According to Pew Research in the 2008 elec­tion cycle in which Junior Illinois US Senator Barack Obama was elect­ed pres­i­dent, whites made up 76.3% of the record 131 mil­lion peo­ple who vot­ed, while blacks made up 12.1%, Hispanics 7.4%, and Asians 2.5%.
We do not have data for the 2020 cycle; votes are still being count­ed, (yes I do have a prob­lem with the length of time it takes for states to fin­ish count­ing, tab­u­lat­ing, and report­ing out vote totals after elec­tion day).
Since the coun­try has embarked on ear­ly vot­ing before Election day, it makes sense to dis­pense with the idea of elec­tion day, and embrace elec­tion week.
The longer it takes for the process to be com­plet­ed, the more it gave liars and pro­pa­gan­dists like Donald Trump to stir up anger, resent­ment, and poten­tial vio­lence in an already over­heat­ed environment.
The con­cept of an “elec­tion day” caus­es Americans to cor­rect­ly expect to have elec­tion results by the end of elec­tion day.
It is incon­ceiv­able that after the débâ­cle of 2000 in which the Supreme court took it upon itself to stop the vote count, dis­en­fran­chis­ing God only knows how many vot­ers, and hand­ing the pres­i­den­cy to goof-ball George W Bush, America is no fur­ther along in cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing effi­cient elec­tion machin­ery, that allows peo­ple to vote, and have their votes counted.

There will be no short­age of lessons to be learned after this cycle is com­plete, not the least of which is that (a) America is not a Democracy, (in a democ­ra­cy, the win­ner is the per­son or polit­i­cal par­ty that gets the most votes) (b) African-Americans must wake up to the real­i­ty that its inter­est is not the same as that of Hispanics or Latinos.
Hispanics/​Latinos are now the largest minor­i­ty group in the United States, dwarf­ing African-Americans that have had that hon­or for a very long time.
On the issue of social jus­tice, polic­ing, and a raft of issues, Hispanics have either been eeri­ly silent or have thrown their cap in the ring with white Republicans, regard­less of how they treat them.
Cubans in south Florida are prob­a­bly the most trig­gered of all Hispanic com­mu­ni­ties. Whisper the word com­mu­nist or social­ist, and they will jump over a cliff in terror.
It is unfair for me to crit­i­cize them. I have nev­er lived in Cuba, but truth be told, not many of them have either.
I will expand on this as time allows.
In the mean­time, as we exhale from the ten­sions of the last four years, let us not lose sight of the fact that as the Latino com­mu­ni­ty grows in size, their atti­tudes toward social jus­tice and oth­er issues may not line up with that of black folks.
The most obvi­ous sign of that is that many Latinos see them­selves as white, not that they have been accept­ed as such yet. Still, if Raphael Cruz’s name change to ‘Ted” is any­thing to do with it, they are cer­tain­ly look­ing for­ward to being assim­i­lat­ed as the Irish and Italians wait­ed and were assimilated.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast, all free to you, of course.

A Georgia State Patrol troop­er has been arrest­ed on felony mur­der charges after he shot and killed a 60-year-old Black man fol­low­ing a traf­fic stop on August 7. Now, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the victim’s fam­i­ly says a civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion is underway.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that on Friday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations arrest­ed 27-year-old state troop­er Jacob Gordon Thompson in Screven County for the shoot­ing of Julian Lewis.

From AJC:

Authorities have said the shoot­ing took place after Thompson attempt­ed to stop a Nissan Sentra for a bro­ken tail­light on Stoney Pond Road in Screven County. After a brief chase down sev­er­al coun­ty roads, the troop­er ini­ti­at­ed a PIT maneu­ver, and the car came to a stop in a ditch, the GBI said. The troop­er fired one round, fatal­ly strik­ing Lewis. The fam­i­ly attor­ney said the PIT maneu­ver was unnec­es­sary. PIT maneu­vers, in which an offi­cer uses his or her car to push a vehi­cle off the road, can be dan­ger­ous and are gen­er­al­ly only done to elim­i­nate any risk to pub­lic safe­ty. Johnson con­tends there was no risk to pub­lic safe­ty on the rur­al dirt road. The GBI was request­ed that day to inves­ti­gate the offi­cer-involved shoot­ing. The agency has opened 59 such inves­ti­ga­tions this year.

Thomson — who has been a Georgia State Trooper since 2013 — claimed in his police report that he “heard the engine on the violator’s vehi­cle revving at a high rate of speed.”

“I saw him wrench­ing the steer­ing wheel in an aggres­sive back and forth man­ner towards me and my patrol vehi­cle,” his report reads. “It appeared to me that the vio­la­tor was try­ing to use his vehi­cle to injure me. Being in fear for my life and safe­ty, I dis­charged my weapon once.”

At this point, one has to assume that “I was in fear for my life” is writ­ten some­where in the Cop’s Guide to Killing Black People When it Clearly Wasn’t Necessary. Fortunately, this time the words weren’t tak­en at face val­ue, and an arrest was made.

Lewis’ wife Betty — who was leav­ing the funer­al home when she heard that her husband’s killer would be charged — agrees.

“I want jus­tice for Julian. He was too good to die as he did. This is one step towards jus­tice,” she said in a state­ment, AJC reports.

Lewis fam­i­ly attor­ney and for­mer Georgia NAACP head Francis Johnson — who said he learned Friday that the U.S. Department of Justice approved his request for a civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion — also praised the GBI Director Vic Reynolds, the local dis­trict attorney’s office and oth­er offi­cials for prompt­ly arrest­ing Thomson and mak­ing him answer for his alleged crimes.

“It’s rare that I’m able to say that all the agen­cies involved have done the right thing,” Johnson said.

Johnson said that he request­ed the civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion — despite the fact that Thomson has no pri­or dis­ci­pli­nary infrac­tions on his police record — because word on the street is that Thomson has a his­to­ry of racial bias.

“We got lots of mes­sages from peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty that the habit of ex-troop­er Thompson was to racial­ly pro­file and harass Black and brown peo­ple on the high­way,” Johnson told AJC. “This was not shock­ing to them that this happened.”

IMF COUNTRY FOCUS

The COVID-19 cri­sis is hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant impact on Jamaica. The pan­dem­ic, which is severe­ly hurt­ing tourism and remit­tances, reached the Caribbean coun­try just a few months after the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of its eco­nom­ic reform pro­gram — which was sup­port­ed by a $1.66 bil­lion Stand-By Arrangement from the IMF.

In response, the gov­ern­ment has ramped up its recov­ery efforts and estab­lished a spe­cial task force to effec­tive­ly respond to the eco­nom­ic impact of the cri­sis. In this con­text, Jamaica has also request­ed emer­gency financ­ing from the IMF in the amount of $520 mil­lion.
In an inter­view with IMF Country Focus, Jamaica’s Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Nigel Clarke, explains what mea­sures the coun­try is tak­ing to pro­tect lives and liveli­hoods from the impact of the pandemic.

What has been the eco­nom­ic impact of COVID-19 on Jamaica?

As with most economies around the world, the Jamaican econ­o­my has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact­ed by the effects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The econ­o­my is expect­ed to con­tract by over 5 per­cent this fis­cal year. Furthermore, gov­ern­ment rev­enues are expect­ed to decline by dou­ble dig­its even as emer­gency health expen­di­tures, as well as social and eco­nom­ic sup­port expen­di­tures, rise. Our bal­ance of pay­ments will also be neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by our con­sid­er­ably low­er inflows from tourism and remit­tances, which pri­or to the pan­dem­ic rep­re­sent­ed approx­i­mate­ly 20 and 15 per­cent of GDP, respec­tive­ly. As such, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is hav­ing a mul­ti-dimen­sion­al impact.

What eco­nom­ic mea­sures has Jamaica tak­en so far to com­bat the effects of the pandemic?

As with most economies around the world, the Jamaican econ­o­my has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact­ed by the effects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The econ­o­my is expect­ed to con­tract by over 5 per­cent this fis­cal year. Furthermore, gov­ern­ment rev­enues are expect­ed to decline by dou­ble dig­its even as emer­gency health expen­di­tures, as well as social and eco­nom­ic sup­port expen­di­tures, rise. Our bal­ance of pay­ments will also be neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by our con­sid­er­ably low­er inflows from tourism and remit­tances, which pri­or to the pan­dem­ic rep­re­sent­ed approx­i­mate­ly 20 and 15 per­cent of GDP, respec­tive­ly. As such, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is hav­ing a mul­ti-dimen­sion­al impact.

What eco­nom­ic mea­sures has Jamaica tak­en so far to com­bat the effects of the pandemic?

The gov­ern­ment imple­ment­ed a social and eco­nom­ic sup­port pro­gram called the CARE Programme, which pro­vides assis­tance to vul­ner­a­ble indi­vid­u­als and small busi­ness­es through inno­v­a­tive and exist­ing deliv­ery channels.

More specif­i­cal­ly, the pro­gram provides:

• com­pas­sion­ate grants to those who were unem­ployed or infor­mal­ly employed pre-pandemic;
• tem­po­rary unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits to the pre­vi­ous­ly employed who have been laid off or ter­mi­nat­ed since the pan­dem­ic; and
• grants to the self-employed whose reg­u­lar earn­ings have been dis­rupt­ed in addi­tion to grants to small businesses.

The CARE Programme also incen­tivizes employ­ers in tar­get­ed sec­tors to remain con­nect­ed to their employ­ees. Transfers are made to busi­ness­es that retain employ­ees (who are below a par­tic­u­lar income lev­el) on their pay­roll. Among oth­er mea­sures, the CARE Programme pro­vides sup­port for the sick, the elder­ly, the dis­abled, and those who were eco­nom­i­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble pre-pan­dem­ic by sup­ple­ment­ing exist­ing pro­grams.
In addi­tion, we have sup­port­ed new health expen­di­tures. The fis­cal year ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ bud­get is being adjust­ed to accom­mo­date low­er rev­enues, new expen­di­tures, re-pri­or­i­tiz­ing of pre­vi­ous­ly planned expen­di­tures, and uti­liza­tion of cash resources.

It is also worth not­ing that, even dur­ing these unprece­dent­ed times, the gov­ern­ment has tak­en, and will con­tin­ue to take, steps to ensure trans­paren­cy and good gov­er­nance in spend­ing and pro­cure­ment asso­ci­at­ed with our COVID-19 pol­i­cy respons­es. For exam­ple, we plan to pub­lish key infor­ma­tion on pro­cure­ment con­tracts and, as we have already done with the CARE Programme, will request that the Auditor General’s Department under­take and pub­lish an audit of COVID-19 relat­ed spending.

Jamaica’s strong own­er­ship through­out its eco­nom­ic pro­gram and track record imple­ment­ing reforms result­ed in a stronger and more resilient econ­o­my. How have these reforms helped dur­ing this chal­leng­ing time?

The most obvi­ous way is that we have encoun­tered the pan­dem­ic with sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er debt than we had when we entered the glob­al finan­cial cri­sis ten years ago. This has pro­vid­ed some flexibility.

In addi­tion, we had accu­mu­lat­ed cash resources of over 3 per­cent of GDP through pub­lic body reform, inclu­sive of divest­ment of state enter­pris­es, and fis­cal over-per­for­mance. We were plan­ning to use these resources to accel­er­ate debt repayment.

Due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er, we will instead need to draw down on these resources to assist in financ­ing bud­getary expen­di­tures in light of the decline in rev­enues and the new emer­gency expen­di­tures that have arisen. The reforms that gave rise to these cash resources have put Jamaica in a much stronger posi­tion with a wider pool of options.

Finally, Jamaica’s mon­e­tary pol­i­cy frame­work was strength­ened over the course of the Stand-By Arrangement with price sta­bil­i­ty becom­ing the cen­tral goal of mon­e­tary pol­i­cy under a flex­i­ble exchange rate régime. This allowed for sig­nif­i­cant reserve accu­mu­la­tion with non-bor­rowed net inter­na­tion­al reserves increased by over $1 bil­lion. Work con­tin­ues to fur­ther devel­op for­eign exchange and debt mar­kets, which will be crit­i­cal in sus­tain­ing effi­cient inter­me­di­a­tion of cap­i­tal to sup­port increased invest­ment in Jamaica.

How has the ongo­ing work in devel­op­ing the Natural Disaster Risk Management pol­i­cy frame­work helped in respond­ing to the COVID-19 shock?

We made a his­toric trans­fer to our Natural Disaster Contingencies Fund, which was cre­at­ed to pro­vide for unfore­seen dis­as­ter-relat­ed expen­di­tures of any kind two fis­cal years ago. We were able to draw down from this con­tin­gency to finance some of the emer­gency social spending.

It was extreme­ly use­ful to have this option. The amount drawn will be replaced as part of the appro­pri­a­tion process. However, we would not have been able to respond to the COVID-19 relat­ed emer­gen­cies as quick­ly and as nim­bly as we did with­out the resources avail­able in the Natural Disaster Contingencies Fund.

How will Jamaica make use of the emer­gency assis­tance from the Rapid Financing Instrument?

Given the severe shock from the pan­dem­ic, the pro­ceeds of the Rapid Financing Instrument will be used to strength­en the reserves at the Bank of Jamaica. As of now, we do not need the financ­ing facil­i­ty for bud­getary sup­port. We are using our own cash resources and oth­er pro­grammed bud­getary inflows.

A while back I was asked to deliv­er a short address to a small group of peo­ple includ­ing a few local pub­lic offi­cials. It was around the time that Haiti was dev­as­tat­ed by the ter­ri­ble earth­quake, tak­ing the lives of tens of thou­sands of Haitians in the process.
One of the issues that were cen­ter stage at the time was how best to get resources to the peo­ple who need­ed them the most.
There were many ideas dur­ing the time as to how best to exe­cute get­ting crit­i­cal much-need­ed food, med­i­cine & equip­ment for shel­ter to the suf­fer­ing peo­ple.
I thought about the ideas a lot but the one com­po­nent that seemed to be the prob­lem solver was not men­tioned at all.
It was the four-let­ter word “LOVE”.

Well-inten­tioned peo­ple can give all of the mon­ey, food, and equip­ment need­ed in a time of cri­sis, but as long as there is no love in the heart of those han­dling the efforts, all those resources gen­er­al­ly end up in the wrong hands, and with mon­ey pour­ing from it into the wrong pock­ets.
Those who remem­ber those events may attest to just how bad­ly those resources were han­dled after that earthquake.

Today we are faced with a cri­sis of a dif­fer­ent nature. This time, it is not one coun­try fac­ing a cri­sis while every­one else looks on.
This time it is a cri­sis where all of us are at risk, all of us are vul­ner­a­ble.
There are no those peo­ple over there.
We are all God’s peo­ple fac­ing a cri­sis togeth­er.
Given our instincts to imme­di­ate­ly default to pan­ic, this pan­dem­ic offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty for intro­spec­tion, an oppor­tu­ni­ty for demon­strat­ing love & car­ing toward each oth­er.
This time the vic­tims are not hun­dreds or thou­sands of miles away, they are all around us, we are the vic­tims, we are all at risk.
As trag­ic as the deaths and the hor­ror sto­ries are, they offer us the unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to be of help to our neigh­bors. No deed is too small to mat­ter in times of crisis.

Not all of us will emerge on the oth­er side of this, nev­er­the­less, when this shall have end­ed, there will be books writ­ten about the tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties for the rebirth this pan­dem­ic offered. They will talk about those who took advan­tage of those oppor­tu­ni­ties.
Out of the sul­phuric ash­es and lava spilled from an angry vol­cano, ris­es a beau­ti­ful for­est filled with life and promise.
How we emerge from this event may depend on how we treat each oth­er.
Whether we sur­vive or thrive may depend on whether we pan­ic or we fall back and see the hand of God in every event.

The Prime Minister’s con­ces­sion that, quote: ‘The country’s crime prob­lem has “evolved cur­rent­ly, over and above our estab­lished capac­i­ty to address it”, should be a mon­u­men­tal­ly pro­found state­ment polit­i­cal­ly and pol­i­cy-wise, but in a coun­try like ours, it will spark bare­ly a rip­ple except for polit­i­cal mileage.
An inane quote from a dance­hall artiste would gar­ner more inter­est than the Prime Minister’s pro­found con­ces­sion of fail­ure, which he has arrived at way too late.
In 2016 I wrote the arti­cle below in which I implored the Prime Minister to fire Terrence Williams from INDECOM.
My thought process was that since the admin­is­tra­tion would not table leg­is­la­tion in the par­lia­ment to repeal the INDECOM law that was cre­at­ed by a pre­vi­ous JLP admin­is­tra­tion, hope­ful­ly, remov­ing the can­cer­ous growth, Terrence Williams, would help to min­i­mize some of the dam­age being done, until anoth­er admin­is­tra­tion took office that was not blink­ered by myopia.

The above arti­cle has been one of the most wide­ly read that I have writ­ten to-date, gar­ner­ing tens of thou­sands of read­ers, accord­ing to Google ana­lyt­ics.
There is hard­ly a chance that the Prime Minister did not read it, or was told about it, accord­ing to one well-placed source with close ties to the admin­is­tra­tion.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister did not heed my warn­ings to him to remove the con­tentious, and self ‑serv­ing Terrence Williams from the equa­tion, even if he did not want to remove the (Trojan horse) we have come to know as INDECOM.

Rather than take my unso­licit­ed coun­sel, the Prime Minister dou­bled down on the strat­e­gy which brought him to where we are today, forc­ing him to con­cede defeat to the killers roam­ing our coun­try.
Every Jamaican who is not ben­e­fit­ting from crime should today be extreme­ly agi­tat­ed and up in arms at their Government at the state­ments of defeat com­ing from the nation’s chief exec­u­tive.
We were bound to get here, just days ago I wrote that a Saint Andrew Member of Parliament Fayval Williams extolled the val­ues of peace march­es on her social media page.
I con­tend­ed then, that peo­ple with­out polit­i­cal pow­er can march all they want, but the peo­ple with the pow­er to effec­tu­ate change on behalf of their con­stituents should not be talk­ing about polit­i­cal march­es as a solu­tion to the wave of vio­lent crimes sweep­ing the coun­try.
When politi­cians do that I argued, it is an act of capit­u­la­tion. It says “we are out of options”.

The instances of the Prime Minister throw­ing his sup­port to Terrence Williams and INDECOM and berat­ing the brave offi­cers in our coun­try, which allows him to have a coun­try to gov­ern are many.
In June of 2017, while address­ing a so-called use of force con­fer­ence con­vened at the Jamaica Conference Center by, you guessed it.….….….….INDECOM, Andrew Holness said the fol­low­ing.

Quote: The use of force to main­tain law and order has not achieved any­thing ben­e­fi­cial.
“The soci­ety that we are try­ing to cre­ate can­not rely on the use of force to get the preser­va­tion of law and order. For too long, since our inde­pen­dence, since our colo­nial past, we have relied on force, in order to get law and order.”

The truth of the mat­ter is that there is no fac­tu­al data that sup­port­ed the Prime Minister’s asser­tion that there has been a reliance on force to main­tain law and order.
The real­i­ty is that when cit­i­zens break the laws and law-enforce­ment inter­venes to enforce the laws and those cit­i­zens decide to resist, force becomes a neces­si­ty.
It is because of that why the laws were writ­ten decades and decades ago, long before Andrew Holness or myself were born to give the police the right to use force in the exe­cu­tion of their duties should the need arise.
Nowhere in the world has it been demon­stra­bly more nec­es­sary to use force to enforce the laws than in Jamaica.
Instead of hob­nob­bing with INDECOM, Holness would have been bet­ter served by using his ele­vat­ed plat­form as Prime Minister, to edu­cate the large mass of illit­er­ate and law­less peo­ple who fun­da­men­tal­ly believe it is their God-giv­en right, not just to resist their own arrest, but also to inter­vene in try­ing to pre­vent­ing every oth­er arrest. 

The Prime Minister made no attempt to bal­ance his asser­tions at that con­fer­ence with facts. Surely as the leader of the coun­try, he could have called up the com­mis­sion­er of police and ask for police use of force guide­lines.
He could have asked them to give him data on the num­ber of times force was used against the police, which is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant data to have when one is writ­ing a speech or is about to deliv­er one on police use of force.
He has a staff of peo­ple who ask “how high” when he says jump.
But he could not be both­ered hav­ing facts, what he cared about was mak­ing the case for INDECOM, it’s bloat­ed bud­get and fine offices and ameni­ties, while police offi­cers were lit­er­al­ly liv­ing and work­ing in bird feces in some police sta­tions.
Since the Prime Minister could not both­er to tell the truth, I decid­ed to pub­lish the truth.

A report from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) showed that, in 2014, the police were shot at 470 times, 425 times in 2015, and 502 in 2016. During those inci­dents, two police­men were mur­dered and eight injured in 2014, eight were mur­dered and 19 injured in 2015, while six were killed and 22 injured in 2016. At the same time, in 2014 some 112 civil­ians were killed by the police, 92 in 2005, and 102 the fol­low­ing year.

In addi­tion to the vio­lence against the police for those years here is a list of the num­ber of Jamaicans who were report­ed mur­dered to the police.

This infor­ma­tion was eas­i­ly sourced, but Prime Minister Holness did not both­er to source it.
It did not jive with his pre-con­ceived world-view of law enforce­ment, despite his many police body­guards.
What was impor­tant to him was to make the case against the police. His pre­con­ceived ideas are hav­ing con­se­quences now.
Police offi­cers are not allowed to touch the mur­der­ers so they are free to kill at will.
The Police have right­ly shoul­dered arms. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

As Mexican troops moved in to arrest Ovidio Guzman Lopez, Mexican nar­co King, and one of the sons of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman serv­ing time in an American Prison, armed gun­men sur­round­ed the sol­diers forc­ing the release of Guzman who was being arrest­ed on an American extra­di­tion war­rant.
Sounds eeri­ly like Déjà vu, where have we heard this before?

The sol­diers were humil­i­at­ed, as events unfold­ed in Culiacan the strong­hold of the Sinaloa Cartel, but not as much as the Government of President Manuel Lopez Obrador.
*Ironically, Lopez Obrador has been high­ly crit­i­cal of what he calls the mil­i­ta­rized approach to law enforce­ment by his pre­de­ces­sors, accord­ing to the Los Angeles Times.
*In our own Jamaica, we have heard the very same idi­ot­ic argu­ments prof­fered by some in the high­est lead­er­ship posi­tions.
In oth­er words, they want to put an end to the stark and ram­pant vio­lence and killing in our coun­try but they want to do so with feath­ered gloves and pow­dered hand­ker­chiefs.
When the house is on fire, you want water or foam to put it out, and it requires skilled fire­men, not talk­ers and pon­tif­i­cates.

The Mexican gangs went around the city set­ting fires to vehi­cles and block­ing the egress of the sol­diers. Several sol­diers were dis­armed and paci­fied by the heav­i­ly armed gangs.

In a weak attempt at face-sav­ing Mexico’s Security Secretary AlfansoDurazo said: “There was no pact with crim­i­nals, there is no failed state.” “There was a failed oper­a­tion.” Typical politi­cian, it is remark­able how they man­age to blame the secu­ri­ty forces when they fuck up and allow crim­i­nals to gain con­trol.
The equal­ly pathet­ic Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio blamed the group of secu­ri­ty offi­cials for what he called eager­ness to pur­sue Guzman with­out autho­riza­tion from super­vi­sors.
Those who are ratio­nal fair and awake will remem­ber that Jamaican author­i­ties did the very same thing after the secu­ri­ty forces valiant­ly annexed the law­less Tivoli Gardens to Jamaica, instead of receiv­ing a tick­er-tape parade they received a tongue lash­ing by the dirt­bags in gov­ern­ment who are total­ly unwor­thy of the posi­tions they held. As if their dis­gust­ing response was­n’t bad enough, they brought in a for­eign­er in the per­son of a for­mer Bajan jurist, to fur­ther dis­re­spect our secu­ri­ty forces.

There was a report­ed 60 secu­ri­ty offi­cers in a con­voy of vehi­cles and they were eas­i­ly over­pow­ered.
Mexico’s secu­ri­ty cab­i­net decid­ed to call off the oper­a­tion alleged­ly with the goal of ( get this), “safe­guard­ing the well-being and tran­quil­i­ty of Culiacan soci­ety.“
If this was­n’t so stu­pid it would be fun­ny. the tran­quil­i­ty of a city run by nar­co-ter­ror­ists and gang­sters.
It was just the pre­vi­ous Monday that nar­co-ter­ror­ists had mur­dered 14 police offi­cers in the state of Michoacan.

According to reports, con­voys of trucks dri­ven by masked gun­men patrolled the city cen­ter, at least one of the mount­ed with a .50-cal­iber machine gun. They seized and set fire to dozens of vehi­cles includ­ing a bus and a police car, and block­ing at least 14 roads.
The specter of armed gang­sters parad­ing the streets of Kingston before the secu­ri­ty forces went into Tivoli Gardens is still fresh in the minds of many Jamaicans. After all, it was just nine (9) years ago.
One Mexican woman bemoaned what she char­ac­ter­ized as the gov­ern­men­t’s sur­ren­der. “The peo­ple who real­ly are in charge here are the nar­cos”.
As are the gang­sters in Jamaica!
In response to the shock­ing humil­i­a­tion of the secu­ri­ty forces, the Mexican President said: “The cap­ture of one crim­i­nal can­not be worth more than the lives of peo­ple”.

It is the lan­guage being used today even as crime con­tin­ues to esca­late in Jamaica. This year alone, over a thou­sand peo­ple have been mur­dered with over two months to go in the year.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness, told a group of peo­ple who sur­round­ed him com­plain­ing about the police, that the police may have caught a crim­i­nal, but they alien­at­ed the com­mu­ni­ty. Imagine a law­less Jamaican crim­i­nal-lov­ing inner-city com­mu­ni­ty being alien­at­ed from the rule of law?
No oth­er Jamaican Prime Minister has so immersed him­self into the day to day affairs of law ‑enforce­ment, in which he has no busi­ness, as Andrew Holness has. As such he will bear the full respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­tin­ued ero­sion of the rule of law in our coun­try.
That is the kind of talk the Mexican President and Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio used against their own secu­ri­ty forces, instead of lay­ing blame where it belongs with the blood-thirsty narco-terrorists.

In recent weeks the Jamaican Justice Minister Delroy Chuck lam­pooned the secu­ri­ty forces for arrest­ing Ruel Reid and oth­ers of their clique on cor­rup­tion charges.
Chuck, who had no idea what the evi­dence was against Reid when he spoke, and whose daugh­ter, an attor­ney, is rep­re­sent­ing Ruel Reid, berat­ed the police for mak­ing the arrest.
He has since with­drawn the broad­side but the dam­age was done.
Additionally, the youth arm of the rul­ing JLP also came out and accused the police of wrong-doing even though there has been no evi­dence of any wrong-doing so far.

The Jamaican Government of the day, as has the one before it, con­tin­ued to mis­use and abuse the secu­ri­ty forces in an attempt to con­tin­ue the inep­ti­tude of the inves­tiga­tive capa­bil­i­ty of the police.
It con­tin­ues to pro­mote to senior posi­tions in the JCF, men, and women who are inca­pable of for­mu­lat­ing a crime strat­e­gy, much less exe­cut­ing one under com­mand.
As a con­se­quence, the JCF is a top-heavy low capa­bil­i­ty force. As was the sit­u­a­tion, two and three decades ago, the JCF use work­horse offi­cers to sup­press out of con­trol hot-spots, while recent­ly pro­mot­ed senior offi­cers sit in cushy offices.
Well-know com­man­ders who have a proven track record of suc­cess are passed over for pro­mo­tions, while lack­eys and lap­dogs receive pro­mo­tions to posi­tions they can­not justify.

As the blood-let­ting con­tin­ues in Saint Andrew South, for exam­ple, this pub­li­ca­tion wish­es the new­ly installed com­man­der, Superintendent Wayne Cameron all the best in this new com­mand.
Superintendent Cameron’s intel­lect and stel­lar com­mand suc­cess­es in Portland, Manchester, and places beyond, were enough to get him thrown into the morass of Saint Andrew South.
Those very same attrib­ut­es were not enough to get him pro­mot­ed in the last go-around, nor the time before that, nor the time before.
We wish you well Wayne Cameron.….…

LIKE AND SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

ALLEGATIONS AND COUNTER ALLEGATIONS

The saga in which five Jamaican Nationals were arrest­ed by United States Coast Guard for well over a month in 2017 and did not allow them to con­tact their fam­i­ly mem­bers who thought they were dead should con­cern all Jamaicans.
The inci­dent was remark­able enough to prompt the American Civil Liberties Union to file a law­suit on behalf of four of the men in the state of Florida.
In the video above, the men recount­ed their ordeal and stuck to the nar­ra­tive that they were inno­cent fish­er­men whose engine died and their boat drift­ed off­shore.
The men spoke at length about the treat­ment they received at the hands of US Coast guard author­i­ties and the sub­se­quent guilty plea they took in order to be allowed to return to Jamaica to see their fam­i­lies after doing time in an American prison.

At the same time, the US Authorities have insist­ed that the men were mar­i­jua­na smug­glers. They claimed they recov­ered a spe­cif­ic amount of mar­i­jua­na,( 613 pounds) to be exact. They also claimed that they found sev­en 20-gal­lon fuel drums and two 55-gal­lon fuel drums. According to the report­ing in the (local Observer), the Affidavit filed in the Southern District Court of Florida, did not elab­o­rate whether the drums con­tained fuel or not.
As such, it is dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile the sig­nif­i­cance of the men­tion­ing of the fuel drums in the Affidavit(outside of sim­ple account­ing of course). Most sig­nif­i­cant to the American pros­e­cu­tor’s case I thought, was the fact that they said they found no fish­ing gear to back up the claim of the Jamaicans that they were indeed fish­er­men.
Having watched the video twice I thought to myself that the men could actu­al­ly be both fish­er­men and drug smug­glers, as there is no mutu­al exclu­siv­i­ty between the two.

I also thought about fish­ing gear from the start. If they had fish­ing gear on board and indi­cat­ed to the American Coast guard, that they were actu­al­ly fish­er­men, it still would not mean that they are not drug deal­ers if they had drugs on board their ves­sel, or had been seen toss­ing the car­go over­board.
Having fish­ing gear on board would mean noth­ing in that sit­u­a­tion, if drugs were found.
On the oth­er hand, the men said that the US Coast guard destroyed their boat, which indi­cat­ed to me that there was some­thing unto­ward going on.
I know that American author­i­ties have gone over and above what is required when they deal with peo­ple of col­or. I know American Police have been known to frame peo­ple for crimes they have not com­mit­ted.
Nevertheless, I found it strange that the US Coast Guard would destroy a boat and incar­cer­ate inno­cent fish­er­men who have mere­ly drift­ed off course.
The US Coast guard has been a force for good in help­ing strand­ed fish­er­men and oth­ers strand­ed at sea, regard­less of their nation­al­i­ty, so if they are lying about this, to my mind it would be an anomaly.

DRUGS FOR GUNS AND AMMUNITION

Since we do not know what occurred out there on the high seas, we are left to spec­u­late and opine based on what the two sides alleged.
At the same time, we are ful­ly aware that Jamaica is awash in guns and ammu­ni­tion, much of which the local police tells us comes in through the drugs for guns trade.
We make no deter­mi­na­tion whether these men were drug deal­ers or not. What we do know is that the [US Coast Guard] has been instru­men­tal in appre­hend­ing untold ship­ments of drugs before they enter the United States, and in the process, have also destroyed numer­ous small ship­ping ves­sels used to trans­port the drugs.
We do not know who to believe in the sce­nario as is alleged by the two com­pet­ing inter­ests. Sufficing to say it would be help­ful if the Americans had video doc­u­ment­ed the event, so that their claims could have had more valid­i­ty as far as their affi­davit reveals.

TREATMENT OF DETAINEES

Which brings us to the ques­tion of how the men were alleged­ly treat­ed. We have heard the men tell their sto­ries of how inhu­mane­ly they were treat­ed by American author­i­ties after they were tak­en into cus­tody.
Again, this writer has no infor­ma­tion out­side that which has been report­ed to bol­ster the claim of the defen­dants in this mat­ter, or to sub­stan­ti­ate the alle­ga­tions of the charg­ing author­i­ties, nei­ther will the many who will have vary­ing opin­ions on this case.
However, from my per­spec­tive, the fact that the ACLU has filed a suit in court on behalf of the men, indi­cates to me, that there is some evi­dence that they were treat­ed inhu­mane­ly or out­side of what they were enti­tled to as detainees of the US Government.
Under all cir­cum­stances,( includ­ing wars), accord­ing to the Geneva Convention pris­on­ers are to be treat­ed with respect dig­ni­ty and care.
These men weren’t pris­on­ers of war even, at best they were sus­pects in a crim­i­nal case. Under what author­i­ty did the US Coast Guard keep them chained on deck their boat under the ele­ments for a month if true?
How is that even defen­si­ble? Even if they were mur­der­ers, that treat­ment is out­side the norms of decen­cy and nor­mal civ­i­lized con­duct. The Americans would be scream­ing blue mur­der if their [white] nation­als were treat­ed that way by anoth­er coun​try​.In fact they would be pre­pared to go to war over it.
Would they have liked it if their drug deal­ers were arrest­ed by Jamaican author­i­ties and treat­ed that way?
If true, the Commanding offi­cer and every­one involved who treat­ed those men with such bar­bar­i­ty and such indif­fer­ence should be held account­able to the fullest extent of the law.
However, the fam­i­lies of these men should not hold their breath for account­abil­i­ty from America.
At the helm of the Federal Bureaucracy sits a despot­ic tyrant who rips babies from their par­ents puts them in cages, and in many cas­es some have died. He does not respect the laws of his own coun­try, nei­ther does he respect large sec­tions of the American pop­u­la­tion which are non white.
It fol­lows, there­fore, that the treat­ment alleged­ly met­ed out to these black Jamaicans, (regard­less of whether they com­mit­ted a crime or not), was das­tard­ly and inher­ent­ly bar­bar­ic, but not out of the norms of what is expect­ed under a tyrant like the one which is in charge today.

This inci­dent must be held up to the world so that it may see what is hap­pen­ing to peo­ple as a result of a despot­ic régime which has zero respect for estab­lished nation­al or inter­na­tion­al norms.
The harm being done to peo­ple far extends out­side the shores of America and it must be held up so the world may see for itself, what tyran­ny cloaked under a façade of Democracy looks like.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police cor­po­ral, busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. He is also a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge.