IF you ask most residents of Annotto Bay, they will tell you that crime is on the rise, inched upwards by a mixture of high unemployment levels and drugs.

"Unemployment, drug abuse, crime and larceny, drainage problem, and lack of public toilet facilities. These were the issues identified as having the biggest effect on the community," said Karl Fisher, a retired businessman who lives in the town.

The Annotto Bay courthouse, where court officials compete with licenced and unlicensed taxi operators for parking space. (Photos: Karl McLarty)

These were the major concerns highlighted at the February 3 meeting of the Annotto Bay Health and Environmental Association, Fisher said.
Community members placed the blame for what they see as spiralling crime levels on the recent removal of the Area Two Police headquarters from Annotto Bay to Tower Isle, near Ocho Rios.

The police disagree. There is no flare-up of criminal activity, cops said. Residents are simply in a panic because of the July 3, 2004 murder of Winston and Aileen Chin. The middle-aged duo were shot and killed as they went to their home in Bellefield, near Highgate in the parish, after closing the wholesale business they operated in Annotto Bay.

And while Inspector Glen Boyd, the officer in charge of the Annotto Bay Police Station, took note of community members' concerns, he argued that the statistics cannot substantiate their claim that crime is on the rise in the town.

"Three robberies have been reported to us since the start of the year. They have been cleared up," he said, adding that in one case the robbery attempt was unsuccessful.
But while Boyd denied knowledge of flourishing "crack houses" in the town, residents had no qualms about pointing them out.

To people who may not know what lies beneath the town's seamier underbelly, these establishments may simply appear to be small-scale business places, they said. But some community members insisted that these locations, and what is peddled inside them, is largely to blame for the increase in drug abuse within the town.

Residents maintain that some of the vagrants roaming the town's streets are really crack addicts and not mentally ill, as is the popular perception. And while lawmen have dismissed allegations of drug-infested dens, Boyd pointed to what he saw as the number one problem in fighting crime in Annotto Bay.

"Our biggest problem here is the fact that we only have one vehicle, which has been made up from the cannibalisation of two other vehicles," the cop said. "That is the vehicle which has to do everything. It has to respond to calls, patrol, take prisoners to Port Maria for bail, and it stands to reason that we can only be in one place at a time."
They have increased foot patrols to make up for the lack of vehicular mobility.

The recently-formed Annotto Bay Business Association has promised to help the lawmen.

"Since the police have only one vehicle and the policing district is so large, we agreed that in cases where it is needed, we will provide bus fare to police personnel who have to respond to calls, when the vehicle is out," said the association's Pam Lowe-Chang.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World