Persons interested in surrendering their illegal firearms during the police force’s planned gun amnesty can do so via various agents, not just the police.
This is according to Deputy Commissioner of Police Frankie Joseph, as he was discussing the amnesty on WE FM’s Cop Chat program.
He said the addition of the option to surrender firearms to these agencies will aid in making this operation a success.
“So what we did for this amnesty, we go further than surrendering the weapons to only the police, we added agents. So we have agencies in the document, that if you’re not comfortable surrendering your weapons to the police for different reasons,” Mr. Joseph.
Some of these agents that the deputy commissioner spoke of include, pastors, parliamentarians and more.
“You can surrender your weapon to a minister of religion, a justice of peace, a lawyer/solicitor—a lot of the weapons that we have collected before were surrendered through lawyers so that is a customary thing. You have parliamentarians, you can surrender it to your parliamentarian who represents you if you want. We have firearms dealers, headteachers or any person in the community that you feel you are comfortable with and you can trust, you can surrender that weapon to that person,” he said.
The last time there was a national gun amnesty held in St. Vincent and the Grenadines was in 2003. Deputy Commissioner Joseph said that operation was not as successful as they had hoped it would be, running from February 1st to June 30th, with only 19 firearms handed in.
This year’s National Gun Amnesty will come into effect on Friday March 1st 2024 for 91 days and will conclude on Friday May 31st 2024. Five firearms have already been handed in before the amnesty period.
