Police officers on Saturday concluded their three-day conference pledging to work harder to reduce traffic accidents and beat back the threats of criminal violence.
The deliberations held under the theme, “Building confidence and goodwill through reform, partnership, training and effective policing,” were attended by 112 officers.
In an end-of-conference statement, the police said the focus of their deliberations was premised on issues raised by President Bharrat Jagdeo in his address at the opening of the conference, as well as points raised in the subsequent addresses by Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee and Commissioner of Police (ag) Henry Greene. The statement said that the conference was divided into groups and there were discussions on the changing and evolving crime scene; the Citizen Security Programme; the Security Sector Reform Programme; Information Gathering and the threat and impact of Global Warming. Further, the police statement said that the conference took note of Jagdeo’s display of confidence in and support for the security services in dealing with the crime situation and was also heartened and encouraged by his pledge to make available the resources needed to upgrade the crime-fighting capabilities of the law enforcement agencies.
Additionally, the conference focused significantly on the police’s response capability to scenes of crime; the improvement of the current 911 system through training and exercises; the upgrading of current response teams and the creation of small, fully-equipped response teams at stations.
Discussions were also held on the proposed training by the British and issues that were raised in relation to fighting crime at the last Commissioners of Police and Chiefs of Staff meeting in St Kitts relative to legislation for plea bargaining, wire-tapping, video identification parades, remote video evidence and justice protection; the training and upgrading of kidnap and ransom teams and kidnap and ransom negotiators. These also included the setting up of the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) and other systems that were used during last year’s Cricket World Cup, the police statement said. It added that Greene addressed officers on the Citizen Security Programme and the Security Sector Reform Programme noting that police ranks will benefit in the areas of traffic management, computerisation of the traffic records and a new forensic laboratory among other things. Security for the Caribbean Festival of Arts Carifesta was also considered, at which juncture, Minister of Culture Frank Anthony made a presentation about the events to be held. Matters relating to community policing were also discussed at the conference.
