People’s National Party (PNP) spokesman on national security, Senator Peter Bunting, has poured cold water on the crime statistics released last week by Commissioner of Police Major General Antony Anderson, which showed that up to October 3, murders were down 12 per cent when compared to the corresponding period in 2022.

The 12 per cent reduction announced by the country’s top cop translated to 141 fewer murders up to that time. Overall, Anderson reported a 13 per cent decline in all major crimes.

During a PNP press conference Tuesday morning, Bunting stated that the Jamaicans have “reacted with confusion and disbelief” to the commissioner’s announcement. He said this was so as “the daily media stories reporting murders, double murders, triple and quadruple murders and shootings, don’t seem to accord with the statements made by the commissioner of police and by the high command”.

Bunting pointed out that October is currently averaging about five murders per day and “most Jamaicans woke up this [Tuesday] morning to the shocking news of another quadruple murder in Trelawny last [Monday] night”.

The former security minister acknowledged that a week on from the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) Quarterly Media Briefing, murders were down 11 per cent. He also noted that up to October 7, the JCF was reporting that 1,070 murders had been committed in Jamaica. However, Bunting said there was a caveat.

“This is indeed an 11 per cent reduction when compared to the same period last year. However, what the JCF did not highlight is that last year, the comparative year, had the second-highest number of murders since 2010 when there was that operation in Tivoli Gardens related to the extradition of Christopher Coke.

“So the 2023 statistics can be down, relative to a record bad year in 2022 but still represents an objectively horrific situation currently,” Bunting remarked.

He repeated what he said at the PNP’s annual conference in September that at the current rate, the country is on track to record 1,400 murders by the end of the year.

And, he ripped into Prime Minister Andrew Holness, charging that he has failed to keep Jamaicans safe over the nearly eight years of his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Administration. Bunting highlighted that during the last PNP Administration between 2012 and 2016, when he was minister of national security, murders averaged 1,129 per year. This, he said, was the lowest average of any government in the last 20 years. Bunting also noted that the average under the current JLP Government over eight years is 1,416 murders per year since 2016.

“On average, 287 more Jamaicans are murdered each year under this JLP Administration than during the previous PNP Administration, a whopping 25 per cent increase in the annual murder rate between the two periods.

“That means 2,300 more Jamaicans have been murdered over the last eight years than if this JLP Administration had just maintained the rates that obtained under the previous administration,” said Bunting.

He insisted that he took “no joy in pointing this out to the public” and pointed to what he described as “vested interests, cronies and apologists” in the Holness Administration which he said “would prefer if we were silent on this issue”.

“However, a society cannot talk about good governance, about accountability, yet hide Andrew Holness’ abject failure at fighting violent crime,” Bunting concluded.