Geisha Kow­lessar

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams has ad­mit­ted the coun­try is fac­ing a vi­o­lent crime chal­lenge.But he says de­spite there be­ing a man­pow­er short­age of more than 1,400 of­fi­cers, there has been a 36 per cent re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crime over the first quar­ter of 2013. This, he said, was in all cat­e­gories of se­ri­ous crimes, in­clud­ing rapes and sex­u­al of­fences.

Williams made the com­ment be­fore mem­bers of a joint se­lect com­mit­tee in the Par­lia­ment build­ing yes­ter­day. The com­mit­tee, chaired by Dr James Arm­strong, ex­am­ined the per­for­mance of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions posed by Arou­ca/Mal­oney MP Ali­cia Hospedales.Hospedales said ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the Po­lice Ser­vice's Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA), the de­tec­tion rate was ten per cent, com­pared to last year when the rate was 12 per cent.

Asked if dis­band­ing the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt) had played a part in the poor de­tec­tion rate, Williams said that was not the case."In our opin­ion, and that is a lim­it­ed opin­ion, be­cause we have done no sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis, but strict­ly on ex­pe­ri­ence and his­to­ry, the low de­tec­tion is not re­flec­tive of the change of the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit," Williams said.

"What hap­pens, by way of de­tec­tion, mur­ders take ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be con­duct­ed, and what you may find is that a mur­der may be solved not nec­es­sar­i­ly when it is com­mit­ted, but it may be solved over a pe­ri­od, some­times over a year."He said as the year pro­gressed, the Po­lice Ser­vice ex­pect­ed the de­tec­tion rate to in­crease, re­sult­ing in more mur­ders be­ing solved. Some two or three mur­ders, he said, were al­so ex­pect­ed to be solved by the week­end.

In­sist­ing there was a "clear plan" to lift the de­tec­tion rate, Williams said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was chal­lenged by the lack of man­pow­er."The Po­lice Ser­vice right now is fac­ing a short­age of man­pow­er by 1,430 per­sons...We are in the mode of in­creas­ing re­cruit­ment," he said."At present we can­not ded­i­cate more per­sons to the in­ves­ti­ga­tions of homi­cides. The pri­or­i­ty fo­cus of the Po­lice Ser­vice is on crime re­duc­tion, crime con­trol."

The sanc­tioned strength of the Po­lice Ser­vice is 7,715, he said.Williams said the or­gan­i­sa­tion's fo­cus on crime re­duc­tion re­quired the largest num­ber of of­fi­cers to be out on the streets seek­ing to man­age and con­trol crime."We have seen a ma­jor re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes in 2013, but as we go for­ward and look at the is­sue of homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we are seek­ing to ex­pand the team of ded­i­cat­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tors and pro­vide ad­di­tion­al train­ing for those of­fi­cers," he said.

"We are al­so go­ing to bring on board ad­di­tion­al forms of tech­nol­o­gy. And as you have less num­bers to in­ves­ti­gate, you can ded­i­cate more time to those less num­bers."Say­ing the re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes was achieved through a se­ries of ini­tia­tives, Williams said the Po­lice Ser­vice had de­lib­er­ate­ly changed its mod­el of polic­ing from "a re­ac­tionary mode to a very proac­tive mode."