The solu­tions to Jamaica’s crime epi­dem­ic are not to be found in a sil­ver bul­let or mag­ic beans; they are in a series of com­mon-sense ini­tia­tives that I have writ­ten about for years. Common-sense mea­sures do not require much crit­i­cal think­ing; in fact, some of those ini­tia­tives are not nov­el ideas but ideas that have worked in oth­er countries.
Much of the answers lie in the Jamaican peo­ple, includ­ing past and present law enforce­ment offi­cers who left out of frustration.
It is impor­tant to note that the laws do not appro­pri­ate­ly deter crim­i­nal con­duct, and in many cas­es, they encour­age it.
We need a new Constitution; this means sev­er­ing the colo­nial ties with Britain, giv­ing our­selves a chance to embark on a bet­ter path toward self-suf­fi­cien­cy even in this ever-increas­ing inter­con­nect­ed world.
Thankfully the Government has now begun doing the work to get us on that track, and this means that this admin­is­tra­tion is listening.

I wrote for years that because the laws are old and archa­ic, they encour­age law-break­ing. For exam­ple, if the penal­ty for ille­gal fish­ing is ten dol­lars Jamaican, why would any­one not break that law and catch some fish and, if caught, pay the fine.
Thirty-one years ago, while I was a young cop, some of the laws were so archa­ic there was no rea­son to enforce them, so we did not both­er doing so. Enforcing them would not even gar­ner a con­vic­tion; judges would admon­ish and dis­charge defen­dants mak­ing a mock­ery of our officers.
Today, most of those laws are still there not updat­ed. This lapse, or rather acts of delin­quen­cy by the leg­is­la­ture, result­ed in two gen­er­a­tions of Jamaicans who are uncon­strained by the prospect of con­se­quence, so they do as they please.
Other laws are direct gifts to law­break­ers; there is no oth­er way to view them; ‘squat­ter’s rights, whose idea was it to leg­is­late that if one crim­i­nal­ly occu­pies some­one’s prop­er­ty over a cer­tain peri­od, they auto­mat­i­cal­ly become the own­er of the property?
Why would peo­ple who need a place to live not set up res­i­dence on oth­er peo­ple’s prop­er­ty? In many cas­es, they begin build­ing per­ma­nent struc­tures on land they know they do not own- land belong­ing to some­one else.

Given that green­light by the state to break the laws, Jamaicans embark on build­ing ille­gal set­tle­ments on cap­tured lands, some­times argu­ing it’s ‘Jah’s land’; of course, once they estab­lish ille­gal own­er­ship, no one dares set foot on the prop­er­ty, it is no longer Jah’s land but theirs.
For as long as I can remem­ber, admin­is­tra­tions of the two polit­i­cal par­ties have allowed urban sprawl across the cor­po­rate area and the entire coun­try. This is not unique to Jamaica, but oth­er nations are respon­si­ble for their problems.
These squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties became incu­ba­tors of vio­lent crime. It is easy to fol­low the nexus of how allow­ing for what is viewed as small, incon­se­quen­tial infrac­tions to metas­ta­size into mam­moth epi­demics like the one we are fac­ing today.
Allowing squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties from Sufferers Heights to Flankers and From Back-To to Riverton and places beyond has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the vio­lent epi­dem­ic of crime that has claimed the lives of tens of thou­sands of inno­cent Jamaicans over the last sev­er­al decades.
This result­ed from incom­pe­tent and acqui­es­cent poli­cies that encour­aged law­break­ing to solid­i­fy blocks of votes to attain and hold on to polit­i­cal power.
Lazy and incom­pe­tent leg­is­la­tors hired to make the right deci­sions spend their time fig­ur­ing out ways to defraud the pub­lic instead of mod­ern­iz­ing the nation’s laws.
Feuds that emanate from cap­tured prop­er­ty almost always end up with vio­lence as a solu­tion, vio­lence encour­aged and made pos­si­ble by a delin­quent state.

Simple fix­es like pass­ing laws with sun­set pro­vi­sions give law­mak­ers time to see how leg­is­la­tion works and whether to reau­tho­rize or allow them to expire.
There is no sur­prise that Jamaica is viewed as one of the most vio­lent places on earth; its gov­ern­ment, since 1962, has active­ly and unwit­ting­ly enhanced crim­i­nal conduct.
The present admin­is­tra­tion, too, approached the job of gov­er­nance with the same non­cha­lance as its pre­de­ces­sor, uncon­vinced that you can­not build a soci­ety in which there is ram­pant crime and corruption.
However, it seems clear­er nowa­days that the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion, at least on the face of it, real­izes that Jamaica has no chance of com­pet­ing with­out an end to the ram­pant criminality.
So the jus­tice min­is­ter Delroy Chuch has tabled leg­is­la­tion that would add some teeth to mur­der con­vic­tions. Some argue cor­rect­ly it does not go near­ly far enough
It still isn’t law..

Who has a vest­ed inter­est in bring­ing back vio­lent mur­der­ers from prison except for tri­al lawyers? Where is the lob­by for vio­lence pro­duc­ers? What I am ask­ing is, whose cause is served by short­er prison sen­tences for those who have been found guilty of tak­ing the lives of others?
The Prime Minister recent­ly told William, a future king of England, “we are going our own way”, Good, and none too soon. That state­ment should have been uttered six­ty years ago back in 1962, not 2022.
I hope this is more than just words but action that will be fol­lowed up with a shiny new con­sti­tu­tion well debat­ed and backed up by expert advice and craft­ed using data. And for God’s sake, when I say expert opin­ion, I do not mean from the University of the West Indies..”
That Institution’s left­ist bull­shit has all but destroyed our coun­try and much of the Caribbean.
A new con­sti­tu­tion and updat­ed laws are Jamaica’s best chances of pro­pelling itself into the 21^st cen­tu­ry, albeit already 22 years late. Jamaicans can obey laws; we do when we live in oth­er coun­tries; let us ensure that we build a nation of laws that pro­tects the weak and inno­cent and appro­pri­ate­ly sit­u­ate those who refuse to adhere to our social order.

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

Two ATM’s explod­ed ear­ly Saturday morn­ing at the Scotia Bank in the Portland town of Port Antonio, at this time we do not know what caused the explosions.

Scattered debris, bro­ken glass every­where, but thank­ful­ly no reports yet of injuries.

It is report­ed that this man, a secu­ri­ty offi­cer was found at the rear of the premis­es in an incin­er­a­tor and was trans­port­ed to hos­pi­tal by the police.

More to come as new infor­ma­tion becomes available.

It’s been a year since 35-year-old Matthew Zadok Williams was killed by DeKalb County Police after a woman wrong­ly claimed she saw a home­less man in the woods lurk­ing near her home in Decatur, Georgia, a sub­urb of Atlanta

“The fact that it’s been a year, and noth­ing has been done,” Zadok Williams’ frus­trat­ed moth­er, Chris Ann Lewis said.

The fam­i­ly of Zadok Williams says they’ve mulled over count­less hours of body­cam footage to wrap their minds around how and why police killed their broth­er and son. “We can talk about this in such detail because we watched eight hours of the footage, eight hours or more,” Zadok Williams’ sis­ter Zeporah Williams said.

Zadok’s sis­ters, Hannah and Zeporah and his moth­er, Chris Ann Lewis, have spent count­less hours mulling over their loved one’s final moments on April 12 of last year. They say their broth­er and son was known for his big heart, thirst for learn­ing and dry sense of humor, but all of those endear­ing qual­i­ties have been over­shad­owed by the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing his death.

“He was try­ing to get back in, he had locked him­self out, he had been doing some work around his home and he was try­ing to reen­ter his home when police saw him, and it had been report­ed that he was a tres­pass­er,” said Mawuli Davis, the Williams’ fam­i­ly attorney.

DeKalb County Police said in a news release on its Facebook page a day after the shoot­ing, “[Zadok Williams] lunged at offi­cers with the knife caus­ing one of them to dis­charge their firearm.”

The fam­i­ly says Zadok Williams had a knife and buck­et in hand for some plumb­ing-relat­ed work around his home. Released body­cam video picks up moments after offi­cers are heard con­clud­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with the woman who has been described as the house­mate of the woman who called 911. Officers can be seen approach­ing Zadok at his home.

“Hey what’s up man, what you are doing around here, you live here?” one of the respond­ing offi­cers is heard ask­ing Zadok Williams. “Do you know why we’re here?” the offi­cer asked, and at this moment in their inter­ac­tion, Zadok Williams can be seen walk­ing down the steps on the frontside of his town­house-style home. As he reach­es the ground he runs.

One of the offi­cers seen in the body­cam video fires one shot, but Zadok Williams was able to run back toward his home.

Moments lat­er, Zadok Williams climbs atop his roof to break into his home from an upstairs win­dow. Bodycam video does not ful­ly cap­ture this visu­al but debris on top of the roof can be seen falling to the ground near Zadok Williams’ front door.

As Williams was on the roof, he kicked in an upstairs win­dow to enter his home — he appar­ent­ly had locked him­self out. By this time, three offi­cers hud­dle around Zadok Williams’ front door on the porch.

“Put the knife down, put the knife down,” offi­cers can be heard scream­ing at Williams, who’s just on the oth­er side of his front door inside the home before the offi­cers kick open the door. 

The body­cam video shows the front door clos­ing moments after police kicked it open. At this moment one of the offi­cers fired a shot at the door. Audio from the body­cam picks up Zadok Williams telling offi­cers, he’s defend­ing his property.

“I’m defend­ing my prop­er­ty” Williams says repeat­ed­ly. “Come out and talk to us,” one of the offi­cers on the porch said to Williams while stand­ing in an aggres­sive pos­ture and gun drawn. Again, Williams says, “I’m defend­ing my prop­er­ty,” as one of the offi­cers responds with, “If you put the knife down you don’t have to defend nothing.”
Read the full sto­ry here:https://​atlantablack​star​.com/​2​0​2​2​/​0​4​/​1​4​/​i​m​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​g​i​v​e​n​-​t​h​e​-​m​i​d​d​l​e​-​f​i​n​g​e​r​-​m​a​t​t​h​e​w​-​z​a​d​o​k​-​w​i​l​l​i​a​m​s​-​f​a​m​i​l​y​-​d​e​m​a​n​d​s​-​a​c​c​o​u​n​t​a​b​i​l​i​t​y​-​o​n​e​-​y​e​a​r​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​s​u​b​u​r​b​a​n​-​a​t​l​a​n​t​a​-​c​o​p​s​-​g​u​n​n​e​d​-​h​i​m​-​d​o​w​n​-​i​n​-​h​i​s​-​h​o​m​e​-​l​e​t​-​h​i​m​-​b​l​e​e​d​-​o​ut/

In Syracuse New York, alleged­ly over a bag of stolen chip.
By Rachel Kiley

https://​twit​ter​.com/​i​/​s​t​a​t​u​s​/​1​5​1​6​0​6​9​2​8​9​3​6​2​7​0​6​437

A video of police putting a young Black boy in a police vehi­cle over an alleged­ly stolen bag of chips went viral on Tuesday.

The per­son who record­ed the video appeared to have just hap­pened upon the scene, which involved at least three Syracuse Police Department (SPD) offi­cers putting a boy into a squad car, as anoth­er child stood by.

The boy screams, cries, and tries to get away, as the man record­ing asks what is going on and tells the offi­cers to stop.

“He look like a baby to me,” the man says.

“He’s steal­ing stuff,” a cop says. “Keep walk­ing, dude. You don’t even know what you’re talk­ing about.”

A sin­gle bag of chips is on the ground near­by. The oth­er boy present at one point screams at the cops that the oth­er kid didn’t steal, while the man record­ing offers to pay for the chips if that is the issue. “I’ll pay for them,” the man says.

Another man shows up and tells police that the boy looks too young to legal­ly be arrest­ed, like­ly refer­ring to a recent­ly passed law that pro­hibits chil­dren under the age of 12 from being arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed in New York under most cir­cum­stances, bar­ring homi­cide. However, the law doesn’t take effect until next year.

The video ends with the boy scream­ing from the back of the police vehicle.

On Facebook, the SPD said in a state­ment it is review­ing the incident.

“We are aware of a video being shared on social media involv­ing sev­er­al of our Officers and juve­niles accused of steal­ing from a store on the City’s north­side. The inci­dent, includ­ing the Officers’ actions and body-worn cam­eras, are being reviewed. There is some mis­in­for­ma­tion involv­ing this case. The juve­nile sus­pect­ed of lar­ce­ny was not placed in hand­cuffs. He was placed in the rear of a patrol unit where he was direct­ly brought home. Officers met with the child’s father and no charges were filed,” it wrote.

It went viral on both Reddit and Twitter Tuesday.

It’s unclear when exact­ly the inci­dent took place, or what hap­pened with the child involved. Attempts doc­u­ment­ed by Twitter users to learn more from the SPD were unproductive.

“They trau­ma­tized that lit­tle boy over a bag of chips? Unbelievable,” one Twitter user said.

Redditors also brought up the idea of adul­ti­fi­ca­tion bias, where Black kids are often viewed as old­er, and there­fore “less inno­cent,” than white kids.

Policing is not exact­ly an easy job; the lev­el of sup­port that police offi­cers receive in exe­cut­ing their duties may be dic­tat­ed by the lev­el of matu­ri­ty and suf­fi­cien­cy of the com­mu­ni­ties they police. Poorer, dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties that are incu­ba­tors of crim­i­nal­i­ty tend to be less tol­er­ant of gov­ern­ment agents (police), whom they view less favor­ably as oppres­sors than protectors.
This is not a con­cept con­fined to Jamaica but rather one that per­me­ates poor­er soci­eties in which the police is the face and force of Government.
As a for­mer police offi­cer who spent a decade polic­ing the grit­ty com­mu­ni­ties of Kingston & Saint Andrew and many places across Jamaica, I under­stood ful­ly the psy­chol­o­gy that binds com­mu­ni­ties that view gov­ern­ment in an unfa­vor­able light, regard­less of who is in power.

Poverty, lack of oppor­tu­ni­ties, and lack of resources in those com­mu­ni­ties become soil, water, and sun­light for the ger­mi­na­tion and growth of crime.
Government agents are the least wel­come vis­i­tors to those com­mu­ni­ties; gov­ern­ment agents are seen as ‘stop­ping their food.’(sic)
Regardless of the right­ness of police action with­in those com­mu­ni­ties, there is lit­tle sup­port for what they do; law­ful police action is viewed as ‘evil by the wicked police.’
So arrest­ing some­one who has been steal­ing elec­tric­i­ty, water, or food is a crime by the wicked police, not the right thing to do as they are tasked.
Anti-police hatred should be anti-gov­ern­ment hatred, but as I said ear­li­er since the police are the face and force of gov­ern­ment, that ven­om is direct­ed at them. In Jamaica, in par­tic­u­lar, that ven­om is spread by a lazy and decep­tive media that know­ing­ly par­tic­i­pates in dis­sem­i­nat­ing false information.
Of the two main secu­ri­ty agen­cies, the JCF & JDF, the Jamaica Defence Force has long enjoyed def­er­ence and respect from inner-city com­mu­ni­ties that the police as an agency could only hope for. Individual police offi­cers who exem­pli­fied them­selves in dif­fer­ent ways enjoyed sup­port and respect, not the force as a collective.
The JDF was more revered and respect­ed because (a) many rank-and-file mil­i­tary mem­bers lived in those com­mu­ni­ties, but (b) more so because sol­diers were not tasked with doing police duties. They were only called out for spe­cial events.
Over the last sev­er­al decades, the JDF has been pressed more and more into com­pli­ment­ing police num­bers in law enforce­ment duties. As com­mu­ni­ties real­ize that polic­ing is a con­cept, not a per­son or group of peo­ple, the lus­ter has grad­u­al­ly worn off the JDF. Soldiers are essen­tial­ly now police in a dif­fer­ent uniform.

The young men and women of the JDF who are thrust into these unten­able sit­u­a­tions live the night­mare that young men and women of the JCF have been exposed to for decades after independence.
They have expe­ri­enced the anger from com­mu­ni­ties pissed at gov­ern­ment fail­ures, incom­pe­tence, cor­rup­tion, and bad policies.
Young mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces are vic­tims of the sys­tems like the peo­ple who live in those communities.
Members of the Jamaica Defense Force are now liv­ing the night­mare their coun­ter­parts in the Constabulary have always lived, deal­ing with oblig­a­tory accu­sa­tions they are mur­der­ers and the lies that every­one wit­nessed events of police abuse that occurred at four in the morn­ing. An irre­spon­si­ble and lazy press enhances the process of spread­ing the poison.
Young sol­diers in west Kingston and wher­ev­er else their polit­i­cal boss­es thrust them into cov­er­ing up the smoke of polit­i­cal incom­pe­tence must now nav­i­gate paths to their sur­vival, which is to col­lect their pay­check and go home to their fam­i­lies. The same dilem­ma young police offi­cers face that leads to the high attri­tion the Constabulary faces, despite the lack of jobs in the country.
The JDF is now a police force in a dif­fer­ent uni­form, bye-bye luster.…..

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

*On May 23, 1934, a posse com­posed of police offi­cers from Louisiana and Texas, includ­ing Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, con­cealed them­selves in bush­es along the high­way near Sailes, Louisiana. In the ear­ly day­light, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in an auto­mo­bile, and when they attempt­ed to dri­ve away, the offi­cers opened fire. Bonnie and Clyde were killed instant­ly. (fbi​.gov)*.
Clyde Champion Barrow and his com­pan­ion, Bonnie Parker, were want­ed for crimes that ranged from mur­ders, bank rob­beries, and theft of motor cars to abduc­tion. The Bureau of Investigations was pur­su­ing them, (now the FBI), along with local police and Sheriff’s officers.

At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have com­mit­ted 13 mur­ders and sev­er­al rob­beries and bur­glar­ies. Barrow, for exam­ple, was sus­pect­ed of mur­der­ing two police offi­cers at Joplin, Missouri, and kid­nap­ping a man and a woman in rur­al Louisiana. He released them near Waldo, Texas. Numerous sight­ings fol­lowed, link­ing this pair with bank rob­beries and auto­mo­bile thefts. Clyde alleged­ly mur­dered a man at Hillsboro, Texas; com­mit­ted rob­beries at Lufkin and Dallas, Texas; mur­dered one sher­iff and wound­ed anoth­er at Stringtown, Oklahoma; kid­naped a deputy at Carlsbad, New Mexico; stole an auto­mo­bile at Victoria, Texas; attempt­ed to mur­der a deputy at Wharton, Texas; com­mit­ted mur­der and rob­bery at Abilene and Sherman, Texas; com­mit­ted mur­der at Dallas, Texas; abduct­ed a sher­iff and the chief of police at Wellington, Texas; and com­mit­ted mur­der at Joplin and Columbia, Missouri.

It would be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that any law-abid­ing per­son would not want the author­i­ties to col­lar the pair before they could do any more harm. This brings us to the mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion; *are law-enforce­ment offi­cers jus­ti­fied in sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ing crim­i­nal sus­pects with­out tri­al by a court of law*?
The killing of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker was cer­tain­ly not the first time that American law enforce­ment offi­cers had sum­mar­i­ly mur­dered with­out tri­al peo­ple they sus­pect­ed of crimes-some­times minor infrac­tions if they were Black.
Their killing was a high-pro­file sum­ma­ry exe­cu­tion that cap­tured the nation’s imag­i­na­tion. Their sto­ries have been told in movies, com­ic books, and doc­u­men­taries. No one both­ered address­ing why they were sum­mar­i­ly mur­dered with­out any attempt to trap and cap­ture them so they could face tri­als for the crimes they were accused of?

The answer to that ques­tion may be tied to a peri­od that pre­dates the killing of Parker and Barrow.… a time when a *sus­pect­ed* horse or cat­tle thief was tried in the salon while a gal­lows was being erect­ed outside.
At the end of the kan­ga­roo tri­al, the blood­thirsty whiskey sod­den hood­lums would stum­ble out of the salon and string up the sus­pect until he was dead-inno­cent or not.
*Being so high-pro­file, the Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker killing rep­re­sents one of the bet­ter-known inci­dents in which law enforce­ment sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed cit­i­zens with­out a tri­al and suf­fered no consequence.
Barrow and Parker’s killings were auto­mat­i­cal­ly jus­ti­fied not because they refused to sur­ren­der; they were not giv­en a chance to sur­ren­der; they were exe­cut­ed for their alleged­ly com­mit­ted crimes.

The sum­ma­ry exe­cu­tion of Barrow and Parker became prece­dent on how to han­dle alleged crim­i­nals, whether they were guilty or not. People of col­or, already suf­fer­ing under the irre­versible yoke of black skin, were already hav­ing their lives snuffed out by police with no ques­tions asked. The nation did not care; the word of the police was enough; they deserved it.
Today, they still kill with­out con­se­quence, just a lot more so.
The idea of crim­i­nal­iz­ing Blacks and using their crim­i­nal record to deval­ue their lives became a neces­si­ty and a main­stay of law enforce­ment; it remains so today.
The wear­er of black skin is pre­sumed guilty until proven inno­cent, one hun­dred & eighty degrees oppo­site of what an American cit­i­zen is enti­tled to under the nation’s con­sti­tu­tion. Black skin means unde­serv­ing of respect, unde­serv­ing of deference.

The ele­va­tion of police offi­cers’ lives above that of the cit­i­zens they serve and the prac­tice of ignor­ing police crimes has cre­at­ed an unac­count­able police cul­ture, one rife with impuni­ty and arrogance.
The badge they wear sym­bol­izes state pow­er, impuni­ty, and immu­ni­ty. The gun on their hips makes them care­free and gives them a lais­sez-faire atti­tude about cer­tain lives. They kill whomev­er they want under the col­or and cov­er of law, uncon­cerned about con­se­quence. Paid vaca­tions, pro­mo­tions, and awards they give to them­selves are the rewards they reap for out­right murder. 
Patrick Lyoya, a 26-year-old Black man, was the lat­est to suf­fer that fate. A Grand Rapids, Michigan cop with whom he strug­gled, put a bul­let in the back of his head even as he had Lyoya face down in the mud.
The Grand Rapids police did not even feel the need to fur­nish the name of the cop; he is on paid leave. Police con­tin­ue to kill in the name of the state, and the state pro­tects its own.

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After Minneapolis mon­ster-cop Derek Chauvin and his three side­kicks mur­dered George Floyd, America erupt­ed in a social jus­tice out­cry many say exceed­ed the social jus­tice upheaval of the 60s.
Police across America did not stop abus­ing cit­i­zens, not by a long shot; some data points to increased aggres­sion and abuse by many police depart­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in large cities and towns.
In New York City, Buffalo, New York, In Oregon, right here in Minnesota, and places in between-police increased aggres­sion, abuse, and vio­la­tion of cit­i­zens’ rights.
Even more fright­en­ing is that though the coun­try was in an upheaval about police vio­lence, includ­ing their use of lethal force, police across the coun­try did not change their pat­terns and prac­tices relat­ed to the use of lethal force.

The New York Times report­ed in November of last year that just sev­en hours before pros­e­cu­tors opened their case against Derek Chauvin, a for­mer Minneapolis police offi­cer charged with mur­der­ing George Floyd, a Chicago offi­cer chased down a 13-year-old boy in a West Side alley and fatal­ly shot him as he turned with his hands up.

One day lat­er, at a hotel in Jacksonville, Fla., offi­cers fatal­ly shot a 32-year-old man, who, the police say, grabbed one of their Tasers. The day after that, as an eye­wit­ness to Mr. Floyd’s death broke down in a Minneapolis court­room while recount­ing what he saw, a 40-year-old men­tal­ly ill man who said voic­es were harass­ing him was killed in Claremont, N.H., in a shootout with the state police. On every day that fol­lowed, through the close of tes­ti­mo­ny, anoth­er per­son was killed by the police some­where in the United States.
The killings con­tin­ued unabat­ed to three (3) per day, but that is hard­ly the only issue Americans face at the hands of out-of-con­trol police. The Times recount­ed, even as Americans con­tin­ue to process that case — and anx­ious­ly wait for a ver­dict — new cas­es of peo­ple killed by the police mount unabated.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​r​b​i​t​r​a​t​o​r​-​c​l​e​a​r​e​d​-​m​o​n​s​t​e​r​-​c​o​p​s​-​w​h​o​-​p​u​s​h​e​d​-​7​5​-​y​e​a​r​-​o​l​d​-​m​a​n​-​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​g​r​o​u​n​d​-​f​r​a​c​t​u​r​i​n​g​-​h​i​s​-​s​k​u​ll/

In New York City, mem­bers of the NYPD used the vehi­cles paid for by the tax­pay­ers of that city to attempt to ram and run over pro­tes­tors who had the nerve to protest their bar­bar­ic actions. In Buffalo, New York, robot­ic mon­sters in police uni­forms pushed a 75-year-old man to the ground frac­tur­ing his skull-Martin Gugino spent over a month in hos­pi­tal recov­er­ing from a con­cus­sion and frac­tured skull. The mon­sters who vio­lent­ly assault­ed mis­ter Gugino were cleared by an Albany Arbitrator named Jeffrey Selchick, who argued mis­ter Gugino‘was def­i­nite­ly not an inno­cent bystander. Selchick called the offi­cers’ use of force “absolute­ly legit­i­mate. Selchick added that “Gugino may also have been sur­prised when the offi­cers used force to push him away because he may have enter­tained the unfound­ed belief that the offi­cers would let him inter­fere with the per­for­mance of their duties.”
In oth­er words, the police are well with­in their rights to use any lev­el of force they deem fit to pun­ish cit­i­zens if their orders are not imme­di­ate­ly com­plied with. Mister Gugino was report­ed­ly out after a declared curfew.
Jefferey Selchic was an Adjunct Professor who taught Arbitration and Collective Bargaining cours­es at Albany Law School, Union University.

As the atten­tion of Americans is direct­ed at events hap­pen­ing thou­sands of miles away in Ukraine, the cor­po­rate American media con­tin­ue to harp on human rights abus­es sup­pos­ed­ly com­mit­ted by Russian troops. Interestingly they fail to report on the dai­ly assault on human rights right here in the United States. Frighteningly, at every lev­el of the courts sys­tem in the United States, there is con­tin­ued sup­port for police abuse of cit­i­zens and a total dis­re­gard for the constitution.
The supreme court con­tin­ues to bend and twist the con­sti­tu­tion to facil­i­tate a com­pre­hen­sive police state right here in America.
While Americans watch and crit­i­cize Russia’s gov­ern­ment for abus­es in Ukraine, American police are slow­ly turn­ing the streets of cities and towns into a com­pre­hen­sive dystopi­an night­mare for Americans- par­tic­u­lar­ly Americans of color.
Police have noth­ing to fear from the courts; aggriev­ed cit­i­zens will have to decide what course of action they will take if they can­not get jus­tice from the branch­es of gov­ern­ment tasked with hon­or­ing the con­sti­tu­tion because they are more inter­est­ed in fos­ter­ing a police state.

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

While you weren’t look­ing after the tumul­tuous events that pre­ced­ed the police mur­der of George Floyd, local admin­is­tra­tors have been busy putting crim­i­nal cops back on to police depart­ments after they have been fired or sus­pend­ed for egre­gious crimes against mem­bers of the pub­lic they are sworn to protect.
As those mon­sters are returned to the streets, look for them to become more embold­ened in their attacks on civilians.
Worse, it is log­i­cal to expect oth­ers with sim­i­lar mind­sets to act out their vio­lent ten­den­cies against inno­cent cit­i­zens, regard­less of their age or gender.

Two Buffalo Police offi­cers were cleared of wrong­do­ing after an elder­ly pro­test­er was pushed to the ground.

Violent cops who pushed a 75-year-old man to the ground crack­ing his skull, and did not help him were cleared by an arbi­tra­tor who basi­cal­ly said he deserved what he got.
Mister Gugino suf­fered a con­cus­sion and frac­tured skull and remained in the hos­pi­tal for near­ly a month before being released, accord­ing to a civ­il rights law­suit filed against the officers.

Officers Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe were found not guilty on Friday by an arbi­tra­tor who said Martin Gugino ‘was def­i­nite­ly not an inno­cent bystander.’