When The Likes Of Paul Burke Support Anti-crime Legislation We Have Reached Critical Mass.…

(Chubble ketch yu pickney shut fit yu )!!!
Old Jamaican proverb !
Translation when you get in trouble you are forced to do things you would normally never do.

The Jamaican Government is in a mad rush to pass by mid July a bill into law it calls the Special Security of Community Development Measure.
I com­mend the Government for now rec­og­niz­ing that some­thing dras­tic needs to be done to cor­ral the Island’s gal­lop­ing mur­der rate.
Since the start of the year almost 700 Jamaicans have been report­ed mur­dered. In addi­tion to those shot and injured oth­er types of assaults, includ­ing sex­u­al assaults and a gen­er­al sense of law­less­ness is the norm. This in addi­tion to the insane car­nage on the Island’s road­ways, which has result­ed in 156 fatal­i­ties up to May 8^th.

Ignore Bunting And Phillips On Crime: Not Long Ago Bunting Wanted Divine Intervention…

The new leg­is­la­tion is being tout­ed as a means toward bring­ing down the Island’s out of con­trol mur­der numbers.
Many Jamaicans at dif­fer­ent lev­els believe there is no need for more laws or emer­gency pow­ers for law enforcement.
What is need­ed they argue is a restruc­tur­ing of the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.
I concur.

There is much that the police can do with the immense pow­ers they have if they learn to use those pow­ers intelligently.
Since the long­stand­ing emer­gency pow­ers of the 70’s and 80’s have been pulled from the police they have strug­gled to deal effec­tive­ly with crime .
Nevertheless, intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, exploit­ing the flee­ing felon arrange­ments and oth­er built-ins, allows police offi­cers to do their jobs with­out undu­ly incon­ve­nienc­ing cit­i­zens, or abro­gat­ing their rights.

Sadly the arc of crime is not going to be bent by this bit of leg­is­la­tion even if it becomes law.
Another law which sin­gles out com­mu­ni­ties rather than indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties (gangs) are prob­a­bly going to yield neg­li­gi­ble results at best and worse case may even exac­er­bate rather than fix the prob­lems it is intend­ed to fix.

There is much which can be done with­out anoth­er bit of anti-crime legislation.

♦Hiring judges who respect the law , not judges who rely on their own emo­tions regard­ing bail and sentencing.
♦ Hire more judges and prosecutors.
♦ Remove cor­rup­tion from the Judiciary
♦ Remove cor­rup­tion from the police department.
♦ Repeal the INDECOM Act and reau­tho­rize a law which inves­ti­gates like the FBI does , not an agency of one per­son­’s ego , which cre­ate con­flict with law-enforce­ment and align itself with lob­by groups which are opposed to police.
♦ Train and equip hun­dreds of moti­vat­ed young offi­cers who want to serve in the CIB.
♦ Eliminate polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence from law enforce­ment and elim­i­nate polit­i­cal con­nec­tions to crim­i­nal gangs.
♦ Both polit­i­cal par­ties must come togeth­er and throw their unequiv­o­cal sup­port behind the police.

The fore­gone is not a panacea for the elim­i­na­tion of crime . It is a road map which if expand­ed upon will begin the slow and tedious return of Jamaica to some sem­blance of safe­ty and security.
Civility and respect must be taught in the home.

It is a wel­come change to see PNP stand­out Paul Burke come out in sup­port of the new anti-crime ini­tia­tives of the admin­is­tra­tion, despite intran­si­gence and obstruc­tion from lead­ers of his party.
If old front-line sol­diers of the PNP like Burke can now see the need to stop with the pussy­foot­ing I don’t know what it will take to wake up the lead­er­ship of the coun­try that the play time thing has long passed.

The PNP fraud­u­lent­ly main­tain that more pow­ers to law enforce­ment means the rights of Jamaicans will be tak­en away.
In a bril­liant rebut­tal to his par­ty Burke said “Our rights have already been tak­en away…I have wit­nessed first-hand the lev­el of fear…I used to be able to go across many com­mu­ni­ties, I am [now] reluc­tant to do so” .

In the mean­time , while the Government is dead set on get­ting this mag­i­cal bit of leg­is­la­tion passed by mid July ‚it has invit­ed the reg­u­lar shapers of pol­i­cy to make sub­mis­sion about the legislation.
Of course the inter­est groups which have always impact­ed anti-crime leg­is­la­tion are the very same groups which will be inform­ing the debate on this one as well.
In the end this bit of mag­ic will have the same degen­er­a­tive effect the INDECOM law has had on crime.
The Norman Manley Law School.
The Bar Association.
Anti-Police lob­by, Jamaicans for Justice(JFJ. FAST, PMI, and the oth­er crim­i­nal sup­port­ing cabal of deplorables, all of which make mon­ey or gain rel­e­vance from crime.

The per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of stu­pid­i­ty is doing the same old thing and expect­ing a dif­fer­ent result.…