Dark days

The Corporate Area has been rocked by a series of gruesome killings, including the discoveries of mutilated bodies and triple murders since the start of August, threatening to erode the declines in homicide made in the first half of 2023.

In the most recent incident, investigators attached to the Constant Spring Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) are probing the murder of three men whose bullet-riddled bodies were found along Greendale Drive in St Andrew on Sunday.

Reports are that, about 11:10 p.m., residents heard explosions and contacted the police.

On the arrival of lawmen, the three men, who remained unidentified up to yesterday evening, were taken to hospital where they were pronounced dead.

Residents say the men are not from the community.

“I was at home and heard the hol’ heap a gunshot ... . First it sounded like when bike a backfire ... . It stop and then start again. When people go look, we nuh hear no bawling. Ah so you know dem nuh come from ‘bout the place,” a resident told The Gleaner.

The police theorise the men were brought to the location and executed.

This is the second triple killing recorded across the Corporate Area in less than a week.

On August 3, three people were killed and four others injured following a shooting at a party on Rusden Road in Rockfort.

They are 22-year-old Warren Benjamin, a fisherman of Adestra Road, Kingston 2; 19-year-old Raheem Walters, construction worker of Belmont Road, Kingston; and an unidentified male believed to be in his mid-20s.

The police say the unidentified man is about five feet 10 inches tall with an owl tattooed on his throat and a lion on his left forearm.

The Elletson Road police said that, about 11 p.m., the seven people were among patrons at a party dubbed ‘Topless Thursdays’, when a man stepped outside the bar and opened gunfire at the group.

The Major Investigation Division is probing this incident.

Meanwhile, also in Kingston, the police identified the men whose mutilated bodies were found in bags on Glendale Avenue in Vineyard Town on August 1.

Dead are 21-year-old Omario Lawrence and 19-year-old construction worker, Calhime Campbell, otherwise called ‘Kutchie’, both of Homestead Road, in Vineyard Town.

Reports are that, about 2:15 p.m., passers-by stumbled upon the bodies and alerted the police.

On their arrival, the police saw the bodies in two separate bags along the roadway.

Investigations are ongoing.

Concerns about incidents such as these were highlighted by Opposition Leader Mark Golding in his Emancipation Day address to the nation.

Golding highlighted concerns about crime and said it remains the country’s number-one problem.

“Violent crime continues to plague our communities, causing pain and suffering to many Jamaicans. We lose valuable human resources every day that lives are taken by violence,” he said in his message to the country.

Senator Peter Bunting, opposition spokesman on national security, also argue that the prolonged delay by the Government in tabling a critical piece of legislation in Parliament to tackle the country’s serious crime problem was indicative of an administration that was displaying “heights of incompetence”.

Governor General Sir Patrick Allen, in his 2019 Throne Speech detailing the plans and programmes of the Government for the then 2019-2020 financial year, stated that the Enhanced Security Measures Act would be developed and tabled during that parliamentary year.

Three legislative years later, the Enhanced Security Measures Act has not been tabled in Parliament.

In April 2022, Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced that the Enhanced Security Measures Act would be tabled in Parliament “shortly”.

“It’s either the heights of incompetence, or the Jamaica Labour Party administration has invested so much PR (public relations) behind SOEs (states of emergency) that they no longer care about the Enhanced Security Measures Bill,” Bunting said in a recent Gleaner interview.

The latest crime statistics, released by the police in late July, show that, for the period January 1 to July 29, 2023, the country recorded 786 murders, an 11.8 per cent reduction year- on-year.

andre.williams@gleanerjm.com