Update | Holness taken out of context on crime, says commissioner
Published:Wednesday | March 4, 2020 | 12:00 AMKaryl Walker/Gleaner Writer
Commissioner of Police Major General Antony Anderson is siding with Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who has expressed confidence that despite a frightening rate of murders that seems to have the nation’s security apparatus in a tailspin, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
In a recent exclusive interview with The Gleaner, Holness conceded that the crime monster had grown exponentially greater than the nation’s capacity to combat its heartless operatives and their resulting heinous deeds.
Speaking at a town hall meeting at the Lauderhill City Hall in Broward County, South Florida, on the weekend, Anderson agreed that the present method of tackling the crime ogre was antiquated, but agreed with the man at the helm of running the nation’s affairs that significant gains will be made when a raft of initiatives which are currently being rolled out reach completion.
“That is being taken out of context. There are serious gains being made and are about to be made. Our people have been traumatised by violence for too long and we have to up the ante,” Anderson told The Gleaner while being surrounded by the Lauderhill police, who whisked him away after the vibrant town hall gathering.
The top cop utilised a powerPoint presentation to show the murder rate in Jamaica between 2004 and 2019 which saw a total of 29,605 murders, at an average of 1,973.6 murders per year, being tallied on police blotters.
“Our people have experienced the trauma of violence for too long. We need a unified political and national view to make inroads,” Anderson, who blamed a pervasive gang culture, public disorder and the evolution of crime and criminals as the reason behind the high levels of violent crime, said.
THREE-POINT STRATEGY
The town hall meeting was held under the theme ‘A Radical Approach to National Security – Transforming the Jamaica Constabulary Force’. Anderson used the opportunity to inform concerned members of the Jamaican diaspora domiciled in South Florida that despite the flood of negative news coming out of Jamaica about unceasing murders, perpetrated most often by the use of the gun, the rate has actually been trending downwards and would most likely continue the positive trend when his three-point strategy bears fruit.
The strategy he said involved:
- Increased law-enforcement activities.
- The transformation and development of the Constabulary to overtake the gains made by the criminal underworld.
- Stakeholder engagement
He defended the implementation of states of public emergency and zones of special operations as a critical tool in the law-enforcement arsenal, citing dips in the murder rates in the majority of police divisions the SOEs were now imposed (Kingston East – 100 per cent; Hanover – 49 per cent; Westmoreland – 50 per cent; Clarendon – 58 per cent; St Catherine South – 29 per cent; St Catherine North – nine per cent; and St Andrew South – 11 per cent).
St James has been the one division where the murder rate climbed (seven per cent), but Anderson said this was due to the fact that a previous SOE which had been put in place in the hotbed parish was halted before being reinstated several months ago.
ROLE OF JDF
“Murders are up seven per cent in St James, but we have made serious gains there and since the reinstatement of the state of emergency there, violent crime has decreased in St James more than any other division which has a SOE,” he said. “We have recovered the most illegal guns in St James over any other division, and have managed to occupy spaces which have led to a decrease in violence.”
Anderson, a former head of the army who served for 34 years, also reacted to a recent RJRGLEANER-commissioned Don Anderson poll, which revealed that the majority of Jamaicans are in favour of Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) soldiers playing a bigger role in the fight against crime at the street level.
“The JDF has been assisting the police in fighting crime since the 1970s and will continue to do so,” he said.
He pointed to gains that had been made by the police in securing convictions of several criminals who had previously snubbed their noses at law enforcement due to archaic investigative and forensic capabilities of the police.
“We have had an unprecedented number of gang members arrested and charged due to improved case file preparation for court. We have also had a 50 per cent increase in guilty pleas.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this story indicated that there were 29,605 murders between 2014 and 2019. That was a typo. It should have said 'between 2004 and 2019'.