The JCF has killed Duppy Film! Let us break out in song and dance and let us breathe easy, the JCF has it seemed to found their aim again. Over the past two weeks, the JCF has been on a roll, killing up to a dozen dangerous wanted men and having one turn himself in. Some would see this as Jamaica finally taking crime seriously, taking it hard to the criminals and ensuring that they hurt no one else, and while I am elated that these persons can no longer cause such harm to society as they have been alleged to (yes almost none were tried and found guilty so alleged), I can’t help but wonder if by the recent actions of the JCF and the majority of our reactions are we serious about tackling crime or do we only like the idea?
Now before one gets to thinking that this is some piece crying over the ‘fallen soldier’ that is Duppy Film, let me say again no it is not, persons who commit crimes, and persons who commit violent crimes deserve prison, and in some cases a bit more than that. However, that does not blind me to the fact that something is fundamentally wrong with a crime strategy that entails simply ‘kill anything that moves’, or worse still ‘shoot first and questions be damned’, a strategy that totally ignores key questions and a society that seems willfully blind to them.
Now it is not a secret (or maybe an open one) that Duppy Film was well connected, a hired gun he was in hot demand for a time and used by quite a few influential persons. It is also not a secret (again maybe another open one) that he was paid to take out an influential individual. He was found in a part of the island (his home parish admittedly) where the guns for drugs trade and the import/export of drugs is home, and just like that, after seven years on the run, eluding a dragnet of 180 joint JCF-JDF, was found and gunned down out of the blue… does that not strike anyone else as strange? That this man who had answers so so many pertinent and pressing issues, was gunned down just so, after seven years of eluding everyone? To me, something smells fishy about that whole incident.
That is really the point that I am really trying to make here, this not so much to mourn the life that was wasted because the system was set up in such a way that the young man faced a choice of the gun (with its pros and inevitable cons) or play by the rules and be shafted (as is the everyday reality in this nation), no, it is to simply state that as a nation with crime and criminal elements roosted and having taken deep roots in the society and state apparatus, how can we be pleased with the killing of a person who held such key information?
Yes, in all likelihood he was the bloodthirsty killer that we read about in the papers, and that may have been the case with the countless others, but is it any real surprise that after destroying the criminal element without getting the necessary information (for which man living in West Street working as a day labourer can afford a brand new AK-47?) as to who funded him/her, or who their boss is, has only resulted in us looking to smash the 1300 mark for murders this year? Catch them, hold them, convict them, wring the information out of them and then go after the big fishes, that is one of the fastest ways to put a dent in crime.
Let’s not remain the same society that we have been for so long happy with half measures and actions that in the long run will only lead to the national harm. Let’s demand that instead of killing every suspected SOB on site and in every shootout, the JCF instead shoot to wound, say a gut or knee shot, painful but not necessarily lethal, that way we can get the relevant information, lock up the actual power players and truly start ending this crime scourge.
jamaicachange 