The Ja­maica Con­stab­u­lary Force (JCF) says it will main­tain a height­ened alert sta­tus and take a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to­wards ir­re­spon­si­ble firearm use and il­le­gal use of fire­works dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son.

“We com­mon­ly call it ‘gun salute’ at Christ­mas time. When it comes on to New Year’s, peo­ple have a way, es­pe­cial­ly both per­sons with li­censed firearms, as well as per­sons with il­le­gal weapons, they tend to do that. We have stepped up our vig­i­lance,” said Dr. Gary McKen­zie, the As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Dr McKen­zie, who is as­signed to the Strate­gic Op­er­a­tions Port­fo­lio and the Pub­lic Safe­ty and Traf­fic En­force­ment Branch, told a Ja­maica In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice (JIS) Think Tank that the po­lice have in­ten­si­fied their fo­cus on curb­ing the prac­tice.

“In fact, we are hap­py to say that last year, there was some im­prove­ment based on all the re­ports that we got. But this year will be no dif­fer­ent in terms of our vig­i­lance around the is­sue,” he said.

ACP McKen­zie said that firearm use must al­ways be re­spon­si­ble and warned that gun salutes can have dead­ly con­se­quences.

“It is very im­por­tant that per­sons re­alise and recog­nise that the use of firearms must be re­spon­si­ble, so gun salute is a no-no. So once that hap­pens, we ex­pect peo­ple to re­port it,” he said.

He cit­ed a trag­ic ex­am­ple of the dan­gers in­volved in gun salutes.

“We have had in­stances where peo­ple are mak­ing gun salutes and per­sons have been shot, as the clock struck 12 … took out a firearm, fired it, a tree was over his head, and a man fell from the tree. These kinds of things do hap­pen, and we have to guard against it,” ACP McKen­zie said.

He al­so is­sued a strong warn­ing re­gard­ing fire­works and fire­crack­ers, not­ing that their unau­tho­rised use will not be tol­er­at­ed.

“Fire­crack­ers are il­le­gal,” he stat­ed. “Per­sons should not be sell­ing them. Per­sons should not be buy­ing them, and per­sons should not be us­ing them. Where any of these things are seen by the po­lice, they will act on it, and per­sons will be pros­e­cut­ed and tak­en to court.”

The As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice al­so out­lined the process for ob­tain­ing per­mis­sion to use fire­works legal­ly.

“In terms of per­mit, the fi­nal­i­ty of it rests with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, but that is ap­plied through the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. When that is done, there is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion as to why, how, where it will be used and whether or not it is nec­es­sary,” he ex­plained. “If all things are sat­is­fied, it may be ap­proved.”

Dr McKen­zie al­so spoke of the im­pact loud ex­plo­sions are hav­ing on vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of so­ci­ety.

“We need to recog­nise that when we do this in com­mu­ni­ties, whilst we are try­ing to sat­is­fy our­selves in terms of plea­sure, there are young ba­bies with­in the com­mu­ni­ties, there are el­der­ly per­sons, per­sons who are ill, and some of the fire­crack­ers, when they burst, it ac­tu­al­ly sounds like gun­shot and it caus­es per­sons to feel fear­ful,” he said. —KINGSTON, Ja­maica (CMC)