COVID CRIME RIOTS - PM warns of conspiracy of chaos in pressing for SOE extensions
Published:Wednesday | April 22, 2020 | 12:00 AMRomario Scott/Gleaner Writer
In making his case for an extension of sweeping security powers, Prime Minister Andrew Holness disclosed to Parliament yesterday that intelligence revealed that criminals had hatched a calculated plan to incite instability to profit from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There are organised criminal gangs who are seeking to create hysteria, who are seeking to target distribution and retail chains, who are seeking to put people in lines to chaos and to start fights.
“... Let it be known that even though we are consumed with fighting this health epidemic, we have not relented or are diverted in our efforts to fight the crime, murder and violence epidemic in this country,” Holness told Parliament yesterday.
He did not offer any specifics on the geographic location of the crime riots and whether any of its masterminds had been arrested.
The prime minister was opening the debate on several resolutions seeking the extension of states of emergency now in force across nearly half the police divisions in Jamaica.
Violent crime has long dogged political administrations in Jamaica, with murders here consistently three to four times the regional per-capita average in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The prime minister said yesterday that murders were down 0.5 per cent year-on-year – clarifying that he misspoke of a 0.5 per cent increase – a precipitous decline from being 10 per cent ahead of the 2019 numbers.
But that fall has largely been attributed to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Jamaica in the second week of March, which triggered restrictions on mass movement, the shuttering or early closure of businesses, and a mass migration of employees and children to stay indoors because of work-from-home arrangements and the lockdown of schools.
That trend is not merely a domestic outlier, as countries worldwide have recorded plunging crime levels.
A Gleaner review up to the first week of April revealed that all major crimes were on the decline – some as precipitous as by 70 per cent – but murders have continued to be an albatross around the neck of the Holness administration.
Holness argued that the country should not let down its guard, even as he touted the success of the measure in crime hotspots.
According to the prime minister, crime in Hanover, St James and Westmoreland has declined, in aggregate, by approximately 25 per cent since an SOE came into effect there on April 30, 2019.
In those parishes, some 3,275 people have been detained and 88 remain in custody.
But clear-up rates have trended downwards all year – meaning the police are tying fewer persons to crimes and thus compromising the solving of cases. Gun seizures have also been falling all year.
Holness admitted that the St Andrew South Police Division remained a challenge for law enforcement, despite an SOE being in effect, but pointed to successes there.
“This is probably the smallest of the SOEs that are in place, but the intensity of crime in this area is reflected in the number of detainees and also in the marginal reduction that we are seeing in murders,” Holness said.
On examination of the impact since July 7, 2019, Holness said there has been a seven per cent reduction in murders from 133 to 124, and a 16 per cent fall in shootings. Eighty detainees are in custody.
The prime minister said that the division was the most difficult of the police zones in the Corporate Area, but sought to assure that the constabulary was redoubling its efforts, while citing the black eye of a recent jailbreak at the Hunts Bay Police Station.
The House of Representatives eventually approved the extensions, with 44 members voting in their favour and two against.