From Contributor:
Minister Joan Gumbs
You may respond to Minister Gumbs at ministergumbs@​howyalivinnow.​org or leave her a response in the com­ments sec­tion below.

I n what has become a pat­tern of Jamaican men killing their wives and some­times tak­ing their own, the lat­est news of a Detective Corporal who kills his wife for “tor­ment­ing” his life is par­tic­u­lar­ly unset­tling. Not only because of the strange­ness of the account, but also the insen­si­tiv­i­ty of the media and pun­dits for­ward­ing and replay­ing the hus­band’s con­fes­sion on social media. According to var­i­ous news sources, the offi­cer was hav­ing “issues” with his wife, and could­n’t tek it nuh more. But instead of walk­ing away, he chose to shoot her at their Tower Isle home in the parish of St. Mary. 

My grand­moth­er always said there are three sides to every sto­ry, and dead man tells no tales. So, Jennifer Hardy Lawrence is not around to tell her side of the sto­ry. how­ev­er, my take on the whole bizarre affair is not to place blame at the feet of this woman. She may not be inno­cent. She may have done all that the media is report­ing she has done (based on the hus­band’s social media con­fes­sion). But it sad­dens me to hear my own gen­der speak­ing ill of the dead – espe­cial­ly one of our own. “She had it com­ing” and “mi nuh sor­ry fi har,“are not appro­pri­ate respons­es to this inci­dent. In a male-dom­i­nat­ed soci­ety where news of behead­ing and female muti­la­tions are not uncom­mon, the last thing a woman needs is for her sis­ters to turn on her and defend her killer. The hus­band is not the vic­tim here – regard­less of what twist and turn the sto­ry takes. We don’t know what took place on that fate­ful Tuesday morn­ing because we weren’t there. Mrs Lawrence is not around to tell us, and we cer­tain­ly can­not take her hus­band’s account of events as gospel. What we do know is that Kirk Lawrence was a police offi­cer who has to work every day under extreme pres­sure in high-volatile com­mu­ni­ties. If the cor­po­ral kills his wife for tor­ment­ing his life, then we have to assume he, him­self, was under severe stress. 

PTSD is not a con­di­tion expe­ri­enced only by our sol­diers when they go to war. It is very real among our local police offi­cers. One would have to be in the sit­u­a­tion to tru­ly under­stand what it feels like to go into a com­mu­ni­ty where gun­men can hide out in the most inno­cent of places. You are going in blind. The “friend­lies”, i.e. the shop­keep­er, house­wife, youth on the cor­ner play­ing domi­noes, et al, can either be gun­men and women, or are enablers for these crim­i­nals. Let’s not fool our­selves. These mur­der­ers, rapists, rob­bers, et al have moth­ers, sis­ters, daugh­ters, wives, and girl­friends. And the truth is, many times the police have no idea who is whom. They see a per­son reach­ing into his or her pock­et, they don’t know if a gun or bub­blegum will emerge. Do you have any idea how stress­ful that can be? I don’t know if reg­u­lar men­tal check­ups are done for the men in red. But if not, it is time that we start doing as much for them as the men in green. 

Based on the voice note mes­sage he alleged­ly left behind, he did not plan to “face judg­ment” for his crime, sug­gest­ing a mur­der-sui­cide attempt. However, his col­leagues got to the house before he could make his chil­dren orphans, and he is now in cus­tody. In the USA and UK (from whom we adopt many poli­cies and pro­ce­dures) the police offi­cers under­go peri­od­ic psych eval­u­a­tions. After an inci­dent, they are relieved of their duties until they have been cleared by a psy­chi­a­trist. This needs to be imple­ment­ed in JA. There are too many accounts of killings by our police offi­cers, who have sworn to pro­tect our cit­i­zens, not kill them – even if they are mar­ried to them! Sincere prayers and con­do­lences to the bereaved of this woman, espe­cial­ly the chil­dren who will have to spend the rest of their lives deal­ing with the knowl­edge that their father killed their moth­er. This is a time to show sup­port, not play the blame game. HYLN? What is your take on this sto­ry? Do you believe the hus­band? Do you believe he could have walked away even if the wife was guilty of all the alle­ga­tions? What about the chil­dren? Let us know what you’re think­ing in the com­ments box below.

Early uncon­firmed reports indi­cate that the Man who video­taped the Sunday morn­ing inci­dent In May Pen Clarendon (a bar­ber) was just murdered. 

Other uncon­firmed reports have indi­cat­ed that the dece­dent is not the per­son claimed in the ini­tial report­ing. We await the offi­cial report from the police as to the iden­ti­ty of the deceased man.

More to come.

A WHOLE GENERATION HAVE COME OF AGE WHO HAVE NO RESPECT FOR THE RULE OF LAW, THEY WERE TOLD TO DISRESPECT POLICE OFFICERS, PASTORS EVEN THEIR TEACHERS.
SOME IN THE MEDIA EVEN ENCOURAGED THEM TO STONE POLICE STATIONS.

Long before for­mer Senior Superintendent of Police Reneto Adams famous­ly pre­dict­ed that Jamaica would pay dear­ly for the way it was act­ing toward the police, a baby doc­tor had got­ten her clutch­es into Jamaica’s law enforce­ment infra­struc­ture.
She man­aged to con­vince the rul­ing class that the way we police Jamaica was evil, too harsh on dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals and should be dis­card­ed.
Esprit de corps, that (band of broth­er­hood) which binds law enforce­ment into a fra­ter­nal order of love and car­ing for each oth­er, a fam­i­ly away from home where offi­cers depend on each oth­er when the going gets tough.
This is some­thing they do not teach at a pedi­atric school, but it was sold to the coun­try as a [veil of com­plic­i­ty to cov­er up wrongs]. It was derid­ed even though that baby doc­tor was nev­er a part of any mil­i­tary or para-mil­i­tary force and was total­ly igno­rant of what it means to those who serve.
The truth of the mat­ter is that Carolyn Gomez knew noth­ing about polic­ing, esprit de corps, or what it takes to police Jamaica’s unique envi­ron­ment any more than the police knew how to treat col­icky babies.
In fact, the most vocif­er­ous detrac­tors of the police in civ­il soci­ety have nev­er served in any­thing greater than them­selves.
They have giv­en noth­ing in ser­vice to the coun­try, yet they are the most opin­ion­at­ed and crit­i­cal of the police department.

There is no deny­ing that the police share some blame in the way they are treat­ed. By far too many of the men and women of the JCF have betrayed their oaths. Nevertheless, I do believe that what Bruce Golding did will for­ev­er be the water­shed, and a sem­i­nal moment in the his­to­ry of our coun­try.
But it was­n’t just Golding, Portia Simpson Miller and the PNP were all in on it. They all had a vest­ed inter­est in the pro­mul­ga­tion and pro­lif­er­a­tion of the Garrisons which are the foun­da­tions on which their polit­i­cal via­bil­i­ty are built.
The PNP’s rapa­cious desire to gain and keep polit­i­cal pow­er was rivaled only by Bruce Goldings desire to bring the police to heel and INDECOM was born.
Make no mis­take about it, every police agency should have over­sight. Police sim­ply can­not be left to police them­selves.
On the oth­er hand, the police are asked to do a job that is dis­sim­i­lar to every oth­er discipline.

Jamaica takes its cue from the west­ern pow­ers. Our sys­tem of gov­ern­ment is copied from the British Westminister mod­el.
Additionally, many of the nation’s laws do have some sim­i­lar­i­ty to laws in the United States.
In addi­tion to those sim­i­lar­i­ties, Jamaica is a sig­na­to­ry to sev­er­al west­ern world Treaties, thus ren­der­ing the way we do busi­ness not too dis­sim­i­lar as it relates to imple­ment­ing our laws.
As I have said before in oth­er Articles, the des­ig­na­tion of what con­sti­tutes a failed state by the west­ern pow­ers like the United States is the inabil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment of such states to give a cred­i­ble account­ing of its cit­i­zen­ry.
According to the Global Policy Forum:
Failed states can no longer per­form basic func­tions such as edu­ca­tion, secu­ri­ty, or gov­er­nance, usu­al­ly due to frac­tious vio­lence or extreme pover­ty. Within this pow­er vac­u­um, peo­ple fall vic­tim to com­pet­ing fac­tions and crime, and some­times the United Nations or neigh­bor­ing states inter­vene to pre­vent a human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter.
Jamaica is not yet a failed state, but intel­li­gent minds can clear­ly see that we are already deep into some of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of that definition.

Many of our prac­tices are def­er­en­tial to the American’s ways of doing things for bet­ter or for worse.
Ironically what the Jamaican lead­er­ship has con­ve­nient­ly for­got­ten or will­ful­ly left out of it’s pla­gia­riz­ing, is the con­cept known as [qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty]. 
“Qualified immu­ni­ty bal­ances two impor­tant inter­ests — the need to hold pub­lic offi­cials account­able when they exer­cise pow­er irre­spon­si­bly and the need to shield offi­cials from harass­ment, dis­trac­tion, and lia­bil­i­ty when they per­form their duties rea­son­ably.” Pearson v. Callahan.

In oth­er words, Jamaican police offi­cers are asked to risk their lives in a coun­try with one of the high­est kill rates in the world, a vio­lent and abu­sive soci­ety, a large­ly illit­er­ate pop­u­la­tion, poor remu­ner­a­tions, and hor­rif­ic work­ing con­di­tions and no real back­ing from the leg­is­la­ture.
It is with­in that envi­ron­ment that police offi­cers are asked to oper­ate.
Every day could mean death on the job, or God for­bid they chal­lenge a man with a gun, off to jail they go.
Which brings to mind the ques­tion for­mer Detective Chris Porter asks of young mem­bers still serv­ing “why are you still serv­ing in the JCF”?
The Jamaican Government has mort­gaged the secu­ri­ty of the coun­try for the elu­sive and Utopian con­cept of [Human-Rights].
The present com­mis­sion­er of Police, a police Commissioner who once head­ed the three thou­sand man defense force dreams of the day when all police offi­cers are human rights activists.

Unfortunately for every­day Jamaicans who do not own high-pow­ered weapons and large caches of ammu­ni­tion, the force that the com­mis­sion­er star­ry-eyed, dreams of hav­ing, will be of no use to the coun­try.
There can be no guar­an­tee of human rights where there is no peace. The most fun­da­men­tal right each and every per­son has is their God-giv­en right to life.
If the Jamaican state can­not guar­an­tee the cit­i­zens of the coun­try that they won’t be slaugh­tered just by leav­ing their homes, how can the gov­ern­ment guar­an­tee their oth­er rights?
It is that back­ward the­o­ry which won nation­al acclaim for Carolyn Gomez, a snake in the grass who wove her way into the body politic and dis­tort­ed the nation­al nar­ra­tive in a way that a black Jamaican, nev­er could.
This fraud was giv­en a nation­al hon­or, though she was lat­er dis­graced and is now gone from the spot­light.
What remains is the dam­age she was able to do to our coun­try. Make no mis­take about it, Jamaicans are liv­ing in Carolyn Gomez’s Jamaica.
Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell are derivates of Carolyn Gomez’s work. This is the Jamaica they cre­at­ed in which the pow­ers of the police are tak­en away, and the peo­ple like Sheep are con­vinced that they will be guar­an­teed inalien­able rights.
They nev­er both­ered to tell them that they would be dead right.
The Island’s polit­i­cal lead­ers have ced­ed the pow­er, author­i­ty, and remit of the state to for­eign-fund­ed so-called rights lob­bies, with agen­das anti­thet­i­cal to the well­be­ing of Jamaica. Jamaicans for jus­tice chief among them.
They knew full well that Gomez’s race would give her the lever­age to do what she was able to do.
Unfortunately, for the peo­ple and even the brain-dead politi­cians, they are yet to fig­ure out that Gomes was a plant, specif­i­cal­ly placed there as part of a strat­e­gy to keep Jamaica sub­ju­gat­ed and behold­en to for­eign inter­ests
Demonize the police and cre­ate an envi­ron­ment in which there is no rule of law and con­di­tions are ripe for chaos. There can be no real growth and pros­per­i­ty in a crime-rid­den coun­try. Jamaica is a crime-rid­den coun­try which will con­tin­ue to depend on International Lending insti­tu­tions.
Checkmate.
Gomes would still be there doing dam­age had she not com­mit­ted the car­di­nal sin of intro­duc­ing wards of the state to homo­sex­u­al mate­r­i­al.
They for­got that Jamaicans do not like homosexuality!

Police cor­po­ral Kirk Lawrence report­ed­ly killed his wife this morn­ing at their mat­ri­mo­ni­al home sit­u­at­ed at 34 Jamaica Beach ‚Tower Isle Saint Mary.
Early reports indi­cate that the offi­cer and his wife were engaged in an argu­ment when gun­shots were heard com­ing from the res­i­dence.
The Prospect Police were alert­ed, on the arrival of the police, it is alleged that Corporal Lawrence was seen at the entrance to the residence.

Upon check­ing inside the res­i­dence, the body of Mrs. Lawrence was found with gun­shot wounds.
A voice note attrib­uted to the offi­cer is already in cir­cu­la­tion on social media, in it, a man can be heard giv­ing a rea­son for killing his wife.

This report­ing is still devel­op­ing and have been updat­ed as more infor­ma­tion becomes available.

By now most Jamaicans would have heard about the mil­i­tary-style assault heav­i­ly armed crim­i­nals car­ried out in May Pen Clarendon.
According to ear­ly report­ing, heav­i­ly armed gun­men on a rob­bery spree at around 9:15 am Sunday morn­ing shot and injured two police offi­cers.
Injured is Sergeant David Craddock and Constable Chase Carnegie. Both offi­cers were alleged­ly shot when they encoun­tered the armed mili­tia who were trav­el­ing in two motor­cars.
Early report­ing indi­cates that con­sta­ble Carnegie was shot in the face and right shoul­der, and the Sergeant who was on foot was shot twice in the abdomen and buttocks. 

Some account­ing by wit­ness­es to the hell this morn­ing revealed that the men entered a Chinese Establishment and ordered every­one to lie face down on the floor ‚they then they demand­ed mon­ey from the oper­a­tors of the estab­lish­ment.
The wit­ness­es attest­ed that while some of the men were inside try­ing to find the mon­ey, their cronies were out­side lay­ing down a bar­rage of cov­er­ing fire at the two police offices. It is any­one’s guess whether it was that sheet of gun­fire that almost took the lives of the two offi­cers.
One of the most fright­en­ing things said by one eye­wit­ness was that the gun­men were not pan­icked or seemed in any hur­ry.
After lay­ing down fire for about 15 min­utes the eye­wit­ness who said he was lay­ing on the floor with oth­er patrons of the super­mar­ket, tells of one gun­man com­ing back into the super­mar­ket and demand­ing more mag­a­zines from his com­pa­tri­ots. After receiv­ing the extra clip he sim­ply went back to lay­ing down fire accord­ing to the eyewitness.

Whether this group of guys was 5 or 10 is imma­te­r­i­al. The fact of the mat­ter is that they were heav­i­ly armed and accord­ing to that eye­wit­ness they were in no hur­ry. The fact that they were in the mid­dle of May Pen Town and there is a Police Station right there in Town, and they did not see the need to wor­ry about the police should be rea­son enough for the police high com­mand and the Political Directorate to wake the fuck up, but not until a group of these mon­sters vis­it a mem­ber of the Government or Political Opposition and exter­mi­nate their whole fam­i­ly will change come.
ZOSO’s and SOE’s are designed to keep the mur­der count down with­out fix­ing the prob­lem. Elections have to be won on both sides, so the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of law-abid­ing Jamaicans take a back seat to polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy.
Funding has to be had and visas have to be secured, and so no one wants to upset the Americans by enforc­ing the laws and deal­ing with the ter­ror­ists as one friend lamented.

Well, the Americans can fuck off with their fund­ing for all I care. They ensure that no one defies their laws. Their police kill whether assailants have guns or not. Why then would we keep our hands out to a pow­er which secures it’s own, yet tells us we can­not because we are beg­gars?
INDECOM is par­tial­ly fund­ed by out­side ele­ments and I have repeat­ed­ly asked the Government to tell the JAMAICAN peo­ple why those sources are fund­ing INDECOM and not the rule of law?

Under this Administration, the crime strat­e­gy is to put the bod­ies of police and sol­diers between the Militias and their intend­ed tar­gets with a view to sup­press­ing the kill rate.
Through the use of ZOSO’ s and SOE’s the gov­ern­men­t’s hope is to sup­press the mur­der sta­tis­tic with­out actu­al­ly going after the mur­der­ers and killing them or putting them in jail where they belong.
This strat­e­gy is tan­ta­mount to spray­ing a flow­ery per­fumed air fresh­en­er over shit and expect­ing the odor to go away.
But in fact the stench nev­er goes away, it now becomes shit with an arti­fi­cial flow­ery odor.
What the Government is doing is pol­i­tics [101], much the same way that the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion rec­og­nizes what’s hap­pen­ing and is reluc­tant to sup­port the ZOSO’s and SOE’s, but with the same polit­i­cal cal­cu­lus in mind.

At the same time, the min­ions who sup­port the two polit­i­cal par­ties are all over social media giv­ing sup­port to this non­sense and mak­ing excus­es for this affront of an admin­is­tra­tion.
How do we change this par­a­digm when the peo­ple them­selves are so heav­i­ly invest­ed in pol­i­tics to their own detri­ment?
This Administration, like the one before, has not done a damn thing after the débâ­cle that Bruce Golding cre­at­ed by giv­ing the nation the INDECOM Act.
The Opposition PNP is no friend of the rule of law, they have more polit­i­cal gar­risons than the gov­ern­ing JLP. Their polit­i­cal strat­e­gy is root­ed in the igno­rance of the peo­ple and their con­tin­ued depen­dence on state handouts.

The Andrew Holness Government through his jus­tice Minister Delroy Chuck and National Security Minister Horace Chang have tak­en a scalpel to the nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus of the coun­try under the guise of mod­ern­iz­ing it.
Chuck is work­ing assid­u­ous­ly to toss mur­der cas­es from court Dockets, on the one hand, there­by remov­ing the like­li­hood of mur­der­ers fac­ing jus­tice for their crimes and on the oth­er, fight­ing to have the records of those vio­lent mur­der­ers expunged.
No coun­try expunges the records of vio­lent offend­ers, much less those who have tak­en the lives of others.

While Delroy Chuck is tak­ing a scalpel on the one end, Horace Chang is using a cud­gel on the oth­er by lit­er­al­ly debon­ing the JCF ren­der­ing it total­ly use­less.
How so, you ask?
By dis­man­tling the Mobile Reserve which has been the ver­i­ta­ble back­bone of the nation’s secu­ri­ty for decades.
Make no mis­take about it, regard­less of the intent of the Andrew Holness régime, this will have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the coun­try.
For those pay­ing atten­tion, it is already pay­ing div­i­dends, the heav­i­ly armed mili­tias on the Island are high­ly intel­li­gent and they are way ahead of the game.
What this admin­is­tra­tion has done, as has the one before it, is to embark on a cam­paign against the police which is hav­ing dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the coun­try.
Even as I strug­gle to be fair to Holness and his Government, I believe his admin­is­tra­tion is on par with that of PJ Patterson’s as the worst in our nation’s his­to­ry as it relates to the rule of law.

Here is a word of cau­tion to the Prime Minister, lis­ten to me real good. If you believe that you and your cab­i­net are insu­lat­ed and immune to the vio­lence that reg­u­lar Jamaicans are exposed to you are kid­ding your­self.
The only rea­son that they haven’t come for you is that they do not want you.
Yet.….….…..
If they decide that they want you they will come for you and no amount of those poor­ly trained and sup­port­ed police and sol­diers that you have around you will save you.

Real lead­ers lead from in front, they do not watch polls and make deci­sions based on the next elec­tion.
The events of 2010 were warn­ing enough, but as Robert Nesta Marley said quote’, “with the abun­dance of wata di fool ded fi thirst”.
The nation needs to know why this gov­ern­ment has refused to unleash the police on the mur­der­ers and dan­ger­ous mili­tias which are embold­ened and killing at will?
What kind of strat­e­gy it is which tar­gets the police and gives a thumbs up to crim­i­nals?
Is this admin­is­tra­tion act­ing in the best inter­est of the coun­try?
This admin­is­tra­tion must explain to the nation why it hates the police and what it intends to do about the rov­ing mili­tias across the coun­try.
In the mean­time, these two offi­cers may well die, pay­ing the ulti­mate price, while their lead­ers pan­der to the crim­i­nals and their lob­by, instead of sup­port­ing the rule of law.

There is a large num­ber of mer­ci­less killers walk­ing around on the streets of Jamaica. For all intents and pur­pos­es, they are no longer wor­ried about the police.
Technically speak­ing, this Administration has all but neutered the police. In one of the most shame­ful and dis­re­spect­ful dis­plays ever, as it relates to a Governing body and one of its Agencies, this admin­is­tra­tion all but made it clear it did not like the police.
I sin­cere­ly doubt whether that lev­el of dis­re­spect could fly any­where in the world except Jamaica with­out a shut­down of the coun­try and a mas­sive exo­dus from the ser­vice.
Unfortunately, before the Prime Minister and his cabal decid­ed to be out­right dis­dain­ful of the police through their words and deeds (a‑la, glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guards), they knew full well that the police would do noth­ing, no mat­ter the dis­re­spect met­ed out to them.

The nation’s police ser­vice is the insti­tu­tion which has the respon­si­bil­i­ty to enforce the laws. The Military is for war. The idea that mem­bers of the Military are dis­ci­plined and there­fore bet­ter suit­ed to do polic­ing is the epit­o­me’ of igno­rance.
And so it fol­lows there­fore that the very ratio­nale for the Militarization of the pub­lic ser­vice is an endeav­or built on a far­ci­cal premise.
The notion that some­how, Jamaica’s mil­i­tary is more dis­ci­plined than the cops plain­ly choos­es to ignore a few real­ly impor­tant facts.
(1) Soldiers (pre­vi­ous­ly) had far few­er inter­ac­tions with mem­bers of the pub­lic as police offi­cers do.
(2) Disciplinary issues between the mem­bers of the Military are han­dled inter­nal­ly.
(3) There are (4) four times as many cops as there are sol­diers, so com­plaints against the police are going to be expo­nen­tial­ly high­er based on those num­bers alone.
(4) Most sol­diers live(d) in under­served com­mu­ni­ties with the crim­i­nals, and are not seen as a threat to their activ­i­ties.
(5) Many sol­diers are active­ly engaged in the crim­i­nal con­duct that civil­ian crim­i­nals are engaged in.
(6) Police offi­cers pre­vi­ous­ly were reluc­tant to arrest mem­bers of the JDF even when they were caught break­ing the laws.
(7) Even when caught, they were gen­er­al­ly turned over to the JDF and things are kept under wraps.
(8) Jamaica is a law­less coun­try deemed to be 84% cor­rupt, cops are not ever going to be pop­u­lar in a coun­try with that degree of cor­rup­tion.
(9) Taken whol­ly, with oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics, it is under­stand­able that they would have more street creds than the cops.

But the issue is not real­ly about street cred, who is more respect­ed or even who is feared. This is about how the Holness Administration has sum­mar­i­ly decid­ed to mil­i­ta­rize the Island’s pub­lic ser­vices and open­ly humil­i­at­ing and dis­re­spect­ing career police offi­cers.
This has drawn strong con­dem­na­tion from cer­tain sec­tions of the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion. One overzeal­ous per­son likened the Prime Minister to Adolph Hitler, a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion I am sure she regrets, but prob­a­bly lacks the char­ac­ter and humil­i­ty to with­draw, and issue a full-throat­ed apol­o­gy.
Some peo­ple are harsh­ly crit­i­cal of my views on this sub­ject of the Prime, even though my views on the Jamaican Prime Minister are far less caus­tic than those of Crystal Tomlinson of the PNPYO.
Not all of the crit­i­cisms of me as it relates to the Prime Minister come from par­ti­san Laborites. So it would be fool­ish of me to sim­ply brush aside those con­cerns and crit­i­cisms with­out address­ing them head-on.
The Pm is doing a pret­ty good job on the econ­o­my, not so good on the cor­rup­tion front.
That does not mean that he him­self is involved in malfea­sance. Nevertheless, he promised in his inau­gu­ra­tion speech, that there would be zero tol­er­ance for cor­rup­tion in his admin­is­tra­tion. His promis­es have not kept pace with real­i­ty.
As some­one who sup­port­ed his can­di­da­cy, no one is more dis­ap­point­ed at the approach Andrew Holness brought to the Prime Minister’s office on the issue of crime.
Holness’ tone and tenor toward the police and the rule of law have been dis­mis­sive and down­right dis­re­spect­ful. His world-view could only have been shaped at the nation’s largest Institution of high­er learn­ing, a smol­der­ing caul­dron of social­ist antipa­thy toward Conservative val­ues and the rule of law.
So even though Andrew Holness now heads the par­ty of the late greats, Sir Alexander Bustamante’, Sir Donald Burns Sangster, the Honorable Hugh Lawson Shearer, and even Edward Phillip George Seaga, He is a [car­bon cut-out of Bruce Golding], rather than a con­tin­u­a­tion of the Labor Party greats on the rule of law.
Andrew Holness has some ideas of the Labor Party’s past Conservative val­ues, the last of which was evi­dent under Edward Seaga, but he lacks the fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of what it takes to ful­ly acti­vate those val­ues for the bet­ter­ment of the coun­try and a last­ing peri­od of pros­per­i­ty for the Jamaican people.

Simply put, when it comes to deal­ing with crime, Andrew Holness is a light­weight and an abysmal fail­ure like the PNP Prime Ministers before who walked the very same cor­ri­dors the late (Wilmott Perkins labeled the Intellectual ghet­to).
” We will all soon be dead, unless some­one final­ly ensures that those who kill buck upon some­thing that says no more” a local School Principal laments the death of one of his stu­dents, killed and dumped in bush­es like a piece of garbage.
Instead of fight­ing the mur­der­ers in Jamaica Holness has decid­ed he wants to fight the police.
He start­ed off by spread­ing the nar­ra­tive that if we want to fix crime we must first fix the police.
Then they empow­er antag­o­nist INDECOM’s boss the hyper-par­ti­san Terrence Williams to per­se­cute. This start­ed a both-ends leak in the JCF. (1) they can no longer meet recruit­ment tar­gets, and (2) peo­ple are rac­ing to the exits to find green­er pas­tures in the CARICOM region and beyond.
There is not much they can do to force peo­ple into the JCF but they have darn sure tried to stop them from leav­ing by cre­at­ing new uncon­sti­tu­tion­al poli­cies which crim­i­nal­ize cops who leave with­out giv­ing (6) months advance notice that they intend to leave.
Not only are the bet­ter peo­ple not will­ing to stick around for the non­sense, but they are also now attract­ing can­di­dates who are crim­i­nals.
So the idea of fix­ing the force becomes an abstrac­tion and so they can blame the crime epi­dem­ic on the police. Checkmate .… right?

None of this was nec­es­sary, what was required was a respect­ful approach, begin­ning with pay­ing the offi­cers a liv­ing wage. Creating reten­tive strate­gies which incen­tivize edu­ca­tion, val­or, ser­vice, hon­est and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.
By cre­at­ing a mer­it-based sys­tem which rewards good work and the right atti­tude you begin the process of weed­ing out the dead­wood. Right away you plug the attri­tion dike on the back end, while on the front end hav­ing to hold the gate from assault as the best qual­i­fied, most suit­able can­di­dates would be beat­ing down the doors to enter.
The approach tak­en by this admin­is­tra­tion has increased the chal­lenges to the police, cre­at­ed more law­less­ness and ulti­mate­ly increased crime.
No amount of SOE’s and ZOSO’s can cure this for the gov­ern­ment.
This wrong-head­ed approach influ­enced by Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) and the long line of anti-police hate groups roam­ing around on the Island, [some paid with tax­pay­ers funds] will con­tin­ue to increase mur­ders and oth­er vio­lent crimes.
The crim­i­nal under­world is watch­ing and they are lov­ing what is hap­pen­ing, the police no longer present a cred­i­ble threat to their oper­a­tions.
The Government may just come out and say it sup­ports the crim­i­nals because whether it knows it or not it does.

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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.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) has long lamented the shortage or absence of resources to get the job done effectively.

Police Station ‚Constant Spring:

Recently the Force announced it was oper­at­ing with 50% of the resources it needs to get the job done. Having served in the JCF I under­stand the seri­ous­ness of not hav­ing even the most basic resource to do the job.
On the oth­er hand, I was also a wit­ness to the JCF’s lack of man­age­ment, which result­ed in excep­tion­al waste and dupli­ca­tion of efforts, fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the resource issue.
These waste gen­er­al­ly are clear, first in the qual­i­ty of a por­tion of the Force, there have always been too many offi­cers who should find alter­na­tive employ­ment. This is attrib­ut­able to their lazi­ness, lack of focus, lack of integri­ty, lack of love for the job, lack of com­mit­ment to the cause. There are legit­i­mate argu­ments to be made for a lack of com­mit­ment. I would sim­ply argue that though those argu­ments are legit­i­mate, they are not rea­son enough to be a slack­er. Those opposed to work­ing for the wages, or are offend­ed by oth­er sit­u­a­tions are free to leave.
Then there is the treat­ment of the vehi­cles, which gen­er­al­ly are not suit­ed to Jamaica’s ter­rain, no fault of the Police and sec­ond­ly the round the clock oper­a­tion of the vehi­cles, again this is not some­thing that should rea­son­ably be pinned on the depart­ment, it is attrib­ut­able to the shortage.

The way patrols are done is inef­fec­tive and counter-pro­duc­tive even. This needs a com­plete reassess­ment. On the gen­er­al issue of waste, the same argu­ments may be made about many busi­ness­es and agen­cies in Jamaica and oth­er coun­tries. Jamaica sim­ply can­not afford it. When both sides of the resource issue are con­sid­ered, the truth lies some­where in between the two sides, with a lean­ing toward not near­ly enough of any­thing to do the job. With that said the true test of any man­ag­er or man­age­ment com­pa­ny, is to do the best job pos­si­ble with lim­it­ed resources.

In the American civ­il war between North and South, Union General, Westmoreland com­plained to President Abraham Lincoln about not hav­ing enough Troops to attack the Confederate South, Lincoln replaced Westmoreland with General Ulysses S Grant. We all know that Grant won the war sav­ing and cement­ing the Union and the United States as we know it today. My point is that Jamaica is a poor devel­op­ing coun­try, many peo­ple will chal­lenge me even on the notion of Jamaica being a devel­op­ing coun­try. There will nev­er be enough resource to go around. Neither polit­i­cal par­ty is par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of the rule of law, in fact, some of the peo­ple at the high­est lev­el of Government/​Opposition are crim­i­nals, or at a bare min­i­mum, main­tain crim­i­nal con­tact. They do not want a pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­tent and inde­pen­dent police department. 

Late 1987 I was tem­po­ral­ly trans­ferred to Constant Spring along with three oth­er men, Allen Gauntlet, Keith Skully and O Marston oth­er­wise called (Fat-Ball), Marston was some­what port­ly, hence the moniker. None of us was full trans­ferred in Force Orders from The Mobile Reserve where we were offi­cial­ly sta­tioned, we were sim­ply sent to fill the vac­uüm which was left from the trans­fer of then Detective Sargent Cornwall (big­ga) Ford, a leg­end, who had just been trans­ferred to the Flying Squad, based at the Kingston Central Police compound.

For the record, nev­er let any­one tell you that name brand-cops do noth­ing to bend the crime curve south. Determined crim­i­nals have esca­lat­ed crime, deter­mined cops bend the curve south. 

Throughout our coun­try’s his­to­ry, there have been noto­ri­ous­ly dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals, these men have large­ly gained their noto­ri­ety, through dif­fer­ent means, bru­tal­i­ty, cal­lous­ness, aid­ed and abet­ted by sym­pa­thet­ic mem­bers of the pub­lic, Politics, cor­rupt-cops, the ter­rain of our coun­try, and oth­er means. Conversely we have pro­duced deter­mined cops who knew how to remove crim­i­nals from the streets, Cops like Keith (trin­i­ty) Gardener, Joe Williams, Anthony Hewitt, Altimoth (par­ra) Campbell, Isiah Laing, are some of the more rec­og­niz­able names, of course there are men, and yes Women, Like Hortense Brown, who in many cas­es were just as effec­tive, Dick Hibbert, Ruddy Dwyer, Benjamin, O C Hare, and a long line of valiant sol­diers of urban polic­ing who under­stood our coun­try’s ter­ror­ists and how to deal with them. 

The men and women whom I did not men­tion need not doubt their con­tri­bu­tion to our coun­try’s sta­bil­i­ty, you know your­selves, the point was about the most cel­e­brat­ed, the most well known. I nev­er wore , nei­ther did I ever see a bul­let-proof vest dur­ing my decade of ser­vice from 1982 to 1992, we did not have com­put­ers, we did not even have type-writ­ers, at the Constant Spring CIB which serves some of the most depressed com­mu­ni­ties and some of the most upscale, we did not have a type­writer. I sug­gest­ed to detec­tive Sergeant McInnis that we use col­ored pins and a map of our geo­graph­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty to assist us. Different col­or pins rep­re­sent­ed dif­fer­ent types of crimes. Red for mur­der, blue for rapes, green for break-ins, yel­low for shoot­ings and so on. This very sim­ple, unso­phis­ti­cat­ed method, allowed us to see, in real terms, what type of crimes were being com­mit­ted where. Complainants sup­plied us with the when, it made it eas­i­er for us to find the who. I sought and gained per­mis­sion to approach inter­est­ed par­ties oper­at­ing in our precinct, and asked for old dis­card­ed type-writ­ers. Business-peo­ple were more than hap­py to give us usable type-writ­ers and desks, this made the demand from the kha­ki-clad clowns for a tor­rent of paper-work more pos­si­ble. At the time I was at the CIB office, they demand­ed 5 copies of all crimes com­mit­ted in the Parish of St. Thomas, St. Catherine and St. Andrew North, which con­sti­tut­ed Police Area 5. 

It gen­er­al­ly took hours to record the crimes from St Catherine, a sin­gle detec­tive work­ing the office on any giv­en night would start writ­ing as soon as he entered the office at 8: pm some­times he would still be writ­ing at 9: am when the morn­ing shift arrived and some­times, long after. All of those crimes in detail had to be record­ed by hand and dupli­cat­ed 5 times. I came up with the nov­el idea of car­bon paper, they put the brakes on that com­plain­ing that car­bon cre­at­ed smudges, which ren­dered the doc­u­ment illeg­i­ble, so it was back to writ­ing and writ­ing and writ­ing. One copy for the Commissioner’s Office, one for the Divisional Officer, one for the Area Officer, one for the crime chief. one for the Divisional Detective Inspector. A colos­sal waste of paper and man­pow­er to large­ly sat­is­fy the egos of lazy pompous over­weight dead-woods.

My point in all of this is this. The Commissioner will nev­er have all the resources he needs, what he does have is the infi­nite resource called the brain. Commissioner Ellington must devel­op strate­gies in con­junc­tion with capa­ble offi­cers at his dis­pos­al, to stop the scourge of crime. That will not get done with most of the kha­ki-clad crew he has, most should be retired to save tax-pay­ers mon­ey. Pushing paper, or sit­ting behind a desk is not polic­ing. Most of these peo­ple, some I served with, are more con­cerned with the way a piece of fools-cap paper is fold­ed, so they may write non­sense on it, than how to remove crim­i­nals from the streets. In fact, many of them nev­er arrest­ed any­one, nev­er been to court, but they are career cops, and don’t ever let them hear an explo­sion, Usain Bolt would have to seri­ous­ly strug­gle to keep his world record. No won­der the coun­try is inun­dat­ed with crime, the kha­ki-clad clowns are more cor­rupt, more cor­rod­ed by pol­i­tics than the young men. Money is the only thing which flows upstream.I would be hap­py to sup­ply the Commissioner with a detailed plan, out­lin­ing how to reduce crime by 20 to 30% in the first year. By the time the sec­ond year comes around, crime will begin to take a seri­ous trend downwards. 

In no oth­er coun­try would the right of any­one super­sede the rights of inno­cent minor chil­dren.
Except in Jamaica where a Rastafarian wannabe star’s lies, and assaults the police, destroys pub­lic prop­er­ty yet his posi­tion is sup­port­ed by many in the pub­lic sphere.
In this cesspool of anti-police malig­nan­cy, despite the cred­i­ble state­ments of the chil­dren’s aunt, the police hat­ing trolls still berate the police for doing exact­ly what they are sworn to do.

The inci­dent which occurred recent­ly in which the aunt of two lit­tle boys asked the Gordon Town Police to accom­pa­ny her to a res­i­dence to remove two boys she believed were not being tak­en care of, have once again high­light­ed some old fis­sures with­in the Jamaican soci­ety.
According to local report­ing, Melesha Welsh aunt of the two boys and sis­ter-in-law of Rastafarian Sean McDonald, who goes by the moniker (JahDore) asked the police to accom­pa­ny her to the house to attend and inves­ti­gate reports the chil­dren were not being well cared for.
In syn­op­sis, the chil­dren were removed from the res­i­dence by Ms. Welsh and tak­en to the Gordon Town Police sta­tion upon which Sean McDonald showed up and all hell broke out.

“I regret noth­ing. The kids are not Rastafarian, and they are not even his (bio­log­i­cal) kids. I trimmed them, and fed them, not the police. This is a big pub­lic­i­ty stunt by JahDore, my father is a ras­ta, I respect their tra­di­tions, I would not vio­late that. I made the com­plaint to the police because I love my nephews and they have not been going to school since October last year, and now is May, and it could­n’t con­tin­ue, I don’t want them to grow up dunce and can’t con­tribute to soci­ety.” Ms. Welsh told a local reporter.

“It was a sim­ple mat­ter and we all were at the police sta­tion to dis­cuss it when I saw JahDore kick the offi­cer in his bel­ly and the offi­cer grabbed his foot and thump him in the face. When I saw Jahdore dip to his waist, I grabbed the chil­dren and ran out of the police sta­tion because I feared what would hap­pen next. While out­side, I saw a bar­ber across the road. The kids had a fun­gus in their head, espe­cial­ly the younger one, so I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do it, I had to beg the bar­ber to trim him,” said Welsh, who is the sis­ter of JahDore’s spouse, Semela. According to Loopnews.

ISSUE #1

Since the inci­dent occurred, every Tom, Harry, and police-hat­ing Dick have crawled out of the wood­work to seek rel­e­vance by pil­ing on the police for doing exact­ly what they are sworn to do.
If for instance, Ms. Welsh had gone to the Gordon Town Police and asked for help to secure the well­be­ing of two minor chil­dren she believed to be in dan­ger, and the police failed to assist her and harm came to the chil­dren, what would be the posi­tion of the anti-police vil­lage lawyers?
Literally every day, minor chil­dren face grave dan­ger in Jamaica at the hands of rel­a­tives and oth­ers, who are sup­posed to give care and secu­ri­ty to them. That fact is sep­a­rate from the stark real­i­ty of the nation’s atro­cious crime epi­dem­ic, which places inno­cent chil­dren smackdab in the crosshairs of the human vul­tures who prey on the defenseless.

ISSUE#2

The step­fa­ther of the chil­dren a wannabe star is con­sid­ered among the nev­er-end­ing list of untouch­ables in the coun­try which prides itself on its high crime sta­tis­tics.
This low-life actu­al­ly went to the police sta­tion and assault­ed a police offi­cer.
There is an old Jamaican say­ing (ash­es cold dawg sleep in de).
From the mouth of the cred­i­ble wit­ness and aunt to the alleged abused chil­dren Ms. Welsh, quote” It was a sim­ple mat­ter and we all were at the police sta­tion to dis­cuss it when I saw JahDore kick the offi­cer in his bel­ly.“
This police force has cer­tain­ly gone soft and has become a pussy. I make no apol­o­gy for mak­ing this obser­va­tion. This illit­er­ate fool should not be head­ing to the Half-Way-Tree cour­t­house this morn­ing, he should be lying some­where chill­ing.
This is the kind of atmos­phere that the PNP and JLP have cre­at­ed in Jamaica. Not just in the sense that a law-break­er would attack and try to harm a police offi­cer, that comes with the ter­ri­to­ry.
Nevertheless, the gen­er­al across the board dis­re­spect for the rule of law, from the lack of under­stand­ing that the police is duty bound to pro­tect minors, to the con­dem­na­tion and lies by the vil­lage lawyers in the soci­ety and the phys­i­cal attack on the police offi­cers in the sta­tion house is a sear­ing indict­ment on the state of affairs in the country.

ISSUE#3

In most coun­tries, secur­ing the inter­est of chil­dren who may be in dan­ger one way or the oth­er, is of para­mount inter­est.
This is true not just of all state agen­cies, but it is an unwrit­ten under­stand­ing among the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion that we look after our most vul­ner­a­ble.
The shock­ing real­i­ty is that coun­ter­in­tu­itive­ly, in JAMAICA, the great­est con­cern to the peo­ple who are sup­posed to care most about these very vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren is for a fuck­ing Rastafarian who was alleged­ly not tak­ing care of the chil­dren in his care, and psy­chi­cal­ly attacked police offi­cers.
God for­bid that the hair of the chil­dren be cut and they are fed a meal.
Because for this coun­try, hav­ing dirty dread­locks with fun­gus in their head is far more impor­tant than per­son­al hygiene and a good meal.
It is a sick and non­sen­si­cal Orwellian men­tal­i­ty which makes the wrong right, and right wrong which is feed­ing this mas­sive mur­der rate on this once love­ly Island.
It is a place where Convicted dope deal­ers are cel­e­brat­ed and giv­en God-like rev­er­ence, where mur­der­ing scum­bag com­mu­ni­ty thugs are ele­vat­ed and referred to as “DONS’.
A place where Rastafarians who with their col­leagues destroyed per­son­al prop­er­ty and mur­dered respond­ing police offi­cers are giv­en apolo­gies and tax-pay­ers mon­ey to boot.
It is a coun­try in which an entire com­mu­ni­ty thumbed its col­lec­tive nose at the rule of law for decades, opt­ing instead for the lead­er­ship of a com­mon mur­der­er. When the secu­ri­ty forces final­ly annexed that com­mu­ni­ty to the coun­try, those who sur­vived were com­pen­sat­ed for their decades-long sup­port and indul­gence in ille­gal activ­i­ties against the coun­try.
This is what JAMAICA has become.…..

Reports indi­cate that National Security Minister Horace Chang’s vehi­cle was involved in an acci­dent this morn­ing in the vicin­i­ty of Grants Pen Road.
Early reports indi­cate that Chang may have escaped seri­ous injury.
(Developing)

THE GOVERNMENT’S DISRESPECTFUL ATTITUDE AND TONE TOWARD OUR POLICE ARE CONTRIBUTING TO THESE ATTACKS 

At about 12:15am Constable Toddmar Allen of the Mobile Reserve was shot and injured at a Bar in Rollington Town Saint Andrew. He was tak­en to The Kingston Public Hospital where he was pro­nounced dead.
Constable Allen is report­ed to have dri­ven to Ranny’s Bar in the com­mu­ni­ty, went inside and ordered a drink. Whilst sit­ting down two (2) men armed with hand­guns entered the bar and ordered him not to move. 

Shortly after, three explo­sions were heard.
Constable Allen report­ed­ly ran to the Rollington Town Police Station where he fired one shot and col­lapsed at the gate. He was rushed to Hospital by the police, but was pro­nounced dead from gun­shot wounds to the back and chest. His Glock pis­tol was retrieved by the police.

OBSERVATION

This young offi­cer’s killing may be ran­dom or it may not be. There is no deny­ing that the police have done tremen­dous harm to them­selves by the activ­i­ties they have involved them­selves in.
Nevertheless, for the most part, these young men and women are inno­cent of any of the Force’s bag­gage.
They deserve the sup­port of the cit­i­zen­ry and they damn sure deserve respect and sup­port from the Government.
They stepped for­ward to serve when many their age are engaged in the destruc­tion of the coun­try. And for that alone I sup­port them.
Unfortunately, the polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, com­pris­ing both polit­i­cal par­ties as well as some sec­tions of civ­il soci­ety and the media, has done incal­cu­la­ble harm to not just the rule of law, but have set up these young peo­ple to die at the hands of the cow­ard­ly crim­i­nals in our coun­try. Make no mis­take about it, the dis­re­spect and dis­dain showed the police by Prime Minister Andrew Holness and his lack­ey Horace Chang is con­tribut­ing to this attack on our police offi­cers.
No mem­ber of the PNP should take com­fort in my state­ments, the PNP is equal­ly com­plic­it as the JLP in this con­se­quen­tial broad­side against law enforce­ment in our country.