Policing strategies, social interventions needed instead of SOEs, says Golding

WESTERN BUREAU:

FOLLOWING THE Government’s latest declaration of a state of public emergency (SOE) for St James, after Monday evening’s gun-slaying of two children in the parish, Opposition Leader Mark Golding is adamant that what is needed to combat crime is a solid policing strategy plus social- intervention programmes.

In a media interview on Wednesday, while touring several communities in the St James Southern constituency, Golding derided the use of SOEs in response to crime as an invalid tactic.

“This is a strategy that the Government has been relying on for the last five years. We do not think it is a valid strategy, and that is why we are contesting it in court. The SOEs, we do not think that they can be validly used as a policing tool, and they have not worked because the crime problem in the country continues,” said Golding.

He was making reference to the People’s National Party’s seeking a declaration from the court earlier this year concerning the constitutionality of the Government’s use of SOEs as a crime-fighting measure.

“What we need is social interventions to redirect youth at risk away from crime, and we need serious strategies for law enforcement to ensure that hardened criminals, violence producers, are effectively addressed and cases are built that can hold them accountable and ultimately put them behind bars for long periods of time,” Golding stressed.

The latest SOE was announced early Wednesday morning on the heels of the deaths of seven-year-old Justin Perry and nine-year-old Nahcoliva Smith, both students of Chetwood Primary School in St James.

The two children were killed on Monday night when the taxi they were in was shot up by gunmen along the Flower Hill main road in Salt Spring, an attack that also claimed the life of 26-year-old fellow passenger, Tevin Hayle.

The shooting has been linked to an ongoing gang feud in the Salt Spring area.

In announcing the SOE, Prime Minister Andrew Holness declared that a clear message needs to be sent to criminals he labelled ‘terrorists’ and repeated his administration’s policy that SOEs are among the raft of measures that need to be used to combat crime.

SOEs were previously declared for St James in December 2022, May 2023 and June 2023 and have been criticised as the Government’s only immediate response to the violence in the parish and that, after each has ended, violence crime spiked again.

Not a knee jerk reaction

Yesterday Holness insisted that the latest establishment of an SOE for St James was not just a knee jerk reaction to the death of the young boys.

“The Government must respond. The fact that these things keep reoccurring, is more so a testament to the nature of the beast that we tackle,” Holness said.

“It is also very clearly demonstrated that when we act and we are not supported in action by the extension of the emergency powers to finally bring to heal the beast, then the problem continues,” he said.

Holness said the nation should recall that, in 2018, the murder rate in St James “grew to levels that were far past countries at war” before the SOEs were declared in the parish.

However, commenting on Monday’s killings, Golding suggested yesterday that the declaration of a zone of special operations (ZOSO) in Salt Spring, which was called for by St James Central Member of Parliament Heroy Clarke during Tuesday’s sitting of Parliament, would have been a better manoeuvre as opposed to an SOE.

“We understand the need to respond very strongly to what happened in the Salt Spring community, and I want to extend condolences to the parents and families of the two young boys who were killed in that awful incident. We heard Heroy Clarke yesterday [Tuesday] in Parliament call for a ZOSO in the community, and the ZOSO is something we support in appropriate cases, and we feel that that would be the right mechanism to deploy here,” said Golding.

The ZOSO measure brings opportunities for social intervention to the community where it is imposed, along with the active presence of the security forces.

Ainsworth Morris contributed to this story.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com