The primary focus of my crime-fighting strategy has consistently been that we must throw out the old template.
We must first change our mindset. Change our laws. Change how we respond to criminal conduct. Change how we respond to law enforcement.
I know it is a heavy lift, but outside of armed insurrection to course-correct, I believe this may be the last best chance for the country to.….…..well, course-correct.
In writing about this subject over the years, I have laid out strategies that will stop the bloodshed if the common-sense approaches I proposed are followed.
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(1) Penalties for violent crime that make it clear we will not tolerate violent crimes in our country.
(2) Truth in sentencing, meaning that the sentence stipulated by the law is the sentence violent offenders serve in prison.
(3) Mandator Minimum sentences for violent offenders, whether they use firearms or machetes to commit violent acts.
(4) Remove from the control of judges the sentence violent gangsters receive.
(5) Make the sentence for murder a minimum of 25 years in prison and a maximum life without the possibility of parole.
(6) No bail for murder accused.
(7) Speedy trial for murder accused.
(8) Change criminal-focused strategy to a victim-focused strategy; worry less about criminals, focus on crime victims.
(9) Create national security policy based on Jamaica’s unique needs, not what foreign interests want.
(10) Invest heavily in criminal investigation techniques.
The ten-point plan I offered up is a sure-proof way to take back our country from violent murderers. In each bullet point of the plan are strategies to be discussed and worked out.
It is not a plan devised in the halls of academia. It is not a plan devised from the back offices of criminal supporting cabals.
It is a common-sense approach that comes from a crime fighter who bled his shoes full of blood defending the people of my country.
As I was working on this article, a former colleague texted me the following; “They would rather pay millions to some consultants for some pie in the sky solution, instead of getting it from people like you.”
“They are using crime as a political football whilst the country is bleeding.”
This esteemed colleague and I entered the Police Academy on the same day in January of 1982. Unfortunately for him, he cannot walk; a gunman’s bullet severed his spine in the line of duty years ago. He has no police detail protecting him.
The framework needed to establish Jamaica as a nation of laws is not difficult; neither political party wants to adopt measures that will stop the bloodshed.
If this ten-point plan I have been proposing for years is adopted, it will begin the slow and tedious reduction in murders and other violent crimes that ZOSO’s and SOE’s individually or combined could never hope to achieve.
So as they refuse to take counsel, we must ask whether they are serious about reducing violent crimes, or are they merely blowing smoke up the collective ass of the people?
In a nation where there are not adequate laws, people do as they are allowed. It was no wonder that the Chief Justice was stunned that telecom companies could stymie and refuse to hand over cell phone data to the police who were legitimately engaged in murder investigations.
In the larger scheme of things, I would imagine those police investigators and the prosecuting attorney could have gone to a judge and obtained a warrant to secure the evidence they needed but there is no evidence that they bothered pursuing that route.
Presiding over the Klansman gang trial, the senior judge asked whether the prosecution had the call data to match what the senior police investigator testified to. The senior jurist was told that the telecom companies placed blockades in the way of the police. Simply put, the telephone companies operating in Jamaica actively hindered the investigations into a major organized crime syndicate that took numerous lives.
How can a country operate this way while the morons in Gordon House bang on the people’s desks and hurl insults at each other you ask?
The Chief Justice asked prosecutors:
“How can there be a difficulty in you getting information from a service provider when the police are investigating serious crimes? How is that possible? So none of the service providers provided the call data? I want to know if that is what is being said because something is seriously wrong. Does the law permit them to withhold the information? Because if that is so, the law needs to be changed; something is seriously wrong here, no man, that can’t be.”
I.……rest my case…
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.