Montego Bay — Security Minister Peter Phillips has promised that the coastlines along the western end of the island will come in for special focus in his thrust to curb the illicit narcotics trade which, he said, is the major source of violent criminal activity across the island.

“All the intelligence that we have points to the fact that the tap-root, the heart of the particular problem we have now is the problem of the illegal trade in narcotics. And I think in this regard you understand that this section of the country, western Jamaica, by virtue of its geography, its proximity to the Central American and South American coastlines is in a sense at the front line of the struggle where Jamaica on a whole is concerned,” he said Friday evening.

The minister was speaking in Montego Bay at a public forum on crime.

“And it is therefore something that we have to pay particular attention to, how we strengthen our capabilities here in the western end of the country. We need only to look at events in Westmoreland last year, the extent of the cocaine finds, the number of murders associated with those very finds, to understand the nature of the problem we face,” Phillips added.

According to the Westmoreland police, the parish’s murder figures doubled last year, partially as a result of the fallout of a massive drug find in the Belmont community. There were reports that some of the contraband had gone missing and several murders in the area shortly after the find plunged were attributed to the cocaine.

The other contributing factor to Westmoreland’s soaring murder rate last year, the police charged, was the high level of domestic violence.

That is another area on which the security ministry will be focusing.

Phillips charged, Friday evening, that he will seek to push through legislative amendments aimed at minimising the cases of domestic violence across the island.

“We have to find ways to address that particular problem because about 29 per cent of murders, in a sense, are within the household or some primary group unit,” he told reporters after the forum.

“So what we are doing is looking at the legislation to see ways in which amendments can help law enforcement to address this issue more directly. (And) to see if there is, for example, mandatory counselling in the event that there are repeated reports about particular individuals within particular households. We are exploring those kinds of things,” he added.

There has long been a casual response to conflicts within households or relationships, with neighbours and law enforcement officials ignoring the problem until it becomes fatal. According to Phillips, he is working to change this approach.

“We are looking at possible amendments in the domestic violence act, which will make it a requirement for an investigation of all reports that come to a police station of domestic violence,” he said in his address. “We need to ensure that there is protection for the women who are subject to this type of abuse because often a problem like that, left alone, becomes a murder statistic later on. We have to address this particular problem.”

He suggested counselling as one aspect of early intervention, and stressed the need for the strengthening of dispute resolution techniques as well as getting community level involvement.