We had been this way long before the advent of violent video games, as the lyrical content of our music changed to one that glorifies violence and civil disobedience so did the level of violence and civil disobedience. I remember as a boy hearing John Holt’s song“if yu continue to bun down de herb we gonna bun dung de cane fields” , even at that age I detected an ominous message in that song that I did not like, not looking to single out John Holt but the message was clear and there have been a whole slew of songs that have come and gone that have arguably added to the debate.
The message inherent in that song that rubs me the wrong way is the arrogance of the singer in suggesting that the actions the state takes, legal actions, by the way, would be countered with a criminal response, one that would cause harm to the larger public and the country as a whole. That made my blood boil, even as a boy.
Interestingly enough John Holt is at the top of the list of my favorite artists of all time.
Each year our police report over 1600 murders of Jamaican citizens, there are unmentionable rapes, shootings, home invasions, robberies, arson, and a plethora of other serious crimes that have literally wiped out any quality of life for middle-class Jamaicans. In fact, middle-class Jamaica exists no more, traditional middle-class neighborhoods like, Vineyard Town, Water House, Marl Road, Olympic Gardens have long been turned into war zones and actual zones of political exclusions.
Later, more traditional areas like Moreton Park, St Andrew Park, Duhaney Park, and once exclusive middle-class areas like Havendale has seen the rot and decay of zinc fence and squatters taking over their communities, and the obligatory crime that comes with the sprawl.
Having patrolled those areas as well as all of the other garrisons and enclaves in Jamaica, I am acutely aware of the pain of middle-class people who worked hard played by the rules and saw their standard of living deteriorate in front of their eyes. I can’t count how many homes I have been to in response to breaking calls, and home invasions where a family was held up at gunpoint and robbed and sometimes the woman raped, usually at the hands of men from as far as Arnett Gardens, Greenwich Farms and sometimes as far as Portmore.
I cannot recall how many scenes of murder I have attended as a member of the JCF where a man returning home was shot as he got out of his car to open his gate after a long day at work, usually at the hands at some punk who asked him for something but did not get it or felt he did not get enough.
Many business people have simply packed it in and moved away, not because they wanted to, but because it would be suicidal to stay, as a result, we have seen our country get from bad to worse, registering almost twenty years of negative growth.
In 1991 I exited the Police Department of my own free will, I had gotten a little tired of people asking me why I was in the police force, and asking if I was trained in Jamaica, my answer to these questions were always the same , I loved to serve, and yes I was trained in Jamaica, and there were many cops like myself who just wanted an opportunity to serve.
I now hear many talk about police officers acting like they are not getting paid for the job they do, some even go as far as suggest that jobs are hard to come by so they should be glad to have a job. I think if those smart asses knew the attrition rate of the Jamaica Constabulary Force they would shut their mouths.
Serving in the Constabulary in Jamaica is like military service, the risks are the same as that of active military in wartime. most police officers serve with distinction and trust me it is service, more in the form of servitude, considering the pay and working conditions, those who feel that it’s such a great job should encourage their kids to give service to country by serving in the military or police force, most Jamaicans however poor want their kids to be lawyers and doctors, nothing wrong with that, but who will look out for safety and security? Certainly not the rapacious unscrupulous lawyers!
There have always been those who agitate against police, that is their right, there are indeed too many instances where police officers have overstepped their bounds and acted in a way that is contrary to their training and the department’s protocols. This includes, but not confined to questionable shootings. the latter which cannot be looked at within the context of any other police department or any other country, except a country that has verifiable similar characteristics as our own.
There are those who point to the number of police killings in the context of its numerical content as if numbers is a determinant in how many people get shot by cops. What their numbers fail to point to on every occasion is the number of cops that get killed and injured annually. Those numbers are astronomically high when compared to any other police department in any other country, those numbers do not get into the data collected by the criminal rights groups operating in Jamaica and funded by outside entities.
The Honourable Dr. Carolyn Gomes OJ (born March 30, 1958 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a Jamaican human rights activist. Dr. Gomes is also the co-founder and current Executive Director of Jamaicans for Justice.[1][2]On December 10, 2008, Dr. Gomes received the prestigious United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.[3] On October 19 of the next year, she was honored with the Order of Jamaica, in recognition of her advocacy for human rights.
That did it for me under no circumstance would I recognize an awardee of either of the above-named entities.
The Daily Gleaner of August 27th detailed an account of two social climbing Mexican women pulled over by shorter dark-skinned Mexican police who generally come from the indigenous people. The women proceeded to berate the officers and went as far as slapping them for daring to pull them over, the ineffectual excuses for cops allowed them to drive away even though it was clear they had been drinking and posed a threat to the public, which was obvious to the people who called the police in the first instance.
Of note is the identical environment that exists in both Jamaica and Mexico, one of the castes, those above the law do as they please, the result, two countries with the highest murder rates in the world. Both competing for the dubious distinction of murder capital.
Just recently Vicente Fox former Mexican President suggested that the current President call a truce with the drug cartels. President Calderon has waged a systematic and sustained war against the cartels, and correctly so, there should be no discussions with terrorists and criminals, the Mexican state should hunt them down like dogs and destroy them wherever it finds them.
That conciliatory tone of Fox is the tone Jamaicans want to take with criminals, it’s no wonder Jamaica is mired in criminality, and Vicente Fox was ineffective as president of Mexico. This blog commends president Calderone for his principled stance against terrorists that would destroy his country.
This is the kind of Jamaica that Carolyn Gomes and her foreign handlers want. The European Union and the mother group British based Amnesty International funds Gomes and her agency JFJtheir job is to aggitate and sow discord , creating enmity between the people and their police department.
A country that has high crime and civil unrest cannot grow, check and mate. Our people are playing into the hands of the very same people who enslaved us. This time they are doing it under the guise of human rights, do you believe people in England care one hoot about how you live? ask yourselves why do they find it nescessary to give her all the funding she needs to destabilize our country? Why do they fund her so that she could quit her pediatric practice to do their bidding full time?
Carolyn Gomes has been at the forefront of criminals support in Jamaica, she has waged a systematic and concerted crusade against the security forces , eliciting and securing funding from various foreign groups to include the European union and others to supply them with data which she does , not caring about the veracity of the data .
Gomes’ vendetta is reported to come from a case where a relative got entangled with the law . Obviously Gomes feels she and her family are above Jamaican laws, and are entitled to royal treatment.
I have pointed to her deceit and lies in previous posts and once again ask, who is the puppet master behind Carolyn Gomes , a white woman, who continue to receive huge sums of money to wage a crusade against Jamaica’s security forces.
How much money is she being paid that she could give up her pediatric practice.
Does JFJ pay taxes on the monies it takes in from foreign bodies.
What information does she give to her masters in Washington and London?
Is JFJ in breach of Jamaican laws?
Why is Carolyn Gomes allowed to supply false information to foreign agencies and there is no investigation?
Is the Jamaican Government of both political gangs in league with Gomes in selling out Jamaica’s secrets and security details to foreign agencies and if so why?
What is the true reason she was awarded with the title Honorable and given an Order of Jamaica?
Those awards and titles now makes me nauseous , and is not worthy to be spat upon.
Recently a series of beheadings gripped the nation, included in the unfortunate list of victims were a pastor and her daughter, their crimes? speaking to the press, their severed heads were recovered from the Rio cobre river. This was followed by the gruesome killing of Norma-Lyn Hall, a senior lecturer at Brown’s Town Community College, and her husband Stephen Hall. of Discovery Bay.
Early reports suggest the couple was murdered in their home and their bodies dumped in a section of the community called lakeside park, the police reported that the couple’s sport utility vehicle was also missing from their home.
Despite the killing of these treasured Jamaicans the foreign controlled insurgency group Jamaicans for Justice and its reactionary leader Carolyn Gomes did not utter a word of condemnation to the killers of these positive Jamaicans, not one word of support to the families, nothing.
Yet true to form they were all over the news thanks to their friends at the Gleaner and other acquiescing media houses , calling for the swift trial and imprisonment of ex-cop Walter Spikes who was allegedly deported to Jamaica. Spikes was alleged to have fired the shot 8 years ago that killed a little girl Renee’ Lyons, Spikes was allegedly chasing a suspect at the time.
Why does Foreign handled Carolyn Gomes and JFJ not care about good decent Jamaicans that are killed by the hundreds annually , but are obsessed with cops who in the execution of their duties make mistakes?
Why did Officer Spikes and the other cops who decide not to face Jamaican courts flee, is there an inherent hostility in the Jamaican judiciary fuelled by outside groups that makes it impossible for cops to get a fair trial?
We know there is a serious problem with judges who act like they are part of defense teams, we know money is changing hands, between lawyers, accused, and judges. Does the public know that their security is being compromised because cops cannot do their jobs because there are forces that want Jamaica to fail and are actively working to keep the country beholden to agencies like the World bank, International monetary fund, and the European union?
Recently the European Union begged Agencies like Jamaicans for Justice to come get money to supposedly strengthen human rights, does anyone know anyone or any agency that gives money for free, without an agenda?
It is time for ordinay Jamaicans to accept that the Foreign group called Jamaicans for justice has nothing to do with Jamaica but is a spy agency for foreign interests . The sooner they wake up the better , or it will be too late . Your children’s future depends on it.
mike beckles:
have your say:
If Carolyn Gomes had a relative who had a run in with the law and that was the reason she ended up leading JFJ then indeed her motives are 100% suspicious. I don’t think it is likely though that she is actively conspiring with the EU to keep Jamaica lawless. Rather I think she is hoodwinking the EU. After all the EU is against drug trafficking. Even the Netherlands where one can legally buy marijuana would be against drug trafficking since that trade would represent competition. The rest of the EU countries don’t support drugs in any form. Indeed Britain was one of the partners in the formerly secret MOUs that allowed security organizations to wiretap suspected criminals and the British High Commission told the US Embassy that James Robertson was involved in criminal activity and now we have James Robertson’s visa being cancelled. However as the EU organization responsible for giving out funds to human rights organizations probably does not have any one in Jamaica to assess the veracity of Gomes’ claims to it, they probably just have to take her word at it for the kind of work she claims to be doing. I doubt very much that she would notify the EU agency responsible for her funding that she is selective in whom her organization gives support to nor would she dare tell them that she is against the police force in general. Indeed I remember past utterances where she gave lip service to the concept of a functioning police force. She probably repeats those utterances to those who fund her. However the trick though is that her “plans” for a functioning police force would result in anarchy; such as her plan for the entire police force to be disbanded and then replaced by a new (and smaller) police service. Given that we have one of the lowest police to civilian ratios in the region, if not the world it is little wonder that we have a high crime rate, but Gomes’ apparently thinks it is too high. I view that suggestion in the same vein as the Bruce Golding government’s idea to move the JDF out of Kingston entirely by selling off Up Park Camp (to their friends of course) and into St. Catherine. One can only imagine what would have happened had this move been carried out before the government was pressured into signing the extradition request for Dudus (who pleaded guilty by the way). We could well have experienced a criminal rampage in the city akin to what happened in Colombia and what happens in parts of Mexico with the JDF having to first fight their way into Kingston along a Mandela Highway that would obviously have been blocked. We might have seen far more days of violence that had actually occurred.
I also don’t blame the World Bank or IMF for our woes. After all the IMF and World Bank are in the business of giving loans. You can’t expect them to go against the very foundations of their organizations by telling Jamaica “no you should stop borrowing!”. Imagine any bank telling you that! And they also don’t need to conspire to keep Jamaica poor. We do that all by ourselves because we are addicted to borrowing. Note how the papers editorial cartoons (especially the cartoon in the government propaganda paper) lionize a certain finance minister for getting loans. As some columnists have said, ours must be one of the few countries where our finance ministers are generally applauded for increasing the national debt. Both parties have a borrowing mentality and if the IMF and World Bank were not around they would doubtlessly borrow from somebody else whenever they form the government.
We just need to stop borrowing and prioritize spending. There seems little point in spending money on roads the way we do since even some of of the JDIP funded roads now have uneven surfaces (the precursors to potholes) and very, very shallow channels in them and some non-JDIP funded road fixes have fallen into disrepair already. So just patch them as we used and spend all the extra money on education (it should be shameful to us that our university students are practically the only ones in the region which do not receive near total government subsidy and that while other countries’ poorest schools have whiteboards and black markers our poorest schools have teachers struggling just to buy white chalk for some really ancient blackboards) and security (double the size of the police force and revamp the academy).
[By the way I did as you said and contacted you Mr. Beckles using the “Contact Me” option at the top but I haven’t gotten any email]