Jamaican Gangsters Know The Government Lacks Balls To Crush Them…

In the first of a two-part series, yes­ter­day we pub­lished Mexico and Jamaica’s march into failed state­hood). It is a pat­tern we dis­cern, and a set of sim­i­lar­i­ties which exists in the way Mexico and Jamaica have approached the chal­lenges they face in deal­ing with the mur­der­ous crim­i­nal gangs, and nar­co-ter­ror­ists in the two coun­tries.
One of the myths about how we should deal with dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals, is that soci­eties can (1) con­vince crim­i­nals to cease and desist,[ be it drugs and gun-run­ning, extor­tion human-traf­fick­ing or what­ev­er], or, (2) live with, and accept their exis­tence and the can­cer­ous harm they bring to our soci­eties.
Personally, I do not sub­scribe to either of the two options and nei­ther should you.
Criminals push the enve­lope until soci­ety puts a stop to the lib­er­ties they take against the law-abid­ing. The mon­ey and pow­er they derive from their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, they do not give up because they are asked to.
Those deriv­a­tives must be wrest­ed from them, con­fis­cat­ed and put to the greater good.
The very acts of try­ing to paci­fy gang­sters, are viewed as weak­ness­es.
Gangsters and nar­co deal­ers are quick to fill the pow­er vac­u­ums which results from Government inac­tion and com­plic­i­ty.
Jamaican author­i­ties give the cit­i­zens the impres­sion that they are con­flict­ed about crime.
In actu­al­i­ty, many are deeply invest­ed in the crime cul­ture. They are own­ers and share­hold­ers in secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies and oth­er busi­ness­es which depend on a high crime rate to sur­vive.
Mark Shields, a British cop( colo­nial over­seer), was brought in sup­pos­ed­ly to mod­ern­ize the Jamaican police depart­ment, he got in on the act.
He mar­ried a Jamaican bride, and is now involved in the pri­vate secu­ri­ty indus­try. Why fix the sys­tem when they can prof­it from it?

I ref­er­enced Mexico as I seek to high­light anoth­er soci­ety faced with sim­i­lar con­di­tions as hap­pen­ing in my own beloved Jamaica. Of course, there are oth­er nations in our hemi­sphere that could poten­tial­ly have tak­en the place of Mexico with the same effect. Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua come to mind.
The lat­ter three, how­ev­er, are well along the failed state high­way, so much so that their cit­i­zens are leav­ing in droves. This is cre­at­ing a huge human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis for Mexico and the US which have their own prob­lems.
When we are hon­est enough to admit facts we begin to real­ize that as peo­ple are leav­ing Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, so too would peo­ple leave Jamaica but for the fact that we are an island and not a coun­try with land bor­ders.
In 2014, 4 in 10 Jamaicans said giv­en a chance they would leave our coun­try. That num­ber may be a lot high­er today.
In the case of Mexico, as in Jamaica, one of the cru­cibles which have result­ed in the present law­less­ness, is the ram­pant cor­rup­tion on the part of Government offi­cials.
Corruption inex­orably leads to the pre­cip­i­tous decline in the rule of law and the growth of law­less­ness and mur­der, the type our coun­try is now experiencing.

In Mexico, offi­cials at the high­est lev­els, as is in Jamaica, have not only turned a blind eye to the devel­op­ment of crim­i­nal enter­pris­es, there is strong evi­dence that polit­i­cal lead­ers are heav­i­ly invest­ed in crim­i­nal con­duct on the one hand, and being facil­i­ta­tors on the oth­er, or both.
In both Mexico and Jamaica the pow­er­ful polit­i­cal class has act­ed as a buffer between law enforce­ment and crim­i­nal enter­pris­es.
In Mexico’s case, there have been lead­ers who emerged with the desire and deter­mi­na­tion to take the fight to the drug car­tels. However, lim­its on their times in office and entrenched cor­rup­tion in the pub­lic sec­tor cre­at­ed the impres­sion that the strat­e­gy could and did not work.
As pres­i­dent of Mexico from 2006 to 2012, Felipe Calderón presided over one of the blood­i­est eras in his country’s his­to­ry. Calderón’s crit­ics say his deci­sion to deploy the mil­i­tary against the drug car­tels led to the mas­sive increase in killings.
President Calderone explained that he had no regrets about the way he decid­ed to fight the drug war. If he could do it all over again, he wouldn’t change a thing, he said. 

The for­mer pres­i­dent points to research that sug­gests vio­lence was already on the rise by the time he was elect­ed. He says ram­pant cor­rup­tion in state and local gov­ern­ments under­mined his strat­e­gy. And he offers data that sug­gests mur­ders were actu­al­ly falling in some key cities by the time he left office. Other research showed that no oth­er coun­try in the Western Hemisphere expe­ri­enced an increase in homi­cide rate or absolute num­ber of homi­cides as large as Mexico’s. The vio­lence only con­tin­ued to climb under his suc­ces­sor, Enrique Peña Nieto.

It is easy to under­stand that the entrenched nature of the cor­rup­tion in Mexico would result in those killings. The nar­co king­pins hit back to show their pow­er and dis­dain for the author­i­ty of the state.
During the ’80s and 90, ‘s the killings and bomb­ings in Colombia esca­lat­ed as Pablo Escobar hit back with every­thing he had, as he fought to avoid extra­di­tion to the United States.
In 2010 vio­lence peaked as Christopher Duddus Coke’s mili­tia band­ed with oth­er gangs to pro­tect Coke from extra­di­tion to the United States as well.
The inescapable truth is that dis­lodg­ing entrenched crim­i­nal empires in a sit­u­a­tion in which pub­lic offi­cials are cor­rupt is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult.
The longer coun­tries wait to erad­i­cate crim­i­nal empires the more dif­fi­cult it becomes to suc­ceed against them. Removing them with­out blood­shed is impos­si­ble.
During the American civ­il war, the Union gen­er­al George Mclellan built up a huge army but refused to move against the trea­so­nous rebels. President Abraham Lincoln was forced to remove him and put in his place a man who was unafraid to do what it takes to win a war.
Given McClellan’s pen­chant for cau­tion, had Linclon not act­ed to remove him the United States would not exist as we know it today. 

Wars mean spilled blood, it is nev­er our desire to see blood spilled, but the deci­sion to go to war with the state is always up to those who thumb their noses at the laws. It is not the fault of the state to deci­sive­ly put down such revolt.
Make no mis­take about it, we are at war with those who take the lives of the inno­cent. If we are to have any sem­blance of a civ­il soci­ety we have to make the hard choic­es at some point that the state must pre­vail.
That the greater good of the nation must take prece­dent over our fear of upset­ting bleed­ing-heart crim­i­nal sup­port­ers, who pre­tend to be watch­dogs and pro­tec­tors of human rights.
Wars are not won through appease­ment. Wars are won by real lead­ers who make the hard choic­es to con­front evil head-on, unafraid to buck the trends, unmind­ful of crit­i­cisms.
The biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the sac­ri­fices of heroes are those who sac­ri­fice noth­ing.

A cor­rupt Colombia crit­i­cized Los-Pepes dur­ing the dark days of Pablo Escobar’s reign. Sure, Los Pepe, spilled blood, but they saved a nation. Today Colombia is not a Scandanavian pro­to­type, but she is a coun­try that was giv­en a new start. Today Colombians can live in rel­a­tive peace and secu­ri­ty. They can raise their chil­dren free from dai­ly bomb­ings and the specter of immi­nent death.
The longer Jamaica dithers and allows the law­less­ness to take hold the clos­er she inch­es to becom­ing a failed state.
No invad­ing army will restore the rule of law. We either stop the law­less­ness now or become once and for all a failed state run by gang­sters. We are pre­cip­i­tous­ly close to that point.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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