Hard policing alone will not bring peace – PNP
KINGSTON, Jamaica— Member of Parliament for Kingston Central, Ronald Thwaites, and the People’s National Party’s (PNP) candidate for the said constituency, Imani Duncan-Price are pushing back against the state of public emergency (SoE) in the constituency, arguing that peace and order will only be achieved through “genuine collective community effort” and not what they describe as hard policing.
The constituency along with Kingston Western and sections of St Andrew Southern were placed under SoE yesterday by Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
In a statement, Thwaites and Duncan-Price said that although SoEs have been declared in many places, “the sad reality is that the unrelenting murder rate confirms the urgent need for an effective national crime plan.”
“Without a crime plan, hard policing alone in Central Kingston will not bring peace,” Duncan-Price said.
“As Dr Peter Phillips and the PNP have repeatedly said, we need a real crime-fighting plan that incorporates urban renewal, jobs, land reform, improved educational opportunities and long-lasting social interventions etc,” she added.
They both pointed to initiatives undertaken across the constituency to that end, which they said have shown positive results.
Duncan-Price explained that she had organised with several local businesses and fundraised $1m for the Peace Management Initiative (PMI) to do intense work on the ground with all relevant groups from December – January after the last spike in murders in November 2019.
“The effort saw a reduction in the number of murders in the area. But such efforts need consistent funding from the government, not to be defunded as is happening now with PMI,” she noted.
“Towards that end, a multi-stakeholder meeting involving the police and Peace Management Initiative’s representatives, businesspersons, principals of schools in the constituency, chairpersons from Community Development Councils (CDCs), was held only last Thursday to address troubling concerns in some communities,” she added.
“In the meeting, the police indicated unequivocally that the current spike in murders was not political. We all agreed that all residents deserve real, sustained peace so the communities can thrive,” the candidate said.
Thwaites and Duncan Price expressed condolences to the families who have lost loved ones in the ongoing violence in the communities.
