MORE police operations result in more contact with gunmen. More contact with gunmen results in more combat. More combat results in more policemen or gunmen being killed. The determination of which group wins is dependent on planning, training, weaponry, and courage.

The current strategy being employed by the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is an increase in operations. This occurs simultaneously with improvements in equipment, weaponry, and training. The increase in operations is a prescription for increased combat. The improvements in the above-noted is a formula for winning.

So how am I to interpret the recent comments by the director of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM)? He expressed disappointment over the 300 plus gunmen losing their lives in combat with the police. Does that mean he would have preferred that the gunmen win?

If the answer is no, then I have to assume that he would have preferred that the police had fewer operations so that there would have been less contact. If this is so, then he must realise that a reduction in operations would have resulted in the gunmen murdering hundreds more people!

So what exactly does he want? That the police lose their gunfights? Or that the police stay out of the way of the gunmen, which invariably leads to them committing more murders? I’m quite lost in his logic.

Then he made statements that police accounts of the engagements were often not true. But how does he know that if he has no evidence? And if he has evidence, then why haven’t the police been charged?

INDECOM is staffed with extremely competent investigators. The group they are investigating, ie the police force, has been stripped of the right to remain silent, rendering them second class citizens. They are the only group that has been so rendered since Independence.

So, where is the evidence? If you have no evidence how can you make a statement like that?

Spending time on street corners while growing up, I would often hear the most loquacious troublemaker in the group speak of things she knows “because she heard from a good source”. I expect this from street corners, not from an arm of our Government, financed by our Government, with a lot of help from other organisations that INDECOM refuses to name.

Do you see the disaster they call Venezuela? That has been Jamaica on several occasions.

In the 70s criminal gangs, political gangs, guerrilla warfare, and militias were the order of the day — we’ve just left that out of our history books. Places like Tivoli Gardens, Arnett Gardens, and Rockfort operated as if they were subsets of the rest of the country.

Venezuela right now is very similar to this. In 2010 we were a version of Venezuela. The same way the Americans came for President Maduro is the same way they were setting to come for Christopher “Dudus” Coke. It would have been a disaster. They would have taken out our military installations, Denham Town Police Station, and hundreds — possibly thousands — of people would have been killed.

Do some research into the snatching of President Manuel Noriega from Panama and the body count that resulted from that operation. This is what gang domination causes — the rise of corrupt government officials who become members of drug cartels.

We could have been Panama or Venezuela if not for the brave police officers and soldiers who laid their lives on the line to capture Coke and prevent the loss of only God knows how many innocent people’s lives. The operations that are resulting in combat are playing their part so that Jamaica will not become a rogue State again; so that it will not be susceptible to being invaded. Believe me, when criminals become leaders is when criminality runs wild.

So people ask what I think of the operation that was conducted in Venezuela. I think it is regrettable that lives were lost, that they were likely police officers and soldiers doing their jobs. However, like President Noriega, President Maduro, based on the US indictment, chose to export narcotics to the United States. While Maduro is, at this moment, presumed innocent until proven guilty, this is a bad decision that many people make. If you want to be stupid and break their laws by sending poison to their country then what you get you have coming.

I have travelled to countries around the world that do not have a drug problem. Why should the United States accept that narcotics are being sent to their country whilst the people responsible hide in countries that are virtually giving the drug dealers legal launch pads to send narcotics to the United States?

Some people say it’s all about oil. I say, do you think the USA would have invaded us to execute the warrant against Christopher Coke? If your answer is yes, then why do you think that invasion is always motivated by profit?

We have no oil, and I guarantee you that if we didn’t try to catch Coke they were going to do it themselves. They are the most powerful country in our region. They don’t mess around.

Do you think it’s a coincidence that our scammers are kept in their jails, despite never having travelled to the USA prior to their convictions? If you know this then why provoke them to wrath? Leave them alone.

After 50 years of combat we finally have most Jamaicans lined up behind the armed forces in their renewed energy to bring gang domination to an end. We cannot allow ourselves to be divided in this quest. We cannot allow foreigners to further divide us.

Nobody celebrates the loss of life in combat between the gunmen and the security forces. It is extremely difficult for the officers involved. There is an entire department that has to oversee the counselling of these officers because no officer joined the force with the intention of killing anyone.

The decision to kill is taken by the people who choose to become members of gangs. This is their virtual profession. No police officer considers killing as part of his duties — it is just the end result of combat against one of the most brutal criminal enterprises in the Pan American region.

If you believe that this group is capable of killing more then 1,400 people in a year why is it so difficult for you to believe that they challenge the police to gunfights?

Or do you think that the 32,775 homicide victims since the start of the millennium killed themselves?

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