Killings And More Killings !!!

The Jamaican Government is engaged in self con­grat­u­la­tions regard­ing the International Monetary Funds Flower praise for the Country regard­ing that Country’s adher­ence to the Funds poli­cies under the Extended Fund Facility agreement.

IMF Deputy Managing Director Min Zhu said because of the finan­cial “mir­a­cle” that the Government has per­formed, the local econ­o­my is turn­ing in a pos­i­tive direc­tion. “By our fore­cast, the growth this year will be stronger than last year, and even more impor­tant, for next year the growth will be stronger than this year. Meanwhile, the fis­cal deficit will drop to almost zero… so I think it’s absolute­ly a mir­a­cle. It’s a great achieve­ment by the Jamaican Government,”.

Clearly a polit­i­cal state­ment if there ever was one. That aside the Fund knows that the Jamaica Government is high­ly unpop­u­lar with the peo­ple at this time. If there is a change of Government it may mean that a new Administration may jet­ti­son the fund for a more fis­cal­ly pru­dent eco­nom­ic path. That course of action is not in the inter­est of the IMF.

It is always sus­pect when a lender Agency like the International Monetary Fund has flow­ery praise for a Country. That gen­er­al­ly means they are reap­ing rewards on their invest­ments. That is what they are in busi­ness for, to make mon­ey. Generally when a Nation finds itself in the good graces of the Fund it’s peo­ple are feel­ing the squeeze of aus­ter­i­ty. Strict adher­ence to the Funds fis­cal path usu­al­ly leads to upris­ing in the streets. Fortunately for Jamaica it has a pop­u­la­tion which is too immersed in trib­al pol­i­tics to real­ize it can­not con­tin­ue on this path to ruination.

As the Government engages in self con­grat­u­la­tions Crime con­tin­ues to make the Country a place to avoid. From St Thomas in the East to St James in the West, Criminals kill at will with­out con­se­quence. The Police as always, is engaged in putting out fires, with­out putting for­ward a cohe­sive, sus­tain­able approach to elim­i­nat­ing the Criminal under­world from the Country.

The Department’s new­ly mint­ed Commissioner Carl Williams, a PhD is yet to put for­ward a com­pre­hen­sive plan which will have at its core.

(1 Serious 21’st cen­tu­ry Intelligence gath­er­ing, dis­sem­i­na­tion and utilization.

(2 Using the Intelligence gath­ered to lob­by law-mak­ers to come up with mean­ing­ful Legislation with teeth.

(3 Develop strate­gies which mon­i­tors crim­i­nals on an ongo­ing basis, lis­ten to their con­ver­sa­tion, know their whereabouts.

(4 Seeking help from and coop­er­at­ing with Neighboring and oth­er Nations in whose inter­est it is to make sure Jamaica’s crim­i­nals do not main­tain con­nec­tions with crim­i­nal ele­ments in their Jurisdictions.

Jamaica’s Police Department can­not con­tin­ue to oper­ate pure­ly as a reac­tive Force. Criminals are sophis­ti­cat­ed and deter­mined. They will con­tin­ue to use inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative ways to car­ry out their nefar­i­ous designs. The Police can­not sim­ply be play­ing catch-up and being hor­ri­ble at it at that.

I keep hear­ing that the Police Force is chang­ing, that the force of yester-year has been replaced with a new­er more sophis­ti­cat­ed force. I look at the num­bers. I look at the per­for­mance. Nothing that I have seen impress­es me that crime will be trend­ing down any­time in a way that is sus­tain­able, or attrib­ut­able to the JCF. Conversely low­er num­bers at a giv­en time may be attrib­ut­able to events hap­pen­ing at that giv­en time more-so than any­thing the Police Department has implemented.