Daniel Thwaites | Has Minister Chang gone brainless?

Let’s say I don’t charge National Security Minister Horace Chang for the shirt he caused me to ruin, he still owes me a cup of coffee.

Here’s how it happened:

I’m sitting down with my coffee in de big bright morning. I open up the newspaper while taking a sip of my deeeelicious brew.

I read the headline: ‘The nation has failed the police – Chang’ and out comes the coffee all over my shirt.

What did he just say?

So wait deh … while we suffer with one of the highest murder rates on the globe, it’s the nation that has failed the police, not the other way around.

I’m trying to play fair and think of some of the things he could have said that might not have felt like a drive-by shooting inna mi ears. He could have said that the politicians have failed the police. Or the Government. Even successive governments, so as to spread the responsibility between him and him fren dem.

I mean, there are more than a few non-offensive ways the security minister could have delivered some such message that wouldn’t quite rub salt into the festering wounds. But no … it’s the nation that has failed the police? Wow!

Politics runs like the ghetto, still. The same man that rob yuh cupboard or yuh flat screen last night will come next morning and say “mi hear yuh get rob! Dem bwoy ya too wikkid!!” There’s a level of self-excusatory evasion that’s remarkable to watch.

How else to see it when the security minister, in the wake of the ‘used car scandal’, is heard complaining about the force not having enough police vehicles to respond to citizen calls for help. How could the royal “we” slip into the assignation of blame for that? We??? Minister Chang must have a mouse in his pocket.

Greener pastures

But let’s extend the thought. If it’s the people who are responsible, then the solution is easy, straightforward, and painless. Perhaps the police force needs to hire a different population to serve them. The force just needs to get rid of the current nation and hire a new nation. This country isn’t working out and it hasn’t been working out for a while, so it’s probably time for the force to seek greener pastures.

Except … waaaait a minute! Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

But this was just the latest piece from the security minister. Somehow, he is managing to say precisely the wrong thing every time he opens his mouth, except for that one time when he pointed out that the relationship between some lawyers and their clients are suspiciously close.

But even then, what we need to hear about is appropriate legislation and prosecution of the offenders. The template was set in the United States when the drug dealers used to have attorneys on constant retainer, guiding them on how to frustrate law enforcement. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel about tainted assets and payment of legal retainers. What we need is a security minister not whining, but doing something about it.

Then Chang has given succor and encouragement to the anti-INDECOM forces. Ridiculous. In this day and age, we still have a security minister resistant to vigorous civilian oversight of the police?

Unbelievably, the latest word is that Chang has cut off the miniscule funding for the Peace Management Initiative. What a monstrous mistake.

UNDER PRESSURE

Now he has put the Noise Abatement Act to one side for the duration of the holidays. That’s essentially cancelling the one unambiguously positive quality of life achievement. Thanks, Minister! Who needs to sleep in any case? It’s waaay overrated. Not only that, I like waking up to the melodic strains of “Gyal cock up yuh batty and ride”. It fits right into morning prayers before the coffee I spit up all over myself.

All these things add up to the biggest problem of all. It’s that Minister Chang has the unenviable side-job of pulling wool over our eyes to convince us that as far as crime is concerned, things are trending in the right direction. They’re not. The states of emergency, the zones of special operation, and all the enhanced security measures are failing. Each and every one: Fail. Fail. Fail.

Let me tell you what to watch out for in security ministers: how long they last before they come into the complete capture of the police force. It happens when they realise that their political survival is dependent on the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the organisation tasked with policing the crime that also happens to be a major producer of crime and mayhem.

Now remember that Minister Chang is a sensible bredda. Normally, when sensible people start talking gibberish, people just assume that he’s gone off his rocker somehow, or that the former sensibleness has fled the upstairs palace. That describes some situations, but here that’s not the way to think about it.

When you see Chang starting to talk rubbish all over the place, it’s because he’s facing pressures and seeing things that are pushing him in the direction of producing garbage.

I think his brain has been kidnapped and is being held ‘ostrich’ by the police. It takes a skilful negotiator to walk between those raindrops, and most don’t make it.

People took the appeal for divine intervention and gleefully noted that it didn’t amount to much of a crime-fighting strategy. But whatever its defects, it sure beats this latest strategy of blaming the people for why we’re subject to such chaos, murder and mayhem.

- Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.