You can package a dead Rat in a box, wrap the box in pretty Christmas wrapping paper, then place a pretty bow on it, but in the box is still the corpse of a dead Rat that will eventually smell up the damn place.
The idea of SOEs and ZOSOs as a permanent crime-fighting strategy is as stupid and retarded as the people whose ideas they are.
Throwing groups of soldiers and police into so-called hotspots to show that crime will go down in that area while ignoring and refusing to acknowledge the rise of violence in other areas is both duplicitous and dangerous.
This is not rocket science; drop a huge rock into a small pool, it displaces some of the water from the pool. The displaced water does not cease to exist; it exists in a different place. So are criminals displaced by the security forces not forced out of their activities; they move their operations to other areas.
The violent crime data coming from the same police department supports this irrefutable fact.
https://mikebeckles.com/what-happened-to-jamaica-we-once-had-leaders-didnt-we/
Since the Island’s (“so-called independence”), both political parties have played politics with national security when in power; they play the same childish and dangerous games with national security when in opposition.
This has not stopped; the present administration unable and unwilling to take the necessary steps to stop the slide into total lawlessness, still plays politics with the SOEs & ZOSOs, hoping to pull the wool over the people’s eyes.
The opposition party desperate to gain power plays the same dangerous games.
In the meantime, the dead Rat stinks to high heaven- Gangsters openly play war games, putting on display for all to see the awesome arsenal they have at their disposal.
And while we are at it, might I add that this year’s murder statistics have already surpassed last year’s gruesome total, yet the Government still maddeningly talks about the successes of ZOSOs & SOEs.
Incompetent and clueless, complicit and acquiescent, or both, you decide.
https://mikebeckles.com/neither-political-party-in-jamaica-interested-in-controlling-violent-criminals/
The failed strategy of ZOSOs & SOEs can be quantified in the irrefutable facts I laid out. Ultimately, the administration’s go-to strategy does not reduce crime overall, burns out the security forces, and infringes in a burdensome way on the rights of innocent Jamaicans for far too long.
But there are also exponentially more unseen negatives that competent security strategists [must] foresee and plan to offset.
It must register in the minds of the nation’s leaders, for christ’s sake, that soldiers at checkpoints on a small Island of 2.8 million people are not normal. It is a dystopian nightmare that allows politicians to continue to lie to the people to remain in power.
In a recent article, I spoke to the quality of leadership at the highest levels of the nation’s security apparatus; second rate.
I spoke to the members of the police high command, including the Commissioner of police, holding a panel discussion at which top commanders of the JCF spoke of the virtues of ZOSOs & SOEs. I pointed out that I was not the least bit surprised that the police high command was parroting the government’s talking points. Conversely, I would be surprised if they had grown a backbone and chosen not to.
Ultimately it is up to the head of the Police and Military to execute the Government’s National Security Strategy. With that in mind, I will not fault the Government directly for what happened to a young soldier of the Jamaica Defense Force at a checkpoint last week.
Jamaica Defense Force Private Jermaine Rose was hit at a checkpoint that was obviously manned by him, and another soldier, the driver of the vehicle that broke both his legs, among other serious injuries in Greenwood Saint James, left him bedridden today.
The 29-year-old told the media from his bed at JDF Headquarters Up Park Camp that they heard gunshots on the night of the incident while he and his colleagues were on duty sometime after midnight. The two soldiers decided to check the vehicles that were passing.
He recounted, “at around 12:30 [am], we saw four cars approaching the checkpoint and we tried to slow them down, and they stopped for a second and then dem tek time approach the checkpoint…, and then they were driving cross and cross in the road,” recounted the Tower Hill, St Andrew resident.“They (the cars) tried to hit down one of my colleagues first, and he jumped out the road, and just as I was about to jump [out of the road], a car hit me and broke my two feet and dislocated my right hand,” he said. According to Rose, the vehicle’s impact on his body resulted in him being flung in the air and landing on the sidewalk. The car did not stop.
Under what plausible scenario could security planners place young men and women into volatile situations like these without the proper support structure to ensure that this could not happen and the offender is not immediately apprehended?
Police work is inherently dangerous,-yes police work, that’s what the soldiers were out there doing without police training.
Common sense dictates that if there are checkpoints, there must be adequate resources, i.e., enough officers with assets and vehicles ready for any offender who would try to breach the checkpoint.
The idea of a checkpoint only makes sense if those manning them can enforce every aspect of those checkpoints.
Assuming that the motorists had something to do with the shots the soldiers heard, what incentive would they have to stop and be searched and arrested at a sad-sack checkpoint manned by a couple of soldiers on foot?
In a country of laws, the leaders who placed the lives of these young people in that situation would have been subject to an inquiry and brought up on charges.
We know that this will be shrugged away by the political leaders as nothing to be alarmed about; however, if the events happening in our country do not alarm the Jamaican people, I have no idea what will.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.