One of the things I write about con­stant­ly is the lax nature of Jamaica’s judges deci­sions as it relates to bail and sen­tenc­ing. As a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer I wit­nessed it first­hand, the total dis­re­gard for the dif­fi­cul­ty of remov­ing vicious crim­i­nals from the streets based on a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of fac­tors to include ter­rain, some­times entire com­mu­ni­ties col­lab­o­rat­ing with the accused and lack of resources .
Yet Jamaica’s crim­i­nal lov­ing judges sum­mar­i­ly turn them loose as soon as they are brought before the courts.
It’s as if those on the bench have a vendet­ta against law enforce­ment and they use the bail act to get back at the police.
Unfortunately the con­se­quence to the pub­lic is extreme­ly costly.
One of the argu­ments they use in push­ing back against police crit­i­cisms is that bail was not intend­ed to be used as punishment.
Of course not! Bail was nev­er intend­ed to pun­ish an accused but cer­tain oth­er points have to be considered .
Not arbi­trar­i­ly grant­i­ng Bail, par­tic­u­lar­ly to vio­lent offend­ers is one way “the peo­ple” guar­an­tee that accused per­sons are made to account for the crimes they are charged with committing.
Additionally what the crim­i­nal lov­ing judges will not speak to, is the fact that the Bail Act also makes pro­vi­sions for seri­ous offend­ers to remain in cus­tody based on cer­tain criterias ‚.
Those cri­te­rias include..
(1) The like­li­hood of flight(absconding).
(2) The offend­er inter­fer­ing with the Investigation.
(3) The offend­er harm­ing witnesses.
(4) The like­li­hood the accused will reoffend.
Well guess what, a large per­cent­age of them actu­al­ly do reoffend.

If these cri­te­rias are tak­en into account when the ques­tion of bail is con­sid­ered for vio­lent offend­ers the like­li­hood of vio­lent offend­ers return­ing to the streets pre­tri­al would be vast­ly reduced and many poten­tial complainants/​witnesses would still be alive.
In many Nations if one is accused of mur­der or inflict­ing seri­ous bod­i­ly harm to anoth­er human being he or she has no expec­ta­tion of bail pretrial.
Not so in Jamaica.….
In some cas­es mur­der­ers are grant­ed bail after being arrest­ed and charged for murder/​s and are sum­mar­i­ly giv­en bail upon which they go out and elim­i­nate witnesses/​complainants.
In one well doc­u­ment­ed case one par­tic­u­lar defen­dant had five sep­a­rate unre­solved mur­der arrests. He was giv­en bail each time he was arrest­ed. He then went out and killed each time he was released on bail then sim­ply left the country.
Not only did he kill wit­ness­es he abscond­ed the jurisdiction.
Despite the gap­ing hole in the Bail Act the par­lia­ment has done noth­ing to ensure that if one is charged with mur­der or oth­er seri­ous felonies and the complainant/​wit­ness­es are killed the case con­tin­ues regardless.
TIVOLI ENQUIRY OFFERS IDEA HOW A CARIBBEAN COURT OF JUSTICE WOULD OPERATE..

I am tired of hear­ing about inno­cent until proven guilty.
We are all con­ver­sant and pro­tec­tive of the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence but it can­not be so heav­i­ly slant­ed to one side that we lose sight of the heinous crimes being com­mit­ted by peo­ple who should be in custody.
It is impor­tant that peo­ple who com­mit crimes are made to answer for their actions. How can we expect peo­ple to be deterred from com­mit­ting crimes when we make it so easy for them to walk away with­out con­se­quence in Jamaica?
On the oth­er hand on the rare occa­sion that the well con­nect­ed are vic­tims of crime every stop is pulled out , every stone over­turned to bring those respon­si­ble to justice.
Too many Jamaicans have accept­ed the con­game that there is one sys­tem of jus­tice in our coun­try or that the sys­tem is insu­lat­ed from the ten­ta­cles of corruption.
It is a lie which becomes clear when peo­ple the sys­tem val­ue become victims.

Manchester res­i­dents Milton Green and Andy Weir were on Thursday sen­tenced in the Manchester Circuit Court for the mur­der of for­mer People’s National Party Member of Parliament Dr Neil McGill. Green is expect­ed to serve 30 years before being eli­gi­ble for parole, while Weir is expect­ed to serve 20 years. McGill, on a vis­it to the parish, was report­ed­ly found in his vehi­cle with gun­shot wounds in the com­mu­ni­ty of Hillside in August 2010. He was the for­mer Member of Parliament for St Mary Western from 2002 – 2007. He was also a jus­tice of the peace, a retired Jamaica Defence Force Reserve sol­dier and busi­ness­man.Killers of PNP politi­cian sentenced

Where are these kinds of sen­tences for the 1600 plus Jamaicans killed each year who are not mem­bers of the PNP or have “Dr” behind their names?
So much for the ‘jus­tice is blind bullshit”.

The Following is a sto­ry pub­lished in the Jamaica Observer of Sunday, March 10, 2013 under the Authorship of Sybil E Hibbert a vet­er­an jour­nal­ist and retired court report­ing spe­cial­ist. She is also the wife of Retired ACP Isadore ‘Dick’ Hibbert, rat­ed among the top Jamaican detec­tives of his time.
See sto­ry here : Cheating’ wife freed of mur­der of musi­cian Carlton Barrett..

Any offi­cer sta­tioned at the Constant Spring (CIB) at the time knows full well that this ver­sion of events sur­round­ing this crime is sim­ply farcical.
The names of the accused , the judges and attor­neys are real and cor­rect , the way the case was dis­posed of is cor­rect but the offi­cers involved in this inves­ti­ga­tions were not named .
No one arrest­ed in this case was assault­ed in any way .
What this case rep­re­sent­ed is a much deep­er cor­rup­tion with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in Jamaica which sees a great piece of Police-work and impec­ca­ble detec­tive work reduced to noth­ing because of mon­ey, influ­ence ped­dling and pow­er­ful under­world crime figures.
Here again is a rea­son why our courts can­not be trust­ed to do the right thing in dis­pens­ing jus­tice in our country.

Officers engaged in this case recall how this case was inves­ti­gat­ed they also know that the police offi­cer named in this sto­ry had zero to do with solv­ing this crime.
At the appro­pri­ate time I will write in detail how this case was solved because a young con­sta­ble recent­ly attached to the Constant Spring CIB broke this case wide open using com­mon sense and per­sis­tent­ly refused to be ignored as this inves­ti­ga­tion was going nowhere.

ALBERTINE Barrett, wid­ow of Carlton Barrett, a for­mer drum­mer in Bob Marley’s Wailers Band, was on October 18, 1991, jailed for sev­en years along with the two men charged with her for con­spir­a­cy to mur­der her husband.

Carlton Barrett was a well-known musi­cian on the dance­hall cir­cuit at the time of his death. He was gunned down at his gate at 12 Bridgemount Park Avenue, Kingston 8 about 9:30 pm on April 17, 1987.

The late Justice Ellis (retired senior puisne judge) in pass­ing the sev­en-year prison term on Barrett and the oth­er two accused, remarked at the time that the case raised the fright­en­ing spec­tre of con­tract murder.

He said that a con­tract mur­der was very dif­fi­cult to solve because the con­trac­tor was a stranger to the vic­tim and police inves­ti­ga­tors there­fore had lit­tle to go on to find the killer.

“You were the author of the plot,” the judge told Barrett as she stood in the pris­on­er’s dock await­ing her fate. She had been recent­ly mar­ried, the court was told, and was sev­en months pregnant.

His Lordship added before impos­ing the sen­tence on her: “Your attor­ney, Tavares-Finson, in elo­quence and sin­cer­i­ty, men­tioned that you had lived a life of liv­ing hell with your hus­band, but it is my view that you could have (with)drawn from that with­out resort­ing to what you did.”

Sentenced with her were Glenroy Carter, 39, her reput­ed lover and taxi oper­a­tor of 15 Grayden Avenue, Kingston 10, and Junior Neil, 39, also called “Bang”, a mason, of 19 Seaward Drive, Kingston 11, whom the pros­e­cu­tion alleged was respon­si­ble for snuff­ing out the life of the deceased.

But by 1994, after hear­ing evi­dence and legal sub­mis­sions for 12 days — fol­low­ing two pre­vi­ous tri­als and a suc­cess­ful appeal to the Jamaican Court of Appeal — a jury retired for 25 min­utes and returned a not-guilty ver­dict in favour of all three accused. They were then acquitted.

Justice Bingham (lat­er judge of appeal now retired) presided at this tri­al in the Home Circuit Court.

The Crown had alleged that the three accused con­spired in 1987 to kill Carlton Barrett. Cautioned state­ments were alleged­ly giv­en by the three accused to the police in which they were alleged to have said that there was an agree­ment to kill him for a pay­ment of $20,000. These state­ments were ten­dered in evidence.

It was also part of the Crown’s case that pri­or to the mur­der, Carter, a Jamaican who resided in the USA, was on vaca­tion here when he met the accused Albertine Barrett and they became lovers. It was fur­ther alleged that the accused, Junior Neil, was con­tract­ed to car­ry out the killing.

In their defence, the three accused denied giv­ing the state­ments vol­un­tar­i­ly to the police. They claimed they were beat­en and forced to do so.

Barrett and Carter were tried twice for the murder.

In the first tri­al, the jury failed to arrive at a ver­dict. In the sec­ond, Justice Panton (lat­er pres­i­dent of the Court of Appeal) ruled that Barrett’s cau­tioned state­ment was inad­mis­si­ble, as the pros­e­cu­tion had not proven that coer­sion played no part in the tak­ing of her statement.

The judge said then that he laid no blame on Detective Superindent Donald Brown (lat­er ACP retired), who had tes­ti­fied. Carter’s state­ment was admit­ted into evi­dence and he was freed by the jury.

Barrett was defend­ed by attor­neys Tom Tavares-Finson and Dr Paul Ashley; and var­i­ous­ly by attor­neys K D Knight, QC (lat­er gov­ern­ment min­is­ter), Bert Samuels and Norman Harrison. Neil was rep­re­sent­ed by attor­neys C J Mitchell and Gayle Nelson.

The Crown’s case was pre­sent­ed at var­i­ous times by Lloyd Hibbert, deputy direc­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions (now judge of the Supreme Court); Yvette Sibble, assis­tant direc­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions; Lancelot Clarke, assis­tant direc­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions; and Crown Counsel Cheryl Richards.

A Home Circuit Court judge and jury lat­er heard from Detective Superintendent Brown that a team of detec­tives head­ed by him began car­ry­ing out inten­sive inves­ti­ga­tions imme­di­ate­ly after the murder.

Brown had giv­en evi­dence lat­er, at an ‘in cam­era’ tri­al, that the inves­ti­ga­tions led to the arrest of the three accused and they each gave cau­tioned state­ments admit­ting that they were involved in a plot to kill Barrett.

Giving evi­dence in the hear­ings was Oswald Brown, a jus­tice of the peace (JP), who tes­ti­fied for the Crown. He said he was present when Barrett and Carter gave cau­tioned state­ments to the police.

Harold Nembhard, also a JP, said he wit­nessed a cau­tioned state­ment giv­en by Neil.

In these state­ments, which were ten­dered in evi­dence and read to the jury, the three accused alleged­ly admit­ted con­spir­ing to mur­der Barrett.

Carter and Albertine Barrett were alleged to have said in their state­ments that they went to the cor­ner of Seaward Drive and Molynes Road where they saw Neil, o/​c “Bang”, and asked him if he knew of any­one who could ‘bump off’ a man.

Albertine Barrett is alleged in the state­ment to have giv­en “Bang” a pho­to­graph of her hus­band, as well as the licence num­ber and make of the car he drove.

All this evi­dence was revealed at a sub­se­quent tri­al, the result of Justice Patterson order­ing a retrial.

All three accused were this time con­vict­ed for con­spir­a­cy to mur­der Barrett, a jury hav­ing failed to arrive at a unan­i­mous ver­dict in respect of mur­der against Barrett and Carter.

At that first tri­al in 1988, when the case was called, Deputy DPP Hibbert had informed the court that there was a new indict­ment — con­spir­a­cy to mur­der Carlton Barrett — in respect of Neil, who would be tried at a lat­er date.

Neil was remand­ed in cus­tody pend­ing the out­come of the mur­der charge filed against the oth­er two accused.

The retri­al took place in 1990 when Carter and Barrett were freed by a jury of the mur­der charge.

But by 1991, after the con­vic­tion of all three for con­spir­a­cy to mur­der result­ed, an appeal to the Court of Appeal suc­ceed­ed. Again, a new tri­al was ordered.

Finally, in November 1994, a Home Circuit Court jury, after hours of delib­er­a­tion, returned not-guilty ver­dicts in favour of all three accused per­sons and they walked free.

Testifying in his defence, dur­ing the peri­od, Neil told the judge and jury that he was beat­en by the police and then giv­en a state­ment to sign. He said that a piece of con­crete with wires was tied to his tes­ti­cles and he was told to walk.

“It feel like it was draw­ing down my bel­ly, draw­ing down inside of me. I could not take it any­more and so I signed,” Neil told the court.

He added that Superintendent Brown showed him where to sign.

Barrett wept as she told the court, in sworn tes­ti­mo­ny, that her hus­band, who had been a drug addict, used to beat her.

She relat­ed sev­er­al acts of cru­el­ty done to her by him over an extend­ed peri­od, but she denied plot­ting with any­one to kill him. She admit­ted that she had been engaged in an affair with Carter while liv­ing with her hus­band but claimed she knew noth­ing at all about how he met his death.

Carter, who also gave sworn tes­ti­mo­ny in his defence said that he had heard that the police were look­ing for him, and on April 22, 1987, he went to the Constant Spring Police Station. There, he gave a state­ment to the police, deny­ing that he knew any­thing about the mur­der of Carlton Barrett. He was also ques­tioned about his fam­i­ly, he stated.

He said that after he was ques­tioned, he was tak­en to Red Hills police sta­tion and on April 24, he was giv­en a state­ment to sign. He said he signed it because he thought it was the state­ment which he had giv­en to the police on April 22.

Carter fur­ther told the court that he could not read and denied that he had giv­en any cau­tioned state­ment to the police.

He said he met Albertine Barrett in January 1987 and they had a rela­tion­ship. But he insist­ed that he did not know any­thing about the mur­der of her husband.

The two accused said the police forced them to sign the cau­tioned state­ments and both said they were beat­en by the police.

They were cross-exam­ined by Deputy DPP Hibbert, and Assistant DPP Sibble.

Carter also called a wit­ness to sup­port his claim that he was at home at the time when Carlton Barrett was killed.

However, there was an inter­est­ing turn of events in this tor­tur­ous tri­al when, in June 1990, Bert Samuels, appear­ing for Carter, sought and was grant­ed per­mis­sion to with­draw from the case on the grounds that he was not prop­er­ly instruct­ed by his client and so could no longer appear for him.

Samuels also point­ed out at the time to Senior Puisne Judge Chester Orr (now retired) that Carter was lan­guish­ing in cus­tody because he could not take up his $100,000 bail and that, too, affect­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of coun­sel get­ting prop­er instructions.

Tavares-Finson, coun­sel for Albertine Barrett, told the court then that he was ready to pro­ceed with the retri­al, where­upon the case was set for men­tion in the Home Circuit Court on June 25, 1990 so that a lawyer could be assigned to rep­re­sent Carter.

But by December 1990, when the mat­ter next came before the court for tri­al, Samuels was vig­or­ous­ly mak­ing a no-case sub­mis­sion on behalf of Carter, after such a sub­mis­sion by Tavares-Finson and Dr Ashley had been ear­li­er upheld by the tri­al judge on Albertine Barrett’s behalf.

Justice Panton had ear­li­er ruled that there was a case for Carter to answer. But after giv­ing evi­dence on his own behalf, sup­port­ed by a wit­ness, Carter as found not guilty of Carlton Barrett’s death.

Four years lat­er, all three accused suc­cess­ful­ly appealed their con­spir­a­cy to mur­der charge, and were final­ly set free.

Sybil E Hibbert is a vet­er­an jour­nal­ist and retired court report­ing spe­cial­ist. She is also the wife of Retired ACP Isadore ‘Dick’ Hibbert, rat­ed among the top Jamaican detec­tives of his time.

In due course I will write the true events as they occurred.….

The People’s National Party (PNP)Administration in Kingston is doing all in it’s pow­er to influ­ence Jamaicans to ditch the British based Privy Council as Jamaica’s final Court of Appeals and replace it with the Caribbean Court of Justice based in Trinidad.
The Opposition Jamaica Labor Party(JLP) which has a stronger record on the rule of law is opposed to the measure .
This pub­li­ca­tion sees many prob­lems with Jamaica mov­ing to the CCJ based on sev­er­al factors.
The argu­ments in sup­port of the CCJ are weak and friv­o­lous and is not sup­port­ed by facts , nei­ther is there a foun­da­tion in place to deal effec­tive­ly with the points raised by those opposed to the move.

See : JAMAICA SHOULD VOTE “NO” ON CCJ

Pride in coun­try and the region is impor­tant but it is hard­ly a rea­son to remove some­thing which has worked and replace it with some­thing which is unproven and for all intents and pur­pos­es seem head­ing for fail­ure at least as far as caribbean Islands sign­ing up is concerned.
Thus far only Barbados, Belize and Guyana retain the CCJ as their final court of appeals, it is impor­tant to note that despite the fact that the Court is based in Trinidad that nation has not moved to adopt the court as it’s final court of appeals.
It is cer­tain­ly not in the inter­est of Jamaicans for our coun­try to pur­sue this course even when we still have the Queen of England as the Constitutional head of state.
Doing so would effec­tive­ly be plac­ing the cart before the horse and for no good rea­son but to feel good.

This medi­um and this writer (not a lawyer) has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly point­ed to the hor­ri­ble state of the Jamaican crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. I con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to the vast defi­cien­cies with­in the sys­tem which I wit­nessed as a law enforce­ment offi­cer in our coun­try between 1982 and 1992, which has some­thing to do with my deci­sion to exit the stage after only a decade despite my love for the job.
All objec­tive observers will con­clude that the sys­tem has got­ten expo­nen­tial­ly worse over the years, a fact which arguably has some­thing to do with the lev­els of crime in the coun­try today.

This writer have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly point­ed to the fact that at the heart of this is the fact that the Country’s Judges are far too lib­er­al. I have con­sis­tent­ly writ­ten in this medi­um about that fact, detail­ing com­pre­hen­sive cas­es where sit­ting Judges have sup­plant­ed the laws with their own bias­es and decide uni­lat­er­al­ly that they will turn crim­i­nals loose and in oth­er cas­es cir­cum­vent the process to ensure that cer­tain well-con­nect­ed peo­ple are nev­er found guilty of the crimes for which they have been charged.
I have argued that this has cre­at­ed a sce­nario which has the man on the street sub­se­quent­ly decid­ing not to obey laws because of their belief that the laws only apply to them and that the well-con­nect­ed are free to com­mit crimes with­out consequence.

RM PUSEY SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THIS CASE NOW:

There is a sys­tem­at­ic attempt to con­fuse peo­ple in Jamaica into believ­ing that the Judiciary is total­ly untouched and untar­nished which is not based in facts.
However, more impor­tant­ly every­one has seen the way cas­es have been han­dled over the years, fair and con­sci­en­tious observers know just how easy it is for a defense lawyer to pick up the phone and call his friend the judge to influ­ence a deci­sion one way or the other.
Or worse, for politi­cians and their affil­i­ates to use var­i­ous means, from coher­sion to cor­rup­tion from pres­sure to threats and intim­i­da­tion to change the tra­jec­to­ry of a case in which they have a vest­ed interest.
What know Jamaican Drug-Lord or Community Don has ever been con­vict­ed of a traf­fic tick­et much less the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of mur­ders they order and com­mit in the country?

Even in Jury tri­als it is impor­tant to note just how easy it is for a sit­ting judge to use his/​her perch as ref­er­ee to cre­ate enough doubt which effec­tive­ly caus­es a jury to vote not guilty.
It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for pros­e­cu­tors to gain con­vic­tions in Jamaica, tri­al judges are open­ly hos­tile to the pros­e­cu­tion while being shame­ful­ly cozy with defense attorneys.
As a for­mer cop I saw this first hand and was amazed by it and shame­ful of the practise.
It was and still is a prac­tice which sees crim­i­nals thumb­ing their noses at the process but most of all at hard work­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers who risk life and limb to bring crim­i­nals to justice…
And oh by the way the crim­i­nals know it and are not afraid to remind police offi­cers of it..
The peo­ple pay the Police the Prosecutors and the Judges but it is impos­si­ble to tell if one sit in a court­room and lis­ten to many of the Island’s judges, they would come away think­ing that the defen­dant pays the tri­al judges.

IT’S SO MUCH EASIER TO CRITICIZE WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO FACE THE BULLETS….

If Judges are inca­pable of under­stand­ing their roles in the dis­pen­sa­tion of Justice in Jamaica how can we sup­port their region­al col­leagues to be fair and impartial?
As I have said repeat­ed­ly, Jamaican Lawyers would have you believe that their pro­fes­sion is one of fideli­ty and strict ded­i­ca­tion to the cause but the facts say otherwise.
Lawyers become Judges.
Most of the Island’s Lawyers attend­ed one of the three law schools in our Region, the Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica, the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and the Eugene Dupuch Law School in the Bahamas . Many across the region know each oth­er, the risk is sim­ply too great for more corruption.

MANY JAMAICAN LAWYERS ARE NOT ABOVE BOARD, THEY SHOULD NOT EXPECT TO GET SPECIAL TREATMENT WHEN THEY BREAK THE LAWS…

Many peo­ple in the Caribbean have con­fi­dence in the Privy Council as their final court of appeals not because they are une­d­u­cat­ed old colo­nial­ists who want to hold onto the final ves­tiges of slavery.
They do so arguably because they under­stand well that the sys­tem in the region is not near­ly infal­li­ble nei­ther is it free from the can­cer­ous ten­ta­cles of corruption.
They under­stand that it is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble for those ten­ta­cles to reach the bench­es of the Privy Council or expo­nen­tial­ly less like­ly so to do.
It is against that back­ground that the region has resist­ed jump­ing onto the band­wag­on to which the People’s National Party is try­ing to chain the country.

MAGISTRATE: NOT GUILTY, BUT IS KERN INNOCENT ?

Jamaicans who are intel­lec­tu­al­ly able to place coun­try over pol­i­tics will read­i­ly relate to the way sev­er­al high pro­file cas­es have gone in Jamaica, not the least of which is the Kern Spencer cor­rup­tion tri­al which start­ed with a bang and end­ed with a whim­per, thanks to the efforts of a sin­gle Resident Magistrate.
There is a par­tic­u­lar strain of anti-police bias which is not only high­ly evi­dent in Jamaican court­rooms but may be observed in the rhetoric of the wider Caribbean’s old polit­i­cal guard many of whom were edu­cat­ed at the var­i­ous cam­pus­es of the left­ist col­leges across the Caribbean region.
Many are life­long admir­ers of the likes of Cheddi Jaggan, Walter Rodney Michael Manley and oth­er left­ists who ruled and high­ly influ­enced the region dur­ing the six­ties and seventies.
Neither of those peo­ple were exact­ly known for their sup­port for the rule of law or police offi­cers who uphold the laws.

For those of you who doubt any of this take a look at this video of Bajan National David Simmons import­ed to Jamaica to chair a com­mis­sion look­ing at events which occurred in 2010 when a Jamaican crime lord Christopher (Duddus) Coke was being sought for extra­di­tion to the United States to face crim­i­nal charges.
During the peri­od in which the Island’s Security Forces sought this crim­i­nal Police offi­cers were killed, Police sta­tions were burned to the ground and scores of peo­ple were murdered.

It required the might of the Island’s Military with the help of the police just to breach the Community of Tivoli Gardens Cokes red­out where author­i­ties believed he was holed up with hun­dreds of heav­i­ly armed mer­ce­nar­ies. Coke’s Gunmen were deter­mined and ded­i­cat­ed to killing agents of the state in order to pre­vent the crime lord’s extra­di­tion to The United States.

These events played out in real time as the world watched in hor­ror, won­der­ing when did this lev­el of insur­gency take over the once pris­tine Island every­one around the world came to love.
Despite all of that, here is the behav­ior of David Simmons who heads the com­mis­sion look­ing into the events which occurred at that time.

This is the rea­son Jamaicans who want to improve our coun­try and it’s crim­i­nal jus­tice fail­ures should send the PNP and those push­ing this atroc­i­ty packing.
It is impor­tant that to do so Jamaicans not con­fuse this issue with any oth­er issue.
The mere fact that the Portia Simpson Miller Administration is push­ing this fias­co on the peo­ple in light of what you just saw in this rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pling is evi­dence enough we should shun this.
On that basis Jamaicans must send a strong mes­sage to Miller and her anti-Jamaican cam­paign to fur­ther erode our insti­tu­tions that at least for now we are not going to dis­pense with the Privy Council.
On that basis the PNP must go.….….….….

In yet anoth­er vin­tage dis­play David Simmons who heads the Commission inves­ti­gat­ing events in Tivoli Gardens in 2010 showed that his arro­gance is mak­ing a mock­ery of the enquiry.

Giving evi­dence yes­ter­day Superintendent Everton Tabannah tes­ti­fied that a female infor­mant who lived in Tivoli Gardens told him that men from Grant’s Pen Kingston 8 who had gone to Tivoli Gardens to join Christopher (Dudus)Coke’s Militia were killed after they demand­ed par­tial pay­ment of $50,000 of the $100,000 total pay­ment they were promised by Coke.
Tabannah tes­ti­fied that the infor­mant told him she was hap­py the Security Forces took over the com­mu­ni­ty as she was quote“tired of the fool­ish­ness” which was hap­pen­ing in her community.
Tabannah tes­ti­fied that from infor­ma­tion gleaned from infor­mants over 300 heav­i­ly armed mili­ti­a­men were in Tivoli Gardens before the Security forces annexed the com­mu­ni­ty to the rest of the Island.

It was then that Simmons jumped in inter­rupt­ing Tabannah .… “I’m sus­pi­cious of this evi­dence. I’m sus­pi­cious, this evi­dence does not sit well with me”address­ing attor­ney for the JCF Deborah Martin.
As one of the hear­er of facts Simmons was with­in his bounds when he inter­rupt­ed Tabannah insist­ing that that part of his tes­ti­mo­ny was not in his ini­tial statements.

The Superintendent explained that the par­tic­u­lar point had slipped his mind but that he had relayed that infor­ma­tion to oth­er offi­cers includ­ing his supe­ri­ors and named those to whom he relayed the information.
Simmons is praised as an astute Lawyer/​Judge, in the inter­est of clar­i­ty and for the record I am nei­ther just a can­tan­ker­ous blogger.
However it real­ly is remark­able that David Simmons does not under­stand that intel­li­gence or what is referred to as infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing is not evidence.
As such the Police offi­cer has absolute­ly no oblig­a­tion to include what he heard(hearsay) into an affi­davit (state­ment) which is a fac­tu­al prov­able nar­ra­tive of the offi­cer’s rec­ol­lec­tion of events.

Since the infor­ma­tion giv­en him was not proven, it is (hearsay) and not admis­si­ble in a court of law (as per Jamaican law). This does not mean that though the offi­cer can­not prove it that it did not hap­pen , infor­ma­tion is for the use of police to do fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions with a view to solv­ing crime it is not evidence.
Essentially that infor­ma­tion is like a road rather than a destination.

Most shock­ing how­ev­er is that David Simmons asked Superintendent Tabannah to give her name and address in the open forum of the hear­ing room. Tabannah in his police wis­dom said he didn’t take her name and doesn’t know her address.
He essen­tial­ly shook Simmons off using his knowl­edge of the laws, Simmons could learn a thing or two if he would get out of his own way.
For peo­ple who are not famil­iar with the process Superintendent Tabannah skill­ful­ly side­stepped the igno­rant and stu­pid demand by claim­ing he does not know her name nor address.

SEE ALSO DAVID SIMMONS WON’T APOLOGIZE TO VAV…

Those famil­iar with how wit­ness­es and infor­mants are treat­ed in Jamaica are patent­ly aware that reveal­ing his source’s name and address in that open forum would have been tan­ta­mount to a death sen­tence on that poor woman.
The Tivoli Enquiry is a huge waste of scarce tax­pay­ers resources. It is being used to shame and indict the Jamaica Labor Party .
It is time that peo­ple of con­science demand that this nev­er end­ing fish­ing expe­di­tion end and David Simmons pack up and head back to Barbados.
Clearly Simmons is more con­cerned with grand­stand­ing and show­boat­ing than lis­ten­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny of the wit­ness­es with a view to mak­ing rea­soned recommendations.
There are hard­ly any Jamaicans who do not know what Tivoli Gardens was about. There are hard­ly any real Jamaicans who do not know how gar­risons are oper­at­ed . They cer­tain­ly do not need any­one from Barbados to shed light on ghet­to life in Jamaica.

There are more than enough instances of gross cor­rup­tion with­in the sit­ting admin­is­tra­tion which are wor­thy of enquiries To date there are none as far as I know.
It’s time for this horse and pony show to end send this pompous jack-ass back home.…..

Republicans are fum­ing mad or just plain whin­ing because they did not get soft­ball ques­tions from CNBC’s ques­tion­ers at their last debates.
Both the Republican National Committee’s Chairman Reince Priebus and most of the can­di­dates have com­plained about the ques­tions the bunch of GOP losers were asked.
Heading the enti­tled list of whin­ers were Donald Trump. Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and a few others .
Shockingly can­di­dates and the Republican National Committee are demand­ing that only Right wing nutjobs mod­er­ate the debates, their choice of debate mod­er­a­tors include Rush Limbaugh Sean Hannity and others.
Seriously if this was­n’t so absurd it would be worth a chuckle.

Here’s the kick­er though Donald trump who is run­ning as a “win­ner” did say he was­n’t opposed to “whin­ing” if he did­n’t get his way.
So there you have it Republicans who talk through the sides of their mouth about lib­er­ty and democ­ra­cy are actually

opposed to answer­ing prob­ing ques­tions from the press . You sim­ply can­not make this up .
In the mean­time Democratic can­di­dates are out doing what they do , lis­ten­ing to vot­ers needs so they can for­mu­late poli­cies to solve problems.

The white male par­ty real­ly has noth­ing to offer the coun­try out­side the con­stant drum­beat for war , usu­al­ly with dredged up ene­mies and of course trick­le down eco­nom­ics which gives an inor­di­nate amount of resources to the rich who will in turn offer crumbs from their table to every­one else.

This is the most ridicu­lous exper­i­ment which failed under Reagan and Herbert Walker Bush , brought the Country to near eco­nom­ic col­lapse under George W Bush and is being advo­cat­ed by all the can­di­dates after the Democrat Barack Obama brought the econ­o­my back from the brink of col­lapse, as Bill Clinton did after the débâ­cle of the first Bush presidency.

So you won­der how is it that they are able to win elec­tions when clear­ly peo­ple must be able to see through the bull?
Well not so fast the Republican Party was hijacked by the rabid Racist Dixiecrats after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Democrats have not won the South since.
White men have not gone back to the Democratic par­ty since. Ever since they have launched a cam­paign of fear­mon­ger­ing at aver­age whites, telling them that “those peo­ple” are try­ing to take their coun­try , their jobs , their way of life and every­thing else.
Those peo­ple who are pret­ty much every­one else oth­er than white males.

Funny thing is many don’t have any of those things to lose but hatred caus­es them to vote and mil­i­tate against their own self interest.
So there you have it.…..

The recent events in a South Carolina School in which a cop attacked and abused a black stu­dent once again shocked the world. The vio­lence lev­eled against Americans of all col­ors but more-so African-Americans of all ages and gen­ders seem to be on the rise but hard­ly any­one could believe a police offi­cer would do what we saw hap­pen to a student.
I was com­pelled to speak out against the Officer’s actions as I thought despite my 10 years in law enforce­ment in Jamaica one of the tough­est most vio­lent places to do police work, I nev­er thought that lev­el of vio­lence could be lev­eled at any stu­dent much less a female student.
Since the inci­dent the Sheriff’s office has demon­strat­ed good sense by fir­ing that Deputy.
Unfortunately for the peo­ple of South Carolina or some oth­er state this offi­cer may very well end up hired by anoth­er police depart­ment as a kind of “screw you” to the forces of what’s right.
SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS, A MISNOMER..

In com­ment­ing on the inci­dent I argued that what­ev­er the stu­dent did could not be appro­pri­ate­ly dis­cussed in the same con­text of the offi­cer’s response which was expo­nen­tial­ly out of the range of what was appro­pri­ate, as such I did not dis­cuss her actions. I thought then that to dis­cuss both togeth­er dimin­ish­es the enor­mi­ty of the act com­mit­ted against that stu­dent and I still believe so today.
Even as a trained for­mer Police offi­cer I did not think that I need­ed to see any­thing else as CNN’s res­i­dent house police apol­o­gist Don Lemon seemed to believe may have shed more light, which would jus­ti­fy what the offi­cer did.
Interestingly Lemon for­got that the oth­er guest he was foist­ing his illog­i­cal attempt at cop appease­ment to was Sunny Hostin a Lawyer and for­mer Federal pros­e­cu­tor who ought to know when a stan­dard of proof has been met.
As I have said before there is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that if some­one slaps a cop that cop has a right to pull out a gun and shoot that person.
Let me be clear as far as the law is con­cerned a police offi­cer may only use force pro­por­tion­ate to the force used against him/​her.

QUESTION: WHEN IS SHOOTING A 12-YEAR-OLD CHILD REASONABLE?
A Police offi­cer does not get to employ bru­tal unhinged vio­lence against a per­son because the per­son is bel­liger­ent or uncooperative.
Yet there are no short­age of experts on the police band­wag­on mak­ing those argu­ments. Of course that’s not the law.
One of the rea­son for the unmit­i­gat­ed assault we are wit­ness­ing is that from County Courts all the way to the Supreme Court , Judges have stretched the mean­ing of the laws to their lim­its to jus­ti­fy police aggres­sion against the public.

THE BEHAVIOR OF PEOPLE MATTER ALSO HOWEVER
It would be disin­gen­u­ous to dis­cuss the offi­cer’s behav­ior with­out tak­ing time to speak to the prob­lem of teenage violence .
And more specif­i­cal­ly the prob­lem of teenage behav­ior in the black community.
As per reports The South Carolina stu­dent flipped and tack­led by sheriff’s deputy Ben Fields is in fos­ter care, her attor­ney told the New York Daily News. it is unclear whether the unnamed teen was in fos­ter care before the inci­dent or was placed there after­wards the report stat­ed that her bio­log­i­cal moth­er and grand­moth­er are how­ev­er alive.
In light of this rev­e­la­tion it makes it dif­fi­cult to speak to her behav­ior or lack there­of with­out under­stand­ing the dynam­ics of what in total­ly may be affect­ing this teen.
Which is all the more rea­son that the school should nev­er have includ­ed the police in a mat­ter of dis­ci­pline where clear­ly no crime was committed.
One of the Arguments we have heard is that it is a mis­de­meanor to dis­rupt school and that is what the young lady was engag­ing in by sit­ting at her desk and refus­ing to leave the classroom.
Those in favor of the Police state argues that it was pre­cise­ly why the Cop was called.
Anyone who feel com­fort­able with cops drag­ging chil­dren from their desks and flip­ping them across the room clear­ly does not deserve to share the same space or breathe the same air as ratio­nal people.
It is a seri­ous indict­ment on the Police state that we would even be argu­ing about crim­i­nal­iz­ing our chil­dren for things many of us did in school which teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors han­dled it quite capably.

REPORT: SOUTH CAROLINA STUDENT FLIPPED BY POLICE OFFICER IS IN FOSTER CARE

I would be remiss how­ev­er if I ignored or seek to ratio­nal­ize teenage tru­an­cy. It is shock­ing and despi­ca­ble the behav­ior we see being dis­played by Black teens across the country.
Of course you are going to have prob­lems with author­i­ty fig­ures if you curse out grownups and threat­en them . Have you ever rid­den the New York City sub­way and seen the behav­ior of Black teenage stu­dents? Have you even rid­den the New York City Buses , have you rid­den the trains or bus­es in any of America’s urban cen­ters and seen the behav­ior of young African-Americans”
This hap­pened recently…

When is ever okay to attack your teacher are you kid­ding me? Many of these stu­dents are not real­ly stu­dents they are preda­tors. They oper­ate in packs, they curse, steal, and they mete out vio­lence to whomev­er they see fit and they do not care.
So some­times when we see them receive cer­tain treat­ment know that many of them are not saints.

Most adults who live or do busi­ness in America’s urban cen­ters have seen them rob­bing stores in packs like wild preda­tors , sim­ply tak­ing what they want under the cov­er of numbers.
As mem­bers of the Black com­mu­ni­ty we are not help­ing them under­stand dis­ci­pline and con­se­quences if we cov­er for them and ratio­nal­ize away the bar­barism of some of these youngsters.

So lets not kid our­selves about these black kids and their behav­ior, every child must be taught respect for author­i­ty be it in church school or wher­ev­er . They sim­ply can­not run roughshod over every­one and every­thing with­out consequence.
And yes with­out point­ing fin­gers when we do not obey the rules the police will come and they are going to take you one way or the other.
Period.….

No amount of con­dem­na­tion and dis­gust would be enough in respond­ing to what we wit­nessed on an ama­teur video shot by a stu­dent in a Columbia South Carolina Schoolroom as school offi­cials and stu­dents stood and sat in numb silence as a state trained , paid and sanc­tioned Thug assault­ed a 16 year old girl in the most vicious way pos­si­ble under the guise and author­i­ty of law enforcement.
As nau­se­at­ed and dis­gust­ed as the world is at this vicious dis­play of bar­barism is, if stu­dents had not tak­en out their cell phones and record­ed this inci­dent no one would have been any wis­er, this stu­dent and her class­mates would have been assault­ed, trau­ma­tized and vic­tim­ized with­out con­se­quence to the offend­er. Life would have gone on as usu­al as it always has.

Life would have gone on as usu­al because for almost four hun­dred years this is exact­ly how black peo­ple have been treat­ed in this coun­try. As I said in pre­vi­ous articles,whatever hap­pened in that class­room which pre­cip­i­tat­ed the call­ing of the police, can­not be dis­cussed in the same con­text in which we dis­cuss what hap­pened after the police entered the room.
If we do so we unwit­ting­ly give tac­it sup­port to the bru­tal crim­i­nal bar­bar­i­ty and dis­gust­ing dis­play of dis­re­spect we all witnessed .

So when the head of the FBI James Comey comes out and blames cit­i­zens for video­tap­ing atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against them by these bru­tal thugs in uni­form as the rea­son for the rise in crime this is what he wants to keep from you.
Clearly this was a crime and it should be pros­e­cut­ed if and when it is pros­e­cut­ed it will in fact add to the crime statistics.
The only thing James Comey did not say to the Police Chiefs and the Nation is that much of the crime is being com­mit­ted by those who are sworn to pro­tect and serve.

It was a telling moment at least for the 47 mil­lion Black cit­i­zens of this coun­try when the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations came out and blamed them for non-vio­lent­ly record­ing police abuse against their per­sons , rather than speak to the atro­cious behav­ior we are wit­ness­ing in front our eyes.
For those in our com­mu­ni­ty who have his­tor­i­cal­ly seen the FBI as Savior against the forces of tyran­ny Comey’s speech must give you pause.

SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS

As we sort through this shock­ing event which hap­pened to the abused teenage girl and every oth­er stu­dent par­tic­u­lar­ly stu­dents of col­or we do a tremen­dous dis­ser­vice to them if we do not view what hap­pened to her in the greater con­text of the school to prison pipeline which the states have been run­ning in this coun­try essen­tial­ly turn­ing reg­u­lar dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters into crimes and our school age chil­dren into criminals .

They start­ed with the sleigh of hand by not accept­ing that what they have done is mil­i­ta­rize schools with police. Somehow they fig­ured smart peo­ple would not be par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with hav­ing gun-tot­ing cops hav­ing any­thing to do with their chil­dren inside their classrooms.
So what they did was to place gun-tot­ing cops into the class­rooms among your kids, only they cre­at­ed a more palat­able name for them. All of a sud­den the juiced up sher­if­f’s deputy is no longer a cop he is a school resource offi­cer.

What resource does he/​she bring to the school you decide ?
Students around the globe attend class­es at dif­fer­ent lev­els with­out hav­ing armed cops in their schools and they do just fine that’s the way it’s always been.
America cre­at­ed it’s own night­mare with it’s insane insa­tiable appetite and affin­i­ty for guns.
But as insane as that is that is not the big­ger issue. The real issue is the Country’s con­tin­ued obses­sion with crim­i­nal­iz­ing and incar­cer­at­ing its minori­ties by attack­ing stu­dents of col­or in the places where they should feel safest.

Make no mis­take about it there is a tac­tic yet explic­it accep­tance of this class­room to prison approach by the states and by a large sub­set of the white population.
Did I say a large sub­set of whites?
Yes a large per­cent­age of the white pop­u­la­tion is so hate­ful of Blacks that they will sup­port every harm which is brought about on the per­son of black people.
It is nev­er about their sup­port for police , in fact they are abused just as bad­ly by police . The fact is that they have devel­oped a pol­i­cy of “the ene­my of my ene­my is my friend”.
They are not sup­port­ing police they are sup­port­ing assault on Black peo­ple, it does not mat­ter whether it’s the police, the Russians or ISIL any­one who hates and is will­ing to assault Blacks are friends of theirs.

We see it in the data as it relates to how black stu­dents are dis­ci­plined with­in the school systems.
It is evi­dent in sus­pen­sion and expul­sion rates even though there is absolute­ly no data which sug­gests that black stu­dents are more dis­rup­tive in school.

We waste our time talk­ing about the action of the cop if the con­ver­sa­tion is not cen­tered on why state gov­ern­ments are turn­ing schools into police posts. Cops ought not be in class­rooms unless some­one pulls a gun or oth­er weapon on some­one else and they are called.
This act of Government which places cops in schools is designed to intim­i­date young peo­ple into acqui­esc­ing to Government’s demands or else. It has noth­ing to do with safety.

Most of us attend­ed schools in which there were no cops or any­where on the prop­er­ty , how many oth­er nations engages in this prac­tice oth­er than the United States?
I can tell you not many if at all…
Black America wise up the fir­ing of this cop alone will change nothing.

It is gen­er­al­ly not my habit of com­ment­ing too much on low down politi­cians because writ­ing about them gen­er­al­ly have the oppo­site effect of sham­ing them, it usu­al­ly brings them more atten­tion. For most politi­cians there is gen­er­al­ly no bad pub­lic­i­ty they are gen­er­al­ly extreme nar­cis­sists who take what­ev­er atten­tion they can get good or bad.

On this occa­sion I will break with that rule sim­ply to talk about the low down loud-mouth bul­ly who serves as Governor of New Jersey.
Chris Christie defies log­ic , It nev­er quite dawned on me what log­ic Jersey Democrats used in vot­ing for this retard­ed loud-mouth school­yard bul­ly in a total­ly blue state?
The guy is noth­ing but a Rudolph Giuliani 2.0 on steroids. He is uncouth, abra­sive, arro­gant and a down­right liar.
Maybe it can be chalked up to the sup­posed rough and tum­ble notion of the New York/​New Jersey per­sona “feg­gud about it”.
But even so the vot­ers them­selves are get­ting tired of this punk and many are ask­ing him to resign . I mean he is nev­er there he’s always out chas­ing the elu­sive dream of becom­ing President of the United States.
No one begrudges the fat man the right to chase his dream but when a police offi­cer gets shot and he goes on National Television to blame the President of the United States for the shoot­ing it is beyond disgraceful.

I total­ly get that Christie needs trac­tion in a 16 per­son field in which he hard­ly gets to answer a ques­tion. What bet­ter way to try to gar­ner some atten­tion than attack­ing the President of the United States?
But to bla­tant­ly lie to gain shock val­ue shows the depths the over the riv­er over­weight thug is will­ing to go to to boost his wan­ing pres­i­den­tial ambitions.
As I said he is exact­ly like Giuliani, both were Federal Prosecutors who lack the intel­lect to be objective.
Neither of these bul­lies are capa­ble of mak­ing ratio­nal dis­tinc­tions between wrong and right as far as cops are concerned.
For these two Cops can do no wrong .
It was part of the rea­sons no one is talk­ing about President Giuliani. The so-called “America’s Mayor” is now a mere footnote.
Like Giuliani Christie will crash and burn. There is no way either of these two school­yard thugs could be allowed anywhere

near the nuclear codes. It is that same arro­gance which got him boot­ed from a Amtrak qui­et car .

Chris Christie was report­ed­ly kicked out of an Amtrak train car Sunday for yelling on his cell phone in one of the train service’s “qui­et cars.”The Garden State gov­er­nor, known for his blunt and at times loud style, was spot­ted by fel­low pas­sen­gers in the qui­et car on a 9:55 a.m. Amtrak train trav­el­ing from Washington, D.C. to New York, accord­ing to Gawker. The strug­gling 2016 can­di­date “got on last minute yelling at his two Secret Service agents I think because of a seat mix-up, sat down and imme­di­ate­ly start­ed mak­ing phone calls on the qui­et car,” pas­sen­ger Alexander Mann told Gawker. Christie appeared to be in the midst of an intense con­ver­sa­tion and was heard repeat­ing phras­es includ­ing “this is frickin’ ridicu­lous” and “seri­ous­ly?” accord­ing to Mann.
‘This is frickin’ ridicu­lous’: Chris Christie gets boot­ed from Amtrak qui­et car for being too loud while on cellphone 

We salute Amtrak for putting this bul­ly in his place imag­ine this guy hav­ing pow­er to use the world’s ‚most pow­er­ful military?
If he is yelling at Agents now as a fad­ing can­di­date imag­ine if he was to ever become President.…

This assault hap­pened yes­ter­day October 26^th to a stu­dent in her Columbia South Carolina class room …
Reports indi­cate the girl was asked to leave the class after using her cell­phone she did not, upon which Administrators were called and she still sat in her seat.
That is when they brought in the Thug and this was the result. Judge for your­selves whether you would allow this to hap­pen to your child.
This hap­pened in a class­room involv­ing a female stu­dent . This was not a ter­ror­ist about to blow up some­thing . If a girl can­not be safe in her own class­room from the thug­gish assault of the State where can she be safe.
Does any­one see where we are as a peo­ple in what is clear­ly a police state gone awry?
FBI DIRECTOR: VIOLENT CRIMES ARE UP BECAUSE POLICE OFFICERS CAN’T BE AS ABUSIVE WITH CELL PHONE VIDEOS EVERYWHERE

Just two days ago the FBI direc­tor James Comey had the nerve to blame peo­ple who video­tape cops abus­ing oth­er cit­i­zens for the rise in some cat­e­gories of crime in the country.
To begin with he cit­ed absolute­ly no data which sup­ports his argu­ments but that did not stop him from mak­ing the ridicu­lous and uncon­firmed state­ment anyway.
What makes Comey’s com­ments more omi­nous and dis­turb­ing is the fact that the FBI is count­ed on at the fed­er­al lev­el to inves­ti­gate inci­dents of police abuse of cit­i­zens. The ques­tion now is what is the qual­i­ty of the Investigations being done by the FBI in cas­es where police com­mit crimes against citizens?

Personally I always won­dered about the basis for Black peo­ple’s faith in the FBI to be impar­tial or thor­ough in light of the Agency’s his­to­ry in deal­ing with the community.
The FBI has con­sis­tent­ly had an adver­sar­i­al rela­tion­ship with the African-American com­mu­ni­ty despite rhetoric to the contrary.
Just recent­ly in Ferguson Missouri as African-American peo­ple were in the streets demon­stra­tion sys­tem­at­ic Police abuse White Anti-African-American mer­ce­nar­ies were walk­ing around heav­i­ly armed the FBI was there spy­ing on the demonstrators.

James Comey, direc­tor of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) admit­ted to the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) that his agency spied on the Ferguson protests with aer­i­al craft because of the requests from local law enforce­ment. Comey clar­i­fied his rev­e­la­tion by stat­ing that the FBI does not “fly planes around America look­ing down to see if some­body might be doing some­thing wrong”; how­ev­er that is exact­ly what the FBI did at Ferguson. And because of this, the FBI did not obtain war­rants before engag­ing because of a loop­hole in the process that rests on the notion that “planes do not cap­ture or record the con­tents of any com­mu­ni­ca­tions on the ground.” Comey added: “The law is pret­ty clear that you don’t need a war­rant for that kind of conversation.”

The planes used by the FBI appar­ent­ly were tasked with watch­ing spe­cif­ic sus­pects who were alleged­ly thought to be involved in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty and under inves­ti­ga­tion for ter­ror­ism and espi­onage when the Ferguson police depart­ment asked the FBI to assist them in “devel­op­ing situation[s]” such as riots. Comey vehe­ment­ly stat­ed that the planes were not con­duct­ing sur­veil­lance, and yet the FBI sent air­craft to Ferguson in August of 2014 to watch over the protests against police because of the shoot­ing of Michael Brown. And then the FBI helped out again in Baltimore dur­ing the Freddie Gray protests. The direc­tor of the FBI explained that his agency will be deployed “if there is tremen­dous tur­bu­lence in a com­mu­ni­ty, it’s use­ful to every­body — civil­ians and law enforce­ment — to have a view of what’s going on. Where are the fires in this com­mu­ni­ty? Where are peo­ple gath­er­ing? Where do peo­ple need help? And some­times the best view of that is above rather than try­ing to look from a car in the street.” Director Admits FBI Spies on African Americans & Muslims From the Sky

Whenever Police abuse cit­i­zens we hear the con­stant drum­beat about what hap­pened before which pre­cip­i­tat­ed the incident?
Let me explain some­thing on that issue, police do not have a right to mete out pun­ish­ment , it is the duty of a court of law to make that determination.
There is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion which is prac­tised by police and their apol­o­gists in the main street Media when­ev­er inci­dents like these occur . Which is to cre­ate a smoke screen, cre­ate a nar­ra­tive that some­thing else may have occurred which we are not aware of.
This sideshow is intend­ed to deflect atten­tion away from what we saw with our eyes so we may wan­der off into the weeds of hypotheticals.
That is where they want the dis­cus­sion to be cen­tered, away from what we saw with our eyes, delv­ing instead in “maybes and what ifs”.
What we saw in that clip is inde­fen­si­ble regard­less of what may or may not have tran­spired pre­vi­ous­ly. It does not require an inves­ti­ga­tion he should be fired forthwith.

The main stream media will of course engage in a process of char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion on the stu­dent, and char­ac­ter san­i­ta­tion of the cop.Any attempt to dis­cuss what this female stu­dent may have done pri­or to the assault on her with­in the con­text of the cops actions is a grave dis­ser­vice to what he did and must be seen as a clear attempt to jus­ti­fy his thug­gish bru­tal behavior.
In this medi­um we speak to the dis­re­spect too many cops have when they are deal­ing with peo­ple of col­or and black peo­ple in general.
They sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly refer to grown black men as “bud or guy” while refer­ring to white men as ” sir”.
Many cops are a mere hair trig­ger from using force when they deal with peo­ple of col­or. In many cas­es they active­ly esca­late sim­ple things so they can law­ful­ly assault Black cit­i­zens . Whatever they do or say pri­or to using force is mere­ly a “cov­er your ass” in the event of scrutiny.
The FBI of course will Investigate and this guy will be found to have act­ed law­ful­ly and the police state’s assault will continue.
This is the state which hate and fear built.

One of the things I learned over the last 24 years liv­ing in the United States is the absolute arro­gance of white men . Whether it is a ques­tion of invad­ing the sov­er­eign Iraqi Nation and cre­at­ing ISIL in the process or whether it is their response to the Black Lives mat­ter move­ment as it relates to police exces­sive behav­ior their atti­tudes are the same.

Most of us oth­er peo­ple argue points based on mer­its , pros and cons, we defend our posi­tions based on the inher­ent feel­ing that we are right and justified.
Not so with the American white male.
He nev­er quite got around to explain­ing how Christopher Columbus man­aged to dis­cov­er land peo­ple were liv­ing on in orga­nized soci­eties before he hap­pened upon those lands.
He makes no attempt to explain or address the fact that the “Moors” Black Africans had arrived set­tled here beside Native Indians and lived peace­ful­ly with the Natives since around the 12^th century.
The ques­tion of his lack of fideli­ty to the numer­ous treaties he signed with the Indians and dis­hon­ored is nev­er broached or discussed.

So it’s no sur­prise that when he refers to America in the con­text of Immigration or the Black Lives mat­ter move­ment he nev­er both­ers to speak to the strug­gles of either group he sim­ply dou­bles down on what he sees as his right to the land and his right to do with the world what he sees fit.
It’s not just his right to do with the entire United States as he sees fit. He also believes in his absolute right to con­trol the entire globe.

He speaks about remov­ing and replac­ing Governments and Administrations as if it’s his duty and job to do so , the unspo­ken under­stand­ing being America’s right to dic­tate to every­one else.
Just last Sunday Tony Blair the Conservative Former British Prime Minister speak­ing to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria took the unprece­dent­ed step[ of apol­o­giz­ing for his role in the Iraq war.
The apol­o­gy was not with­out the ever present white male arrogance .….…..
Quote ‚“I apol­o­gise for the fact that the intel­li­gence we received was wrong. “I also apol­o­gise for some of the mis­takes in plan­ning and, cer­tain­ly, our mis­take in our under­stand­ing of what would hap­pen once you removed the régime.”
You won’t get even that from Bush or the war crim­i­nal Dick Cheney.
On that note I salute the Canadian peo­ple for rec­og­niz­ing and demon­strat­ing that the rea­son peo­ple respect their coun­try is not because it throws its weight around the world in wars of choice but because it has a his­to­ry of not doing so.
The unmis­tak­able rejec­tion of Stephen Harper speaks vol­umes about the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the Canadian vot­er on this par­tic­u­lar subject.

FBI DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY STILL UNSURE IF WHITE SUPREMACIST’S ATTACK IN CHARLESTON WAS TERRORISM

But the gall of them, who gives them the right to decide who rules in these coun­tries ? They nev­er quite got around to explain­ing that either . So we are left to assume and maybe more defin­i­tive­ly con­clude that the col­or of their skin gives them that authority.
The FBI Director says Police are feel­ing scared they don’t want to get out of their cars that’s the rea­son some crimes are trend­ing up is that Police are scared to do their jobs because they are under more scruti­ny because cit­i­zens are video­tap­ing their activities.
The infer­ence being that Police can­not do their jobs unless they abuse and kill peo­ple indis­crim­i­nate­ly despite hav­ing access to the best and most sophis­ti­cat­ed sup­port struc­ture prob­a­bly of any nation.
The tragedy in all of this is that for the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple of col­or who have been abused by the sys­tem the FBI and the Federal appa­ra­tus was seen as a Savior of sorts. I nev­er quite rec­on­ciled that notion con­sid­er­a­tion the his­to­ry of the FBI and the divi­sive, dis­rup­tive and down­right dan­ger­ous role it has played in the African American Community historically.
I guess when you are a drown­ing man you clutch at straws.
Simply put Black peo­ple’s faith in the FBI as an inde­pen­dent inves­tiga­tive Agency was always mis­placed. Blacks plac­ing their faith in the FBI as an impar­tial play­er between them and the police was always an exer­cise in stu­pid­i­ty and futil­i­ty. Comey sim­ply con­firmed what I always believed.

Whites take own­er­ship of America and the world , blacks can­not even say this is my coun­try and not blink, in fact they sim­ply nev­er say it. Guess what if you don’t take own­er­ship the oth­er guy will. As such white men con­tin­ue to tell them do not look up at me , don’t you dare look in my eyes and there­in lies the problem.

Speaking at a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Area Council One meet­ing in St Andrew Opposition spokesper­son on jus­tice Delroy Chuck cau­tioned oppo­si­tion sen­a­tors against embar­rass­ing them­selves by sup­port­ing the Simpson Miller Administration in mak­ing the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) the final court of appeals for Jamaica.

In address­ing the crowd of laborites Chuck said “If one, two, or eight [JLP] sen­a­tors make the error [and vote for the bills], not only would they be embar­rass­ing them­selves, but what they would do is cause the Labour Party to expend mon­ey to take these three bills to the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, [and the] Privy Council,”.

Chuck argues fur­ther ‚“Let me make it even fur­ther clear. If one, two, or all eight of them go ahead and sup­port the bills, the leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, the spokesper­son on jus­tice, and the Jamaica Labour Party will take those three bills to the Constitutional Court, right up to the Privy Council, to show that they are a mock­ery to the Jamaica Constitution,” “The only way the CCJ can be the final appel­late court is when we put it to the peo­ple and we say to the peo­ple ‘do you want the CCJ or you want a final Jamaican court’ and let the peo­ple of Jamaica make that decision,”.

I am no fan of Delroy Chuck but even a bro­ken clock is right twice dai­ly, the only way the CCJ should be rat­i­fied as the final court of appeal for Jamaica is to put it on the bal­lot and let the peo­ple decide. I have very lit­tle con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of the Jamaican elec­torate to make sound deci­sions but it is their coun­try they should own the decision.
I agree with Chuck on this and I have said so pre­vi­ous­ly it should be placed on the bal­lot so the peo­ple can own the decision.
I believe accept­ing the prison deal with Britain should also be a bal­lot issue. I know that some will be quick to remind us that lead­ers are elect­ed to lead . My response to that is that no one per­son or group of peo­ple has all the answers as such large deci­sions such as the Prison deal and the (CCJ) deci­sion should be the deci­sion of voters.

The Jamaicagleaner​.com is report­ing that one Jamaica Labor Party Senator is lean­ing toward sup­port­ing the Government motion>When asked about it Arthur Williams is report­ed to have said Chucks state­ments will have no impact on the way he will vote. Big sur­prise there [sic]
Delroy Chuck warned if the issue is passed the next JLP Administration would sim­ply reverse it.
If they put the CCJ in sec­tion 110 of the Constitution, the next JLP gov­ern­ment, which will be in pow­er lat­er this year or next year … when­ev­er the elec­tions are called, we are going to use a sim­ple major­i­ty to remove it,”

It is remark­able that the PNP would be seek­ing to push the CCJ on the Jamaican peo­ple in light of the con­di­tions of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in the country.
One does not have to be a legal lumi­nary to rec­og­nize that what Jamaica should be work­ing on at this time is improv­ing the con­di­tions of court build­ings, upgrad­ing and invest­ing in equip­ment which will ensure bet­ter deliv­ery of ser­vice and most impor­tant­ly improv­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of the police so that a greater per­cent­age of crim­i­nals can be removed from the streets and placed where they belong.
I have not heard a mean­ing­ful argu­ment for the removal of the Privy Council as the final appel­late court beyond the one about sov­er­eign­ty and independence.
On that issue I say, look how well we have han­dled our affairs since our so-called independence[sic].

Since we have not heard any mean­ing­ful argu­ments for the CCJ beyond that, one is tempt­ed to ascribe sin­is­ter motives to the PNP’s push for it.
Less and less peo­ple have rea­sons to believe in the Government’s abil­i­ty to deliv­er fair and ade­quate jus­tice to them. One of the issues I have raised on this sub­ject is that part of the prob­lem with our sys­tem of jus­tice on the Island is that Prosecutors , Defense Lawyers and Judges all pret­ty much come from the same farm.
They are large­ly all part of the very same small club, from post­grad­u­ate to grad­u­ate stud­ies. Does any­one in their right mind believe phone calls are not made which have seri­ous impli­ca­tions on verdicts?

The CCJ which is based in Trinidad, does not have Trinidad as a mem­ber to date, that ought to say some­thing about the idea in and of itself.
Thus far only Barbados, Belize and Guyana retain the CCJ as their final court of appeals .
I am not sug­gest­ing by any mea­sure that the CCJ is cor­rupt or inca­pable. What I am say­ing is that for those with mal-intent it is much eas­i­er to get to, and I do not mean geographically.
Jamaica can­not afford to have any fur­ther ero­sion of trust in its abil­i­ty to deliv­er jus­tice to it’s cit­i­zens. The con­se­quences will be dire and far reach­ing if we go down this path.

Irish-American actress Maureen O’Hara has died. She was 95.

The Parent Trap star’s fam­i­ly con­firmed to The Irish Times that she passed away from nat­ur­al caus­es in her sleep on Saturday.

The FitzSimons fam­i­ly (O’Hara was born Maureen FitzSimons) issued a state­ment, say­ing, “Maureen was our lov­ing moth­er, grand­moth­er, great-grand­moth­er and friend. She passed peace­ful­ly sur­round­ed by her lov­ing fam­i­ly as they cel­e­brat­ed her life lis­ten­ing to music from her favorite movie, The Quiet Man.”

Per the Irish Times, the fam­i­ly praised O’Hara, who received an hon­orary Academy Award in 2014, for hav­ing brought “unyield­ing strength and sud­den sen­si­tiv­i­ty to every role she played.”.

“Her char­ac­ters were feisty and fear­less, just as she was in real life,” the fam­i­ly’s state­ment con­tin­ued. “She was also proud­ly Irish and spent her entire life­time shar­ing her her­itage and the won­der­ful cul­ture of the Emerald Isle with the world.”

O’Hara’s fam­i­ly not­ed in their state­ment that while she “cher­ished her pri­va­cy, she always appre­ci­at­ed the expres­sions of good will from peo­ple around the world and from all walks of life. She espe­cial­ly loved it when chil­dren recog­nised her from her role in Miracle on 34^th Street and asked her: ‘Are you the lady who knows Santa Claus?’ She always answered: ‘Yes I am. What would you like me to tell him?’ ”

The late actress’s fam­i­ly, which includes her daugh­ter Brownyn FitzSimons, said, per The Irish Times, “While we mourn the loss of a very won­der­ful woman, we also cel­e­brate her remark­able life and hope that it serves as an exam­ple to young peo­ple around the world, espe­cial­ly in Ireland, to work hard to make their dreams come true and to always have the courage to stand up for themselves.”

The fam­i­ly not­ed, per The Irish Times, that for those wish­ing to hon­or O’Hara, they “have a sim­ple request: vis­it Ireland one day and think of her.”
See more here : Actress Maureen O’Hara Dies at 95

Eighteen (18) infants have died between June and September this year from health­care-asso­ci­at­ed infec­tions at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) in Kingston and Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Montego Bay accord­ing to the Jamaican media.

No one knows more about the unbear­able grief which comes from los­ing one’s child than this writer . The immea­sur­able grief is so much that many com­mit sui­cide, oth­ers are ruined emo­tion­al­ly for life and oth­ers sim­ply quit after their child has died.
It is against that back­drop that this medi­um wish­es to asso­ciate with the pain and suf­fer­ing of those par­ents as they grieve this loss and suf­fer a pain that cuts to the core.

In most soci­eties the per­son who heads the health sec­tor would resign as a mark of respect for those par­ents and for not fig­ur­ing out that some­thing was amiss.
There has been a sig­nif­i­cant amount of calls for the Minister of health Fenton Ferguson to step aside in light of these deaths which clear­ly could have been avoided.
He has stead­fast­ly refused to step aside claim­ing he could not have fixed a prob­lem of which he was unaware.
This is not the first time that Ferguson a Dentist by trade has come under scruti­ny and for his lack of aware­ness of what ails the nation’s health care deliv­ery system.
Many of his crit­ics did so against the chick v out­break which plagued the Island just months ago. Some argue that the fact that he is a den­tist and not a med­ical doc­tor has some­thing to do with what they char­ac­ter­ize as his incompetence.
I dis­agree that one has to be a med­ical doc­tor in order to be a good min­is­ter of health which is an admin­is­tra­tive job.
Ferguson has at his dis­pos­al a vast cadre of com­pe­tent med­ical doc­tors with whom he can consult.

In fact we under­stand that a recent audit was done of the health ser­vices and Ferguson hid the results from the country.
Additionally it has been report­ed that a promi­nent young Doctor Alfred Dawes who head­ed the Jamaica Medical Doctors Association (JMDA) has been black­list­ed by the Portia Simpson Miller Government because he spoke out about the con­di­tions in the health sec­tor on the Island.
The Medical Doctors Association report­ed their experiences .

“We have flies in the oper­at­ing the­atre. We have to reuse sin­gle-use instru­ments that aren’t dis­posed of but [are] washed and placed in antibac­te­r­i­al solu­tion and used on anoth­er patient,”. Pads and pen­cils used with elec­tro­sur­gi­cal machines, which sends elec­tri­cal cur­rent to blood ves­sels to stop bleed­ing, are also reused. “The pen­cils are soaked in dis­in­fec­tant and reused till they stop work­ing,” the doc­tor said. However, he point­ed out that the reused pen­cils run the risk of burn­ing the patient and caus­ing elec­tri­cal fires. Another doc­tor said they often prac­tise what they term ‘social­ist med­i­cine’ as left­overs from an indi­vid­u­al’s surgery are used on some­one else. “We have a mesh that is used to fix her­nias. We ask patients to buy them as the hos­pi­tal always runs out. When we don’t use all of the ster­ile mesh in the surgery for the patient who bought it, we soak it in dis­in­fec­tant and use the left­over on a patient who could­n’t afford to buy their own,” According to the Jamaicaobserver​.com.

The Prime Minister thus far has been nowhere in sight, in fact the only time she is heard from these days is when she shows up to cozy up to Foreign lead­ers, latch on to the suc­cess­es of sports stars, or curse out the Opposition. In her absence the People’s National Party’s Youth Organization the “Comrade farm” or “D league” of the Governing admin­is­tra­tion has stepped to the fore attempt­ing to address the issue of the deaths of the infants.

PNPYO ACCUSES JLP OF POLITICISING HEALTH CARE

The Opposition “must imme­di­ate­ly remove their favourite polit­i­cal­ly coloured lens­es and call a spade a spade”. Kledsiella is well known as one of the most com­mon hos­pi­tal bugs, caus­ing pos­si­ble fatal ill­ness­es world­wide. “Kledsiella’s spread among neonates does not aver­age above six per cent in Jamaica, includ­ing the deaths this year, and while sta­tis­tics will not bring back the lives of some of our youngest Jamaicans, we still fare bet­ter than some more eco­nom­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful coun­tries, such as Brazil with a 50 per cent affect­ed rate of its neonates”

In oth­er words as the Party leader usu­al­ly say to those who oppose her igno­rant non­sense, “Shut up”.
It could have been much worse.
If ever there was any doubt where Jamaica is head­ing under the stew­ard­ship of the present Administration and its sub­sidiaries there need be no fur­ther questions.
The met­ric used in Jamaica is the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, as such our coun­try does not mea­sure itself against the suc­cess of oth­ers we rate our­selves against the fail­ure lev­els of others.
Notwithstanding this glar­ing lack of vision, wis­dom and car­ing, hun­dreds of Thousands of Jamaicans will dress up in orange col­ored cos­tumes like “junkanoo” per­form­ers and they will jubi­lant­ly march into polling sta­tions come next nation­al elec­tions. Some may go even fur­ther, they will wound and even kill those who have oppos­ing polit­i­cal views.
In fair­ness the oth­er side will do the very same.
In the end the slow yet steady slide below the pover­ty line will con­tin­ue. Soon Jamaicans will be run­ning away to Haiti. They sim­ply do not know they deserve better.

Like so many oth­ers David Simmons arrived in Kingston with pre­con­ceived notions about the things he heard about Policing in Jamaica. Simmons from Barbadoes was hired by the Simpson Miller gov­ern­ment to chair the Commission look­ing into the actions of the secu­ri­ty forces when they went to arrest Tivoli Overlord Christopher (Dudus)Coke on an extra­di­tion war­rant in 2010.

SEE ALSO INQUIRY SHOULD BE ABOUT PNP’S REFUSAL TO SUPPORT SECURITY FORCES

It’s impor­tant to have account­abil­i­ty in Government . Government cor­rup­tion across the Globe has lit­er­al­ly oblit­er­at­ed peo­ple’s trust and con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of their Governments to serve their best interest.
Jamaica a small devel­op­ing Nation has done more than it’s fair share in destroy­ing the faith of it’s cit­i­zen­ry that their best inter­est are being addressed in mean­ing­ful ways.

So no well mean­ing Jamaican can seri­ous­ly say that in the inter­est of trans­paren­cy a com­pe­tent pan­el should not be empan­elled to exam­ine events which occurred which result­ed in the deaths of over sev­en­ty Jamaicans.
Jonah believed the peo­ple of Nineveh was unde­serv­ing of God’s love and car­ing because of their wicked ways , so he dis­obeyed God’s com­mand to go and issue them a warn­ing to turn from their wicked ways.
Many of us are like mind­ed, we saw the peo­ple express­ing their undy­ing love and devo­tion to Dudus Coke and pledg­ing to lay down their lives for him.

It is not out of the realm of ratio­nal­i­ty to say well they had their wish.
nev­er­the­less as a peo­ple we can­not allow vengeance or pet­ty polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences to destroy our coun­try for our chil­dren and our chil­dren’s children.

Critics with an under­stand­ing of Jamaica’s pol­i­tics say the Enquiry is being under­tak­en with a view to gain polit­i­cal points. This may be true but it’s still nec­es­sary to have these enquiries in a demo­c­ra­t­ic society.
I too share that view I believe the over M$140 spent so far could have been put to bet­ter use.
In the end noth­ing new will emerge which most Jamaicans don’t already know .

SEE MORE HERE : Vaz blasts Tivoli com­mis­sion chair­man over damn­ing state­ment; demands apology

David Simmons arrived in the Island and right off the bat he formed opin­ions and expressed his bias­es against the Police and Military. In the con­text of his func­tion I believed he over­stepped his bound on sev­er­al occa­sions in a forum which requires tact, dis­cre­tion, cir­cum­spec­tion and most impor­tant­ly impartiality.
Simmons failed dis­mal­ly in his utter­ances and has been chas­tised by sev­er­al for shoot­ing off at the mouth with­out ade­quate­ly engag­ing his brain.

After spend­ing just a lit­tle time in Jamaica and see­ing the crime sta­tis­tics dai­ly David Simmons have had a “come to jesus moment” , an awak­en­ing if you will.
Responding to media reports that the num­ber of mur­ders report­ed this year has sur­passed the num­ber report­ed for the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year.
Simmons said , “This is a nev­er end­ing spi­ral, it has to stop. Jamaica has to pull back from this,” 
Oh, what’s this I hear? It’s not as peachy and rosy as you thought?

It’s always easy to com­ment and pass asper­sions when you don’t have to face the bullets.
Imagine if you were a mem­ber of the secu­ri­ty forces who faced those mili­ti­a­men who risked life and limb for that ungrate­ful unde­serv­ing nation?
I guess your com­ments would be lot more mea­sured , cir­cum­spect and respect­ful , but then again when you don’t have to face the bul­lets because oth­ers have vol­un­teered to do it on your behalf it’s easy to criticize.

This is the third Article in a row in which I am respond­ing to events in Jamaica which involves mem­bers of the Bar Association.

During the years I served in the (JCF) Jamaica Constabulary Force I became friends with sev­er­al decent and hard­work­ing mem­bers of the Legal Fraternity.
In fact a cou­ple of my good friends kind­ly assured me they would defend me “pro-bono” if ever I need­ed to be defend­ed legal­ly as a result of the pur­suits out my duties as a police officer.
Those assur­ances will for­ev­er remain in my heart. The kind­ness and thought­ful­ness of those assur­ances still warms my heart even though I left law enforce­ment over two decades ago.

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Such was the extent of the friend­ships which devel­oped as a result of the mutu­al respect and admi­ra­tion we had for each oth­er from work­ing togeth­er though work­ing at dif­fer­ent ends of the spectrum.
I also built rela­tion­ships with some mem­bers of the bench who are still serv­ing today and I am indeed proud of those asso­ci­a­tions as I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe those pro­fes­sion­als were of the high­est cal­iber and still remain so.
From my per­spec­tives oth­ers were sim­ple bul­lies who hid behind the clown cos­tumes and hurled abuse at those who could not defend themselves.
Those abus­es con­tin­ue to this day and in many cas­es have increased exponentially.

Over the years we have seen sit­u­a­tions in which mem­bers of the Legal fra­ter­ni­ty have brought the once proud and pris­tine fra­ter­ni­ty into seri­ous ques­tion. Some mem­bers can­not seem to avoid com­mit­ting lar­ce­ny as ser­vants, fraud­u­lent con­ver­sions, or mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing their clien­t’s monies.
Every year as I have point­ed out in recent arti­cles sev­er­al are struck from the list of those allowed to prac­tice law on the Island.
The General legal Council pro­vides a detailed list which pro­vide the names of those so dis­barred . One must bear in mind that list includes only those bad lawyers who have been caught and found to have com­mit­ted seri­ous and egre­gious breach­es of their sacred trust.
Disbarred Attorneys

The same is true of the Police ser­vice in which I spent 10 of my for­ma­tive adult years.
As we seek to look at the behav­ior of some mem­bers of the Bar it is impor­tant to observe that Lawyers become Judges. No one goes to School to become a Judge.
Judges are appoint­ed from the pool of lawyers which prac­tices law both on the side of the Prosecution and the Defense.
Most Western Industrialized nations tend to pick their Judges from the Prosecution side, the same can­not be said for Jamaica.
This may or may not have some­thing to do with the per­cep­tion that it is almost impos­si­ble to gain con­vic­tions in Jamaica’s crim­i­nal courts, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the accused is connected.

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I made the afore­men­tioned obser­va­tions against state­ments made by President of the bar Association of Jamaica Donovan Walker and an alleged Investigation which has been com­menced by Zaila McCalla the Island’s Chief Justice into an inci­dent in which an Attorney was arrest­ed at the Supreme Court in Kingston.
In his state­ment Walker said he spoke to the Commissioner of Police and the Minister of Justice about the arrest which he saw as problematic .
Stating quote : “Arresting an offi­cer of the court with­in the precincts of the Supreme Court build­ing sends a bad sig­nal ‚the action may be seen as an act of con­tempt, the dig­ni­ty of the courts must be observed by all offi­cers of the court, includ­ing the police”.

This writer main­tains that the laws of the Country must be upheld and respect­ed indeed by every­one in the coun­try. In a Democracy no per­son is greater than the oth­er. As such the laws must be applied fair­ly and equi­tably across the board.
I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe there is no bet­ter place to arrest a per­son than in the very halls of jus­tice , if the Supreme Court does con­sid­er itself a hall of jus­tice as it once was.
The President of the Bar Association has from the report­ing been able to secure the com­mence­ment of an inves­ti­ga­tion into what is clear­ly a jus­ti­fi­able and prop­er arrest.
He argues that the arrest in the con­fines of the court could be viewed as con­temp­tu­ous with­out pro­vid­ing one iota of evi­dence in sup­port of that scur­rilous assertion.
The enforce­ment of Jamaican laws can­not be con­fined to the poor­est of the poor and the least con­nect­ed only, and it cer­tain­ly can­not be sub­ject to the whims of a gen­tri­fied Bureaucrat.

The great­est imped­i­ment to our sys­tem of Justice is not where alleged crim­i­nals are arrest­ed it rests with the appli­ca­tion of the law. Most impor­tant­ly it rests with the per­cep­tion the pub­lic has of the peo­ple who are sworn to uphold those laws.
Judges, Attorneys and Police offi­cers have a duty to com­port them­selves in a dig­ni­fied manner.
Allegations of Police mis­con­duct is well doc­u­ment­ed based on their numbers.
Instances of mis­con­duct by Lawyers are not as well know or ampli­fied, prob­a­bly because their num­bers are not as voluminous.
Judges engage in unlaw­ful con­duct how­ev­er their num­bers are sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than the num­ber of prac­tis­ing lawyers.
Juxtapose that with the fact that the high­er a per­son is posi­tioned in Jamaica the less like­ly he will ever be accused much less charged or con­vict­ed of a crime.

I will now intro­duce to you a let­ter which appeared in the Jamaica Daily Gleaner of Oct.22^nd 2015 ..
This let­ter was writ­ten by one of the Country’s pre-emi­nent legal minds whom from his let­ter believes fun­da­men­tal­ly in the quote: world class qual­i­ty of the nation’s legal minds.

In a let­ter to the Editor pub­lished on October 19, Glen George Wilson gives as a rea­son for keep­ing the Privy Council as our final Court of Appeal that the lawyers of the Caribbean will con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from par­tic­i­pat­ing in delib­er­a­tions with oth­er world-class legal minds. The objec­tive of hav­ing Caribbean lawyers exposed to world-class legal minds will be more read­i­ly achieved by the accep­tance of the CCJ’s appel­late juris­dic­tion because at present only a very lim­it­ed num­ber of lawyers have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to appear in the Privy Council so as to have delib­er­a­tions with oth­er ‘world-class legal minds’. Since there are world-class legal minds with­in the Caribbean, the CCJ as an itin­er­ant and more acces­si­ble court would offer more and bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties for that participation.

Power To Legislate

The sec­ond rea­son Wilson gives is that the CCJ will use its pow­er to leg­is­late from the bench and so the vot­ers could be ignored. He has giv­en no basis for this sur­mise and there is no evi­dence in the CCJ’s 10 years of adju­di­ca­tion to sup­port it. But why does Williams feel that the CCJ would be more prone to leg­is­late from the bench than the Privy Council? Certainly, the CCJ will be in a bet­ter posi­tion to sense the will of ‘the vot­ers’ than the Privy Council, as Lord Hoffman, an emi­nent Law Lord and Privy Councillor advised us.

Lloyd G. Barnett .
Attorney-at-law

This let­ter is a clas­sic demon­stra­tion of what we have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly main­tained in this medi­um , that at the high­est lev­el in Jamaica it is all about self and not the long-term wel­fare and well­be­ing of the country.
Of course Jamaica has no short­age of world ‑class legal minds that is nev­er in question.
Jamaicans are over­achiev­ers, what­ev­er we set our minds to we excel at it even when we seek to self-destruct.
That is not the issue, the issue is that bright legal minds like the Goodly Dr Lloyd Barnett is will­ing to cajole and coax our coun­try into get­ting rid of the Privy Council and replac­ing it with the CCJ.

It is clear from this let­ter that what’s upper­most and of para­mount impor­tance to the Author Dr Barnett as indeed many oth­ers is not the future of our nation and the rule of law but the pro­mo­tion and aggran­dize­ment of the legal fraternity.
No Jamaican lawyer can rea­son­ably pick up the phone and call the Privy Council in England with a view to influ­enc­ing a rul­ing one way or the other.
Can we say the same about the crim­i­nal Justice sys­tem in Jamaica?
if we dis­card the Privy Council will Jamaicans be able to say to them­selves they are com­fort­able that the process is untar­nished and with­out collusion?
Are Jamaicans con­fi­dent they are get­ting jus­tice at home when Prosecutors, Defense Lawyers and tri­al Judges were trained at the same law school, attend the same func­tions and are mem­bers of the same social clubs?
If Jamaicans believe they are get­ting untar­nished jus­tice I have a bridge I would like for them to con­sid­er purchasing.
These are just a few of the pow­er­ful voic­es lob­by­ing for the CCJ which ulti­mate­ly will be a grand old social club for the good old boys.
Jamaicans need to see this for what it is and eschew it.

Yesterday I inar­tic­u­late­ly and crude­ly respond­ed out of anger and dis­gust to the news that Jamaica’s Chief Justice Zaila McCalla has launched a probe into the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing how an attor­ney-at-law was arrest­ed inside the Supreme Court building.
Jamaica’s Criminal courts dock­ets are over­flow­ing with unre­solved cas­es this has been an ongo­ing sit­u­a­tion for decades , how­ev­er much of it has hap­pened on the watch of McCalla.
This is true despite the fact that the Police are lock­ing up a measly 7% of mur­der­ers con­trary to alter­na­tive arguments.

The sit­u­a­tion is so dire as it relates to dis­po­si­tion of cas­es in the crim­i­nal courts sys­tem that some have pro­posed that the Powers that be sim­ply throw out all of those cas­es and start afresh.
What those myopic com­men­ta­tors does not both­er to think about is the fact that if that path was to be fol­lowed the island would also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dump a bunch of mass mur­der­ers in cus­tody back onto the streets in what would have amount­ed to a de fac­to Amnesty to mass murderers.

Much of the delay in resolv­ing cas­es rests not with inad­e­quate police inves­ti­ga­tions and case con­clu­sion as some want you to believe. As a for­mer offi­cer who spent many years in the sys­tem I must tell you they stem from defense lawyers ask­ing for adjourn­ments because they haven’t been paid.
Any Detective or uni­formed offi­cer will tell you they are as frus­trat­ed as any­one when Lawyers show up ask­ing the judge for an adjourn­ment because quote; “My client haven’t yet ful­filled cer­tain obligations” .
It’s impor­tant that the record be set straight on some of these lies which have gone unad­dressed for too long, in many cas­es where delays occur the police have noth­ing to do with it.

Judges nev­er say no when their crim­i­nal lawyer cohorts ask for these con­tin­ued adjourn­ments and rea­son­ably no one expects them to work with­out being paid.
It’s sim­ply a mat­ter of log­i­cal­ly plac­ing the root-caus­es of the delays where they appro­pri­ate­ly belong.

With all of the prob­lems in the Courts sys­tem I am real­ly miffed that McCalla would have time to even con­sid­er the non­sen­si­cal notion that a Lawyer arrest­ed with­in the con­fines of the courts con­sti­tutes some kind of threat to the author­i­ty of the court as the head of the Bar Association seem to think, or war­rants some kind of inves­ti­ga­tion of sorts.

What did McCalla do when Judith Pusey jammed up the sys­tem with ven­gance in an effort to ensure that Kern Spencer would not be found guilty of the crime for which he was charged ?
Pusey a sub­or­di­nate of McCalla mount­ed what could only be con­strued as a Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. type defense on behalf of Spencer, con­trary to her role as hear­er and tri­er of the facts.

In an unprece­dent­ed move not seen in recent his­to­ry Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey fought with the pros­e­cu­tor to the Appeals Court as she attempt­ed to stymie the more plau­si­ble out­come of guilty for the accused.
It took the Appeals court to smack­down this affront to the dig­ni­ty of the process , of course it did not mat­ter in the end because Pusey end­ed up toss­ing the case at the request of Spencer’s attorneys.
This has been and still remain one of the most glar­ing and rep­re­hen­si­ble assault on our sys­tem of justice.
Judith Pusey still sits on the mag­is­trates bench in jamaica.
Such was the out­rage of Judith Pusey’s behav­ior dur­ing the course of the Kern Spencer’s cor­rup­tion tri­al that Senior Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Caroline Hay blamed the mag­is­trate’s pos­ture for the slow pace of the tri­al, argu­ing that it “effec­tive­ly caused stay of the pros­e­cu­tion’s case for a peri­od of sev­en months and pre­vent­ed it from proceeding”.

“Considering the con­duct of the tri­al judge, the fair-mind­ed and informed observ­er would have a rea­son­able appre­hen­sion or sus­pi­cion of bias, and as such, pub­lic trust in the judi­cial process is under threat,” the DPP stat­ed in the court document.

In light of all this and the host of oth­er prob­lems plagu­ing the equi­table and fair dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice in Jamaica Zaila McCalla did absolute­ly nothing .
Zero . Zilch. Nada.
Where was this Jackass (no offence to don­keys) Donovan Walker when the Integrity of the crim­i­nal Justice process and the entire sys­tem of our Parliamentary Democracy, which has at it’s core a fair judi­cia­ry was threat­ened on what clear­ly was an out­right case of Judicial obstruction?
On the basis of the Kern Spencer case alone the Jamaican peo­ple lost repeat­ed­ly. They were bilked out of mil­lions of dol­lars dur­ing the sup­posed dis­tri­b­u­tion of the light bulbs and they lost again when Judith Pusey decid­ed to waste pub­lic funds in her fight with the Prosecutor.
The great­est loss how­ev­er is the lack of faith that case gen­er­at­ed in the sys­tem. A com­po­nent which sure­ly impacts the tra­jec­to­ry of crime in general.

Despite this Zaila McCalla has report­ed­ly launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into the fact that a lawyer was appro­pri­ate­ly arrest­ed by the police some­where in the Supreme Court building.
The Investigation is sup­pos­ed­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ed because the President of the Bar Association Donovan Walker is offend­ed that one of his cronies was cor­ralled with­in the court precinct.
Earl Melhado, was arrest­ed on October 9 by inves­ti­ga­tors from the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) as he exit­ed a court­room at the Supreme Court. According to Walker, this was an unprece­dent­ed move. The Bar Association pres­i­dent argues that arrest­ing an offi­cer of the court with­in the precincts of the Supreme Court build­ing sends a bad sig­nal. According to him, the action may be seen as an act of con­tempt. President of the Jamaican Bar Association, Donovan Walker, Walker argues that the dig­ni­ty of the courts must be observed by all offi­cers of the court, includ­ing the police.

As one of my good friend con­fid­ed in me “Just who the hell do these lawyers think they are”?
Yes who the hell do they think they are that when they com­mit them­selves spe­cial accom­mo­da­tions should be made for them ?
Might I remind these lit­tle “grung gads” there should be no spe­cial accom­mo­da­tion made for any­one who run afoul of the law.
The law must be observed with fideli­ty fair­ness, it must be equi­tably dis­pensed with mal­ice or ill will toward none. No one should get spe­cial treat­ment , yes that includes Lawyers.

The notion that arrest­ing some­one in the precinct of the court bor­ders on con­tempt, is on the face of it utter bull-shit but a more indepth look reveals the hypocrisy and sense of enti­tle­ment these lit­tle “Sovereigns” feel they deserve.
It is the crim­i­nal act for which the accused is charged which demeans and brings con­tempt to the courts and the process, not the total­ly and com­plete­ly legal , law­ful and nec­es­sary act of arrest­ing the per­pe­tra­tor which is contemptuous.
What the lit­tle Emperors are object­ing to under the pre­text of con­trived and faux con­cern about con­tempt for the Courts, is every­thing to do with their con­tin­ued belief that the police should be seen but not heard.

The time has come for this neo-Colonial way of think­ing to be erased from the psy­che of the Nation.
It is impor­tant that the Bar and it’s President be remind­ed that Slavery was abol­ished long ago and that we are march­ing slow­ly toward a Nation of laws and yes the laws of the coun­try apply to everyone.
You are accused of break­ing the law you get arrest­ed wher­ev­er you are found period.
What bet­ter place for him to be arrest­ed than in the halls of Justice?
The laws of the coun­try can­not and will not be just for the “lit­tle dut­ty foot bway”, it applies to Criminal Lawyers ‚or Lawyers who are Criminals as well.
Is there even a dif­fer­ence in Jamaica anymore ?