A woman cries near the gate of Sonia Aldith, who was murdered at home in Independence City on Valentine's Day, 2005. - File

DEVELOPED IN the late 1960s to satisfy the housing needs of the lower middle class outside the Corporate Area, Independence City, the first planned Portmore development, gave new hope to its inhabitants.

Their only concern was the inconvenience of mosquitoes during the rainy season.

However, four decades later, amid a shift from middle- to low-income housing, as well as social and infrastructural decay of pre-existing village-like settlements, such as Gregory Park, Old Braeton, Dunbeholden, Naggo Head, Newland and Old Passagefort, criminal gangs have usurped mosquitoes as Portmore's main menace.

Last year, there were 97 mur-ders in the St Catherine South Police Division, 106 shootings, 109 robberies and 111 break-ins, statistics which Superintendent Marlon Nesbeth and his team are hell-bent on containing.

"We've recovered as many as 67 guns and 400-odd rounds of ammunition since the start of the year. I think we are significantly ahead, in that regard ... and intend to keep it up," he told The Gleaner.

Gang warfare

Headquartered at the 'Hundred Man' station in 2 North, Greater Portmore, the ambit of the police division's reach stretches from Ferry to the northwest, Hellshire to the south, and Central Village and Old Harbour to the northeast of the Sunshine City itself.

Like many urban and suburban communities countrywide, Port-more's crime wave - especially murders and shootings - has been largely fuelled by internecine gang violence.

Nesbeth told The Gleaner the average Portmore citizen was hardly affected by targeted gang killings.

"More than 60 per cent of the murders committed this year are gang-related in terms of the victims and perpetrators. Law-abiding citizens are not significantly affected, and even in those odd incidents, such as the recent killing of Elva Mullings in Bridgeview, they are quickly cleared up," he sought to assure the public.

"The suspect, Mario White, was shot and killed by the police and the murder weapon recovered from him. Based on further investigations, we know he was responsible for the shooting," the superintendent added.

However, Nesbeth's analysis may give hollow confidence for residents of the mainly dormitory quasi-city of Portmore, many of whose property values have remained relatively stagnant, in an otherwise booming housing market, partly because of crime and the withering façades of homes.

Not an easy task

Nesbeth

What has not been as easy is cracking the criminal gangs, which continue to give the municipality a bad rap, especially by those who had doomed its development, more so with the building of low-income homes, as 'a big ghetto'.

What started as Independence City, a develop-ment of two- and three-bedroom housing units bordering the Caymanas Park race-track, has spawned more than 30 named Portmore communities, not counting the mega-development of Greater Portmore and the Hellshire areas, which themselves have various mini-settlements.

Home to more than 250,000 residents in a country of 2.7 million, Portmore habitués generally spend most of their time attending school, working, shopping and being entertained in Kingston and St Andrew, only returning to sleep at night.

In addition to its size, the dynamics of Portmore - slum-like in some instances, zinc fences and all, and suburban in others, with mansions rivalling to those of upscale St Andrew - present challenges to the St Catherine South Police Division.

ainsley.walters@gleanerjm.com