CORAL SPRING, Trelawny — A senior Jamaican law enforcement leader’s call for proactive information sharing to stop dispute-related violence has sparked a promising policy review from the country’s top justice official, opening a new conversation about balancing public safety, privacy rights, and crime prevention in communities across the island. During the question-and-answer session of last Friday’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy Development and Estate Planning Public Education Forum, hosted at Ocean Coral Spring under the theme “Resolving Disputes, Securing Legacy”, St James Police Division Commander Senior Superintendent Eron Samuels raised urgent ethical and operational questions about existing restrictions that block police from accessing early records of escalating land and estate disputes.\n\nSamuels, who framed the issue as a critical gap in the country’s violence prevention strategy, pointed to two recent murders in his jurisdiction that were directly linked to long-running property and estate disputes already documented in court proceedings. “If we could have gotten wind of that earlier we might have avoided two murders,” Samuels told the gathered crowd and officials. “So, I want to know what would the problem be with the police officers getting that information early?”\n\nBeyond early access, the senior police commander also called for the creation of a centralized national registry or database to track all active property and estate disputes. Such a system, he argued, would document involved parties, log initial incident reports, and maintain an official public record of identified tensions — a resource that could allow law enforcement and conflict resolution officials to intervene before tensions turn lethal.\n\nResponding to Samuels’ request, Justice Minister Delroy Chuck acknowledged the senior commander had raised a “very important point” that demands urgent policy review. Current protocols enforced through the Administrator General’s Department, which oversees estate administration in Jamaica, ban the sharing of dispute information with law enforcement. But Chuck signaled openness to revising these rules to enable early intervention.\n\nChuck explained that early alerts of impending conflict over land in local communities would allow officials to deploy restorative justice interventions or police outreach to de-escalate tensions before violence breaks out. Even so, he emphasized that any policy change would require careful negotiations to balance crime prevention goals with Jamaica’s existing Data Protection Act, which sets strict rules for sharing personal information provided to government agencies.\n\n“We have to be careful about data protection; but to the extent that we’re talking about preventing violence, it is something we need to discuss,” Chuck said. “We will discuss it further to find out to what extent will information come to you. And [if] parties come to the administrator general, you anticipate that there could be a conflict and, quietly, we could pass on the information to the police to say, ‘There’s likely to be something in that community.’”\n\nFriday’s forum was the first event in a new public education campaign launched by the Administrator General’s Department to address rising tensions over what Jamaicans call “dead lef” — disputes over inherited property and unplanned estates that have become a leading source of inter-personal and community violence across the country. The campaign’s core goals include simplifying public information about intestacy rules and estate planning, as well as expanding awareness of alternative conflict resolution tools to reduce violent outcomes.