BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - WITH the Police Force reportedly seeing a decrease in the number of crimes committed in 2020, the data has not been fully provided to the media despite officials quoting statistics on various platforms.
Back in January SKNVibes made a request for the complete statistics for the year 2020. Since then, follow-ups were made with the latest being earlier this month. However, this publication was informed that the data is still being compiled by the Force.
This is despite the Police Force presenting the first three quarters of data for 2020 after repeated requests by this media house during last year.
Ironically, the same information being requested by the media has been presented several times this year by the Minister of National Security, the Commissioner of Police as well as a number of high-ranking members of the Police Force.
The latest occurrence of the information being provided by the Police Force was on last Tuesday's (May 11) edition of ‘Leadership Matters’, where high-ranking members of the National Security apparatus were present - the National Security Advisory, the Commissioner of Police and the Chief Immigration Officer.
During that panel discussion, the Commissioner gave an outline on the number of major crimes committed for last year.
In comparative data, the Top Cop indicated that for 2018 there were 23 homicides, 12 for 2019 and 10 for 2020 while, thus far for 2021, there were four on record.
The Violent Crimes Unit has thus far solved three of the four murders.
“I can assure the listening public and viewers that by the end of next month my Violent Crimes Unit will be able to solve the other homicide,” noted the Commissioner.
He reported that there was a 100 percent decline in Non-fatal Shootings for the period under review. “In 2020 at this time we had two such shootings, and today we have recorded zero.”
In relation to Sexual Crimes, Commissioner Brandy said that 20 were recorded in 2020, and for this year there were 14 sexual matters.
However, even as the official numbers are being quoted for 2020 and 2021, the media still do not have any record of those from the police.
It therefore begs the question: “Are the media being slighted by the Police Force in the providence of official data?”
