Clock Ticking On Antony Anderson’s Efficacy (audio)

Listen to audio com­men­tary above.

I promised I would keep my mouth shut despite hav­ing to place one hand over it and use the oth­er to hold it in place to keep me from break­ing my promise not to ask Antony Anderson what his plans are?
I made the promise not to talk about major gen­er­al Antony Anderson’s appoint­ment and tenure as police com­mis­sion­er, large­ly for two rea­sons, (1) to allow time to the mem­bers of the pub­lic, includ­ing police offi­cers past and present, who say give him time and (2) because he need­ed to get into office and accli­mate him­self to the job before speak­ing out on what he intends to do differently.

Jamaica’s New Police Commissioner

Nevertheless, I am find­ing it hard to con­tain myself a month after Anderson assumed office and all we hear out of 103 Old Hope is an eerie silence. It real­ly is insignif­i­cant what I think or says. What is inter­est­ing is that the major opin­ion mak­ers in the coun­try are begin­ning to ques­tion Anderson’s silence since he took office.

The Gleaner’s edi­to­r­i­al board one of the most stri­dent anti-police enti­ties in the coun­try lashed out in Friday’s online pub­li­ca­tion claiming :
Indeed, it has been almost a month since he took over as Jamaica’s com­mis­sion­er of police from the light-foot­ed and unre­mark­able tenure of the career police offi­cer, George Quallo. Yet, the pub­lic does­n’t know what General Anderson’s pri­or­i­ties on the job are and, assum­ing that he has some, what his strate­gies are for get­ting them done. Nor are peo­ple aware what spe­cif­ic con­tri­bu­tions General Anderson wants from them towards his success.

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Rather inter­est­ing to read, con­sid­er­ing that the elit­ists on that board would rather see a dog in the com­mis­sion­er’s chair than a police offi­cer who came up through the ranks. That aside, oth­ers are also crit­i­ciz­ing the gov­ern­ment on what they see as a lack of alacrity and dis­patch in mount­ing an effec­tive strat­e­gy to sup­press the coun­try’s mur­der rate.
Well- known crim­i­nal rights cam­paign­er Horace Levy lashed out at the admin­is­tra­tion as well:

Isn’t it obvi­ous that two ZOSOs, or even four, as cur­rent­ly con­struct­ed to each require 300 to 400 sol­diers and police, is not cut­ting it? Why? Because, to begin with, the human resources are lim­it­ed. But face it: We are on a path to anoth­er 1,600−1,800 mur­ders in 2018. Another route has to be cho­sen and cho­sen now. Which brings up the sec­ond crazy notion — that it is the advice of the secu­ri­ty forces that decides what to do about our vio­lence and mur­der. The police and the army only knows one kind of solu­tion that is more of only, or chiefly, the tried-and-failed repression.

If You Believe The ZOSO Will Have An Impact On Murders You Deserve To Be Conned .…

Well there you have it, where have I heard that log­ic before?

EVERYONE KNOWS HOW TO STOP THE CRIME MADNESS

Why would any­one depend on secu­ri­ty offi­cials for secu­ri­ty advise, what luna­cy? Maybe Mister Horace Levy would be kind enough to explain to the Jamaican peo­ple who require a coun­try free from vio­lent crime and the specter of immi­nent death dai­ly, why they should trust him over trained officials.
In the mean­time, I’ll call my plumber to see what he can do about my blood pres­sure which is get­ting a lit­tle high from this lunacy.

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In addi­tion to Anderson’s silence and what some are begin­ning to say is a lack of cred­i­ble crime-strat­e­gy, mem­bers of the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion have begun to assert that they are con­sid­er­ing embark­ing on street protest as a means to reg­is­ter dis­sent to what they claim is the lack of a cred­i­ble strat­e­gy to com­bat crime.

HERE’S THE DILEMMA

The stark real­i­ty sur­round­ing the silence of the new­ly installed com­mis­sion­er of police is that Anderson who left the JDF and was appoint­ed as the nation’s first nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er is using the time to claw his way around the rules and respon­si­bil­i­ties of what the job entails. More impor­tant­ly, what a chief con­sta­ble does.
The stu­pid idea that because some­one has train­ing in a cer­tain field, or may have a degree or two in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline it qual­i­fies that per­son as an author­i­ty on all oth­er dis­ci­plines. It is a remark­ably daft mill­stone around the col­lec­tive necks of Jamaicans.
Anthony Anderson is part of the men­tal­i­ty which fun­da­men­tal­ly believes that we must tread care­ful­ly around dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers rather than extin­guish them like bugs.

So as Anderson brings him­self up to speed on what it is that police do, the blood­let­ting con­tin­ues unabat­ed and with no end in sight? I do believe that Major General Anthony Anderson would like to do a good job. After all, it isn’t his fault that he has this momen­tous respon­si­bil­i­ty thrust upon him even though he does not have any idea about law enforce­ment and now needs the time to learn.
Fault the sys­tem of men which allows it.

Even if Anderson was to ful­ly accli­mate him­self to his new duties today and was ready to go, noth­ing would change because the crime rate in our coun­try is hard­ly a func­tion of who sits in the police com­mis­sion­er’s chair but a func­tion of the nation’s lax laws and sup­port for crim­i­nal conduct.
In this very medi­um, I have per­son­al­ly pub­lished sev­er­al crime plans which I believe giv­en the ide­al leg­isla­tive frame­work would begin to have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on crime. Nevertheless, it is almost insane to believe that with the present laws and the men­tal­i­ty in the coun­try, any police com­mis­sion­er, (much less one who does not even under­stand what he is sup­posed to do) will be able to pos­i­tive­ly change the tra­jec­to­ry of vio­lent crimes.

In all of that, it is remark­able that this Jamaican nation of peo­ple who are sup­posed to be so smart actu­al­ly believe that it is a good idea to put some­one with no train­ing or expe­ri­ence to do a job over career pro­fes­sion­als who are immi­nent­ly qual­i­fied. A para­dox no dif­fer­ent than that which pro­pelled Donald Trump to the pres­i­den­cy of the United States.