Predators and prey, as it is in the Animal Kingdom so too is it with humans. Animals instinc­tive­ly react vio­lent­ly out of the need to eat or when they are threat­ened. Humans on the oth­er hand sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly cal­cu­late how to prey on oth­ers . The defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic which sep­a­rates the two species is the abil­i­ty of humans to rea­son. Since we are able to rea­son , it fol­lows there­fore that when we decid­ed­ly kill some­one, we simul­ta­ne­ous­ly give up the right to expect clemency.

Opposition Senator Merlene Malahoo Forte made an absolute fool of her­self in her con­tri­bu­tion to the debate on a Bill which seeks to expunge the Record of Jamaicans con­vict­ed for pos­sess­ing small quan­ti­ties of Marijuana. In her con­tri­bu­tion the Opposition Senator sug­gest­ed that the record of mur­der­ers should also be expunged as every­one deserves a sec­ond chance. Forte went on to say quote: “In some coun­tries peo­ple are reha­bil­i­tated for the offence of mur­der. Our own Privy Council has stat­ed that not every­one who kills and is con­victed of mur­der should be regard­ed as a mur­derer, in the tra­di­tional sense.

I believe I am miss­ing some­thing here, but what? What am I upset about ?

.….….….…..Everything!

1) I would like to see the data on reha­bil­i­tat­ed mur­der­ers, and the coun­tries from which they come.

Not every­one who kill and is con­vict­ed of mur­der should be regard­ed as a mur­der­er in the tra­di­tion­al sense?

News for the good­ly Senator/​former Magistrate. If some­one is con­vict­ed of mur­der, that per­son is a mur­der­er. I under­stand that many of the Liberal Elites in Jamaica would like to call vicious killers some­thing else , but they are murderers.

If there are mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances in the com­mis­sion of the offense then the offend­er most cer­tain­ly would have been con­vict­ed of a less­er offense. If it isn’t mur­der the evi­dence may point to Conspiracy. It may point to Manslaughter, It may be mur­der or even manslaugh­ter in a less­er degree based on said spe­cial circumstance.

There is no way how­ev­er to make mur­der pret­ty ‚it is the killing of a human being by anoth­er human with mal­ice aforethought.

If the evi­dence does not sup­port this cri­te­ria , then it was not mur­der. Now I’m not sure what coun­try the Senator is ref­er­enc­ing. Some Scandinavian nations are very cre­ative in the way they approach Punishing crim­i­nals. I am yet to learn whether they actu­al­ly expunge the records of con­vict­ed mur­der­ers. In fact their approach to pun­ish­ment cou­pled with their eco­nom­ic bouyan­cy may be a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in their extreme­ly low mur­der rates.

Jamaica has one of the World’s high­est inci­dence of mur­der. Criminals kill with wan­ton dis­re­gard for life. Why would any­one in a posi­tion to influ­ence and shape Policy want mur­der­ers to walk around with pris­tine records. What is the moti­va­tion then for those who decide not to take life.

In Christian Theology it is report­ed that two thieves were cru­ci­fied with Jesus Christ. Jesus did not inter­vene, he did not try to change the penal­ty imposed on them by law. He offered one eter­nal life because he repent­ed. Despite the belief that that thief found solace in the Lord , he still paid the price for his crimes. Actions have consequences.

There is absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with redemp­tion for killers after they pay their debt to soci­ety. We sim­ply do not expunge their record. You get to have a clean record by not com­mit­ting crimes. What is the reward for those who play by the rules? What is the idea behind the con­stant desire to reward the most despi­ca­ble and brutish among us?

Just recent­ly two men report­ed­ly walked into a Car deal­er­ship and sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed a man­ag­er on Maxfield Avenue. Thanks to Technology one of the killers has been appre­hend­ed. This case is no dif­fer­ent than the hun­dreds of homi­cides com­mit­ted in the tiny Caribbean nation annu­al­ly. It is just one where the killer was iden­ti­fied. On the rare occa­sion these dement­ed cretins are caught and con­vict­ed , how could any sane per­son want their record expunged?

I was stunned beyond belief when I saw this sto­ry in the Jamaica Observer attrib­uted to Opposition Senator Marlene Malahoo Forte a for­mer Resident Magistrate, and now the per­son who occu­py the Air chair of the late Wilmott Mutty Perkins.

Opposition Senator, Marlene Malahoo Forte’s sug­ges­tion that expunge­ment of con­vic­tions under the Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) Bill be extend­ed to per­sons con­vict­ed of all forms of crimes, includ­ing mur­ders, failed to get any sup­port in the Senate on Friday. Speaking in the debate on the Bill, which pro­vides for expunge­ment of con­vic­tions for using small quan­ti­ties of gan­ja, after between 30 months and 10 years of reha­bil­i­ta­tion, Senator Malahoo Forte, a for­mer Resident Magistrate, said she made the sug­ges­tion in the con­text that every­one can be reha­bil­i­tat­ed. “It doesn’t mat­ter where you have wronged, over time you can be reha­bil­i­tat­ed. It may sound far- fetched, but it is not impossible,”.

Jamaican Politicians have a propen­si­ty to let their mouths gal­lop in front of their brains. This is one case where it begs the ques­tion, “did she do any home-work in prepa­ra­tion for her sub­mis­sion to the debate?

We are talk­ing about expung­ing the record of con­vict­ed Criminals here. The Senate is con­sid­er­ing a Bill, which pro­vides for expunge­ment of con­vic­tions for using small quan­ti­ties of gan­ja, after between 30 months and 10 years of rehabilitation. 

I think this is a good piece of leg­is­la­tion which shows good will to peo­ple who have offend­ed but have man­aged to stay out of trou­ble. No one should be con­demned for life because he/​she was con­vict­ed for a lit­tle weed.

Forte went on to say ” “In some coun­tries peo­ple are reha­bil­i­tat­ed for the offence of mur­der. Our own Privy Council has stat­ed that not every­one who kills and is con­vict­ed of mur­der should be regard­ed as a mur­der­er, in the tra­di­tion­al sense.

This is a shock­ing lib­er­al tes­ta­ment com­ing from some­one who once was a Magistrate. The issue is one of the expunge­ment of records, which has noth­ing to do with the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of mur­der­ers.

This state­ment how­ev­er illu­mi­nates what I have writ­ten about for some­time now, that Jamaica Judges are crim­i­nal lov­ing left­ists who sup­plant the rule of law with their own per­son­al opinions.

How can any­one sug­gest that Society remove from record, the fact that some­one was Convicted of Murder, irre­spec­tive of the cir­cum­stances? Have Forte cal­cu­lat­ed that she is in jeop­ardy of no longer be tak­en seri­ous­ly? Assuming she ever was !

Jamaica is awash in crime and cor­rup­tion, many will legit­i­mate­ly argue that expung­ing records is not the way to go at this time. I believe how­ev­er that it is always the right time to be merciful.

We send mur­der­ers to prison to do time, then they are released back into soci­ety. That is for­give­ness. That is hav­ing a sec­ond chance. We do not wipe the slate clean, we keep a record of their deeds to inform and edu­cate us going forward.

Clearly Melhado Forte has shown her­self to be a feath­er-weight who is not wor­thy of seri­ous consideration.

A few days ago a young man walked into my busi­ness inquir­ing about what it would cost at a bare min­i­mum to have a cell phone. I asked him a few qual­i­fy­ing ques­tions, all the time refer­ring to him as sir. He could­n’t have been more than 23 years old. He was big, with a boy­ish, almost child­like look.

To my sur­prise he retort­ed ” Mike why you call­ing me sir man?I ain’t nev­er done any­thing to you, you know me man , you know my Mom , if I did some­thing to you I apol­o­gize man”.

Then he said some­thing even more shock­ing . Man I miss my father , I haven’t seen my dad for so long Mike” !

In shock, I looked at anoth­er cus­tomer stand­ing close by. I was unsure how refer­ring to him as “Sir” could be con­strued to be an indi­ca­tion that I was mad at him. I was even more con­fused as to what him miss­ing his dad had to do with the foregone.

I con­clud­ed one thing , he was hurting.

The male cus­tomer stand­ing close by chimed in , “Sir is a sign of respect man” , to which he nod­ded his head in obvi­ous under­stand­ing and smiled. I was­n’t con­tent to let him walk away with­out at least try­ing to learn a lit­tle about him. After explain­ing to him that refer­ring to him as Sir was a sign of respect and cour­tesy, he smiled broad­ly then told me he had not seen his Dad in years. I had no solu­tion, so I told him I loved him. He pur­chased the ser­vice he could afford and left.

So what’s the moral of this spiel? Well… I’ve want­ed to talk a lit­tle about some of these very issues for years now. Having worked a decade in Law Enforcement I saw a whole bunch of young peo­ple whom I believed would have been expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter off had their par­ents made the right decision.

Many of the prob­lems of our Society today may be traced back to the doorsteps of each and every home on this Planet. Whatever the prob­lem, they begin with deci­sions we made.

That deci­sion may be an emo­tion­al deci­sion to vote for some­one who should nev­er be elect­ed to office, or an ill-advised deci­sion by a woman to have sex with a male she knows will nev­er be a father to a child, in the event she becomes preg­nant. The deci­sion may be even more sim­ple, how about not tak­ing the chance of hav­ing a child, in the event she can­not forego sex?

This is a sub­ject we have tip-toed around for far too long, large­ly in def­er­ence to women. There is a rea­son most female Animals mate with the strongest male, The Alpha male. It is a built in defense against the break-down of the Specie. Imagine if Lionesses mat­ed with the weak­est most fee­ble Lion, pret­ty soon Lions would be hunt­ed by domes­tic Dogs. But seri­ous­ly you do get the pic­ture right?

The Human specie is not all about the need for brute force to sur­vive, notwith­stand­ing women are not absolved of their respon­si­bil­i­ty to be judi­cious with their bod­ies. I am in no way lay­ing the entire­ty of the blame at the feet of women, nei­ther will I shy away from ask­ing women to be more account­able because it is unpop­u­lar to do so.

Barring sex­u­al assaults, and oth­er events which takes away a wom­an’s right to choose a part­ner, It begins with a wom­an’s deci­sion to have sex with a man. It begins with her to decide to have unpro­tect­ed sex. It is her deci­sion to have sex with a man who has no job and nev­er had one. It is her deci­sion to have sex with a man who has sev­er­al women. It is her deci­sion to main­tain a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with a man who can­not stay out of jail.

Ask your­selves this, how will a man be a suit­able father to your kids if he is a shift­less , lazy man who does not work and can­not stay out of prison? I’ll take it a bit fur­ther , why would you want a man who is in and out of Prison to be the father to your chil­dren? What kind of role-mod­el will he be? Is that even impor­tant to you women? This is a con­ver­sa­tion we need to have with­in the black community. 

We can con­tin­ue to bemoan what the “Man” did , or even con­tin­ue to do. We can con­verse­ly get up and change our cir­cum­stance. We can­not con­tin­ue to blame oth­ers for deci­sions we make. We can­not con­tin­ue to exco­ri­ate and vil­i­fy those in our com­mu­ni­ty who speak to these truths. No one owes us a liv­ing, not our par­ents, not the coun­try, not the President.

It is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to seek knowl­edge. There are places called Schools, no one owes it to us to get us an edu­ca­tion. Why does an American Citizen not have a piece of Identification? Is it an unrea­son­able request to ask that you iden­ti­fy your­self in order to vote? Why do you think those who would do us harm make it so we have to show ID? Don’t you real­ize it’s because they know we sim­ply refuse to go get a piece of identification?

Why do you women con­tin­ue to have sex with unwor­thy men you know will not stick around if you get preg­nant? Why do you then turn the male child from that union into that man who walked away from you, call­ing him your baby? Have you ever won­dered why he calls your home his Crib? If you enable him to live off you, not get an edu­ca­tion, not get a job. How will he be a man to the women he inter­acts with? How will he be a father to the chil­dren he will most cer­tain­ly sire?

It will be anoth­er hun­dred years and noth­ing will change for us if we shack­le our­selves to the belief that some­how it is up to some­one to teach us things. To give us things, to make deci­sions for us.

How much longer can we hide behind the fal­la­cy that some­how young women are to be pitied because they made con­scious deci­sions to have unpro­tect­ed sex which results in preg­nan­cy? Does any­one real­ly believe young women today do not know that sex leads to preg­nan­cy? On what Planet is that notion plau­si­ble ?I humbly ven­ture to say that in the case of young girls in High Schools who have kids , they actu­al­ly active­ly plan those preg­nan­cies, some­times with their friends so they may all have babies around the same time.

Those are the rea­sons 71% of all black babies born the US are born to sin­gle unmar­ried women. Whose fault is that? Is that the white man’s fault? I made this argu­ment recent­ly in a con­ver­sa­tion and some­one accused me of “judg­ing” the women.….….…

I was told that these women do not know they should not have unpro­tect­ed sex. Because they are not taught that they should­n’t. My ques­tion was, “whose fault is that”? How much longer are we going to pre­tend it is some­one else’s fault that a large num­ber of that 71% , are mere­ly fod­der for the Prison Industrial Complex?

We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue with the non­sense that they are build­ing Prisons to house black peo­ple. It rather is that we con­tin­ue to have chil­dren we refuse to care for that invari­able end up in the pris­ons. The so-called- man is all too eager to prof­it from our mis­takes. It is the American way , it is called Capitalism.

It’s incred­i­ble what pass­es for com­mon sense and intel­lect these days. Take Conservative Icon and reg­u­lar FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion pun­dit Anne Coulter for exam­ple. Here’s what this much revered opin­ion mak­er of the right had to say about the game of soc­cer. (America’s inter­est in World Cup soc­cer is a sign of “moral decay.”

Coulter went on to say quote, “Soccer is a team sport that doesn’t rec­og­nize the indi­vid­ual achieve­ment that has made America great”. 

Okay I got­ta real­ly lean on my Conservative friends here, real­ly? So the Xenophobic Coulter cer­tain­ly nev­er heard of Pele, Diego Maradona , Socrates Jurgen Klinsmann the American soc­cer coach and count­less others.

What does it take to be a Conservative these days? Does one have to be the most racist Xenophobic , irra­tional moron? It cer­tain­ly appears that way !

The American pas­time Baseball, is a Team Sport. So is American Football, which by the way fields a lot more play­ers than Soccer does per game. What about Basketball , last time I checked it was a team sport or maybe it’s a one-on-one in Coulter-land. Most Organized gamed are played at the team lev­el , includ­ing Boxing, Tennis, Golf, Swimming, and even Gymnastics.

This has got to be the most ridicu­lous state­ment yet com­ing from this hair-brained Racist ide­o­logue. It behooves her and her acolytes at FAKE news to rec­og­nize that America have not done well in Soccer because America did not put the nec­es­sary resources into the game which would make her com­pet­i­tive like oth­er Nations which have done so.

The entire World Plays Soccer and Cricket , America is slow com­ing to that real­i­ty, to that we say wel­come America. Note to Coulter, America did not become great because of peo­ple like you and the FOX crowd, she did so despite you.

Here’s hop­ing America will have a bet­ter show­ing at the next World cup in 2018 despite the nean­derthal rem­nants like Coulter etal.

There is obvi­ous moral decay for sure here, I hope Coulter gets help before it’s too late.

Over the suc­ceed­ing days ‚weeks and months, the abrupt depar­ture of Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington will invari­ably be the top­ic of many discussions.

Ellington’s sud­den Exit is not nov­el in the way Commissioner’s of Police have left their jobs in the Island Nation. Of course as Jamaicans like to say “if sup­pem nuh gu su it nealy gu su” .Translation , if what you heard is not total­ly true, it has some truth to it.

Owen Ellington could nev­er have been the first choice for the PNP Government. After all Ellington was appoint­ed Commissioner of Police under Bruce Golding and his JLP Administration in 2010. Anyone with knowl­edge of Jamaican pol­i­tics, knows that plum jobs are hand­ed out to die-hard par­ty loy­al­ists, some­times, irre­spec­tive of qual­i­fi­ca­tions or talent.

This is gen­er­al­ly true of both Political Parties. However the PNP hav­ing held elect­ed office for 28 of the last 40 years, have lit­er­al­ly trib­al­ized the entire pub­lic sec­tor from top to bot­tom. No area of nation­al life has been spared the cor­ro­sive insid­i­ous can­cer, which is the People’s National Party Agenda.

Ellington posed a prob­lem for the new PNP Administration how­ev­er. He was edu­cat­ed. He was well loved by the men and women under his com­mand. He also had the respect and admi­ra­tion of the pub­lic. Ellington’s pop­u­lar­i­ty with the pub­lic came large­ly from his stat­ed com­mit­ment to remov­ing rogue cops, restor­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty to the Agency and reduc­ing crime.

Hardly any oth­er Commissioner came to the top job with such a clear-eyed focus, on what need­ed to be done. How do you replace some­one with Ellington’s Resume, and game-plan? 

So the Directionally chal­lenged, moral­ly bank­rupt, crime lov­ing Administration was stuck with Owen Ellington. This does not speak to Ellington’s Politics far from it. In fact he may be a sup­port­er for all we know. Just not a died-in-the-wool PNP trib­al­ists like a Roy Thompson or a Francis Forbes. Or a poten­tial mem­ber of Parliament in wait­ing like a Lucius Thomas for that matter.

Ellington is no fool, he must have had his res­ig­na­tion ready in his desk draw­er from the day the new Administration stepped into Jamaica House.They did not give him a sin­gle vote extend­ing the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency when he went into Tivoli Gardens to get Dudus Coke.

The PNP showed their hand when despite being chief cheer-lead­ers against Bruce Golding,they would not sup­port the secu­ri­ty forces. In a Country pop­u­lat­ed with rea­son­able peo­ple that par­ty would have been banned to polit­i­cal obscu­ri­ty. They were con­verse­ly reward­ed with the reins of Government just months lat­er. Golding for his part, was the one banned to obscu­ri­ty for stu­pid­ly inter­ven­ing into what clear­ly was a mat­ter for the coun­try’s courts.

It’s now 2014 this Government has been a colos­sal fail­ure by every met­ric. National Elections are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due between  December 29^th 2016 and 16 March 2017 . It is impor­tant that the cor­rupt Simpson Miller Administration have trust­ed loy­al­ists in place in time to exe­cute their game plan.

We do not yet know what the true rea­son was, why Ellington was shown the door. He may have been asked to do some­thing anti­thet­i­cal to his beliefs and prin­ci­ples. He may have been put in a ten­u­ous posi­tion ren­der­ing it impos­si­ble for him to con­tin­ue . Whatever the rea­son, the nar­ra­tive put forth by Bunting and his Ministry amounts to noth­ing more than a load of crock.

I was nev­er a great fan of Owen Ellington, I am a huge fan of Jamaica, With Miller and the band of thieves run­ning the gov­ern­ment and Ellington run­ning the JCF it was always a sit­u­a­tion out of cor­rect order.

It must have been hard for him to dumb down for his polit­i­cal boss­es. Ellington gained my respect when he wrote an arti­cle trum­pet­ing the Indonesian mod­el and it’s suc­cess­es. I thought the writ­ing was on the wall for his tenure, I said so then.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​?​p​=​4​990

We sub­scribe to Time Warner Cable for our Business and Home . We hard­ly watch Television, so for both Accounts we asked for basic Cable. Subscribers of Time Warner Service in the Hudson Valley are famil­iar with the Triple Play . Phone , Internet and Television bun­dled togeth­er , Generally adver­tised for $33 per ser­vice. The total month­ly cost being $99 plus Taxes. Of course the phone is a total waste of mon­ey these days, no one ever uses the phone in our home. The one in my Business is fast becom­ing obso­lete also.

Of course every month the billed amount for the very same pack­age increas­es, while Channels on it’s Cable Television sur­rep­ti­tious­ly dis­ap­pears. A call to the Company gen­er­al­ly elic­its a pack­aged response ‚which goes some­thing like this.

“Oh, we are sor­ry the Channels you ref­er­enced should­n’t have been a part of your pack­age to begin with”.

The same thiev­ery is part of Time Warner’s argu­ment when you sign up and ask for a fixed IP Address. You pay for a fixed IP and is giv­en a Dynamic IP Address. Their argu­ments are always the same it’s the fault of the Sales-per­son who took the order. Never mind that the Sales-peo­ple work for Time Warner Cable. They nev­er accept responsibility.

Yesterday Wednesday June 18^th I arrived at work , of course it’s World Cup Soccer time so I had 3 Televisions on ESPN so cus­tomers who are inter­est­ed in the Soccer may watch the game if they chose to. I have had ESPN as a part of my basic Cable pack­age for years, on both accounts. Sometime in the ear­ly after­noon the cable froze and even­tu­al­ly all screens went black . I wait­ed believ­ing that some­thing was wrong with the feed and it would be restored in due time. After a while I real­ized that was­n’t hap­pen­ing, so I called Time Warner.

The Customer Service Rep on the line com­menced to tell me “Oh we’ ” I cut him off,” what­ev­er you do , do not tell me ESPN was not a part of my pack­age”!! He went on I’m sor­ry sir that is a fact.

I blew a fuse, are you kid­ding me I have had the ser­vice for years. If ESPN is not a part of it why did you not take it from the time you took all the oth­er chan­nels, why wait for the World Cup, the most watched event?

He pro­ceed­ed to go around in cir­cles after I lam­bast­ed him and his Company for being decep­tive, unscrupu­lous and dis­hon­est . I told him that straight away, I would be can­celling both accounts and going with Fios or Optimum TV, their com­pe­ti­tion, then I hung up the phone.

Thursday morn­ing I arrived at work and for good mea­sure I turned the Televisions on to ESPN chan­nel 21 and what do you know , ESPN was back up and running.

Time Warner has been involved in these decep­tive and unscrupu­lous prac­tices for years. In fact they have lost a big part of their mar­ket share. They don’t even both­er to mar­ket the triple play any­more . More and more sub­scribers of Cable TV are look­ing else­where for ser­vice. The afore­men­tioned two are com­pe­tent alter­na­tive providers as well as Direct TV.

Time Warner unscrupu­lous prac­tices are well doc­u­ment­ed with cus­tomers as far as California com­plain­ing of the Company’s unscrupu­lous bait and switch and oth­er nefar­i­ous prac­tices.http://forums.timewarnercable.com/t5/Channels-and-Programming/Enjoy-Better-NOT/td‑p/11599

Time Warner’s jin­gle ask cus­tomers to “Enjoy bet­ter” , you take a gam­ble on them, you are gau­rant­ed worse. I will still dump the Company, if for noth­ing more that its unscrupu­lous attempt to get me to pay for a chan­nel I had for years all because it’s being heav­i­ly watched. This was not my first bad expe­ri­ence with the Company, this time I have had enough. The Company’s efforts to weasel a few dol­lars out of me , like a com­mon street thug ‚will result in two lost accounts.

Soon many more cus­tomers will catch on and do the same.

For the first time this evening I got involved in the muck of local pol­i­tics. I joined many oth­er busi­ness owners

who are less than pleased with the way the new Parking

pay sta­tions were shoved down our throats

Literally every busi­ness own­er who tes­ti­fied, yours tru­ly includ­ed, point­ed to pre­cip­i­tous drop-offs in busi­ness since the new Pay sta­tions were installed.

Many also point­ed to the fact that the pay sta­tions are notably absent from the cir­cle at the bot­tom of main street close to the Hudson River. They argued there are busi­ness­es peo­ple in that area that are friend­ly with peo­ple of pow­er in City Hall. This Blogger is unable to sub­stan­ti­ate those claims . What I know is that there are no pay sta­tions in that Area . Which is clos­er to where the Mayor’s father has his business.

Coincidence ? Maybe , but it smells to high heav­en. Restaurant own­ers are com­plain­ing they will be forced to lay off work­ers . They com­plain of what they char­ac­ter­ize as a tick­et­ing blitz under­way. I thought it was real­ly iron­ic that we the busi­ness own­ers who pay the tax­es to hire these cops and tick­et agents, are unable to make a liv­ing because they write tick­ets which keeps our cus­tomers away .

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea if we can­not afford the tax­es, maybe then they may be forced to cut some of the dead-wood.

Just maybe.

Truck Driver Kevin Roper 35 employed to Mega Company Walmart appeared in a Middlesex County Court House Wednesday June 11^th. Mister Roper plead not guilty to vehic­u­lar homi­cide and assault by Auto.

Roper, the Walmart truck dri­ver involved in the New Jersey Turnpike car acci­dent Saturday morn­ing that claimed the life of one per­son and crit­i­cal­ly injured four oth­ers, includ­ing come­di­an Tracy Morgan, has plead­ed not guilty to vehic­u­lar homi­cide and assault by auto. He remains free on $50,000 bail. No new court appear­ance was sched­uled. Middlesex County pros­e­cu­tors accuse Roper, 35, of not sleep­ing for 24 hours pri­or to the crash. He turned him­self in to police imme­di­ate­ly after the acci­dent and has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave by Walmart.The com­pa­ny has vowed “to take full respon­si­bil­i­ty” for the acci­dent if it’s proved that Roper caused it. http://​gma​.yahoo​.com/​t​r​a​c​y​-​m​o​r​g​a​n​-​c​r​a​s​h​-​w​a​l​m​a​r​t​-​t​r​u​c​k​e​r​-​k​e​v​i​n​-​r​o​p​e​r​-​p​l​e​a​d​s​-​1​9​5​9​3​6​516 – abc-news-celebrities.html

Laws gov­ern­ing Truckers are strict these days, in fact dri­ving with­out ade­quate sleep is tan­ta­mount to dri­ving while intox­i­cat­ed . It is trag­ic when mem­bers of the trav­el­ling pub­lic are injured or killed.. We pray for the fam­i­ly of the deceased as well as those injured, includ­ing Tracy Morgan 45, who con­tin­ue to bat­tle for life in a New Jersey Hospital.

Mister Roper is alleged to have bragged in a tweet quote: Trying to win more than lose, dri­ving trucks for a liv­ing, move or get hit! #Walmart.

This has set off a firestorm of hatred of mis­ter Roper in the Main stream Media .

Really?

Are we going to con­demn a man for a tweet he made which had noth­ing to do with the crash? Does any­one believe this dri­ver will­ful­ly crashed his rig into the vehi­cle trans­port­ing Tracy Morgan and others?

Does that tweet mean mis­ter Roper is a mani­ac who was a tick­ing time bomb wait­ing to take some­one’s life? So far there is no evi­dence of that. What we have is a hard work­ing man try­ing to earn a liv­ing. Sure he needs to face the Courts , that’s where inno­cence and guilt are decide.

In fact Fox news reports .Walmart released this statement.

“With regards to news reports that sug­gest Mr. Roper was work­ing for 24 hours, it is our belief that Mr. Roper was oper­at­ing with­in the fed­er­al hours of ser­vice reg­u­la­tions. The details are the sub­ject of the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and we are coop­er­at­ing ful­ly with the appro­pri­ate law enforce­ment agen­cies. The inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing and unfor­tu­nate­ly we can’t com­ment fur­ther on the specifics.

“Federal law requires dri­vers to work no more than 14 hours for any shift and 11 hours of driving.” 

We sim­ply have not reached that stage where an informed con­clu­sion can be arrived at. This is not the case of a drug deal­er fir­ing a weapon, hit­ting an inno­cent bystander. What we have it seem, is a hard work­ing man who is involved in an auto­mo­bile crash. It behooves every­one includ­ing those in the Media to take a step back and let the sys­tem play out before they con­demn this man to be stoned to death.

As users of the road we should be care­ful how we react in con­demn­ing oth­ers. We nev­er know when we may be involved in a crash or acci­dent, find­ing our­selves accused of vehic­u­lar homicide.

Virginia Congressman from the 7 Congressional District Eric Cantor has suf­fered a stun­ning pri­ma­ry defeat at the hand of Dave Bratt. Without bela­bor­ing the point of Cantor’s defeat , it bears men­tion­ing that Cantor became a vic­tim of his own conspiracy.

Cantor was one of the con­spir­a­tors who gath­ered in a secret loca­tion in Washington DC the very night Barack Obama was cel­e­brat­ing his inauguration.

Robert Draper’s much-dis­cussed and heav­i­ly-report­ed new book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.”

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 peo­ple in total) includ­ed Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-law­mak­ers present includ­ed Newt Gingrich, sev­er­al years removed from his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican word­smith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R‑Ohio) — who, Draper writes, had an acri­mo­nious rela­tion­ship with Luntz.

Read the rest of the Article here.

Robert Draper Book: GOP’s Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration

Republicans had no inter­est in America, what they cared about was Party over Country . Their sin­gu­lar goal is to main­tain pow­er at all cost . They were deter­mined that Obama would not be allowed to Govern. The acri­mo­ny and ran­cor which char­ac­ter­ized the polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment in Washington DC since the President took office was, and still is the strat­e­gy of the Republican Party.

Their goal is to trans­fer wealth from the 99% of Americans to the wealth­i­est 1%. To do that they have to main­tain pow­er at all cost. Eric Cantor was a dar­ling of the T‑Party , the front group of Charles and David Koch, Billionaire Industrialists.

Gerrymandered Districts cre­at­ed by Republicans to ensure safe re-elec­tion for their incum­bents, actu­al­ly cre­ate a bunch of hard­ened overzeal­ous ide­o­logues like Dave Bratt. In essence Eric Cantor the right wing hard-ass,eventually was not hard-ass enough, he fell on his own sword.

In my last Blog I high­light­ed the dis­par­i­ty in the way the city of Poughkeepsie was being run. I talked about the lack of Sanitation ser­vices in some parts of the city while oth­er parts are kept in pris­tine con­di­tion. I also

made clear that the Mayor needs to do a bet­ter job as all res­i­dents of the City deserve the same treatment.

I must also add that it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty or res­i­dents to take care of their com­mu­ni­ty. Eating from a paper plate and then sim­ply drop­ping it on the side­walk after fin­ish­ing the meal is com­mon sight here. The notion of walk­ing and eat­ing a full meal is prob­a­bly an alien con­cept to some of you , not so here. In some instances piz­za box­es are strewn on the side­walk, left exact­ly where the piz­za ran out or where the wind dis­card­ed it .

The dif­fer­ence in the life of the city is very sharp. Poverty, drugs , vio­lence, guns and sol­id mid­dle class life coex­ist togeth­er. Yet as if miles apart. It occurred to me today as I had brunch with my wife, that at the risk of sound­ing arro­gant or grand, life is large­ly depen­dent on the choic­es we make. We can decide to com­plain about the things which are wrong in our lives. Just how poor we are, just how bad­ly we have been treat­ed, or we may use those adver­si­ties as cat­a­lysts to empow­er ourselves.

Our city is infest­ed with drug users and push­ers. A few days ago a young man Shiquan M. Krouser, 27, was shot and killed by Police. It is alleged that he attacked and injured a female police offi­cer. Police respond­ed to a report of a man who was “dust­ed up” — high on angel dust or PCP — “caus­ing a dis­tur­bance, stop­ping cars, yelling and scream­ing,” at the inter­sec­tion of Main and Academy streets ear­ly Saturday morn­ing, “all they (offi­cers) know is the per­son they encoun­tered,” Chief Ron Knapp said. http://​www​.pough​keep​siejour​nal​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​c​r​i​m​e​/​2​0​1​4​/​0​5​/​2​7​/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​n​a​a​c​p​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​/​9​6​4​7​1​75/

One could argue that the chal­lenges fac­ing the City Of Poughkeepsie are no dif­fer­ent than any oth­er city. There may be some ele­ment of truth to that.

I believe how­ev­er, that in a city this small , the dis­par­i­ty is pret­ty wide. Walk the streets of this city and you get a feel for what I’m talk­ing about. Drugs can be sourced on almost every cor­ner. Prostitutes roam the streets night and day and shoot­ings are nev­er far away.

Inside the Shadows Restaurant the Sunday after­noon crowd enjoyed fine din­ing in a com­fort­able and ele­gant atmos­phere. It does seem we chose to live the way we live . We are not bound by our present cir­cum­stance. How we react to adver­si­ties will impact what hap­pens to us going for­ward. Truly Poughkeepsie is a lot like oth­er American cities, she has some chal­lenges not found in oth­er cities how­ev­er. Residents of this Mid ‑Hudson City can do bet­ter to remove this stig­ma that our city is just a drug town where peo­ple go to get high, or as one crit­ic told me once ” a place where old peo­ple retire” .

This is a city where one is nev­er far from the Hudson River. The new­ly ren­o­vat­ed Walk-way over the Hudson is one of America’s newest and most scenic National Parks. We have two fab­u­lous Colleges here, State of the Art Hospitals and great din­ing. This lit­tle City on the Hudson can be a great place to live, it all depends on we the people.

City of Poughkeepsie, Population rough­ly 20,000. Chief Executive, ®Mayor John Tkazyik.

The City of Poughkeepsie is invit­ing all prop­er­ty own­ers who own a prop­er­ty clas­si­fied as “411” to explore the option of hav­ing the Sanitation Department col­lect refuse. We would like for you to com­pare your cur­rent san­i­ta­tion rates with the City of Poughkeepsie’s rates. The cost of refuse pick­up will be based on an assess­ment of the prop­er­ty done by the Department of Public Works. If you would like to set up an appoint­ment please con­tact DPW at (845) 451‑4111. http://​www​.city​of​pough​keep​sie​.com/

What the city’s Mayor and Website does not tell you is that these very prop­er­ty own­ers who own slight­ly larg­er Rental prop­er­ties enjoyed Garbage pick­up as a func­tion of the tax­es they pay like oth­er City Residents. These Property own­ers were forced to pay to have garbage from their prop­er­ties picked up by a Local Garbage com­pa­ny Royal Carting.

That arrange­ment lit­er­al­ly pun­ish­es those with a rental prop­er­ty with four or more Rental apart­ments. It’s a kind of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pun­ish­ment of res­i­dents who have attained a degree of suc­cess. This is noth­ing new how­ev­er under this Mayor, there is a cer­tain type of selec­tive dis­pen­sa­tion of scarce resources in this not so large city. Main street, the main artery of the com­mer­cial dis­trict is clean and well main­tained . In the sec­tion from Academy down to the River. This sec­tion large­ly has white owned businesses . 

The sec­tion from Academy head­ing East to the City lim­its , sel­dom sees a street-clean­ing vehi­cle. In many instances there are shrubs grow­ing out of the side­walks. For full dis­clo­sure I have owned and oper­at­ed a Business on the lat­ter part of Main Street for 13 years. I have spo­ken to the Mayor about the way the Sanitation Department has gone about it’s func­tions and he has respond­ed swift­ly. However things go right back to the way they were the next day. This sec­tion is large­ly pop­u­lat­ed with Black and Mexican businesses.

Work crews have been busy installing new gas lines on the south­ern side of main street for months now . Residents have been forced to deal with traf­fic snarls. Business own­ers have com­plained of dras­tic reduc­tion in busi­ness as a result. Additionally, dust and noise pol­lu­tion from the heavy equip­ment adds to the mis­ery lev­el. Yet right on cue the City is busy hav­ing new park­ing meters installed for the first time on the east­ern cor­ri­dor of Main street.

Most cities do have park­ing meters. The prob­lem here in Poughkeepsie is that while the Mayor and his Administration gives the aver­age res­i­dent of the City less for his tax Dollar, large com­pa­nies seem to be doing real­ly well under his stew­ard­ship. If the Mayor wants to be a Mayor for all res­i­dents of the City, he must ensure ade­quate and equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of ser­vices for tax-pay­ers funds. He can­not rea­son­ably ask for more, even as he gives less and less.

But then again the Mayor is already seek­ing high­er office. Business own­ers like myself will be forced to feed these Meters for the 11 or 12 hours we are open each day. Hopefully the Mayor will see fit to make sure that the streets are swept and the putrid sew­er odor in some areas are dealt with.

Officer Vincent LoGiudice appeared in Nassau County Court, where a grand jury indict­ment was unsealed, charg­ing him with two felony counts of sec­ond-degree assault and one count of third-degree assault in the April 25 beat­ing of Kyle Howell, 20. Prosecutors said the offi­cer used exces­sive force as he and his part­ner were attempt­ing to arrest Howell. LoGiudice was released on his own recog­ni­zance by Nassau County Court Judge Christopher Quinn. He faces a max­i­mum of 7 years in prison if con­vict­ed of the top charge. He is due back in court on July 2. LoGiudice, 34, has been sus­pend­ed with­out pay after an inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by the depart­men­t’s inter­nal affairs unit in con­junc­tion with the Nassau dis­trict attor­ney’s office, sources said Tuesday. Police allege in court doc­u­ments they were try­ing to stop Howell from swal­low­ing a bag of mar­i­jua­na, and that he kicked and punched police. 

http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​7​T​e​h​H​_​p​7​XGg

The only prob­lem with that sto­ry is that the video evi­dence dif­fers dra­mat­i­cal­ly from the

Police account . The cop was seen run­ning back to the front of the car after he was head­ed in the direc­tion of the rear of the car. How could this cow­ard claim he saw him swal­low­ing any­thing when he was at the rear of the car? The video seem to sug­gest that Howell said some­thing to the cop which he though was out of line. Heaven for­bid some­one talk back to one of these earth­ly Gods. In the video LoGiudice was seen run­ning back to where Howell was sit­ting and in a fit of rage rained blows all over the young man. Even if Howell had mar­i­jua­na he did not com­mit him­self against these lunatic and moron­ic cops. What is the penal­ty for pos­ses­sion of a bag of Marijuana?

To add insult to injury hun­dreds of these cow­ard­ly thugs were out in force sup­port­ed by their clos­et­ed big­ot­ed friends and neigh­bors denounc­ing the District Attorney for doing her job, which was to charge these two cow­ards with felony assault. The pur­pose of the mob of cops at the Court-House had noth­ing to do with sup­port­ing this cow­ard. They fun­da­men­tal­ly believe they are above the law. They believe they should not be held account­able for assault­ing any­one and they damn sure believe they should nev­er be ques­tioned or held account­able for seri­ous­ly assault­ing a 20 year-old African American male. What this bunch of big­ot­ed thugs suc­ceed­ed in doing was show­ing the world the con­tempt in which they hold the very pub­lic they are sworn to pro­tect. The very peo­ple who pay their ele­gant salaries, all $145,900 a year of it, allow­ing them to live on Long Island . Howell, who was arrest­ed on April 25, had surgery to repair an injured eye he suf­fered dur­ing the inci­dent. He said Tuesday he no longer trusts police offi­cers. The Police Union Boss believes this Cop is the best they have on Long Island. I believe that state­ment should send shiv­ers down the spine of every­one liv­ing and dri­ving through that part of New York. That state­ment how­ev­er sup­ports this Article. They are com­mon thugs.

No bag of mar­i­jua­na or any oth­er sub­stance gives a Cop the right to pum­mel a mem­ber of the pub­lic this way. Even if they sus­pect­ed that Howell was swal­low­ing the con­tra­band there are avenues in law which allows for a con­vic­tion through test­ing. If a con­vic­tion was that impor­tant to them. The fact of the mat­ter is these thug-cops want­ed to admin­is­ter a beat­ing to some­one they believe beneath them. Every sin­gle cop and sup­port­er who showed up in sup­port of that beat­ing is a dis­grace and a blight to the badge they wear, but more-so they are a dis­gust­ing blight on the human race.

Howell was charged with assault­ing two police offi­cers, wit­ness tam­per­ing and sev­er­al oth­er charges. All the charges were dropped last month after a judge reviewed the video.“I am very grate­ful that I have the video to prove my inno­cence,” Howell said last month. “Without the video, we would have no voice,” his moth­er, Joan Howell, said. “If there was no video, we would not be here today.”Even with the video, the police union and LoGiudice’s attor­ney warned against jump­ing to con­clu­sions in the case.

Not only were these crim­i­nal cops pre­pared to beat this young man into a pulp, they want­ed to send him to prison for a long time for get­ting beat­en by them. As far as their Union and Attorneys are con­cerned the video evi­dence should not be trust­ed. Obviously the pub­lic is too stu­pid to fig­ure out what they saw with their own eyes. They on the oth­er hand, are allowed to use the graini­est videos to con­vict sus­pects all the time, par­tic­u­lar­ly black suspects.

How many African-Americans are locked up in Jails and Prisons all across America on trumped-up charges and fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence? Every year scores of peo­ple are released from Prison because Cops and Prosecutors , lie, fab­ri­cate or with­hold evi­dence result­ing in seri­ous Prison time for inno­cent cit­i­zens. To com­pound that prob­lem Courts are extreme­ly reluc­tant to revis­it decid­ed cas­es, even when there are strong evi­dence of Prosecutorial impro­pri­ety. The Nassau County DA on the dis­missal of the con­coct­ed charges, should have charged them with fil­ing false reports. In cas­es like these these cops should feel the full force of the laws. Police offi­cers are paid to pro­tect us, they are not above the laws.

SSP Dathan (Duffy) Henry (deceased)

On learn­ing of the death of my good friend Senior Superintendent Dathan(Duffy) Henry, I was shocked beyond belief. On the 12:05:30 I wrote a blog-post titled “What caused the death of SSP Dathan Henry”.

Henry’s rank and his smarts belied his age, he was only in his ear­ly 40’s when he passed. Duffy, as we called him when he was a young con­sta­ble, was every­thing the force need­ed in a young officer.

He was smart , will­ing , hon­est, fear­less, and even though we were once con­sta­bles work­ing at the CIB office at Constant Spring after I left the depart­ment, Duffy’s tal­ents took him to the rank of SSP rather quick­ly, through the accel­er­at­ed Promotions pro­gram. We are left to won­der what would have hap­pened had he lived? The lega­cy he left in Clarendon will be hard to repli­cate. the Police depart­ment is expo­nen­tial­ly worse off for his passing.

Since his pass­ing, there has been reports that the med­ical exam­in­er could not decide what caused his death, lat­er after the fam­i­ly pressed the author­i­ties, they revealed that the sub­stance Warfarin was dis­cov­ered in his body.
Checks with online med­ical ref­er­ences show that War­farin is used to pre­vent the blood from clot­ting, so that it takes longer than usu­al for some­one to stop bleed­ing if they have a cut or is injured.

I have tried to keep the feet of the Authorities to the fire in my small way, by con­tin­u­ing to high­light this mys­tery. Word on the streets in Jamaica has been that Senior Superintendent Henry was poi­soned. I know that heresy is not evi­dence as such I will be judi­cious with my comments.

However it bears men­tion­ing that the Police have been woe­ful­ly inept in bring­ing to jus­tice the killers of Superintendent Anthony Hewitt, Superintendent Denzil Boyd, Seargant Simpson, or any of the oth­er Police Officers who have been vicious­ly slain since Duffy died.

This is unac­cept­able, how can a police force be unable to bring to jus­tice even those who slaugh­ter it’s biggest and bright­est stars. What kind of inves­ti­ga­tions are being done? As we speak the police have far more tools at their dis­pos­al. Yet two decades ago we were able to bring crim­i­nals to jus­tice with more alacrity and in much high­er numbers.

The Police force has been reduced to a shell, a tooth-less paper Tiger, by the forces of crim­i­nal sup­port in Jamaica, and the Commissioner of Police has fall­en for it.

Carolyn Gomes

No one in their right mind could argue that the police force does not need seri­ous over­haul, but the police force is a secu­ri­ty agency first. As such the inner work­ings of the force must be to run on a need-to-know basis at a bare minimum .

I call on the Commissioner of police Owen Ellington to :

♦ Create a cold-case squad to inves­ti­gate and bring to jus­tice the killers of the police offi­cers where there has been no clo­sure. No coun­try, no police depart­ment, may sur­vive if it’s law-enforce­ment agents are sum­mar­i­ly slaugh­tered and no one is held account­able. I call on you to do this in light of the fail­ure of suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions (of both polit­i­cal par­ties) to pass mean­ing­ful leg­is­la­tion which pro­tects law-enforce­ment officers.

♦ Ask senior Investigators who have served , the likes of Ruddy Dwyer, Dick Hibbert and oth­ers ‚to vol­un­teer their time to help with these inves­ti­ga­tions, the way good old fash­ioned crim­i­nal Investigations were done.

♦ Impress upon the brain-dead politi­cians who are above you, that they must pass mean­ing­ful leg­is­la­tion that dif­fer­en­ti­ate the killing of police offi­cers from oth­er murders.(No life is more valu­able than anoth­er, but oth­er nations have attached more puni­tive teeth to the killing of cops, it works)

♦ Begin to train and equip detec­tives so that they may once again begin the task of investigations,so the police force may once again be able to solve a crime.

Horace Levy

♦ Cease and desist from pub­lish­ing the Force Orders to the public/​criminal under­world, they have no expec­ta­tion or right to what’s in it . It’s none of their damn business.

♦ Stop pan­der­ing to the very forces that are destroy­ing the rule of law in Jamaica. Stand for some­thing or step aside. There is a rea­son those peo­ple believe you are doing a good job. Even as police offi­cers are killed and no one held account­able. Even as you argue that crime is on the decrease. Do you seri­ous­ly believe any­one buys that nonsense.

♦ Build a rela­tion­ship with the cops under your com­mand, and for God’s sake I do not mean those who walk around with their guts hang­ing below their belts, in Khaki uni­form, who nod at every­thing you say, they are robots.

The police Force must be free to do it’s job, the job of polic­ing can­not be dic­tat­ed by Jamaica’s elit­ist pre­tenders, the law must be obeyed by everyone.

I call on you to find the killers of all the police offi­cers killed, it can­not be any com­fort to you that less that 7% of the coun­try’s crim­i­nals are being brought to court and even less are being con­vict­ed in a court of law.

That, Commissioner is not suc­cess , no mat­ter what Carolyn Gomes, or Horace Levy tell you.