Unacceptable! ... Senator reports Kingston is 16th most violent city in the world

Livern Barrett, Senior Parliamentary Reporter

Government Senator Kamina Johnson-Smith today revealed that in a recent report, Kingston came in at number 16 on a list of the 50 most violent cities last year.

She did not name the report.

"Sixteen! This cannot be a statistic that we accept," said Johnson-Smith, who was speaking in the Senate today during the debate on the extension of the state of public emergency now in place in sections of the Corporate Area.

On September 23, Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced that a state of emergency had been imposed in several communities across the Kingston West, Kingston Central and the St Andrew Central police divisions.

Johnson-Smith, who is also the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, said the level of criminality that exits in these communities "runs entirely against our vision for Kingston."

"We must disrupt and dismantle the gangs and their criminal activities," she insisted.

Johnson-Smith also pushed back at criticisms from the Opposition that the government was normalising the use of states of emergency as a crime-fighting tool.

One of those critics, Opposition Senator Donna Scott-Mottley, said the Andrew Holness administration has declared three states of emergency this year alone compared with three over the last five decades.

Scott-Mottley said this erodes the shock and awe effect the measure was intended to have.

But Johnson-Smith said her concern "is the very opposite."

"My concern is that persons have so normalised the excessive state of violence which we have in this country that they do not recognise that the level and nature of criminal activity is so extensive that it endangers public safety," she said.

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