One of the really interesting announcements coming out of last week’s Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) forum titled ‘Dialogues between Democracies’, was that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will be setting up offices in Jamaica.

Our instinct is to be very supportive of this move for what we think are obvious and compelling reasons. And we are not going to be sidetracked by empty talk about national sovereignty.

Jamaica has expended huge amounts of resources and billions of dollars across various political administrations — money that could have made our education and health systems far better than they are today — with little to show for it in terms of reduced crime, murders in particular.

Some of our best minds have been put in charge of the National Security Ministry, almost to no avail. We speak of people like Messrs K D Knight, Peter Phillips, Trevor MacMillan, Dwight Nelson, and Peter Bunting, among others who brought a certain cerebral capacity to the job.

The only time in recent memory that we have seen a marked drop in murders — that were averaging over 1,000 a year — was after the military-led operation in western Kingston to remove former Tivoli Gardens strongman Christopher “Dudus” Coke in 2010. We are now back to square one.

If we are true to ourselves, we will admit that one of the strongest reasons it has been so difficult to control crime is the enduring nexus between politicians and criminals. In recent years, the criminal enterprise has asserted its independence by growing its connections with drug dealing, gunrunning and extortion.

Besides the politicians, the smallness of the island and our population size make it possible that large numbers of Jamaicans either know or are shielding criminals, sometimes because they are relatives or neighbours, and those who are not are often just too afraid or untrusting of authorities to tell.

In the circumstances, serious crime fighting calls for greater intelligence capacity in our security forces, especially in regard to drug dealing and gunrunning with their international connections.

United States Ambassador to Jamaica Luis G Moreno has assured that the FBI and ATF officers will help to train local personnel.

The ambassador says the ATF is crucial, as it can trace serial numbers and conduct forensic tests on guns coming through the United States and Central America in the nefarious drugs-for-guns trade.

“Having the FBI means that if there is a federal crime committed here which affects both Jamaica and the United States, I don’t have to wait for the office in Miami…to send me agents. Once we have an office here full-time, that guy will go out, train people, and will liaise and exchange information,” Mr Moreno said.

He pointed out that the US has invested and will continue to invest tens of millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours in improving the capabilities of Jamaica’s security forces and the judiciary.

This is help we can do with.

It is a great pity that we don’t have a model akin to the International Monetary Fund programme, which would force us to set our crime fighting house in order in the way we have had to do with our economy.