In The 60’s Jamaica Had The Rule Of Law:what Happened Since.……

I read the story of the oldest known ex-police officer in Jamaica twice his story is riveting and compelling. Despite the challenges of the job he is not bitter or angry 104-year-old Howell Burke, joined the police force on “January 7, 1939” my dearly departed Grandfather was a mere 28 years old at the time.

Mister Burke spoke about his faith. “Longevity wasn’t promised to me, it was a gift from God Himself, because He spared me from four instant deaths dur­ing my life,”.
He spoke dur­ing the inter­view about his feel­ings when Basil Robinson the very first black man was appoint­ed the com­mis­sion­er of police.
“It was the right move,” he said. “We had to have a com­mis­sion­er. As a mat­ter of fact, any­body could have become the com­mis­sion­er, because all we want­ed was a man with dig­ni­ty, a man who was strict to duty, devot­ed to his task and who had inter­est in the work and the inter­est of the men under him.”
One mem­ber of the police par­ty sit­ting in on the inter­view seek­ing to inject polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness chimed in …
“Men and women”.
“We nev­er had women in those days.” Mister Burke corrected.
Whoops , how about know­ing the his­to­ry of the orga­ni­za­tion before open­ing your mouth?

Mister Howell Burke lament­ed that even though he was asked to act in senior posi­tions he was not paid for the times he did. He also said that despite enter­ing the force with cre­den­tials of a teach­ing assis­tant he was not pro­mot­ed com­men­su­rate with those credentials.
He retired from the force at the rank of sergeant.
His com­ments high­light the issues which have plagued the police force arguably since it’s incep­tion and per­sists to this day.
As a for­mer mem­ber who quick­ly left once I real­ized the inner work­ings of the force and the mind­set of the coun­try toward the rule of law I am enthralled by the ser­vice of this vet­er­an and I wish to offer up my best wish­es to him and pray that if it’s God’s will he will have many more healthy years.

THE REAL ISSUE WHICH EMANATED FROM HOWELL BURKE’S INTERVIEW WITH THE OBSERVER

What I real­ly want­ed to relate to from mis­ter Burke’s sto­ry is the rev­e­la­tion that he was a mem­ber of the police par­ty which clashed with Rastafarians in Coral Gardens St James in April 1963.
Said, Mister Burke…
I was the first police­man on the scene and I always say I was the last man to leave, because it was after [Superintendent] Bertie Scott was shot and killed that it end­ed,” Burke said. “It was he who led us into bat­tle. But I can’t give it to you piece­meal like that.” We, the police­men, up to the time when we left the scene when Bertie was killed, no one could tell why such a thing hap­pened, why the attack on the Rastas took place,” 
“You see, we were defend­ing the police, the Government and the peo­ple of Jamaica, because when we went there, at the spot where Bertie was killed, one detec­tive was already hacked to death, Detective Melbourne; and two oth­er police­men were sup­posed to have been killed, but luck­i­ly one sur­vived. I can’t remem­ber the name of the oth­er one, but the one who sur­vived was Campbell, a young police­man. He was left on the way­side to die, because even when we were going up in the riv­er to look for the gang of men who were sup­posed to be in the hills, we passed him lying there with the oth­er man, and we gave him up as dead,”.

According to the Jamaica Observer the offi­cer ref­er­enced was Constable Errol Campbell who, at the time, was ren­dered per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled because of severe injuries to his head and was wheel­chair bound from that time.
Many Jamaicans are not ful­ly con­ver­sant of events which occurred in Coral Gardens in 1963.

The vio­lence in Coral Gardens was trig­gered by a land dis­pute the pre­vi­ous year involv­ing Rudolph Franklin, a Cornwall College grad­u­ate who had embraced the Rastafarian faith. He was report­ed­ly farm­ing ille­gal­ly on land in the Tryall area owned by the Kerr-Jarrett fam­i­ly. During an alter­ca­tion with a police offi­cer, he was alleged­ly shot five times and left for dead in a church­yard. Discovered by school­child­ren, Franklin was tak­en to hos­pi­tal where he was treat­ed but, on his release, was charged with pos­ses­sion of gan­ja. He was sen­tenced to six months in prison and, accord­ing to those who knew him, was an embit­tered per­son when released in ear­ly 1963. Further police harass­ment, they said, pushed him over the edge and sparked the Coral Gardens attack.

Three Rastafarians, three civil­ians and two police­men died at Coral Gardens. Among the dead was Rudolph Franklin, the mil­i­tant leader of the Rasta group that set the Ken Douglas Shell ser­vice sta­tion on fire, before killing the civil­ians, cor­po­ral Clifford Melbourne and Inspector Bertie Scott.
Franklin and two of his accom­plices, Lloyd Waldron and Noël Bowen, were killed at Coral Gardens. Two oth­ers, Carlton Bowen and Clinton Larman, were charged with mur­der and went on tri­al in July 1964. They were found guilty and sen­tenced to hang fol­low­ing a month-long tri­al presided over by Justice Ronald Small. Bowen and Larmond were hanged on December 2, 1964. (source jg).

Agents of the state were mur­dered in that event which was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the mil­i­tan­cy and ille­gal activ­i­ty of the then-bur­geon­ing Rastafarian move­ment on the Island. Their rhetoric and actions were seen as a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty and cor­rect­ly so.
The Island’s Prime Minister of the time the Rt Honorable Sir Alexander Bustamante ordered the Military and the police to deci­sive­ly put down the insur­rec­tion which they did.
Officer Howell Burke under­stand that at the time he and his col­leagues were defend­ing the Government and most impor­tant­ly our country.
Officer Howell Burke a cen­te­nar­i­an ful­ly under­stood the con­text in which he and his col­leagues were law­ful­ly and appro­pri­ate­ly ordered to restore order to a chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion in which mur­der and arson had already occurred.
The courts also ful­filled its law­ful oblig­a­tion under the law in the judg­ment it passed and the judg­ment of the courts was appro­pri­ate­ly executed.

Decades lat­er our coun­try has walked away from com­mon-sense law enforce­ment, sup­plant­i­ng the rule of law with ide­o­log­i­cal lib­er­al­ism which has its birth­place at the Mona cam­pus­es of the University of the West Indies.
Those attempts at social engi­neer­ing have result­ed in a cor­rupt and incom­pe­tent crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and a police depart­ment which is a tooth­less paper tiger.
The ensu­ing result is a coun­try in which crim­i­nal gang activ­i­ty is on the rise. The police esti­mate there are over three hun­dred crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing on the island of 2.7 mil­lion people.
Each year the Island expe­ri­ences over a thou­sand homi­cides with less than 7% of mur­der­ers con­vict­ed for their crimes.
Of the few who are sen­tenced the appeals courts usu­al­ly revis­it their sen­tences and either reduce the sen­tence of the low­er court or release the offend­er on some archa­ic technicality.

Last December, Public Defender Arlene Harrison Henry sent a report to Parliament, the result of an inves­ti­ga­tion into sev­er­al inci­dents, includ­ing the bloody Coral Gardens clash, for which she rec­om­mend­ed repa­ra­tions and that the Jamaican State apol­o­gizes to Rastafarians.
In any oth­er nation, a pub­lic offi­cial intend­ing to stick her nose into this issue would seek to send a report to the par­lia­ment ask­ing that there be recog­ni­tion of the offi­cers who gave their lives on that day.
Our coun­try has devolved into a mis­guid­ed crim­i­nal par­adise in which self-serv­ing indi­vid­u­al­ists rec­om­mends that Arsonists and cop killers be giv­en remu­ner­a­tions and an apology.