A 23-year-old St George man was due to appear in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court today after he was arrested and charged with firearm and drug related offences.

Darron Denico Austin of Glebe Land is accused of unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of two rounds of ammunition and unlawful possession of cannabis.

The offences were allegedly committed around 4 a.m. last Saturday, during the Foreday Morning Jam.

Lawmen, acting on a tip off, searched Austin while he was jumping in a band.

As the 2017 Crop Over festival climaxes today, there are reports of a shooting in the area of Waterford, St Michael.

Barbados TODAY understands that the victim was shot in the foot by a police officer.

However, details are still sketchy and all that Public Relations Officer of the Royal Barbados Police Force Acting Inspector Roland Cobbler would say at this stage is that lawmen are investigating reports of violent incidents, including a stabbing, as the island’s premier cultural festival draws to a close.

A St George man, who is accused of violating the Firearms Act, received an automatic 28-day stay at HMP Dodds when he made his first appearance in court today.

It is alleged that Darron Denico Austin of Glebe Land had a firearm in his possession on August 5 as well as two rounds of ammunition without a lawful licence.

The 23-year-old was not required to plead to the indictable charges but admitted to Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sergeant that he had 10.3 grammes of cannabis worth $51.53 in his pocket at the time.

Austin reappears in court on September 5.

Is house building in Barbados reflective of the people and their customs, or is it an imitation of what is happening structurally in the developed world?

These were some of the hard questions that arose at an Urban Development Commission discussion forum last night, following a presentation made by Magistrate Christopher Birch on non-physical challenges facing Barbados’ urban landscape.

“The temptation of our increasingly technocratic age is to give more emphasis to the development of infrastructure, layout and provision of services, along with environmental sustainability and service provision,” Birch asserted before the audience which gathered in the UDC conference room.

However, the magistrate expressed concern that while the island may well be fulfilling the letter of the legislation and attaining the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals, it may well be overlooking its actual human development.

“What is being done to reinforce the human factor in urban development?” Birch asked aloud.

“It is easy to claim that in this century, infrastructural and service innovation is well ahead of where Barbados was at independence. After all, health care, housing, roads and communications are all at a comparatively advanced level when compared to times past and in other countries.

“That said, could it be that in providing the modern trappings of human living, Barbados may have paid too much heed to the physical needs of the country and not the human needs of the population?”

Also taking part in the discussion, Director of Youth Cleveston Hunte, a former probation officer, said, “there are a number of social development challenges which arise as a result of how we plan our city, our urban areas.

“What has lagged behind is the human development side, in terms of the actual development of our people,” he said.

Strong concern was also raised about the island’s changing cultural and social norms, which are reflected in the current housing patterns. It was pointed out that in the not so distant past, Barbadians lived in tight-knit communities in which neighbours knew each other well and it was commonplace to walk over to your neighbour to borrow emergency food supplies, such as salt and sugar when the kitchen stock fell low.

However, Chief Town Planner, Mark Cummins said that despite the best efforts of planners, it was hard nowadays to control the mix of persons going into respective dwelling units, with Church Village, St Philip being the planning exception.

He explained that while this area has the same terrace units like any other place in Barbados, “careful selection” was made of persons to live there, including police officers, nurses, teachers and other professionals.

This may explain why there have been no reports of social problems – including problems of crime – in that area, Cummins also suggested.

“We continue to put [together] people that we feel are of the same social class. And in so doing it reduces the hard work that the planners would have put in to ensure that [social] structure is there,” the chief town planner said.

Cummins also made reference to the Grotto housing development at Beckles Road, St Michael, saying “you cannot ask for better space in terms of its location” and comparing it with private sector developments which he said were “not as aesthetically pleasing as the Grotto”, but which fetch rentals from $4,000 to $8,000 per month.

“What we should do is ensure that we have a mix of persons. We have the youth, we can have some seniors in there so all the traditions . . . can be passed on and those public spaces can then become spaces of education,” Cummins further suggested.

Also in attendance was Speaker of the House of Assembly Michael Carrington, who questioned whether stipulations and covenants in property transfers could be a factor in social dislocation as these conveyances usually include rules on how properties should be separated and the minimum expenses to be involved in any construction.

“In addition to the price of the land, they tell you can’t build guard walls as an example for less than a certain amount,” he said.

In response, Magistrate Birch observed that “alienation is very much a part of the human landscape.

“We build that wall and we build that wall and it gets higher and it gets stronger,” he said, while referring to the period prior to the 20th century when Barbados was very separated.

“A day will come where we are going to look around and [realize] we’re back where we started,” he warned.

I suspect I have mentioned in this space before that I am not a Crop Over baby. Reggae is my choice of music and prancing around half-naked in the sun next to scores of other sweaty people is not my idea of a grand day spent. Having said that, I believe in live and let live as a core value of my life. So I usually am somewhere on the sidelines of Crop Over with my friends and a good Barbadian rum – more my idea of a day constructively spent.

Since I have never caught Crop Over fever, I keep my commentary of it to a bare minimum. It somehow feels wrong to critique an exercise I admit I do not fully participate in. With all that disclaimer out of the way, permit me two quick observations. The masquerade bands are getting smaller every year. The Grand Kadooment procession is now a mass of vehicular traffic as a band with an average of about 100 people seems to have no less than 30 associated vehicles.

Perhaps why I am a little upset by this new feature of Crop Over is that the first place I noticed this ‘truck-for-everything’ was Trinidad. It therefore reminds me of the extent to which Crop Over is being ‘carnivalized’. As I said having no vested interest in participation I do not know if the ‘carnivalization’ is to be construed as healthy or not, but I hope the relevant stakeholders notice it and that there is some managed change for the greater good of the overall festival.

My second concern is a lot more minor. As I watched the costume advertising which the bands had affixed to their trucks along the route, I realized we are back to advertising costumes on one female body type. Personally, if I had a choice about a costume purchase to make and I did not see my body type reflected in the costume advertising, I would not purchase a costume.

When only one body type is used to advertise costumes that type of body becomes the standard by which the costume’s beauty will be judged and I would not try to reach a standard that was not feasible because my body type was not considered in the advertising. The next hot topic on the minds of many was the spate of violence which broke out at the end of Monday’s Grand Kadooment. For as long as I can remember there have been scrapes associated with the annual jump up. So in this regard, I agree with the officials that comparatively, the level of violence seen associated with this year’s festival might not be too much outside of general norm.

What has certainly changed is the type of violence and the brazen manner in which the incident occurred and this is concerning not only for Crop Over but as a general trend moving forward in Barbados.

The innocent bystanders who were injured by gunmen shooting after a target are not the first in recent memory. One of the more tragic incidents I remember was the woman who lost her life on Barbarees Hill. There is at least one other I remember recently of a woman being shot in her leg along Black Rock when a man was gunned down.

If we remove this latest incident of violence from Crop Over and classify it as another where innocent bystanders got injured, I think we would be even more alarmed about where we have reached in Barbados. We now have a type of criminal who is completely removed from any connection with the wider society.

He or she is the child who has faced systematic depravity in their personal lives from early and for long periods of time. They have come from communities where educational opportunities are scarce and they do not feel that many other opportunities are made available for them to excel. They have seen lives of crime play out around them as a means of income and they do not feel a sense of guilt or wrong doing when they themselves get into crime.

They come out of educational facilities which have not been equipped to deal with their learning challenges. Many take their learning deficiencies into adulthood and are unable to find the resources to help themselves or their children, who sometimes have the same difficulties. These people find menial jobs which never offer them enough to live beyond an existence where several have to clutter into one house in order to exist.

They have misplaced spending habits due to a lack of exposure and oftentimes poor dietary habits. All of this comes together to create a person who is vulnerable emotionally and can be influenced by cultures which permeate the (mainly foreign) movies and television they watch, the video games they play and the steady diet of rap and dub music they consume.

These individuals can feel that they are more connected and loyal to a friendly gang in America than they feel to the Barbadian women, children and men they live with. Our ‘us and them approach’ to generational poverty, education and other social variables has assisted in the justification of how they feel. So when they imitate the antics of the bad man in Jamaica or Brooklyn, New York who can leave home and shoot through a crowd four or five hours’ drive away, they cannot process that on a little rock, they may shoot through a crowd and kill their own neighbour, child, sister or friend.

The police and the Attorney General have finally admitted that we have gangs. Not only do we have gangs, we have big well-established gangs, some with connections within the ‘system’. They also have a steady supply of disillusioned youth, men and women who have become a part of an established structure.

We have to find ways to stop innocent bystanders from becoming the victims of the cross fire that is playing out, but we also need medium and long term strategizing if we are to really understand the depth of the historical, cultural and deep-seated problems we face.

Anglican Priest Reverend Hugh Sandiford today blasted Governments for being part of the move away from Christianity, the absence of which, along with inaction of society, he blamed for the current state of gun violence in Barbados.

Delivering the sermon at the St Matthias Anglican Church where members of the  Barbados Defence Force attended a service to mark its 38th anniversary, Sandiford said that for a long time Christianity has been losing its influence on the island.

But, addressing an audience that included Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, he added that this declining influence was hastened by the removal of biblical names of schools over the past two decades.

“In our nation, this has been evident for quite some time, but during this 20-year period we witnessed the renaming of several schools,” he said.

“This attempt to raise our national consciousness  also  simultaneously removed reminders of Christianity from the psyche of our nation, thereby further weakening its influence.”

Rev’d Sandiford themed his sermon on the benefits of joint or community action borrowing terminology from the Bible, “two are better than one”, and focused on what he saw as society’s mistakes of the past 20 years.

While noting that, “in recent times there’ve been too many shootings in our beloved Barbados”, he said, “if we reflect on Barbados you would realize that we heard the term crime and violence being used approximately 20 years ago”.

“Many of us did not take it seriously then . . . We sat and did nothing 20 years ago . . . We’ve brought our pigs to fine market.”

He said that while crime and violence had begun raising to a significant position in society, “simultaneously other things were happening socially which contributed to where we are today”.

According to the Reverend’s recollection, at the same time that there began talk of men in crisis, male and female gender-specific organizations were, “continuously taking pot shots at each other instead of coming together and working towards a solution”.

“While they were poking fun at each other we noticed a new face appeared on the bloc liming, and that face is feminine. Our young ladies started to frequent the blocs as well.”

He said that while girls began joining boys in these social groupings there was the take off of the technological era.

“Everything both good and bad became available and was just one click away, it was in this culture that the [millennials] . . . that they were born and were raised as a part of this ‘I’ culture,” he said and spoke of the emerging self-centeredness, “which is the same mentality of our prevailing culture. There is limited if any regard at all for others”.

He said that the solution to the gun violence and deaths currently affecting Barbados lay in the people, and not in seeking to snuff out the symptom of social problems instead of the cause.

“Our appeal to meet force with force will not solve the problem. It might win the battle, but the war can only be won if we as a people, as citizens of Barbados stand together and correct this systemic flaw.

“All of us have roles to play if we are to overcome this. We can no longer simply cower and hide and hope that something brings it to an end.

“We must use our influence as church, as families, as communities.”

Rev’d Sandiford pointed out that the gun-related violence and deaths are not caused by the overwhelming majority of Barbadians, and urged that the superior numbers of law abiding persons must, “use our spheres of influence because these same perpetrators are our children. They live within our communities. It starts with each and every one of us”.

“We can no longer sit and do nothing. “Together we stand, but divided, this nation, this paradise we call home will fall. “Two are better than one. Let us stand together and let us make the next 50 years even more glorious that the first 50,” he added.

Barbados has signed on to a Host Country Agreement with the Caribbean Export Development Agency (Caribbean Export) to receive support for private sector development.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Senator Maxine McClean and Executive Director of Caribbean Export Pamela Coke-Hamilton recently signed the agreement.

Senator McClean said she was very pleased that after 20 years, both parties had finally signed an official agreement “formally documenting the facilitation efforts”.

“I am happy to say that the Government of Barbados was able to offer to the agency the high level of support that we have deemed appropriate for our regional and international partners.

“Caribbean Export was established in November 1996 and since then, it has been, and still is, the only regional trade and investment promotion agency in the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group, and that is an important indicator of its significance and value,” she said.

The Minister noted that there had been a long partnership between the agency, the country and the region, and it was a “shining example” of the CARICOM, CARIFORUM and the European Union partnership.

Coke-Hamilton said her agency was pleased to formalize its position, and looked forward to continuing to support the Government of Barbados and its private sector.

She said that to date, Caribbean Export has assisted over 500 beneficiaries from Barbados with work programme-based initiatives, and subsequently, has spent over $1.8 million supporting private sector development on the island.

“As we ramp up the 11th EDF [European Development Fund] work programme, we hope to continue our support to Barbadian companies. We have already supported a number of Barbadian companies to get grants via the LINK-Caribbean Angel investment programme, and I would encourage any early-stage company that is in need of financial support to explore this programme,” she advised.

Coke-Hamilton thanked Senator McClean for her continued support over the years and expressed the hope that Barbados would continue to move in a direction that “promotes a strong and vibrant private sector”.

A tropical storm warning remains in effect for Barbados as Tropical Storm Harvey forms 400 kilometres east of the island.

SUMMARY OF 500 PM AST…2100 UTC…INFORMATION
———————————————-
LOCATION…13.0N 55.8W
ABOUT 250 MI…400 KM E OF BARBADOS
ABOUT 355 MI…570 KM E OF ST. LUCIA
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS…40 MPH…65 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT…W OR 270 DEGREES AT 18 MPH…30 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE…1004 MB…29.65 INCHES

SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT:

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for…
* Martinique
* St. Lucia
* Barbados
* St. Vincent and the Grenadines

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for…
* Dominica

A Tropical Storm Warning means that tropical storm conditions are expected somewhere within the warning area, in this case within 24-36 hours.

A Tropical Storm Watch means that tropical storm conditions are possible within the watch area, in this case within 24-36 hours.

For storm information specific to your area, please monitor products issued by your national meteorological service.

DISCUSSION AND 48-HOUR OUTLOOK
——————————
At 500 PM AST (2100 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Harvey was located near latitude 13.0 North, longitude 55.8 West. Harvey is moving toward the west near 18 mph (30 km/h), and this motion is expected to continue for the next couple of days. On the forecast track, Harvey should move through the Windward Islands and into the
eastern Caribbean Sea on Friday.

Reports from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter Aircraft indicate that maximum sustained winds are near 40 mph (65 km/h) with higher gusts. Slow strengthening is possible during the next 48 hours.

Tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 35 miles (55 km) to the north of the center.

The minimum central pressure estimated from the Hurricane Hunter
data is 1004 mb (29.65 inches).

HAZARDS AFFECTING LAND
———————-
WIND: Tropical storm conditions are expected to first reach the Lesser Antilles within the warning area by early Friday, making outside preparations difficult or dangerous. Tropical storm conditions are possible in the watch area on Friday.

RAINFALL: Harvey is expected to produce rainfall totals of 2 to 4 inches across portions of the Windward Islands from Martinique southward to Grenada. These rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.

NEXT ADVISORY
————-
Next intermediate advisory at 800 PM AST.
Next complete advisory at 1100 PM AST.

The Barbados Water Authority (BWA) advises all Barbadians that before a storm it is important to store an adequate supply of water for household use in the event pumping stations go offline or water mains rupture leading to a water outage.

The recommended amount is five gallons per person per day for at least five days; water must be stored in clean, covered containers.

The BWA further advises the public to follow the instructions of the MET office and emergency personnel and keep indoors during the storm.

We pray that our staff, customers and all of Barbados be safe during the passage of this current system. (ENDS)