Govt.& Opp. Know Crime Solutions, But Continue To Deceive The People.…..

We con­tin­ue to speak out about the spi­ral­ing crime rate in Jamaica and the tone-deaf­ness with which the author­i­ties are han­dling the prob­lem.
Gunmen con­tin­ue to kill at will, even as the gov­ern­ment roll out Zones of Special Operations and declare states of emer­gen­cies.
Despite these stop-gap mea­sures which take the place of real strate­gies, the gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion, con­tin­ue to delude them­selves that this is real­ly no big deal.
My friend’s wife once told me of her love for pork, she said she had white rice and pork, and she fell ill. She said she knew the pork had made her ill, but she decid­ed to stop eat­ing rice.
The Administration and the oppo­si­tion in Kingston know what to do about the gang­sters run­ning around killing the inno­cent but they are too in love with them.
So the con­vene con­fer­ences to pull the wool over the peo­ple’s eyes, to cre­ate an illu­sion that they are doing some­thing rad­i­cal about it.
I say to the peo­ple of Jamaica they aren’t!
There is one solu­tion to the gang­sters run­ning unop­posed in our coun­try, and that is strong leg­is­la­tion and no-non­sense polic­ing.

Delusion, how­ev­er, is fool’s gold. Our peo­ple do not like to fol­low rules, we don’t like to obey laws, until of course, we move to places where they will have none of that non­sense.
And so instead of tack­ling the prob­lem head-on, they con­tin­ue to twid­dle their thumbs and pre­tend that this is a mere nui­sance on the path to pros­per­i­ty, or what­ev­er the hell their mantra is.
The real­i­ty is that even if pros­per­i­ty was pos­si­ble in this hotbed of killings and oth­er vio­lent crimes, the stan­dard of liv­ing would still be sub­stan­dard as a result of the pal­pa­ble fear in the coun­try.
The fact of the mat­ter is that there can, and will be no pros­per­i­ty or real growth in an atmos­phere in which so many have access to ille­gal guns.
In the mean­time, the Prime Minister, and the min­ions in his gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue to inject them­selves into indi­vid­ual cas­es where police are forced to take action against crim­i­nals. This fur­ther mud­dies the water and ren­ders the work of the secu­ri­ty forces more difficult.

A recent­ly con­vened con­fer­ence between the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader, had the very same group of peo­ple who should nev­er ever be part of pol­i­cy­mak­ing in atten­dance.
Seated at the table were Jamaicans For Justice, the nation’s pre­em­i­nent anti-police agi­ta­tor, and oth­ers. At a time when five peo­ple lost their lives in one day in one small sec­tor of the city.
They con­tin­ue to fol­low the same path of obsti­na­cy, embrac­ing the very same band of idiots who present them­selves as experts and yet they expect dif­fer­ent results, and so the gang­sters laugh and con­tin­ue to kill with impuni­ty. Which makes one won­der whether they are killing with immu­ni­ty from the polit­i­cal leadership? 

They con­tin­ue to lis­ten to so-called experts like the squir­rel­ly Horace Levy who once stat­ed that the police’s assess­ment of what con­sti­tutes gangs was wrong. In his esteemed knowl­edge, the col­lec­tion of men who hang on the cor­ners in the dan­ger­ous inner-city com­mu­ni­ties were not gangs, they were mere ‘cor­ner-crews.’
These are the peo­ple who are influ­enc­ing pol­i­cy. These are the secu­ri­ty experts advis­ing on crime.
As a for­mer street cop who tra­versed almost every square yard of the tough and for­bod­ing inner-city areas of Kingston and Saint Andrew under the per­il of death, I nev­er heard any­thing so non­sen­si­cal. But these are the self-impor­tant buf­foons that the anti-police admin­is­tra­tion in Jamaica House sub­scribe to.
Instead of strong and unequiv­o­cal sup­port to the law enforce­ment agen­cies, the admin­is­tra­tion’s efforts are direct­ed at strength­en­ing JFJ and INDECOM at the expense of the hard-work­ing peo­ple in law enforce­ment.
I nev­er for­got my great Aunt always talk­ing about “what a ting wen dish tow­el tun table claat.“
That is where the nation’s secu­ri­ty is now pre­cip­i­tous­ly posi­tioned, in the hands of rank ama­teurs and self-pro­claimed experts.

The prob­lem for Jamaica is not that we haven’t seen this tem­plate that the crim­i­nals are using. In 201 we saw where their heads were. Earlier this year we got anoth­er glimpse of their capa­bil­i­ties in Guinep Tree May Pen. So it’s not as if there isn’t prece­dent.
Out of 2010 encounter with the entrenched pseu­do-gov­ern­ment of Christopher, Duddus Coke , was more than enough data-points from which the Government could eas­i­ly have extrap­o­lat­ed strate­gies, and cre­at­ed a seri­ous set of laws which would once and for all set a course for­ward which would secure the coun­try for gen­er­a­tions to come.
The incom­pe­tence and crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty of the then PNP admin­is­tra­tion cou­pled with the full acqui­es­cence of the JLP, ensured that there would be no lessons learned from what could eas­i­ly be a sit­u­a­tion in which the coun­try became a nar­co-state.
These are the kinds of things the two polit­i­cal par­ties have sub­ject­ed the coun­try to. The rea­son being that with­in their ranks are crim­i­nals who are ben­e­fit­ting from the mur­der-may­hem.
As one per­son puts it yes­ter­day, they are turn­ing our coun­try into a dynasty where their chil­dren fol­low into their foot­steps by own­ing seats in the par­lia­ment and the atten­dant unen­cum­bered access to pub­lic funds.
Rather than thank the secu­ri­ty forces the two bunch of crim­i­nals in both polit­i­cal gangs band­ed togeth­er to demo­nize the secu­ri­ty forces for their valiance in annex­ing Tivoli Gardens to the Island.
Several mem­bers gave their lives. The filthy politi­cians on both sides, in an effort to appease the thugs and the rab­ble, blamed the secu­ri­ty forces for their own failures.

October 17^th; Heavily armed fight­ers sur­round­ed secu­ri­ty forces in a Mexican city on Thursday and made them free one of drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s sons, after his cap­ture trig­gered gun­bat­tles and a prison break that sent civil­ians scur­ry­ing for cov­er. Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said a patrol by National Guard mil­i­ta­rized police first came under attack from with­in a house in the city of Culiacan, 1,235 km (770 miles) north­west of Mexico City.

After enter­ing the house, they found four men, includ­ing Ovidio Guzman, who is accused of drug traf­fick­ing in the United States. The patrol was quick­ly out­matched by car­tel gun­men, how­ev­er, and it was with­drawn to pre­vent lives being lost, the gov­ern­ment said. Simultaneously, fight­ers swarmed through the city, bat­tling police and sol­diers in broad day­light. They torched vehi­cles and left at least one gas sta­tion ablaze. “The deci­sion was tak­en to retreat from the house, with­out Guzman, to try to avoid more vio­lence in the area and pre­serve the lives of our per­son­nel and recov­er calm in the city.

This is what hap­pens when cor­rupt gov­ern­ments side with crim­i­nal ele­ments against the secu­ri­ty forces. This is not hap­pen­ing in an abstract sense, nor in some dis­tant lands thou­sands of miles away. This hap­pened in Mexico, a part of the same Latin-American and Caribbean region of which Jamaica is a part.
I incor­po­rat­ed this sto­ry into this arti­cle because this hap­pened time and again in Jamaica, and the excuse is always the same. “The secu­ri­ty forces with­drew to save lives”. What a load of crock.
I saw the Jamaican Prime Minister at a scene hold­ing a baby while one woman explained her side of a sto­ry to him. Of course, the police are always wrong, and the crim­i­nals are always choir­boys. After lis­ten­ing, Holness told the crowd that the police may have caught the crim­i­nal but they alien­at­ed the com­mu­ni­ty.
Never mind that the police have a duty to go wher­ev­er crim­i­nals are and haul them off to jail under the col­or of law, regard­less of whether the crime-infest­ed com­mu­ni­ties like it or not.
Holness is the head of the gov­ern­ment, he was hear­ing one side of the sto­ry, he had no idea where the truth lay. Instead of telling the peo­ple that there are agen­cies and pro­to­cols in place to take care of com­plaints, he went on to berate the police, with­out any evi­dence.
These are the kinds of bla­tant­ly moron­ic and sopho­moric things he brought to the table as the leader of our coun­try. His anti-police bias is beneath the office of the Prime Minister’s office and should not be tol­er­at­ed.
It is for this rea­son that I won­der at the intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty of the police offi­cers who place their lives at risk to pro­tect peo­ple like these in both polit­i­cal par­ties.
It is the same kind of char­ac­ter defi­cien­cy and lack of moral char­ac­ter which char­ac­ter­izes Mexico’s lead­ers. A cor­rupt and duplic­i­tous con­nivance with the crim­i­nal under­world which makes Mexico a per­pet­u­al third world coun­try. It is the same char­ac­ter­is­tic that defines Jamaica.

Since this admin­is­tra­tion fails to see this threat for what it is, and since the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion is worse at gov­er­nance, we are left with the hope that the tail will even­tu­al­ly wag the dog. Maybe then we can pick up the pieces and start over.
At least that is my dream, the pool is far too filthy and contaminated.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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