St James cops set sub-100 murder target for parish in 2025

The St James police are aiming to achieve a sub-100 murder tally for 2025, building on its 34 per cent reduction in murders for the parish so far this year.

Head of the St James police, Superintendent Eron Samuels, credited the police's routine operational activities and general policing initiatives for the gains made in lowering the murder rate in the parish this year.

He made the overall disclosures at the monthly meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation (SJMC) on Thursday.

"Our operational activities so far this year and our general policing have so far yielded some amount of results; we are now at 34 per cent less murders than last year, which amounts to 63 less murders across the parish of St James," Samuels informed.

He said the police are still not where they want to be relative to murders.

"We want to see if we can, in 2025, have a sub-100 year (relative to murders), and that's the aim of the division, to ensure that we bring St James out of the title of 'the most violent parish', and see if we can ensure that we continue to see some gains and reduce all violent crimes that we have in St James," said Samuels.

According to the latest Jamaica Constabulary Force's (JCF) serious crime report for the period January 1 to December 7, 2024, St James recorded 120 murders this year when compared to 176 killings for the corresponding period last year.

At the time of the publication of those statistics, the figures represented a 31.8 per cent decline in murders for the parish.

As the Christmas season gets into full swing, the top parish cop said his law enforcers will be focusing their attention on the parish’s crime hotspots.

"Basically, we're heading into the yuletide season, and we wanted to ensure that we impact all the (crime) hotspots within the division, looking for wanted persons, persons of interest, and searching for weapons," Samuels indicated.