What Are The Police Afraid Of Why They Haven’t Arrested The Murderer/​s Of Germaine Junior

I gen­er­al­ly avoid com­ment­ing on cas­es under police inves­ti­ga­tions for sev­er­al rea­sons. (1) You nev­er know how inves­ti­ga­tions will turn out; eat­ing crow is not some­thing I par­tic­u­lar­ly relish.(2) the police deserve all of the def­er­ence they can get to do an already dif­fi­cult job. With that said, one homi­cide has caught my atten­tion amidst the litany of oth­ers, not for any par­tic­u­lar defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic except that it seems that par­tic­u­lar homi­cide should not be too dif­fi­cult to solve.
Nevertheless, over a year has passed, and still, the deceased’s fam­i­ly has not got­ten clo­sure as the police have not made an arrest.
Now I under­stand that it’s easy to shrug and say, “join the line; there are thou­sands of unsolved mur­ders in Jamaica,” but again, the cir­cum­stances of this case cause me to sec­ond guess my def­er­ence to the police on this one.

The case involved the death of 51-year-old Germaine Junior at a home sup­pos­ed­ly owned by an attor­ney at law, Patrick Bailey, over a year ago.
According to local report­ing, the deceased was stabbed sev­er­al times and shot once in the head.
The deceased man was report­ed to be a nat­u­ral­ized American cit­i­zen and was sup­pos­ed­ly vis­it­ing the Island upon his death. Mister Junior’s fam­i­ly is incensed at the police for good rea­son. The fam­i­ly insists if their loved one were a promi­nent per­son, the case would have been solved long ago. They bemoan the fact that the police have been in con­tact with them only once in the last year since mis­ter Junior’s death.
A cou­ple of points have stuck out like a sore thumb, in this case, leav­ing much room for spec­u­la­tion in the absence of bet­ter report­ing and more infor­ma­tion forth­com­ing from the police.

♦ Patrick Bailey is a promi­nent attor­ney who eas­i­ly fits into the cat­e­go­ry of the prover­bial big man accord­ing to Jamaican culture.
♦ Was mis­ter Junior there as his guest, if not his, then whose?
♦ Who else lives in the home of attor­ney Patrick Bailey if anyone?
♦ Police report­ed that Bailey stum­bled upon the body at about 4:30 am in his own house as he was asleep even though mis­ter Junior was alleged­ly shot.
♦ If the homi­cide hap­pened in a sec­tion of the res­i­dence out­side mis­ter Bailey’s earshot (assum­ing the res­i­dence is large enough that Bailey would not have heard a gun­shot), nev­er­the­less, who gets up and walk around the house at 4:30 am?

♦ How could Bailey sleep through what must have been a strug­gle, much less the sound of a gun­shot in his house?
♦ The state­ment that he stum­bled upon the body at 4:30 am could only have come from Bailey him­self, which gives it lit­tle cred­i­bil­i­ty under the circumstances.
♦ A prop­er coro­ner’s inquest should nail down approx­i­mate­ly what time mis­ter Junior was killed, as against Patrick Bailey’s assertions.
♦ The Police report­ed that there was no forced entry to Bailey’s house. This is absolute­ly crit­i­cal evi­dence as it demon­strates that who­ev­er killed mis­ter Junior had access to the residence.
♦ A knife believed to be the one used to stab mis­ter Junior was alleged­ly found beside his body, was it checked for fingerprints?

♦ If Mister Junior was liv­ing abroad at the time and was only vis­it­ing the Island, why would the police and oth­ers allege that he was a care­tak­er of the residence?
♦ The fact that mis­ter Junior’s body was found with mul­ti­ple stab wounds sug­gests a crime of pas­sion cou­pled with the fact that he was also shot.
♦ Was Patrick Bailey’s per­son checked for marks indi­cat­ing whether he was involved in a strug­gle, or did the police take his word that he slept through a stab­bing and a shoot­ing? If not, why was it not done?
♦ Why was Patrick Bailey ruled med­ical­ly unfit to give state­ments to police by Doctor Jeptah Ford at the time?
♦ According to local media reports after the inci­dent, Patrick Bailey’s doc­tor and client, Jephthah Ford, instruct­ed that he be con­fined to bed after report­ed­ly exhibit­ing signs of being unwell. Ford also said he was not fit to give a state­ment at the time.

♦ Why was Bailey giv­en spe­cial priv­i­leges when even police offi­cers trau­ma­tized by instances of fatal encoun­ters are forced to give a quick account­ing as to what occurred?
♦ Who else had access to the res­i­dence, if any­one, and what was their rela­tion­ship to mis­ter Junior?
♦ Did the police check Patrick Bailey’s house for bloody clothes or clothes recent­ly washed?
♦ Did the Police check out­hous­es (if applic­a­ble) and garbage recep­ta­cles for poten­tial bloody clothes?
♦ If the police deter­mined there was no forced entry to Bailey’s house, how could they sum­mar­i­ly rule him out as a suspect?

I am mak­ing no assump­tions about who killed this man; I am not say­ing any­one, in par­tic­u­lar, is respon­si­ble. I am say­ing that the Police should get up off their back­sides and do the inves­tiga­tive work, and who­ev­er killed mis­ter Junior should be ban­gled up and bun­dled off to jail. Bailey was report­ed to be arro­gant when con­tact­ed by the media assert­ing quote,” any­thing dem seh, mek dem seh it. I have no answer; just pub­lish what­ev­er they say. My back is broad. I have no com­ments, no com­ments, no com­ments! Just sim­ply, you report what­ev­er you want to,”
According to local media report­ing, Assistant Commissioner of Police Élan Powell, who had the crime port­fo­lio at the time of the homi­cide, insist­ed that the police were hid­ing noth­ing and the inves­ti­ga­tions would be done, and the chips would fall where they may.

This state­ment does lit­tle to assuage the anger and dis­trust the fam­i­ly of mis­ter Junior har­bors as it relates to the police’s abil­i­ty to bring the killer of their loved one to justice.
Clearly, what­ev­er the under­ly­ing assump­tions and pre­sump­tions in this case are, a human being was mur­dered, and some­one is respon­si­ble for his unlaw­ful killing. This can­not be a dif­fi­cult case to solve one way or the other.
If the own­er of the premis­es, a well-heeled lawyer, did not kill the vic­tim, some­one else did in his house.
It does not require rock­et sci­ence to fig­ure this case out; if no one broke into the house and there was no one else in the house, then the per­son in the house is the killer, or the per­son in the house knows who killed mis­ter Junior and has aid­ed and abet­ted the coverup of this hor­ren­dous murder.

This case is a trav­es­ty and should not stand; the police can­not be that incom­pe­tent or, worse, pissed-scared that they are unwill­ing to arrest the killer or killers.
Whatever the police know caused them to rule Patrick Bailey out as a sus­pect ought to be made pub­lic or told to the griev­ing family.
Bailey deserves no spe­cial treat­ment or def­er­ence under the law over and above any­one else, which would give the police rea­son not to divulge how they deter­mined he was not a suspect.

In February of 2016, Assistant com­mis­sion­er Powell told a Gleaner Editor’s forum that the police did not wish to name the sus­pects in the mat­ter but sought to assure that the police were active­ly pur­su­ing the case.
Since Powel was in charge of crime at the time, both he and the head of crime must now give a prop­er account­ing to this bereaved fam­i­ly as they are duty-bound to do.
There should be no more mur­ders swept under the rug because some­one knows some­one who knows someone.
This should not be allowed to stand, and the fam­i­ly should not stand for it; they are right in demand­ing answers.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

A Sense Of Disconnect Regarding The Seriousness Of Crime In Jamaica

There is a cer­tain sense of detached res­ig­na­tion asso­ci­at­ed with the killings going on today, whether they are in the United States or any oth­er nation includ­ing our own small Island of Jamaica.
We no longer process each death with the same amount of grief and rev­er­ence we did in times past. Whether the grue­some­ness of the images and the speed and fre­quen­cy with which the images bom­bard our brains have desen­si­tized us is for the experts to decide.

Onlookers stand above the body of a young, male mur­der vic­tim found dumped in a gul­ly in Meadowbrook Estate neigh­bor­hood of Kingston, Jamaica June 13, 2008. On aver­age there is a mur­der every 5.5 hours in Jamaica, an astro­nom­i­cal rate giv­en the total pop­u­la­tion of the tiny Caribbean nation is only around 3 million.

Whether the sense­less­ness of the killing of 59 inno­cent con­cert­go­ers in Las Vegas Nevada or the mur­ders of Horace and Daisy Lyn in May Pen Clarendon, the shock­ing real­i­ty is that we are so desen­si­tized to the mur­ders that we only respond to them as sta­tis­tics or based on the fame and impor­tance of the victims.

The truth is that every time an inno­cent life is snuffed out we are less­er as humans for the loss of that per­son­’s con­tri­bu­tion to mankind.
The tragedy now is in the care­free way in which we treat the death of indi­vid­u­als. Like a sin­gle leaf falling from a tree at the end of its time so too do we treat the many indi­vid­ual mur­ders each day, sav­ing our atten­tion and in some cas­es our out­rage for the mass casu­al­ty situations.

It does not mean that those of us who are yet alive are all cru­el uncar­ing peo­ple it means that we can only process the cru­el­ty of each act in a lim­it­ed amount of time before we are greet­ed with another.
Sometimes so many indi­vid­ual cas­es that we can no longer pay spe­cial atten­tion, we sim­ply glance at the headlines.

Parts of the Las Vegas mall where 59 peo­ple were mur­dered and over 500 injured

What is it which caus­es some­one to open fire on a group of inno­cent peo­ple whom he does­n’t know? What caus­es some­one to make the deci­sion to blow up inno­cent men women and chil­dren he has nev­er met?
What is it which caus­es any­one to slaugh­ter an inno­cent cou­ple when sim­ply rob­bing them in dis­guise would suf­fice if rob­bery was the motive?

How many more lives will be snuffed out before the Government stop lis­ten­ing to pre­ten­tious peo­ple with their own agen­das and take the req­ui­site steps to pro­tect­ing the Jamaican people?
According to the report­ing, the Las Vegas shoot­er took his own life, he was not the only killer to take his own life before author­i­ties could arrest him, he won’t be the last.
One thing is cer­tain every mass killer in the United States know that if caught he will nev­er see the light of day again.

Can we say the same for Jamaica?I think not, killers sim­ply walk away with pret­ty lit­tle fear they will be held account­able for their actions.
The few who are brought before the courts are prompt­ly grant­ed bail and allowed back onto the streets to kill again as many times as they wish.
Nothing in the nation’s laws or the sup­port giv­en to law enforce­ment sends a clear mes­sage that crime will not be tolerated.

Contrarily, the lack of unequiv­o­cal sup­port ded­i­cat­ed to law enforce­ment and the lax atti­tude of the courts sends a clear mes­sage that the lives of cit­i­zens are not impor­tant unless they are from upper St Andrew.
The clock is tick­ing on this issue before we reach a point of no return. In 2010 Jamaica received a very impor­tant mes­sage of the clear and present dan­ger immi­nent against the state

The United States has the law enforce­ment infra­struc­ture to repel an attack on the sov­er­eign­ty and legit­i­ma­cy of the state Jamaica does not.
Clearly, despite the killings, there is a sense of busi­ness as usu­al on the part of the admin­is­tra­tion, that the func­tions of Government can be advanced despite the dai­ly mur­ders with a lit­tle mag­ic act involv­ing smoke and mirrors.

Peter Phillips oppo­si­tion leader

The oppo­si­tion par­ty is far worse, it’s goal is the con­trol of state pow­er and the pil­fer­ing of scarce tax-pay­ers resources.
That has been its modus operan­di, there is noth­ing to indi­cate that any­thing will change with that party.
So the nation is left with the hope that the Holness admin­is­tra­tion will stop the pos­tur­ing, send the so-called human rights lob­by pack­ing and get to work secur­ing the nation.

Andrew Holness

In case the admin­is­tra­tion is won­der­ing where secur­ing the nation falls with­in its raft of respon­si­bil­i­ties, the answer is num­ber one.
Every Administration’s pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty is to ensure the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the people.
Advancing the idea that there will be pros­per­i­ty in this mur­der mad­ness is sim­ply anoth­er act in the smoke and mir­rors sideshow.

All 5 Living Former U.S. Presidents To Attend Hurricane Relief Concert

All 5 Living Former U.S. Presidents To Attend Hurricane Relief Concert

Former pres­i­dents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama plan to attend a hur­ri­cane relief con­cert at Texas A&M University lat­er this month, fol­low­ing a dev­as­tat­ing string of storms that has affect­ed mil­lions across Texas, Florida and the Caribbean.

The event, called “Deep from the Heart: The One America Appeal Concert,” will be host­ed by the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and fea­ture per­for­mances from musi­cians includ­ing Alabama, The Gatlin Brothers, Lyle Lovett and Cassadee Pope. All funds raised from tick­et sales will go to help storm victims.

This cat­a­stroph­ic hur­ri­cane sea­son has already caused hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars in prop­er­ty dam­age, dis­placed mil­lions and destroyed entire com­mu­ni­ties,” a press release announc­ing the event said. “As a result, our fel­low Americans are fac­ing over­whelm­ing chal­lenges. The stag­ger­ing, urgent need is sim­ply beyond the capac­i­ty of gov­ern­ment alone to address.”

In a state­ment, George H.W. Bush said the con­cert would empha­size that those affect­ed by hur­ri­canes Harvey, Maria and Irma would be tak­en care of “for the long haul,” say­ing such effort would con­tin­ue “even if the path to recov­ery feels like a road that goes on forever.”

The 43rd pres­i­dent and I, and our dis­tin­guished col­leagues in this ‘One America Appeal,’ are very grate­ful to these won­der­ful per­form­ers — some of them old friends, some of them new — for giv­ing their time and tal­ent to help the urgent cause of hur­ri­cane recov­ery in Texas, Florida, and the Caribbean,” the elder Bush said in a state­ment.

Donald Trump is unaf­fil­i­at­ed with the cam­paign, but has trav­eled to TexasFlorida and most recent­ly Puerto Rico after the storms passed. Trump came under fire on Tuesday for throw­ing paper tow­els at sur­vivors of Hurricane Maria and say­ing the storm wasn’t a “real cat­a­stro­phe” like Hurricane Katrina, even though 3 mil­lion res­i­dents were with­out pow­er at the time.

The White House on Wednesday asked Congress for an addi­tion­al $29 bil­lion in aid to help Puerto Rico and oth­er areas recov­er from the storms, includ­ing near­ly $13 bil­lion for FEMA.

Las Vegas Attack Update: The Ones Who Were Lost

Las Vegas Attack Update: The Ones Who Were Lost

A 20-year-old aspir­ing nurse who fell into her high school sweet­heart’s arms. A Navy vet­er­an haunt­ed by the mem­o­ries of war. A mechan­ic who loved the out­doors and held a stranger’s hand as he died. A mom of four with a new­born at home, still out on mater­ni­ty leave. A hus­band cel­e­brat­ing his anniver­sary, tak­ing a bul­let for his wife.

Fifty-eight peo­ple died in the Sunday night attack on a coun­try music con­cert on the Las Vegas Strip, not count­ing the shoot­er, and more than 500 were injured. It was the worst mass shoot­ing in mod­ern U.S. his­to­ry.

Not every vic­tim has been named. “It’s a long, labo­ri­ous process to iden­ti­fy the vic­tims and reunite them with the fam­i­ly mem­bers,” said Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo. But dozens of vic­tims have already been iden­ti­fied, and across the coun­try, fam­i­lies, friends and entire com­mu­ni­ties are griev­ing their loss­es. http://​www​.npr​.org/​s​e​c​t​i​o​n​s​/​t​h​e​t​w​o​-​w​a​y​/​2​0​1​7​/​1​0​/​0​2​/​5​5​5​0​1​8​6​6​5​/​l​a​s​-​v​e​g​a​s​-​m​a​s​s​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​-​l​a​t​e​s​t​-​w​h​o​-​a​r​e​-​t​h​e​-​v​i​c​t​ims

The Power Of Propoganda

I write about the val­ue of truth from time to time, I do so because I believe fun­da­men­tal­ly in the impor­tance of truth as a moral prin­ci­ple on which we must build our societies.
As a kid, I prid­ed myself on speak­ing the truth to the best of my abil­i­ty. My guardians knew well, that what­ev­er my answer was to their ques­tions they could rely on it. I strove nev­er to let them down on that front.
As a par­ent now, I impress upon my own chil­dren the impor­tance of being hon­est with their answers so that when trou­ble comes I may count on their answers to guide me in my defense of them.

I recent­ly wrote about the times we are liv­ing in and in that arti­cle, I won­dered whether or not we have entered a post-fac­tu­al stage as some experts sur­mise. What is evi­dent is the fact that those who con­trol infor­ma­tion medi­ums do have the abil­i­ty to shape nar­ra­tives. Those peo­ple are not always hon­est players.
Does that mean we have entered a post-fac­tu­al world or have we sim­ply entered a phase in our his­to­ry in which those who pro­mul­gate infor­ma­tion under­stand the val­ue of shap­ing the nar­ra­tive to suit their own agendas?

EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS AND THOSE WHO CRY WOLF

Take for instance the fact that there are now few­er police shoot­ings in Jamaica since the Bruce Golding Administration passed the INDECOM act into law.
Does that fact mean that there were uni­ver­sal extra­ju­di­cial killings by the police?
Or rather does it mean that police offi­cers have cho­sen to be less proac­tive in going after crim­i­nals and there­fore vio­lent law-enforce­ment encoun­ters with crim­i­nals have gone down?
More impor­tant­ly, as a result, crim­i­nals have been vast­ly embold­ened and the nation has seen a sub­se­quent increase in homi­cides and oth­er vio­lent crimes includ­ing assaults on police offi­cers themselves.

Terrence Williams

In order to under­stand this ques­tion, one has to look at the def­i­n­i­tion of extra­ju­di­cial killings.
[Extrajudicial killings are char­ac­ter­ized as is the killing of a per­son by gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties with­out the sanc­tion of any judi­cial pro­ceed­ing or legal process].

In this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, there is noth­ing which speaks to the dan­gers police face when they are forced to use lethal force to save their own lives or the lives of oth­ers in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of their duties. And for good reason.
The fact that police are forced to shoot vio­lent crim­i­nals though regret­table, may be viewed three ways depend­ing on what nar­ra­tive a per­son choos­es to convey.
(a) vio­lent police officers.(b) vio­lent soci­ety.© both.
If a police offi­cer kills a per­son who pos­es no threat to him­self or the life of oth­ers that action would con­sti­tute an extra­ju­di­cial killing.
What is wrong and decep­tive is that there are those who take large swaths of data and use that data to make their argu­ments that police are killing large amounts of inno­cent peo­ple extrajudicially.

Carolyn Gomes

Carolynn Gomes did that and no one except myself chal­lenged her, instead, they gave her a nation­al hon­or for dis­tort­ing data, not just at home but in front of International Human rights agencies.
Terrence Williams learned the val­ue of that les­son to make his points. Of course, that kind of decep­tion could only fly in a soci­ety intent on sup­port­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty, a soci­ety igno­rant as hell or both.

DATA MANIPULATION

The Commissioner of INDECOM must sub­mit quar­ter­ly reports on its func­tions to the parliament.
Those reports indi­cate the nuances of how the agency is pro­gress­ing as per its man­date. Withing those reports are numer­i­cal data of peo­ple charged with crimes, files sub­mit­ted to the Director of Public Prosecution for action, files sub­mit­ted to the three agen­cies over which INDECOM has over­sight for action by those depart­ment heads among oth­er things.

Despite the fact that INDECOM is the agency tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions and arrest­ing errant offi­cers of the [3]departments, and despite hav­ing done it’s very best to do so, INDECOM’s prin­ci­pal offi­cers con­tin­ue to smear the police that its use of force is a cause for con­cern even though it[the chief inves­tiga­tive agency] have no evi­dence of wrong­do­ing by offi­cers involved in these use of force instances.

Arlene Harrison Henry

Gone are the days when there were cries and out­cries that the police are a law unto themselves.
There is an over­sight agency, a con­fronta­tion­al, inef­fec­tive one that pro­duces noth­ing over and above what the CCRB was doing but one nonetheless.
In fact, every Tom Dick and Henry[sic] is now an author­i­ty on police use of force protocols.
Truth can­not be what Terrence Williams or his sup­port­ers say it is or what the con­niv­ing duplic­i­tous media allows him to proffer.
Truth must super­sede rhetoric and dem­a­gog­ic smear.

We live in vio­lent times, we must hold our law enforce­ment agen­cies account­able, no one wants to live in an unac­count­able police state.
On the oth­er hand, it is disin­gen­u­ous and wrong to con­tin­ue to use the term extra­ju­di­cial killings when there is no evi­dence to sup­port those claims.
A lie is a lie no mat­ter how many times it is retold. As such, it is impor­tant that the nation under­stand that no mat­ter how many times Terrence Williams and his sup­port­ers lie about ques­tion­able killings it does not make them so, guns includ­ed or not.

It is very dis­turb­ing that Terrence Williams can con­tin­ue to give the false impres­sion to a gullible pub­lic that the police has no legal right to use lethal force if they are attacked with weapons oth­er than a gun.
In fact, the Police has the right to use lethal force to defend his life even if an assailant does not have a weapon of any kind, as long as the assault on his per­son con­vinces him/​her that his/​her life is in danger.

No police offi­cer has an oblig­a­tion to absorb assault in the pur­suit of his duty. When you attack an offi­cer of the law you must know that you by your actions have placed your life in danger.
What is even more despi­ca­ble is that those who ought to know bet­ter have gob­bled up fake news and embarked on the process of spread­ing it against the nation’s law enforce­ment Agencies.
If the tra­di­tion­al media is unable or unwill­ing to push back against this kind of mis­in­for­ma­tion maybe it’s a sig­nal to the rest of us that its time has come and gone.

What Will It Take For The JCF To Correct This

WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR THE JCF TO CORRECT THIS?

From time to time I write about the lack of prop­er real police train­ing for mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
I also talk about a seem­ing lack of super­vi­sion and prob­a­bly just as impor­tant a sense of Esprit-de-corp which has vis­i­bly and demon­stra­bly been miss­ing Whenever mem­bers of the force attempt to effect arrests.

At a time when prop­er train­ing, lead­er­ship, super­vi­sion, and coör­di­na­tion are crit­i­cal to law enforce­ment the JCF seems to be hell-bent on wait­ing on the next big event at which it will fail.

The images in the video below are a tes­ta­ment that offi­cers are not being prop­er­ly trained. They are not being prop­er­ly super­vised and they are not exe­cut­ing their duties properly.

This video ought to be a must in lec­tures on what not to do.
Not only should the offi­cers have arrest­ed the assailant imme­di­ate­ly, the offi­cer who fired his weapon at the last moment fur­ther exac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion with a net zero effect.
Someone could have been killed as he fired his weapon.
These occur­rences are not new, we write about them, social media is replete with them yet the hier­ar­chy of the JCF has not done a damn thing to change this kind of thing and change it fast.

Just a day ago a sin­gle gun­man killed 59 peo­ple and seri­ous­ly wound­ed over 500, even though Jamaica is thou­sands of miles from Las Vegas Nevada the JCF can learn valu­able lessons from these incidents.
The JCF has got to be bet­ter, it has got to learn lessons from oth­ers and imple­ment plans to deal effec­tive­ly with the chal­lenges which are sure to come its way in this present reality.
If three and four offi­cers can­not effect a sim­ple arrest of an indi­vid­ual who assaults one of them with­out fir­ing a weapon in a futile attempt to stop that assailant how will it react to a seri­ous assault?

Why Single Out Hunts Bay

WHY SINGLE OUT HUNTS BAY?

For decades the dress code of the Jamaica Constabulary Force has been a sore subject for members of that police department.
For rank and file officers who are required to go out and make arrests and be responsive to the requirements of modern-day policing, the impracticality of the uniform is a real issue.
This dress code has long out­lived its usefulness.

The uni­form still being worn by the police has not kept pace with the ever-evolv­ing face of policing.
The Federation which acts as a de fac­to union for rank and file offi­cers cer­tain­ly have not been as stri­dent as it should be in lob­by­ing for a more prac­ti­cal work dress for its members.
Additionally, the uni­form worn by senior mem­bers from Inspector to Commissioner depicts an image that they are not inter­est­ed in doing police work or worse that they are above actu­al policing.

In police depart­ments across the world, police offi­cers wear full dress uni­form with util­i­ty belt replete with accou­ter­ments of the trade. This is true of the last joined guy or girl all the way to the chief of the department.

Today’s police have to be much more adept in order to match the dex­ter­i­ty of crim­i­nals, what they wear is very important.

There is no log­i­cal rea­son for the uni­form still in exis­tence except that this is the uni­form which they have had for decades.
I think it is safe to say that there are many things which we have had for decades which aren’t work­ing so well, that includes some of our laws.
Not only is the uni­form of the police cer­e­mo­ni­al and imprac­ti­cal the hier­ar­chy of the force in typ­i­cal utter obsti­na­cy con­tin­ue to insist on the wear­ing of dress uni­form as opposed to the blue den­im even in cas­es where it is a dan­ger to offi­cer’s lives.
I will come back to that.

There are offi­cers who are called upon to take on crim­i­nals in ways oth­er police offi­cers are not.
This has been true through­out the nations short his­to­ry, it will be true as long as this nation exists, it is sim­ply the way things work.
This is not unique to Jamaica, it is stan­dard pro­ce­dure in police depart­ments across the world.
That is the rea­son two offi­cers who have had dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences serv­ing in the same depart­ment will have dif­fer­ent opin­ions in dis­cus­sions on aspects of the very same department.

The Blue uni­form is a uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed dress includ­ing for the world’s largest police depart­ment the NYPD.

Some of those spe­cial func­tions include the Mobile Reserve offi­cers, CIB, and oth­er offi­cers, also there are offi­cers who are asked to pen­e­trate deep into depressed com­mu­ni­ties and bring polic­ing to those residents.
In depressed com­mu­ni­ties all across the coun­try and in places like Riverton City and oth­ers with­in the Hunts Bay police area of responsibility.
Some of these offi­cers are asked to ride motor­cy­cles and are gen­er­al­ly required to work night shifts.

The abil­i­ty to use stealth in the per­for­mance of their duties is absolute­ly crit­i­cal to these offi­cers who risk their lives dai­ly with­out the val­ue of back­up in short order.
Having prac­ti­cal uni­forms (not dress cer­e­mo­ni­al uni­form) is crit­i­cal as well.
These offi­cers we are told, have removed many guns from the streets and have saved many lives. Nevertheless, we have learned that Deputy Commissioner of Police Clifford Blake has sin­gled out the Hunts Bay offi­cers and demand­ed that they wear dress uni­form even though they are required to work nights and under less than ide­al circumstances.

DCP Clifford Blake

Speaking to sources I was told that the DCP is demand­ing that only 20 offi­cers be allowed to wear the more prac­ti­cal Denim dress.
When I inquired what was the expla­na­tion giv­en for the fact that the DCP sin­gled out Hunts Bay, I learned that none was given.

Whatever the rea­son for this direc­tive from DCP Blake, it should not be that one divi­sion is sin­gled out for a pol­i­cy direc­tive. Particularly in a divi­sion which, for all intents and pur­pos­es serves some of the most depressed and vio­lent com­mu­ni­ties on the Island.
The con­di­tions the Hunts Bay police encounter each day direct­ly stip­u­lates that they need the best accou­ter­ments to do their job.
That includes the most prac­ti­cal uni­form available.
We would like to ask DCP Blake to look at this direc­tive and under­stand the impli­ca­tions of his direc­tive when con­sid­ered against the life and safe­ty of the men and women over whom he has super­vi­so­ry control.

The need to have offi­cers con­form to dress code can­not be overem­pha­sized, how­ev­er, the den­im uni­form is vast­ly supe­ri­or in prac­ti­cal­i­ty and functionality.
The den­im, or some­thing close to it, should be the way for­ward not dress to be scoffed at for the more imprac­ti­cal cer­e­mo­ni­al cum­mer­bund attire.
We urge DCP Blake to con­sid­er the lives of offi­cers over old cer­e­mo­ni­al norms.

Small-Town America Has A Serious Drinking-Water Problem

On a swel­ter­ing day last July, a team of sci­en­tists stood before a crowd­ed room of peo­ple from the tiny town of Sanders, Arizona, and showed them a pho­to of a dilap­i­dat­ed wood­en shack cov­ered by hole-filled tarps. This, the sci­en­tists explained, was the town’s water source.

Tonya Baloo, a long­time res­i­dent and moth­er of two, did a dou­ble take. “It looked like a Third World coun­try,” she says. “I was like, ‘Is this Africa?’”

The well serv­ing Sanders res­i­dents Chris Shuey

The researchers’ next image — a chart with a flat red line cut­ting through yel­low bars — was even more wor­ri­some. Tommy Rock, a Ph.D. can­di­date study­ing water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion at Northern Arizona University, explained that the red line was the Environmental Protection Agency’s thresh­old for ura­ni­um allowed in pub­lic water sys­tems: 30 micro­grams per liter. The yel­low bars rep­re­sent­ed ura­ni­um lev­els in Sanders’ water sup­ply dat­ing back to 2003. They hov­ered around 50 micro­grams per liter.

For more than a decade, the chart showed, peo­ple in Sanders had been drink­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed water.

Residents lis­tened, dumb­found­ed. Sanders sits on the edge of the Navajo Nation; ura­ni­um mines, relics of the Cold War, have long dot­ted trib­al lands across the West. Long-term expo­sure to the heavy met­al can cause kid­ney dis­ease and can­cer. But locals had nev­er been noti­fied of the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Nor were they aware of the near­ly 200 drink­ing-water vio­la­tions that the local util­i­ty had amassed over the pre­vi­ous decade, rang­ing from ura­ni­um and bac­te­r­i­al con­t­a­m­i­na­tion to fail­ure to test the water.

The ini­tial betray­al,” Baloo says. “It was shocking.”

Roughly 6 mil­lion Americans use one of 2,300 pub­lic water sys­tems that qual­i­fy as “seri­ous vio­la­tors”; 99 per­cent of those util­i­ties serve few­er than 50,000 people.

The meet­ing hap­pened two months before researchers in Flint, Michigan, revealed that their city’s water was laced with lead. In both cas­es, curi­ous sci­en­tists exposed years of drink­ing-water vio­la­tions that affect­ed pre­dom­i­nant­ly poor, minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties. (Most Sanders res­i­dents are Navajo and live on less than $20,000 per year.) But unlike urban Flint, Sanders is home to just 630 peo­ple and con­sists of a clus­ter of sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes, a gas sta­tion, a dol­lar store, two church­es, and a trad­ing post — all sur­round­ed by miles of red rock and sage brush.

An aer­i­al view of Sanders, Arizona Doc Searls/​Flickr/​Wikimedia Commons

The town is one of thou­sands of rur­al com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try where water qual­i­ty has qui­et­ly evad­ed fed­er­al health stan­dards for years. Many small util­i­ties sim­ply can­not afford advanced water treat­ment tech­nol­o­gy, says Jeff Griffiths, a pub­lic health pro­fes­sor at Tufts University and a for­mer advis­er to the EPA on drink­ing water. (An inspec­tion of the Sanders well in 2012, for exam­ple, found that “the own­er pours an unap­proved bleach prod­uct down the cas­ing vent dai­ly as the method of dis­in­fec­tion.”) According to EPA data, rough­ly 6 mil­lion Americans use one of 2,300 pub­lic water sys­tems that qual­i­fy as “seri­ous vio­la­tors” — defined as hav­ing mul­ti­ple, con­tin­u­ous, or seri­ous health or report­ing prob­lems. Ninety-nine per­cent of those util­i­ties serve few­er than 50,000 peo­ple. Together, they serve a pop­u­la­tion 25 times the size of Flint.

A week after Rock’s pre­sen­ta­tion, Sanders res­i­dents received a notice in the mail from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) inform­ing them of the high ura­ni­um lev­els in the local water sup­ply — a first since the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion was report­ed to the state in 2003. Long-term expo­sure can increase the risk of kid­ney dis­ease and can­cer, it said, but the sit­u­a­tion wasn’t an emer­gency. “You do NOT need to seek an alter­nate (for exam­ple, bot­tled or hauled) water sup­ply,” it read. “The water remains safe to use until treat­ment is put into place.”

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Many res­i­dents, wary of the state’s assur­ances, avoid­ed the water. Baloo brought her kids an hour away to her mom’s house for baths. Genevieve Lee, a 73-year-old retired teacher, resort­ed to eat­ing canned food and tak­ing sponge baths out of a buck­et. She made 40-minute treks to Gallup, New Mexico, for water and often found her­self won­der­ing about the uranium’s impact. Did it con­tribute to her breast can­cer in 2008? To her neighbor’s kid­ney disease?

Lee, Baloo, and oth­ers formed a water task force, peti­tion­ing for the town to con­nect to a near­by, well-main­tained util­i­ty in the Navajo Nation. “All we think about is water,” Baloo told me this spring.

The hub­bub led Sanders school sys­tem super­in­ten­dent Dan Hute to test the schools’ water sup­ply, which comes from a pri­vate well unaf­fil­i­at­ed with Sanders’ water sys­tem; the water in Sanders ele­men­tary and mid­dle schools was also con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. Hute tapped into school bud­gets to pro­vide bot­tled water to rough­ly 500 stu­dents and 150 teach­ers. “I’ve got­ten no help from any­body,” Hute told me ear­li­er this spring. According to Rock, no local, state, or fed­er­al agency pro­vid­ed the town with bot­tled water or filters.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, util­i­ties are required to noti­fy their cus­tomers if water has con­t­a­m­i­nant lev­els above the EPA’s thresh­old. If they fail to do so, the law calls for the “pri­ma­cy agency” — in Sanders’ case, the state — to inter­vene. After 30 days, the EPA steps in.

“These peo­ple have been drink­ing this for years. It’s not a short-term expo­sure. I’m a lit­tle baf­fled by their lack of concern.”

Though the pol­i­cy sounds sim­ple enough, the real­i­ty is far murki­er. Dr. Bruce Macler, an EPA tox­i­col­o­gist who helped decide to tell Sanders res­i­dents that
http://​www​.moth​er​jones​.com/​e​n​v​i​r​o​n​m​e​n​t​/​2​0​1​6​/​0​6​/​r​u​r​a​l​-​w​a​t​e​r​-​c​o​n​t​a​m​i​n​a​t​i​o​n​-​u​r​a​n​i​u​m​-​n​a​v​a​j​o​-​s​a​n​d​e​rs/

This arti­cle has been updated.

To Resolve The Critical Issues We Must At Least Agree On Truths…

TRUTH

A tran­scen­dent fun­da­men­tal or spir­i­tu­al real­i­ty”(Merriam ‑Webster)

It’s has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to have a con­ver­sa­tion on how to solve some of our nation’s prob­lems these days.
Many peo­ple much smarter than I argue we are liv­ing in a post-fac­tu­al world. I am no intel­lec­tu­al so I don’t know whether we are or not, I still believe in the good in each per­son to see reason.
Whether true or not it is becom­ing clear­er, at least to me, that con­ver­sa­tions and debates get bogged down in the mundane.
In addi­tion to the ad hominem attacks that are com­mon­place when we dis­agree, it appears we can’t even agree on truths.

We are not going to solve the issues fac­ing us a race of peo­ple or even in small­er quan­ti­ties as Jamaicans if the basic require­ment of acknowl­edg­ing the truth is out­side our grasp.
As an opin­ion writer, I am thrilled to dive into the debate and defend my point of view. I believe that when we are able to hash out opin­ions and agree on truths we are that much clos­er to resolv­ing our problems.
We can always dis­agree on opin­ions but it becomes a waste of time talk­ing when we can­not accept facts such as cred­i­ble irrefutable data.
Of course, we can dis­agree about how the data was col­lect­ed, we can dis­agree on how it is inter­pret­ed, we may even argue on its rel­a­tiv­i­ty to the top­ic being dis­cussed but it does no one any good to argue when the data is unindictable.

A friend recent­ly told me that she dis­agrees with my writ­ing style, she tells me it’s too jar­ring, “I get a headache every time I try to read your work.”
I Love my friend but the truths that I try to com­mu­ni­cate, are not exact­ly palat­able to the poten­tial tar­get groups of which she is a part.
My friend, a real down to earth edu­cat­ed woman may find it dif­fi­cult to agree that the edu­cat­ed elit­ist class has no use for cer­tain truths which dis­rupts their decade’s long com­fort zones.

As much as I rel­ish the thought of appeal­ing to my friend’s group­ing I am more inter­est­ed in appeal­ing to the wider mass­es who must begin to take their own lives into their hands through the appro­pri­ate assim­i­la­tion of use­ful truth­ful information.
In order to make the best use of truth­ful infor­ma­tion, we must first iden­ti­fy truth and use that as a start­ing point. Essentially at some point in time, we have to accept that black is black and white is white instead of wast­ing time bick­er­ing over shades.
Or even more banal spend time tear­ing down the mes­sen­ger when the truth does not line up with the safe place you devel­oped on the issue.

It’s ridicu­lous to accuse your con­tem­po­rary of being a Democrat because his views do not line up with your Republican world-view.
It’s equal­ly unpro­duc­tive to spend time accus­ing your con­tem­po­rary of being PNP because your Government is in pow­er and I just hap­pen to chal­lenge them with facts.
How dumb are we real­ly when we believe the par­ty we sup­port can do no wrong and the one we despise can do no right?
I’ll tell you what that is, it is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of small-mind­ed­ness and ignorance.

So what if the per­son is a Democrat, so what if I just hap­pened to be a mem­ber of the PNP, does that then trans­form truth to fiction?
Does it change the fun­da­men­tal fact that we must come togeth­er to solve the issues which affect us?
I vot­ed once in Jamaica and it was for Edward Seaga It was my very first oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote.
Not only did I vote but at the ten­der age of 18 I signed up to be a return­ing offi­cer at the polling sta­tion because I believed in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.

It is that fer­vent belief in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process which makes it impos­si­ble to sit idly by and watch as our coun­try embarks on process­es which I know are absolute­ly the wrong path, regard­less of who sits in Jamaica house.
The only time I ever vot­ed was for the Seaga Government yet I was one of his harsh­est crit­ics and con­tin­ue to crit­i­cize Seaga today and give him cred­it where he deserves that credit.
The PNP has been demon­stra­bly destruc­tive for our coun­try, sub­se­quent­ly, I nev­er con­sid­er that par­ty wor­thy of much dis­cus­sion or debate.
I was always quite com­fort­able to see the PNP on the side­lines look­ing in, just not com­fort­able enough to allow the arro­gance of some with­in the labor par­ty to go unchecked.

I am Jamaican, not JLP and damn sure not PNP.
I will con­tin­ue to lob­by and speak truth to pow­er, not just in Jamaica but in my adopt­ed home, the truth is lib­er­at­ing it is refresh­ing we should all wel­come truth, regard­less how unpalat­able it is.

As Threats To National Security Intensifies Govt Policies Walk Us Backwards Into The 20th Century

Back in the day polic­ing was aid­ed and enhanced by two crit­i­cal com­po­nents which worked rel­a­tive­ly well .
These two com­po­nents have out­lived their use­ful­ness and should be dis­card­ed as the coun­try strive for a more sci­en­tif­ic and intel­li­gence based form of polic­ing and dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice com­men­su­rate with the 21st century.

DISTRICT CONSTABLES


District con­sta­bles are an aux­il­iary of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) they are appoint­ed by the Commissioner of Police and are assigned to the com­mu­ni­ties in which they live.
District Constables once offered valu­able ser­vice to the police depart­ment and the nation.
Traditionally, reg­u­lar­ly police offi­cers relied on District Constables to act as a kind of walk­ing warrant.

It was gen­er­al­ly accept­ed that as long as a dis­trict con­sta­ble was present police could enter a dwelling with­out a war­rant and search for want­ed crim­i­nals and or contraband.
Today as the job of law enforce­ment becomes a lot more chal­leng­ing it may be time to dis­pense with the DC as we affec­tion­ate­ly ref­er­eed to those loy­al men and women who have risked much and may not have got­ten the recog­ni­tion they deserve for their ser­vice and sacrifice.

Once upon a time District Constables were mere­ly appoint­ed but received no train­ing, they learned on the job.
Today they receive four to six weeks train­ing at the Jamaica Police Academy and are now assigned uniforms.
Their train­ing includes Laws and Police Duties. Community Policing. Use and Care of Firearms. Defense Tactics and Drills.
As the nation move to mod­ern­ize the force into a twen­ty first cen­tu­ry depart­ment it may be time for the DC’s to go and the fund­ing allo­cat­ed them be used toward mod­ern­iz­ing the force. .

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE(JP)

A group of lay magistrates

Justices of the peace have giv­en invalu­able ser­vice to our nation , effec­tive­ly oper­at­ing as qua­si mag­is­trates in the absence of real magistrates.
In oth­er cas­es Magistrates have not made them­selves avail­able so that the wheels of jus­tice can turn effec­tive­ly and efficiently.
Despite the qual­i­ty ser­vices lay mag­is­trates (JP’s) have giv­en over the years politi­cians have effec­tive­ly cor­rupt­ed and cor­rod­ed the lay mag­is­trates process.
Political plants and oper­a­tives have made a mock­ery of the func­tions they per­formed in the process of the dis­pen­sa­tion of justice.
For decades the two polit­i­cal par­ties have so cor­rupt­ed this process that many who are lay mag­is­trates are active criminals.

It is because of this con­t­a­m­i­na­tion that the push by jus­tice Minister Delroy Chuck to broad­en the scope of this pro­gram should be of grave con­cern to all Jamaicans.
For exam­ple under the new [Zones Of Special Operations Act] (ZOSO), It is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the JP’s to be present when the secu­ri­ty forces are con­duct­ing searches.

In addi­tion, peo­ple detained or arrest­ed must imme­di­ate­ly be brought before a JP, who will deter­mine whether there are rea­son­able grounds for the arrest or detention.
If the JP is sat­is­fied that the arrest or deten­tion is jus­ti­fied, the per­son shall be remand­ed in cus­tody for not more than 24 hours, after which he must be brought before the judge of a parish court.
If the JP is not sat­is­fied that the arrest or deten­tion is jus­ti­fied, “he shall order that the per­son be released forthwith.”
So many fac­tors with­in this are wrong, fear ‚col­lu­sion are just two of the com­po­nents which could ren­der this process a dud, yet it is what has been foist­ed on the police and the nation by the Holness administration.

In oth­er words the fun­da­men­tal author­i­ty of the Police is abro­gat­ed and abridged ‚sup­plant­ed by and with the author­i­ty of poten­tial untrained polit­i­cal hacks.
At a time when the nation is under threat from well orga­nized and heav­i­ly armed gangs and mili­tias the Government’s push is to walk the coun­try back into the ves­tiges of our colo­nial past.
This is what is being cod­i­fied into law even as the coun­try grap­ple with exis­ten­tial threats to human life and nation­al secu­ri­ty on a broad­er scale.

Can’t Treat Each Other With Dignity:get Out

Leadership at it’s best dis­played by Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria head of the United States Air Force Academy.

YouTube player

If you can’t treat some­one from anoth­er gen­der, whether that’s a man or a woman, with dig­ni­ty and respect, then you need to get out. If you demean some­one in any way, then you need to get out. And if you can’t treat some­one from anoth­er race or a dif­fer­ent col­or skin with dig­ni­ty and respect, then you need to get out.”http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​a​i​r​-​f​o​r​c​e​-​a​c​a​d​e​m​y​-​r​a​c​i​a​l​-​s​l​u​r​s​_​u​s​_​5​9​c​e​2​3​1​3​e​4​b​0​5​f​0​0​5​d​3​3​9​3​0​7​?​n​c​i​d​=​i​n​b​l​n​k​u​s​h​p​m​g​0​0​0​0​0​009

Classless Media Whore Terrence Williams Attacks Police Even As Female Officer Is Nursing Gunshot Wounds Received In Her Own Home

The much maligned and belea­guered Jamaica Constabulary force has been fight­ing through some of it’s most dif­fi­cult times.
In recent weeks the JCF has suf­fered sev­er­al attacks on it’s mem­bers in their own homes.
In fact in less that two weeks three offi­cers have been shot in their homes.
Though this is not new it marks an esca­la­tion in the war being waged on the Island’s Law enforce­ment by the crim­i­nal underworld.

In recent days the police has with­stood those assaults and have actu­al­ly tak­en out the cop killer Marlon Duppy film Perry .
They have been involved in sev­er­al shoot­ings in which dan­ger­ous killers have been removed from the streets and have with­stood ambushes.

Just some of the weapon­ry which have flood­ed the Island and are in the hands of gangsters.

Additionally, they have recov­ered sev­er­al guns and numer­ous amounts of ammu­ni­tion ren­der­ing the streets, high­ways and byways of the Island some­what safer.

Caches of guns the police recov­er almost daily.

All of this has gen­er­at­ed much pos­i­tive press for the police but more impor­tant­ly the chat­ter on social media has been changing.
The nar­ra­tive have been much more sup­port­ive of the police of late and that ter­ri­fies some peo­ple who eat the flesh of dead cops and drink their blood..
If you are a crim­i­nal or you are in the busi­ness of dem­a­goguery, lies and sen­sa­tion­al­ism against the police that is bad for business.
So what do you know, chief dem­a­gogue and media whore, the com­mis­sion­er of the crime enhance­ment agency INDECOM , decid­ed he want­ed some of the spotlight.

Terrence Williams (right) com­mis­sion­er of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), Hamish Campbell, left.

Williams aid­ed by his friends in the media was not about to allow the police a sin­gle moment of respite so he found a way to worm him­self into the limelight.

Big Gleaner headline.

JCF Slowly Responding To INDECOM On Sanctions.

(INDECOM) Terrence Williams yes­ter­day said that respons­es are slow­ly com­ing in from the hier­ar­chy of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Police Service Commission a day after he informed Parliament that the lead­er­ship has failed to take action against 138 senior cops rec­om­mend­ed for dis­ci­pli­nary sanc­tions.

The only trou­ble with this attempt to draw atten­tion to him­self, is that this was in rela­tion to INDECOM’s April to June report to the parliament.
Terrence Williams aid­ed by his loy­al lieutenant[sic] British trans­plant Hamish Campbell said that the police have respond­ed by let­ter in some cas­es say­ing that the depart­ment has decid­ed not to act on some of the reports.

We have received some let­ters updat­ing us. Some of the let­ters are say­ing that they are going to con­duct fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions. Some are say­ing that too much time has passed and they are not going to take any fur­ther action or dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings, and some are say­ing that they agree with us.” 

Williams said that while the law allows for the con­stab­u­lary to explain to Parliament why no sanc­tions have been under­tak­en, no expla­na­tion has been tendered.

In oth­er words not only have Terrence Williams decid­ed to usurp the press the JCF is get­ting on it’s suc­cess­es, he has decid­ed­ly tak­en on the role of lec­tur­ing the Parliament.
Remember that in cas­es where the police decide not to act on a rec­om­men­da­tion of INDECOM, in the inter­est of trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty they are man­dat­ed to give rea­sons for their decision.
The Parliament have not issued a com­plaint or made any demand for addi­tion­al respons­es from the police.
In fact it is with­in the pre­rog­a­tive of the police to make the deter­mi­na­tion whether Williams’ rec­om­men­da­tions are act­ed upon as he suggest.
Upon mak­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion Williams’ job is done.

Even as a female offi­cer and her daugh­ter were shot, their wounds still raw, the glo­ry hunt­ing, media whor­ing Terrence Williams had one intention.
Get the cam­eras on him­self, how pathet­ic and inse­cure this lit­tle man must be?

Deceased Cop killer Marlon Perry (dup­py film)

Williams went on to rat­tle off num­bers which points to increas­es in police fatal shoot­ings. In the same breath he made no men­tion of the shoot­ings in which offi­cers are shot in their own homes.

Said Williams; ”

Investigations by INDECOM show that a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of those shoot­ings are not in accor­dance with eye-wit­ness accounts pro­vid­ed. Of the 185 peo­ple who have either been shot and killed or shot and injured, 42 per cent of them did not have a firearm. A small­er num­ber had oth­er weapons like ice picks, stones, a piece of wood, and a num­ber hav­ing a machete or knife.”

So though he has the pow­er and the author­i­ty to pros­e­cute if there is evi­dence of wrong­do­ing, and even though he clear­ly has no evi­dence which could poten­tial­ly crim­i­nal­ly indict offi­cers who use lethal force in case where ice-picks and machetes are used, and even though we all know that the sup­posed wit­ness­es are gen­er­al­ly crim­i­nals them­selves, Terrence Williams chose demagoguery.
And at a time when the police high com­mand raised the threat lev­el against it’s offi­cers to severe.

Terrence Williams is a sick, dement­ed nar­cis­sist who is hell bent on doing what­ev­er he needs to do to remain relevant.
If Williams believes ice-picks and machetes pose no threat then he should do us a favor and take on the role of a police officer.
It would be a tremen­dous favor to our coun­try and to human kind.
The nation should reject INDECOM in’it’s present form and should unequiv­o­cal­ly reject the polit­i­cal plant Terrence Williams before he does more dam­age to our country.

Courts Continue To Grant Bail To Accused Murderers Who Attack And Kill Cops And Citizens

Day in day out I per­son­al­ly take on the unen­vi­able and unpaid task of writ­ing about what is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica. I con­tin­ue to remark on crime’s influ­ence and how it is destroy­ing the qual­i­ty of life for my fel­low coun­try­men and women who only want to live a law-abid­ing and decent life.
I feel that to whom much is giv­en much is required and so it is not just about the lit­tle gifts that one may be able to give it’s also about the greater good ‚that one may help in shap­ing the pol­i­cy debates through legit­i­mate well-inten­tioned advocacy.

In the process I have tak­en a lot of per­son­al heat, crit­i­cism and even threats, enough to cause any­one to rea­son­ably say what do I care , I just wont both­er with this.
Others have accused me of try­ing to gain fame and noto­ri­ety from try­ing to bring atten­tion to whats hap­pen­ing as it relates to crime.
The peo­ple who actu­al­ly know me actu­al­ly do laugh at those accu­sa­tions, I am the last per­son to seek atten­tion , in fact I do my utmost to stay in the shadows.
Others say “you are doing it for mon­ey,” that’s laugh­able too, I use my own mon­ey to ensure that this plat­form remain on the web so that not just myself but who would nor­mal­ly not have a voice gets their opin­ions and points of views heard.
I am con­vinced that the Jamaican peo­ple, despite all of their intel­lect and exu­ber­ance can­not live out their God-giv­en poten­tial in an atmos­phere of ram­pant crime, cor­rup­tion, and violence.

It was that love of peo­ple and ded­i­ca­tion to duty which got me shot in a dark alley on Blackwood Terrace one night in 87 as I accom­pa­nied a com­plainant home after he made a report to us.
We could have tak­en his report and sent him home, instead we chose to accom­pa­ny him to his house. We were to learn lat­er that he had only told us half of the sto­ry, that omis­sion near­ly cost me my life on that fate­ful night.
A cow­ard with a brand new ille­gal gun and the inten­tion to kill wait­ed in the dark­ness, I was not about to go with­out a fight, though shot and bleed­ing I was not about to sur­ren­der my life to a use­less piece of human waste.

It is that ded­i­ca­tion to duty and com­mit­ment which gal­va­nizes my ener­gies and caus­es me to con­tin­ue to keep sup­port­ing the rule of law and the imper­fect men and women [many of whom dis­agree with me] who risk their lives to keep oth­ers they nev­er met safe.

It is for that rea­son that I con­tin­ue to point to the struc­tur­al defects in the laws which allows crime to con­tin­ue unchecked.
As for­mer SSP Reneto Adams allud­ed and I have been spo­ken to for years, there are no real deter­rent in the laws. That lack of deter­rent is hav­ing a dele­te­ri­ous effect on the abil­i­ty of the police to impact crime in a mean­ing­ful way.

Terrence Williams
Self-serv­ing Commissioner of INDECOM

The nation’s lead­ers have stead­fast­ly buried their col­lec­tive heads in the sand and ignored the advice and coun­sel of peo­ple who know and have opt­ed to take the advice of peo­ple with per­son­al vendet­tas and agen­das anti­thet­i­cal to the best inter­est of our country.
Pride will not allow them to say we made a mis­take, so they dou­ble down on the mis­takes, squan­der­ing scarce resources and pre­cious lives in the process.

No ZOSO will have any mean­ing­ful impact on crime. ZOSO is like a well run police precinct which cov­ers a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­i­cal area.
My expe­ri­ence taught me that crim­i­nals will not stick around where there are no-non­sense police, they sim­ply migrate to oth­er areas.
This I stat­ed repeat­ed­ly before the ZOSO was even enact­ed into law, imme­di­ate­ly after the first ZOSO was declared the police and oth­er enti­ties con­firmed that crim­i­nals were run­ning to oth­er areas.

the exis­ten­tial threat crim­i­nals pose to the coun­try can­not be ignored by the nation’s lead­ers. It is a gross dere­lic­tion of duty and an abject fail­ure to take active mea­sures to pro­tect law abid­ing cit­i­zens from ram­pag­ing crim­i­nals, who are unafraid and undeterred.
The Island’s lead­ers con­tin­ue to out­source the Island’s secu­ri­ty to Terrence Williams, an ego mani­a­cal nar­cis­sist with an agen­da and a vendet­ta, fund­ed by for­eign interest.
Additionally the Government have allowed anoth­er tax-pay­er fund­ed agency, [the pub­lic defend­ers office] to become a antag­o­nis­tic tool of crim­i­nals against the nation’s law enforce­ment agencies.

Arlene Harrison-Henry

At what point does the Government say enough?
Chief among the rea­sons for the nation’s excep­tion­al­ly high mur­der rate is the fact that the Island’s judges act as a law onto themselves.
They sum­mar­i­ly release the most dan­ger­ous killers back onto the streets as soon as the police haul them before the courts.
This kind of behav­ior is stan­dard prac­tice regard­less of the grue­some nature of the crimes the accused are alleged to have committed.

The courts con­tin­ue to make the scur­rilous argu­ments that Bail ought not be used as pun­ish­ment while ignor­ing the guide­lines with­ing the very same bail act.
It is time that judges stand up and respect the con­sti­tu­tion of Jamaica and cease and desist from the nefar­i­ous prac­tices of grant­i­ng bail to accused mur­der­ers over and over and over and over regard­less of the amounts of time they kill while on bail.

Supreme Court Jamaica

SECTION OF THE BAIL ACT FOR CLARIFICATION

4.-(1) Where the offence or one of the offences in rela­tion to C~~CW which
the defen­dant is charged or con­vict­ed is pun­ish­able with which bail
impris­on­ment. Bail may be denied to that defen­dant in the following
cir­cum­stances­r­ta­nies
in
(U) the Court, a Justice of the Peace or police offi­cer is
sat­is­fied that there are sub­stan­tial grounds for believing
that the defen­dant, if released on bail would-
(i) fail to sur­ren­der to custody;
(ii) com­mit an offence while on bail; or
(iii) inter­fere with wit­ness­es or oth­er­wise obstruct
the course of jus­tice, whether in rela­tion to
him­self or any oth­er person;

(6) the defen­dant is in cus­tody in pur­suance of the sentence
of a Court or any author­i­ty act­ing under the Defense
Act;
the Court is sat­is­fied that it has not been prac­ti­ca­ble to
obtain suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion for the pur­pose of taking
the deci­sions required by this sec­tion for want of time
since the insti­tu­tion of the pro­ceed­ings against the
defen­dant;
(d) the defen­dant, hav­ing been released on bail in or in
con­nec­tion with the pro­ceed­ings for the offence, is
arrest­ed in pur­suance of sec­tion 14 (abscond­ing by person
released on bail);
(e) the defen­dant is charged with an offence alleged to have
been com­mit­ted while he was released on bail:

It is an affront to the dig­ni­ty of law-abid­ing Jamaicans that this kind of behav­ior is allowed to con­tin­ue to jeop­ar­dize their lives.
Aided and abet­ted no less than by paid ser­vants of the pub­lic whose duty it is to pro­tect them, but who does­n’t think enough of them to them­selves fol­low the laws.

This is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the nation’s homi­cide rate and the over­all sta­tis­tics of vio­lent crimes.
Two days ago the police act­ing on infor­ma­tion went to a loca­tion in Naggo Head Saint Catherine where they inter­cept­ed a man armed with a gun, dur­ing that con­fronta­tion the assailant was mor­tal­ly wounded.

The deceased turned out to have been out on Bail on a mur­der charge.
Incensed at his death, his cronies are report­ed to have gone to the home of one of the police offi­cers and opened fire at his wife and daughter.
Even though shot, Woman Inspector Grant returned fire killing one of the assailants and pos­si­bly injur­ing anoth­er ‚who from reports turned up at the Kingston Public Hospital claim­ing he was shot by gunmen.

This medi­um have received cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the idea of going to the Inspector’s house was to hold Inspector Grant and her fam­i­ly until her hus­band arrived home then kill all of them.
This is the lev­el of plan­ning which is going on against the offi­cers who uphold the laws.
Our offi­cers are receiv­ing no help from the Government, no help from the courts, no help from the civ­il soci­ety in prac­ti­cal­ly erad­i­cat­ing this men­ace from the society.

Just some of the weapon­ry which have flood­ed the Island and are in the hands of gangsters.

Instead the Government indulges in plat­i­tudes and smoke and mir­rors with a view to cre­at­ing the impres­sion that much is being done to aid in the fight against crime.
The ter­ror­ists who threat­en the sov­er­eign­ty and legit­i­ma­cy of the Jamaican state have not gone away, instead their ranks have swollen with depor­tees and oth­ers. Their arse­nals have been replen­ished and improved.

The lethal­i­ty and sophis­ti­ca­tion of the weapon­ry in the hands of the gang­sters is stunning.
Yet the Government aid­ed and advised by crim­i­nal enhance­ment groups like Jamaicans for Justice, the IACHR and it’s own cre­ation, INDECOM, con­tin­ue to ignore the clear and present dan­ger these gangs pose to the nation’s security.

Recently recov­ered

I ask, “how long will this Government allow this con­di­tion to dete­ri­o­rate, how much is enough” ?
How long will it be before both polit­i­cal par­ties final­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly renounce vio­lence, con­demn gar­risons and com­mit to dis­man­tling the gar­risons which are the incu­ba­tors for these gangs?

The More Things Change

On Sunday February 21st 1965 Malcolm X, Nation of Islam min­is­ter and civ­il rights leader was gunned down in the Washington Heights New York Audubon Ballroom as he addressed a gath­er­ing of Muslim followers.
According to his­tor­i­cal record­ing of the death of the fire­brand leader he was killed by mem­bers of his own Organization.

Malcolm-x-assassination(image cour­tesy of cbs news)

Sure there were peo­ple with­in the Nation of Islam who were upset by Malcolm’s response that his spir­i­tu­al leader Elijah Muhammad was hav­ing affairs with young women with­in his organization.
Nevertheless, there were pow­er­ful forces who want­ed Malcolm gone.
His mes­sage against white suprema­cy, police abuse and racial injus­tice made him pub­lic ene­my num­ber one from many quar­ters opposed to black empowerment.

Dr-King-Jesse-Jackson-and-oth­ers-on-the-bal­cony-of-the-Lorraine-Motel-just-before-he-was-assas­si­nat­ed..

On Thursday April 4th 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assas­si­nat­ed, alleged­ly killed by a sniper’s bul­let as he stood on a bal­cony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee.
On the occa­sion of the killing of Dr. King Time Magazine said this.

President Johnson’s announce­ment of a major peace offen­sive in Asia, cou­pled with his renun­ci­a­tion of anoth­er term, raised antic­i­pa­tion through­out the world that the long agony of VietNam might soon be ended.
Even as that hope blos­somed, an old­er blight on the American con­science burst through with the capri­cious­ness of a spring freeze. In Memphis, through the bud­ding branch­es of trees sur­round­ing a tawdry room­ing house, a white sniper’s bul­let cut down Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., pre-emi­nent voice of the just aspi­ra­tions and long-suf­fer­ing patience of black America.

Throughout America’s tor­rid and tor­tured his­to­ry the list of black lead­ers who have been slaugh­tered for dar­ing to speak out is long and in some cas­es unknowable.
Each and every life snuffed out had the same impor­tance as that of King and Malcolm, we hon­or each and every life as we do their more well know contemporaries.

The jour­ney to peace­ful coex­is­tence based on mutu­al respect and human dig­ni­ty have, to this day remained an elu­sive dream 49 years after Martin Luther King’s light was extin­guished and 52 years after the fire which was Malcolm X, was doused with cru­el extin­guish­ing bile of com­plic­i­ty and hatred.

Would Be Assassin Allegedly Turned Up At KPH With Gunshot Wound.

Police sources revealed that this man turned up at the Kingston Public Hospital for treat­ment claim­ing that he was attacked and shot.
They believe he was one of the would-be assas­sins of Inspector Grant and her family.

This man report­ed­ly turned up at the Kingston Public Hospital with a gun­shot wound.

This we are told may very well be the oth­er would be assas­sin of the Grant family.


Police sources con­firmed that their inves­ti­ga­tions have estab­lished that he was not shot where he alleged that he was but that he has stuck to his story.

UPDATE TO THIS STORY
 Assault at com­mon law, Fatal shoot­ing, recov­ery of firearm and ammu­ni­tion, com­mit­ted 26.9.2017 about 3pm nag­go head vic new lus­cious hq bar, Portmore, st Catherine. Circumstances are: mem­bers of the st Catherine south spe­cial ops act­ing on infor­ma­tion that a want­ed man was in the area went there and saw a man fit­ting the descrip­tion, on approach of the police the man pulled a hand gun from his waist­band and point­ed it at the police, the police in defence of their lives fired at him and he was hit, he was rushed to the Spanish town hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead by Dr Thomas @ 3:40 pm. One .380 semi auto­mat­ic pis­tol ser­i­al num­ber 98003311 loaded with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing 7 rds were tak­en from the deceased man. INDECOM was informed. Det Sgt Noël Bryan I/​o. Ssp Bennett,sp grey, ddi south on scene. Futher update follows.

LATER THE REPRISAL ATTACK ON WOMAN INSPECTOR GRANT AND HER FAMILY 

Three (3) counts of Wounding with Intent by gun­shot and a sus­pect­ed fatal shoot­ing, com­mit­ted about 8:15pm . Victims are Insp. Allison Grant-Johnson of MPD, Ashley Rochester, 23 year old Dist. Cons. of TSD and Bianna Johnson, 17 year old stu­dent of a Kingston high school all of the above address. Information is that all 3 vic­tims (moth­er and daugh­ters of the above address) were at home when one of the daugh­ters was about to exit the rear of the house to dis­card refuse when she was pounced upon by at least 3 gun­men, she screamed out and her moth­er who was in a bed­room went to her assis­tance.…. a gun bat­tle ensued dur­ing which all 3 per­sons were shot and injured. Inspector Grant-Johnson fired and based on the descrip­tion giv­en it is believed that one of the men was fatal­ly shot, he was found some dis­tance away. The injuries of the injured who are being treat­ed at KPH are not con­sid­ered life threat­en­ing. Of note, Insp. Grant-Johnson’s hus­band, Sgt. Ainsley Johnson was involved in a fatal shoot­ing and recov­ery of a pis­tol earlier.

Its impor­tant that the nation under­stand that the cir­cle begins because a man who mur­dered was grant­ed bail by the courts , turns around and attack police offi­cers and is tak­en out.
His cronies in turn went to one of the offi­cers home where they shot and injured his daugh­ter and wife who is also a police officer.
She returned fire killing one and wound­ing anoth­er who alleged­ly turned up at the KPH claim­ing he was shot by assailants.

These men did not turn up to kill the judge who grant­ed them bail, they turned up to kill police offi­cers after their crony who was giv­en bail by a crim­i­nals lov­ing judge was killed by police.
This is where our coun­try is today, mur­der­ers grant­ed bail attempts to kill cops , is killed in the con­fronta­tion and his cronies attacks one offi­cer’s fam­i­ly with a view to assas­si­nat­ing the entire family.

The Jamaican Government at all lev­els is in the process of pro­vid­ing aid and com­fort to the ter­ror­ists who are slaugh­ter­ing and maim­ing inno­cent Jamaicans.
Turning mur­der­ers loose through the courts and through INDECOM embold­en­ing crim­i­nals to do things once unimaginable.

Police Quite Capable Of Removing These Terrorists: If Govt Gets Out Of The Way…

The Jamaica Constabulary Force con­tin­ue to erad­i­cate from the small Island the bru­tal and mer­ci­less home grown ter­ror­ists who have tak­en over the coun­try since the Bruce Golding led JLP in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the People’s National Party gave the coun­try INDECOM.

The life­less body of alleged gang leader Daniel Whittaker o/​c dan dan.

Since this mon­strous police shack­ling law was passed in 2010 thou­sands of Jamaicans have lost their lives who would­n’t nor­mal­ly have.
Many are indeed inno­cents who should not have lost their lives.
On the oth­er hand many have died who are part of the problem .
With that said between the Government,Opposition, the crim­i­nal courts sys­tem and the agen­cies they cre­at­ed to ham­strung the police the job of the police have become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to near­ly impossible.

Over the years Administrations of both polit­i­cal par­ties have allowed lob­by groups opposed to the police and sup­port­ive of crim­i­nals to use police shoot­ing sta­tis­tics to solic­it funds from inter­ests, some of which are opposed to Jamaica’s interest.
Groups like Jamaicans For Justice under the lead­er­ship of Carolyn Gomez have done immea­sur­able harm to our coun­try by manip­u­lat­ing data in sup­port of her own interest .

Out of those actions we got INDECOM, and the Public Defender’s Office but we also got dra­mat­ic increas­es in homi­cides, Rapes, Sexual molesta­tion of women and chil­dren and over­all dra­mat­ic increas­es in vio­lent crimes.
As I have said in pre­vi­ous arti­cles Jamaica has peo­ple with immense tal­ents and intel­lect, there is no rea­son we should not be a first world state despite our late start.

Think for a moment at the immea­sur­able poten­tial peo­ple, all of us, look at what we have done in the dias­po­ra and at home.
Imagine if we are able to coa­lesce those pos­i­tives into devel­op­ing that 4411 square miles?
Now imag­ine if you are a lender to Jamaica and you want to keep mak­ing money.
Would it be in your inter­est in have a devel­oped sol­vent Jamaica?
Use your heads Jamaicans, there are peo­ple giv­ing mon­ey to anti police groups which have done the cal­cu­la­tion, they are hop­ing you will not do yours.

There are high­ly placed peo­ple with­in the present Government and the Opposition par­ty who have the good sense to rec­og­nize that the INDECOM act is hav­ing dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences on the enforce­ment of the Nation’s laws, none have had the char­ac­ter and balls to stand up and demand that this law which kills be repealed.

INDECOM Generation Of Killers Hell Bent On Killing Cops In Their Own Homes

Inspector Grant

Just recent­ly and in the space of one week two police offi­cers were attacked in the sanc­ti­ty of their own homes.
I wrote about it argu­ing then that this is alarm­ing and that the police at least must be dou­bly vig­i­lant if that is at all pos­si­ble con­sid­er­ing what they face in Jamaica and the lev­el of sup­port that is giv­en to criminals.

I argued in my last arti­cle that attacks on police in their own homes is noth­ing new but should be watched to see if there is a pat­tern developing.
I believe we need look no fur­ther to come to the rea­son­able con­clu­sion that this is indeed a strat­e­gy being adopt­ed by the well armed crim­i­nal underworld.

Yesterday female cop, Inspector A Grant was attacked in her home and shot along with her 23 ‑year-old daughter .
The offi­cer report­ed­ly returned fire hit­ting one of her assailants killing him.
We under­stand that the offi­cer’s hus­band is a police offi­cer who was involved in a shoot­ing and that the attack on her and her fam­i­ly was a reprisal attack.
We have been unable to get con­fir­ma­tion on that angle of the story.

Since Bruce Golding gave the the coun­try INDECOM, the rule of law has gone to the dogs in Jamaica .
It is not that there should­n’t be over­sight of Government agen­cies includ­ing the ones over which INDECOM have over­sight responsibility.
The prob­lem is the col­lu­sion which occurred between the Bruce Golding Government, out­side lob­by groups with agen­das against the police the PNP with zero input from the police.
It is impor­tant to rec­og­nize that despite the tril­lions of dol­lars Jamaica’s politi­cians have stolen and the crim­i­nal­i­ty in which mem­bers of par­lia­ment have been involved, the Police and the Contractor General’s depart­ment has no pow­er to pros­e­cute them.

The Police Military and Corrections which INDECOM Investigates, have giv­en more than enough rea­sons for gov­ern­ment to lis­ten to the calls for trans­paren­cy com­ing from the people.
Nevertheless, it is the com­plic­i­ty with which Golding and his cronies cob­bled togeth­er INDECOM and placed his polit­i­cal oper­a­tive Terrence Williams at the helm which is the problem.

Out of the INDECOM Act came increased and more brazen mur­ders, attacks on law enforce­ment offi­cers and a gen­er­al unwill­ing­ness of police to go after criminals.
The polit­i­cal pup­pet Golding placed atop the INDECOM fecal pile nev­er miss­es an oppor­tu­ni­ty to trum­pet the fact that police shoot­ings have gone down.
That’s an absolute and irrefutable fact.
Those argu­ments are for his for­eign han­dlers who give mon­ey to INDECOM to ham­strung the police and turn Jamaica into a waste­land of crim­i­nal­i­ty, there­by keep­ing her impov­er­ished and in debt.

What Terrence Williams nev­er talks about is the fact that police shoot­ings have gone down because police offi­cers have large­ly dis­en­gaged while the mur­der­ers which have tak­en over the coun­try have been emboldened.
As a con­se­quences mur­ders have gone up marked­ly with no end in sight.
If the idea behind INDECOM was for less crim­i­nals to get shot and more inno­cent Jamaicans shot and mur­dered the INDECOM Act has been a strate­gic suc­cess for INDECOM’s financiers.

The arro­gance of these ter­ror­ists are on full dis­play for all to see ‚now that they are embold­ened by INDECOM , and the Office Of Public Defender, two tax pay­er fund­ed Government agen­cies which sup­ports criminals.

Brazen images many Jamaicans do not see in their local media. This is hap­pen­ing in your country.

The killing of law enforce­ment offi­cers will not cause an awak­en­ing of the peo­ple seem­ing­ly drunk on las­civ­i­ous­ness and wine, some oth­er event will have to awak­en them, if of course the coun­try is not already too far gone and is large­ly pop­u­lat­ed with criminals.
Some with­in the Government con­tin­ue to use cruise ship arrivals and vis­i­tors to all inclu­sive resorts as a barom­e­ter of sta­bil­i­ty in the country.
I under­stand the need for sta­bil­i­ty and calm but the Government is woe­ful­ly mis­guid­ed if it mis­cal­cu­lates how quick­ly those arrivals will evap­o­rate if the ter­ror­ism in the coun­try is allowed to continue.

Caches of guns the police recov­er almost daily

The for­eign press can do a lot of dam­age once this con­tin­ues, its only a mat­ter of time.
The images which many Jamaicans at home are not privy to and that which many in the dias­po­ra pre­tend does­n’t exist are out there for all to see.
People come to me and ask “I want to go on vaca­tion we would like to go to Jamaica what do you think”?
They hear and see whats going on.
What do you think?

Imagine!

A life well lived in ser­vice to human­i­ty is gen­er­al­ly mourned when that light is final­ly extinguished.
Not so Sunday morn­ing, when a hail of police bul­lets evis­cer­at­ed the dark­ness of a life which was des­tined to end the way it did.

Marlon Perry o/​c (dup­py film) lived his life out­side the bounds of decent mod­ern soci­etal norms, his claim to noto­ri­ety, the infamy of extin­guish­ing inno­cent human lives.
Marlon Perry is only the lat­est of a long line of infa­mous killers who decid­ed they would respect no laws.

From Coppa, Sandokan , Tony Welsh, George Flash, Natty Morgan, Rigen,Jim Brown, to Perry the list is long and varied.
As some­one said today, sure Duppy Film is gone but his spon­sors are walk­ing around in suits and ties.

Marlon ‘Duppy Film’ Perry

There are hun­dreds of Duppy Films walk­ing around unen­cum­bered on the Island today, they are just as lethal and in many cas­es far more lethal than Marlon Perry ever was.
They make a name sole­ly out of the bar­bar­ic act of tak­ing inno­cent lives[making duppy].

The truth is that they emerge, grow and thrive because Jamaica has the per­fect storm of char­ac­ter­is­tics which aids and nour­ish­es crime.
We can con­tin­ue to talk about the crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty which exists in the two polit­i­cal par­ties spread­ing out across the hills and val­leys of the Island but that would be flog­ging a dead horse.

We also must con­cede that pol­i­tics have affect­ed the body politic to the extent that hav­ing a rea­son­able con­ver­sa­tion on caus­es and cures are inevitably instant­ly reduced to PNP JLP, instead of wrong and right.

The lack of edu­ca­tion, pover­ty, and mis­in­for­ma­tion have had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for any mean­ing­ful debate to devel­op, much less a strate­gic pol­i­cy ini­tia­tive which would begin to impact crime in a mean­ing­ful way.

Everyone knows about that, in fact, a PNP leader once said: “there is noth­ing that can be done about crime.”
Translation; We will not be doing any­thing about crime!
The for­mer Minister of National Security Peter Bunting once called for divine inter­ven­tion in the fight against crime, rather than push­ing for laws which send clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sages to crim­i­nals that their actions would not be tolerated.

There con­tin­ues to be a shock­ing tone deaf­ness, not just to the con­se­quences crime is hav­ing on the coun­try but to the strate­gies which are need­ed to walk back sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the gains crim­i­nals have made par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last two decades.

For years I have spo­ken to the need for a com­plete over­haul of our nations crim­i­nal laws.
Over the last sev­er­al years there have been minor fix­es here and there but by and large the con­se­quences for com­mit­ting crimes have not been enough to be a deter­rent to criminals.

Jamaica was quick to issue a mora­to­ri­um on hang­ing at the behest of the [mas­ters] who have the final say in the British Privy Counsel.
This came after the con­tin­ued non­sense being prof­fered by the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty that the death penal­ty is not a deter­rent to criminals.

I know of no crim­i­nal who was put to death by the state or any who met their end at the hand of police who returned to kill again.
They are deterred.
Fomer SSP Renetto Adams spoke to this recent­ly, argu­ing that there are no deter­rent com­po­nent in the Island’s laws.
Former ACP Keith [Trinity] Gardiner also broached that sub­ject from time to time.

In all of the obtuse polit­i­cal noise some­one must be the grown-up in the room.
The police moves which are net­ting weapons and want­ed crim­i­nals have noth­ing to do with large scale ZOSO’s done for the cameras.
They are intel­li­gence dri­ven police oper­a­tions which almost dai­ly result in caches of dan­ger­ous weapons removed from the streets.

Imagine if there was a will to sup­port the police with bet­ter train­ing, bet­ter equip­ment, bet­ter pay, bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, bet­ter leg­isla­tive sup­port and bet­ter over­all sup­port across the board?

There would be no need for any­one to give up their pre­cious rights which are so infringed when the police come to ask if there are any gun­men hid­ing in their homes?
No mas­sive police/​military joint force check­ing to make sure there are no mur­der­ers in the communities.
Imagine the incon­ve­nience of hav­ing to tol­er­ate the forces of law and order in the com­mu­ni­ties as opposed to mind­less killers hav­ing crate blanch in those com­mu­ni­ties to do as they please.

There is no tip-toe­ing around the fact that we are not deal­ing with a soci­ety of great people.
Even if you do not pull the trig­ger but you offer aid and com­fort to the trig­ger man you are equal­ly guilty.
The sup­port you give to those who hate the police and the rule of law means that you too have blood on your hands.

This beau­ti­ful coun­try is not too far gone but if there is a silent major­i­ty, now is the time for you to cause your voic­es to be heard.
Those hell-bent on turn­ing our coun­try into a failed state have vocif­er­ous trolls doing their bid­ding , its time to speak out, call your elect­ed offi­cials and demand that they pass laws which puts crim­i­nals away.
They refuse to hang them so police should go after them with a vengeance and the courts should throw away the key when they are convicted.

We need tough mean­ing­ful laws to deal with the [dup­py films] walk­ing around whether they wear suits and ties or mil­i­tary garb , they are all the same to me, and should be all the same to every con­sci­en­tious law abid­ing Jamaican.