Jury still out on states of emergency

Jamaica must employ more evidence-based anti-crime strategies to permanently eliminate the scourge of crime, instead of hastily arranged states of emergency (SOE) that only offer a temporary fix to the problem, Jamaican criminologist Sanjay Thompson believes.

Thompson, a doctoral student criminologist at Lund University in Sweden, was reacting to the reintroduction of SOEs in seven police divisions by Prime Minister Andrew Holness last Sunday, including the parishes of St James, Westmoreland and Hanover in western Jamaica that account for 277 of the 1,250 murders committed across the island since the start of the year.

“Right now the country is in a critical state with criminality and the fact that they have called for another SOE, while necessary, cannot be the long-term solution,” said Thompson, who hails from Old Harbour, St Catherine. “What we need is an understanding of the problem and the underlying conditions that created the problem, because incendiary policing cannot solve this. We need a plan that goes beyond an election cycle.”

The parliamentary Opposition is also not in support of more states of emergency, believing that such measures should only be used when all the other provisions for the maintenance of law and order are found to be inadequate.

LIVES MORE THAN STATISTICS

However, Fitz Bailey, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) in charge of operations and head of the Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigation Branch (CTOC), pointed out that SOEs are not crime-solving mechanisms; they are used to cauterise the bloodletting so that ordinary policing can be done.

“I think people have a misconception of what the state of emergency is for,” the senior cop told The Sunday Gleaner. “The state of emergency is not to solve crime, we continue to do our traditional police investigation, but in order to stop the bloodletting, it is important to have that sort of extraordinary authority.”

There have been questions surrounding the value of the enhanced security measure, especially with murders threatening another record-breaking year at the current rate, but Bailey is ready to celebrate even two lives saved because of the SOE.

“For the general public sometimes people's lives are seen as statistics, but for us as police they are not statistics,” he said. “We are on the ground, we see the reality, we go to every crime scene … we see the weeping mother and how distraught the family members are to lose a loved one, so we live it every day.”

States of emergency are also beneficial to law-abiding citizens in volatile communities, who are forced to endure the continuous threat to their peace, disrupting the education of children because of conflicts between the lawless, the DCP stressed, adding, “I am of the view that a state of emergency cannot be forever, but it has a place.”

With three of its four divisions under SOEs once again, the police Area One High Command is hoping to arrest a wave of senseless killings in the region. The measure proved useful for the St James police division in 2018 when homicide barely crept over the 100 mark, after a frightening 341 killings the previous year. Murders also plunged in Westmoreland.

Up to November 13 this year, the police statistics show that St James registered 34 per cent more killings than the 100 committed over the corresponding period last year, while Hanover has recorded an additional eight to the 29 for the corresponding period for 2017.

Juveniles are figuring prominently in major crimes in Westmoreland, as the generational gang warfare between Cooke Street, Dallin Street, Russia, Dexter, River Top, Gully Bank, Seaton Crescent and other communities in the parish capital continues.

The mostly underdeveloped seaside villages have been at odds since 2007, and have contributed significantly to the 106 murders committed in the parish since the start of the year.

FIRE THE SECURITY MINISTER

Bishop O'Neil Russell, pastor of Ark of the Covenant Holy Trinity in the volatile Cooke Street, otherwise called Twelve Street, and also regarded as the community leader, claims that people on the outside want to destroy residents from his community, so they are forced to defend themselves because the current crop of police serving in the division cannot help the situation.

“None of the warring communities will sit down and let someone come and take their lives, so every community has their guns, but they are not fighting for turf, lotto scam money or donship; they are fighting for survival,” he said.

Russell is the only resident in Coke Street that frequents rivalling communities, thanks to his role as a member of the clergy and the Peace Management Initiative (PMI). He argues that the state of emergency is a failed experiment that will not work in Westmoreland.

“Bringing back the state of emergency is a poor decision by my prime minister,” he said. “What he needs to do is to fire the security minister, do a reshuffle of his Cabinet and get rid of this commissioner of police, because they have failed.”

Russell explained that every community has a don, but he denied being the man running Cooke Street, a political stronghold for the ruling Jamaica Labour Party.

“The way I stand in my community some may say I am a don, but this is not so, but I have to ensure that they are okay, because they face constant abuse from the security forces and discrimination from potential employers, and if a man can't work, him can't eat, and if he can't eat, there is going to be problems,” he shared with The Sunday Gleaner.

Russell also noted that a gun amnesty would not reap much success in his community, because no one will willingly give up their “prized possession”, with other communities armed and ready to kill.

CASUALTIES IN WAR

He denied participating in plots to attack other communities, but instead will encourage community members against any act of criminality if he is made aware.

“What I do say to them is that there are casualties in war, and if someone from our community should go out there and hurt somebody, they will want to hurt back our community,” Russell noted.

“Our youths are living in fear, and many are forced to drop out of high school because both schools (Manning's and Godfrey Stewart high) are located in communities controlled by rivalling gangs.”

He added, “I can tell you one thing for sure, I will never give information to the police, because the problem goes far beyond the police getting information and making an arrest. Successive governments continue to fail the people where crime is concerned, but we have to live the reality.”

Criminologist Thompson does believe that Jamaica's crime problem can be solved, but says the current one-size-fits-all approach in policing volatile communities has contributed to the anti-crime failures over the years.

“The Government needs to give more resources to the JCF (Jamaica Constabulary Force),” Thompson said.

“Right now it looks like we are throwing them under the bus. They cannot adequately protect people who are at risk for violence and at the same time deal with property or even white-collar crime with the resources at their disposal.”

mark.titus@gleanerjm.com