PHILIPSBURG--Local Chief of Police Lt. Governor Franklyn Richards "will be looking into" shutting down businesses and detaining disorderly residents in response to rampant crime in St. Maarten.

Richards said Monday he was considering giving police and prosecutors the authority to close businesses, offices and homes "that violate public order," and to search cars and persons more after "serious indication of wrongdoing in a neighbourhood."

Other measures, he said, would be "the temporary detention of a person or groups of persons who ignore specific law and order rules."

He said crime had become too rampant to ignore. He said these measures would not make the island a police state. "The police are legally obliged to take all reasonable steps to protect people and property where there is a real and immediate risk to them from the acts of another," Richards said.

He also echoed the police's call Monday for the public to volunteer information to help solve crime, condemning – as did police – threats against officers.

"Threatening police officers ... is also not acceptable behaviour coming from what we assume were law-abiding citizens," Richards said through the Government Information Services (GIS). "These actions do not overshadow the contributions that have been made to law enforcement on the island, and I continue to encourage law-abiding citizens to help the police, because it's a community effort in fighting crime."

He was referring to reports from police that persons in Dutch Quarter had threatened and cursed officers as they worked to recover eight stolen cars from bushes between Union Farm and Zorg en Rust this weekend. Crooks torched two of the cars.

Richards complained that persons should have told police when they saw cars burning in the bushes. "The police are reliant on community assistance in the fight against crime," Richards said. "A person not alerting the police to two vehicles on fire in the bushes is a dereliction of civic duty and responsibility towards society; evidence was probably destroyed in the fire."

He again called for the community to join the police in fighting crime, but said government needed to take its responsibility to the people to ensure their safety – pointing at insufficient street lighting as one problem.

"As we prepare to become a country, aspects of security become our collective responsibility," Richards said. "Government is also ultimately called upon to dedicate the necessary attention to fighting crime."