WELL, as you probably all know now, two policemen were killed just over a week ago at a venue on Waltham Park Road. They were off duty.

This is an incredible tragedy, made more personal because I know the father of one of the young policemen very well. I, too, have adult children. I don’t want to imagine the pain associated with burying one of them.

I was going to write this article last week, closer to the date on which the cops were killed. However, I find that when I am too emotional I say things that get me into trouble.

One week later, now that I am writing it, I’m still angry, I’m still hurt. I still feel the pain that my friend is going through planning his son’s funeral. I am angry that the policemen did not win this conflict. I wish they had defended themselves and that it was the gunmen who were shot.

It then occurred to me that if they had defended themselves, Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) would be condemning them for defending themselves. This may seem ridiculous to you but JFJ treats every police shooting as avoidable.

Its sister organisation, the Independent Commission of Investigations (Indecom), treats every police shooting as condemnable. Both organisations are basically the same, except that one has the power to send police officers to prison and the other to impact their American visas.

Are you convinced now? Does this act of brutality convince both of these connected organisations that these men are capable of killing? That they are, in fact, armed with illegal guns?

Does this act of brutality convince you that if the police don’t act swiftly and use deadly force, then this is the outcome? Or is it that the policemen’s deaths were in vain?

You see, most people don’t realise that you don’t have to be well-trained to kill people at short range with a firearm. In fact, with modern firearms it’s even easier.

Modern guns, like Glocks, have made guns more dummy-proof. Anybody — child, dwarf, or moron — can point at a target five feet away and pull the trigger with virtual ease. Older guns are not as dummy-friendly. They were harder to use and had several layers of safety before they could be fired.

Do you realise that the shipments of guns recovered at the wharves are usually new, modern, striker-fired firearms? Do you realise that these guns are in the hands of men just as brutal as the men who killed the young policemen?

Why then do you treat every police shooting as avoidable? Why do you treat every shot gunman as a victim? Why do you treat every cop who defends himself and kills his attacker as a murderer?

Am I being dramatic? Disingenuous? Okay, tell me. When you made the 2020 list of fatal shootings that you presented as “avoidable”, “regrettable”, “suspicious”, whatever verbiage you chose to use, did you omit the man who killed four police officers and was later killed by the police in a shoot-out? Certainly, he couldn’t be considered a “victim”.

This is what happens when you release statistics with a narrative and an intention to promote or champion a particular cause. So I ask again: If this tragedy had not taken place because of the speed or superior training of the police officers, and the men who killed the officers were the ones who were killed instead, would you have presented these men as victims?

At some point we all have to recognise how significant a threat gang members represent to the safety of society in general. We need to acknowledge what their continued existence will mean for the future of Jamaica; the impact they are having on the psyche of other young men.

The psychological impact of these gangs is an understudied area. Let us look at the example of how roadwork is treated in gang-dominated communities.

First of all, the gangs have to be in the picture, so many of the people who are getting work on the sites are known gang members. Then there are those who are paid but do not even work on the sites. Think of the effect on an uninvolved young man who can’t get a job on the site but is seeing that only gang members are benefiting from the employment opportunity. Then you ask him to believe in the system? To avoid gang membership?

How can the same Government be telling you to stay out of gangs whilst the jobs being created by government projects (such as roadwork) go first to them? And it’s really not the contractor’s fault; if he doesn’t hire them then no one else can work there.

This is just one very small example of how the gangs’ continued existence is a prescription for misery for many vulnerable Jamaican citizens. Have you examined how your existence and your actions contribute to the continuation of organised criminal gangs? The fact that something has always been a certain way doesn’t mean that it can’t change.

JFJ, as an organisation, can start to be a part of the support system for victims of gang violence, for victims of crime, generally. Indecom can become a truly independent organisation and break away from the rhetoric that makes it sound more like human rights activists rather than autonomous investigators.

You can join in the 50-year struggle to defeat the gangs rather than be the greatest impediment to their defeat. Indecom, as an organisation, is important in the armed forces’ struggle to defeat the gangs. Its investigations, separate from the police investigations into police shootings that result in police officers being vindicated over 90 per cent of the times, demonstrate to the public — both international and local — that the armed forces of Jamaica are not practising extrajudicial killings. You just have to stop trying to explain away that statistic like you are ashamed of it.

No longer can the phrase, “I was just doing my job,” be an excuse for support of an enemy that feeds on the poor and the weak. That excuse died in the Nuremberg trials.

Feedback: drjasonamckay@gmail.com