Whack-a-mole-crime Strategy

“One zone will not have an impact on the nation­al crime rate; the impact is sup­posed to be on the zone and the imme­di­ate areas of the zone.” [Andrew Holness]
But does it make sense if you stop the killing in one area if killings are increased in anoth­er as a con­se­quence of the replace­ment of the killers?

The PM’s state­ments though off, offered a sense of relief to me when he uttered those words in response to ques­tions posed by the press a few days ago.
It offered me hope that despite the protes­ta­tions of the bots who tra­verse social media, mak­ing blan­ket polit­i­cal state­ments and giv­ing sup­port to things they do not under­stand, at least he under­stands the lim­i­ta­tions of his own policies.

If You Believe The ZOSO Will Have An Impact On Murders You Deserve To Be Conned ….

So now that we got some sem­blance of the truth from the Prime Minister, I hope his sup­port­ers will be more informed and less bel­li­cose in their attacks on peo­ple who under­stand crime policy.
By his own admis­sion, the PM con­ced­ed that his pol­i­cy is essen­tial­ly, at best, a whack-a-mole game. Create a zone, and the killers pop up some­place else.

Whether this was a Freudian slip or a real moment of hon­esty, I do not know.
I know that I nev­er heard this com­ing from the Prime Minister through­out the Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSO) debate discussion.

Nevertheless, now that we have heard the truth from the high­est elect­ed office­hold­er, it’s impor­tant to parse the real­i­ties in an hon­est and real way.
So I would like to walk the par­ti­san polit­i­cal hacks who name-call and label me with ad hominem attacks through the holes in this process in a sim­ple and unso­phis­ti­cat­ed way.

FACT

Since the ZOSOs are a sta­t­ic phe­nom­e­non, mean­ing large amounts of police per­son­nel backed by sol­diers are con­fined to a cer­tain geo­graph­ic area, crim­i­nals slith­er away to oth­er parts of the Island.
Before the ZOSO bill became law, I said crim­i­nals would go elsewhere.
That’s exact­ly what they did.
Local news reports have borne out those truths, which actu­al­ly were not earth-shat­ter­ing pre­dic­tions but com­mon sense assessments.

Murders have actu­al­ly gone up since the ZOSO law was passed, and the Prime Minister declared the first zone.
It is yet unclear if there are any con­nec­tions between the ZOSO and the esca­la­tion in homicides.
In pre­vi­ous arti­cles, I explained why I believed crime would increase after the ZOSO bill became law.
Not the least of which is that crim­i­nals some­times wait to see what author­i­ties are com­ing up with before con­tin­u­ing on with their activ­i­ties. They then adjust their activ­i­ties accordingly.
As far as the ZOSO is con­cerned, it did not require much for the crim­i­nal under­ground to fig­ure out that this was a noth­ing burger.
So it’s back to busi­ness as usu­al and with some intensification.

For ZOSO to have any chance of suc­cess, there would have to be, in my esti­ma­tion, one hun­dred thou­sand police and sol­diers simul­ta­ne­ous­ly swoop­ing down on polit­i­cal gar­risons and hotspots across the Island in a coör­di­nat­ed and well-exe­cut­ed exercise.
They would need to have snif­fer dogs which would sniff out weapons as the search teams go from house to house in search of weapons.
Additionally, the police would also have to be extra vig­i­lant on their look­out for stray crim­i­nals seek­ing to evade the heat.
Those resources would have to be sta­tioned in those com­mu­ni­ties for a pro­tract­ed peri­od of time, allow­ing for what­ev­er dress­ing the Government wants to add to the hard work law enforce­ment has already done.
At the same time, there would have to be spe­cial resources ded­i­cat­ed to pre­vent­ing guns and ammu­ni­tion from enter­ing the Island through the porous ports of entry.

Since the coun­try has noth­ing close to those resources, the next best thing to do is to attack the prob­lem through a sys­tem­at­ic out­ward build.
This means a few things that may seem regres­sive but are absolute­ly cru­cial in build­ing out a pol­i­cy to arrest crime on the Island.

♦This means ask­ing for help from non-European coun­tries if needed.
Jamaica can­not use Scandinavian or oth­er European polic­ing mod­els to deal with crime.
Scandinavian coun­tries have large­ly mono­lith­ic cau­casian soci­eties, which enjoy some of the best stan­dards of liv­ing on the planet.
Crime is low because of two fac­tors (1) Those soci­eties are intol­er­ant of crime; they have soci­eties found­ed on the rule of law.(2) Those soci­eties are wealthy, so they nat­u­ral­ly have few­er vio­lent crimes.
Lobbyists and oth­ers on the tax-pay­ers dime who trav­el to these coun­tries and then return with their mod­els should be stopped.

♦ Those who lob­by on behalf of crim­i­nals under the guise of human rights should have no seat at the table, and their views ought not to inform or impact policy.

♦ Repeal the INDECOM act.

♦ Re-do the INDECOM act, and ensure that the law in no way, nei­ther by spir­it nor the let­ter gives the impres­sion to crim­i­nals that they have a friend in the law.

Ensure that the law has safe­guards and con­sid­er­a­tions of law enforce­men­t’s points of view.
Attach puni­tive com­po­nents, which makes it a crime for any mem­ber of INDECOM to asso­ciate, meet with, or oth­er­wise col­lude with groups that lob­by against any of the groups INDECOM is investigating.

♦ Abolish the Public defend­er’s office.

The min­istry of jus­tice and the Director of Public Prosecution should be the Public Defenders.
Use the resources mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed by that depart­ment to improve the jus­tice system.
Pass laws that place crim­i­nals in prison and keep them there.
Change the laws to make it manda­to­ry no bail for mur­der defendants.
Make it manda­to­ry life with­out parole for those con­vict­ed of com­mit­ting mur­ders with a firearm.
Make it twen­ty years to life for any­one pos­sess­ing an ille­gal gun.
Five years are manda­to­ry for the pos­ses­sion of ille­gal ammunition.

♦ Create account­abil­i­ty stan­dards in the Police and all oth­er Government agencies.
The mis­in­for­ma­tion plagues the Island that police are the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of cor­rup­tion comes from the elit­ist camps.
We know that the Ministers of Government, regard­less of par­ty, are usu­al­ly cor­rupt, and so too are mem­bers of parliament.
That’s why the Contractor General’s depart­ment came into being but with­out pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al powers.
All Government agen­cies are cor­rupt; begin the process of clean­ing up the cor­rup­tion from the top down.
Better train, equip, pay, super­vise, and sup­port the police.

♦ Build Prisons. Courthouses. Hire Prosecutors. Appoint Judges from the pros­e­cu­tor’s office. Both Political par­ties must eschew gar­risons, and gangs and take a uni­fied stance against crime.
Anything out­side this com­pre­hen­sive approach is not a crime strat­e­gy but an attempt at deceiv­ing the public.

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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.