Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner reporter

Students of both New Day Primary and Junior High School and Shortwood Practising Junior High School participate in a peace march in the community of Grants Pen on Thursday, February 28. A recent study says community policing has not been successful in the area. - Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer.

Residents of Grants Pen, located in north St Andrew, are agreeing with the findings of a study commisisoned by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that points to the failure of a coalition of private-sector groups to restore civility to the battle-worn community.

"It is not a model in terms of success and replicability," the report reveals.

Attracting a cost of J$177 million, the policing model was conceptualised and implemented to harmonise the relationship between residents and the police, soften the image of the community, and reduce the high crime rate.

A modern multipurpose complex, second to none in the island, comprises a police station, health centre, community meeting rooms, an Internet café, and banking services. It was designed to draw residents and police into a single communal zone that encouraged interaction.

disunity continues

However, two years into the project, crime has not been significantly reduced and the community continues to experience disunity. Residents tell The Sunday Gleaner that the well-intentioned project has failed them.

According to residents, the model broke down shortly after the opening of the multifaceted police station in early 2006. It was initiated to quell the gang violence in the community, but as many as 50 people were killed or injured by the gun in the last year, several of them women and children, residents claim. Many of the killings and the violent acts go unreported, community members report.

Trust of the police is even worse than it was in the beginning, say the residents, citing "injustice and brutality" as the main reasons for the souring of relations between them and the lawmen.

Residents also allude to a lack of management as another factor accounting for the failure of the project, which was a recom-mendation of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a United States-based organisation brought to Jamaica by the American Chamber of Commerce in the 1990s.

"Areas in the community that PERF was supposed to be targeting, were not - areas such as Grants Pen Drive and others which were directly involved in the 'war'," a resident claims.

tradesman and labourers

"The only interaction PERF have with them (target group), was when the police station was being built and they gave work to members of the community and at the end of the day, most of the 'shottas' them are tradesman and labourers," the resident relates.

The residents add that com-munity groups set up to foster unity in the area were suffering from a lack of leadership, so they eventually broke down.

But things really failed, they say, when PERF lost the bid to continue the programme after its contract ended in March 2006, shortly after the opening of the police station. The contract went to Management Systems International (MSI), a company which has partnered internationally with the USAID on several projects.

"Their (MSI) office was on Shortwood Road and it was a good community resource. If anything happened, you could run go up there and say so and so, and they would organise a meeting and get police together and get citizens together and say, 'We are going to do this'," a resident discloses. "But they are no longer there, they moved their office to New Kingston." There were no more meetings and several of the projects, such as summer camps for the children, have been discontinued. Several residents employed to MSI also lost their jobs, community members claim.

Relationships with the police broke down as several cops, trained specifically by PERF, were transferred to other areas. Others never seemed willing to police the area.

"When shooting out there, them will tell you say wait until them kill off them one another and then they will come pick up the body," another resident tells The Sunday Gleaner. "Them not going to come," the resident adds.

cops colluded

Some residents allege there were cops who colluded with criminals. It is an issue also cited in the USAID assessment, which notes that some constables got to know the criminals and many of the relationships led to rumours and allegations of bribery and corruption.

Executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Jamaica, Becky Stockhausen, admits that the Grants Pen community policing project has regressed.

She says the project worked for residents during its first phase, but went downhill when PERF's contract ended and MSI won the bid to take over the project. The management of the project was subcontracted by MSI, she discloses, to another individual from Washington.

"After that, all the things that had been going on socially and otherwise, didn't happen anymore. So, this assessment (the USAID report) would have happened two years after abandonment," she says.

project not sustained

According to Stockhausen, PERF's project had not been fully implemented, nor was its training of police officers completed before its contract expired and, therefore, the project could not be sustained.

She adds that it was never the intention of the original project managers for other volatile communities to adopt the high-cost Grants Pen model, but only the concept, which sought to encourage interaction between police and residents. The initiative was to be replicated in five other inner-city communities across the Corporate Area.

"Some communities only have gang violence and maybe it's not political. So, in each community, you would go in and talk to the people," Stockhausen explains. Moreover, she says, not all communities would need such a model.

"Grants Pen was grandiose because of its particular situation and what we need to do is to take certain aspects of it (elsewhere)," she says.