Curfews curbed rising crime trend
(CNS): A summary of crime in Cayman over the first five months of this year has revealed that the islands were on a trend of rising crime before the COVID-19 lockdown reduced the opportunity for criminality. The release earlier this week of the crime statistics report for 2019 largely identified a downward trend for most types of crime. But an interim RCIPS report for this year shows an upturn over the first quarter of 2020, a trend that was halted only by the curfews.
While the report shows that more people were calling the police during the lockdown between 23 March and 31 May when compared to the same period last year, significantly fewer calls were actually to report a crime. Police found that people were calling for many reasons, including not being able to get issues resolved by other government entities or to report suspected curfew breaches.
But the number related to crime were far fewer than the same two months in 2019.
“Since Covid restrictions were introduced total recorded crime has reduced by nearly a third,” the RCIPS said in the report. “Due to the restrictions as part of the response to Covid, the opportunities for offenders to commit crime have been reduced.”
But given an increase of 14% in overall recorded crime compared to 2019 in the first three months of the year, police believe that “without the unique conditions associated with Covid, overall crime would have increased to date in 2020”.
But instead crime fell during the two months of curfew by almost a third, as the nighttime hard curfew gave police the ability to stop and pull everyone over after dark and the nighttime economy shut down.
Violent crimes fell by 6% in the first five months of this year because of the lockdown. Before it was introduced these crimes had increased by 8% when compared to 2019. But a 22% drop between 22 March and the end of May led to an overall decrease.
Drug crimes, which were increasing substantially at the start of the year, were also dramatically curtailed by the curfew. Over the Covid period consumption and possession of both ganja and cocaine fell by 37%.
“The restrictions on movement outside of the home, coupled with the closure of the nighttime economy have resulted in less visible signs of drug consumption,” the police inferred from the numbers.
The biggest drop related to burglary, robbery and theft, which fell by 56% owing to the curfew. Police believed that without the interruption of the COVID measures, the numbers for such crimes would have remained steady in the first half of this year compared to last.
However, local disputes between neighbours, exacerbated by the COVID-19 restrictions, fuelled a slight increase in public order offences.
Although the police did not record the number of calls relating to domestic abuse in this report, throughout the period of the lockdown measures, the police have raised concerns that there may have been a hidden increase in domestic abuse.
The RCIPS specialist units had been fully prepared for an increase and had contingency plans to help get victims to safety in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the number of calls has remained relatively low. The police have previously said this could be because victims have less access or ability to report or get away from abusers.
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Can’t wait to see how that next crime report looks like
With so many unable to support themselves, and “welfare” only offered to those who are classified as “tourist industry”
Crime is only truly prevented by people having decent opertunities to make a reasonable living.
Any level of policing will not help if people are not able to support themselves, and that has been taken away from so many locals who have no other plac3 but Cayman.
the curfew needs to be lifted completely on the 22nd.
it never made sense from day one and is now being used as a police crime control measure.
I’d have thought with the number of breach of curfew cases, crime would have increased. Or is breach of curfew not classed as a crime?
Read the report
Yeah I did, no mention as to whether the breaches in curfew ie ‘warned for prosecution BS’ are included in the statistics. If that is a crime (which I don’t know the answer to) then I’d have assumed the crime rate actually increased…
Page 2 – Covid Restrictions – “This document will not include Covid specific offences for breaches of hard curfew or tickets issued for breaches of soft curfew. The document seeks to be a like for like comparison to 2019.” Hope this helps.
We’re glad you all had less work to do so you could do even less than you normally do because the Governor and Premier agreed to lock us all up. We hope you are ready for the explosion of crime soon to come as a result of the very lockdown enabling this back-patting press-release that has impoverished and displaced hundreds/thousands. If you are not, well, we will be having a very different public discussion than the one we have had to date, and fresh consent will need to be given by the public to being policed at all.
We could let these select statistics slide if there were a functioning full time traffic and community patrol. With a civil defense budget already larger then some jr NATO members, the public has remarkably poor visibility on how it’s all spent, and very little access to leadership to explain it all. Our Coast Guard transshipment interdiction force, has to been retasked to police the stingray city attraction, replicating the DoE mission; and the new Regiment and our helicopters have been formed to buttress sovereign UK Navy/Army disaster relief and curfew policing duties. Why are we going on safari and not addressing our internal disfunction?
Crime only drops to zero If those entrusted to patrol and enforce our laws give up and move back into their air conditioned clubhouses. This isn’t a snitching culture and there is a “stable” high to medium level of law-breaking permissiveness at the best of times. Few witnesses due to police and gov’t corruption, and apparently zero accountability and/or public cross examination of those entrenched hierarchies. When response times are measured in half hour increments, there is no expectation of competent interdiction capability, only hindsight insurance form cleanup with adjusts and victims – so why call the police? Anything worth anything has to be chained up and locked at night.