MANCHESTER, Jamaica — Newly minted head of the Manchester police, Odean Dennis, is imploring citizens to be vigilant of strangers in their communities as he pointed to the prevalence of lottery scammers in once peaceful areas.

“One of the key things I am seeing as being [prevalent] in the parish is the number of scammers, it is almost as if they have found Manchester as a safe space and they have come into the place and infest it for want of a better term, it is something that I see that we are going to have to do significant work around,” he said on Thursday during a meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce at Golf View Hotel in Mandeville.

He told the business group that citizens have become too welcoming to strangers.

“One of the issues with parishes like Manchester, and I saw a similar thing when I was working in Trelawny, is that the citizens of these parishes are very welcoming and as a result of that when persons who are strangers come in they readily accept them,” said Dennis.

He said unsuspecting residents and landlords are then caught off guard.

“Unknown to them is that these persons are coming with baggage and the type of baggage that you don’t want to associate yourself with… Some of the time people will come and give the homeowners a year’s worth of rent and that ready cash quickly gets you to accept those persons and the baggage that they come with,” he said.

He reiterated that Manchester was once known as a very peaceful parish with minimal disputes compared to the trend in gun violence affecting it presently.

“Usually you would hear that these incidents are interpersonal incidents that involve relatives or associates within a community who may get a little bit heated and then you hear that some form of cutting tool is brought into play and people lose their lives as a result,” he said.

“Now what you are hearing is guns and the prevalence of the gun as the tool that is being used to perpetrate in these attacks in the parish and it seems as though this is the norm, it is something that I am unfamiliar with when you look at Manchester and what it used to be,” he added.

His comments follow Thursday’s shooting death of 57-year-old landscaper Andrew Williams in Trinity district near Porus.

Read: Man shot dead in Manchester

Dennis said detectives are gathering leads in the case.

— Kasey Williams