Senior Cop Vows To Dismantle Gangs In Hanover But Does She Have The Means To Deliver?

Newly assigned com­mand­ing offi­cer for the parish of Hanover Sharon Beeput recent­ly had this to say.

“It is our inten­tion to dis­man­tle the gangs oper­at­ing in our space”.
“I must inform that some mem­bers from those gangs [One Voice and One Link] have met their demise… Other mem­bers who are still asso­ci­at­ed with these gangs are still active with­in the spaces.”
“We do have a chal­lenge with the com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing. You might not have been see­ing them in your spaces reg­u­lar­ly, because we do have some resource chal­lenges of which the high com­mand is address­ing presently.
“Frequent raids in pub­lic spaces … just want you to be aware of this, that is going to happen.
She added that the police will also be dom­i­nat­ing pub­lic spaces such as the trans­port cen­ters and mar­kets, while fre­quent oper­a­tions tar­get­ing crim­i­nal sus­pects and oth­er per­sons of inter­est are also to continue.

Of course why not ?

Recent trends by the police, to police from behind desks, police through press releas­es, and of course oth­er car­toon style mea­sures like being DJ’s .This is what Jamaican Governments of both the JLP and the PNP has done to the JCF.

Total emas­cu­la­tion of our once proud police Force, the JCF was a force for good it is now reduced to a pathet­ic paper tiger wor­thy of ridicule and scorn.

Terrorism across the Globe is now a com­mon occurrence,just yes­ter­day ter­ror struck in the heart of London.
If we set aside the dai­ly slaugh­ter on the Island and ask our­selves what hap­pens if there is a major ter­ror attack on the Island ?Would this cast of car­toon char­ac­ters be the ones investigating?

Are we to believe that we are insu­lat­ed as a Nation to the point we should allow our­selves to be this woe­ful­ly unpre­pared to deal with attacks ?
There is noth­ing which pre­cludes us from an attack , lets wrap our minds around that fact for a sec­ond . Even if our pol­i­tics have not earned us any ene­mies who want to kill us, there are nations who have ene­mies who have assets in Jamaica.
These assets may become tar­gets for those who would use vio­lence as a means of set­tling grudges and disputes.

Gangs have lit­er­al­ly tak­en over our coun­try. They traf­fic in arms and drugs. They extort cit­i­zens. The sell young girls into slavery.
They rape and mur­der young girls and women at will. They break lit­er­al­ly every law with impunity .
Yet the Government has spent much of it efforts in com­ing up with strate­gies to fur­ther shack­le the Island’s police offi­cers under the guise of human rights.

Where will the lead­er­ship come from which will say “we will dis­man­tle these gangs” , and mean it?
Merely say­ing we know the gangs and “they are wreak­ing hav­oc in the pub­lic spaces” is a joke if you do not have the means or the know how to dis­man­tle them.

Don’t you just love the new ways of speak­ing , the repeat­ed use of the term “spaces”, which real­ly does zero to allay the fears of residents.……But I digress.
One of the things which have become abun­dant­ly clear is the fact that the JCF has not got­ten bet­ter as a result of a mas­sive influx of UWI graduates.
No one will argue that they are not more stush and pol­ished. No one can argue with their abil­i­ty to pick up on new terms to bol­ster their vocabularies.
The ques­tion is , how has this helped the coun­try in bend­ing the arc of crime?

Policing requires smart well trained ded­i­cat­ed and com­mit­ted people.
In the same way that there was harsh crit­i­cisms of ded­i­cat­ed police offi­cers with lit­tle to no edu­ca­tion, the same is jus­ti­fied with the new pack of so-called edu­cat­ed who have zero ded­i­ca­tion, lack of desire to do the job, or even the abil­i­ty to do it.
At least many of the poor­ly edu­cat­ed big foot police offi­cers were hard work­ing men and women who knew where to sniff out crim­i­nals and they damn sure knew how to keep crime down.

On a note of interest.……
I am inter­est­ed to learn just how exact­ly will this senior offi­cer dis­man­tle these gangs?
Last Year the Minister of National Security Robert Montague list­ed a set of prin­ci­ples he believes are nec­es­sary to dis­man­tle and elim­i­nate crim­i­nal Gangs.
Those prin­ci­ples are as follows:
1. Effective polic­ing through part­ner­ship with citizens.
2. Crime pre­ven­tion through social development.
3. Situational pre­ven­tion to reduce oppor­tu­ni­ties for crime and vio­lence based on the posi­tion that the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment must be planned, designed and man­aged for safety.
4. Sure and swift jus­tice process­es to avoid delays in appre­hen­sion, pro­longed pros­e­cu­tions and dilut­ed pun­ish­ment which dis­cour­age law enforcer.
5. Reduction in re-offend­ing, by redi­rect­ing offend­ers to become pro­duc­tive, law abid­ing citizens.

Here’s my take you be the judge..

(1)In order to dis­man­tle gangs the first order of busi­ness is to give unequiv­o­cal sup­port to our law-enforce­ment offi­cers and prosecutors.
(2)laws which gives pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment offi­cers a leg up in tying gang relat­ed crim­i­nal activ­i­ty togeth­er as a crim­i­nal enter­prise as the Rico statute does.(see Rico statute, https://​www​.hg​.org/​r​i​c​o​-​l​a​w​.​h​tml).
(3) Attach strict penal­ties to breach­es of anti-gang laws, and oth­er crimes which may be asso­ci­at­ed with gang activity.
(4) Improve the pros­e­cu­tion time­lines which allows courts to try offend­ers with­ing a year after they are arrested.
(5)Detailed gang intel­li­gence data collection.
(6) Attach spe­cial­ly trained Investigators to inves­ti­gate gang affil­i­a­tions and have spe­cial pros­e­cu­tors to pros­e­cute them.
(7) Anti-gang leg­is­la­tion must be such that poten­tial offend­ers are scared to even be accused of gang activity.

Unless we make crime a thing poten­tial offend­ers are afraid to com­mit, they will con­tin­ue to com­mit crimes.
I am dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to the notion that crime, and in par­tic­u­lar Gang activ­i­ty is a deriv­a­tive of pover­ty and poor socio eco­nom­ic conditions.
Sure pover­ty forces peo­ple to steal to sur­vive. Sure pover­ty forces peo­ple to hus­tle to survive.
I am yet to hear a cohe­sive argu­ment from the lib­er­als who argue that gang activ­i­ty and mur­der is a deriv­a­tive of poverty.
As I have said before, a sim­ple response to that line of rea­son­ing is that there are nations which are far more impov­er­ished, than Jamaica, and which has far low­er stan­dards of liv­ing yet they have expo­nen­tial­ly less seri­ous crimes.