By Lloyd Williams, Senior Associate Editor
A policeman examines the body of a man shot dead by gunmen in Spanish Town, St. Catherine.
THE REPORT by the police that 27 people were murdered in the past week, in addition to 29 cases of shooting, is not at all comforting.
The murder of any citizen always is abominable and none less so than the killing of a policeman who, of course, enjoys no greater level of civil rights than another citizen, as all citizens are equal before the law.
Jamaica, sad to say, is not unfamiliar with the murder of policemen, and indeed, of civilians.
Dr. Anthony Hariott, Senior Lecturer, Department of Government, UWI, Mona, and author of Police and Crime Control in Jamaica: Problems of Reforming Ex-Colonial Constabularies in his article, 'Social Identities and the Escalation of Homicidal Violence in Jamaica', in the book Understanding Crime in Jamaica: New Challenges for Public Policy, examines the dynamics of the rapid escalation of homicidal violence in Jamaica since the mid-1970s.
He states: "In 1999 Jamaica's murder rate stood at 33 incidents per 100,000 citizens. This represents the highest rate in the Commonwealth Caribbean, ranking Jamaica approximately fifth in the Hemisphere and 10th in the world."
Compared with the other 114 countries that submitted reports to Interpol in 1998 on reported crimes, Jamaica may be described as an extraordinary case. At its highest point in 1997, the murder rate for Jamaica was 41 per 100,000. This figure was approximately twice the average for Latin America, which as a region has consistently recorded the highest level of social violence in the world."
(In 1997 the murder toll was 1,038; it rose to 1,138 in 2001.)
But this killing spree did not begin just recently.
POLICE STATISTICS
According to police statistics, a total of 20,203 people were reported murdered in Jamaica from 1960 to 2003, with more than 380 killed in the 117 days that have gone in 2004 so far.
During the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, riots, sniper fire, and terrorist attacks claimed the lives of some 3,200 people from 1969 to 1998, many in England itself. During the same 30 years in Jamaica, 14,507 people were murdered in a country which is supposed to be at peace and not in the throes of bloody civil war. We have come a far way from say, 1960 when there were 60 murders for the year, and when a murder trial would, for its duration, dominate The Daily Gleaner's front page. These days, a crime reporter can hardly keep track of the daily murder toll.
Of course, in this murderous phase that seems to be dogging us, auditors, bakers, bankers, carpenters, householders, toddlers, old women, journalists and policemen have been murdered, a reflection of the sheer pervasiveness of criminal violence.
But this killing spree has not just recently begun.
So, inured as we may be to the media's coverage of violent crime, if not of our own personal or too-close-for-comfort awareness, we cannot avoid acknowledging that Jamaica has a serious murder problem. And if civilians get murdered, it stands to reason that police will get murdered too.
Police work is a hazardous occupation. Daily, deadly danger comes with the territory, especially for those people who have to serve on the streets, especially in hostile territory. The problem is though that even the most innocent of street, teeming or quiet, can take on deadly dimensions these day, not only for civilians but also for the police. Indeed, in Jamaica, men have been murdered simply because in the criminals' eyes, they resemble police!
It is to be expected that attempts will be made to assault the police who respond to crimes in progress, while conducting investigations, or making arrests. But the cold-blooded nature of some of these murders a detective shot dead by three men while sitting in his car sends a particularly scary chill down this nation's spine.
In Jamaica in 1994 there were 690 murders; 780 in 1995; 925 in 1996, 1,038 in 1997; 953 in 1998; 949 in 1999; 887 in 2000; 1,138 in 2001; 1045 in 2002; 975 in 2003 and 380 plus in with 247 days still to go in 2004.
In 1990, 11 Jamaican police personnel were murdered in the line of duty; in 1991 it was 10; in 1992, 9; in 1993, 6; in 1994, 5; in 1995 it was 4; in 1996, 10; in 1997, 13; 1998, 14; 1999, 8; in 2000, 11; in 2001, 13; in 2002, 16; in 2003, 13; and five so far in 2004.
Of course the police have been active themselves, accounting for 135 deaths in 1990; 156 in 1991; 145 in 1992; 123 in 1993; 100 in 1994; 132 in 1995; 148 in 1996; 149 in 1997; 145 in 1998; 134 in 1999; 134 in 200; 141 in 2001; 133 in 2002; 114 in 2003 and 43 so far in 2004.
Despite years of warning, policemen still get shot in bars while relaxing as if they are deep in the innards of the U.S. National Security Agency. There was the case a few years ago of a policeman who fell asleep, drunk, at a bar, putting his pistol beside him on the counter better to enjoy his snooze. The bar operators took it up and put it in safekeeping. He woke up and apparently still in a daze, walked out leaving the pistol. Shortly after, his senior officer visited the bar, asked for the firearm and the bar staff gave it to him. The policeman later faulted the staffers for having done so, apparently in the wake of disciplinary action.
Some civilians have been equally careless with their firearms.
For the last umpteen years, the Church has been railing from the pulpit against the wanton, senseless murders that seem to have beset this land. The police say they have been doing their best, limited as they are in personnel and resources, to curb the problem.
The missing essential of the curb-the-murders equation seem to be just how to engage civil society to ensure their co-operation with the forces of law, to bring the murderers to book. Without this, the murder toll always is going to be frightening, if not inclusively fatal.
