Many Cops Given Up On Ending Murders/​Pols Stand In The Way Of Real Fight…

Every day we read about the mur­ders in JAMAICA, yet to some, it is no big deal. “People die every day, peo­ple die every­where”, they say.
I am a lot less san­guine about these killings than the aver­age Jamaican. I find it appalling that life is so deval­ued, that peo­ple just step over the dead bod­ies and con­tin­ue par­ty­ing.
The Government and Opposition par­ty has found in the crime issue, a use­ful polit­i­cal foot­ball. Blame the par­ty in Government for the high lev­els of crime, and when it is their turn in gov­ern­ment, they do the bare min­i­mum, so as not to change the par­a­digm.
The unfor­tu­nate thing for the coun­try is that while the two polit­i­cal par­ties play pol­i­tics with this issue, the dead bod­ies of Jamaicans are pil­ing up across this beau­ti­ful country.

The ques­tion for those who say peo­ple die every­where is. “how in God’s name can you be com­fort­able with Jamaica being the num­ber two coun­try on this plan­et for mur­ders and vio­lent crime”?
How could peo­ple become so desen­si­tized to the shed­ding of blood?
And then it hit me, we have already wit­nessed the shred­ding of our cul­tur­al norms, our coun­try has become a place for glad­i­a­tors and blood­suck­ers.
We have already lost the soul of our nation.

Yesterday I received a phone call that sent a chill down my spine while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly evok­ing the twin demons of anger and despair in me.
My child­hood friend was mur­dered in Saint Mary.
He had gone to do busi­ness I was told, as he always does as he tries to make a liv­ing.
It was not enough to just rob him of his mon­ey, tak­ing his life was nec­es­sary to sat­is­fy their blood-lust.
Elvis Richards was born rough­ly a month before me, we went to school togeth­er and we com­pet­ed at every­thing.
In class, he was a maths whizz who was very use­ful in help­ing me under­stand math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts.
On the field of play, whether it was soc­cer or my beloved crick­et, we always had a blast.
He mar­ried his child­hood sweet­heart and I was hon­ored to be at his wed­ding to see him and Gene wed.
We sep­a­rat­ed as he returned to the United States where he had ear­li­er migrat­ed to, and I con­tin­ued on with my life, mak­ing my con­tri­bu­tion to the crime fight in Jamaica.

Years lat­er our paths crossed again as I moved to the United States and he went back to Jamaica. We spoke on and off, every time we spoke he would encour­age me to return so that we could con­tin­ue to enjoy the beau­ty of Jamaica as we did pre­vi­ous­ly.
I always told him I would love to, but I was uncom­fort­able with the Government’s atti­tude toward vio­lent crim­i­nals. He would laugh and say “bway das why mi live inna di kun­try.“
The last time we spoke was just before Christmas of last year. We both wished each oth­er well.
It was the last con­ver­sa­tion we would have. Living in the coun­try could not save him from the dement­ed mon­sters. They took his prop­er­ty, but it was not enough to sim­ply take what he had. They want­ed his life, and so they took that away from him as well.

A Government’s num­ber one respon­si­bil­i­ty is to keep the peo­ple safe.
If a gov­ern­ment fails at its pri­ma­ry func­tion, noth­ing else it does that may be con­strued to be pos­i­tive mat­ters.
The gov­ern­ment can­not stop peo­ple from killing each oth­er. The gov­ern­ment can put in place laws which make it abun­dant­ly clear, that if you kill anoth­er human being, you will be found, and when you are caught you will wish that you were dead.
The Governing Jamaica Labor Party under Andrew Holness has been way out on his skis, he believes that the dirty busi­ness of rein­ing in the Islands blood­thirsty mur­der­ers can be done with vel­vet white gloves and top hat.
For its part the Opposition People National Party has no plan to deal with the men­ace, it posi­tions itself in oppo­si­tion to every­thing the Government does, which includes pro­pos­als on how to deal with crime.
The Honorable House of Representatives is used to dis­play class­less, boor­ish ver­bal clash­es between the two groups of low-class [Mongrels] who pre­tend to be leaders.

Dealing with crim­i­nals is dirty work, it is not pret­ty, but it is nec­es­sary if Jamaica wish­es to main­tain its sta­tus as a func­tion­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety. By its con­tin­ued refusal and lack of will, Jamaica has con­tin­ued to degrade as a soci­ety, while still per­sist­ing in cre­at­ing a thick­er veneer of pre­tense.
Given time the whole façade will come tum­bling down. Sure the cruise ship arrivals are cool. New all-inclu­sive hotels and lots of tourists crammed into pro­tect­ed spaces will fool the world for a lit­tle while, but the coun­try is being destroyed from with­in.
Murderers know that when the rub­ber meets the road both polit­i­cal par­ties are hand in glove with them and that’s the bot­tom line.
As home­own­ers lose the val­ue of their homes more and more extor­tion­ists make it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to live in once-pris­tine neigh­bor­hoods.
The sys­tem is more inter­est­ed in jail­ing police offi­cers for tak­ing out the mur­der­ing scum, than it is in jail­ing the scum who take inno­cent life.
We need a rad­i­cal change in Jamaica, that change may have to come at the expense of both the JLP & PNP.
One way or anoth­er, since both par­ties have posi­tioned them­selves as agen­cies against progress and change.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.