The recent brutal attacks on six homeless individuals resulting in the death of five has acted as a morbid exclamation mark to what has been a bloody January. This increase in murder has resulted in calls for action from the opposition, condemnation by the government and the urging of cooperation in the crime fight from the private sector. This month also saw the downing of a ‘mystery’ plane in clarendon suspected of carrying drugs whose occupant’s whereabouts are now unknown despite a rigorous search effort.
The condemnation has come in the usual forms, the MP Robert Morgan used the incidents to state emphatically that ‘criminals seem to have more rights than their victims. Some walking around with AKs yet still many do not realise that the criminals have declared war on the peaceful. Our crime problems will not be solved with doves. What we need much won’t accept and fight it every day’. This utterance came after the PM made a statement condemning the violence in media and the fact that the songs which promote violence degrade our musical product. The leader of the opposition and his point man the leader of opposition business not to be left out of the media scrum that ‘The silence from the PM and National Security Ministry is deafening! We demand openness from our gov on crime statistics, & urgently call for a plan to combat crime. The opposition stands ready to support any plan that can make meaningful change’. Bunting noted that the PM must deal with the rising crime issue as this is a promise from his first term.
Not to sound mean, but these responses to our crime situation either reveal the lack or thought coming from our political class, or that they really do not care about this crime monster and either answer should make us worried. Mr Morgan and his tropes are old hat, they have been the talk of the shoot-first crowd since the 90s and it is as silly and baseless a point now as it was then. Criminals have more rights is a stupid statement, first off, what ‘right’ does the criminal enjoy that the law-abiding citizen does not? None, actually, rather they have been conferred privileges by Mr Morgan’s ilk, that is the privilege of police protection, political backing, legal backing, guns, the tacit approval to use them against enemies etc… and those who have not been conferred with those privileges have taken them rather than wait on a political or industrialist sponsor.
But that was poetry he will say, painting with words, but we are still then left with his misguided thought that removing the criminals will result in no violent crime. Let us use his logic, let us say tomorrow all the violent criminals (read gunmen) are taken off the street. Apart from the near 40% of murders left (see domestic homicides), what infrastructure has been put in place to ensure that the current generation of hungry and lost children will not pick up the guns? Have we ended our status as a drug haven, locked up the money men financing crime or the politicians who protect them and benefit from them? No, not when we have agencies like the PMI being deliberately underfunded and with social workers still to be rolled out in the much-vaunted ZOSO’s.
The LOO and his leader of business are equally as bad. As Mr Obrien-Chang noted, the opposition and govt have a much-heralded crime consensus which had ‘public input’ and had the church and private sector sit in on its drafting. What on earth does he mean when he says they stand ready to support any plan? Did they not draft a plan, have we decided that it was not feasible, or has it met the fate of most plans in Jamaica that is ending up in some desk or archive never to be implemented but instead referred to and referenced like a religious text? If the plan is a dud tell us, instead of waiting on the government, provide tour own plan. If the plan is still on push it and accept jointly the risks that come with it instead of literally playing politics with peoples lives.
The PM and his screed against violent music are funny, sad and very ironic. This is a man who is an acknowledged fan of Kartel, who goes by the moniker Brogad and who (as those who reside in high society felt up until only recently) shoes associated with the criminal class and now finds it fit to condemn the violence in music. This after he gave Shabba Ranks (a man who was not one to shy away from violent music) high national honours has discovered that violence in our music might, just might, be degrading the product, truly a rival to S/Paul. Has he forgotten the recent dubplate campaign which saw his party making ‘murder musicians’ rich or does he think that enough time has passed so we the plebs all the way down here would not remember?
All of this, the cries against rights groups, the demands of greater police power, the dancing around the crime plan totalling no action at all makes some sense though not all when we contemplate the recent plane crash. A noted industrialist stated rather bluntly that the crash could answer why it is the Jamaican economy hasn’t tanked. He was and remains very polite in his delivery, I am not. What he meant is that the plane which crashed was as we all suspect a drug plane and that the drugs which flow through Jamaica are the sole reason why with tourism dead as the dodo, we have not gone the way of Greece.
This drugs money has many tentacles, and it goes deep into places we would not even imagine. Be it the church, the police, army, medical profession, banking profession, construction and industrial, drugs money keeps this country afloat. Politicians are not immune and are to a greater or lesser extent involved. Some directly and some by simply turning a blind eye. With this scourge, the drug trade, being the number one reason behind our murders and their viciousness one cannot help but feel that it is a touch hypocritical of the politicians who after all do not face what the peace activists have to face, what with them having 24/7-armed security, and who are wined, dined and funded by the financers of the murderers they vocally condemn in parliament.
All these politicians have tough chat, but ask them to assist, really do what they can on their part to help and you get stonewalled. Open campaign finance so we know who funds the parties, nah. The timely declaration of finances by MP’s, none of that. Maybe passing laws making those who are delinquent or failed public so citizens can know them and review their documents, banish the thought. These are things which they as our leaders could do to begin rooting out the criminals and financers of murderers starting at the top, but grandstanding and condemning is their choice. Punching down is the order of the day on their menu, degrading those who do the work and take the risks, offering no solutions to the issues and instead lamenting our callous nature is what they offer. No better can be expected from a class which has been so thoroughly compromised, bought out and or intimidated by the monster they claim to despise.
The answers are there, spoken by the people on the ground and doing the work. The citizen who says the plane crash is bigger than Rocky Point and goes on to describe the events knows part of the answer, the social workers who say 6 years at least is needed for a true fully funded ZOSO type project to work knows part of the answer, the man who works construction knows the part of the answer. We each individually know some part of why or crime situation is what it is and to be frank most people from the day labourer to the lecturer know part of the answer as to why our crime is what it is, and we know our politicians are part of the problem.
Billions for the police, I admit much needed, but what of social work? Modernisation of what is a trumped-up security force (the security ministers’ words) as opposed to funding agencies of social healing and cohesion is the hallmark of an elite out of touch with reality. The beefing up and empowering of a force which to this day remains corrupt and rooted in paramilitary tactics as opposed to intelligence driven operations is not seeking to build a Jamaica where families can be raised. The failure to prosecute or at the very least stamp out through regulation the financing of money laundering operations such as car lots, bars, and lounges while at the same time clamping down on the street level players is a recipe for madness. To be blunt, no social work, none of the lame wimpy ‘dove’ things which Mr Morgan derides will lead to Tivoli 2.0, no one don, no elder gangsters and a bunch of children with no guidance be it state or gangster, who will become even more vicious as they seek to make their own stripes and legends.
This juvenile reasoning by our politicians must not make us sad, rather we must be enraged that they can think this way. We must demand a true security plan, aimed at social issues, violence makers, financers, and political backers. A ZOSO like tool may very well be needed so will the violent dispatching of some criminals who may unfortunately refuse to go into custody and face justice, but to act like that is the sole thing needed, that social workers and rights groups don’t accept it is an unfortunate necessity in some cases and to decimate the funding of social work and social workers (groups and peoples whose whole job is to craft and build a functioning society) will only lead us back to where we are now. The suppression of crime act was almost 20 years in its implementation and crime got worse despite the killing of scores of known gunmen and the state intimidation of whole communities which produced them, if we don’t admit that social workers need to be a part of the fixing process and prioritise them in funding as we do with police and soldiers then we may as well give the army the keys to power because at least they as the military would know how to properly run a police state.
The condemnation of the violent music may, I emphasise, may be justified. They are over the top at times and most graphic, but apart from art simply reflecting society (a society we all played a part in making) we should also listen to their conscious songs if we are to fully condemn and pass judgements. Be they Kartel, Bounty, Shabba etc… they all have mentioned the ills of society which leads the youth to a life of crime and list endlessly and melodically what needs to be done to end the violence. We hear what we want to hear, and the condemnation of a whole category of music and musicians without even assessing their full body of work, maintaining the elitist mentality spoken of by Bob Marley where nothing good comes from the ghetto or ghetto music. We want to change the music, really move it from the glorification of violence, the sexualisation and exploitation of women and the base materialism which is preached then here again we need the social agents which have been routinely disregarded by our politicians.
The hypocrisy must end, lives are being lost in meaningless manners. Condemning solely the producer and not the facilitator of violence, not providing avenues away from and options other than crime while lamenting the rise in young murderers, failing to provide people with a real sense of citizenship and ownership of the country and lambasting the shredding of the social fabric. This must end, our actions must match or words, with reams of crime plans gathering dust in the security ministry and with a populace terrified but still vocal and knowledgeable about what needs to be done we must end the talking points of damn near 30 years and accept the fact that everyone is going to have to accept things we don’t particularly like (doves and hawks) or we should get ready for something we have only seen in the movies and read about in the news, a truly failed state where the criminals don’t stand half hidden in the shadows but instead openly run things, we are a hairs breadth from that scenario, its time politicians stop joking with the peoples business and taking pot shots at each other as well as people on the ground and do the work people put them in office to do and the work which their post demands they carry out.
jamaicachange 