And to keep those murder numbers down, and reduce the number of burglaries and robberies that normally occur during the Christmas season, Musa says the police have been deployed to patrol the known hotspots. But what about the criminals who go out of the norm and target places you wouldn't expect to be hit? Well, there aren't enough police officers to control crime across the entire country, but Musa says they are trying their best to keep residents safe.
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"As we did in September when we had the Carnival, we definitely increased the patrols, we came up with different strategies, we looked at the hotspot areas that we were expecting crime and so we definitely put our boots to the ground in those particular areas, we put even more boots on the ground for the carnival season, likewise in November for November 19th, and so we are hoping that for the entire month of December we will see a more intensified approach from the police department, the commissioner has assured us that yes we will get, we will target those areas that have been problematic in the last few years and especially look out for opportunists, criminals that are looking for opportunity to take advantage of people, we'll be definitely looking at that and trying to prevent robberies, and theft and burglaries from taking place. In regards to the robbery in Hattieville, as you rightly pointed out, it's a very large country to police with only 2,000 police officers but we have to put our officers in strategic places as close as possible to all the hotspots and yes even in areas that we don't expect crime to happen. As you know we have new recruits coming out hopefully by mid next year, they just recently went into the police training academy, 150 new recruits, and so we will get that increase next year but for the time being we do have to utilize the resources, the manpower that we do have in the best possible way that we can."
