Suggestions to help solve the crime problem.

The Jamaican police and its commanders are absolutely clueless on what is required to bring crime under control.

Firstly, I would rather the police take a more proactive approach to solving crime verses the reactive approach that is currently taken.

Now, I think what they ought to do is to place a simple map detailing the crime hotspots in Jamaica, these include the following areas.

• Corporate Area.
• St Catherine.
• Montego Bay
• Clarendon

See Jamaica Observer article at this link, which gives greater details.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20051015T210000-0500_90482_OBS_FLASH_POINTS_OF_CRIME_.asp.

Now what the security forces should do is, to determine from the crime “hot” spots, which communities are aligned? By this I mean when a crime is committed in Trench Town for example, the criminals may move to areas of spanishtown to cool off as the know the police will be coming into Trench Town very soon.

So now we know gunmen travel between community A to B or C.

Armed with all this information, the police will conduct simultaneous surprise raids in these communities, use as much of the resources that they have available between the various arms of the police and the army.

These raids should be done prior to any reports of shooting etc to catch these guys off hand. The fact is everyone expects police raids after a surge in crime, however very few expect that when there appears to be a lull in criminal activities.

In addition to doing so, the police should seek the assistance of the local telecom companies to shut down cellular service in these communities at least 2hrs prior to the raid. This would prevent any form of communication between gang members from the area under raid, who are seeking to get assistance from other gang members in or outside of their areas.

By crippling their mode of communication this would leave them very vulnerable and it would also prevent renegade members of the security forces from passing on any information also once they are in the communities.

The actual areas that are to be targeted on the day in question should only be available to the most senior members of the police and the army, as failure to do so will result in only women and children present in the communities when the raid actually takes place.

I don’t think I need to state why, as that is already known.

Watch this blog, as I will be seeking to expand on this later

Tragedy in Jamaica Part 1

While we all agree that there is no easy fix to the problem, I think there are certain steps that we ought to be taking in trying to at least stabilize the situation.

We know for a fact that, there are lots of idle hands out there, as well as a lot of guns. We also know that those using these guns cannot afford to buy them, hence they must be financed by others.

I think it will be next to impossible to get the guns out of the hands of these guys, so we need to therefore focus on another area, which I will term as containment.

Guns cannot work without bullets. Guns can be used multiple time, but not the bullet. This leads me to believe that if we seriously focus on the supply side of the bullets we can put a serious dent into these killings. Not that the intent may not still be there, but the means would not be present to carry out the act.

How we get this done will be a very serious challenge. I am therefore proposing that the Minister of National Security do the following.

• Every barrel shipped from New York, New Jersey, Washington and Miami should be X-rayed at the point of entry. There is enough anecdotal evidence to show that bullets are coming in consumer goods in barrels.
• All large household appliance, refrigerator, stove and television, which are assigned to individuals (not companies), should be similarly X-Rayed.
• All cars imported out of the USA destined to individuals should be similarly checked.
• Use data collected from previously intercepted shipments to target areas from the USA the individual who are shipping these bullets. We should get our counterpart in the USA to assist us in this effort.
• Create a central database where the tracking of all legally imported bullets are held.
• Use database above to track individual purchase of bullets from authorized vendors. Aggressive buying by licensed firearm holders should be viewed as suspicious and thoroughly investigated.
• There should be a database  (if not already in place) a log, which tracks  receival and the issuance of bullets, to all policemen from that division, station by station, and  should be saved on a server, which is managed by persons other than the police themselves.
• After each operation all bullets returned should be logged and all spent shells collected and examined. For each bullet fired there should be a corresponding spent shell.

The above, while focused on illegal shipments coming in, also tries to focus on the legal bullets reaching into the hands of those with illegal guns.

If we can obtain a machine to sniff out illegal drugs leaving the island in very small quantities and reap major success, there is nothing to suggest that we cannot reap similar success as we look at illegal imports, which are killing countless Jamaicans.