West’s major crimes still trending down post-SOE
Published:Sunday | November 8, 2020 | 12:24 AMMark Titus - Staff Reporter
The police Area One High Command is attributing the reduction in serious crimes to the state of emergency (SOE) imposed in three of its four divisions to arrest a wave of murders across the western region last year. Though the security measure was brought to an end in August, business interests in Montego Bay would support a reintroduction under certain conditions.
Police statistics show that, up to October 31, 2020, all the western parishes, except for Hanover, realised significant drops in major crimes, when compared to the same period last year.
Murders and robberies declined significantly throughout Area One, which also includes Trelawny, but rape continues to be a challenge, with only St James realising a 40 per cent drop, while Westmoreland, Jamaica’s bloodiest parish in the first quarter of 2019, had an 11.8 and 13.9 per cent decline in murders and shootings, respectively.
On the other hand, the parish of Hanover had single-digit increases in break-ins and shootings.
“Holistically, we are doing exceptionally well, but we still have a lot to do and this third-quarter result is based on the downward trajectory that we benefited from coming out of the zone of special operation,” Assistant Commissioner of Police Clifford Chambers, head of Area One, told The Sunday Gleaner.
“What we did at the end of the SOE was to develop and implement a 60-day operational surge that targets the volatile areas, identify the violence producers and focus on the top five most wanted in each division,” he said.
The SOEs across the island were brought to an end in mid-August, weeks ahead of the September general election.
Mount Salem Operation Credited
In St James, the added zone of special operation (ZOSO) in Mount Salem has also been credited for some of the successes.
“[The SOE and ZOSO] assisted us to identify those violence producers who were not known, and that within itself was the right step to manage their movements and manage those persons, so as to negate their involvement in crime and to do the necessary processing, so we are now aware of their likely locations and their associates,” he said.
Business interests in western Jamaica have long toasted the crime-fighting strategies, and the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MBCCI) says it would support a return of an SOE to further tackle the crime scourge.
“We will support the use of the military, as permitted by law, in geographic areas where the homicide rate is above 32 per 100,000, which is two times the regional average,” MBCCI President Janet Silvera told The Sunday Gleaner, even as she called for sustained public engagement.
She said the chamber was willing to support another SOE “where the level of violence supersedes the capacity of the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the commissioner of police, along with the chief of staff of the Jamaica Defence Force, agrees that it is necessary.”
However, publisher and former parliamentarian Lloyd B. Smith believes that an SOE should only be reintroduced in response to civil unrest.
According to Smith, who is also a former MBCCI president, the police’s current approach of targeting criminals is the way forward.
“The modus operandi of the SOE is to net fish, but the problem with that approach is that a lot of persons, many of them innocent, were incarcerated for long periods of time and we saw the court ruling in respect to the matter in respect to one’s human rights,” Smith argued.
“What the Police High Command needs to do now is spearfishing, where you strategically use forensic and digitally driven intelligence to deal with the criminals and influencers of criminality out there … ,” he added. “The approach of breaking up the gangs should have been the strategy from a long time, and that should be continued.”
Impact of COVID-19
While lauding the reduction in numbers in the parish, Canon Hartley Perrin, custos of Westmoreland, is questioning the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the crime figures.
“I would have felt a little more comfortable if the numbers were in normal times, and one wonders if the results had anything to do with the abnormality or just the relentless work of the police and the military,” he said.
However, Superintendent Robert Gordon, commanding officer of the Westmoreland Police Division, says the pandemic created a greater challenge for his men and women.
“I am not sure about COVID playing a role in the reduction in our crime rate,” he said.
On the contrary, he suggested, criminals were now able to conceal their identities with masks without raising suspicion, because of the pandemic.
“As a matter of fact, except for the curfew period, COVID would have created some level of challenge with the wearing of the mask. So while there were some positives, there would have been some challenges, and the wearing of the mask by everyone was one of them,” the 25-year veteran crime-fighter said.
“The SOE was no doubt an excellent tool, and what it did over the period of time was allow us to focus on investigation of a number of crimes that were committed and, by so doing, we were able to successfully arrest and charge a number of the criminal elements within the space,” Gordon said.
“So what we implemented was proximity policing, where we impact the space or individuals who are likely to, suspected to or about to, commit a crime,” he added. “We operationalise and make our plans around areas that are of the greatest risk and have the potential for certain crimes to be committed, because even one less fatal shooting is a big victory for me.”
The Trelawny Police Division has maintained control of criminal activities within its borders, despite the threat of migratory criminals from the more crime-infested regions in Area One, and Superintendent Kirk Ricketts believes the SOEs in other divisions were beneficial to his parish.
“Yes, there has not been the need for a SOE in Trelawny, even when the harsh glare of the law in St James may see criminals wanting to come to the more peaceful parish, because what we have done is rely heavily on a very strong investigative approach that, once we have an offence, we are able to detect offenders and they are quickly arrested,” Ricketts told The Sunday Gleaner yesterday.
“Criminals are not restricted by boundaries,” the divisional commander added. “If there is high levels of violence in St James, it plays out in other areas. So the dampening of the violence in St James also redounds to the benefit of other areas, so the SOEs helped us to be where we are today.
“One of the things that would have helped us is a significant boost to our mobility by the High Command because we were limited when I took command of the space,” he said. “Now we are able to have round-the-clock patrols.”