Crime increases by 3.5% as robberies soar in 2022
(CNS): The release of the annual crime statistics for 2022 shows that robberies soared to new highs last year, while crime in general grew by around 3.5% when compared to 2021, as the population rose again following the re-opening of the borders. But compared to 2019, the last year before the pandemic, crime was down by almost 8%. During 2022 police answered 35,309 calls for service and recorded 3,810 crimes.
The RCIPS is still not yet recording a crime clear-up rate, but officers made 2,176 arrests throughout the year. Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Superintendent Pete Lansdown explained that the RCIPS is measuring the clean-up, or detection, rate and that he is overseeing the development of what could become a public reporting mechanism.
But he said there are complexities associated with the time lag, offenders committing multiple crimes and cases where victims are not prepared to support a prosecution. Nevertheless, Lansdown said he had implemented detection targets based on a number of factors for burglary, robbery and serious violence, including murder.
Police Commissioner David Byrne said the police believe there are around 30 recidivist offenders behind many of the burglaries and robberies that were committed last year. As a result, crime levels appear to be directly impacted by whether or not this small group of criminals is locked up.
Byrne said that overall, 2022 saw the RCIPS return to “a normal state of policing” after the COVID-19 pandemic, which is reflected in the statistics.
“Although we saw an increase in acquisitive crime and firearm-enabled crime in 2022 compared to 2021 when looking at the past five years, the numbers are in line with pre-pandemic years and overall show a downward trend,” he said.
“We saw ongoing success in reducing the most serious criminal offences, and success in bringing some of our worst offenders to justice, ensuring that the Cayman Islands remain a safe place to live, work, visit and do business”.
The primary area of concern for the RCIPS over the course of 2022 was a general increase in the use of guns and two significant spikes in robbery offences between March and April and again between October and December.
In total, there were 50 robberies or attempted robberies recorded throughout the year, and guns were used in 38 of them. There were 95 recorded crimes that involved the use or possession of an unlicensed firearm or ammunition, compared to 57 in 2021.
20% of the gun crime happened at licensed premises, but no shots were fired in most of the robberies. Although a toy gun was confirmed to have been used in one gas station robbery, as the robber left the imitation plastic weapon behind, police believe that overall it is likely that most of the guns used in robberies were real.
“The proliferation of firearms used in robberies during 2022 and associated risk to members of the public and law enforcement is the key concern and an ongoing priority for RCIPS,” police officials said in the report.
While serious violent crime fell last year by more than 6%, there were four murders in 2022 compared to just two in 2021. There were 760 offences classified as violent crime, which is the lowest number of this type of crime since 2018.
Byrne said that the RCIPS came in under budget for 2022, and despite the slight increase in crime and a growing population, the RCIPS headcount has remained stable. There are currently 391 police officers serving in the RCIPS, including specialist support staff such as the Air Support Unit.
Check back to CNS this week for more on the fight against crime in general, tackling the increasingly complex world of cross-border financial and cyber crimes as well as details of a very bad year for collisions on Cayman’s roads.
See the 2022 crime report and the tables of statistics in the CNS Library.
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10:21 you are a bigger idiot, if you don’t believe Status grants have played a big part in ruining Cayman
David Baines said in 2009 that there were only 15 criminals in Cayman prepared to use firearms. Later he said that those 15 were either dead, in prison or had left the island, yet the level of firearm violence increased, rather than stopping. Now the current COP says there are only 30 recidivist criminals committing the burglaries and robberies. Guess we should all feel so much safer.
Meanwhile the roads are a complete shit show, the police are doing nothing about the driving standards, literally nothing! Even your own officers are terrible drivers.
Do we have a traffic department? People in the mornings weaving in and out of traffic @ 80mph (yes I see it on your pointless electronic signs) tailgating inches off bumpers, undertaking on the hard shoulders. Not a cop car to be seen anywhere. YOU ARE F’ING USELESS!
When will we graduate from letting non-indigenous (for the sake of the real word) people tell us we are stupid, not qualified, prejudice and we can’t govern ourselves? These are the same people who are making a good living off of us. No reason we can’t have locals running the police force except for the UK installing “stupid” in our physic and taking a pen to put us down every chance they get. Woke, they say?
Maybe when you stop doing stupid things! ONLY Caymanian’s can elect the fool Ministers you have had the past 20-30 years – how has that worked? You continually elect over and over worthless officials. Stop electing under-educated, un-ethical, im-moral, misognist officials then you may see progress. Sorry to rain on your pity party which has been in full swing for years, but Caymanian’s need to grow some and take responsibility instead of always blaming others. You don’t like the current state of affairs… FIX IT!
OK… so you are not stupid. But wait, the MacBeater just got re-appointed to a cabinet position. How in any fantasy of a corrupt, third-world cesspool of an ill-managed territory can this happen. I won’t recount his history as apparently nobody here gives a da.n about his repulsive 40 year political career – you love him. Sorry – maybe not YOU, but folks here are STUPID! And further, you deserve to get what you desired – a corrupt, third-world government.
Did you ever consider that many Caymanian’s (surely not you…) are stupid (I would say under-educated as opposed to stupid), not qualified, prejudiced and can’t govern themselves? History and fact proves this correct. Please understand, Cayman has a very recent history as a semi-self governed Territory. The USA, 30 years after getting Independence was woefully struggling to govern itself. Cayman is in a worse historical situation as there are too many monied expats/investors/developers who can simply roll out bribes to get what they want (I will confess to being a one bedroom Condo owner for 40 years with comfortable but marginal wealth, but recognize what has been done by the ultra wealthy). Cayman simply does not have enough years of educated citizens trained in Law, business (yes there are a few legacy families, but they also control TOO much), legislation, social services, etc.
When I look at who Caymanian’s have elected as Ministers the past 20-30 years (been here since 1984), it is a very poor result. Not enough quality, too many uneducated folks elected. It is not surprising that so many simply chores are beyond the Ministers grasp. You have an awesome monetary surplus, but will not buy a glass recycler??? This is an easy and inexpensive decision; how can we expect the same Ministers to reconcile hard decisions (Port, Dump, Roadways, Building Codes). A glass crusher is a no-brainer, but it befuddles them.
Your Ministers are simply not up to the task of self-governance. But, you elect them, so who will take responsibility?
This is the result of liberal style “leadership” from PACT. They’re going to turn this place into San Francisco. Only a couple of weeks ago there were drug addict encampments along the beaches where people were doing drugs and pooping on the beaches and living in tents by the thousands.
Oh dear lord, get a life.
You know this wouldn’t be long I love the way they use San Francisco to disguise their racism and anti Caymanian sentiment. my counter to them now is unfortunately we have some who have come here now and have adopted our local custom of camping on our beaches who have nefarious and criminal intentions for doing so and asked them to take up with them please. This is our problem Cayman we unfortunately because of the foolish political notion of increasing our population we are some how going to be better off .We may have to now legislate some our Caymanian rights and customs into law because some coming here now want to do away with both.
As a part-time expat here for 36 years, I agree with you. I truly hope Cayman can make progress on it’s many social issues. However, my time here has led me to believe that will not happen.
With the [story on CNS published in December] about illegal gambling (through Numbers games) generating between $30M and $50M annually, can the RCIPS please focus on tracking this down so we can prosecute some money laundering cases. That $30-50M is being laundered somewhere, somehow on this island! And we need to demonstrate to the EU and FATF that we are prosecuting money laundering offences.
Meanwhile the captain is making bread.
What a tangled webb.
How is this possible? Didn’t RCIPS just have a big back patting ceremony celebrationg a whole load of promotions to Detective Inspectors or similar?
Thank you RCIPS Cayman is very safe. This is the main reason no one wants to leave.
How quickly we forgot how the RCIPS shut down the spike in Robberies that occurred towards the end of 2022.
I live in West Bay which is one of best place in the world to live. I haven’t locked my car in 30 years.
Does your car have tires? I doubt everything you typed.
When last did the UK pay their salaries? Remind me since we are stupid.
Do a search, I’m sure you can figure it out since you are so bright.
On the 5-year crime trend chart: what am I even looking at? They have a chart with no legend and a bunch of squiggly lines lol.
I thought it was an ECG measuring the pulse of Caymans society which is clearly shown as a downward and dying trend.
got no time for rcips…since jon-jon incident…
Only since then???
Before we just thought they were incompetent…
Jon-Jon who?
Which one? Sacred Vessel or Trainergate?
Post “Office” DUI into light pole with emergency interventions from Premier and AG.
OK. So there three separate incidents.
I went to GT police station once to report my expensive mountain bike stolen from my property. They literally laughed at me for wanting to file a report, and said it was a waste of time, I would never see it again. I did file the report, but suspect it was just binned.
Report the same to any police station in the US and they will tell you the same.
Seriously, what do expect the police do? Stop every cyclist island wide the next two weeks looking for your bike?
Are you double digit IQ? Firstly why compare with the US? Secondly if you file a report with the relevant information regardless of recovery chance, you at least stand a chance of getting it back vs no chance at all with no report. Thirdly do you conveniently forget that every now and then there is a police auction of recovered stolen goods. Why do you think that is?
You are not very good at reading comprehension are you? The poster was encouraged to NOT make a report. No the police would not stop every cyclist on the island, or the same for a stolen car or say a 20k Rolex stolen from your house, they would not check everyone wearing a Rolex either so I do not understand your statement, because I doubt it is anyone’s expectation.
BUT if you file a report with details include unique identifiers like serial numbers, description etc. if it is recovered they will know who the rightful owner is. The problem here is that the police do not even try and it is simply wrong to tell a reporter not to bother.
Yes but we’re not in the US are we? We’re on a small island with a ridiculous number of police per capita. What they all do exactly, I still don’t know.
That’s literally their job. And no, the US cops wouldn’t do that.
Sorry to report, my county in Ohio will certainly follow up. You very mis-informed, or ignorant of facts.
Low expectations in Cayman… Low results – YOU are to blame.
No real surprise here. Odds are in favour of the perps. Firstly not likely you will be arrested, and second odds are that DPP after 3-4 years will drop your case.
How did $25mln in cocaine and ganja walk out of evidence locker inside the West Bay police station during daylight hours, with staff and CCTV recording nothing? Who shot Dr Frank McField? Why wasn’t Dwayne Seymour breathalyzed after crashing into a light pole? The answer to all of these is “shhhhh”.
When did drugs disappear form West Bay police station? Never heard of that.
I don’t remember the date but it has been quite a few years…….
and nobody seemed to care. I kept waiting for them to get the guilty cops, but no one was ever investigated as far as I know.
I suppose they divided it and everyone had some good times.
It wasn’t West Bay. Also, where is the surveillance van they “lost”?
It was the central police station in George Town. The big one, with all the cops. Where no one noticed some guys climbing over a wall, forcing open said container, and shipping suitcases loads of coke and ganga out again.
https://caymannewsservice.com/2016/02/no-cops-suspended-in-stolen-drugs-scandal/
If we keep growing population & unemployment at the same rate of overall inflation with no salary increases – guess what other stat grows along with it…. CRIME.
If 90% of Cause List defendants and aspiring residents of HMP Northward are born Caymanians, then there is no causal relationship to work permit holders and variations in transient population. If anything, there’s more victims!
LOL, Wow – this went way over your head didn’t it @5:11pm? I never said HMP wasn’t occupied by mainly Caymanians. We are in the Cayman Islands after all so I would certainly hope that is the case.
Do you not think for a second that Caymanians are not also having more children and thereby also growing the population? When we are at the products of bottom-feeder education, and the minimum wage is what it is – what do you think will happen in order to survive? CRIME.
At the same time there are tons of people being welcomed to our shores with no hesitation, and in some cases there is NO JOB on the other end of an empty work permit. How do you think that they survive with no income?? CRIME.
Stop trying to create further division across nationalities. I am half Caymanian & half-Jamaican, and that is not at all what was meant.
Shame on YOU for being so narrow-minded.
If you are Half-Jamaican, then most of the ‘Cayman-kind’ folks’ hate you (they really are not very welcoming). Sorry for your poor acceptance as a decent citizen here. Hateful for Jamaicans?… it is the Cayman way. Sadly, many are decendents from Jamaica.
Be well.
Pure rubbish and old drivel where did you get that 90% from. Do you mean the almost 100% criminals showing up here now on work permits and after committing crimes they cannot be deported because their baby momma is some was married to a Caymanian mama’s who now has Status. As for the prison population why is it that the 90% of the local Caymanian prison inmates cannot or are not allow to work whilst in prison but a 100% of the foreign threats to our national security dangerous prisoners are allowed to earning money and work outside prison giving them opportunities to impregnate local women by their fellow countrymen who are in charge of the prison. Give it a rest eh your anti Caymanian vitriol is getting as stale as your breath!
You raise a good point.. that goes the other way to what you intended it to say.
If the population is approximately 50/50 caymanian/non-caymanian why are is cause list “90%” full of caymanians?
Are you saying that caymanians are more prone to crime? if so, well first, thats discriminatory and racist and second, it goes against any scientifically or mathematically plausible explanation.
Perhaps! the issue is the persons who are doing the arresting and prosecuting are *drumroll* not caymanians….
Open your eyes cayman, the evidence is all around you.
The evidence would be the hard data. What you deem to be evidence is supposition. 90% of the convicted criminals are Caymanians, but you dont want to believe that is representative so you assume that the solution to that uncomfortable truth is that none is arresting the non Caymanians, yet you have zero data for that conclusion.
And yes, having a prison population composed mainly of the local population is not surprising and entirely representative of most societies – but a bit difficult to explain when less than 50% of the adults living here are Caymanian.
To save you the effort, I’ll offer you the next excuse …..the prison population statistics are distorted by “paper” Caymanians, not real, multi generational Caymanians…
So then you are saying that Caymanians are predisposed to criminal behaviour and other nationalities are not, specifically the entire non caymanian population in Cayman.
Caymanians!!!! Take a damn good look at this.
You rely on hard data being the convictions, nothing wrong with that approach. But listen you ignorant bastard, in order to secure a conviction a person must first be investigated/arrested and then prosecuted.
If the investigators and prosecutors are just as racist and discriminatory as you then that means that only their targets will make it into the system and suffer convictions while the other sector of the population will not thus distorted statistics.
in short, caymanians are targeted for prosecution and it is reflected in the prosecution statistics.
Black lives matter? Caymanian lives matter?
Read this comment everyone, this is clearly an intelligent racist bigot writing the comments above this post.
Where is this hard data? Bet it doesnt exist, just some troll making noise
So nothing at all to do with them leaving the best funded education system in the world functionaly illiterate and innumerate and choosing to then rob people instead of working an unskilled job?
A very biased one sided post.
Cash spend does not mean a quality education or a proper syllabus or caring teachers.
It’s more about the parents but they are too busy procreating with anyone they meet so they can’t properly raise kids.
Those are not parents, those are bearers.
Unfortunately they are also parents.
sorry..but got no time or rcips following jon-jon and wayne incident.
sorry, but not sorry.
Q. How many known gang leaders have been disturbed, prosecuted, or jailed since Sheldon Brown in 2006? Why is that answer zero?
These Commissioners, past and present, seem to think it’s always a good explanation to point to a limited number of offenders. All that demonstrates is police incompetence.
Get your policemen to do the job they get a great salary to do. 2 or 3 standing along side the roads with a speed gun isn’t making us feel no safer.
You are much more likely to die or get injured in a automobile accident in Cayman than get violently robbed or assaulted. So we need more instances of “2 or 3 with a speed gun” on the roads to make us feel safer.
Put average speed photo radar cameras on all bypasses and a few points on Shamrock Road.
No thanks.
Yeah because we really need to dumb down the standard of driving here! Horrible idea.
Standing by the entrance to a roundabout – where everyone has to brake to make the manoeuvre!!! SMH
I don’t even see that many out on the road but if they did enforce traffic violations I’m sure they’d catch some of these people that are breaking other laws. start with the ones that have scratched off their license plate numbers or have too dark a tint.
Toronto installed just 50 static speed cameras near school areas and in the first 3 months of this year they issued 80,000 tickets. Other cities have done the same around North America and it forces compliance. If the RCIPS continue not showing up, we will need four of these (with RFID readers) to supervise the 25mph speed limit of West Bay Road and make it safe for pedestrians, bikes, and scooter road users.
Issuing tickets is not the problem. No one will pay them. Insurance will be cancelled and Licence fees not renewed. I would say that conservatively you could drive in Cayman for 3-5 years with no inspection, insurance or even licence plates before being stopped. Ever see a vehicle on the road and wonder how it possibly passed inspection? It doesn’t take much.
Same is true in these other cities…some might choose not to pay, but then they can’t renew license, car, or insurance. In Cayman, the three RFIDs on our cars can ping back an unlicensed red flag, and the cops can just calmly attend owners house to serve arrest warrant.
Probably more than this. I don’t bother reporting break ins anymore due to the apathy the police show. Even after providing cctv evidence they managed to lose it
they take care of their own
This!
Ignorant if implying locals.
The force has been majority non locals for decades unfortunately
So tell us why Caymanians aren’t applying? Could it be the inability to produce a clean record?
Nope. Can’t stand the corruption and ineptitude.
Police corruption prevents a lot of victims reporting crime.
Therefore these figures are not a true reflection of what is going on with crime on the island .
When you report a crime currently you have no idea whether your statement and personal details will be leaked to CMR.
The Commissioner and top teer, is aware of it. But have done nothing
Currently Be careful if you ever think about reporting anything
Unless you want your name in lights
One of the first orders of business for the new Governor will have to be giving Byrne notice, and recruiting capable replacements from the top down. There must be minimum performance expectations that are deployment-driven with full accountability. Success cannot be measured against the previous year’s failing grades. Failing less isn’t a pass, and neither is failing more!
This commissioner has single handedly turned the clock back on policing 20 years.
Turning back the clock 20 years would be a confidence improvement, rather than the step backwards that it has been. It will take many years to earn back trust.
Wellp, they say inflation is up across the boa-..
I’ll see myself out.
Mac’s status Grant’s kids have come of age, yep, the timing’s about right.
i think you arean idiot 8:28 am.
Truth hurts doesn’t it!
unfortunately it’s true and if you have a problem with that then you need to look around at your country folk.
It is also true that corruption or other impropriety may have been associated with some of the grants, and that the police do not appear to have investigated any of them.
Someone should complain to the judges, or the attorney general, oh, wait, shit…