Porsha’s Sinister Pledge Should Be Taken Seriously.…

On the occa­sion that there was gun­fire at the JLP ral­ly in Sam Sharpe square Montego Bay I tried to direct atten­tion to the fact that the inci­dent high­light­ed the inep­ti­tude of the police above all else.
RALLY’S SHOOTING EXPOSES WEAKNESS IN ABILITY OF POLICE TO PROVIDE REAL SECURITY.
At the time of the arti­cle there was vis­cer­al push-back from many ex-police offi­cers who argued stri­dent­ly that the police can do lit­tle at polit­i­cal ral­lies. Those shock­ing com­ments remind­ed me large­ly of my very first day of police ser­vice at the Constant Spring CIB when I walked into a tai­lor shop on the Coptic build­ing at the cor­ner of Barbican and Grant’s Pen Roads and arrest­ed a man sit­ting in the shop with a revolver secret­ly tucked into his waistband.
I had no idea who he was at the time of the col­lar but imme­di­ate­ly I entered the estab­lish­ment I real­ized the man did not belong around that sewing machine.

Back at the CIB office all of the detec­tives were in an uproar that they were look­ing for the man “ChickenToe” for months.
Chicken Toe received 2 years hard labor in prison for ille­gal­ly hav­ing that weapon. I will nev­er for­get that my first arrest, on my first day at the CIB was for remov­ing an ille­gal weapon from the streets.
Chicken Toe came to see me imme­di­ate­ly after he was released from prison, he thanked me for not killing him and for treat­ing him fair­ly even though he had a weapon.
I learned then that in the Jamaican police con­text look­ing for some­one meant , look­ing for the sus­pect to drop from the sky.

I was not sur­prised at the response of my esteemed for­mer col­leagues when I crit­i­cized the police for not hav­ing a plan which would ade­quate­ly enforce the laws regard­less of the size of the crowds. In fact I seri­ous­ly doubt whether they had a plan on paper peri­od. The police plan is and has always been to sim­ply send some bodies.
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that any­one would argue that based on the enor­mi­ty of the crowd the police should only show up as win­dow dress­ing but not as a force to ensure that the nation’s laws are enforced and lives secured.
Despite my cha­grin this is exact­ly how Jamaican police offi­cers are being schooled.
Simply show up.
My argu­ments were strate­gi­cal­ly laid out on a point by point basis, not just hol­low words but detailed specifics on exact­ly how it could have been accomplished.
At the cen­ter of my con­tention was the fact that peo­ple could be shot with hun­dreds of police offi­cers at the scene and no one is apprehended.
It came as no sur­prise then that the PNP meet­ing could also expe­ri­ence a shoot­ing and no one is held accountable.

Without bela­bor­ing the obvi­ous I must also speak to the non­sen­si­cal notion that based on crowd size police are pow­er­less to do their jobs.
It is under­stood that after the shoot­ing at the meet­ing in which the Prime Minister was on scene there was a stam­pede, as a result sev­er­al per­sons includ­ing chil­dren were tram­pled and had to be hospitalized .
These are exact­ly the kinds of things which occur when large groups of peo­ple are lumped togeth­er. The more peo­ple there are the greater the pos­si­bil­i­ty some­thing will happen,(something neg­a­tive will jump off).
These are the very issues I speak to regard­ing the JCF . The Agency demon­stra­bly is unable to learn any­thing from events of the past.
It is out­ra­geous that in a mat­ter of days two shoot­ings could occur at events in which the heads of the two polit­i­cal par­ties were in atten­dance and no arrest has been made.
I won’t even both­er speak­ing to the stance demeanor and tac­tics of those charged specif­i­cal­ly with the polit­i­cal lead­ers protection.
Jamaica’s polit­i­cal lead­ers should be eter­nal­ly grate­ful that peo­ple will kill each oth­er over pol­i­tics but will not lift a fin­ger to harm them.

The idea that this lev­el of medi­oc­rity can be explained away with­in the con­text of crowd size may make sense to a group of secu­ri­ty guards but cer­tain­ly not to a police depart­ment wor­thy of respect.
The police depart­ment projects a sub­stan­tial amount of form and not much more. I make no apolo­gies for crit­i­ciz­ing a police force which has mur­der com­mit­ted in it’s pres­ence yet is unable to make an arrest.
Incredibly the Police force still con­tin­ue to oper­ate as a bunch of night-watch­men even as we are well into the 21^st century.

It is with­in the con­text of the inep­ti­tude of the police depart­ment and it’s inabil­i­ty to trans­form itself that the Prime Minister’s state­ments take on sin­is­ter resonance.
Speaking imme­di­ate­ly after the inci­dent the Prime Minister vowed to find out who was involved . Her inflamed rhetoric was the oppo­site of that of the Leader of the oppo­si­tion in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion at Sam Sharpe Square.
Even though the Prime Minister had no idea who was involved in the shoot­ing , she was inex­plic­a­bly able to say specif­i­cal­ly why the shooter/​s did what they did.
If the Police had no idea who did the shoot­ings which occurred while they were present, how exact­ly will they find out after the fact?
Which Means Portia will have to get her infor­ma­tion from the streets .
If and when she gets the infor­ma­tion as this writer is sure she will , what will she do with that information?
Will that infor­ma­tion be passed on to the inept police or will Porsha’s street his­to­ry dic­tate the final outcome?

UPDATE

Since this sto­ry broke a Dr, who treat­ed many of the injured who turned up at Hospital, stat­ed that none of the wounds of the injured were con­sis­tent with gunshot.
Regardless , there are con­firmed reports con­clu­sive­ly indi­cate that indeed shots were fired which pre­cip­i­tat­ed the stampede.
To date no one has been arrest­ed for fir­ing guns or any oth­er crimes asso­ci­at­ed with this event.