Partnership Needed to Fight Crime in St. Thomas

Commanding officer in charge of St. Thomas, Deputy Superintendent Jonathan Morrison, has called for a partnership between the police and citizens in preventing and solving crime in the parish.
“We prefer to have crime prevention than crime protection. You can’t bring back a dead person so we want to stop it from happening. We have to be proactive,” Deputy Superintendent Morrison stated as he addressed a Local Government Month symposium on November 26 at the Morant Villas Conference Room in Morant Bay.
Deputy Superintendent Morrison said that since he assumed duties on September 15, some seven homicides have been committed in the parish. “There is a volatile situation as far as extortion is concerned in this parish and it may contribute to some of the murders that are past and it’s going to contribute to some that are to come,” he said, adding that the police will be working to address the situation.
In the meantime, he informed that 35 murders have been committed in the parish since the start of the year, compared to 35 for the entire 2007. He said that efforts were being made to solve these crimes but the witnesses, who have been identified, were afraid to come forward.
Referring to the recent brutal attacks on children, the Superintendent expressed concern about the number of unsupervised small children on the streets.
“I see children on the streets, on the lonely Pamphret roads, back and forth. I see children unprotected on the highways and I see young women also unprotected and I worry when I see that,” he bemoaned.
The symposium, held under the theme: ‘Local Government Reform, putting governance in your hands,’ was organized by the St. Thomas Parish Council in collaboration with the St. Thomas Parish Development Committee and the Social Development Commission.