FORBES... we have 400 and odd less major crimes, but homicides are up by one per cent

POLICE Commissioner Francis Forbes yesterday admitted that his plan to reduce murders by 20 per cent this year had failed, but held out a possibility for an overall reduction in crimes by the end of the year, given, he said, that there was a significant drop in major crimes.

"The 20 per cent proposed reduction target ...is right now out of the window," Forbes told journalists after a Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica leadership programme at the East Queen Street Baptist Church Hall in downtown Kingston.

"We have 400 and odd less major crimes, but homicides are up by one per cent," the commissioner said.

Police statistics show that murders, year-to-date, total 570 compared to the same period last year when 566 murders were reported. Of this year's total, police have categorised 134 as domestic killings, compared to 168 last year.

According to the police data, major crimes reported since the start of this year total 4,111, compared to 4,616 for the same period last year, a drop of 11 per cent.

Forbes, though, was obviously unhappy with that performance, saying that the constabulary had to return to the drawing board to devise strategies to further cut violence.

"We had hoped that by now we would be at least at a 15 per cent decrease, and we did get very close to that," Forbes said. "At one stage we were way up there, but as time went by the domestic type murders, the conflict type murders, the reprisals have grown, and certainly the outbreak from the elections has not ceased."

Giving examples of incidents that have increased the number of murders, Forbes pointed to the outbreak of violence in Mountain View last month which led to more than 16 people being shot dead and dozens injured. He said West Kingston and Arnett Gardens were being closely watched as tensions associated with the gun slaying of former Arnett Gardens don, William "Willie Haggart" Moore, two years ago have not yet been settled.

"So that has kept us occupied in a significant way and we can't really be satisfied with things at this time," said Forbes who had last year promised a 25 to 35 per cent reduction in homicides by the end of this year.

On December 1 last year, the Government, in response to deepening concerns about crime in the island, launched a major anti-crime initiative in the Kingston and St Catherine communities most affected by violence. Their order to the police was to stay in those communities for as long as it took to rid the streets of criminals and restore law and order.

Although the 1,045 murders here last year represented a near eight per cent reduction, Jamaica still had one of the world's highest murder rates at just over 40 per 100,000 population.

While the mandate given to the security forces in the latest initiative was to contain crime and take apart drug gangs which operate in the island's inner-city communities, a major portion of their instruction was to build trust in the communities where the police are often perceived as the enemy. Police homicides hover at about 140 a year and human rights groups often accuse the constabulary of extra-judicial killings.

At the start of the programme, the police and soldiers involved themselves in cleaning up communities, socialising with residents for whom they also arranged free medical services. The plan was for the security forces to work with residents to transform the economic and social environments of the communities. Help in this effort would be given by key support agencies such as non-governmental organisations, the private sector and government agencies mandated to provide social services.

But yesterday, Forbes said that that arm of the programme had hit a few bumps.

"Not everything is going as planned," he said, adding that not all the agencies that had promised to come on board had done so.

Despite this setback, Forbes remained optimistic that the island could see an overall reduction in crimes this year. "I must confess that it is still possible to reach the overall reduction of crime," he said. "I look at the overall crime, but high on my agenda is homicide, and when homicide is not down, I am not comfortable at all."

He blamed some of the killings on small disputes that could have been settled without violence, noting that this was happening despite the conflict resolution efforts of the police and other state agencies. "...people seem to really have a low threshold when it comes to disputes," the police chief lamented.

He said that although there has been a "small increase" in crime, the police have made a dent in the drug trade "that has helped to keep a cap on some of the potential crimes that could have been committed".

He named the Kingston metropolitan area as one of the constabulary's major points of concern given that it contributes between 65 and 70 per cent of the major crimes annually.

"But I would say St Catherine North, to include Spanish Town and its environs, is very high on our agenda," Forbes added. "We are still concerned with August Town, Mountain View and some areas of Kingston Central and we are not satisfied with what is happening in Arnett Gardens."

In relation to Mountain View, Forbes said: "We are desperately trying to retrieve some of the guns from those communities. We realise that no matter how long peace lasts in these communities, guns are still easily at hand and at the slightest provocation something big could happen."

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