High Level Plan For Curbing Crime In Jamaica.

Contributor Conrod Tucker

High-Level Crime Plan to Combat and Control the Crime Epidemic in Jamaica.

Since the begin­ning of the year, Jamaica has been under siege by maraud­ing gun­men who have mur­dered almost 200 peo­ple, and we are only in the month of February. If this mur­der rate con­tin­ues, it will eas­i­ly sur­pass last year’s 1616 total, and could poten­tial­ly become a record year for homi­cides in this country.

Last year, the parish of St. James record­ed an astound­ing 355 homi­cides, the most ever record­ed by a sin­gle parish in a cal­en­dar year, which prompt­ed the Andrew Holness led gov­ern­ment to invoke a lim­it­ed State of Emergency, now known as Enhanced Security Measures in the parish.

However, in oth­er parts of the coun­try, the killings have con­tin­ued unabat­ed and sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties have emerged as hotspots. The nor­mal­ly qui­et town of Linstead and its envi­rons in the parish of St. Catherine have account­ed for 7 homi­cides since the start of the year.
August Town, in St. Andrew, did not record a mur­der for 2 years, but since 2018, sev­er­al mur­ders have been com­mit­ted in that community.
St. Catherine, led by gang activ­i­ties in the old cap­i­tal of Spanish Town, has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing the most killings so far this year.

Clarendon could become the next St. James if crim­i­nals are allowed to con­tin­ue to com­mit brazen mur­ders in the parish. It is in the top three for mur­ders com­mit­ted in the coun­try this year. Although the Enhanced Security Measures in St. James, appears to be work­ing, it is only a tem­po­rary solu­tion. What is going to hap­pen when the Enhanced Security Measures are over?

Are the cit­i­zens of Jamaica to think the blood-let­ting in that parish is going stop? And what about oth­er parish­es where sev­er­al mur­ders are occur­ring dai­ly? Consequently, I believe the time has come for the gov­ern­ment to strate­gize and imple­ment a com­pre­hen­sive crime plan to com­bat and con­trol the crime mon­ster that has tak­en over the coun­try for many years.

I was stunned that the Minister of National Security Robert Montaque open­ly feud­ed with for­mer Commissioner of Police George Quallo. This absur­di­ty was more mag­ni­fied because the coun­try is in the mid­dle of a cri­sis with record amounts of peo­ple being killed dai­ly. That was not the time for any well-think­ing gov­ern­ment to even con­tem­plate remov­ing the Commissioner of Police, much less forced him into retirement.

The gov­ern­ment, the Police High Command, and the JDF should be work­ing on a plan to cur­tail the vio­lence that has affect­ed so many of our cit­i­zens. The seri­ous­ness of the prob­lem has prompt­ed the U.S., Canada and Great Britain to issues trav­el advi­sories to its cit­i­zens about vis­it­ing Island. The fol­low­ing is a 12 point high-lev­el crime plan that should be imple­ment­ed ASAP.

1. Establish a non-par­ti­san civil­ian board whose mem­bers have expe­ri­ence in law, crim­i­nol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions, and is respon­si­ble for recruit­ing, inter­view­ing, hir­ing and ter­mi­nat­ing the con­tract of the Commissioner of Police. This board should not have any polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions and should be giv­en full auton­o­my, free from any polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in man­ag­ing all aspects of their respon­si­bil­i­ty. The max­i­mum term lim­it for the board mem­bers should be 5 years.

2. The Commissioner of Police con­tract should be a max­i­mum of 5 years and he or she reports to the board. The indi­vid­ual should have the expe­ri­ence as a crime fight­er in Jamaica and under­stands the nuances and com­plex­i­ties of deal­ing with Jamaica’s volatile crime problem.

3. Hire an ombuds­man to be the watch-dog for the police board, the ombuds­man should be non-par­ti­san and giv­en full auton­o­my to inves­ti­gate the board activ­i­ties, free from any polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence. The ombuds­man must pro­vide annu­al pub­lic reports that are non-clas­si­fied in nature, detail­ing the actions of the board.

4. Police area and divi­sion­al com­man­ders should do min­i­mum 2 years stints in the parish­es they are trans­ferred to build rela­tion­ships and gath­er intelligence.

5. Employ a zero-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy to rid the force of cor­rupt per­son­nel, because there are crim­i­nal ele­ments in the force.

6. Outfit the police force with drones to covert­ly iden­ti­fy crim­i­nals activities.

7. Reduce some of The pow­ers of INDECOM, they should be allowed to inves­ti­gate the police but no author­i­ty to press charges. Pressing charges should only be under the purview of the DPP.

8. Increase the use of tech­nol­o­gy espe­cial­ly in foren­sics and intelligence.

9.Reimplement the death penalty.

10. All firearm-relat­ed con­vic­tions should car­ry a min­i­mum cus­to­di­al sen­tence of 10 years.

11. Establish bet­ter com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions with the pub­lic, so that peo­ple will be encour­aged to talk to the police.

12. Increase train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple to enable them to find mean­ing­ful employ­ment after their train­ing is com­plete. This would act a deter­rent to them join­ing gangs and becom­ing criminals.

The opin­ions expressed by our writ­ers are their own, they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the views of chatt​-abox​.com or it’s owners.