‘Granville Division is wild, wild west’
MONTEGO BAY, St James — The absence of a physical police station has emboldened criminals who have now transformed Granville into a place where residents are crippled with fear, says councillor for the area, Michael Troupe.
“We lost the Granville Police Station [in a fire] about two months ago and… I just realised that the station is not only a building, but it seems like by the looks of it that the criminal elements within the division are afraid of the building itself. Right now, as I speak, the Granville Division is the wild, wild west. I have never seen it like this before,” he told Thursday’s monthly meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation.
Police officers from Granville are now housed at the police post within the gated Meadows of Irwin community, about a 10-minute drive away.
While acknowledging that there is some level of police presence in the under siege community, Troupe is asking for more to be done.
“There are foot patrol [officers] in the Granville Division, but I [believe] that we need more than just foot patrol. I want to see searching [of homes and individuals take place]; I want to see them coordinate an area and do proper searching,” he pleaded. “Granville is on edge right now and we are asking for intervention.”
Still reeling from last Saturday’s drive-by shooting that claimed the life of 28-year-old Ian Elliott, the elected official told his peers he has never seen things this worse in his division.
“I have never seen, in my 23 years as councillor, that one [mother] can lose two sons in the space of [four] weeks, about half a mile [apart]. So far, [in] less than two months, we have lost six [individuals] within the Granville Proper [area],” he said. “The entire division now is on edge. The other day I called for a ZOSO (zone of special operation) but any tool they have, whether ZOSO or whatever, to calm the minds of the residents, that is what we need in Granville right now. There are some streets in Granville that they cannot walk past, they [must] drive. People are afraid to walk in Granville now to go to other areas in the division.”
