Councillor’s Suggestion On Using Extortionist To Collect Fees Comes From Fertile Soil..

Each day we report and opine on crime and cor­rup­tion on the Island Nation of Jamaica .
Despite the bla­tant acts of mur­der and oth­er vio­lent crimes each day, the atti­tude of Jamaican author­i­ties seem to be to blame the police.

They con­tin­ue to sell Jamaica as a place of sun, fun, music , great food and people.
“Don’t wor­ry be hap­py every­thing alright”.

In fair­ness to them, brand Jamaica has tremen­dous pull , peo­ple across the globe like the name Jamaica, for the rea­sons out­lined above, but not just, they also like our coun­try for the fabled Ganja weed as well.

Nonetheless tourists come in droves ‚they dis­em­bark from cruise ships, and aero­planes , they con­verge on the all inclu­sive prop­er­ties, many do not get to see the true Jamaica out­side the all inclu­sive properties.

None are obliv­i­ous of the dark under­bel­ly which they are warned about before leav­ing their home countries.
Unfortunately for many Jamaicans who do not have police details, osten­ta­tious man­sions with grilled for­ti­fi­ca­tions and elec­tron­ic gates, the real­i­ty is grim.

At a time when mur­ders are run­ning wild,over 4 homi­cides dai­ly , rapes at astro­nom­i­cal highs, extor­tion con­tin­ue unabat­ed , suck­ing the lifeblood of busi­ness­es and indus­tries , chil­dren being sold into servi­tude and gen­er­al law­less­ness runs unchecked, the atti­tude of the Government is to fur­ther shack­le law enforcement.

In this medi­um we have noticed a pat­tern on the part of the Andrew Holness led Government .That pat­tern is to do the bare min­i­mum while giv­ing the impres­sion that max­i­mum efforts are in place to deal decid­ed­ly with criminals.

This is evi­denced in the wishy washy leg­is­la­tion it has pro­posed which would sup­pos­ed­ly give law enforce­ment pow­ers the secu­ri­ty forces should have had as a mat­ter of course to search and cor­don cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties in search of weapons and want­ed offenders.
These pow­ers on the face of it, would seem to be proac­tive, how­ev­er once the thin veneer of decep­tion is peeled back, it reveals the mali­cious intent of the bill.

The pow­ers seemed more about the indi­vid­ual civ­il rights of dan­ger­ous gun­men than of remov­ing those gun­men from the streets.
Cordons and search­es are good for recov­er­ing weapons and arrest­ing want­ed crim­i­nals , they are not intel­li­gence-based tech­niques which has sus­tain­able val­ue to law enforcement.
Targeted intel­li­gence based polic­ing is the only way to effec­tive­ly remove these dan­ger­ous killers from the country.

Despite the ever increas­ing seri­ous­ness of the crimes and the poten­tial for Terrorism, Jamaican author­i­ties seem to be look­ing to make it eas­i­er for dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to oper­ate out­side police control.
This, when it should be ful­ly engaged in find­ing ways to empow­er law enforce­ment to pro­tect the population.

John Myers

The alle­ga­tions that a Parish Councillor of the gov­ern­ing Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) has sug­gest­ed that the admin­is­tra­tion use crim­i­nal extor­tion­ist to col­lect out­stand­ing fees owed to the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) is shocking.

According to pub­lished reports Councillor for the Lawrence Tavern Division in St Andrew West Rural John Myers, sug­gest­ed using the “col­lec­tion skills” of extor­tion­ists to make mar­kets prof­itable after it was dis­closed that an esti­mat­ed $17 mil­lion in mar­ket fees is owed to the KSAMC and that the month­ly mar­ket deficit is $5.5 million.

Myers con­tends that his state­ments were tak­en out of context.
“I said that if you are los­ing so much mon­ey, bil­lions of dol­lars, and you know the extor­tion peo­ple them or you know the per­son them you could deal with them or maybe talk to them. Hear what they have to say.” Said Myers !
“I don’t know if it is a crime to say some­thing like that. I could­n’t come out and tell them to lock them up. I could­n’t do that; I don’t know them as extor­tion­ists. It’s the offi­cers [of the cor­po­ra­tion] who explain that it was extor­tion,” he con­tin­ued. In fact, Myers said report­ing extor­tion­ists could result in him being killed.

Any sug­ges­tion, or even the most vague nod in that direc­tion must be seen as the thought process of a depraved mind, or maybe a prod­uct of depraved minds.
That should alarm even the most hard­ened JLP par­ti­sans. This parish Councillor must have known that there is fer­tile soil with­ing the Government for that kind of think­ing , regard­less of what the admin­is­tra­tion does to dis­tance itself from his comments.