EDITORIAL - Enforce the law!

At best the police, while focusing on hard crime for more than a generation, have been sporadic and tentative in the enforcement of the 'softer', quality-of-life laws. As a consequence, the country is overrun with social disorder; and what is even worse, a prevailing sense on the part of too many Jamaicans that they have some sort of entitlement to earn a living and to pursue their own interests outside the law while disregarding the rights of others.

Illicit street vending is almost completely out of hand in the urban centres of the country. The country is overrun with noise from street dances every day of the week and even from churches delivering their over-amplified versions of the gospel to unwilling hearers.

The illegal taxi trade has a dominant role in public transportation. Squatting anywhere and everywhere is the order of the day. The breach of zoning regulations, conducted under the very nose of the authorities is the order of the day. And the unlawful extraction of electricity and water from the providers is a widespread and entrenched fact of life.

Overdue attention

Following on the incursion into Tivoli Gardens to execute an extradition warrant and to pacify criminal forces assembled there to defend the subject of the warrant, the police have been giving some overdue attention to more generally restoring law and order.

Over the objections of Mayor McKenzie on technicalities, the police have moved decisively to curb unlawful street vending in downtown Kingston. They have removed tons of material used in the street-vending business and cleared city streets that have been clogged with vending for decades. Other areas are awaiting similar clean-up.

For example, the police must now move to enforce the Noise Abatement Act more rigorously. We remind our readers that the Noise Abatement Act was enacted in 1997 to replace and strengthen a section of the Towns and Communities Act. The Noise Abatement Act, like its parent legislation the Towns and Communities Act are both designed to protect the rights of citizens from infringements by other citizens, has been mostly observed in the breach. On the books, introduced with much fanfare, but poorly enforced.

New focus

And the police have now turned their attention to school-gate vendors, who may be operating outside the law.

As is to be expected, from previous cycles of enforcing these laws, the protests and objections are pouring in. One powerful argument is that the people involved in these activities have to earn a living and cannot be absorbed by the formal economy. The social and economic accounting, however, needs to be more balanced and complete. There is no question that many other people are hindered in earning a living, in enjoying their own property, or face loss in their own operations on account of these unlawful activities. Indeed the entire economy, taken as a whole, suffers from these unlawful activities.

The business of the Government is to protect the rights and freedoms of all citizens, not to give preferential privileges to some, and outside the law. The police, who are neither social workers nor politicians, must continue, indeed extend, the enforcement of the quality-of-life laws, with due respect for the human rights of those who may be acting outside the law.

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