JAMAICA, IS IT TOO FAR GONE?

Many stud­ies have been done to deter­min­ing how to tack­le crime. Various con­clu­sions arrived at, which sug­gest crime is a social mal­a­dy, fixed basi­cal­ly by ensur­ing every­one have jobs. Those who con­clude thus, have still not come up with an expla­na­tion for white col­lar crimes. Neither have they respond­ed to the fact that in many coun­tries, the peo­ple who are deeply involved in crim­i­nal behav­ior are wealthy peo­ple. In Jamaica there are var­i­ous groups which pur­port to be in the busi­ness of crime reduc­tion, yet their very exis­tence demand that there is ten­sion, and rival­ry. The so-called Peace Management Initiative head­ed by Horace Levy comes to mind. It is no sur­prise that Levy is one of the most vocal crit­ic of police. In a world where Levy’s role was right­eous, he would be a stri­dent sup­port­er of the police, work­ing hand in hand with them toward a com­mon good. Horace Levy has to con­tin­ue [ to eat a food ]so his rela­tion­ship with cops is adversarial.

Horace Levy

JAMAICANS HATE LAWS.

Jamaicans hate to obey laws, they com­plain if the police enforce infrac­tions they believe incon­se­quen­tial. How many times have you heard the say­ing, weh dem nuh gu look fi tief and mur­der­er? Yet if the Police dis­en­gages and (give a bly,)ignore the small stuff, many like my friend Kent Phillip Gammon Attorney at law crit­i­cizes them for not doing their jobs. So what is the police to do in a coun­try which clear­ly does not want to be policed?

During the 1970’s and 80’s New York City was a mess, mug­gings, rob­beries, rapes, mur­ders, graf­fi­ti was every­where, the smell of urine per­me­at­ed every sub-way sta­tion, every hall-way, every ele­va­tor. The city’s first African American Mayor David Dinkins insti­tut­ed a pro­gram called safe streets safe city, the thrust of that pro­gram was to tack­le minor offences, from squeegee men to graf­fi­ti artistes to those who peed in pub­lic places. Dinkins served one term, but his pro­gram was con­tin­ued and expand­ed on by his suc­ces­sor Rudolph Giuliani, today New York city is one of the safest places to live. And by the way the qual­i­ty of life is pret­ty good too, just ask New Yorkers.

For decades Jamaican cops have been put in an unten­able posi­tion to fail. They have been placed into a boil­ing caul­dron of law­less­ness ‚cre­at­ed by their polit­i­cal bosses,the very peo­ple who have a vest­ed inter­est in crime and chaos. Every cop who ever served in the JCF knows that the very politi­cian who makes the laws are the very peo­ple stok­ing the fires against him/​her when he tries to enforce the laws. Have you ever won­dered why the politi­cian is always on site when the police take strong action in the ghet­to? Jamaicans love crime, live by crime, they do not want crime elim­i­nat­ed. I once believed in the right­eous­ness of a crime free soci­ety, as such I vol­un­tar­i­ly signed up to serve. It did not take long for me to rec­og­nize that I would not be mak­ing a dif­fer­ence car­ry­ing a gun and badge there. So I sur­ren­dered them and took my leave, I pity those who can­not leave.

Jamaicans pre­dis­po­si­tion to crime does not stop at the water’s edge, many who leave end up right back home because they can­not stay away from crime. Out of the remain­der not deport­ed, many active­ly fund crime and even still more live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through crim­i­nals back home, active­ly cheer-lead­ing crime. So before the few of us not in that group talk about elim­i­nat­ing crime we may need to elic­it the ser­vices of pro­fes­sion­als to deter­mine the rea­son for Jamaicans crim­i­nal pre-dis­po­si­tion. Dr. Fred Hickling has char­ac­ter­ized the Jamaican soci­ety large­ly as mad. This assess­ment drew howls of con­dem­na­tion from many Jamaicans who weren’t too keen on being char­ac­ter­ized as mad . https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​y​w​p​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​343

Dr Fred Hickling.

Without the ben­e­fit of being a psy­chol­o­gist or soci­ol­o­gist it is impos­si­ble for me to make a clin­i­cal deter­mi­na­tion as to what ails our peo­ple , yet from a com­mon sense per­spec­tive it bears men­tion­ing that Jamaicans love crime hence the state of the coun­try. In order to change the crime sit­u­a­tion we will have to have a mon­u­men­tal psy­cho­log­i­cal change in the pop­u­la­tion. I do not see that hap­pen­ing, do you?