From Home Guards And Brigadistas We Arrive At This Place..

Criminals com­mit minor offences if they get away with it they com­mit more seri­ous breach­es. Still no con­se­quences ? They grad­u­ate to more seri­ous felonies.
Eventually they do as they please know­ing that no one will hold them account­able for their actions. This is true of both the aver­age thug and the thugs who wear suits to work bang on desks or those who occu­py boardrooms .
From Rigen to Sandokan, from Copper to Natty Morgan to Dudus and beyond the process of evo­lu­tion has been the same .
None of these blythes on human­i­ty was swat­ted down when they start­ed in their life of crime.
Eventually the aspi­ra­tions of young men is to become a Gangster and their glo­ri­fi­ca­tion makes our lit­tle girls yearn to be their lovers.. This is true across the Globe. This is why the Scarface per­sona is so revered in Latin culture.
Out of that emanat­ed Pablo Escobar.Griselda Blanco.Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.Carlos Lehder.Amado Carrillo Fuentes. and count­less others .

The fact that the home coun­try of these mur­der­ous scums were allowed to per­pet­u­ate their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties with impuni­ty have had dis­as­trous con­se­quences for those coun­tries, not just as it relates to the loss of life but in the dam­age done to their indi­vid­ual cultures.
In some coun­tries cit­i­zens who make con­scious deci­sions to cause harm to oth­ers do so know­ing their actions will result in swift and deci­sive con­se­quences from authorities.
In coun­tries like Malaysia , Vietnam, Indonesia and oth­ers in Asia, mere­ly traf­fick­ing in dan­ger­ous drugs is enough to get one a date with the executioner.
Never mind in mid­dle Eastern coun­tries where Religious Theocracies are far more pro­hib­i­tive. Responses from those Governments are much swifter and more bru­tal in deal­ing with those accused of crimes.

No sane per­son could rea­son­ably want that kind of jus­tice sys­tem for our west­ern style Parliamentary democ­ra­cy in Jamaica.
Yet the unabat­ed shed­ding of blood has prompt­ed many to call for a return of cap­i­tal punishment.
Those opposed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment argues it is not a deterrent.
I nev­er quite under­stood what met­ric is used in the mea­sure­ment of deterrence !
How does one mea­sure the amount of peo­ple who made deci­sions not to kill because they do not want to face lethal Injection, a fir­ing squad or hangman?
Those so deterred prob­a­bly will nev­er tell, so to sug­gest cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is not a deter­rent is pure cockamanie.
Frankly how­ev­er we must fig­ure out a way to catch mur­der­ers and oth­er crim­i­nals. If we can’t catch them because we do not know how to, then any talk of cap­i­tal or any oth­er form of pun­ish­ment is pre­ma­ture gibberish

The great­est deter­rent is catch­ing crim­i­nals. When you catch them right away you remove them from cir­cu­la­tion. That dis­suades oth­ers from crim­i­nal involve­ment and indulgence.
It also changes the tra­jec­to­ry of the younger Generation who would poten­tial­ly see crime as a viable or attrac­tive life choice.
In our coun­try we nev­er got tough on crime we encour­aged, glo­ri­fied and roman­ti­cized it .
We allowed some “pre­ten­tious glo­ri­fied idiots” to tell us what kinds of laws we should have and how we should enforce them.
Our Government became the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of cor­rup­tion so much so that law­mak­ers will not pass laws which will ensnare them. We allowed oth­er nations to tell us what we can and can­not do with our crim­i­nals because we are behold­en to them for loans and handouts.
So they make demands which grow crime keep­ing us even more depen­dent on them. Of course they do not employ any of their demands in their own coun­tries where they are hawk­ish on crime.
So Jamaica is forced to drop cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment even though the United States still kills peo­ple dai­ly using cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and police take care of the rest with­out trial.
Britain and Canada has a cam­era and oth­er resources in every rab­bit hole so no crime goes unpunished .
Yet They are the first to tell Jamaica you can­not use cap­i­tal punishment.
Now my posi­tion is nei­ther for nor against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In fact I would rather not see cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Jamaica based on the present state of the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

After Independence Jamaica was pret­ty much left on its own, the whites pret­ty much left the coun­try some remained and have long died out how­ev­er the mulat­toes and the new­ly mint­ed black “bour­jois” imme­di­ate­ly picked up where the British landown­ers had left off. The mulat­toes real­ly did not mind the police deal­ing deci­sive­ly with crime it was the “neva si cum si” blacks who believed and rein­forced a dif­fer­ent type of colo­nial struc­ture , one not based on col­or per se but one based on edu­ca­tion as a class identifier.
Prime Minister Hugh Lawson Shearer who col­lo­qui­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly in an effort to show his unbri­dled oppo­si­tion to crime told the police to shoot first and ask ques­tions lat­er in ref­er­ence to vio­lent crime which had begun to rear it’s ugly head.
He was ridiculed and pil­lo­ried by the new­ly emerg­ing black upper class for seek­ing to empow­er the police.
So in 1972 Michael Manley emerged the win­ner of nation­al elections.
Known crim­i­nals were ele­vat­ed to mem­bers of his per­son­al secu­ri­ty detail, the bad man cul­ture had final­ly attained officialdom..
They accom­pa­nied him on for­eign trips and the duly con­sti­tut­ed pow­er and author­i­ty of the chief Constable was sup­plant­ed with two para-mili­tia type appa­ra­tus­es one called the Home Guards and the oth­er the Brigadistas.

Make no mis­take about it the home guards were large­ly local hacks. The Brigidistas were well trained, marx­ist indoc­tri­nat­ed in Cuba by the Castro Government and released back onto the Island under Michael Manley.
It was at that time that what Jamaicans knew as crime evolved into some­thing much more sophis­ti­cat­ed and sinister.
Police Stations were assault­ed , police offi­cers mur­dered and the killers were casu­al­ly shut­tled out of the coun­try to safe havens in Cuba and oth­er marx­ist enclaves and lat­er even unsus­pect­ing coun­tries like Canada and the US to name a few.
This writer spent count­less nights in the Wareika hills hunt­ing down these killers who were wreak­ing ter­ror on the once inno­cent Island

Once pris­tine com­mu­ni­ties were turned into zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions for polit­i­cal gain. Jamaicans once friends and neigh­bors became blood ene­mies as they watched their com­mu­ni­ties upend­ed and reduced to lit­er­al battlefields.
For the entire peri­od of Michael Manley’s dis­as­trous tenure as head of our coun­try to present day the only time crime trend­ed south­ward was the peri­od between 1980 and 1988 when Edward Seaga’s served as Prime Minister.
This does not mean that Seaga had clean hands in the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of our coun­try. He played a role which saw com­mu­ni­ties loy­al to the Labor Party become mil­i­ta­rized as well in order to sur­vive the vio­lence from the oth­er side.
Tivoli Gardens, Rema and a few oth­ers took on new mean­ing. Of course the Labor Party’s Garrisons were few and far between when com­pared to the vol­ume the PNP had.
My analy­sis as it relates to crime trends does not include the peri­od between the time Bruce Golding took over as Prime Minister from Portia Simpson Miller and when Andrew Holness lost to her in 2011.

Whether it is a gun­men killing six in Hanover and torch­ing their home injur­ing anoth­er four or men alight­ing from a car and open­ing fire on a car on hope road in broad day­light with­out fear of appre­hen­sion the stark real­i­ty is that they were con­fi­dent there will be no consequence.
That con­fi­dence and cav­a­lier atti­tude is what gives them the con­fi­dence to mur­der police offi­cers. They have no fear of get­ting caught . And of course if they are ever caught they know darn well they will have more peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions mil­i­tat­ing on their behalf than against them and that includes some who sit on the Courts.

We got to this place because we got a bunch of peo­ple in Jamaica who are the most pre­ten­tious ass­holes. Let’s call a spade a spade.
They sit in their lit­tle gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties behind grill gates, one room grilled from the oth­er and they blovi­ate and pon­tif­i­cate about everything.
Every Doctor, Lawyer, busi­ness­man, every damn thief has an opin­ion on law enforce­ment and how it must be shack­led . Every arrest is dis­sect­ed and every police encounter with the pub­lic under­goes a postmortem .
“The Police bway dem mus­si nu know dem place, how dem fi arrest di big man” nev­er mind that their crony is a damn criminal.
The Police were char­ac­ter­ized as “krow­bait” and “jankru” on morn­ing tele­vi­sion because one crack addict­ed tele­vi­sion news­cast­er was accost­ed buy­ing crack in Barbican square. “Yup” How dare the Police enforce the laws.

But none of this mat­ter much when con­sid­ered against the fact that those who hold high Political offices lead throngs of motor­cy­cle brig­ands to polling sta­tions and casu­al­ly steal bal­lot box­es in precincts not favor­able to them and yes they do worse things too.
So now our lit­tle Island of 2.7 mil­lion is teth­er­ing on the brink of eco­nom­ic col­lapse, most of the com­pa­nies which sur­vived Manley’s onslaught dur­ing the 70’s and were rein­forced and reen­er­gized under Seaga have sim­ply fold­ed under the triple weight of extor­tion from the Government, the Trade Unions and those out­side Gordon House.
Throw in bungling bureau­cra­cy and inane restric­tions, exor­bi­tant ener­gy prices, oth­er oper­a­tional costs, the killing of busi­ness own­ers and the Island is now a place no one looks to when they want to invest.
So the con­stant unsub­stan­ti­at­ed rhetoric you hear that the Island is now poised for invest­ment and devel­op­ment makes sense only to the dis­ori­ent­ed polit­i­cal hacks who par­rot those talk­ing points come near elec­tion time.

There is a rea­son one does not go to a fire­house when he needs repairs done to his car. We also do not go to the teacher when we need to have a her­nia removed, we go to a med­ical doctor.
We got a lit­tle too big for our britch­es, a lit­tle knowl­edge turned us into com­plete fools, we went down a path from which we don’t know how to get out. Interestingly rather than seek redemp­tion and hum­ble our­selves we dou­ble down on stupidity.
So when Golding cre­at­ed (inde­com) to deal with alleged police excess­es under much pres­sure from inter­est groups, he did­n’t both­er to use his office to make sure that there would be the right bal­ance in that bit of legislation.
A bal­ance which would allay the fears and con­cerns from cer­tain aggriev­ed sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion, while ensur­ing that police offi­cers are pro­tect­ed against per­se­cu­tion and witch hunts when they take steps to pro­tect the country.
He allowed one argu­ment to hold sway and the nation end­ed up with a bad law.
Rather than repeal it they will stub­born­ly delude them­selves it is a good law which cor­rals police excesses.
They will not say we made a mis­take in draft­ing debat­ing and pass­ing this and it is cost­ing peo­ple their lives, they sim­ply have not yet reached that lev­el of sophis­ti­ca­tion. They will hold stead­fast to the talk­ing points that Police shoot­ings have gone down and that is what is important.

However when the ill-advised law and the Napoleonic com­mis­sion­er are held up to the light nei­ther pass­es muster.
(1) Contrary to the baloney fed the pub­lic that the (inde­com) Act is pos­i­tive­ly respon­si­ble for the reduc­tion in police shoot­ing crim­i­nals the truth lines up more with the fact that the police have sim­ply cho­sen not to engage.
In fact the police did not engage the gun­men on Hope Road just this week accord­ing to our sources even as gun­men shot up a car injur­ing the driver.
Why should they? Why should they engage and be treat­ed like crim­i­nals have their weapons tak­en, hav­ing to leave their offices to go give state­ments to a non-police agency intent on mak­ing crim­i­nals of them?
Why should they risk pros­e­cu­tion sim­ply for doing their jobs because a self aggran­diz­ing crea­ture intent on grab­bing pow­er wants to climb on their backs or slide in their blood to big­ger and bet­ter things for him­self? There is no rea­son to engage so they sim­ply don’t.
Therein lies the rea­son police shoot­ings are down.
Criminals haven’t stopped killing peo­ple the police have sim­ply stopped shoot­ing back. The soon­er the peo­ple real­izes this and demand the dis­band­ment of (inde­com) the bet­ter off they will be.

(2) More police offi­cers have been shot and wound­ed and indeed killed since the (inde­com act) came into exis­tence than at any oth­er time. Criminals are embold­ened and they are act­ing with raw impunity.
The killings are too many to seri­ous­ly contemplate.
So this year more Jamaicans will be killed than last year and it will con­tin­ue until the dum­b­ass politi­cians say to the oth­er shit­heads “shut up”, then repeal (the inde­com act) seri­ous­ly go back to the draw­ing board and come up with a piece of leg­is­la­tion which makes sense.
It is nev­er too late to say we were total Jackasses.….…..