Honest Debate Needed About Our March Toward Anarchy.….

Are we ignor­ing or just plain miss­ing a crit­i­cal yet impor­tant fact in the crime cul­ture in our country?
Are we miss­ing the fact that there has been a par­a­digm shift in the char­ac­ter of the Nation over the last three decades?
On launch­ing the most recent state of emer­gency in Montego Bay Prime Minister Andrew Holness assert­ed that 99% of the Jamaican peo­ple are good, hon­est and decent peo­ple and that the nation should work to rid the coun­try of the [1% ]of the pop­u­la­tion which is engaged in crim­i­nal con­duct.(some­thing to that effect)

Sounds like a rea­son­able state­ment from a leader who wants to inspire coöper­a­tion and show con­fi­dence in his coun­try, but is it true?
Over the last three decades, the polic­ing of Jamaican com­mu­ni­ties have been defined by the extent to which the com­mu­ni­ty is
tied up under the con­trol of a polit­i­cal under­boss or Don (accord­ing to local par­lance).
These under­boss­es see to dis­ci­pline, [jungle jus­tice, usu­al­ly death for the sim­plest trans­gression] with­in the com­mu­ni­ties. [“gar­risons”]. Handouts, patron­age work and oth­er good­ies and most impor­tant­ly, the deliv­ery of votes come elec­tion time to the mem­ber of Parliament.

In this arrange­ment the mem­ber of par­lia­ment del­e­gates the day to day run­ning of the con­stituen­cy to the [Don]. He does what he sees fit, usu­al­ly, that means the oper­a­tion of a major crim­i­nal empire. For his /​her part the mem­ber of Parliament gets the votes he/​she needs come elec­tion time for run­ning defense against the Police for the com­mu­ni­ty [“Don”].

This arrange­ment has been a work­ing tem­plate for decades but one which saw some minor changes in the way some of the mov­ing parts operates.
The pow­er of politi­cians has waned in the gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties as calls for greater account­abil­i­ty in Government spend­ing ampli­fied. The award­ing of Governments con­tracts tak­ing cen­ter stage in that regard. (see the con­trac­tor gen­er­al act)

As the amounts of mon­ey politi­cians have to spend becomes less and how those monies are spent are more scru­ti­nized the con­trol mem­bers of par­lia­ments have on their con­stituen­cies have waned dramatically.
As their con­trol waned, the [“Don”] became even more influ­en­tial. To fill in the gap cre­at­ed by few­er slush dol­lars com­ing from the polit­i­cal boss­es the Dons expand­ed their own illic­it busi­ness­es, becom­ing more pow­er­ful and feared in the process.

Extortion. lot­to-scam­ming. mur­der for hire. drug deal­ing. pros­ti­tu­tion. human-traf­fick­ing. weapons trade and a whole slew of oth­er crimes, local and transna­tion­al, became far more lucra­tive to the [Dons] fur­ther erod­ing the impor­tance of the politicians.
As a result, the well doc­u­ment­ed polit­i­cal killings which came to crit­i­cal mass dur­ing the 1980’s gen­er­al elec­tion became a thing of the past.
No longer were the com­mu­ni­ties so heav­i­ly depen­dent on their par­ty’s con­trol of Jamaica House for their survival.

Despite their new­found finan­cial inde­pen­dence, the Dons still need­ed the politi­cians. They were still need­ed to run defense against the Police.
The movie “Shottas” depict­ed the afore­men­tioned renais­sance as the [Don Wayne] showed why he did not need the politi­cian [mis­sa Anderson].
In the final cut, [mis­sa Anderson] was sum­mar­i­ly exter­mi­nat­ed by Wayne and his cohorts after he no longer served their interest.

The wealth and influ­ence of the Ghetto under­boss­es became a tremen­dous lure to the youths. The Don has access to mon­ey, guns, they take what they want at the point of a gun. They have access to the women and girls they want, and they are revered.
The pow­er the dons accu­mu­late is envi­able and wor­thy of emulation.
Why would young­sters in under­served com­mu­ni­ties want to go to school when they can have all of the perks [now] through the pow­er their guns give them?

Everyone wants to be a Don and so the inevitable pro­lif­er­a­tion of gangs across the coun­try was only a mat­ter of time.
The spoils from the illic­it activ­i­ties in which the gangs are involved fuel the econ­o­my of many communities.
Large num­bers of the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ties are some­how tied to or are ben­e­fit­ting from the ille­gal cash flow to those communities.

Enforcing of the laws is not a part of the plan in the com­mu­ni­ties and so every­one comes out to demon­strate when­ev­er the police dare to enforce the laws, no mat­ter how jus­ti­fi­able their actions.
In the image above we see the reac­tion of one St Mary com­mu­ni­ty when a local crim­i­nal was shot by the police and an ille­gal weapon tak­en from him.
And so the ques­tion aris­es giv­en the facts as I out­lined them, why would the police not play the game some are play­ing, leave the depart­ment, or sim­ply turn a blind eye?

The fact of the mat­ter is that there is only one insti­tu­tion stand­ing between the anar­chist and our coun­try and it is the law enforce­ment community.
The behav­ior of large groups of peo­ple in response to police activ­i­ty in their com­mu­ni­ties have pre­cious lit­tle if any­thing to do with police mis­con­duct and every­thing to do with the solid­i­fy­ing and con­den­sa­tion of crim­i­nal­i­ty as a result of years of nurturing.
This has been sup­port­ed by Politicians of both polit­i­cal par­ties since 1962 to present day.

The lies of the rul­ing class and their cohorts in civ­il soci­ety ampli­fied by their mouth­pieces in the media can­not be left to stand.
We can in no way allow the con­tin­u­ance of mis­in­for­ma­tion and out­right lies as well as the mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of blame to the police which is but one of the sev­er­al arms of gov­ern­ment tasked with the dis­pen­sa­tion of the jus­tice product.

In light of the Prime Ministers asser­tion that 99% of the Jamaican pub­lic are good and decent peo­ple, there is no basis for those claims, his state­ments are not borne out by the facts.
The scene which played out in St Mary weeks ago have occurred thou­sands of time over and over all across the Island. These are not good and decent people.
These are not just 1 % of the pop­u­la­tion. Houston we have a problem.