Fifty Eight ‚(58) Individuals Have Been Murdered In One Week:

For the last 14 days, 58 indi­vid­u­als have been mur­dered: week one, 28, week 2, 30, and dur­ing that peri­od, 15 per­sons have been mur­dered in St. James, alone, 1,160 mur­ders report­ed so far this year is a 10 per cent increase over the fig­ure for the same peri­od (up to the end of November, 2012) last year.http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​J​L​P​-​r​a​p​s​-​P​M​-​f​o​r​-​n​o​t​-​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​f​i​g​h​t​-​a​-​p​r​i​o​r​i​t​y​-​_​1​5​6​5​3​715.

Portia
These are num­bers attest­ed to in a press Conference held at their Belmont Road offices by the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party. At the press con­fer­ence the oppo­si­tion leader and oth­ers bemoaned the lack of lead­er­ship on the crit­i­cal issue of crime and vio­lence by the admin­is­tra­tion and the Prime Minister in par­tic­u­lar. I am not exact­ly sure whether the Opposition par­ty rec­og­nizes that the PNP exists as a polit­i­cal enti­ty because of crime. The streets under­stands that when the peo­ple’s National Party forms the Government it’s gen­er­al­ly a free-for-all. The per­cep­tion on the streets is that the par­ty allows every­one to (eat a food), col­lo­qui­al Jamaican ter­mi­nol­o­gy which means to tac­it­ly allow peo­ple to break the laws for per­son­al gain. Jamaicans do not like laws, so the People’s National Party has been a per­fect fit for most Jamaica’s since suffrage.

Carolyn Gomes

There are sev­er­al bills lan­guish­ing in the Parliament which could poten­tial­ly give law enforce­ment a leg-up despite the woe­ful inad­e­qua­cy of resources giv­en to them. Conversely, what the Government has done is to place a stran­gle-hold on effec­tive law-enforce­ment, by col­lud­ing with Jamaicans for Justice to imple­ment strate­gies which crim­i­nal­ize cops who do what they are sworn to do. Police Officers are not going after crim­i­nals, out of fear they will end up in prison on fraud­u­lent ghet­to evi­dence cooked-up by (inde­com). No one denies the need for effec­tive police over­sight, it is an absolute neces­si­ty. Oversight how­ev­er, can­not be a fish­ing expe­di­tion aimed at impris­on­ing Police offi­cers to con­form to the dic­tates of Carolyn Gomes and( jfj)

Let’s not kid our­selves into believ­ing that Portia under­stands the debil­i­tat­ing con­se­quences crime has on the Nation’s psy­che and finances. Many eval­u­a­tions have been done high­light­ing the trau­ma to both. Nevertheless there are peo­ple with­in that Administration who are capa­ble of assim­i­lat­ing the detri­men­tal and gen­er­a­tions long con­se­quences that crime will have on the nation. We then must pull our heads from the sand and accept the fact that crime thrives in Jamaica because this admin­is­tra­tion wants it to. All the evi­dence points to that con­clu­sion. From as far back as the 70’s, People National Party poli­cies have been crim­i­nal friend­ly and acqui­es­cent, if not total­ly and out­right complicit.

Percival Patterson

Gutting of law-enforce­ment capa­bil­i­ties in the 70’s under Michael Manley, allow­ing for crim­i­nals to march into police sta­tions and remove crim­i­nals from police con­trol. Guerrilla-style assaults on Police sta­tions, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions(gar­risons). A total decade, 10 years with­out a sin­gle detec­tive trained under Percival Patterson. The lat­ter saw crime explod­ing expo­nen­tial­ly, and the moral com­pass of our Nation for­ev­er changed for the worse.

How can Portia Simpson Miller be expect­ed to be part of any solu­tion to elim­i­nate or erad­i­cate crime when her very ascent was made pos­si­ble because of crime? As a police offi­cer in the late 80’s I watched Portia roll-around in the streets on White Hall Avenue, sur­round­ed by a bunch of red T‑shirt, motor­cy­cle rid­ing brig­ands. She was upset we did not allow them to steal the bal­lot box­es. Yes I said it. It’s naïve to believe that the par­ty which is soft on crime, which wins more elec­tions because of that stance can, or will fix crime. As Jamaicans we have to accept the stark and con­tra­dic­to­ry real­i­ty that most Jamaicans are not opposed to crime, they are opposed to those who work toward elim­i­nat­ing it. The labor par­ty will have a tough road to hoe, first in con­vinc­ing an illit­er­ate mass that it’s in their eco­nom­ic and exis­ten­tial inter­est to turn it’s back on crim­i­nal­i­ty. Then get­ting them to vote deci­sive­ly to root it out. That means keep­ing the People’s National Party out of Jamaica House.