Police launch new public-order operation in market district COPS TARGET DOWNTOWN KINGSTON
Assistant Commissioner Assan Thompson explains the plan to take back the streets of downtown Kingston to a group of worshippers at Parade in downtown Kingston last Thursday.
THE POLICE have vowed to take back the streets of downtown Kingston following an upsurge in lawlessness in the market district in recent weeks.
Assistant Commissioner Assan Thompson – who heads the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s Area Four, which includes Kingston East, Kingston Central, Kingston West, St Andrew South and St Andrew Central police divisions – last week announced that in addition to tackling the gangsters head-on, the cops will incorporate a public-order approach.
“We have seen the need to deal with public order and public safety as a high priority, and so we have indexed a high level of importance to the maintenance of public order and public safety,” Thompson said, as he led a team from Harman Barracks on South Camp Road to downtown Kingston last Thursday.
“We believe that if public order is broken down in these public spaces, the criminals will get greater opportunity to commit crimes. While we deal with crime as the end result of something that has gone wrong, we are going to look at what is giving rise to the problem. We are going out there this morning to seriously look at how we maintain public order and public safety,” added Thompson
Last Thursday’s operation started at 11 a.m. and targeted the usual suspects: illegal vendors, illegal taxi operators, ‘loader men’, robbers, extortionists, and anyone else who could not account for their purpose at
The people are not talking to the police. You will stand right here and hear four shots fire around the road, and by the time you leave and go around there, people say you a idiot because the man walk past you.
the bus terminus in Parade, as well as Beckford and Pechon streets and their environs.
Less than half an hour into the operation, a police minivan was half-filled with men deemed fitting the description of suspects.
At other locations, police teams carried out searches, directed traffic, and explained the reasons for the operation to pedestrians.
Their explanation, however, did not go down well with a group of Christian worshippers huddled under the ‘Big Tree’ on Orange Street. There, the officers’ presence was rebuked by the worshippers, as a group of higglers lambasted them for the impromptu operation.
Such police public-order operations are not new to downtown Kingston. Late last year, head of the Traffic Division, Senior Superintendent Calvin Allen, and then head of Kingston Central, Superintendent Michael Scott, launched similar initiatives and promised equal results.
But according to Thompson, this time will be different.