Three Police divisions are reporting a decrease in murders and serious crimes, but as law enforcement officers are getting a grip of the crime situation, they are faced with new challenges of getting successful prosecutions.
In many of the Court cases, witnesses have been failing to show up in Court, and victims are now opting to settle the cases outside of the Court then refusing to give evidence.
Assistant Commissioner of Police and Commander of Regional Division 4C, Khali Pareshram noted the issue in a programme released by the Police Force.
Mr. Pareshram said while the Police have been doing their best to ensure that they move as quickly as possible to have criminal matters go through the Court system, they have no control over decisions made by victims and witnesses outside of the Courthouse.
“The thing is, what I would have observed in Regional Division 4C we would have been seeing an increase number of matters being dismissed due to the negligence of witnesses—witnesses are not appearing in court and some victims are now going to court to settle the matters, we would have seen matters as serious as robberies are now settling in the Court,” Mr. Parsheram said.
The Assistant Police Commissioner said the trend has led the Police to come up with new strategies to deal with the situation since it is impacting their crime fighting efforts.
“So when these matters are settled, these are the same offenders that are released freely back into the society to commit (crime) again and this is one of the things that we have been looking at and we are now working to come up with a strategy on how to deal with such situations because it do affect our cases, our prosecution rate and it is sending the suspect back into the same to commit themselves again,’ Mr. Pareshram stated.
Mr. Pareshram said while the Police Force is most times at the receiving end of the criticisms for unsuccessful Prosecution, citizens must also take into account that the Police do not always get the cooperation from witnesses and victims.
While expressing similar sentiments, Commander for the Region 10 area, Assistant Commissioner Kurleigh Simon described the crime situation in Region 10 as being “quiet”. However, he said following the unrest earlier this year in Linden, the Police in the region are trying to rebuild relations with the communities there.
“We are working on rebuilding our relationship with the citizens of Linden, we are seeing positive growth in that field because we are constantly doing our community outreaches and we have our youth groups that we are still monitoring and managing and we still have cooperation from outr community policing groups,” Mr Simon noted.
He also reported a more than 40% reduction in serious crimes for the region.
Region 7 is also reporting a drop in crime according to its Commander Dion Moore.
“When we look at crime holistically, we find most of these murders are disorderly murders, robbery under arm, they are committing in those mining areas not predominantly within the business hub which is Bartica,” Moore said.
The Guyana Police Force has been facing some criticism over its crime fighting efforts, especially in the larger and more populated regions.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login