Robbery Or Larceny Bunting’s Story Just As Bad.

There has been conflicting reports of an incident involving Jamaica’s National Security Minister Peter Bunting in the Parish of Portland a few days ago.

Local news­pa­pers report­ed that Peter Bunting the Country’s National Security Minister was robbed of elec­tron­ic prop­er­ty while he was a guest at a Villa in the Parish of Portland. The reports indi­cate that some of the items were returned but no arrest has been made. Now there are sharp dif­fer­ences between a rob­bery and a break-in, which are not nec­es­sar­i­ly obvi­ous to reporters, and as such the ques­tion was posed to Bunting if there was any truth to the sto­ry that he was held up at knife point and robbed of his valuables?

Bunting answered in the neg­a­tive, vol­un­teer­ing that thieves had in fact entered a room in which friends of his were stay­ing. He went to pains to elab­o­rate that his American friends weren’t in the room at the time.

Just some clar­i­fi­ca­tion here for the media and oth­ers read­ing this, so there is no misunderstanding.

• ROBBERY: Is is the unlaw­ful tak­ing of one’s property,where the vic­tim feels threat­ened and as a result of that fear hands over his/​her prop­er­ty. It does­n’t mat­ter whether or not the assailant is armed or not as long as the vic­tim part­ed with his/​her prop­er­ty out of fear.

•Burglary: The unlaw­ful break­ing and enter­ing of a res­i­dence, at night, with intent to com­mit a felony. Entry does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean bod­i­ly entry, smash­ing a win­dow and using a stick to fish valu­ables from a dwelling , is enough to con­sti­tute entry, the tak­ing being a felony.

I was left befud­dled and per­plexed about the rea­son for the Minister’s detailed expla­na­tion about what had occurred, but with Delroy Chuck the Opposition spokesper­son on Security ques­tion­ing the verac­i­ty of Bunting’s denial it adds more to the fire of spec­u­la­tion which has start­ed to rage as to what real­ly hap­pened to Bunting.

Whatever the truth is, nei­ther of the sit­u­a­tions are par­tic­u­lar­ly good for the Minister of National Security, I’m unsure whether Bunting is mar­ried and was at a Villa with a para­mour. Initial report­ing indi­cat­ed that Bunting and a female com­pan­ion were robbed while they were pool-side, as we have indi­cat­ed Bunting has pooh-poohed that ver­sion of events, giv­ing his own ver­sion of what happened .

What is clear, irre­spec­tive of which ver­sion of events turns out to be the truth, is that not even the coun­try’s high­est secu­ri­ty offi­cial is immune from the ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty that is now com­mon-place in Jamaica.

Generally when you hear that some­thing hap­pen in Jamaica if the ver­sion of events you hear is not exact­ly the truth , be con­soled that it is not far from the truth. We will be talk­ing more about this as we col­lect some facts, we keep our ears real close to the ground.

One has to imag­ine that Bunting did not check into a run down motel, as such the ver­sion of events detailed by the Minister does absolute­ly no good to either his, or our coun­try’s stand­ing. What is clear is that, the sup­posed veil of secu­ri­ty and safe­ty, which is sup­posed to cov­er vis­i­tors to the coun­try, exist only in the minds of the coun­try’s Security Personnel, of which Bunting is the head fool.