KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is urging businesses and individuals who are victims of extortion, or who have been approached by extortionists, to make a report to the police.

Detective Sergeant Grace Frazer-Lawrence, sub-officer at the National Strategic Anti-Gang Division in the JCF, said it is important that people not give in to extortionists.

“I know of the fear factor, and I know that you are intimidated; however, when you work with the police, when you report the crime to us and we start to do our investigation, we can honestly sit here and tell you that things will happen, persons will be prosecuted. We have the judiciary system that we work well with, and we will ensure that things are done,” Frazer-Lawrence said.

She was speaking on the Force4Good Podcast recently, which is an initiative of the JCF aimed at shining light at issues affecting Jamaicans.

Frazer-Lawrence noted that in Jamaica, extortion is quite prevalent in the transport industry.

“Persons in the transport industry are targeted to pay repeatedly, to pay what they call a fee or they ‘tax them’ to pay monies to operate in the space. And it’s not just for persons in the transport industry; it’s also persons that operate and just have small businesses. But we are asking persons to come, because we do have measures in place that we can actually offer to them or we can also say to them, okay, this is what is going to happen, so that we can help to prevent them getting harmed,” she said.

Frazer-Lawrence also informed that extortion could take different forms, and that businesspersons need to be aware of the subtle ways that extortionists do things.

“They may come around and ask you about protection, that I can protect you from certain criminal elements, when they are indeed the said criminal elements that they’re trying to offer protection from. We also have where they come and they issue a letter to pay this amount of money, or you need to relocate, or they make some kind of threats to say that you will be harmed. Of course, persons get phone calls, they also get text messages and WhatsApp messages too, and we have some recently where persons come to report from business organisations that they have gotten threats via WhatsApp messages to say that you will be killed if you don’t pay this amount of money for operating in this space,” she said.

For her part, station manager at the National Strategic Anti-Gang Division, Detective Inspector Paulette Wynter-Crossfield, informed that money earned from extortion can run into billions of dollars annually.

She noted that while extortion is present across the island, it is bigger in areas such as Spanish Town, St Catherine. She further informed that efforts have been made in the past to reduce the incidents of extortion.

“We had started some time ago to try to regularise the persons who were considered to be backup men within the park, where they would be loading the taxis or the bus and all of that. We tried to regularise it; it really fell through. So… a lot of stakeholders have to be on board with this, buy into this, in order for it to really work,” Wynter-Crossfield said.

— JIS