St. Kitts and Nevis Police Cold Case Strategy bearing fruit

Commissioner of Police in St. Kitts and Nevis Celvin G. Walwyn

NIA CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (April 26, 2012) — News came earlier this week that Police had arrested someone in the 2008 murder of Nevisian Leon Westerman of Low Street in Nevis and Commissioner of Police in St. Kitts and Nevis Celvin G. Walwyn said the arrest came about because of a Cold Case Strategy that had been implemented.

The Commissioner was at the time being interviewed by the Department of Information on Tuesday April 24, while he was on a visit to students at the primary and secondary schools in Gingerland.

“We issued a press release with regard to the solving of a case that happened in 2008 here in Nevis. We have been working on this case for a while as part of the Cold Case Strategy.

“I cannot go into details in it because I have another arrest to make with regard to the case but that is not the first case that we have done. When I first came here we had one from 2007 that we solved and the people are in prison right now. We are revisiting all of the old cases with the hopes of making more arrests,” he said.

According to the Commissioner, new strategies implemented had began to bear fruit in the Federation and pointed to some of the initiatives, among them greater direct access to him given to the public.

“I give out my phone number 662 2145 and I can tell you I get calls all hours of the night people giving me information and we have made so many arrests by the public calling and giving me the information. So we do have a lot of police community support and I want to keep that going. That’s why I am making myself available to the public whenever they call,” he said.

Also in St. Kitts he said the Police had gone into some communities with the Neighbourhood Watch Programme with Inspector David in charge. He noted that the Inspector had already been to Nevis and all over St. Kitts to get the police and the communities to interact.

“We give out crime prevention tips like how to prevent burglaries, how to prevent robberies, how to act during a robbery, we give all this information out.

“Our police website which is under construction right now is going to have brochures that you can go to and download and read whenever you want to but as far as the fruits of what we are doing we have seen an increase in the people calling the police and now people are willing to testify,” he said.

Regarding the new Witness Protection Programme started in the Federation, the Commissioner explained that it was available to persons who wanted to volunteer information.

“We have a location I can’t tell you where it is or how it operates but we do have something in place for those who want to give information but fear that they might be attacked because of coming forward. We have a place that if you want to we can have you placed there so you can be safe,” he said.