Salt Spring benefits from social intervention programmes
MONTEGO BAY, St James — Head of the constabulary’s Community Safety and Security Branch (CSSB) in St James, Deputy Superintendent Yvonne Whyte-powell, says the relationship between the police and residents in sections of Salt Spring, St James, has seen a vast improvement.
She said police-citizen relations are being repaired through social intervention programmes, including a breakfast feeding programme, an annual youth summer camp, started more than two years ago, and increased community engagement.
“Now we are not nameless, faceless people; we basically interact like family members,” DSP Whyte-powell stated.
She said a number of stakeholders have partnered with the police on the initiatives, including the Jamaica Social Investment Fund, Citizen Security and Justice Programme (CSJP) and the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ).
She noted that these programmes have been bringing about transformation and has impacted the culture of violence in sections of the community, in particular Meggie Top.
Whyte-powell said the breakfast feeding programme and the summer camps ensured that the police had a good rapport with residents and children, many of whom know members of the Community Safety and Security Branch by name.
“There are other social intervention programmes that are done by other agencies, and we partner with them on many occasions, but this particular aspect of the intervention would have started in late 2018 and continued into 2020…that area of Salt Spring that we worked… has been relatively calm for the last two years,” she told JIS News.
A key component of the social intervention strategy is to target children by showing them an alternative to crime and violence.
“We thought it best to target children as they were going through the socialisation process, and when you get to the students, eventually it filters down the line. Students have parents, they have brothers and sisters and they go to church and they interact with community members and that is the approach that we took with the social intervention programme in Salt Spring,” Whyte-powell said.
She added that the work being executed by the Community Safety and Security Branch has made police operations easier.
“It helps the police, too, when we do this type of intervention because we are in the community and we know what is going on and what the needs are. When the operational police went into the community and saw the impact of what we are doing, it totally transformed a lot of them. They see the community from a different perspective,” DSP Whyte-powell pointed out.
Residents have also been playing a critical role in the quest for change by supporting the police in the various activities.
“I must say that even with the children who were a part of the camp it is a community decision. The community members, we consult with them... They identified the children that were most in need of the intervention and they also assist with some of the programmes that we are doing,” she told JIS News.
The Salt Spring Community Development Committee (CDC) has also been lending a helping hand to ensure that the days of violence in the community will remain a thing of the past.
“There are the Community Development Committee persons who want change in their community in a positive way, and you find that [it’s better] when you work with them because of the informer culture…if I am familiar with one person… then that person is likely to be a target, but if there is a group in the community that is working for the betterment of the community and we work alongside that group, that’s where the transformation and change in relationship takes place,” DSP Whyte-powell explains.
Acting president of the CDC, Donna Wedderburn, welcomed the positive change being experienced in sections of the community, noting that part of the fix was targeting children.
She told JIS News that while “we’re not there yet” there has been a level of change “where persons are feeling freer to go about doing what they do”.
“The police, for the past three years, have been having a summer camps and it grooms the young minds because you know whatever you are doing, you know parents are involved, brothers are involved, other relatives are involved and the level of respect for the police has improved greatly. People now see the police as friends and not so much as the enemy. It is a welcome change for the community,” she said.
The Summer Camp was held virtually in 2020 due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, with some 70 children from the communities of Salt Spring and Cambridge participating.
Some 25 of the participants were presented with tablets to assist with virtual learning.