Delroy ChuckPEOPLE, EVERYWHERE, want to live in safe, secure and prosperous communities. They expect their governments to uphold, maintain and respect the rule of law and provide the social atmosphere and economic opportunities to achieve personal satisfaction and prosperity. To be sure, the natural tendency is for families to seek communities that provide serenity, a pleasing ambience, improving qualities of life, a sense of well-being and otherwise upscale neighbourhoods. Why has Jamaica failed to meet these basic needs and reasonable expectations of its people?
The present government seems incapable of providing answers, solutions and inspiration to a downtrodden and long suffering people. Hope fades, as the path to a brighter future gets dimmer with each passing day. The nation is unsafe, its economy disintegrating, its social services disappearing, its infrastructure decaying and, thus, the psychological mood of its people becomes one of despair, defeat and hopelessness. If ever there was a time for inspiring leadership, now is the time. Yet, it is not forthcoming.
The Prime Minister returned from his working holiday, cheered by hundreds of partisan fanatics and the nation eagerly awaited the speech of his life to lift the people from the prevailing doom and gloom. What a disappointment! The PM's speech on Sunday night was another replica of failed crime measures and of what has been uttered so often before.
More police patrols, another new anti-crime squad, more cordons and curfews, tougher police measures, targeting crime-prone areas, identifying the dons and other criminal elements and more resources for the police are unlikely to stem and contain crime now or hereafter. Much more is needed.
In the present crime wave, with business leaders calling for serious actions, with communities under siege from criminals and gunmen, with fear and apprehension gripping every law-abiding citizen, with more citizens telling stories of grief and criminal attacks, with the rich and fortunate making preparations to migrate, and so on, the time was ripe for the PM to come with something new and refreshing to give hope and assurance. But, it was not to be. The PM reiterated and regurgitated the same, old, tried and failed measures and the results will naturally be the same.
If I were Prime Minister, I would level with the nation, take the people in my confidence and admit that what governments have tried before have not succeeded and hence fresh thinking and new approaches to deal with crime are needed. Let us admit that for 25 years and more, this nation has tried to fight crime with brutality, inhumanity and injustice and has failed dismally and totally, and only the foolhardy can continue to believe that such measures can ever work. Crime control must involve the whole community. Crime is not only a police matter, as some would like to think and believe, it is a community problem and demands community solutions.
If we are ever to solve and control the rampant criminality then we need to treat crime with many different solutions, as no single solution will work in all communities. For example, police patrols and community policing are more likely to work in middle class areas than in the inner city communities. To be sure, I welcome the increased police patrols in my communities of Barbican, Cherry Gardens, Russell Heights, Jacks Hill, Millsborough, Paddington, Drumblair, Waterloo Road and so on, as increased policing are likely to contain criminality in these middle class areas, and make them safer.
Where we have the real problem however is in our depressed, inner city communities, where the dons rule, where police are distrusted and hated, where police patrols increase tension and anxiety, where the subculture of crime and criminality festers, where marauding and restless young men create havoc, where protection rackets are the means of survival for businesses and gangs alike, where the economic hardship and social decay make life unbearable and intolerable and thus make criminality tolerable, and where the wretched of the earth survive in squalor and, eventually, die in ignominy. No one could easily persuade me, before I entered politics, that communities next door to wealth and affluence could live in such filth, squalor and decay. I salute the forgotten, the poor, the aged and the vulnerable who have had to endure the poverty and hardship and still maintain discipline and obedience to the law.
I will not forget, early in my political career, as I toured the Grants Pen communities and met a senior law officer, well known for his fearsome crime-fighting techniques, who said to me that he oftentimes wondered why communities like these do not have more crimes. The tension, conflicts, struggle and hopelessness in these communities make them breeding grounds for rampant criminality and violence. We can target these areas and shoot off all the dons and young gunmen but it will only be a matter of time, and after more internecine gang warfare, before another don and more gangsters emerge. The gang members and dons of 10, 20 and 30 areas ago are no longer in control; it is the brutal and fearless warriors still in their late teens and early 20s who prey on one another and rob and invade businesses and weak and vulnerable citizens.
The lesson we need to learn is that we will never control and stem the tide of criminality until we are able to offer to these inner city communities the hope of a better life and of a safer and prosperous future. We can begin if we admit that recent economic policies have aggravated the distribution of poverty and hurt the poorest of the poor. A different path is now necessary and must be taken. If I were Prime Minister therefore I would map out a strategy of urban renewal and regeneration, to bring businesses and development to these areas, to acknowledge that safety and prosperity are the desired goals, and hence to admit that the present politics of scarce benefits and spoils have failed and contributed to the rampant criminality.
Delroy Chuck is an attorney-at-law and Opposition Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by e-mail at delchuck@hotmail.com.
