This Article is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of for­mer Inspector Dadrick Henry who lost his valiant strug­gle with can­cer. I wrote this arti­cle as a trib­ute to you, sir, a man who spent his entire life try­ing to make Jamaica bet­ter. Misunderstood and unaid­ed by a filthy sys­tem that was more sym­pa­thet­ic to the crim­i­nals than to you and your sac­ri­fices. Rest In peace, brother.

After my ten-year career in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, I left the depart­ment in 1991. I real­ized (1) that I could not accom­plish my eco­nom­ic goals and (2) that I could not effec­tu­ate real change in our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem from with­in a fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed agency that itself oper­ates in a sys­tem of law and order that was in name only.
In my view, two crit­i­cal com­po­nents pre­vent­ed our nation from being safer: (1) our incom­pre­hen­si­ble infat­u­a­tion with the celebri­ty gang­ster cul­ture and (2) the struc­tur­al built-ins that allow the well-con­nect­ed to oper­ate out­side the laws.
To the extent that Jamaica is seen as a law­less coun­try, these two com­po­nents have act­ed as an umbrel­la under which the nation’s crime pan­dem­ic mushroomed.
A care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of the fore­gone may be jux­ta­posed with oth­er crit­i­cal ele­ments such as con­flicts of inter­ests, such as defense lawyers walk­ing out of court­rooms where they are defend­ing vio­lent mur­der­ers and then walk­ing into Gordon House to leg­is­late on gun violence.
The JCF is far from the only agency to expe­ri­ence brain drain, but the high attri­tion from the JCF speaks for itself. Given the appro­pri­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties, the attri­tion rate would be expo­nen­tial­ly higher.

I felt that I could kill two birds with one stone if I left the JCF at the time I did. (1) I could attempt to achieve some of my finan­cial goals and (2) be more effec­tive in shin­ing a light on the sys­tem from the out­side with­out the con­straints of being inside an agency and a sys­tem that frowns upon con­struc­tive crit­i­cisms. Having said that, no one should be under any illu­sions as to where my loy­al­ties lie.
When I start­ed writ­ing in sup­port of polic­ing, many peo­ple encour­aged me, but they would­n’t go much fur­ther than that. The blow­back was intense; some even threat­ened my life (not some­thing I was par­tic­u­lar­ly per­turbed about). I was nev­er one to cow­er in fear.
The anti-police vit­ri­ol in our coun­try was intense, made worse because there was no active gov­ern­men­tal sup­port for the police.
I absolute­ly believed that there was a fun­da­men­tal need for police reform. 
But I also thought that reform­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was far more impor­tant as the police oper­ate in the wider jus­tice sys­tem that includes the pros­e­cu­tor’s office, the crim­i­nal courts, the prison sys­tem, and last but not least, the leg­isla­tive frame­work that dic­tates whether the police suc­ceed or fail.

I wrote hun­dreds of arti­cles mak­ing the case for (1) Constitutional reform, (2) reform­ing the pow­ers of the judi­cia­ry, (3) police over­sights, and (4) the anti­quat­ed penal­ties for vio­lent crimes.
There was zero attempts to trans­form the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem dur­ing the 90 to the ear­ly or mid-2000s’, it was,’ any­thing a anyt­ing’.
The Golding admin­is­tra­tion broke an 181/​2‑year cycle of PNP rule that saw our nation tee­ter­ing on the brink of collapse.
Instead of learn­ing while look­ing from the out­side, Bruce Golding took office and decid­ed that the prob­lem was with the police. So his response was to cre­ate an over­sight agency and ful­ly equip that agency with ameni­ties that the police still do not have today to do their jobs.
Bruce Golding had no prob­lem get­ting sup­port for form­ing that agency, as the PNP was will­ing to sup­port any­thing against the police and the rule of law.
We all saw where Bruce Golding’s head was as events came to a head in 2010. Bruce Golding will for­ev­er be remem­bered as the leader who refused to hand over a trans-nation­al gang­ster for tri­al. This is noth­ing any leader should be proud of. Golding’s opin­ion should nev­er fac­tor into dis­cussing Jamaica’s way forward.

Andrew Holness did not come to office under­stand­ing the crit­i­cal role the rule of law plays in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety — a prod­uct of the same sew­er that pro­duced past lead­ers. His dis­dain for the police was evi­dent from the start.
His love affair with the mil­i­tary and his use of sol­diers in his gov­ern­ment elicit­ed claims that he want­ed to turn the coun­try into a dic­ta­tor­ship. I nev­er thought that Andrew Holness har­bored strong man tendencies.
I believe that his per­ceived dis­re­spect for the police stemmed from a lack of under­stand­ing of the rule of law enhanced by the source of his for­mal education.
Holness, too, demon­strat­ed a strong belief that attack­ing the police and advanc­ing the JDF was the way to go. The idea is that mem­bers of the JDF have a bet­ter rap­port with the pub­lic than mem­bers of the JCF. The mis­guid­ed per­cep­tion many Jamaicans har­bor is also from a lack of under­stand­ing of the func­tions of the two agen­cies. We all love to see our mil­i­tary mem­bers, and we take pride in them, but the minute you have them do police duties, the shine is off the ball, and they become just as dis­liked by those who sup­port lawbreakers.
This writer has tried to explain this for years, and now we see the lus­ter of the JDF dimin­ished like a crick­et ball that has been bat­ted around for six­ty overs.

Governing is far dif­fer­ent than cam­paign­ing or sit­ting on the side­lines, a les­son Andrew Holness is begin­ning to learn. Thus, attack­ing the JCF under the guise of ref­or­ma­tion has exposed the need for a wider approach to reform­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, which this writer pro­posed a decade and a half ago. 
The JCF sure­ly need­ed reform­ing, not the destruc­tive approach demand­ed by reac­tionar­ies like Carolyn Gomes, Terrence Williams, and oth­ers. However, after your so-called reform of the JCF, what then?
I’ll tell you what, then: vio­lent crime is still trend­ing upward, the streets are just as law­less, and every­one is look­ing at each oth­er while wring­ing their hands.
I hate to say I told you so.….but I did. Reform the wide sys­tem, then reform the police. The police were nev­er the prob­lem; the police have always been a micro­cosm of the wider system.
I have pro­posed numer­ous sys­tem changes to save lives and pro­duce a bet­ter police department.
The Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion has recent­ly start­ed to pay atten­tion to some of these pro­pos­als, even though they will nev­er admit where those ideas came from.
There are no writ­ers, politi­cians, or any­one for that mat­ter who have con­sis­tent­ly demand­ed that the par­lia­ment pass much stronger laws for crim­i­nals with guns who com­mit mur­der. There has nev­er been any­one on the Island who has demand­ed that there be manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes.
No one on the Island has pro­posed remov­ing from the judge’s purview the sen­tences met­ed out to cap­i­tal mur­der­ers. But the bur­geon­ing crime sta­tis­tics have pro­mot­ed action, and many peo­ple are jump­ing on the band­wag­on. I want to wel­come them to the par­ty even though they are a dol­lar short and a day late.

This writer is unapolo­getic in stand­ing on the demand for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for vio­lent crimes regard­less of who com­mits them. I also strong­ly believe that Jamaica needs to sev­er its colo­nial ties with Britain and, there­fore, embark on a new con­sti­tu­tion­al order. 
Nevertheless, I applaud the UK Privy Council, which upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of manda­to­ry min­i­mums for vio­lent offend­ers in May last year.
The Privy Council dis­missed the garbage appeal of Tafari Morrison who was sen­tenced to 15 years by the local courts in 2013 for a rob­bery in which the vic­tim was robbed of his cell phone and shot mul­ti­ple times. The vic­tim was shot mul­ti­ple times despite hand­ing over his phone to Morrison and his cronies. 
Morrison was 16 years old at the time of the rob­bery and, at age 17, was sen­tenced to more than 15 years in prison. The Supreme Court had imposed a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence of 15 years in prison on the teenager.
The Appeal Court upheld the sen­tence fol­low­ing an appeal by his attor­neys, who argued that the impo­si­tion of the 15-year min­i­mum sen­tence for the firearm offense was pro­hib­it­ed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and was, there­fore, unlaw­ful. The attor­neys then took the mat­ter to the Privy Council.
I believe that lawyers have a right to defend their clients vig­or­ous­ly. But I must ask, who is pay­ing these vul­tures for these expen­sive appeals?
Instead of mak­ing these friv­o­lous appeals, how about instruct­ing your clients that what they did was abhorrent?
There is noth­ing uncon­sti­tu­tion­al about sen­tenc­ing a vio­lent offend­er to prison for extend­ed peri­ods of time. If you do not want to be impris­oned, do [not] pick up a weapon to rob and then shoot an inno­cent per­son.… period!!!
My issue with this sen­tence is that it was not near­ly long enough.….. this vicious ani­mal will be out of prison in his ear­ly thir­ties, hard­ened to do it again. He should have been sent away for life with­out parole.

For a long time, many talk­ing heads in Jamaica have argued that long sen­tences do noth­ing to deter crim­i­nals. I have con­sis­tent­ly dis­agreed. Removing vio­lent mur­der­ers from the equa­tion essen­tial­ly means they can­not com­mit more crimes.
Notwithstanding this sim­ple real­i­ty, the idea that we should be lenient has pre­vailed and dev­as­tat­ing­ly affect­ed policy. 
The gov­ern­ment is final­ly chang­ing its tune now. Here’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness recent­ly in Salt Springs Montego Bay after a triple mur­der, includ­ing two chil­dren. Quote, “we have already start­ed to increase the penal­ties for mur­der and, in par­tic­u­lar, cap­i­tal mur­der. In our sys­tem, the way to sep­a­rate them is to give them long sen­tences and take them out of the space. Short of the death penal­ty, this is the next best thing.”
No shit Sherlock, I have been say­ing this same fuck­ing thing for almost two decades. Whether they are locked away or killed by the police, they [do not] come back to kill again; that’s the great­est deterrent.
For decades, there have been crit­i­cisms local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly about how Jamaica gov­erns itself, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the issue of crime. A quick review of the local groups reveals a com­mon denom­i­na­tor: they are fund­ed and assist­ed by for­eign dark money.
Why? 
Front and cen­ter in offer­ing unso­licit­ed opin­ions have been the“US Department of Justice’s Office of Justice pro­grams. In offer­ing an assess­ment of the Gun Court Act in 1992, the agency said the fol­low­ing: Jamaica’s prin­ci­pal gun-con­trol leg­is­la­tion, the Gun Court Act, man­dat­ed harsh sen­tences for crim­i­nals who used guns dur­ing a crime and denied some Jamaicans their legal rights; these harsh mea­sures proved to be inef­fec­tive in con­trol­ling crime.
Nowhere in the world are cit­i­zens more denied their legal rights than in the American Criminal Justice sys­tem, which is a race-based sys­tem. Secondly, who asked them? Jamaica streets are inun­dat­ed with guns that come main­ly from the United States.
If the United States cared about the rights of Jamaicans, they would plug the dyke and stop the flow of ille­gal guns into Jamaica. The most sacred right a per­son has is the right to life.

The US Department of Justice went on to state; The Gun Court Act was passed in 1974 and sur­vived in its most repres­sive forms through 1982. This act estab­lished a spe­cial court to deal with the offense of the ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearms and oth­er offens­es that involved firearms where the offend­er’s pos­ses­sion was ille­gal and pro­vid­ed for a manda­to­ry and inde­ter­mi­nate sen­tence for ille­gal pos­ses­sion and use of firearms. Despite the lim­i­ta­tions of the data and analy­sis, a gen­er­al empir­i­cal assess­ment of the Gun Court Act can be made. The data show that fol­low­ing an ini­tial decline, there were over­all increas­es for all firearm-relat­ed crimes through­out most of the study peri­od. Those inter­viewed about the caus­es of the firearm crime who were not direct­ly affil­i­at­ed with either polit­i­cal par­ty attrib­uted it to the use of strong-arm men, gun­men, and gang­sters in the polit­i­cal are­na; wide­spread vic­tim­iza­tion in the allo­ca­tion of jobs and con­tracts by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments and by local author­i­ties; and inter­fer­ence by politi­cians with the police in the exe­cu­tion of their duties. Statistics sug­gest that ille­gal firearms were still in the hands of many crim­i­nals dur­ing the years the Gun Court Act was imple­ment­ed. The attempt to con­trol firearm crim­i­nals through the pas­sage of manda­to­ry firearm leg­is­la­tion failed, and polit­i­cal moti­va­tions seem to have been impor­tant rea­sons for this fail­ure. Following the elec­tion of the JLP in 1980, the Gun Court Act remained in effect with its most oppres­sive fea­tures for two years. By ear­ly 1982, many indi­vid­u­als inter­viewed stat­ed the fail­ure of either gov­ern­ment to remove, or at least sub­stan­tial­ly amend, the act was a chal­lenge to all class interests.

A Black man who was detained by police dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing walk in a qui­et com­mu­ni­ty north­west of Detroit says the white offi­cer who threw him against a squad car, cuffed him and accused him of plan­ning to break into a car also told a sig­nif­i­cant lie. Brian Chaney says he asked for a super­vi­sor dur­ing his arrest in Keego Harbor, Michigan, and Police Officer Richard Lindquist told him that anoth­er offi­cer was present and in charge. The prob­lem: That sec­ond offi­cer was not a super­vi­sor or even a mem­ber of the Keego Harbor Police Department. Lindquist was nev­er dis­ci­plined and his chief says that while a sus­pect has the right to request a super­vi­sor, what the offi­cer did was OK. “An offi­cer can lie in the field when he’s not under oath,” Keego Harbor Police Chief John Fitzgerald said in a depo­si­tion in Chaney’s $10 mil­lion wrong­ful deten­tion law­suit.
But with American trust in police plum­met­ing, but­tressed by cell­phone and body­cam videos that can expose untruths, a pro­fes­sion once broad­ly con­sid­ered above reproach has seen its rep­u­ta­tion suffer.

“It’s well accept­ed that the weak­est and most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of soci­ety are the biggest vic­tims of coer­cive prac­tices, like police being dis­hon­est and decep­tive prac­tices in inter­ro­ga­tions,” said James Craven, a legal asso­ciate with Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice and a for­mer crim­i­nal defense attor­ney. In a Gallup poll last year, 43% of respon­dents said they have a great deal or quite a lot of con­fi­dence in the police, down from 51% in 2021 and 64% in 2004. Gallup says 43% is an all-time low. “We need police we can trust,” Craven said. “We need to start envi­sion­ing a police force that’s built with integri­ty at the cen­ter.” Several recent cas­es under­score that need. In May, a Washington, D.C., police offi­cer was arrest­ed on charges that he obstruct­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion and lied about leak­ing con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to Proud Boys extrem­ist group leader Enrique Tarrio. A white police offi­cer and union leader in Portland, Oregon, was fired in 2022for leak­ing a false report from a 911 caller who claimed a Black city com­mis­sion­er had been involved in a hit-and-run. The depart­ment lat­er rein­stat­ed him.

A for­mer offi­cer in Louisville, Kentucky, admit­ted in court that she and anoth­er offi­cer fal­si­fied infor­ma­tion in a search war­rant that led to the 2020 fatal police shoot­ing of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman. Police are allowed to use decep­tion and present false evi­dence dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions to get sus­pects to admit guilt, accord­ing to a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing. New York State has con­sid­ered leg­is­la­tion that would ban police from lying to sus­pects dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tions, while Illinois,Colorado and Oregon pro­hib­it police from lying when inter­ro­gat­ing juve­niles. Chaney, a licensed ther­a­pist and cer­ti­fied hyp­nother­a­pist from sub­ur­ban Detroit, says in his law­suit that in July 2021 he dropped his two teenage sons off at a gym. He was walk­ing for exer­cise along a com­mer­cial street in Keego Harbor, about 30 miles (50 kilo­me­ters) north­west of Detroit, when Lindquist drove up behind and shout­ed: “Get your hands out of your pock­et!” According to the law­suit, Lindquist told Chaney, “I’m going to frisk you because you look like you have a weapon and were going to break into cars.”

Lindquist called him a “dog,” shoved him in the back and pushed him against the squad car, injur­ing his groin. His wrist was hurt from the hand­cuffs in the ordeal last­ing more than 20 min­utes, Chaney’s com­plaint says. Chaney said Lindquist only released him after he asked, “What are you going to do next, put your knee into my neck?” ref­er­enc­ing the killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.

Fitzgerald said in his depo­si­tion on July 18, 2022, that Lindquist was­n’t dis­ci­plined over the lie about the super­vi­sor, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as “an attempt­ed de-esca­la­tion, momen­tary spec­u­la­tion.” He insist­ed lying is not pol­i­cy in his depart­ment but that “it’s what they’re allowed to do.” Citizens who have been detained can ask for a super­vi­sor — in this case, Fitzgerald — and offi­cers should call him. Lindquist didn’t call and he did­n’t think the offi­cer gave Chaney his phone num­ber, Fitzgerald said. The chief declined to com­ment to The Associated Press, cit­ing the pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion, and sev­er­al nation­al and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions advo­cat­ing on behalf of law enforce­ment did not respond to mes­sages from the AP. Lindquist no longer works for the Keego Harbor police and the AP was unable to reach him. Attorneys rep­re­sent­ing Lindquist in Chaney’s case did not respond to requests for com­ment. “You should not have the right to lie,” said Leonard Mungo, Chaney’s attor­ney. “That’s some­thing that we’re writ­ing into the moral fab­ric of the most pow­er­ful insti­tu­tion of our soci­ety that has the author­i­ty to put you in jail.” Detroit-area attor­ney David A. Robinson said the lies are a disappointment.

“People hold police in high esteem,” said Robinson, who spent 13 years as a Detroit police offi­cer. “A cop’s fall from grace is high­er than that of a reg­u­lar per­son when he is caught in a lie, sim­ply because of this per­cep­tion.” Robinson is Black and most of his clients are Black peo­ple alleg­ing civ­il rights vio­la­tions by police. “My expe­ri­ence with the pro­fes­sion reveals police offi­cers seem often to take lib­er­ties in reports in order to jus­ti­fy force or but­tress an arrest,” Robinson said. “It is there­fore fool­ish to take an officer’s word at face val­ue.” Once some­one real­izes an offi­cer has lied to them, trust is dif­fi­cult to restore, accord­ing to Robert Feldman, pro­fes­sor of Psychological and Brain Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Basically, I think police offi­cers lie because they can,” Feldman said. “Most of the time they are not caught lying, and even if they are, they get away with it. If you come to an under­stand­ing the police are not cred­i­ble and they use deceit, it makes you sus­pi­cious of every­thing they are saying.”

_​_​_​

New York City Council Member Yusef Salaam, a mem­ber of the exon­er­at­ed group of men known as the Central Park Five, says he was stopped and pulled over by police with­out being giv­en an expla­na­tion. The police stop in New York City on Friday casts a renewed light on a police trans­paren­cy bill, called the How Many Stops Act, that City Council mem­bers are set to vote on Tuesday to over­ride Mayor Eric Adams’ veto. It would require offi­cers to pub­licly report on all inves­tiga­tive stops, includ­ing rel­a­tive­ly low-lev­el encoun­ters with civil­ians. In the encounter with Salaam, which last­ed less than a minute at 6:20 p.m., a police offi­cer — heard in body cam­era footage pro­vid­ed Saturday by the New York Police Department — asks Salaam to roll down the back win­dows of his car.

But after Salaam iden­ti­fied him­self as a coun­cil mem­ber and asked if every­thing was okay, the offi­cer quick­ly with­drew with­out pro­vid­ing fur­ther expla­na­tion for the stop. What Salaam says next is inaudi­ble. Police lat­er said in a state­ment that Salaam was stopped for dri­ving with a dark tint beyond legal lim­its. The police offi­cer con­duct­ed him­self pro­fes­sion­al­ly and respect­ful­ly, the NYPD said in the state­ment, adding that he used dis­cre­tion to allow the coun­cil mem­ber to com­plete his offi­cial duties. “This expe­ri­ence only ampli­fied the impor­tance of trans­paren­cy for all police inves­tiga­tive stops because the lack of trans­paren­cy allows racial pro­fil­ing and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al stops of all types to occur and often go under­re­port­ed,” Salaam, a Democrat, said in a statement. 

City Council Member Sandy Nurse said she was on a video call with Salaam and oth­er peo­ple when he was pulled over. Nurse said she heard Salaam ask the offi­cer for the rea­son for the stop, for which none was giv­en. Salaam and four oth­er Black or Latino men were false­ly accused and con­vict­ed of rap­ing and beat­ing a white jog­ger in Central Park in 1989. Salaam was arrest­ed at age 15 and impris­oned for almost sev­en years. Their con­vic­tions were even­tu­al­ly over­turned through DNA evi­dence. Salaam won a seat on the New York City Council in November and rep­re­sents a cen­tral Harlem dis­trict. “At a time when Black and Latino New Yorkers con­tin­ue to be dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly sub­ject­ed to uncon­sti­tu­tion­al stops that go under­re­port­ed, and civil­ian com­plaints of mis­con­duct are at their high­est lev­el in over a decade, the need for basic trans­paren­cy is clear,” New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a state­ment Friday about the leg­is­la­tion, before the traf­fic stop.(AP)

The recent arrest of for­mer PNP Member of Parliament Jolyan Silvera for the mur­der of his wife Melissa, who died late last year, should not elic­it any excite­ment from ordi­nary Jamaicans.
The real­i­ty is that no one should be exempt from the reach of the law when they break it. Sadly, the arrest, much less the suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of high-pro­file Jamaicans, remains a dis­tant dream rather than a reality.
I lis­tened to one very senior mem­ber of the JCF relat­ing to the media the arrest specifics, and I could bare­ly lis­ten to the whole thing. The case’s specifics make it so clear-cut that not arrest­ing Silvera would have been a clear abdi­ca­tion of duty. 
However, the JCF has a his­to­ry of abdi­cat­ing its respon­si­bil­i­ty to the coun­try when it suits them. 
This has cre­at­ed dis­trust, dis­re­spect, and a lack of con­fi­dence in the agency by most Jamaican people.
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The caus­tic com­ments on social media direct­ed at the police around this arrest can be brushed aside as cop-hat­ing gib­ber­ish. However, an agency that requires the pub­lic’s par­tic­i­pa­tion for much of its suc­cess must be mind­ful of pub­lic per­cep­tions. Perceptions are not always facts, but giv­en enough time and no fac­tu­al cor­rec­tion, per­cep­tion often­times becomes a reality.
Far too many well-con­nect­ed peo­ple are com­mit­ting crimes and fac­ing no con­se­quences. Ordinary Jamaicans are not blind to these things, and so they are in no mood to hear the police crow­ing about one arrest as if they want medals for doing their jobs.
The JCF has fum­bled the bag on numer­ous occa­sions that involve high-pro­file cas­es. Many Jamaicans alive today will recall the alle­ga­tions sur­round­ing the infa­mous Dianne Smith case in 1983 by the Constant Spring Police.
Dianne Smith, a young stu­dent, was alleged­ly raped and mur­dered while on her way to school. Allegations arose after the das­tard­ly crime that a well-known upper Saint Andrew man, the son of a well-con­nect­ed polit­i­cal fam­i­ly, had com­mit­ted the crime.
The man named who him­self became and is still a mem­ber of par­lia­ment has strug­gled over the decades to con­vince a skep­ti­cal Jamaica that he was inno­cent. Those strug­gles includ­ed threat­en­ing tort action against those who dared to men­tion his name in the Dianne Smith mur­der case.

Whether or not this polit­i­cal fig­ure was involved in the rape and mur­der of Dianne Smith is any­one’s guess because the Constant Spring Police tasked with the mur­der inves­ti­ga­tions have yet to arrest any­one, much less gain a con­vic­tion for that mur­der forty-one (41) years lat­er. The per­cep­tions sur­round­ing that crime remain that there have been no real inves­ti­ga­tions because of who the alleged sus­pect was.
The fail­ure of the police to inves­ti­gate and arrest the criminal/​s in the Dianne Smith case enabled the rumor to con­tin­ue and has done immense harm to the rep­u­ta­tion and good name of the per­son named by the streets. If the per­son named in that rape and mur­der was tru­ly guilty, the incom­pe­tence or com­plic­i­ty of those tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing that crime enabled him to walk away scot-free.
I served in the Constant Spring CIB office between 1987 and 1991, and nev­er once did I hear any­one talk about a Dianne Smith case file that was still open.
It is impor­tant to remem­ber that mur­der is not a statute; it is against com­mon law. As such, mur­der has no statu­to­ry lim­i­ta­tions as to when a guilty mur­der­er must be caught and con­vict­ed. I found it odd that though a mur­der­er may be arrest­ed for a mur­der he com­mit­ted a hun­dred years ear­li­er, by the time I arrived at the Constant Spring CIB in 1987, a mere four (4) years lat­er, there was no talk or inves­ti­ga­tions ongo­ing in the Dianne Smith rape/​murder case. There was absolute­ly no open, ongo­ing investigation.
Why was that?

WHY HAS THERE NOT BEEN AN ARREST IN THIS CASE?

In the link pro­vid­ed above in red, I wrote about a sim­i­lar case that the Constant Spring CIB office sup­pos­ed­ly inves­ti­gat­ed, sim­i­lar to the Dianne Smith case. Below is one of sev­er­al arti­cles I wrote in 2017 about the Germaine Junior case.
In 2021, here is what the police had to say.
We have not closed their probe into the mur­der of a man four years ago at the St Andrew home of promi­nent attor­ney Patrick Bailey. 
Germain Junior, a 51-year-old con­struc­tion work­er, was found with stab wounds and a sin­gle gun­shot wound to the head in the attor­ney’s liv­ing room on September 30, 2016. 
In an update on the case on February 1^st, 2021, at a police press con­fer­ence, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) in charge of crime, Fitz Bailey, said the probe into the killing is ongoing.
“Well, the mat­ter [Junior’s mur­der case] is ongo­ing. It is not yet closed, but the truth is we go by the evi­dence, and I don’t think we have the ade­quate amount of evi­dence to advance a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion at this time,” he disclosed.
“Even since I took over the [crime] port­fo­lio, we have had quite a num­ber of case reviews. We have actu­al­ly done sev­er­al lines of enquiries, but at this point we don’t have the evi­dence to mount a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion,” Bailey added.
Police reports at the time sug­gest­ed that Bailey stum­bled on the body short­ly after 4 am in his liv­ing room, and the police were alerted.
(How could a police depart­ment even men­tion clos­ing a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion when there are no statu­to­ry lim­i­ta­tions on mur­der)?

It seems that what the Minister of National Security, Horace Chang meant when he said ‘we hafi gi tony a chance’, speak­ing of Commissioner of Police Antony Anderson, was about effec­tu­at­ing cos­met­ic changes.
What am I yap­ping about? Well, it seems that one of the things I have sup­port­ed for a long time, speak­ing of out­fit­ting police offi­cers in a prac­ti­cal uni­form, is com­ing to fruition. 
This nice blue uni­form adorned with the Jamaican flag and crest insignia above the heart is prac­ti­cal for both male and female offi­cers and some­thing they can be proud of don­ning each day.
But that seems to be all we are get­ting from Tony’s stewardship.

I’m told that offi­cers are asked to pay for these nice-look­ing uni­forms. I have not been able to ver­i­fy whether this is true inde­pen­dent­ly. However, there may be some truth, as many offi­cers wear imprac­ti­cal red-seam black pants and striped grey shirts. Some may argue that that ensem­ble is not so bad; truth­ful­ly, I have not seen any offi­cers wear­ing that ensem­ble with the god-awful cum­mer­bund of late.
But the fact that offi­cers still wear the red seams seems to indi­cate that offi­cers may have been asked to pay for the blue ensemble.
One last thing of note: how can we have nice high­ways and no police offi­cers patrolling them? Driving on the nation’s roads, you may see a sin­gle cop car parked with the offi­cers out of the car chat­ting or on their cell­phones. All of this while vehic­u­lar traf­fic races by at break­neck speed. The cops are in total oblivion.
If we are to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, the nation’s pre­mier law enforce­ment agency must act pro­fes­sion­al­ly and give the impres­sion that it is at least one step above Deputy Barney Fyffe of Mayberry.
I’m still per­plexed when­ev­er I lis­ten to the Prime Minister speak on secu­ri­ty inside our coun­try; he refers to the Jamaica Defense Force and then the Jamaica Constabulary Force as an afterthought.

The JCF, As I have writ­ten for years, must do a bet­ter job at polic­ing. It must demon­strate that it is a force to be reck­oned with.… not some emp­ty slo­gan vis a force for good.
By inves­ti­gat­ing and arrest­ing guilty offend­ers, catch­ing crim­i­nals in the act, and pre­emp­tive­ly dis­man­tling crim­i­nal net­works, the JCF will gain the respect of the Jamaican peo­ple. The JCF must retake con­trol of the streets before it expects any respect and sup­port from the peo­ple as to its abil­i­ty to seri­ous­ly impact crime and vio­lence in any mean­ing­ful way.
That is a force for good.….. not an emp­ty slogan.
The few offi­cers I observed in pub­lic on my last vis­it home did not give me con­fi­dence that the JCF is inter­est­ed in law enforce­ment but is more inter­est­ed in floss­ing and being on their mobile devices.
This is a fail­ure of lead­er­ship at all levels.
The JCF has expo­nen­tial­ly more offi­cers than two or three decades ago. It has more up-to-date resources than it did pre­vi­ous­ly. Yet, there are few­er cops vis­i­ble on the streets, high­er lev­els of vio­lent crimes, and the streets have all but been ced­ed to unruly drivers.
How the agency expects to func­tion this way is a mys­tery to me.

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

This writer has called for every single one of those proposals over the last decade-plus, on these very pages. Let us finally stop talking about it and get it done.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness called for the death penal­ty a while back. Before the words could leave his mouth, the pon­tif­i­cat­ing crim­i­nal sup­port­ing vul­tures were already on him, pick­ing apart the car­cass of his words.
For many, this may have come as a sur­prise, but for me, it was par for the course. I was already wide awake to the real­i­ty that there are fac­tions in our coun­try that cel­e­brate the gun cul­ture and the macabre prospect of the wan­ton killing of our fel­low citizens.
There has always been a sub­set with­in the Jamaican body politic that feels itself insu­lat­ed from the real­i­ties of hav­ing their lives snuffed out at a momen­t’s notice. That sub­set, main­ly from the Mona incu­ba­tor, inter­prets its posi­tion in acad­e­mia as a god-giv­en right to dic­tate to the rest of us how we should secure our country.
Tragically, for the ordi­nary Jamaican, not cor­rupt­ed and cor­rod­ed by the Mona incu­ba­tor, the gun­men are a real­i­ty they know and under­stand all too well. The aver­age Jamaican is forced to live with the pon­tif­i­ca­tion and grand­stand­ing that influ­ence the poli­cies and laws that emanate from them.

The Jamaican Prime Minister him­self, a prod­uct of the Mona incu­ba­tor, also har­bored the world­view that most Jamaicans fed up with crime and vio­lence under­stand well. However, Andrew Holness was forced to face the real­i­ty that talk­ing out of the side of one’s mouth while look­ing on from the out­side is dif­fer­ent than governing.
What pass­es for media on the island man­aged to pull itself away momen­tar­i­ly from glo­ri­fy­ing the dance­hall mur­der cul­ture to label the Prime Minister’s call for the death penal­ty an act of frustration.
It may have been an act of frus­tra­tion, truth­ful­ly. After all, the Prime min­is­ter is no dum­my. He under­stands that Jamaica is bound by the British Privy Council’s mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty in 1998.
As a nation, we are sub­ject to that mora­to­ri­um because the lead­er­ship com­pris­ing the two polit­i­cal par­ties still has their col­lec­tive noses up under Charles’ ass.
It fol­lows, there­fore, that if Jamaica is to estab­lish clear lines of demar­ca­tion on the issue of crime, it must do a cou­ple of things. (a) Decouple itself from the shack­les that bind our coun­try to the for­mer slave-own­ing col­o­niz­ers. (b) Establish a strong leg­isla­tive frame­work of laws that makes mur­der­ers and vio­lent offend­ers wish that we had the death penal­ty.
I believe decou­pling from Britain and estab­lish­ing the afore­men­tioned leg­isla­tive frame­work are needed.
I would argue that the death penal­ty is final, and because we do not have the fool­proof sys­tem to estab­lish guilt beyond doubt, we should prob­a­bly keep the mora­to­ri­um on the death penalty.
Many peo­ple to whom I have spo­ken on this sub­ject in the dias­po­ra want the death penal­ty pre­cise­ly because of the love affair many peo­ple have with crim­i­nals, even those con­vict­ed of heinous murders.
They feel that the death penal­ty ends that once and for all. Though frus­trat­ed with the lack of progress on this issue, this writer does not share those views.

The gov­ern­ing Administration can no longer afford to dither on this sub­ject. The vot­ing pub­lic gave the Jamaica Labor Party a huge man­date to secure the coun­try. There is this mis­con­cep­tion that Jamaicans love crim­i­nal­i­ty. I have always dis­agreed with this point of view. I do under­stand that the crim­i­nal sup­port­ers are high pro­file. I under­stand that they have loud bull­horns and are influ­en­tial. But I also know, as a for­mer police offi­cer, that the peo­ple who gave me infor­ma­tion hate crim­i­nals. I know that the major­i­ty of the peo­ple in the dias­po­ra (those not engaged in send­ing back guns and mon­ey to fur­ther crim­i­nal behav­ior, hate the crime on our island. 
Everywhere I go in Jamaica, I use the con­ver­sa­tions I have with the peo­ple as a sound­ing board on the issue of crime and vio­lence. What I hear from the peo­ple is what I heard over three decades ago: they do [not] want crime and vio­lence in their country.
The silent major­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple believed the Prime Minister would be seri­ous when he said peo­ple would be able to sleep with their win­dows open if they gave him the man­date to lead. I hard­ly believe they expect­ed that it would be like wav­ing a mag­ic wand and crime would dis­ap­pear. The present sit­u­a­tion did not devel­op overnight; it will not dis­ap­pear overnight. The expec­ta­tion was that the gov­ern­ment would be res­olute once giv­en the man­date to lead.
The Government can­not lay this at the feet of the oppo­si­tion par­ty. We know that with­in that polit­i­cal par­ty are con­vict­ed crim­i­nals with law degrees and oth­ers who would be in prison but for the fail­ures of law enforce­ment. That is not to say there aren’t crim­i­nals in both polit­i­cal parties.
We know that the oppo­si­tion par­ty’s reluc­tance to let go of the issue of crime as a polit­i­cal foot­ball has ren­dered it use­less and worth­less. The Government must lead based on the man­date it was given.

In a recent address, the PM laid out a series of no-non­sense leg­isla­tive mea­sures com­men­su­rate with some that this writer has demand­ed for many years on these same pages as a mat­ter of record. I applaud the recog­ni­tion by the PM. 
Notwithstanding, words are just words; we need leg­isla­tive action from this government.
There will be howls com­ing from the oppo­si­tion par­ty; there will be howls com­ing from the Mona incu­ba­tor; there will be howls com­ing from the for­eign-fund­ed crim­i­nal rights orga­ni­za­tions that have tak­en root in our coun­try. I call on the Prime Minister to ignore those mon­grel dogs and pass his announced leg­isla­tive agenda.
Jamaica is march­ing into devel­oped nation sta­tus; the sin­gle largest issue hold­ing us back is the issue of crime. Those fund­ing the crim­i­nal rights agen­da in our coun­try want to see us fail.
It is in their inter­est to scare their nation­als away from com­ing to Jamaica because if we are unable to con­trol crime, we will per­pet­u­al­ly be a beggar/​bor­row­er nation behold­en to them.
It is time for Jamaican lead­ers to under­stand what is at play here. Their state depart­ments and home office quick­ly issue trav­el advi­sories on Jamaica aimed at dam­ag­ing our nation’s econ­o­my. Thankfully, the cit­i­zens of those coun­tries are not their gov­ern­ments, and as such, peo­ple con­tin­ue to flood our shores to expe­ri­ence for them­selves the beau­ty and joy of brand Jamaica.

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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.

The most sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to the law­less­ness in our coun­try is an obstruc­tion­ist judi­cia­ry that har­bors the belief that it should be left to oper­ate out­side of the con­trol of the peo­ple’s elect­ed representatives.
The Judges of the Supreme Court are appoint­ed by the President under clause (2) of Article 124 of the Constitution. The President con­sults with Supreme Court and High Court judges to make informed appointments.
The judi­cia­ry of Jamaica is based on the judi­cia­ry of the United Kingdom.
The courts are orga­nized at four lev­els, with addi­tion­al pro­vi­sions for appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. The Court of Appeal is the high­est appel­late court.
It is impor­tant to cast aside the shack­les of British Colonial attach­ments. We must draft, dis­cuss, and rat­i­fy a new Constitution with Jamaicans hav­ing the final say in our sys­tem of Justice.
Having said that, I am ful­ly con­ver­sant with the propen­si­ty of Jamaican author­i­ties to default to cor­rup­tion. Therefore, the new Constitution must have guardrails and safe­guards to ensure that no one picks up the phone to call a col­league to influ­ence the out­come of a mat­ter before the courts. Guardrails must ensure that the chat­ter at their lit­tle coun­try clubs does not influ­ence jus­tice in our coun­try as much as possible.

It is past time that Jamaica shed this yoke of Colonial resid­u­al­ism and forge ahead on the strength of our own ener­gies and intel­lect. Allowing a bunch of unelect­ed bureau­crats to deter­mine how jus­tice is admin­is­tered is tan­ta­mount to liv­ing under a king and his decrees.
We must strong­ly tell Charles we no longer want to buy what he sells. It is quite okay for the British to cast aside cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment; their cit­i­zens do not have access to guns. Consequently, some of their cops can opt not to car­ry guns. Jamaica has no such lux­u­ry. Our small nation is flood­ed with ille­gal firearms, and there is no short­age of mind­less poten­tial mur­der­ers who are will­ing to use them to show pow­er. The state can­not con­tin­ue to be def­er­en­tial and sub­mis­sive to the crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in our country.
There is no short­age of poten­tial to get this run-away crime and law­less­ness under con­trol. There was no short­age of poten­tial dur­ing the 1980s when we made them flee to oth­er countries.
The prob­lem lies in a cor­rupt leg­isla­tive body that lacks the intesti­nal for­ti­tude to pass appro­pri­ate leg­is­la­tion that puts crim­i­nals in prison and keeps them there.
The judges argue that they grant bail to mur­der­ers because it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al not to. Let us then change the con­sti­tu­tion and remove that excuse from them.
Let us ensure that the peo­ple who will­ful­ly mur­der oth­ers are put away for life. Let us stop fos­ter­ing the non­sense that they deserve short sen­tences, as some on the judi­cia­ry believe, so they should be let off lightly.
Finally, let us ensure that judges get no say in sen­tenc­ing dan­ger­ous killers; let us enshrine it in law that mur­der­ers are put away with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
Hardly any­one forces any­one to com­mit mur­der, but if it hap­pens, there are mit­i­gat­ing built-ins in the laws to pro­tect those offenders.
It is time to stop the cha­rade and seri­ous­ly send a mes­sage to these bleached-out face killers that they will play by our rules, not the oth­er way around. We owe it to our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren. We owe it to the sur­vival of our nation…

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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.

If you know the name Isat Buchanan, you also know what he is. Writing about the twice-con­vict­ed drug couri­er turned lawyer/​lecturer in Jamaica high­lights the cor­rup­tion in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem more so than the despi­ca­ble imbe­cil­ic traits in this individual.
Built in the Isat Buchanan sto­ry are the per­ti­nent ques­tions that the Jamaican author­i­ties must answer.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​3​5​2​873 – 2/
(1) How could a drug con­vict have his crim­i­nal record purged/​expunged, allow­ing him to trav­el to the United States? Who san­i­tized Isat Buchanan’s crim­i­nal record and why?
(2) After com­mit­ting the same felony in the United States and spend­ing almost a decade in prison, then deport­ed to the Island, how could the GLC allow Isat Buchanan to prac­tice law?
(3)His dis­hon­or­able behav­ior shamed the GLC to hand down a two-year sus­pen­sion and a mon­e­tary fine to Buchanan for con­duct the body char­ac­ter­ized as“offensive, pro­fane, vul­gar, foul, and obscene.”
Buchanan, on a pod­cast, quot­ed from a record­ing done by Vybz Kartel in which he instructs the DPP to com­mit a sex­u­al act. He described the jus­tice min­is­ter as “a con­sti­tu­tion­al pedophile” who “fin­ger fucks the con­sti­tu­tion.” Buchanan who was chair­man of the People’s National Party’s Human Rights Commission resigned after his out­ra­geous comments.

Buchanan’s dis­parag­ing com­ments about the Director Of Public Prosecution (DPP) and Justice Minister are beneath the dig­ni­ty of an offi­cer of the court. Isat Buchanan is the lead lawyer rep­re­sent­ing con­vict­ed mur­der­er Adija Palmer, pop­u­lar­ly known as Vybz Kartel, on appeal before the British Privy Council. How appro­pri­ate. This shamed the GLC into action as it wiped the shit of shame from its col­lec­tive face.
This writer thought that even though the GLC bent the rules for its own rea­sons to allow Isat Buchanan to the bar, its lat­est action in sanc­tion­ing him removes some of the stench of com­plic­i­ty, cor­rup­tion, and ignominy from the body.
I fool­ish­ly for­got that the entire sys­tem is a shit­stem, a cesspool of back-rub­bing and nepotism.
I for­got the court sys­tem, and that was stu­pid of me.
Even though Buchanan’s attor­ney, Valerie Neita Robertson, argued her client was gen­uine­ly con­trite and had learned his les­son, she appealed the deci­sion of the GLC, and why not? The court sys­tem is a back-scratch­ing club for the wealthy and well-connected.
The Appeals court grant­ed the stay.
This writer wish­es to reg­is­ter again why I oppose Jamaica becom­ing a Caribbean Court of Justice member.
There is not enough char­ac­ter with­in the Caribbean legal sys­tem for us to trust that deci­sions com­ing from that body will con­form strict­ly to our con­sti­tu­tion and laws.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​s​a​t​-​b​u​c​h​a​n​a​n​-​d​i​s​h​-​c​l​o​t​h​-​t​o​-​t​a​b​l​e​-​c​o​v​e​r​-​p​r​o​v​e​d​-​h​e​-​i​s​-​d​i​s​h​-​c​l​o​t​h​-​f​i​n​a​l​l​y​-​s​u​s​p​e​n​d​ed/

Those of you who fol­low my work also know that Buchanan broad-brushed the police depart­ment as dunces who did not under­stand the Constitution. Of course, like any con­vict­ed crim­i­nal inca­pable of tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty, he tried to back­track, argu­ing that his com­ments were tak­en out of con­text. But the head of the Police Officer’s Association was not about to allow him to get away with it.
“Any police offi­cer can become a lawyer if he so choos­es, but Isat Buchanan can­not become a police offi­cer with his crim­i­nal record,” said the head of the POA, SSP Wayne Cameron.
But if you thought Buchanan’s back­track­ing was pathet­ic, it paled to his excuse for despi­ca­ble behav­ior toward the DPP.
In his response sum­ma­ry to the GLC, Buchanan argued that the show he was on caters to a cer­tain class of Jamaicans, the major­i­ty of whom are une­d­u­cat­ed peo­ple, and if he is not ani­mat­ed and not using pro­fan­i­ty, he can­not bring the point home to these persons.
These are the state­ments of a sub­ject who believes he is the smartest per­son in what­ev­er room he is in. He is a nar­cis­sist, a liar, and a very dan­ger­ous per­son. Buchanan’s com­ments against police offi­cers being not smart or edu­cat­ed enough dis­par­aged the thou­sands of Jamaicans who are risk­ing their lives against the vicious killers he loves and represents.
His com­ments against lis­ten­ers of the pod­cast he was on dis­par­age the entire Jamaica.
Unfortunately, like the legions sup­port­ing him and his client, the Norman Manley Law School-edu­cat­ed Buchanan can­not under­stand this.
This guy rep­re­sents the worst of our coun­ty. No one should be delu­sion­al about the fact that he may have earned an under­grad­u­ate degree and lat­er a law degree. The true test of a man is his char­ac­ter. Isat Buchanan was nowhere around when those virtues were being hand­ed out. A dish rag can nev­er be a table­cloth; this may be a les­son lost to the GLC.

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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.

By Akela Lacy

Including the newly revealed $30 million, the NYPD paid out more than $80 million in misconduct cases so far in 2023

THE NEW YORK Police Department has been mak­ing head­lines for the huge set­tle­ments paid out by the city in mis­con­duct cas­es. In the first half of 2023, New York City paid more than $50 mil­lion in law­suits alleg­ing mis­con­duct by mem­bers of the NYPD. 

That fig­ure is on track to exceed $100 mil­lion by the end of the year — but even that total doesn’t cap­ture how much the city has to spend in cas­es where its cops are accused of every­thing from caus­ing car acci­dents to beat­ing inno­cent people.

The $100 mil­lion fig­ure does not include law­suits set­tled by the city pri­or to lit­i­ga­tion, which reached $30 mil­lion in the first nine months of this year, accord­ing to data obtained from the office of the New York City Comptroller through a pub­lic records request. Pre-lit­i­ga­tion set­tle­ments from July 2022 through September of this year totaled $50 mil­lion — mean­ing the city’s pay­outs in such suits since July 2022, includ­ing those set­tled after lit­i­ga­tion, rose to a total of around $280 million.

“It says some­thing that it’s just such a high amount even before peo­ple get to file in civ­il court,” said Jennvine Wong, staff attor­ney with the Cop Accountability Project at the Legal Aid Society, which pro­vides pub­lic defense in New York City. ”And all it does is it helps obscure police misconduct.”

The infor­ma­tion about pre-lit­i­ga­tion set­tle­ments pro­vid­ed to The Intercept through a pub­lic records request includ­ed set­tle­ments rang­ing from $1.8 mil­lion to $119. The comptroller’s office did not have imme­di­ate­ly avail­able data on the amount paid in pre-lit­i­ga­tion set­tle­ments pri­or to July 2022. 

In response to ques­tions, an NYPD spokesper­son point­ed to a comp­trol­ler report that showed an 11 per­cent decrease in claims from 2021 to 2022, and a 52 per­cent drop in claims filed with the comp­trol­ler against the NYPD since 2013.

“The NYPD care­ful­ly ana­lyzes this infor­ma­tion as well as trends in lit­i­ga­tion against the Department,” said an NYPD spokesper­son who did not pro­vide their name. “When it comes to lit­i­ga­tion data, the NYPD is see­ing sim­i­lar suc­cess in the declin­ing num­bers. There has been a near­ly 20% reduc­tion in police action fil­ings against the NYPD from 2021 to 2022, and a near­ly 65% reduc­tion since 2013.”

The report notes that while the num­ber of tort claims filed against the NYPD declined from 2021 to 2022, the amount of pay­outs increased by 14 per­cent, from $208.1 mil­lion to $237.2 million.

Earlier this year, The Intercept report­edthat a new NYPD web­site ded­i­cat­ed to “trans­paren­cy” around police mis­con­duct and pay­outs leaves out cops accused of wrong­do­ing and only cov­ers a frac­tion of the mil­lions the city pays out in such cas­es. The web­site only includes those cas­es where there are find­ings of guilt, even as the police pay out mil­lions of dol­lars pre­cise­ly to avoid con­vic­tions and oth­er find­ings of wrongdoing. 

Some of the police offi­cers left out of the trans­paren­cy data­base have been named in mul­ti­ple mis­con­duct law­suits. In some of the cas­es, rather than receiv­ing pub­lic scruti­ny through the data­base, the NYPD cops have received pro­mo­tions.

In the land of the free, you can­not make this shit up. How intrin­si­cal­ly cor­rupt the police depart­ments are. No, these things are not hap­pen­ing in Russia, China, Or Iran; they are hap­pen­ing in America.

A Hawaii dri­ver who was false­ly arrest­ed for drunk dri­ving in November says a police offi­cer told him to deny fur­ther exam­i­na­tion at a Pearl City police sta­tion. According to Hawaii News Now, the offi­cer gave Ammon Fepuleai that advice under the pre­tense of sav­ing him time while being booked for the arrest, which proved to be false and end­ed with pros­e­cu­tors drop­ping the case for lack of evidence.

The U.S. is record­ing alarm­ing­ly high cas­es of false DUI arrests; for the last few years, police depart­ments nation­wide have con­duct­ed more “empha­sis patrols” to curb drunk dri­ving. But these DUI check­points are often fed­er­al­ly-fund­ed, and the over­time hours they pro­vide are paid for by state and fed­er­al agen­cies rather than the police depart­ments car­ry­ing out the patrols

HNN inves­ti­gat­ed the case, com­pil­ing infor­ma­tion from Fepuleai’s arrest doc­u­ments as well as video and audio footage from the officer’s body cam, which the patrol­man turned off at one point — a vio­la­tion of the Honolulu Police Department’s arrest procedures.

What is most strik­ing about the inci­dent is how rote the DUI stop goes, and how blithe­ly police dis­missed evi­dence they col­lect­ed, which sug­gest­ed Fepuleai was, indeed, not drunk. It’s almost as if the police knew he was telling the truth, but arrest­ed and processed him any­way just to raise their arrest stats. Per HNN

And sim­i­lar police behav­ior has been record­ed in oth­er places, such as Fort Collins, Colorado. An inves­ti­ga­tion car­ried out by the Coloradoan found that an offi­cer tasked with catch­ing drunk dri­vers near­ly dou­bled his arrests year-over-year from 50 DUI arrests in 202^o, to 90 in 2021, then 190 in 2022.

After a series of law­suits for wrong­ful arrests, the offi­cer resigned before the depart­ment could fire him for improp­er con­duct — which is encour­aged both implic­it­ly and explic­it­ly by the fund­ing tied to these DUI patrols.

Defence attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing three Washington police offi­cers on tri­al for the mur­der of a Black man have accused the vic­tim of “cre­at­ing his own death.” Tacoma offi­cers Matthew Collins, 40 and Christopher Burbank, 38 are fac­ing sec­ond-degree mur­der and manslaugh­ter charges in con­nec­tion with the 3 March 2020 death of Manuel Ellis. A third offi­cer, 34-year-old Timothy Rankine, is charged with manslaugh­ter in the case. Throughout the nine weeks of tri­al, jurors have heard from pros­e­cu­tors that the offi­cers knocked Ellis to the ground, punched and choked him and shot him with a taser until he died. Before he was killed, Ellis whis­pered to the offi­cers: “Can’t breathe, sir.” Closing argu­ments start­ed on Monday, with the state argu­ing that Ellis would be alive today if the offi­cers had done what most peo­ple would do if some­one was strug­gling to breathe. 

Special pros­e­cu­tor Patty Eakes said on Tuesday that the offi­cers had “cho­sen to treat [Ellis] like an ani­mal, in the most dehu­man­iz­ing posi­tion you can imag­ine.” The defen­dants’ attor­neys have since made con­tro­ver­sial char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Ellis’ death, direct­ly blam­ing him for being “para­noid” and ulti­mate­ly “[caus­ing] his own death.” “This is a sit­u­a­tion where he cre­at­ed his own death,” defense attor­ney Wayne Fricke claimed dur­ing clos­ing argu­ments on Wednesday, per CBS News. “It was his behav­ior that forced the offi­cers to use force against him because he cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion that required them to act.”

Ellis’ cause and man­ner of death were ruled a homi­cide caused by lack of oxy­gen due to phys­i­cal restraint. Ellis was on his stom­ach, with both his legs and arms tied and his body pressed against the con­crete while the offi­cers rest­ed their weight on him, The News Tribune reports. However, the defence has focused on metham­phet­a­mine lev­els present in Ellis’ body at the time of his death and an enlarged heart not­ed in the autop­sy report. The defence has said that Ellis was the aggres­sor and that he attacked the offi­cers with “super-human strength” and even­tu­al­ly died of a drug over­dose and a dam­aged heart. Witness tes­ti­mo­ny and video pre­sent­ed at the tri­al sug­gest oth­er­wise. Three wit­ness­es said they saw the offi­cers sit­ting in their patrol car as Ellis approached and walked to the pas­sen­ger side. When Ellis turned to leave, Burbank threw open the door and knocked Ellis to the ground, accord­ing to the wit­ness­es. Prosecutors also played video record­ed by the wit­ness­es for the jury.

Mr Burbank and Mr Collins gave their offi­cial state­ments before they knew there was audio and video of the encounter, Ms Eakes said. They claimed Ellis attacked them vio­lent­ly and relent­less­ly and didn’t say a coher­ent word. “But you know that’s not true,” Ms Eakes told the jury. “He did speak after he was pinned to the ground. He said he couldn’t breathe, sir, polite­ly and nice­ly.” When Mr Rankine showed up and pinned Ellis to the ground, even though he was in hand­cuffs, Ellis said he couldn’t breathe three more times. Mr Rankine respond­ed by say­ing, “If you’re talk­ing to me you can breathe just fine.” 

After that, they put hob­bles on Ellis’ ankles and con­nect­ed them to his hand­cuffs. The sec­ond-degree mur­der charges filed against Mr Burbank and Mr Collins, also called “felony mur­der,” mean a felony was being com­mit­ted and some­one died. In this case, the pros­e­cu­tion argues the offi­cers com­mit­ted the felony of unlaw­ful impris­on­ment or assault. Ms Eakes told the jury that they don’t need to unan­i­mous­ly agree on which felony was com­mit­ted to find the two offi­cers guilty, only that Ellis died dur­ing the com­mis­sion of a felony. They also have the option of manslaugh­ter, which is the charge Mr Rankine faces. Closing argu­ments con­tin­ued on Wednesday. The pros­e­cu­tion is now expect­ed to present a rebuttal.

The Associated Press con­tributed to this report