Another record year

"The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing." 
Edmund Burke


Jamaica seems to have become the perfect example of Burke's quote.There were (according to police figures) 1,680 murders last year, the highest number ever recorded in Jamaica.


One thousand, six hundred and eighty. That's two giant Airbus A380s chock full of people. That's a Coaster and a Hiace full of people killed each week. That's a car load of people murdered every day. That's unacceptable.


The police force has many shortcomings, which I've pointed out on several occasions and which most, if not all, of us see very regularly, but the members of the JCF are not the "good men" in Burke's quote. That dubious honour belongs to all of us who, through our silence and apathy, allow criminals to be brazen enough to shoot a woman in Half-way-tree in the middle of the day or to invade a party, shoot somebody 30 times and torch 6 houses.


Evil is flourishing because Jamaicans of all classes and creeds simply look the other way. Whether it's rampaging gunmen or someone breaking in to the house next door, we have allowed ourselves to be paralyzed by fear and this has, in turn, impacted the ability of the JCF to investigate and solve crimes. No  police force in the world, no matter how much CSI technology they employ, can effectively combat crime without the cooperation of citizens.


There are those who say that the reason for the lack of cooperation is that fact that people are afraid that the very same policemen who the information is passed along to are in league with the criminals. This collusion may be true, as we've seen in recent cases, but there are anonymous avenues such as Crime Stop and Operation Kingfish through which information can be passed on to the police.


As I pointed out in a previous post, Jamaica is a country of contradictions. We berate the JCF and the Minister of National Security for the high murder rate, but are unwilling to do our part to help bring it under control. The root of the murder problem isn't violent lyrics or video games or the incompetence of the JCF or politicians, it's us. It's the "informer" stigma we cling to and the "me nuh business" attitude which we have towards gang members and murderers.  Until we good men decide to do something, evil will continue to flourish and we'll continue to break records.