LUCEA, Hanover — A fight for turf in the small town of Green Island has contributed to 77 per cent of the murders in Hanover so far this year, the police have reported.

The killings, in that 25.5 square kilometer section of the parish, coupled with those in Montpelier which cops have labelled as another crime hotspot, are in stark contrast to the rest of Hanover. Overall, murders are down by 46 per cent when compared to last year’s figures.

Green Island is in western Hanover and Montpelier is in Sandy Bay, in the east of the parish, and the police are concerned.

“Since the start of the year we have had a total of 13 murders reported to date, and of those 13, ten were committed in Green Island,” crime officer for Hanover, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Carl Brown told the Hanover Municipal Corporation’s monthly meeting on Thursday.

A breakdown of police statistics has shown that four murders were committed in January, two in February, two in March, and five since the start of April. There were 19 for the same period last year.

“Up to March they were sporadic, in different areas, and we did not pick up a pattern where these murders are concerned,” DSP Brown said of the Green Island killings.

That changed with the most recent incident last Saturday night. Gunmen drove through Green Island and opened fire, killing one man and injuring two others.

Brown said the incident was a reprisal for the killing of a violence producer in the town, Wade Phillips.

Phillips, who had been off the police radar for some time, was killed in Negril last Thursday.

The senior cop argued that, while the police knew that a reprisal would follow, they were unable to identify the targets ahead of time.

He told the municipal corporation that Phillips was at war with the infamous Adrian “Turbo” Clarke who, although incarcerated, still has his “tentacles” in Green Island.

The alleged leader of the Hanover-based Hundred Rounds Gang, Clarke was sentenced to 20 years in prison when he appeared in the Western Regional Gun Court in 2017.

Brown said curfews, such as the one that began at 6:00 pm on April 8 and ended at 6:00 pm on April 10, are among the measures being used to address the bloodletting.

“We intend to use another until we can get a handle on it,” he said.

He stressed that attention will also be given to Montpelier, which he described as “a sitting time bomb as well”.

The crime officer said the issue there has to do with two sets of people who have been fighting since last year.

While the police were able to arrest eight from both sides, mid-year they went to court and the matter was discontinued after they promised to maintain the peace. However, the truce did not last long.

A man was killed last Monday, and the police say they are expecting a reprisal.

“But we have put things in place to mitigate, if not cancel altogether, what they have planned,” assured Brown.

He said the police will continue to utilise resources at hand to secure the parish.

“The division is like every other police area where we have shortages. But we have the external resources to call on — the JDF (Jamaica Defence Force) [and] our special ops (area operations). For the time being, they are assisting us greatly in Green Island and Montpelier,” he said.

“We will continue to use what is available to us as well as the curfew to see how best we can cauterise what is happening until we can ensure that the citizens of Hanover feel safe again,” added Brown.