People who decide to be Police Officers has to be a spe­cial breed, after all in places like Jamaica it can­not be because of the mon­ey. Police offi­cers risk their lives every day in order to keep the rest of us safe. In some coun­tries and locales the risk are some­what greater than others.

Police in Mexico some­times wear masks:

Yet a police offi­cer nev­er knows what is going to hap­pen when he/​she ini­ti­ates a sim­ple traf­fic stop . As such a police offi­cer must always be on guard to pro­tect his/​her life. Something hard­ly any­one else has to do at work in a giv­en day. Many argue that police offi­cers make the choice will­ing­ly so they should­n’t speak of the risks. The infer­ence being that free-will dimin­ish­es or reduces the legit­i­ma­cy of the argu­ment con­cern­ing the risks.

Police in the United States some­time wear masks:

Over the last few years one of the charge lev­eled against cer­tain units with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force is that offi­cers wear masks on cer­tain operations.

The argu­ments put forth by con­cerned par­ties is that police offi­cers are more like­ly to abuse cit­i­zens rights if they know they can­not be iden­ti­fied. This is a legit­i­mate con­cern that should be addressed.

Police offi­cers should be giv­en all the tools they need so they may effec­tive­ly do what we ask them to do, which is to pro­tect us. At the top of that list and of utmost impor­tance is officer-safety.What that means is that the offi­cer’s secu­ri­ty is para­mount, his life must first be secured.

Cops in Egypt wear­ing masks:

On the oth­er hand the rights of cit­i­zens must be pro­tect­ed. Police offi­cers can­not have carte-blanche to abuse cit­i­zens. In the process of strik­ing the bal­ance between account­abil­i­ty and offi­cer-safe­ty, we are forced to rely on the integri­ty of those we empow­er and arm, to do the right thing by us, the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect and serve.

Cops in Haiti wear masks:

So the dis­cus­sion comes down, not to whether cops may wear masks on cer­tain occa­sions, but to the qual­i­ty of the peo­ple whom we empow­er to be police offi­cers. Many who posi­tion them­selves as com­men­ta­tors of every­thing police does, has zero knowl­edge of the dynam­ics or what it takes to be a cop in Jamaica. Frankly some sim­ply do not care. Many in posi­tions to shape leg­is­la­tion argues that not enough police offi­cers are get­ting shot.

Some in the Media gave peo­ple advice to stone police sta­tions years ago, oth­ers encour­age them to fight police offi­cers. politi­cians dis­trib­ute guns to kill peo­ple , cops included.

There are a few rea­sons why cops some­times wear face-masks on cer­tain oper­a­tions, chief among them are.

♦ They are work­ing undercover.

♦To keep their iden­ti­ties secret.

♦ Protecting them­selves and their fam­i­lies from reprisals.

♦ As a safe­ty precaution.

If an Officer wears a mask because that offi­cer wants to con­ceal wrong-doing on his/​her part, that offi­cer has already crossed the line, he is a criminal .

In Jamaica the need for offi­cers to be care­ful can­not be over-empha­sized, Jamaican crim­i­nals like to kill cops.

Noted Jamaican Doctor Garth Rattray was adamant in his col­umn in the dai­ly glean­er when he stated .

Quote:A patient of mine who is a mem­ber of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) was main­tain­ing a police pres­ence, parked in a marked police vehi­cle, close to an inter­sec­tion with a very major thor­ough­fare in St Andrew. As he observed the traf­fic and the gen­er­al sur­round­ings, a young man emerged from a neigh­bour­ing depressed com­mu­ni­ty. He walked right up to the dri­ver’s side win­dow and calm­ly announced, “One a unnu kill one a wi so wi a go kill back one a unnu.” The mes­sen­ger then dis­ap­peared back into the bow­els of his hon­ey­combed com­mu­ni­ty.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​5​2​0​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​3​.​h​tml

This is what Jamaican police offi­cers have to deal with, in a small coun­try that is rough­ly 4411 square miles. Everyone knows some­one who knows some­one who knows where some­one lives. It is no won­der then that Police offi­cers are being killed in the own homes. (See blog-posts on this site deal­ing with this issue.)

Many peo­ple believe police offi­cers have firearms to take home. Guess again , many offi­cers are forced to hand over the weapons they use on the job and are left to the mer­cy of Jamaican crim­i­nals by the hier­ar­chy of the police force, some offi­cers have acquired pri­vate weapons, not all, those with­out are left to fend for themselves.

Why are Jamaican cops pre­clud­ed from wear­ing masks when they are much more like­ly to be killed than their inter­na­tion­al counterparts?

When the Police Commissioner acqui­esces to the dic­tates of Reactionary forces which are hell-bent on mak­ing Jamaican a crim­i­nal Utopia, police offi­cers die.

There is an bunch of Elitist in Jamaica who are spear-head­ing this assault on the safe­ty of police offi­cers, they are strate­gi­cal­ly posi­tioned to do innu­mer­able dam­age to the the rule of law and the lives of ordi­nary Jamaican cops, they are suc­ceed­ing in this endeav­or with the tac­it acqui­es­cence of the Police high-com­mand who are large­ly polit­i­cal lap-dogs.

Heading that list is.

♦Carolyn Gomes heads the group which calls itself Jamaicans for jus­tice or (JFJ).

♦Earl Witter mediocre crim­i­nal lawyer now giv­en the job cre­at­ed obvi­ous­ly for him , Public Defender.

♦Terrence Williams Commissioner , pow­er hun­gry wannabe-cop ‚appoint­ed to the new agency INDECOM.

♦Horace Levy self pro­mot­er and head of the so-called Peace Management Unit.

These are all posi­tions which which are at odds with law-enforce­ment in the small Caribbean Island of Jamaica, these are not the only ones but they are among the pri­ma­ry ones who grand-stand at the expense of the Jamaican police.The tragedy is that when they do, police offi­cers die.

Witter and Gomes vehe­ment­ly asserts ‚that in order for the num­ber of civil­ians killed to be more believ­able more cops would have to be killed. That kind of atro­cious state­ment could not come from the mouth of any per­son who want­ed to retain any degree of pub­lic sup­port in any developing/​ed coun­try except Jamaica. Carolyn Gomes received the Order of Jamaica. The oth­ers are lin­ing up for their awards from the crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it Government(government not con­fined to party).

Jamaica has one of the high­est mur­der rates in the world, many argue that crime is a direct result of pover­ty and lack of oppor­tu­ni­ties. Yet there are coun­tries which have sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er stan­dard of liv­ing where crime is sub­stan­tial­ly low­er than Jamaica.

You ask what is it that dif­fer­en­ti­ates Jamaica from those coun­tries? The sim­ple answer is “vil­lage lawyers”, most of us present our­selves as an author­i­ty and have an opin­ion on everything.

We are impressed by stuff like, col­or, mon­ey, big hous­es, cars and Degrees, so it mat­ters not that a per­son who is a Pediatrician knows noth­ing about law-enforce­ment. That per­son­’s opin­ion is val­ued aver that of the real pros. But it goes even deep­er than that.

The poli­cies being fol­lowed are cost­ing the lives of cops, no one speaks for the cops who are being slaugh­tered, the forces head­ed by the char­la­tans above, are silent when cops are killed. Many peo­ple are now ask­ing the ques­tion why?

We don’t need croc­o­dile tears from them, what we have seen so far tells us what side they are on. The ques­tion is , has the Jamaican peo­ple real­ized who their ene­mies are . I real­ly don’t care for a lot of cops in the JCF , nev­er did, in fact some of them deserve to be treat­ed like sec­ond-class cit­i­zens in the job they ded­i­cate their lives to. Many of them deserve to have that pow­er-hun­gry ego-mani­a­cal ‚nar­cis­sis­tic shit-head Terrence Williams give speech­es to oth­er shit-heads about what police are sup­posed to do and what they aren’t sup­posed to wear. The top-tier or the police depart­ment, with the excep­tion of a few, are sim­ply polit­i­cal hacks who sim­ply do as they are told.

What I care about is the future of Jamaica, left up to Continue read­ing →

Citizens demon­strate against police killings in Jamaica:

Awhile back I wrote an Article which was fea­tured in the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, in The arti­cle I attempt­ed to dis­cuss the issue of extra-judi­cial killings. One of Jamaica’s lead­ing criminal/​constitutional lawyer Bert Samuels respond­ed that he would like to see police con­fess to killing inno­cent Jamaicans. I had known Bert for years as a cop sta­tioned at Constant Spring, he is a son of the soil, a man who has done well for him­self hav­ing come from the local com­mu­ni­ty of Glen Drive Kingston 8, just across from Cassava-Piece. Mister Samuels has the unique dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing come from the hood, while hav­ing pulled him­self up to the heights of pow­er through edu­ca­tion. I could empathize with his lit­tle out­burst, hav­ing under­stood his background.

There has been a lot of debate on the issue of extra-judi­cial killings by police offi­cers not just in Jamaica but across the world. Incidents of ques­tion­able police killings are most­ly con­fined to urban or depressed com­mu­ni­ties. I can­not give you a psy­cho­log­i­cal expla­na­tion for it, in coun­tries like the United States and Britain race is seen as a deter­mi­nant. In oth­er places like Jamaica the argu­ments are more con­vo­lut­ed, less rational.

In the US Police line up in antic­i­pa­tion of protest action:

The gen­er­al argu­ment which dom­i­nat­ed the dis­cus­sion in Jamaica is (“because dem poor”) because the vic­tims are poor. This line of argu­ment has lit­tle legit­i­ma­cy when we look at where police offi­cers come from. Jamaica’s Police Force is almost 100% from the poor­er class of peo­ple. So one would have to buy the argu­ment that police are against the poor, the very class from which they come. Thus far we have seen no data which would sup­port that theory.

Rastafarian’s have long argued that police take action against them because they are .….…. well Rastafarian. Criminals argue that police sin­gle them out because they are poor, nev­er because they are.….. well you guessed it, crim­i­nals. It fol­lows that the argu­ment that police treat peo­ple in so-called upscale neigh­bor­hoods bet­ter, is absolute­ly true. There is how­ev­er a rea­son for it, at least in the Jamaican sense, if your life is less threat­ened you are less like­ly to be aggressive.

Whether we agree on this or not is imma­te­r­i­al, police offi­cers get killed less in sub­ur­bia, that’s a fact. One does not have to be a police offi­cer in Jamaica to under­stand this, peo­ple sim­ply do not go into cer­tain areas, and if they have to, they are scared as hell with the hair stand­ing on the back of their necks. It’s no dif­fer­ent if you are a cop, only dif­fer­ence is that in the case of a cop, that fear is trans­lat­ed into awareness.

Dr. Carolyn Gomes is a pedi­atric doc­tor who is head of the group which calls itself Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ). The Group presents itself as a legit­i­mate Human Rights Agency. However time and again by their very actions, they have put that legit­i­ma­cy into ques­tion. Human Rights is a fun­da­men­tal right which is giv­en by God, not just to crim­i­nals, not just to peo­ple who have been vic­tim­ized by the state or it’s agents, but to everyone.

One of the most fun­da­men­tal right guar­an­teed to us is the right to life, yet the high­ly mis­guid­ed Dr. Gomes fail to rec­og­nize that sim­ple fact. As I have said every­one has the right to the life and human dig­ni­ty bestowed by our cre­ator. … … And yes Dr. Gomes even the mur­der­ers who you so stout­ly defend have a right to life.

My own view is that even though I respect the sanc­ti­ty of human life I would pre­fer to spend my time advo­cat­ing for the inno­cent. I would rather spend my time advo­cat­ing for the approx­i­mate­ly 1600 Jamaicans who are report­ed mur­dered each year for the last decade plus .

I would rather advo­cate for…

♦The inno­cent peo­ple burned out of their homes.

♦The count­less women vio­lent­ly raped , too scared to report it to author­i­ties because of threats to their lives and that of fam­i­ly members.

♦The lit­tle boys and girls forced into a life of pros­ti­tu­tion because a fam­i­ly mem­ber lost a gun belong­ing to the area don. Forced to pay, for the rest of their lives, with their lives, for some­thing they nev­er lost themselves.

♦The moth­ers and fathers who are forced to send their daugh­ters away to give them a chance to grow up free from rape from the don , then report them miss­ing to the police to save their own lives.

I could go on and on Dr. Gomes but you get the picture.

There are some who are fooled by the actions of peo­ple like Dr. Gomes and oth­ers, believ­ing that every­one who comes in the name of Human Rights are legit­i­mate, sor­ry I live in a coun­try where there are many prob­lems of Human Rights, and where Human Rights advo­ca­cy abounds.

One thing is cer­tain Human Rights can­not, and is not allowed to inter­fere with the rule of law. As impor­tant as the indi­vid­ual right is, it can­not come at the expense of the many.

Extra-Judicial killings are immoral and ille­gal, Police Officers who kill sum­mar­i­ly should and must be removed from the Force or any police depart­ment in any civ­i­lized coun­try. With that said Extra-judi­cial killings can­not be deter­mined by the amount of peo­ple killed by police. Each case of police shooting/​killing is a sep­a­rate inci­dent, has sep­a­rate and defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics which deter­mines whether they con­form to the use of lethal force guide­lines out­lined to officers.

If they don’t they are not nec­es­sar­i­ly ille­gal, they are not nec­es­sar­i­ly mur­der, there is a lot of space between jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide and mur­der. Officer made a mis­take, sus­pect act­ed like he had a weapon, sus­pect attacked offi­cer had no weapon, sus­pect is shot.….

Is that murder?

Where is the mal­ice aforethought?

You see Dr. Gomes, you alleg­ing extra-judi­cial killings is syn­ony­mous to me alleg­ing that you are sum­mar­i­ly and ille­gal­ly dis­pens­ing drugs to chil­dren who do not need it. Without know­ing how many babies you see each year, how sick they are, what ill­ness­es you dis­pense drugs for, or how many times per day you do write prescriptions.

You are still prac­tic­ing med­i­cine aren’t you? If not ‚you should con­cen­trate on what you have been trained to do. Go back to tak­ing care of babies and let the cops take care of the terrorists.

I believe that you fun­da­men­tal­ly care about what you do at the peace man­age­ment ini­tia­tive. I think you are shaped by your expe­ri­ences, I must inform you that despite what­ev­er suc­cess­es you may have achieved from your orga­ni­za­tion’s efforts, what you do is not a replace­ment for the rule of law. Criminals must pay for their crimes, it is through tough puni­tive mea­sures imposed by soci­ety that the del­i­cate bal­ance between anar­chy and civil­i­ty is main­tained. You have been known to argue that a large per­cent­age of what the Police char­ac­ter­ize as Gangs in our coun­try are in fact what you call ” cor­ner crews”.

With all due respect even if we are to accept your corner-crew designation as a legitimate alternative moniker , I must inform you that said corner crews and Gangs would not be, and aren’t mutually exclusive. You have a job to do, do your job, stay out-of-the-way of law enforcement.

I know that it is common for those who(“eat the proverbial food”” in situations as yours, feel that the way to continue to eat that food is through the demonizing of the police. I must also inform you that you are not doing neither yourself nor Jamaica any good through your actions. The rule of law is going nowhere, it will be there ;long after you and I are gone, or I shudder at what will obtain. Do your job and lament the innocent lives lost at the hands of the scumbag predatory monsters who prey on the weak. You have been at this demagoguery long enough. Just do what you can and let the rule of law do what it is supposed to do, and if that means eradicating murderous urban scum, then so be it. What are the police supposed to do? Are the police supposed to beg criminals not to shoot at them, are they supposed to refuse to fire back at criminals out of fear that they may kill too many criminals?

I suggest that you prepare and make public a detailed proposal that you feel should replace the measures which Police Agencies use all over the World when they are confronted with life and death decisions.Those decisions in most cases must be made in a fraction of a second. Failing to provide such a detailed proposal, I strongly suggest that you confine yourself to whatever it is you are educated or trained in, if anything.

Of note is your total failure/​refusal to mention the innocent Jamaicans whom have been slaughtered, not just since the start of this year but between the years 2001 to 2008, 2001 – 2008

Reported Cases of
Murder : 10, 836
Shootings : 11,229
Rape and Carnal
Abuse: 9119

Not one word from you about the innocent people killed, I suggest you and your friend Carolyn Gomez be very careful, criminals do not care who they kill, you are not immune, they will kill you too. Take care of what you understand and leave Law Enforcement to those trained and tasked with it.

Sincerely: Michael A Beckles:

I spent 10 years in the Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCf ), I loved what I did, Many argue that the police force was just a job for peo­ple who did­n’t qual­i­fy for any oth­er job, or who could­n’t find any­thing else to do. I can­not speak to why any­one else joined, but I know I qual­i­fied for Mico Teachers College , but was dis­suad­ed by my step-dad, who encour­aged me to become a police officer.

I know there are not many choic­es for jobs in Jamaica, so even if peo­ple joined because they could­n’t find oth­er jobs , so what? When the pros and cons are weighed it requires a lot of sac­ri­fice from every per­son who serves, irre­spec­tive of length of ser­vice. Low pay, hor­ren­dous work­ing con­di­tions, not enough leg­isla­tive sup­port, not enough polit­i­cal sup­port, not enough mate­r­i­al sup­port, the risks involved. On and on, the cons out­weigh the pros.

When I joined I hoped to make a dif­fer­ence from with­in, after 9 years I real­ized that I could­n’t, after leav­ing in 1991 I asked myself ” am I able to effect change from with­out”? The jury will be out on that long after I’m gone, but while I’m alive I have pledged to myself that I will try my best to see how I may help in chang­ing the land­scape in my lim­it­ed capac­i­ty. Rosa Parks changed a Nation sim­ply by sit­ting down.

One way I feel that change can come about, is exam­in­ing how we con­duct busi­ness from the inside, and doing a men­tal audit with a view to doing bet­ter with what we have.

Years ago while I was assigned to the Constant Spring CIB Superintendent Brooks was trans­ferred to take over the Division. One morn­ing I was on my way to my car which was parked at the back of the sta­tion, when I heard him yelling “cib, cib where is the crime report”? I real­ized he was talk­ing to me, despite the fact that my name was not “cib”. What real­ly pissed me off was that I had just com­plet­ed a tour of duty which com­menced 8.45 am the pre­vi­ous day, with a break at 1:pm to 6:pm, fol­lowed by an all nighter, prepar­ing a volu­mi­nous hand-writ­ten report of all the crimes in Saint Thomas, Saint Catherine, and St, Andrew North which made up Police Area 5. Did I men­tion that I was required to pre­pare 5 copies ?

In addi­tion I had done exact­ly what was required of me, by hav­ing some­one place the report on his desk, and was on my way home to show­er and go to court. I did not answer, I pro­ceed­ed to my car and drove away. He did­n’t both­er to look for the report, he did­n’t feel he need­ed to address me as “offi­cer”, or “cor­po­ral”, he saw me as a whole branch of the force. Despite this mis-step Brooks did not change his ways, he dou­bled down on stu­pid­i­ty by car­ry­ing a grudge against me from that day forward.

Sometime lat­er, as part of an Investigation into a stolen Motor-bike, I went to a home in the depressed com­mu­ni­ty of Cassava Piece , to speak to two broth­ers who were know to us as car­rear crim­i­nals. With me was con­sta­ble Francis and detec­tive cor­po­ral Wilford Gayle who lat­er went on to become a Senior Superintendent. Gayle was one of the offi­cers with me the night I was shot on Blackwood Terrace.

In addi­tion to the fact that these two broth­ers were crim­i­nals, the moth­er was also a drug-deal­er and facil­i­ta­tor of that crim­i­nal enter­prise oper­at­ing from her home. I spoke to the moth­er, indi­cat­ing why I was there, she told me her sons were not home, I asked her to relay to her sons that I would like to see them in order to exclude them as sus­pects in a my inves­ti­ga­tion. She was pret­ty civ­il dur­ing the whole con­ver­sa­tion, so we left. I went on to oth­er mat­ters, and con­clud­ed my tour for that day.

The next morn­ing on my arrival at the office I was told by detec­tive Seargant Jerry Wallace who was Sub-Officer in charge of Crime that Superintendent Brooks want­ed to see me. I found it odd, if Brooks want­ed to find some­thing out he could have got­ten that infor­ma­tion from Detective Inspector Noel Asphall the Divisional Detective Inspector(DDI), or Seargant Wallace the (SOIC) sub-offi­cer in charge of crime, what did he want with me? I had no idea so I picked up my note-book expect­ing that he prob­a­bly need­ed brief­ing on a indi­vid­ual case from the hors­es mouth. I asked Wallace to accom­pa­ny me, I nev­er did any­thing in the force with­out a witness.

Brook’s was on the phone when we entered his office, judg­ing from the con­ver­sa­tion he was on a per­son­al call, (yes that ear­ly in the work day). He con­tin­ued his con­ver­sa­tion chat­ting away mer­ri­ly as if Seargant Wallace and I were trans­par­ent. He did not offer us a seat, he did­n’t ask us to wait awhile, noth­ing, he just ignored us . Personally I nev­er allow myself to be dis­re­spect­ed in that way, and this was not going to be any dif­fer­ent, so I turned to walk away, upon which he hasti­ly hung up the phone.

Then he lit into me.

“Weh di blood claat yu gu dung a M.. yaad guy fire up shat fah, a weh di rass-claat du onuh , onuh blod claat nowa­days police”? I was stunned , what was he talk­ing about? Who did I fire shots at, nei­ther of the men was at the house when we went there, so what was he talk­ing about?

He con­tin­ued to berate me, I stood there and allowed him to con­tin­ue the tirade, when it appeared he was fin­ished, froth­ing at the mouth, I calm­ly asked him, “are you done? You are a damn dis­grace to the uni­form, I respect the rank you hold but you as a per­son is a dis­mal disgrace.

I turned to leave then turned back, pulled my weapon, eject­ed the round in the cham­ber, placed the round back into the mag­a­zine, placed the extra mag­a­zine and the weapon on his desk and told him the Force has a Ballistic Branch and walked out with Wallace in tow.

Back in the CIB Office Seargant Wallace placed his hands on his head and declared ‘jesus gad, 21 years inna di police force, an mi neva si one act­ing cor­po­ral dress dung wan super­in­ten­dent suh.

Gayle chimed in “if a did mi mi woul­da tell him bout him blod claat”.

Jerry Wallace retort­ed “shut up yu blood claat yu fraid a yu fuck­ing shadow”.

I did not know how prophet­ic those words would be until that night on Blackwood Terrace.

Later that morn­ing Detective Inspector Asphall called me to his office and told me Brooks told him what hap­pened ear­li­er. Inspector Asphall told me Brooks want­ed to know about who I was, Inspector Asphall told me laugh­ing­ly “Becks I told him “if you want to know who this man is look at the red ink in the morn­ing report”, mis­ter Asphall hand­ed me my weapon and the two magazines.

Back then red ink on the crime report indi­cat­ed crimes which were cleared up.

In fair­ness to Superintendent Brooks he also asked Inspector Asphall to apol­o­gize to me for his behav­ior. I would have much pre­ferred a per­son­al apol­o­gy, even as I under­stood how dif­fi­cult it must have been for him to acknowl­edge this error.

For the dura­tion of my stint there, Superintendent Brooks tried to mend fences, par­tic­u­lar­ly when cer­tain well placed per­sons called and asked him to have me stop by to see them when I’m on enquir­ers at night.

That woman in Cassava-Piece under­stood the val­ue of launch­ing a pre-pre­emp­tive attack on me in order to have me removed from the case. She knew that her sons were going down and down they went. I recov­ered the motor-cycle in Drewsland and all involved were giv­en their just due in court, includ­ing M..‘s sons.

My col­leagues who were sta­tioned there at the time knows exact­ly what fam­i­ly I am refer­ring to. I write of these encoun­ters to encour­age senior offi­cers to set the exam­ple that they want younger offi­cers to fol­low. If you hope to change the JCF , you must be the change you desire.

I spoke to a friend recent­ly who is a mem­ber of the Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCF) he has been a cop since 1987, hard-work­ing dis­ci­plined, he has been a Sargent for over a decade, at the ripe old age of 44 he is now look­ing to leave the job he loves because he is stuck. The fact is that he does not kiss up, he’s not into pol­i­tics, and he is not con­nect­ed. Every day we read of cops doing things we would be alarmed at even if they were com­mit­ted by reg­u­lar crim­i­nals. I recall an instruc­tor ask­ing the class while I was on CIB course which offense was on the books that police offi­cers had not com­mit­ted? We remained silent, the more we thought about it the longer the silence grew, this was back in 1991. The point of all this is that even as the force is strug­gling with an image that is bad­ly in need of resus­ci­ta­tion and repair, it con­tin­ues to frus­trate good offi­cers, forc­ing them to leave for green­er pas­tures. As an Agency the JCF has an abnor­mal­ly high attri­tion rate, high­er that any oth­er agency in the coun­try. This begs the ques­tion why? If as some say that police offi­cers are ego-mani­a­cal light­weights who gets high on the pow­er, why does offi­cers give up that pow­er so freely?

I joined the JCF in 1982, passed grade 1 exams at 2 years ser­vice, no promotion.Passed grade 2 at 4 years ser­vice, no pro­mo­tion .I was not made act­ing cor­po­ral until about 7 years ser­vice, despite pass­ing the exam at 2 years ser­vice, and had already passed the grade 2 years ear­li­er. I went on CIB course , as well as qual­i­fied and passed the accel­er­at­ed exams and the inter­view, had a clean record with numer­ous com­men­da­tions, yet I was­n’t pro­mot­ed Corporal until I had decid­ed to leave at 9 years plus ser­vice. My sin I did not take no bull and I did not kiss ass. I was laud­ed by sev­er­al Judges as a fine exam­ple of what a good and com­pe­tent police Officer should be. Their Honors, Basil Reid, Donald Macintosh, His wife her Honor Mrs Marva Macintosh were some of the Senior Judges who had incred­i­bly high praise for not just my work , or case prepa­ra­tion, but the way I tes­ti­fied in court. Many Lawyers were ter­ri­fied to face me and this is no idle boast, it is his­tor­i­cal fact, not intend­ed as puffery , just to make the point.

In fair­ness to trail lawyers who I am par­tic­u­lar­ly hard on today, I have friends who told me in con­fi­dence if I ever need­ed a lawyer, they would rep­re­sent me pro-bono, they know them­selves, they are prac­tic­ing today.The only peo­ple who could not appre­ci­ate the val­ue of my work were the peo­ple whose job it was to do so, well at least some of them.

There are many oth­ers who left the JCF, or more appro­pri­ate­ly the JCF left them, because of poor lead­er­ship on the part of senior offi­cers who were them­selves pro­mot­ed to posi­tions they were not qual­i­fied or equipped for. I write this because it impor­tant to note that the police depart­ment as an enti­ty, has no oth­er com­mod­i­ty on which to trade except its human resource. Yet one of the great­est fail­ure of the JCF is it’s con­tin­ued inabil­i­ty to ade­quate­ly pro­mote and exploit that which is it’s great­est asset.

A sim­ple push-poll of for­mer mem­bers, would sup­port my asser­tion, many for­mer mem­bers irre­spec­tive of where they emi­grat­ed to, are doing expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter for them­selves and their fam­i­lies than they ever did serv­ing in the JCF. We always spoke to the nobil­i­ty of the Agency,I some­times won­der whether we are not refer­ring to the way we would have liked it to be rather than the way it actu­al­ly is?

Unless you have walked a mile in my shoes then you can­not know how I feel. I crit­i­cize the Jamaican Police Commissioner’s use of force pol­i­cy, not because it is whole­sale abhor­rent, but because it was for­mu­lat­ed with­out any input from the prin­ci­pal play­ers, police offi­cers fac­ing the criminals.

It is not unusu­al that the Commissioner of police or his pre­de­ces­sors before him would for­mu­late work­ing doc­u­ments with­out any input from the cops on the beat or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the fed­er­a­tion. It bears say­ing also, that I was nev­er a fan of cops in the Federation, they cur­ry favor,and look for their own inter­est. Essentially the police in Jamaica are with­out any­one lob­by­ing on their behalf. The Commissioner of Police and mem­bers of the gazetted Ranks are Civil Servants,they serve at the dis­cre­tion of the polit­i­cal direc­torate. Rank and file, from the rank of Inspector to Constable are sub­se­quent­ly reliant on the Federation to look out for their inter­est, yet mem­bers vot­ed into the Federation, has tra­di­tion­al­ly been pup­pets of one or the oth­er polit­i­cal par­ty, they sit and wait to be pro­mot­ed out of there, some­times after nego­ti­at­ing hor­rif­ic deals for their members.

There is heavy human rights ele­ment to the com­mis­sion­er’s new pol­i­cy with a less than ade­quate counter-bal­ance for offi­cer safe­ty. In fact this doc­u­ment seem to have orig­i­nat­ed from the Fagan Avenue Office of Criminal Rights lob­by (JFJ). Owen Ellington is a prod­uct of the University of the West Indies,he holds two degrees includ­ing a Masters in busi­ness Administration from that hot-bed of left-wing ide­ol­o­gy. In short I applaud Ellington for get­ting an edu­ca­tion, but he is not a cop , nev­er was one, it is no won­der then that he pre­sent­ed this laugh­able doc­u­ment as a work­ing doc­u­ment on which offi­cers lives are hinged.

Jamaican crim­i­nals are demon­ic and heart­less, they rape and mur­der as a mat­ter of course, police depart­ments in the devel­oped world has found out first-hand the deprav­i­ty and cal­lous dis­re­gard they have for human life.

During the 1980’s when Jamaican cops became seri­ous with crim­i­nals, many ran to oth­er shores, there they demon­strat­ed their scant regard for human life, includ­ing those of law-enforce­ment offi­cers. Legislators and law-enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als in coun­tries like the USA, Canada, the UK and oth­ers, hasti­ly draft­ed seri­ous and sweep­ing leg­is­la­tion that made it clear that they were not going to tol­er­ate that kind of crim­i­nal­i­ty on their shores and that they were absolute­ly not going to have their law-enforce­ment offi­cers left unprotected.

Federal laws like the Rico statute and on the state lev­el, many states includ­ing New York and California, passed the there strikes and you are out and the Rockefeller laws which gave law-enforce­ment the tools they need­ed to do their jobs. I have spo­ken to many mem­bers of the NYPD who have relat­ed to me how seri­ous they were forced to take the Jamaican crim­i­nals, the cal­lous­ness of these crim­i­nals ‚these cops had pre­vi­ous­ly nev­er seen.

If a cop has to fire a warn­ing shot mis­ter com­mis­sion­er he does not need to pull his weapon. I do not expect you to under­stand this you nev­er had the need to pull a weapon to defend your­self and nei­ther has your close ally Carolyn Gomes.

Several years ago I was a mem­ber of the Rangers Squad based at the Mobile Reserve. Early one sun­ny after­noon four of us were on rou­tine patrol in a Toyota Land Cruiser in the Jacques road area of Mountain View Avenue, I can­not recall all the mem­ber of that patrol team that day but I remem­ber the dri­ver Acting Corporal Berry, a jovial guy who spoke with a stutter.

We were head­ing up Jacques road, for those of you old enough to recall, those land cruis­ers announced them­selves a half a mile away,

the engine had a cer­tain famil­iar sound. As we round­ed a cor­ner there were a group of about six men sit­ting on a wall, on see­ing the vehi­cle they all rolled off the wall like trained pro­fes­sion­als. In a flash we were out, I was the youngest mem­ber of that team, we raced into the yard after them, M16 at the ready. They round­ed the cor­ner of the house and we stopped abrupt­ly, not intend­ing to run into a hail of gun­fire. Berry being the dri­ver was the last per­son out, he raced to where we were and was about to run around the cor­ner when I grabbed him by the back of his belt and pulled him down.

On my stom­ach I peered around the cor­ner and there was the muz­zle of a gun point­ed to where my col­league Berry would have been. Thank God we did not lose any­one that day. The biggest take-away from that event was that these men were not con­tent to just escape from the police with their ille­gal guns, they want­ed to kill us.

On ever occa­sion that I pulled my weapon as a front line cop for the decade I served, I believed it was nec­es­sary to pre­serve my life and the life of oth­ers. When a pedi­atric doc­tor who has a vendet­ta against law-enforce­ment offi­cers gets to make pol­i­cy, Police Officers die.

Lets be clear, Carolyn Gomes, Terrence Williams, Susan Goffe,and Earl Witter does not care how many Police offi­cers die, in fact they con­tend that instances of police killings are not com­men­su­rate with the num­ber of dead cops, as such they are not credible.

Let me tell you what that means , not enough cops are get­ting killed.

Ellington has not stood with front line cops, police offi­cers are oper­at­ing with prison hang­ing over their heads for doing what they are sworn to do.

This must stop and I will not stop try­ing until I am able to effect change, I will not sit by while this lying char­la­tan, excite, encour­age, sup­port, and empow­er crim­i­nals to kill police officers.

Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington issued new direc­tives to cops on the streets regard­ing the use of lethal force. On the issuance of those direc­tives we argued that there was no need for a new use of lethal force pol­i­cy, because the exist­ing pol­i­cy is clear, unequiv­o­cal and is stan­dard pro­to­col in the west­ern world. Of course Commissioner Ellington who nev­er faced an armed crim­i­nal in his life is out on the ocean with­out a pad­dle on this ever so impor­tant policy.

That stan­dard is sim­ple, a police offi­cer may dis­charge his/​her weapon in defense of his life or that of anoth­er. Nothing that Ellington adds or take away from that uni­ver­sal pro­to­col ‚on Carolyn Gomes’ behalf will change the fact that cops have a right, every time and are jus­ti­fi­able every time that they have to dis­charge their weapons under the cir­cum­stances I laid out above.

Here are the direc­tives from the Commissioner Of Police.

In a release obtained by OG​.NR, Police Commissioner Owen Ellington has issued new guide­lines to JCF mem­bers in this week’s force orders.

This new direc­tive comes fol­low­ing the recent shoot­ing death of 16-yr-old Vanessa Kirkland who was killed in con­tro­ver­sial cir­cum­stances on Norman lane in Kingston ear­li­er this week. The Commissioner says fol­low­ing recent dis­cus­sions a review of Police pro­ce­dures in the use of Police Force is be done in two weeks by a team lead by the Deputy Commissioner of Inspectors who is expect­ed to make rad­i­cal changes.

Protecting Human Rights and Human Dignity: A JCF Priority

Among our strate­gic pri­or­i­ties is to pro­mote respect for and pro­tec­tion of human rights and human dig­ni­ty. Recent revi­sion of our Firearms and Use of Force Policy with accom­pa­ny­ing train­ing and sen­si­ti­za­tion efforts are the ini­tia­tives tak­en in pur­suit of this pri­or­i­ty. In the last five years, we have made con­sid­er­able progress in the train­ing and re-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of our front-line mem­bers in the safe use and care of firearms. We have made changes to our weapons sys­tem, reflect­ing an imper­a­tive to reduce the risk of col­lat­er­al injury when we are forced to engage crim­i­nal ele­ments in built up areas.

This is most evi­dent in the shift away from rou­tine use of M16 Assault Rifles and Carbines in street lev­el polic­ing to the lighter and less lethal MP5 Sub-Machine Guns and Glock Pistols. The re-intro­duc­tion of pep­per spray with the stat­ed inten­tion to equip 6000 front-line per­son­nel with a com­bi­na­tion of less lethal options to the use of dead­ly force, are all part of a process being under­tak­en with the ulti­mate aim of build­ing a response capa­bil­i­ty that can counter vio­lence direct­ed at front-line per­son­nel by civil­ians, while at the same time, reduce or pre­vent injury and death of attack­ers as well as bystanders.

Recent Shootings and Fatalities

In recent weeks, the Jamaica Constabulary Force has faced much crit­i­cism for an abnor­mal increase in civil­ian fatal­i­ties aris­ing from armed con­fronta­tion with crim­i­nal sus­pects in a very short peri­od of time. Tough ques­tions are being raised about the ade­qua­cy of our Use of Force Policy and the extent to which our front­line mem­bers sub­ject their thoughts and actions to said Policy. Those who crit­i­cize and raise ques­tions or con­cerns about the rate of police killings do so legit­i­mate­ly and iden­ti­fy with the grow­ing num­ber of cit­i­zens who have set high­er stan­dards of pro­fes­sion­al­ism from their police ser­vice. We should not see our crit­ics, on this mat­ter of use of force, as adver­saries, but rather, val­ued part­ners who may yet help us refine our tech­niques, thus enabling us to bet­ter achieve our strate­gic pri­or­i­ty of pro­tect­ing human rights and human dignity.

We are a Responsive Force

The Jamaica Constabulary Force must respond to the legit­i­mate con­cerns and expec­ta­tions of our cit­i­zens. The rate of police/​criminal con­fronta­tions, with atten­dant injuries and fatal­i­ties is unac­cept­ably high. Though we are see­ing decline in such inci­dence over recent years, we are nowhere near the point where we can be com­fort­able with this record.

Key Policy Considerations

The Minister of National Security has request­ed that a com­pre­hen­sive review of the Jamaica Constabulary Force Operating Procedures be con­duct­ed with a view to mak­ing adjust­ments where appro­pri­ate. Accordingly, at our last Executive Management Board Meeting on Monday, March 19, the senior lead­er­ship of the Force spent almost one hour dis­cussing the most recent inci­dents of mul­ti­ple casu­al­ties aris­ing from police/​criminal confrontations.

Arising from the dis­cus­sions, a team led by the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge Inspection, has been tasked to con­duct an urgent review of our Use of Force Policy and

Training and make rec­om­men­da­tion for rad­i­cal improve­ment with­in two weeks. Among the changes under con­sid­er­a­tion and which the High Command has asked Senior Officers to con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tions with rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tions and their juniors are:

• Standard of Care to be exer­cised when dead­ly force is to be used. The cur­rent view is that police offi­cers’ first reac­tion when faced with dan­ger is “offi­cer safe­ty”. We are seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing a pol­i­cy posi­tion which demands that police offi­cers exer­cise equal con­cern for “bystander safe­ty”, extend­ed to the attack­er as they do for their own safe­ty. That is to say our offi­cers must take rea­son­able and safe steps to pro­tect the lives of attack­ers and “pos­si­ble bystander” as they do to pro­tect their own lives. I sug­gest “pos­si­ble bystanders” to make it clear that our duty of care extends to per­sons seen and unseen. Others who may be out of view being shield­ed by pen­e­tra­ble bar­ri­ers such as fence, soft walls or pan­els of motor vehi­cles. Officers are called upon to seri­ous­ly con­sid­er the con­se­quences of shoot­ing into crowds, build­ings, through phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers or into motor vehi­cles. Let us all assume that there are inno­cent per­sons in those posi­tions whose lives may be put at grave risk when we shoot and in such sit­u­a­tions “do not shoot”. Our pub­lic’s expect a high stan­dard of care from us because we are sworn to pro­tect life. Our actions should con­vince our pub­lic’s that even in the face of dan­ger; we have no desire to take life.

• Threat to Use of Deadly Force. The exist­ing Force Policy insists that a police offi­cer should not remove a hand­gun from its hol­ster or train a rifle unless he is legal­ly and moral­ly pre­pared to take a life. The Policy posi­tion obvi­ous­ly reflects what must be the ulti­mate con­se­quence of deploy­ing dead­ly force and empha­sizes the seri­ous nature of the act of dis­charg­ing a firearm in any place. We believe such strict rule denies the police offi­cer the tac­ti­cal option of “threat­en­ing the use of dead­ly force” while demand­ing that an attack­er ceas­es an attack or drops a weapon. Consideration is being giv­en to a pol­i­cy to change allow­ing offi­cers to:

1. train a loaded weapon on an armed attack­er and demand that

he drops a weapon and ceas­es an attack under threat of being shot;

1. appeal to bystanders to move out of an arc of fire for their own safety;
2. relate to the attack­er the con­se­quence of con­tin­u­ing an armed attack on any per­son while call­ing wit­ness­es to the officer’s effort at dif­fus­ing a volatile situation;
3. ver­bal­ize an assur­ance to an attack­er that dis­arm­ing is in both the officer’s and attacker’s own safety.

• Firing of Warning Shots. This prac­tice is pro­hib­it­ed in our cur­rent pol­i­cy. We gave much thought to revis­ing this posi­tion along the lines of giv­ing front-line offi­cers the option of dis­charg­ing a warn­ing shot in a safe direc­tion as an esca­la­tion of threat to use dead­ly force, but stop­ping short of direct­ing force on a human tar­get. This, if applied as a tac­ti­cal option, will:
• force­ful­ly bring home to armed sus­pects the grave dan­ger to which they expose them­selves and oth­ers if they con­tin­ue an armed attack or the threat of attack of the police.
• enable an armed sus­pect to assess the infe­ri­or­i­ty of his fire pow­er to that of the police, mak­ing him real­ize that con­tin­ued attack or threats posed by him is futile and poten­tial­ly fatal.

1. cause bystanders to retreat from “hot zone” or take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tion to avoid injury, which may include sig­nalling their loca­tion to the police and mak­ing an appeal for safe extraction.
2. sig­nal attempts by the police to counter a threat of vio­lence with­out use of dead­ly force.
3. Containment and Waiting Out Armed Suspect. This is already a require­ment of the Firearms and Use of Force Policy but obvi­ous­ly not used as often as need­ed. Several inci­dents show that all oppor­tu­ni­ties of con­tain­ment and dif­fus­ing armed stand-offs were not ful­ly exploit­ed. We will insist in the revised Policy that no forced and armed extrac­tion of sus­pects from any premis­es, vehi­cle or bar­ri­cad­ed area should be under­tak­en until the police have exhaust­ed all options to effect an unarmed sur­ren­der and the sus­pects have giv­en all oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so. The only excep­tion is where the sus­pect pos­es immi­nent threat to the life of any per­son and delayed action from the police would wors­en the situation.
4. 

Criminal Rights activist Carolyn Gomes:

1. Tactical Retreat. Our police offi­cers are cul­tured to pay the ulti­mate price rather than retreat from armed crim­i­nal attack. We are work­ing on a set of pro­ce­dures which could accom­mo­date “tac­ti­cal retreat” as an option to pre­serve human life with­out under­min­ing the sense of pride and hon­or of front-line offi­cers. We will begin the con­ver­sa­tion with the idea that a tac­ti­cal retreat does not sig­nal aban­don­ment of the cause.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…
2. END OF GUIDELINES:
3. I ask all of you my read­ers, do update me on which Police depart­ment to your knowl­edge retreats from armed crim­i­nals as a strat­e­gy. This is mind blow­ing sur­ren­der to crim­i­nal ele­ments in Jamaica by those tasked with enforc­ing the coun­try’s laws. Jamaica is now see­ing acts of ter­ror syn­ony­mous to what is hap­pen­ing in sub-Saharan Africa.
4. Just last week scores of heav­i­ly armed men burned sev­er­al hous­es in one area, mur­dered some occu­pants and ordered oth­ers nev­er to return. This is the Jamaica run by Carolyn Gomes of the crim­i­nal Rights group Jamaicans for Justice. This they do not want you to know, don’t buy the lies about Jamaica no problem.

When groups of armed men, some­times scores, and in uncon­firmed cas­es hun­dreds, can amass toward a com­mon cause, as was the case in Tivoli Gardens in 2010, or in Gravel Heights and many oth­er instances, in Saint Catherine, St. James, Clarendon, and oth­er Parishes, do you still believe it’s just crime?

Do you still say “Jamaica nice” or does Jamaica have seri­ous prob­lems which needs address­ing now and with all seriousness?
What is to stop them from tak­ing out whomev­er they chose to?
Ask your­selves these ques­tions, even as you crit­i­cize us for air­ing the dirty laun­dry in public!!!
Who is safe, is the Prime Minister real­ly safe? Is any­one safe?
If these Mercenaries real­ly want to get some­one what’s to stop them?
It took a mass build-up of troops and police and help from the United States to dis­lodge Coke.

Burnt out homes:(cour­tesy­ja­maicaob­serv­er)
So ask your­selves this, if these heav­i­ly armed demons wants to do any­thing what’s to stop them?
You may dis­lodge them later.
But the dam­age will have already be done.
This is seri­ous busi­ness, we all must put pres­sure on the Administration in pow­er in Jamaica to take steps right away to remove this exis­ten­tial threat from the coun­try immediately.

Leroy Robinson mur­dered try­ing to save his neigh­bor after ter­ror­ists set her house on fire:
This is not pol­i­tics, it’s real­i­ty, your atten­tion to this will speak vol­umes, it’s not about jokes and bull, this is seri­ous, peo­ple are dying , young girls are being raped and forced into pros­ti­tu­tion, homes are being torched, some­times sev­er­al at a time.
We sim­ply can­not pre­tend any longer.

While these acts of domes­tic ter­ror­ism are hap­pen­ing the state charged sev­er­al police­men with mur­der on the demand of Carolyn Gomes of Jamaicans for Justice, (JFJ) local crim­i­nal rights lobby.

The case against the police offi­cers as out­lined in the Gleaners Story, may have bor­dered on reck­less­ness, but mur­der? It is alleged that a rob­bery occurred in Portmore Saint Catherine and the rob­bers were tailed to a Kingston loca­tion where they were engaged by police and a young woman was killed and sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple injured.

There is no indi­ca­tion whose bul­let hit who , of course Carolyn Gomes has demand­ed the offi­cers be charged with Murder. Terrence Williams INDECOM boss, drunk with pow­er and demand­ing more pow­er, obvi­ous­ly hot under the col­lar that the cops were not charged imme­di­ate­ly after he sub­mit­ted the file to the DPP, just this week went to the media demand­ing more pow­ers so he may pros­e­cute police officers.

Acquiescing to the howls for blood, the DPP has charged the offi­cers with mur­der, I am not ful­ly con­ver­sant with the facts of the case so I will with­hold com­ments on the case itself. Sufficing to say, there is law in Jamaica that gives the DPP the pow­er to charge a police offi­cer with a crime, in order to quell pub­lic dis­qui­et, even though there may not be evi­dence to sup­port the charge.

Many police offi­cers do not know this, yet when offi­cers are exon­er­at­ed peo­ple scream cov­er-up, because they do not know there was no evi­dence to begin with. Yet cops spend all their income, are ruined finan­cial­ly, and car­rear-wise, for doing what they were sworn to do.

Murder is a the unlaw­ful killing of a human being by anoth­er human being with mal­ice aforethought.

I am won­der­ing how they charged mur­der, where is the mal­ice, implied or expressed in this case? I will be watch­ing , you should too.

Armed mer­ce­nar­ies erect bar­ri­cades to an entry point into Tivoli Gardens as they pre­pared for war against the Jamaican State in 2010.

This coun­try we know as Jamaica, some of us love, some claim to love, is fast descend­ing into a cesspool which will only attract the worst types of crim­i­nals, if we do not put a stop to it now.

Decent peo­ple are already shun­ning our beloved coun­try because of what’s hap­pen­ing there, we are fast-track­ing to becom­ing anoth­er sub-Saharan hell-hole.
Why is the National empha­sis on what is alleged­ly done by mem­bers of the Military, most of which are like­ly dis­tor­tions and dis­trac­tions ? (NOT argu­ing there should be no accountability).!!!
The National con­sen­sus must expo­nen­tial­ly be cen­tered on find­ing out how a com­mu­ni­ty got to what Tivoli Gardens mat­estacised into.

More impor­tant­ly, how could a local crim­i­nal become so pow­er­ful, that he was vir­tu­al­ly untouch­able locally.
Why the hell are we re-writ­ing history ?

Police sta­tion burns:

The Office of Public Defender has final­ly released the long await­ed Report, of what exact­ly tran­spired in the West Kingston Community of Tivoli Gardens in 2010. This has revived a vibrant debate on the issue, most of which so far has been in my esti­ma­tion fright­en­ing­ly mis­guid­ed and unpatriotic.

Someone not con­ver­sant with what led up to the Jamaican State annex­ing Tivoli Gardens to the rest of the coun­try, could seri­ous­ly walk away believ­ing that the peo­ple are seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion from a for­eign gov­ern­ment which ille­gal­ly invad­ed their enclave.

Bullet rid­dled police station:

The truth of the mat­ter is, since it’s incep­tion Tivoli Gardens has long enjoyed a type of favored sta­tus, one that is un-earned, but which has been bestowed on it nonethe­less ‚much like the fabled old­er sis­ters in the Cinderella story.

Tivoli Gardens, the brain-child of it’s patron Edward Seaga, for­mer Prime Minister and peren­ni­al mem­ber of Parliament, had a split per­son­al­i­ty. At best it was a great exam­ple of com­mu­ni­ty, a great com­mu­ni­ty clin­ic, my old­est son was born in that very clin­ic. A great Comprehensive High School, and oth­er social ameni­ties. Tivoli Gardens was ground zero for cul­ture and sports, much to the delight of Seaga who saw his efforts at social engi­neer­ing sim­i­lar to a par­ent child relationship.

Darling Street Police Station destroyed:

But like a dot­ing par­ent Seaga failed to heed the prob­lems ema­nat­ing from that com­mu­ni­ty, much like a par­ent ignor­ing and deny­ing the wrongs been done by his teenag­er. Many argue that Seaga more than ignored those prob­lems, he was the cre­ator of those problems.

The Don cul­ture which evolved from the Tivoli com­mu­ni­ty mod­el, is now pos­ing an exis­ten­tial threat to the social order of Jamaica as we knew it. Seaga fun­da­men­tal­ly believed in the social mod­el he cre­at­ed, which was one of a hier­ar­chi­cal struc­ture with him at the polit­i­cal zenith. He also cre­at­ed the space for a Don or so-called(com­mu­ni­ty leader) who saw to the day to day affairs of the community.

This com­mu­ni­ty leader han­dled the affairs of the com­mu­ni­ty, the prob­lem with this how­ev­er is that it removed Tivoli from the sphere of influ­ence of the broad­er Jamaican soci­ety. This includes the abil­i­ty of the Police to arrest felons who take up res­i­dence there after they had com­mit­ted egre­gious crimes in oth­er parts of the country.

Seaga famous­ly asked years ago , quote: “What was Adams doing in Tivoli Gardens”? in ref­er­ence to then leader of the crime man­age­ment unit going into the com­mu­ni­ty to appre­hend want­ed men. Seaga unwit­ting­ly gave a peek into how he real­ly saw the com­mu­ni­ty, appar­ent­ly as his fief­dom not sub­ject to the reach or dic­tates of the rule of law.

As a boy grow­ing up in Saint Catherine, I was a fan of Tivoli Gardens, I saw that com­mu­ni­ty as a nec­es­sary counter-bal­ance to the con­fla­gra­tion of PNP gar­risons which had lit­er­al­ly sprung up every­where in the Kingston and Saint Andrew met­ro­pol­i­tan area. Years lat­er I changed my mind­set when as part of a Special Police unit from the Mobile Reserve I took sus­tained auto­mat­ic fire from that com­mu­ni­ty at the Denham Town Police Station, hun­kered down and ordered by the Superintendent not to return fire.

When the fir­ing ceased a police truck parked in front of the sta­tion was destroyed, bul­let holes pot-marked the walls of the sta­tion, where panes of glass exist­ed min­utes ear­li­er shards of shat­tered glass told a jagged tale of hor­ror. No one was ever held respon­si­ble. The prob­lem with what hap­pened that day is this, it hap­pened sim­ply because one boot-lick­ing, lap-dog Superintendent had his nose too far up Seaga’s ass to get out of our way, or was too much of a cow­ard to get out-of-the-way and let us do our jobs. My per­cep­tion of the JCF changed that day, it has­n’t improved since.

How could that com­mu­ni­ty not take on a brazen don’t care atti­tude of being untouchable?

The group of Ranger Squad mem­bers, of which I was a part, were more than capa­ble of han­dling those scum­bags that day. We were ide­al­ists who would have made the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice for the Jamaican state. Politics drove a nail in the cof­fin of the Jamaican state on that day.

In any coun­try where the rule of law is usurped, the empha­sis lat­er is gen­er­al­ly to make sure that those opposed to the nat­ur­al order are dealt with quick­ly and deci­sive­ly. This is true even in states that does not nec­es­sar­i­ly adhere to demo­c­ra­t­ic norms.

In Jamaica today, the con­ver­sa­tion is cen­tered around com­pen­sa­tion for res­i­dents of Tivoli Gardens. From the bull-shit report com­ing out of Witter’s office, to the par­lia­ment, to the reg­u­lar vil­lage lawyer, the argu­ment is about appor­tion­ing blame to the foot sol­diers of the secu­ri­ty forces who went in and restored san­i­ty to that vol­canic situation.

In most coun­tries those mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces would have received com­men­da­tions and have acco­lades heaped on them. In Jamaica the out­ra­geous sen­ti­ment is that a com­mis­sion of inquiry must now be con­vened to dig fur­ther to see what ille­gal act was com­mit­ted by those brave mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces, (if any) in what was a the­ater of war.

If you are final­ly appalled and out­raged you should be, this is in addi­tion to the wast­ed $76.098-million which has been allo­cat­ed to Witter’s office for this year. For that mon­ey, tax-pay­ers received a report call­ing for a com­mis­sion of inquiry, and yes that the peo­ple in Tivoli Gardens should be paid handsomely.

You ask what they should be paid for ? Your guess is as good as mine.

Jamaica just secured anoth­er loan from the International Monetary Fund, this mon­ey though nec­es­sary for the short term, will be part­ly respon­si­ble for dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to the coun­try’s attempt at sol­ven­cy in the future.

This will add to the coun­try’s bur­geon­ing debt cri­sis. Working police offi­cers, nurs­es teach­ers , fire­men and oth­ers, who apply to the National Housing Trust for mort­gages are turned down, years ago I was one of them. The Jamaican Prime Minister recent­ly announced a plan to build hous­ing units for urban dwellers, to peo­ple famil­iar with Jamaica, these are peo­ple who are unable finan­cial­ly to pay for those homes. They are polit­i­cal hand­outs for votes.

In effect, it is a dis­gust­ing­ly cyn­i­cal attempt at vote buy­ing, while work­ing pro­fes­sion­als are turned away , unem­ployed peo­ple will be housed at no cost to them­selves. If you ever won­dered why Jamaica is the way it is you should digest what you just read here today.