Special Security And Community Development Measures Act, 2017 ‚a Shit Sandwich With A Different Wrapper… A Bullshit Sandwich Wrapped In Flowery Napkin…

SERIOUS ESCALATION

On March 24^th police offi­cers turned up at a home in Armadale, Alexandria, St Ann to arrest Sadan Mullings, also called ‘Saddam’, and his crony, Nickoy Treleven, who were both want­ed for a string of mur­ders and shoot­ings in west­ern Jamaica.
According to local media reports before police offi­cers could sur­round the house the fugi­tives report­ed­ly threw two grenades from the build­ing and exit­ed with guns blaz­ing at the officers.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​i​s​-​i​s​-​n​o​t​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​t​h​e​y​-​h​a​v​e​-​d​e​c​l​a​r​e​d​-​w​a​r​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​s​t​a​te/

One of the grenades report­ed­ly failed to det­o­nate, one police offi­cer was injured by the oth­er which explod­ed send­ing shrap­nel fly­ing in all direc­tions, the injured offi­cer was tak­en to hos­pi­tal with a piece of shrap­nel lodged in his chest. Treleven was found some dis­tance from the build­ing suf­fer­ing from gun­shot wounds. He lat­er died.
Residents were stunned at the gun­fire and explo­sion from the grenade which jolt­ed them out of their sleep just after midnight.
 https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​u​s​t​-​a​n​o​t​h​e​r​-​d​a​y​-​o​f​-​g​r​e​n​a​d​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​d​e​a​d​-​c​o​p​s​-​w​e​l​c​o​m​e​-​t​o​-​j​a​m​a​i​ca/

Despite this rad­i­cal esca­la­tion , (not of the assault on law enforce­ment, assault on the police is a dai­ly occur­rence), but in terms of the weapon­ry in the arse­nal of the crim­i­nal under­world there was no state­ment from the government.

COP MURDERED

On Friday March 24^th a police offi­cer was shot dead in Frankfield, Clarendon after he attempt­ed to stop a rob­bery while on his way home. The police say 37-year-old Corporal Kevin McLean was on his way home at about 7:40 pm when he wit­nessed men rob­bing two Chinese nation­als. Corporal McLean attempt­ed to inter­vene and the gun­men opened fire, hit­ting him. He was rushed to the hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead.
The Government was death­ly silent.

Jamaica aver­ages 100 mur­ders per month. That’s an aver­age of 1200 hun­dred homi­cides per year . That fig­ure does not include peo­ple who are shot, stabbed or oth­er­wise assault­ed which result in death at a lat­er date. The police report­ed there were 1192 mur­ders report­ed to them in 2015 . That fig­ure rep­re­sent­ed a 20% increase in homi­cides over the year 2014.

Jamaica had about 45 killings per 100,000 peo­ple in 2015. This makes Jamaica one of the most vio­lent coun­tries in the world. The United Nations lists the island as hav­ing the world’s sixth-worst homi­cide rate. For it’s part the World Bank ranked Jamaica in the top five most mur­der­ous coun­tries in the world in 2013. By com­par­i­son, Chicago, which has rough­ly the same pop­u­la­tion as Jamaica at 2.7 mil­lion, had 468 killings in 2015.

In 2005 the Island record­ed over 1600 homi­cides. Those homi­cide num­bers must be viewed with­ing the con­text of oth­er seri­ous crimes like shoot­ings, wound­ing. rapes and oth­er vio­lent felonies. Those oth­er crimes which does not result in death, vast­ly out­num­ber the homi­cide num­bers. Added togeth­er crime is a very very seri­ous issue on the Island.
In brief Jamaica is an extreme­ly vio­lent mur­der­ous place.

This lev­el of vio­lence makes Jamaica unique­ly chal­leng­ing to police.
With all of their ills and what has been writ­ten about them , Jamaican police do the best they can with the hand they are dealt by the polit­i­cal class.
The irony of the Jamaican expe­ri­ence is that the major­i­ty, which is the poor­er class, large­ly do not under­stand the crip­pling neg­a­tive effect crime, cor­rup­tion and vio­lence has on their lives.
The rul­ing elites are in no hur­ry to con­vince them of those facts.

The Prime Minister, just over a year in office, seem to begin to under­stand that his much vaunt­ed cam­paign promis­es of “pros­per­i­ty” will have as much chance of becom­ing a real­i­ty as a snow­ball in hell, has been talk­ing about a new leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tive on crime.
While cam­paign­ing, Holness promised Jamaicans would be able to sleep with their doors open at nights.
Since tak­ing office crime has gone up 20%.
Neither the present crime sit­u­a­tion nor the esca­la­tion should be laid at the feet of the Prime Minister .
Not just yet !
Nevertheless Andrew Holness is the guy with the big desk at which the buck stops.
Holness seem to care more about appeas­ing the pha­lanx of human rights orga­ni­za­tions which has set up shop in the coun­try rather than attend to the exis­ten­tial crime prob­lem fac­ing the country.

The fol­low­ing is the text of state­ments the Prime Minister gave on new Legislative mech­a­nisms his admin­is­tra­tion is putting in place to deal with crime.
It is impor­tant to note that one of the hall­mark of the Prime Minister’s ini­tia­tive is that the police will be allowed to car­ry out raids and oth­er activ­i­ties in cer­tain areas des­ig­nat­ed Zones of Special Operations.
I believe we all know those so called zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions will mean the most depressed and impov­er­ished communities.
It is worth men­tion­ing that the vast major­i­ty of the crimes being com­mit­ted are not ran­dom crimes but are rather crimes which spin off from the Lotto scam and gang activities.

It’s also impor­tant to note that these crimes gen­er­al­ly have noth­ing to do with the poor­est of our peo­ple who nei­ther benef from the lot­to scam or gang activ­i­ty in any sig­nif­i­cant way.
But the most strik­ing thing about the Prime Ministers piece of leg­is­la­tion, the Special Security and Community Development Measures Act, 2017 , is that it is not a crime fight­ing tool giv­en to the Police to aid them in fight­ing the scourge of heinous crimes and ter­ror which is engulf­ing the Island.
It is a gift to the so-called Human Rights and pres­sure groups arrayed in the Island against the rule of law under the dis­guise of rights.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness, says mech­a­nisms will be put in place to ensure that cit­i­zens’ rights are not vio­lat­ed dur­ing oper­a­tions.This is specif­i­cal­ly in rela­tion to plans for the des­ig­na­tion of zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions for secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment in areas with high lev­els of crime. Responding to ques­tions posed by jour­nal­ists dur­ing his post-Budget Debate pre­sen­ta­tion press con­fer­ence at the Office of the Prime Minister on March 22, the Holness not­ed that under the new mea­sures, spe­cif­ic mem­bers from the Jamaica Defence Force and the Jamaica Constabulary Force will be select­ed to form a joint com­mand to car­ry out oper­a­tions in these communities.

This is not a crime fight­ing tool for the Police and mil­i­tary to root out the killers who prey on the innocent.
This is Tivoli Gardens 2.0 .
In the address the Prime Minister made not a sin­gle men­tion of the fact that our police offi­cers face the most dan­ger­ous weapons includ­ing grenades.
He made no men­tion of the fact that just days ago a police offi­cer was bru­tal­ly slaugh­tered after he inter­vened to stop a rob­bery in Clarendon.
There is no men­tion of the police offi­cers killed just this year alone.
There is no men­tion of the police offi­cers who are killed each year because they dared to be police officers.
There is no men­tion of the numer­ous unpun­ished assaults on police offi­cers each day which even the courts are wont to punish.

Holness’s bill is noth­ing more than a shit sand­wich wrapped in a new paper with a bow on top.
What the Prime Minister does in this bill is what Bruce Golding did when he hand­ed the nation INDECOM and a resul­tant con­tin­ued increase in crime as a consequence.
This Legislation is a trav­es­ty which will do noth­ing to address the every evolv­ing crime problem.
It is a Bill which ask the secu­ri­ty forces to do the impos­si­ble to wage war on Jamaica’s ter­ror­ists with­out shed­ding blood.
It asks Police and sol­diers to go into the most volatile sit­u­a­tions walk­ing on egg shells.
It sets up mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces to take the fall in any sit­u­a­tion in which they are forced to use force to neu­tral­ize threats.

Holness’s Bill is cyn­i­cal , trans­par­ent and an insult to the secu­ri­ty forces  who take the risk.
Clearly from the Prime min­is­ter’s own words , this bill places all of the blame on offi­cers in the event of out­cry but absolves his admin­is­tra­tion and gives polit­i­cal cov­er to him and his party.
This is Tivoli Gardens 2.0 and the police and mil­i­tary who have to go into these areas and con­tend with these mur­der­ous scum­bags should see it for what it is.
I dare­say that Andrew Holness would not allow either of his boys to join the secu­ri­ty forces and face the dan­gers they face.
More impor­tant­ly he would not go into war with his hands tied behind his back nei­ther would he allow his chil­dren to do it.
Why then would he want oth­er peo­ple’s sons and daugh­ters to go to war and not make a stir?