16 % Reduction In Murder Rate Commendable Yet.….

Despite anoth­er eco­nom­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing year for Jamaicans, there is at least one area of the pub­lic sec­tor which appears to be improv­ing the qual­i­ty of life and in some cas­es deter­min­ing whether Jamaicans live or die. For the first time in years the Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCF has report­ed that there are reduc­tions in major crime cat­e­gories against the last cor­re­spond­ing period.

Murders have dropped 16 per cent, shoot­ings are down 12 per cent, rape has fall­en by 23 per cent and aggra­vat­ed assault by 17 per cent. Of note is the fact that Police killings have dropped a pre­cip­i­tous 54% against the last cor­re­spond­ing peri­od. This is good news across the board for the country.Remarkably the low­er crime num­bers and the par­al­lel low­er inci­dents of police killing bears out what I have always believed. In most cas­es, if crim­i­nals do not threat­en police with bod­i­ly harm they will not be shot. This is not always the case but from my decade long expe­ri­ence it is true in many cas­es of police use of lethal force in Jamaica.

Peter Bunting , Minister of National Security is ecsta­t­ic about the down­ward trend in the crime stats, as he should be, already some are tak­ing pot shots at the Minister that he prayed for Divine inter­ven­tion at the start of the new Year but have not cred­it­ed God with the drop in crime across the board. Minister Bunting took con­sid­er­able flack for what some char­ac­ter­ized as his naïveté , when he sug­gest­ed that Jamaica need­ed divine inter­ven­tion to help with it’s crime prob­lem. That aside, 1005 Jamaicans were killed at the hands of crim­i­nals. In a Country of 2.7 mil­lion a 16 % reduc­tion in homi­cides pales when looked at par­al­lel to the killing of 1005 human beings.

As Jamaicans cel­e­brate a new year, down­ward trend­ing crime num­bers, and less police killings it is nat­ur­al for politi­cians to say their poli­cies are work­ing . Minister Bunting to his cred­it, gave cred­it to the men and women of the police depart­ment for the low­er num­bers. The fact is there are more police offi­cers on the streets with the merg­er of the JCF and ISCF ‚which are now under one uni­fied command.
The police point to their efforts in arrest­ing lot­to-scam­mers, remov­ing guns from the streets and oth­er ini­tia­tives which they say are the rea­sons for low­er crime num­bers. Noticeably they have also been far more inter­ac­tive with the pub­lic. Police ‑pub­lic inter­ac­tion is cru­cial if the Constabulary is to arrest the gal­lop­ing crime wave in the coun­try. Other

inter­est­ed par­ties like church­es are also involved in bridg­ing the divide.
Community polic­ing is a tried and proven method of polic­ing which has borne fruits in many coun­tries. It is imper­a­tive that the JCF con­tin­ue it’s out­reach to the pub­lic. Over the years indi­vid­ual offi­cers have had their own out­reach to the pub­lic which has borne sig­nif­i­cant fruit for the country.
I am still some­what skep­ti­cal that the down­ward trend will be sus­tained because (1 Of the absence of a well artic­u­lat­ed prov­able for­mu­la , and (2 An econ­o­my that is at best anemic.
Despite this we con­grat­u­late the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty, mem­bers of civ­il soci­ety who are get­ting involved and mem­bers of the pub­lic some of whom are start­ing to real­ize that the life they save may be their own.