Police hailed the success of its Winter Guardian campaign over the recent festive season saying that they hoped the reduction in crimes would continue into the rest of 2026.
Royal Cayman Islands Police Service Superintendent Roje Williams told Compass TV’s Daybreak programme that the busy Christmas period usually gave rise to an increase in traffic, road collisions and opportunistic crimes, saying, “What we look at in Winter Guardian is ensuring that there’s overall public safety during this period.”
Zero road fatalities
He said that the campaign had been “extremely successful” with 70 arrests in the first week with data from subsequent weeks still being collated. He hailed the fact there were no road fatalities during December, compared with four in the same period last year, giving credit to not only the police service but the community at large, “Because it is not just a police and enforcement effort. It is also our civic and social responsibility to drive safe.”
Chief Inspector Dian Dyer-Alexander said that one of the most significant lessons from previous years was that “visible reassurance is one of the most important services that we can provide to the public”, so police were located where they were most needed, such as on the roads, doing traffic stops, at large gatherings and at high-risk locations.
Inspector Brandaughn Phillips said that as well as the increased focus on traffic safety, the police force was paying particular attention to domestic abuse incidents, retail and commercial burglaries, robberies and financial crime and said the police presence had had a big impact over the period.
Williams added, “I think the biggest success is not necessarily the numbers or the numbers of arrests; I think it is the safety within the community.”
He said that the greater police engagement had been noticed in the community, with people remarking, that “they’d never seen so many police officers in their entire life”.
Plans for 2026
Williams said that the police were now focusing on plans for 2026, including increasing officer numbers, increasing patrols and a change in strategy towards more community policing, and that Winter Guardian was a great framework on which to build upon.
Added Dyer-Alexander, “It is refreshing to know that we were able to keep our communities safe during one of the most dangerous periods of the year that has left us as a service, and by extension, the community, stronger. We know how we are approaching the remainder of the year, and we hope to be able to carry this through, carry that engagement, that public trust and confidence and that reduction in the fear of crime, throughout 2026.”
Simon Miller, prevention specialist from the National Drug Council told Daybreak that this year’s Purple Ribbon buses initiative “went well” with people planning to take the free New Year’s Eve buses this year ahead of time, rather than using it as a last resort.
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