Georgetown: The Ministry of Home Affairs has taken its online crime reporting initiative one step further providing video demonstrations, more leeway for descriptions, and a crime mapping and predictive model that will in the long-run empower law enforcement officers with knowledge about crime in society.
The online crime reporting system was first launched in November last year, to allow any citizen to communicate with the Ministry of Home Affairs and law enforcement officials, via SMS (text messages), email or black berry messages.
Video presentations re-enacting an onlooker at a robbery scene making a photo, video or audio report to law enforcement, using the mobile technology available, can be viewed on the Crime Stoppers website and on Facebook.
The ‘I paid a bribe reporting’ system that is also part of the technology based initiative is being accompanied by two jingles that were aired today when Information Technology Specialist Floyd Levi and Systems Development Officer in the Ministry of Home Affairs Nkasi Nedd interacted with the media.
Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee and senior officers of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) were also witnesses.
Nedd, a New Zealand scholarship awardee now attached to the Ministry of Home Affairs introduced the crime mapping and predictive model which allows the eyewitness to among other things give more details about the crime such as date, time and location.
The multi-faceted mapping system colour codes locations where crimes occur, helping law enforcement to analyse patterns of crimes throughout the country. Interested persons can seek information about particular crimes and have the option of offering a tip, according to Nedd.
Through analysis of monthly or weekly crime statistics, the technology is also designed to help law enforcement make predictions about the likelihood of crimes proliferating or decreasing in communities.
“We are also looking into long-term predictions where we will use the socio-economic conditions of each community in order to predict which community is a crime community or in which communities crime will occur… we will try as much as possible to have these models predict crime to a relatively high degree so that we can direct our resources to individual communities,” Nedd explained.
Research is at present still ongoing in this aspect of the project, particularly as it relates to data collection relevant to each community, testing and readjustment of the models before implementation according to Nedd.
The initiative to make use of technology to address crime dates back to Crime Stoppers, a non-profit community programme established through a partnership of the GPF and the Private Sector Commission (PSC) that allows citizens to report a crime committed with guaranteed anonymity and rewards if requested.
For interested persons, emails can be sent to crimestoppergy@gmail.com, crimestoppergy@yahoo.com or crimestoppergy@hotmail.com. Text messages can be sent to 623-6968, 623-6072 and for those with BlackBerry handsets can add pins 2804E429 or 2828B269, and send the relevant information.
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