Residents want Amity Hall Police Station restored

AMITY HALL, St James — Long before last October’s Hurricane Melissa battered the police station in Amity Hall, St James, the building was badly in need of repair. Things got worse when two containers the police force had planned to use as a temporary location were blown away by the storm’s Category 5 winds. Last week’s murder in the community has added urgency to residents’ calls for their local police station to be reopened.

“It’s since the storm it look like this. People were in there before the storm but it’s after the storm it look like that,” a woman who asked not to be named told the Jamaica Observer during a recent visit. “It did want to take down and fix up still, but them did still inside it,” she remarked.

The Amity Hall Police Station serves several communities in the area, including Lottery, Latium and Bucks Hill. With its closure the closest option is about 15 kilometres away in Adelphi, and the distance is taking an emotional and financial toll on residents. “We need the station because we kinda nuh feel so hundred like how the station is not there now; [we] feel insecure and all of that,” the female resident said.

Last week’s murder occurred metres from where the shuttered police station is located, and it has sent shock waves through what was once a relatively peaceful area. As-yet-unknown assailants fatally shot a young man in the early hours of last Monday morning, leaving the community in mourning and on edge. The remnants of two containers that were to be used to accommodate staff of Amity Hall Police Station in St James.

They were destroyed by last year’s Hurricane Melissa. “Just the other day them come kill a little youth, just right near the post office, little boy up there, nice little youth,” the woman from the community told the Observer. She credits God’s grace for the infrequency of major crimes in their community.

The woman shared her views on what happened with the previous effort to relocate the police station. “They had a container but the breeze blow it down in the road. Seems like them never tie it down properly and it blow down,” she said.