Effective police strategies prevented more murders from occurring last year, the commissioner of police has said.

There were 1,207 recorded murders last year.

According to Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams, who was hosting journalists at his Old Hope Road headquarters in St Andrew last Friday, the strategic measures the police put in place earlier, started bearing fruit in the latter part of the year and as such the murder rate from October to December saw a decline.

“We focused our efforts on increasing the presence of the police in traditional and recently emerging hotspots, and we proactively engaged with community members to help maintain the peace in volatile areas,” Williams explained.

“We were unrelenting in our efforts to track down and bring to justice the heartless gunmen who have been wreaking havoc in our society,” he added.

To this end, Williams said that more than 700 murder suspects were arrested and charged last year, the first in over 50 years since that many murder suspects have been busted.

The commissioner also boasted of another achievement — a 55 per cent clear-up rate of murders for 2015. This, according to Williams, is the highest clear-up rate for murders in 12 years.

As it relates to the murder figures, the commissioner said that 70 per cent of those killings were gang-related. He said the gang feuds that drove up the crime were chiefly in the parishes of St James, Westmoreland, St Catherine and Clarendon.

“It was a disappointing reversal of the hard-won gains on 2014 when we recorded the lowest number of murders,” Williams added.

Police statistics showed that 997 murders were committed in 2014.

Williams said that the number of gangs in Jamaica fluctuates over the years between 250 and 300, adding that the police have been working with the communities in an effort to stem gang activities.