The police hier­ar­chy deci­sion to trans­fer Senior Superintendent of Police Steve McGregor from St James has not gone down well with some stake­hold­ers in the parish, espe­cial­ly in the com­mu­ni­ties where he had crime-pre­vent­ing ini­tia­tives in place. “I believe he was mak­ing an impact by con­nect­ing with the peo­ple. He has been steadi­ly win­ning the trust of the peo­ple and mak­ing an impact on the com­mu­ni­ty with his pro­grams,” said Pastor Knollis King, who heads the Rose Heights Covenant of Peace move­ment. “I am not hap­py to see him leav­ing at this time.” During height­ened law­less­ness in 2015, McGregor was trans­ferred from the Kingston Western Police Division to St James to deal with the upsurge in mur­ders and oth­er crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, which has earned the parish the dubi­ous title of the nation’s crime cap­i­tal. When McGregor was trans­ferred from Kingston Western, the res­i­dents in those com­mu­ni­ties, with whom he had devel­oped a spe­cial bond in the after­math of the extra­di­tion of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, protest­ed the deci­sion and called for his return.

FATHER FIGURE

During his one-year stint in St James, McGregor imple­ment­ed sev­er­al bold com­mu­ni­ty-polic­ing ini­tia­tives in his bid to build trust among res­i­dents. He was viewed as a father fig­ure in some com­mu­ni­ties, where he unof­fi­cial­ly adopt­ed chil­dren from homes with­out fathers. In the com­mu­ni­ties where he broke down the bar­ri­ers in terms of a his­to­ry of antag­o­nism between res­i­dents and the police, res­i­dents are open­ly express­ing the view that unless he is replaced by an equal­ly car­ing com­mand­ing offi­cer, the gains he made could go down the drain. “This is one police­man that I trust and believe in … when he gives you his word, he keeps it,” said a res­i­dent from Rose Heights. “I know that some politi­cians don’t like his style of polic­ing, but he was get­ting the job done … and in a humane way.” For per­sons like King, who rep­re­sents the com­mu­ni­ty as a coun­cilor in the St James Parish Council, the mere one-year stint that McGregor served was just too short of hav­ing the desired impact.

“I def­i­nite­ly believe one year was too short. Mr. Derrick Champagnie was an excel­lent, out­stand­ing offi­cer, and by the time we start reach­ing some­where, they moved him. It’s always the same thing, and I’m tired of the same type of game. Trust takes time to build,” said King. Rose Heights is one com­mu­ni­ty where McGregor recent­ly intro­duced the ‘Police Supervised Curfew Initiative,’ designed to keep chil­dren off the streets and away from anti­so­cial activ­i­ties at night. With McGregor gone, King told The Gleaner that he is now unsure of the pro­jec­t’s fate. However, he was told by anoth­er police offi­cer from the neigh­bor­ing Mt Salem com­mu­ni­ty, where there is a sim­i­lar ini­tia­tive, that the pro­gram would continue.

Calls For More Urgency In Finding Solutions To Crime

President of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce Warren McDonald is urg­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Robert Montague to estab­lish a com­mit­tee on crime com­pris­ing key stake­hold­ers. He told The Gleaner that the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce has been push­ing hard for a crime and jus­tice com­mit­tee that would play a crit­i­cal role in mon­i­tor­ing issues relat­ing to nation­al secu­ri­ty and cre­at­ing increased pub­lic aware­ness of efforts to stem the scourge of crime and vio­lence affect­ing the coun­try. McDonald argues that the police and the army alone can­not suc­cess­ful­ly cramp crime in Jamaica, not­ing that sup­port is need­ed from a wide cross-sec­tion of the pub­lic. “What needs to be said clear­ly is that we are in part­ner­ship with the peo­ple to try and stem the tide of crime. It’s not just more cars and more guns for the secu­ri­ty forces. It needs sup­port and infor­ma­tion from the peo­ple to deal with the issues.” Lieutenant Commander George Overton, pres­i­dent of the Jamaica Society for Industrial Security, indi­cat­ed that although it is ear­ly days for the new admin­is­tra­tion, there was a need for a greater sense of urgency in tak­ing on the surges in murders.

Police sta­tis­tics reveal that St James alone has record­ed more than 100 mur­ders with less than six months gone in the year. Up to last week­end, police data show that 103 per­sons have been report­ed killed in the parish since the start of the year. This rep­re­sents a 27 per­cent spike com­pared with the 81 mur­ders record­ed for a sim­i­lar peri­od in 2015. However, the police sta­tis­tics indi­cate that there has been a two per­cent decline nation­al­ly in the num­ber of per­sons report­ed killed. Both Overton and McDonald assessed the Ministry of National Security in the first 100 days of the new administration.

MANAGEMENT STYLE

However, Overton rea­soned that there was a dif­fer­ent man­age­ment style of the nation­al secu­ri­ty port­fo­lio, one in which the min­is­ter “pays a com­mis­sion­er of police to do his job… I tend to believe, and I hope, that behind the scenes, he is hav­ing dia­logue and apply­ing the pres­sure that needs to be applied. He is care­ful­ly pro­ceed­ing and get­ting his hands on the steer­ing wheel prop­er­ly”. Opposition Spokesman on National Security Peter Bunting said his coun­ter­part, Robert Montague, got off to a “rocky start” as mur­ders exceed­ed 100 for each of the first three months he has held the port­fo­lio. “The pre­vi­ous few months were aver­ag­ing about 80 mur­ders. This has prob­a­bly put him on the back foot as he grasps around for quick respons­es and solu­tions, some of which are more gallery-play­ing than sub­stan­tive, rein­tro­duc­ing hang­ing, for exam­ple, which is real­ly for pub­lic rela­tions val­ue as this will not real­ly take us forward.”

Bunting said the nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter had made some encour­ag­ing steps, such as main­tain­ing the Unite for Change ini­tia­tive, which involves build­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships with all stake­hold­ers. “My sug­ges­tion to him would be not to spend all his time respond­ing to the events of the day but focus on care­ful pol­i­cy analy­sis and let that inform the strate­gies that he pur­sues.” He said there was an absence of pol­i­cy sig­nals from the min­is­ter and the Throne Speech was devoid of any direc­tion on the way for­ward in terms of nation­al secu­ri­ty. However, he acknowl­edged that Prime Minister Andrew Holness has sought to forge some bi-par­ti­san approach to crime. “I wel­come that and look for­ward to it being trans­lat­ed into some­thing tangible.”

Eight Persons Shot As Guns Bark Out West…

Eight per­sons were shot and injured in west­ern Jamaica inci­dents on Wednesday night as gun-tot­ing thugs con­tin­ue to wreak hav­oc, giv­ing cre­dence to the region being dubbed the island’s undis­put­ed crime cap­i­tal. In Westmoreland, which has seen four mur­ders in recent days, Hartford res­i­dents got a major scare when shoot­ers, trav­el­ing on motor­cy­cles, opened fire on a busi­ness place, hit­ting four men and send­ing oth­ers flee­ing for their lives. According to an eye­wit­ness account, short­ly after 8 p.m., res­i­dents were stand­ing out­side of the busi­ness place when the men rode up, and with­out warn­ing, opened fire. The four per­sons were hit as pan­ic set in. “At first, I thought one of the bikes had back­fired, but when I looked close­ly, I could see fire com­ing out of the guns, and then I real­ized that we were under attack,” a res­i­dent told The Gleaner. “To be hon­est, it is a mir­a­cle that nobody got killed.”

When the shoot­ing sub­sided, and the gun­men rode away, the injured per­sons were hur­ried­ly placed in cars and rushed to the Savanna-la-Mar General Hospital, where they were all admit­ted in seri­ous but sta­ble con­di­tion. Based on pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tions car­ried out by the police, Superintendent David White, the com­mand­ing offi­cer for Westmoreland, believes that the shoot­ing was an act of reprisal for Friday night’s shoot­ing death of 45-year-old Carole Johnson, a res­i­dent of the com­mu­ni­ty. In St James, it was a night of hor­ror for Rose Heights, Bottom Pen, and Blood Lane res­i­dents as rifle-wield­ing thugs drove through their com­mu­ni­ties, fir­ing shots with impuni­ty. While the res­i­dents of Rose Heights and Blood Lane luck­i­ly escaped with­out suf­fer­ing any injuries, four men were shot and injured in Bottom Pen.

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT

According to Rose Heights res­i­dents, at approx­i­mate­ly 11 p.m., two cars with men armed with rifles drove into the com­mu­ni­ty. They began fir­ing shots wild­ly, caus­ing res­i­dents to flee in pan­ic. The car, which did not stop, drove over to near­by Bottom Pen, where they opened fire. This time, four men were shot and injured. On their way out of Bottom Pen, the men again opened fire in Blood Lane. However, those res­i­dents, who had seem­ing­ly tak­en cov­er after hear­ing the heavy gun­fire in Bottom Pen, escaped unscathed. “What gwaan a com­plete mad­ness … the man dem just a buss shot wild,” a res­i­dent told The Gleaner. “Montego Bay has become the Wild West again … every day we have shoot­ings and killings in this city.” While the police have not con­firmed any motives for the shoot­ings, sources famil­iar with the Montego Bay under­world told The Gleaner that it was an act of reprisal for the killing of Canterbury’s ‘top man’ (gang­ster), who res­i­dents iden­ti­fied only as Zekes. He was shot dead in down­town Montego Bay on Tuesday. Since the start of the year, St James has record­ed 105 mur­ders, Westmoreland 40, and Hanover 13.