The mis­take the cops made in Spalding yes­ter­day was in not shoot­ing the attack­ing mob lead­ers dead!!!

Attack a police offi­cer in any coun­try on this plan­et and if you live to regret it you will real­ly regret it, I mean real­ly regret it.
In America attack­ing a police offi­cer even with­out a weapon could be auto­mat­ic death, and if you sur­vive to talk about it, you will have years in prison to con­sid­er your actions.
I recent­ly watched a video of a woman who attacked Russian cops with her hands and their response was brutish.
Literally shock­ing was the lev­el of force the offi­cers employed to the attack­er who was a woman no less.
Whether we agree with the lev­el of force employed by the offi­cer under attack is nei­ther here nor there. Wrong or right that is his/​her call to make when he/​she feels his/​her life threat­ened.
Every offi­cer of the law, like every­one else, has an expec­ta­tion that they will fin­ish their shift and go home to their fam­i­lies with­out being assault­ed, abused or worse.
He/​she alone gets to make that call and the laws should back that offi­cer ful­ly everywhere.

Why is it then that Jamaicans liv­ing at home feel that they have a license to attack police offi­cers who are doing their jobs?
Before we exam­ine those rea­sons, it is impor­tant to acknowl­edge that when Jamaicans set foot over­seas, they are keen­ly con­ver­sant that what they do at home will not fly in oth­er coun­tries.
Even with­in the CARICOM region in which Jamaicans are sup­posed to be able to trav­el rel­a­tive­ly freely, mem­ber states still some­times nuance the rules of the CARICOM char­ter to allow their law-enforce­ment to be par­tic­u­lar­ly wary and vig­i­lant to the pres­ence of Jamaicans trav­el­ing to their coun­tries. The record of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty is unde­ni­able and there should be no con­ver­sa­tion around what are unde­ni­able facts.
In the past police offi­cials have ridiculed Jamaicans who com­plain about the treat­ment they receive when they vis­it their coun­try and are sin­gled out for spe­cial treat­ment, “this is not Jamaica.“
Clear ref­er­ences that they will not tol­er­ate the kind of law­less­ness which exist in Jamaica in their countries.

There is no secret that Jamaica is and has always been a very vio­lent and law­less coun­try. In response to the law­less­ness and vio­lence, the strat­e­gy has been to tight­en con­trol over the police ser­vice, effec­tive­ly ren­der­ing offi­cers “paper tigers” through a series of leg­is­la­tion under the guise that they are trans­form­ing the police force into pro­fes­sion­al police ser­vices.
Now, there is a con­ver­sa­tion to be had around the rea­sons behind the strat­e­gy to muz­zle and hand­cuff the police.
Not the least of which is the cor­rupt nature of the politi­cians who pop­u­late both polit­i­cal par­ties.
A police depart­ment behold­en to them and inca­pable of con­duct­ing intel­li­gent inves­ti­ga­tions is inca­pable of stop­ping their rapa­cious assault against the peo­ple’s resources.

Rather than change the par­a­digm after the mili­tia upris­ing of 2010 in sup­port of drug lord Christopher Duddus Coke both polit­i­cal par­ties dou­bled down on stu­pid, or should I say dou­bled down on crim­i­nal acqui­es­cence and gave the coun­try INDECOM.
That is the lega­cy of the Duddus sup­port­er Orett Bruce Golding, who was forced from office for stand­ing in the way of the extra­di­tion of a known drug lord and crim­i­nal king­pin, who has been accused of being a mer­ci­less mur­der­er.
After the secu­ri­ty forces lib­er­at­ed Tivoli Gardens from the con­trol of that scum king­pin and annexed it to the rest of the Island, both polit­i­cal par­ties band­ed togeth­er to con­demn the secu­ri­ty forces for act­ing deci­sive­ly toward the king­pin and his mili­tia.
Although the Americans pre­vailed in hav­ing Coke extra­dit­ed, the mes­sage to the crim­i­nal under­world was clear.
“We are with you don’t wor­ry”.

The inci­dent in Manchester yes­ter­day in which a bus dri­ver felt embold­ened to psy­chi­cal­ly attack a uni­formed police offi­cer doing his job, and the ensu­ing mêlée and destruc­tion of prop­er­ty by the band of dumb ani­mals must be laid square­ly at the feet of the polit­i­cal class.
My prob­lem with the actions of the offi­cers is that because of fear that the Government has insti­tut­ed in them through INDECOM as a harass­ment agency, the offi­cers missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to send a clear mes­sage.
Jamaica has far too many opin­ion­at­ed idiots to func­tion as a mod­ern soci­ety.
My only prob­lem with the cops involved is that they retreat­ed, that’s not police train­ing. 
Police train­ing dic­tates that in sit­u­a­tions like the one they faced they stand their ground back to back, train their weapons to the head of the lead attack­ers and as soon as they step for­ward to cause harm to them, method­i­cal and sys­tem­at­i­cal shoot to kill.
Let’s see how many would keep step­ping for­ward.
That’s what I fault the offi­cers with, but they do not make them like they used to.

At the end of the day what we need to do is to ignore the con­tin­u­ous talk­ing from the shit­heads and come to the real­iza­tion that there is no pros­per­i­ty to be deliv­ered by the JLP, and damn sure no alter­na­tive growth path by the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing PNP in this mad­ness and chaos.
That is why we need to shut INDECOM down now, send Hamish Campbell home and take back our coun­try from this mad­ness.
If any of these offi­cers are charged with any­thing there should be hell to pay by INDECOM.
The fact that Jamaica con­tin­ues to strug­gle with cor­rup­tion accord­ing to Transparency International is proof pos­i­tive that the facts are on our side and not on the side of the Island’s lead­er­ship.
The fraud­u­lent wit­ness­es whom I have been writ­ing about for years, who are nur­tured and pro­mot­ed by the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing press must not be allowed to place anoth­er police offi­cer on sus­pen­sion.
If INDECOM con­tin­ues to be a clear enhancer of this kind of assault on our police, steps must be tak­en to ensure that INDECOM does not destroy the life of anoth­er hard-work­ing police offi­cer.
The same method­olo­gies which are applied to INDECOM should be applied to those who sup­port that crim­i­nal enhance­ment agency.
No coun­try which sup­ports crim­i­nals at the expense of its law enforce­ment agents can be suc­cess­ful, cor­rupt coun­try, no invest­ment.
Jamaica’s crim­i­nal politi­cians sure­ly can­not con­tin­ue to fool the major­i­ty of the peo­ple forever.

Most impor­tant­ly, through the pro­lif­er­a­tion of smart­phones and CCTV cam­eras, the lie which the anti-police media gave legit­i­ma­cy to are being exposed.
The real ques­tion after many years in which lying crim­i­nals turn up to give false evi­dence against the police must be, how many police offi­cers lives have been ruined as a result?
This writer has been mak­ing the case that this prac­tice which is aid­ed and abet­ted by the media has result­ed in a lot of the cas­es against offi­cers end­ed up fail­ing to meet the most basic pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al stan­dards because they were fraud­u­lent from the start.

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THIS HAPPENED LAST WEEK

Detectives assigned to the Spanish Town Criminal Investigation Branch are prob­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the shoot­ing deaths of a man and a woman on Old Harbour Road in Spanish Town, St Catherine on Thursday. Those killed are 21-year-old Vaughn Smith, oth­er­wise called ‘Mr. Cool’, and 19-year-old Serena Kerr, both of Shelter Rock in Spanish Town. The police say about 2:30 p.m, res­i­dents heard explo­sions in the area went to inves­ti­gate and dis­cov­ered the bodies.The police say Smith and Kerr were found lying in blood with gun­shot wounds to the upper body.

As per usu­al, the report to the police is just that it will take time for a full inves­tiga­tive nar­ra­tive to take shape., so we await the results of a full inves­ti­ga­tion.
In the mean­time, the streets are talk­ing and the sto­ry being told while sad caus­es one to won­der what was the dece­dent Vaughn Smith’s inten­tion?
Word on the streets is that Vaughn encour­aged Serena to accom­pa­ny him to go pur­chase a gun and that did not go so well.
Unconfirmed reports indi­cate the young cou­ple was robbed of their cash and then mur­dered by the men who were sup­posed to sell them the weapon/​s.

It is always sad when some­one los­es his or her life, nev­er­the­less, these are some of the con­se­quences of those kinds of actions.
If the report­ing is cor­rect, one has to assume that the inten­tion of the deceased were less than pure.
As trag­ic as this case is, it may very well be a case of ear­ly karma.

Ex-Police Constable Collis Chucky Brown has been sen­tenced to life in prison in the so-called death squad case. His sen­tence stems from three counts of mur­der and wound­ing with intent.
He must serve 51 years in prison before he is eli­gi­ble for parole.
More to come.….

Marvin Douglas a for­mer con­sta­ble of the Jamaica Constabulary Force and for­mal­ly of the Trelawny Division now a busi­ness man in fal­mouth died a few hours ago in a motor vehi­cle crash along the Spring Hill high­way in the parish.

We are told that a Detective Inspector of Police in charge of scenes of crime Investigations at the Spanish Tow Police sta­tion nar­row­ly escaped death at his home.
Detective Inspector Harris was attacked by gun­men who shot up his car.
In what seems to have been an attempt­ed rob­bery attempt, the men alleged­ly tailed the cop from the bank where he report­ed­ly went to trans­act busi­ness.
Several m16 shells were recov­ered from the scene of the inci­dent and the cop is report­ed to have escaped seri­ous injury.

UPDATE TO THIS STORY

At about 10am Detective Inspector Devon Harris, of the tech­ni­cal ser­vices divi­sion with­drew cash from the bank and drove home and parked in his dri­ve­way.
He alight­ed from the car when he noticed a grey hatch­back motor car dri­ving towards him, he became sus­pi­cious and stood in front of the car one man alight­ed from the rear seat of the car with a M16 rifle, and opened fire at him.
He took eva­sive action upon which two oth­er men with hand­guns also alight­ed from the car and they too opened fire at Inspector Harris.
Detective Inspector Harris ran into a near­by premis­es and hid him­self.

They went into the Inspector’ car and stole his lap­top- bag con­tain­ing his HP lap­top com­put­er val­ued at five hun­dred and fifty us dol­lars (US $550). The gun­men made good their escape.
Insp Harris suf­fered no gun­shot injuries but suf­fered cuts and bruis­es to his hands and knees from hav­ing fall­en dur­ing the encounter.

There is a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion to be had about the false sense of secu­ri­ty and brain­wash­ing Jamaicans are lulled into. An anti-police mind­set which cre­ates the per­cep­tion that an agency that was cre­at­ed to harass the police is in their best inter­est.
Just today threats were made by gangs that peo­ple in the once qui­et town of Mandeville will be slaugh­tered one each day if a gang­ster arrest­ed by the police is not released forth­with.
When the fake lay­ers of peace and con­tent­ment are peeled away Jamaica has a very seri­ous prob­lem with crim­i­nals and it is not get­ting bet­ter.

When a case which is brought by the police gets dis­missed by the courts for want of pros­e­cu­tion it is not the same as a case in which a police offi­cer was charged for a crime and walked free because the pros­e­cu­tion can­not sub­stan­ti­ate the case it brought.
The Jamaica Constabulary Force is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing crimes which involve 2.8 mil­lion Jamaicans and every sin­gle for­eign­er who ever set foot not just on Jamaican soil but may have com­mit­ted a crime against our coun­try 12 miles away from our coun­try’s shores.
As an over­sight agency INDECOM is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing a secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus of approx­i­mate­ly 12,000 peo­ple not count­ing the Corrections Department.
Most alle­ga­tions against the secu­ri­ty forces were, and still, are forced by gang lead­ers, or as they were called (area lead­ers). Common lowlife scum­bags, san­i­tized, pack­aged and sold to the Jamaican peo­ple by what pass­es for a media.
Fake mourn­ers became the norm, wail­ing away at the sup­posed killings of their choir­boy friends whom they watched get­ting mur­dered by the police as he slept in his bed at 3 in the morning.[sic]
Innocent com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, or as one anti-police agi­ta­tor Horace Levy labeled them, (cor­ner crews) not dan­ger­ous gang­sters.
That is not to say that the break­down in the nation’s social order and the neglect of the police over a peri­od of sev­er­al decades has­n’t result­ed in many peo­ple who should nev­er be police offi­cers becom­ing police offi­cers.
As a con­se­quence, the poor qual­i­ty of those can­di­dates nat­u­ral­ly end­ed up in out­comes which are anti­thet­i­cal to a good police depart­ment and the good of the coun­try overall.

On the 7^th of this month Detective Corporal Kevin Adams, Constable Carl Bucknor, and District Constable Howard Brown had their 8‑year night­mare come to a spec­tac­u­lar end when Queen’s Counsel Caroline Hay told the court, the pros­e­cu­tion would be unable to negate the defense’s posi­tion of self-defense. 
The three police offi­cers were charged with the mur­der of Andrew Bisson in a police oper­a­tion on September 5, 2011.
The Investigations were under­tak­en and con­duct­ed by INDECOM.
During the tri­al the judge, Chief Justice Byran Sykes spoke to the grave reser­va­tions he had about the case against the offi­cers.
Justice Sykes observed (1) [ that it seemed that the accused offi­cers were being tar­get­ed by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM)].
(2) Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, the tri­al judge expressed con­cern about whether the accused police­men were afford­ed an objec­tive and fair inves­ti­ga­tion?

On Tuesday, January 22^nd, 2019 Sergeant David Hutchinson and Constable Kenneth Daley were before the very same Judge Bryan Sykes. The two were charged with mur­der in a July 2013 inci­dent fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion by INDECOM into the fatal shoot­ing of a teenag­er, Derrick Bolton, and anoth­er man.
Like the case on January 7^th, pros­e­cu­tors told the court that they could not pro­ceed against the accused as they could not pro­duce the pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es.
The offi­cers were charged after 8 peo­ple were fatal­ly shot in an area of Saint Catherine and the police respond­ed and con­front­ed the two, who were report­ed­ly mem­bers of the noto­ri­ous Klansman gang.

The com­mon inves­tiga­tive thread in these two most recent cas­es in which offi­cers who have been charged with mur­der and have spent years await­ing tri­al, in some cas­es while locked away like com­mon crim­i­nals is INDECOM.
In response to charges by police offi­cers that INDECOM was charge ‑hap­py and was charg­ing offi­cers then doing inves­ti­ga­tions, Terrence Williams the head of the agency in 2016 sought to debunk claims he and his agency were abus­ing the pow­ers giv­en to the agency.
He argued that the com­mis­sion’s oper­a­tions does not allow for charges to be laid with­out prop­er inves­ti­ga­tions being car­ried out.
“The INDECOM Act oper­ates in a way that before any­body can be charged, it must come through the direc­tor of com­plaints and then be seen by me.
“The design of the INDECOM Act is to ensure that all inves­ti­ga­tions are super­vised by some­body with senior legal qual­i­fi­ca­tion and expe­ri­ence. So the com­plaint that is being made is com­plete­ly off the mark, based on sys­tems. Further, it is not our prac­tice to charge per­sons before the case is com­plet­ed, Williams told the Gleaner at the time.
So much for adher­ing to the dic­tates of the law!

In 2016 Terrence Williams told the same news­pa­per that
“of the six cas­es that have been com­plet­ed, mean­ing cas­es placed before the courts since the cre­ation of the agency in 2008, only one per­son was acquit­ted, and there is one where the DPP felt the case should not go on. We have five cas­es where there have been con­vic­tions, includ­ing one case with eight peo­ple.”
Only that there was no truth to Terrence Williams’ state­ments.
In Manchester, INDECOM charged a police offi­cer with using his hel­met to hit a man.
Case dis­missed.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Jason Anderson, who is assigned to the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA), has been charged with dis­charg­ing a firearm with­in 40 yards of a pub­lic road, con­trary to Section 23 of the Firearms Act and assault at com­mon law. Charged by INDECOM.
Case dis­missed.
There are oth­er cas­es that have also result­ed in dis­missals all of which are cas­es brought against the police by INDECOM.

The aver­age Jamaican has been raised, schooled and indoc­tri­nat­ed into hat­ing law enforce­ment. Even some who have worked as police offi­cers because they may have been unable to get jobs in the pri­vate econ­o­my has been known to be vehe­ment­ly against the very dis­ci­pline which puts food on their table.
The ques­tion of hav­ing cops opposed to the rule of law is cer­tain­ly more per­va­sive now than it was before.
With so many peo­ple enter­ing the depart­ment from the left-lean­ing University of the West Indies the prob­lem is now a seri­ous threat to the nation’s secu­ri­ty.
Enemies of polic­ing now doing polic­ing.
It can­not be overem­pha­sized that nei­ther of the two major polit­i­cal par­ties wants a com­pe­tent police depart­ment which is capa­ble of doing the type of inves­tiga­tive work which would have end­ed in the arrest of politi­cians involved in the Petrojam scam, Outameani, the Iran sug­ar deal, the Cuban light­bulb scan­dal, and the host of oth­er thefts in which bil­lions of dol­lars sim­ply dis­ap­peared.
That is why INDECOM serves the inter­est of both polit­i­cal par­ties.
That is the rea­son they do not care that Deputy Commissioner of INDECOM British trans­plant Hamish Campbell was alleged to have plant­ed evi­dence on an inno­cent black man while he worked in his home country.

No mat­ter how much you adore INDECOM and hate the police, it is pret­ty dif­fi­cult to ignore the obser­va­tions of the nations most senior jurist.
(1)That it seemed that the accused offi­cers were being tar­get­ed by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM)].
(2) Concerned about whether the accused police­men were afford­ed an objec­tive and fair inves­ti­ga­tion.
What is absent from this whole con­ver­sa­tion is a fair and just appre­ci­a­tion for the fact that these case are being approached and pros­e­cut­ed in a man­ner which is inju­ri­ous to police offi­cers and worse is dan­ger­ous to the nation’s secu­ri­ty.
Furthermore, the duplic­i­tous silence by what pass­es for an orga­nized media, or worse the fail­ure to put two and two togeth­er and report to the peo­ple the dan­ger they are in by allow­ing for the con­tin­u­a­tion of INDECOM. 
Because the sta­tus quo serves the inter­est of both polit­i­cal par­ties voic­es like mine will go unheed­ed.
Nevertheless, as the coun­try bounces from one dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion to anoth­er and as the gangs con­sol­i­date their pow­er, the peo­ple like sheep, are led to believe that the num­ber one prob­lem they face is threats to their human rights.
In the mean­time, Superintendent Wayné Cameron and his offi­cers are on high alert in Manchester, despite the forces arrayed against them this offi­cer and his men and women are deter­mined and vig­i­lant­ly out there pro­tect­ing the lives of the cit­i­zens with their own lives.
Undeterred by threats from gang­sters who would turn our beau­ti­ful Island into a Sub-Saharan waste­land, spilling inno­cent blood if their demands are not met.

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I got to think­ing recent­ly and I arrived at a cou­ple of con­clu­sions (1) The gangs doing the killings are still oper­at­ing with impuni­ty. (2) The num­ber of gangs seems to be on the increase. And (3) just how easy it was for the peo­ple to be influ­enced that good no-non­sense polic­ing atti­tude toward dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals was bad for them and the coun­try. And so I want to have a lit­tle talk with you my read­ers, rather than just talk at you.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

It is impor­tant to remem­ber where we are com­ing from and where we are so that we may make informed deci­sions which will impact where we are going in the way we want to.
Because as the cliché goes, “if you don’t know where you are going you are already there”.
Now it is impor­tant to remem­ber that Jamaica has always been a high crime coun­try.
This is so because of the way polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence by the two polit­i­cal par­ties (a) cer­at­ed gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties, ren­der­ing them no go for law enforce­ment and havens for mur­der­ers and oth­er crim­i­nals. (b)Lack of resources for law enforce­ment and lack of prop­er train­ing also played a role. © The revolv­ing door for crim­i­nals cre­at­ed by the courts result­ed in apa­thy and in some cas­es crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty by law enforce­ment.
I will attempt to show you the tra­jec­to­ry of mur­ders over the years in order to demon­strate how cer­tain fac­tors both inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly have helped to shape the tra­jec­to­ry of the most seri­ous crimes in our coun­try.
Jamaica record­ed the fol­low­ing num­ber of homi­cides over the fol­low­ing years.

In the year 2017, 1,616 mur­ders were report­ed to the author­i­ties. And 2018 result­ed in around 1455 homi­cides, give or take a cou­ple either way.
Now, though these homi­cide num­bers are stark, I believe they are fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed, because they only rep­re­sent killings in which vic­tims of gun­shot wounds, stab­bings, and oth­er vio­lent assaults die imme­di­ate­ly.
Not all vic­tims of vio­lent attacks die imme­di­ate­ly and so there may be anoth­er 10, 20, or even 30% more deaths which can rea­son­ably be attached to those annu­al homi­cide num­bers.
At the risk of mak­ing myself part of the nar­ra­tive which is absolute­ly not my intent, I wish to point out that between the start of the sta­tis­tics above and when I left the force in 1991 mur­ders were far too many but not over­ly astro­nom­i­cal.
When we jux­ta­pose the num­bers which exist­ed between 1982 when I joined the depart­ment (405) and 1989 (439) and the facts I laid out about polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence and lack of resources ham­string­ing the police you will also notice that homi­cides remained gen­er­al­ly steady.
We may go back and look at the years 1980 to 1981, and we will notice that those years rep­re­sent­ed the elec­tion year 1980 and 1981 the year a new admin­is­tra­tion took office and so those num­bers were anom­alies as far as the homi­cide num­bers went.
Older Jamaicans will recall the 1980 elec­tions in which an esti­mat­ed 899 Jamaicans lost their lives, large­ly as a result of polit­i­cal vio­lence and 1981 although the num­bers had dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly to 490, those 1981 num­bers still rep­re­sent­ed a high, for a good sev­en (7) year peri­od and nev­er again reached or exceed­ed [490] until 1990 when the num­bers jumped dras­ti­cal­ly con­sid­er­ing the pre­vi­ous sev­en-year sta­bil­i­ty to 543 homi­cides.
By 1991 the year I exit­ed the force all bets were off homi­cides had moved up to 561.
Gone were the good old days in which mur­der­ers knew that it was not their streets.
So what hap­pened you ask, why is it that between the time you served and the time you left mur­ders got out of con­trol Mike?
Was it you keep­ing all those shot­tas under con­trol?
I wish I could take cred­it for it (smile) but we have to seri­ous­ly look at what hap­pened in our coun­try which caused basi­cal­ly (8) eight years of sta­ble homi­cide numbers?

THE SEAGA ADMINISTRATION
I gen­er­al­ly get killed(no not lit­er­al­ly) laugh, for dar­ing to write about pol­i­tics or the way I see it through my own eyes grow­ing up and liv­ing thir­ty (30) years of my life in my coun­try.
Many peo­ple are offend­ed they say talk only about law enforce­ment.
I gen­er­al­ly laugh at that because right here in this arti­cle we see just how pol­i­tics impacts every oth­er area of our lives.
Edward Phillip George Seaga won the 1980 gen­er­al elec­tions on a plat­form of con­ser­vatism.
It was easy for Seaga’s mes­sage to res­onate against the Manley mes­sage of self-suf­fi­cien­cy and nation­al pride.
Any mes­sage that was oppo­site to Manley’s would have res­onat­ed, peo­ple were hun­gry, store shelves were emp­ty, crime and vio­lence were every­where.
Seaga’s vic­to­ry was a dev­as­tat­ing blow to Michael Manley and the (PNP), his Conservative Jamaica Labor Party won 51 of the then 60 seats in the par­lia­ment. Many laborites sus­pect­ed Manley lost his seat but was allowed to keep it.
No evi­dence of that ever sur­faced but the whis­per­ing con­tin­ued for years.

Many Jamaicans who grew up dur­ing my time which is the 70’s and real­ly came of age in the ’80s will quick­ly argue that all politi­cians in Jamaica are cor­rupt, dis­hon­est, mon­sters.
I have no facts to counter those asser­tions but I will say that even if not total­ly true, what­ev­er Jamaicans say does have some truth in there some­where.
Edward Seaga cre­at­ed the satel­lite com­mu­ni­ty of Tivoli Gardens. Those who know a lit­tle about Jamaica’s his­to­ry will recall that Tivoli Gardens rose out of the God for­got­ten slums pre­vi­ous­ly known as (Back-o-wall).
Tivoli Gardens was a mod­ern apart­ment com­plex with ameni­ties like a park, com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter, a state of the art clin­ic etc.
[Full dis­clo­sure], my first child was born at that clin­ic because it was rumored to be the very best in the Island at the time.
Seaga was might­i­ly proud of what he cre­at­ed in that com­mu­ni­ty as he ought to be.
However, like an over-dot­ing par­ent, he failed to see that the child he gave life to was turn­ing bad.
And that was an egre­gious error in judg­ment, that baby became a mon­ster. When a child becomes that it reflects bad­ly on the par­ents.
Because of Seaga’s fail­ure to rein in Tivoli Gardens, he will for­ev­er and for the remain­der of his days be sad­dled with the infamy that that com­mu­ni­ty came to rep­re­sent.
And that is all too sad because when it came to law and order Edward Seaga nev­er stood in the way of the police doing their jobs, save and except for his delin­quent baby Tivoli Gardens.
The data demon­strates that it was under Edward Seaga’s tenure that homi­cides lev­eled off and remained con­stant.
Edward Seaga demit­ted office in (1988) and Michael Manley was back at the helm of our gov­ern­ment.
By 1990, just one year into Manley’s tenure, homi­cides jumped from (439) into the new ter­ri­to­ry of (543.

Homicides con­tin­ued at a mer­ry clip under Michael Manley and con­tin­ued so after he ced­ed pow­er to his inept deputy Percival Patterson.
By (2002) still with the PNP in pow­er, homi­cides had reached (1045).
In just over twelve(12) years under PNP lead­er­ship, homi­cides in Jamaica had increased by (238.041%).
We can argue along the mar­gins polit­i­cal­ly, what we can­not deny is the data.

A NEW NARRATIVE

In 2007 Orett Bruce Golding a for­mer min­is­ter of con­struc­tion under Seaga who had left the JLP and helped to form the then third par­ty the National Democratic Movement or (NDM) had returned to the JLP and was able to eke out a slim major­i­ty for the JLP.
The JLP vic­to­ry seemed at the time to be vot­er malaise and exhaus­tion from the PNP’s ¹⁴¹⁄₂ unbro­ken years in office and the back­ward direc­tion of the coun­try.
By (2011) Golding was forced to resign from entan­gle­ments with the Christopher Coke mat­ter.
Andrew Holness took over the lead­er­ship of the par­ty and the Government and soon sought his own man­date against the Portia Simpson Miller-led (PNP).
Holness was defeat­ed at the polls on the 5^th of January 2012 and Miller served as the Prime Minister until fresh elec­tions were called on the 3^rd of March 2016.
Andrew Holness’ par­ty won the elec­tions, albeit by a razor-thin one seat major­i­ty which was lat­er strength­ened by two by/​elections in which the rul­ing (JLP) pre­vailed.
The moral of the sto­ry sur­round­ing the peri­od which includ­ed Simpson Miller, Bruce Golding and Andrew Holness is sim­ply this.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties are respon­si­ble for the events as they occurred in that time peri­od and so we are left to ana­lyze what event or series of events caused both par­ties to become com­plic­it or incom­pe­tent, or both, in deal­ing with vio­lent crimes.

HUMAN RIGHTS

If I pre­tend­ed that the Jamaican police have not engaged in atro­cious behav­ior I would be lying.
If I pre­tend­ed that politi­cians, judges, lawyers, pros­e­cu­tors, and par­sons and peo­ple in every dis­ci­pline haven’s as well I would be lying.
And if I pre­tend­ed that peo­ple in lit­er­al­ly every dis­ci­pline, in every nation across the globe haven’t done the same thing.…again I would be lying.
The real­i­ty of the fore­gone is that peo­ple, regard­less of their jobs are only peo­ple who are prone to excess­es and abus­ing their pow­ers.
When that hap­pens the soci­eties in which they oper­ate must take steps to rem­e­dy those trans­gres­sions and put in place safe­guards to guard against recur­rence.
So if you have bad Pastors you do not tear down the church.
With the mul­ti­ple reports about Priest sex­u­al­ly assault­ing lit­tle boys the pow­ers that be has­n’t got­ten rid of the Catholic Church, they are work­ing to fix it.
When our police make mis­takes we fix the prob­lems and we sup­port our police, we should not tear them down.
Unfortunately, that is not what we do in Jamaica, we tear down our police and that pro­vides a wide open­ing to those who would ben­e­fit from the break­down in the rule of law.

As ridicu­lous as the lack of sup­port for the police is, the sin­gle great­est issue in my esti­ma­tion is the influ­ence the so-called human rights lob­by has been able to wield in our coun­try.
The faith­ful obser­vance of and fideli­ty to human rights are fun­da­men­tal tem­plates of any demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.
Nevertheless, human rights and nation­al secu­ri­ty are two fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent issues, nei­ther of which are dis­pens­able or mutu­al­ly exclu­sive in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.
Given that human rights lob­bies are not as vis­i­ble or influ­en­tial in the pow­er­ful democ­ra­cies, and since there is a kind of default pre­sump­tion that they are the tem­plate for good demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties, we tend to ignore the gross human rights trans­gres­sions which occur in these pow­er­ful nations.
Police abuse of peo­ple of col­or is the num­ber one human rights issue which has affect­ed peo­ple of col­or in the United States, Britain, and Canada today as it always has.
There is hard­ly any response or state­ments much less any mean­ing­ful steps tak­en on behalf of a sin­gle aggriev­ed par­ty any­where in any of the named pow­er­ful devel­oped coun­tries.
There has been zero advo­ca­cy on behalf of any killed or injured by police here in the United States to my knowledge.

SO WHY THE DEVELOPING WORLD?

The human rights lob­by in the devel­op­ing world in which Jamaica finds itself are gen­er­al­ly fund­ed by sup­port­ers or par­ent lob­bies in the west­ern pow­er cen­ters which are in turn fund­ed by dark mon­ey.
A coun­try which under­mines its law-enforce­ment is a coun­try with high crime sta­tis­tics. Jamaica’s crime-fight­ing efforts are direct­ed at its police offi­cers, not at the vio­lence pro­duc­ers.
Not that there can­not be an effec­tive crime-fight­ing mech­a­nism in place and vig­i­lant police over­sight simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Why would larg­er coun­tries want crime to increase in the devel­op­ing world?
Larger west­ern coun­tries are lenders to poor­er devel­op­ing coun­tries. They desta­bi­lize those nations because they need to keep them bor­row­ing.
A coun­try inun­dat­ed with crime has next to zero chance of climb­ing its way out of pover­ty.
Jamaica has made many tac­ti­cal mis­takes, not the least of which has been allow­ing the inter­na­tion­al human rights lob­bies to worm their influ­ence into the body politic of the coun­try.
It’s a ver­i­ta­ble dis­as­ter at this point as lit­er­al­ly every bit of leg­is­la­tion which is sup­posed to ben­e­fit the Jamaican peo­ple has to pass muster with human rights lob­bies which take orders from either the United States, Canada, or Great Britain.
Why would either of these nations care about human-rights?
They don’t!
They under­stand full well that the ques­tion of human rights is some­thing the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion will sign onto. What poor cit­i­zen­ry will not be enam­ored with the idea of a group of peo­ple who are pro­tect­ing them from the pow­er of the state?
Jamaica has long flirt­ed with wannabe police watch­dogs the likes of Flo O’Connor and oth­ers, but the coun­try com­plete­ly sold out to Carolyn Gomes and Jamaicans for Justice(JFJ).
If the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of Jamaicans were attend­ed to with the same dili­gence and fer­vor as the influ­ence the crim­i­nal enhance­ment lob­bies have had on the deci­sion mak­ing of our coun­try we would have a very good country.

THE END GAME

Ultimately, what will hap­pen is that the state will com­plete­ly lose con­trol. We are not far from that point, we had a glimpse of that in 2010.
In Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Brazil. and Venezuela, right here in our hemi­sphere we have seen the effects of their gov­ern­men­t’s com­plic­i­ty and cow­ardice in con­fronting the dan­gers posed by gangs which lat­er metas­ta­sized into mur­der­ous drug car­tels.
Unless the Jamaican peo­ple come out from the fog cast by the crime enhance­ment lob­by Jamaica will see peo­ple leav­ing on old rick­ety rafts and old canoes try­ing to find safe har­bor.
It can still be stopped but time is run­ning out.

The body of 29-year-old Nordia Markland was found hang­ing from a beam at her house last Saturday at around 4 a.m. on Shannon Lloyd Crescent in Clarendon. 

The fam­i­ly of the deceased are trau­ma­tized by the fact that a video show­ing miss Markland’s body dan­gling from the beam has been doing the rounds on social media.
They are also upset that peo­ple who have seen the video has char­ac­ter­ized her as wicked and has cre­at­ed their own nar­ra­tive as to the rea­son she alleged­ly took her own life. 

Distraught rel­a­tives say miss Markland was depressed after the death of her father, she had to bury a cousin short­ly after.
We have the video but have opt­ed not to post it out of def­er­ence and respect to her and her fam­i­ly.
Mental ill­ness and depres­sion are real issues which affect untold num­bers of peo­ple, many of whom suf­fer in silence. 

The grief and deep depres­sion which would cause some­one to see no way out forc­ing them to ulti­mate­ly take their own life can­not be reduced to some­one’s opin­ion of the deceased.
It must be under­stood against the pre­cious nature of life and the sheer hope­less­ness which the vic­tim must have felt which caused him/​her to end that one pre­cious life.