Prime Minister Dean Barrow
"The police and ourselves discussed how on a longer term basis you can remove these people from the equation. I am saying that we have passed all sorts of laws. There is an offence on the statute book that has been there for years. We've tried to tweak it. We tried to make it more robust, but that essentially said that membership in a gang is illegal. I am now learning that one of the persons being detained will be charged with some offence of causing public terror. That reassures me, because you are very unlikely to get them for the actual offence of murder, or of shooting somebody. Then the question of affiliates is raised. We are told we have some extremely young recruits that are being used as trigger persons. Again, you can't prove it, but we've passed a law that said in the case of minors who are not going to school, who are not in circumstances in terms of their home environment that are stable who are not working and if they are minors, presumably they can't work, we can go to court for a sort of care order that will take these young people off the streets. You talk about the fact that currently there seems to be a feeling that the police can't charge anybody without first getting the approval of the DPP - that makes no sense to me at all; the office of the DPP is the ultimate backstop, but you can't wait to charge until you've asked the DPP for the office's view of the circumstances. When I was practicing law, the police used to charge you, they felt they have enough evidence, they charge you and I am saying to the police let's do that."