Taming The Enemy Within.….…

---

We are get­ting mighty close to what is called crit­i­cal mass with the gen­er­al arc of crime in Jamaica.
The stark real­i­ty is that the present sit­u­a­tion seems to be out­side the con­trol of local authorities.
We have now passed the stage where appor­tion­ing blame is use­ful in this ongo­ing saga which is the shock­ing dete­ri­o­rat­ing secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion on the Island.
Sure we know that both polit­i­cal par­ties share blame for the exist­ing sit­u­a­tion, some with greater cul­pa­bil­i­ty than oth­ers but there is lit­tle doubt that argu­ing about who is more guilty will do noth­ing to rem­e­dy the situation.

The increase in the num­ber of homi­cides this year over last year and that of last year over the pre­ced­ing year have seen admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties pre­sid­ing over what appears to be a homi­cide and anoth­er seri­ous crime wave over which nei­ther have control.
If we are able to sus­pend the omnipresent pre­dis­po­si­tion to see every­thing pure­ly from polit­i­cal per­spec­tives we may have a shot at actu­al­ly hav­ing a mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion about how to resolve this issue before it’s too late.
In order for us to begin to arrest this very seri­ous prob­lem, we need to agree that no one per­son has all of the answers and that the course we are on is not working.

CAUSATION

We need to take a dif­fer­ent look at what are the issues fuel­ing this crime monster.
The uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed idea that pover­ty is the cause of crime in the coun­try is intel­lec­tu­al indo­lence and maybe an attempt to deflect atten­tion away from the real reasons.
We can agree that pover­ty is not going to be elim­i­nat­ed from Jamaica any­time soon. If the focus can be divert­ed to the issue of pover­ty as the rea­son that peo­ple are decap­i­tat­ing oth­ers while oth­ers are bring­ing large caches of weapons into the coun­try, then we will con­tin­ue as a dog chas­ing its tail into per­pe­tu­ity, while those who ben­e­fit from crime con­tin­ue to fat­ten themselves.

There is no deny­ing the real­i­ty that ” a hun­gry man is an angry man”, with that in mind, the actions of the man who goes out and steals in order to eat can be viewed with­in the con­text of poverty.
Looking at the total­i­ty of the nation’s crime prob­lem, how­ev­er, pure­ly from the point of view of pover­ty must sub­se­quent­ly be seen as sim­plis­tic and to some degree disingenuous.
The ques­tion then, is, to what end is the nation being mis­led into an accep­tance of the mur­der mad­ness under the guise of poverty?
As I have writ­ten before there are coun­tries across the globe and indeed in our own hemi­sphere with low­er stan­dards of liv­ing and sig­nif­i­cant­ly less crime to boot.

If we intend to be hon­est with our­selves we must agree that the mas­sive caches of weapons com­ing into the coun­try are not being import­ed by peo­ple in pover­ty, nei­ther are the drugs com­ing in and pass­ing through have impov­er­ished peo­ple behind them.

FACTS

Earlier this year caribbean​na​tion​al​week​ly​.com pub­lished a report released by the United States State’s Department of State, which stat­ed that sev­er­al coun­tries in the Caribbean are major illic­it drug pro­duc­ing and drug-tran­sit coun­tries with some also being major mon­ey laun­der­ing countries.
The US Department of State’s “International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR),” notes that the Bahamas, Belize, Haiti, and Jamaica, are among 22 coun­tries world­wide con­sid­ered major drug pro­duc­ing or major drug tran­sit countries.

The fore­gone gives a slight­ly clear­er view as to what are real­ly some of the fac­tors fuelling the mas­sive crime wave in our country.
The local police have stri­dent­ly main­tained that the illic­it lot­to-scam­ming is a major con­trib­u­tor to the homi­cide rate as well.
Thus far this year there are over 300 deaths in St. James the epic cen­ter of the lot­to scam epi­dem­ic which leaves over a thou­sand oth­er homi­cides which the police would be hard pressed to pin on that trade.
Even if there were anoth­er two hun­dred which could cred­i­bly be attrib­uted to the lot­to scam mak­ing it a total of say 500, there would still be in excess of 800 oth­er homi­cides which were com­mit­ted for oth­er reasons.

SOLUTION

Police can­not enforce laws which do not exist.
Corrupt police offi­cers are vast­ly less effec­tive than hon­est cops.
The penal­ty for seri­ous crimes under the penal code does not have suf­fi­cient deter­rent components.
As long as the rights of mur­der­ous crim­i­nals are viewed with the same impor­tance as their vic­tims there will be no dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between the two cat­e­gories of Jamaicans.
If we are unable to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between how we treat mur­der­ers over how we view their vic­tims we have already lost the war.

I know of no coun­try in which the rights of crim­i­nals are viewed with such del­i­ca­cy. No oth­er place where crim­i­nal­i­ty is so accept­ed by the broad­er soci­ety and excused.
No oth­er place !
We have the answers to the prob­lems the coun­try faces, the Colombians cer­tain­ly faced their prob­lems head-on when they chose to say no to nar­co-ter­ror­ism from the Medellin and Cali cartels.

We can con­tin­ue the pre­ten­tious­ness as a coun­try while hid­ing behind lay­ers of grill for­ti­fi­ca­tions, pret­ty soon how­ev­er, no one will be safe not even those who believe they are in charge with their police escorts.
Massive cor­rup­tion and the lethal­i­ty of the weapons in the hands of the crim­i­nal under­world ren­ders their police escorts null and void against whats to come.
A few patri­ots will have to balls up and make some sac­ri­fices for the life of our beloved Island. The non­sense which comes out of Mona will not save our coun­try it will take balls and courage like that exhib­it­ed by Paul Bogle and Nanny.
This time the ene­my is within.……

REFERENCE

The Colombian Government and decent law-abid­ing peo­ple under­stood that putting the cart before the horse was a pre­scrip­tion for failure.
Within that con­text, aver­age peo­ple decid­ed to take their chil­dren’s and their own future into their own hands.
Summing up the sto­ry of Colombia a coun­try once on the verge of becom­ing a failed nar­co-state was an Article writ­ten for the Daily Telegraph by Journalist Szu Ping Chan in 2015.

Diplomacy, hard work and com­pro­mise have helped to trans­form the coun­try over the last decade. The iron fist of for­mer pres­i­dent Álvaro Uribe that helped to destroy many rebel strong­holds in 2002 has been put back inside the vel­vet glove held by the cur­rent pres­i­dent, Juan Manuel Santos.The for­mer defense min­is­ter is edg­ing clos­er to sign­ing a his­toric peace deal with the FARC rebels, although the tough­est part of the nego­ti­a­tion — amnesty, and repa­ra­tions — has yet to be agreed.
Meanwhile, Colombia’s mid­dle class is on the rise, climb­ing from 16pc of the pop­u­la­tion in 2002 to 27pc in 2011. In the streets of Bogotá, Cartier, Louis Vuitton and Armani line up next to high street names Zara and Mango.

The pover­ty rate – defined by the World Bank as any­one liv­ing on less than $1.25 (81p) a day – has fall­en from almost 50pc to 34pc over the same peri­od. While pol­i­cy­mak­ers have more to do, Colombians are lift­ing them­selves out of pover­ty. Entrepreneurial spir­it means many choose to sell goods in lit­tle stalls or on the streets. Old jeans and used shoes are sold along­side trin­kets and food. In the cen­ter of Bogotá, one sell­er has around 100 dolls piled up on a tar­pau­lin. An improv­ing econ­o­my means the adver­tis­ing slo­gans are very dif­fer­ent now. “Colombia, mag­i­cal real­ism”, is a homage to the coun­try’s most famous author, Gabriel García Márquez, who died last year.

Note that the Government of President Alvaro Uribe under­stood fun­da­men­tal­ly that he had to deal with the coun­try’s crime prob­lem with an Iron fist.
After top­pling the car­tels the new President Juan Manuel Santos slid the iron fist back into a vel­vet glove.
As I have said for years we need an atti­tu­di­nal change in how we approach this issue. The rights of mur­der­ers is incon­se­quen­tial when we con­sid­er them against what they did to their vic­tims and their families.
There need to be a 180 degree par­a­digm shift in how we go after those who kill and those behind them.
Sending a clear uniquovi­cal mes­sage that their meth­ods will not be tol­er­at­ed is the only mes­sage they understand.
It is the only solu­tion which will begin the process of revers­ing this madness.