The public remains safe even though the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is understaffed by 26 officers, according to Commissioner of Police Kurt Walton.
Speaking at the latest meeting of the Finance Committee on 25 Sept. to discuss government requests for $108 million in supplementary spending, Walton told MPs that to fill gaps caused by the staffing shortage, the RCIPS had had to move officers from other districts and disrupt some community policing initiatives.
Overall, Walton said there were 373 police in the RCIPS – the same number as in 2008.
There were at least 57% fewer people living in the Cayman Islands in 2008 than now and the RCIPS had 17 fewer departments in the organisation at the time. Cayman’s 2008 population was approximately 56,000 and grew to almost 88,000 by 2024, according to the Economics and Statistics Office.
Officers moved
Responding to a question from Opposition Leader Joey Hew about public concerns over community policing, Commissioner Walton said, “We’ve had to make a temporary reallocation of resources given our low levels, in particular on our shifts. At the moment we are 26 constables short across all shifts on Grand Cayman and that has put us in not a good place.”
To try and relieve the issue, he said, “We looked at where we could find existing resources to help fill some of those gaps across the shifts, and as a result, we have not disbanded community policing [but] we’ve shifted a number of community officers.”
“Six PCs in George Town and one in West Bay have been reallocated to shifts temporarily until we start to rebuild the programme,” he said.
Commissioner Walton said his goal with the proposed 2026 budget allocation was to get the community policing department up to 27 police constables, which would consist of one PC in each of the 19 constituencies, two at the Clifton Hunter and John Grey high schools, which are currently in place, and then to increase the number of community safety officers.
He added: “I have every faith that that we will be able to rebrand and refresh our community policing starting in 2026.”
Cayman still safe
Concerns over police staffing issues were recently flagged by the Ombudsman Sharon Roulstone. However Walton said he wanted to reassure the public over safety.
“When someone calls at two in the morning, the minimum that we can do is provide a response,” he said. “For me, right now, that is my priority, and what we have found is we haven’t actually made the public any less safe. In fact, you would have probably seen some of our releases over the weekend where we’ve had some really dangerous individuals taken off the street and with a quick police response, because that for me is a priority: When the public calls, we respond.”
Of the extra $1.2 million recently allocated to the RCIPS, Walton said that $812,000 went towards personnel, and there is a focus on recruitment, which he hoped would soon mean 13 more officers – allowing the community officers to return to their previous roles.
Allocated funding not received
Just a few weeks before the 2025 General Elections, Cabinet approved $7.7 million of additional funding for the RCIPS. However, almost $5.8 million of that was never received by the police.
Following questions from Deputy Opposition Leader Kenneth Bryan about where the additional funding that was meant for the police had gone, Walton said that while the money been allocated to RCIPS by the previous government and had been approved in Cabinet, the money never reached the police force because it was never tabled in Parliament.
Asked Bryan: “Would that money have prevented the situation that we’re in now, in order for you to get your hiring done?”
Responded Walton: “I think you’ve put me in a position here. What I will say here is, I have taken a position where, even with the shortages, we were not putting the public at risk. We were still taking dangerous offenders off the road. In fact, we’ve taken a lot of dangerous offenders off the road. Whereas it would have certainly given me the ability to increase my numbers, I still hadn’t put the public at significant risk. So, I think that’s probably the best way I can put that.”
Responded Bryan: “I think you should have gotten the money, because it was approved in Cabinet and the government came to Finance Committee already since the election and you should have had that tabled here. So you could have gotten your money, because the people of George Town Central and all the other constituencies that have a community officer should not have been deprived of that.”
Bryan also raised the issue of recruitment, reading out an email from a person who had applied for a job with the police, but was sent a reply which read, “Please be advised that a temporary hiring freeze across the Cayman Islands government, which was originally set to end on July the 31st, 2025, has now been extended until December 31st of 2025. Once the freeze has been lifted, we’ll be able to provide you with further information regarding a final decision.”
Bryan told committee, “We heard earlier today that it was a soft [recruitment] freeze, not a hard freeze and priority jobs would be given priority, and I think policing is probably one of the top priorities. So I’m still a little bit confused when I see that people are being told that there’s a freeze.”
Rolston Anglin, finance minster and committee chair, addressed the hiring issue later in the debate, saying, “I just wanted to make the point that across government, while there’s been a soft freeze, there still have been some increases across all areas including RCIPS, not to the magnitude that we want to get to, but 2026-27 budget is when we’ll see additional funding.”