Seven Killed In A Matter Of Hours In St Jam

Killings con­tin­ue unabat­ed in Jamaica with the Parish of Saint James tak­ing over as the Murder Parish from St Catherine, St. Andrew and Clarendon which usu­al­ly jock­ey for that dubi­ous distinction.
Within a 24 hour-peri­od 6 peo­ple met their demise in the parish . The Mayor of Montego Bay Glendon Harris opined that even if a police offi­cer was placed in every yard it would prob­a­bly not make a difference..
That’s sur­ren­der­ing to Criminals.
Yet that state­ment is reveal­ing as well, for years this writer have said there are actu­al­ly no strate­gies in place geared at effec­tive­ly cur­tail­ing the flood of killings and oth­er seri­ous crimes.

The Minister of National Security Peter Bunting toured the Parish after the seri­ous blood-let­ting final­ly woke him from his slum­ber. Bunting promised res­i­dents of affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties that more Police Officers would be forth­com­ing to plug the Dyke.
Now I know you did not miss the dis­con­nect between the two offi­cials on the issue.
The Mayor said even if a police offi­cer was placed in every yard it prob­a­bly would not stop the bleed­ing. I agree with him. I agree because the very premise of a strat­e­gy which places an offi­cer in every yard would indeed be a strat­e­gy of sur­ren­der and weak­ness. I will how­ev­er come back to this point in the inter­est of clar​i​ty​.At the same time the Minister was promis­ing more offi­cers as one of the solu­tions to the prob­lem. Now some­where in all of this con­fu­sion is a deficit of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and under­stand­ing . Will more police help or wont it?

Additionally the Minister is sched­uled to head to Washington DC to meet with State Department Officials on the issue of the Lotto scam­ming his Ministry points to as a rea­son for the violence.
Can any­one say out of ideas?

I want­ed to come back to the non-strat­e­gy which the Mayor stat­ed prob­a­bly would not make a dif­fer­ence. That would be the strat­e­gy of plac­ing an offi­cer in every yard.
Yes I know he was speak­ing hypo­thet­i­cal­ly, but his com­ments reveals a deep­er sense of hope­less­ness which is cer­tain­ly not lost on the crim­i­nal underworld.
Additionally, the Minister’s Statements that he would be seek­ing US State Department help goes to the heart of my con­tin­ued argu­ments that the Administration has no strat­e­gy of it’s own to com­bat crime.
Subsequently Crime has gal­loped out of con­trol. The noise you hear from the Minister and the Mayor is one of exas­per­a­tion and fright.
The fecal mat­ter is begin­ning to hit the fan.

Many years ago as a young Constable sta­tioned at the Mobile Reserve they would send us to pro­vide pro­tec­tion to a woman and her fam­i­ly. The woman lived some­where in Eastern Kingston and was a PNP func­tionary. The woman was an ordi­nary per­son against whom death threats were alleged­ly made by polit­i­cal rivals. Apart from the fact that I absolute­ly resent­ed being her per­son­al body­guard on the occa­sions I was sent to guard her per­son and home. I resent­ed even more the regres­sive strat­e­gy of stand­ing or sit­ting at some­one’s home to pro­tect their life and prop­er­ty as against what ought to rea­son­ably be done ..
I felt like a sit­ting duck when I was there. I nev­er knew the nature of the threat the oth­er offi­cer and I faced while we were there . And I cer­tain­ly did not believe sit­ting around wait­ing to be attacked was a work­able strategy.
So what is a young Constable to do?
I told them if you have me down to go back there I will not go and you can do what you want to do.
My stance had noth­ing to do with the lady’s pol­i­tics. She was a very ami­able woman.
It had noth­ing to do with whether I believe she was enti­tled to police pro­tec­tion. As a tax­pay­ing cit­i­zen of Jamaica she absolute­ly was enti­tled to protection.
She was­n’t enti­tled to have me as a per­son­al body­guard, and on that basis I refused to be a sit­ting duck wait­ing to be attacked. It was­n’t the wom­an’s fault that the police hier­ar­chy saw that approach as a work­able strat­e­gy, young cops lives be damned. The issue was that the police hier­ar­chy saw that as a work­able strat­e­gy at the expense of police offi­cer’s lives.
I was not about to be a casu­al­ty in a war I did not start, want­ed no part of and cer­tain­ly did not understand.

Fighting crime has many sim­i­lar­i­ties with fight­ing a war. What is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica is a war. In 2010 the World saw up close what

Jamaica’s mer­ce­nar­ies looked like when it took the Nation’s Defense Force to top­ple a sin­gle drug kingpin.
This is no jok­ing matter.
Throughout History many Nations built walls and great for­ti­fi­ca­tions to pro­tect them­selves. Ironically ‚regard­less of the strength of those for­ti­fi­ca­tions smarter more deter­mined ene­mies need­ed only be patient to starve out res­i­dents of those for­ti­fied cities.
Historically speak­ing, the Armies which craft­ed great Empires were the Armies which pushed the bound­aries of Conventionalism.
Those his­tor­i­cal­ly great Armies were not con­tent to sit behind high walls wait­ing to be attacked, they sought out their ene­mies and destroyed them on their turf.
A sim­i­lar break with con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is ful­ly applic­a­ble to Jamaica’s crime prob­lem. Under the lead­er­ship of the Rt. Honorable Hugh Lawson Shearer crim­i­nals knew where they stood.
They stood on slip­pery slopes pre­cip­i­tous­ly doing their bal­anc­ing acts. Other Jamaicans like Dudley Thompson came and went they talked tough on crime but at the same time they were per­fect­ing the craft of polit­i­cal thug­gery. None had the cred­i­bil­i­ty of Shearer.
No, not Edward Seaga.
Tivoli Gardens. Seaga’s attempt at social engi­neer­ing became a love-child which blind­ed his eyes and took down a Prime Minister.

The con­tin­ued killings in Jamaica is not just a police issue it is a polit­i­cal issue. For decades Jamaicans have been allowed to treat the Nation’s laws with impuni­ty. So too have law enforce­ment offi­cers been treat­ed with­out prop­er regard. The Legislative process failed to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion with appro­pri­ate laws. The Liberal Court System took advan­tage of the lax­i­ty, using it’s perch as a plat­form for it’s own agenda.
The Police fol­lowed suit, when the hier­ar­chy could muster the strength to pull it’s head from the rear-end of the Political class the remain­der of it’s time was spent per­se­cut­ing it’s subordinates.
Apathy and dis­re­spect drove good cops away in droves. The rest con­tin­ued on becom­ing a force mul­ti­pli­er, cre­at­ing more of it’s use­less self.
That mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of use­less­ness cre­at­ed mas­sive cor­rup­tion among all ranks. Which cre­at­ed INDECOM.
The new INDECOM fresh-faced and bushy-tail is hav­ing to face none of the dan­gers yet it receives all of the praise . For those famil­iar with Jamaicans. the ene­my of the police is auto­mat­i­cal­ly my friend.
INDECOM is exu­ber­ant and relent­less with it’s new found pow­er, as it posi­tions itself as defend­er of the defense­less it demands more and more pow­er to go after those killer cops[sic].

The Nation is delight­ed , what’s not to like?
Finally the likkle police bway dem anda mannaz.
Of course none of this miss­es the crim­i­nal under­world. Yet the know it all pompous lit­tle jack­ass­es from the Intellectual ghet­to prances around offer­ing opin­ions on stuff they know noth­ing about as they cow­er in fear behind lay­ers and lay­ers of grill fortifications.
How long before the for­ti­fi­ca­tions become a death trap ?
Time will tell.