Brute force is not the answer

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I am so frustrated to wake up every day and read all what these persons in authority have to say on their approach on fighting crime. They all seem to think the police and the army is the answer to this crime situation.

None of them seem to realise that to fix crime, they first have to find the source of the problem. Just sending out the police and army to enforce what they really don’t understand will never work, no matter how long they will be at it.

It’s time for them to realise that brute force is not the answer.

Why don’t they try going into these violent communities, sit down with the citizens and find out what is needed in these neighbourhoods and start from there; remedy their plights and I guarantee you that you will see the crime situation disappear. But as long as the most used approach is to call in the security forces and set up SOEs and ZOSOs, we will forever be doing this.

I say to them that one of our crime problems is our language. When people can speak a language but cannot read and write, there’s a problem; and this is what is fuelling our crime problem. I believe that so far, the brute force has seem to fail. As a small country such as ours, we should never have our army out on the street battling our own because our political leaders screwed up our country’s direction from the day of Independence.

CRIME SITUATION

What they have done to our Patois-speaking population was the first crime that they handed down to our people. So, without them waking up and realise the mistake and correct it, we will forever be in this crime situation until someone comes along and change this.

And now we are talking about Jamaica becoming a republic. Well, I have bad news for them. If they think becoming a republic without fixing the language issue will make the crime just go away, just because we gain a new title, they will be mistaken.

What I want all our politicians to do is to take a moment and imagine children playing, children reading in a language they speak, writing in a language they speak and fully understand -- this will be the only way forward. We have to stop just catering for the elites and think that if we don’t address the language issue, one day the elite will feel the wrath of the Patois-speaking population, because they will only get more violent. This time, they will bring it to the elites, at which time it will be too late to stop it.

CONCERNED JAMAICAN