It was the year 2008 and the Presidential Election cycle was in full swing the Democratic Party had just made his­to­ry by mak­ing a black man it’s stan­dard bear­er. This was unprece­dent­ed for either polit­i­cal par­ties. The only oth­er non-white male per­son to come close to the Presidency was Democratic nom­i­nee Geraldine Ferraro a Queens Democrat in 1984 as run­ning-mate to Walter Mondale.

Republican War Hero Arizona Senior Senator John McCain would be the man fac­ing off against the young upstart Africa-American Senator from Illinois the state of Abraham Lincoln. There was a gen­er­al air of expectan­cy in the air . Barack Obama burst onto the scene with a cam­paign mes­sage of hope& change. His mes­sage was par­tic­u­lar­ly res­o­nant with young Americans of all stripes , many of whom would poten­tial­ly be vot­ing for the very first time in their lives.
The Country had been through two terms of Republican President George W Bush dur­ing whose pres­i­den­cy the nation expe­ri­enced the tragedy of September 11^th 2001 when Terrorists struck demol­ish­ing the Twin Towers and parts of the Pentagon. Thousands of Americans lost their lives on that fate­ful day. The Country was deeply immersed in a war in Afghanistan when American troops entered that coun­try in pur­suit of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda which was report­ed­ly respon­si­ble for the September 11^th car­nage on American soil. Additionally President George Bush and his Vice President Dick Chaney took the Country into a sec­ond war of choice alleg­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion in the nation of Iraq. This hor­ri­ble lapse in judge­ment and Presidential lead­er­ship has had cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quence for the world since and will con­tin­ue to do so for the fore­see­able future.

John McCain was a sea­soned well respect­ed Senator who many argue has incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence in Foreign affairs. John McCain spent 5½ years in cap­tiv­i­ty as a POW in North Vietnam. For decades that war his­to­ry has insu­lat­ed him from harsh crit­i­cisms even when his judge­ment calls have been woe­ful­ly lack­ing. Of course this was pre-Donald Trump for­ay into Politics which we will get to.
Despite the rhetoric of the past about expe­ri­ence and judge­ment this was John McCain’s big moment. The first test, the first win­dow of what the deci­sion mak­ing of a pres­i­dent John McCain would look like. That ques­tion cen­tered on McCain’s choice of a run­ning mate.

McCAIN CHOSE SARAH PALIN…
McCain could have cho­sen any Southern Governor to shore up his less than stel­lar hard right cre­den­tials . In fact many believed that for­mer oppo­nent Mike Huckabee the for­mer Arkansas Governor would have been a good pick if McCain want­ed a true died in the wool Bible thump­ing Conservative as a run­ning mate.
Instead John McCain chose lit­tle known first term Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. This was a shock­er to most polit­i­cal watch­ers , none of it made polit­i­cal sense.
Sarah Palin was a first term Governor of Alaska and was hard­ly know in the low­er forty eight states.What exact­ly did Palin bring to the McCain Campaign that he could not find in any Governor or Senator in the low­er forty eight states? Frankly at the time I nev­er quite thought much of the McCain cam­paign. I was not enam­ored with the “bomb,bomb, bomb Iran” nar­ra­tive. Of course I am biased I was solid­ly in sup­port of then Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy.

John McCain’s deci­sion to chose Sarah Palin unleashed a brand of racial­ly polar­ized pol­i­tics no one in my gen­er­a­tion or younger had ever seen before .
In a doc­u­ment titled Partisan Polarization and the Rise of the Tea Party Movement Professor Alan I. Abramowitz Department of Political Science Emory University wrote .
The Tea Party move­ment has attract­ed enor­mous atten­tion from jour­nal­ists, can­di­dates, and elect­ed offi­cials since it first appeared on the U.S. polit­i­cal scene in ear­ly 2009. However, there has been con­sid­er­able dis­agree­ment among polit­i­cal observers about the num­bers and moti­va­tions of those par­tic­i­pat­ing in Tea Party protests, the preva­lence of racist sen­ti­ments among Tea Party activists, the role played by wealthy indi­vid­u­als, con­ser­v­a­tive groups and media fig­ures in foment­ing these protests, and the poten­tial long-term impact of the move­ment (Judis 2010; Crabtree 2010; Parker 2010; Scarborough 2010). A key ques­tion raised by the spread of Tea Party protests and the emer­gence of Tea Party can­di­dates in numer­ous House, Senate, and guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tions is whether this move­ment rep­re­sents a new force in American pol­i­tics or whether it is sim­ply the lat­est, and per­haps the nois­i­est, man­i­fes­ta­tion of the long-term right­ward shift of the Republican Party — a shift that can be seen as part of a larg­er trend toward increas­ing par­ti­san polar­iza­tion in American pol­i­tics (Abramowitz 2010; Bafumi and Shapiro 2009; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006; Weisberg 2010; Williamson, Skocpol and Skoggin 2011). Political ana­lysts aligned with the lib­er­al wing of the Democratic Party have tend­ed to crit­i­cize the Tea Party protests as a large­ly top-down phe­nom­e­non dri­ven by well-fund­ed con­ser­v­a­tive inter­est groups and media fig­ures (Waldman 2010). It is clear that right-wing orga­ni­za­tions such as Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works have pro­vid­ed impor­tant logis­ti­cal sup­port for the move­ment and that con­ser­v­a­tive media fig­ures, main­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Fox News, have played cru­cial roles in pub­li­ciz­ing and encour­ag­ing atten­dance at Tea Party ral­lies (Bedard 2010). However, these efforts could not have suc­ceed­ed with­out the exis­tence of a large, recep­tive audi­ence among the pub­lic. Any suc­cess­ful social move­ment requires both lead­er­ship and orga­ni­za­tion and a grass roots army of sym­pa­thiz­ers to respond to those lead­ers 2 and orga­ni­za­tions and the Tea Party move­ment is no excep­tion (Garner 1977; Wood 1982; McAdam and Snow 1997).

It was dur­ing the elec­tion peri­od of 2008 and the intro­duc­tion of Sarah Palin onto the American polit­i­cal scene that the filthy racist under­bel­ly of America’s race prob­lem came to the fore. For the first time a cer­tain seg­ment of the American pop­u­la­tion believed that the citadel of white suprema­cy they built was about to be tak­en over by a black man with a fun­ny sound­ing name.
Whether McCain was pushed to select Palin a rabid divi­sive racist we may nev­er know. Whether McCain knew just how ran­cid and cor­ro­sive her rhetoric would be toward the African-American Democratic can­di­date we may nev­er know either. But note the time the Tea-Party rose to promi­nence and judge for yourself.
I believe those old enough to remem­ber the 2008 Elections does­n’t need a reminder of the Xenophobic, igno­rant, Racist cam­paign Sarah Palin waged on behalf of John McCain’s candidacy.
Jeremiah Wright. Obama’s alleged Kenyan birth and his sup­posed Manchurian can­di­da­cy. Obama’s sup­posed Muslim faith. A car­toon car­i­ca­ture of Barack in Muslim regalia and Michelle Obama decked out with bul­lets across her chest and an auto­mat­ic rifle slung over her shoul­der were just a few of the dis­gust­ing imagery and nar­ra­tive forced into the polit­i­cal discourse.

The new nor­mal of out­right racism has not dis­si­pat­ed in the six and a half years since Barack Obama won two Presidential Elections in the United States beat­ing John McCain and Mitt Romney deci­sive­ly. In those six and one half years the United States Secret ser­vice report­ed that threats issued against President Barack Obama is unprece­dent­ed and far exceeds threats issued against any oth­er President. In that time Sarah Palin has ran out of juice like a bat­tery oper­at­ed toy reveal­ing to those who believed she had some­thing to offer that real­ly she was a mere unso­phis­ti­cat­ed semi-lit­er­ate imbecile.
More omi­nous­ly how­ev­er the Tea Party con­tin­ues to be a force in Right wing pol­i­tics forc­ing out once mod­er­ate can­di­dates from the Republican Party and replac­ing them with Xenophobic neo-nazis types who do not hide their feelings .….

Mark Potok Senior fel­low at the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote in 2013 that .…

Capping four years of explo­sive growth sparked by the elec­tion of America’s first black pres­i­dent and anger over the econ­o­my, the num­ber of con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed anti-gov­ern­ment “Patriot” groups reached an all-time high of 1,360 in 2012, while the num­ber of hard-core hate groups remained above 1,000. As President Obama enters his sec­ond term with an agen­da of gun con­trol and immi­gra­tion reform, the rage on the right is like­ly to intensify.

The furi­ous reac­tion to the Obama administration’s gun con­trol pro­pos­als is rem­i­nis­cent of the anger that greet­ed the pas­sage of the 1993 Brady Bill and the 1994 ban on assault weapons sup­port­ed by anoth­er rel­a­tive­ly lib­er­al Democrat — Bill Clinton. The pas­sage of those bills, along with what was seen by the right as the fed­er­al government’s vio­lent sup­pres­sion of polit­i­cal dis­si­dents at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in the ear­ly 1990s, led to the first wave of the Patriot move­ment that burst into pub­lic con­scious­ness with the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb­ing. The num­ber of Patriot groups in that era peaked in 1996 at 858, more than 500 groups few­er than the num­ber active in 2012.

For many, the elec­tion of America’s first black pres­i­dent sym­bol­izes the country’s chang­ing demo­graph­ics, with the loss of its white major­i­ty pre­dict­ed by 2043. (In 2011, for the first time, non-white births out­num­bered the births of white chil­dren.) But the back­lash to that trend pre­dates Obama’s pres­i­den­cy by many years. Between 2000 and 2010, the num­ber of hate groups rose from 602 to more than 1,000, where the count remains today. Now that com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform is poised to legit­imize and poten­tial­ly accel­er­ate the country’s demo­graph­ic change, the back­lash to that change may accel­er­ate as well.

While the num­ber of hate groups remained essen­tial­ly unchanged last year — going from 1,018 in 2011 to 1,007 in 2012 — the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) count of 1,360 Patriot groups in 2012 was up about 7% from the 1,274 active in 2011. And that was only the lat­est growth spurt in the Patriot move­ment, which gen­er­al­ly believes that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is con­spir­ing to take Americans’ guns and destroy their lib­er­ties as it paves the way for a glob­al “one-world gov­ern­ment.” From a mere 149 orga­ni­za­tions in 2008, the num­ber of Patriot groups shot up to 512 in 2009, jumped again to 824 in 2010, and then sky­rock­et­ed to 1,274 in 2011 before hit­ting their all-time high last year.THE YEAR IN HATE AND EXTREMISM.

It is absolute­ly no sur­prise then that that cli­mate would bring to the fore a new mon­ster rep­re­sent­ing the most racist forces of the Republican party.
Xenophobic. Racist. Misogynistic. Crude . Loud . Disrespectful and dan­ger­ous those are just a few of the adjec­tives which define Donald Trump.
Of course it’s easy to dis­miss Trump as a (car­ni­val-bark­er) as Obama labeled him awhile back , you may even dis­miss him as a clown as I have char­ac­ter­ized him years ago. What we do at our per­il is dis­miss the evil that this Fascist brings to the elec­toral process.

Of course he has drowned out all of the oth­er can­di­dates vying for the repub­li­can nomination.
Unfortunately for the par­ty and the coun­try the tac­tics of the repub­li­can can­di­dates rep­re­sents a mad race to the bot­tom. Each and every can­di­date vying for atten­tion and recog­ni­tion is doing their darnedest to show just how evil they can be. Naturally the tar­gets of their ire this cycle are immi­grants. The crowds which turn up at Trump’s ral­lies are not say­ing they want change. They are not show­ing up because they are tired of politi­cians as the main stream media wants the pub­lic to believe, they show up because they har­bor the same feel­ings Trump does.
Making America great again means mak­ing it all white, that’s what this immi­gra­tion fight is about.

Over 800 Jamaicans have been slaugh­tered since the start of the year, this is a marked increase in the num­ber of Jamaicans slaugh­tered at the hands of crim­i­nals over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year. At this rate it’s log­i­cal to expect that over 1600 of the Island’s cit­i­zens will be killed at the hands of criminals[sic].
Additionally there are wound­ings from gun vio­lence which may not nec­es­sar­i­ly result in instant deaths and which ulti­mate­ly may be exclud­ed from homi­cide data.
Then there are vio­lent wound­ings. Jamaicans wound each oth­er with any weapon they get their hands on. Weapons of choice includes Guns. Knives. Machetes. Ice-picks. Sulphuric acid. Hot water. and even rocks. There is an insane propen­si­ty and a desire to inflict ulti­mate harm, to maim and to kill. Violence is used and sup­port­ed as the only means of con­flict resolution.
It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile the hypocrisy of Jamaicans when they lament that the Police use lethal force in a way that may seem to be extra­or­di­nary to an unin­formed observ­er in view of the fact that the pop­u­la­tion is inher­ent­ly violent.

A cou­ple of years ago I wrote an Article detail­ing the insane pre­dis­po­si­tion of many Jamaicans to fight with Police offi­cers. In that arti­cle I out­lined what I saw as a mem­ber of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) where peo­ple in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties actu­al­ly forced police offi­cers to use vio­lence to do their jobs.
In a sick way it was a means-test­ing method employed by cit­i­zens on police offi­cers to test their met­tle to be offi­cers wor­thy of respect and capa­ble of mak­ing even the sim­plest arrest.
In oth­er words Cops had to use force of vio­lence to arrest in order to qual­i­fy to make the next arrest. As a young con­sta­ble walk­ing the beats of east. west, south and north parade I was draped in my uni­form , but­tons fly­ing every­where by a woman no less.….
Of course that woman, hope­ful­ly she is still alive will nev­er put her hands on anoth­er per­son, least of all a police offi­cer. The courts had some real no non­sense judges at that time and she had some time to sit in jail and real­ly think about touch­ing an offi­cer in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of his duties.
Today Jamaica is a law­less Serengeti of crim­i­nal­i­ty, where pow­er­ful gun-tot­ing thugs lord over the powerless.

As we look at the dis­in­te­grat­ing sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica it is impor­tant to ask whether those killed are all inno­cent? Not guilty does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean inno­cent or with­out blame or guilt. Many who them­selves fall vic­tim to vio­lent crimes in Jamaica lived a life of crime or offered sup­port to those who shed inno­cent blood.
We reap what we sow and it is impor­tant that as we con­tem­plate the vio­lence play­ing out across the Island that we under­stand the vio­lence which is taught and encour­aged as a way of life. The vio­lence which vio­lence breeds.
Literally every Jamaican has an opin­ion on the num­ber of Jamaicans killed by Police each year.
They are pret­ty smart when it comes to police killing crim­i­nals but are woe­ful­ly igno­rant of the facts and fig­ures which neces­si­tates the use of lethal force in those encounters.

Literally every­one believes the num­ber is too high. Ironically they call for the death penal­ty and demand that police exter­mi­nate crim­i­nals when they know the vic­tims of crimes.
So even though they lam­bast the Police , encour­age peo­ple being arrest­ed to fight the police and some open­ly espouse the killing of police offi­cers on social media they want their friends and fam­i­lies avenged by the very same police.

There are some basic facts which are alarm­ing­ly miss­ing from the knowl­edge-base of many Jamaicans which I believe may lead to more police vio­lence against them to include death.
In addi­tion to igno­rance of their respon­si­bil­i­ties under the laws, the cre­ation of (inde­com) and the con­tin­ued pos­tur­ing by Terrence Williams, there is a seri­ous risk to the pop­u­la­tion as it relates to poten­tial errors in judge­ment when deal­ing with police officers.
As a result I take the lib­er­ty to include here some basic facts as it relates to how one should oper­ate when deal­ing with a law enforce­ment officer.

HERE ARE A FEW REMINDERS.…..

(1) A Police offi­cer is empow­ered to uphold the laws with­out FEAR of FAVOR, MALICE or ILL-WILL.
(2) A Police Officer has ever expec­ta­tion of doing his/​her job with­out being assault­ed by any­one that includes the per­son being arrest­ed and those stand­ing by.
(3) A Police Officer is autho­rized to use force equal to the force being used by an offender.
(4) However it must be borne in mind that the offi­cer is giv­en wide lat­i­tude as to how he/​she per­ceives that threat lev­el as it relates to his/​her life.
(5) All of this goes away if a cit­i­zen who is told he/​she is being arrest­ed agrees with the offi­cer’s deci­sion to arrest him/​her.
(6) You do not get to lit­i­gate that in the streets . You do not get to fight a police offi­cer. You await your day in court.
(7) Police offi­cers have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to be cour­te­ous. Citizens have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to be courteous.
(8) Your Rights can­not be guar­an­teed when you make a con­scious deci­sion to assault a Police officer.
(9) (inde­com) can­not help you when you break the laws , put your hands on a police offi­cer and you get what’s com­ing to you.
(10) Do you think that the offi­cer will say okay I change my mind because you decide to resist ?
(11) Contrary to pop­u­lar opin­ion the police CAN be jus­ti­fied in using LETHAL force even though an assailant does not have a weapon.

WORD FOR CARL WILLIAMS COMMISSIONER OF POLICE.….…
The Commissioner of (inde­com( Terrence Williams under­stands the val­ue of media in get­ting his mes­sage and his agen­da out.
The Commissioner of Police on the oth­er hand COWARDLY refus­es to stand with decent hard work­ing police offi­cers who go out and put their lives on the line in defense of a thank­less and unde­serv­ing people.
Williams hides instead behind super­flu­ous press releas­es while police offi­cers are being killed and assault­ed in the streets because they are unsure of their mandate.
I have seen some weak and feck­less police Commissioners in my time this guy Carl Williams has got be be the most feck­less of all.

HERE’S A STATEMENT JAMAICAN OFFICERS SHOULD HEAR FROM THEIR COMMISSIONER IF THEY HAD ONE.……
Go out do your jobs with­out fear, or favor , mal­ice or ill-will and when you do this Commissioner and this police high com­mand will stand with you every step of the way as you exe­cute the man­date of putting your­selves in har­m’s way to bring san­i­ty and secu­ri­ty to the nation.
Know the laws , enforce the laws and as your com­mis­sion­er I will ensure you are not bul­lied , or brow­beat­en by anyone.
The laws are there to be obeyed as police offi­cers we have a duty to enforce the laws and that is what I want you to do.
If they do not like the laws it is up to their elect­ed offi­cials to change the laws but we will enforce the laws with­out fear or favor.
Do not be per­turbed by those tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing what you do your sac­ri­fice gives them the right and the secu­ri­ty to do what they do.

Police offi­cers going out to do their jobs can­not be uncer­tain whether if they do their jobs they will be pros­e­cut­ed and per­se­cut­ed. It can­not be that police offi­cers lives hang in the bal­ance because an illit­er­ate vio­lent pop­u­la­tion can­not under­stand they do not get to fight with police offi­cers when they break laws and are being apprehended.
This is what obtains in Jamaica.
I do not know Carl Williams, in the late eight­ies and ear­ly nineties when real police offi­cers includ­ing myself who did not take that kind of shit had the streets locked and crim­i­nals run­ning to oth­er coun­tries I believe he was at Narcotics.
What I do know is that if he did not fit the bill of what the pup­pet mas­ters want­ed he could not have got­ten the job of Commissioner of Police. That does not com­port with the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of offi­cers who police the streets.
It seem like more police offi­cers will die and the vio­lence toward offi­cers will con­tin­ue unabat­ed because their leader is a feck­less pup­pet of the upper Saint Andrew crowd.

There are pre­cious few objec­tive and hon­est Jamaicans who stay abreast of cur­rent events who would not con­clude that the Gleaner’s Editorial Board is solid­ly Pro-People’s National Party.
That’s quite okay , it is per­fect­ly nat­ur­al that Opinion writ­ers have their polit­i­cal lean­ings . In fact I recall when the Editorial board of the very same Paper, (dif­fer­ent mem­bers of course), so out­raged a cer­tain prime min­is­ter that he marched up North Street to the paper’s offices with a throng of sup­port­ers in tow and with clenched fists shout­ed “next time, next time”.
Times have cer­tain­ly changed, today the par­a­digm have come full cir­cle. The dif­fer­ence with the Editorial board of the once impres­sive , once respect­ed Gleaner Company is that Editorial Board is now a tool of the PNP which is used to lam­bast and berate those with whom they disagree.

It’s impos­si­ble for the Board mem­bers to find time to remove them­selves from Andrew Holness’ rear end, where they spend the bulk of their time sniff­ing for some­thing wrong with his lead­er­ship style. When they do man­age to extri­cate them­selves smelly from their filthy for­ay they spend the remain­der of their time bash­ing the Police, bash­ing the Federation and Raymond Wilson the Federation’s Chairman.
Never mind the over 800 mur­ders report­ed­ly com­mit­ted in the Country since the begin­ning of the year. Never mind the tank­ing econ­o­my. Never mind the fright­en­ing ero­sion of val­ues and the rise of pover­ty in the Country.

Board writ­ers have become so parochial no one both­ers to take them seri­ous­ly any­more. Their argu­ments have become repet­i­tive, sim­plis­tic and boor­ish­ly unso­phis­ti­cat­ed. So today once again they lashed out at Police Federation Chairman Raymond Wilson for speak­ing out in defense of Rank and file mem­bers of the Police Department.
In a cow­ard­ly, gut­less and asi­nine attack the Editorial pub­lished an Article titled. The Rabble Rousing Sargent Wilson>
The Article con­tained noth­ing beyond the reg­u­lar praise for (inde­com) the agency which inves­ti­gates police mis­con­duct, and char­ac­ter­is­tic blath­er about the virtues of Terrence Williams (inde­com’s) Commissioner . Of course there was the pre­dictable sto­ries of gen­er­al­ly how much every­one hates police in Jamaica. I thought to myself as I read it, this is noth­ing new this has got to be lead­ing up to some­thing else.

I read the Article and of course I just yawned , it real­ly was noth­ing more that the reg­u­lar banal­i­ty we have become accus­tomed to from the Gleaner’s Editorial writers.
But rabble?
If Raymond Wilson is a rab­ble rouser then the Police is Rabble !!
Right?
Rabble. The low­er class­es; the com­mon peo­ple:(Dictionary​.com)
Rabble . The low­est class of peo­ple.(Merrian Webster).
I talk about the Elites and the dis­dain they have for Jamaicans in this Blog almost on a dai­ly basis.
What sad­dens me is the fact that these low-class bot­tom-feed­ing social climbers, who them­selves are large­ly from poor and mid­dle class fam­i­lies can be this dis­re­spect­ful and just plain stupid.
These are the new uncle tom negroes who are occu­py­ing slots at the once respect­ed paper. Now they are bet­ter than the field negroes.
My ini­tial instinct was to assume that they are being will­ful­ly dis­re­spect­ful of all hard work­ing police offi­cers but it would be wrong of me to con­clude that this bunch of idiots are smart enough to be disrespectful.
I con­clud­ed instead they are just stu­pid­ly unaware that what they did was to igno­rant­ly and unwit­ting­ly dis­re­spect every cop on the beat.

In the end the Editorial went to it’s low­est when it demand­ed that Wilson con­vince his mem­ber­ship to accept the Government’s wage offer. Ah ha , there you have it , so this is what the ver­bal assault is all about.
This most dis­re­spect­ful attack on police offi­cers labelling them “the low­est class” all to get them to capit­u­late to accept­ing a wage offer which will con­tin­ue to keep them in poverty.
The Police Department deserves an apol­o­gy from the Gleaner Company. That attack was not jour­nal­ism. It was free speech but free speech from a bunch of cow­ard­ly boot-lick­ers whose free­doms to spew that bile is guar­an­teed not by (inde­com) but by the police offi­cers who defend their rights to be ass-wipes.
Shame on the Jamaican Government for engag­ing in this class­less attack on the Island’s Police Officers by way of sur­ro­gates at the glean­er Company.
This is just anoth­er exam­ple of the dis­dain with which the Administration holds Police Officers.

One of the argu­ments we hear from Jamaica’s self pro­claimed Elites is “oh we need a pro­fes­sion­al police force” . Noble indeed and we all would like that but lets look at some facts. I live in the United States which has thou­sands of police depart­ments and oh boy I cau­tion you peo­ple who claim to know every­thing about what a great police force should be, be care­ful what you ask for . I pose this ques­tion to you against the back­drop of low­er police shoot­ings, high­er inci­dences of homi­cides and oth­er seri­ous crimes and police suicides.

Under what cir­cum­stances would you be com­fort­able with police offi­cers in Jamaica killing unarmed cit­i­zens claim­ing they are in fear for their lives and have those killing be ruled juatified?
Be care­ful what you ask for .
Under no cir­cum­stance would a Jamaican offi­cer be deemed in the right if he or she was to shoot an unarmed sus­pect despite the lev­el of dan­ger posed by that sus­pect. I should know I was a police offi­cer on the mean streets of Kingston and across the coun­try. At best dur­ing my ser­vice years I was at the rather intim­i­dat­ing height of 5 feet 8 inch­es tall and weigh­ing a max­i­mum of 145 pounds. Literally every­one was big­ger than me , yet as impos­ing as most of these peo­ple were I would not be able to legit­i­mate­ly use lethal force against any­one despite the fact that the law implic­it­ly gave me that right. That right to use lethal force if my life or the life of anoth­er is in dan­ger is inter­pret­ed dif­fer­ent­ly in Jamaica. In order for an offi­cer to make that claim with any degree of suc­cess the assailant must have a gun or a large machete. Even if a dan­ger­ous assailant is armed with a knife and pos­es a direct threat to offi­cers lethal force by offi­cers are deemed excessive.
For the most part many with­in the Jamaican soci­ety would rather see a dead cop than a dead criminal.

Despite the fact that a much big­ger indi­vid­ual has the pow­er to cause seri­ous bod­i­ly harm with his bare hands and may poten­tial­ly turn any inan­i­mate object into a lethal weapon the laws are not inter­pret­ed that way in favor of police offi­cers , not by the anti-police judges who dis­pense their brand of jus­tice on the Island and cer­tain­ly not in the court of pub­lic opinion.
Bear in mind that Jamaican crim­i­nals are par­tic­u­lar­ly vio­lent. Is there any won­der Police offi­cers are stressed out and are tak­ing out their prob­lems on those close to themselves?

Let me qual­i­fy two things before the cyn­ics pounce. (1) I am not advo­cat­ing the killing of unarmed civil­ians . I mere­ly made the point metaphor­i­cal­ly for the ben­e­fit of those who pre­tend to know how American Police Departments oper­ate and yearn for their oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures. And (2) I am not sug­gest­ing that it’s okay for offi­cers to bring home prob­lems and make their fam­i­ly mem­bers pay for what they are going through.
It’s impor­tant to note how­ev­er that in the United States Police offi­cers do get accused of being involved in phys­i­cal vio­lence against their spous­es. I must has­ten to add that being a police offi­cer in Jamaica is far more stress­ful than it could ever be any­where in the United States.

I am not equat­ing the two . I am aware of the vast dis­par­i­ty in wealth between the two coun­tries. Again I mere­ly use the United States because the peo­ple who debate these issues tend to see the United States as the ulti­mate met­ric by which all oth­er coun­tries should be judged. As some­one who have lived in the United States for over two decades I see things dif­fer­ent­ly than those who see things from their tele­vi­sion screens.
I am par­tic­u­lar­ly mind­ful of these truths about a few of the ills fac­ing Jamaican cops.
Low wages. The dan­gers asso­ci­at­ed with the job. Internal pres­sures with­in the job. Lack of sup­port from the polit­i­cal direc­torate. And now anoth­er Agency to sec­ond guess and Monday morn­ing quar­ter-back every action they take .
I humbly sug­gest that the lev­els of sui­cides and mur­der-sui­cides being com­mit­ted by mem­bers of the JCF will be just the tip of the ice­berg com­pared to whats to come.

Over the last month and a half sev­er­al offi­cers have been killed in the line of duty. One Corporal is alleged to have com­mit­ted sui­cide. And just recent­ly a con­sta­ble is alleged to have killed his girl­friend and turned his weapon on him­self. One does not have to be a psy­chol­o­gist to under­stand that there is a cri­sis with­in the police department.
Everyone needs a word of com­fort and a pat on the back some­time no mat­ter how old and griz­zled we are. One of the char­ac­ter­is­tics a leader should pos­sess is the abil­i­ty to empathize. Leaders cry with their peo­ple , grieve with fam­i­lies , their empa­thy is sup­posed to lift a nation.
As Winston Churchill was able to do amidst the ruins of London dur­ing world war two, great lead­ers inspire peo­ple to rise and accom­plish great­ness amidst dev­as­ta­tion ruin and despair.

Unfortunately Jamaica has no leader . What we have is some­one bare­ly lit­er­ate. Someone who lacks the basic under­stand­ing that her posi­tion requires her to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the people,particularly those in her employ. But how can she? She is pos­sessed with the desire nev­er to talk her­self out of the job she should nev­er have been allowed to hold in the first place.
Many of the offi­cers now suf­fer­ing went into vot­ing booths and elect­ed this incom­pe­tent to office and they will live or die with their decisions.

I watched some­thing pro­found yes­ter­day which remind­ed me the longer you live the more you learn if of course you want to learn
Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton was speak­ing to three mem­bers of the “Black lives mat­ter movement“who con­front­ed her on some poli­cies of her hus­band for­mer President Bill Clinton which end­ed up incar­cer­at­ing what they say are an unprece­dent­ed amount of blacks and oth­er peo­ple of color.

Secretary Clinton respond­ed appropriately …
“I don’t believe you change hearts. You change laws, you change allo­ca­tion of resources, you change the way sys­tems oper­ate. You’re not gonna change every heart. You’re not. But at the end of the day, we can do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some sys­tems and cre­ate more oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple who deserve to have them. …”
For peo­ple who deserve to have them..ha ha ..

There are times I seri­ous­ly wish that I could sep­a­rate out some Jamaicans who want things done a cer­tain way and allow the rest of us who want things done anoth­er way live togeth­er and see how things shake out right ?
Unfortunately we all have to live togeth­er even though we absolute­ly abhor and have the great­est dis­dain for closed mind­ed peo­ple who are unable to rea­son based on facts in front of them.

There are some peo­ple who adamant­ly believe cer­tain peo­ple should not have the right to vote because they are unin­formed and will­ful­ly so and as such they should not be able to vote and sub­ject every­one else to bad lead­er­ship based on that wil­ful or uncon­scious igno­rance. On that I will with­hold my opinion.

There is an old proverb which say ‘you nev­er throw out the baby with the bath water”. There’s anoth­er which says “you nev­er cut your nose off to spite your face”. In both of these prover­bial sit­u­a­tions you end up the los­er if you do. Of course one of the most dif­fi­cult things to get peo­ple to do is to rea­son based on facts and evi­dence, not be dog­mat­ic based on baked-in ide­o­log­i­cal lean­ings and biases.

No one has to give up their core beliefs in order to have an open mind. An open mind allows for hon­est debate on any range of sub­jects. In fact it is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of igno­rance to adopt a dog­mat­ic approach it means you have decid­ed­ly locked off your mind to the oth­er per­son­’s point of view . Which is fine but you also lose the abil­i­ty to absorb what the oth­er per­son says. And you cer­tain­ly fail to learn some­thing in the process. There’s anoth­er old say­ing which is appro­pri­ate here “even a bro­ken clock is right twice each day”.

TO THE BRAIN DEAD
The mat­ter of the (inde­com) Act is front and cen­ter in the debate in Jamaica every­one knows I am opposed to the Act , not because I do not want Jamaican Police offi­cers held account­able for engag­ing in unlaw­ful or crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. Of course not. In fact even as we debate this two more police offi­cers have placed the JCF Jamaica Constabulary Force in a neg­a­tive light once more.
One sup­posed offi­cer was shot by secu­ri­ty guards as he attempt­ed to rob a busi­ness­man and anoth­er was shot in a sting oper­a­tion involv­ing oth­er police offi­cers. These are in addi­tion to the oth­er police offi­cers who are some­how tied up in the legal sys­tem or oth­er­wise fac­ing inves­ti­ga­tions for alleged crim­i­nal conduct.
So mem­bers of the JCF def­i­nite­ly need over­sight. In fact Law Enforcement Agencies all across the United States are hav­ing to sub­mit to some lev­el of over­sight . Whether by Independent Agencies or risk being tak­en over by the Federal Government is some cases.
Effective over­sight is actu­al­ly good for good law enforce­ment Agents but that over­sight has to be done fair­ly and it must take into account the dif­fi­cul­ties police offi­cers face in the exe­cu­tion of their duties.
It is not enough to say we under­stand that police offi­cers face inher­ent dan­ger as a lead-in or pre­cur­sor before an all out ver­bal assault on their point of view.

It is par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal that we do not brush aside the con­cerns of police or those who sup­port law enforce­ment in the Island based on the exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances which are attached to police ser­vice in the country.
♦ Jamaica is seen as par­tic­u­lar­ly cor­rupt , in fact 84% corrupt.
♦ Jamaican crim­i­nals kill cops , thats it.
♦ Jamaican cops are poor­ly paid,poorly equipped, poor­ly super­vised , poor­ly sup­port­ed, poor­ly trained,and poor­ly appreciated.
♦ Jamaican crim­i­nals are determined.
♦ They face incred­i­ble risks, just on the basis of being police officers.

So when The Minister of National Security and The Junior Minister in the Tourism Ministry Damion Crawford speak out about (inde­com) there is no rea­son to demo­nize them. There is no rea­son to dem­a­gogue the peo­ple who refuse to say just kill all the police officers.
I learned I will not be able to change hearts or minds yes­ter­day and I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe the mem­bers of the joint select com­mit­tee with respon­si­bil­i­ty for (inde­com) Laborites and PNP, rec­og­nizes what we have been say­ing and what Raymond Wilson recent­ly said, the law is bad as constituted.
It is not always that PNP and Laborites have com­mon cause on any issue ‚so there must be some­thing to what those of us on this side of the issue are saying.
Driving the debate on the oth­er side is a poi­so­nous hatred of police so it mat­ters not what the police or their sup­port­ers say. There is real­ly no rea­son to spend time on a mean­ing­less debate of this issue with these peo­ple. Most of them has absolute­ly no idea what’s in the law so why talk to them.

One of the things that Terrence Williams has been able to do is to cap­i­tal­ize on the immense police hatred in the coun­try to push for more and more pow­er. Fortunately for the good peo­ple on the Island The joint select com­mit­tee of Parliament with respon­si­bil­i­ty to police (inde­com) has decid­ed to .….… police (inde­com).
The argu­ments of Young Jamaica the youth arm of the JLP that over­sight of (inde­com) is “tan­ta­mount to shack­ling the agency” goes to the heart of the group’s lack of expo­sure to how real democ­ra­cies work. Oversight of the over­sight agency is called “Transparency and accountability”.

The Minister of National Security and indeed young Minister Crawford are tak­ing a lot of ridicule for their coura­geous stance in rec­og­niz­ing that any Law designed to snare cor­rupt cops can­not have an adver­sar­i­al approach and atti­tude to police offi­cers. It is impor­tant to note that the labourites on the com­mit­tee also vot­ed because they have seen the light.
No one wants account­abil­i­ty in Jamaica more than me but that account­abil­i­ty can­not be about only one group of peo­ple who do a darn good job of arrest­ing crim­i­nals amongst their own ranks.
I sup­port­ed the Contractor General’s Act . I sup­port the INDECOM Act. The (inde­com) Act caus­es police offi­cers to be hes­i­tant and unsure about doing their jobs.
Why ?

Because the Commissioner of (inde­com) has made a mock­ery of the law and it’s man­date. He has stuck his nose into the office of the Director of Public Prosecution where he makes all kinds of unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims about favoritism and incom­pe­tence. He stuck his nose into the courts sys­tem demand­ing that his case should be giv­en pri­or­i­ty. In the end most of Williams sup­port­ers are unaware that he want­ed the job as a high court judge in Jamaica. He also want­ed to be DPP but was side­lined for Paula Llewellyn. After snag­ging the job at (inde­com) he fought to ensure that every­one knew that his job was at the lev­el of a high court judge, the post he real­ly want­ed to begin with.
That is what got us to this point, the DPP test­ed (inde­com’s) pow­er in the Parliament and guess what she won.
In his dog­mat­ic and rapa­cious cru­sade to con­sol­i­date pow­er Terrence Williams gave up power .

It was exact­ly because of his relent­less pur­suit of more and more pow­er which caused many peo­ple includ­ing the Police Federation and sane observers to have some pause, this Blogger being among them.

When a snap cost ben­e­fit analy­sis is done , though unsci­en­tif­ic one has to ask whether the snake oil Terrence Williams and oth­ers are sell­ing actu­al­ly stand up to scruti­ny? Terrence Williams , Hamish Williams and their legions of police hat­ing sup­port­ers would have you believe that it is because of (inde­com’s) sup­posed vig­i­lance why inci­dents of police shoot­ings have dropped. Notwithstanding by (inde­com’s) own report­ing and data the major­i­ty of police shoot­ings they inves­ti­gat­ed were found to be jus­ti­fi­able shoot­ings. Bear in mind that the agen­cy’s very exis­tence was pinned to alle­ga­tions of what spe­cial-inter­est in Jamaica called extra-judi­cial killings.
But let’s assume that that asser­tion was cor­rect. Are we say­ing we are sat­is­fied that the dra­mat­ic increase in the num­bers of mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous felonies is worth police lay­ing off tak­ing out seri­ous crim­i­nals? Remember (inde­com) said the vast major­i­ty of the cas­es it inves­ti­gat­ed where police shoot some­one they came away with a ver­dict of good-shooting”.

How then do they jus­ti­fy the marked increase in the seri­ous loss of life and oth­er seri­ous crimes being com­mit­ted since Williams’ witch-hunt began? Just a cou­ple of days ago Terrence Williams was in the news again talk­ing about the haz­ards of being an (inde­com) agent . I real­ly want­ed to puke when I heard him it’s every day now . Everyday he is in the news mak­ing one fan­tas­tic claim or another.
The bot­tom line is that nei­ther Williams nor his sup­port­ers can jus­ti­fy the loss of life because the real­i­ty is that the police are watch­ing the clock> Officers are doing the bare min­i­mum . The Island’s crim­i­nals know that the police do not want to be sub­ject­ed to an inves­ti­ga­tion or worse by an über anti-police group hell-bent on mak­ing a name for them­selves on their blood and sac­ri­fice. The crim­i­nals are sim­ply tak­ing advan­tage of this peri­od of mad­ness in Jamaica. Unfortunately the vast major­i­ty of the sup­port­ers of this mad­ness live uptown in for­ti­fied cas­tles where the like­li­hood of reper­cus­sions are dis­tant and unlike­ly because of the police. It would be good to see the Police pull back from Kingston 6 and Kingston 8 and pay some atten­tion to the peo­ple in Kingston 13 and Kingston 12.

I am begin­ning to feel that just maybe the Jamaica Labor Party and their sur­ro­gate groups just should not be entrust­ed with state pow­er. It is indeed sad that some­one like myself could even begin to think that way of the Party I have loved and sup­port­ed all my life.
I am feel­ing alien­at­ed from the par­ty of my Grandfather , the work­ing man’s par­ty . The par­ty which believed in hard work dis­ci­pline and per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty has now changed to a par­ty of out­landish Elitists who seem to be doing every­thing in their pow­er to alien­ate the peo­ple from the party.
In recent times we have seen the most dis­gust­ing behav­ior from Everald Warmington.
The Elitist anti-police pos­ture of Kent Phillip Gammon and Dennis meadows.
Lets not for­get Delroy Chuck and sev­er­al mem­bers of the par­ty but now we see the youth arm of the par­ty ‚Young Jamaica come out in alarmist fash­ion against Damion Crawford for speak­ing out against the (inde­com) Act.
In a shrill infan­tile attack on Damion Crawford, Young Jamaica unleashed a ver­bal tor­rent of what amounts to noth­ing more than an out­landish load of excrement.

In it’s ill-informed illog­i­cal word-dump Young Jamaica said quote:

“When one con­sid­ers Crawford’s increas­ing attacks, cou­pled with the secu­ri­ty min­is­ter’s ill-advised deci­sion to rec­om­mend an over­sight body for the over­sight body, you form the uncom­fort­able per­cep­tion that there are forces seek­ing to desta­bi­lize the orga­ni­za­tion,” Young Jamaica said in a release yes­ter­day. It added: “The People’s National Party gov­ern­ment must defin­i­tive­ly declare its hand on whether it sup­ports the work INDECOM is doing in this coun­try. It is becom­ing increas­ing­ly obvi­ous that there are forces with­in the PNP hell-bent on destroy­ing it. Is this a move to appease dis­grun­tled police per­son­nel ahead of an elec­tion? We would rec­om­mend to the gov­ern­ment that a cred­i­ble crime strat­e­gy be devel­oped. Do not make INDECOM a scape­goat for low police morale.“We are not going to allow INDECOM to be bul­lied into sub­mis­sion. This will see us slip­ping back into the dark days where the law abid­ing and hard­work­ing men and women of the secu­ri­ty forces were over­shad­owed by the scourge of extra­ju­di­cial killings and police abus­es. We had an unen­vi­able record where extra­ju­di­cial killings are con­cerned, that num­ber is declin­ing. INDECOM deserves to be strength­ened, not attacked and demeaned. “For the scores of young Jamaicans, espe­cial­ly inner city youth, who are los­ing faith in the for­mal jus­tice sys­tem, INDECOM rep­re­sents a cham­pi­on for their rights. Crawford is gross­ly mis­guid­ed if he believes it is any­one’s best inter­est to take that away.”

From fol­low­ing Damion Crawford com­ments care­ful­ly there is noth­ing in what the Minister said that would mean dis­band­ing (inde­com) . What Crawford and this Publication fun­da­men­tal­ly believe is that the (indecom)Act as present­ly con­fig­ured is inher­ent­ly flawed.
The notion that Crawford’s or any­one else opposed to the Act in its present form is doing so out of an attempt to appease dis­grun­tled police offi­cers shows their igno­rance on mat­ters of importance.
Most impor­tant­ly it demon­strates a pat­tern of dis­re­gard and dis­re­spect for the wel­fare and well­be­ing of police who place them­selves between crim­i­nals and law abid­ing Jamaicans.
It is impor­tant to remind Young Jamaica that it was under Bruce Golding’s Administration (inde­com) this poor­ly though-out law was con­fig­ured. It was under the Bruce Golding Administration that Carolyn Gomes and oth­ers with per­son­al agen­das lob­bied with lies to over­seas Agencies like Amnesty International and The Inter American com­mis­sion on human rights which forced the cre­ation of a law which is clear­ly caus­ing the deaths of scores of Jamaicans includ­ing police offi­cers. A law con­fig­ured with no thought or input from the secu­ri­ty forces

It is under­stand­able that the idea of cost ben­e­fit would elude Young Jamaica not every­one has the abil­i­ty to crit­i­cal think.
In fact informed oppo­si­tion to the law is sure to appear coun­ter­in­tu­itive to many who are opposed to our police force. What they do not under­stand is that you don’t go too far the oth­er way which is what (inde­com) as con­fig­ured does bal­ance is impor­tant. It was under the Golding Administration that this mon­stros­i­ty was designed with no thought to con­se­quences as per the esca­la­tion of crime.
No one could rea­son­ably argue that the police does not need over­sight. Oversight can­not how­ev­er be about the grandios­i­ty of Terrence Williams and his ego. It must be bal­anced and objec­tive not what we have today. What we have today is a agency of the Elites which was designed to shack­le and place the police in their place.
Very sel­dom do I find com­mon cause with mem­bers of the People’s National Party but when Young Jamaica attacks Damion Crawford and Peter Bunting for hav­ing the vision in rec­og­niz­ing that the law is far from per­fect it gives me pause.

Personally I want over­sight of the police, why would any­one not want that? What peo­ple opposed to (inde­com) are say­ing is that as it is present­ly con­fig­ured it is no good. It can­not be that peo­ple who want to fix a bad law is demo­nized as want­i­ng to tear down the law.
What Young Jamaica is engag­ing in is cheap dem­a­goguery with­out a full under­stand­ing or tak­ing the time to under­stand what clear­ly Damion Crawford and Peter Bunting ful­ly gets. Not every­thing can be seen through polit­i­cal lens.
These inex­pe­ri­enced and in some cas­es igno­rant young Laborites fail to under­stand that not every­thing done under the Labor par­ty is good and not every­thing done under the PNP is bad.
Young Jamaica reck­less­ly and pro­fuse­ly talk about dan­ger­ous. What is dan­ger­ous is it’s ill-informed dem­a­goguery of the two men who get what clear­ly it’s mem­bers are inca­pable of grasping.
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble the lev­el of idio­cy of Young Jamaica in assert­ing that Quote:“When one con­sid­ers Crawford’s increas­ing attacks, cou­pled with the secu­ri­ty min­is­ter’s ill-advised deci­sion to rec­om­mend an over­sight body for the over­sight body, you form the uncom­fort­able per­cep­tion that there are forces seek­ing to desta­bi­lize the organization,”
What idio­cy> Oversight of the over­sight makes them uncom­fort­able? It is called account­abil­i­ty. It is called transparency.
It is called bal­ance. It is called get­ting it right.

The Labor Party has a his­to­ry of being per­ceived as a par­ty of the rich and well con­nect­ed . This per­cep­tion wrong or right has kept the par­ty out of Jamaica House for much of the time since Independence. I stand to be cor­rect­ed but I can­not recall Young Jamaica com­ing out in sup­port of the police but for polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy yet every­one is falling over them­selves to crit­i­cize and demo­nize any­one who dare speak out about their cre­ation (inde­com) .
Maybe it won’t be such a bad thing if the Labor Party is kept out of Jamaica House until it demon­strates the matu­ri­ty to lead.