‘We are coming for you!’ - Angry Police Fed boss warns killers of cop’s mom

Chairman of the Police Federation, Sergeant Patrae Rowe, has criticised what he termed the apparent apathy of Jamaicans to violent crime as he addressed mourners at the funeral of a cop’s mom who was brutally murdered last month.

Laetitia Francis was slain on Thursday, February 6, at her shop in Old Harbour Glades, St Catherine.

“Today, we are angry, not only because of the way Miss Francis was taken from us, but because of the silence, angry because our country has become so nonchalant in the face of barbaric actions which threaten out very sovereignty,” Rowe said.

Rowe lamented that police personnel and their families were not insulated from gangland-style killings.

Addressing a capacity congregation at the Old Harbour Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Police Federation chief delivered a call to action to hunt down criminals in the country and urged citizens to work with the police in apprehending them.

He had a pithy message for violent criminals in Jamaica.

“We are coming for you. Once you have touched one of us, you have touched all of us!” Rowe said.

no sacredness

The thanksgiving service had greater poignance because it was held on International Women’s Day, a point that did not miss the attention of Police Commissioner Major General Antony Anderson.

“This is a day when we should be celebrating our women, celebrating the protection of women, and, more importantly, where we recognise the sacredness of being a mother ... . These are important things in creating the kind of society that we want,” he said.

Anderson declared that the country owed a debt to Francis’s family that could never be repaid, stressing that no police officer should have to bear the burden from those carrying out “cowardly acts on their families”.

Fitz Jackson, opposition spokesman on national security, in condemning the assault on a woman more popularly known as ‘Miss Nancy’, said that the deadly shooting was an attack on all.

“We are all in it together. There is no Government, there is no Opposition, there is just one Jamaica when it comes to protecting our citizens,” he said, adding that what has happened to Francis was that “criminals are not only targeting law enforcement officers but their family. “

Jackson said that law-enforcement officers should not bear the burden of worrying about their family when they were on the front line of the battle against crime and violence. “They must have the assurance that the entire country is behind them,” he said.

Fayon McCalla injected some laughter into the solemnitude of the occasion as she reminisced about happier times with her mother – even if she was never one to “spare the rod and spoil the child”.

McCalla shared that her mother was a stickler for education and said that not even an overflowing gully could prevent her from sending her kids to school.