Bunting labels PM 'a slow learner' on crime prevention

While charging that the Andrew Holness-led administration is bankrupt of ideas to bring crime and violence, under control, Opposition Senator Peter Bunting has highlighted that 2,300 more Jamaicans have been killed in the last eight years since the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has been in power.

Mapping the number of persons killed in the last 16 years across the different administrations, Bunting pointed out that during the People’s National Party’s (PNP) tenure, 2012-2015, there was an average murder rate of 1,129 in comparison to an average 1,416 murders, over the JLP’s current eight-year reign.

“On average 287 more Jamaicans have been murdered each year under this JLP administration than during the previous PNP administration.

“A whopping 25 per cent increase in the annual murder rate between the two periods. That means 2,300 more Jamaicans have been murdered over the last eight years than if this JLP administration had just maintained the rate that was obtained under the previous 2012-2015 PNP administration,” the senator asserted during the State of the Nation Debate last Thursday in the Senate.

According to Bunting, the Opposition “take no joy” in publicising the information but there are vested interests including the “Holness political administration, its cronies and apologists; who would prefer if the PNP remains silent on the matter".

He added: “However, we cannot talk about good governance, about accountability, yet hide the Andrew Holness administration’s abject failure at fighting violent crime.

"The Opposition cannot be complicit in manufacturing the consent of the people against their own interests. We owe it not just to the memory of the thousands murdered, but to the tens of thousands of grieving relatives and friends, to the terrified 18 communities, to the environment of fear that causes people to “tek weh demselves” if they see an armoured cash delivery vehicle in the vicinity,” he said.

Bunting said the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) crime statistics for January 1 to December 16 show that 1,349 persons have been killed, which is an eight per cent reduction over the corresponding period last year.

However, he said the Government and the JCF have failed to highlight that last year's stats had the second-highest numbers since the May 2010 Tivoli incursion.

At the current rate, he said the projections are that there will be approximately 1,400 murders.

But, while noting that the JCF and police commissioner have been touting and celebrating the monthly reduction in murder over the several months, Bunting said there has been public confusion and disbelief as the daily reports of multiple killings do not accord with the reduction.

In the same vein, he said, the daily reports of murders further belie the administration’s reliance on the use of states of emergency (SOE) as effective crime-fighting strategies and their supposed success.

He then pointed to several recent high-profile murders including the murder of the Moodie siblings in Westmoreland, well-known businessman William ‘Baba Roots’ Webb at his home in Darliston, in Westmoreland, and last Wednesday’s murder of the Hopewell High bursar outside the school gate, which have taken place while an SOE was in place.

“These incidents highlight an administration bankrupt of ideas that continue to rely solely on ineffective emergency measures to curb the deeply rooted issues of crime and violence,” he said.

If the Opposition was asked what it would do differently or what it was doing differently when the murder rate was just over 1,000, Bunting said the PNP, with fewer resources and less manpower in the security forces, had recognised that crime prevention efforts and social investment were as important or even more important long-term than crime control or suppression efforts.

With that realisation, he said the PNP had instituted the Unite for Change programme, which the JLP abandoned along with other social programmes like the Peace Management Initiative and the Citizens Security and Justice Programme.

He said every crime prevention initiative was abandoned and all the ministry's resources were re-directed to the failed policy of the militarisation of policing, and the serial and routine use of SOEs.

“ After almost eight years of abject failure in keeping his promise of people being able to sleep with their windows and doors open, imagine my astonishment when I read a media article recently about the PM touring Project STAR in Central Kingston, which is really a private sector version of the PNP’s Unite for Change Initiative. In the article the PM declared “It is a whole of society effort”.

"Eight years along and he finally realises it is a whole of society effort. Jamaica has paid dearly in lives lost - 2,300 additional lives lost -because PM Holness has been a slow learner when it comes to adopting policies to sustainably reduce violent crime,” Bunting said.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com