We Can Turn This Thing Around…

It is great to see the Jamaican Prime min­is­ter in the United States con­ven­ing meet­ings with American Officials on a plan between the two nations that would stem the flow of ille­gal guns into Jamaica.
It took mis­ter Holness and his gov­ern­ment a long time to do what peo­ple like myself have been say­ing he should have done years ago. Seeking help from the United States, the coun­try from which most guns are flow­ing, to stop or at least plug the dyke.
We should be clear-eyed about the help we ask from the Americans because the last thing we need in our polic­ing in Jamaica is the evi­dent bru­tal­i­ty across America’s over 18,000 police departments.
On the oth­er hand, Jamaica’s police offi­cers are seri­ous­ly lack­ing in train­ing, direc­tion, lead­er­ship, and exe­cu­tion of polic­ing duties. I believe the Americans can be of help in those areas.
The Americans have a stake in a sta­ble Jamaica and should be hap­py to help Jamaica fight against transna­tion­al criminals.
A safe Jamaica means her cit­i­zens will not be look­ing to live in the United States; that alone ought to be enough for the United States to give Jamaica the tools she needs to fight the fight she is engaged in.
Nothing is wrong with ask­ing for help, but the most crit­i­cal com­po­nent miss­ing from the sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica is a will­ing­ness on the part of the nation’s lead­ers to attack the prob­lem head-on.
Both the PNP & JLP con­tin­ue to refer to the out­dat­ed post-colo­nial era con­sti­tu­tion and laws that have the Island shack­led to unten­able non-deter­rent laws that no longer work.
We need a new Constitution!!!
Additionally, Jamaica has tied itself to region­al and glob­al treaties and con­ven­tions, mak­ing it incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to gov­ern itself appro­pri­ate­ly with­out undue con­dem­na­tion from for­eign pow­ers and lobbies.
Jamaica seeds to unshack­le and unteth­er her­self from some of those treaties.

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