How Do They Get Some Control Back Without Upsetting The People In Washington DC?

According to police sta­tis­tics, 14’868 Jamaicans have been mur­dered between the decade which spawned the year 2007 and 2017.
Those num­bers do not include miss­ing per­sons who have not been heard from again or those killed who haven’t been report­ed to author­i­ties. Missing from the equa­tion also, are those who have been shot or oth­er­wise injured who did not die immediately.

Those num­bers reflect law enforce­ment offi­cers and ordi­nary Jamaicans, not the type of Jamaicans which would real­ly jog the con­sciences of those in power.
No Member of Parliament, no University Professors, no Minister of Government. In oth­er words hard­ly any­one from the gild­ed elites but for an out­lier or two.

2007	1574
2008	1601
2009	1680
2010	1428
2011	1125
2012	1097
2013	1200
2014	1005
2015	1192
2016	1350

2017.….….….….….….….….….….….1616.….….

So the 14’868 Jamaicans who lost their lives in the unde­clared decades-long civ­il war have become mere sta­tis­tics, throw-aways, col­lat­er­al dam­age and life con­tin­ue as if noth­ing happens.
How have our lead­ers dealt with the issue? A quick look at the num­bers year over year, gives a pret­ty good indi­ca­tion that what­ev­er has been tried clear­ly has not been working.

SO WHAT EXACTLY HAS THE GOVERNMENT BEEN DOING

From my van­tage point both the pre­vi­ous PNP Administration and the Governing JLP Administration, either mis­un­der­stand the impor­tance of the rule of law to a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety or they have col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly made the deci­sion that pol­i­tics and the trap­pings of pow­er are more impor­tant than country.

Additionally, the oner­ous over-reach of for­eign-fund­ed, local­ly based crim­i­nal rights lob­by groups, have vir­tu­al­ly tied the hands and sealed the lips of politi­cians on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide with the excep­tion of a few.
Groups like Jamaicans For Justice has com­piled Police fatal shoot­ing data and have pre­sent­ed those data to their han­dlers in Washington DC in con­texts which have been dis­fa­vor­able to both the Government and the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

The crit­i­cal sup­port which nor­mal­ly comes from the United States to assist in the fight against Gangsters and Terrorists are sum­mar­i­ly dis­con­tin­ued when alle­ga­tions of extra­ju­di­cial killings are made against law enforce­ment enti­ties like the JCF as per the Leahy Law.
The Leahy Law is the col­lo­qui­al term for a pro­vi­sion of the Foreign Assistance Act (sec­tion 620M) and its twin pro­vi­sion in the National Defense Authorization Act. See Act here: https://​www​.just​se​cu​ri​ty​.org/​4​2​5​7​8​/​l​e​a​h​y​-​l​a​w​-​p​r​o​h​i​b​i​t​i​n​g​-​a​s​s​i​s​t​a​n​c​e​-​h​u​m​a​n​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​a​b​u​s​e​r​s​-​p​u​l​l​i​n​g​-​c​u​r​t​a​in/

The shock­ing truth is that agen­cies may not tech­ni­cal­ly be in breach of Human rights pro­to­cols to be penal­ized and for assis­tance to be cut off.
“Credible Information”: Although meet­ing the thresh­old of cred­i­bil­i­ty is less for “infor­ma­tion” than it is for “evi­dence,” the bar is still sur­pris­ing­ly hard to meet, con­trary to com­mon per­cep­tion. The State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor, appro­pri­ate­ly in my view, coun­seled that infor­ma­tion need only be cred­i­ble to a “rea­son­able” per­son in order to com­pel a restric­tion of assis­tance. And in the­o­ry, accord­ing to State Department Guidance, “the stan­dard should gen­er­al­ly be regard­ed as low.”

It is this law which has been used to penal­ize mem­bers of the JCF and the insti­tu­tion itself on the flim­si­est of evi­dence sub­mit­ted to the Inter American Commission on human rights by JFJ under the lead­er­ship of pedi­atric doc­tor and then head of JFJ Carolyn Gomes.
It is that mis­use and duplic­i­tous manip­u­la­tion of data which has changed the par­a­digm in how the JCF address­es crime, a small detail which has elud­ed the ordi­nary Jamaican.

It is that law which is behind the expan­sion, growth, and pow­er of the lob­by which has hov­ered over law enforce­ment, influ­enced leg­is­la­tion and has ter­ri­fied the Island’s lead­ers into submission.
The prospect of not receiv­ing grants, being cut off from loans, is ter­ri­fy­ing just on the face of it.
Losing visas and not being allowed into the United States as some mem­bers of the JCF has been sub­ject­ed has been more than enough to get the police to back off from aggres­sive­ly enforc­ing our laws.

The bor­row­er is a slave to the lender accord­ing to the Bible, (accord­ing to com­mon sense).Simply put it’s economic.
When Law enforce­ment is afraid to engage because of the con­se­quences of that engage­ment crim­i­nals are embold­ened. When mur­der­ers are embold­ened peo­ple die, peo­ple are raped, chil­dren are abused.
The lev­el of law­less­ness in the coun­try has gone up dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the years, so it’s not just homi­cides, there is a gen­er­al sense that the rule of law does not exist anymore.

Are there some cor­rupt cops you bet, so too are there cor­rupt judges, politi­cians, lawyers, doc­tors, busi­ness­men, Pastors and in every sin­gle discipline.
The hem and haw about police cor­rup­tion is mere­ly an attempt to dis­tract from the real rea­sons crime has been going up and up each year.
The chal­lenge for the lead­ers now is how do they get some sem­blance of con­trol with­out upset­ting the peo­ple in Washington DC?
Remember their Rottweilers, Pugs, and Mongrels are there watch­ing and wait­ing to file their fraud­u­lent reports.