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OVER THE YEARS I have written many columns on the Jamaican crime situation, giving my personal spin on what could and should have been done and what was going to happen if certain things were not done. But, perhaps because of the medium in which these opinions were presented, THE STAR, or perhaps because of the messenger himself (I am not a political pundit and have no desire to be, nor do I have millions of dollars or wield enormous amounts of power) they were ignored.
Because of this, after this day I will no longer write anything about crime or anything to do with crime because I realise that no one, or at least none of those who should be taking heed, was listening.
However, while I am still not bound by the aforementioned declaration I have chosen to open up some eyes about us Jamaicans and why we need to look into ourselves for the solutions to our crime problems at home and our worsening image abroad. In the past year alone countries have been imposing visa restrictions on us like being Jamaican is similar to having the plague. We are responsible for a large number of crimes in Barbados, the United States, United Kingdom, Cayman and I swear if we look hard enough, we're probably running drugs through Afghanistan.
Whether it is Bruce Golding, Portia Simpson Miller or whoever, becomes the next leader of my beloved country, the situation with crime is not going to change until the people are either willing to change or change is enforced upon them.
During the 1950s, '60s and 1970s, many Jamaicans migrated to the U.S. and Great Britain in search of a better life (it seems we have always been doing that no matter how good life was or is in Jamaica; let's face it, we are foreign-minded). Back in those days, the Jamaicans who migrated, by and large, blended into their new environments and worked their butts off to realise their dreams.
TIME CHANGE
It was rare back then when you would hear of a Jamaican being involved in criminal activity. However, from about the mid-1980s onwards our image abroad began to change. We were forming gangs along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and in certain provinces in the U.K. Nowadays it seems like whenever we hear of a Jamaican abroad it has to do with the commission of a crime.
Also, at some instance during that time, we became a lot more selfish and a lot crueller. Our gangs were named among the most violent both in the U.S. and the U.K., perhaps demanded by the environments that we were attempting to assume control of. During this same period our murder rate at home began to climb steadily, if not alarmingly.
Some idiot stated at an RJR media forum recently that crime only rises under the PNP and decreases under the JLP. It is comments like these that show that we do not understand what is going on. Those Jamaicans living abroad were not being governed by the party in power were they? If it was as he believes, how does he explain the Shower Posse in the U.S. during the early 1980s? Wasn't the JLP in power then? And did the PNP have anything to do with the upsurge of Jamaican drug gangs in the U.K. during the 1990s?
We should stop that kind of thinking because the problem is not with the governments, at least not entirely; it's with us. We have come to believe, especially in the last 20 years or so, that everybody should be rich when in reality 'it aint gonna happen'. We have become lazy, evil, and morally bankrupt and that has nothing to do with government. We have become so taken with material possessions that we don't care who we hurt to get them, even if it means selling death in the form of drugs, guns, or whatever will make us that quick buck.
These things have nothing to do with governments; it has to do with the men and women we see in the mirror everyday. So, if we want to solve the crime problem in Jamaica today, the answers that we are looking for are not very far away. Because all those answers are within us all.
Have a Merry Xmas all, if you are still able to do so.
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