Police roll out ‘Operation Secure Paradise’ in St James
Basking in the success of positive cultural changes stemming from the recently launched multi-agency initiative, Operation Restore Paradise, the st James police have followed up with another initiative, dubbed Operation secure Paradise, which was launched on Friday.
Operation Restore Paradise involves other agencies such as the Ministry of Health, St James Municipal Corporation, Jamaica Public Service, National Water Commission, National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), Island Traffic Authority, and the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard.
“We are all aware of the Restore Paradise initiative, where the multi-agency approach has been brought to bear to restore public order and change some features of what’s happening in the city itself. I can say from the police department that where we are with the Restore Paradise we have seen significant changes in behaviour, in terms of public order…the traffic congestion in certain places, the whole market situation, [and] we are seeing a change in culture in the persons themselves,” head of the St James police division Superintendent Vernon Ellis reported at the monthly meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation, last week.
He disclosed that the new initiative, Operation Secure Paradise, was conceptualised to address shortcomings that showed up during a crime profile “of the city itself which falls into the Barnett Street police area”.
“We realised that there were several deficiencies. As a result of those deficiencies we have created another strategy to support the Restore Paradise,
and that’s the Operation Secure Paradise,” Superintendent Ellis stated.
He noted that the police zone in the city will now be divided into six.
“We see where the city is expanding, new business on every street, we see a lot of things moving out to Fairview, so we have geographically looked at splitting the city into six zones. What we normally had was two mobile patrol [units] operating in Montego Bay from Barnett Street. So we have acquired new assets, in terms of vehicles, and we have designed a policing system which has six patrols starting 8:00am…,” the St James police commander said.
“So we are actually outlaying a metropolitan police for the city itself, so we will have nine motorcycles to have a quick response team.”
He added that there will be a heavier reliance on the use of technology to police the city.
“We are looking at geofencing our police cars to specific zones; so electronically, if they come out of the zone supervisors or managers elsewhere can know, we can also collect the data from that and put it in our analysis machine to see what’s happening,” the head of St James police division revealed.
“So far we have moved away from the analogue checking of vehicles in the commercial district. We have barcoded several of these businesses, and with the phone systems that we have now, we no longer need to walk in there to write in the log book. The phone is sufficient, the officer hits a button, it comes back to the central area, you are able to map your assets where they are on the ground in real time, and you can go back to doing some quality check and assurance.”