Ihave received many responses to my letter on the handling of the extradition matter and the incursion into Tivoli Gardens. Many of them are troubling but this one from George Watson is the most startling;

“I am just wondering if people like the author could tell us what they expected of the security forces after people barricaded themselves in, paid people fortunes per day to ‘defend’ the garrison, burnt down police stations and killed members of the security forces?

“What should they have done — go into the town square and say, ‘We are here to serve a warrant on Mr. Coke, can we have him please?’ My contention is that not enough of the bastards were killed. Should have been about 7,000.”

The point that many people including myself have been trying to make is that if the request for extradition had been handled according to the letter of the law, without any leaking to Mr. Coke so that he could have had a copy in his office, his movements could have been quietly tracked and he could have been arrested without all the fanfare. In addition, there would have been no need for the residents to barricade Tivoli Gardens, no need to recruit sentries to defend the garrison, no demonstration of women declaring that they would not give him up, no dislocation and traumatization of students in the middle of their exams, no disruption of airline travel schedules and tourism, no travel advisories by the US, Canada and the UK, and, maybe, no one would have been killed, neither citizens nor security forces.

The security forces could have been fully prepared and mobilized to deter any backlash if there had been a well-coordinated strategy for taking the accused into custody. It is Bruce Golding’s devious and inept handling of the extradition matter that brought the nation to a crisis.

What followed was a series of reckless actions, which were preventable.

If the matter had not been mishandled, Bruce Golding would not have found the opening to dust off and try to reintroduce the fascist anti-crime bills, which had already been rejected.

To solve crime

The so-called de-garrisonisation should have been treated as a separate issue from the extradition of Michael Coke. It requires a well-laid out medium to longterm multi-dimensional plan involving “social intervention, economic development, re-socialisation based on education and persuasion, and discontinuation of contracts and other forms of support to the dons”, with the presence of force as a deterrent to criminal activity.

What Jamaica needs to solve the crime problem is effective, consistent policing within the existing laws. The corrupt police need to be weeded out of the force and it needs to be staffed with decent law-abiding citizens who have the proper training, ability and equipment to carry out their duties. For decades, the questionable activities of some citizens of Tivoli Gardens have been bruited about. Tivoli Gardens and other so-called garrisons developed under the watch of successive governments and the security forces. They ought to be ashamed of the revelations about shallow graves when it all happened under their watch.

Some of these may be among the many unresolved cases of missing persons. The most recent one is believed to be that of a special constable. Wasn’t the police investigating his disappearance?

Dr. Barbara Reynolds
babsyreynolds@gmail.com