Lambert Brown, Guest Columnist
ALMOST ONE year to the date, in this space, I was critical of Operation Kingfish. At the time, I said, "Let's catch real kingfishes and avoid the king spins". Today, one year on, the men and women of Operation Kingfish deserve the heartiest of congratulations. They have effectively started the process of turning so-called 'dons' into dandruff.
For the first time, some of the 'Mr. Bigs', whether in 'drugs runnings' or the 'badness business', are being brought to book. In general, the persons in charge of Kingfish have shown a willingness to be even-handed across political lines. Importantly, they have displayed a tendency to favour the judicial process by giving the accused his day in court.
By meticulously operating within the four corners of the law, they have reaped greater successes against the gangs and dons than all other units or squads that have been established over the last two decades. Clearly, crime can be fought and controlled without the fear-generating paraphernalia and the high body count of questionable killings.
Unfortunately, too many of our citizens still believe that the way to solve crime is through brute force and execution whether of the judicial or extra-judicial nature.
BRAINS RATHER THAN BRAWN
What Operation Kingfish has confirmed over the year of its existence is, that, brains rather than brawn and bullets bring greater benefits, even in crime fighting. I hope that in increasing the size of the police force to 10,000 or 12,000, greater emphasis will be placed on the quality of the recruits.
Again, I make the call for 200-300 science-based students to be recruited and further trained in forensic skills. This will facilitate the possibility of more crimes being solved and therefore drive the real fear into the criminals that they will be caught and brought to book whenever they commit their nefarious deeds.
The solution to crime, rests not so much in the quantity, but rather in the quality of personnel, as well as the quality and effectiveness of resources available for crime fighting.
At least twice this year in my columns, I have called for a refocusing of the Government's budget in order to emphasise crime reduction as a top priority objective of the society. In this light, I welcome that Opposition Leader Bruce Golding's proposal that if elected to power, his party would for the first three years, make crime fighting a priority.
Such refocusing of the budget must take into account the necessary after-treatment to prevent the recurrence of the dreaded dandruff. Even if Kingfish succeeds in removing the existing 'dons', if the proper treatment is not meted out to the healthy scalp, then the return of dandruff is inevitable.
There can be no doubt that the way we deal with the poor people in the urban communities and rural districts will be critical if the battle of crime reduction is to be successful. Do we hypocritically speak down to them demanding their cooperation with the police, or do we work with them to win their mind and soul, as partners against the criminals in this potential piece of paradise?
LISTENING TO 'SONIA'
This is the dilemma posed by the poignant public service advertisement on radio entitled 'Hey Gal Sonia'. In that advertisement, a 'shotta' comes home from his night of pillage with his bloody shirt and tells Sonia in a threatening voice to wash out the bloodstained shirt. Sonia mumbles to herself, loud enough for us to hear, that she 'don't like when him go murder/rob'.
She continues her mumbling with a telling reaffirmation that it is 'him looking afta' her. That is what we are up against in all the enclaves of dons and dandruff.
We can piously beseech the Sonias of this country that they must cooperate with the state all we want. However, if the state by its policies does not 'look afta' her, she will have no time for the rest of us in society. It is our failing to listen carefully to what Sonia is telling us that led her and her friends to join the many protests in defence of the dandruff. We are too taken up with the correctness of our moralising message to realise that Sonia is trying to talk to us. This prevents us from hearing her desperate cry for us to help her, so she can help us all make the society a better place for all to live and prosper.
Had we been listening and responding to Sonia, she would have long ago told us about the guns coming in crates and other ways through our leaking ports. By the way, are the X-ray machines working effectively at the ports?
Somebody please tell us quickly. Did any other similar crates pass through the ports? How many crates, if any did it take to build the house at Tanaky? Had the Kingfishers not had luck on their side in finding that shipping document, would the crate loaded with its weapons of community destruction have safely exited our ports? Will anybody be bold enough to ask these questions when next Parliament meets? Let's watch and see.
CREATING NEW POLICIES
Listening to Sonia requires that we create policies that will make her independent of the dons. She must be put in a position to be economically independent, secure from rapists and invaders of her community. She must be able to send her children to school and expect them to live a life better than the one she endured. This is the environment that Government is responsible to create.
Instead, Sonia is a victim of high unemployment, poverty, low wages and low self-esteem. The proposal from JLP MP, Andrew Holness, for a $2 billion fund for tackling the urgent social problems faced by the urban and rural poor is deserving of top place in the construction of the 2005/2006 national budget. It is incumbent on the Opposition to insist that the next budget not become another exercise in arithmetic, meaningless to the life of the Jamaican people, in general, and the urban and rural poor in particular. The Government for its part, now has a glorious opportunity, coming at the time of an imminent new leader, to eschew partisan concerns as to which party made the proposal and just do the right thing. If we fail to lift up Sonia and her likes, surely we will be condemning the positive work begun by Operation Kingfish to failure.
Lambert Brown is a vice-president of the University and Allied Workers Union, and can be contacted at labpoyh@yahoo.com.
