Guerrero boasts of DPS achievements

Police Commissioner Robert A. Guerrero boasted some of his office’s achievements since his appointment as head of the Department of Public Safety more than a year ago. He was the guest speaker in last week’s Saipan Chamber of Commerce’s monthly general membership meeting at Hyatt Regency Saipan’s Sand Castle.

Despite a challenging past 11 months, Guerrero said they still managed to have some improvements and successes at DPS. “It has been a challenging 11 months since I became commissioner but we managed to succeed and have some improvements at DPS.”

He said a lot of burglaries are connected with crystal meth or “ice,” which is why they beefed up the Drug Enforcement Task Force, composed of personnel from DPS, Division of Customs Services, and the Department of Corrections.

“We’ve been doing a lot of arrests regarding ‘ice’ and we have put police officers in schools where officers are assigned there the whole day. Our police officers are also out there in the community doing patrols,” said Guerrero. “We also have a K9 unit in place. These are narcotic and attack dogs and they are going to work closely with our drug task force and burglary detective units.”

Guerrero said they would also enhance police visibility, especially in Garapan because of an increase in tourism arrivals and foot traffic in the tourist district. “We are beefing up the kōban (small neighborhood police station) by adding two new vehicles for them so they could patrol the tourist district.”

“We had also opened up the Kagman substation a week ago with a 24-hour operation. We pushed for that project with the reason being the response time it takes in that area. The response time takes longer than anywhere else on the island so we really need more police presence back there,” he said.

“We’re anticipating opening another substation in Koblerville and once the fire station in the San Roque area opens, we’re also going to beef up our presence in that area,” said Guerrero, who added that DPS has also acquired new equipment for all its police officers.

Upgrades

New body armors or bulletproof vests and new firearms were issued to all officers after Gov. Ralph DLG Torres signed the Special Act for Firearm Enforcement Act into law. “We are making sure our police officers are also safe on the streets,” said Guerrero.

He added that DPS has 22 new officers that graduated from the academy last September and they would hire 20 more to beef up enforcement activities in the months to come. Their department also has new uniforms, the first time they changed it since 1999.

“We want to put more officers on the streets as much as possible. And we have new uniforms, which is much cooler. The new uniforms will also avoid confusion with the Division of Customs Services and the U.S. Probation Office,” said Guerrero.

DPS also acquired seven more vehicles to put more officers on streets. “We have seven new vehicles and with the four that we have before, we now have 11. We are anticipating six more so we could put additional patrol vehicles for the villages.”