Police offi­cers, past and present, are detail­ing just how dire the sit­u­a­tion is in Jamaica’s old capi­tol of Spanish Town. One retired Senior Superintendent said, ‘crime is not under con­trol’ in Spanish Town. Really Sherlock? Talk about stat­ing the obvious.
The for­mer senior cop was­n’t done with his ridicu­lous assess­ment; he went on…The (SOE) State of Emergency works, but as soon as the police pack up and move out, and the secu­ri­ty forces move out, all the guys just come back.’
I believe what the for­mer senior cop out­lined is the text­book def­i­n­i­tion of some­thing [not]working. Had it worked it would have solved the prob­lem, nev­er­the­less, I won’t delve too deeply into the naievete of the for­mer senior offi­cers com­ments suf­fic­ing to say that I have a body of work detail­ing why the force has been a fail­ure because of his way of thinking.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​u​n​a​c​c​o​u​n​t​a​b​l​e​-​j​u​d​i​c​i​a​r​y​-​a​n​d​-​u​n​r​e​s​p​o​n​s​i​v​e​-​h​o​l​n​e​s​s​-​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​-​r​e​s​p​o​n​s​i​b​l​e​-​f​o​r​-​h​i​g​h​-​l​e​v​e​l​s​-​o​f​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​t​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​i​n​-​j​a​m​a​i​ca/
Another offi­cer, a con­sta­ble, said the sit­u­a­tion is quote, ‘tough,’ the young offi­cer opined that if the sit­u­a­tion is not attend­ed to with due dis­patch the secu­ri­ty forces may be forced into a Tivoli Gardens 2.0 type situation.
In the mean­time the police report that they have arrest­ed 82 peo­ple for pos­ses­sion of ille­gal firearm, ammu­ni­tion or both, and seized 59 ille­gal guns in St Catherine, an increase of 28 per cent com­pared to 2021. As at June 15, the St Catherine North Police Division record­ed 70 mur­ders and 51 shoot­ings, increas­es of 52 per cent and 76 per cent, respec­tive­ly when com­pared to the sim­i­lar peri­od in 2021. In the St Catherine South Police Division, 58 mur­ders were record­ed over the peri­od, the same as last year, and 53 shoot­ings were report­ed com­pared to 43 last year, an increase of 20 per cent..’.’

The police are up against it deal­ing with this scourge. A judi­cia­ry that is enam­ored with crim­i­nals. A soci­ety that pre­teneds it is some­thing it is not. An oppo­si­tion polit­i­cal par­ty that is high­ly sup­port­ive of the rights of mur­der­ers over those of ordi­nary Jamaicans. And a gov­ern­ment that is weak-kneed about tak­ing the deci­sive steps nec­es­sary to rein in the out of con­trol judi­cia­ry by remov­ing from their hands the pow­er to turn con­vict­ed crim­i­nals lose with light sen­tences for vio­lent offens­es and on the issue of bail, turn­ing the sys­tem into a turnstyle.
The Government of Prime Minister Andrew Holness [must] take the nec­es­sary steps to ensure that the bleed­ing ends by embark­ing on a series of mea­sures immediately.
(1)The gov­ern­ment must be more proac­tive by estab­lish­ing greater con­trols over the nation’s porous bor­ders with a view to stem­ming the flow of ille­gal weapons and ammu­ni­tion flood­ing the Island.
(2) The gov­ern­ment must move deci­sive­ly to table and pass leg­is­la­tion that removes from the hands of judges the abil­i­ty to hand down ridicu­lous­ly lenient sen­tences to vio­lent offenders.
(3) The Government must move deci­sive­ly to table and pass leg­is­la­tion that pre­vents judges from grant­i­ng bail to vio­lent offend­ers who have com­mit­ted a pri­or vio­lent offence.
(4) The Government must move with alacrity to estab­lish bet­ter inves­tiga­tive capac­i­ties with­ing the nations secu­ri­ty services.
(5) The Government must act deci­sive­ly to estab­lish stronger penal­ties for vio­lent crim­i­nals includ­ing the death penalty.
The Governemnt must act with dis­patch to empow­er the secu­ri­ty forces with bet­ter train­ing , equip­ment, logis­tics, and sup­port struc­tures that will enable them to com­mence bet­ter sur­veil­lance, infil­tra­tion, and ulti­mate­ly the elim­i­na­tion of the crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing with impuni­ty on the island.

The Administration can­not afford to wring it’s col­lec­tive hands as the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion before it did. In fact the for­mer admin­is­tra­tion demon­strat­ed that the par­ty’s pro­cliv­i­ty for advanc­ing the fun­da­men­tal rights of crim­i­nals over that of law ‑abid­ing Jamaicans have been an abject fail­ure. As a con­se­quence the PNP has lost the legit­i­ma­cy to cri­tique any­thing the present admin­is­tra­tion does on the sub­ject. We encour­age the PNP to con­tin­ue to ask for divine inter­ven­tion, in the mean­time I encour­age the present admin­is­tra­tion to pray but also to dopt the mea­sures I outlined.
As I out­lined today on a friend’s social media post on the ques­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Jamaica as a result of the Pratt Morgan case, a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty was entered into by the Jamaican Government. (Moratorium Definition): a [tem­po­rary] pro­hi­bi­tion of an activity.
Since the 1993 Privy Council rul­ing and the ensu­ing mora­to­ri­um, weak admin­is­tra­tions from both polit­i­cal par­ties have refused to end the silli­ness and resume hang­ing the scum that take inno­cent lives. There is absolute­ly noth­ing stop­ping Jamaica from exer­cis­ing its sov­er­eign­ty by resum­ing hang­ing. As a con­se­quence mur­der­ers are able to oper­ate with­out any fear of consequence.
We know that on the rare occa­sion that they are impris­oned they are able to record albums, drink Hennessey, talk on cell­phones, order hits on whomev­er they chose and live nor­mal lives includ­ing being let out to have rela­tions with women on the outside.
The sys­tem has failed in every regard and the coun­try is head­ing for what obtains in Latin America where the crim­i­nals runs the jails. It may already be worse than we thought, the inmates are run­ning the assylum.

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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.

Striking a bal­ance between ensur­ing vic­tims’ rights, the rule of law, and the rights of the accused to due process and a fair tri­al is no easy task. It is premised on the fun­da­men­tal ide­al that Judges, Prosecutors, Defense Attorneys, and Police will adhere strict­ly with fideli­ty to their oaths.
This is no easy task because humans are prone to mis­takes and abus­ing their author­i­ty. The abuse of author­i­ty is not con­fined to any region or coun­try; for exam­ple, in New York City, Police were grant­ed the pow­er to stop and search peo­ple they sus­pect­ed of car­ry­ing ille­gal weapons. The process was called stop and frisk.
Admittedly, this was not a bad strat­e­gy that the police would have the pow­er to stop some­one they believe may have an ille­gal weapon on their per­son or in an automobile.
A per­son with bad inten­tions will cer­tain­ly think twice about tuck­ing a gun in his waist­band or car if he believes there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting caught.
For the record, the penal­ty in New York State for pos­sess­ing an ille­gal weapon behind bars depends on the nature of the offense, the spe­cif­ic charge and degree of which a per­son is con­vict­ed, and past crim­i­nal history.
Penalties for a felony con­vic­tion of Criminal Possession of a Firearm include one to four years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000. (The max­i­mum penal­ties for a mis­de­meanor are one year in jail and a fine of $1,000.) These days, first-time offend­ers are usu­al­ly the only peo­ple for­tu­nate enough to face a mis­de­meanor charge for gun pos­ses­sion instead of a felony charge. (Explained newyorkcrim​i​nallawyer​.com).
Mayor Bill de Blasio dis­con­tin­ued stop and frisk after much out­cry from the minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing in the city’s five Boroughs. Their com­plaint cen­tered on their per­cep­tion that the sta­tis­tics showed that police were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly stop­ping young men of col­or and search­ing them. Only a small minor­i­ty of those stops result­ed in a weapon or any con­tra­band being found.
One could argue that the stops, includ­ing young Black and Latino men, are gross­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate. Still, real­is­ti­cal­ly and truth­ful­ly, those are the peo­ple who large­ly com­mit gun crimes in the city, so the police would nat­u­ral­ly focus on them.
But it was not that peo­ple protest­ed about the sta­tis­tics alone; they com­plained about the treat­ment met­ed out to inno­cent young Black and Brown men at the hands of the police.
And there­in lies the prob­lem, over-zeal­ous cops with bad atti­tudes and Rambo men­tal­i­ties tried to live out their fan­tasies by being rude, dis­re­spect­ful, and abu­sive to young men of col­or whom they disliked.
As the sta­tis­tics and abuse piled up, so was the anger of the peo­ple kin­dled, and stop and frisk was dis­con­tin­ued; the result is that young men are now car­ry­ing their ille­gal weapons unper­turbed about being stooped and frisked.
The inabil­i­ty of some police offi­cers to do their jobs right put the city in per­il, and that’s the bot­tom line.

Under the sup­pres­sion of crimes Act in Jamaica dur­ing the 1980s, there was the usu­al honk-honk from the hog­pen; we know them well; they are the bot­tom-feed­ers who posi­tion them­selves as Human Rights advo­cates. The trou­ble with their advo­ca­cy is that it nev­er quite gets to empa­thy for the crime victims.
During the Reagan Years, the same as the Seaga years, Crime in Jamaica was con­trolled. Let me be the first to say that crime was not where this writer want­ed it to be dur­ing those years, as I believed then that if we had bet­ter lead­er­ship of the Constabulary at all lev­els, we could have been expo­nen­tial­ly more successful.
Full dis­clo­sure, I served most of my trun­cat­ed police ser­vice dur­ing the 1980s before leav­ing abrupt­ly in search of bet­ter opportunities.
During the 80s, the police had a bet­ter grasp of who the crim­i­nals were and where they were hid­ing; as I said before, with bet­ter lead­er­ship, we could have done a way bet­ter job of decap­i­tat­ing crim­i­nal net­works if we had lead­er­ship that had the abil­i­ty to think.
I am first to say that there were abus­es by the police and mil­i­tary dur­ing those years, as could have been expect­ed where there is poor lead­er­ship up the chain of com­mand, poor train­ing, and inad­e­quate account­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms; police, like every cat­e­go­ry of work­ers, will abuse their authority.
Nevertheless, the indis­putable fact is that dur­ing the 1980s, few­er Jamaicans were being mur­dered. Since then, Jamaica, an out­post of British Colonialist impe­ri­al­ism, was forced to do away with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, which embold­ened peo­ple to be brazen. Additionally, the peri­od after the Seaga admin­is­tra­tion was fol­lowed by an unprece­dent­ed ²²¹⁄₂ years unbro­ken run of doing as you please in Jamaica that saw Jamaica becom­ing the mur­der cap­i­tal of the world and a place where crim­i­nals go to chill and act out their crim­i­nal­is­tic fantasies.
After the Seaga years, Human Rights Watch, a group that has influ­enced many oth­er such groups on the Island, wrote the following.

JAMAICA The Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s human rights pol­i­cy toward Jamaica has not yet been clear­ly artic­u­lat­ed. The State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in 1988, draft­ed by the Reagan admin­is­tra­tion and issued in February 1989, pre­sent­ed an under­stat­ed but fair­ly real­is­tic pic­ture of cur­rent human rights abus­es. But there is no indi­ca­tion that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has used its influ­ence to per­suade the Jamaican gov­ern­ment to end the abus­es described in the report. Jamaica is a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety with a Constitution and laws that pro­tect its cit­i­zens. The coun­try has a par­lia­men­tary sys­tem with free elec­tions, com­pet­ing polit­i­cal par­ties, a free press, and estab­lished insti­tu­tions to check abus­es of pow­er. Jamaicans open­ly crit­i­cize their gov­ern­ment, and the gov­ern­ment pub­lish­es sta­tis­tics on crime and reports on fatal shoot­ings by the police. The inde­pen­dent Jamaica Council for Human Rights mon­i­tors human rights on the island. Despite its free insti­tu­tions, Jamaica con­tin­ues to abuse the human rights of its cit­i­zens in three areas: a high rate of fatal shoot­ings by police offi­cers, the deten­tion of sus­pects with­out charges for long peri­ods of time, and inhu­mane con­di­tions in pris­ons and police lock-ups. In 1988 the police shot and killed 181 civil­ians, accord­ing to the Jamaican police. During the ten-year peri­od begin­ning January 1, 1979, the Jamaican police force, accord­ing to its own fig­ures, shot and killed an aver­age of 208.3 civil­ians a year. This fig­ure is extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high for a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of about 2.3 mil­lion. In the United States, with a pop­u­la­tion about 100 times the size of Jamaica’s, police are esti­mat­ed to shoot and kill about 700 peo­ple a year. In South Africa, with a pop­u­la­tion about thir­teen times the size of Jamaica’s, police shot and killed 585 peo­ple in 1987. We believe that this extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high rate of killings by the police is due in part to the per­mis­sive cli­mate cre­at­ed by the Suppression of Crime Act, a state-of-emer­gency law enact­ed in 1974 which sus­pends war­rant require­ments and oth­er pro­ce­dures that pro­tect Jamaicans’ rights. Many young police offi­cers have nev­er worked with­out the extra­or­di­nary pow­ers giv­en to them by the Suppression of Crime Act. This lack of struc­ture seems to have encour­aged some to dis­charge firearms too freely.

https://​www​.hrw​.org/​r​e​p​o​r​t​s​/​1​9​8​9​/​W​R​8​9​/​J​a​m​a​i​c​a​.​htm

In the link pro­vid­ed above, one can see that there is no men­tion of the inno­cent Jamaicans who lost their lives to maraud­ing ter­ror­is­tic killers. There is no men­tion of the bro­ken fam­i­lies the vic­tims left behind. Instead, the report details num­bers that tell only a small part of the sto­ry but do not con­sid­er the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis that must go into the report­ing so read­ers would bet­ter under­stand the com­plex­i­ty of Jamaica’s crime pandemic.
As we see today, when the Opposition People’s National Party’s spokes­peo­ple open their mouths, they talk about the rights of indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens as if the secu­ri­ty forces are act­ing against law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and not in their interest.
It is the same play­book that the so-called human rights advo­cates use to con­found and con­fuse the Jamaican peo­ple with great effect but to their detri­ment. If you are dead no right that you had mat­ters. The most impor­tant right a per­son has is the right to life. This fun­da­men­tal fact eludes the par­a­sites who say they are advo­cat­ing for the rights of poor Jamaicans.
Today Jamaica is stead­fast­ly stuck in the same mind­set, influ­enced by a back­ward human rights advo­ca­cy that is stead­fast­ly focused on the rights of crim­i­nals. For those who sur­vive the rav­ages of crim­i­nal con­duct and those who died, .…..well, for Jamaica’s human rights com­mu­ni­ty, it’s …oh well.
The Judiciary itself came up under this mis­guid­ed think­ing that the rights of mur­der­ous crim­i­nals trump the rights of law-abid­ing citizens.
The Chief Justice posi­tion is a high­ly regard­ed posi­tion of trust, maybe naive­ly so, but in our sys­tem of jus­tice, we need to have trust in our arms of gov­ern­ment for our democ­ra­cy to work.
Alas, over the years, the judi­cia­ry has been called into ques­tion in ways we have nev­er seen before. Witnesses brag about their high-priced attor­neys work­ing on their behalf, cor­rupt­ing judges to get the out­comes they want in court.
Sentences giv­en to vio­lent offend­ers, repeat vio­lent offend­ers even, are jaw-drop­ping in their lenien­cy, while the judges lec­ture the pub­lic about the rules they must con­sid­er when hand­ing down sentences.
The unde­ni­able truth, how­ev­er, is that even though the laws are not near­ly as strin­gent as they ought to be, thanks to the pow­er­ful tri­al lawyer and human rights lob­by on the Island, unelect­ed judges vio­late the trust placed in them by releas­ing onto the streets vio­lent repeat offend­ers on bail, and even when they are con­vict­ed the sen­tences giv­en to them makes no rea­son­able sense.
Still, some Jamaicans bury their heads in the sand, fin­gers in their ears, and yell to drown out the real­i­ty of this corruption.
As I have said in pre­vi­ous arti­cles, judi­cial cor­rup­tion is not con­fined to sit­u­a­tions where a judge is paid off for a cer­tain out­come but may be bet­ter char­ac­ter­ized as the following.
(Judicial cor­rup­tion means ‘all forms of inap­pro­pri­ate influ­ence that may dam­age the impar­tial­i­ty of jus­tice and may involve any actor with­in the jus­tice sys­tem, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, judges, lawyers, admin­is­tra­tive Court sup­port staff, par­ties, and pub­lic ser­vants.) Those con­sid­er­a­tions may include polit­i­cal activism.
Steeped cul­tur­al­ly to hero-wor­ship peo­ple in posi­tions of author­i­ty, the aver­age Jamaican is blind­ed to what’s hap­pen­ing to our coun­try. As a con­se­quence, dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals are returned to the streets as soon as they are arrest­ed and even when they are convicted.
We watch the tri­als of dan­ger­ous mur­der­ous gang­sters and see a judge dis­re­spect the police and pros­e­cu­tor while giv­ing def­er­ence to their defense attor­neys. We watch speech­less as a sin­gle judge arguably acts as a defense lawyer to vio­lent killers.
This is shock­ing to observers look­ing on yet it is par for the course in Jamaica.
This prac­tice is to be found nowhere else in the world, so Jamaicans should look at the record of the vio­lence pro­duc­ers and ask them­selves, ‘why was this per­son back on the streets? For decades they scape­goat­ed the police depart­ment lay­ing the crime issue square­ly at the feet of what they char­ac­ter­ized as the incom­pe­tent police depart­ment pop­u­lat­ed with dunces.
Now the police force has more PhDs than a University, more lawyers than a law firm, and more degrees than a ther­mome­ter, yet still, crime is high­er than when the force was per­ceived their way.
Our coun­try is cor­rupt to the core, and the cor­rup­tion is eat­ing away at the abil­i­ty of those in pow­er to effec­tu­ate change.
The soon­er we real­ize this, the ear­li­er we can begin to turn this sink­ing ship around.
We await the ver­dict in the Clansman trial!!!

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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.

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The fam­i­ly of Landon Nobles, a Texas man shot in the back by police in 2017, was award­ed $67 mil­lion in dam­ages by a jury and is now at risk of see­ing that dol­lar amount reduced by a fed­er­al judge. The night of May 7, 2017 is a day that changed the life of Belinda Nobles-Thompson and her fam­i­ly when Landon Nobles, 24, was shot in the back by Austin Police offi­cers in Austin, Texas. “Everybody is still going through it even though it’s five years lat­er,” Nobles-Thompson said of her deceased brother.

The night of the inci­dent, police respond­ed to report­ed gun­shots at a night­club, after a woman on the scene told respond­ing offi­cers a man fired shots in the air. She described the shoot­er as a Black male wear­ing blue shorts and a white shirt with an Air Jordan logo on it.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​u​g​h​k​e​e​p​s​i​e​-​k​i​l​l​e​r​-​t​u​r​n​e​d​-​u​p​-​w​i​t​h​-​b​u​l​l​e​t​s​-​i​n​-​h​i​s​-​g​u​t​-​c​o​r​r​a​l​l​e​d​-​b​y​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​w​a​t​c​h​-​v​i​d​e​o​-​i​n​s​i​de/

Police, using sur­veil­lance video, sin­gled out Nobles as fit­ting the descrip­tion giv­en by the woman and oth­er wit­ness­es at the Pecan Festival where the sounds of gun­shots emanat­ed. As one of the offi­cers approached Nobles, he ran away.

According to the Travis County District Attorney’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing, one of the offi­cers claimed they saw Nobles with a gun as the foot chase con­tin­ued, and as the pur­suit neared its final moments, one offi­cer pushed his bike into the flee­ing Nobles and knocked him to the ground. At that point, the offi­cer tes­ti­fied last December, he heard a “clank­ing” and “clear­ly saw a gun,” before the offi­cers fired five gun­shots into Nobles’ back when he got back to his feet. The DA’s report says a gun was found near Nobles’ body where he was shot.

“Shot in the back, not in the side, not while turn­ing, not while spin­ning and there’s no gun­fire that these wit­ness­es said they saw,” said Edmund “Skip” Davis, one of the attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the Nobles family.

In November 2018, the dis­trict attor­ney cleared the offi­cers in the shoot­ing, declar­ing the shoot­ing jus­ti­fied because the offi­cers believed their lives were in danger.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​o​u​r​-​c​o​u​n​t​r​y​-​i​s​-​i​n​f​e​c​t​e​d​-​w​i​t​h​-​a​-​p​r​o​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​-​c​a​b​a​l​-​o​f​-​l​e​f​t​i​s​t​-​m​o​l​e​s​-​b​u​r​r​o​w​e​d​-​d​e​e​p​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​i​n​f​r​a​s​t​r​u​c​t​u​r​e​-​o​f​-​e​v​e​r​y​-​p​a​r​t​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​s​e​c​t​or/

In April 2019, Nobles’ fam­i­ly filed a fed­er­al wrong­ful death law­suit against offi­cers Sgt. Richard Egal and Cpl. Max Johnson, who fired the gun­shots, and the city of Austin, Texas. In December 2021, a jury decid­ed the city of Austin, Texas, and offi­cers Egal and Johnson must pay the Nobles fam­i­ly $67 mil­lion in damages.

The jurors said “no rea­son­able offi­cer could have believed the shoot­ing was law­ful” as the rea­son for the large award, the Austin American-Statesmanreport­ed.

“The jury based their deci­sion off, it was unjust, and they proved a point in my opin­ion, this has to stop,” said Nobles-Thompson.

“A jury returned a cal­cu­lat­ed ver­dict that said, each plain­tiff gets $20 mil­lion and Landon Nobles estate gets rough­ly $7 mil­lion,” said Johnson of the jury award. He went on to explain each of Nobles’ two sons would get $20 mil­lion, Nobles’ moth­er would get $20 mil­lion, and the remain­der would go to Nobles’ estate.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​p​n​p​-​i​s​-​l​i​k​e​-​l​i​t​t​l​e​-​m​o​n​g​r​e​l​s​-​b​a​r​k​i​n​g​-​a​t​-​p​a​s​s​i​n​g​-​c​a​r​s​-​t​h​e​y​-​h​a​v​e​-​n​o​-​s​o​l​u​t​i​o​n​-​f​o​r​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​p​r​o​b​l​e​ms/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​i​t​t​i​n​g​-​d​o​w​n​-​w​i​t​h​-​g​a​n​g​s​t​e​r​s​-​g​o​b​b​l​y​g​o​o​k​-​i​d​e​a​-​t​h​a​t​-​d​e​s​e​r​v​e​s​-​n​o​-​a​t​t​e​ntion/​

Carlton Belton 31- a felon who report­ed­ly was indict­ed for felony rob­bery and weapons pos­ses­sion after rob­bing a man in Newburg New York in 2013 was arrest­ed and booked into the coun­ty jail on Sunday.
Belton is report­ed to be the thug in the video who sum­mar­i­ly assas­si­nat­ed anoth­er gun-tot­ing hood­lum in an all-night store at 386 Main street at about 4.30 am on Sunday morning.
The deceased man 27-year-old Atiba Proverbs made the fatal mis­take of push­ing his weapon away after he was shot, arguably with the inten­tion of evad­ing con­se­quences for hav­ing the weapon.
It was a mis­take that may have cost him his life.

Police

One of the essen­tial prin­ci­ples of crim­i­nal law is that the state or peo­ple must prove their case beyond a [rea­son­able] doubt; it is a dif­fer­ent prin­ci­ple than that which applies to civ­il cas­es with a low­er bur­den of proof. I placed the word ‘rea­son­able’ in brack­ets because when defen­dants are brought before the courts, the ver­dicts must be just, whether the defen­dant faces a jury or *a bench trial*(*trial by a judge).
The word rea­son­able is intend­ed to ensure that a defen­dant receives a fair tri­al when a com­pe­tent tri­er of facts, be it a judge or jury, con­sid­ers the full pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence and makes a ratio­nal deci­sion of inno­cence or guilt.
Though crit­i­cal to the equi­table and fair dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice, the word “rea­son­able” was nev­er intend­ed to be insurmountable.
It was not intend­ed to be a get-out-of-jail-free card for mass-mur­der­ers or to be used by left or right-wing judges to ful­fill their polit­i­cal agen­das instead of their sworn oaths to be impar­tial tri­ers of facts and to dis­pense sen­tences that are com­men­su­rate with sen­tenc­ing guide­lines set out in law by the peo­ple’s representatives.

Jamaica’s high­ly left­ist judi­cia­ry has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the Jamaican pub­lic for decades as it relates to this issue, and it must stop. Let me reit­er­ate for those who are quick to crit­i­cize what they haven’t under­stood because they are ser­i­al crit­ics; the impor­tance of ensur­ing that a guilty ver­dict is beyond a rea­son­able doubt can­not be over-empha­sized, nev­er­the­less; it is not an impen­e­tra­ble fortress to shield the guilty from being convicted.
Us Jamaicans have always been known to be a lit­tle extra and pre­ten­tious. We are deeply enam­ored with things over peo­ple. We indulge celebri­ties, even ticky-ticky Z‑list celebri­ties. We wor­ship at the altar of degrees and sta­tus while den­i­grat­ing the aver­age work­ing joe.
This mind­set glo­ri­fies fak­ery over orig­i­nal­i­ty and hon­ors and respects thieves and mur­der­ers, over hon­est work and decency.
It cre­at­ed a per­fect breed­ing ground for the kind of coun­try we have today in which gang­sters are heroes while teach­ers, police offi­cers, and farm­ers are treat­ed with zero respect. It is a prime breed­ing ground for exploita­tion by those with pow­er in both the polit­i­cal and legal fraternity.
It cre­at­ed the men­tal­i­ty that we can have a first-world twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry coun­try on an anti­quat­ed, out­mod­ed 20^th-cen­tu­ry infra­struc­ture. Jamaicans are indoc­tri­nat­ed into believ­ing that we can use white gloves on dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals and attain the kinds of soci­ety that exist in Scandavanian or some Asian societies.

Today the essen­tial prin­ci­ple of *beyond a rea­son­able doubt* that ought to pro­tect the inno­cent from wrong­ful con­vic­tion is being used sur­rep­ti­tious­ly to pro­tect the guilty from con­se­quences right before our eyes. The guid­ing prin­ci­ples that ought to engen­der trust and con­fi­dence in our jus­tice sys­tem have been hijacked by the very peo­ple we appoint­ed to be stew­ards of our trust.
Our coun­try is infect­ed with a pro-crim­i­nal cabal of left­ist moles bur­rowed deep in the infra­struc­ture of every part of the pub­lic sec­tor. It is chal­leng­ing to wean Jamaicans off the ideas their left­ist indoc­tri­nat­ed lead­ers all gain from a sin­gle insti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing. Those left­ist ideas have been prop­a­gat­ed and pro­mul­gat­ed through­out the Caribbean to the detri­ment and impov­er­ish­ment of the peo­ple forced to live under those policies.
The one thing stand­ing in the way of Jamaica going the way of Venezuela, or sub-Saharan Africa, is Bustamante’s par­ty. Even it is infect­ed with the destruc­tive left­ist ide­ol­o­gy that has destroyed once bur­geon­ing soci­eties. It took a life­time for Andrew Holness, the present JLP Prime Minister, to real­ize that crime is an exis­ten­tial prob­lem that can­not be remind­ed with finesse and soft touch. So it is not just the oth­er side that is infect­ed with this stupidity.
We must con­tin­ue to reori­ent and edu­cate the mass­es that a soci­ety in which crim­i­nals hold sway over the mass­es is a soci­ety stuck in pover­ty and want.
A soci­ety in which white-col­lar crim­i­nals exist at the top and gun-tot­ing blue-col­lar crim­i­nals at the bot­tom is a soci­ety where those in the mid­dle get squashed.
It is the very def­i­n­i­tion of Jamaican soci­ety today in which politi­cians, judges, tri­al lawyers, and their friends at the top and gun-tot­ing hood­lums at the bot­tom devour every­one else.
It is a Jamaica in which left­ist bureau­crats on the courts release the most dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals into soci­ety and then blame the police using the very prin­ci­ple in law designed to pro­tect the innocent.
“Beyond a rea­son­able doubt.”\.

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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.

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I am hap­py to see that PrimeMinister Andrew Holness has arrived at the frus­tra­tion lev­el that the Jamaican peo­ple have been at for over four decades on crime. It has been a long slow climb for Holness, but he began see­ing the light after the Haitian President was assas­si­nat­ed in his own home. Influential peo­ple in Jamaica have been insu­lat­ed from the ram­pant vio­lence that plagues oth­er Jamaicans. As such, they have lofty and even Utopian ideas about the laws passed in Jamaica and the penal­ties met­ed out to dan­ger­ous and vio­lent offenders.
The con­se­quences to Jamaicans who want peace is that the poor are vic­tims of vio­lence while the priv­i­leged are pass­ing observers to the carnage.
The result on the International stage is that Jamaica is the most vio­lent coun­try in the Caribbean and the entire Latin-American region, sur­pass­ing dan­ger­ous coun­tries like Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and others.
There is seri­ous oppo­si­tion to mean­ing­ful laws that would help to cau­ter­ize the vio­lence; essen­tial­ly, vio­lence is a way of life in Jamaica from which many sec­tors make mon­ey, or as we say in Jamaican ver­nac­u­lar, ‘eat a food”.
Now I do under­stand that the Kumreds will be pissed at this arti­cle. The Laborites hate me when I speak out against their par­ty. Frankly, any­one who knows me knows that I do not give a shit. And, oh, by the way, if my lan­guage offends you, this is not for you take your fake ass some­where where they care because I don’t give two shits.

Some vocal groups include the tri­al lawyers who depend on crim­i­nals to eat; (the coun­try can go to hell). Others include the par­a­sites human rights lob­by that has tak­en up res­i­dence in Jamaica like flies take to shit.
Of all the groups push­ing against reform on the tiny Island nation, none is more offen­sive than the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), on whose ²²¹⁄₂ year unbro­ken reign the nation den­i­grat­ed from a pros­per­ing and grow­ing nation to a nation whose peo­ple are shunned, reviled, and deemed per­sona non gra­ta in oth­er coun­tries includ­ing our Caribbean neighbors.
This polit­i­cal par­ty has done so much harm to the coun­try that it is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that the elec­torate does not force it to dis­solve and disband.
I lis­tened to one of the local radio sta­tions on Friday morn­ing at the prompt­ing of a friend; on the pro­gram was the PNP’s so-called shad­ow cab­i­net mem­ber on Justice, Donna Scott-Mottley. To be hon­est, I did not want to waste my time lis­ten­ing to any­thing any­one from the PNP had to say; I should have fol­lowed my gut.
The sad real­i­ty is that the PNP has noth­ing to offer Jamaica out­side more of the same, which is more fail­ure, pover­ty, hyper­bole, and non­sen­si­cal gib­ber­ish wrapped and pack­aged in flow­ery bullshit.
It was more of the same, pol­i­tics, pol­i­tics, more craven hunger for pow­er and no solu­tion. The People’s National Party has not reformed. Therefore, it has noth­ing to offer Jamaica; it is still the same old Manley par­ty of fail­ure that it offered Jamaica in the 70s and the unfor­tu­nate 221/​2‑year peri­od of dis­as­ter that has stunt­ed Jamaica’s growth and devel­op­ment to this day.

The PNP is a par­ty that cares noth­ing about crime and vio­lence; what mat­ters to them is that the whole thing is burned to the ground so they may gov­ern over the ash­es. It is the same take no pris­on­ers par­ty influ­enced by Cuban com­mu­nism that cloaks itself in pop­ulism ‑dan­ger­ous pop­ulism that the poor believe is in their inter­est. That has been how left-wing pop­ulist par­ties through­out the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa man­age to cor­ral the votes of the lumpen and keep them in pover­ty. At the same time, they line their pock­ets at the poor’s expense.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties are hard­ly worth shit, but on the sem­i­nal issue of crime, the PNP must cease and desist from play­ing pol­i­tics with peo­ple’s lives and sup­port the Government’s push to bring seri­ous pain to the murderers?
When asked whether the view that crim­i­nal rights take prece­dent over the rights of crime vic­tims, Donna Scott-Mottley stam­mered her way through a long litany of non­sen­si­cal argu­ments, includ­ing the point that Jamaica has been plagued with vio­lence for over forty years.
Criticizing leg­is­la­tion that would make it a manda­to­ry 15 years for an offend­er caught with a gun Donna Scott-Mottley, the mouth­piece for the crim­i­nal-cod­dling PNP, argued that it is gross­ly unfair because a per­son can bor­row a car from a friend and had no idea that a gun was in the bor­rowed car.

Arguably, this rein­car­na­tion of Albert Einstein has no idea that those issues are sort­ed out in a tri­al in a court of law…
But what the Jamaican peo­ple [must] con­sid­er is that like so many before her in both polit­i­cal par­ties, this grifter, Donna Scott-Mottley is a tri­al lawyer who earns a liv­ing from crim­i­nals hav­ing their way. These are the con­flicts of inter­est that are allowed to flour­ish in Jamaica. Grifters like Donna Scott-Mottley do not give a shit about dead Jamaicans. What they care about are the illic­it dol­lars that flow into their bank accounts from the killers who employ them to get them out of jail. These grifters have zero care for where those monies come from.
But the People’s National Party nev­er cared about the safe­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple; the par­ty has always been about gain­ing and hold­ing onto state pow­er. The par­ty always tried to cur­ry favor with the mass­es, posi­tion­ing itself as the par­ty of the poor. Its poli­cies keep peo­ple poor; that’s by design so that it may manip­u­late them. But it is the poor who are get­ting killed, day in and day out.
The PNP is sell­ing more of the bull­shit it has been sell­ing for decades, noth­ing new but the same old snake oil.
Fortunately, the Jamaican peo­ple saw through the bull­shit and rel­e­gat­ed them to the out­side, where the small incon­se­quen­tial group, like lit­tle mon­grels, bark at pass­ing cars. That is where they should remain.

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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.

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There is a gra­tu­itous default nar­ra­tive that many low-infor­ma­tion Jamaicans use when­ev­er the ques­tion of vio­lence on the Island is broached. That is that there is crime every­where. Even those who ought to know bet­ter and had the good for­tune of trav­el­ing to oth­er coun­tries still make non­sen­si­cal ‘what-about’ statements.
Chicago, Illinois, is one of the American cities with an inor­di­nate num­ber of shoot­ings; the city report­ed a pop­u­la­tion of 2.699 mil­lion (2020). According to the Chicago police depart­ment, 2021 end­ed with 797 homicides.
Jamaica has a pop­u­la­tion of 2.961 mil­lion (2020) and a slight­ly larg­er pop­u­la­tion of over two hun­dred thou­sand residents.
Despite hav­ing almost the same pop­u­la­tion, the jamaica con­stab­u­lary force report­ed that the Island Nation record­ed 1,463 killings in 2021. Jamaicans killed 666 more of their fel­low Jamaicans than res­i­dents of Chicago did their own.
Additionally, for the sec­ond year in a row, Jamaica had the high­est mur­der rate in the Caribbean and Latin American region, sur­pass­ing such nations as Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador, and Chile, known as vio­lent hotspots of homicide.
Jamaica has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing the high­est kill rate of any nation in the Caribbean-Latin-American region, with a kill rate of 49.4 per 100,000 residents.
The sit­u­a­tion in Chicago does not per­turb res­i­dents of near­by Evanston, Illinois; they do not live in fear as res­i­dents all across the Island are because they are always so close to the ground zero of the violence.
Mass shoot­ings in America pose a sig­nif­i­cant risk to all Americans; there is no deny­ing that, nev­er­the­less, because of the size of the United States, it is impos­si­ble to com­pare report­ed inci­dents of vio­lence in the United States and vio­lence in tiny Jamaica.
If you do not under­stand the dif­fer­ence, I can­not help you.

I am past the stage where I believe that most Jamaicans want a crime-free soci­ety. There is a prac­ti­cal argu­ment to be made that most Jamaicans have nev­er seen the peace­ful and serene Jamaica of the 1960s. It is, there­fore, rea­son­able to con­clude that since they do not know what a peace­ful Jamaica looks like, they are unable to imag­ine liv­ing in a safe and peace­ful country.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness spoke to the upsurge in vio­lence in Spanish Town, St Catherine, label­ing it a nation­al emer­gency and the need to get civ­il soci­ety to ‘come along with stronger mea­sures to pro­tect the country.
“The lev­el of orga­nized crim­i­nal activ­i­ty there is a nation­al emer­gency. I do not have the lux­u­ry to be dither­ing on these mat­ters any­more; we have to act on it. We have to act to pro­tect inno­cent, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.”
I must pause to make the point that the word ‘any­more’ in the prime min­is­ter’s state­ments, which in his own words, is an admis­sion that he has been dither­ing on the issue of crime.
Touché to my detrac­tors who con­tin­ued to argue that the prime min­is­ter has been doing all he can on this exis­ten­tial issue of vio­lent crime; he has­n’t; he just acknowl­edged it.
I wish I had a dol­lar for all the times I wrote that the gov­ern­ment is [not] doing all it could to cau­ter­ize this issue.
Addressing the National Disaster Risk Management Council, Holness said. In our lib­er­al democ­ra­cy”, there are cer­tain changes that require the coöper­a­tion of the Parliamentary Opposition.
Let us stop there, mis­ter prime min­is­ter, do what you can with­out them. If you can edu­cate the peo­ple, use what­ev­er tools you have but leave the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion out.
There are no cir­cum­stances under which the (People’s National Party (PNP) would side with the Jamaican peo­ple or the coun­try over their own rapa­cious and craven desire to attain power.
This par­ty and all of its func­tionar­ies are inher­ent­ly pro-crim­i­nals, which goes for the PNP moles in the pub­lic sec­tor, includ­ing the courts.
The PNP has opposed and fought tooth and nail to oppose every bit of leg­is­la­tion that would put a seri­ous dent in vio­lent crime. The par­ty has con­sis­tent­ly placed itself square­ly in the camp of the killers while talk­ing out of the side of its mouth about crime, only as a means to gain state power.
For all intents and pur­pos­es, it is dif­fi­cult to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the People’s National Party and the mur­der­ous scum destroy­ing the coun­try. That par­ty has always been a crim­i­nal sup­port­ing par­ty; it will not change under the present leadership.
Personally, I have seen no dif­fer­ence between PNP and the killers run­ning the streets.

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

I’ve heard it before, so hear­ing it again did not sur­prise me. Nevertheless, it does­n’t make more sense today than when these non­sen­si­cal ideas were broached pre­vi­ous­ly, speak­ing of police sit­ting down with gang­sters to iron out feuds.
Without try­ing to shame any­one for the sug­ges­tion, we must first rec­og­nize that sug­ges­tions that police sit down with gang­sters are by def­i­n­i­tion an acknowl­edg­ment that the sit­u­a­tion is out of the con­trol of the secu­ri­ty forces and, there­fore, up to the war­ring gang­sters to main­tain peace.
By mak­ing that default acknowl­edg­ment, we are turn­ing over peace, tran­quil­i­ty, and law and order to gangsters.
How did that exper­i­ment work out in Tivoli Gardens when suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments of both polit­i­cal par­ties ced­ed Tivoli Gardens to the Coke fam­i­ly- a fam­i­ly of ardent criminals?
This writer is tired of the fan­cy gob­bly­gook lan­guage that accom­pa­nies this sub­ject in Jamaica as it does with oth­er sub­jects; the nar­ra­tive is always couched in hifa­lutin lan­guage that goes back to slav­ery and the atten­dant con­se­quences to us as a peo­ple with­out address­ing the issue at hand.
Being a prag­ma­tist, I much rather leave the pos­tur­ing to the log­ger­heads and apply myself to find­ing prac­ti­cal solu­tions to the problems.

Sure, we under­stand that the nation’s crime prob­lem has deep­er roots in the coun­try’s socio-eco­nom­ic con­di­tion. We also under­stand that the prob­lems of vio­lence that have man­i­fest­ed them­selves across all spec­trums of the soci­ety as a con­flict res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nism [may] have even deep­er roots dat­ing back to the peri­od after slav­ery and even the peri­od of slav­ery itself.
But what are we to do with that infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge? Are we to con­tin­ue to delude our­selves into think­ing that rec­og­niz­ing a prob­lem is a fix to the problem?
Are we going to con­tin­ue with the inane per­spec­tive that pover­ty is the dri­ver of crime in Jamaica yet the pur­vey­ors of crime are able to afford high-pow­ered weapons, exces­sive amounts of ammu­ni­tion, man­sions, cars, boats, motor­cy­cles, and lav­ish lifestyles?
When are we going to ask where they get the mon­ey to afford the fan­cy (liars)? Sorry, I meant lawyers when they get caught?
The coun­try is in a state of ver­i­ta­ble warfare…let that sink in. As we have seen in the United States, with the mass killings across the coun­try, ide­ol­o­gy and polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy [trump] com­mon sense and duty to the country.
The American polit­i­cal right hijacked the sec­ond amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion that guar­an­teed gun own­er­ship and made it a super­im­pos­ing amend­ment that can­not be touched, even though the framers had no idea that there would be weapons capa­ble of killing scores of peo­ple in sec­onds when James Madison pro­posed the sec­ond amend­ment to the constitution.
In the United States, not all in the polit­i­cal spaces are naïve enough to believe that the sec­ond amend­ment means that there can be no safe­guards in law about who owns guns and what kinds of guns they are allowed to have.
However, the polit­i­cal right holds this view, so they are stock­ing up on guns because they fear a race war is coming.
In Jamaica, the stu­pid­i­ty in deal­ing with crime runs the gamut of both polit­i­cal par­ties and all spec­trums, except for the peo­ple who sur­ren­der their chil­dren to join the secu­ri­ty forces.
What could poten­tial­ly be gained from a sit­down with war­ring mur­der­ers? To begin with, when we take action for the nation­al good, we must pon­der the cost-ben­e­fit of our actions. Is it pos­si­ble that there could be a tem­po­rary lull in the hos­til­i­ties that war­rant­ed the sit­down in the first place? Sure it’s pos­si­ble, but what kind of mes­sage would the police be send­ing when they ele­vate com­mon punks to sit­ting at the table with the government?
Those are the kinds of things weak gov­ern­ments do with guer­ril­la move­ments that are fight­ing for state pow­er, and they nev­er end well. We need to under­stand the pow­er of optics and how those will affect the young and impressionable.
Years ago, I implored the police to remove the graf­fi­ti imagery of so-called dons that adorn com­mu­ni­ties. It took a long time before that mes­sage sunk in and the police began to remove those images; whether it was a con­tin­u­ing process or just a flash in the pan I do not know.

I nev­er under­stood why Jamaicans are opposed to strong penal­ties for vio­lent offend­ers? I nev­er under­stood why peo­ple care more about the dan­ger­ous offend­ers who take life with­out care, than they do the vic­tims of those monsters.
I have long writ­ten off the nin­com­poops who look to the University Of The West Indies for guid­ance on crime and oth­er top­i­cal issues. In real­i­ty, Jamaica is in the sit­u­a­tion it is in large­ly because of the log­ic that emanates from that cesspool of insanity.
Providing the lead­er­ship for our coun­try, that sin­gle insti­tu­tion has turned out a buck­et­ful of idiots and morons at all lev­els. We see the con­se­quences of the edu­ca­tion the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to has pro­vid­ed to Jamaicans and the English-speak­ing Caribbean. (Rest in peace, Mutty Perkins).
We can get to where we police com­mu­ni­ties that once had war­ring fac­tions with high-pow­ered weapons shoot­ing at each oth­er with finesse; we are not there yet.
The coun­try is awash in dan­ger­ous weapons and untold amounts of ammu­ni­tion. This real­i­ty will not change any­time soon because of the nation’s porous bor­ders, cor­rupt offi­cials, and gov­ern­ment incom­pe­tence. The Jamaican peo­ple who still want the rule of law must avail them­selves of the real­i­ty that between the two polit­i­cal par­ties, there will be no seri­ous attempt leg­isla­tive­ly to end this scourge once and for all.
They are too in love with the mur­der­ers who run around in the con­stituen­cies they rep­re­sent and in which they oper­ate as mini-kings and queens.
There are no real con­se­quences for mur­der­ers; there­fore, we must rub­bish this idea of the police sit­ting down with gang­sters to end feuds.
Even the judi­cia­ry is in the pock­ets of the gang­sters; Jamaica is, for all intents and pur­pos­es, slid­ing fur­ther into failed state cat­e­go­ry. It did not have to be this way, but Jamaican are too pre­ten­tious. Jamaica is [not] at the place where it can finesse its law enforce­ment. We are not Scandanavia, and even they make dras­tic changes when the need aris­es, as the Fins did after the shoot­ing that took sev­er­al lives.
As I go, I would just like to ask this ques­tion; has any­one noticed that there is no out­cry about get­ting rid of the police com­mis­sion­er? Why is that?

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.This arti­cle was updat­ed after its publication.

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