Cornwall bleeds
Westernmost county turns its back on bloody year, hopes for better 2022
Published:Sunday | January 9, 2022 | 12:08 AMMark Titus - Sunday Gleaner Writer
Chinese expatriates operating businesses in Jamaica are fearful that they remain marked targets for the criminal underworld, following the shooting death of 53-year-old businessman Shiyun Shu and his wife, Haikong Wan, in Bellevue, St Elizabeth, last month.
The couple, who operated JoJo Supermarket in the usually quiet village, were also robbed of an unsubstantiated amount of cash during the attack.
While the Association of Chinese Enterprises in Jamaica Limited did not respond to The Sunday Gleaner questions sent by email up to press time, Montego Bay businessman Zhiqiang Lu told our news team that the tension remained high.
Although expressing grave concern about the vicious attacks on his compatriots, Lu, who operates Queens Supermarket in Mount Salem, believes order can be restored if the authorities act decisively.
“The feeling in the Chinese community is not good. It was some weeks before [the St Elizabeth double murder] that a Chinese business operator from Montego Bay got killed outside of St James, and there were several robberies in Montego Bay,” Lu told The Sunday Gleaner.
“Christmas week,and even prior to Christmas, had been very, very tense, so we did not want to step out of our stores,” he said. “I personally feel as if the Chinese are being targeted.”
The turnout at a recent virtual meeting between the police and Chinese business operators also revealed the level of frustration now being experienced because of crime, but Lu, who has been living in Jamaica since 2001 and currently serves as a director of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, recalls some even more troubling earlier years.
He noted that there has been gradual improvement, especially since the introduction of the zones of special operation (ZOSO) in Mount Salem in 2017.
“It was not so peaceful because you would hear shots being fired on the main road in broad daylight, but since the ZOSO was introduced, I have less fear walking on the street,” he said. “When compared to when I just came to Jamaica, I am confident that the police want to work with us because there is a huge improvement in communication. The signs are there to show that things can get better if there is strong enforcement by the authorities ... . I believe that things can get better.”
In March 2020, Kenneth ‘Kenny’ Li, who operated the Montego Bay-based Cash Smart Supermarket, was robbed and killed en route to the bank. Two months later, another Chinese national was relieved of $8 million, a year after losing $12 million in an armed robbery at Reading on the outskirts of the St James capital.
Just last month, another member of the Chinese community was attacked and stabbed near a bank in downtown Montego Bay, just 24 hours after a female compatriot was slashed in the face, to bring the number of attacks to seven in recent times.
The Jamaica Constabulary Force would not comment on the suggestion that the Chinese could be target, but said that there were concerns that the victims were mainly operators of businesses that dealt with large amounts of cash on a daily basis.
Far way to go, but all not lost
The Bellevue double killing took St Elizabeth’s homicide tally to 27 for the third consecutive year and occurred just days after a series of murders, including that of schoolteacher Chanel Smith, who was gunned down in the presence of students; and the shooting death of three others, hours apart.
Serious crimes declined by 36.9 per cent in the Superintendent Narda Simms-led police division.
“We got a big hit with the unfortunate killing of the Chinese couple, but it was still a good year for the men and women of this division, where we saw a reduction in all serious crimes when compared to the year before,” Simms told The Sunday Gleaner on reflection.
But while the decline in serious crimes is welcome news, Christos Brown, vice-president of the Black River Chapter of the St Elizabeth Chamber of Commerce, wants to see stronger support for the police.
“I am hoping that businesses will see the need to unify the efforts in support of the crime-fighting strategies of the police,” he said. “It is very concerning. We need to work in unison, create a link or pool our resources to police each other’s businesses … . This cannot be left to the police alone.”
Three of four police divisions in Area One – which comprises Trelawny, St James, Westmoreland, and St James – experienced a drop in serious crimes last year, with Westmoreland being the exception. The region remains the most murderous in Jamaica, with 351 violent deaths, mainly by the gun.
St James saw a 26 per cent increase in homicides, ending the year at 160 murders, compared to 127 in 2020. Westmoreland jumped by 48 more deaths to 128; while killings climbed by 39.4 per cent in Hanover. Only Trelawny showed a decline in 2021, falling from 23 in 2020 to 17 last year.
Bishop O’Neil Russell, community leader of Cooke Street, otherwise called Twelfth Street, in Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland, is hoping for an end to the bitter, bloody feud between the mostly underdeveloped seaside villages that has contributed to the majority of the murders in the western parish. Although an increase in police presence in the parish capital has brought some calm, Russell knows that the shooting can resume at any time.
However, Westmoreland Central Member of Parliament George Wright is not satisfied with mere boots on the ground in his constituency. His wish is for the use of technology to aid the crime-fighting initiatives even as he makes plans to have talks with the warring gangsters with the aim of bringing an end to the violence.
“We have a very far way to go. We cannot be satisfied with mere patrols if we are serious,” Wright told The Sunday Gleaner. “We need drones, surveillance cameras, sniffer dogs, and metal detectors because my greatest priority for 2022 is to see a significant reduction in the crime rate and the overall development of the parish.”
‘Between a rock and a hard place’
Like Westmoreland, St James has featured among the island’s top five most murderous police divisions for the past decade.
Businessman Mark Kerr-Jarrett is renewing his call for legislation that identifies, specifies, and classifies illegal weapons; an increase for the salary of the police; and the establishment of laws and procedures for the quick completion of court cases.
“The problem is that we are going to continue to go around this mountain, and crime is going to escalate because the legislators are not updating or upgrading the laws to address the new trend in crime,” he said. “Successive governments have been doing the same things and expecting different results.”
Yet Assistant Commissioner of Police Clifford Chambers is pleased with the efforts of the cops in Area One last year.
“ ... We did not have the external support or the help of the military as we did in 2020, yet we have had a significant increase in the amount of persons arrested and charged, a marked increase in the amount of illegal firearms recovered over the year before, and we achieved all this in the midst of a pandemic that depletes the working number of men and women significantly,” he noted.
Chambers does not believe that the statistics, by themselves, paint a true picture of the gains being made by the police.
He is hoping that going forward, the police will be able to forge a better relationship with citizens and the business community.
Hanover Custos Dr David Stair is bemoaning the impact being sandwiched by two of the most murderous divisions has had on his parish.
“One of our problems in Hanover is that we do not get to choose who our neighbours are, and so we get caught between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “We have Westmoreland on one end and St James on the other, so when they make moves in either of those places it spills over into Hanover, but we are hoping that 2022 will be a better year.”