INDECOM Is The Criminal Underworld’s Greatest Asset

In the ongo­ing back and forth about crime in Jamaica, the nar­ra­tive seems to cen­ter inex­orably on the 8’000 man police depart­ment for some rea­son.
Understandably the aver­age Jamaican feel this is a good place to start because “they[the police] are sup­posed to be above it all, they are the guardians of the gate.“
I can­not dis­agree with the idea that our police offi­cers are indeed the gate­keep­ers and as such our expec­ta­tions that they are bet­ter stew­ards of our trust is not mis­placed.
On the oth­er hand, I look at the wider soci­ety which strug­gles with cor­rup­tion and I find it hard to blame 8’000 peo­ple for the sins of 2.8 mil­lion.
The fact that I per­son­al­ly look at the wider soci­etal prob­lems does not mean abso­lu­tion for the police, I just seek to under­stand the prob­lems of the police in a larg­er context.

It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to under­stand a sce­nario in which we have a depart­ment of well-round­ed police offi­cers who come from a depart­ment which is head­ed by some liars, thieves, and a bunch of polic­ing neo­phytes at the top. The depart­ment itself comes from a soci­ety which is viewed as inher­ent­ly cor­rupt by rat­ing agen­cies. Some of the leg­is­la­tors are out and out crim­i­nals.
In an online thread this morn­ing I point­ed to the futil­i­ty of the American war on drugs over the last sev­er­al decades.
Sure, I am all for aggres­sive polic­ing but in a coun­try like the United States where racial prej­u­dice is most egre­gious­ly man­i­fest­ed through the actions of law enforce­ment, it was a colos­sal dis­as­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple of col­or not val­ued by seg­ments of law enforcement.

Despite the mas­sive incar­cer­a­tion rate, (large­ly of peo­ple of col­or). Despite the mass depor­ta­tions for pot infringements(including of inno­cent peo­ple who nev­er smoke or dealt pot but got caught up in fren­zied pot raids. and despite the tril­lions spent in mil­i­ta­riz­ing America’s police depart­ments, main­ly to fight the drug war, America’s drug epi­dem­ic is worse today that when the war was first start­ed.
The fact of the mat­ter is that the inge­nious meth­ods illic­it drug sup­pli­ers have gone to,- to get sup­plies into the United States are dri­ven by the insa­tiable appetite of the American pub­lic for nar­cot­ic drugs.
And despite the unde­ni­able suc­cess­es of law enforce­ment and pros­e­cu­tors in rack­ing up arrests and incar­cer­a­tion, the prob­lem only seems to be get­ting worse.
To a large extent now, the prob­lem can hard­ly be laid at the feet of pot, because to a large extent, pot is legal in some states and white men and women are get­ting incred­i­bly rich, while blacks are still being incar­cer­at­ed for the very same drug on tech­ni­cal­i­ties.
The prob­lem now is pre­scrip­tion drugs. Or bet­ter yet over pre­scrip­tion by white col­lar crim­i­nals, (or should I say white coat­ed crim­i­nals) who over­pre­scribe them?
The mor­tal­i­ty rate among drug users is through the roof, yet the cha­rade of fight­ing the drug wars remain. Instead of edu­cat­ing the pub­lic they con­tin­ue on the mass over polic­ing of the prob­lem, feed­ing the prison indus­tri­al com­plex and mak­ing crim­i­nals out of addicts.

Years ago I stopped smok­ing cig­a­rettes, I was not a pack a day smok­er. I was more like a pack for three days kind of guy who smoked casu­al­ly, that includ­ed giv­ing away a cou­ple here and there. They raised the price of cig­a­rettes but that did not cause me to stop smok­ing. If any­thing it made me more defi­ant that I would pay the ten dol­lars per pack of cig­a­rettes because I worked hard and could afford it.
I would not allow Government bureau­crats to tax me out of pur­chas­ing some­thing per­fect­ly legal, that I enjoyed hav­ing.
When I saw the imagery of dirty dam­aged lungs on tele­vi­sion and saw peo­ple gasp­ing and labor­ing to breathe how­ev­er, that influ­enced me to stop smoking.

Despite the atro­cious behav­ior of some mem­bers of the JCF, the anti­dote for fix­ing the police lies in build­ing a bet­ter soci­ety one house­hold at a time.
The police are asked to do way too much for the pal­try sum they are paid. Nevertheless, even if they were well paid the many demands soci­ety places on the police are far too great.
Former Chief of the Dallas Police Department in the state of Texas argued in 2016, “every soci­etal fail­ure, we put it on the cops to solve,” Brown said, before lament­ing that police are left to solve prob­lems that gov­ern­ment fails to address:

“Not enough men­tal health fund­ing, let the cop han­dle it”. “Not enough drug addic­tion fund­ing, let’s give it to the cops”. “Here in Dallas we have a loose dog prob­lem, Let’s have the cops chase loose dogs”. “Schools fail, give it to the cops”. “70 per­cent of the African-American com­mu­ni­ty is being raised by sin­gle women, let’s give it to the cops to solve as well”. “That’s too much to ask”. “Policing was nev­er meant to solve all those prob­lems”. “I just ask oth­er parts of our democ­ra­cy along with the free press to help us”.

Quartz​.com]

The actions of peo­ple on the streets are indica­tive of a soci­ety tee­ter­ing on the brink of becom­ing a failed state.
The gen­er­al law­less­ness and unwill­ing­ness of the peo­ple to sub­mit to the dic­tates of the laws are telling signs of a soci­ety in seri­ous trou­ble.
Those charged with leg­is­la­tion are too heav­i­ly invest­ed in the chaos to real­ize that their actions are direct­ly tied to the chaos and law­less­ness on the streets, because the peo­ple are experts at read­ing the mes­sages they send, even when the mes­sage is wrapped in new leg­is­la­tion that seems intend­ed to rem­e­dy the prob­lems.
When a cop is attacked in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of his duty and the gov­ern­ment does not respond with leg­is­la­tion right away which tight­ens the screws on would be attack­ers of state agents, the mes­sage sent is, we don’t care. 

When crim­i­nals burn police sta­tions and the gov­ern­ment responds by giv­ing aid and com­fort to the same com­mu­ni­ty the gov­ern­ment is say­ing we are with you against the secu­ri­ty forces.
When crime esca­lates ad the Government’s response is to fill entire areas with law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary bod­ies, then chide the same mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces about human rights, the crim­i­nal under­world knows it is all for show, (a shit-show).
And when both polit­i­cal par­ties make the con­scious deci­sion that the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the nation would be the barom­e­ter on which to lam­poon each oth­er, the oppo­si­tion par­ty always has an inter­est in high­er crime sta­tis­tics.
How they arrive at those high­er crimes sta­tis­tics are up to the Jamaican peo­ple to see for themselves.

Jamaica is receiv­ing an inor­di­nate amount of depor­tees from England The United States, and oth­er parts of the world.
These peo­ple are [not all vio­lent crim­i­nals] nev­er­the­less, many of them are and they are gen­er­al­ly hard­ened crim­i­nals who will stop at noth­ing to con­tin­ue the lav­ish lifestyles they had before they were nabbed.
On the oth­er hand, the schtick that the Government and oppo­si­tion par­ty has engaged in pulling over the eyes of law-abid­ing Jamaicans is hav­ing dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the aver­age cit­i­zen.
Gruesome mur­ders and mass killings are now the norms while the police are scared to go after the enlight­ened crim­i­nals, many of whom are depor­tees who brought their knowl­edge from the devel­oped coun­tries from which they were deport­ed.
Instead of drop­ping the ham­mer on crim­i­nals the coun­try’s polit­i­cal lead­ers gave the nation INDECOM.
That agen­cy’s claim to rel­e­vance has been the gangs it has embold­ened.
Violent crim­i­nals now cel­e­brate INDECOM.
When the crim­i­nal under­world’s great­est friend is a gov­ern­ment agency that coun­try is in deep trouble.