SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth – All agreed that there was no need to panic but as National Security Minister Peter Phillips himself conceded at a forum here recently “there are enough signs of problems” with crime in St Elizabeth to warrant, at the very least, serious concern.

While police figures indicate a general trend downwards of major crimes, the police chief in St Elizabeth, Superintendent Fitzgerald Barrett, is worried by a hike in domestic violence, which has pushed the parish murder toll to 34 so far this year, compared with 29 for all of last year.

At a recent meeting of community leaders and others at the latest in a series of the security ministry’s parish crime prevention and community safety forums, Phillips warned of the dangers posed by the merchants of guns and drugs.

“One of the disturbing signs that we have to watch is that sections of the St Elizabeth coast have become vulnerable to people who want to traffic drugs and guns,” Phillips said.

One response – the recent equipping of the Jamaica Defence Force with ocean-going patrol vessels – was an important ingredient in the battle to protect the coastline,” he said. Plans were also in place to provide the marine police “in the very near future” with other patrol vessels that could “operate closer to the coastline”.

But Phillips insisted that the bottom line in the police’s fight to maintain peace and good order in Jamaica’s traditional “bread basket” parish, would be the “cooperation of citizens”.

Said Phillips: “If you have information, pass it on (to the police), even if you don’t think it is important, because we cannot allow St Elizabeth to be defined as a centre of gun-running and drug-running.”

At the same time, the minister was critical of the sympathetic approach of many in the parish to ganja dealers. St Elizabeth has long been recognised as one of the lead sources of the illegal weed in Jamaica, and Phillips warned that while there was “a kind of benign view in terms of ganja”, intelligence suggested that “a significant number of guns imported into the country are imported by way of a ganja-for-guns trade”.

The gun is the weapon of choice for Jamaican criminals accounting for the majority of the more than 1,400 murders committed nationally thus far this year.

Acting Deputy Superintendent in charge of crime in the parish, Barry Daley, in an interview with the Observer also addressed the pernicious link between ganja and guns, claiming that ganja originating in St Elizabeth was ending up in Haiti and Nicaragua in Central America and was being traded “for guns rather than money”.

Daley said that while the actual acreage of ganja had dropped considerably over the years, the “quality” and “potency” of the illegal drug had increased with improved use of “technology”.

The good news, however, was that there was “not a lot” of evidence of the cocaine trade in the parish, said Daley. Barrett who also spoke at the recent forum in Santa Cruz, told the audience that most violent deaths in the parish so far this year had followed altercations between people who knew each other, which police classified as “domestic situations”.

He said while reported “serious” crimes, such as shootings, robberies, house and shop-breaking, rape and carnal abuse were down by about 9.7 per cent – from 185 to 167 – there had been a climb in murders for the period January 1 up to October 26 – 33 murders compared with 24 for the same period last year. Of the number this year, 12 had been committed with the use of a gun.

Even as Barrett delivered his report, word was spreading that a 63 year-old pensioner, Merita Dawkins of Orange Grove, Knoxwood, a small, quiet community on the road from Lacovia to Mountainside, had become the 34th murder victim in St Elizabeth since the start of the year. The available evidence appeared to suggest that Dawkins was killed by someone who knew her well.

Earlier, Phillips had argued that the worrying increase in domestic violence was evidence that many would have to “re-learn” behaviour.

“Collectively, as a community we are going to have to re-learn things that are basic to human existence. that diversity is a natural part of life, differences of views are more easily reconciled through dialogue rather than violence. It’s a process that has to start from home and in the schools but a process that has to involve deliberate strategies to strengthen the foundations of family life,” Phillips argued.

Parliamentary secretary in the national security ministry, Kern

Spencer, who aspires to replace agriculture minister Roger Clarke as the parliamentary representative for North East St Elizabeth, also highlighted the connection between crime and schooling.

He pointed to the long-standing and disturbing tendency among many farming families in St Elizabeth “to send children to school Monday to Thursday but keep them back at home to work on farms on a Friday…” Such practices, he suggested, directly affected the literacy rate in St Elizabeth.

The parish has one of the highest illiteracy rates nationwide. “Unfortunately it is from the ranks of illiterates and semi-literates that criminals are recruited.,” he warned.

– myersg@jamaicaobserver.com