Does any­one see the cyn­i­cal ploy Andrew Holness is per­pe­trat­ing on the Police depart­ment and the coun­try or is it just me?

Jamaica is expe­ri­enc­ing close to 7 homi­cides each day which places the annu­al mur­der sta­tis­tics clos­er to 2500 mur­ders each year.
Those num­bers do not account for those who are shot or stabbed but does not die right away but does nonethe­less and are not count­ed in the mur­der statistics.
The police should be train­ing for an all out assault on the killers yet what the Prime Minister is doing is send­ing them in, to place their bod­ies between war­ring fac­tions so that he can have a glossy result on paper.

If the ploy was­n’t so cyn­i­cal and out­right insult­ing I would be pre­pared to give it a chance to work.
Like a bus head­ing toward a cliff, I do not need to wait for it to fall off the cliff to know it is head­ing in the wrong direction.

In 2010 under pres­sure from the United States of America to extra­dite Christopher (dud­dus) Coke to stand tri­al for trans-nation­al crimes, the Bruce Golding led JLP Administration was forced to acqui­esce to the demands of the mam­moth neigh­bor to our north and begin the process of extra­dit­ing Coke.

After much wheel­ing and deal­ing, pos­tur­ing and grand­stand­ing Golding was forced to send Duddus to the Americans so he could face jus­tice for his crimes.
The sequence of events which led to the mil­i­tary and police’s entry into Tivoli Gardens are well known and doc­u­ment­ed in this medi­um as a mat­ter of his­tor­i­cal fact.

Nevertheless, after annex­ing the com­mu­ni­ty which exist­ed out­side of the Island’s laws for decades, the admin­is­tra­tion of Portia Simpson Miller for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es con­vened a kan­ga­roo court to con­demn the secu­ri­ty forces.
Golding was long gone by then, Miller the parochial pop­ulist now in Jamaica House was not about to allow a good scan­dal to go unexploited.
The Kangaroo court led by David Simmons a retired Bajan Jurist com­menced with a demon­stra­bly pal­pa­ble dis­dain for the secu­ri­ty forces.

In the end, the report sub­mit­ted by Simmons and the oth­er two jurists was a cringe-wor­thy shame­ful and dis­gust­ing piece of garbage unwor­thy of the paper on which it was written.
The pan­elist’s lack of a basic under­stand­ing or empa­thy for the secu­ri­ty forces, the risks they take and the sac­ri­fices they make was a seri­ous indict­ment of their lack of knowl­edge and depth than it was ever about any­thing unto­ward they may have done.
It’s lack of objec­tiv­i­ty and it’s obvi­ous and bla­tant bias­es reduced all three pan­elists to mere hus­tlers and pimps of the legal profession.

The back sto­ry that does not get men­tioned, the sto­ry which every­one took for grant­ed despite the dead cops and burned out police sta­tions was the lit­tle fact that peo­ple could walk through Tivoli gar­dens again.
It was­n’s the secu­ri­ty forces who fell down on the job it was the lying thiev­ing bas­tards who dou­ble as politi­cians who did. Members of the secu­ri­ty forces laid down their lives so that Jamaica could hon­or its inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions and a dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal could meet justice.
It was the incom­pe­tent politi­cians which allowed that com­mu­ni­ty to become a vac­u­um over which gangs are now fight­ing for control.

2.0

The clue­less Portia is now gone, thank you God.
Unfortunately, what we have now is Bruce Golding 2.0.
I had high hopes for this guy, ini­tial­ly, it seemed he at least had the basic under­stand­ing of what it takes to win.
I must admit I was so intent on see­ing the back of Portia, Phillips, the Burkes, and oth­ers that I may have over­looked the imper­fec­tions of his pol­i­cy positions.

He said the right things of course. Oh, he wants to build prosperity.
Noble indeed, but no one both­ered to press him on how he would accom­plish that feat with the crime rate and lack of dis­ci­pline in the country.

I was hope­ful, hav­ing lis­tened to his wife Juliet, I heard a smart woman who under­stood the con­cerns of the police and gen­uine­ly cared about their concerns.Unfortunately, Juliet Holness was­n’t run­ning to be the Prime Minister she was mere­ly run­ning for a seat in rur­al Saint Andrew.

Andrew Holness is no Hugh Shearer he is no Edward Seaga (even with Seaga’s neg­a­tives) Andrew Holness is Bruce Golding 2.0 (baby Bruce).
Holness promised crime would come down under his lead­er­ship. In fact, he promised Jamaicans would be able to sleep with their win­dows open if only they elect­ed him to Jamaica house.
Now we all know Politicians embell­ish and just plain lie. So we all took that promise with a grain of salt.

You see Andrew Holness nev­er had a real anti-crime plan which would tack­le crime at its root and yank it up so it with­ers and dies.
In fact, Holness’ choice of Security Minister is a stark reminder that he did not care about the secu­ri­ty forces.
He was con­vinced that he would gen­er­ate jobs for every­one and gang­sters would put down their guns.
Now the Botanist Robert Montague may not know a damn thing about crime and secu­ri­ty but his rhetoric has been sup­port­ive of the secu­ri­ty forces.

Andrew Holness’ world­view is shaped by his school­ing and affil­i­a­tions. He hon­est­ly believes he could tell the police “fuck you” I got this and crime would sim­ply with­er away sim­ply because he was Prime Minister.
Then he woke up from his stu­por, there are dead bod­ies every­where and he can­not blame the oth­er party.
He is the head hon­cho in charge.

So he devised a plan which would paper over the gap­ing hole in the wall. He decid­ed on the cre­ation of an illu­sion which would appease the mass­es, fool oth­ers while he was left to be Prime Minister.
Remember he has been run­ning around telling every­one who would lis­ten that police would not be kick­ing in doors like back in the day under his watch.
So this guy def­i­nite­ly has a prob­lem with police offi­cers. Time after time after time he has prof­fered the nar­ra­tive that police have killed peo­ple and plant­ed guns on them.
This from the Prime min­is­ter and Minister of National Defense.
He loves the con­fer­ences Terrence Williams con­vene, he does­n’t miss those. He par­rots the lying nar­ra­tive of the eat-a-food crowd which lives on the car­cass­es of dead cops, you know them. INDECOM, JFJ, PMI, FAST, IACHR, et al.

The plan was to cre­ate an illu­sion which gives the appear­ance of suc­cess but will do absolute­ly noth­ing about the actu­al mur­der statistics.
The Special Zones Act was born. here’s how it works.
The Prime Minister(Andrew Holness) retains the right to des­ig­nate an area, a zone which needs spe­cial atten­tion from the secu­ri­ty forces.
That area is flood­ed with secu­ri­ty per­son­nel. But God for­bid that mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces should have to rough up a shot­ta who gets caught up in the drag­net. God for­bid the secu­ri­ty forces are forced to shoot a fuck­ing mur­der­er point­ing a high pow­ered weapon at them.
So he devised a plan to cre­ate a human rights course, which is noth­ing more than a façade to appease the crit­ics who live from con­demn­ing the police.
Does Holness think we are stupid?

The idea is to have mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces place their bod­ies between war­ring fac­tions, armed with high pow­ered auto­mat­ic weapons.
There is only one lit­tle prob­lem, they must­n’t make any sound and they must­n’t upset anyone.
Just fuck­ing stay there.
Does any­one believe the killers are going to stay in an area sat­u­rat­ed with police?
What then will hap­pen if an area is sat­u­rat­ed, does­n’t crime invari­ably trend down there?
The killers will sim­ply move to oth­er areas as they did in 2010.

So you do see that the new spe­cial zones law is not designed to affect crime it is mere­ly designed to pla­cate the human rights lob­by while plac­ing a mir­ror in front of the rest of the coun­try as it plays smoke and mir­rors tricks.

HERE ARE SOME FACTS AND SOLUTIONS

♦To the apol­o­gists and those bound and con­strained by pol­i­tics, do me a favor, think.
Any approach geared to address­ing Jamaica’s vio­lent gangs and mili­tias must have cer­tain crit­i­cal components.
The polit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the coun­try must be res­olute­ly behind the men and women who place their lives on the line in defense of others>
Government and Opposition must divest them­selves of the rela­tion­ships with crim­i­nal gangs.
Government and Opposition must issue unequiv­o­cal full-throat­ed sup­port for law enforcement.
Policies must be designed with the con­cerns of the secu­ri­ty forces at the tip of the spear.
The gov­ern­ment can­not con­tin­ue to use the secu­ri­ty forces to cur­ry favor with spe­cial inter­est as Andrew Holness is clear­ly doing.

Craft leg­is­la­tion which makes prin­ci­pals and sec­on­daries all com­plic­it as a crim­i­nal enterprise.(See American RICO Law here)
Prosecute and pun­ish with 25 to life in prison for vio­lent assaults in which a gun or knife was used.
Obtain war­rants to lis­ten to the tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion of gang leaders.
Identify through intel­li­gence, the lead­ers of gangs, tar­get them using var­i­ous coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence tech­niques which can be learned from oth­er law enforce­ment agencies.

TARGETED SOLUTIONS

(1)These meth­ods should be geared at top­pling the gangs by cut­ting off the head of the snake destroy­ing the tail as well.
(2)Enhance the plea bar­gain laws.
(3)Exponentially improve the intel­li­gence gath­er­ing capa­bil­i­ties of the police.
(4)Train and equip more detec­tives, diver­si­fy the meth­ods detec­tives use to gath­er intelligence.
(5)Bring the nation’s laws up to date mak­ing the com­mis­sion of crimes a cost­ly affair.
(6)Make all mur­ders in which a gun was used pun­ish­able with life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
(7)Have truth in sen­tenc­ing the law of the land.
(8)Pass manda­to­ry min­i­mum laws for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes.
(9)Treat Rapes and sex­u­al assaults of minors with the seri­ous­ness mur­ders are treat­ed under these proposals.
(10)Use JDF assets to police the Island’s ports against the gun and dope trade which is destroy­ing the Island.
(11) Remove Terrence Williams from INDECOM, or bet­ter yet repeal the law.
(12)Demand greater account­abil­i­ty from police com­man­ders through the imple­men­ta­tion of the COMPSTAT sys­tem. This method demands com­man­ders and osten­si­bly the inves­ti­ga­tors, pro­vide specifics on how they have han­dled each and every report made to them.
Commands and advance­ments should be based on the COMPSTAT sys­tem of account­abil­i­ty. Conversely, the same sys­tem should be used to iden­ti­fy non-per­form­ers and take the appro­pri­ate steps to retrain those offices or part com­pa­ny with them.

This writer will be the first to cheer the Prime Minister the minute he demon­strates sup­port for some or all of these pol­i­cy solutions.
Failing which I have to point out that this ini­tia­tive under con­sid­er­a­tion is noth­ing more than a three card trick.