JAMAICAN GOV. TIES COPS HANDS EVEN AS THEY ARE BEING MURDERED.

THE PROBLEM

Serious crimes con­tin­ue to increase in Jamaican, over the National Heroes cel­e­bra­tion (7) per­sons were mur­dered. These mur­der fig­ures how­ev­er do not evoke alarm or fear in the minds of Jamaicans who have come to accept the killing of their neigh­bors as par for the course. Jamaicans use every ratio­nal­iza­tion to explain away these shock­ing mur­der fig­ures. Excuses range from, peo­ple gets killed every­where to, the per­son who got killed must have done some­thing to deserve his head get­ting sev­ered from his body. They make these excus­es even as they con­struct more grill for­ti­fi­ca­tions with the false belief ‚that they will be safe behind lay­ers of iron which only fur­ther imprison them .Of course this offers no real secu­ri­ty from the maraud­ing mur­der­ers who prey at will.

Portrait of the lat­est cop to be slaugh­tered in Jamaica by hoodlums.W/Spl/Cons Arianna Henry.

Since 2002 fifty (50) Officers have been mur­dered direct­ly in the line of duty , with far more killed which are not cat­e­go­rized as “in the line of duty”. The trou­ble with that char­ac­ter­i­za­tion is that, crim­i­nals are increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed, they opt to attack a sin­gle offi­cer and not take on a num­ber of offi­cers. This strat­e­gy on their part is far more effec­tive in accom­plish­ing their anar­chis­tic desires in exact­ing revenge on police offi­cers. As repug­nant as that strat­e­gy is , it would be far less effec­tive if the coun­try was one which stood solid­ly behind it’s law enforce­ment offi­cers. Conversely what the peo­ple have sad­dled them­selves with for decades is a par­ty which offers them cot­ton can­dy, which is sweet to the taste but does noth­ing to sat­is­fy their hunger. The present Administration has a leader who is at best intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged and at worse a dunce. No amount of white-wash is going to cov­er up that glar­ing fact.

CONTRIBUTORS

The par­ty which forms the Administration has had a his­to­ry of prob­lems with the rule of law , dat­ing back to the 1970’s . At its core the People’s National Party (PNP) is a par­ty which pan­ders to the base instincts of the least edu­cat­ed , least priv­i­leged. This strat­e­gy allowed them to con­trol state pow­er for an unprece­dent­ed 18 years with a four (4) year break, then con­tin­ue to present day. Members of the Police depart­ment are a large part of that prob­lem, many mem­bers are no dif­fer­ent from their civil­ian coun­ter­parts who vote against their own eco­nom­ic self-inter­est. As such they share in the blame for what is hap­pen­ing to the force and indi­vid­ual police offi­cers. This analy­sis is not an endorse­ment of any polit­i­cal par­ty, it is more-so a sweep­ing indict­ment of a polit­i­cal cul­ture which has failed dis­mal­ly in address­ing the fun­da­men­tal basic needs of the peo­ple. As a con­se­quence, the coun­try has been reduced to a laugh­ing-stock. The best achieve­ments of our peo­ple inter­na­tion­al­ly, are now called into ques­tion and sub­ject to ridicule.

Jamaica has had a long flir­ta­tion with vio­lence, some of our nation­al heroes are remem­bered and so des­ig­nat­ed exact­ly because of their propen­si­ty for vio­lence or the dis­rup­tion of estab­lished order. Whether we see that as a fruit­ful path for a coun­try is a point for live­ly legit­i­mate debate. What is clear is that if you sow corn you will def­i­nite­ly not reap toma­toes. As such when we cel­e­brate killing and car­nage we will reap a har­vest of may­hem and destruc­tion. We are reap­ing that har­vest of may­hem and destruc­tion now. Our entire con­tem­po­rary cul­ture is designed around killing. The media not to be out­done has signed on to the crazi­ness, incor­po­rat­ing the crass, degen­er­a­tive, mur­der ver­nac­u­lar into seri­ous jour­nal­is­tic dis­course. Dance-hall music is sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­en­tial that it informs soci­etal norms (vis a vis infor­ma fi dead).In short killing and the use of firearm is such a large part of Jamaican cul­ture that, to be good one has to be shat[sic] shat mean­ing good. Twisted yes, true yes.

Because of the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the gun and anti-con­for­mi­ty cul­ture, our peo­ple have deter­mined for decades that the way to fame and for­tune is by estab­lish­ing the moniker (rude bway)for them­selves. All of us have fed that mon­ster, when we cel­e­brate mur­der music, when we buy films depict­ing killing and car­nage, when we sign on to vio­lence as the only means to con­flict res­o­lu­tion, and yes when we wan­ton­ly extra-judi­cial­ly kill even the most vile cretins. Wherever car­cass­es exist, scav­engers are nev­er far off. It is no sur­prise then that oppor­tunists of all stripes would emerge in Jamaica , pur­port­ing to cham­pi­on the cause of the poor and dis­pos­sessed. Some emerge in the name of Human Rights, oth­ers pur­port to be able to “man­age peace” what­ev­er that means? The entire Governmental struc­ture is large­ly made up of immoral hus­tlers and thieves.

The police depart­ment which is tasked with pro­tect­ing the rights and safe­ty of cit­i­zens allowed itself to be reduced to a cesspool of graft , bribes and cor­rup­tion, it remained obliv­i­ous to calls to trans­form itself even as it sunk deep­er into irrel­e­vance. Those who ran the depart­ment lacked the depth to rec­og­nize that if the depart­ment con­tin­ued on that path it would one day wake up and find it was relieved of it’s pow­er. That day is here. Even as I and oth­ers scream that the way to fix the crime prob­lem is to recruit, train equip,supervise and pay offi­cers, that train has already left the sta­tion. The Political direc­torate, nev­er a fan of poor peo­ple’s off­spring hav­ing such pow­ers ‚were more than will­ing to sub­vert that pow­er. Enter (INDECOM)Independent Commission of Investigations>The prob­lem for the police is that the notion of inde­pen­dence in that body is a mis­nomer. It is nei­ther inde­pen­dent nor a cred­i­ble Investigative body. It is a bunch of Elitist who hates police offi­cers, they are aligned to the Anti-police antag­o­nist group (JFJ) Jamaicans for Justice, anoth­er mis­nomer. Together these two bod­ies in con­junc­tion with the office of Public defend­er forms a tri­ad of aggres­sion against law enforce­ment in the coun­try which has ginned up such sen­ti­ment against the con­stab­u­lary that the chick­ens have nat­u­ral­ly come home to roost. The killing of police offi­cers is now an almost dai­ly occur­rence. The head of JFJ and the pub­lic defend­er stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that police accounts of fatal shoot­ings can­not be believed because not enough offi­cers are being shot. These are the peo­ple with whom the head of INDECOM hang out and grant press con­fer­ences. For my Readers who are not from Jamaica, it is impor­tant that you under­stand that the office of pub­lic defend­er is a gov­ern­ment office . It’s offi­cials are paid with tax dol­lars. These are the peo­ple who argue that not enough cops are being killed. Now they have their wish.