New cops take to streets after 14 week course
(CNS): Although the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS) is still short on cops 18 new officers started on the beat this week after graduating from their basic training course swelling the total number of officers in the RCIPS to 354. Police said that the fourteen week course tests the recruits’ mental, physical and emotional resilience and the new Police Commissioner David Baines said the recruits were a welcome addition.
“Having gone through 14 weeks of tough training they have sworn to protect the communities of the Cayman Islands and are a welcome addition to the Service,” he said at the graduating ceremony on Friday (24 July). Recognizing the supportive role played by family members Baines noted the challenges of the service. “Being a police officer is a challenging task that impacts upon officers but equally, yet less obviously, upon their families and the valuable support given by relatives should not be overlooked,” he added.
RCIPS’ Head of Training, Inspector Anthony White commended the graduates for deciding on a career in the RCIPS which he aid they would take up and bear witness for the protection and preservation of life and property. “They chose to lead and place themselves as a vanguard of what is decent in all of us. How noble that is in such taxing times in our country,” he said. "This class was continually challenged by tragic and unforgiving events surrounding their immediate families, yet they withstood when others may have succumbed. They are proud and will make a strong addition to our complement of officers. They entered as individuals and emerged as a collective, supportive body ready for assisting the community."
Much has been made in the community lately of the problems of recruiting Caymanian officers and the alleged distrust in the local community of officers from other jurisdictions but the break down of the nationality of these 18 recruits was not supplied.
According to the RCIPS website in April this year from the then serving 343 officers the vast majority are Caymanian with 173 local people in the service. There are also a wide selection of countries represented in the forces including 75 from Jamaica, 26 from the UK, 23 from Barbados 7 from Canada and 7 from St Vincent. There are four officers from each of the countries of India, Trinidad, Bahamas and the Philippines and three from Guyana, Honduras and St Lucia. There are also individual recruits from the US, Venezuela, Belize, Haiti and St Thomas.
Anyone with information about crime taking place in the Cayman Islands should contact their local police station or Crime Stoppers on 800-8477 (TIPS). All persons calling Crime Stoppers remain anonymous and are eligible for a reward of up to $1000 should their information lead to an arrest or recovery of property/drugs.
Category: Local News
"I would hope that you are not implying that all Caymanian graduates are incompetent!"
Me again… Sorry. My mistake.
As news to me the term "school leaver" does in some countries mean graduates and not drop-outs. To the extent that my comments might have been received by recent graduates, I offer my unreserved apologies, my heartfelt congratulations at your achievement and my best wishes for a fruitful life.
To those who are "early school leavers", i.e. drop-outs (see, I’m learning), get your butts back to school and follow the examples of those graduates who are headed to richer, more rewarding lives.
Sorry for the confusion.
"I would hope that you are not implying that all Caymanian graduates are incompetent! "
I would never imply such a thing. Caymanian graduates are fine and also often go on to post-secondary institutions and become professionals of great competence.
HOWEVER, if your read your original post you started this discussion with reference to "school leavers", meaning drop-outs who couldn’t cut it in high school, by definition being people who are not graduates and who lacked either the intellectual horsepower or the impulse to make something of themselves, or both, (translation: mentally dull and/or lazy) so that they now have no training to do anything useful at all.
Those people I don’t think could make good cops. Send them back to school. At least a trade school so they can learn to bake or fix cars. Don’t vest them with the power of the law and ask them to protect your society. If you do, don’t complain when the criminals start to win because the officers couldn’t figure out how a tape recorder works. You can only expect so much (and not much) from a drop-out.
Kids: STAY IN SCHOOL. Your future depends on it.
That’s all I’m saying.
"School leavers should be a target for police. They could train some of these interested Caymanians to be police. This way we would have our own home grown police officers!"
Nothing like building the force with the best and the brightest. If they couldn’t make it through high school, why will they succeed at criminology?
I would hope that you are not implying that all Caymanian graduates are incompetent! I believe that if given the chance some of our youths could fill these positions.
School leavers should be a target for police. They could train some of these interested Caymanians to be police. This way we would have our own home grown police officers!
"Aaaah Cayman when will we ever get our little Island back?"
When we decide to take it back.
When we decide to take initiative instead of waiting to be recruited.
When we decide it is important enough to be cops / teachers / nurses / doctors.
Well some of these newly graduated officers have been employed with the Police for over 2 years. So it could be genuinely true that the RCIP wrote to the UK applicant to advise they were not recruiting. Perhaps the other recruits were succesful applicants waiting for the next training session. There are so many other reason why the Police coudld have written to adivse they were not recruiting.
It is obvious that some people think just because people from the UK apply for a police officers job in Cayman they should receive one. In my honese opinion we do not need Police who have been trained, but police recruits with an opne mind and a brain, not ones who have learnt to intimidate people and force the public into committing offences like how the English Police do.
You honestly believe that Police recruited from the UK, force people into crime…..seriuosly I despair at the stupidity of some of my fellow Caymanians.
You can’t have too many Caymanian police officers the island is just too small and they will always spend too much time in compromising situations such as cousins etc expecting to get let off crimes and all too often have the same instilled racism and fear of strangers as some of the other caymanians and take this out by stitching up expats on false charges in order to let a caymanian go free.
At least officers from other areas are impartial and as long as they are honest, hardworking and not just here for an extended holiday then they are vital to keeping everything fair and above board.
14 weeks doesn’t sound like a long time to train a copper. I’m not sure if they can teach you every aspect of the law and legality in 14 weeks, let alone the time they spend on arrest techniques, self defence etc. I hope we don’t start hearing of loads of people being falsely arrested in the coming months for non-offences!
Re "You can’t have too many"
How true. I have a family member who had to leave the police because of pressure from druggy etc family members to let them off for even speeding offences. They-his own family-made his life bloody miserable. So stop the hypocrisy, Cayman, about the need for "our own" in the Police.
Congrats to the new Officers and I hope they are going to be fair, impartial, non racist, not be doing anyone any "favours" and so on and so on.
However, what I find interesting is that a friend of mine from the UK applied twice in the last year only to be told that they were not recruiting! In fact he has 2 letters stating this from the RCIP! Wow, then how on earth did these guys end up on a training course? Were they plucked out of thin air? My friend has two years basic police training gained in the UK………but when he applied it appears he was lied to by the RCIP. He is probably better off well out of it.
Aaaah Cayman when will we ever get our little Island back? Don’t get me wrong posters but i Dont have a issue and i have have travel around and their is nothing wrong with minorities in the police forces as it happens around the world but 343 and 173 is 51% of the force is "Caymanian" is unacceptable as it could not happen in any of the above listed countries in fact it would not be tolerated by these countries respective governments.
In fact for a population 55,000 it is downright scary for all those who reside here. As most of these countries have serious integrity and corruption issues with their Law enforcement agencies. Why are we now taking on or bringing these dynamics into Cayman.
This is why the constitution is so important to protects us from any of the coming abuses because we are putting this island’s rights and privileges and power in the hands of person we know nothing about. At the same hand we are marginalizing our youth and young caymanians Cayman this a recipe for real trouble in the near future. But some in power are well aware of this?
So, how many of these new recruits are Caymanian? I hope that efforts are being made to recruit more Caymanian police officers.
Good luck Officers. Welcome to the Mean Streets.