Department of Public Safety Commissioner Ernest Mark Williams said he has no problem with Superior Court Associate Judge Kenneth L. Govendo\u2019s appeal to DPS and the Attorney General\u2019s Office to improve their investigation techniques.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would agree with him [Govendo]. You can only be proficient if you train. There are areas that we need to do some training,\u201d Williams said in an interview with the Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Although he expressed confidence in the skills of the detectives at the DPS Criminal Investigation Bureau, the commissioner underscored the importance of further training.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of great officers out there. If you don\u2019t train, you don\u2019t practice things, then you lose the proficiency,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In a recent ruling, Govendo suggested that DPS re-evaluate the tools and skills that detectives use in conducting an investigation and preparing affidavits in support of arrest and search warrants.<\/p>\n
In addition, Govendo said the AGO should be consulted to guide police detectives in substantiating probable cause before submitting an affidavit to a judge.<\/p>\n
The judge made the suggestion in his written order that granted former acting police director Capt. Aniceto T. Ogumoro\u2019s motion to suppress all the evidence seized during the raid at his house on Capitol Hill on Feb. 10, 2006.<\/p>\n
The AGO charged the 44-year-old police captain with two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm, one count of possession of a weapon without proper registration, and one count of unlawful possession of ammunition.<\/p>\n
Williams said the skills of law enforcers tend to diminish if they stop undergoing training. But he stressed that DPS has \u201cfine, top-caliber people out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams said he is taking Govendo\u2019s decision in a positive way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was there that day in the courtroom and I have no issues with that. …We have to do some training in some areas and not just the areas that he identified,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The commissioner, however, emphasized that he is commenting only the judge\u2019s suggestion to improve the investigators\u2019 skills and not on the legal issues as the case is still pending in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Department of Public Safety Commissioner Ernest Mark Williams said he has no problem with Superior Court Associate Judge Kenneth L. Govendo\u2019s appeal to DPS and the Attorney General\u2019s Office to improve their investigation techniques.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}