Many people look at the homicide rate in Jamaica and use it to determine their risk of becoming murder victims.

They look at the many killed in the world of scamming, the modern form of fraud, and the butchery that comes with it.

They look at the turf wars, where morons fight to please foreign-based mongrels for pocket change.

They even look at age-old gang conflicts in which men kill boys for reasons no one remembers.

But are we all in the same circle of risk? Or is it different depending on class, gender, or life decisions? Let’s discuss.

The scamming wars that now form the identity of western Jamaica can be blamed for altering the crime culture in that geographic region. Many people have been killed because some nerds figured out how to steal. Some of the dead were innocent, some not. However, all bled when they were shot.

So is the risk real?

It is to the scammer, his family, his gang, and of course, people in public places he frequents.

However, the risk is greatest to the actual gang members who are participating in this gang activity. Their family members are also at risk, but arguably to a slightly lesser degree.

The people who are innocently killed because they happen to be in a public place, like a bar that is mowed down because the scammer is in it, are obviously at risk. However, this risk will be significantly less than to the actual scammer and his family. For obvious reasons, an innocent will only be killed because he happens to be around a scammer.

On the other hand, family members of the scammer will be killed because they are targeted by the gangster’s enemies.

People directly involved and their family members face a different risk from other people in the community.

This very same variable exists right across Jamaica, depending on your class, your occupation, and even your gender. So let’s look at a person who is a middle-class member of society and lives in Hope Pastures or Liguanea. He, too, is certainly in danger of losing his life. However, there are other factors to consider.

He is not a gang member, so no one is likely to target him unless there exists some private conflict. If he is killed, it will likely happen because of a random crime, not intended to be, but resulting in a murder.

The true risk occurs when he is walking on the street in his community. A motorcycle or a car stops beside him, a robbery is attempted, and guns are involved. This is the formula for tragedy.

You see, the person doing the robbery is usually an idiot. Once an idiot has a gun, anything can happen. The criminal may pull up beside the person, take out the firearm, and instruct his victim to give over his property. The victim does not respond quickly enough or does not act at all and the idiot panics and shoots him.

This is also the case when people jog. They become targets because they carry smartphones, sometimes valued at over $100,000. The earphones they wear are another $50,000. These make them targets.

Many times the situation graduates from robbery to murder because of resistance.

Other times the escalation occurs because the thief panics. Sometimes the moron doing the robbery wanted to kill that day anyhow. It really happens.

So, of course, people carry licensed firearms. They believe that this will assist them in a close-quarter robbery. So let’s work through this together.

Exactly how do you plan to use this gun to prevent injury or death to yourself in such a scenario? Is it that once the person walks, rides, or drives up to you, you will draw your pistol and fire at him once you see his gun?

If so, the best result you are going to get is that both you and the robber shoot each other. It is also very likely that you will be shot many times before you get that gun into firing position and the gun will then be taken from you.

You could perhaps plan to draw your firearm and engage before the person presents a firearm to you. However, if you are wrong, you’re going to be spending an inordinate amount of time at a building on King Street explaining your behaviour to some very serious-looking judges.

There is a very strong possibility that you could shoot people who have no intention whatsoever of robbing you.

A simple solution to this problem is, if you carry a firearm, you should not walk or jog on the street with it. It makes you a target and is almost useless in a robbery unless you plan to get shot also.

My advice to you is, if you want to go walking or jogging on the road, do not carry your gun, your smartphone, or your Apple AirPods. Additionally, if you are approached, do not resist, you will get shot. Unless, of course, it graduates to abduction.

If there is any attempt at abduction, never allow yourself to be moved to a secondary crime scene. The criminal’s control only increases in that follow-up scenario.

On my street, which is located uptown, three people that I know of have been abducted. On the road that adjoins mine, three people that I know well have been murdered. One of these people was a champion in Jamaican sport pistol shooting. All those murders occurred because of robberies gone bad.

I cannot emphasise enough the risk that robbery poses to the citizens in uptown communities and the risk of becoming a murder victim. So many people are robbed, abducted, and even raped in that small group.

Some will say that you don’t often hear of people in this socio-economic group being killed. However, you have to look at the population of this group, which is so much smaller than the population of groups in the inner cities.

As it relates to your assessment of your own risk, you need to watch the statistics of people being robbed in your community and in places that you frequent, and worry less about the statistics of killers killing killers.

People who live in inner-city communities do not share the same risk.

In my study, which analysed homicide victims in Portmore, St Catherine, between 2015 and 2018, of a total 381 victims, more than 78 per cent were people with a history of gang activity at some level. I was able to determine that a gangster in that municipality is 160 times more likely than a regular citizen to be a murder victim.

So the regular citizen who lives in an inner-city community needs to realise that, if his family member is a gangster, his risk of being a homicide victim is significantly more than the man whose relative has a nine-to-five job. However, if the man chooses to visit places where gang members gather, his risk becomes higher than the person who chooses not to do so.

People who operate businesses are also at risk of being murdered. This is likely to occur in robberies gone bad, extortion rackets, or disputes with labourers they employ. However, they do not all share the same level of risk. People in the construction industry, operate in environments that gangs control, and operate cash-rich businesses are at a greater risk than corporate businessmen.

Many believe that if they pay extortionists they are safer. That may or may not be true. However, always remember that if you pay extortionists you are strengthening a gang against its enemy. You therefore become an enemy of their enemy. So it goes back to risk assessment.

Yet I am willing to gamble that when they were considering the possibility of being murdered, they were all looking at the total homicide statistics and barbarism that is taking place as a result of gang conflict to determine their level of risk. This is not practical.

If you decide to pay extortion in central Spanish Town, then you have become an enemy of one, or maybe two, of the three primary gangs that operate there. Perhaps you have no choice, but it’s important that you know that you are putting yourself at risk so you can prepare for the consequences of that decision.

Even professionals are at risk of being murder victims and, like the other categories, they too face different levels of risk. For example, attorneys-at-law are at a much higher risk than doctors.

This focus of this column is risk assessment — not how to avoid being killed, but rather how to determine your likelihood of being killed.

If there is one lesson I would like readers to learn from this analysis, it is that robbery, particularly armed robbery, needs to be looked at far more closely than it currently is.

This is particularly relative to people not operating in high-risk zones, but rather in zones that they consider low risk. That is my message to the middle class.

To the unfortunate inner-city dweller, your risk becomes greater the closer you get to that gang member.

We all, irrespective of where we live, can reduce our likelihood of becoming murder victims. It obviously becomes more difficult depending on where you live.

However, the process begins with a logical analysis of what your risks are and deciding what you can do to reduce them.

drjasonamckay@gmail.com