Coconut Telegraph?

No.........sadly it doesn't surprise me. 🙁

Glad it didn't happen on STX; if so the news probably would have been out already.

"islands need to look into ways in which the crews who work on them are better protected." Everyone should be protected. I haven't heard about it but wonder where & when it happened exactly.

Trade,

i agree. whenever i see a statement like that (not blaming the visitors), i DO think that when the islands are safer for me, the resident, they will automatically be safer for everyone.

What amazes me is that this is on the internet, being accepted as truth with no indication of who this was or when it happened. The internet has been very good in some ways, but in others...(td)

My two cents,
Depending on how the stars are aligned and the mood I"M in, my appearance changes. I Let my hair grow (what I have Left) and don't shave. Kinda look like a Haight Ashbury-Wood Stock burn out at times. I would like to have a dollar every time I was approached by tourists and crew members who wanted to score (Drugs). Some were very nice and polite, others were looking for that can of whoop a$$.

Anita, I also get annoyed when they talk about cleaning up the roadsides, etc. because what will the tourists think? If it's a nice place for us who live here, it will be a nice place for tourists. I'm not saying I don't care about what tourists think but get really ticked when it seems we don't count but someone who spends 7-8 hours here might go tell his pals in Pocatella he saw a Heinecken bottle on the roadside. I don't want to see the Heinecken bottles either but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that a lot of the problems with littering or anything else down here could be solved very easily if the litter laws would be enforced STRONGLY. Last week I was behind a police car that was directly behind a safari full of tourists. Suddenly, a water bottle was tossed out of the safari. Did the cop pull it over & slap a $1000.00 ticket on the tourist? Or even a warning? No. Would the policeman give me a ticket if I had done the same thing? Probably not but he/she should.

One thing I've liked is seeing many, many more police cars on the road under the current governor BUT, I see large & small infractions in front of these police & they either don't see it or just ignore it. I strongly believe in Giuliani's method of cutting crime in NYC. He clamped down on the small things such as jaywalking & jumping the turnstiles on the subways to avoid paying the fares. It was like a chain reaction. The bigger crimes went down a LOT also. We're just like children. The more we get away with, the more we'll try to get away with.

However, I was heartened to see a policeman pull over a safari driver with a full load of tourists who was driving on the wrong side of the road to get to a right turn lane near CAHS rather than wait until he could legally get in that lane. Don't know whether he gave a ticket or not but it made my day.

Lizard, my favorite tourist police blotter story in the paper was a cruise ship passenger who was busted for drugs in a housing project here. He said he was just wandering around the project sight-seeing. :@)

Hmm...i didn't hear anything about this until the post. Probably b/c it happened in St. Thomas. If it happened in St. Croix, it'd be all over the news and the cruise ships would be pulling out immediately. Even doing a google search - no mention in the Daily News.

The Daily News prints crimes, especially on STT so this isn't a hush-up.

Trade,
An interesting subject "roadside litter". I have been thinking about it that a lot lately on my daily walk from princess plaza up to St John where I live. I never see people on the side of the road picking this stuff up like in the states. No community service workers, VI workers or volunteers! I attribute the massive quantity of beer bottles to the fact that I think no one on island thinks to keep a trash bag in their vehicle since drinking while driving is legal. I can't possibly accept that natives so proud of their islands would willfully enjoy their roadside landfills.
Rather than stumble over them since there are no shoulders to walk on I have been kicking them out of the way.
The image that junk leaves on visitors is real. I remember when I first visited before our move I referred to STX as a "dirty little island" upon my return. It is what really makes it look 3rd world. If STX tourisim wants to improve their image, I think they should fund an "adopt a highway" like they have in the states. Get school kids and groups involved if they don't want to spend the resources to do it themselves. All it takes is a few trash bags and people that would like to see a change.
The downside: Less green sea glass

dolphingirl,

Rather than kick them aside, why not carry a plastic bag and pick them up?

They used to pay high school kids to pick up roadside litter. Maybe the money ran out.

My husband and maintenance man have actually been picking up liter in that area of St. John about once a week. Doesn't matter how often or what time of day, etc. it's back the next day! This is fairly new, too. We just started noticing how bad it is getting within the last couple of months.

We often take the back road over to Sion Farm, past Lew Muckle School. Now, that is atrocious! Candy wrappers, soda cans and all types of junk food trash all up against the school ground fence. Good time to start teaching the kids it is wrong. Any of you Lew Muckle parents out there. Maybe bring it up at a PTA meeting?

And...a second issue...what are those kids doing eating so much junk food?

Okay everyone, thanks for hijacking my thread!:P

But seriously, someone can make a statement on the internet about being mugged and within hours it is all over the globe. Fact or fiction? It doesn't matter.