Violent crimes, in varying degrees, are fuelled by several factors; gang activities, religion, hatred, phobias, poverty, domestic disputes, and the ability to get away with it are only a few of the reasons why people engage in this antisocial behavior.
The mistakes societies make are the presumptions that we can curtail or eliminate violence among us simply by throwing more police at the problem.
Pain in the body is not the problem; pain is a warning signal that something is wrong. So we take pain relieving medication to reduce the immediacy of the issue, but we still need to get to what caused the problem in the first place.
If we do not identify and treat the reason for the pain, not only does the pain return after the medication’s initial effect, the problem worsens for the body.
When the government throws a bandaid (ZOSO, SOE) at the violence plaguing a community, the flare-up subsides, sure but does the problem go away?
No…
Arguably, in the same way, pain in the body can be transient, moving to another part of the body quickly, so too are the criminals able to move before law enforcement arrives.
When violent criminals strike an area for some time, the authorities flood the area with law enforcement officers and soldiers for peacekeeping. This practice demonstrates that the government has no other tool to deal with said violence’s producers.
What the practice does is demonstrably say to the criminals all they need to do is stay one step ahead of the flood of police officers and soldiers because there is nothing else coming.
And that is exactly what they do.
In a recent conversation with one of my friends and mentors, whom I admire for his street-savvy, toughness, bravery, and knowledge, he reminded me of how we operated as cops.
We could not stop anyone who really wanted to commit murder but the people so inclined knew that the possibility of getting away with it was next to zero.
Killing a cop, well, that was a whole other story. And so, because of how we operated, that became a crime suppression mechanism. That kind of aggressive, knowledge-based policing is no longer in the toolbox, my friend lamented, because the Prime Minister said he did not want any of it.
This writer has repeatedly reminded you that Andrew Holness balked that cops are aggressive with criminals.
Why is that?
The net results are for everyone to see, well over a thousand homicides each year on his watch; that is the collateral damage.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.