TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Goldfinger Jewellery store in Marina Royale Robbed

Daily Herald Story Robbery took place at 2:30 in the afternoon on Friday, December 11th.

Probably right when they were reopening from their lunch break. Sorry to hear about this again, those jewelry stores seem to get hit on a regular basis.

And yet another today. https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/54127-armed-robbery-at-western-union?fb_ref=Default

Ridiculous. The police need to get this situation under control.

I was at Western Union last week, I waited for 1 and half hours, along with 50 other people. Gunmen blasting off rounds in such a small space with so many people could really end up badly ...

It's great to whine about this but why are we not doing anything ourselves ?

And your suggestion would be? Not to much tourist and visitors can do.

We can all write to the dutch authorities and to the French ones.

In a previous post I explained who is interested in Dutch parlement and why. Nobody replied.

...which will do exactly what??? They know what the issues are, they certainly don't need tourists telling them they need to address the crime problem..

Sorry Carol, not my idea of a civil society.

Over the centuries, if people didn't move because the people in charge knew about the issues, nothing would have changed ...

Honestly, I just don't see how writing letters would do anything. It isn't like they don't know the issues..

Writing letters does not inform authorities of the issues, but it informs them of the level of concern with respect to the issues. Citizens should write to make it clear that politicians that do not act do not get re-elected. Visitors can make it clear that they will vote with their tourist dollars.

At one time shots being fired during robberies were rare. Now they are getting more and more common. This disturbs me.

kind of makes you think twice about spending much time in a jewellery store

I agree 100% Ritchard. I'm pretty sure that the Dutch would not like too much publicity about what is happening here. Dutch public opinion does not really like the idea of overseas territories per se, but if they are becoming crime ridden, that would not go down well back home.

When SXM became administratively independent, they committed to building up a police force to a certain level of staffing, they still have not delivered, hence all of these issues.

It's not a question of telling what is happening or what they should do, it's a question of telling them that we are so concerned that we might take our dollars elsewhere...