A Year After Winning A Landslide The Prime Minister Blames Boogeymen For The Killings, A Sign Of Failure…

Talk about paint­ing your­self into a cor­ner.….. Prime Minister Andrew Holness cam­paigned on the promise that peo­ple would sleep with their win­dows open under a Holness admin­is­tra­tion. I will not hold the prime min­is­ter to that promise; politi­cians make crazy state­ments, I am not here to nit-pick or make polit­i­cal points.
As I have said repeat­ed­ly, if you read my work and take from it that I am a syco­phant for one side or the oth­er, you are out of your mind.
But let us look at the oth­er things the Prime Minister said before win­ning the elec­tions, after he won, and the things he con­tin­ues to say today.
“Police will not be kick­ing down peo­ple’s doors while I am Prime Minister.”& ” We can­not just form anoth­er squad and send them to shoot up gun­men.” .…..Who the hell does this guy think he is any­way? But wait, you are lit­er­al­ly telling shoot­ers that they have a friend in you when you make state­ments like that.
What is the Prime Minister’s inter­est in keep­ing shoot­ers alive, at the per­il of law-abid­ing Jamaican citizens?
The Prime Minister con­tin­ues to embar­rass him­self by sup­pos­ing that police offi­cers go out to exe­cute shoot­ers. That is usu­al­ly a choice made by the gun­men themselves.
As I said pre­vi­ous­ly, I will not hold the prime min­is­ter to his sil­ly cam­paign promise. Still, I will con­tin­ue to hold him account­able based on the direc­tion he has been tak­ing the coun­try, which has been the oppo­site direc­tion required to begin to turn the coun­try around.

The Prime Minister’s arro­gance and his bull­ish­ness on the sub­ject cre­at­ed ani­mos­i­ty in many offi­cers past and present. Many of those offi­cers placed their lives on the line for a pal­try salary and con­tin­ue to do so.
The Prime Minister joined the anti-police antag­o­nist to Monday morn­ing quar­ter­back vio­lent con­fronta­tions, even those in which police are killed and injured.
By tak­ing that tack and bring­ing in his friend Antony Anderson from the mil­i­tary to exe­cute what I cau­tioned would be a failed strat­e­gy, he basi­cal­ly sig­naled that he want­ed a clean break from tra­di­tion­al polic­ing; police offi­cers guns must fire sweet-smelling ros­es, offi­cers must walk around kiss­ing every ass and every jack­ass and call­ing them sir and ma’am..”
Emboldened by the buf­foon­ery, every punk decid­ed to drape up offi­cers who approach them, regard­less of their transgression.
Several offi­cers lost their lives because they were scared to defend them­selves, out of fear that Holness’ boy Terrence Williams would take their gun away, then per­se­cute them to the fullest extent of [INDECOM], not by Jamaican law.
The res­ig­na­tions poured in up to fifty per month, so they insti­tut­ed mea­sures to make it a crime for offi­cers to leave the JCF, with­out first giv­ing a 6‑month pri­or notice before they do so.

Still, the offi­cers kept on leav­ing, not car­ing about their new rules.
The chick­ens have now come home to roost, mis­ter Holness paint­ed him­self into a cor­ner, he told us our old ways were out­dat­ed, he knew bet­ter than the offi­cers who are in the field doing the work, the peo­ple he so resent­ed that he does­n’t even con­sult them to talk about polic­ing, he con­sults sol­diers, on polic­ing. He placed sol­diers to super­vise career police offi­cers. He cre­at­ed the gen­er­al per­cep­tion among the rank and file that the best they could ever aspire to in the JCF after the best edu­ca­tion, and years of polic­ing expe­ri­ence, is Deputy Commissioner of Police.
They are not good enough to head the agency they spent their entire work­ing careers serv­ing. Holness did not need to say those words; the infer­ence was bla­tant­ly clear.
Holness’s arro­gance has been caus­ing count­less lives; it will con­tin­ue to cause the lives of much more inno­cent Jamaicans.
The Prime Minister’s arro­gance will be his undo­ing. The Zones of Special Operations he tout­ed has done noth­ing to stem the blood-let­ting. The States of Emergencies he derid­ed then was forced to ini­ti­ate did not do it either, and nei­ther has his charm offen­sive done a damn thing to stop the killings.
Now that peo­ple can­not sleep with their win­dows open, .… (ok, that was a low blow), okay, peo­ple can­not sleep, period.
What now?
The Prime Minister and his Police Commissioner have revert­ed to blam­ing the media and the Opposition par­ty. The Prime Minister insin­u­at­ed that some sin­is­ter force is dri­ving up the mur­der sta­tis­tics. His Commissioner of Police blames media head­lines for sen­sa­tion­al­iz­ing mur­der statistics.
How in God’s name can one sen­sa­tion­al­ize facts?

The Jamaica Labor Party won 49 seats in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions, oblit­er­at­ing the Opposition People’s National Party. The vic­to­ry was so resound­ing it sent Opposition Leader Peter Phillips into retire­ment. It was the first time since 1967 that the Jamaica Labor Party had won back to back con­test­ed elec­tions. The mag­ni­tude of the 16 seat pick­up by the JLP was a clear man­date for the JLP to reshape Jamaica and set a new course for the coun­try after years of stag­na­tion and regres­sive per­for­mance under PNP leadership.
The Prime Minister’s state­ments blam­ing shad­owy bogey­men for his watch’s esca­lat­ing mur­ders is a shock­ing admis­sion that his secu­ri­ty poli­cies are an abysmal fail­ure.
Come on, guys, are you seri­ous right now? It is okay to say you were wrong. It is okay to say that the bull­shit you have been ped­dling was .….……well, like I said, cow manure.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.