SECURITY Minister Peter Bunting vows to ‘choke off supply of funds’ to gangs... Minister says police will be taking back parking lots as part of the Government's plan for a further reduction in major crimes operated by criminal networks

Tuesday, December 30, 2014 Jamaica Observer

SECURITY Minister Peter Bunting has vowed that the police will be taking back public property used by criminal organisations to fund their operations, as part of the Government's plan for a further reduction in major crimes.

BUNTING… several town centres across
 the island will be targeted

Criminal gangs, in a major extortion racket, have 'captured' bus and taxi parks in a number of towns across the island, collect money from drivers who use them and use it to fund their underground operations.

A tough-talking Bunting, in on interview on the JIS television programme Issues and Answers, said several town centres across the island will be targeted as the strategy is to "choke off supply of funds" from organised crime networks.

"...Wherever criminal groups have commandeered parking lots, and they proceed to operate it as commercial parking facilities, or where they have commandeered any public space, or public facility, and using it to turn a profit and to extort payment from public passenger vehicles, the police are targeting these areas to choke off the fuel for criminal organisations," said the security minister, noting that once money is dried up from the criminal groups their existence will also fade.

Bunting, meanwhile, reported that the decline in major crimes in 2014 was done with fewer arrests and less than 15 curfews. He said in the past there would have been "thousands of curfews across communities where young men were rounded up by the security forces", but it has proven that crimes can be contained when policing is intelligence- driven. more