And while that is a killing - the charge is manslaughter by negligence - so the police won't have to add it to their list of murders for July. So far there have been 8 this month, 1 more than the 7 recorded in June of last year.
And, coming off a month of June that saw 13 murders, compared to just 3 in June of 2021, are the police facing an insurmountable statistical upswing in major crime? We asked the COMPOL today:
Reporter
"We spoke about it last time when you misrepresented the numbers and prevaricated and said that there were eleven in June. You convinced me on that when we know it was thirteen - which I proved to you in minutes, but June was a murderous month. You had hoped that for July and August with the work of you and your commanders you could bring it down, but July again has been a very deadly month. We are heading sir, for a year in which the murder rate is going to go up again. Is this an indictment on you?"
Chester Williams,Commissioner of Police
"I do not see July as a very deadly month, I do not see to what you are referring to as a very deadly month but I can tell you at this time that we are below ten for the month of July. While our numbers are up, compared to last year and 2020. If we were to compare our number this year to 2019, 2018, 2017 and even perhaps 2016, our numbers are down compared to those years. You would know that 2020 was the year when we had one of the lowest murder rates with one hundred and four and then 2021, last year we had a 125. I still believe that we can beat last year's number and we're going to work diligently to do that, but again we have to understand that many of these crimes that are occurring these murders are not murders that can be prevented by the police. We have some very stupid murders, you try your hardest best to prevent the gang members and then we see the domestic ones popping up here there and everywhere. Those are the ones that often times really hurt, because you know you're doing your best to stop those that are somewhat preventable and then the unpreventable just pops up on you."
