We Have Consistently Provided Solutions

The very idea that the Government’s strat­e­gy to deal with the exis­ten­tial threat the gangs pose to our coun­try is to flood neigh­bor­hoods with police and sol­diers tells a sto­ry which begs introspection.

Close your eyes for a minute please if you will and pic­ture heav­i­ly armed sol­diers and police offi­cers in neigh­bor­hoods. In that men­tal jour­ney, I want you to imag­ine for a minute where in the world are these images part of dai­ly lives.

I hear Iraq, I hear Afghanistan, I hear sub-Saharan Africa.
Now open your eyes, because I hear Jamaica. Now think for a minute, not just about the optics but about the real­i­ty which neces­si­tates this.

Then under­stand what led us to this point.
Political manip­u­la­tion, social engi­neer­ing, and a process of sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly divid­ing the coun­try into polit­i­cal camps which osten­si­bly careened out of their con­trol and now they can­not con­trol it.

Many of us for­mer police offi­cers have been warn­ing about this for decades. Many of us have walked away.
Today even with the lack of oppor­tu­ni­ties in the coun­try peo­ple sign up and in a cou­ple of years, they decide they want no part of it.

On aver­age 600 offi­cers sim­ply walk away each year, the polit­i­cal lead­ers and the depart­men­t’s hier­ar­chy can con­tin­ue to delude them­selves into believ­ing that the pri­ma­ry rea­son offi­cers are leav­ing at the rate of 50 each month is pure­ly economics.

The fact is that many who leave the depart­ment leave and remain in the coun­try despite the short­age of bet­ter opportunities.
Worse yet, if they think that to cod­i­fy into law a six months notice before offi­cers leave at the per­il of impris­on­ment will stop the mass exo­dus, they are even dumb­er than we thought.
You want to fix crime give respect and tools to law enforcement.
You are not the ones plac­ing your lives on the line each day.

For their part, prin­ci­pals of both polit­i­cal gangs/​party may con­tin­ue to appor­tion blame for the nation’s predica­ment but both would be well advised to do some soul search­ing and deep introspection.
Maybe just maybe a mea cul­pa would be a good place for them to start the heal­ing process in this country.

Maybe it’s time for a truth and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion com­mis­sion, as was insti­tut­ed in South Africa after apartheid was dismantled.
Inevitably though, it would require exact­ly what the title says, “Truth and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion”, some­thing I doubt Jamaica’s politi­cians are capa­ble of.

In the absence of that, there are ways in which we can at least arrest this slide our coun­try is on.
There are those who refuse to face the real­i­ty that our coun­try is tee­ter­ing pre­cip­i­tous­ly close to anar­chy. We have some choic­es we must make, none of which requires us to ignore real­i­ty, or paper over the real­i­ties with a thick­er veneer of bull.

There are those who rather crit­i­cize and demo­nize the messenger/​s, than see the prob­lems for what they are, and rec­og­nize those who have cre­at­ed the sit­u­a­tion we are in.
It is a dan­ger­ous stran­gle­hold Jamaica’s politi­cians have placed around the col­lec­tive neck of the nation’s peo­ple after the colo­nial era. One which caus­es the larg­er pop­u­la­tion to see lit­er­al­ly every issue good or bad, through the nar­row lens of politics.

Some read the head­lines an form polit­i­cal opin­ions because they are too piss lazy to read. They would rather say we iden­ti­fy prob­lems with­out attach­ing solu­tions. For those I have no time.
The fact is that for years this writer has attached a series of work­ing solu­tions to end­ing this cul­ture of crim­i­nal­i­ty which has gripped our country.

For the most part, they are ignored, in some instances, they are copied and used only when the prover­bial shit has reached the fan, then they claim those ideas as their own.
I am absolute­ly not per­turbed that they would use my ideas, I beg only that they uti­lize all of them in a com­pre­hen­sive man­ner for best results. Maybe we will have a bet­ter Jamaica for future gen­er­a­tions if we care enough about any­one but ourselves.

There are those who are inclined to dis­re­gard the solu­tions I have offered, because I make an easy tar­get. It allows them to absolve their polit­i­cal idols of cul­pa­bil­i­ty for the state of the nation, while they spend their time engag­ing in ad hominem attacks on those who talk about the issues.
In the same way, the polit­i­cal class blames the police for the prob­lems they cre­at­ed, their min­ions’ char­ac­ter assas­si­nates any­one who dares to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo.

IN THESE MUSINGS YOU MAY FIND SOME SOLUTIONS

The path for­ward out of this morass will require a mon­u­men­tal lift and a par­a­digm shift from the way we see the prob­lems. This will mean that we have to try new things which our coun­try have not tried before.
We did not get to this place overnight, we had rough­ly 55 years, a life­time of doing the wrong things result­ing in what we have today.
It will require much time and effort to right the ship, but the sin­gle most impor­tant thing is that we rec­og­nize that what we have been doing has been fail­ing and that we need to make a change.

How do you begin the process of reori­ent­ing the mass­es to the idea that crime is hav­ing a debil­i­tat­ing effect on their lives?
How do you con­vince a nation which Transparency International rates inher­ent­ly cor­rupt, to turn away from sup­port­ing and assist­ing crim­i­nals and embrac­ing the rule of law?

It requires that we have Godly, moral, and upright peo­ple in lead­er­ship, whose inter­est is in nation build­ing, and not self-enrichment.
It requires that Government take respon­si­bil­i­ty for its fail­ings and stop plac­ing blame on under­lings it has set up to fail.

How do we begin the process of train­ing chil­dren to believe in God fam­i­ly and coun­try? How do we reori­ent our young peo­ple to hav­ing respect for life and our cher­ished insti­tu­tions? Are we too far gone that we can­not clean up our pub­lic insti­tu­tions and as a con­se­quence, ensure that pri­vate insti­tu­tions adhere to the rule of law?

Can we have police offi­cers, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges with right­eous inten­tions in the way they dis­pense their functions?
Are we will­ing to spend the time to put ade­quate laws in place to pro­tect the inno­cent and pun­ish the guilty? Do we have the char­ac­ter to ensure that we are not pay­ing lip ser­vice to the exis­ten­tial threat we all face from the exist­ing sit­u­a­tion because we gain mileage one way or another?

Those are some of the broad­er ques­tions we must tack­le before we begin to exe­cute a more pre­cise plan of action which will pull up by the roots the cul­ture of crim­i­nal­i­ty which is chok­ing the lifeblood out of our nation­al life. I stand ready to assist this admin­is­tra­tion or any one in the future which asks for my help.
What I will not do is to be any­one’s pup­pet while they car­ry on with busi­ness as usual
Each and every Jamaican have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to work toward a bet­ter coun­try for their chil­dren, at the rate things are going it seems the Island is des­tined to be cor­rect­ed when the Chinese have ful­ly tak­en over.

Those who for­get the mis­takes they made are des­tined to repeat them.
A peo­ple who came over on slave ships, were bru­tal­ized for cen­turies, sodom­ized, mar­gin­al­ized and mur­dered, who came out of slav­ery and the degra­da­tion of a vicious caste/​class sys­tem, only to turn on each oth­er, may very well find them­selves back in the shack­les of eco­nom­ic and class bondage once more, in a coun­try they call theirs but which will be theirs in name only.