JG - Disowning crime

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Gleaner

Disowning crime

published: Sunday June 15, 2008

Orville Taylor

He is that relative that you wished you never had. He turns up at the most inopportune times, wearing awful-looking shirts, reminiscent of certain politicians, and speaks with a loose tongue, publicly revealing details about your life that you would have preferred to forget.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Like a sex tape that the nasty public seeks to milk as it flows like spilt liquid, he touches everybody, destroying all that he reaches.

Everything that he hits he swallows and he has a voracious appetite.

Although he consumes a large part of the national income, nobody seems to be able to control or collect from him, because his name is crime and he does not pay."

"The PNP's big man moves with the dexterity of a ballet dancer as he points to the growth of the international drug trade and, of course, his favourite scapegoat - deportees.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that most of the homicides and major crimes are by boys who have seen only the planes used by carpenters, this has continued to be a beating stick.

Face it!

The jump in murders coincides with his tenure."

"Indeed, some of the crimes are caused by deportees, but the majority of deportations are for relatively minor and immigration offences and not capital crimes.

Moreover, the allegation of their major involvement in the crime wave is not supported by the police data."

"(T)he increase in homicides is directly correlated to the insensitivity to non-unionised labour in the 1990s."

&

"Nonetheless, there is also an external cause.

Doubtless, the drug trade, the wanton importation of deportees (and I mean the cars here, Jake!), cellphones, the Internet and cable television, bear the blame as well.

Also, the loss of agricultural and manufacturing jobs is directly linked to the actions of the American Democratic Party.

Ironically, the so-called 'anti-black' Reagan/Bush/Bush-led Republican Party had created the Caribbean Basin Initiative, giving preferential treatment to West Indian imports and creating thousands of jobs in manufacturing.

Paradoxically, the decline in the agricultural sector is correlated to the Bill Clinton initiative that killed the Caribbean banana industry.

If you destroy the banana farmer, won't he grow weed or buy guns?"


Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Send feedback to orville.taylor@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com.