Commissioner of the Royal Anguilla Police Force, Mr. Paul Morrison, has dismissed allegations that the police did not provide assistance to an Anguillian fishing boat which went adrift and was toured to St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, by a US Coast Guard vessel.
Mr. Morrison spoke to media representatives at the police press conference on Tuesday, November 3. He reported: “The case arose where a guy in distress, in the US territory’s waters of St. Croix which is 121 miles from Anguilla, called up to say that his boat’s engine is not working, his batteries have gone flat and can the Anguilla Police Force come out, recharge his batteries and give him a tug home.
“There are a couple of things: 121 miles would probably take seven hours to get there if we went on a good day and a fair wind…It is actually in American territorial waters. The police notified the Marine Unit and the Marine Unit contacted the Coast Guard in St. Maarten. They both contacted the American Coast Guard. An aeroplane was sent up and an American Coast Guard boat was sent to rescue him, and he was towed into St. Croix where his boat was fixed and he sailed back to Anguilla.”
Mr. Morrison continued: “I am not sure why this has made the news in terms of the Royal Anguilla Police Force didn’t do its job. The Royal Anguilla Police Force did a good job – notified the right authorities at the right time and got assistance to him in the shortest amount of time…I think in the Police Report is a statement saying that the guy threatened to sue the Anguilla Police Force if anything happened to his boat. I’m unsure where the logic in that comes from.”
Asked whether he was making any attempt to contact the gentleman to refute his charges, the Police Commissioner replied: “I would be more than happy for him to come in and speak to me. The facts are logged and, to be honest, everything is a matter of record; the American Coast Guard will have a record of that; there will be a record of the calls; there will be the trail between the call to St. Maarten etc; and the fact that an American Coast Guard turned up to pick him up is probably validation that that was the course of action. I am not sure as to the motive for pointing a finger at the failure of the Royal Anguilla Police Force when, actually, the Royal Anguilla Police Force did its job to coordinate the search and rescue.”
In order to strike a balance, The Anguillian sought to obtain the other side of the story, and was able to speak with Mr. Glenford Hughes, the Mate on the fishing boat. The boat, named In God We Trust, has a length of 45 feet and is used for commercial fishing expeditions in the surrounding waters.
According to Hughes, he and four others were on the boat – including the owner, Mr. Evan (Rugby) Lake – fishing over sixty miles west of Anguilla as usual early on Tuesday morning. When they were about to leave the area, their batteries were dead – a fault of the engine’s alternator – and the boat began to drift. Hughes said that he and his wife (who was in Anguilla) called the Anguilla police for assistance and were told that they (the police) would see what they could do. A second call produced the same reply. Hughes told the police that his wife would purchase a battery and requested that they should bring it to them. He indicated that Rugby, using a satellite phone, called a police officer who said the police were not coming. At one point the fishermen gave the police the coordinates of their position. “We were told that we were in Antiguan waters,” but we said “we were west of Anguilla,” Hughes recalled, stating that the police officer then said “they are not coming for us”.
Hughes said further that he and his wife, as well as the Anguilla police, called the Coast Guard in Puerto Rico. “They dispatched a helicopter and a boat and the boat towed us into St. Croix,” he stated. “We were then about 27 miles from St. Croix. There, we got a jump to recharge our batteries and were able to return to Anguilla on our own.” Hughes said St. Croix is 108 miles from Anguilla and not 121.
“I feel they [the police] abandoned us,” he added.
