There are not many countries in the world that experience a true “wow“ moment. In Jamaica, thanks to our sportsmen and sportswomen, we have experienced wow moments several times. When I say wow I mean that it is a moment that stands in its own time; an accomplishment that is truly incredible, that few other countries in the world could ever do, and that we didn’t expect to see in our lifetime. That is what I call a wow moment.

The 2008 Olympic Games was a wow moment for me because I had never experienced Jamaican athletes performing at the level that Usain Bolt delivered at the championship. So even though himself and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce delivered time and time again after 2008, I came to expect it, and I was still grateful for it, but it wasn’t a wow.

When Jamaica’s Combined Martial Arts team beat the Japanese in team fighting decades ago it was a wow moment for Jamaica. We beat China, Vietnam, and The Philippines after that, but it never had the wow effect because people came to expect it.

The reduction in crime last year was a wow moment for me. I had been dreaming of this whilst I was fighting for decades to see a year like that.

There is rarely any time that you get me to say “Wow!” regarding the same accomplishment being repeated year after year. That is until March 31 this year when I saw the homicide rate drop a further 30 per cent, from a year that also experienced a record fall in homicides. I honestly never thought I would live to see something like this. It’s like killing, particularly killing by gangs, is no longer an expectation.

Let me put this in perspective. I am writing this article on Friday afternoon. My editor is probably calling me choice names. I have not slept since waking up on Thursday morning because my operations superintendent, Troyville Haughton, conducted an operation involving well over 100 policemen and women in a volatile community because he believes that it is possible that a murder may take place there, so he is making sure it’s not going to happen.

This is preventative policing at a new level that we simply could not have accommodated before. Why? Because we were always fighting to prevent carnage, to minimise murders so to speak. This has been our reality for decades. Now I live in a time when we conduct massive operations to prevent one single murder. Wow!

At this point in time, a quarter into the year, my division (St Catherine South) has had five murders. They are primarily domestic in nature and they are tragic, but I can recall a first quarter many years ago when I had 40 of those tragedies.

This reduction is not in any way unique to St Catherine South. The St Catherine North police division, home of the notorious killing fields of Spanish Town, has had seven murders, but it’s a 46 per cent improvement over last year. I have seen quarters in that division that neared 50 in its not-too-distant past.

The Area 5 police division — which comprises killing zones like Spanish Town, Central Village, Grant’s Pen, Common, and 100 Lane — for the first time has less murders than any other police division in Jamaica.

I have been studying and fighting crime for decades in Area 5 and cannot remember a single time that we beat Area 2 with reductions in homicide, much less having less than them. Wow! This puts Assistant Commissioner of Police Howard Chambers in a zone that no one has ever existed before and, on the flip side, puts him under incredible pressure to maintain and better this. Yuh see why mi tired now?

This pressure is not isolated to him. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Hopton Nicholson is also under pressure as the commanding officer of the St Catherine North Division with his record-breaking reductions.

Operation Superintendent Camendo Thoms, the CIB crime chief and Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Homer Morgan are also expected to maintain these homicide figures and continue to break records in solving murders.

Murder clear-up is currently at a higher rate in the St Catherine North Division than is being experienced in Queens, New York.

Let me share something with you that you probably don’t realise. The St Andrew North Division, which is, of course, in Area 5, has the same homicide rate as the safest police division in Sweden. I might add that Sweden is considered one of the safest countries in the world.

In fact, there is no police division on planet Earth that has a lower first quarter homicide rate than St Andrew North because as of the first quarter of 2026 they have zero homicides to report. SSP Randy Sweeney has a lot to be proud of. He also has a mountain to climb to maintain this.

SSP Leighton Grey, who is in charge of the St Catherine South Police Division, told me in an interview the other day that he will not even accept one murder for the rest of the year because murders must not be tolerated. Normally, I would say he is not being realistic, but based on what I am seeing, anything is possible.

Criminologists and criminal justice professionals will, for many years, give various reasons how this has been accomplished. There are many factors involved, but I can’t help but think that the level of micromanagement that I am seeing by commanding officers and operations officers has a role in these reductions.

There is also that benefit that is achieved when you give young men and women an opportunity to command, rather than waiting on their energy to dissipate with age. This has been a new thrust by Commissioner of Police Dr Kevin Blake and his management team. The men and women leading the charge, or to a large degree, are still young men and women.

ACP Howard Chambers, Superintendent Randy Sweeney, Superintendent Camendo Thoms, and Superintendent Carey Duncan were running through zinc fences barely a few years ago with me. In fact, if I was to pick a high-risk entry team other than my team that I serve on, I would pick Superintendent Thoms, Superintendent Sweeney, Superintendent Duncan, Superintendent Marvin Brooks, and Superintendent Linroy Edwards as the team I would feel safest working with. Now they are all in senior management.

You can’t imagine how motivating it is for young men who put their lives on the line every day to work with men commanding them who have also put their lives on the line, and were the best at doing so during their time. And, their time was just the other day. There is also obvious proof in front of them that there is no glass ceiling anymore preventing front-line warriors from achieving higher ranks.

I am seeing also more involvement by female police officers. They are necessary and they have no excuse to not be on operations because SSP Tommy Lee Chambers, the officer with responsibility for operations in Area 5, is often on the ground during these major operations.

It’s not easy, the sun is hot, the gear is heavy, the environment is filthy, and the risk is high.

Internationally, we are a different country. If we replicate this first quarter three more times we will have a murder rate of 17 per 100,000. The Pan-American murder rate is 19 per 100,000. Wow!

If we accept that St Catherine has 500,000 people, and if we replicate the first quarter three more times St Catherine would have a murder rate of 9.6 per 100,000. Miami Dade County is 9.45 per 100,000.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. So it is Commissioner Blake who has the greatest pressure to not only maintain last year’s reduction, but to replicate the reduction experienced in the first quarter. That is a mammoth task. I don’t envy him, but I believe in him, and I believe it can be accomplished, because I didn’t see 100 unwilling policemen and women working between zinc this morning. I saw motivated young men and women.

This has been the magic of the Kevin Blake phenomenon. He has managed to engender the support of both the high command and the foot soldiers. Not easy, but he has done it. Also, the culture is different now. Many years ago being fed on an operation was a novelty. Now you are fed; everyone.

We used to carry rifles older than our wives. Our uniforms no longer look like a throwback from colonial times. Now there is no North American police officer better equipped than a Jamaican cop. We are similarly resourced.

We wear level four vests. We drive new vehicles. So there is a holistic approach to crime-fighting that includes motivation and recognises individuality.

As Major General Antony Anderson, former commissioner of police — who also was a great leader — used to say, “We cannot do what they do; we are here to preserve lives and recognise people’s human rights.”

What makes this accomplishment so outstanding is that it has been done in a democratic environment, where people’s rights have been respected, no indefinite detention. Police officers who step out of line and choose a life of crime are captured and prosecuted by the same force that they shamed.

We have to consider how can we maintain this. How can this be a new normal. We need to separate society from the gangs, make them outcasts. The Opposition and Government must share and collaborate in this war against gangs. Human rights organisations need to recognise that gangs are the enemy of the State and the people. If they choose their side, they are the enemy of the people as well.

We must be careful of international interference. We don’t need them telling us what to do, we don’t need them investigating our police. We are a sovereign State. We need to ensure that Dr Blake is not taken from us the same way that former Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke was.

Commissioner Blake is currently one of the most sought-after criminal justice leaders in the world. He is the most successful that I have ever studied, not just for homicide reductions, but for his insistence that human rights will be respected. We therefore have to ensure that he’s given all the resources needed to get the job done and to ensure he stays until we reach a point that returning to what we were is not even a consideration.

Feedback: drjasonamckay@gmail.com

Police on operation.