KD Knight’s Self Mendacity

There are many things which need improv­ing in Jamaica, the stub­born refusal of the two polit­i­cal par­ties to deal col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and deci­sive­ly toward end­ing vio­lent crimes being chief among them.
On the oth­er hand, there are things which are going right, for the very first time, to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion a bud­get was passed with­out any new tax­es announced to finance it.

The lat­est growth of 1.1 per­cent in the econ­o­my is a step in the right direc­tion, though the growth rate was bet­ter in 2015, cul­mi­nat­ing in a spike in 2016 in which there was 2.1 per­cent growth rate.
The People’s National Party have main­tained that the path the coun­try is on was a func­tion of the steps it had tak­en to sta­bi­lize the economy.
In actu­al­i­ty, after an unprece­dent­ed 14 ¹⁄₂ years in office, the PNP had all but wrecked the econ­o­my and brought the coun­try to its finan­cial knees.

The ane­mic growth rates which emanat­ed out of the IMF’s restruc­tur­ing plan giv­en to the Portia Simpson Miller gov­ern­ment did in fact set the coun­try on the right and sus­tain­able path to recov­ery. It just isn’t enough for the PNP to crow about its part in this frag­ile recov­ery when it had the lux­u­ry of freez­ing pub­lic sec­tor wages for years, apply­ing mas­sive tax increas­es and mak­ing cuts in ser­vices as hall­marks of its tenure.
It is a bit rich to set fire to a man’s house and then demand recog­ni­tion for call­ing the fire department.

After Percival Patterson took over the reins of gov­ern­ment crime sky­rock­et­ed out of con­trol. Rather than take steps to improve law enforce­ment capa­bil­i­ties, Patterson watched crime sky­rock­et while the police depart­ment dete­ri­o­rat­ed into an inef­fec­tu­al depart­ment which lacked the most basic inves­tiga­tive capabilities.

Patterson demand­ed that police offi­cers return to wear­ing uni­forms effec­tive­ly mak­ing the JCF a pure­ly reac­tive force which could only respond effec­tive­ly to crimes com­mit­ted in the view of officers.
To add insult to injury Patterson did not make any mon­ey avail­able to train a sin­gle detec­tive for a full decade. The result of those poli­cies is still being reflect­ed in the crime sta­tis­tics today.

During that same peri­od, there was no clear indi­ca­tion that there was any will or inten­tion to curb the nation’s bur­geon­ing crime wave. Even worse there was no crime plan to be implemented.
It was dur­ing that peri­od of time that KD Knight was the Minister of National Security & Justice.

It is with the for­gone in mind that I find KD Knight’s threat to “rouse up” Jamaicans if the Andrew Holness-led Government does not present a com­pre­hen­sive crime plan to the coun­try by April galling and cheeky.
KD Knight is a great lawyer, a lawyer I would seek out if I need­ed legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion in a court of law, nev­er­the­less, Knight had his turn at the tiller and he was no dif­fer­ent than oth­ers who had pre­ced­ed him, nei­ther was he bet­ter than any who suc­ceed­ed him.

There is no need for any more crime plans, what is need­ed is a com­pre­hen­sive realign­ment across the legal, polit­i­cal and civic spec­trums. A realign­ment of under­stand­ing that the present approach­es to crime are not work­ing because they favor those who break our laws.
Crime plans do not change the tra­jec­to­ry of crime, res­olute actions do.
There is a stub­born mind­set across the soci­ety that we can trans­form vio­lent crim­i­nals into pro­duc­tive mem­bers of society.

The real­i­ty of that mind­set is that we can­not change peo­ple who do not want to be changed. For years I have per­son­al­ly writ­ten that we can­not beg peo­ple not to com­mit crimes, we have to make it so that they are dis­suad­ed from com­mit­ting crimes.
The nation’s laws and gen­er­al mind­set are as such that in many instances it lit­er­al­ly pays to be engaged in crim­i­nal conduct.

Listen to the audio clip below.

It is imper­a­tive that there is bipar­ti­san con­sen­sus on crime, a way for­ward which empow­ers law enforce­ment while hold­ing them account­able. There is a fix avail­able which requires set­ting parochial pol­i­tics and pop­ulism aside for the greater good of our country.

That greater good is not enhanced by pos­tur­ing, mak­ing threats, or show­ing off.
KD Knight is an intel­lec­tu­al, there is no deny­ing that, and so we must con­clude that the rea­son he makes these threats of dis­rup­tion is pure­ly political.

Knight must know what needs to be done, it is not that dif­fi­cult to under­stand that in order to fix crime there are laws and law enforce­ment which are geared toward crime eradication.
KD Knight has led an accom­plished life of achieve­ments, it is time for him to think about his lega­cy, about what kind of coun­try he would like to leave when he is gone.
It is time he puts pol­i­tics aside and uses his influ­ence to carve out bipar­ti­san solu­tions to the nation’s problems.
Threats and grand­stand­ing are so 1970’s, it is beneath our coun­try’s dig­ni­ty, I would like to think it is beneath the dig­ni­ty of KD Knight as well.