Hunts Bay Incident Evokes Feelings Of Deja Vu

Malachi Dowie, a 19-year-old man of 11 Olympic Way, Kingston 11, was fatal­ly shot by the police on the roof at the Hunts Bay Lock-Up, and one firearm was seized from him. The inci­dent occurred on Saturday Night at about 11:40 PM.
According to the Commanding Officer Senior Superintendent Kirk Ricketts, a man was seen on top of the lock push­ing con­tra­band in the lock-up. When con­front­ed by the police, he opened gun­fire at the police, who returned fire. A Glock 17 pis­tol was recov­ered. Ricketts also report­ed that one accom­plice was able to escape.

It is impos­si­ble to ana­lyze how the SSP knows how many men escaped, giv­en the inescapable tense sit­u­a­tion and that it occurred at night. Given the seri­ous­ness of the crime, I won’t go through the thoughts in my head as to why any­one could have escaped. Imagine for a minute that the intrud­er had man­aged to get weapons into the lock­ups and were suc­cess­ful in arm­ing the pris­on­ers. Given the lack of pre­pared­ness of the police, all of the pris­on­ers would have escaped; how many cops would have been killed?
If the police can­not mar­shal resources to appre­hend crim­i­nals on top of the sta­tion­house before they escape, how could they have pre­vent­ed an assault involv­ing freed, armed prisoners?
In the audio file below, SSP Ricketts out­lined what occurred with the oblig­a­tory police tak­ing the nec­es­sary action before defend­ing them­selves from peo­ple who would do them harm.
The Senior Superintendent may be right as to why the men were atop the sta­tion­house, but how can he be so assertive with­out due diligence?

To the aver­age observ­er, this is noth­ing new; some fools attempt­ed to breach secu­ri­ty at a police sta­tion, and one met his mak­er, end of sto­ry. To some­one who is not inclined to take things at face val­ue as is so cus­tom­ary from the police, this may be far more seri­ous than what was out­lined by the police.
The lead­er­ship of the JCF con­tin­ues to take things at face val­ue, neg­li­gent­ly refus­ing to pur­sue events to the last lead before issu­ing grand state­ments to the press. There is hard­ly any con­ti­nu­ity in the way they pur­sue inves­ti­ga­tions. Coming up with plau­si­ble, good-sound­ing state­ments to the press seems to take prece­dence over doing good inves­tiga­tive work and achiev­ing bet­ter outcomes.
Why am I not con­tent with the state­ment issued by the SSP?
Here’s why!!!!!

On November 20^th, 1986, a hor­rif­ic inci­dent occurred at the Olympic Gardens Police Station, a short dis­tance from the Hunts Bay Police Station and a part of the Saint Andrew South Police responsibility.
Here is how the New York Times report­ed the incident.
Six heav­i­ly armed men threw home­made gaso­line bombs at a police sta­tion in the cap­i­tal’s west­ern slums ear­ly today and shot three police offi­cers to death, the author­i­ties said. The attack occurred about 1 A.M. at the two-sto­ry police sta­tion in the Olympic Gardens neigh­bor­hood of Kingston. Police sources said the attack appeared to be ”more crim­i­nal than political.”
Witnesses said the attack­ers had been armed with M‑16 rifles and high-cal­iber weapons. They stole the slain offi­cers’ ser­vice revolvers and broke into the ammu­ni­tion lock­er, steal­ing a sub­ma­chine gun, two M‑16 rifles, and an unde­ter­mined amount of ammu­ni­tion, the police said.
Given the seri­ous assault that occurred 38 years ago, result­ing in the loss of mul­ti­ple offi­cer’s lives, would­n’t it be a good idea to fol­low every lead before issu­ing state­ments to the press?

Given a sce­nario in which SSP Ricketts’s assess­ment was cor­rect, and the men intend­ed to trans­fer weapons to oth­ers inside, what was the intent behind that trans­fer? How can the SSP be cer­tain that if the inci­dent were about trans­fer­ring non-lethal con­tra­band, lethal con­tra­band would not follow?
If crim­i­nals are caught trans­fer­ring con­tra­band into the cells, it is prob­a­bly safe to say they have suc­cess­ful­ly done so before.
If not, then the con­tra­band SSP Lewis noticed get­ting dis­cov­ered is allowed in by care­less or cor­rupt per­son­nel at the cells. Either way, it is anoth­er black eye for the JCF.
The killing of a sin­gle per­son in an inci­dent this seri­ous should not sig­nal the end of an inves­ti­ga­tion but the com­mence­ment of a wider, more com­pre­hen­sive inves­ti­ga­tion into exact­ly what is behind it.
I under­stand that the police have to do much with pre­cious lit­tle. The least of these are dilap­i­dat­ed build­ings and insuf­fi­cient tools to do their jobs. Nevertheless, these are dikes they [must] plug themselves..

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.