Melville Cooke
IT IS all getting a bit hard, is it not, to keep up with, these proposed adoptions, proposed distancing of politicians from gunmen, proposed naming of extortionists, proposed adoption of propositions proposed at Emancipation Park, proposed opposition to proposed distancing from gunmen.
And all the propositioning does not add up to a solution.
In 1974 the Suppression of Crime Act was passed and it stayed in effect for 20 years, two decades in which crime was hardly limited, much less suppressed. However, the name of that particular act indicates the mindset of those who would rule us.
For the objective is not the solution of crime; it is the suppression thereof.
I have not done the necessary culling of the files, but I am willing to stake my future title as Most Honourable on the proposition that the murder rate in high slaughter-rate zones such as Olympic Gardens and that troubled section of Mountain View is no higher (or, if it is, only slightly so) than in the days of political turmoil leading up to the 1980 election.
FRACTION
I submit that what we are seeing is the rest of the country seeing a fraction of what these war zone communities have been experiencing for decades, to the point that it has become nigh normal.
It was inevitable, of course, that violent crime would spread with the influx of motor vehicles, so much so that the 'white Toyota' is almost standard for drive-bys and various criminal activities.
It was not supposed to be that way. The savagery created by Jamaica's political system was supposed to stay suppressed in the communities of zinc fences and gully toilets. If it did emerge, it was supposed to spend its force on the buffer zone of the middle class (and it has). But it was not supposed to notch up an Azan on a CCN release; Thomases and Browns and Henrys are fine, but those who really run Jamaica are coming to realise that no name is bullet-proof.
And it scares the Emancipation Park statue daylights out of them.
What the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) and this includes the church really wants is a suppression of, not a solution to, crime. They want to amputate without chemotherapy, carve out a pound and a half of flesh without losing blood, to transplant without the roots.
And it will not work.
BOTTOM EXPOSED
When the ostrich buries its head in the sand to 'escape' danger, much as those who really run things around here are doing with our crime problem, it leaves its bottom exposed. Our collective derriere is hoisted to the wind and something very unpleasant is coming at it. Hard.
For there is no 'talking to' a set of people who know what their fathers, cousins, brothers, friends have done in the name of politics, with no real repercussions and even rewards. For has not the recent news shown us that the route of social mobility, from living inner-city communities to uptown, upscale communities is through 'badness', of donship in the name of one major party or the other?
They know that propositions cannot sever blood bonds and we should know it too.
It was bemusing to see they and the sons and daughters of they who starved Jamaicans and 'married' sugar and Stayfree in the run-up to the 1980 election closing their shutters against crime. Is this what you all were fighting for in the vaunted battle of good against evil, of capitalism against socialism, of the USA vs USSR? For us to be heading towards another record year of murders?
Well, now you get what you want, do you want more?
There is also this thing about associating with criminals that the PSOJ is keen on politicians not doing. Does this mean that we will no longer see a repeating cast of high-profile lawyers representing reputed dons and drug lords? Does this mean that when a child of 23 walks on to a car lot and asks for a new, multimillion dollar unit cash he will be questioned as to where he got his money? Does this mean that the developers of high-end housing will ask those who come to buy the source of their income?
Why do I really, really doubt it?
Suppression of crime did not work 30 years ago and it certainly will not work now.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
