The Department of Public Safety has seen a significant drop in the CNMI\u2019s crime rate following the strict curfew hours set by the Governor\u2019s COVID-19 Task Force. <\/p>\n
According to DPS Commissioner Robert Guerrero, crime has gone down and he believes the strict curfew hours is the reason for this, as well as compliance of members of the community. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe do come across people who don\u2019t abide by curfew and our officers do stop them and advise them and they comply. We have never had to make an arrest for it. Aside from the arrest at the airport [when one incoming passenger refused to be put in quarantine], we\u2019ve never had to make an arrest relating to COVID-19. People are cooperating, and the task force is doing a good job in putting the necessary procedures in place,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
DPS spokesperson Dre Pangelinan said that traffic cases, like crime, have also gone down tremendously because of the curfew. <\/p>\n
However, DPS is still working on the exact figures on how many crime incidents occurred since the government shut down and implemented strict curfew laws back in March. \u201cDuring that time, when no one was on the roadways, majority of the people that were out on the streets were first responders and it helped first responders get to where they needed to be and without having the risk of coming into contact with any other vehicle,\u201d Pangelinan said.<\/p>\n
He said the curfew helped the department a lot and that DPS has also stopped issuing updates on how many dispatch calls they receive over the week because calls that come in are now nearly almost all COVID-19-related. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe numbers have really gone down so I didn\u2019t really need to send out updates on that. Most of the inquiries coming in were about COVID-19 and COVID-19-related issues so we have had to direct these issues to the task force,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Pangelinan said that during the first week of the implementation of the curfew, DPS officers immediately enforced the curfew laws, both on the roadways and through social media. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had officers out on the roadways making sure that residents are aware of the curfew. We have also posted it and we have sent out a press release that specifically states details of the curfew,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
However, Pangelinan said the department also gives credit to members of the community for making DPS\u2019 job of enforcing the curfew laws easier. \u201cToward the beginning, everybody was aware because during that time, everybody was in quarantine and everybody was on their mobile devices and they were quick to disseminate the information to their friends and families and that really helped us out a lot,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Department of Public Safety has seen a significant drop in the CNMI\u2019s crime rate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":328259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328303","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}