I haven’t written a blog on any issue in Jamaica recently.Truthfully I am simply exasperated at times, at some of the things which occur and the responses of the leadership and the people to them.

The recent killing of a preg­nant woman and the shoot­ing of anoth­er in a sin­gle inci­dent involv­ing the Police, in Yallhas St. Thomas are trag­ic indeed, any loss of life is a tragedy and must be seen as such, news reports as usu­al, detail the sequence of events com­pre­hen­sive­ly from one per­spec­tive, that of so-called eye­wit­ness­es at the scene.

The deceased woman is nev­er going to be able to tell her sto­ry, so we will have to rely on the accounts of the offi­cer and the injured woman. As is to be expect­ed the Police Officer is guilty of a crime in the minds of every­one except maybe some of his colleagues.

I have pro­vid­ed a link for you , this was indeed a tragedy, how­ev­er:http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​2​0​9​0​4​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​6​.​h​tml

Gleaner pho­to:

As I have said in many blogs over the last 21 years since I left law enforce­ment, if we would just stop resist­ing arrest, stop fight­ing with police, even if we believe we are being arrest­ed unlaw­ful­ly we should nev­er fight an officer.

On the oth­er hand there must have been anoth­er way for the offi­cer to deal with the offend­er, and yes she was an offend­er, oth­er offi­cers stand­ing around should be fired in the pub­lic’s inter­est, they should have stepped in and com­plet­ed the arrest, help­ing the oth­er offi­cer which would have pre­vent­ed all of this from happening.

Jamaican Cops work under tremen­dous stress, they have no sup­port from the peo­ple, nei­ther do they have sup­port from Government, many of whose mem­bers are crim­i­nals themselves.

Based on the fact that the woman was in an advanced stage of preg­nan­cy and there are no reports of weapons, there can be no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the use of lethal force on the part of the officer.

This does not absolve any­one , includ­ing the deceased and her sis­ters from obey­ing the laws. All of the hue and cry may be legit­i­mate, how­ev­er the offi­cer was enforc­ing the law.

If we do not agree with a law or we believe that cer­tain laws have become obso­lete or archa­ic we must lob­by our polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives to have them removed. Fighting police Officers who enforce them are counter pro­duc­tive and down­right dangerous.

There are no legit­i­mate rea­sons for any­one fight­ing a police officer,much less being involved in a ker­fuf­fle which sees the offi­cer being thrown to the ground.

What was the tip­ping point which saw the offi­cer mak­ing that fate­ful deci­sion of life and death?

Having said that, the real tragedy here, at least from this van­tage point, is that the oth­er Officers did not inter­vene to effect this arrest, or to walk that woman away force­ful­ly so that she would not end up fight­ing an offi­cer which result­ed in her death.

As a peo­ple we are pre­dis­posed to attack­ing the mes­sen­ger, we spend a tremen­dous amount of time tear­ing down those among us who have diver­gent views from those we share or sup­port. We go out of our way to demean opin­ions we are not in agree­ment with rather than try to learn from them.

Also in the Jamaican news is a state­ment attrib­uted to Robert Mugabe President of Zimbabwe: In that arti­cle Mugabe is report­ed to have charged men in his coun­try to shun the influ­ence of Jamaican men as they are drunk­en, mar­i­jua­na smok­ers: quote:“Mugabe brand­ed Jamaica as “a coun­try of mar­i­jua­na smok­ers, where women are now tak­ing charge since men are always sloshed (drunk),” while also stat­ing, “In Jamaica, they have free­dom to smoke mban­je, varume vanog­a­ra vakad­hak­wa (men are always drunk) and uni­ver­si­ties are full of women…The men want to sing and do not go to col­leges vamwe vanob­va vamon­wa musoro (some are dread­locked). Let us not go there.“http://​www​.exam​in​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​r​e​g​g​a​e​-​a​r​t​i​s​t​e​s​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​i​a​n​s​-​i​r​k​e​d​-​b​y​-​m​u​g​a​b​e​-​s​-​s​t​a​t​e​m​ent

Examiner pho­to:

Whether we like what Mugabe said,yes or no, it serves no use­ful pur­pose to den­i­grate, or demo­nize him, it will be a dif­fi­cult case to make against mis­ter Mugabe any­way, Jamaica once bestowed a nation­al hon­or on him.

Two lessons here, be more care­ful who you give National Honors to , and rather than demo­nize mis­ter Mugabe, it behooves all Jamaican men to do some seri­ous intro­spec­tion, there are a lot of truths in his statements.

We don’t have to like the mes­sen­ger to appre­ci­ate the message.