Yesterday I wrote briefly about the horrors of driving on Jamaican streets and highways. In the brief article, I asserted that the Constabulary all but ceded control of the streets to taxi drivers and minibus drivers, much to the peril of the traveling public.
In fairness to the two named groups, other drivers have also taken a cue from them and are doing the same thing.
After exposure to driving on the streets, it makes sense to drop to one’s knees and pray to God for his mercies to allow you to get back home safely.https://mikebeckles.com/jcf-gave-up-the-streets-to-hooligans/
Up to Tuesday, the 2022 number of Jamaicans killed in auto crashes stood at 431. “It is on track to hit 472 by December 31… 41 people who are alive right now will be dead in 32 days, one private sector executive bemoans.
The irony is that the private sector is concerned about this but seemingly not the police to the extent they should. At least not the high command that seems content with sitting in offices and giving speeches.
The carnage on the roads could be drastically reduced if the constabulary deployed real traffic cops who are not afraid to issue summonses and make arrests for reckless driving.
Then again, the government has not done anything to add teeth to the traffic laws, so there is hardly any point in writing tickets and issuing summonses when there are no real consequences for scofflaws.
I read that a man shot and killed a celebrity’s dog in the United States and was sentenced to twenty-one years in prison. A murder conviction in Jamaica gets the offender seven years. The nation’s security is certainly not a priority. Far too many powerful and influential people make money from crime in Jamaica. Secondly, there are far too many self-important fools with undue influence at the University of the West Indies impacting policy for the government to seriously address the issue of crime and violence in the country.
So the Prime Minister continues to bullshit the country about the effects of ZOSOs & SOEs.
Drivers overtake on sidewalks, around dead corners, uphill downhill, across continuous white lines, all reckless driving, all arrestable offenses, but there are no cops around.
The inherent dangers on the roads are exacerbated by the violent crime that continues to escalate and continue to plague the country. Shockingly, the political opposition would rather play politics with this issue to gain power.
But the opposition is not in charge; the JLP administration has stuck its fingers in its own ears and continued to shout, ” I cannot hear you on this existential issue.
Almost a decade ago, now disgraced Prime Minister Bruce Golding introduced the country to a new police oversight agency. That agency was named the Independent Commission of Inquiries, or INDECOM.
At the time, it was hardly reasonable to argue against the formation of an oversight agency to look at abuses and crimes committed by the police, military, and corrections departments.
There was no way anyone could seriously overlook the crimes that police officers were involved in. Additionally, the competence and willingness of the police hierarchy to deal effectively with corruption were well known, largely because of its own incompetence and corruption.
This writer was all for an oversight agency that was well thought out and empowered. What Golding gave the country was a very poorly configured law that was, at best, the personification of incompetency and, worse case, an unbridled anti-police bloodhound.
The law, which has since gone through some changes, was not only bad and poorly written, it was intentionally written to be injurious and destructive to our police officers. Many innocent officers became victims of the poorly written law, and the self-aggrandizing zealot Golding named as the commissioner of the neophyte agency.
The basis for the INDECOM Act was justifiable’ the way the law was written has been malicious. I warned at the time, and in subsequent articles over the years, that it would cause great harm to Jamaica (a) by killing the morale of officers, (b) cause mass attrition from the agency, and © result in an exponential increase in lawlessness.
No one listened, and today all three predicted outcomes are with us. The sad reality is that even as we mourn the destruction of our way of life as we knew it, the loss of blood and treasure is even greater.
And so for Golding and his acolytes at the University of the West Indies, including the disgraced pediatrician Carolyn Gomez who found her place advising the Ministry of National security, the blood will forever be on their hands.
Part of that advice was to do away with the time-honored tradition of esprit de corps, a feeling of pride, fellowship, and common loyalty shared by the members of a particular group).
This Esprit de corps is essential to any group activities. For members of the military and paramilitary groups like police departments, it is critical because each member’s life depends on his comrade having his back. It is a matter of life and death, something neither the idiotic baby doctor nor the morons in the national security ministry understand because they never sacrificed anything for our country…
Today, despite a larger number of cops in uniform, officers having more equipment than ever in the force’s history, including technology, and better formal education, the Constabulary is exponentially worse than it was three decades ago.
So much for modernization.
Numbers are the metric we use to judge performance and competence; the data does not add up. Our country is worse off than it was decades ago on the issue of crime and violence.
This article has been updated from its original publication.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.