Ellington’s Empty Rhetoric.

Two years ago I wrote a series of short blogs, they were in rela­tion­ship to events on the ground in Jamaica. Gang war­fare was the issue then. At the time Police Commissioner Owen Ellington called on his divi­sion­al com­man­ders to come up with strate­gies to erad­i­cate gang activ­i­ty from their indi­vid­ual divi­sions. I thought that was odd, for sev­er­al rea­sons, not least of which was that the com­mis­sion­er want­ed divi­sion­al heads to come up with their own strate­gies. It seemed to me at the time that a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy should be devel­oped by the police high com­mand, fine tuned by the depart­ments lawyers and val­i­dat­ed by strong leg­isla­tive support.

Commissioner Owen Ellington

I argued then that the com­mis­sion­er’s approach would be noth­ing more than a patch­work of sim­ple raids which will even­tu­al­ly tar­get reg­u­lar peo­ple, while real crim­i­nals con­tin­ue with their crimes. I also argued that this com­mis­sion­er had no prac­ti­cal knowl­edge of crime reduc­tion, nei­ther did most of the top com­man­ders with­in the present JCF. As such I opined that crime would get worse. Since then I don’t believe any­one can hon­est­ly say I was wrong in my assess­ment, or that the Commissioner’s rhetoric has borne any fruit. Just yes­ter­day the Observer chron­i­cled ghast­ly alle­ga­tions of mass graves and rou­tine killings by gangs in the east­ern part of the coun­try alleged­ly involv­ing Police offi­cers aligned to the gangs. It would be naïve to believe that there is no truth to these alle­ga­tions, or that these graves would be con­fined to any one geo­graph­ic area of the Island. Over the years Jamaica has become a killing field, no one is safe any­where in Jamaica anymore.

How did we get here? The pol­i­tics of both polit­i­cal par­ties got us here. Two Political par­ties which are glo­ri­fied crim­i­nal gangs. One bet­ter at win­ning elec­tions, so it con­trol the turf. He who con­trols the purse strings con­trols the vot­ers, he who con­trols the vot­ers con­trols the purse strings. Why would either par­ty want a pro­fes­sion­al police depart­ment? Over the years the JCF has been pop­u­lat­ed with boot-lick­ers. Good com­pe­tent ded­i­cat­ed offi­cers exit­ed the stage leav­ing vast open­ings for crim­i­nals and polit­i­cal patrons to fill, and fill it they did. The Constabulary under­went a rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion dur­ing the régime of Percival Patterson, for a full decade the depart­ment was not giv­en the funds to train a sin­gle detec­tive. Patterson sim­ply did not care about crime as long as he was able to feath­er his fini­cal nest, and that of his cronies. The coun­try and police depart­ment is still reel­ing from the effects of the dev­as­ta­tion of the Patterson régime.

The Minister of National Security seem to want an end to the crime on one hand . His approach is that the coun­try needs divine inter­ven­tion. I agree with him yet I under­stand God will not come down and beg crim­i­nals to put their guns down. Criminals must be made to put the guns down, or the state must take the guns from their life­less hands. On the oth­er hand Minister Bunting says there is no indi­ca­tion crime is spi­ral­ing out of con­trol. What? .. Every year close to 1.600 Jamaicans are report­ed killed , that num­ber does not take into account the many oth­ers mur­dered and their bod­ies dumped. What is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica is shame­ful, it is fright­en­ing, it is das­tard­ly it reminds us of oth­er places where mil­lions are mas­sa­cred and no one held respon­si­ble. This Government must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the thou­sands of Jamaicans who are mur­dered every year and no one is held accountable.

It is a mon­u­men­tal fraud to pre­tend Jamaica is this hos­pitable place as they trum­pet the fact that 2 mil­lion peo­ple vis­it­ed in a year. At the same time peo­ple are being killed and their bod­ies dumped in mass graves. This can­not stand, this Prime Minister can­not con­tin­ue to fly around on the coun­try’s bor­rowed mon­ey, while this is hap­pen­ing on her watch. To say she is incom­pe­tent would be dis­re­spect­ful to the incom­pe­tent. This woman by virtue of her being Prime Minister is itself a mon­u­men­tal fraud and a trav­es­ty. Yet there is no short­age of apol­o­gists will­ing to see this once pearl of the Caribbean reduced to the stan­dards of sub Saharan Africa. Those of you who believe it can’t hap­pen need to have your heads exam­ined. All of the com­po­nents are already in place for it to hap­pen . In 2010 we saw for the first time what a defi­ant mili­tia can do. The entire coun­try is divvied up into turfs ‚each con­trolled by local low life punks who believe they are Dons. They have no short­age of guns and ammu­ni­tion, and damn sure no short­age of mer­ce­nar­ies. Sadly it appears some of those mer­ce­nar­ies are ‚mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces. When this issue is looked at in it’s total­i­ty it becomes clear that Jamaica is clos­er to sub Saharan Africa than many of you imag­ine. con­tin­ue to pre­tend , con­tin­ue to tell your­selves it’s not that bad. keep your heads buried in the sand.