Crime: Like The Little Pig Leaders Continue To Build House Of Straw

Over the last cou­ple of weeks, I received a cou­ple of text mes­sages from my eye doc­tor’s office say­ing their records indi­cat­ed that I am due for an inspec­tion. Mind you this is in addi­tion to my Doctor insist­ing that my sweet tooth may cause me to end up with diabetes.
Oh, I almost for­got that my Dentist insists I need to come in for a deep­er clean­ing than the one I had not too long ago.

The rea­son all of these pro­fes­sion­als are call­ing me in, well that’s the way they make mon­ey. They have my infor­ma­tion because when I need to have my eyes checked I went to see an eye Doctor. When I need­ed gen­er­al check up I went to see a gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er and of course a gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er though immi­nent­ly qual­i­fied as a Medical Doctor would not be the best choice to give den­tal advice so I went to see a Dentist.

WHERE AM I GOING WITH THIS?

It’s incred­i­ble to me that those tasked with the secu­ri­ty of an enti­ty, any enti­ty, much less a coun­try would devise crime strate­gies with­out com­pe­tent law enforce­ment exper­tise and seri­ous input.
Education: “The process of receiv­ing or giv­ing sys­tem­at­ic instruc­tion, espe­cial­ly at a school or university”.

There is a kind of ill-informed mind­set in Jamaica which gives rise to the view that a per­son with some edu­ca­tion, regard­less of the dis­ci­pline in which he/​she may have done their stud­ies, the per­son is then qual­i­fied in all things.
Using that inane log­ic makes a lot of sense to go to a Ph.D. to have your heart surgery done.[sic]

I hear the argu­ments of those who say, well maybe they can­not depend on the Jamaican police offi­cers past and present to craft crime reduc­tion strate­gies because they were the ones tasked with the job of crime reduc­tion and that has not worked out quite so well.
I’ve always said nine plus one is ten but the qual­i­ty of the 10 may be taint­ed if the nine and or the one was arrived at improperly.
The end result may seem right even though the method­ol­o­gy used to arrive at the answer is fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed.

Sure the Police in Jamaica could have done a way bet­ter job over the decades.
Nevertheless they have had to deal with hov­er­ing polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence from both active polit­i­cal par­ties and even the defunct ones.
I recall see­ing my face and a cou­ple of my col­leagues, on the cov­er of the com­mu­nist pub­li­ca­tion The Struggle years ago, to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion the head­line blared “Terrorist cops”.

Our sin was to appro­pri­ate­ly ensure that WPJ thugs did not breach the fence at Jamaica house dur­ing one of their demon­stra­tion against the Seaga Government.
At the time they want­ed to breach the perime­ter fence to get on the grounds of the premis­es the Prime Minister Edward Seaga was in the building.
To Trevor Monroe’s cred­it, he apol­o­gized to me in front of my col­league Jerry Wallace and his sis­ter Mrs. White over lunch at his sis­ter’s restau­rant on Dunrobin Avenue some­time later.

Political inter­fer­ence is crip­pling to effec­tive law enforce­ment. It can­not be fun to be account­able to the pub­lic to keep crime under con­trol while deal­ing with sab­o­tage from your civil­ian boss­es who sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly engage in sub­ver­sion using myr­i­ad tac­tics and strategies.
As dif­fi­cult as that is polit­i­cal admin­is­tra­tions of both the JLP and the PNP have engaged in pro­mot­ing a cul­ture of crime through the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of the gun and bad-man cul­ture in order to ensure their polit­i­cal survival.

Additionally, over the decades oper­a­tives of both major polit­i­cal par­ties have active­ly engaged in crim­i­nal con­duct from the theft of pub­lic funds, sys­tem­at­ic cor­rup­tive prac­tices and even issu­ing guns to the Island’s poor unem­ployed youths to kill oth­ers from the oppos­ing party.
On the oth­er hand, they have col­lud­ed with crim­i­nals, used their polit­i­cal clout to remove from police cus­tody dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers and in oth­er cas­es facil­i­tat­ed the flight from jus­tice of oth­er crim­i­nals includ­ing cop killers.

Jamaica’s Laborites and Kumreds have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­man­tled our coun­try over the years since 1962 with a few bright spots here and there in between. A coun­try’s direc­tion is set by its lead­ers not the oth­er way around.
As a con­se­quence we do not fire the team (the peo­ple), we seek new lead­er­ship by fir­ing the coach­es the(political leaders).

As the Island’s homi­cide rates con­tin­ue to gal­lop away from author­i­ties, St James the Tourism mec­ca of the west­ern part of the coun­try and the West Indies has seen a record 158 mur­ders since the start of the year and Sunday, July 24^th.
There were 140 homi­cides report­ed to police for the same peri­od last year.
But the high mur­der rate is not con­fined to just the west­ern parish­es. Across the coun­try, the blood-let­ting and gen­er­al sense of law­less­ness con­tin­ue to dom­i­nate the news.

The police have done an admirable job recov­er­ing hun­dreds of guns and thou­sands of rounds of ammu­ni­tion in their encoun­ters with law­less elements.
Working with the Island’s Customs they have man­aged to con­fis­cate sev­er­al con­tra­band ship­ments of guns, ammu­ni­tion, bal­lis­tic vests and even grenade launch­ers which indi­cate that we are not play­ing small ball anymore.
What is mys­ti­fy­ing to this writer is the rea­son behind the seem­ing lack of inves­tiga­tive pro­bity which would lead to pros­e­cu­tion, and ulti­mate­ly the jail­ing of prin­ci­pals behind the guns and ammu­ni­tion smug­gling into the country.

Despite the suc­cess­es of the secu­ri­ty forces, I am left with a sick­en­ing feel­ing in the pit of my stom­ach that what the secu­ri­ty forces are recov­er­ing at the wharves are “gim­mies” gifts to author­i­ties, while big­ger ship­ments pass through unimpeded.
The inabil­i­ty of the police to inves­ti­gate and bring to jus­tice a sin­gle gun smug­gler should be a cause for con­cern for the coun­try and is a seri­ous indict­ment on the capa­bil­i­ties and I dare­say the integri­ty of the secu­ri­ty forces.

The bur­geon­ing mur­der num­bers and the gen­er­al law­less­ness is fright­en­ing in and of them­selves as such the Prime Minister’s new ini­tia­tive the Special zones law may seem like a panacea to some, much the same way the INDECOM act was seen by those appalled at police cor­rup­tion and yes the police haters too.
What we have seen is that in real terms INDECOM is a suc­cess only in the eyes of the head of that agency and his sup­port­ers. The ter­ri­fy­ing increase in crime as a result of that non­sen­si­cal leg shack­le of a law is cold com­fort to those whose loved ones have been tak­en from them.

The spe­cial zones law is the brain child of politi­cians, and peo­ple intent on the reten­tion of the sta­tus quo, not the police. In the mean­time, heav­i­ly armed gangs of ter­ror­ists con­tin­ue to rule the streets while the gov­ern­ment wor­ries about infring­ing on their rights.
Before a beau­ti­ful build­ing is con­struct­ed the process of ground clear­ing and foun­da­tion lay­ing is important.
Failing to lay the appro­pri­ate foun­da­tion means that like two out of three of the lit­tle pigs the Government is build­ing a house of straws and sticks.
Next time the big bad wolves come they may not be as eas­i­ly rout­ed as those in 2010 were.