Public Property Will Not be Used by Criminals – Security Minister

As major crimes continue their downward trend, the police are taking back public property used by criminal organizations to fund their operations, according to Minister of National Security, Hon. Peter Bunting.

The Minister, who was speaking recently on the Jamaica Information Service (JIS) television programme, ‘Issues and Answers’, noted that several town centres across the island are targeted, and the strategy is to “choke off supply of funds” from organized crime networks.

“So, wherever criminal groups have commandeered parking lots, and they proceed to operate it as commercial parking facilities, or where they have commandeered any public space, or public facility, and using it to turn a profit and to extort payment from public passenger vehicles, the police are targeting these areas to choke off the fuel for criminal organizations,” Mr. Bunting said.

“We are doing it in the commercial districts, the market districts, Down Town Kingston, Spanish Town, Montego Bay, and all the major towns across Jamaica,” the Minister added, emphasising that once funds are dried up from the criminal groups, their existence will also fade.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bunting reported that the decline in major crimes that the country is experiencing in 2014 was done with less arrests and less than 15 curfews. He said in the past there would have been thousands of curfews across communities where young men were rounded up by the security forces, but it has proven that crimes can be contained when policing is intelligence driven.

“We made a deliberate decision that only in the most exceptional circumstances (I would) approve a curfew. This year we only had 14. We have also reduced the number of arrests,” the Minister pointed out.

He informed that so far this year, police fatal shootings have been reduced by 50 per cent, with 300 fewer persons losing their lives.“We have close to 700 fewer victims of serious and violent crimes this year, including murder, shooting, rape and aggravated assault,” he said, adding that 192 fewer persons have been murdered.

“What is important is the most effective use of police resources. We are about smarter policing,” Mr. Bunting said.