Renewed public trust in police has resulted in reduction in crimes – Minister Ramjattan

Georgetown:  Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan has stated that the renewed public confidence in the Guyana Police Force (GPF) and other law enforcement agencies is among factors credited for crime reduction. The Minister was at the time addressing the National Assembly on May 4, 2016.

“Trust in the law enforcement was the lowest when we got in here in May (2015). It is improving now and you cannot deny that, it is because of that trust being regained, we have a huge set of members of the community coming forward with information on the evidence and the witness statements and all of that so that we can solve the crimes … Today we are in a far superior position in relation to crime solving,” Minister Ramjattan stated.

Referring to the statistics issued by the GPF, presenting the breakdown of the reduction in crimes for the year 2016, the Minister stated that the new relation between the community and the police has resulted in several cases being cracked. He credited this success to the new measures and initiatives implemented.

“Look where we were in the graphs that we did, it is coming down, right down, 199 literally, but what we had some time ago was 373, 341, 311 per month and you must appreciate that, do not play political football with the statistics.”

The statistics released by the police are as follows:

Month	2011-2012	2012-2013	2013-2014	2014-2015	2015-2016
May	302	320	348	304	323
June	298	296	355	312	353
July	288	270	367	322	356
August	291	307	352	292	362
September	340	306	347	262	301
October	317	354	383	343	327
November	316	329	375	293	303
December	304	307	334	302	296
January	320	353	343	297	280
February	325	328	312	309	253
March	311	339	292	357	292
April	299	323	311	341	199

Minister Ramjattan told the National Assembly that the government is concerned over the crime situation; however he assured (the National Assembly) that everything possible is being employed to further reduce crime.