Some Jamaican Business Leaders want the Police and (indecom)to coöper­ate in pro­tect­ing the coun­try from crim­i­nals. Generally the Country’s Business lead­ers do not get involved except when they think their bot­tom line is in danger.
Recently some busi­ness lead­ers spoke out against what they believed was a Jockeying between Investigators of the Police Department and those from (inde­com) to estab­lish who has super­sed­ing author­i­ty at scenes of crime.
The answer is sim­ple (inde­com) is not the police depart­ment tasked with crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions and as such it has no author­i­ty to take over a crime scene. Even if the Police killed some­one dur­ing the com­mis­sion of a crime the Police still have the author­i­ty to con­tin­ue the inves­ti­ga­tions as they nor­mal­ly would.
The over­sight Agency’s role is to look for impro­pri­ety if there are alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety. That how­ev­er does not give that body super­sed­ing author­i­ty over police, worse case sce­nario is that they share the scene.
The Private sec­tor had all the time in the world to lob­by at the time the (inde­com) Act was being debat­ed . The body chose to remain silent, though the effec­tive­ness of the Police in deal­ing with crime on the island direct­ly affects their bot­tom line.
It is rea­son­able to con­strue that their mealy-mouthed appeal for the police and (inde­com) to work togeth­er is relat­ed to dwin­dling bot­tom lines as crim­i­nals over­run the country.
Ever the cyn­ic, I do not believe the pri­vate sec­tor is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about who has super­sed­ing author­i­ty at scenes of crime.

The (inde­com) Act was a bad law not because the Police do not need over­sight. Lord knows some of the Island’s cops need much more than over­sight in my esti­ma­tion. So that’s not the issue. It’s a bad law because it was not researched, or debat­able prop­er­ly so that the law could snag dirty cops while expos­ing false alle­ga­tions of police mis­con­duct by those with an axe to grind.
We have said repeat­ed­ly in this pub­li­ca­tion that the law is bad because it does not ful­fil the man­date which is required. It empow­ers a nar­cis­sist to abuse the pow­ers of the Act, and ulti­mate­ly send crime sta­tis­tics through the roof .
There should be no ques­tion about who has super­sed­ing author­i­ty at crime scenes.
If an (inde­com) inves­ti­ga­tor breach­es a crime scene tape he/​she should prompt­ly be arrest­ed and charged for breach­ing and poten­tial­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing that crime scene.
In a real democ­ra­cy of course where Bills are prop­er­ly thought-out and debat­ed before they are passed into Laws this could not stand. A bad law is worse than no law at all and that is what the (inde­com) Act is, a bad law.

(Indecom) Investigators should not be at a shoot­ing scene unless there are alle­ga­tions of police impropriety.
This is a piece of leg­is­la­tion which was passed by a bunch of morons which will have debil­i­tat­ing con­se­quences for the fore­see­able future until the morons decide to repeal , rethink, and reau­tho­rize it.

The JCF says it has adopt­ed a pol­i­cy of advis­ing INDECOM of every shoot­ing result­ing in death or injury to any per­son which involves mem­bers of the force, whether or not mis­con­duct is estab­lished. However, the force says that the prac­tice has placed its inves­ti­ga­tors at a dis­ad­van­tage to prop­er­ly process/​investigate crime scenes, “as INDECOM inves­ti­ga­tors are under­tak­ing every such scene with­out estab­lish­ing that there is mis­con­duct on the part of the secu­ri­ty forces”.

The JCF said that the Act is not clear as to whom or at what point it is deter­mined that there is an inci­dent, and that the issue is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by sec­tion 10 of the Act, which pro­vides for INDECOM to receive and inves­ti­gate com­plaints from per­sons who allege that the con­duct of a mem­ber of the secu­ri­ty forces result­ed in acts includ­ing death, injury, sex­u­al assault, dam­age to prop­er­ty, “or any­thing which, in the opin­ion of the com­mis­sion­er [of INDECOM] is an abuse of the rights of a cit­i­zen”. The JCF also com­plained that the INDECOM Act empow­ers the com­mis­sion­er to give direc­tives to the com­mis­sion­er of police, who is oblig­ed to imple­ment these rec­om­men­da­tions for the preser­va­tion of an inci­dent scene and oth­er mat­ters. It said that the fact is that in many cir­cum­stances, the direc­tives of INDECOM is rel­a­tive to oper­a­tional direc­tives to the police com­mis­sion­er. “Any such instruc­tion of INDECOM con­flicts with the pow­er of the com­mis­sion­er of police under sec­tion 3 (2) of the Constabulary Force Act, which states that the com­mis­sion­er (of police) has sole oper­a­tional com­mand and super­in­ten­dence of the force,” the JCF sub­mit­ted. The JCF also sug­gest­ed that the INDECOM Act must be amend­ed to make it clear that it does not con­flict the pro­vi­sions of the Constabulary Force Act.

In its sub­mis­sion, the JDF said that the Act pro­vides INDECOM with pow­ers, such as that of a Supreme Court judge, that are beyond those required for inves­ti­ga­tions and has been inter­pret­ed to bypass some of the estab­lished checks and bal­ances to assure fair­ness. “The Act devi­ates from inter­na­tion­al and local prece­dent and caus­es con­flict with the Defence Act, there­by hav­ing a severe neg­a­tive impact on the dis­ci­pli­nary and admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures of the JDF,” the JDF submitted.

Yesterday September 23^rd, Commissioner of the Independent Commission of Investigations (inde­com) Terrence Williams is report­ing that the num­ber of police shoot­ings which end in death is falling. He dis­closed that up to three years ago, fatal shoot­ings by the police aver­aged 250 per year, with the num­ber falling sig­nif­i­cant­ly to 129 in 2014. For the first half of this year, the num­ber stood at 50. Williams explained that there has been some improve­ment in the coöper­a­tion between the inves­tiga­tive body and the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), which has result­ed in less use of exces­sive and dead­ly force by the police dur­ing their oper­a­tions. “It is not that the police must not use force to defend them­selves, and to defend us, but that use of force must be rea­son­able and pro­por­tion­ate,” Williams said.
What Williams did not both­er to say is that Crime has gone up expo­nen­tial­ly. Which is not sur­pris­ing once one under­stands what is ulti­mate­ly impor­tant to (inde­com) and those who sup­port the Act in its present form. The fact is that any unlaw­ful killing the police does deval­ues us all . We should nev­er be com­fort­able ever, that agents of the state’s kills an inno­cent per­son in our names.
And so we are forced to bal­ance the need to secure our com­mu­ni­ties from dan­ger­ous blood thirsty crim­i­nals while doing all we can to ensure that those we ask to do the job do so in a way that is not anti­thet­i­cal to our val­ues and the fun­da­men­tal human rights of everyone.

That is no easy task but it must be done. What we must nev­er do how­ev­er is to ham­strung those we ask to pro­tect us with their lives . Neither should we empow­er those who are quite con­tent to slide in the blood of offi­cers to fame and power.

The peo­ple’s National Party is chomp­ing at the bit in anger at the fact that some­one or a group of per­sons alleged­ly aligned or a part of the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party has pur­chased the domain name (www​.por​ti​asimp​son​miller​.com,).
The People’s National Party obvi­ous­ly now in cam­paign mode is extreme­ly angry at this sim­ple act of cap­i­tal­ism. The par­ty sees this most for­ward think­ing act of cap­i­tal­ism and crit­i­cal think­ing as Quote,” a cow­ard­ly act of des­per­a­tion to gain trac­tion and rel­e­vance to dri­ve traf­fic to the JLP’s own website”.
Whew !!
That was not the extent of it how­ev­er in a scathing attack on the Jamaica Labor Party the PNP said “The par­ty views the JLP’s actions as immoral and uneth­i­cal and reflec­tive of a par­ty that is bank­rupt of ideas that will use the immense pop­u­lar­i­ty of the prime min­is­ter to seek to shore up its flag­ging brand,” the release said.

“Fresh on the heels of a dis­mal tour in the United States, the Opposition Leader has now clear­ly resort­ed to ‘pig­gy­back­ing’ on the inter­na­tion­al­ly and local­ly rep­utable name of the par­ty leader and prime min­is­ter in order to get an audience,”.
Oh my good­ness, real­ly? Okay in the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure I am a lit­tle more par­tial to the Labor par­ty’s poli­cies than that of the PNP but real­ly ? I have con­sis­tent­ly said that the PNP does not under­stand the mechan­ics of a mar­ket econ­o­my and as such the peo­ple are pay­ing a very high price for it.
The lack of under­stand­ing cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion in which busi­ness­es can­not thrive as a result of old and archa­ic Socialist Policies from the sev­en­ties which were enact­ed by econ­o­my killer Michael manley.
Four decades lat­er the Jamaican econ­o­my strug­gles along because the peo­ple are large­ly too enam­ored with promis­es and jin­gles to under­stand that Socialism kills their oppor­tu­ni­ty for a bet­ter life.

High crime rates, low eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, High infla­tion , low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, low employ­ment, high brain drain, I could go on and on , these are the symp­toms of an econ­o­my built to serve Government rather than the peo­ple. There is not a sin­gle suc­cess­ful nation with ide­o­log­i­cal-social­ism as its foun­da­tion prin­ci­ple. Four decades after the débâ­cle of the Manley years the PNP is still stuck with the ridicu­lous spec­ta­cle of clenched fists and call­ing each oth­er com­rades. Ironically not even the Russians do any­more, they have grad­u­at­ed to the con­cepts (win or lose) of the mar­ket economy.

It is scary to think that the PNP would make a big deal out of such a sim­ple act which out­flanked them as a party .
The advance pur­chase of domain names is one of the old­est tricks since domain names became a com­mod­i­ty. Some can­di­dates run­ning for President in the United States have had to buy back their own names from some young enter­pris­ing kid with a com­put­er in his par­ents base­ment. Welcome to the 21^st century !
The tragedy is not the mind­less com­ments com­ing out of the PNP on this most insignif­i­cant and sim­ple issue but that they are not con­ver­sant with these sim­ple acts of the 21^st century.

How can they lead when sim­ple things like the advance pur­chase of a domain name (any­one’s name) be seen as a big deal rather than a slick move which out­flanked them?
After being in polit­i­cal obliv­ion for many years Bruce Golding was able to eke out a vic­to­ry over the PNP because the Labor Party under­stood how to use the pow­er of technology.
One very effec­tive piece of video mon­tage was par­tic­u­lar­ly dam­ag­ing to Portia and the PNP then . Maybe it’s time the Labor Party dou­ble down on using tech­nol­o­gy to appeal to the peo­ple since the PNP is still stuck in the stone age.

As the People’s National Party wraps up it’s 77^th annu­al con­fer­ence yes­ter­day there appeared to be no change in the excite­ment and fer­vor in the vot­ers as they glee­ful­ly attend­ed the con­fer­ence decked out in par­ty colors.
I spoke to a pub­lic sec­tor work­er recent­ly who is a sup­port­er of the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) he resigned­ly pre­dict­ed that the PNP will be returned to pow­er when­ev­er the Prime Minister decides to call National Elections. Ahast I asked him how he arrived at that opin­ion with the present state of affairs in the country?
He told me with calm detach that despite all the neg­a­tives in the coun­try there is no outrage.

Jamaica has had some tur­bu­lent upheavals dur­ing times of hard­ship and uncer­tain­ty. During the sev­en­ties peo­ple ran in droves from the coun­try tak­ing their wealth , their busi­ness­es and their exper­tise at the urg­ing of left­ist Prime Minister Michael man­ley. Even though it was counter intu­itive many peo­ple to this day still see the lat­er apolo­getic Michael Manley as a great leader of epic pro­por­tions. Never mind that after the colos­sal screwup of the Island’s econ­o­my Manley tak­ing a hia­tus of sorts, then came back and apol­o­gized . Many saw noth­ing wrong with the irrepara­ble harm Manley did to the country.
Additionally, some Caribbean polit­i­cal relics for­mer cahoots of Manley who were more con­cerned with ide­o­log­i­cal social engi­neer­ing than the wel­fare of the peo­ple, still believe he was a great leader.

Which brings us to present day and the fright­en­ing decline in every mea­sur­able met­ric of the stan­dard of liv­ing of Jamaicans. My friend argues that no mat­ter how expen­sive food and oth­er basic neces­si­ties are the peo­ple are con­tent. Which caused me to won­der are the peo­ple con­tent , or are they (1) resigned to their fate, or (2) do not know they deserve better?
If for noth­ing else would­n’t the malaise. cor­rup­tion, crime, deval­u­a­tion, infla­tion and gen­er­al sense of dys­func­tion cause peo­ple to want change?

Between 1972 and 1980 things got bad in Jamaica , real­ly bad. Then

Leader of the Opposition Edward Seaga launched his cam­paign on the theme (DELIVERANCE IS NEAR) to retake the coun­try from the rav­ages of the so called demo­c­ra­t­ic Socialism a social exper­i­ment gone bad.
Today the very same ves­tiges of Democratic Socialism which cre­at­ed the largest brain drain of any small nation are still in place yet the peo­ple like Sheep to the slaugh­ter march duti­ful­ly to the beat of the same drums which destroyed the nation’s econ­o­my between 1972 and 1980.

Left wing Media is up in arms today because an inbred igno­ra­mus asked Donald Trump at an event in new Hampshire.
“We have a prob­lem in this coun­try, it’s called Muslims. We know our cur­rent pres­i­dent is one, “You know he’s not even American, birth cer­tifi­cate man , “But any­way, we have train­ing camps grow­ing where they want to kill us. That’s my ques­tion. When can we get rid of them?”
Despite the inces­sant drum­beat about Trump not fol­low­ing John McCain’s lead in denounc­ing racist igno­rance there is some­thing which is lost in all of the noise.
Of course Trump did not denounce it , he start­ed it but despite the praise for John McCain he missed a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to be a great American himself.
When con­front­ed by a racist igno­rant woman at a Minnesota event who said “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s not, he’s not uh — he’s an Arab.
McCain respond­ed “No, ma’am. He’s a decent fam­i­ly man [and] cit­i­zen that I just hap­pen to have dis­agree­ments with on fun­da­men­tal issues and that’s what this cam­paign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].”
Even though many saw that moment as a mag­nan­i­mous McCain moment, John McCain missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be big. If McCain believed as we are told that America was built by peo­ple who fled reli­gious per­se­cu­tion how could he not tell her that there is noth­ing in the American Constitution which pre­cludes Muslims or any oth­er Religious prac­ti­tion­er from run­ning for President.
In fact the only two require­ments is that the can­di­date reach­es the age of 35 years of age and was born in the United States.
Even on born in the United States stip­u­la­tion there are nuances, McCain him­self the son of a Navy Admiral was born in the Panama Canal zone. Ted Cruz anoth­er left wing loon was born in Canada. Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, was actu­al­ly born in Canada. But because his moth­er was a U.S. cit­i­zen, he is con­sid­ered a nat­ur­al-born cit­i­zen as well, and is there­fore eli­gi­ble to run for pres­i­dent. Cruz was born in 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. His fam­i­ly lat­er moved to Texas, when he was 4.
Even if Obama was born out­side the United States which he was­n’t why would his American cit­i­zen moth­er not qual­i­fy for the same rights as a Ted Cruz?
The igno­rant Right nev­er miss­es an oppor­tu­ni­ty to tie itself into knots as they try to add legit­i­ma­cy to the illegitimate.

Ever since Barack Obama took to the nation­al polit­i­cal stage the cel­lar-dwellers of the Republican Right have attacked his Blackness and his very right to com­pete for the Presidency of the United States. Unfortunately even some Democrats har­bor some of the same resent­ments when he seri­ous­ly chal­lenged Hillary Clinton and it appeared she would be beat­en for the demo­c­ra­t­ic Nomination in 2008.
Hillary Clinton is now crit­i­ciz­ing Donald trump for not repu­di­at­ing the cave dweller who asked the ques­tion as John McCain did in 08 ‚iron­i­cal­ly when under pres­sure dur­ing the pri­maries in 08 the very same Hillary said “he is a chris­t­ian,.….….…. as far as I know”!!!
Again in March of 2008 in answer to a 60 min­utes ques­tion­er Steve Kroft, “You don’t believe that Senator Obama’s a Muslim?” Kroft asked.
Clinton answered “Of course not. I mean, that’s, you know, there is no basis for that. You know, I take him on the basis of what he says. And, you know, there isn’t any rea­son to doubt that,” .
Hillary Clinton had a chance there and then to stamp out that hatred direct­ed at anoth­er Democrat she did­n’t, she allowed polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy to dic­tate her response and as such she has no author­i­ty to denounce Donald Trump.
Donald Trump will nev­er be the President of these United States let’s get that straight. The major­i­ty of Americans are decent evolved peo­ple who have long got­ten over racist ten­den­cies. Of course that major­i­ty is bol­stered by the coali­tion Barack Obama pieced togeth­er in 2008 .
That coali­tion includ­ed African-Americans-Hispanics, young peo­ple, Union work­ers, women. Jews, Asians and others.

Barack Obama is a suc­cess­ful two-term pres­i­dent whether they like it or not. The nasty xeno­pho­bic racism which was unearthed and unleashed on the American elec­toral process was intro­duced By Sarah Palin , Donald trump and oth­ers in the birther move­ment. Let’s thank Senator John McCain for that as well.
Since then President Obama has made pub­lic his long form birth cer­tifi­cate which silenced all of the crit­ics and doubters with the excep­tion of the intel­lec­tu­al turds like Palin Trump and the imbe­cile who posed the ques­tion to Trump.
Barack Obama was forced to show his papers. It was the same as dur­ing slav­ery when free black men were forced to show their free­dom papers to slave-catch­ers who would some­times destroy those papers and vio­lent­ly arrest them and return them to bondage.
Donald trump Sarah Palin and the igno­rant Right are mod­ern day slave catch­ers whose rel­e­vance is tied to pan­der­ing to the moron­ic and un-edu­cat­ed with­out whom they are noth­ing. As it was back in slav­ery , slave catch­ers were unim­por­tant whites with no pow­er their only sense of author­i­ty came from abus­ing blacks.

Of course Trump has a lot of mon­ey but his nar­cis­sis­tic cam­paign of “me” reveals a rather inse­cure shell of a man who needs to be told that he is loved, that he mat­ter. Putting down the achieve­ments of oth­ers, he believes enhances his own statute. His inco­her­ent dis­joint­ed sen­tences usu­al­ly end with the ques­tion “right”? An indi­ca­tion that he con­stant­ly needs to be validated.
As such I believe it is a waste of time to talk about Donald Trump at length. We have seen his kind before just ask pres­i­dent Rudolph Giuliani .……

Leader of the Political oppo­si­tion Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) Andrew Holness spoke at a sparse­ly attend­ed event recent­ly at the Medgar Evers College in new York city.
The Jamaica Gleaner glee­ful­ly pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that the event was a JLP show which was sparse­ly attend­ed then was forced to retract the lie after the facts of who put on the event emerged.
Notwithstanding, Holness obvi­ous­ly was not amused when he turned up to speak and saw the small audi­ence wait­ing to hear him speak.
Holness report­ed­ly said quote“I’m obvi­ous­ly look­ing to see more people,”.

The event held in part­ner­ship with the Medgar Evers College and the Proud Jamaica Foundation kick-start­ed what , con­fer­ence direc­tor, Marcia Meikle-Naughton said is a lead­er­ship sum­mit series.
A video of the event which sur­faced on social media which this pub­li­ca­tion will not fea­ture because of the poor qual­i­ty did show a sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed room at the time the video was recorded.

This ought to be a learn­ing expe­ri­ence for Andrew Holness. Comrades would not have allowed Portia Simpson Miller or any of their top offi­cers to walk into a sit­u­a­tion like this which could cast that Official in a less than pos­i­tive light.
The Labor Party still has not learned the val­ue of pop­ulism and inclu­sion of the com­mon man in what they are doing. Clearly they still do not under­stand the impor­tance of perceptions.

Even though the event was booked as a Leadership Summit[sic] (what­ev­er that means), Holness and his advanced peo­ple (assum­ing there are any), ought to have used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to demand that as part of his show­ing to speak, con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers fill the hall with peo­ple friend­ly to the labor par­ty and it’s principles.
In this busi­ness of pol­i­tics optics are crit­i­cal in shap­ing perceptions.
The Grammys, Oscars, Tony’s and oth­er events use seat fillers to ensure that their events send the cor­rect message.
Holness advance peo­ple will have to under­stand that each event he is asked to attend and address is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case his lead­er­ship skills as well as to impress those he address­es that he is a leader wor­thy of their time and attention.

Police Commissioner Dr. Carl Williams issued a state­ment to res­i­dents of West Kingston that crime is under control.
Speaking at a press con­fer­ence at his Old Hope Road offices Commissioner Williams said. “I am ask­ing all law abid­ing cit­i­zens for their patience as we con­tin­ue with the cur­fews and cor­don and search oper­a­tions to get the crim­i­nals from their midst,”.
The top cop point­ed to increased coöper­a­tion between res­i­dents and his offi­cers cit­ing what he char­ac­ter­ized as a non exis­tence of any such coöper­a­tion initially.
The Commissioner encour­aged offi­cers on patrol to inter­act with res­i­dents with­in the com­mu­ni­ties. Pointing to heavy police/​military deploy­ment in the com­mu­ni­ties Williams said this has had a calm­ing effect on the west Kingston communities.

The Commissioner must know how­ev­er that mere­ly flood­ing the streets of these inner cities com­mu­ni­ties with offi­cers is not sus­tain­able for the long run . Residents of these war torn com­mu­ni­ties are no strangers to these heavy deploy­ments which tend to sup­press the blood-let­ting for a few day after which the secu­ri­ty forces leave and it’s back to the sta­tus quo.

This can­not be laid at the feet of Commissioner Williams and his offi­cers alone. As impor­tant as it is to take these com­mu­ni­ties and hold them, it is impor­tant that the Government and NGO’s get involved in these com­mu­ni­ties to offer hope and direc­tion for young peo­ple who can­not find jobs.
Unfortunately the Administration is deaf­en­ing­ly silent as we allud­ed to in anoth­er arti­cle just today despite the rash of killings plagu­ing the country.
Despite the lack of polit­i­cal lead­er­ship on crime it is impor­tant that the police adopt mea­sures on their own to min­i­mize the num­ber of crimes and the trau­ma­tiz­ing effects it is hav­ing on the Island’s residents.

In order to flood a com­mu­ni­ty with cops and mem­bers of the mil­i­tary they have to be pulled from some­where, this means that though the JCF is not ful­ly staffed the addi­tion­al help from the Military in spe­cial sit­u­a­tions great­ly alle­vi­ates the man­pow­er shortage.
So it seem that some of these prob­lems can be solved with more care­ful plan­ning and a lit­tle ingenuity.
Many years ago we were able to keep crime in check in Saint Andrew North using sim­ple yet inge­nious tech­niques . Yes we had a great team of offi­cers at the Constant Spring ‚Maverly, Red Hills, Stony Hill,and Lawrence Tavern police sta­tions . I speak about these offi­cer yet I have nev­er actu­al­ly named them . It is only appro­pri­ate that I try to doc­u­ment some of these offi­cers with whom I was priv­i­leged to serve.
Many of these offi­cers have left the depart­ment as I did , some stayed and are in senior man­age­ment posi­tions , some have retired and trag­i­cal­ly we have lost some of our friends.

That team includ­ed Deputy Superintendent Anthony Hewitt. Detective Inspector Noël Asphall. Detective Sergeant Gerald Wallace. Detective Sergeant Donald Mc’Innis. Detective Sergeant Barrington Campbell. Detective sergeant Harding. Detective Corporal Tracey. Detective cor­po­ral Colin Pinnock. Detective cor­po­ral Morgan. Detective Corporals Leroy Hanson. Brimroy Garwood .Wilford Gayle. Green. Devon Watkis. Dean Taylor. Ellison. Dadrick Henry. Altamoth(Parra) Campbell. George Henry. Lynval Henry . Spy Henry . Élan Powell. Allan Campbell. George Henry. Yasmin Ankle. Michael Beckles. Constables Dathan Henry. Foster. Foster. Allen Gauntlet .Francis. Webber . Skully. Francis. Errol McLeish.

To the offi­cers who served with us whom I omit­ted it does not mean you were any less impor­tant the years have tak­en their toll it has been 24 years since we worked togeth­er. The list of offi­cers named here were scat­tered over the sta­tions named in the St, Andrew north Police Division who worked assid­u­ous­ly and tena­cious­ly to con­tain crime with next to no resources.
One of the chal­lenges for us at the Constant Spring sta­tion was the fact that we we had two extremes in our police respon­si­bil­i­ties. Cassava Piece, Red Hills Road, White Hall avenue, Ackee-Walk , Grants Pen, Grants Pen Gully and Barbican were some of the depressed com­mu­ni­ties which ringed the Constant Spring Station to the south East and west while the upscale com­mu­ni­ties of Barbican Heights, Cherry Gardens, Norbrook, and sim­i­lar neigh­bor­hoods fell with­in our sphere of respon­si­bil­i­ty to the north and north east.

We were tasked with pro­tect­ing the poor­est of the poor as well as the rich­est and most impor­tant peo­ple at the same time, at best we had three cars. We learned to find ways to use sim­ple tech­niques to solve prob­lems. I take cred­it for a sim­ple board with a map of our area of respon­si­bil­i­ty, we used col­ored pins to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of crime . This allowed us to con­cen­trate our resources in the areas where they were need­ed most with resound­ing suc­cess. This of course was done because we had a ter­rif­ic group of ded­i­cat­ed officers

I urge the Commissioner to apply crit­i­cal think­ing to solv­ing some of the prob­lems fac­ing the Jamaican peo­ple. Nothing will endear the police to the Jamaica peo­ple again as solv­ing the crime problem .
The police Commissioner will have to find ways to do so with no help from the Administration in Jamaica House. The present Administration sim­ply does not under­stand the effects of crime on soci­ety or is too heav­i­ly immersed in it . Either way Jamaica los­es . I say it’s the latter.

Amidst spec­u­la­tion and fer­vor sur­round­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of General Elections in Jamaica pos­si­bly by the end of this year is the omi­nous and con­stant stream of dai­ly murders.
The next Jamaican gen­er­al elec­tion is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due between 29 December 2016 (the day of the pre­vi­ous elec­tion in 2011) and 16 April 2017 (with­in three months of the date of the first sit­ting of the new Parliament on 17 January 2012).
Despite the length of time still to go experts and Election watch­ers are excit­ed­ly watch­ing for signs that the next National polls may be clos­er than we think.
One indi­ca­tor of this immi­nence is the sight­ing of Portia Simpson Miller on pub­lic plat­forms . Addressing the annu­al con­fer­ence of her South West St Andrew con­stituen­cy the Jamaican Prime Minister said “I hear them say that I am miss­ing in action, all who say that I am miss­ing in action, why them nev­er say the same thing when the JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) hav­ing their prob­lems? I don’t have any prob­lems in my par­ty, I am the leader and I lead from in front, not behind”.

To the aver­age observ­er this state­ment means lit­tle but to those steeped in Jamaican polit­i­cal tra­di­tions this may mean elec­tions are near or worse case, the sea­son has start­ed and it will be a long campaign.
The Jamaican Prime Minister is a prod­uct of Garrison Politics which has metas­ta­sized and is now an inte­gral part of the Jamaican Political land­scape. Garrison Politics is the prac­tice of the polit­i­cal par­ties to use scarce pub­lic funds to cre­ate zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions . Zones of par­ty loy­al­ists who vote for the par­ty which doles out the free­bies. In many cas­es par­ty loy­al­ists receive free hous­ing in select com­mu­ni­ties, they pay no prop­er­ty tax­es, and are afford­ed pay­checks for work they nev­er do.
This prac­tise has had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the Jamaican econ­o­my it has balka­nized, trib­al­ized and polar­ized the nation’s pol­i­tics over the ensu­ing decades since Independence and cost thou­sands of lives.

The Jamaican Prime Minister’s par­ty is not the only vil­lain, her par­ty has sim­ply been bet­ter at it. However the Prime Minister brings to the stage a sense of parochial­i­ty and crass­ness that many Jamaicans at home and in the dias­po­ra would like to see exit the stage. Many Jamaicans believe the Prime Minister is not only unqual­i­fied but gross­ly unfit to serve as the high­est elect­ed offi­cial based on those char­ac­ter­is­tics. All across the coun­try the rash of mur­ders con­tin­ue unabat­ed. The Police are pow­er­less to do any­thing about it and the Prime Minister now back in the spot­light from hiber­na­tion pre­tends that all is well. Maybe it’s time the Prime Minister remove those ridicu­lous sun­glass­es so she can see what every­one else sees hap­pen­ing to the once proud and thriv­ing Island.

CRIME

The Police report that the major­i­ty of killings and oth­er seri­ous crimes are now being com­mit­ted out­side the Kingston and St. Andrew Metropolitan area and Spanish Town the tra­di­tion­al mur­der hotspots. There are sev­er­al fac­tors at play which makes this pos­si­ble. The cre­ation of Highways link­ing the Kingston Metropolitan Region to the rest of the coun­try makes access and egress to and from the rest of the coun­try a breeze. Many of these crimes are being com­mit­ted by men on high pow­ered motor­cy­cles. The nation’s crim­i­nals are not stu­pid they are aware that the great­est con­cen­tra­tion of law enforce­ment assets are bun­dled in Kingston and Saint Andrew. They also know that soft­er tar­gets exist out­side Kingston and so the chance of them get­ting appre­hend­ed are next to zero. It appears that as far as mur­ders are con­cerned nowa­days the Police sim­ply show up and car­ry out the motion. It does not appear that there is any sig­nif­i­cant head­way being made in Investigating and bring­ing crim­i­nals to jus­tice. It is a fright­en­ing prospect when one con­sid­ers the amount of mur­der­ers walk­ing the streets of Jamaica with absolute­ly no fear they will ever be brought to jus­tice. In instance after instance we see the Police oper­at­ing in the pub­lic and they seem unsure and unpre­pared to deal with the prob­lems they are faced with. This is not lost on the crim­i­nal under­world. For a decade dur­ing the 1990’s, by the (JCF’s) own admis­sion the Percival Patterson Administration did not make a sin­gle dol­lar avail­able to train detec­tives. Many sober watch­ers of the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion will tell you that was the peri­od dur­ing which the Police depart­ment lost con­trol of crime.”

COMMUNITY POLICING

There are no sub­sti­tutes for good com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing and impec­ca­ble detec­tive work these two com­po­nents are key to the suc­cess of any depart­ment. Corruption .Perceived Corruption. Politics. Nepotism. Low com­pen­sa­tion. Lack of Leadership from the high com­mand and the Political direc­torate and incom­pe­tence are only some of the issues plagu­ing and hin­der­ing the JCF’s abil­i­ty to ade­quate­ly arrest the run­away crime rate.
As I have said before It is crit­i­cal that Police Officers use their dis­cre­tion in going about their duties how­ev­er there is a clear line of demar­ca­tion which offi­cers in uni­form should not cross. No Police Department allows it’s offi­cers in uni­form to behave in ways which are anti­thet­i­cal to the depart­men­t’s rules. Police offi­cers sub­se­quent­ly must under­stand that even as they strive for ways to con­nect with the com­mu­ni­ties they serve they must remain vig­i­lant that they do not bring the depart­ment to a place where the very peo­ple they chose to impress have to look down in order to see them . The notion that a police depart­ment in cri­sis will endear itself to a pub­lic which cel­e­brates an over­turned patrol car, by engag­ing in “coon­ery and buf­foon­ery “is symp­to­matic of an intel­lec­tu­al defi­cien­cy and a rot which have per­me­at­ed some seg­ments of the soci­ety includ­ing ex-mem­bers. It is bela­bor­ing the point to say Police depart­ments do well when they embrace com­mu­ni­ty Policing.

As a small busi­ness own­er I was real­ly unhap­py when my city dis­con­tin­ued the prac­tice of hav­ing patrol offi­cers stop in to busi­ness­es and say “hi” to store own­ers. I thought the pre­vi­ous out­reach and cama­raderie we shared with our offi­cers were spe­cial and wor­thy of our depart­ment and the over 30,000 res­i­dents who live in my city.
Not once how­ev­er did I see a sin­gle offi­cer hav­ing to Become a disc jock­ey or a danc­ing gyrat­ing clown to earn our respect.

Ending a dance or event which refus­es to abide by the Town and Community Act should not have to be done because a cop gets on stage and join in the event. If and when we find our­selves at that point it means that the Police depart­ment has lost it’s effectiveness.
Police doing their jobs effec­tive­ly can­not be through clown­ing, it is done with coör­di­nat­ed back­up, offi­cers com­ing to the assis­tance of fel­low offi­cers and com­ing fast . That is the best way to ensure that cit­i­zens obey the laws and the offi­cers tasked with enforc­ing them.
let me be clear there is absolute­ly no mer­it to the argu­ments that no mat­ter what offi­cers do as long as you slap the title police com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions on it it’s okay. That philo­soph­i­cal sin­gle mind­ed­ness is exact­ly why the depart­ment finds itself inef­fec­tive and ineffectual.
The police is under­stand­ably unsure and ten­ta­tive. This places their lives at seri­ous risk. Almost dai­ly there are inci­dents of offi­cers forced to back down from crowds of peo­ple who quick­ly gath­er around and hin­ders the arrest of offend­ers. In some cas­es this involves a female offi­cer who offer lit­tle or no help to her male coun­ter­part. In oth­er cas­es attempts to effect an arrest becomes a night­mare because offi­cers are ten­ta­tive and uncer­tain how to effec­tive­ly arrest an offender.

This again is a cri­sis of lead­er­ship. Criminals and their sup­port­ers are like Predators. Sharks can detect a sin­gle drop of blood in the ocean from long dis­tances away. Criminals can sense fear and uncer­tain­ty in police offi­cers. We need to bring back the deci­sive­ness and assertive­ness in our offi­cers. Jamaican crim­i­nals are not get­ting kinder they are get­ting more cal­lous more bru­tal. The police depart­ment must have offi­cers who are not afraid to enforce the laws deci­sive­ly. That is at the heart of the prob­lem. This whole idea of danc­ing police offi­cers , police offi­cer as disc jock­eys, and police offi­cers dag­ger­ing in uni­form is tes­ta­ment not to the chang­ing times but the idio­cy of pro­po­nents. Of course offi­cers can engage the pub­lic and have loads of fun in uni­form, there is how­ev­er a line which they should not cross. There is a clear line between being pop­u­lar and the class clown.

Lloyd B Smith out in St. James cen­tral, Raymond Pryce out in St Elizabeth, Dr Lynvale Bloomfield in Portland Eastern, Lisa Hanna in per­il up there in St. Ann, and Damion Crawford in St Andrew for the PNP . Gregory Mair out in NE St. Catherine for the JLP. Additionally there are count­less oth­er squab­bles brew­ing in both Political par­ties. In a Democracy this could be con­strued to mean the demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­toral process is at play and the voice of the peo­ple are being heard.
Not so in Jamaica for either Party.

The only con­stant in all of this is that it is rea­son­able to con­strue that nation­al elec­tions are not too far away. Some elec­tion watch­ers have pre­dict­ed the Country may see nation­al elec­tions before the end of this year.
When attempt­ing a seri­ous cri­tique of Jamaica’s polit­i­cal real­i­ty one has to do so from the most base per­spec­tive. This is true because every­thing done polit­i­cal­ly in Jamaica is done for the most base self-serv­ing rea­sons. People are not forced out because the par­ties want to purge non-per­form­ing dead-wood from their ranks. People are purged because oth­er peo­ple in posi­tions of pow­er want them out for their own rea­sons. The ulti­mate sin in Jamaican pol­i­tics is mem­bers with minds of their own. 
Having an inde­pen­dent mind is a no no. You nev­er crit­i­cize the par­ty no mat­ter how wrong it’s poli­cies are. Speaking out is polit­i­cal suicide.

Lloyd B Smith a for­mer JLP mem­ber who went over to the PNP spoke out recent­ly against cor­rup­tion with­in the par­ty. Smith ought to have know that crit­i­ciz­ing the PNP was polit­i­cal sui­cide par­tic­u­lar­ly as a mem­ber who does not have “deep roots” in the par­ty, a kind of nice term die-hards use pejo­ra­tive­ly to style non-orig­i­nal-cult mem­bers of the PNP like Smith.

Patrick Atkinson the Attorney General also tran­si­tioned to the PNP after con­test­ing nation­al elec­tions on the JLP tick­et twice. Atkinson bolt­ed then bolt­ed to the PNP in 2007 where life has been peach since .Politics is all about grasp­ing the moment, seiz­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty and noth­ing to do with ser­vice. Recently Joan Gordon Webley jumped the Labor ship and sought mem­ber­ship in the Governing PNP.
Comrades feel­ing invad­ed by the hordes[sic] of laborites jump­ing ship as Donald Trump feels about Mexicans invad­ing the US south­ern bor­der, howled in con­dem­na­tion at the influx of laborites to their cult. As a result Webley is now in lim­bo her appli­ca­tion to join the par­ty was decid­ed against by the National Executive Council of the PNP which sent her appli­ca­tion back to the exec­u­tive for reconsideration.
Does that migra­tion of laborites mean they have giv­en up on the JLP ever assum­ing office again? Or does it mean they have final­ly sur­ren­dered to the nar­ra­tive that “Jamaica a PNP coun­try”?
Or maybe both ?

People’s National Party del­e­gates have also shown Raymond Pryce the door and the Nation’s first elect­ed Rastafarian Damion Crawford is in per­il up there East Rural St. Andrew.
Crawford may be in dan­ger for doing the unthink­able hav­ing words of sup­port for the Jamaican Police. However his stri­dent cri­tique of (inde­com) may be the rea­son the Party is being nudged to remove him. At least for Crawford this may be big­ger than the parochial­ism of PNP trib­al pol­i­tics , but may even come from more pow­er­ful forces out­side the coun­try who are major sup­port­ers of (inde­com).
One thing is notice­able though were the Labor Party expe­ri­enc­ing this lev­el of dis­uni­ty, there would be major glee that nar­ra­tive being that the Labor par­ty has come apart at the seams. Not so when the PNP goes through it’s pains , it’s just inter­nal business. 
Maybe Jamaica real­ly is “PNP country” !!

Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis returned to work today after spend­ing 5 days in jail. A Federal Judge ruled Davis was in con­tempt of his order to grant mar­riage licens­es to gay and les­bian couples.
Miss Davis a devout Christian refus­es to acqui­esce to the demands, argu­ing doing so would vio­late her con­science. Kim Davis the Rowan County Clerk is opposed to gay and les­bian mar­riage based on her Christian faith. This morn­ing Davis tear­ful­ly stood in front of her offices and issued a state­ment say­ing she would not inter­fere if her deputies issued licens­es to same-sex cou­ples, but she would not autho­rize those licenses.
“To affix my name or author­i­ta­tive title on a cer­tifi­cate that autho­rizes mar­riage that con­flicts with God’s def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage as a union between one man and one woman vio­lates my deeply held reli­gious con­vic­tions and con­science,” Davis said dur­ing a brief state­ment after arriv­ing at her office. “For me, this would be an act of dis­obe­di­ence to my God.”..
It is impor­tant to note in light of the grow­ing sup­port for homo­sex­u­al lifestyle that at the time Kim Davis ran for pub­lic office the law of the land was that mar­riage was between one man and one woman as it has been ordained by God for thou­sands of years. Of course this was before the Supreme Court took it upon itself to usurp God’s author­i­ty with it’s earth­ly authority..
As we have repeat­ed­ly said in this pub­li­ca­tion, this demon­ic issue was and is nev­er about mar­riage or equal­i­ty. Neither is it about mar­riage equal­i­ty. It is about the per­se­cu­tion of Christians for their belief in God. This is big­ger than a mere con­tem­po­rary issue. It is inher­ent­ly the ful­fil­ment of Scriptures in front our very eyes. Unfortunately many includ­ing those who are sup­posed to be pro­tect­ing the flock are woe­ful­ly unpre­pared , ill-equipped and in some cas­es blind to what’s happening.

For we wres­tle not against flesh and blood, but against prin­ci­pal­i­ties, against pow­ers, against the rulers of the dark­ness of this world, against spir­i­tu­al wicked­ness in high places.
This morn­ing Media hous­es were glee­ful­ly report­ing that a Lesbian cou­ple had announced their inten­tion to show up for a mar­riage licence.
How con­ve­nient ? 
Why on the very day Kim Davis decid­ed to return to work? Why announce their inten­tions? Why not show up and do what oth­er cou­ples do when seek­ing a mar­riage licence? 
Because the idea is to show Kim Davis bro­ken and sub­dued and humil­i­at­ed. They broad­cast their inten­tions to show up because that is exact­ly what the Gay Agenda is about. It is about get­ting Christians and oth­er dis­senters to bow down or be humil­i­at­ed as nean­derthal relics of a less than intel­li­gent time. les­bian cou­ple — Shannon Wampler and Carmen Collins were not there just for the piece of paper which ulti­mate­ly will con­demn them they were there to show Kim Davis and Christians across the Globe where the arrow is trend­ing and County Clerk Brian Mason was more than hap­py to sell his soul for a moment in the spotlight.

Revelation 13:16 – 18 

Also it caus­es all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the fore­head, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the num­ber of its name. This calls for wis­dom: let the one who has under­stand­ing cal­cu­late the num­ber of the beast, for it is the num­ber of a man, and his num­ber is 666.
God says in Revelation 18:4 ‘come out of her My peo­ple.’ (Babylon) . Some Christians believes Babylon in the book of Revelation is a city, and God says in Revelation 18:4 ‘come out of her My peo­ple.’ But these Christians sin­cere though they are,misunderstand what Babylon is in Revelation. Babylon in the book of Revelation is not a city it’s the fall­en church.God warns his peo­ple to come out of this fall­en church, so they don’t share in her sins.
As this Gay agen­da unfolds in front our eyes and is being rammed down our throats the head of the Catholic Church[sic] says “who am I to judge” ? If the Catholic Pontiff both­ered to read the Bible he would under­stand that call­ing sin, sin is not judg­ing. He would know it is exact­ly what Jesus said we should do even as we show love to our fel­low sinners.

If the Pontiff was clear on Biblical teach­ings and not the wor­ship of the Virgin Mary he would know that it is exact­ly the duty of the Church to point to a path of moral clar­i­ty rather than mud­dy the water which leads to life eternal.
It is exact­ly what the Lord God com­man­deth when he tell us to come out of Babylon . This is the Pontiff who tells his Bishops to absolve peo­ple of their sins. Who is the Pope or his Bishops to absolve any­one of sin. God alone has the pow­er to remove sin not some ele­vat­ed tool of Satan.
Pope Benedict silent­ly went into obscu­ri­ty because he did not sup­port the agen­da of Homosexuals. We wrote in this very pub­li­ca­tion that the rea­son he was forced out was exact­ly because he would not allow him­self to be a tool for this satan­ic prac­tice. In 600 years no oth­er Pontiff had resigned until Joseph Ratzinger (Benidict XVI) stepped aside which made way for Francis.

Catholics and non-Catholics alike are glee­ful at the lib­er­al­ism of Francis , whose poli­cies are more in tune with con­tem­po­rary cul­ture. Rather than stand­ing on the prin­ci­ples of chris­t­ian teach­ings Francis has sig­nalled a rev­o­lu­tion­ary path many see as anti­thet­i­cal to the teach­ings of Jesus Christ. As such catholics and non-catholics are sali­vat­ing glee­ful­ly that this indeed is their Pope.

FRANCIS
♦He has con­tra­dict­ed the teach­ings of past popes.
♦ He has praised a chil­dren’s book pro­mot­ing homo­sex­u­al coupling.
♦ He has defend­ed homosexuality.
♦ He has seem­ing­ly advo­cat­ed for cul­tur­al relativism.
♦ He has encour­aged more lib­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic tra­di­tions sup­port­ed by many Jesuits.
♦ He has soft­ened church rules regard­ing divorce and remarriage
Read more here :22 Pope Francis Statements Proving He’s a Leftist. 

The Protestant faith has been duplic­i­tous­ly silent , not want­i­ng to attract atten­tion even as Christians are being per­se­cut­ed for their faith. The church is silent because it does not want to be be irrel­e­vant, out­dat­ed, or to lose it’s tax-exempt status.
I warn the silent Pastors that the next Kim Davis will be you. This is not a move­ment about Homosexuals being togeth­er. Gays have engaged in their homo­sex­u­al lifestyle for thou­sands of years.
This is about your faith. This is about your abil­i­ty to stand up to the pow­ers of Satan (earth­ly gov­ern­ment) and say I will not denounce my faith in order to fit in.
Silence will not change that , Satan will not cease his attacks sim­ply because the Church cow­ers and hide in fear. Satan wants the total destruc­tion of your faith . Hence the word of God (Psa. 119:11). The duty of God’s chil­dren is to hide His Word in their hearts.
The next line of attack will be against the Pastors who shy away from Kim Davis . Some have even argued that because she was mar­ried sev­er­al times she does not fit the bill of a per­fect stan­dard bear­er for this stance.
Says who? Throughout Biblical his­to­ry God used peo­ple oth­ers scoffed at to car­ry out his plan. Who are you to decide that her mar­riages make her unfit to be a stan­dard bear­er. God used tax col­lec­tors, for­mer pros­ti­tutes, and oth­er lay peo­ple to ful­fill his pur­pose , his will be done.

Shannon Wampler and Carmen Collins walked into Kim Davis’ office not just to get a mar­riage license, they walked in to show Kim Davis they have the pow­er of the American Federal Government behind them, they glee­ful­ly chat­ted away with those who share their beliefs while the acquient clerk took care of the Devil’s business.
The next chap­ter in this episode will be that the Churches will be asked to mar­ry Gays. Some of the Pastors will val­i­date the Devil’s work in the house of the Lord. Those of you who remain silent hop­ing that not get­ting involved will save you are in for a rude awak­en­ing. If you refuse you will first lose tax-exempt sta­tus , you will be black­list­ed and even­tu­al­ly forced to either mar­ry them or go to Jail , oh yes it’s the law right?
They will make the very same argu­ments that the Church has no right to dis­crim­i­nate. They will say you Pastors are nean­derthal big­ots who refuse to fol­low the laws. They will say you are stand­ing on anti­quat­ed prin­ci­ples which are stymieing the evo­lu­tion of their Utopian Gay society. 

The Church is so much a part of the world that there is no dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between the world and the Church . The lord chal­lenges us to come out of Babylon . The Christian Church is no stranger to per­se­cu­tion , hold on there is much more com­ing . This is the begin­ning of the great falling away as fore­told by Scripture. Choose ye this day whom he shall serve.
Daniel 7:25
He will speak against the Most High and oppress his holy peo­ple and try to change the set times and the laws. The holy peo­ple will be deliv­ered into his hands for a time, times and half a time.
Daniel 8:25
He will cause deceit to pros­per, and he will con­sid­er him­self supe­ri­or. When they feel secure, he will destroy many and take his stand against the Prince of princes. Yet he will be destroyed, but not by human power.
Daniel 11:36
“The king will do as he pleas­es. He will exalt and mag­ni­fy him­self above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods. He will be suc­cess­ful until the time of wrath is com­plet­ed, for what has been deter­mined must take place.

On Wednesday September 9^th Harvard edu­cat­ed retired ten­nis star James Blake 35 was lean­ing against a mir­rored beam out­side a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, his hands clasped as he wait­ed to be tak­en to a cor­po­rate appear­ance at the United States Open when he was bum-rushed and thrown to the ground by white plain-clothes NYPD offi­cer 38-year-old James Frascatore.
Mister Blake sus­tained bumps and bruis­es from his rough encounter with Frascatore he has been doing the media cir­cuit at their invi­ta­tion, to shed light on what real­ly hap­pened to him .
Since then the NYPD has released video footage of the encounter which showed Frascatore rough-hous­ing a star­tled and com­pli­ant Blake. 
Even more dam­ag­ing for Frascatore and the NYPD is the Department’s own acknowl­edge­ment (1) That the encounter was a Sting oper­a­tion gone bad. The NYPD alleges the sting was aimed at an alleged cred­it card scam­mer who resem­bles James Blake. More impor­tant­ly (2) That James Frascatore has a his­to­ry of abu­sive behav­ior to the pub­lic in the four years since he joined the NYPD from Florida. There is no men­tion whether he had a his­to­ry of abu­sive behav­ior while being a police offi­cer in the State of Florid. What we do know is that there are present­ly two civ­il actions in the Courts against Frascatore since he joined the NYPD.

The New York Times reports that In 2012, a Queens man said, Officer James Frascatore pulled him over for a bro­ken tail­light, opened his car door and punched him three times in the mouth, unpro­voked. The fol­low­ing year, anoth­er Queens res­i­dent claimed, Officer Frascatore punched him in the stom­ach sev­er­al times out­side a bode­ga and called him a racial epi­thet. Both inci­dents involved black men.
The Times report indi­cat­ed that Jamaes Frascatore’s his­to­ry of exces­sive force com­plaints, includ­ing at least three filed against him with the Civilian Complaint Review Board in 2013, revealed a pat­tern of res­i­dents claim­ing they were detained with­out expla­na­tion and mis­treat­ed despite com­ply­ing. It also led some lawyers and res­i­dents to crit­i­cize the Police Department for not pun­ish­ing him before he was involved in anoth­er rough arrest.
The report detailed instance after instance in which Frascatore and his cronies assault­ed and abused cit­i­zens and lied about it in police reports. In one case he report­ed that he was bit­ten on the hand by one man he arrest­ed, yet expert tes­ti­mo­ny revealed the cut on his hand was con­sis­tent with him punch­ing the sus­pect in the mouth as the sus­pect­ed main­tained. Despite all of these alle­ga­tions of abuse and instances of lying Officer James Frascatore was still work­ing the streets and allowed to con­tin­ue the pat­tern of rough abu­sive behavior.

Since this report came to light NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton has said race played no part in the treat­ment of James Blake. In the mean­time Frascatore report­ed­ly have final­ly been stripped of his gun and badge. Not sur­pris­ing­ly the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association said Mister Blake’s arrest “was made under flu­id cir­cum­stances where the sub­ject might have fled.”in an attempt to jus­ti­fy the use of force. No rea­son­able per­son both­er to take the NYPD PBA seri­ous­ly anymore.

Working the streets of any big city for police offi­cers is no easy task . People are rude, abra­sive, dis­re­spect­ful, and they are vio­lent, yet police offi­cers must find ways to do their job with­out undu­ly abus­ing or caus­ing harm to the very peo­ple they are sworn to protect.
Police offi­cers must always be remind­ed that their core func­tion is (1) “to pro­tect and serve”. And (2) That even in the worse sit­u­a­tions a per­son is inno­cent until proven guilty in a court of law. Even then, with the addi­tion of sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal advances to law enforce­ment and crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions we see that in many instances even some the sys­tem adamant­ly claimed were guilty of heinous crimes have been released from pris­ons, some­times after decades in prison for crimes they did not commit.
With that in mind offi­cers should have some degree of pause even when they are con­vinced they are right about the guilt of an indi­vid­ual. A good cop knows things are not always what they seem.

If one was to attach some degree of cred­i­bil­i­ty to the state­ment of the PBA that the sit­u­a­tion was flu­id and that the sus­pect they were actu­al­ly pro­fil­ing could have escaped, one would have to be pre­pared to dis­pense with real­i­ty. No sus­pect being the sub­ject of a sting oper­a­tion in New York City is going to escape, so lets dis­pense with that bull. 
Which brings us to this real­i­ty. The Police claim the sus­pect of their inves­ti­ga­tions was involved in a cred­it card fraud essen­tial­ly a white col­lar crime.
What’s wrong with walk­ing up to a sus­pect and sim­ply iden­ti­fy­ing one’s self as police offi­cers and if war­rant­ed telling the sus­pect he/​she is under arrest?
Why does every arrest have to be about throw­ing peo­ple to the ground with groups of cops strad­dling and kneel­ing into an on the suspect?
What’s that about?
James Blake was tak­en down by a sin­gle offi­cer . If the Police are to be believed when they say the sus­pect they were inves­ti­gat­ing might have fled, they would cer­tain­ly not have had a sin­gle offi­cer doing the take-down and even­tu­al arrest. It is time that the NYPD owns when it is wrong and stop dis­re­spect­ing the cit­i­zens they are sworn to pro­tect and serve. People are pre­pared to give police the ben­e­fit of the doubt because offi­cers are human like the rest of us. Lying and obfus­cat­ing cre­ates more enmi­ty and anger , it’s okay to be wrong, some­thing the PBA seem inca­pable of understanding.

If I am lean­ing on a build­ing and the police comes up and arrest me by mis­take then releas­es me once they fig­ure I was not the per­son they were look­ing for, as long as they did not abuse me or was dis­re­spect­ful to me I’m good. If I get thrown to the ground, sus­tain bumps and bruis­es and is ver­bal­ly abused in the process, of course I want penance from the offender/​s.
Commissioner Bratton’s insis­tence that their ini­tial sus­pect bore strik­ing resem­blance to James Blake and as such race played no role in the inci­dent may res­onate with police apol­o­gists and racism-deniers, it how­ev­er miss­es anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to rec­og­nize and apply fix­es to a sim­mer­ing problem.
It is not out­side the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ties to imag­ine that if James Blake was a white 35-year-old male just stand­ing around he would not be bum-rushed, tack­led and thrown to the ground. 
Commissioner Bratton and mil­lions of racism deniers do them­selves and the nation a dis­ser­vice when they fail to rec­og­nize or admit that there is a built in dis­re­spect when some in law enforce­ment come in con­tact with black and brown cit­i­zens. The longer he and oth­ers con­tin­ue this cha­rade the longer it con­tin­ues, the more like­ly it is that inno­cent peo­ple con­tin­ue to be hurt by police.

I’m no fan of Republican pol­i­tics the Republican par­ty apart from being a den and refuge for racists is also an enclave for hyp­ocrites. Let me has­ten to say this cri­tique is in no way an endorse­ment of Democratic values.
So I just watched Ben Carson famed Nuero-Surgeon give a press con­fer­ence on tele­vi­sion. Carson is the very first Doctor to suc­cess­ful­ly sep­a­rate Siamese twins. He’s a Brilliant man who pro­fess­es his Christian faith and strong affin­i­ty for tra­di­tion­al values.
I must say I was impressed with Carson. I had not both­ered lis­ten­ing to him or any oth­er Republican so far this sil­ly sea­son. On the face of it Carson seemed like a rea­son­able man . He espous­es Family, God and Country (not nec­es­sar­i­ly in that order).In fact Carson speaks elo­quent­ly on some of the very issues we talk about reg­u­lar­ly in this forum regard­ing the black community.
Personal Responsibility.
Respect.
Education.
Religion.
I was par­tic­u­lar­ly thrilled that he spoke decid­ed­ly on the issue of chil­dren being born to unwed moth­ers, link­ing that phe­nom­e­non direct­ly to some of the very stub­born chal­lenges fac­ing the African-American com­mu­ni­ty today. Asked by reporters whether he would meet with “Black-Lives Matter-Activists” ? Carson said he would !
Carson Elaborated, “Black-Lives Matter should include more words includ­ing those being aborted.……
Now do you see why no mat­ter how ratio­nal and sane they sound ini­tial­ly once you let them speak you real­ize that Republicans are all full of crap? Carson came from poor and very hum­ble begin­nings , through hard work and decid­ed appli­ca­tion he rose to become a famed Nuero Surgeon. I am with Carson when he speaks on the issues of per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, edu­ca­tion, and respect . However when Carson uses lan­guage which insu­lates him from white cri­tique , sug­gest­ing that he does not know that what black activists are say­ing is that black lives mat­ter (too) Then Carson show him­self to be just anoth­er pan­der­ing house negro to the Plantation owners.

Carson >“All lives matter” !!!

Ben Carson speak­ing in May of this year said “Black Lives Matter’ move­ment amounts to “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness going amuck,” argu­ing that the con­ver­sa­tion around police vio­lence against African-Americans should be “a lit­tle more mature.” “If you hire a plumber and he does a bad job, do you say all plumbers are bad? Let’s go out and kill them? I don’t think we do that,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, reit­er­at­ing an argu­ment that he made in the wake of the Baltimore riots ear­li­er this year. “We need to be a lit­tle more mature, but cer­tain­ly in cas­es where police are doing things that are inap­pro­pri­ate, I think we ought to inves­ti­gate those prompt­ly and jus­tice should be swift.

Okay on this anal­o­gy I am tempt­ed to take back all the nice things I pre­vi­ous­ly said about Carson. Plumbers do not kill peo­ple. If plumbers were killing peo­ple when they are sup­posed to save lives I believe it would be fair to expect peo­ple to have dras­tic neg­a­tive reac­tions to them doing the oppo­site of what they are sup­posed to do. This may be a good time to remind the good­ly Doctor Carson that police are just plumbers of a dif­fer­ent name.
Secondly Carson miss­es the point by a mile when he plays into the nar­ra­tive of those who do not mind the wan­ton and whole­sale killing of black peo­ple. Ben Carson must know that when he says all lives mat­ter he is destroy­ing the very basis of the claim made by black lives mat­ter activists who have read­i­ly con­ced­ed that white lives mat­ter and they want their lives to mat­ter as well. Saying “All lives mat­ter” is a fun­da­men­tal denial of the fact that for many in law enforce­ment the lives of black youth are expend­able, and yes sim­ply does not mat­ter that much.
Carson like oth­er Republicans hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly talks about Abortion and the sanc­ti­ty of life yet they care pre­cious lit­tle about life out­side the womb. They espouse bud­get cuts which dec­i­mate the most vul­ner­a­ble. They close schools and build jails which ensures the sur­vival and growth of the prison indus­tri­al com­plex. They sup­port the unmit­i­gat­ed lack of restraint or account­abil­i­ty when it comes to police crimes against the black community.

So the ques­tion becomes , why are Republicans sup­port­ing a black man for President of the United States? Presently Carson is polling sec­ond only to Donald Trump the white seg­re­ga­tion­ist car­ni­val bark­er, whose idi­ot­ic rants are start­ing to wear on even some Republicans .
Is it that Republicans can­not gar­ner any cred­i­ble amount of black sup­port but they are inclined to have their own ver­sion of black­ness? A black­ness which par­rots their nar­ra­tive despite the dis­taste­ful racists things they say and do to blacks?
Why not ?
They already have one on the Supreme Court who does their every bid­ding blind­ly. Why not sup­port anoth­er Oreo-Cookie for show?
In the end the Republicans will not nom­i­nate Ben Carson for President . Like their staged blacks at Republican con­ven­tions Ben Carson is just a show­piece which will even­tu­al­ly be tucked away after they have made their point .
It’s always the same with his kind.…

Whats up with Republicans and their obses­sion with oppos­ing every­thing the President is for ? You know even as I ask this ques­tion and already know­ing the answer I have to jump to John Boehner the Republican Speaker of the House . This man has got to be the worst Speaker in history.
One would have thought that [the crier] John Boehner who grew up in mod­est cir­cum­stances would have been a man of under­stand­ing and con­vic­tion. Boehner who tell the sto­ry of hav­ing shared one bath­room with his eleven sib­lings in a two-bed­room house in Cincinnati has not had any balls in stand­ing up to the Nativist Reactionary forces with­in the Republican cau­cus. Instead Boehner chose to stand with the worst of the worst in blan­ket oppo­si­tion to even the most com­mons sense issues of the day.
Today the Tea Party camped out in Washington DC to call for the death of the President’s Iran deal. Of course the lie com­ing from the racist fringe is that they need a bet­ter deal.
They need­ed a bet­ter health plan also .

They need­ed small­er Government.
They need­ed a dif­fer­ent time­line of troop with­draw­al . Even though it was George Bush who nego­ti­at­ed that agree­ment with the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki.
So too were they opposed to the Iran deal before there was as deal. The fact is that they do not want peace . What they have been clam­or­ing for is war the only com­po­nent miss­ing is a Republican pres­i­dent who is will­ing to dive head­long into anoth­er war of choice as George Bush did with the urg­ing of war crim­i­nal Dick Cheney.

So what’s real­ly at stake in this ? Why have the clown parade of Ted Cruz the Canadian-born Hispanic now trans­formed into a south­ern white Supremacist . Donald trump the Tea-Party orange-haired Carnival-Barker . Sarah Palin and

Michelle Bachmann the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of idio­cy gath­ered in Washington DC with the con­spir­a­cy idiot fringe who vote against their own self interest?
Well to begin with the Iran Nuclear deal will of course bear the sig­na­ture of Barack Obama. Remember Obama dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed him­self in 2008 against Hillary Clinton by say­ing “she vot­ed for the Iraq war I did not”.
This is about three things > (1) Oil Prices are falling . If and when the deal is rat­i­fied and sanc­tions are lift­ed Iran will once again be free to sell it’s oil on the world mar­ket and they have lots of it . (2) If Iran resume oper­at­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty of Nations and do busi­ness with­in the glob­al mar­ket­place, Benjamin Netanyahu does not have hege­mo­ny over the mid­dle east, mon­ey equals pow­er. (3) Obama’s lega­cy . Barack Obama has already won at health care. He won at end­ing two wars as he said he would. He won at bring­ing the econ­o­my back from the brink of col­lapse. He won (the arguable vic­to­ry) on mar­riage equal­i­ty. He is now

win­ning on the Iran nuclear deal.
You can hate on lega­cy, you can try to dis­tort the facts of his­to­ry but you can­not change the facts of his­to­ry . Barack Obama will go down as a great and effec­tive President. That both­ers them. That is at the heart of Republican intran­si­gence. It is at the heart of Republican Obstruction. Despite their best efforts even their own Supreme Court appointees have large­ly rub­ber-stamped Obama’s leg­isla­tive achievements.

The idio­cy of this gath­er­ing in Washington DC today is that Obama has already won. The President has the votes he needs to pass the deal, he has the votes he needs, he does­n’t even have to use his veto . This will be done with­in the con­gress with­out the need for a Presidential veto .

In essence the Clown parade is doing what it has done through­out his­to­ry bray at

the moon. They are a bunch of losers and intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged light­weight wannabe nativists who are real­ly.….….….….. not natives at all . That idio­cy is encap­su­lat­ed in one man Donald Trump a total clown, and a bunch of illog­i­cal racists who long for the way it used to be .…
Hang on for the ride.……

I’m con­vinced that Evil is inher­ent in some peo­ple no mat­ter what sit­u­a­tion they go through there is no epiphany, no “wow I’ve gone through some things and God has been good to me” or since some are loathe to acknowl­edge God , then maybe”  wow I’ve been lucky, let me change some things about myself”.
Take Dick Cheney for instance. Here’s a guy many in oth­er coun­tries and indeed right here in America believe is a darn war crim­i­nal who should be tried in the Hague for war crimes.
Cheney cre­at­ed and nur­tured intel­li­gence to sup­port war on a sov­er­eign nation. Reports indi­cate Cheney manip­u­lat­ed the Intelligence Agencies to man­u­fac­ture intel­li­gence in sup­port of the Political right’s ille­git­i­mate war with Iraq.
The Iraq war led to the death of Saddam Hussein and his sons . Hundreds of thou­sands of inno­cent Iraqis and the death and maim­ing of thou­sands of American sol­diers. It result­ed in the cre­ation of the group which now calls itself ISIL. The fall­out from the Iraq inva­sion has been con­se­quen­tial and so far reach­ing no sane per­son should keep qui­et about its con­se­quence on our world.

I must first say That I am per­son­al­ly offend­ed that the likes of Dick Cheney and the White Fundamentalists fringe of the Political right assume to have author­i­ty over this plan­et every­one else.
What both­ers me is that this piece of crap is func­tion­ing with a heart belong­ing to some­one else that could eas­i­ly have been giv­en to some­one more deserving.
As Salon​.com Joan Walsh wrote :
In an inter­view giv­en by Cheney to Larry King on CNN . Cheney said..

When I came out from under the anes­thet­ic after the trans­plant, I was euphor­ic. I’d had – I’d been giv­en the gift of addi­tion­al lives, addi­tion­al years of life. For the fam­i­ly of the donor, they’d just been [through] some ter­ri­ble tragedy, they’d lost a fam­i­ly mem­ber. Can’t tell why, obvi­ous­ly, when you don’t know the details, but the way I think of it from a psy­cho­log­i­cal stand­point is that it’s my new heart, not some­one else’s old heart. And I always thank the donor, gener­i­cal­ly thank donors for the gift that I’ve been giv­en, but I don’t spend time won­der­ing who had it, what they’d done, what kind of per­son. “It’s my new heart, not some­one else’s old heart.”

Walsh wrote:

Consider the com­plete self-cen­tered­ness of that state­ment, and the utter lack of empa­thy. I shouldn’t be sur­prised at that — war crim­i­nals and tor­ture-pro­mot­ers aren’t known for their empa­thy — but I was. Cheney’s so absorbed in his great good luck that he can’t help shar­ing: “My car­di­ol­o­gist told me at one point, ‘You know, Dick, the trans­plant is a spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence, not just for the patient, but also for the team.’” What a gen­er­ous guy, shar­ing that “spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence” with his car­di­ol­o­gy team! So: Cheney is hap­py to have a new heart, but doesn’t both­er to “spend time won­der­ing who had it, what they’d done, what kind of per­son.” And his state­ment that it wasn’t a “pri­or­i­ty” to learn about his heart donor reveal­ing­ly echoes his expla­na­tion for get­ting five defer­ments from the Vietnam War: The noto­ri­ous war hawk famous­ly told the Washington Post: “I had oth­er pri­or­i­ties in the ’60s than mil­i­tary ser­vice.” Now he has oth­er pri­or­i­ties than learn­ing about his heart donor. It’s cer­tain­ly not com­pul­so­ry to find out about the per­son who died so that you could live – who gave what Cheney called “the gift of life itself.” There may be valid psy­cho­log­i­cal rea­sons not to. I don’t judge that deci­sion. But I can’t get over the cold­ness required to express com­plete indif­fer­ence to know­ing about that per­son, and their family’s suf­fer­ing. Or could it be com­pas­sion? For a lot of peo­ple, the tragedy of a fam­i­ly mem­ber dying would be com­pound­ed, not less­ened, by learn­ing that their heart went to Cheney. Nah, there’s nei­ther com­pas­sion nor self-aware­ness in the way Cheney talks about receiv­ing “the gift of life,” from American tax­pay­ers or from his mys­tery heart donor. See sto­ry here :http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​3​/​1​1​/​1​4​/​d​i​c​k​_​c​h​e​n​e​y​_​e​v​e​n​_​b​i​g​g​e​r​_​m​o​n​s​t​e​r​_​t​h​a​n​_​y​o​u​_​t​h​o​u​g​ht/

The draft dodg­ing war crim­i­nal Dick Cheney is back as he does every elec­tion cycle, like a peren­ni­al gar­den plant but a lot more sin­is­ter and dan­ger­ous donat­ed heart and all. One would have thought that a and giv­en a sec­ond chance at life would be far more ret­ro­spec­tive and philo­soph­i­cal. But if he does­n’t care about where or whom he received the new heart from how can any­one expect this demon to have a change of heart[pun]?

As the Vice President to President George Bush who select­ed him­self after he was giv­en the task of search­ing for a pos­si­ble vice pres­i­den­tial run­ning mate for then can­di­date Bush Dick Cheney has not fol­lowed his Boss’s lead in stay­ing out of the fray after eight years in office. Instead he has used every oppor­tu­ni­ty to attack President Obama’s lead­er­ship on every­thing from the Economy to Foreign Policy , both areas in which his and his boss’s lead­er­ship has cre­at­ed unman­age­able con­se­quences for America and the entire world.

Of all the things Dick Cheney said noth­ing both­ered me more than this statement.….
President Barack Obama’s goal in the Iran nuclear deal appears to have been to make Iran the top pow­er in the Middle East, for­mer Vice President Dick Cheney told Newsmax TV.  “The only way to inter­pret it and what his motives were was he real­ly want­ed to boost Iran’s posi­tion in that part of the world and make them the dom­i­nant force at the expense of our allies,”.
This is as far as Cheney will go and fur­ther in his inces­sant attack on President Obama. It has­n’t been the first time the war crim­i­nal Cheney has ques­tioned the President’s moti­va­tions and loyalty.
Barack Obama has no inten­tion of drag­ging America back into anoth­er war in the mid­dle east as Bush Cheney and the neo-cons did which result­ed in a frac­tured Iraq , and Syria and the cre­ation of ISIL which is caus­ing cat­a­stroph­ic refugee crises as we speak.
Notwithstanding the for­mer vice pres­i­dent who made America a tor­ture state is still press­ing for war against Iran a much more pow­er­ful nation than Iraq , a war which would essen­tial­ly mean the sec­ond world war because of the com­plex entan­gle­ments in the region .
Of course a war between America and Iranwould sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fit Halliburton and Cheney s the war between America and Iraq did. The web­site http://​read​er​sup​port​ed​news​.org/ report­ed that after a decade of war The com­pa­ny was giv­en $39.5 bil­lion in Iraq-relat­ed con­tracts over the past decade, with many of the deals giv­en with­out any bid­ding from com­pet­ing firms, such as a $568-mil­lion con­tract renew­al in 2010 to pro­vide hous­ing, meals, water and bath­room ser­vices to sol­diers, a deal that led to a Justice Department law­suit over alleged kick­backs, as report­ed by Bloomberg.

WATCH: Rand Paul Says Dick Cheney Pushed for the Iraq War So Halliburton Would Profit Then sen­ate can­di­date Rand Paul ®Kentucky speak­ing to stu­dents Republicans at Western Kentucky University

There’s a great YouTube of Dick Cheney in 1995 defend­ing [President] Bush No. 1 [and the deci­sion not to invade Baghdad in the first Gulf War], and he goes on for about five min­utes. He’s being inter­viewed, I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and he says it would be a dis­as­ter, it would be vast­ly expen­sive, it’d be civ­il war, we would have no exit strat­e­gy. He goes on and on for five min­utes. Dick Cheney say­ing it would be a bad idea. And that’s why the first Bush did­n’t go into Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, their CEO. Next thing you know, he’s back in gov­ern­ment and it’s a good idea to go into Iraq.

Paul con­tin­ued:

The day after ⁹⁄₁₁, [CIA chief] George Tenet is going in the [White] House and [Pentagon advis­er] Richard Perle is com­ing out of the White House. And George Tenet should know more about intel­li­gence than any­body in the world, and the first thing Richard Perle says to him on the way out is, “We’ve got it, now we can go into Iraq.” And George Tenet, who sup­pos­ed­ly knows as much intel­li­gence as any­body in the White House says, “Well, don’t we need to know that they have some con­nec­tion to ⁹⁄₁₁?” And, he [Perle] says, “It does­n’t mat­ter.” It became an excuse. ⁹⁄₁₁ became an excuse for a war they already want­ed in Iraq.

In the late 1980’s Wayne ‘Sandokan’ Smith exe­cut­ed a nev­er before seen attack on the Olympic Gardens police sta­tion. Three police offi­cers were shot and killed dur­ing the attack and weapons and ammu­ni­tion stolen from the sta­tion . Waterhouse, Tower Hill, Riverton City and oth­er areas of Kingston where the gang­ster was believed to hang out was car­pet­ed by Police Officers.
As a mem­ber of the Ranger Squad I was one of those offi­cers on the front lines search­ing for Smith. Despite the Intelligence com­ing in and being dis­sem­i­nat­ed to us on the ground it was oth­er mem­bers of the crim­i­nal under­world which decid­ed the heat was too much and Sandokan was more of a lia­bil­i­ty to their safe­ty than he is worth. He was exter­mi­nat­ed in Tower Hill in 1989 by his own kind. This inci­dent was not the first time that Police offi­cers had been killed far from it . Jamaicans have nev­er been a bunch which had much respect for the nation’s laws or for those whose job it is to uphold them. It was how­ev­er a loss of inno­cence for the Police depart­ment (or it should have been).
Despite those real­i­ties Police Stations across the Island are soft tar­gets for any­one wish­ing to car­ry out an attack on mem­bers of the police department.

For the most part even the mod­ern police sta­tions are poor­ly thought out edi­fices which does not reflect the mod­ern real­i­ties and safe­ty con­cerns of 21^st cen­tu­ry polic­ing. In some cas­es police sta­tions are old hous­es which was nev­er intend­ed to be police sta­tions. This places the lives of police offi­cers at addi­tion­al and undue risks even as they sleep in these old dilap­i­dat­ed facilities.
These are fail­ures of Government which can­not be brushed aside. Notwithstanding the police have a duty to them­selves to be ever vig­i­lant if not for any­one but their own secu­ri­ty and survival.

Despite the loss of inno­cence in 2009 the Police hier­ar­chy was to be left egg on their faces again, unable to explain how for 182 days, 23-year-old Courtney Grayson of Hendon Norwood, in St James, worked as a police­man at the Mt Salem Police Station in Montego Bay, before he was arrest­ed and charged for imper­son­at­ing a police offi­cer and unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of property.

If the Police can­not even tell who is a police offi­cer how can this agency be trust­ed with the secu­ri­ty of a nation?
Is it that some­one just show up and say “I’m a police offi­cer “and he/​she is allowed in? Where is the trans­fer in the week­ly Force Orders autho­riz­ing the trans­fer? Where was the big bel­ly Superintendent or whomev­er was in charge of that frat house pos­ing as a police station?
Doesn’t an offi­cer report­ing to a new divi­sion or even a trans­fer with­in the same divi­sion have to report to whomev­er is in charge, where he/​she is then val­i­dat­ed and briefed before set­tling in?
That did not happen ..

On many occa­sions when we see instances of break­down with­in the JCF I am par­tic­u­lar­ly hard on the lead­er­ship. Many peo­ple includ­ing ex-mem­bers some­times push back because they con­tin­ue to embrace the auto­crat­ic method­ol­o­gy of the JCF even though they have long left.
Of course it is always a fail­ure of lead­er­ship when these break­downs occur. We may argue that the Officer in charge can­not see every­thing but it is up to him/​her to imple­ment proac­tive for­ward think­ing strate­gies which would pre­vent inci­dents like these from ever happening.

September 2015 : A man, peo­ple say is of unsound mind, alleged­ly sneaked onto the Hunts Bay Police Barracks in St Andrew recent­ly, slept, then woke up and got dressed in police gear the fol­low­ing morn­ing. A police source told the Jamaicaobserver​.com that the man went unno­ticed until he asked one of the offi­cers for $20. It is said that a senior offi­cer at the Hunts Bay Police Station became sus­pi­cious when he noticed the man wear­ing a police vest, back-to-front, on his bare skin. The uniden­ti­fied man report­ed­ly pro­ceed­ed to the guard­room to sign for a firearm and in the process, start­ed beg­ging for mon­ey. According to sources, the man has slept on the police bar­racks before with­out being noticed.
I’m not sure how one say he has slept in the bar­racks before then in the same sen­tence say he did so unnoticed.
I guess that’s my point, noth­ing this Police Force says make sense these days.

I have been an unapolo­getic sup­port­er of the rule of law in our coun­try. Because of my sup­port for the rule of law I under­stand I have to sup­port those who uphold the laws. Despite my unmit­i­gat­ed sup­port I have been a vocal crit­ic of what Jamaicans have come to know as the Police high command.
One of the rea­sons I walked away from the Police Department is exact­ly because of what I saw dur­ing my 9 ¹⁄₂ year service.
Gross-Incompetence. Bravado. Nepotism. Political-Connections. Dishonesty. Ignorance. Stupidity. Poor lead­er­ship skills.
These are just a few of the char­ac­ter­is­tics which caus­es the Jamaican peo­ple a lot of mon­ey spent on train­ing peo­ple, turn­ing them into police offi­cers, yet the police depart­ment has been like an old sieve as it has been unable to retain good qual­i­ty peo­ple who are capa­ble of doing the job. Some for­mer Police offi­cers will always make the case that poor salaries and remu­ner­a­tions are the rea­son why there is such a high attri­tion rate. I agree only par­tial­ly. Upward mobil­i­ty have always been a way for offi­cers to earn more mon­ey. The so-called high com­mand made a mock­ery of that process by pro­mot­ing peo­ple who worked in offices who nev­er did a day’s actu­al polic­ing. Additionally they pro­mot­ed friends and lack­eys who licked their boots. When polit­i­cal pro­mo­tions are added to the mix there is pre­cious lit­tle upward mobil­i­ty left for decent, hard-work­ing cops to make the depart­ment a career.

In the years since men scaled the walls of the police sta­tion and mur­dered 3 police offi­cers in Olympic Gardens police sta­tions have burned, dozens of offi­cers have been killed both on and off duty.
The Police Department will prob­a­bly be woe­ful­ly short of equip­ment and man­pow­er for the fore­see­able future irre­spec­tive of which par­ty holds pow­er. The Police depart­ment will have to be more proac­tive with sim­ple com­mon sense issues like the one ones I just allud­ed to. It cer­tain­ly does not engen­der con­fi­dence when we see inci­dents of this kind being allowed over a peri­od of decades.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. The police depart­ment can­not issue state­ments about pro­tect­ing the nation when it clear­ly can­not secure its own facilities.
In light of these rev­e­la­tions it is clear to assume that if a group of peo­ple so desire they can take over any police facil­i­ty at any time.
Not because of any­thing but the Police own incompetence.….…

It appears the Governing People’s National Party (PNP) is posi­tion­ing itself to announce nation­al Elections in Jamaica if not today in the not too dis­tant future.
Opposition Member Of Parliament Carl Samuda prob­a­bly feel­ing the seis­mic rum­blings have chal­lenged Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to call Elections.
Of course it is impor­tant that we take a peek at what’s at stake in it for Jamaicans when the Prime Minister exer­cis­es her dis­cre­tion to call nation­al elections.
Readers unfa­mil­iar with Jamaican pol­i­tics are prob­a­bly aghast that nation­al elec­tions are left up to the leader of the par­ty in pow­er to decide.
So once again this Publication calls for fixed Election dates. This removes the prospect of manip­u­la­tion of the process for par­ti­san polit­i­cal pur­pos­es. It gives the gov­ern­ing par­ty the impe­tus to work for the good of the peo­ple rather than wait for inci­den­tal indices which may be con­strued to be com­ple­men­tary of the par­ty in power.

Insofar as con­di­tions in the coun­try are con­cerned it defies log­ic as to what would be in the indices which would cause the Prime Minister to think that call­ing elec­tions at this time would be favor­able to her par­ty, [if true].
Most cat­e­gories of crime are sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than the same peri­od last year. Of course the Prime Minister is either bliss­ful­ly igno­rant or detached­ly uncon­cerned with the crime stats. The Prime Minister’s polit­i­cal rise was one which was made pos­si­ble as a result of crime and chaos as such it is quite easy to under­stand her lack of con­cern for mur­der and may­hem. They sim­ply do not cause her any pause or alarm.
Inflation is through the roof as wages remain stag­nant and the val­ue of the dol­lar depre­ci­ates almost dai­ly forc­ing more and more peo­ple deep­er and deep­er into poverty.
Residents are unable to afford basic food items to feed their fam­i­lies and are unable to pay for books and school fees for their children.

Yet the Governing PNP has always had an ace up its sleeve as far as win­ning elec­tions are con­cerned. The truth of the mat­ter is that the PNP starts out with rough­ly a net eleven (11) seat advan­tage out of a pos­si­ble six­ty three (63) seats in the nation’s parliament.
This is made pos­si­ble as a result of a process called Garrisonization or (ger­ry­man­der­ing) . In Jamaica this is done by the par­ty in pow­er build­ing hous­ing in cer­tain con­stituen­cies they con­trol and giv­ing them to par­ty loy­al­ists. In many instances recip­i­ents of this largess does not pay for the house, pays no elec­tric­i­ty or water bills. Oh did I men­tion they pay no prop­er­ty tax­es either?
This con­cept though not exclu­sive to the PNP has been per­fect­ed by that par­ty because it has sim­ply done a bet­ter job of it and has con­trolled the purse strings for much of the time since independence.
In oth­er words because they have had pow­er for most of the time they get to keep pow­er all of the time.
Hence the mantra “Jamaica a PNP country”.

In polls con­duct­ed sev­er­al months ago and leaked to the pub­lic the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) had rea­sons to be buoyed about it’s chances because of spe­cif­ic indices in the coun­try. Notwithstanding the Labor Party still has to deal with that elevens seat dis­ad­van­tage. It has to deal with it’s own inter­nal series of squab­bles, and most impor­tant­ly it has to deal with it’s per­cep­tion issues.
Many Jamaicans who would nev­er cast a vote for the PNP because of it’s incom­pe­tence, and cor­rup­tion do look at the JLP dis­dain­ful­ly as a result of the per­cep­tion that it is a par­ty of Elitists, yours tru­ly being one of them.
The par­ty long seen as a par­ty of half whites or mulat­to well-to-do peo­ple has done pre­cious lit­tle to divorce itself from that per­cep­tion. Additionally some young upstarts asso­ci­at­ed with the par­ty have been dis­re­spect­ful or at best tact­less in their com­ments regard­ing large swaths of voters.

Despite the fail­ings of the PNP there are many peo­ple who are quite con­tent to put them back in office as a result of the Labor Party’s seem­ing inabil­i­ty to show empa­thy with the com­mon man and exer­cise con­trol over it’s upstarts who seem to believe they have a right to rule.