Imagine!

A life well lived in ser­vice to human­i­ty is gen­er­al­ly mourned when that light is final­ly extinguished.
Not so Sunday morn­ing, when a hail of police bul­lets evis­cer­at­ed the dark­ness of a life which was des­tined to end the way it did.

Marlon Perry o/​c (dup­py film) lived his life out­side the bounds of decent mod­ern soci­etal norms, his claim to noto­ri­ety, the infamy of extin­guish­ing inno­cent human lives.
Marlon Perry is only the lat­est of a long line of infa­mous killers who decid­ed they would respect no laws.

From Coppa, Sandokan , Tony Welsh, George Flash, Natty Morgan, Rigen,Jim Brown, to Perry the list is long and varied.
As some­one said today, sure Duppy Film is gone but his spon­sors are walk­ing around in suits and ties.

There are hun­dreds of Duppy Films walk­ing around unen­cum­bered on the Island today, they are just as lethal and in many cas­es far more lethal than Marlon Perry ever was.
They make a name sole­ly out of the bar­bar­ic act of tak­ing inno­cent lives[making duppy].

The truth is that they emerge, grow and thrive because Jamaica has the per­fect storm of char­ac­ter­is­tics which aids and nour­ish­es crime.
We can con­tin­ue to talk about the crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty which exists in the two polit­i­cal par­ties spread­ing out across the hills and val­leys of the Island but that would be flog­ging a dead horse.

We also must con­cede that pol­i­tics have affect­ed the body politic to the extent that hav­ing a rea­son­able con­ver­sa­tion on caus­es and cures are inevitably instant­ly reduced to PNP JLP, instead of wrong and right.

The lack of edu­ca­tion, pover­ty, and mis­in­for­ma­tion have had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for any mean­ing­ful debate to devel­op, much less a strate­gic pol­i­cy ini­tia­tive which would begin to impact crime in a mean­ing­ful way.

Everyone knows about that, in fact, a PNP leader once said: “there is noth­ing that can be done about crime.”
Translation; We will not be doing any­thing about crime!
The for­mer Minister of National Security Peter Bunting once called for divine inter­ven­tion in the fight against crime, rather than push­ing for laws which send clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sages to crim­i­nals that their actions would not be tolerated.

There con­tin­ues to be a shock­ing tone deaf­ness, not just to the con­se­quences crime is hav­ing on the coun­try but to the strate­gies which are need­ed to walk back sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the gains crim­i­nals have made par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last two decades.

For years I have spo­ken to the need for a com­plete over­haul of our nations crim­i­nal laws.
Over the last sev­er­al years there have been minor fix­es here and there but by and large the con­se­quences for com­mit­ting crimes have not been enough to be a deter­rent to criminals.

Jamaica was quick to issue a mora­to­ri­um on hang­ing at the behest of the [mas­ters] who have the final say in the British Privy Counsel.
This came after the con­tin­ued non­sense being prof­fered by the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty that the death penal­ty is not a deter­rent to criminals.

I know of no crim­i­nal who was put to death by the state or any who met their end at the hand of police who returned to kill again.
They are deterred.
Fomer SSP Renetto Adams spoke to this recent­ly, argu­ing that there are no deter­rent com­po­nent in the Island’s laws.
Former ACP Keith [Trinity] Gardiner also broached that sub­ject from time to time.

In all of the obtuse polit­i­cal noise some­one must be the grown-up in the room.
The police moves which are net­ting weapons and want­ed crim­i­nals have noth­ing to do with large scale ZOSO’s done for the cameras.
They are intel­li­gence dri­ven police oper­a­tions which almost dai­ly result in caches of dan­ger­ous weapons removed from the streets.

Imagine if there was a will to sup­port the police with bet­ter train­ing, bet­ter equip­ment, bet­ter pay, bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, bet­ter leg­isla­tive sup­port and bet­ter over­all sup­port across the board?

There would be no need for any­one to give up their pre­cious rights which are so infringed when the police come to ask if there are any gun­men hid­ing in their homes?
No mas­sive police/​military joint force check­ing to make sure there are no mur­der­ers in the communities.
Imagine the incon­ve­nience of hav­ing to tol­er­ate the forces of law and order in the com­mu­ni­ties as opposed to mind­less killers hav­ing crate blanch in those com­mu­ni­ties to do as they please.

There is no tip-toe­ing around the fact that we are not deal­ing with a soci­ety of great people.
Even if you do not pull the trig­ger but you offer aid and com­fort to the trig­ger man you are equal­ly guilty.
The sup­port you give to those who hate the police and the rule of law means that you too have blood on your hands.

This beau­ti­ful coun­try is not too far gone but if there is a silent major­i­ty, now is the time for you to cause your voic­es to be heard.
Those hell-bent on turn­ing our coun­try into a failed state have vocif­er­ous trolls doing their bid­ding , its time to speak out, call your elect­ed offi­cials and demand that they pass laws which puts crim­i­nals away.
They refuse to hang them so police should go after them with a vengeance and the courts should throw away the key when they are convicted.

We need tough mean­ing­ful laws to deal with the [dup­py films] walk­ing around whether they wear suits and ties or mil­i­tary garb , they are all the same to me, and should be all the same to every con­sci­en­tious law abid­ing Jamaican.