I arrested a young man once for a stabbing murder. He was 18 years old and the victim was 19. He was taken into custody with the entire tenement yard in view, all family, of course.

As the usual drama played out with the wailing mother and crying sisters, I saw him look at a three-year-old child and said, “Yuh nah guh see mi fi a long time.”

The child answered, “Mi know.”

I wondered why a child, a baby actually, would realise that once he leaves with the police in handcuffs he isn’t coming home for an extended time.

Once at the station, I did the usual formality, as required by law. He told me he did it. He said he was provoked. He even showed me messages on his phone. The victim had sent him very offensive messages, with references to his mother and sexually related inferences.

I looked at the messages and as a “person” I agree that those messages would upset me. I may have even punched someone out if I was younger man. But kill? When did normal people become so prepared to commit murder in Jamaica?

Gangsters are killers, I get that! But they make up less than three per cent of our population. This kid was no gangster, but he was prepared to kill because of an insult. Can you fathom the waste? One young man in his prime killed for sending the wrong message. One young man in his prime sent to live out decades in a cell. Because of words.

Let’s not forget the other casualties of this conflict — the family members who have lost the loved one and the family of the offender who have, in many ways, lost one too. We often forget the family. If there is one thing I have learnt it’s that the victim’s mother cries as hard as the killer’s mother when he meets a similar fate.

As a lawman it is no less gut-wrenching. There are two villains in our society that are often not called out. One is the ‘culture of killing’ and the other is the misery caused by men. Yes, it is men, not women who are responsible for almost all tears shed for blood-lust. Violent crime remains the bedfellows of men, not women. We are the failing gender in this regard.

So now, on to the ‘culture of killing’. Where did it start? Some would say the 1970s, when good men took on the habits of bad men to fight a righteous cause. Or so they say. Or when our recording artistes felt it was okay to sing songs about killing and mutilating people. I am not sure. I think it’s a little bit of both. How do we fight this? How do we change it? It’s hard.

Vietnam had a civil war in the ’60s and ’70s and over the course of the conflict they killed like devils. After the war the losing side’s soldiers were sent like prisoners to re-education camps. They stopped killing. Was it because of the camp experience? Or was it because the totalitarian regime of the North Vietnamese created such dire consequences for breaches of the law that most just fell in line. Whatever the reason, they stopped.

There are few equals that can compare to the homicidal conduct of the Japanese and the Chinese in the 1940s, and in China’s case beyond that. They kill no more.

You know what Vietnam and China have in common? Their citizens have their Governments’ boot stuck squarely on their throat. Their Governments don’t tolerate killing. In fact, they don’t tolerate crime. The citizens have no choice but to follow as instructed. So we have an answer. Or do we?

Can we create an environment of intolerance to violent crime that can effectively eradicate the culture we have created and now embrace? We would have to give up our right to freedom, like China and Vietnam have.

Would it be worth it? Depends who you ask — the wailing mother of the murdered son or the broken spirit of the unjustly remanded.

What would we be willing to give up? Habeas Corpus, freedom of speech, freedom of movement?

The aforementioned Japanese had a seriously embedded culture of not just killing, but cruelty. It was somewhat interposed within the guidelines of the Bushido code of conduct.

Their cruelty, brutality and homicidal mentality played out right throughout the war but peaked in a city called Nanking where they slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people and raped tens of thousands of women and girls in 1937.

Unlike China and Vietnam, they do not currently have tyrannical, all powerful governments to enforce law and order. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, they changed. They did this by a cultural adaptation which took effect largely under the occupation of the United States.

Is it that we must look at the techniques used by them? Or should we find our own means?

One thing for certain, killing has become a part of the culture of our society and many a wailing mother would do anything to change it.

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