Government Too Arrogant To Concede Crime Strategies Have Failed…

‘Incredible’, is the word that comes to mind as I watch our country implode into a failed state. ‘Incredible’, because the fix is not hard; the problem is that the country is being run by a bunch of egomaniacal narcissists who operate in an echo chamber.
They hear the echoes of their own voices and that of their sycophants, and nothing else…(The country is teetering on the brink)
This writer thanks the Police Officers Association (POA) under the leadership of the able and competent stewardship of Senior Superintendent Wayne Cameron for supporting the rank and file of the JCF in its just fight for wages they earned and deserve.

The Political Party present­ly in the oppo­si­tion is a weak knock­off of the American Republican Party. To the PNP, it is pow­er at all costs; desta­bi­liza­tion, lies, vot­ing against the stop­gap mea­sures the gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es, which by default aids the crim­i­nal gangs.
The People’s National Party would rather burn the coun­try to the ground to rule over the ashes.
It would be total­ly laugh­able if it weren’t so seri­ous that some­one like Peter Bunting, who was (a)Minister of National Security in a past PNP administration,(b) was sound­ly reject­ed by the vot­ers in his con­stituen­cy, © as min­is­ter threw up his hands and declared only divine inter­ven­tion could help jamaica’s crime prob­lem, (d) is propped up in the upper cham­ber at Gordon House as a Senator,(e) now is open­ing his mouth about crime. Peter Bunting had no clue as Minister of National Security; he has no clue now.

Make no mis­take about it Holness’ Zones Of Special Operations(ZOSOs) and States Of Emergency dec­la­ra­tions are not cred­i­ble crime-fight­ing strate­gies; he can­not be that naïve that he does­n’t know that.…..or is he?
On the oth­er hand, no one should be fooled into think­ing that the deci­sion by the PNP dum­b­ass­es in the upper cham­ber to vote against a new ZOSO has any­thing to do with core beliefs, con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty, or that they have a bet­ter plan that they pre­sent­ed to Holness.
The People’s National Party is the Party that allowed crim­i­nals to take over our coun­try unchecked. The PNP is still the par­ty with zero inten­tion of curb­ing the vio­lence in our coun­try. The PNP ben­e­fits from the gangs and the vio­lence that dri­ves busi­ness­es out of Jamaica.
As for this writer, I do not expect any­thing from that par­ty except thiev­ery, cor­rup­tion, more sup­port for crim­i­nals, scan­dals, and pover­ty for Jamaicans. That par­ty would be dis­band­ed and barred from con­test­ing elec­tions in Jamaica for­ev­er if it was up to me.
Twenty-two and one-half years ²²¹⁄₂ of PNP rule for­ev­er changed and dam­aged our coun­try irreparably.
Now onto the gov­ern­ment and its failures.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness gen­uine­ly wants to see vio­lent crime go down; how­ev­er, arro­gance will not allow him to con­cede, “I total­ly fucked up when I lam­bast­ed the police.” “I fucked up when I did not lis­ten that ZOSOs & SOEs are not real crime-fight­ing strate­gies.” “I fucked up when I decid­ed to put a sol­dier in charge of polic­ing.” “I fucked up when I caused the nin­com­poops asso­ci­at­ed with the University of the West Indies to influ­ence me on how I approach crime-fight­ing with their bull­shit thesis.”
Now, look where all of that; hifa­lutin bull­shit has got­ten the country?
The prob­lem with the choice for Commissioner of Police is that Antony Anderson also gen­uine­ly wants to make a dif­fer­ence. Of course, he has been giv­en more resources, grace, lat­i­tude, and agency to bring about the gov­ern­men­t’s change. Still, the vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics tell a dif­fer­ent story.

All of the police offi­cers who knew the streets are long gone. We now have a force that is larg­er than two decades ago, bet­ter equipped (rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing);. However, they have to pur­chase their own uni­forms, afraid to do their jobs because the Holness admin­is­tra­tion and its cre­ation INDECOM will imprison them.
Police need over­sight, but I warned that there would be con­se­quences for the direc­tion Holness was taking.
The top-tiered rung of the lead­er­ship of the JCF, deputy com­mis­sion­ers, and assis­tant com­mis­sion­ers, sure­ly sound like intel­lec­tu­als when they speak. Still, they have no idea what actu­al crime-fight­ing is.
In a forum the JCF spon­sored recent­ly, I saw brava­do and balder­dash; not a sin­gle speak­er seemed to know a damn thing out­side of try­ing to sound impres­sive. Not one seemed to have a sin­gle strat­e­gy for root­ing out and elim­i­nat­ing the gangs, but they were heavy on par­rot­ing talk­ing points.
The sad real­i­ty is that the data point­ed in the oppo­site direc­tion as they par­rot­ed what the gov­ern­ment want­ed them to say.
The fact that the forum was nec­es­sary is evi­dence that the gov­ern­men­t’s strat­e­gy has failed.
So while the rank and file mem­bers were demon­strat­ing in front of the supreme court for monies earned, and oth­ers were bemoan­ing the con­di­tions they are being asked to work under in the ZOSO’s & SOE’s, their so-called lead­ers were in a pan­el dis­cus­sion par­rot­ing the admin­is­tra­tion’s talk­ing points like wound-up robot toys.

Let’s hear from the police com­man­ders them­selves.

Having watched the pan­el dis­cus­sion, do you under­stand why I have always said that these so-called lead­ers are incom­pe­tent lapdogs?
The offi­cers are in these zones of oper­a­tion with­out toi­lets for long hours, and here are their lead­ers telling the forum that they are well tak­en care of.
No one men­tioned that these offi­cers need to be paid the monies owed to them, which would boost morale and make them want to con­tin­ue serv­ing and sac­ri­fic­ing for the country.
Listening to them, one would walk away believ­ing that they have a crime under con­trol. Here ladies and gen­tle­men are why they do not qual­i­fy to lead the JCF. This is why they are not respect­ed. This is why crime is out of control.
ZOSO’s & SOEs move crim­i­nals from one area to anoth­er; it does [NOT] low­er vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics. I lis­tened to some ques­tions in that forum that sought to debunk points I have con­sis­tent­ly raised.
For exam­ple, the air in the bal­loon anal­o­gy; you squeeze the bal­loon, and air rush­es to anoth­er sec­tion of the balloon.
Commanders swore that it was­n’t so because the num­bers went down in the areas under occupation.….smile.
They failed to rec­og­nize that over­all crime went up in oth­er areas, borne out in the vio­lent crime statistics.
How can we achieve a seri­ous reduc­tion in vio­lent crimes with lead­ers of this caliber?
Our coun­try is in seri­ous trouble.

.

.

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.