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Social heads, residents of western Jamaican communities forced to flee as criminals take over
BY HORACE HINES , Observer West reporter
Thursday, July 09, 2009
MONTEGO BAY, St James -
Violent criminals have literally trumped law and order in Granville, Retirement, Pitfour and several other war-torn western Jamaican communities, forcing residents to run for their lives.
"Right now in the Retirement area, where over the last 21 days, three bodies have been picked up... some persons who bought land in Phase One of Retirement Housing Scheme are now moving out. Some civil servants who started to build their houses have left their houses, some completed and some partially completed. In the Fuller area people are also moving out; in Clark Land in Granville, four families had to run away from the area leaving four houses which are now taken over by criminals," said Michael Troupe, Councillor of the Granville Division.
According to Troupe, the violence in Granville, which has accounted for 18 per cent of the murders committed in St James, has also caused a colossal exodus of students from the Granville All-Age school.
"The student population which used to be 1300 at Granville All Age, has gone down to about 700 because people are moving out and taking their children with them," Troupe explained.
Government's attempts to enhance social activity through a multimillion-dollar drive geared at refurbishing the community centre have fallen flat as the residents dare not venture out at nights." People are afraid to go there even during the day," said Troupe.
Commercial activity is also suffering as business operators are compelled to pull down their shutters by 6:00 pm for fear of being robbed and killed.
"Everyone is involved now - automatically - as they now target communities and not persons anymore," said Troupe.
The spiralling crime rate is also taking a heavy toll on the resources at the Cornwall Regional Hospital, according to Everton Anderson, head of the public medical facility.
"It definitely is depleting our resources. We are seeing a large number of violence related injuries. Last year, we saw nearly 3000 cases of violence-related injuries in our Accident and Emergency department and it showed an increase over 2007 when we saw 2597. Now the problem continues to challenge the hospital," he said.
Dr Delroy Fray, the hospital's senior medical officer, added that during the nights, the operating threatre is bombarded by violence-related cases.
"After 10:00 pm the operating threatre is occupied by crime-related injuries. If we didn't have those we could sleep at nights. It depletes our operating theatre's supply so that the following day when the patient come now for ordinary operations such as hernia, breast cancers, colon cancers and so forth, it puts a dent in how speedily we can deal with these cases," he said.
Head of the St James Police Division crime department, Deputy Superintendent of Police Michael Garrick told the Observer West that the problem warranted intervention.
"We need to see a greater effort from the powers that be to abate the crime situation in Montego Bay and St James in general. One does not see any real special effort being made and as we have been saying for sometime now, sooner or later it is going to spill over into the tourism industry and it might be too late to take it back by then, so I think we have to be more proactive than reactive," he said.
In recent years, the multimillion-dollar international sweepstakes and lottery scam have been blamed for a significant number of the high murder rate in St James. However, Assistant Commissioner of Police in Charge of Area One Denver Frater says gang warfare is at the head of the diverse factors fuelling crime in the parish.
"There is a multitude of factors contributing to the crime situation in the parish. One of the problems is the inability of people to settle simple disputes in a civilised manner instead of resorting to violence, especially those residents in the challenging committees," he said.
"Gang-related violence is what is at the forefront of our problem, easy access to guns and one cannot rule out the crazy money flowing from the Lottery scam - large sums of money in the hands of irresponsible people who go out and arm themselves, we have killings, reprisal killings," he added, reiterating the need for law-abiding residents to report any suspicions of criminal activities to the police.
"We continue to implore law-abiding citizens to be vigilant, especially in challenging communities and to communicate their observations to the police. We have trusted conduits by which these can be communicated.
I speak to Crime Stop which can be reached by dialling 311, Operation Kingfish, 811 and also the Anti-Corrupt hotline, 1-800-CORRUPT," he said.
Commander of the St James Police Division, Superintendent Maurice Robinson, who lamented the severe shortage of manpower - by as much as 30 per cent of the ideal number - also expressed the need for the relevant authorities to intensify efforts to reduce joblessness among the residents living in inner-city communities.
Last year the St James Police Division recorded an alarming 217 homicides. So far this year the murder tally stands at 111.
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