‘I apologise to you’ - Holness says sorry for death of trainee cop

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has told the mother of a slain young policeman that he wished his Government could have acted sooner to save his life.

Duvaughn Brown, 25, a trainee policeman attached to the National Police College of Jamaica, was shot and killed during a brutal attack in Naggo Town district in Whithorn, Westmoreland, on Wednesday night. Holness, who visited the cop's mother, Mable Forbes, expressed profound sorrow for her loss.

Holness said that law enforcement officers were tracking the explosion of crime in the parish, pointing out that there were five murders in Westmoreland the night before a state of public emergency was declared in the parish on Sunday.

"We recognised that if we did not intervene the parish could explode. We tried to act as quickly as we could. I apologise to you. It is very, very sad that we could not have done anything more in a quicker way that would have probably saved your son, and I ask you to understand," the prime minister said.

Holness was on a visit of crime-infested spots in Westmoreland, one of seven police divisions in which a state of emergency has been imposed to curtail rising levels of criminality, including murders and shootings.

"This is for me one of the most difficult things to do, to try and counsel a mother who has lost their child especially under these circumstances," Holness said. "Your son was a part of law and order and was just about to graduate, and for no apparent reason he was senselessly gunned down," Holness told Forbes.

Brown, who operated a block-making business in the community, returned to the community with a part for one of the machines. He was at a shop in Naggo Town district, close to his mother's house, when he was attacked by three men who shot him. The police said that two persons have since been arrested. Lawmen are probing whether the trainee cop may have been attacked by persons who had feuds with his relatives.

Police data indicate that 106 murders and 114 shootings have been recorded in Westmoreland as of November 13. Those statistics do not take into account the murder of Corporal Brown or the killing of 19-year-old Shadane Campbell and another unidentified man who were shot and killed while attending a UNICEF/peace management gender violence training session in Savanna-la-Mar on Tuesday.

Holness said that Westmoreland has outgrown the ability to be policed under normal circumstances. He is hoping that with the extra powers given to members of the security forces under the state of emergency will help arrest the problem.

"The truth is that the level of crime and violence, particularly in the community [of Dexter and Dalling streets in Savanna-la-Mar] in which we are, it is over and above the capacity of regular policing," Holness said.

"There are several gangs in the region that appear to be at war with each other [and] they are brazen," he said.

"They don't seem to fear the law and they seem determined to exact revenge on each other, and in so doing, in some sense civilians, innocent citizens are killed."