by Nick Delgado

Guam - The Guam Police Department is seeing an increase in crimes involving tourists. But they're not just talking about crimes against tourists, but tourists committing crimes.

Tourists aren't just coming to Guam for rest and relaxation anymore according to Frankie E. Smith Precinct Commander Lieutenant Ron Taitano - they're also visiting for other reasons. "This ranges from thefts, in past every so often we would see tourist coming in reporting things missing at the beaches or going into stores purchasing items and coming out reporting they were robbed so over the last three years we've seen a slight increase in them falsifying these complaints," he said.

Other types of crimes include credit card fraud, and tourists who may become violent after having too much to drink. "When you go on vacation you have a carefree attitude and you get intoxicated, you get excited and sometimes you offend the local and there comes that conflict where you want to have fun and the local people find you to be rude, so there becomes this battle," he added.

Such was the case a couple weeks ago, where four Japanese tourists were arrested on charges of rioting after fighting with other clubgoers both inside and the then outside of a night club. But whether its tourists or locals committing crimes the Guam Police Department is working with security at local hotels, as well as GHRA and GVB to keep Tumon safe.

Out of the 203 disturbances last year, 48 percent were tourists. GVB deputy general manager Nate Denight said, "GVB always promotes Guam as a safe destination for families and visitors to come from abroad so safety is very important to us, so we'd just like to work with our local population to make sure we are out there promoting Guam as safe. So anything we can do to keep that reputation is something we got to do.

"Of course, there is going to be incidents ongoing so its about how we can mitigate them and how we can do better. Something that GVB tries to do is connect all the different agencies in the government and private sector to see what we can do to address these safety concerns."