Events of note in our soci­eties war­rant at least a sec­ond look to see if we may learn from them. If they are not what we want them to be, we may see whether we can reme­di­ate them.
The actions of 42-year-old Stephen Witter, a Stony Hill res­i­dent, when approached by Police on Hellshire Public beach is one such event that offers all stake­hold­ers a teach­able moment.
The police, the Public, the Government& Opposition Legislators, and even our children.
Stephen Witter was among a group of men approached by the police for alleged breach­es of the Disaster Risk Management Act,(gathering close togeth­er, with­out social dis­tanc­ing or wear­ing masks).

Stephen Witter’s actions were so hos­tile; they result­ed in the group of heav­i­ly armed police offi­cers walk­ing away, choos­ing, sup­pos­ed­ly to de-esca­late, out of fear of crowd intervention.
The inci­dent, from the mask, man­dates, the police approach to enforce­ment, Witter and his cronies response, the police own response all bears a real­ly clos­er look.
Inherent in all of those events, we see the soci­etal rot that con­tin­ues to plague Jamaica, result­ing in the volu­mi­nous vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics the Island con­tin­ues to experience.

The Disaster Risk Management Act

The police are report­ed to have approached the group of men because they were not adher­ing to the Disaster Risk Management Act.
I com­mend the offi­cers for also pay­ing atten­tion to the small things. When the small things are attend­ed to, it sends a mes­sage that big things will not be tolerated.
From what we have learned, the Act is not as plain as it could be in giv­ing the police clear and unequiv­o­cal sight on how the law is to be enforced. Credit the Jamaican Parliament for its inabil­i­ty to write a good piece of leg­is­la­tion that is unambiguous.
Witter is from Stony Hills; we don’t know whether he or his cronies were on the beach legit­i­mate­ly or not; that is some­thing it seemed that the police did not both­er to investigate.
It seems that a breach of the above-men­tioned act, was the least of which Witter could legit­i­mate­ly be charged with.

The Police Approach
One of the most absurd propo­si­tions I see being advanced today about polic­ing in Jamaica, is that cops should retreat and come back lat­er to arrest offend­ers, much like how they went back and arrest­ed Stephen Witter.
There are sce­nar­ios in which the police are forced to sus­pend actions to get bet­ter out­comes, for var­i­ous reasons.
What can­not become the norm is for the police to be forced to sus­pend mak­ing arrests for a future date, even in sit­u­a­tions where sev­er­al offi­cers are present, as in the Witter case.
At that rate, Jamaica will nev­er be able to hire enough police offi­cers to make arrests in a coun­try that is already a high crime, volatile and law­less country.
The alter­na­tive can­not become the norm; police must not step back from mak­ing arrests out of fear that bystanders will intervene.
We need penal­ties that dis­suade, and offi­cers who are unafraid. We must ensure that those who would inter­fere in an arrest, jus­ti­fied or not, will think long and hard about the length of time they will spend in prison for their actions.
The Police have demon­strat­ed that they are not up to the task. People respond based on the actions of the police. If the police are hes­i­tant and ten­ta­tive, the crowd is embold­ened. If the police are uni­fied and method­i­cal in car­ry­ing out their pur­pose, the voic­es in oppo­si­tion become a lot less bellicose.
We see the evi­dence of the police’s inabil­i­ty to make sim­ple arrests, even when they have num­bers; the train­ing’s inad­e­qua­cy is embar­rass­ing in its glar­ing obviousness.
The once trea­sured con­cept of esprit de corps that once guid­ed how offi­cers con­verged quick­ly to effec­tu­ate arrests have been replaced by feck­less­ness and hes­i­tan­cy, giv­ing rise to more lawlessness.

The pub­lic’s approach

Policing Jamaica’s streets has always been a chal­lenge; peo­ple gang­ing up on cops they believe to be weak and feck­less is noth­ing new.
In fact, peo­ple go out of their way to test police offi­cer’s met­tle, we can ques­tion the legit­i­ma­cy of their ways, but we may not deny that they do.
They will get in a new offi­cer’s face ad they will even assault offi­cers to see what they are made of. The chal­lenge for young cops in that Serengeti of chaos and crim­i­nal­i­ty, is that they are expect­ed to absorb the assaults to their per­sons, with­out any atten­dant puni­tive law to pun­ish offenders.
By that mea­sure, offi­cers are being asked to sac­ri­fice their bod­ies and lives to main­tain order in a hos­tile envi­ron­ment cre­at­ed and helped by politicians.
The options open to the Jamaican police offi­cer in Andrew Holness’s Jamaica are bina­ry, (a) go hard against offend­ers backed up by their pow­ers enshrined in the JCF Act, or (b) Ignore it all and go home to their families.
The Andrew Holness, Horace Chang, Delroy Chuck, Antony Anderson, UWI idea of polic­ing, has been a night­mare for law-abid­ing Jamaicans and their families.
The mur­der rate con­tin­ues to spi­ral out of con­trol because the police can­not do their jobs.
What we wit­nessed on that Hellshire beach must be laid square­ly at the feet of Andrew Holness, a Spanish Town pro­tégée’ who grew up resent­ing the police.
We wit­ness these events play­ing out across the coun­try because of his con­tin­u­ing inter­fer­ence in polic­ing and the poli­cies he has been putting in place to ham­string the police’s efforts to do their jobs effectively.

The Legislators
We know they are dumb, even to the point of being moron­ic. We know they can­not write a piece of Legislation that stip­u­lates clear intent. We even know that some of them have con­flicts of inter­est, and some are even mixed up in criminality.
But the leg­is­la­tors, too, have a job to do here; if the laws aren’t work­ing, change the damn laws.
At what point will it dawn on those morons that the coun­try is going to hell in a hand­bas­ket, because the laws are too criminal-friendly?
The Jamaicans who stri­dent­ly break laws do so because they know that they will not be pun­ished in any mean­ing­ful way, even if they are caught. They also know that even when caught break­ing the laws, they can fight or intim­i­date the police, a force that is so feck­less, sev­er­al offi­cers will retreat because they are afraid of a few loud­mouth punks.
Even though this pat­tern has been a sta­ple for decades, what pass­es for leg­is­la­tors in the peo­ple’s house have failed to enact leg­is­la­tion mak­ing it a felony to inter­fere in arrests, mak­ing it a felony to assault a police officer.
That is the rea­son this writer has zero respect for that body of mal­con­tents who are mere­ly cheap hus­tlers look­ing to make a buck.

The Police

It is tough to watch them effec­tu­ate even the sim­plest arrest. I have no more ener­gy to waste; these guys are what they are. They are them­selves, vic­tims of the envi­ron­ment they grew up in, and are now forced to police.
If this is the new and improved polic­ing that Andrew Holness unleashed on Jamaica in his grand restruc­tur­ing plan, head­ed by a med­ical doc­tor, and exe­cut­ed by a sol­dier, God helps our country.
The car­toon­ish idea of a police com­mis­sion­er beg­ging offend­ers not to resist arrest, is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Barney-Fyffe car­i­ca­ture the JCF has become under the assault of this bunch of losers.

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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. 

Yes, each per­son has a right to free­dom of speech, and sure, peo­ple have a right to voice their dis­plea­sure at author­i­ty figures.
My ques­tion is this; where exact­ly are the lines between sane and ratio­nal dis­plea­sure, and out­right abu­sive and dis­re­spect­ful behav­ior that has no place in a demo­c­ra­t­ic society?
Without hav­ing the facts of what occurred in this sit­u­a­tion before the cam­eras start­ed rolling, my ques­tion is, how can this kind of con­duct be allowed to continue?
Let us not be delu­sion­al about this, Andrew Holness has degrad­ed the police, bad-mouthed them, and inter­fered in their work, and this is the result.
The police have done more than enough to degrade their own author­i­ty, and they are not being trained in tac­ti­cal maneuvers.
One of the cocka­mamie sto­ries I heard from their high com­mand is that this offend­er will be arrest­ed even­tu­al­ly. I must also dis­agree with some of my for­mer col­leagues who seem to have bought into this new-age paper police tac­tics that you go back to arrest later.
They had sev­er­al offi­cers there, and there should have been an unspo­ken under­stand­ing that all of the offi­cers present con­verge on this punk in two sec­onds, throw him to the ground, and cuff him.
The next agi­ta­tor who opens his mouth gets the same treatment.
The idea that offi­cers must always be mind­ful of esca­la­tion sends the wrong mes­sage that a sin­gle cop or two can­not effect an arrest.

At issue here seem to be three stand­out issues.
(1) Government incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion in allow­ing pub­lic lands, includ­ing pub­lic beach prop­er­ties, to be occu­pied by crim­i­nals allow­ing for the con­struc­tion of shan­ty struc­tures. And as we can see in these videos, per­ma­nent struc­tures gen­er­al­ly with­out prop­er­ty own­er­ship, per­mits, and or any approval.
Jamaica’s num­ber one for­eign exchange earn­er is tourism, yet prime sea­side prop­er­ties are hang­outs for thugs and bad­men, whom the police seemed mighty afraid of.

(2) Lawless ele­ments who believe they are above the laws, and that they can do as they please with­out con­se­quence. This is not only hor­ren­dous for the present, but it is a tick­ing time-bomb with a younger gen­er­a­tion emerg­ing, that will have zero respect for the rule of law.

(3) An incom­pe­tent and poor­ly trained police force that does not know what laws they are enforc­ing, and is there­fore unsure of them­selves, result­ing in sit­u­a­tions like the some in the video.
I talk about the demon­stra­bly poor train­ing of the Police Department mem­bers, and I am con­tin­u­al­ly being told that they are being giv­en the appro­pri­ate train­ing levels.
If what we are wit­ness­ing here is appro­pri­ate train­ing, not just to quick­ly and effec­tive­ly arrest a dis­re­spect­ful loud-mouth piece of garbage, but know­ing what laws or ordi­nances he vio­lat­ed that would neces­si­tate his arrest, then obvi­ous­ly they are being trained to fail.

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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. 

Just today, I wrote about the lev­el of law­less­ness in our country.
Primarily because the Government has placed the lives of crim­i­nals over those of our law ‑enforce­ment officers.
Only in a soci­ety where the coun­try’s lead­er­ship encour­ages this kind of behav­ior by using var­i­ous arms of the said gov­ern­ment to mil­i­tate against law-enforcement.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​l​o​s​s​-​o​f​-​l​i​f​e​-​i​n​s​i​g​n​i​f​i​c​a​n​t​-​t​o​-​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​-​i​n​-​s​o​-​c​a​l​l​e​d​-​m​o​d​e​r​n​i​z​a​t​i​o​n​-​p​r​o​c​e​s​s​-​o​f​-​j​cf/

Criminals may pay INDECOM, The Justice Ministry, The Public Defenders office, and oth­er arms of the Government; for all intents and pur­pos­es, their jobs are to antag­o­nize the police.
This offi­cer was long with­in his rights to nat­u­ral­ize this direct threat to his life, why did he not.
That assailant could at any­time have removed his weapon and use it to take his life, or use the baton to cut off his air cir­cu­la­tion and killed him.

Why did he not use his weapon against his monster?
Because he was afraid of being made out to be the bad guy, by the gov­ern­ment by the press, and by the crim­i­nal-lov­ing public.

Looking back at the past is one of the best met­rics of mea­sure­ment for how far we have come, what we have accom­plished, what we can tweak or change, or whether we may even want to go back to some of the old strate­gies where the results may have been bet­ter than what we have at present.
Or we could change to say we are agents of change, even when the change we seek has result­ed in expo­nen­tial­ly more neg­a­tive con­se­quences when com­pared to the past.
With that said, I believe in chang­ing tac­tics; stand­ing still is stag­na­tion; it may even be char­ac­ter­ized as dor­man­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly when we are deal­ing with con­tin­u­ing evolv­ing sit­u­a­tions like vio­lent crimes.

Whereas we have a his­tor­i­cal record of low­er crimes, all things con­sid­ered, it is fool­ish to dis­re­gard the data of that peri­od sim­ply because we want to make a point that we know bet­ter today, we want to set a dif­fer­ent stan­dard, even to the detri­ment of hun­dreds of peo­ple’s lives each year.
As a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer, I have all but giv­en up on the Jamaican crime sit­u­a­tion, because it seems to me that those in pow­er would rather show­case struc­tur­al changes that they have insti­tut­ed, rather than deal with the real-life con­se­quence of the loss of human life.
And so it seems that the Government’s insis­tence on what it terms ‘the mod­ern­iza­tion of the Constabulary,’ (exe­cut­ed by a sol­dier no less), is far more impor­tant than any cumu­la­tive loss of lives that may accrue dur­ing this sup­posed process.

It behooves all Jamaicans who would like a way out of the seem­ing­ly per­ma­nent mess of spi­ral­ing vio­lent mur­ders, to con­sid­er ways on their own to get out of the mess, since the Government is demon­stra­bly not inter­est­ed in doing any­thing about it.
One way to do so is to look to the past at the low­est lev­els of vio­lent crimes in our mod­ern his­to­ry, then eval­u­ate the atten­dant issues that may have impact­ed the data and see how we can for­mu­late strate­gies based on the pos­i­tives from that era.
How do we do that?
Glad you asked; before we get to that, it is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that the gov­ern­ment of Jamaica has main­tained a stub­born and arro­gant stance on the issue of vio­lent crime, refus­ing to accede to peo­ple with knowl­edge choos­ing to lis­ten to talk­ing heads from the University of the West Indies who read some­thing in a book then regur­gi­tate it.
That is where the gov­ern­ment for­mu­lates crime pol­i­cy, aid­ed by anti-police crim­i­nal-rights activists, and exe­cut­ed by a paper gen­er­al who has nev­er seen combat.
This arrange­ment is one of the great­est acts of decep­tion ever per­pe­trat­ed on the Jamaican people.

Let us see where we were in our recent past and how we man­aged to accom­plish the rel­a­tive­ly low­er numbers.

mur­der-rate-jamaica

Let us begin with 1980, the peri­od dot­ted with three red dia­monds rep­re­sent­ed a crit­i­cal mass as it relates to polit­i­cal killings. We see that, but for 1977 where 409 mur­ders were report­ed to police, despite the tur­bu­lence, want, and short­ages in the coun­try, homi­cides were very low com­pared to where we are today.
After the 1980 elec­tions, mur­ders dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly, cut by almost 50% but did not exact­ly go back to pre-1980 num­bers. Still, the num­bers remained con­sis­tent­ly low for eight (8) straight years, after which there was a sig­nif­i­cant jump in 1990 by more than 25 per­cent­age points.
Of even greater note was the sig­nif­i­cance and alacrity with which the mur­der num­bers took of after 1990 to the present day.
This data is crit­i­cal if we are to under­stand what exact­ly occurred at the point where we had the low­est num­bers after the dra­mat­ic rise in killings dur­ing the year 1980, why they dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly and remained so for eight(8) years, then there­after took off like a rocketship?

So what was the sig­nif­i­cant sin­gle char­ac­ter­is­tic at play in the 8‑years dot­ted with a green tick?
Edward Seaga was elect­ed Prime Minister in 1980, and his par­ty remained in pow­er for those 8‑years. Let me has­ten to say that this analy­sis is not designed to make polit­i­cal points. Those who would read and ana­lyze it with blink­ered polit­i­cal lens­es, one way or anoth­er, may do so; please remem­ber your polit­i­cal deduc­tions are not mine.
Edward Seaga, the polit­i­cal leader, was far from per­fect. His polit­i­cal career is para­dox­i­cal, depend­ing on who is telling his story.
Seaga loved Jamaica; he under­stood that there could be no real eco­nom­ic growth in an envi­ron­ment of crim­i­nal­i­ty. Yet he cul­ti­vat­ed one of the most his­tor­i­cal gar­risons in our coun­try because his pride would not allow him to con­cede that the baby he cre­at­ed in trans­form­ing back-o-wall into what would lat­er become the thriv­ing mod­ern com­mu­ni­ty known as Tivoli gar­dens, in its struc­ture of Donmanship was anti­thet­i­cal to the rule of law and there­fore the effec­tive gov­er­nance of Jamaica.

Seaga’s sup­port­ers will argue that Tivoli gar­dens was a nec­es­sary evil to counter the PNP’s con­fla­gra­tion of gar­risons; I would counter that all things con­sid­ered, two wrongs do not make a right, but those are my per­son­al views.“Edward Seaga nur­tured Tivoli gar­dens as a par­ent his child, but he was not hes­i­tant about giv­ing to the police, the names of those he deemed to be out of [order] in the community.
Tivoli Gardens is a tiny slice of Jamaica; I would do a dis­ser­vice to the facts if I made the case, that by con­trol­ling crime in that enclave, you effec­tive­ly con­trol crime across the length and breadth of Jamaica.
So we must exam­ine the oth­er fac­tors that went into the mas­sive reduc­tion in mur­ders rel­a­tive to 1980 and when Seaga won the elec­tion and the peri­od after the PNP’s Michael Manley beat him in the 1989 General elections.

During Seaga’s stew­ard­ship„ many Jamaican crim­i­nals fled to oth­er coun­tries, by uti­liz­ing uncon­ven­tion­al means. Some went to Cuba; we lat­er learned, then moved on to Canada. Michael Manley cul­ti­vat­ed warm rela­tions with Pierre Trudeau of Canada and Fidel Castro of Cuba; thus, there were chan­nels open for them to exploit.
Others found ways into Britain and the United States.
The results of that peri­od of exo­dus are well known; Jamaican crim­i­nals took with them a kind of ruth­less­ness that forced leg­is­la­tures in those host coun­tries to adopt [dra­con­ian] mea­sures which ensnared and incar­cer­at­ed thousands.
After serv­ing lengthy prison sen­tences due to those mea­sures, the sig­nif­i­cant upward bound in homi­cides in the year, 2002 may very well reflect when those crim­i­nals were start­ing to be released from pris­ons and deport­ed to Jamaica.
That is not to say that depor­tees are direct­ly respon­si­ble for the mur­der­ous onslaught. Still, it is fair to assert that they brought back with them a lev­el of cal­lous­ness and sophis­ti­ca­tion Jamaicans nev­er knew before.

The Jamaica they returned to was not a Jamaica hos­tile to vio­lence-pro­duc­ers. There was an admin­is­tra­tion in pow­er that said quote; (‘any­thing a any­thing’).sic.
That col­lo­qui­al ter­mi­nol­o­gy was a wink and a nod to the crim­i­nals to do as they please. They also returned to a police depart­ment immersed from top to bot­tom in cor­rup­tion, a soci­ety cul­tur­al­ly social­ized into cor­rup­tion, and a jus­tice sys­tem inef­fec­tu­al to the req­ui­site task.
A change of Government in 2010 saw a dra­mat­ic reduc­tion in mur­ders from the pre­ced­ing three years, and a fur­ther reduc­tion for a few years there­after, up to 2016 when the num­bers went beserk again.
The log­i­cal deduc­tion from this the­sis is that itis rea­son­able to say that crime has thrived in Jamaica when the coun­try’s lead­er­ship has been most acqui­es­cent with its growth.
The coun­try has not had the lead­er­ship of the type of Seaga on this issue under either polit­i­cal par­ty, even though there has been a dip under the abbre­vi­at­ed Bruce Golding Administration.

The cur­rent lead­er­ship of Andrew Holness on [this] issue may be char­ac­ter­ized as rid­dled with arro­gance, igno­rance, spite, and a will­ing­ness to enact struc­tur­al changes in the Constabulary to the per­il of hun­dreds of Jamaicans each year.
In the end, Andrew Holness, Horace Chang, and Antony Anderson may get their wish to restruc­ture the JCF, just so that they may have brag­ging rights for the sake of change.
That changes will be a pyrrhic vic­to­ry as (a) the changes are already prov­ing to be at the expense of an effec­tive police depart­ment & (b) by the time those changes take effect, there may not be any­one left alive.
This Prime Minister has demon­strat­ed that he is a dis­re­spect­ful anti-police antag­o­nist, one who has caused a mas­sive attri­tion of com­pe­tent peo­ple from the depart­ment. Some of the peo­ple who have left the depart­ment haven’t even left the coun­try. That is a clear indi­ca­tion that they are fed up with him and what he has meant to the pro­fes­sion they love.
After con­tribut­ing to the con­tin­ued destruc­tion of the JCF, he engages in talk­ing points in which he argues that the crime sit­u­a­tion is out­side the abil­i­ties of the JCF to handle.
‘No buster’, you ham­strung the police with your words and deeds, then com­plain that the crime sit­u­a­tion is out of their abil­i­ties to control.
It is the equiv­a­lent of set­ting the house on fire then com­plain­ing about the fire­men’s inabil­i­ty to put out the blaze.
The JCF has nev­er been unable to cope; what the depart­ment needs are res­olute lead­er­ship, some­thing Andrew Holness should take a reme­di­al class in understanding.

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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. 

People are enti­tled to their opin­ions, just not their own facts. I have great respect for peo­ple who hold beliefs con­trary to mine, as long as they gen­uine­ly believe in the rea­sons they hold the beliefs they do.
I also under­stand that as peo­ple, we come from dif­fer­ent back­grounds and cir­cum­stances. Those cir­cum­stances help shape who we are as individuals.
As such, I try to under­stand each per­son­’s per­spec­tive and tread light­ly before crit­i­ciz­ing their views with­out first try­ing to see things their way.

I read Chief Justice Bryan Sykes’s com­ments regard­ing alle­ga­tions that judges are giv­ing light sen­tences to hard­core crim­i­nals, to the dis­plea­sure of police offi­cers and the larg­er community.
I knew Sykes as a young offi­cer in the ’80s when he was a court(pros­e­cu­tor) junior clerk at Half-way ‑Tree Resident Magistrate’s Courts.
No one was under any illu­sion that Sykes was ever going to amount to an aggres­sive pros­e­cu­tor, who had a pen­chant for going after bad guys.
As per my own assess­ment, Bryan Sykes was an even-keeled dude who seem­ing­ly did not care one way or the other.
As a for­mer police offi­cer who was gung-ho about remov­ing crim­i­nals from the streets, Sykes would not have been my choice of a pros­e­cu­tor, not by a long shot.
Outside of that, I will not engage in ad hominem attacks on the Chief Justice. I left law enforce­ment eons ago, and I am sure that Justice Sykes bust­ed his tail to get to where he is today, and that is not only admirable, it is commendable.

Before respond­ing to the Chief Justice’s state­ments, I will first say that the sen­tences met­ed out to vio­lent offend­ers are an inte­gral part of why Violent crime con­tin­ues to rise year over year.
In fair­ness, all of us must take stock that the penal code isn’t work­ing as the penal­ties are far too criminal-friendly.
When Judges hand down light sen­tences to vio­lent offend­ers, it com­pli­cates the already thorny issue of vio­lent crime in our coun­try. Neither Bryan Sykes nor any oth­er Jamaican should make any asser­tions that the penal­ties being hand­ed down to the nation’s most vio­lent offend­ers are any­where near where they ought to be.
This issue, how­ev­er, is not sole­ly with­in the remit of judges, but lies square­ly at the feet of the Legislature to bring the crim­i­nal code up to where it needs to be to respond to the wave of vio­lent crimes wash­ing over the country.
I have per­son­al­ly called for a total revamp­ing of the crim­i­nal code and com­ing up with penal­ties that bet­ter reflect the sever­i­ty of the crimes and the times’ seriousness.
In those calls, I have laid out in prac­ti­cal terms how that may be achieved, includ­ing (a) leg­is­lat­ing much stiffer penal­ties for vio­lent crimes, (b) leg­is­lat­ing truth in sentencing,(unless there are exi­gent cir­cum­stances, a ten-year sen­tence should result in ten years served), © manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain vio­lent crimes,(this removes from crim­i­nal friend­ly judges, the dis­cre­tion to turn them loose as soon as they are convicted.

So let us ‘con­sid­er the Chief Justice’s statements!
Remember, he respond­ed to the idea that cops are mad that judges are issu­ing light sen­tences to vio­lent offend­ers. We will hence­forth refer to the Chief Justice as CJ.
(CJ) “I have no prob­lem with crit­i­cisms of judges, but we must have all the infor­ma­tion before we crit­i­cize, and in any event, the solu­tion to this is a sim­ple one, which the min­istry is address­ing, name­ly right of appeal by the Crown. So all of these things will be addressed in due course.”
I agree with the Chief Justice, on the need to have all of the facts; how­ev­er, it can­not be that the CJ is tone-deaf to this issue that has been per­va­sive for decades.
In any event, the pros­e­cu­tor’s right to appeal the egre­gious cas­es of improp­er lenien­cy by some judges can­not come soon enough.

Sykes respond­ed in a spe­cif­ic case where the police are incensed at the sen­tence hand­ed down to a known gangster.
(CJ)“According to the news report, the police are report­ed­ly upset because of the light sen­tence; the point is that there is no offense known as ‘alleged gang­ster.’ There is a statute called the Criminal Justice (Suppression of Organisations) Act. If the police believe that they have suf­fi­cient evi­dence to con­vince a court of the req­ui­site stan­dard that this per­son is indeed a crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion mem­ber, then that is the charge that ought to have been laid. Then the per­son would have been tried or placed before a judge of the Supreme Court, but the judge at the Parish Court can’t take account of unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions.”
Agreed wholeheartedly!

(CJ)“And in any event with Parish Court judges, there is a lim­it to the sen­tence that they can give, and the report does not indi­cate the remarks by the sen­tenc­ing judge which the Court of Appeal has now oblig­ed all judges at what­ev­er lev­el in the tri­al courts to indi­cate why a par­tic­u­lar sen­tence was giv­en. I am sure that the judge did this, but, of course, those things are not usu­al­ly of inter­est. What is of inter­est now is the nine months it is said that he received.”
Hmm, I won­der why the Court of Appeals has now man­dat­ed that judges at all lev­els in the tri­al courts indi­cate why a par­tic­u­lar sen­tence is given?
Could it be that the Appellate court rec­og­nizes that there are vast unex­plained dis­par­i­ties in the sen­tences being hand­ed down for the same offens­es, and with no mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances, in dif­fer­ent courts by dif­fer­ent judges?
Is the CJ aware of these dis­par­i­ties occur­ring in the Saint James tri­al courts, for example?
I’ll move on.

Speaking to the claims that the con­vict­ed man was believed to be a mem­ber of the feared Hollywood Gang, the chief jus­tice said alle­ga­tions were insufficient.
(CJ)“Again, where is the evi­dence to sup­port this? Furthermore, leg­is­la­tion indi­cates that where the per­son has entered a plea, dis­counts should be tak­en into account. Interestingly, the report does not indi­cate any long list of pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions of any kind, so it would appear, even on this report, that this is a gen­tle­man [who] may very well have been, as far as the court is con­cerned, a first offend­er, no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tion and he is in a court that has a lim­it placed upon its sen­tenc­ing. The gen­tle­man has been in cus­tody for some eight months, so all of these are fac­tors that the judge would have to take into account.”
I agree with the CJ’s assump­tions; if they are assump­tions. On the one hand, how­ev­er, he seemed to want to cre­ate the impres­sion that he knew pret­ty lit­tle about the case in ques­tion. Still, his speci­fici­ty relat­ed to the offend­er’s crim­i­nal record and the court’s lim­i­ta­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the length of time the offend­er was in jail before tri­al, seem to tell a dif­fer­ent story.
Nevertheless, I will move on.

I want­ed to give the chief Justice due def­er­ence, and as such, I laid out his com­ments and gave him cred­it when he spoke the truth.
But for the Chief Justice to stand before reporters or wher­ev­er the hell he stood to make claims about lim­i­ta­tions on the court, first-time offend­ers, and the time dan­ger­ous offend­ers spend in jail before tri­al, with­out acknowl­edg­ing the ele­phant in the room is disin­gen­u­ous, to say the least.
To pre­tend that there is no prob­lem with the sen­tences hand­ed down by judges with­in the sys­tem, makes Bryan Sykes a hyp­ocrite and, for all intents and pur­pos­es, a damn liar.
He has been in the sys­tem long enough to know full well that this has been a sore sub­ject for decades.
Is he going to pre­tend also that the rea­son the court of appeals man­dat­ed that judges give rea­sons for the sen­tences they hand down is sim­ply arbi­trary and unre­lat­ed to this vex­ing question?

The instances in which Judges bring the jus­tice sys­tem into dis­re­pute through dis­parate sen­tenc­ing, are far too many for any­one, least of all the Chief Justice, to pre­tend it isn’t happening.
If Bryan Sykes were a leader, what he would do is sched­ule a sit­down with police offi­cers and allow for a dis­cus­sion to occur between him­self, his con­tem­po­raries, Prosecutors, and defense Attorneys so that the views of all can be aired out and a bet­ter under­stand­ing of all the roles appreciated.
Denying that judges are let­ting vio­lent crim­i­nals off the hook with slight slaps on the wrist by stat­ing the obvi­ous, is at its heart disingenuous.

.

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

A Police Constable, Nicholas Brown of the St. Catherine ESM, was on his way to work at about 3:15 am this morn­ing February 27^th when a lone gun­man attacked him.
The offi­cer was attacked after leav­ing the May Pen Toll Booth when he stopped in the Savannah Crossing vicin­i­ty to change his punc­tured tire.
A lone assailant alleged­ly attacked him with a firearm; a strug­gle ensued; dur­ing the strug­gle, Constable Brown man­aged to dis­arm his attack­er and hit him with the weapon though receiv­ing 13 stab-wounds to his back.
Constable Brown is being treat­ed at the May Pen Hospital.
His con­di­tion is con­sid­ered sta­ble at this time.
The inci­dent is being investigated.

The Police Officers Association (POA), the enti­ty with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) that rep­re­sents gazetted offi­cers of the Force, issued an exu­ber­ant state­ment in sup­port of its for­mer col­league, Former Senior Superintendent of Police James Forbes, who on Friday had his 2014 con­vic­tion for attempt­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice con­vic­tion over­turned by the appel­late court.
The POA’s state­ments were issued under the sig­na­ture of its chair­man Senior Superintendent Wayne Cameron.
SSP Forbes was con­vict­ed in a case that involved Portland Member of Parliament Douglas Vaz, and Tankweld boss, Bruce Bicknell.
The case involved Bicknell receiv­ing a speed­ing tick­et and alleged­ly solicit­ed SSP Forbes help through his friend Douglas Vaz to make the tick­et go away.
An inves­ti­ga­tion was trig­gered, and all three men were arrest­ed and charged; Bicknell & Vaz was freed of all charges while Forbes was con­vict­ed and ordered to serve six months in prison or pay a fine of $800,000.
Forbes paid the fine and filed an appeal.
The appeal took almost sev­en years, which did not go unno­ticed by the court, apol­o­giz­ing for the long delay before the verdict.
On Friday, February 26, SSP James saw that con­vic­tion over­turned and his good name restored.

THE POA’s RESPONSE

February 24, 2021

Mr. A. James Forbes 

Senior Superintendent of Police

Dear Sir,

Re: Court of Appeal Decision

The Executive of the Police Officer’s Association, on behalf of its mem­bers, wish­es to con­vey our best wish­es on your vic­to­ri­ous out­come hand­ed out by the Court of Appeal this morn­ing. For many years dur­ing your tenure at the Jamaica Constabulary Force, you were the face rec­og­nized by Jamaica’s cit­i­zens, like that of Integrity, Safety, Reassurance and Standard Bearer for the insti­tu­tion.  

It is with utmost respect and regard, that we acknowl­edge the for­ti­tude which you dis­played dur­ing the past six years to demon­strate your inno­cence and to dis­play the integri­ty that you have been well-known for. We rec­og­nize the impact that the pre­vi­ous deci­sion, had on your fam­i­ly and the diver­sion of your career path; how­ev­er, we rest assured that jus­tice has indeed been served although pro­longed. In going for­ward, the POA cel­e­brates this vic­to­ry with you. and stands ready to offer not only our con­grat­u­la­tions but also to extend assis­tance to you and your fam­i­ly as nec­es­sary, in the days ahead. 

The POA encour­ages you to remain stead­fast in your actions and to hold true to your prin­ci­ples. 

Sincerely,

Wayne Cameron, Mr.

Chairman

S.S.P. Wayne Cameron S.P. David White S.P. Maldria Jones-Williams S.P. Christopher Phillips 

Chairman  Vice-Chairman  Secretary/​Treasurer Assistant Secretary/​Treasurer 

876−816−2436 876−833−8899 876−322−2500  876−423−1067  

Wayne.​cameron@​jcf.​gov.​jm  David.​white@​jcf.​gov.​jm  Maldria.​jones@​jcf.​gov.​jm  Christopher.​phillips@​jcf.​gov.​jm

S.P. Catherine Lord S.P. Alvin Allen A.S.P. St. George Jackson 

Member Member  Member 

876−325−8764 876- 351- 2389  876- 542‑9077/​876−771−0000

Catherine.​lord@​jcf.​gov.​jm Alvin.​allen@​jcf.​gov.​jm  Stgeorge.​jackson@​jcf.​gov.​jm 

Lawyers have a respon­si­bil­i­ty, as offi­cers of the court, to ensure that what­ev­er actions they take are not only legal but eth­i­cal, and do not bring dis­re­pute to the sys­tem of Justice.
Nevertheless, it appears that greed con­tin­ues to plague the legal pro­fes­sion, result­ing in Lawyers find­ing them­selves run­ning afoul of the very pro­fes­sion they are sworn to defend.
This is not only true in Jamaica, where the sto­ries are many and var­ied but in Trinidad & Tobago and oth­er parts of the Caribbean.
The per­ti­nent ques­tion in light of these events is; why are lawyers held to a dif­fer­ent standard?
If a cit­i­zen receives mon­ey on behalf of anoth­er and con­verts it to his own use and ben­e­fit, he is guilty of fraud­u­lent conversion.
Paying the mon­ey back does not negate the offense, even though it may go to mit­i­ga­tion in the offend­er’s sentencing.
Why are lawyers and politi­cians allowed to break the laws with impuni­ty and get away with it sim­ply by repay­ing the money?
This must stop!
For those rea­sons, I oppose a Caribbean court of jus­tice because all across the Caribbean, jus­tice has demon­stra­bly meant dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent people.

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»>

The Trinidad & Tobago High Court has issued an arrest war­rant against attor­ney Kathy-Ann Mottley for refus­ing to repay a man more than $.2 mil­lion paid to her ­after con­vinc­ing him he owed the mon­ey to one of her for­mer clients.
Upon her arrest, Justice Avason Quinlan-Williams ordered that Mottley be made to serve one-year imprison­ment unless, while behind bars, she can facil­i­tate the repay­ment. If that were to be done, then the attor­ney is to be imme­di­ate­ly ­released from cus­tody. The war­rant was issued on Monday after Canute Antoine ini­ti­at­ed legal pro­ceed­ings against Mottley.

In 2016, Antoine also filed a com­plaint with the Disciplinary Committee of the Law Association against her. The Express under­stands that up to yes­ter­day after­noon, Mottley had not yet been tak­en into cus­tody. In all, she has to ­repay Antoine the sum of $209,142.02 plus ­inter­est. This is not the first time the attor­ney has found her­self in such a dilem­ma before the court. In September last year, she was spared a jail term by Justice Frank Seepersad for refus­ing to pay a for­mer client more than $.1 mil­lion in dam­ages that she was ini­tial­ly with­hold­ing. That client’s son was killed in a vehic­u­lar acci­dent. Mottley had rep­re­sent­ed the woman at tri­al, and after receiv­ing com­pen­sa­tion on the woman’s behalf, she failed to hand over the money.

Again, pro­ceed­ings were brought against her before the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee and lat­er at the High Court. In his rul­ing, Justice Seepersad had ordered that if Mottley did not hand over the mon­ey with­in a cer­tain time, she would be made to serve 30 days’ impris­on­ment. On two occa­sions, she made appli­ca­tions for exten­sions of time to pay the woman last September, the mon­ey was repaid in full and the com­mit­tal war­rants recalled by Seepersad.

Former Senior Superintendent of Police James Forbes, who was charged with Portland MP Daryl Vaz and Tankweld boss Bruce Bicknell in 2014, had his con­vic­tion reversed by the appel­late court this morning.
Forbes was charged with attempt­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice in a case where Bicknell was issued a traf­fic tick­et for speeding.
SSP Forbes became embroiled in the affair after he was alleged­ly asked to inter­cede on Bicknell’s behalf by Vaz, a friend of Bicknell.
In a con­vo­lut­ed twist, Forbes was con­vict­ed of the charge, while Vaz and Bicknell were freed.
Forbes was fined $800,000 or six months in prison, the court of appeals ordered that the $800,000 be returned to Forbes immediately.