Dissecting The Police Data As Murders Continue To Increase

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Data released by the Jamaica Constabulary Force show a 4% increase over the same peri­od last year while reg­is­ter­ing a 5% reduc­tion in shoot­ings over the same period.
The fol­low­ing are the sta­tis­tics.: The cur­rent mur­der tal­ly is 18 below the num­ber of homi­cides record­ed in Jamaica in 2003 — the last year in the past two decades when mur­ders were below 1,000. 

. St James, St. Catherine North, and Westmoreland are the top three divi­sions since the start of the year with 132, 94, and 89 mur­ders, respectively.
. Portland record­ed the fewest mur­ders, 8, fol­lowed by Trelawny, Hanover, and St Elizabeth, all of which report­ed 26 mur­ders each. . Shootings declined by 4.9 percent.
. The St Andrew South divi­sion had the most, 89, fol­lowed by Westmoreland with 84.
.There were 58 few­er rapes for the peri­od com­pared with 2021.
. Most of the 256 rapes report­ed to the police were record­ed in St Andrew North (32). St. Mary and Kingston Central both had three each.
.Robberies across the island increased by 13 per­cent, with 582 report­ed.
.Robberies declined in sev­en of the 19 police divi­sions, while Manchester record­ed 75 rob­beries, which is the high­est among all divi­sions for the period.
.Break-ins have increased by 5.2 per­cent, as 625 inci­dents were report­ed com­pared to 594 last year.
.As with rob­beries, Manchester had the high­est num­ber of break-ins (114) — two more than it record­ed over a sim­i­lar peri­od in 2021.
.Police divi­sions in Kingston report­ed the least num­ber of break-ins accord­ing to the police.

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As is cus­tom­ary, the dev­il is in the details. Numbers gen­er­al­ly tell a sto­ry that speaks to the effi­ca­cy of pol­i­cy pre­scrip­tions and whether or not strate­gies work and gives us an indi­ca­tion of shift­ing dynam­ics. Data is a set of val­ues or infor­ma­tion which, when analysed togeth­er, gives an inference.

. For exam­ple, it would be instruc­tive to under­stand what is behind the increase in Robberies and break-ins plagu­ing the once peace­ful parish of Manchester, par­tic­u­lar­ly when armed rob­bery inci­dents have gone down in sev­en police divisions.
. What is behind the increase in rapes in Saint Andrew North, the last police divi­sion this writer served before leav­ing the department?
The data tend to indi­cate some con­sis­ten­cy as the tra­di­tion­al trou­bled areas of St James, St Catherine North, and Westmoreland con­tin­ue to lead with homicides.
One bright spark in the data is the Portland, Hanover, and Saint Elizabeth parish­es. The three parish­es con­tin­ue to lead with few­er murders.
.Shootings declined by 4.9 per­cent. The St Andrew South divi­sion, what did the police do, if any­thing, that led to this decline?
Were there more police patrols, more vig­i­lance, more cars, motor­cy­cles, and pedes­tri­ans stopped and search­es done? If the answer is in the affir­ma­tive, then it behooves the police to step up those activ­i­ties in a more tar­get­ed and sus­tained way to con­tin­ue the positives.
On the oth­er hand, if these low­er num­bers are attrib­uted to some­thing like every­one watch­ing ath­let­ic games, then nei­ther the police nor the cit­i­zens can take com­fort in what is then a tem­po­rary lull in the violence.
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INSIDE TEH DATA

Inside the data are indi­ca­tors for the police and the gov­ern­ment to ana­lyze. What mea­sures are in place in Saint James, Westmoreland parish­es, and the Saint Catherine North division?
How long has the police depart­ment imple­ment­ed those strate­gies, and what is the depart­ment doing to craft alter­na­tive mea­sures since the strate­gies, if any, aren’t exact­ly bear­ing fruits?
It would be inter­est­ing to under­stand what is dri­ving the num­ber of rapes com­mit­ted in Saint Andrew North over oth­er police divi­sions. Full dis­clo­sure I last served at the Constant Spring CIB many moons ago, so I have a soft spot for that divi­sion. I thor­ough­ly enjoyed work­ing at the Constant Spring CIB. I was shot in that police pre­scient, which includ­ed Grants Pen dur­ing my time. There was no Grant’s Pen Police Station; we ser­viced the entire area.
Most of the 256 rapes report­ed to the police were record­ed in St Andrew North (32)
The num­ber 32 does not seem alarm­ing to the untrained, but to women, one or two inci­dents of pub­li­cized rapes are enough to dri­ve fear into their hearts as mur­ders do.

Here is a sim­ple tool I devel­oped while serv­ing at Constant Spring. This can be incred­i­bly use­ful for the detec­tives look­ing at seri­ous crime data.
Place a map of the police area on a board and source some pins of dif­fer­ent col­ors. One col­or for mur­ders, one for rapes, anoth­er for rob­beries, and stick the pins into the area on the map com­plainants report­ed crimes against them occurred.
You will be sur­prised to see how those col­ored pins give you a pic­ture of where resources should be tar­get­ed for best results.
Day, date & time memo­ri­al­ized in com­plainant affi­davits gives detec­tives a good idea of who is doing what, where, and when.

The JCF is now top-heavy, with grad­u­ates from var­i­ous col­leges across the Island. Gone are the days when the police were ridiculed for being dunces. Therefore, it is impor­tant that the depart­ment lead­ers under­stand that rank is not to lord over the rank and file; it is for leadership.
But then again, most of the lead­ers in the JCF, from the Commissioner on down, have no clue about polic­ing. Most senior lead­ers have degrees in areas that have noth­ing to do with the dis­tinct dis­ci­pline called law enforce­ment. Nevertheless, they have rank and are run­ning divi­sions but don’t know their head from their asses.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.