By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

NATIONAL Security Minister Wayne Munroe said he is troubled by people who “are into” murder statistics.

He made the comment during a meeting of the Rotary Club of Nassau at St James Native Baptist Church, where officials discussed crime solutions.

The event’s moderator noted that crime declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, with murders dropping significantly during lockdowns. There were 74 murders in 2020.

Mr Munroe said: “Over the last three to four years, the Jamaican government instigated a state of emergency in some parishes in response to murders, and the statistics show that immediately the state of emergency ended homicides spurt in the area that was the subject of the state of emergency. So it may sound troubling, but when we came out of our lockdown, it wasn’t surprising you have a spurt of murders.

“I’m not one for counting murders because one is too much, 70 too, but at the end of the day, the people who are into statistics trouble me because every murder isn’t really a statistic. It’s a person, and it doesn’t matter whether or not you say this person is somebody who’s in the game and so makes themselves a target.”

The murder count for the year increased to 26 after 15-year-old Chester Forbes, Jr, was killed on Monday.

The 21 murders in January 2024 were the most the country has recorded in January in at least a decade.

According to The Tribune’s records, eight people were killed in 2023, eight in 2022, ten in 2021, six in 2020, two in 2019, nine in 2018, 14 in 2017, eight in 2016, ten in 2015, and 11 in 2014.

The record for murders in a year is 145 in 2015.