“One of the things that they do in shaping that environment is that they enforce what we refer to as a code of silence, where citizens see crime and are afraid to report them, where citizens are unwilling to co-operate with law enforcement, and where citizens may actually turn against others who co-operate with law enforcement,” the police commissioner added.
It’s the extremities in the dancehall music being produced by some artistes that get to Police Commissioner Owen Ellington.
The lyrics, he insists, are being used to threaten witnesses, discourage co-operation with the police, and enforce a code of silence in communities held hostage by gangsters.
Just as bad, they are influencing behavior among children who, he said, will grow up believing that violence is normal.
“Gangs shape the environment for the continuous commission of criminal activity from which they make money,” Ellington argued at the Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange last week.
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