These questions are important because if the country is largely criminal, it would scientifically explain why the police and the politicians are said to be criminals too! Let us look at the facts and not at hyperbole and spin!
1. A VIOLENT,AGGRESSIVE AND CORRUPT PEOPLE IS THE BASE FOR THE FORMATION OF A CORRUPT AND VIOLENT SECURITY FORCE AND CORRUPT AND VIOLENT GOVERNMENT
Jamaicans world wide among other things, have a well-known reputation for aggressiveness and some for violent tendencies. The high illegitimate birth rate and consequent poor family structures, are major contributors to this. Our violent and demonstrative history is another factor, but we have no excuses for not having taken the nation along a path of healing.
When a violent and aggressive people forms a security force how can that force not reflect the consciousness of that people? You cannot just change a man’s uniform and think that you can change his nature. You cannot train persons who support lynching suspects and calling it mob justice, and think that some of them will not retain the urge to take the law into their own hands. What percentage of Jamaicans support the public mob murders called “justice killings”? I do not know but at my high school many believed that “di tief fi ded” and without a trial too. I heard classmates voice this! What happens when one of these citizens become a police officer, as one of my classmates did? Do they automatically abandon their uncivilized murderous urges? I think not.
The security forces are violent, angry, brutal and abusive because the Jamaican people are violent, angry, brutal and abusive! The actions of the security forces are the symptoms of a warped, violent, pathological consciousness which seeks to inflict pain and disfigurement, to establish dominance over rebellious or contradictory actions. Power magnifies the latent and hidden characteristics of any individual. Any group of Jamaicans except those from the Churches, those from strong moral background and those from stable two parent families, would show the same characteristics of today’s police force! Similarly, the police force is corrupt because the Jamaican people is corrupt. Corruption is a way of life in Jamaica, so when a corrupt people forms a police force, what does anyone think we will have? Similarly, when a corrupt and violent people form a government, that government must resemble the consciousness of the people. When you elect a murderous “mob killer” to office he does not become a justice evangelist overnight!
DOES TRAINING CHANGE THE INWARD CONSCIOUSNESS OF A PERSON?
In times of stress and emergency most humans revert to their inbuilt biases and most strongly held beliefs and seek to preserve their safety over everything else. We just saw in New York the dismissal of a police officer who performed traitorously under fire and literally ran away when faced with danger from criminals! United Nation soldiers threw away their guns and ran for their lives when faced with determined militants in Senegal a few years ago! Only the finest trained security personnel like the US Secret Service, who have been effectively brainwashed, will remain undeterred to their cause regardless of circumstances. Police personnel in Jamaica do not receive this training and hence we will always have Amadou Diallo shootings! The training the Jamaican police receives is insufficient to reverse the violent cultural effects of their neighborhoods and the historical instincts to kill and maim “opposers”.
2. HIGHEST RATE OF MOB “JUSTICE” KILLINGS OF ANY DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY IN THE WORLD- 19 LAST YEAR!
As far as I know there has never been a national call from any prime minister or minister of justice for the arrest of these mob murderers in Jamaica. Silence is agreement! As a matter of fact, most citizens seem to support these murders and call them “justice killings”! The Jamaica Observer recently referred to one of these murders as a “justice killing” and interviewed one of these murderers who gleefully said “dis ah ow wi treet tief dong ya”!
3. MOBS ATTACK POLICE STATIONS DEMANDING TO MURDER SUSPECTS!
There was no other democratic country in the Caribbean in which mobs attacked police stations demanding prisoners last year except in Jamaica. There was no call for the arrest of the mob that attacked and damaged fire trucks a few weeks ago. Last year a crowd surrounded a police station demanding a prisoner and the police had to smuggle him away to safety! There was no public outcry! Who committed more murder, rapes, robberies, arsons, kidnappings and extortions last year, the security forces or the criminal underground contract killers and crime syndicates? And yet the hypocritical, citizenry is more apt to demonstrate against police killings but when the murderers kill and rape one of their fellow citizens, there is no demonstration- none!
4. 80% OUT OF WEDLOCK BIRTH RATE
If true this statistic is shameful. While considered a evil pale thing in most countries, in this country having children with whomever, is a good thing! But it proves that we cannot be trusted. Any man who cannot be true to his wife cannot be true in business or sports or politics. Hence our high rate of immorality and mistrust in our personal lives parallels our high rate of political and business corruption!
5. EXTORTION ACCEPTED AS A WAY OF LIFE
There are not many countries with such a widespread extortion practice as in Jamaica. Extortion is so widespread that even some members of the business community admitted that some members pay up! Some whole communities are run by extorted gains and the whole country knows this is true! One criminal who was finally killed had a J$100 million dollar extortion and construction business (s) minutes from a major police station in Spanish Town. When he was killed, riots and demonstrations shut down the former capital as the “law abiding citizens” who call politicians corrupt came to supported their hero! The whole country supports this extortion industry. If it did not there would be strict laws against it. If it did not there would be undercover teams in taxis, and at construction sites setting traps for these scum! But there is none; meaning “we support your action; just do not kill anyone please!”
6. RAMPANT BRIBERY IS THE SHORT CUT WAY TO SUCCESS
There are not so many countries where bribery is so widespread as it is in this one. The police are often said to be involved too. Dropping off a smalls cuts the bureaucracy!
7. CONTRIBUTIONS TO POLITICAL PARTIES IS PURPOSELY UNDER SCRUTINIZED!
Political contributions which would lead to imprisonment in many countries are condoned in the land of shortcuts. Why have we waited so long to have regulations governing political contributions? It seems to me that the PNP has turned the Jamaica Diaspora Foundation into a fundrasing mechanism. To quote from my report on Delano Franklin’s last meeting at the Consulate in New York: “But something happened next that reminded me of Trafigura. A man came up and walked right passed everyone, came up and started speaking to Delano. Said he “I am going to be donating.. to..” I did not hear the rest of the statement as he leaned in close but Delano clearly said “thank you, thank you.” You can connect the dots. By the way is it not illegal for American citizens to donate money to political parties overseas? I need to check on this. You had better hope the statute is on Franklingura’s side on this one. The USA is not Holland!
7. SEX WITH MINORS (16 YEARS OLDS) IS LEGAL!
What depravity! Even many politicians and CEOs participate in this legal “rape” and if you called for the age of consent to be increased to 18 you would hear the screams against it and see such opposition in the Parliament, which would prove what they are doing at night! We need a law to raise the age of consent to eighteen!
9. HAVING CHILDREN WITH SEVERAL WOMEN IS RESPECTED!
We should have a law making having children with two or more women simultaneously, illegal! What a sick country. Sexual predators like taxi drivers, mini bus drivers, mothers who set up their young girls with the money men, etc have given us a generation of brutish children! There are not many countris where one man have 14 children with different women and it is not condemned!
10. THE GOVERNMENT TOO ACCEPTS BRIBES
After a major incident in which the ruling political party received millions in donation from an overseas company with which a Jamaican government owned company has an annual contract, polls indicated that the majority of the voters still supported the ruling party.
11. THE GOVERNMENT TOO BREAKS THE LAW
The Minister of Finance stood up in the parliament and stated that one of his departments which had been overseeing financial status of compainies, had been operating illegally for five years and there is no hue and cry in the country!
12. REMEMBER JAH CURE THE CONVICTED RAPIST?
Well, the victim reported last year that she is often taunted by citizens who shouts at her, “free Jah Cure”! Businessmen have visited her offering huge sums of money if shw would change her story!
13. THE MYTH ABOUT POVERTY CAUSES CRIME EXPOSED
We often hear this on radio. “If there were enough jobs we would not have so much crime.” Well I have never heard anyone explain how come when many of these Jamaicans go to countries where there are countless opportunities, they fall into the crime syndicate industry. Canada, England, the USA and other countries deports thousands of Jamaican criminals every year. No other country has so many of its nationals deported as criminals!
14. RAMPANT CRIMINALITY NOW LOOKS NORMAL
Here are some examples reported by Claude Robinson in his article “To inflame or to inform”.
(i).”Classes were suspended at the Bois Content All-Age school for three days after teachers stayed off the job in a show of protest against the poor condition of the road. The Ministry of Education and Youth then hinted that it would be deducting monies from the teachers’ salary, but the Jamaica Teachers’ Association said it would resist any such attempt and the government seemed to back off.” This is nothing but grand larceny and the Jamaican Teachers’ Association should certainly be prosecuted!
(ii).Furious parents at the Bois Content All-Age in St Catherine padlocked the gates to the institution to protest against the poor state of the roadway leading to the school. Again a criminal act which deserves prosecution.
(iii).At the Cascade Primary and Junior High School in Portland the gates of the institution “were padlocked by angry parents who said the physical condition at the school was in a deplorable state,” a condition confirmed by the newspaper’s own investigation. The parents said they padlocked the gate at the school to send a signal to the Ministry of Education that “we are tired of the false promises and foolishness,” lamented Patricia Vera, a parent. This is more criminal behaviour.
(iv). Here is another example reported by Karyl Walker, Observer staff reporter Monday, January 08, 2007 in the presence of the police! “When it was evident that the proceedings (at a concert) had come to a halt, the angry patrons started leaving the venue but took along with them, thousands of chairs laid out on the lawns of the Golf academy, in an effort to recoup their losses.
“Them too wicked, feisty and tief,” one seething woman said, “We nah support nothing fi do wid Foundation again. Fifteen bills and that’s all?”
“A true them people yah decent and not so young or else we would have whole heap a work fi do this morning,” a uniformed police officer said as members of the disappointed audience filed past with chairs over their shoulders.” Can you imagine; the police being witness to grand theft?
15. WIDESPREAD PRAEDIAL LARCENY
President of the Beef and Dairy Producers Association of Jamaica Limited (BDPAJ) Robin Crum Ewing says cattle farmers lost $60 million to praedial larceny in 2005. But that figure is expected to increase significantly when last year’s tally has been analysed.
“Cattle theft is a major threat to the revitalisation of the local beef and dairy sub-sectors, because it is driving farmers out of cattle farming and acting as a disincentive to potential investors,” Crum Ewing told the Sunday Observer that individual farmers have reported security costs as high as $120,000 per month. Ingrid Brown Ja. Observer, Jan. 28, 2007
16. SO-CALLED HUMANISTS HELP CONTRIBUTE TO THE PERPETRATION OF CRIMINALITY
Any so-called humanists or actions that seek to address the violence of the security forces and seek to bring corrective actions by suing and verbally disparaging the security forces, is focussing on the symptoms and not on the source of the problem. What happens when focus is on the symptoms and not on the cause to bring a cure? There is the guaranteed continuuity of the disease. This is the same principle on which traditional medicine maintains its profitability. The so-called humanists, Jamaican for Selective Justice, The Farquharson Institute, Sobers and others are guilty of this. Continuuity of symptoms also offers them platforms for profitability hence their refusal to address any cause or origin. As long as there are symptoms they are guaranteed a forum to massage their egos. They have no interest in solving problems.
DOES ANHYONE REMEMBERS MICHAEL GAYLE?
This question was asked by the Farquharson Institute in its article to the Observer recently. This article entitled: “Waiting on justice – delayed or denied” makes my point even more stronger. Justice it seems, according to the Farquharson Institute, can only be delayed when the police are involved in nefarious shootings but when mobs kill innocent citizens, their victims do not deserve justice at all! For these we can just “fahget et”. The Institute presented a long article on justice for the victims of police shootings but mentions nothing about justice for the largest number of victims of mob killings among democratic countries in the world! Stunning, is it not. But calling for justice for these victims offers no oppoutunities for visibility, profit potential, ego-massaging and appearances on the Perkins On-line Radio show!
Frankly the question that needs to be asked is not why the police are so corrupt and violent, but when are we going to face the fact of our criminality. Because until we face our sins and repent, we will never change! This is Port Royal in moden times. Perhaps we need the Port Royal solution. Let it be so!
