I have a penchant for literary works and hold an ingrained fascination for the poet Claude McKay, who spent his formative years in James Hill, Clarendon. He later migrated to New York to search the streets of Harlem for his identity and write poignant poems as he was so moved. His works touch on all aspects of the society as he observed on his extensive travels, but more so reflected his experience in Harlem, USA and Russia.

McKay also wrote novels, but is more famous for his poems, one of which is the headline of this article. No doubt, many of us would have read this poem or heard it recited, but may have never really given conscious thought to the carefully selected diction or felt moved by the powerful message embedded in the tone and mechanics employed in the literary work considered a powerful social commentary.

Years ago, when McKay wrote this poem, he himself a policeman, not a prophet, he may have been repelled by the asinine and reprehensible acts of crime against humanity and must have written those words hoping common sense would prevail. To say that decades later the telling words in the title quite aptly speak to what is happening in our country today is an understatement.

Our countrymen, women, and children are dying. Rapidly. They are being killed. Rabidly. Not many get to see the allotted “three score and 10” as is set out in the Bible, and even fewer get to live to a “ripe old age” and get to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Not many are dying from natural causes or illnesses. Of course, we do have people dying from the aforementioned, but many of the country’s citizens who are dying suffer the indignity of being killed. Mercilessly so. Thoughtlessly so. Wantonly so. Recklessly so. Senselessly so.

They are being brutally slain like hogs; many of them. They are “hunted and penned in an inglorious spot” and are being fire-bombed, shot gangland style, executed by mercenaries and the avaricious. Our people are being killed in acts of reprisal, in acts of moments of madness, in acts of temporarily induced insanity, in acts of cold-blooded wickedness. There is very little respect for life — anybody’s life. Until this changes, our murder rates will keep spiralling out of control and, if we are not careful, very soon our dams, rivers, seas, streams, and ponds will be running red, blood red with the innocent blood of our countrymen who are being slain at the hands of the barbaric lot.

Police Commissioner Dr Carl Williams, in a desperate effort to stop the flow of guns into the country and get illegal firearms off the streets, has launched the “Get the Guns” campaign — a laudable, but recurring, maybe redundant effort. On an average, the Jamaican police get approximately 600 such guns annually, the commissioner was heard saying to Dionne Jackson-Miller in her interview with him on the radio programme Beyond the Headlines. With this initiative, he hopes the figure will double. ACP Elan Powell, in a recent interview on Television Jamaica’s morning programme, Smile Jamaica, reiterated the commish’s views, adding that the gun accounts for a high percentage of the crimes committed in the country. We know that. We hear it every day on “Crime Time News” as my then seven-year-old called it.

The Broken Window Theory

We have to do more than that. Retirees, taxpayers, the legitimately unemployed, our children, the indigent, the ill, the disabled, the elderly, we expect more than this. We need an assurance that if this is where we are going to live, work, raise our children, and retire, the country should be a relatively safe place to do so; not a haven for barbarity. Wilson and Kelly (1982) conceptualised the “Broken Window” Theory that states if each broken window on a building is fixed, rather than leaving it to become derelict, it can mitigate other acts of vandalism and criminal activity. We need to identify and fix each community’s “broken window”. What are we waiting on? How many more of our babies’ lives must be “aborted”? How many of our children’s lives must be stunted? How many more of our young adults’ lives must be snuffed out? How many more of the adults in their prime productive years must be made “redundant”? How many more of our senior citizens’ lives must be “retired”? How many more of our police officers’ lives must be “shot down”? How many more of the criminal elements among us be murdered?

Proper policing and parenting policies

We must take the business of crime-fighting seriously. We must equip our crime fighters appropriately with the requisite ongoing professional courses and resources if we want efficiency in and effectiveness of these crime-fighting measures. When Miss Taylor Swift sings “Band-Aids can’t fix bullet holes”, she may be singing more about a love relationship gone south, but that statement may be very applicable to the measures we take to fixing our crime situation. Admittedly, we do have rogue cops among the honourable men and women in the force and they must be identified and dealt with, but notwithstanding, the hundreds of others who take their jobs and their oath seriously, who put their lives on the line, who leave their families day after day to face the hostility of a suspicious public and the mortal madness of cold-hearted murderers, as they leave the warmth and safety of their beds to go on pre-dawn operations. They must be taken care of. Not left to work in substandard police stations, haggle over salary increases, think extrajudicial killings are okay, nor take their own lives when the pressures of a seemingly uncaring society overwhelms them.

“Are we an accursed lot?” Are we subject to suffer the indignity of being cut down by villainous imbeciles, many of whom cannot even spell the make of the weapon they use to carry out their atrocities? Whose responsibility is it anyway to stem this national and international embarrassment? I hope we all realise that all of us collectively and individually have a moral and social responsibility to help stop this mayhem that is threatening to overrun our country. We must recognise that crime cannot be solved by any single entity and certainly should not be expected to be fought along party lines. We must start with the most intimate socialisation units: the homes, the communities, the churches. Parents must be taught to be responsible adults who should be held accountable for the crimes of their offspring.

After all, we are not “hogs”, nor are we logs. We do not deserve to be robbed of life by “mad and hungry dogs” before the Lord is ready for us. We need to take action and consider it our civic duty to do so. We need to stem this flow, whether it is the bloodletting or the carnage on our road network. We need to cauterise the bloody flow of innocent lives unless we intend to sit back and watch this unwarranted genocide take place.

We cannot afford to play possum nor appear opiated. While something [remains] “rotten in the state of Denmark”, many of our Caribbean neighbours and other countries farther afield who fall in the developing category on the Human Development Index (HDI) are advancing because their political directorate may be light years ahead of their time. This does not have to be so. Jamaica is ranked 96 of the 187 countries on this list. We have the resources to make this island a paradise, but the allocation and proper management of the resources have to be given priority. We must change our mindset.

We ought to focus on fixing what seems to be inalienably wrong with our once-beautiful and much-sought-after country. This place was once called a paradise. That pseudonym would be laughable were it to be used to describe what has become one of the most murderous places on Earth. I am certainly tired of seeing the abject poverty and the ubiquitous disillusionment that has become so pervasive in our country. The ironic thing about our beautiful country is that there are those days when crime is a figment of our imagination — days like when we have a World Cup qualifier game in the “office” or when our super athletes don the national colours and put on their stellar performances for the rest of the world. Just juxtapose the image of our celebrated sportsmen and women against our woebegone country’s crime statistics. A parody for the Globe or the Little Theatre.

What will it take for us to make our citizens realise the value of one other’s lives? Why does it seem that our laws have become merely obsolete words written on paper and our penal system innocuous? When will we learn? How will we “fight back”?

Alcia Morgan Bromfield, MEd, BEd, DipEd, is a teacher of linguistics and literature, communication specialist, author, and poet. Send comments to the Observer or amorganbromfield@yahoo.com.