Hope in that South St Andrew computer centre

A report on page three of the Daily Observer’s Saturday edition about a new computer centre in South St Andrew should be of interest to all.

To summarise, a computer centre has been set up at the Admiral Town Police Station to serve communities in the immediate environs, including Jones Town and neighbouring Torrington Park, where rival factions have been at odds for some time.

We are told that the centre is the 20th to be established in ‘war-torn communities’ through the Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA) and the Ministry of Health's Learning Networks programme.

Dr Omar Davies, who is the member of parliament for South St Andrew, is quoted as saying that the computer centre “must be a common meeting place” for people from the various communities.

He reportedly identified the potential of the centre to strengthen peace as being among the reasons he was particularly interested in the project.

For our part, we applaud social interventions such as this one which allows well-intentioned young people in socially and economically depressed communities to gain access to crucial tools of information technology within walking distance of their homes. Many among the socalled “haves” in our society are unaware of the difference such a project can make in terms of providing hope for the economically and socially deprived.

Some in communities such as Jones Town and Torrington Park have turned to crime and the criminal dons precisely because of a sense that their needs have been ignored and that they have been abandoned by the society and the State.

Also, we have no doubt that Dr Davies is correct when he suggests that the computer centre can help to foster community peace by being a meeting ground for those with differences.

The truth though is that the hardcore criminals, carrying guns and other weapons of terror, who are at the heart of gang violence in communities such as Jones Town and Torrington Park, are not likely to go to the police station to use computer facilities.

Indeed, it is precisely because of the threat posed by those terrorists that the centre is being located in the police station in the first place.

The situation reminds us that ultimately Jamaica’s crime plague can only be contained by a partnership of social intervention and strong policing.

A major problem for the State is that across the length and breadth of the country the credibility of the police force is probably as low as it has ever been because of the numerous instances of corruption and wrongdoing now being uncovered.

This newspaper is encouraged, though, by the evidence emanating from the force itself of a growing determination to clean up internal corruption and malfeasance. We believe that the fruit of that determination can be a strong, clean, united Jamaica Constabulary uncompromisingly committed to fighting crime.

As we have said in this space many times previously, such a force — properly resourced and supported by the society — can, in partnership with a comprehensive programme of social intervention, bring the criminals and terrorists to heel.

  0 comments

  1 comments

  2 comments

  3 comments

  1 comments

  1 comments

  14 comments

  7 comments

  6 comments

  1 comments

  4 comments

  10 comments

  12 comments

  3 comments

  12 comments

  11 comments

  6 comments

  4 comments

  16 comments

  16 comments