The troubled Grants Pen community in upper St Andrew where the guns have again begun to bark, was urged yesterday by peace marchers to give up its gunmen and criminals or remain in terror and fright.

The march, led by Deputy Commissioner Mark Shields, the British policeman hired to help curb crime in Jamaica, came a week after the killing of a seven-year-old girl, apparently caught by a stray bullet in a crossfire between warring gangs, in a section of Grants Pen Avenue called ‘Top Gully’.

“You all have an individual responsibility, however terrified or frightened you may be of these gunmen. You will remain so if you don’t help us to get the guns and the criminals off the streets,” Shields declared to residents from a police bullhorn as the tour reached Grants Pen Avenue, where little Shaneal Raffington met her untimely death last Sunday.

“These men cannot rest until we find them and we will lock them up with the right evidence,” Shields vowed.

More than a dozen persons have been killed since violence erupted between a gang from Top Gully and another from an area known as ‘Bottom Gully’. Residents say men from Bottom Gully invaded their community and opened their guns, killing Shaneal.

The feud has been ongoing since a dispute over a gun which was taken from a teenaged boy by men from Bottom Gully, reports said.

The violence then took on a political tone earlier this year after persons painted pro-PNP slogans on walls in Top Gully, a predominantly JLP area. Since then tension has mounted in the community and gunfire rang out in the area nightly.

But Member of Parliament for the North East St Andrew constituency, Delroy Chuck, said the violence was not politically related.

“I believe some persons are trying to make it into a political conflict, but it is not. These were boys who used to get along together,” Chuck said. “Badmindedness and conflict cannot help the community.”

Some residents of Top Gully say the recent round of gun violence has escalated since the arrival of a deportee from the United States last month.

“He is one of the main trouble makers. He is giving the youths ideas and trying to fight against any effort for peace. We hope the police hold him and kill him,” one woman said as she clutched an infant to her hip.

The violence seemed to have an effect on some residents who openly cheered when Superintendent Assan Thompson, head of the St Andrew North Police division, said the police would be targeting the troublemakers relentlessly.

“We sick and tired of it. The children are afraid to walk on the streets and them run up and down and bawl when shot a fire,” one woman from Top Gully said. “The area leaders and councillor know who they are and it hurt to know that them nah war fi nothing”.

People’s National Party caretaker, Leonard Green, also condemned the violence in the area. “We do not condone that type of activity and we don’t have to live like that,” Green said. “We condemn the killers of that innocent little child.”

DCP Shields, the political representatives, Bishop Herro Blair, head of the Peace Management Initiative (PMI), members of the Grants Pen Ministers Fraternal and Morin Seymour of the Kingston Restoration Company, were at the head of the march through the Morgans Lane, Grants Pen Avenue, Grants Pen Lane and Shortwood Lane areas.

At Grants Pen Avenue, the peace party stopped at the spot where little Shaneal was murdered and prayed with her grandparents, Adolphus and Clementina Fraser. The elderly couple was clearly devastated by their loss.

“It is very hard for us to take,” Adolphus Fraser told the Sunday Observer. “Right now we don’t have the money to put away her body.”

The peace march followed two days of meetings between the police, the Ministers Fraternal and representatives of the Boston police department at the Jamaica Conference Centre. Arising out of the meeting, the police report that they have formulated a seven-point plan to tackle the issue of crime in Grants Pen.

The points of the plan are:

. Reinforcement of the community policing strategy, with emphasis on training all officers in the police division in community policing;

. Training of officers in modern policing concepts including forensic, investigative and crime scene management techniques;

. Continued collaboration with various agencies, including the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM), USAID, political representatives and The Stella Maris Foundation;

. The de-stigmatisation of Grants Pen as a violence-prone area;

. Continued police activity to displace criminals from the area

. Implementation of a programme to break the back of the informer culture; and

. Shifting of the power base from the don to law-abiding residents.