Miami, FL — Hector Reyes, a 26-year old man from Miami, is facing felony charges for an alleged shooting after a verbal altercation with a white man. He tried denying the accusations, but his 4‑year old daughter spontaneously told the police that her father was shooting.
According to reports, Reyes was with his daughter and her mother visiting family when the incident happened. Reyes and his brother-in-law confronted a man who was allegedly making obscene gestures toward Reyes’ daughter’s mother.
After a brief argument, Reyes, his daughter, and her mother got in a car and that’s when Reyes started shooting towards the direction of the man he argued with, witnesses said.
A few minutes later, police chased his car and pulled him over. Police were questioning him when out of the blue, his daughter told the police, ”My daddy was shooting.”
The girl’s mother, who was also in the car, immediately refute what her daughter was saying and said that she didn’t know why her daughter would say something like that. She added that it must be because the child was always talking about police.
Reyes was arrested on one felony count each of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possessing a deadly weapon while committing an offense. He’s also facing four counts of felony child abuse with no great bodily harm.
Despite that, Reyes maintains he is not involved in the shooting.
Commencing an Impeachment inquiry in the house does not guarantee a conviction in the Senate. Certainly not with a law-breaking enabling Senate controlled by Republicans. Nonetheless, commencing an impeachment inquiry is the correct thing to do when a sitting president decides that the laws do not apply to him. In some countries, a lawless leader may be recalled, and in others, they engage in coups to remove leaders they believe are acting outside their authority. In the United States, the Constitution allows for impeachment as the means to remove a president who [commits high crimes and misdemonors] (sic). Regardless of the outcome of the actions on which the US house has embarked, removing a lawless, immoral cancerous presidency is the correct thing to do. When the question is asked for posterity, “what did our leaders do while all this was going on”? It will forever be told, that the United States House of Representatives under Democratic leadership started an impeachment inquiry, which was intended to hold the head of the executive branch of the government accountable.
Andrew Johnson & William Jefferson Clinton
It will, forever be a stain on the US Senate under Republican leadership, that a bunch of men and women who took an oath to defend the Constitution of these United States, allowed a lawless executive to continue unchecked, as a result of political and other considerations. The Speaker of the House has a duty to protect the Republic from a lawless executive. Prudence and fidelity to constitutional responsibilities cannot be a slave, or subservient to poll results, or public perceptions.
Richard Nixon
Defending the Constitution cannot be a function of polls and public opinion. If, as a nation, the United States is at a place in which the chief executive can flout the laws and the people are okay with it, then the problem is bigger, much bigger, than Donald Trump. Regardless of the outcome of this inquiry, Donald Trump will have the dubious distinction, as did Andrew Johnson, William J. Clinton and Richard Nixon who resigned before he could be kicked out, of being impeached, or had impeachment inquiries commenced against them. It is a hall of shame in which Donald Trump belongs, he is a stain on the decency of humanity.
True to form Republican leadership in the Senate has steadfastly vowed to defend a lawless Donald Trump. No other single human being has done more harm to the Republic than Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell. No single person’s treachery will be more long-lasting.
“What do you play?” If you are a black male on a large, predominantly white college campus, you’ve likely answered this question when someone — usually a white person — innocently assumed you play a sport that landed you at their prestigious university. As a 16-year-old freshman at SEC football powerhouse Auburn University, I stood 5’5” and weighed 120 pounds if I was soaking wet wearing a pair of Timberlands and you also measured my high-top fade. Still, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked that question, and I always wish I could come up with a sharp, witty answer.
One of the least-mentioned symptoms of the psychosis we call white supremacy is the delusion of merit. Many white people subliminally believe that there is a separate entrance through which black people can sneak their way onto the grand white stage simply because they are black. If they ever find a black person standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them, they assume the black person got there through affirmative action, athletic ability or by diving through some “minorities-only” loophole that allows the “underprivileged” people with melanin to exist in white spaces. It’s why many white people still believe that black people get to go to college for free. It’s also why white people think affirmative actions “lower the standard” so black people can be admitted to a college or get jobs.
It’s also why Barack Obama will always be the “Black President.” Barack Obama was better-educated, less scandalous and more successful than any president this generation has seen. Unlike George W. Bush, Obama didn’t lie to get us into war. Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama never faced impeachment. He didn’t help hide a guns-for-cocaine plot like George H.W. Bush. And at the end of Obama’s presidency, 138 people in his administration hadn’t been convicted, indicted, or become targets of official investigations for misconduct and/or criminal violations, like Ronald Reagan. And because the current commander in chief is a white supremacist, tax-evading, broke-ass bitch with delusions of grandeur and a ball of laundromat dryer lint for a brain, Donald Trump still can’t comprehend how Obama earned a Nobel Peace Prize. And it tears him apart. On Monday, during a Press conference during the U.N. General Assembly, Trump once again whined about Obama’s 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace and how he hasn’t received one yet. The Washington Post reports:
“I think I’m gonna get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things — if they gave it out fairly, which they don’t,” Trump said at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, responding to a Pakistani journalist who told him he would deserve the award if he could work out the decades-old dispute between India and Pakistan over the territory of Kashmir. Trump offered no real evidence that the five-person Nobel committee, which is appointed by the Norwegian parliament, is actually rigged — except that it awarded Obama, then the president, the prize in 2009.
“They gave one to Obama immediately after his ascent to the presidency, and he had no idea why he got it,” Trump said. “You know what, that was the only thing I agreed with him on.”
Goddamn, this man is thirsty.
In 2018, 18 Republicans nominated Donald Trump for the prestigious honor because of his efforts to “end the Korean War, denuclearize the Korean peninsula, and bring peace to the region.”
Unless the Nobel Committee introduces a new category and Trump wins the Nobel Prize for Lying Motherfuckers, he probably will always envy Obama’s accomplishment. But Trump’s claims that the Nobel Prize is rigged is typical of the psychosis that won’t allow him to admit that Obama won more electoral votes (both times), had a larger inauguration audience and probably has a bigger…ummm…hand size.
Seriously, I was gonna say hand size.
Yes, hands.
Trump’s delusion is not atypical. He is, after all, just a dumb white man stricken with the mental illness of whiteness. To be fair, being white is not a mental disorder. However, whiteness makes one susceptible to the idea that one has climbed their way to one’s positions, prestige and perch atop the social strata while the rest of us were lollygagging on the negro-only escalator. Because, if they admitted that the system was rigged in their favor, they would also have to acknowledge that their unwillingness to dismantle the system of white supremacy makes them, in some small way, white supremacists, too. All of them.
Just the other day, during a late-night Walmart search for Hostess chocolate cupcakes (I don’t eat that shit but, oh, the things we do for love), an elderly white man wearing a Crimson Tide t‑shirt stopped me and asked where he could find some kind of seasoning. I don’t know why, but even after I told him I didn’t work there, he rambled into a long explanation of how he seasoned his pork chops. I wish I could remember the particular herb, but all I could say was: “That’s the only seasoning you use?”
In less than a minute, he revealed that his wife had taught him this seasoning method and he never really cared for it. But after she passed away, he began eating his chops that way. His voice began to crack and, I have no idea why, but this small little glimpse into his sorrow also made me tear up. For a minute and a half, under the fluorescent superstore lighting, he was just an old man telling his story and I was just a human looking for shitty, preservative-filled cupcakes. Just before I walked away, he joked: “Why are you wearing that shirt?” I looked down and realized I was wearing a dark blue t‑shirt that said “AuburnAF” written in bright orange letters. From a distance, it was easy to mistake the tee for a Walmart uniform, which was probably why he stopped me in the first place. I knew he was needling me because, like most of the people in the area, he was a fan of AU’s archrival, the University of Alabama. “Oh,” I answered. “That’s where I went to school.” “Really?” he asked. “So, what did you play? I still don’t have a good answer.
More than three-quarters of House Democrats have come out in support of an inquiry as Trump’s Ukraine scandal grows.
By Heidi Przybyla and Adam Edelman
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who for months resisted efforts to launch impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, announced a formal inquiry on Tuesday, saying that the president’s burgeoning Ukraine scandal marked a “breach of his Constitutional responsibilities.”
“This week the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically,” Pelosi said.
“The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” she continued. “Therefore, today I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.”
Pelosi said she was formally directing her party’s six committees to “proceed with their investigations under that umbrella.”
“The president must be held accountable,” she said. “No one is above the law.”
Pelosi’s change of heart comes as dozens of House Democrats — now more than two-thirds of the caucus — have come out in support of an impeachment inquiry in the wake of reports that Trump may have withheld aid to Ukraine to pressure officials there to investigate the son of political rival Joe Biden.
The impeachment drive follows days of revelations surrounding Trump’s apparent push to have the Ukrainian government investigate the former vice president’s son Hunter Biden, who had business dealings in the country. On Monday, The Washington Post and other media outlets reported that Trump instructed his acting chief of staff to place a hold on about $400 million in military aid for Ukraine in the days before a late July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump responded on Twitter within moments of Pelosi’s announcement, calling it “Witch Hunt garbage.”
“They never even saw the transcript of the call. A total Witch Hunt!” he wrote.
Such an important day at the United Nations, so much work and so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage. So bad for our Country!
Muskegon, MI — Charles Anderson, a Michigan police officer, was discovered to have kept and displayed a KKK memorabilia in his home. He has been fired since it went public when Rob Mathis, a prospective homebuyer who is Black, saw the items and posted about it on Facebook.
Last month, Rob Mathis and his wife were touring Anderson’s home that was for sale when they saw a framed KKK document with a title “Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Application for Citizenship.” Mathis, who is also an Army veteran, immediately shared it on a now-viral Facebook post, saying he felt disgusted.
“I feel sick to my stomach knowing that I walk to the home of one of the most racist people in Muskegon hiding behind his uniform and possibly harassing people of color and different nationalities,” Mathis said in the post, adding that he also saw Confederate flags throughout the home.
Mathis did not divulge Anderson’s name on the post but commenters identified him. The Muskegon Police Department, where Anderson had been serving as a police officer for 20 years, acknowledged the post and said that Anderson could be “in possession of certain items associated with a white supremacy group.” He was placed on leave pending an investigation since August 8.
Moreover, the recent incident could reopen a case in 2009 where Anderson fatally shot Julius Allen-Ray Johnson, a 23-year old unarmed Black man. Back then, he was cleared of any wrongdoing since it was ruled that he acted in self-defense. But the results of the investigation could change that.
“Whether or not officer Anderson has racist tendencies or not, would that move the needle one way or another?” Muskegon County Prosecutor D.J. Hilson told MLive in August. “I guess I can’t answer that question. I don’t know. I need a completed internal investigation.”
It has yet been known if the case would be reopened now that Anderson is already terminated.
Although it was not specifically stated in the Muskegon Police Department Policy and Procedure Order that private display of racist materials is illegal, it highlights that officers should not act in a way that would compromise public trust.
“Police officers will, therefore, avoid any conduct that might compromise integrity and thus undercut the public confidence in the officer or this law or this law enforcement agency,” it said.
Pennsylvania State Police, investigating one of their own for allegations of racial bias, have (surprise!) cleared themselves of any wrongdoing. The incident in question took place on July 8, when two white state troopers pulled over Rodney Gillespie’s car after he briefly crossed over the center lines of a narrow, winding two-lane road.
After state police turned on their lights, Gillespie drove one more minute down the road before turning into the driveway of his home. The reason, Gillespie told police at the time, and to BuzzFeed News later, was because he feared what pulling over on an unlit road with no passersby would beget.
“I knew my house was lit with lights,” Gillespie told BuzzFeed News last week. “What other place do you think is safer than your house?”
Dashcam footage of the event released by police last Friday shows trooper Christopher S. Johnson, a recent police academy grad, barking at Gillespie to get out of the car. He questioned the 52-year-old pharmaceutical executive about why he hadn’t pulled over sooner.
“This is a small street, I didn’t want to get killed,” he responds. When Johnson says the officers’ hearts were racing because Gillespie had continued driving, he continues, “you all kill black people, I didn’t want to get killed.”
“You want to know how to get hurt? Not stopping for police. You’re running,” Johnson replies. When Gillespie explains that he was “just scared,” Johnson takes offense.
“Listen, one of my best friends, that’s a trooper that works with me, is black. I don’t want to hear that black nonsense,” the trooper says.
The two officers end up handcuffing Gillespie for several minutes before giving him a traffic ticket.
While Pennsylvania State Police found troopers “could have more effectively deescalated the situation” once Gillespie had pulled over, the agency found the complaint of bias-based profiling “was not sustained,” according to a statement released last Friday. State police also pointed out that the officers’ microphones were turned off at several points during the incident — a violation of police protocol.
Watching video of the incident, Gillespie pointed out to BuzzFeed News two noteworthy statements officers made that were not picked up by their microphones:
The first was that police said they followed him when he passed their car because of recent break-ins. The second was that officers asked him who his “girlfriends” were, referring to his wife Angela and his 17-year-old daughter Jaida, who was sleeping in the back seat (his elder daughter Jasmyn, 22, was not in the car).
“As an African-American, as a man, trying to take care of his family, I felt like there was a little bit of … [police officers] trying to egg me on, emasculating me, right in front of my family,” Gillespie said. In a separate interview with ABC following the agency’s decision, Gillespie said he plans on suing the state police to force changes through.
“This has never been about me. It’s about making sure it doesn’t happen to others,” Gillespie said.
Our country is being destroyed for profit by foreign companies, Jamaicans are not benefitting from this
Much has been said on the question of the Cockpit Country and the need for the Government to stop any mining in the precious watershed. The Prime Minister, to his credit, has shown some sensitivity to the issue and in has promised that under his administration there will be no mining in the cockpit country. Additionally, he has met with some activist artiste who has taken an interest in the cause of preserving the area in its pristine condition. We should all commend our artists who use their celebrity to bring attention to these pressing issues of our time. We should celebrate and encourage, rather than try to find reasons to demonize and vilify them.
A Hungarian town flooded as a result of bauxite mining
With a clear eye on the evidence of the consequences of climate change, and doing what’s right, the Jamaican Government must forthwith cancel all contracts, and make a full declaratory statement, that not one single inch of the Cockpit Country will be touched for mining or anything else. It matters not at this point, who did what. The present Administration must now show the ability to lead, and not engage in the back and forth about who awarded contracts when. The Jamaican people, and the next generation, deserves a clear and unequivocal statement of leadership and commitment from our government. That statement should end this issue once and for all, that there will be no mining in this vital watershed.
The beautiful and necessary pristine cockpit region
This is not a political issue, it is an existential issue. Roughly 40% of the Islands water supply comes from the Cockpit region. Over the years Jamaica has like other countries is recording higher and higher temperatures as the effects of climate change becomes undeniable. As the Amazon burns, wildfires in California and Oregon eviscerates entire towns each year, as mammoth storms wipe out entire Islands, as lands once habitable, become lakes due to rising oceans, the writing is on the wall, and it does not require anyone special to decipher what it is saying. Climate change is real. If there are financial costs to canceling Noranda’s contracts, the Government should bite the bullet and cancel those contracts, but there should be no further action taken which would jeopardizes the future of Jamaica’s children.
Huge plains across the African continent, laid bare by droughts and famine.
Climate change is having other effects on our planet outside the obvious lack of water, wild-fires, massive storms, and unpredictable temperatures. It is causing mass migration of people from their homes in search of food and water as the effects many thought would be for other generations has made it clear, it is for us to fix. For the people fleeing their homes in Latin-America, life has become unbearable without water. This has been happening across the African continent for decades, as rich multi-national corporations continue on in its centuries-long rape and pillage of the continent. Millions in Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, and other African nations have lost their lives and their livelihoods but there has hardly been any attention paid to this tragedy, because after all, its just Africans dying.
Drought ravaged Africa
As America struggles to deal with the mass of humanity pressing against its southern border, it is important to understand how some of the delicacies Americans have come to cherish and enjoy, have contributed to that mass of humanity at the southern border. In Chile, large scale avocado farming has diverted much-needed water from small farms and homesteads leaving peasant farmers and regular Chileans without the precious commodity, forcing them to flee or face death from starvation and thirst.
A drought-ravaged Kenyan farm
According to NBC) In one Honduran village named El Rosario, villagers watched helplessly as drought withered their corn and bean crops for a fifth straight year. With nothing to sell and no food supplies to feed their families, they’ve entered the growing season without any reserves. For those who might want to leave — and can afford to — the choices are few. San Pedro Sula, a city a few hours to the northwest, is overrun by drug gangs and violence. Migrant caravans leave from there to the Mexico‑U.S. border but offer no guarantee — and hiring a smuggler costs thousands of dollars. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/central-america-drying-farmers-face-choice-pray-rain-or-leave-n1027346
With no water, and no rainfall options are few for the villagers of Rosario
Now is not the time for platitudes and cheap slogans, I applaud the people who have stood up and demanded that the government listen to their concerns. After all, the government must be a government of [we the people]. For once, let us stop labeling each other with political labels and worse, and instead, see this crisis for what it is. Climate change is not an abstract projection for future generations to tackle. It is here today, if we do not tackle it, there will be no one left to do it.
Please share this article as much as you can, we need full awareness on this issue.
Mike Beckles is a former Jamaican police Detective corporal, a business owner, avid 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.
We cannot guarantee the safety of whistle-blowers. Oh, we pass all kinds of laws with fancy names like the “Whistleblower Protection Act.” Our presidents sign executive orders called “Protecting Whistleblowers with Access to Classified Information.” But when the rubber meets the road, when a whistle-blower wants to dish about the people in charge of enforcing the laws, all of our acts and proclamations are easily ignored pieces of paper.
Chelsea Manning lives in the Alexandria Detention Center. Edward Snowden lives in Moscow. People get to be called “whistle-blowers” only when the institutions they’re blowing the whistle on allow it. Otherwise, they’re called “criminals” or “spies” and are subjected to the full weight of the American justice system.
That justice system is currently run by Attorney General William Barr, and he is the most obvious reason our current “whistle-blower” has yet to come forward to Congress about whatever he or she would like to tell the American people about Donald Trump’s interactions with, and promises to, foreign leaders. What we know is that this whistle-blower, an intelligence official who worked at the White House, filed a complaint with Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community — and that Atkinson deemed the information credible enough to forward it to the director of national intelligence (DNI), and then to Congress. What we also know is that the Department of Justice told the DNI to ignore our whistle-blower laws and keep the information hidden from Congress.
Now, there are people in Congress, the media, and on the presidential campaign trail who hope that the whistle-blower takes the heroic step of risking their professional career and personal freedom to come forward, to Congress. Senator Kamala Harris urged the whistle-blower to “go directly to Congress,” saying that the “American people will stand with you.”
Man, if I were the whistle-blower, I’d tell all of these politicians and pundits to kiss my whole entire backside. We “American people” are a decadent bourgeoisie who won’t storm concentration camps to save children. Why should the whistle-blower believe that the “people” will do anything to “stand with” them, unless the whistle-blower has the secret recipe for chicken sandwiches? Our leaders in Congress are feckless cowards. They have failed, repeatedly, to hold President Donald Trump or A.G. Barr accountable for any of their past transgressions against the rule of law. Why should the whistle-blower believe that Congress — through the newly opened House Intelligence Committee investigation or other means — is going to start holding Trump and Barr accountable now? Read more here; https://www.thenation.com/article/whistleblower-trump-ukraine/
Louisville, KY — Simmons College, an HBCU in Kentucky, has reportedly declined $1 million in scholarship funds that Papa John’s Pizza founder John Schnatter donated earlier this month. As a result, 10 students who were initially promised the scholarship will no longer receive the funds and they are disappointed.
However, the administrators at Simmons College said an internal problem between the company and its founder is what really caused the cancellation of the scholarship donation.
“It felt as though someone has taken weapons of mass destruction and flown them into the hopes and dreams and aspirations of some of America’s most vulnerable students,” said President Rev. Kevin Cosby about the company’s apparent decision to no longer make the donation.
But then, the restaurant chain claimed that the administrators at the college were the ones who rejected the scholarship funds through email.
“Thank you for our discussions on how to help support the students of Simmons College of Kentucky,” Von Purdy, Simmons’ director of development said in the email that was recently released. “In light of recent news, it is best to decline your scholarships at this time and perhaps look at other ways to partner in the future.”
Still, the college maintained that the email was sent only because a Papa John’s executive told them to do so.
Despite what appears to be a miscommunication, Papa John’s reportedly made a donation of $30,000 to the college. It has yet been clear if the donation will go toward the students’ scholarships.
Prior to that, John Schnatter, the founder and former chairman of Papa John’s Pizza, donated $1 million to Simmons College. It comes about a year after he was forced to step down as chairman of the restaurant chain after he allegedly used the n‑word during a meeting.
There are a lot of pressing issues facing the Jamaican people, as there are issues facing countries across the globe, large and small, rich and poor. The challenge for us, is to find leadership which is up to the task, honest, capable and most of all, laser-like focused on real solutions for the future. [Luckily for us], our small Island ‑Nation can be self-sufficient as it relates to feeding ourselves. That, of course, depends on whether we are willing to eschew the inane belief that American goods are superior to ours. We can also be near energy sufficient with the abundance of sun and wind we have at our disposal. Despite the perennial problems we have with not having enough clean drinking water in our pipes, I am of the opinion that there are more than enough sources of clean drinking water, in this the land of [wood and water]. The lack of water in the pipes is, however, a bi-product of myopic and incompetent political leadership. That can be solved if serious effort and investment are made in developing the infrastructure which would exploit the abundant water sources which exist across the length and breadth of the Island. But before we get to harnessing those water sources, the practice of funeralizing dead bodies in family plots must be outlawed immediately. Apart from being bad for groundwater, it depreciates property value.
PNP Senator Dr. Andre Haughton
[Unlickily for us] the young leadership which has sprung up seemed to be more interested in hype and social-media than actually tackling the substantive issues the country face. It appears that no matter how many letters they have behind their names some of these young leaders are dumber than rocks. Which brings me to the old cliché‘, “some men are born great, some have greatness thrust upon them”.
PNP Senator Andre Haughton says he intends to move a motion that will allow for the use of Jamaican expletives in dancehalls. “This motion is important because this is our culture. Too many aspects of our culture have been unnecessarily vilified. These little things, these words contribute to the uniqueness of the Jamaican culture and is what sets us apart from countries across the world.” “When I say the dancehall space, I mean anywhere, wherever you can go get a permit and keep a party. We want to make it like how you have X‑rated movies, that way people already know what dem a sign up for,” he said, noting that there are few people in Jamaica, who are affected by the use of these “bad words”. Haughton said overseas these words are considered comical, noting “there are a lot of people who these words don’t affect in a negative or positive way”.
As I said before there are pressing issues facing the Jamaican people, yet the young senator is focused laser-like on coarsening the culture. He argued that [overseas] people find those bad words comical. Ha-ha, so there it is foreigners find our lingo comical, but they do not want it regularized in their country. I suggest since this young senator believes that they are so enamored with our expletives, he packs up and leave Jamaica, then unload a bunch of those [b**** c***t] on the interviewer at the first job he interviews for. You see, some of us are dead set on being clowns, shucking and jiving as long as Massa finds it entertaining. Getting (rayyyyys) from idiotic dance hall Disc jockeys, who simultaneously tell men to dump building blocks onto female genitalia is not something anyone should be seeking. Neither should the desire for social media likes, influence public policy. For years dance hall DJ’s have told Jamaicans not to tell police whats going on in their communities. They openly encourage and nurture the murder culture in the music, and on the microphones, blaring out their disdain for societal norms, while they openly encourage killings and carnage, right there in the dance halls. Look where it has gotten us. As if that is not bad enough, the young PNP Senator wants to put the murder and mayhem on steroids.
The most shocking thing about this, is not that he is simply seeking a hype, but that he got the idea that artists should be free to unleash unchecked expletive-laced tirades, after police warned Japanese sound system, Mighty Crown, not to use profanity during the Fully Loaded show in August of this year. Overly anxious to please the Japanese, he is prepared to further erode our culture, under the nonsensical notion that foreigners are benefitting from it and finds our expletives comical. On a scale of 1 – 10, this guy is a zero on the idiot scale. To begin with, the suggestion that it would be like x‑rated movies because people know what they are getting into is cockamamie. Sound systems are extremely loud disruptive things. There is a silent section of the population who have to get up and go to work, but they are forced to endure nights with little or no sleep because of the incessant blaring of sound systems, coupled with the moronic disc jockeys screaming into the microphones. Add a healthy dose of expletives to that mental torture and you got a perfect brew to drive law-abiding working people totally insane. This is what Andre Haughton wants to unleash on working people.
Members of the security forces stand guard downtown Kingston
Murders shootings and other violent crimes continue unchecked making Jamaica one of the most violent places on earth to live and raise a family. One would expect that there would be an all hands on deck approach to this existential crisis, but not so. In 2014, 1,192; murders were reported to the police. In 2015 the number was 1,450. In 2016 it was 1,350. In 2017 it was 1,616. And in 2018, 1,287 Jamaicans reportedly lost their lives violently. Thus far for 2019, roughly 900 murders have been reported to police, at this rate the homicide numbers are on pace to equal last year’s numbers if not exceed them. This despite the spate os ZOSO’s and states of emergencies declared and operational across hotspots. These numbers are generally higher as some of the victims who have been shot, chopped, stabbed or otherwise injured by assailants, eventually, die. Those deaths are not included in these summaries.
If Jamaica is to meet the challenges of the 21st century it will require enlightened and dedicated leadership, not hype and cosmetic changes designed to score points. Andre Haughton should consider how he can help our country in a positive way, he cannot be that stupid, he is a Ph.D. On this issue, however, he clearly needs to take a chill pill and step back from the hype.
Justice Nicole Simmonds decision to quash the application of the Inspector of Investigations for INDECOM, to compel a police constable to answer questions, is a step in the right direction for the courts. In righting a monumental and unconstitutional wrong done by the two political parties, the decision should set the stage for the police to file a constitutional challenge to the INDECOM law as we have urged in this medium since 2011. Unfortunately, rank and file should not hold their breath for the Federation to take action on their behalf. Having conferences and making speeches at north coast hotels are far more important to-dos on the Federations agenda..
The Bruce Golding administration gave unfettered power to INDECOM to harras the police. At the same time, the PNP was more than happy to sign onto the measure. Every person has the right to remain silent and to refrain from self-incrimination, constitutionally. So too does police officers!
The decision came after the attorney for Constable Delmond Grant, Chuck Cameron, filed an application for judicial review against INDECOM. The policeman’s attorney however erred in my estimation, when he told the media that he thought it is possible that an officer of the Commission has the power to compel a Policeman to answer questions, just not the Inspector of Investigations. A cow giving a pail of milk then kicking it over maybe? Just a thought! If the attorney is speaking to what exists presently in the unconstitutionally designed INDECOM law, that I understand. On the other hand, if he is making a constitutional argument, then, he too is out in left field.
The constitution is the preeminent law of the land, each and every piece of legislation must pass constitutional muster. The constitution gives each and every Jamaican the right to remain silent. Police officers do not have fewer constitutional guarantees than other citizens. As such, neither can they be forced to answer questions if they chose not to. Sure, officers must give a detailed written account of their actions, but under no circumstances should they be expected to answer questions of a hostile agency hell-bent on persecuting them.
Mike Beckles is a former Jamaican police Detective corporal, a business owner, avid 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.
A part of the Poughkeepsie waterfront and the Henry Hudson Bridge in the background over the Hudson River
If you know Jamaicans well you know that Jamaicans are going to find a way to make a living wherever they are, one way or another. And true to form, sometimes our quest to survive does not always lend itself to portraying us in the best light possible. Take for instance Jamaica’s taxi-operators and other public transport operators, their lawlessness and seeming refusal to obey any rules of the roads. Or the perennial dollar vans which traversed Nostrand, Flatbush and other avenues in Brooklyn or any of the other thoroughfares in Queens and the Bronx, New York’s outer Boroughs. Of course in a small city like Poughkeepsie, a city of just over 30’000 residents, set on the banks of the Hudson River , in the beautiful Hudson Valley, Jamaican taxi-operators are also to be found plying their trade.
With the Jamaicans are some Arabs, Hindus, and even some whites. The disruptive unruly image you may have in your head about how they may behave is not the reality in Poughkeepsie. They are forced to line up in one area by the train station and await passengers emerging from the Metro-North line. Poughkeepsie is the last stop for the Metro-North trains even though the Amtrak trains continue further north. Jamaicans have always complained about how they are treated by the authorities, many feel targeted by the police and by City-Hall overall. One could argue that when forced to abide by rules many of our people are not very comfortable. Or we may also accept that as people of color we are sometimes held to more exacting standards of accountability than others. Regardless of where the truth lies, the emergence of Uber and Lyft have not exactly helped the taxi-operators, particularly because they all operate as a splintered group of individuals. They never bothered to create an umbrella group under which to operate, which could potentially give them some autonomy and currency when they are forced to deal with the authorities or just for their own survival.
City of Poughkeepsie Police cruiser
On the periphery of that group of operators are others, which includes Jamaicans, African-Americans, Mexicans and others who compete for the dwindling dollar of not just the railroad commuters, but for the sometimes raucous and inebriated students of the nearby Marist College. Many of the drivers who transport students from the downtown Poughkeepsie watering holes back to the Marist campus have developed a rapport with students who have their phone numbers and call them when they need to be taken to or from the watering holes and restaurants. As a consequence, some of those operators have large vans rather than cars. At $3 or so per person for the short trip, a load of five or upward makes the trip worthwhile for these men who are fighting to survive.
Town of Poughkeepsie Police cruiser
Unfortunately for them, the Town Of Poughkeepsie which almost encircles the city, has a police department which exemplifies the enforcer mentality. The Department’s headquarters which is a veritable quick walking distance from the city line has an almost Lilly-white workforce. Though the city itself has a mixed population the town is less so. Below is a breakdown of the city of Poughkeepsie racial breakdown from the last census.
White: 48.06%
Black or African American: 37.59%
Other race: 7.37%
Two or more races: 5.23%
Asian: 1.32%
Native American: 0.39%
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 0.04%
According to NY hometown locator, The Town Of Poughkeepsie is a County Subdivision of Dutchess County. The subdivision has a T1 Census Class Code which indicates that the Town Of Poughkeepsie is an active county subdivision that is not coextensive with an incorporated place.
There is hardly any crime to speak of in the Town of Poughkeepsie, nevertheless, it is customary to see the Towns police department, the County Sherrif’s department, and State Police units, all doing traffic stops in the town and city. The Town of Poughkeepsie municipal court is a beehive of activity, a veritable money pit, as residents from all around, are dragged in to pay exorbitant traffic fines cops in the three departments dreamed up. It was one of these cops who stopped a Jamaican operator whom I will refer to as Joe Brown as he headed out to Route 9 in his van toward Marist College and was pulled over by Town of Poughkeepsie cop J Roosa.
Mister Brown explained how he was pulled over by Roosa for not using a turn signal to turn right onto Rt 9 North from Washington Street. The fact of the matter is that there can be no left turn onto Rt 9 from where mister Brown was. It is a one-way northward only. So the idea of using a right turn signal when the only turn is a right turn becomes academic. But that was only a guise it seemed, the officer had other ideas as to why he initiated the stop. Generally, they are so excited to pull motorists over that they do not even know the laws they are trying to enforce. A Sheriffs’ deputy once pulled me over after I drove through a yield sign while his vehicle was at a dead stop on the red light. He hurriedly drove through the red light and pulled me over and demanded my papers. As I reached for my papers, I asked why he stopped me? He responded that I did not stop at the yield sign. I asked him whether he understood what yield meant? He answered in the affirmative, and so I asked him who should I have yielded to? He said his vehicle. I asked him why would I yield to him if he was at a dead stop on a red light? He smiled, wished me a good day and walked away.
Some of the 19 tickets Town of Poughkeepsie officer, J Roosa wrote a single motorist
Mister Brown though alone in his vehicle was not so lucky, as officer J Roosa was incensed that he told him he was recording the stop. Mister Brown explained that the cop berated him verbally and told him he did not care about being recorded. When an officer behaves in a manner that is disrespectful to a member of the public and tells that person he does not care, that cop is operating under a certain amount of knowledge that he and his colleagues do not have to be accountable to anyone. After all, the heavily bearded black man declaring his right to record the illegal stop, must have enraged that white officer? How dare he challenge his authority to be lord and master over him?
Nineteen tickets later, mister Brown was sent on his way by that police officer who took an oath to protect and serve the community. But he did not do that, in a final act of denigration and humiliation, officer J Roosa allegedly threw the tickets into mister Brown’s van, instead of handing them to him. Officers in the Town of Poughkeepsie extract a good salary from taxpayers who live in that municipality. Some reporting indicates that they earn somewhere in the range of $84K-$95K annually. We have not been able to verify whether these numbers are indeed correct. There is a long and detailed history of their disrespectful and racist attitudes toward people of color. These are the abuses of power that run the length and breadth, and all across America. In every nook and cranny of the myriad police departments which are generally always staffed with all white officers. Luckily for mister Brown, the judge saw through the abuse of power and threw the entire lot out. Despite having done nothing wrong mister Brown was still forced to pay $20 in court cost. Though he was brought before the court illegally, he still had to pay something to oil the machinery of injustice.
Mike Beckles is a former Jamaican police Detective corporal, a business owner, avid 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.
After what looks like an almost certain failure to secure a majority in Israel’s election on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t need anyone to tell him about the murmurings within Likud that his own party should start thinking about a change in leadership. He suspects they are there, and have been for a while.
As he arrived at the party’s campaign headquarters at Expo Tel Aviv in the early hours of Wednesday morning, greeting senior Likudniks with forced, tight-lipped smiles, the heavy makeup he wore could not mask the tiredness on his face from days of relentless campaigning and long hours of nonstop online Likud TV broadcasts, in which he harangued right-wingers to go out and vote.
Seminary, MS — Louie Revette, a 38-year old white man, has pleaded guilty to the racist act of burning a cross outside the home of an African-American family on October 2017. He was convicted of several charges in connection to the crime and he recently received his sentence of 11 years in federal prison. Revette was reportedly convicted on one count of using fire in the commission of a federal felony, interference with housing rights and a federal civil rights violation in connection to the incident.
During his trial, Revette was remorseful and said that he wishes he could take it back. He said, “I want everyone to know I’m not proud of what happened. I hate what I did. I cannot even believe I did that. I’ve never done anything like that before in my life.”
Revette entered a guilty plea in April and confessed that he went to a majority-Black neighborhood in Seminary, Mississippi, to burn crosses that he himself created at his home with his accomplice Graham Williams, who also pleaded guilty.
Both Revette and Williams said they did the racist act in an attempt to “threaten, frighten, and intimidate” Black residents due to their race and color.
“Those who instill fear and terror into our neighbors and our fellow citizens because of the color of their skin will face the full weight and force of the law from the U.S. attorney’s office,” Mike Hurst, U.S. attorney for Southern Mississippi, said in a statement from the Justice Department. “There is absolutely no place in our society or our country for this type of behavior, and we will do all that we can to prevent these racist acts and bring to justice those who are intent on committing these crimes.”
Judge Keith Starrett described the defendants’ actions as a “big deal.” He said, “It is not an act of courage to come in the night and try to intimidate somebody.”
Meanwhile, prosecutors wanted a harsher sentence for Revette saying that he even tried to recruit more others to join him in burning crosses. Rose Marie Shears, the grandmother of one of the victims, said Revette and Williams should have to be in prison for 20 to 40 years for their crime.
“I thought that ‘those days’ were over,” she told federal prosecutor Julia Gegenheimer. “This act has brought it all back.”
Graham Williams, who faces up to 30 years in prison, is scheduled to be sentenced on November 5.
There is no greater group of cheer-leaders for the light sentences being handed down to murderers and criminals arrested with illegal weapons and ammunition, than the criminal lawyers in Jamaica. As officers of the court, the Jamaican bar has become a disgusting lobby for criminals, in what appears to be a misunderstanding of their roles as defenders of the innocent and upholders of the laws.
The foregone was a paragraph pulled from an article I wrote on September the 4th of this year. That paragraph was incorporated in a broader article which spoke to the inadequacy of the methodologies being employed in the crime fight. And more importantly, the fact that the laws are more beneficial to criminals than they are to law-abiding citizens.
Just over a week later and the most recent death of a young lawyer, Sashakay Fairclough in Ocho Rios, St Ann in a hail of bullets, Attorney at law Peter Champagnie found his voice as he addressed the court at the opening of the Michaelmas Term of the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston. “It is a sad reminder that none of us are immune from the savagery in terms of criminal conduct.” Hmmm!!! Addressing Vivene Harris the presiding judge, Champagnie went on; “Having said that, my lady, I do believe that it behoves us at the private bar — especially those who practise at the criminal bar — to be mindful that while we remain guardians of the rights of individuals and defend our clients to the best of our ability within the confines of the law and all ethical standards, we have a greater responsibility in this new dispensation to …offer solutions in the way of crime-fighting and crime prevention,”
Really now? What an epiphany! It seems to me some people only care about crime when it affects them or others in their circle or social class. Crime has become a staple and a way of life in Jamaica, in terms of its acceptability. I cannot recall, neither as a young adult, a crime fighter, or as a former crime fighter back in civilian life, ever hearing lawyers speak out against crime. I stand corrected if someone can produce evidence contradicting me on this. I’m generally not one to question the motives of others, but I had to dig a little deeper to find out what was the reason for this totally unexpected call by one of the nation’s most prominent criminal defense attorneys? And then the answer was right there in front of me. Three (3) attorneys have been killed since the start of the year. Conversely, since the beginning of the year up to August 25th, Jamaica has recorded 869 murders — among them 30 children. If we subtract the (3) attorneys from that 869 number, we are left with a total of 866 Jamaicans murdered, including as I alluded to, (30) children. None of that was important enough to activate the panic button in a single defense attorney, until their own began showing up on the stat sheets.
The truth of the matter is that crime in Jamaica has largely been seen as a poor people’s problem. Poor people live in underserved communities infested with criminals. Poor people’s kids become police officers. Poor people’s kids join the army. Poor people die at the hands of criminals, with the exception of a few anomalies which generally gets ignored. Say for example when a politician gets murdered for political expediency and life goes on. The élite class is able to live out their fantasies as lords over the peasanty during the day. At night they retreat to the relative safety of their gated communities uptown, replete with high fences and armed guards. For the rest of the country, it’s every man for himself.
Champagnie’s plea came as a result of the death of three of their own. The average Jamaican has no one to lobby on their behalf, so the deaths of (866) people are less significant than the deaths of (3). Over the years using this medium, I have personally pointed to the complicity of bench and bar in the growth of crime in our country. In some cases, the lines between the guys who pull the trigger and their lawyers are so vague that they are indistinguishable. In other cases, through greed lawyers end up in the docks as ordinary criminals. Champagnie’s call to his colleagues for solutions to the Island’s crime problems, is merely a well couched acknowledgement of what we have been saying for years. Surely, no one believes that trial lawyers coming up with solutions is what he is pleading for. What he should say, is that his colleagues should end their associations with the criminal underworld for the good of the country and be done with it.
Mike Beckles is a former Jamaican police Detective corporal, a business owner, avid 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.
An eight-ounce plastic bottle of drinking water retails for somewhere between US$1 & $1.50 if you purchase at retail. With bulk rate you get a better deal monetarily, as for the quality of the drinking water, I cannot speak to that. But water quality is hardly what I want to talk about today, so there is that. So at the rate of say US$1 per bottle, a gallon container should cost approximately US$8. Of course, again, because a gallon is considered bulk-buying the cost is exponentially less.
A gallon of gasoline retails for somewhere between US$2-$3, on the east coast of the United States, I imagine it may be a little more pricey on the west coast nevertheless the cost of drinking water is now greater than the cost of gasoline. Who would have thunk it?[sic] For years now I have been telling friends and family members that the next major conflict to engulf the world will probably be over clean drinking water.
As scientist continue to warn about the danger climate change poses to our planet, it is not difficult to see how rising ocean levels could contaminate freshwater sources. Droughts and wildfires caused by deforestation and changing temperatures will force nations to compete more aggressively for the precious commodity. The general consensus is that 71% of the earth’s surface is water, additionally, water also exists in the air as water vapor, in rivers and lakes, in icecaps and glaciers, in the ground as soil moisture and in aquifers, and even in you and your dog, according to one expert. Nevertheless, not all of that water is drinkable water, and as we are all well aware, we each use a lot of water in our every day lives. Estimates vary, but each person uses about 80 – 100 gallons of water per day. Are you surprised that the largest use of household water is to flush the toilet, and after that, to take showers and baths? With about 7.7 billion people on the planet, the need for clean drinking water is a growing one even as water becomes less abundant.
In India people line up and wait for the precious commodity
According to [Sciencedaily], about 70% of water flow reaching Egypt is derived from the Blue Nile and Atbara River, both sourced in Ethiopia. Over the past 200 years, rapidly increasing human activity has seriously altered flow conditions of the Nile. Emplacement in Egypt of barrages in the 1800s, construction the Aswan Low Dam in 1902, and the Aswan High Dam in 1965 has since altered water flow and distribution of nourishing organic-rich soil in the delta.
Egypt’s population has recently swelled rapidly to about 90 million, with most living in the soil-rich Lower Nile Valley and Delta. These two areas comprise only about 3.5% of Egypt’s total area, the remainder being a mostly sandy desert. Due to much-intensified human impact, the delta no longer functions as a naturally expanding fluvial-coastal center. Less than 10% of Nile water now reaches the sea, and most of the nutrient-rich sediment is trapped in the delta by a dense canal and irrigation system.
And in North Africa too.
According to the [Financialtimes], For centuries, the banks of the Nile have been home to farms producing rice as well as cotton and wheat. But now water shortages, soil degradation, and pollution have created a crisis that has undermined agriculture in the delta, which is struggling to support millions of impoverished farmers.
Egypt forced to reduce rice cultivation
According to [Researchgate], Water scarcity has direct implications for food security in arid regions. Egypt faces an escalating situation of water scarcity, as its renewable freshwater resources are fixed and the population is growing rapidly. The per capita supply of freshwater is already dangerously low and predicted to plummet even further by the year 2025.
Millions do not have access to clean drinking water
Under British colonial rule, a 1929 treaty reserved 80 percent of the Nile’s entire flow for Egypt and Sudan, then ruled as a single country. That treaty was reaffirmed in 1959. Usually upstream countries dominate control of a river, like the Tigris and Euphrates, which are much reduced by the time they flow into Iraq from Turkey and Syria. The case of the Nile is reversed because the British colonials who controlled the region wanted to guarantee water for Egyptian agriculture. The seven upstream countries — Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda — say the treaty is an unfair vestige of colonialism, while Egypt says those countries are awash in water resources, unlike arid Egypt, which depends on just one.[Thenewyorktimes]
Across the African continent, the crisis is severe.
In a July 2017 article, titled How Egypt Is Slowly Losing Its Hold Over the Nile River [worldpoliticsreiew] said; Currently, more than 430 million people live across the 11 countries that make up the Nile Basin: Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Eritrea. The population of the Nile Basin is likely to jump to nearly 1 billion by 2050. The upstream countries “can’t wait forever for Egypt to get onboard,” says Aaron Wolf, a professor of geosciences at Oregon State University.
Brazil sleepwalking into a water crisis
As the Amazon burns, wildfires become a staple across California, massive storms wipe out entire population, killing thousands and the polar ice caps continue to melt at a record pace, it has become clear that the climate crisis is not some abstract issue of the future it is here. Clean drinking water will become more and more valuable even as it becomes more scarce. Each and every one of the 7.7 billion of us have a responsibility to be more coignizant of this crisis and do our part in conserving this precious commodity.
Mike Beckles is a former Jamaican police Detective corporal, a business owner, avid 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.
The Jamaican Government has bone-headedly refused to see that the (criminal-centered, rather than a victim-centered) crime strategy it has pursued contributes to its runaway murder rate. Both Political parties have pursued policies that have aided criminals. Yet, they continue to deceive the Jamaican people with band-aid strategies aimed only at their own self-interest rather than the nation’s interest. Jamaica’s violent crime rate will not be remedied with states of emergencies, Zones of special operations, or any other band-aid fixes. Since the nation declared a moratorium on capital punishment, the posture must be imprisonment for extremely long stretches for violent offenders and offenders caught with an illegal weapon. The laws employed in Jamaica are aiding criminality. The murderers are winning, while the Government blows smoke up the nation’s ass.
Jamaica has been no stranger to shockingly light sentences handed down by judges who have no respect for victims’ rights. In most cases, the sentence handed down is an insult to the victims, as the offender seems to enjoy greater respect from the judiciary than the crime victims and their families. Over the last three decades, as the country declared a moratorium on capital punishment to please its colonial masters, crime has taken a decidedly northward trajectory. Despite unequivocal evidence that removing capital punishment from the table has emboldened the Island’s criminals, unelected liberal judges continue to thwart the will of the people and allow dangerous criminals to walk with mere slaps on the wrist. The Island-Nation has always had a romantic idealism when it comes to the perception of the supposedly independent judiciary. Hardly any Jamaican will believe you if you tell them that there are corrupt judges. Understandably, it shocks their sensibilities and disrupts the last vestiges of honesty and safety they have created for themselves in their own heads about people with power. This naïveté suits the trial lawyers, clients, and the media practitioners who heap praises on the judges for returning the murderers to the streets as soon as the police arrest them. In the meantime, gun crimes continue to increase even as the bodies of the security forces continue to be used in long stretches, as they are asked to maintain States of Emergencies and Zones of Special Operations in myriad places across the Island. In announcing his latest State Of Emergency, Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the country, there are enough police and soldiers to maintain the latest declarations. Speaking to a couple of soldiers, they told me differently. One member told me that he and his colleagues were forced to sleep in their vehicle after doing their shifts, as there was nowhere else. No preparation was made for their accommodation.
WONDERINGWHYTHEREARESOMANYGUNCRIMES?
A 19-year-old carpenter was sentenced to three years probation on each count for illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. I wonder what he used the gun and ammunition for?
A 19-old was sentenced to a fine of $400,000 or two years in prison for illegal possession of a firearm and three years probation for illegal possession of ammunition.
A 43-year-old was convicted of robbery with aggravation. He was sentenced to 18 months at hard labor, each for illegal firearm possession and robbery with aggravation.
In the meantime, New Zealand’s government plans to create a registry of all guns in the country and stiffen penalties on illegal gun sales and modifications. The move comes six months after a gunman killed 51 people at mosques in Christchurch. “Owning a firearm is a privilege, not a right,” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday, adding, “That means we need to do all we can to ensure that only honest, law-abiding citizens can obtain firearms licenses and use firearms.”
New Zealand’s homicide rate in 2014 was (1) per 100,000, as opposed to Jamaica’s (47) to every 100,000 people. Between 2007 – 2016 there were 686 people killed by homicide (i.e., murder and manslaughter offenses) In New Zealand. That is 686 people killed in a country of roughly five million people over a (9) nine-year period. Conversely, a country of 2.7 million people, Jamaica records roughly 1600 homicides in a single year. See information on World’s homicide rates here. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5 Jamaica is in the company of El Salvador at 83 and Honduras at 57 per 100,000, respectively.
Why Jamaica’s political leadership has refused to deal decisively with the issue of crime and violence remains somewhat of a mystery to many, to the majority of us who served in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, not so much. The political leadership had scant regard or respect for the police department, and for good reason. The majority of the senior members of the force were not leaders in the true sense of the word. They were political lackeys, promoted not on merit but the basis of their subservience. Data and policy positions come from the (UWI), the University of the West Indies, the nation’s preeminent institution of higher learning. A cesspool where leftist anti-police dogma is in no short supply. Policies are arrived at from the pontificating self-aggrandizing idiots who give textbook ideas that are not tested in practical situations and are generally unsuited for Jamaica’s unique situation. It would make sense that since they do not respect the police enough to hear from them, they would ask an independent police official from a first-world country to come in and assist them with policing policies. Unfortunately for the Nation’s law-abiding citizens, they don’t default to their friends and cohorts from the UWI.
The higher echelons of the Constabulary, the Judiciary, the legal fraternity, the media, and every other stratum of civil society are now packed with leaders from the UWI. Yes, that same leftist cauldron of failed socialist ideology. So there is no diversity of thought. PNP and JLP have differing ideas on how to fleece the nation’s treasury and retain power. Nevertheless, when it comes to formulating public policy, they are all products of the very same dirty pool. Once upon a time, I would write about their refusal to consider the police’s perspective when bills are being debated. Not that expert input is considered when virgin legislation is being debated in this country. There is no need to consider the police when they debate new legislation today. The police hierarchy is no more decoupled from the leftist ideology today than it was two or three decades ago. The police force is now a top-heavy parking lot for PhDs. and other academic types, all from the same dirty pool.
In 2018 the Jamaican Judiciary created its own mouthpiece, the Court Management Service (CMS), after senior investigators of the JCF drafted a document which revealed that judges in St James, Westmoreland, Hanover, and Trelawny are opting more for fines, suspended sentences, and probation orders for persons convicted for illegal possession of firearm and ammunition. Of course, the sanctimonious hypocrites believe they are above being criticized, and God forbid that the criticism should come from the lowly police. So they issued their own statement, quite unusual because they previously did not bother to respond to criticisms; they are above it all. “The judiciary has no objection to “appropriate scrutiny,” but it should be done in a fair, balanced manner, and based on full and accurate information.” The Judges said. If you have to address being scrutinized, you clearly abhor being scrutinized; after all, you are members of the [independent Judiciary right].
But they weren’t done.
“The judiciary welcomes and understands the public interest in the dispensation of criminal justice, especially at a time when there is heightened sensitivity to the high levels of some crimes in our country,” “However, inaccurate, incomplete, and unverified information that unfairly generates negative perceptions of sentencing practices brings the judiciary and our system of justice into disrepute and creates a significant threat to the rule of law and the fabric of our democracy.“ What poppycock bullshit!! The sanctimonious hypocrisy of these criminal-loving charlatans is endangering the country, not criticisms of their dirty deeds.
The sheer arrogance of this statement smacks the elitism of the first order. The transparent annoyance in this [form] response from the Judiciary was an affront to the intellect of discerning Jamaicans who must know that whether they like it or not, some Judges do accept bribes. That some of the sentences being meted out reflect that reality. Regardless of the smoke, they blow up the nation’s collective ass; the issue is not just the wide disparity in the sentences; the sentences are wholly inappropriate. If judges do not like sentencing criminals to prison, they are free to get off the taxpayer’s dole and become defense lawyers. However, while they remain on the dole, they have a duty and a responsibility to follow the laws; they do no work for themselves; they are servants of the Jamaican people. As for their supposed independence, that went out the door when Justice Bryan Sykes was appointed to act as Chief Justice. So much for Judicial independence, all of a sudden, the thin veneer of above-it-all was peeled away, revealing the truth of their little social club.
The crime statistics are not wholly the result of light sentences, police corruption, political interference-incompetence, or the population’s across-the-board predisposition to be soft on criminals; it is a confluence of all of the above, and then some. In the same breath, there is no greater group of cheer-leaders for the light sentences being handed down to murderers and criminals arrested with illegal weapons and ammunition than the criminal lawyers on the Island. As officers of the court, the Jamaican bar has become a disgusting lobby for criminals, in a misguided misunderstanding of their roles as defenders of the innocent and upholders of the laws. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will continue to say the obvious. As Nations across the globe seek to tighten loopholes to prevent criminals from undermining their societies, the Island nation of Jamaica continues to placate criminals by giving voice to criminal rights lobbies, criminal defense lawyers and taking into account the feelings of criminals ignoring the rights of crime victims. It is a shocking abdication of duty, yet it serves the narrow political interests of both parties and the special interest groups that have made the Island’s murder rate their feeding tree.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.
American police routinely falsify and plant evidence, lie under oath, and criminalizes young Black men as a matter of course. But worse, young African-American males are are at much greater risk of being killed by police than young men of any other ethnic group. Black men over and over, wind up in the for-profit Prison Industrial complex, which works like a hamster wheel from which many never manage to extricate themselves. The entrenched strategy works to keep the for-profit prison cells filled with black bodies and creates, the dysfunction in the black family that enhances the concept of white supremacy. As a consequence, young African-American men develop expansive criminal records, ironically, many have never committed any real crimes in their lifetime. Regardless, the expansive criminal records they accrue, is used to justify murdering them, by.… you guessed it, the very same police. The travesty is not just that police do what they do, but that prosecutors and the courts do nothing to stop these nefarious practices.
How, you ask, is it possible that one can end up with an expansive criminal record without committing a single crime? If that is your question, you are not alone, I too was incredulous that many people with criminal records have never committed a crime in their entire lives. It took me many years of seeing American police abuse,[see; https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-central-park-five/ ] that it became clear to me, that there has always been a systematic strategy to criminalize young black men and women where possible, incarcerate them and eventual use the criminal records they gave them to justify their eradication from society. If you are not offended by that you are a part of the problem.
None of the foregone changes the fact that many young Black men do commit crimes they ought not to have committed, and for those, there is no defender in this writer or from this medium. The strategy did not necessarily target African-America women per se. they who design the strategies understood that when men are removed from the home the children are generally expected to follow the fathers into the for-pay prison industrial complex.
However, not all of the women have caved to the public assistance, of [section-eight] which takes care of the majority of the rent and the [food stamps] which provides the most basic dietary sustenance. Those, of course, comes with the obligatory, “you can have no men here or you lose these benefits”.[sic] And so the cycle continues.
What they never bargained for, were those African-American women who would beat the odds and educate themselves. These women have become a force to be reckoned with. And now as we have seen with Sandra Bland and others, including women in the “Black lives matter movement”, Black women are not shielded from police violence either. This is not a new concept, it was the strategy which came into existence after the Emancipation Declaration. Criminalizing the newly freed Blacks became the top priority for states, and they went about it with fervor.
Today the strategy is the very same. A young black man walking down the street is approached by a cop who grabs and orders him around. He protests and is thrown to the ground and accused of resisting arrest, a (felony), committing battery on a police officer, a (felony), and just to make it stick, Jay-walking as the [concocted] reason for stopping the young man in the first place. [It has to be all justified right]? The judges will see through the lies. I hear you thinking? Wrong! The judges, prosecutors, police, and everyone else are all parts of well-oiled machinery of [injustice]. Even if that young man is not convicted on a felony on his first offense, he is now in the criminal justice system. And so he is given probation for two years and the stipulation is that he must report to a probation officer for the duration of the two years. He must also[not] come in contact with law-enforcement while he is on probation. He must also not associate with any felons either. The only problem is that they had already made felons of literally everyone he knows in his small world of a few city blocks. And so he tries his best not to come in contact with law enforcement. Understandably, he is now angry, because he did nothing wrong, to find himself in this restrictive and humiliating position. His only crime has been, to be born in his black skin. But what the stipulations in his probation does not do, is prevent law-enforcement from coming in contact with him, and reporting the contact to his probation officer. Or worse, some other cop arrests him for looking at him the wrong way. Either way, he is now taken into custody by parole and serving the two-years sentence he was given and placed on probation.
And now you start to see how this all comes into being, but they are not done with him yet. So he does his time, and yes he is angry as hell, he just did two years because some cop decided he wanted to show him who was boss. Nevertheless, he heads home and tries to find a job. Place after place he goes but door after door is closed in his face. He finds out that no one will hire someone who have been arrested, much less someone just released from prison. Dejected, he stands on the corner which just happens to be a designated high crimes drug area, never mind that his entire community which is grossly under-served is one massive ghetto, and for all intents and purposes could in totality be designated a drug-infested area. And so he is arrested for being in a high crime area (police designation), in the process of being arrested [again] he lashes out at the cops who have turned his life into a living hell. Sixteen bullets later his body lays on the street corner, his lifeblood draining from his body becomes part of the dust and grime on the street on which just minutes earlier he stood, full of life and hope, trying to understand how to survive in this hostile place. His arrest and prison time justifies his murder. The cops receive paid vacation, and life goes on as if he never existed.
It is for this reason that I find the United Nation’s Commission on Human Rights and other groups to be hypocritical in the way they report on Human Rights Abuses in the developing world, while simultaneously ignoring the pressing and blatant daily murder of people of color by America’s militarized police. I understand that the task of following up on these cases may be monumental and may even be outside the capabilities of the UN. After all, the Federal Bureau of Investigations itself does not have any idea how many people America’s thousands of police departments kill each year. The fact is that they are not required to even report to Federal Authorities, how many people they slaughter each year. Why do you think this is so? The answer is in the skin color and social status of those who are murdered, even when they are unarmed and poses no threat to police. Consistently, Prosecutors, their fraudulent grand juries regular juries and the Judges have failed to indict and convict these murderous monsters, and so they continue to kill with impunity.
According to VOX.com; Police officers in the US shoot and kill hundreds of people each year, according to the FBI’s very limited data — far more than other developed countries like the UK, Japan, and Germany, where police officers might go an entire year without killing more than a dozen people or even anyone at all. The Los Angeles Times reports that about 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police, according to a new analysis of deaths involving law enforcement officers. That makes them 2.5 times more likely than white men and boys to die during an encounter with cops. The analysis also showed that Latino men and boys, black women and girls and Native American men, women, and children are also killed by police at higher rates than their white peers. But the vulnerability of black males was particularly striking.
At least two news organizations built databases to try to account for as many fatal police shootings as possible. The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its efforts, and two of its central findings were that people with mental illnesses made up large numbers of those killed by police, and that very few officers were ever prosecuted for even the most questionable of fatal encounters. As a Pro-Publica article puts it; “It’s the Blue Lives Matter More theory of policing.” “When in doubt, shoot. If you can shoot, you should shoot. If you have the choice of waiting that one second to see if you could protect the citizen’s life and put your own life at risk, you must take the citizen’s life.”
In case after case rather than show respect to the family of people they have murdered in cold blood police departments, and indeed the other police departments which are assigned to investigate these killings, spend their time trying to dig up dirt with which to smear the decedent rather than trying to figure out what exactly happened. In one case which garnered national attention in the state of West Virginia, a suicidal man who was killed by police in a town called Weirton. His car towed from in front of his home, after police killed him. The officer who initially responded to the domestic call recognized that the young man was in crisis and did not shoot him even though he recognized that he had a gun. The gun was pointed toward the ground. Other responding officers immediately shot and killed the man. The initial officer who sought to de-escalate the situation by talking down the young man was fired for not killing him. State police investigators compiled records of every brush the dead man might have had with the law: a DUI that was dismissed; a purported role as a getaway driver during an alleged assault in Ohio. The official state police report included a claim by authorities in Ohio that had they encountered the man when he was alive, they would have arrested him. So much for the so-called integrity of investigations done by other police agencies. Police investigating police should give no comfort to aggrieved families.
The prevailing culture is that officers are [oriented] to shoot in concert with each other, in order to back up and justify each other’s legitimacy to shoot in the first place. On February 4th, 1999 NYPD cops fired 41 bullets at 22-year-old Amadou Diallo, 19 of those bullets struck mister Diallo killing him. Out of that deranged and despicable behavior by NYPD cops, the department’s [copsplained] why 41 bullets were fired at a single individual. The term contagious firing was born. It became clear to the world then, that American police were not in the business of shooting to save their own lives or the lives of others, they were shooting to ensure that the victim of their violence never gets to tell his side of the story. For years I have advanced the arguments as a former police officer from a very violent culture, and having being shot in the line of duty, that police officers should be taught to shoot only because they have to, not because they can. Compassion is not cowardice.” Police officers must not employ lethal force simply because then can get away with killing. That whole concept of shooting to kill, under the guise of officer safety, defeats the very concept of good policing.
Mike Beckles is a former Jamaican police Detective corporal, a business owner, avid 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.
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