Mark Wignall | Taming a difficult people

Each day, key people in Government have to talk with the security experts in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), and together, they devise the best stopgap measure to ensure that we hold together for 24 hours. Self-immolation and grabbing one’s neighbour by the throat are not allowed.

It is either an SOE, a ZOSO, or a throwback - the curfew. The imposition of a curfew in Trench Town harks back to a time when a youthful, keenly observant citizen and victim of police brutality, Bob Marley, was gathering raw material for his literary triumph on an unbelievably global scale.

Trench Town people were living in shanties in the 1950s and 1960s with hardened dirt as the floor. It was the practice of brutal police in the JCF to demonstrate the extent to which the poor in Jamaica detested the poor. A typical curfew involved a few Jeeps with stout, big-belly cops, rum on their breaths, and a big truck in tow.

The cops would swoop down on boys they saw, rough them up (gun butts in the belly or across the face, many slaps), load them in the trucks, take them to the nearest police station, beat them up some more then let then go without charging them. Many were simply glad to be back home. A few of the boys were real rotten eggs, but the majority were just scraped up off the streets to meet the desires of brutal men.

Senior policeman turned a blind eye, the politician stepped up only when key members of his tribe were taken in. At the same time knowing that in those days the commissioner of police operated as extensions of the party, which placed him as top cop. Sometimes rotten eggs from the other tribe were picked up and brutalised in dark rooms with thick concrete walls.

The curfew in Trench Town is the principal’s bell ringing to dispense living history and to engage us in how long we have remained stalled in unwanted gears.

As for the present Government, I am tempted to wonder if maybe, someone is, or a few key people are, playing games. Is it an eenie, meenie, miney, moe situation and then a hand goes into a bag to pick out either SOE, ZOSO, or curfew?

In all instances of crime fighting, the present Government is forever trapped. The people have no time to wait on 10-year plans when 10 years ago, many five-year plans were falling apart. The irony is that the majority of us have no other choice but to support the latest old hit.

Hopefully, in neither of them will there be “weeping and a wailing tonight …”

MORE EXPLANATIONS FROM SSL INVESTIGATORS

His speciality in law involves white-collar crime. He said last Thursday: “The SSL debacle is one example of when crime and corruption take a hold of society. All kinds of crime, murder, robbery, praedial larceny, rape, extortion, white-collar crime, and fraud are carried out in Jamaica. Murder gets the headlines, for obvious reasons, but recent events show that fraud and scamming are doing very well and have a strong foothold.

“Corruption of law enforcement combined with a weak justice system in Jamaica allows criminals to get off often or never charged. Thus, criminals see crime as a business operation, which is far more profitable than roadwork or manual labour.”

He hammered the nail. “The last 40 years of allowing “badness” to rule and corrupt leadership to thrive because politicians wanted power and to retain power at all costs and thus happily cavorted with criminal elements has come to haunt Jamaica. That moral bankruptcy is the root of all that is happening crime-wise in Jamaica now.”

My friend, who is a former retired cop living abroad, emailed me: “I note the sophistication of the operation at SSL last week. It is reported that the CEO’s laptop was among the five taken. That is not a coincidence. I am certain the perpetrators knew exactly what they were looking for and that they had intelligence as to the location of the laptops.

“I would not be surprised if rogue law-enforcement personnel were involved either doing the “job” or providing the intelligence.

“But think of this. The important future. Some very smart people are involved. The break-in compromises the investigation. There is the possibility that those eventually charged will, through their attorneys, raise all kinds of arguments about the evidence. In addition, what was on those laptops?

“I have the feeling there was financial information about SSL and confidential communications. Now more than ever I get the feeling that the “main’ players in the crime will not be held accountable. So far, we the people are forced to operate on the basis that those doing deep probes of this SSL matter are reasonable people and law-abiding citizens.”

Until something explodes like an asteroid from the heavens, I have to place my faith in the SSL investigators.

ALICE AND NADINE CAN CO-EXIST

When Alice, who operated as a vendor at Crab Circle, was caught on smartphone camera doing the utmost despicable act of defecating in a plastic bucket supposedly in bushes but exposed to the eye of the public, all hell broke loose.

Then things happened quite fast. The venue was shut down, then rebuilt in a fairly fancy, streamlined stall. The private sector stepped up, arranged running water and proper toilets. But the mayor said, no Alice would be there. The public must have its ‘sacrificial lamb’.

That caused two economic tragedies. Nadine, the vendor who took the video is a whistleblower who is now deemed, ironically, a pariah.

The human factor was really not sufficiently examined. Isn’t it possible or likely that Alice has IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), which causes abdominal pain? The pain goes away when the person defecates. Maybe Alice needs a doctor and treatment instead of the mayor chasing her away.

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.