Archive for October, 2008
Windsor Park scene of major fight
(CNS): What appears to have been a mob disturbance or a possible gang fight resulted in a number of arrests this weekend in Windsor Park. Police said that on Friday, 24 October, at around 3:45 pm officers arrested three teenagers on suspicion of threatening violence and being in possession of an unlicensed firearm in the Oak Lane area.
Later that night same night at around 1:00 am officers were alerted to another disturbance in the Windsor Park area. This time when they arrived police arrested 11 people aged between 14 and 20 for various offences including unlawful assembly. A number of weapons including a machete, a razor and some wooden clubs were seized. Police said that follow-up investigations and house searches resulted in implements believed to be used for preparing drugs for sale being located and seized. Some of the men have been released on bail while some remain in custody.
Police said that two of the men, aged 17 and 18 arrested on Friday afternoon have been released on bail pending further investigations but the third, a 16-year-old, remains in police custody. Some of the eleven men arrested in the earlier hours of Saturday morning have also been released on bail while some remain in custody.
In a separate incident on Saturday, a further arrest was made. A 53-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of theft and disorderly conduct.
“Criminal activity will not be tolerated in George Town,” said InspectorBennard Ebanks, second in charge of the district. “We hope that our swift action and positive arrests send a strong message to those involved in crime that they will not get away with it.”
Anyone with information about crime taking place in the Cayman Islands should contact their local police station or Crime Stoppers on 800-8477 (TIPS). All persons calling crime stoppers remain anonymous, and are eligible for a reward of up to $1000, should their information lead to an arrest or recovery of property/drugs.
Elderly man dies in his prison cell
(CNS): According to HMP Northward a 74-year-old man died in his prison cell in the early hours of Saturday morning (25 October). Windell Dilbert, who was on remand on a murder charge was reportedly found by the night-shift officer who was checking cells.
Although offering few details the prison said that Dilbert had been unwell for some time, he had visited hospital frequently and was recently hospitalised for a few days.
The night-shift officer, on one of his routine checks, noticed that Dilbert seemed to be sitting on the floor of his cell. The officer found him unresponsive and called the shift supervisor, who attended and then called 911.
Medics and police officers attended the scene and pronounced Dilbert dead. The prison said the cause of death will be the subject of a coroner’s inquest, which is standard practice for deaths in custody.
The department said that it extends its condolences to Dilbert’s family.
According to news archives Dilbert was on remand waiting trial regarding the murder of former RCIPS officer Michael Ebanks in the home the two men shared on Courts Road, George Town, on Friday 1 June 2007 at the government-owned affordable housing site.
Driver kills rare duck
(CNS): Just a few months after Cayman Wildlife Rescue placed a sign along the Linford Pierson to caution drivers about a family of West Indian Whistling Ducks nesting along the busy stretch of road one of them was mowed down by a vehicle on Sunday and Alison Corbett, Project Manager of Cayman Wildlife Rescue is appealing to the public not to feed the birds nesting by roads as it encourages them to nest in dangerous spots.
“The ducks have nested here for many years and each year some of the young were reported to be killed by oncoming traffic,” said Corbett who explained that she had seen many people feeding the ducks along the highway and pleaded with them to stop. “Unfortunately feeding wildlife roadside has deadly consequences. I think one of the reasons why the ducks choose this unfavourable site is due to this factor.”
By the end of September the five young were fully fledged and would have been able to leave the wetland area but in October they were found still habituating the dangerous wetland and were still being fed by the public. “Sometimes when people think they are helping the situation they are in fact making it worse. It deeply upsets the volunteers of CWR and we hope that the public will learn from this mishap.”
Cayman Wildlife Rescue strongly advises the public never to feed wildlife along the roads. This act is dangerous not only the wildlife, but also very dangerous to people themselves. “I would like to thank everyone for their concern and for keeping wildlife in mind when driving. Being an active driver and keeping your eyes on the road and roadside is not just a safe driving practice for people, but will also benefit our wildlife,” Corbett added.”CWR would like to see more signs installed along deadly stretches of road, which are proving to be fatal to wildlife. Cars continue to be one of the major killers of wildlife and unfortunately most of the animals we have brought in due to cars are usually euthanasia cases. Wildlife and traffic don’t mix. We ask drivers to please keep an eye out for the feathered, furred and scaled friends we share the road with.”
Corbett said the sign was a joint project between Vision Marketing & Signs of Paradise. The support from the public was outstanding and CWR received many calls & emails from members of the community concerned about the duck family.
Most residents only became familiar with the West Indian Whistling Duck after Hurricane Ivan, when it ventured out of the wetlands and into urban areas in search of food. It is also a nocturnal bird, roosting in the mangroves during the day, flying out to feeding grounds in the evening, and returning to roost just before dawn. There are now several private individuals around the island who feed them on a regular basis. According to Patricia Bradley’s “Birds of the Cayman Islands” (Caerulea Press, 1995), the West Indian Whistling Duck is listed as an endangered species and is protected on the island.
If members of the public find injured wildlife, they can call the 24 hr Wildlife Emergency Hotline 917-BIRD (2473) where dedicated volunteers will provide emergency service & support. For your own safety and that of the animal, members of the public are requested to not attempt to rescue or care for the animal themselves – rather call the hotline and trained volunteers will attend to the animal. Cayman Wildlife Rescue is a programme of the National Trust for the Cayman Islands. This project is staffed entirely by volunteers with other full time jobs, and is financed 100% by donations from the public. If you would like to help by donating funds or volunteering time, please contact Alison Corbett at caymanwildliferescue@gmail.com www.caymanwildliferescue.org
Catron pursues offender’s list
(CNS): As a result of the continued delay on the government’s part to introduce an official sex offenders register, local activist Sandra Catron plans to circulate a petition which will be handed to government giving them until May 2009 to set a number of initiatives in motion in order to tackle the issue of child abuse within the Cayman Islands community.
Catron is calling for the mandatory reporting of sexual offenses; the implementation of a comprehensive sex offenders registry that includes convictions from the past 10 years with full public access; longer and stricter sentences for offenders; a requirement for offenders to provide current addresses and updated photos subject to five years imprisonment for non-compliance and to work with international agencies like CEOP Centre based in London to make sure that all visitors/residents are subjected to both domestic and international policing and checks. If these regulations are not implemented Catron says she intend to establish her own register online that she will, if necessary, host offshore.
“I dare say that with the next general election around the corner we need to now exercise our power as voters and demand a sexual offender registry law be put in place before May 2009. It is unacceptable for politicians and senior civil servants to stand by and do nothing while our children continue to be preyed upon by the vilest of our society,” she said.
At last week’s post Cabinet press briefing the government said it had not seen the details of the police plan to introduce a formal offenders register and therefore it could not offer an opinion on the subject. However, the Minister for Education, Alden McLaughlin, offered a word of caution as he said that identifying the perpetrator in small community like Cayman, not least because the perpetrators were often family members, was tantamount to identifying the victim.
“Although we haven’t taken a position as a government, I personally have pointed out in the past that it is understandable — we all want people who perpetrate these crimes held up to public criticism. But the concern I have is that in a place as small as Cayman to identify the culprit means to identify the victim,” the Minister said. “So we have to ask ourselves, how do we strike the balance? But as a country we certainly need to do what we can to protect ourselves from sex offenders and hold them up to public outrage.”
He also noted that while government would support tougher sentencing measures, he felt mandatory sentences tied the hands of judges. In the recent controversial case over an alleged light sentence handed down to a sex offender, the perpetrator actually has a serious mental illness.
“You have to be careful in meting out full justice that you don’t place the courts in a position where they can’t consider all the circumstances” he added. “There is no point in sending someone with a mental illness to HMP Northward. Our problem is we don’t have adequate facilities to deal with these people.”
Catron dismisses the comments regarding the identification of victims. “The people in the Cayman Islands have been subjected to a continual veil of secrecy that has and will continue to destroy our children, families and communities,” she said. “I am baffled by the lack of political willpower to demand a sex offender registry.”
Catron argued that the idea that a register would be detrimental in a community of our size because it exposes the victim is nonsensical, political doublespeak. “We all know that given the size of the community we normally know information about both the victim and the abuser almost immediately,” Catron added. “Over the years I have had many victims and mothers of victims contact me because they are often at a loss of what to do. In one case, a local offender is now driving a school bus.”
She said that while our politicians sit back and look for reasons not to support this initiative, our children are being directly put in the line of sight of these known abusers who pose a very unique and different risk to the most vulnerable.“ Community supervision and oversight has proven to work,” Catron said. “The usefulness of this registry cannot be underestimated and I stand by my contention that the government has failed us in this respect. A sex offender registry should ideally be a government initiative that is both mandated and maintained by them.”
Child rapists charged
(CNS): Police confirmed today that two men recently arrested have now been charged with the rape of a five year old child. The charges come in the wake of an investigation by the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS) Family Support Unit, following accusations made on 20 October.
The charges also follow the controversial circulation of an email identifying one of the perpetrators before charges were made which raised concern in the RCIPS that people may take matters into their own hands.
Police confirmed today, however, that Marden Hernandez-Kirkconnell, 26, has been charged with one count of rape and Kent Robert Ebanks, 52, residing in West Bay, has been charged with three counts of rape. Police confirmed that the charges relate to the molestation of a 5-year-old child. Both men appeared in court Monday afternoon, 27 October.
The issue of sex offenders has taken centre stage in the media recently following what was considered a lenient sentence handed down to a convicted paedophile earlier this month and the failure of the courts to identify the perpatrator in order to protect the victim. As a result local activist Sandra Catron has said she intends to establish a website where the names and details of sex offenders living in the Cayman Islands will be published.
“The objective of a sex offender registry is to prevent further victimization through improving the management of adult and juvenile sex offenders who are in the community,” said Catron.
Police said anyone who would like to speak to an officer about crimes of this nature should contact the Family Support Unit on 946-9185.
Anyone with information about crime taking place in the Cayman Islands should contact their local police station or Crime Stoppers on 800-8477 (TIPS). All persons calling crime stoppers remain anonymous, and are eligible for a reward of up to $1000, should their information lead to an arrest or recovery of property/drugs.
Man released but murder enquiry goes on
(CNS): A man who has been held in custody by police since Saturday, 18 October, helping them with enquiries regarding the murder of Estella Scott Roberts has been released without charge and the investigation continues. Superintendent Marlon Bodden, who has strategic oversight of the investigation, said officers were, however, following a number of positive lines of enquiry.
“This man is free to go,” said Bodden. “We have a number of lines of enquiry which all need to be thoroughly followed up. We work with the evidence and material we have at the time and build upon this with additional information that comes to light. The implication and elimination of people is reliant upon the evidence.”
The man was released today after being questioned without police bail or charge but over 20 officers, led by Senior Investigating Officer, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Kennett, remain working on the investigation. Numerous statements have been taken and a number of exhibits have been sent overseas for forensic analysis.
“We have a number of positive lines of enquiry which we cannot elaborate on at this time,” Bodden added. “We appreciate all the assistance we have been receiving and encourage the community to continue to work with us. We must take a stand against violence as a whole community.”
Estella Scott-Roberts was last seen in the car park in-between Deckers and Buckingham Square at around 11.15pm on Friday, October 11. Her burnt out black Ford Edge was found in the Dykes in West Bay the following day. An examination of remains found in the vehicle by a forensic pathologist has left little doubt that the body is that of Estella Scott-Roberts. Anyone with information is asked to contact the murder team directly or Crime Stoppers on 800-8477. Dedicated contact numbers are as follows: Detective Inspector Kim Evans – 926-1773; Detective Constable Wade Chase – 925-7240; Detective Constable Charmane Dalhouse – 926-3975; Detective Constable Karl Lovell – 925-6761.All persons calling crime stoppers remain anonymous, and are eligible for a reward of up to US$125,000 should their information lead to an arrest and conviction.
Are Cayman’s laws too lax?
The right of the community to be informed of potential offenders in our midst must be weighed against the basic legal principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law by a jury of their peers and further that they have exhausted all their legal rights.
In a population pool as small as ours, can anyone with an internet address be called to jury duty nowadays and be trusted to limit themselves to examine the evidence presented in an objective, non-biased manner and hand out a fair verdict?
The seemingly new idea of placing alleged offenders on the world-wide web and having them quickly “convicted” in the court of open public opinion does not bode well with me. We must guard against this seemingly “rush to judgment” becoming an obsession and in the end, allowing a hardened criminal who should be removed from the law abiding midst of our society and neighborhoods’, remain simply because a fair and just trial could not reasonably be expected to be given due to the “alleged perpetrator” already having been convicted in the open arena of public opinion and “world-wide web” court of weak jurisprudence.
I believe most of us agree that the sentence handed out on the recent case of indecent assault on a five year old was – to say the least – ludicrous, and a result of laws that are not severe enough to be effective deterrents for the kind of gut-wrenching offenses we are witnessing in our islands today.
Though I expect the usual segments of the population to oppose the reinstatement of capital punishment, I really fail to see why the law abiding majority of us should pay for years of humane living conditions for offenders that obviously forfeited their humanity when they chose to commit such heinous offenses. The idea of my hard-earned tax money being utilized to provide three meals a day, medical and dental care, clothes and a token salary to such offenders is anathema to me. I would prefer to help needy children or the elderly with my tax dollars.
And this is with the backdrop that today’s crimes ´seemingly are being committed by younger perpetrators, thus their likelihood of long term incarceration and additional “prison housing costs” will be of a greater and ever larger costs to me and you. Thus we ALL need to be concerned in regards to what now seems to be an attitude of “creeping criminality” and “passive acceptance of criminality in our society”. It ought to be and must be stamped out at its early stages, or else we will ALL suffer long term and dire consequences for failure to act decisively today.
In conclusion, I think that excessive leakage of information before a case goes to trial will ultimately undermine our legal system. However, our laws need to become as harsh as the crimes that are being committed, and if reliance on the old adage of “ I want my pound of flesh”, is to be relied on, then I too think that life in prison is not enough for murder in the first degree and neither are a few years for a serious crime against a minor!
In short, we have much to be thankful for yet in our mostly tranquil and socially harmonic society, and this should give us all greater impetus to rally around the campaign to stamp out “creeping criminality” within our Caymanian society.
Blacklist threat part deux
An interesting but predictable follow-up to the threat by some EU countries to have the OECD blacklist Switzerland (itself an OECD member) as an uncooperative tax haven occurred over the weekend.
The Swiss Foreign Minister chastised
“It would not be the approach one expects from a state bound by the rule of law” she said. On Monday, the EU ambassador to
Tom Jones wins new resort
(CNS): Cayman’s latest five star resort development will begin construction very soon following the announcement by developer Michael Beggs that Tom Jones International has won the contract to construct Island Resort and Residences in Grand Cayman’s East End. An exclusive and reclusive ‘condotel’ Beggs says this development will raise the bar in Cayman when it comes to high end resorts and Tom Jones is the best company for the job.
“Having seen the work that Tom Jones international did on Beachcomber and other major developments I know we have the right people on board,” said Beggs who explained that island Resort and Residences had reached a preliminary agreement with the firm which is also currently developing two of the government and fast becoming one of Cayman’s biggest contractors.
Beggs said that it took him sometime to decide on a contractor as he said the project needed an experienced company that won’t take any shortcuts and will construct a safe and secure resort. Engineered to withstand anything that nature could throw at it Beggs said finding the right firm to build the Island Resort was as important as finding the right architects and design team.
“People will now begin to see this amazing resort take shape as construction begins and we really are bringing something entirely different to Cayman,” Beggs added. Despite the recession Beggs says he is confident the resort will be a success. “The ultimate hedge against recession is luxury,” he explained adding that with so many new resort developments cancelled around the Caribbean , his development will be attracting investors looking for an exclusive destination that are now faced with less choice.
The resort, which will have 221 rooms, is being constructed on the Queen’s Highway in between the Royal Reef Resort and the proposed site for the Mandarin Orient. Beggs says that during construction there will be lots of employment opportunities for Eastenders and local sub-contracting firms. He said that Tom Jones International will soon be holding district meetings to talk to the local community about the jobs available.
Once the resort is open Beggs said not only will it have an impact on the Cayman economy as whole by attracting high net worth individuals to the island but it will also continue to offer excellent career opportunities for lots of local people.
Global warming greatest risk
(Reuters): The risks of inaction over climate change far outweigh the turmoil of the global financial crisis, a leading climate change expert has said. Calling for new fiscal spending tailored to low carbon growth Nicholas Stern, a former British Treasury economist said inaction on emissions blamed for global warming could cause economic pain equal to the Great Depression. Go to article.