If The Law Is Bad Repeal It Stupid…

Speaking at the Jamaica Labour Party con­fer­ence at the National Arena in Kingston on Sunday Andrew Holness the Island’s Prime Minister final­ly came to his damn sens­es, sort of, at least.
Addressing the par­ty faith­ful, Holness had a come to Jesus moment of sorts, an epiphany even, one which even his wife and mem­ber of Parliament Juliet Holness, had a long time ago.

Holness final­ly argued that INDECOM some­times go too far in its func­tions and in the process, is caus­ing mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces to be fear­ful in the exe­cu­tion of their duties. He says the secu­ri­ty forces need to feel that they are pro­tect­ed as they fight the high crime rate. He says a bal­ance is needed.

My good friend would say “no shit Einstein, what took you the f**k so long to fig­ure that out”?
Here’s the thing, for as long as this destruc­tive law has been in effect I have fought it’s exis­tence tooth and nail.
I have had many peo­ple call me all kinds of names, oth­ers have even threat­ened me for dar­ing to crit­i­cize a law they want­ed which final­ly hand­cuffs law enforce­ment the way they want­ed it to.

I, on the oth­er hand, have stri­dent­ly argued that yes we need police over­sight, but we also need strong law enforce­ment if ever our coun­try is to have a shot at prospering.
Though not a zero-sum game we have to enforce our laws and iron out the issues which emerge as we go along.
Under no con­di­tion can we have a sit­u­a­tion in which police offi­cers are afraid to do their jobs because of oner­ous over-zeal­ous oversight.
In the case of INDECOM and those at its helm, the agency is not mere­ly an over­sight enti­ty, it has delib­er­ate­ly cul­ti­vat­ed an atmos­phere of ani­mos­i­ty and bad blood which has noth­ing to do with its mandate.

Ultimately the law was poor­ly writ­ten, way too much pow­er was giv­en to the agency and to add insult to injury they placed a nar­cis­sis­tic lit­tle Napolean at its helm.
The Prime Minister must have seen the com­ments com­ing from the lips of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Dr. Keith Rowley who made it clear days ago that law­less­ness would not be tol­er­at­ed in his country.

Despite Holness’ words, one can­not copy com­mon sense, you either have it or you don’t.
He went right ahead and placed his feet in his mouth as was to be expected.
Said Holness “the gov­ern­ment has set aside funds in the Supplementary Budget to assist mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces with pay­ing the legal costs of law­suits aris­ing from their actions in the line of duty”.

The law is not a shack­le, repeal the law if it’s bad, debate the act again, this time with the added ben­e­fit of see­ing what did not work and pass a good law which pro­tects both cit­i­zens and police offi­cers alike.
Unless of course, the law was writ­ten to offer work to the pha­lanx of lawyers who are leav­ing school and find­ing it dif­fi­cult to find work? The law can­not ever become big­ger and more pow­er­ful than those who made it or those it was intend­ed to pro­tect, repeal it now.
The answer to the prob­lem can­not be to allow Terrence Williams’ zealotry and nar­cis­sism to destroy peo­ple’s lives at the expense of taxpayers.

The real­i­ty is that once the Government came to its sens­es that the law is becom­ing a net neg­a­tive and there­by caus­ing the esca­la­tion of crime, the law ought to be done away with.

In 2010 when the frame­work of the law was made pub­lic, I was shocked that some­thing that destruc­tive could be passed out of the Parliament.
Since then I have con­sis­tent­ly made the argu­ment that it would be a crime pro­duc­ing law.
I have tak­en much flack from aca­d­e­mics and idiots alike, I’m some­times unsure where the lines are between those two groups.
Ultimately, I under­stand that many who crit­i­cized me for the posi­tion I take do not under­stand the law do not under­stand what law enforce­ment offi­cers face and some did not want to understand.

I know that the pal­pa­ble hatred many in the soci­ety have for the rule of law and law enforce­ment offi­cials would keep the mon­strous crime enhanc­ing law intact, regard­less of the loss of lives it causes.
I said repeat­ed­ly in the many arti­cles I wrote on the sub­ject, that the shit would hit the fan and they would come to their senses.
There are spat­ters on the ceil­ing now but from the com­ments of the Island’s chief exec­u­tive, he still has­n’t come to his sens­es ful­ly yet.
“Many more will have to suf­fer, many more will have to die, don’t ask me why”. (Hon Robert Nesta Marley)