POLICE Commissioner Francis Forbes has asked the Montego Bay community to work with the police to make the western city a less attractive target for criminals.

The aim, he said, was to formulate and implement strategy that will drive home the point that those who engage in criminal activity in the area will be caught.

“I understand that you suffer, in some degree, from some people we call itinerant criminals — criminals who do not live in this parish but they visit because they see this parish as a soft target,” the police commissioner told community members recently. “And so one of the things that we have to do is a little target hardening. We need to send a message to the outside people that if you are coming to commit crime in St James, and in Montego Bay in particular, you do so at a very high risk of being caught.”

The city’s business leaders have long complained that the local police are understaffed and lack the resources needed to adequately maintain law and order. One area to which they have consistently pointed is the lawlessness on the streets.

Forbes himself raised the issue, contending that it is an indication that “everything isn’t right” on the law enforcement front.

“From where I sit I get complaints daily about the lawlessness that seems to exist on the roads here in Montego Bay. And when I meet with the traffic people we are going to have to come up with a strategy to bring back some law and order on the roads here in Montego Bay,” he vowed. “We have to bring back law and order on the streets.”