Police cor­rup­tion is some­thing no decent law abid­ing per­son likes or want in their soci­ety. It erodes trust, increas­es crime and cre­ates a soci­ety in which jun­gle jus­tice becomes the law of the land, among oth­er ills.
On that basis, I join with every­one, regard­less of where they live, in con­demn­ing police abuse and cor­rup­tion in all its ugly forms.

In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, I must declare my 10-year law enforce­ment his­to­ry which I must admit have influ­enced how I look at all issues which deal with law enforcement.
Nevertheless, I am with any­one who wants police offi­cers who fol­low the laws and do what’s right.
We need to be able to trust the word of our police offi­cers. The stakes are sim­ply too high and the con­se­quences too severe when the peo­ple we depend on to be the first link in the chain of jus­tice are cor­rupt­ed and compromised.

Since we depend on the integri­ty of our police, it is crit­i­cal that when they tell us that they arrest­ed some­one for a crime, it is impor­tant that the per­son arrest­ed is indeed the cor­rect person.
If by an mea­sure the arrest­ed par­ty was arrest­ed wrong­ful­ly, it must be attrib­uted to an error and should nev­er be the result of police malfea­sance or col­lu­sion to incrim­i­nate that arrestee wrongfully.

Every instance of an offi­cer tak­ing a bribe is a betray­al of the sacred oath that offi­cer took to uphold the laws faith­ful­ly, with­out fear or favor, mal­ice or ill will toward none.
Whether that bribe is a cup of cof­fee, or a mil­lion dol­lars, the cor­ro­sive result is the same.

Hence it is cru­cial that all of our offi­cers are of the best character.
In much of what I write, I have received crit­i­cism for what some see as not enough cre­dence giv­en to the issue of police corruption.
I some­times make the mis­take in assum­ing that every­one knows and under­stand my aver­sion to cor­rup­tion wher­ev­er it rears its ugly head.
I also assume some­times unwit­ting­ly, that they knew that dur­ing my decade as a police offi­cer I was instru­men­tal in weed­ing out a few dirty cops.
For that, I apologize.

Even though I speak out about police cor­rup­tion I am par­tic­u­lar­ly hes­i­tant about being caught up in the weeds where many would­n’t mind hav­ing sup­port­ers of the rule of law like myself ensnared.
If they can silence us by get­ting us into a defen­sive pos­ture of defend­ing police cor­rup­tion their job would have been done.
So even though we abhor these igno­ble acts of cor­rup­tion and malfea­sance it is impor­tant that we keep our focus on crime in all its forms includ­ing crimes com­mit­ted by those who wear the uni­form of police officers.
There are more than enough peo­ple out there with fin­gers point­ed at the police, so it’s impor­tant that at least for this writer my eyes remain sin­gu­lar­ly focused on crime in general.

Police depart­ments are made up of peo­ple, fal­li­ble peo­ple who are prone to fall vic­tim to the wiles and lure of those who would com­pro­mise them.
These humans, have the same char­ac­ter flaws as the rest of us. Unfortunately, a few months or a cou­ple of years train­ing is nev­er enough to cleanse every­one of the flaws in their char­ac­ters. In fact, some­times the more time a per­son spends on a police depart­ment is the more cor­rupt and com­pro­mised they become.
Hence the rea­son it is impor­tant that there be checks and bal­ances in who we allow on our police depart­ments and who we pro­mote to high­er positions.

It’s also impor­tant that we look clos­er at those in whom we have placed even more con­fi­dence than we place in the police.
I speak about those we ask to police the police.
Now I cer­tain­ly under­stand that our police do not come from Utopia or some plan­et san­i­tized of crime and corruption.
They are humans, sub­ject to human frail­ties. But as we look at our police let us also look at those polic­ing the police.
I believe it is only fair that since we hold our police to cer­tain stan­dards of fideli­ty it is even more impor­tant that we are clear-eyed about the char­ac­ter of those we ask to keep the police honest.

It is nat­ur­al for many in my coun­try of birth to demo­nize and dem­a­gogue police officers.
It can hard­ly be said that the police have not brought much of it on themselves.
Nevertheless, some of the blame has attri­bu­tion else­where, we will not both­er to address those today.
So as we admit to the need for over­sight of the police lets dig a lit­tle into the lives of those who have been put in place to police the police.

Let us look at Hamish Campbell deputy Commissioner of INDECOM.

♠

The fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence against Ira Thomas

On 30 June 1988, one Freddy Brett was shot at close range in the thigh by a tall black man wear­ing, accord­ing to a wit­ness, a light-col­ored coat. It hap­pened out­side the Hope & Anchor pub on the River Lee Navigation in north London, an area cov­ered by what lat­er became the very noto­ri­ous Stoke Newington Police Station.

Ira Thomas was also a tall black man. But he was not the per­son who shot and injured Brett.

Ira Thomas was con­vict­ed of the shoot­ing a year lat­er — but on 13 February 1992, after 2½ years in prison, the Appeal Court, most unusu­al­ly, quashed the jury’s ver­dict. The Appeal judges’ ver­dict was with­er­ing: “The victim’s account of events was sim­ply ludi­crous”, but also, more rel­e­vant­ly to this arti­cle, “The so-called foren­sic evi­dence was unavail­ing”.

Brian Moore, who togeth­er with Hamish Campbell may have orga­nized the plac­ing of firearms residue in Barry Bulsara’s pock­et, was, in 1988, a senior offi­cer in the Crime Squad in the cor­rup­tion-rid­den Stoke Newington police sta­tion. An anti-cor­rup­tion probe, Operation Jackpot, was set up lat­er and result­ed in the con­vic­tion of sev­er­al offi­cers for co-oper­at­ing with drugs and crime lords in the area. Many cor­rupt offi­cers, how­ev­er, escaped conviction.

The orig­i­nal SIO in the Ira Thomas case was Detective Sergeant Gordon Livingstone. Shortly after the shoot­ing of Freddy Brett, how­ev­er, Livingstone was pro­mot­ed to the Flying Squad at Rigg Approach, anoth­er group of senior offi­cers also rid­dled with corruption.

On 25 April 1989, two offi­cers, act­ing on an anony­mous but false tip-off, arrest­ed Ira Thomas for the attempt­ed mur­der of Freddy Brett. One Terry McGuinness searched Thomas’s flat, find­ing noth­ing of inter­est. He did not believe there was any evi­dence against Thomas. Later that day, at 4.15pm, McGuinness released Thomas, stat­ing on the cus­tody record that the mat­ter had been ‘dealt with’.

Livingstone had mean­while recent­ly been replaced as the Head of the Stoke Newington Crime Squad by Brian Moore, now an act­ing Detective Inspector. At this point in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing of Freddy Brett, he took over the reins of the investigation.

At 7.25pm, Brian Moore amend­ed the cus­tody record in bold black ink, as follows:

“With ref­er­ence to the entry [by McGuinness] timed at 4.15pm, I have now traced a num­ber of state­ments, which were not avail­able to DC McGuinness at the time he advised the cus­tody offi­cer that this mat­ter had been dealt with. The griev­ous bod­i­ly harm and firearms offens­es have NOT been con­clud­ed and my inquiries are ongoing”.

For what­ev­er rea­son, maybe to pro­tect the real shoot­er of Brett, Moore was deter­mined to charge Thomas with the shoot­ing. He refused to release Thomas from custody.

He asked two oth­er detec­tives, Peter McCullough and Dave Edwards, to search Thomas’s flat again for a ‘light-coloured coat’ which a wit­ness claimed to have seen a black man wear­ing after the shoot­ing inci­dent with Brett. Two such coats were found and tak­en for foren­sic evi­dence – I will deal with that evi­dence in a moment.

There are then two whol­ly con­flict­ing accounts of what hap­pened next at Stoke Newington police cells.

Brian Moore said that Ira Thomas:

a) refused to come out for an interview

b) admit­ted to shoot­ing Brett, but refused to sign the officer’s notes record­ing his con­fes­sion and

c) demand­ed to see a par­tic­u­lar solicitor.

Moore said he called Solicitors Les Brown and Co. – lat­er to be involved in cor­rup­tion alle­ga­tions. The cus­tody record states that Les Brown called the police sta­tion at 10.48pm say­ing he would con­tact Moore in the morn­ing. Moreover, it states that Thomas was ‘checked hourly’ and was ‘asleep until giv­en break­fast at 8.45pm’.

Ira Thomas gave a whol­ly dif­fer­ent account. Gillard and Flynn com­ment wry­ly that it remains “‘an abid­ing mys­tery how Thomas’s ver­sion of events was so rad­i­cal­ly different”.

This was Thomas’s account of events, which in the light of sub­se­quent events appears to be the truth­ful one. He says that what occurred that night was as follows:

a) he made no admis­sion of guilt

b) Moore shout­ed at him

c) Thomas asked to be rep­re­sent­ed by his solic­i­tors Goodman Ray; Moore refused

d) Instead, Moore arranged for solic­i­tor Les Brown to attend. When he did so, Thomas asked him: ‘Do you work for Goodman Ray?’ When he said ‘No’, Thomas said ‘F_​_​_​off, then’.

e) a white man claim­ing to be a fraud­ster was placed in his cell. Thomas said: ‘He kept ask­ing me what I was in for and did I do it. I was sus­pi­cious he was under­cov­er police…I demand­ed that he be removed’

f) a black man alleged­ly arrest­ed for theft was then placed in his cell. He had with him a quan­ti­ty of cocaine which he offered Thomas. Once again Thomas was sus­pi­cious that he was a ‘plant’ of some kind and suc­cess­ful­ly asked for him to be removed from his cell.

That same night, police offi­cers McCullough and Edwards searched Thomas’s flat again and, con­trary to police pro­ce­dures, did so with­out an inde­pen­dent per­son present. They removed two coats, a beige mac, and a camel-haired coat, shown to Thomas the fol­low­ing morn­ing. Thomas and his flat-mate both insist­ed they belonged to his flat-mate.

On 6 June, Moore ’phoned Thomas’s solic­i­tor, Anne Chiarini, to say that no firearms residue had been found on either coat.

Yet less than two months lat­er, on 2 August, Thomas was re-arrest­ed and told that “a sec­ond foren­sic test had found firearms residue in both cuffs of the beige mac, because the sci­en­tist car­ry­ing out the first test hadn’t rolled down the cuffs prop­er­ly the first time”.

Thomas was asked to com­ment on the new evi­dence against him. He replied: “Yes. You are try­ing to fit me up”.

Subsequently, Stoke Newington Police blocked the release of the orig­i­nal April cus­tody record, but was even­tu­al­ly forced to release it. This caused g Thomas to ‘go bal­lis­tic’, because it was evi­dent­ly whol­ly false.

The pros­e­cu­tion of Thomas came to court on 19 March 1990 at the Old Bailey.

A sen­sa­tion­al moment in the tri­al came when the foren­sic sci­en­tist, Robin Keeley from the Forensic Science Service (the same foren­sic sci­en­tist used in the Jill Dando case) said that he had found three specks of firearms residue, two on the out­er sur­face of the mac and only one inside the cuff.

He solemn­ly told the court that any residue left on the out­side of the mac ‘I would expect to have fall­en away with­in 12 hours of a gun being fired’. Moreover, he said that the police had told him that the man had been lying ‘undis­turbed’ inside a wardrobe for a long time.

Thomas and his flat­mate, by con­trast, point­ed out that they had no wardrobe, only a rail on which clothes were hung, and that the coat had been reg­u­lar­ly worn and even machine-washed a few weeks before the offi­cers seized it.

Later, Terry McGuinness, who orig­i­nal­ly searched the flat, told Gillard and Flynn: “The beige mac caused me con­cern because I hadn’t seen it or found it when I searched the flat”. Read more here https://​jill​hav​ern​.foru​mo​tion​.net/​t​9​4​5​7​-​a​-​b​i​o​g​r​a​p​h​y​-​o​f​-​h​a​m​i​s​h​-​c​a​m​p​b​e​l​l​-​t​h​e​-​m​a​n​-​c​h​o​s​e​n​-​t​o​-​h​e​a​d​-​o​p​e​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​g​r​a​nge

Judge Herrod QC gave a very fair sum­ming-up of the evi­dence, call­ing the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence ‘insub­stan­tial’, and point­ing out numer­ous oth­er flaws in the prosecution’s evi­dence. Despite this, the jury returned a major­i­ty guilty ver­dict. Most unusu­al­ly, the judge in the case, who was bound of course to accept the jury’s ver­dict, wrote to the defense bar­ris­ter and said: ‘You will obvi­ous­ly be appealing’.

The Appeal Court heard the appeal on 13 February 1992 and quashed the jury’s major­i­ty deci­sion. Thomas was imme­di­ate­ly released from prison. 

After the tri­al, new evi­dence came to light. One Lee Pritchard approached Thomas’s solic­i­tors and told them that offi­cers from Stoke Newington Police Station had approached him and offered him size­able quan­ti­ties of hero­in if he would make a false state­ment, say­ing that he had seen Ira Thomas on the same toad where Brett was shot, car­ry­ing a gun in his hand. The offer had been repeat­ed many times, but Pritchard refused to help the police. 

Moore’s career then took a steep upward path, despite his actions in the Ira Thomas case. He was pro­mot­ed to a top anti-cor­rup­tion intel­li­gence unit, CIB3, known as ‘The Untouchables’, and lat­er left that élite but cor­rupt squad to become a DCS at Belgravia Police Station in the Met, soon after­ward becom­ing the SIO on the Dando case. One would have to raise a ques­tion about how a man who was deeply involved with what looked like a delib­er­ate plot to frame an inno­cent man by plant­i­ng firearms residue on a coat could ever have been cho­sen to lead such a high-pro­file inves­ti­ga­tion as the Jill Dando mur­der hunt.

Brian Moore and Roy Clark

A fur­ther ques­tion aris­es as to who placed Brian Moore as SIO and Hamish Campbell as IO in the Dando inves­ti­ga­tion, thus replac­ing the pre­vi­ous SIO and IO. It was one Roy Clark. I am going to take a few para­graphs to exam­ine a few aspects of Clark’s career.

Moore’s career had become entwined with that of Roy Clark. 

In 1998, Roy Clark put Moore in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions of seri­ous cor­rup­tion at the Flying Squad, based at Rigg Approach. This was a high­ly ques­tion­able appoint­ment because “Moore knew many of the detec­tives he was now inves­ti­gat­ing because they had pre­vi­ous­ly worked togeth­er at Stoke Newington Police Station” (“The Untouchables, p. 427). 

Brian Moore, as we have seen, was cen­tral to the ‘fit­ting-up’ of Ira Thomas, and the SIO in charge of the deeply flawed arrest and charg­ing of Brian Bulsara over the mur­der of Jill Dando. 

What sort of man put Brian Moore in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing cor­rup­tion of a group of offi­cers (at Stoke Newington Police Station), amongst whom he had worked, and where he had been involved in the ‘fit­ting up’ of a man who wrong­ly served 2½ years in prison for an offense he did not commit?

Clark entered the police force in 1967. During the 1980s he worked his way up at the thor­ough­ly cor­rupt Stoke Newington Police Station. Continue read­ing more here. https://​jill​hav​ern​.foru​mo​tion​.net/​t​9​4​5​7​-​a​-​b​i​o​g​r​a​p​h​y​-​o​f​-​h​a​m​i​s​h​-​c​a​m​p​b​e​l​l​-​t​h​e​-​m​a​n​-​c​h​o​s​e​n​-​t​o​-​h​e​a​d​-​o​p​e​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​g​r​a​n​g​e​#​2​4​1​343

A biography of Hamish Campbell, the man chosen to head Operation Grange

by Tony Bennett on 28.04.14 23:11

This arti­cle is an exam­i­na­tion of the man cho­sen as the Senior Investigating Officer for Operation Grange, the review of the dis­ap­pear­ance of Madeleine McCann. Its remit was even­tu­al­ly prised out of the Metropolitan Police by means of a Freedom of Information Act ques­tion. It was:

“To exam­ine the [dis­ap­pear­ance of Madeleine McCann] and seek to deter­mine (as if the abduc­tion occurred in the UK) what addi­tion­al, new inves­tiga­tive approach­es we would take and which can assist the Portuguese author­i­ties in pro­gress­ing the matter….The ‘inves­tiga­tive review’ will be con­duct­ed with trans­paren­cy, open­ness, and thoroughness”.

Although when the inves­ti­ga­tion had been archived in Portugal two main alter­na­tives were sug­gest­ed — either abduc­tion, or the hid­ing of Madeleine’s body by her par­ents — those who set up Operation Grange were clear. From the Prime Minister to the Home Secretary to the then head of the Met, Sir Paul Stephenson, abduc­tion was the only hypoth­e­sis to be inves­ti­gat­ed. The review, as the Prime Minister’s spokesman clar­i­fied, was ‘to help the fam­i­ly’ (the McCanns).

Every police inves­ti­ga­tion or review of a seri­ous crime has an inves­ti­ga­tion coör­di­na­tor, known as the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), and a deputy, called the Investigating Officer (IO). The role of the SIO is to set an inves­ti­ga­tion strat­e­gy and to decide and obtain the resources he needs to do the work required – in this case, a review. The job of the IO is basi­cal­ly to car­ry out the agreed strat­e­gy and to direct operations.

Sir Paul Stephenson decid­ed to appoint one Hamish Campbell as the SIO, with an addi­tion­al require­ment for the SIO to present his report to one Simon Foy. Andy Redwood, a Detective Chief Inspector, was appoint­ed as the IO. Before long, Campbell and Redwood deter­mined that they would need a staff of around 35 to 40 to car­ry out the review.

The main pur­pose of this arti­cle is to look at the back­ground his­to­ry and con­nec­tions of Hamish Campbell.

The mur­der of Jill Dando

Seven years ago, on 28 April 2007, the McCanns set off from East Midlands Airport for their ill-fat­ed hol­i­day in the Portuguese Algarve resort of Praia da Luz.

It was also on 28 April, 15 years ago, in 1999, that TV Crimewatch pre­sen­ter Jill Dando was shot dead at point-blank range in a killing that had all the hall­marks of a pro­fes­sion­al con­tract killing.

Two indi­vid­u­als con­nect­ed with the inves­ti­ga­tion into the dis­ap­pear­ance of Madeleine McCann were also con­nect­ed with the inves­ti­ga­tion into the mur­der of Jill Dando.

They are:

Clarence Mitchell — who was at the time work­ing for the BBC as their senior crime reporter. He was appar­ent­ly the very first reporter at the scene of the crime, and cov­ered the inves­ti­ga­tion into Jill Dando’s mur­der in the months fol­low­ing her death

Hamish Campbell — who was the investigation’s IO — placed in charge of the day-to-day inves­ti­ga­tion into Jill Dando’s mur­der in 1999. He was pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for the arrest and charg­ing of Barry Bulsara, known also as ‘Barry George’, with the mur­der of Dando. Bulsara was sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment for mur­der­ing Jill Dando but sub­se­quent­ly acquit­ted, sev­en years lat­er, on appeal.

Years lat­er…

Clarence Mitchell, three days after Madeleine McCann was report­ed miss­ing, was asked by the Prime Minister Tony Blair to cease his full-time job as Head of the Media Monitoring Unit and work full-time on pub­lic rela­tions and rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment for the McCanns

and

Hamish Campbell was appoint­ed in May 2011 as the SIO for Operation Grange, the review — now re-inves­ti­ga­tion — into the dis­ap­pear­ance of Madeleine McCann being con­duct­ed by Scotland Yard.

This arti­cle will also exam­ine aspects of the back­ground of Ian Horrocks, the ex-detec­tive, hailed as one of Britain’s fore­most inves­ti­ga­tors, who was sent out to the Algarve by Rupert Murdoch’s Sun news­pa­per in February 2012 and deliv­ered reports to the Sun and SKY NEWS back­ing the McCanns’ abduc­tion claims and heav­i­ly crit­i­cis­ing the Portuguese police.

The Jill Dando inves­ti­ga­tion was run out of Belgravia Police Station, London. So is Operation Grange.

Here are some basic facts about the ill-fat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion into Jill Dando’s death, led by Hamish Campbell:

A. It was car­ried out at the time the McPherson report on the mur­der of Stephen Lawrence had been pub­lished. The Metropolitan Police was dis­graced by that report. Scotland Yard’s rep­u­ta­tion was in tatters.

B. Barry Bulsara was wrong­ly con­vict­ed by a jury and served sev­er­al years in jail for an offense he didn’t commit.

C. The only foren­sic evi­dence against him was a speck of firearms residue said to have been ‘found’ in his coat pocket.

D. Cliff Richard, a friend of Jill Dando, was inter­viewed ‘a num­ber of times’ by the police inves­ti­gat­ing Dando’s killing.

E. No-one apart from Barry Bulsara has ever been charged with killing Jill Dando. Her killer, and any­body who may have hired the killer, remain at large.

F. The main the­o­ry, put for­ward repeat­ed­ly by the police them­selves and reg­u­lar­ly in the main­stream media, is that a Serbian hit-man car­ried out the attack in revenge for NATO bomb­ing the TV sta­tion in Belgrade.

G. A sec­ond the­o­ry, with some cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence to back it up, is that Dando was mur­dered by a hit-man on the instruc­tions of a career crim­i­nal and drugs lord Kenneth Noye.

H. A third the­o­ry, with – as far as I am aware – no evi­dence to back it up, is that Dando had become aware of a high-lev­el pedophile ring, and was killed by hit-man act­ing on behalf of one of the country’s secu­ri­ty forces.

The Dando inves­ti­ga­tion and the role of Hamish Campbell

In November 1999, a detec­tive named Brian Moore was pro­mot­ed from the rank of Detective Superintendent (DS) to Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS). At the same time, he left a top secret and very cor­rupt intel­li­gence unit, CIB3, known as ‘The Untouchables’. The cor­rupt nature of ‘The Untouchables’ is dealt with at length in a book of the same name by Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn, pub­lished in late 2004, near­ly 10 years ago. Michael Gillard has recent­ly been at the cen­ter of expos­es in the nation­al print media about exten­sive cor­rup­tion at the heart of the Metropolitan Police Force. He has researched links between very senior offi­cers in the Met, and a num­ber of lead­ing drugs lords.

Brian Moore’s first job in his new role as DCS was to take over the fal­ter­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, code­named ‘Operation Oxborough’, into the mur­der of Jill Dando. He became the inves­ti­ga­tion coör­di­na­tor, or ‘Senior Investigating Officer’ (SIO), on 6 December 1999. By this time, Dando had been dead for over 7 months. In this respect, his role matched that of Dr Goncalo Amaral, who head­ed up and co-ordi­nat­ed the ini­tial inves­ti­ga­tion into Madeleine McCann’s dis­ap­pear­ance, before he was removed from the inves­ti­ga­tion less than four weeks after he had made the McCanns for­mal sus­pects in the dis­ap­pear­ance of Madeleine.

Moore appoint­ed Hamish Campbell as his day-to-day chief inves­ti­ga­tor, or ‘Investigating Officer’ (IO).

Prior to the appoint­ment of Moore and Campbell to run the case, the inves­ti­ga­tion had found noth­ing of inter­est, despite over 7 months on the case. The Met had thou­sands of reg­is­tered infor­mants. Not one of them had come up with any infor­ma­tion at all about who might have killed Jill Dando and why. A reward of £250,000 for infor­ma­tion (about £½ mil­lion today) had pro­duced noth­ing. Operation Oxborough had inter­viewed in depth Dando’s fam­i­ly, friends, lovers (of whom there had been many) and col­leagues. As Gillard and Flynn cor­rect­ly observed in their book (p. 428), “The mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion was at an impasse”.

All that was to change once Moore and Campbell took over the investigation.

As an aside, there was a sig­nif­i­cant amount of at least low-lev­el cor­rup­tion at Belgravia Police Station at the time. Belgravia Police Station is close to Harrods, owned by Al-Fayed. Al-Fayed did favors for Belgravia-based police offi­cers. Police offi­cers returned the favors. Indeed, there was already an anti-cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tion at that time into the so-called ‘Hamper Squad’, a group of Belgravia-based offi­cers who would arrest and harass any­one, includ­ing his own employ­ees, sus­pect­ed of aid­ing and abet­ting his bit­ter busi­ness ene­my, Lonrho tycoon ‘Tiny’ Rowland. The greedy offi­cers had a con­tin­u­ous sup­ply of free ham­pers and huge dis­counts on Harrods goods. Indeed, one hon­est offi­cer, Bob Loftus, gave the anti-cor­rup­tion unit the actu­al names of police offi­cers who had accept­ed these bribes. No police offi­cer, how­ev­er, was ever pros­e­cut­ed for these crim­i­nal offenses.

At the time, Al-Fayed owned the now-defunct satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, Punch. Officers also leaked details of the Dando inves­ti­ga­tion to Punch, prompt­ing a leak inquiry.

By March 2000, the team of Moore-&-Campbell was hom­ing in on Barry Bulsara, though quite why they did so is unclear. He was an obses­sion­al and delud­ed lon­er, fas­ci­nat­ed with him­self, and lived in a pig-sty. There was no evi­dence that he was capa­ble of car­ry­ing out a cold-blood­ed, pro­fes­sion­al killing, though he did have an inter­est in guns. Eleven days before the anniver­sary of Jill Dando’s death, Bulsara’s flat was searched, and a blue Cecil Gee over­coat was seized.

At the same time, main­stream media crime cor­re­spon­dents were briefed that the inves­ti­ga­tion had iden­ti­fied an obses­sive lon­er as the pro­file most like­ly to have com­mit­ted the crime. This seemed at odds with a killing at point-blank range, appar­ent­ly with a sawn-off shot­gun fit­ted with a silencer.

DCI Hamish Campbell appeared on Crimewatch to rein­force in the public’s mind that it was an obses­sive lon­er they were look­ing for. He asked for the public’s help in iden­ti­fy­ing such a person.

It was a full 15 days after the Cecil Gee coat was seized that it was tak­en to a Mr. Robin Keeley of the Forensic Science Service on 2 May 2000. That 15-day delay has nev­er been explained. He then found a sin­gle speck of firearm residue inside the left pock­et, and said that it was con­sis­tent with the type of firearm used to kill Dando. This was to form the crux of the case against Bulsara, even though no oth­er firearm residue or tools for mod­i­fy­ing guns were found in his flat. At his tri­al at the Old Bailey in May 2001, pros­e­cu­tion bar­ris­ter Orlando Pownall claimed it was ‘com­pelling evi­dence of Bulsara’s guilt’.

During the tri­al, it emerged that dur­ing the foren­sic pro­ce­dure, Bulsara’s coat was first of all tak­en to a police stu­dio where it was pho­tographed on a tailor’s dum­my. Firearms had pre­vi­ous­ly been pho­tographed at the same stu­dio, rais­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of acci­den­tal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. This extra­or­di­nary deci­sion, accord­ing to Detective Sergeant Andy Rowell, was made by DCI Hamish Campbell. Campbell lat­er denied this, but since he was the IO, this con­vinced no-one.

As we now know, Bulsara was con­vict­ed. He appealed against con­vic­tion, but his first appeal was reject­ed in July 2002. He appealed again in 2008 — and this time his appeal succeeded.

In April 2010 it emerged that the Ministry of Justice had denied Barry’s claim of £1.4 mil­lion compensation.

The deci­sion was made by Jack Straw, Justice Secretary at the time. A High Court appli­ca­tion for com­pen­sa­tion was also refused, with judges reject­ing his claim that the Justice Secretary had ‘unfair­ly and unlaw­ful­ly decid­ed he was not inno­cent enough’. A year lat­er, a fur­ther claim was turned down when High Court judges ruled: “There was indeed a case upon which a rea­son­able jury, prop­er­ly direct­ed, could have con­vict­ed the claimant of murder.”

The ques­tion obvi­ous­ly arose as to whether the police might have fab­ri­cat­ed the case against Bulsara by delib­er­ate­ly plac­ing a speck of firearm residue in his coat pock­et. This sug­ges­tion has been giv­en added cred­i­bil­i­ty by the involve­ment of DCS Brian Moore, the SIO in this case, in anoth­er case of a man being fit­ted up — Ira Thomas.

Given that senior Met offi­cers chose Brian Moore to act as the SIO in the case of Jill Dando’s mur­der, it is instruc­tive to look at his major role in anoth­er case where it was accept­ed that an inno­cent man had been ‘fit­ted up’.

TALKING ABOUT CORRUPTION

In 1987 pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor Daniel Morgan was report­ed to be on the verge of reveal­ing extreme­ly dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion of mas­sive cor­rup­tion in the Metropolitan Police.
Mr. Morgan, was found in a pub car park with an Axe buried in his head in 1987.
According to the Telegraph​.com Mr Morgan’s mur­der was the sub­ject of a long-run­ning and com­plex inves­ti­ga­tion. Thousands of lines of inquiry were pur­sued and over three-quar­ters of a mil­lion doc­u­ments exam­ined. No-one was brought to jus­tice despite five police inquiries and three years of legal hear­ings, esti­mat­ed to have cost around £30 mil­lion. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed in 2008 but two, includ­ing a for­mer detec­tive accused of per­vert­ing jus­tice, were dis­charged after a string of super­grass­es were discredited.

INDECOM’s own Hamish Campbell who was Detective Chief Superintendent at the time and a senior Scotland Yard detec­tive, apol­o­gized to Mr. Morgan’s fam­i­ly after the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case against the remain­ing three sus­pects, admit­ting that police cor­rup­tion was a “debil­i­tat­ing fac­tor”.

In May of 2013 then Home Secretary and Now Prime Minister Theresa May ordered an inquiry into the killing of mis­ter Morgan.
Two years after the Inquiry was ordered Metropolitan Police had not turned over a sin­gle doc­u­ment to investigators.

A senior back­bench MP also crit­i­cized the Metropolitan police, blam­ing the force for delay­ing the start of the inquiry. Labor MP Tom Watson said: “It is extra­or­di­nary that a case involv­ing police cor­rup­tion has tak­en near­ly two years to yield even a sin­gle doc­u­ment. Even for the Met, it is a remark­able state of affairs.“They are clear­ly refus­ing to coöper­ate with an inquiry that is in the pub­lic inter­est and has the author­i­ty of the home secretary.”

Since Hamish Campbell could not get a con­vic­tion in a case involv­ing his very own col­leagues who have been accused of mur­der and mas­sive cor­rup­tion, includ­ing fail­ure to act as it relates to a legit­i­mate Inquiry Order from the home sec­re­tary, what makes him qual­i­fied or com­pe­tent to inves­ti­gate cops in Jamaica?
Speaking to Nationwide News in October of 2016 Hamish Campbell told reporters that DCP Glenmore Hinds com­ments were shame­ful, dis­ap­point­ing and untrue.
Hinds had told the Parliamentary com­mit­tee that Terrence Williams INDECOM com­mis­sion­er had been problematic.

I sub­mit that it was the fail­ure of Hamish Campbell to bring his own col­leagues to jus­tice which was shameful.
It was Hamish Campbell’s action in the case of Ira Thomas the black accused which was not only shame­ful, but I sub­mit rep­re­hen­si­ble, to say the least.,

Nevertheless, Hamish Campbell is now on the pay­roll of the Jamaican peo­ple, he could not bring any of the high pro­file cas­es he was tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing to an appro­pri­ate conclusion.
Campbell nev­er once acknowl­edged the deep cor­rup­tion which has been endem­ic in the Metropolitan Police. He is how­ev­er in Jamaica pass­ing judg­ment on Police officers.
So this writer ask, what is it which impressed the Government of Jamaica about Campbell, out­side, of course, the col­or of his skin?

THIS IS NOT CRIME, THEY HAVE DECLARED WAR ON THE JAMAICAN STATE.

Admit it or chose to cover it up, but there is one truth that cannot be denied, Jamaica is on a collision course with anarchy.
Anarchy is a precursor to, and an advanced component of a failed state.

Now let me be real clear for the faux patri­ots who believe that point­ing out what ails our coun­try is tan­ta­mount to air­ing dirty linen in public.
I do not give a rats back­side about what you think.
If you believe sweep­ing the dirt under the rug means you have a clean house that’s on you .
It’s just not a the­o­ry to which I subscribe.
Let me dis­abuse oth­ers of your ilk who believe that because you did not get a visa to leave the coun­try , or that you chose to stay home gives you a monop­oly on patriotism .
To you I say, get over your stu­pid selves.
Those who make those argu­ments are com­pa­ra­ble to a man who stepped in s**t and got so accus­tomed to the stench he can no longer smell it.

In the course of just this week there have been report­ed high pro­file kid­nap­pings, Murder of police offi­cers and even the use of grenades in response to police attempts to arrest want­ed murderers.
This is not busi­ness as usu­al!
This means that the stakes have been raised and they haven’t been raised by the Government.
Not only are they killing our police offi­cers with high pow­ered weapons, we have a Government agency whose sole man­date is to seek to imprison offi­cers who fight back using their weapons. We now have the crim­i­nal under­world lob­bing grenades at our police offi­cers, and the Government is death­ly silent.

This is an alarm­ing esca­la­tion in the war against the rule of law.
Yet nei­ther the Prime Minister the Minister of National Security nor the Opposition par­ty held a press con­fer­ence to address this esca­la­tion.

The JLP Government is death­ly silent . The Opposition PNP is sin­gu­lar­ly pre­oc­cu­pied devis­ing schemes to get back state pow­er so they may get their grub­by lit­tle klep­to­ma­ni­ac fin­gers on state money.
As our police offi­cers are wound­ed and mur­dered with high pow­ered weapons and oth­er weapons which belong only on bat­tle­fields, the inept Government con­tin­ue to pre­tend that the plat­i­tudes it has uttered thus far since tak­ing office are enough smoke screen up the nation’s ass ‚to divert from the stark real­i­ty that it came to office with no desire to do a damn thing about crime.

In the mean­time I am yet to hear of a cor­re­spond­ing press con­fer­ence from Terrence Williams the tool Bruce Golding and the PNP gave to the nation, which they unequiv­o­cal­ly knew would cause an esca­la­tion in crime.

Those of you who are clear eyed about con­tem­po­rary events will recall that it was just two weeks ago that the lying self-serv­ing snake Terrence Williams called a Press Conference at his Dumfies Road Office to lament the fact that police shoot­ings had gone up for January/​February over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od of the past year.

What Lying Deceptive Terrence Williams Does Not Say Is Far More Substantive Than What He Actually Said…

What the decep­tive liar nev­er both­ered telling reporters at the time was that , not only had killings and oth­er crimes increased but that none of the killings by offi­cers were deemed to be bad shootings.
Remember it is Williams own Agency INDECOM which is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing all police shootings.
Since his office found no wrong­do­ing in the shoot­ings what was the pur­pose of his press con­fer­ence except to smear the JCF and gin up ani­mos­i­ty against the police?’
Rather than lament the increase in vio­lent crimes against women, lit­tle girls, and gen­er­al­ly all law abid­ing Jamaicans, Terrence the snake oil sales­man was engaged in dem­a­goguery against the police.
On March 1^st , I said that his Press con­fer­ence would cre­ate more ani­mus against the police fur­ther endan­ger­ing their lives.
I was right. 

Notice how silent he is with the death of these officers?
Notice how silent the gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion are as well?
Had ter­ror­ists used live grenades against police offi­cers in any oth­er coun­try it would have been huge news.
Things would come to a halt . There would have been a joint state­ment of sup­port for the secu­ri­ty forces .
Parliament would have been unit­ed against the forces of anarchy.

The British Parliament was unit­ed in sup­port for their coun­try and their police offi­cers against a sin­gle ter­ror­ist who used a knife and a vehi­cle to kill.
In Jamaica our offi­cers are injured and slaugh­tered using bat­tle­field weapons and it’s busi­ness as usual.
Smart peo­ple must now come to rec­og­nize that their Government does not care how many of them are killed.
Neither does their elect­ed offi­cials care about the dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion which has occurred.

The Jamaican peo­ple must decide whether they want INDECOM to remain while their sons daugh­ters moth­ers and wives are raped and mur­dered for Terrence Williams’ ego.
It’s up to the peo­ple to decide whether this Government is seri­ous about remov­ing this dan­ger­ous scourge of crime and ter­ror which is threat­en­ing to destroy them all.

Clarendon cop murdered in attempt to thwart robbery.

FRANKFIELD, Clarendon — A police­man was shot dead in Frankfield, Clarendon last night after he attempt­ed to inter­vene in a rob­bery while on his way home yes­ter­day. Reports from the police are that 37-year-old Corporal Kevin McLean was on his way home at about 7:40 pm when he wit­nessed men rob­bing two Chinese nation­als. McLean attempt­ed to inter­vene and the gun­men opened fire, hit­ting him. He was rushed to the hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead. McLean was assigned to the Chapelton police. Read more here http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​C​l​a​r​e​n​d​o​n​-​c​o​p​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​e​d​-​i​n​-​a​t​t​e​m​p​t​-​t​o​-​t​h​w​a​r​t​-​r​o​b​b​ery

Restaurant owners killed in Hanover triple murder.

HANOVER, Jamaica — Three peo­ple are dead and one injured after a shoot­ing at a restau­rant in the Dias com­mu­ni­ty of Kingsvale, Hanover last night. Initial reports from the police are that 47-year-old Marcia Johnson and her com­mon-law-hus­band Authur Noël Muir, 49, both of Clinic in Hanover were killed, along with anoth­er 49-year-old man, Peter Aitchison. Johnson and Muir owned the restau­rant, and Aitchison report­ed­ly oper­at­ed a near­by bar. An unnamed per­son was injured in the inci­dent, which took place around 9:00 pm. Read more here: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​R​e​s​t​a​u​r​a​n​t​-​o​w​n​e​r​s​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​i​n​-​H​a​n​o​v​e​r​-​t​r​i​p​l​e​-​m​u​r​der.

Police seek 26-y‑o in relation to St Ann grenade incident.

ST ANN, Jamaica — The police are this after­noon seek­ing a man impli­cat­ed in a grenade-throw­ing inci­dent on Thursday, in which a police sergeant was injured and an alleged gun­man killed. The police are seek­ing 26 year-old Sadan Lloyd Mullings of Elgin Town, Lucea in Hanover, who they say is want­ed in con­nec­tion with sev­er­al seri­ous crimes in west­ern Jamaica and St Ann.

The police are urg­ing Mullings to imme­di­ate­ly turn him­self in to the near­est police sta­tion. Reports are that about 9:00 pm last night a team of police from the Mobile Reserve and Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) was con­duct­ing oper­a­tions at Armadale, Alexandria in St Ann in search of men impli­cat­ed in the quadru­ple mur­der in Westmoreland on Saturday, March 18.
Ream more here: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​U​P​D​ATE – Police-seek-26-y-o-in-relation-to-St-Ann-grenade-incident

Business owner killed, 3 injured in employee pipe attack.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — One of the co-own­ers of a St Andrew fur­ni­ture store, Moncrieffe’s Patio Shop, is dead and three peo­ple injured fol­low­ing an attack by a male employ­ee at the estab­lish­ment today. Barbara Moncrieffe was con­firmed dead by police and her hus­band Vassell Moncrieffe, bet­ter known as ‘Teddy’, as well as two employ­ees, report­ed as being in hos­pi­tal for treat­ment. The police are yet to con­firm the details of the inci­dent but accord­ing to eye­wit­ness reports, the employ­ee came to the busi­ness place on Old Hope Road around 12:30 pm, where an alter­ca­tion ensued. The employ­ee in ques­tion, who is yet to be iden­ti­fied, was said to have used a bro­ken pipe to assault the four peo­ple for rea­sons unknown. Read more here: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​B​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​-​o​w​n​e​r​-​k​i​l​led – 3‑in­jured-in-employ­ee-pipe-attack.

Search On For Gunmen Who Attacked Police With Grenades, Injuring A Cop.

Sleuths have launched a hunt for a man who yes­ter­day hurled two grenades at a police team, injur­ing a cop, when they turned up to arrest him at a house in Armadale, Alexandria, St Ann. Assistant Police Commissioner Ealan Powell said the cops had gone to the house to arrest Sadan Mullings, also called ‘Saddam’, and his crony, Nickoy Treleven, who were both report­ed­ly want­ed for a string of mur­ders and shoot­ings in the west­ern parishes.

But just as police offi­cers sur­round­ed the house, call­ing to the men inside, the fugi­tives report­ed­ly threw two grenades from the build­ing and exit­ed with guns blaz­ing at the offi­cers. One of the grenades report­ed­ly failed to det­o­nate, while a police­man was injured by the oth­er, which jolt­ed the Alexandria com­mu­ni­ty from its sleep short­ly after mid­night. Treleven was found some dis­tance from the build­ing suf­fer­ing from gun­shot wounds. He lat­er died, said Powell.

ARMED AND DANGEROUS

“We are appeal­ing to Saddam to turn him­self in to the police by 6 p.m. tomor­row (today). And I want the pub­lic to know that he is a vicious and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal who should be avoid­ed,” Powell told The Gleaner yesterday.

“He is want­ed for sev­er­al mur­ders and is known to turn his back on his friends and even fam­i­ly,” con­tin­ued Powell, not­ing that the use of the grenades goes to show the “lev­el of vicious­ness and how armed and dan­ger­ous he is”.

Powell described the police­man’s injuries as seri­ous, but not life threat­en­ing. He con­firmed that an ille­gal gun was tak­en from the dead man’s body. He could not imme­di­ate­ly name the type of gun.

He said the men are orig­i­nal­ly from the Green Island dis­trict in Hanover and that their stomp­ing grounds includ­ed St James, Westmoreland and sur­round­ing envi­rons. Read more here : http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​3​2​5​/​s​e​a​r​c​h​-​g​u​n​m​e​n​-​w​h​o​-​a​t​t​a​c​k​e​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​g​r​e​n​a​d​e​s​-​i​n​j​u​r​i​n​g​-​cop

Cop Killed In Bustamante Highway Accident.

A fatal acci­dent along the Bustamante Highway in Clarendon has claimed the life of a police­man attached to the Spanish Town police division.

The acci­dent hap­pened some­time after 6 o’clock yes­ter­day evening. It is report­ed that the cop, who was dri­ving a black infin­i­ty motor car, alleged­ly over­took a line of traf­fic and failed to keep left. He then col­lid­ed into a truck, then lost con­trol of the vehi­cle and slammed into the back of a truck which was parked along the road. A team from the Clarendon fire depart­ment had to be called in to cut him from the car. He was then rushed to the May Pen hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead. Up to late last night his iden­ti­ty was being with­held. Read more here: http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​3​2​4​/​c​o​p​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​b​u​s​t​a​m​a​n​t​e​-​h​i​g​h​w​a​y​-​a​c​c​i​d​ent

Hunt On For Two Gunmen Who Kidnapped Manchester Businessmen.

The Manchester police have inten­si­fied their inves­ti­ga­tions into the kid­nap­ping of two busi­ness­men in the parish on Thursday. Both men were found unharmed and released after the police foiled the ran­som drop. One sus­pect was arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with the crime, while the police con­tin­ue the hunt for the two gun­men believed to be respon­si­ble. Head of the Manchester police, Superintendent Wayne Cameron, report­ed that the two busi­ness­men were held up by gun­men at a house and tak­en into bush­es. According to Cameron, one of the gun­men made con­tact with the wife of one of the busi­ness­men demand­ing a ran­som of $1 mil­lion. More here: http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​3​2​5​/​h​u​n​t​-​t​w​o​-​g​u​n​m​e​n​-​w​h​o​-​k​i​d​n​a​p​p​e​d​-​m​a​n​c​h​e​s​t​e​r​-​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​men

MONTEGO BAY, St James — Acting Commissioner of Police Novelette Grant has lashed out at peo­ple who warn wrong­do­ers of the police’s approach to their com­mu­ni­ties, in a scathing attack against res­i­dents who take the side of criminals.

“Don’t sig­nal to them (crim­i­nals). Don’t give par­alan­guage and sign lan­guage, and all kind of sounds in the com­mu­ni­ty, to tell them that we (police) are com­ing. Don’t do that because what you are doing is expos­ing your­self to even greater risks and dan­ger,“ the act­ing police com­mis­sion­er charged.

She also ques­tioned why cit­i­zens are so unwill­ing to com­mu­ni­cate what they know to the police when they can sur­rep­ti­tious­ly pass on infor­ma­tion through Crime Stop and the Stay Alert app.

“I am say­ing, why are com­mu­ni­ties being com­plic­it with crim­i­nals? You can’t be com­plic­it with crim­i­nals and turn around say who is going to pro­tect you because there are many avenues for you to report with­out hav­ing to put your­self out there. We have Crime Stop, and we have var­i­ous ways, we have Stay Alert app that we are ask­ing peo­ple to down­load. So we are not ask­ing you to jump up in the street and point on peo­ple,” she argued. Read more : http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​r​e​g​i​o​n​a​l​/​T​o​p​-​c​o​p​-​l​a​s​h​e​s​-​o​u​t​-​a​t​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​w​h​o​-​b​a​c​k​-​w​r​o​n​g​d​o​e​r​s​_​9​3​423

Newly assigned com­mand­ing offi­cer for the parish of Hanover Sharon Beeput recent­ly had this to say.

“It is our inten­tion to dis­man­tle the gangs oper­at­ing in our space”.
“I must inform that some mem­bers from those gangs [One Voice and One Link] have met their demise… Other mem­bers who are still asso­ci­at­ed with these gangs are still active with­in the spaces.”
“We do have a chal­lenge with the com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing. You might not have been see­ing them in your spaces reg­u­lar­ly, because we do have some resource chal­lenges of which the high com­mand is address­ing presently.
“Frequent raids in pub­lic spaces … just want you to be aware of this, that is going to happen.
She added that the police will also be dom­i­nat­ing pub­lic spaces such as the trans­port cen­ters and mar­kets, while fre­quent oper­a­tions tar­get­ing crim­i­nal sus­pects and oth­er per­sons of inter­est are also to continue.

Of course why not ?

Recent trends by the police, to police from behind desks, police through press releas­es, and of course oth­er car­toon style mea­sures like being DJ’s .This is what Jamaican Governments of both the JLP and the PNP has done to the JCF.

Total emas­cu­la­tion of our once proud police Force, the JCF was a force for good it is now reduced to a pathet­ic paper tiger wor­thy of ridicule and scorn.

Terrorism across the Globe is now a com­mon occurrence,just yes­ter­day ter­ror struck in the heart of London.
If we set aside the dai­ly slaugh­ter on the Island and ask our­selves what hap­pens if there is a major ter­ror attack on the Island ?Would this cast of car­toon char­ac­ters be the ones investigating?

Are we to believe that we are insu­lat­ed as a Nation to the point we should allow our­selves to be this woe­ful­ly unpre­pared to deal with attacks ?
There is noth­ing which pre­cludes us from an attack , lets wrap our minds around that fact for a sec­ond . Even if our pol­i­tics have not earned us any ene­mies who want to kill us, there are nations who have ene­mies who have assets in Jamaica.
These assets may become tar­gets for those who would use vio­lence as a means of set­tling grudges and disputes.

Gangs have lit­er­al­ly tak­en over our coun­try. They traf­fic in arms and drugs. They extort cit­i­zens. The sell young girls into slavery.
They rape and mur­der young girls and women at will. They break lit­er­al­ly every law with impunity .
Yet the Government has spent much of it efforts in com­ing up with strate­gies to fur­ther shack­le the Island’s police offi­cers under the guise of human rights.

Where will the lead­er­ship come from which will say “we will dis­man­tle these gangs” , and mean it?
Merely say­ing we know the gangs and “they are wreak­ing hav­oc in the pub­lic spaces” is a joke if you do not have the means or the know how to dis­man­tle them.

Don’t you just love the new ways of speak­ing , the repeat­ed use of the term “spaces”, which real­ly does zero to allay the fears of residents.……But I digress.
One of the things which have become abun­dant­ly clear is the fact that the JCF has not got­ten bet­ter as a result of a mas­sive influx of UWI graduates.
No one will argue that they are not more stush and pol­ished. No one can argue with their abil­i­ty to pick up on new terms to bol­ster their vocabularies.
The ques­tion is , how has this helped the coun­try in bend­ing the arc of crime?

Policing requires smart well trained ded­i­cat­ed and com­mit­ted people.
In the same way that there was harsh crit­i­cisms of ded­i­cat­ed police offi­cers with lit­tle to no edu­ca­tion, the same is jus­ti­fied with the new pack of so-called edu­cat­ed who have zero ded­i­ca­tion, lack of desire to do the job, or even the abil­i­ty to do it.
At least many of the poor­ly edu­cat­ed big foot police offi­cers were hard work­ing men and women who knew where to sniff out crim­i­nals and they damn sure knew how to keep crime down.

On a note of interest.……
I am inter­est­ed to learn just how exact­ly will this senior offi­cer dis­man­tle these gangs?
Last Year the Minister of National Security Robert Montague list­ed a set of prin­ci­ples he believes are nec­es­sary to dis­man­tle and elim­i­nate crim­i­nal Gangs.
Those prin­ci­ples are as follows:
1. Effective polic­ing through part­ner­ship with citizens.
2. Crime pre­ven­tion through social development.
3. Situational pre­ven­tion to reduce oppor­tu­ni­ties for crime and vio­lence based on the posi­tion that the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment must be planned, designed and man­aged for safety.
4. Sure and swift jus­tice process­es to avoid delays in appre­hen­sion, pro­longed pros­e­cu­tions and dilut­ed pun­ish­ment which dis­cour­age law enforcer.
5. Reduction in re-offend­ing, by redi­rect­ing offend­ers to become pro­duc­tive, law abid­ing citizens.

Here’s my take you be the judge..

(1)In order to dis­man­tle gangs the first order of busi­ness is to give unequiv­o­cal sup­port to our law-enforce­ment offi­cers and prosecutors.
(2)laws which gives pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment offi­cers a leg up in tying gang relat­ed crim­i­nal activ­i­ty togeth­er as a crim­i­nal enter­prise as the Rico statute does.(see Rico statute, https://​www​.hg​.org/​r​i​c​o​-​l​a​w​.​h​tml).
(3) Attach strict penal­ties to breach­es of anti-gang laws, and oth­er crimes which may be asso­ci­at­ed with gang activity.
(4) Improve the pros­e­cu­tion time­lines which allows courts to try offend­ers with­ing a year after they are arrested.
(5)Detailed gang intel­li­gence data collection.
(6) Attach spe­cial­ly trained Investigators to inves­ti­gate gang affil­i­a­tions and have spe­cial pros­e­cu­tors to pros­e­cute them.
(7) Anti-gang leg­is­la­tion must be such that poten­tial offend­ers are scared to even be accused of gang activity.

Unless we make crime a thing poten­tial offend­ers are afraid to com­mit, they will con­tin­ue to com­mit crimes.
I am dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to the notion that crime, and in par­tic­u­lar Gang activ­i­ty is a deriv­a­tive of pover­ty and poor socio eco­nom­ic conditions.
Sure pover­ty forces peo­ple to steal to sur­vive. Sure pover­ty forces peo­ple to hus­tle to survive.
I am yet to hear a cohe­sive argu­ment from the lib­er­als who argue that gang activ­i­ty and mur­der is a deriv­a­tive of poverty.
As I have said before, a sim­ple response to that line of rea­son­ing is that there are nations which are far more impov­er­ished, than Jamaica, and which has far low­er stan­dards of liv­ing yet they have expo­nen­tial­ly less seri­ous crimes.

Yesterday I spoke to the need for sim­ple work­able solu­tions to Jamaica’s seri­ous crime prob­lem. In that arti­cle I sug­gest­ed some­what euphemisti­cal­ly, that lead­ers sim­ply fix the prob­lems and ditch the over­ly grandiose ideas.

In the Article I used the sto­ry of the lit­tle dutch boy who saw a small breech in a Dyke and decid­ed that he would stick his fin­ger into the hole to stop the leak.
So he sim­ply and smart­ly just just stuck his fin­ger in . Just as he thought the water stopped flow­ing in. The down­side was that he was now stuck there until help arrived.
Help did arrive , in the form of one of the town’s lead­ers who stood by grand­ly while the child risked hypothermia.

More town elders arrived , the result of more grown-ups did not how­ev­er fix the dyke they grand­stand­ed about how the leak should be plugged and by whom.. Sound familiar?
Sufficing to say that was not the end of the sto­ry, but the fable apt­ly describes our coun­try and the way things.…. well ‚end up not get­ting done.

Addressing the nation’s Parliament on Tuesday Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the Nation that his admin­is­tra­tion is once again unveil­ing yet anoth­er plan to address crime.
Those of us who fol­low the day to day occur­rences as it relates to crime have one response to this anoth­er crime plan, we roll our eyes.
Calling for bipar­ti­san sup­port Holness out­lined his admin­is­tra­tion’s lat­est ini­tia­tive on crime .

The most com­pre­hen­sive of the Bills — The Law Reform (Zones of Special Operations) (Special Security and Community Development Measures) — will give mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) essen­tial pow­ers, which the Government believes are nec­es­sary in address­ing seri­ous crimes, while uphold­ing the rule of law and pro­tect­ing the fun­da­men­tal rights of citizens.
The prime min­is­ter called for bipar­ti­san sup­port for the Bill, which seeks to estab­lish a legal frame­work in which the prime min­is­ter, act­ing on the advice of the National Security Council, may declare any high-crime area of Jamaica a zone for spe­cial secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions and com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment measures.

With all due def­er­ence to the esteemed Prime Minister and his admin­is­tra­tion, the prob­lem in our coun­try may hard­ly be attrib­uted to a lack of laws to pun­ish murderers.
The will and tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude to say to crit­ics of police tac­tics , “shut your mouths “is where that attri­bu­tion belong.
The lack of will to stand behind good police offi­cers as they do their jobs is wor­thy of that attribution.
Continuing to give cre­dence to the non­sense that tough polic­ing is syn­ony­mous to vio­lat­ing civ­il and human rights is stu­pid­i­ty of the worst order and a capit­u­la­tion to the forces of darkness.

The Jamaican Prime Minister a prod­uct of the far left lean­ing University of the West Indies can hard­ly be count­ed on to under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of crime, it’s crip­pling con­se­quences and reper­cus­sions on nations, and the sim­ple yet res­olute solu­tions which are required to solve them.

The issue of crime may be explained sim­ply as two sep­a­rate hous­es with two sep­a­rate occupants.

SCENARIO#1

The occu­pant of house num­ber one makes his bed each morn­ing before leav­ing for work. He wash­es every­thing he uses and places stuff he uses back into their right­ful places.
At the end of each day occu­pant num­ber one places the garbage in it’s recep­ta­cle in it’s allot­ted place at the back of his house.
His home is always pris­tine, he is proud to show off his home to friends when they vis­it . Never mind that he nev­er has to both­er hav­ing a spe­cial clean­ing in order to invite friends into his home.

SCENARIO#2

Occupant of house num­ber two gets up does not make his bed, does not wash dish­es he uses , he sim­ply drops tow­els, food wrap­pers, and oth­er garbage on his floors.
His kitchen sink is always filled with dirty dish­es . The garbage con­tain­er in his kitchen is filled with refuse , spilling over onto the filthy dirty floors.
On his walls Cockroaches, Ants and oth­er insects crawl leisure­ly and freely ‚filled from the food he leaves all over the house.
He would like to bring vis­i­tors into his home but he is ashamed. He has a desire to see a clean house but lacks the will to clean up the filth ‚so he does noth­ing and the prob­lem grows more severe.

CONCLUSION

There is no need to have a major cleanup if you sim­ply put things in place as the need arise. There is no need for a mon­u­men­tal effort if you put the garbage in it’s place:
If you fail to secure the refuse and place it out­side in it’s assigned recep­ta­cle , you can be sure that Cockroaches and Termites are going to take over your house.

For decades those charged with tak­ing care of the Jamaican house sat idly by refus­ing to put out the garbage.
In fact it could log­i­cal­ly, truth­ful­ly and rea­son­ably be argued they invit­ed garbage in.
No mat­ter how stink the garbage got they refused to lift a fin­ger. They saw the Cockroaches and the Ants , they saw the Termites and still they did noth­ing because they liked the stench and the disorder.

The lack of tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude to put out the garbage has caused the Termites to take over the house . Now some want to embark on a major cleanup, but they need help.
So they call to oth­ers to help, though under­stand­ably their calls will not gen­er­ate a pos­i­tive response because it’s sim­ply too much work and they have oth­er things to do.

The ques­tion now is, whether there is enough will to do the nec­es­sary cleanup and fumi­ga­tion work, which would ren­der the house fit for human habi­ta­tion again.
Or whether the option is sim­ply to aban­don the house to the Cockroaches and Termites?

They could have sim­ply cleaned the house.……

In the short several days since Junior Justice Minister Pearnel Charles Jnr. announced tougher scrutiny in the nation’s penal institutions the Jamaica Observer reports there has been several instances of correctional officers attempting to smuggle mobile phones and other digital devices into prison facilities.This resulted in four correctional officers from the Tower Street Adult Correctional Facility being arrested and 36 mobile phones seized.

I am high­ly crit­i­cal of the Government struc­ture and the way it goes about exe­cut­ing it’s man­date. The rea­son I am hyper crit­i­cal is not that I am nec­es­sar­i­ly con­tentious or that I believe there aren’t tough chal­lenges in run­ning a country.
But from a prag­mat­ic stand­point I believe we could have had a bet­ter more pros­per­ous nation had those entrust­ed with it’s direc­tion been more judi­cious with their charge.

I crit­i­cize because as a young man I too stepped for­ward in ser­vice to my coun­try. It was a chal­lenge I was gid­dy about accept­ing when I put my uni­form on and stepped out onto the streets as a police offi­cer. I served with hon­or and dis­tinc­tion even tak­ing a bul­let in the process.
The priv­i­lege to serve has been one of the high hon­ors of my life.

We can­not fix all of the things all at once, but we can fix some of the things one at a time one day at a time.
I humbly sub­mit the fable nar­rat­ed by Dr. H. Albertus Boli, one which I read and fell in love with as a grade School stu­dent in North East St. Catherine.
It is the sto­ry of the lit­tle dutch boy who saved Holland.

A LITTLE BIT OF METAPHOR…

Once there was a little Dutch boy who discovered a leak in the dike.
What should he do? From a single leak, a terrible breach might grow. The whole country could be flooded, and everyone he knew would drown. So he did the only thing he could think of. He stuck his finger in the dike, and the leak stopped.

Of course, now he was stuck. He couldn’t move, because as soon as he did, the leak would start again. So he stood there for quite some time. He was rather tired, and his finger felt a bit numb from the effort of holding back the North Sea, but he knew he was doing his duty. At last the Burgomaster happened to pass by. “Young man,” he said with a certain amount of sternness, “why are you poking your finger in the dike?” “I am stopping a leak,” the boy explained. “I saw the dike leaking, so I stuck my finger in the hole.”
“Heroic boy!” the Burgomaster exclaimed. “You shall be rewarded! Meanwhile, keep your finger there while I call the Burghers together.”

So the Burgomaster called a meeting of the Burghers, and they agreed that the boy had heroically saved Holland. “And now,” the Burgomaster asked, “what shall we do about the leak?” “It seems to me,” one of the Burghers replied, “that private enterprise has already found an admirable solution to the problem. The boy has stuck his finger in the dike, and the leak has stopped. You might describe it as voluntary self-regulation. There is no need for expensive government action.”

So the Burghers voted to award the boy a Certificate of Good Citizenship, which the Burgomaster was delighted to be able to present to him the next day. “Thank you,” the boy said politely, “but I still have my finger in this dike.” “And we appreciate that,” the Burgomaster replied. “I may confidently speak for the whole Council of Burghers in saying that your heroic action is universally admired.” So the boy stood there with his finger in the dike for a few more days. It was not long, however, before another leak sprang in the dike, a little bit farther down the way.

“What shall we do?” the Burgomaster asked the Burghers. “There is another leak.” “As private enterprise has so admirably solved the previous problem,” one of the Burghers responded, “the solution to this new leak is obvious. We need only persuade another heroic boy to stick his finger in it.” So they went into the local school and found another boy who, after much persuasion, was willing to stick his finger in the dike. It was, however, only a few days later that two more leaks appeared. This time it was much harder to persuade boys to stick their fingers in the holes; and when, a week later, half a dozen more leaks appeared, no volunteers were to be found. “What shall we do?” the Burgomaster asked the Council. “Private enterprise seems no longer to be adequate. We may have to repair the dike itself this time.”

“Nonsense,” said one of the Burghers. “The solution that worked before will work again. We must simply force private enterprise into action.” So the Council visited the school and dragged a number of young boys by the ears to the dike, where they were forced to plug the leaks with their fingers. But the dike, which was old and poorly maintained, continued to spring new leaks here and there, so that it was all the Burghers could do to find more boys to plug up the leaks with their fingers. At last the Burghers compelled every little boy in the Low Countries to stick his finger in a hole. All economic activity came to a halt, as it is well known that young boys are the leading consumers of skates and cheese, on which the economy of Holland depended at that time.

“What shall we do?” the Burgomaster asked the Council. “We have run out of heroic little boys. At this rate, we may have to plug the leaks with our own fingers.” “That would be moderately inconvenient,” one of the Burghers remarked. So the Council voted to remove the North Sea by digging a new seabed somewhere in Germany; and they voted themselves a number of solid gold spades, befitting their dignity, for the purpose. And if you go to suburban Wilhelmshaven right now, and look into the field to your right as you drive westward on the Friedenstrasse, you will see a number of Dutch burghers very busy with their spades, trying to dig a new bed for the North Sea. It is lucky for them that the people of Wilhelmshaven have mistaken the burghers for a party of archaeologists looking for ancient Saxon remains, which has allowed them to continue the work uninterrupted. https://​drboli​.word​press​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​3​/​0​6​/​t​h​e​-​l​i​t​t​l​e​-​d​u​t​c​h​-​b​o​y​-​w​h​o​-​s​a​v​e​d​-​h​o​l​l​a​nd/

There is much to assim­i­late from this piece of fic­tion. In fact it is an appose depic­tion of life imi­tat­ing art , at least as far as my con­cerns are as it relates to our country.
The lit­tle boy did his job, much the same way each aver­age Joe gets up and does his in our coun­try each and every day.

They are not the prob­lem, a clos­er look at the actions of the Burgomasters gives one a clear-eyed, yet less than osten­ta­tious per­spec­tive of how we become our own worst ene­mies when we should sim­ply act, but fail to do so.
Our coun­try is a small bit of land, 4411 square miles with about 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple, it has it’s fair share of chal­lenges , none of which are insurmountable.

Like the brave lit­tle boy who ini­tial­ly stuck his hand in the Dyke to save his coun­try, so too has aver­age Jamaicans arisen to the task of Nation-building.
For decades aver­age Jamaicans have stuck their fin­gers in the Dyke plug­ging the leaks as they wait for the Burgomasters to act so they can extri­cate their fin­gers from the hypother­mic cold.
And as the Burgomasters asked the boy, and even­tu­al­ly all boys ‚to sac­ri­fice and sac­ri­fice more, even as they them­selves dither and pon­tif­i­cate, so has our nation’s lead­ers reneged on their respon­si­bil­i­ties while aver­age Jamaicans toil in vain.

Instead of sim­ply plug­ging the Dyke our lead­ers have stood by, much the same way the Burgomasters did, adopt­ing grandiose unten­able solu­tions instead of sim­ply plug­ging the dyke.
Therein lies our problem.

Once again ter­ror­ists killers have struck snuff­ing out the lives of 4 men in the Parish of Westmoreland.

According to Reporting four men on two motor­cy­cles rode up to a pop­u­lar cook-shop in the District of Bath Westmoreland at about 9.00pm where the four vic­tims were and opened fire.

Dead are 68-year-old tyre repair­man Glendon Nanan; 54-year-old ‘Duco man’ Carl Banhan; 24-year-old labour­er Timothy Bernard; and 19-year-old Dimario McIntosh, who is unem­ployed — all of Bath dis­trict, Westmoreland.
The police have yet to estab­lish a motive for the killings.

At this stage of the game it has to be clear to all con­cerned about Jamaica that the killings are ter­ror­is­tic in nature.

They are designed to sow fear. More than that how­ev­er, is the sense of com­fort those who kill have ‚which allows them to kill with such impunity.

Lets set aside our dif­fer­ences on how crime should be addressed for a minute.

Or whether it should even be addressed at all.
I say the lat­ter because hav­ing dealt with this issue for 35 years, I am con­vinced that many who are part of the debate does not want the Island’s crime prob­lem solved because of their vest­ed inter­ests in it’s continuance.

At some point in time we all must come to a con­sen­sus, that no mat­ter the rea­sons for the blood­shed it is un-sustainable.

We have to con­clude that whether these peo­ple were bad peo­ple or not, killing them in that man­ner can hard­ly be the way we treat our own people.

Assuming that these four men whose ages range from old­er to hard­ly hav­ing lived, are inno­cent, we must say enough is enough.
We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to exter­mi­nate ourselves.

We can­not con­tin­ue to say peo­ple are only being killed because they are involved in lot­to-scam­ming, or that they are mind­ing oth­er peo­ple’s busi­ness , or that they looked at some­one the wrong way.
Using that log­ic who will be left in the end?
At what point does the Government ditch the failed strat­e­gy which has been in effect,. and place a boot ‑heel on this men­ace once and for all?

Or bet­ter yet ‚when will the Government dis­card the lib­er­al dog­ma which emanat­ed out of the University Campus of the West Indies ?

This Liberal cor­ner­stone of our process since the ear­ly 1970’s has been a colos­sal failure.

This failed sys­tem gives/​gave the ben­e­fit of the doubt to crim­i­nals , nur­ture and abet the worst among us , while giv­ing lit­tle or no sup­port to the rule, of law or those who enforce the laws.

We can­not con­tin­ue to speak to the issue of police cor­rup­tion with­out first under­stand­ing why we end up with a less than ide­al police department.
In order to arrive at that under­stand­ing we have to first acknowl­edge that it was the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship which was first cor­rupt, lead­ing to the cor­rup­tion of the var­i­ous arms of Government.

Our polit­i­cal struc­ture is rot­ten from the core out­ward. The empha­sis on the Police or the Registrar General’s Department are at best hypocritical.

Everyone knew that peo­ple could not send mon­ey in let­ters from over­seas because peo­ple who work in the Postal ser­vice opened the let­ters took the mon­ey and resealed the letters.

We all knew that no mat­ter how great a dri­ver you are, if you did not pay the Examiners you would not get a dri­ver’s licence.

Same is true at the Registrar General’s Department , don’t both­er try­ing to get a birth cer­tifi­cate if you have no mon­ey to pay for it.
Passport , same deal.
Literally every­thing which is part of Government’s func­tion has to be paid for again despite the tax­es we already paid.

People com­plained for decades about the cor­rup­tion of the Prison Warders , the Government did noth­ing, because whether JLP or PNP the politi­cians were steal­ing bil­lions so they did not care.
Ordinary peo­ple won­dered how could Customs Officers afford the lux­u­ri­ous homes and the fan­cy cars they drove.
We knew, and the Politicians knew, but they did not care, because much of the tax­a­tion levied by these agents end­ed up in their pock­ets through one nefar­i­ous scheme or another.

Remarkable the most vis­i­ble Antagonists against the Police are death­ly silent no mat­ter the amount of inno­cent blood shed.
There are no press con­fer­ences to announce their con­cern at the sense­less killings.
There is no hand-wring­ing, no lament­ing the amount of chil­dren left with­out their parents.
Because the ulti­mate aim is nev­er the pro­tec­tion of the inno­cent but the con­tin­ued shield­ing of the rights of accused and con­vict­ed murderers.

May God help our coun­try as it strug­gles to pull it’s col­lec­tive head from the dirt and it’s psy­che from igno­rance, mis­in­for­ma­tion and brainwashing.

Here again is the Police making statements !
How much longer can the police run this campaign of bravado without backing it up with results?
The police like every other entity has a duty to produce results, not make grand pronouncements and issue threats.
Of late all we have seen from the police are threats, warnings, and the issuance of gibberish.

So here we go again.……

In the wake of the cap­ture of one of the coun­try’s most want­ed in Portland, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Oneil ‘Merciless’ Thompson has issued a warn­ing to crim­i­nals seek­ing refuge in the peace­ful parish.

Thompson, who is in charge of oper­a­tions, said the police are well aware that crim­i­nal ele­ments, whose activ­i­ties have been dis­rupt­ed in oth­er parish­es as a result of hard work by law enforce­ment, have been head­ing to what they believe are safer grounds to set up shop and resume their ille­gal activ­i­ties and lifestyles.

“This parish is not a safe haven for killers, rob­bers, scam­mers, or any­one engag­ing in unlaw­ful activ­i­ties,” com­ment­ed Thompson.

“The police are on high alert and no crim­i­nal mind or those with links to crim­i­nal activ­i­ties will be enter­tained in this peace­ful parish. The hon­est and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens will con­tin­ue to enjoy the peace and tran­quil­li­ty that they are accus­tomed to; and no gun­man, rapist, extor­tion­ist, or those engaged in illic­it activ­i­ties will cause may­hem or anar­chy on lov­ing and car­ing res­i­dents,” he added. Sheniele Kemar Levy, unem­ployed of 9 Windward Road in Kingston, who is also known as ‘Reds’ or ‘Choppy’, was recap­tured in Muriton Pen, Long Road, Portland, on Tuesday. He is want­ed for mur­der, shoot­ing with intent, and abscond­ing bail. Read more @ http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​3​1​7​/​p​o​r​t​l​a​n​d​-​n​o​-​s​a​f​e​-​h​a​v​e​n​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​s​-​c​o​p​s​-​w​a​r​n​-​m​i​g​r​a​t​i​n​g​-​t​h​u​g​s​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​o​n​e​-​n​a​t​i​ons.

One of the more daunt­ing chal­lenges fac­ing the police in Jamaica is the rugged and hilly terrain.
Jamaica is a very moun­tain­ous coun­try. The rugged ter­rain lacks gen­er­al plan­ning, which ought to be in place to guide mod­ern com­mu­ni­ty cre­ation better.
In real­i­ty, peo­ple build struc­tures on their prop­er­ty, and the next per­son builds on his land, and before you know it, there is an unplanned com­mu­ni­ty. It’s not unusu­al to find beau­ti­ful homes on roads next to auto repair shops that spill out onto spaces where side­walks should be.
Alleyways, cul­verts, and arti­fi­cial gul­lies all form part of the mish-mosh of chaos: Jamaican urban and sub­ur­ban centers.
Even in cas­es where there are ele­ments of plan­ning, the result falls woe­ful­ly short of meet­ing mod­ern com­mu­ni­ty plan­ning standards.
The greater Portmore Area of Saint Catherine is a case study in what not to do. Yet, homes’ build­ing con­tin­ues unchecked using the same meth­ods, which present severe chal­lenges for first respon­ders and have become a breed­ing ground for crim­i­nal activity.

Homes are built with park­ing lots set apart, which forces home­own­ers to leave their cars or dis­em­bark pub­lic trans­porta­tion and walk along nar­row alleyways.
This presents seri­ous safe­ty chal­lenges to res­i­dents of these communities.
In the event of fire or ill­ness, ambu­lances and fire trucks are some­times unable to get to res­i­dents in a time­ly fashion.
All of this because there is inad­e­quate planning.
Never mind the unau­tho­rized expan­sions on homes, and the use of homes as com­mer­cial entities.

More chal­leng­ing for the police is the ever-present gul­ly issue, which offers shoot­ers easy escape routes dur­ing shoot-outs.
As a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer, I know all too well the daunt­ing chal­lenges these sce­nar­ios pose to both offi­cer safe­ty and the per­cep­tion of offi­cer veracity.

There are total­ly con­struct­ed com­mu­ni­ties from board and zinc, and the dirt alley­ways are all hemmed in on both sides with cor­ru­gat­ed zinc sheets.
Add a heavy mix­ture of high-pow­ered weapons to those slums, and the job of the police becomes expo­nen­tial­ly more difficult.
It is easy to crit­i­cize, sec­ond-guess, and Monday morn­ing-quar­ter­back police when they give their ver­sion of shoot­ing events.
But those of us who were forced to police these death-traps under­stand the method­olo­gies the Island’s urban ter­ror­ists employ in defend­ing those turfs from the rule of law.
In the inner-city com­mu­ni­ties, women, and chil­dren quick­ly secure fall­en shoot­ers’ weapons, while oth­er thugs lay down cov­er­ing fire.
This mil­i­taris­tic strat­e­gy has been a long­time sta­ple of many com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Political garrisons.
The so-called area lead­ers and area dons under­stand that dead gang­sters and no weapons mean police are in trou­ble and most like­ly will end up in prison.

The Jamaican media has been a will­ing and com­plic­it part­ner of the crim­i­nal under­world; in oth­er cas­es, the media unwit­ting­ly becomes the area’s Don’s mouthpiece.
Over the years, the media has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly cast doubt on the police ver­sions of events as a mat­ter of policy.
The use of the word “alleged­ly” is used sub­tly to belie police ver­sion of events, while there are no such dis­claimers when paid mourn­ers come out to claim police mur­dered inno­cent choir boys.
Those are facts for the Jamaican media!
To a man, every sin­gle per­son of the 2.8 mil­lion Jamaicans knows that the peo­ple who turn out to mourn and claim they saw the police mur­der inno­cent youths in their beds at 3.00 in the morn­ing are lying.
Yet the Media give them mega­phones to make the scur­rilous, lying accu­sa­tions any­way. This is not to give cov­er to police who betray their oaths. This writer has no such inten­tion to cov­er for dirty rogue cops.
This is not to sug­gest that there have not been inci­dents where some offi­cers have act­ed out­side the laws. I con­tend that the media and, sub­se­quent­ly, many in the so-called civ­il soci­ety have giv­en aid and com­fort to crim­i­nals for decades, while demo­niz­ing the police.
This has cre­at­ed dis­re­spect for the rule of law and con­tempt for those who enforce them.

Yes, it hap­pens all the time men shoot at offi­cers, offi­cers respond, and there are dead bod­ies, and yes, some­times there is no find­ing the weapon/​s.
The antag­o­nis­tic Terrence Williams of INDECOM tells of a case where offi­cers were fired on and returned fire, killing a subject.
Officers combed the bush­es and were unable to locate any weapon.
He bragged that his inves­ti­ga­tors arrived on the scene and com­menced to search for the fall­en weapon.
An INDECOM agent is report­ed to have found the weapon.
Williams retells that sto­ry to make the police seem inept at find­ing evidence.
The fact is that giv­en the ter­rain in sit­u­a­tions like we have in Jamaica, it is quite easy to miss cru­cial pieces of evi­dence, includ­ing weapons in places where there are thick under­brush, veg­e­ta­tion, and hilly and unpre­dictable terrain.
It came as no sur­prise to me that the offi­cers who were accused and slan­dered in the media as part of a sup­posed death squad oper­at­ing in Clarendon were found not guilty by a jury just today, Wednesday, March 15^th.
The Police have every right to use lethal force in defense of their lives and the lives of oth­ers; even in cas­es where there are no guns, offi­cers some­times face dan­ger­ous offend­ers hell-bent on doing them harm.

Police offi­cers have a right and an expec­ta­tion to go home to their fam­i­lies at the end of their shift.
We expect our offi­cers to be men and women of char­ac­ter and good judg­ment. After all, they are invest­ed with the pow­er of life and death over oth­ers. We should expect no less.
But in cas­es where they act appro­pri­ate­ly in defense of their lives or that of the cit­i­zens, they swore to pro­tect, and they have every expec­ta­tion that they will be supported…

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

Police Corporal Roan Morrison and Constable Collis ‘Chucky’ Brown have been freed of crim­i­nal charges in the so called police death squad trial.

For almost five weeks, the cops were on tri­al for mur­der and wound­ing with intent. But after delib­er­at­ing for one hour and 45 min­utes, the jury found them not guilty. During the five-week tri­al, 18 wit­ness­es were called. It’s relief for both men.

While in cus­tody last night, Brown learned that his father had passed away. Justice Jennifer Straw, who presided over the tri­al, had told the jurors that they should arrive at a ver­dict based on the evi­dence before them. She also told them that, if pos­si­ble, their ver­dict must be unanimous.

Morrison and Brown were arrest­ed and charged by the Independent Commission of Investigations fol­low­ing a shoot­ing inci­dent in May Pen, Clarendon on February 13, 2010 in which 20-year-old Phaebian Dinnal was killed and anoth­er man injured. The police claim the men were killed after cops were fired on. But the pros­e­cu­tion has reject­ed that claim. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​3​1​5​/​j​u​s​t​-​c​o​p​s​-​f​r​e​e​d​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​w​o​u​n​d​i​n​g​-​c​h​a​r​g​e​s​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​s​q​u​a​d​-​t​r​ial

Just last week I wrote about a trend in the JCF to engage in what I call media policing.
This phe­nom­e­non has become a norm for the Jamaican Police. It is Policing done from behind desks.
The Police has shift­ed from actu­al real polic­ing over the last two decades or less to a more Media ori­ent­ed grand­stand­ing which goes more to form than it does substance.

I am all for the police get­ting their side of the sto­ry out. But it’s impor­tant that they wait to have a side before mak­ing state­ments from behind desks.
The hier­ar­chy of the Police force seem to have com­plete­ly bought into the con­cept of office polic­ing , much to the demise and detri­ment of the country.

As I’ve asked in pre­vi­ous article,“why does the police feel oblig­at­ed to make state­ments on every ini­tia­tive they are about to embark on?
Is there a strat­e­gy by these new age cops who now pop­u­late the high­er ech­e­lons of the force to release strat­e­gy direc­tions as a means of con­vinc­ing the pub­lic that they are doing some­thing about crime, even as crime con­tin­ue unchecked?

CASE IN POINT…#1 

Last week the Police pre­ma­ture­ly released infor­ma­tion that they had com­menced Investigations in cas­es of attempt­ed extor­tion in three parishes.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Clifford Chambers bragged that busi­ness own­ers were now coop­er­at­ing with the police and they actu­al­ly knew who the offend­ers are.

Now I have turned that state­ment over and over in my mind, and I can­not find a sin­gle thing which gives cred­i­bil­i­ty to that way of doing things.
What could pos­si­bly be gained from this dis­clo­sure except to place the lives of busi­ness peo­ple in jeop­ardy, and send­ing the per­pe­tra­tors into hiding?

CASE IN POINT #2

The Clarendon Police announced an ini­tia­tive to stop and search young men wear­ing hood­ed sweat shirts and oth­ers hav­ing their faces cov­ered with handkerchiefs.
Head of the Clarendon Police Division Superintendent Vendolyn Cameron Powell said that the dri­ve to stop and search young men wear­ing hood­ies was part of efforts to com­bat crime in the parish. She also ques­tioned why any­one should need to wear hood­ies in Jamaica’s trop­i­cal climate.

Part of my argu­ments about the police refrain­ing from mak­ing too many state­ments relates to the fact that as a prag­ma­tist I am results driven.
Why not wait until you have some­thing pos­i­tive to report,-report it and move on, results speak a hell of a lot loud­er than ver­bal pronouncements.
Imagine just how lit­tle pro­nounce­ments mat­ter when there is noth­ing pos­i­tive to report.

Secondly there are active forces with­in the coun­try which are dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to the rule of law . Not nec­es­sar­i­ly because they are crim­i­nals , but more that with­out a chasm and a sense of con­flict between law enforce­ment and the cit­i­zen­ry they are absolute­ly irrelevant.
But we will come back to that.……

We still have a coun­try where peo­ple are free to wear what they want to wear.
What we don’t have is a coun­try in which peo­ple are free to break the laws.
There is a fine line between that sense of indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty and free­dom to do as we please and the right of the state to infringe on those rights to keep the major­i­ty in a sense of rel­a­tive safety .

This par­tic­u­lar police woman seem to have a seri­ous prob­lem with her mouth. It has not been the first sec­ond and it will not be the last time that she makes com­ments which she has no busi­ness making.
Profiling is an inte­gral part of polic­ing, any smart police offi­cer knows and under­stand this.
If you are hav­ing a slew of rob­beries in a cer­tain area, being com­mit­ted by say young Asian men you sim­ply do not go out look­ing for young Caucasian men.
You look for young Asian men. That’s pro­fil­ing .Profiling is some­thing police use, not some­thing police go around talk­ing about.

Immediately the head of the Clarendon Police made that state­ment there was push-back. Remember I said I would come back to this?
Enter Horace Levy the exec­u­tive Director of Jamaican For Justice(JFJ)

Quote :“There is no right (on the part of the police to imple­ment such a strat­e­gy) to me. Just because there are some crimes being com­mit­ted by guys with hood­ies, you are to start search­ing every hood­ed guy? It’s a style and a mat­ter of self-identification!” 
“I dis­agree with the police stop­ping and search­ing every­body wear­ing a hood­ie. The police are to have a good rea­son for search­ing some­body to begin with. They don’t have the right to just stop and search every­body. To add to that, if they are stop­ping and search­ing every­body wear­ing a hood­ie, that’s pro­fil­ing, and that’s being quite dis­crim­i­na­to­ry.”

There is noth­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry if police exer­cise vig­i­lance in look­ing out for crim­i­nals who wear hood­ed sweat shirts in 96 degrees weath­er so as to con­ceal their identities.
If there is a gen­er­al shift toward the wear­ing of hood­ies in Jamaica’s blaz­ing hot weath­er then the Police have a duty and indeed a respon­si­bil­i­ty to look at these guys.

The dif­fer­ence in all of this is that the police must stop telegraph­ing what they are about to do before they take action.
What is this new alien con­cept of polic­ing which tells exact­ly what it is about to do?
How does the Police depart­ment expect to shake it’s car­toon-char­ac­ter per­sona when it con­tin­ues to make unforced errors like this which ele­vates incon­se­quen­tial eat-a-food char­ac­ters like Horace Levy and others.
It was­n’t too long ago that Horace Levy and oth­er leech­es of his Ilk were active­ly push­ing back against the police wear­ing any type of pro­tec­tive gear which con­cealed their iden­ti­ties while on some operations.
Neither Horace Levy nor his men­tor Carolyn Gomes cared that police offi­cers are some­times forced to police volatile ares in which they them­selves live, which neces­si­tates the need for disguises.

Now these very same peo­ple are imme­di­ate­ly argu­ing for the rights of men to wear hood­ies when clear­ly their intent is to com­mit crimes and get away with doing so.
I have con­sis­tent­ly said that the police must be much smarter and more tac­ti­cal in the way it goes about it’s business.
The Media had no prob­lem find­ing Horace Levy to get him on record as soon as Cameron Powell made anoth­er stu­pid statement.
If only the Police could find a way to just shut the f**k up and just get the job done?

In response to Terrence Williams trans­par­ent attempt to smear mem­bers of the police depart­ment, the JCF under Acting Commissioner of Police Novelette Grant has shown more balls than any male Commissioner, Deputy or Assistant has, since the Albatross (inde­com) was forced on to the Jamaican people.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​n​d​e​c​o​m​-​w​o​r​r​i​e​d​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​f​a​t​a​l​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​s​-​f​o​r​-​f​i​r​s​t​-​t​w​o​-​m​o​n​t​hs/

In response to media whore Terrence Williams’ atten­tion seek­ing faux con­cern about police killings last week, the Police high com­mand respond­ed with their own expla­na­tion of the numbers.

What Lying Deceptive Terrence Williams Does Not Say Is Far More Substantive Than What He Actually Said…

Addressing jour­nal­ists at a press con­fer­ence he called at his Dumfries Road offices last week the (inde­com) anti-police agi­ta­tor Terrence Williams all but shed tears at what he char­ac­ter­ized as his con­cern for the amount of fatal shoot­ings the police depart­ment was involved in for the months of January and February this years thus far.

Williams who has nev­er seen a Television cam­era or a micro­phone he did not like, called a press con­fer­ence to shed croc­o­dile tears for what he saw as a quote “wor­ry­ing upward trend in police shoot­ings for the first two months of 2017”.
Williams and his cohort Hamish Campbell a Scotland Yard agi­ta­tor argued that there was a 55 per cent increase in police fatal shoot­ing in the first two months of the year. They dis­closed that over the peri­od, a total of 31 peo­ple were shot dead by the police say­ing that this is wor­ry­ing sign.

This Publication pushed back against that char­ac­ter­i­za­tion imme­di­ate­ly. In doing so I point­ed out out that the lying decep­tive Williams and his cohort were using num­bers to con­vey a nar­ra­tive which could not stand, because not only did it not tell the whole sto­ry, it was inher­ent­ly done to cre­ate out­rage against mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces.

What I found utter­ly dis­gust­ing and shame­ful was that in the same week that Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell were active­ly slan­der­ing the secu­ri­ty forces, poten­tial­ly plac­ing their lives in more dan­ger , a long serv­ing police sergeant was gunned down in the Portmore area of St Catherine.
What nei­ther Terrence Williams nor Hamish Campbell both­ered to state was that there are no charges against any offi­cer which goes to the law­ful nature of those shootings.
What the two decep­tive bas­tards did not say is that police offi­cers are total­ly jus­ti­fied under the law in using lethal force to neu­tral­ize threats to their lives or the lives of others.
Needless to say the dis­gust­ing Judas Iscariot who heads ( indecom)did not men­tion his killing.

In response to Williams’ dan­ger­ous dem­a­goguery the Police released infor­ma­tion direct­ly chal­leng­ing Williams and Campbell’s disin­gen­u­ous notions and con­coct­ed concerns.
According to the high com­mand, an assess­ment of the data shows a direct cor­re­la­tion between an increased num­ber of vio­lent gun attacks against the secu­ri­ty forces, increased gun mur­ders and shoot­ing of civil­ians and an increase in police use of dead­ly force when com­pared with the same peri­od in 2016. It says a total of 45 gun assaults against cops were record­ed for the first two months of 2017.
The High Command says of the 31 police-involved shoot­ings, 23 result­ed from shoot­ings at the police while eight were as a result of assault at com­mon law against cops.

In addi­tion to releas­ing the data the police called for (inde­com), advo­cate groups, fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to sup­port their appeal to armed crim­i­nal sus­pects to sur­ren­der peace­ful­ly and desist from attack­ing secu­ri­ty personnel.
When did police shoot­ing crim­i­nals in defense of their lives become a concern ?
And Why is Terrence Williams so upset that vio­lent crim­i­nals are shot?
Are we to under­stand that Terrence Williams pre­fer the killing of police officers?

That would not be my choice of lan­guage in address­ing Williams and Campbell. But I under­stand that the Police like that good­ly woman in that old British com­e­dy, must ” keep up appear­ances”.

As I have said for years about this creepy lit­tle dem­a­gogue Terrence Williams, he under­stands the anti ‑law enforce­ment ten­den­cies in the coun­try and he has played it like a well tuned Stradivarius violin.

Why else would he go to the trou­ble to call a press con­fer­ence to point out that police shoot­ings have gone up while delib­er­ate­ly leav­ing out crit­i­cal excul­pa­to­ry infor­ma­tion , unless his sole desire is to inflame pas­sions against the secu­ri­ty forces?

This real­ly goes to the char­ac­ter and intent behind the lead­er­ship of (inde­com), which needs seri­ous, seri­ous scrutiny.
This writer is quite con­tent to be the sole per­son yelling in the wind until our coun­try comes to it’s sens­es. Understanding that the actions of Terrence Williams does not pass the smell test.

In the mean­time I must offer a word of con­grat­u­la­tion to Acting Commissioner of Police Novelette Grant who has demon­strat­ed more grav­i­tas and balls than every Commissioner of Police who have served in my lifetime.
Bravo Novelette!!!
Numbers do not lie. Political hacks with their own agen­das do.

An edu­cat­ed non-polit­i­cal pro­fes­sion­al woman does not need to kow-tow to politi­cians and their well placed destruc­tive lackeys.
Our police offi­cers have a job to do and they should do it with­out fear or favor, mal­ice or ill will, and cer­tain­ly despite croc­o­dile tears from the ene­mies of our coun­try and their local lackeys.

Never hes­i­tate to hit back against these disin­gen­u­ous lying char­la­tans who would shape pub­lic opin­ion against the hard work­ing peo­ple who stand between inno­cent peo­ple and those who would destroy life.
I applaud you on this International Women’s day Novelette Grant.
You rock .

According to local media reporting Jamaican police Investigators are busy, supposedly tracking down at least three persons they believe are behind extortion letters received by business owners in three parishes.

Leading the Investigation is Assistant Commissioner of Police Clifford Chambers who brags that crim­i­nals under­es­ti­mat­ed the lev­el of coöper­a­tion that exists between the police and the busi­ness community.
Chambers heads the Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime (C‑TOC) division.
Said Chambers “Law enforce­ment is work­ing in a bet­ter part­ner­ship with busi­ness enti­ties, so the crim­i­nal under­world will real­ize that they are not cow­er­ing any­more.”
For the sake of Jamaica I pray there is nev­er a real ter­ror inci­dent which these peo­ple will be tasked with investigating.

Here’s the thing, all of what ACP Clifford Chambers say may very well be true, but one of the car­di­nal rule in con­duct­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion is silence.
How about not talk­ing about the fact that they have the let­ters, or even know there are letters?
The Assistant Commissioner claim he has infor­ma­tion who the per­pe­tra­tors are which makes me wonder.Why would you make your job harder. ?
Why place the lives of the poten­tial vic­tims and their fam­i­lies in dan­ger ?Why talk about an inves­ti­ga­tion which is still in it’s embry­on­ic stage ? http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​3​0​6​/​e​x​t​o​r​t​i​o​n​-​p​u​s​h​b​a​c​k​-​c​o​p​s​-​h​u​n​t​-​m​e​n​-​a​t​t​e​m​p​t​i​n​g​-​s​h​a​k​e​-​d​o​w​n​-​b​u​s​i​n​ess

How about con­duct­ing the Investigation ‚arrest and charge the per­pe­tra­tors, then have a press con­fer­ence with them in full view of the cam­eras ? That’s called Perp shaming !!!
If the Police love the idea of speak­ing in front of cam­eras why not wait until they have some­thing to crow about which does not jeop­ar­dize com­plainants lives
Talking about coöper­a­tion at this ear­ly stage serves no use­ful pur­pose. It endan­gers busi­ness own­ers. It send per­pe­tra­tors into hiding.
What could pos­si­bly be gained from this dis­clo­sure except to place the lives of busi­ness people/​complainants in dan­ger, and send­ing the per­pe­tra­tors into hiding?

How about Police get back to doing Policing and less show­boat­ing for the Media?
On a point of note, it’s remark­able that sim­ple mat­ters like these could become a major Investigation wor­thy of the office of an Assistant Commissioners of Police.
Back in my time one cor­po­ral and a con­sta­ble, or a sin­gle con­sta­ble would remove these crim­i­nals from the streets with­out any fanfare.
Oh how has time changed.……