Mobile phones are becoming crucial “witnesses” in murder, firearms and other serious criminal investigations.
That proclamation came from the Regional Security System (RSS) Digital Forensics Laboratory Manager, Richmark Deane, who told the Saturday Sun in an exclusive interview that, “digital forensics is now central to serious crime investigations, not just cybercrime.”
In 2025, out of its overall 251 cases across the region, the lab received 137 from Barbados, which accounted for 55 per cent of the total received that year.
“In many of those cases, the phone is the most important witness,” he said, adding that messages, call records, contacts, photographs, location history and application data helps investigators establish who was communicating with whom, where people were at a particular time and how a group was organised.
“Taken together, that evidence can link suspects to each other, to weapons, to locations and to the movement of drugs or cash . . . . It can also clear people who were wrongly suspected.”
Figures supplied
The figures supplied by the RSS showed that Barbados accounted for 1 113 of the 1 653 cases received by the laboratory between 2020 and 2025.
Murder was the largest single category of cases received in 2025, accounting for 34.5 per cent, while firearms-related offences represented 10.8 per cent. Robbery was at 5.7 per cent, while drugs and theft each represented 4.7 per cent.
Deane said murder was the laboratory’s leading case category every year since 2020.
“The offences fall into two groups. The first is cyber-enabled crime: online fraud, impersonation, extortion, harassment and the sharing of intimate images without consent. The second and growing group is traditional serious crime where a phone holds the key evidence: homicides, firearms offences, drug trafficking, robbery and sexual offences.”
The number of cases received by the laboratory rose from 125 in 2020 to 400 in 2023, before falling to 251 in 2025. Deane cautioned that the nature of the work had become more complex as investigators had to contend with encryption and data held in online accounts.
More data
“Complexity has risen throughout. Devices carry far more data, encryption is standard on modern phones and much of the evidence now sits in Cloud services and encrypted messaging apps rather than on the device itself.”
He added: “A single case today can involve several phones and many gigabytes of data, where a few years ago it might have been one handset.”
Smartphones and SIM cards made up 88 per cent of the 722 items examined by the laboratory in 2025. There were 366 smartphone examinations and 271 involving SIM cards.
Deane, however, stressed that digital evidence must be considered alongside other investigative material.
“Digital evidence rarely stands alone. It is strongest when it supports and is supported by witness statements, CCTV, ballistics and other forensic work.”
The laboratory’s work also faces practical obstacles. Locked devices, encryption, damaged phones and disappearing messages can complicate examinations. Data held by overseas cloud and social-media companies may require formal legal processes that take months.
“The longer a device sits before it is properly preserved and examined, the greater the risk that data is lost or overwritten,” Deane said.
The RSS figures also show that Barbados’ submissions to the regional laboratory had fallen sharply in 2026. Up to Tuesday, only eight examination requests from Barbados had been recorded, compared with 429 in 2025 and 407 in 2024.
Deane attributed the reduction to the commissioning of a new, state-ofthe-art Digital Forensics Laboratory within the Barbados Police Service. The RSS figure, therefore, he said, reflected the number of requests sent to the regional facility, not the total amount of digital forensic work being undertaken in Barbados.
The RSS laboratory has received 2 129 cases from ten countries and territories since 2019 and has completed or returned 2 039, a reported completion rate of 95.8 per cent. Deane said 90 cases remained outstanding, including 22 from Barbados.
For Deane, the significance of digital forensics extends beyond offences formally classified as cybercrime.
“Cases recorded as cybercrime on their own are a small share of our caseload. The bigger story is how central the phone has become to violent crime,” he stated. (NS)
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