Heather Robinson SOME YEARS ago I had a conversation with a four-year-old that has stayed with me. We were discussing the behaviour of his younger friend whose father had been murdered. The sound of his voice is as clear as it was yesterday: "P... S... nuh dead. 'Im de a jail. Me can show you de jail". He then proceeded to point to the Spanish Town Police Station and said: "See the jail there and over there so a de prison," as he pointed in the direction of the St. Catherine District Prison.
When a four-year-old can differentiate between the jail at the police station and a prison, isn't it time that we begin to ask ourselves some very serious questions?
Why has it become commonplace for us to express little or no emotion when another Jamaican is murdered senselessly? The majority of us do not know that person, but to some individual or family that life was precious and important. To some individual and person that person was THE ONE.
On Saturday night I heard a Superintendent of Police tell a group of persons how a father having witnessed the murder of his son promptly told him that his son was dead already, and he therefore had no interest or desire to tell the police what happened, much more to be a witness. With fathers like these, murderers will continue to slaughter sons, fathers and brothers, without any care for the consequences of their actions.
EXPRESS HOSTILITY
Why do we criticise those who protest when the police arrest murder suspects to the point of openly expressing hostility? We do this without thinking at times that there is something real and fundamental that we can do to make our country a safer and better place. The vociferous among us do not constitute the majority. They have over the last few years been more organised and vocal than some of us have been. We have been hearing their voices and not our own. We have been deafened by their expressions of distrust and abuse of the police while we have cowered in fear, and some of us have openly sought to give succour and support to these criminals. Some of us who should know better and do better have developed almost a romantic connection with criminal activity and behaviour, and have therefore effectively and knowingly bolstered and energised criminals.
Is there something that I can do to help reduce the power and dominance of a group of social misfits, you might be asking. There are a number of things that can be done. Firstly, we must decide which side are we on. Are we on the side of those who murder, rape, extort, kidnap, or "tief'? Have we walked past such persons and knowingly ignored them and their actions, while we hope that the day will never come when as a parent you too will say "him dead already, so me can't bother"?
Or are we all waiting on the police to "do dem work" and "go ketch tief" while we who know sit and demand justice for Jamaicans and terrorise our police officers into a state of fear? They too have families who care and who require at this time that we begin to find demonstrable means of proving how much we care.
Jamaicans are required at this time to stop walking that thin line that has for too long been unable to determine who is genuinely good versus who is endemically evil. The need for us to send clear signals and actions that will make us separate and disparate groups of Jamaicans is the prerequisite for a peaceful Jamaica, where criminals know that they are a minority that will be controlled by our security forces and decent Jamaica.
Together we must work to find not just a way, but the best way of assisting the police in their efforts not just to protect us, and bring criminals to justice, but also the best way in which we can work with the police to protect themselves.
It is only when we have found this way, that we will truly begin to understand whether we have allowed criminals to imprison us while we wait on "who next" and appreciate, like a four-year-old, the reality of whose jail and whose prison this is.
Heather Robinson is a senior life underwriter and former Member of Parliament.
