THE EDITOR, Sir:
Crime is a multimillion-dollar industry with well-defined hierarchy, controlled and run by some amazing minds!
It is naïve to think that what has been happening is merely idle hands finding work to do therefore, if we rounded up and carted these scoundrels off to jail, the problems would be solved.
Also, it is most disingenuous to believe that the parlous state of the economy is substantially responsible for the worrying state of crime therefore, fix the economy and the crime problem is history.
To blame the frightened, bewildered and helpless citizen of uncooperativeness will most certainly do nothing salutary to the crime situation!
What is happening is well organised: Venal politicians of the highest order have been bought and corrupted thereby emasculating them.
The police force has been infiltrated and being undermined to make its members appear just as villainous as the criminals.
TARGET THE MASTERMIND
Voracious businessmen are in collusion with the organisers of crime because it benefits their business in a significant way. This is the reality!
Any crime-fighting initiative, therefore, that targets only the foot soldiers and ignores the mastermind behind the crime will not work!
The latest call for the Church to co-operate with the Government, presumably because it is privy to helpful information, is a piece of sophistry. The Church knows no more than the government!
The problem with the crime-fighting effort is 'lack of backbones'. During his tenure, the former Commissioner of Police, Francis Forbes, often intimated that he had 'intelligence', which linked 'some big men' to crime.
How often do we hear of big finds but no arrests and the rest is history? How often do you hear of some nefarious activity linked to a particular upscale community, and not another word uttered?
REAL CRIME-FIGHTING
Politicians must come clean even if it costs them their careers; history will be kind to them.
The police force must seem to be intolerant of and hasty to discipline and/or get rid of 'bad cops' and stop the 'image maintenance' tactics.
The 'big men' who are known by the authority to be involved in nefarious activities must be exposed like anybody else so the public can stop doing business with them.
The Church must stop petting and powdering corrupt politicians. Then the citizenry will feel confident in the little they can do.
It is only at this point the real crime-fighting will begin!
I am, etc.,
E. ELPEDIO ROBINSON
elpedioart@anngel.com.jm
Laurel Drive, Kingston 10
