A tourists-citizen act

Your attitude will always determine your altitude. This is wisdom our leaders need to adhere to when considering what to do about offering more protection for our tourists and citizens in the fight against crime and “ice” usage. If we have learned one thing about crime and criminals it’s the fact that they can never be stopped completely and that determent is our best option for preventing criminals from committing crimes. The recent editorial by Zaldy Dandan about tourists being “easy targets” was so true and one can only wonder when our Legislature and DPS are going to do something that offers more determent to the prevention of crimes against tourists and even local citizens which is to a large degree being driven by the use of “ice.”

This is not the first time I have written about the need for a tourists act and it has also become apparent that we also need a citizen act to serve the same purpose of providing more protection and stronger prosecution of crimes against tourists and crimes against citizens that were driven by the use of “ice.” With the new casino coming online there will be more tourists who will be even bigger targets, which is why the CNMI must change its attitude toward preventing crime as much as possible—crime prevention is our best weapon. We the people must do more than create a Drug Court we must also create new Legislation that will help to drive this new court’s functions because a lot of the crimes are being driven by the use of “ice” but they are not being caught for “ice.” We must address the use of “ice” and its effect on crime to offer the strongest determents too crime and the use of “ice” – it’s called “tough-love” in the ghettos of America.

I fully realize that with every action there is a reaction and I’m sure my critics will recognize and even admit that the trade-off for preventing crimes against tourists and local citizens will surely cause criminals to shift their focus towards businesses. For sure this will be one of the negative outcomes from a tourists-citizen act but I believe that businesses are in a far better position and should be better prepared to prevent crimes against them than our tourists and citizens. We the people need for businesses to step up to the challenge which will also make their establishments more safer and better protected which means it may be time for the CNNI to institute “armed guards” before more people die given a guard has already been killed in the past.

Times are changing and we had better change our attitude with the times because we are going to see a rise in crime once the casino opens so our leaders have some hard decisions to make if they truly want to do more to protect our easy target tourists and citizens in the villages. But whatever our leaders do I pray that DPS will at least start planning for a “remote control center with cameras in Garapan and at all the major tourists sites.” I’ve yelled and pleaded for a camera system before but it fell on deaf ears. But I shouldn’t have to explain or offer any more rational as to how important it is for these locations to have cameras—it’s a common practice worldwide that makes common sense in this day and time.

DPS is already creating a taskforce due to the rise in crime that is clearly being generated by the increase in the number of “easy targets” (tourists). But if our leaders take the attitude of continuing to do nothing more about protecting the very people who bring the money that drives our economy our altitude for convincing tourists they are safe here will remain low and even a deal-breaker for potential tourists who learn about the robberies and crimes against tourists. It would be far better for tourists and citizens to see signs in their language that they are being protected by a special law for them that will surely deter criminals. I am very confident that when a person learns that “if they commit a crime against a tourist or citizen and they are a known “ice” user that they will automatically be facing a consecutive sentence of 1 to 5 years in addition to their charged crime” they will think twice and even three or four times before using “ice” and committing a crime against a tourist or citizen just to afford their habit. They are not committing these crimes to get milk money for their children who are also suffering from their behavior and need some relief help and support. We the People need to put our foot down and try to do all we can to stem the tide of crime that is surely going to rise with the opening of the casino.

Our attitude will determine our altitude when it comes to stopping crime and the use of “ice” which goes hand and hand in committing crimes against tourists and citizens. Our legislature needs to create new laws and also commit some of the new tax money from the casino they are pondering towards DPS becoming more modern with a remote camera system in critical public locations throughout Garapan and at all major tourist sites.

Ambrose M. Bennett
Kagman