The Thriving Business Of Crime In Jamaica, It’s Inception, And What It Will Take To Break It’s Back.

“Welcome to the next Medellin” said a friend to me this morning. We were discussing the murder trial of Patrick Powell playing out in a Kingston courtroom as well as the killing of a man who refused to pay his fare on a bus just this week. Killings are nothing new , in fact it has become so commonplace that there is hardly any response to them anymore. Jamaicans have come to accept death as nothing to be sorrowful about and have moved on to how the culture of killings may be exploited for financial gain .

The Medellin ref­er­ence was jar­ring­ly poignant because it has been a ref­er­ence I have used in speak­ing to what has been allowed to devel­op in Jamaica arguably for decades but which has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tak­en shape over the last two decades.

We can have a dis­cus­sion about crime in the abstract . You know, we can look at crime aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly as some like to do from the halls of acad­e­mia , churn­ing out hypothe­ses devel­oped in places far away geo­graph­i­cal­ly or may be right there on the ground but are far removed from reality.
Alternatively we may dis­cuss it prag­mat­i­cal­ly and address the hard truths of what must be done if the direc­tion of the coun­try is to be altered.
Before we do that how­ev­er the crit­i­cal ques­tion of whether or not the desired end game is a crime free coun­try must be answered.

It is fun­da­men­tal that-that ques­tion be placed on the table when­ev­er the ques­tion of crime is being dis­cussed. There is a gen­er­al con­sen­sus among many Jamaicans both at home and in the dias­po­ra that crime is big busi­ness in our coun­try and as such the dif­fi­cult being expe­ri­enced in craft­ing and imple­ment­ing seri­ous anti-crime strat­e­gy may be attrib­uted to that. They point to the mas­sive increase over the years of Security com­pa­nies, funer­al par­lors, and the sec­ondary indus­tries which have sprung up around the mor­bid death culture.

There is much we can point to that has got­ten the Island to the place it is, poised teth­er­ing on the brink of becom­ing a failed state, obvi­ous to all except some liv­ing in it.
One of the great fail­ures of the Jamaican peo­ple has been they they appor­tion respon­si­bil­i­ty for violence.

SCENARIO #1
A man jumps over the wall to some­one’s home to steal some man­goes from a tree laden with ripe fruits in the front yard.
Sure the man is hun­gry we all need sus­te­nance to survive.
Out comes the home­own­er and chal­lenges the offender .
The offend­er takes umbrage and gets into a phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion with the homeowner.
The home­own­er in defense of his life and prop­er­ty pulls a weapon and kills the offender.

THE NARRATIVE
The Media and the ever present crowd which just hap­pen to always be around to wit­ness these events[sic] argues that the man was a good yute who would­n’t hurt a fly.
They demon­strate while dem­a­gogu­ing the home­own­er as a wicked per­son who killed the good yute who was starv­ing and only want some­thing to eat.
The hon­est home­own­er is demo­nized and threat­ened , his life and that of his fam­i­ly is now at risk .
He is forced to flee his home in order to pro­tect his life and that of his family.
His prop­er­ty is tak­en over by thugs.

SCENARIO#2

Same man pass­ing home sees ripened man­goes on tree in front yard.
He is hun­gry so he decides to open the gate . Sure it’s risky but a hun­gry man has to take chances.
He knocks on the grill and the home­own­er comes out onto the verandah/​porch. He tells the home­own­er that he was pass­ing and hav­ing seen the man­goes and being hun­gry he decid­ed to ask for a few mangoes.
The home­own­er sizes him up at first then decides to let him in where he is treat­ed to a meal . before he leaves the home­own­er gives him some mon­ey, allowed him to have some man­goes and offered him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to come and do some work around the house once a week so he can earn a lit­tle money .
He walks away filled, some mon­ey in his pock­et and with some man­goes . Let alone the prospect of a part time job.
But most impor­tant­ly he walked away !

Oh even when this kind home­own­er does all that, the young man turns up for work and is treat­ed well. The home­own­er leaves him in his house when he trav­els abroad .
On his return he brings all kinds of for­eign stuff for him as he does for his family.
Nevertheless the young man nev­er sat­is­fied steals the man’s car. And ulti­mate­ly brings his friend lets him into the house where he kills the homeowner.
The nar­ra­tion above are pure­ly fictional. 
This para­graph isn’t . I can­not tell you how many sit­u­a­tions I attend­ed to in which this syn­op­sis char­ac­ter­ized the sto­ry of mur­der which brought us to that home,.

Much of the prob­lems in our coun­try began because of the cul­tur­al sense that they should not have to ask for any­thing . They should be allowed to take what they want­ed and when chal­lenged sim­ply kill the owner.
Complicit in the cre­ation of that nar­ra­tive was the Media, which for years wit­ting­ly and unwit­ting­ly served as a well lubri­cat­ed con­duit for the anti rule of law nar­ra­tive. Sacrificing Journalism upon the altar of sen­sa­tion­al­ism, in order to receive a few “raaaay” even when they knew that what they were report­ing could not pos­si­bly be true.

They absolute­ly knew that the hun­dreds of wit­ness­es who turned out demon­strat­ing Police bru­tal­i­ty could not have been in the bed­room of John Brown when he was killed at 3;30 in the morn­ing. But jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty nev­er kicked in when they offer them micro­phones to lie , even though they knew they were lying.
Much the same way they pro­filed demon­stra­tors demon­strat­ing police bru­tal­i­ty signs in a case where a bus-dri­ver killed a pas­sen­ger who refused to pay his fare and attacked the dri­ver and con­duc­tor. It nev­er mat­tered to the media that there was no police involved in the shoot­ing they por­trayed it as such anyway.
No jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty. For years the media facil­i­tat­ed this fraud on the coun­try with­out being held accountable.
The Media’s sub­tle injec­tion of the word “alleged­ly” into every sto­ry com­ing from law-enforce­ment, not only aid­ed and encour­aged crime it actu­al­ly embold­ened lead­ing crim­i­nals with­in the grit­ty inner city com­mu­ni­ties to increase and uti­lize the con­cept of pro­fes­sion­al mourn­ers to chal­lenge every police shoot­ing label­ing them executions.

The fall­out from that is a balka­nized police force which under­stood that offi­cers had no sup­port and were on their own . Many good offi­cers left. Those who stayed dropped their hands. Others sim­ply chose to join the criminals.
So how did we real­ly get here?
After 1962 Jamaica was forced to fig­ure things out for itself. Sure there was rem­nants of the old colo­nial past, but as the 70′ stepped in most of the white planters had long exit­ed the stage or had sim­ply died out.
Left in their place were the mulat­toes and the new­ly mint­ed edu­cat­ed blacks. (I like to refer to them as the new neva si cum si)
This band of hyp­ocrites were quite vocif­er­ous against the dic­tates of the colo­nial mas­ters when they were sub­ject­ed to their . However once they became the new back­ra mas­sa they dou­bled down on the very same things they crit­i­cized the Colonial mas­ters about. The taste of pow­er was way too sweet to be let go , who need­ed a nation of laws?
Who need­ed a nation where lead­ers would be the every-man?

Now they were the boss­es why would they want a pro­fes­sion­al police force which could hold them accountable?
In fair­ness to them this was not con­fined just to Jamaica or even parts of the caribbean region. Drastic instances of the same abuse of pow­er in parts of Africa after the col­lapse of the British Empire pro­duced dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the peo­ple out­side the tight spheres of pow­er. Blacks unac­cus­tomed to pow­er and the trap­pings in those nations refused to let go so dic­ta­tor­ships emerged every­where. So too did they appear in Latin and South America and in parts of Asia.

The new­ly mint­ed rul­ing class did not care too much about how many bod­ies piled up in polit­i­cal bat­tles as long as they can nav­i­gate the streets of the city in their ill-got­ten dark­ly tint­ed cars to their lux­u­ri­ous enclaves in the pris­tine set-aside com­mu­ni­ties of Cherry Gardens Norbrook and Jack’s hill.
In Jamaica they main­tained a sem­blance of democ­ra­cy by hold­ing elec­tions but ensur­ing that bal­lot box­es were stuffed with enough votes to guar­an­tee the out­comes they desired.
Not out­right dic­ta­tor­ships but a Dog of a dif­fer­ent name is still a Dog.
As I have said con­sis­tent­ly in this medi­um, the thing which pissed me off the most about being a police offi­cer there for the decade I served was inter­act­ing with the self appoint­ed bourjois‘.
Fake accents and the sense that the peo­ple who lived just down the road in the ghet­tos were “oth­er”.
Nothing made me more nau­seous than them ask­ing me “where were you trained” when I vis­it to deal with their reports ? As if a Jamaican police offi­cer speak­ing eng­lish and not a bro­ken mix of ebon­ics and eng­lish was an outlier.

Remember that Medellin comparison ?
Colombia could have tak­en hold of Pablo Escobar , Carlos Lehder and the mem­bers of the Medellin car­tel long before they got into cocaine pro­duc­tion and export.
They could have tak­en care of the Cali Cartels from the begin­ning when they start­ed set­ting up coca plan­ta­tions and cocaine labs in the jun­gles of Colombia.
In fact Pablo Escobar was an exporter of uncus­tomed elec­tron­ic goods into the coun­try long before he decid­ed to get involved in drugs.
Dirty pub­lic offi­cials above the police tied the hands of the Colombian police and gave infor­ma­tion about indi­vid­ual offi­cers and their fam­i­lies to ordi­nary thugs ‚. Police were forced to look away.

Long before the burn­ing of police sta­tions . Before the mas­sacre of police offi­cers. Long before zones of car­tel exclu­sion for law enforce­ment. Long before the down­ing of air­lines and attacks on the nation’s high­est courts , Colombia could have act­ed against these monsters.
Long before the sense­less killing of tens of thou­sands of inno­cent Colombians, the Colombian Government could have put an end to the shenani­gans of those com­mon thugs.
Because of the inac­tion of the Government . Because of the refusal of the Colombian Government to act for the good of the coun­try. Even if the many, or even the inno­cent can­not grasp it con­cep­tu­al­ly, a nation deserves to have a future, not as a nar­co state, not as a crim­i­nal state.
Many in Colombia were com­plic­it, many were sim­ply trapped,needing a way out.
Many in Jamaica are com­plic­it but as it was in Colombia, so too are many trapped need­ing a way out.

And then came Los Pepes !!!!!
To be continued.….….….….….….…..