PNP rejects JLP’s crime victory lap

While the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) accepts that there is still work to be done in tackling crime islandwide, it insists that the steady decline in murders is reason enough for voters to return the party to Government in the next general election.

Deputy Prime Minister and National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang said the Government’s efforts have begun to yield results, with murders decreasing and law enforcement becoming more effective. This, the JLP believes, has blunted the Opposition’s rhetoric on one of the nation’s most pressing issues.

Chang was speaking at a special Gleaner Editors’ Forum last Thursday, responding to critics who questioned the dramatic fall in murders since the start of the year and the weight it holds going into the looming general election. Days later, at another Gleaner Editors’ forum, Opposition Spokesman on Citizen Security and Productivity Peter Bunting chided the JLP for gaslighting the public with such arguments.

“We needed five years to build out a police force that could deal with the level of crime in the society, and we are seeing it now. And the impact is not only now,” stated Chang, noting that years ago, the target was for fewer than 20 murders in one week. Now, the country is averaging 10, he said.

“The decline started when we got near to 14,000 police officers. We had, in fact, begun to satisfy their transportation and communication problems. You can look at the numbers starting September 2024. It came right after [police] graduation, when we graduated about 300 or so,” said Chang, who claimed that Jamaica has seen 20 weeks with fewer than 20 murders.

“When we get that kind of response in a service like the police force, we are on a trend. The criminals who have been taken to prison and the criminals who have died in shoot-outs are not going to come back to start another wave of crime, and the police force is not going to drop back to 10,000,” he said.

Backing up Chang’s claims, JLP Senator Marlon Morgan emphasised that the trend began in 2023 with an eight per cent reduction in murders. That figure increased to 19 per cent in 2024, and the current year-to-date decrease stands at around 40 per cent.

“The sustained reduction in murders that we are seeing is not on account of the police going around and shooting down Jamaicans. That is absolutely not the case. Unfortunately, I’ve picked up that kind of sentiment and commentary on social media and elsewhere among some observers,” said Morgan, who, last month, championed a pushback against critics, calling for greater accountability within the police force.

He also defended the Government’s law-and-order policies, noting that focused deterrence, legislative reform, and tactical deployment have made a difference in hotspots.

The Government has projected that murders could fall below 1,000 – a first since 2003, when 976 cases were recorded. In 2014, there were 1,005 murders.

However, the JLP’s celebration of falling crime rates has not gone unchallenged. Just days after Chang’s remarks, Bunting dismissed the Government’s narrative as both misleading and disrespectful to the Jamaican public.

“More Jamaicans have been murdered during PM Holness’ two terms in office than in any other two terms in the history of Jamaica. How can that be deemed a success?” he asked. “For the first eight years of this administration, when the principal strategy responding to violent crime was the serial and routine use of [states of emergency, SOEs], 2,300 more Jamaicans were murdered than if the annual average of the previous PNP administration had just been maintained.”

The Supreme Court recently found that the routine use of SOEs as a crime-fighting tool violated the Constitution.

Bunting attributed the murder reduction to “focused deterrence” – a crime-fighting strategy that the PNP has long lobbied for, he charged.

“In fact, the leader of the Opposition had developed a brief for legislation to achieve a targeted approach to the repeat violent offenders – effectively, a tool for targeted policing (i. e. spearfishing) rather than the SOE’s net-fishing approach,” said Bunting.

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com