Police death triggers call for opening of Green Acres station
Published:Thursday | July 21, 2022 | 12:06 AMRasbert Turner and Ruddy Mathison/Gleaner Writers
AN URGENT call has been made for the commissioning of the Green Acres Police Station in St Catherine, which is in close proximity to the site where a policeman was shot and killed on Tuesday.
Dead is Constable Jermaine Brown of the Spanish Town Police Station in the St Catherine North Police Division.
Reports are that the 32-year-old constable was attacked while driving his private Toyota Allion motor car about 5 p.m.
“We need to get the station up and running. Dem people yah couldn’t be so brazen in dem behaviour,” Marian Daley said in a Gleaner interview.
“Look at the inconvenience it caused and this gives the community a bad name, so we need the police station now.”
A number of Brown’s colleagues gathered on the scene, some speaking in hushed tones while others openly expressed their concerns.
One fellow cop cast his murder as “an attack on Jamaica”.
“We serve the same formation from we left the training school nine years ago. I just can’t process this,” the colleague said.
“I just cannot see how such a humble person met this demise.”
The police say Brown went to the area in his private motor car to conduct personal business when he was pounced upon by unknown assailants who shot him multiple times inside his car.
The attackers fled on foot into nearby bushes.
Eyewitnesses, however, told The Gleaner that Brown had just entered his car and was slowly driving away from the premises when three men, who were in waiting, fired on the vehicle from behind, hitting the cop multiple times.
According to residents, Brown had been providing private security duties at a business establishment located in the vicinity of where he was shot.
They also disclosed that Tuesday’s fatal shooting came weeks after a female manager at the establishment was also killed by gunmen.
St Catherine West Central Member of Parliament Dr Christopher Tufton had said last November that the $73-million Green Acres Police Station was on the verge of being opened.
However, because the area is plagued by chronic flooding, approximately $260 million was needed to expand the drainage system.
Brown’s passing is the second police death within the last two weeks in the St Catherine North Police Division. The fatal shooting of Inspector Enroy Madourie is still being investigated.