Killings Now Like A Circular Firing Squad: No One Is Safe…

The vio­lence in Jamaica should give pause to every well-mean­ing per­son with any con­nec­tion to our country.
However one of the tragedies com­ing out of this wan­ton blood­shed is the fact that it can no longer be char­ac­ter­ized as just a high crime rate.

IT IS A WAR…

At the risk of being labeled alarmist, I respect­ful­ly point to the fact that at present rate we can no longer argue this is just crime.
Based on the raw num­ber of dead bod­ies our coun­try is in an unde­clared state of civ­il war.

Even more sig­nif­i­cant to the future of the coun­try is the killing of chil­dren, in what some would argue is col­lat­er­al damage.
Now we all know that as a mat­ter, of course, wars do pro­duce inno­cent dead, (col­lat­er­al damage).
What we should be con­cerned about how­ev­er is the killing of the nation’s chil­dren and the trau­ma which is being unleashed on count­less oth­ers as a consequence.

As a result of the killings and the fail­ings with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem the vio­lence has now tak­en on a cir­cu­lar direc­tion,( i.e.,) even when a killer is held account­able by the sys­tem, the penal­ty is so inad­e­quate that fam­i­lies and friends of the vic­tims feel they must take mat­ters into their own hands.
Not to men­tion that in most cas­es sur­viv­ing mem­bers of a fam­i­ly knows who their loved one’s killers are.
For the most part the vast major­i­ty of the nation’s mur­der­ers nev­er even get arrest­ed much less tried and con­vict­ed for their crimes.

Of the sev­en (7%) who do get con­vict­ed many are over­turned on appeal, and as you will see from the fol­low­ing sto­ry, even when they are not over­turned on appeal, they are turned loose back onto the streets in a few years even when con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal murder.

According to local Media:

The shoot­ing death of a 16-year-old Muschett High School stu­dent and her uncle in Cheesefield, St Catherine, ear­ly Sunday morn­ing has left her fam­i­ly and school com­mu­ni­ty severe­ly devastated.The deceased have been iden­ti­fied as 35-year-old Lerude Bartley of Fourth Street, Linstead, St Catherine, and his niece, Octavia Leslie of Deeside, Trelawny.

Bartley is said to have been released from prison last year after serv­ing a 15-year sen­tence for murder.
According to fam­i­ly mem­bers, Octavia, who was fond­ly called Tavia, her four sib­lings, and their par­ents, went to Linstead ear­ly Saturday morn­ing to attend her aun­t’s funer­al which was sched­uled for the fol­low­ing day.

After attend­ing the wake through­out Saturday night, dur­ing the wee hours of Sunday morn­ing, Octavia accom­pa­nied her uncle, who she was meet­ing for the sec­ond time, to the bor­der­ing Cheesefield com­mu­ni­ty where he walked home an elder­ly woman.
But tragedy struck while they were using a short­cut on their way back. They were both shot in the head by unknown assailants. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​o​b​s​e​r​v​e​r​-​w​e​s​t​-​f​r​o​n​t​-​p​a​g​e​/​d​o​u​b​l​e​-​g​r​i​e​f​-​f​a​m​i​l​y​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​c​o​m​m​u​n​i​t​y​-​m​o​u​r​n​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​g​-​o​f​-​1​6​-​y​-​o​-​s​t​u​d​e​n​t​_​9​8​4​0​8​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​606

On the face of it, every Jamaican should be com­plete­ly alarmed at the prospect that sim­ply walk­ing in a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty can get one mur­dered exe­cu­tion style.
That fact is par­tic­u­lar­ly chill­ing for some­one like me who hails from anoth­er rur­al St Catherine com­mu­ni­ty and knows the com­mu­ni­ty of Cheesfield quite well.

It is unnerv­ing to imag­ine that even in the most remote com­mu­ni­ties guns are a sta­ple for any­one who wants them.
I am not naïve to think that there is not some deep­er back sto­ry here, what is con­cern­ing to me is the idea that death can come so eas­i­ly even in the most remote community.

Could this dou­ble mur­der be a hit because the deceased Bartley him­self had killed and had spent time in prison for his crimes?
If I was inves­ti­gat­ing these homi­cides, you bet I would be look­ing at that angle for sure.
Yet if the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem had applied the appro­pri­ate penal­ty to Bartley for the crime of mur­der for which he was con­vict­ed he would be alive today.
And so would his niece…

Make no mis­take about it, I shed no tear for any­one who has killed anoth­er human being except in self-defense or in defense of another.
So there are no tears here for Mister Lerude Bartley.
I know I should for­give, yea, yea, it is up to the Lord God to for­give him for killing anoth­er person.
The Criminal jus­tice sys­tem failed every­one, includ­ing Lerude Bartley but more so it failed Octavia Leslie and by exten­sion all the stu­dents of Muschett High School.
This case is a clas­sic exam­ple of what I have been talk­ing about for years, these are vivid exam­ples of the not so obvi­ous con­se­quences of not keep­ing crim­i­nals in prison.

We are look­ing at the metas­ta­siz­ing of the vio­lence, some­thing I have been speak­ing to for some time now.
It’s like a cir­cu­lar fir­ing squad.
In a cir­cu­lar fir­ing squad, no one is safe.
Had the courts admin­is­tered the appro­pri­ate sen­tence to Lerude Bartley he would still be in jail and Tavia as she was affec­tion­ate­ly called, would still be alive.
She would have sung at her rel­a­tive’s funeral.
Now some­one will be singing at her’s even before she had a chance to live.
This is way too sad.….