Almost 100 Dead In Less Than One Month.….

Jamaica has aver­aged 3.2 mur­ders per day for the new month of January, com­pared to 2.75 per day for all of 2014.
Imagine almost a hun­dred dead bod­ies laid out in a row , all killed in less than a month, in a small Island with a pop­u­la­tion of 2.7 million.
Despite these shock­ing , yet un-sur­pris­ing num­bers the coun­try’s min­is­ter of secu­ri­ty is ask­ing the nation not to panic.
Minister Bunting had this to say.
“If this rate con­tin­ues, we could see the month end­ing with approx­i­mate­ly 100 mur­ders. However, let me point out that, even in 2014, we had two months with mur­ders above 100, which points to the ran­dom­ness in how these crimes occur, and to demon­strate that we need not be undu­ly alarmed at this time,” 
let me point out that at the end of last year the Jamaican Police depart­ment and min­is­ter Bunting bragged about south­ward trend­ing crime statistics.
Murders they report­ed had dropped 16 per cent, shoot­ings were down 12 per cent, rape had fall­en by 23 per cent and aggra­vat­ed assault by 17 per cent. Of note is the fact that Police killings have dropped a pre­cip­i­tous 54% against the last cor­re­spond­ing period.

See. 16 % Reduction In Murder Rate Commendable Yet…

At the risk of sound­ing neg­a­tive we argued then that we con­grat­u­lat­ed the JCF/​JDF for their hard work under dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances with mar­gin­al to non-exis­tent sup­port from the Miller Administration. We also opined that we were very skep­ti­cal that the down­ward trend could be sus­tained in the absence of (1 a well artic­u­lat­ed prov­able for­mu­la , and (2 An econ­o­my that is at best anemic.
We also felt that nei­ther the Minister nor the Police depart­ment had pre­sent­ed any evi­dence to which they could rea­son­ably claim was attrib­ut­able to the low­er num­bers then.

Minister Bunting in try­ing to explain the spike in mur­ders yet allay fears simul­ta­ne­ous­ly , said “The secu­ri­ty forces are respond­ing oper­a­tional­ly to the gang sit­u­a­tion in St Catherine North, and in so doing, we will employ the approach­es that worked in 2014, name­ly tar­get­ing vio­lence pro­duc­ers, dom­i­nat­ing crit­i­cal hot-spots, pri­or­i­tiz­ing foren­sic and inves­tiga­tive resources to this area, and dry­ing up the fund­ing sources for these crim­i­nal organisations,”.
The state­ments of the min­is­ter to any­one in the know is a des­per­ate attempt to buy time.The Minister ear­li­er last year stat­ed that despite the best efforts of law-enforce­ment crime con­tin­ued to esca­late. He argued then for divine inter­ven­tion. If the best efforts of the police then were not enough to arrest the spi­ral­ing crime wave , how can the min­is­ter advance his lat­est argu­ments on how to low­er the num­ber of homicides?
Sources on the ground tells me the wave of homi­cides being com­mit­ted in the areas named by the min­is­ter are direct­ly attrib­ut­able to the Klans-man gang affil­i­at­ed to , you guessed it, the rul­ing People’s National Party Administration of Portia Simpson Miller.

All across You-tube there are videos of peo­ple fight­ing and being dis­re­spect­ful to police officers. 
Never before in the his­to­ry of our coun­try, save and except dur­ing the Manley débâ­cle of the 70’s, has Jamaica’s crim­i­nals have such crate-blanche to do as they please.
As a cop in the late 80’s, to ear­ly 90’s, I felt we were oper­at­ing with our hands tied behind our backs. Today’s cops are oper­at­ing with their hands tied behind their backs and are also blindfolded. 
There is no rule-of-law in Jamaica, our coun­try is essen­tial­ly a klep­toc­ra­cy. The present Administration is large­ly seen as bla­tant­ly cor­rupt and incompetent.
The litany of alle­ga­tions against the Government remains so, (alle­ga­tions only, because there is no redress in the courts for the peo­ple who want a func­tion­ing democracy. 

Being in pow­er for inor­di­nate stretch­es of time, has allowed the rul­ing PNP to place cor­rupt func­tionar­ies at all lev­els of civic life and con­sol­i­date it’s bases of pow­er. The court being no excep­tion. The last extend­ed stretch the par­ty had was for an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ years. 
Imagine how much harm a cor­rupt admin­is­tra­tion can do in that much time.
Notwithstanding the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party has also failed to offer strong deci­sive alter­na­tive for­ward-lean­ing lead­er­ship. Thus far the oppo­si­tion has been reduced to a cas­trat­ed dog which can only dream of a time when it was able to have it’s pick of bitches.
The nation in gen­er­al has been des­ig­nat­ed 84% cor­rupt by the European based Transparency International. In essence the vot­ers and the admin­is­tra­tion have been a per­fect match-made in corruption-heaven.

The INDECOM Act which was cre­at­ed by the Opposition JLP while in pow­er between 2007- to 2011, was draft­ed and passed in response to massive

police cor­rup­tion and abuse. The Act though well inten­tion-ed , was poor­ly craft­ed and imple­ment­ed. The Act may have mar­gin­al, yet unproven effect on police cor­rup­tion but it has mea­sur­ably had a chill­ing effect on offi­cers abil­i­ty to do their jobs.
If any­thing, the Act has embold­ened a law-less pop­u­la­tion to be even more abra­sive and abu­sive of the rule of law and those who enforce the laws.
From the off­set the Commissioner giv­en the task to head the neo­phyte Agency was more con­cerned about ele­vat­ing his own stature and self aggran­diz­ing than remov­ing rogue cops and work­ing with the Police depart­ment toward the rule of law.

Jamaicans at home who yearn for a crime-free coun­try hope against hope . There is no foun­da­tion being laid which will bear fruits of a just and crime/­cor­rup­tion-free country.
The nation needs a com­plete re-align­ment away from crim­i­nal­i­ty. This is no easy task there is sim­ply too much cor­rup­tion with­ing the body politic. The Government is inher­ent­ly cor­rupt, who will re-align and mobi­lize the people?
Jamaicans resid­ing in the dias­po­ra kid them­selves about the direc­tion of our coun­try. Many chose to pre­tend that the coun­try will some­how fix itself, while they give aid and com­fort to the crim­i­nal enhanc­ing Government in Kingston.
The rest of us are aware there will be a lot more blood-shed before peo­ple wake up from their slum­ber to the real­i­ties of what has hap­pened to our country.