The Ja­maican gov­ern­ment is of­fer­ing a two-mil­lion-dol­lar (One Ja­maican dol­lar = US$0.008 cents) re­ward for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest of those re­spon­si­ble for the mur­der of 14-year-old Terona Thomas in Olympic Gar­dens on the out­skirts of the cap­i­tal.

Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, speak­ing at the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny of a closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion sur­veil­lance project, has promised to find those re­spon­si­ble for mur­der­ing Thomas, who was shot dur­ing a dri­ve-by last month.

“We are go­ing to find you. We are go­ing to put cam­eras on that road and sev­er­al oth­ers. And I al­so want to an­nounce that we are go­ing to put up a two-mil­lion fund for the cap­ture and ar­rest of the 14-year-old girl.

“I am go­ing to ask the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (Dr. Ho­race Chang) to top it up so that there is a greater in­cen­tive, be­cause some­body knows,” Hol­ness, the par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the St. An­drew West cen­tral con­stituen­cy, told the cer­e­mo­ny, de­scrib­ing those re­spon­si­ble for the death of Thomas as “as a low life beast.

“That 14-year-old could have been a lawyer, doc­tor, or teacher. Mo­ments af­ter ask­ing her moth­er for some mon­ey to go to the shop to buy crab,  just down the road from her house…the moth­er went in­to her pock­et and gave her daugh­ter the mon­ey with no ex­pec­ta­tion that some low life beast would come and claim the life of her daugh­ter over some fool­ish­ness, over who stole whose gun, and we must have pity and sym­pa­thy for these peo­ple?

“We must protest on their be­half? It is time that Ja­maica stands up and be de­fin­i­tive. We must stand up and protest for the vic­tims,” Hol­ness said, adding “we are go­ing to put cam­eras on those roads so that the crim­i­nals have nowhere to hide. When they think about com­mit­ting an act on Olympic Way, they will think twice”.

Hol­ness said that with 51 closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion (CCTV) cam­eras mount­ed at strate­gic lo­ca­tions on Olympic Way, the au­thor­i­ties are send­ing a strong mes­sage to gang­sters that their il­le­gal ac­tions will be record­ed and they will be found and brought to book.

“It is im­por­tant to let the crim­i­nals know that we see you, we know you, we can find you, and we will reach out and touch you. The cam­eras have li­cence plate recog­ni­tion, they can scan and cap­ture li­cence plates in re­al time."

“This will al­low us to de­tect stolen ve­hi­cles. We know that there are pock­ets of gangs around the area that are in­volved in the stolen ve­hi­cle trade. We are go­ing to find you and break up your gang.”

Hol­ness said that the CCTV project, es­ti­mat­ed at more than J$100 mil­lion, is be­ing un­der­tak­en af­ter the Ja­maica Con­stab­u­lary Force iden­ti­fied the area as a pri­or­i­ty zone for sur­veil­lance.  Hol­ness said the high-de­f­i­n­i­tion cam­eras will be fo­cused on schools, pub­lic spaces, and build­ings to pro­vide con­stant vis­i­bil­i­ty.

He told the cer­e­mo­ny that the en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient cam­eras are ex­pect­ed to work non-stop.

“They are not off some­times and then on some­times. These are the lat­est cam­eras. These have 99 per cent up­time. You’re deal­ing with the best tech­nol­o­gy. These cam­eras have the abil­i­ty to pan, tilt, and zoom. From with­in the con­trol cen­tre, the op­er­a­tor can tilt the cam­era, move it and zoom it. A noise can be made and the cam­era moves to that noise — even with­out an op­er­a­tor”.

Hol­ness said the sys­tem is the first of its kind in Kingston and St An­drew and will be­come the mod­el for the wider Ja­maica un­der the Ja­maica­Eye na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sur­veil­lance pro­gramme, which aims to in­stall 2,500 cam­eras across the coun­try over three years.

“This is a smart in­vest­ment in our peo­ple’s safe­ty, and it is on­ly the be­gin­ning. As you know, Cab­i­net has ap­proved a strate­gic mas­ter plan of the ex­pan­sion of the Ja­maica­Eye net­work. Al­ready, 500 of those 2,500 cam­eras have been ear­marked for Port­more, Old Har­bour, Port An­to­nio.

“We are build­ing out a na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture of safe­ty. For all the peo­ple who are quick to re­tort, [they] are go­ing to get cam­eras un­til they don’t know what to do with it; then you are go­ing to hear the com­plaint that there are too many cam­eras. This gov­ern­ment gets things done prop­er­ly and with en­durance.

“The cam­eras in­stalled here are not iso­lat­ed; they are a part of a na­tion­al grid. The footage can be ac­cessed not on­ly by of­fi­cers here at Olympic Gar­dens but al­so by po­lice emer­gency con­trol. That means im­proved co­or­di­na­tion, faster re­sponse times, and bet­ter out­comes when sec­onds mat­ter.

“This lev­el of re­al-time in­te­gra­tion is what mod­ern polic­ing de­mands — and we are equip­ping our of­fi­cers not just with more tools but with the right tools. The mon­i­tor­ing cen­tre here will be staffed by trained per­son­nel, guid­ed by prin­ci­ples of pri­va­cy,” Hol­ness said, not­ing that for far too long, many Ja­maicans have felt un­safe in shared en­vi­ron­ments, daunt­ed by dis­or­der, acts of vi­o­lence, rob­bery, and ex­tor­tion, acts which are of­ten com­mit­ted in plain view, un­der­min­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence and hurt­ing lo­cal economies.

“When fear dri­ves away the pub­lic from pub­lic spaces, small busi­ness­es suf­fer, trans­porta­tion sys­tems stall, and so­cial trust is erod­ed. I re­call many years ago, and peo­ple who live in the area will know when the ‘Pat­ty Man’ was killed,  that trig­gered an on­go­ing gang war that claimed many lives, and it went on for many years.

“What I learned from that, be­ing a young Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment at the time and in­ter­act­ing with the peo­ple, was that every­body knew who did the killing but no­body would talk or say any­thing.

“Peo­ple saw what hap­pened but no­body would say any­thing. They told me, they told oth­er peo­ple, and they spoke among them­selves, and I am sure they whis­pered to the po­lice , but there was no­body to come for­ward to give a state­ment.

“This is pre­cise­ly why we ini­ti­at­ed the Ja­maica­Eye pro­gramme. Closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion sur­veil­lance is in­stru­men­tal to re­claim­ing and se­cur­ing these vi­tal ar­eas. It pro­vides vis­i­bil­i­ty where there was once vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. It de­ters crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty by in­creas­ing the risk of be­ing caught. It gives law en­force­ment a crit­i­cal tool to re­spond quick­ly and to hold per­pe­tra­tors to ac­count,” Hol­ness said.

Ja­maica has record­ed 236 mur­ders for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to May 3 this year, a 37.7 per cent de­cline for the same pe­ri­od last year when 379 peo­ple were mur­dered.

In 2024, Ja­maica record­ed 1,141 mur­ders.

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, May 7, CMC –

CMC/af/ir/2025