Oluwatosin Lamidi
The state government on Tuesday handed over 750,000 new criminal suspect forms to state police command.
This according to the State’s Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Adeniji Kazeem was part of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s efforts to ease justice delivery, record keeping and intelligence gathering of criminals in Lagos State.
According to him, with the introduction of the new forms, information about the suspects would assist in the profiling and building of important intelligence that could assist in tracing defendants and providing accurate Bio-data to the courts during the prosecution of criminal cases in the state.
He said forms would also be used to gather personal details of suspects, their physical attributes, information about their next of kin and previous convictions.
He noted that the Ambode’s administration is committed to ensuring the preservation of law and order and provision of effective criminal justice administration in the state.
Kazeem promised police command that state government would continue to partner with the police for effective and efficient justice delivery in the state, adding that the importance of the forms cannot be over emphasized, more so because the information of the suspects and defendants shall progressively be transposed to an electronic data base which can assist in providing information on previous offending pattern of a suspect.
The data, according to him, would hold information about previous convictions, nature and types of offences committed by convicted persons in the state.
“The forms would also assist the DNA data base to be built on the completion of the Lagos State DNA Laboratory which can be interfaced with these collection of data and samples of DNA from suspects and convicted persons which would be warehoused in the Criminal Data Base that would be rolled out to the public soon,” Kazeem said.
The commissioner impored police officers to adequately use the forms and record information needed when processing suspects through the Charge Room, adding that any information that is not captured at the first opportunity is always difficult to recapture later.
The Commissioner of Police, (CP) Fatai Owoseni through DCP Bolaji Salami, thanked Ambode for his commitment to making the job of policing in the state to be more effective and efficient.
