By now most Jamaicans would have heard about the military-style assault heavily armed criminals carried out in May Pen Clarendon.
According to early reporting, heavily armed gunmen on a robbery spree at around 9:15 am Sunday morning shot and injured two police officers.
Injured is Sergeant David Craddock and Constable Chase Carnegie. Both officers were allegedly shot when they encountered the armed militia who were traveling in two motorcars.
Early reporting indicates that constable Carnegie was shot in the face and right shoulder, and the Sergeant who was on foot was shot twice in the abdomen and buttocks.
Some accounting by witnesses to the hell this morning revealed that the men entered a Chinese Establishment and ordered everyone to lie face down on the floor ‚they then they demanded money from the operators of the establishment.
The witnesses attested that while some of the men were inside trying to find the money, their cronies were outside laying down a barrage of covering fire at the two police offices. It is anyone’s guess whether it was that sheet of gunfire that almost took the lives of the two officers.
One of the most frightening things said by one eyewitness was that the gunmen were not panicked or seemed in any hurry.
After laying down fire for about 15 minutes the eyewitness who said he was laying on the floor with other patrons of the supermarket, tells of one gunman coming back into the supermarket and demanding more magazines from his compatriots. After receiving the extra clip he simply went back to laying down fire according to the eyewitness.
Whether this group of guys was 5 or 10 is immaterial. The fact of the matter is that they were heavily armed and according to that eyewitness they were in no hurry. The fact that they were in the middle of May Pen Town and there is a Police Station right there in Town, and they did not see the need to worry about the police should be reason enough for the police high command and the Political Directorate to wake the fuck up, but not until a group of these monsters visit a member of the Government or Political Opposition and exterminate their whole family will change come.
ZOSO’s and SOE’s are designed to keep the murder count down without fixing the problem. Elections have to be won on both sides, so the safety and security of law-abiding Jamaicans take a back seat to political expediency.
Funding has to be had and visas have to be secured, and so no one wants to upset the Americans by enforcing the laws and dealing with the terrorists as one friend lamented.
Well, the Americans can fuck off with their funding for all I care. They ensure that no one defies their laws. Their police kill whether assailants have guns or not. Why then would we keep our hands out to a power which secures it’s own, yet tells us we cannot because we are beggars?
INDECOM is partially funded by outside elements and I have repeatedly asked the Government to tell the JAMAICAN people why those sources are funding INDECOM and not the rule of law?
Under this Administration, the crime strategy is to put the bodies of police and soldiers between the Militias and their intended targets with a view to suppressing the kill rate.
Through the use of ZOSO’ s and SOE’s the government’s hope is to suppress the murder statistic without actually going after the murderers and killing them or putting them in jail where they belong.
This strategy is tantamount to spraying a flowery perfumed air freshener over shit and expecting the odor to go away.
But in fact the stench never goes away, it now becomes shit with an artificial flowery odor.
What the Government is doing is politics [101], much the same way that the political opposition recognizes what’s happening and is reluctant to support the ZOSO’s and SOE’s, but with the same political calculus in mind.
At the same time, the minions who support the two political parties are all over social media giving support to this nonsense and making excuses for this affront of an administration.
How do we change this paradigm when the people themselves are so heavily invested in politics to their own detriment?
This Administration, like the one before, has not done a damn thing after the débâcle that Bruce Golding created by giving the nation the INDECOM Act.
The Opposition PNP is no friend of the rule of law, they have more political garrisons than the governing JLP. Their political strategy is rooted in the ignorance of the people and their continued dependence on state handouts.
The Andrew Holness Government through his justice Minister Delroy Chuck and National Security Minister Horace Chang have taken a scalpel to the national security apparatus of the country under the guise of modernizing it.
Chuck is working assiduously to toss murder cases from court Dockets, on the one hand, thereby removing the likelihood of murderers facing justice for their crimes and on the other, fighting to have the records of those violent murderers expunged.
No country expunges the records of violent offenders, much less those who have taken the lives of others.
While Delroy Chuck is taking a scalpel on the one end, Horace Chang is using a cudgel on the other by literally deboning the JCF rendering it totally useless.
How so, you ask?
By dismantling the Mobile Reserve which has been the veritable backbone of the nation’s security for decades.
Make no mistake about it, regardless of the intent of the Andrew Holness régime, this will have devastating consequences for the country.
For those paying attention, it is already paying dividends, the heavily armed militias on the Island are highly intelligent and they are way ahead of the game.
What this administration has done, as has the one before it, is to embark on a campaign against the police which is having disastrous consequences for the country.
Even as I struggle to be fair to Holness and his Government, I believe his administration is on par with that of PJ Patterson’s as the worst in our nation’s history as it relates to the rule of law.
Here is a word of caution to the Prime Minister, listen to me real good. If you believe that you and your cabinet are insulated and immune to the violence that regular Jamaicans are exposed to you are kidding yourself.
The only reason that they haven’t come for you is that they do not want you.
Yet.….….…..
If they decide that they want you they will come for you and no amount of those poorly trained and supported police and soldiers that you have around you will save you.
Real leaders lead from in front, they do not watch polls and make decisions based on the next election.
The events of 2010 were warning enough, but as Robert Nesta Marley said quote’, “with the abundance of wata di fool ded fi thirst”.
The nation needs to know why this government has refused to unleash the police on the murderers and dangerous militias which are emboldened and killing at will?
What kind of strategy it is which targets the police and gives a thumbs up to criminals?
Is this administration acting in the best interest of the country?
This administration must explain to the nation why it hates the police and what it intends to do about the roving militias across the country.
In the meantime, these two officers may well die, paying the ultimate price, while their leaders pander to the criminals and their lobby, instead of supporting the rule of law.