Commander of the Area One Police Division Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Clifford Chambers has underlined that the state of public emergency (SOE) which was declared for Westmoreland and St James on Thursday will not be characterized by the lockdown of major thoroughfares as previous SOEs.
Among the major complaints emanating from SOEs in the past were the long waiting hours that honest working members of the public had to sit in traffic at checkpoints manned by members of the security forces. Business operators also grumbled about the lost of business hours during the security measure.
” We are not looking to lock down major thoroughfares as we have done in the past but we will be targeting some persons who are creating the issues our there for us,” ACP Chambers told reporters hours after the declaration of the latest SOE.
Since the start of the year some 95 murders have been reported in St James and 54 in Westmoreland. But while the number of major crimes are below where they were at the same time last year, ACP Chambers, in defending the need for latest SOE, cited that “what we are seeing is a quickening of the closing of the gaps”.
He revealed that communities and some persons will be targeted during the SOE.
“We do have persons who are being pursued assiduously based on they be put up as high value target. We have some major arrests what we are seeing now is a little too lax in the freedom of movement of some of these persons so we will be targeting some persons, we will be targeting some communities we will be ensuring that the detectives are out there to gather what evidence necessary to build their cases,” ACP Chambers said.
