Private Sector’s Demands Of New Commish, Selfish And Misplaced…

Two days ago a new police commissioner took office in Jamaica .
Fifty eight (58) year old George Quallo, a career cop took over the reins of the nation’s pre-eminent law enforcement agency at a critical time .
Up to April 11^th of this year, three hundred and fifty eight (358) Jamaicans lost their lives violently .
That figure represented a 21% increase over last year.

Last year 1350 peo­ple lost their lives at the hands of crim­i­nals . That num­ber does not include peo­ple who have been vio­lent­ly attacked and have lost their lives lat­er while in hos­pi­tal or at home as a result of injuries received from those attacks.
Surely the job of this com­mis­sion­er will not be easy . From reports, Commissioner Quallo has a good record and a work­ing under­stand­ing of what needs to be done prag­mat­i­cal­ly to reduce crime.
Already seg­ments of the soci­ety are demand­ing action from the new com­mis­sion­er , with oth­ers forth­right telling him what he must do .

According to local media, west­ern Jamaica busi­ness lead­ers are demand­ing greater atten­tion from the new commissioner.
President of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MBCCI) Gloria Henry, while con­grat­u­lat­ing Quallo on reach­ing the top of the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s lad­der, is insist­ing that he move swift­ly to imple­ment the planned cut­ting of the parish of St James into two police divisions.

Oral Heaven, pres­i­dent of the Westmoreland Chamber of Commerce,wants Quallo to move expe­di­tious­ly to erad­i­cate the plague of lot­tery scam­ming which, he said, is fuel­ing the spi­ral­ing mur­ders and oth­er major crimes in his parish.

President and CEO at Global Outsourcing Solutions Ltd, Davon Crump, said the imme­di­ate focus of the new com­mis­sion­er must be to stem the flow of ille­gal guns and ammu­ni­tion into the coun­try, which fea­ture promi­nent­ly in the wave of killings across west­ern Jamaica. “I am sure they (the police) have been doing the best they can, but I want this gen­tle­man (new police com­mis­sion­er) to tack­le the root cause of crime. Find the root cause, and that is to plug where the guns and ammu­ni­tion are com­ing from.”

The demands been made of the police com­mis­sion­er are rea­son­able demands , how­ev­er they are misplaced.
The police does not make pol­i­cy they enforce our laws.
The busi­ness sec­tor can have tremen­dous lob­by­ing clout if it starts under­stand­ing where to chan­nel it’s lob­by­ing efforts , or in this case , their demands.
The crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty in our coun­try have cer­tain­ly estab­lished it’s bona fides in lob­by­ing for what it wants, which is the pro­tec­tion of the rights of rapists, mur­der­ers and the most vile crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in our country.

If the busi­ness sec­tor is seri­ous about crime , it must take a page from the book of the crim­i­nal rights lobby .
That inter­est group under­stands where to train it’s fire, and so too should those of us who are opposed to the rights of crim­i­nals tak­ing prece­dent over that of the innocent.

There would be no greater and more pow­er­ful group of peo­ple in the coun­try than the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty , were they to har­ness the pos­si­bil­i­ties with­in them.
Yet the pri­vate sec­tor has not been near vocal enough in help­ing to shape the direc­tion of the coun­try through the leg­isla­tive process, out­side of instances where their imme­di­ate bot­tom lines are affected.

Their myopic inac­tion has allowed oth­ers with less hon­or­able intent to monop­o­lize the nar­ra­tive. They have been incred­i­bly suc­cess­ful in the pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion which have demon­stra­bly been harm­ful to our coun­try, chief among them the INDECOM Act.
Additionally they have been mas­ter­ful in pre­vent­ing mean­ing­ful leg­is­la­tion from com­ing to the fore which would in a seri­ous way bend the arc of crime in the direc­tion ben­e­fi­cial to our country.

As such the Nation’s Political lead­er­ship , have become scared even to sug­gest, much less to table leg­is­la­tion which would once and for all send a clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sage to crim­i­nals that their actions will no longer be tolerated.
What we end up with are small piece­meal , mealy-mouthed plat­i­tudes, loads of gib­ber­ish about human rights, when the real issue is the exis­ten­tial threat crime pos­es to our coun­try’s survival.

The self­ish­ness of the busi­ness sec­tor , and it’s inabil­i­ty to orga­nize on behalf of the coun­try from which it extracts untold wealth has cre­at­ed a one sided force.
That force has pushed admin­is­tra­tions of both par­ties ( which were nev­er gung­ho about doing some­thing about crime to begin with) into tak­ing actions or not to take actions , with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for our coun­try and our people.
The Private sec­tor must now do more than donat­ing some mon­ey to fix a police sta­tion or to pur­chase a few bicy­cles , and orga­nize into a cohe­sive force to push back against for­eign fund­ed human rights lob­by which are doing tremen­dous harm to our country.

Making these demands of the new com­mis­sion­er is ask­ing him to deliv­er that which he cannot.
The Government is ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble for tabling leg­is­la­tion and pass­ing laws which deal effec­tive­ly with crime.
The Administration can­not have it both ways, sell­ing Jamaicans on it’s slo­gan of pros­per­i­ty if the peo­ple are not alive to see it.
The admin­is­tra­tion must lead and not from behind on this all too crit­i­cal issue.