THE SWEEPING condemnation of Montego Bay as a drug den is an alarming declaration from a source who should know. This comes from the top police officer in charge of crime-fighting in the tourist capital.
Even more disturbing, is the scope of allegations embracing civil society, politicians and even policemen, in a gallery of criminality which is said to have crippled law enforcement.
That at least is the position taken by Superintendent Newton Amos in his startling testimony to the Gleaner's latest Editors' Forum staged at our Western Bureau on Wednesday.
The so-called 'Mr. Bigs' of the Montego Bay drug network are said to have massive wealth and influence presumably used to cover their tracks and evade police prosecution. The inference is that bribery must play a role to stymie any attempt at effective policing. And since Mr. Amos says policemen are involved, the cleansing, it seems, must start with the 'enemy within'.
Even MP Horace Chang, in his contribution, admitted to the Forum that drug trafficking is a major source of employment to many in his Northwest St. James constituency, and a major source of support to inner-city communities.
Such a frank admission is reminiscent of the tentative attitude of the then MPs from St. Ann when matters affecting the campaign against cultivation of ganja were dealt with in the House of Representatives in the late '60s to '70s. The attitude reflected the reality of ganja as a cash crop and part of the livelihood of the farming peasantry.
Presumably, one of the objectives of the current Commission study on ganja is to update the official attitude to the weed. But what is now reported from Montego Bay is a quantum leap embracing the harder drugs that now fuel the hardcore drug trafficking with international linkages. And such linkages have been confirmed by the Prime Minister himself from way back in July, 2001, when he announced the West Kingston enquiry. It was regarded then as the first official acknowledgement of such linkages.
In short, what Superintendent Amos is now revealing must surely be known at the highest levels of the Police Force, and the Ministry of National Security. The Police Commissioner and the Minister of National Security must have been made aware that the tourist capital of the nation is caught in the grip of operations of a criminal drug network.
It is disturbing in the extreme that the Superintendent is in effect declaring that the police cannot bring the 'Mr. Bigs' to book; that this major resort capital is held to ransom by a criminal drug network which operates with impunity. The Honourable Peter Phillips, as Minister of National Security, must tell the nation what the Patterson Administration is doing about this shocking state of affairs.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
