Crime Stop works: Yet still we remain silent

THE CURTAINS had barely come down on last Sunday’s Crime Stop 36th Anniversary Gala event at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel, when news came of Jamaica’s latest mass shooting, this time in Linstead, St Catherine where five people were killed, including a four-year-old girl, and four others wounded. I had barely written that sentence when RJR News reported a short while ago that another mass shooting, this time in Central Kingston, had left a disabled child dead and four others wounded.

Both incidents stand in stark contrast to the optimism felt early in the evening last Sunday as Jamaica was treated to a wonderful celebration of some of Jamaica’s most unsung heroes, and not just the Crime Stop organisation itself. Thousands of citizens have, over the years, done their part to help clean up this country’s massive crime problem, by calling in thousands of tips to the legendary tip hotline. Those tips have led to over 3,000 arrests, the removal of more than 1,000 illegal firearms, and the seizure of over $900 million in narcotics. Hundreds of millions in stolen property have also been recovered, all at a cost of just under $90 million paid out in the form of rewards. That Crime Stop has been able to do all this for over 35 years without ever once having a source compromised or revealed is even more remarkable.

In 2025 alone, tips to Crime Stop increased by nearly a quarter compared to the year before, with one in every six calls producing actionable intelligence. These are not abstract figures, we were told on Sunday, but a representation of actual lives saved, crimes prevented, and criminal enterprises dismantled before they could inflict more harm.

DEFLATED HOPES

So, imagine how deflated everyone who attended the event must have felt when news of the Linstead shooting emerged immediately after the ceremony ended. The timing was cruel. Within hours of celebrating a programme built on trust, cooperation, and civic duty, Jamaica was once again reeling from the aftermath of another example of unchecked violence.

Together, these two events, one triumphant, one tragic, reveal something profound about where we are as a country: we have built systems that work, but we still haven’t built the courage to use them.

The Linstead shooting reeked of another massacre last year, this time in Cherry Tree Lane where nine persons were killed. Like that incident, Sunday’s shooting was not an act of random violence, we are told. It was, by all accounts, the continuation of an ongoing gang conflict, meaning that someone, somewhere, knew that that attack was coming.

In Jamaica, secrets don’t stay buried long. Trust me. I tried and failed miserably to keep it a secret that I had recently turned 50. Now, everyone in Jamaica knows that I’m an old man. So, if my senior citizen card was revealed last weekend, why can’t we have similar levels of exposure when it comes to crime?

In the days that followed Sunday’s shooting, police confirmed that the community had been visited several times before. There were warnings, whispers, signs. But no one spoke up.

So if, according to Crime Stop, every tip saves a life, then, by extension, every act of silence costs one. Crime Stop can only act on the information it receives, and, until we bridge the gap between knowing and reporting, these cycles of bloodshed will continue.

Of course, the fear is understandable. Jamaicans have lived too long under the shadow of reprisals. That’s why Crime Stop was devised as a movement to break that very fear – an anonymous system where the caller’s identity is protected, and the information, not the individual, is what matters. It is the safest way to speak up in a country where speaking up can be dangerous. And yet, we still practise ‘see and blind, hear and deaf’.

INVESTING IN THE TOOLS THAT WORK

If the success of Crime Stop proves anything, it is that community intelligence is one of the most potent weapons in modern policing. But not if this weapon is underfunded or under-promoted.

That Crime Stop still struggles to get support from corporate Jamaica is a head scratcher, given that the system has delivered nearly a billion dollars in drug seizures, despite the modest annual funding that it receives.

Crime Stop deserves more than applause and platitudes. It needs to be sustained through heavy investment in its technology, public awareness, and community engagement. It should be as familiar to Jamaicans as 119, with each and every child in school being taught how to use it. Because, without community intelligence, we are simply asking the police to fight blind.

Silence is not neutrality; it is complicity. We cannot keep relying on silence and hope that justice, and the police, somehow prevail. Rather than RIPs and condolences and “so sad” messages on social media, we as a country owe it to that little girl in Linstead, and to every family that has buried a loved one because of violence, to use the tools that work.

Major Basil Jarrett is the director of communications at the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) and crisis communications consultant. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Threads @IamBasilJarrett and linkedin.com/in/basiljarrett. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com