Police Sitting Down With Gangsters, Gobblygook Idea That Deserves No Attention…

I’ve heard it before, so hear­ing it again did not sur­prise me. Nevertheless, it does­n’t make more sense today than when these non­sen­si­cal ideas were broached pre­vi­ous­ly, speak­ing of police sit­ting down with gang­sters to iron out feuds.
Without try­ing to shame any­one for the sug­ges­tion, we must first rec­og­nize that sug­ges­tions that police sit down with gang­sters are by def­i­n­i­tion an acknowl­edg­ment that the sit­u­a­tion is out of the con­trol of the secu­ri­ty forces and, there­fore, up to the war­ring gang­sters to main­tain peace.
By mak­ing that default acknowl­edg­ment, we are turn­ing over peace, tran­quil­i­ty, and law and order to gangsters.
How did that exper­i­ment work out in Tivoli Gardens when suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments of both polit­i­cal par­ties ced­ed Tivoli Gardens to the Coke fam­i­ly- a fam­i­ly of ardent criminals?
This writer is tired of the fan­cy gob­bly­gook lan­guage that accom­pa­nies this sub­ject in Jamaica as it does with oth­er sub­jects; the nar­ra­tive is always couched in hifa­lutin lan­guage that goes back to slav­ery and the atten­dant con­se­quences to us as a peo­ple with­out address­ing the issue at hand.
Being a prag­ma­tist, I much rather leave the pos­tur­ing to the log­ger­heads and apply myself to find­ing prac­ti­cal solu­tions to the problems.

Sure, we under­stand that the nation’s crime prob­lem has deep­er roots in the coun­try’s socio-eco­nom­ic con­di­tion. We also under­stand that the prob­lems of vio­lence that have man­i­fest­ed them­selves across all spec­trums of the soci­ety as a con­flict res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nism [may] have even deep­er roots dat­ing back to the peri­od after slav­ery and even the peri­od of slav­ery itself.
But what are we to do with that infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge? Are we to con­tin­ue to delude our­selves into think­ing that rec­og­niz­ing a prob­lem is a fix to the problem?
Are we going to con­tin­ue with the inane per­spec­tive that pover­ty is the dri­ver of crime in Jamaica yet the pur­vey­ors of crime are able to afford high-pow­ered weapons, exces­sive amounts of ammu­ni­tion, man­sions, cars, boats, motor­cy­cles, and lav­ish lifestyles?
When are we going to ask where they get the mon­ey to afford the fan­cy (liars)? Sorry, I meant lawyers when they get caught?
The coun­try is in a state of ver­i­ta­ble warfare…let that sink in. As we have seen in the United States, with the mass killings across the coun­try, ide­ol­o­gy and polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy [trump] com­mon sense and duty to the country.
The American polit­i­cal right hijacked the sec­ond amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion that guar­an­teed gun own­er­ship and made it a super­im­pos­ing amend­ment that can­not be touched, even though the framers had no idea that there would be weapons capa­ble of killing scores of peo­ple in sec­onds when James Madison pro­posed the sec­ond amend­ment to the constitution.
In the United States, not all in the polit­i­cal spaces are naïve enough to believe that the sec­ond amend­ment means that there can be no safe­guards in law about who owns guns and what kinds of guns they are allowed to have.
However, the polit­i­cal right holds this view, so they are stock­ing up on guns because they fear a race war is coming.
In Jamaica, the stu­pid­i­ty in deal­ing with crime runs the gamut of both polit­i­cal par­ties and all spec­trums, except for the peo­ple who sur­ren­der their chil­dren to join the secu­ri­ty forces.
What could poten­tial­ly be gained from a sit­down with war­ring mur­der­ers? To begin with, when we take action for the nation­al good, we must pon­der the cost-ben­e­fit of our actions. Is it pos­si­ble that there could be a tem­po­rary lull in the hos­til­i­ties that war­rant­ed the sit­down in the first place? Sure it’s pos­si­ble, but what kind of mes­sage would the police be send­ing when they ele­vate com­mon punks to sit­ting at the table with the government?
Those are the kinds of things weak gov­ern­ments do with guer­ril­la move­ments that are fight­ing for state pow­er, and they nev­er end well. We need to under­stand the pow­er of optics and how those will affect the young and impressionable.
Years ago, I implored the police to remove the graf­fi­ti imagery of so-called dons that adorn com­mu­ni­ties. It took a long time before that mes­sage sunk in and the police began to remove those images; whether it was a con­tin­u­ing process or just a flash in the pan I do not know.

I nev­er under­stood why Jamaicans are opposed to strong penal­ties for vio­lent offend­ers? I nev­er under­stood why peo­ple care more about the dan­ger­ous offend­ers who take life with­out care, than they do the vic­tims of those monsters.
I have long writ­ten off the nin­com­poops who look to the University Of The West Indies for guid­ance on crime and oth­er top­i­cal issues. In real­i­ty, Jamaica is in the sit­u­a­tion it is in large­ly because of the log­ic that emanates from that cesspool of insanity.
Providing the lead­er­ship for our coun­try, that sin­gle insti­tu­tion has turned out a buck­et­ful of idiots and morons at all lev­els. We see the con­se­quences of the edu­ca­tion the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to has pro­vid­ed to Jamaicans and the English-speak­ing Caribbean. (Rest in peace, Mutty Perkins).
We can get to where we police com­mu­ni­ties that once had war­ring fac­tions with high-pow­ered weapons shoot­ing at each oth­er with finesse; we are not there yet.
The coun­try is awash in dan­ger­ous weapons and untold amounts of ammu­ni­tion. This real­i­ty will not change any­time soon because of the nation’s porous bor­ders, cor­rupt offi­cials, and gov­ern­ment incom­pe­tence. The Jamaican peo­ple who still want the rule of law must avail them­selves of the real­i­ty that between the two polit­i­cal par­ties, there will be no seri­ous attempt leg­isla­tive­ly to end this scourge once and for all.
They are too in love with the mur­der­ers who run around in the con­stituen­cies they rep­re­sent and in which they oper­ate as mini-kings and queens.
There are no real con­se­quences for mur­der­ers; there­fore, we must rub­bish this idea of the police sit­ting down with gang­sters to end feuds.
Even the judi­cia­ry is in the pock­ets of the gang­sters; Jamaica is, for all intents and pur­pos­es, slid­ing fur­ther into failed state cat­e­go­ry. It did not have to be this way, but Jamaican are too pre­ten­tious. Jamaica is [not] at the place where it can finesse its law enforce­ment. We are not Scandanavia, and even they make dras­tic changes when the need aris­es, as the Fins did after the shoot­ing that took sev­er­al lives.
As I go, I would just like to ask this ques­tion; has any­one noticed that there is no out­cry about get­ting rid of the police com­mis­sion­er? Why is that?

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.This arti­cle was updat­ed after its publication.

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