At any moment, there is a minimum of three armed response units on the roads of Grand Cayman, Police Superintendent Kurt Walton told East Enders Thursday night.
District residents gathered at the East End United Church Hall for the fourth public meeting since Acting Commissioner David George took command on 27 March. Responding to questions with Mr. Walton and Mr. George were Superintendent Adrian Seales and Chief Inspector Richard Barrow.
The topic of armed officers arose when a woman asked about response time to incidents occurring in East End. One man asked why the senior officers in East End could not be armed.
Mr. Walton said the Tactical Force Unit, also known as the Uniformed Support Group, consists of one inspector, four sergeants and 24 officers.
Officers are briefed on matters at the station before each shift, he explained.
Asked what would happen if the police got calls from West Bay, Bodden Town and East End all around the same time, Mr. Walton said it would obviously be a strain. ‘We would have to be driven by intelligence coming in to us,’ he said.
Mr. George replied to the idea of arming other officers, saying it was a dangerous road to go down. ‘If you issue arms casually, you’re putting people out there who are not trained properly,’ he pointed out. But to train such officers would take them away from their regular duties.
He said it was a question of where resources are placed. For each 24-hour post five or six officers would be needed, he explained.
Most of the other questions during the two-hour meeting had to do with traffic, including road signs and speeders.
Mr. Barrow gave statistics on crime and traffic since the last police meeting, in May 2007. He said there had been a 60 per cent detection rate in burglaries, with a lot of success due to information members of the community had provided to officers.
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