We crit­i­cize them when they fail to act pro­fes­sion­al­ly and so we should com­mend them when they act accord­ing­ly and pro­duce pos­i­tive results for Jamaica, speak­ing of the secu­ri­ty forces.
This medi­um wish­es to give cred­it to the CTOC team and to DPP Paula Llewelyn in the case involv­ing Jamaican gun­run­ner Jermaine Rhoomes .
Rhoomes was giv­en a 57 months sen­tence by a Florida judge for ille­gal­ly ship­ping a num­ber of guns and mul­ti­ple rounds of assort­ed ammu­ni­tion to Jamaica.
Jamaica’s DPP Paula Llewelyn attend­ed the hear­ing and addressed the court. The accused plead guilty, avoid­ing a poten­tial 20-year prison sen­tence.
Rhoomes was bust­ed at his res­i­dence in Saint Petersburg Florida after law enforce­ment bust­ed into his house and even­tu­al­ly found mul­ti­ple, guns and assort­ed rounds of ammu­ni­tion being read­ied for ship­ment along with foodstuff.

The DPP report­ed that it was mem­bers of Jamaica’s Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigation Branch (CTOC), who found the bar­rels, the guns and ammu­ni­tion inside the bar­rels on the wharf hid­den under pack­ages of flour, rice, and sug­ar. [Llewelyn said CTOC, through sci­en­tif­ic means, made the link between Rhoomes and the weapons and enlist­ed the assis­tance of US Homeland Security inves­ti­ga­tors in Florida which led them to find him, search his house, and find the ship­ment of guns and ammu­ni­tion being pre­pared accord­ing to local report­ing].

As a crit­ic of the law enforce­ment process in Jamaica, I am encour­aged by the news that col­lab­o­ra­tion between local and American law enforce­ment are being pur­sued result­ing in pos­i­tive results for both coun­tries.
I have long stat­ed that the end game can­not sim­ply be to inter­cept the ship­ments, it must be a long game that includes strate­gi­cal­ly tar­get­ed col­lab­o­ra­tive inves­ti­ga­tions that traces the ship­ments of illic­it arms and ammu­ni­tion to the gen­e­sis of their existence.

The DPP laud­ably spoke to the lives that will be saved because this scum was caught and will be cool­ing his heels in an American prison.
Nevertheless, what is more, astound­ing is the DPP’s warn­ing that had Rhoomes been tried in Jamaica he would like­ly have walked free.
As I have tried to remind the Jamaican peo­ple in this medi­um, the polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives are not doing due dili­gence on crime. This is result­ing in untold unnec­es­sary mur­ders and the resul­tant trau­ma those killings bring to ordi­nary Jamaican fam­i­lies.
The bang­ing on desks and the moron­ic infan­tile ban­ter that goes on in Gordon house does pre­cious lit­tle, if any­thing, to advance the inter­est of the nation.
The DPP can­not say it so I said it.

According to Llewelyn, “Section 4 of the Firearms Act pro­vides that the impor­ta­tion of firearms and ammu­ni­tion into Jamaica, with­out the req­ui­site license being a breach of the law. However, the Firearms Act does not pro­vide for arms traf­fick­ing as an offense. The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this case would be on all fours with arms traf­fick­ing”.
This is a gap­ing loop­hole in the law, no rea­son­able per­son in Jamaica or any­where else who reads this should be under any illu­sion that this is unbe­knownst to the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide.
This forces the ques­tion of why?
Why would this gap­ing hole in this crit­i­cal law be left open? Could this have some­thing to do with who exact­ly is involved in bring­ing guns and ammu­ni­tion into the coun­try?
As the Government and Opposition polit­i­cal par­ty pay lip ser­vice to the epi­dem­ic of mur­der which is wreak­ing hav­oc on nor­mal peo­ple, the evi­dence sug­gests that well-con­nect­ed peo­ple are mak­ing a killing from this illic­it trade.

The DPP should be com­mend­ed for tak­ing the ini­tia­tive to spear­head the move to have the weapons found in Jamaica sent back to the United States and hav­ing the accused tried in the US know­ing the inad­e­qua­cy of local laws.
At the same time, I must chas­tise the Director for not being proac­tive enough. In fact, she has been total­ly reac­tive on this issue accord­ing to her own account­ing.
“I also under­stand that the Jamaica Constabulary Force has made rec­om­men­da­tions to the com­pe­tent author­i­ties here,(JAMAICA) for ‘a deal­ing in firearms’ pro­vi­sion to be put into the Act, and what we will do is lend sup­port to that, because it is very impor­tant”.
It is unclear whether or not there were con­sul­ta­tions between the office of the DPP and the JCF before the afore­men­tioned JCF rec­om­men­da­tions were made to the Government?
What is clear is that there should have been con­sul­ta­tions between police and pros­e­cu­tor on a mat­ter this impor­tant.
What is also cru­cial, is that the DPP knew about the police rec­om­men­da­tion and clear­ly did not add the weight of her office to it.
Actions of this nature, or more to the point a lack of action of this nature, are cer­tain­ly not to her credit.

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.

Robert Williams burst into the sta­tion­house on Longwood Ave. just before 8 a.m. and blast­ed the lieu­tenant, iden­ti­fied by sources as Officer Jose Gautreaux, in the arm, author­i­ties said. Williams threw him­self on the floor in sur­ren­der and tossed his gun away, send­ing it skit­ter­ing across the sta­tion house floor. 
“I will point out that this cow­ard imme­di­ate­ly laid down, but only after he ran out of bul­lets,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said at a press con­fer­ence Sunday. Williams, 45, was released on parole in 2017 for an attempt­ed mur­der con­vic­tion, records show.

Years ago I warned that our con­tin­ued affin­i­ty for fol­low­ing blind­ly behind, and accept­ing the nar­ra­tive of any­one with pale skin would prob­a­bly lead to our undo­ing as a nation.
Sadly, despite the fact that slav­ery was abol­ished in 1834, and Jamaica gained its Independence (of sorts) in 1962, Many Black Jamaicans to this day, seem to be stuck believ­ing that white peo­ple are supe­ri­or to them­selves.
This sense of dark-skinned infe­ri­or­i­ty, and feal­ty to Caucasians, is also extend­ed to Mullatos and pret­ty much any­one, not Black.
Most of you can relate to this, what I call the (big­ger-heads )syn­drome.
The unfor­tu­nate truth is that like in Blacks in oth­er parts of the world, some Jamaican Black peo­ple have resigned them­selves to what they have been told about them­selves, (that they are infe­ri­or to oth­er races).
Sure, I know that this kind of talk may be offen­sive to some peo­ple, but some­times these things need to be said. There is no point sweep­ing the garbage under the car­pet and pre­tend that the house is clean.

In the ear­ly, to mid-1990s Jamaica’s mur­der rate was at what I thought at the time was an intol­er­a­bly high lev­el. I had entered the law enforce­ment space in 1982 believ­ing that I could make a dif­fer­ence.
I was not the only one who felt that way, I know for sure guys who had left the teach­ing pro­fes­sion to become police offi­cers, oth­ers had left oth­er jobs includ­ing in the pri­vate sec­tor. I for one had decid­ed on law enforce­ment after they made the Jamaica school of agri­cul­ture defunct. My dream was to pur­sue stud­ies in agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence as a career. That dream was enhanced by my high school teacher Mister Bascoe who thought he saw some­thing in me, and gave me an all-expense-paid trip to the Jamaica school of agri­cul­ture (JSA) sit­u­at­ed on the Twickenham Park cam­pus. This facil­i­ty now hous­es the Police acad­e­my.
As a teenag­er, I was in hogs-heav­en dur­ing that vis­it. However, before I could get into that insti­tu­tion it was made defunct.
I even­tu­al­ly spent the bet­ter part of the year 1982 on the same cam­pus, not as an agri-sci­ence stu­dent, but as a police trainee.

As I said ini­tial­ly, I was aghast at the num­ber of homi­cides being com­mit­ted dur­ing the time I served. In ret­ro­spect, I believe that every ‑law-abid­ing Jamaican would do any­thing to get back to where we were between the years 1982 the year I joined & 1991 when I depart­ed the JCF.
What is evi­dent in the num­bers below is that though the mur­der sta­tis­tics were high­ly intol­er­a­ble and should pro­vid­ed no com­fort to any­one, par­tic­u­lar­ly because the coun­try is so small.
The num­bers were what they were, and so we worked assid­u­ous­ly to make the streets safe for Jamaicans and vis­i­tors alike.
It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that in the year 1980 dur­ing the blood­i­est nation­al elec­tions in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, 899 were killed, large­ly as a result of polit­i­cal vio­lence.
After the elec­tions of 1980 mur­ders dropped by almost 50% to 490 in 1981, this was under the JLP’s Edward Seaga’s Government. We do not have accu­rate num­bers for the year 1985.

By the end of 1988, Edward Seaga was gone from office, Michael Manley had been returned to Jamaica House by the short-mem­o­ry elec­torate.
Prime Minister Manley was ail­ing not long after tak­ing office again, and as a result, he was forced to turn over lead­er­ship of the coun­try to his Deputy Percival Patterson by 1992.
What hap­pened in Jamaica after­ward, is up to any­one’s inter­pre­ta­tion, those pay­ing atten­tion can come to their own con­clu­sions.
One thing is cer­tain, it is that Percival Patterson became the only Prime Minister in Jamaica’s his­to­ry to be sworn into office for a fourth term, con­sec­u­tive or oth­er­wise.
The People’s National Party occu­pied Jamaica House for an unprece­dent­ed ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years between 1988 and 2007.
The mur­der sta­tis­tics below are reflec­tive of those four terms and beyond.

In the September 2007 gen­er­al elec­tions, Bruce Golding eeked out a mar­gin­al win for the JLP, break­ing the PNP’s stran­gle­hold on Jamaica House. Murders which seemed to have tak­en on an even more omi­nous tra­jec­to­ry in the same year con­tin­ued through 2008 and 2009 before tak­ing a dive in 2010.
The over 200 few­er killings in 2010 than 2009 is attrib­uted to the actions the secu­ri­ty forces took to annex the JLP strong­hold of Tivoli Gardens to the rest of the coun­try.
The south­ward tra­jec­to­ry con­tin­ued even after the JLP was oust­ed from office as a result of Bruce Golding’s han­dling of the Christopher Duddus Coke extra­di­tion request by the United States.
A clos­er look at the num­bers reveals a rather telling sto­ry. In the num­bers is the appear­ance that a cul­tur­al shift occurred.
Something hap­pened dur­ing those ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years that unde­ni­ably changed the way Jamaicans viewed the sanc­ti­ty of life, or should I say, for many Jamaicans life was no longer a thing of val­ue.
What I do recall is that the Jamaican peo­ple were told that quote; “any­thing a any­thing, run wid it”.
Out of that wink and nod by the Patterson Administration to crim­i­nals to do as they please, was a resul­tant mas­sive esca­la­tion of killings.
Those were not polit­i­cal killings as had obtained dur­ing the 1980 elec­tion cycle.
Those killings were gang-relat­ed and were large­ly attrib­uted to the crim­i­nal under­world mur­der­ing peo­ple who had refused to bow down to their extor­tion demands.

During this time not a sin­gle detec­tive was trained by the Patterson admin­is­tra­tion for over a full decade. As ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty esca­lat­ed, the police became more inef­fec­tive. Patterson who seemed to have hat­ed Detectives issued through his lack­eys in the JCF hier­ar­chy, a decree that all police offi­cers were to be back in uni­form.
By that decree, Percival James Patterson effec­tive­ly gave crim­i­nals carte blanch to do as they please with­out con­se­quence.
The JCF is still reel­ing from the harm done to it and the coun­try as a result of the Patterson gov­ern­ment.
Another sig­nif­i­cant event occurred dur­ing that peri­od. A mass smear cam­paign against the hard-work­ing mem­bers of the JCF who were keep­ing the mur­der­ers on the run was ini­ti­at­ed. It was exe­cut­ed across the board with pre­ci­sion-like mas­tery.
Literally, every police shoot­ing was brand­ed as an extra­ju­di­cial killing in the media.

It was a mas­ter­ful stroke of genus ini­ti­at­ed by the thugs who ran the innerci­ty com­mu­ni­ties. Those com­mu­ni­ties had become ver­i­ta­ble incu­ba­tors, pro­duc­ing a nev­er-end­ing sup­ply of young men ready for a life of crime.
The media in total feal­ty to the cam­paign of smear, will­ing­ly gave a plat­form to the throngs of man­u­fac­tured mourn­ers who turned out to mourn every police shoot­ing.
Throngs of women gave exact eye-wit­ness account­ing of how those events occurred con­trary to police account­ing of events.
Never mind that many of those shoot­ings occurred in the dead of night, or ear­ly in the morn­ing when they could not have been present and clear­ly were lying.
No one both­ered to check the verac­i­ty of those sto­ries, no one both­ered to take notice that it was the very same faces who claimed to have seen each and every shoot­ing in the respec­tive communities.

The mur­der­ers who oper­at­ed under the san­i­tized name of (Area Leaders) giv­en them by the media and the self-styled NGOs like the Peace Managemen Unit oper­at­ed by Horace Levy, had all but tak­en over.
The PMI and oth­er groups that had sprung up sup­pos­ed­ly in the fight to pro­tect civ­il rights, were essen­tial­ly run­ning inter­fer­ence for the Gangsters.
When the police des­ig­nat­ed a cer­tain gang as such, Horace Levy refut­ed the police des­ig­na­tion and claimed they were not gangs at all, but [cor­ner crews].
The gross­ly under­staffed, poor­ly paid, unsup­port­ed, poor­ly trained, gross­ly under-equipped police depart­ment was on its own.
The Patterson destruc­tion of the Police depart­ment and the rule of law was com­plete.
Between the slew of for­eign-fund­ed groups like JFJ that had sprung up and the false infor­ma­tion being bandied about, for­eign pub­li­ca­tions like the [Guardian] and oth­ers engaged in a feed­ing fren­zy.
They Blared out insid­i­ous head­lines like “JAMAICAN POLICE FINALLY BEING MADE TO ACCOUNT”.
Tragically for Jamaicans, not a sin­gle one of those enti­ties care about the blood­shed occur­ring today, except to high­light their home coun­try’s trav­el advi­sories to their nation­als wish­ing to trav­el to Jamaica. 

Not only had the gang­sters seized the ini­tia­tive based on the sup­port they were get­ting from all quar­ters, but they also went on the offen­sive by using the pro­ceeds of their ill-got­ten wealth to import more guns and ammu­ni­tion into the coun­try.
Communities were sole­ly run by these over­lords, none more pow­er­ful than Christopher Dudus Coke.
By now Lotto scam­ming and oth­er trans-nation­al crimes, includ­ing human traf­fick­ing( et al) had now found their way into the arse­nal of the Islands crim­i­nals.
Battered bruised and con­fused, mem­bers of the JCF began to look for the exits. The force not only could not keep the peo­ple it had, but it was also unable to replace those who were head­ing for the exits.
In all of the fore­gone, no sin­gle indi­vid­ual had been more impact­ful in chang­ing con­tem­po­rary Jamaica than a mul­la­to pedi­atric doc­tor named Carolyn Gomez.

Gomez cre­at­ed a group she named Jamaicans For Justice, (JFJ). Like the white angel she was, Carolyn Gomez con­vinced her­self that it was her call­ing to ride in and save Jamaicans from the police who were sup­pos­ed­ly killing every­one pre­med­i­tat­ed­ly and extra-judicially.[sic]
It was not hard for Gomes to gain trac­tion, she has pale white skin and she is a doc­tor to boot.
Jamaicans, even some of whom had sent their daugh­ters and sons to risk their lives to keep the coun­try safe, fell hook-line-&-sinker for the smear cam­paign against the police.
That is not to sug­gest by any stretch that the police are with­out bad actors. Like any police depart­ment, the JCF has always had its share of incom­pe­tent and cor­rupt cops.
This real­i­ty was not any­thing close­ly relat­ed to what was being pro­mul­gat­ed in the media. Nevertheless, by then, an expan­sive pha­lanx of anti-police agen­cies had sprung up in the space.
Anti-police dem­a­goguery had now become the nation’s largest growth indus­try, out­side what the crim­i­nal under­world was doing.

Anti-police dem­a­goguery now had a rec­og­niz­able face, a white face, a face Jamaicans could not for once believe may be wrong, or have ulte­ri­or motives.
Simple con­cepts like (esprit de corps) the spir­it of broth­er­hood, that we were taught we need­ed, each one look out for the oth­er, some­thing crit­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary in police work was slan­dered and demo­nized.
The nation’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship bought into the defama­tion, so too did the inept police hier­ar­chy. Esprit de corp was now a blue wall of silent crim­i­nal acqui­es­cence. It was gone.
What the Jamaican peo­ple clam­or­ing for Gomez and JFJ nev­er both­ered to find out was where exact­ly was the fund­ing com­ing from?
They did not draw the line when Gomez jet­ted off to Washington DC to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, with the names of hard-work­ing police com­man­ders whose jobs it was to keep crime under con­trol in tough depressed com­mu­ni­ties like Western Kingston and Saint Andrew Southern.
Those offi­cers were brand­ed as extra­ju­di­cial killers by Gomez and JFJ with­out a sin­gle scin­til­la of evi­dence.
Other bot­tom feed­ers like (FAST), Families Against State Terrorism one of the many human rights groups had joined the fray to pro­tect the Jamaican peo­ple from the extra-judi­cial killers in police uni­forms.
The strug­gling police depart­ment tried to hold down crime even while it was los­ing its mem­bers to the gang­ster’s guns. This same police depart­ment accord­ing to FAST was for all intents and pur­pos­es A ter­ror­ist group.
Merriam’s: def­i­n­i­tion of the word “Terrorism”, the unlaw­ful use of vio­lence and intim­i­da­tion, espe­cial­ly against civil­ians, in the pur­suit of polit­i­cal aims.
The poor police depart­ment that may have been a lot of things was nev­er this.

Carolyn Gomez, Horace Levy, and the oth­ers con­tin­ued with the tar­ring and feath­er­ing of the Police Department, too piti­ful to defend itself the depart­ment absorbed the body blows with­out fight­ing back.
The Government did noth­ing to defend the police,
and so the vio­lence pro­duc­ers stepped up their game. By the time Bruce Golding took over the coun­try the police depart­ment was so bat­tered, demor­al­ized and deplet­ed, the dam­age was already done.
Golding was to add the coup de grâce, INDECOM was born.
Today mur­ders are trend­ing dan­ger­ous­ly high, it harkens back to the peri­od in 2002 when mur­ders topped a thou­sand for the very first time.
That peri­od includ­ed the twi­light of Patterson’s régime, through the March 2006 Portia Simpson Miller take over as Prime Minister, through to the Bruce Golding tenure.
What the homi­cide num­bers por­tend is that the endem­ic vio­lent crime has incu­bat­ed, tak­en hold and metas­ta­sized under Percival Patterson.
It con­tin­ued unchecked under Portia Simpson Miller and Bruce Golding’s lead­er­ship and even under Andrew Holness’s trun­cat­ed first tenure as Prime Minister. 

On 5 December 2011, Andrew Holness was defeat­ed at the polls by Portia Simpson Miller turn­ing back Holness’s bid to gain his own man­date after suc­ceed­ing Bruce Golding who resigned in dis­grace.
For Portia Simpson Miller it was a polit­i­cal vin­di­ca­tion of sorts, win­ning her own man­date after she was beat­en by Golding dur­ing her trun­cat­ed tenure, hav­ing tak­en over from Patterson.
On 25 February 2016, Andrew Holness would defeat Portia Simpson Miller in nation­al elec­tions called by Miller.
Holness too had been vin­di­cat­ed polit­i­cal­ly, he had won his own man­date.
The unfor­tu­nate fact of the mat­ter is that for­mer Prime Minister Simpson Miller does not deserve cred­it for the south­ward tra­jec­to­ry of vio­lent crime which occurred on her watch.
The sin­gle defin­ing event of the secu­ri­ty forces storm­ing Tivoli Gardens in 2010 caused a dras­tic reduc­tion in mur­ders and oth­er vio­lent crimes.
That event demon­strates how vio­lent crim­i­nals should be han­dled as long as the secu­ri­ty forces are res­olute and are in it for the long haul.
The answer to the nation’s mur­der prob­lem is right there in the 2010 secu­ri­ty forces response to Christopher Coke’s mili­tia.
Violent thugs ran away and scat­tered like the ver­min they are. However, once they real­ized that the Simpson Miller gov­ern­ment was more intent on play­ing pol­i­tics with the issue by set­ting up the Kangaroo Tivoli Inquiry, the dis­persed crim­i­nals who were lay­ing low in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties attached their ten­ta­cle into those com­mu­ni­ties.
Jamaica by then had a nation­wide Gang prob­lem, no one in the Simpson Miller admin­is­tra­tion would do any­thing about it.
It is now the sin­gle largest dri­ver of the nation’s mur­der problem.

Carolyn Gomez would lat­er be exposed for who she tru­ly was, but the dam­age was already done.
Others like Horace Levy,.….……oh, they are still there, like ter­mites eat­ing away at the wood­work of our coun­try’s rule of law.
Yup, the [big­ger heads], the mulat­tos and the uptown crew, they damn sure have made a mock­ery of our coun­try and the peo­ple who placed their trust in them.

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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.

Not hav­ing worked in law enforce­ment for a long time, I am restrained in my com­ments as it relates to spe­cif­ic pro­to­cols and indi­vid­ual cas­es before the courts.
Nevertheless, I can­not help but won­der about the num­ber of cas­es before the courts, (seri­ous cas­es) in which crim­i­nal defense attor­neys are able to make suc­cess­ful no-case sub­mis­sions.
If there is enough evi­dence for a com­pe­tent pros­e­cu­tor to present a case to the courts for tri­al, how can that case end up being tossed by a mag­is­trate or judge for lack of evi­dence?
The default response is usu­al­ly to blame the police, I get that, but these cas­es are giv­en to pros­e­cu­tors who are all lawyers.
I assume they have to read the case files, look at the evi­dence, see what is miss­ing, (if any­thing), talk to inves­ti­ga­tors to see how out­stand­ing bits of evi­dence may be secured in time for the trail, and tight­en up what­ev­er loose ends may exist.
These are not exam­ples of police incom­pe­tence, they are pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al incompetence.

“There is no greater task giv­en any man, than to bring the mur­der­er of the inno­cent to jus­tice.“
That line stuck with me, it was a line deliv­ered by Instructors to the small class of young offi­cers, of which I was a part, dur­ing Detective train­ing at the Police Academy, the year was 1991.
All these years lat­er, one of the most bur­den­some thing for me, is to know that there are mur­der­ers walk­ing around among law-abid­ing cit­i­zens hav­ing tak­en inno­cent life/​lives.
In a per­fect world, we expect that all mur­der­ers will be brought to jus­tice, at least that’s my expec­ta­tion. We live in a world that is far from per­fect, but that does not pre­clude us from striv­ing for the best that we can do. Which brings us to the qual­i­ty of the pros­e­cu­tors.
They are the ones who are sup­posed to vet the cas­es they are pre­sent­ing to a judge or jury. How can they not say to inves­ti­ga­tors, “could you go back and secure this, and this bit of evi­dence before we go for­ward”?

Whenever pos­si­ble, it is always bet­ter when inves­ti­ga­tors sit with pros­e­cu­tors and go through the evi­dence before mak­ing an arrest.
By doing so Police do not find them­selves backed up against the clock to either charge or release an arrestee.
There is no deny­ing the fact that the Island’s crim­i­nal defense lawyers are hard­ly any bet­ter than the crim­i­nals they defend.
It is also well known that the major­i­ty of the mag­is­trates and judges are woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate when it comes to the fair and equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice. Simply put, the Islands judges are not gen­er­al­ly on the side of crime vic­tims.
Like so many oth­er areas of civic life, the Island’s tri­ers of facts have not demon­strat­ed that they under­stand the harm vio­lent crim­i­nals are caus­ing the soci­ety.
With that said, poor case prepa­ra­tion is the pre­rog­a­tive of the pros­e­cut­ing Attorneys and police inves­ti­ga­tors, not judges and defense lawyers. Even in cas­es pre­sent­ed to the courts which were inves­ti­gat­ed under the new enhanced anti-gang leg­is­la­tion, we see dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal accused, one after anoth­er, peeled off from the list of accused on tri­al, and let go by the courts.
Since the Government and the Judiciary do not care enough about the nation’s crime emer­gency, pros­e­cu­tors and police must.

In one of the most shock­ing dis­plays of inves­tiga­tive and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al incom­pe­tence, three peo­ple, includ­ing a for­mer sol­dier, were freed of mur­der charges on February 6^th, after their lawyers made suc­cess­ful no-case sub­mis­sions on their behalf.
The case involved the killing of Oshane Burke on September 15, 2009. Eleven years after the police arrest­ed one accused at the body-dis­pos­al site jus­tice delayed was jus­tice denied.
Oshane Burke was employed to for­mer JDF sol­dier Kareem Campbell, and Nadine Moore, who oper­at­ed a busi­ness. They were charged with the mur­der of Burke along with an employ­ee, Damion Smith, whom the crown alleged­ly con­spired to kill Burke for steal­ing cash and bot­tles and liquor from Campbell and Moore.

The body of Oshane Burke was alleged­ly found with mul­ti­ple stab wounds along the Port Royal main road, where a police patrol team spot­ted a man act­ing sus­pi­cious­ly in close prox­im­i­ty to it.
Prosecutors used the man as it’s star wit­ness, but the wit­ness admit­ted in court that blood­stains were found on his clothes when he was appre­hend­ed by the police, and that he attempt­ed to flee on the approach of the offi­cers.
There was no evi­dence led as to whether the blood was that of the deca­dent, even though that would have been one of the eas­i­est things for the pros­e­cu­tor to nail down from the start.
According to local report­ing, [the defense also brought to the pros­e­cu­tion’s star wit­ness’s atten­tion that he had told one of the police offi­cers on the spot that he nev­er meant to com­mit the crime. He denied telling the police this. However, the police gave evi­dence to the contrary.

If the police tes­ti­fied that the wit­ness admit­ted to the crime, how could they not have charged him as the prin­ci­pal killer?
If he was the actu­al killer, why would they bend over to make him a pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness in order to haul Kareem Campbell, Nadine Moore, and Damion Smith into the net?
It seems that inves­ti­ga­tors and pros­e­cu­tors gam­bled on get­ting every­one they could and end­ed up los­ing every­thing.
As such, four poten­tial­ly guilty accused may have been set free by the courts when all should have paid for their crimes.
This is not the way that par­tic­i­pants in crime are sup­posed to be han­dled.
It seems to me that if pros­e­cu­tors had charged the wit­ness with the mur­der and offer him a lighter sen­tence, it is quite pos­si­ble that they would have nailed the oth­er accused and they would have nailed him as well.

Worst-case sce­nario, even if the three oth­er accused, who were able to pay for high pro­file crim­i­nal defense, were able to beat the case, the man caught on the scene would have paid for the mur­der of Oshane Burke. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Oshane Burke may have been less than an ide­al human-being/c­i­t­i­zen, none of us is per­fect, and so no one deserves to be mur­dered and dis­card­ed like garbage, while the killers are allowed to walk free.
The killers have the sys­tem on their side, it is time that those tasked with bring­ing the mur­der­ers to jus­tice remem­ber the charge, ““There is no greater task giv­en any man, than to bring the mur­der­er of the inno­cent to jus­tice.”

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.

Over the years we have all seen evi­dence that the police are timid, unsure, and unpre­pared for what they are fac­ing on the streets.
I have per­son­al­ly asked the police for evi­dence that the inci­dents we see of the police act­ing like key­stone cops, is not indica­tive of poor train­ing. Time and again we have been told that train­ing is top-notch.
I have con­sis­tent­ly pushed back at that notion, hav­ing served and hav­ing seen the train­ing. Moreover hav­ing had to cre­ate my own pro­tec­tive mech­a­nisms, I was absolute­ly sure that young offi­cers are not being remote­ly prop­er­ly pre­pared for the streets.

In yet anoth­er exam­ple of its old plan­ta­tion men­tal­i­ty, the Jamaica Constabulary Force is demon­strat­ing that despite ad-hoc cos­met­ic changes, the JCF is still the same decrepit and dys­func­tion­al old house that can­not stop the water seep­ing in.
Blustery, bul­ly­ing and sen­si­ble sound­ing expla­na­tion have replaced blus­tery, bul­ly­ing and dumb sound­ing expla­na­tions.
Sure, the lead­er­ship of the Force has more degrees today, but are they any smarter, are they any more edu­cat­ed than in the past? Their expla­na­tions sound more plau­si­ble but the truth of the mat­ter is that it is the very same bull­shit wrapped in a shinier package.

Student Constables in train­ing in batch­es [121 and 122] have become restive, because they have no idea when they will be allowed to grad­u­ate or (passed out) from their long train­ing.
According to the trainees they com­plet­ed four months of train­ing and have been sent into divi­sions from July 2019.
According to the stu­dent con­sta­bles, at the time of their enlist­ment, they were told that they would be doing four months basic train­ing and four months in sev­er­al divi­sions across the island, in addi­tion to three weeks prepar­ing for grad­u­a­tion.
To date, they are still work­ing in the police divi­sions across the coun­try, with­out hav­ing com­plet­ed their train­ing, with­out a police offi­cer’s salary and they have no idea when the sit­u­a­tion will end.
Now I got­ta tell you, I did not know that the salaries of stu­dent con­sta­bles are less than that of a grad­u­at­ed con­sta­ble.
I do not recall that being the case, but they may have made those changes on the backs of these poor young peo­ple who have stepped up to serve their coun­try, while duplic­i­tous­ly keep­ing them from grad­u­at­ing to max­i­mize exploit­ing them. 

Now con­sid­er that the JCF can­not find qual­i­ty recruits to fill the ever-chang­ing demands of the force. Also con­sid­er that Jamaica has one of the low­est offi­cers to pop­u­la­tion ratio any­where in the world, which puts the lives of Jamaicans in dan­ger and makes the job of the police that much more dan­ger­ous, and the risks to their per­sons expo­nen­tial­ly greater.
Also, con­sid­er that Jamaica is one of the most vio­lent nations in the world, and that the mur­der rate is the sec­ond-high­est in the world.
Consider that approx­i­mate­ly 600 offi­cers resign from the force each year, and that num­ber does not include those retir­ing, or those who are fired.
When all of the fore­gone is con­sid­ered, the ques­tion becomes why would the JCF exploit and abuse the young peo­ple who have stepped for­ward to serve their coun­try by using these archa­ic tac­tics which clear­ly places them at a dis­ad­van­tage on so may levels?

The infor­ma­tion emanat­ed from a let­ter writ­ten by one or more stu­dent con­sta­bles who are con­cerned that they are in lim­bo and the police depart­ment is not giv­ing them the answers they are enti­tled to.
The con­sta­bles out­lined just how uncer­tain­ty is neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing their lives.
Welcome to the JCF young people,[sarcasm].
In an arti­cle I wrote a few months ago, I repeat­ed that giv­en a chance I would take the young offi­cers and dump the entire high com­mand, with the excep­tion of a few here or there.

In the man­ner that has become the modus operand of the JCF, the lead­er­ships pushed back on the claims of the young offi­cers to be, argu­ing that there are no finan­cial con­straints pre­vent­ing their grad­u­a­tion as some have spec­u­lat­ed.
Said the [plan­ta­tion own­ers], (sor­ry), I meant the high com­mand;
“These batch­es [121 and 122] were ini­tial­ly des­ig­nat­ed to be passed out in December of 2019.
They were trained at the staff col­lege for an ini­tial peri­od of four months, after which they are sent to the train­ing divi­sion for a four-month peri­od of train­ing in the live envi­ron­ment. It is after this peri­od which they would be grad­u­at­ed or ‘passed out’.
“However, due to the real­i­ties of vio­lence and crime fac­ing the coun­try, cou­pled with the chal­lenges to law and order in our main urban cen­ters, the JCF and – more impor­tant­ly – the nation need­ed them to remain deployed. Their con­tin­ued deploy­ment car­ried over into the new year as the con­di­tions on the ground remained large­ly the same.”

So here is the real­i­ty, from July to February is rough­ly 8 months. The sounds you hear, that’s me slap­ping my chest and count­ing my fin­gers.
Add that to the four months they did at the staff col­lege, that’s a whole year. and remem­ber they will still have to go back and do field­craft, and pre­pare for grad­u­a­tion.
Why would the police com­mis­sion­er not com­mu­ni­cate the rea­son for the delay to these young peo­ple?
The rea­son is sim­ple, as the mul­ti­tude of peo­ple who have passed through the JCF has main­tained all along, the agency is incom­pe­tent and it’s lead­er­ship arro­gant, unre­spon­sive and igno­rant bul­lies who have no lead­er­ship skills.
Having young untrained peo­ple doing police work is a dan­ger to both the pub­lic and to the students. 

Over the last cou­ple of years that the Government has ini­ti­at­ed the pol­i­cy it labels ZOSO, Zones Of Special Operations, and has includ­ed States of Emergencies as part of its crime-fight­ing efforts, I have argued that what the Government is doing is to use the bod­ies of police and sol­diers as a form of crime data sup­pres­sant, rather than devel­op a sus­tain­able and coher­ent plan of action.
This state­ment from the high com­mand is proof that this is all about boots on the ground and tak­ing a chance to see if the high­er vis­i­bil­i­ty of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel will have a deter­rent effect on the crime pro­duc­ers.
Well, we all have seen that it does­n’t work, those of us who have worked in the busi­ness saw it for what it was, a three-card-monte.
The Government of the day has been play­ing a dan­ger­ous game with the lives of the nation’s most vul­ner­a­ble and exposed cit­i­zens. It is no bet­ter than the incom­pre­hen­sive incom­pe­tence dis­played by the for­mer PNP admin­is­tra­tion as it relates to crime.
The strat­e­gy of appease­ment to the Criminal rights fra­ter­ni­ty at the expense of the lives of ordi­nary Jamaicans, have had dis­as­trous con­se­quences.
Last year we had well over 1300 Jamaicans mur­dered and this year is already on pace to see an eight or so per­cent­age point increase over last year.

What has become man­i­fest­ly clear is as I have warned, the intent is to secure votes, and appease the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty at the expense of the secu­ri­ty forces. This admin­is­tra­tion, like the one pri­or, and the one pri­or, has no inten­tion of rolling up its sleeves and tak­ing on the nation’s crim­i­nals.
Criminals know it, and as such the killings con­tin­ue.
Let me be clear, there is only one strat­e­gy that will work and that can­not be white­washed or papered over, it can­not be couched in hifa­lutin legalese.
The police know who the mur­der­ers are, and so does the peo­ple in the affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.
Administrations of the two polit­i­cal par­ties have abdi­cat­ed their oath to defend the Jamaican peo­ple in order to please the United States, Canada, and The United Kingdom.
They do not want Jamaican crim­i­nals dealt with as they deal with their crim­i­nals, or even the inno­cent peo­ple they exe­cute who have not com­mit­ted any crimes.
At the same time, the three coun­tries are the largest depos­i­tors of crim­i­nal depor­tees in Jamaica.
The so-called police watch­dog groups are in fact for­eign agen­cies ded­i­cat­ed to the con­tin­ued slaugh­ter of our peo­ple.
Notice that they are eeri­ly silent regard­less of the grue­some nature, or the num­ber of peo­ple killed each day?
They don’t care, what they are focused on is ensur­ing that crim­i­nals are kept alive to dis­rupt the Island’s poten­tial of becom­ing a self-suf­fi­cient devel­oped state.

This Government has repeat­ed­ly stat­ed that it does not want the police to kick doors in and go after crim­i­nals. This means that the admin­is­tra­tion is quite com­fort­able with the mur­der­ers exist­ing as long as they do not make the admin­is­tra­tion look bad.
Please do not smile com­rades. I am not mak­ing a polit­i­cal state­ment. I am mak­ing a Jamaican state­ment. Neither polit­i­cal par­ty wants the crime epi­dem­ic in the coun­try solved.
Unless the Police are freed up to go in guns blaz­ing to erad­i­cate and exter­mi­nate these killers there is no hope that this total­ly pre­ventable blood­shed will dry up.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties in gov­ern­ment and in oppo­si­tion, under­stand that for the most part, the peo­ple being affect­ed by the vio­lence are the poor­est cit­i­zens, politi­cians have police details, their rich upper Saint Andrew cabal can afford to live in gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties with pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards, some bet­ter armed than the police.
On the oth­er hand, they are quite com­fort­able hav­ing untrained peo­ple out in the pub­lic giv­ing the pub­lic the false impres­sion that they are being pro­tect­ed.
It is a mon­u­men­tal fraud and it has been exposed for all to see.

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.

Chicago, IL — Qaw’mane Wilson, a rap­per from Chicago known as Young QC, who report­ed­ly hired his friends to kill his own moth­er has been sen­tenced to 99 years in prison. He thought that by hav­ing his moth­er killed, he could get her life insur­ance mon­ey and sav­ings to spend on his lux­u­ri­ous lifestyle.

Wilson, the only child of his moth­er Yolanda Holmes, was appar­ent­ly used to get­ting every­thing he want­ed. His moth­er would spoil him with clothes, jew­el­ry, car, and even helped him get a steady job.
However, Wilson wasn’t con­tent. He want­ed to flaunt more mon­ey in hopes to get more fans as a bud­ding rap­per. To achieve that, he decid­ed to kill his moth­er.
In 2012, Wilson, who was then 23-years old, hired Eugene Spencer to kill his moth­er. Spencer rode with Wilson’s girl­friend when he went to Holmes’ apart­ment to car­ry out the crime.

According to police reports, Spencer shot Holmes as she slept in her bed. Holmes’s boyfriend tried to stop Spencer but fell uncon­scious after a phys­i­cal strug­gle. Spencer then stabbed Holmes after call­ing Wilson who told him, “make sure the b — - is dead.”
Wilson even­tu­al­ly with­drew mon­ey from his mother’s bank account. He used the cash to cus­tomize his Mustang car. At one point, he went to a local night­club and threw mon­ey in the air for his fans to col­lect, as seen on a YouTube video post­ed on his account in May 2013.
Wilson, who is now 30-years old, recent­ly received a 99-year sen­tence. Before the rul­ing was made, he told the judge, “I just want to say, nobody loved my moth­er more than me. She was all I had. That’s it.”
The gun­man, Spencer, was sen­tenced to 100 years.

Washington Parish, LA — Ja’Quarius Taylor, a gay teen from Louisiana, was report­ed­ly found dead near a lake with a shot to the head. His fam­i­ly is urg­ing the FBI to get involved with the inves­ti­ga­tion as they believe that his death was a hate crime.

On January 12, a per­son who was check­ing the water lev­els of the lake called 911 after notic­ing an unre­spon­sive body. An hour before the dis­cov­ery, Taylor’s moth­er noticed he was miss­ing and called 911 as well. Police even­tu­al­ly iden­ti­fied that the body was of Taylor, who also lived near the lake.

Taylor, who is a senior stu­dent at Varnado High School, was gay. Taylor’s fam­i­ly believes that because of his sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and race, his death was an anti-gay and anti-Black hate crime.

His fam­i­ly said they are not sat­is­fied with the inves­ti­ga­tion being done by local author­i­ties. They are hop­ing that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will get involved “because of the per­ceived con­flicts of inter­est and fam­i­ly rela­tions the local sher­iff may have,” his fam­i­ly said in a statement.

Taylor’s death is cur­rent­ly being inves­ti­gat­ed as a homi­cide, accord­ing to the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office, cit­ing that it could be inves­ti­gat­ed as a hate crime if appro­pri­ate evi­dence will be found.

Last week, a sig­nif­i­cant piece of evi­dence in con­nec­tion with the crime was found by a dive team from St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office in the lake near where Taylor’s body was found. The evi­dence, which has yet been dis­closed, is being processed by a fed­er­al law enforce­ment crime lab.

“We have reached out to our law enforce­ment part­ners on the local, state and fed­er­al lev­els,” Sheriff Randy Seal told Fox8. “Our intent is to leave no stone unturned as all agen­cies work togeth­er to solve this sense­less murder.”

Moreover, no arrests have yet been made in the shoot­ing death. A $5,000 reward has been offered for any infor­ma­tion about the sus­pect or the incident.

Every day we read about the mur­ders in JAMAICA, yet to some, it is no big deal. “People die every day, peo­ple die every­where”, they say.
I am a lot less san­guine about these killings than the aver­age Jamaican. I find it appalling that life is so deval­ued, that peo­ple just step over the dead bod­ies and con­tin­ue par­ty­ing.
The Government and Opposition par­ty has found in the crime issue, a use­ful polit­i­cal foot­ball. Blame the par­ty in Government for the high lev­els of crime, and when it is their turn in gov­ern­ment, they do the bare min­i­mum, so as not to change the par­a­digm.
The unfor­tu­nate thing for the coun­try is that while the two polit­i­cal par­ties play pol­i­tics with this issue, the dead bod­ies of Jamaicans are pil­ing up across this beau­ti­ful country.

The ques­tion for those who say peo­ple die every­where is. “how in God’s name can you be com­fort­able with Jamaica being the num­ber two coun­try on this plan­et for mur­ders and vio­lent crime”?
How could peo­ple become so desen­si­tized to the shed­ding of blood?
And then it hit me, we have already wit­nessed the shred­ding of our cul­tur­al norms, our coun­try has become a place for glad­i­a­tors and blood­suck­ers.
We have already lost the soul of our nation.

Yesterday I received a phone call that sent a chill down my spine while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly evok­ing the twin demons of anger and despair in me.
My child­hood friend was mur­dered in Saint Mary.
He had gone to do busi­ness I was told, as he always does as he tries to make a liv­ing.
It was not enough to just rob him of his mon­ey, tak­ing his life was nec­es­sary to sat­is­fy their blood-lust.
Elvis Richards was born rough­ly a month before me, we went to school togeth­er and we com­pet­ed at every­thing.
In class, he was a maths whizz who was very use­ful in help­ing me under­stand math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts.
On the field of play, whether it was soc­cer or my beloved crick­et, we always had a blast.
He mar­ried his child­hood sweet­heart and I was hon­ored to be at his wed­ding to see him and Gene wed.
We sep­a­rat­ed as he returned to the United States where he had ear­li­er migrat­ed to, and I con­tin­ued on with my life, mak­ing my con­tri­bu­tion to the crime fight in Jamaica.

Years lat­er our paths crossed again as I moved to the United States and he went back to Jamaica. We spoke on and off, every time we spoke he would encour­age me to return so that we could con­tin­ue to enjoy the beau­ty of Jamaica as we did pre­vi­ous­ly.
I always told him I would love to, but I was uncom­fort­able with the Government’s atti­tude toward vio­lent crim­i­nals. He would laugh and say “bway das why mi live inna di kun­try.“
The last time we spoke was just before Christmas of last year. We both wished each oth­er well.
It was the last con­ver­sa­tion we would have. Living in the coun­try could not save him from the dement­ed mon­sters. They took his prop­er­ty, but it was not enough to sim­ply take what he had. They want­ed his life, and so they took that away from him as well.

A Government’s num­ber one respon­si­bil­i­ty is to keep the peo­ple safe.
If a gov­ern­ment fails at its pri­ma­ry func­tion, noth­ing else it does that may be con­strued to be pos­i­tive mat­ters.
The gov­ern­ment can­not stop peo­ple from killing each oth­er. The gov­ern­ment can put in place laws which make it abun­dant­ly clear, that if you kill anoth­er human being, you will be found, and when you are caught you will wish that you were dead.
The Governing Jamaica Labor Party under Andrew Holness has been way out on his skis, he believes that the dirty busi­ness of rein­ing in the Islands blood­thirsty mur­der­ers can be done with vel­vet white gloves and top hat.
For its part the Opposition People National Party has no plan to deal with the men­ace, it posi­tions itself in oppo­si­tion to every­thing the Government does, which includes pro­pos­als on how to deal with crime.
The Honorable House of Representatives is used to dis­play class­less, boor­ish ver­bal clash­es between the two groups of low-class [Mongrels] who pre­tend to be leaders.

Dealing with crim­i­nals is dirty work, it is not pret­ty, but it is nec­es­sary if Jamaica wish­es to main­tain its sta­tus as a func­tion­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety. By its con­tin­ued refusal and lack of will, Jamaica has con­tin­ued to degrade as a soci­ety, while still per­sist­ing in cre­at­ing a thick­er veneer of pre­tense.
Given time the whole façade will come tum­bling down. Sure the cruise ship arrivals are cool. New all-inclu­sive hotels and lots of tourists crammed into pro­tect­ed spaces will fool the world for a lit­tle while, but the coun­try is being destroyed from with­in.
Murderers know that when the rub­ber meets the road both polit­i­cal par­ties are hand in glove with them and that’s the bot­tom line.
As home­own­ers lose the val­ue of their homes more and more extor­tion­ists make it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to live in once-pris­tine neigh­bor­hoods.
The sys­tem is more inter­est­ed in jail­ing police offi­cers for tak­ing out the mur­der­ing scum, than it is in jail­ing the scum who take inno­cent life.
We need a rad­i­cal change in Jamaica, that change may have to come at the expense of both the JLP & PNP.
One way or anoth­er, since both par­ties have posi­tioned them­selves as agen­cies against progress and change.

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.

Last week Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Bryan Sykes, berat­ed the Police for what he sees as a per­pet­u­al prob­lem of inef­fi­cien­cy and tar­di­ness.
Chief Justice Sykes spoke specif­i­cal­ly of what he con­strued to be the tar­di­ness of police wit­ness­es to turn up for hear­ings and give tes­ti­mo­ny in cas­es before the courts.

“I can’t under­stand how the police keep the same lev­el of inef­fi­cien­cy day in, day out, year in, year out.”
“From I start­ed work­ing in the sys­tem, it has been the same issues every sin­gle day. They are late, more often than not. The court has­n’t moved, the places haven’t moved, and they can’t be in place. Thirty years, and when I talk, peo­ple get upset. This does not require spe­cial genius; all it requires is com­mon sense.” 

I’ve known Byran Sykes from the late 80s when he was a low-lev­el clerk of the Courts at Half Way Tree; he was a rather soft-spo­ken, unas­sum­ing man who made mis­takes like the rest of us.
Sykes did not stand out enough then to war­rant atten­tion as an enthu­si­as­tic man about pros­e­cut­ing crim­i­nals.
Simply put, Byran Sykes was a reg­u­lar cog in the slow, inef­fi­cient wheel of jus­tice at the time, noth­ing more, noth­ing less.

With that said, the police depart­ment, like every pub­lic sec­tor body, has its own share of dead­wood. If Chief Justice Sykes wish­es to speak the truth, he will agree that many of his col­leagues in the judi­cia­ry are mis­fits as well. Some Magistrates and Judges should hard­ly be mag­is­trates and judges in the same way that many cops should nev­er don a police offi­cer’s uni­form.
Chief Justice Sykes blast­ed the police as he wait­ed for a police wit­ness to appear for a case he was hearing.

“This is real­ly incom­pe­tence of the high­est order. The date for tri­al has been set in excess of sev­er­al months; this is not new. I’ve been sit­ting here for near­ly 70 min­utes now, wait­ing for the police to be at the remote loca­tion. That is incom­pe­tence, not even inef­fi­cien­cy. So if the police force can­not, after a hun­dred years, have a con­sta­ble at a remote loca­tion, what else can they do?” 
I do under­stand the frus­tra­tion of the Chief Justice, and to some degree, I sub­scribe to some of his com­ments. On the oth­er hand, I won­der whether or not the learned Chief Justice had both­ered to get one of his aides to find out the rea­son the offi­cer was late?
After all, being a police offi­cer is no easy feat. Being a police offi­cer in Jamaica is dou­bly and triply more dif­fi­cult than being an offi­cer elsewhere.

“Are we going to do any work, or are we going to sit here the whole day? I need to know what the posi­tion is. It is now 10 min­utes to 11. We can’t sit here wait­ing and wait­ing and wait­ing with no end in sight; no wit­ness­es, none here to tes­ti­fy, not one. No court can oper­ate like that; some­thing needs to hap­pen. This is absolute­ly out­ra­geous.” Sykes lamented.

I hope the lead­er­ship of the police depart­ment sees these com­ments and, for the love of God, makes a change. Not to bul­ly the peo­ple they super­vise, but to work toward greater effi­cien­cy and com­pe­tence.
As the Chief Justice lament­ed, courts can­not oper­ate with­out wit­ness­es in place. Neither can every­one be avail­able, and police offi­cers fail to show. There have to be ways to make police wit­ness­es more avail­able to the courts when they are involved in inves­ti­ga­tions.
A senior pros­e­cu­tor with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, in pro­vid­ing the judge with an update, then said:
“I can­not say when they will arrive, but about 15 min­utes ago, I was told the wit­ness­es were on the toll road.”
This means that the offi­cer was in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Prosecutor and was not shirk­ing his oblig­a­tion to be in court.

Said a far-from-pleased Justice Sykes: “So, in oth­er words, we are just going to wait and wait and wait; same occur­rence last week. This is a recur­ring prob­lem, and it is not just this court; it is hap­pen­ing across the island.”

It hap­pens across the Island because we have one police depart­ment which ser­vices the entire Island.
The JCF, which has one of the low­est offi­cers to cit­i­zen ratios in the world, is over­worked and under­paid.
The JCF has approx­i­mate­ly 11,000 mem­bers but los­es about 50 offi­cers each month to attri­tion, and that fig­ure does not rep­re­sent peo­ple who are retir­ing.
According to a 2012 study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) of sev­en Caribbean coun­tries, includ­ing Jamaica, the ratio of police offi­cers to civil­ians in Jamaica was one offi­cer per 273 inhab­i­tants, which was the low­est police pres­ence per capi­ta of the sev­en Caribbean coun­tries sur­veyed (UN 2012, 95)

Let that sink in, mis­ter Chief Justice.
It seems to me that you are bark­ing up the wrong tree here.
At 10:58 am, a court offi­cer indi­cat­ed to pros­e­cu­tors that the wit­ness­es were in the park­ing lot.
At 11:04 am, the first wit­ness was called.

The fact that the force is so short-staffed and over­worked as a result of nor­mal duties, State of Emergencies, and hav­ing to man Zones Of Special Operations is no small mat­ter.
I have no inter­est in mak­ing excus­es for the Constabulary, but those who work with­in the sys­tem must under­stand the lim­i­ta­tions of the sys­tem.
Chief Justice Sykes is frus­trat­ed, there is noth­ing wrong with that, but the Police are also frus­trat­ed with Chief Justice Sykes’ col­leagues turn­ing loose the crim­i­nals they arrest and bring before the courts.
His col­leagues com­mit gross mal­prac­tice dai­ly across the coun­try, under the guise that the bail act forces them to let loose vio­lent offend­ers and that they have a duty to try to reform vio­lent mur­der­ers.
I sup­pose the Chief Justice (a good man), but he should pay atten­tion to his dirty yard before he crit­i­cizes his neigh­bor’s yard.
Violent mur­der­ers are giv­en bail up to six times, killing each time they are giv­en bail, arrest­ed, and giv­en bail by Sykes’ moral­ly bank­rupt colleagues.

Police offi­cers who inter­act with crime gen­er­al­ly come from a small pool of over­worked offi­cers bear­ing the title “Detective.” At every scene of crime, it is the very same peo­ple (in the par­tic­u­lar divi­sion) that a crim­i­nal act is com­mit­ted who show up.
Generally, those Detectives han­dle an inor­di­nate amount of cas­es which puts them under severe pres­sure to cope. This lim­its the qual­i­ty of their work; it influ­ences their abil­i­ty to show up to court on time. It also affects their fam­i­ly life, some­thing the nation and Chief Justice Sykes do not con­sid­er.
Jamaica is not a devel­oped coun­try; as such, Sykes’ fight is not with the police depart­ment; it ought to be with Government.
Sykes can­not be a bul­ly and take his frus­tra­tions out on the weak­est link.
He either knows that these issues exist, or he is sim­ply pon­tif­i­cat­ing for the media.

Many years ago, a bul­ly, Lensley Wolfe, who was on the high court, was hear­ing a case in which I was the Detective han­dling the case.
I arrived at the Gun court five min­utes after the case was called, and Wolfe lit into me.
I am sure he believed that the fact that most Jamaicans call them [mi lord] clown suit and all, I was intim­i­dat­ed or afraid of him.
As he began to berate me for being late. He could not both­er to call me up to speak to me respect­ful­ly. Nah, he was the mighty Judge, and I was a mere foot-sol­dier cop.
I stopped him dead in his tracks, “stop”! I told him.
” I am not the pris­on­er in the dock; if you were a judge of any stature, that is where your ire should be direct­ed not at me.”
“I am not intim­i­dat­ed by you,” I told him.
He com­menced argu­ing in a typ­i­cal infan­tile bul­ly-like fash­ion. “I am not afraid of your Federation.” I laughed in his face and informed him that I did not care about the Federation either, but I thought that the Privy Council might have some­thing to say about his ignorance.

All of the offi­cers in the court­room ran out­side, hands on their heads; nev­er in their life­time had an offi­cer so dressed down an igno­rant judge.
Lensley Wolfe was known as a dis­re­spect­ful bul­ly; many offi­cers were afraid of him. I guess that may have played a part in my desire to bust him down to size bloody his nose.
I doubt that he ever tried to dis­re­spect an offi­cer after that inci­dent.
On that occa­sion in ques­tion, I had worked from 7:45 am to 1:00 pm the pre­vi­ous day, then resumed duties at 6:00 pm, worked all through the night until 8:00 am on the morn­ing of our clash.

I then went home to show­er (remem­ber no sleep), got dressed, then stopped at the Half-Way Tree Court’s office to sub­mit charg­ing infor­ma­tion in anoth­er case.
Since the Gun court was a high­er court than Half-Way-Tree Magistrates court, I had to be absent from Half-Way-Tree court in order to attend the Gun Court and, God for­bid, be five min­utes late.
My trav­els to court were in my pri­vate car; I received not a sin­gle pen­ny from the Government for the extra hours I put in or for gas for my car.
Exhausted, I was not about to take no shit from a pompous fool in a clown costume.

Chief Justice Sykes occu­pies a dis­tin­guished and ele­vat­ed office from which he can, and should, use his influ­ence to effect change.
Nevertheless, as the Rt Honorable Robert Nesta Marley said, ” wid di abun­dance of wata di fool still ded fi turs,” with all the pow­ers at his dis­pos­al, if the chief jus­tice does not know how to use it, it is still pow­er in the hands of a fool.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree and pub­lish­er of the blog mik​beck​les​.com.