Analysis / National Security

The Billboard Has Changed Sides: The NDP’s Crime Promise Faces Its Hardest Test

Three men were shot dead within sight of the Central Police Station on Friday night. The NDP once declared that government was to blame for violent crime. Now that it controls the government, Vincentians are entitled to demand more than sympathy, statements and references to the past.

By Lance Davis · Vincypowa News · Saturday, July 18, 2026

Three men were shot and killed in Kingstown on Friday night in another eruption of gun violence that has placed the New Democratic Party’s central campaign promise under renewed scrutiny.

Claude John of Redemption Sharpes, along with Ottley Hall residents Karon “Twin” Bowens, 35, and Giovannie Grant, 24, were killed in the Chinatown area of Kingstown, the stretch of shops and businesses between the Solidarity Carpark and the fish market where people regularly gather. The shooting took place several hundred metres from the Central Police Station.

According to reports, two masked gunmen approached from the seaside behind the public washroom and opened fire. All three men died at the scene. It is the second shooting in Kingstown this year in which multiple people have been killed. On 10 April, Enrique John, 29, of Layou and Raheem Guy, 22, were gunned down at Stony Ground.

The reported histories of Bowens and Grant will attract public attention. Grant had previous convictions for assault and theft and was facing additional charges. Bowens had served prison sentences for firearm offences, including possession of an unlicensed weapon and discharging a firearm.

However, a person’s criminal history does not give anyone the authority to execute him in the street. Nor does it reduce the danger posed to innocent people when masked gunmen can enter a busy section of the capital, discharge firearms and disappear.

Reports also suggest that Claude John might not have been an intended target. That possibility should remind the country that gun violence does not remain confined to people involved in criminal activity. It endangers vendors, commuters, workers, children and everyone else using public spaces.

The NDP made crime a test of government

The political context cannot be avoided.

While in opposition, the NDP repeatedly used the country’s homicide figures to argue that the ULP government had failed. Its billboard, erected at Gibson Corner in May 2024 and followed by others, declared in three lines that there were 52 homicides in SVG in 2023, that crime was out of control, and that the NDP had a plan to make SVG safe again.

The billboard understated the figure. There were 55 homicides in 2023, of which the authorities classified 52 as murders. Godwin Friday defended the sign at the time, saying that if it forced an uncomfortable conversation, the country should have that conversation sooner rather than later.

He went further on the campaign platform. Speaking at an NDP election meeting, Friday said crime and violence, and in particular crime against women and young girls, were what the country had become known for, and that this history had to be reversed. He rejected the idea that it was fixed:

“It is not handed down to us as something immutable, unchangeable. These are things that we can shape for ourselves.”

He then placed responsibility directly on the outgoing administration, saying the blame had to be laid at the feet of Ralph Gonsalves and the ULP, before delivering the line that has aged into a standard:

Government is to blame Godwin Friday, NDP election campaign

That was the standard the NDP established.

The party cannot now abandon that standard because it has moved from opposition benches into Cabinet. It cannot argue that every killing was evidence of ULP failure before November 2025, but that killings under the NDP are merely the result of deep-rooted social problems beyond the government’s immediate control.

Crime was complex then, and it remains complex now.

No responsible person should claim that Prime Minister Godwin Friday or National Security Minister St. Clair Leacock personally caused these murders. Governments do not pull triggers. However, governments are responsible for policing policy, border security, intelligence, criminal investigations, prevention programmes, prosecution resources and public confidence in the justice system.

That was true under the ULP, and it remains true under the NDP.

Where is the plan?

The NDP promised more resources for frontline police officers, improved technology, expanded community policing, a national forensic laboratory and a dedicated national security minister. It also proposed closer cooperation with international law-enforcement agencies, stronger customs inspections and an intelligence-led approach to stopping illegal firearms from entering the country.

Some of that has moved. Here is where the public record stands as of today.

Those first entries are real progress, and the government is entitled to say so. But an equipment handover is not a strategy, and it is worth noting plainly that the ballistics systems were a regional donation rather than a Vincentian purchase. The government did not buy its way to a safer country in June. It accepted tools that a partnership between CARICOM and Washington made available to the region.

Vincentians need to know what parts of the NDP’s crime plan are operational, what deadlines have been established and what measurable results have been achieved.

How many illegal firearms have been intercepted since the government took office? Has police intelligence identified the networks importing and distributing guns? Has community policing been expanded? Are additional officers being deployed in violent-crime hotspots? When will the forensic laboratory open, what will it cost, and who is paying for it?

The public also deserves regular information about homicide clearance rates, firearms prosecutions and the progress of major investigations. Between 2012 and 2023, police statistics show 408 murders in SVG, of which only 147, or about 36 percent, were recorded as solved. That number is the clearest measure of whether gunmen believe they will face consequences. Silence about it creates rumours, fear and the impression that they will not.

The victims are not campaign material

The NDP was entitled, while in opposition, to criticise the former government’s record. The situation demanded political attention.

But the party also turned homicide figures into campaign material. It told Vincentians that it had a plan and that a change of government would make the country safer.

The public therefore has a right to examine that promise closely.

The answer cannot be to remove the old billboards, stop publishing homicide graphics and hope that voters forget what was said. Nor can the government simply blame the environment it inherited. The NDP knew the scale of the problem before it asked to govern. In fact, it made that problem one of its main arguments for being elected.

The triple killing in Kingstown is not merely another statistic. Three families are grieving. A capital already struggling with fear has witnessed gunmen kill three people near the country’s principal police station. The psychological message sent by such an attack is devastating.

The government must respond with urgency, coordination and transparency. It must demonstrate that its security strategy extends beyond campaign slogans and equipment handovers.

The NDP said it had a plan to make St. Vincent and the Grenadines safe again.

The billboard has now changed sides. The promise belongs to the government, and so does the responsibility to show that the plan is real.