Over the past four weeks some thirty-nine (39) members of the Royal Anguilla Police Force have benefitted from training in Investigation and Statement Taking.
The training which was four (4) one (1) week sessions, focused on enhancing and complimenting the knowledge and experience of officers whilst creating a consistent and systematic approach when investigating and collecting evidence. Participants in the training were drawn from across the RAPF.
Commissioner of Police Mr. Paul Morrison said, “This training was geared at improving our investigators with the aim of building capacity and resilience in the RAPF when it comes to the investigation of serious crimes. All investigations start from first point of contact with the Police and it is important that all officers understand the importance of principles of collecting and presenting evidence. The training will no doubt assist in ensuring that we continue to standardize our investigation approaches and be more systematic in the collection of evidence during such investigations.”
The program funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, FCO was conducted by Mr. Andrew Carr an ex police officer from Kent Constabulary in the Uk who has been delivering investigative training throughout his career and was part of the Intelligence led policing model adopted first by Kent before being rolled out across all UK forces in the 90’s.
His training supplemented the dedicated investigation mentoring and development program which ran over two months by John McFarland which focused on the Major Crime, Volume Crime , Child safeguarding, Scenes of crime investigators and Criminal intelligence Units. This program was designed to improve the way crimes are recorded and better use of the OTRICS system to conduct major investigations.
This program is one of the many programs that will be delivered to the RAPF in the coming months that will be funded by the FCO which will include Officer Safety Training, Child Exploitation investigation training and mentoring.
Also through funding from CEOP, FCO we have been able to enhance our capabilities to investigate serious crime by building and equipping a new forensic facility and bullet track for the fast time investigation of gun related crime.