Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn believes justice is being denied because of the culture of silence inculcated in the society.

This culture was on show yesterday after three men were murdered at Woodpecker Avenue, Kingston 11, as residents appeared reluctant to speak about the day's events when The Gleaner visited.

The dead men are Leslie Williams, 64, mason of Flinch Crescent; 35-year-old Shawn Davis, of Canary Avenue both in Kingston 11; and Mark Pennant, 39, of Hitchin Street, Allman Town, Kingston. The age of the injured man has not yet been ascertained.

Fashionable and hip

Llewellyn, who was speaking at the Montego Bay Community College Hospitality and Creative Studies Department Job Readiness Seminar at the Half Moon Conference Centre, Rose Hall, said the culture of silence makes it fashionable and hip to turn a blind eye to many of society's ills.

She said this sometimes caused accused persons to return to the society with more zest to commit greater crimes, sometimes affecting those who kept quiet.

"What it has spawned is an age where we now have the 'informer-fi-dead' culture, and that culture ensures that a lot of good cases that would be dealt with in the court sometimes go out the door because we do not have people who are prepared to do their duty and come to court to give the evidence about what they saw," she said.

She explained that this phenomenon goes back some time, as children were in the past criticised, even by parents, for speaking out.

When The Gleaner visited Woodpecker Avenue, residents, though unwilling to speak about the murders themselves, pleaded for calm to return to the area.

The three murders added to Jamaica's spiralling crime rate, with around 600 murders committed since the start of the year.

Renewed violence also erupted in east Kingston yesterday, resulting in the murders of two persons in Rockfort. The incident took place at Hyppolite Road at 2:30 a.m.

Police reports are that 26-year-old Conrad McKnight and his live-in girlfriend, Crystal Lawrence, were killed by gunmen who forced open a window to their home and shot them.

McKnight and Lawrence died instantly. The Constabulary Communication Network said investigators from the Kingston Eastern police division have made no arrests for the homicides.

Rockfort relatively quiet

Rockfort has been relatively quiet this year, but has been a hub for criminal activity in the last two years.

Police Commissioner Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin yesterday reiterated his determination to see community policing placed at the forefront of the Jamaica Constabulary Force's drive to combat crime.

Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Community Based Policing Implementation Team, Lewin said the time had come for pilot projects concerned with community policing to become a thing of the past.

He told the gathering that community safety branches are to be established in each police station across the island, with officers dedicated to community policing.

"The Jamaica Constabulary Force's focus on community policing is formed on the notion that, if communities are to be made safe, everyone from the government through regional and local partners, the public and the private sectors the churches and voluntary organisations and, of course, the people who live in our communities must play their part," he said.