President of the Jamaica Association for the Resettlement of Returning Residents, Percival LaTouche, is urging Jamaicans overseas not to return home.
According to LaTouche, who spent over 30 years in the United Kingdom from 1958 until the early 1990s when he resettled in the land of his birth, “It makes no sense you spend 20, 30, or 40 years overseas working hard only to return home for people to kill you.”
LaTouche made the comments to Loop News on Tuesday while reacting to the murder of returning resident, 44-year-old Karen Cleary, whose body was found buried in a shallow grave on her property in Boscobel, St Mary on Monday afternoon.
Cleary, who was born in Jamaica but had lived in England for 20 years, had been building her dream home in the country of her birth when she went missing on November 25. Her body was found wrapped in a tarpaulin in a hole which had been covered with a layer of concrete and dirt. A post mortem will be done to determine the cause of death.
Returning resident, 44-year-old Karen Cleary was killed while building her dream home in Jamaica.
News of her brutal demise has already hit the foreign media and comes just days after the body of 72-year-old American Nancy Hardy was found in a shallow grave in Hanover last Wednesday, four days after she had been reported missing.
Hardy was of Amherst, Massachusetts in the United States and Phase 3, Whitehall in Negril, Westmoreland.
LaTouche told Loop News that dozens of homes built by returning residents are locked up as they have moved back overseas because they are fearful of being targeted. He said there are some 60 such houses in the Mandeville area alone and returnees have lost confidence in the ability of the security forces to protect them.
And according to Latouche, returning residents of Retreat and Prospect in St Thomas are under siege from robbers.
“The people dem can’t come out a dem house,” he said.
Having started one of the first such associations for returning residents in Jamaica 25 years ago, and having personally attended over 160 funerals for returning residents – many of them murder victims – LaTouche is now at his wits end as to what should be done to address the problem.
And he is not holding back in going after the leadership of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) which he accused of being inept.
LaTouche slammed Police Commissioner, Major General Antony Anderson, claiming that the most decisive action the top cop has made since he was appointed to the job nine months ago is “go after the Public Defender”. He described members of the JCF hierarchy as being bereft of ideas and paying lip service to the plight of returning residents.
Despite an overall 21 per cent reduction in murders this year, when compared to 2017, LaTouche charged that the police have not done enough to reduce homicides, in particular of returning residents. This he said is a failure on the part of Anderson. He said 11 returning residents have been killed since the start of the year, an average of one each month.
As it relates to a special task force that was announced in July to address the situation, LaTouche has dismissed it as a joke.
“It’s pure politics in it, it’s not going anywhere. I went to one meeting and I realised this is rubbish, so I haven’t gone back. All we can hear is pure chat and more chat,” LaTouche told Loop News.
In July, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade announced the establishment of a taskforce to address security and safety concerns related to returning residents and their holistic reintegration into the Jamaican society.
Melbourne Flake, 81, and his 70-year-old wife Etta were murdered in St Thomas earlier this year.
It said the task force would be chaired by State Minister Pearnel Charles Jr and would comprise returning residents, the ministry’s Diaspora Affairs Department, and the JCF.
In its own statement, the JCF committed to assisting returnees to vet persons they engage to work for them. It is reported that Clearly and several others may have fallen victim to the very persons they had employed to work on their homes.
The JCF said at the time that the safety and security of returning residents remained a high priority and strategies and support systems were being bolstered for their protection.
According to the JCF, meetings would be held regularly at the divisional level to enhance the sharing of important information.
Following the killing of two returnees from the UK – 71-year-old Florence and 74-year-old Halford Anderson in June, the Guardian newspaper reported that Jamaican expats who return home after decades in the UK face an “extreme risk” of murder. The newspaper was quoting a senior, retired member of the JCF.
The newspaper also reported that 85 Britons, Americans and Canadians were killed in Jamaica since 2012.
The Andersons had only recently retired to Jamaica where Charlie was born, when they were fatally stabbed, and their bodies burned following a firebomb attack on their dream home in Mount Pleasant, in the parish of Portland.
That double murder followed the killing in April of 63-year-old Birmingham charity worker, Delroy Walker, in Boscobel, St Mary where he had built his dream home. Two men whom he had employed to work on his house were taken into custody.
In January, 81-year-old Melbourne Flake and his 70-year-old wife Etta, both of Retreat in St Thomas and who were returning from Canada, were found dead in their home in the parish. Two persons are before the court in connection to those killings.
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La touche (by way if haiti) hol a proper fuk off! Instead you and your organization find ways to assault the prime minister and hia cabinet you busy diacouraging resettlement. You older heads PHUCKED up the xountry from way back when…the killings and deep piveety is the end results.
Don’t go anywhere then. There is nothing the government can do but make suggestions on how you should act when you come back.
Don’t build a mansion in a depressed area. Don’t hire family members who are untrustworthy to handle your business. Use reputable companies to do construction or security work. Spend money on good work. But if you tell them this they will say no man my cousin/brother can do the work for cheap.
People who feel left behind will be jealous. But property in a nice community and don’t plan to go to the area where you grew up esp if you grew up in poverty. This seems to happen only in country (St Mary,St Thomas).
It is the people own family killing them off
La touché did not have to advice common sense people not to return to Jamaica .There are endless places to retire in this world and if Jamaica will not protect retirees other places will.Stop blaming other people for the state of the country because every last one a unu a some selfish MF.
I concur with this man. I’m not going back there to live. I worry for my mom who has a house there and is planning to retire soon. Contrary to what some people may believe, these incidents occur almost anywhere on the island and in upper middle class areas too.
His statement coming from a place of sheer helplessness. Him just tired and frustrated with yet another killing, not a robbery, but a murder yet again.
Some advice for returnees.
1) Downplay how well you’re doing
Jamaica is FILLED with jealousy and haters so flaunting your success will only push them to put energy into their bad-mind.
2) Keep all money transactions conversations to yourself! Make sure you discuss your business matters in private and over encrypted calls out of people’s ear shot. Again safeguard yourself from nosey people, which seems to be very abundant in Jamaica.
3) Aspire to dress down as oppose to dressing up… Your clothes and overall appearance can make you a target, so try to blend in as oppose to standing out via the latest fashions.
4) Befriend a “never left” yardie to be your mouth piece and referral guide when it comes to bargaining or setting up prices or referring you to honest workers, also remember that you have to make your choice of person very meticulously and wisely.
5) Don’t trust anyone!!! Always have a plan to protect yourself, never leave yourself vulnerable to someone’s word, being a liar, two-faced and just fake in general are hackneyed personailty traits among the populous so be on guard for that. M
6) invest in security measures whether it be dogs, surveillance cameras, locks on all doors and windows, high walls etc, make sure that it won’t be easy for anyone to get to you. That effort alone in investing in equipment and means to protect yourself can discourage a lot of people from plotting on you.
7) Invest in a licensed firearm…No explanation needed
8) Be able to say “No” to people and don’t make anyone feel entitled to your possessions. If you decide to give, do it in the form of an investment as oppose to straight charity. Charity in Jamaica leads dependency which can easily lead to entitlement.
9) Obseve before you partake.
10) Make police reports of any threats or harassment aimed at you by anybody.
Hoped that help, people add more to the list just in case I forgot anything.
Sorry but before me do all dis, me tan a me yaad abroad. I have to be free to move around. All that is not worth it to me. IJS.
Here we go again. Yet more murders in Jamaica and some trying to blame the victims, the swearing, hatred and violent attitude of the first post by ‘Phantom Phoenix’ illustrates Jamaica’s problem! I’ve been visiting Jamaica for more than 20 years as my parents emigrated back there from the UK. I’m very well traveled and can honestly say Jamaica has a chronic violence crime problem as does most of the the Caribbean; I’ve spent the last few months investigating international crime statistics and the Caribbean without question has one of the highest violence crime rates in the world.
I have noticed that even Caribbean islands with populations of under 4000 people still have higher murder rates than most of the world; take into account that international crime statistics are compiled from police records based on populations per 100,000 for a given year.
Whenever I post my opinion to Jamaican newspapers online they always avoid showing it. There always seems to be a certain amount of denial from the media and officials.
As for the recent British murder victims in Jamaica, its completely irrelevant if they knew their attackers or not, what matters is that they are dead and those responsible resorted to violence.
We should be asking why cant Jamaica and the Caribbean crime rate resemble more that of Japan, Finland or Qatar?
Why is it specifically violent crime rather than non violent crime that dominates the crime statistics in this region?
My sister made me aware that a female doctor in Montego Bay has to travel with a male for protection when shes performing home visits.
Jamaica and the Caribbean needs zero tolerance for violent crime. and that should include vile violent language by some using the internet or other media.
I will be surprised if this post is accepted but hopefully truth will prevail.
?!
JMG accepts post without prejudices.
You too fuking tender! Clutch yu pearls or balls on that note. Because what I wrote didn’t indicate any violence.
Jamaica weh mi born and grow? a who can tell me nuh fi go a mi yard? but they encourage foreigners to come and invest. The government need to protect its citizens and I mean all of it’s citizens, rich, poor, old, returning residence, children, handicap. Nuff Jamaicans abroad have money and would love to spend it in Jamaica but dem fraid fi go home. I travel all over the world and when people ask me where i’m from and I say Jamaica, they treat mi like mi special to rass. Jamaica itself is a brand, let the citizens of the country enjoy it. we all earn it. It saddens me to see all this senseless killing and the state my beloved country is in. Missa man you bright, you caah tell mi nuh fi come home. tell di government to do their job and protect it’s citizens.
Please to resubmit you post a 1000x! NOBODY can discourage me from my birth land.
Security is the responsibilities of government and citizens. La touche (damn haitian lineage) should go tek issues with parliament. Such a damn meaaage him a send out a slap doos out a good people mouth!
Dem encourage Mexico and de rest a lite and white fi come and SECURE DEM TO De MAX.
La touche fi go back a england. Ole rass royalist dem still breathing. I am one not sorry fi windwarders.
***unu done know I no see nuff a who no like when me post…so bayyyyy on that note.
It nuh look good fi unnu a tell ppl nuffi come a dem country doe. Place waah clean up like a global cleanse. Mi memba behind the scenes Angel tell mi pray fi everything an mi did affi practice miself. right now all travel road psalm mi have. Every chance mi get when mi head nuh tek mi talk to father God n try keep him in everything suh when unnu go ask God fi cover yuh an family under the blood of Jesus Amen. Our country needs help and they want to put ppl in fear for what is to come so you will easily accept. The beast system has already been in effect years ago. Stay strong, stay prayed up cause only God can help us now because our leaders are corrupt and its been that way. They don’t care about us. Wake up!!
At Phantom; when them tell people not to come home it seems they have given up and the bad guys have won. we cannot let them win. good over evil must prevail.