The weekend's outbreak of crime has resulted, rightly, in a good deal of despair in the community.

Now is the time for the whole community to come together to tackle this problem.

The Police must be given the tools they need to detect these kinds of crimes and to properly and safely police areas where shootings, drug dealing and the like are likely to take place.

This must include a genuine crackdown on guns and gun crime, including putting in even heavier penalties for crimes involving guns.

There also needs to be a much more intensive approach to preventing the shipment of drugs and guns through the Island's ports of entry. This is not that complicated, with just three ports and one airport to police. And yet drugs and guns continue to come in.

Of course, crime detection, prosecution and detection is only one part of the solution.

The community has to look at the causes of crime and gang violence much more closely, and the fact that drugs and the profits to be made from drugs are largely responsible for this cycle of violence.

One aspect of this is to look much more closely at the so called "war on drugs", which no one would claim is being won. The oft-quoted definition of madness – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result – applies here, not just in Bermuda but around the world.

By that token, the expansion of the Mirrors Programme and increased funding for drug rehabilitation in this year's Budget is correct if it will reduce demand for drugs. However, the weakness in both Mirrors and in drug rehabilitation is not in the programmes themselves but in after care – what happens to people when they return to their families and neighbourhoods is as or more important than the treatments themselves. Much more needs to be done here.

The bigger debate concerns the whole question of the criminalising of drugs, particularly cannabis. There is not sufficient space here to debate that whole question, but it is a debate that is necessary. Only the entirely deluded think that drugs do no harm to the body and mind, but the criminalisation of drugs has to be set against the enormous profits, and the corruption that ensues, that the criminalisation of the drugs trade creates.

This applies equally to gangs. While it may well be true that gangs act as a substitute for families and reflect breakdowns in the social fabric of the community, there can be no doubt that the profit motive derived from drugs is the driving factor in the growth and power of gangs.

Removing the profit motive and thus weakening the power of drug suppliers is a powerful argument in favour of reducing the dangers of drugs-related crime, especially violent crime, in the community.

Having said that, liberalisation of drugs laws have not always proven to be successful. The jury is still out in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and the United States, the Island's main trading partner, is not yet ready to embark on such a course. Any moves by Bermuda ahead of the US on this particular initiative would have to be taken very carefully.

That does not mean that much more should not be done to reduce demand for drugs, through rehabilitation, public awareness campaigns and through education campaigns. These should have a particular emphasis on the health risks of substance abuse, in the same way that anti-alcohol and anti-tobacco campaigns have done with a degree of success.

In the meantime, the Police must be given the support they need, and there is no room for buck passing. The whole community has a stake in preventing any more deaths and injuries, and in ensuring that those responsible are brought to justice. In particular, witnesses to these crimes have an obligation to themselves and to their community to come forward to tell what they know and to put a stop to this madness.