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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” Thomas responds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.…..