Crime In Jamaica Part # 3:

Once the rich had left the greed and envy was turned with­in. Which leads us to the present crime situation.

Not all of Jamaica’s rich or wealthy peo­ple fled dur­ing the Manley Years„ of course some of them were aligned to the PNP, they under­stood that there was mon­ey to be made even in the unfriend­ly busi­ness envi­ron­ment of that era.

They braved the dan­ger while they held on tight to their US Visas and green cards. The die was how­ev­er cast, Jamaica was now a (trop­i­cal Serengeti) where the strong sur­vived, and the weak gets eaten.

Fast for­ward and we saw crime trend down under Edward Seaga, now this is where the para­dox lies. Many will point to the fact that Seaga main­tained the so-called moth­er of all (gar­risons) Tivoli Gardens. Tivoli Gardens was is the com­mu­ni­ty that was the cen­ter of Seaga’s West Kingston con­stituen­cy. Many argue that any reduc­tion of crime under Seaga was despite him rather than because of him. As some­one who start­ed out in law enforce­ment dur­ing the Seaga Administration I have a more nuanced view of the matter.

Edward Seaga for­mer Prime Minister of Jamaica.

The defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic that will , and has influ­enced opin­ions expo­nen­tial­ly against Seaga is the per­cep­tion that he main­tained Tivoli Gardens as a sort of fief­dom that was hands off for the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces. As I said before my views are as nuanced as the facts allowed .

Seaga did allow Tivoli Gardens to be a fief­dom, he did favor ele­ments of the crim­i­nal under­world, he did inter­fere in law enforce­ment as it relat­ed to that com­mu­ni­ty. Seaga defied con­ven­tion­al wis­dom when he stood at the funer­al of Lester Lloyd Coke a know crim­i­nal and an archi­tect of the infa­mous show­er posse. Coke was no saint Seaga knew it, he deliv­ered the votes, kept the com­mu­ni­ty in line and han­dled the affairs of the com­mu­ni­ty day-to-day. Seaga also knew that Coke was a crim­i­nal want­ed by the Americans, he knew he was a drug-deal­er who had more seri­ous alle­ga­tions lev­elled against him. Yet Seaga stood at the funer­al of Coke and stat­ed emphat­i­cal­ly that he was a com­mu­ni­ty leader whom the peo­ple loved. When that state­ment is dis­sect­ed Coke may have been a com­mu­ni­ty leader of sort, he may have been loved/​feared. Even if those state­ments were indeed true he was still a criminal.

On the day Edward Seaga made those state­ments about Coke I lost any mod­icum of respect I may have had for him.

However on the oth­er side of the issue he changed the par­a­digm as it relat­ed to crime and the way the issue was approached under the Manley admin­is­tra­tion. Criminals were not being removed from police sta­tions, cops were not being out gunned and there were major efforts to low­er crimes, based on efforts his admin­is­tra­tion devot­ed to the fight against crime. Unfortunately Seaga did not see his baby (sic) Tivoli Gardens being part of that wider need to con­trol crime. In some ways he may have been blind­ed by his decades-long nur­tur­ing of that com­mu­ni­ty, as a mod­el to what urban com­mu­ni­ties may accomplish.

Like a dot­ing par­ent Seaga felt that because he loved his child every­one should feel the same way. He lost sight of the impor­tance of dis­ci­pline in that child’s life.

To this day Seaga believes that his baby Tivoli gar­dens is a per­fect child which need­ed no discipline.