Police still not revealing detection rates
(CNS): The latest crime statistics published by the RCIPS this week show that crime remains relatively stable in the Cayman Islands, with the figures for 2021 reflecting a less than 4% increase over 2020. But while the police can tell the country exactly how many burglaries, sexual assaults and robberies took place last year, they are still not reporting their detection rates. Police Commissioner Derek Byrne said this remains “a work in progress” as this is not an easy thing to report back to the public.
The report gives a very detailed description of the service calls the police deal with as well as a detailed account of the number (3,696) and types of crimes reported. The report reveals that 2,247 arrests were made, that six illegal guns were taken off the street and $4 million worth of drugs were seized. But it does not tell the public how many crimes were solved.
Speaking at the statistics report press conference this week, the commissioner said that the records are updated by police as investigations move forward, but a crime is not completed until the director of public prosecutions says they are taking the case to court.
He said crimes also cross years, and while the police know when they have solved a crime, secured the evidence and a suspect, and sent the case to the DPP, there were “several strands that have to come together” before a crime is recorded as detected and fed into the police database.
Byrne said these “leading-lagging” issues meant that the records are not as accurate as he would like to enable these statistics to be reported.
“There is a better way for us to manage our detection rates,” the commissioner told the media, adding that he wanted to be sure that the data he gives out has integrity and is accurate.
“We do have some concerns around how we are recording detection rates. We do have multiple successes so I am quite happy that we are detecting serious and even less serious crime, but to try and put that into the crime report to give detection rates, I think I am just a little bit away from it but it is a work in progress.”
As examples of how quickly the RCIPS can solve some crime, Byrne noted the machete attacks last weekend, where there are suspects and charges have been brought in all three cases. But getting the whole package together to get the case through court, conviction, and even to appeal, makes reporting detection rates to the public difficult, he said.
The commissioner explained that arresting and charging a suspect did not reach the threshold of a formal detection to enable a crime to be recorded as closed.
“We have some work to do in terms of getting this detection rate onto our books; it requires some modifications to our computers,” he said, adding that the UK counting rules system that the RCIPS is using requires a high level of accuracy and integrity to enable the police service to stand by the data.
“I would not be comfortable producing detection figures but I am happy to say that we have significant detections made across a range of crime categories,” Byrne said.
In the report, the RCIPS said the goal is to “have the best possible crime recording system in the region” that delivers accurate statistics that the public can trust.
See the crime report in the CNS Library.
See the full briefing on CIGTV below:
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“Not an easy thing to report back to the public” – seriously? Here is the UK the police tick a box on the crime report when someone is prosecuted (cautioned/summonsed/charged) and I’m pretty sure they do that in Ireland as well, Mr Byrne!
My God Man! How long does it take to investigate something as straightforward as the alleged theft of topsoil? Murder investigations take less time in many western countries.
The Commissioner seems uninterested. What is his plan to get crime under control? The crime situation is not “normal” . It is unacceptable that he has nothing to say about a way forward.
8:52 I pity you. You are so out of touch with reality that it is scary.
If you attended the uninformed services awards recently you would have seen the persons responsible for the peace we have today.
Sorry. I missed it. Was at a cock fight in East End.
Do you even know who Derek Haines and Woody Foster are? Your self congratulatory award shows mean nothing compared to the contributions of those gentlemen, and many others, who make their impacts from outside the civil service. Yes, there are a number of incredible civil servants but the civil service itself? A rogue entity too focused on itself, and harming Cayman.
What is scary is that large numbers of the most vulnerable in our community have had their pension monies stolen by criminal employers, and the police have done nothing about it.
RCIP – have you detected any illicit cabinet status grants yet or are all those involved too powerful to warrant attention?
Probably got distracted by Gasboy. Then there is the issue of the Webb entourage at FIFA. Some of the Watson stuff still seems strangely unattended to.
So much overt shit. So little meaningful action.
Seriously. Why do we even bother?
I see Police speeding and when I get to the restaurant the police car is parked outside and they inside eating.
Yup – I wrote an article about this in the compass back in the day.
A police sanction detection” rate is where an offender is either taken to court, cautioned, fined or given an official warning. It’s not complicated stuff.
What happens at court, or at any appeal hearing is a matter for The Director of Public Prosecutions and/or The Courts to report on.
What about when a whole bunch of people are gathered for an illegal cock fight, are actively participating in heinous animal cruelty, illegally gambling, unlawfully purchasing and consuming alcohol in an unlicensed premises and then threaten the safety of police officers? Have those crimes been detected, even though the police think it acceptable not to arrest and charge every single last one of those responsible? Was one of them a Minister’s wife, or wha?
We pay our police to be serious about crime. The joke, apparently, is on us.
Possibly stop the headline at “police still not..
How about just telling us when someone’s file is sent to the prosecutor to handle?
Isn’t “crime is stable” the same as “we are making no headway” with the next managerial step being “please fire me”?
The ESO used to report something called “crimes cleared up” in the RCIPS section of the annual statistics compendium. It was never quite clear what that actually meant.
But the figures also showed a disturbing tendency for RCIPS’ performance to decline as the RCIPS budget ballooned. The graph had become an X.
I remember when someone got away with robbing a Gas Station and then all gas stations got hit. If people get away with robbing businesses then we will see a rise in incidents.
01 @ 6:09 pm – you mean the duo who, by witness accounts, acted like a trained team? Wonder who might fit that bill? Armed, trained, act like a team…..? Wonder why they were never found? Hmmm…
I wonder how the police established the value of the drugs they seized. Is that what they sold it for?
Unfortunately, that is a relevant point.
Thank you RCIPS the Cayman Islands are by far the safest place to live in the Caribbean if not the world.
Let’s focus on this fact people. The performance of the RCIPS and our civil service is one of the reasons no one wants to leave our Islands.
You can cry and moan about it buts it’s true.
No. All our neighbors have gone to shit. That is why everyone wants to stay here. The police are supposed to be stopping the same from happening here. Instead they are literally importing the failed standards of the failed states they hail from.
LOL. You are delusional. The reason expats don’t want to leave is the tax free income and lifestyle. When have you ever, EVER, heard someone say they love Cayman because of the RCIPS or the civil service? If anything, the opposite.
6:06 rubbish! Tax free money is no good if you are dead or afraid to go outside and spend it. JM is right.
No one stays in a crime riddle country run by a Government that provides poor services to its people.
Suck it up and admit it.
Bullshit. Our relative safety compared to our neighbors (and it is a pretty low bar) is more attributable to the likes of the late Benson Ebanks, Woody Foster, Maples, and Rotary, than it is to the modern iteration of the RCIP.
This is not the police force of Derek Haines lore. It is a farce. Our civil service is largely a joke. It is an inept bureaucratic drain on our community, often serving nothing but itself. It’s destruction of the education system over the last 20 years, at considerable expense, is no clearer indicator.
I would like to know how many of these criminals are getting away with it because of who they know or are related to! Where are the statistics on that?
We were robbed while away for an hour. The police were called. They took full fingerprint whorls from our windows. Police officers told us who they thought it was, then neighbors stopped by and told us the same name. Yet no one was arrested. We never saw our stuff again. Nothing came if it! How could that happen on this small of an island?
So Commissioner. Of the 2,247 arrests made, how many were the subject of a meaningful enquiry to confirm their immigration status? Of those that were determined not to have Caymanian status from birth/as of right, how many were referred by your officers to WORC/Border Control so that their agencies could do their jobs and help protect us all from actual (and reasonably suspected) wrongdoers?
BINGO. The automatic, inexpensive, lawful, highly effective and long established mechanism for us to limit and curtail criminality. Ignored by our robust law enforcers. So many of the answers are so easy. If only they did their jobs.
I think the answer is that they never do it. I do not believe they do it when people are charged either. Frankly, the immigration enforcement team should probably raid the RCIP. They appear to be concealing information that the other agencies need. The RCIP have more information on who is here to do us harm than any HR agency. Let there be no misunderstanding. Our ongoing descent into lawlessness is in large part directly attributable to our police farce literally refusing to fulfill their roles, or to use the tools available to them. No one holds them, or anyone else, accountable.
Jamaican police dont arrest Jamaicans.
They don’t even need to arrest. Just report the allegations and any evidence to immigration.
You could end the press briefing with that sentence. All you need to know.
Thank you!
Why would someone vote the comment down. It is the law. If the police fail to follow that practice they are obstructing other agencies of government from carrying out their important functions. They are exposing the society to unnecessary risk. WE DO NOT WANT FOREIGN CRIMINALS HERE! Why are the police facilitating their remaining?
90% of the low grade people that have come here didn’t earn a drivers license and their friends told them they will be perfectly fine driving at odd hours.
6;16 pm, Jamaicans police men here protecting their own, it’s too many of them with their criminal ways here. Stupid Caymanian women having children by them and they never support the children, then foolish Caymanian women cry, “I am a single mother I need help,”
And the Attorney General seems not to like enforcing the Maintenance Act and is normalizing men having multiple children with multiple women. Wonder what culture that comes from?
Well, a foreign criminal would down vote….
Imagine how effective it would have been if every participant in the angry mob that confronted police at the cock fighting incident had been arrested and processed. Just sayin. Instead we have to continue to live with a number of people who do us no good, and should not even be here.
They ALL should have been arrested. What is the RCIP excuse for not standing their ground and charging them all. Instead the police left. Why do we bother with laws around here?
But we need them for all the great jobs that the unbridled development is creating!
Other than crooks, is there anyone here that wants our unchecked crime to remain stable?!? The solution to maintaining nearly nothing is to continue doing nearly nothing! This is an admission that we will need to recruit a new Police Commissioner if we want any improvements in our safety.
no respect for the guy who closed beaches during covid…. all because his staff were too lazy or incompetent to the basics of their job.
Massive over reach of authority. Beaches closed for 2 months at a time folks could have done with some aesthetic relief for the mind and soul. Fining women $1400 for walking a dog . Helicopter buzzing families on Spotts beach before Easter in 2020. Please go back to Ireland.
The people have spoken, let’s see if Gov is listening.
There were 4 armed robberies within two days in Town this week. They might want to update their stats!
Wow there was ANOTHER armed robbery tonight at JN Money in Savannah. Seriously what is going on??
Jamaica.
Guess it is because the Commissioner is too busy getting the traffic under control. Time for this guy to check out and go back to Ireland.
And it seems the only purpose the traffic unit serves these days is to catch people doing 12 over on a triple lane highway. Ridiculous. 99% of drivers and police don’t indicate ever!
It’s as if they want to go for easy pickings to reach a quota instead of zones where it actually matters i.e. schools and dense residential areas like Marina Drive.
Didn’t you know that speeding only occurs where Police can find adequate shade from the sun to enforce?
Or the idiot drivers passing school buses while they have the red unloading/loading lights flashing.