Tampa, FL — Joseph Edwards Williams, a 26-year old man from Florida who was released from prison as part of efforts to pre­vent fur­ther spread of the coro­n­avirus behind bars, was arrest­ed again after he alleged­ly shot and killed a man the very next day after being released.

Williams was fac­ing non-vio­lent drug charges when he was includ­ed in the 164 low-lev­el offend­ers that were released from Hillsborough County Jail on March 19, six days after he was arrest­ed. “The order was draft­ed in an effort to low­er the risk of the spread of COVID-19 with­in the Hillsborough County deten­tion facil­i­ties and to pro­tect the inmates, deputies and civil­ian staff work­ing with­in the jails,” the sheriff’s depart­ment said in a statement.

The next day since he was released, author­i­ties believe Williams was involved in the fatal shoot­ing of a man in the Progress Village area, accord­ing to WFLA. He was arrest­ed ear­li­er this week, fac­ing charges of sec­ond-degree mur­der, gun pos­ses­sion, vio­lent­ly resist­ing an offi­cer, drug pos­ses­sion, and para­pher­na­lia pos­ses­sion. Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a state­ment that Williams “took advan­tage of this health emer­gency to com­mit crimes while he was out of jail await­ing res­o­lu­tion of a low-lev­el, non-vio­lent offense.” Williams was arraigned via video appear­ance and was ordered held on a more than $250,000 bond.

Between the sophis­ti­cat­ed Levels of vio­lent crimes plagu­ing Jamaica, the num­ber of high-pow­ered weapons and ammu­ni­tion in the hands of the crim­i­nal under­world, and the lev­el of gen­er­al law­less­ness across the soci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly inner-city com­mu­ni­ties, it is incum­bent that the Governing author­i­ty now con­sid­ers new clan­des­tine meth­ods to root out cer­tain ele­ments from the soci­ety.
Those who have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to live or vis­it devel­oped soci­eties are thrilled at the lev­el of calm and sta­bil­i­ty that exist in those soci­eties. Even though no place is total­ly crime-free, the real­i­ty is that in many large cities, small cities, large towns and small towns and sub­urbs across the United States, Canada, the UK, all across Europe and even Asia peo­ple are able to live their lives with­out the stark real­i­ty of immi­nent death at every turn.
Countries do not get to this lev­el of calm and tran­quil­i­ty in a vac­u­um, or by wish­ing them so, or pray­ing for divine inter­ven­tion. Leaders take deci­sive steps to make them so.
What is unknown to the peo­ple who enjoy the sausage is how the sausage is made, and that’s okay.
But Governments can­not watch how the wind blows par­tic­u­lar­ly in a place like Jamaica in order to devel­op policy.

When you look at the inner-city com­mu­ni­ties and their love affair with mur­der­ers, rapists, thieves and child moles­ters, it is clear that seek­ing con­sen­sus from those com­mu­ni­ties on the way for­ward on deal­ing with crime is a total waste of time.
Collectively, those com­mu­ni­ties are the prob­lem and will not be a part of the solu­tion. Those com­mu­ni­ties can­not be seat­ed at the table, when cul­tur­al­ly they have resist­ed social-order and the rule of law.
Sure, there are great peo­ple liv­ing in those tough inner-city com­mu­ni­ties, nev­er­the­less, over­all, the gang­sters who shape and rule those com­mu­ni­ties deter­mine how they are run.
It is time that this admin­is­tra­tion begins the process of dis­man­tling those communities.

This fight has long exceed­ed the capac­i­ty of the local police to man­age. Even with the addi­tion of the 3’000-man army, the Jamaican secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus is woe­ful­ly under­staffed to deal with the lev­el of vio­lence and oth­er crimes in the soci­ety.
Soldiers are in the fight mere­ly as bod­ies or boots on the ground. A clas­sic exam­ple that more bod­ies, or boots on the ground are only one part of what is need­ed, is the fail­ure of States Of Emergencies & ZOSO’s to reduce the lev­el of vio­lent crime across the soci­ety.
Jamaica’s police to cit­i­zen ratio is not the best nei­ther is it the worst. One 2012 esti­mate placed Jamaica’s police depart­ment at 8’600, and a total offi­cer to cit­i­zen ratio of 315 offi­cers per 100,000 cit­i­zens.
Now I do under­stand that those num­bers hard­ly mean any­thing unless they are placed in con­text.
So, in Mexico, for exam­ple, anoth­er vio­lent coun­try, the same esti­mate was a total of 544,000 police offi­cers and a ratio of 464 offi­cers per 100,000 res­i­dents.
In Norway, a rel­a­tive­ly peace­ful European nation, their law enforce­ment num­bers in 2019 were 10,170 and a ratio of 188 offi­cers per 100,000 res­i­dents.
The num­ber of offi­cers to cit­i­zen ratio becomes an issue depend­ing on the lev­el of crime and vio­lence with­in the soci­ety.
Jamaican law enforce­ment is woe­ful­ly under­staffed and under-resourced, police offi­cers are at greater risk than most oth­er coun­tries due to the lev­el of vio­lent crim­i­nals in the country.

The Prime Minister just last March admit­ted that crime was out of the gov­ern­men­t’s abil­i­ty to con­trol. That is a stark admis­sion of fail­ure that should send shiv­ers down the spine of all Jamaicans at home and those abroad who have prop­er­ty there, and would one day like to retire in the coun­try of their birth.
Amidst the noise, chat­ter, and ban­ter about “Jamaica nice,”(which is indis­putable), our coun­try is beau­ti­ful, is a seri­ous sense of col­lec­tive self-doubt and deni­a­bil­i­ty about the nation’s future.
Those who engage in pre­tense and deni­a­bil­i­ty, must know that the false sense of con­fi­dence they try to project does not equate to patri­o­tism.
An (osac​.gov) report revealed that in 2017, Jamaica’s homi­cide rate was 56 per 100,000; in 2018, the homi­cide rate dropped to 47 per 100,000, but remains three times high­er than the aver­age for Latin America and the Caribbean. Forbes Magazine list­ed Jamaica as the third most dan­ger­ous place for women trav­el­ers in 2017. In 2018, Business Insider ranked Jamaica 10^th among 20 of the most dan­ger­ous places in the world. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recent­ly cit­ed crime as the num­ber one imped­i­ment to eco­nom­ic growth. The Jamaican gov­ern­ment con­clud­ed that cor­rup­tion and the transna­tion­al crime it facil­i­tates presents a grave threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty. 

The same report detailed; “Gangs are a major secu­ri­ty issue across the coun­try, and are the source of the major­i­ty of vio­lent crime nation­wide.” 
It is now time to make the hard deci­sions, clear­ly, the con­ven­tion­al meth­ods are not work­ing and will not work.
Within the gangs that are mur­der­ing ordi­nary Jamaican cit­i­zens, is a hard­ened sub­set that is dia­bol­i­cal and Sociopathic. They will not yield to con­form­ing to the rule of nor­mal soci­ety and must be made to.
The com­mu­ni­ties we have come to rec­og­nize as Garrisons will not be bull­dozed and replaced with beau­ti­ful con­do­mini­ums with beau­ti­ful gar­dens and swim­ming pools.
And so we must begin the process of decon­struct­ing the [Garrison men­tal­i­ty] that exist in the minds of the people.

(1) Remove from every wall every build­ing, every edi­fice, decals, por­traits, & every oth­er method used to make mar­tyrs of gang­sters, dead or alive.
(2) Systematically, use every legal law-enforce­ment tac­tic to tar­get arrest and charge known offend­ers who have lead­er­ship aspi­ra­tions and who present them­selves as (DONS) under the guise of (area leader.)
(3) Build a data­base of their every activ­i­ty, [where pos­si­ble doc­u­ment their every move, who they asso­ciate with, their famil­ial & oth­er con­nec­tions]
Databases are cost­ly to devel­op and main­tain and their con­tent is con­stant­ly chang­ing as gang mem­bers move, die, get locked up, buy new cars, divorce, remar­ry, change names, and so on. When used, they can be an effec­tive way of locat­ing sus­pect­ed gang­sters for whom war­rants have been issued and for pro­vid­ing law enforce­ment agen­cies with infor­ma­tion about migrat­ing gang mem­bers. 
(4) Gather intel­li­gence, gath­er intel­li­gence, gath­er intel­li­gence.
(5) Through intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, find ways to divert those mem­bers who may be influ­enced to engage in use­ful activities.

(6) Where pos­si­ble, estab­lish men­tor­ship pro­grams, encour­age cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion in becom­ing men­tors to at-risk youths.
(7) Police local knowl­edge is key, this is not just about one anti-gang oper­a­tion using covert assets, but about lit­er­al­ly every law-enforce­ment asset, every cop on the beat using his or her shift to gath­er intel­li­gence, then pass­ing that intel­li­gence to com­mand­ing offi­cers who must then dis­sem­i­nate that intel­li­gence to the Anti-gang units.
That intel­li­gence should include the name and address of every per­son the beat-cop comes across dur­ing his or her tour. Where pos­si­ble it should include a pho­to­graph to go with the name and address.
Members of the JDF should also work at pro­vid­ing intel­li­gence on routes of escape in the com­mu­ni­ties in which they live or may have poten­tial assets of infor­ma­tion. Knowing where sus­pects live, the kinds of cars they dri­ve, the motor­cy­cles they dri­ve, where their vehi­cles are usu­al­ly parked is crit­i­cal.
(8) Know each gang mem­ber and their par­ents, know their girl­friends, they can always be count­ed on to turn up to see their girl­friends and moth­ers.
Having that intel­li­gence is impor­tant.
(9) Know the mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ties who will sup­port the efforts of the police. Individual offi­cers who are part of anti-gang units must find ways to get their per­son­al cell phone num­bers to those assets. This allows for the free-flow of infor­ma­tion rather than going through the reg­u­lar bureau­crat­ic chan­nels.
(10) Where pos­si­ble sat­u­rate known areas of gang activ­i­ty with uni­formed police. This acts as a deter­rent, as well as serves to dis­rupt their illic­it activ­i­ties. Eventually, gangs move to oth­er areas with sus­tained law enforce­ment sat­u­ra­tion, this allows for com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing and build­ing trust.
The so-called ZOSO’s & declared states of pub­lic emer­gen­cies are proof that sat­u­ra­tion works to a cer­tain degree in low­er­ing crime in areas in which sat­u­ra­tion is employed, but it must be accom­pa­nied by build­ing trust and devel­op­ing assets through those rela­tion­ships for the long haul.
After the gangs have been forced out, it is crit­i­cal that com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing follows.

(11) Experts warn, Gangs, like any oth­er crim­i­nal enter­prise, or any orga­ni­za­tion for that mat­ter, need to com­mu­ni­cate inter­nal­ly in order to main­tain con­trol. The dai­ly activ­i­ties of a street gang gen­er­ate a con­stant stream of infor­ma­tion includ­ing orders from gang lead­ers, warn­ings, tips, threats, gang pro­pa­gan­da and street gos­sip. As gangs grow in size both numer­i­cal­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly, the need for effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes both more impor­tant and dif­fi­cult. Add to this the com­pli­ca­tions caused when senior gang mem­bers are incar­cer­at­ed and the need for secret com­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes more appar­ent. 
For exam­ple, when Adija Palmer (VybzKartel’s) voice was heard on voice-notes talk­ing about how an asso­ciate mis­han­dled his [shoes], it is impor­tant that law-enforce­ment under­stood that he was not talk­ing about shoes, but about guns.
There is much work to be done. It is time that the Government becomes pro-active in get­ting the police up to speed with these strate­gies, with a view to break­ing the back of the mon­ster.
Wishing away crime or worse, set­ting up road­blocks make the police, the mil­i­tary, and the gov­ern­ment look weak and pathet­ic.
I stand ready and will­ing to assist the Government and the secu­ri­ty forces in draft­ing & exe­cut­ing sus­tain­able anti-crime & anti-gang strate­gies that will help to bring the Island’s crime epi­dem­ic under control.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

If Jamaica is ever to pull back from the brink of anar­chy, the aver­age man on the street who has no voice, no pow­er, must see that the laws of the coun­try applies to all Jamaicans and not just the pow­er­less.
The idea of gov­er­nance is a sacred covenant between the gov­erned and those who gov­ern.
The pow­er in the hands of those who gov­erned is bestowed upon them by those who sub­mit to the con­cept of being gov­erned
For police offi­cers and oth­er offi­cers who are vest­ed with pow­er to detain and or infringe on the rights of indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens, so too are their pow­er of author­i­ty derived from the cit­i­zens.
It is impor­tant than it is rec­og­nized, that where­in there is the appear­ance, (jus­ti­fied or not), that cer­tain seg­ments of the soci­ety is exempt from enforce­ment of the nation’s laws, there tend to be upris­ings and push­back which may take var­i­ous forms depend­ing on the local­i­ty.
Those forms of protests can take sev­er­al forms, rang­ing from the wan­ton break­ing of laws, as a means of get­ting back at the sys­tem they view as cor­rupt or unjust, to open rebel­lion result­ing in the over­throw of governments.

It is for those rea­sons that it is impor­tant that as a soci­ety we con­tin­ue to strive for a coun­try wher­ev­er we are domi­ciled, in which all are equal under the law.
Regardless of the defin­ing socio-eco­nom­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics that are used to sep­a­rate us, it is impor­tant that the laws apply even­ly & just­ly in the eyes of all cit­i­zens.
In the 2016 American Presidential elec­tions a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of the nation’s intel­li­gence agen­cies report­ed that the Russian counter-mea­sure cam­paign was designed to widen the cracks of divi­sion with­in the American soci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly along racial lines.
Those who fol­low the news and cur­rent events would know just how suc­cess­ful those mea­sures turned out to be.
Today, more than three years after those elec­tions and the instal­la­tion of a new pres­i­dent, America remains extreme­ly polar­ized and at war with itself.
If those dis­par­i­ties did not exist they could not have been exploit­ed in a way that is counter to the inter­est of the United States.

Even as the strug­gle con­tin­ues to lev­el the play­ing field in the United States, so too must the fight con­tin­ue to end the intran­si­gent resid­ual effects of colo­nial­ism and the resul­tant caste-sys­tem that has been left behind in Jamaica by the Island’s col­o­niz­ers.
In order to do so, the remain­ing ves­tiges of that caste sys­tem must be bro­ken down. We can begin that process by ensur­ing that all of our peo­ple have equal pro­tec­tion under the law.
When some­one breaks the law he or she can­not be shield­ed from the con­se­quences of their actions based on who they are, or their sta­tion in the soci­ety.
In Israel, the Prime Minister was recent­ly indict­ed on cor­rup­tion charges, in oth­er devel­op­ing coun­tries like Pakistan, we have seen for­mer President Musharraf indict­ed and con­vict­ed in absen­tia.
All across the Globe as coun­tries strug­gle to emerge from the dark­ness of pover­ty into the light of free­dom and democ­ra­cy, pow­er­ful lead­ers have been brought down and made account­able for their crim­i­nal actions.
Jamaican can be no excep­tion in this regard.
It is for those rea­sons that I will for­ev­er stand behind the rule of law and those who cor­rect­ly enforce the nation’s laws with­out fear or favor, mal­ice or ill-will.

Regardless of the out­come of the Kari Douglas arrest, I am heart­ened to see young police offi­cers risk­ing all by stand­ing true to their oaths and mak­ing arrests, even at the per­il of their careers.
As a past mem­ber of the JCF, I was forced to stand up to politi­cians, on sev­er­al occa­sions, many of them believed then, as they do today, that they are above the laws, or that the laws do not apply to them. That same lev­el of con­tempt for the laws, and by exten­sion, those who enforce them, is very self-evi­dent among the wealthy elites as well.
I was trans­ferred because I did exact­ly what the law autho­rized me to do in one inci­dent. A politi­cian still serv­ing in the present admin­is­tra­tion and a cor­rupt senior police offi­cer, col­lud­ed to ship me away from the divi­sion. (Speaking of the same Saint Andrew North)
That did not go down as they planned, the peo­ple who knew my ser­vice took to the streets, with block­ade and fire.
The Commissioner of Police, Herman Ricketts, was forced to send me back. That day I arrived to a hero’s wel­come from the peo­ple I served, among them, indi­vid­u­als I had pre­vi­ous­ly arrest­ed.
That day will for­ev­er live in my mind. Policing is about being fair, just, firm, respect­ful, hon­est and impar­tial.
It was those attrib­ut­es that inspired offend­ers I had inves­ti­gat­ed and arrest­ed and who were suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed and did time to seek me out after they did their time to thank me for doing my job fair­ly.
One man came back and thanked me for not shoot­ing him when I took a loaded gun from his waist­band.
He pro­fuse­ly thanked me for not shoot­ing him after he did his two years in prison.
It nev­er crossed my mind that shoot­ing him was an option when I took that loaded weapon from him. 

The Attorney General of Jamaica today, poignant­ly and metic­u­lous­ly cleared up some broad ambi­gu­i­ties with­in the pub­lic space on the issue of peo­ple who are exempt under the Disaster Risk Management Act.
Those mis­con­cep­tions include, but are not con­fined to the idea, that because one is exempt by virtue of their job descrip­tion they can­not be found to be in breach of the Disaster Risk Management Act.
Mrs. Malahoo Forte explained, that even if one is exempt, he or she can­not abuse that exemp­tion by run­ning per­son­al errands or to stop at a rum bar for drinks, and then claim exemp­tion.
The exemp­tion must be relat­ed exact­ly to that per­son­’s pro­fes­sion­al func­tion which neces­si­tat­ed the exemp­tion in the first place.
Also, when asked to pro­vide proof of exemp­tion, the exempt par­ty has a duty to do so. A dri­ver’s license is not proof of exemp­tion.
Additionally, a police offi­cer doing his duty has no bur­den to know whether a per­son is a parish coun­cilor, mem­ber of par­lia­ment, or a doctor.

When the police seek out and arrest a young man who vio­lat­ed the Disaster Risk Management Act, and when that young man apol­o­gized pub­licly, even as he still awaits his day in court, there should be zero tol­er­ance for any parish coun­cilor or prime min­is­ter who breach­es the act and believes that curs­ing out and abus­ing the police offi­cers is accept­able.
Corruption is an ene­my of growth, cor­rup­tion comes in many forms.
Regardless of who you are, under these cir­cum­stances that we have nev­er encoun­tered before, when stopped by the police tell them who you are and that you are exempt.
As I said before, that exemp­tion would be applic­a­ble based on whether the per­son was act­ing in an offi­cial capac­i­ty or not.
If the offi­cer is deter­mined to arrest you, sub­mit to the arrest and have your day in court.
I find it dif­fi­cult to believe that they would decide to arrest if they were not abused ver­bal­ly.
The only thing I fault the police offi­cers with, in Kari Douglas inci­dent is that they allowed her to dri­ve to the Constant Spring police sta­tion to be charged.
They were more than lenient.
She should have been hand­cuffed and tak­en to the police sta­tion, exact­ly like that young man was before her.
We can­not have two dif­fer­ent stan­dards for the same tiny country.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Share this:

We have been real­i­bly informed that a meet­ing is sched­uled by the Police Officers Association (POA) between the Deputy Superintended who alleged­ly authored the com­plaint in the Kari Douglas inci­dent involv­ing SSP Steve Mcgregor, and McGregor him­self.
We await the out­come of that meet­ing. it is also alleged that Kari Douglas who has been a parish coun­cil­lor for the PNP before switch­ing par­ties have had sev­er­al encoun­ters with law enforce­ment pri­or and was even arrest­ed but have not been held account­able because of her famil­ial and polit­i­cal affiliations.

In the mean­time, the Police Federation released the fol­low­ing state­ment on the inci­dent.
PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release, April 8, 2020, Kingston Jamaica.
The Police Federation has come out in sup­port of its mem­bers fol­low­ing the arrest of Jamaica Labour Party coun­cilor, Kari Douglas, who was arrest­ed under the Disaster Risk Management Act.

The Federation said, that notwith­stand­ing the exemp­tion, Miss Douglas should have giv­en a prop­er account of her­self, and should have had prop­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that would have explained her exemp­tion.
The Federation says the wan­ton dis­re­spect met­ed out to police offi­cers by some politi­cians is unbe­com­ing of pub­lic fig­ures and our nation’s leaders.

According to Detective Sergeant Rowe, chair­man of the Police Federation, this is not the first alter­ca­tion Miss Douglas has had with per­sons who were car­ry­ing out their legit­i­mate func­tion. He said, whilst not going into details as the mat­ter is under inves­ti­ga­tion, the account of the coun­cilor’s actions were very dis­turb­ing and trou­bling.
The Federation says they will stand by their mem­bers in the law­ful and pro­fes­sion­al exe­cu­tion of their duties, as no one is above the law.