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A wave of violent incidents involving high school students across Jamaica has sparked urgent alarm from senior law enforcement, who warn that physical and armed conflicts among young people are rising at an alarming rate despite ongoing proactive intervention efforts.

Acting Senior Superintendent Mark Harris, head of the St Andrew Central Police Division, outlined the growing crisis in an interview with Jamaica Observer on Friday, just one day after a 16-year-old student from elite all-boys school Jamaica College was formally charged with assaulting a peer. The teen faces charges of assault occasioning bodily harm and is scheduled to appear in juvenile court in the coming week.

Jamaica College has recently dominated local headlines for dual historic athletic and academic triumphs: in March 2026, the school claimed the Mortimer Geddes Trophy as boys’ national champion at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships, and just days later ended a 39-year title drought to win the 2026 TVJ Schools’ Challenge Quiz championship. But the institution’s celebratory momentum has been overshadowed by a string of violent incidents on and off its campus. Just weeks after the championship wins, a March 24 assault left one student injured and a classmate under arrest. More recently, a viral video surfaced online showing two Jamaica College students repeatedly attacking a fellow student, sparking public outcry.

Jamaica College is not an isolated case. Just this month, the country was rocked by the fatal stabbing of 13-year-old Kland Doyle, a Seaforth High School student, who was killed by a classmate in Morant Bay, St Thomas. Harris also detailed a string of other recent violent incidents involving armed students across the St Andrew Central policing district. Four schoolboys were arrested and charged in Gordon Town after officers found them in possession of illegal offensive weapons. Three days before his interview, police intervened to break up a mass brawl between four students at Papine High School, where all four were found carrying knives, ice picks and machetes. While no assault charges were filed as none of the participants reported injuries, all four were charged for possession of prohibited weapons. Harris also recalled a near-fatal incident ahead of this year’s Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships, where a 14-year-old Calabar High School student was stabbed and admitted to intensive care in critical condition; the suspect charged in that attack remains in police custody.

Harris acknowledged that the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) has extensive experience responding to youth violence, but emphasized that the current frequency of incidents has reached unacceptable levels. “We are not strangers to treating with these things, but they are getting one too many, and that is what we want to reduce,” he said. A major unaddressed challenge, he added, is that many violent altercations between students are never reported to authorities, meaning the true scale of the crisis is likely higher than official data reflects.

To curb the trend, the JCF has partnered with the Ministry of Education and other local stakeholders to roll out targeted interventions, including pre-event tension mitigation that Harris said successfully reduced violence ahead of the 2026 athletics championships. The force’s Community, Safety and Security Branch maintains a permanent presence in schools across St Andrew Central, with dedicated school resource officers and territorial leads assigned to at-risk institutions, regular campus visits, and ongoing educational programming to teach students about the long-term consequences of violent behavior.

Harris warned that normalized violence in schools sets a dangerous foundation for adulthood, when criminal acts carry far more severe lifelong consequences. “These [students] will become adults in a few years and then the adult world is so different and demanding and even needs more discipline than in schools, because serious crime is not a joke, it has serious implications on persons if they commit these crimes,” he said. “We are working with other stakeholders and other agencies to assist these persons and to let them understand the implications of these senseless acts that end with them being arrested, charged, and taken before the court.”

Jamaican-born educator Karen Francis has turned her decades-long commitment to youth development into action, completing a grueling 12-hour dance marathon at Trench Town’s iconic Culture Yard this Wednesday to raise $500,000 for a new youth entrepreneurship initiative tailored to the tight-knit community in St Andrew.

The effort, designed to unlock the latent creative talent of Trench Town’s young people and turn that skill into sustainable, globally connected livelihoods, will breathe new life into a shuttered local reading centre, which will serve as the headquarters for the upcoming Trench Town Community 4-H Youth Entrepreneurship Programme. Alongside fundraising for the programme, the dance marathon also marked the official launch of the Founding Supporter Circle, an international outreach campaign that invites 500 donors across the globe to contribute $1,000 over one to two years to hit the $500,000 target. Interested backers can choose to sponsor individual segments of the marathon or make direct donations to the youth-focused project.

In an interview with the Jamaica Observer on the day of her performance, Francis explained that the idea for the programme grew out of her observation that the unused reading centre – once supported by a sponsor that could no longer sustain funding – was leaving local children without access to a critical community learning space. Drawing on her years of experience organizing and leading 4-H clubs, she saw an opportunity to repurpose the space and leverage her own skills to uplift the neighborhood she holds close.

The programme will equip participating young people with three core pillars of training: entrepreneurship basics, cultural arts skill-building, and business English instruction, all designed to help participants access and engage with international markets. Unlike traditional community aid models, the initiative focuses on empowering youth to build their own independent trade relationships, including connections with young creators and businesses across other African nations. Leveraging 4-H’s existing global network, the programme will help integrate Trench Town creators into an established circular economic ecosystem, turning untapped local talent into stable, long-term income.

Francis, who now resides in the United States and has led youth-focused projects across the world, emphasized that Trench Town already boasts a vibrant informal local economy full of skilled creators – from seamstresses and garment makers to artisans – that just needs intentional structure to scale. “Anything that you need, they have here. This is what black economy looks like, and it just needs to be properly structured and organised,” she noted. Participants will learn to design, produce, and market a range of cultural goods for local and international sale, including handmade jewelry, crocheted goods, original paintings, pottery, and branded Trench Town merchandise.

To enrich the programme’s training offerings, Francis has arranged for alumni from the U.S. State Department’s English Language Fellow Programme and other international exchange initiatives to join as mentors, guest instructors, and supporters. She stressed that fluency in standard English is a critical tool for global commerce, noting that while Jamaican patois – the primary daily language of most Trench Town residents – is a culturally rich and valuable part of local identity, the ability to code-switch between patois and standard English is essential for international trade. “It is important for all of us to be able to switch from patois and back into English. We need it to engage in trade, which is what all countries are pretty much engaged in,” she explained.

Beyond economic empowerment, the initiative also seeks to reshape harmful public narratives about Trench Town. While the community is globally celebrated as the birthplace of reggae legends including Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer, it has long been stigmatized due to past violent incidents, and many local young people lack access to structured entrepreneurial opportunities. Francis aims to rewrite that story by centering Trench Town’s youth and their creative work.

The programme will position products made by participants to sell directly to tourists visiting the Culture Yard, moving beyond a handout model to a mutually beneficial exchange that helps youth recognize the inherent value of their work. “Rather than handouts, they are able to come and spend their money; we want them to see the value in their products. They are not begging; they assign the value to it and they exchange it that way so they learn the value of what they’re producing,” Francis said. This model, she added, will help young people build lasting personal pride and a stronger sense of connection to their community, laying the groundwork for long-term, community-led growth.

On a quiet Thursday in Kingston, Jamaica, 100-year-old Vera Green woke to mark a historic milestone few ever reach: her centennial birthday. Though a recent chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) diagnosis has left her movement limited and breathing labored, the soft-spoken centenarian says she feels nothing but gratitude for the century of life she has lived.

“I can hardly catch my breath, so I mostly have to stay in one place, but I thank the Lord and I am quite satisfied,” Green shared in an interview with the Jamaica Observer during a home visit Thursday.

Born as one half of a pair of twins in the rural community of Stanmore, St Elizabeth, Green and her brother Vivian were the youngest children of their working-class parents. From an early age, she showed a sharp curiosity and love for learning, enrolling at St Albans Primary and Infant School with a clear dream: to become a teacher. That ambition was cut short, however, when crippling family financial hardship forced her to leave schooling after sixth grade to help support her household.

“I wasn’t backward in school; my head was very good and everything. I wanted to be a teacher, but my parents never had the means to support my studies,” Green reflected. “I made sure all my own children got an education, went to school, church, every opportunity, and they turned out well. If my parents had been able to help me pursue my goals, I know I would have achieved something great too.”

After leaving primary school, Green took on casual day labor for local families, and later supplemented her income with small-scale farming, she said. Her granddaughter Lisa, who now helps care for her, shared that Green’s resourcefulness extended far beyond standard work — for decades, she served as an uncertified community midwife, helping dozens of local women deliver their babies at a time when the nearest hospital, Black River Hospital, was miles away and inaccessible for many rural families.

“In the rural countryside back then, there weren’t formal career opportunities for women like her, so she took on whatever work she could do, from housekeeping to farm work that local community members hired her for,” Lisa explained. “What always stuck out was how she stepped up when people needed her. Any time a woman went into labor, people would come running for Vera, and she would go help deliver the baby — no questions asked.”

Today, Green lives with COPD and hypertension, which has slowed her movement considerably, but she retains her sharpness and daily devotional routine. Remarkably, she still reads her Bible every day without needing prescription glasses, recites scripture daily, and maintains a steady practice of prayer, Lisa added.

Even as Green embraces gratitude for reaching 100, she acknowledges that advanced age brings unignorable challenges. “When you get old, everything fades. You can’t take care of yourself the way you used to. If people don’t help me, if they don’t put what I need in my hand, I can’t get it for myself,” she said. “But still, I thank God, and I bless the people who take care of me.”

Members of Green’s church community, the Kencot Seventh-day Adventist Church, gathered to celebrate her milestone this week. Christopher Johnson, leader of the congregation’s Seniors Ministry, who hails from the same St Elizabeth community as Green, said the centenarian is a beloved member of the church, and currently the only member of the congregation to reach the 100-year mark.

“We are delighted to share this 100th birthday with her. It’s an extraordinary milestone,” Johnson said. “We have several other nonagenarian members, three women aged 97, 98 and 99, but Vera is our first centenarian. She is quiet but always active, incredibly warm and friendly to everyone she meets.”