MONTEGO BAY, St James — Prime Minister Andrew Holness says that following the initial phase of the state of public emergency, the security forces will be going after individuals who are facilitating crimes in St James.

“The second phase of the state of emergency will see transitioning to deal with people who facilitate the street-level crime,” Holness stated.

“If we are going to really bring this crime problem to heel, then we must deal with the hierarchy of criminality.”

The state of public emergency was declared in St James on January 18 in a bid to tackle the spate of murders and other crimes in the parish. On Tuesday, members of the House of Representatives voted to extend the measure by three months, until May 2.

Holness noted that the focus during the initial phase of the state of emergency has been to combat “street-level crimes”.

“In the first phase, we are concentrating on dealing with the street-level crimes that you face on a daily basis. Any of you here could be driving on any road and be a victim of an unintended crime, so immediately we want to control the street-level criminals. But the street-level criminal is just the symptom of a deeper problem,” he noted.

“There is literally an ecosystem of criminality that is growing in St James. It is driven by lotto scamming and other such economic crimes. It is facilitated by formal systems, our formal banking system, our formal telecommunications system, our formal transportation system, our medical system. Many of the crimes that we see committed are not all just domestic. Much of it [stems from] who stole whose money, and for the crime to be profitable you have to be able to get the cash that represents the profit, which means that somebody has to either change your US dollars, lodge the money for you, or facilitate some illegal transaction. We can’t deal only with the street criminal and not deal with the facilitators.”

The prime minister was addressing the St James Chapter of the Lay Magistrates’ Association awards banquet last Saturday night at the Hilton Rose Hall Hotel, hours after witnessing first-hand a Kalashnikov rifle that was seized by the security forces in Salt Spring, one of the communities he toured after meeting stakeholders in the parish during the morning hours.

He pointed to the likelihood of the weapon coming through the ports with the collusion of a government employee.

“That AK-47 was not made in Jamaica. It is highly likely that it came in through our ports, which means that either an officer of the government was neglectful in detecting, turned a blind eye, or actively facilitated its way through our ports. It couldn’t have just arrived here,” Holness remarked.

He pointed out that residents are ambivalent about an illegal gasoline retail operation which flourished for decades in Freeport, not too far from the police station, but which was recently dismantled by the security forces since the declaration of the state of emergency.