MANDEVILLE, Manchester — The people of troubled community Greenvale, just west of here, are hopeful that tension between Top and Bottom Greenvale will end following a unified peace walk involving political, religious and security leaders on Thursday.

The initiative, which was spearheaded by Member of Parliament for Manchester North Western Mikael Phillips, follows three months of violence resulting in seven murders linked to conflicts in the community.

A similar walk planned by Phillips on September 1 was overshadowed by a murder four hours before the scheduled start.

Phillips is hopeful that the walk will assist in the process towards peace.

“What we need to get back in the mindset… that it is one community is not a top and a bottom, but it is one community of Greenvale. We started out in Hatfield and we walked Texas, Big Head Street and Scott Town,” he said.

“The importance of today’s walk is not that there is violence taking place now, but what we want to do is to shore up the community that they can interact with the police and the political representatives, the Church. HEART Trust NSTA was here which engaged some of the young people,” he added.

Phillips earlier this month had called on the security forces to lockdown Greenvale in an effort to seize illegal firearms and detain known violence producers following the murder of 28-year-old Romario Allen otherwise called “Rue Rue”, a resident of Dunsinane District (near Top Greenvale) in Manchester on October 1 in Mandeville. Another man, 37-year-old Dale Clarke, who was also shot in that incident, succumbed at hospital.

It is believed that Allen’s murder was a reprisal for the August 5 killing of 35-year-old Adrian Nation, otherwise called Blue, and his uncle, 68-year-old Leslie Levy, otherwise called Lloyd/Rasta man, in Bottom Greenvale. Nation and Levy were buried less than 12 hours before Allen was shot on Ward Avenue.

Police placed a restriction on entertainment events and a curfew in Greenvale following the August 5 double murder in an effort to avert reprisals. Two people were also shot and injured in that incident. Police theorised that Nation was the target of the gun attack.

Phillips said the majority of the community want to see better days in Greenvale.

“That community spirit that we had in the past we want it back again, it is important. You have hard-working people that live in the community and in any community you are going to have some people who give trouble and some that want love and peace and harmony. Greenvale is one such community that when you talk about a community spirit, sports, church or just coming together to have fun. We have been one community,” he said.

“I want to thank the members of the community, especially those who felt somewhat intimidated from coming from the top down to this side and they have walked with us and it shows that this tension that is taking place in some instances is manufactured. I know you want to live as one community, same way. There are some other activities that we want to do with the police, so that there can be more interaction,” added Phillips.

Damion Young, a member of the Jamaica Labour Party who contested the Manchester North Western constituency in the September 3, 2020 election, pledged his support for Phillips’s initiatives.

“Community intervention is really critical in these times and whilst the walk through is useful, we must ensure that we follow-up with the other meaningful interventions,” he said.

Head of the Manchester police Superintendent Shane McCalla said the peace walk is a step in the right direction.

“The initiative today was to come back into the community, because there is still a lot of stigma with some of the recent occurrences and to get feedback from the persons who are specifically in Top Greenvale as to some of the issues they are having. Issues that relate to even how the police/citizen relationship is unfolding as we try to police the space in an effective way, so that all members of the Greenvale community feel safe and secure,” he said.

“So far, this is a start and it is a move towards the direction which the police want to go… The tough security measures are not the ultimate route that we want to take, because that is not sustainable. We want to have the community at a particular level where we can soften the type of hard approach that we are now using in terms of the lockdown [and] other stringent security measures that we have put in place,” added McCalla.