Govt Must Order Thugs To Surrender Weapons Or Have The Security Forces Pluck Them From Their Cold Dead Fingers

It is a brand new year we should be focused on new ideas and new ini­tia­tives to keep our coun­try safe.
Unfortunately, our lead­ers have not moved to take con­trol of the crises fac­ing our coun­try so we are forced to be obsess­ing about issues which should have been addressed years ago.

Fortunately, the threats Jamaica faces are not from hos­tile state actors but from crim­i­nals with­in and with­out who would turn the Island into a Serengeti of blood­shed and lawlessness.
Our prob­lems are not insur­mount­able, nev­er­the­less, if the nation’s lead­ers con­tin­ue to pos­ture for cheap polit­i­cal lever­age it won’t be long before they become so.

Yesterday I spoke to how Jamaica got to the state of law­less­ness it’s present­ly mired in. I also point­ed to a few Nations which have had seri­ous prob­lems with law­less­ness and out­lined specif­i­cal­ly how the nation of Colombia has weath­ered the storm under the strong decid­ed lead­er­ship of pres­i­dent Álvaro Uribe Vélez.

My friend tells me that if Jamaica wants to fix its crime prob­lem it has to adopt New York City’s model.
Unfortunately for Jamaica the mod­el used by New York City which began under the lead­er­ship of David Dinkins the city’s first African-American Mayor begun with com­mu­ni­ty policing.

The prob­lem con­tin­ued under a more aggres­sive Rudolph Guliani but was infused with a far more decid­ed and no-non­sense approach as it relat­ed to enforce­ment prac­tices and procedures.
The so-called bro­ken win­dows approach which includ­ed pros­e­cut­ing offend­ers for all infrac­tions as well as a stop and frisk com­po­nent which many criticized.
I sup­port­ed the stop and frisk com­po­nent, I fun­da­men­tal­ly believed that a per­son who would take an ille­gal weapon into the streets who believes he will be stopped and arrest­ed for that weapon he would think twice about doing it.

As was the case in most sit­u­a­tions in America, it was the dis­parate appli­ca­tion of the stop and frisk com­po­nent which jus­ti­fied the courts step­ping in and end­ing it.
Jamaica is long past the place where sim­ply adopt­ing com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing will change the par­a­digm. Community polic­ing is invalu­able after the brush has been cleared. There is no sce­nario in which com­mu­ni­ty offi­cers can be inject­ed into com­mu­ni­ties war­ring with AK47 and oth­er auto­mat­ic weapons.
Which brings me to the issue of wars.

WARRING ACTORS ARE NOT MERE CRIMINALS THEY ARE A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY.

As long as the nation naive­ly con­tin­ue to pre­tend that the heav­i­ly armed war­ring fac­tions which oper­ate in parts of the Wareika foothills, Tivoli and Arnett Gardens, Riverton and all places in between, all the way to the west­ern parish­es, there will be no end to the bloodletting.
This is not mere­ly crim­i­nal con­duct, it was­n’t just crim­i­nal con­duct when the mur­der­ous over­lord Christopher Coke decid­ed that he would not sub­mit to an arrest warrant.
In the same way that Pablo Escobar the leader of the Medellin car­tel in Colombia and oth­er lead­ers of the Cali and oth­er car­tels act­ed when the Government sought to arrest them. They fought the state.

Today Mexico and Guatemala con­tin­ue to strug­gle to deal with nar­co-ter­ror­ists with­in their coun­tries pri­mar­i­ly because of the cor­rupt nature of many with­in the body politic.
Nevertheless, Mexico took the nec­es­sary steps to arrest El Chapo Guzman and ship him off to the United States where he is present­ly fac­ing real jus­tice for his crimes.
As it was in Colombia and it is in Mexico today so is it in Jamaica.
This is exact­ly what is hap­pen­ing in Mexico today, it was the norm in Colombia before Uribe’s Presidency in 2002.

Jamaicans on the streets have acknowl­edged that the exis­ten­tial threat the nation faces from these vio­lent actors is indeed a state of war.
People are ter­ri­fied and trau­ma­tized in their homes at the inces­sant sound of gun­fire, unsure whether this time it will be their doors kicked in and lights out for their entire family.
Children are unable to go to school and entire com­mu­ni­ties are placed under siege as maraud­ing gangs of urban ter­ror­ist parade their heavy auto­mat­ic weapons total­ly uncon­cerned about consequences.

The aver­age Jamaican have long under­stood that the coun­try was in a state of unde­clared civ­il-war, it is the two polit­i­cal par­ties which have con­sis­tent­ly refused to acknowl­edge it for what it is.
This year alone there are esti­mates which put the Island’s homi­cide num­bers above 1600 for the first time since 2005.

It is not only the polit­i­cal par­ties which are cul­pa­ble in this fias­co, there are oth­er actors which are equal­ly as cul­pa­ble in the con­tin­u­ance of this charade.
The fact that there is a so-called “Peace Management Unit”, is in and of itself an acknowl­edg­ment that the coun­try is in a state of war.
Ironically the Peace Management Unit and its lead­ers, begin­ning with Horace, Levy does not want peace. Peace would mean irrel­e­vance for Levy and his cabal of deplorables.

Instead of help­ing the Police to iden­ti­fy the ter­ror­ists in the com­mu­ni­ties Levy and oth­ers foment and nur­ture dis­sent and oppo­si­tion against the police all the while pre­tend­ing to want peace in the communities.
What we end up with are a bunch of peo­ple who attach them­selves to the body politic like the thou­sands of par­a­sitic plantlife which attach them­selves to the tall trees in the Amazon Jungle.

They fan the flames of anar­chy, all the time pre­tend­ing to care about Human Rights. They play a dan­ger­ous game of Russian roulette with the nation’s secu­ri­ty with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the aver­age Jamaican.
Some of these agen­cies are fund­ed by for­eign dark money.

The Jamaican Government has a respon­si­bil­i­ty as it’s pri­ma­ry func­tion to drown out the noise and deploy the mil­i­tary to go into the enclaves in which these ter­ror­ists are mur­der­ing and muti­lat­ing and erad­i­cate them once and for all as President Uribe did in Colombia.
There should be no fear of crit­i­cisms, crit­ics ben­e­fit from the mur­der may­hem which exists, with­out it they have no relevance.

That is the rea­son Uribe did not bow to them, it is why Duterte in the Philippines are not bow­ing to critics.
Various admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties have giv­en far too much def­er­ence to so-called human rights lob­by oper­at­ing in our country.
The con­se­quences are there for all to see. The idea that a Government in a coun­try like Jamaica would be def­er­en­tial and behold­en to armed thugs is shock­ing and embar­rass­ing to say the least.

There should be one state­ment com­ing from the Government to the heav­i­ly armed gangs oper­at­ing on the Island.
Turn in the weapons, all of them in 7 days, fail­ing which we will pluck them from your cold dead fingers.
The time has come for the Jamaican Government and those on the oppo­si­tion bench­es to rec­og­nize that if they do not act to remove the weapons from the hands of the mur­der­ous killers there will be hell to pay.
Events of 2010 will have been a cake­walk rel­a­tive­ly speaking.

Yes, if that means sus­pend­ing habeas cor­pus then so be it. These are des­per­ate times which requires deci­sive measures.
Those who sit on the side­lines and make grand state­ments are going to do what they do best “chat”, the nation’s nation­al secu­ri­ty can­not be exe­cut­ed with def­er­ence to them.
In many coun­tries, they can crit­i­cize and make their state­ments only from afar. It’s time that Jamaica fol­low suit.