Mandeville, Manchester – A five per cent increase in murders so far this year has been a damper. But National Security Minister Peter Phillips believes an anti-crime coalition of “decent law-abiding citizens”, allied to social intervention in economically depressed communities and an ongoing drive to modernise and transform the security forces will eventually lead to Jamaica’s decades-old crime problem being brought to heel.

Addressing a Manchester Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Manchester Golf Club recently, Phillips hailed the Chamber’s Closed to Crime Initiative, involving a partnership between local police and the business community, as an example of the road Jamaicans need to take.

Even as parliamentary elections approach, Phillips said, “decent, law-abiding Jamaicans should not divide on the issue of the centrality of the challenge of crime and violence”. There was a need, he said, “for all of the law-abiding to be on one side, isolating criminals and assisting in apprehending them, identifying them, convicting them and establishing Jamaica as a safe place for decent people to go about their livelihood.”

In a wide-ranging address focusing on the multi-faceted, yet integrated nature of the anti-crime fight, Phillips said the society would have to address the “core” social and economic issues that create the “environment for the recruitment of criminals”.

It was already proven that social intervention twinned to focused action by the security forces to remove hardened criminals in a number of economically depressed urban communities had led to dramatic reductions in crime in those areas, said Phillips.

“In one of those communities we moved from a situation of 30-odd murders in 2006 to zero in the current year (so far). In Matthews Lane (downtown Kingston) 40-odd murders (dropped) to nine in the current period (this year),” the minister said.

It was out of recognition that such community interventions should be expanded substantially that the Government recently proposed a new programme involving

“community safety officers” which would serve “to transform the role and operations of the District Constabulary”.

Said Phillips: “Fundamentally, we are moving towards a system of community safety officers that can operate on a genuinely voluntaristic effort; to help work alongside the police and establish a framework for order in communities. Criminality thrives in an atmosphere of disorder whether it be environmental breaches, traffic breaches, breaches to the transport rules or breaches to public order .”

While saying he would speak “more definitively” at a later date on “the organisational arrangements and the timetable for implementation” of the community safety officers programme, Phillips argued that there was “a role for a sufficiently redefined volunteer core to become involved in helping to protect communities along with the police.”

The minister seemed inclined to distance the proposed volunteer core from the much-maligned home guards of the 1970s, claiming it would be “something managed by the police without any possibility of intervention at any political level”.

Added Phillips: “What we seek to do is basically to create a coalition of the law-abiding to take back Jamaica fully, once again. But it is going to involve not just the police alone. If we are to succeed it is going to require the mobilisation of all persons of goodwill. So . some people will patrol with the police, many will just simply monitor the transport system, others will audit environmental breaches so that they will be rectified and penalties imposed where that is required, some can assist with praedial larceny efforts, some will be able to assist with the safe schools programme”.

His hope was that “as we establish the core of community safety officers that there will be many citizens from among your midst who will step forward in the near future”, Phillips told his audience comprising business and community leaders in Manchester.

A basic failing of Jamaica’s crime-fighting strategy in 45 years since Independence from Britain was that there had not been the investment in the anti-crime infrastructure to match what he described as “doubling” of criminal activity in every 10-year period.

The Government’s drive to “transform this particular paradigm” was at the heart of the “whole modernisation programme,” Phillips said.

He recalled that the constabulary’s establishment had now been increased to 12,000, though only 8,500 of those spaces were currently filled despite ongoing recruitment. Vetting was an important yet constraining element, since there was the need to ensure not only quantity but a high quality of recruits.

The minister reiterated the Government’s drive to apply national work standards to the police force, which will mean a restructuring of the “system of pay and reward” and a 40-hour work week.

“You cannot have people working, 70 (hours), upwards of 80 hours per week and expect real performance out of them,” said Phillips. “Not to mention the stress which often leads to destructive behaviour to others and to themselves .”

The national security minister said the Government’s commitment to modernisation was evident in the expenditure of US$2.5 million in just acquiring “more up-to-date intelligence surveillance equipment”; more than US$30 million in re-equipping the Jamaica Defence Force coast guard with three offshore patrol vessels, and US$8 million on 27 vessels for the marine police, making them now better equipped to police Jamaica’s coastal waters.

“. in a few weeks (they) will be operational out of Bowden, St Thomas and the Portland Bight area of Clarendon. to cover the coastline between Clarendon, Manchester, St Elizabeth.” he said.

Phillips recounted moves to improve forensics and communications with US$8 million spent on a fingerprint identification system and close to US$20 million in modernising a multi-dimensional communications system.

Regarding the will to combat the “central figures” in crime, he pointed to the work of Operation Kingfish and the police generally in netting high-profile criminals as evidence that there were no more “untouchables”.

The State’s success in combating the lucrative cocaine trade was proof of the dangers now faced by rich and powerful criminals. Phillips recalled that back in 2002/03 it was estimated that “Jamaica accounted for” 20 per cent of all cocaine transshipped to the USA compared to an estimated two per cent last year.

“It was once felt there were untouchables in the country, beyond the reach of the law . many of those are behind bars, some are elsewhere and some have not been apprehended but they are within the sights of the security forces,” he said. “The security forces know that there is no one of whatever status too high, or so protected, that they cannot be brought within the reach of the law.”