Assistant Commissioner of Police Micheal Smith (right), head of the Area 3 police, leading a high-level police team on a tour of Effortville in Clarendon last night. Eight persons were shot in the community, five fatally, between Wednesday and Thursday. Other members of the team include Senior Superintendent Glenford Miller, head of the Clarendon Division; Superintendent Christopher Philips; Deputy Superintendent Owen Brown; and DSP Dodd.
WESTERN BUREAU:
Relatives of one of the victims killed in a spate of gun attacks in Effortville, Clarendon, on Wednesday night have since fled the community after reportedly being threatened that their house would be burnt to the ground, even as a curfew has been imposed on the area to restore a sense of calm.
Jamaica’s national security establishment is now grappling with how to deal with four serving policemen who have been sanctioned by a “hypocritical” lame-duck Trump administration for alleged “gross violations in human rights”.
“I’m searching and trying to understand why now; why almost two decades later,” a senior official in the Holness administration said of the US imposing the entry block and other sanctions on the six men and their immediate families over the 2003 incident in Kraal, Clarendon, that left four civilians dead.
“Visas are cancelled all the time, but we’ve hardly ever seen something quite like this where the law is invoked. It must mean something. What? Should current officers in the JCF (Jamaica Constabulary Force) and the army be worried if they are linked to any other controversial shootings?”