Criminals in Saint Lucia will be pursued in cyberspace says local police
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Criminals in Saint Lucia will be pursued in cyberspace says local police |
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Contact: Kerwin Xavier
Monday 26 September 2011 – Soon Saint Lucian criminals will no longer be able to hide in cyberspace. Ongoing is an “Identification and Seizure of Digital Evidence Training Programme” which began Monday for officers of the Saint Lucia Police Force. The training forms part of assistance drive from the United States Embassy in Barbados.
Security Investigator for the Regional Security Office for the US Embassy, Neil Hinds says: “The training that we are presenting here is part of the anti-terrorism assistance programme initiative for cyberforensics in the Caribbean. The skill-sets that are going to be developed here will enable them to look for digital devices that contain evidential value which they will know how to identify. They will know how to seize, package and send the evidence collected to the lab for analysis.”
Acting Police Commissioner Vernon Francois is not only elated about the increase capacity the course brings to the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force, but the possible potential the training can have on the conviction rate of law enforcement officers.
“This training will assist our officers obviously to be more efficient as it relates to their ability to deal with cases of that nature. We are in a situation presently where we cannot depend on eye witnesses evidence. “There are a number of issues associated with eye witness evidence—sometimes through intimidation and other issues, people are not prepared to come forward to give evidence in court. We want to go more in the direction of physical evidence and we think that this area in terms of identification and seizure of digital evidence will take us in that direction.”
According to commissioner Francois, the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force has been engaged in training recently dealing with the collection of physical evidence such as DNA. Upon completion of the one-week course, the police force will have another 16 officers with the capacity to deal with cybercrimes . |
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