SPANISH TOWN, St Catherine – One hundred and twenty additional cops have been deployed in the Spanish Town business district to ensure the protection of shoppers during the Christmas holidays.

The additional lawmen include 50 recruits from the nearby Police Academy in Twickenham Park, and 25 others who were engaged in other duties in the St Catherine North Division, headquartered here in Spanish Town.

“The entire business community and shopping plazas are now flooded with police, and is covered by

24-hour foot patrols, supplemented by mobile patrols. We also have a nine-man quick response motorcycle team to back up the foot patrols,” said Deputy Superintendent Merval Smith, crime chief for the St Catherine North Division.

Smith was confident that the foot patrols and mobile patrols would help to clamp down on pickpockets, con artists and extortionists who flock the town, especially during busy holidays.

The police, said Smith, have placed special attention on the traditional trouble spots such as the town centre, food market district, the bus terminus, Angels, Willodene and Greendale shopping plazas and Old Harbor Road business strip.

“We are promising Spanish Town a quiet Christmas because we are confident (that) we will be on top of the problem.

as we are in constant dialogue with the business community,” Smith said.

In the meantime, he said if off-duty cops were allowed to be employed in businessplaces incidents of crime would be reduced significantly, a suggestion which was being considered by the St Catherine North police.

“We are looking at how best we can allow off-duty police to work for pay in the business area, instead of hiring private security or community enforcers as in-house security,” Smith said, adding that he would like the concept to be implemented during the festive season.

“It would cut down on robberies, pilfering, shoplifting and possible extortion. The off-duty police would be a human camera in the businessplace, capturing and recording the activities of the criminal operating in there.

“This will reassure shoppers when they know that they are interfacing with the police and brings hands on closeness with the community, the gangster, the extortionist and criminals who usually operate during the Christmas season.”