The U.S. Virgin Islands is teaming with its neighbors to improve security and public safety in the region, territorial officials said Friday.
Police Commissioner Novelle Francis, Jr. and National Guard Adjutant General Renaldo Rivera held the press conference Friday to report on their trip to meet with Caribbean leaders planning greater security cooperation in the region at a conference in Barbados.
The two took part in a five-day conference aimed at building effective partnerships and advance common strategic interests. Representatives of the seven Regional Security System countries – Antigua & Barbuda, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and Grenada.
The RSS was conceived in 1982 as an agreement for mutual assistance and formally came into being in 1996. The U.S. government picked the organization as the center of its Caribbean Basin security effort in 2009. The U.S. Virgin Islands is not a member of the organization, but Rivera and Francis said the groundwork has been laid for close cooperation when the need arises.
Neither the commissioner nor the general would talk specifically about any plans for action discussed at the meeting, but said there are plenty of areas where the territory and the group have common interests. Among them are interdicting drug and weapons trafficking, building databases that any member of the group can use in combating crime, conducting search and rescue, water purification and emergency response in times of natural disaster.
Other issues on which they cooperate include immigration control, fisheries protection, customs, maritime policing and pollution control.
Rivera said he and Francis, along with Gen. Emmett Titshaw of the Florida National Guard, were kept on a busy schedule, moving "from meeting to meeting to meeting" and holding far-ranging discussions.
It was more than a "getting to know you" meeting, Francis said, although it can be helpful when you get someone on the phone in an emergency and you not only know the person’s name, but you’ve met with him.
There are also practical steps that will be taken, but neither the police nor Guard officials would talk about what those might be. It might be a little too soon, and the two said they didn’t want to unveil their plans.