THE EDITOR, Sir:
BASIC GSAT mathematical calculations tell me that the five per cent murder reduction target for 2006 announced by the Commissioner of Police Lucius Thomas at a press conference using the 2005 benchmark of 1,674 is approximately 84. This is seven per month and a little less than two per week. Somewhere in the press, it is also being reported that the police are asking for a well deserved 45 per cent increase in salaries. Like most Jamaicans, I would have liked to hear at least that the police are aiming at a similar figure regarding the reduction of murder and other crimes. If that were so, we could be looking at well under a thousand, so the five per cent is uninspiring, even though I must agree that any reduction is good, because lives would have been saved.
The police alone cannot overcome this mountain of crime. It has to be multi-sectored and multi-pronged, while building the consciousness of the population around this one. If this approach is not taken, the police again would have been given baskets full of holes to carry water, and then the man from Murray Mountain would be blamed for the failures.
The police do not enact laws, create employment, bring in investments, and neither are they responsible for what Beresford Hay, in the Letter of the Day on January 31, refers to as the contemptuous incompetence and crumbling institutions.
CRIME DIVERSIFIED
Crime had not only increased in 2005, but the most frightening part is that it has been diversified throughout rural Jamaica, and that needs to be halted. When there are murders and/or robberies by the gun in places like Nine Miles in St Ann, Bethel Town in Westmoreland, or other rural communities, then it is clear that rural culture, which serves as the national guardian of values and attitudes, is under threat.
As part of a holistic crime-fighting approach, rural communities must be given special insulating attention, to prevent an infiltration by criminals from the so-called hot spots and foreign to these perceived cool spots, only to be made hot soon after. An 80 per cent reduction target would be more inspiring and able to gain mass support much easier with slogans like 'Take murder no further' or 'Say no to murder and crime' or 'Forward to One Love Jamaica'.
I am, etc.,
MICHAEL SPENCE
Micspen2@hotmail.com
P.O Box 630, Liguanea
Kingston 6
