BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – IN an effort to boost the crime detection rate, Commissioner of Police Ian Queeley said a strategy has been set in place for 2017 which includes the bolstering of the Police Forces’ forensic capabilities.
Speaking at his first Lecture for the year, Commissioner Queeley said although the detection rate for 2016 was marginally higher than the previous year’s, the Force is displeased with it.
“We would want to ensure that when criminal activities are committed, because we know that we cannot stop all the criminal activities… we want you to be in a position to at least detect. …We still believe that there is much more work to be done.”
And as such, he informed that investments would be made in the area of training of personnel as well as building out the Force’s technical and forensic scope.
“And so we would be calling for greater investment in technology and science because that is the way we think we are going to go. We will improve not only… on capacity building opportunities on specialized areas, but we will do that in general areas… But of course, we would also want to place the heaviest emphasis on our forensics; we think that it is important that we go full steam ahead in building out our forensic capability…
“You should be seeing increase in service training refreshers, training to make certain that you are up to speed with whatever legislative changes have been made and basically adapting and adopting to best practices worldwide…”
He did not go into detail but the Commissioner also spoke of discussions – between his team and the Attorney General – for the changing of specific laws to aid the cause of law enforcement.
“We also will be lobbying the powers that be for legislative changes that we believe would be beneficial to the law enforcement community, be it from the investigative standpoint or from the preventative standpoint. Because we think that some of our laws certainly need revisiting. We have actually had discussions on more than one occasion with our Attorney General as to areas that we think can assist us in the improvement.
The crime statistics for 2016 – which would include the detection rate for that year - have yet to be released to the public. The Commissioner of Police has indicated however, that the body of figures would be released shortly.
