Mark Wignall | Love for the assault rifle

He loved his AK-47 assault rifle. At a particularly murderous time in our political history, that is, in the 1970s and well into the early days of the 1990s. I was in the yard at the back and he was talking about his AK. Occasionally he would phone me and invite me there. He was fully into the street politics of the People’s Nationl Party (PNP). All I would ask is, do not expose your gun here.

He once spoke about a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) street operative gunman with unusual respect because that man loved and could fire with deadly accuracy at the enemy by using an AK.

The commissioner of police has shown us what the most vicious gunmen in Jamaica desire are very effective killing tools. But that graphic picture must also paint a picture of despair. How do we make that great trip back to normality?

It has long been known that gunmen have been infiltrating business districts because of weekly extortion but, one senior policeman who wished to be nameless suggested that the brazenness of some of these killers has led to them attempting to take over the very towns where these districts occupy.

“If the security forces do not fight back, we are truly screwed,” the policeman said. The society cannot afford to give in at any level.

At another level, it seems that the street is managing its own affairs, as only that level can. Just last week, he showed up and positioned himself near to a schoolyard gate. They saw him trying to hide from his past. It didn’t take a minute and he was history. Rough. Without pretence.

The commissioner of police cannot bring reality into our lives more than life has burnt it into us. Many of us have been there. The problem is, why is it so problematic for us to bear this on a daily basis?

IS HE RIGHT THIS TIME?

I don’t usually quote Lloyd D’Aguilar because he is mostly a ‘bomb thrower’ and a man carried quite high on hyperbole. But this matter of Nzinga King must matter.

1. Nzinga King’s hair was forcefully cut, allegedly by a policewoman, while in police custody on July 24, 2021.

2. The police commissioner ordered an internal investigation into the hair cutting. Nothing has happened almost seven months since. Police abuse of citizens in their custody continues unabated.

3. INDECOM carried out an investigation and turned its report in to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

4. The DPP said it needed further investigation but has provided no information as to what further investigation was required.

5. Nzinga reported that, when INDECOM came to see her on a second occasion, the matter of her not receiving a trial prior to being sentenced on July 22 was not raised. To this date, we have no idea what the DPP asked INDECOM to further investigate. The focus continues to be on the forced hair cutting.’

It seems almost impossible for this time to have elapsed were the social elements rearranged. But this is how it is. Or, is it?

SERIOUSLY FLA?

It makes no sense for the Firearms Licensing Authority (FLA) to have gone silent on the key reasons why a gun licence was denied to that Chinese business couple who were shot dead last December. They applied for a gun licence in July. It was refused but with nothing specific, outside of just something generic.

But, they have been murdered and, even with the barest of mathematical chances, something is out of whack. Is it not normal to assume that most business persons are qualified for a gun licence? This is Jamaica, is it not?

More on this needs to be ventilated. That so many key individuals are silent ought to be bothering more of us. But maybe that was by design. It was embedded into our social structure.

COST OF GUNS

The veil has come down on what has been known for long now. The increasing cost of guns must drive up the cost of murders for hire. A man owning an AK-47 can afford not to fire it. At about US$3,000 per instrument of death, rental is the way to go. I am not into making joke of death. I know that there is pain behind every death in Jamaica.

Even if we know that many of those killed are part of an unknown number of ‘unknowns’, we have to count them, if not their motives.

REAL ESTATE

We Read in the online Gleaner on February 2, 2022, and in the past few days, that attention is being drawn to real estate development/construction and connections to money laundering and criminal activity. Minister Chang stated in a Gleaner article that the security forces are looking in to this. Really? In 2022? So, Minister Chang and his government are just now seeing this? ‘You and I have exchanged e-mails on the topic years ago,’wrote a friend of mine living and working abroad.

After suggesting that Minister Chang has conveniently forgotten much on this, he says, ‘The criminals must be laughing till dem belly buss. Of course, the delicate part, there may well be many prominent Jamaicans mixed up in the real estate/construction and money laundering business.”

We are surrounded by the evidence of this activity and many of the business heroes in present-day top of Jamaica are real estate icons.

This day would always come when that which is legal is no intermixed with the illegal that it makes little sense trying to unravel the whole.

 Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.