Dear Editor,
The Safety and security of people and property is the number one responsibility of government. However, our negligent government, which includes the PM, the Minister of Justice and the Police Chief, knew for over 40 hours beforehand that cat. five Hurricane Irma was heading directly towards us, but did not issue a state of emergency and order all police officers, the VKS, the Coast Guard and the 50 or so military personnel that were on island at the time to secure their families and report to duty at 6:00pm on September 5 to stand by in barracks and be ready to be dispatched to secure the capital Philipsburg, the major food suppliers, hotels, and other business areas on island.
Both European and American forecast models were showing that Irma was going to pass very close or right over us more than 30 hours before as a strong cat. five hurricane. Why did the PM not issue a “state of emergency” on September 5? Why did the Police Chief and Minister of Justice not order all Justice Officers, which includes the VKS and the Coast Guard, to report to duty at 6:00pm on September 5?
Why did the PM not request 100 or so military troops and some Curaçao police offers to be sent to the island before, or right after the storm stopped on September 6? After all, it only takes 1½ hours for military transport planes to bring in troops and some additional Curaçao police officers from the military base in Curaçao. Why was no stand-by request made to the Dutch Minister of Defence and the Dutch Minister of Justice in advance for military assistance? Military troop transport aircraft can land in almost any condition. They could have landed at the airport one hour after the wind stopped.
I was watching the news before the electricity and Internet went down, and I saw that the governor of the state of Florida had already issued a state of emergency and requested everyone to evacuate the coastline of Florida and move further inland. That was four or five days before Hurricane Irma was expected to hit Florida.
I suppose we did not learn what happens after a cat. five hurricane from Hurricane Luis 22 years ago. So, no security preparations were made.
I understand from eyewitnesses that looters had already started looting the bars along Boardwalk Boulevard and some stores in Philipsburg after the sea started rising before the winds started early in the evening on September 5.
All hell really started to break loose during the eye of the storm, before the second half of the hurricane. Cost-U-Less and Le Grand Marché were broken into; the front hurricane doors were ripped off by looters during the eye of the storm. Early morning on September 6 before the winds had stopped hundreds, if not thousands were swarming Cost-U-Less and Le Grand Marché . I could see from my house pickup trucks and cars loading up.
By eight o’clock in the morning on September 6 processions of people on scooters, loaded pickup trucks, cars and shopping carts were carrying 42-inch TV sets and other stolen goods towards St. Peters and Betty Estate. This continued for three days without police doing anything to stop it.
A little later in the day on September 6 I saw some police cars driving by the procession of looters on L.B. Scott with their sirens blaring, but did nothing. Meanwhile, in Philipsburg they were breaking into the electronic and jewellery stores. Not one law enforcement officer to be seen anywhere!
Storeowners ran to the police station to tell the police they are breaking into my store. “Please help!” The police told the storeowners that they had no police officers to send, many did not show up for duty because they also had houses and families to take care of, they said.
What? What is the duty of the police? While most looters were foreigners, many locals were in between. We had security guards looting. We had government civil servants looting. We had some politicians’ immediate family members looting. We had employees looting the stores they worked at. We had mother and father looting with their children. We had Haitian women looting with their grown children. We even had some so-called Christians in church on Sunday and looting on Wednesday.
Again, most of the looters were foreigners and the children of foreigners! I overheard one Jamaican woman in a Chinese restaurant telling her friends that she was in Cost-U-Less and all she could hear the people speaking was Jamaican and Spanish.
I also saw some Guyanese and people from down-island carrying home looted stuff.
Many hundreds, if not thousands of people looted multiple millions of dollars in merchandise, much of it will not be paid by insurance, very few caught and given light sentences. What message do you think this sends to the criminals next time around? If one loots a can of milk, he is just as guilty as the one who steals a 40-inch TV.
No one was starving and hungry on the morning after Irma. Can one go and steal a rancher’s cow and say he was hungry? That rancher would have the right to shoot that person on the spot for cattle-rustling. Same for if one who steals a farmer’s crops. Let’s not try to make a thief the victim here.
One looter was beaten by cops and there was an outcry from some bleeding-heart leftist about police brutality. He should have not only been beaten. In my opinion, he should have also been shot, for he was not only breaking a zero tolerance curfew, but he was also looting (stealing). I support the police officers on this one. More should have been beaten and shot. If you act like an animal, you should be treated as such. If more were beaten and shot, next time around there would be no looting.
Zero tolerance should mean just that. Zero tolerance has become meaningless, a joke! Bleeding heart leftists were trying to make this criminal into the victim here again.
Well, on the third day I saw some military showing up at roundabouts standing there with guns in hand, no bullets in their magazines, watching looters go by in their loaded pickup trucks, cars, scooters and shopping carts and doing nothing to stop the looters. I asked one of them, “Why you are not doing anything to stop them?” He told me that they do not yet have orders to intervene. I suppose the PM still did not yet sign off on the “State of Emergency” after the third day of looting.
Zero tolerance only kicked on the fourth day after the storm, after almost every store, Chinese supermarket, liquor store and school were looted out. Our anti-business government has a track record for demonising the business community. It’s as though they wanted the businesspeople to be looted out. Some politicians told some of the businesspeople to “let the people take what they want, you have insurance”
St. Maarten has become a high risk dangerous place in which to invest and major investors have lost confidence. Unemployment will now skyrocket, thanks to the incompetence of our leaders. Non-Dutch citizens who were looting should be declared “enemies of the state” and should be treated as such, You don’t come to another man’s state saying you are looking to make a better life for yourself and through your actions to destroy and bring down that state. They should be locked up and be deported.
Guest workers with temporary work and residence permits who are now unemployed; should be given a day to return home, or be deported! No new guest work permits should be issued for another five years. Rebuilding should be done by Dutch citizens and permanent residents with clean police records, if not, they should also be deported!
Crime was alarmingly high before Irma. Less than one in 10 of every criminal case is ever solved. Those few minuscule cases that do get solved, criminal convicts get little or no time in jail. Most people do not report crime because they know that the chance of their cases being solved is little to none.
You may call me whatever names you wish to now! Xenophobia is a word created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons!
Parliament still has a chance to redeem itself by sacking the PM, the Minister of Justice and the Police Chief for gross incompetence and negligence. By now you should know that I support the Dutch in invoking Article 51 to take over border security and install the Integrity Chamber. Don’t like it that way? Then I suggest you go for independence (plan B) and get out! On St. Maarten we have our own Robert Mugabe and his henchmen, and on Statia they have their own Idi Amin.
Some of my neighbours are thieves. Five houses down the road from me, I saw cars off-loading lot of looted goods into their apartments two hours after the storm, and two weeks after the storm, three houses down from me the police surrounded that house, called in the police flatbed truck and loaded up the truck up with fridges, TVs and lots of other goods from the house.
Some of my neighbours are thieves! Is your neighbour a thief?
When you import the ghetto, you become the ghetto. Good luck for the future St. Maarten. You will need it!
Peter Gunn
