WESTERN BUREAU:Senior Superintendent of Police Eron Samuels, the commanding officer for the St James Police Division, is insisting that the parish’s reduced murder tally over the past four years makes Montego Bay the safest city in the English-speaking Caribbean.Samuels is standing firm on the claim despite not providing supporting regional statistics.He first made the assertion during the recent Dream Weekend press launch and repeated it when The Gleaner caught up with him after Thursday’s monthly meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation (StJMC), where he delivered his monthly report.While St James currently leads the nation in murders since the start of the year, with 37 homicides recorded since January, seven more than the 30 recorded during the corresponding period last year, Samuels insists the statistics do not tell the full story.“The two biggest cities in the English-speaking Caribbean are Montego Bay and Kingston. The St James Division services the city of Montego Bay, and the city of Kingston is serviced by six divisions, and if you check the numbers and add them up, we are indeed the safer one in terms of the activities that take place within the city,” said Samuels, who did not supply empirical evidence to support his claim despite being asked.“Based on what we are seeing, we have less numbers in terms of murders for our city limits compared to Kingston. If we are the safest country in the Caribbean, that alone speaks for itself, that we are the safest city in the Caribbean,” Samuels insisted. “When I arrived in the division [as operations officer in 2022], that year we completed with 225 murders, then we moved to 180, then down to 125, and then 58. Consistently, you are seeing where we have done well.”According to the Global Peace Index 2026, Jamaica was ranked the third most peaceful country in the North and Central American region, behind Canada in first place and Costa Rica in second. Jamaica was also ranked 70th in the world overall and listed among the countries considered to have a medium state of peace.Despite those rankings, the St James Police Division continues to record the highest number of murders of any police division in Jamaica, a position the parish has held for more than two decades. The parish’s murder tally has largely been attributed to interpersonal conflicts, which in turn trigger reprisal and counter-reprisal killings.On a regional level, the World Population Review lists the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago as the safest countries in the Caribbean for 2026, based on their rankings in the Global Peace Index 2025. That index gave Jamaica a score of 2.047, compared to 2.020 for Trinidad and Tobago and 1.996 for the Dominican Republic.In a June 23 advisory, the United States Department of State issued a Level 2 travel advisory for Jamaica, warning travellers to exercise increased caution when visiting sections of St James, including Salt Spring, Flankers, Rose Heights, the Hart Street area, Norwood, and Mt Salem because of the risk of crime.In the meantime, Samuels is urging the media to focus more on the gains the police have made in reducing murders in St James, an improvement he hopes can be sustained through community groups, police youth clubs in schools, and the referral of interpersonal disputes to the Dispute Resolution Foundation.“We especially want the media to understand, and I want them to highlight the positives of St James, what we have achieved, and not to just dwell on the fact that we may have the highest murders in the country. Where we are coming from, looking at 300-plus murders a year coming down to 58, I think it is worth celebrating as a parish, as all stakeholders working together to make St James the place to live, raise families, and do business in the Caribbean,” said Samuels.christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com