CRIME: The Zones Of Special Operations Law: Is It The Best Way To Solve Montego Bay's Crime Problem?

Montego Bay is in the strange position of being poised for greater economic development while standing at the edge of a dark abyss of crime and violence. On one hand tourism arrivals are at record levels, the BPO sector is expanding promising thousands of jobs over the coming years while new businesses continue to open around the city. On the other hand, the orgy of murders continues unabated throughout the tourism capital of the island.

The number of murders since the beginning of the year now exceeds 160 and despite continuing effort and numerous strategies employed by the police the crisis continues. The government has now passed the Zones Of Special Operations Act into law hoping that it will be the master stroke in arresting the carnage perpetrated by criminals and criminal organizations around the island.

The Zones Of Special Operations Law will grant the security forces certain essential powers not normally available to them to combat criminality. Whenever it is utilized it will be limited to a specific geographical location or locations within the island for a specific period of time. The security forces will have the power to cordon off these zones, impose curfews, conduct searches of persons, places and vehicles as well as the authority to seize vehicles, articles and documents and make arrests.

The new law has naturally sparked much debate with many politicians and members of the society voicing concerns about possible human rights violations by the security forces that could occur under this legislation. There is also a concern about the influence of politics in determining the zones of operations. To be fair, the Bill does go to great lengths to address these concerns and outlines numerous measures to prevent abuse. It also provides for a “Social Intervention Committee” that would go even further to formulate a “sustainable development plan” for the designated areas.

The debate is still ongoing and it should be of interest to all Jamaicans who care about the rights and well-being of their brothers and sisters. There is another area of debate, however, that has not been as loud but is equally important and that is whether or not, despite the numerous powers of this law, it will be able to efficiently address the crisis of crime in the country.

A recent article from the Daily Gleaner highlighted a number of points made by Opposition senator Mark Golding.  Some of the issues he raised had to do with the actual challenges faced by the security forces in addressing the nation’s crime problem. They include insufficient diligence by the police in case preparation which causes long delays in the courts, “lack of focus” in intelligence and evidence gathering to ensure convictions, an undermanned police force and low conviction rates in the courts due to delays and inefficiencies.

Mention was also made of the societal and cultural challenges faced by many crime-ridden areas. There are insufficient resources to address the problems of poverty and other social issues which exacerbate criminality. The dysfunctional cultural habits which require change and the social re-conditioning of hearts and minds will require plenty of time - years, perhaps decades.

The very important question, therefore, that needs to be asked is whether or not the new Zones Of Special Operations Law is able to overcome these challenges. If a lot of the problems are systemic within the police force and the court system then having greater powers to search and arrest may not necessarily result in more convictions. Ultimately, it is a high number of convictions that will act as a real deterrent to criminals within the society.

If the Government already does not have sufficient resources to tackle the social, economic and cultural problems of violent, poor underdeveloped communities then the provision in this law for a “Social Intervention Committee” is of little use or comfort.

Making use of this law which will grant the security forces extraordinary power over some of our citizens will be a very serious undertaking and it is something the people of this city should debate thoroughly and not take lightly. While it would appear that there are sufficient measures within the Zones of Special Operations Law to protect individuals from abuse by the security forces we cannot forget that we live in a society where this problem already exists despite the best efforts to prevent it. There are many opposing voices who still feel the new legislation is at great risk of abuse. The ongoing atmosphere of distrust between many communities and the police is a very real issue. Will this law make matters worse or better?

The other important question is, will it actually address the very real systemic problems faced by our police and courts in tackling criminals? If it can't do that then it will be yet another chapter of failure in the war against crime. It would be wise if our local police, community leaders and political representatives communicate to the city exactly how they think the Zones of Special Operations Law will make Montego Bay safer and more peaceful. If their argument is persuasive it will help all of us to get behind them when the time comes to implement it. They will need the support of Montego Bay's citizens in this endeavour. 

SPORTS: Manchester City Must Spend Big To Make Sure Of Strength In Depth

In my latest sports feature which was published in Typical City, a Manchester City blog, I look at why Manchester City needs a strong bench in order to consistently realize its domestic and European trophy ambitions. Read the article on the Typical City website by clicking on the image to the left.

LIFESTYLE: VJ's Punjabi Dhaba & Sky Bar: A Friday Afterwork Mix Of Indian and Jamaican In Montego Bay

The Friday evening view of the city and the Caribbean

Montego Bay is a City that enjoys a wide variety of culture where Jamaicans mix with a variety of small groups that hail from different parts of the world.  Friday nights at Vijay’s Punjabi Dhaba and Sky Bar located on Queens Drive (Top Road) in Montego Bay, is one of those occasions to enjoy this ethnic diversity in Jamaica’s second city.  Stepping on to this rooftop bar overlooking the city's coastline and the Caribbean Sea you will be greeted by the aroma of Indian cuisine and local Jamaican cooking.

This little hideaway owned and operated by Mobay businessman, Vijay Sadarangani provides a Friday night escape to start the weekend like no other.  You will find a mix of Jamaican, Indian and other foreign expats coming together to enjoy a few drinks, eat some great food from the culturally diverse menu options and enjoy the spectacular evening panorama before them.

On one end of the rooftop patio is the Punjabi Dhaba set up like something straight out of an Indian movie street scene.  It’s a little wooden set-up with a counter behind which the Indian chef is hard at work.  Menu items are scrawled on a board in the kitchen.  Yes, you have walked into a little part of Mumbai or at least it certainly feels like it.

Vijay Sadarangi (second from left) with his chefs

On Friday nights after work there is a special on Kababs that comes with a purchase of a cue of liquor.  The promotion is very popular with patrons.  But for others there is a more than satisfactory variety of Indian items.  There is the Mutton Rogan Josh, the number mutton dish cooked in an onion sauce with natural spices.  Of course there is the Chicken Tikka Masala topped with a sauce made of tomato., onions, ginger and garlic masala.  There is more to choose from and you can only familiarize yourself with a visit to the restaurant.

On the opposite end of the patio is the Sky Bar.  This is the end where you can get some Jamaican Jerk Chicken and other local offerings.  There are also the type of local offerings you really need on a Friday like Appleton Rum and Red Stripe beer.  The Indians tend to go for the whiskey in general.  But that is where the cultural differences stop because most of the people there, apart from the occasional group of tourists, live and work in Montego Bay.

It may be a physical setting with a laidback Bollywood meets “Yaad” vibe but at the end of the day it’s a good old Montego Bay vibe as laughter, liquor and good food helps everyone to wind down and start the weekend in a great mood.  People stand around at the bar while in the more central area

VJ's Punjabi Dhaba - like an Indian street scene but
it's overlooking Mobay and the Caribbean Sea

various groups are dining at tables.  It’s a small but cozy area perfect for relaxed social interaction.

The music is usually a mix of oldies and reggae as opposed to dancehall for this more mature, relaxed audience.  At the right moment you will even here some Indian music coming through the speakers and you may be pleasantly surprised at the Jamaican response.  Indian music afterall is a huge and successful industry.

Friday nights at VJ’s Punjabi Dhaba and Sky Bar are a pleasant escape from the norm.  It’s just the right mix of “something different” with “something familiar”.  The difference is in the cultural mix of food and people while the familiar comes from everyone being one people, one Montego Bay, one Jamaica.  If you haven’t checked out VJs Punjabi Dhaba and Sky Bar, you really should.  Friday evening after work is one time in Montego Bay that you shouldn’t be complaining that there is nothing to do.

SPORTS: Football is life. Long live Chapecoense.

Football is often a screen on to which we project various aspects of our lives.  Some people identify with underdogs and so they follow underdog teams.  Or they simply, in their own minds, turn their teams into underdogs.  Some dream of being titans so they follow larger than life football teams, or they elevate their teams to the level of titans.  It's like love, the romantic kind where you see your lover as a reflection of yourself or a reflection of what your self needs in order to be satisfied with itself.  If you see yourself as a giant or if you need giants in your life you may support a club like Real Madrid, the team of Galacticos.  If you identify with the small man who stands up to any challenge and becomes a giant in his own right you may be a fan of Atletico Madrid, a team with less money than the giants that often beats the giants.

But even with football, as in real life, at a certain point romantic love transforms into something less self-centred, real love.  You stop getting angry with your team when it loses and you start suffering with the players when they suffer on the pitch. You find yourself worrying about their injuries, angry at other fans for berating them and even curious at times about their personal lives and how they are getting along in life off the field.  You get to know their strengths and weaknesses and you become ok with their imperfections.  Your player may have a poor left foot but he's one of your heroes.  And the lad has been with the team since he was a teenager so he is one of our own, you remind yourself.

There's also the camaraderie with other fans.  It becomes one big extended family sharing victories and defeats together.  It becomes bigger than family.  It becomes a community of shared hopes, dreams and visions of the future.  We get together in groups and in forums online to discuss strategy, to discuss team politics, to discuss management and the way forward.  It even evolves beyond that to interaction with fans from other teams discussing the state and future of the game.  And at this point it feels like so much more than just a game.

This is why the expression "Football Is Life" is so popular.  It is a sport that imitates life in so many ways.  At a certain point, the imitation is so perfect it doesn't feel like an imitation anymore.  The passion is real.  The love is real.  Grown men cry over defeats. They cry tears of joy over the victories.  Boys and girls nurture dreams. There's the anxiety, the suffering with your team and even heart attacks.  Weddings have been scheduled so as not to clash with matches.  Work has been skipped.  Life has been disrupted and life has been celebrated.  Football is life.

And that is why so many football fans around the world, even those who never heard of the Brazilian team Chapecoense before today, feel the heart-wrenching loss of this team that perished in a horrific air disaster, yesterday.  The connection that all football fans share through football, the passion for a sport that takes up such a great part of our lives, makes such a tragic loss so relatable.  In football as in life we are bound by our empathy and our identification with each other. In the world of football those traits are arguably stronger than in any other sport in the world.

That is why I am gutted by the deaths of so many members of a football team in one night.  I am gutted for their families, their friends and their fans.  I am gutted by the photographs of fans crying in the bleachers of their stadium in Chapeco, Brazil.  The most striking thing about these images is the fans facing a football field devoid of players, a field on to which they would normally project their hopes and dreams but now only reflects a shocking emptiness.  I feel that sense of loss as if it were my own.

Any one of us who has suffered a great tragedy in our family knows that these days will not pass easily for the people in Chapeco.  The days and nights will be long and hard.  If I could offer any comfort to the fans now it is that life inevitably goes on with the living and how we cope with the past is often related to how we approach the future.  The vice president of Chapecoense has vowed to rebuild the team.  It is a declaration that he and the fans will have to hold on to in order to survive this trial.  It may seem almost pointless in this moment of despair but with time this statement of intent will exercise a kind of gravity to pull the club forward.

The greatest legacy of the players who lost their lives on that flight can be the continuation and survival of the hopes and dreams of Chapecoense.  The players already set this in motion by achieving what many never expected this little team to achieve.  They rose from Brazil's lower tiers of football to reach the highest tier, the Serie A. This year they reached the final of a major international competition, the Copa Sudamericana, for the first time in their history.  They were travelling to play this final when disaster struck.

Hopefully, the club and the fans will now draw on what makes football so great, the fact that it is a screen on to which we can project our human spirit and our aspirations.  May the club rise like a phoenix from the ashes and may all the fans, families and friends live that painful but worthwhile rebirth. May this spirit of survival and achievement be the legacy of those players and coaches who worked so hard to put a little team on the map, a team that was on its way in an airplane to achieving something great.  Maybe the flight to football glory has just been delayed.  Never stop flying because that is what football is all about.  Football is life. Life goes on. Long live Chapecoense.

HUMAN RIGHTS: #JamaicanLivesMatter

We need to turn some of our attention from #BlackLivesMatter in the United States and put more of our attention on #JamaicanLivesMatter right here in Jamaica. There's a lot going on. A lot. Amnesty International has been giving some attention to Nakiea Jackson's killing a couple years ago so I've become acquainted with this particular case. One of the things that struck me is how the police often have an excuse not to turn up in court on the days when the case is being tried. I remember someone who worked for my family many, many years ago had a brother who was shot by the police and the police used to do the same thing every time the case came up in court. Amazing how not much has changed over all these years.  

If you are interested in keeping up to date on police extra judicial killings and other human rights issues in Jamaica you can follow the Jamaicans For Justice Facebook page, and the Amnesty International Caribbean Facebook page.  You can also get some of the background on Nakiea Jackson's killing from Petchary's Blog in 2014.

RT #Time4JusticeJA - Stay tuned for more about human rights in #Jamaica @JAForJustice pic.twitter.com/Z1u1y04yiy

— Amnesty Caribbean (@AICaribbean) November 19, 2016

Killings by the police in our country have caused the relatives to seek justice for far too long. #Time4JusticeJA @AICaribbean pic.twitter.com/OXvpDH1AAe

— JamaicansForJustice (@JAForJustice) November 21, 2016

SATIRE: Jamaica Prepares To Vote For Hillary

Jamaican people have become so obsessed with the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump electoral battle they actually think the election is a Jamaican one, and they plan to come out by the thousands to vote tomorrow. Doris MacPherson, a forty two year old hairdresser living in Montego Bay says she is ready to cast her vote for Mrs. Clinton. She laments the fact, however, that the government has put out no information concerning the location of polling stations in Mobay.

“Mi hear say yu have one polling station out by Bogue,” she says “But then mi hear say dem move it go a Bottom Road.  Dem nuh even tell we what time di poll dem a open, tomorrow. Anju Holness need fi organize himself.”

Apparently, the Jamaican government also believes we will be holding an election and has made preparations. Prime Minister Andrew Holness says businesses and schools will close early tomorrow to ensure that everyone in the island has a chance to vote for Hillary Clinton.

“I cannot over-emphasize the importance of this election.” he stated emphatically “Trump must not be allowed to win.  We can’t afford another war.  We lost thousands of Jamaicans in Iraq and Afghanistan.  No more wars, please. No more.”

When reminded that Jamaica did not fight in those wars the Prime Minister appeared momentarily confused and said quietly to himself  “Raas. Is true.”  Nevertheless, he said this election is still important for Jamaica and can affect other issues like the Mexican immigrants pouring into Jamaica at the border and the future of Obamacare in the island.

Prominent Montego Bay psychiatrist, Anthony Patterson, believes that whatever happens at the polls, tomorrow, Jamaicans will need to come together and heal.  “Its scary!” he points out. “The country is bitterly divided and we are on the brink of civil war. We have 99.9 percent of the population on one side with Hillary Clinton, and on the other side we have reggae singer, Etana.  A Trump victory could mean a war between everybody and Etana.”  When contacted for comment Etana furiously dismissed the press saying “A wha di….Unu really bring up dis ting fi come twist me words, again.  Come outa mi house, now!”

At some point tomorrow night the election will be over.  The campaign which began in earnest last year has taken a severe psychological toll on many Jamaicans.  Some have even declared they can’t and won’t speak about any more politics until the election has passed.  Of course, if Mrs. Clinton loses Jamaicans could find themselves in a very uncomfortable position as new Prime Minister Donald Trump grabs all of us by the proverbial pussy.

SPONSORED POST: Get Ready To Celebrate Restaurant Week With MVP Smokehouse In Montego Bay

This year’s Restaurant Week will take place from November 11 to November 19 and of course MVP Smokehouse in Montego Bay is involved.  Montego Bay’s favourite little eatery for Jamaican cuisine has been included in the “Tasty” category of participating restaurants and the establishment's many regular customers are buzzing with anticipation.

So what does MVP Smokehouse have in store for these eight days of culinary celebration now in its 11th year?  Well, expect a very Jamaican menu, of course, reflecting creative twists on popular Jamaican dishes plus a few international items added to enhance the variety.

The appetizers will feature a Jerk Chicken Mousse with Crackers where spicy meets smooth. A Vegetable Quesadilla and Jamaican Peppered Shrimp make up the other offerings in this section before we start turning our attention to the main course.

Ok, now we’re ready.  Are you a seafood person?  Will you be having the Shrimp in Cilantro Sauce? Or are you going full-on Yardie style with the Jerk Pork, Chicken and Sausage Combo?  You can hold on to that Yardie vibe and step it up a notch in sophistication and creativity with the Breast of Chicken stuffed with Gingered Plantains.  Now, that sounds very enticing.

MVP Smokehouse has always kept vegetarians in mind and the Zucchini Noodles served with a Homemade Puttanesca Sauce caters to the non-meat eaters.  But, if you are a meat lover, come back to the light and enjoy the Barbecued Ribs.  Your main course selections are accompanied by a choice of Garlic Mashed Sweet Potatoes, Rice & Peas or Mini Smoked Macaroni and Cheese.

Now, we are at that point where bellies are full but we don’t know how to say “STOP!”.  Yes, we are now in dessert territory.  Space will have to be found for the Sinful Chocolate Cake topped with Strawberry Sauce.  Full stomachs must still rise to the challenge of Banana Bread Pudding Minis drizzled with Creme De Cocoa or make way for the Blue Mountain Chocolate Tiramisu.  You could also choose the Cheesecake Cups topped with Assorted Tropical Fruit as your last hurrah.

MVP Smokehouse has such a faithful following in Montego Bay that its regulars could be called the MVP Smokehouse evangelicals.  Surely, they will consider this week to be even more special than the other weeks of the year.  It will be a Christmas before Christmas so to speak, and if you aren’t an evangelical yet, Restaurant Week 2016 is a very special opportunity to discover this almost religious culinary experience for yourself.