SOE’s And ZOSO’s Lacks Necessary Viscosity Needed In Crime Fight

The roll­out of armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers and the blan­ket­ing of com­mu­ni­ties like Grange Hill In Westmoreland with secu­ri­ty per­son­nel bod­ies are cool optics and all, It may even be spec­tac­u­lar to some peo­ple who have nev­er seen a spec­ta­cle like that in those parts of the coun­try. 
In fact, the mas­sive roll­out of gov­ern­men­tal pow­er as it is may even save some lives as local shot­tas are forced to lay low for a while until they fig­ure out the logis­tics of mov­ing around unde­tect­ed to ply their macabre trade.

Ultimately though, I believe like every­one else the gov­ern­ment knows that this strat­e­gy wears thing real­ly fast. The bod­ies of police offi­cers and sol­diers alike begin to grow tired and weary, and crim­i­nals even­tu­al­ly adapt to the secu­ri­ty pres­ence and fig­ure out ways around them.
There is a prece­dent for this, despite the mas­sive deploy­ment in St James, mur­ders dis­si­pat­ed in some areas but flared up in oth­ers, and occurred even in the areas of the state of emergency(SOE).
I hate to say “I told you so” but Stevie Wonder could have seen that com­ing.


Sure the Administration has to do what­ev­er it can to stem the blood­let­tings. Failure to do so would amount to an abdi­ca­tion of its core func­tion.
Unlike the Opposition PNP which crit­i­cizes the SOE’s and ZOSO’s ini­ti­at­ed by the admin­is­tra­tion sim­ply for the sake of polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, my response is about sustainability.

Many years ago I accom­pa­nied a friend to a place in the St Ann hills. I drove my pre­cious lit­tle VW Golf which was leak­ing engine oil from an engine which had long past its prime. Unmindful of the calami­ty we were plac­ing our­selves in, we went any­way, despite the oil leak and the clat­ter and clunk from a dying engine.
We had a grand time and lat­er that night we decid­ed to head back to Kingston.
I start­ed my old jalopy and the clank­ing sound­ed loud­er than it did ear­li­er that day. We got out of the car and looked under­neath where all of the oil made a mean­der­ing pat­tern in the red St Ann dust. The last guy who looked at the oil leak had for­got­ten to tight­en the drain plug.
There was no ser­vice sta­tion around and we had no engine oil.

I thought about using cook­ing oil as a sub­sti­tute after plug­ging the drain with cloth and oth­er stuff but the only shop opened at that time of the night had no cook­ing oil. A griz­zled old reg­u­lar stand­ing near­by sug­gest­ed we use “Syrup.”.….…… >Syrup?
The lady at the shop had syrup, so straw­ber­ry syrup it was.
The syrup had enough vis­cos­i­ty to take us to Kingston. I can just imag­ine the par­ty those engine parts had at the sweet treat, nev­er­the­less, the sweet treat had to be purged from the engine and replaced with the actu­al stuff which is guar­an­teed to pro­duce the desired results.
So back to the less tasty engine oil went my old Golf, sor­ry engine parts the par­ty is over.

The ini­tial sug­ar rush to the cit­i­zens who are delight­ed to see gov­ern­ment forces, wears thin real quick when their move­ments are con­strained, busi­ness­es are forced to close ear­ly and par­ties become a thing of the past.
I am not crit­i­ciz­ing the admin­is­tra­tion for doing what it must, a‑la these stop-gap mea­sures. The polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion cer­tain­ly has no moral author­i­ty and def­i­nite­ly no stand­ing based on its prece­dent of fail­ure. When the PNP crit­i­cizes the gov­ern­ment as it has been doing, it makes its motives rather sus­pect, as it has been com­plic­it in the crim­i­nal­iz­ing and destruc­tion of our culture.

So what is the solu­tion?
The solu­tion lies not in the show of force but in a res­olute show of resolve begin­ning with new laws.
Let the bleed­ing heart frauds who opine on every issue from behind their grilled for­ti­fi­ca­tions chat to their heart’s con­tent, that’s what they do.
Let them pon­tif­i­cate about human rights and let them yap about poli­cies and pro­to­cols befit­ting Scandinavia.
The Government has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to secure the nation, and Jamaica cer­tain­ly isn’t Scandinavia.

The great­est threat to the nation’s secu­ri­ty is not the lit­tle-dis­joint­ed gangs run­ning around with Kalashnikov rifles, it is the pon­tif­i­cat­ing frauds who shape pub­lic pol­i­cy with data and direc­tion they pull out of their col­lec­tive ass­es.
There must be a strength­en­ing of the nation’s gun laws, as the secu­ri­ty forces bat­tle to find the weapons those with the pre­dis­po­si­tion to bring guns into the coun­try find new ways to avoid detec­tion.
The guns the secu­ri­ty forces recov­er must, there­fore, be seen as a mere frac­tion of the weapons and ammu­ni­tion flood­ing the coun­try from the United States, Hatia and Colombia via the drug trade.

The fight must be a gov­ern­ment to Government inter­ac­tion.
As a young police offi­cer, I spent count­less hours in the bush­es of Westmoreland and oth­er parts of the coun­try destroy­ing Ganga fields because Ronald Reagan want­ed then destroyed.
Jamaican Ganga was get­ting into the United States and many Jamaicans were get­ting rich from the weed.
Jamaican gangs across the United States had used their new found wealth to cre­ate may­hem on the streets of many US cities, it was not enough to make mon­ey they embarked on a sys­tem of wan­ton vio­lence nev­er before expe­ri­enced in cities like New York and as far away as Anchorage Alaska.
The United States took the nec­es­sary steps to cor­rect the mad­ness through the pas­sage of laws like the RICO statute and the “three strikes you are out”, laws.
Many groups crit­i­cized those laws and they admit­ted­ly weren’t per­fect, but they worked. Problems with those laws arose when law-enforce­ment and pros­e­cu­tors chose to inject race and oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions into their appli­ca­tions.
Nevertheless, the unavoid­able con­sen­sus is that those laws worked to remove those threats from the equa­tion. 

It is now time for Jamaica to demand that the United States work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with Jamaican law enforce­ment, not just to stop the guns com­ing in, but to trace the ship­ments from the US to their sources and bring the ship­pers to jus­tice.
Jamaican law enforce­ment must also exer­cise bet­ter inves­tiga­tive tech­niques which are not con­fined just to the recov­ery of the ship­ment and the adren­a­line derived from know­ing those weapons will nev­er reach the hands of mur­der­ous thugs. They must be focused more on tech­niques which fol­low ship­ments to those who receive them.

Even if the fore­gone is insti­tut­ed, those who flout the nation’s laws and wreak hav­oc on the soci­ety can sim­ply walk out on bail when arrest­ed. Jamaican judges are mini-gods account­able to them­selves.
Unless the Bail Act is redone it’s all for naught.
Subsequently, there must be leg­isla­tive changes which take from the hands of con­flict­ed judges the abil­i­ty to grant bail for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes. 
Yea, yea, guilty until proven inno­cent balder­dash, tell that to the vic­tims of vio­lent crimes and their fam­i­lies.
Tell that to those who had their loved ones snatched away from them because some punk has a gun and want to demon­strate his pow­er.
Tell that to the moth­ers who see their daugh­ters vio­lat­ed corpse lying in bush­es because some moron decid­ed that no meant yes.

Before a nation builds out its ideas of a mod­ern soci­ety and embarks on the per­fec­tion of the rights and priv­i­leges its inhab­i­tants desire and to which they are enti­tled, it has to do the hard work of first cre­at­ing a nation in which the rule of law is sacro­sanct. 
That hard work begins with a con­sti­tu­tion and a set of laws which pro­tects the inno­cent and pun­ish­es the guilty.
As long as Jamaica con­tin­ues to allow the unpun­ished assault of the weak and inno­cent and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­tects the rights of the guilty there will be no turn around from this dilem­ma the nation faces.