What Is Commissioner Williams Smoking..

Youth Unemployment is rough­ly twice the National Average in Jamaica . Youth Unemployment Rate in Jamaica decreased to 5.70 per­cent in May of 2015 from 5.90 per­cent in April of 2015. accord­ing to the Ministry of Internal Affairs & Communications. According to the same report­ing the very same Ministry reports that Youth Unemployment in 2015, reached an all time high of 13.20 per­cent in March of 2003.
To Jamaicans famil­iar with the num­ber of young peo­ple with absolute­ly noth­ing to do these num­bers are beyond laughable.
Despite this, I am not talk­ing specif­i­cal­ly about youth unem­ploy­ment in the abstract but as one of the rea­sons for the Country’s high mur­der rate.
Youth Unemployment. Deportation. Lack of ade­quate Laws. Lack of laws with teeth. Police Incompetence. Lack of sup­port for the Rule of Law. Lack of sup­port from the Political Directorate to Law Enforcement, are only some of the issues fuel­ing the Nation’s bur­geon­ing crime wave.

WHAT IS COMMISSIONER OF POLICE CARL WILLIAMS SMOKING ?
Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams yes­ter­day gave him­self a per­fect rat­ing of 10 out of 10 as he launched what he said were a num­ber of new and tweaked ini­tia­tives to go after crim­i­nals who are respon­si­ble for almost 90 per cent of the 602 mur­ders record­ed in the island over the first six months of this year , accord­ing to the Jamaica Observer. SEE STORY HERE Perfect 10.

According to the report­ing , that fig­ure rep­re­sents a 19 per cent jump (98 more) in the num­ber of mur­ders com­mit­ted over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year. The Article the­o­rized that Williams is seek­ing to allay the fears of Jamaicans.

I am unsure to what extent anoth­er pro­nounce­ment from the Police High Command offer­ing grand plat­i­tudes and mak­ing promis­es it can­not and has no capac­i­ty to ful­fill will do that.
Williams argues that at the top of the list of ini­tia­tives to stem the tide of dead­ly crimes was a new pro­gram called ‘Get the Guns Campaign’, which will offer mon­e­tary incen­tives to cit­i­zens who pro­vide infor­ma­tion that lead to the con­fis­ca­tion of dead­ly weapons. “In light of this and the increased use of guns in mur­ders, I am here intro­duc­ing the ‘Get the Guns Campaign’,” the com­mis­sion­er told jour­nal­ists at a news con­fer­ence at his office in Kingston. “This cam­paign is designed to one, inter­cept ille­gal guns com­ing into the coun­try; two, seize ille­gal guns in the hands of the crim­i­nals; and three, ulti­mate­ly reduce the num­ber of gun mur­ders in the coun­try,” Williams said.!!!
Call me unin­formed and sil­ly but I have to ask this of Commissioner Williams.
If the pro­gram is to quote : Offer mon­e­tary incen­tives to cit­i­zens who pro­vide infor­ma­tion that lead to the con­fis­ca­tion of dead­ly weapons.!
How will the very same pro­gram quote: Intercept ille­gal guns com­ing into the coun­try; two, seize ille­gal guns in the hands of the crim­i­nals; and three, ulti­mate­ly reduce the num­ber of gun mur­ders in the country,”?
Hence my ques­tion to the good­ly Dr. What are you smoking?

Essentially this is just anoth­er Gun Amnesty which gen­er­al­ly does pre­cious lit­tle to reduce Crime but pro­vides a stream of income to those already immersed in crim­i­nal con­duct and more specif­i­cal­ly those engaged in the gun trade.
Generally, Criminals do not give up their guns, they will turn over unused or unus­able old weapons to the police while hold­ing onto their stash of real weapons.
Probably more con­se­quen­tial, a gun amnesty opens up new oppor­tu­ni­ties for gun traders to source weapons ille­gal­ly then sim­ply sell them to the Police/​Government at a profit.

As a for­mer front line street cop I was nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly enthused about gun amnesty. They nev­er real­ize the intend­ed results. In the end they offer pay-offs to cit­i­zens who should have called police about their knowl­edge of ille­gal weapons for their own good to begin with.
Good cit­i­zens call police about crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, includ­ing the where­abouts of ille­gal weapons. Jamaicans must under­stand the lives they save may be their very own.
As a sup­port­er of the Rule of Law, and a Jamaican who yearn for the Police Department to be an effi­cient enti­ty which pro­duces results, I am pained at the Commissioner’s statements.
This state­ment is a clear indi­ca­tion that on the mer­its the Police has no real strat­e­gy to push back against seri­ous crimes in Jamaica.

I am aware that the Government has not sup­plied near­ly enough resources to do the Job. We are also aware that to some extent The Administration is heav­i­ly invest­ed in Criminal con­duct through sur­ro­gates who are well placed in crit­i­cal areas of the society.
I am also aware that the Administration has a net­work of Garrisons through­out the Country in which Criminal behav­ior is nur­tured and encouraged .
Despite this, it is impor­tant that the Police employ more stri­dent and work­able strate­gies geared at pro­vid­ing returns on Investments for the Jamaican Nation.
I ful­ly under­stand that the Force is large­ly demor­al­ized as a result of the fore­gone and oth­er issues, how­ev­er the Commissioner must use the tools he has at his dis­pos­al more effectively.
A gun Amnesty is not the answer real and tan­gi­ble strate­gies are ..

(1)Training Detectives to Investigate Crimes.
(2) Using your Office to push the Administration to pass Laws putting crim­i­nals behind bars and keep­ing them there.
(3) Use Officers more effi­cient­ly by hav­ing very vis­i­ble , coör­di­nat­ed pres­ence in high risk communities .
(4) Having your­self and the rest of the Gazetted Ranks stand firm­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly behind Officers until they are proven to have bro­ken the laws. Over the decades Commissioners and the Gazetted Ranks have been noth­ing but boot lick­ing lack­eys when it comes to sup­port­ing police who do the real work.
(5) Be pro­fes­sion­al take no bull­shit from nei­ther the Administration nor the Opposition. In order to effect change the Police must become an equal oppor­tu­ni­ty offend­er in sup­port of the Nation’s Laws.
(6) Stop being sub­servient and def­er­en­tial to Politicians.

Over the years this pub­li­ca­tion has made real and sub­stan­tive sug­ges­tions which if adopt­ed would have seri­ous­ly placed seri­ous crimes in remission.
Many years ago while I was a young Constable sta­tioned at the Mobile Reserve crim­i­nals would ter­ror­ize Brook Avenue and oth­er parts of the com­mu­ni­ty of Duhaney Park.
Armed with high-pow­ered weapons they used the high ground at the back of Brook avenue as a stag­ing ground from which to launch assaults on the Community.
A sin­gle Police Unit with four offi­cers, appro­pri­ate­ly armed, strate­gi­cal­ly placed brought those attacks to a halt.
These are not new strate­gies. They worked in the Eastern St Andrew com­mu­ni­ties of Nannyville, at the foot of Wareika Hills, and in oth­er loca­tions all across the cor­po­rate area.
As a young offi­cer I was part of sim­i­lar strate­gies all across the Country as we were air­lift­ed into com­mu­ni­ties like Hayes and adjoin­ing com­mu­ni­ties in the Parish of Clarendon. Flankers in St. James and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties all across our country.
The place­ment of well trained , well equipped offi­cers who are unafraid to take action is the best way to tamp down on seri­ous crimes.
Placing band-aid on gun­shot wounds is a fool’s errand.
Commissioner Williams may have spent too much time behind desks to ful­ly under­stand­ing crime fight­ing techniques.
Empty out the Police sta­tions, flood the com­mu­ni­ties with uni­formed cops .
The best deter­rent against crim­i­nals is catch­ing them when they com­mit crimes.
If offi­cers are placed and their place­ment strate­gi­cal­ly coör­di­nat­ed with appro­pri­ate rein­force­ments crime trends down dramatically.
As I have said before there are struc­tur­al and geo­graph­i­cal chal­lenges to effi­cient polic­ing in Jamaica, despite those chal­lenges, sus­tained ‚coör­di­nat­ed intel­li­gence-based polic­ing is possible.
It’s time the Commissioner and his cohorts above Cross Roads real­ize that PhD’s are good but they do pre­cious lit­tle to impact crime . Flowery goobly-gook sounds good but real polic­ing from real cops has no substitute.
That is the job of real ded­i­cat­ed crime fight­ers who know what the hell they are about.