Our Country Is In A State Of Paralysis On Violent Crime, No One Seems To Have A Clue How To End It…

The Jamaican Government seems to be fix­at­ed in a state of dor­man­cy on the issue of crime. The admin­is­tra­tion believes that the killers will stop killing if it says and does noth­ing. So it says and does nothing.
I write his arti­cle with zero empa­thy for the Prime Minister and the sit­u­a­tion he finds him­self in.
Let me be clear; I total­ly under­stand that the young Prime Minister would come to the job of Prime Minister with a desire to trans­form the Jamaica Constabulary Force. Hell, If I were in his shoes, the trans­for­ma­tion would have been dra­mat­i­cal­ly different.
The dif­fer­ence with my approach as opposed to his ‑is that I would trans­form the force, and the mem­bers would know that it was for their good and ben­e­fit, and so would the nation.
Unfortunately, Andrew Holness alien­at­ed the police in words and deeds even as he ele­vat­ed INDECOM and bleed­ing-heart bot­tom feed­ers who claim to be human rights activists.
The sad irony with those bot­tom feed­ers is that they nev­er have a sin­gle thing to say when inno­cent Jamaicans are mur­dered, not even when lit­tle boys have their throats slashed.
Last Year, 1,463 mur­ders were report­ed to the police, who long lost the fight against vio­lent crim­i­nals. Homicides went up in most police divi­sions across the Island, and if the past is pro­logue, this year will be even more bloody.

The Police Force need­ed over­sight, and it had over­sight. However, the intro­duc­tion of a new Agency, the Independent Commission of Investigations, INDECOM, could not have been cre­at­ed at a worse time.
This writer warned that even though the police force was deeply cor­rupt and was get­ting even more so, tying the hands of the police was not the answer, par­tic­u­lar­ly when hard­ened first-world crim­i­nals were being deport­ed back to Jamaica in droves from sev­er­al countries.
Not only was INDECOM untime­ly, but the new­ly mint­ed Commissioner was also unnec­es­sar­i­ly con­fronta­tion­al and antag­o­nis­tic toward the police.
The antag­o­nism com­ing from the Government, the human rights bot­tom feed­ers, INDECOM, along with the influx of depor­tees, cre­at­ed the per­fect storm for crime to thrive on the Island.
Everyone want­ed in on the act, so the judges joined the fray-releas­ing gun con­victs back onto the streets, often with probation.
It became the norm there­after for mur­der con­victs to receive twelve and ten-year sen­tences even for com­mit­ting mul­ti­ple homicides.
In the mad­ness of anti-police mele, crim­i­nals were con­sol­i­dat­ing and expand­ing their mur­der­ous empire all across the length and breadth of the Island.
They have sup­port­ers in Gordon House, in the high­est ech­e­lons of the Island’s judi­cia­ry, and the most sophis­ti­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ties for all intents and pur­pos­es.
Crime has become inex­tri­ca­bly inter­twined into the coun­try’s pop­u­lar cul­ture that nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty has a clue how to dis­man­tle the crim­i­nal gangs.
I ques­tion whether either polit­i­cal par­ty wants this cav­al­cade of killings to stop.

For the aver­age Jamaican who would like peace and secu­ri­ty, their chances of hav­ing either lies in a visa and get­ting the hell away because nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty intends to take the steps nec­es­sary to end the killings.
Lobbyists for crim­i­nals parad­ing as human rights agen­cies and indi­vid­u­als have more sway over anti-crime leg­is­la­tion than law-abid­ing Jamaicans.
It real­ly is not hard, manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences of 25 with or with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole for mur­der depend­ing on the cir­cum­stances of the case.
Caught with an ille­gal gun, min­i­mum ten years impris­on­ment. Release the police to go after the killers unfet­tered and bring them in dead or alive, their choice.
Jamaica can­not con­tin­ue to have a nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy based on crim­i­nals’ rights. We need a vic­tim-cen­tered anti-crime strat­e­gy any­thing else is blow­ing smoke up the col­lec­tive ass­es of the Jamaican people.
For decades dance hall was allowed to set the stage in how the pub­lic inter­act­ed with law enforce­ment. Police offi­cers were labeled police boys, Babylon boys, pussy­holes, and the aver­age Jamaican were told that inform­ers must die.
The cumu­la­tive effect of that over the last four decades or so has been a Jamaica that has very lit­tle respect for the rule of law or those who enforce the laws.
So spare me just a lit­tle sar­casm if I do not give a shit about the croc­o­dile tears com­ing from that fra­ter­ni­ty on the sub­ject of mur­ders in Jamaica.
Andrew Holness start­ed with a botanist as nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter; today, we have a med­ical doc­tor in that job and a sol­dier doing the work of a top cop. Those appoint­ments should not engen­der any con­fi­dence in the admin­is­tra­tion to get the job done. At the very least, we need peo­ple in those posi­tions who know want the hell it takes to get the job done.
None of that mat­ters as much as the refusal of the JLP admin­is­tra­tion and the PNP oppo­si­tion to pass laws that send a clear mes­sage that we will not tol­er­ate any more of this shit.
Laws that remove from the dirty judges remit the abil­i­ty to turn vio­lent crim­i­nals loose as soon as they are found guilty.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.