Po­lice com­mis­sion­ers from across the re­gion will spend the next four days con­sid­er­ing how they can bet­ter utilise tech­nol­o­gy to stay ahead of crim­i­nals. The more than 20 top cops, to­geth­er with of­fi­cials from sev­er­al re­lat­ed re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions in law en­force­ment, be­gan the 26th an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing and Con­fer­ence of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (AC­CP) in Ja­maica. The theme of the con­fer­ence is Har­ness­ing Tech­nol­o­gy for the Ad­vance­ment of Law En­force­ment. The meet­ing ends to­mor­row.

Dur­ing the con­fer­ence, pre­sen­ta­tions will be made by rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the US Mar­shal Ser­vices, the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (FBI), the Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA), and the Ja­maica Con­stab­u­lary Force.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da's Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Dr Er­rol Cort said the meet­ing came at a crit­i­cal time for the re­gion, giv­en its height­ened state of alert­ness and the preva­lence of cer­tain vi­o­lent crimes be­ing com­mit­ted in the var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries. He urged par­tic­i­pants "to con­tin­ue to ex­plore new and de­vel­op­ing tech­nolo­gies that will fur­ther en­hance every­day polic­ing op­er­a­tions." Cort said that al­so im­por­tant was the con­tin­ued train­ing of law en­force­ment per­son­nel in the ef­fec­tive use of these ex­ist­ing and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies.