Latest update December 23rd, 2024 3:40 AM
114 murders, 498 armed robberies in 2019 – But Force reports steady drop in serious crimes in five-year period
By Shikema Dey
Releasing statistics to support their reassurances of a drop in serious crimes this year, the Guyana Police Force reported a spike in murders, but a drop in gun-related robberies.
The Force also released statistics which showed a
Statistics showing the decline in serious crimes for 2015 to 2019
n overall -2.5% decrease in serious crimes throughout Guyana for 2019, and a continuous drop in serious crimes over the past five years.
This revelation was made on Friday at the Guyana Police Forces’ Christmas Policing Presentation held at Eve Leary.
Acting Crime Chief, Michael Kingston, in his presentation outlined that for the past five years, serious crimes have seen a rapid decline from 3,925 in 2015 to 2,235 as of October 2019.
This, he attributed to the valiant collaborative efforts by all members of the Force.
According to the statistics, the GPF over the past year, has seen a steady decline in rape, robberies where a firearm was used, robbery with aggravation, break and enter and larceny. There were no kidnappings.
However, the numbers for burglary, robbery with violence and larceny from the person still remain worrying.
According to the Force’s statistics, there were 114 murders 2019, in comparison with 84 homicides for 2018. The murders for this year included four execution style killings, 21 robbery-murders, 12 domestic murders, 63 disorderly murders and 14 in which the motive was unknown.
For this year, also, there were 498 robberies in which firearm were used, compared with 509 gun-related robberies last year; 257 robberies in which instruments other than firearms were used, in comparison to 202 of a similar nature in 2018; 138 robbery with violence in 2019, compared with 129 similar robberies last year.
Police also reported 229 incidents of rape this year, and 315 rape reports for the same period last year.
Region 4A, the crime hub
From the statistics given, Region Four ‘A’ is seen as the central area for serious crimes with 41.3% coming from that area.
But the acting Crime Chief was happy to report that serious crimes dropped in this area from 254 in January to 208 in October 2019.
Murders in Guyana fell into six categories, execution, robbery, domestic, disorderly, unknown and others with the disorderly category carrying the weight.
The acting Crime Chief said, “This is one of the areas…It is very worrying to us and therefore we are in the process of partnering with stakeholders to get this down.”
From 2015 to 2019, disorderly murders went from 64 to 63, just off by one number.
For 2019, the Force saw 10.16% disorderly murders coming from Region Four ‘A’ with Region Nine following closely behind with 9.14%.
For murders as per region this year, Region Four ‘A’ led with 21% followed by Four ‘C’ with 15%.
Robberies saw a rapid decrease over the past five years moving from 1,458 in 2015 to 976 in 2019 and Region Four ‘A’ saw the largest number in this area with a whopping 59% of gun robberies.
The Acting Crime Chief reported that most of these robberies occur on the streets with the number climbing from 146 in 2015 to 336 in 2019.
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