Chicago is the capital city of the state of Illinois, the population of the city of Chicago is approximately 2.7 million residents.
The city is considered one of the most violent places in the United States, according to Newsweek Chicago is known for having the highest number of homicides in the United States, and it’s living up to that reputation by already topping 400 killings for 2017, after four people were killed among 36 shot over last weekend.
Despite these frightening homicide numbers, the killings are concentrated only in certain areas of the city which are heavily populated. You are free to guess who lives in those violent, heavily populated areas.
Jamaica is an Island nation whose population is roughly the same as the city of Chicago’s 2.7 million residents.
Of the fourteen small parishes which makes up the tiny Island nation of Jamaica, the Parish of St James is among the smaller parishes with a land size of approximately 594.9 square kilometers or (230 square miles).
So far this year St James which is vying for the new wild west title while boasting it is the epic center of Caribbean tourism has registered over 310 homicides.
Leaders, please listen to me, you are doing something wrong!
Blacks killing Blacks in the city of Chicago is not outside the realm of an acceptable solution for other interests in a racially polarized country like the United States.
Jamaicans killing Jamaicans at that alarming rate within those tiny spaces cannot be viewed with the same lens. The reverberating traumatic consequences of this will be felt for generations to come, granted that there is anyone left.
You simply cannot build a shiny new city in a great big forest without first doing some serious clearing and establishing an infrastructure.
The notion that we can build a society of promise and prosperity in an environment of lawlessness and bloodshed is a pipe dream.
This latter statement is not meant to be a critique of the present Administration or any previous or future administration, it is simply a statement of fact.
So where are we going wrong?
We need a complete 180 degree turn from the way we see our responsibility to the crime monster.
As far as is evidenced there is a misguided perception among the educated on the Island that crime is a social phenomenon which must be handled with nuance and care.
If that is what they teach them at the University of the West Indies our country is in for a rude awakening. Most of the country’s academic elites came out of that cauldron of leftist ideological stew.
The problem with their worldview is that it has failed and failed dismally, so much so that even the most powerful nations which embraced those philosophical underpinnings have come to the realization that they guarantee only failure and poverty for their populations.
Subsequently, even as Russia and China still cling to their totalitarian past they have moved to modernize their economies, moving them in line with the more market-driven western models.
years of corruption and failed leadership
On those models are built the principle of the rule of law, a concept which is not perfect but one which has demonstrably resulted in a better standard of living for western democracies.
The notion that our security forces should be cautious and careful in the fight against dangerous 21st-century killers has no basis in reality.
Neither does it guarantee that the fight in which our security forces are engaged is winnable using those mind-numbingly stupid rules of engagement.
Our Country has a decision to make. Much of what the old neanderthals like Delroy Chuck, Peter Phillips, et al embrace are the failed teachings which came out of the 70’s when Michael Manley was leading throngs of people to free criminals from police stations. This ignorant mindset has seeped into Andrew Holness and the younger generation of leaders who do not fully understand the concept of the rule of law.
The stark reality is that criminals must know that our security forces are coming for them and if they resist they will be killed, end of story.
The constant attack on the techniques of the past now championed by Holness and many in the JLP and the PNP fail to speak to the most important facts.
Their argument that the security forces had their way and look where it got us, is again a lie which is not supported by the facts.
When have the Jamaican security Forces ever had their way in Jamaica? Was there ever a time in which the political administration of both political parties did not have their grubby little fingers in the police department?
When was the security forces not starved of training resources and pay?
So let’s deal with what they are really dealing with when they broach this subject of police having their way.
It was failed leadership and the nurturing of criminals which necessitated the Suppression of Crimes Act which gave police additional powers to combat the dangerous criminals Jamaica produce.
Other Law Enforcement Agencies like the London Metropolitan Police and the New York City Police Department have attested to the ferocity and heartlessness of Jamaica’s killers.
Failed leadership on crime ..
It was the politics of political interference which created the lack of respect for law enforcement in the first place.
It was both political parties which created political garrisons and made them veritable no-go zones for the security forces.
It was the creation and maintenance of these zones of exclusions(garrisons) which metastasized into incubators of criminal activity resulting in the Shower Posse, Spanglers, Ratbat, Wareika Hills gangs and the now thousands of gangs which have taken over the Island.
Jamaica did not become the murder capital because of tough policing Peter Phillips and Andrew Holness, Jamaica became a criminal paradise because that type of policing was not allowed to continue and expand.
| Year | # of Murders |
| 1970 | 152 |
| 1971 | 145 |
| 1972 | 170 |
| 1973 | 227 |
| 1974 | 195 |
| 1975 | 266 |
| 1976 | 367 |
| 1977 | 409 |
| 1978 | 381 |
| 1979 | 351 |
| 1980 | 899 |
| 1981 | 490 |
| 1982 | 405 |
| 1983 | 424 |
| 1984 | 484 |
| 1986 | 449 |
| 1987 | 442 |
| 1988 | 414 |
| 1989 | 439 |
| 1990 | 543 |
| 1991 | 561 |
| 1992 | 629 |
| 1994 | 690 |
| 1995 | 780 |
| 1998 | 953 |
| 1999 | 849 |
| 2000 | 887 |
| 2002 | 1045 |
| 2003 | 975 |
| 2004 | 1471 |
| 2005 | 1674 |
| 2006 | 1340 |
| 2007 | 1574 |
| 2008 | 1601 |
| 2009 | 1680 |
| 2010 | 1428 |
| 2011 | 1125 |
| 2012 | 1097 |
| 2013 | 1200 |
| 2014 | 1005 |
| 2015 | 1192 |
| 2016 | 1350 |
Based on the numbers above it is clear that between 1970 and 1972, under the leadership of the Island’s best law and order Prime Minister, Hugh Lawson Shearer, the homicide numbers fluctuated from a high of 145 to 170. An average of just over 155 dead Jamaicans each year to violence.
By 1972 the nation elected a leftist Prime Minister on a platform of better must come. By 1973 under Michael Manley’s leadership murders had jumped to 227.
After two terms of Michael Manley’s leadership in 1980 murders were up to 899. In that 8 year period not only were 3095 Jamaicans murdered according to police reports, the average yearly homicide rate had jumped from 155 under Hugh Lawson Shearer to 386.875 under Manley’s stewardship.
The sampling I used to arrive at this conclusion included only the years 1970, 1971 and 1972 under Shearer stewardship while the sampling represented (8) years of Michael Manley’s stewardship.
Given that the data does not include years before 1970, and we do know that murders were markedly less in those years it is fair to argue that if the statistics were averaged over a period of eight years under the Jamaica Labor Party the yearly average would have been exponentially lower than the 155 average using just the three years under Hugh Lawson Shearer.
By 1980 Edward Seaga was elected to office and homicides again dropped from the anomaly year of 1980 when 899 were slaughtered to 490 in 1981.
Based on existing data murder never reached the 490 number ever again under the leadership of Prime Minister Edward Seaga.
By 1988 a reformed and penitent Michael Manley was returned to office and for the very first time homicide had surpassed the 500 mark, for the first time ever in 1993 when 543 people were murdered( not on list).
Citing ill health Michael Manley stepped down and Percival Patterson was appointed Prime Minister.
Under Patterson’s policy of “anything, a anything” crime galloped away from 629 homicides annually when he assumed office in 92 to 1574 in 2007 when Orette Bruce Golding assumed office as the nation’s Eight Prime Minister.
It is important to note that by 2005 Murder had reached its highest peak of 1674 under the do as you please attitude of Percival Patterson.
The trend lines are clear, Jamaica’s crime rate and more specifically it’s homicide rate increased under political leadership in which criminals were given the upper hand by politicians whether through commission or omission.
The homicide rates under both Hugh Shearer and even later under Seaga after which the nation had endured 8 years of Michael Manley policies indicate that stronger law enforcement resulted in fewer dead people.
These numbers are available for all to look at and extrapolate from them the truth. That is the reason I am and will be a critic of Andrew Holness who as a JLP Prime Minister has departed from the tried and proven orthodoxy of his conservative labor party predecessors.
There is one way and one way only to go after hardened criminals who have made it clear that they intend to destroy our societies.
That way is with an iron fist and resolve of steel.
That law enforcement officer who risks their lives to go after dangerous killers must be hypersensitive to the human rights of those killers is retarded thinking.
Criminal play by their own rules, which means there are no rules. Tying the hands of police in that regard is strictly tantamount to aiding and abetting criminals.
Unless we stop with the pretense and the hifalutin bullshit coming out of the legal and criminal rights communities we can kiss our country goodbye.