{"id":2475,"date":"2019-07-01T19:30:47","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T19:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=2475"},"modified":"2019-07-01T19:30:50","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T19:30:50","slug":"psoj-demands-crime-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=2475","title":{"rendered":"PSOJ demands crime plan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><strong>Clinton Pickering<\/strong> &#8211; Freelance Writer<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The imposition of States of Emergency is not seen by the powerful Private Sector Organization of Jamaica (PSOJ) as good enough to battle the scourge of crime. PSOJ President Howard Mitchell, is demanding a crime plan.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He made this declaration, \u201cToday, in the parish of St James\nthat has suffered so much from crime and from violence, I am using this forum\nas a platform to again call on our government and our opposition party to sit\ndown together with civil society to discuss the root cause of our crime, the\nlink of our crime with corruption, the broad based long term solutions that are\nnecessary to&nbsp; reduce the murder rate, the\nviolence and undisciplined behaviour and to devise national methodologies and\napproaches to meet those challenges and put us on a path of mature\ndevelopment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mr. Mitchell was addressing a PSOJ President\u2019s Forum at\nJewel Grande in Montego Bay on Wednesday, June 27, 2019, in which he placed the\ncountry\u2019s crime problem in the context of a national disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dissatisfied with the responses to crime over the past 20\nyears, the outspoken private sector leader said, \u201cI don\u2019t care what they call\nit; a crime summit, Vale Royal talk, a violence commission, I really don\u2019t care\nbut for God\u2019s sake, let us address these issues together as mature members of a\nsociety and focus on our mutual progress and prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;<strong>DISAPPOINTED<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The theme for the forum was focused on disaster management\nand mitigation and Mr Mitchell was disappointed at the poor turnout of\nMontegonians in spite of over 90 confirming their attendance. In addressing an\napproach to threats to the nation\u2019s social fabric and progress, he stretched the\ndefinition of disaster to include crime among the list of manmade destructive\nevents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He argued that every society in history has stood on the\nthree pillars: a strong state, efficiently and well-managed, not indulged in\ncorruption and restricted to the provision of the essential services; having a\nprivate sector that is energetic, competent, innovative, independent and\neducated to meet the requirement of policies developed by the state and, a\nnational community that is confident, cooperative and focused on policies\ndeveloped by the state in conjunction with the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His take on the crime dilemma is that, \u201cWe as civil society\nhave stood by and done very little as standards fail, as the sidewalks become\ncrowded with illegal vendors, the streets are overcome with robot taxis and\nitinerant hustlers and our produce markets, where the genuine community hub\nwhere the community\u2019s rural and urban meet, have become staging areas for drug\ndealing and vectors for contagious illnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mr. Mitchell said it was clear to him that \u201cgovernment by\nitself cannot deal with the disaster of crime effectively (and) without active\nsupport of civil society, measures taken by the state will not only not have\nlong term viability will have the potential for distortion of the intended\neffect and the creation of a hardcore criminal gang society.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He said this was why the PSOJ and others continued to call\nfor inclusive dialogue among both major political parties and civil society.\n\u201cWe assert that without active participation and consensus from the three\npillars of our society, the imbalance that result will continue to cause\nfailure in our society,\u201d declared Mr Mitchell. He added that the organization\ndid not want to know the details of a crime plan or to make one itself, \u201cbut we\nwant to know that one exists.\u201d Further, \u201cWe are not asking to be involved in\noperational decision-making but we in the private sector; that is the market,\nwant to align our efforts to reduce the economic marginalization of the society\nalong with the effort of the security forces,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeffThe imposition of States of Emergency is not seen by the powerful Private Sector Organization of Jamaica (PSOJ) as good enough to battle the scourge of crime. PSOJ President Howard Mitchell, is demanding a crime plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1340,1341,1338,1339,390,30],"class_list":["post-2475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-howad-mitchell","tag-presidents-forum","tag-private-sector-organization-of-jamaica","tag-psoj","tag-state-of-public-emergency","tag-western-jamaica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2478,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions\/2478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}