Editorial | Nab the big guys

Last week’s reported interception of 233 guns and over 40,000 bullets at a warehouse in Kingston continued a recent trend of significant discoveries of firearms, which we hope signals that the authorities are on the cusp of breaking the back of the inflow of illegal weapons to the island.

It seems obvious that law enforcement, the police and Customs, no doubt with support from international partners, especially the United States, are getting better at these interceptions.

The Gleaner now looks forward to the arrest, prosecution and conviction of the importers of these, and other illegal weapons, as has been promised by Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness.

For, as the national security minister, Horace Chang, commented, the organisers of these gun shipments are, in many respects, “worse than the shooters”.

Yet, it is rare, if ever, that the big guys find themselves before the courts, despite the many threats, over decades, that they will, and the official acknowledgement that the young men who use the guns to cause mayhem can hardly afford to buy them.

The latest gun find is highly significant in the context of Jamaica’s crisis of violent crime and the prevalence of illegal firearms on the island. Annually, over a 1,000 people are murdered here. The homicide rate hovers close to 50 per 100,000, among the world’s highest. Around three-quarters of homicides are committed with guns. There are as many non-fatal shooting incidents as murders.

WORKED SIMULTANEOUSLY

Jamaica, clearly, has a problem with socialisation/conflict resolution and with guns. Both have to be worked simultaneously, but, difficult as even that is, the solutions to the latter are, on their face, more straightforward. It requires identifying where the guns are coming from, who is sending them, and to whom, and intercepting the shipments.

However, over the years, doing this hasn’t proved easy, despite the police knowing where the bulk of the guns come from (the United States) and annually confiscating hundreds of illegal guns from criminals or intercepting shipments at ports.

There are two main causes for this, the Jamaican and other Caribbean authorities, whose countries face a similar problem of illegal guns, highlight. First, while the Americans collaborate with regional law enforcement, helping to identify and deter gun shipments to the region, their efforts are not sufficiently robust, such as in surveilling goods at US ports. That would involve a costly slowdown in the US trade, the Americans believe.

Second, there is the sheer volume of illegal guns to Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean, and the porousness of the borders of island states to smugglers.

Indeed, in a 2019 speech to Parliament, Dr Chang estimated that around 200 illegal firearms found their way monthly, undetected, into the country. That would translate to 2,400 a year, or over three times 700 or so the police removed from the streets.

GUNS SEIZED

It is not clear how much, statistically, that equation has changed, but the anecdotal evidence suggests that many guns are being seized – at least in larger, or consolidated shipments.

For instance, apart from last week’s warehouse haul, in December, 39 pistols and 2,800 rounds of ammunition were found at the wharves in Kingston, in what was suggested to be the result of an intelligence operation. A fortnight earlier, two dozen disassembled guns and more than 200 bullets were taken from the luggage of a passenger at the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay. Additionally, in February 2024, 64 pistols and nearly 1,000 bullets were discovered at the Kingston Wharves.

Prime Minister Holness suggested that these finds were reflective of his government’s increased investment in the capacities of the constabulary, particularly its technology.

“We are able to detect them with our scanning technology, and we were able to recover them,” he said.

That’s good. But a greater deterrent, we believe, would be putting the big financiers of the trade, whether street-level gang bosses or private criminal entrepreneurs, behind bars.

In that regard, the police have to deliver on what Prime Minister Holness promised with respect to the importers of illegal guns: “We will find them (the guns) and we will find you. And we are serious about it.”

Perhaps the latest find will prove to be the case that changes the old dynamic and delivers the big guys, given the declaration by the police chief, Kevin Blake, of it being “just the catalyst for a larger operation”.

We therefore look for the follow-up.