Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness Wednes­day said that the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al, Patrick Allen, has de­clared a state of pub­lic emer­gency (SOE) in the en­tire parish of St. James, where two school boys were among sev­er­al peo­ple shot and killed ear­li­er this week.

Hol­ness, speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence, said that the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al had tak­en the de­ci­sion “af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and re­view of the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion in St. James.”

Hol­ness said that the Par­lia­ment on Tues­day rose to­geth­er “to con­demn the bar­bar­ic mur­der of in­no­cent lives.

“Young chil­dren who had their en­tire fu­ture ahead of them and par­ents, it must be a con­sid­er­a­tion in your mind that it could have been your chil­dren.

“And so we take this mo­ment as we de­clare our re­sponse to grieve with the fam­i­lies and to en­cir­cle them and sur­round them with our prayers for com­fort at this time,” a somber look­ing Hol­ness told re­porters, adding ”but we al­so give res­olute as­sur­ance to the peo­ple of Ja­maica that we will not wilt, we will not re­sile in the face of ter­ror.”

Hol­ness said that the cir­cum­stances of the crime in­volv­ing the school chil­dren will be dealt with by the heads of the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies when they ad­dress the news con­fer­ence “but I want you to bear in mind that the re­sponse of the gov­ern­ment has been first of all pro­por­tion­ate, re­strain and we have been very strate­gic as well.”

He said the pub­lic will re­call when his ad­min­is­tra­tion de­clares the use of Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSP), the au­thor­i­ties were tar­get­ing then the top 20 most vi­o­lent com­mu­ni­ties in­clud­ing the area where the mur­ders were com­mit­ted this week.

Hol­ness said the re­sults of the ini­tia­tive were com­mend­able and ZOSP could be re­gard­ed as a mod­el of trans­for­ma­tion of com­mu­ni­ties.

“But it did not make the news and we did not nec­es­sar­i­ly pro­mote it ei­ther,” he told the news con­fer­ence with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ma­jor Gen­er­al Antony An­der­son and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Dr. Ho­race Chang in at­ten­dance.

He said crime in Salt Spring al­so de­clined and that the gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to take the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions in­to oth­er hotspots us­ing a dif­fer­ent ap­proach.

Hol­ness said when the au­thor­i­ties re­laised that there was a resur­gence of gang war­fare in the area “we used the tools of cur­few, in­creased po­lice pres­ence and nor­mal po­lice op­er­a­tions...but that did not seem to bring the …gang wars un­der con­trol. The ac­tu­al cir­cum­stance of this act of ter­ror is that some­one, ob­vi­ous­ly a cit­i­zen of Ja­maica, a son of Ja­maicans, a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty, some­one who went to our schools, some­one who may be a par­ent him­self, ob­vi­ous­ly lay wait­ed some­one who is a tar­get in a pub­lic pas­sen­ger ve­hi­cle, in a taxi that any one of you here to­day, if you were in St. James ..in a pub­lic space."

“It’s a high pow­ered weapon. This is not or­di­nary crime . This is the worst of the worst. The re­sult is that an­oth­er young Ja­maican, I be­lieve he was 26 years old, want­ed by the po­lice…but he felt he was at large and hide him­self in pub­lic in a pub­lic pas­sen­ger trans­port that is known to car­ry chil­dren,” Hol­ness said, adding that the re­sult be­ing two, “in­no­cent young chil­dren” be­ing mur­dered.

Po­lice said Justin Per­ry and his school­mate Na­cho­live Smith of the Chet­wood Pri­ma­ry School, and an uniden­ti­fied man, were shot and killed by gun­men while trav­el­ling in a taxi on Mon­day evening in the Flower Hill com­mu­ni­ty of the volatile Salt Spring area, north west of here.

The Salt Spring area is the site of an on­go­ing gang feud. Last Fri­day, gun­men shot and killed six-year-old Ar­i­an­na Salmon, a grade one stu­dent of St Jude’s Pri­ma­ry, along with her grand­moth­er Marie Salmon, 42 and Michael Smith, 34.

Chang told the news con­fer­ence that in the past 10 days “we have seen an out­break of verey bru­tal vi­o­lence’ in the Salt Springs area, de­scrib­ing Mon­day’s killings as “heart ren­der­ing."

“It touched the emo­tion of the en­tire na­tion,” he said, adding “it is un­for­tu­nate that that kind of bru­tal­i­ty had to shake us again…and I hope the en­tire na­tion would re­spond to the Prime Min­is­ter’s call for … tack­ling the bru­tal crim­i­nals...”

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Nov 8, CMC – 

CMC/gf/ir/2023