Byron Buckley, Associate Editor

Policemen talk at a crime scene where a woman was shot dead on Stephen Street in Allman Town, Kingston, earlier this year. - Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

The message sent - intentionally or unintentionally - by Prime Minister Bruce Golding last week, during which more than 40 persons were brutally murdered, was: 'I am not responsible to fight crime. Go talk to the commissioner of police.'

Hours before the PM articulated this sentiment on his radio call-in programme, Jamaica House Live, Commissioner of Police Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin had told the federated ranks of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) that the crime situation - with appro-ximately 700 murders committed since the start of the year - would worsen before it improved.

As shocking as that assertion is, here is the real rub. Admiral Lewin believes fundamentally, that no matter what operational strategies the JCF implements, crime will remain problematic until the root causes of this social malady are seriously addressed.

"Unless those in high places shed the baggage they are carrying, we will never rid ourselves of the monster of crime. We need a political consensus to battle crime," Lewin intoned at the 65th annual conference of the Jamaica Police Federation in Montego Bay last week.

A fool's paradise

The straight-talking police commissioner has kicked the national security ball into the lap of the political directorate: govern-ment and opposition. He is attempting to raise the debate about life-and-death matters in the murder capital of the world above semantics.

While the prime minister, who has the defence portfolio, quibbles about roles and responsibility for protecting the nation, Jah Kingdom goes to waste.

Golding, on his radio programme, pointed to resource constraints. But if Lewin's thesis is correct, acquiring more equipment for the police, and even paying them more, without attendant changes in the socio-political culture, will be a waste of scarce resources. It is tantamount to living in a fool's paradise.

According to Lewin, "significant changes have to be done to the way we practise our politics over the years, because it has been the source of much division among our people."

So, the issue at hand, with due respect to the prime minister, is essentially not about scarce resources. Neither is it about responsibility for security operations versus policy making.

The issues turn on leadership and political will. Will Golding lead the charge to slay the hydra-head dragon of garrison-type politics that impulsively spews death?

Does he and his counterparts in the Opposition support, for example, Commissioner Lewin's observation that it is counter-productive to leave guns and criminals in communities after the quelling of violent flare-ups?

That is an issue that has to be settled by the political directorate because, as Lewin notes, the practice leaves people with the capacity to "turn it (crime) up and down whenever they choose".

National security vital

The time for playing deadly games with people's lives and blighting the prospects of the nation must come to an end now. If Finance Minister Audley Shaw is to stop writing debt-repayment cheques of $700 million per day - which Golding has pointed to as a constraint on national-security expenditure - then crime must be significantly abated.

National security runs through all aspects of the nation's life. National-security issues are economics issues.

Reacting last week to the upsurge in violent crime, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) noted that Jamaica's high incidence of murder was having a "significant impact on business, in particular tourism, and labour productivity".

The eight months of paralysis in the management of national security has been costly on all fronts, but more so in terms of the many lives snuffed out with impunity by murderous criminals.

Some of those killed, possibly, did not have lily-white hands; but any decent, law-abiding society cannot tolerate the perpetuation of jungle justice or revenge killing, which has resulted in widening collateral damage.

One is marked for death because he or she lives in a community having a row with persons from another community. Police statistics show that gang-related killings accounted for 44 per cent of total homicides committed in April.

Golding knows what to do to end community-based terrorism. There has been a plethora of anti-crime studies and reports. The last one - the MacMillan Report - was commissioned by Golding himself in 2006.

The document, dubbed a Road Map to a Safe and Secure Jamaica, outlines strategies specifically to break the nexus between garrison-type politics and crime.

MacMillan, an ex-army colonel and former commissioner of police was appointed national security minister one month ago.

Few men have had the opportunity, like the colonel, to have an impact on his country for the better for generations yet unborn. He has a ready-made road map to follow. He has public goodwill. If he is to survive in the political jungle, the new national security minister needs to quickly build a broad-based civic coalition against crime.

MacMillan needs the backing of civil society because he is going to have to stare down his political colleagues on both sides of the political divide. For example, the prime minister leads a garrison constituency. So, too, does the leader of the Opposition.

Citizen-based movement

We observed how effectively the electoral reform model has worked. The electoral culture has been transformed through the integrity and steely will of the independent members of the then Electoral Advisory Committee, backed up by a local electoral watchdog, Citizens Action for Free and Fair Election, as well as the United States-based Carter Center.

In a similar fashion, the drive to delink politics and community-based crime needs to have strong backing from civil society.

MacMillan, with roots in Jamaicans For Justice, a local human-rights watchdog, is well placed to get a strong citizen-based movement pushing for the elimination of community-based crime.

Last week, the PSOJ pledged support for the appointment of MacMillan and promised to work with him and the Government in coming up with solutions to crime. The PSOJ added that a concerted effort should be made now to implement the recommendations of the MacMillan Report.

Other strategies

An important element of the MacMillan Report is the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission. If the decades-old political/community feuds are not settled, the spiral of violence and revenge killings will continue. An eye for an eye will leave the whole Jamaica blind! The colonel should address this with fierce urgency.

MacMillan should also advocate the implementation of a labour draft. All males between 15 and 25, if they are not gainfully employed or enrolled in an educational programme, should be involved in a mandatory state-run employment and training programme.

This should be an element of the social component of the anti-crime strategies. The National Youth Service, in collaboration with HEART/NTA, should be given the mandate to spearhead this with support from the Jamaica Defence Force.

As the PSOJ stated last week, tackling crime, and in particular violent crime and murder, should be "job number one" for the Government. This is a timely reminder to the prime minister.

Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.

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