The Royal Virgin Islands Police Force (RIVPF) continues to record a number of successful breakthroughs, including the recovery of 75 firearms and over 2100 rounds of ammunition in less than nine months.
This is according to the Commissioner of Police Mark Collins who made the announcement on Monday as the RVIPF celebrates 55 years of service to the territory this week.
Collins at the time was providing statistics to support the progression of the force, showing that his team has been active in solving a number of criminal matters.
He said, “I spoke yesterday about the number of firearms we’ve recovered, 75 in the last 8/9 months, 2156 I think rounds of ammunition and I said yesterday each one of those rounds of ammunition, each one of those bullets is a life that potentially we’ve saved. So I commend the hard work that we do.”
“In 2021, 11 persons were charged with murder and put before the courts. Unprecedented. And the list goes on. Tons and tons of cocaine recovered and we do this in collaboration with our colleagues here, our colleagues in the UK, our colleagues in the US, but actually collaboratively together as teams of the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force,” he added.
Ongoing internal training sessions
Collins also spoke on the progression of internal training of his officers, a commitment he made upon first taking the role.
He said the training sessions are critical to the development of the force as they continue to advance their respective standards to ensure that cases are presented at the highest level when reaching the court stage.
“This week and last week we ran a Sergeants Development Course, in the next two weeks we will run an Inspector Development Course. This is vitally important and I made a commitment that when I got here that we would increase training and development in the territory, locally delivered by training a trainer and bringing in experts in from other territories and the UK to assist us in that training,” he stated.
“So we’ve had Senior Investigating Officers courses, we’ve had CID courses, Financial Crime courses, Civics courses and the list goes on. And we would need to continue to do that to be professional and to present those cases to the magistrates’ courts and the crown courts,” he further explained.
Internal promotions coming soon
The top cop also hinted at a number of upcoming internal promotions which he said are on his agenda.
He assured the audience that the pending senior vacant positions will be filled with officers who are already part of the force and not external personnel.
“I very quickly want to go in then to recruiting new superintendents, new chief inspectors from within the organisation. No external adverts, from within the organisation. We have the skill and an excellent team within the RVIPF to recruit from within and long may that continue… So superintendents and chief inspector adverts to go out in due course and then followed up by our sergeants and inspector vacancies and we’ll look through those processes to fill those upcoming vacancies that we project over the next 12 months,” he expressed.