Lying with murder stats

The decision of the editor-in-chief of The Gleaner to publish boldly the daily crime statistics on the front has got tongues wagging.

This activist role of The Gleaner has not gone down well with some people. Apparently, some persons would want The Gleaner to lie on the murder statistics and not tell the truth about the road of destruction on which we are. There is the charge that highlighting murder would affect tourism. This charge assumes that tourists are fools and do not know what is happening in Jamaica. Perhaps tourists are more informed than us. BET TV shows American Gangster repeatedly, which details our crime situation and I have never seen it on local television. There is much on Jamaican crime on YouTube.

Some say the publication of the figures on murders is too stressful. Perhaps we need to recall this young man who escaped Jamaica's inner city by becoming a professional basketball player. He stated that while in Jamaica at nights while in bed, he would count gunshots and be able to tell from the sound what sort of weapon was fired! That is stress. Talk to Card Unit of the 'Dancin' Dynamites' show about stressful it is living in the inner city. Talk to relatives who have to live with the memory of witnessing the merchants of deaths and the result of their mayhem. It is callous for persons to talk about it is too stressful to see the murder statistics on the front page while ignoring those whose daily diet is violence and murder.

Interestingly, I have never seen a writer of a letter to the editor whose loved ones was gunned down complained about The Gleaner's front page.

Some claim we need good news instead of bad news. It reminds me of an early churchman named Marcion who cut out the more unpleasant parts of the Bible because it did not fit into his image of God. Life comes with the good and the bad, what is needed is a balance and not to ignore the uncomfortable and unpleasant realities.

A significant event

Since human beings are made in the image of God and human life is special, sacred and has intrinsic value then the loss of life is a significant event. Even natural death of a loved one is traumatic much less the senseless and brutal murders. These deaths ought to be big news and the most important item on the agenda of Jamaicans.

Professor Gibbs Davidson in a letter to the editor (May 8) said that if a gruesome murder of a five-year-old were to have happened in the USA, "the entire city would come out and demand that the killer or killers be apprehended". Part of the problem is that we have become numb when it comes to murders. As a nation, we are far too tolerant of murders.

At least The Gleaner got us talking about the slaughtering of people. Perhaps The Gleaner can take heart from Monday's immediate protest and vigil by entertainers after the brutal attack on Oneil Edwards of Voicemail and the challenge from Mr Vegas to fellow artistes to stop glorifying the gun.

What else needs to be done? The Sunday Gleaner's front-page editorial under the signature of Garfield Grandison calls for a coalition against criminality. This is urgently needed. We ought to provide information confidentially to the police via telephones. We must support Major General Stewart Saunders' call for the soldiers to be more involved on the streets.We must support former Commissioner of Police Hardley Lewin's call for the cutting of the links between politicians and criminals. We must support the Jamaica Council of Churches' call made years ago during the presidency of the Rev Karl Johnson that political parties must declare the sums and sources of their funding, etc.

We must frontally attack this monster of crime and tell the stark truth about the resulting murders.

Devon Dick is pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church and author of 'The Cross and the Machete: Native Baptists of Jamaica - Identity, Ministry and Legacy'. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.