New crime measures announced
National Security Minister Robert Montague has announced measures to combat crime and violence and to improve the effectiveness of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) for 2017.
Speaking at the JCF’s annual devotional exercise at the Police Commissioner’s Office, Old Hope Road, Montague informed that among the measures will be the splitting of the St James Police Division “to bring to bear more resources on the problems” in the parish.
He further announced the arrival of two naval ships on January 21 from the Netherlands for the Coast Guard to patrol the seas and secure the nation’s borders.
A surveillance plane will also arrive l ater this year, which will attempt to prevent the trafficking of illegal guns and ammunition.
Montague noted that 40 rankand-file members of the JCF will be travelling to Cuba for training with dogs that have been acquired.
He also pointed out that 200 more vehicles will be added to the JCF fleet in order to enable every police station to respond appropriately to various occurrences.
CCTV CAMERAS
“We’re going to be expanding the closed- circuit television (CCTV) network. We have four towns with CCTV cameras and we’ll be expanding this into New Kingston,” he said.
Montaque said persons with CCTV will also be able to send their footage to the police.
“We’re going to do facial recognition, geo-fencing and licence-plate reading. We’re going to be investing heavily in the intelligence network to lead the operations of the force,” he added.
Regarding legislation, he noted that several changes were coming to the Bail, Firearm and Fingerprint acts.
Attention is also to be given to praedial larceny, and motorcyclist helmets will be required to bear a registration number.