Commissioner of Police, Mr. Paul Lynch, said that crime in Anguilla remains very low with only 7 crimes reported on the island in the last week.
He observed: “Crime in Anguilla remains very low – from a mixture of minor theft, cannabis possession, burglary in a bar, to the most serious – a shooting.”
Mr. Lynch noted that Becky Tippa, from the UK, has completed a review of the police department’s control room and will make some recommendations about how to develop it to make it more customer-friendly and less intimidating to the public when they walk into the police station. This will also include how to maximise the use of the existing communication technologies as well as a 911 system of services.
According to the Commissioner, there is a concerted effort to increase and improve the level of police training that is provided to his Police Officers to increase the effectiveness of their service. He said that Inspector Randy Javois was sent to the UK for training in operating the control room and will be responsible for taking that initiative forward.
Officers have begun training in the use of tasers, and will soon be outfitted with body-worn cameras for accountability and transparency as they go about doing community policing. “A fundamental fact about tasers is that if you end up in a confrontation with somebody, and you point a taser at them, 90 % of those conflicts will stop without any force being used. That is the main point. We don’t want to be wrestling with people – we don’t want to be doing anything other than encouraging people and communicating with them,” Commissioner Lynch explained.
In an effort to keep guns off the streets in Anguilla, Mr. Lynch highlighted the approach his department is taking:
• Encourage persons to report information about any crime, including gun possession, through the department’s highly confidential website www.gov.ai/911. He noted that the website is managed off island and that not even he – as Commissioner of Police – can access the source of the information.
• Implement an amnesty day for people to voluntarily give up their guns, or consider offering payment for guns.
• Extricate persons wanting to get out of the gun community.
• Track and manage the movement of boats throughout the islands.
• Set up vehicle check points around the island.
• Increase sentencing for persons convicted of possessing firearms and ammunition, including their use during the commission of crimes.
• Implement Automatic Number Plates Recognition technology (ANPR) to quickly identify vehicles used in gun crimes.
• Educate people to give information and intelligence confidentially.
“Beginning April 1, 2022, officers will work with key individuals in each community to gather information intelligence, and to focus on solving some of the problems that exist within the communities. We will also partner with other government agencies to invest time to help address some of the problems that are facing families in the communities,” Mr. Lynch said.
Commissioner Lynch presented the overview of policing in Anguilla at the Government’s press briefing on Monday, February 7.
