Jensen La Vende

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams yes­ter­day told his col­leagues that while he was proud of their achieve­ments in re­duc­ing crime sta­tis­tics, he wants them to work four times hard­er at re­duc­ing the mur­der rate.The po­lice plan to move more de­tec­tives to the Homi­cide Di­vi­sion to help cut down on the killings, he said.The mur­der toll is cur­rent­ly 264, while the num­ber was 231 last year for the same pe­ri­od.Speak­ing at an award cer­e­mo­ny at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing yes­ter­day, Williams said they had an up­hill task.

He added that the me­dia saw their per­for­mance through the lens of mur­ders, and while there had been a de­crease in oth­er ar­eas of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, mur­ders must be ad­dressed."We have to see crime in the broad con­text as it im­pacts the lives of crim­i­nals," Williams said."But know­ing that mur­ders are used as the bench­mark, over the next five months it is crit­i­cal for us to put what I would call quadru­ple ef­fort to make that dif­fer­ence.

"The num­bers are high and we are not proud of the lev­el of mur­ders in the coun­try. We are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to dri­ve the num­bers down."Williams said the po­lice had been chal­lenged by the State and so­ci­ety to treat with is­sues of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty and had set them­selves a "stretch" tar­get of re­duc­ing mur­ders by 20 per cent to push the or­gan­i­sa­tion, but so far there had been an in­crease.But, he said, they would find the right ap­proach to re­duc­ing mur­ders.

Among the suc­cess­es Williams re­ferred to was sur­pass­ing the tar­get­ed ten per cent de­tec­tion rate, es­pe­cial­ly in the East­ern and South West­ern di­vi­sions. He al­so high­light­ed the To­ba­go and Cen­tral di­vi­sions, which had a 38 and 45 per cent de­crease in se­ri­ous crimes re­spec­tive­ly.

North­ern Di­vi­sion, led by Sr Supt David Abra­ham, was giv­en spe­cial recog­ni­tion by Williams, who said for the last three years it had been ex­celling in firearm re­cov­er­ies, and while na­tion­al­ly there was an in­crease in mur­ders, there had been a re­duc­tion in that di­vi­sion for the year.In his clos­ing re­marks, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in charge of crime Glenn Hack­ett told the award win­ners: "I want us to re­duce the mur­der rate more than the ten per cent we have giv­en our­selves as a tar­get. And this is not im­pos­si­ble.

"To achieve that, we at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el have tak­en a de­ci­sion to trans­fer 50 per cent of the de­tec­tives in the di­vi­sions, as part of our an­ti-crime and an­ti-homi­cide dri­ve, to trans­fer those de­tec­tives to the Homi­cide Di­vi­sion. They will as­sist in cur­rent in­ves­ti­ga­tions and cold-case in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

"More im­por­tant­ly, we want you to con­tin­ue the im­pe­tus in the di­vi­sions with the hot-spot polic­ing and oth­er ini­tia­tives that we have to­geth­er em­barked on to re­alise this down­ward spi­ral in mur­ders that we de­sire."And we can do it. I as­sure you we can do it."