Police Commander of Region Eight (Potaro-Siparuni), Senior Superintendent Michael Kingston said that rape is the only serious crime that has seen an increase.
“…Crime is only up because of one specific offence and that is rape. That is the only offence that has caused my figure to be up,” Kingston said.
He made this disclosure on Tuesday night during his appearance on the Guyana Police Force’s (GPF) weekly Police and You programme.
Providing brief statistics, Kingston said that Region 8 has recorded close to 19 rapes for the year thus far. The figure he said exceeded twice the number of cases recorded for the same period last year.
For 2020, he said Region 8 recorded about seven rape cases.
Additionally, Kingston said, other serious crimes such as murders and armed robberies have decreased.
“When it comes to murder, robberies, all other categories I am down….Break and enter and so forth, I am down. But the only figure that has Region 8 crime figures showing an increase is rape,” he said.
For the year so far, two murders were recorded, one of which remains unsolved. There has been one report of an armed robbery, Kingston added.
Having recognised the increase in rape cases, Kingston explained that a number of steps are being taken to address the issue.
He said he has since reached out to several organisations including the Child Care and Protection Agency for assistance to raise awareness in the communities within the region.
“So it is a work in progress. We are working assiduously to ensure that this kind of crime that affects the community….is being dealt with very rigidly,” he said.
However, Kingston noted that while these matters are being reported to the police, they are not done in a timely manner.
As such, he said that by the time the report is received, the perpetrators would escape providing the police with a challenge to locate them.
“We were able to get some of the perpetrators and we weren’t able to get some but we continue to pursue them and it is not easy that you could issue a wanted bulletin for them because in the interior region getting access to some of the photographs of some of the suspects is not that easy,” Kingston said.
During last week, the GPF said it recorded a 19.9% decrease in serious crimes as of August 9, this year. The force reported that there has been a 62.6% increase in rape reports. As of August 9, there were 187 reports of rape compared to 115 for the same period last year.
