WHERE ARE WE HEADING?

Members of the Jamaica Police Force have a very tough road to hoe. They are asked to put their lives on the line in defense of some of the most crim­i­nal-lov­ing peo­ple to be found any­where. How did Jamaica get there you ask? Jamaica got there because of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in law-enforce­ment. This cre­at­ed an atti­tude which says, if you are con­nect­ed, strong , pow­er­ful, or a bad-man you can sim­ply bad man your way through the sys­tem and no one will dare touch you. This atti­tude start­ed around the time Michael Manley became Prime Minister in 1972. His rhetoric was one which was con­strued to mean, one could sim­ply take what­ev­er one want­ed, whether you own it or not.

The peri­od between 1972 when Michael Manley’s was elect­ed to office and 1980 when he was boot­ed from it, was the most tumul­tuous peri­od in Jamaica’s mod­ern his­to­ry. High prices, run-away crime, food short­ages and a gen­er­al ide­o­log­i­cal and moral shift in the direc­tion of our coun­try. Today Jamaica is reap­ing the bit­ter fruits of that shift. The Jamaica of today is one where the men­tion of the word  “God” to many, is a dirty word. It is a Jamaica which indulges in las­civ­i­ous and Hedonistic plea­sures. A Jamaica opposed to author­i­ty, yet hell-bent on death and destruc­tion. At the Genesis of this shift, crime esca­lat­ed under Manley, it got so bad, his admin­is­tra­tion was forced to build the Gun Court and insti­tute a state of Emergency. At the heart of those actions , is the cer­ti­tude of my argu­ments. When you cre­ate a feel­ing in peo­ple that they can do as they please, They do as they please. At the same time Manley was build­ing the Gun-Court his goons were active­ly engaged in march up to police sta­tions and forcibly remov­ing crim­i­nals from police cus­tody. This was unprece­dent­ed in Jamaica. This kind of thug­gery was unknown to the coun­try under the lead­er­ship of its for­mer Prime Minister Hugh Lawson Shearer of the Labor Party. Shearer would tol­er­ate none of that behav­ior, he gave police a free hand to go after the crim­i­nals wher­ev­er they were.

Unfortunately for Jamaica ‚the labor par­ty, seek­ing to strike a counter bal­ance, built and main­tained two pre­mier gar­risons dur­ing that time . Tivoli Gardens and Wilton Gardens(Rema). After Seaga won in 1980 he did not stand in the way of the Police doing their duties. There was one caveat of course, Tivoli Gardens was out of bounds. I entered Law Enforcement as a fresh-faced ide­al­ist who believed I could change the world, want­i­ng to do good. I want­ed to give peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to live their lives hav­ing the free­dom to go wher­ev­er they chose to in their own coun­try with­out the per­il of immi­nent death. As a High school kid I saw what Political vio­lence did to our coun­try. I want­ed to be a part of chang­ing it. It did­n’t take long for me to rec­og­nize that noth­ing I could do as a police offi­cer would ever change Jamaica for the bet­ter. I rec­og­nized pret­ty ear­ly that the cor­rup­tion was at the top , and the stream was already way too con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. I made plans to exit and was out ful­ly in 10 years.

Despite the rel­a­tive calm of the Seaga years of the 80’s the writ­ing was on the wall. The peo­ple had tast­ed the fruits of the Manley ide­ol­o­gy, free­ness, do what you want. law enforce­ment will not be allowed to touch you. Take peo­ple’s prop­er­ty through force of arms. Receive mon­ey for no work. The gen­er­al law­less­ness of the 70’s was too strong a lure to resist. The labor par­ty was boot­ed from office in 1989 and Michael Manley was returned to office, despite the unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter which were his pre­vi­ous two terms.

What result­ed after was an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ years of PNP rule which drove the nail in the eco­nom­ic and social cof­fin of Jamaica. Punctured only by a brief 4 ‑year inter­lude when Bruce Golding and the JLP was elect­ed to office by a razor-thin mar­gin of vic­to­ry in 2007. By 2011 the PNP was back in office under the lead­er­ship of Portia Simpson Miller, who Golding had beat­en just 4 years pri­or. Today only about 13% of the nations peo­ple are in the mid­dle-class. A shock­ing 83% of the peo­ple are liv­ing below the pover­ty line. All of this, after 28 years of People’s National Rule of the last four decades.Corruption is the hall-mark of the Administration.
Rating Agency Transparency International rat­ed Jamaica 84% cor­rupt. Crime will not be head­ing south any­time soon. The courts can­not be trust­ed to dis­pense equi­table and fair jus­tice. Despite our best hopes, there are large chunks of the Jamaican pop­u­la­tion who are sim­ply above the laws. A huge chunk of the pop­u­lace, both at home and in the dias­po­ra are sup­port­ive of crim­i­nal­i­ty and chaos. Some liv­ing abroad active­ly fund crime there. Jamaica is expe­ri­enc­ing the bit­ter fruits of the Manley doctrine.