PORTMORE, St. Catherine:
THE SOUTH St. Catherine Police Community Relations Department is having a hard time keeping up with the number of juvenile cases from the Portmore area. The Portmore Journal understands that the department has an average of 80 cases per week.
In an interview with the head of the department Corporal Jacqueline Brown said that most of the cases are sexually related. She said that the department is bombarded with parents coming into the office seeking assistance with their delinquent children. She disclosed that most of these children are from single parent homes. "Most of these parents are so frustrated that they want to leave the children at the station", she pointed out.
Corporal Brown said that she has children as young as seven-years-old who have been brought to the station by parents. Some of these cases are minor offences such as stealing, however, the major cases are reports of teenage girls having sexual relationships with taxi operators and bus men.
A source also told The Portmore Journal that sexual promiscuity is so prevalent to the extent where at a particular school a teenage girl was approached by another girl to have sex with her for $500.
Corporal Brown said that the rise in the number of cases was due mainly to lack of supervision by parents who left their children unattended. She said to combat the problem, the department will be hosting a parents seminar on December 9. "As a result of the amount of cases coming into the office, we have decided to go to the route of the problems. We are going to have a seminar with the parents", she said. She is also appealing to the churches and service clubs to volunteer as mentors for the Big Brother, Big Sister programme. She said the two year old programme has been doing well but would accomplish more if more persons were helping. "We need help with the programme, these children just need someone to love them and to reach out to", she said.
