In calling for closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in all schools and one police officer to be assigned to each of those educational institutions, Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) President Mr Leighton Johnson was, we think, displaying more desperation than naivete.

The absolute wretchedness of the incident in which eight-year-old Danielle Rowe was abducted from school and her throat slashed in June this year explains Mr Johnson’s despair and his pipe dream of seeing CCTV cameras and police officers in all schools.

It is not that schools do not need the technological devices and the warm bodies of cops, given the poor state of security in the space. But the reality is that the public purse cannot handle the related expense and the Jamaica Constabulary Force cannot spare the manpower.

Speaking at the JTA’s 59th Annual Conference’s official opening and investiture ceremony on Monday, Mr Johnson reminded us that many schools are open and vulnerable to outside invasion due to the lack of secure perimeter fences.

Moreover, multiple schools operate in violence-prone communities and are beset with localised gangs who have established cells therein, defeating any attempt at imposing discipline and threatening the harmony among students. Untrained, unarmed watchmen — the cheaper alternative to security guards — can no longer handle the situation.

Mr Johnson also suggested that students should be specially transported to school through expansion of the rural bus service that caters to beneficiaries of the Programme for Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH).

Again, we’d love to see that happen, but the JTA president might be better off expending his mental energy trying to determine what is possible in the here and now. Indeed, that is what all Jamaica should be doing at this time.

That is why we have kept hammering the point that, as a people, Jamaicans and our leaders must organise ourselves and stand as one — not as members of opposing political parties, but as one people against criminals. Such a determined and organised stance, we believe, is the most glaring, missing element in this nation’s perennial struggle to rid itself of criminality.

Rather than talking destructive foolishness on political platforms, the country’s leaders should be exploring together the best ways of empowering and organising communities to assist the security forces.

In addition to correcting loopholes in law that make it easier for criminals to escape justice, our legislators should be sitting together to find ways of improving Jamaica’s penal and correctional system so that convicts can return to society as potentially useful citizens, rather than embittered and hardened criminals.

Everyone should remember that, regardless of which political party is in power, the criminals will still be here if we simply sit back and do nothing but play the blame game.

Importantly, at the community level, people need to desist from shielding criminals, who will likely turn on them in the future.

As former Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica President Mr Keith Duncan said recently, Jamaica is doing well in terms of macroeconomic stability. “Imagine, then, how much more could be achieved if, as a united people, we deal decisively with crime.”