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PM Rejects Gang Narrative For June Murders
posted (July 29, 2019)
And moving from administrative matters to the situation on the ground, we also asked the COMPOL about June's murder figures which were up 340%. He said that was a bad month - but police still have things basically under control. We disputed that:

Reporter
"You have been having a pretty good run as commissioner. Is it indicative of the fact that it's not about you, it's what the criminals choose to do. You dint really have control. You got lucky and got away for a few months, but then the criminals turn it up and there goes your numbers."

Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"You have a funny way of putting things, but be that as it may, yes as I said before the month of June we took a shellacking. That is the truth. Last year June we had four murders, this year June we had seventeen. That is a significant increase. Again, any objective observer would concede to the fact many of the murders in June were things that the police had no control over. It was not a situation where the gang violence was rampant and was getting out of control. So yes while we took a shellacking in the month of June I do not equate that to the fact that our strategy is failing. Since then we regrouped, we have looked at tweaking our strategy to see how we can normalize things and I believe that the month of July so far has not been what we expected but much better than the month of June was."

Reporter
"Do you accept then that while the numbers may be good for some months, you are not in charge of this, the criminals are in charge, the gangs are in charge."

Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"Like i said the crimes that occurred in June, majority of them, over 80% of them were not committed by gang members or persons who we know to be gang members, so let us not go ahead of ourselves and try to bring down the police."

Reporter
"So then you dispute the crime observatory which is a functionary of the Ministry of National Security. They say that all the murders in June were gang related. That's on their website."

Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"If that is there then I will refute that."

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