- Leonardo Blair
Policemen patrolling the streets of Kintyre last week.
Leonardo Blair, Staff Reporter
SOME RESIDENTS have begun returning to the violence-torn community of Kintyre in St. Andrew, but many of them say it will take more than the presence of the newly introduced police command post to improve the shaky cease-fire there.
And Bishop Herro Blair, chairman of the Peace Management Initiative (PMI) whose group is currently working with other agencies to broker a peace pact in the community agrees with them.
'Band-aid' solutions introduced through the PMI and other agencies, he says, will definitely not put an end to the warfare. Not with the resources they are currently working with.
"Most of what we do is to band-aid the situation because we don't have the resources to do more," explains Bishop Blair. "All the benevolence that we carry with our walk and our talk will be of no use unless we find the root cause of the violence in these communities."
The deadly flare-up of gun-related violence in Kintyre this month left 10 people dead in its wake. A cease-fire came just over a week ago when a police command post monitored by the Papine police was introduced to the area to monitor the situation. According to Orlando Grant, sub-officer in charge of the Papine Police Station, "It's not tense (in the area) again."
However, for Marsha Graham who recently returned to the community after the violent outbreaks forced her to leave her kids behind with relatives, guns will stop barking in Kintyre only when development comes.
Ms. Graham, who serves as the overseer of the Kintyre Postal Agency, said "...We need a lot of help here in Kintyre. Look around, graduates leaving school with nothing to do and those who are working losing them jobs... we need more jobs."
The lull in fighting and the patrolling policemen have given the area a kind of surreal peace. In this peace is the picture of three unattended teenagers with nothing to do.
Davian "Pappy" Gordon, 17, dropped out of the Gordon Town All-age School more than a year ago and is now in a shifty situation. He just started learning the construction trade which many young men in the community generally turn to, for survival.
"Mi nuh pick it up good yet but the man dem on the site say mi learning fast," says the teen who looks barely 13. "Mi woulda love a work weh mi can go every day though because mi nuh too like deh pon the road to all that," he adds.
The last time 16-year-old Keno Williams sat in a class at the Tivoli Gardens High School was more than a year ago, when he was in the third form. He hasn't yet visited his fourth form class which will move on in June, because "Mi mother don't have no money."
Just last week, residents of Quarry Heights, in the community were still moving out of the area as threats of further killings created an atmosphere of fear. This, after three men were shot and killed two Mondays ago.
Some residents like Hyacinth Joneshowever, who lived closer to the killings say police post or not they won't be turning keys in the Kintyre settlement ever again.
Ms. Jones fled Kintyre more than a week ago and despite a recurrent questioning of her resolve to stay out of the community, she is determined that she will not return.
The born-again Christian says although she believes in God, the fear she felt in the Kintyre "war zone" made her sick. At one point she explains, the violence felt like "all hell a pop outta door".
"I was afraid," she says. "I talked to Jesus and I told him that 'I don't know if I have upset You by running away. But I am fearful'.
"I cannot go back (to Kintyre), this kind of thing not good for my pressure," says Ms. Jones, who suffers from lupus.
She has been travelling to and from a rural parish in the mornings at a cost of $200 daily, to maintain her job in Kingston. If she loses it she says, "I'm going back to country."
"No matter what happens, she argues "people still going to move. Is just that them don't have nowhere to go. Mi sorry fi the people them that don't have nowhere to go because them have police and soldier over there (Kintyre) and people still dying."
The efforts of the Peace Management Initiative (PMI) did very little to target crime in the community. All that the team did in the community "was to meet and greet with the people who need protection," not the criminals terrorising the community at night.
"I think they (the police) need some of the guns that the gunmen have because one night when they did a killing on the road, my God! it sound like something in Iraq," says Ms. Jones.
Name changed to protect privacy
