SOMETHING IS happening in the St. James Police Division. We want to be careful not to celebrate too early, since short-term success is not the same as long-term victory. But over a two-week period running up to the publication of our Cornwall Edition last Thursday, the parish did not register a single murder.
In our editorial of Tuesday, July 13, we urged, following the lead of the St. James Police Division, that public officials analyse and act on crime data. At the time of writing then, 76 people had been killed in the parish since the start of the year, a murder rate of 2.6 per week. Two weeks without a single murder is therefore a significant occurrence. Crime Chief, SSP John Morris, is attributing the reduction in murder and other crimes to the new initiative launched last month, including a new 21-member anti-crime unit. The unit has the analysed crime data to guide its operations with critical intelligence.
We note that the St. James anti-crime initiative came out of a collaboration of the police, business leaders and citizens. In Spanish Town the One Order gang seemed to run things. Businesses faced enforced closure on July 13 as a mark of respect to the slain leader Oliver 'Bubba' Smith. Similar demands went out for yesterday's funeral following a period of elaborate mourning in the communities which benefited from Smith's paternal support. The strong police presence in the area yesterday seems to have assured business operators and commuters that they were not obliged to follow that order.
As the Jamaica Constabulary Force reshuffles its top leadership yet again, the High Command should carefully study the emerging success story in the St. James Division. Spanish Town, St. Andrew South, the Kingston Divisions and other known high-crime areas cannot be beyond the crime data analysis and data-driven anti-crime action which are showing positive results in Montego Bay. As we noted in the July 13 editorial, crime has clear patterns and trends. And we add now that there is usually just a handful of hardened perpetrators.
As the police seek to bring hard crime under control, we remind them of the "broken windows" theory of crime developed by criminologist James Q. Wilson and others, and which has been applied everywhere that rising crime rates have been brought under control as in New York City. When a broken window is allowed to remain unrepaired, other windows are soon broken by vandals. But when soft misdemeanours are rigorously prosecuted a sense of law and order is restored, the cost of breaking the law goes up, and harder crimes trend downwards. By all means, get the guns and gunmen, but don't forget to apply the anti-litter law, the zoning laws and the traffic laws rigorously. In short, there should be no let up in enforcing existing laws.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
