Hope Is Not A Strategy But It Seems That Is All Vulnerable Jamaicans Have Left…

I won­der what would have hap­pened if Jamaica’s elites had thrown their col­lec­tive weight behind our bud­ding democ­ra­cy in the ear­ly days. A Democracy that rose from the ash­es of colo­nial­ism and the chal­lenges of the 70’s which lit­er­al­ly ques­tioned the very idea of whether us Jamaicans could gov­ern our­selves.
Wonder where our coun­try would be if those who had loud impor­tant voic­es capa­ble of shap­ing opin­ions, used those pow­ers and perch­es to push and demand a soci­ety cen­tered around the con­cept of the rule of law?
After all, it is rather easy and con­ve­nient to blame every­one else for what we failed to do for our­selves. As Jamaicans, we have cer­tain­ly blamed the Americans and the CIA for our own stu­pid fail­ings even as we have blamed the Cubans who were sim­ply look­ing to broad­en its sphere of com­mu­nist influ­ence. What we did as Jamaicans were total­ly up to us and not any­one else.

Wonder where our coun­try would be if the news­pa­per edi­to­ri­als, radio gab­bers, and tele­vi­sion talk­ing heads used their medi­ums to edu­cate and chal­lenge our peo­ple to respect author­i­ty?
I guess we will nev­er know, and so I find it curi­ous that the very same enti­ties are all caught up in hand-wring­ing at the seri­ous­ness of the mur­der mad­ness grip­ping the Island.
Nobody seems to under­stand what to do or have any prac­ti­cal ideas on the way for­ward. In fact, if you looked at the Observer Editorial page you would walk away believ­ing those jok­ers were always con­cerned about the crim­i­nal behav­ior pat­terns of our peo­ple.
The trav­es­ty of this real­i­ty, is that they real­ly believe that there is some way of get­ting to the cos­mopoli­tan soci­ety they crave, with­out dirty­ing their hands.

The sense of empa­thy that is demon­strat­ed in the Observer’s Editorial page for police com­mis­sion­er Antony Anderson is astound­ing, to say the least. This led me to won­der, where was that sup­port over the years for the police? Where was that kind of under­stand­ing?
The Observer’s Editors are not only empa­thet­ic, but they were also falling over them­selves to cre­ate a nar­ra­tive that legit­imizes the very inac­tion of Anderson.
Speaking to the com­mis­sion­er’s fail­ure to chal­lenge Andrew Holness, the prime min­is­ter and Peter Phillips the oppo­si­tion leader, into col­lec­tive action on crime they had the fol­low­ing to say.

OBSERVER

He has used every oppor­tu­ni­ty he gets to artic­u­late and paint the big pic­ture on the fight against crime, includ­ing his lat­est inter­view car­ried in the Sunday edi­tion of this news­pa­per, in which he implores Jamaicans to fight this scourge togeth­er. And yet we could not help notic­ing the fact that, in what was his first major inter­view for the new year, our top crime-fight­er and guardian of the nation com­plete­ly avoid­ed any ref­er­ence to the role of our elect­ed politi­cians who should pro­vide lead­er­ship. Could it be that General Anderson him­self sees no prac­ti­cal use in call­ing on the Government and Opposition to pro­vide the lead­er­ship in mobi­liz­ing the coun­try to put par­ti­san­ship aside and unite against the crim­i­nals?

[Get the fuck out of here], are you kid­ding me? Not only has Antony Anderson failed as all oth­er com­mis­sion­ers of police have failed, (arguably not all because of their own incom­pe­tence, but because of the sys­tem set up for them to fail.
Nevertheless, no seg­ment of this media fra­ter­ni­ty showed any degree of empa­thy to pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­ers of police who came up through the ranks. They cared even less about the hard-work­ing grunts who risked life and limb for the shit­ty beans they are paid for their trou­bles.
On the con­trary, the media was not only hos­tile, but has demon­stra­bly incit­ed vio­lence against police officers.

OBSERVER

General Anderson’s Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) has been con­sis­tent in its posi­tion on the impor­tance of part­ner­ships and pub­lic engage­ment, stress­ing that the over­all effort to remove dis­or­der and mobi­lize the groundswell of sup­port among our cit­i­zens for a safer Jamaica “requires con­tin­u­ous engage­ment with the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, com­mu­ni­ty-based inter­ests, and our inter­na­tion­al partners”.

Blah, blah, blah what a load of crock?
Had pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­ers not said and done the very same things for years?
Under Antony, Anderson, crime has basi­cal­ly con­tin­ued to climb year over year, with well over 1300 homi­cides for the year that just end­ed. Any oth­er com­mis­sion­er of police would have been berat­ed and clas­si­fied as a fail­ure.
The men and women under the Commissioner would be demeaned as incom­pe­tent une­d­u­cat­ed fools.
So what we are up against today is that the [bull-puckey]that this very group of peo­ple who told the nation that he rea­son crime was climb­ing was that the police force was made up of a bunch of illit­er­ate idiots.
Now that was­n’t a total lie, but what the force lacked in for­mal edu­ca­tion it cer­tain­ly made up for in ded­i­ca­tion from its officers. 

The elit­ist’s ele­ments in our coun­try clam­ored for a force filled with their cronies from the UWI and oth­er insti­tu­tions, they got them.
That is the rea­son Antony Anderson has received lat­i­tude that no one before him did.
They are now too ashamed to say that their efforts at social engi­neer­ing had failed, and failed mis­er­ably, so they pre­tend that it’s not even hap­pen­ing.
In the mean­time, the crime sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues unabat­ed, and all Anderson and his enablers in the Editorial rooms have is hope and a whole lot of bull­shit.
Unfortunately for Jamaicans hope is not a strat­e­gy, nei­ther is bullshit.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, 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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