At a news con­fer­ence at the end of 2025, Ja­maica’s Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Dr Kevin Blake, said, “Mur­ders are down by 43 per cent na­tion­al­ly. As of De­cem­ber 20, Ja­maica has record­ed 649 mur­ders, rep­re­sent­ing 487 few­er mur­ders than the same pe­ri­od in 2024.” He added that shoot­ings were down by 32 per cent, re­port­ed rapes by 27 per cent and vi­o­lent crimes by 13 per cent.

In a so­cial me­dia post ear­li­er in De­cem­ber, Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness said the re­duc­tion in crime in the north Caribbean is­land was the di­rect out­come of sus­tained an­ti-gang op­er­a­tions, leg­isla­tive re­forms, stronger in­tel­li­gence co­or­di­na­tion and the dis­ci­plined ap­pli­ca­tion of the Clear-Hold-Build strat­e­gy with­in the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs).

The Clear-Hold-Build strat­e­gy used in Ja­maica means in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions were used to dis­man­tle ac­tive gangs with­in the zones (Clear), a sus­tained, law-abid­ing pres­ence by the Ja­maica’s de­fence force and po­lice ser­vice pre­vent­ed crim­i­nal el­e­ments from re-en­ter­ing the zones (Hold) and so­cial in­ter­ven­tions, in­clud­ing im­proved in­fra­struc­ture and ser­vice ac­cess, were ex­pand­ed to ad­dress root caus­es and iso­late gang in­flu­ence (Build).

While it is clear that ZOSOs con­tributed to a sharp de­cline in ma­jor crimes in 2025, the strat­e­gy was clear­ly not an overnight suc­cess in Ja­maica, where the av­er­age an­nu­al num­ber of mur­ders be­tween 2018 and 2024 was about 1,332. The ZOSOs were in­tro­duced in Ja­maica in 2017, build­ing from one then to sev­en zones in 2022.

The ref­er­ence to the Ja­maican ex­pe­ri­ence is ap­pro­pri­ate, of course, be­cause of the fail­ure of the Gov­ern­ment on Tues­day night to con­vince any of the in­de­pen­dent or op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors to sup­port the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion.

Need­ing the votes of 19 of the 31 Sen­a­tors to be ap­proved—the leg­is­la­tion re­quired a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty, as it in­fringed on fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms—the Gov­ern­ment was on­ly able to get the sup­port of its 15 sen­a­tors.

A sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to the Gov­ern­ment’s lack of suc­cess in get­ting the leg­is­la­tion through the Sen­ate was the de­ci­sion by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie not to con­sid­er amend­ments pro­posed by the in­de­pen­dent and op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors.

“We are maybe 72 hours away from the end of the State of Emer­gency and we wish to have some­thing in place by then,” Je­re­mie told his col­leagues dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage of the Sen­ate sit­ting, which is when pro­posed changes to leg­is­la­tion are de­bat­ed.

Je­re­mie may have mis­cal­cu­lat­ed both the length of time be­tween his state­ment and the end of the State of Emer­gency—it would have been over 100 hours—and the dis­po­si­tion of the 14 sen­a­tors who were told, in ef­fect, that their opin­ions and sug­ges­tions were not wor­thy of se­ri­ous con­tem­pla­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­scrip­tion of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors as “bootlick­ers and brown-nosers,” “shame­less,” “hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly pi­ous” and a “pseu­do-in­de­pen­dent group” may al­so have been counter-pro­duc­tive in in­flu­enc­ing those leg­is­la­tors.

The Gov­ern­ment’s in­abil­i­ty to get the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion passed is, how­ev­er, un­for­tu­nate, giv­en that back-to-back states of emer­gency con­tributed to the 42 per cent de­cline in the num­ber of mur­ders in T&T in 2025.

Gov­ern­ment was ob­vi­ous­ly hop­ing to repli­cate the suc­cess of the Ja­maican ex­pe­ri­ence with ZOSOs and its own suc­cess in re­duc­ing the num­ber of mur­ders last year.

It is, there­fore, hoped that the Gov­ern­ment has a plan ‘B’ for con­tin­u­ing the bat­tle against the crim­i­nal el­e­ments in this coun­try. And that T&T does not look back at Tues­day’s mis­step as a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty.