Joseph: New unit cuts killings

While murders peaked at 52 in March, “only” 21 people were killed in April.

“What contributed to the reduction in April is a number of strategic issues which were addressed,” Joseph said. “We established a Homicide Bureau,” he added.

Joseph said the staff of the bureau had recently been increased from 40 to 150.

He said Cabinet has suggested the reopening of “cold” cases of murder, the setting up of a Homicide Prevention Working Group, and an improvement in how evidence is taken to court, and Cabinet supported a Repeat Offenders Programme.

Joseph compared this year’s murders to those of last year. They were a total of 131 murders for the year up to 31 April 2006, compared to 108 murders in the same period in 2005.

These were comprised of 39 in January 2006 (with 24 killings in January 2005), 19 in February 2006 (down from 28 in February 2005), 52 in March 2006 (up from 30 in March 2005), and 21 in April 2006 (down from 26 in April 2005).