Gunmen Must Be Under No Illusions They Are Fair Game

A man walk­ing through a short­cut one day in haste and with the desire not to be late, unfor­tu­nate­ly, lost his left eye from a low hang­ing branch. Instead of doing the right thing by remov­ing the branch, he told him­self he would leave it there so some oth­er per­son could lose an eye like he did.
On his way home that evening he walked the same route and lo and behold the next per­son to lose an eye to the branch was him.
This time his right eye was gouged and he was left total­ly blind.

One of the morals of this lit­tle sto­ry is, be care­ful what you wish for oth­ers, as that which you wish for oth­ers may very well befall you.
There are how­ev­er oth­er morals we may extrap­o­late from that same sto­ry. For example
When faced with a threat remove it deci­sive­ly or it will even­tu­al­ly over­whelm you.

There is a pre­vail­ing tone-deaf­ness on crime which is evi­dent to every­one except for Jamaicans themselves.
The shock­ing loss of life which has become a reg­u­lar part of pop cul­ture leads one to con­clude that the Island has reached a crit­i­cal mass , which indi­cates that the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple left in Jamaica are either crim­i­nals or in some way asso­ci­at­ed with criminality.

I under­stand that-that is an insid­i­ous and shock­ing state­ment to make but how else can we explain the sense of res­ig­na­tion with the present condition?
How does one explain the dai­ly butcher­ing of our busi­ness­peo­ple who make up the back­bone of our country?
How do we explain the con­stant car­nage and blood­shed which elic­it not much more than raised eyebrows?
Do we con­tin­ue to make the same asi­nine state­ments about crime even as com­mu­ni­ties and homes look more and more like the admin­is­tra­tive­ly seg­re­gat­ed sec­tions of some American prisons?

In what nor­mal sit­u­a­tion does a small town like Montego Bay which depends on tourism for its very sur­vival have pro­longed gun­bat­tles between maraud­ing gun­men and law enforce­ment offi­cials? Which leads us to the only log­i­cal con­clu­sion we must all come to.
Separate and apart from the vicious polar­iza­tion of our soci­ety which pits laborites against Comrades, the ad hominem attacks one attract for demand­ing qual­i­ty ser­vice from those who are sup­posed to deliv­er them, the soci­ety has def­i­nite­ly changed and for the worse.

Remarkably, even some in the dias­po­ra who ben­e­fit from stricter rules which neces­si­tate bet­ter account­abil­i­ty have become cheer­lead­ers for the state of anar­chy which con­tin­ue to evolve, devolv­ing the soci­ety in the process.
Why would one send back guns instead of school­books and com­put­ers? Why would we be active apol­o­gists and cheer­lead­ers for the law­less­ness from the rel­a­tive safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of our safer com­mu­ni­ties overseas?

The San Diego Union-Tribune in June 2009 said, “Ships from Miami steam into Jamaica’s main har­bor loaded with TV sets and blue jeans. But some of the most pop­u­lar U.S. imports nev­er appear on the man­i­fests: hand­guns, rifles and bul­lets that stoke one of the world’s high­est mur­der rates.
The vol­ume is much less than the flow of U.S. guns into Mexico that ends up in the hands of drug car­tels – Jamaican author­i­ties recov­er few­er than 1,000 firearms a year. But of those whose ori­gin can be traced, 80 per­cent come from the U.S., Jamaican law enforce­ment offi­cials have said in inter­views with The Associated Press”.

The nar­ra­tive that crime is every­where has been a talk­ing point for many peo­ple for far too long. Unfortunately, the nar­ra­tive is chang­ing with each pass­ing day. We don’t hear that line so much these days because the killers are demon­strat­ing that this is no joke, they are in charge.
Nevertheless, there are still more than enough illit­er­ates who are inca­pable of extri­cat­ing their faces from the ass­es of politi­cians long enough to rec­og­nize that this is not about pol­i­tics it’s about the sur­vival of a nation.

Any polit­i­cal par­ty, politi­cian or any oth­er per­son who is not a part of the solu­tion they are a part of the prob­lem. Our coun­try needs solu­tions not mind­less bots who tra­verse social media look­ing to attack others.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties have con­tributed to the destruc­tion of our cul­ture and our nation since 1962, not all to the same degree but both are guilty.
When I speak out I do so in my own medi­um, I answer to no trash nei­ther am I behold­en to any irrel­e­vant polit­i­cal hack who spend their time on Mark Zuckerberg’s medi­um, I own mine which makes me answer­able to .……
Me.
My love of coun­try tran­scend the nar­row con­fines of polit­i­cal alle­giances cen­tered on what one can derive.
We owe it to our­selves and our off­springs to leave this land our fore-par­ents toiled and died for a bet­ter place. We have no oblig­a­tion to sur­ren­der it to mur­der­ers. and rapists.

As a Jamaican who served my coun­try I have a stake in my coun­try, I own prop­er­ty there, I have fam­i­ly there.I have no vest­ed inter­est in either polit­i­cal par­ty, I call balls and strikes regard­less of who’s at bat.
It is silence and blind igno­rant alle­giance to polit­i­cal par­ties which has brought us to this.
It will be vig­i­lance and unmit­i­gat­ed demand for account­abil­i­ty and action which will get us out of it.
There is lit­er­al­ly no one who does not have a fam­i­ly mem­ber friend or acquain­tance who has been gunned down raped or robbed on that tiny sliv­er of land.
It has to come to an end and the time to do it is now. There must be bet­ter and more sophis­ti­cat­ed law enforce­ment best prac­tices, not the kind we see play­ing out every day on social media plat­forms in which the police seem clue­less and help­less in the face of law­less onslaughts.

The imagery we see of heav­i­ly armed brazen punks are no dif­fer­ent than the images we see in Sub-Saharan Africa, in parts of South America and the Middle East or even some sec­tions of Mexico.
There is one word which char­ac­ter­izes those areas, it is “ungovern­able.”
Jamaica’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship may con­tin­ue to put the love of pow­er over the coun­try or it can rec­og­nize the dire straits fac­ing the nation and begin an edu­ca­tion­al cam­paign which tells of the exis­ten­tial fight the nation is facing.

Jamaicans are not ungovern­able, Jamaicans are forced to fol­low laws in oth­er coun­tries. The prob­lem is that the lead­er­ship of the coun­try com­pris­ing both polit­i­cal par­ties have ced­ed the coun­try to inter­na­tion­al lob­by groups which have zero pow­er in their home coun­try to impact policy.
The Government made a good first step recent­ly by not send­ing a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the con­fer­ence in Uraguay host­ed by the Inter America Commission on Human Rights.

It was a good first step even as the admin­is­tra­tion bun­gled the response by sug­gest­ing it did not send a rep­re­sen­ta­tive because of the title of the conference.
The first order of busi­ness is to tell those lob­by groups, we will pun­ish those who go out and will­ful­ly abuse our cit­i­zens but don’t ever tell us how to enforce our laws and keep our coun­try safe. If they can­not accept those assur­ances they should be shown the door.
The Government must unshack­le the police and ensure once again that those who would take inno­cent lives are under no illu­sions that theirs is fair game.