TOO MANY JAMAICANS INVESTED IN CRIME FOR STRATEGIES TO WORK EFFECTIVELY.

Crime is lit­er­al­ly suf­fo­cat­ing the life-blood from Jamaica, already just under 40 Jamaicans report­ed dead to author­i­ties, and we are just about at the half-way mark of January. Whether we are at, or below the lev­els of homi­cide we were at lat year this time, the num­bers are just shock­ing. Imagine if we had a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter which snuffed out the lives of these peo­ple who were alive ‚just cel­e­brat­ed Christmas a cou­ple of weeks ago. They did not expect to be among the sta­tis­tics of the new year. Some of them prob­a­bly were not both­ered by the num­bers of last year. And even worse some prob­a­bly felt they are not both­er­ing any­one so the killings will affect the next guy, the next girl, not them. The prob­lem with that think­ing is that when we allow crime to fes­ter it does not dis­crim­i­nate. Ironically that is not how it works, we are all at risk when we see some­thing and we choose not to say some­thing. We are all part of the sta­tis­tic-in-wait­ing when we decide not to be inform­ers. There are many ways to say some­thing if you see some­thing with­out endan­ger­ing one’s self. Yet the (infama fi ded) men­tal­i­ty is so deeply embed­ded into pop­u­lar cul­ture that it’s not sim­ply that many chose not to say any­thing any­more, they are active cheer-lead­ers and ratio­nal­iz­ers at best and active par­tic­i­pants at worse.

Crime is a debil­i­tat­ing can­cer which eats away at the core of soci­ety. Apart from the more vis­i­ble loss of life, and phys­i­cal pain, it destroys qual­i­ty of life and cre­ates pover­ty for all except those who are active parts of that cul­ture. When we con­sid­er how the informer must die notion crept into pop­u­lar ver­nac­u­lar, it is almost laugh­able, weren’t it so tox­ic and dan­ger­ous. How can a peo­ple who pro­fess to be smart be duped by une­d­u­cat­ed dance-hall disc jock­eys? If the disc jock­eys’s are half-baked illit­er­ates , yet they are able to have such an impact on an entire pop­u­la­tion what does that say about the people?

I am not say­ing Jamaica’s crime prob­lem must be placed at the feet of dance-hall artistes. I am sim­ply say­ing, why did some­thing which had its Genesis in the dance-hall have such res­o­nance. Why do Jamaicans go out of their way to show sym­pa­thy for the most despi­ca­ble crim­i­nals, rather than empathize with vic­tims of crime? Remove law-enforce­ment from the equa­tion, there are still vic­tims involved. They make all kinds of non­sen­si­cal and igno­rant argu­ments about Cops, in their quest to cov­er up their affin­i­ty for crime. Seldom do we hear a word of empa­thy for the vic­tims. Just yes­ter­day one bril­liant light-bulb on Face-Book sought to explain why peo­ple in the Chinese com­mu­ni­ty are being tar­get­ed for crim­i­nal­i­ty. she recit­ed a litany of rea­sons which sup­pos­ed­ly jus­ti­fies the crim­i­nal­i­ty vis­it­ed on them. No one deserve to be sin­gled out to be robbed beat­en or worse. It is rep­re­hen­si­ble and dis­gust­ing, yet our coun­try’s crime prob­lem has deep roots in the dias­po­ra, many of whom are more than sup­port­ers on social media. Many are pro­vid­ing the means for the crim­i­nal acts being expe­ri­enced back home.The Country des­per­ate­ly needs tough well thought out anti-crime leg­is­la­tion. This is essen­tial so those who live a life of crime will think twice. If they chose not to, then they should be pre­pared for the con­se­quences. No one piece of leg­is­la­tion will be a panacea. Yet Jamaica can ill-afford to allow the argu­ments for social inter­ven­tion to dis­suade it from pass­ing tough mean­ing­ful laws which will over time cut and con­trol crime. Tough anti-crime laws and social inter­ven­tion are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive , the coun­try must do both, one should not impact the other.

This Administration does noth­ing about crime unless it is dragged kick­ing and scream­ing to the table. Lets not for­get they refused to sup­port the Security Forces in their efforts to solid­i­fy their gains after the Tivoli incur­sion of 2010. En-mass the PNP vot­ed as a unit, not to extend the already lim­it­ed state of emer­gency which was ear­li­er autho­rized. In the most ridicu­lous yet insult­ing spin imag­in­able, they told the coun­try that they did not sign on to allow the secu­ri­ty forces to do their jobs, because they were afraid they would abuse cit­i­zens rights. Never mind the Police Officers and cit­i­zens who were killed, sta­tions shot up and burned to the ground. Never mind the effort it took for the Security forces to annex Tivoli Gardens to the rest of the coun­try after it was hijacked by mer­ce­nar­ies from all over the coun­try. I will not write what thoughts came into my head on hear­ing that garbage. What they did not tell the coun­try and indeed the world which was watch­ing, was that they weren’t about to allow the secu­ri­ty forces to enter their zones of exclu­sions (gar­risons) to remove the guns and the Dons.

Anti-gang leg­is­la­tion lan­guished in Parliament while crim­i­nal sup­port­ers in both polit­i­cal par­ties allowed their cronies in the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty like Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) and oth­ers to water down the lan­guage in the Bill. I brought this to your atten­tion recent­ly and today I am report­ing that Bill has been signed into law. I will not speak to the specifics of what’s in it, I haven’t yet seen it. Nevertheless the ink has­n’t dried before the usu­al bleed­ing hearts are already yelling that the sky is falling. This bit of leg­is­la­tion will hope­ful­ly fur­ther assist the Country’s exis­ten­tial fight against crime and terror.

With the anti-gang law in place, polic­ing meth­ods are like­ly to alien­ate more youth and more com­mu­ni­ties. The police will now be able to arrest and charge inner-city youth with­out need­ing evi­dence that they com­mit­ted any crime. The flur­ry of arrests will no doubt bring about a lull in crime that will seem to prove that the new law is hav­ing the desired effect.Yvonne McCalla Sobers:http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​4​0​1​1​4​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​2​.​h​tml

Yvonne McCalla Sobers

These peo­ple have no solu­tion to the crime prob­lem. They have no empa­thy for vic­tims of crime. No appre­ci­a­tion for the eco­nom­ic cost to the coun­try, nei­ther do they care. Their busi­ness is crime, their rel­e­vance rests with high crime rates and the per­cep­tion of police excess. Too many peo­ple are invest­ed in crime in Jamaica (affi eat a food), That does not mean only those on the Island, but since the late 1980’s to date large parts of the crim­i­nal ele­ments sought refuge on oth­er shores. Many with­in the dias­po­ra leads what appears to be nor­mal law abid­ing lives in the UK, Canada and of course the United States, while they fuel the fire of crime back at home.