It’s Not Just The Politicians, Jamaicans Have A Collective Soft Spot For Criminals.……

OUR HISTORY OF LIONIZING MURDEROUS PUNKS FROM RIGEN TO THREE-FINGER ‑JACK, SANDOKAN TO NATTY MORGAN, JIM BROWN TO TONY BROWN AND GEORGE FLASH IS WELL DOCUMENTED

CLAUDIE MASSOP, BUCKY MARSHALL,BIYA MITCHELL,BURRY BOY,TONY WELSH, FEATHER MOP, DONOVAN CINQUE, ZACKIE THE HIGH PRIEST, COPPER, SANDOKAN, WALLY DREAD, PETER CUPS, MONKEY STEWBERT, DUBAL, DINAL,WAXIE, BROWN MAN, TANTUDDY , SEXY PAUL, TEDDY PAUL, IAN MASCO, NINEY, GENERAL STARSKY, JIM BROWN, BASKIN, DEVON STAR, TONY BROWN, WATERHOUSE BUNNY, GEORGE PHANG, WESPICK, LENIMENTS CURLY LOCKS, GOLD STREET, CHUBBY DREAD,
DELROY UZI EDWARDS, TEK LIFE, EARL FROWZER, NATTY KUNDA,
NATTY CHRIS, WATER BUGGAH, FIA BUGGAH, COW, EARLY BIRD, JIMMY SPORT, CLAUDIE SHOE, GEORGE FLASH, ZEEKS, MR WONG. DUDDUS.
The list is endless.

If the Police are not allowed to go after the gang­sters and get the guns wher­ev­er the hell they are, because remem­ber, the Prime Minister said police are no longer allowed to kick in doors and arrest crim­i­nals. And when an accused mur­der­er is final­ly brought to court he is giv­en bail and turned loose right away. Worse yet, on the rare occa­sion that these vicious gang­sters are found guilty, they are giv­en a tap on the wrist. And if the gov­ern­ment now wants to expunge their crim­i­nal records, then, what are the peo­ple sup­posed to do?

The cit­i­zens are going to take the law into their own hands, and that is some­thing no one wants.
Government has a duty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the cit­i­zen­ry. In fact, it is the pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty of any gov­ern­ment from as far back as Medieval rulers who built walls and oth­er for­ti­fi­ca­tions to pro­tect their peo­ple.
Unfortunately, this rather sim­ple real­i­ty has not yet dawned on those on whose shoul­ders it falls to pro­tect the Jamaican peo­ple.
It is not as sim­ple as some police offi­cers turn­ing a blind to far too much, or sell­ing their badges.
It tran­scends some pros­e­cu­tors not aggres­sive­ly pros­e­cut­ing some crimes.
It’s more than just cit­i­zen-leg­is­la­tors not hav­ing the balls to write leg­is­la­tion which is clear and unequiv­o­cal in its resolve against crime, because of course, many of them are crim­i­nal defense lawyers. You know, the law­mak­ers are the law­break­ers?
It is not even just about judges who sul­ly the Bench by tak­ing bribes, or as prod­ucts of their envi­ron­ments, refus­es to sen­tence vio­lent felons to long prison terms.
It is more than the prison offi­cials who allow con­tra­band into the sys­tem and cre­ates through their cor­rup­tion, anoth­er lay­er of crim­i­nal con­duct in the penal sys­tem. Or even let­ting con­vict­ed felons out for days on end while they are sup­posed to be locked up.
It is about all of the fore­gone and then some.
But most of all it is about a col­lec­tive cul­ture which is high­ly tol­er­ant and def­er­en­tial to crim­i­nal and law­less behav­ior.
It is that back­ward think­ing which caused the People’s National Party to send Anthony Brown and George Flash over­seas after they had com­mit­ted numer­ous mur­ders in the ’70s includ­ing the killing of police offi­cers.
Murder is not a statute, it is accord­ing to com­mon law. And so there is no [statute of lim­i­ta­tion], when you kill some­one if you get caught a hun­dred years lat­er you can be pros­e­cut­ed.
The fact that Anthony Brown and George Flash were nev­er pros­e­cut­ed means that some police offi­cers were com­plic­it in destroy­ing the files which should have been used to pros­e­cute them on their return to Jamaica.
Somehow they knew that they would nev­er be held account­able and so they returned with nary a care in the world. 

It is a col­lec­tive nation­al dis­ease of the mind which is unfor­tu­nate­ly cen­tered on demon­strat­ing to crim­i­nals that we care more about them than look­ing after crime vic­tims.
It is a twist­ed and warped psy­che which defaults to empa­thy for crim­i­nals rather than their bro­ken vic­tims.
And so we have to face the real­i­ty from Jamaica House on down, that the way we have dealt with crim­i­nal con­duct has been regres­sive and of itself a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the growth of crime in our coun­try.
There is not a sin­gle con­sci­en­tious Jamaican who could log­i­cal­ly argue that we have not as a nation, ded­i­cat­ed far too much of our ener­gies wor­ry­ing about how we treat dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers than we have spent car­ing about those killed and or those left behind to grieve and suf­fer.
It is kind of a sce­nario in which a kid spills red wine on the white shag car­pet. He had no busi­ness touch­ing and his par­en­t’s wine and the more he tries to clean it up, the worse the car­pet becomes.
He start­ed out doing some­thing which he should­n’t have done, and rather than just stop.….… He con­tin­ues to try to clean up what was start­ed all wrong and does more and more damage.

As a coun­try, we can come to the recog­ni­tion that we are not hav­ing the intend­ed results from our efforts. That’s usu­al­ly a sign that we have been going about our approach to crime all wrong.
I under­stand how dif­fi­cult that can be to accept. In fact, even some who have spent decades in law enforce­ment would rather ques­tion the mes­sen­ger than look at the mes­sage. What we have devel­oped in Jamaica is a far too nuanced approach to law enforce­ment.
We have become the man who with his son was tak­ing their don­key to sell at the mar­ket. You know the sto­ry they lis­tened to every per­son with an opin­ion until they lost the don­key.
There is one way to deal with crim­i­nals. The state must make it clear that those who decide on a life of crime must expect no quar­ter for their actions.
The great­est deter­rent to crime is a no-non­sense puni­tive approach, those who are not deterred soci­ety ought to have a rem­e­dy for them as well.
We have become a crim­i­nal cen­tered soci­ety and part of the rea­son for that is that the entire lead­er­ship of the coun­try at every lev­el have passed through the far left lean­ing doors of the University of the West Indies.
Politicians on both sides think as a mono­lith on every­thing out­side their own rapa­cious desire to sur­vive polit­i­cal­ly.
The lack of [alter­na­tive] crit­i­cal-think­ing, from the world­view derived from the UWI, has con­fined the nation to a bunch of auto­crats at every lev­el who are mono­lith­ic in their think­ing.
They are pre­oc­cu­pied with arrang­ing the deck chairs on the sink­ing Titanic, instead of ready­ing the lifeboats.