KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – Prime Minister Andrew Holness says the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) have been tasked with establishing special security operations around crucial infrastructure projects on the island.
Holness, making his contribution to the 2023/24 budget debate in the House of Representatives, said the aim is to ensure that significant projects which will be undertaken are not hijacked by criminals seeking to illicitly benefit from public resources through extortion or holding up work schedules.
He said elements of this undertaking and the resulting impact on crime had been seen along the Southern Coastal Highway Improvement Project, particularly in the Bull Bay area.
“In the coming fiscal year, the government will undertake several major infrastructural projects across the island. The National Security Council discussed this specific type of threat, and we have tasked the JCF and MOCA to establish special security operations around these projects to ensure that our major infrastructure projects are not hijacked by criminals seeking to illicitly benefit from public resources through extortion or holding up work schedules,” he said.
Prime Minister Holness said in addition to the social and public health challenge, crime and violence are now a systemic threat to the proper functioning of the State to enforce its laws, deliver justice, protect its borders, and secure its revenues.
“When criminals routinely seek to kill or intimidate witnesses, they weaken the ability of the justice system to convict them,” he said, adding, “when criminals deliberately seek to befriend and enlist the protection of police officers and public officials, they compromise the ability of the State to enforce its laws effectively.
“When criminals seek to infiltrate our ports and airports, they compromise the ability of the government to control our borders. When criminal gangs seek to extort public works, this is a direct and bold attempt to use State resources to advance criminal enterprises,” Holness said.
He said that the prevalence of criminal gangs organizing violence against citizens and the State in furtherance of their criminal enterprises could not be taken lightly. Holness told legislators that organized violence by gangs amounts to criminal terrorism.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Holness said the verdict in the recent anti-gang trial is a victory for Jamaica.
“I want to commend the JCF and their investigators, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and their prosecutors, who have put together the case. I believe special mention must be made of the two main witnesses who made great personal sacrifices,” he said.
He said organized violence is a national emergency requiring enhanced preventative powers to disrupt the activities of the gangs, control the space in which they operate and the movement of their members, increase surveillance on them and cut off their source of funding, and divert their recruits.
“In this context, we have used limited and localized states of public emergency (SOEs) to slow the build-up of gang terrorism and its devastating impact on communities and the undermining effect it has on the State.
“The SOEs work every time they are deployed because they are targeted at those on whom strong intelligence has indicated their involvement in creating the threat to life and property on so extensive a scale in the community that if the state does not act immediately, the threat will materialize and rapidly escalate,” he added.
Prime Minister Holness said the JCF does not only disrupt the violence of gangs through the SOEs, but every year the security forces interrupt at least 300 planned murders through its intelligence capabilities.
“The problem, however, is far greater than our resources and institutions. But the bigger problem is the lack of political consensus around how to deal with it.
“The SOEs, combined with our intelligence operations and the gang cases we continue to put before the courts, have helped to suppress the murder rate. However, the root cause, organized violence from gangs, is always trying to push the murder rate up. It is a continuous struggle. But we are building the capacity to overcome the gangs sustainably,” Prime Minister Holness told Parliament.
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