Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

The pri­vate­ly-owned, so­cial-net­work­ing Web site, Face­book, is be­ing con­sid­ered for use to post pho­tographs and oth­er in­for­ma­tion about want­ed crim­i­nals. Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert said so dur­ing Tues­day's launch at the Mar­riott, In­vaders Bay, of Crime Stop­pers Caribbean Most Want­ed. Philbert said im­prove­ments to the of­fi­cial Po­lice Ser­vice Web site and oth­er on­line me­dia al­so were be­ing con­sid­ered to dis­sem­i­nate in­for­ma­tion about crim­i­nals and re­ceive as­sis­tance from the pub­lic in the fight against crime.

He al­so wel­comed the re­cent launch of a Crimestop­pers' Web site, www.caribbean­most­want­ed.com, which pre­sent­ed the most want­ed crim­i­nals in the re­gion. This was fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tions with re­gion­al po­lice of­fi­cers. Ac­cord­ing to the Web site, five of the six want­ed crim­i­nals in the re­gion were from T&T with the oth­er want­ed man from Bermu­da. The T&T fugi­tives were be­ing sought for mur­der, fraud, drug traf­fick­ing and firearm of­fences. Philbert was con­fi­dent the Web site would help re­duce crime. "It cer­tain­ly will. It is an ex­cel­lent tool. I think the best part of it (is that) it is free.

"This reach­es every­body and it is quite user-friend­ly as you see," he said. He added: "It pro­vides the op­por­tu­ni­ty for every­thing that we have been strug­gling with in terms of as­sis­tance from the pub­lic.

"You know, the con­cerns that we have in terms of trust, po­lice trust, and po­lice con­fi­dence, this would over­come it im­me­di­ate­ly." He said the Web site al­so of­fered the po­lice op­por­tu­ni­ties to pro­vide the faces and sketch­es of want­ed crim­i­nals to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. "We spoke to­day (Tues­day) about it and we want to crowd it (the Web site with pic­tures of fugi­tives). We want to put as many faces up as pos­si­ble," Philbert said.