ZOSO ‑So So ?

I am on record detail­ing why the stu­pid ZOSO will not work.
No need to flog a dead horse, the damn thing will prove me cor­rect with­out my hav­ing to con­tin­ue a point by point break­down of why it won’t.

I will be an observ­er from this point on, watch­ing and cat­a­loging the faults in this process.
I will say this, how­ev­er, Robert Montague the National secu­ri­ty Minister has cer­tain­ly con­fessed the real intent of the so-called ZOSO act which bears out what I have been say­ing before the bill became law.

Said Montague at a town hall meet­ing a cou­ple of days ago.
“The law seeks to con­tain crime while safe­guard­ing the human rights of res­i­dents and pro­mot­ing com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment through social inter­ven­tion ini­tia­tives”.
Hmmm.

No, I absolute­ly do not want the law to fail. I just know that what the gov­ern­ment is doing is the oppo­site of what it should be doing and so I can­not sup­port it.
We now hear that the intel­li­gence data on which the deci­sion was made to make Mount Salem and it envi­rons the first ZOSO was flawed.

We under­stand there is much hand-wring­ing even though I don’t see what harm is done by hav­ing a mas­sive show of force in a com­mu­ni­ty, except the mas­sive show of force in that community.

I’m a lit­tle dis­turbed at the con­tin­ued incom­pe­tence of the police, assum­ing they are respon­si­ble as has been report­ed for fur­nish­ing flawed data to the pow­ers mak­ing the deci­sion on where to go.
We also hear that the whole grand cha­rade has not net­ted a sin­gle gun.
Is there any won­der that it hasn’t?

If the exer­cise is to con­tain crime while safe­guard­ing the human rights of res­i­dents and pro­mot­ing com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment through social inter­ven­tion ini­tia­tives, why would you expect to see high pow­ered weapons tak­en off the streets?
For the record the Government wants to safe­guard cit­i­zens right, (noble), they want to pro­mote com­mu­ni­ty development(commendable) and con­tain crime .….
I was with the Government until they said con­tain crime with­out say­ing a sin­gle word about what they intend to do about the thou­sands prob­a­bly tens of thou­sands of guns in the hands of dan­ger­ous killers.
That’s where we part com­pa­ny, those guns should be plucked from the hands of these killers one way or the oth­er and they should not be paid to turn them in because what you are cre­at­ing by doing so is to sanc­tion a mas­sive legal gun trade with criminals.
If you can­not stop the guns com­ing in why would you be pay crim­i­nals to turn in their guns?

You may do sev­er­al things to a rick­ety old house, (a) You may bull­doze the whole damn thing, which we can­not do in this case. (b) Tear down the old cracked and peel­ing walls and start over with new dry­wall and elec­tri­cal wiring.Or © paper over the whole thing and cre­ate an impres­sion to a gullible new buyer.

The Jamaican Government opt­ed for © to paper over the house but some of us are not buy­ing it.
We are quite capa­ble of doing our own inspec­tion even as some law abid­ing Jamaicans won­der out loud about the brave com­pe­tent cops we once had?

Bunch Of Smoke On Crime, No Fire: Cops Must Get A Clue As Well…

The gov­ern­ment itself told us that this exer­cise is not about fix­ing the old decrepit house, I mean Island, it’s about pla­cat­ing the public.
You know deceiv­ing the buy­er that here­in lies a beau­ti­ful house/​Island, only it’s not true.
It’s a decrepit old house with bad­ly rot­ting walls, faulty elec­tri­cal wiring, and leak­ing pipes.
Peel off the veneer of beau­ti­ful wall­pa­per and the whole façade collapses.

Sure many res­i­dents want to see the secu­ri­ty forces in their com­mu­ni­ties, who would­n’t want a mod­icum of peace and qui­et? What par­ent does­n’t want their chil­dren safe as they trek to school or even as they play as all chil­dren should?

In fair­ness to the Holness admin­is­tra­tion, I under­stand it’s cow­ardice even as I loathe it.
Holness has a razor thin one seat major­i­ty in the leg­is­la­ture, any dis­rupt­ing event and he is out as Prime Minister.

That’s one way to look at the Prime Minister’s cow­ardice in the approach he opt­ed for in the ZOSO act.
You see, it’s the path of least resis­tance, he can’t tear down the whole thing. He is not pre­pared to do the hard work and risk a pub­lic back­lash, par­tic­u­lar­ly with an oppo­si­tion par­ty which is quite will­ing to stoke the fires of crime and ben­e­fits from the fall­out and a pop­u­la­tion heav­i­ly invest­ed in crime.

As a result of the Opposition’s ‑oppo­si­tion and the pha­lanx of crim­i­nal rights lob­by input into the ZOSO law, it became a use­less bunch of crap not worth the paper it’s writ­ten on.
No damn coun­try make their laws while wor­ry­ing about for­eign human rights lob­by except Jamaica.
Stupid is as stu­pid does.

Whats a guy to do?
Holness was a part of the Bruce Golding admin­is­tra­tion when the Americans demand­ed the extra­di­tion of Christopher Coke.
He knows damn well what Tivoli Gardens was, let’s not rewrite his­to­ry, let’s not san­i­tize that com­mu­ni­ty’s past.

Despite his demon­stra­ble igno­rance and lack of respect for what police face dai­ly Mister Holness must know that when the secu­ri­ty forces move in to remove a crime leader from a com­mu­ni­ty like Tivoli Gardens, Arnett Gardens or any of the major gar­risons on the Island, unfor­tu­nate­ly, there will be bloodshed.

He does not want anoth­er exam­ple of what hap­pened in Tivoli to hap­pen on his watch, only the police did not cre­ate that sce­nario they did.
Politicians cre­at­ed these gar­risons, police sta­tions were burned before a sin­gle cop entered the com­mu­ni­ty and yes police offi­cers were shot and killed in that process.

Literally, every­one was giv­en a chance to leave the com­mu­ni­ty they chose to use the oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate their sup­port of Coke.
We have learned that many offi­cers did not turn up to go into Mount Salem recent­ly, accord­ing to one report­ing less than a third of the 140 offi­cers who were sched­uled for that oper­a­tion opt­ed out.

Let this be a les­son to this Government and the preda­to­ry one in waiting.These young peo­ple who step for­ward to be police offi­cers do so know­ing full well that their coun­try is heav­i­ly anti-police or to put it anoth­er way is a crim­i­nal cod­dling mecca.

Nevertheless, they step for­ward to serve.
What they are demon­strat­ing through the low num­bers of peo­ple now step­ping for­ward to sign up, the high attri­tion rate, or even their refusal to be used and abused like they were in Tovili is that they are not going to be scape­goat­ed any longer and for that, I am extreme­ly proud.

Not all Jamaicans are blind­ed by green or orange blinkers.
As a result, we are able to see through the smoke and the beguil­ing yet decep­tive illu­sions of his mirrors.
Some of us know what police work ought to look like it’s not whats hap­pen­ing today and it cer­tain­ly should not be about shoot­ing down any­one except by the let­ter of the law.

I urge the Prime Minister to stop the games and get real polic­ing and law enforce­ment advice with a view to end­ing this very seri­ous prob­lem the Island is experiencing.
Jamaicans can ignore our warn­ings but it behooves lead­er­ship to lis­ten the last thing we want is for our coun­try to be labeled a ter­ror­ist state.
I have been warn­ing about this for years. We ignore this at our peril.