West Kingston Calm Now Lets Apply Some Simple Common Sense Techniques To Crime Fighting…

Police Commissioner Dr. Carl Williams issued a state­ment to res­i­dents of West Kingston that crime is under control.
Speaking at a press con­fer­ence at his Old Hope Road offices Commissioner Williams said. “I am ask­ing all law abid­ing cit­i­zens for their patience as we con­tin­ue with the cur­fews and cor­don and search oper­a­tions to get the crim­i­nals from their midst,”.
The top cop point­ed to increased coöper­a­tion between res­i­dents and his offi­cers cit­ing what he char­ac­ter­ized as a non exis­tence of any such coöper­a­tion initially.
The Commissioner encour­aged offi­cers on patrol to inter­act with res­i­dents with­in the com­mu­ni­ties. Pointing to heavy police/​military deploy­ment in the com­mu­ni­ties Williams said this has had a calm­ing effect on the west Kingston communities.

The Commissioner must know how­ev­er that mere­ly flood­ing the streets of these inner cities com­mu­ni­ties with offi­cers is not sus­tain­able for the long run . Residents of these war torn com­mu­ni­ties are no strangers to these heavy deploy­ments which tend to sup­press the blood-let­ting for a few day after which the secu­ri­ty forces leave and it’s back to the sta­tus quo.

This can­not be laid at the feet of Commissioner Williams and his offi­cers alone. As impor­tant as it is to take these com­mu­ni­ties and hold them, it is impor­tant that the Government and NGO’s get involved in these com­mu­ni­ties to offer hope and direc­tion for young peo­ple who can­not find jobs.
Unfortunately the Administration is deaf­en­ing­ly silent as we allud­ed to in anoth­er arti­cle just today despite the rash of killings plagu­ing the country.
Despite the lack of polit­i­cal lead­er­ship on crime it is impor­tant that the police adopt mea­sures on their own to min­i­mize the num­ber of crimes and the trau­ma­tiz­ing effects it is hav­ing on the Island’s residents.

In order to flood a com­mu­ni­ty with cops and mem­bers of the mil­i­tary they have to be pulled from some­where, this means that though the JCF is not ful­ly staffed the addi­tion­al help from the Military in spe­cial sit­u­a­tions great­ly alle­vi­ates the man­pow­er shortage.
So it seem that some of these prob­lems can be solved with more care­ful plan­ning and a lit­tle ingenuity.
Many years ago we were able to keep crime in check in Saint Andrew North using sim­ple yet inge­nious tech­niques . Yes we had a great team of offi­cers at the Constant Spring ‚Maverly, Red Hills, Stony Hill,and Lawrence Tavern police sta­tions . I speak about these offi­cer yet I have nev­er actu­al­ly named them . It is only appro­pri­ate that I try to doc­u­ment some of these offi­cers with whom I was priv­i­leged to serve.
Many of these offi­cers have left the depart­ment as I did , some stayed and are in senior man­age­ment posi­tions , some have retired and trag­i­cal­ly we have lost some of our friends.

That team includ­ed Deputy Superintendent Anthony Hewitt. Detective Inspector Noël Asphall. Detective Sergeant Gerald Wallace. Detective Sergeant Donald Mc’Innis. Detective Sergeant Barrington Campbell. Detective sergeant Harding. Detective Corporal Tracey. Detective cor­po­ral Colin Pinnock. Detective cor­po­ral Morgan. Detective Corporals Leroy Hanson. Brimroy Garwood .Wilford Gayle. Green. Devon Watkis. Dean Taylor. Ellison. Dadrick Henry. Altamoth(Parra) Campbell. George Henry. Lynval Henry . Spy Henry . Élan Powell. Allan Campbell. George Henry. Yasmin Ankle. Michael Beckles. Constables Dathan Henry. Foster. Foster. Allen Gauntlet .Francis. Webber . Skully. Francis. Errol McLeish.

To the offi­cers who served with us whom I omit­ted it does not mean you were any less impor­tant the years have tak­en their toll it has been 24 years since we worked togeth­er. The list of offi­cers named here were scat­tered over the sta­tions named in the St, Andrew north Police Division who worked assid­u­ous­ly and tena­cious­ly to con­tain crime with next to no resources.
One of the chal­lenges for us at the Constant Spring sta­tion was the fact that we we had two extremes in our police respon­si­bil­i­ties. Cassava Piece, Red Hills Road, White Hall avenue, Ackee-Walk , Grants Pen, Grants Pen Gully and Barbican were some of the depressed com­mu­ni­ties which ringed the Constant Spring Station to the south East and west while the upscale com­mu­ni­ties of Barbican Heights, Cherry Gardens, Norbrook, and sim­i­lar neigh­bor­hoods fell with­in our sphere of respon­si­bil­i­ty to the north and north east.

We were tasked with pro­tect­ing the poor­est of the poor as well as the rich­est and most impor­tant peo­ple at the same time, at best we had three cars. We learned to find ways to use sim­ple tech­niques to solve prob­lems. I take cred­it for a sim­ple board with a map of our area of respon­si­bil­i­ty, we used col­ored pins to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of crime . This allowed us to con­cen­trate our resources in the areas where they were need­ed most with resound­ing suc­cess. This of course was done because we had a ter­rif­ic group of ded­i­cat­ed officers

I urge the Commissioner to apply crit­i­cal think­ing to solv­ing some of the prob­lems fac­ing the Jamaican peo­ple. Nothing will endear the police to the Jamaica peo­ple again as solv­ing the crime problem .
The police Commissioner will have to find ways to do so with no help from the Administration in Jamaica House. The present Administration sim­ply does not under­stand the effects of crime on soci­ety or is too heav­i­ly immersed in it . Either way Jamaica los­es . I say it’s the latter.