The recent massacre of eight innocent people and the wounding of nine others in Clarendon has sent shock waves through an increasingly hardened Jamaican society. The victims were guilty of one thing only — being at a bingo party.

This seems to be the cement straw that could likely break the camel’s back. Many who, to my constant provocation, speak of the gangs like regular folk deserving of equal rights are somewhat mute. Not everyone, but most of them.

Our Prime Minister Andrew Holness is talking tough at a much higher level than usual and I’m glad that he is sending the correct message. He speaks of a declared war on gangs. Sounds good, but for it to be real you need a few things to occur. Let’s discuss what they are.

Enact laws that identify the gang members as a separate branch of society, similar to what the United States’ Homeland Security Act does to terrorists. This distinction sets the platform for laws to be created that allow for indefinite detention, and removes the right for such criminals to be placed before a court of law. Sort of like an El Salvador situation.

This, of course, requires alterations to the constitution that is possible with the political allocation of seats that the ruling party controls. The Senate, however, could block the process but that would be political suicide for the Opposition. People are tired of anyone who speaks of rights for gang members.

So it’s possible to get this thing going. Of course, this will require expanded facilities for the detention that will be required.

Then there is the Indecom Act, which was created and enacted by a destroyed prime minister in a period of peril, and just after the biggest battle on Jamaican soil since the Morant Bay Rebellion. I speak, of course, of the ‘Tivoli Incursion’, as it is commonly called.

The Indecom Act is flawed. It takes away the right of a policeman/policewoman to remain silent, but it does not do so to a baby killer. It empowers the commission to be an impartial investigator, but also saddles it with the responsibility to reduce police shootings. Therefore, it forces the commission to target the police to achieve its mandate, barring which it fails.

The commission is not judged by the amount of good, solid investigations it completes but rather the amount of reduction achieved in annual police shooting statistics. Or by the number of police it charges.

The commission is allowed to accept funds from critics of the very organisations it investigates. Almost 14 years has passed since Indecom was created and although it is not the same organisation it was then, it still represents an encumbrance to the war against the gangs.

This war has to have a united Government, if not a united people. Indecom is part of the Government. Indecom is viewed as an enemy of the police force and army, and an ally of the gangs by the very men and women who you are asking to wage war on your behalf.

Indecom, though improved, is still haunted by its history, by its creation, and by the lingering memory of the war waged on the men and women of the island’s police force and army in its early years.

The culture still has the vibe of ‘put the police bwoy in him place’ or ‘fi wi time now, we can destroy you because we a di boss, bwoy’.

Jamaica has a long history of conflict between Government forces and society, this for hundreds of years. Indecom was the tool that provided a change when a civilian organisation had the boot on the police officers’ throat. Despite an improved management structure, the culture is there.

The Act must be repealed, the organisation disbanded and a new Act with a new name must be born. The dedicated people can be rehired and the remnants of the old culture discarded, just like the German army had to be disbanded post-World War Two and reformed. That’s why South Africa changed its flag post-apartheid.

You change things after an organisation is guilty of hurting innocent people. You reform, you rename. This organisation must exist to be impartial investigators alone, not crusaders against police shootings. Foreign funding and influence must be stoutly opposed. The commission must not exist to dig into the affairs of the police force. It needs to stay out of policy evaluation and, in fact, must be silent and answer only to the Government.

Indecom must investigate police complaints and shootings and stop trying to find reasons to show its power. This is the new Indecom that the country needs.

How can we fight a war when all a gangster needs to do is to make his ally or relative, or even a fellow gang member, give a statement that they saw the police commit a crime and a police or several police can be charged?

Gangs take grown men’s teenage daughters against their will and turn them into gang whores. How difficult do you think it is for them to get a citizen living under their jurisdiction to tell a lie?

Also, think on this: The organisation that they are telling the lie to has a mandate to reduce shootings and charge the police. Not even the dimmest of people reading this could expect that the armed forces can wage a war with this organisation existing in its present form and expect that the armed forces will win. A war is needed once and for all.

Jamaica is at its best place in crime statistics in several years. I predict that this year will have less murders than 2018. The police force is motivated, the leaders of most of the largest gangs are imprisoned. Christopher Coke, Tesha Miller, and Chambers are all behind bars yet mass shootings still occur.

Well, they occur in the United States and their crime statistics reveal a rate of five per 100,000, whilst we dance around about 48 per 100,000 on average.

Their shootings are more racial, political, and the result of mental illness. Ours is pretty much purely because of gangs. So a massive reduction in our homicide rate doesn’t guarantee that they won’t occur. It will, however, be less likely if we create an environment in which the gangsters can’t remain in the society as free men, a law that sets them apart from the rest of society.

So like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), they had to live in the jungles, or like the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, they had to stay underground. The list of groups that are considered illegal by designation is common in countries in civil wars. The difference is we don’t admit we are in one.

A lot can happen, but will it? Likely not, because Jamaica is not yet ready, but it will be when a Cherry Lane massacre occurs in Cherry Garden. Then, and only then, will the country speak with one voice.

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