Special Crime Zones Bill Will Be Cotton Candy: Taste Good Bad For You…

The recent­ly tabled (Law Reform (Zones of Special Operations) (Special Security and Community Development Measures) Act, 2017” )oth­er­wise called the (“spe­cial crime zones Bill”) was passed in the house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives last night.
The process is not over, there is a process which includes the Senate debat­ing and vot­ing on it , then to the Governor General for his sig­na­ture before it becomes law.
If Delroy Chuck has any­thing to do with it,-it is guar­an­teed to be anoth­er paper tiger.

Simultaneously, the month of June has been the most vio­lent in 7 years. The police reports ‚141 per­sons were killed up to Tuesday June 27^th.
That num­ber rep­re­sents the largest num­ber of per­sons to be killed in Jamaica since 2010 in a sin­gle month.

Now that the bill has gar­nered some sem­blance of bi-par­ti­san sup­port ‚there are enough rea­sons to believe it may actu­al­ly become law despite my per­son­al mis­giv­ings about it’s ulti­mate success.
As I said in a recent Article the fact that the likes of the PNP’s Paul Burke is sup­port­ing the bill is not only a sign of the times, but a glar­ing exam­ple Jamaica’s crime prob­lem has reached crit­i­cal mass.

The vil­lage lawyers are already out with their ill-informed prog­nos­ti­ca­tions. They will talk about the poten­tial for police abuse . They will talk about past instances of abuse. They will even talk about the press­ing need for restraint, because some­how we must pro­tect the human rights of crim­i­nals and their supporters.
What the Monday Morning quar­ter­backs won’t talk about is the fact that the coun­try is a ver­i­ta­ble zone of exclu­sion for law abid­ing people.
Decent law abid­ing cit­i­zens are lit­er­al­ly liv­ing , in fear that the next per­son killed may be them.

In response to the bill ‚the PNP’s Paul Burke spoke elo­quent­ly in a sin­gle statement.
“Our rights have already been tak­en away…I have wit­nessed first-hand the lev­el of fear…I used to be able to go across many com­mu­ni­ties, I am [now] reluc­tant to do so” .
Burke’s state­ments came in response to his par­ty’s con­tin­ued harangu­ing, and hid­ing behind the issue of human rights as a rea­son for not sup­port­ing anti-crime initiatives.

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the debate the Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said “The truth is that the Jamaican State only exists in some areas of Jamaica, and so from a nation­al secu­ri­ty point of view we want to ensure that every square inch of Jamaica has some pres­ence of the Jamaican State,” he said. “We are accept­ing it as the norm, and we are nor­mal­iz­ing a sit­u­a­tion that should nev­er be nor­mal,”
This is a remark­able state­ment from the Jamaican Prime Minister.
In that state­ment he acknowl­edged that Jamaica is now a frac­tured coun­try in which state pow­er exists only in some areas.
For the record Jamaica is an approx­i­mate 4411 square miles and a pop­u­la­tion of 2,7 mil­lion people.
That is a pro­found admis­sion. We have been warn­ing against this for years.

Now grant­ed that Holness just recent­ly seemed to have had this brush with real­i­ty , a con­tact aware­ness which may have hap­pened because of the num­ber of dead bod­ies , nonethe­less this writer feels oblig­at­ed to wel­come him to the plan­et real­i­ty.[sic]

According to Jamaican media 712 peo­ple were report­ed killed from the start of the year to June 27^th.
If that trend hold the coun­try is on track to record over 1400 homi­cides for the year. Those mur­der num­bers are much clos­er to the year 2005 than a sit­u­a­tion in which the coun­try’s homi­cide num­bers are being checked.

Now of all the idi­ot­ic, sil­ly things I have heard in this crime con­ver­sa­tion, noth­ing piss­es me off more than the request Tourism Minister Ed Bartlett made. Bartlett wants the local media to bury the crime num­bers in the nether regions of their publications.
This idi­ot­ic nar­ra­tive has tak­en on legs , not sur­pris­ing­ly , many Jamaicans believe hid­ing bad news is okay, as long as they are not killed while they are hav­ing cur­ry goat and rice, Guinness stout and Ganja. Many are not too con­cerned about the dead bod­ies they step over to get to the party .

I per­son­al­ly wel­come this bit of leg­is­la­tion ‚the “special crime zones Bill” ‚even though I am under no illu­sion that it will do much to take back the streets from the gangs which now rule them.
But because it seem to indi­cate an awak­en­ing of the peo­ple who run the coun­try to the grim real­i­ties of the time .

I dis­agree with the intent of the bill , I doubt when it becomes law it will be suc­cess­ful because the bill will be focus­ing on com­mu­ni­ties not indi­vid­u­als and entities.
When the secu­ri­ty forces swoop down on cer­tain areas as des­ig­nat­ed by the prime min­is­ter or whomev­er that author­i­ty is , it can almost be guar­an­teed they will not be swoop­ing down on Cherry Gardens or Norbrook.
They will not swoop down on Jacks Hill or up on Stillwell Road.

Based on that alone poor­er peo­ple who are con­fined to sec­tions of Three Miles, of Rema, Olimpic Gardens or Payne avenue will be penal­ized for being poor.
If the so-called human rights advo­cates want to make that argu­ment I am all for sign­ing on to that narrative.
What I will have no patience for ‚is the gib­ber­ish from those who talk about human rights for killers but have no com­pas­sion or empa­thy for crime victims.
This is why I con­tin­ue to speak about the val­ue of what Los Pepes did in Colombia.

Any effec­tive strat­e­gy which will have a pos­i­tive impact on Jamaica’s bur­geon­ing ter­ror prob­lem must begin with…

♦The under­stand­ing that whats going on is terrorism.
♦ Remove the hand­cuffs from the hands of the good police offi­cers, and place them on those of crim­i­nal cops.
♦ Fire Terrence Williams , repeal INDECOM, and replace it with a law and lead­er­ship which is not in con­flict with police , but roots out dirty cops.
♦ Ignore for­eign Government’s opin­ion of how we enforce our laws and what laws we pass to gov­ern our country.
♦ Make mon­ey avail­able and begin the task of train­ing enough detectives .

♦ Infiltrate the gangs.
♦ Take from judges hands the pow­er to deter­mine sen­tence in gun crimes( truth in sentences).
♦ Hire more judges who under­stand their roles as inter­preters of the law , not lawmakers.
♦ Hire more, (and )com­pe­tent prosecutors.
♦ Hire Judges who were prosecutors.

♦ Fast-track court cas­es so that jus­tice may be served and cit­i­zens may once again have con­fi­dence in the state to deliv­er justice.
♦ Get politi­cian’s grub­by lit­tle fin­gers off law enforce­ment by cre­at­ing a sys­tem of checks and balances.
♦ enact seri­ous laws which puts crim­i­nals caught with a gun in prison for a min­i­mum of two years, grant­ed the weapon was nev­er used in the com­mis­sion of a homi­cide or assault.
♦ In the event the weapon was involved in a n assault or Robbery the penal­ty should be twen­ty years in Prison.

♦ A crim­i­nal caught with a weapon , or who used a gun in the com­mis­sion of a homi­cide, the penal­ty should be life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
♦ Improve account­abil­i­ty in the JCF , using the CompStat  sys­tem , short for COMPuter STATistics), a sys­tem if applied judi­cious­ly and hon­est­ly cre­ates best prac­tices of account­abil­i­ty for Police Commanders. If you aren’t mea­sur­ing it, how do you know if you are fail­ing or succeeding?
♦ Create in the JCF and élite task-force to inves­ti­gate while col­lar crimes , that includes every Jamaican, no one is above the laws.
♦ It’s time for a nation­al Identification data­base, cre­ate one.

Jamaica must remove some of the voic­es from the debate if this thing is to be resolved . Many of the loud­est voic­es push­ing back against reform and solu­tions based sug­ges­tions, are the peo­ple ben­e­fit­ing from the cul­ture of crime on the Island.
This law will not do a damn thing to bring mur­der down, mur­der­ers will sim­ply slith­er out of what­ev­er zones are des­ig­nat­ed at a giv­en time, and move to oth­er areas as they did in 2010.