According to CANA, Grenada police are reporting a 35 per cent increase in the number of unwanted physical attacks on law enforcement officials.
Acting Commissioner of Police, Edvin Martin, told a news conference that there is a growing lack of respect for police officers, noting that a comparison of the data for the first six months of this year as against the same period last year , shows a 35 per cent increase in that category.
“Assault on police moved from 40 in 2018 to 54 in 2019, a 35 per cent increase. This in my mind speaks to the lack of cooperation or a lack of respect for officers during the execution of their duties,” Martin said, adding “I want to appeal to the public to be more cooperative to officers in the execution of their duties”.
Martin, flanked by senior officers, said the police would be examining ways in which they can possibly train officers to de-escalate situations because it may also be a factor in fuelling these offensives against law enforcement officials.
“Assault on police in the execution of their duties is a major concern we must address,” he said.
The data show a reduction in all major crimes even as the police acknowledge there remain pockets of concerns in certain categories. The police said 8,001 crimes were recorded during the period under examination so far this year as compared to 7,009 last year.
“There is certainly an overall contraction of major crimes in each category,” said Martin who is of the opinion that if the pattern continues, Grenada will record a second consecutive year of a reduction in crime.
While the biggest increase was in the areas off murder and assault on police, the most significant reduction was in the sexually related offence category.
“We have an increase in murder, it moved from six to eight and what is important to note here is that five of those eight homicides seem to be associated with the use of offensive weapons,” Martin told reporters.
“You will realise that the RGPF (Royal Grenada Police Force) has been advocating very strongly for us to have a zero-tolerance on the carriage of offensive weapons in a public space. An offensive weapon is anything that is used to intentionally cause harm to another person.
“In the category of assaults offensives, this continues to be a major challenge, particularly threatening language and threatening language as an offensive category by itself has accounted for the largest number of reports made to the police,” said Martin.
In the area of sexual offences, the police said “this area had the largest reduction of reported crimes for the period moving from 227 in 2018 to a 197 as of June 30th 2019.
“While this is encouraging the decrease is not significant enough. We attribute this reduction to increase advocacy, de-stigmatization of reporting and increase law enforcement efforts. I want to say these efforts must be sustained, we must build on the gains while we try to get this terrible crime out of our society,” said Martin.