Boyne
Ian Boyne, Contributor
AS A seasoned debater I have found that the first rule of effective debating is to thoroughly understand the opponent's point of view. So often I have seen people argue past one another because they fail to grasp the essence of the opponent's arguments.
The more I hear people debate the crime and violence issues, the more I am convinced that philosophy and the rules of logical argumentation should be part of the core curriculum from primary school to high school. The human rights lobby keeps making the critical, not-to-be-underestimated point that palliative measures such as hard policing and bringing out the army on the streets cannot solve the crime problem. They point out that even if we satisfy some people's thirst for vengeance and terror tactics and assassinate 500 criminals in the next month, more are being produced by a system which is failing to provide the social and economic amenities for an ordered life. That's absolutely right.
DISCUSSION
Two seasoned champions of the working class and oppressed masses, attorney-at-law Dennis Daly and former People's National Party (PNP), General Secretary Dr D.K. Duncan, engaged me in an intense and involved discussion on Cliff Hughes' radio programme, Nationwide, on Tuesday. These are men for whom I have the highest admiration. They have been genuine, indefatigable advocates for human rights long before it became fashionable, and they have an understanding of the root causes of our poverty and social dysfunctionalities that is far superior to many. They have a wholistic approach to human rights. In terms of honesty and openness, I believe there are few people in public life who could equal D.K. Duncan, for example.
Last week Tuesday both men were eloquent in chronicling how our unjust socio-economic conditions breed criminals every day, and how futile is the fight against crime without addressing the underlying root of the problem. Says Dr. Duncan in his Gleaner column that same Tuesday: "The state needs to treat inner-city problems with the same urgency, resolve and 'no matter what it costs', approach as it did the financial sector in the 1990s."
Absolutely!
But as I pointed out to Dr. Duncan on Nationwide, we need to do that urgently, but we need to do something today, tonight, to stop the five murders a day. We cannot wait until we solve the problems of the inner cities before we stop the slaughter of our citizens. Why do we have to adopt this useless, absurd either-or thinking when we need a both-and approach?
There is one very significant and hopeful thing which has come out of our reflections on our crime crisis, and that is the urgency of tackling, in a systematic and sustained way, the problem of poverty and economic and social deprivation. This is a major positive for future action. It has taken this society many decades for us to agree on this. When Michael Manley put before this nation in the 1970s the crucial issue of uplifting the poor and oppressed, the society was not galvanised around that necessity.
Today Edward Seaga is a most articulate and insistent advocate of the poor and downtrodden, batting skilfully and compellingly again for the underclass in his opening address to Parliament recently; and the Private Sector Organisation (PSOJ), of Jamaica is today fully behind the thrust to redeem the inner cities and to improve the conditions of the poor and the Gleaner itself has editorially come out decisively on the side of the marginalised. This is a major victory for the progressive forces.
If there is one positive which has emerged from the ashes of our crisis, it is this far-reaching consensus that policing is not the answer to crime. In the 1960s and even later we did not have this consensus. Many felt that breaking a few skulls and "killing the boy dem" (the criminals), was the simple and straightforward answer to the crime problem. Today we have gone beyond that idiocy and gut reaction. But let us not forget that there are some hardened, "dog-heart", ferocious people in our midst, termed as "animals" by Mark Wignall recently, who must be dealt with today, tonight while we are working on the other short, medium and long-term strategies being called for by the human rights lobby. There are some well-organised terrorists who rule certain communities through terror tactics, fear and intimidation. There are people walking freely with their AK-47, M-16 and SLRs who are not afraid to use them on seven-month babies and old ladies.
MARKSMEN
A way has to be found to drive fear in them. We are not the ones who should be afraid. They should be scared that some well-trained marksmen might encounter them and in that encounter they could be blown away. They must not be given the impression that talk-show hosts, news reporters and the human rights lobby are so effective in intimidating the police that they are afraid to take them out if they are challenged. Policemen should not have to be worried about talk-show hosts jumping on them and reporters slanting their stories against them if, when challenged by these terrorists, they defend themselves and send the terrorists to their graves. The police under those circumstances, should be applauded by us in the media or at least not harassed, tried and attacked as murderers without giving them the benefit of the much-touted "due process".
Gunmen and terrorists must know that we are not "hugging them up", and that we will not even implicitly give them any succour. While we are carrying on our values and attitudes programmes, encouraging better parenting, teaching responsible fatherhood, making the inner cities
more liveable and providing jobs and a better economy for the poor, we must simultaneously deal with those who are determined to operate outside of the law. We are engaged in psychological warfare first, and they are the ones who should be trembling. We must track them and crack them. We must target the gangs, the dons, and the terrorists and make life difficult for them. When they are foolish enough to challenge the police ballistically, the police must make life literally impossible for them and they must get this message clearly.
The Minister of National Security must continue to talk tough. He can't leave that to Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams alone. Terrorists must not turn on their radios in the mornings to hear people attacking the police, questioning their every move and action, while they, the terrorists, are murdering five a day. That madness must stop now!
More of us in the media must put our own lives on the line and send a message to the criminal network. Give them no support tacitly. They are our enemies and they are a threat to our lives and our society, not to the PNP Government. The Government, in fact, to maintain credibility, must show equal vigour and earnestness in tracking and cracking the PNP gunmen and dons. If you are just locking up or putting away JLP gunmen in shoot-outs with the police, then the crime-fighting plan will lose the support of the people and responsible PNP people must come out against this dangerous partisanship if it happens. In fact, I say to the Government, go after the PNP gunmen first! The Minister of National Security must make it manifest to us that if any Member of Parliament in his party has links with gunmen, those gunmen have no safe haven under his tenure.
Let's face some realities. The human rights lobby talks glibly all the time that people would give information to the police if there was more community policing and if Reneto Adams and his tough group would be softer and gentler. Do they not know that there are some hardened, cold- bloodied, heartless terrorists who control certain communities and no one dares go to the police against them - because sometimes even the police are in their employ?
No amount of community policing and good-guy behaviour by certain police personnel will make those people come forward. People are not fools. After these human rights people speak loftily about people giving information to the police, they are back in their air-conditioned SUVs, BMWs and Benzes and headed for the suburbs. The people have nowhere to go so they have to "see and blind hear and deaf". Also, " He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life". How could Dr. Duncan be so naive as to believe that, "The people themselves will turn in for due process the hardened and pathological criminals - given the right circumstances" (Tuesday column).
Read the Wednesday Gleaner report of the woman and her pregnant daughter who were killed on Solitaire Road in Kingston 5 last week. A few days before, a gun was found in the yard and the terrorists believed they were the "informers". No amount of community policing could save them, and the others in the yard have wisely moved out because they know better than Duncan who is privileged to live uptown and who can get to speak to the Prime Minister when his life is threatened.
We must start to face the realities in this country and not wait until we end up like Somalia, Rwanda and other "collapsed states" before we say, "If we did know". Mark Wignall, Don Robotham and I have courageously blown the whistle on the human rights fundamentalists who are so far-sighted that that don't see the precipice immediately before them. Yes, we need to deal with the long list of things suggested by the human rights fundamentalists, but, for heaven's sake, we have to deal with some gangsters and terrorists today, tonight to stop the five murders a day.
And , yes, I agree, hard policing can never solve the problems of crime . We tried it before without the other things before and it has failed miserably. Our oppressive, unjust socio-economic conditions continue to reproduce criminals every day. You can't eliminate enough of them before even more are produced in this free-market , survival-of-the-fittest economy. I have been at one with Duncan, Daly and other progressives in saying that for decades. But the poor are being gunned down and are held in terror in their communities. Their girls are being raped. Indeed, the very jobs which we talk about are being chased away by the terrorists, because people have to be closing down businesses because protection money is demanded and foreign investors who know this, don't want to come here. The criminals are making it impossible for the decent poor to have a chance at life.
This is Police Week. Let us make find ways to support the police this week and into the future. Let's focus on criminal abuses rather than speculate about police abuses.
One of the benefits of studying philosophy is that you learn in a very acute way, that there are dilemmas in the real world and that the real world does not always accommodate, of our neat, sanitised conceptions and expectations. The additional police powers being advocated by Don Robothom and me have serious potential dangers. Taking the spotlight off the police can give them a license to abuse innocent people and take the law into their own hands. Even criminals must be convicted by a court of law. If police are judge, jury and executioner, then we have slipped from civilised norms. And Wilmot Perkins is right: "How can the state break the law in the name of law and order?" We must not easily dismiss the points of the human rights lobby, for many of them are formidable.
But the human rights fundamentalists must lose some of their arrogance and sell-assurance that the truth and purity are purely on their side. Hard policing in the short-term will not solve the crime problem, but by putting away some people, a few precious human lives can be saved and even one innocent life spared is worth it, isn't it?
