The Cherry Tree Lane massacre was world news. After it was reported my friend from Istanbul called offering me a place to stay to avoid the ‘genocide’. The world thinks we have gone mad.

They simply don’t understand that it is an isolated incident between gangs that killed eight innocent people, injured 10 more, and changed the lives of hundreds of family members who have to care for or bury their relatives.

My friend doesn’t understand. The wider international community doesn’t understand. We live here, we understand. All of us who live here realise that a few thousand citizens of our country, financed by a few hundred citizens living abroad, are intent on doing to us as they please. They wish to brutalise us, kill us, rape our women and our children, force us to pay them what we earn, disobey our laws, corrupt our jurors, and, last but not least, control us.

We understand. We wake up every day here. We all understand, except, that is, for the members of Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ). What is it with these people? The prime minister talks tough after the biggest massacre in our history and the best way you can find to contribute to the crisis in our time of need is to criticise his comments. What exactly are they trying to achieve? Is it to ostracise themselves from the rest of the country? Is it to let the gangs know that they have their backs? Or are they the only group in this country that does not realise the brutal, soulless evil that makes up the gangs in this country? I’m lost to their strategy.

President Nayib Bukele from El Salvador reverses his murder rate in record time from 100 per 100,000 to five per 100,000 and they criticise him. I would think anybody with a soul would put people’s lives ahead of everything else. He is saving lives. That is all that matters. I couldn’t give a row of pines how he does it. Whether it is gang members’ lives or innocent people’s lives — he is saving lives. Nothing else matters.

Now, let me take off my writer’s cap and put on my police one. Let’s talk JFJ. Every day I go to work I am fighting a battle against the gangs with an aim to stop them from killing. Just so you know, you’re not helping! In fact, your organisation’s systematic attacks on the security forces of this country for decades have significantly contributed to establishing a circle of support for the gangs. You have, in effect, assisted gang growth. Vicarious liability is real. So is vicarious responsibility.

Not every member of the Nazi party between 1933 and 1945 gassed Jewish people. The people at those rallies, the civic organisations that supported Nazism have their place among those with blood on their hands. The people behind the campaign in Rwanda that killed a million innocent Tutsis in 1994 were deemed guilty and hunted for years after. Many didn’t touch a machete, but rather a microphone.

Your visible, public concerns about the Government’s and police’s treatment of gangs is helping the gangs. Some conversations are not for public consumption because they are irresponsible and give the impression that we are not united against the gangs. If we cannot all unite against a group of men who turned an AK-47 rifle on people at a birthday party, then we cannot unite for any cause whatsoever. That’s not to say you lobby in private for your cause.

Now, the Cherry Tree Lane massacre was big news, horrible news. The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) solved the case within seven days. Two men are charged. Other officers risked their lives in combat to bring a third to justice. Why isn’t this big news? This is incredible police work. Virtually every major detective descended on the crime scene, irrespective of where they worked. The crime was solved. But it’s not big news. Why?

I keep telling people to stop ignoring the murder clear-up rate by the JCF. It is within world standards; it can compete with the USA, despite our murder rate being 49 per 100,000 and the USA’s being five per 100,000. (No, it’s not 60 per 100,000, JFJ). Look at the major cases: The Khanice Jackson case, the Danielle Anglin case, the case of GC Foster Vice-Principal Gibbs Williams. All were solved within days of their commissions…to an arena of silence.

It is time that we honour our warriors who fight while the rest sleep. Amazing work is being done. The country is in a cycle of crime reduction, finally! This cycle could be quadrupled if we had the laws that El Salvador introduced. These are the same laws that JFJ is asking you to reject, the same laws that JFJ will walk to the international community and ask for sanctions against us if we introduce them.

I read Mickel Jackson’s piece on rejecting the Bukele model. It was well written. It had sound advice, based on the history of a planet that has repeatedly created dictators through legislation. The reality is that amidst the concept of an ideal society and how crime control should be achieved, it’s all theory. In practice, crime can’t be fought in our environment with the laws that we have, and that she would like us to have. We are in a war environment, although we are not legally designated as such.

Her suggestions would result in at least 10,000 being murdered over the next 10 years. The Bukele model that I am advocating would result in fewer than 2,500 murders. The model could possibly result in some wrongful detention; her model has and will result in at least a thousand dead.

We need to change our laws. There is a reason that Britain has pre-charge bail in whatever name they choose to call it. Jackson speaks of her opposition now that we have introduced it. We are the ones who need it, far more than they do. There will be a time when we can build or regain the free society that she is advocating. That time will be after the war against the gangs is won. We have been fighting the gangs for 50 years. When will we realise that we can’t win until we consider them ‘enemies of the State’?

This is our reality, whether we like it or not.

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