Amidst Speculation About National Elections Jamaican Murderers Continue On A Tear.…

Amidst spec­u­la­tion and fer­vor sur­round­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of General Elections in Jamaica pos­si­bly by the end of this year is the omi­nous and con­stant stream of dai­ly murders.
The next Jamaican gen­er­al elec­tion is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due between 29 December 2016 (the day of the pre­vi­ous elec­tion in 2011) and 16 April 2017 (with­in three months of the date of the first sit­ting of the new Parliament on 17 January 2012).
Despite the length of time still to go experts and Election watch­ers are excit­ed­ly watch­ing for signs that the next National polls may be clos­er than we think.
One indi­ca­tor of this immi­nence is the sight­ing of Portia Simpson Miller on pub­lic plat­forms . Addressing the annu­al con­fer­ence of her South West St Andrew con­stituen­cy the Jamaican Prime Minister said “I hear them say that I am miss­ing in action, all who say that I am miss­ing in action, why them nev­er say the same thing when the JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) hav­ing their prob­lems? I don’t have any prob­lems in my par­ty, I am the leader and I lead from in front, not behind”.

To the aver­age observ­er this state­ment means lit­tle but to those steeped in Jamaican polit­i­cal tra­di­tions this may mean elec­tions are near or worse case, the sea­son has start­ed and it will be a long campaign.
The Jamaican Prime Minister is a prod­uct of Garrison Politics which has metas­ta­sized and is now an inte­gral part of the Jamaican Political land­scape. Garrison Politics is the prac­tice of the polit­i­cal par­ties to use scarce pub­lic funds to cre­ate zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions . Zones of par­ty loy­al­ists who vote for the par­ty which doles out the free­bies. In many cas­es par­ty loy­al­ists receive free hous­ing in select com­mu­ni­ties, they pay no prop­er­ty tax­es, and are afford­ed pay­checks for work they nev­er do.
This prac­tise has had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the Jamaican econ­o­my it has balka­nized, trib­al­ized and polar­ized the nation’s pol­i­tics over the ensu­ing decades since Independence and cost thou­sands of lives.

The Jamaican Prime Minister’s par­ty is not the only vil­lain, her par­ty has sim­ply been bet­ter at it. However the Prime Minister brings to the stage a sense of parochial­i­ty and crass­ness that many Jamaicans at home and in the dias­po­ra would like to see exit the stage. Many Jamaicans believe the Prime Minister is not only unqual­i­fied but gross­ly unfit to serve as the high­est elect­ed offi­cial based on those char­ac­ter­is­tics. All across the coun­try the rash of mur­ders con­tin­ue unabat­ed. The Police are pow­er­less to do any­thing about it and the Prime Minister now back in the spot­light from hiber­na­tion pre­tends that all is well. Maybe it’s time the Prime Minister remove those ridicu­lous sun­glass­es so she can see what every­one else sees hap­pen­ing to the once proud and thriv­ing Island.

CRIME

The Police report that the major­i­ty of killings and oth­er seri­ous crimes are now being com­mit­ted out­side the Kingston and St. Andrew Metropolitan area and Spanish Town the tra­di­tion­al mur­der hotspots. There are sev­er­al fac­tors at play which makes this pos­si­ble. The cre­ation of Highways link­ing the Kingston Metropolitan Region to the rest of the coun­try makes access and egress to and from the rest of the coun­try a breeze. Many of these crimes are being com­mit­ted by men on high pow­ered motor­cy­cles. The nation’s crim­i­nals are not stu­pid they are aware that the great­est con­cen­tra­tion of law enforce­ment assets are bun­dled in Kingston and Saint Andrew. They also know that soft­er tar­gets exist out­side Kingston and so the chance of them get­ting appre­hend­ed are next to zero. It appears that as far as mur­ders are con­cerned nowa­days the Police sim­ply show up and car­ry out the motion. It does not appear that there is any sig­nif­i­cant head­way being made in Investigating and bring­ing crim­i­nals to jus­tice. It is a fright­en­ing prospect when one con­sid­ers the amount of mur­der­ers walk­ing the streets of Jamaica with absolute­ly no fear they will ever be brought to jus­tice. In instance after instance we see the Police oper­at­ing in the pub­lic and they seem unsure and unpre­pared to deal with the prob­lems they are faced with. This is not lost on the crim­i­nal under­world. For a decade dur­ing the 1990’s, by the (JCF’s) own admis­sion the Percival Patterson Administration did not make a sin­gle dol­lar avail­able to train detec­tives. Many sober watch­ers of the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion will tell you that was the peri­od dur­ing which the Police depart­ment lost con­trol of crime.”

COMMUNITY POLICING

There are no sub­sti­tutes for good com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing and impec­ca­ble detec­tive work these two com­po­nents are key to the suc­cess of any depart­ment. Corruption .Perceived Corruption. Politics. Nepotism. Low com­pen­sa­tion. Lack of Leadership from the high com­mand and the Political direc­torate and incom­pe­tence are only some of the issues plagu­ing and hin­der­ing the JCF’s abil­i­ty to ade­quate­ly arrest the run­away crime rate.
As I have said before It is crit­i­cal that Police Officers use their dis­cre­tion in going about their duties how­ev­er there is a clear line of demar­ca­tion which offi­cers in uni­form should not cross. No Police Department allows it’s offi­cers in uni­form to behave in ways which are anti­thet­i­cal to the depart­men­t’s rules. Police offi­cers sub­se­quent­ly must under­stand that even as they strive for ways to con­nect with the com­mu­ni­ties they serve they must remain vig­i­lant that they do not bring the depart­ment to a place where the very peo­ple they chose to impress have to look down in order to see them . The notion that a police depart­ment in cri­sis will endear itself to a pub­lic which cel­e­brates an over­turned patrol car, by engag­ing in “coon­ery and buf­foon­ery “is symp­to­matic of an intel­lec­tu­al defi­cien­cy and a rot which have per­me­at­ed some seg­ments of the soci­ety includ­ing ex-mem­bers. It is bela­bor­ing the point to say Police depart­ments do well when they embrace com­mu­ni­ty Policing.

As a small busi­ness own­er I was real­ly unhap­py when my city dis­con­tin­ued the prac­tice of hav­ing patrol offi­cers stop in to busi­ness­es and say “hi” to store own­ers. I thought the pre­vi­ous out­reach and cama­raderie we shared with our offi­cers were spe­cial and wor­thy of our depart­ment and the over 30,000 res­i­dents who live in my city.
Not once how­ev­er did I see a sin­gle offi­cer hav­ing to Become a disc jock­ey or a danc­ing gyrat­ing clown to earn our respect.

Ending a dance or event which refus­es to abide by the Town and Community Act should not have to be done because a cop gets on stage and join in the event. If and when we find our­selves at that point it means that the Police depart­ment has lost it’s effectiveness.
Police doing their jobs effec­tive­ly can­not be through clown­ing, it is done with coör­di­nat­ed back­up, offi­cers com­ing to the assis­tance of fel­low offi­cers and com­ing fast . That is the best way to ensure that cit­i­zens obey the laws and the offi­cers tasked with enforc­ing them.
let me be clear there is absolute­ly no mer­it to the argu­ments that no mat­ter what offi­cers do as long as you slap the title police com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions on it it’s okay. That philo­soph­i­cal sin­gle mind­ed­ness is exact­ly why the depart­ment finds itself inef­fec­tive and ineffectual.
The police is under­stand­ably unsure and ten­ta­tive. This places their lives at seri­ous risk. Almost dai­ly there are inci­dents of offi­cers forced to back down from crowds of peo­ple who quick­ly gath­er around and hin­ders the arrest of offend­ers. In some cas­es this involves a female offi­cer who offer lit­tle or no help to her male coun­ter­part. In oth­er cas­es attempts to effect an arrest becomes a night­mare because offi­cers are ten­ta­tive and uncer­tain how to effec­tive­ly arrest an offender.

This again is a cri­sis of lead­er­ship. Criminals and their sup­port­ers are like Predators. Sharks can detect a sin­gle drop of blood in the ocean from long dis­tances away. Criminals can sense fear and uncer­tain­ty in police offi­cers. We need to bring back the deci­sive­ness and assertive­ness in our offi­cers. Jamaican crim­i­nals are not get­ting kinder they are get­ting more cal­lous more bru­tal. The police depart­ment must have offi­cers who are not afraid to enforce the laws deci­sive­ly. That is at the heart of the prob­lem. This whole idea of danc­ing police offi­cers , police offi­cer as disc jock­eys, and police offi­cers dag­ger­ing in uni­form is tes­ta­ment not to the chang­ing times but the idio­cy of pro­po­nents. Of course offi­cers can engage the pub­lic and have loads of fun in uni­form, there is how­ev­er a line which they should not cross. There is a clear line between being pop­u­lar and the class clown.