Lets Face Facts :We Made A Conscious Decision Not To Be A Country Of Laws..

We had two choices to deal with the ever emerging reign of terror in Jamaica for years and we made our choice.

(1) We could stop polit­i­cal med­dling in law enforce­ment. Take seri­ous­ly the rule of law by (a) Modernizing the police depart­ment. (b) Establishing the rule of law as the gov­ern­ing phi­los­o­phy as the bedrock on which our par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy is built. © Disentangling the two polit­i­cal par­ties from crime, cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal con­duct and affil­i­a­tions and (d) Begin the metic­u­lous process of upgrad­ing and improv­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

(2) We could do the reverse of (1) by (a) Demonize the rule of law and its agents. (b) Allow the police depart­ment to dis­in­te­grate through attri­tion, lack of sup­port, chas­ing crime fight­ers from the force, direct­ly and indi­rect­ly, recruit­ing into the depart­ment and pro­mot­ing peo­ple with no love and ded­i­ca­tion to the job. © Continue polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, sup­port, and shield­ing of crim­i­nals. (d) Allow the jus­tice sys­tem to crum­ble to the point the aver­age per­son has no faith in it and as a result take mat­ters into their own hands.
Faced with the two choic­es Jamaica chose the latter.

As a child I was an avid read­er, I would read every­thing in sight. I had an insa­tiable appetite for books, the knowl­edge I derived from them was an accel­er­ant which fur­ther drove me to read even more.
My jour­ney, through those pages, made me real­ize that to a large extent our peo­ple were not exact­ly keen on obey­ing rules.
I gleaned that there was a sub-cul­ture which not so secret­ly rev­eled in the exploits of the most deranged killers in our country.
From Three fin­ger Jack, Rigen, Coppa, Natty Morgan and the list of oth­er mass mur­der­ers, these infa­mous can­cers on our nation’s psy­che became icons of our pop­u­lar culture.
In places con­sid­ered nor­mal, the mem­o­ry of these men would be reviled and shunned, not in Jamaica.
In a sick and dement­ed Orwellian way a cer­tain seg­ment of the peo­ple cheered the exploits of the mur­der­ers even as they ply their mor­bid trade and evade the rule of law.
Today the con­di­tions which bred those can­cers have mul­ti­plied and are ampli­fied cre­at­ing expo­nen­tial­ly more of the same degenerates.
Sadly as the num­ber of mur­der­ing degen­er­ates grows so too has the sup­port for them and their cause.

We nev­er had a real dis­cus­sion on how we were going to deal with the vilest killers our coun­try produced.
We sim­ply swept crime under the car­pet. On oth­er occa­sions we say there is crime every­where. Pressed even fur­ther with the stark­ness of the killings we get into a defen­sive pos­ture, like Porcupines we roll into balls, spikes pro­trud­ing out­ward ready to spike any­one who dares to speak out against Jamaica’s crime culture.
With a twist­ed inane log­ic which makes sense only to us, we pre­tend speak­ing out is tan­ta­mount to a lack of patriotism.

We nev­er dis­cussed or worked out the con­se­quences, not hang­ing mur­der­ers would have on our fledg­ling democ­ra­cy and ultra-vio­lent killers.
We sim­ply marched to Britain’s drum­beat, even though we did not have their infra­struc­ture or desire to lock up for life these dement­ed killers.
Rather than send them to prison for life where they belong we opt­ed instead for a lib­er­al per­spec­tive from the Island’s insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing which argues for redi­rec­tion for crim­i­nals over seri­ous puni­tive reme­dies which has both components.
As a con­se­quence, we end up with a lib­er­al inef­fec­tu­al sys­tem which pro­vides no deter­rent effect on crime and a hard­ened crim­i­nal under­world unde­terred by the prospect of being held accountable.

We nev­er quite dis­cussed the con­se­quences to the coun­try of mov­ing away from hard nosed polic­ing which though not a total panacea kept mur­ders to under five hun­dred each year for a long time.
We sim­ply acqui­esced to a mis­guid­ed egal­i­tar­i­an con­cept that if we pro­vide every­one with jobs crime would be a thing of the past.
This sil­ly notion ignores the fact that in gen­er­al, the pup­peteers behind the pup­pets who pull the trig­gers are indeed wealthy well to do peo­ple with more than aver­age finan­cial resources.

There was no nation­al dia­logue when INDECOM was cre­at­ed on the damp­en­ing effect it would have on actu­al real polic­ing (not the show­boat­ing which exist today).
Sure the police need­ed to be held accountable.
Sure per­cep­tion is impor­tant in the way cit­i­zens view the han­dling of police abuse complaints.
But was it nec­es­sary to cre­ate a state fund­ed adver­sary to the police?

Did it make sense to send home real crime fight­ers while merg­ing the JCF and ISCF with­out retrain­ing mem­bers of the ISCF or weed­ing out those who could not qualify?
Was it good pol­i­cy to cre­ate a top heavy high com­mand with lit­tle or no real com­mand and con­trol expe­ri­ence and in many cas­es with peo­ple who have no knowl­edge of crime fighting?
I believe we all know the answers to these questions.

Over and above the obsti­na­cy of our mis­guid­ed direc­tion we refuse to send pris­on­ers to pris­ons for the most heinous crimes.
Instead of send­ing a clear mes­sage when we do con­vict them, vio­lent mur­der­ers are being giv­en 7 and 10-year sentences.
Since we do not send them to the gal­lows why would we not send them to prison for life?

The sick per­vert­ed egal­i­tar­i­an poli­cies which fail to rec­og­nize that not all peo­ple are equal, that some peo­ple will kill no mat­ter the soci­ety in which they live, has done a tremen­dous dis­ser­vice to the Island’s crime fight­ing efforts.
Neither Obeah nor divine inter­ven­tion, nei­ther tears nor brava­do will bend the arc of crime in Jamaica.
What is required is a metic­u­lous well thought out pol­i­cy which ensures that crim­i­nals get the mes­sage that the rule of law is the gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ple, not gangsters.