Anderson redrawing police map - Rethinks population shifts in curbing crime
Published:Friday | March 6, 2020 | 12:27 AMPaul Clarke/Gleaner Writer
The boundaries of Jamaica’s police divisions may be realigned as the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) grapples with a spike in murders despite steep declines in most other serious and violent crimes, Commissioner of Police Major General Antony Anderson has revealed.
Anderson said that the mapping rethink would be based on astrategic analysis of demographic shifts in towns and communities that could result in the borders of the country’s 19 police divisions being changed.
The move represents part of the reformation drive led by Anderson in an attempt to recalibrate law enforcement as more brain than brawn.
The upshot of the realignment is ultimately to curb and solve crimes, particularly murders and other gun-related offences.
“It is something we are looking at, primarily how we police the Kingston Metropolitan Region and how we police the rest of the country,” Anderson told The Gleaner at yesterday’s passing-out exercise of 332 constables from the National Police College of Jamaica at Twickenham Park, St Catherine.
Those numbers are expected to be a small step in Anderson’s mandate to move the complement of police personnel from 12,000 to 18,000 by 2024. That goal is dependent on how fast the JCF can enlist new recruits and reduce the annual attrition of about 500 officers.
He said the proposed changes are part of the overall transformation of the JCF.
“We have to look at the structure as it has been in existence since forever, and it is impacting how we police. In addition to that, we have to look at how housing developments have changed and how it has played a part in the needed change in strategies of the force,” Anderson said.
“Likewise, our population centres have grown, and we need to determine the best way to police them.”
According to Anderson, the plans are far advanced.
The police commissioner has been weighed down by an 11.5 per cent jump in murders, especially in the metro divisions of Kingston, St Andrew, and St Catherine. Homicides are up in seven of the eight metro divisions, with St Andrew North – a key hotspot on the police radar as a rash of gang conflicts has erupted.
SOE COMING?
It is unclear whether Anderson has recommended that a state of emergency be imposed in St Andrew North – the security measure upon which the Government has relied as its primary weapon to suppress violent crime – but his hint of an imminent crackdown suggests that that might be on the cards.
States of emergency have been implemented in nearly half the police divisions nationwide, with mixed results. Although murders are down in St James and Hanover, other divisions, like St Andrew South, are trending higher than last year’s figures.
“These have been conflicts that have been recurring on and off for many years in that area, and while I will not divulge plans for that specific area, rest assured, it is coming,” the commissioner said of St Andrew North.
He added that the problem was exacerbated because of resistance from residents to out gangsters.
“Even with the arrests, the public will have a role to play in those gang-bangers being prosecuted.
“But when we do the arrests, it is dependent on evidence, not on what you know, and so unless there is a scene that they [criminals] can be attached to and we receive some sort of evidence that we can associate them with the particular crimes evidentially, then we have to depend on people coming forward to give witness statements,” said Anderson.
Stung by criticism of the police’s lukewarm response to a spate of killings on or near the Red Hills Road corridor of St Andrew North, Anderson said that the JCF was seeking to target criminal organisations instead of merely apprehending a few individuals.
The St Andrew North Division has recorded 27 murders since the start of the year, almost four times last year’s body count for the corresponding period in 2019.
Shootings have also risen by 150 per cent from eight to 20.