PUSEYSTUDENTS WHO loiter in the Spanish Town bus park after school hours run the risk of being injured or killed as rival criminal gangs don school uniforms to up the ante in their fight for turf.
Head of the Special Anti-Crime Task Force (SACTF), Donald Pusey, told The Sunday Gleaner that gangsters have been using the school uniforms in an attempt to outsmart each other as they struggle to control the lucrative extortion racket in the bus park which some sources say nets hundreds of thousands of dollars daily for the criminals.
The police, who are now trying to cramp the new strategy, said last week that they now consider persons in uniforms after certain hours suspects in the extortion racket.
"I personally am looking into their own security, I don't want to see any schoolers injured in this exercise. If you are coming to the park to take a bus or a taxi to go to school, take it and go to school. If you are coming to take a bus home, take the bus and go home," said SSP Pusey. "The first day of the shooting (violence in Spanish Town) involved men dressed in khaki clothes. I am saying when school is over go home."
SSP Pusey who, along with some 150 other police officers, is trying to maintain calm in the tense Spanish Town area, is also pleading with parents to assist the police in protecting their children by ensuring that they return home on time and are in school when they are supposed to.
Several residents and workers in the area pointed out that on the day of the shooting young men dressed in khaki pants and white shirts were involved in the wild shootings in the area. Many of them they say have also been posing with young schoolgirls as a means of getting into rival communities.
A curfew was imposed on Spanish Town and its environs on Wednesday night after warring gangs crippled business and put the St. Catherine capital under virtual siege.
The security forces have sought to flush out members of the 'One Order' and 'Klansman' gangs, reportedly responsible for the killing of at least 12 people and the injuring of 20 others since the start of the year.
L . B.
