MONTEGO BAY, St James — Opposition spokesman on national security Senator Peter Bunting has lashed out at the Government for what he insists are policies that led to years of spiralling murder.

“They created the conditions why the murders spiked, they created the conditions why police couldn’t do their jobs,” he told a People’s National Party (PNP) town hall meeting in Montego Bay Wednesday evening.

Hammering the Government for protracted reliance on states of public emergency (SOEs) as a crime-fighting tool Bunting said, “There was no reduction in murder anywhere. In fact, there was a 25 per cent increase in the entire Jamaica, year after year.

“Yes, temporarily, in a particular area or community where there was a surge of security forces, you would find a decline — temporarily; but there was something called the balloon effect. So after states of emergency in St James then you found murders going up in Hanover, in Westmoreland, in Trelawny,” add Bunting, who was national security minister from 2012 to 2016 in a PNP Administration.

The Holness Administration first declared an SOE in St James in January 2018. The parishes of Hanover and Westmoreland were added in April 2019.

Several SOEs were declared in other sections of the country over the years even after the PNP refused to support the measure in Parliament. On May 16, 2025 the Supreme Court declared multiple states of public emergency (SOEs) imposed between January 2018 and February 2023 unconstitutional.

According to the judgment, the SOEs were not declared for purposes specified under Section 20 of the constitution; were not demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society; and breached the doctrine of separation of powers. The Government says it will appeal the decision.

The issue has been political fodder for the PNP as it campaigns in the run-up to general elections due by September.

On Wednesday, Bunting also told supporters that the Government’s failure to provide adequate resources to the police force had contributed to the murder tally.

“Vehicles are a force multiplier for the police and by year two there were so few operational vehicles in the police force that the murder rate skyrocketed; it continued for the next eight years,” he charged.

“It was so bad that Andrew Holness now has the record of being the prime minister who, in his two terms, more Jamaicans have been murdered than under any other two terms under any other prime minister,” Bunting added.

His comments about a lack of resources are at odds with a July 2024 announcement by Holness that $39 billion would be invested in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) over the next three years. The Government has pointed to the combination of the years of SOEs with investments in the JCF as the reason for the significant drop in murders now being seen.

Bunting acknowledged that there has been an improvement but he dismissed the notion that SOEs contributed to this.

“In the last two years, and in particular in the last five months, we have seen welcomed declines and that is because there have been no inefficient states of emergency used in Jamaica,” he insisted.

“The professional police officers can focus on what they know to do to bring down crime instead of manning these checkpoints which not catching anybody,” Bunting declared.

He took the opportunity to laud members of the JCF for the work being done to bring murders down in the country.

“We commend this commissioner and his team who have not wasted time talking about, ‘Give us state of emergency’ but focused on the spear-fishing approach which we have always advocated rather than the net fishing approach which only violates ordinary Jamaicans’ rights,” Bunting said.

He said a PNP Government would use a community-led approach to fight crime.

“Social investment; that is something that we advocated for when we were in office before. This Administration abandoned it completely. We will be returning to that,” he promised.

“We have seen the private sector [work] on their own, because the Government completely defunded social interventions and social investment. Project STAR has been a successful project but very limited in scale and scope. We will come back and put Government funding behind these things,” added Bunting.

He said as part of the PNP’s strategies to tackle crime there will be a focus on at-risk youth, housing, better road infrastructure, and better schools in certain communities.