With the current development and economic activity in the CNMI, especially on Saipan, the Department of Public Safety plans to beef up its enforcement and community presence in anticipation of an increase in crimes.<\/p>\n
DPS Commissioner Robert A. Guerrero, who was yesterday\u2019s guest speaker in the Saipan Chamber of Commerce meeting at the SandCastle of the Hyatt Regency Saipan, said they expect criminal activities to rise with the opening of the casino and other businesses in the coming months. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere would be more people on the island. The casino and other big business will bring in more people. And whenever there\u2019s more people, we anticipate crime to increase as well,\u201d he said. \u201cWe anticipate the presence of more criminal activities on our streets with the increased economic activity. We\u2019re preparing for everything\u2014robbery, theft, ice, and other crimes. A lot of robberies are connected with drugs and we\u2019re preparing for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerrero said the CNMI Drug Task Force\u2014composed of personnel from DPS, the Division of Customs Services, and the Department of Corrections\u2014seized over 2,000 grams of \u201cice\u201d or crystal meth last year. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis has a street value of over $800,000. The task force is involved in the daily operations on what to do and who to investigate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do get briefed on it but we don\u2019t get into the operations issues. But we do have a lot arrests involving ice,\u201d said Guerrero, who added that there are inmates at Corrections on drug-related charges.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said the drug court, which is still fairly new in the CNMI, is a separate entity that would do the whole process of reviewing the cases. \u201cWhat happens is, we bring in guys and then refer them to the [Office of the Attorney General], and go to the drug court.\u201d<\/p>\n
DPS has arrested 113 individuals for crimes against property and another 379 for crimes against persons this year alone. \u201cThese individuals, as you\u2019ve probably heard, have been prosecuted and others have ongoing trial. We made quite a number of arrests, there are a lot of pending cases that have search warrants, and active cases against criminals being investigated,\u201d said Guerrero.<\/p>\n
He added that most of those arrested, either awaiting or have ongoing trial are detained at Corrections. \u201cThe facility is built to hold up to 600 inmates. When I left Corrections, there were around 150 and right now, probably around 200 and there\u2019s quite a bit involving ice. The federal detainees are different, they are at the facility for awhile then shipped out to serve time in federal prisons,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the current development and economic activity in the CNMI, especially on Saipan, the Department…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[256,26,35,67],"class_list":["post-239830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-casino","tag-cnmi","tag-dps","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239830","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\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}