Returning to comments made by the Premier on the matter of crime, taken from the Commissioners report, the Commissioner of Police released the crime data for the year 2015/2016 on Friday with crime seeing a reduction of 1% across the country, or 18 crimes being committed.
The Commissioner added that “Our detection rate has increased from 24% last year to 25% this year. However serious crimes continued to rise with gun enabled crime being a particular concern. The number of crimes reported per day remains stable at Nine, across the country.
This year we saw eight murders, of these two; have suspects that will appear in court. Of the other six, our enquiries continue and we are following some very positive leads in a number of them. I cannot give more detail on that due to the sensitivity of the enquiries and the need to keep information confidential. I can say that the short-term deployment of UK-based Investigators has already proved beneficial in a number of cases and specific investigative techniques. We will build on this in the coming year (s).
Firearms offence has risen by nine reported incidents; robberies are up by Nineteen recorded incidents and burglaries are also up by Sixty-Five recorded incidents. While all crimes have an impact on the victims these more serious offences can prove traumatic and that is why we have sought to invest our resources to tackle these more serious matters.
It does, however, take time and investment to change the profile of an organization. We have invested heavily in training across a range of disciplines including;
Crime Scene Management, Intelligence gathering and handling, Criminal Investigation, Marine Officer Training, Child Safeguarding and a significant focus on Armed Policing.
This Training is continuing, and we have Senior Investigating Officer Training scheduled to commence next week with participants from other OT’s. Marine Branch training for all officers in that Unit commences Monday, and again colleagues join them from across the Caribbean.
The Commissioner says that he has already introduced a new incident command structure to ensure that senior officers are trained and ‘on call’ to enable us to respond efficiently and effectively to serious incidents. We have substantially increased our numbers of highly trained tactical Officers under the new Command of ‘Specialist Operations’. This command brings together Tactical Officers, Firearms Training, Marine and Air Assets and will expand further to ensure that all specialist officers work collaboratively across the country.
In addition, a large number of officers have been trained in Police use of and the management of firearms related incidents. All of this training is continuing and will build the professionalism of my officers and staff.
There are a significant number of technical assets that will improve our ability to detect and prevent crime on the near horizon and following the training these will be introduced across the Force. We will see improvements in how we manage our information and resources and our feedback to the public and those we serve.
I will continue to invest all my energy in making this Force the best it can be. The arrival of the new Deputy Commissioner, Mr. Marc Callaghan along with the two Assistant Commissioner will shape our future direction in collaboration with officers, staff, communities and all the partner organizations we work with.
