Zip It Just Take Your Medicine…

Jamaica is a vio­lent place, it is dan­ger­ous place to vis­it , it is a dan­ger­ous place to live.…
Yea , yeah , I know there is crime every­where , peo­ple kill peo­ple every­day in oth­er coun­tries. If that’s

your atti­tude , this Article is not for you .
It is for sane peo­ple who do not con­form to the worst com­mon denominator.
It is not for those who ratio­nal­ize away whats wrong with us.

It is the right of peo­ple every­where to live in peace and secu­ri­ty. Free from the prospect of being gunned down uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly for no good reason.
It is not too much to ask that a group of Farmers engag­ing in a friend­ly game of domi­noes at a rur­al shop enjoy the game and a drink with­out being gunned down needlessly.
This sim­ple past-time is an old and sacred pas­time . A good game of domi­noes shared between friends should not end in the death of any mem­ber of our community.
It is not expect­ing too much when peo­ple sit in their back­yards with a cou­ple of friends after a hard day’s work and enjoy a cock­tail with­out their home being invad­ed by armed thugs who then rob, rape, and kill them.

Women should be able to walk with­out being fon­dled , groped and raped by depraved thugs who have no respect for their right to say “no ‚and be secure in their persons’.
Young boys and girls should nev­er be denied their God giv­en right to grow up with­out being exposed to sex­u­al and oth­er forms of abuse.
While we are on the sub­ject of abuse …
Let me be clear with the Administration if office at this time.
There is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in low­er­ing the age of con­sent from 16 years of age to 14 years of age.
A 14 year-old-child is inca­pable of ful­ly under­stand­ing adult con­se­quences to the ado­les­cent urges she is

expe­ri­enc­ing. Those urges should not be an invi­ta­tion for sex­u­al exploita­tion but a time for dia­logue with her parents.
This is a time when we should be explor­ing ways to deal appro­pri­ate­ly with sex­u­al offend­ers , not mak­ing it eas­i­er for them to legal­ly exploit children.

If our nation could pull it’s col­lec­tive head from it’s pre­ten­tious ass, we could begin to sort out some of the thorny issues fac­ing our coun­try today.
One of the most seri­ous issue affect­ing the qual­i­ty of life in Jamaica is crime. Yet the vast major­i­ty of Jamaica’s pre­ten­tious wannabe Elites demor­al­ized the Police Department for decades while hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly ignor­ing the destruc­tion both polit­i­cal par­ties were bring­ing to our coun­try by pit­ting Jamaicans against Jamaicans.
Sometime around the late 60’s to ear­ly 70’s our coun­try start­ed see­ing some crim­i­nal exam­ples, they indi­cat­ed what could become a seri­ous prob­lem if not nipped in the bud.
The Prime Minister at the time Hugh Lawson Shearer (using what today is less that polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect lan­guage) told crim­i­nals in no uncer­tain terms that there would be no sup­port com­ing from his admin­is­tra­tion on their behalf.

The new mil­i­tant crop of black intel­lec­tu­als fresh­ly mint­ed out of the UWI were quick to use their new found edu­ca­tion and sta­tus to cre­ate a counter cul­ture. That counter cul­ture , unfor­tu­nate­ly for our coun­try was one which did not encour­age sup­port for the rule of law.
Many pounced on the PM’s com­ments which said in con­text that police would have free rein to go after criminals.
Before long Shearer was out of the lead­er­ship role of the JLP replaced by Edward Seaga,the Architect of Tivoli Gardens the for­mer Back-o-Wall.
The rise of Michael Manley to pow­er in 1972 was to be the begin­ning of a peri­od of immense unciv­il behav­ior unprece­dent­ed in our Island.
Manley’s rise had a slew of linch­pins chief among which was a new black con­scious­ness which unfor­tu­nate­ly did not believe in hard work for a fair days pay.
Today our coun­try reg­is­ters one of the high­est rate of vio­lent crimes in the world to include mur­der, rapes, shoot­ings, extor­tion and a gen­er­al sense of lawlessness.
This can­not be laid sole­ly at the feet of politi­cians . Much of the respon­si­bil­i­ty should square­ly be placed at the feet of the new­ly edu­cat­ed class, those who expe­ri­enced edu­ca­tion but did not under­stand the dif­fer­ence between polic­ing in Jamaica as a third world nation and polic­ing in the devel­oped world.

Yes offi­cers must do their jobs with the rights of cit­i­zens in mind.
However it can­not be done when peo­ple are fir­ing high pow­ered weapons at them.
The police first must paci­fy and remove the threat then employ com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing. You do not nego­ti­ate with crim­i­nals who play by no rules.
The Faux bour­geoisie which large­ly was safe­ly encap­su­lat­ed from the hor­rors of crime, thanks to the sac­ri­fice of police offi­cers, nev­er quite under­stood that a del­i­cate bal­anced must be struck between hard polic­ing and con­cerns for human rights.
In many instances their protes­ta­tions about human rights had noth­ing to do with actu­al or real con­cerns for the coun­try’s poor and dis­pos­sessed but because they were active­ly engaged in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties themselves.

Just today crim­i­nals shot and injured sev­er­al peo­ple down­town Kingston, this is in addi­tion to the over 3 Jamaicans who are killed each day.
Jamaican crim­i­nals are oper­at­ing on free range.
They have pre­cious lit­tle fear of the police and even less regard for the rule of law.
Oh wait…
Sorry, we do not have a coun­try of laws we have a coun­try where every fly-by-night who know somebody

who know some­body who know some­body is above the law.
Jamaican police offi­cers have cer­tain­ly done more than enough to war­rant seri­ous oversight.
INDECOM is not that over­sight. Creating anoth­er police agency to police the police, which is in com­pe­ti­tion with the police but has no under­stand­ing of polic­ing, is anti­thet­i­cal to solv­ing the prob­lem of improp­er police. behavior.

Our coun­try is a small sliv­er of land 4,411 square miles. We have a pop­u­la­tion of 2.8 mil­lion people.
Some very pow­er­ful peo­ple in and out­side Government are ben­e­fit­ing immense­ly from crime and the wave of Gang activ­i­ty which is fuel­ing the coun­try’s mur­der rate.
If Jamaican Authorities were inter­est­ed in con­trol­ling crime they would have upgrad­ed, equipped, and mod­ern­ized the police department.
The over­sight agency INDECOM was not cre­at­ed by the present admin­is­tra­tion but the Government has had every oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring the police depart­met up to date.
They failed because they do not want to succeed.