Editorial | Hunt Southboro killers

This newspaper is heartened by the level-headedness with which the island’s political parties responded to last week’s murder of Ainsley Parkins, a People’s National Party (PNP) councillor in the St Catherine local government.

Our concern is that a single injudicious statement from either side, suggesting political motivation for the killing, could inflame partisans, leading to further violence and causing long-term damage to the peace. In that regard, the police should redouble their efforts to find and prosecute the perpetrator(s) of the crime, whoever that, or those persons, may be.

In other words, it must be made clear that if politics was indeed a motivation for this crime – and there is no claim or evidence that it was – those who were behind it are not safe from the law.

Mr Parkins represented the Southboro division in Portmore in the St Catherine Municipal Council. His representation of that division also made him a member of the Portmore Municipal Council, the city’s local government.

One day last week, as he sat in his car in his division, having just dropped off workers for a community project, he was shot by two gunmen.

PASSED OFF

In the normal scheme of things, a violent act like this, while painful and deeply deplored, might be passed off as just another episode in Jamaica’s crisis of criminal violence. Approximately 1,500 people are murdered in the island annually, giving Jamaica a criminal homicide rate of nearly 55 per 100,000, among the world’s worst.

These days, the police say that criminal gangs fighting for turf and ascendancy in extortion rackets account for over 65 per cent of the murders. Another 20 per cent or so of the homicides is the result of domestic violence – people who know each other but unable to settle disputes.

Jamaica has a long history of murderous violence. But decades ago, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, during a period of sharp ideological divide, the violence was largely driven by politics. Party supporters attempted to dislodge rivals and corral votes in so-called garrison communities. Notably, though, politicians were rarely, if ever, the direct targets of this violence.

The exclusionary zones still exist, but direct political control of violence within them, most analysts concede, has largely receded. The gangs – and the general attitude of power by muscle spawned by the politics of the old period – have morphed into entrepreneurial operations.

Although there is no evidence of this being the case, there is a fear that Councillor Parkins’ murder could be a harbinger of a return to the bad, old days, especially if encouraged by incautious or rabble-rousing statements by partisans.

A year ago, Lennox Hines, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) councillor caretaker for the Southboro division – the one that was represented by Mr Parkins – was ambushed and shot dead while driving on a busy highway. That murder was never solved. The JLP controls the national Government.

Happily, that crime was not put through the partisan political mills. There was no significant claim that the motive was political.

SPECULATION

Nonetheless, the murder of Councillor Parkins, and the fact that he represented the division on which Mr Hines harboured political ambitions, has caused some speculation that the two incidents were connected – even a tit-for-tat.

The good thing is that responsible political voices have not, up to now, encouraged or engaged in these speculations.

The PNP called the murder a “heinous act of violence”, which it condemned.

“We call upon law-enforcement agencies to conduct a swift, thorough, and impartial investigation, leaving no stone unturned in their pursuit of justice,” the party said.

It did not go overboard.

Similarly, the local government minister, Desmond McKenzie, has called for Mr Parkins’ murderers to be brought to justice. He recognised, too, Mr Parkins’ work as a councillor.

“His service to the community will be remembered and his contributions to the betterment of Southboro division are recognised and appreciated,” McKenzie said.

These are clear signals for the potential hotheads to cool it.

Which this newspaper endorses. It helps to lower the temperature on any simmering tension in Southboro or elsewhere in St Catherine.

It would help even more if the police were to catch and prosecute the murderers of Mr Parkins and Mr Hines.