Commentary

The police and their thinking

THE POLICE ARE always doing things that amaze me. Like the alarm and amazement and investigation into the gun licence for Vybz Kartel, P thought this was quite a lark.

Are we going to get any reports about these investigations made public ­ hardly likely. But we can await the findings; the police investigating themselves is always worth the effort.

But this latest one made public this week about the planned change in the release of statistics on murders to quarterly reports because of a perceived link between the figures and the increase in murders is really pushing the envelope.

Unless we are to understand that the seeming randomness of violent crime in Jamaica is not random at all. And all these years there has been an organized group of people probably called the 'Let's Keep The Murders Up Society' lurking and watching the figures daily to make sure they are always up over the 900 mark. And one significant part of the practice of murder is linked to knowing what the daily or monthly tally is.

For all our sakes I hope the cops are right. Because then the solution is really simple --. Don't release figures at all!

You know a part of this logic is also tied to people who insist that songs that speak about guns and killing lead to people committing murder. Solution simple again, isn't it? Just ban all music about guns and killing and commission hundreds of thousands of 'the world is rosy and the sky is blue music' and all killings would probably come to an end. Right? Well, I think not.

The cops, I believe, are more disturbed about the perception of crime and safety that the daily tally of figures presents. Fact: an annual murder rate of more than 900 people is an embarrassment to anyone who is in charge of making sure that murders are down. Maybe the cops think if people are not told about the numbers of people who are being killed then they might just believe that things are under control and the cops are doing a good job. We like to refer to Jamaica as an island paradise -- we look around at the natural beauty and we think yes, it is paradise.

No paradise

But the police need to understand that this paradise is not Alice's Wonderland or Neo's Matrix. No, if we think that people are not being murdered that will not stop them from being murdered. If it were that simple, well heck, fire the commish, hire a psychiatrist, hypnotist and all the other mind twisters and have a mass gathering and get the populace to believe that it was not 900 but 0 people who were murdered last year.

Oh but oops -- according to the police's theory if the 'Let's Keep The Murders Up Society' heard that murders were down that low they would call up Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda and do a 'ting' to get those figures really moving.

C'mon guys, get real.

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