Crime In Jamaica Part # 4.

This is the fourth seg­ment in a series of blogs titled ” Crime in Jamaica”.In this seg­ment I will attempt to show you how we have got­ten to this point, a coun­try which is now liv­ing off the largess of peo­ple liv­ing abroad..

In this pic­ture is for­mer People’s National Party leader and prime Minister, and (center)Current par­ty leader and Prime Minister por­tia Simpson Miller.

National elec­tions held 1988 saw the return of the PNP to pow­er for what would turn out to be an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ year hold on polit­i­cal pow­er, a move that to some may have been the sec­ond most instru­men­tal fac­tor as it relates to the con­di­tion of the coun­try today.

Negative eco­nom­ic growth, pur­suance of poli­cies that has zero chance of grow­ing the econ­o­my, mas­sive cor­rup­tion, run away crime, no updat­ing of the coun­try’s archa­ic laws and a pletho­ra of oth­er acts that could only be char­ac­ter­ized as best case incom­pe­tence and worst case criminal.

For exam­ple the Jamaican Police Department, revealed that for a whole decade not a sin­gle dol­lar was pro­vid­ed for train­ing of a sin­gle detective.

Bear in mind peo­ple com­mit crimes if they know they will get away with it. If there is less and less like­li­hood that one will be brought to jus­tice for crimes he com­mit­ted he will nec­es­sar­i­ly be embold­ened to con­tin­ue to do so with impunity.

Of course, true to form crime esca­lat­ed, the “do as you please “seed which was plant­ed dur­ing the 70’s, “take what you want from the cap­i­tal­ists” had now come to full bloom.

During the 80’s under Seaga and the Jamaica Labor Party, 600 mur­ders annu­al­ly were then astro­nom­i­cal num­bers, at least for those of us who were on the fore-front of the war on crime. We thought at the time that in a coun­try then with a pop­u­la­tion of 2.5 mil­lion that num­ber of killings were untenable.

After I exit­ed law-enforce­ment in 1991 I was stunned at the lev­el of incom­pe­tence , com­plic­i­ty, and acqui­es­cence in the Governing PNP gov­ern­ment which saw mur­ders rock­et­ing to in excess of 1600 annu­al­ly. This was dou­ble the num­ber of homi­cides in just a cou­ple of years.

Most Jamaicans liv­ing abroad had one com­mon com­ment, ” I sim­ply do not rec­og­nize the coun­try, it is not a place I would ever live again”

One may argue about the lev­el of patri­o­tism in those com­ments, that’s a legit­i­mate con­ver­sa­tion to have , I do know this how­ev­er, most peo­ple want to live a long life.

People who built homes intend­ing to return home sim­ply just aban­doned their invest­ments, chos­ing instead to stay alive. The so-called busi­ness sec­tor, (so-called) because of what now remains of that sec­tor, ele­ments of civ­il soci­ety are now grap­pling with the rea­sons the lev­els of law­less­ness are so per­va­sive. They do so while they advo­cate for the very ingre­di­ents that sus­tains, encour­ages and nur­tures anar­chy.

Lenient sen­tenc­ing, giv­ing crim­i­nals amnesty, giv­ing aid and com­fort to crim­i­nals, sup­port­ing crim­i­nal rights over the rights of vic­tims, amongst a pha­lanx of oth­er myopic paths to soci­etal destruction.

If the peo­ple entrust­ed to make the laws are ben­e­fit­ing from criminality,why would they enact leg­is­la­tion that would effec­tive­ly put crim­i­nals in jail where they belong? Why would the soci­ety expect them to train and equip a pro­fes­sion­al police force capa­ble of fol­low­ing evi­dence wher­ev­er it leads,or train any detec­tives at all?

Most Jamaicans liv­ing over­seas pull their hair out won­der­ing why it is that Jamaica can­not arrest the run-away crime prob­lem in the coun­try? The truth is politi­cians from both side of the polit­i­cal divide ben­e­fits one way or anoth­er from crime and in some cas­es many of them are active crim­i­nals. What pass­es for media are real­ly polit­i­cal­ly aligned dic­ta­tion tak­ers who write fluff pieces. They are gen­er­al­ly more com­fort­able writ­ing about dance-hall gyra­tions. The edi­to­ri­als are large­ly advo­cates for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, and noth­ing more.

The coun­try is awash in high-pow­ered weapons, guns have report­ed­ly come from Haiti, in what is called the gun for drugs trade. Jamaicans take to the seas with mar­i­jua­na and return from Haiti with boat-loads of weapons. Information received indi­cate that every­thing , includ­ing food is exchanged by Jamaicans for weapons. Food which includes ‚we are told, the meat of don­keys, dogs and the car­cass of oth­er ani­mals we would­n’t eat in this part of the world

Weapons have come in from Colombia in the cocaine trade, from the United States through the ports, in bar­rels appli­ances and oth­er inge­nious ways.Weapons also enter the coun­try from the United States in air­craft and boats, drug smug­glers bring weapons in and leave with plane and boat-loads of cannabis. This has made many Jamaicans rather wealthy. This includes politicians,police,lawyers and businessmen.

With the recent dra­con­ian depor­ta­tion poli­cies being under­tak­en by the United States, Canada, and Britain the coun­try has seen a seri­ous spike in seri­ous and com­plex crimes which the police force is ill-equipped to deal with. Many of the peo­ple being mass deport­ed are intel­li­gent peo­ple versed in cyber crimes and are cog­nizant of how to breach the rules in coun­tries far more sophis­ti­cat­ed than Jamaica. This pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem for local law-enforce­ment, many of whom are them­selves deeply involved in criminality.

And so the soci­ety calls on the police to answer for the run-away crim­i­nal­i­ty over­tak­ing the coun­try , the police reacts the way they know how, they respond with bullets.