Govt, Policy On Crime Cynical And Dangerous For The Long Run.….

“Di ting wata dung to nut­ten”). Translation. The thing is watered down to noth­ing. In case you are won­der­ing what I’m talk­ing about?
It is the con­sen­sus among the peo­ple who have spent two or three decades in the Jamaica Constabulary Force,(JCF) that they are no longer allowed to enforce the laws.
Many of you polit­i­cal apol­o­gists, (God bless you), can­not see any­thing ratio­nal­ly. Your only prism is polit­i­cal and col­ored either orange or green.

The nation’s vio­lent crime rate is at epi­dem­ic lev­els and ris­ing, but of course, as far as the aver­age vil­lage lawyer we hear opine on this is con­cerned, (“crime de eve weh”), crime is every­where.
It is a kind of faux patri­o­tism born out of a mis­guid­ed belief that iden­ti­fy­ing the can­cer­ous tumor of crime and seek­ing to cau­ter­ize it is less than patri­ot­ic.
So the default option is to ratio­nal­ize it away. It is syn­ony­mous to the for­mer female prison guard turned come­di­an, who joked that she would look at what she described as the gor­geous male crim­i­nals in prison, some of them rapists, and in self­ish lust tell her­self, “but he nev­er killed any­body.”

There is no point in try­ing to pry those peo­ple from their cub­by­holes of com­fort­a­bil­i­ty. If they believe they are not enti­tled to bet­ter, who am I to insist oth­er­wise?
But for the rest of us who know that as a peo­ple we can, and should do bet­ter, we must con­tin­ue to mil­i­tate for change.
We under­stand that we deserve bet­ter than liv­ing like caged ani­mals in a Serengeti of law­less­ness. We can ill-afford to pre­tend that there is no prob­lem, so we will con­tin­ue to speak out. 

The People’s National Party admin­is­tra­tion squan­dered the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty years ago. In an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₁₂ year unbro­ken run in office, instead of shoring up and expand­ing the struc­ture of the rule of law, the Patterson Administration said “any­thing a any­thing,“a wink and a nod to its crim­i­nal sup­port­ers that they should go out and take what­ev­er they want­ed from whomev­er they please.
At the same time, the Patterson admin­is­tra­tion was busy plun­der­ing the nation­al cof­fers, send­ing the coun­try deep­er and deep­er into pover­ty and debt.
Patterson did not lift a fin­ger to address the nation’s bur­geon­ing crime rate. Instead, he dev­as­tat­ed the JCF’s abil­i­ty to respond to the grow­ing crim­i­nal threat.
Under PJ Patterson’s lead­er­ship, the Criminal Investigations Branch (CIB) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force did not train a sin­gle detec­tive, for over ten years.
If we do not con­tin­ue to hone the skills of those whose task it is it bring killers to jus­tice, is there any won­der that the police is unable to make crim­i­nal charges stick?
If you sur­mise that maybe, just maybe that is the way the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship wants it, I believe you are the per­son I am writ­ing to.
Patterson did not make a sin­gle pen­ny avail­able to train a sin­gle detec­tive for more than a decade under his dis­as­trous régime.
Patterson said the coun­try need­ed all offi­cers to be in uni­form, a clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sage that he did not want the crim­i­nal (“Dons”) who pro­vide var­i­ous ser­vices to the PNP locked away by police.
The crim­i­nal enter­prise that was the Patterson Government ensured that there would not be a pro­fes­sion­al and com­pe­tent police depart­ment to inves­ti­gate and lock up the par­ty faith­ful.
To add insult to injury the left­ist University of the West Indies recent­ly hon­ored Percival Patterson, a total fail­ure and a dis­as­ter for our coun­try. A man whose tenure in office ben­e­fit­ted only him­self and his cronies.
The hon­or was a clear sign that there is no dif­fer­ence of thought between that far-left insti­tu­tion, and the morons it churns out.
It is a ver­i­ta­ble rogue’s gallery of bot­tom feed­ers bestow­ing acco­lades on bot­tom feed­ers. Essentially the awards are not worth the mate­ri­als they are made from.

The Jamaica Labor Party under Bruce Golding was a dis­grace. Ultimately, Golding was forced to step aside, giv­ing rise to Andrew Holness his pro­tégé of sorts.
Neither Bruce Golding nor Andrew Holness respects the rule of law or the offi­cers who enforce them.
Bruce Golding will for­ev­er be remem­bered as the Prime Minister who stood up for a trans-nation­al crim­i­nal, (Christopher Duddus Coke), instead of stand­ing up for the nation.
Today, Andrew Holness is Prime Minister, and though many believe that he is a genius of sorts, we are yet to see that genius exe­cut­ed in either word or deed, as far as secu­ri­ty and crime is con­cerned.
Holness has not demon­strat­ed that he (a) under­stands the impor­tance of the rule of law to a demo­c­ra­t­ic nation, (b) the impor­tance of sup­port­ing & respect­ing those who risk their lives to enforce our laws,© that he under­stands, [or even cares] about the morale of the men and women who work to secure the safe­ty of him­self, his fam­i­ly, and the nation at the per­il of their own lives.

Andrew Holness won his own man­date on February 25^th, 2016, after an abbre­vi­at­ed run as Prime Minister after Bruce Golding was forced to step aside after the Christopher Coke débâ­cle.
Holness arrived with an atti­tude of recrim­i­na­tion against the JCF. He issued blan­ket unver­i­fied state­ments against the JCF. He accused mem­bers of kick­ing down doors and killing inno­cent peo­ple in cold blood.
One thing is cer­tain [as a mat­ter of fact], the vile hearsay invec­tives Holness lev­eled at the JCF is 100% unadul­ter­at­ed hearsay.
Given Jamaica’s hyper-vio­lent soci­ety the police had lit­tle choice but to match force with vio­lent force.
And so under Seaga’ s tenure, when our police were allowed to act, our coun­try had 500 to 600 mur­ders each year.
Today under Holness’ lead­er­ship, despite ZOSO’s and SOE’s the Island is expe­ri­enc­ing homi­cide num­bers three times what obtained under Seaga.
The vio­lent nature of the Island’s crim­i­nals made Holness’ actions and words even more hyp­o­crit­i­cal and dan­ger­ous.
The prob­lem with Holness’ mis­guid­ed posi­tion is that he is Prime Minister and there­fore he is unique­ly posi­tioned to be destruc­tive, if he ever puts his mind to it.
He has put his mind to it!
It is dif­fi­cult for me to rec­on­cile that he means well when he has artic­u­lat­ed how he arrived at his mis­guid­ed posi­tion on crime.
His posi­tion as a mem­ber of par­lia­ment for one of the Island’s gar­ri­son con­stituen­cies peels back the thin veneer of bull­shit, reveal­ing the bla­tan­cy of his hypocrisy.
Instead of stand­ing up for the nation’s future by mak­ing a strong unequiv­o­cal dec­la­ra­tion that the rule of law is sacro­sanct, and demon­strat­ing com­mit­ment through actions, he aligned him­self with JFJ and INDECOM against the police. 

Peel back the thin veneer of bull­shit and Andrew Holness’ pub­lic rela­tions stunt is not just obvi­ous, it is insult­ing­ly cyn­i­cal.
The police offi­cers are receiv­ing no real train­ing which would make them capa­ble of address­ing the threat posed by vio­lent crim­i­nals and even those who would go so far as to chal­lenge the author­i­ty and sov­er­eign­ty of the state.
Holness wants the police to be cour­tesy corps offi­cers, hold down crime sta­tis­tics, solve noth­ing, harm not a sin­gle mur­der­er.
According to one cred­i­ble source in the know, nei­ther is the car­toon­ish mil­i­tary train­ing any bet­ter than that which is being giv­en to the police. It’s a façade the source laments.
But we all knew that mem­bers of the JCF are (a) poor­ly trained and (b) afraid of their own shad­ows.
The end­less social media videos pro­vide ample evi­dence that law-abid­ing Jamaicans should be ter­ri­fied for their safe­ty and secu­ri­ty.
The inad­e­qua­cy of the train­ing and lead­er­ship vac­u­um, sup­port struc­ture and the ter­ror of being per­se­cut­ed by Andrew Holness’ INDECOM, is more than enough for police offi­cers to run the oppo­site direc­tion from the call of duty.

This admin­is­tra­tion is play­ing a dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal game under the guise of ZOSO’s and SOE’s. Both mea­sures amount to mass sat­u­ra­tion of pub­lic spaces with the bod­ies of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel, not the strate­gic goal of crime elim­i­na­tion.
Holness and the JLP are inter­est­ed in win­ning elec­tions as is the oppo­si­tion PNP. Political par­ties do not go after crim­i­nals in Jamaica. Being a crime-fight­ing leader like the great Hugh Lawson Shearer is way out­side the realm of what any­one should expect from Andrew Holness in present-day Jamaican.
The hyp­ocrites and vil­lage lawyers will find ways to crit­i­cize Shearer but one thing is cer­tain there is not a sin­gle damn law-abid­ing Jamaican who would not trade places and go back to the days of Shearer.
We can­not expect Holness to be Shearer, but by God, we can at least expect him to be like the flawed Edward Seaga.
Does he have to be a Bruce Golding?
One can under­stand that politi­cians want to win elec­tions. Within that frame­work, it is also under­stand­able that politi­cians would want to do as lit­tle harm as pos­si­ble to their chances to gain and hold onto pow­er.
Those con­cerns are expo­nen­tial­ly height­ened because of (a) a high­ly polar­ized crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing pop­u­la­tion and (b) a poor­ly edu­cat­ed pop­u­lace.
Unfortunately for the nation, the lead­er­ship of both polit­i­cal par­ties large­ly comes from the same ran­cid pool sit­u­at­ed up at Mona com­mons.
PNP and JLP same shit. Same cor­rupt­ed and con­vo­lut­ed men­tal­i­ty.
Gone are the days when the dif­fer­ence between the two polit­i­cal par­ties were dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent.
There was no ques­tion of the dif­fer­ence between the par­ty of Seaga and that of Michael Manley. The lines of demar­ca­tion were dis­tinct. Voters had a real choice.
Today Holness and Peter Phillips come from the same stink­ing pool of left­ist shit­tery. And although Phillips will nev­er change from being a stu­pid com­rade, Andrew Holness is cer­tain­ly a prod­uct of the same failed left­ist crap­o­la. The par­ty of Bustamante, Sangster, Shearer, and Seaga is now a car­bon copy of Michael Manley’s dystopi­an nightmare.

When a politi­cian comes up to you to talk about pros­per­i­ty, or that he can do bet­ter than the ones in pow­er, look at the unchecked killings going on around you, know that he is play­ing you for a fool.
This is a time for patri­ots to stand up to these two cor­rupt polit­i­cal par­ties and let them know that it is Jamaica first.
That paper­ing over the crime sta­tis­tics using the bod­ies of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel for polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy is not accept­able, and it will not be tol­er­at­ed.
That we are not stu­pid, we are onto their devi­ous and decep­tive game of crime sup­pres­sion in cer­tain areas. We see the esca­la­tion in oth­er areas, we also see the nation­al num­bers and know that not a damn thing is being done about tam­ing the dan­ger­ous mon­ster of vio­lent crime.
That we will no longer sup­port this dan­ger­ous and cyn­i­cal plan to play pol­i­tics while they,(both par­ties) dis­re­spect our police.
Long after these lead­ers are gone we will still need our police and we will damn sure need our country.

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.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.