As it should , there are divergent views about how best to tackle crime in Jamaica . Like everyone tuned in to this subject , I too have a point of view on how we can return stability and common sense to our country.
Nevertheless I also understand that my point of view is only one view-point, as such I am always open to different ideas on how best this monster may be tamed.

In the inter­est of trans­paren­cy I must declare right away that I do not have a par­tic­u­lar­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed or high­fa­lutin plan of action .
I pre­fer to leave that to the pre­ten­tious, arti­fi­cial peo­ple who got us into the shit in the first place.

Yes I said pre­ten­tious , we got to this point because there are too many fake ass pre­ten­tious peo­ple on that lit­tle Island, nev­er mind those liv­ing abroad.
Remember when our courts met­ed out lash­es to con­vict­ed Prisoners across their backsides?
Remember when “Wanda” the hang­man at the Spanish Town District Prison had reg­u­lar dates with those who decide to take the lives of others?
Remember when police offi­cers were not afraid or sis­si­fied, remem­ber when cops went after crim­i­nals and brought them to jus­tice or brought jus­tice to them(their choice)?

What were the mur­der fig­ures then?
I“ll tell you we were hav­ing less than 300 homi­cides then and most were polit­i­cal killings , fos­tered and made pos­si­ble by the dirt-bag politicians.
We had some­thing which worked but it was­n’t good enough because we had some fake ass black peo­ple who were allowed into Universities and all of a sud­den killing mass killers was some­how taboo…

So the courts will not order them lashed for rape and oth­er seri­ous crimes and put them in prison where they belong . The courts are restrained from send­ing them to a date with the hang­man at the Spanish Town District Prison .
The Police are expect­ed to run from them when they shoot at them, or risk the wrath of INDECOM a fake Institution set up by the same fake and pre­ten­tious social climbers.

What did they think was going to hap­pen when they enable crim­i­nals with their agenda?
So now the shit is all over the fan .….
Or we can pre­tend that it isn’t , you know many of the fake ass pre­tenders will even argue with you , insist­ing that crime is everywhere.

They will tell you also that crime is about pover­ty, . Yah please explain how pover­ty caus­es four homi­cides per day when the evi­dence points to peo­ple with mas­sive man­sions and mas­sive bank accounts.
The pre­ten­tious fakes like to hear them­selves talk , I guess it makes them feel good , over-ana­lyz­ing an issue which does not need much analyzing.
Take a quick look around at the coun­tries Jamaicans like to chat about .

Singapore . Death penal­ty flog­ging for some crimes and a no-non­sense approach to crime over​all​.By the way the most pros­per­ous nation in Southeast Asia.
Cuba. extreme pover­ty , low crime rate, so there goes the pover­ty-crime nexus .
China , much Chines in our coun­try from main­land China, low crime rates when com­pared to their large pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 bil­lion people.
Low tol­er­ance for crimes , Death penal­ty for crimes includ­ing ‚but not con­fined to just murders.
The United States, large coun­try com­prised of 50 sep­a­rate states world’s old­est democ­ra­cy. World’s sec­ond largest democ­ra­cy. Many of the States retain the death penal­ty which they car­ry out in a vari­ety of ways.
Those that does­n’t retain the death penal­ty mete out long prison terms to mur­ders and oth­er offend­ers , usu­al­ly life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
No pre­tense there !!!

We could go on but you get my point.
Crime reduc­tion is not nuclear sci­ence ‚it does not require knowl­edge about heavy water Reactors and fos­sil mate­r­i­al or how to put a long series of com­pli­cat­ed for­mu­las to work in cre­at­ing the end product.
Solving homi­cides does require sci­ence and smart peo­ple . Solving com­pli­cat­ed Internet , fraud, and oth­er trans-nation­al crimes does require smart approach­es and it does require smart people.

That is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent thing from doing the sim­ple things the Chinese, the Americans, the Cubans and oth­ers do .
They do not pre­tend . They go after crim­i­nals wher­ev­er they are , they find them they bring them to jus­tice and when they are con­vict­ed they lock them up throw away the key or worse.

Fake accents, fake moral­i­ty, fak­ing every­thing includ­ing pre­tend­ing to be what we aren’t , fake being a devel­oped first world country.
Criminals are not fools, the so-called lead­ers and the social climbers are.
The peo­ple behind crime are sim­ply exploit­ing the com­plic­it sit­u­a­tion which exist.
They are well with­in their rights to do what they do if the sys­tem lets them.

Before this shit can stop the pre­ten­tious lit­tle clowns have to be made to sit down and shut up.
No I am not advo­cat­ing for Renetto Adams’ type of madness.
I am say­ing remove the shack­les from the police.
Add good no non­sense judges to the courts who will send these scum­bag mur­der­ers away for good.
Clean out dirty cops from the Police department.
Stop cre­at­ing mul­ti­ple police agen­cies, they are not need­ed it’s a tiny damn Island.
Pay and moti­vate the police.
Stop mak­ing the JCF a park­ing garage for left wing loons from the UWI who can­not find employ­ment else­where, they are not cops.

These punks are killing , rap­ing and doing the things they do because they are allowed to get away with it.
It does­n’t require too much crit­i­cal think­ing, no over ana­lyz­ing, no pretense.
Just do it.…..

Sacramento police offi­cer seen on video hurl­ing man to the ground and repeat­ed­ly punch­ing him in the face, and is now on unpaid admin­is­tra­tive leave.

A California police offi­cer seen on video hurl­ing a jay­walk­er to the ground and repeat­ed­ly punch­ing him in the face will be the sub­ject of a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, author­i­ties have said.
The “dis­turb­ing” and unrea­son­able actions of the offi­cer, a two-year vet­er­an of the depart­ment, were not with­in pol­i­cy, Sacramento police said in a statement.

The offi­cer was already on unpaid admin­is­tra­tive leave as a result of the inci­dent and will now be sub­ject to a crim­i­nal investigation.
The depart­ment also released a sec­ond video of the inci­dent, shot from the officer’s dash cam­era at a much greater dis­tance than the video shot by a bystander that cir­cu­lat­ed ear­li­er Tuesday. The lat­est video has sound.

In the exchange on a res­i­den­tial street, the man says the offi­cer stopped him “for noth­ing”, then says “if you were a real man, you would take your gun away and fight me like a real man”.
The offi­cer then lunges at the man and tack­les him, punch­ing him repeat­ed­ly. Another offi­cer joins the strug­gle soon after.
The man was hand­cuffed for resist­ing arrest and for an out­stand­ing mis­de­meanor war­rant in Fresno County. Police say he con­tin­ued to resist by kick­ing the inside of the patrol car and had to be restrained with a leg hobble.

But after a review, police found no charges were called for and the man was set free. The names of the man and the offi­cer have not been released. Sacramento’s may­or, Darrell Steinberg, also crit­i­cized the offi­cer. “I find the actions of this offi­cer extreme­ly dis­turb­ing and they are not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the train­ing nor the expec­ta­tions we have for our police depart­ment,” Steinberg said.

The inci­dent began after the offi­cer told the man from his police cruis­er to stop after he was seen jay­walk­ing, but the pedes­tri­an ignored the offi­cer, the police depart­ment said.
The offi­cer then got out of the car and tried to detain the man, but he walked away, the state­ment said, adding that the two argued and the man took off his jack­et and chal­lenged the offi­cer to fight. https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​7​/​a​p​r​/​1​3​/​c​a​l​i​f​o​r​n​i​a​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​b​e​a​t​i​n​g​-​j​a​y​w​a​l​k​e​r​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​ion

We thought we would update you on this case, one of many cases of police involved shootings last year which elicited national outcry and demands for policing reform across the United States.
Courtesy of our friends at the nydai​lynews​.com

A Miami police offi­cer accused of shoot­ing an unarmed black ther­a­pist who had his hands above his head last sum­mer will face crim­i­nal charges.

North Miami Police Officer Jonathan Aledda has been charged with attempt­ed manslaugh­ter and cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence Wednesday in the shoot­ing of 47-year-old Charles Kinsey, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office said in a state­ment.

Kinsey filed a fed­er­al law­suit against Aledda after the July 18 shoot­ing, claim­ing the trained SWAT offi­cer used exces­sive force and had car­ried out a false arrest. Cellphone video showed the South Florida ther­a­pist try­ing to calm his autis­tic patient, Arnold Rios, who had wan­dered away from a group home and was car­ry­ing a toy truck.

Police offi­cers, includ­ing Aledda, arrived at the scene after a 911 caller report­ed some­one sui­ci­dal who was pos­si­bly armed. “I’m going to the ground, just like this with my hands up. And I’m lay­ing down here just like this. And I’m telling him again, ‘Sir, there’s no need for firearms. I’m unarmed, this is an autis­tic guy. He has a toy truck in his hand,’” Kinsey told WSVN at the time.

Aledda was 150 feet away when he fired three times, strik­ing Kinsey in the leg. Rios was not injured. The officer’s police union said Aledda was try­ing to shoot Rios because he thought he posed a threat to Kinsey.
Aledda was placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, but angry pro­test­ers were call­ing for his firing.

I understand the need to have someone competent to sit in the big chair , keep the seat warm until someone suitable can be found to fill it on a longer term basis.
Where I’m stuck is , if I’m good enough to occupy the chair for 90 days or for whatever period , why can’t I be the person getting the job for the longer period?

Over the life of the JCF the Agency has had two qual­i­fied female (DCP’s) Deputy Commissioners of Police sit in the big chair, while the pow­ers vest­ed with the Authority to source a Commissioner sup­pos­ed­ly con­duct­ed their search .
To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion Jevene Bent was asked to act in the capac­i­ty of Commissioner twice while a search was con­duct­ed , on both accounts she was overlooked .

Recently Novelette Grant was asked to act in the capac­i­ty of Commissioner of Police for 90 days while a search was con­duct­ed for a replace­ment for Carl Williams whom was report­ed to have opt­ed for ear­ly retirement.
That search con­clud­ed and even though Novelette Grant is immi­nent­ly qual­i­fied she too was overlooked .
This is not new how­ev­er as men have been asked to act and have been over­looked as well.
The last being DCP Glenmore Hines. One start to get the feel­ing they know the com­pe­tence of the per­son asked to act, but those Temporary com­mis­sion­ers just don’t quite fit the pushover bill.
You know what I mean, they haven’t passed the lap­dog test.

Whether Williams was pushed ‚or the stag­ger­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics forced him to face facts we may nev­er know.
What we do know is that Williams is no fool , he was a career police­man who came up through the ranks and earned a PhD in the process.
Clearly from the van­tage point of Commissioner he must have had a come to Jesus rev­e­la­tion that no mat­ter how edu­cat­ed and savvy a Commissioner is he will only dam­age his record serv­ing in that capac­i­ty in Jamaica, a place built to fos­ter and pro­mote crime and dysfunction.

In most Military and para mil­i­tary insti­tu­tions peo­ple take ear­ly retire­ment when they have been passed over for a pro­mo­tion after being asked to act.
They also retire if they have lost a key com­mand. It hard­ly make sense to con­tin­ue when you have clear­ly reached the zenith of your career.
Both Jevene Bent and Novelette Grant have giv­en long and ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice to their coun­try and I wish them both well.

I must say that I often look at the JCF today and smile a lit­tle smile to myself . It is exact­ly what I thought it would be when I took the deci­sion to just walk away after a mere ten years service.
I had passed every test they had and was pro­mot­ed cor­po­ral. I had being on CIB course. I had been one of the few offi­cers who qual­i­fied for accel­er­at­ed pro­mo­tions but was passed over because I was nobody’s lap dog.
I knew that my sharp tongue and hard-nosed desire for excel­lence would not sit well in the JCF .
I took an ear­ly exit.
That deci­sion was one of the best deci­sions of my life.

Quallo

I don’t know the new­ly appoint­ed Commissioner of Police George Quallo beyond the fact that he joined the force in 1976 and he is now on his 41^st year of ser­vice to the JCF.
One of the lit­tle things which just seemed to be quite obvi­ous but no one is talk­ing about with this pick is that there is no PhD beside his name.
I men­tion this with­in the con­text of the pop­u­lar per­cep­tions which has fes­tered over the decades that there needs to be a cer­tain type of Police offi­cer lead­ing the force.
So they twice tin­kered with the top job by bring­ing in two Former Military peo­ple to head the Agency. Those for­ays were colos­sal failures.
Then they switched and brought in a PhD , noth­ing wrong with that either, at least he was a cop.

Now it seem they have decid­ed to go back to a cop.
A cop’s cop.
Someone who knows the grit and grind of the Island’s polic­ing needs.
Whether George Quallo is that per­son is yet to be seen.
I have long main­tained that being top cop or even a good cop does not require a PhD. It requires a cop not a lawyer, not a Business major , it requires a cop.

That a can­di­date for Commissioner of Police, or police offi­cer of any oth­er posi­tion has a PhD or oth­er Degree is icing on the cake ‚not the cake itself.
Being a good cop requires a whole lot more.
Don’t for one minute buy into the sil­ly notion that it doesn’t .
Former NYPD Commissioner Bratton is the mold of what a cops cop ought to be .
A Masters Degree in Business Management is great for busi­ness man­age­ment. A PhD in strate­gic plan­ning is great and all, but how does that trans­late into polic­ing Jamaica’s unique crime situation?
Former Commissioner of Police Carl Williams by all account was a good and decent man. Supremely edu­cat­ed yet he bowed out or was forced out early.
Clearly he must have rec­og­nized that the task he was giv­en was an impos­si­ble one. He must have seen that with one hand they claimed they want­ed him to curb crime but on the oth­er they were erect­ing bar­ri­cades to his abil­i­ty to do his job. He won’t even come out and say so but we know the score.

What is evi­dent is that the spi­ral­ing homi­cide rate has now pan­icked those who are tasked with select­ing a com­mis­sion­er of police to actu­al­ly take a seri­ous look at a cops cop ‚and tap him for the top job.
What is not clear is whether Quallo has the grav­i­tas and the abil­i­ty to moti­vate the good offi­cers under his command .
Root out dirty cops who con­tin­ue to besmirch the name of the Agency.
And defend the good offi­cers who go out day in day out and place their lives on the line for an ungrate­ful, crim­i­nal­ly-com­plic­it and cor­rupt people.

Crime in Jamaica is not unman­age­able or out­side the capa­bil­i­ties of the JCF.
The issue keep­ing crime at the lev­els they are is Government inter­fer­ence in law enforcement.
The idea of checks and bal­ances is cocka­mamie in Jamaica .“Sure there are checks against the police doing an effec­tive job that’s why they gave the coun­try INDECOM.

If Andrew Holness breaks the law will the Police go up to Jamaica House and bring him out in handcuffs?
If Peter Phillips breaks the laws will the police go to his house and arrest him?
The answer is a resound­ing no !!!
Is there any mys­tery to why the aver­age per­son on the streets break the nation’s laws with impunity?
If those with pow­er can­not be arrest­ed what is to keep them from abus­ing the laws?

Now do you see why we have this spi­ral­ing crime rate?
If you have every served in law enforce­ment in Jamaica you know that the nation’s crime rate can­not be altered with­out stiffer laws , less or zero polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, and Government get­ting out of the way.
Jamaica needs an atti­tu­di­nal change , a change in men­tal­i­ty which says you can­not sim­ply take some­thing which does not belong to you because you are poor.
Over the years that men­tal­i­ty has exac­er­bat­ed the crime prob­lem expo­nen­tial­ly .Poverty has become the excuse for all things criminal.
There is a gen­er­al belief that a per­son with mon­ey and prop­er­ty is an ene­my to be exploit­ed and killed .
Anyone can sim­ply build struc­tures on prop­er­ty they do not own and they are excused because they are poor. They then steal elec­tric­i­ty, water and what­ev­er else they chose. With that mind­set where is the desire to achieve through excellence?
This has hap­pened across Administrations of both polit­i­cal parties.

Governments have aid­ed and abet­ted in this mea­sure . It helps to absolve them, enables them to renege on their promis­es of ser­vice and their core respon­si­bil­i­ty to per­form up to standard.
As a con­se­quence we end­ed up with a gen­er­a­tion which believes hard work is too hard . A gen­er­a­tion who believes get­ting their hands dirty is beneath them.
A Generation which has no prob­lem how­ev­er get­ting bloody hands to eat. Just no earth under their fingernails.

How can they not be that way when we have a Government which apol­o­gizes to crim­i­nals for flout­ing the laws. Compensates them for burn­ing police sta­tions and killing sol­diers and police officers?
A gov­ern­ment which wants to pay off Rastafarians for killing police offi­cers in 1962 in St James.
Rastafarians who by the way were liv­ing on cap­tured lands.

This has been the foun­da­tion laid by the Island’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship of both polit­i­cal parties.
Two polit­i­cal par­ties which in my esti­ma­tion ought to be dis­band­ed and the lead­ers thrown in jail for incom­pe­tence , cor­rup­tion and gross dere­lic­tion of duty.
It is to this quag­mire that George Quallo comes to fail.
They do not want a crime free coun­try , every police offi­cer I have spo­ken to over the years knows it .
In order to have change in Jamaica there must be a rev­o­lu­tion­ary depar­ture from the sta­tus quo.
We are sim­ply not there.

Technology glitches are putting people in jail and driving law enforcement crazy.

The law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty in Massachussetts had a deal. In 2012 the state entered into a con­tract with the lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­er of elec­tron­ic ankle mon­i­tors, the small GPS devices strapped over the socks of parolees and peo­ple await­ing tri­al to make sure they didn’t skip town or oth­er­wise show up in places they weren’t sup­posed to.

There were prob­lems from the begin­ning, accord­ing to cor­rec­tions offi­cials, offend­ers, and attor­neys. For exam­ple, the bat­tery on the bracelets was prone to dying sud­den­ly and with­out warn­ing. The inter­nal anten­na didn’t always per­form well under­neath cer­tain cloth­ing or in cer­tain build­ings. The devices some­times relayed inac­cu­rate nav­i­ga­tion­al coor­di­nates, leav­ing offend­ers in tech­ni­cal vio­la­tion of the con­di­tions of their release. Some offend­ers found them­selves hav­ing to walk out­side in the mid­dle of the night or stand in the mid­dle of a street to estab­lish a satel­lite con­nec­tion and prove to author­i­ties that they were where they were sup­posed to be. A July 2015 arti­cle in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly recount­ed a crim­i­nal defense attorney’s tale of his client’s device show­ing that he had walked across a lake.

What’s unusu­al about this chap­ter in Massachussetts law enforce­ment his­to­ry is not the heavy reliance on ankle mon­i­tors, which are in wide use around the world, or even that there were some glitch­es in the tech­nol­o­gy. What’s espe­cial­ly notable is that the devices them­selves were made by 3M Co. Yes, that 3M. The Post-it Notes and Scotch tape com­pa­ny, a Fortune 100 main­stay with a mar­ket val­ue of $115 bil­lion, is also one of the world’s largest mak­ers of GPS ankle mon­i­tors, a field it entered in 2010.

Corrections agen­cies around the world are des­per­ate for cost-effec­tive alter­na­tives to over­crowd­ed pris­ons, which is why 125,000 peo­ple are being mon­i­tored with ankle devices in the U.S. alone. Peru is con­sid­er­ing putting ankle bracelets on more than 20,000 inmates. In Norway, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security is exam­in­ing the use of ankle mon­i­tors for asy­lum seek­ers. Germany recent­ly passed leg­is­la­tion allow­ing them to be used to track Gefährder, or poten­tial terrorists.

A Brief History of Offender Tracking

3M’s oper­a­tions and sales in 200 coun­tries have allowed it to draw on deep net­works to win gov­ern­ment con­tracts and move quick­ly into the top ranks of the $6 bil­lion offend­er-mon­i­tor­ing busi­ness, as it’s called. But there’s evi­dence that the company’s reach has at times exceed­ed its tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ties, with some­times dis­as­trous results. Parolees and peo­ple await­ing tri­al have been sent to jail because of false vio­la­tion alerts gen­er­at­ed by 3M mon­i­tors; equal­ly trou­bling, author­i­ties are some­times so over­whelmed by alerts that they can’t tell who’s in vio­la­tion and who isn’t. You don’t have to be a cod­dler of crim­i­nals to under­stand that this is a problem.

3M says it’s final­ly got­ten a han­dle on it, but the strug­gle to mas­ter this busi­ness has left the com­pa­ny bruised. The com­pa­ny says it can’t com­ment on spe­cif­ic cas­es in which wear­ers claim their bracelets false­ly placed them in vio­la­tion. In a writ­ten state­ment, it adds, “while many offend­ers vio­lat­ing the terms of their pro­ba­tion claim inno­cence, their guilt, along with the effec­tive­ness of the sys­tem, has been proven in var­i­ous vio­la­tion of parole hear­ings almost every day.”

“We have a great busi­ness and a won­der­ful tech­nol­o­gy,” says Raymond Eby, pub­lic secu­ri­ty busi­ness direc­tor at 3M’s Traffic Safety & Security Division, which over­sees the elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing divi­sion. “But it’s com­pli­cat­ed — it’s prob­a­bly the most com­pli­cat­ed thing that 3M does, to be hon­est with you.”

And also the thing with the high­est human stakes. It’s one thing to turn out sim­ple but inge­nious solu­tions for con­sumers and busi­ness­es. People love you for that. It’s quite anoth­er to be at the cen­ter of mat­ters of pub­lic safe­ty and civ­il lib­er­ties. When peo­ple go to jail with your prod­uct bound to their bod­ies, you attract an entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind of atten­tion. Read more here : https://​www​.bloomberg​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​2​017 – 04-06/what-s-the-mak­er-of-post-it-notes-doing-in-the-ankle-mon­i­tor-busi­ness-strug­gling

According to Élan Powell Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of Crime the police are wait­ing on noto­ri­ous gang­ster Tesha Miller to secure legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion before they ques­tion him.

The same report­ing detailed that Miller was locked up for over a month by Bahamian author­i­ties before he was deport­ed from that country.
Additionally he was deport­ed from the United States a year ear­li­er where he was jailed for a report­ed two years for ille­gal entry.

Now just per­mit me to vent a lit­tle bit here.
I believe fun­da­men­tal­ly in the rule of law, that can­not be overemphasized.
I also believe that the laws must work equal­ly and just­ly for every­one regard­less of their stand­ing in society.
I also believe in the God giv­en right each and every per­son has to human rights and human dignity.
But when it comes to mak­ing a dis­tinc­tion between the rights of crime vic­tims and those who engage in crim­i­nal con­duct, I come down square­ly on the side of the victims.

Not let me has­ten to say that respect­ing the rights of vic­tims and crim­i­nals is not a bina­ry choice, but even with­in the nar­row con­fines of those choic­es I still side with the aggrieved.
Sure Criminals have rights but Jamaica has no busi­ness bog­ging down the process of remov­ing crim­i­nals from the streets by putting in place laws which pre­vents police from inter­view­ing crim­i­nals with­out lawyers present.

For the Record and the moles who are ready to pop up accus­ing me of not respect­ing peo­ple’s rights.
Most major west­ern Nations , includ­ing the United States, Canada and Great Britain will inter­ro­gate crim­i­nals before they actu­al­ly get a lawyer.
There is noth­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong with that , par­tic­u­lar­ly if that arrestee has been read his/​her Miranda rights.

That Miller could have been returned to the coun­try on March 28^th and the Police have not been able to speak to him a full 11 days lat­er speaks to two things.
(1) Jamaica’s crim­i­nal jus­tice laws are far too uppi­ty. A vio­lent devel­op­ing coun­try like Jamaica has no busi­ness plac­ing those imped­i­ments in the way of law enforcement.
(2) With the lack of resources and train­ing fac­ing the JCF the laws were put in place specif­i­cal­ly to keep peo­ple exact­ly like Tesha Miller out of jail.
Why does­n’t the Government assign him a pub­lic defender ?

It’s prob­a­bly safe to say that Powell and his cast of char­ac­ters have next to noth­ing on this scum­bag, they nev­er do .
But nonethe­less it is dif­fi­cult to ignore the fact that Police could be ham­strung to such degree by the very Government which ought to be look­ing out for the pro­tec­tion of the population.

Why is our soci­ety so pre­ten­tious in it’s protes­ta­tions about human rights, when it demon­strates no such par­i­ty in the way it approach­es the fun­da­men­tal rights each and every cit­i­zen has to life?
What’s behind this sick per­vert­ed love affair between Jamaicans and crime?
Is it unfair when we accuse the Government regard­less of polit­i­cal par­ty of col­lu­sion with criminals ?
Are we unfair when we point to the implic­it actions Government take which are aid­ing and abet­ting the bru­tal killings and oth­er crimes plagu­ing the country?
No !!!

There are sim­ply far too many instances where actions tak­en are demon­stra­bly sup­port­ive of and enhances the con­tin­u­ance of wan­ton criminality.
There comes a time when we have to believe the evi­dence and not con­tin­ue to tell our­selves that they mean well.

As peo­ple we look to the courts to dis­pense Justice, we gra­tu­itous­ly defer to the Courts to do whats right as the final arbiter of truth and fairness.

Jamaicans are no dif­fer­ent, we too look to the courts to do the right thing. Unfortunately for Jamaicans in giv­ing that def­er­ence we miss the glar­ing fact that the courts are not too far removed from the cor­ro­sive influ­ence of the crim­i­nal cabal of crime car­tels which run the Island.
Are the judges out there shoot­ing people ?
Of course not !!!
But they may as well have been because there are clear and unequiv­o­cal evi­dence that the actions they take rea­son­ably may some­times may be con­strued by any per­son of sound think­ing that their actions are clear­ly in fur­ther­ance of the com­mis­sion of crimes.

Members of the rank and file of the Police force as well as aver­age Jamaicans always knew that the jus­tice sys­tem only pun­ished the very poor.
As police offi­cers we wit­nessed first-hand the def­er­ence with which peo­ple with mon­ey were treat­ed by the Courts.
On the rare occa­sion that a mem­ber of the finan­cial élite finds himself/​herself before the courts, the process which got them there was expo­nen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent than that of the dut­ty foot bway who was just brought in the back of the old jeep.

In fair­ness their crimes usu­al­ly are of the white col­lar nature so it may rea­son­able be con­tend­ed that-that their lev­el of entan­gle­ment with the police need­ed not be with hand­cuffs lying on the floor of the jeep.
Though there is a cer­tain degree of truth to that , the incom­pe­tence, and the licky licky nature of the police high com­mand made any inves­ti­ga­tion of their involve­ment in more seri­ous crimes an impossibility.

As it was twen­ty and twen­ty five years ago,so is it today. Only dif­fer­ence is that today the depart­ment has a litany of for­ward lean­ing named depart­ments which does noth­ing but turn out the same lev­el of incompetence.
Police have always com­plained about the lax way that mag­is­trates and judges han­dled dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals they worked hard to remove from the streets . In their own defense many of those judges pushed back argu­ing that they are mere­ly mak­ing sure that cas­es which came before them were prop­er­ly brought and when that was done crim­i­nals were appro­pri­ate­ly dealt with.

Both sides had a point both sides were lack­ing. My dear friend Mister Basil Reid was hat­ed by some cops. Judge Basil Reid was reviled by many as New York state African American Judge Bruce_M._Wright  was reviled by NYPD cops.

Many cops argued that judge Reid was too lenient and was inter­est­ed only in turn­ing crim­i­nals back onto the streets.
Judge Reid was a kind and lenient man , that was a giv­en and yes judge Reid was less tol­er­ant of cas­es lan­guish­ing on the dock­et in his court­room. He would sim­ply dis­miss the case if after a few men­tion dates the pros­e­cu­tion’s case was not ready. I had no prob­lem with Mister Reid . I made sure my cas­es were ready and he was quick to use me as his token cop who got things done the cor­rect way .

I loved and admired judge Reid but even with the best pre­pared case he relied too heav­i­ly on sus­pend­ed sen­tenc­ing . I was not always hap­py with his sen­tenc­ing method­ol­o­gy but I learned that I was look­ing at it from the per­spec­tive of a street cop who worked hard to remove crim­i­nals from the streets .
It took me some­time to rec­og­nize that he was see­ing these men as peo­ple who erred and deserv­ing of a sec­ond chance when they appeared before him all pen­i­tent and look­ing pup­py eyed.
Some Judges were bet­ter able to sort through what appear before them while under­stand­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of appre­hend­ing dan­ger­ous criminals .
Their hon­ors mis­ter Donald McIntosh and his wife came to mind . Exemplary jurists.

But there were oth­ers like Lenslie Wolf who rose through the ranks to become Chief Justice . That Wolfe could have attained the office of Chief Justice was a sear­ing indict­ment to the direc­tion in which the sys­tem of jus­tice was headed.
In 2000 an Attorney named Humphrey McPherson sued the then Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe for slander .

McPherson com­plained in his affi­davit that on May 25, 2000 Wolfe had mali­cious­ly abused him in the pres­ence of his client Stanley Mason and oth­er attor­neys, by say­ing to him, ‘See de brave man deh. Him brave … him a write feisty let­ters, bout him want dis­qual­i­fy judges. Which judge a go hear him case. Time is the mas­ter, it’s only a mat­ter of time.’

McPherson claimed that Wolfe’s remarks had seri­ous­ly injured his char­ac­ter and rep­u­ta­tion as an attor­ney and brought him into pub­lic scan­dal, odi­um and con­tempt. He argued that the words were cal­cu­lat­ed to dis­par­age him or to intim­i­date him in his work as an attorney.
Lensley Wolfe sim­ply denied that he berat­ed McPherson. McPherson claimed that he suf­fered shock and injury, loss and dam­age and suf­fered great humil­i­a­tion and shame in public.

Now this case rep­re­sent­ed the clas­sic case of fowl fight in which a cock­roach has no busi­ness but I talk about this case because Wolf flat­ly denied every abus­ing McPherson .
That’s it !
But Lensley Wolfe an abra­sive and uncouth per­son did not have to wor­ry about hav­ing to be held account­able when he alleged­ly said “Which judge a go hear him case” ?
Humphrey McPherson had the ter­ri­ble luck to have Basil Reid hear his case and I believe we all know how that case ended.
Reid tossed the case alleg­ing the stan­dards of slan­der was not met.
http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​7​6​5​4​6​_​A​p​p​e​a​l​-​C​o​u​r​t​-​s​t​r​i​k​e​s​-​d​o​w​n​-​l​a​w​y​e​r​-​s​-​s​l​a​n​d​e​r​-​s​u​i​t​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​c​h​i​e​f​-​j​u​s​t​ice

Whether or not Lensley Wolfe slan­dered McPherson we may nev­er know . What I do know is that Lensley Wolfe had a his­to­ry of being an uncouth class­less bul­ly who did­n’t care whom he berated .
If he thought he could get away with it.

For years as a judge at the Gun court and oth­er courts he open­ly dis­re­spect­ed police offi­cers who allowed him to get away with it.
One morn­ing I arrived at the Gun court 5 min­utes after my case was called to Lensley Wolfe’s harsh and abu­sive tongue.
Now in order to under­stand my ire at being ver­bal­ly abused by Wolfe , one would have to under­stand what my sched­ule looked like start­ing at 8:00 am the pre­vi­ous day when I arrived at work.
I worked until 1:00 Pm then got a break to return at 6:00 pm the same day. After arriv­ing at 6:00 Pm I worked through the night cul­mi­nat­ing at 8:00 Am .
After leav­ing work at 8:00 I ran home took a show­er , dressed , grabbed a cup of cof­fee and stopped off at the Half Way Tree Resident Magistrates Court offices to leave a charg­ing affi­davit(Information) in anoth­er case then dash off to get to the Gun Court at 10 05 am.

After tak­ing a tongue lash­ing I took a tac­ti­cal deci­sion to end Wolfe’s bul­ly­ing of cops once and for all if I could.
I point­ed to the pris­on­er in the dock and told Wolf cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly “there was the ene­my” , I’m not .
I remind­ed him that his pow­ers end­ed once the court was adjourned mine went across the coun­try and 12 miles out to sea.
The rest of the con­ver­sa­tion drew admi­ra­tion and much cel­e­bra­tion from many of my col­leagues from all over the Island for weeks as word got out that final­ly some­one stood up to Wolfe’s bullying.

Lensley Wolfe nev­er looked me in the eyes ever again after I told him I would fight him all the way to the Privy Council in his own Courtroom.
I encoun­tered him after that at the Constant Spring Police Station in a cor­ri­dor a, on see­ing me he bolt­ed back the way he came and ducked into an office.
I don’t know whether he slan­dered McPherson but the arro­gant brava­do McPherson detailed sound­ed eeri­ly close to what Wolfe would say .
Unfortunately for the Plaintiff Humphrey McPherson the judge hear­ing the case was Basil Reid.
He stood no chance.

Over the years the face of the courts have changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly , unfor­tu­nate­ly not for the bet­ter . The court now finds itself a part of a cabal of incom­pe­tence, col­lu­sion and com­plic­i­ty. Neither of these char­ac­ter­is­tics bode well for the Jamaican peo­ple who have seem­ing­ly moved on, and accept­ed both the risks and the rewards to be derived from a crim­i­nal state.

Imagine if we ever ced­ed to the temp­ta­tion of a Caribbean Court of Appeals as a final court to air our grievances?

We under­stand that Klansman super Gangster Tesha Miller, a man whose name has been linked to mul­ti­ple Murders ‚has again been returned to Jamaica .This time from the Bahamas.
There is much to be said about Miller a man who have been able to some­how avoid con­vic­tion for any­thing in Jamaica.
This despite his name being linked to mul­ti­ple mur­ders, a mas­sive extor­tion ring oper­at­ing in the Old Capital of Spanish Town , with ten­ta­cles we are told reach­ing into May-pen and Mandeville.
All of that, and years of gang­land activ­i­ty which has turned Spanish Town and it’s envi­rons into a ver­i­ta­ble war-zone.

Nevertheless Miller was able to leave Jamaica for the United States sev­er­al times we are told and was even­tu­al­ly incar­cer­at­ed here in the states and deported.
Miller has been able to leave the coun­try even as the Jamaican police insist­ed they had him under sur­veil­lance. But I won’t berate my for­mer col­leagues too much for being woe­ful­ly incom­pe­tent and sim­ply incon­ceiv­ably pathet­ic at what they do.

I must always remind myself that at least they are now more edu­cat­ed than when I served in the late 80’s to ear­ly 90’s.
That has to count for some­thing, I will even­tu­al­ly fig­ure it out someday.
But back to Tesha Miller .….
This alleged Gangster seem to be Teflon. Before dis­ap­pear­ing for the Bahamas there was a flare­up of vio­lent crimes , includ­ing mur­ders in Spanish Town.
At the time local Police asked Miller to come in to speak with them.
In typ­i­cal Gangster style he did not show.
There is an old Jamaican proverb which says “ash­es cold dog sleep in de”,I will leave the inter­pre­ta­tion open for you my read­ers to decipher.

Now it’s impor­tant to note that at the time Miller was returned to the Island from the United States , the JCF said they would keep an eye on him to ensure that there would not be a return to the law­less­ness which obtains when he is back head­ing the Klansman Gang.
At the time I scoffed at that notion because the JCF has zero abil­i­ty to keep any­one under sur­veil­lance out­side a 90 year old lady.

Nevertheless, despite those idle boasts ‚Miller alleged­ly con­tin­ued on with his busi­ness as usu­al . When asked to come in he sim­ply dis­ap­peared and there was not a peep out of the police.
I guess those homi­cides , shoot­ings and extor­tions were cleared up when he disappeared.
Well, we all know that across the Caribbean and indeed across the west­ern world nations are heav­i­ly invest­ed in their fights against crime .
So it should come as no sur­prise that wher­ev­er this piece of mat­ter showed up law enforce­ment author­i­ties would send him pack­ing back to his paradise.

It’s not a stretch to grasp why even with­in the CARICOM com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber states have seri­ous con­cerns about allow­ing Jamaicans into their country.
Look ‚we can hide behind patri­o­tism and pre­tend that they hate us because some­how we are bet­ter than them or we can face the facts that our coun­try has den­i­grat­ed to a pari­ah state because we com­mit too many crimes and have a curi­ous affin­i­ty and love affair with all things criminal.
That’s it , period !!

Bravado , Bullying, and bulls**t does not change those facts.
The first ques­tion we must ask is whether the police will now nail Tesha Miller for the homi­cides , remem­ber they asked him to come in to speak to them?
If they sim­ply released him after his sec­ond depor­ta­tion in as many years does this not demon­strate that the Police are mere Poppy-show?
I love and sup­port the Police but I can­not in good con­science sup­port them when the coun­try has crim­i­nals like these roam­ing the streets, leav­ing the coun­try as he pleas­es ‚and no one can nail him for his crimes.

I am mind­ful that the Criminal Court sys­tem is not the friend­liest place to the rule of law.
I know that even under the rare cir­cum­stance that a crim­i­nal is con­vict­ed in those courts, with enough mon­ey to pass around crim­i­nals are released on appeal.
These are the facts sur­round­ing the Jamaican Criminal Justice System. This writer will not bury his head and pre­tend that judges are some­thing spe­cial, they aren’t.
Despite these chal­lenges how­ev­er this lev­el of non­cha­lance and care­less­ness can­not con­tin­ue in a soci­ety which pre­tends to be a mod­ern society.

Cops are not allowed to shoot these mur­der­ing bas­tards when they con­front them.
Even when there is a rare con­vic­tion the judges let them out on appeal.
The entire coun­try sup­port them, from Politicians to the cler­gy, from civ­il soci­ety to the jus­tice system.
It’ is no won­der that in a coun­try so small there are over 4 homi­cides per day.
It’s no sur­prise that no one wants us in their country.

No one should reasonably argue against the critical need for oversight of police in any jurisdiction. Lord knows certainly not of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
With that said, the JCF has had it’s own share of internal oversight which has had great success. Their achilles heel being that they failed to make public what they were doing. This resulted in a prevailing narrative that the police weren’t held to account. Given enough time it became an alternative fact.

The JCF has had spe­cial Branch which has worked to root out dirty cops years ago.
Feeling that more was need­ed to be done to rein in bad police offi­cers spe­cial inter­est pres­sured the polit­i­cal pow­ers to do more .As a con­se­quence they cre­at­ed the (CCRB) The civil­ian com­plaint review board.
At any giv­en time Jamaicans have had one or more Agencies to which they could turn to make com­plaints against mem­bers of the police depart­ment and the Military.

Then the CCRB too became a vic­tim of out­side pres­sure and Bruce Golding gave the Country INDECOM. For the dura­tion of the life of the CCRB cer­tain inter­est groups engaged in a vis­cer­al pro­pa­gan­da assault against it argu­ing that it was not doing enough.
At the time I argued this was being done to dis­cred­it the Security forces , dem­a­gogue the CCRB with the ulti­mate goal of cre­at­ing anoth­er agency over which they had con­trol, and which would car­ry out their mandate.
INDECOM was born.

On the birth of INDECOM and the appoint­ment of Terrence Williams as it’s com­mis­sion­er I said this was not going to be police over­sight , it was going to be police persecution.
Immediately he was appoint­ed, Terrence Williams joined the most rad­i­cal most caus­tic voic­es against the police in a press conference.
They joined JFJ and oth­er anti-police groups to con­demn the police department.
The JCF cried foul and called for Williams to step down.
This was not like­ly to hap­pen, at the time INDECOM had pow­er­ful sup­port­ers who weren’t going to care about the con­cerns of law enforcement.

Now it’s impor­tant that when we con­sid­er the cre­ation of INDECOM we take into account that the new Agency INDECOM has not done a sin­gle thing out­side what the oth­er over­sight bod­ies have done to remove dirty cops.

Yet the noise from the cor­ners which has kept up the drum­beat for police over­sight have fall­en suspiciously,and death­ly silent, now that they have their own bunch of anti Police Elites con­trol­ling the process.

It is impor­tant to under­stand that despite their best efforts police offi­cers are nec­es­sar­i­ly going to have com­plaints against them even when they patrol with mem­bers of the Military.
Purely by the nature of their job which puts them into dai­ly con­tact with bel­liger­ent accused who break the laws, those con­tacts are gen­er­al­ly not friend­ly encounters.Complaints against police are going to be many.
Empathy for the police’s argu­ments are going to be hard to find.
So it’s total­ly under­stand­able that in Jamaica’s case, any Agency empow­ered to inves­ti­gate the Police, the Military and Corrections will invari­able receive more com­plaints against the Police as opposed to the cor­rec­tions Department which has to deal with peo­ple con­vict­ed of crimes and set apart from society.
Or the Military which has lim­it­ed and in most cas­es periph­er­al con­tact with mem­bers of the public.

What I find trou­bling yet total­ly unsur­pris­ing how­ev­er, is the silence which has now fall­en over the so-called Human Rights com­mu­ni­ty since the cre­ation of INDECOM.
Never mind that they are nev­er con­cerned about the death of inno­cent Jamaicans , just how well accused and con­vict­ed crim­i­nals are treated.
There has been no dai­ly calls and Television appear­ance from Jamaicans for Justice (JFF) through Carolyn Gomes. She was defrocked, reveal­ing her true agen­da. That Agenda though not total­ly con­fined to , includ­ed dis­sem­i­nat­ing sex­u­al­ly explic­it Homosexual mate­ri­als to chil­dren, but not before the polit­i­cal Elites hand­ed her a nation­al honor.

There is no dai­ly mind­less chat­ter from Horace Levy who head­ed his own eat-a-food NGO, the Peace Management Unit(PMI).
So Caroline Gomes was shamed into step­ping down from JFF and in walked Horace Levy . Levy of course, may be remem­bered for being antag­o­nis­tic against even the police’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of crim­i­nal gangs as what they are, crim­i­nal gangs.
He had alter­na­tive facts , alter­na­tive char­ac­ter­i­za­tion for those crim­i­nal gangs he labeled them “cor­ner crews.”
There was noth­ing which could be attrib­uted to Levy’s antag­o­nis­tic behav­ior out­side being dis­rup­tive, and an appeas­er of entrenched crim­i­nals in the tough inner city com­mu­ni­ties of Kingston, St. Andrew and oth­er parish­es across the Island.

In addi­tion to JFJ, PMI there are oth­ers , Families Against State Terrorism (FAST) , there is the Inter American Commission Commission on Human Rights and sev­er­al others.
Imagine if these peo­ple were arrayed along­side the police to erad­i­cate crime?

Local News paper  jamaicaob­serv­er reports that in it’s 7 years of exis­tence, INDECOM the Agency the Elites want­ed and got from Golding released some star­tling num­bers which should cause all of us to ask , are we get­ting val­ue for money.
(1) One hun­dred and eigh­teen( 118) mem­bers of Jamaica’s secu­ri­ty forces, main­ly police per­son­nel, before the court in 74 cas­es for alleged wrongdoing.
(2) Secured six con­vic­tions involv­ing 13 police personnel.
(3) The com­mis­sion lost four cas­es where­in five police­men have been acquit­ted of charges.

So lets unpack this lit­tle bit of data.
in 7 years INDECOM pre­sent­ed to the courts 74 cas­es . For this pur­pose the amount of offi­cers caught up in these cas­es are imma­te­r­i­al, par­tic­u­lar­ly when we look at the pathet­ic con­vic­tion rate even with the small amount of cas­es which has reached resolution.
That’s just over 10.57 cas­es on aver­age for each of those 7 years.
That com­putes to less than one case per month.
Remember we are not debat­ing con­vic­tion rates here, this num­ber of 74 cas­es rep­re­sents the total­i­ty of the cas­es INDECOM placed before the courts as a result of it’s supe­ri­or inves­tiga­tive skills and it’s renowned Independence.[sic]
Now INDECOM has claimed that the major­i­ty of reports they have inves­ti­gat­ed, they have found that offi­cers have done noth­ing wrong.
Do the math for your­selves, six con­vic­tions in 7 years means less than one con­vic­tion per year. Great returns on investment?
I think not !

So the ques­tion remain, if there are only 74 alleged cas­es of impro­pri­ety in 7 years ‚what is the Agency doing bet­ter than what the over­sight agen­cies before it man­aged to accomplish?
Terrence Williams ever look­ing to jus­ti­fy his job, ever look­ing to bur­nish his ego, argues “The long delay in hav­ing mat­ters resolved by the courts has result­ed in the loss of wit­ness­es, com­plainants and accused (who become frus­trat­ed, migrate or die),” the report stated.

So this sto­ry made me laugh, aren’t these the very same sce­nar­ios affect­ing cas­es across the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem? Among the promi­nent rea­sons, the com­mis­sion list­ed that defence attor­neys would request adjourn­ment (69 per cent of the times) and the mat­ter could not be reached or there was no court avail­able (16 per cent). “Defence requests include adjourn­ments because coun­sel was absent, change of coun­sel, or more time to pre­pare,” the report stated.

We have a less than ide­al crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem which could be argued, enhances criminality.
If the process pre­vents INDECOM from get­ting res­o­lu­tions to it’s 74 cas­es over a full 7 years, imag­ine just how much more the clogged cor­rupt and incom­pe­tent court sys­tem encour­ages crim­i­nals to com­mit crimes under­stand­ing they may nev­er see the inside of a courtroom?

INDECOM replaced the Police Public Complaints Authority and inves­ti­gates actions by mem­bers of the Security Forces.
Imagine if the resources invest­ed in INDECOM were har­nessed and appro­pri­ate­ly placed into bet­ter recruit­ment , train­ing and equip­ping of police officers?
Those resources could be bet­ter used in improv­ing cour­t­hous­es , hir­ing more pros­e­cu­tors and over­all cre­at­ing a bet­ter jus­tice sys­tem which guar­an­tees a bet­ter and more effec­tive deliv­ery of jus­tice for all Jamaicans.

That’s the way we cre­ate a sys­tem which is fair equi­table and just.
We now know that INDECOM was not only a bad law which has result­ed in much loss of inno­cent lives.
In addi­tion to the embold­en­ing of crim­i­nals , the loss of inno­cent lives , we now know it is demon­stra­bly not good val­ue for money .
These num­bers reveals what I have per­son­al­ly said from the start, we can do a whole lot bet­ter with those resources and we would have had a lot less ani­mus between the Security Forces and the Agency tasked with over­see­ing them.

Those are real facts.
Not “Alternative facts”

Crime is a prob­lem in many nations , it feeds on pover­ty and poor socio-eco­nom­ic conditions.
Most of all how­ev­er, crime feeds on acquiescence !!!
Nowhere is this more evi­dent than in my coun­try Jamaica.
It bog­gles the mind it defies log­ic, it makes no dis­cernible sense.

Crime increas­es in Jamaica on an annu­al basis, what does the Government do? It pro­pos­es to pass laws which fur­ther enhances the growth of crime and crim­i­nal networks.
This is becom­ing the modus operan­di of the JLP which draft­ed the INDECOM Act with the col­lu­sion of the Opposition PNP and passed that bad law. They did not even both­er to get the views of the par­ties the INDECOM Act is sup­posed to oversee.
They nev­er sought the input of the police , mil­i­tary, nor the cor­rec­tions depart­ments when they con­sid­ered the legislation.
As a con­se­quence, the Law Bruce Golding and his cohorts cob­bled togeth­er with the bless­ings of the oppo­si­tion par­ty has been an unde­ni­able sig­nif­i­cant dri­ver of crime.
Notwithstanding, the Government refus­es to repeal the law dou­bling down on it instead ‚even as it pre­tend to search for clues to the Island’s bur­geon­ing crime problem.
It is not by acci­dent that the English speak­ing Caribbean has an inor­di­nate­ly high crime rate as com­pared to the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

There is a legit­i­mate argu­ment to be made for the high crime rate in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana as com­pared to the British or US Virgin Islands , or even Barbados , a small Island nation with a small pop­u­la­tion and a Government which takes a decid­ed­ly more intel­li­gent no-non­sense approach to crime.

When we com­pare the British and US vir­gin Islands, Barbados and the more reg­i­ment­ed Cuba, we may extrap­o­late from their crime sta­tis­tics that crime is a fac­tor in the Island Nations which have weak , cor­rupt and crim­i­nal­ly acqui­es­cent Governments.
These weak Governmental struc­tures and their lack of will to effec­tive­ly deal with the core issues of crime have placed sev­er­al Spanish speak­ing coun­tries in the Americas at the top of the list of most dead­ly and vio­lent places in the world along with the English speak­ing Caribbean nations of which Jamaica and Trinidad are a part.

Some Nations are actu­al­ly deter­mined to find ways to fix their crime prob­lem, oth­ers seem­ing­ly are tak­ing steps to fur­ther cement crime into the every­day oper­a­tions of their nations.
Trinidad which had about 351 homi­cides in 2012 is now acknowl­edg­ing that it has a prob­lem which needs urgent reme­di­al action. Guyana in 2012 record­ed 135 killings.
In 2014 Barbados record­ed 25 homi­cides. The British Virgin Islands had 2 in 2006. The Cayman Islands had a grand total of 8 in 2009. Haiti with a pop­u­la­tion of 10.32 mil­lion peo­ple, a coun­try seem­ing­ly in a con­stant state of war had a grand total of 1033 homi­cides in 2012. Puerto Rico with a full mil­lion more peo­ple than Jamaica saw a total of 681 mur­ders in 2014.
Jamaica aver­ages 100 per month , over twelve hun­dred each year​.In 2005 the Island record­ed in excess of 1600 homicides.

Trinidad’s National Security Minister Edmund Dillon said his gov­ern­ment believes a more “direct and strate­gic approach” is required to deal with the sit­u­a­tion in Central Trinidad where rival gangs have been engaged in reprisal killings.
As part of that strat­e­gy the min­is­ter said his Government would place a police sta­tion in the cen­ter of the affect­ed area.
Additionally , the Minister said his gov­ern­ment believes that time is now, the place is Enterprise and the force will be one of uti­liz­ing all agen­cies of nation­al secu­ri­ty to deal with issues of crime.

Conversely , with one of the most astro­nom­i­cal­ly high homi­cide rates, and clear esca­la­tion in the weapon­ry in the hands of crim­i­nals, the Jamaican Government is propos­ing new leg­is­la­tion which on the face of it looks like a crime bill, but is anoth­er police ham­per­ing, crime esca­la­tion piece of legislation.

There will be no reduc­tion in the homi­cide rate in Jamaica any­time soon.
The Special Security and Community Development Measures Act, 2017 , being tabled by the Jamaican Government is not a bill which if passed into law will do any­thing to alle­vi­ate the Island’s run­away mur­der rate.
What it is ‑is polit­i­cal cov­er which will shield the Government from any fall­out when the secu­ri­ty forces are forced to con­front the Island’s vicious killers.

Jamaica has a love affair with crime and crim­i­nals . Many well placed and well con­nect­ed peo­ple are active­ly engaged in crime.
The Government of the United States has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly revoked visas to many of those same peo­ple, some in civ­il soci­ety and even those in the two polit­i­cal parties.
Political pow­er is deter­mined by who have scarce resources to dole out . Crime and cor­rup­tion is rife at all lev­els of the soci­ety includ­ing the Government. No sec­tor is immune from the stench.

What the Jamaican Government is doing with crime today is to ask the secu­ri­ty forces to once again take the risks to bring crime under con­trol as they were asked in 2010, only to hold hear­ings to find ways to imprison and embar­rass them.
In address­ing crime the Jamaican Prime Minister made not a sin­gle men­tion of dead cops, assault­ed cops or the entry of grenades into the arse­nals of the crim­i­nal underworld.
Conversely as the mur­der rate rock­ets out of con­trol Andrew Holness said this.
Quote :“When we designed this (secu­ri­ty mea­sure), we have actu­al­ly writ­ten into the law an account­abil­i­ty frame­work and we have made it an offence for the offi­cers not to fol­low the account­abil­i­ty frame­work.”

This is not a bill designed to erad­i­cate Jamaica’s dan­ger­ous and mur­der­ous crim­i­nal gangs. It is leg­is­la­tion designed to give polit­i­cal cov­er to the Government against crit­i­cisms it is not doing any­thing about the scourge of crime.
The Administration nev­er­the­less has no qualms about cre­at­ing a law which will ensnare the police for doing their jobs as they did when they gave the coun­try INDECOM.
The Police Federation has no clue .…..

SERIOUS ESCALATION

On March 24^th police offi­cers turned up at a home in Armadale, Alexandria, St Ann to arrest Sadan Mullings, also called ‘Saddam’, and his crony, Nickoy Treleven, who were both want­ed for a string of mur­ders and shoot­ings in west­ern Jamaica.
According to local media reports before police offi­cers could sur­round the house the fugi­tives report­ed­ly threw two grenades from the build­ing and exit­ed with guns blaz­ing at the officers.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​i​s​-​i​s​-​n​o​t​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​t​h​e​y​-​h​a​v​e​-​d​e​c​l​a​r​e​d​-​w​a​r​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​s​t​a​te/

One of the grenades report­ed­ly failed to det­o­nate, one police offi­cer was injured by the oth­er which explod­ed send­ing shrap­nel fly­ing in all direc­tions, the injured offi­cer was tak­en to hos­pi­tal with a piece of shrap­nel lodged in his chest. Treleven was found some dis­tance from the build­ing suf­fer­ing from gun­shot wounds. He lat­er died.
Residents were stunned at the gun­fire and explo­sion from the grenade which jolt­ed them out of their sleep just after midnight.
 https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​u​s​t​-​a​n​o​t​h​e​r​-​d​a​y​-​o​f​-​g​r​e​n​a​d​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​d​e​a​d​-​c​o​p​s​-​w​e​l​c​o​m​e​-​t​o​-​j​a​m​a​i​ca/

Despite this rad­i­cal esca­la­tion , (not of the assault on law enforce­ment, assault on the police is a dai­ly occur­rence), but in terms of the weapon­ry in the arse­nal of the crim­i­nal under­world there was no state­ment from the government.

COP MURDERED

On Friday March 24^th a police offi­cer was shot dead in Frankfield, Clarendon after he attempt­ed to stop a rob­bery while on his way home. The police say 37-year-old Corporal Kevin McLean was on his way home at about 7:40 pm when he wit­nessed men rob­bing two Chinese nation­als. Corporal McLean attempt­ed to inter­vene and the gun­men opened fire, hit­ting him. He was rushed to the hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead.
The Government was death­ly silent.

Jamaica aver­ages 100 mur­ders per month. That’s an aver­age of 1200 hun­dred homi­cides per year . That fig­ure does not include peo­ple who are shot, stabbed or oth­er­wise assault­ed which result in death at a lat­er date. The police report­ed there were 1192 mur­ders report­ed to them in 2015 . That fig­ure rep­re­sent­ed a 20% increase in homi­cides over the year 2014.

Jamaica had about 45 killings per 100,000 peo­ple in 2015. This makes Jamaica one of the most vio­lent coun­tries in the world. The United Nations lists the island as hav­ing the world’s sixth-worst homi­cide rate. For it’s part the World Bank ranked Jamaica in the top five most mur­der­ous coun­tries in the world in 2013. By com­par­i­son, Chicago, which has rough­ly the same pop­u­la­tion as Jamaica at 2.7 mil­lion, had 468 killings in 2015.

In 2005 the Island record­ed over 1600 homi­cides. Those homi­cide num­bers must be viewed with­ing the con­text of oth­er seri­ous crimes like shoot­ings, wound­ing. rapes and oth­er vio­lent felonies. Those oth­er crimes which does not result in death, vast­ly out­num­ber the homi­cide num­bers. Added togeth­er crime is a very very seri­ous issue on the Island.
In brief Jamaica is an extreme­ly vio­lent mur­der­ous place.

This lev­el of vio­lence makes Jamaica unique­ly chal­leng­ing to police.
With all of their ills and what has been writ­ten about them , Jamaican police do the best they can with the hand they are dealt by the polit­i­cal class.
The irony of the Jamaican expe­ri­ence is that the major­i­ty, which is the poor­er class, large­ly do not under­stand the crip­pling neg­a­tive effect crime, cor­rup­tion and vio­lence has on their lives.
The rul­ing elites are in no hur­ry to con­vince them of those facts.

The Prime Minister, just over a year in office, seem to begin to under­stand that his much vaunt­ed cam­paign promis­es of “pros­per­i­ty” will have as much chance of becom­ing a real­i­ty as a snow­ball in hell, has been talk­ing about a new leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tive on crime.
While cam­paign­ing, Holness promised Jamaicans would be able to sleep with their doors open at nights.
Since tak­ing office crime has gone up 20%.
Neither the present crime sit­u­a­tion nor the esca­la­tion should be laid at the feet of the Prime Minister .
Not just yet !
Nevertheless Andrew Holness is the guy with the big desk at which the buck stops.
Holness seem to care more about appeas­ing the pha­lanx of human rights orga­ni­za­tions which has set up shop in the coun­try rather than attend to the exis­ten­tial crime prob­lem fac­ing the country.

The fol­low­ing is the text of state­ments the Prime Minister gave on new Legislative mech­a­nisms his admin­is­tra­tion is putting in place to deal with crime.
It is impor­tant to note that one of the hall­mark of the Prime Minister’s ini­tia­tive is that the police will be allowed to car­ry out raids and oth­er activ­i­ties in cer­tain areas des­ig­nat­ed Zones of Special Operations.
I believe we all know those so called zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions will mean the most depressed and impov­er­ished communities.
It is worth men­tion­ing that the vast major­i­ty of the crimes being com­mit­ted are not ran­dom crimes but are rather crimes which spin off from the Lotto scam and gang activities.

It’s also impor­tant to note that these crimes gen­er­al­ly have noth­ing to do with the poor­est of our peo­ple who nei­ther benef from the lot­to scam or gang activ­i­ty in any sig­nif­i­cant way.
But the most strik­ing thing about the Prime Ministers piece of leg­is­la­tion, the Special Security and Community Development Measures Act, 2017 , is that it is not a crime fight­ing tool giv­en to the Police to aid them in fight­ing the scourge of heinous crimes and ter­ror which is engulf­ing the Island.
It is a gift to the so-called Human Rights and pres­sure groups arrayed in the Island against the rule of law under the dis­guise of rights.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness, says mech­a­nisms will be put in place to ensure that cit­i­zens’ rights are not vio­lat­ed dur­ing oper­a­tions.This is specif­i­cal­ly in rela­tion to plans for the des­ig­na­tion of zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions for secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment in areas with high lev­els of crime. Responding to ques­tions posed by jour­nal­ists dur­ing his post-Budget Debate pre­sen­ta­tion press con­fer­ence at the Office of the Prime Minister on March 22, the Holness not­ed that under the new mea­sures, spe­cif­ic mem­bers from the Jamaica Defence Force and the Jamaica Constabulary Force will be select­ed to form a joint com­mand to car­ry out oper­a­tions in these communities.

This is not a crime fight­ing tool for the Police and mil­i­tary to root out the killers who prey on the innocent.
This is Tivoli Gardens 2.0 .
In the address the Prime Minister made not a sin­gle men­tion of the fact that our police offi­cers face the most dan­ger­ous weapons includ­ing grenades.
He made no men­tion of the fact that just days ago a police offi­cer was bru­tal­ly slaugh­tered after he inter­vened to stop a rob­bery in Clarendon.
There is no men­tion of the police offi­cers killed just this year alone.
There is no men­tion of the police offi­cers who are killed each year because they dared to be police officers.
There is no men­tion of the numer­ous unpun­ished assaults on police offi­cers each day which even the courts are wont to punish.

Holness’s bill is noth­ing more than a shit sand­wich wrapped in a new paper with a bow on top.
What the Prime Minister does in this bill is what Bruce Golding did when he hand­ed the nation INDECOM and a resul­tant con­tin­ued increase in crime as a consequence.
This Legislation is a trav­es­ty which will do noth­ing to address the every evolv­ing crime problem.
It is a Bill which ask the secu­ri­ty forces to do the impos­si­ble to wage war on Jamaica’s ter­ror­ists with­out shed­ding blood.
It asks Police and sol­diers to go into the most volatile sit­u­a­tions walk­ing on egg shells.
It sets up mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces to take the fall in any sit­u­a­tion in which they are forced to use force to neu­tral­ize threats.

Holness’s Bill is cyn­i­cal , trans­par­ent and an insult to the secu­ri­ty forces  who take the risk.
Clearly from the Prime min­is­ter’s own words , this bill places all of the blame on offi­cers in the event of out­cry but absolves his admin­is­tra­tion and gives polit­i­cal cov­er to him and his party.
This is Tivoli Gardens 2.0 and the police and mil­i­tary who have to go into these areas and con­tend with these mur­der­ous scum­bags should see it for what it is.
I dare­say that Andrew Holness would not allow either of his boys to join the secu­ri­ty forces and face the dan­gers they face.
More impor­tant­ly he would not go into war with his hands tied behind his back nei­ther would he allow his chil­dren to do it.
Why then would he want oth­er peo­ple’s sons and daugh­ters to go to war and not make a stir?