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 who are 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).

Officers start­ed leav­ing in droves rather than try to moti­vate and incen­tivize them to stay; Holness dou­bled down on dra­con­ian mea­sures designed not just to make it dif­fi­cult for dis­grun­tled offi­cers to leave but crim­i­nal­ize them with stiff prison time if they fail to give advanced warn­ings that they intend to resign.
Not only are these mea­sures uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, but they also did not stop the attri­tion. And so Holness was forced to send stu­dent con­sta­bles to man his ZOSOS & SOEs for a frac­tion of what they should be paid and for pro­tract­ed peri­ods of time over which they should be exposed with­out the appro­pri­ate train­ing.
The police are in an exis­ten­tial fight with zero back­ings from the gov­ern­ment. The failed Commissioner of Police Antony Anderson has no solu­tion to the killings; he does not know what to do, he was nev­er a cop.
At the same time, his lev­el of fail­ure has been far worse than any com­mis­sion­er of police who has come up through the ranks.
The silence is deaf­en­ing; there is no demand to fire the com­mis­sion­er com­ing from the usu­al quar­ters. What we hear now (crick­ets) is deaf­en­ing silence because Anderson is their boy.
Set of fuck­ing sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrites.
It is only the gov­ern­men­t’s stat­ed com­mit­ment that will send a mes­sage to the crim­i­nals that the coun­try’s lead­er­ship is solid­ly behind the secu­ri­ty forces.
Now it is abun­dant­ly clear that ZOSO’s & SOE’s will not stop the killings; they have thrown up their hands in despair.
They dug them­selves a hole of pre­tense from which they can­not remove them­selves.
There is only one solu­tion to deal­ing with these ver­min, and that is to exter­mi­nate them.
The pre­ferred route to remov­ing them from soci­ety is to arrest them and have them face the courts. But in Jamaica, even the damn judges seem to be in bed with the mur­der­ers.
That leaves just one solu­tion, but the pop­u­la­tion has its head too far up its own ass that it is stuck talk­ing about the human rights of mur­der­ers while no one talks about the human rights of those who have their lives tak­en from them.
A few cars and the like are not a com­mit­ment to law enforce­ment.
This Administration has stead­fast­ly refused to step back from its com­mit­ment to obstruct the efforts of law enforce­ment; as a con­se­quence, the nation must con­tin­ue to weep and bury its dead.
Until the peo­ple decide to rise and do some­thing about it themselves.

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.

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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. 

ANOTHER CASE TO BE MADE FOR A NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION DATA BASE

The police said that they received reports of loud explo­sions com­ing from the area about 9:10 pm, and went to inves­ti­gate. According to the police, on their arrival, four peo­ple were seen — two men and two women. The premis­es was searched and sev­er­al 9mm spent cas­ings were observed on the ground. A black 9mm Glock pis­tol with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing one 9mm round was found on top of fur­ni­ture in a sec­tion of the house, while one of the men hand­ed over a black Glock case to the officers.

Ammunition and a car­ry­ing case recov­ered at the scene

According to the police, when they enquired about the weapon, they were told that the firearm belonged to a licensed firearm hold­er who is present­ly over­seas; how­ev­er, no firearm doc­u­men­ta­tion was pre­sent­ed. The two men were sub­se­quent­ly arrested.

Identification report­ed­ly tak­en from one of the men

This sto­ry has been updated.…

WE NEED THIS SHOOTER OFF THE STREET NOW, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

Please be on the look­out for this punk, he is report­ed­ly from Lilliput in Saint James. He is said to be in and out of police lock­up but has not been sen­tenced for any of his crimes.

It is report­ed that ear­li­er this morn­ing he opened fire on a police patrol in Barrett Town. Cons Aarons who was one of the offi­cers in the vehi­cle was report­ed­ly shot in the face and has been under­go­ing treat­ment at an Area Hospital.

If you see this man do not approach him, noti­fy the near­est police sta­tion or sim­ply call 119 and have him brought to jus­tice as soon as possible.

I met a young man who was vis­it­ing the States from Jamaica recent­ly, he was intro­duced to me by his cousin, an asso­ciate of mine.
It was the sec­ond time that he had come by, hav­ing been in to see me when he first came into the coun­try.
This time he was get­ting ready to leave to go back home. Having met him the first time, I had already formed a favor­able opin­ion of him.
Great kid who just want­ed to enjoy life and have a good time, all while think­ing he was the best thing ever to have hap­pened to girls.
I saw a lot of me in him when I was his age, and so we hit it off immediately.

My per­cep­tions of him were the same pos­i­tive opin­ions I have always had as a police offi­cer work­ing the streets & alley­ways of Grant’s Pen Gully, Birdsucker Lane, Whitehall Terrace, Ackee-walk and the count­less oth­er depressed com­mu­ni­ties of Saint Andrew North, includ­ing Blackwood Terrace where I was shot one dark night in 88.
(When push comes to shove) as they say, the vast major­i­ty of those young peo­ple are good peo­ple who sim­ply want a chance.
The con­ver­sa­tion we had between us even­tu­al­ly turned to the high lev­els of vio­lent crime in our country.

And soon he vol­un­teered that his father is a politi­cian with some means in the cen­ter of the Island.
He vol­un­teered how he was arrest­ed by a (police-bway)[sic]. He rev­eled in the fact that bystanders berat­ed the offi­cer and told him he had no right arrest­ing (name with­held) bway.
More than all, he seemed ecsta­t­ic that the offi­cer was told that he would be out of the Parish with­in a week.
He detailed how peo­ple went to the sta­tion and demand­ed his release and that oth­er offi­cers at the sta­tion refused to book him into cus­tody, all because of a cer­tain big-name thug in the parish and their asso­ci­a­tions with, and prob­a­bly fear of him.

He went on in absolute & total delight, laugh­ing at the spec­ta­cle, as he recount­ed the events in his head, the look on his cous­in’s face was price­less, the young­ster had no idea of my past.
What he nev­er said was that the offi­cer relent­ed and caved in as a result of the abuse. He nev­er said the offi­cer relent­ed when his com­pro­mised col­leagues refused to do their sworn duty because of their asso­ci­a­tions with a filthy thug who has deep and long­stand­ing ties with the high­est ech­e­lons of the People’s National Party and has under­writ­ten many of their campaigns.

The dis­re­spect we see on the streets toward our police offi­cers as they strug­gle to do their duties, has deep­er roots than just mere law­less­ness.
Although a few of the politi­cians on either side pay lip ser­vice to the law­less­ness in the coun­try and the resul­tant vio­lence which comes from it, the thugs who run the gar­risons with their robin hood per­sonas, still hold tremen­dous sway over what hap­pens on the streets.
It is exact­ly for that rea­son that the politi­cians will not, and prob­a­bly can­not renounce and decon­struct the gar­risons they cre­at­ed since 1962.
The gang­sters who con­trol the gar­risons have too much eco­nom­ic pow­er now, and most of all they hold too many secrets for the politi­cians.
In many cas­es, it is the finan­cial back­ing of the thugs that made it pos­si­ble for the politi­cians to attain polit­i­cal office.
It is a com­plete 180-degree turn from what obtained just decades ago.

Many are the sto­ries we have heard of politi­cians at the high­est lev­els using their diplo­mat­ic sta­tus to bring large sums of dirty mon­ey into the coun­try.
Effectively using their offices and their trust­ed diplo­mat­ic sta­tus, to act as couri­ers for drug deal­ers.
Since we can­not val­i­date those sto­ries we will leave them alone, suf­fic­ing to say, that what­ev­er you hear in the streets have some sem­blance of truth to it.
Even if there is a 10 % truth to any of that, it should cause the stom­achs of law-abid­ing Jamaicans to turn.
Many years ago I decid­ed that I would leave the police force by sim­ply drop­ping every­thing and walk­ing away.
I want­ed to make a bet­ter life for myself than the police force could give me.

I want­ed to be reward­ed on mer­it, not by asso­ci­at­ing with crim­i­nals. Not by being a cor­rupt cop who betrays his oath.
But I left main­ly because I thought that had I stayed, I would not be able to make the change need­ed by being sub­servient to a broad­er polit­i­cal sys­tem that is cor­rupt inside and out, a sys­tem on which I would depend for my own upward mobil­i­ty, what­ev­er form that would take.
I thought that as they say, “the pen is might­i­er than the sword,” and maybe, just maybe, by con­stant­ly ham­mer­ing away, shin­ing a light at the cor­rup­tion with­in the sys­tem some changes will be made.
That some­how, we can build a bet­ter coun­try for gen­er­a­tions to come.
Sometimes, that has to be done with­out the naysay­ers and those who would rather attack a mes­sen­ger than face the mes­sage.
That has always been the black expe­ri­ence since our ances­tors were dragged away from their homes and brought to the west­ern world as chat­tel.
It is for that rea­son that Harriet Tumbam report­ed­ly car­ried a gun, not just for the white slave-catch­ers, but for the N****s who would run back and tell “massa” where the safe hous­es were in the under­ground railroad.

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.

At every turn where law­less Jamaicans abuse police offi­cers doing their duty, one acronym is heard com­ing from their mouths.
“INDECOM” !!!
The Jamaican Prime Minister final­ly con­ced­ed yes­ter­day quote” ‘The country’s crime prob­lem has “evolved cur­rent­ly, over and above our estab­lished capac­i­ty to address it”
I have repeat­ed­ly chal­lenged this PM to step away from his charged rhetoric against the police and begged him to sup­port our police.
Yesterday he con­ced­ed defeat, but still refus­es to repeal the INDECOM Act, and return to the CCRB which was far more effec­tive, far less confrontational.

I call on the JAMAICAN Prime Minister to repeal the INDECOM Act forth­with.
It took an act of par­lia­ment to cre­ate it, it requires an act of par­lia­ment to repeal it.
Table the repeal in the house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives and let mem­bers vote on it.
Tell the United States, England And Canada to stand down, it is their dark mon­ey that is par­tial­ly sup­port­ing the crime enhanc­ing Trojan horse.
The secu­ri­ty forces must have over­sight, but more than any­thing else, they need our sup­port.
The United States Embassy in our coun­try days ago issued restric­tions to their staff and cit­i­zens about where not to in our coun­try.
The list of places is shock­ing to all peo­ple who know the Island. The list was so expan­sive there was hard­ly any­place that their staff is allowed to go.

Repeal the dis­as­trous INDECOM Act, and return to the for­mer CCRB which was far more effec­tive and with none of the acri­mo­nious bag­gage that comes with INDECOM.
Free up the police to go after the crim­i­nals and hold them account­able when they vio­late their oaths.
Enforcing or nation’s laws has noth­ing to do with vio­lat­ing cit­i­zens’ rights.
Your mis­guid­ed approach to this issue may not have brought our coun­try to this point, but it has cer­tain­ly cement­ed the dis­re­spect being met­ed out to our police and has strength­ened the hands of crim­i­nals.
Stop this mad­ness now.

Updated…

A police patrol report­ed­ly just accost­ed a group of three young men push­ing a hand-cart. This alleged­ly drew the sus­pi­cion of the team and so they decid­ed to inves­ti­gate.
On the approach of the law-men, all three men ran leav­ing the cart and the drum. 

The cops checked the drum and in it was a dead body.
Up to the time of this report, the police have not appre­hend­ed either of the three men.

People eli­gi­ble to poten­tial­ly have their con­vic­tions thrown out include any­one 50 years of age or old­er, peo­ple who have not been con­vict­ed of a crime over the past 10 years

Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey is ask­ing the court to throw out near­ly 66,000 mar­i­jua­na con­vic­tions, some of which date back decades. At a news con­fer­ence Thursday, Lacey said her motion rep­re­sents some­thing that has nev­er been done before in state his­to­ry. It is believed that heal​ife​health​.co​.uk will help in buy­ing mar­i­jua­na alter­na­tives and sup­ple­ments.
“We believe it is the largest effort in California to wipe out old crim­i­nal con­vic­tions in a sin­gle court motion,” Lacey told CBS Los Angeles.
Initially, Lacey said pros­e­cu­tors had been work­ing to reduce past mar­i­jua­na con­vic­tions from felonies to mis­de­meanors after Proposition 64 passed in 2016. But she said she didn’t think this went far enough.

“I’ve instruct­ed my deputy dis­trict attor­neys to ask the court to dis­miss all eli­gi­ble cannabis-relat­ed con­vic­tions,” Lacey said at the press con­fer­ence, accord­ing to CBS Los Angeles. “I also took the will of the vot­ers one step fur­ther. I expand­ed the cri­te­ria to go above and beyond the para­me­ters of the law to ensure that many more peo­ple will ben­e­fit from this his­toric moment in time.”
People eli­gi­ble to poten­tial­ly have their con­vic­tions thrown out include any­one 50 years of age or old­er, peo­ple who have not been con­vict­ed of a crime over the past 10 years, peo­ple with con­vic­tions who suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed pro­ba­tion and peo­ple under the age of 21 with convictions.

“As a result of our actions these con­vic­tions should no longer bur­den those who have strug­gled to find a job or a place to live because of their crim­i­nal record,” Lacey explained.
Lacey filed the motion on Tuesday, also request­ing that the court seal the con­vic­tions. In total, this would impact about 62,000 felony cannabis con­vic­tions and 3,700 were mis­de­meanor pos­ses­sion con­vic­tions, across L.A. County, includ­ing Burbank, Pasadena, Inglewood, Santa Monica, and Torrance.
“If you have a record, you don’t have to wor­ry about even going through and hav­ing it sealed…We’re mak­ing a motion to seal it because we real­ize that’s the issue,” Lacey said, report­ed CBS Los Angeles. “When you go to apply for a job, you go to apply for hous­ing and your record comes up, even though we’ve expunged it, that may not give you help.”
Lacey made the move three weeks before the March 3 Primary, where she is hop­ing to get re-elect­ed to a third term. Her chal­lengers include George Gascon, the for­mer San Francisco DA, and Rachel Rossie, a for­mer fed­er­al pub­lic defender.

People can call the L.A. County Public Defender’s Office to see if their case is eli­gi­ble for dis­missal at 323−760−6763.
The sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed here; https://​the​grio​.com/​2​0​2​0​/​0​2​/​1​7​/​l​a​-​c​o​u​n​t​y​-​d​a​-​f​i​l​e​s​-​m​o​t​i​o​n​-​t​o​-​d​i​s​m​i​s​s​-​n​e​a​r​l​y​-​6​6​0​0​0​-​m​a​r​i​j​u​a​n​a​-​c​o​n​v​i​c​t​i​o​ns/

Ever so often we see inci­dents of alleged mur­der­ers walk­ing out of court­rooms released by a judge.
I for one crit­i­cize judges when they sup­plant the law with their own lib­er­al views and turn dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals back onto the streets.
On the oth­er hand, Judges can­not be fault­ed when defense attor­neys make no-case sub­mis­sions on behalf of their clients.
They have no recourse but to oblige, because pros­e­cu­tors do not pro­vide the court with evi­dence enough to force defen­dants to answer the charges against them.

It is almost incom­pre­hen­si­ble that in so many instances, it is the pros­e­cu­tors who are telling the court that they do not have enough evi­dence to pro­ceed.
How is it pos­si­ble that a case can be before the court and Investigators do not have the evi­dence to sup­port the charge/​s against the accused/​s, at least in order for the case to be tried before a jury?
We wrote about this recent­ly because almost dai­ly we see reports of this hap­pen­ing. This means that although only a small amount of actu­al mur­der­ers are ever arrest­ed we are wit­ness­ing an even small­er per­cent­age of those arrest­ed being con­vict­ed for their crimes.
These are exact­ly the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a fail­ing soci­ety. When crim­i­nals are not being held account­able, cit­i­zens lose faith in the sys­tem.
The result is chaos, we are wit­ness­ing that law­less chaos today.

Take for instance the mur­der case against 38-year-old Audley Duvall, who the police said was one of Jamaica’s most want­ed crim­i­nals in 2017.
Duvall was set free by a Judge of the high court when the pros­e­cu­tion admit­ted it could not pro­ceed for want of evi­dence.
Duval and anoth­er man were accused of the shoot­ing death of Craig Grey on August 16, 2016, at his farm in Coolie dis­trict in Bog Walk, St Catherine. The wit­ness in the case report­ed­ly gave evi­dence that the men wore masks and as such he was unable to see their faces.
He sub­se­quent­ly tes­ti­fied that he saw the faces of the accused and that he pre­vi­ous­ly denied see­ing his face because he was afraid. He also report­ed­ly tes­ti­fied that he was able to see his face because of light from a pig­pen. This was report­ed­ly con­tra­dict­ed by pho­tos from the crime scene and the evi­dence of the scene of the crime inves­ti­ga­tor who tes­ti­fied that he did not see a light in the pig­pen.
At the end of the prosecution’s case, the judge agreed with the defense that the wit­ness’ evi­dence was unre­li­able and instruct­ed the jury to return a for­mal ver­dict of not guilty. (Gleaner reporting)

If this accused was a seri­ous threat as the police said he was pri­or to his arrest, how could they not do all in their pow­ers to ensure this guy paid for his crimes?
Without point­ing fin­gers, I am forced to won­der whether the inves­ti­gat­ing officer/​s did all they could in this instance or did he/​she sim­ply decid­ed to go with the sin­gle eye-wit­ness’s state­ment?
There are sev­er­al rea­sons not to depend on eye-wit­ness state­ments alone, not the least of which is that a skilled defense attor­ney can always poke holes in that wit­ness­es’ tes­ti­mo­ny at tri­al.
Secondly, in high crime geo­gra­phies like Jamaica, wit­ness­es are eas­i­ly threat­ened, or oth­er­wise tam­pered with, (being paid off for exam­ple).
With the length of time that elaps­es between when a defen­dant is arrest­ed and brought to tri­al, eye­wit­ness accounts are eas­i­ly dis­cred­it­ed by a com­pe­tent defense attor­ney.
Witnesses leave the coun­try, they receive pay­offs, they are threat­ened and even killed.
Combined, the case for not depend­ing on a sin­gle eye­wit­ness account is rather com­pelling.
But it seems to me at least, that once a wit­ness turns up and gives a state­ment, inves­ti­ga­tors and pros­e­cu­tors are ecsta­t­ic and they do noth­ing more.

Which brings us to the def­i­n­i­tion of [Murder].….…..(“the unlaw­ful pre­med­i­tat­ed killing of one human being by anoth­er”).
Other def­i­n­i­tions say with mal­ice [afore­though]. The term ‘pre­med­i­tat­ed’, con­sti­tutes and cov­ers the ele­ment of mal­ice in mur­der.
So what is the rea­son for out­lin­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of mur­der? The answer is sim­ple.
If an inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer has evi­dence iden­ti­fy­ing a killer, there is a strong like­li­hood that if the offi­cer digs a lit­tle deep­er he will find a motive for the killing.
Once a motive is devel­oped, it becomes eas­i­er to deter­mine why the killing may have been planned [pre­med­i­tat­ed] [mali­cious], stitch­ing that evi­dence togeth­er some­times opens up new streams of evi­dence as well. Leading to more state­ments from oth­er wit­ness­es (eg) a wit­ness may attest to hear­ing the defen­dant say he was going to kill the dece­dent.
There may also be doc­u­men­tary evi­dence, a let­ter, streams of text mes­sages or voice mes­sages, between the defen­dant and decedent. 

The defen­dan­t’s where­abouts at the time of the mur­der are also cru­cial. Ask him to give an ali­bi for his where­abouts at the time the dece­dent was mur­dered.
Then test the ali­bi.
If he lies about the ali­bi he is lying about every­thing else.
Doing the tough unsexy work involved in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions may not always prove guilt beyond a rea­son­able doubt, but the [cir­cum­stan­tial] nature of the sec­ondary evi­dence devel­oped around the eye­wit­ness’s sto­ry may very well be enough to get the case to tri­al.
In today’s world in which busi­ness­es and house­holds have secu­ri­ty cam­eras, it is worth can­vass­ing an area with a view to find­ing out whether a secu­ri­ty sys­tem may have cap­tured some­thing a per­son may have missed. It is well worth the effort. 

It is for this rea­son that I have chal­lenged the JCF, and my beloved CIB to learn from oth­er coun­tries, assign teams of two or more detec­tives to run­down leads and work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and swift­ly on cas­es to ensure that cas­es are inves­ti­gat­ed the right way.
A sim­ple thing like a cig­a­rette butt is some­times a crit­i­cal bit of evi­dence, as a defen­dant may have been smok­ing at the scene of the crime and left that tiny bit of evi­dence there.
A killer may have walked into a bar and ordered a dring before killing some­one. He walks out and every­one who was in that bar says they have nev­er seen that per­son before.
The police come and do their inves­ti­ga­tions, col­lects state­ments, none of which means any­thing unless the assailant is caught and the wit­ness can be brought into an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion parade to iden­ti­fy the assailant.
But nobody remem­bers that the killer ordered a Guinness or a Heineken, or may even have ordered a drink in a glass.
So all of the bot­tles are gath­ered and placed with oth­er emp­ties and the glass­es are washed, and away goes all of the valu­able DNA evi­dence from that shoot­er drink­ing from that con­tain­er.
There is no statute of lim­i­ta­tions on mur­der,(mur­der is a vio­la­tion of com­mon law), so as long as that DNA evi­dence is stored in a data­base, there is a chance that he will even­tu­al­ly be brought to justice.

Nowadays with DNA test­ing, those bits of evi­dence may be enough to ensure that a mur­der­er does not walk free.
We know that despite offi­cers and pros­e­cu­tor best efforts killers stand a chance of being released if not on bail they are released for want of enough pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al evi­dence.
Even when they have been con­vict­ed the court of appeals is incred­i­bly lenient in find­ing a tech­ni­cal­i­ty to return them to the streets.
The prin­ci­ple of prece­dent, (Stare deci­sis) let the deci­sion stand, is one that seems lost on Jamaican jurists.
I know that it is an uphill fight when the Government refus­es to give offi­cers the tools they need, and refus­es to pro­tect the coun­try with sen­tences that ensure that for vio­lent crimes, crim­i­nals are not returned to the streets.
That would include remov­ing from judges the dis­cre­tion to allow dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to walk with a slap on the wrist.
But with this admin­is­tra­tion that will not hap­pen, because the Justice Minister is giv­ing mur­der­ers half-off their would-be sen­tences if they sim­ply plead guilty.
In addi­tion to that, he also wants to wipe clean the record of vio­lent mur­der­ers and rapists.
Those are the hall­marks of a fail­ing state.….….….….….….….….….……

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.