ST JAMES, Jamaica — Head of the St James Division Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Steve McGregor today dis­closed that no per­mis­sion was giv­en for a motor­cade to go through the Flanker com­mu­ni­ty in St James, yes­ter­day. “In fact, there were explic­it warn­ings against it,” SSP McGregor said.
In a state­ment issued by the Corporate Communications Unit on Wednesday, SSP McGregor explained that the warn­ing was nec­es­sary because of height­ened ten­sions in Flanker as a result of the shoot­ing death of two men from the com­mu­ni­ty and the injury of three oth­er peo­ple at a Jamaica Labour Party mass ral­ly in Sam Sharpe Square on Sunday. However, this warn­ing was not heed­ed and one man was yes­ter­day killed and three oth­er peo­ple were injured in Flanker. They were part of a motor­cade on Kodak Street in Flanker. The motor­cade report­ed­ly involved Jamaica Labour Party supporters.
The deceased has not yet been iden­ti­fied but police say some 12 motor vehi­cles were dam­aged in the incident.

SSP McGregor advised that police intel­li­gence assets are on the ground con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and that this infor­ma­tion informs deci­sions about the grant­i­ng of per­mis­sion for march­es and motor­cades. “We are appeal­ing to orga­niz­ers and par­ty offi­cials to heed all instruc­tions and warn­ings giv­en in the future,” SSP McGregor said. In the mean­time, the St James police are again appeal­ing for good sense to pre­vail dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign season.
Read more here: No per­mis­sion giv­en for JLP motor­cade through Flanker — Police

ALTHOUGH all the cat­e­gories of seri­ous and vio­lent crimes have been on a decline local­ly, Jamaica still records some of the high­est crime stats worldwide.

Minister of National Security Peter Bunting made the rev­e­la­tion while speak­ing recent­ly at the launch of the Next GENDERation toolk­it — an ini­tia­tive led by the World Bank to sup­port efforts to stem Jamaica’s epi­dem­ic of vio­lent crimes. Bunting said that despite efforts to curb these num­bers, the Caribbean and Central America con­tin­ue to top the charts in vio­lent crimes, adding that the prob­lem isn’t only one of law enforce­ment. “Violent crime is large­ly a youth-based phe­nom­e­non in terms of the per­pe­tra­tors and in terms of the vic­tims. If I were to look at one of the pri­ma­ry indi­ca­tors of gen­der-based vio­lence, which is rape, and I were to go back five years, we have seen rapes in year to date January at about a third of what they were five years ago,” Bunting said.

“But, [though] all the cat­e­gories of seri­ous and vio­lent crimes have been on a decline — a long-term trend — the chal­lenge is we start­ed from such a high lev­el that even when we have cut it in half, it still leaves us with the high­est cat­e­gories world­wide. “Our region unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Caribbean and Central America, is the region with the high­est lev­el of vio­lent crimes in the world. It is real­ly a devel­op­ment imper­a­tive not just for Jamaica, but for the entire region.” The nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter said one con­tribut­ing fac­tor that needs to be addressed in the “most urgent and pro­found way” is the impact of ‘father­less­ness’ on our chil­dren. Bunting, who was quot­ing sta­tis­tics he said he received from Dr Michael Coombs, founder of the National Association of the Family, said that based on research done in the United States, United Kingdom and the Caribbean, father­less chil­dren may be the rea­son for the crime epidemic.

“It indi­cates that father­less boys, for exam­ple, that’s 50 per cent of our boys in Jamaica, are 11 times more like­ly to dis­play vio­lent behav­iour, nine times more like­ly to run away from home and become vic­tims or per­pe­tra­tors of crime, twice as like­ly to drop out of school, nine times more like­ly to become gang mem­bers, and six times more like­ly to end up in prison,” he said. Added Bunting: “Fatherless girls are more than twice as like­ly to expe­ri­ence teenage preg­nan­cies and nine times more like­ly to be vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse.” Subsequently, he said mak­ing this one adjust­ment and get­ting fathers involved in the lives of their chil­dren could sig­nif­i­cant­ly cre­ate a shift in the exist­ing social par­a­digm, lead­ing to a phe­nom­e­nal change. Additionally, Bunting said he has recog­nised the influ­ence that gen­der dynam­ics has on vio­lence, and his min­istry has engaged a gen­der spe­cial­ist in phase three of their Citizens Security and Justice Programme to ensure gen­der sen­si­tiv­i­ty and equi­ty in all its inter­ven­tion activities.

“We want to ensure that we have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how the risk of vio­lence affects young men and young women dif­fer­ent­ly and to imple­ment that in our var­i­ous out­reach pro­grammes,” he said. Bunting main­tained that he, along with the Ministry of National Security, is com­mit­ed to work­ing with its part­ners — the world bank, oth­er inter­na­tion­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al part­ners, pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il soci­ety — to change the neg­a­tive social norms that have so deeply scarred many of our young men and young women. Jamaica’s crime stats among high­est world­wide, despite reduction

POLICE yes­ter­day con­firmed that two men were fatal­ly shot, while two of its mem­bers — a cor­po­ral and a con­sta­ble — were shot and injured and two firearms seized dur­ing a gun­fight in the Ferry dis­trict, St Catherine, on Thursday night. The men were not iden­ti­fied up to late yes­ter­day after­noon. The injured police­men were tak­en to hos­pi­tal where they were admit­ted in sta­ble con­di­tion. According to the police, a 9mm Browning pis­tol and a 9mm Sig Sauer firearm along with sev­er­al rounds of ammu­ni­tion were seized fol­low­ing the shooting.

The Police Corporate Communications Unit has revealed that there is now a strong police pres­ence in the the Meggie Top com­mu­ni­ty of Salt Spring, St James.

This after the grue­some mur­der of three peo­ple. Four per­sons were shot, how­ev­er one sur­vived. Police report­ed­ly con­firmed Tuesday that the four were shot at approx­i­mate­ly 11:30 pm. The injured indi­vid­ual is said to be in seri­ous condition.

Two Children and Mother Die From Suspected Carbon Monoxide Poisoning.

Two chil­dren and their moth­er are sus­pect­ed to have died as a result of car­bon monox­ide poi­son­ing in Three Hills, St Mary on Thursday, February 4.

According to Loop News, they have been iden­ti­fied as 37-year-old Charla Thompson-Young and her two chil­dren- 12-year-old Brandon Young and 4‑year-old Leslie Ann Young, all of Three Hills in St Mary. Reports from the Retreat Police are that about 7:30 am, Mrs Young’s sis­ter went to the house where she dis­cov­ered the bod­ies. The Police was called in and the bod­ies were seen in the house. Preliminary inves­ti­ga­tions by the Police revealed that a gas gen­er­a­tor, which was housed in the liv­ing room, was report­ed­ly left turned on overnight with the house locked-up.
Gruesome Triple Murder in St James

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum ® sus­pend­ed his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign on Wednesday. “We are sus­pend­ing this cam­paign as of this moment,” he said on Fox News. He also announced that he is endors­ing Sen. Marco Rubio (R‑Fla.).

The news, first report­ed by CNN and the Washington Post ear­li­er on Wednesday, comes after Santorum fin­ished with just one per­cent of the vote in the 2016 Iowa GOP cau­cus. The loss had already prompt­ed his cam­paign to post­pone a planned 46-coun­ty tour in South Carolina. Santorum had hoped to earn the back­ing of evan­gel­i­cal Christian vot­ers and peel away sup­port­ers from some of his con­ser­v­a­tive rivals, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑Texas). He announced his pres­i­den­tial run on May 27 in a Pennsylvania fac­to­ry, join­ing an already-crowd­ed field of GOP con­tenders. His high­ly con­ser­v­a­tive plat­form, fueled by his own blue-col­lar roots, rest­ed upon rein­ing in spend­ing and fight­ing on behalf of the American worker.

“It’s time to revi­tal­ize man­u­fac­tur­ing, pro­cess­ing, con­struc­tion and ener­gy sec­tors of our econ­o­my again so America can once again thrive,” his cam­paign web­site said. On some issues, he veered away from many in his par­ty, propos­ing to raise the min­i­mum wage by 50 cents per year over three years dur­ing a CNN Republican debate. Santorum is also known for his hawk­ish for­eign pol­i­cy. He has staunch­ly opposed the nuclear deal struck between world pow­ers and Iran, call­ing it “the great­est betray­al of American nation­al secu­ri­ty” in U.S. his­to­ry. He also advo­cat­ed for 10,000 U.S. troops to defeat the Islamic State, a ter­ror­ist group also referred to as ISIS or ISIL.
His run has been marred by con­tro­ver­sial com­ments on abor­tion, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and immi­gra­tion. In August, he said that undoc­u­ment­ed par­ents are “like some­one who robs a bank because they want to feed their family.”

Santorum ran in the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on a sim­i­lar plat­form, but with a greater degree of suc­cess. He won 11 pri­maries and cam­paigned in all 99 of Iowa’s coun­ties on a tight bud­get, lead­ing him to a very nar­row vic­to­ry in the 2012 Iowa cau­cus. (He fin­ished 11^th out of 12 can­di­dates in this year’s Iowa cau­cus.) Some of his com­ments, how­ev­er, land­ed him in hot water through­out the cam­paign. He famous­ly told Fox News’ Chris Wallace in 2011 that gay sol­diers “cause prob­lems for peo­ple liv­ing in close quarters.”

Santorum did­n’t drop out of that pri­ma­ry race until April of 2012, after a series of defeats and the hos­pi­tal­iza­tion of his daugh­ter, Bella, who suf­fers from a rare genet­ic dis­or­der. At that point, he osten­si­bly hand­ed the 2012 GOP nom­i­na­tion over to Mitt Romney. Santorum served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 1995 and in the Senate from 1995 to 2007. In 1996, he co-authored a GOP wel­fare reform bill, which President Bill Clinton ulti­mate­ly signed into law. Rick Santorum Suspends Presidential Campaign, Endorses Marco Rubio

The National Democratic Movement (NDM) laments the call­ing of a gen­er­al elec­tion 11 months before it is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due, with­out there being a nation­al dis­as­ter or cri­sis. This is the clear­est indi­ca­tion yet, that Portia Simpson Miller’s People’s National Party Administration, after four years in office, can­not face the peo­ple after the next bud­get is pre­sent­ed. Hence, the gov­ern­ing par­ty is attempt­ing to trick the peo­ple into giv­ing them anoth­er term in office, with­out telling us the truth of the hard­ships which will be unleashed upon the backs of the poor and mid­dle classes.

The NDM is of the view that the last four years of fol­low­ing International Monetary Fund (IMF) orders slav­ish­ly, like a head­man on a slave estate, admin­is­ter­ing lash­es on a poor defence­less peo­ple, devalu­ing our dol­lar to a pre­cip­i­tous­ly low lev­el; demand­ing more pro­duc­tion while mak­ing food, health care and social ser­vices become less acces­si­ble to the peo­ple of Jamaica, has not solved Jamaica’s prob­lems. The NDM again calls on the peo­ple of Jamaica to demand that the fol­low­ing issues be placed on the table in the upcom­ing gen­er­al election:
[1] When will tax & pen­sion reforms be imple­ment­ed, and how many pub­lic sec­tor work­ers will be laid off after the gen­er­al election?

[2] Fixed date for elec­tions and sep­a­rate bal­lots for prime min­is­ter and mem­bers of parliament.

[3] Members of par­lia­ment must serve the peo­ple who elect them and make good laws rather than appoint­ments to Cabinet.

[4] Abolish per­son­al income tax (PAYE) and have one equi­table General Consumption Tax system.

[5] Focus on the young by facil­i­tat­ing per­ma­nent jobs for the main cat­e­gories of high school and uni­ver­si­ty graduates.

[6] Fix nation­al secu­ri­ty and jus­tice with ade­quate resources and train­ing for the police, the judi­cia­ry and imple­ment­ing a nation­al ID system.

[7] Fix the health sec­tor by sim­ply upgrad­ing the hos­pi­tals and mak­ing avail­able prop­er health ser­vices by intro­duc­ing an Ability-to-Pay Basis System.

[8] Fix the edu­ca­tion sys­tem by refo­cus­ing on ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion by bring­ing it with­in the for­mal edu­ca­tion system.

[9] Dismantle the gar­ri­son struc­ture in con­stituen­cies (which rep­re­sent approx­i­mate­ly twen­ty-five per cent of voters).

[10] Create the struc­ture and envi­ron­ment for a ful­ly trans­par­ent gov­ern­ment and cre­at­ing the foun­da­tion for a real sov­er­eign people.

The NDM believes that the peo­ple of Jamaica must demand real sys­temic change.

The NDM also believes that both the Jamaica Labour Party and the People’s National Party have dug Jamaica into the eco­nom­ic hole in which we have found our­selves and are con­tin­u­ing the same old and unpro­duc­tive poli­cies direct­ed by the IMF and others.

We have, for the past 72 years, been swap­ping one set of failed par­ty poli­cies for anoth­er, and is of the view that it is main­ly some in Jamaica’s pri­vate sec­tor and oth­er spe­cial inter­ests who fund the old sta­tus quo pol­i­tics that get most of the ben­e­fits from the present sys­tem of poor governance.
PNP can’t face J’cans

The Chicago offi­cer who killed Laquan McDonald nev­er synced his micro­phone to his dash­cam and even inten­tion­al­ly dam­aged the cam­era, accord­ing to police main­te­nance logs. What’s worse: He’s not the only offi­cer to do so. Over 1800 logs first obtained by DNAinfo Chicago show that offi­cers reg­u­lar­ly dam­age their cam­eras or find ways to keep the sound from sync­ing. Their meth­ods include hid­ing micro­phones in glove box­es, pulling out the bat­ter­ies, dam­ag­ing anten­nae, and so on. The logs showed that Jason Van Dyke, the offi­cer involved in the Laquan McDonald shoot­ing, caused “inten­tion­al dam­age” to his dash­cam at least once, though the logs indi­cate that the dash­cam was bro­ken mul­ti­ple times. On the day of the shoot­ing, the audio for the video was not picked up by his car or the one next to his.

One month after the shoot­ing, a Nov. 21 review of 10 videos down­loaded from Van Dyke’s squad car deter­mined it was “appar­ent … that per­son­nel have failed to sync the MICs [sic],” accord­ing police records. Of the five police vehi­cles that were present the night of the shoot­ing, only two had dash­cams that actu­al­ly record­ed video, and one of those was report­ed­ly bro­ken. Records show that, five days before the shoot­ing, a request was put in to repair the dash­cam, though “no prob­lem” was found with the equip­ment when it was exam­ined October 31. One week lat­er, the sys­tem was report­ed­ly bro­ken again, with a “hard­ware issue” remain­ing unad­dressed for four months. Three addi­tion­al dash­cams were unable to cap­ture footage the night of the shoot­ing, due to sys­tem mal­func­tions that inclue: “Power issue,” “disc error” and “appli­ca­tion error.”

It was not until McDonald was shot and killed by Officer Jason Van Dyke that Chicago PD rec­og­nized the wide­spread issue of offi­cers inten­tion­al­ly tam­per­ing with dash­cams and dash­cam micro­phones. Following the release of the one dash­cam video of the shoot­ing, Van Dyke has been charged with first degree mur­der.
Report: Officer Van Dyke inten­tion­al­ly broke dash­cam before Laquan McDonald shooting

SAVANNA-LA-MAR,Westmoreland — The Westmoreland police have vowed to make an exam­ple of a coun­cil­lor, who will be charged soon, to show that no one is above the law “irre­spec­tive of creed, class or social status”.
|The councillor’s] behav­iour and intim­i­da­tion can­not stop the police from act­ing and this is a strong warn­ing that if any polit­i­cal per­son­nel or any­body believe that they can intim­i­date the police from car­ry­ing out their law­ful duty, they have anoth­er guess com­ing because we will arrest,” David White, the deputy super­in­ten­dent who heads the Westmoreland Police Division, told the Jamaica Observer West.

The lead­ers of the occu­pa­tion of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, includ­ing Ammon Bundy, have been arrest­ed after a shootout with law enforce­ment offi­cials about 15 miles north of Burns on Tuesday night.

One of the mili­tia mem­bers was shot and killed dur­ing the con­fronta­tion, and though the iden­ti­ty of the deceased has not yet been released, many reports on the ground indi­cate that the deceased is LaVoy Finicum, who spoke at length about how he would rather die than be tak­en into cus­tody. State Rep. Michele Fiore (R‑Nevada), who speaks direct­ly to the Bundy fam­i­ly, has con­firmed Finicum was the casu­al­ty in the shootout.

Also among those arrest­ed were Ryan W. Payne, Brian Cavalier, and Shawna J. Cox. They have all been charged with felony counts of imped­ing offi­cers of the US from dis­charg­ing their offi­cial duties through the use of force, intim­i­da­tion or threats. Ryan Bundy of Bunkerville, Nevada, suf­fered a minor gun­shot wound but is in sta­ble con­di­tion and is expect­ed to be charged with the others.

The FBI, Oregon State troop­ers, and oth­er law enforce­ment agen­cies were all involved in the gun­fight and sub­se­quent arrest, but it is unclear who shot first.

The inci­dent appar­ent­ly began with a traf­fic stop that occurred while Bundy and his sup­port­ers made a trip to a meet­ing in the neigh­bor­ing town of John Day. Highway 395 has been tem­porar­i­ly closed between Burns and John Day.

Harney District Hospital, where some of the mil­i­tants involved in the gun­fight have been treat­ed, is also on lockdown.

In a sep­a­rate inci­dent the same night, Oregon Police arrest­ed Joseph Donald O’Shaughnessy, a sup­port­er of the Bundy occupation.

Ammon Bundy, along with dozens of oth­er armed right-wing extrem­ists, occu­pied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan 2 to protest the government’s treat­ment of Steven and Dwight Hammond, local ranch­ers who were con­vict­ed of com­mit­ting arson on fed­er­al land adja­cent to their prop­er­ty. The Hammonds declined Bundy’s sup­port, and the armed mili­tia group has been crit­i­cized and derid­ed by the vast major­i­ty of locals in the area. They have also found them­selves sub­ject tocon­fronta­tions with rival groups, inte­ri­or con­flicts and fist­fights, and pranks from detrac­tors as they have con­tin­ued their occupation.

The women were teenagers and grand­moth­ers. Most were liv­ing on the mar­gins. All of them were black. And dur­ing a month-long tri­al that became a sym­bol of police pre­da­tion, they formed a bleak parade of 13 wit­ness­es who accused a for­mer Oklahoma City offi­cer of using his badge to coerce sex acts and rape.

On Thursday, after 45 hours of delib­er­a­tion, a jury con­vict­ed Daniel Holtzclaw, 29, on five counts of rape and 13 oth­er counts of sex­u­al assault, includ­ing six of sex­u­al bat­tery, against eight of the women.

The con­vic­tions includ­ed four for first-degree rape, which car­ries a pos­si­ble sen­tence of life in prison. He will appear in court on 21 January for sentencing.

Holtzclaw was cleared of a fur­ther 18 of the 36 charges he faced, includ­ing rape, sex­u­al bat­tery, bur­glary, inde­cent expo­sure and stalking.

His con­vic­tion is like­ly to be viewed as a key moment of account­abil­i­ty for law enforce­ment offi­cers who abuse their posi­tion: out of the hun­dreds of police offi­cers ter­mi­nat­ed for sex­u­al abuse in recent years, only a small num­ber faced crim­i­nal charges and even few­er were con­vict­ed. And black women are espe­cial­ly liable to be their targets.

Still, the case did not attract the lev­el of atten­tion that activists and media out­lets have paid to oth­er accu­sa­tions of rape or police abuse. Some racial jus­tice activists were frus­trat­ed that the tri­al did not gen­er­ate the same cov­er­age as police-involved shoot­ings that have killed black men. At the start of the tri­al, in ear­ly November, local activists were sur­prised to find the court­room emp­ty of the women’s groups that have sup­port­ed accusers in oth­er rape tri­als. And major net­works car­ried lit­tle to no cov­er­age of the tri­al or its outcome.

Many attrib­uted the low vis­i­bil­i­ty of the case to the pro­file of the vic­tims: vul­ner­a­ble women of col­or with trou­bled his­to­ries. Holtzclaw, police inves­ti­ga­tors found, method­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed black women with crim­i­nal records or a his­to­ry of drug use or sex work. For all but one of his tar­gets, police inves­ti­ga­tors said, the for­mer offi­cer used his posi­tion on the force to run back­ground checks for out­stand­ing war­rants or oth­er means by which to coerce sex.

An advo­cate who watched the tri­al unfold said the alle­ga­tions fit a famil­iar pat­tern. “Officers count on no one believ­ing the vic­tim if she reports,” said Diane Wetendorf, who runs a coun­sel­ing group in Chicago for women who are vic­tims of police abuse. “And [they] know that the word of a woman of col­or is like­ly to be worth even less than the word of a white woman to those who mat­ter in the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.”

Indeed, Holtzclaw’s choice of vic­tims laid the ground­work for an aggres­sive defense. His attor­ney, Scott Adams, aggres­sive­ly ques­tioned his accusers about their mar­i­jua­na use, drink­ing, thefts and sus­pend­ed driver’s licens­es in an attempt to under­mine their credibility.

In court and in pre­tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny, how­ev­er, the 13 accusers told broad­ly con­sis­tent sto­ries about how Holtzclaw iso­lat­ed them, assault­ed them, and ter­ror­ized them into silence.

One woman accused Holtzclaw of dri­ving her to a field, rap­ing her in the back of his squad car, and leav­ing her there. “There was noth­ing that I could do,” she tes­ti­fied. “He was a police offi­cer and I was a woman.”

Another of his vic­tims, a 17-year-old girl, tes­ti­fied that Holtzclaw raped her on her mother’s front porch. She said he threat­ened her with an out­stand­ing war­rantfor tres­pass­ing. “What am I going to do?” she asked. “Call the cops? He was a cop.” The jury con­vict­ed Holtzclaw of every count relat­ed to her assault.

Another woman said the for­mer offi­cer forced her to per­form oral sex while she was under the influ­ence of drugs and hand­cuffed to a hos­pi­tal bed. Holtzclaw, the woman tes­ti­fied, implied that he could have her charges dropped in return. “I didn’t think that no one would believe me,” the woman tes­ti­fied in a pre-tri­al hear­ing. “I feel like all police will work together.”

Holtzclaw’s crimes took place over sev­en months in 2013 and 2014 while he worked the 4pm to 2am patrol.Oklahoma City law enforce­ment arrest­ed Holtzclaw on 18 June 2014. The pre­vi­ous night, he had pulled over a 57-year-old day­care work­er and molest­ing her dur­ing the traf­fic stop. Holtzclaw then ordered her to per­form oral sex, his gun in plain view, she has testified.

The woman made an imme­di­ate report to the Oklahoma City sex crimes divi­sion. Detectives arrest­ed Holtzclaw in the after­noon. Before long, the inves­tiga­tive team con­nect­ed Holtzclaw with oth­er reports of sex­u­al abuse against unnamed offi­cers. GPS evi­dence from his patrol car also linked Holtzclaw to the alleged crimes.

Holtzclaw was fired from the force in January 2015.

“The Oklahoma City police depart­ment is pleased with the jury’s deci­sion,” the law enforce­ment agency said in a state­ment on Thursday night. “We are proud of our detec­tives and pros­e­cu­tors for a job well done … [We] firm­ly believe jus­tice was served.”

During the tri­al, Holtzclaw did not con­test that he encoun­tered the women, but he main­tained his inno­cence. He had a ded­i­cat­ed con­tin­gent of online sup­port­ers using the hash­tag #FreeTheClaw. The defense called just one wit­ness, a for­mer girl­friend of Holtzclaw’s who tes­ti­fied he nev­er exhib­it­ed sex­u­al­ly aggres­sive or inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior around her.

The ver­dict will sur­prise advo­cates who were steel­ing them­selves for an acquittal.

Legal experts not­ed that Holtzclaw’s defense har­nessed pow­er­ful stereo­types about rape vic­tims. His attor­ney not­ed that his accusers wait­ed months to report his crimes and that they were not “per­fect vic­tims” or “per­fect accusers”. The case unfold­ed before an all-white jury. (Court doc­u­ments indi­cate Holtzclaw is Asian or Pacific Islander.)

“These cas­es are so dif­fi­cult to pros­e­cute because the defense attor­neys go after the vic­tims’ cred­i­bil­i­ty in court,” said Wetendorf. “In my expe­ri­ence work­ing with vic­tims of police abuse, offi­cers do tar­get vul­ner­a­ble women, par­tic­u­lar­ly drug addicts, alco­holics and prostitutes.

“They are con­fi­dent that ‘no one will believe’ these vic­tims. Where women of col­or are avail­able as tar­gets, they are even eas­i­er prey.”

Rachel Anspach, of the African American Policy Forum, con­sid­ered it a a sign of progress that Holtzclaw’s case even went to tri­al. “Historically, we’ve seen the jus­tice sys­tem hasn’t pro­tect­ed black women from sex­u­al assault,” she said.

http://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​5​/​d​e​c​/​1​1​/​d​a​n​i​e​l​-​h​o​l​t​z​c​l​a​w​-​f​o​r​m​e​r​-​o​k​l​a​h​o​m​a​-​c​i​t​y​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​g​u​i​l​t​y​-​r​ape

POLICE Commissioner Dr Carl Williams has admit­ted that not enough is being done to curb cor­rup­tion with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

“Of course not enough is being done,” Dr Williams said last week in response to a journalist’s ques­tion on the issue of cor­rup­tion. “If enough was being done we would not have cor­rup­tion in the force. It would have been a thing of the past.” The com­mis­sion­er said the “account­abil­i­ty sys­tems” need­ed strength­en­ing, and added that “we have to ensure that we change the cul­ture” of the force. “You would have seen in the last years or so where a num­ber of police offi­cers have found them­selves on the wrong side of the law. What we found is that sev­er­al of them are young police offi­cers, between one and five years ser­vice,” said the com­mis­sion­er dur­ing a brief­ing with senior jour­nal­ists at his Old Hope Road office in St Andrew.
“Perhaps some of them have been exposed to a cul­ture in the police force that has caused them to go on the wrong side, but in the major­i­ty of cas­es, these per­sons came into the force with their deviant behav­iour. In oth­er words, they had already had those bad inten­tions before they came in. We recruit­ed them with those bad inten­tions, with those bad habits,” Williams added.

Williams said that the poly­graph­ing of all new recruits seek­ing to join the force will be one way of resolv­ing that issue. The force has inten­si­fied its anti-cor­rup­tion dri­ve since 2007 to weed out cor­rupt cops and pre­vent them from mov­ing up the ranks​.In a 2013 col­umn in the Jamaica Observer, then Police Commissioner Owen Ellington wrote that anti-cor­rup­tion pol­i­cy had helped to rid the force of some 400 indi­vid­u­als of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter between 2007 and that year. Updated fig­ures were not avail­able from the police up to press time yes­ter­day. During his out­line of the thrust in the 2013 arti­cle, Ellington not­ed that the anti-cor­rup­tion strat­e­gy had “been sup­ple­ment­ed by a strength­en­ing and care­ful appli­ca­tion of admin­is­tra­tive tools avail­able”, which encom­pass­es areas of the recruit­ment, pro­mo­tion and re-enlist­ment, rota­tion and sep­a­ra­tion. Between 2010 and 2013, some 236 mem­bers had been denied per­mis­sion to re-enlist, Ellington wrote. The process of ear­ly and retir­ing police offi­cers in the inter­est of the pub­lic are oth­er well known meth­ods of rid­ding the force of bad apples.

The force also utilis­es its Ethics Committee in the fight against cor­rup­tion. The Ethics Committee allows the Police High Command to con­front such mem­bers about their con­duct, while at the same time pro­vid­ing the mem­ber an oppor­tu­ni­ty to address the alle­ga­tions. “This allows man­age­ment to gauge the risk a mem­ber may pose to the organ­i­sa­tion and take appro­pri­ate action. In some instances, this process has led to the vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion by the mem­ber, while in oth­ers, it has high­light­ed the need for fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions, result­ing in cas­es being re-rout­ed to the [Anti-Corruption Branch] and the [National Intelligence Bureau],” Ellington wrote then. In an effort to ensure that the top brass of the JCF isn’t inject­ed with ques­tion­able char­ac­ters, pro­mo­tions no longer hinge sole­ly on the con­cept of can­di­dates’ knowl­edge of the job and being hard workers.

“Not only must they demon­strate knowl­edge of the job and com­pe­tence, but their con­duct both on and off the job is scru­ti­nised at length. Gazetted offi­cers are held at an even high­er stan­dard as they under­go a gru­elling process of psy­cho­me­t­ric eval­u­a­tion, pan­el inter­views, eth­i­cal screen­ing and manda­to­ry poly­graph test­ing. All can­di­dates must be com­pli­ant with the pro­vi­sions of the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption, which stip­u­lates the year­ly sub­mis­sion of dec­la­ra­tion of assets and lia­bil­i­ties. They must also sub­mit to the High Command, receipts from their last three dec­la­ra­tions,” Ellington said then.
‘We have to change the culture’

The Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) has obtained a war­rant to search the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) head­quar­ters at Up Park Camp for mor­tars and infor­ma­tion relat­ed to their use dur­ing the 2010 police-mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Tivoli Gardens.

Major Basil Jarrett, the head of the JDF Civil-Military Coöperation Unit, says the mil­i­tary is aware of the war­rant. According to law enforce­ment sources, INDECOM is also in pos­ses­sion of a num­ber of sum­mons­es for sev­er­al mem­bers to appear before the body for inter­views. It was unclear when the search war­rant and sum­mons­es were issued, but sources told The Gleaner Online that they were obtained using infor­ma­tion uncov­ered dur­ing the ongo­ing west Kingston Commission of Enquiry. However, before INDECOM could exe­cute the search war­rant attor­neys for the JDF went to court seek­ing to block the search. The mat­ter came up before Justice Bryan Sykes in Chambers this morn­ing. Despite claims by sev­er­al res­i­dents of Tivoli Gardens that they heard “bombs” dur­ing the May 2010 oper­a­tions to cap­ture drug king­pin Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, the JDF ini­tial­ly rebuffed the claims. However, tes­ti­fy­ing before the Sir David Simmons-chaired tri­bunal, for­mer JDF Chief of Defence Staff Major Stewart Saunders acknowl­edged that he ordered the use of mor­tars and that a total of 37 were fired in three open spaces in the west Kingston com­mu­ni­ty. Stewart and JDF Mortar Control Officer Major Warrenton Dixon defend­ed the use of the mor­tars say­ing there were used to cre­ate a diver­sion for gun­men who were engag­ing mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces in fierce fire­fights and to keep women and young chil­dren in-doors and out of harms way. “It’s unfor­tu­nate that 70-odd per­sons lost their lives in there, but I believe strong­ly in my heart that the use of the mor­tars saved a lot of lives and I am proud of it,” Dixon tes­ti­fied last month. INDECOM gets war­rant to search JDF head­quar­ters.

THE FACE OF A COP-KILLER

KINGSTON, Jamaica – The Police High Command says it has increased the reward to J$1.5 mil­lion to any­one who can give reli­able infor­ma­tion lead­ing to the arrest and charge of Marlon Perry oth­er­wise called ‘Duppy Film’, of Phillipsfield, Yallahs, St Thomas. Perry was impli­cat­ed in the bru­tal slay­ing of Corporal Kenneth Davis and Constable Craig Palmer on Tuesday, December 22. The police­men were killed on the Poor Man’s Corner main road in St Thomas. The fol­low­ing indi­vid­u­als are also being asked to imme­di­ate­ly turn them­selves in to the Yallahs Police. They are: Jason Foster, 21, of East Albion, St. Thomas, and Kevin Eldermire oth­er­wise called ‘Harry Patta’ of a St Thomas address. Anyone with infor­ma­tion that can assist the police in their inves­ti­ga­tions is being asked to con­tact the Criminal Investigations Branch head­quar­ters at 922‑4741 or 922‑4487, Yallahs Police at 982‑5075, Crime Stop at 311, 811, Stay Alert App, Police 119 emer­gency num­ber or the near­est police station.

On the eve of tes­ti­fy­ing at a police tri­bunal, the teen who near­ly died after he was smashed into the win­dow of a Bronx hookah bar by an NYPD sergeant said his assailant should be boot­ed from the force. Javier Payne, 15, is sched­uled to appear Wednesday in the NYPD tri­al room at One Police Plaza where Sgt. Eliezer Pabon is charged with using “unjus­ti­fied force” against the hand­cuffed boy on May 17, 2014. “What he did to me was­n’t right and he could do it again,” Payne told The Daily News. “I feel he should lose his job.” The Bronx dis­trict attor­ney declined to press crim­i­nal charges against the sergeant because a glazier claimed the win­dow was defec­tive, but the Civilian Complaint Review Board found that the sergeant used exces­sive force. The inci­dent occurred after Payne and a 13-year-old pal were arrest­ed for punch­ing a man in the face after ask­ing him for a cigarette.

A sur­veil­lance cam­era at Hookah Spot on Arthur Ave. cap­tured the action as Pabon rushed at the hand­cuffed youth fac­ing the win­dow, and in a clear­ly unpro­voked action, struck the teen with his left arm. Payne slammed up against the win­dow which explod­ed on impact. “This depart­ment tri­al will deter­mine how the NYPD polices itself,” said lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, who has filed a $25 mil­lion law­suit against the sergeant and the city.

Payne, now a 9^th grad­er at Health Opportunity High School in Manhattan, under­went emer­gency surgery to remove pieces of glass from his heart. The teen said he is self-con­scious and embar­rassed by the scar on his chest. “I get sharp pains in my chest some­times because of the way I move my arm,” he said. Pabon’s lawyer declined to comment.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — A Coaster bus dri­ver who con­fessed to dri­ving over a policeman’s foot and hit­ting him with his motor vehi­cle after he was sig­nalled to stop was fined $50,000 when he appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court yes­ter­day. Claeon Campbell plead­ed guilty to the charges of assault­ing a police offi­cer and assault occa­sion­ing bod­i­ly harm. Reports are that on December 30, the police­man, who was on duty in the vicin­i­ty of Manor Park in St Andrew, sig­nalled Campbell to stop. However, Campbell dis­obeyed. Campbell report­ed­ly swung the bus to the left while the offi­cer was still in front of it, caus­ing the wing mir­ror to hit the offi­cer and the wheel to go over his foot.
When Campbell appeared in court, Senior Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey asked Campbell if there was any rea­son he should not be sent to jail.

“It wasn’t will­ful­ly done,” Campbell said. The police­man told the court that Campbell seemed to have been hav­ing a bad day when he sig­nalled him to stop.

“You nev­er see the police­man?” Pusey asked. “Yes your hon­our, I was try­ing to take the bus out of the road,” Campbell replied. Campbell was sub­se­quent­ly fined $50,000 or six months. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​M​a​n​-​f​i​ned – 50 – 000-for-driving-over-cop-s-foot

• Matt FernerNational Reporter, The Huffington Post
• Nick WingSenior Viral Editor, The Huffington Post

Many peo­ple viewed 2015 as a year of reck­on­ing for police, with con­tin­ued scruti­ny of the use of dead­ly force spurring momen­tum for reform. In real­i­ty, how­ev­er, the road to account­abil­i­ty remains a long one.

That point is clear­ly reflect­ed in the num­ber of police offi­cers who were con­vict­ed on mur­der or manslaugh­ter charges last year for fatal­ly shoot­ing a civil­ian in the line of duty.

In 2015, that num­ber was zero.

And that’s not unusu­al. No offi­cers were con­vict­ed on such charges in 2014 either.

In fact, since 2005, there have only been 13 offi­cers con­vict­ed of mur­der or manslaugh­ter in fatal on-duty shoot­ings, accord­ing to data pro­vid­ed to The Huffington Post by Philip Stinson, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nol­o­gy at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University. Stinson’s data does­n’t include cas­es in which civil­ians died in police cus­tody or were killed by oth­er means, or those in which offi­cers only faced less­er charges.

One of the last suc­cess­ful con­vic­tions came in 2013, when Culpeper Town, Virginia, police offi­cer Daniel Harmon-Wright was sen­tenced to three years in jail for vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter charges in the slay­ing of Patricia Cook, an unarmed 54-year-old, a year earlier.

On Feb. 9, 2012, Harmon-Wright respond­ed to a sus­pi­cious vehi­cle call and found Cook parked in a local Catholic school park­ing lot. In court, Harmon-Wright said when he asked Cook for her driver’s license, she rolled up her win­dow, trap­ping his arm, before begin­ning to dri­ve away. Harmon-Wright respond­ed by unload­ing sev­en rounds into Cook, with fatal shots hit­ting her in the back and head. But a jury didn’t find the officer’s tes­ti­mo­ny cred­i­ble, return­ing a guilty ver­dict on three charges in the shoot­ing death. After serv­ing out his sen­tence, Harmon-Wright was releasedin 2015.

Some offi­cers in these cas­es have served out years­long sen­tences for their crimes. Others were in and out of jail in months. Some even became police offi­cers again. But only a tiny por­tion of cops who kill while on duty ever face charges for their actions, much less actu­al punishment.

The inabil­i­ty to con­vict police on mur­der or manslaugh­ter charges for fatal on-duty shoot­ings con­trasts with a recent increase in pros­e­cu­tion, Stinson said. In 2015, 18 offi­cers faced such charges, a sig­nif­i­cant increase from an aver­age of around five offi­cers each year over the pre­ced­ing decade. Many of these cas­es involved inci­dents from pre­vi­ous years and have yet to go to tri­al, but if his­to­ry is any indi­ca­tor, it seems unlike­ly that many of the offi­cers will be convicted.

The tiny num­ber of con­vic­tions in fatal police shoot­ings looks even small­er when you con­sid­er just how many cas­es the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem con­sid­ers each year. Although there are no reli­able gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics on civil­ians killed by police, data com­piled inde­pen­dent­ly last year by out­lets like The Guardian and The Washington Post, or civil­ian track­er Mapping Police Violence, have led to esti­mates of rough­ly 1,000 dead­ly shoot­ings each year.

Of that total, pros­e­cu­tors and grand juries around the nation each year have deter­mined that around five of these cas­es involve mis­con­duct wor­thy of manslaugh­ter or mur­der charges. And in the end, the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem typ­i­cal­ly con­cludes that only around one shoot­ing each year is con­sis­tent with manslaugh­ter or murder.

This means the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of police shoot­ing cas­es are ulti­mate­ly deter­mined to be jus­ti­fied homi­cides, in which dead­ly force was used law­ful­ly, often in what police say was an effort to pro­tect an offi­cer’s safe­ty or to pre­vent harm to the public.

One rea­son for the lack of pros­e­cu­tion and sub­se­quent con­vic­tion begins with the Supreme Court’s legal stan­dard for use of lethal force. According to Graham v. Connor, the land­mark 1989 case that estab­lished the stan­dard, each “use of force must be judged from the per­spec­tive of a rea­son­able offi­cer on the scene, rather than with the 20/​20 vision of hind­sight.” The rul­ing specif­i­cal­ly cau­tions against judg­ing police too harsh­ly for split-sec­ond deci­sions made in “tense, uncer­tain and rapid­ly evolv­ing” sit­u­a­tions. All of this gives offi­cers plen­ty of lee­way to explain why their actions were legal.

The tra­jec­to­ry of police shoot­ing cas­es has long been deter­mined by police depart­ments them­selves, which, until recent­ly, were large­ly able to con­trol the nar­ra­tive of events that led to a killing. And when cas­es have gone to tri­al, judges and juries have exhib­it­ed a ten­den­cy to side with the police. All of these fac­tors make it exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to con­vict an offi­cer, in the rare instances in which they face charges at all.

“Only about 20 per­cent of the offi­cers arrest­ed are ever con­vict­ed of mur­der or manslaugh­ter,” Stinson explained. “Juries and judges seem reluc­tant to sec­ond-guess the split-sec­ond life or death deci­sions of police offi­cers in vio­lent street encoun­ters in the course of their job … and will give the ben­e­fit of every doubt to an offi­cer on tri­al in these cas­es. That is not so for oth­er types of crimes by police offi­cers, but it cer­tain­ly is the case in these shoot­ing cases.”

Stinson said that while there is a recent surge in offi­cers charged for mur­der or manslaugh­ter, it’s too ear­ly to tell if the upswing is the begin­ning of a trend. But he believes new­er tech­nol­o­gy like cell phone video and police body cam­eras have pro­duced a “tip­ping point,” lead­ing the pub­lic to take a more crit­i­cal view of the police’s ver­sion of events.

While Stinson said he thinks many police shoot­ings are jus­ti­fied, he pre­dicts that we’ll con­tin­ue to see more offi­cers charged with mur­der or manslaugh­ter in the com­ing years. But bar­ring con­sid­er­able reform of a law and jus­tice sys­tem that gives police wide lat­i­tude to inflict lethal force upon the pub­lic, this may not cor­re­spond to a sim­i­lar rise in con­vic­tions. Here’s How Many Cops Got Convicted Of Murder Last Year For On-Duty Shootings There’s some­thing strange about this picture.