PHILIPSBURG–The Police Force of St. Maarten continues to operate without its ACTPOL information software since June 7. The move continues to create international concern about not being able to identify high-priority wanted criminals, because the software serves as a shared information programme between the police forces of Curaçao, Aruba and the Netherlands.
Information reaching The Daily Herald suggests that persons on international criminal watch lists travelled through St. Maarten with no hesitation several weeks ago and were apprehended by authorities when they arrived at their final destinations. One suspect was caught in possession of four passports.
The Justice Ministry has accumulated a huge debt to Stichting Beheer ICT Rechtshandhaving in charge of maintaining the software in the Netherlands. The foundation shut down the software after various warnings to the Ministry about the default in payments.
The system holds vital information shared between St. Maarten, Curaçao, Aruba and the Netherlands police forces. Police Chief Carl John and management are working on an internal software programme, but many doubt whether this will be effective once completed. In the meantime, St. Maarten remains vulnerable.
Minister of Justice Edson Kirindongo said in an invited comment on Monday that the situation was still the same. “The police are working with their own software. Nothing has changed since June,” he said.
ACTPOL is an information system for police forces designed to register all activities performed by the police in one centralised system. It supports the police with the intake (obtaining and registration of a police report), basic police patrol (police on the streets) and other law enforcement processes.
The application enables each police station to function independently and the data to flow at the same time to a central server, thereby achieving the benefits of a centralised system. ACTPOL offers a flexible and advanced search option in addition to an extensive and advanced analysis capacity.
Activities related to the day-to-day functioning of police departments, including back-end administrative processes, are covered in ACTPOL. The processes have been incorporated in the application to ease the task of administration and record-keeping via a document management system, thereby bringing in operational efficiency throughout the Police Force.
Bron: Daily Herald