Bullets&Blood

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• • gleanerjamaica • jamaicagleaner • BULLETS & BLOOD THE GLEANER, TUESDAY, JULY 5, 2016 D8
‘WE NAH REALLY
LOOK TROUBLE,
BUT WE NAH BACK
WEH IF IT GOOD’
‘CENTRAL
REPOSITORY’
FOR GUNS
W HILE THE Government and the Police
High Command have been implementing
new strategies and social intervention
programmes to combat the bloodletting in St
James, which has been recording at least 100
murders every year since 2006, the harsh
reality is that guns are plentiful and the ‘shottas’ have become
killing machines.
Recently during a demonstration, where residents were
protesting yet another police killing in an inner-city community, a
man who engaged in a discussion with a member of our team
invited us into a yard because “he was uncomfortable talking on
the road”.
Inside the yard, there were several young men, most of them
openly displaying guns, including high-powered rifles.
They seemed perfectly at ease as they smoked, laughed and talked
casually about what they would do “if we hold dem bwoy deh”.
“We nuh fraid a nobody … . We nah really look trouble, but we
nah back weh if it good,” said one of the young men.
“Still, we like when we place calm, because less police come bout
yah,” he added.
A HIGH-RANKING police officer
recently shot down the idea of an
amnesty as a practical solution for
stemming gun crimes in Spanish
Town, St Catherine.
“It might (work), but I would
not want to do that because the
guns that are out there, many of
them are being managed from a
central repository,” Senior
Superintendent of Police Clifford
Chambers told a Job and Growth
Forum hosted by The Gleaner
Company at Cecil’s Restaurant in
the Old Capital.
Chambers went on to explain
that most of the gun slayings were
done with weapons hired out in
much the same way one might
rent a garden tool to do a specific
job and then return it to the
owner/business operator. For this
reason, if the ‘shottas’, as young
men between the ages of 18-25
engaged in most of the gun crimes
are called, were to heed the
inducements from the police to
turn in their guns, that could
have devastating personal
consequences, as well as for their
families.
“So you not going to have that in
Spanish Town,” the senior cop
insisted.
Getting the public to understand
their pivotal role in fighting crime
by cooperating with the police and
seeing law enforcers as the first
line of defence, is still the most
effective way, according to
Chambers.
“Between 2015 and 2016, we
arrested and tried over 16
persons,” the senior cop disclosed,
adding that community and
proximity policing were still very
effective means of intelligence
gathering.
Seized in 2016.
FILE
In 2013, the then Flying Squad team at a press conference displays a number of guns and ammunition seized during various operations.