Im­me­di­ate­ly up­on as­sum­ing his role as As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for the South/Cen­tral Re­gion, Wayne Mys­tar has de­liv­ered a stern warn­ing to ex­tor­tion­ists, crim­i­nals and rogue of­fi­cers that once re­ports are made against them and ev­i­dence is found, they will face the full brunt of the law.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, Mys­tar urged cit­i­zens to con­tact him at 486-9999 if they had in­tel­li­gence to share anony­mous­ly.

Re­gard­ing the pub­lic’s fear of be­ing ex­tort­ed by crim­i­nals, Mys­tar urged busi­ness­peo­ple and con­trac­tors to lodge re­ports with the po­lice, say­ing this is the first step to­ward stop­ping the crim­i­nals.

“We are go­ing to be deal­ing with that (ex­tor­tion) in a re­al­ly se­ri­ous man­ner, but we are ask­ing the pub­lic: do not be afraid, give us that in­for­ma­tion, and we will deal with it, which will in­clude pro­tect­ing them (pub­lic),” Mys­tar said.

He added, “It is on­ly with your help that we will break the back of this par­tic­u­lar crime.”

Asked how preva­lent ex­tor­tion was in the south­ern re­gion, Mys­tar said he did not have the da­ta.

How­ev­er, TTPS le­gal of­fi­cer for the South­ern Di­vi­sion, Re­gan Ram­nanan, said he was aware of one re­cent re­port of ex­tor­tion.

“Ex­tor­tion is be­ing en­gaged head-on. The im­por­tant thing to note is that in the ab­sence of a re­port or in­for­ma­tion, it is not prac­ti­cal for us to say we are deal­ing with the is­sue. And while we un­der­stand the fear the pub­lic may have re­gard­ing how long the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is tak­ing, I can say there are min­i­mal re­ports of ex­tor­tion in the South­ern Di­vi­sion that I am aware of,” Ram­nanan said.

With home in­va­sions on the rise, Mys­tar al­so called on the pub­lic to be vig­i­lant and to in­stall im­mo­bilis­ers in their ve­hi­cles, as ve­hi­cle thefts were al­so in­creas­ing.

On the top­ic of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, Mys­tar said in the south­ern, south­west­ern, and cen­tral re­gions, most mur­ders were do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed. How­ev­er, he not­ed that the po­lice were im­ple­ment­ing new strate­gies based on three cri­te­ria: De­ter, De­tect, and De­fend.

He al­so an­nounced that school li­aisons will be placed in all schools, and reg­u­lar meet­ings will be held with prin­ci­pals to en­sure ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion in cas­es of youth delin­quen­cy.

Mys­tar al­so said po­lice of­fi­cers are be­ing trained in the lat­est crime-fight­ing tech­nolo­gies and will be util­is­ing pre­ci­sion polic­ing strate­gies based on da­ta-dri­ven analy­sis.

In a bid to en­sure that cit­i­zens are treat­ed with re­spect, Mys­tar said the TTPS will al­so soon launch a cus­tomer ser­vice pol­i­cy, where cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives will be placed in sta­tions to as­sist peo­ple when they come to make re­ports. He not­ed that po­lice town meet­ings will con­tin­ue, and of­fi­cers will con­tin­ue util­is­ing body cam­eras to en­sure prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion of in­ter­ac­tions with the pub­lic.

Say­ing he has an open-door pol­i­cy, Mys­tar urged the pub­lic to con­tact his of­fice and make an ap­point­ment to see him if they were con­cerned about is­sues. He called for a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to the crime fight, stress­ing that pub­lic as­sis­tance was need­ed now more than ever.