Police have seized 10 firearms so far this year, amid an ongoing spate of armed robberies and gun crime on Grand Cayman.
RCIPS Detective Superintendent Peter Lansdown says the public has an important role to play in combatting gun violence in Cayman.
“Please come forward, help yourselves out,” he said. “Without people in the community doing the right thing and telling us what’s going on, and standing up and being counted to stop it… we have real difficulties in ending this spiral of violence,” Lansdown said on the Cayman Compass talkshow The Resh Hour on Wednesday.
He said it takes the community’s support to help keep Cayman safe by sharing information on who has guns or who is involved in criminal activities.
RCIPS Media Relations Officer Jodi-ann Powery agreed, saying crime affects everyone.
“Quite often, people know who it is that are committing these crimes, and it’s not until they are victim of the crimes themselves that we get word of who it is. So if you see something, you say something. [It] doesn’t have to go directly through us. Crime Stoppers is offering a $50,000 reward for persons who provide information that lead to arrest and conviction for firearm offences, for instance,” Powery said.
Lansdown said, so far this year, there have been 21 robberies, of which 13 are firearm-related.
Shooting incident remained unreported
Lansdown expressed disappointment over the lack of information related to a 4 June shooting incident outside a bar on Shamrock Road. In that incident, shots were fired by armed men some time after 10pm. No one was injured.
Lansdown said despite there being nearly 30 people at the scene, no reports were made to police.
“I’ve seen the CCTV… everybody just running away from the scene, obviously scared…, but not one single person put in a phone call into police – nobody. So we would never have found out about that without some community intelligence, and now we’re on the back foot already,” he said.
He said CID has had to spend “an awful amount of time” identifying witnesses that were at the scene.
“So instead of spending our time and our efforts chasing the suspects, we’re spending our time and efforts chasing witnesses. It just gives a big time frame for the suspects to commit more crimes and to hide and disappear,” Lansdown said.
He said investigations are also still continuing into a 9 June shooting in which two men were wounded after a masked man began firing at them.
One of the victims was discharged from hospital shortly after the shooting, and the second victim, who had the more serious injuries, is expected to be released “imminently”, Lansdown said.
No arrests have been made.
Lansdown said he needs witnesses to come forward to help with the case.
“We know there were a lot of people at the venue at the time,” he said. “Some have come forward and we’ve got some accounts, but basically an individual, masked, made off from the scene after the shooting and we haven’t got that much further from that. We need to work out motives and approach routes, escape routes,” he said.
Firearms in hands of certain groups
Lansdown said police are looking into whether the recent shooting incidents and firearm-related robberies were linked.
He said that he was confident that a number of firearms came on the islands over the last couple of years and have got into the hands of groups of individuals that feuding with each other.
“Some of these firearms incidents are certainly related to that, but we are getting intelligence information, evidence; we’re slowly putting together a picture. I’m reasonably confident that there’s three or four groups of people out there loosely linked, maybe 12 or 15 individuals perhaps, that are just orchestrating a lot of this violent activity,” he explained.
Lansdown said police, in some instances, believe they know who is responsible and try to target those people, but “it’s very fluid and very mixed”.
“We’ve had some arrests this year,” he said, “but it’s a slow burn… watching CCTV, gathering forensic evidence, awaiting results to come back, building the picture bigger and bigger. I think we will get on top of it reasonably soon.”
He added that the recent spike in robberies are mostly at commercial properties, and he encouraged local businesses to consider security upgrades, like CCTV, reinforced electronic doors and good lighting.
“One of the best things we can do is bank your money. Put your money away on a regular basis. Don’t leave a great amount of money in the till… Just get it safe somewhere else banked and and then these robbers will learn,” he said.
Lansdown added that some of the recent robberies saw the gunmen leave with as little as $20.
“It should put them off. They’re facing mandatory seven to 10 years imprisonment for committing these offences if they’re in possession of a firearm, and for $20 or $30, that just is not worth it. Eventually, they should learn the lesson,” he added.
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