There’s a shortage of police officers to serve the eastern districts. Area Commander Richard Barrow made those comments while speaking with residents at a police meeting at the Bodden Town Primary School Monday night.
Mr. Barrow |
He said problems with recruiting, retaining foreign officers, assignments to work late shifts at the police station and other challenges in the policing service is what they struggle with and steps are being taken to address that as early as next March.
‘Joining the police force is not very appealing for young Caymanians at this time. Even if we do get them to recruit they leave in no time, saying they do not like shift work,’ said Mr. Barrow.
Residents at the meeting said not enough was being done to encourage recruitment of young Caymanians.
The department needs to send recruiting officers with whom these young people can identify with, said one local resident. He advised sending those Caymanians, and officers who identify with the Cayman culture, to seek new recruits.
‘The police need to restructure their programme to attract these youths,’ said Youth Services, Youth Empowerment Officer Lisa Charleston. ‘The Police need to target youngsters from the primary level by sending officers to the schools and out in the community to speak with residents.’
Resident Dwayne Seymour said some sort of incentive needs to be put in place to get new officers to join. He advised giving them a weekend off every now and then. Mr. Seymour said he was also one to look forward to the weekend as a young person and understands the peer pressure officers go through.
Another resident said Bodden Town officers were lazy and took their ‘sweet time’ in responding to calls from those needing police assistance.
‘The force has a number of recruitment drives aimed at targeting young people,’ said Inspector Ian Yearwood. Mr. Yearwood said programmes like D.A.R.E are doing well, combined with efforts to have officers visit schools and hand out pamphlets with information about the police service.
Despite the shortage of police staff and the Island losing a degree of tranquillity, Mr. Barrow said the Eastern Districts still had a moderately low crime rate.
However, Mr. Barrow said he has concerns about the recent increase in domestic violence cases and daytime home burglaries. He said suspects are mainly taking small items such as cell phones, laptops, games, ipods and loose change, which suggests these crimes are being committed by young adults.
In this regard, Mr. Barrow said he had enlisted the help of the Youth Services Department to help counsel young adults against turning to a life of crime. Ms Charleston said the Youth Services were in the process of selecting a youth directory, which would hopefully be done by the end of the year.
The directory will provide a list of youth groups and activities that parents can have their children involved in.
Traffic, scam issues
Mr. Barrow also said RCIPS continues to target noisy dump trucks that speed through the communities and motorists that fail to obey traffic lights in school zones.
Detective Sergeant Michael Montague also gave his input on finance scams, which continue to crop up in Cayman.
‘A lot of people in Cayman are falling victim to the Nigerian scam and other fraud issues,’ Mr. Montague said.
There are several different types of scams where fraudsters seek out victims on the Internet and request bank account numbers to deposit large sums of money. They also target businesses, issue fraudulent cheques and credit cards; and use the charity scam where persons elicit money for sick relatives and make donations to supposedly worthy causes, only to have that cash taken by scammers.
‘One (that) just frequently surfaced was the puppy scam,’ said Mr. Montague. ‘This is where fraudsters put puppies for sale over the Internet or in local newspapers.’
Mr. Montague encouraged residents to be aware of these deals, ignore the communication, and delete all correspondence from the scammers.
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