A very dear friend tried to con­vince me he was no alco­holic awhile back, ” Mike after mi nah dring rub­bin alco­hol, ungle if mid did a drink rub­bin aco­hol mi wudda sey mi need help.”
Two stints in prison lat­er, as a result of his drink­ing and dri­ving, he is still con­vinced that he does­n’t have a drink­ing problem.

There is a cer­tain sense of con­tent­ment, or res­ig­na­tion peo­ple feel in their cir­cum­stances, I guess it makes them accept far less than they were cre­at­ed to accept.
Whether it’s as my friend say he is no alco­holic, or Jamaican peo­ple say­ing “crime de every weh”, in response to the fright­en­ing mur­der rate it seems deni­a­bil­i­ty has now become a cop­ing mechanism.

In the United States, the all-out assault on once held soci­etal norms for the high­est exec­u­tive office is passed off as just Trump being Trump.
We have become so accus­tomed to the vul­gar­i­ty and gar­ish behav­ior that we tell our­selves that is the way it has to be, this is the new normal.
Back home the killings elic­it a glance if at all, the crime scene tape has become a spec­ta­cle, a spec­ta­cle which lasts until the corpse is removed and the blood is washed away and it’s back to busi­ness as usual.

I am always a lit­tle miffed at the idea that we can­not make a change as if we are total­ly pow­er­less. I have nev­er shared the per­cep­tion that it’s up to some­one else to do for us what we ought to be doing for ourselves.
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus and ignit­ed a movement.
There is some­thing each and every per­son can do to make a bet­ter world. If the price of a cer­tain brand of bread is too high sim­ply stop eat­ing that brand, no mat­ter how much you like the taste of that brand.

I don’t like the way the few NFL play­ers are being treat­ed for tak­ing a knee dur­ing the singing of the nation­al anthem. No one will notice but I have stopped watch­ing since Colin Kaepernick has been black­list­ed and will nev­er watch anoth­er game unless he is hired by a team.
So you say what dif­fer­ence does t make if you stop watch­ing many more peo­ple are?
Many peo­ple are watch­ing but I ain’t, that’s the dif­fer­ence. If enough of us stand up and say no what do you think the out­come will be?

The urge I have and the adren­a­line rush of watch­ing a good game are strong but they do not out­weigh my resolve to stand on prin­ci­ple and not sell out for a cou­ple hours of fun.
Former President Barack Obama was always quick to remind us, we are the change we seek. It is not up to some­one else to fix things for us.
Each Generation has a duty to the cause of jus­tice and broth­er­hood, peace and pros­per­i­ty so that when we have fin­ished our leg, the baton will be passed leav­ing the next run­ner with a good shot at this race called life.

We call ill afford to hand the baton to the next run­ner leav­ing him no chance of winning.
Winning is life, it is our exis­tence, it is the dif­fer­ence between sur­vival and extinc­tion. Don’t ever for one minute believe that we can­not be evis­cer­at­ed as if we nev­er existed.

What we should not be doing is doing our ene­my’s work for them. If the wan­ton sav­agery and the bar­bar­ic killings are not stopped by some­one or some­thing who will be left?
How about each and every one of us decides that we will not sup­port crim­i­nal behav­ior and mean it?
How about we make the deci­sion that at least in my house­hold there will be no blood money?
We may not think it’s can­ni­bal­ism when the mon­ey the mend bring home was tak­en from the per­son whose life he had just snuffed out but it is.
Today it’s that per­son, rest assured tomor­row it will be you.

Not much has changed in Jamaican Media from what exist­ed two or three decades ago except that we have more enti­ties than the pre­vi­ous RJR and JBC radio and JBC Television which signed off at mid­night, after which there were only crickets.
Sure, Radio and Television have got­ten expo­nen­tial­ly more vul­gar and as a con­se­quence, the soci­ety has den­i­grat­ed much fur­ther than in many oth­er nations.
The results of this are borne out in the vio­lence and homi­cide sta­tis­tics which are chok­ing the lifeblood out of the tiny Island we once thought of as paradise.

In the time since then, we have had tens of thou­sands of mur­dered Jamaicans, Vybz Kartel lec­tured at the (Intellectual ghet­to (UWI) and Ninjaman gave a pep talk to law enforce­ment officers.
The irony in all this is that both are now con­vict­ed murderers!
From the lofty out of touch Editorial offices at that behe­moth on North Street to the cushy lit­tle stu­dios of both radio and tele­vi­sion the inces­sant dai­ly bar­rage of anti-police invec­tives was bound to have neg­a­tive con­se­quences for our country.

You see, the perch­es haven’t changed, nei­ther have the influ­ences which come from the media hous­es changed.
What has changed are the ways the rest of the world views the issues of today and how to deal with those issues and no one both­ered to inform the Editorial boards of the Gleaner, Observer or the self-appoint­ed mouth­pieces of the Jamaican peo­ple in the tra­di­tion­al mediums.
The prob­lems with their views are that they are large­ly shaped from parochial per­spec­tives, devoid of exposure.

So they still write their Editorial pieces from those lofty perch­es and the vil­lage lawyers debate them on talk radio and tele­vi­sion. The back­ward­ness of those edi­to­ri­als final­ly seep down into the body politic, and to the man on the streets where it becomes gospel.
The prob­lem with all this is that the ini­tial per­spec­tive was not based on crit­i­cal think­ing or deep intro­spec­tion or even data-driven.
They are old tired posi­tions of pun­dits and prog­nos­ti­ca­tors steeped in old prej­u­dices and per­cep­tions which have no rel­e­vance to today’s society.

So sure, the edi­to­r­i­al board of the Gleaner would be offend­ed by the idea that their baby INDECOM is prob­lem­at­ic, they do not care about the mas­sive loss of life occur­ring in the coun­try, why would they, it makes for sen­sa­tion­al headlines?
They do not care about the men and women who brave the bul­lets when they sleep either, berat­ing them sells news­pa­pers too.

At the very best, the bright­est of them can­not extrap­o­late from the data the neg­a­tive impact this law is hav­ing on the lives of ordi­nary Jamaicans.
They are hell-bent on their focus, which is to demo­nize the police. Any emerg­ing data which con­flicts with the rot­ten fish they are sell­ing is swift­ly dis­card­ed in a con­vo­lut­ed word sal­ad of hyperbole.

A soci­ety which hates its defend­ers must be pre­pared to deal with the con­se­quences com­ing from its offenders.The media has a respon­si­bil­i­ty, to be hon­est with its assess­ment of top­i­cal issues. It must endeav­or to ensure that it does due dili­gence even in the opin­ions it prof­fers, they too matter.

Eventually, the stench of the rot ris­es up to the high­est tur­ret of your tow­ers and no one is immune from the fallout.
Be care­ful with your stewardship.

Terrence Williams has now demon­strat­ed that he is big­ger than those who employ him.
In fact, Williams clap-back at Andrew Holness’ com­ment that INDECOM some­times goes too far bears out what I have main­tained since the agency was authorized.

It now seems that because of INDECOM’s for­eign back­ing, Terrence Williams has adopt­ed a Laissez-faire atti­tude toward any­thing any­one says about INDECOM.
His “I don’t give a shit what you think “atti­tude is now direct­ed at the duly elect­ed Prime Minister.
Now, this is a lit­tle bit fun­ny to some­one like me.

Andrew Holness is part of the cabal of deplorables[sic] which cooked up this act, with Bruce Golding, Delroy Chuck, and oth­ers. Yes, he was part of that Administration and of course with the bless­ings of the sim­ple-mind­ed Portia Simpson Miller and her band of crim­i­nal sup­port­ing thugs.

Remember that Terrence Williams’ broth­er is part of the JLP Administration. Now here is the kick­er, Holness knew at the time that the way the law was draft­ed and word­ed would have seri­ous con­se­quences for Police offi­cers yet he did nothing.
He has since then stead­fast­ly refused to acknowl­edge that the law is harm­ful even as his wife a neo­phyte politi­cian expressed empa­thy with the police.
It is only now that he has a surly police depart­ment on his hand, angry about the way wage nego­ti­a­tions are regress­ing that Holness sud­den­ly has his epiphany.
While we are on the sub­ject let me once again say to the lawyers and vil­lage lawyers who are inca­pable of under­stand­ing what we mean when we say the law is gross­ly inju­ri­ous to police offi­cers, no mat­ter how clean they are.

(1) The law demands that Police Officers attend INDECOM’s offices at the ear­li­est oppor­tu­ni­ty (at the per­il of prison) and give state­ments in cas­es where they were forced to use lethal force.
Anyone who has ever been involved in a shoot­ing under­stands how dev­as­tat­ing­ly trau­mat­ic that is.
In most depart­ments in oth­er coun­tries offi­cers are giv­en time to decom­press from that ordeal.
According to the Emperor of INDECOM [sic], it appears that offi­cers rel­ish being engaged in fatal shoot­ings, so the lev­els of fatal shoot­ings are attrib­ut­able to that love of killing and not the extreme vio­lent nature of the Island’s killers..

(2) Officers are forced to defend them­selves in court in cas­es where they did their jobs and a zeal­ous con­fronta­tion­al INDECOM and Terrence Willimas charges them with a crime, usu­al­ly result­ing in immense hard­ships and finan­cial ruination.

(3) To those talk­ing about good cops hav­ing noth­ing to fear, put that in your pipes and smoke it. Let’s see how you would like to be ruined finan­cial­ly for doing exact­ly what you swore to do at the per­il of prison.

(4) This writer is encour­aged that the Government is now pro­vid­ing some sem­blance of finan­cial relief to offi­cers to help with their legal bills in cas­es where they are per­se­cut­ed for doing their duty.
The thing to do is to repeal the law and replace it with a law which pro­tects both police and pub­lic alike.
I will per­son­al­ly con­tin­ue to do my lit­tle part to keep the light shin­ing on this mon­strous crime enhance­ment law which is tak­ing the lives of count­less Jamaicans and chang­ing the way peo­ple respond to the rule of law forever.

I call on this Government to stop this right now by repeal­ing the INDECOM law and replace the law with one which works for both the Police and the public.
Hire a Commissioner who is untaint­ed by the self-aggran­dize­ment and self-pro­mo­tion, one who under­stands that as an inde­pen­dent inves­tiga­tive unit his/​her agency can­not take sides one way or the other.

Terrence Williams argues that INDECOM also has over­sight of the Military and Corrections depart­ments yet he has heard no com­plaints of low morale from those two entities.
(1) When the Military takes to the streets it does so under the purview of the Police, not as a law enforce­ment enti­ty on its own.
(2) The cor­rec­tions depart­ment deals with incar­cer­at­ed peo­ple who are sub­ject to the rules of the Institution in which they are held and are dealt with accord­ing to the rules therein.
(3) The Police are forced to deal with every­one who breaks the law and those who sup­port them and their refusal to sub­mit to being held account­able for their trans­gres­sions against the law.

Either this guy is not too bright or he is delib­er­ate­ly try­ing to deceive the pub­lic, some­thing he has done effec­tive­ly with the help of a com­plic­it cabal of anti-police antag­o­nists in the media for sev­en years. Police work is noth­ing like what the mil­i­tary or cor­rec­tions depart­ments do, Police offi­cers are asked to deal with much more, includ­ing mak­ing life and death deci­sions with­in a frac­tion of a second.
Since lying Terrence Williams knows so much about this police cul­ture he so glibly talks about through his lying decep­tive lips, I say to him do a ride along with the two or so cops at night in Payne land, West Kingston, East Kingston or the ghet­tos sur­round­ing Montego Bay.

I know this gets to you Terrence, so I chal­lenge you to put on your big boy pants for a week and show the nation that you are not just talking.
Demonstrate to the coun­try that when you make your big chat you are will­ing to back them up by plac­ing your life on the line to back them up.
Do the ride-along with the real men who pro­tect our coun­try. You are a dis­re­spect­ful lit­tle nar­cis­sist who speaks about the men and women of the police depart­ment in dis­re­spect­ful terms, even the career offi­cers who have giv­en decades of ser­vice to our coun­try way above any­thing you will ever accomplish.
Show some damn respect.
Failing which, sit your ass down and shut your fuck­ing mouth.….….

For years after leav­ing law enforce­ment I have asked the ques­tion of my coun­try’ s lead­ers, “what kind of coun­try do we want to have”?
Are we try­ing to achieve a nar­co-state, a coun­try divid­ed into enclaves like sub-Saharan Africa or Lebanon and oth­er failed states?
Or do we want to make Jamaica the glo­ri­ous state it can be con­sid­er­ing what our coun­try has to offer?
Are we con­tent to con­tin­ue feed­ing the stereo­typ­i­cal per­cep­tions that Blacks are inca­pable of self-gov­er­nance? Since Independence, we have cer­tain­ly demon­strat­ed that we are inca­pable, or at best unwill­ing to make good gov­ern­ing decisions.

Why have polit­i­cal lead­ers of both polit­i­cal par­ties made such hor­ri­ble deci­sions, deci­sions which are anti­thet­i­cal to the oaths they took to pro­tect the nation from all ene­mies for­eign and domestic?
Each and every Government have as their pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty, the charge to pro­tect their cit­i­zens using all of the tools at their disposal.
Administrations of both polit­i­cal par­ties have been quick to adopt and sup­port a for­eign imposed mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment but have been neg­li­gent in uphold­ing the foun­da­tion­al pil­lars of the Bail Act.

Jamaican Judges A Large Part Of The Murder Problem/​Ask Dexter Pottinger

The courts are sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent arbiters out­side the con­trol of the [peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, such is what many legal schol­ars and many wannabes will have you believe.
The truth of the mat­ter is the courts are there to inter­pret the laws passed by the Parliament, the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Therefore if a law is not work­ing it is up to the Nation’s Parliament to take action to ensure that the laws are up to date.
So when the Prime Minister tells a crowd of cheer­ing sup­port­ers that the INDECOM act has been problematic,(something I have argued for years),
then rather than pro­pose a repeal and replace, (a log­i­cal rem­e­dy), the PM promis­es to make more mon­ey avail­able to police for their defense.
In essence that is politi­cians blow­ing smoke up peo­ple’s col­lec­tive ass­es rather than doing what they were elect­ed to do, lead.

When the Minister of National Security final­ly admits that there is a prob­lem because peo­ple are being grant­ed bail and they are return­ing to kill over and over again, it’s start­ing to sound a lit­tle tone deaf when they could have fixed that prob­lem a long time ago.
Revealing that 143 Jamaicans have been mur­dered by men who are on bail for oth­er charges just this year alone Robert Montague said he will be propos­ing leg­is­la­tion that will ensure that peo­ple who com­mit gun crimes or are held with guns do nor receive bail).

That has been my sug­ges­tion for years, why would an alleged mur­der­er be allowed out on bail, yet in the Jamaican courts alleged mur­der­ers are grant­ed bail up to six times after been charged with cap­i­tal mur­der and killed again and again and again.
That kind of brain-dead mad­ness only hap­pens in Jamaica, nowhere else, so much so that Jamaica has become a laugh­ing stock around the CARICOM region and sits atop the mur­der states on the planet.

Despite the fact that the present Bail act is gross­ly out­dat­ed and insuf­fi­cient to deal with the exi­gen­cies of the time, there are strong stip­u­la­tions with­in the act which gives Judges the back­ing they need should they choose to be good stew­ards in the dis­pen­sa­tion of their mandates.
Insofar as that is con­cerned Jamaica’s judges have come up woe­ful­ly short in hon­or­ing their oaths, they have effec­tive­ly turned the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem into a revolv­ing door, mak­ing a mock­ery of the sys­tem of justice.

Sure, Bail is not sup­posed to be used as pun­ish­ment for an offend­er but the Bail act despite all its frail­ties, gives judges cov­er to keep alleged crim­i­nals in jail where they belong.
There are three spe­cif­ic points in the act which makes it clear that even way back when the act was first con­ceived seri­ous crimes were tak­en rather seriously.
Bail may be refused if…
(1) the offend­er is unlike­ly to show up for trial.
(2) the offend­er may interfere/​kill with witnesses.
(3) The seri­ous­ness of the crimes the offend­er is accused of committing.

There are no log­i­cal argu­ments to be made for what Jamaican judges have done, no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the harm they have caused by turn­ing loose seri­ous offend­ers to kill after they have been arrest­ed on homi­cide charges.
It is a seri­ous breach of the pub­lic’s trust, the harm per­pe­trat­ed on the nation by these bureau­crats, unelect­ed by any­one but who wield immense pow­er and influence.
The nation must now begin the seri­ous process of tak­ing the nec­es­sary steps to bring san­i­ty back to our streets and our communities.
Much of which must be done leg­isla­tive­ly. Jamaican can­not con­tin­ue to act out­side inter­na­tion­al norms with­out consequence.
We must say to these thugs once and for all “no more” and mean it.

Among the raft of sug­ges­tions I have pro­posed for tack­ling the crime epi­dem­ic in Jamaica are manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain cat­e­go­ry of crimes as well as a full repeal of the INDECOM and Bail acts and a re-pas­sage of both laws with added com­po­nents that reflects the seri­ous­ness of the times in which we live.

Finally, parts of the Administration in Kingston are also call­ing for the very same things we have been advo­cat­ing across admin­is­tra­tions for the last decade or more.
A cou­ple of years ago, I put togeth­er this plan which I updat­ed at the time the Parliament was debat­ing the ZOSO Act; since then, there has not been much move­ment toward any of the bul­let points.
Well, now we have begun to see some crack­ing, at least some of the rhetoric com­ing from the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Security tends to indi­cate that they are begin­ning to get it.

Whack-a-mole-crime Strategy

Either that, or there are moves afoot to pla­cate the police as they demand a liv­able wage. Which would sug­gest that the admin­is­tra­tion ful­ly appre­ci­ates and under­stand what needs to be done to stop this gal­lop­ing crime wave and make the job of the police more impactful.
On Sunday, Holness acknowl­edged that INDECOM was hurt­ing law enforce­ment efforts, a point I have made sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly for the last sev­en years.

At the same con­fer­ence, the Minister of National Security told sup­port­ers, “We are mov­ing to tight­en our gun laws because in 84 per­cent of all crimes in Jamaica, the gun is present, and we don’t make guns in Jamaica. So we are going to tight­en the gun laws. And when I take a law to Parliament, I want you, the Labourites, to stand with us, and we will find out if the oth­er peo­ple dem a guh stand wid us, too, because every­thing we do that is good, dem oppose us.”

“When I bring that bill to Parliament, we going to say, if you charge with a gun crime, no bail. No bail. Because so far this year, 143 Jamaicans have been mur­dered by men who are on bail for oth­er charges. With the new law, no bail. We going to put it into law that if you are caught with a gun, there will be a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence that you know when you get con­vict­ed, no fine. You going to tan a prison fi 15 – 20 years,” he told supporters.

I encour­age the admin­is­tra­tion to remove those who pur­port to care about human rights from the table. They offer zero solu­tions to the Island’s crime epi­dem­ic, and nei­ther do they offer any help to the vic­tims of crime or those who sur­vive their mur­dered loved ones.
We must begin to see these peo­ple as the self-serv­ing vul­tures they are and dis­miss them cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly from the discussion.
Human Rights and nation­al secu­ri­ty are not a mutu­al­ly exclu­sive phe­nom­e­non; we can and must do both simul­ta­ne­ous­ly; it is not a zero-sum game.

The Thriving Business Of Crime In Jamaica, It’s Inception, And What It Will Take To Break It’s Back.

I con­tin­ue to implore the Government to move on this plan, the change in rhetoric on INDECOM, the National Identification law, and the Bail Act are encour­ag­ing steps, but only a full and com­pre­hen­sive embrace of the strate­gies out­lined here will bring the desired results.

(1) Shore up the ports of entry, effec­tive­ly stop­ping the guns com­ing in illic­it­ly and hold­ing those gains.

(2) Tactically cor­don the areas you want to search, then go in with trained Dogs to find the weapons and arrest the murderers.

(3) Stagger where the secu­ri­ty forces go at any giv­en time; it should not be based sole­ly on the area with the high­est num­ber of killings.
By doing so, you min­i­mize the like­li­hood that your next move can be anticipated.

(4) Remove from the Prime Minister the pow­er to decide where the secu­ri­ty forces go in the ZOSO.
It mat­ters not that the PM sup­pos­ed­ly acts on the advice of the Security Council.
This Act hyper politi­cizes polic­ing and gives the next par­ty to hold pow­er the abil­i­ty to engage in tit-for-tat using the secu­ri­ty forces to car­ry out their nefar­i­ous bidding.
As long as secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions are green-light­ed by politi­cians, those oper­a­tions stand to be politicized.

(5) Stop grant­i­ng bail to accused murderers.

(6) Stop dem­a­gogu­ing the secu­ri­ty forces.
Use the air­waves to edu­cate the peo­ple about the ben­e­fits of adher­ing to the rule of law.

(7) Stop giv­ing the nation the impres­sion that effec­tive hard-nosed polic­ing, which arrests crim­i­nals and places them in jail, is anti­thet­i­cal to cit­i­zens’ human rights.
The great­est right a per­son has is the right to life. You have no right if you are dead; as such, the coun­try must place it focus­es on remov­ing from its midst the mind­less killers and throw its sup­port behind law enforcement.

(8) Stop cor­rupt­ing pub­lic offi­cials. Report police and oth­er pub­lic offi­cials who ask for bribes.
Do not offer to bribe pub­lic officials.

(9) Enact truth in sen­tenc­ing for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes.
Mandatory 25 years to life for murder.
This is absolute­ly nec­es­sary since the nation’s lead­ers have decid­ed to go against the wish­es of the peo­ple and have declared a mora­to­ri­um on hanging.
Twenty years min­i­mum for any crimes com­mit­ted using a firearm.

(10) Look at the US Rico statute, and draft a law that mod­els that statute effec­tive­ly pros­e­cut­ing gang­sters as the Rico Statute does.

(11) Institute a manda­to­ry National Identification pro­gram, law enforce­ment needs to be able to iden­ti­fy each and every Jamaican.

(12) Remove all polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence from law enforce­ment. What this admin­is­tra­tion is doing is even more polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, not less. Move the pletho­ra of human rights advo­cates from the table where nation­al secu­ri­ty is being discussed.

(13) Repeal and replace the INDECOM Act.

Speaking at the Jamaica Labour Party con­fer­ence at the National Arena in Kingston on Sunday Andrew Holness the Island’s Prime Minister final­ly came to his damn sens­es, sort of, at least.
Addressing the par­ty faith­ful, Holness had a come to Jesus moment of sorts, an epiphany even, one which even his wife and mem­ber of Parliament Juliet Holness, had a long time ago.

Holness final­ly argued that INDECOM some­times go too far in its func­tions and in the process, is caus­ing mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces to be fear­ful in the exe­cu­tion of their duties. He says the secu­ri­ty forces need to feel that they are pro­tect­ed as they fight the high crime rate. He says a bal­ance is needed.

My good friend would say “no shit Einstein, what took you the f**k so long to fig­ure that out”?
Here’s the thing, for as long as this destruc­tive law has been in effect I have fought it’s exis­tence tooth and nail.
I have had many peo­ple call me all kinds of names, oth­ers have even threat­ened me for dar­ing to crit­i­cize a law they want­ed which final­ly hand­cuffs law enforce­ment the way they want­ed it to.

I, on the oth­er hand, have stri­dent­ly argued that yes we need police over­sight, but we also need strong law enforce­ment if ever our coun­try is to have a shot at prospering.
Though not a zero-sum game we have to enforce our laws and iron out the issues which emerge as we go along.
Under no con­di­tion can we have a sit­u­a­tion in which police offi­cers are afraid to do their jobs because of oner­ous over-zeal­ous oversight.
In the case of INDECOM and those at its helm, the agency is not mere­ly an over­sight enti­ty, it has delib­er­ate­ly cul­ti­vat­ed an atmos­phere of ani­mos­i­ty and bad blood which has noth­ing to do with its mandate.

Ultimately the law was poor­ly writ­ten, way too much pow­er was giv­en to the agency and to add insult to injury they placed a nar­cis­sis­tic lit­tle Napolean at its helm.
The Prime Minister must have seen the com­ments com­ing from the lips of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Dr. Keith Rowley who made it clear days ago that law­less­ness would not be tol­er­at­ed in his country.

Despite Holness’ words, one can­not copy com­mon sense, you either have it or you don’t.
He went right ahead and placed his feet in his mouth as was to be expected.
Said Holness “the gov­ern­ment has set aside funds in the Supplementary Budget to assist mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces with pay­ing the legal costs of law­suits aris­ing from their actions in the line of duty”.

The law is not a shack­le, repeal the law if it’s bad, debate the act again, this time with the added ben­e­fit of see­ing what did not work and pass a good law which pro­tects both cit­i­zens and police offi­cers alike.
Unless of course, the law was writ­ten to offer work to the pha­lanx of lawyers who are leav­ing school and find­ing it dif­fi­cult to find work? The law can­not ever become big­ger and more pow­er­ful than those who made it or those it was intend­ed to pro­tect, repeal it now.
The answer to the prob­lem can­not be to allow Terrence Williams’ zealotry and nar­cis­sism to destroy peo­ple’s lives at the expense of taxpayers.

The real­i­ty is that once the Government came to its sens­es that the law is becom­ing a net neg­a­tive and there­by caus­ing the esca­la­tion of crime, the law ought to be done away with.

In 2010 when the frame­work of the law was made pub­lic, I was shocked that some­thing that destruc­tive could be passed out of the Parliament.
Since then I have con­sis­tent­ly made the argu­ment that it would be a crime pro­duc­ing law.
I have tak­en much flack from aca­d­e­mics and idiots alike, I’m some­times unsure where the lines are between those two groups.
Ultimately, I under­stand that many who crit­i­cized me for the posi­tion I take do not under­stand the law do not under­stand what law enforce­ment offi­cers face and some did not want to understand.

I know that the pal­pa­ble hatred many in the soci­ety have for the rule of law and law enforce­ment offi­cials would keep the mon­strous crime enhanc­ing law intact, regard­less of the loss of lives it causes.
I said repeat­ed­ly in the many arti­cles I wrote on the sub­ject, that the shit would hit the fan and they would come to their senses.
There are spat­ters on the ceil­ing now but from the com­ments of the Island’s chief exec­u­tive, he still has­n’t come to his sens­es ful­ly yet.
“Many more will have to suf­fer, many more will have to die, don’t ask me why”. (Hon Robert Nesta Marley)

Is there a rea­son that the Government of Jamaica can­not step for­ward and say unequiv­o­cal­ly to crim­i­nals,” there will be no sanc­tu­ary or respite we will hunt you down and we will find you,” out­side the mealy-mouthed plat­i­tudes we hear of course?

Is there a rea­son the Opposition Party can­not do the same?
Is it pure­ly because the Government does not want to push too hard con­sid­er­ing that the coun­try is such a crim­i­nal lov­ing sanctuary?
Is it that the Opposition par­ty knows there is always trac­tion to be gained by par­rot­ing the worn out line about their con­cern for human rights?
Is this all there is to it or is there some­thing else at play here in Jamaica as it relates to the crime wave which makes it impos­si­ble for the polit­i­cal lead­ers to come out with one voice against the inces­sant bloodshed?

A friend recent­ly called my atten­tion to the state­ment of the Prime Minister of Trinidad who told his nation that his admin­is­tra­tion would not allow for law­less­ness in Trinidad and Tobago, instruct­ed the police and the secu­ri­ty forces to take “any and all resources’ to ensure law and order.
Responding to a spe­cif­ic inci­dent of law­less­ness in his coun­try and in a thin­ly veiled swipe at Jamaica, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley warned he would not allow Trinidad and Tobago to go down the road that exists in some Caribbean coun­tries where cer­tain peo­ple believe that they must be in con­trol of areas and even try to pre­vent mem­bers of the law enforce­ment agen­cies from enter­ing those areas.

The inci­dent in ques­tion saw res­i­dents block­ing the roads and the high­way lead­ing in and out of the cap­i­tal Port of Spain fol­low­ing the arrest of two “com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers” who were released hours lat­er. But the action by the res­i­dents led to bumper to bumper traf­fic for hours as motorists fled the cap­i­tal in droves to escape being trapped dur­ing the after­noon rush hour.
Some car own­ers report­ed that their vehi­cles were hit by stray bul­lets and police said they received reports that motorists were robbed as they remained stuck in traf­fic. Some report­ed that their win­dows were dam­aged while some deliv­ery trucks were report­ed­ly looted.

Dr. Rowley told reporters that his admin­is­tra­tion’s sup­port for law enforce­ment is “unwa­ver­ing” and that all nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies “have the full sup­port of the state to enforce the law in Trinidad and Tobago regard­less of who you are, where you are and what your sta­tus is in this country”.
“I am here­by let­ting the cit­i­zen­ry know that this is the time when all good men, all good women, should stand on the line of law enforce­ment and let all those who have crim­i­nal intent in this coun­try know that they stand alone where these mat­ters are concerned.

That state­ment from the Trinidadian Prime Minister is f****** lead­er­ship! That’s the kind of lead­er­ship which is miss­ing from our discourse.
It is cer­tain­ly not the first time our CARICOM neigh­bors have swiped at us on the issue of crime and lawlessness.
Unfortunately for the sec­tion of the Jamaican soci­ety which is the most vocal on top­i­cal issues when­ev­er oth­ers crit­i­cize us for our stu­pid­i­ty on crime rather than fix our prob­lem we dou­ble down on stupid.

In 2015 Acting Police Commissioner Errol Alexander of Saint Lucia told crim­i­nals who chose to attack Police offi­cers quote: “I am send­ing a mes­sage out there that if the crim­i­nals think that we are in Jamaica, we are not in Jamaica, we are in Saint Lucia, and we will take what­ev­er mea­sures nec­es­sary to pro­tect the safe­ty of our police officers.”

That’s f****** lead­er­ship, not equiv­o­cat­ing, not mealy-mouthed crim­i­nal cod­dling bullshit.
Every day the news­pa­pers and online pub­li­ca­tions are flood­ed with the sto­ries of the wan­ton bloodshed.
Will that kind of talk end criminality?
No, but it sends a strong mes­sage to the force of anar­chy and may­hem that we the peo­ple are com­ing after them.
That there are more of us than there are of them, well in Jamaica’s case that may be hard to reconcile.

I am sick to my stom­ach at the killing in the coun­try, the pre­ten­tious bull­shit nature of many in the soci­ety who talk about human rights as if dead peo­ple can enjoy rights, and a gov­ern­ment which pre­tends that it’s sup­posed good inten­tions will solve this problem.
Let’s be clear-eyed about this killing spree, it is not about to get bet­ter until the Government and oppo­si­tion par­ty gets their heads out of their col­lec­tive ass­es and rec­og­nize that this is not mere­ly crime anymore.
We have a seri­ous prob­lem here which will not be solved by try­ing to bring these blood-thirsty scums to jus­tice, they will have to be ter­mi­nat­ed and ter­mi­nat­ed with dispatch.
It is only then that they will get the mes­sage that the nation is not fuck­ing around any­more and think long and hard about their own mor­tal­i­ty when they decide to ter­mi­nate someone.

Much of what is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica has hap­pened before, in Colombia.
In the process of the shame­ful blood­let­ting in that nation, no one was blame­less, politi­cians, par­sons, police, judi­cia­ry too many had bloody hands, they dirt­ied them­selves as they dived into the caul­dron of blood grasp­ing for the dirty dol­lars, the by-prod­uct of anguish and pain.

In the end, it took cit­i­zens who decid­ed that they did not want their coun­try to be a nar­co-state (meth­ods aside) and they took action.
That time is here that time is now for decent law-abid­ing Jamaicans (what­ev­er is left if any) to band togeth­er and take action.
To hell with the mealy-mothed pre­ten­tious par­a­sites who bray about human rigts.
The most impor­tant right a per­son has is the right to life.

The year was 1980 I had just moved from North East St. Catherine as a fresh-faced young adult who had pre­vi­ous­ly grad­u­at­ed high school.
Edward Seaga had just trounced Michael Manley at the polls and the nation looked toward a new future free from trib­al pol­i­tics, a future of hope.

I moved to upper Marl road where I stayed with my sib­lings and step­dad on Hyde Park Road.
I would lat­er enter the Port Royal police train­ing facil­i­ty but was to lat­er leave to begin train­ing at the Jamaica Police Academy as the very first batch of recruits to begin train­ing and grad­u­ate from the new­ly mint­ed old school of agriculture.
I thought it was strange that the police nev­er seemed to have any­thing built for them, they always seemed to occu­py facil­i­ties oth­ers had vacat­ed, but I digress.

After grad­u­a­tion, I was sent to the old west street facil­i­ty, bet­ter known as the beat and foot patrol divi­sion, after a six-month stint I was one of a few offi­cers ever to be trans­ferred to the Mobile Reserve who were not trained specif­i­cal­ly for that divi­sion, anoth­er first.

I did­n’t like it there one bit but it even­tu­al­ly grew on me as I made the then high­ly respect­ed Ranger’s squad.
My love of busi­ness, my pro­fes­sion today, began around then when I pur­chased a small bar from a lady who oper­at­ed the bar right there where she lived on Plantain Avenue behind the old New Yorker Factory on Waltham Park and Bay Farm Roads.

It was there that I met Desmond Ballantine oth­er­wise called (Ninjaman). Ninjaman was a bud­ding DJ then, every Friday and Saturday night we had the sound sys­tem African Star, based on Marl Road play­ing at my lit­tle joint.
Ninjaman fol­lowed that Soundsystem then. He would walk up to the bar wear­ing a full-length dress coat in the siz­zling Jamaican heat, his trade­mark I guess?

In the time since those ear­ly days when I was a young cop and Ninja man was a bud­ding disc jock­ey try­ing to make a name for him­self much water has flown under the bridge.
Despite the many suc­cess­es in his rise to the top of the dance­hall pyra­mid, Ninjaman nev­er seemed to be able to extri­cate him­self from the beguil­ing ten­ta­cles of crime.

Ninjam man did not have to choose that path, sure he lived in the com­mu­ni­ty of Marl Road a some­times grit­ty com­mu­ni­ty as did I. He arrived from St Mary as I arrived from St Catherine around the same time.
The choic­es we make are our own not a func­tion of where we come from.

That is the rea­son I have no sym­pa­thy for Desmond Ballyntine (nin­ja man) on his con­vic­tion for murder.
A life is a very pre­cious commodity.
Each per­son gets a sin­gle life, in my esti­ma­tion, it is an egre­gious injus­tice, a ter­ri­ble trans­gres­sion to take some­one’s life unless it is in defense of your own.

It is now time that the Artical Don, stand like a man and face his pun­ish­ment. After all, he will be liv­ing his life regard­less of the penal­ty they mete out to him.
An option he and his son Jahneil took from Ricardo Johnson in 2009 when they uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly snuffed out his life.
Desmond Ballentine and his son will nev­er receive the jus­tice they deserve. Under the Jamaican shit-stem of jus­tice, they will not be exe­cut­ed as they should be for tak­ing the life of Ricardo Johnson.
They will receive a slap on the wrist upon which they may very well appeal, who knows? Some mon­ey may change hands and even­tu­al­ly they case may get tossed on some minor technicality.

Welcome to Jamaica.….……

Among the per­sons being tar­get­ed, declared Selvin Haye, deputy com­mis­sion­er in charge of crime, are the financiers behind the ille­gal impor­ta­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of firearms, as well as those involved in drug trafficking.

“We will be build­ing more and bet­ter enter­prise cas­es to tack­le this type of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. We will be using spe­cial­ized teams now armed with bet­ter inves­tiga­tive skills and ana­lyt­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties to track these crim­i­nals,” Haye said.

Well, I guess we have got­ten over the cha­rade that ZOSO was going to be a sig­nif­i­cant dri­ver of crime in a souther­ly direction.
We are now onto the next smoke screen.
Inherent in those com­ments com­ing from the police high com­mand is a con­fes­sion that there have been zero empha­sis to link those ship­ping the weapons and ammu­ni­tion from over­seas to the con­tra­bands they ship.
The police high com­mand has been com­plic­it in sim­ply bask­ing in the glo­ry of an occa­sion­al find here and there and tak­ing the cred­it for the work the cops on the streets do.
That has been the modus operan­di of the bloat­ed top heavy bureau­cra­cy that is known as the police high command.
A com­mand struc­ture which has nev­er done much in the way of gar­ner­ing real com­mand and is any­thing but structured.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​e​r​e​-​a​r​e​-​t​h​e​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​o​rs/

So now they admit that despite the crime wave over the last sev­er­al decades, hell, since I left the force after my brief stint in 91 that the depart­ment was­n’t doing what they ought to have been doing even now?
The Deputy Commissioner’s state­ment was a real expose’ into what is real­ly hap­pen­ing or more like, what is not hap­pen­ing in the force that is con­tribut­ing to the wave of homi­cides and oth­er seri­ous crimes sweep­ing the country.

Though it is 2017 the force seems to be more focused on record­ing reports onto com­put­ers (mov­ing away from those God-awful big old books ) than solv­ing seri­ous crimes.
I was nev­er one who had much con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of the police high com­mand to get any­thing done or to sus­tain a good thing estab­lished by the rank and file. As such I nev­er gave any cre­dence to the grand pro­nounce­ments which come out of that body. Neither do I both­er pay­ing atten­tion to those who are con­vinced that there is new inno­va­tion hap­pen­ing in the force which will amount to any­thing pos­i­tive today.

In his first report­ing to the Parliament hav­ing been man­dat­ed by law after the launch of the first Zone of spe­cial oper­a­tions in Mount Salem St James prime Minister Andrew Holness told the nation quote:

The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the ZOSO des­ig­na­tion was based on the rel­e­vant legal cri­te­ria, intel­li­gence, as well as strate­gic and oper­a­tional con­sid­er­a­tions of the joint com­mand of the secu­ri­ty forces. He said that, fol­low­ing 32 spe­cial oper­a­tions con­duct­ed by the joint force in the first 10 days, five ille­gal firearms were recov­ered, two want­ed men were tak­en into cus­tody and a num­ber of “lead sheets” used in lot­to scam­ming activ­i­ties recov­ered. “The next 10 days will see the con­tin­u­a­tion of inter­nal secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions to rid the zone of ille­gal weapons, ammu­ni­tion, and con­tra­band,” the prime min­is­ter told the House.

The leader of the Opposition Peter Phillips coun­tered that despite the oper­a­tion haul of “five guns and two arrests in 10 days”, 54 mur­ders have occurred at the same time across the island. He insist­ed that since the dec­la­ra­tion of the ZOSO, the dai­ly nation­al rate has increased. “That is to say that we had been going nation­al­ly at about 4.2 mur­ders per day…and in the peri­od since the zone, the nation­al aver­age has been about 5.5 mur­ders per day.”

I nev­er thought that there would be a crime ini­tia­tive that would have any mea­sur­able effect on crime in the present envi­ron­ment that exists in the coun­try today.
There has to be a seis­mic atti­tu­di­nal shift in the way peo­ple see crime affect­ing their lives and what they are will­ing to do to change that paradigm.
Jamaica has nev­er been a place which was sup­port­ive of crime ini­tia­tives, it has always been high­ly opin­ion­at­ed with­out the facts as well.
Those char­ac­ter­is­tics are a per­fect storm which caus­es the Island of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple to be one of the high­est pro­duc­ers of crime on the planet.

One of the prin­ci­ples I applied as an offi­cer was to allow sus­pects to talk, they will tell you pret­ty much what you need to know. Today as a per­son who oper­ates in the busi­ness space I still lis­ten intent­ly to all who I do busi­ness with-with a view to deter­min­ing their authenticity.
The state­ments of the police high com­mand have been extreme­ly revealing.

Which brings me to my final point.
The police high com­mand is even more stu­pid than I pre­vi­ous­ly thought they were.
If the Police high com­mand real­ly intend­ed to final­ly get up off their tired decrepit behinds and do some­thing about trac­ing the caches of weapons pour­ing into the Island why would they announce it?

One of the things those con­cerned about crime harp on is polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in law enforcement.
Politicians are cul­pa­ble as it relates to the crime wave sweep­ing the coun­try but as it relates to the police announc­ing its inten­tions to crim­i­nals politi­cians bear zero responsibility.
That col­lu­sion or utter stu­pid­i­ty is the police’s and theirs alone.

No one stands in the way of the police if they chose to go after prin­ci­pals in the weapons trade, not even the politicians.
If the police are inter­est­ed in bust­ing the peo­ple at the top who are import­ing guns and ammu­ni­tion into the coun­try the police can do it.
Announcing that they intend to go after prin­ci­pals now when it should have been doing that as a mat­ter, of course, tells a skep­tic like me that they are not going after the big fish they are sim­ply telling them to be more discreet.

I have always sup­port­ed the police but I can in no way turn a blind eye to bla­tant incom­pe­tence at the bare min­i­mum and gross com­plic­i­ty at worse on the part of the police.
Trust me it is not as hard as the police tell you it is to track down and bring these crim­i­nals to justice.
If the police real­ly want­ed to bring these prin­ci­pal offend­ers to jus­tice they would seek the war­rants they need and go about their inves­ti­ga­tions with­out mak­ing announcements.
After all the politi­cians are some of the worst crim­i­nals, why would the police tell them what they intend to do?
That ladies and gen­tle­man is the rea­son I decid­ed to walk away from this depart­ment as soon as the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself.