Assasin: Where We Disagree!

[Historian]

It needs INSIDE help not outside. Too many people in Jamaica put up with crimes and criminals. Until people start talk and get fed up with crime in their neigbourhood then nothing will happen. It no matter where the police come from. I thought they had gotten overseas cops to help with crime fighting already.

The best help they could get is ATF and other US agencies doing a better job of fighting the export of guns to Jamaica and states like Georgia, Virginia etc. clamping down on their gun laws. There is no criminal enterprise that can stand if people decide to take action, not one order, not Jungle, not Tivoli.

This lack of trust is the greatest present and clear danger to Jamaica. The people don’t trust the security forces, and, therefore, we cannot unite to overcome the criminals. Society is bitterly divided on how to deal with these criminals. How can we restore law and order when substantial sections of the Jamaican people and highly influential opinion-makers believe that what is seen as the constituted authorities for law and order are themselves a threat to law and order? – World Press Review (Vol. 48, No. 10; October 2001)

Assasin, when will you open your eyes and realize that outside help is needed, and needed urgently? When we begin having 2,500 homicides annually? And this isn’t as farfetched a possibility as you might think. In 1980 when Jamaica was actually experiencing a civil war, some 800 people were killed during that violent general election campaign. Last year, some 1,685 (or something close to this number) were killed.

It’s nice and easy for you to wax eloquently with statements such as “until people start talk and get fed up with crime in their neighbourhood….” I agree with you, except that, unlike you, I’m not sure to whom they should talk. Should they put their lives and the lives of their loved ones at risk by approaching members of a police force that is riddled with corruption from top to bottom? And what will be the result in the face of a judicial system that is tottering along as it desperately tries to fulfill its mandate as the third branch of government?

I could tell you horror stories of male and female teens and adults in corporate area communities who have had their tongues cut out or their eyes removed, and when their bullet riddled bodies were later discovered, it was obvious that they paid heavily for being “informers”!! Trust me when I say that it’s easy for you to talk, as you live in a country where the rule of law is a reality! In Jamaica the rule of law barely exists anymore!

But if you think back, we all bought and danced to records which trumpeted the refrain, “Informer Fe Dead”! And while we danced to such dangerous, anti-social messages, we smiled broadly, sipped our Heineken or Red Stripe or Guinness and thought to ourselves, “Jah know, reggae rule the world”! Well, there it is…. the chickens have now come home to roost and we are reaping the consequences of our mind boggling stupidity.

But back to what I said above -- When one decides to start presenting the police with much needed evidence, corruption within the force will be their first stumbling block. Here is a paragraph taken from “Gun-Happy Police Adds to Jamaica’s Killing Spree,” by James Brabazon (published in The UK Guardian; Sunday, September 2, 2007):

“There are circumstances of police killing that are questionable and that we have investigated,” he (National Security Minister Peter Phillips) confirms. In the past eight years, with almost 2,000 police killings, only one police officer has been convicted of murder. The Court of Appeals president, Justice Seymour Panton, has called for an end to the “appallingly high rate of extra-judicial killings”. In his opinion, police testimony in such cases is “no longer generally credible”.

Now do you understand the real fear of the police by many Jamaicans living in poor communities? Then, to make an already bad situation worse, our hardworking police force today solves much LESS than 40 percent of murders committed in any given year!! Is it any wonder that crime is the way it is today?

Now, read his extract from Amnesty International, published April 1, 2008:

People living in inner-city communities are left at the mercy of gang leaders who use the vacuum left by the state to control huge aspects of their lives -- including the collection of “taxes”, allocation of jobs, distribution of food and “scholarships”, and the punishment of those who transgress gang rules.

As one woman from an inner-city community told Amnesty International, “At night we had to sleep on the floor, all of us, the children, the grandma, all of us; covered by the mattress because sometimes the shots can go through the house and kill us.”

“Criminal gangs make up a small proportion of the community population but their actions are devastating: they keep thousands of people living in constant fear and provide an excuse for government officials to label all community members as criminals,” said Fernanda Doz Costa. Despite the violence they experience daily, community members are reluctant to report abuses due to fear of reprisals by gang leaders, lack of confidence in the judicial system and mistrust of police officers working in their communities.

In closing, Assasin, and with respect to your knowledge and love for Jamaican music, let me include something musical that won’t detract from the focus of this discussion. The help from inside Jamaica that you refer to in your post has not been forthcoming since the rude boys ratchet knife-flashing gangs of the 1960s started to rule the streets. Yes, those were the thugs that Prince Buster attacked in hits like “Judge Dread” and that Junior Smith sung about in “Cool Down Your Temper.” Those thugs were armed to the teeth and already creating havoc back in the 1960s!!!

But guess what? Well, just read these lyrics from Dandy Livingstone’s musical reply to Prince Busters’ “Judge Dread in a late 1960s recording called “We Are Rude”: “We are still rude/We are still tuff/We fear no one/Because we have guns.”

By the way, nowhere in my post did I suggest that police be brought in!! The word I used was “military”, a term not associated with law enforcement officers, but rather with a tougher, more hardened and highly trained institution.

P.S. It is a bit naïve to suggest that only “one percent” of Jamaicans are involved in crime!! The percentage is much higher, and it’s almost disingenuous to suggest otherwise!

[Assasin]

Do you think foriegners will change our culture? Take Iraq and Afgahanistan as example. Even with Black Water and all the world best security firm and military there and it still don't stop the crime after so many years. We have had some good British cops in Ja and instead crime continue to grow.

In my opinion the most important help we need is stop easy access to guns by criminals. The US has not been able to do that. Procecute criminals in the US, UK and Canada who are supporting criminal enterprise in Ja and those in Ja who are running international enterprises.

It no matter how many foriegners we get, if they can't work with our corrupted politician, security forces, and people still have the mentality that a little crime is what is needed to "eat a little food" then nothing will change. Not to mention the more car, more gal attitude that sees our children with fatherless kids. Foriegners are not going to change the "kill informer mentality" only Jamaicans can.

No matter how they try if we are not our brothers keeper in and protecting criminals nothing will change and it starts with the Prime Minister not protecting Dudus and others start washing their hands. It starts with teachers caring again. It starts with us giving back, and this is not about money but we need to go sit down pon roadside and reason with some of these youths and go back to our schools and encouraging the youths.

Some of the youths have no idea that a lawyer, doctor, etc. come from their community but they know that there is a don, because we don't not spend enough time with them. It is all about communities. Again some of the places in Jamaica with the highest unemployment have the least crime in Jamaica. Take for example from Port Maria to Buff Bay and see how many crimes are committed there. Take Maroon Town and see. There are even some little ghetto spots in Kingston which look out for each other.

Foriegners can help us with the leadership and setting up plans and structure but it is up to us. There is no naivity about that. We can look to the sky all we want but the problem is ours to solve.

On a musical note there has also been many positive songs which others have used to better their causes. Yes I use the positive music to meditate and relax etc. So it really is a choice. Yes I agree some of the lyrics were in support but do you realise how many people that positive reggae was their lifeline that help them through ruff times? Tunes such as "Love and hate" "One love" and so many others.

[Historian]

Re: Do you think foreigners will

No matter how they try if we are not our brothers keeper in and protecting criminals nothing will change and it starts with the Prime Minister not protecting Dudus and others start washing their hands. It starts with teachers caring again. It starts with us giving back, and this is not about money but we need to go sit down pon roadside and reason with some of these youths and go back to our schools and encouraging the youths.

Our people know the state of criminality in Jamaica and the role of the gun in silencing witnesses. Robert Hill, otherwise called Kentucky Kid, and his pregnant wife were beaten up by the police and the incident caught on tape and sent to the police high command; Hill warned on Youtube that if he died, it would be police who killed him, yet the police came back for him and killed him in a supposed shootout; how much more evidence do we need that this is a sick, broken and very dangerous country? – Mark Wignall, “Golding’s Broken Promises”; The Sunday Observer, May 2, 2010

The police have failed to solve more than 6,000 of the murders committed within the last six years and indications are that most of the killings that will be committed for the rest of the year will also remain unsolved. – Tyrone Reid, “Wanted! Detectives for the JCF”; The Sunday Gleaner, May 2, 2010

'Sass : First of all, my use of the word “naive” was made in reference to the statement in the other thread that only “one percent” of Jamaicans are involved in crime. Clearly this does not make sense when we consider the alarmingly large number of cases of illegal activity on a daily basis!

Secondly, please read the two quoted sources above (Wignall and Reid) and bear those in mind when you discuss poor people making a change. Boss, it’s not as easy as you seem to think! People are scared, and so they probably should in a land where there is major corruption from the very top of the echelon of leadership!

Thirdly (and I sincerely hope that I do not offend you by this statement), like the present and past Jamaican governments, you apparently attach no great urgency to the state of anarchy in Jamaica today. Your anaphora “It starts with….” (in your third paragraph which I quoted above) is nice for political speeches, aside from the fact that you’re stating what every reader on this forum already knows. And yes, you’re correct in saying that, but is it helping? We can sit back and philosophize about the importance of the family as a socializing agent as far as teaching positive values is concerned, and of course we would be correct. But while we do this, another 1,600-plus Jamaicans will be murdered this year, and probably a similar amount or even more next year!

So, yes, Jamaicans at home can change the situation….maybe in another two generations or so. Quite frankly, though, I pin greater hopes on Jamaicans who have lived abroad for an extended period (particularly in so-called First World countries), and who have been exposed to the rule of law as well as a higher standard of living, to be the ones to take the lead in making the change possible. In the meantime, outside military assistance, such as has been the case in our second closest neighbor Haiti, might be our only chance in the short to medium term.

Finally, my musical reference had nothing to do with the positive use of music for relaxation (something both you and I use music to do). My reference was to show that there has always been support for criminality in some of our popular recordings, from the days of ska, rocksteady, reggae and now dancehall. While this will most likely have no impact on people like you and me, the same cannot be said about everyone.

[Assasin]

Brethren we a reason and there is no offense whatsoever taken.

One big difference and that is I use "Jamaicans, us etc." because I didn't differenciate those in Ja to the diasporia. I know there are many guilty parties here in the disaporia who support crimes, send guns and support crime entities in Ja. It is often overlooked when we talking about crime in Ja but they play a big role in crime in Ja. I don't just expect people living Ja to make a difference but also when we visit to do what we can. Spend a day out of the hotel and go to a primary school and give a speach or go to your old high school ground and talk to a class.

Yes there is urgency but the fact is everytime they kill the dons from Jim Brown, Copper, Starsky, Massop, Willi Haggard, on and on it takes 2 years at most for someone to step in.

I believe positivity like negitivity spread fast and there can be big changes in the next few years if we are serious. Yeah there has always been an element of criminality in our music but we are not unique with that, but our society choose to the negitive. I would ask if you know how often people overseas tell me the positivity of reggae on them, but I know they do that to you too.

The fact is Yes I know some areas are really ruff but when you have once peaceful places copying the garrison, then that is a big problem and this is where I think most of the effort have to be concentrated to stem crime while fighting the hard core criminals.


I know it is hard to form progressive groups with your fellow Jamaicans sometimes but we have to keep on trying and work on good causes.

[ReggaeMike]

Do you think foriegners will change our culture? Take Iraq and Afgahanistan as example. Even with Black Water and all the world best security firm and military there and it still don't stop the crime after so many years. We have had some good British cops in Ja and instead crime continue to grow.

Actually Assassin, Iraq would be an example that supports Historian's position. I'm not sure about Afghanistan as the online media tend to have less analysis about Afghanistan (and I suppose it is much harder to gather data in mountainous, isolated Afghanistan than in flat, well-connected Iraq), but I will check.

With Iraq just look on the following:

http://icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx

and specifically:

http://icasualties.org/Iraq/IraqiDeaths.aspx

The second one gives monthly deaths of civilians in Iraq between 2005 and 2010 (and is ongoing).

This also gives an overview of Iraq's casualties since 2003 from various sources (but since it is Wikipedia take it with a grain of salt):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

By practically any available measure the number of civilians who have died yearly in Iraq has fallen dramatically since 2007 (which was the year of the Surge in US troop numbers).

Look on the graphs and numbers from here:

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2009/

For instance in 2009 IBC counted 4,645 civilian deaths (the lowest ever since 2003) and in 2008 they counted 9,217 civilians deaths (the first time the number has dropped below 10,000 a year since 2003).

In the icasualties tables one can see that their monthly figures give civilians deaths as being consistently under 1,000 per month since August 2007 (the surge started between January and March 2007) and also being consistently under 600 a month since April 2008. Bear in mind that this is coming from figures consistently over 1,000 a month (and a times exceeding 3,000 a month) since July 2006 and which were quite often (11 months out of 14 for which data is given) over 500 a month between 2005 and July 2006.

Of course most of these studies have one major problem which they rely on English language media which is why the probably have a much lower number for total deaths (around 65,000 in 2006 and about 100,000 now) than the two Lancet studies in 2004 and 2006 (which estimated 655,000 excess deaths by 2006). However as the Lancet studies showed a overall, generally similar rate of increase in deaths over the years between 2003 and 2006 as such studies like Iraq Body Count then it isn't a stretch to speculate that any new Lancet study would probably show a decrease since 2007.

[ReggaeMike]

It no matter how many foriegners we get, if they can't work with our corrupted politician, security forces, and people still have the mentality that a little crime is what is needed to "eat a little food" then nothing will change. Not to mention the more car, more gal attitude that sees our children with fatherless kids. Foriegners are not going to change the "kill informer mentality" only Jamaicans can..

Quite truse Sass, but then if say our murders dropped form 1,400+ a year to say 400+ a year might that not embolden average people to fight back against petty crimes? Remember that story in the Star where they reported that some people were intimidating vendors downtown into giving them food for free? If the organized criminal enterprise and infrastructure was broken and more murderers and would-be murderers were caught (or turned into duppies) wouldn't that weaken the grip of fear that gives rise to this kind of permissive environment? If people aren't nearly as afraid of being shot to death without consequences for the murderer because they simply refused to give away free food then petty crimes such as these might decrease. It would also free up the resources of those good police who are left so they can actually pursue non-fatal crimes (not to mention that large scale foreign assistance might actually help them wrap up such cases - and we have never had large scale foreign assistance, just a few police officers from Britain in mainly symbolic roles as it was unlikely that one high ranking British police officer and a few other investigators from Britain would have caused a dent in the crime rate since there are far too many challenges for just that number of officers).

[Assasin]

How does Iraq support it when before the US invade the monthly death toll was a lot less. Voilence maybe down now but a lot of that violence was against US troops. There is still a lot of inter fighting going on and it is now 7 years later and 150 thousand US troops. Still didn't stop violence.

[ReggaeMike]

How does Iraq support it when before the US invade the monthly death toll was a lot less. Voilence maybe down now but a lot of that violence was against US troops.

Yes Sass, but a LOT more Iraqi civilians have died over a given 2 year period than the total number of US troops in 7 years (total US troop deaths: 4,000+; total Iraq civilians dead from 2003: 100,000-650,000+). And a lot of those Iraqi civilians have died at the hands of other Iraqis, not coalition forces. Those deaths cannot be considered as a result of violence against US troops since those poor Iraqi civilians were never US troops. Remember the mosque bombings? Those were most definitely directed at the civilian population, not US forces. Had the US simply gone in, overthrown Saddam and left in 2004 it is quite possibly that hardly anything would have played out differently in Iraq since what the US did was to remove Saddam's authority and then allow a sort of semi-controlled lawlessness (or near civil war) to reign until the surge in 2007. US troops weren't really there in sufficient numbers to provide security between 2003 and 2007 and without an Iraqi army (disbanded in 2003) and with many police quitting or in hiding Iraq was essentially without sufficient security internally which allowed a lot of people to get away with a lot of things they could never do in pre-2003 Iraq or in post-2007 Iraq.

The averge death toll prior to the invasion was predicated upon Iraq being a dictatorship where laws were strictly enforced (unlike here), but the death toll has been trending down since 2007 and over time will probably return to pre-war levels and maybe even go lower. In any event the average death (not just murder) rate in Iraq seems to have been higher than in Jamaica before the invasion started. However, the point is that Iraq was an orderly (if repressed) society before 2003. People didn't generally loot anything that wasn't tied to the ground (as our scrap metal thieves have done) and if one compares the per capita death rates it is shows that a lot of that talk about Jamaica having a murder rate equivalent to a war is crap (well almost crap if one is using places like Lebanon or Iraq, but it is disturbingly true if one uses places like Colombia):

According to the IBC there have been about 100,000 since 2003 or approx. 14,285 a year (and this is assumed to be directly due to the conflict and thus "excess" deaths).

According to the 2006 Lancet survey there were 655,000 such excess deaths between 2003 and 2006 (or approx. 218,333 a year).

The Lancet's 2004 survey gave a conservative figure of 98,000 excess deaths (not including Fallujah which it said would raise the numbers to 298,000 excess deaths) and said that the 98,000 figure represented a 50% increase on pre-invasion death rates and that the Fallujah figures if included would represent a 150% increase. As these figures were for approximately a 1 and 1/2 year period then we can estimate the Lancet's figures for the pre-invasion deaths to be 65,333 a year.

Now let's look on the per-capita figures. Iraq has a population of 31,234,000 (down by 2 million since the invasion) and Jamaica has a population of 2,700,000.

So prior to the invasion Iraq's estimated deaths per capita was 65,333/33 million = 0.001979 or 1.979 per 1,000 of the population or 19.79 per 10,000 of the population.

By 2006 according to the Lancet study the deaths per capita would have reached:

excess deaths = 655,000/3 = 218,333 a year.

total deaths = 218,333 + 65,333 = 283,666 a year.

deaths per capita = 283,666/31,234,000 = 0.00908 or 9.08 per 1,000 of the population or 90.8 per 10,000 of the population.


Using the Iraq Body Count figures (which could potentially be grossly underestimated) we would have:

2006 excess deaths = 27,727

combined with estimate pre-war invasion rates = 27,727 + 65,333 = 93,060

2009 IBC death rates based off combined totals = 69,987/31,234,000 = 0.002979 or 2.979 per 1,000 of the population or 29.79 per 10,000 of the population.

2009 excess deaths = 4,654

combined with estimate pre-war invasion rates = 4,654 + 65,333 = 69,987

2009 IBC death rates based off combined totals = 69,987/31,234,000 = 0.00224 or 2.24 per 1,000 of the population or 22.4 per 10,000 of the population.

Jamaica's 2003 murder rates (not death rates):

975/2,700,000 = 0.0003611 or 0.361 per 1,000 of of the population or 3.61 per 10,000 of the population.

Jamaica's 2006 murder rates:

1,340/2,700,000 = 0.000496 or 0.496 per 1,000 of the pop. or 4.91 per 10,000 of the pop.

Jamaica's 2009 murder rates (not death rates):

1680/2,700,000 = 0.000622 or 0.622 per 1,000 of the population or 6.2 per 10,000 of the population.

Checking online Jamaica's 2003 death rate was apparently 5.42 per 1,000 pf the population; 2006's was 6.52 per 1,000 and 2009's death rate was apparently estimated at 6.4 per 1,000 of the population.


Now the Lancet study estimates excess deaths to include deaths due to violence, the coalition military, "other" and "unknown". And the Lancet study is talking about death rates, not murder rates, so the pre-invasion death rates would presumably include everything from murder to old age, road fatalities and accidents.

But taken altogether Iraq has seen a downward trend in violent deaths while Jamaica has seen an ever-increasing upward trend.

Sure it doesn't take outside intervention to stem violence. The Bahamas did it by rounding up their drug lords a few years ago and Colombia did it with Uribe as they had murders apparently reduced from 29,000 in 2002 to 16,000 in 2009 (and the homicide rate down from 6.9 per 10,000 in 2002 to 3.5 per 10,000 in 2009)...although Colombia got a lot of assistance from the US to fight the rebels who were mainly responsible for the high murder rate. This assistance includes hundreds of millions of US dollars in aid as well as US soldiers in Colombia numbering in the low thousands who provide training and sometimes go after wanted individuals (but only US special forces it seems are involved in these manhunts).

However, Jamaica doesn't appear to have the political will of the Bahamas in rounding up the drug lords and I personally don't see any Uribe-type figure in Jamaica (and even so, Uribe probably would have had a much harder time bringing murders down without millions of US dollars in aid to the Colombian police and military). So it would seem that barring a Bahamas-type situation, Jamaica at some point will need some kind of large scale foreign assistance to help bring down the murder rate. This happened with the surge in Iraq and with Uribe and Plan Colombia (ironically, Jamaica in 2009 is as murderous as Colombia in 2002-03, while Colombia in 2009 is only as murderous as Jamaica was in 2003). As the Colombian and Iraq situations show though, this foreign assistance can't be expected to totally curb it. Ideally it would take some kind of foreign assistance (most preferably like what Colombia got with money, training and a few soldiers to assist) coupled with internal initiatives like what you were talking about. That way murder in the country would get attacked from two sides: directly confronting murderers through police action (foreign and domestic) and indirectly preventing murderers from appearing through community intervention. With Iraq there hasn't really been any sort of community reconciliation which I'm sure would bring the violent death rate there down substantially.