Political unity, increased manpower, intelligence gathering and a more trusting witness protection programme are some of the things, if given to the Homicide Bureau, may improve the detection rate.
To date 328 people have been murdered with arrests in 52 of them. Speaking on i95FM on Wednesday Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said the police had a ten per cent detection rate.
Rowley said the ten per cent murder detection rate was unacceptable, adding the People’s National Movement will do all in its power to give the service all the tools it needs to address crime.
In a telephone interview with the T&T Guardian yesterday, Senior Supt Oswald Cudjoe, operational head of the Homicide Bureau, said human resources were major components in increasing the detection rate.
“We need to get back our resources, namely human resource. Homicides are taking place rapidly and we need a central location where all data pertaining to homicides will be collected and analysed,” Cudjoe said.
The senior officer, who spent time working in various intelligence-gathering units of the Police Service said there also needed to be a fusion centre between the Homicide Bureau and two other units, the Organised Crime, Narcotics and Firearms Bureau and the Criminal Gang and Intelligence Unit.
Those two units, he said, oversaw the three main factors that contributed to murders, gangs, drugs and guns.
Cudjoe said the fusion centre would relay vital information among the units while investigators sought to solve the murders.
“The intelligence unit will guide the cause of the homicide, getting information is not sufficient. Accurate and timely information is needed along with a more robust intelligence unit and a fusion centre,” Cudjoe said, adding the executive of the Police Service has a draft strategic plan and operational plan that is being looked at to facilitate the idea.
Cudjoe said apart from that, police officers should be allowed to do police work while many of the social aspects recently adopted went back to social groups, such as churches.
He said in many cases police officers were being made to do so much more than policing that they were unable to be police officers effectively.
He added that in years past the Homicide Bureau was a small unit with homicide officers attached to the nine divisions and dealing with murders within their own division.
He said: “We need to concentrate on our core functions as well, no one is judging us on community work, they are judging us on crime, and the barometer is murders. There needs to be a broad based intelligence apparatus, a justice protection unit and fusion centre,” he said.
Cudjoe added that other units of the Police Service could play a vital role as well, highlighting the Traffic Branch as the guns used to kill were not transported via helicopters of flying saucers but on the roadways. He called for a better and more effective way of car searches.
“There is too much politics playing in the country. It is only when people get serious that things will change. If people come together, it could change. This thing is not beyond us,” he said.
During the interview on Wednesday Rowley said the Government was aiming to put security services in a position to prevent or detect crime and prevention would include getting firearms off the streets and preventing trade in illegal guns.
Information gathering to identify the criminals would be an important part of the process, he said.
He added, however, that the police were being hampered by a lack of motivation within its ranks and the failure of the public to co-operate with their crime-fighting initiatives.
One measure to decrease the crime and specifically the murder rate was the idea of local constabularies in the regional corporations, Rowley said, adding this will incur an increased cost at running the country but “crime also had a cost.”