PLYMOUTH, Montserrat – The Royal Montserrat Police Service (RMPS) has acquired new forensic equipment and has trained officers as part of efforts to strengthen the organisations investigative capacity.
Seven officers completed a three-day development training programme aimed at familiarising senior and trainee scenes of crimes officers with a new Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS); which will be used to assist with crime-solving efforts on the island.
The AFIS will allow the RMPS to maintain a database with the prints of convicted offenders and finger prints of those recovered from crime scenes.
Commissioner of police, Steve Foster said the new technology will greatly enhance the investigative capacity of the police. “This will greatly improve our service delivery as key actors in the criminal justice system. The AFIS is one of a number of advanced technology that the office of the governor, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and project officer, Alan Morrison have assisted the police in acquiring over the past three months, to give us advanced investigative skills.”
Commissioner Foster said the service has also acquired equipment to finalise the setting up a video recording interview suite for both victims and suspects, which will greatly improve the quality of evidence presented at court. Additionally, the RMPS has invested in case cracker technology and will also be conducting training in double casting in the event that the RMPS has to address cases that involve ballistics (impact of bullets and missiles).
The seven trained officers are PC68 Orlando Dasent; PC 65 Kino Thomas; Sergeant (Ag) 23 Leon Edwards; PC 94 Mataniah Antoine; PC97 Solomon Samuel, Inspector Julian Wade, and WPC63 Kisha Nelson.
The training was facilitated by Scott Howard from AFIX Technology Inc., the company which provided the fingerprinting system, as well as other biometric identification systems.