Here is the dilem­ma for Jamaica, the peo­ple who inter­pret the Constitution have no imag­i­na­tion. Consequently, the 1962 Independence Constitution is inter­pret­ed as a sta­t­ic uncom­pro­mis­ing bul­wark rather than a liv­ing, breath­ing doc­u­ment rep­re­sent­ing our time.
Oh, and on that note, it is for those rea­sons that I con­tin­ue to believe and call for a new con­sti­tu­tion. One that is free from lan­guage that is remote­ly def­er­en­tial to our past colo­nial slavers.
The Government is to some degree con­strained as to )(a) what it can do legal­ly to bring the run­away mur­der rate down because of the court’s myopic inter­pre­ta­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion; (b) the law­less ele­ments and their apol­o­gists now believe that the law­less­ness in Jamaica is an enti­tle­ment and they will not allow that to be wrest­ed away from them. (Anything a any­thing”)
The sad real­i­ty is that there are not enough sane peo­ple in the nation of 2.8 mil­lion who real­ize that this is not a nor­mal prob­lem; there­fore, nor­mal enforce­ment pro­ce­dures will not suffice.
What pass­es for the judi­cia­ry is a crim­i­nal-friend­ly cabal of left­ist elit­ists that releas­es mur­der con­victs and oth­er vio­lent felons back onto the streets as soon as they are convicted.
Judi­cial bias must be exposed, and reforms to increase court­room hon­esty imple­ment­ed. To ensure a fair adju­di­ca­tion of each and every case, the judi­cia­ry has to be inde­pen­dent, impar­tial, and act with integri­ty. (Transparency. Org).
It is time for a new con­sti­tu­tion, new and effec­tive crime-sup­pres­sion laws. Jamaica’s judges are mak­ing a mock­ery of our sys­tem, cost­ing lives and expos­ing our coun­try to crim­i­nal overthrow.
It is time that they can no longer hide behind the cov­er of sen­tenc­ing guide­lines while scream­ing about the need for judi­cial inde­pen­dence. Independence comes with responsibilities.
One of the most press­ing dan­gers fac­ing our coun­try is that judges con­tin­ue to grant not just repeat mur­der accused bail (some hav­ing killed five sep­a­rate times after being giv­en bail and are yet to be tried on the first arrest); they release con­vict­ed mur­der­ers, tiny slaps on the wrist , then back onto the streets on the day they are con­vict­ed of murder.
What incen­tive does a con­vict­ed mur­der­er has for not going on a killing spree?

There is the feel­ing among some Jamaicans that our tiny coun­try should be a place where any­thing goes. They have no respect for the nation’s laws; the roads and high­ways are a case study in that lawlessness.
No one believes in join­ing a cue to be served; we all gath­er around shout­ing because the idea of an order­ly line is an alien con­cept to us.
We view obnox­ious coarse behav­ior as vir­tu­ous; def­er­en­tial, rev­er­en­tial & respect­ful behav­ior is scoffed at as weakness.
Badness is glo­ri­fied by what pass­es for media. For exam­ple, the radio, which once was a medi­um that attract­ed pro­fes­sion­als like Marie Garth, Don Toppin, Winson the Whip Williams, Allan Magnus, Tony Vertie, and oth­ers, is now pop­u­lat­ed with the likes of .….…Oh well, I won’t… you do the naming.
But there is sig­nif­i­cant data that proves that Jamaicans are not hea­thens who kill each oth­er at the drop of a hat. There are prob­a­bly twice as many Jamaicans liv­ing and thriv­ing in the dias­po­ra than Jamaicans liv­ing on the Island.
The com­mon thread that ties all Jamaicans over­seas togeth­er, allow­ing them to remain in their adopt­ed home­lands, is respect for the laws of those coun­tries. Those who have oth­er ideas.…… .…..receive a first-class one-way tick­et back.

This medi­um is loaded with infor­ma­tion going back over a decade, con­tribut­ing writ­ers and I have been warn­ing about what Jamaica would become if we failed to put guardrails in place to pro­tect inno­cent JAMAICANS from the mind­less socio­path­ic killers in our coun­try. Neither the PNP admin­is­tra­tions of the past nor the JLP took those warn­ings seriously.
Because, of course, those morons believed in their hearts that they knew bet­ter than the experts.…..actual crime fight­ers who did the hard work in the trench­es to keep the coun­try safe.
They ele­vat­ed antag­o­nists like Flo Oconnor, Carolyn Gomez, Mark Witter, Horace Levy, Terrence Williams, and oth­er dum­b­ass mouth­pieces who did not know their heads from their stu­pid ass­es. They demo­nized the valiant offi­cers who placed their bod­ies between the killers and ordi­nary society.
Finally, the street cops who knew the ropes knew how to deal with the threats pulled back. ( I warned about that too).
The idea of mod­ern­iza­tion became a ral­ly­ing cry. Police must now oper­ate as a cour­tesy corps, among some of the most blood-thirsty, mind­less killers, whose mantra is, ‘kill and col­lect, drink and for­get.’
Sure we rub­bished ZOSO’s and SOEs; we rub­bished the strate­gies employed because, as a for­mer street cop, I argued that as far as vio­lent crim­i­nals are con­cerned, the coun­try was actu­al­ly incen­tiviz­ing crim­i­nals. Added to the dilem­ma is the con­stant stream of depor­tees being dumped back onto the Island. Many of these peo­ple are sea­soned and hard­core crim­i­nals who spent decades hon­ing their craft against sophis­ti­cat­ed enforce­ment infra­struc­tures in devel­oped nations.
(We warned about that too, these pages are chock-full of those warn­ings), yet here we are. So while the peo­ple liv­ing in their gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties pat them­selves on the back believ­ing they are safe, may I remind them that the gang­sters have mon­ey too, they live right beside you in those gat­ed communities.
The sup­posed head of the Klansman gang, Andre “Blackman” Bryan, did not live in a Spanish Town hov­el; he lived uptown Saint Andrew. ( Money talks bull­shit walks). Uptown is now a haven for gang­sters and white-col­lar crim­i­nals alike.

WARNED ABOUT WHAT CONSTITUTES A FAILED STATE.

(1) Failed state, a state that is unable to per­form the two fun­da­men­tal func­tions of the sov­er­eign nation-state in the mod­ern world-sys­tem: it can­not project author­i­ty over its ter­ri­to­ry and peo­ples, and it can­not pro­tect its nation­al bound­aries. The gov­ern­ing capac­i­ty of a failed state is atten­u­at­ed. It can­not ful­fill the admin­is­tra­tive and orga­ni­za­tion­al tasks required to con­trol peo­ple and resources and pro­vide min­i­mal pub­lic ser­vices. Its cit­i­zens no longer believe that their gov­ern­ment is legit­i­mate, and the state becomes ille­git­i­mate in the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty’s eyes. A failed state is com­posed of fee­ble and flawed insti­tu­tions. Often, the exec­u­tive bare­ly func­tions, while the leg­is­la­ture, judi­cia­ry, bureau­cra­cy, and armed forces have lost their capac­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al inde­pen­dence. Source- (Britannica).
(2) Nation-states fail because they are con­vulsed by inter­nal vio­lence and can no longer deliv­er pos­i­tive polit­i­cal goods to their inhab­i­tants. Governments lose legit­i­ma­cy, and the very nature of the par­tic­u­lar nation-state itself becomes ille­git­i­mate in the eyes and hearts of a grow­ing plu­ral­i­ty of its cit­i­zens. Source- (Brookings Institution).
(3) A failed state is a gov­ern­ment that has become inca­pable of pro­vid­ing a sov­er­eign nation’s basic func­tions and respon­si­bil­i­ties, such as mil­i­tary defense, law enforce­ment, jus­tice, edu­ca­tion, or eco­nom­ic sta­bility. Fail states’ com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics include ongo­ing civ­il vio­lence, cor­rup­tion, crime, pover­ty, illit­er­a­cy, and crum­bling infra­struc­ture. Source- (Thoughtco​.com).
Typical fac­tors con­tribut­ing to a state’s fail­ure include insur­gency, high crime rates, inef­fec­tive and impen­e­tra­ble bureau­cra­cy, cor­rup­tion, judi­cial incompetence.

Some of the broad­er con­se­quences to the aver­age cit­i­zens in failed states are pret­ty steep; revo­ca­tion of visas, no grant­i­ng of new ones, the lim­it­ed abil­i­ty of cit­i­zens to trav­el to oth­er coun­tries because those coun­tries that [mat­ter] are unable to trust the gov­ern­ment bod­ies that they rely on to attest to the char­ac­ter of the cit­i­zens, brain drain, peo­ple try­ing to leave in droves, etc.
In sum­ma­ry titled “Bad Neighbors: Failed States and Their Consequences,” gsdrc​.org pro­claimed quote; ” When states fail, neigh­bor­ing states are also like­ly to expe­ri­ence high­er lev­els of polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, unrest, civ­il war, and inter­state con­flict. State fail­ure is not con­ta­gious, but some of its most neg­a­tive con­se­quences dif­fuse to oth­er states. (gsdrc​.org)
For exam­ple, the inabil­i­ty of Haiti to form and main­tain a sta­ble and com­pe­tent gov­ern­ment has result­ed in a flood of Soviet-era weapons into the hands of Jamaican crim­i­nals through our porous borders.
That is not to say that all of the guns com­ing into our coun­try are being sourced through Haiti; much of it is still get­ting in from the United States.
Partly because (a) American author­i­ties have not attached the same vig­or and enthu­si­asm to pre­vent­ing its guns from get­ting out and into the hands of peo­ple who should not have them, as it does in try­ing to con­trol the drugs get­ting into the nos­trils and veins of its insa­tiable addicts. (b) due to the incom­pe­tence of the Islands cus­toms offi­cials who are more con­cerned with extort­ing mon­ey from peo­ple with goods to clear at the wharves than they are at pro­tect­ing our coun­try from con­tra­band com­ing in.
The peo­ple will­ing to pay can still bring in guns and oth­er con­tra­band because of cor­rupt cus­toms officials.

I had high hopes for Jamaica after the PNP was defeat­ed at the polls. I hoped against hope that the new admin­is­tra­tion would have had a greater under­stand­ing of what it takes to bring the vio­lent mur­der sta­tis­tics down.
Unfortunately, I was quick­ly dis­il­lu­sioned by the rhetoric of Andrew Holness. I real­ized ear­ly on that this was not going to be a change gov­ern­ment, just the lat­est iter­a­tion of the sta­tus quo.
And so, no.…… Jamaicans can­not sleep with their win­dows and doors open; the coun­try faces an exis­ten­tial cri­sis from the hun­dreds of gangs scat­tered through­out the coun­try. The type bot­tom feed­ers like Horace Levy renamed cor­ner crews.
No, ZOSOs and SOEs will not change the par­a­digm; those restric­tions are now time-worn. They will only serve to frus­trate and antag­o­nize an already edgy pop­u­la­tion that has already been asked to stay inside from COVID-19.
But by all means, if that is all that’s left, then it is what it is; this admin­is­tra­tion, too, is out of ideas.

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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.

Real leaders make tough decisions not spit on their fingers and turn to the wind. The burgeoning killing spree is out of control and the nation’s leaders in power refuse to take the steps necessary to end it.
On the other hand, the opposition party seeks to make hay of the situation rather than proposing workable solutions.
At this rate soon there will be no one left.

If you believe that the role of a Police Commissioner is pure­ly admin­is­tra­tive and that the most senior exec­u­tive posi­tion in a police agency can be occu­pied by some­one who has a cou­ple of degrees in a dis­ci­pline unre­lat­ed to polic­ing; then I sug­gest the next time you need surgery ask the jan­i­tor to do it. (He may even do it on the cheap for you).
Conventional wis­dom in Jamaica is that a per­son who has a degree in any sub­ject auto­mat­i­cal­ly makes them an expert in all things.
It’s a real­ly regres­sive think­ing process, but that helps the ego of the peo­ple who labor to earn their degrees; they now get to feel good about them­selves at the expense of the peo­ple who chose not to go that route.
Even as I con­tin­ue to advo­cate for high­er education,-education has pre­cious lit­tle to do with earn­ing degrees.
This brings me to my point; I am still sur­prised at the num­ber of police offi­cers and for­mer mem­bers who actu­al­ly believe that the present Commissioner of Police is right for the JFC.

Because real talk, the man was the head of the Jamaica Defense Force (JDF),so he must know how to be a bet­ter com­mis­sion­er than the career offi­cers, right?
(In fact, that exper­i­ment of for­mer heads of the JCF tak­ing over the force has real­ly worked out well for the country).
Hardly Lewin. Trevor Mac Millan and now Antony Anderson, the awe­some­ness of that exper­i­ment has been astound­ing. (sar­casm)
Maybe the next time there is a fire, I will call the teach­ers to put it out. A lack of respect for all dis­ci­plines, and a healthy under­stand­ing that every cat­e­go­ry of work­ers is as impor­tant as the oth­er, has been crit­i­cal in decid­ing what the coun­try is going through with vio­lent crime.
Too many knuck­le­heads and too many talk­ing heads had too much time on their hands, so a dai­ly dose of anti-police invec­tive both on radio and tele­vi­sion for decades cre­at­ed gen­er­a­tions that have zero respect for the rule of law.

That aside, senior lead­ers of the JCF have not com­port­ed them­selves in a way that inspires and engen­ders trust in their leadership.
The cor­rupt prac­tices of nepo­tism, polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, news car­ry­ing, etc., have forced men to become boys. They jock­ey for advance­ment not on mer­it, but by cur­ry­ing favor with whomev­er they feel can best serve their self­ish interest.
This facil­i­tates a break­down in morale and even worse results in a lack of respect from their juniors.
This has giv­en cov­er to polit­i­cal admin­is­tra­tions from both polit­i­cal par­ties to side­line senior lead­ers who would nor­mal­ly be in con­tention for the top spot.
And seri­ous­ly, who amongst us could rea­son­ably make a case for any of the top lead­er­ship of the force to come up with strate­gies that would begin to trend vio­lent crime downwards.
So even as we rub­bish bring­ing in for­mer heads of the mil­i­tary, there is no argu­ment to be made for some­one from the present crop of Deputy Commissioners to become com­mis­sion­er of police.
The present cri­sis neces­si­tat­ed the Prime Minister declar­ing that it is out of the scope of the JCF to han­dle and that the crime sit­u­a­tion is now a pandemic.
Both state­ments are indeed true, three of the force’s offi­cers can­not effect the arrest of a sin­gle sub­ject, so there is that.
Even as Commissioner Anderson laments the high inci­dences of vio­lent crime, quote,“We have a mur­der rate that per­sists at a lev­el of 3 times our region­al aver­age and 8 times the glob­al aver­age.” ‑This writer is at least glad that he is start­ing to real­ize some­thing that I have been bang­ing the drums about for well over a decade in this medium.
Unfortunately, a com­mis­sion­er of police who came up through the ranks, with the coun­try fac­ing this pan­dem­ic of mur­ders, would have been long scape­goat­ed and fired.
So as we con­tin­ue to ‘give Tony a chance’ (more sar­casm), we are also painful­ly aware that he has got­ten expo­nen­tial­ly more grace than any of his pre­de­ces­sors who came up through the ranks. It is a bit­ter pill to swal­low that some­one com­ing from zero police knowl­edge, can poten­tial­ly be bet­ter at polic­ing tac­tics, train­ing, per­son­nel, lead­er­ship, strate­giz­ing, security,etc than career officers.

Having out­lined the fore­gone, it is impor­tant to assert that at this point, it does­n’t mat­ter who the com­mis­sion­er of police is. With the lax laws in our coun­try being what they are, and the judges aid­ing and abet­ting the shot­tas, this coun­try is in for a bumpy ride.
(‘Many more will have to suf­fer, many more will have to die) Hon Robert Nesta Marley.
This writer has con­sis­tent­ly called for stricter laws. Better train­ing for our police. Longer sen­tences for crim­i­nals who com­mit vio­lent crimes. Stricter gun laws send a clear mes­sage that gun crimes will not be tol­er­at­ed. Mandatory min­i­mum sen­tences remove from the judge’s con­trol the length of prison time a vio­lent offend­er receives. The Jamaican judi­cia­ry is a large part of the exis­ten­tial threat the nation faces.
Truth in sen­tenc­ing, ten years must mean ten years locked away, unless offend­ers take mea­sur­able steps that demon­strate to a com­pe­tent body that they are reformed.
It is cliché to argue that doing the same things brings the same results, but it is also true. Decisions that bring mea­sur­able pos­i­tive results require tough choic­es that are not always pop­u­lar. Since politi­cians depend on pop­ulism to get elect­ed, it is nat­ur­al that they shun tough deci­sions. This is not unique to Jamaica, but Jamaica has a par­tic­u­lar strain of law­less­ness that comes from its lead­ers’ cow­ardice and silent acquiescence.
Jamaica’s vio­lent crime prob­lem will remain until a nation­al awak­en­ing rec­og­nizes that this is not in the nation’s inter­est. Until then, the police and mil­i­tary will con­tin­ue to pour water into the bas­ket and won­der why the water lev­el nev­er rises?

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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.

No, I am not anti-police!!!
I was a police offi­cer for a decade; I know, it’s hard to imag­ine that some­one who does so much to high­light police mis­con­duct could have ever been asso­ci­at­ed with law enforcement.
That’s exact­ly the point. So Mike, ‘what is behind this change that appears to be a con­tra­dic­tion of sorts?
It real­ly is no great mys­tery. I served a decade as a law enforce­ment offi­cer in my native Jamaica, so I imme­di­ate­ly sup­port­ed the police when I arrived in the United States in 91. As I allud­ed to in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle linked below, the media brain­wash­ing did a num­ber on me. The avalanche of cop shows on tele­vi­sion took its toll on me as it may have impact­ed mil­lions of oth­ers; I was sucked in. https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​d​i​f​f​e​r​e​n​t​-​a​p​p​r​o​a​c​h​e​s​-​s​a​m​e​-​r​e​s​u​l​t​s​-​u​s​i​n​g​-​p​o​l​i​ce/

Mainstream media glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of police on the one hand and selec­tive report­ing on police mis­con­duct has solid­i­fied the idea into the pop­u­la­tion’s psy­che that the police are heroes who must be believed.
I also real­ized that pros­e­cu­tors and the judi­cia­ry had no prob­lem with cops lying to legit­imize arrests and even fal­si­fy­ing arrest reports, plant­i­ng drugs and weapons on African-American men to get them sent to prison.
I real­ized just how police offi­cers sum­mar­i­ly lied to cre­ate legit­i­ma­cy for uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and ille­gal actions they engage in, par­tic­u­lar­ly against Black Americans.
I was shocked that the Supreme Court opened the door even fur­ther for police to lie against the very cit­i­zens they are sworn to pro­tect. I have no respect for the police today because what pass­es for polic­ing is not what I signed up for decades ago.
If you were to ask me what exact­ly sep­a­rates me from the American pro­to­type cop? I would quick­ly answer that American police offi­cers kill when they do not need to.
American police have become robots who sum­mar­i­ly kill because they are legal­ly jus­ti­fied, even though they know their actions are moral­ly wrong.
That may explain the wide chasm between for­mer offi­cers like myself, say from Jamaica, and American police offi­cers. I will be the first to admit that there have been loose can­nons in the agency I was a part of; nev­er­the­less, the Police killings in the United States far exceed human decen­cy and moral­i­ty, yet they are con­sid­ered jus­ti­fi­able in law.
When a nation allows its agents that much lat­i­tude in sum­mar­i­ly end­ing the lives of its cit­i­zens, that nation has lost its soul.

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT

In addi­tion to that, a large chunk of the pop­u­la­tion does not care that police mur­der oth­er Americans who do not look like them. Simply put, a large per­cent­age of white Americans are either out­right brazen big­ots or clos­et racists.
What does that have to do with polic­ing, you ask?
There are over 324,882 Police Officers cur­rent­ly employed in the United States. The most com­mon eth­nic­i­ty of Police Officers is White (62.4%).
For the big­ots clos­et­ed or open, police are a defense line against them and ‘those peo­ple. The’ those peo­ple’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion is a step for­ward these days, I guess- pre­vi­ous­ly, Blacks were not seen as people.
To these peo­ple, it is unim­por­tant whether African-Americans live or die; in fact, they would soon­er have an America in which there are no peo­ple of color.
The 62.4 Percent of white men who work in the near­ly 18,000 police depart­ments across the nation come from the same peo­ple who have no care in the world for their fel­low Americans.

Before you tell me how much you dis­agree, please explain why racism is not dying out in America? In fact, Racism seemed to have tak­en on new life after Donald Trump was installed into the pres­i­den­cy and allowed to stir up the ran­cid morass of racism that laid sim­mer­ing, deceiv­ing some into speak­ing of a post-racial America.
Are all police offi­cers vio­lent racists?
Oh, Hell no!
I have met some won­der­ful human beings who just hap­pened to be police offi­cers. I have also seen some that I real­ly don’t care for. But I also under­stand that police offi­cers are peo­ple too, and like every pro­fes­sion, there are bad police officers.
The dif­fer­ence with police offi­cers is that we expect the police to be a cut above the rest; we expect that they will do the right thing, and so when they betray their oaths, it lit­er­al­ly cre­ates a shock. Officers have the pow­er of life and death over us, yet unlike oth­er pro­fes­sions-police offi­cers are the least educated.
Why would the least edu­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­als have such a seri­ous job is beyond me?
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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.

NYPD Cops made light work of this elder­ly man who seemed ine­bri­at­ed and appeared to have had a weapon. The offi­cers had cov­er behind their cars, had enough time to try and engage the gen­tle­man in a con­ver­sa­tion, and could poten­tial­ly have tak­en the time to fig­ure out what was real­ly going on with him.
Regardless of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing what was up with the now-deceased gen­tle­man, we have to ask our­selves if we want a soci­ety in which the goal of the police is to exter­mi­nate cit­i­zens who may be expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal anguish or trauma?
Ask your­selves this; what would these police offi­cers have done if they were not allowed to car­ry firearms?
Would they not have tak­en cov­er and tried talk­ing to the elder­ly man? I think so.

Let us be clear about this; there will be no charges against these two cops. Even if the man had only a knife, the sys­tem would jus­ti­fy his killing by state agents.
If he, in fact, had a gun, then this shoot­ing is back-slap­ping good for them.
but, every offi­cer of the law is equipped with a con­science, he/​she must ask him/​herself this ques­tion after all of the back­slap­ping and the con­grat­u­la­tions are over; “Was I moral­ly jus­ti­fied in tak­ing the life of this once liv­ing breath­ing human being?
Legally jus­ti­fied but moral­ly bankrupt.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​y​o​u​-​a​r​e​-​a​-​f​o​o​l​-​i​f​-​y​o​u​-​b​e​l​i​e​ve/

No mur­der is more impor­tant than the oth­er; in the same way, no life is more impor­tant than anoth­er. We should all remem­ber this when we view the count­less mur­ders that occur in our tiny Jamaica that go un-inves­ti­gat­ed, un-pros­e­cut­ed, and there­fore un-avenged.
As a young con­sta­ble attend­ing the first weeks of detec­tive train­ing in 91, I recalled some­thing said to us that will live with me until they lay me to rest. It was this quote; There can be no greater respon­si­bil­i­ty giv­en any human being than to bring to jus­tice the killer of the inno­cent”. I ques­tion whether this prin­ci­ple still guide our young offi­cers today?
Those who knew me dur­ing my abbre­vi­at­ed stay in the JCF will truth­ful­ly attest to the vig­or, enthu­si­asm, and ded­i­ca­tion I brought to the job.
That ded­i­ca­tion was dri­ven by my dis­taste for crim­i­nal­i­ty and a desire to see all peo­ple live in peace and lat­er fueled by that quote embed­ded in me in 91.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​m​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​e​r​-​a​n​d​e​r​s​o​n​-​s​p​e​a​k​s​-​o​u​t​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​j​u​d​g​e​s​-​l​a​t​e​-​a​n​d​-​h​a​l​f​-​h​e​a​r​t​e​d​-​w​e​l​l​-​k​i​n​da/

As a cop, I was unre­lent­ing against crim­i­nals; now years lat­er, as a free­lance writer, I try to use what­ev­er tal­ents God gave me to bring to light top­i­cal issues that need attention.
I agree that I some­times write angry. Angry that issues with clear and easy fix­es are allowed to devel­op into major dis­as­ters because a few peo­ple ben­e­fit from the sta­tus quo. Some may be offend­ed by the way I speak to issues.….
A casu­al acquain­tance, a Ph.D. can­di­date at the UWI, once told me,” you could be a phe­nom­e­nal writer, but you are your own worse ene­my; you curse too much.”
I calm­ly told her that I do not write to be rec­og­nized; writ­ing for me is a vehi­cle, a means to say what I want to say. In essence, it is not the des­ti­na­tion, mere­ly the vehicle.
In the open­ing para­graph, I spoke to the impor­tance of treat­ing every life with equal respect because it has become the new way of liv­ing to brush past the killing of reg­u­lar peo­ple. We are now incensed only when the rich and famous die at the hands of criminals.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​s​-​k​l​a​n​s​m​a​n​-​t​r​i​a​l​-​p​r​o​g​r​e​s​s​e​s​-​l​o​o​k​-​f​o​r​-​j​u​d​g​e​s​-​t​o​-​s​h​o​w​c​a​s​e​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​d​i​s​d​a​i​n​-​f​o​r​-​c​o​n​s​e​q​u​e​n​c​e​-​f​o​r​-​a​c​t​i​o​ns/

Years ago, a jury absolved Andre “Blackman” Bryan of the grue­some mur­der of Jamaican Urban Transit Company head Douglas Chambers. A jury set the mur­der­ing scum free. Now his for­mer asso­ciates are tes­ti­fy­ing to oth­er homi­cides alleged­ly com­mit­ted by the very same use­less sociopath.
According to one wit­ness, Blackman showed him the gun used to kill the for­mer chair­man of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company Douglas Chambers, and said he put two big holes in his head.
The police some­times do good work in bring­ing these demons to jus­tice; how­ev­er, unlearned, crim­i­nal-lov­ing peo­ple and a judi­cia­ry that is both crim­i­nal­ly sup­port­ive and arguably cor­rupt con­tin­ue to turn them loose to kill over and over again.
This time will turn out to be no dif­fer­ent; the cri­sis with­in the jus­tice sys­tem of unelect­ed and cor­rupt judges will ulti­mate­ly be the undo­ing of the once beau­ti­ful country.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​u​d​g​e​s​-​i​n​-​w​e​s​t​e​r​n​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​c​l​e​a​r​l​y​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​t​a​ke/

In a 2017 piece for the Gleaner, Dr. Omar E. Hawthorne a lec­tur­er in inter­na­tion­al rela­tions at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and author of ‘Do International Corruption Metrics Matter? Wrote the following.
Often, when we talk about judi­cial cor­rup­tion, the image is that of judges tak­ing bribes. However, judi­cial cor­rup­tion is a lot more. It includes all forms of inap­pro­pri­ate influ­ence that may dam­age the inde­pen­dence of jus­tice and may involve any play­er with­in the jus­tice sys­tem, includ­ing lawyers and admin­is­tra­tive sup­port staff. The ques­tion of cor­rup­tion is not only a mat­ter of rela­tions between judi­cial per­son­nel and court users; it is also about inter­nal rela­tions in the judiciary.
The per­cep­tion of pet­ty cor­rup­tion in the judi­cia­ry is sys­temic and an issue that many in devel­op­ing and devel­oped coun­tries have to deal with. In a Global Corruption Report, one in 10 of the respon­dents who had been in con­tact with the judi­cia­ry over the past year answered yes when asked whether they had paid a bribe.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​s​-​n​a​t​i​o​n​s​-​m​o​v​e​-​t​o​-​s​t​i​f​f​e​n​-​g​u​n​-​l​a​w​s​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​s​-​s​e​l​f​-​r​i​g​h​t​e​o​u​s​-​j​u​d​g​e​s​-​r​e​l​e​a​s​e​-​g​a​n​g​s​t​e​r​s​-​o​n​-​p​r​o​b​a​t​i​on/
See a tes­ti­mo­ni­al from one such Jamaican.
https://​www​.linkedin​.com/​p​u​l​s​e​/​h​i​g​h​l​y​-​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​-​s​t​a​t​e​-​a​f​f​a​i​r​s​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​s​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​-​a​t​t​o​r​n​e​y​-​s​i​l​v​e​r​a​-​a​d​j​u​dah

https://​www​.linkedin​.com/​p​u​l​s​e​/​m​o​r​e​-​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​i​o​n​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​s​-​c​o​u​r​t​-​a​p​p​e​a​l​-​p​r​e​s​i​d​e​n​t​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​a​d​j​u​dah
Over the years, I have heard from sev­er­al Jamaicans who have vehe­ment­ly argued that they have paid judges for cas­es to go away.
Unfortunately, there is still a large seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion that stead­fast­ly believe in the whole­some­ness of Jamaican judges. As the report said, cor­rup­tion is not just con­fined to judges tak­ing bribes but con­sists of inap­pro­pri­ate influ­ence that dam­ages the inde­pen­dence of justice.
I have writ­ten con­sis­tent­ly about this.
The wit­ness tes­ti­fy­ing against Andre Blackman Bryan revealed to the court some­thing that most of the fak­ers and fraud­sters in the Jamaican soci­ety who sup­port crim­i­nal cod­dling can­not understand.
The wit­ness said Bryan gave him the duty of scour­ing the inter­net to find crime sta­tis­tics on the island. He said Bryan was angry when he learned that Montego Bay and Clarendon were record­ing more mur­ders and shoot­ings than Spanish Town, where the Klansman is based. Bryan said the gang need­ed to up its game in this respect as those areas should not be beat­ing Klansman turf. He fur­ther said the Andre Bryan assigned an indi­vid­ual to devel­op a strat­e­gy to dri­ve the num­bers of killings for their home base.
These are the types of strate­gies being devel­oped, while the jus­tice Minister Delroy Chuck and a host of oth­ers try to find ways to get vio­lent crim­i­nals out of prison. Violent crim­i­nals who have the means to deliv­er death and destruc­tion strate­gi­cal­ly plot how to kill more Jamaicans to sat­is­fy their own egos, their own blood-lust, the desire to be seen as the Don…
Corrupt judges look the oth­er way and hand out sus­pend­ed sen­tences to gang­sters who are caught red-hand­ed with guns. The court of appeals finds ways to let mur­der­ers out on minor tech­ni­cal­i­ties while fool­ing the lumpen that they are pro­tec­tors of our democracy.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​w​o​r​l​d​-​i​s​-​w​a​t​c​h​i​n​g​-​h​o​w​-​t​h​e​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​c​o​u​r​t​-​h​a​n​d​l​e​-​t​h​i​s​-​k​l​a​n​s​m​a​n​-​t​r​i​al/

If left unat­tend­ed, tumors like these become can­cer­ous, jeop­ar­diz­ing the entire body. Criminals like these left to oper­ate freely threat­ens nation­al security.
Criminals have a way of upping their game to a dif­fer­ent lev­el, where the killings become the point. If a socio­path­ic killer believes there is no con­se­quence when he kills, he kills more.
Andre Blackman Bryan and his cronies in the Klansman gang are socio­path­ic killers aid­ed by a cor­rupt and acqui­es­cent jus­tice sys­tem. Cancers in our society.
It is no longer good to take what is not theirs; they derive a sick thrill from killing their vic­tims. When they are even­tu­al­ly brought before the courts, these low-lev­el scums are able to hire the most expen­sive ‘crim­i­nal defense lawyers’, even though they nev­er did a days work in their lives.
They are sick preda­tors that have become can­cer on the inno­cent cit­i­zens of Jamaica, made pos­si­ble by a cor­rupt and com­plic­i­ty sys­tem that pre­tends to dis­pense jus­tice but is equal­ly as cor­rupt as the ones that shed the blood.

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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.

I wrote about this well over a year ago; still today, the scum who took this inno­cent man’s life has not been brought to jus­tice, to my knowl­edge, nei­ther has jus­tice been brought to him /​them. Hundreds of mur­der­ers are walk­ing around in Jamaica today, “kill and col­lect, drink and for­get,” they say. Even though he spoke to some­one on the phone, some­one who may have orches­trat­ed or known who orches­trat­ed rob­bing and mur­der­ing him, it is a near cer­tain­ty that no one sought to get his tele­phone records to see who the per­son was. Last year my own queries led me to a so-called detec­tive who acknowl­edged that he was han­dling the case.
So at best, there is a state­ment in a file cab­i­net some­where which con­sti­tutes the inves­ti­ga­tions into the heinous mur­der. This was months after Elvis Richards was mur­dered; he con­ced­ed then that he had still not spo­ken to the mur­dered man’s sig­nif­i­cant oth­er. A state­ment in a rink-ding file cab­i­net now con­sti­tutes this good man’s life.
Neither Miss Alcie, Elvis’s mom, nor Eliese, his lov­ing daugh­ter, has had any clo­sure; like hun­dreds of fam­i­lies each year who lose loved ones, the police are either over­whelmed, ill-equipped, don’t care, or incompetent.

An Admission That Crime Is Out Of Their Control, Now What?

June 3^rd, 2020

There is absolute­ly no one in our coun­try that has not been touched one way or anoth­er by vio­lent crime.
That speaks vol­umes about the emo­tion­al toll it takes on indi­vid­u­als and the nation as a col­lec­tive. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly trau­mat­ic to those not con­tribut­ing to the wave of law­less­ness that has tak­en over our streets and our schools. As I sat to write this arti­cle, I am also hum­bled that I was hon­ored by the beau­ti­ful daugh­ter and moth­er of my life­long friend Elvis Richards, or ( Dozi), who offered me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to say a few words in trib­ute to his life.
Elvis, a lov­ing kind (Rastaman), became a vic­tim of the rabid crim­i­nal­i­ty that has now char­ac­ter­ized our country.
Elvis loved his coun­try, so much so that he would ask me (suh wen yu a cum bak cum liv Inna di place bredrin)?

Here was a man work­ing to take care of his fam­i­ly, tak­en away by rabid degen­er­ates, and for what.….. a few thou­sand dol­lars in his pock­et? His life was tak­en from him, leav­ing his fam­i­ly to grieve, includ­ing his minor child, left to grow up with­out her lov­ing dad.
This sto­ry is of hun­dreds of fam­i­lies each year who do not have lav­ish police pro­tec­tion or cas­tles in the hills. Across the length and breadth of the tiny Island and all across the dias­po­ra, the con­se­quences of these killings res­onate and impact the psy­che of those left behind.
The dai­ly killings have now been baked into the cul­ture; they no longer evoke alarm, nei­ther do they gar­ner grass­roots resis­tance against them.
Rather than lis­ten to what works from peo­ple who have actu­al­ly worked at this, the nation’s lead­ers embarked on cos­met­ic ini­tia­tives designed to pla­cate the nation, designed to give a false sense of com­fort, that just around the cor­ner a respite awaits, with­out doing the hard work to guar­an­tee it.
Because of this administration’s mis­guid­ed stance on crime, we have seen a rapid and sus­tained rise in vio­lent crimes, but that is not all, the police are lit­er­al­ly unable to enforce the nation’s road traf­fic Act, as they are being attacked even as they try to write tick­ets to the law­less motorist who plies the road­ways as taxi-oper­a­tors. In the schools, the stu­dents now fight their teachers.
No laborites, I don’t want to hear your shit that the PNP is to blame; your par­ty is in pow­er now; save it.
This is big­ger than nar­row par­ti­san politics.

And now we hear the top-most leader admit that the lev­el of vio­lent crimes across the coun­try is out­side of the country’s abil­i­ty to deal with.
The coun­try is at the mer­cy of the killers.
On tak­ing office, this Prime Minister decid­ed that he want­ed a pol­i­cy of hug­ging up and cod­dling the most vio­lent crim­i­nals in the country.
No, he did not actu­al­ly say he want­ed to hug them, but his attacks on polic­ing prac­tices and pro­ce­dures, some­thing he knows noth­ing about, all but told the crim­i­nals they had a friend in Jamaica house. They already knew they had one in INDECOM.
When the prime min­is­ter was embark­ing on this path, I wrote sev­er­al arti­cles warn­ing that he was open­ing up a pan­do­ra box, that the nation would not be able to con­tain what comes out of it.
Talk about police kick­ing in doors to people’s hous­es, talk about not on my watch will they, (the police), con­tin­ue to shoot peo­ple, was Holness’s call­ing card, as he embraced the anti-police activist Terrence Williams.
In the streets, the mur­der­ers were laugh­ing; they knew they had a friend in this guy.
Instead of hir­ing a police com­mis­sion­er who knew about polic­ing, Holness hired his friend Antony Anderson, an army man, and made him com­mis­sion­er of police. Not that a com­mis­sion­er who came up with­in the ranks is a panacea to what’s going on, but at least he would be able to speak to the nation defin­i­tive­ly on the issue.
Instead of insti­tut­ing train­ing for the police that gives them the edge they need to fight the crim­i­nals, he insist­ed on human rights train­ing, not just for the police but for the mil­i­tary, and placed them in some­thing cre­at­ed and named Zones Of Special Operations or (ZOSOS’s).

The Jamaica Defense Force, long one of the nation’s last insti­tu­tions of decen­cy and deco­rum, (to the extent that decen­cy and deco­rum still exist), has report­ed­ly part­ed com­pa­ny with Captain Omaine Morgan, who has been linked to the con­tro­ver­sial Pathways International Kingdom Restoration Ministries in St James.
You know the one, the church of the now deceased, ex-con Kevin Smith.
One won­ders why mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces are con­stant­ly expect­ed to oper­ate at a high­er stan­dard of decen­cy and deco­rum than their civil­ian leaders?
Will the politi­cians and oth­er high­ly-placed peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with the con­tro­ver­sial pas­tor and his church come out, self-iden­ti­fy, and step aside from what­ev­er high-pro­file port­fo­lios they hold as well?
I won’t hold my breath for that to hap­pen, so there is that.
At the same time, I am won­der­ing what is behind the secre­cy with the Police depart­ment? Why has the JCF not fol­lowed suit with the police­woman who was also alleged­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Kevin Smith, pro­vid­ed uni­formed escort along with Captain Morgan to Pastor Smith, and is report­ed to have allowed Smith access to her ser­vice pis­tol, clear­ly fir­ing offenses?
Why is the JCF always last to the dance even when the dance is free?
Oh, wait .…..
A team from the Police high com­mand is con­duct­ing a high-lev­el probe. (sar­casm) I know this will take time as much as it is tak­ing to deter­mine whether or not a police offi­cer did cut the locks of a woman at the Four Paths Police Station.(even more sarcasm)

Nzinga King, claimed police cut her locks at the Four Paths Police Station in Clarendon…

The JCF is bleed­ing approx­i­mate­ly 600 mem­bers through attri­tion each year; it is prob­a­bly not a bad idea for the force to use that process to force some of the bad apples from its ranks.
By mov­ing stead­fast­ly against offi­cers like this female offi­cer, the force would send a clear mes­sage that those kinds of asso­ci­a­tions will not be tolerated.
Bad recruit­ing and poor back­ground checks by the JCF have done immea­sur­able dam­age to the force; addi­tion­al­ly, like oth­er women in the wider soci­ety, far too many female offi­cers have fall­en vic­tim to the fast mon­ey lure of the crim­i­nal underworld.
If this offi­cer left her ser­vice weapon in the care of KevinSmith or any­one else asso­ci­at­ed with the path­way church, there is cer­tain­ly no rea­son for foot-drag­ging by the JCF.
Follow the lead of the JDF and save some face.

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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.