National Affairs: Bangin', Gangs operate with Impunity, while Police seem merely Puny

Kingston.
Spanish Town.
Montego Bay.

Father.
Son.
Holy Ghost.

The above is more than a Christian/spiritual reference. On a more obscure scale, jazz lovers know it refers to John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders and Albert Ayler, the trio of saxophonists who -among others - helped push a less harmonically constricted version of jazz (call it "free", I don't particularly like that term) into main stream consideration from the late 60s into the early 70s (Sanders, the "son" in this particular trinity, is still going strong, the other 2 having passed - within 7 years of each other).

By my own stretching, it also refers to the three main urban areas in Jamaica where gang activity has been wreaking havoc and grabbing headlines. Spanish Town is actually the oldest of the three chronologically, but I don't know anyone who could argue with Kingston as the "father" in this model. Spanish Town

Medieval drains addled

By a 10,000-proof cocktail

Of liquid shit chased with

Exhaust

fit only

For dogs and derelicts

Leavened by plastic bag fruits and

3-day old Chinese food

No resurrection and instead of

‘Crucify him!”

The shouts are

“Cross Roads!”

“Molynes!”

“Half Way Tree!”

“Town!”

The crush of wage slaves

Crammed 5-in-a-row as

Hell drivers play shuffle-and-deal

With State goons on

Wheels

Churches like ships

At anchor

The collared Conquistadors

Delivering the believers into

Varied stages of

Ecstasy

As they search for gold

Of their own

Garvey's Ghost

To varying degrees, this scenario is replicated in both of the other two  - wholly inadequate infrastructure exacerbated by  politically-biased "development" and massive rural-urban drift, as agriculture diminished in importance (or, more accurately, fluctuated), sent farmers scurrying out of rural bases into "Town" for promised jobs in factories that did not always materialize to the level in which they were hyped.

Jamaica has been constantly ranked as one of the country’s with the highest levels of crime. Both petty crimes and murders have fluctuated over the years. Mostly increasing by large percentages and decreasing by smaller numbers.
In 2005, Jamaica had 1,674 murders or a murder rate of 58 per 100,000 people, the highest per capita rate in the world that year. The certainly was a factor in the November 2008 Parliament decision to retain the death penalty, which is performed by hanging.

There were 1,682 reported murders in 2009 and 1,428 in 2010. Since 2011 the murder rate has continued to fall following the downward trend started in 2010. In 2012, the Ministry of National Security reported a 30 percent decrease in murders.

The decrease has been attributed to increases in police patrols, curfews and more effective anti-gang activities. Can this this really be accepted though? In a climate where both extra-judicial killings by the Police and  the slaying of Police officers has increased, are we really dealing with violence in the society simply by providing more cars and personnel?

Recent flare-ups of gang- driven violence in downtown Kingston and sections of "Spain" (as the old capital is often called) suggest the answer is "No". Commissioner of Police Karl Williams has put the number of active gangs throughout the country at over 200; that's active, meaning their operations are occupying law enforcement and show up on Police blotters. This is way too high a number for a country with a population of about 3 million; I seriously doubt the cities of Los Angeles or Houston in the US, notorious for similar activity, have that many.

And then, we have to ask, what is sustaining these gangs? As in the case of outlaw groups around the world, its a case of  frustration, minor to zero positive parental models, and the siren call of notoriety and even profit that "the gangsta life" has been seen as offering. This latter reason is certainly a major factor in the ongoing Lotto scam activities in Western Jamaica. With large sums of money being generated - thanks to the gullibility and greed (yes, I said it!) of US citizens, scammers have been turning on each other in an attempt to "grab all the marbles" as the phrase goes.

And don't believe that drug-running has faded into oblivion. There are still rendezvous taking place between Jamaicans and Colombians bearing coke, with that coke in turn being offered, along with marijuana, to Haitians (and Americans), in exchange for firearms - guns which, as the Commissioner has shared, are often in pristine condition.

Without putting am major dent in this operation, there will be little or no let-up in gangland killings, including of the Police, whose presence now poses little, if any threat to the gang recruits. Full legalization of marijuana (growing, consumption, distribution and export), could go a long way to toward diverting the current drugs-for-guns trade, provided the erstwhile "druggists" can show a clean police record (not that difficult). But even that is a ways off, given the glacial pace of certain legislation in Jamaica.


And this is not simply an issue of getting a handle on murders. The country's rapes per capita  rate was listed as the 6th highest in the world for the period 1998 - 2000, at 0.4766 per 1,000 of the population. South Africa tops that table with 1,1954, with the Seychelles 2nd on 0.7883. Corruption is another prevalent crime with 45.56% of business managers identifying its influence in business, the 17th highest rate in the world.

Clearly, officialdom, big business and indeed community members are all complicit to varying degrees. Among the people stepping in community marches "for peace and safety" are some of the folks harbouring and tipping off their criminal relatives, lovers and friends as to the movements and intentions of the Police, and there's no shortage of anecdotes about the Police themselves being the informers. Big business, partly out pragmatism, also stays cozy with gangsta types (out of public view of course), often looking to cut deals to divert certain activities away from their offices, or in some cases, to help "launder illegitimate proceeds.

Simply, this problem is beyond money being thrown at it. We also have to throw in some genuine intervention on the social side - sustainably fund organizations that have a track record for community-building and plow even more into extra-mural education and sports across urban and rural centres. The returns on this investment may be slower, but over time, I believe, they will be greater than  doubling the size of the  police force or quadrupling the number of vehicles.

We also need to show more concern for enacting justice. The current flap concerning a judge's decision to "ban" social media comment on the ongoing X6 murder trial is already casting a dark shadow over the perception of the justice system as haven for the monied class and hell for those without significant material resources.

Our urban centres can become models of safety and progress, so long as we don't allow ourselves to fall into the old stale thinking patterns of more enforcement = lower statistics = safer communities.

There is, after all, another "trinity" to consider:

[Real] Development;
Justice
Safety

"Police as Thieves": Assault on Precinct 13(2005)

A kind of "mid-voltage all-star cast" with the likes of Ethan Hawke, Gabriel Byrne, John Leguizamo, JA Rule, Bryan Dennehy and Laurence Fishburne playing various roles, this remake of the Kurt Russell-John Carpenter collaboration is not a game changer but it doesn't wear out its welcome.

Credit for that goes to the cast and to director Jean-Francois Richet (who would subsequently pilot Vincent Cassel to global superstardom as the gangster Mesrine. For a Parisian, he and his production crew do a pretty good job of presenting the post-Industrial gloom of Detroit on New Year's Eve, but one supposes that post-Industrial gloom is largely same wherever in the world one finds it.

For those unfamiliar with the original, Sgt Jake Roenick (Hawke) is the classic anti-hero cop; he took the rap for an undercover narcotics bust gone bad that resulted in the loss of a colleague and is now just marking time. Judgement is close at hand as the precinct office is set to be closed come Jan. 1, but "hell" arrives early in the form one Marcus Bishop, (Fishburne), the local crime boss, whose police transport is forced to stop at the unlucky-numbered precinct by persistently bad weather. said transport is also carrying a mini rogues' gallery of violent but petty criminals and one certifiable sociopath (Leguizamo, ultimately wasted), who are themselves none too happy about spending the night in company of Roenick and his fellow cops.

The ante is upped - violently - by a cabal of corrupt officers (led by Gabriel Byrne) who are intent on rubbing Bishop out in order to stop him from testifying and thus overturning their own cozy criminal empire. This new development forces an "unrighteous" but unavoidable alliance between jailers and the jailed as Roenick finds himself  again confronted by the things he has long sought to avoid: leadership and responsibility for the lives of others

Standard issue stuff, and truthfully, this remake does at time suffer from standard-issue and sub-standard dialogue. It makes up for it quite handsomely in the action and the characterizations, especially Hawke and Fishburne, who steadfastly take their characters out of the realm of cliche into solid believability. Hawke, who had something of a cop phase going(between this movie, "Training Day" and then "Brooklyn's Finest") has the audience (okay, me) rooting for and cussing him out with equal intensity, while Fishburne achieves a deft balance of pragmatism, pathos, poetics and sheer menace that one is almost sad to see him go (no spoiler intended; watch the end)

Whether or not you liked the original, this update (now itself seven years into history) is worth a look for its finely shaded but otherwise almost unrelenting darkness.

Small Screen, Huge Stories: Boardwalk Empire & The Pillars of the Earth

Time was, not that long ago, when the uncompromising dedication to narrative was left to (some) feature films, while television - read network television - followed the path of least offense.

The purveyors of cable TV had a different idea though, and certainly over the last decade, cable channels have surpassed both  their network cousins and much of the feature film world in showing compelling programmes in both comedy and drama. Showtime has "Homeland" AMC has "Mad Men", STARZ has "Spartacus" and Ken Follet's "The Pillars of the Earth" and HBO has, among many others, "Boardwalk Empire".
Prohibition was likely intended as a political solution to a social problem, but its hard to argue with the contention that is created far worse problems than it ever solved. By shifting the supply side form legal to illegal sources without addressing the demand, it aided the growth of mobsterism and corruption, with the attendant ills. Such is the premise of this series, which has gone through two very popular and highly acclaimed seasons. The setting is Atlantic City(which provides the "Boardwalk" of the title), 1920, and the focus is primarily on one Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, nominally city treasurer, but de facto the Big Kahuna; nothing goes down - or up - in the town precincts without him knowing, and collecting on it. from his suite in the Ritz-Carlton he presides over bootlegging, prostitution and a host of illegal and legitimate buisnesses, aided and abetted by his brother Eli, the sheriff, and the city aldermen, his confederates.
But uneasy sits the head that wears the crown, and it will take all the skill and wit he has to manipulate and fend off enemies from without and within.

Medieval England may seem a long thematic jump form Prohibition-era America, but the elements are quite consistent: power, intrigue, lust, violence mistrust - and the desire to build something greater than what has previously been. Ken Follet's blockbuster novel gets the period treatment from Scott brothers, Ridley and Tony, who serve as executive producers, overseeing a cast and crew drawn mostly from Britain, but spanning the Continent. A humble master builder has dreams of building a great cathedral, but to do it, he must outwit some powerful forces with their own outsize agendas.

On the whole, the Boardwalk story is more compelling to watch, but Pillars should hardly be dismissed out of hand. For one, its more restrained. The in-your-face style of "Boardwalk", with its blood-spattered killings, frontal nudity and soft-porn sex scenes can become tiresome with repeated viewings, even though the writing overall redeems each episode. Another important difference is that the 'Pillars" series has a lone director for all the instalments, as opposed to the "revolving door" employed by "Boardwalk" creators Terence Winter, Martin Scorcese and Mark Wahlberg. Not saying there are any obvious aesthetic gaps, but it does jar a little bit.
Such nitpicking aside, both shows make excellent viewing, whether seen as a marathon, or at your leisure. They represent two ways of exploring the issue of man's enduring quest for power and personal aggrandizeement, a fascination that hardly ebbs, and for which cable TV is the ideal medium.