Many years ago I attended the International Sport Karate Association (ISKA) World Championships for the first time in Europe. It was a natural step for the Jamaica national martial arts team, after being a regular at the ISKA US Open for many years, and dominating.

I was the first fighter to participate. About a minute into the first bout I realised that I had not trained for this tournament. You see, for whatever reason, the culture of this tournament required significantly elevated physical conditioning versus what is required at the sister tournament held in the United States. I was barely able to take home the bronze medal.

As the other Jamaican fighters began competing, I was hoping for a different result, but the reality was that just as I had not trained for this tournament in the required way, then ultimately, I had, likewise, not prepared them.

One by one I saw the young fighters who dominated the US Open being eliminated, except the great exception, Oshane Murray, who miraculously pulled off a gold medal.

Looking back, I remember it was only after the third fighter got eliminated that I accepted my reality. That being said, Jamaica now, and for many years, dominates the ISKA World Championships.

In fact, the most successful ISKA fighter in history is Akino Lindsay, who is a Jamaican.

Lindsay was recently recognised for his world record of winning more gold medals than any other fighter at the ISKA World Championships in over a decade of competing.

So we learnt the hard way, and took the necessary steps to meet the challenge.

Years later I question why I believed, after my first bout, that the result would be any different. In fact, after the first fighter it should have been painfully obvious that it would not change. This, however, is how we are as human beings. We hold on as much as we can to a desire rather than accepting our reality.

Last week I was in an interview on a radio station where I outlined the issues relating to body-worn cameras and them being an unsuitable tool for police operators to engage in combat whilst wearing them. I was besieged by messages to my e-mail comparing Jamaican special operation teams to SWAT teams in the United States.

In response to one of those rather harsh e-mail, I asked the writer why doesn’t he compare the equipment carried by Navy Seals and special force units, rather than SWAT teams? Well, needless to say, the writer didn’t like my response.

You see, we keep comparing the reality of the Jamaican crisis to that of the United States, which is not comparable. The United States may have people being killed in mass shootings at concerts and supermarkets, but as an overall figure we are 10 times their murder rate.

The gangs there just don’t kill as much as ours do on a per capita basis. They also don’t engage the police in shootouts with the regularity that our gangs do.

The Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team, which is the oldest in the United States, rarely has a shooting incident in a calendar year. There are reasons for this. SWAT teams are large and overwhelm their targets, so firing at them is technically ‘suicide by cop’.

I have been trained by dozens of SWAT operators. The large majority have never been shot at, at all. And a small minority have been shot at, maybe once. I have also been trained by people who have served on special operations and special forces units serving their country in overseas military conflicts. I find their experiences far more similar to the experiences of myself and the men I work with, and have worked with.

I also find a commonality of equipment being used by the special force units that we use. Of course, they have some equipment we don’t have, but in the modern day Jamaica Constabulary Force the gap has narrowed considerably.

The special forces units do not wear body-worn cameras because it is not a tool suitable for combat. It is an incredible tool to combat corruption.

So why is our environment more similar to an overseas military war zone than an environment that SWAT would operate in? Well, we live in a country that gangs are so large they can influence the selection of our government. They were created decades ago to fight as militias for the political parties of the day.

They are funded by a diaspora of criminals that are sending down weapons by the hundreds and ammunition by the tens of thousands. Our homicide rate over the last 30 years, if evaluated using this period of time, puts us as the most violent country on planet Earth. So you’re darn right. Our threat and all reality are more in keeping with the special forces in a time of military conflict than a SWAT team in a domestic environment with a murder rate one-tenth of ours. So the solution that you think you had in body-worn cameras does not exist.

Now, it is for you to accept this reality, despite not liking it; just as I had to accept that my team had not been properly prepared for the tournament in which I had them enter.

We don’t have the resources that the United States does. We can’t afford to spend over $1 billion to please local human rights activists. Unlike them, the Jamaican armed forces are not being funded by overseas donors.

In addition, the high command of this country’s armed forces cannot put equipment on officers that are dangerous to the officers, just to please a small cluster of Jamaican citizens who are answerable to donors from foreign nations.

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