Aim is to reduce crime to 20 percent by the end of the year: CP

Commissioner of Police Abdulla Riyaz has said that the aim of the Maldives Police Service would be to reduce violent crimes to 20 percent by the end of the year.

Speaking on a video interview published on the police service website, Commissioner Riyaz said that when he assumed the position of commissioner, the crime rate in the country was high and that one the first things he did was to establish “operation priorities” to reduce the numbers.

He established the operational priorities mechanism last year but the success was not up to what he expected he said, largely due to certain political challenges.

“In reality, we could not achieve as much as we wanted last year due to a number of reasons. The country was in great political turmoil last year. We continued to fight crime through all these challenges. It is the same this year as well,” Riyaz said.

Commissioner Riyaz said that the police service in the Maldives functions differently from other police services around the world, in the sense that while there are special divisions to respond to emergencies in other countries, the Maldives has just one force to respond to all sorts of matters.

“In other parts of the world, there are various different people for different tasks with different names, but the Maldives police have to work through all this as one. For example, if a fire breaks out in one of the islands, the police have to attend to the fire. They have to, even if there are five people,” Riyaz said.

Commissioner Riyaz said that during the past two year, the police gave a high of priority to reduce murders in the country and that the fact that there have been no murders so far this year is the success of those efforts. He said that their special efforts to investigate the people involved in organized and drug related crimes have been also been greatly successful.