Author Archives: Mike

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‘I Don’t Care About That!’: Trauma Nurse On Scene Of Deadly Shooting Fires Back At Off-Duty Deputy

The 911 call made by the sheriff’s deputy that shot and killed a Black man in North Carolina has been released. The city coun­cil has now request­ed that the U.S. Department of Justice get involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion. Deputy Jeffrey Hash called 911 after he shot Jason Walker on Saturday, Jan. 8, in Fayetteville, North Carolina
The almost four-minute call records Hash as say­ing, “I just had a male jump on my vehi­cle and broke my wind­shield. I just shot him. I am a deputy sher­iff.” “You said you shot him?” the dis­patch­er asked the deputy.

“Yes, he jumped on my car, please,” he respond­ed. When the dis­patch­er asked for his name, Hash said, “I am a lieu­tenant with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.” Later in the call, the dis­patch­er asks Hash if he is near the vic­tim, he replies, “I am. He’s gone. He’s gone, ma’am.” “Is he breath­ing?” the dis­patch­er inquires. The deputy answered, “No, ma’am, he is not. He’s gone.” Hash then asks for “units out ’cause there are peo­ple gath­er­ing.” During the call, the deputy tells the dis­patch­er that his vehi­cle is a red Ford F‑150. He then states, “He shat­tered my wind­shield.” Also heard on the call is an exchange that Hash had with a wit­ness, Elizabeth Ricks, the woman who tried to assist Walker after he was shot. The call cap­tures Hash telling her to leave the scene.

“Just keep mov­ing, ma’am,” he says to Ricks. She replies to him, “I’m a trau­ma nurse.” To her qual­i­fi­er, he says, “I’m a deputy sher­iff. Come here. He jumped on my vehi­cle. I just had to shoot him.” The dis­patch­er joins in the con­ver­sa­tion and asks for clar­i­ty on what actu­al­ly hap­pened, to which Hash sub­mit­ted his ver­sion. “I was dri­ving down the road and he came fly­ing across Bingham Drive, run­ning, and then I stopped so I wouldn’t hit him and he jumped on my car and start­ed scream­ing; pulled my wind­shield wipers off, and start­ed beat­ing my wind­shield and broke my wind­shield,” Hash recalled. “I had my wife and my daugh­ter in my vehi­cle.” The dis­patch­er asked, “Did he have any weapons, sir?” Hash said that Walker did not have a firearm, and again, assert­ed his ver­sion of the sto­ry, “He just tore my wipers off and start­ed beat­ing. … He bust­ed my wind­shield.” Turning her atten­tion to the vic­tim, who Hash had already said was not breath­ing, the dis­patch­er asked about how many peo­ple are present at the site of the crime. “There are tons of cars and peo­ple gath­er­ing around,” he stat­ed. The 911 call con­tin­ued to pick up con­ver­sa­tions from those who gath­ered around Walker’s body. One key voice is Ricks, the trau­ma nurse Hash told to “keep mov­ing.” Ricks can be heard say­ing that the man is still alive. Hash final­ly asks for help, say­ing, “He has a light pulse right now. I need EMS now.” The dis­patch­er asks where the man was shot, but nei­ther Hash nor Ricks has the infor­ma­tion. Hash reveals to the dis­patch­er, “I’m see­ing blood on his side, ma’am.”

Ricks is heard try­ing to save him, notwith­stand­ing Hash’s request for EMS’s arrival on the scene. The call records her in the back­ground ask­ing for a shirt or some­thing to stop the bleed­ing. Others in the back­ground repeat the dispatcher’s ques­tions about where Walker was shot, but Hash con­tin­ues to say that he doesn’t know and repeats his ver­sion of what hap­pened, “He was on the front of my vehi­cle. He jumped on my car.” Ricks snaps, “I don’t care about that, where is the entry point?” Hash respond­ed to her and says to the dis­patch­er, who tells him to stop talk­ing to the peo­ple on the scene, “People are hos­tile right now.” Hash’s “hos­tile” com­ment was cap­tured on the two-minute cell­phone video of the after­math of the shoot­ing, record­ed by Chase Sorrell, Ricks’ boyfriend. Ricks and Sorrell are key wit­ness­es to the fatal shooting.The Fayetteville Observer reports that the two say they were dri­ving about two car lengths behind Hash when the nurse saw Walker stand­ing on the side of the road. Ricks main­tains that Walker wait­ed for one car to go by before he start­ed to cross the street. That is when Hash’s truck came by and struck the 37-year-old Black man, and Hash got out of the car and shot the man four times, the nurse says. After that, she got out of her car to attempt to save his life as he lay dying next to the back wheels of the Ford pick­up truck.

Ricks’ account of Walker being hit by a car con­tra­dicts police claims released ear­li­er this week. Fayetteville Police Chief Gina Hawkins said on Sunday, Jan. 9, the pick­up truck had a “black box” that would have reg­is­tered if the vehi­cle struck “any per­son or thing.” She also added that one eye­wit­ness said to her office that Walker was not hit by the truck. The Fayetteville news­pa­per reports that Ricks says she gave a wit­ness state­ment to police at the scene of the shoot­ing. Since the shoot­ing, Hash has acquired rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Parrish Daughtry, his lawyer, shared on Tuesday that her client was “dev­as­tat­ed” about the inci­dent. She said, “Lt. Hash is dev­as­tat­ed for Mr. Walker’s fam­i­ly, his own fam­i­ly, the greater com­mu­ni­ty and dev­as­tat­ed by these events. Beyond that, I’m real­ly pro­hib­it­ed from dis­cussing the facts.” Walker’s fam­i­ly also acquired the ser­vices of a lawyer. Ben Crump, the civ­il rights attor­ney that has rep­re­sent­ed vic­tims in many high-pro­file cas­es such as those of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin, will rep­re­sent the inter­ests of the fam­i­ly of the deceased.

Ben Crump Law, PLLC
@BenCrumpLaw
NEWS ALERT:
@AttorneyCrump

has been retained by the fam­i­ly of Jason Walker, a 37-year-old man who was shot and killed by off-duty Cumberland County deputy Jeffrey Hash on January 8.

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The Chaos On The Streets Reflects A More Dangerous Underbelly Of Danger.…

Parents who try to be friends with their chil­dren with­out the appro­pri­ate dis­ci­pline find out real fast that they do as they please and are nev­er friends with them.
Governments that acqui­esce to the prin­ci­ple of ‘any­thing goes’ find out real fast that peo­ple with a bent for flout­ing laws will do so indis­crim­i­nate­ly when allowed to do so.
It begins with what appears to be mun­dane and insignif­i­cant things-but they have vast con­se­quences for how the cit­i­zens of any coun­try respond to rules.
For exam­ple, on my recent trip to Jamaica, I was stunned that there was zero police traf­fic enforce­ment. The police have all but ced­ed the streets to the unruly drivers.
Taxis, bus­es, and pri­vate motor vehi­cles over­take on the left, on the right, around cor­ners, up hills, irre­spec­tive of road mark­ings against such behavior.
Cars, bus­es, and mini­vans have col­ored head­lights, some blue, some red, some amber, and some blink­ing, cre­at­ing immense con­fu­sion to motorists not used to the dif­fer­ent col­ored blink­ing head­lights. All of this added to the mad­den­ing cir­cus of con­fu­sion and chaos.

How can any­one con­vince me that these prac­tices can­not be out­lawed in a sin­gle day’s sit­ting of the Parliament? Which would effec­tive­ly allow the police to remove these scofflaws from the streets?
The sad real­i­ty is that there is no desire from those entrust­ed with the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the nation. Either they have no idea how to rein in the mad­ness, or they are too afraid to take the nec­es­sary steps to cor­rect these basic issues.
On the one hand, the gov­ern­ment is too timid to take the bold steps, while the oppo­si­tion par­ty rel­ish­es in the chaos, hop­ing to ride it back to power.
If the gov­ern­ment can­not bring san­i­ty to the streets through strong enforce­ment, how can the Jamaican peo­ple have any hope that there will be a return to any appear­ance of nor­mal­cy as far as the wan­ton mur­ders are concerned?
I trav­eled the Edward Seaga Highway quite a bit on my recent trip. The post­ed speed lim­it is gen­er­al­ly 80 kilo­me­ters along the high­way, with a few exceptions.
Drivers flew by me at speeds in excess of 140 kilo­me­ters with no con­cern that they would be apprehended.
On two occa­sions, I saw a police high­way patrol unit, and of course, they offered zero deter­rent to the madness.
The offi­cers were parked and out of the patrol vehi­cle chat­ting as the traf­fic whizzed by them at break­neck speed.

On the night before Christmas Eve, I was in Ochi Rios square, and it was the same mad­ness, one police vehi­cle parked on main street with blue lights flashing.
I was curi­ous why the offi­cers had their lights flash­ing. As my car drew clos­er, I real­ized that both offi­cers were on their cell phones chat­ting casu­al­ly as if they had no care in the world.
The flash­ing lights were the deter­rent effect I imag­ined. I drove on by and mind­ed my business.
Preliminary report­ing sug­gests that the coun­try end­ed 2021 with 1,463 mur­ders.
That num­ber does not include those killed and dumped that the police have no clue about, and it also does not include peo­ple shot or oth­er­wise wound­ed who die at a lat­er time from those injures.
Nevertheless, the 1463 num­ber rep­re­sents an aver­age of 4.008 Jamaican mur­dered dai­ly. In sim­ple terms, Jamaica con­tin­ues to be one of the most dan­ger­ous places on earth to live.
Last year saw homi­cides increase in most police divi­sions by as much as 60% in some cas­es. The Government’s strat­e­gy of SOEs and ZOSO’s has had lit­tle or no mea­sur­able effect on vio­lent crimes. There is real­ly no ben­e­fit in say­ing we told them it wouldn’t.
Nevertheless, the Opposition par­ty’s crim­i­nal sup­port­ing intran­si­gence has pre­cious lit­tle to do with prin­ci­ple or that they have bet­ter ideas. The oppo­si­tion’s refusal to sup­port the exten­sion of the SOEs and ZOSOs is all about being part of the crime enhance­ment cabal that includes the judges and the crim­i­nal rights loud­mouths that are destroy­ing Jamaica.

The oppo­si­tion par­ty has zero com­punc­tion about see­ing the coun­try burned to the ground, and they are quite hap­py to gov­ern over the ash­es. Having access to the peo­ple’s mon­ey has always been the sin­gu­lar focus of the oppo­si­tion party.
However, the PNP is not in pow­er now, and it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the admin­is­tra­tion in pow­er to govern.
It is not governing.
It has­n’t looked out­side the box, so the killings con­tin­ue unabat­ed. If they can’t fix the chaos on the roads, how would I expect them to attend to the vio­lent crime pandemic?

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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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Sheriff Moves To Fire Georgia Deputy Who Commented Online That Ahmaud Arbery ‘Still Got The Death Penalty’

A Georgia sheriff’s deputy in mid­dle Georgia has been “sus­pend­ed with­out pay pend­ing ter­mi­na­tion” after alleged­ly call­ing mur­der vic­tim Ahmaud Arbery a “crim­i­nal” on social media. In addi­tion to label­ing the slain jog­ger as a crim­i­nal, he is accused of smug­ly writ­ing, “he still got the death penalty.”

Houston County Deputy Paul Urhahn com­ment­ed on the Macon outlet’s Facebook post about the recent sen­tenc­ing of Arbery’s killers, Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Bryan. The deputy replied, “That crim­i­nal Arbery still got the death penal­ty though.” On Friday, Jan. 7, the three men were hand­ed down life sen­tences for their roles in the 25-year-old’s death. The McMichaels both received life sen­tences with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, plus an addi­tion­al 20 years. Bryan, a McMichael’s neigh­bor, was sen­tenced to life in prison with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole in 30 years

Judge Timothy Walmsley stat­ed at sen­tenc­ing, “Ahmaud Arbery was then hunt­ed down and shot, and he was killed because indi­vid­u­als here in this court­room took the law into their own hands.”

Despite delet­ing the com­ment, screen­shots have been shared across social media, land­ing in the Houston County Sheriff’s Office. Over the week­end, the sheriff’s office launched an inves­ti­ga­tion, and on the morn­ing of Monday, Jan. 10, decid­ed to sus­pend Urhahn with­out pay and pend­ing termination.

Sheriff Cullen Talton wrote a let­ter detail­ing how the deputy vio­lat­ed sev­er­al of the department’s poli­cies, all relat­ing to code of conduct:

  • Page 5 (4A) – An offi­cer must at all times, on and off duty, con­duct him/​herself in a man­ner which does not bring dis­cred­it to the depart­ment or county.
  • Page 5 (4B) – Conduct unbe­com­ing of an offi­cer shall include that conduct
  • (2) – Which has a ten­den­cy to destroy pub­lic respect for employ­ees and con­fi­dence in the department.

The blow­back from the com­ment did not stop with the depart­ment. Activist Eli Porter, a mem­ber of the Poor And Minority Justice Association told WGXA, “That deputy rep­re­sents that entire depart­ment, and for him to say some­thing like that — I’m just … it got under my skin.”

Porter believed that the sheriff’s imme­di­ate response com­mu­ni­cat­ed a pow­er­ful mes­sage to the com­mu­ni­ty, show­ing every­one that “the sheriff’s office does not stand with what Paul said.”

Few peo­ple have expressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with the dis­graced officer.

Kimberly Ochelli wrote, “Exactly the type of per­son we do not need to be a Peace Officer not only in our beau­ti­ful city, but any­where. He deserved exact­ly what he earned.”

“He deserves to lose his job,” Laurie Hardeman post­ed in the com­ment sec­tion. “When a racist shows his true col­ors they need to learn just how igno­rant they act. And it reflects on how he or she was brought up and how igno­rant their fam­i­ly is also.”

But some believed that his free­dom of speech had been violated.

“The man has a right to his opin­ion, why should some peo­ple be denied their right to express them­selves because they work in cer­tain areas,” wrote Will Maddox.

Lawana Henrich asked, “I do not know what he said but what hap­pened to free­dom of speech?

Urhahn has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to appeal this deci­sion over the next 10 days. If he does not, his ter­mi­na­tion will be effec­tive on Jan. 20.

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My Recent Visit Home

I will be the first to admit I’m no trav­el writer; how­ev­er, it is hard, at least for me, to soak up Jamaica’s nat­ur­al beau­ty with­out shar­ing a few snap­shots with you.
Thanks to the con­ve­nience of the iPhone, walk­ing around with my Canon Easy-share seemed rather odd to every­one I imagined.
So my iPhone it was.

At Dolphin’s Cove Ochi Rios, I a recent trip home.

Pristine Jamaica land we love

There is so much to enjoy if we stop and under­stand how beau­ti­ful our coun­try is.

Enjoying the serenity

Where swim­ming with the Dolphins is an actu­al thing…

Preservation of our coral reefs has allowed our marine life to flourish.

Locals and vis­i­tors lined up wait­ing to swim with the Dolphins at Dolphins Cove…

IMG_​4017

I mar­vel at the beau­ty and seren­i­ty of the place.

My wife agrees.

A house that is built on a rock.

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The JCF Must Stop Jail-breaks, Leave The Judges To Turn Killers Loose To Murder The Innocent…

It is bad enough that the tools avail­able to the police are sub­stan­dard, that they are forced to buy their own uni­forms (real uni­forms), that the pay is shit­ty, on and on and on.
I under­stand that the court sys­tem func­tions as an aid to vio­lent crim­i­nals by turn­ing them loose on bail and appeals and con­tin­u­ing to dis­re­spect the hard-work­ing offi­cers when they haul the mur­der­ers before them to face justice.
The behav­ior of judges is once again a sore point that both the police fed­er­a­tion and the police offi­cers asso­ci­a­tion must act on immediately.
Policing is a noble and respectable pro­fes­sion; police offi­cers should [not] allow crim­i­nal-lov­ing Jamaican judges an inch to dis­re­spect them in the courts. Police have immense pow­ers; learn your pow­er to stop the dis­re­spect­ful com­ments and actions of the crim­i­nals who dis­re­spect you to cur­ry favor with criminals.
They will tell you they are uphold­ing the judi­cia­ry’s integri­ty; they are not; they are sup­port­ing criminals.

That said, there should be no cir­cum­stances under which a pris­on­er walks out of a police lock­up. This is an issue that con­tin­ues to occur repeat­ed­ly, and it has been hap­pen­ing for decades.
Poor man­age­ment at the divi­sion­al lev­el, com­man­ders fail­ure to apply the appro­pri­ate lev­els of lead­er­ship and over­sight. This, how­ev­er, comes from the top, where the top-tier of the force stum­ble from cri­sis to cri­sis with­out devel­op­ing new poli­cies and pro­to­cols to pre­vent these events from occur­ring again.

Instead, when pris­on­ers walk out of police lock­ups, the con­sta­bles and cor­po­rals are pun­ished with­out a full top-down review to deter­mine what hap­pened to ensure it does not hap­pen again.
This is some­thing Deputy Commissioners of police should be work­ing on; they are the most senior offi­cers in the Department. However, if these most senior peo­ple have no expe­ri­ence in actu­al polic­ing but were fast-tracked to the posi­tions they hold because they earned a degree or kissed some ass­es, we have the same prob­lem in the depart­ment as we have in the judiciary.

The Freeport Police sta­tion in Montego Bay is not an old facil­i­ty by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, and it is not a facil­i­ty that some guys can saw through a met­al bar and escape in a back alley.
That some­one could walk out of a facil­i­ty like the Freeport police lock­up and poten­tial­ly kill a wit­ness against him is inexcusable…
The police must main­tain its stan­dard in doing its best to pro­tect the Jamaican peo­ple. It is up to the judges to turn killers loose onto the Jamaican soci­ety to shoot and decap­i­tate inno­cent citizens.
Come on, JCF, you are bet­ter than that.

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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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Do You See It Or Do You Wish To Close Your Eyes?

Some time ago, I post­ed an image of a cop on social media that I thought demon­strat­ed where American polic­ing real­ly was.
As a for­mer Jamaican police offi­cer who ful­ly under­stands the impor­tance of deport­ment and per­cep­tions, I thought it impor­tant to raise aware­ness of what I perceived.

This is a screen­shot of a cop on YouTube rough­ing up a home­less white man who had com­mit­ted no crime.
The ‘cop’ was not under­cov­er, which could explain the ragged tat­tooed look, and he was active­ly patrolling the streets.

Here is anoth­er who was fired in Michigan for being real­ly dis­re­spect­ful to a Black man he arrest­ed for col­lect­ing sig­na­tures for a Tenant’s Association in his hous­ing development.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that fir­ing a cop in the United States is real­ly not pun­ish­ment. They go to anoth­er depart­ment where they are usu­al­ly paid more mon­ey and pro­mot­ed. Unless they are decer­ti­fied and crim­i­nal­ly pros­e­cut­ed, no pun­ish­ment met­ed out real­ly matters.

This cop, who has remained name­less and refused to iden­ti­fy him­self to the per­son film­ing, was fired. Note the beard­ed rough look.

This cop works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His name is Ian Lichterman.

Ian Lichterma. Note the tat­toos he claims rep­re­sent his German her­itage. Now, look at the tat­too on his left arm and com­pare it with the one in the image below.
According to Buzzfeed News, Lichterman does have ties to neonate groups. The Philadelphia PD did an inves­ti­ga­tion and declared they saw noth­ing wrong.

In 2016 Buzzfeed news said this about the Lichterman tat­toos snapped after he was seen doing crowd control.
It has become clear if it wasn’t before, that white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy has per­me­at­ed the halls of American author­i­ty — from the White House, where anti-immi­grant nativists Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka were hired as advis­ers to Trump; to the prison sys­tem, where three Florida cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers, found to be Ku Klux Klan mem­bers, were con­vict­ed of plot­ting to kill a black inmate; to the church, where a Catholic priest and part-time his­to­ry teacher in Virginia was forced to resign after a parish­ioner dis­cov­ered that he‘d orches­trat­ed at least six cross burn­ings dur­ing his time in the KKK; to the mil­i­tary, where a for­mer Marine Corps recruiter and staff sergeant, who retired in January, became leader of the white suprema­cist group Vanguard America; to the fire sta­tion, where a fire­fight­er in Ohio wrote in a Facebook com­ment that he’d rather save a dog than a black per­son because “one dog is more impor­tant than a mil­lion niggers.”

David Borst and George Hunnewell of the Fruitland PD were fired after a law enforce­ment report tied them to the Ku Klux Klan in 2014.
In 2018 these Neo-Nazi cops in Alabama were sus­pend­ed for open­ly dis­play­ing white pow­er signs in this pic­ture. from left to right #1 ‑2 ‑4 & 5.

How many of these peo­ple do you think are oper­at­ing in plain sight in police depart­ments across the coun­try, killing, maim­ing, and lying on reports?
In the image above, the white suprema­cists-cops in Jasper, Alabama, PD, cel­e­brat­ed with white pow­er signs after col­lar­ing an African-American fugi­tive. The cow­ard­ly punks then lied that the signs were a kid’s game. Their pun­ish­ment, two weeks with­out pay, they were allowed to con­tin­ue to be slave catch­ers. As you know, American polic­ing derived from slave-catch­ing and remains so today.
In August of 2020, the Brennan Center For Justice said in a Summary;The government’s response to known con­nec­tions of law enforce­ment offi­cers to vio­lent racist and mil­i­tant groups has been strik­ing­ly insuf­fi­cient.
This writer has made the very same point repeat­ed­ly over the years, albeit less artic­u­late, since the FBI 2006 inter­nal memo was made pub­lic that warned of white suprema­cists infil­trat­ing police depart­ments using what they refer to as ghost skins actors. At the time the memo was writ­ten, the FBI warned that the prac­tice of white suprema­cists infil­trat­ing police depart­ments was a threat to nation­al security.
Ghost skins refer to hate group mem­bers and sym­pa­thiz­ers who don’t overt­ly dis­play their beliefs to blend into soci­ety then advance their white suprema­cist causes.
Part of the rea­son they have cho­sen to enter law enforce­ment is to have mem­bers alert them to poten­tial inves­ti­ga­tions against them, the Brennan Center For Justice said.
It is safe to say that 15 years lat­er, no seri­ous steps have been tak­en to rein in, much less erad­i­cate that can­cer from law enforce­ment despite the increased inci­dences of police vio­lence lead­ing to the deaths of more peo­ple of col­or year over year.
The Supreme Court has basi­cal­ly been mum while Federal appeals courts have giv­en police more and more pow­er to abuse the rights of cit­i­zens under the dubi­ous cloak of qual­i­fied immunity.

In the 2020 Brennan Report Michael Graham stat­ed; While it is wide­ly acknowl­edged that racist offi­cers sub­sist with­in police depart­ments around the coun­try, fed­er­al, state, and local gov­ern­ments are doing far too lit­tle to proac­tive­ly iden­ti­fy them, report their behav­ior to pros­e­cu­tors who might unwit­ting­ly rely on their tes­ti­mo­ny in crim­i­nal cas­es, or pro­tect the diverse com­mu­ni­ties they are sworn to serve.
In con­clu­sion, Graham writes,The affin­i­ty some police offi­cers have shown for armed far-right mili­tia groups at protests is con­found­ing giv­en that many states, includ­ing California, Illinois, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington, have laws bar­ring unreg­u­lat­ed para­mil­i­tary activ­i­ties. And it is most trou­bling because far-right mil­i­tants have often killed police offi­cers. The over­lap between mili­tia mem­bers and the Boogaloo move­ment — whose adher­ents have been arrest­ed for man­u­fac­tur­ing Molotov cock­tails in prepa­ra­tion for an attack at a Black Lives Matter protest in Nevada, incit­ing a riot in South Carolina, and shoot­ing, bomb­ing, and killing police offi­cers in California — high­lights the threat that police engage­ment with these groups pos­es to their law enforce­ment part­ners. See the full report in the link below.
https://​www​.bren​nan​cen​ter​.org/​o​u​r​-​w​o​r​k​/​r​e​s​e​a​r​c​h​-​r​e​p​o​r​t​s​/​h​i​d​d​e​n​-​p​l​a​i​n​-​s​i​g​h​t​-​r​a​c​i​s​m​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​a​c​y​-​a​n​d​-​f​a​r​-​r​i​g​h​t​-​m​i​l​i​t​a​n​c​y​-​law

Rob Stamm

In 2019 the Antifascist group Seven Hills unearthed enough evi­dence on Rob Stamm, a 36-year-old sergeant in the Virginia Capitol police that had respon­si­bil­i­ty for pro­tect­ing the then gov­er­nor Ralph Northam.
Stamm was uncov­ered through his likes on far-right-wing post­ings on social media. Activists noticed a large ban­dage on Stamm’s neck at a protest against the Governor and decid­ed to dig into his back­ground upon which where they found mul­ti­ple links to the far-right. Stamm’s tat­toos also show an alleged affin­i­ty for the far-right, the most obvi­ous of which appears to be a large Iron Cross on his upper left arm, a German war medal. He also alleged­ly had a neo-Pagan Viking rune on his left bicep and what seemed to be a wolf­san­gel on his neck — an ancient Germanic sym­bol often used by far-right groups like the Aryan Nations — which he then attempt­ed to cov­er up with a more gener­ic design.

Hiding in plain sight, these mon­sters are polic­ing com­mu­ni­ties of col­or with the awe­some pow­er of life and death.

None of this was dis­cov­ered by the gov­ern­ment whose job it is to pro­tect all Americans, it was dis­cov­ered by Anti-Fascist American cit­i­zens that have been demo­nized as anti-American in right-wing media like Fox noise and others.
If unearthing dan­ger­ous and vio­lent poten­tial ter­ror­ists bur­rowed into law enforce­ment is anti-American, by def­i­n­i­tion they are say­ing being American means one must be a racist poten­tial terrorist.
This hard­ly scratch­es the sur­face, how­ev­er. In September 2018, a cop in Georgia was sus­pend­ed after it was dis­cov­ered he had liked Facebook posts pro­mot­ing the Ku Klux Klan. In July that year, a deputy at the Clark County Sherrif’s Office in Washington State was fired for mak­ing mer­chan­dise for the Proud Boys, a far-right gang.
Rob Stamm
Rob Stamm was even­tu­al­ly fired from his job after the expo­sure, how­ev­er, the fir­ing of a cop in the United States means very lit­tle. He can sim­ply move to anoth­er depart­ment where he will almost cer­tain­ly be hired and even pro­mot­ed, not despite what he alleged­ly did but because of what he did.
Unless they lose their accred­i­ta­tion to be a police offi­cer los­ing their job when uncov­ered may actu­al­ly mean a pro­mo­tion to anoth­er more tol­er­ant law enforce­ment agency.

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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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Louisiana Judge Blames Sedatives For Using N‑word In Video

No other medium highlights America’s deep race problem more than this one does fearlessly. Many people believe this is a police-only problem it isn’t. America’s race problem runs straight through every sector of American life.
How many Black lives do you think this judge ruined.

A Louisiana judge has claimed that seda­tive drugs are to blame for her usage of a racial slur, after footage was leaked online

Judge Michelle Odinet, 52, can be heard using the racial slur in a viral video clip, which was record­ed last week­end at her fam­i­ly home in Bendel Gardens, Lafayette.

While watch­ing secu­ri­ty footage of a Black male attempt­ing to break into the house, Ms Odinet, along­side oth­er mem­bers of the fam­i­ly, can clear­ly be heard using the n‑word, as well as oth­er profanity.

After one of the younger chil­dren says, “And mom’s yelling n****r, n****r,” a female voice appears to respond, “We have a n****r. It’s a n****r, like a roach.”

A short clip of the inci­dent was shared on Twitter by Huffington Post edi­tor Philp Lewis, which has since been shared over 6000 times.

Judge Michelle Odinet, 52, can be heard using the racial slur in a viral video clip, which was record­ed last week­end at her fam­i­ly home in Bendel Gardens, Lafayette. While watch­ing secu­ri­ty footage of a Black male attempt­ing to break into the house, Ms Odinet, along­side oth­er mem­bers of the fam­i­ly, can clear­ly be heard using the n‑word, as well as oth­er pro­fan­i­ty. After one of the younger chil­dren says, “And mom’s yelling n****r, n****r,” a female voice appears to respond, “We have a n****r. It’s a n****r, like a roach.” A short clip of the inci­dent was shared on Twitter by Huffington Post edi­tor Philp Lewis, which has since been shared over 6000 times.

I had no idea seda­tives could bring out Racism;(sarcasm) even so, does this light-heart­ed ban­ter sounds like she was sedat­ed? I sub­mit that she sound­ed rather elat­ed, not sedated.

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However, in response to her alleged usage of the racial slur, Judge Odinet blamed it on seda­tives, which she claimed to have start­ed tak­ing fol­low­ing the bur­glary attempt.

“My chil­dren and I were the vic­tim of an armed bur­glary at our home,” she explained to The Current (via the Daily Mail).

“The police were called and the assailant was arrest­ed. The inci­dent shook me to my core and my men­tal state was fragile.”

Judge Michelle Odinet (Via Lafayette City Court)
Judge Michelle Odinet (Via Lafayette City Court)

“Anyone who knows me and my hus­band, knows this is con­trary to the way we live our lives. I am deeply sor­ry and ask for your for­give­ness and under­stand­ing as my fam­i­ly and I deal with the emo­tion­al after­math of this armed burglary.

The Republican judge is now fac­ing calls with­in her com­mu­ni­ty to resign from her posi­tion on the Lafayette City Court. She was first elect­ed to the posi­tion just over a year ago, win­ning 57 per cent of the vote against rival can­di­date Jules Edwards.

Leading the calls for her to stand down is Lafayette city mar­shall, Reggie Thomas. “As a proud Black man, and the Lafayette City Marshall, I strong­ly believe Judge Odinet should be held account­able,” he told the Acadiana Advocate.

“I’m sure that peo­ple of col­or will find it impos­si­ble to trust that they will be treat­ed fair­ly and equal­ly when they have to stand for judg­ment before Judge Odinet.

“This type of lan­guage can­not be accept­ed or tol­er­at­ed by any­one, espe­cial­ly those who serve as lead­ers in our city.”

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Soldier’s Near Death Shows Fallacy Of Security Strategy…

You can pack­age a dead Rat in a box, wrap the box in pret­ty Christmas wrap­ping paper, then place a pret­ty bow on it, but in the box is still the corpse of a dead Rat that will even­tu­al­ly smell up the damn place.
The idea of SOEs and ZOSOs as a per­ma­nent crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy is as stu­pid and retard­ed as the peo­ple whose ideas they are.
Throwing groups of sol­diers and police into so-called hotspots to show that crime will go down in that area while ignor­ing and refus­ing to acknowl­edge the rise of vio­lence in oth­er areas is both duplic­i­tous and dangerous.
This is not rock­et sci­ence; drop a huge rock into a small pool, it dis­places some of the water from the pool. The dis­placed water does not cease to exist; it exists in a dif­fer­ent place. So are crim­i­nals dis­placed by the secu­ri­ty forces not forced out of their activ­i­ties; they move their oper­a­tions to oth­er areas.
The vio­lent crime data com­ing from the same police depart­ment sup­ports this irrefutable fact.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​a​t​-​h​a​p​p​e​n​e​d​-​t​o​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​w​e​-​o​n​c​e​-​h​a​d​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​s​-​d​i​d​n​t​-​we/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​b​a​c​k​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​d​a​y​-​w​e​-​g​o​t​-​t​h​e​-​j​o​b​-​d​o​n​e​-​f​r​o​m​-​t​h​e​-​b​o​t​t​o​m​-​up/

Since the Island’s (“so-called inde­pen­dence”), both polit­i­cal par­ties have played pol­i­tics with nation­al secu­ri­ty when in pow­er; they play the same child­ish and dan­ger­ous games with nation­al secu­ri­ty when in opposition.
This has not stopped; the present admin­is­tra­tion unable and unwill­ing to take the nec­es­sary steps to stop the slide into total law­less­ness, still plays pol­i­tics with the SOEs & ZOSOs, hop­ing to pull the wool over the peo­ple’s eyes.
The oppo­si­tion par­ty des­per­ate to gain pow­er plays the same dan­ger­ous games.
In the mean­time, the dead Rat stinks to high heav­en- Gangsters open­ly play war games, putting on dis­play for all to see the awe­some arse­nal they have at their disposal.
And while we are at it, might I add that this year’s mur­der sta­tis­tics have already sur­passed last year’s grue­some total, yet the Government still mad­den­ing­ly talks about the suc­cess­es of ZOSOs & SOEs.
Incompetent and clue­less, com­plic­it and acqui­es­cent, or both, you decide.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​n​e​i​t​h​e​r​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​a​l​-​p​a​r​t​y​-​i​n​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​i​n​t​e​r​e​s​t​e​d​-​i​n​-​c​o​n​t​r​o​l​l​i​n​g​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​t​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​als/​

The failed strat­e­gy of ZOSOs & SOEs can be quan­ti­fied in the irrefutable facts I laid out. Ultimately, the admin­is­tra­tion’s go-to strat­e­gy does not reduce crime over­all, burns out the secu­ri­ty forces, and infringes in a bur­den­some way on the rights of inno­cent Jamaicans for far too long.
But there are also expo­nen­tial­ly more unseen neg­a­tives that com­pe­tent secu­ri­ty strate­gists [must] fore­see and plan to offset.
It must reg­is­ter in the minds of the nation’s lead­ers, for christ’s sake, that sol­diers at check­points on a small Island of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple are not nor­mal. It is a dystopi­an night­mare that allows politi­cians to con­tin­ue to lie to the peo­ple to remain in power.
In a recent arti­cle, I spoke to the qual­i­ty of lead­er­ship at the high­est lev­els of the nation’s secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus; sec­ond rate.
I spoke to the mem­bers of the police high com­mand, includ­ing the Commissioner of police, hold­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at which top com­man­ders of the JCF spoke of the virtues of ZOSOs & SOEs. I point­ed out that I was not the least bit sur­prised that the police high com­mand was par­rot­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s talk­ing points. Conversely, I would be sur­prised if they had grown a back­bone and cho­sen not to.

Ultimately it is up to the head of the Police and Military to exe­cute the Government’s National Security Strategy. With that in mind, I will not fault the Government direct­ly for what hap­pened to a young sol­dier of the Jamaica Defense Force at a check­point last week.
Jamaica Defense Force Private Jermaine Rose was hit at a check­point that was obvi­ous­ly manned by him, and anoth­er sol­dier, the dri­ver of the vehi­cle that broke both his legs, among oth­er seri­ous injuries in Greenwood Saint James, left him bedrid­den today.
The 29-year-old told the media from his bed at JDF Headquarters Up Park Camp that they heard gun­shots on the night of the inci­dent while he and his col­leagues were on duty some­time after mid­night. The two sol­diers decid­ed to check the vehi­cles that were passing.
He recount­ed, “at around 12:30 [am], we saw four cars approach­ing the check­point and we tried to slow them down, and they stopped for a sec­ond and then dem tek time approach the check­point…, and then they were dri­ving cross and cross in the road,” recount­ed the Tower Hill, St Andrew resident.“They (the cars) tried to hit down one of my col­leagues first, and he jumped out the road, and just as I was about to jump [out of the road], a car hit me and broke my two feet and dis­lo­cat­ed my right hand,” he said. According to Rose, the vehi­cle’s impact on his body result­ed in him being flung in the air and land­ing on the side­walk. The car did not stop.

Under what plau­si­ble sce­nario could secu­ri­ty plan­ners place young men and women into volatile sit­u­a­tions like these with­out the prop­er sup­port struc­ture to ensure that this could not hap­pen and the offend­er is not imme­di­ate­ly apprehended?
Police work is inher­ent­ly dangerous,-yes police work, that’s what the sol­diers were out there doing with­out police training.
Common sense dic­tates that if there are check­points, there must be ade­quate resources, i.e., enough offi­cers with assets and vehi­cles ready for any offend­er who would try to breach the checkpoint.
The idea of a check­point only makes sense if those man­ning them can enforce every aspect of those checkpoints.
Assuming that the motorists had some­thing to do with the shots the sol­diers heard, what incen­tive would they have to stop and be searched and arrest­ed at a sad-sack check­point manned by a cou­ple of sol­diers on foot?
In a coun­try of laws, the lead­ers who placed the lives of these young peo­ple in that sit­u­a­tion would have been sub­ject to an inquiry and brought up on charges.
We know that this will be shrugged away by the polit­i­cal lead­ers as noth­ing to be alarmed about; how­ev­er, if the events hap­pen­ing in our coun­try do not alarm the Jamaican peo­ple, I have no idea what will.

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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 Circular Firing Squad Of American Police Violence

Continue read­ing →

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Democracy Dies When We Fail To Open Our Eyes

They say Democracy dies in the dark; I dis­agree; democ­ra­cy dies when we fail to open our eyes to those killing it.
Who can hon­est­ly say they did not see what Donald Trump was doing from as ear­ly as 2015 when he was tout­ing a run for the United States presidency?
You should not lie that in 2015 ‑2016 you did not see reporters repeat­ed­ly ask him if he lost the elec­tions, would he con­cede, and he refused to say he would. You saw it, yet mil­lions of you vot­ed for him.
This was the very first time in any of our lives that we had seen a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date refuse to say he would abide by the norms estab­lished by the found­ing fathers of this great republic.
What did you think he would do if he refused to abide by the most basic estab­lished norms that had guid­ed the actions of pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates for the life of the republic?

Trump with Xi

When he attacked the foun­da­tion pil­lars of the repub­lic, what did you think was behind that? The Courts, the Media, the Investigative Agencies of Government that we all trust to keep the nation safe from ene­mies from with­in and with­out; did you not see the strat­e­gy as alien to American polit­i­cal culture?
You saw him go on a sys­temic cru­sade against media hous­es that refused to par­rot his pro­pa­gan­da and lies; what did you think that was about? Are you going to pre­tend that you did not know that those char­ac­ter­is­tics were exact­ly indica­tive of the behav­ior of would-be dictators?
Oh, by the way, in addi­tion to tak­ing on the per­sona of strong­men, he open­ly expressed ado­ra­tion for them; Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, North Korea’s Kim Jon- Un, China’s Xi Jinping, Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and oth­er despots around the globe.

Birds of the same feath­er flock togeth­er: Trump & Duterte

He also open­ly pre­tend­ed to joke about being pres­i­dent for life if he was elect­ed; after he was elect­ed, he open­ly flout­ed the idea of remain­ing pres­i­dent for sev­er­al terms.
None of this has ever hap­pened before, but Americans pre­tend­ed that this was nor­mal. In 2016, Americans elect­ed the most immoral, rep­re­hen­si­ble, amoral and cor­rupt human being to be their pres­i­dent over an accom­plished woman.
Donald Trump ham­mered away at American Democracy through­out his four-year pres­i­den­cy with help from sur­ro­gates inside and out­side the Republican party.
Trump com­mit­ted every crime a pres­i­dent could com­mit, and he knew he would lose the 2020 elec­tions. Still, he had a plan to stay in pow­er. That plan was to stack the Supreme Court with as many Justices as he could; he added three in his sin­gle term with the help of the Mitch McConnell anti-democ­ra­cy Republican conference.
Trump planned to have some Republican states declare that they could not deter­mine the win­ner of the elec­tions in their state, which would toss the mat­ter to the house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives, where Republicans had a 26 – 24 major­i­ty of state leg­is­la­tures they control.
This would ulti­mate­ly toss the elec­tions to the Supreme Court he had recent­ly remade with his stooges Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amey Coney Barrett, in addi­tion to the three that were there pre­vi­ous­ly, John Roberts, Samuel Alito a hyper-par­ti­san and of course Uncle Clarence Tom-Ass.

Whispering with Erdogan

Despite every­thing Donald Trump did before and dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, he was elect­ed pres­i­dent, and there­after he began dis­man­tling American Democracy.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump’s chief strate­gist Steve Bannon said that Trump’s cab­i­net picks were aimed at the “decon­struc­tion of the admin­is­tra­tive state,” mean­ing weak­en­ing reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies and oth­er bureau­crat­ic entities.
A dunce him­self, Trump chose Betsy DeVos to run the edu­ca­tion depart­ment, Louis Dejoy to head the US postal ser­vice, and a host of oth­er flunkies vehe­ment­ly opposed to how the agen­cies and cab­i­net posi­tions they were head­ing operated.
Steven Mnuchin at Treasury, Jeff Sessions at Justice, Ryan Zinke at Interior, Ben Carson at Housing, Scott Pruit at the E.P.A, con­firmed what Bannon had bragged about to their CPAC Klan rally.

A vicious dic­ta­tor and a clown wannabe

What exact­ly did Donald Trump, a failed busi­ness­man, bring to the table that caused him to be elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States after he was heard brag­ging on tape just before the elec­tions that he grabbed young women by their genitalia?
I mean, the pop­u­lar Gary Hart was dead in the water for far less, Howard Dean tanked after let­ting off a freak­ish howl. Bush senior lost the elec­tion arguably because he did not know the price of a loaf of bread.
American polit­i­cal his­to­ry is replete with can­di­dates of both polit­i­cal par­ties fail­ing due to the prover­bial October sur­prise. Usually, some issue came up that shocked voters.
Donald Trump’s past and present were not just sor­did; they were dis­gust­ing and com­plete­ly unsuit­able for dog-catch­er, much less the pres­i­den­cy of the United States.
So what was it about Trump that caused Americans to elect him the 45th United States pres­i­dent? Please do not tell me that he was a busi­ness­man from out­side Washington DC, it is a crock, and you all know it.
It is the same sto­ry that the main­stream media fed the nation for decades about white blue-col­lar work­ers, rather than call­ing them what they tru­ly are, large­ly une­d­u­cat­ed racist white people.

Here he is with M.B.S.

What was it that caused them to turn out to vote for Donald Trump in num­bers nev­er before seen for a Republican pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, 75 mil­lion? What was Donald Trump’s appeal despite all of his crimes and faux pas, racism, and being the first pres­i­dent in his­to­ry to be impeached twice, and in a sin­gle term?
Was any­one sur­prised that despite every­thing Donald Trump was allowed to get away with, he decid­ed to orches­trate a coup d’ e’tat against the American Constitution and gov­ern­ment to make him­self pres­i­dent for life?
Trump’s plan has always been to seize pow­er then pass on lead­er­ship to his under­lings as he sees fit, as is the case in the coun­tries named above run by bru­tal dictators.

With Kim jun Un

Every one of those 75 mil­lion who vot­ed for him knew what he was about. Some were not sophis­ti­cat­ed enough to under­stand that he want­ed to be King, but it would not have mat­tered even if they were that smart.
Retaining an America in which whites are priv­i­leged, and every oth­er race is sub­servient to whites has been far more impor­tant to some than retain­ing the world’s old­est democracy.
That was what inspired them to turn out on January 6th in their thou­sands to over­throw the American exper­i­ment to install an imbe­cil­ic moron who would do what­ev­er they want­ed to fur­ther white dom­i­na­tion over oth­er races in America.
He is an amoral char­ac­ter who will do any­thing to enrich him­self, includ­ing tear­ing down the coun­try he claims to love but is inca­pable of loving.
President Joe Biden gath­ered over 100 world lead­ers at a sum­mit and made a plea to bol­ster democ­ra­cies, call­ing safe­guard­ing rights and free­doms in the face of ris­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism the “defin­ing chal­lenge” of the cur­rent era.
Nowhere is Democracy in greater dan­ger than in the world’s old­est democ­ra­cy, right here in America, where the Trump-packed Supreme court and Republican leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try have placed American democ­ra­cy on life support.
For the court, prece­dent in vot­ing and oth­er rights mean noth­ing. At the same time, the leg­is­la­tures use vot­er-sup­pres­sion laws and ger­ry­man­der­ing to select the vot­ers they choose rather than the vot­ers choos­ing them.
If and when American falls, so too will the remain­ing few democ­ra­cies across the globe; some esti­mates say only 20-per­cent of the world’s peo­ple live in a free country.
Only one in five peo­ple live in a soci­ety that can be called free, and it is get­ting worse.

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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 Consequences Of Actions On Both Side.…

One of the guid­ing prin­ci­ples of my life has been and still is that actions have con­se­quences. I will explain how actions result in dan­ger­ous and dead­ly con­se­quences imper­il­ing the per­son who ini­ti­at­ed the action and oth­ers around them.
I speak of the killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Brooklyn Center Minnesota man who was killed in the com­mu­ni­ty of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, a mere 10 miles from where Derek Chauvin was on tri­al in the killing of George Floyd.

20-year old Daunte Wright and his infant son.

Former senior police offi­cer Kim Potter faces tri­al for killing the young father. I have thought about this case for a very long time, and I have read a lot of mate­r­i­al on what tran­spired that led to the young man’s death; and I have also thought about the issue from the per­spec­tive of a for­mer police officer.
Most of all, I have giv­en thought to some of the com­ments that peo­ple on all sides have made, most­ly along balka­nized racial and ide­o­log­i­cal lines.

Former police offi­cer and killer of Daunte Wright Kim Potter

Let us drill down as rea­son­able people.
Did offi­cer Kim Potter com­mit murder?
Murder is the killing of a per­son by anoth­er with mal­ice afore­thought. It is dif­fi­cult to say that the offi­cer want­ed to mur­der Daunte Wright when she attempt­ed to arrest him for hav­ing an out­stand­ing warrant.
Before The police stopped Daunte Wright, nei­ther offi­cer Kim Potter nor the oth­er offi­cers involved in the inci­dent knew that mis­ter Wright had an out­stand­ing warrant.
There are claims that Daunte Wright had no dri­ver’s license, his tags were expired, there was an order of pro­tec­tion issued against him, and of course, there was a war­rant out for his arrest on weapons charges.
At the ten­der age of 20-years old, it is fair to say that mis­ter Wright was on a slip­pery slope and head­ing for disaster.
The sem­i­nal issue here is that the police were not privy to any of that infor­ma­tion until they decid­ed to pull over his car for an air fresh­er hang­ing over his rearview mirror.

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Officer Potter is report­ed to have received exten­sive train­ing in know­ing the dif­fer­ence between a taser and a ser­vice weapon. Officers whose dom­i­nant hand is their right usu­al­ly wear the taser on their left side, and their ser­vice weapon on the right.
Left-hand­ed cops would do the reverse. Some cops wear the taser on the front of their uni­form. Regardless of how it is worn, the idea is to ensure there is no mis­tak­ing the use of each weapon.
Officer Potter claimed that she mis­tak­en­ly pulled her ser­vice weapon instead of her taser when she shot Daunte Wright.
As a for­mer police offi­cer, I am ful­ly con­ver­sant that actions have con­se­quences; the imme­di­ate response of offi­cer Potter after shoot­ing mis­ter Wright can be crit­i­cized, but it is dif­fi­cult to argue that she was not trau­ma­tized immediately.
That video will go a long way in her defense that she had no inten­tion of shoot­ing mis­ter Wright.
As we try to make sense of what occurred, we must remem­ber that even if offi­cer Potter did not intend to shoot Daunte Wright-Daunte Wright is no less dead, and offi­cer Potter killed him.
The fact that mal­ice is not present does not mean there was­n’t neg­li­gence, care­less­ness, or reck­less­ness, all aggra­vat­ed, because mis­ter Wright is dead.

Daunte Wright is dead; sor­ry, I made a mis­take can­not change that fact.
There may not have been mal­ice afore­thought, but that does not exon­er­ate offi­cer Potter of culpability.
The jury is almost Lilly white, as is cus­tom­ary when police offi­cers face tri­al. It is impor­tant to see how these peo­ple will hon­or their obligations.
Daunte Wright made a series of mis­takes in his life, includ­ing choos­ing not to sub­mit to being arrest­ed. Sometimes bad deci­sions have cumu­la­tive effects, and the case of Daunte Wright’s death is a clas­sic exam­ple of the cumu­la­tive effect of bad decisions.
The most impor­tant take­away from this case is that the police pro­filed Daunte Wright using the air fresh­en­er to ini­ti­ate an ille­gal pre­tex­tu­al stop.
Daunte Wright is dead because of that pre­tex­tu­al stop. Officer Kim Potter is fac­ing felony charges because of that pre­tex­tu­al stop.
As long as police across the coun­try are allowed to use pre­tex­tu­al stops to harass the peo­ple they want to, peo­ple will con­tin­ue to die. Not just from mis­takes as in this case, but the raft of killings of inno­cent unarmed motorists by tyran­ni­cal wannabe-Rambo cops.

This is a case where the defense for for­mer offi­cer Potter should show some class and not try to impeach the char­ac­ter of Daunte Wright.-Daunte Wright’s record already impeach­es him.
But noth­ing in his record war­rant­ed the death sen­tence. In defend­ing his client, Kim Potter’s defense attor­ney has been on a tear in try­ing to make the case that mis­ter Wright got what he deserved.
They can­not help them­selves even though the defense strat­e­gy has­n’t been that the offi­cers were in fear for their lives; Potter’s defense lawyers are mak­ing the case that he deserved what he got. It is clas­sic white man’s vit­ri­ol because nei­ther he nor his chil­dren will ever face being racial­ly pro­filed by the police in America.
Officer Potter makes for a sym­pa­thet­ic fig­ure even among the litany of the illic­it police killing of minorities.
Kim Potter was oper­at­ing in a flawed sys­tem that empow­ers her to abuse rights, that sys­tem not only endan­gered the lives of Daunte Wright and his girl­friend but also placed her in the posi­tion she is in today. She should face the con­se­quences for his death, and that is the rea­son there are less­er offenses.
That is why pros­e­cu­tors appro­pri­ate­ly charged for­mer offi­cer Potter with first-degree manslaugh­ter and reck­less han­dling or use of a firearm.
She should be con­vict­ed on both charges.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mikebeckles.com.A

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Today In Liguanea Saint Andrew, (crude Language & Violence) Caution.

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Back In The Day We Got The Job Done From The Bottom Up.…

Deterrent is an impor­tant part of any polic­ing strat­e­gy; vis­i­ble uni­formed offi­cers in spe­cif­ic areas are impor­tant to shore up the con­fi­dence of those that police seek to reas­sure and send a clear mes­sage to those they want to …deter.
However, the deter­rent aspect should only be the frontal part of any polic­ing strat­e­gy and planning.
The main strat­e­gy for plan­ners can­not and should not be just about uni­formed cops out in num­bers at cer­tain times like dur­ing the Christmas season.
The most impor­tant part of the plan should work like a com­put­er moth­er­board, not just what you see on the com­put­er screen, but what hap­pens behind the screen that you can­not see.
Simply put, there bet­ter be a com­pre­hen­sive plan that includes swat, detec­tives, the uti­liza­tion of plain­clothes assets, con­fi­den­tial infor­mants, assets plant­ed with­in the groups you are work­ing to dis­man­tle, eyes and ears on those groups, etc.

Trotting out some stu­dent con­sta­bles you had at the acad­e­my march­ing up-down, up-down to the out­dat­ed and use­less train­ing man­u­al for a few weeks or months, wear­ing that ridicu­lous­ly imprac­ti­cal uni­form should reas­sure no one, but rather should give pause and con­cern that even at this late stage this is the best that the nation’s secu­ri­ty plan­ners can muster.
Gabbing has always been a prob­lem of the police *high command*-*whatever that is.
They nev­er real­ly mat­tered in any use­ful way in crime reduc­tion in our coun­try, and as I point­ed out in a recent arti­cle, they only took cred­it for the work that the peo­ple at the bot­tom did.
For those rea­sons, as a young man who passed through the JCF, I had zero regard for what exist­ed as the *high-com­mand* then; I don’t today.
If you are no good at the thing you are best at, what good are you?

Assuming that what I saw in one of the local dailies this morn­ing is the plan the police depart­ment has for the Western Parishes, and more specif­i­cal­ly Area One, res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers should be very con­cerned for the Christmas season.
Laying out your strat­e­gy in detail to the media is actu­al­ly telling the crim­i­nals what assets you have and how you intend to uti­lize those assets.
It is rea­son­able to say that the transna­tion­al crime plan­ners in Jamaica are heads and shoul­ders above the police planners.
Political lead­ers and oth­ers have said so based on the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the crimes being car­ried out.
This writer warned many years ago that this would hap­pen large­ly due to the large num­ber of crim­i­nal depor­tees com­ing in from indus­tri­al­ized nations.
It is fair; I believe to assume that when the police detail com­pre­hen­sive­ly how they intend to counter the crim­i­nals, the crim­i­nals have the capa­bil­i­ty to devel­op coun­ter­mea­sures to go around police plans.
I mean, for the love of God, why would a senior police plan­ner detail to the media the mea­sures he intends to exe­cute to keep cit­i­zens safe, except that he likes to chat and be seen?

Throughout the years, the JCF and Jamaica have ben­e­fit­ed from the name of some brave offi­cers. Some have used vary­ing meth­ods, includ­ing unortho­dox, to get results for the Jamaican people.
Their meth­ods have, with­out a doubt, result­ed in the preser­va­tion of count­less lives. Those offi­cers, some well-known oth­ers not so much, have giv­en incred­i­ble unsung ser­vice to our peo­ple and nation, some mak­ing the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice in ser­vice to their beloved country.
Whether we agree with them or not is not the issue. When we look at the cost-ben­e­fit ratio was their efforts worth it? And as Ronald Reagan asked vot­ers in his cam­paign against President Jimmy Carter in 79, are you bet­ter off now than you were four years ago?
I ask Jamaicans now,” are you bet­ter off now than when those offi­cers had your back”?
I salute you all: Joe Williams, Trinity, Bigga Ford, Parro Campbell, Noël Asphall, OC Hare, Isiah Laing, Spungy, Dadrick Henry, Tony Hewitt, and every­one in between, men and women.
We were all imper­fect men and women doing a dif­fi­cult job with lit­tle or no help, but our hearts were in the right place.
In some instances, yes, we used unortho­doxy, but we kept the peo­ple safe.
We were not into talk­ing to the media, we were about the peo­ple’s business.
You can talk about mod­ern­iza­tion all you want but if the video does­n’t match the audio then it is all gibberish.
The crim­i­nals are win­ning this war and you have no clue what you are doing. You can­not plan for what you nev­er trained for, lived, or expe­ri­enced. Reading some­thing in a book does not a police offi­cer make.

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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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‘You Don’t Belong Here’: Son Charged With Assault After Mom Calls Cops On Black Worker

A man accused of racial­ly pro­fil­ing a Black work­er in a Tennessee park­ing garage with his white mom has been charged with assault after a video of the alter­ca­tion went viral on social media, the Nashville Metro police said.

According to an arrest war­rant filed Dec. 2, Edward Brennan took a swing at Johnny Martinez, who was check­ing cars for park­ing per­mits in the Nashville garage, after his mom called the police because Martinez refused to show them iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. “A rea­son­able per­son would regard the con­tact as extreme­ly offen­sive or provoca­tive,” caus­ing Martinez to fear “immi­nent bod­i­ly injury, the war­rant states.

Martinez told The Daily Beast that he was work­ing in the River House apart­ment building’s park­ing garage on the evening of Nov. 27, when he saw the white moth­er and son mon­i­tor­ing him.

Entitled white Karen and her Ken- son

“As I was doing my rounds…I noticed peo­ple watch­ing me,” he explained.

As he con­tin­ued to work, Martinez said he tried to avoid the pair until the moth­er alleged­ly told him, “You don’t belong here. How did you get here?”

In a video orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on YouTube, Martinez can be seen film­ing the moth­er and son as they ques­tion him. Brennan tells Martinez that he will call the police, and the moth­er — iden­ti­fied as “Bitsy” — asks for Martinez’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Brennan then walks toward a car off-cam­era while the moth­er con­tin­ues pes­ter­ing Martinez.

YouTube player

When the son comes back on cam­era, he strikes Martinez, knock­ing a bot­tle open­er off his key­chain. Martinez told The Daily Beast that when he went to pick it up, Brennan alleged­ly tried to attack him again.

“When he attacked me, he swung, he almost hit me in the face,” Martinez said. “He broke this bot­tle open­er off of my keys. When I went to go pick it up, he lunged.”

Martinez said that he wait­ed for the police to show up, but the mom and son left. When reached for com­ment, Edward Brennan hung up on The Daily Beast.

Martinez explained that he worked for a boot­ing com­pa­ny that has hun­dreds of con­tracts with prop­er­ties across Nashville. His job was to make sure that vehi­cles at those prop­er­ties had per­mits to park at those locations.

“If they didn’t have a per­mit, we would immo­bi­lize the vehi­cle. We would put a boot on it,” he said.

He explained that he thinks it’s nor­mal for peo­ple to be curi­ous about what he’s doing while check­ing cars. But with his large head­lamp, knee pads, and lan­yard, he should appear offi­cial enough for peo­ple to believe he’s working.

River House apart­ments declined to com­ment on the matter.

Martinez said that he was more shocked than any­thing about the inci­dent, which left him feel­ing anx­ious days later.

“I felt like crap,” he said. “I thought I was going to have a typ­i­cal Karen moment.”
(This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at the dailybeast)

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Colonization Of The Mind, This Time By So-called Educated Blacks/​colonization Nonetheless…

As a soci­ety, Jamaica has so far to go that it is some­times eas­i­er to throw up the prover­bial arm and say there is no point in try­ing to fix the problems.
The lev­el of cor­rup­tion and stu­pid­i­ty is incom­pre­hen­si­ble. Additionally, the peo­ple are not exact­ly edu­cat­ed on how mod­ern soci­eties are sup­posed to oper­ate; we are in seri­ous trouble.
We can safe­ly drill down on how the peo­ple edu­cat­ed at the University of the West Indies and the oth­er left­ist col­leges on the Island have been able to do so much dam­age to our once pris­tine Island culture.
We are pret­ty con­ver­sant by now that the Country’s lead­ers have all but for a few excep­tions, been edu­cat­ed, or should I say indoc­tri­nat­ed.…. say it with me-“up by uwi,” dwl.
You see the group­think; you see the one-track mono­lith­ic thought process­es of the actors, regard­less of the branch of gov­ern­ment in which they bur­rowed themselves.
From the courts to Jamaica House and else­where, we see how those insti­tu­tions have indoc­tri­nat­ed rather than edu­cat­ed result­ing in dire con­se­quences for our country.

Nowhere is that evi­dence more vis­i­ble than in the qual­i­ty of the polit­i­cal lead­ers we have run­ning our coun­try; dum­b­ass­es who are inca­pable of sit­ting togeth­er and look­ing at laws that have worked for oth­er coun­tries, see­ing how they would fit Jamaica, and pass laws that pro­tect the cit­i­zens of our country.
Arrogant nar­cis­sists, most­ly unlearned loud­mouths, lack­ing the humil­i­ty nec­es­sary to say I was wrong or I don’t know.
So the coun­try is caught up in an exis­ten­tial cyclone of igno­rance and stu­pid­i­ty, cre­at­ed and nur­tured by those the peo­ple chose to lead.
But what could we expect when lead­ers are not cho­sen because of their intel­lect or track record of sound leadership?
We have always been peo­ple impressed with form, not sub­stance. We always val­ued soar­ing rhetoric over rea­soned per­for­mance, flashy per­sonas over lev­el-head­ed ret­i­cent, proven leadership.
Yup, we are the peo­ple who call for the release of con­vict­ed mur­der­ers and dem­a­gogue preach­ers of the gospel; we lit­er­al­ly do these things.

It is easy then that they who have supped from the bit­ter cup of decep­tion and brain­wash­ing can so eas­i­ly deceive the rest of us who got our edu­ca­tion down by grass yard or at the uni­ver­si­ty of hard-knocks.
Of course, they take us for fools.
How else could judges decide on what they want to do with mur­der­ers out­side of the dic­tates of the laws?
How else could defense lawyers ask police wit­ness­es why they did not inform INDECOM that he had swift­ly removed a coop­er­at­ing wit­ness from a crime scene?
Do these defense lawyers know that INDECOM has noth­ing to do with police inves­ti­ga­tions and strate­gies? Or do they throw shit against a wall and see what sticks?
Fortunately, Bryan Sykes pre­sid­ing over the Klansman tri­al told the lit­tle twerp that this was a bench tri­al and that he would not be ana­lyz­ing the evi­dence through the lens of a jury.
Doing what they are used to doing, throw­ing innu­en­dos and unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions to igno­rant juries that are some­times made up of peo­ple with active crim­i­nals in their fam­i­lies in an effort to cre­ate doubt, result­ing in guilty mur­der­ers being set free.
What did we expect when we have defense lawyers defend­ing crim­i­nals in court in the morn­ing, then run­ning over to the par­lia­ment build­ing to decide on crim­i­nal statutes as mem­bers of parliament?
How did we expect to have laws friend­ly to the good of ordi­nary law-abid­ing Jamaicans when we allowed this kind of con­flict of interest?
Worse yet, many judges come from the defense side of the aisle rather than the pros­e­cu­tor’s side. Can we now see why judges in Jamaica are so hos­tile to the peo­ple’s interests?

The bot­tom line is that these lit­tle Tadpoles from up by Uwi, swim­ming around in the lit­tle pool, are real­ly con­temp­tu­ous of the Jamaican peo­ple. They do not care about the twelve hun­dred plus mur­ders each year. They do not care that Travel agents are shun­ning jamaica, and major nations are issu­ing trav­el advi­sories to their nation­als wish­ing to trav­el to our country.
They have con­vinced them­selves they are smarter than the rest of us; after all, they were all edu­cat­ed -“up by uwi.”
And that makes them experts in all things, and they would rather burn the damn thing down and rule over the ashes.
They can only feel good about them­selves when they oper­ate as lords among a pop­u­la­tion of serfs.
It is anoth­er form of col­o­niza­tion, but the peo­ple are blind to it.
That is their mind­set until the rest of us put a stop to it.

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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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Justice Department Closes Investigation Into Emmett Till Killing After Failing To Prove Key Witness Lied

The Justice Department has offi­cial­ly closed its inves­ti­ga­tion into the infa­mous killing of Emmett Till with­out fed­er­al charges for a sec­ond time, leav­ing only more ques­tions after a poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant claim from one of the last liv­ing wit­ness­es led inves­ti­ga­tors on a fresh hunt for evidence.

(Original Caption) Friends restrain grief-strick­en Mrs. Mamie Bradley (left) as her son’s body is low­ered into the grave after a four day, open cas­ket funer­al. The 15-year old Negro young­ster, Emmett Till, was shot and clubbed to death last week in Greenwood, Mississippi. He is believed to have been mur­dered for alleged­ly whistling at a white woman. Two men have con­fessed kid­nap­ping the youth by deny killing him.
In 2017, pro­fes­sor Timothy Tyson unearthed what appeared to be a key piece of evi­dence in one of the most haunt­ing and gris­ly mur­ders doc­u­ment­ed in the Jim Crow Era: a recan­ta­tion from the woman at the cen­ter of the case who had accused Till of mak­ing sex­u­al advances at her over 60 years ago.
Yet after an exhaus­tive inves­ti­ga­tion, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has now con­clud­ed it can­not prove the woman lied to fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors about her story.
After CNN report­ed the devel­op­ment in the case ear­li­er Monday, the depart­ment sub­se­quent­ly made pub­lic a memo explain­ing the evi­dence inves­ti­ga­tors reviewed and its rea­sons for clos­ing the mat­ter with­out fed­er­al charges.
Read more here:https://​www​.cnn​.com/​2​0​2​1​/​1​2​/​0​6​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​e​m​m​e​t​t​-​t​i​l​l​-​c​a​s​e​-​c​l​o​s​e​d​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​tml

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Judges Fraser & Morrison Cannot Both Be Right With Disparate Sentences…

On December 2nd, I respond­ed in a way that I am nev­er proud of when I am pissed; my response was after the twelve (12) year sen­tence hand­ed down to a dou­ble mur­der­er by Bertram Morrison.
In sen­tenc­ing 21-year-old Linden Powell for dou­ble mur­der, Morrison also ruled that he would be avail­able for parole after only ten (10) years.
The dou­ble mur­der­er was also pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to 18 months impris­on­ment at hard labor on each of two counts of firearm offenses.
That 18 months sen­tence giv­en by anoth­er judge was incred­i­bly offen­sive giv­en the nation’s crime pan­dem­ic. However, the tragedy is that he was giv­en such a lenient sen­tence, and we see the direct result of how these unelect­ed Judges are ruin­ing our coun­try from behind closed doors.
My out­burst on the 2nd lacked focus, I am the first to admit, but I can­not write in beau­ti­ful lan­guage when I see what they are get­ting away with.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​m​o​n​g​r​e​l​-​j​u​d​g​e​s​-​w​h​o​-​a​r​e​-​t​u​r​n​i​n​g​-​m​a​s​s​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​e​r​s​-​l​o​o​s​e​-​i​n​-​j​a​m​a​i​ca/

Bertram Morrison

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The sen­tence hand­ed down by Bertram Morrison is a trav­es­ty to the Judicial process, to the Jamaica peo­ple, and a clear wink and nod to the mur­der­ers who are run­ning amok in our country.
More than any­thing, the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly light sen­tence for what was two mur­ders brings into sharp focus some­thing I have been report­ing on, cor­rup­tion with­in the judi­cial system.
I do not know whether this was a case where mon­ey changed hands. I am [not] say­ing that mon­ey changed hands; I am say­ing that these kinds of sen­tences cause spec­u­la­tion, which does no good to the process.
If I had the slight­est bit of infor­ma­tion that mon­ey changed hands, I would report it here.
If and when I get to the bot­tom of these acts of betray­al against the Jamaican peo­ple, I will not be shy about report­ing it, as what pass­es for media in our coun­try does daily.

Since I do not yet have evi­dence of malfea­sance, let us exam­ine the pos­si­ble ratio­nale for this out­ra­geous sen­tence, which the Director Of Public Prosecution is appro­pri­ate­ly appealing.
♦The sus­pect plead guilty. Pleading guilty to a crime is com­mend­able when an offend­er is caught. Prosecutors have always sought to give the accused some con­ces­sion for com­ing clean and help­ing police and pros­e­cu­tors catch oth­er dan­ger­ous criminals.
In this case, pros­e­cu­tors asked for more than dou­ble the time that Morrison gave the defendant.
What mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances could there be to over­come the aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances of this cold-blood­ed killer’s dou­ble mur­ders, in addi­tion to his past crim­i­nal his­to­ry? If there were any mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances we cer­tain­ly haven’t heard of any.
Here we have a crim­i­nal whom the police removed from the streets after being arrest­ed on firearms charges twice and was released by these crim­i­nal judges, and what did he do? He went out and mur­dered two peo­ple that we know of, and God knows how many more.
As a for­mer police offi­cer, I strong­ly sup­port­ed this move becom­ing a real­i­ty in Jamaica (grant­i­ng some lenien­cy to crim­i­nals who plead guilty and assist­ing law enforce­ment in fur­ther investigations).
I should have remem­bered that there’s noth­ing right­eous and good that Jamaicans in posi­tions of pow­er will not desecrate.
What these Judges are doing is des­e­crat­ing our judi­cial process.
I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly opposed Delroy Chuck’s scorched earth approach to cut the sen­tence an accused would receive in half sim­ply because they plead guilty to the charge/​s.
Delroy Chuck serves the inter­est of crim­i­nals, as do many high­ly placed gov­ern­ment offi­cials in the Island nation; the con­se­quences to the coun­try have been devastating.
I pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that Delroy Chuck’s dri­ve to remove mur­der cas­es from courts dock­ets sim­ply because they have been there for five years is tan­ta­mount to the tax­pay­ers pay­ing Chuck to rep­re­sent Jamaica’s murderers.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​y​-​p​a​y​-​d​e​l​r​o​y​-​c​h​u​c​k​-​w​i​t​h​-​t​a​x​-​d​o​l​l​a​r​s​-​t​o​-​l​o​b​b​y​-​f​o​r​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​ls/

♦Sentencing guide­lines. Sure, judges are guid­ed by sen­tenc­ing guide­lines, but this case had noth­ing to do with sen­tenc­ing guide­lines. This judge bla­tant­ly said ‘fuck you” to the Jamaican peo­ple by impos­ing a twelve-year sen­tence on the dou­ble-mur­der accused. So I once again call for new laws and sen­tenc­ing for mur­der­ers and those who com­mit oth­er vio­lent crimes. (See 10-point plan for Jamaica’s recov­ery below.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​i​s​-​1​0​-​p​o​i​n​t​-​p​l​a​n​-​h​a​s​-​b​e​e​n​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​t​a​b​l​e​-​f​o​r​-​a​-​d​e​c​a​de/
We can under­stand the idea that police offi­cers should exem­pli­fy a high­er stan­dard of con­duct than the aver­age cit­i­zen. I can live with that idea since cops are tasked with bring­ing crim­i­nals to justice.
However, inside those police uni­forms are human beings just like every­one else. Notwithstanding, I will not spend time argu­ing that police should­n’t be held to a high­er stan­dard than most — I am in agreement.
However, let us exam­ine anoth­er case right there in Jamaica, adju­di­cat­ed by anoth­er judge in which some­one lost his life.
The dif­fer­ence, in this case, was that a police offi­cer was alleged­ly involved.

David Fraser

In 2017 for­mer police con­sta­ble Mark Russell was sen­tenced to life in prison for assist­ing in the exe­cu­tion-style killing of a 17-year-old gang­ster in 2007. Former con­sta­ble Russell will have to serve 24 years in prison before being eli­gi­ble for parole.
Constable Russell was assigned to the Hunts Bay Police Station when he was accused of assist­ing in the crime. Judge David Fraser sen­tenced con­sta­ble Russell.
Fraser said Russell would not have been eli­gi­ble for parole until after 30 years if he had not already spent six years in cus­tody — one year in the United States, where he had fled, and the remain­ing years in Jamaica after being extradited.
No one in their right mind could rea­son­ably try to negate what the accused con­sta­ble did and was found guilty of.
I also agree that if the con­sta­ble com­mit­ted the act for which he was found guilty, the sen­tence hand­ed down by the court is in line with the sen­tences that mur­der­ers should receive across the board, no exception…
The glar­ing incon­sis­ten­cy in these two sen­tences demon­strates a cou­ple of things.
(1) There are two jus­tice sys­tems in Jamaica, one that aids vio­lent crim­i­nals and high­ly placed Jamaicans, and anoth­er that pun­ish­es ordi­nary Jamaicans and errant cops.
(2) That either of the two judges is dan­ger­ous­ly wrong; that David Fraser demon­strat­ed ani­mus toward Constable Russell in the sen­tence hand­ed down and his utter­ances; Or that Bertram Morrison direct­ly used his trust­ed office to aid and give suc­cor to a dou­ble murderer.


In respond­ing to pleas from mem­bers of the cler­gy (a) who knew Russell since he was a child,(b) that he was not a ser­i­al crim­i­nal,© and that he did not even fire the shot that killed the dead crim­i­nal who had fired at mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces; Fraser said he had to con­sid­er those police offi­cers are entrust­ed to pro­tect and serve the pub­lic, but that the ver­dict of the jury indi­cat­ed their belief that Russell did the oppo­site of that.
Fraser added that he con­sid­ered that Russell was not the shoot­er and that the social inquiry report spoke high­ly of him and echoed the sen­ti­ments of the cler­gy members.
Constable Russell though guilty, aid­ed and abet­ted a sin­gle mur­der. Constable Russell’s life was spent being a police offi­cer; he did not even pull the trigger.
What would have been the sen­tence hand­ed down to Constable Russell had David Fraser not (a) tak­en into account the social inquiry report, (b) had Russel pulled the trig­ger, © Russell had assist­ed in more than one homi­cide, (d) Constable Russell was accused of actu­al­ly aid­ing in more than a sin­gle murder,(e) had cold-blood­ed­ly killed two people,(f) had a vio­lent back­ground and (g) pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed on weapons and ammu­ni­tion charges?
Double mur­der­er Linden Powell killed two peo­ple, and those are only the ones we know of.
These two sen­tences are the most egre­gious abuse of the con­cept of aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing con­sid­er­a­tions when crim­i­nals are to be sentenced.
This abuse of our jus­tice sys­tem can­not be allowed to stand.

Both ver­dicts can­not be cor­rect in the same small country.

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This arti­cle was updat­ed after its first posting.

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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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No, All Is Not Lost, We Just Need To Cut Our Losses…

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Reality dic­tates that you can­not suc­cess­ful­ly build a sus­tain­able nar­ra­tive on a foun­da­tion of lies. It fol­lows also that you can­not expect a high-rise tow­er built on faulty foun­da­tions to sur­vive earth­quakes, hur­ri­canes, and the like.
And so, as we risk sound­ing like a bro­ken record, it is still worth that risk to men­tion that the gov­ern­men­t’s crime-fight­ing strate­gies were the equiv­a­lent of apply­ing a bandaid to a gun­shot wound;(sorry for the gun­shot metaphor).
We can­not help but notice the pan­ic in the Jamaican Prime Minister’s state­ments that any­one caught with a hand­gun should be put to death. (smile).
During a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with a for­mer col­league and friend recent­ly, we cracked up at the fact that the Prime Minister’s shrill utter­ances amount­ed to a far greater threat to indi­vid­ual human rights than any­thing police offi­cers ever did in their right­eous inten­tions to rid the streets of vio­lent criminals.

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And so, I want Jamaicans to jux­ta­pose the Prime Minister’s jour­ney from the cam­paign trail to Jamaica House. “No police will be kick­ing down doors as long as I am Prime Minister.”
To, ‘look at what hap­pened in Haiti,’ in ref­er­ence to the mur­der of that nation’s pres­i­dent- and onto the pan­icked posi­tion of “death penal­ty for any­one caught with an ille­gal gun.” ( Buss ‑out-a-laff)
No, per­pet­u­al crit­ics, I am [not] mak­ing light of the coun­try’s crime prob­lem; I am amused at the con­se­quences for reck­less actions and words.
If I were a guy seek­ing elec­tive office who was raised in an anti-law enforce­ment envi­ron­ment, edu­cat­ed at a left­ist lib­er­al col­lege, sur­round­ed by anti-law enforce­ment bot­tom-feed­ers, and rep­re­sent­ed a con­stituen­cy in which crim­i­nal­i­ty abounds, I would prob­a­bly say some of the things Andrew Holness said and did to dis­tance him­self from the police.
(Actually, I would­n’t), I mere­ly want to show cau­sa­tion for his actions…

I won­der where the so-called human rights bot­tom-feed­ers are now? The Prime Minister’s pan­icked out­burst is exact­ly what the bot­tom-feed­ers would have a feed­ing fren­zy over were they uttered by the police. Like glut­to­nous pira­nhas, they would have torn the last shred of meat from the car­cass of any­one who dared to sug­gest such a trav­es­ty, all in fur­ther­ance of their agenda.
By the way, have you ever noticed that no mat­ter how many inno­cent Jamaicans are mur­dered each year, the so-called human rights frauds oper­at­ing in Jamaica are silent?
Ask your­selves then, ‘whose inter­est do they serve’? Certainly not the inter­est of inno­cent, law-abid­ing citizens.
However, these are the peo­ple Bruce Golding lis­tened to-these are the peo­ple his pro­tégée Andrew Holness takes coun­sel from.
No one is advo­cat­ing for a police state, cer­tain­ly not your hum­ble ser­vant. However, we must acknowl­edge that the same Jamaican peo­ple who are clam­or­ing for our coun­try to remain an iso­lat­ed crim­i­nal out­post are the same ones clam­or­ing to get visas to America where they would have to obey laws or face the full brunt of what it means to be black in the American jus­tice sys­tem. In fact, many of the present crime pro­duc­ers have actu­al­ly felt that hand and have been sent back home.

The idea of check­points in Zones of oper­a­tion as a long-term crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy speaks to the igno­rance inher­ent in those poli­cies, both in con­cept, and execution.
But the data does not lie. Regardless of what the Prime Minister and his lack­eys say (includ­ing the police) who held a pan­el dis­cus­sion trum­pet­ing the great­ness of Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSOs) and States Of Emergencies SOEs, the under­ly­ing fact is that mur­ders con­tin­ue to climb over­all.
They can lie all they want, but the math does­n’t; it mat­ters lit­tle if you sup­press mur­ders in a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­i­cal area and crime goes up else­where; you do not get to crow about decreased murders.
By doing that, you are being disingenuous.

Gomes

I expect noth­ing less from the police high com­mand, how­ev­er. The police high com­mand has nev­er been any good at any­thing, not on com­mand, not on per­son­nel man­age­ment, not on craft­ing and exe­cut­ing crime-fight­ing strate­gies, not on devel­op­ing a train­ing man­u­al that reflects the chal­lenges offi­cers face today, not on effec­tu­at­ing mean­ing­ful account­abil­i­ty in crim­i­nal investigations.
In fact, the police high com­mand has been noth­ing but a bunch of lap­dogs who walk behind politi­cians and serve as pho­to props for them.
The suc­cess­es of the JCF three decades ago when our annu­al mur­der num­bers were just over 500 could not be attrib­uted to the high command.
The suc­cess­es we cre­at­ed in the past by erad­i­cat­ing the killers and forc­ing oth­ers to flee the coun­try have nev­er been a top-down affair but rather a bot­tom-up endeavor.
Hard-nosed cops on the ground (name brand cops) doing the work, cor­rupt rum drink­ing pot-bel­lied dead­wood at the top tak­ing credit.
The JCF’s sol­ven­cy through the years was nev­er about who was at the top; it was about who was at the bot­tom. Bottoms up.

Terrence Williams

When they decid­ed to fol­low the dic­tates of Carolyn Gomes and lat­er cre­ate the troll, Terrence Willams, Jamaica, by default, signed the death war­rant for thou­sands of Jamaicans who oth­er­wise would have been alive today.
Let me be clear, (a)had Carolyn Gomes a Jamaica mulat­to, not become a [thing] in how our laws are enforced, and (b)Bruce Golding not foist­ed the lit­tle anti-police troll Terence Williams on the nation, thou­sands of mur­dered Jamaicans would still be alive today.
That same Bruce Golding who refused to send Duddus to face tri­al in the United States is [still] influ­enc­ing pol­i­cy today, even though he was forced to demit office in disgrace.
Do not act surprised.

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Jamaica is reap­ing the bit­ter fruits of years of farm­ing crim­i­nals. No, my friends, all is not lost; we can turn this around quickly.
We need a set of new laws, a set of new cops, a dif­fer­ent nation­al mind­set; we can keep the shit­head judges just take away the pow­er they have to fur­ther cor­rupt our sys­tem by let­ting dou­ble mur­der­ers off the hook with 12-year sentences.

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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.