Mark Wignall | Student violence warns of troubles ahead

A little over a week ago I interviewed an 18-year-old man who was waiting on the call to begin his short training course in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

He was quite honest with me and did not express any noble ideals driving him to join up. He was blunt and related what he saw as a Jamaican reality. “The pay,” he answered. “It better dan nutten.” Then just about the same time as he was preparing for an uncertain future, I and many others were inundated by the many incidents of student violence in various schools.

It occurred to me that the young man was being given a glimpse of, and shown a pointer towards, his future relationship with another batch of dysfunctional adults in this country. And of course by that time, those who had not made that tough trip back to turning their lives around will, unfortunately, cement relationships with criminality and gunplay.

Many of the incidents of student violence were digitally captured on smart phones owned by other students. Almost as troubling as the violence itself was the ready group of students either egging on those in violent conflict or just wildly immersing themselves in what they see as entertainment without an entry fee.

There are some who believe that digitally capturing these incidents does more good than harm as it exposes the fault lines in too many of our schools. I disagree with that simply because many Jamaicans already know it is happening. Some high schools like Immaculate Conception do not allow the use of phones by students on the campus. And while the students at Immaculate are just as Jamaican as those from the schools where student violence lurks like a coiled spring, I cannot recall ever hearing of a violent student brawl at the all-girl Catholic school.

Many of the students at these violence-prone schools have much working against them in the society. First is the fact that many of their teachers have grown sick of them. There is also the community behaviour that hardens them into intractability. Most importantly are the homes that house highly dysfunctional adults mistakenly calling themselves parents. Always hounding them is the tough community where some of these students reside.

Not many people living there expect much from the students, so in time, a destructive feedback loop condemns them to their fate.

When the young woman Ms N’Zinga King first showed up on the news radar, reports suggested that one, she was a feisty Jamaican rasta woman standing up for her rights in this Babylon country and not afraid to upbraid police personnel who were trying to deny her of those very rights.

N’ZINGA KING PUZZLE

In that process, according to her, she was locked up by the police at the Four Paths Police Station where, she said, a female police woman forcibly cut off her locks. The cutting of the locks (by brutal policemen) of those who profess the Rasta faith and way of life, prevalent in the late 1950s and 1960s, was driven by the behaviour of those comfortably seated at the top of the socio-political hierarchy especially Bustamante, Jamaica’s first prime minister, whose politics was more into bread than education; always bereft of higher ideals.

So when I heard reports suggesting that N’Zinga’s locks were shorn, I was shocked. And I was prepared to believe everything she said. An investigation was done by INDECOM and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), and in the normal process, concluded that the prosecution could not proceed to levying any charges against the police.

WHICH ONE TO BUY INTO?

Which one to buy into, the DPP or the public defender?

Of course those who love to hate the DPP rose up, and if they had the means, they would have spilled their bile on Ms Paula Llewellyn, the JCF, the Government and just about everyone who did not agree that N’Zinga’s locks had been forcibly cut.

What is certain is that she went in the station with hair and exited without hair. According to the findings of the DPP, N’Zinga “pop out her hair”. The DPP’s findings included forensics, which also included the use of DNA matching.

But to me it still does not explain how a rational, sane person who professes faith in Rasta grabs her hair in bits and pieces and tears it away from the roots. How is that ever done unless the young woman was in the process of having a serious mental breakdown.

Surely if they were cut by a pair of scissors, an examination by a powerful microscope would show microscopic striations consistent with the use of scissors. If she did indeed tear out her hair, there would have to be significant bleeding.

If as the DPP avers the evidence indicates that N’Zinga ‘pop out her hair’, where is the evidence of bleeding? Is it possible that because the young woman had been wearing her locks since birth, the roots had become weakened so when she snapped and began pulling at them, they readily came out. Without bleeding?

The report by the public defender makes its conclusion on a process, made utterly simplistic by the reliance on too much ‘he said, she said’. Towards the end of last week the Public Defender and the DPP spoke on radio. Although Ms. Llewellyn gave her explanation as to why she could not see a viable prosecution I sensed that she was silently weeping for the public defender in the ease of conclusion of the matter.

As for me, there is still something of paramount importance that is not clear to me, and that is, how did N’Zinga lose her hair?

The saying ‘the law is an ass’ must have been coined by someone of my thinking. When two people (heading two important agencies where the law must operate at its finest and its best) speak on public radio and we are still left in the dark, the law must indeed be made only for those who are capable of understanding the brays of donkey language.

If you gathered elucidation, I congratulate you. I am still waiting on the stubborn ass to kick me in the a**.

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