Six Months Of Policing Our Way And Real Jamaicans Can Judge For Themselves.….

There is a State of Emergency in St James Parish, [no scratch that] it is now (enhanced secu­ri­ty), we can­not for­get that.
Remember that the forty-six-year-old (46) Prime Minister Andrew Holness prides him­self in remind­ing us that he is from a new Generation with dif­fer­ent ideas. Not to for­get also that right there in Salem St James was the very first so-called (ZOSO) ini­ti­at­ed, we are not sure how that is pan­ning out.

There is also a brouha­ha brew­ing about the appoint­ment of an act­ing Chief Justice, in the per­son of Justice Bryan Sykes for the Supreme Court. Now all of the Constitutional experts, Clergy, and polit­i­cal pun­dits have come out with their opin­ions of dire con­se­quences as a result of the PM’s actions.
Yadda, yad­da the sky is falling, when in actu­al­i­ty there is absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with the Prime Minister installing an act­ing Supreme Court chief jus­tice while a search is fine-tuned. One which should not exclude the emi­nent Justice Sykes.
The argu­ment that the search should have been going on ahead of time as the term lim­its of sit­ting chief jus­tices is well known is a legit­i­mate debate to have.

In the mean­time, the crime sit­u­a­tion is cen­ter stage, as the search is sup­pos­ed­ly in earnest for a new Commissioner of Police after Commissioner George Quallo decid­ed he could no longer car­ry the bas­ket he was giv­en to car­ry water.
Even as the search is in earnest for a Commissioner the Police Service Commission’s [PSC’s] mem­ber­ship is yet to be decided.
Local media Reports indi­cate the Prime Minister will make the appoint­ments soon with Professor Gordon Shirley, as chair­man. Dr. Marshall Hall. Retired Rear Admiral Peter Brady.Reverend Dr. Maitland Evans. And Anthony Harriott. The dis­re­spect­ful fraud who recent­ly labeled the entire police depart­ment “tox­ic” Has not issued an apol­o­gy nor has he been asked to.

Of note is the not too dif­fi­cult to spot slight, that of all of the retired com­mis­sion­ers and oth­er senior-lev­el retired offi­cers in the coun­try, no one is being con­sid­ered to serve on the commission.
This fits into the nar­ra­tive of Andrew Holness’s dis­dain for the police and may be summed up with local media push­ing for a mil­i­tary leader to be once again placed in charge of the police department.
To do some­thing once, and fail is, .….…… well not prob­lem­at­ic. To do the very same thing and expect a dif­fer­ent result from the first is sil­ly. To attempt the same a third time is utter­ly stu­pid and bone­head­ed some­thing I do not place out­side Holness’s modus operandi.

If they think that crime is high now let them place anoth­er sol­dier above the men and women in the JCF and they will see what God they are serving.
In fact, local media is ecsta­t­ic about their sup­port for a mem­ber of the mil­i­tary by point­ing to the JDF’s report­ing on the State of Emergency in St James.
They are gid­dy that in some instances the police offi­cers are cut out of brief­ing frames.
This, the media claim is as a result of police corruption.This writer did not miss it,I report­ed on it weeks ago.

The fal­la­cy of this chaos and dis­re­spect is summed up in an arti­cle writ­ten for the [Observer] by a local faith leader (monikered H Morgan)

Nothing that we have tried thus far has worked to per­ma­nent­ly quell the ram­pant spate of mur­ders that has for too long held our beau­ti­ful island home in a vice-like grip of fear and under­de­vel­op­ment. The many crime stud­ies and crime plans have not worked. Changing the Government, min­is­ters of nation­al secu­ri­ty and com­mis­sion­ers of police has not worked. Change in leg­is­la­tion, along with the intro­duc­tion of harsh­er penal­ties, has not worked. Killer cops who alleged­ly oper­at­ed death squads have not worked. Security oper­a­tions and cur­fews have not worked. Zones of spe­cial oper­a­tion have not worked, except in the imme­di­ate locale where they have been imple­ment­ed. Now, the Government has imposed a state of pub­lic emer­gency in the parish of St James. But past expe­ri­ence with this par­tic­u­lar response sug­gests that it too will not work. We are left with prayer but we have been pray­ing for a long time.

Now there is so much wrong here which I will address but it is impor­tant to grasp that this min­is­ter believes that the answer to the nation’s crime prob­lem lies in ( Pleading with dons, gun­men and shottas ).
Mind you these are the folks who are shap­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy, the peo­ple’s opin­ions that are lis­tened to on the Island.
More impor­tant­ly, it is that mind­set which guides the PrimeMinister’s think­ing. Shockingly this UWI indoc­tri­nat­ed ide­o­logue bone­head­ed­ly believes that there is a way to stop the doped up mon­sters with­out squash­ing them like bugs.

To begin with, the entire lay­out of fail­ures which this Parson claimed have not worked, absolute­ly could not work with­in the frame­work of the decrepit sys­tem which exists in the country.
Placing beau­ti­ful antique fur­ni­ture in a leaky old house result in destroyed antiques.
After all of their advo­ca­cy, the best we have now is prayer and plead­ings with dons and shottas?
In what coun­try does the gov­ern­ment beg crim­i­nals to stop killing people?
I say give us a chance. I echo for­mer SSP Adams, six-months, that’s it.
See that these are not real gang­sters, not real thugs but snivel­ing lit­tle bitch­es who are allowed to do as they please because the Government refus­es to car­ry out its pri­ma­ry func­tion of pro­tect­ing the nation from these punks..

Set anger aside, I feel drained, total­ly emp­ty, that this is where we are on this when the solu­tions to the crime sit­u­a­tion are right in front of our eyes.
The idea that all have failed is not the prob­lem, the issue is that they con­tin­ue to be stuck in the mind­set that the things they tried were, in fact, use­ful solu­tions to the problem.
The 46-year-old Holness, a prod­uct of the University of the West Indies him­self, was raised to have no respect for the police. His rhetoric has not only demon­strat­ed that dis­re­spect it has demon­strat­ed his will­ing­ness to con­tin­ue on this fools-fol­ly of a gloved hand approach he has been on.

RECOURSE

This writer has sub­mit­ted a (12 point plan out­line) to the Government which I have offered as a frame­work to begin a dis­cus­sion on in assess­ing how the crime Monster may begin to be tamed. Since then oth­er plans have emerged to include the PNP’s plan(which I haven’t seen ), as well as a plan sub­mit­ted by for­mer Deputy Commissioner of Police Mark Shields a British cit­i­zen who was sec­ond­ed to Jamaica.
Shield’s plan sound­ed eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of a plan already in the pub­lic space but I digress.

MY PLAN

(1) Shore up the ports of entry, effec­tive­ly stop­ping the guns com­ing in illic­it­ly and hold those gains.

(2) Tactically cor­don the areas to be searched then go in with trained Dogs to find the weapons and arrest offenders.

(3) Stagger where the secu­ri­ty forces go at any giv­en time, it should not be based sole­ly on the area with the high­est num­ber of killings.
By doing so you min­i­mize the like­li­hood that your next move can be anticipated. 

(4) Remove from the Prime Minister the pow­er to decide where the secu­ri­ty forces go in the ZOSO.
It mat­ters not that the PM sup­pos­ed­ly acts on the advice of the Security Council.
This Act hyper politi­cizes polic­ing and gives the next par­ty to hold pow­er the abil­i­ty to engage in tit-for-tat using the secu­ri­ty forces to car­ry out their nefar­i­ous bidding.
As long as secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions are green-light­ed by politi­cians those oper­a­tions stand to be politicized. 

(5) Stop the grant­i­ng of bail to accused mur­der­ers and oth­er dan­ger­ous felons. An inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry is extreme­ly impor­tant to any democ­ra­cy, yet the judi­cia­ry can­not oper­ate with­out account­abil­i­ty to the people.
Judges can­not be allowed to release crim­i­nals as they see fit while argu­ing bail is not a penal­ty, there are built-ins in the Bail act to keep vio­lent offend­ers behind bars.

(6) Stop dem­a­gogu­ing the secu­ri­ty forces. Give the Police the assur­ance they need that the Government and oppo­si­tion sup­port their efforts.
Use the air­waves to edu­cate the peo­ple about the ben­e­fits of adher­ing to the rule of law. Make it clear to crim­i­nals they have no safe haven.
Demand greater account­abil­i­ty from the Police high command.

(7) Stop giv­ing the nation the impres­sion that effec­tive hard-nosed polic­ing which arrest crim­i­nals and places them in jail is anti­thet­i­cal to cit­i­zens human rights.
The great­est right a per­son has is the right to life. You have no right if you are dead, as such the coun­try must place it focus­es on remov­ing from its midst the mind­less killers and throw its sup­port behind law enforcement.

(8) Citizens must be edu­cat­ed to desist from cor­rupt­ing pub­lic offi­cials, to report police and oth­er pub­lic offi­cials who ask for bribes.
Do not offer to bribe pub­lic offi­cials. Repeal the INDECOM Act, debate and pass a new law with safe­guards for the police. Ensure that the agency is total­ly unbi­ased and neutral.

(9) Enact truth in sen­tenc­ing for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes.
Mandatory 25 years to life for mur­der, 20 years for all crimes com­mit­ted with a gun.
This is absolute­ly nec­es­sary since the nation’s lead­ers have decid­ed to go against the wish­es of the peo­ple and have declared a mora­to­ri­um on hanging.
Twenty years min­i­mum for any crimes com­mit­ted using a firearm.

(10) Look at the US Rico statute, and draft a law which mod­els that statute effec­tive­ly pros­e­cut­ing gang­sters as a crim­i­nal enter­prise as the Rico Statute does.

(11) Institute Mandatory National Identification pro­gram, law enforce­ment needs to be able to iden­ti­fy each and every Jamaican.

(12) Remove all polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence from law enforce­ment. What this admin­is­tra­tion is doing is even more polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence not less.