The intractable issue of cor­rup­tion with­in the Jamaican pub­lic sec­tor is the burn­ing log in the fire of vio­lent crimes. Because the polit­i­cal lead­ers are them­selves com­pro­mised and, in some cas­es, cor­rupt, they are unable and unwill­ing to sup­port the ref­or­ma­tion of the Jamaican gov­ern­ment and place the coun­try on a real foun­da­tion where the rule of law replaces the rule of man.
Jamaicans need a new con­sti­tu­tion. One that is well thought out. One that rep­re­sents and pro­tects the Jamaican peo­ple, but most of all, one that sets Jamaica on a path to true self-governance.
Not the gov­er­nance we have today that is still tied to our old colo­nial masters.
Setting our coun­try on a path to real nation­hood will not be easy, and as one per­son said in our recent zoom con­fer­ence, it will take decades to do because it took decades to get us here.
The dan­ger, how­ev­er, is that we risk doing noth­ing. If we do noth­ing, we are giv­ing up on Jamaica, which is what the transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works want us to do.
We are also con­ver­sant about the dif­fi­cul­ty in even begin­ning a con­ver­sa­tion toward effec­tu­at­ing mean­ing­ful change in the face of intran­si­gent and igno­rant resistance.
We have begun that con­ver­sa­tion and will con­tin­ue to see where we go. Thank you to those who decid­ed to start with us. We intend to have a series of these dis­cus­sions on crime and corruption.
It is easy to stand aside and crit­i­cize, but we have decid­ed to begin the hard work.

For those who were too busy or oth­er­wise occu­pied to attend, we have attached the link below for your convenience.

https://​us06web​.zoom​.us/​r​e​c​/​s​h​a​r​e​/​U​C​M​m​P​2​N​C​l​J​e​R​i​n​W​-​z​R​w​F​C​K​8​a​9​T​p​-​f​o​R​q​r​2​d​z​d​R​H​S​X​s​M​N​-​7​u​j​i​X​t​N​-​e​3​W​J​q​w​0​i​2​C​A​.​1​A​H​V​2​I​a​v​X​4​N​t​P​lDl

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

A 29-year-old man who was pum­meled by a police offi­cer while in cus­tody in 2020 reached a $90,000 set­tle­ment with the City of Cranston and his attack­er over the assault.

Gian Mattiello, of Cranston, agreed to set­tle with the city and its police depart­ment over his assault in March 2020 by for­mer Police Officer Andrew Leonard as he was being booked at police head­quar­ters fol­low­ing a domes­tic dis­pute with his brother.

In May 2021, District Court Magistrate J. Patrick O’Neill found Leonard guilty of sim­ple assault after a bench tri­al. The judge reject­ed Leonard’s argu­ments that he used rea­son­able force and was try­ing to pro­tect him­self after Mattiello reached for his belt. Instead, O’Neill con­clud­ed that Leonard had missed oppor­tu­ni­ties to de-esca­late ten­sions with Mattiello, who appears to be try­ing to pro­voke the offi­cer in sur­veil­lance video footage.

O’Neill took notice, in par­tic­u­lar, of images that showed Leonard giv­ing Mattiello a shot with his knee after bar­rag­ing him with punches.

“That knee is an assault on a defense­less per­son who just caught a beat­ing,” O’Neill said.

Leonard, 47, ini­tial­ly appealed the ver­dict to Superior Court, but in September opt­ed to admit to the crime rather than head to trial.

Judge Richard Raspallo gave Leonard, who had been on the force for more than two decades pri­or to the inci­dent, one year of pro­ba­tion after he plead­ed no con­test to sim­ple assault.

Could your kids be at risk?A Central Falls cou­ple’s twins were strug­gling. Then a blood test showed high lead levels

Mattiello sued the city, the Police Department, Leonard, and Officers Zachary Burns and Thomas Levy in U.S. District Court fol­low­ing O’Neill’s ver­dict, argu­ing that his rights had been vio­lat­ed when he was sub­ject­ed to exces­sive force by Leonard. He accused Burns and Levy of fail­ing to inter­vene to pro­tect him from Leonard.

Mattiello sought $2 mil­lion in dam­ages for emo­tion­al dis­tress, med­ical expens­es, lost earn­ings and legal fees.

Mattiello agreed to release his claims and dis­miss the suit after reach­ing a nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment with the par­ties late last month. The agree­ment spec­i­fies that it should not be con­strued as an admis­sion of lia­bil­i­ty on the part of the City of Cranston or the Police Department.

Criminal Justice Reform:She was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of killing her tod­dler daugh­ter. Now, she wants RI to pay her

Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. entered an order accept­ing the set­tle­ment agree­ment on Dec. 5.

The city was rep­re­sent­ed by Patrick McBurney and William O’Gara, of Pannone Lopes Devereaux & O’Gara, with Michael J. Colucci also rep­re­sent­ing Leonard. Carl H. Hurvich rep­re­sent­ed Mattiello.

It is safe to assume he will turn up in another department nearby with his rank and most likely, a larger salary regardless of what he did wrong.

A Peoria police sergeant has resigned fol­low­ing an “alter­ca­tion” with a female offi­cer, the depart­ment announced.

This is typ­i­cal of how things get done. Rather than fire these mis­cre­ants and take their law enforce­ment cre­den­tials which pre­vent them from ever serv­ing as police offi­cers when they do things like these, they allow them to go where­upon oth­er depart­ments hire them.

By Alia Shoaib.

• A Texas police offi­cer was fired from the San Antonio police depart­ment after two inci­dents involv­ing feces.
• In one inci­dent, offi­cer Matthew Luckhurst fed a home­less man a sand­wich with feces in it.
• He was lat­er hired by the Floresville depart­ment but has been fired after an out­pour­ing of anger.

A Texas police offi­cer, who first lost his job in 2016 after giv­ing a home­less man a feces sand­wich, has been fired by a sec­ond Texan police depart­ment, reports said.

The San Antonio police depart­ment indef­i­nite­ly released Matthew Luckhurst after a sep­a­rate inci­dent in 2016. He was lat­er hired by the police depart­ment in Floresville, Texas, local out­let KSAT reported

The city’s may­or said there had been an out­pour­ing of emails from locals who were unhap­py Luckhurst had been re-employed as a police officer.

Mayor Cissy Gonzalez-Dippel said in a state­ment: “Matthew Luckhurst was released from employ­ment with the Floresville Police Department yes­ter­day Dec. 13^th.”

“Our city man­ag­er, Andy Joslin is imple­ment­ing stricter hir­ing poli­cies for all city of Floresville employ­ees. He is also work­ing with Chief Herrera on the Reserve program.”

Luckhurst was first ter­mi­nat­ed by the San Antonio police in 2016 after an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that he placed feces between slices of bread and gave it to a home­less man while on duty, accord­ing to KSAT.

The police offi­cer won an appeal over the feces sand­wich inci­dent due to a local gov­ern­ment code that pre­vents offi­cers from being dis­ci­plined for con­duct occur­ring over 180 days ago, the out­let reported.

He was lat­er giv­en a sec­ond indef­i­nite sus­pen­sion fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into a sep­a­rate inci­dent in which he alleged­ly failed to flush feces down a toi­let in the wom­en’s restroom at the down­town bike patrol office and spread a “brown tapi­o­ca-like sub­stance” on the seat.

Luckhurst took respon­si­bil­i­ty for the toi­let inci­dent but said it was a prank and apol­o­gized: “In hind­sight, it was imma­ture,” he said at a hear­ing, per KSAT.

However, he did not win his appeal against the toi­let inci­dent. The arbi­tra­tor assigned to the case decid­ing that SAPD Chief William McManus was jus­ti­fied in ter­mi­nat­ing him, cit­ing the “egre­gious nature of Luckhurst’s con­duct aimed at women.”

Sometimes I comment before posting these horror stories. At other times I prefer to remain silent and allow the depravity to sink in. This is what obtains in America as law enforcement to a large degree. People talk about good cops, which begs the question, where are they?

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By Pilar Melendez.
Harris Elias and his 15-year-old son were dri­ving home from din­ner at a local Fort Collins, Colorado, taco spot when they got pulled over.
Elias, a 51-year-old sin­gle father of three, told The Daily Beast that he imme­di­ate­ly “put his defens­es up” as he noticed Officer Jason Haferman walk­ing up to his dri­ver-side win­dow on Dec. 3, 2021.
“At first, he asked me if I knew why he had pulled me over, which I thought was a ridicu­lous ques­tion because I had no idea why he would pull me over,” Elias said. “As soon as he asked me what I had to drink, I knew it was hap­pen­ing all over again.”
The har­row­ing sense of déjà vu, he said, was spurred because just two years pri­or, he had been arrest­ed by a Loveland, Colorado, police offi­cer on sus­pi­cion of dri­ving under the influ­ence (DUI). The case was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed, but it instilled a deep fear of overzeal­ous law enforce­ment in Elias.

In a police report obtained by The Daily Beast, Haferman claimed Elias’ “eyes were glassy, pupils con­strict­ed, and his breath­ing was deep” and imme­di­ate­ly placed him under arrest to get test­ed for drugs and alco­hol at a local hos­pi­tal. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Services lab report lat­er detect­ed no drugs or alco­hol in his system.
But before those results came back, Elias was already halfway to hell.
“I can’t explain what it is like walk­ing through the hos­pi­tal hand­cuffed. To see how peo­ple look at you, and how the staff inter­acts with you,” Elias said. “It was real­ly degrading.”
The humil­i­a­tion, he said, was just the start. When he was allowed to bond out of jail three days lat­er, he said, he had to deal with child pro­tec­tive ser­vices and beg a judge to let him have con­tact with his son.
That’s because in Colorado, state law dic­tates that an indi­vid­ual who com­mits a DUI that involves a child can also be pros­e­cut­ed for child abuse, a charge Elias faced in addi­tion to dri­ving under the influ­ence and care­less dri­ving. Elias even­tu­al­ly got all charges dropped after approx­i­mate­ly two months — but, he said, the sting hasn’t gone away.

“Knowing that I couldn’t even dri­ve with my own kid and there was zero evi­dence that I vio­lat­ed any law… it made me feel six inch­es tall,” Elias explained. “By far, the thing that doesn’t go away from this case is the child abuse aspect of it. It is the ulti­mate way to hurt some­one who has spent the last 15 years as a sin­gle dad.”
Elias is not the only Colorado res­i­dent to be wrong­ful­ly accused of dri­ving under the influ­ence after being stopped by Haferman. In fact, the Fort Collins Police Department con­firmed to The Daily Beast that in the last two years, at least nine of Haferman’s DUI arrests were exe­cut­ed on dri­vers with no drugs or alco­hol in their systems.The shock­ing series of ques­tion­able arrests was first report­ed by Fox31.
Not includ­ed among those nine is the case of Harley Padilla — even though the severe­ly dis­abled man was forced to spend a year in jail when Haferman arrest­ed him after he said Padilla was slur­ring his words and that his bal­ance was uneven. After a motor­cy­cle acci­dent four years pri­or, the 52-year-old lost his left arm and is forced to speak through a hole in his throat.
“Because of his injuries, I don’t think Harley Padilla even has the capac­i­ty to slur words,” his attor­ney, Troy Krenning, told The Daily Beast. “He speaks through his throat and doesn’t use his tongue or lips. Haferman also talked about his bal­ance being uneven. No shit, he is disabled.”

At the end of his bench tri­al over the Feb. 18, 2021, arrest, Larimer County Judge Sarah Beth Cure found not only that Padilla was not guilty of dri­ving under the influ­ence, but also that Officer Haferman lacked “cred­i­bil­i­ty” and offered “incon­sis­tent” testimony.“It changed course on sev­er­al of the key facts. Some of his tes­ti­mo­ny is not sup­port­ed by the evi­dence,” Cure con­clud­ed in her rul­ing, accord­ing to a tran­script obtained by The Daily Beast. “In fact, some of it was con­trary to the evidence.”
But before Fort Collins Police Chief Jeff Swoboda could fire Haferman after an inter­nal police inves­ti­ga­tion, the 31-year-old resigned from the force, as the chief announced ear­ly this month. A police spokesper­son con­firmed the res­ig­na­tion came after Haferman had been reas­signed twice and ulti­mate­ly placed on leave after a review ini­tial­ly began at the start of the year — before inter­nal affairs began their own inves­ti­ga­tion in April. “The inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion did not iden­ti­fy any mal­in­tent or crim­i­nal vio­la­tions,” the spokesper­son said. “It did reveal a pat­tern of poor per­for­mance in terms of admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ties, pro­ce­dur­al con­sis­ten­cy, and adher­ence to the stan­dards of oper­a­tion that we train and expect from our offi­cers.” Three res­i­dents sub­ject­ed to Haferman’s arrest spree told The Daily Beast they were hor­ri­fied by the idea the now-for­mer cop has seem­ing­ly got­ten off “scot-free” while they are left with what they describe as phys­i­cal, men­tal, and emo­tion­al scars from encoun­ters with him.

All describe Haferman stop­ping them under the pre­tense that they com­mit­ted a minor traf­fic infrac­tion. Then — after claim­ing they exhib­it­ed signs of drunk dri­ving such as smelling like alco­hol or hav­ing glassy eyes or dilat­ed pupils — they say Haferman forced them into squad cars and took them to hos­pi­tals, hand­cuffed, to get a blood test. The peo­ple who spoke with The Daily Beast all pro­duced state blood test results show­ing that no alco­hol was found in their system.
All say they were forced to spend time and mon­ey to clear their name and even­tu­al­ly have the charges dropped. “It was hor­ri­ble,” Padilla told The Daily Beast.
Another woman told a local news out­let that she was forced to stay in jail overnight even though she repeat­ed­ly explained to Haferman that her eyes were red because she had just been dumped by her boyfriend and had been cry­ing for three hours.
Haferman did not respond to a request for com­ment for this sto­ry. And his record is not unblem­ished: if he were to apply to a new depart­ment, the state’s “Peace Officer Standards and Training” data­base would show the cop “resigned while under investigation.”
But the cop’s res­ig­na­tion, accord­ing to crim­i­nal defense lawyers and the police depart­ment, means that tech­ni­cal­ly, Haferman can move to anoth­er state (or even anoth­er Colorado coun­ty) and apply for anoth­er law enforce­ment posi­tion. A spokesper­son for the Fort Collins Police Department told The Daily Beast that even though Haferman was fac­ing ter­mi­na­tion, the state agency “does not pro­hib­it employ­ment if an offi­cer resigns from an agency, and ter­mi­na­tion is not auto­mat­ic grounds for decer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Colorado.”

That rais­es the prospect the cop could land in a new gig — infu­ri­at­ing those caught up in what they described as a sense­less drag­net that upend­ed their lives. “I can nev­er look at a police offi­cer the same way again,” Elias said. Haferman was not exact­ly shy about accus­ing peo­ple of drunk dri­ving. It was, after all, his job.
Of the 504 dri­ving-under-the-influ­ence arrests his depart­ment made last year, a police spokesper­son con­firmed that Haferman was involved in 191 — or about 37 per­cent— “either as the pri­ma­ry arrest­ing offi­cer or pro­vid­ing DUI inves­tiga­tive support.”
That num­ber is not, in and of itself, ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing giv­en that Haferman worked in a DUI enforce­ment assign­ment at the time.
But police say that eight of those cas­es in 2021 alone result­ed in arrests where blood tests indi­cat­ed no drugs or alco­hol detect­ed. Police also admit that Haferman was involved in at least one more arrest where no drugs or alco­hol were detect­ed this year.
“People still joke to this day, ‘Don’t Drink and Drive, but even if you’re not drink­ing, you could still get a DUI’” in Larimer County, Matthew Haltzman, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing a man whom Haferman arrest­ed in April on a DUI charge that was dis­missed, told The Daily Beast. “It was that bad.” Among his tar­gets was Padilla, who was dri­ving home after spend­ing the day vis­it­ing a friend in Fort Collins when he noticed the flash­ing behind him.
“I saw the lights and imme­di­ate­ly thought it was a plow­er because of all the snow on the ground,” Padilla told The Daily Beast. “Then I real­ized it was a cop car.”

Padilla was no stranger to being pulled over. He was also not inno­cent of dri­ving-relat­ed crimes, hav­ing plead­ed guilty or no con­test to sev­er­al DUIs over the years. But he told The Daily Beast that his­to­ry — and his phys­i­cal state — had left him try­ing hard­er than ever “to do every­thing right on the road.” So he was shocked when Haferman told him he had been swerv­ing while dri­ving and accused him of dri­ving under the influ­ence. Haferman imme­di­ate­ly placed Padilla in hand­cuffs and sent him to the hos­pi­tal for a blood test, which came back clean for alco­hol, accord­ing to a tran­script of a judge’s ruling.
During the trans­port via ambu­lance — at his own request, giv­en he had an infec­tion in his femur — Padilla said his wrist was hurt and his shoul­der knocked out of its sock­et.“At the hos­pi­tal, they sug­gest­ed I stay for a few days because of every­thing wrong with me,” Padilla said. “But instead I was sent to jail. And then I stayed there because I refused to admit I was drunk dri­ving when I wasn’t.” At the end of his bench tri­al, a judge agreed with him that he wasn’t drunk dri­ving. But Padilla was found guilty of pos­sess­ing an open mar­i­jua­na con­tain­er in his car and acknowl­edged that he had THC in his sys­tem — though the blood test result showed it was below the state lim­it for dri­ving, and he said it was pur­chased with his med­ical mar­i­jua­na card. For his part, Elias saw every charge against him dis­missed. But get­ting there was a struggle.

Haferman stat­ed in a police report that he stopped Elias after the dri­ver did not have his “head­lamps acti­vat­ed at night… failed to yield the right of way to the pedes­tri­ans and made a wide turn to get around the pedes­tri­ans.” The offi­cer also said that he turned into the wrong lane with­out using his right turn sig­nal. Haferman also not­ed that Elias refused to par­tic­i­pate in road­side tests to deter­mine his sobri­ety; Elias told The Daily Beast he refused to do so because he “shut down” and didn’t want any­thing he said to be mis­in­ter­pret­ed lat­er. “It took me longer to find my car insur­ance and reg­is­tra­tion than it did for him to con­duct his drunk dri­ving inves­ti­ga­tion and arrest me,” Elias said. Body-cam footage of the arrest obtained by The Daily Beast shows Elias remain­ing calm but refus­ing to answer Haferman’s ques­tions as he searched for his license and insur­ance. Eventually get­ting out of the car, Elias says in the footage that he refus­es to par­tic­i­pate in his sobri­ety tri­als and asks for him to “write him a tick­et and let him go.” Haferman refused and con­tin­ued to ask him whether he con­sumed alco­hol — in response to which Elias insist­ed on speak­ing to his attor­ney. In the footage, Elias is heard telling Haferman that the hand­cuffs were hurt­ing him. “It was a vio­lent arrest,” Elias said. “He quick­ly came behind me and grabbed my left wrist and put it in a painful wrist lock. It imme­di­ate­ly sent me into a panic.”

As Haferman was clos­ing the squad door behind him, Elias said, the cop “slammed the door on my knee” — a move that prompt­ed him to scream out “fuck, Jesus Christ!” in the body-cam footage. In the arrest report, Haferman wrote that he felt “some restric­tion when the door was almost closed.” After he was even­tu­al­ly released from jail, Elias said, he faced ran­dom drug tests that forced him to pee in front of a stranger — and a mir­ror — and lost mon­ey pay­ing an inde­pen­dent lab and a lawyer to clear his name. While it’s been months since the dis­trict attor­ney dis­missed charges against Elias, he stressed that the “prob­lem didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly go away.” In addi­tion to what he claims is emo­tion­al dis­tress from the arrest, he said he has lost his for­mer sense of safe­ty and secu­ri­ty in his com­mu­ni­ty that has him “con­stant­ly look­ing over my shoul­der.” “It’s hard to even think about it again,” he added. And the knowl­edge that Haferman was able to resign “feels like less than a slap on the wrist.” “It’s over­whelm­ing,” he said. “He got off scot-free.” The Fort Collins Police Department’s inter­nal affairs depart­ment offi­cial­ly began to look into alle­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing by Haferman in April. By then, Carly Zimmerman had already been arrest­ed after being stopped for alleged­ly dri­ving reck­less­ly past Haferman as he was exe­cut­ing anoth­er traf­fic stop.
In body-cam­era footage obtained by KDVR, Haferman asks Zimmerman how much she has had to drink — to which she replies that she had not had any, but has “been cry­ing for about three hours” because she had just gone through a breakup. Zimmerman’s charge was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed and her driver’s license was rein­stat­ed after a hear­ing, accord­ing to the out­let. (Zimmerman and her lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.)

Around the same time, Derrick Groves was arrest­ed, too. According to an April 7 arrest report obtained by The Daily Beast, Haferman stopped Groves after the man alleged­ly lost con­trol of his car and drove down an embank­ment. Noting that Groves was on pro­ba­tion for a pri­or DUI offense, Haferman said he quick­ly con­clud­ed that he had “blood­shot, glassy eyes, his pupils appeared to be dif­fer­ent sizes, and he [his] speech was slow and raspy at times,” the report states. Groves insist­ed that he “does not use alco­hol and drugs because he was on probation…[and] stat­ed that he was 100 per­cent sober.” Groves was even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed and forced to go to the hos­pi­tal to get a blood test before even­tu­al­ly get­ting placed in a jail cell for a day. The dis­trict attor­ney even­tu­al­ly dis­missed his DUI in June — and his care­less dri­ving charge two months lat­er. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Services lab report said no drugs or alco­hol were detected.
“I can’t diag­nose PTSD, but he cer­tain­ly has all the symp­toms of being some­one who is trau­ma­tized,” Matthew Haltzman, his lawyer, told The Daily Beast.
The Larimer County District Attorney’s Office told The Daily Beast they were first made aware of the sus­pi­cious cas­es this sum­mer. That’s when the District Attorney’s office was informed by Fort Collins Police that they had already start­ed con­duct­ing an inter­nal review.
Matt Maillaro, an assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney, told The Daily Beast that by August — after going through case files and find­ing “more prob­lem­at­ic cas­es” — his office con­tact­ed the police depart­ment with the news. They would “no longer be pros­e­cut­ing cas­es in which for­mer offi­cer Haferman was an essen­tial wit­ness,” the pros­e­cu­tor said.

Maillaro added that the DA’s office con­clud­ed that sev­er­al of Haferman’s arrests were “made based on poor judg­ment, dis­re­gard for the prop­er pro­ce­dures and train­ing, and a mis­un­der­stand­ing or dis­re­gard of the legal require­ments regard­ing prob­a­ble cause.” But they did not find any­thing to sup­port crim­i­nal charges against him. “Through our review, it was appar­ent this had already been done on most of the cas­es by virtue of each pros­e­cu­tor dis­miss­ing Haferman’s bad cas­es when they saw the evi­dence didn’t sup­port a pros­e­cu­tion,” Maillaro added. It remains to be seen if Haferman can walk away com­plete­ly unscathed. Elias’ lawyer, Sarah Schielke, told The Daily Beast that she plans to file a law­suit against the Fort Collins Police Department and Haferman on behalf of Elias and sev­er­al oth­er clients who were also false­ly arrest­ed on DUI charges. Matthew Haltzman said he plans to file a sim­i­lar law­suit next year. “I think that Jason Haferman had an innate desire to be the best DUI cop out here or on his force, no mat­ter the cost. No mat­ter who was left in his wake,” Haltzman said. “But while he was just see­ing prey, he was not real­iz­ing he was leav­ing people’s lives for­ev­er changed.” “But that’s over now. His reign of ter­ror is over and it’s time to get justice.”

It is great to see the Jamaican Prime min­is­ter in the United States con­ven­ing meet­ings with American Officials on a plan between the two nations that would stem the flow of ille­gal guns into Jamaica.
It took mis­ter Holness and his gov­ern­ment a long time to do what peo­ple like myself have been say­ing he should have done years ago. Seeking help from the United States, the coun­try from which most guns are flow­ing, to stop or at least plug the dyke.
We should be clear-eyed about the help we ask from the Americans because the last thing we need in our polic­ing in Jamaica is the evi­dent bru­tal­i­ty across America’s over 18,000 police departments.
On the oth­er hand, Jamaica’s police offi­cers are seri­ous­ly lack­ing in train­ing, direc­tion, lead­er­ship, and exe­cu­tion of polic­ing duties. I believe the Americans can be of help in those areas.
The Americans have a stake in a sta­ble Jamaica and should be hap­py to help Jamaica fight against transna­tion­al criminals.
A safe Jamaica means her cit­i­zens will not be look­ing to live in the United States; that alone ought to be enough for the United States to give Jamaica the tools she needs to fight the fight she is engaged in.
Nothing is wrong with ask­ing for help, but the most crit­i­cal com­po­nent miss­ing from the sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica is a will­ing­ness on the part of the nation’s lead­ers to attack the prob­lem head-on.
Both the PNP & JLP con­tin­ue to refer to the out­dat­ed post-colo­nial era con­sti­tu­tion and laws that have the Island shack­led to unten­able non-deter­rent laws that no longer work.
We need a new Constitution!!!
Additionally, Jamaica has tied itself to region­al and glob­al treaties and con­ven­tions, mak­ing it incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to gov­ern itself appro­pri­ate­ly with­out undue con­dem­na­tion from for­eign pow­ers and lobbies.
Jamaica seeds to unshack­le and unteth­er her­self from some of those treaties.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

One of the most crit­i­cal com­po­nents in the vio­lent crime-fight Jamaica faces is arro­gance and stu­pid­i­ty on the part of Jamaica’s lead­ers. But most impor­tant is the inher­ent dis­re­spect for the dis­ci­pline of law enforcement.
Contrary to what they say in pub­lic, the coun­try’s lead­er­ship has all been schooled in the same dirty pool of igno­rance and a belief that cops are high school dropouts who could find no oth­er job, so they chose law enforcement.
There was some truth to that the­o­ry, as it is true that in all oth­er pro­fes­sions, there are total idiots, whether they man­aged to earn a degree or two degrees.
The Police depart­ment of today is vast­ly more for­mal­ly edu­cat­ed than the force that exist­ed three or four decades ago. Nevertheless, the stig­ma of dis­re­spect seems to linger, with law enforce­ment dealt with only as an afterthought.
Another dynam­ic at play is the belief in the coun­try that a degree in a sin­gle sub­ject qual­i­fies the hold­er to be an author­i­ty on every sub­ject. This insan­i­ty has hob­bled progress in the coun­try with grave con­se­quences for the people.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​w​o​r​s​e​-​o​f​f​-​w​i​t​h​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​a​n​d​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​-​t​h​a​n​-​i​t​-​w​a​s​-​t​h​r​e​e​-​d​e​c​a​d​e​s​-​a​go/

No one under­stands med­i­cine more than a sci­en­tist or doc­tor, and the same is true of nurs­ing- ques­tions on nurs­ing are best direct­ed at nurs­es. And you cer­tain­ly want to speak to teach­ers if you want to learn about the lit­tle thing we call edu­ca­tion because every­one got their edu­ca­tion from teachers.
However, when it comes to solv­ing the nation’s crime prob­lem, the coun­try’s lead­er­ship turns to pedi­a­tri­cians, talk­ing heads, and every­one but the peo­ple with the exper­tise. This is dis­re­spect of the high­est order that must be called out once and for all.
The nation’s last three nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ters have all been peo­ple thrust into the role with zero expe­ri­ence in nation­al secu­ri­ty. Let me has­ten to pre­empt those who con­tin­ue to be apol­o­gists by argu­ing that the secu­ri­ty min­is­ter is a pol­i­cy posi­tion. The best pol­i­cy deci­sions will come from peo­ple with inti­mate knowl­edge of the dis­ci­pline. There, I fixed that for you!!!!
Peter Bunting of the PNP was a busi­ness­man. The JLP’s Robert Montague is a Botanist, and Horace Chang is a med­ical doctor.
By that met­ric, we should have Andrew Holness a teacher, doing surg­eries in the hos­pi­tals. The sad real­i­ty is that both polit­i­cal par­ties’ lead­er­ship lack com­mon sense and cer­tain­ly sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness of the crit­i­cal impor­tance of secu­ri­ty in a nation.
But the dis­re­spect, arro­gance, and stu­pid­i­ty do not stop there; in recent times, three for­mer heads of the Island’s mil­i­tary have been appoint­ed head of the con­stab­u­lary with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to the morale and effec­tive­ness of the force.
The present com­mis­sion­er of police is one of those trans­plants. The results are clear.
Operating a lit­tle defense force whose main func­tion is to back up the con­stab­u­lary in no way, shape, or form pre­pared either of those three men to lead a police depart­ment of twelve thou­sand men and women on a mis­sion as cru­cial as enforc­ing the nation’s laws.
With all respect to their cre­den­tials, we may nev­er get to learn whether heads of the Jamaica Defense Force were or are remote­ly qual­i­fied, regard­less of the rank they attained. The acid test of a true mil­i­tary leader is per­for­mance as a com­man­der. Jamaica has not and is not engaged in any wars so our mil­i­tary lead­ers have zero lead­er­ship as com­man­ders under fire.
Need I say more?
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​c​f​-​g​a​v​e​-​u​p​-​t​h​e​-​s​t​r​e​e​t​s​-​t​o​-​h​o​o​l​i​g​a​ns/

The Prime Minister loves using the State Of Emergency Powers as a crime sup­pres­sant tool. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that mis­ter Holness was not always enam­ored with that pow­er while he was in oppo­si­tion.
In fact, he berat­ed and cas­ti­gat­ed the fact that police could, under those same pow­ers, barge into some­one’s home with­out a warrant.
Whenever you place pow­er into the hands of humans, they will abuse it. Place extreme pow­ers into the hands of humans, and they will abuse those pow­ers exponentially.
My entire ser­vice from 1982 to 1991 as a police offi­cer was under the so-called sup­pres­sion of crime Act, which allowed us addi­tion­al pow­ers to go after criminals.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties failed dur­ing that peri­od of pro­tract­ed use to write, debate, and pass leg­is­la­tion into law that had the nec­es­sary teeth to pro­tect the country.
Consequently, the coun­try has floun­dered like a ship with­out a rud­der bounc­ing off rock after rock with no clear anti-crime pol­i­cy from either par­ty while in government.
https://mikebeckles.com/a‑clean-unbiased-and-honest-judiciary-central-to-the-rule-of-law-in-a-democratic-society/

Year after year, the Island’s crime sit­u­a­tion wors­ens while the polit­i­cal lead­ers either play pol­i­tics or pon­tif­i­cate about band-aid approach­es they have imposed. It becomes more dif­fi­cult to uproot the ‘dons’ who are import­ing guns into the coun­try and wreak­ing hav­oc on the young peo­ple they bring into their gangs.
“No gang is gonna get fame by us for call­ing up their names. They are nobod­ies and we must treat them like that, because the rea­son why they have pow­er is because we big them up in the soci­ety.”(Andrew Holness PM)
The audio has­n’t always matched the video so we will keep a keen eye from now on.
Are the nation’s lead­ers dumb, or are they inten­tion­al­ly allow­ing crime, vio­lence, and may­hem to con­tin­ue because there is mon­ey to be made from crime?
We will explore that in anoth­er article.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Yesterday I wrote briefly about the hor­rors of dri­ving on Jamaican streets and high­ways. In the brief arti­cle, I assert­ed that the Constabulary all but ced­ed con­trol of the streets to taxi dri­vers and minibus dri­vers, much to the per­il of the trav­el­ing public.
In fair­ness to the two named groups, oth­er dri­vers have also tak­en a cue from them and are doing the same thing.
After expo­sure to dri­ving on the streets, it makes sense to drop to one’s knees and pray to God for his mer­cies to allow you to get back home safe­ly.https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​c​f​-​g​a​v​e​-​u​p​-​t​h​e​-​s​t​r​e​e​t​s​-​t​o​-​h​o​o​l​i​g​a​ns/

Up to Tuesday, the 2022 num­ber of Jamaicans killed in auto crash­es stood at 431. “It is on track to hit 472 by December 31… 41 peo­ple who are alive right now will be dead in 32 days, one pri­vate sec­tor exec­u­tive bemoans.
The irony is that the pri­vate sec­tor is con­cerned about this but seem­ing­ly not the police to the extent they should. At least not the high com­mand that seems con­tent with sit­ting in offices and giv­ing speeches.
The car­nage on the roads could be dras­ti­cal­ly reduced if the con­stab­u­lary deployed real traf­fic cops who are not afraid to issue sum­mons­es and make arrests for reck­less driving.
Then again, the gov­ern­ment has not done any­thing to add teeth to the traf­fic laws, so there is hard­ly any point in writ­ing tick­ets and issu­ing sum­mons­es when there are no real con­se­quences for scofflaws.
I read that a man shot and killed a celebri­ty’s dog in the United States and was sen­tenced to twen­ty-one years in prison. A mur­der con­vic­tion in Jamaica gets the offend­er sev­en years. The nation’s secu­ri­ty is cer­tain­ly not a pri­or­i­ty. Far too many pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial peo­ple make mon­ey from crime in Jamaica. Secondly, there are far too many self-impor­tant fools with undue influ­ence at the University of the West Indies impact­ing pol­i­cy for the gov­ern­ment to seri­ous­ly address the issue of crime and vio­lence in the country.
So the Prime Minister con­tin­ues to bull­shit the coun­try about the effects of ZOSOs & SOEs.
Drivers over­take on side­walks, around dead cor­ners, uphill down­hill, across con­tin­u­ous white lines, all reck­less dri­ving, all arrestable offens­es, but there are no cops around.
The inher­ent dan­gers on the roads are exac­er­bat­ed by the vio­lent crime that con­tin­ues to esca­late and con­tin­ue to plague the coun­try. Shockingly, the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion would rather play pol­i­tics with this issue to gain power.
But the oppo­si­tion is not in charge; the JLP admin­is­tra­tion has stuck its fin­gers in its own ears and con­tin­ued to shout, ” I can­not hear you on this exis­ten­tial issue.

Almost a decade ago, now dis­graced Prime Minister Bruce Golding intro­duced the coun­try to a new police over­sight agency. That agency was named the Independent Commission of Inquiries, or INDECOM.
At the time, it was hard­ly rea­son­able to argue against the for­ma­tion of an over­sight agency to look at abus­es and crimes com­mit­ted by the police, mil­i­tary, and cor­rec­tions departments.
There was no way any­one could seri­ous­ly over­look the crimes that police offi­cers were involved in. Additionally, the com­pe­tence and will­ing­ness of the police hier­ar­chy to deal effec­tive­ly with cor­rup­tion were well known, large­ly because of its own incom­pe­tence and corruption.
This writer was all for an over­sight agency that was well thought out and empow­ered. What Golding gave the coun­try was a very poor­ly con­fig­ured law that was, at best, the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of incom­pe­ten­cy and, worse case, an unbri­dled anti-police bloodhound.
The law, which has since gone through some changes, was not only bad and poor­ly writ­ten, it was inten­tion­al­ly writ­ten to be inju­ri­ous and destruc­tive to our police offi­cers. Many inno­cent offi­cers became vic­tims of the poor­ly writ­ten law, and the self-aggran­diz­ing zealot Golding named as the com­mis­sion­er of the neo­phyte agency.

The basis for the INDECOM Act was jus­ti­fi­able’ the way the law was writ­ten has been mali­cious. I warned at the time, and in sub­se­quent arti­cles over the years, that it would cause great harm to Jamaica (a) by killing the morale of offi­cers, (b) cause mass attri­tion from the agency, and © result in an expo­nen­tial increase in lawlessness.
No one lis­tened, and today all three pre­dict­ed out­comes are with us. The sad real­i­ty is that even as we mourn the destruc­tion of our way of life as we knew it, the loss of blood and trea­sure is even greater.
And so for Golding and his acolytes at the University of the West Indies, includ­ing the dis­graced pedi­a­tri­cian Carolyn Gomez who found her place advis­ing the Ministry of National secu­ri­ty, the blood will for­ev­er be on their hands.
Part of that advice was to do away with the time-hon­ored tra­di­tion of esprit de corps, a feel­ing of pride, fel­low­ship, and com­mon loy­al­ty shared by the mem­bers of a par­tic­u­lar group).
This Esprit de corps is essen­tial to any group activ­i­ties. For mem­bers of the mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary groups like police depart­ments, it is crit­i­cal because each mem­ber’s life depends on his com­rade hav­ing his back. It is a mat­ter of life and death, some­thing nei­ther the idi­ot­ic baby doc­tor nor the morons in the nation­al secu­ri­ty min­istry under­stand because they nev­er sac­ri­ficed any­thing for our country…
Today, despite a larg­er num­ber of cops in uni­form, offi­cers hav­ing more equip­ment than ever in the force’s his­to­ry, includ­ing tech­nol­o­gy, and bet­ter for­mal edu­ca­tion, the Constabulary is expo­nen­tial­ly worse than it was three decades ago.
So much for modernization.
Numbers are the met­ric we use to judge per­for­mance and com­pe­tence; the data does not add up. Our coun­try is worse off than it was decades ago on the issue of crime and violence.

This arti­cle has been updat­ed from its orig­i­nal publication.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

From time to time, you have seen me talk about how crime and law­less­ness impov­er­ish­es every­one except those engaged in crim­i­nal acts. It is not a con­cept that the author­i­ties in Jamaica seem to get; in fact, they seem to have walled them­selves off from hear­ing things that are not com­pli­men­ta­ry of what they are doing.
Jamaica is burst­ing with poten­tial there is no ques­tion about that; clear­ly, the gov­ern­ment is doing some great things with the econ­o­my and tourism sector.
Of course, there is much more that could be added to the tourism prod­uct, aside from the idea that our coun­try is a beach with reg­gae music where peo­ple go to smoke weed.
The dynamism of the young peo­ple and the excite­ment they share when you inter­act with them is heart­warm­ing. However, the coun­try’s lead­ers still haven’t fig­ured out how to max­i­mize or unleash our nation’s full poten­tial, one which is not beset by vio­lent crime.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​a​-​c​u​l​t​u​r​a​l​l​y​-​u​n​t​a​p​p​e​d​-​g​o​l​d​-​m​i​ne/

On a recent trip to Jamaica, I could not help but notice that despite the hype and big talk about progress (don’t get me wrong, there is some progress), the stark real­i­ty is that as it relates to safe­ty and secu­ri­ty, the coun­try is less safe than 31 years ago when I left the JCF.
To begin with, the pre­em­i­nent law enforce­ment agency, the JCF, has all but ced­ed the streets to the hooli­gans oper­at­ing as taxi oper­a­tors and mini-bus dri­vers. There is hard­ly a cred­i­ble con­ver­sa­tion in oppo­si­tion to this asser­tion anymore.
Driving all over the cor­po­rate area day after day, I could have count­ed the num­ber of police vehi­cles on the one hand and had fin­gers left over.
It was the same as my pre­vi­ous vis­it in Ochi Rios and Montego Bay a year ear­li­er. I observed a sin­gle police vehi­cle in Ochi Rios square parked in the crush of human bod­ies, both offi­cers uncon­cerned, scrolling through their cell phones.

Decades ago in Kingston, there were seri­ous motor­cy­cle traf­fic cops; offi­cers who were feared and respect­ed, but it was­n’t just in Kingston but what was then the Ferry high­way and all across the Island. Traffic cops main­tained a strong pres­ence, and traf­fic fatal­i­ties were minimal.
There were expo­nen­tial­ly few­er auto­mo­biles on our hor­ri­ble local roads and thor­ough­fares, but the force was much smaller.
Today there are rough­ly 12,000 police offi­cers on the job as opposed to some­where around 8’000 offi­cers three decades again. Again, I under­stand that as the num­ber of cops has increased over the years, so too has the pop­u­la­tion grown from rough­ly 2.5 mil­lion in the ear­ly nineties to approx­i­mate­ly three mil­lion today.
Understandably, the force is still gross­ly under­staffed by inter­na­tion­al stan­dards, and the agency is beset with the ever-present prob­lem of attrition.
Additionally, offi­cers are forced to work with­out the tools they need to do their jobs. No one asks doc­tors, nurs­es, fire­men, or oth­er work­ers to do their jobs with­out the appro­pri­ate tools. Yet mem­bers of the JCF do not have life-sav­ing bal­lis­tic vests, no tasers, pep­per spray, and oth­er accou­ter­ments of the trade.

Ironically, offi­cers who act in the moment in defense of life and prop­er­ty with­out the req­ui­site tools are at per­il of prison by the same sys­tem that is unwill­ing to equip them.
The Commissioner of Police, Antony Anderson, seems to be oper­at­ing in a cocoon away from the real­i­ties on the ground. I was told that police sta­tions are oper­at­ing with­out a sin­gle ser­vice vehi­cle. How can police oper­ate with­out vehi­cles when they are required to answer dis­tress calls from the pub­lic at rapid speed?
Sources con­firmed that Antony Anderson’s response to why there are police sta­tions with­out ser­vice vehi­cles is that offi­cers are crash­ing the vehicles.
Police offi­cers must respond to calls with the utmost alacrity; they are asked to deal with the worst actors in our societies.
Unfortunately, giv­en the job we ask offi­cers to do, cars will crash. Officers place their lives on the line to answer those calls. I seri­ous­ly doubt that there is a sin­gle offi­cer who wants to be involved in a poten­tial­ly life-threat­en­ing auto crash.
But I am will­ing to for­give Antony Anderson’s naïveté and igno­rance because, as I have said in pre­vi­ous arti­cles, he was nev­er a police offi­cer, so he has no lived expe­ri­ence of what it is those police offi­cers do.
What utter nonsense!!!

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The 28-year-old Virginia cop who killed three fam­i­ly mem­bers of a Riverside teenag­er had posed online as a teen to “groom” the 15-year-old girl, the Riverside Police Department said Wednesday.

Austin Lee Edwards por­trayed him­self as a 17-year-old while com­mu­ni­cat­ing online with the girl, using “groom­ing” meth­ods, which can include tac­tics such as ask­ing for or offer­ing sex­u­al­ly explic­it images, pro­vid­ing gifts and offer­ing com­pli­ments, Riverside Police Chief Larry Gonzalez said at a news conference.

Gonzalez said it is still under inves­ti­ga­tion how long the dig­i­tal rela­tion­ship between Edwards and the teen girl tran­spired and what plat­form they used to meet or com­mu­ni­cate, but inves­ti­ga­tors believe many of those typ­i­cal exploita­tive strate­gies for “sex­tor­tion” were used in this case.

“This type of vic­tim­iza­tion takes place across every plat­form, social media, mes­sag­ing apps, gam­ing plat­forms, etc.,” Gonzalez said. Read more here: https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​c​a​t​f​i​s​h​i​n​g​-​c​o​p​-​p​r​e​t​e​n​d​e​d​-​1​7​-​g​r​o​o​m​e​d​-​1​8​5​2​5​2​4​8​1​.​h​tml

Over the years the United States Supreme Court and var­i­ous branch­es of the Federal judi­cia­ry have seri­ous­ly erod­ed the rights of Americans in a series of nefar­i­ous and down­right uncon­sti­tu­tion­al rul­ings while giv­ing more pow­er to the state and, there­fore, to police who use their pow­ers to oppress and even com­mit murder.
From the deci­sion in Shelby County, Alabama v Holder to Citizens United to Roe V Wade and more, the court has made hor­ri­ble deci­sions that have result­ed in con­tin­ued ero­sions rather than the expan­sion of the rights of Americans.
This pat­tern of abuse by a court that enjoys unprece­dent­ed unpop­u­lar­i­ty and a wide belief that it is ille­git­i­mate can be expect­ed to con­tin­ue well into the future due to the six right-wing extrem­ists on the court.
Before this present court is done, it may very well dis­man­tle the 246-year exper­i­ment that is the United States.(mb)

Federal Court to Rule on Passengers Live Streaming Police During Traffic Stops

By Erin Marquis

Cars have always been a mine­field when it comes to pri­va­cy rights vers­es pub­lic safe­ty, and now, two impor­tant ques­tions are final­ly in front of a U.S. cir­cuit court: Is live stream­ing pro­tect­ed in the same way as record­ing, and does the pas­sen­ger in a stopped car have a First Amendment right to record or broad­cast a stop?

These ques­tions are now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit based on a law­suit brought by Dijon Sharpe. Sharpe was rid­ing in a car pulled over by Winterville, N.C., police in 2018. He began live stream­ing the traf­fic stop to Facebook Live when a Winterville Police Department offi­cer told him to stop. The offi­cer tried to grab Sharpe’s phone and threat­en­ing him with arrest if Sharpe didn’t sur­ren­der the phone to the officer.

Sharpe sued the police depart­ment, argu­ing that live stream­ing the inter­ac­tion was impor­tant in order to show that the footage was not edit­ed and to pro­tect the footage from being delet­ed should the police seize his phone. The Winterville Police Department, how­ev­er, argued that live stream­ing puts offi­cers at risk by adver­tis­ing to peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with stopped dri­vers exact­ly where they are. Such live streams could lead to a crowd gath­er­ing or revenge from asso­ciates angry over police stops in general.

While the right to free speech is in the mix — and you def­i­nite­ly have the right to at least record a traf­fic stop — the Fourth Amendment argu­ment is impor­tant too. Just where do pas­sen­gers’ pro­tec­tion against unrea­son­able search­es and seizures end and police offi­cers’ rea­son­able need to con­trol a traf­fic stop begin? From the Washington Post:

Previous courts have upheld citizen’s right to record the police, but this is the first time the ques­tion of a passenger’s rights have been called into ques­tion. The deci­sion could have rever­ber­a­tions for everyone’s rights while behind the wheel. We will update this sto­ry once there is a ruling.

There is a ten­den­cy with­in the jus­tice sys­tem to have strength only for the poor­est and least pow­er­ful Jamaicans. If you are a poor man who can­not feed your fam­i­ly, be advised that your deci­sion to steal some ack­ees from mas Joe’s tree will land you in prison if you are caught steal­ing them.
On the oth­er hand, if you are a polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed lawyer, a man can be stabbed repeat­ed­ly and shot in your home in which there was no oth­er per­son but your­self, no one broke into the house, and you will nev­er see the inside of a jail cell.
A young man who grabs a neck­lace and runs away is at greater risk of going to prison if caught than a politi­cian who alleges that he left his reg­is­tered firearm in his car, for­got or omit­ted to lock the vehi­cle, then dis­cov­ers that the weapon was gone and failed to noti­fy the police until he was ready to do so.….… the next day.

For the sys­tem to work, every Jamaican must have buy-in, mean­ing every Jamaican, regard­less of means, must have a brief that the sys­tem is there to pro­tect them. When those of less means har­bor the belief that the sys­tem only works for those at the top, they rebel. They do as they please; when the mass­es are in a state of dis­con­tent, the upper class is not in a safe place.
It is past time for the sys­tem to self-cor­rect. Jamaica needs to move expe­di­tious­ly from the present sys­tem of man to a sys­tem of laws. We need a new con­sti­tu­tion writ­ten by Jamaican aca­d­e­mics. We need a police depart­ment that is pro­fes­sion­al and delib­er­a­tive. A com­pe­tent pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al body and a less cor­rupt judi­cia­ry that is less inclined to work on behalf of vio­lent murderers.
Some have chas­tised me for repeat­ed­ly char­ac­ter­iz­ing the Jamaican judi­cia­ry as ‘cor­rupt.’ Their under­stand­ing of the term cor­rupt in this con­text is lim­it­ed to only tak­ing bribes. Yet, no one should be delu­sion­al about whether judges have tak­en mon­ey from defense lawyers to aid their clients. Even with that knowl­edge, some Jamaicans would rather pre­tend this dynam­ic does not exist rather than face the facts.
The term cor­rup­tion with­in the con­text of the judi­cia­ry is not con­fined to tak­ing bribes but extends further.
Transparency International, a world-renowned watch­dog agency, asserts ’ judi­cial cor­rup­tion fuels impuni­ty and cor­rodes the rule of law.’
Equal treat­ment before the law is a pil­lar of demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties. ‘When courts are cor­rupt­ed by greed or polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, the scales of jus­tice are tipped, and ordi­nary peo­ple suffer.’

Nowhere is this more self-evi­dent than right here in Jamaica, where at the very top of the judi­cial branch of gov­ern­ment, there appears to be cor­rup­tion, one that results in the inex­plic­a­ble minor tech­ni­cal­i­ties and inane argu­ments that are used to jus­ti­fy the release of vio­lent repeat mur­der­ers and gang­sters back onto to the streets.
Worse yet, this comes against the back­ground of a judi­cia­ry with no con­se­quen­tial over­sight that ensures fideli­ty to pro­to­col and adher­ence to prin­ci­ples and propriety.
To the extent that the judi­cia­ry is held to any stan­dard of pro­to­col and pro­pri­ety, they are self-polic­ing and, there­fore, answer­able to no one but themselves…
One of the main dri­vers of crime is the belief among a large seg­ment of soci­ety that the sys­tem does not work for them. Therefore they are pre­pared to do as they please and live with the consequences.
The sad real­i­ty is that while they are pre­pared to live with the con­se­quences, the rest of soci­ety is dying from their actions.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police detec­tive, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog Mikebeckles​.com.