Frustrated!

Thepolice say they have arrest­ed and charged more than 250 peo­ple under the anti-gang law since last year, but their hard work has been frus­trat­ed as none of the cas­es have been brought to tri­al due to the heavy back­log in the courts.

“Since we’ve had the anti-gang leg­is­la­tion, we have arrest­ed over 253 per­sons. The chal­lenge we face is that [of the] 208 per­sons last year and 46 this year, none of those cas­es have gone through the courts yet. They’re all clogged up some­where in the court sys­tem,” lament­ed Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of crime Glenmore Hinds. Hinds made the rev­e­la­tion at yesterday’s sit­ting of the Jamaica Observer Press Club which host­ed the constabulary’s top brass at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue head­quar­ters in Kingston. Hinds also stat­ed that he was of the view that “there is no real urgency” to pri­ori­tise these cas­es. “One of the things that we want to see done is at least for some of these cas­es to go through to set the prece­dence, and recog­nise where there are short­com­ings in the law. But until that hap­pens, we won’t see how effec­tive the law is. It’s the vol­ume; the sys­tem can­not cope,” he insisted.

The Criminal Justice (Suppression of Criminal Organisations) Bill, pop­u­lar­ly called the anti-gang law, came into effect in 2014 and forms part of the Government’s strat­e­gy to fight crime. It makes pro­vi­sion for the dis­rup­tion and sup­pres­sion of crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tions and out­lines offences, in order to restore a sense of secu­ri­ty in the coun­try and strength­en the capac­i­ty of law enforce­ment agen­cies to effec­tive­ly deal with crime. The law also seeks to pro­hib­it peo­ple from estab­lish­ing a crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion; tak­ing part in, or par­tic­i­pat­ing in a crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion; pro­vid­ing or obtain­ing a ben­e­fit from a crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion; and har­bour­ing or con­ceal­ing a par­tic­i­pant in a crim­i­nal organisation.

Yesterday, Deputy Commissioner Hinds said that some 300 gangs, at max­i­mum, oper­ate island­wide, with the major­i­ty in the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s St Andrew South Division. Following close­ly, Hinds said, are the St Catherine North Division, which hous­es the country’s two main gangs – Klansman and One Order; Kingston Western Division; Kingston Eastern Division; and sec­tions of St James. Read more here :Frustrated!