Andrew Holness took office talking thrash about police kicking off people’s doors. To date, he has empowered political operative Terrence Williams to persecute the police but has done nothing about the gangs which have taken over entire parishes.
In the meantime, the police have become an ineffectual laughingstock while the gangs rule the streets, leaving those not yet dead cowering in fear, wondering whether one of the barrages of bullets they hear has their name on it.
One of the most renowned quotes attributed to Jamaica’s first national hero, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, is: “Jamaicans will not know themselves until their backs are against the wall.“
I do not pretend to know just how far up against the wall the small nation of 2.8 million is willing to be pushed?
Neither do I know just how much smaller they can “small up dem self.“
And so, as I have predicted time and again, simply putting grill fortifications around one’s home will not be enough given time.
That time is here; grill fortifications do nothing to deter the killers anymore.
If they decide to kill, nothing stops them. They travel in large groups, heavily armed, totally unconcerned about police or military presence.
They simply law down huge and sustained volleys of automatic weapons fire on whoever dare approach them.
The tragic irony in that overused Garvey quote is that the very people who recite it unfailingly fail to grasp that they themselves are unwitting pawns on that chessboard.
Jamaica has one of the world’s highest murder rates. For an Island/nation with the size of 4,411 square miles or less than a third of the American state of Connecticut, the 48th smallest of that nation’s 50 states, Jamaica’s murder rate is staggering.
Unfortunately for the law-abiding citizens still left in Jamaica, there will be no respite or let up anytime soon.
The Island’s political leadership has no concern for the bloodletting outside of using it for mileage politically.
The sitting Prime Minister came to office with a decided attitude against the police, or more appropriately against the police department’s tactics in keeping criminals in check.
Tactics are used on urban and other criminals and militias around the world. Those are tough, no-nonsense, hard-nosed policing tactics that create space around the population and pause those who would commit murders.
Without stipulation or context, he repeatedly stated that ” the days of police kicking off people’s doors are over” closed quote.
Now technically, Holness has no power to directly stop the police from going after criminals, including kicking down doors to get them.
Nevertheless, he has the power to make it increasingly difficult by increasing the bureaucratic process after such police actions, thereby rendering the police uninterested in going after criminals.
This he did by ramping up the power with stated support for the onerous, overbearing and counterproductive police watchdog INDECOM.
This essentially iced police enthusiasm for fighting crime.
Under this kind of system, officer’s interest is best served by simply running out the clock on their shifts and going home to their families, rather than risk being persecuted by an overzealous INDECOM. Usually on false affidavits provided them by manufactured witnesses.
Day after day, I watch uncut video clips of the dead, at other times the bullet-riddled bodies, sometimes still writhing as the lifeblood drains from their ruptured bodies. Meandering like a lazy puddle on the dusty sidewalks.
Simultaneously, I see the Prime Minister mislead the Jamaican people that he brings prosperity to their lives.
Fundamentally ignoring the existential crisis the country faces as he makes those promises.
Repeating over and over again, the discredited refrain, knowing full well, [or does he], that there can be no prosperity in an environment of wanton unchecked violence.
How stupid are these political leaders really? They ignore the people’s cry, in Saint James, Westmoreland, and Clarendon, in Saint Thomas and Saint Catherine and Hanover and Manchester, in Saint Elizabeth and Kingston, in Portland and Trelawny, in Saint Andrew and Saint Mary and Saint Ann.
There is no haven from the gun in Jamaica, guns are everywhere, and the gangsters don’t care who knows that they are armed and dangerous.
The people are begging for an end to lawlessness to live their lives as normal people do.
Yet the unconscionable Administration in Jamaica House, like the one before it, refuses to release the agents of the state to go after the terroristic thugs who are killing people at will.
Choosing instead to focus on the supposed human rights obligations of police officers.
If the leaders refuse to plug the dike, then the water will wash over them. Somehow change will come either with their help or to their peril.
I call upon innocent, law-abiding Jamaicans to mobilize against this threat. If your leaders refuse to act, then you must act.
Do not be a statistic; stand up and fight and throw out the bums.