We learned today that almost two years after tak­ing the lives of two police offi­cers this men­ace to soci­ety had jus­tice met­ed out to him.
This ought to serve as a reminder to those who would choose a life of crime which involve rap­ing and tak­ing the lives of others.
But it won’t, that is the rea­son I sub­scribe to a strat­e­gy of method­i­cal­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly stalk­ing and find­ing these ter­ror­ists and remov­ing them from the equation.

There is no short­age of peo­ple who make all kinds of excus­es for these demons who decide to take life and kick against soci­etal norms, those excus­es range from we should be kind to them to pover­ty made them do it.
There are those who say the death penal­ty does not solve the prob­lems these mis­cre­ants cause.
The demise of this cold blood­ed killer who we learned was dressed for war hav­ing an assault rifle and two hand­guns, will not stop crime.
One thing is sure is that it will stop crime from him.

What I do know is that whether the death penal­ty or the brand of jus­tice met­ed out to this mur­der­ous mon­ster today, one thing is sure, he will nev­er kill any­one again.
This brand of jus­tice works for those who would take the lives of the innocent.
Every rope has an end.
This thing reached the end of his rope today.

As the brave offi­cers final­ly put down this crea­ture today there are those who are cer­tain to sec­ond guess their actions.
Others will lump his killing into nation­al police killing sta­tis­tics as they dem­a­gogue our police officers.

We will con­tin­ue to stand with all of you brave offi­cers who do whats right and noble in this noble pro­fes­sion you chose.
Thank you for your service.

My great friend, a for­mer effec­tive Jamaican police offi­cer inboxed me this morn­ing, in my inbox was a video of an inter­view giv­en by for­mer Senior Superintendent of police Renetto Adams to local tele­vi­sion sta­tion CVM.
My friend told me he want­ed me to watch the video and say some­thing about what mis­ter Adams had to say.
I told him I would watch the inter­view as soon as I had a chance and get back to him.

I must say that I do not know mis­ter Adams and must has­ten to say that mis­ter Adams came to promi­nence after I did my brief ten-year stint and exit­ed the JCF.
In the inter­est of clar­i­ty and full dis­clo­sure, I must reveal that I have on occa­sions crit­i­cized some of the things mis­ter Adams have said and in par­tic­u­lar, I have been par­tic­u­lar­ly harsh in my cri­tique of some of the method­olo­gies assigned to mis­ter Adams’ way of policing.
I con­tin­ue to stand behind those crit­i­cisms today.

Even as I have crit­i­cized for­mer SSP Adams on occa­sions, I was always mind­ful that much of mis­ter Adams’ ampli­fied tenure as a police offi­cer came in the 90’s after I had already left the depart­ment and the nation had become much more law­less and the pop­u­la­tion much more tol­er­ant of criminals.

Despite the fore­gone and to the extent that the video was avail­able, mis­ter Adams struck some impor­tant themes. Themes which I have been scream­ing about for years.

EX-PATRIATES

The JCF has a morale prob­lem, this is not new, every con­sta­ble join­ing the force is taught to strive to be the best and to shoot for the high­est office.
That office is the Chief Constable’s chair(commissioner of police).
The pay has always been lousy, so the specter of pro­mo­tion takes on greater sig­nif­i­cance to mem­bers look­ing to feed their families.
The promise to mem­bers that if they have good con­duct, pass their exams when sched­uled, are up to speed in their first aid and work hard they will be pro­mot­ed also makes it dou­bly dif­fi­cult when offi­cers check the box­es and are not promoted.
That affects morale, it makes it dou­bly worse when out­siders are brought in and pro­mot­ed over long-serv­ing mem­bers, not to men­tion expa­tri­ates who bring absolute­ly noth­ing to the table but are paid enor­mous sums of money.

Bringing in peo­ple from England as well as appoint­ing peo­ple from the mil­i­tary to head the force have done immea­sur­able harm to morale with­in the force as pol­i­tics has, which I will get to.
There is no way that a for­mer com­mis­sion­er of Police would be hired to head the Army which real­ly does not require much because of its size and scope.
Why then would a for­mer mil­i­tary head be qual­i­fied to head the JCF, not once but twice?

Worse yet what has Mark Shields, Les Green and oth­ers con­tributed to the JCF for the huge salaries they received, which I must has­ten to say was expo­nen­tial­ly more than Jamaicans who held the same rank?
When a com­par­a­tive analy­sis is done the harm their hir­ing did far out­weigh any con­ceiv­able ben­e­fits which may have accrued.
That includes the incred­i­ble urge black Jamaicans have to be val­i­dat­ed by white Europeans.

OUTSIDE INFLUENCES IN THE WAY WE ENFORCE OUR LAWS

I have long main­tained that part of the rea­son our coun­try is inun­dat­ed with crime is that as a nation Jamaica has teth­ered itself to for­eign treaties, char­ters, and con­ven­tions which have had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for our country.
Of course, Jamaica does not want to be a rogue nation but it is impor­tant that for our own sur­vival we adopt mea­sures only if they will not have debil­i­tat­ing con­se­quences for us.

We must ask our­selves why are inter­na­tion­al donors will­ing to give undis­closed sums of mon­ey to enti­ties like INDECOM, and the pha­lanx of groups now oper­at­ing on the Island fund­ed by for­eign dark mon­ey under the guise of human rights.
Could it be that they know that a coun­try over-run with crime will inex­orably be an impov­er­ished coun­try which will per­pet­u­al­ly be forced to come beg­ging and borrowing?

Why would they not give that mon­ey to law enforce­ment and the jus­tice depart­ment to improve our jus­tice sys­tem so that the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice would be more time­ly, effi­cient and just?
Could it be that a Jamaica of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple hav­ing those hall­marks of jus­tice would rapid­ly become a coun­try attain­ing sol­ven­cy and self-suf­fi­cien­cy there­by not reduced to beg­ging for aid and grov­el­ing for loans?

The United States, Britain, and Canada are all eco­nom­ic pow­er­hous­es, nei­ther of those coun­tries accepts out­side influ­ence in how they make or enforce their laws.
Most donors to groups on the Island which give tac­it sup­port to crim­i­nals are from the three named countries.
Jamaica should nei­ther accept nor allow either of those coun­tries to shape its policies.

POLITICS 

The age-old prob­lem of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence is one lit­er­al­ly every cop who ever stepped out on the beat can attest to.
Adams spoke to this can­cer, detail­ing how he was trans­ferred because he dared to ignore a gazetted offi­cer’s ille­gal request to drop a case he had which was already before the courts.

Those who have fol­lowed my rant­i­ngs over the years already under­stand my dis­dain for the senior corps of the JCF with the excep­tion of a few of its mem­bers past and present.
I always believed that cor­rup­tion starts at the top and fil­ters downstream.
The cor­rup­tion detect­ed in some junior mem­bers of the force are only vis­i­ble because they are more in con­tact with the gen­er­al public.

The real cor­rup­tion and col­lu­sion are at the top. Senior mem­bers of the Police force are always respon­si­ble for the oper­a­tional pros and cons of what hap­pens inside the force.
It is the cor­rup­tion which trick­les down from them which infect­ed the body of the force.
Nevertheless, they were nev­er shy to throw the rank and file of the depart­ment under the bus, cre­at­ing in the process ‚the impres­sion that the young men and women are the problem.
Corrupt, col­lud­ing, cow­ard­ly, and incom­pe­tent are the descrip­tive words I always believed best described the major­i­ty of the forces most senior officers.

The gen­er­al pub­lic does not see the envelopes deliv­ered to their offices for work done by their semi-starv­ing sub­or­di­nates who nev­er received a cent.
No one sees the envelopes they receive for the cas­es they pres­sure the young ener­getic offi­cers to drop at the per­il of their jobs and careers.

Yes, pret­ty much all of the offi­cers under­stand this all too well. This writer is no exception.
I was uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly and with­out warn­ing trans­ferred back to the Mobile Reserve from St Andrew North by a cer­tain mem­ber of par­lia­ment col­lud­ed with his lap­dog, a now-retired deputy Commissioner to have me trans­ferred out of the Division.
My sin, not allow­ing any Dons or area lead­ers to devel­op with­in my sphere of influence.
The Parliamentarian, now a dinosaur, is a min­is­ter of Government.

They thought they had pulled off a coup until the peo­ple real­ized what had occurred and all hell broke loose.
All traf­fic head­ing to Manor Park came to a standstill.
The peo­ple want­ed their police offi­cer that they could trust back, so com­ing from Herman Ricketts was back you go.
Police offi­cers can be tough as nails take no shit and still be revered, loved and admired.
When you are that type of offi­cer your ene­mies are politi­cians, cor­rupt senior offi­cers, street thugs and their supporters.

ON WANTING TO BE COMMISSIONER OF POLICE

Renetto Adams spoke elo­quent­ly on why he was not seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered to be Commissioner of police at the time he applied.
He allud­ed to the lev­el of con­trol out­side play­ers have on who gets appoint­ed the com­mis­sion­er of police on the Island.
There are pow­er­ful forces pulling the strings out­side the coun­try and this has noth­ing to do with real and jus­ti­fi­ably need­ed human rights guar­an­tees for every Jamaican.

All in all the points raised by for­mer SSP Adams were spot on.
In two arti­cles writ­ten for local news­pa­pers recent­ly, for­mer Assistant Commissioner of Police Keith Gardiner made sim­i­lar obser­va­tions and pre­sent­ed work­able solu­tions to restor­ing order to the Island.
That advice fell on deaf ears as much of what I have per­son­al­ly been say­ing have fall­en on deaf ears.
Nevertheless, I will per­son­al­ly con­tin­ue to doc­u­ment these events and make sug­ges­tions because it is impor­tant that we do so for the good of the chil­dren and even those unborn.

As I was writ­ing this a friend inboxed me from Jamaica, she loves Jamaica and has lit­er­al­ly made Jamaica her home, quote:

Tell me one rea­son why Jamaica has this killing culture…killing mentality.…???no Carribean island has this violence.…and all of them are the 3.World.….that means poor.…maybe the gov­ern­ment has to send all Jamaican’s back to they roots.…..to clean the island.…and devel­op with Refugees from Syria…Afghanistan…Africa…maybe it would be bet­ter if China takes it over one day.…..I love this island.…don’t get me wrong.…but I am look­ing for an alter­na­tive island.…Trinidad…St Martin…Barbados…Guadeloupe...

Me: Our coun­try has a cul­ture which encour­ages vio­lence, gives com­fort and suc­cor to mur­der­ers and a pop­u­la­tion which is high­ly tol­er­ant of crim­i­nals.

Her: I know.…this is very bad for the Tourism Industry...

Me: Jamaica has always been a coun­try which sup­ports crim­i­nals. The coun­try is sim­ply reap­ing the rewards of those actions.

Her : This is awful.…there is no Future for a bet­ter life.…I think peo­ple have crime gene…There is only a future for crime.….

Me: Things can be turned around but they require strong lead­er­ship, unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is no lead­er­ship of that kind in Jamaica. So yes the future is quite bleak.
Be safe, please…

Her: Yep I try my best.…but it is dif­fi­cult for a ****************..to have always bad mind of people.…there is no relax­ing part…no Joy…

“One zone will not have an impact on the nation­al crime rate; the impact is sup­posed to be on the zone and the imme­di­ate areas of the zone.” [Andrew Holness]
But does it make sense if you stop the killing in one area if killings are increased in anoth­er as a con­se­quence of the replace­ment of the killers?

The PM’s state­ments though off, offered a sense of relief to me when he uttered those words in response to ques­tions posed by the press a few days ago.
It offered me hope that despite the protes­ta­tions of the bots who tra­verse social media, mak­ing blan­ket polit­i­cal state­ments and giv­ing sup­port to things they do not under­stand, at least he under­stands the lim­i­ta­tions of his own policies.

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

So now that we got some sem­blance of the truth from the Prime Minister, I hope his sup­port­ers will be more informed and less bel­li­cose in their attacks on peo­ple who under­stand crime policy.
By his own admis­sion, the PM con­ced­ed that his pol­i­cy is essen­tial­ly, at best, a whack-a-mole game. Create a zone, and the killers pop up some­place else.

Whether this was a Freudian slip or a real moment of hon­esty, I do not know.
I know that I nev­er heard this com­ing from the Prime Minister through­out the Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSO) debate discussion.

Nevertheless, now that we have heard the truth from the high­est elect­ed office­hold­er, it’s impor­tant to parse the real­i­ties in an hon­est and real way.
So I would like to walk the par­ti­san polit­i­cal hacks who name-call and label me with ad hominem attacks through the holes in this process in a sim­ple and unso­phis­ti­cat­ed way.

FACT

Since the ZOSOs are a sta­t­ic phe­nom­e­non, mean­ing large amounts of police per­son­nel backed by sol­diers are con­fined to a cer­tain geo­graph­ic area, crim­i­nals slith­er away to oth­er parts of the Island.
Before the ZOSO bill became law, I said crim­i­nals would go elsewhere.
That’s exact­ly what they did.
Local news reports have borne out those truths, which actu­al­ly were not earth-shat­ter­ing pre­dic­tions but com­mon sense assessments.

Murders have actu­al­ly gone up since the ZOSO law was passed, and the Prime Minister declared the first zone.
It is yet unclear if there are any con­nec­tions between the ZOSO and the esca­la­tion in homicides.
In pre­vi­ous arti­cles, I explained why I believed crime would increase after the ZOSO bill became law.
Not the least of which is that crim­i­nals some­times wait to see what author­i­ties are com­ing up with before con­tin­u­ing on with their activ­i­ties. They then adjust their activ­i­ties accordingly.
As far as the ZOSO is con­cerned, it did not require much for the crim­i­nal under­ground to fig­ure out that this was a noth­ing burger.
So it’s back to busi­ness as usu­al and with some intensification.

For ZOSO to have any chance of suc­cess, there would have to be, in my esti­ma­tion, one hun­dred thou­sand police and sol­diers simul­ta­ne­ous­ly swoop­ing down on polit­i­cal gar­risons and hotspots across the Island in a coör­di­nat­ed and well-exe­cut­ed exercise.
They would need to have snif­fer dogs which would sniff out weapons as the search teams go from house to house in search of weapons.
Additionally, the police would also have to be extra vig­i­lant on their look­out for stray crim­i­nals seek­ing to evade the heat.
Those resources would have to be sta­tioned in those com­mu­ni­ties for a pro­tract­ed peri­od of time, allow­ing for what­ev­er dress­ing the Government wants to add to the hard work law enforce­ment has already done.
At the same time, there would have to be spe­cial resources ded­i­cat­ed to pre­vent­ing guns and ammu­ni­tion from enter­ing the Island through the porous ports of entry.

Since the coun­try has noth­ing close to those resources, the next best thing to do is to attack the prob­lem through a sys­tem­at­ic out­ward build.
This means a few things that may seem regres­sive but are absolute­ly cru­cial in build­ing out a pol­i­cy to arrest crime on the Island.

♦This means ask­ing for help from non-European coun­tries if needed.
Jamaica can­not use Scandinavian or oth­er European polic­ing mod­els to deal with crime.
Scandinavian coun­tries have large­ly mono­lith­ic cau­casian soci­eties, which enjoy some of the best stan­dards of liv­ing on the planet.
Crime is low because of two fac­tors (1) Those soci­eties are intol­er­ant of crime; they have soci­eties found­ed on the rule of law.(2) Those soci­eties are wealthy, so they nat­u­ral­ly have few­er vio­lent crimes.
Lobbyists and oth­ers on the tax-pay­ers dime who trav­el to these coun­tries and then return with their mod­els should be stopped.

♦ Those who lob­by on behalf of crim­i­nals under the guise of human rights should have no seat at the table, and their views ought not to inform or impact policy.

♦ Repeal the INDECOM act.

♦ Re-do the INDECOM act, and ensure that the law in no way, nei­ther by spir­it nor the let­ter gives the impres­sion to crim­i­nals that they have a friend in the law.

Ensure that the law has safe­guards and con­sid­er­a­tions of law enforce­men­t’s points of view.
Attach puni­tive com­po­nents, which makes it a crime for any mem­ber of INDECOM to asso­ciate, meet with, or oth­er­wise col­lude with groups that lob­by against any of the groups INDECOM is investigating.

♦ Abolish the Public defend­er’s office.

The min­istry of jus­tice and the Director of Public Prosecution should be the Public Defenders.
Use the resources mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed by that depart­ment to improve the jus­tice system.
Pass laws that place crim­i­nals in prison and keep them there.
Change the laws to make it manda­to­ry no bail for mur­der defendants.
Make it manda­to­ry life with­out parole for those con­vict­ed of com­mit­ting mur­ders with a firearm.
Make it twen­ty years to life for any­one pos­sess­ing an ille­gal gun.
Five years are manda­to­ry for the pos­ses­sion of ille­gal ammunition.

♦ Create account­abil­i­ty stan­dards in the Police and all oth­er Government agencies.
The mis­in­for­ma­tion plagues the Island that police are the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of cor­rup­tion comes from the elit­ist camps.
We know that the Ministers of Government, regard­less of par­ty, are usu­al­ly cor­rupt, and so too are mem­bers of parliament.
That’s why the Contractor General’s depart­ment came into being but with­out pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al powers.
All Government agen­cies are cor­rupt; begin the process of clean­ing up the cor­rup­tion from the top down.
Better train, equip, pay, super­vise, and sup­port the police.

♦ Build Prisons. Courthouses. Hire Prosecutors. Appoint Judges from the pros­e­cu­tor’s office. Both Political par­ties must eschew gar­risons, and gangs and take a uni­fied stance against crime.
Anything out­side this com­pre­hen­sive approach is not a crime strat­e­gy but an attempt at deceiv­ing the public.

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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.

Yet anoth­er Police offi­cer has been mur­dered in Jamaica this time in his home.
This lat­est attack was on 29-year-old con­sta­ble Nicaldo Green who was assigned to the Stadium police station.

According to the Police, con­sta­ble Green arrived at his home at about 10: 10 pm and opened the grill gate to his home when assailants opened fire on him.
Neighbors called the police who rushed their mor­tal­ly wound­ed col­league to the hos­pi­tal but it was too late.
His killers who had the audac­i­ty to attack him in his own home also took his ser­vice pistol.

This lat­est attack fol­lows close­ly on the heels of the attack on a cor­po­ral of police again at his home in Stewart Town Trewlany.
The Stewart Town attack occurred around 2: pm as the offi­cer arrived at his house he real­ized that some­one had bro­ken into his home.
He was pounced upon and dur­ing a strug­gle with his masked assailants he was shot in the leg and stabbed in his arm.

In nei­ther of these inci­dents have the Government issued a sin­gle state­ment of con­dem­na­tion to those responsible.
Needless to say, the blood suck­ing leech­es who pre­tend to care about human rights, [nev­er human lives] are also silent.
It comes as no sur­prise that they are silent when the pro­tec­tors of the soci­ety pay with their lives, it is exact­ly because of the mur­dered offi­cers that the fakes, frauds, and char­la­tans can con­tin­ue to dem­a­gogue law enforce­ment officers.

I admit­ted­ly do not know whether there are back sto­ries to the attacks on these two offi­cers who are the lat­est to be attacked.
Nevertheless, what I do know, is that in less than a week two mem­bers of the police force have been attacked in their own homes.
That is enough to cause me alarm and moti­vate me to speak out even if it does­n’t stir any­one else.

Jamaica is a vio­lent crim­i­nal tol­er­ant soci­ety. There is pre­cious lit­tle, to no regard, for the rule of law.
Subsequently, there is pre­cious lit­tle, to no regard, for those who enforce the nation’s laws and that is true of those who occu­py tax­pay­ers hous­ing at Vale Royal, to those in the grit­ty inner-city gar­risons for free.
The dis­dain shown to law enforce­ment begins in Jamaica house and it spreads outward.

It is impor­tant to note that even though there is cor­rup­tion with­in the police depart­ment, it has been the cor­rup­tion com­ing out of Jamaica house for decades which have cre­at­ed the sense of anti-law enforce­ment dis­re­spect which has been a sta­ple on the Island through­out that time.
And I dare­say which has inspired and char­ac­ter­ized Jamaica’s law­less­ness, begin­ning in the ear­ly 1970’s.

The larg­er Jamaican soci­ety is pre­dom­i­nant­ly une­d­u­cat­ed, the peo­ple form opin­ions on hearsay.
The bet­ter known the pur­vey­or of false sto­ries, the more cred­i­bil­i­ty they attach to the story.
In this envi­ron­ment, lying, thiev­ing politi­cians are glo­ri­fied like deities.
Breaking through life­times of brain­wash­ing to sup­plant it with truth and valid infor­ma­tion can be an uphill bat­tle, to next to being impossible.

This writer will con­tin­ue nev­er­the­less to impress upon the Jamaican peo­ple that the very free­doms they cher­ish are being tak­en away from them as a result of the ram­pant mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes sweep­ing the entire Island.
No one is advo­cat­ing a police state, no one is more averse to a police state than I am.

It is impor­tant to note how­ev­er that you can have com­pe­tent and high­ly respon­sive law enforce­ment but you have to want it and play your part each and every Jamaican.
You are not hav­ing free­dom if you are dead, there is no free­dom if you are afraid to leave your home, there is no free­dom if you are being killed in your own home.

I ask all of you to look at the silence of the agen­cies which say they are look­ing out for your human rights.
Ask your­selves why are the fol­low­ing agen­cies silent no mat­ter how many inno­cent Jamaicans are raped muti­lat­ed and mur­dered but are pre­dictably incensed and vocif­er­ous as soon as a crim­i­nal is killed by agents of the state?

People do not have to have degrees from renowned uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges to be able to think for themselves.
Each and every Jamaican have the abil­i­ty to think for him or herself.
Ask your­selves why is that their sup­posed focus is only on the rights of those who are killers rapists and thieves?
Then ask your­selves why is it that all of them are receiv­ing fund­ing from for­eign donors?

It is not too dif­fi­cult to put two and two togeth­er to arrive at four.
Ask why are for­eign donors fund­ing INDECOM, JFJ, FAST, IACHR and the oth­er leech­es who have set up shop in Jamaica?
Why are for­eign enti­ties fund­ing INDECOM?
Why is the Jamaican Government fund­ing a Government agency (The Office Of the Public Defender) to harass and mil­i­tate against the Police?
Then ask your­selves whether the nations who give these groups mon­ey allow any­one to tell them how to enforce their laws?

A 29-year-old police con­sta­ble was on Tuesday night shot dead by unknown assailants as he arrived home in Portmore, St Catherine.

The con­sta­ble who worked at the Stadium Police Station had just entered his house when he was attacked and shot.

His attack­ers then took his firearm and escaped in a red motor car.
More to come.

It is a universally agreed fact that crime thrives where it is allowed to.
As it is in well-run nations in which democracy is built on the rule of law, so too are totalitarian nations conversant that crime must be suppressed at all cost.

Unfortunately for our small Island Nation of Jamaica, that memo seems to have got­ten lost in the shuffle.
Crime affects nations in vary­ing ways out­side the obvi­ous dan­ger it pos­es to life, lib­er­ty, and property.
Crime impov­er­ish­es nations and destroys gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple yet unborn.
The [Borgen Project] argues that Beyond the pro­tect­ed walls of the all-inclu­sive hotels, crime, vio­lence, and pover­ty plague the pop­u­la­tions of Caribbean nations. While tourism may be grow­ing back to pre-reces­sion lev­els in pock­ets of resorts, most of the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to bat­tle with ris­ing rape, mur­der, and pover­ty levels.

In 2013 Professor Anthony Clayton of the University of the West Indies, in a report pre­pared for the Ministry of National Security, called A New Approach: National Security Policy for Jamaica said, for exam­ple, that the direct med­ical cost of injuries due to inter­per­son­al vio­lence account­ed for near­ly 12% of Jamaica’s total health expen­di­ture in 2006, while pro­duc­tiv­i­ty loss­es due to inter­per­son­al vio­lence-relat­ed injuries account­ed for approx­i­mate­ly 4% of Jamaica’s GDP. If the lat­ter is added to the esti­mate of secu­ri­ty costs, then the com­bined total is 7.1% of Jamaica’s GDP.”
It is impor­tant to con­sid­er that seri­ous crime has con­tin­ued to rise each year since that report and has been done, which means that each year crime con­tin­ues to take a larg­er chunk of the nation’s gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP) with no clear end in sight.
More data is avail­able that shows in real dol­lars and cents just how crime dri­ves Jamaicans deep­er and deep­er into pover­ty year over year. Not pover­ty dri­ving crime as some would have you believe, but crime dri­ving poverty.

WHY?

Over the last sev­er­al decades, ’ var­i­ous stud­ies have been done which have all seem to con­clude that crime and vio­lence in the Caribbean and Jamaica, in par­tic­u­lar, may be attrib­uted to poverty.
Of course, it is easy to set­tle on pover­ty if you want to be intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est or plain lazy.
There is no deny­ing that if a per­son is hun­gry and has no mon­ey, they go into sur­vival mode and are like­ly to steal to survive.
On the oth­er hand, if you look at the real dri­vers of crime, a‑la greed, gangs, drugs, depor­ta­tions cou­pled with the nations refusal to put a foot on the neck of crim­i­nals, you begin to get a clear­er pic­ture of why Jamaica has con­tin­ued to have a per­va­sive and grow­ing crime problem.

TRUTH…

There are for­eign pub­li­ca­tions that have naive­ly writ­ten at length about the Government’s attempt to arrest crime with­out an atten­dant deep­er under­stand­ing of the role politi­cians and pol­i­tics play in cre­at­ing and exac­er­bat­ing seri­ous crime pro­lif­er­a­tion on the Island.
Those of us who came out of the trench­es and had a deep­er under­stand­ing of how the Island inner cities and towns work, is quite con­fi­dent when we say, “no, pover­ty is absolute­ly not respon­si­ble for the mas­sive esca­la­tion of shoot­ings, sex­u­al assaults, and mur­ders sweep­ing the Island.”
Additionally, many nations with far low­er liv­ing stan­dards do not have Jamaica’s astro­nom­ic crime problem.

SAD PROGNOSIS

It has been said that Jamaicans have a vio­lent predisposition.
I am not in a posi­tion to lit­i­gate that. I believe that many peo­ple in any place who are allowed to be vio­lent to each oth­er, with at worse a slap on the wrist, may very well con­tin­ue to use vio­lence as a con­flict res­o­lu­tion mechanism.
Unfortunately, there is a regret­table mind­set in the coun­try among the most influ­en­tial that despite the seri­ous­ness of the crimes com­mit­ted, the offend­ers should be giv­en a slap on the wrist as pun­ish­ment for their actions.
That per­cep­tion sup­ports my posi­tion that seri­ous crimes in Jamaica and a lack of a seri­ous puni­tive com­po­nent, has pre­cious lit­tle to do with pover­ty and every­thing to do with rich and pow­er­ful peo­ple want­i­ng to stay out of prison for their own crimes.
This writer has con­sis­tent­ly artic­u­lat­ed a cohe­sive and cogent path for­ward to deal with this mon­ster plagu­ing the nation.
Among my sug­ges­tions are the need to pass tougher laws, bet­ter train, equip and pay police offi­cers, build more cour­t­hous­es and hire more judges from the pros­e­cu­tion’s side of the fence and hire more pros­e­cu­tors as well.

FRUSTRATED

Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Paula Llewelyn recent­ly voiced frus­tra­tion at the grow­ing case­load her office is forced to han­dle with a staff that is not grow­ing to meet the demands.
Llewelyn argues that her plea for more pros­e­cu­tors has basi­cal­ly fall­en on deaf ears.
Her office was told that the min­istry was await­ing com­plet­ing a gen­er­al orga­ni­za­tion­al review before her request for addi­tion­al staff could be grant­ed. However, to date, she has not been giv­en the cour­tesy of a response. (jamaicaob​serv​er​.com)
As cas­es con­tin­ue to pile up at the DPP’s office, some con­tin­ue to scape­goat the police for not doing enough to cur­tail crime.
So my ques­tion to those who make those scur­rilous and mali­cious state­ments is this, have you asked Government, past or present, why they have refused to build cour­t­hous­es, improve the bail act, bet­ter train and pay police offi­cers, among the things need­ed to be done?

The police arrest mur­der­ers at a mer­ry clip, but lib­er­al judges with their own agen­das are thwart­ing their efforts.
Judges con­tin­ue to use the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as a revolv­ing door, result­ing in more homi­cides as a consequence.
While crim­i­nals are being let loose on the soci­ety and cas­es can­not get to tri­al because of the short­ages frus­trat­ing, the chief pros­e­cu­tor, the Island’s min­is­ter of jus­tice, is lob­by­ing for mur­der cas­es over five years to be purged from the court dockets.
When you con­sid­er the for­gone, a bet­ter pic­ture focus­es on where they are tak­ing the country.
This is not about par­ty pol­i­tics; it is about facts and fig­ures; nei­ther par­ty has clean hands.
Neither par­ty has demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to point the coun­try in the right direc­tion so that the hard work of tak­ing back the coun­try can begin.
It must be under­stood that even though every­thing has been done at the moment, if the poli­cies being employed are not com­men­su­rate with an appro­pri­ate res­o­lu­tion of the crime issue, it is all for naught.
The poli­cies being employed can­not resolve the Island’s crip­pling crime prob­lem, so that you may form your own conclusions.

The strate­gies need­ed to begin the south­ward trend in seri­ous crime once under­tak­en will leave no doubt in the minds of those who would engage in and or offer sup­port and suc­cor to crim­i­nals that this is different.
Nothing past or present has occurred, which would con­vince them that the Government can put the brakes on their activities.
The right strate­gies will inex­orably and cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly be clear to all that Jamaica has final­ly decid­ed to do some­thing about this problem.
Thus far, we have seen noth­ing, sug­gest­ing that there is even a recog­ni­tion, much less a declared will to seri­ous­ly tack­le the problem.
On that basis, crime will con­tin­ue to increase, more inno­cent peo­ple will, unfor­tu­nate­ly, become vic­tims in the process.

To begin the process, the gov­ern­ment must stand up so that those who would com­mit crimes may stand down.
That will only be accom­plished when the pol­i­cy is actu­al­ly made in con­sul­ta­tion with real Jamaicans and not with for­eign-fund­ed enti­ties with their own agen­das anti­thet­i­cal to Jamaica’s interests.
The aver­age Jamaican who plays by the rules is being sac­ri­ficed for the good of those who have killed time and again.
The human rights of the guilty super­sedes that of his victim.
Unless we dis­pense with those who pros­ti­tute human rights as a means to make a name for them­selves, crime will con­tin­ue to escalate.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast, all free to you, of course.

A British police offi­cer is now being inves­ti­gat­ed after being cap­tured on video jok­ing about shoot­ing a Black man.

One of the three officers that social media swooned over is being investigated for racist Facebook posts

RACHEL LEAH

The Gainesville Police Department said they were inves­ti­gat­ing one of the three “hot cops” — the one with the lush beard — who became known and loved after a self­ie of them assist­ing in the after­math of Hurricane Irma went viral. The offi­cer in ques­tion alleged­ly post­ed anti-semit­ic posts to his Facebook, the Gainesville Sun reports.

A spokesman from the Gainesville Police Department pub­lished a state­ment on the department’s Facebook and said they were “review­ing the alle­ga­tion” and fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the com­plaint would remain con­fi­den­tial until the inves­ti­ga­tion closed. “The Gainesville Police Department prides itself with our phi­los­o­phy and mis­sion of com­pas­sion, inclu­sion, and respect and will ful­ly review the mat­ter,” the state­ment said.
See sto­ry here: http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​9​/​1​5​/​h​o​t​-​c​o​p​s​-​h​u​r​r​i​c​a​n​e​-​i​r​m​a​-​s​e​l​f​i​e​-​r​a​c​i​st/

The long litany of anti-police groups death­ly silent on homi­cides of ordi­nary jamaicans/​JFJ/​FAST/​PMI/​IACHR /​etal, hyp­ocrites, and frauds.

This medi­um gives much respect to the always capa­ble Mobile Reserve Police and the Lotto Scam task force which seized five ille­gal firearms includ­ing assault rifles from an address on Ducketts Road in Cambridge Saint James yesterday.
This haul along with the almost week­ly caches seized at the Island’s ports are a stark reminder of just how the small Island is being inun­dat­ed with guns.

If Jamaica is ever to get its arms around vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted with guns the first order of busi­ness is to stop the guns com­ing in illegally.
Additionally sim­ply recov­er­ing the weapons must not be the goal of law enforcement.
There must be an inves­tiga­tive com­po­nent which tracks the con­tra­band to its des­ti­na­tion with a view to arrest­ing the top peo­ple behind this mas­sive impor­ta­tion of guns and ammu­ni­tion into the country.

The youths on the cor­ner down on Delacree Road and Fitzgerald lane in Kingston 13 do not have the resources to bring in ship­ments of guns.
Those guns are being import­ed by peo­ple in Kingston 5 and Kingston 8.
No one is above the law go after these ter­mite ene­mies of the state and expose them with open perp walks for all to see.

According to local report­ing, the items seized are an M16 assault rifle; two 12-gauge shot­guns; two 9mm pis­tols; 215 rounds of ammu­ni­tion; 76 lead sheets; six cel­lu­lar phones; three ski masks; a lap­top; and a note­book con­tain­ing iden­ti­ty infor­ma­tion of peo­ple resid­ing overseas.

This writer has always main­tained that actu­al polic­ing will only be suc­cess­ful when offi­cers are allowed to do their jobs.
That entails build­ing rela­tion­ships and cul­ti­vat­ing sources, it is as old a strat­e­gy as the press, cul­ti­vat­ing sources and receiv­ing good information.
So too is the cul­ti­va­tion of sources and infor­mants crit­i­cal to obtain­ing action­able intel­li­gence in crime fighting.
We need to get back to peo­ple trust­ing their offi­cers, like the man who pulled me aside in busy Cros Roads and told me where to find an M16 assault rifle in a ceil­ing in a house in Greenwich Farm.
As he said it was there it was when we went there.

Police offi­cers do not hap­pen upon five guns and an assort­ment of ammu­ni­tion and oth­er con­tra­band with­out good intel­li­gence sup­plied by good citizens.
That action­able intel­li­gence will only come when cit­i­zens trust offi­cers not just to act on the intel­li­gence sup­plied but in pro­tect­ing with their own lives, their right not to be out­ed as the source of the infor­ma­tion given.

Murder and oth­er seri­ous crimes will not begin to trend down because of some pol­i­cy dredged up in Jamaica House with full input from a bunch of mal-intent politi­cians and their anti-police friends with no input from police.
It will be solved with politi­cians step­ping the fuck back and allow­ing the JCF pro­fes­sion­als to do their jobs.

Politicians set pol­i­cy, they do not exe­cute law enforce­ment strategies.
What is even more stun­ning is that in Jamaica crime strate­gies are being for­mu­lat­ed, imple­ment­ed and exe­cut­ed with full def­er­ence to groups who are inex­orably opposed to police officers.

The police can do the job they are asked to do, what they need is for the crim­i­nals who are dou­ble dip­ping as politi­cians to step aside and end their dem­a­goguery of the depart­ment and for the mealy-mouthed know-noth­ings to shut their trap and allow the offi­cers to do their jobs.

I am tired of hear­ing politi­cians talk about human rights on every occa­sion the ques­tion of law and order comes up.
As if police offi­cers exe­cut­ing their man­date to go after crim­i­nals is equiv­a­lent to abuse of cit­i­zens rights.
Based on the mur­der sta­tis­tics alone the aver­age Jamaican will have no need to talk about human rights they will have no damn life to be respect­ed if cur­rent trends hold.

The coun­try is los­ing approx­i­mate­ly 1400 peo­ple to vio­lence each year yet the long line of anti-police groups arrayed in sup­port of crim­i­nals are death­ly silent.
The fun­da­men­tal right that each and every Jamaican who obeys the laws have to life and lib­er­ty are of no con­cern to them.
Whats impor­tant is the rights of mur­der­ers, child rapists, and oth­er degenerates.

In order for us to solve this prob­lem, peo­ple must give up the killers in their midst.
The Government and Opposition must give full sup­port to the rule of law and the offi­cers who sac­ri­fice for the safe­ty of others.
And most impor­tant­ly remove from among their ranks mem­bers of par­lia­ments who are still active­ly engaged in crim­i­nal conduct.

In order to under­stand the lev­el of law­less­ness and the astro­nom­i­cal mur­der sta­tis­tics grip­ping the Island of Jamaica, it’s impor­tant that you under­stand the crit­i­cal role vary­ing Government Agencies have been play­ing in enhanc­ing this trag­ic process.

Let’s exam­ine the mur­der of fash­ion design­er Dexter Pottinger.
Please fol­low me on this sequence of events which led to the death of Pottinger.

According to pub­lished reports, the accused killer of Pottinger is Tatoo and make­up artist Romario Brown of Rocky Valley, Stony Hill in St Andrew.

On July 31, Brown was grant­ed bail in the Home Circuit Court on a charge of mur­der, after he was arrest­ed fol­low­ing the death of Alexia Bepatt on April 8, 2016.

Less than a month lat­er on August 29 after he was grant­ed bail for the mur­der Brown was once again arrest­ed for being in pos­ses­sion of a dan­ger­ous weapon.
Brown was this time grant­ed sta­tion bail in the sum of J10,000. He was sched­uled to appear in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court on September 19 for that offense.

The Police argue they were not aware that he was out on bail for that mur­der when he was grant­ed bail for pos­ses­sion of an offen­sive weapon.
The Police need not be defen­sive about grant­i­ng him sta­tion bail for the offen­sive weapon.
The Police have that right and respon­si­bil­i­ty to grant bail for offens­es of that nature.

The police, in this case, are also vic­tims of not hav­ing com­put­er sys­tems with data which would tell them that the arrestee is a mur­der accused out on bail.
They too are vic­tims because the lib­er­al activists who sit as judges con­tin­ue to turn the mur­der­ers loose as soon as they arrest them.

In all of this, there are crickets.
The silence is deaf­en­ing, no one is talk­ing about the fact that the jus­tice sys­tem which has been fail­ing Jamaicans for decades failed Dexter Pottinger and it cost him his life.
Sure Pottinger may have post­ed bail for Brown but if a judge did not take it onto him­self to set free a man who already killed a woman Pottinger would be alive today.

For years I have waged a per­son­al cru­sade on these very pages against these very dan­ger­ous practices.
In some cas­es, men who kill have been grant­ed bail up to five sep­a­rate times, before fac­ing the courts on the first charge of murder.

In what real­i­ty is that accept­able, that a mur­der accused would be grant­ed bail kills again is arrest­ed imme­di­ate­ly grant­ed bail, goes out and kill is arrest­ed grant­ed bail, goes out and kill is grant­ed bail, goes out and kill grant­ed bail. Then tired of not being held account­able he sim­ply hops on a flight and leaves the country.

In June of 2016, National Security Minister Robert Montague spoke to this. Said the Minister .…

“There is an instance where one man was arrest­ed for mur­der, offered bail, came out, mur­dered again, this time two times, appre­hend­ed, offered bail, came out, mur­dered again, appre­hend­ed, offered bail, took the bail, came out, mur­dered again, was appre­hend­ed, offered bail. His moth­er was active­ly seek­ing bail and the com­mu­ni­ty said ‘don’t bail him’. She insist­ed and she was killed, and the offer of bail is still on the table”.

In oth­er words, the activist judges are stead­fast­ly going to inter­pret the bail act in the nar­row way they want to advance their own agendas.
They con­tin­ue to make the argu­ments that the issue of bail ought not to be punishment.
Great point if you are deal­ing with white col­lar crimes or a man who stole some ack­ee from Mister Brown’s tree.

The Bail Act specif­i­cal­ly says that bail can be denied based on the seri­ous­ness of the crime alleged.
Bail may also be denied if the accused may abscond (mean­ing the per­son takes flight and does not show up for trial.
That deter­mi­na­tion is arrived at based on what occurred after the accused com­mit­ted the offense.
In many cas­es, judges have cast aside this par­tic­u­lar spec­i­fi­ca­tion and have ordered accused per­sons to sur­ren­der trav­el doc­u­ments to police.

The prob­lem in Jamaica is there is no nation­al data base which prop­er­ly iden­ti­fies each person.
As a con­se­quence, after com­mit­ting mur­ders and sum­mar­i­ly grant­ed bail they sim­ply pull out a dif­fer­ent pass­port, boards a flight and is gone.

But the most fun­da­men­tal point the bail act makes for not grant­i­ng bail to accused mur­der­ers is that the accused may interfere/​kill poten­tial wit­ness­es against him.
Nowhere in the world is this more crit­i­cal than Jamaica. And it’s all made pos­si­ble because the judges take it onto them­selves to decide that no mat­ter how heinous the mur­der the accused com­mits they are going to grant bail.

The next time you are about to crit­i­cize the police for not doing enough about crime take a look at these sta­tis­tics and rec­og­nize where the prob­lem lies.
Just ask Dexter Pottinger how he feels about the Judge who grant­ed bail to his killer after he was charged with murder.
In fact, ask the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of oth­er Jamaicans who have suf­fered Pottinger’s fate because some judge decides to be an over­lord rather than obey the law.

We need ade­quate changes to the bail act as a mat­ter of urgency. We need truth in sen­tenc­ing now as well.