Are We A Nation Of Majority Criminal/​s/​supporters?

Discussions of crim­i­nal acts on social media reveal a shock­ing truth. There are far more peo­ple sup­port­ive of mur­der­ous crim­i­nals than you may have imag­ined.
To be truth­ful, it depends on the coun­try in which the crimes are com­mit­ted.
As you may know, we Jamaicans have a real pre­dictable response to this, “Well, crime is every­where”. Or bet­ter yet, “krime de ebery weh”.
It’s hard to argue with that point of view. Fortunately, we aren’t talk­ing about whether crim­i­nals are every­where. We can all agree that wher­ev­er there are humans there will always be some moron will­ing to steal, kill, or oth­er­wise act out­side the bounds of decen­cy.
What we are real­ly talk­ing about when we con­tin­ue to harp on the issue of crime, is the actu­al lev­els of crim­i­nal­i­ty and not whether it exists at all.

So two things come to mind when we read the com­ments on social media, when the ques­tion of a vio­lent crim­i­nal is the sub­ject under dis­cus­sion.
(1) That there is a silent major­i­ty of Jamaicans, who even under the cov­er of anonymi­ty, are too scared to speak out against crime and crim­i­nals.
(2) That the coun­try has changed so dras­ti­cal­ly over the last three decades that the vast major­i­ty of the peo­ple are mur­der­ous crim­i­nals or relat­ed to them some­how.
Now I know that ‑that char­ac­ter­i­za­tion may be a bit much but a peek at the com­ments on these issues is enough to dri­ve dread into any reg­u­lar per­son­’s heart. I know it does mine.

We have a bi-polar nation which some­times says all of the right things on crime then does all of the wrong things.
The two polit­i­cal par­ties which rule the coun­try agree on one thing and one thing only. Crime serves their inter­est.
On the sin­gu­lar impor­tant ques­tion of how crime is to be han­dled, there is absolute­ly no day­light between the two par­ties.
They both agree that the zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions they cre­at­ed to ensure state pow­er is good for them.
Across Africa, the gen­er­a­tion of free­dom fight­ers who sur­vived the wars against European col­o­niza­tion saw them­selves as own­ers of their respec­tive coun­tries.
European col­o­niza­tion was replaced with tin-pan dic­ta­tor­ships which fur­ther enslaved and dis­en­franchized their peo­ple.
The gen­er­a­tion which took over from the British col­o­niz­ers in 62 in our coun­try adopt­ed the same pos­ture and Garrison pol­i­tics was born.
It is the very same sys­tem of dis­en­fran­chise­ment in which those liv­ing in the zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions, trade feal­ty and a life­time of enslave­ment for a few cheap favors doled out by their polit­i­cal mas­ters.
Those liv­ing out­side the zones of exclu­sions are no less vic­tim­ized, because it comes down to which of the two com­pet­ing polit­i­cal gangs have the most seats locked away, pret­ty much decid­ed before a sin­gle vote is cast. 

Sometimes politi­cians hide and do things which ben­e­fits them­selves and some­times they do those things in the open.
Donald Trump says what he does is done in the open so he is not obstruct­ing jus­tice.
It seems Jamaica’s politi­cians are read­ing from the same script as they tact in the same direc­tion.
(1) They make laws which empow­er crim­i­nals and makes it hard­er for vic­tims and law enforce­ment.
(2) They cre­ate agen­cies which lob­by and ensures crim­i­nal rights, noth­ing for vic­tims of crimes, not even a men­tion.
(3) They pay lip ser­vice to law enforce­ment but empow­ers gang­sters and mur­der­ers.
(4) We some­times tell our­selves that our polit­i­cal lead­ers are stu­pid because of the steps they take. But are they real­ly stu­pid or are they real­ly astute?

They are not dumb, they know that high num­bers of vio­lent crimes impov­er­ish­es the peo­ple. They know that a nation that is inun­dat­ed with vio­lent crime is nev­er going to attract enough invest­ments to make that coun­try pros­per­ous.
They know that when a coun­try is inun­dat­ed with crime, and when that coun­try can­not gen­er­ate enough rev­enue to pay for goods and ser­vices, that nation is forced to bor­row.
They under­stand that a bor­row­er is a slave to the lender. They know that when oth­er nations fund a large slice of INDECOM’s bud­get and funds some of the so-called human rights lob­by they have their own agen­das for doing so.
Yet none of that knowl­edge is enough to make up for their abil­i­ty to latch onto and hold state pow­er as a result of the une­d­u­cat­ed and depen­dent pop­u­la­tion and the crime which keeps invest­ments away.

A lot of peo­ple saw this com­ing, police offi­cers, nurs­es, teach­ers, lawyers, doc­tors, and every­one in between. Those who could seek alter­na­tive res­i­den­cy arrange­ments did so.
Many would like to return to their coun­try to now build their coun­try.
Unfortunately, the metas­ta­siz­ing effect of the degen­er­a­tive poli­cies both polit­i­cal par­ties have pur­sued over the last five or so decades made it impos­si­ble to return and be guar­an­teed any degree of safe­ty.
Though the pri­ma­ry role of gov­ern­ment is to pro­tect the peo­ple, nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has real­ly stood with the silent major­i­ty of Jamaicans by enact­ing a strict and irrefutable slate of laws which sends a clear mes­sage to crim­i­nals and empow­ers law enforce­ment.
They are so decid­ed on main­tain­ing the gar­risons which form their illic­it bases of pow­er that they are unwill­ing to stand with law enforce­ment against the crim­i­nal under­world.
As a con­se­quence, the real­ly hard-work­ing police offi­cers left the police depart­ment in droves. Many were demo­nized as killer cops and forced out through a series of dra­con­ian mea­sures.
In their place now sits imposters and show­boats who saw the police depart­men­t’s pro­mo­tions lad­der as the per­fect exam­ple of how to cur­ry favor and acquire pow­er with­out real­ly doing the hard work.

The astro­nom­i­cal high attri­tion rate of young offi­cers from the police depart­ment and the Government’s sub­ver­sive method­olo­gies employed to keep offi­cers from leav­ing when they chose to, is a clear indi­ca­tion that offi­cers no longer find the JCF a place of hon­or and integri­ty. They no longer believe that they can make a dif­fer­ence in an agency which is set up to fail.
Neither of the two main polit­i­cal par­ties is invest­ed in a Jamaica free from high num­bers of vio­lent crimes.
As a con­se­quence, crim­i­nals have no com­punc­tion about fight­ing and killing police offi­cers.
Whichever par­ty forms the gov­ern­ment usu­al­ly stays mum in the face of assaults on police offi­cers and police facil­i­ties.
If cop killers are caught and placed before the courts they are imme­di­ate­ly giv­en bail, and if con­vict­ed there are no real penal­ties for their crimes.
If the offi­cers man­age to over­come the attacks and take out their attack­ers the state spares no resource in going after them with a view to putting them in jail.
If ever there was a request for a blue­print on how to make a coun­try a par­adise for crim­i­nals, Jamaica is a case study.
College cours­es may be taught on how to take a beau­ti­ful coun­try and stu­pid­ly destroy it while delud­ing your­self that you are mak­ing progress.
Some of the most dis­tress­ing aspects of this are that the argu­ments used by the Island’s deci­sion mak­ers. They bor­row nar­ra­tives from places like the United States which demo­nizes the con­cept of “para-mil­i­tary polic­ing.“
Try fir­ing off a gun, it does­n’t have to be aimed at any­one, in any State of the United States, you will have a pret­ty good edu­ca­tion in para-mil­i­tary polic­ing.
Otherwise called “Militarized polic­ing.” Yet the Americans are like we are deport­ing every­one with whom we ever dis­agreed.
We love our mil­i­ta­rized police. Even though you are get­ting the depor­tees back your police should all be Patsies.