Yesterday I wrote about the grow­ing prob­lem of attacks on police offi­cers by lit­er­al­ly every­one they approach in Jamaica. I made it clear that the( inde­com) Act embold­ens crim­i­nals to act with impuni­ty which is evi­dent from the dras­tic rise in seri­ous crimes includ­ing homicides.
As if that’s not bad enough there is grow­ing evi­dence of peo­ple who would oth­er­wise not chal­lenge law enforce­ment offi­cers in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of their duties lit­er­al­ly attack­ing and throw­ing punch­es on cops even when they are stopped for breach­ing the Island’s traf­fic laws..

There are instances where a par­tic­u­lar offi­cer was attempt­ing to con­fis­cate an unli­censed motor­cy­cle as he is oblig­ed to do by law . The dri­ver stead­fast­ly refused to sur­ren­der the motor­cy­cle. He threat­ened the offi­cer, threw punch­es, got back on the motor­cy­cle and rode off leav­ing a jeer­ing crowd to ridicule the officer.
The offi­cer’s female part­ner stood harm­less­ly by and watched.
Window dressing!!!!

It is appalling to watch the lev­el of law­less­ness which is occur­ring in Jamaica while the Administration in Kingston and the half-baked idiot who sits in Jamaica House does noth­ing to take back the streets from the crim­i­nals who have the police on the run.
The aver­age per­son on the streets have zero fear of the laws which are large­ly archa­ic and pos­es zero deter­rent effect to would be criminals.
On the rare occa­sion that crim­i­nals are appre­hend­ed and the evi­dence is over­whelm­ing that it can­not be thrown out the cor­rupt left­ist judges which pop­u­late the bench lit­er­al­ly slaps crim­i­nals on the wrist and sim­ply turn them loose back into society.
This in and of itself is a ter­rif­ic recruit­ment tool for the crim­i­nal underworld.
Jamaica’s young men and in some cas­es young women are drawn inex­orably to a life of crime. A sim­ple cost ben­e­fit analy­sis shows that crime pays in Jamaica.

A young man who walks into a busi­ness place and robs a mil­lion dol­lars has very lit­tle chance of ever get­ting caught in Jamaica anymore.
If how­ev­er he is caught and by some stroke of luck he is con­vict­ed in the social­ist court sys­tem he is like­ly to be slapped with a fine of fifty thou­sand dol­lars at most.
Why would this young man not rel­ish a life of crime?
To the causal observ­er this may seem like a crim­i­nal jus­tice which is fail­ing . To the avid watch­er who pays atten­tion it is far more sinister.
The Governing PNP encour­ages crime and cor­rup­tion. Every aspect of it’s func­tions is a tan­gled web of crim­i­nal­i­ty and corruption .
The award­ing of Government con­tracts is a pigs trough of cor­rup­tion , graft and pay­offs to crim­i­nal thugs who deliv­er large swath of votes to the PNP from par­ty strongholds.

My pre­ten­tious coun­try­men will scoff at the notion that our beloved Island is no dif­fer­ent than a sub-Saharan enclave ruled by crim­i­nal warlords.
There absolute­ly is not much difference,Jamaica sim­ply has a bet­ter lay­er of veneer.
The mass­es of the unin­formed unwit­ting­ly believe that the coun­try is on a path to devel­op­ment. The fact is that from the Prime Minister to the thug in the gar­risons the sys­tem works they are reap­ing the rewards of crime and corruption.
For every­one else they have carte blanch to go out and get theirs by what­ev­er means necessary.
And they do , this allows the com­mon man to make a liv­ing in the crim­i­nal under­world or col­lo­qui­al­ly “eat a food” while the Government starves law enforce­ment of resources, sup­port, and leg­is­la­tion which would seri­ous­ly impact crime in a pos­i­tive way for well mean­ing Jamaicans.

This crude yet effec­tive strat­e­gy gave the People’s National Party con­trol of state pow­er for 31 of the last 43 years.
Today the People’s National Party still con­trol state power.
In what may cer­tain­ly be unprece­dent­ed time in office in a coun­try not con­sid­ered a dic­ta­tor­ship the PNP using those worse prac­tices through the 70’s to present day has dec­i­mat­ed the pro­duc­tive sec­tor, cre­at­ed a riv­er of brain drain, evis­cer­at­ed the nation­al cur­ren­cy , presided over mas­sive moral and infra­struc­tur­al decay and dri­ven the entire mid­dle class into poverty.

In the mean­time Forbes projects the Island’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to have a Net Worth of $20 Million. Portia Simpson Miller Net Worth.

Speaking on the strate­gies being employed in com­bat­ing crime in Saint James, the new mur­der Parish, Senior Superintendent of police Steve McGregor told one of the dai­ly news papers he and his team will be work­ing assid­u­ous­ly to remove pros­ti­tutes from the streets par­tic­u­lar­ly along Harbor street and the area known as the hip-strip.
McGregor high­light­ed the high lev­el of unruly behav­ior, some­thing we spoke about yesterday.
“Right now it is a chal­lenge because it is a very undis­ci­plined town­ship and the town has been allowed to behave this way for some time, so the fact that we are now tight­en­ing the noose on them as it relates to their behav­ioral pat­tern, we are get­ting a chal­lenge from them. But we are up to the task and we are going to police the town­ship the way that we are doing because we are find­ing that this is send­ing a good mes­sage to the gen­er­al parish as it relates to discipline,”.

Of course the police are being challenged .
Of course they have been allowed to behave that way for sometime.
It goes to the Government’s pol­i­cy of allow­ing peo­ple to break the law while cre­at­ing the impres­sion it wants low­er crime.
The fact is that the Governing admin­is­tra­tion in Kingston is inher­ent­ly corrupt .
In a coun­try of laws most of it’s mem­bers would have been doing seri­ous time in prison.
So even though I com­mend the Senior Superintendent for at least rec­og­niz­ing that tack­ling qual­i­ty of life offences is a good way to root out more seri­ous crimes,to the aver­age per­son it seem sil­ly talk­ing about lock­ing up pros­ti­tutes while mass mur­der­ers are walk­ing around untouched.

What the Nation needs to see(not hear) is a ruth­less assault on mass killers many of whom have exe­cut­ed sev­er­al inno­cent peo­ple and have paid no price.
This would require lead­er­ship and there is real­ly no seri­ous lead­er­ship at the top of the Constabulary.
What we see com­ing from the top lead­er­ship is the same old boot-lick­ing bull­shit which has char­ac­ter­ized pre­vi­ous police com­mis­sion­ers tenure.
The first order of busi­ness is that offi­cers must know that when they go out to enforce the laws they have the full back­ing of the law in car­ry­ing out their duties.
That includes sup­port from the Government, the Chief con­sta­ble and the police federation.

The Commissioner of Police acknowl­edges the threat lev­els against offi­cers and offers his full sup­port for offi­cers who take action to pro­tect their lives from vicious crim­i­nal assault.
When has Commissioner Williams or the Officer Corps of the JCF ever stood with offi­cers being per­se­cut­ed by the Government through (inde­com)?
The threat to police though real and ever present is not con­fined to offi­cers being shot down sim­ply because they are offi­cers. It is inher­ent every­day in the sim­plest inter­ac­tions they have each day in the pur­suit of their duties.
In no oth­er coun­try but Jamaica would a motor­cy­clist kill a cop ‚sev­er­ing one of his legs after ram­ming him when sig­naled to stop and seri­ous leg­is­la­tion not be enact­ed to make sure it does not hap­pen again.
In Jamaica it’s noth­ing , just anoth­er dead cop.
Cops are assault­ed and the crowds laugh and the per­pe­tra­tor walks away free as a bird.
Officer takes action he faces crim­i­nal charges.

This is the real Jamaica , not the con­trived Jamaica they show to the world in the tourist board repet­i­tive ads. Our coun­try is not get­ting bet­ter it is slid­ing fur­ther and fur­ther into anarchy.
The first step toward stop­ping the destruc­tion of our coun­try is remov­ing the crim­i­nal­ly cor­rupt admin­is­tra­tion from power .

As crime con­tin­ue to rise in Jamaica because of the INDECOM Act chill­ing effect on offi­cers abil­i­ty to do their job, more and more peo­ple on the streets are being extra aggres­sive and vio­lent against police officers.
Time after time we see sim­ple traf­fic stops esca­late to dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions, usu­al­ly because some­one wants to show off to bystanders who usu­al­ly play the role of agitators.

Frequently we high­light instances of Police offi­cers unlaw­ful­ly killing cit­i­zens and oth­er­wise abus­ing the rights of cit­i­zens par­tic­u­lar­ly in the United States.
Conversely we see an oppo­site sit­u­a­tion devel­op­ing in Jamaica where the Police are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly being attacked by peo­ple who have no fear of consequence.

In instance after instance we see videos of police offi­cers on the streets try­ing to do their jobs being seri­ous­ly attacked by men who sim­ply want to show bystanders that they will not sub­mit to arrest.
Officers are fac­ing seri­ous risks to their per­sons and are clear­ly hes­i­tant because they do not want to be accused of using exces­sive force.
This sit­u­a­tion is unten­able, for­get about ris­ing crime, offi­cers have absolute­ly no oblig­a­tion to be assault­ed for doing their jobs.

It is impor­tant that offi­cers under­stand that despite what the vil­lage lawyers say “an assailant does not have to have a weapon to pose seri­ous harm to an officer’.
Let me reit­er­ate, the laws guar­an­tee offi­cers the pow­er to use what­ev­er force is nec­es­sary to pro­tect their lives or that of oth­ers. That force includes but is not con­fined to lethal force.
You may shoot to kill an assailant swing­ing at you with intent to harm you,. If an assailant suc­ceeds in knock­ing an offi­cer to the ground the next step is that he will take the offi­cer’s weapon and use it on him/​her.
You are jus­ti­fied in using dead­ly force on an assailant swing­ing at you.

The Commissioner of Police is a lack­ey whose chief func­tion it appears is to issue state­ments about police offi­cers being under threat, yet he does absolute­ly noth­ing to shore up sup­port for the men and women under his com­mand who are in mor­tal dan­ger every day they go out to pro­tect the lives and prop­er­ty of others.
The Police Federation is a neutered mon­grel which yelps inces­sant­ly but has teeth of rub­ber when it counts.

The first thing the Commissioner of Police should do to pro­tect offi­cers is to ensure that as soon as an offi­cer calls for back­up rein­force­ments are there imme­di­ate­ly or with­in two to three min­utes thereafter.
There is no greater deter­rent than an assailant know­ing more cops are on the way in sec­onds and his ass will be sub­dued one way or the other.
Physical assault is nev­er far away from police offi­cers. In Jamaica it is a blood­sport, peo­ple do it so they can brag about it.
It is time that offi­cers make it clear they will not tol­er­ate attack on their per­sons irre­spec­tive of who want to inves­ti­gate or the impo­tence and incom­pe­tence of the Commissioner of Police.

If the Government does not pro­vide tasers to sub­due poten­tial assailants offi­cers should not bear that bur­den through their shed blood.
Officers should nev­er abuse the rights of cit­i­zens how­ev­er if a sus­pect attacks an offi­cer he/​she must nev­er hes­i­tate to use their weapon. Whether or not the assailant is armed. Use the weapon you are giv­en, shoot to kill, period.
This lev­el of law­less­ness has sim­ply got to stop.

Each Election cycle in the United States Republicans out-right­ly uses Black Americans as a wedge to win white votes.
I am sure it was worse in the ear­ly years before Nixon’s “south­ern strat­e­gy” , Reagan’s launch­ing his cam­paign in the south . Bush’s “Willie Houghton” attack against Michael Dukakis to name a few .
With that in mind I see no rea­son to believe that Republicans will be any dif­fer­ent this cycle.
One would hope that since we are now in 21^st cen­tu­ry that maybe, just maybe com­mon decen­cy would apply and the white men run­ning for the pres­i­den­cy on the right would show some class , decen­cy and intelligence.
Unfortunately despite the fact that Blacks are the most sol­id and loy­al part of the Democratic base Democrats are not shy about throw­ing the black com­mu­ni­ty under the bus to cur­ry favor with white vot­ers either.
Political watch­ers will recall Bill Clinton’s “Sister Soulja” diss,and even the incon­se­quen­tial Martin O’malley’s “all lives mat­ter” in response to the black lives mat­ter movement.

With all of the hate­ful rhetoric com­ing from Republican can­di­dates Donald Trump , Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee Ben Carson and oth­ers I won­dered what was gained from the meet­ing between the Black Ministers who met with Trump on Monday?
One spokesper­son speak­ing on behalf of the black min­is­ters said Trump was not a racist. I have no idea why a group of self serv­ing Negros would line up to say a rabid dis­eased racist is no racist?
But then again I also won­dered why slav­ery last­ed that long in this coun­try until I saw and heard the views of some Black Americans.

It was­n’t the first time that a bunch of black reli­gious char­la­tans had lined up to sup­port the orange-haired buf­foon. At a press con­fer­ence pri­or to a ral­ly in Norcross, Georgia, Donald Trump was sur­round­ed onstage by black pas­tors and min­is­ters sup­port­ing his can­di­da­cy. One pas­tor took the micro­phone and said Trump would make “a hell of a chief executive”:

“I can’t think of a bet­ter per­son, a bet­ter leader to lead this coun­try to where America needs to go.”

“I want to dis­pel this notion that Donald Trump is a racist,” he con­tin­ued. “We’re not here as token blacks. We’re here because we want to sup­port him… We believe him and his leadership.”
Another said Trump could be trust­ed to look after Christians in this coun­try and pro­tect their spir­i­tu­al needs. In response to a ques­tion, Trump said he has not met with the Black Lives Matter group. No one both­ered to men­tion to the Clown that he had recent­ly berat­ed Bernie Sanders for not dis­re­spect­ing black lives mat­ter activists, nei­ther was it impor­tant to the bible thump­ing har­lots who lined up to deceive their own peo­ple in God’s name.
I found out long ago that it was not a good idea to fight for the American black because he has no desire to excel beyond the low­est rung of the ladder.
You dis­agree ? Look at what they have done with the gains secured by Thurgood Marshall, Martin King , Medger Evers Malcolm X and the count­less oth­ers who made the ulti­mate sacrifice.

For those So-called Ministers a meet­ing with “Massa”, I mean Trump, was enough to cause them to for­get all of the dis­parag­ing things Trump said about President Obama and the Black lives mat­ter move­ment , or even that he refers to black peo­ple as “the blacks”.
As long as “Massa“met with them they felt all was right with the world he was no racist screw those Activists in the streets chant­i­ng and march­ing for justice.
If only you were like me “Massa” would accept you too[sic].
The only prob­lem for the black min­is­ters is that they were mere props for the fur­ther­ance of the Trump hate machine.
I mean if Trump can meet and rub shoul­ders with “The Blacks”, the most despised and reviled and they can come out and say Mister Trump is no Racist who cares what the “rapists and mur­der­ers” from Mexico think, right?

It was a bril­liant stroke of genius by the Trump cam­paign, of course those well attired Black Ministers had no prob­lem being the dis­play Mannequins. In fact the whole stroke of genius went com­plete­ly over their heads.
As long as we refus­es to place val­ue on our­selves oth­ers will val­ue us or bet­ter yet deval­ue us. As long as a pho­to-Op with “Massa” makes us feel all is well with the world we are con­demned to con­tin­ue being the man­nequin for all to hang their designs on.

The inane spec­ta­cle known as black Friday is now over for this year. The ginned up spec­ta­cle of big sav­ings to con­sumers seem slow­ly to be dawn­ing on peo­ple as a just anoth­er scam by big business.
CNBC reports that the large stores were pret­ty full but with most­ly young peo­ple who seemed more curi­ous than they were shopping.

“I don’t think this is the tar­get shop­per that every­body’s look­ing for today,” said Deloitte’s Kate Ferrara, who arrived at South Shore Plaza in Braintree, Massachusetts, at 6 a.m .“People were shop­ping, but over­all, it was pret­ty calm”. Steve Barr, with Price-water­house Coopers, said ear­ly indi­ca­tions are that in-store sales will be flat, with the big win­ners being online stores and shop­pers. He ques­tioned how stores that are offer­ing 50 to 70 per­cent off this ear­ly in the sea­son will be able to sur­vive long term. “My con­cern would be for the long-term ben­e­fit of the retail­ers this just has­n’t been the hol­i­day shop­ping week­end that they were hop­ing for,” he said.

In the inter­est of fair­ness I must con­fess that I am the oper­a­tor of a small busi­ness which makes the big box stores my sworn enemy.
In an effort to cre­ate a lev­el of par­i­ty cham­bers of com­merce across the coun­try have cre­at­ed small busi­ness Saturday as a way to get peo­ple to shop small­er main street busi­ness­es which have been the life-blood of America for hun­dreds of years.
Unfortunately for most small busi­ness oper­a­tors like myself who appre­ci­ate the ges­ture it’s gen­er­al­ly too lit­tle too late . By Saturday morn­ing all of the mon­ey is already spent. Unfortunately for cities and com­mu­ni­ties small busi­ness-own­ers are unable to hire peo­ple because even though black Friday sales seemed flat shop­pers are not flock­ing back to small stores, they are spend huge sums online.

Technically this reduces gross receipts to an even small­er group of real­ly wealthy peo­ple as the pro­ceeds are chan­neled to only a select group of peo­ple and cre­ates returns night­mares for online shoppers.
Whether this is a com­ing to it’s sens­es by the shop­ping pub­lic is yet to be seen .
I per­son­al­ly doubt it but remain hopeful .
Even if small busi­ness peo­ple like myself do not reap any mean­ing­ful rewards from peo­ple com­ing to their sens­es it brings me some com­fort if peo­ple stop mak­ing spec­ta­cles of them­selves while the very rich fat­ten their wallets.

YOU ARE A BLACK PERSON LIVING IN AMERICA.…

You believe the Police are there to pro­tect you. You believe Prosecutors will pros­e­cu­tor offenderS regard­less of who they are. You believe also that Judges are tru­ly inde­pen­dent tri­er of facts who will not allow affil­i­a­tions to col­or the way they dis­pense justice.
Here’s the skin­ny you are a fool.
Obviously four hun­dred years of rabid racism has taught you noth­ing if you chose not to wake up you are guar­an­teed anoth­er four hun­dred which will be worse that the pre­vi­ous if you can pic­ture that.

CITY OF CHICAGO FIRES INVESTIGATOR BECAUSE HE REFUSES TO FALSIFY POLICE BRUTALITY COMPLAINTS TO ABSOLVE COPS OF GUILT.

The city of Chicago fired an inves­ti­ga­tor because he refused to fal­si­fy police bru­tal­i­ty com­plaints to make offi­cers appear inno­cent of any wrong­do­ing, fur­ther rais­ing sus­pi­cions that the Chicago Police Department (CPD) is a cor­rupt police force. Investigator and for­mer police com­man­der Lorenzo Davis, 65, was released from the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) after refus­ing to alter case find­ings indi­cat­ing sev­er­al instances of unjus­ti­fied use of police force. The IPRA announced Davis’ ter­mi­na­tion on July 9, and accused him of hav­ing “a clear bias against the police.” The IPRA also said that Davis was “the only super­vi­sor at IPRA who resists mak­ing request­ed changes as direct­ed by man­age­ment in order to reflect the cor­rect find­ing with respect to OIS.” Considering the CPD’s past of heinous cor­rup­tion, it’s rea­son­able to believe that Davis was oust­ed because he didn’t cov­er up the behav­ior of dirty cops. The Chicago PD has earned a noto­ri­ous rep­u­ta­tion for cor­rup­tion and racism that has exist­ed for decades. Even the high­est-rank­ing police offi­cials in Chicago are sus­pect­ed of being cor­rupt. “I did not like the direc­tion the police depart­ment had tak­en,” said Davis. “It appeared that offi­cers were doing what­ev­er they want­ed to do.” Listen to WBEZ’s report.

Most if not all American Police Departments are actu­al laws onto them­selves . I don’t mean they are inde­pen­dent of Political manip­u­la­tion , I mean that they oper­ate with impuni­ty in most cas­es con­trary to the rule of law with­out fear of consequence.
To many Black cit­i­zens the police are mere thugs in uni­form with the legit­i­ma­cy of the law to back them.
Former Commander Lorenzo Davis refers to many with­in the Chicago Police Department as “race sol­diers”, he should know. However what exist in Chicago exist in Missouri, In Texas, In new Mexico, In Florida , In New York and every nook and cran­ny of the United States.

JUDGE LET COP WALK AFTER DEADLY SHOOTING .LEGAL EXPERTS SAY REASONING IS INCREDIBLE.
A Cook County judge acquit­ted Chicago police offi­cer Dante Servin of sev­er­al homi­cide-relat­ed charges for the fatal shoot­ing of an unarmed woman stand­ing out­side with some friends near his home. It was the first time in 15 years that a police offi­cer had been charged in Chicago for a fatal shoot­ing. And the court­room atten­dees explod­ed in out­rage as Judge Dennis Porter announced Servin was not guilty on all charges for killing 22-year-old Rekia Boyd. But Porter’s rul­ing was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­found­ing because of bizarre rea­son­ing that some legal experts are call­ing “incred­i­ble.” In an opin­ion that lament­ed Servin was nev­er charged with the more severe crimes of first- and sec­ond-degree mur­der, Porter sug­gest­ed he was acquit­ting Servin and send­ing him home with­out any pun­ish­ment because the invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter charge against him was actu­al­ly not severe enough. Servin was off duty when he fired the shots. He encoun­tered a group gath­ered in an alley while dri­ving through in his Mercedes sedan. As he drove the wrong way down the alley after an alter­ca­tion, he said he thought he saw one of the men reach for a gun and fired sev­er­al shots over his shoul­der at indi­vid­u­als who had their backs to Servin. Servin hit 22-year-old Rekia Boyd in the back of the head, killing her. “He was con­stant­ly shoot­ing,” Icka Beamon tes­ti­fied, who was in the alley that night and ran for cov­er. “He was try­ing to kill all of us.” Porter, the Cook County judge pre­sid­ing over the case, agreed that Servin was act­ing inten­tion­al­ly when he fired his gun. In fact, he said in his rul­ing, Illinois courts have long held that when a defen­dant “intends to fire a gun, points it in the gen­er­al direc­tion of his or her intend­ed vic­tim, and shoots, such con­duct is not mere­ly reck­less,” but “inten­tion­al” and “the crime, if any there be, is first degree murder.”

In a bizarre turn of rea­son­ing, Porter sug­gests that since the first-degree mur­der charge is not on the table, and the crimes with which he was charged — invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter and reck­less dis­charge of a gun — require that Servin was reck­less, Servin can­not be con­vict­ed of any crime at all. Lamenting that both sides might “ben­e­fit from some clo­sure on this ques­tion,” he nonethe­less con­cludes that the law com­pels him to acquit Servin of all charges. Porter’s rea­son­ing doesn’t clear­ly square with sev­er­al fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of crim­i­nal law, accord­ing to legal experts. The con­cepts of “reck­less­ness” and “intent” are crim­i­nal law con­cepts that describe what is an ele­ment of almost every crim­i­nal offense — state of mind. In homi­cide cas­es, for exam­ple, state of mind (known as mens rea) is direct­ly cor­re­lat­ed to the sever­i­ty of the crime — offens­es that require mere “reck­less­ness,” or “con­scious­ly disregard[ing] a sub­stan­tial and unjus­ti­fi­able risk” — typ­i­cal­ly car­ries a low­er pun­ish­ment than mur­der crimes, which require the pros­e­cu­tor to prove intent, because inten­tion­al acts assume a high­er lev­el of malice.

Porter asserts that a defen­dant who does some­thing inten­tion­al­ly could not have also been reck­less, and thus should not be con­vict­ed of any­thing at all. But this dis­tinc­tion between reck­less­ness and intent “real­ly doesn’t make any sense at all,” University of Illinois law pro­fes­sor Marareth Etienne told ThinkProgress. At least under the nation­al crim­i­nal law stan­dard known as the Model Penal Code that all first-year law stu­dents are taught in Criminal Law 101, a high­er state of mind such as intent “always proves a low­er lev­el,” in this case, reck­less­ness. Recklessness “just means that you were aware of a risk and you didn’t take the prop­er pre­cau­tion. So clear­ly if you shoot at some­body and you shot in a crowd you’re aware of a risk that they’re gonna die,” Etienne said. “This is incred­i­ble!” University of Illinois Director of Trial Advocacy J. Steven Beckett said. “It appears to me that a less­er includ­ed offense was ignored because the proof of the greater offense was obvi­ous. This put pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al deci­sion-mak­ing under scruti­ny beyond any­thing imag­in­able.” In oth­er words, the pros­e­cu­tors were pun­ished for not hav­ing charged Servin with a more severe crime. Even more remark­able, Porter came to this deci­sion in what is known as a “direct­ed ver­dict” before he even heard the defense’s arguments.

“When a motion for direct­ed ver­dict is made by the defense, the evi­dence must be con­sid­ered in the light most favor­able to the pros­e­cu­tion,” Beckett points out. “What the judge did here appears to be just the oppo­site!” Etienne points out sev­er­al adverse con­se­quences that would result if Porter’s under­stand­ing of the law pre­vailed. A defen­dant charged with invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter could get on the stand and make the very argu­ment Porter now makes: I am not guilty of a crime of reck­less­ness because I did this on pur­pose. “And by the way my tri­al has start­ed so dou­ble jeop­ardy. You can’t go back and charge me with an inten­tion­al killing.” Double jeop­ardy is the con­sti­tu­tion­al notion that an indi­vid­ual can’t be charged twice for the same offense, and legal experts seemed to agree that dou­ble jeop­ardy means Porter’s rul­ing can’t be appealed, and that pros­e­cu­tors from the same juris­dic­tion can’t file charges a sec­ond time around. The oth­er adverse con­se­quence is that most of the plea deals pros­e­cu­tors now make with defen­dants wouldn’t make much sense: A defen­dant is charged with first-degree mur­der, for exam­ple, but pleads guilty to the less­er offense of invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter. “And that’s done all the time,” said Etienne. Porter does cite sev­er­al Illinois cas­es for his con­clu­sion. These cas­es pri­mar­i­ly deal with the issue of jury instruc­tions in the reverse sit­u­a­tion when some­one charged with a more severe intent crime wants a jury to con­sid­er a less­er offense. A mur­der defen­dant, for exam­ple, wants the judge to also instruct the jury that they can find the defen­dant guilty of the less­er crime of invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter rather than mur­der. The judge rejects the defendant’s argu­ment, on the ratio­nale that this is a crime of intent, and not a less­er crime of reck­less­ness. But Etienne points out that this is a very dif­fer­ent legal argu­ment. “To dis­miss a case where reck­less­ness was charged because intent was proven. That’s a dif­fer­ent ques­tion,” she said, while con­ced­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Illinois courts would come out a dif­fer­ent way on this question.

Timothy P. O’Neill, a pro­fes­sor at John Marshall Law School in Chicago, ques­tions Porter for anoth­er, dif­fer­ent rea­son. “I respect Judge Porter, but at the same time I think he maybe made the case a lit­tle bit more dif­fi­cult than it had to be,” O’Neill said. Even if Servin intend­ed to fire the gun, he seem­ing­ly didn’t intend to hit Boyd. He instead intend­ed to hit the man whom he believed was pulling a gun out of his waist­band. “You can do inten­tion­al acts and still be found guilty of invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter based on results,” O’Neill said. Both O’Neill and Etienne agreed that Servin could have, and per­haps should have, been charged this time around with mur­der — a crime that requires intent. “But that does NOT mean that it is legal­ly impos­si­ble to also find it could have been invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter: the defen­dant com­mit­ted vol­un­tary acts that reck­less­ly killed an unin­tend­ed vic­tim,” O’Neill said. “That is invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter.” http://​thinkprogress​.org/​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​/​2​0​1​5​/​0​4​/​2​1​/​3​6​4​9​0​4​3​/​j​u​d​g​e​-​l​e​t​s​-​c​o​p​-​w​a​l​k​-​d​e​a​d​l​y​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​-​t​h​o​u​g​h​t​-​c​h​a​r​g​e​s​-​w​e​r​e​n​t​-​s​e​v​e​r​e​-​e​n​o​u​gh/

It’s impor­tant to note that the lat­est case of egre­gious police mis­con­duct hap­pened in Illinois the State the President calls home. And in Chicago a city run by the President’s for­mer Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel a Democrat.
The killing of trou­bled 17 year old Laquan McDonald by City of Chicago Cop Jason Van Dyke result­ed in a mas­sive cov­er-up involv­ing the Mayor the Prosecutor’s office and the Police who went as far as to crim­i­nal­ly delete crit­i­cal footage from a busi­ness place which cap­tured the exe­cu­tion of the 17 year old teen by Van Dyke.
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said Van Dyke had been on site less than 30 sec­onds and out of his car for six sec­onds, when he start­ed shooting.
However despite this clear knowl­edge that Jason VanDyke who had in excess of 20 com­plaints against him for abus­ing cit­i­zens had exe­cut­ed Laquan McDonald no crim­i­nal charges were brought by the Prosecutor ,

The mur­der­ous cop was still allowed to con­tin­ue oper­at­ing as a police offi­cer. Despite clear abu­sive and vio­lent ten­den­cies Van Dyke was allowed to con­tin­ue being a cop. Even after the city set­tled with at lest one mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty he caused seri­ous injury to. The city of Chicago pro­posed and reached a $5 mil­lion set­tle­ment in April to the moth­er of Laquan McDonald even though she did not even file a law­suit against the city for the mur­der of her son.
The Mayor , the Prosecutor and the Police brass knew it was a hor­ren­dous mur­der yet they fought tooth and nail to cov­er up the atro­cious behav­ior of a man whom they all knew sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed anoth­er human being. The city’s man­ager’s were equal­ly as duplic­i­tous in approv­ing a 5 mil­lion dol­lar sum of tax­pay­ers mon­ey so a mur­der­ing punk could remain in uniform.
As a for­mer police offi­cer I am offend­ed when I see media hous­es like CNN bring on cops to tell view­ers why it’s nec­es­sary to fire 16 bul­lets into anoth­er human being who is armed with a small pen knife when the first shot spun him around and he fell pos­ing no dan­ger to any­one( not that he did before the shots).

A police offi­cer’s job is not to kill peo­ple, their job is to pro­tect and serve.
Members of the pub­lic are not ene­my com­bat­ants cops do not need to keep fir­ing until a per­son shows no sign of life.
CNN and oth­er cor­po­rate medi­um of mis­in­for­ma­tion are asym­met­ri­cal­ly wag­ing a war against black com­mu­ni­ty as well bring­ing cops, retired cops and cop-apol­o­gists on to con­vince a gullible pub­lic that cops need to treat civil­ians as com­bat­ants on a battlefield.
Even wars have rules of engage­ment, trag­i­cal­ly for the Black Community in America police do not seem to need to observe any rules of engagement
Jason VanDyke opened fire on Laquan McDonald imme­di­ate­ly after arriv­ing on by all accounts includ­ing the damming video of the incident.
He fired and kept fir­ing until the prostate vic­tim stopped twitch­ing . .….….…Sixteen shots in all it was a pub­lic execution.
None of the oth­er offi­cers fired a sin­gle shot. The crim­i­nal defense lawyer for Van Dyke lied that his client feared for his life the video shows oth­er­wise. An offi­cer afraid for his life does not advance on the per­son you are afraid of as Van Dyke did in the video.
The Prosecutor did not charge the killer cop with cap­i­tal mur­der until after a judge forced them to release the video.
The cov­er-up is mind bog­gling in this case the entire sys­tem in Chicago was pre­pared to cov­er up this heinous execution.
But no per­son of col­or should be sur­prised at this , it has been hap­pen­ing for hun­dreds of years and indeed cer­tain­ly before the advent of mobile cam­eras and video devices.

This killing is just anoth­er in a long line of police killing of peo­ple with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. It is eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the killing of 12 year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland.
It smacks of a cal­lous, bla­tant, con­temp­tu­ous ‚dis­re­spect­ful dis­re­gard for human life. Those who argue that Blacks are killing Blacks shows a seri­ous lack of com­mon sense . It is the job of the police to bring black mur­der­ers to jus­tice they are paid to do so. The pris­ons are filled with black gang-bangers. What does that have to do with police murder?
We do not pay police to com­mit mur­der . Rahm Emanuel spoke of the impor­tance for peace after the video was released, yet Emanuel is dis­mis­sive of the Black Lives Matter Movement , declar­ing last month,” this move­ment has made a hard job even hard­er for law enforce­ment It is hav­ing an impact on the safe­ty we want to see through­out the city of Chicago,” .
Nothing like legit­imiz­ing these pow­er crazed big­ots they turn on you in a jiffy. This from a guy who Chicago Black res­i­dents turned out in droves and elect­ed to office.

What author­i­ty did Chicago police have to enter the burg­er King and erase damn­ing evi­dence from a secu­ri­ty camera?
Now that we know the offi­cers lied about the sequence of events what action will be tak­en against them?
What action will be tak­en against those who delet­ed the video of the exe­cu­tion from the sys­tem of a pri­vate company?
Will the Police Union now come out and apol­o­gize for lying that Laquan McDonald lunged at Van Dyke?

None of this will hap­pen because we live in a police state where the laws are stretched and recon­fig­ured to accom­mo­date police killings.
No one knows exact­ly how many peo­ple police kill in America each year. In light of recent hap­pen­ings some orga­ni­za­tions have begun look­ing seri­ous­ly at just how many peo­ple American police are exe­cut­ing in their name on an annu­al basis.
There are no uni­formed stan­dards of report­ing cop killings, none is required . It was always left up to cops to decide when to kill peo­ple and they do not even have to report it to fed­er­al authorities
Video Vigilantism is now slight­ly begin­ning to scratch the sur­face of this grotesque under­bel­ly of police atroc­i­ties and it reveals some­thing many would like to pre­tend is not happening.

Unfortunately some see it as nec­es­sary to con­trol and even exter­mi­nate Blacks from the equa­tion. This is a dou­ble edged sword how­ev­er as police are killing whites as well with alarm­ing alacrity and frequency.
Maybe just not with such depraved indif­fer­ence but soon col­or won’t matter.
Batons,pepper-spray and tasers are mere­ly used as instru­ments of tor­ture for American cops once a sus­pect is peace­able in hand­cuffs not tools to sub­due vio­lent suspects.
In oth­er coun­tries includ­ing Britain police are able to encir­cle sus­pects who are armed with machetes and swords with­out fir­ing a sin­gle shot. Generally when a sus­pect is in pub­lic act­ing strange armed with swords, machetes or small fold­ing knives[sic] there is usu­al­ly some­thing more going on as was the case of Laquan McDonald. The rul­ing is that he had PCP in his sys­tem whether this is true or not we may nev­er know. Who knows what to believe from these Agencies anymore?
If a per­son is act­ing irra­tional­ly it is all the more rea­son to try to deesca­late .Whatever hap­pened to try­ing to resolve issues ?
Why are American cops so deter­mined to kill?

The cou­ple was spot­ted out­side their New York City home on Sunday, with Camille cling­ing to her hus­band’s arm. The 78-year-old come­di­an was dressed down in a white sweat­shirt with the words “Hello Friend” print­ed on it, while Camille wore a long grey coat. Hello Friend is the name of the foun­da­tion the Cosbys set up in hon­or of their late son, Ennis Cosby, who was killed in a failed rob­bery attempt in 1997.

The sight­ing marks the first time in six months that the come­di­an has been pho­tographed. The last pub­lic sight­ing of Cosby was in May dur­ing his appear­ance at Selma High School in Alabama, where he pro­mot­ed education.

Over 50 women have now accused the embat­tled come­di­an of sex­u­al assault. He has denied all wrong­do­ing and has nev­er been charged with a crime.

Last December, Camille defend­ed her hus­band of over 40 years, after the num­ber of women accus­ing him of sex­u­al assault began to grow.

“A dif­fer­ent man has been por­trayed in the media over the last two months,” she said in the state­ment. “It is the por­trait of a man I do not know. It is also a por­trait paint­ed by indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions whom many in the media have giv­en a pass. There appears to be no vet­ting of my husband’s accusers before sto­ries are pub­lished or aired. An accu­sa­tion is pub­lished, and imme­di­ate­ly goes viral.”

“None of us will ever want to be in the posi­tion of attack­ing a vic­tim. But the ques­tion should be asked — who is the victim?“she added.

In November 2014, super­mod­el Beverly Johnson briefly talked about Camille, after she claimed Cosby drugged her in 1986 at his home when she came to read for a part on The Cosby Show. Johnson said that when she called to con­front the come­di­an using the pri­vate num­ber he gave her, she was shocked to hear Camille answer the phone.

“A lit­tle shocked, I quick­ly iden­ti­fied myself to her in the most respect­ful way pos­si­ble and then asked to speak to Bill,” Johnson wrote for Vanity Fair. “Camille polite­ly informed me that it was very late, 11 p.m., and that they were both in bed together.”

WATCH: Three New Bill Cosby Accusers Come Forward, Including a Former Mrs. America

Cosby recent­ly had a legal win on Nov. 13, when Judge Debra Katz Weintraub tem­porar­i­ly stayed an order for him to sit for a depo­si­tion in accuser Janice Dickinson’s defama­tion civ­il suit against him. Cosby’s depo­si­tion was orig­i­nal­ly sup­posed to take place on Nov. 23 in Boston, Dickinson’s attor­ney, Lisa Bloom,exclu­sive­ly told ET ear­li­er this month.

Cosby was already ordered to give a depo­si­tion on Oct. 9 in the case of Judy Huth, who claims in a law­suit that he molest­ed her at the Playboy Mansion in 1974 when she was 15. It was ruled the details of that depo­si­tion are to be sealed from the pub­lic until Dec. 22, so the court can decide which por­tions may or may not be kept confidential.

Read more here :Bill Cosby Steps Out for First Time in Six Months, Wife Camille Remains By His Side by Antoinette Bueno 3:50 PM PST, November 24, 2015

Awhile back I had a con­ver­sa­tion with a woman who adamant­ly argued about the virtues of moth­er­hood and it’s impor­tance. She insist­ed moth­er­hood was far more impor­tant than father­hood. I thought to myself “were it left up to many of these women the world’s pop­u­la­tion would have died out long ago”.
She told me women stay at home and wipe snot and take care of their kids as such they love more than any­one else.
I had heard that cocka­mamie all my life and was real­ly fed up with the nonsense >
So I asked her whether fathers who gets up on a scaf­fold­ing to wash win­dows 99 floors above the ground, con­struct sky­scrap­ers, the sol­dier who goes to war, or the Police Officer who goes out every day lay­ing his life on the line count­ed as love, Or whether that’s even love at all?
Her answer was a jum­bled mess of gobbledygook.

For years the Feminist move­ment has rede­fined love between par­ents and chil­dren to some­thing only women could give. This reduced Fathers to pas­sive­ly neutered car­ri­ers of check­books to cater to his wom­an’s needs.
He is pow­er­less to make deci­sions in his home and his chil­dren look to their moth­er for guid­ance and security.
In some eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties the men have sim­ply left.
Many argue that they pay child sup­port. When I first heard this argu­ment about pay­ing child sup­port I was indig­nant that these men are sim­ply bums who do not want to look after their children.
A clos­er look how­ev­er reveals that in many cas­es these men are led to believe mon­ey is all they are required to give .
So even though they are present in the house­hold they have absolute­ly no impact on their chil­dren’s development
I mean in American house­holds many men are mere observers to what occur includ­ing how their chil­dren are raised and they dare not dis­ci­pline their own chil­dren out of fear of the women.
Many sim­ply chose to abdi­cate their respon­si­bil­i­ty because they do not want to deal with the stress of fighting,.
Oh by the way they dare not look to the courts for jus­tice . The fam­i­ly courts may very well be the most unjust arm of the so-called jus­tice system.

Patriot Update puts it this way.
Who fought the bloody bat­tles of the American Revolution that estab­lished America as a free and sov­er­eign nation? It was men. Who draft­ed the Declaration of Independence and Constitution — two of the most sig­nif­i­cant doc­u­ments in human his­to­ry? It was men. Who went chin to chin with Hitler’s storm troop­ers in four years of bru­tal bat­tles and saved the world from Nazi tyran­ny? It was men. Who bat­tled Tojo’s sui­ci­dal troops down to the last man on a string of Pacific islands? It was men? Who con­struct­ed the sky­scrap­ers that give New York City its dis­tinc­tive sky­line? It was men. Who rebuilt New York’s sky­line after it was destroyed by crazed ter­ror­ists on 9 – 11? It was men. In fact, if you exam­ine the actions, inven­tions, deci­sions, and activ­i­ties that made the United States the world’s sole superpower?
Feminists are neu­ter­ing the American male and the American male is let­ting it hap­pen. In his book, Missing from Action: Vanishing Manhood in America, author Welden M. Hardenbrook writes: “Over the years I have had the priv­i­lege of work­ing with the broad spec­trum of men who can only be found in America. No mat­ter who they have been — cap­i­tal­ists, com­mu­nists, col­lege stu­dents, dropouts, Christians, athe­ists, blacks, whites, young, or old — they have had one prob­lem in com­mon. They have suf­fered to one degree or anoth­er from the touch of the fem­i­niz­ing forces that have tak­en over the land. These men have not been sure what it means to be a man…They are men who refuse to take respon­si­bil­i­ty. Their pas­siv­i­ty and inac­tion ensure that…lead­er­ship in their homes belongs to their wives.” Hardenbrook might have added that it isn’t just in the home where men are no longer lead­ers. NEUTERING THE MALE OF THE SPECIES: THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY.

Daughters need to see strong fathers who are tow­ers of strength for their fam­i­lies. Strong fathers are good role-mod­els so they know what to look for when they are ready to date.
Sons also must be giv­en strong role mod­els who are not neutered wus­si­fied male, pet­ri­fied of mak­ing deci­sions because there will be hell to pay because the wives will throw a fit.
In our house­hold its all boys , they play sports both bas­ket­ball and foot­ball, they are engaged in some type of sport­ing activ­i­ty year round.
I very sel­dom make it to a scrim­mage as a self employed per­son . My wife sel­dom miss­es a scrim­mage because her sched­ule allows her that latitude.
Does that mean she loves the boys more than I do ? It would be a mis­take for any­one to come to that conclusion.
I will lay my life down for my chil­dren when the rub­ber meets the road.
None of this stuff define love.
Feminism is not only doing irrepara­ble harm to tra­di­tion­al mar­riage it is hurt­ing Generations to come arguably over­turn­ing the roles between the sexes.
Many of us men are all too hap­py to del­e­gate the respon­si­bil­i­ty to be men .
In America prob­a­bly more so than any place else women are more than will­ing to have men reduced to a joke and men are allow­ing it.

More and more Jamaicans and insti­tu­tions appear to be see­ing the need to have fixed Election dates as opposed to hav­ing the sit­ting Prime Minister decide when to call elec­tions. At best the present mod­el more resem­bles some­thing from a Monarchy as opposed to our Parliamentary Democratic system.
The Private Sector Organization Of Jamaica through it’s head William Mahfood is among the lat­est to add his voice to the cho­rus which includes the Editorial Page of the Jamaica Observer , the Electoral Commission of Jamaica the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party among oth­ers. Ironically this small medi­um and this writer have been call­ing for fixed elec­tion dates for years. Fixed elec­tion dates is not a panacea or sil­ver bul­let for what ails Jamaica but it is one step in the right direc­tion as it relates to Governance.

For years we have argued that a sin­gle indi­vid­ual , (irre­spec­tive of sta­tion or par­ty) hav­ing the pow­er to decide elec­tions is bound to manip­u­late the option and abuse that privileged.
If that pow­er is removed from the hands of politi­cians their abil­i­ty to hold the coun­try to ran­som while they tin­ker with the process to get the results they desire from the polls goes away.
People who Govern are sup­posed to do the best job pos­si­ble of gov­ern­ing. They should enact the poli­cies they cam­paigned on and live with the consequences.
Technically elec­tions are due more than a year from now and of course some are con­fused won­der­ing what then is the fuss about.?
The Constitution demands that elec­tions be held no more than 5 years from the date of the last elections.
The last nation­al polls were held on December 29^th 2011.
The Jamaica Observer and polit­i­cal pun­dits all agree it was the Prime Minister her­self who placed the nation on elec­tion foot­ing by telling her sup­port­ers to quote“Get ready”. Additionally Dr Peter Phillips, had also, dur­ing the cam­paign, stressed the urgency of get­ting the elec­tion out of the way to remove the uncer­tain­ty among some prospec­tive investors and to get the coun­try back on track.

Now con­front­ed with what seem like an immi­nent loss the Prime Minister is walk­ing back all of that now claim­ing she will await God’s touch to decide when to call elec­tions. Of course she awaits Gods touch while giv­ing a pletho­ra of sil­ly rea­sons why she is not yet ready to call elections.
Quote: “You will be appro­pri­ate­ly informed when my mas­ter touch­es me and say ‘my daugh­ter go nigh’,”
This non­sense is no way to run a coun­try. Its time Jamaicans set aside the cur­ry goat and red stripe pol­i­tics and embrace and begin to chart a course if not for them­selves for their chil­dren’s future.

Black Lives Matter activists gath­ered to protest what they say is once again the egre­gious killing of an unarmed hand­cuffed Black man by Police in Minneapolis were fired on alleged­ly by white Supremacists, or by peo­ple opposed to them stand­ing up for their rights.
Before we talk about this any fur­ther it is impor­tant to pause and rec­og­nize that we are not talk­ing about the unlaw­ful killing of an unarmed Black man which pre­cip­i­tat­ed the protest.
We have now moved to talk­ing about Police killing unarmed hand­cuffed Black men.
Demonstrators have set up a camp out­side the Minneapolis Police Department’s 4^th Precinct to protest the fatal police shoot­ing of a black man. Police say they shot Jamar Clark in the head because he inter­fered with para­medics who were treat­ing his girlfriend.

The Police know­ing that this is inde­fen­si­ble argues that he was not cuffed at the time he was shot in the head.
They no longer have to defend the fact that a Black man is unarmed any­more the con­ver­sa­tion has moved on.
Black skin col­or has been weaponized and accept­ed so. Police are well with­in their rights to kill a Black per­son sole­ly on the basis of his/​her skin col­or and there is no debate any­more about weapons.
It’s impor­tant to note just how far the goal-post have been moved by the Supreme Court, the low­er courts and the Mainstream Media to accom­mo­date police mur­der. We are no longer talk­ing about the unmit­i­gat­ed wrong of police offi­cers killing unarmed peo­ple that’s accept­able now, the debate is how to get away with killing peo­ple while they are in handcuffs.

Reports of the inci­dent in Minneapolis indi­cate that Ambulances did not show up until fif­teen min­utes after being called that at least 5 peo­ple have been shot.
the Newyorktimes​.com reports Some wit­ness­es said on Twitter that they had been sprayed with Mace by the police fol­low­ing the shooting.
Some are the­o­ris­ing that the shoot­ers may actu­al­ly have been Police wear­ing ski masks. Protesters said the three men have been show­ing up at the ral­lies film­ing the events and act­ing oth­er­wise shady. This caused them enough con­cern to assign peo­ple to keep an eye on the men.

One thing is clear now as was clear dur­ing the six­ties when King and oth­ers marched for social jus­tice Activists are fight­ing white suprema­cists not just clad in sheets and ski masks but in police uniforms.
It is impor­tant not to for­get that along with that dan­ger is the insti­tu­tion­al­ized sav­agery of white suprema­cy which is deeply and indeli­bly entrenched with­in the sys­tem includ­ing but not con­fined to ambu­lances not show­ing up with dis­patch to deal with the demands of injured victims.

Irrespective of what 24 year-old Jamar Clark did or did not do the ques­tion must be cen­tered on whether it war­rant­ed him being shot in the head cuffed or not?
We have seen this script before in Ferguson Missouri in the shoot­ing of Michael Brown. Shot from a dis­tance away when the cop had all the time to react with­out resort­ing to lethal and dead­ly force. But it did not mat­ter he knew there would be no con­se­quence to him for killing Michael Brown.
The voice of the peo­ple alarmed the sys­tem so Michael Brown became a vicious beast which need­ed to be put down.
It is accept­able for one’s past trans­gres­sions to deter­mine whether police see fit to inflict cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment on the spot in America now.

♦ Institutionalized Racism at the cen­ter of these immoral killings.
♦Institutionalized Racism at the cen­ter of med­ical response.
♦ Institutionalized Racism at the cen­ter of Police aggres­sion even after the shootings.
♦ Institutionalized racism embold­ened the shooters.
♦ Institutionalized Racism will impact the Investigation.
♦ Institutionalized Racism cor­rodes the Courts sys­tem which makes it impos­si­ble for Blacks to get Justice, par­tic­u­lar­ly at state levels.
♦ Institutionalized Racism in the report­ing of events.
♦Institutionalized Racism in the medi­a’s nar­ra­tive on the aforementioned .
♦ Institutionalized Racism con­tin­ues the insid­i­ous tox­ic can­cer which con­tin­ues to eat away at the foun­da­tion of this nation.
Because one set of peo­ple want to have rights and guar­an­tees no one else should.

This seri­ous prob­lem is not just a prob­lem on American soil it shapes opin­ions and per­cep­tions about America on the International stage.
In the mean­time the Right wing fas­cists run­ning for the Presidency riles up the most vile racist xeno­pho­bic ele­ments of their base against every­one not a white Anglo-Saxon.
I won­der how they plan on Governing the mess they are creating ?
Already things are get­ting quite com­pli­cat­ed around the Globe adding fuel to the fire hard­ly seem like a smart strat­e­gy but they have dived in head­first advo­cat­ing for more of what got us to this point, we shall see.

One of the things I learned as a child from my care­givers was to “speak the truth and speak it ever cost it what it will he who hides the wrong he did does the wrong thing still”>
Now I’m a man I still hear the same refrain today , most­ly from rich white men who refer to them­selves as Christian Conservatives.
I have always con­sid­ered myself a Christian by faith even before I gave my life to the lord, because I was raised in a Christian home. It was that fun­da­men­tal belief in God which pre­vent­ed me from steal­ing, killing, and doing oth­er things some find social­ly unacceptable.

As I delib­er­at­ed for myself the mer­its of giv­ing my life to Christ I sought to find ways to be Christ-like . I want­ed to do the things Christ told us to do. I thought about Matthew 26:11 a woman broke an Alabaster box of pre­cious oint­ment, she then used the oint­ment to wash Jesus’ feet then used her hair to dry them.
His dis­ci­ples were not pleased but Jesus know­ing their thoughts said unto them …10“Why do you both­er the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me. 11“For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me. 12“For when she poured this per­fume on My body, she did it to pre­pare Me for burial.…

I will not talk about my inter­pre­ta­tion of Conservatism suf­fice to say that Merriam​-Webster​.com. char­ac­ter­izes it this way.
CONSERVATISM<>A polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy based on tra­di­tion and social sta­bil­i­ty, stress­ing estab­lished insti­tu­tions, and pre­fer­ring grad­ual devel­op­ment to abrupt change; specif­i­cal­ly : such a phi­los­o­phy call­ing for low­er tax­es, lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion of busi­ness and invest­ing, a strong nation­al defense, and indi­vid­ual finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty for per­son­al needs (as retire­ment income or health-care coverage).

On the basis of what Christ wants us to do I con­sid­er myself a Christian despite my filthy-rags dis­po­si­tionn at times. I also see cer­tain ele­ments of my per­son­al belief sys­tem in Merriam Webster’s elo­quent char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Conservatism.
I am not par­tic­u­lar­ly sold on the con­cept of  indi­vid­ual finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty for per­son­al needs (as retire­ment income or health-care coverage.
I do believe Government has a role to play in help­ing those who are unable to help them­selves, not those who refuse to help themselves.

Despite my best efforts I haven’t found much com­mon­al­i­ty with the polit­i­cal right’s protes­ta­tions of either Christianity or Conservatism and my ideas of either.
The Bible says by their fruits you shall know them.Matthew 7:20 …19“Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.20“So then, you will know them by their fruits. 21“Not every­one who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the king­dom of heav­en, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heav­en will enter.…

I don’t want to judge who fit the bill of a chris­t­ian and who does­n’t but when a philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tive espous­es Christian prin­ci­ples yet does every­thing anti­thet­i­cal to the faith I feel duty bound to at least say to peo­ple uncon­vinced or con­fused at the dis­con­nect between words and deeds that they are char­la­tans and impostors.

♦The Political right espous­es the right to life, I am not opposed, it is nev­er man’s right to take life. Yet their defense of life stops after a woman gives birth.
They stead­fast­ly believe a woman absolute­ly have no right to ter­mi­nate a preg­nan­cy even preg­nan­cies which emanat­ed from rapes or inces­tu­ous assaults.
Now Like I said pre­vi­ous­ly I refuse to play God it’s above my pay-grade to decide who live or die like some white peo­ple believe when they deny tax­pay­ers funds to help care for chil­dren after birth.
They oppose food-stamps and oth­er ben­e­fits which would give babies the most basic sustenance.
They oppose every oth­er forms of Governmental assis­tance which would sus­tain life even to those who can­not help themselves.
Where is the chris­t­ian empa­thy and love

Yet they want mas­sive buildup of mil­i­tary arse­nal at the expense of social pro­grams which would aid the least able to take care of themselves.
Ironically they have no prob­lem giv­ing lucra­tive tax-breaks to mega cor­po­ra­tions which absolute­ly does not need the money.
And this is just on the char­i­ty end of the spectrum.
In order to elic­it sym­pa­thy from them one has to be white Anglo-Saxon regard­less of the trav­es­ty being vis­it­ed on the vic­tim. Where is their empa­thy for their fel­low man? Where is their fideli­ty and obe­di­ence to the teach­ings of Jesus Christ?

In order to make Jesus palat­able to them­selves they had to change per­cep­tions of what Jesus looked like. So Jesus Christ could not con­tin­ue to be a dark-skinned Jewish man he had to be recre­at­ed to look like a long haired white male> Without equiv­o­ca­tion that lev­el of inse­cu­ri­ty and hatred has got to be genetic.

♦ One of the amaz­ing things to me is their dis­gust­ing inabil­i­ty to speak the truth . This is not a ques­tion of Left and Right , it’s a issue of White.
How do you straight faced call your­self a Christian then lie through your teeth ?
If God was venge­ful where would these white men be?
Dr. John Henrik Clarke . born January 1, 1915 died July 16, 1998 Writer ‚Historian Professor, Hunter College in New York and at Cornell University.
When the ear­ly Europeans first met Africans, at the cross­roads of his­to­ry, it was a respect­ful meet­ing and the Africans were not slaves. Their nations were old before Europe was born. In this peri­od of his­to­ry, what was to be lat­er known as “Africa” was an unknown place to the peo­ple who would some­day be called, “Europeans.” Only the peo­ple of some of the Mediterranean Islands and a few states of what would become the Greek and Roman areas knew of parts of North Africa, and that was a land of mys­tery. After the rise and decline of Greek civ­i­liza­tion and the Roman destruc­tion of the city of Carthage, they made the con­quered ter­ri­to­ries into a province which they called Africa, a word derived from “afri” and the name of a group of peo­ple about whom lit­tle is known. At first the word applied only to the Roman colonies in North Africa. There was a time when all dark-skinned peo­ple were called Ethiopians, for the Greeks referred to Africa.
Why Africana History? by Dr. John Henrik Clarke.

The unmit­i­gat­ed gall to copy an entire peo­ple’s his­to­ry then do every­thing in their pow­er to remove every trace of the great­ness and grace of our ances­tors is dumbfounding.
Black Lives mat­ter Activists are now some­how anti-law enforce­ment? Why would any Black per­son be for a Law Enforcement mod­el which kills their sons and daugh­ters aunts and uncles and gets away with it.
What unvar­nished arrogance?
Students don’t have the right to rise up on University Campuses and speak out against racial oppres­sion in their Schools, their com­mu­ni­ties, their coun­try, because some white guy decides who should speak and who shouldn’t?
On what Planet is this sus­tain­able and with­out consequence?

When stu­dents at Dartmouth protest in sol­i­dar­i­ty with stu­dents of Mizzou and Yale white peo­ple get into chatt rooms and use all kinds of con­de­scend­ing lan­guage , clear­ly what they want is for black peo­ple to shut up and endure anoth­er 400 hun­dred years of tyranny.
Instead of relat­ing to the obscene pogrom which have been vis­it­ed on African peo­ple in this coun­try and around the world and still con­tin­ue today as some whites have done the major­i­ty of them wants silence.
Who the hell do they thing they are?

They engi­neer wars across the Globe . They engi­neer over­throw of gov­ern­ments with whom they dis­agree then label free­dom fight­ers terrorists.
How sus­tain­able will this con­tin­ue to be? How many more years will the black and brown peo­ple of the Globe lay dor­mant even with the rav­ages of geno­cide inflict­ed on them through arti­fi­cial dis­eases ‚wars and oth­er meth­ods of exter­mi­na­tion? Do they think we are too stu­pid to under­stand whats going on ?

There is no Christian in their brand of Conservatism let’s be clear about that. In the same way there was no Christianity in their hearts when they inter­act­ed with the Africans and Native Indians then mer­ci­less­ly mas­sa­cred them, there is no Christianity in their hearts today.
They are the sons and daugh­ters of dark­ness and the soon­er we speak to these truths the better.
When Black peo­ple rise up and say Black lives mat­ter what the hell is their prob­lem ? All these peo­ple are say­ing is “our lives mat­ter too” ! Their lives have always mattered.

We do not need them to val­i­date this move­ment, and we cer­tain­ly do not need the val­i­da­tion and sup­port of those whom Professor Clarke so appro­pri­ate­ly refer to as “white butt kissers”.
The fact that they are up in arms is that it’s caus­ing them some dis­qui­et, some dis­com­fort, on that basis alone Black Lives Matter must not only con­tin­ue it must intensify.
For hun­dreds of years they have mas­sa­cred and raped with impuni­ty, they have intim­i­dat­ed and wreaked all kinds of geno­cide and ter­ror and Blacks peo­ple stood silent­ly by and allowed them to get away with it.
It must end. Why would they not be indig­nant now they have always had things their way ? “Yes mas­sa suh” !!

It was January of 1982 I was gid­dy with excite­ment, I had just entered the Police Training school at Port Royal. Little did I know that I would spend a full year between Port Royal and Twickenham Park which would even­tu­al­ly become what we now know as the Jamaica Police Academy.

It is kin­da strange how I end­ed up at Twickenham Park despite join­ing the JCF and found my way on the back of a truck des­tined for Port Royal.
In High School my Agriculture Science Teacher mis­ter Bascoe thought that I was some­thing spe­cial , I nev­er quite fig­ured out why, I always thought myself an aver­age stu­dent but teach­ers I love them. Mister Bascoe gave me an all expense paid trip to the Twickenham Park facil­i­ty which was the Jamaica School of Agriculture at the time.
I fell in love with the place, I redou­bled my efforts back in mis­ter Boscoe’s Agri sci­ences class­es so I could make him proud.

It was­n’t long after that that the Jamaica school of agri­cul­ture was dis­band­ed and the facil­i­ty was giv­en to the Ministry of National Security, it would lat­er become the new home for police trainees.
My choic­es after leav­ing high school were Mico Teacher’s col­lege or the Police depart­ment, I had no inten­tion of going to Knockalva Agricultural School in Ramble Hanover.
Port Royal here I come..

The choice for me at the time was pret­ty easy. Coming from a fam­i­ly where mon­ey was some­thing we read about. No one need­ed to con­vince me that at that time the Police depart­ment would be a bet­ter fit.
Police recruits are paid as soon as they start train­ing not so for colleges.
The even­tu­al hun­dred plus of us who start­ed train­ing in June of 1982 would be the very first batch of young con­sta­bles to begin and com­plete train­ing at the Jamaica police academy.

There is a lot to be said about any­one who decide to become a police offi­cer. There is even more to be said about any­one dar­ing to be a police offi­cer in Jamaica eas­i­ly one of the most law­less places . The peo­ple are large­ly unin­formed yet high­ly opin­ion­at­ed, a some­times potent mix.
It cer­tain­ly did not take me long to real­ize that this was not the best place to be a police officer.
One of the things I hear now which I heard for the decade I served is that the police are only there for the money.
There is alway a cer­tain ele­ment of truth to the argu­ment that peo­ple work because they need money.
There is much more to the argu­ment when that per­son actu­al­ly place his/​her life on the line for that pay­check. On that basis I nev­er quite under­stood the log­ic of that argument.
Having seen the attri­tion rate from the police depart­ment over the years it cer­tain­ly does not enhance the mon­e­tary argu­ments police detrac­tors make.

After grad­u­at­ing from the Academy it did not take long for me to real­ize that despite my love for the rule of law the depart­ment would not be my last car­rear stop. The job was dif­fi­cult the pay was shit­ty but the peo­ple who led the depart­ment made the job more dif­fi­cult and shit­ti­er than it need­ed to be.

Every young con­sta­ble who enters the Police ser­vices is book­end­ed by the per­ils on the streets and the ego­ma­ni­a­cal king­pins who super­vise the high­er up the worse they are.
Subsequently cops are stressed, many offi­cers seek escape in alco­hol and oth­er vices
Others sim­ply decide to look out for themselves.

Most impor­tant­ly how­ev­er I real­ized that it was not in the cards that I would con­tin­ue risk­ing my life for a nation which sim­ply did not believe in the rule of law.
People dis­agree some­what with that sen­ti­ment but the facts are clear. Only the poor­est of the poor coun­try folks allow their chil­dren to enter law enforce­ment. Mothers active­ly coun­sel their chil­dren nev­er to become police officers.
The brunt of that bur­den falls to poor rur­al folks to sac­ri­fice and bury their chil­dren in ser­vice to country.

Many today who become Police offi­cers are risk averse even with bul­let proof vests , com­put­ers and oth­er mod­ern tools.
During the Seaga years when I served we were record­ing 300 mur­ders annu­al­ly, at the time I thought we were fail­ing dis­mal­ly in what we were sup­posed to be doing.
I thought then that we could have done bet­ter even with the short­ages of resources which would have saved a lot more lives and reduced some of the loss to citizens.
As I have said repeat­ed­ly in oth­er arti­cles being a police offi­cer brought out some of the great­est emo­tions in me. Usually love and admi­ra­tion for our coun­try’s poor­est and dispossessed.
Conversely I devel­oped a pal­pa­ble dis­dain for those who con­sid­ered them­selves élite, they ben­e­fit­ed most from the sac­ri­fice we made while short cir­cuit­ing law-enforce­ment efforts but giv­ing noth­ing back to make our coun­try better.

I walked away from law enforce­ment under­stand­ing that I would not make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the fight to make Jamaica a coun­try of laws. It was not going to be done from a law enforce­ment posi­tion. There were sim­ply too many forces with their own inter­est which want­ed a crime culture.
I can­not lie that I was not annoyed by the ghet­to cul­ture which demo­nizes police. However I was nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly swayed one way or the oth­er by it. I knew that with the right lead­er­ship the man on the street was movable.
With the right lead­er­ship peo­ple con­form. The prob­lem for Jamaica was nev­er that the aver­age guy was unswayable, the prob­lem is that no one in lead­er­ship was doing the right kind of swaying.

The prob­lem of law­less­ness which exist today did not hap­pen all by itself. There has been over half a cen­tu­ry of cul­tur­al oppo­si­tion to the rule of law. Unfortunately for the few sane Jamaicans still liv­ing there who believe things will change for the bet­ter I can­not offer any words of comfort.
If you plant corn for a mil­lion years for a mil­lion years you will reap corn.
Rather than look at mod­els which work in oth­er coun­tries refine them to suit our par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances Jamaican lead­ers either did noth­ing or active­ly stood in the way of bet­ter law enforcement.

This year like all the years before over a thou­sand and a half peo­ple will be slaugh­tered on the Island of 2.7 million.
Countless chil­dren will be raped and sodom­ized ( boys and girls) . Many more will be traf­ficked into pros­ti­tu­tion and oth­er vices. Hundreds more will be seri­ous­ly hurt and dis­fig­ured from vicious assaults.
More hous­es will be fire­bombed and chil­dren muti­lat­ed and killed.
The Island’s lead­ers will do absolute­ly noth­ing about it.

In the end the peo­ple will con­tin­ue to glo­ri­fy crim­i­nal “dons”, even as they lament the crime spree, wash away the blood and bury their dead.
From as ear­ly as I can recall the police was “baby­lon bways”, my look at the Island’s his­to­ry reveals noth­ing the police did to turn the peo­ple from respect­ing the rule of law. Conversely what I saw was a peo­ple opposed to dis­ci­pline which invari­ably changed the police to start look­ing out for themselves.
The afore­men­tioned is in no way a state­ment of sup­port for cor­rup­tion it is sim­ply a state­ment of fact..

When a coun­try cre­ate and cul­ti­vate a cul­ture of dis­re­spect for author­i­ty that coun­try should not be sur­prised when it reaps a har­vest of mur­der and mayhem.
The Island’s lead­ers are large­ly crim­i­nals in pri­vate, I say that with­out equiv­o­ca­tion . It is not a stretch to the­o­rize that the rea­son they allowed the Police depart­ment and the rule of law to dete­ri­o­rate is that a com­pe­tent police depart­ment is a great threat to their abil­i­ties to milk the coun­try dry.

Today the depart­ment has a lot of mem­bers with degrees , these peo­ple worked hard to earn their degrees and must be com­pen­sat­ed com­men­su­rate with their edu­ca­tion, the down­side to this is a top heavy force which is demor­al­ized. Many of it’s mem­bers are not in it to reduce crime, it’s lead­er­ship worse.
Those who take the risks are not reward­ed I have spo­ken to enough cops who tell me the same story.

The Nation missed a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty to do a top down audit of what ailed the force dur­ing the ear­ly 2000’ .
That audit would have revealed that the force need­ed new edu­cat­ed lead­er­ship capa­ble of under­stand­ing the secu­ri­ty chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try in the 21^st cen­tu­ry but that the force also need­ed tough hon­est ded­i­cat­ed offi­cers do get the job done.
Had the Political direc­torate done that audit it would have rec­og­nized that many of the prob­lems of cor­rup­tion and alle­ga­tions of abuse could be fixed with.…
Better pay . Better train­ing. Better equip­ment. Better super­vi­sion. Better accountability.
Instead of fix­ing the prob­lem they went ahead and cre­at­ed anoth­er Agency which fur­ther exac­er­bate crime con­trary to what the bone­heads tell you.

But the prob­lems were the cre­ation of the very peo­ple whose respon­si­bil­i­ty it was to pre­serve the safe­ty of the population.
During the Patterson years there was no mon­ey made avail­able to train a sin­gle detec­tive for over sev­en years despite the sky­rock­et­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics. Sure police offi­cers were walk­ing around with big guns but big guns do pre­cious lit­tle to deter crim­i­nals who gen­er­al­ly do not com­mit crimes in front of police.

Jamaica has always had prob­lems con­tain­ing crime but for those focused on this prob­lem this was essen­tial­ly when Jamaica lost the fight against law­less­ness under the pathet­ic lead­er­ship of Percival James Patterson.
Patterson’s lead­er­ship or lack there­of ush­ered in a peri­od of law­less­ness which was not seen before on the Island. Ironically he did not lift a fin­ger to do a damn thing to stop it. He was too busy pil­lag­ing the coun­try’s economy.

It is lit­tle won­der then the present occu­pant of Jamaica house Patterson’s pro­tégé, has no empa­thy for Jamaicans includ­ing police offi­cers whose blood con­tin­ue to run yet she is vocif­er­ous with sup­port for the fam­i­lies of the dead in France.
Every day we wit­ness police offi­cers afraid to do their job of enforc­ing even the sim­plest traf­fic law because of course they will cer­tain­ly be assault­ed and they dare not respond with­out being sub­ject to crim­i­nal proceedings.
I am sor­ry to remind those wait­ing for low­er crime in Jamaica there will be a very long wait .……

Cheap parochial pol­i­tics is still the norm in Jamaica, whomev­er hold pow­er uses that pow­er to the max­i­mum to in fact stay in power.
For years I have been shout­ing in the wilder­ness that the time has come for Jamaica to set fixed National elec­tion dates, effec­tive­ly remov­ing that pow­er from the sit­ting Prime Minister regard­less of the par­ty in power.
It’s the year 2015 and I was shocked to hear Jamaica’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller assert in rela­tion to immi­nent elections.

“The jour­ney might be long and I’m not telling you that the cam­paign will not be long. And I hear every­body guess­ing whether I’m going to call elec­tion or not. You will be appro­pri­ate­ly informed when my mas­ter touch­es me and say, ‘my daugh­ter go [now]’,”
“And as I go around, I will feel the pulse and then at the right time I will give you the sound­ing of the trum­pet. Oh my Comrades, see the sig­nal wav­ing in the sky reinforcement…victory, vic­to­ry, vic­to­ry is nigh,” .

Let’s be clear nation­al elec­tions are not con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due until ear­ly 2017 , how­ev­er the Nation has been on elec­tion foot­ing for months now. The Prime Minister’s own words con­firms that fact.
Yet she con­tin­ues to play with the Nation’s busi­ness like it’s her per­son­al lit­tle social club .
As a firm believ­er in God I find it an affront that she would inti­mate that some­how God Almighty will some­how tell her when to call elections.
If God was in the busi­ness of speak­ing to Portia he would have done so long ago regard­ing the plight of the peo­ple in the coun­try under her stewardship.
But more so he cer­tain­ly would have harsh words for her about her four decades in pol­i­tics, the pover­ty of the peo­ple she gov­erns and the con­di­tion of her con­stituen­cy of South West St. Andrew the most deplorable in the country.

Fixed elec­tion dates forces politi­cians to per­form then face the peo­ple come elec­tion time. Leaving it to the par­ty in pow­er to decide when elec­tions are called allows manip­u­la­tion of the process as we are wit­ness­ing again.
She allud­ed to that very point.
“As I go around, I will feel the pulse and then at the right time I will give you the sound­ing of the trum­pet”
Unwittingly ele­vat­ing her­self to deity , but more so reveal­ing her par­ty’s true inten­tions behind her manip­u­la­tion of the process.
Internal polls are alleged to show her trail­ing bad­ly , jux­ta­pose that with the tur­moil in her par­ty sur­round­ing who will rep­re­sent cer­tain con­stituen­cies , the astro­nom­i­cal high cost of liv­ing and the pover­ty and mis­ery index, Miller is under­stand­ably afraid to face the electorate.

So while she prays for God to change con­di­tions even as she has had years to do her job and did not, the entire civ­il soci­ety is fever­ish­ly work­ing to change the par­a­digm to once again fool the gullible and unin­formed electorate.
Just today the Jamaica Gleaner report­ed that Gas prices will be going down a whop­ping $3.47 .

Petrojam has announced a $3.47 cut in the prices of gaso­line effec­tive tomor­row. E10 87 gaso­line will sell for $94.77 per litre while E10 90 octane will sell for $96.42 per litre. Meanwhile, the price of Automotive Diesel Oil will move down by $2.42 per litre to sell for $92.08. A litre of kerosene will go down by $2.59 to sell for $87.90. Propane cook­ing gas will sell for $32.08 per litre fol­low­ing a cut of $1.25 while butane will move down by $1.11 to sell for $39.95 per litre. Marketing com­pa­nies and retail­ers will add their respec­tive markups to the announced prices.

The price of Oil and nat­ur­al gas has trend­ed down for almost two years now. Gas in some parts of New York State is now under $2 per gal­lon as opposed to $5 at the heights of the gas price increase that rep­re­sent an over 60% reduc­tion in price. How con­ve­nient it is that just now gas prices will be low­ered by a whop­ping $3.47 as talk ramps up about elections?
Additionally the Government has announced that there will soon be an auto­mo­bile assem­bly plant in St Catherine which will poten­tial­ly employ thou­sands. The Bank of Jamaica not to be out­done has announced that the Jamaican Dollar is no longer overvalued.
To the aver­age per­son some of these state­ments may not mean much but to those tuned into the process these and oth­er fore­casts and asser­tions rep­re­sents a coun­try going in the right direc­tion. A County poised for growth and pros­per­i­ty which is exact­ly the oppo­site of the truth .

The PNP has mas­tered the art of polit­i­cal manip­u­la­tion and dis­tor­tion. It has woven it’s way into every crevasse of nation­al life like a can­cer­ous tumor. This effec­tive­ly politi­cizes every Governmental func­tion inevitably por­tray­ing the Administration and par­ty as benev­o­lent provider.
The Party has effec­tive­ly destroyed the coun­try’s econ­o­my in its rapa­cious pur­suit of state power.
Effectively reduc­ing our coun­try to a Banana Republic which refus­es to acknowl­edge it is a banana republic.

A Joint Select Committee of the Jamaican Parliament has request­ed over­sight of (inde­com) . This after the Police the JDF and Director of Public Prosecution has for­mal­ly made known their dis­qui­et with the oper­a­tional tenets of the Agency and more so it’s Commissioner Terrence Williams>

Williams who is on his sec­ond term as Commissioner uses the Agency as a per­son­al tool of vendet­ta against law enforce­ment, berat­ing, harass­ing the police agency as well demean­ing the DPP’s office when his wish­es are not adhered to on his timeline.
Additionally Williams have done immea­sur­able harm to the neo­phyte agency from its incep­tion by in-advis­ed­ly align­ing the agency with forces open­ly hos­tile to the police and military.
For all intents and pur­pos­es the well of good­will which ought to exist between the JCF, JDF, Corrections and (inde­com) has been seri­ous­ly poisoned.
As a result (inde­com) is arguably hard­ly as effec­tive as it would be had it not pur­sued an adver­sar­i­al path with the agen­cies over which it has oversight.

The Parliamentary com­mit­tee say over­sight is for ensur­ing inter­nal account­abil­i­ty and over­sight of the man­age­ment of the organisation.
It’s impor­tant to note that the (inde­com) Act came into exis­tence (signed into law) under the JLP and Bruce Golding.
It was no sur­prise that Opposition mem­ber, Delroy Chuck’s posi­tion is that he could only sup­port an over­sight board as a pure­ly review body.
In oth­er words he sup­ports a tooth­less paper tiger as over­sight of an agency many believe clear­ly is out of control.
In oth­er words despite the fail­ings of the law and the hun­dreds of dead Jamaicans each year as a result of police pulling back Delroy Chuck sees no need to have super­vi­sion of Williams and (inde­com).

Minister of National Security Peter Bunting insist­ed that a sub­mis­sion from the direc­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions point­ed to the need “to hold the delib­er­a­tive process to a high­er stan­dard and to height­en account­abil­i­ty with­in (inde­com)”.
Lets remem­ber that it was the con­tin­ued over­step­ping of his bounds which prompt­ed the DPP to make a sub­mis­sion to the Parliament that Williams was a loose can­non dan­ger­ous­ly out of control.

Bunting to this point seem to be the only per­son with­in the polit­i­cal appa­ra­tus from either side of the polit­i­cal aisle with an iota of oper­a­tional; brain cell . Bunting main­tained ” if mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces con­clude that engag­ing armed vio­lent crim­i­nals is a ‘no win’ exer­cise for them, then we run the risk of facil­i­tat­ing crim­i­nal impuni­ty with obvi­ous adverse con­se­quences to society,”.

This pub­li­ca­tion and this writer have main­tained that per­spec­tive from the incep­tion of (inde­com).
I have been accused of want­i­ng carte blanche for the police, those who know me know this is the fur­thest thing from the truth.
I also advo­cat­ed prop­er over­sight of the police, one which is ful­ly aware of what we ask police offi­cers to do and the com­men­su­rate need which comes with that.
That there be lat­i­tude in the inter­pre­ta­tions of their actions.
This per­spec­tive have earned me the ire of some police offi­cers who view that posi­tion as anti-police as well , go figure?

As I have main­tained from the very begin­ning no one in his right mind could argue that the police do not need keen over­sight and expect to be tak­en seriously .
I have am also of the opin­ion that the answer to cor­rup­tion in the JCF is not (inde­com) as it is configured.
The cre­ation of (inde­com) is mere­ly anoth­er lay­er of Governmental bureau­cra­cy which is not only cost­ing the Jamaican peo­ple dear­ly in terms of dol­lars and cents but in blood and oth­er trea­sures as well.
The monies wast­ed on (inde­com) could have been invest­ed in the police depart­ment mak­ing it a 21^st cen­tu­ry police agency capa­ble of deal­ing with emerg­ing threats.
Conversely what we have is yet anoth­er lay­er of bureau­cra­cy which we are now learn­ing will need anoth­er lay­er of you guessed it , bureaucracy.
CRIME NOW REQUIRE NEW THINKING IS SECURITY APPARATUS UP TO THE TASK…

The Jamaican peo­ple and Government thus far is behold­en to the old adage of not look­ing a gift horse in the mouth .
The help com­ing into the coun­try to (inde­com) sub­se­quent­ly avoids scruti­ny, so too are the motives of the donors. Never mind that law enforce­ment is para­mount in the donor countries.
Nothing shack­les law enforce­ment in their countries.
Jamaicans stead­fast­ly refuse to ask them­selves why are they help­ing to shack­le the police ? Why would they not help the police to con­trol crime?

Terrence Williams points to the reduc­tion in police shoot­ings as a met­ric for what he wants the coun­try to believe is (inde­com’s) suc­cess. What he does not point to is that mur­ders have increased over 22% over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od the pre­vi­ous year . Oh and by the way that year also saw an increase over the pre­vi­ous year .

As long as the goal remains the preser­va­tion of the Island’s crim­i­nals then Terrence Williams and (inde­com) are doing a great job . Hundreds and hun­dreds of dead Jamaicans be damned.

“People judge a commissioner’s per­for­mance main­ly based on mur­der fig­ures and with cur­rents trends on the rise I do not expect pos­i­tive feedback”.

Those com­ments belong to Commissioner of Police Dr.Carl Williams.
The Commissioner of police seem to be hav­ing an Epiphany or come to Jesus moment of sorts as it relates to how his job per­for­mance should be judged.
I thought to myself “wow” you think? when I saw the Commish’s com­ments. I won­dered when did the top cop real­ize that peo­ple dying on his watch would indeed be a reli­able met­ric as it relates to his job performance?
Then I said to myself “oh well bet­ter late than never”

I am reluc­tant to beat up on the Commissioner because I know he has been giv­en bas­ket to car­ry water as every oth­er police chief before him on the Island has .
But I have to at least ask.
Is it just me or does it seem like the Élite in Jamaica are far more patient with Carl Williams despite the mas­sive loss of life and the seri­ous­ness of oth­er crimes ?
Well nev­er mind it may just be me !
I just believe that that PhD will get you a lot of pass­es that oth­er police Commissioners nev­er enjoyed.
You know how Jamaicans think . The Élite sees him as one of them , they can’t call him “dunce police bway”.
And the man on the street fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that PhD is a cure all for everything .!
He must know what he is doing right?.….….….….….….….….….… Right !

Crime takes on new and seri­ous dimen­sions every day . The strate­gies employed in deal­ing effec­tive­ly with it must also take on new and out of the box think­ing beyond the tra­di­tion­al norms.
Unfortunately I am yet to be con­vinced that there is polit­i­cal will or desire to see the mon­ster tamed much less neutralized.

Unfortunately the Police Department has not demon­strat­ed an aware­ness of the chal­lenges of law enforce­ment in the 21^st cen­tu­ry, nor the abil­i­ty to con­vince us it has solu­tions should oth­er sit­u­a­tions arise out­side the reg­u­lar pha­lanx of mur­ders and oth­er crimes.

At the same time the Nation’s Prime Minister makes pub­lic state­ments of sol­i­dar­i­ty with France which recent­ly expe­ri­enced ter­ror­ist attacks on its soil.
She was silent about attacks in Kenya Nigeria and oth­er parts of Africa .
More pro­found­ly she is curi­ous­ly silent about the wan­ton shed­ding of blood right there at home.
Not only is she silent but stead­fast­ly refus­es to take any steps to empow­er law enforce­ment to root out the crim­i­nal cells which are oper­at­ing with­in strong­holds con­trolled by her polit­i­cal par­ty for obvi­ous polit­i­cal reasons.

In law if you enable the com­mis­sion of crimes before they occur or give aid and com­fort to the prin­ci­pal after the offence you are guilty of a crime as well .
Based on those prin­ci­ples the Government in Kingston is guilty of aid­ing and abet­ting in the killing of hun­dreds of Jamaicans annually.
If not by co-mis­sion then cer­tain­ly by omission.
It behove the Prime Minister to stay low with all of that pub­lic talk about sol­i­dar­i­ty with France.
Not because free­dom lov­ing peo­ple across the Globe should not stand with each oth­er in times of tri­al but because France has the means to defend itself, Jamaica does not.

The last thing Jamaica needs is to attract the atten­tion of a ter­ror group because we have a big mouth and want to be seen.
The JCF can bare­ly gain a con­vic­tion for a domes­tic mur­der based on the lib­er­al nature of the Islands courts and of course police inept­ness. The coun­try cer­tain­ly does not need any more problems.

Commensurate with the times the secu­ri­ty forces must now look to devel­op­ing solu­tions which can poten­tial­ly arise before they occur. This how­ev­er demands Legislative action which demands plans of action from the secu­ri­ty services.
The JDF should be heav­i­ly invest­ed in this process as there are no real exter­nal threats to the coun­try just yet.
It is cru­cial that at this time the Police high com­mand and the JDF come togeth­er through new Legislation to cre­ate pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios and work out solu­tions for them ahead of time.

Those solu­tions should be at the Prime Minister’s fin­ger­tips for autho­riza­tion should the need arise.
Of course these solu­tions must be clas­si­fied .…Only a select group of peo­ple should have access to clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion and there must be seri­ous penal­ties for divulging clas­si­fied information.
It can­not be that the secu­ri­ty chief briefs the Prime Minister and Minister of National Security about a crime lord and as soon as the brief­ing is com­plete and the chief leaves the crime Lord knows every­thing which was briefed to the two leaders.

Those are crim­i­nal acts, any pub­lic fig­ure so con­vict­ed should be look­ing at a min­i­mum of 25 years in prison.
Some mem­bers of the Officer Corp of the JDF can cer­tain­ly find the time to brain­storm with cer­tain parts of the JCF in strate­gi­cal­ly think­ing of pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios the coun­try may face.
They must look at sce­nar­ios which occurred in oth­er coun­tries, see how their respons­es worked , see how they may be applied in our coun­try should the need arise as well as devel­op­ing strate­gies for sit­u­a­tions which are yet to occur.
Jamaica sim­ply can­not afford the lux­u­ry of a mil­i­tary for show anymore.
The coun­try cer­tain­ly can­not sit and wait for sit­u­a­tions to arise then try to come up with reac­tive band aid solutions.

The Private sec­tor can play a role in help­ing to fund a project which would hire a few of the bright­est from the Nation’s col­leges to help with work­ing on solu­tions the coun­try may face.
I believe it is clear that the strate­gies being used are not working .
The fight against crime must now evolve to include in a broad­er sense strate­gies to include deal­ing with Terrorism.
We saw what hap­pened in Tivoli Gardens. We saw how homes are being fire­bombed even in once quite serene areas of the Island.
We have seen police sta­tions attacked and burned to the ground. We have cer­tain­ly seen local crim­i­nals exert their will at will.
Guaranteed, despite all of what we have wit­nessed in the past the peo­ple tasked with the nation’s secu­ri­ty have no strate­gies in place should there be recurrence.
Yet it is almost assured there will be recur­rences and yes much worse.

As Terror mer­chants unleash their wares against those to whom they are opposed large pow­er­ful nations like the United States , Canada , Britain, France and oth­ers will take steps nec­es­sary to pro­tect­ing themselves.
The ter­ror groups will not sim­ply walk away say­ing “okay we can’t fight these guys”,they will look for soft tar­gets wher­ev­er their ene­mies have interests.
Is Jamaica pre­pared to deal with any of this ?
You decide.

Speaking about events unfold­ing at the University of Missouri in an expan­sive and vivid­ly artic­u­late Article writ­ten for the Huffington Post on instances of racism, Matt Ferner said the fol­low­ing. (Matt Ferner National Reporter, The Huffington Post) 

“The first response from many has been to ques­tion and reject the verac­i­ty of each episode, as if the idea of a black per­son fac­ing oppres­sion or aggres­sion because of their race is so unbe­liev­able in today’s America that it must be made-up. Apparently it’s eas­i­er for some peo­ple to accuse the black com­mu­ni­ty of con­coct­ing an elab­o­rate racial con­spir­a­cy than it is to con­front the dif­fi­cult real­i­ty of racism in America”

Fallen Olympic fig­ure skater and doc­tor Debi Thomas is now liv­ing in a bed bug-infest­ed trail­er park where she’s pen­ni­less and beg­ging for­mer fans for mon­ey, she revealed in a new interview.

The 48-year-old for­mer ath­lete has hit rock bot­tom near­ly 30 years after becom­ing the first African American to win the wom­en’s title at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, she told Iyanla Vanzant on the rela­tion­ship expert’s “Fix My Life” series.

“(I feel) frus­trat­ed,” the once-trail­blaz­ing Thomas says before break­ing down in tears in the emo­tion­al episode that aired Saturday on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

The two-time U.S. nation­al cham­pi­on and 1988 Olympic bronze medal­ist turned to the renowned life coach after “crip­pling life chal­lenges” from two divorces left her fam­i­ly broke and forced her to shut down her med­ical prac­tice in Virginia.

A des­per­ate GoFundMe page she start­ed about 10 months ago failed to raise even a quar­ter of what she had hoped.

Thomas is now liv­ing in a run-down mobile home in the Appalachian Mountains with her fiancé, who has admit­ted to hav­ing alco­hol and anger issues, and his two chil­dren. She lost cus­tody of her 13-year-old son.

“You got to a point where you could­n’t afford to do any­thing oth­er than live in a trail­er. Is that what I’m hear­ing you say?” Vanzant asks before rip­ping into Thomas for only feel­ing “frus­trat­ed” at her heart­break­ing circumstances.

“Not sad, not angry, not ashamed?” the TV host asks.

“No,” Thomas responds.

“Not guilty that you’ve got a man, two kids and a bed­bug infes­ta­tion in a trail­er,” Vanzant says. “Frustration is what you feel? Nothing else?”

Thomas starts to cry and shakes her head as Vanzant digs deep­er, accord­ing to a short clip.

“This is what I know: You’re liv­ing in a trail­er in the Appalachian Mountains and your son ain’t with you!” she shouts. “You’re rais­ing some­body else’s chil­dren! So, you can tell me what­ev­er you want to tell me. Telling your­self the truth is important.”

The Poughkeepsie, New York native pur­sued a med­ical degree after grad­u­at­ing from Stanford University in 1991 and soon after became an ortho­pe­dic surgeon.

Thomas lays out a list of ambi­tious prospec­tive projects she had hoped to com­plete in the fundrais­ing page that col­lect­ed about $2,000 out of the $10,000 goal. One of her plans was to star in a real­i­ty TV show.

“What we need now is help keep­ing our heads above water until we can make our dreams a real­i­ty,” she pleads in a video post­ed on the GoFundMe page.

The episode is aired on Saturday at 9 p.m.
Olympic fig­ure skater and doc­tor Debi Thomas reveals she’s broke, liv­ing in bug-infest­ed trail­er in emo­tion­al interview

It’s the year 2015 , half a cen­tu­ry after man walked on the moon. African-Americans have evolved from slav­ery, the chain gangs, Jim crow and the prison indus­tri­al com­plex to hold the Presidency the most cher­ished office in America.

A black man is the President. There has been a black Attorney General. In fact a black woman now heads the jus­tice depart­ment. A Black man held the top mil­i­tary post as chair­man of the joint chiefs, and no greater Chairman has America seen. As if that was not enough he went on to become sec­re­tary of state.

Blacks have held top posi­tions in almost all areas of civ­il soci­ety from NASA to the Supreme Court, from the hal­lowed halls of acad­e­mia to the pow­er­ful board rooms across the country.
Despite the adver­si­ties inher­ent in secur­ing those posi­tions black Americans have been twice as effec­tive , twice as impact­ful as their white counterparts.The present occu­pant of the white house is no exception.

Despite the myr­i­ad lay­ers of imped­i­ments placed in the way of black upward mobil­i­ty in this sup­posed land of the free, blacks have tri­umphed and excelled.
Which leads to the mil­lion dol­lar question .
Why is it that whites in America and across the Globe refuse to com­pete on a lev­el play­ing field?
The myth that Caucasians are supe­ri­or based on con­coct­ed myth­i­cal per­cep­tions of grandios­i­ty have long been debunked leav­ing those who believe it look­ing igno­rant and stupid.
So they don’t say it in pub­lic any­more they mere­ly recite it in their lit­tle inner cir­cles where igno­rance is the defin­ing theme.

The rest of the world which by the way is major­i­ty peo­ple of col­or have long exposed the non­sense that white supe­ri­or­i­ty as a con­cept is lit­tle more than the think­ing of a fright­ened infe­ri­or peo­ple who deal in lies and bullyism.
In America when stu­dents of col­or are placed in class­rooms with white stu­dents in most cas­es black stu­dents com­ing from mid­dle class homes do bet­ter aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly than their white counterparts.
Don’t men­tion the Jewish or Asian kids or the kids who come here from Africa.
So it would be instruc­tive to learn from the pur­vey­ors of white supe­ri­or­i­ty what met­ric they use in arriv­ing at their conclusion.

It can’t be that they are more ath­let­ic, that lie has be dead and buried long ago so what is it?
Is it that whites are bet­ter swim­mers ? Are they supe­ri­or because there are hard­ly any swim­ming pools in urban areas just like ten­nis courts and golf cours­es are con­ve­nient­ly absent ?
I guess you get my point !!!

The fact of the mat­ter is that well into the 21^st cen­tu­ry a large swath of white America are act­ing like petu­lant lit­tle children.
They can­not be cap­tain of the team because oth­er mem­bers of the team are more tal­ent­ed and have bet­ter lead­er­ship skills, so they want to pick up the ball and go home.
Only the ball does not belong to them.
The ball belongs to the team so they are not allowed to pick it up and take it home with them.

And there­in lie the prob­lem in 2015, whether it’s Missouri University Campus or Ferguson Missouri, Be it Staten Island the south of New york State or Cleveland Ohio and all places beyond the despi­ca­ble igno­rant racist atti­tudes of white peo­ple are the same.

They couch it by pre­tend­ing to sup­port Police aggres­sion against peo­ple of col­or but more specif­i­cal­ly Black peo­ple the sub­ject of their hatred. Every year more and more peo­ple are killed by American police and most of those killed are white. It is true that more blacks are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly killed based on their num­bers but in raw num­bers more whites are killed each year.

Whites though rabid sup­port­ers of police can­not be hap­py with the num­ber of unarmed white men being killed by those sworn to pro­tect and serve. In fact they aren’t.
Their right­eous indignation[sic] is unbri­dled when white men are vic­tims of police abuse, or they are con­ve­nient­ly silent.
The killing of Black men becomes a feed­ing fren­zy for them. The cho­sen tact is demo­nize dis­tort and devalue.
They look at every­thing the mur­dered per­son ever did, use it to demo­nize him/​her then they use their media to dis­tort his/​her life his­to­ry, sub­se­quent­ly devalu­ing his/​her life which in the end val­i­dates the mur­der or assault on the vic­tim’s person.

One of the things I per­son­al­ly have a prob­lem with is the pas­siv­i­ty and sense of secu­ri­ty blacks demon­strate while it is clear that white peo­ple are active­ly teach­ing their chil­dren to hate.
There can be no rea­son­able argu­ment that seeks to con­vey a mes­sage that America is get­ting bet­ter with race rela­tions. Look at the nean­derthal per­sona of America since Barack Obama rose to the presidency.
And please do not insult me with the gob­bly gook that Obama was elect­ed by white voters.
Obama did receive some white votes of course, after all there are decent white peo­ple , most of whom are enlight­ened to vote Democratic and they did vote for Obama twice. However Obama was elect­ed twice because those whites, unprece­dent­ed amounts of Blacks,Latinos, Jews, Asians, Gays and Lesbians and those with oth­er social­ly defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic vot­ed for him.

Yes white stu­dents have always stood for what’s right and decent , my cri­tique is in no way a blan­ket indict­ment of the white race but there are far too many white cur­mud­geons who are con­tent to ben­e­fit from white privilege.
Too many of those hyp­ocrites chose to remain silent in the face of unmit­i­gat­ed hatred and aggres­sion against black peo­ple in America.
Too many are con­tent to have police abuse and kill black peo­ple while they sit in their lit­tle cir­cles and gloat because they are too chick­en shit to com­pete on a lev­el play­ing field.
Too many are com­fort­able with Police depart­ments becom­ing active mil­i­taries against the nation’s black population.

How much black blood is enough for America ?
From the shores of Western Africa through the mid­dle pas­sage to the shores of the west­ern world , from slav­ery through jim crow , from the chain gangs to present day , how much black blood will appease the glut­tony of America’s white vampires?
How much is enough? When will it stop? When will black peo­ple be allowed to live with­out the vit­ri­olic hatred fuelled by white peo­ple’s low self esteem and sense of insecurity?

The Jamaica Observer Editorial Page is usu­al­ly rea­soned and objec­tive in my view , even when I dis­agree I always walked away feel­ing that at least there was an attempt at objectivity.

As an opin­ion writer myself I run the risk of being harsh­ly crit­i­cized every time write an opin­ion piece.
Every per­son who takes it unto himself/​herself to opine on events simul­ta­ne­ous­ly take on being harsh­ly criticized.

It is in that spir­it that I have to dis­agree with the Editorial Page of Wednesday November 11^th.
The writer crows about being right that Commissioner of Police Carl Williams should not tes­ti­fy open­ly for a select com­mit­tee of the par­lia­ment on the crime sit­u­a­tion affect­ing the country.
In its Article titled : Bringing the top cop before Parliament: We told you so!
The writer said quote.…

We were scep­ti­cal about the deci­sion of Opposition spokesman on nation­al secu­ri­ty, Mr Derrick Smith, to use his posi­tion as chair­man of Parliament’s Internal and External Affairs Committee to sum­mon the police com­mis­sion­er to explain his anti-crime strat­e­gy. As we feared, the pres­ence of the top cop at the com­mit­tee meet­ing yes­ter­day turned out to be anoth­er big occa­sion for our par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to keep this coun­try divid­ed on a mat­ter as crit­i­cal as crime-fight­ing. We have Mr Smith to thank for the fight over whether to have the com­mis­sion­er answer ques­tions open­ly in the pres­ence of the media or to speak in-cam­era, where sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion would not be exposed to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Thankfully, the forces of rea­son pre­vailed and the ques­tions posed to the com­mis­sion­er were answered in-camera.

There was no way that those polit­i­cal­ly charged-up par­lia­men­tar­i­ans would have a nice qui­et dis­cus­sion seek­ing solu­tions around which they could unite the pop­u­lace to fight crime with elec­tions seem­ing­ly just down the road. How intim­i­dat­ed and uncom­fort­able Dr Carl Williams must have felt. To use the police com­mis­sion­er to score polit­i­cal points is irre­spon­si­ble in the extreme and is a fur­ther demon­stra­tion of the imma­tu­ri­ty of those involved.

We are not fooled by Mr Smith’s pre­tence at inno­cence in telling yes­ter­day’s meet­ing that the com­mis­sion­er would not have to answer open­ly any ques­tions that could elic­it sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion. Why bring him there then? If he want­ed non-sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion, he need­ed only to ask for a report to be sent to his com­mit­tee. Furthermore, the fact that he did not want the com­mis­sion­er to speak in-cam­era sug­gest­ed ulte­ri­or motives for hav­ing him come before the committee.
Bringing the top cop before Parliament: We told you so!

The mem­ber Derrick Smith, who want­ed the Commissioner to tell the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives exact­ly what mea­sures he is under­tak­ing to guar­an­tee them some degree of safe­ty is well with­in his rights to ask the Nation’s top cop to come before his com­mit­tee and tell the Nation what is being done to arrest the run­away crime in the country.

In fact, fail­ing to do so would have con­sti­tut­ed dere­lic­tion of his responsibilities .
The fact that there is now pro­ce­dure in place to demand that kind of account­abil­i­ty from those who are tasked with var­i­ous respon­si­bil­i­ties is exact­ly how a Democratic and trans­par­ent soci­ety work.
If there are con­cerns sur­round­ing how wit­ness­es tes­ti­fy before these com­mit­tees those con­cerns should not deter or pre­vent more tes­ti­mo­ny in the inter­est of trans­paren­cy and accountability.
If there are not enough pro­ce­dures in place to facil­i­tate wit­ness­es giv­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion it is an indict­ment on par­lia­ment rather than it is on a mem­ber or the process for that matter.
It is a bit of a stretch to ascribe polit­i­cal motives to Derrick Smith for doing his job. It may very well be that of course there is polit­i­cal mileage to be gained from the crime sit­u­a­tion in the country.
Why would the Opposition (any oppo­si­tion) not seek to gain trac­tion from crime as it should every oth­er area where the Governing Administration(any admin­is­tra­tion) has been lacking?
Crime is a polit­i­cal issue and the mem­ber has every right to hold the admin­is­tra­tion account­able for its poor performance.
It is exact­ly the role of the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion to politi­cize these issues.
Whether it is ram­pant pover­ty. Rampant crime. Rampant cor­rup­tion. Rampant lack of account­abil­i­ty. Dead babies or what­ev­er else.
It is exact­ly why we have oppo­si­tion to hold the Government account­able and keep the peo­ple informed.
What bet­ter time to do so than at elec­tion time?

The Commissioner of Police is an edu­cat­ed man, even with­out the PhD, as chief con­sta­ble he must be patent­ly aware that there are going to be things which he can­not divulge in pub­lic. That’s real­ly not rock­et sci­ence, every con­sta­ble worth his salt knows he can­not divulge sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion to everyone.
The Commissioner must also know that under the most intense grilling from Parliamentarians he is with­in his rights to say I can­not divulge cer­tain infor­ma­tion but the answer you seek will be sup­plied confidentially.
For cry­ing out loud the Commissioner of police now has lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the JCF, that was not so years ago.

On that basis the Observer’s crit­i­cism of Shadow Minister Derrick Smith is par­ti­san and a lit­tle bit petty.
If the Observer edi­to­r­i­al writer does not want the issue of crime to be dis­cussed as a fail­ure of the PNP Administration then it should sim­ply say so.
The most fun­da­men­tal respon­si­bil­i­ty of any Government is to keep peo­ple safe.
This Administration has failed dismally.
It is absolute­ly fair game to hold the Government respon­si­ble for fail­ing at its most basic function.
The Opposition should not be silent on this and nei­ther will this medi­um nor this writer.