MONTEGO BAY, St James – Crime chief Mark Shields on Thursday conceded that the police and the business community had to do more to stem the crime plaguing several inner-city communities in St James, including Bottom Pen and Salt Spring.

“We need to be far more coordinated, and the business community has to help,” said Shields. “The problem people in Salt Spring face is more than a problem of policing. You have young men with high-powered weapons prepared to go out and kill each other,” said Shields, a deputy commissioner of police.

Shields was speaking at the end of a tour of the troubled communities of Bottom Pen and Salt Spring, in which five murders were committed between Monday and Thursday this week.

Shields’ call followed similar concerns by pastor of the Weslyan Holiness Church, Bernard Scarlett, who said earlier in the week that enough was not being done to stem crime in the community of Norwood, another tough inner-city area in St James.

The tour, which also involved Assistant Commissioner Glenmore Hinds, head of the Operation Kingfish task force, started at Bottom Pen, where a 19-year-old chef, Andre Turner, was killed Monday, and ended at the Salt Spring Health Centre, near Flower Hill in the parish.

It highlighted some of the problems faced by the police and the community in the fight against crime.

“Now you can understand,” Shields told reporters, as he lamented the poor infrastructure in the crime-riddled communities, which are not easily traversed on foot because of its rugged terrain and gullies.

Shields said the communities clearly lacked the necessary infrastructure to facilitate policing in the regular way, but insisted that the police had to coordinate their efforts using the meagre resources they had. “We need to do better,” he said.

Member of Parliament Dr Horace Chang, who was a part of the tour party, said there had been meetings in the communities and that he anticipated a lull in the violence.

“I think we have convinced them at this time that it is not worth it to continue with the shooting,” said Chang. He encouraged persons who were being sought by the police to “come in and let the law take its course”.