‘Stop, Drop & Go!’ ; A safer Sint Maarten starts with you!

Lately many media have been reporting about how busy Police and Public Prosecutors are, on the Dutch side as well as on the French side of the island, with numerous violent armed robberies and deadly shootings on our ‘Friendly Island’. These criminal activities show that there are a lot of illegal fire arms in our country.

The combination ‘Friendly Island’ and ‘illegal fire arms’ doesn’t sound like a good one. We keep hearing complaints from civilians who dislike going out at night, because they feel it’s too dangerous on the streets of Sint Maarten/Saint Martin.

This is the reason why the governments of Sint Maarten and Saint Martin, as well as the public prosecutors and the police forces on both sides of the country are saying: “Enough is enough! We will not tolerate that people are afraid to go out, so, with the help of all the citizens of Sint Maarten and Saint Martin, we have to clean sweep this island of all illegal fire-arms!”

On Friday, the 26^th of September 2014, in a joint press conference that was organized by the French authorities, they launched a campaign that’s called ‘Stop, Drop & Go’.

Stop, Drop & Go

The purpose of the project ‘Stop, Drop & Go’ is to get rid of all the illegal fire-arms on this island. People that own illegal fire-arms can surrender these voluntarily between October 15th and October 31st and will not be prosecuted for possessing a fire-arm. On weekdays between 8.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. they are welcome to hand in their guns at the Attorney General’s office on the 3rd floor of Puerto del Sol Plaza, Welfare Road #68 in Simpson Bay.

For the people on the French side of the island there are the two Gendarmeries in French Quarter and Concordia, Marigot where they can surrender their illegal weapons. After this period of time the police and public prosecutor’s offices will be operating even harder in their battle against illegal fire-arms. Higher punishments will be demanded by the prosecutors and the police forces will toughen their actions.

A safer Sint Maarten starts with you!

So, between October 15^th and October 31^st, we encourage the people of Sint Maarten and Saint Martin to ‘Stop’ possessing illegal fire-arms, ‘Drop’ them at the places mentioned above and ‘Go’ on with the cooperative battle for a safer Sint Maarten/Saint Martin. After all: A safer Sint Maarten starts with you!