The Govt’s Inability To Stop Traffic Infractions Shows It Is Incapable Of Ending The Killings…

As the admin­is­tra­tion in Kingston buries its head in the sand on the exis­ten­tial issue of crime, even mat­ters of basic safe­ty, seem to be out­side of the abil­i­ties and scope of the peo­ple tasked with the nation’s secu­ri­ty and safety.
A sto­ry caught my eyes in one of the local dailies today. Some res­i­dents of the west­ern tourist town of Negril in Westmoreland are demand­ing that medi­ans that were placed on the Norman Manley Boulevard,(rolling eyes at the idea of anoth­er edi­fice named after the Manleys), be removed forth­with. The medi­ans were placed there to reduce speed­ing that has been caus­ing crash­es on the strip.
The res­i­dents and their mouth­pieces argue that the medi­ans are now dam­aged by speed­ing motorists and are now, adding to the rea­sons seri­ous crash­es occur on that strip of roadway.

Cognitive dis­so­nance, I guess!
So, here we have a sit­u­a­tion in which the medi­ans were dam­aged by the same speed­ing motorists who refuse to adhere to the road traf­fic act’s dic­tates. The same motorists who con­tin­ue to crash and kill oth­er motorists and pas­sen­gers they trans­port, mak­ing demands that the reme­dies applied, be removed.
The clue­less mem­ber of Parliament, some­one named Morland Wilson, stu­pid­ly joined the call to remove the medians.
The Member of Parliament had this to say, quote; “In December, I got reports of four acci­dents as a result of the medi­ans. And when I say as a result – vehi­cle, lit­er­al­ly, dri­ve up on the medi­ans. Some turned over, some lost con­trol and hit walls and oth­er cars and pedes­tri­ans. So, it is hor­ri­ble.”
You can­not make these things up. This was the state­ment from a sup­posed leader of our country.
No mis­ter mem­ber of par­lia­ment, the cause of the crash­es can­not be attrib­uted to the medi­ans; they are direct­ly a result of speed­ing motorists.

We can­not keep mov­ing the goal­post of account­abil­i­ty so that we may appease law­break­ers. We are fail­ing the coun­try; we are march­ing the coun­try into a failed state, status.
Just an aside for the mem­ber of par­lia­ment mis­ter Wilson, there is a dif­fer­ence between what is con­sid­ered an acci­dent and what is con­sid­ered a crash.
Accident; an unfor­tu­nate inci­dent that hap­pens unex­pect­ed­ly and unin­ten­tion­al­ly, typ­i­cal­ly result­ing in dam­age or injury.
Crash; this hap­pens because of actions of one or more dri­vers through one or more events, i.e., speed­ing, reck­less and care­less dri­ving, speed­ing, drunk dri­ving, etc.
Therefore, it fol­lows that for the most part, these [crash­es] are result­ing in the death of cit­i­zens because of one or more of the caus­es I laid out in the def­i­n­i­tion of [crash].
The medi­ans were placed in the road­ways to slow down dri­vers, instead of abid­ing by the new rules, the speed­ers con­tin­ued speed­ing, dam­ag­ing the infra­struc­ture and snuff­ing out more lives.
The response from the res­i­dents and the mem­ber of par­lia­ment is noth­ing if not dystopian.

I am remind­ed of a joke my friend’s wife shared with me, (sor­ry Jackie, I had to bor­row this one). She loves pork, and so she had a meal of pork and rice, she devel­oped a stom­ach ache. She knew the pork caused her stom­ach ache, but she stopped eat­ing rice.
Common sense dic­tates that the peo­ple know what is caus­ing the crashes,(speeding), not the medi­ans placed there, not the medi­ans that the same speed­ing motorists now damage.
The mem­ber of par­lia­ment can­not be that dumb that he does­n’t under­stand that sim­ple con­cept. But, tak­ing stricter action to rein in these law­less motorists would be a bridge too far, so they want the medi­ans removed, and their polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive concurs.
Why are you writ­ing about parochial mat­ters like medi­ans in roadways?
Well, small things grow into big things; if we can­not stop motorists from speed­ing on a sin­gle strip of the road­way, how in God’s name can this same admin­is­tra­tion and police force stop crime on this Island?
Think about it!

Outside the obvi­ous ques­tion of the Westmoreland, police inabil­i­ty to take dras­tic steps against those motorists, lies the even deep­er issue of this admin­is­tra­tion back­ing away from tak­ing action to stop crim­i­nals. Choosing instead, to back away from the lawbreakers.
It is stu­pid to do the same things and expect a dif­fer­ent result, but that is only accept­able in ordi­nary peo­ple. When we elect lead­ers to rep­re­sent us, we expect that they will make mis­takes; what we do not expect, is to see our lead­ers make mis­takes, fail to rec­og­nize those mis­takes, and worse, refus­ing to reme­di­ate those mis­takes out of arrogance.
This Administration can no longer pre­tend that its poli­cies on crime are work­ing. We knew they would not work; there is a full body of work in this medi­um out­lin­ing why they would not work.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister exer­cised his pre­rog­a­tive and embarked on his fools mission.
We had no pow­er to stop him, so we were forced to wait for the con­se­quences; sad­ly, the results are many dead Jamaicans. As a for­mer offi­cer who walked those streets, path­ways, and alley­ways, I had seen the gory bod­ies laid bare as the blood dried in the dust on the sidewalks.
We did not need to see those dead bod­ies, the Prime Minister & his cab­i­net did, Andrew Holness, Horace Chang, Delroy Chuck, the cabal of crim­i­nal rights activists, et al. .…. oh, let us not for­get Tony Anderson[sic].

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.