NO ONE should underestimate the magnitude of the challenge facing Dr. Peter Phillips, Minister of National Security, in bringing the level of crime in the Jamaican society under control and it was appropriate in the present crisis for him to address the nation on how his government is trying to deal with it.
Crime epidemics infect other societies from time to time and, given political will and resources, are eventually sterilised. The pandemic of crime and violence in Jamaica has lasted for so long that Dr. Phillips' warning that there can be 'no quick fix' seems to be caught in a time warp. In the dialect, the statement that there is no quick fix assumes that there is a gradual fix, that steady and increasing progress is being made, albeit at a slow pace. Despite statistical juggling, we are not sure that this is so and we hope that Jamaicans are not coming to the conclusion that there is no fix possible, quick or gradual.
In an attempt to be reassuring, Minister Phillips trotted out a list of equipment which government has recently provided to the police but the ordinary citizen has no way of knowing whether this is sufficient to the task. Instead of 145 motor cars, maybe 200 are needed. Rather than 700 hand held radios perhaps 2000 are needed for a force that numbers some seven thousand persons.
We have reached a stage where the public is concerned that we are trying to deal with the crime problem on a 'too little, too late' basis. We have learned that neither the extreme of zero tolerance nor the benevolence of community policing is going to work. What is needed is a balance between the two, a balance dependent on an exquisite judgement as to where the Jamaican culture wants the fulcrum to be placed. Of course, if there is no unified Jamaican culture, if the society is already too fragmented and stratified, the judgement becomes all the more difficult.
That difficulty derives from divergent leadership at the top. The Jamaican road map to curbing crime has twisted and turned from inner-city enclaves and now onto the highways of increased mobility.
The Commissioner, as police professional, gave a negative assessment of the journey without allowance for political fallout. So the Minister had to assert the civilian control that is at the heart of political leadership; Opposition criticism is more easily deflected at this level.
But these are minor skirmishes, small battles of the war yet to be won.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
