Why did he not issue the order to arrest Coke? Remember he said  Lewin indi­cat­ed that the sur­veil­lance would allow for a “soft” deten­tion of Coke and avoid poten­tial unrest should the extra­di­tion request reach the Jamaican authorities.

General Stewart Saunders this morn­ing tes­ti­fied that Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke “hur­ried­ly” left his upper St Andrew home and drove to his west Kingston strong­hold of Tivoli Gardens near­ly five min­utes after he and the Police Commissioner at the time briefed then Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

I am uncer­tain how this bit of news is rel­e­vant in the con­text of the ongo­ing Inquiry been con­duct­ed into events which occurred when the Military and Police entered Tivoli Gardens to arrest Coke who was want­ed for extra­di­tion to the United States .
Unless there is evi­dence that someone(Golding) for exam­ple alert­ed Coke. How is it rel­e­vant when Coke could sim­ply and coin­ci­den­tal­ly be head­ing to Tivoli the epic-cen­ter of his operations.
Saunders told the com­mis­sion that then Police Commissioner Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin request­ed the sur­veil­lance of Coke, indi­cat­ing that he had become aware of a like­ly extra­di­tion request for the for­mer Tivoli Gardens strong­man. According to Saunders, Lewin indi­cat­ed that the sur­veil­lance would allow for a “soft” deten­tion of Coke and avoid poten­tial unrest should the extra­di­tion request reach the Jamaican authorities.

If this evi­dence is true… If Lewin believed Golding to be the source of the leak.
Then it appeared Lewin want­ed to dam­age Golding more than to do his job.
It would appear that Hardly Lewin failed dis­mal­ly as the head law enforce­ment Officer to uphold his sworn oath to pro­tect and serve.
Lewin had always referred to Tivoli Gardens as the moth­er of all Garrisons. If Tivoli was the moth­er then the intri­cate web of PNP Garrisons across the Nation were cer­tain­ly grow­ing chil­dren as far as Garrisons are concerned.
Of course those seemed to have elud­ed Lewin while he was head of the JDF and as head of the Constabulary.
It is shock­ing that Saunders could assert that both he and Lewin were aware that Coke would be want­ed for extra­di­tion and did noth­ing , even though they claimed he was under sur­veil­lance. The state­ment of Saunders opened up both the JCF AND JDF to con­dem­na­tion of being incred­i­bly incompetent.
If they had Coke under surveillance.
If he knew the order to extra­dite was com­ing down the pipe.
If he had infor­ma­tion that Coke was head­ed for Tivoli Gardens soon after he briefed the Prime Minister,and if Lewin was told Coke was alert­ed . Why did Lewin not use his author­i­ty to do what he said he would do? According to Saunders, Lewin indi­cat­ed that the sur­veil­lance would allow for a “soft” deten­tion of Coke and avoid poten­tial unrest should the extra­di­tion request reach the Jamaican authorities

That was the moment for Lewin to do his Job and he did not.
On that note Lewin should be seen for what he real­ly was a polit­i­cal oper­a­tive who did not do his job.

A fed­er­al jury sen­tenced Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death. Tsarnaev, 21 and his broth­er Tamerlan were accused of plot­ting and car­ry­ing out the Marathon Bombing using a pres­sure cook­er bombs as their weapon of choice. Tamerlan was killed in a shoot out with Police while Tsarnaev was cap­tured and charged with mul­ti­ple Terrorism charges for which he received the death penal­ty in Massachusetts, arguably the most lib­er­al state in the Union.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faced 30 charges relat­ed to the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, the killing of MIT police offi­cer Sean Collier, and the ensu­ing Watertown fire­fight in April 2013. The Marathon bomb­ing killed three peo­ple and injured at least 264 oth­ers.
Dylan Storm Roof tar­get­ed the African American com­mu­ni­ty. He took all the steps nec­es­sary plan to exe­cute African Americans even as they wor­shiped in Church. Clearly these peo­ple were killed because of their col­or. Reports indi­cate Roof said he had to car­ry out his “Mission” even as the kind­ness of his vic­tims forced him to rethink the das­tard­ly act he was about to commit.

“MISSION”
Who was involved in Radicalizing Dylann Storm Roof ? The term “Mission” sug­gest he had co-con­spir­a­tors. If not in exe­cu­tion cer­tain­ly in it’s devel­op­ment. Who autho­rized the “Mission”? Does any­one believe this sil­ly look­ing lit­tle mis­cre­ant thought out, planned and exe­cut­ed that plan, even as he wore and dis­played sym­bols of Racism?
I do not?
“TERRORISM”
“Terrorism is the use of vio­lent acts to fright­en the peo­ple in an area as a way of try­ing to achieve a polit­i­cal goal”.
How does the Act com­mit­ted by Dylann Storm Roof dif­fer from that com­mit­ted by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

“OUTRAGE”
Where is the nation­al out­rage sim­i­lar to that we heard when the Tsarnaev broth­ers took those inno­cent lives in Boston?
When Anglo-Soxons kill peo­ple of col­or here in America there is a sys­tem­at­ic effort to nuance and mod­i­fy the ter­ror­ist intent of the killer, talk­ing instead about Guns, men­tal-health, pover­ty and oth­er periph­er­al issues. Obama too , in his con­tin­ued effort not to offend, tip­py-toed around this mas­sive Act of Terrorism choos­ing instead to talk about gun-control.
This has noth­ing ‚to do with gun con­trol, (did­ly squat), this is Terrorism based on race.
Nowhere in the def­i­n­i­tion of Terrorism does it say acts of ter­ror are con­fined to Islamist’s alone.

“INCONSEQUENTIAL TOOL OF HATE”
Dylan Storm is a 21 year-old incon­se­quen­tial instru­ment of hate. A liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of the hate which hate produces.
The source/​s from which Dylan Storm learned to hate are very much in place today as they were before he gunned down 9 mem­bers of the community.
♦The Confederate bat­tle Flag still flies over the State’s Capital Building.
♦ South Carolina boasts (19) rec­og­nized Hate Groups, more than any oth­er State in the Nation.
♦ South Carolina is one of just five States which does not have a a Hate Crime Statute.
♦ South Carolina pro­duced Joe Wilson the imbe­cile Congressman who shout­ed out “you lie” at Barack Obama as he addressed the Nation in a state of the union address.

The lit­tle hate­mon­ger who took the lives of 9 peo­ple was arraigned on Friday on nine counts of mur­der .That’s all good but where are the Terror charges, what am I miss­ing? The Judge allowed dece­dents fam­i­ly mem­bers who so desired to speak at the arraign­ment. Literally all who spoke told the accused they for­gave him.
It’s their right to free them­selves of hate but for­giv­ing and going back to the way things were isn’t working.
Forgiveness is a prod­uct of repen­tance and sup­pli­ca­tion. It does not pre­ced­ed these Acts it suc­ceeds them…

.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…..

HISTORY BEHIND MOTHER EMANUEL CHURCH.

As we’ve been hear­ing, Emanuel AME Church in Charleston was well-known long before it became the site of a mas­sacre by a sus­pect who’s linked to white suprema­cy. The church has a deep his­to­ry in the civ­il rights move­ment. And yes­ter­day, President Obama not­ed its roots in an ear­li­er bid for freedom.

PRES BARACK OBAMA: This is a church that was burned to the ground because its wor­shipers worked to end slavery.

MONTAGNE: The pres­i­dent was speak­ing about an event in 1822. One of the church’s founders, a freed slave named Denmark Vesey, was con­vict­ed for plan­ning a slave revolt, a revolt that was nev­er car­ried out. He was exe­cut­ed. The tree where it’s believed he was hanged still stands in Charleston. Historian Douglas Egerton wrote a book about Denmark Vesey.

DOUGLAS EGERTON: He had one of those amaz­ing sto­ries that if it were a movie or a nov­el, one would not believe it. When he was about 13, he was pur­chased to be sold into the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which is mod­ern day Haiti. He liked the cap­tain who had bought him, a man named Joseph Vesey, who had used him briefly as a cab­in boy. And Vesey set­tled in Charleston as an importer of nau­ti­cal goods.

MONTAGNE: All right, so he was skilled. And as I under­stand it, he bought his freedom.

EGERTON: He played the lot­tery, and he won about $1,800. And so he bought his free­dom, and the deed was signed on New Year’s Eve 1799. So he went to sleep that night and woke up in the new cen­tu­ry as a free man, but his wife and his chil­dren remained slaves.

MONTAGNE: So as the rare free black man among most­ly black peo­ple who are slaves, what was his role exact­ly in con­coct­ing a plan for a slave revolt?

EGERTON: The plan was ini­tial­ly to rise up on July 14, 1822, that was Bastille Day. And the idea was that as church bells tolled mid­night, urban slaves would slay their mas­ters as they slept and then fight their way to the docks and sail the next morn­ing to Haiti.

MONTAGNE: And Haiti, it must be not­ed, had been freed through a slave revolt.

EGERTON: Yes, so this made Vesey’s plot unusu­al in North America in that it was not kind of a typ­i­cal rebel­lion. It was a mass exo­dus. It was a mass escape. Vesey under­stands that non­com­bat­ants — which is to say women, chil­dren, aged — are going to die when his men rise up. But of course, their goal is not to kill whites. Their goal is to get away.

MONTAGNE: Tell us about the tri­al itself.

EGERTON: It was essen­tial­ly a kan­ga­roo court. There was no chance that Vesey was going to sur­vive this alive. And they read a sen­tence to him they had obvi­ous­ly writ­ten in advance. It was very long and pre­pared. And his only response was to look at them and say the work of insur­rec­tion will go on. They could hang him, but they could­n’t kill the idea.

MONTAGNE: How, though, did his case affect what is now Emanuel Church?

EGERTON: After the con­spir­a­cy col­lapsed, the church was raised, prob­a­bly burned to the ground. And so the build­ing that’s there now is the third-gen­er­a­tion AME Church in Charleston. And of course, Vesey has nev­er been for­got­ten by the black com­mu­ni­ty in South Carolina, who worked long and hard to get the stat­ue erect­ed that went up in 2014. And of course, white Carolinians have always regard­ed the church as kind of a hotbed of activism, which is why this tragedy was undoubt­ed­ly no acci­dent. This has been a tar­get for a very long time.

MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for talk­ing with us.

EGERTON: Good to talk to you, a sad day.

MONTAGNE: Douglas Egerton is the author of “He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives Of Denmark Vesey.” He’s also an his­to­ri­an at Lemoyne College in Syracuse, N.Y.

Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our web­site terms of use and per­mis­sions pages at www​.npr​.org for fur­ther information.

There is renewed con­ver­sa­tion in JAMAICA about giv­ing the Diaspora the vote.
As with any oth­er issue there are peo­ple lined up on either side of the debate.
Personally I did not give much thought to the issue until recently.
Opposition leader Andrew Holness who recent­ly returned from trips to England and the United States, said it would be impor­tant to give mem­bers of the Diaspora a con­stituent vote. Holness went on to say that the con­stituent vote would mean that the Diaspora have a vote in the Parliament,rather than being spread out over all con­stituen­cies which would have the pow­er to decide the out­come of elec­tions from overseas.
Recently one of the Portia Simpson Miller pro­pa­gan­da Organ the Daily Gleaner Editorial page exco­ri­at­ed the Opposition leader for dar­ing to sug­gest that Jamaicans liv­ing abroad be allowed to vote in nation­al elections.
The Editorial dia­tribe nev­er both­ered to rec­og­nize the dis­tinc­tion Holness made that a Constituency vote would not and could not change the Government.

Having thought about the issue and read some of the pros and cons I do believe mem­bers of the Diaspora should be allowed to vote but not just in a nar­row con­stituen­cy vote.
If every mem­ber of the dias­po­ra , not a for­eign cit­i­zen return to their homes come enu­mer­a­tion time , reg­is­ter to vote then vote come elec­tion time whats to stop them?
This would also be a ter­rif­ic way to dis­man­tle Jamaica’s mul­ti­ple Political Garrisons.
There are no laws to my knowl­edge which pre­vents Jamaicans liv­ing abroad from doing so. Does Geography then become the pre­clud­ing factor?
If so why?
Many mem­bers of the Diaspora work under severe­ly dif­fi­cult con­di­tions to send mon­ey back to Jamaica. One report indi­cates The Jamaican dias­po­ra sent 16 Billion US dol­lars home over the last decade. That Infusion of cash is sec­ond only to the resources derived from Tourism.
Monies sent back to Jamaica impacts the Jamaican econ­o­my in more fun­da­men­tal ways that even tourism does. People imme­di­ate­ly put monies they receive direct­ly into the Jamaican economy.
Sixteen Billion Dollars inject­ed into the econ­o­my and no equi­ty share?

Wednesday’s Gleaner Letter of the day was Titled “Tread Cautiously With Diaspora”. The title by it’s very word­ing sug­gest­ed that mem­bers of the Diaspora are not Jamaicans but Alien crea­tures who should lay no claim to Jamaica, The dis-qual­i­fi­er being that they live abroad.
Many Jamaicans return­ing home to vis­it and to be rein­te­grat­ed into Jamaican soci­ety have com­plained of being treat­ed like outsiders.

Many have been tar­get­ed along those lines for Robberies and even worse.
That aside, the let­ter laid out what I thought was the true intent of the let­ter when the writer stat­ed in the end …
If the idea is ‘to gath­er the intel­lec­tu­al and mate­r­i­al capac­i­ties of Jamaicans, wher­ev­er they are’, there are many ways to do that which do not require any form of eli­gi­bil­i­ty for rep­re­sen­ta­tion. As sug­gest­ed often, one can have ‘funds’ or ‘bonds’ that clear­ly allow the dias­po­ra to make finan­cial par­tic­i­pa­tion in nation­al development.

In oth­er words we will be hap­py to take your mon­ey but you get no say. That mind­set is can­cer­ous. It is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the gen­er­al ero­sion which has per­me­at­ed our coun­try for decades now. Every per­son who invest in a com­pa­ny or coun­try buys equi­ty share with that investment.
When you pur­chase equi­ty-share you do get to have a say. For years Jamaica has ben­e­fit­ed from Diaspora mon­ey with­out giv­ing any­thing back. That has to stop, whether they like it or not.
All mem­bers of the Diaspora must demand our decade long 16 Billion Dollar equi­ty share in our homeland.
Its not up to the recip­i­ents to decide, it’s our call to make and we should make it.

If you lis­tened to JAMAICA’S Finance Minister Peter Phillips” speech Tuesday dur­ing his address to the nation and you just hap­pened to have been in a Coma , or maybe too young to know, you would cer­tain­ly come away believ­ing that the PNP was an inno­cent observ­er to the last 40 years.

Phillips told the Nation .…

“Funds were not avail­able at afford­able inter­est rates. Even grant resources were denied us,” Phillips said. “Our reserves were dwin­dling and investor con­fi­dence was declin­ing.” He said the most telling sign of “our near bank­rupt­cy, as a coun­try, was the high lev­el of pub­lic debt which stood at approx­i­mate­ly 145 per cent of Gross Domestic Product by March 2013, with­out any mul­ti­lat­er­al sup­port, and had become a mill­stone around the neck of every Jamaican”. The finance min­is­ter said to ser­vice this debt, in the 2010 fis­cal year, it took 60 cents out of every dol­lar of the budget.“In addi­tion, to pay pub­lic ser­vice wages, it took anoth­er 21 cents of every dol­lar,” Phillips explained. “This meant that 81 cents of every dol­lar spent by the Government went to ser­vic­ing the debt, and pay­ing the wages of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.” He said these oblig­a­tions left the Government with only 19 cents out of every dol­lar to fix roads, improve health ser­vice, build schools, pro­vide water and hous­ing, meet nation­al secu­ri­ty costs and clean drains, among oth­er things.
What Peter Phillips omit­ted is the fact that his Party, the PNP was in charge of the econ­o­my for all but 12 of the last 40 years. Phillips said the telling sign of “our near bank­rupt­cy”, as a coun­try, was the high lev­el of pub­lic debt which stood at approx­i­mate­ly 145 per cent of Gross Domestic Product by March 2013, with­out any mul­ti­lat­er­al sup­port, and had become a mill­stone around the neck of every Jamaican”.
Simply put, the Country was spend­ing rough­ly 50% more that it was earning.
Despite the caus­tic nature of Jamaican Politics, Phillips could not lay blame at the feet of the Opposition Labor Party. This was rather telling as Jamaica inch­es toward National elec­tions due in about a year.

National Polls not yet released are report­ed to show the Jamaica Labor Party increas­ing it’s lead over the PNP to a whop­ping 20 point deficit. Additionally the Election Commission is telling the Nation that Local Government Elections will be pushed back.
Minister Phillips despite his impas­sioned argu­ments that his Government have pulled the coun­try back from the brink of bank­rupt­cy ‚nev­er took respon­si­bil­i­ty for his par­ty’s ter­ri­ble mis­han­dling of the coun­try’s affairs.
Additional the Minister said there would be no mon­ey to offer pub­lic sec­tor work­ers increas­es beyond the 7% already offered by the Administration.
It will be inter­est­ing to note the reac­tion of the mas­sive pub­lic sec­tor work­force come elec­tion time.

In the end Phillips took no respon­si­bil­i­ty for his par­ty’s four-decade long man­gling of our coun­try’s finan­cial affairs. He

mere­ly chron­i­cled the near-miss of total eco­nom­ic col­lapse. There was no I’m sor­ry, can we have anoth­er chance to do it right. Omar Davies was mere­ly shuf­fled to anoth­er port­fo­lio after pre­sid­ing over the most cat­a­stroph­ic and incom­pe­tent han­dling of our nation’s econ­o­my in history.
The People’s National Party has no solu­tion for Jamaica beyond the plans laid out by the International Monetary Fund. Of course the Funds plan bal­ances the books on the backs of the nations peo­ple to the extent bank­rupt­cy is avert­ed and they receive mas­sive returns on their funds in excess of that loaned to us.
The Government cel­e­brates meet­ing the Fund’s tar­gets as a sign they are on the right path. It’s about time the peo­ple wake up and real­ize pass­ing IMF tests means bad news for for them.
The rul­ing PNP is sim­ply engaged now in shuf­fling and reor­ga­niz­ing the deck-chairs on the sink­ing Titanic.

Recently we report­ed on a trend which is hap­pen­ing in the Tourism sec­tor in Jamaica.
Many pas­sen­ger sim­ply stay on boat when they dock in Jamaica.
This noth­ing new. I have seen tourist harass­ment up close and per­son­al as a young police offi­cer who spent count­less hours bat­tling that scourge.
The issue of harass­ment can­not be con­fused with ven­dors polite­ly offer­ing their wares for sale in a non-threat­en­ing or aggres­sive manner.
For the most past that can­not be said of the sit­u­a­tion vis­i­tors face when they enter our shores.
I recount an inci­dent relat­ed to me by a female police offi­cer in my city here in the United States. She and her hus­band nar­row­ly escaped death by ven­dors in Montego Bay, thank­ful­ly they were res­cued by oth­er ven­dors. Their crime ? Daring to turn down an aggres­sive man who offered unwant­ed wares.

Tourism Minister Dr Wykeham McNeill is report­ed as telling del­e­gates attend­ing the sixth Biennial Diaspora Conference in Montego Bay yes­ter­day that cruise vis­i­tors are shy­ing away from get­ting off their ships when they get here because they are being harassed. The upshot, Dr McNeill point­ed out, is that the prob­lem is pre­vent­ing small busi­ness oper­a­tors from earn­ing from tourism. According to the Jamaica Observer.

I’m unsure about the upshot, as Dr, McNeil sees it but we have report­ed on this very issue time and again point­ing to the loss to legit­i­mate busi­ness­es and the econ­o­my in general.
The truth is that even as Dr. McNeil points to this age old prob­lem, his Administration is allow­ing it to hap­pen. Not only have they allowed it to hap­pen in Tourism towns, they allow hig­glers and hus­tlers to sell wares in front of stores all across down-town Kingston and oth­er major cities across the Island. Business own­ers com­plain to their own detri­ment, they are either killed or wake up to smol­der­ing ruins the next day.
This is the luna­cy which has per­me­at­ed our coun­try. Yet as a friend told me on the phone from Jamaica recent­ly it does not mat­ter what the PNP does to Jamaicans , Jamaica is PNP Country and the peo­ple will return them to power.
My friend laugh­ing­ly told me nev­er­the­less ” if yu cut mi, mi bleed orange blood”.
My friend a rather intel­li­gent man under­stands the dynam­ics of the sit­u­a­tion, he is more resigned to the real­i­ties on the ground than he is a dyed-in-the wool-comrade.

McNeil believes that both polit­i­cal par­ties should con­sid­er it their duty to repeat­ed­ly remind their base of the dam­age that tourist harass­ment does to Jamaica. This age old prob­lem will not be fixed one bit by beg­ging peo­ple not to. In the same way we can­not beg dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to refrain from com­mit­ting crimes , we can in no way expect hun­gry broke peo­ple to stop ped­dling their wares.
As I have said repeat­ed­ly, the prob­lems fac­ing the Jamaican peo­ple will not be fixed by this Administration. The meth­ods which are need­ed to effec­tive­ly turn around the mind­set of Jamaicans are not part of the strate­gies of the PNP.
The PNP does not aggra­vate voters.
They win elec­tions by mak­ing promis­es that effec­tive­ly any­thing goes, all one has to do is run ‑wid ‑it [sic]

I’m not sure what type of method­ol­o­gy the Jamaica Constabulary Force is using in it’s attempt to con­tain and sup­press crime in Jamaica’s inner cities.
What I do know is that they aren’t working.
I under­stand the chal­lenges fac­ing the police and they are many and var­ied chief among which are.
♦ The pre­ten­tious nature of Jamaican up-town tap­pa­naris[sic] to inject them­selves into every­thing the police does , sole­ly to find fault. We Jamaicans know how to do every­one’s job but our own.
♦ Lack of resources and sup­port from the Government to effec­tive­ly get the job done.
♦ The propen­si­ty of inner city dwellers to push back against law enforce­ment even though they derive the most ben­e­fit from prop­er law enforcement.
♦A judi­cial sys­tem hos­tile to law enforce­ment, prob­a­bly found nowhere else in the world.
♦ A per­va­sive cul­ture of anti-law enforcement.
♦ Lack of ongo­ing train­ing and logis­ti­cal support.
♦ Low and inad­e­quate wages and remu­ner­a­tion for the extra work and the haz­ard offi­cers face.
♦ Dealing with an over­sight Agency which places itself in the posi­tion of Savior but brings pre­cious lit­tle if any­thing to the table.

Yes it is dif­fi­cult being a police offi­cer in Jamaica, I know for a fact many offi­cers would be out if the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself.
Officers are large­ly in it now for the lit­tle stipend they receive 12 times a year.
Morale is at all time lows.
Esprit de corps is non-exis­tent, a thing of the past.
They risk their lives for a cor­rupt , Administration which refus­es to rec­og­nize their sacrifice.
They risk their lives for a peo­ple total­ly unde­serv­ing of the sac­ri­fice they make.

I am not anti-police, I have been in the trench­es , I have fought along­side many still serv­ing includ­ing SSP Cornwall (big­ga) Ford , a man who was senior to me and whom I still have the utmost respect for as a seri­ous crime fight­er to this day.
Senior Superintendent Ford is now the Commanding Officer in charge of Western Kingston. This Command means Ford has come full cir­cle as a young man who hails from right there in Hannah Town.
Ford is a son of the soil, he knows the com­mu­ni­ty inside out , not just as a police offi­cer but as a kid who tra­versed the lanes and alley-ways as all lit­tle boys do.
Understanding the psy­chol­o­gy of the com­mu­ni­ty is not a prob­lem then for Ford.

As vio­lence con­tin­ue to plague com­mu­ni­ties in west Kingston, Schools are forced to keep chil­dren inside out of fear for their lives. Educators lament chil­dren are trau­ma­tized at the con­stant sound of gun­shots. As a result they are forced to hun­ker down as if in a war zone.
How can Jamaica expect to suc­ceed as a Nation if it’s chil­dren are trau­ma­tized. Kids go to School not know­ing when a stray bul­let with their name on it will hit?
These are the con­di­tions we read about and con­demn in Gaza and the West Bank. We can­not allow this bunker real­i­ty to con­tin­ue to be par for the course any longer.

I am left won­der­ing whether the cur­rent sys­tem the police is employ­ing of putting out fires may not be con­tribut­ing to the problem?
Criminals are oppor­tunis­tic Vultures. They will push the enve­lope of oppor­tunism to the extent they are con­vinced they will pre­vail with­out con­se­quence. In many instances the strat­e­gy of the Police has been and still remain high­ly predictable.
It may be time for the Police to adopt a grid approach to con­tain­ing crime.
Outside in , rather than inside out.

This means using every sin­gle iota of resource avail­able to posi­tion cops strate­gi­cal­ly around trou­ble spots.
This means very few offi­cers at police stations.
This means bring­ing the assets of the Defense Force into the mix. We won’t be fight­ing Cuba any­time soon we don’t need troops and vehi­cles lay­ing around idle.
This means cut­ting off poten­tial escape routes includ­ing gul­lies and drains.
As soon as some­one fires a gun the out­er cir­cle clos­es until the offender/​s are iso­lat­ed , cut off, arrest­ed or tak­en out.
When you negate the chances of escape you change behaviors.
It’s time to stop dash­ing to scenes of crime after the fact. Criminals under­stand that is what Police do, they have no fear they know the areas , they know the topography.
Lets bring a dif­fer­ent approach to polic­ing in Jamaica’s urban ghettos,.

Since the start of the year over 500 peo­ple have been killed by America’s police forces. Prior to this year there was no actu­al account­ing for the hun­dreds of peo­ple killed each year, as there are no laws or actu­al rules which forces police depart­ments to com­pile accu­rate data of cit­i­zens they kill.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations have said they do not have accu­rate data of the peo­ple killed in the name of law-enforcement.
In many cas­es the vic­tims are unarmed some suf­fer­ing from men­tal issues.
Since the begin­ning of the black lives mat­ter cam­paign, more peo­ple are being sen­si­tized to the seri­ous prob­lem of police mur­der in the United States.
There is still very stiff oppo­si­tion to scruti­ny of police, large­ly by white pro

police groups and indi­vid­u­als who are not opposed to cops killing blacks whether they are inno­cent or not.
In many cas­es cops do not hide their prej­u­dices as was the case in San Francisco California where cops tweet­ed to each oth­er that Killing Black People Is Okay Because “It’s Not Against The Law To Put An Animal Down”.
Despite the vile nature of these com­ments , hard­ly any of this made it to the main stream Media.

Shocking as these num­bers are they are not new. they are sim­ply more obvi­ous now that peo­ple are actu­al­ly record­ing police and more Americans are pay­ing attention.
Additionally there is evi­dence that many cops are engaged in the hor­ri­ble prac­tice of plant­i­ng evi­dence and fal­si­fy­ing records in order to gain convictions.

As you might imag­ine the vic­tims of these atroc­i­ties are usu­al­ly Blacks , Latino, and poor whites.

Black Community lead­ers and grass-roots Organizations look to the FBI to take over and inves­ti­gate instances where local District Attorneys refuse to charge police when they com­mit crimes.
The prob­lem with that strat­e­gy is that the FBI main­tains sur­veil­lance assets on black demon­stra­tors who march for account­abil­i­ty of police actions.
Even as the Agency pur­ports to be engaged in some instances in Investigating mis­con­duct of the very same police…

Data from the Guardian shows that black Americans, par­tic­u­lar­ly young black men, face a high­er like­li­hood of being killed by police than their non-black peers. The Guardian’s report­ing sup­ports that find­ing, show­ing that 28.2 per­cent of all peo­ple killed by police this year have been black, despite mak­ing up just 13.2 per­cent of the population.

This pub­li­ca­tion sup­port Rachael Dolezal.
This pub­li­ca­tion wish­es to reg­is­ter it’s sup­port for Rachael Dolezal for­mer head of the Spokane Washington NAACP.
We would like to reg­is­ter our dis­gust with the per­cep­tion that a dried up with­ered man twice mar­ried and divorced can declare he is now a woman and be award­ed the Arthur Ash medal for courage.
Conversely this edu­cat­ed young woman who may have been eth­i­cal­ly mis­guid­ed in declar­ing her­self black but who have done tremen­dous good as head of her NAACP chap­ter and as an edu­ca­tor is being demo­nized and pilloried.
In essence soci­ety is dic­tat­ing one can mar­ry whomev­er and soon whatever.
One may chose his her gen­der, but nev­er ever assume to be black.
Rachael’s sup­posed birth moth­er when asked whether one can be trans-racial remarked “No, ones race is part of ones genet­ic code”.
Wonder at what stage is one’s gen­der decided?
Ironically the per­son who posed the ques­tion to the senior Dolezals was Thomas Roberts a man who is mar­ried to a man.

Parliament con­tends it does not have the req­ui­site resources or the time to ade­quate­ly do the nec­es­sary over­sight of INDECOM the over­sight Agency cre­at­ed sup­pos­ed­ly to Investigate exces­sive actions from police offi­cers and mem­bers of the Jamaica Defense force.
The Agency came into exis­tence under the for­mer JLP Administration of Bruce Golding. The con­tention then, and appro­pri­ate­ly so, was that mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty Forces, (pri­mar­i­ly the JCF) were engaged in con­duct incon­sis­tent with their mandate.

At the time INDECOM came into exis­tence I thought there was suf­fi­cient over­sight of the JCF. The Police Public Complaints Authority and the Bureau of Special Investigations were active inves­tiga­tive arms tasked with bring­ing errant cops to face the courts. Additionally the Office of Director of Public Prosecution, had the pow­er to file charges against police offi­cers if the office believes a crime was committed.
That was not the extent of it, the DPP had the pow­er to file charges against offi­cers sole­ly to calm pub­lic out­cry. Yes that is Jamaican law, even if there is insuf­fi­cient evi­dence of wrong-doing .
Many Police Officers have had their car­rears and finances ruined as a result of this law.
Nevertheless the deci­sion was made to go for­ward with the cre­ation of a new Agency at the expense of mod­ern­iz­ing the JCF.

Fast for­ward and the con­tention today is that INDECOM is in need of over­sight, oth­er than that which the Parliament sup­pos­ed­ly provide.
At the time the dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing the cre­ation of the ACT was ini­ti­at­ed I thought this was exact­ly where we would be, engaged in a nev­er end­ing cycle of dis­cus­sion of oversight.
I said the the solu­tion was to fix the police, and main­tain the over­sight which was in place.
My posi­tion was not based in a belief that the police did not need over­sight. It was anchored in the knowl­edge that cre­at­ing a new Agency like INDECOM would present oppor­tu­ni­ties for Elitism and confrontational-ism .
That is exact­ly what INDECOM rep­re­sents large­ly because of Commissioner Terrence Williams’s appetite and desire for unchecked power.
William’s asso­ci­a­tions were also wor­thy of scruti­ny, he pub­licly shared a press con­fer­ence with Jamaicans for Justice,(JFJ) and it’s then direc­tor Carolyn Gomes who was decid­ed­ly and unnec­es­sar­i­ly unfair and antag­o­nis­tic toward law enforcement.
Members of the JCF made their dis­plea­sure know at the time. Since then Williams has done pre­cious lit­tle to shape INDECOM into an Agency which fair-mind­ed Jamaicans can trust to look objec­tive­ly at alle­ga­tions of abuse by our secu­ri­ty forces and do an unbi­ased objec­tive investigation.

Williams tenure has be char­ac­ter­ized by demand and more demand for pow­er and con­fronta­tion­al pos­tur­ing against the Police and Military.
As the con­ver­sa­tion pro­gress­es politi­cians have lined up on either sides of the issue. Williams as is expect­ed wants no over­sight from any new body, claim­ing “INDECOM is sub­ject to over­sight by the Public Defender”.
Of course the office of pub­lic defend­er is head­ed by Earl Witter and staffed with func­tionar­ies vehe­ment­ly hos­tile to police.
This is a sim­ple case of the ene­my of my ene­my is my friend, The office of pub­lic defend­er does not offer any real over­sight of INDECOM.

The polit­i­cal alliances arrayed on both sides of the issue are under­stand­able, what is of crit­i­cal import are the out­side groups like the the Norman Manley Law School (NMLS), Jamaicans and for Justice (JFJ).
The Norman Manley Law School even more than JFJ.
The Law School trains Lawyers who ulti­mate­ly become Judges.
Jamaica does not need more Judges or Magistrates hos­tile to the rule of law and those who enforce said laws.
There are more than enough of them in the sys­tem, like Termites eat­ing away at it’s credibility.
How iron­ic is it that Williams who crave more and more pow­er of over­sight desires no over­sight of his actions?
As I have said before this is a pow­er trip for Williams and noth­ing more.

Carolyn Cooper, Linguist and teacher at the University of the West Indies (UWI) could not resist the temp­ta­tion to dip her beak into the shal­low pool of murky noth­ing­ness, which was the much to do about noth­ing brouha­ha, on social media which occurred when Reggae singer Sean Paul’s wife Jodi Stewart-Henriques said Jamaican sprint­er Usain Bolt was a hor­ri­ble neighbor.

Henriques who is also know by the moniker (Jinx) made the com­ments on social media, then retract­ed them after a mael­strom of crit­i­cism went fly­ing her way in true Jamaican fashion.
Stewart though Jamaican , clear­ly did not under­stand from her uptown enclave that if some­one is dubbed the big man you crit­i­cize them at your own detri­ment and peril.
Dr. Cooper her­self, a cul­tur­al icon of sorts has man­aged to attach her­self to pop­u­lar cul­ture like a crus­tacean to cor­ral reef. Cooper teach­es a course at the UWI which cen­ters on Reggae poetry.
Among some of the eye­brow rais­ing things she has done was to invite now impris­oned mur­der­er Adidja Palmer o/​c Vybz Kartel, to speak to her class, even though the class focused on the lyrics of Burning Spear, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Steel Pulse, Tanya Stephens and Buju Banton.

Cooper, true to her counter cul­ture per­sona delved head first into the debate adopt­ing a pre­dictable pop­ulist stance.
I found that laugh­able that peo­ple will twist real­i­ty and com­mon sense to suit a par­tic­u­lar nar­ra­tive because they are expect­ed by their fol­low­ers to think and react a cer­tain way.
In the process they end up twist­ing them­selves into con­ver­sa­tions of word vom­it which end up expos­ing their hypocrisy.
The truth is one is oblig­ed to believe what they believe and not what some­one else thinks you should believe, because of past posi­tions you may have taken.
Cooper in sup­posed sup­port of Usain’s rise to the prime and pris­tine com­mu­ni­ty of Norbrook , quot­ed Bob Marley whose mon­ey and Chris Blackwell’s help allowed him to move from Trench Town to Hope Road.
Quote:

I want to dis­turb my neighbour

‘Cause I’m feel­ing so right

I want to turn up my disco

Blow them to full watts tonight

Inna rub-a-dub style.
After going on and on with her pop­ulist rant she did a com­plete one hun­dred eighty degree turn.

I must admit I do have some sym­pa­thy for Jodi Stewart-Henriques. She’s suf­fer­ing from town-house syn­drome. It’s a con­di­tion brought on by liv­ing so close to your neigh­bours that every­day noise grad­u­al­ly gets on your nerves. Eventually, even the flush of a toi­let enrages you, let alone loud music and dirt bikes. And you end up mak­ing unfor­tu­nate state­ments on social media about who should go back to where they came from.

She then went on to talk about her own expe­ri­ences with night nois­es and how it prompt­ed her to speak to the work­men who gave her a prop­er trac­ing. She bab­bled on for awhile more that she was forced to report the nois­es to the Architect.
Right thats exact­ly the per­son to go to about con­struc­tion noises.
When that did not work she went on, she went to the police of course as far as she is con­cerned that did not pro­duce any result either.
In the end Carolyn Cooper expressed more exas­per­a­tion that Jinx ever did about night noise but she still found it pru­dent to side with Bolt because it was the pop­ulist thing to do.
The last line of Cooper’s disin­gen­u­ous pop­ulist kiss-up, exposed her to be a pho­ny and a fraud.
No mat­ter which kind of ten­e­ment yard we live in. We can’t all go back to wher­ev­er we came from”.

If Cooper want­ed to bring intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty to the debate about noth­ing, as a per­son who pre­tends to be a “roots daw­ta” she would have con­ced­ed that in every ghet­to, every gar­ri­son, every com­mu­ni­ty, in Jamaica it is a part of the every­day col­lo­qui­al ver­nac­u­lar for peo­ple to tell peo­ple to go back where they are com­ing from.(“ gu bak weh yu cum fram”.
It is patent­ly false and intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est to see noth­ing wrong when down town peo­ple uses it but quick­ly jump on Jinx when she uses it.
Sometimes when you are revered by cer­tain class of peo­ple the best thing to do for them is to tell them the truth rather than feed them with a a lie.
The truth is not always pop­u­lar, it’s just the right thing to do.
See Original sto­ry here @ http://​jamaica​glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​a​r​y​/​2​0​1​5​0​6​1​4​/​s​o​u​n​d​-​c​l​a​s​h​-​u​p​t​o​w​n​-​g​h​e​tto

Commissioner of INDECOM Terrence Williams always seem to have a grouse. Williams is a per­pet­u­al whin­er who is

nev­er sat­is­fied with the amount of pow­er afford­ed him under the INDECOM Act.
Williams lat­est gripe is that he sent four reports to Parliament for review with­in the past five years and noth­ing has been done about them.

He told a joint select com­mit­tee of Parliament review­ing leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing INDECOM that one of the four reports that was sent to Parliament out­lined approach­es to safe­guard the right to life, while oth­er reports looked at issues of demand­ing account­abil­i­ty and con­fronting chal­lenges the JCF faces.
If his protes­ta­tions weren’t so fraud­u­lent I would real­ly burst out laughing.

Williams is so pow­er hun­gry it is real­ly laugh­able that two of his sup­posed reports demand­ed account­abil­i­ty ‚but more incred­u­lous­ly con­fronts chal­lenges the JCF faces.
Who in their right mind believes that Terrence Williams gives a Rat’s ass about chal­lenges fac­ing police officers?
Furthermore , chal­lenges fac­ing the police are none of Terrence William’s busi­ness, and they cer­tain­ly do not fall under the scope of things he need to wor­ry about in his capac­i­ty as Commissioner of INDECOM.
Furthermore it is exact­ly the duty of Parliament to fix what­ev­er ails the police as well as INDECOM.
Sure Terrence Williams can make rec­om­men­da­tions to the Parliament, but where does he get off demand­ing the House Act on his recommendations ?
Meanwhile ‚National Security Minister Peter Bunting said Parliament is chal­lenged by the lack of resources to effec­tive­ly review reports from its com­mis­sions. He also said that mem­bers of par­lia­ment are appoint­ed to a num­ber of com­mit­tees, with some hav­ing min­is­te­r­i­al respon­si­bil­i­ties as well as car­ry­ing out their duties to their con­stituents. They [par­lia­men­tar­i­ans] do not have the sup­port staff,” Bunting said.

It is inter­est­ing that the Minister’s posi­tion is that they sim­ply do not have ade­quate staff. Jamaican Parliamentarians are not the only leg­is­la­tors who have to deal with a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of issues.
With that said Parliament should absolute­ly ensure that the views of Terrence Williams not be allowed to impact law enforce­ment in Jamaica with­out ade­quate counter argu­ments from the Police who actu­al­ly under­stand what actu­al polic­ing is and the par­tic­u­lar exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances attached to Jamaican policing.
Williams can claim all he want that his reports are intend­ed to out­line approach­es to safe­guard the right to life, while oth­er reports looked at issues of demand­ing account­abil­i­ty and con­fronting chal­lenges the JCF faces.
He can lay claim to what­ev­er exper­tise he has on the right to life, which is the same claim all oth­er Jamaicans has.
What Williams should not be allowed, is to false­ly claim that his reports con­tain work­able solu­tions to chal­lenges con­fronting the JCF.

Said Williams, “When we make a report, I expect that we are to be called to Parliament, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they are [reports of] dis­put­ed issues,”.

So Williams gripe has pre­cious lit­tle to do with un-exam­ined reports and more to do with his insa­tiable appetite for a stage and lights. Since his appoint­ment Williams has not demon­strat­ed any inten­tion to do his job in an impar­tial and fair way in my estimation.
On that basis his argu­ments ring hol­low as always.
With the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of gripes, com­plaints and demands we have heard from Williams , it seem we would all be bet­ter off see­ing the back of this guy.
Clearly all he cares about is pow­er and atten­tion and he will do any­thing to get both.
For that rea­son he should go.….….…
Terrence Williams is the broth­er of for­mer JLP Senator Arthur Williams.
INDECOM was the brain child of the Bruce Golding Administration, in response to mas­sive pub­lic out­cry to do some­thing about police killings.
Following on two recent Articles involv­ing Kent Gammon and Dennis Meadows, it seem the Labor Party and it’s young Turks are effec­tive­ly becom­ing a par­ty of Anti-police operatives.
We need to make sure police do not abuse their authority.
We also need to under­stand full well how­ev­er that we absolute­ly need our police officers.
We can­not stand idly by and allow ambi­tious me-first oppor­tunists to tear down our officers.

Recently I com­ment­ed on a Letter an aspir­ing Jamaica Labor Party Politician wrote to a media house in Jamaica as an open let­ter to the Commissioner of Police com­plain­ing about what he per­ceived to be police mis­con­duct met­ed out to him at the Half Way Tree Police station.

The aspir­ing politi­cian is Kent Phillip Gammon deputy spokesper­son on Justice and a mem­ber of the Labor Party.
I will allow him to speak for himself.

This is an open letter to the commissioner of police, Dr Carl Williams.

Re: (1) The func­tion­ing of the Half-Way-Tree Police Station on Saturday, May 23, 2015; (2) attor­neys-at-law required to pro­duce iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards from the General Legal Council.

I wish to share my expe­ri­ence with your con­sta­bles on Saturday, May 23 at approx­i­mate­ly 4 p.m. at the Half-Way Tree Police Station.

(A) Facts

(1) That day, I was called ear­ly in the after­noon by a con­cerned cit­i­zen with respect to the tak­ing into cus­tody of Glenroy Ricardo Walker on Friday, May 22, along Anderson Road in Woodford Park in St Andrew by Jamaica Constabulary Force con­sta­bles. I was told he was being held at the Half-Way Tree Police Station.

(2) I was asked to attend upon the Half-Way Tree Police Station to ascer­tain: (i) whether Mr Walker was actu­al­ly in cus­tody there and (ii) what he was being charged for.

(3) On arriv­ing at the Half-Way Tree Police Station, I parked by the hold­ing area to the back of the said sta­tion. I went to the two plain-clothes per­sons seat­ed at the desk and intro­duced myself. No one seat­ed intro­duced them­selves as would be com­mon courtesy.

(4) I was asked by the two seat­ed per­sons to show iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. I told them I didn’t have any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from the General Legal Council (GLC) to iden­ti­fy myself as an attor­ney-at-law. I was told by the man and the woman that I had to pro­duce an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card.

(5) I stat­ed that lawyers didn’t get IDs from the GLC and repeat­ed that I didn’t have any such ID. I pro­ceed­ed to ask if they had in their cus­tody one Glenroy Ricardo Walker.

(6) The two plain-clothes con­sta­bles told me they didn’t know that name and that I was to go to the front of the Half-Way Tree Police Station for more infor­ma­tion. Another female cor­po­ral then sat on the bench by the female plain-clothes con­sta­ble and in an unpleas­ant tone asked me my name. I gave my name again and she, too, asked me for identification.

(7) I repeat­ed to her that I didn’t have any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from the General Legal Council to prove I was an attor­ney-at-law. She then told me I was not allowed in that area and I had to leave now.

(8) I then went to the front of the Half-Way Tree Police Station, where­upon I called back the con­cerned cit­i­zen who had called me ear­li­er that after­noon about Mr Walker to ascer­tain if he had his infor­ma­tion in fact cor­rect. The con­cerned cit­i­zen gave me a tele­phone num­ber for one Superintendent Bailey and told me that that was where Mr Walker had been tak­en into custody.

(9) After call­ing but not get­ting through to the num­ber, Supt Bailey called me on my cel­lu­lar with­in a very short peri­od of time. I told him who I was, he had no clue who I was either, and after explain­ing all in para­graphs (1), (2) and (5) above, I asked him if he could help. He was quite unhelpful.

(11) I was then direct­ed to a sergeant seat­ed in a room by the front desk and I again told him who I was and asked if he had Mr Walker in cus­tody. He, too, asked me for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and I had to repeat I didn’t have any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from the General Legal Council (GLC) to iden­ti­fy myself as an attorney-at-law.

(12) He then told me I had to check with the con­sta­bles at the back of the Half-Way Tree Police Station to ascer­tain if Mr Walker was actu­al­ly in their custody.

(13) Obviously get­ting nowhere with any con­sta­ble at the sta­tion, I left hav­ing wast­ed approx­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes at the said station.

(14) On Tuesday, May 26, I then spoke to the con­cerned cit­i­zen who had called me ear­li­er the after­noon on Saturday, May 23. He told me that Mr Walker had been released from cus­tody that same day.

(B) Issues

(1) Are attor­neys-at-law now required to pro­duce iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards at the Half-Way Tree Police Station, or any oth­er police sta­tion, for that mat­ter, when they attend upon police sta­tions to see clients or poten­tial clients.

(2) How is it that per­sons tak­en into cus­tody at the Half-Way Tree Police Station are not record­ed in your cus­tody book so that attor­neys-at-law can know if their clients and/​or poten­tial clients are in the cus­tody of the State, i.e., a police station?

© Submissions

(1) Attorneys-at-law should not be told they have to leave any area of the police sta­tion unless they pose a threat to the safe­ty of police con­sta­bles and/​or indi­vid­u­als in custody.

(2) Attorneys-at-law should not have to pro­duce any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards from the General Legal Council to prove they are attor­neys-at-law to any police con­sta­ble when an attor­ney-at-law attends upon a police sta­tion seek­ing infor­ma­tion about cit­i­zens who are in cus­tody of the State/​police sta­tions and who are clients and/​or poten­tial clients of those attorneys-at-law.

(D) Closing Comments

– Kent Gammon is an attor­ney-at-law and deputy oppo­si­tion spokesman on justice.

Clearly this guy is a law onto him­self, he could have pro­duced his driver’s licence he did not think the police should demand one.
Secondly he stat­ed quote: Attorneys-at-law should not be told they have to leave any area of the police sta­tion unless they pose a threat to the safe­ty of police con­sta­bles and/​or indi­vid­u­als in custody.
♦ (1) Does Kent Gammon have his name and title imprint­ed on his stu­pid fore­head? If not why should the police believe he is who he say he is.
Guaranteed, had they allowed him the access he demand­ed with­out ID, his let­ter would have been about sup­posed lax in the sys­tem of security .
♦(2)  Attorneys-at-law should not have to pro­duce any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards from the General Legal Council to prove they are attor­neys-at-law to any police con­sta­ble when an attor­ney-at-law attends upon a police sta­tion seek­ing infor­ma­tion about cit­i­zens who are in cus­tody of the State/​police sta­tions and who are clients and/​or poten­tial clients of those attorneys-at-law.
What a Jackass , you damn well bet­ter believe you must pro­duce Identification , who the hell do you think you are that every­one should know who you are?
♦ (3) What I find most dis­turb­ing was this state­ment by Kent Phillip Gammon : The con­cerned cit­i­zen gave me a tele­phone num­ber for one Superintendent Bailey and told me that that was where Mr Walker had been tak­en into cus­tody. (9) After call­ing but not get­ting through to the num­ber, Supt Bailey called me on my cel­lu­lar with­in a very short peri­od of time. I told him who I was, he had no clue who I was either, and after explain­ing all in para­graphs (1), (2) and (5) above, I asked him if he could help. He was quite unhelpful.

I had a few choice words for Gammon on see­ing the post, I also had a few words of advice for Andrew Holness the leader of the Labor Party then.
Here are the com­ments I made then.…

Gammon’s petu­lant lit­tle out­burst is not about police being a law onto them­selves, by his very own admis­sion, he threw a hissy-fit because none of the cops knew who he was or want­ed to kiss his ass.
Not the Constable, Not The Commanding Officer Fitz Bailey.
Gammon’s let­ter is cer­tain­ly not about any­thing the police did wrong .
It’s all about try­ing to make sure more peo­ple know who he was.
An epic fail .
This guy, by his atti­tude will be a drag on the par­ty . Elections are com­ing up pret­ty soon, the par­ty does not need to have the likes of Kent Phillip Gammon drag­ging it down.
It cer­tain­ly does not need him mak­ing ene­mies with the Police department.
I sug­gest Gammon hum­ble him­self and get his behind off his high horse, if he doesn’t, Andrew Holness should do it for him by show­ing him the door pronto.

A MERE 10 DAYS LATER ANOTHER JLP POLITICIAN CAME OUT SWINGING AGAINST THE POLICE FOR NO OTHER REASON BUT FOR THE SAKE OF ADVANCING THEIR OWN AGENDA.

Citizens’ Action for Principles and Integrity (CAPI) is warn­ing that a pro­posed over­sight body for the Independent Commission of Investigation (INDECOM) will dimin­ish the intend­ed inde­pen­dence of the inves­tiga­tive body and may ren­der its effec­tive­ness. The joint-select com­mit­tee of Parliament exam­in­ing the INDECOM Act pro­posed an over­sight body for the inves­tiga­tive and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al body as its zeal­ous pros­e­cu­tion of mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty force is hav­ing a demor­al­is­ing effect. In a news release Friday, CAPI’s co-con­venor Dennis Meadows argued that INDECOM as a com­mis­sion of Parliament already has par­lia­men­tary over­sight in addi­tion to judi­cial scruti­ny. He added that, INDECOM’s finances and oper­a­tions are over­seen by the Auditor General and the Office of the Contractor General. “The gen­e­sis of INDECOM was out of an urgent need for an inde­pen­dent body to inves­ti­gate the mis­con­duct of police and oth­er agents of the State”, Meadows insisted.

Jamaica is a vio­lent place, it is dan­ger­ous place to vis­it , it is a dan­ger­ous place to live.…
Yea , yeah , I know there is crime every­where , peo­ple kill peo­ple every­day in oth­er coun­tries. If that’s

your atti­tude , this Article is not for you .
It is for sane peo­ple who do not con­form to the worst com­mon denominator.
It is not for those who ratio­nal­ize away whats wrong with us.

It is the right of peo­ple every­where to live in peace and secu­ri­ty. Free from the prospect of being gunned down uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly for no good reason.
It is not too much to ask that a group of Farmers engag­ing in a friend­ly game of domi­noes at a rur­al shop enjoy the game and a drink with­out being gunned down needlessly.
This sim­ple past-time is an old and sacred pas­time . A good game of domi­noes shared between friends should not end in the death of any mem­ber of our community.
It is not expect­ing too much when peo­ple sit in their back­yards with a cou­ple of friends after a hard day’s work and enjoy a cock­tail with­out their home being invad­ed by armed thugs who then rob, rape, and kill them.

Women should be able to walk with­out being fon­dled , groped and raped by depraved thugs who have no respect for their right to say “no ‚and be secure in their persons’.
Young boys and girls should nev­er be denied their God giv­en right to grow up with­out being exposed to sex­u­al and oth­er forms of abuse.
While we are on the sub­ject of abuse …
Let me be clear with the Administration if office at this time.
There is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in low­er­ing the age of con­sent from 16 years of age to 14 years of age.
A 14 year-old-child is inca­pable of ful­ly under­stand­ing adult con­se­quences to the ado­les­cent urges she is

expe­ri­enc­ing. Those urges should not be an invi­ta­tion for sex­u­al exploita­tion but a time for dia­logue with her parents.
This is a time when we should be explor­ing ways to deal appro­pri­ate­ly with sex­u­al offend­ers , not mak­ing it eas­i­er for them to legal­ly exploit children.

If our nation could pull it’s col­lec­tive head from it’s pre­ten­tious ass, we could begin to sort out some of the thorny issues fac­ing our coun­try today.
One of the most seri­ous issue affect­ing the qual­i­ty of life in Jamaica is crime. Yet the vast major­i­ty of Jamaica’s pre­ten­tious wannabe Elites demor­al­ized the Police Department for decades while hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly ignor­ing the destruc­tion both polit­i­cal par­ties were bring­ing to our coun­try by pit­ting Jamaicans against Jamaicans.
Sometime around the late 60’s to ear­ly 70’s our coun­try start­ed see­ing some crim­i­nal exam­ples, they indi­cat­ed what could become a seri­ous prob­lem if not nipped in the bud.
The Prime Minister at the time Hugh Lawson Shearer (using what today is less that polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect lan­guage) told crim­i­nals in no uncer­tain terms that there would be no sup­port com­ing from his admin­is­tra­tion on their behalf.

The new mil­i­tant crop of black intel­lec­tu­als fresh­ly mint­ed out of the UWI were quick to use their new found edu­ca­tion and sta­tus to cre­ate a counter cul­ture. That counter cul­ture , unfor­tu­nate­ly for our coun­try was one which did not encour­age sup­port for the rule of law.
Many pounced on the PM’s com­ments which said in con­text that police would have free rein to go after criminals.
Before long Shearer was out of the lead­er­ship role of the JLP replaced by Edward Seaga,the Architect of Tivoli Gardens the for­mer Back-o-Wall.
The rise of Michael Manley to pow­er in 1972 was to be the begin­ning of a peri­od of immense unciv­il behav­ior unprece­dent­ed in our Island.
Manley’s rise had a slew of linch­pins chief among which was a new black con­scious­ness which unfor­tu­nate­ly did not believe in hard work for a fair days pay.
Today our coun­try reg­is­ters one of the high­est rate of vio­lent crimes in the world to include mur­der, rapes, shoot­ings, extor­tion and a gen­er­al sense of lawlessness.
This can­not be laid sole­ly at the feet of politi­cians . Much of the respon­si­bil­i­ty should square­ly be placed at the feet of the new­ly edu­cat­ed class, those who expe­ri­enced edu­ca­tion but did not under­stand the dif­fer­ence between polic­ing in Jamaica as a third world nation and polic­ing in the devel­oped world.

Yes offi­cers must do their jobs with the rights of cit­i­zens in mind.
However it can­not be done when peo­ple are fir­ing high pow­ered weapons at them.
The police first must paci­fy and remove the threat then employ com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing. You do not nego­ti­ate with crim­i­nals who play by no rules.
The Faux bour­geoisie which large­ly was safe­ly encap­su­lat­ed from the hor­rors of crime, thanks to the sac­ri­fice of police offi­cers, nev­er quite under­stood that a del­i­cate bal­anced must be struck between hard polic­ing and con­cerns for human rights.
In many instances their protes­ta­tions about human rights had noth­ing to do with actu­al or real con­cerns for the coun­try’s poor and dis­pos­sessed but because they were active­ly engaged in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties themselves.

Just today crim­i­nals shot and injured sev­er­al peo­ple down­town Kingston, this is in addi­tion to the over 3 Jamaicans who are killed each day.
Jamaican crim­i­nals are oper­at­ing on free range.
They have pre­cious lit­tle fear of the police and even less regard for the rule of law.
Oh wait…
Sorry, we do not have a coun­try of laws we have a coun­try where every fly-by-night who know somebody

who know some­body who know some­body is above the law.
Jamaican police offi­cers have cer­tain­ly done more than enough to war­rant seri­ous oversight.
INDECOM is not that over­sight. Creating anoth­er police agency to police the police, which is in com­pe­ti­tion with the police but has no under­stand­ing of polic­ing, is anti­thet­i­cal to solv­ing the prob­lem of improp­er police. behavior.

Our coun­try is a small sliv­er of land 4,411 square miles. We have a pop­u­la­tion of 2.8 mil­lion people.
Some very pow­er­ful peo­ple in and out­side Government are ben­e­fit­ing immense­ly from crime and the wave of Gang activ­i­ty which is fuel­ing the coun­try’s mur­der rate.
If Jamaican Authorities were inter­est­ed in con­trol­ling crime they would have upgrad­ed, equipped, and mod­ern­ized the police department.
The over­sight agency INDECOM was not cre­at­ed by the present admin­is­tra­tion but the Government has had every oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring the police depart­met up to date.
They failed because they do not want to succeed.

Opposition spokesper­son on Tourism Shahine Robinson wor­ries that Jamaica is under-per­form­ing when com­pared to oth­er Caribbean destinations.

Robinson not­ed: “Jamaica’s five per cent growth for the first quar­ter of 2015 falls well below sev­er­al of our region­al com­peti­tors, includ­ing Cuba at 14.1 per cent; Dominican Republic 7.4 per cent; Aruba 19.7 per cent; Curaçao 10.3 per cent; and Barbados at 11.1 per cent.” These des­ti­na­tions, she said, reg­is­tered those growth rates in rough­ly the same peri­od as Jamaica.

This has been a strong con­cern by this medi­um for years, and we have con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to the need to improve the product.
For years Jamaican Authorities has basi­cal­ly rest­ed on their lau­rels, believ­ing that brand Jamaica alone will bring hordes of vis­i­tors flock­ing to our shores.
For decades after Cuba was block­ad­ed by The United States , Jamaica enjoyed tremen­dous fruits from Tourism it real­ly had not earned.
During that time Destinations like the Bahamas , and US Virgin Islands con­tin­ued to see mas­sive returns from their Tourism product.

Neither of the two par­ties Administrations demon­strat­ed the vision to mas­sive­ly trans­form the prod­uct. Like every oth­er sec­tor of the econ­o­my suc­ces­sive Administrations sim­ply sucked resources from the sec­tor with­out under­tak­ing the seri­ous upgrades to keep the prod­uct competitive.
Meanwhile Cuba is back as a des­ti­na­tion , just 90 miles off our coast. Despite mar­gin­al increase in tourists vis­it­ing Jamaica, the finan­cial ben­e­fit to our peo­ple became con­sis­tent­ly less and less.
Not only have they neglect­ed to ade­quate­ly improve Jamaica as a real­is­tic Tourism des­ti­na­tion the

Country has con­sis­tent­ly lost ground due to a seriess of issues.
As such even though there may be more peo­ple com­ing to our shores, the actu­al dol­lar count derived is not what it ought to be.
♦ Crime.
♦ Harassment.
These two issues in par­tic­u­lar has caused tourists to be com­pressed into all inclu­sive resorts which are owned by large cor­po­ra­tions and for­eign interests.
This has lit­er­al­ly shut out small vil­las and guest hous­es, con­cen­trat­ing monies derived from the indus­try into few­er and few­er hands. Small restau­rants , cafes, nov­el­ty stores, and craft shops can no longer depend on tourists to sup­port their businesses.
Most of their pur­chas­es are now done at in-bond stores.

Some of the prime venues in Montego Bay, Ochio Rios and Port Antonio are no longer oper­a­tional. Additionally the Nation’s sec­ond City of Montego Bay, the for­mer epic cen­ter of Caribbean tourism, is now a shell of it’s for­mer glory.
UN-planned , ille­gal set­tle­ments have sprung up all around the city, bring­ing mas­sive crime and oth­er social ills to the once pris­tine yet rus­tic west­ern city.
Despite Jamaica’s inabil­i­ty to devel­op a for­ward-lean­ing tourism prod­uct, tourists con­tin­ue to flock to Jamaica.
The num­bers though noth­ing to scoff at, are not what they could be had author­i­ties cre­at­ed a less myopic approach.
Revenue derived from Tourism could be more equi­tably dis­persed cre­at­ing a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing for locals.
Jamaica’s tourism has sur­vived despite neglect from the author­i­ties. Whether this will con­tin­ue remains to be seen.
Though not a bet­ting man , I am will­ing to wager that with Cuba now open for tourism, there will be a mas­sive explo­sion of tourists to that Island.
That will poten­tial­ly pose seri­ous chal­lenges to Jamaica’s abil­i­ty to main­tain it’s cur­rent lev­el of arrivals , much less increase them.
Time will tell.