Let’s Sweep The Dead Bodies Under The Rug:Bartlett

“No one wants to wake up and see a front-page sto­ry in our news­pa­pers stat­ing, ‘Jamaica bleeds’,” Bartlett told del­e­gates attend­ing the 56^th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston two days ago.

If this state­ment was­n’t so seri­ous­ly unhelp­ful and dan­ger­ous I would bust out laughing .….

Look I have always liked Ed Bartlett. As a Jamaican Politician Ed Bartlett is prob­a­bly one of the nicer per­sons you will find of any of the creeps who tra­verse Gordon House.
I have met and inter­act­ed with Minister Bartlett twice in his capac­i­ty as mem­ber of par­lia­ment of the Nannyville-Back-Bush area of St, Andrew and they were rather pos­i­tive encounters.
On that basis I will try to be char­i­ta­ble to min­is­ter Bartlett , even as I dis­agree with his approach.

TWO SERIOUS INFRACTIONS SUGGESTED WHICH WILL ONLY EXACERBATE THE KILLINGS

♦ Minister Bartlett in his under­stand­able con­cern for the sec­tor over which he has port­fo­lio has unwit­ting­ly sug­gest­ed that dol­lars are more impor­tant than people.
Now lets be real here, there are many peo­ple in this present day Jamaica who aren’t worth fight­ing for , despite that how­ev­er we have to work toward build­ing a bet­ter Jamaica regard­less of those deplorables.

Said Bartlett : While acknowl­edg­ing the role of the media in a free democ­ra­cy, graph­ic details of crime in Jamaica can destroy all the gains that have been made in the tourism sec­tor in recent years.”

In oth­er words lets pre­tend that this isn’t hap­pen­ing. We will just sim­ply sweep the garbage under the rug and pre­tend the house is clean, no one will, know.
Laughable, crime is a metas­ta­siz­ing phe­nom­e­non which feeds on acqui­es­cence and fear.
Those two defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics have been part of Jamaica’s atti­tude toward crime for decades.
The year­ly esca­la­tion in the num­ber of homi­cides is tes­ta­ment to the fact that-that pol­i­cy does not fix the prob­lem it enables it.

♦ In a Democracy you don’t get to sup­press news you don’t like .
Instead of lob­by­ing stake­hold­ers with­ing the tourism sec­tor to pony up mon­ey to help train, equip, and pay the police Minister Bartlett wants what lit­tle effec­tive­ness the Media has left to be fur­ther dimin­ished through censorship .
This is what makes Ed Bartlett’s state­ment so significant.

The Minister must know that nei­ther he nor the admin­is­tra­tion of which he is a part have a right to demand where and how the media operates.
On the oth­er hand Minister Bartlett is woe­ful­ly behind the times if he believes that the news out of Jamaica is com­ing large­ly from the few lit­tle news papers there .
Clearly the min­is­ter does not under­stand the pow­er of Blogs and social media plat­forms in shap­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing the news and infor­ma­tion in real time organically.

As exas­per­at­ing as the issue of crime and ter­ror­ism is to the del­i­cate tourism indus­try, the answer is cer­tain­ly not to try to sup­press the news but to brain­storm with a view toward resolv­ing this exis­ten­tial issue.
For decades suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments of both polit­i­cal par­ties have sup­port­ed crim­i­nal con­duct at the expense of the rule of law and law enforcement.
The present Prime Minister, as did the pre­vi­ous labor par­ty Prime Minister Bruce Golding, clear­ly mis­un­der­stood that sup­port­ing those who are opposed to the police would lead to calami­tous con­se­quences for the Island.

As I have said con­sis­tent­ly I do not talk about the People’s National Party when­ev­er the issue of crime and ter­ror is being debated.That par­ty has done immea­sur­able harm to our coun­try which should dis­qual­i­fy that par­ty from rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics in my opinion.
The labor par­ty should know better.….

With the ter­ri­fy­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics and the turn­ing of pop­u­lar opin­ion on INDECOM Andrew Holness is singing a dif­fer­ent tune, and has recent­ly called for a revis­ing of the INDECOM Act.
This writer has writ­ten dozens if not hun­dreds of arti­cles in this medi­um as well as in oth­er medi­ums in which I have laid out that the JCF must have over­sight but INDECOM is not that oversight.

INDECOM from the out­set through it’s com­mis­sion­er Terrence Williams and Assistant Commissioner Hamish Campbell, set a con­fronta­tion­al anti-police agenda.
That agen­da was evi­denced through INDECOM’S prin­ci­pals shar­ing plat­forms with anti police agi­ta­tors and lob­by­ists like JFJ, the IACHR, FAST to name a few.
Contrary to it’s man­date to re-active­ly inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of abuse by the Military,Police and Correction’s Departments, as well as cas­es in which these enti­ties use force as part of their dai­ly rou­tine , INDECOM’s prin­ci­pals turned the agency into a an anti-police , anti-mil­i­tary lobby.

On that basis alone ‚not only should Williams,Campbell and oth­ers from INDECOM who attend­ed the con­fer­ences with those anti-police lob­by groups be fired at the time , the Act should have been revis­it­ed at that time.
The Police and Military protest­ed at the time, yet Bruce Golding and his admin­is­tra­tion refused to cor­rect this egre­gious trav­es­ty result­ing in a mass exo­dus of good cops who saw the writ­ing on the wall.
The Government had estab­lished an agency to col­lab­o­rate with forces against them .

Others took up the offer of ear­ly retire­ment , leav­ing behind a cadre of police impos­tors many of whom were only there for the lit­tle pay-check giv­en the Island’s dis­mal job pro­duc­ing record.
Degrees yes, moti­vat­ed to go out and fight crime , No!
Scenes of crime inves­ti­ga­tions which begin with full pro­to­cols of the process are only a cha­rade which hard­ly result in mur­der­ers being brought to justice .

There is hard­ly any detec­tive work being done out­side the cha­rade of the crime scene tapes and the guys in the long coats.…
Sure we need the gath­er­ing of the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence but noth­ing replaces the need for good old fash­ioned police work through intel­li­gence gathering.
Police work in Jamaica has being reduced to peo­ple with a few years ser­vice smart­ly dressed in the uni­form of senior­i­ty , sit­ting behind desks mak­ing inane statements.
But whats the use of remov­ing the killers from the streets if the ide­o­log­i­cal­ly lib­er­al judges out of the Norman Manley Law just turns them loose?

There is a nev­er end­ing parade of opin­ions and work­ing papers on how to deal effec­tive­ly with crime in our country.
The vast major­i­ty of what I have seen and read seem to be about the writ­ers sense of them­selves rather than a com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment of what exist and a rad­i­cal approach on how to fix it.

Let me be clear, in order to build a sky-scraper with shiny glass win­dows and cool air-con­di­tioned offices ‚the work of cre­at­ing a design must be done.
Then comes the hard work of dig­ging deep into the earth to estab­lish a foun­da­tion and in many cas­es sev­er­al floors below ground.
After the exca­va­tion is done then comes the hard work of lay­ing con­crete and steel , inch by inch .It is hard dirty work ‚but work which must be done if ever the work­men want to have that tow­er deliv­ered to the owners.

So too is the issue of tak­ing back our streets from the mur­der­ers and gang­sters who con­trol them, hard dirty work .
Not every­one want to face those real­i­ties. It is nec­es­sary work which must be done. This requires police offi­cers , not academics.
Hands must get dirty . hun­dreds of the young men walk­ing around Jamaica rub­bing shoul­ders with law abid­ing Jamaicans have the blood of sev­er­al peo­ple on their hands.
We must nev­er sur­ren­der to the idea that the sheer vol­ume of mur­ders is too great to bring the killers to justice,or bring jus­tice to them , their choice.

There is no arriv­ing at a pros­per­ous and pleas­ant Jamaica using pleas­antries and platitudes.
The hon­est fact is that the dirty work of dri­ving fear into crim­i­nals and putting mur­der­ers in jail and keep­ing them there, must begin if this issue is ever to be addressed successfully.

We can have truth and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion after we have con­trol , not before.
I am not dis­suad­ed by those who crit­i­cize my argu­ments they are exact­ly the argu­ments I expect­ed to hear from mur­der­ers and sup­port­ers of murderers.
We are nev­er ever going to deal effec­tive­ly with crime and ter­ror by sweep­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics under the carpet.