Downward trend for crime in St Elizabeth
SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — Last Tuesday, with four days remaining before the end of January, the St Elizabeth police were holding their collective breath.
That’s because there had been no murders in the parish since the start of 2015. Sadly, it was too good to last.
The news came Tuesday night that 36-year-old farmer David Anderson of Slipe district — a remote low-lying community south-west of Santa Cruz on the fringe of the Black River Morass — had been shot dead while walking in his community.
Police, who theorise that the murder may have been related to the ganja trade, say they are following “leads”.
Disappointing though news of Anderson’s death was, all agree that a single murder in January represents a vast improvement on early 2014.
Back in January last year, the first seven days went by with no killings in the parish, only for two double murders — including that of two 15-year-old boys — to break the tranquil feel on the night of the eighth day of that year. By the end of January 2014, St Elizabeth had recorded seven murders.
“I have to say what a difference a year makes,” said head of the St Elizabeth police, Superintendent Lanford Salmon when contacted by the Jamaica Observer on Saturday.
“By any measure, we have to say one murder is a vast improvement on seven,” he said.
Bad as the start of 2014 was for St Elizabeth’s crime fighters, last year ended relatively well with 21 murders, down from 31 in 2013. Other major crimes were also down, Salmon said.
The St Elizabeth police chief believes the improved situation resulted in large measure from the targeting of known criminals, including gang members, described as “violence producers”. The police also continued their conscious effort to get closer to communities and to gain the trust of people.
Ordinarily, the seizure of a single illegal weapon would go largely unnoticed, but police sources say the capture of a .45 pistol in the Breadnut Walk area of north-west St Elizabeth in late December was significant.
The police are still awaiting the evidence from the forensics experts, but there is strong belief that the gun may have been used for three murders in the Ginger Hill/Pisgah area of remote north-west St Elizabeth in the latter half of 2014.
According to Salmon, tactics used by the police to suppress crime last year will continue with equal intent in 2015. “We will be giving no breathing space to criminals,” he said.
Salmon said the long-delayed opening of a transport centre in Santa Cruz and of a rebuilt market in St Elizabeth’s capital Black River in late 2015 have boosted law and order.
“What this means is that in Santa Cruz, the taxi men and bus men have no excuses for parking on the streets and in the plazas during the daylight hours. The reduced congestion makes it much easier for the police to insist on law and order,” Salmon said. He urged the authorities to move with speed to put “proper lighting” in the transport centre, so that public passenger operators will have no excuses to return to the street sides and plazas at nights.
Salmon said the reopened market has had a similar effect in Black River where vendors are now off the streets, making life easier for the forces of law and order.