The Shot Heard Around The World: The Country’s Crime Problem Has “evolved Above Our Capacity To Address It”.

THIS WAS A PROFOUND ADMISSION OF FAILURE, COMPARABLE ONLY TO PETER BUNTING’S DIVINE INTERVENTION PLEA.

For years I have pil­lo­ried the People’s National Partys fail­ure to do some­thing about the seri­ous prob­lem of vio­lent crime in our coun­try.
I argued then that if allowed, vio­lent-crime, like a can­cer­ous tumor, would become intractable, and there­fore expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult to remove.
I also argued, that even if even­tu­al­ly removed, the cost to the coun­try, (as the effects of remov­ing can­cer from the body are) would be too great, and there­fore would be a pyrrhic victory.

It was for that rea­son that I want­ed a change for our coun­try and believed at the time that Andrew Holness would car­ry on the same no-non­sense poli­cies of Hugh Lawson Shearer and to a less­er extent Edward Seaga.
My per­son­al sup­port for Andrew Holness’s can­di­da­cy to lead Jamaica, has been my great­est regret and since he has tak­en office I have not been shy in mak­ing that regret known.
His atti­tude toward crime has been one of elit­ism, the type of know-it-all dis­re­spect­ful (elit­ism) that has char­ac­ter­ized many of Jamaica’s peo­ple who have been blessed to have set foot in an insti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing.
Unfortunately for the coun­try, that Institution has indoc­tri­nat­ed those who have man­aged to get in, with the most regres­sive left­ist ide­ol­o­gy that has not only been bad for Jamaica but the entire Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty through which it’s ten­ta­cles has reached and cor­rod­ed.
That left­ist ide­ol­o­gy has not worked for any coun­try, and it cer­tain­ly has­n’t worked for Jamaica. 

Former JDF Sergeant And Driver To Antony Anderson A District Constable, Promoted To Ass/​Supt, In JCF.……

That insti­tu­tion has made Andrew Holness a dif­fer­ent leader than for­mer lead­ers of the Jamaica Labor Party. Truth is, Holness is hard­ly any dif­fer­ent ide­o­log­i­cal­ly than Peter Phillips, or any of the oth­er obnox­ious morons in the PNP who pre­tend to be lead­ers. The com­mon denom­i­na­tor between all of them is that incu­ba­tor of regres­sive-ism, known as the University of The West Indies.
Arrogance, has char­ac­ter­ized Holness’s approach to the crime fight.
He threw his sup­port behind INDECOM, the agency cre­at­ed by the dis­graced, and failed Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding, (remem­ber baby-bruce?)
Not behind the Nation’s law enforce­ment heroes.
He went out of his way to dis­re­spect the Island’s less-than-per­fect police, even when there was no need for the slights and the snipes.
He made sure that he sent them a strong mes­sage that he did not val­ue their efforts by nam­ing the for­mer head of the three thou­sand man army, Antony Anderson, the nation’s first nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor. (Take that cops).
He then short-cir­cuit­ed the upward mobil­i­ty of every sin­gle cop on the force, by appoint­ing Anderson Commissioner of Police. How did he do that, you ask?
When a mem­ber of the force is appoint­ed com­mis­sion­er of police, oth­ers move up the pyra­mid, it is that sim­ple.
His actions basi­cal­ly killed morale, but he was­n’t done.
He went ahead and allowed Antony Anderson to bring his for­mer (JDF) dri­ver ( a for­mer sergeant in the army) over to the JCF and made him an assis­tant super­in­ten­dent of police, fur­ther erod­ing morale.

Andrew Holness’s tight embrace of the Army was in and of itself a very clear mes­sage, that he had zero regards for the men and women of the con­stab­u­lary who were the real heroes hold­ing up the coun­try from falling.
He berat­ed them about there will be no more kick­ing down doors on his watch.
He gave INDECOM carte blanche to harass and per­se­cute police offi­cers, to the point, our police offi­cers basi­cal­ly threw up their arms in dis­gust and said: “to hell with it”.
And why not, why would they risk their lives to go after dan­ger­ous demon­ic killers at the risk of get­ting sec­ond-guessed and per­se­cut­ed by a state-fund­ed agency?
The unde­ni­able truth is that INDECOM’s record has fall­en woe­ful­ly short of that of the for­mer CCRB, when it comes to inves­ti­gat­ing alleged police mis­con­duct.
With none of the ran­cor, bad-blood and the grand­stand­ing that has char­ac­ter­ized INDECOM’s exis­tence under Terrence Williams and British cop Hamish Campbell.
I am ashamed of my coun­try’s plan­ta­tion men­tal­i­ty.
Aa a con­se­quence, offi­cers start­ed beat­ing down the doors to leave the depart­ment, to the tune of well over fifty per month.
In typ­i­cal dic­ta­to­r­i­al fash­ion, Holness caused his lack­eys in the hier­ar­chy of the JCF, to insti­tute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al mea­sures aimed at pre­vent­ing mem­bers from resign­ing with­out first giv­ing the depart­ment months-long heads up.
But that did not stop the mass exo­dus, and so now the depart­ment is forced to use untrained stu­dent con­sta­bles to do police work for a frac­tion of what they should be paid.
This has placed the lives and safe­ty of their trained col­leagues, the stu­dent-con­sta­bles them­selves, and the wider pub­lic at risk. All of this could have been avoid­ed.
I have con­sis­tent­ly warned this gov­ern­ment, that I agree that the police need fix­ing from the top, but that its approach would be ruinous to the depart­ment, and cat­a­stroph­ic to the coun­try.
That moment is here!

In an inter­view with a local medi­um, the Jamaican Prime Minister final­ly admit­ted, what many peo­ple, includ­ing this writer, have warned about repeat­ed­ly.

‘The coun­try’s crime prob­lem has “evolved cur­rent­ly, over and above our estab­lished capac­i­ty to address it”.(Andrew Holness said)

This is what I have been writ­ing would hap­pen for years, long before he took office, but more so, after he did.
I thought the Jamaican peo­ple vot­ed him into office because he told them they would be able to sleep with their doors open if he was elect­ed.
Now, we all knew that this was an over­state­ment to which we could not rea­son­ably hold the Prime Minister.
But nev­er­the­less, it made us believe that there would be a new and deter­mined focus on this exis­ten­tial cri­sis.
I knew that there was always a silent major­i­ty of good decent law-abid­ing peo­ple who want­ed peace and secu­ri­ty.
As a police offi­cer, I met them across the length and breadth of our coun­try. As a detec­tive, I knew their gra­cious­ness. They were nev­er shy to tell me what I need­ed to know, because they knew they could trust me nev­er to divulge their names to any­one.
Sure pros­per­i­ty is impor­tant, but there was nev­er going to be any pros­per­i­ty on piles of dead Jamaican bod­ies.
I warned that ZOSOs & SOEs would not help the crime fight. I warned the Prime Minister to embrace the police &military and give them the tools they need­ed to fight for Jamaica, as they fought for Jamaica in 2010, as they fight for Jamaica every day.
No, the Prime Minister threw his sup­port behind INDECOM, and a lying ego­ma­ni­a­cal, self-serv­ing bas­tard.
A bas­tard who said that Jamaican cops should adopt the crime-fight­ing strate­gies of the Latin-American coun­try of Nicaragua.….…… a failed left­ist state.

The killings are unchecked because of the arro­gance of Holness and the major­i­ty of the Island’s politi­cians. But that arro­gance is cer­tain­ly not con­fined to the two polit­i­cal par­ties. It is endem­ic in the so-called acad­e­mia, and it bleeds all the way down to the least edu­cat­ed.
It is the mis­guid­ed notion that naive­ly believes because some­one man­aged a degree of sorts, they are now qual­i­fied to over­see any­thing.
You know, like putting Bankers, Botanists, Medical Doctors, and Army brass over nation­al secu­ri­ty.
It is the same as ask­ing the Janitor to per­form heart surgery.
I did warn that this was going to hap­pen, that we would find our­selves at this point, because of the Prime Minister’s arro­gance and the stu­pid­i­ty of those who fol­low blind­ly behind the polit­i­cal class.
It requires strong laws, strong effi­cient police, effec­tu­at­ing manda­tor min­i­mum for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes and yes, stand­ing INDECOM down.
It is hard for a small coun­try the size of Jamaica to absorb so many con­vict­ed depor­tees, to be flushed with so many weapons, not to have strong effec­tive lead­er­ship on crime.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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