Govt. Knows Its Approach Will Not Solve Crime But Politics Trumps Country

Despite all of the fail­ings of the Police high com­mand as a unit for effec­tive polic­ing in Jamaica, the present wave of mur­der and may­hem can­not be laid at the feet of the police alone.
Neither will the throw­ing of Commissioner of Police George Quallo under the bus suf­fice to dis­tract from the fright­en­ing num­ber of 1600 plus dead Jamaicans last year.

Andrew Holness came to the Job of Prime Minister deter­mined to micro-man­age crime, in a way that I can only char­ac­ter­ize as, “in an “up by elit­ist Mona kind way”.
You all remem­ber when Bruce Golding said that his Government would not be dic­tat­ed to by Mona, in ref­er­ence to the US embassy?
Well, I’m not talk­ing about that part of Mona, I’m actu­al­ly talk­ing about the “Intellectual ghet­to” as per Mutty Perkins.

Andrew Holness had ample time to look at what the coun­try need­ed before he was elect­ed and took on the job of Prime Minister. Holness is young, edu­cat­ed and is sup­pos­ed­ly smart.
Having lis­tened to Holness’s utter­ances since he assumed exec­u­tive lead­er­ship of the coun­try, has caused me much dis­may. He has me ques­tion­ing whether he ful­ly under­stands how a mod­ern soci­ety works.

There are a cou­ple of things which seem to elude Andrew Holness despite what I con­clude is a gen­uine desire on his part to want a pros­per­ous Jamaica.
The prob­lem with his Utopian dream is that there can be no pros­per­i­ty in an atmos­phere of mur­der and oth­er vio­lent crimes.
Attracting invest­ment and retain­ing it by any quan­tifi­able mea­sure in Jamaica’s present cir­cum­stance is tan­ta­mount to attempt­ing to fill a bas­ket with water.

#1 At best, a coun­try can have but mar­gin­al suc­cess com­pared to what it could nor­mal­ly accom­plish, if the specter of mur­der and ter­ror­ism is not removed, even giv­en the best of con­di­tions in the wider world.

#2 Bad mouthing the police by align­ing with Terrence Williams of INDECOM and the Media elites like Cliff Hughes and oth­ers who make a liv­ing from telling lies and opin­ing about police fail­ings, is not exact­ly the pre­scrip­tion for hav­ing a secu­ri­ty force which wants to work for you.
Each and every politi­cian must under­stand, the dif­fer­ence between cam­paign­ing and the com­plex­i­ties of governing.
Andrew Holness still has­n’t yet learned that lesson.

In speech after speech, Andrew Holness told his audi­ences that the police would not be allowed to kick in doors and kill peo­ple under his administration.
The prob­lem with that shame­less bit of pan­der­ing, is that kick­ing doors in is the work that police do when crim­i­nals do not want to sur­ren­der to being arrested.
It is dirty, it is harsh, it is not pret­ty to see but that is what hap­pens when crim­i­nals decide to try to kill inno­cent civil­ians and police officers.
[I am not in any way jus­ti­fy­ing sit­u­a­tions in which offi­cers betray their oaths and take inno­cent lives or take lives when they did not have to]

Terrence Williams Not About Investigating Dirty Cops But About Self Promotion, Grandstanding, And Smear.…

Based on his unequiv­o­cal sup­port for the crime enhance­ment INDECOM Act and his bad-mouthing of polic­ing meth­ods which did not com­port with the dic­tates of the elit­ist cabal of uptown, Holness all but guar­an­teed a police work slow down.
As I asked in an arti­cle a while back. why would Jamaican police risk their free­dom and their lives for a coun­try which does not val­ue their sacrifice?

The log­i­cal con­clu­sion is that in the same way the aver­age Jamaicans do not under­stand how liv­ing in a coun­try of law enhances their lives, Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Peter Phillips and all who fol­low them do not under­stand that con­cept either.

Sadly, their igno­rance and incom­pe­tence are caus­ing the death of hun­dreds if not thou­sands of peo­ple each year.
Our coun­try is at war, it requires sol­diers to fight that war. The Prime Minister’s stance will only cause more deaths not end them.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blogger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.