The continuous reporting about different crimes on this little island made me wonder how bad Sint Maarten is off. I therefore went on Internet and searched for statistics on crime from three major American cities: Los Angeles, Miami And New york.
I didn't expect, of course, that the crime situation on Sint Maarten would be anywhere close to these cities known in movies to be full of violence. For example: did you now that the murder rate in 2009 in Los Angeles was 7.1 killings per 100,000 residents, that New York had a murder rate of 5.1 killings per 100,000 residents and Miami having one of the highest murder rates in the US of 19.2 killings per 100,000 residents in 2009? Oh, by the way: the US itself had an average murder rate of 7 killings per 100,000 residents in 2009. Looking at these numbers I must say that I am glad that I live in Sint Maarten.
Oops!! Wrong conclusion!! Sint Maarten has about 45,000 registered residents and we had 10 killings so far for the year what would take the murder rate to 22.2 killings per 100,000 residents!! To make things even worse, we are only in the 8th month of the year. So if we would calculate the murder rate on Sint Maarten based on these eight months, we would have a murder rate of 33.3 killings per 100,000 residents!! This would mean to say that our murder rate is more than 1.5 times higher than Miami's murder rate, more than 4.5 times higher than Los Angeles' murder rate and even more than 6 times higher than New York's murder rate!!
Welcome to the friendly island where rape, robbery, theft, drug dealing, killing, molesting etc are obviously the most normal things to take place on a daily basis. Increase the penalties for crimes committed against tourist is of course the solution. Why do something about the statistics? As long the tourist is not involved it seems that it doesn't matter. Food for thought!!
Have a great day,
Sjaoel "Shooz" Richardson