Pussyfooting: Operation Jaguar

It is high noon. Navigating down the swing bridge on a day when the weather decides to be as stubborn, indecisive and oppressive as the current reign of this UDP administration is no easy task. Yeah, despite the fact that the sky was ominously overcast and the sun seemed to have abandoned us, it is so humid and choking even the crayon smelling kids who are normally sugar fueled to hyperactivity seem to be more subdued.

But even as the mid-day sultriness disapprovingly stared at the pack of school aged boys, who were blocking the adult flow of traffic on the pedestrian walkway of the rust resilient Swing Bridge, the tallest boy of the lot requisitioned “Unu wah si wich paat di blood deh fahn di man weh get dead?” His tone was sparkling with all the anxiety and rouse appropriate for the intense adventure of an Easter egg hunt.  Off they raced weaving through the canal of handbags and purses clenched by the office workers and frantic housewives who were late to prepare afternoon lunches.

I just could not shake from my mind the thought that Belize had become a sweat factory, an economic sauna, and a social presha pat.  The images of our children gamboling through the streets while bullets, guns and bombs shout their names just feet away from their classrooms and Dora schoolbags,  is just infuriating. Cold like that!

It was only when the sales pitch of the newspaper boy and the inescapable mustiness of that homeless-sprang head odor which is the trademark of downtown Belize City hit me that I looked down at the front page of the Guardian newspaper.  The bare feet newspaper boy peddled in serious jest, “Times, Guardian, Reportah,…get it while e hat…if yuh kiyah read den buy it and watch di pitcha!”

The Bredrin was right! The truth in the high resolution picture on the front page was worth a thousand words.   The picture was the poster child for the “un-caging” of operation Jaguar. (On a side note though people, seriously, who comes up with these names for these UDP failed experiments? 360 degree Plan on Crime, which is a full circle back to the original position; Preventative detention which is oxymoronic at best,  and now “operation jaguar” who would release a ferocious wild killer into a civilian population?  I don’t know if it is Bert Tucker, Yellowman, DJ Dolla, Ramon Dim Witz or some other UDP genius but mi bally unu haffu do better wid dey name.)

Yeah but this photo was excessively daring and provoking.  It knee jerked with all the things the desperate public wanted to shout at the Minister of National Security. Yeah, it did. I mean look at it, there was an intimidating Hispanic descent police officer, with the peak of his hat masking his eyes and half his face, while he confidently taunted an armory of assault weapons which had never been pointed at a Guatemalan intruder.

In the background, not too far from a prospering hamans tree and a wooden house which obviously saw no benefit from the Venezuelan grant money for home improvement, was another bullet proof officer, who had just nabbed an obvious bad man. The guy had to be a miscreant! Come on look at him. He was black, riding a beach cruiser bicycle, baggy gang clothes and a rusty high afro. Gat im!!!!

We all are fed up and unified, even the “Passin” deh come out of their slumber and are in full on exorcism mode against crime.

In terms of  shameless futility, of all the  elected and unelected UDPs, closeted  or flamboyantly out the political closet UDPs, main stream UDP’s or underground ACB –UDP’s, it took a politically disgraced mayor who is an alleged criminal to “cast the first stone” against crime. But, but, but…. Operation Jaguar? Operation Jaguar? Come on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Boots, what kind of rock is this government smoking?

Belize is an interesting country; we are the only place where it is popular to have fire lit barbeques at a gas station and no one even blinks. No!! On the contrary we wait patiently in long lines more concerned that when we get to the front of the line all the breast wah done. That fear is more real to us than the fact that we are standing inches away from a smoking barbeque pit which is no more than spitting distance away from an explosive gas pump!!!!!! We are the same people who will sit back, cross its fingers, close its eyes and hope that this incompetent UDP government is successful at releasing wild man eating Jaguars into our streets.  Operation Jaguar!!???!!!

I waited a while before I became critical of this pussyfooting operation. The way I see it, like most other things in Belize, we are what my grandmother used to call “fuss bruk”. When something is new, no different from a child with a puppy we rush to it but after the novelty of it wears off and we have to clean up the indiscriminant spirals of mushy pooh, no one cares.

Well the dung has been here long before the puppy!!! Come on, family, how can we be in support of this Operation? Some people will take the popular and ear pleasing position of saying that crime is every one’s business but to me this UDP administration is bankrupt and bird brained in everything, much more in solving crime. Operation Jaguar, are you kidding me????!!!??

Yeah I can be harsh. I can be brutal even!  I could memba that it is this same UDP government who just weeks aback slashed/hacked/robbed the Ministry of National Security budget, despite all the pointed and constructive queries from the Opposition in the House. Dey no serious, big man!

Who could forget that long before Dean he mi want turn Belize City into the Cockscomb Basin, we the Opposition mi di tell that haad ears one he dat he should have quitared Carlito’s job as Minister over our national  insecurities. No, he did not want that.

Boss, imagine that man di drap like fly bout yah and that breda too busy playing “lass lick” with a UDP shoplifter who ran the National Campaign for the Government.  Crime???

The UDP is not concerned about crime, they are far too busy shoplifting and casting people out of their party or killing their own. Look, Howell Longsworth, now Pastor, get dash weh. Zenaida get dash weh. Marcel Cardona get hib weh. Mark King get chow eh. Michael Peryfitte get fling weh.  Dey shave Kenny Morgan head and put he inna the attic. Karim Berges get used like wa eight miles patron and then get pitch weh. Trust me, big man the list is much longer.

Crime??!! This government is a crime which needs to be fed to lions and jaguars.  Their idea of governance is to make people suffer and try to jail their own people.  See Deano and the UDP are so obsessed with petty side shows that they barely took their head out of the commotion of in fighting and inbreeding to give us the hollow afterthought of Operation Jaguar. You no serious!!!!

My youth, this is the same government who paroled an ex-convict to the ranks of Ambassador in homage to his royal blood and  who signed another extension for the head of the Police Force, whose head most Belizeans would prefer to see roll.

But the operation itself is foolhardy, for a couple of reasons. The first is that the operation is nothing more than a souped up police vigilante program with stressed out, over- worked, under paid, low morale officers speeding around town with guns like chickens without heads.  It is the worst timed operation in Belize’s history. This must be on the acumen of UDP advisor Easy Glen, because more police officers will hit the streets on the wake of an epidemic of police abuse and corruption.

Think about the back drop here: Police officers in ski masks, suspicions of police death squads, the shoot to kill top brass directive, police assassinations of another police inside the police station, three police killing of civilians in two months, the arrest of CIB officers who are accused of masterminding a criminal rink, the crippling of Stephen Buckley and Elvin Torres, who was featured in our rice bun version of the Rodney King affair. And it is this same police force that you want to unleash? Stap play boss!!!!

Secondly, in the past few months the most heinous crimes have really been happening out district, not Belize City, mi bally!!! We had the murder of the security guard in Spanish Lookout and the robbing of the Bank there. We had the be-heading of two people in Bella Vista, which remains unsolved despite its having similar criminal fingerprints as another murder in that area, and recently we had a Chinese business woman who had her baby strapped to her who was slaughtered at her work, again in San Ignacio. But, no!!! Release the jaguars in Belize City. Why? Boss, easy question. Jules, Jose Sanchez and all the cameras are here. This operation lacks both glitter and substance.

But I guess Dean forgot to throw his penny in the wishing well of Dr. Gayle, locking down the city alone with nothing else will only do two things: the first is that it will push criminal elements into the trans-district and out of district criminal activity. And as we noticed that done mi di happen!

But, secondly, as I heard one defiant gang member say, “we haffu eat, boss”.  These youths have no job, no skill and no direction. After they are on lock down for two or three weeks which is the maximum time for this “Operation act like something di happen” to die off,  our delinquent juvenile population will be three weeks “more broke” and three week out of committing crime to feed their drug dependent habits, demanding girlfriends or pampers wearing children. Three weeks without hustling money and three weeks more desperate, do you think that they will by divine intervention put on long sleeves and ties and become entrepreneurs? Where do you think they will get the money from to pay for three weeks of debt? You think that they will go get an application form from the loans officers on Albert Street?

After they finish roughing up and shooting the pants sagging black boys in the streets of Belize City what is the next phase in the skinning the crime cat? I mean after they force ripe a former UDP Minister’s son to Commissioner, of course.  My guess is…this is all that there is and all that there will be.

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