You Simply Cannot Have It Both Ways On Crime.….

Montego Bay’s Mayor Glendon Harris alleges that robot taxis owned by police per­son­nel are pro­mot­ing ram­pant law­less­ness down­town busi­ness dis­trict of the Second City. Harris made the alle­ga­tions last week at a Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MBCCI) stake­hold­ers meet­ing in Montego Bay. Harris hit out against mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) who he accused of turn­ing a blind eye to traf­fic vio­la­tions, among myr­i­ad oth­er offences com­mit­ted in the city’s busi­ness cen­ter, accord­ing to the Jamaica Observer.
Mayor Harris went on quote : “If you go to the inter­sec­tion of Creek Street, St James Street, and this come in like a cho­rus now, you will find no less than 13 white plate cars… so I can say run­ning ‘robot’, from there to Clock and Mount Salem and we can’t get the police to deal with them,” Harris said.“My under­stand­ing is that these cars, by and large, are owned by police offi­cers. It is said that they are owned by police offi­cers. It needs the police to stamp on that once and for all,” he added.

Hmm ..
This is a cry I seem to hear these days, peo­ple com­plain­ing that the Police are turn­ing a blind eye to offences being com­mit­ted in their very presence.
What I also recall is that many of these same peo­ple were front and cen­ter in con­dem­na­tion of Police offi­cers who took their jobs seri­ous­ly and aggres­sive­ly went after all offences. To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion then the nar­ra­tive was that the police are pres­sur­ing poor peo­ple., Many active­ly instruct­ed offend­ers to phys­i­cal­ly assault police offi­cers. Not sat­is­fied they passed a law which crim­i­nal­ized police for doing their jobs. So lets get this straight you can­not have it both ways, these police offi­cers take action based on what they see. Since it is impos­si­ble to see for oth­ers, maybe these young offi­cers sim­ply haven’t seen these offence.

I remem­ber a time when young Police offi­cers walked those beats and made sure peo­ple had the right to live in peace. I

know a lit­tle about that I was one of those offi­cers. Jamaicans did not want that they com­plained about the police harass­ing poor peo­ple who are just try­ing to make a living.
In Kingston as well on King street. Orange street. Heywood street. North Parade. South Parade.East Parade. West Parade the prob­lem posed by mini-bus­es posed a seri­ous safe­ty prob­lem. Back then as young offi­cers we took a no non­sense approach to their deci­sion not to obey the traf­fic laws. The fact that the courts only fined offend­ers a mar­gin­al feel made enforce­ment a non issue as a deterrent .
In Montego Bay. Negril. and Ochio Rios the same was true, The Chamber of Commerce aligned itself with those who crave anar­chy and accused the police of apply­ing too much pres­sure to those who harass and intim­i­date Visitors to our Island. Again the claim was that the Police are pres­sur­ing poor peo­ple who only want to make a liv­ing. Well the con­se­quence of that is that Tourists were repelled and repulsed by being harangued so the all inclu­sive pack­ages became the choice of vis­i­tors. In addi­tion the seri­ous­ness of our crime sit­u­a­tion result­ed in a US State Department warn­ing to Americans wish­ing to trav­el to Jamaica.
That did not work out so well for the poor peo­ple who only want­ed to make a liv­ing now did it?

Harris con­tin­ued: “If peo­ple are allowed to do any­thing that they want to do, then that is why we end up with the mur­der rate as it is. You have to stop the small things. You are at a traf­fic light in Montego Bay; stop, and vehi­cle just pass you and the police are there, police vehi­cle is there and some­body just broke the stop light and gone and noth­ing is done.
This makes me laugh real­ly they still do not get it I am con­vinced. The Police are doing the bare min­i­mum and they still do not get it.  “Enforcement must be the order of the day in order for us to get back some law and order and civil­i­ty inside this city and inside this coun­try.” Said Harris.
You think?
Since we are on the lit­tle sub­ject of fix­ing small prob­lems I would just like to point out to the good­ly Mayor one tiny lit­tle trans­gres­sion he over­looked . This blun­der which defines the Mayor and his abil­i­ty to lead . That is the issue of the des­e­cra­tion of the Jamaican flag by polit­i­cal hacks who thought it was expe­di­ent or fun­ny to remove the green from the Jamaican flag when the Mayor was being installed as chief exec­u­tive of the city of Montego Bay.
Mister Mayor you could have demand­ed that the mon­stros­i­ty be tak­en down(in the event your argu­ment is you did not know it would be there as is). You could have decid­ed to be sworn in at anoth­er time, or in anoth­er venue. You did not.
When you point fin­gers and make grandiose state­ments be care­ful how you do that par­tic­u­lar­ly when you live in a glass house.
Go tell that to your Government Mayor Harris. tell that to the bunch of know it all’s who are shap­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy with­out an degree of ratio­nale at all . Tell that to the Elites who occu­py ivory tow­ers and relieve their con­sciences by pre­tend­ing to care about what hap­pens down-town while they would not be caught dead down there.
Tell that to those who dri­ve around in deeply tint­ed vehi­cles with the win­dows wound all the way up so they do not have to deal with win­dow-wip­ing squeegee-guys, or the beg­gars at the traf­fic lights.
They then go back to their gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties and man­sions on the hill and pon­tif­i­cate about how much they care for the poor.

Godfrey Dyer, the for­mer pres­i­dent of the MBCCI. chimed in ..

“The peo­ple who you put there must serve. I have seen it also, things hap­pen­ing and a police­man walk­ing by and he does­n’t see it. They are not per­form­ing. They need super­vi­sion. It does­n’t make sense you send half a dozen police­man down town and you don’t have super­vi­sors check­ing on them to see what they are doing. They are just left there for the num­ber of hours that they are left there. They are not per­form­ing they should be a lot more effective,”

News flash, Supervisors can­not force younger offi­cers to make arrests. Though more mid­dle man­age­ment of younger offi­cers may be in order, no one can force any­one to make arrests​.You can­not force offi­cers to make arrest or be tough on offend­ers sim­ply because it suits your pur­pose now. The shit is now hit­ting the fan and it’s now about panicking.
Said Dyer: “The peo­ple who you put there must serve…Ah that supe­ri­or bull­shit , who did Dyer put out there? The real­i­ty is these shit-heads real­ly believe police offi­cers are their lit­tle bitch­es out there to serve their fidu­cia­ry and oth­er inter­ests. They do not care about the inter­est of the offi­cers who are out there stand­ing between them­selves and the anar­chists. You get police to crack down by sup­port­ing them and pay­ing them , you don’t get to demand anything.
Where was the cham­ber of com­merce when the police were fight­ing their wage battles?
Where were the cham­ber of com­merce when the Police were fight­ing an ill-advised and ill-con­fig­ured (inde­com) Act which empow­ers crim­i­nals more than it removes bad cops?

These sup­posed lead­ers need a healthy dose of intro­spec­tion , you can­not have it both ways, get your lazy judg­men­tal ass­es behind the Police , sup­port them and watch crime go away.
Then of course there are the courts where the lib­er­al judges sim­ply dis­pose of cas­es as they see fit , this place is fast becom­ing a failed state.
Too many know it all in this lit­tle Island.
Happy Independence day JAMAICA…