Press conference – Cherry Tree Lane, Clarendon

Address

By means of

The Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP

Prime Minister of Jamaica

Bee

Press conference, Cherry Tree Lane, Clarendon

On

August 14, 2024

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Good morning everyone.

The brutal murder of 8 innocent Jamaicans has prompted the government to mobilize all its resources to respond. I consider this a priority and all our security forces, the JCF, JDF, MOCA, our intelligence agencies; all our security forces have been mobilized for this.

The Deputy Prime Minister has just given an update on the declaration of a state of emergency for the parish of Clarendon. This is the result of our analysis of the available intelligence and the very high probability. I would even go so far as to say, although Acting Commissioner Bailey did not say it, that there are attempts at retaliation and reprisals. As Minister Chang indicated, when incidents like this have happened in the past, if you take the aggregated killings that are linked to the original event, you come up with tens, twenties and thirties, so we are being very careful to ensure that this incident does not trigger a series of additional killings and therefore the implementation of the SOE in Clarendon.

The SOE is not designed to hinder the public and the security services will use this extra power in a very targeted and strategic way. I want to assure the public that as much as our security services are focused on catching the criminals and those responsible, we are also focused on protecting the human rights of our citizens. The rights of the victims should clearly be the priority for me, but we also have a duty as a civilised country to show the criminals that we are operating within the law. So I want to make that point absolutely clear, and you would have seen this in the conduct of the police in their operations so far. They have been very professional, very strategic, very targeted and it is not just talk. Talk is important. We need to engage the public. We need to share information. The public needs to be informed about what is happening, but we also need to report on progress. We need to report on actions and we need to report on challenges and that is what we have done as we have tried to come to grips with what has happened in our country.

In the last press conference, someone said, would you describe this as a mass shooting? I would say, if you were using the language semantically, yes, it is a mass shooting, but mass shootings have a certain connotation. I think a more accurate description is that this is armed organized violence perpetrated by criminal enterprises. This is a gang-related event that goes beyond what the average would have been, and so we’re going to treat it that way and focus on gangs.

We have this traditional idea that gangs are a social response to poverty, disenfranchisement, unemployment. I would suggest to those who hold this view that this is an outdated idea. The gangs that we are dealing with have a lot of resources; they are not poor. They are not struggling for money. They operate as a business. They have structure, they have leadership, and they have systems and rules, and I want you to also keep in mind that they operate on intelligence. They study our police force, they use information operations, they use our banking system, they use our telecommunications system, they use social media, they are well structured and well organized; and what they do is they entrench themselves in communities and they take advantage of poor, dispossessed youth. They give them weapons, they use them as lookouts, they use them to commit crimes, they use the term “they lock down the area” so that they take over our youth, our unsuspecting women, and they use them as foot soldiers, as pawns in the game. And that is what we are about.

The entrenchment of this kind of organised armed violence is a threat, not just to the communities in which it exists, it is a threat to the stability of the state. When I went to the Cherry Tree community on Monday, it was heartbreaking. It could have been any community. In my own constituency, people play bingo all the time. The bingo table is a place of social gathering, and this was not a drive-by. These men were deliberate. They stopped their vehicles. They came out and they pursued victims, and they did not do it in just one location, they left the location where the bingo was and went to another location and did the same thing, so I want the nation to understand that this is another level of criminality. You can only describe this as an act of terrorism.

It was not carried out by someone who is mentally ill or someone with a social feud. This was carried out in the context of a criminal feud. It is the use of violence to support the entrenchment of gang power. It is an act of terrorism and it needs to be treated as such and the public needs to understand the evolving nature of the criminality that we are facing. And what the government has done is build the capacity of our security forces to be able to deal with this level of criminality.

It was very educational for me to visit the community and speak to the mother of one of the victims, who was very effusive in her praise for the police presence in the area where they were constantly patrolling. The area was under active police operations, but it is clear that these criminals would have studied the rhythm of the police and seized an opportunity. This is the level of criminality that we are dealing with. I know that there are certain stories that are commonly told, but I would urge people to be very careful in how they try to characterize what is happening here.

The JCF, JDF, MOCA and all our security apparatuses do not respond in the traditional way. We have new modalities and new ways of responding to this, so there may be people who expect mass mobilisations and mass arrests and all sorts of things. No, that is not how the JCF, JDF and our security forces operate. We operate in an information-rich and intelligence-driven strategic environment. That is what we do, and that is why Acting Commissioner Bailey can report on the progress hours after the incident. He can report that five individuals have been arrested with connections to the incident involving a firearm, one individual has turned himself in, so the impact is there.

Now, as it relates to the wider strategy, I want to spend a few minutes on that. The possibility of reprisals also leads us to look at other gangs that may be involved. So, once we have identified the gangs that are responsible, we know that the connections and the collaboration exist where the gangs that we have identified may well use subcontractors. I hate to use that term, but that is the best way to put it. They may well work with other gangs to carry out their reprisals and so our strategic response will not be limited to the gangs that we know are involved, but to a wider area and so my comments about ensuring that there is a wide net around gangs and attacks and assaults on gangs and gang culture are very pertinent as a result of this incident.

So this is an opportunity for the government to fully mobilize to have a very serious focus on gangs and I want to point out that the government has had a strategy for the last five years to deal with gangs. About five years ago we estimated that there were about 400 gangs operating in our Jamaican space. My last report from the Minister of National Security on Monday was that we are now down to 185 active gangs, but whichever way you look at it, 185 active gangs in our space is still very high. The intention is to get gangs down to zero. And so it is important that the public understands that these gangs that are in your communities are not your protectors. They are not your friends.

One of the strategies to undermine the gangs is to create an environment where citizens can provide information. It is the information that will destroy the gang network and remove the space for gangs to operate in the community. Another action that the government will take to support the promotion of an information-rich environment is that we have now established a fund of $25 million Jamaican dollars. The fund is in the Ministry of National Security and is primarily focused on this incident. We will provide $6 million for credible information and intelligence that leads to the arrest and indictment of any suspect involved in the murder, particularly those involved in pulling the trigger, up to a maximum of $1 million per person.

Secondly, we will provide $5 million for information that will assist in the investigation, arrest and indictment of facilitators of this criminal act, up to a maximum of $1.5 million per person. We are particularly interested in the facilitators and the organizers. The facilitators, the ones who provided the weapons or access to the weapons and ammunition, access to the motor vehicle, organized, made the phone calls, made the connections; we are particularly interested in those individuals.

We will offer a reward for information and intelligence that leads to the recovery of the firearms involved in this murder. We are particularly interested in that and any information about the networks involved in the supply of those firearms, and we will offer $5 million for information and intelligence that results in the recovery of evidence, any kind of evidence against the gangs that were involved in this operation.

Finally, we will be providing a fund of $5 million that will lead to the arrest and indictment of anyone who is harboring the criminal gangs or their associates, up to $800,000 per person identified. So this is a $25 million fund that is aimed at increasing the pace at which information comes in for the investigation. This fund will be under the administration of the Ministry of National Security and the traditional methods of providing information can be used, but any method that you use to get the information in, once it is forwarded to the Ministry of National Security and the relevant details are available, the payments will be made securely.

I would like to remind you of the contact methods through which you can provide information to the security services in a secure manner:

• Crime Stop 311
• Police Emergency 119
• NIB (National Investigation Agency) tip line 811
• MOCA Tip Line 888-MOCA-TIP (888-6622-847)
• JDF tip line 837-888

This government takes this act of terror very seriously. This is the second time I have had to use this term to describe an act of this nature. I would like to remind the nation of the brutal murder that took place in St James, where a criminal used a high-powered weapon, opened fire on a public transport vehicle, killing three people, including two school children. We used a similar strategy of mobilizing the community, declaring a state of emergency, focusing on targeted information and within weeks we were able to bring those responsible to justice. I expect that we will have similar, if not better, results. In fact, more impactful results if we respond to this.

And as I conclude my presentation, I will say that we cannot allow murders to become normalized in our country. And that is why there must be a very strong response to these types of incidents.

Thank you.