Martin HenryTravelling by the Road Map to Safety, the colonel and his men should soon arrive in Western Kingston, the garrison constituency held by the prime minister, and in South West St Andrew, the neighbouring garrison constituency held by the leader of the opposition. They will have eight or nine other similar strategic targets to neutralise.
Rarely does a minister of government get to have written his own policy paper and to have led operations in the portfolio area before being appointed to office. This is Colonel Trevor MacMillan's good fortune - or very bad fortune. The most outstanding case from the last administration is, of course, Dr Omar Davies, who headed the Planning Institute of Jamaica before being appointed minister of finance and planning by a route uncannily similar to how MacMillan has come to be minister of national security.
Colonel MacMillan is about to discover, as poor Derrick Smith before him did, that writing about it and talking about it is a substantially different business from doing it.
While in Opposition, the JLP commissioned a crime plan from a task force headed by the colonel, a former commissioner of police. They got the Road Map to Safety Report. The map called for the severing of the links between politics and crime, the dismantling of political garrisons, and the depoliticisation of the management of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
MacMillan Report
The MacMillan Report recommended ending contracts to garrison dons; preventing sub-contracting to a firm controlled by criminal elements; ending dons making contributions to political parties; stripping garrison dons of all criminally acquired wealth; bipartisan agreement on dismantling garrison superstructure; and, disarming garrisons.
Frightened, unsafe Jamaicans believe that there is a gunman behind every bush. A former Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) officer and police commissioner would know that criminality is far from being random and all-pervasive, but is highly patterned by location, time, purpose, gender, age and other factors, which have been studied to a 't'. The fact that the security forces for 40 years have not been able to use this information for cramping criminality says something very loudly. As the colonel's own road map, and successful action in other jurisdictions, loudly suggest, successful crime fighting is not rocket science.
When we do our studies, and there are numerous, it is crystal clear where the criminal-violence hot spots are, who is involved, and how and why that pattern of criminal behaviour emerged and developed, and how it has infected the country by export of attitudes, arms and persons from those epicentres.
At the inaugural meeting of the National Committee on Political Tribalism, convened by former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson in 1996 [reporting in July 1997], a certain Bruce Golding, then heading the National Democratic Movement (NDM), having walked away from tribal politics, spoke. He declared that, "political tribalism, the use of violence in political activities, the creation of political garrisons, were not a natural outgrowth of a political process, but rather, they were nurtured and nourished as strategic initiatives to secure or retain political power". The president of the NDM acknowledged "the problems that political tribalism posed for law and order".
correct description
The committee accepted "as a correct description" the submission by Dr Barry Chevannes, UWI sociologist, that "there is a link between garrison forces and the party's political leadership." Its report says: "It is ... beyond debate that party politics was the cradle for factional conflicts, that the political clashes of the 1960s, particularly in the election period of 1967, ushered in the era of firearm offences against the person and that party politics remains a major cause. Criminal gangs tend to identify themselves with particular garrison communities and remain affiliated or aligned to their particular party."
More recently, Professor Anthony Harriott, criminologist at the UWI, picked up the theme of crime and politics in his introduction to the book he edited, Understanding Crime in Jamaica. "In Jamaica," he notes, "crime cannot be fully understood without reference to politics. This raises the issue of the political parties being criminal organisations. The resort to criminal means of gaining office, and the alliances with criminals that are used for this purpose, give criminal networks considerable leverage on the parties. These activities of the political elite have profound implications for ordinary criminality, especially the normalisation of crime, which is reflected in the view that criminality has become conformist behaviour."
Harriott concluded that, "if politics and public policy have contributed directly and indirectly to the crime problem, it is politics that will have to rescue the society from violent crime". And therein lies the colonel's dilemma - and opportunity. He is now, as any minister has to be, a member of the political establishment. And really, successful crime fighting will have some very powerful implications for that political establishment, and for the crime fighter himself. A chilling reminder to MacMillan is the public protest and tee-shirt stomping and burning by 'betrayed' PNP garrisonists in sections of Spanish Town against then minister of national security, Dr Peter Phillips, when a police operation took out their don.
assessments
It would be very interesting to hear Phillips's and others' assessment of the political costs to him and his party of his anti-crime zeal. It can get worse. But there really is no other way if we sincerely hope to tame the crime monster.
In considerably less than Derrick Smith's eight months, we will know clearly if the colonel seriously intends to tame the beast. Or, if he is simply enjoying political stardom, as suggested in his premature media confirmation of appointment, and playing the usual games with our safety.
Martin Henry is a communication consultant. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.
