By Devon Evans, Freelance Writer 
Reid
OCHO RIOS:
THE RT. Rev. Alfred Reid, Anglican Bishop of Jamaica, is outraged by what he says is the high level of media exposure being given to criminal elements in the country.
He said also that he was strongly opposed to the frequent showing on television of people demonstrating in support of criminals who were killed by the police.
He stated that this type of publicity would only encourage more protests whenever other similar incidents occur. Bishop Reid made these comments in an interview with The Gleaner, following the conclusion of the 132nd Annual Synod of the Anglican Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands at the Renaissance Jamaica Grande Hotel, Ocho Rios.
Bishop Reid declared that giving criminals and their supporters television publicity was a wrong approach to crime-fighting, and he felt that it would only encourage them to continue their criminal activities.
"I do not believe the present approach whereby the criminals are getting top billing in the media," the Bishop said. "They are, in fact, being made into heroes and stars. They are being lionised and the people who support them by demonstrations and otherwise are also becoming media stars. I think it is the wrong way to go."
Bishop Reid suggested that one of the first approaches to fighting crime was to turn off the spotlight on criminals "and let these people know that they are living in darkness, rather than to put them out there like some form of folk heroes".
"People like those", he said, "should not be put forward as any kind of folk heroes and I don't think they are any kind of revolutionaries either. Because a revolutionary is a rebel with a cause, and the cause cannot be criminality, and robbing other people and raping people and murder or making blood money out of drugs and so on."
A decent ordinary person gets no attention from the media, the Bishop said, while the criminals and their supporters were being highlighted.
"I think that, unwittingly, the society, by highlighting these people, is actually encouraging them," Bishop Reid said. "I don't feel they are stars; they are just criminals."
The Anglican Bishop is recommending that the media begin to highlight and "big up" the ordinary decent people. He said that at the same time, every effort should be made to protect and guard the country's children who were being lured into the arms of criminals by believing that those are the only people who gave them any help for their school fees or their school books.
