My friend brought to my attention this morning the comments of Dr Carl Williams Commissioner of Police as he addressed the 73^rd Annual Joint Central Conferences of the Jamaica Police Federation at the Hilton Rose Hall Resort and Spa in St James on Wednesday.

Said Dr Williams : “People who have sat their exams and who have passed should be con­sid­ered before we add more peo­ple to the pool”.
Isn’t he the Commissioner of Police?
Anyway !

The Commissioner of Police was respond­ing to the can­did asser­tions put forth by the Minister of National Security Robert Montague. Montague said “There must be a sys­tem where after you have passed your exams and you don’t get pro­mot­ed after a peri­od, the per­son must be called in and told what are their faults, or short­com­ings,”.
Hmm ‚oh well that’s a nov­el idea[sic].
It was then that the Commissioner revealed that of all per­sons who have request­ed to see him, about 95 per cent of the issues have to do with promotion.
No s**t , why is that such a “vexed issue”, in your opin­ion Commissioner ‚to bor­row your term?

Anyway the good­ly Commissioner of Police went on to say ‚“As the min­is­ter said, it is unfair for peo­ple who have done their exams to come back and do it again. And that is why no exams have tak­en place this year, because we have to ensure that no oth­er bright stars come and get 98 per cent and eclipse all the good hard-work­ing stal­warts who have been wait­ing for a long time,”.
Really Commissioner Williams, when did you receive this epiphany?
This has been an age old prob­lem, a “vexed issue”, long before you joined the depart­ment, your obser­va­tion would have been legit­i­mate had you made them from the time you joined up to the rank of deputy com­mis­sion­er but once you occu­py the big office you have lost that right to criticize.
What have you done about it , the buck stops with you?

There has nev­er been a bet­ter or pur­er sys­tem of pro­mot­ing peo­ple to lead­er­ship posi­tions than a mer­it-based-sys­tem.
Advancing peo­ple using any oth­er met­ric is bound to end up with dis­as­trous consequences.
Nepotism, who you know, polit­i­cal hench­men, brown-nos­ing, news car­ry­ing, sleep­ing with the boss and reduc­ing them­selves to yard-boys have been only a few of the qual­i­ties nec­es­sary for advance­ments in the JCF.
The hard work­ing stal­warts and those with abil­i­ties to crit­i­cal think were nev­er endear­ing qual­i­ties with­in the JCF.

The JCF has an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high attri­tion rate, there are sev­er­al fac­tors which are con­tribut­ing that race for the door. Top of the list are poor remu­ner­a­tions, lack of advance­ment which could poten­tial­ly com­pen­sate for poor remu­ner­a­tions, lack of sup­port leg­isla­tive­ly and polit­i­cal among others.
As a past mem­ber who actu­al­ly exit­ed the depart­ment after only ten years I under­stood quite well those chal­lenges and still today have a serv­ing mem­ber of my fam­i­ly who has been stuck at the rank of sergeant for over 15 years. Recently I asked him why do you stay in such an ungrate­ful agency , risk­ing your life for such an ingrate population ?
He shrugged and smiled.

Over the years I argued that the Jamaican peo­ple deserved a big­ger bang than that which they get for their buck. I believed then that the nation deserved to get more for the mon­ey it puts into train­ing offi­cers only to see them snapped up by oth­er nations and their police depart­ments where they shine with exem­plary brilliance.
Today I do not make the same argu­ments , I believe the nation deserves what it gets. There is no respect for the rule of law. There is too much active sup­port for crim­i­nals. There are too many peo­ple who are will­ing to side with crim­i­nals, includ­ing the judges whose jobs it is to put crim­i­nals in prison.
On that basis I active­ly sup­port mem­bers of the JCF leav­ing as I did, so they may secure a future and live out their dreams as so many for­mer offi­cers of the depart­ment has done.
I am yet to deter­mine whether there has been an audit done to deter­mine the cost of train­ing an offi­cer only to see so many of them head for the door.
If some of the struc­tur­al breach­es are plugged maybe ‚just maybe the attri­tion rate may be reduced.

MERGER

Some of the struc­tur­al issues plagu­ing the depart­ment are of the depart­men­t’s own cre­ation. I broach this sub­ject with the great­est of sen­si­tiv­i­ty and caution.
I know many of our com­rades from the for­mer Island spe­cial con­stab­u­lary are some of the finest pro­fes­sion­als, hard work­ing and dedicated.
With that said it would be naïve to assume that mere­ly bring­ing the ISCF into the JCF pure­ly for numer­i­cal rea­sons would not have neg­a­tive con­se­quences, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the JCF was unpre­pared to retrain them.

Let me has­ten to say that a large num­ber of can­di­dates who served and are still serv­ing in the JCF who were nev­er mem­bers of the ISCF were them­selves sub-stan­dard candidates.
I make this com­ment with the great­est of respect for the ser­vice of the mem­bers of the for­mer ISCF.
Bringing over to the JCF the mem­bers of the ISCF with­out retrain­ing, and fur­ther­more allow­ing them to main­tain the rank they had was anoth­er move which Stevie Wonder could have seen would have had dis­as­trous con­se­quences ‚the least of which is the pro­mo­tion log-jam which that ill-informed aspect of the merg­er exacerbated.

Regardless of one’s emo­tion­al lean­ing on this, the prac­ti­cal ques­tion remain­ing is whether it was a pru­dent move to bring offi­cers of the Auxiliary and make them super­vi­sors in the reg­u­lar force?
Simply put it amounts to the tail wag­ging the dog. Every mem­ber of the ISCF who wished to join the JCF should have been offered the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go to the train­ing acad­e­my and qual­i­fy to be a reg­u­lar police offi­cer, fail­ing which they should have been giv­en a sev­er­ance pay and allowed to go their way.
It would not have been the first time that a set of work­ers were told their ser­vices as it exist were no longer needed.
Good busi­ness deci­sions should nev­er hinge on loy­al­ty to or emo­tion­al attachments.
At the time of the merg­er I remained silent because I did not want to be accused of advo­cat­ing for peo­ple los­ing their jobs because of any num­ber of dredged up reasons.
Regardless, I opined to close friends that doing a merg­er pure­ly for the sake of numer­i­cal strength con­flict­ed with the forces stat­ed goal of modernization.
The chick­ens are sim­ply com­ing home to roost.

It’s logical to conclude that if the People’s National party attached the same diligence, sense of focus and accountability to Governance it applies to agitating and criticizing the Government the party would be the party which formed the Government.

Former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has also found her tongue which should not come as a shock­er to any­one who know the long-time mem­ber of par­lia­ment and for­mer Prime Minister.
Mr’s Miller was nev­er one to shy away from lash­ing her detrac­tors with her tongue. In fact in one unhinged tirade on a cam­paign stage in Half-Way-Tree Saint Andrew she once warned oppo­nents not to draw her tongue quote: ” cause this gurl nu trou­ble unuh”.
But in Mrs Miller’s defense she always cau­tioned those who would crit­i­cize her not to draw her tongue before she unleash­es her ver­bal tirade on them.
Furthermore while she was Prime Minister she did say she would­n’t “talk har­self outa affice”.

Mr’s Miller was speak­ing to the nov­el idea the man who beat her had . Bruce Golding decid­ed that he want­ed to be a leader who actu­al­ly speak to the peo­ple through his week­ly Jamaica House radio call in show. Yea what the hell was he think­ing? look how he turned out.
Ha, so the good­ly Mrs Miller decid­ed nev­er to talk her­self out of office.
But for those pesky Reporters and cit­i­zens she would still be Prime Minister.

The 31-mem­ber coun­cil of spokesper­sons and a nine-deputy com­ple­ment, have been pret­ty busy offer­ing opin­ions and crit­i­ciz­ing every­thing the 3‑month-old Holness Government does.
The coun­try does need a focused and vig­i­lant oppo­si­tion but it kin­da seem hyp­o­crit­i­cal of the coun­cil of spokesper­sons that all of a sud­den every­one is inter­est­ed in advo­cat­ing for the peo­ple and hav­ing bet­ter ideas about just how things ought to be done.
I mean if the ideas the Council have were so good why is the par­ty on the out­side look­ing in ?
It’s rea­son­able to say that the ideas of the PNP has not worked so well for the coun­try over the last 32 years of PNP rule .
Maybe the par­ty should step aside and go fig­ure out a new path for­ward for itself and the coun­try. I recent­ly heard one autop­sy report which sug­gest­ed that the par­ty moved away from it’s social­ist values.
Practically speak­ing I believe the par­ty has not moved far enough from it’s social­ist roots.

The brand of social­ism being espoused by the grass­roots of the par­ty has already evis­cer­at­ed the mid­dle class and destroyed hope for those at the bot­tom of the ladder.
The redis­tri­b­u­tion­ist ide­ol­o­gy which dec­i­mat­ed the econ­o­my and the pro­duc­tive sec­tor since the 1970’s still is being felt today amidst the hoopla about where the Island’s econ­o­my is posited.
If the Post Mortem is that the par­ty strayed from it’s core prin­ci­ples and that was the rea­son for it’s defeat, the island must brace itself for more of the same from the par­ty which seem inca­pable of under­stand­ing that failed social­ists poli­cies of the 70’s are not going to be sav­ing grace for the 21^st century.

A person feeling ill generally seek medical attention. A medical professional (doctor)then diagnose what ails the person, then counsels the individual on treatment methods.
It’s up to the party feeling ill to decide whether to trust the recommendations of the Doctor or get a second or even a third opinion. Generally there may be variations in the treatment methods but if the initial examination was done properly the diagnosis seldom change. Even though different doctors may have differing opinions on the prognosis.
Simply put, if you have cancer , you have cancer, you may decide whether you want Kemo- therapy, try a holistic natural approach or sit and wait to die.

The same is true for a coun­try expe­ri­enc­ing the rav­ages of crime. It may chose to pur­sue the same path it has always cho­sen for itself, which has not changed a sin­gle thing, engage in rad­i­cal change , or sim­ply sit and wait to be destroyed by it.
The prob­lems which per­sist­ed twen­ty five years ago when I was a young Jamaican cop are the prob­lems of today mul­ti­plied ten-fold.
The very same peo­ple who told peo­ple who called into their radio talk shows to com­plain about police to stone the police sta­tions are the very same peo­ple offer­ing up excus­es and jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the Island’s inor­di­nate crime num­bers over two decades later.

According to some sta­tis­ti­cal esti­mates 30.1% of the country’s peo­ple were aged between 0 and 14. In addi­tion, 62.3% were between 15 and 64 years of age while 7.6% of the pop­u­la­tion of Jamaica were aged 65 and over in 2011.
This gen­er­al­ly means that the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion are younger peo­ple who came of age in the post-inde­pen­dence era. This means a large seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion has no con­cept of a Jamaica of rel­a­tive peace and tranquility.

It comes as lit­tle sur­prise then that the less­er edu­cat­ed peo­ple would not ful­ly respect the soci­etal norms and dic­tates of say the 1960’s when the coun­try was a more cere­bral and pleas­ant place.
Those who could be con­sid­ered edu­cat­ed are prob­a­bly more indoc­tri­nat­ed than edu­cat­ed. The sources of their edu­ca­tion hav­ing been insti­tu­tions of indoc­tri­na­tion in how not to respect social order.

All things con­sid­ered the polit­i­cal philoso­phies which have dom­i­nat­ed the coun­try’s polit­i­cal land­scape for the greater part of the time since it’s sup­posed inde­pen­dence from Great Britain has been pop­ulist lib­er­al dog­ma . Ironically even as the coun­try’s strat­a­gems prove inef­fec­tive in cur­tail­ing crime the brain-dead ide­o­log­i­cal pup­pet-mas­ters dou­ble-down refus­ing to change.
They cling to failed ide­olo­gies which has brought noth­ing but ruina­tion and chaos as they grasp des­per­ate­ly at ways to con­vince oth­ers that life is not so bad.
That oth­er places have crime, that peo­ple from oth­er nations have no right say­ing Jamaica is not a pleas­ant par­adise but an extreme­ly vio­lent place.

The Jamaica Umbrella Group of Churches some of the few able to see through the haze of gan­ga-smoke , alco­hol and deca­dence said in a statement.
Quote :  In recent weeks, Jamaica has wit­nessed the grue­some mur­ders of busi­ness­man Trevor Meikle, Corporal Judith Williams and United States mis­sion­ar­ies Harold Nichols and Randy Hentzel. “The JUGC extends deep­est sym­pa­thy and con­do­lences to their fam­i­lies and friends, mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the peo­ple of Albion Mountain, St Mary, and the peo­ple of the United States. The groups of church­es pray that God’s pres­ence and com­fort will under-gird these loved ones in this dif­fi­cult time.” The JUGC, in a release yes­ter­day, said that it has tak­en note of how life has become very cheap to some peo­ple and that con­tract killing speaks to the depth of deprav­i­ty and moral bank­rupt­cy that are being expe­ri­enced in the minds of people”.(Source jamaicaobserver)

Former Minister of National Security Peter Bunting also called for divine inter­ven­tion as a means to fix­ing the Island’s crime prob­lem dur­ing his sojourn as Minister. The present Minister of National Security Robert Montague too invoked divine inter­ven­tion as a means to fix­ing the problem.
I won’t tell any­one what to believe but if pray­ing is all you do it’s not enough.
Even as I per­son­al­ly wel­come the Church’s input into the dis­course I owe it to them to explain that pray­ing to God to fix our prob­lems is exact­ly not the way to go about seek­ing solu­tions for our problems.
In fact pray­ing and see­ing no result is destruc­tive as it relates to bring­ing new con­verts to the faith.
God estab­lished this world on prin­ci­ples, cause-effect, action-con­se­quence, neg­a­tive-pos­i­tive. As my Pastor suc­cinct­ly puts it han­dle the things you can han­dle and the things you can’t han­dle ask God to han­dle those.
When we can’t han­dle them God will. He sim­ply won’t han­dle what we clear­ly can but refus­es to.

Moses lead­ing the chil­dren of Israel out of Egypt was caught between the red sea and Pharaoh’s army . Moses decid­ed to kneel and pray, a sil­ly strat­e­gy with an advanc­ing army com­ing up in a hur­ry. God com­mand­ed Moses to get up and cast his rod across the red sea, accord­ing to the Bible the ocean opened up and the peo­ple passed through .
Whether one believe those accounts or not , metaphor­i­cal­ly the mes­sage remain the same. We have to do for ourselves.
Literally every mir­a­cle (not mag­ic) that Jesus wrought was inclu­sive of par­tic­i­pa­tion from the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the miracle.
♦Go fill up the Jars with water.( before they were turned into wine).
♦Go show your­self to the Priest.
♦Go wash thy­self in the Jordan River , (this one required much faith as the Jordan riv­er was extreme­ly dirty at the time).
♦Pick up thy bed and walk.
♦Stretch forth thy hand.
♦Go thy way and sin no more.
♦Bring me the loaves and the fish.
Jamaica has the means to elim­i­nate most of the heinous crime plagu­ing the Island, the peo­ple choose to avoid doing any­thing about and so they must and will con­tin­ue to pay the price.

Denial, faux-patri­o­tism, ratio­nal­iz­ing, nuanc­ing, hair-split­ting, lying, false-par­al­lel­ing, justifying,equivocating, none of these actions will change the situation .
The fact is that there are too many peo­ple involved in eat­ing a food from crime.
As such speak­ing out about it will always bring howls of con­dem­na­tion from cer­tain quar­ters .We don’t all want the same thing. Jamaicans have an ingrained love affair with crim­i­nal behav­ior. The cul­ture has become increas­ing­ly tol­er­ant and acqui­es­cent to the crim­i­nal way of life as the pop­u­la­tion gets younger.

Politicians, police, cler­gy, judges Lawyers and every­one in between are heav­i­ly invest­ed in crime , it has become an eco­nom­ic reality.
People depend on mur­der to send their chil­dren to school. An entire sub-cul­ture has emerged out of the blood-drenched soil . Funerals are not somber occa­sions as they once were , they are oppor­tu­ni­ties to show­case the lat­est hair­styles and fashion.
Bands make mon­ey at funer­al celebration[sic]. Funeral par­lors have sprung up in num­bers , almost par­al­lel­ing church­es and rum-bars.
Carpenters, Masons, Sound-sys­tem, and the mul­ti­tude of ven­dors who show up at funer­al sites like vul­tures feed­ing on a carcass.
Such are the realities .…..

The web­site obitz​.com in an arti­cle said quote :In Jamaica we’ve noticed that funer­als are increas­ing­ly becom­ing cen­tres for enter­tain­ment and rev­el­ry. Dance-hall lyrics are recit­ed in pro­ces­sions, and at some ceme­ter­ies the lat­est dance­hall music is played from mas­sive speak­ers. In some respects this is not dis­sim­i­lar to the jazz funer­als in New Orleans, where the band accom­pa­nies the mourn­ers to the ceme­tery. But most of the lyrics in the Jamaican pop­u­lar cul­ture nei­ther have rel­e­vance to the Bible nor pre­tend to man­i­fest a the­o­log­i­cal dimen­sion. http://​www​.obit​s​ja​maica​.com/​t​r​a​d​i​t​i​o​n​s​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​_​f​u​n​e​r​a​l​_​t​r​a​d​i​t​i​ons

According to world population review Jamaica is a small island, but it makes up for its size with a high population density in comparison with much of the rest of the world. The total surface area here is just 10,991 square kilometres (4,244 square miles) and this makes Jamaica the 166^th largest nation on earth, when it comes to geographical area. For every square mile of Jamaican territory, however, there is an average of 252 people here, which converts to 656 per square mile and makes it the 49^th most densely populated country in the world. 39% of Jamaica’s residents live in parish capitals, according to the 2011 census, and the population of the Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA) and all parish capitals was 1.04 million, which is a 5% increase since 2001. KMA alone has 88% of the parishes of St Andrew and Kingston.

The Élite in Jamaica can­not be unaware of these facts so as many includ­ing this writer wring our hands at the con­tin­ued shed­ding of blood there may very well be a plan by the pow­er­ful elites in Jamaica to con­trol pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty by doing noth­ing about it as a way at solv­ing pop­u­la­tion density.

The Jamaica Urban Transport Company (JUTC) in a release yes­ter­day from it’s out­go­ing man­ag­ing direc­tor Colin Campbell said it had no prob­lem with the man­age­ment audit ordered by the min­is­ter of Transport Mike Henry.
Said Campbell : “Nothing is wrong with it. It’s a new team com­ing in and they would want to see the sys­tem that was employed by us, to see if we are doing things in the best way. A man­age­ment audit is dif­fer­ent from a finan­cial audit — it’s just to exam­ine the processes”.

Hum um , why not a finan­cial audit?
If the com­pa­ny is bleed­ing mon­ey would­n’t a finan­cial audit be the way to go to deter­mine the extent of the bleeding?
Why is there bleeding?
Then do a man­age­ment audit to see whether the plans in place are effec­tive (which they could­n’t be in light of the oper­a­tional failures).
Then rem­e­dy that man­age­ment failure?

It was just this week that the Minister Mike Henry said that the com­pa­ny was in urgent need of “gov­ern­ment sup­port”, and that the audit is aimed at iden­ti­fy­ing crit­i­cal oper­a­tional issues that are impact­ing efficiency.
No,no,no Mike Henry you go look at the mon­ey first not the people.
When you iden­ti­fy how much the com­pa­ny is los­ing ‚then you look at the why.
After that trust me the “who” will fall into place.
Said Henry in his release, “the JUTC needs 305 new bus­es over the next two years to meet the demand for seats, but only 30 can be pro­vid­ed in this year’s budget”.

This makes me laugh !!!!
This is what hap­pens when you have politi­cians run­ning com­pa­nies. The head of the board is the for­mer Jamaica Labor Party Member of Parliament Gregory Mair. from North East Saint Catherine my neck of the woods.
The out­go­ing Managing Director is Colin Campbell a People’s National Party functionary.
You get the pic­ture now ?
This is why Tax-pay­ers mon­ey is always going down the tube, par­ty polit­i­cal hacks run­ning com­pa­nies and head­ing boards.

Could this be the rea­son why the new Minister has­n’t ordered a finan­cial audit which would be far more sensible ?
Could it be because they real­ly don’t want to get to the truth as it is a cook­ie-jar for both par­ties much the same way Air Jamaica was which led to it’s demise?
If there is a demand for more seats which the com­pa­ny is inca­pable of fill­ing why is the com­pa­ny los­ing money?
Secondly why are tax­pay­ers expect­ed to keep throw­ing good mon­ey at bad man­age­ment .….….……or worse?
If the com­pa­ny can­not meet the demand for seats how in heav­en’s name is it loos­ing money?
The colos­sal mis­man­age­ment of the long defunct Jamaica OmniBus Service (JOS) should be a crash course in how to destroy a com­pa­ny . Yet it seem noth­ing has been learned from the fail­ures of the (JOS) nor the Jamaica Railway Corporation.

As a small busi­ness own­er I have to oper­ate my busi­ness and make it prof­itable. I must meet oper­a­tional expens­es and turn a prof­it in order to stay in business .
If I am unable to do that I must fold the busi­ness as there is no Government bail-out > Why should tax­pay­ers con­tin­ue to fund these black holes which are pri­vate kit­ties for a lot of con­nect­ed people?

Business is finding a need and filling that need, period..

Disregard every con­vo­lut­ed crap you ever heard and focus on that fact, it is demand which fuels sup­ply, oth­er­wise it’s the cre­ation of goods and ser­vices which peo­ple are inclined to buy into.
If there is demand for bus ser­vice over and above what the com­pa­ny can pro­vide yet the com­pa­ny is los­ing mon­ey the prob­lem is incom­pe­tent leadership .
Or worse.
Part of man­age­men­t’s respon­si­bil­i­ty is to find fund­ing source/​s which allows the com­pa­ny to build out it’s ser­vice, of course with strate­gic growth and prof­it fore­cast which takes into account poten­tial mar­ket hiccups.

Taking every sin­gle expen­di­ture imag­in­able in oper­at­ing an air­line the bot­tom line result is thin prof­it mar­gins even in the best of times. Airlines through the years, have earned a net prof­it between one and two per­cent accord­ing to (Airlineeconomics).
All things con­sid­ered strict con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to how many per­sons are hired per air­plane in the fleet, this is crit­i­cal. It is the dif­fer­ence between sol­ven­cy and insolvency.
Can it be said that Air Jamaica was oper­at­ed this way? I think not !
If the very same prin­ci­ple is applied to the for­mer Railway cor­po­ra­tion, the for­mer Jamaica Omnibus Service and now the Jamaica Urban Transport Corporation, can the author­i­ties see why these enti­ties have been huge caul­drons of waste, loss and corruption?

Numbers do not lie, enti­ties of this nature can­not be places where polit­i­cal patron­age , nepo­tism and chi­canery rule yet prof­it is expected.
The deci­sion must be to oper­ate as real busi­ness or let the peo­ple know that the JUTC will be just anoth­er waste­ful mon­ey pit like all of the oth­er attempts at pub­lic trans­porta­tion which pre­ced­ed it.

The Jamaican Government has announced that through much con­sul­ta­tions with it’s Trinidadian coun­ter­parts about the vex­ing issue of the alleged treat­ment of Jamaicans vis­it­ing Trinidad a solu­tion of sorts have been arrived at.
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, told the House Wednesday that there will now be a des­ig­nat­ed area retro­fit­ted to pro­vide dig­ni­fied and pri­vate accom­mo­da­tion for per­sons required to stay overnight, who are going to be returned to Jamaica.

I real­ly see how this could be a cause célèbre consid­er­a­tion the depths to which our coun­try has sunken. Economically , moral­ly, but equal­ly as impor­tant in how we are per­ceived as a people.
If I’m not mis­tak­en I believe the quar­rel start­ed between the twin Island Republic and Jamaica over not just the treat­ment of Jamaicans when they vis­it that nation but the fact that they are not allowed free access accord­ing to the revised treaty-of-Chaguaramas which guar­an­tees cit­i­zens free access through­out mem­ber states.
Notwithstanding the CARICOM treaty ‚mem­ber states have a right to say no to cit­i­zens from mem­ber states who have not sat­is­fied cer­tain cri­te­ria , eg being able to sup­port them­selves while vis­it­ing, the like­ly-hood they will engage in crim­i­nal con­duct etc.

Increasingly Jamaicans have come under scruti­ny while seek­ing to take advan­tage of the free­dom to trav­el through­out the CARICOM region. Jamaican nation­als have filed griev­ances after alleged mal-treat­ment in Barbados as well as Trinidad and Tobago.
So far Barbados has been forced to pay com­pen­sato­ry dam­ages to one Jamaican in rela­tion to those treatments.
Shanique Myrie was award­ed dam­ages in the sum of US$38,000 by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) after she filed a law­suit claim­ing she was sub­ject­ed to a dehu­man­iz­ing cav­i­ty search by a female immi­gra­tion offi­cer at Grantley Adams International Airport, locked in a filthy room overnight and deport­ed to Jamaica in March 2011.
Myrie alleged that while she was being assault­ed ‚“I asked her who she was and she said ‘I am your worst night­mare’. She then said ‘All you (exple­tive) Jamaicans come here to do is either steal peo­ple’s man or bring drugs here,” Myrie recount­ed. Myrie told the Observer that the immi­gra­tion offi­cer removed her iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tag before com­mit­ting the act.

“She said I hate these (exple­tive) Jamaicans,” Myrie said.

Trinidad has claimed that they have a right to turn back Jamaicans whom they believe are going to over­stay their wel­come or whom they believe will engage in ille­gal activ­i­ties . It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to argue against Trinidad’s asser­tions when there are approx­i­mate­ly over 16,000 Jamaicans in that coun­try who have over­stayed their allot­ted time.

The for­mer min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty of Trinidad and Tobago assert­ed that there was noth­ing in the CARICOM treaty which super­sedes his coun­try’s Constitution. On that basis he argued his coun­try has the right to enforce their laws.
It is dif­fi­cult to argue with that as well…Whether jus­ti­fi­able or not the per­cep­tion among CARICOM states is that Jamaicans are peo­ple who have a vio­lent dis­po­si­tion and a pre­dis­po­si­tion to engage in crim­i­nal conduct.
I won­der how they arrived at those conclusions?

So as the new Administration pats itself on the back and the for­mer shuf­fles up to be in the pho­to-shoot, I remind Jamaicans that noth­ing has changed as it regards how they will be treat­ed in the twin Island Republic. What they have basi­cal­ly agreed to is to pro­vide toi­lets and a place to pos­si­bly sit while they wait to ship you out on the next avail­able flight…
How the hell did we arrive at this place?

Leading up to it’s forced separation from Great Britain and a brief period up to the early 1970’s Jamaica experienced it’s greatest period of peace and prosperity. Sure there were problems with racial and class inequality, poverty, and the raft of problems which plague most countries . As a matter of fact those problems still persist, no not just in Jamaica but in America, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany , Japan, and most of the developed societies across the Globe, so Jamaica has no monopoly on social or societal ills.
To some degree those problems are transcendent in all societies and may have to be addressed by every generation into perpetuity.

What the Island did not have was ram­pant and whole­sale mur­der of Jamaicans by Jamaicans. Jamaica has always been a soci­ety as long as I remem­ber, wary of author­i­ty. A coun­try with a sup­posed free spir­it and a more than ordi­nary dis­re­gard for estab­lished laws and norms.
Flouting laws is not frowned on in Jamaica it is a prac­tice which brings endear­ment and fame.
The Island’s peo­ple have always had a deep affec­tion for fig­ures who defy author­i­ty , infa­mous fig­ures like Three-fin­ger-Jack, Rigen, Natty Morgan, Coppa, Sandokan, Duddus, Zeeks, Dog-Paw, and the long litany of oth­er immoral mur­der­ing scump-bags which have formed part of the Island’s pop culture.

There is a sick per­vert­ed desire to align with, or live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through the most despi­ca­ble of these life forms even when their ulti­mate objec­tives are anti­thet­i­cal to the good of the coun­try, which is always.
What pass­es for Media on the Island glee­ful­ly engages in the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion and pro­mo­tion of those who do the most harm to the Island’s cul­ture and well-being.
Much of what pass­es for music these days is noth­ing more than mur­der lyrics laced with praise and ado­ra­tion for depraved murderers.
The media active­ly cheer-leads the clown pro­ces­sion as the Island slides deep­er and deep­er into rot , much like the fic­tion­al Hans Christian Andersen’s pied Piper led the chil­dren away nev­er to be seen again.

It is in that envi­ron­ment that the report­ed 1000 to over 1600 homi­cides occur each year while pompous Jamaicans nuance and come up with laugh­able met­rics to demon­strate to the world that the Island is not a dan­ger­ous place to live.
People who are dis­mayed are char­ac­ter­ized as “hav­ing a shaky grasp” of the Island’s crime sit­u­a­tion. Others obsti­nate­ly and unin­tel­li­gent­ly talk about crime being in America as well, as if crime in America makes crime in Jamaica defensible.

These self appoint­ed elit­ists have ran out of ratio­nale in the defense of crime, one per­son remarked on social media that crime is quote ‘out of con­trol” yet in the next line he pro­ceed­ed to tell me that crime is only cen­tered in small pock­ets of the Island.
That insane­ly sil­ly and inane state­ment defines the mind­set which has been Jamaican’s all along. Crime is only a Kingston thing, then it was Spanish Town thing, Then it was Montego Bay , Then it’s May Pen, .……
They make these absurd and ridicu­lous state­ments while holed up in homes which look more like pris­ons than places where peo­ple actu­al­ly live. I can’t tell you how many homes I have been in over the years where the own­ers have grill for­ti­fi­ca­tions sep­a­rat­ing room from room.
“Yea mon Jamaica nice no raas”.

Oh while we are on that note, I have heard many Jamaicans com­plain that when they return home they are treat­ed like for­eign­ers . I have also seen a cer­tain degree of that creep­ing into the ver­bal dis­course as well .
There is a mis­guid­ed notion that one has to live on the Island to be a patriot.
I guess that teach­ing is the lat­est bit of gob­bledy­gook to come out of the University Of the West Indies.
Where is Wilmott Mutty Perkins when he is needed?
Where on plan­et Earth is geog­ra­phy the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic in Patriotism? What an absurd con­cept? Who died and made these nit-wits God?

I recall when my grand­dad would invite peo­ple who had noth­ing to eat to come to our lands, they would leave with their don­key laden with bread­fruits , avo­ca­do pears, Jack-fruits, oranges and oth­er good­ies . Those pro­duce would end up in the Linstead mar­ket where they were sold . My grand­fa­ther did not care about the protes­ta­tions from friends who told him to sell the pro­duce to the peo­ple because they were sell­ing it and mak­ing mon­ey. My grand-dad did not care, he believed peo­ple should not go hungry.

My grand­fa­ther’s men­tal­i­ty was that which char­ac­ter­ized our small towns and vil­lages once upon a time. Our small Country was a Conservative Christian Nation which believed that it took a vil­lage to raise a child. That is the way I was raised, hav­ing to be respect­ful to every­one , because every­one had the right to dis­ci­pline the chil­dren , includ­ing Mister Wilson’s wiry lit­tle grand-son.

Don’t recite to me sta­tis­tics about killings in American cities or school shoot­ings as if they jus­ti­fy the insane shed­ding of blood in Jamaica.
The United States is approx­i­mate­ly 3,794,101 sq mi. This is equiv­a­lent to 9,826,675 km². The pop­u­la­tion at present is around 308 mil­lion people.
Jamaica is approx­i­mate­ly 4,411 square miles with a pop­u­la­tion of 2.7 mil­lion people.
When we con­sid­er crime com­par­i­son and seek to con­flate the two coun­tries and their crime sit­u­a­tions we must first under­stand the geog­ra­phy , then we must con­sid­er the effi­cien­cy of law-enforce­ment response when they are needed.
The state of California alone , one of the largest states and one with high­er crime sta­tis­tics as of 2008 had 509 law enforce­ment agen­cies employ­ing 79,431 sworn police offi­cers, about 217 for each 100,000 residents.

I had one real­ly smart per­son tell me this morn­ing that crime in Clarendon for exam­ple is con­fined to the areas around May Pen. He went on to tell me that “if yu jus passin thru di man dem nah gu jus shoot yu su”. Oh thank Jesus I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful for that.
Any way I remind­ed him that over twen­ty five years ago I was active­ly engaged in being air­lift­ed to places in Clarendon like Hayes, Savannah , Kraal, Lionel Town and envi­rons to put down upsurges in crime. He respond­ed that those areas are around May Pen. You real­ly can­not make these things up.
My response to him was that I under­stood his point, as long as you bur­row your­self in a hole away from civ­i­liza­tion you are okay to a cer­tain degree.…

I write fre­quent­ly about the affin­i­ty of Jamaicans to explain crime away or to make state­ments which could eas­i­ly be con­strued as sup­port­ive of crime. The fact is that not always are they sup­port­ive of crime but they believe no one should crit­i­cize any­thing Jamaican .
That includes crime.
They stead­fast­ly and unwit­ting­ly hold to the sil­ly notion that crit­i­ciz­ing Jamaica’s crime sit­u­a­tion is crit­i­ciz­ing Island Jamaica or brand Jamaica. There is no brand Jamaica if these crime num­bers are not addressed as a mat­ter of priority.
The parish of Clarendon Jamaica’s third largest parish is a mere 1,196 square km, not square miles mind you.…
In real terms a healthy man can stand at one cor­ner and piss over the entire parish[sic] .…There are no safe havens in an Island that infin­i­tes­i­mal much less a parish for that matter.
If no one was going to “kill yu su” why on earth are lit­er­al­ly all the house grilled like prisons?
Why are tourists being large­ly con­fined to all inclu­sive des­ti­na­tions, lit­er­al­ly cut­ting out aver­age Jamaicans from the ben­e­fits of the tourists vis­it­ing our Island?
Lets dis­pense with the blovi­at­ing bull‑s**t and face the stark real­i­ty that the Island has a seri­ous and bur­geon­ing crime problem.
Denying it only helps those engaged in or ben­e­fit­ing from crime, peo­ple are not fools. Putting beau­ti­ful wall-paper over a ter­mite infest­ed wood­work is not going to fix the ter­mite infes­ta­tion. Soon the whole damn struc­ture will be com­ing down .
The only per­sons fooled by this con­sis­tent deni­a­bil­i­ty and faux pro-Jamaican aggran­dize­ment are those so engaged .

Suggesting that it’s okay to live in such a small space with the atten­dant homi­cide num­bers is insane­ly juve­nile. Seeking to con­flate those crime stats with crime stats from any American state is just high­lights the lack of knowl­edge of the vast­ness of the American space and the effec­tive­ness of her law enforce­ment responses.