One Cop Shows He Understand The Approach To Fighting Crime: Will His Bosses Go Along Or Will They Run And Hide.…

Vendors in Westmoreland are unhappy with the strategies being employed by the Commanding officer of the Parish Deputy Superintendent of Police David White,.
Part of Deputy Superintendent White’s strategy is to remove illegal vending from the major towns in the Parish. Superintendent White has correctly pointed to the correlation between quality of life infractions like the illegal occupation of streets by vendors and those who would engage in the commission of more serious crimes.

It is safe to imag­ine that the strat­e­gy to go after ille­gal vend­ing is a strat­e­gy which has the bless­ings of the Commissioner of Police. Even if it isn’t and it is an ini­tia­tive of Deputy Superintendent White alone, it is com­mend­able that he has the vision to rec­og­nize the nexus between qual­i­ty of live infrac­tions and more seri­ous crimes. In fact Deputy Superintendent White cat­e­gor­i­cal stat­ed that one of his pri­or­i­ties is to rid the town cen­ters, includ­ing Savanna-la-Mar, of ille­gal vending.
“We know that a num­ber of the ven­dors are there as a result of the pro­ceeds from crime. We also know that some of them have been strate­gi­cal­ly placed by some crim­i­nal ele­ments with­in the town,”White said.

RUSHING TO PUT OUT FIRES IS NOT A PLAN TO ERADICATE CRIME.

One of the points I con­stant­ly sound off on at the risk of being repet­i­tive is the lev­el to which Jamaican author­i­ties have allowed crime to metas­ta­size and the rule of law to denigrate .
As the Island grap­ples with the ever increas­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics the police are left hold­ing the bag as there has been no real polit­i­cal sup­port behind law enforce­ment to go after crim­i­nals in a con­cert­ed way.
In fact the well is so con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed even the courts are sym­pa­thet­ic to criminals.

The Town and Community Act empow­ers the Police to go after any­one who breach­es the Act. Nevertheless before we look at Police respon­si­bil­i­ty we must first exam­ine what gives peo­ple the right to set up vend­ing stalls on side­walks and in some cas­es in the streets and in front of the very doors of legit­i­mate tax pay­ing businesses.
It is the same lethar­gy and sense of per­mis­sive­ness which caused entire com­mu­ni­ties to spring up on Gully-banks , on Government lands and on pri­vate­ly owned prop­er­ties across the country.
It is not heart­less or uncar­ing to ask peo­ple to obey laws. No one can rea­son­ably argue against peo­ple mak­ing a liv­ing. What I believe is that cit­i­zens of Jamaica, or any coun­try for that mat­ter, must make a liv­ing with­in the bound­aries of the laws. If cit­i­zens do not like the laws it is their right to lob­by their polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives to have those laws changed . |
No Nation can rea­son­ably allow it’s cit­i­zens to flout laws with­out descend­ing into chaos.
I believe it is safe to say that both polit­i­cal par­ties have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly avoid­ed get­ting tough with what are deemed minor infrac­tions for decades.
Today it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for author­i­ties to embark on doing their jobs of uphold­ing the laws with­out seem­ing to be bul­lies using state pow­er and resources to sup­press the poor.
Unfortunately the peo­ple most affect­ed by crime are the poor­est peo­ple, yet the strate­gies which are need­ed to improve their lives are the strate­gies against which they are most opposed

Some of the peo­ple who ply their wares for a liv­ing are decent peo­ple who sim­ply want to make a liv­ing. That is under­stand­able but though heart rend­ing as their pleas are, author­i­ties have a duty to remove them from the streets. It is not just a qual­i­ty of life issue it’s is a safe­ty and secu­ri­ty issue>
First respon­ders must have clear streets to get to where they are need­ed. It is that simple.
Over the last four decades in Kingston alone we have seen where unchecked dis­re­gard for the Town and Community Act has done tremen­dous harm to the city and result­ed in much loss of life and property.
From King Street to Orange Street, from Princess street to Heywood Street , Spanish Town Road, and myr­i­ad oth­er arter­ies beyond.
Let’s not ignore the impact Sound sys­tems have had on the psy­che of work­ing peo­ple who are forced to suf­fer in silence , ter­ri­fied of open­ing their mouths because the “Don” decid­ed to have a dance every week. Many sim­ply gave up because they are unable to get police to enforce the laws.
Of course it was the con­fla­gra­tion of ven­dors in these local­i­ties which caused crime to increase expo­nen­tial­ly. It was dif­fi­cult and impos­si­ble to tell who was hig­gler from who was rob­ber, in many cas­es the lines weren’t just blurred they were non-existent.
This is where the Governing admin­is­tra­tion must expend some polit­i­cal cap­i­tal. It may not sound good in the Media which rel­ish­es the role it cre­at­ed for itself as a mouth­piece for crim­i­nal elements.
Down Town Kingston is a case-study in what occured when ven­dors are left to do what­ev­er they please.
In the ear­ly 80’s as a young cop on foot patrol I saw clear­ly what ille­gal vend­ing did to that area of the city and by exten­sion adjoin­ing sub­urbs of down­town Kingston.
Criminals from all of the inner city enclaves came out and hung out among so-called legit­i­mate ven­dors. When they broke the laws and we attempt­ed to arrest them the ven­dors all of a sud­den became an added lay­er of prob­lem we had to con­tend with just to effect those arrests.

Robbers, chain’­grab­bers, and all kinds of crim­i­nal activ­i­ties emerged in those vend­ing enclaves. More opu­lent areas like the con­stant Spring and Half Way Tree Police areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty suf­fered as house-break­ings ‚home inva­sions and armed rob­beries and even mur­ders went through the roof .
Later as a mem­ber of the Constant Spring CIB I saw first hand, and was instru­men­tal in deal­ing with the surge of crime as a result of the under­ground mar­ket which opened up down­town Kingston for stolen merchandise.
Our Police work took us to the bed­room com­mu­ni­ties of Portmore St Catherine and as far-away places as Saint Elizabeth ‚Westmoreland and oth­ers where we recov­ered prop­er­ty robbed or stolen from our police area.
Downtown vend­ing areas became a new under­ground econ­o­my which had pre­cious­ly lit­tle to do with reg­u­lar vend­ing . It was a place where every­thing could be sourced illegally.
This prog­no­sis by Supt White is noth­ing new.

During A question and answer segment of the recent town hall meeting held in Westmoreland’s capital, Savanna-la-Mar — where National Security Minister Robert Montague, Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams, permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security Major General Stewart Saunders, Assistant Commissioner of Police Winchroy Budhoo and DSP White were in attendance — several vendors urged the police to revisit the anti-vending initiative. “I am begging on my bending knees, Sir. Please, please, Sir. I have a loan with Access Finance for $50-odd thousand and from the ninth of January [this year] until now, I haven’t made $9,000. I had to beg some money just to clear some of my loan so that my place don’t put up [for sale],” a female vendor told the commissioner. The vendors were supported by councillor for the North Savanna-la-Mar Division Devon Thomas, who argued that the anti-vending initiative has impacted negatively on the lives of the vendors. “… Superintendent White came into the area with some strategies to fight crime, and I am saying that this has affected vending on the street side, we are saying that people like the jerk man…we need to revise the situation, so we can have organised vending,” Thomas argued.

These sto­ries tug at the heart­strings but none of these accounts, legit­i­mate though they are, mil­i­tates against restor­ing san­i­ty and the rule of law to the streets of the Island’s cities and Towns.
In a pre­vi­ous Article I asked who would bell the cat on this very issue? This is not the first time that this issue has come to the fore, in fact it keeps pop­ping up as admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties seek to apply band-aid approach­es to this metas­ta­siz­ing tumor only to give up when accused of pres­sur­ing poor people.
The Island’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion sug­gest that this is a prob­lem which is going nowhere soon . The new Administration must get behind the Police in deal­ing with this problem.
However it can­not be done arbi­trar­i­ly or in a venge­ful man­ner. It is not an easy prob­lem because admin­is­tra­tions regard­less of par­ty will be asked to pro­vide ade­quate alter­na­tive accom­mo­da­tions to house vendors .
Even then ven­dors may refuse to use those facil­i­ties, it hap­pened sev­er­al time before, they want max­i­mum vis­i­bil­i­ty the streets pro­vide that.
Street vend­ing has become an entrenched part of the Island’s pop­u­lar cul­ture, peo­ple have sim­ply become accus­tomed to doing as they please, they are not about to change overnight even at their own peril.