Jamaica’s state of emergency over crime is back. Here’s why some people are happy

MONTEGO BAY, JamaicaShop owners look up and down the empty sidewalk along Montego Bay’s popular “Hip Strip,” wondering where the tourists looking to buy T-shirts, sip rum punch and dine on authentic Jamaican jerk chicken have gone.

“You see the road?” Gary Verma, 24, a local businessman asked, pointing to the strip, now renamed Jimmy Cliff Boulevard after the reggae music icon. “It is dry now. There is only one tour bus, and no customers are walking in.”

Five months after the government lifted a state of emergency here, Montego Bay is back under the watchful glare of military troops after the high security alert was reimposed April 30 following what officials say was an unacceptable spike in shootings and murders. Soldiers brandishing high-powered rifles are back patrolling the streets alongside police. Together, they are staffing checkpoints, imposing curfews, searching residents and arresting suspects.

“The aim is not to disrupt normal lives unnecessarily,” said Dahlia Garrick, the police spokesperson with the Jamaica Constabulary Force. “The aim is to interrupt violence and to save lives.”

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