By Peter Polack

Peter Polack

Yet another mass killing took place on the night of the last Sabbath in Jamaica that revealed new levels of heartlessness by determined killers. Five people were killed and four wounded as gunmen pretending to be policemen broke new records for ruthlessness that included a dead four year old girl and a wounded eleven year old.

Even the yard dog did not escape their wrath.

The Jamaican Prime Minister rushed to the scene just before the failed remedies of curfew and information reward were trotted out as if some magic snake oil.

These long tries and many pointless efforts are grounded more in political pretense than any real expectation by a population destined to repeat the old sankey, more of the same.

The danger lies in neophytes thinking Jamaica has the monopoly on anti-crime instead of a medical doctor flirting with death and destruction. Jamaica is a country with people not a laboratory to practice failed experiments.

The people want all the officials out at night securing the voters and their families not rushing after all is said and done for a photo op or sound bite.

Three killed ten injured Turks and Caicos Islands July 2025

Five killed Trinidad December 2024

Eight killed nine injured Jamaica 2024

Four killed eight injured Trinidad May 2024

Five killed Trinidad March 2024

Four killed Trinidad March 2024

Seven injured Cayman Islands February 2024

Five killed St.Vincent and the Grenadines 2023

One killed five wounded Cayman Islands 2021

Holness is no Bukele of Salvador and the country is divided by only four seats.

The danger is that novices like the Premier of the Cayman Islands try to copy the ghost of mistakes past. After a mass shooting in his constituency last year the government promised a reward. No one has been arrested.

So long as leadership pretends to lead, the people must pretend to follow in the circus that has become the modern day Caribbean.

Notes

Caribbean Mass Shootings – The New Pandemic

Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands for several decade. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88. 

His views are his own.