The Jamaica Constabulary Force, I believe needs to employ modern strategy in the campaign against crime. I would like to propose as part of any future initiative addressing crime, that the JCF considers implementing Crime Applications(APPs) for Smart Phones as to best start empowering and engaging citizens.
As any Smartphone user will tell you, the Smartphone’s application store is the go to place for tools to make your Smartphone even smarter. Do you want the song playing in the department store on your playlist? Download Shazam. Want to find a telephone number? Get the YellowPages or RedBook app. Want to have the Cashpot Chart at fingertips? Get the Supreme Ventures app. But can an application provide women and students with the tools to empower themselves and help strengthen law enforcement?
The creation of a Jamaican Crime application manage by MOCA and INDECOM, regulated by the relevant government agencies and monitored by JFJ would go along way to enable citizens, activists and local actors to take action to improve their communities. By employing the latest in mobile technology to provide urban populations with fast, discrete, and intelligent safety assistance to conveniently help them report and prevent crimes for the 21st century.
Users of a Jamaican Crime App could potentially report an ongoing crime with the push of a button. A package of information including the location of the crime, photo, video, audio, and text description of the crime are sent to authorities immediately. The application also allows for users to report crime ANONYMOUSLY so that they may continue with their busy lives knowing that with a push of a button, police will know and have everything to pursue the criminal. Ordinary users become the eyes and ears of authorities. Submitted issues could be displayed on the city's map, so citizens are aware of crime hot-spots.
There are often tense situations when calling the police is not an option. There are other times when inconvenience or fear of reprisal prevents one from reporting an incident, featuring the ability to take a photo, record video and audio, and provide a description of the incident, citizens could be assured that their phone has the capability to alert family, friends, and the authorities at the push of a button, should a threat arise.
The application would be especially useful to high school and college students, who often find themselves walking back from class late at night, or the victim of sexual assault. What is key, is that the App would empower the average citizen and ordinary bystanders, to report crime instead of ignoring it.
Local law enforcement organizations are expected to tailor their services to suit the citizenry it intends to serve and protect. In today’s world, everything is going mobile… why not crime prevention? Jamaica's local authorities need a 21st century make-over when it comes to reporting and preventing crimes.
Now... while mobile apps are the most obvious example of how organizations are responding to the public's demands. With reduced budgets, there is no denying that making sure public services and information can be delivered via a mobile phone in an accessible way, whilst keeping up with changes in technology is a hard task... there are a variety of projects of this nature in action today all across the world in a variety of nationalities and municipalities, many of them using OPEN SOURCE options.
Once again... it is therefore incumbent on our relevant ministries and national constabulary to explore these options earnestly and zealously. For a truly user-centered digital application, adapted to the needs of local communities can quickly and affordably achieved, as well as possibly effecting much change and altering our social climate. We must now think local and act global!
⭐Top Story of the Week📰
Market Madness
Marketing in Montego Bay is chaotic and poorly coordinated, with stakeholders pushing conflicting messages, leading to a fragmented city brand and missed economic potential—essentially “mayhem” instead of a clear, unified strategy.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Jamaica and the Trans Pacific Partnership
America's New Secret Nafta!
Jamaica needs to urgently start examining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I am imploring that both the Ministry of Finance and Planning and the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce,
consider the future implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In
November 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Washington’s
official pivot to Asia. Outlining a vision for an Asia-Pacific Century,
Secretary Clinton described a desired symbiotic and unfettered
relationship between the two regions that will provide “unprecedented
opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge
technology.” At the center of this pivot has been the TPP, an enigmatic
trade pact that has been hailed as a true “21st century agreement,”
a purported free trade deal between 11 countries, including the U.S.,
Canada and Japan, which has been in negotiations for some years.
As
a centerpiece of President Obama’s pivot to Asia, which includes Latin
America via the TPP, the trade pact sets a powerful, if not potentially
dangerous, precedent for future trade agreements in the emerging region.
But instead of encouraging sustainable economic trends and responsible
transnational relations, the TPP could enact the same policies that have
been proven detrimental in past smaller-scale agreements like NAFTA.
The TPP rhetoric misrepresents the potential of free trade as it
encourages, through greater international regulations, such as those
seen in the intellectual property and investment chapters, the creation
of domestic policies to manipulate the international market. Often,
these actions strengthen the economically powerful, particularly by
granting to the leadership the right to set its own nation’s course of
action and implement its own visions, while those at the margins suffer.
Thus, the TPP presents a troubling case of free trade being purchased
at too great a price.
Let
us remember that after the United States, Canada and Mexico agreed to
become a single market as part of the North American Free Trade
Agreement, their exports to each other boomed. But here in the
Caribbean, the economies of America's much smaller neighbours reeled
from the impact of that success and found it almost impossible to
compete. From the apparel plants of Jamaica to the sugar-cane fields of
Trinidad, Nafta resulted in the loss of jobs, markets and income for
the vulnerable island nations of the region.
Nafta's
devastating effect on the Caribbean was widely fore-casted before the
treaty's passage in 1993 and Washington had suggested it would cushion
the blow by extending similar trade preferences to the island nations.
However, the Clinton Administration's proposals to give the Caribbean
''Nafta parity'' was twice foundered in Congress in election years. It
is then easy to see the troubles of the TPP which seems would come into
effect vrey close to the U.S. election season.
When
Nafta went into effect, the creation of new jobs in Jamaica stopped
altogether and overall unemployment rose to 16 percent from 9.5 percent,
according to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica. In Mexico it failed
to provide equitable stipulations for labor conditions, environmental
protection, or investment regulations. Laborers on both sides of the
border saw their collective bargaining powers diminish after NAFTA.
Critics of Nafta then, contended that NAFTA
should have been transformed from a “free” trade agreement to a “fair”
trade agreement through revisions that create jobs instead of destroying
them, protect workers, and create an environment that allowed citizens
to stay in their home country and earn a fair living wage.
So
it is no surprise then that critics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
agreement have noted that the deal has little to do with free trade.
Rather, the TPP is about limiting regulation, helping corporate
interests and imposes fiercer standards of intellectual property (to,
again, largely benefit corporate interests).
Noam Chomsky has decried
the TPP, he told HuffPost Live that the deal, which is not yet
finalized, is “designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to
maximize profit and domination, and to set the working people in the
world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase
insecurity.”
Chomsky
said it was “a joke” that the deal is designated a “free trade”
agreement. “It’s called free trade, but that’s just a joke,” Chomsky
said. “These are extreme, highly protectionist measures designed to
undermine freedom of trade. In fact, much of what’s leaked about the TPP
indicates that it’s not about trade at all, it’s about investor
rights.”
On
reviewing the leaked draft TPP chapter, intellectual property law
expert Dr. Matthew Rimmer called the deal, “a Christmas wish-list for
major corporations.”
This
so-called trade pact of the future covers far more than just trade,
with chapters addressing modern topics such as an extension of
investment past real property, intellectual property rights, and
environmental standards among others. There is no question that the
agreement would positively affect many signatory nations’ economies;
however, many of the proposed regulations pushed by the U.S. would
violate regional domestic laws while compromising national sovereignty.
As a Jamaican I am asking in
particular the Honourable Anthony Hylton, Jamaica's Minister of
Industry, Investment and Commerce, to be cognizant of the impact of the
TPP and its implications for International Law and our domestic laws. I
also ask that in any international bargaining that we be
put on a level playing field with other international players, and to
secure strong lobby and collective bargaining power to secure our owning
international commercial future! I ask that the Minister secure us
the opportunity not to be prevented from taking full advantage of the
International markets now and not when we begin reeling from the impact
of the TPP.
Friday, October 16, 2015
The Perm Culture Has Been Linked To Epidemic Of Fibroids in Black Women
The results of a new study in the American Journal of Epidemiology have some black women thinking about going “au natural” when it comes to their hair. A published paper from researchers at Boston ... from http://ift.tt/1LtRSAk in The Montegonian Montego Bay Jamaica - NEWS News and such out of…
from http://dlvr.it/CSfX6q in The Montegonian
Productions from Morant Bay to Montego Bay
Opening today are The Black That I Am (Fairfield Theatre, Montego Bay) and ... The vision the latter has for a new Jamaica is an important theme. from http://dlvr.it/CSQKS8 in The Montegonian Montego Bay Jamaica - NEWS News and such out of Montego Bay, Jamaica... from http://dlvr.it/CSQWck…… from……
from http://dlvr.it/CSfYYg in The Montegonian
Golden aged standard-bearers target Gordon House
Then there are Derrick Kellier, the member of parliament for St James South, and Dr Omar Davies, who has represented South St Andrew for the past ... from http://dlvr.it/CSRRhC in The Montegonian Montego Bay Jamaica - NEWS News and such out of Montego Bay, Jamaica... from… from…
from http://dlvr.it/CSfbrp in The Montegonian
Monday, October 12, 2015
US Ambassador Lauds Relationship Between JA and US
United States Ambassador to Jamaica, His Excellency, Luis Moreno ... Expo at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in St. James on Friday October 9.
from http://dlvr.it/CQp8xS in The Montegonian
Delta Evacuates Plane in Jamaica After Faulty Report of Fire
Nobody was injured in the afternoon incident at Sangster International Airport in the northern tourist city of Montego Bay. A Delta spokeswoman said ...
from http://dlvr.it/CQntkc in The Montegonian
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