Despite a recent flare-up of violence in Spanish Town, St Catherine Chamber of Commerce President Dennis Robotham is hopeful of an “uneventful” Christmas season with regards to crime in the parish.

“Crime has been trending down (over) a year, a year and a half, kudos to the St Catherine North police who have been doing a very good job,” Robotham told Observer Online in a recent interview.

“We have this upheaval ever so often because of the gang infighting… we’re going into the Christmas season and we really would like to see nothing of the sort happen at this particular point in time,” he said.

According to Robotham, business activity has been slow for several months and it is hoped that the holiday shopping season will give commerce a much-needed boost – control over the crime situation in the parish will be critical to accomplishing that.

“Now it is time for us to start to see some returns on new investments and (businesses) are stocking up. We really would like to see more calm or a sense of security that people can say ‘yes things are happening, the security forces are out in numbers,” Robotham said.

“And I think that the authorities, the police in particular, are trying to do their part to create that kind of atmosphere,” he continued. “And we hope that this will bring (crime) down to the point where we’ll see the season go through uneventful, and we’re hoping that that will happen.”