Jensen La Vende

There is an in­crease in rob­beries and as­saults, both with the use of guns, se­nior of­fi­cers in the North­ern Di­vi­sion said yes­ter­day, dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing fol­low­ing the seizure of three guns and 45 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion.

Dur­ing the brief­ing, Supt Hen­dron Moses said there is an in­crease in of­fences in the di­vi­sion, while his ju­nior In­sp Naim Gyan added that there is al­so an in­crease in the num­ber of il­le­gal guns re­cov­ered.

For the year in that di­vi­sion, 41 guns have been re­cov­ered in­clud­ing the three they dis­played yes­ter­day. For the same pe­ri­od last year, of­fi­cers re­cov­ered 38 guns.

Head of the Di­vi­sion Se­nior Supt Sim­bon­ath Ra­jku­mar con­grat­u­lat­ed the of­fi­cers for their work in re­cov­er­ing the guns, specif­i­cal­ly the Mac-10, 9mm and .380 re­volver that were on dis­play.

Ra­jku­mar added that the pub­lic should al­so be thanked for pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic which he urged them to con­tin­ue do­ing.

Both Ra­jku­mar and Moses added that the in­for­ma­tion that they re­ceived from the pub­lic will be treat­ed with con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

Moses said: "With­in the past cou­ple weeks we have been hav­ing an up­surge in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in the di­vi­sion...At some point in time the crim­i­nal el­e­ment has a way of amal­ga­mat­ing to ex­e­cute their crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

"The pub­lic is sup­port­ing us and we are here to let the pub­lic know, what­ev­er it takes for us to give them that lev­el of sat­is­fac­tion, we are here for the long haul.

"With the com­mit­ment of the po­lice of­fi­cers in our di­vi­sion, we are one step ahead, I can as­sure you."

Ra­jku­mar urged busi­ness­men who want to with­draw large sums of cash from banks to con­tact them to avoid mak­ing them­selves tar­gets. He said that of­fi­cers are will­ing to pro­vide es­cort to and from the banks when busi­ness­men are seek­ing to with­draw large sums.

Re­gard­ing a video record­ing of three well-dressed armed men en­ter­ing the prop­er­ty in Trinci­ty, be­lieved to be po­lice of­fi­cers, Moses said the mat­ter is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed and the own­er of the house whose home was bro­ken in­to by one of the men is as­sist­ing po­lice with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.