WHATEVER may be our hopes for the near future, it is painfully obvious that they do not include us forging a better society in the next five, 10, 15 years from now.

In fact, the general mood of the country in the last few years has moved from uncertainty to one in which too many people are openly prognosticating doom and social chaos within a year or so. This presents us with an acute dilemma and one that is more pragmatic in its definition than philosophical in its construction.

“Nobody can bring dis back,” said a 46-year-old street side fruit vendor. “Only God,” she added. A businessman known to me was fingering some string beans in a basket on her stall. We knew each other. He turned to me. “With the best will in the world, when I look around me and see the general direction of those at the top – in business and politics – I do not sense that they really understand the radical dynamics needed to tackle our problems of social breakdown and criminality. We are headed straight down with a capital D,” he concluded.

Taxicab operators are spending 12, 15 hours on the road, making $2,500 for the whole day, but ending up with spending it back to gas the vehicle. So at the end of the day a driver ends up in the same situation as the day before. A half-tank of gas, but no money to take home.

A 25-year-old woman, poorly educated, but angry as hell, was close to exploding yesterday. She was by the side of the road in conversation with a man. A car drove up and as it parked the woman took the view that the driver could have been more careful because he had parked the car much too close to her.”‘Weh di b%4#@c yuh a do bwoy!” she said as the driver came out. He glanced at her briefly then walked away in fear.

The woman, delightfully dressed in a very abbreviated mini skirt, flashed her hands wildly and swayed on her feet. “A wonder if him know seh mi wi just tek me knife and puncture ‘im four tyre.” As a witness to the incident, I went over to her and added jest to the moment in an effort to calm her.

“Right now, mi a look work pan any construction site. I tired fi look and now dis r#&@& a come f#%& wid mi. Him nuh know seh man kill man fi nutten now,” she said.

In the last few months, the police blotters may have recorded the fact that our murder rate has indicated no intention of slowing down after striking a record last year. What the blotters may have missed is the senselessness of too many of the shooting deaths. A senior policeman who preferred anonymity said to me last Tuesday, “Think of it. The cheapest gun one can acquire on the streets now costs around $50,000. And yet the types of guns we have been coming across are anything but ordinary. The question is, what are 16-, 17-year-old boys who never finished school, never worked, doing to be able to afford the possession of guns costing, in some cases, $70,000 and over?”

He agreed with me that Jamaica’s main problem at this time is one that will be with us for at least the next 20 years. “Every day this country produces dozens of new recruits in the drugs and extortion trade. With a Master’s degree in sociology my policeman friend was not exactly what too many of us believe the typical Jamaican policeman is. “The country is at a stage where it is turning back on itself. As uneducated and ignorant as we see these youth, they instinctively know that no one is going to give them a well-paying job and a future of hope. They know that the resources cannot be equitably distributed. So each day as the job market shrinks these youth join the gun market and they are ruthlessly prepared to take what you have, by the hook or the crook.”

“Or by the gun,” I added. He nodded in agreement.

In recent days, the talk at street level has been about the likelihood that “super cop” in the eyes of many Jamaicans, Reneto Adams, may be returning to active duty in an effort to drive fear into the hearts of the heartless gunmen among us. Said a cook shop owner to me one day last week, “Mi cannot understand di people dem who a fight gainst Adams. Di man seh him willing fi come back and assist in fighting crime. Any sensible policeman woulda just waan play domino and drink rum instead a face bullet. Di fact dat di man offer ‘im services must mean seh ‘im is a patriot dat want to see him country get betta.”

For better or worse there is a strong mood of support among our people for Adams. “Let us be honest with ourselves,” said my policeman friend to me. “Certain policeman in the past and now have killed gunmen but it was no real shootout. The gunmen are smart. They move around the community and view their line of operation as existing in a parallel government. The formal government is for uptown. That formal government is their enemy because it controls their direct enemy, the police.”

He went on to tell me that in “shootouts” in the vast majority of instances, the gunmen were unarmed. “These guys are never far from their guns. We know them. Know that they are murderers. We also know that we will be never catch them with their guns. So while one side of me tells me that the rule of law must in all instances prevail, I am faced with a situation where these cold-hearted young men are using the rule of law not just to exist and participate in a dysfunctional universe but to drive fear in the society.”

The general view of those who are voicing support for Adams all over again is that the gunmen are afraid of him and will lie low if not put down their guns. “Adams know how di man dem operate. Him know dem head,” said a taxi driver to me recently.

An unemployed youngster nearby suggested, “Yuh si all di almshouse business whey a gwaan pan Mannings Hill Road now. If Adams di deh back pan di road, dem bwoy woulda run weh long time.”

The government and the authority structure seem set to give Owen Ellington the top cop job. Love it or hate it, the JLP administration pulled a political coup on the Opposition PNP when it signed off on the Debt Exchange agreement recently. That positive has not lasted long as people’s pockets are getting lighter by the day and our new bosses, the IMF, are waiting in the wings with a ball and chain.

It is my belief that if Adams is used to head an operational arm in the crime unit of the JCF, it will be seen as more than just pure police strategy in the fight to bring our systemic, violent criminality down to a level where we can view Jamaica as viable and redeemable. The JLP government would be looking to score politically again, because that is the nature of the beast.

The hope is that some of the widespread support for Adams, who many JLP diehards believe is PNP in his voting choice, will wash off on the JLP and provide it with what has eluded it for the better part of two years.

Do I support the return of Adams? Immaterial one way or the other if the deck is already set.

observemark@gmail.com