While we applaud improved police efficiency in targeting criminals, we suspect increasing cooperation from the public contributed significantly to the dramatic decline in murders and other crimes in 2025.

Police statistics show Jamaica’s murder rate declined in excess of 40 per cent in the year just ended, compared to 2024.

According to Police Commissioner Dr Kevin Blake, up to December 20, Jamaica recorded 649 murders, 487 fewer than the similar period in 2024.

Dr Blake said the “substantial reduction” reflects “accumulative impacts of intelligence-led policing, focused operations against gangs, enhanced firearms interdiction, and the commitment of our officers…”

He also said progress did not come in “isolation” and is not only the result of “police action”. It is, he said, the “product of deliberate alignment, shared resolve, and sustained support across the State and wider society”.

Without doubt, as the commissioner has said, the Government deserves credit for providing increased budgetary and material support for the anti-crime fight.

Also, it seems to us there has been, in recent years, a growing cooperative public attitude towards the police, particularly in rural Jamaica. We believe that this improved relationship is partly an outgrowth of proactive police involvement in community activities, including social services, sports, and so forth.

We readily recall that police intervention in socio-economically depressed Salt Spring, St James, a few years ago inspired the private sector-led Project Star. That project is helping to nurture order and well-being in selected communities.

In Salt Spring, progressive, local-level police leadership had used a breakfast programme for schoolchildren as a centrepiece in building trust between residents and police.

One can’t miss if one starts with children.

And we are reminded of the Salt Spring initiative by the recent efforts of police to partner with others in hosting children’s treats and providing related assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa and in sync with the Yuletide.

Towards police-community partnership, we take heart from the testimony of the fast-rising commander of the St James police, Senior Superintendent Eron Samuels.

He spoke glowingly of the benefits flowing from police/community engagement in St James, which at year-end recorded 40 per cent fewer murders than in 2024.

Mr Samuels tells us that the police proactively set about preventing reprisal crimes, including “anniversary reprisals”, by doing “anniversary interventions”.

He told this newspaper that: “We know we had a murder last year, we went back and spoke to the community, spoke to the family of the victim, and we realise that we’re able to stave off a lot of incidents because of those interventions and interactions.”

Mr Samuels tells of a report from a resident that plans to exact vengeance in a specific instance were shelved after those involved were convinced by the police that “it wouldn’t make sense because it wouldn’t bring back the person”.

For us, such stories suggest empathetic thinking, strategising, and implementation of the highest order on the part of the St James police.

Twinned to continued strong, decisive police enforcement, such thoughtful, innovative community engagement by police at the national level will reap even greater rewards in 2026 and beyond, in our view.