For years successive administrations from the two political parties have done everything in their power to fool the country and the world into believing that they are doing something about the culture of lawlessness in the country.
At the same time, they steadfastly refuse to address the root causes of violence, because they are active participants in the culture of crime for which the country has now become infamous.
Various policy papers have been written by their friends from Mona Commons, usually, those papers are heavy on superfluous gibberish that has no bearing on Jamaica’s crime problem.
So-called experts have been brought in from England, supposedly to fix our police force. Mind you, England, with a population of 56 million has fewer violent crimes in a year than Jamaica a country of 2.89 million people has in a month.
They wanted you to believe that violent crime is intractable and cannot be removed so you should live with it.
They wanted you to believe that effectively dealing with the violence is so complex that you will develop a sense of apathy and a sense of resignation.
And you know what they have won.
Dealing with Jamaica’s criminals is not complex, it requires stiff penalties and a professional police force trained and paid to do their jobs.
It requires most of all, that the policy-makers stop being the law-breakers.
They brought in officers from England which has a well-documented history of corruption of all sorts. The framing of minorities for crimes they did not commit. Planting evidence and lying under oath are but a few of the maladies plaguing some of those British police commands.
Despite not having to deal with the level of crime our officers face, not receiving the paltry pittance our officers are paid, and despite receiving tremendous support to do their jobs, they still engage in criminal conduct.
Those commands include the Begravia Police Station. We should also note that the Deputy Commissioner of INDECOM who now helps to persecute our police officers, comes from those corrupt commands with his own taint.
The lie told our country regarding the state of criminality, is that it is driven by poverty.
Here is the rub, the Government and other agencies release data showing that unemployment is at the lowest level it has been in recent times.
Conversely, every measurement index indicates that crime is on the increase and most importantly violent crimes, including homicides.
It is a clear indication that in Jamaica there is not a lot of correlation between violent crimes and poverty.
I have written quite a few articles in which I laid out different scenarios that demonstrate clearly that certain categories of crime have nothing to do with poverty.
In fact, the evidence suggests that because of the complexities of some of the crimes we have seen reported in the media, the resources used in their commission, they absolutely could not be committed by poor people, at least the planning, if not the execution.
I have also shown that there are countries far poorer, and with standards of living below Jamaica’s, which hardly registers on the meter of high crime statistics.
It is hard to argue that a hungry man will not steal some food, that is survival. I will not make that kind of argument.
It is also hard to make the case for poverty as the cause, when you have a multi-million dollar Sunday morning commando-style heist in the middle of May Pen.
After the decisive actions of the security forces in 2010, we saw crime dip exponentially. Ask yourselves why did that happen?
It happened because, by that single action, the government made it clear that it was in charge. (Now we all know that it was with the boot of the American Government up Bruce Golding’s ass, that prompted that decisive action). Despite that, the country breathed a collective sigh of relief after that incursion. (Law-abiding citizens that is).
As soon as the murderers realized that the Portia Simpson Miller régime was about to make scapegoats out of the security forces, they went back to business as usual.
Since then, violent crimes have trended steadily upward, (with one or two minor exceptions).
One does not need a policy paper from the intellectual ghetto, neither do we need foreign cops to come in and tell us what is wrong in our country, much less how to fix it.
The data is irrefutable.
We need good intelligence-based policing backed up by tough no-nonsense execution.
Most of all we need the two political parties to back the fuck away from policing, if we are to fix this dilemma.
The reason they are unwilling to step away from interfering in how the country is policed is evidenced by the fact that the two political parties are heavily involved in the criminality plaguing the country.
No, the politicians are not all in the streets with AK47’s, are some of them involved in the guns for drugs trade? I don’t know. (some of their cohorts are). They are involved in Lotto-scamming, they are involved in the theft of public funds, they are involved in all kinds of criminality that drive the killings, including taking funding from trans-national criminals to fund political campaigns and giving them construction contracts when they gain office.
These are the reasons that the two political parties will not come together on crime. It is the reason they will not tear down the garrisons. It is the reason they will not support law enforcement.
The idea that the problem of crime and violence will be fixed by social intervention is a slap in the face of law-abiding Jamaicans.
Social intervention programs have their place in underserved communities. Sure, if those programs can catch and remedy some of the maladies that emanate from poverty, there is reason to believe that gang activity and teenage pregnancies may be minimized if not totally averted.
Nevertheless, it is naïve to believe that social intervention has any impact on gangsters who have already experienced the awesome power the gun gives them.
Not to mention the proceeds they derive from having those weapons.
Advancing the social intervention theory, is the same as advising people to jump over twenty dollar bills to pick up a bunch of pennies.
It is time that these so-called professors stop with the lies.
You women who are now all over the Jamaican public sector, stop propagating this bullshit.
Hugging up criminals is not the way to fix this problem.
The longer it takes for what is left of the law abiding citizenry to raise up against the killers and their family members and say we know who is doing what, we will slide forever deeper into a place of no return.
Speaking truth to power is [PATRIOTISM].
I challenge every well-meaning Jamaican to join me in this crusade against criminality.
Your lives and that of our children and grandchildren depends on it . Our country’s survival depends on it.
Don’t be fooled into accepting the idea that the definition of Patriotism is never having left the country, never speaking out against the wrongs you see.
That is not Patriotism, that is called silent acquiescence. It is what those who benefit from crime wants you to believe.
Mike Beckles is a former Jamaican police Detective corporal, businessman, researcher, and blogger.
He is a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog chatt-a-box.com.
He’s also a contributor to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs free of charge, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest podcast all free to you of course.