After The Celebrations Let’s Take Stock, What Have We Accomplished Really?

Hatred of law enforce­ment, lax laws- or no laws, extreme­ly short prison sen­tences, cor­rup­tion, judges doing what they please instead of fol­low­ing the already archa­ic and inef­fec­tive ones that exist, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of a dance­hall cul­ture, and stars who are vio­lent crim­i­nals, all have con­tributed to Jamaica’s con­tin­u­ing decay.
As a peo­ple, we can deck our­selves out in gold, green, and black all we want as we extoll our inde­pen­dence. Everyone except us knows that we are still teth­ered to the frock tails of her Majesty the Queen[sic], still func­tion as a beg­gar nation, and are con­strained from gov­ern­ing our­selves because of our depen­den­cy on oth­ers to sup­ply our basic needs.
Constrained from ful­ly gov­ern­ing our­selves to receive hand­outs, we sold our sov­er­eign­ty to inter­na­tion­al pow­ers, which dic­tate what we can and can­not do in our own country.
You can talk about how much we have achieved in the sports field. I am proud of our ath­letes; they are doing their part, but not for a moment am I dis­tract­ed from the real task at hand.
As a nation, are we doing our part out­side of bask­ing in the glo­ry and the lime­light of what our ath­letes accomplish?
This arti­cle will not get dis­cussed in main­stream media out­lets because the bite is too great; I don’t do the bark thing.
The nation’s lead­ers and the peo­ple who influ­ence pol­i­cy oper­ate with­in echo cham­bers and spin the same out­dat­ed ideas among them­selves. The result is a coun­try slid­ing ever so pre­cip­i­tous­ly close to becom­ing a failed state.
The major­i­ty of our peo­ple would glad­ly move to a for­eign coun­try if giv­en a chance, even the crim­i­nals who are liv­ing lav­ish lifestyles from their ill-got­ten gains. The brain drain that has occurred from the 70s has left Jamaica weak­er, less able to chart a course that would attract the kind of invest­ments to pro­pel the nation into first-world status.
So what exact­ly are we cel­e­brat­ing when even the inde­pen­dence we say we achieved is not inde­pen­dence at all, and in some mea­sure, there are moves afoot to extri­cate our­selves from our old colo­nial oppres­sors finally.
How could proud peo­ple who claim excep­tion­al­ism allow them­selves to con­tin­ue being teth­ered to the very same slave­mas­ters who mur­dered, raped, and sodom­ized our ancestors?
What am I missing?

How can an alleged gun­run­ner sup­ply­ing guns to the streets ille­gal­ly, con­vict­ed in anoth­er juris­dic­tion, be allowed to have a legal­ly issued firearm, yet the head of that author­i­ty still has a job?
Worse yet, where is the inde­pen­dent police inves­ti­ga­tion of that agency that has long been known to sell gun licens­es to every­one, includ­ing criminals?
Where are the inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions into the politi­cians from the two polit­i­cal par­ties named in the ille­gal prac­tice of sign­ing off on gun licens­es for criminals?
These are the things rea­son­able Jamaicans need to ask and not accept the talk­ing points the two polit­i­cal par­ties feed them while it is busi­ness as usual.
The aver­age cit­i­zen, how­ev­er, is far too con­sumed in polit­i­cal trib­al­ism to real­ize that it is up to them to put a stop to the nonsense.
And so, like a herd of sheep, they are herd­ed to the slaugh­ter­house by a sin­gle Mutt. Now ask your­selves what the Mutt will do if each Sheep decides it will not enter the slaughterhouse.
When you are social­ized into believ­ing that some­one else is more impor­tant than you are, that based on a job or title, the bear­er is some big man; or as they say, big­ger heads, you are doomed to con­tin­ue to accept the sec­ond class cit­i­zen­ship they dole out to you.

The nation’s court sys­tem is a mess; judges act as over­lords unac­count­able to any­one even though the peo­ple do not elect them. This new breed of UWI over­lords has made a mock­ery of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, abro­gat­ing estab­lished stan­dards to exact their own brand of lib­er­al jus­tice even against the archa­ic stan­dards that remain in place today.
Slaps on the wrist for vio­lent mur­der­ers, pos­ses­sion of an ille­gal weapon, no big deal, let me pray for you and send you home.
Rape accused are released from prison even as there is a tiny chance that there is ever a con­vic­tion in the jus­tice sys­tem that can­not even find the resources to try mur­der­ers, so it allows them to plead guilty and slices their already mea­ger sen­tence in half.
If you have mon­ey to pay the vul­tures who dou­ble as defense attor­neys but are actu­al­ly con­siglieres to their mur­der­ous clients, you may get your mur­der case deferred until they throw it out of court.
For that, you have Delroy Chuck to thank…
Take the rape case of Siccature Alcock, who goes by the stage name Jah Cure; this is a crim­i­nal scum that was con­vict­ed of rape and ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm in 1999.
Despite those two con­vic­tions, which are both seri­ous felonies, the crim­i­nal cod­dling judge gave him a sen­tence of 15 years which may sound rea­son­able to most observers. However, in Jamaica, the proof of the pud­ding is always in the eating.
There were repeat­ed calls from his crim­i­nal cohorts in the dance­hall indus­try, ampli­fied by the star-gaz­ing morons in what pass­es for media on the Island, “free jah cure, free the cure.’
By July 2007, after serv­ing less than 8 of the 15-year sen­tence, the prison doors were flung open, and the scum­bag rapist was back on the streets because the world could not do with­out anoth­er crim­i­nal reg­gae artiste extolling the name of “Jah” to the rhythms of murder-music.

Law enforce­ment sources con­firmed to me that despite the one rape con­vic­tion Siccature Alcock received, it was not his only rape. He had com­mit­ted more crimes of rape for which he was nev­er held accountable.
Whether this is true, we may nev­er know because it is high­ly unlike­ly that any victm/​s will come for­ward to sub­stan­ti­ate these alle­ga­tions in Jamaica, a place that wor­ships crim­i­nals and reg­gae artists; Siccature Alcock is both a con­vict­ed rapist and a reg­gae artiste.
And so they will remain just that unproven allegations.
Undeterred by that con­vic­tion and buoyed by the hype sur­round­ing his release from prison, he obvi­ous­ly believed that the crim­i­nal laws in oth­er coun­tries were like in the crim­i­nal par­adise of Jamaica.
In October of 2021, Siccature Alcock stabbed a show pro­mot­er in the abdomen in broad day­light in Amsterdam.
The charge was attempt­ed mur­der; I guess in the court’s mind, the charge was not sub­stan­ti­at­ed based on an absence of Malice afore­thought, expressed, or implied.
He was con­vict­ed of attempt­ed manslaugh­ter, a less­er charge. Decades after leav­ing law enforce­ment, I still dis­agree with the idea that mur­der or attempt­ed mur­der can­not be proven with evi­dence of malice.
I believe the very idea that one would use a knife to stab some­one or a gun to shoot anoth­er per­son is intend­ed to kill.
Jamaica can course cor­rect; there is still time, but the cor­rec­tion must be a grass­roots move­ment, and that will not hap­pen when the pop­u­la­tion is so deeply root­ed in the morass of par­ty polarization.
As long as Jamaicans con­tin­ue to con­sid­er them­selves Laborites and Kumreds and not indi­vid­u­als deserv­ing of a bet­ter life, they will con­tin­ue to oper­ate as robots and be treat­ed as the Republican par­ty, and Donald Trump treats une­d­u­cat­ed racist whites.

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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.