MONTEGO BAY, St James — The police in St James are pushing to crack down on violence producers as part of its Christmas security initiative.

The police chief for the parish, Superintendent Eron Samuels, outlined the plan while speaking at the monthly council meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation last Thursday.

“We started a major operation this morning [last Thursday] dubbed Operation Reassure. Basically we are headed into the Yuletide season and wanted to ensure that we impact all the hot spots within the division, looking for wanted persons, persons of interest, and searching for weapons,” he said about the initiative.

Following the announcement, he told the Jamaica Observer that the initiative is to ensure residents and visitors feel safe as they go about their business.

“The operation today seeks to just reassure citizens that we are there, heading into our Yuletide season operations where we are seeking to cover all our bases during this time,” he said.

“We are ensuring that the space is safe for persons who are shopping, persons who are moving about. We have quite a few persons coming back for the holidays and we want to ensure that they have a safe environment,” he continued.

The superintendent also highlighted that the police would be looking at how best to treat with the expected uptick in entertainment events that are expected during the period.

“We will, as best as possible, try to facilitate entertainment activities that are put forward, noting that we will look at the security concerns around these events and also, as best as possible, our ability to police these events,” he explained.

“Going forward, we are just asking persons just to work with the police as we continue to try to ensure that we create a safer environment for everyone,” he added.

He also pointed out that there should be a boost in terms of the number of traffic police to help deal with the flow of motor vehicles that has already been impacting the city.

“Our deployment has increased in terms of general road policing within the township, within the space. For the traffic, we are awaiting an additional influx of traffic officers from high command that would help to augment, but nonetheless, we are trying to have a contingency plan to ensure that we have a smooth flow of traffic throughout the Yuletide season,” he said.

“Our main aim is to ensure that persons can move around [and] enjoy themselves whilst being safe. So we will be out in our numbers right into the new year, ensuring that the streets of St James are safe,” he declared.

In the meantime, he also highlighted some gains that have been made by the security forces in relation to a reduction in murders in the parish.

“Our operational activities so far this year and our general policing have yielded some amount of results. We are now at 34 per cent less murders than last year, which amounts to 63 less murders across the parish of St James,” he told the monthly council meeting.

However, he was quick to point out that they are looking to continue the trend into the new year and beyond, with the hope of removing an unwanted title from the parish.

“We are still not where we want to be; we want to see if we can, in 2025, have a sub-100 year, and that’s the aim of the division,” he said.

“We want to ensure that we bring St James out of the title of most violent parish and see if we can ensure that we see some gains and reduce all violent crimes that we have in St James,” Samuels said.