Too many Jamaicans lends support to merchants of death

With Jamaicans spiraling murder rate in Jamaica, many including myself are hoping for solutions to the problem, which would see a reduction in the murder rate.

We can all agree on that.

The methodology to get to the end game is where the problem is as many want to see a quick fix to the problem, which goes as follows.

The cops should determine the identity of the criminals, find them and them eliminate them and the problems would have been solved.

Let’s examine what this really means and the success rate we have seen by doing this .

Special Squad	Yr Formed	# Murder	Crime rate
	1970	152
	1971	145
	1972	170
	1973	227
	1974	195
	1975	266
Echo Squad	1976	367	Up
	1977	409
	1978	381
	1979	351
Ranger Squad	1980	899	Up
Eradication Squad	1981	490	Down
	1982	405
	1983	424
	1984	484
Area 4 Task Force	1986	449	Down
Area 4 Task Force	1987	442	Down
	1988	414
	1989	439
	1990	543
	1991	561
	1992	629
ACID	1994	690	Up
Operation Crest	1995	780
Operation Dovetail	1998	953	Up
Operation Intrepid	1999	849	Down
Special Anti Crime Task Force (SACTF) / CMU	2000	887	Up
Major Investigative Team	2002	1045	Up
	2003	975
Operation Kingfish	2004	1471	Up
	2005	1674
	2006	1340
	2007	1574
	2008	1601
	2009	1680
	2010	1428
	2011	1125
Moca	2012	1097	Down
Anti Lotto Scam task Force	2013	1200	Up

For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would think that the method to really solve crime is to systematically kill the player, when there is clear evidence to suggest that, this has been a failure from the 1970’s.

The way to solve crime is better investigation,  meticulous evidence gathering, top-notch case building and patience.

The problem with us is we need it fast and in a hurry and so crime scene investigation is reduced simply to picking up of spent shells and appealing for so called suspects to come in or risk being killed on an allegation of being a suspect.

That is just lazy and too many Jamaicans support this approach.

Just today I wrote about the east Kingston where criminal gangs have taken over people homes and them asking them to pay rent to live in their own homes and what does the police do?

They issue a release to say what I said above and then issue and appeal for residents to report such cases to the police. One would therefore left to ask the logic question, how did the cops learn about this trend ?

Since the cops are aware, what does it take for them to go in , determine who these folks are and arrest them. While the cops are issuing press release the people of East Kingston are living in fear, what kind of crap is this.

Is this the same police force which has suggested it will be taking steps to protect the Chinese residents in Jamaica, but is unable or unwilling to protect the people of East Kingston from known criminals, or are these criminals ghost ?

To cripple criminal gangs you need to strike surgical and take down the entire group in a coordinated and simultaneous raid. Killing the leaders does on  of two things

1. Allow a another guy to assume leadership
2. Split the gang into smaller gangs with no real “head”, which now makes them more dangerous and hard to bring under control.