Continue read­ing →

We knew the INDECOM act was flawed, we knew it’s exe­cu­tion was flawed and we said so. Today this writer was vin­di­cat­ed in the Jamaican high court.
We have con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that though over­sight of our law enforce­ment agen­cies is crit­i­cal there has to be a bal­ance in its appli­ca­tions as we must be def­er­en­tial to the chal­lenges law enforce­ment offi­cers face.

It is not a blank check as some detrac­tors are wont to accuse because they are unable to defend their point of view, but rather an under­stand­ing that unless we have first-hand knowl­edge of an issue we must give cre­dence to the views of those who do.
It is against that back­drop that I per­son­al­ly opposed the INDECOM bill even before it became law and have writ­ten dozens of arti­cles explain­ing in depth why it would cre­ate a chill to law enforce­ment and would do pre­cious lit­tle in a pos­i­tive way over and above what the oth­er sev­en over­sight agen­cies were already doing.

For eight years (8) I argued that this law is dri­ving crime, for eight years INDECOM argued crime was high before it’s creation.
For eight years INDECOM crowed that police fatal shoot­ings have gone down because of its vig­i­lance. For eight years I have argued that police fatal shoot­ings have gone down not because crim­i­nals are any less lethal but because police offi­cers are stand­ing down.
For eight years I have tak­en the abuse of the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty in the coun­try for dar­ing to call for the repeal of the INDECOM act.
Neither polit­i­cal par­ty in Government has done any­thing to revis­it the law despite the glar­ing incon­sis­ten­cies in it and their own obser­va­tions that it is indeed flawed.

See rul­ing here: http://www.courtofappeal.gov.jm/sites/default/files/judgments/Police%20Federation%20%28The%29%20et%20al%20v%20Commissioner%20of%20Indecom%20%28The%29%20and%20anor_0.pdf

We are proud of the many long hours of hard work and research we have put into bring­ing aware­ness to the Jamaican pub­lic and peo­ple across the Globe about what is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica.
We are proud that in the face of a near blan­ket smear cam­paign against the police offi­cers who risk their lives dai­ly to cre­ate a mod­icum of peace and safe­ty to the indoc­tri­nat­ed anti-police vio­lence we decid­ed to speak truth to power.
With the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the author­i­ties vio­la­tion of mem­bers right to free speech rights which effec­tive­ly sanc­tions them for speak­ing out against the injus­tice met­ed out to them any advo­ca­cy on their behalf is incred­i­bly valu­able to their morale.

It is with that thought in mind that this medi­um was born in 2011. (1)Out of a sense of help­less­ness, I felt for the nations police offi­cers who do so much under hor­ri­ble work­ing con­di­tions, with less than appro­pri­ate tools of the trade and with their hands tied behind their backs.
(2) Out of an under­stand­ing that the vast major­i­ty of the une­d­u­cat­ed peo­ple in our coun­try deserve a life, a life free from crime and ter­ror. Out of an under­stand­ing that it is those same peo­ple who sur­ren­der their chil­dren to become police officers.
Out of an under­stand­ing that with­out the rule of law we don’t have a country.
Out of an under­stand­ing that despite its flaws (which we have to fix) it is the police who are called when we need help.

It is that sense of duty why I made this per­son­al call to arms so that those of us who walked away do not sim­ply sit on the side­lines because we may be doing bet­ter with our lives. We owe a debt of grat­i­tude to that beau­ti­ful lit­tle coun­try we all love so very much.

The court of appeals has just made an earth-shat­ter­ing rul­ing today.
In a 2 – 1 deci­sion, the court ruled that INDECOM has no pow­er of arrest and as such has no pow­er to arrest and charge any mem­ber of the JCF.
We will say more after we have seen the decision.

UPDATE TO THIS STORY>
This pub­li­ca­tion wish­es to con­grat­u­late DSP Dyer who stood up to a bul­ly and was not swayed in the face of what this pub­li­ca­tion and this writer has long main­tained was the action of a rogue com­mis­sion and a nar­cis­sis­tic media hog­ging com­mis­sion­er whose sole goal it seems is to solid­i­fy pow­er in order to use it against the nation’s secu­ri­ty forces.

In 2014 Dyer was con­vict­ed for inter­fer­ing with an INDECOM probe and fined $800,000.Dyer chal­lenged the rul­ing and took the mat­ter to the high court.
We also wish to con­grat­u­late the Appeals court which inter­pret­ed the law as it is con­fig­ured and made the appro­pri­ate ruling.
The Dyer case emerged from an inci­dent in which INDECOM went to the Central Village Police Station to con­fis­cate the weapons involved in a shoot­ing case involv­ing the police.

https://​www​.inde​com​.gov​.jm/​w​p​-​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​2​0​1​6​/​1​1​/​I​N​D​E​C​O​M​-​A​c​t​.​pdf

DSP Dyer refused to hand over the weapons and was sub­se­quent­ly sub­poe­naed to appear in the Half Way Tree Resident Magistrate Court where he was fined the out­ra­geous sum.
Fortunately, DSP Dyer was not cowed by that rul­ing and decid­ed that the courts are there for all Jamaicans, not just a few. This rul­ing by the high court quash­es Dyer’s con­vic­tion and sends an earth-shat­ter­ing mes­sage to INDECOM that tyran­ny will not suffice.

The agency has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to impar­tial­ly inves­ti­gate and turn over it’s find­ings to the duly con­sti­tut­ed office of the Director of Public Prosecution.
We can­not have a rogue agency of Government going off on its own sow­ing dis­cord in the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty as hun­dreds of Jamaicans are mur­dered each month.

This rul­ing is not a vic­to­ry for rogue cops, it is bal­anced rul­ing for good cops who want to do their jobs. Advocacy works.
My regards to my young intel­lec­tu­al friend who just told me this rul­ing paves the way for the new­ly appoint­ed Commissioner of Police Major General Anthony Anderson to be successful.
An awe­some point of view in light of the mur­der rate.

I once again call on this Government to repeal this oner­ous crime enhance­ment law now.

A new Police Post opened in Green Acres, Spanish Town St. Catherine on Thursday, March 15^th. Whatever can be done to reduce response time by the police is always a good thing. In fact, I recent­ly wrote that who­ev­er the new com­mis­sion­er of police is he/​she should work hard to ensure that response time is cut exponentially.

People are con­soled immense­ly when they have an idea that when they call the police the police is going to be there in record time.
Citizens can expe­ri­ence no greater sense of ter­ror than to be in trou­ble with no recourse or expec­ta­tion of help com­ing from the police.

And so with that in mind, it is a wel­come sign to see a new facil­i­ty erect­ed which will poten­tial­ly bring a cer­tain degree of con­so­la­tion to res­i­dents in and around the imme­di­ate area of Green Acres Spanish Town.
At the risk of sound­ing hyper­crit­i­cal, I made peace with being del­uged with con­dem­na­tion from those who see this as a great achieve­ment for the peo­ple in the area.

Should I wor­ry about the poten­tial blow­back though, when the thing seems like it is actu­al­ly a trail­er? Ok so I am told it is actu­al­ly a trail­er with some paint and accou­ter­ments slapped onto it.

There are parts of the world where peo­ple are putting these con­tain­ers to good use, includ­ing retro­fitting them to house the home­less. Nothing wrong with that at all, in fact, I would be glad to have had one of those as my home as a young offi­cer work­ing in Jamaica based on the stipend we were giv­en then.

Retrofitting these con­tain­ers to house those who can­not afford to pur­chase a home makes a lot of sense, but does it make sense that we are ask­ing our police offi­cers to be caged in these death traps con­sid­er­ing the high-veloc­i­ty weapons in the hands of the gangsters?

I hate to be the guy who pricks the bal­loon, but peo­ple are ask­ing why should the police set­tle for this death trap when one cer­tain min­is­ter of Government’s cell phone bill was J$18.000,000?

Ok, I’m just the mes­sen­ger I real­ly only care about the wel­fare of the young men and women who are going to be risk­ing life and limb in that cage.
I have a cer­tain respect for the par­ents who allow their chil­dren to enter the ser­vice of their coun­try in the JCF, con­sid­er­ing the law­less­ness of the coun­try and the lack of thanks, offi­cers get for risk­ing their lives work­ing in dan­ger­ous and shit­ty con­di­tions for a pal­try stipend.

In the final analy­sis, we have to con­sid­er what we are doing here, what are we spend­ing mon­ey on, regard­less of the cost? Other nations build infra­struc­ture which lasts for cen­turies, Jamaica build for today and so we will have to keep build­ing into perpetuity.

This is anoth­er stop-gap invest­ment in the police and law enforce­ment, at the expense of police offi­cers lives as long as it seems that we are doing some­thing polit­i­cal­ly. Like ZOSO and the State of Public Emergency are also stop-gap par­ti­san mea­sures designed to allay fear and anxiety.

HERE IS WHERE NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE .……WELL TO ME.

With the main­te­nance of law and order high on the agen­da of the Government, a sum of $8.4 bil­lion has been bud­get­ed to bol­ster the capa­bil­i­ties of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF).

This includes $1.77 bil­lion for cyber­se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives by the JDF; $1.36 bil­lion to increase the mobil­i­ty of the JDF; $2.45 bil­lion to pur­chase heli­copters to assist in search and res­cue, casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion, med­ical eval­u­a­tion and train­ing; $1.32 bil­lion to strength­en the capa­bil­i­ty of the JDF with­in Jamaica’s mar­itime zone; and $1.5 bil­lion for the con­struc­tion of new inte­grat­ed train­ing, accom­mo­da­tion, office and stor­age facilities.

Details of the project are out­lined in the ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ Estimates of Expenditure. The Estimates were recent­ly tabled in the House of Representatives by Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Hon. Audley Shaw.(Source JIS)

Well, at least we are now up to speed and ready to take on North Korea, eat your heart out Kim Jong-un.

Police Commanders Must Work On Lowering Response Time.….

This is not the first time that I have spo­ken on this sub­ject and so I will be as brief as pos­si­ble even though I am not con­vinced I won’t have to do so again.
(Two things really).

(1) THE RIGHT OF POLICE OFFICERS TO HAVE AND EXPRESS AN OPINION

I wish I had a dol­lar for each time an offi­cer of the JCF tells me, please Mr. Beckles con­tin­ue to speak out on our behalf, no one else does.
This real­ly breaks my heart.
“The gazetted ranks do not speak out for us and in many cas­es, they are used to per­se­cute us” they lament.
Shocking, yet they tell me, “we can­not wait to see what you have to say but we do not com­ment or share your arti­cles because they will use that to penal­ize us”.
I nev­er hes­i­tate to tell them that there are a lot of us ex-police offi­cers who do wor­ry about their con­cerns, their safe­ty, and their wel­fare if no one else does. A great many of us are not just ex-cops who gath­er to drink rum and play domi­noes. (noth­ing wrong with the lat­ter real­ly), it’s just not our thing.

Sure , I under­stand that law enforce­ment depart­ments gen­er­al­ly have rules gov­ern­ing media pol­i­cy and admit­ted­ly offi­cers have to be cir­cum­spect in what they do, includ­ing on web­sites and social media.
Nevertheless, the police have had oner­ous restric­tions placed on their right to free speech which clear­ly has con­sti­tu­tion­al impli­ca­tions not to men­tion the moral considerations.

I write facts. Facts which are not always palat­able to Jamaica’s social elites. I write facts which are gen­er­al­ly incon­ve­nient to the polit­i­cal caste as well as the crim­i­nal fra­ter­ni­ty. The lines between the lat­ter two are some­times very dif­fi­cult to distinguish.
It fright­ens me that our police offi­cers would be bul­lied by their own Government to the point they are pet­ri­fied to respond to an arti­cle they find lib­er­at­ing. This brings into ques­tion the authen­tic­i­ty of our so-called Democracy in real ways.

But the very same Government has tabled a bill and passed an INDECOM law which takes away their right to have a few days to gath­er their wits before giv­ing a full writ­ten account­ing of their actions in shootouts in cas­es in which they are trau­ma­tized and some­times injured and seen their col­leagues killed.
Former Commissioner George Quallo spoke out about this detail­ing accounts he has seen with young offi­cers emerg­ing from shootouts shak­ing and cry­ing from the enor­mi­ty fo their encounter, yet the INDECOM law forces them to give state­ments even in their men­tal­ly trau­ma­tized state.

Commissioner George Quallo was forced out for not fol­low­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s ortho­doxy, on this and on oth­er issues con­cern­ing the wel­fare of his officers.
Despite the detrac­tors, this medi­um and this writer salutes Commissioner Quallo for not car­ry­ing water for the government.

The Police again had their rights impugned in the recent­ly passed Zones of Special Operations law(ZOSO), in which the admin­is­tra­tion attached an amend­ment which crim­i­nal­izes them for leav­ing the depart­ment with­out giv­ing a six-month notice.
The police is not a mil­i­tary force, offi­cers should have no restric­tions placed on their God-giv­en right to leave when­ev­er they want to, includ­ing with­out even sub­mit­ting a res­ig­na­tion like I did in 91, I sim­ply dropped every­thing and walked away.

(2) “SQUADDY”

One of the things which have been used pejo­ra­tive­ly to bash Police offi­cers in Jamaica over the years is the word “SQUADDY”. That assault was basi­cal­ly engi­neered by Carolyn Gomes the pedi­atric doc­tor turned human rights advocate.[sic]
Carolyn Gomes was even­tu­al­ly exposed for push­ing homo­sex­u­al lit­er­a­ture on under age Jamaican kids in Government care. Of course not before receiv­ing the Order of Jamaica. Go figure.

The word squad­dy con­tin­ue to be tarred and feath­ered in pejo­ra­tive terms as a kind of ter­mi­nol­o­gy which gives aid and com­fort to dirty cops, some kind of code of silence if you will.
The only prob­lem is that Carolyn Gomes had no more idea about what squad­dy meant to cops than I know how to treat a col­icky baby.
The one endear­ing term which police offi­cers had to refer to their col­leagues was too much for them to have and so they launched a cam­paign of demo­niza­tion against it. The poor peo­ple’s chil­dren should not have any­thing, not even a term of endear­ment to their col­leagues with whom they sac­ri­fice togeth­er for their country.
And so it is not out­side the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty that some of the bot­tom-feed­ing social climbers who have invad­ed the police depart­ment and have been pushed to the top do not them­selves under­stand es.prit de corps. They are not cops and nev­er will be.
The anti-police vil­lage lawyers who nev­er served in any­thing but gos­sip groups were quick to gob­ble up the dem­a­goguery, like a run­ning back they grabbed it and ran with it.

And now the nation’s chief dem­a­gogue, Terrence Williams has it and he is run­ning with it.Every chance that Charlatan gets he speaks about the squad­dy men­tal­i­ty in a way that belies the endear­ment police offi­cers feel when we say “squad­dy”.
If only this igno­rant nar­cis­sis­tic lit­tle media whore took the time to ask an offi­cer what the word means to him or her he would not con­tin­ue to embar­rass him­self the way he does when­ev­er he opens his mouth to speak. The wall of silence he sees encap­su­lat­ed in the word “squad­dy” exist only in his twist­ed mind.

“SQUADDY”

Although I have writ­ten about this on pre­vi­ous occa­sions, I will do so once again in the inter­est of clar­i­ty, or until this far­ci­cal liar stops.
Military, police offi­cers and oth­er groups the world over devel­op spe­cial bonds of friend­ship and cama­raderie. That bond of kin­dred spir­it is evi­dent in cadet corps, girls and boys scout troupes, cub scouts etc.
It is evi­dent in col­lege fra­ter­ni­ties some­thing Carolyn Gomes and Terrence Williams should have been con­ver­sant of since they are both col­lege educated.
I guess they missed those cam­pus activ­i­ties as they were too busy mak­ing mis­chief to engage in pos­i­tive cam­pus activities.

Whether it’s cub scouts, girls/​boys scouts col­lege fra­ter­ni­ties police depart­ments or what­ev­er, those bonds are the mem­o­ries we car­ry in our hearts for the peo­ple whom we spent those times with. They form the ties which bind us into ser­vice and com­mon cause. Those bonds pro­vide net­work­ing for col­lege grad­u­ates which ensures if one suc­ceeds all succeed.
They are the ties which bind police offi­cers when we say “squad­dy,“because we depend on one anoth­er not to leave our broth­ers on the bat­tle­field when we are shot and lay there bleed­ing. We are not ashamed of it, we will nev­er be ashamed of it ‚get used to it.

It is that kin­dred spir­it which says we stand with you when no one else will. That spir­it of cama­raderie which cel­e­brates and com­mem­o­rates our col­leagues who we depend on to pro­tect our backs as we engage those who would destroy society.

This is some­thing dear to us and we will nev­er feel bad about it.
We will nev­er be told, nei­ther will we ever aban­don the es.prit de corps, that feel­ing of pride, fel­low­ship, and com­mon loy­al­ty we feel and share.
And so to the lying, self­ish self-serv­ing Saul of Tarsus oth­er­wise called (Terrence Williams) I say try ser­vice to oth­ers. Try doing some­thing oth­er than self-pro­mo­tion and self-aggran­dize­ment. Try belong­ing to some­thing big­ger than your­self and your nar­row self-inter­est and maybe, just maybe you will feel a lit­tle bit of the pride we feel when we say “SQUADDY”.

Read about Saul of Tarsus, take heed.……

At the time Andrew Holness was run­ning around talk­ing about what ZOSO was going to do as it regards crime I coun­tered that giv­en any sce­nario in which a flood or mil­i­tary and police bod­ies are thrown into a small geo­graph­i­cal area crime would inex­orably decline.
The down­side to that strat­e­gy I argued is that that strat­e­gy was vast­ly unsus­tain­able as that process would have to be a nation­wide strat­e­gy for it to have the desired effect.

If You Believe The ZOSO Will Have An Impact On Murders You Deserve To Be Conned .…

Since Jamaica does not have hun­dreds of thou­sands of sol­diers and police offi­cers that strat­e­gy was, there­fore, a stop-gap mea­sure which could only pla­cate and paci­fy the area in which the strat­e­gy is applied.

The stop-gap strat­e­gy was nev­er­the­less applied and to the delight and crow­ing of the polit­i­cal class, the area in which the ZOSO was insti­tut­ed has pre­dictably been paci­fied to the cha­grin and detri­ment of oth­er areas. The crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in that area of St James sim­ply packed up and moved their trade to oth­er areas and con­tin­ued ply­ing their nefar­i­ous and das­tard­ly trade.

It is on this par­tic­u­lar point which I want to focus my read­ers. Some of who were a lit­tle bit offend­ed as they chid­ed me for not wait­ing to see whether the thing would work. As I respect­ful­ly said to many of you over the peri­od before and since it’s cre­ation, ZOSO could not have the desired results we all craved because it does noth­ing to remove from the equa­tion the chief pro­duc­ers of violence.

The process of low­er­ing crime and remov­ing the threat of vicious vio­lence and death from the equa­tion requires a strat­e­gy which first and fore­most rec­og­nizes that the coun­try is in a state of unde­clared civ­il war.
I have tried to make this point ad nau­se­am over the years, our coun­try must attend to the state of unde­clared civ­il war she is in. I have writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles point­ing to that very fact.

Yesterday I talked about the phe­nom­e­nal amounts of mon­ey the Nation waste each year through an act cre­at­ed in 2010 by the Parliament under the lead­er­ship of Bruce Golding the then Prime Minister.
In the 2016/​2017 bud­get, the Government allo­cat­ed to INDECOM M$366.492, for the peri­od 2017/​2018, M$353.35.
After a 22 year neglect of the police depart­ment by the pre­vi­ous PNP Administration, and a grow­ing mur­der prob­lem Bruce Golding had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take steps to recre­ate the police depart­ment by infus­ing the nec­es­sary resources in retrain­ing and equip­ping the police department.

Instead of rec­og­niz­ing the built-in polit­i­cal and leg­isla­tive fail­ings which result­ed in the fail­ings of the police, Golding in col­lu­sion with the PNP, cre­at­ed INDECOM not just to appease the huge anti-police growth indus­try which had devel­oped in the coun­try but also their for­eign han­dlers who dole out huge sums of mon­ey in sup­port of INDECOM as opposed to assist­ing the prin­ci­pal law enforce­ment agency.
In fact, for the same report­ing peri­ods, 2016/​2017 M$230.616 and 2017/​2018 M$202.476 of INDECOM’s bud­get came from over­seas donors.
Why?

The new JLP Administration in Kingston has demon­strat­ed the very same dis­dain for law enforce­ment that the pre­vi­ous JLP admin­is­tra­tion of Golding did, this time on steroids.
Hundreds of mil­lions of dol­lars allo­cat­ed to the 3’000 man defense force which is not like­ly to engage in a war any­time soon except in sup­port of the police.
The Defense force was giv­en a lead role in the So-called ZOSO cur­rent­ly in effect in St James Parish. Selling the false sense of calm in that par­tic­u­lar sec­tor as an exam­ple of suc­cess when the Military is giv­en the lead and that nar­ra­tive being adopt­ed and prof­fered by none oth­er than INDECOM the JLP’s brain­child. If you are not will­ful­ly blind the cir­cle of dis­re­spect is pret­ty hard to miss.

The JCF with all of its short­com­ings has been book­end­ed by the two polit­i­cal par­ties the PNP which decid­ed­ly starved it of resources over a 22-year ‑peri­od and the JLP which demon­stra­bly have decid­ed that its intent is to invest in the demise of polic­ing on the Island.

AS AN ASIDE.…

Just in case you missed it, Speaking at a St James inter­faith prayer break­fast a JDF Colonel Daniel George Pryce an intel­li­gence offi­cer told the con­gre­ga­tion that demon­ic forces are influ­enc­ing crime in St James, where a state of pub­lic emer­gency was imposed in January, and the author­i­ties are not equipped to deal with it.
If this was­n’t so retard­ed it would be laugh­able, this is the same JDF which has the lead over the ZOSO in the parish.This offi­cer is an intel­li­gence officer[sic]

“We wres­tle not against flesh and blood. This war is not phys­i­cal, and there­fore it takes a spir­i­tu­al response to this,” stat­ed Colonel Pryce.
Pryce, who said he was giv­ing the address in two parts — as a sol­dier and as a Christian — not­ed that “me in a my uni­form, the police in their uni­form can’t take on the spir­i­tu­al warfare”.

Pryce spoke to the num­ber of Gangs oper­at­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty of Cambridge 29 to be exact, num­bers sup­plied by the police of course. The Colonel men­tioned demon­ic prac­tices, such as Illuminati and Baphomet, engaged in by gangs. Most notably the gath­er­ing was by a sup­posed Church group which calls itself the Supernatural Encounter Jamaica (SEJ) .

Pryce point­ed out that the gun was respon­si­ble for 253 of the 335 mur­ders com­mit­ted in the parish last year, and not­ed that the mur­der toll was the high­est record­ed in the coun­try’s his­to­ry for a police divi­sion. The fig­ure equates to 67 more mur­ders than were report­ed in 2016. Thank God for ZOSO Colonel Pryce said. There is that rep­re­sen­ta­tion to ZOSO again.

“At this rate, we are almost at a civ­il war”. No Colonel Pryce, we are not almost in a civ­il war, we are in a state of civ­il war!
That war will not be won by indulging in non­sen­si­cal belief in the occult. It will not be won by prayer and fast­ing. It will be won when the Jamaican Government gives the secu­ri­ty forces the tools they need and get out of the way so that they may go after mur­der­ers rapists and oth­er dan­ger­ous felons.

With illog­i­cal rant­i­ngs of this kind, our coun­try is not only des­tined to be the laugh­ing stock of the Caribbean region we will be the laugh­ing stock of the world, in addi­tion to our high mur­der designation.
The only super­nat­ur­al force affect­ing crime is the igno­rant and unex­plained idi­ot­ic approach being applied to the Islands crime epidemic.
It is intel­lec­tu­al rot, not Illuminati. 
If only the lead­ers would pull their heads from their own ass­es that much would be clear.

Last year alone Jamaican Police report­ed that they inves­ti­gat­ed the death of 1616 of their fel­low coun­try­men and women. This num­ber rep­re­sent­ed an increase of about 20% in the homi­cide num­bers report­ed to them the pre­vi­ous year.
The astro­nom­i­cal num­ber of deaths which are large­ly firearm relat­ed tells only a frac­tion of the car­nage hap­pen­ing as it relates to crime and vio­lence, as the num­ber of those shot and injured are expo­nen­tial­ly high­er than those killed.

As the Government strug­gles to appear to be doing some­thing through a series of hap­haz­ard mea­sures, aver­age law-abid­ing Jamaicans are at their wit’s end and are demand­ing dras­tic reme­di­al actions.
None of the actions, (ie) ZOSO zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions law, the state of emer­gency in the parish of Saint James or any oth­er stop-gap mea­sure has had any mean­ing­ful impact on crime reduction.

The intractable crime con­di­tions plagu­ing the Island had it’s Genesis in the 60’s and was nur­tured and enhanced by the two polit­i­cal par­ties since then.
We have got­ten to the point now where vio­lent crime is lit­er­al­ly chok­ing the lifeblood out of the coun­try con­trary to what the polit­i­cal lead­ers tell you, and they refuse to take the steps to stop it.
It is remark­able that in a tiny coun­try of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple over 1600 could be mur­dered in a sin­gle year with­out a real sense of urgency anywhere.

With that said, there are struc­tur­al carve-outs which if insti­tut­ed could have a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive effect yet polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions have ham­pered the imple­men­ta­tion of com­mon­sense approaches.
Some of those com­mon sense approach­es include but are not con­fined to pass­ing laws which puts dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals in prison and keep them there.
Making the com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing the sup­port (leg­isla­tive­ly and oth­er­wise), equip­ment, and remu­ner­a­tions and of course prop­er train­ing which are nec­es­sary for the police to do their jobs effectively.
The Government can­not con­tin­ue to refuse to sup­port the efforts of law enforce­ment while pre­tend­ing to do just that publicly.
Governmental sup­port for the police can­not be only to their para­chut­ed friends that they place above the men and women of the department.

More than any­thing else the Government can repeal the INDECOM Act! It must be clear to all except the will­ful­ly blind, that Terrence Williams is not an inde­pen­dent Investigator but a cheap media whore of a rabble-rouser.
Commissioner Terrence Williams please see Independent Investigator(Robert Muller).

The over­worked under­paid, under-equipped poor­ly sup­port­ed police have been doing their best to deal with the oner­ous crime mon­ster which is stran­gling the coun­try with not much sup­port for their efforts.
Even as they do so Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell sits on the side­lines and active­ly take actions to divert the atten­tion of the coun­try from the task at hand with a view to slime the police.

In address­ing media enti­ties the anti-police, for­eign-fund­ed gov­ern­ment agency chose to slime the police through its com­mis­sion­er and inter­lop­ing assis­tant com­mis­sion­er Hamish Campbell.
Hamish Campbell out­lined that 168 of the 264 shoot­ing inci­dents report­ed against the secu­ri­ty forces last year involved per­sons who were fatal­ly shot. This, he said, rep­re­sent­ed an increase from 2016 when 111 of the 180 gun-relat­ed reports were for fatal shoot­ings. In 2015, there were 169 shoot­ing incidents.

“One mea­sure of assess­ing police use of force and whether it may or may not be exces­sive is a dis­tinc­tion between those who are shot and injured and those who are killed,” Campbell said. “In Jamaica’s secu­ri­ty forces, there are always sig­nif­i­cant­ly more peo­ple shot and killed than there are shot and injured; and it is for the JCF to reflect on those pat­terns.”

The job of INDECOM was sold to the nation as that of an inde­pen­dent agency which would “inde­pen­dent­ly” inves­ti­gate all inci­dents of police shoot­ings as well as all alle­ga­tions of abuse by the police, Military, and cor­rec­tions departments.
Since the JCF is the Agency in the pub­lic’s eye and is the very first agency tasked with deal­ing with those opposed to the rule of law it fol­lows that the over­whelm­ing bulk of the com­plaints would be against the Police.

Nevertheless, from its Genesis, the Commissioner of INDECOM has shown him­self to be an atten­tion seek­ing media whore who seems to go into with­draw­al as a crack or opi­um addict does when he does not see his name in the news.
Terrence Williams’ job is to find bad shoot­ings and rec­om­mend charges. If his Agency can­not find any­thing wrong with the shoot­ings, (shoot­ings in which I might add police offi­cers are shot and killed and injured) , why is Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell allowed to slime the police with dis­tort­ed data?

I once again call for the repeal of the INDECOM Act, we sim­ply can­not have an agency par­tial­ly fund­ed by tax­pay­ers mon­ey which is active­ly bent on sub­vert­ing the role of the police, and enhanc­ing anar­chy in our country.
INDECOM is an ene­my of the peo­ple and by exten­sion an ene­my of our country.
I call on the Jamaican peo­ple who care about crime, its time to demand an end to this farce. Demand a full repeal of the INDECOM act and the resources ded­i­cat­ed to train­ing equip­ping and sup­port­ing the police in their fight for the soul of our country.

It’s time that this despi­ca­ble mod­ern-day Joe McCarthy be shown the door

When an offend­er is told he is under arrest that offend­er has every respon­si­bil­i­ty to sub­mit to being arrest­ed and have his day in court.
If the offi­cer is wrong, the arrestee has access to civ­il reme­dies under the laws.
One thing is cer­tain and should nev­er be forgotten !!!!!
When you decide to resist arrest you open your­self up to what­ev­er is com­ing your way and you alone bear that burden.
Simply put the offi­cer has a right to arrest you if he believes you are com­mit­ting an offense. You do not have the right to resist or fight with the officer.
He has the right under the law to use force to gain your compliance.

Slapping away at offi­cers and mov­ing aggres­sive­ly at offi­cers try­ing to make an arrest is tol­er­at­ed only in Jamaica.
I write dai­ly implor­ing offi­cers to put down this kind of behav­ior rather quickly.
My only prob­lem with what the offi­cer did was that he did not pro­ceed to cuff him as soon as he was subdued.

It was 1982 I was a young con­sta­ble at beat and foot, two of my col­leagues were mobbed at South Parade, I went to their assis­tance, one woman grabbed me by my uni­form shirt and ripped the but­tons apart in the ensu­ing mêlée.
I went to work with my baton and in short order, total order was restored, marched six peo­ple all hold­ing each oth­er’s clothes to Central.
From that day onward until I left Beat and Foot when­ev­er they saw me com­ing they part­ed like the red sea to Moses.
I will move moun­tains for you, I signed on to ensure your safe­ty but if put your hands on me and you will regret it. No Police offi­cer signed up to be assault­ed or killed doing their job.

I have been call­ing for these non-lethal tools to be giv­en to the police and for super­vi­sors to ensure that offi­cers on the beat be in pos­ses­sion of them at all times.
This kind of behav­ior sim­ply has to stop. The Police MUST have the right to make arrests regard­less of the offense, you do not get to fight a police offi­cer and just walk away as if noth­ing happened.

One friend now lives in the United States, the oth­er in a cer­tain parish in Jamaica, both young men worked the land, one caught a break and left, the oth­er remained.
Back at home, they raised goats, burned char­coal and they eked and scratched out a living.
The young man back at home still rais­es the goats, in fact, there were more goats. After all, now that his friend is able to send mon­ey back to pur­chase more goats.
He still chopped wood, build the kilns, cut the grass, stacks the wood and burns the char­coal, all while hav­ing only one arm.

The young man in the States is hard work­ing and respect­ful, a fam­i­ly man, he has been so since I first met him when he first came to the United States, he has remained so for the four years since he has been here.
The sto­ry he tells me warmed my heart until it did­n’t. His sto­ry gave me hope, true to my belief, not all of our young men are dis­pos­able, not all are blood­thirsty killers.
But some def­i­nite­ly are.

While the young man in the States was work­ing hard send­ing every spare dol­lar back to pur­chase the right Rams for sir­ing the best kids, mak­ing sure the pens are secure and every­thing was in place, oth­ers were watch­ing and bid­ing their time.
And so one day over a month ago as the man walked to his goat-farm they struck.
Armed with guns they attacked, he fought valiant­ly using his machete to ward them off, but with only one arm, a machete and three more preda­tors join­ing in, they quick­ly over­pow­ered him.

They chopped and stabbed and chopped and stabbed, they even stabbed him in his eyes try­ing to gouge out them out.
He even­tu­al­ly laid still, play­ing dead in a bid to save his life, what was left of it, if possible.
They dragged him by the feet and dumped him in a ravine where they left him for dead, then they took the goats, all of them.

The bad­ly muti­lat­ed man dragged him­self bleed­ing pro­fuse­ly until he got to help. Well over a month lat­er, he is unable to see from either of his eyes, even as he tries to recov­er from the vicious trau­ma inflict­ed on his body.
As is to be expect­ed no one has been arrest­ed, this grue­some bar­bar­ic case did­n’t even make the local news.

This begs the ques­tion, how many more inno­cent hard work­ing peo­ple have been mur­dered sim­ply for the sweat of their brow?
How can we pre­tend that all is well when hard-work­ing men who till the soil burn char­coal and raise some goats are treat­ed this way sim­ply because of the mea­ger liv­ing they extract for their efforts.

This sto­ry is not dis­sim­i­lar to the killing of 32-year-old Notoya Ricketts whose bul­let-rid­dled body was found by res­i­dents in ear­ly February. Her two-year-old daugh­ter, who was found next to the body, was not harmed.
Miss Ricketts was last seen alive on the way to tend to her ani­mals. Ms. Ricketts’s moth­er was mur­dered in the com­mu­ni­ty just two weeks pri­or to her own death.

These are the types of grue­some killings and assaults which are not being cov­ered in the news. As Tourism num­bers are bur­nished and a new Commissioner of Police is set to take over, the ques­tion must be how do we stop this?
The Police are seem­ing­ly inca­pable or unwill­ing to extend them­selves to do what it takes.
I can’t say I blame them frankly, the sys­tem is sup­port­ive of the killers, not those who work to remove them from soci­ety and to some degree the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion is high­ly sup­port­ive of crim­i­nal conduct.

We get the com­mu­ni­ties we want by our actions, that trans­lates into the parish­es and ulti­mate­ly the coun­try we end up with.
Whether we admit it or not this desire to align with crim­i­nals to the per­il of the rule of law will con­tin­ue to have dis­as­trous con­se­quences for Jamaicans.

Those who shape and make pol­i­cy can pre­tend that the fool­hardy path they are on will result in a utopi­an elim­i­na­tion of crime as against a sys­tem­at­ic and well-tar­get­ed attack on gangsters.
Ultimately we will see the results, like a preg­nan­cy there is a baby com­ing and we will all be forced to face the results.

Continue read­ing →

If the rum­blings in the Jamaican press is true that Major General Anderson the nation’s first nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er is being tapped to be the next Commissioner of Police then I would sug­gest that mem­bers of the police force with any brain in their heads lay down arms and walk away.

It would be the icing on the cake that this admin­is­tra­tion has zero respect for the men and women of the JCF, does not care about their many years of ser­vice and the fact that many are supreme­ly and immi­nent­ly aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly qualified.
In fact, there are serv­ing mem­bers of the JCF who are supreme­ly more qual­i­fied than the Nation’s Prime Minister, Andrew Holness.

We have not ver­i­fied that this sto­ry is cor­rect so we will with­hold fur­ther com­ment at this time.