Former Old Harbour police chief gives verdict on SOEs

Last week the issue came to a climax when the opposition People’s National Party (PNP) voted in the Senate against supporting an extension of previously declared SOEs in seven police divisions across the country which security officials claimed accounted for more than 50 percent percent of homicides on the island.

The move by the opposition drew the ire of Senate President Tom Tavares-Finson of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Tavares-Finson condemned the stance taken by the opposition while unashamedly called for what can only be interpreted as a totalitarian approach to the crime plague.

But while one may rightly view the ludicrous call by the Senate president as a moment of cerebral epilepsy, one former police chief of Old Harbour sought to make the case for the continuation of SOEs, contending the strategy disrupts criminals and their nefarious activities, which gives law-abiding residents the confidence to feed the police with crucial pieces of intelligence.

“You find that when criminal gang members are displaced from their comfort zone where they had support in terms of firepower and personnel around them, they tend to go to places where they have to keep quiet because it’s not their playground, it’s not the areas where they are dominant in,” said Supt. Damion Manderson who now heads the tough St Andrew South Division.

He was among a group of top-ranked police officers who shared their views on the benefits of SOEs in their respective divisions at a recent virtual stakeholder forum organized by the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

The SOEs, which forcibly ended on the weekend due to the opposition stance in the Upper House, were declared in St. Andrew South, Kingston West, Kingston Central, and Kingston East in the Corporate Area, and St. James, Hanover and Westmoreland.

States of emergencies were declared on November 14 for these police divisions by Prime Minister Andrew Holness. The Holness administration was seeking to extend what they termed as “enhanced security measures” to stem violent crimes, specifically murders which currently stands above 1,300 an 11 percent hike year-on-year.

During the declaration of the SOEs in these divisions, murders in Westmoreland for example continued, but it was the opposite for Kingston Central as no homicide was recorded during the period.

SOE, the government contends, is as a necessary tool to cauterize the bloodletting among rival gangs or internal conflicts which oftentimes caused the death of innocent family members drawn into the sphere of gang warfare.

Manderson who in July was reassigned from Old Harbour to take over the reins of St Andrew South, said: “The fear factor is sometimes overlooked by many, but you find that when these individuals are either in detention or arrested or displaced elsewhere, it opens the community to breathe… the relationship between the police and the community then grows and you build on that, and you find that much more statements can be collected. People are more willing to speak to us and people are more willing to partner with us.”