Previous Story
Lack of permanent AG hampers creation of homicide task force
|
Posted on Feb 07 2000
Efforts to organize a homicide task force composed of the Department of Public Safety and the Attorney General’s Office may be moving slow but DPS Commissioner Charles W. Ingram has given the assurance that he has not dropped the plan.
The joint homicide task force with the Attorney General’s Investigation Unit is expected to facilitate the solution of pending homicide cases. While logistics is one area which has hampered its organization, Mr. Ingram said the lack of a permanent Attorney General has somehow contributed to the problem.
When it is finally organized, the Attorney General’s Criminal Division expects an increase in case load. The division has already seen a nine percent jump in the number of cases it is handling from 1998 to 1999.
Police record shows that there are already 18 unsolved homicide cases from 1994 to 1999. Of this, the highest number of homicides were committed in 1995 with seven pending cases, of which majority of the victims were Chinese.
Mr. Ingram said three police officers may be assigned to work with the Attorney General’s Investigation Unit as the new police recruits will not allow him to reassign the police officers who are conducting patrol to join the AG team.
On Saipan alone, three homicide cases were committed from a total of 6,407 crimes reported during that year.
Some 45 more policemen were added to the police force after they graduated two months ago in the training sponsored by the federally-funded program Community Oriented Policing Services Of this, 25 policemen were assigned in Saipan and 10 each in Rota and Tinian to patrol the villages.
