THE Police High Command has boasted of a 100 per cent success rate in solving kidnapping cases. Speaking at a press conference at the Police Officers' Club in Kingston on Wednesday, head of the Organised Crime Investigative Unit (OCID) Senior Superintendent Fitz Bailey said the police have rescued all kidnap hostages.

"As law enforcement agents we can be proud of our anti-kidnapping achievement in Jamaica. I don't think that there is anywhere else in the world where we have a 100 per cent success rate in kidnapping. We have rescued every hostage that has ever been held by kidnappers and they have been rescued without any form of harm or injury to them. We have a very good mechanism in place to deal with kidnapping," Bailey said.

Bailey, in the meantime, warned members of the public to be wary of their relatives who he said were taking part in a growing trend of kidnapping plots as a means of milking money or extorting their unsuspecting relatives.

He said half of the 14 cases reported last year several were found to be carried out by relatives of unsuspecting victims. "Investigations revealed that there has been an increase in the cases of public mischief as it relates to kidnapping and extortion and I want to say that in many instances the person who is purported to have been kidnapped as well as the kidnappers is normally a family members and this is used as a means to extorting money from family members," Bailey told reporters.

Between 2004 and 2011, criminals have demanded $120,085,557.78 ransom money in 85 reported kidnapping cases. Of that amount only $300,000 was paid out and Bailey pointed out that the cash was handed over by unsuspecting relatives.

Last year saw the highest amount of reported kidnappings over the seven year period and OCID investigators have fingered members of a gang which operates out of St Elizabeth, Manchester and Clarendon as the culprits. He said operations of the criminal outfit has been significantly reduced due to concentrated police operations which resulted in several arrests.

However, two main players in the gang are still at large. They have been identified as 22-year-old Cami Stanley of 25 Duke Street in May Pen, Clarendon and Barrington Williams, also called 'Ziggy' of Turners, Clarendon and Point Hill in St Catherine. Both men, the police said, have been linked to a number of kidnappings and are considered to be armed and dangerous.