Misplaced Priorities In Age Of Undeclared Civil War

A new Police Post opened in Green Acres, Spanish Town St. Catherine on Thursday, March 15^th. Whatever can be done to reduce response time by the police is always a good thing. In fact, I recent­ly wrote that who­ev­er the new com­mis­sion­er of police is he/​she should work hard to ensure that response time is cut exponentially.

People are con­soled immense­ly when they have an idea that when they call the police the police is going to be there in record time.
Citizens can expe­ri­ence no greater sense of ter­ror than to be in trou­ble with no recourse or expec­ta­tion of help com­ing from the police.

And so with that in mind, it is a wel­come sign to see a new facil­i­ty erect­ed which will poten­tial­ly bring a cer­tain degree of con­so­la­tion to res­i­dents in and around the imme­di­ate area of Green Acres Spanish Town.
At the risk of sound­ing hyper­crit­i­cal, I made peace with being del­uged with con­dem­na­tion from those who see this as a great achieve­ment for the peo­ple in the area.

Should I wor­ry about the poten­tial blow­back though, when the thing seems like it is actu­al­ly a trail­er? Ok so I am told it is actu­al­ly a trail­er with some paint and accou­ter­ments slapped onto it.

There are parts of the world where peo­ple are putting these con­tain­ers to good use, includ­ing retro­fitting them to house the home­less. Nothing wrong with that at all, in fact, I would be glad to have had one of those as my home as a young offi­cer work­ing in Jamaica based on the stipend we were giv­en then.

Retrofitting these con­tain­ers to house those who can­not afford to pur­chase a home makes a lot of sense, but does it make sense that we are ask­ing our police offi­cers to be caged in these death traps con­sid­er­ing the high-veloc­i­ty weapons in the hands of the gangsters?

I hate to be the guy who pricks the bal­loon, but peo­ple are ask­ing why should the police set­tle for this death trap when one cer­tain min­is­ter of Government’s cell phone bill was J$18.000,000?

Ok, I’m just the mes­sen­ger I real­ly only care about the wel­fare of the young men and women who are going to be risk­ing life and limb in that cage.
I have a cer­tain respect for the par­ents who allow their chil­dren to enter the ser­vice of their coun­try in the JCF, con­sid­er­ing the law­less­ness of the coun­try and the lack of thanks, offi­cers get for risk­ing their lives work­ing in dan­ger­ous and shit­ty con­di­tions for a pal­try stipend.

So I ask about the safe­ty of that death trap against exist­ing prece­dent not out of some desire to be argu­men­ta­tive or anti-gov­ern­ment as the JLP par­ti­sans will accuse me of being, nev­er both­er­ing to talk about the times when I crit­i­cize the PNP.

In the final analy­sis, we have to con­sid­er what we are doing here, what are we spend­ing mon­ey on, regard­less of the cost? Other nations build infra­struc­ture which lasts for cen­turies, Jamaica build for today and so we will have to keep build­ing into perpetuity.

This is anoth­er stop-gap invest­ment in the police and law enforce­ment, at the expense of police offi­cers lives as long as it seems that we are doing some­thing polit­i­cal­ly. Like ZOSO and the State of Public Emergency are also stop-gap par­ti­san mea­sures designed to allay fear and anxiety.

HERE IS WHERE NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE .……WELL TO ME.

With the main­te­nance of law and order high on the agen­da of the Government, a sum of $8.4 bil­lion has been bud­get­ed to bol­ster the capa­bil­i­ties of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF).

This includes $1.77 bil­lion for cyber­se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives by the JDF; $1.36 bil­lion to increase the mobil­i­ty of the JDF; $2.45 bil­lion to pur­chase heli­copters to assist in search and res­cue, casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion, med­ical eval­u­a­tion and train­ing; $1.32 bil­lion to strength­en the capa­bil­i­ty of the JDF with­in Jamaica’s mar­itime zone; and $1.5 bil­lion for the con­struc­tion of new inte­grat­ed train­ing, accom­mo­da­tion, office and stor­age facilities.

Details of the project are out­lined in the ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ Estimates of Expenditure. The Estimates were recent­ly tabled in the House of Representatives by Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Hon. Audley Shaw.(Source JIS)

Well, at least we are now up to speed and ready to take on North Korea, eat your heart out Kim Jong-un.

Police Commanders Must Work On Lowering Response Time.….