Camille Clarke

There has been a 22 per cent re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes in the North­ern Di­vi­sion this year when com­pared to last year's fig­ures. The an­nounce­ment was made on Sat­ur­day night by the di­vi­sion's head, Se­nior Supt Stephen Ram­sub­hag, dur­ing the Sec­ond An­nu­al Awards Cer­e­mo­ny held for po­lice of­fi­cers.

The func­tion was held at the Makan­dal Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

He said the an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives im­ple­ment­ed with­in his di­vi­sion re­sult­ed in a 22 per cent crime re­duc­tion from Jan­u­ary to June, 2011.

He said: "Crime strat­e­gy is in align­ment with the crime plan and these ini­tia­tives re­sult­ed in the 22 per cent re­duc­tion for Jan­u­ary 1 to June 2011 in com­par­i­son with 2010. This is a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment of which we should feel proud." He said spe­cial in­cen­tives were re­spon­si­ble for the high mo­ti­va­tion lev­el with the law­men. Ram­sub­hag said dur­ing the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to June 2011 a to­tal of 46 firearms and 2,696 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion were seized. He said a to­tal of 1,461 war­rants were ex­e­cut­ed on in­di­vid­u­als and this re­sult­ed in the in­car­cer­a­tion of sev­er­al peo­ple on the want­ed list. Ram­sub­hag said among the war­rants ex­e­cut­ed 609 were for the ar­rests of "dead beat dads."

He said the di­vi­sion al­so im­ple­ment­ed a new com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­gramme called the "Neigh­bour Po­lice Of­fi­cer." "These po­lice of­fi­cers will work along main stream of­fi­cers in their sta­tion dis­trict, make foot pa­trols and in­ter­act with res­i­dents. This will pro­vide pos­i­tive in­flu­ence for growth. They will be as­signed to the dis­trict and will work along­side the of­fi­cers and are re­quired to in­ter­act and fos­ter bet­ter re­la­tion­ship with cit­i­zens," he said. Ram­sub­hag said the growth of po­lice youth clubs in the com­mu­ni­ties would al­so as­sist in the fight against crime. Dur­ing the func­tion Ram­sub­hag along with As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er Eu­ly­na Julius, act­ing Supt Samuel Bullen and Cpl Matthew Hay­wood were giv­en spe­cial awards. Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs, deputy com­mis­sion­ers Jack Ewats­ki, Mervyn Richard­son and oth­er se­nior of­fi­cers at­tend­ed. Julius con­grat­u­lat­ed the of­fi­cers for their good work.