These Weapons were alleged­ly recov­ered today in the West Kingston Area, as police inter­cept­ed two motor cars with gun­men on-board.
Early reports indi­cate that the gang­sters are pissed at this loss.

Thank you for the brave police offi­cers who con­tin­ue to put them­selves between the low-life thugs who are deter­mined to cre­ate may­hem on inno­cent Jamaicans.
Unfortunately, for ordi­nary Jamaicans, these police offi­cers are the only thing which stands between them and the killers, as the Government has deter­mined that the full force and pow­er of the entire state appa­ra­tus are bet­ter used chas­tiz­ing and dis­re­spect­ing the hard work­ing and poor­ly paid police.

In a voice note cir­cu­lat­ing on social media one alleged gang­ster can be heard bemoan­ing the loss of the weapons.
At the same time, the killings con­tin­ue unabat­ed across the Island.

In what can only be seen as the most shock­ing and reck­less dis­re­gard for human life, a Texas race-sol­dier oth­er­wise called a (cop), mur­dered a sup­pos­ed­ly preg­nant African-American woman.
I have seen a lot of video record­ings of unnec­es­sary and uncalled for police use of dead­ly force in America, includ­ing the killing of Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, on and on and on.….
None has been more graph­ic than this inci­dent in which this female was mur­dered by a cow­ard­ly punk of a cop.
Here is the sto­ry as report­ed by (BlackPressUSA).

By Mo Barnes, RollingOut​.com

Once again, a shock­ing police shoot­ing caught on video is caus­ing out­rage. Pamela Turner, 44, was shot dead by a Baytown, Texas, police offi­cer Monday night, May 13, 2019. Turner is described as hav­ing a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness and may have been preg­nant at the time of her death. Turner was walk­ing around The Brixton Apartments around 10:40 p.m., accord­ing to local media out­let KPRC 2 News. That is when an uniden­ti­fied Baytown offi­cer rec­og­nized her from pri­or encoun­ters. According to a Baytown Police depart­ment spokesper­son, Turner had out­stand­ing war­rants for her arrest. The war­rants were for two charges of crim­i­nal mis­chief and anoth­er for assault result­ing in bod­i­ly injury. The offi­cer attempt­ed to detain her, and a strug­gle ensued. According to a neigh­bor of Turner’s, she had com­plained about being harassed by this offi­cer in the past.

“During the course of the attempt­ed arrest, the female began strug­gling with the offi­cer, which forced the offi­cer to deploy his Taser,” Baytown Police Lt. Steve Dorris said in a state­ment to the media. “That deploy­ment was not effec­tive, and the female was able to get the officer’s Taser away from him. (She) actu­al­ly tased the offi­cer, which forced the offi­cer to draw his duty weapon and fire mul­ti­ple rounds at the suspect.”The encounter was cap­tured by an unknown bystander and lat­er uploaded to social media. In the video, Turner is seen protest­ing and resist­ing the offi­cer. The offi­cer does, in fact, uses his Taser, and she is heard to yell “I’m preg­nant” as she con­tin­ues to strug­gle. A few moments lat­er, the offi­cer draws his ser­vice weapon and fires five shots at a prone Turner. She was pro­nounced dead at the scene. 

Residents told KPRC 2 that Turner was a res­i­dent of the apart­ment com­plex and fre­quent­ly walked late at night to smoke cig­a­rettes or walk her dogs. Turner’s sis­ter, Antoinette, stat­ed that she was a moth­er of two adult chil­dren and a grand­moth­er to three​.At this time, the offi­cer who shot Turner has been placed on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing. The police are also try­ing to locate the per­sonwho filmed the shoot­ing and uploaded the con­tent to social media. Police will not con­firm if Turner was preg­nant until an autop­sy is completed. 

Maurice “Mo” Barnes is a grad­u­ate of Morehouse College and Political Scientist based in Atlanta. Mo is also a Blues musi­cian. He has been writ­ing for Rolling Out since 2014. Whether it means walk­ing through a bloody police shoot­ing to help a fam­i­ly find jus­tice or show­ing the mul­ti­fac­eted tal­ent of the Black Diaspora I write the news. This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly appeared in RollingOut​.com.

If you are a fol­low­er of events in Jamaica, you could eas­i­ly walk away believ­ing that the Police is the begin­ning and the rea­son for Jamaica’s crime dilem­ma.
What we have how­ev­er is a soci­ety schooled on anar­chy and an unhealthy dis­re­gard and dis­re­spect for the rule of law and a polit­i­cal lead­er­ship exempt from the arms of the law.
Subsequently, there is now an across the board atti­tude that peo­ple should be able to do as they please with­out con­se­quence.
The aver­age life expectan­cy of Jamaicans is some­where in the Mid-sev­en­ties. It fol­lows, there­fore, that for the most part, lit­er­al­ly every Jamaican alive today grew up lis­ten­ing to (AM-band) Radio Jamaica, and JBC Radio, which was dom­i­nat­ed with day­time talk shows.
As you may have guessed the favorite top­ic has been about bad roads, no water or elec­tric­i­ty, pol­i­tics, and police.
(citation)Worldlifeexpectancy.com reports that accord­ing to the lat­est World Health Organization (WHO) data pub­lished in 2018 life expectan­cy in Jamaica is: Male 73.6, female 78.5 and total life expectan­cy is 76.0 which gives Jamaica a World Life Expectancy rank­ing of 59. 

This fac­tu­al analy­sis is in no way an attempt at [cop­splain­ing], the Jamaican police have cer­tain­ly done more than enough to cause at least some of the dis­re­spect they have got­ten over the years. Even so, it is impor­tant to under­stand con­tex­tu­al­ly, how the force arrived at where it is today.
I will not lit­i­gate that here today suf­fic­ing to say that where there is right­eous gov­er­nance agen­cies of gov­ern­ment tend to fol­low suit in giv­ing qual­i­ty ser­vice to the peo­ple.
Where there is cor­rupt gov­er­nance across par­ty lines as it obtains in Jamaica, and there is sys­temic effort to scape­goat a cer­tain branch of Government, as the police have been, then it is only nat­ur­al that the results are what they are.
Jamaicans decry the high mur­der rate yet they shield mur­der­ers and protest when they are arrest­ed or killed.
They talk about the sav­agery being played out on young girls, but they encour­age the drug and alco­hol crazed zom­bies who destroy these chil­dren.
They say they want the laws enforced but get in the way when the police try to enforce the very same laws.
They say they want cor­rup­tion gone, but they go to great lengths to explain away and ratio­nal­ize theft com­mit­ted by their polit­i­cal par­ty mem­bers. We can either have a coun­try of laws in which every­one is pro­tect­ed, and sub­ject to the laws, or we can pay lip ser­vice to the rule of law, while being cheer-lead­ers for the crim­i­nal underworld.

And so as Jamaicans bemoan the mas­sive loss of life at the hands of mind­less drug and alco­hol crazed killers, I pro­pose a new course.
(1) Write a new Constitution and throw out the old one. Let us pledge our com­mit­ment to Jamaica land we love, instead of to an old white woman who rep­re­sents every­thing wrong which was egre­gious­ly done to us.
(2) Replace our old archa­ic sys­tem with a new Republican-Democratic sys­tem, with a tit­u­lar President and a chief exec­u­tive as our Prime Minister. (See Trinidad and Tobago).
(3) Upgrade the penal code to reflect the seri­ous­ness of the times.
(3‑a) Bring back the death penal­ty, death by fir­ing squad.
(3‑b) If a per­son is caught with an ille­gal gun it is impris­on­ment with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
(3‑c) If a per­son is caught with a firearm which was used in a vio­lent crime, a‑la mur­der the penal­ty is death. Persons who are not in pos­ses­sion of ille­gal guns or are engaged in crimes involv­ing firearms should have noth­ing to wor­ry about, right?
(4) Increase expo­nen­tial­ly, the penal­ty for Rapes and oth­er sex­u­al assaults.
(5) Increase expo­nen­tial­ly the penal­ty for pub­lic offi­cials who engage in offi­cial mis­con­duct while in office. (That includes every­one from the Prime Minister on down to the low­est rung of the pub­lic payroll).

If we are seri­ous about clean­ing up our coun­try we can­not be queasy about the penal­ties we cod­i­fy into law to deal with those who break our laws.
In soci­eties in which crime is reduced to a bare min­i­mum, every cit­i­zen has a chance to live their dreams and enjoy their lives as they see fit.
Crime is one of the great­est imped­i­ments to per­son­al and col­lec­tive growth. Jamaica, is no excep­tion to that rule, and so, despite the sup­posed work eth­ic of our peo­ple, the coun­try can only eke out a mar­gin­al best case growth rate of 1.30 %.
According to tradinge​co​nom​ics​.com, Jamaica has one of the slow­est grow­ing economies in the Caribbean. Services, with tourism employ­ing 10 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, is the most impor­tant sec­tor of the econ­o­my and accounts for around 60 per­cent of GDP. 

The nation’s lead­ers on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide talk a good game about increas­ing the gross domes­tic prod­uct.
What they refuse to acknowl­edge is that their love and sup­port for law­less­ness has made it impos­si­ble for the coun­try to see any mean­ing­ful growth.
The con­tin­u­a­tion and per­pet­u­a­tion of the gar­ri­son cul­ture which keeps the res­i­dents of these com­mu­ni­ties impov­er­ished and there­by depen­dent and behold­en to crime fig­ures, are some of the great­est threats to the sol­ven­cy and legit­i­ma­cy of the Jamaican state.
At the same time, the Garrisonization of the Island is not some­thing on the wane. politi­cians in both major polit­i­cal par­ties see the gar­ri­son cul­ture as strate­gic to gain­ing and con­tin­ued hold on state pow­er.
Consequently, the chances of any mean­ing­ful change in the way of dis­man­tling the gar­risons, and free­ing the cit­i­zens from the ten­ta­cles of the so-called area lead­ers o/​c “Dons”, remains a dis­tant dream for think­ing Jamaicans.

An inno­v­a­tive African-American woman Jackie Carter, sup­pos­ed­ly aghast at the Minnesota police mur­der of Philando Castile in 2016 has cre­at­ed a trans­par­ent paper recep­ta­cle pouch called the (not reach­ing) pouch.
The idea that a civil­ian would have to cre­ate some­thing that she hopes would pre­vent traf­fic stop deaths is hor­ri­fy­ing.
Police of their own voli­tion decide to stop mem­bers of the motor­ing pub­lic, there­fore the police should not be in the busi­ness of endan­ger­ing the lives of cit­i­zens when they make that deci­sion to con­strict peo­ple’s move­ment.
Only in sit­u­a­tions in which a stopped motorist threat­ens the life of a cop, should lethal force become an issue. As a for­mer police offi­cer, I am hor­ri­fied to see what is pass­ing for the rea­son­able killing of our fel­low human beings by the police who peo­ple believe is there to pro­tect them.
Philando Castile a hard-work­ing Minnesota man worked at a school dis­trict in his state and was legal­ly reg­is­tered to car­ry a gun.
On the day that trig­ger-hap­py cop Jeronimo Yanez pulled him over and asked to see his ID mis­ter, Castille had his fiancé Diamond Reynolds, and her 4‑year-old daugh­ter with him in the car.

None of that was enough to save his life even though he clear­ly told the cop point­ing a gun on him that he was­n’t reach­ing for the weapon but was try­ing to give him the doc­u­ments he demanded.that he was get­ting the doc­u­ments he demand­ed to see.
Yanez said he though Castile was reach­ing for a gun. He lat­er said in court, “had no choice,” and that he “thought he was going to die.” But Castile plead­ed before his death that he “wasn’t reaching.”

Yanez unloaded a bar­rage of bul­lets into Castille as he tried to get his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.
In cre­at­ing the pouch, the inno­v­a­tive Jackie Carter said “I’m more fear­ful [for my son] in a car here than [when he’s serv­ing] in Afghanistan,” Carter told NBC BLK. Ms. Carter is the moth­er of a 30-year-old son.
Philando Castille was 32-years-old when he was gunned down by a fright­ened lit­tle boy who wore a police offi­cer’s uni­form but was no more deserv­ing of that uni­form that a five-year-old lit­tle boy.

Unfortunately, the pouch cre­at­ed by Ms. Carter will not change any­thing but if it saves one life it will all be worth it.
Philando Castile was with his fam­i­ly in his car, he told the cop he was a licensed car­ri­er of a weapon.
At the time Jeronimo Yanez opened fire on him he was still strapped in his seat­belt and had made no move to unbuck­le it.
Yanez’s part­ner and for­mer school­mate Joseph Kauser was on the oth­er side of the car and did not even see the need to unhol­ster his ser­vice weapon. Yet Jeronimo Yanez fired four bul­lets into Mister Castile’s seat-belt strapped body killing him on the spot.
Anyone trained in polic­ing knows that the posi­tion of Yanez to Mister Castile meant that in order for Castile to have posed a threat to him he would have to pull a weapon and then turn to his left aim the weapon and hope to hit Yanez who was not in the line of sight.
Philando Castile would also have to do so with Yanez’s part­ner on the oth­er side with a clear shot at him still strapped in the car.
What man opens fire on a cop while his wife and kid are in the car? Yet a St Paul jury acquit­ted Yanez who told the court he thought he was in dan­ger of dying. The dam­age was done even before Yanez went to tri­al as local papers lit­er­al­ly paint­ed him a choir­boy.
Despite Mister Castile’s demise, Jeronimo Yanez walked out of court a free man.
To add insult to injury the city of Saint Anthony, in a sep­a­ra­tion agree­ment gave Yanez $48,500 for agree­ing to leave the depart­ment.
So after killing mis­ter Castile he was acquit­ted and paid with the res­i­den­t’s tax dol­lars for the murder.

Philando Castile lost his life because there is not enough val­ue on Black lives. I would bet my last dol­lar that Jeronimo Yanez, a Hispanic cop would nev­er fire his weapon in a car in which there was a white fam­i­ly.
In fact, Jeronimo Yanez would absolute­ly not fire his weapon into an auto­mo­bile in which a Hispanic/​Latino fam­i­ly were the occu­pants.
The shock­ing yet inescapable truth is that law enforce­ment in America does not val­ue African-American peo­ple enough to speak to them respect­ful­ly, not esca­late sit­u­a­tions much less respect our lives.
And so even as I rec­og­nize the good heart and the thought process of Ms. Carter in cre­at­ing this prod­uct, I doubt it will help much.
The gun has become a weapon of choice for police when they inter­act with Black cit­i­zens.
Police are not peace offi­cers in the black com­mu­ni­ty, they are enforcers, there to keep the com­mu­ni­ty in its place.

The elec­tions are over and things will go back to nor­mal, polit­i­cal­ly at least.
Ann-Marie Vaz, a polit­i­cal neo­phyte, was able to eke out a 300 plus vote win, becom­ing the first female mem­ber of par­lia­ment in East Portland’s his­to­ry.
Vaz, has name recog­ni­tion, her hus­band Daryl Vaz, is also a mem­ber of par­lia­ment in the parish.
Nevertheless, it would be a mis­take to brush off her win as sim­ply a result of her name.
Ann-Marie Vaz came to the polit­i­cal the­atre as a house­wife. Despite her lighter hue and soci­etal con­nec­tions, she was not spared the ugli­ness of Jamaica’s elit­ists sys­tem which sees those with­out a col­lege degree as use­less in any process.
Her oppo­nent, the PNP’s Damion Crawford, an emi­nent­ly edu­cat­ed young man, demon­strat­ed that despite his for­mal edu­ca­tion, he was not extreme­ly bright when he ref­er­enced Ann-Marie Vaz’s lack of for­mal edu­ca­tion and hyped his own edu­ca­tion­al [bona fides].
Now grant­ed Crawford’s loss may not be blamed for his lapse into elit­ism for which he was forced to apol­o­gize, Vaz’s vic­to­ry is a win for every smart house­wife and house-hus­band who want to serve their coun­try but nev­er went to University.
The slew of by-elec­tion wins for the gov­ern­ing Jamaica Labor Party may have an even more omi­nous mean­ing for the PNP than Crawford’s elitism.

The Portland Eastern seat was made vacant by the heinous mur­der of long­time Member of Parliament Dr. Lynvale Bloomield of the PNP.
The People’s National Party has been in con­trol of the East Portland Constituency for the last thir­ty years(30). That is the most sig­nif­i­cant take­away when the PNP does its post mortem on this lat­est defeat.
Set aside that fact that the par­ty has lost a string of by-elec­tions after its mas­sive gen­er­al elec­tions defeat at the hands of the JLP, this defeat of the par­ty’s most pop­u­lar stan­dard bear­er by an untest­ed new­com­er, has huge ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the PNP.
For 22-years the People’s National Party held office from the late ’80s through the 90,s and mid 2’000’s.
In an unex­plained leap of faith, the Jamaican peo­ple refused to put the JLP back in office after Seaga lost to Michael Manley in 88, until Bruce Golding eked out a win in 2007.
Between Michale Manley who was giv­en an inex­plic­a­ble fresh start in 1988 after his [mea-cul­pa], Percival Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller, the trio from hell made a mock­ery of Governance, and changed our coun­try for­ev­er, and not for the better.

Many Jamaicans, includ­ing this writer, sad­ly began accept­ing that the par­ty of Alexander Bustamante and Hugh Lawson Shearer had become a filler par­ty, giv­en a chance, only when the peo­ple are tired of the PNP.
Not to be out­done, the PNP arro­gant­ly mis­took the peo­ple’s chas­tise­ment of the JLP for it’s per­ceived arro­gance at times, to mean that Jamaica was PNP Country.
As in most Democratic Nations, it is a tiny sliv­er of around 5 – 10% of the elec­torate, mid­dle of the road vot­ers, who deter­mine elec­tions.
Jamaica is hard­ly any dif­fer­ent in that regard.
Despite this, the Andrew Holness led JLP was able to wipe out a dou­ble-dig­it seat deficit and win the leg­is­la­ture in a sin­gle seat major­i­ty in the 63-seat leg­isla­tive body.
That one seat major­i­ty gave the JLP the abil­i­ty to form the Government and gave Andrew Holness his own man­date to lead the coun­try.
For those famil­iar with Jamaican pol­i­tics and the impact gar­ri­son pol­i­tics has on the elec­toral process, there is an under­stand­ing of the impres­sive nature of the JLP’s vic­to­ry in the gen­er­al.
The string of unlike­ly by-elec­tion wins by the par­ty, have been in of them­selves, indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, [coup-de-grace] over the PNP. 

The fail­ure of the PNP to tan­gi­bly demon­strate it’s fit­ness to lead and set a course, not just for the close of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, but for ush­er­ing in the 21^st cen­tu­ry is more than enough rea­son for young vot­ers to look else­where.
Elsewhere toward the younger Andrew Holness, as against the old tired and jad­ed Peter Phillips who has the per­son­al­i­ty of a brick wall when matched against the last leader of that par­ty, Portia Simpson Miller.
In the same way that polit­i­cal par­ti­sans tend to place par­ty over coun­try, they tend to place self over par­ty.
Peter Phillips the per­son­al­i­ty-defi­cient leader of the PNP is still smart enough to know that Damion Crawford is the most pop­u­lar mem­ber of the lead­er­ship of the PNP.
He is also con­ver­sant that Crawford has aspi­ra­tions on Jamaica house.
It is not out of the ordi­nary to con­clude that Damion Crawford was sent to East Portland to blunt those aspi­ra­tions.
Crawford is a bright young man, not a bril­liant politi­cian. He has made some strate­gic blun­ders, not the least of which was his lat­est by leav­ing the Senate in order to con­test the seat in the low­er cham­ber.
Surely this loss has done dam­age to Crawford’s cred­i­bil­i­ty as a poten­tial leader for his par­ty, in the sense that he was reject­ed by vot­ers in the upper Saint Andrew seat now held by Juilet Holness and now this lat­est débâ­cle in east Portland.

There is a gen­er­al feel­ing that the vot­ers are large­ly fed up with the People’s National Party, and so it is the JLP’s turn.
The JLP has been known for some degree of arro­gance and Elitism, clas­sism, and con­tempt in some quar­ters for the man from the streets.
The JLP has always been the par­ty which offered the best plan for a sta­ble well-estab­lished soci­ety.
The PNP, on the oth­er hand, has demon­strat­ed a keen under­stand­ing of the plight of the com­mon man.
Michael Manley’s raft of social-wel­fare pro­grams has earned the par­ty the endear­ment of ordi­nary peo­ple.
Unfortunately, hand­outs fund­ed by big Government bank­rupts nations.
Likewise, it is impor­tant that the rul­ing JLP learn the lessons the PNP failed to learn. By eschew­ing cor­rup­tion and arro­gance the JLP has the oppor­tu­ni­ty today to once and for all place Jamaica on a sure eco­nom­ic foot­ing which will guar­an­tee a bet­ter Jamaica for gen­er­a­tions to come.
None of this is pos­si­ble how­ev­er as long as this admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to mir­ror the PNP in its failed social engi­neer­ing strate­gies on crime. 

Nothing gives me more delight than to see a Racist cringe and squirm when cor­nered with facts about their racism. Call me sadis­tic if you want, I have no regrets about the joy I feel at their dis­com­fort.
Reason being, Racism is a mal­a­dy eas­i­ly cured with infor­ma­tion, open­ness, and eschew­ing hatred.

On Wednesday I got to sali­vate at anoth­er exam­ple of that dis­com­fort, this time it was in the hear­ing room in the US Capitol build­ing, as the House Oversight Committee con­duct­ed hear­ings in the ongo­ing Trump Russia saga, with Michael Cohen Trump’s for­mer per­son­al lawyer tes­ti­fy­ing to the com­mit­tee.
Quite pre­dictably, with one minor excep­tion, the entire Republican ques­tions to Michael Cohen was about his char­ac­ter.
Not one Republican mem­ber cared to ask a sin­gle ques­tion regard­ing the crimes Cohen alleged that Donald Trump com­mit­ted.
In a shock­ing yet pre­dictable dis­play of slav­ish feal­ty, the world watched as the Republican mem­bers of the com­mit­tee demon­strat­ed that they were noth­ing more than cheap water car­ri­ers for Donald Trump.

But it was Mark Meadows who squirmed under the spot­light as a fresh­man mem­ber of the Committee, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan’s 13^th District trained her fire on the cor­rup­tion and lat­er on Mark Meadows the leader of the so-called Freedom cau­cus on the Republican side.
In a stir­ring address to the com­mit­tee, Congresswoman Tlaib went straight to the cor­rup­tion ram­pant in the Trump White House.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman for cen­ter­ing this com­mit­tee on our sole pur­pose: expos­ing the truth. Some of my col­leagues can’t han­dle the truth and this unfor­tu­nate because it is at the cen­ter of pro­tect­ing our coun­try. “The peo­ple at home are frus­trat­ed and want the crim­i­nal schemes to stop, espe­cial­ly those from the Oval Office. “Mr. Cohen, I am upset, and know that my res­i­dents feel the same way, that the man you worked for the past 10 years, is using the most pow­er­ful posi­tion in the world, to hurt our coun­try sole­ly for per­son­al gain. “We are upset that some of my col­leagues here are so dis­con­nect­ed of what it means to have this President of the United States send­ing checks to cov­er bribe pay­ments you made on his behalf. One in March 2017 and anoth­er one August 2017 after he was sworn in as President. “They (my res­i­dents) are all upset that while my col­leagues are try­ing to dis­cred­it your tes­ti­mo­ny by some of your own unlaw­ful acts and lies, that they are dis­con­nect­ed with the fact that you were the per­son­al lawyer for this President of the United States. That this President chose YOU as his legal coun­sel. “My stance has always been the same based on the facts of what we know not of some future report that we are wait­ing on. My res­i­dents back home don’t need a col­lu­sion cause with a for­eign gov­ern­ment to know that the President, Individual 1, has dis­re­gard­ed the law of the land, the US Constitution, that he has even mis­used his par­don pow­ers. “In the sen­tenc­ing memo filed by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in New York in December of last year, they stat­ed, quote: “’In par­tic­u­lar, and as Cohen him­self has now admit­ted, with respect to both pay­ments, he act­ed in coör­di­na­tion with and at the direc­tion of Individual‑1.’
“Mr. Cohen, as you know President Donald Trump “brand” comes first, not the American peo­ple. Based on what we know now is that indi­vid­ual 1 used his mon­ey, busi­ness­es, and plat­form to enrich him­self, his brand, and in the process direct­ed you, Mr. Cohen, to com­mit mul­ti­ple felonies and cov­er it up. You called it “pro­tect­ing his brand great,” cor­rect?“Mr. Cohen, with this, do you think the President is mak­ing deci­sions in the best inter­ests of Americans? Especially those that you said he used hor­ri­ble words about? African Americans? Muslims Americans? Immigrants?

But then Congresswoman Tlaib direct­ed her fire at Mark Meadows who in the most asi­nine way imag­in­able, brought an African-American woman to the com­mit­tee as a prop to demon­strate to the world that Donald Trump could not be a racist as alleged by Michael Cohen, because she worked for Donald Trump.
The woman in ques­tion, a non-com­mit­tee mem­ber Lynne Patton, was brought in by Meadows and made to stand on the GOP side of the daïs while Meadows berat­ed Michael Cohen in front of the entire world.
Patton, a for­mer par­ty plan­ner for the Trump Organization and old friend of Cohen’s, who now over­sees pub­lic hous­ing in New York and New Jersey for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, stood silent­ly as Representative Mark Meadows (R‑NC) point­ed to her, a black woman:
“Lynne Patton says she would not work for a man who is racist,” the con­gress­man said, after Cohen had referred to Trump in his pre­pared remarks as a racist. “She dis­agrees with you.”
Micahel Cohen rec­om­mend­ed Patton to Donald Trump for employ­ment. So to use Patton against Cohen was in a word, ‘stu­pid.“
And on that con­gress­woman Tlaib was merciless.

Just to make a note Mr. Chairman, just because some­one has a per­son of col­or, a Black per­son work­ing for them, does not mean that aren’t racist. And it’s insen­si­tive, some would even say racist in itself, to use a Black woman as a prop to prove oth­er­wise. “Donald Trump is set­ting a prece­dent that the high­est office can be attained through inten­tion­al ille­gal activ­i­ty, cov­er up, and to hold onto busi­ness assets to break cam­paign finance law and con­sti­tu­tion­al claus­es. “What we have here is crim­i­nal con­duct in the pur­suit of the high­est pub­lic office by Mr. Cohen and Individual 1. I hope that the grav­i­ty of this sit­u­a­tion hits every­one in this body, in Congress, and across the country.” 

Like a cor­nered Critter, Mark Meadows was livid at Tlaib, he lashed out claim­ing that Patton had come to the hear­ing of her own voli­tion.….….….….….….….…… Right!
Meadows also point­ed to the fact that mem­bers of his own fam­i­ly were peo­ple of col­or. It’s racist to sug­gest I asked her to come in for that rea­son,” Meadows said.
Meadows demand­ed that Congresswoman Tlaib’s exchange be “strick­en from the record” and adamant­ly denied alle­ga­tions of racism. 

Mark Meadows must have for­got­ten that he was video­taped in 2012 mak­ing racist com­ments against President Barack Obama.
“2012 is the time we’re going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wher­ev­er it is,” Meadows said at a June 9, 2012, ral­ly. “We’re going to do it!” Three days lat­er, he made a sim­i­lar remark at a Tea Party event.

Now I real­ly don’t want to spend any more time talk­ing about Mark Meadows, a back­wa­ter unen­light­ened tea-par­ty racist. Already too much thought has been giv­en to this two-bit igno­ra­mus who cow­ered like a cor­nered dog beg­ging the black chair­man of the com­mit­tee, Elijah Cummings to come to his defense.
Frankly, if you are not a racist there is no need for any­one to come to your defense to vouch for you. You would have a record of doing things which are not racists.
Unfortunately for Meadows, he is the tip of the spear when it comes to white enti­tle­ment and white racism in America.
The idea that he believed that bring­ing Patton in, and using her as a prop, would be some­thing which would blunt charges of racism against Donald Trump is insane­ly pre­pos­ter­ous on its face.
Not to men­tion Meadows’ insen­si­tiv­i­ty to the igno­rant racism with­in him­self and far too many white Americans who claim not to be racist, but whose actions are the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of racism.

As for the prop, I won’t give her any more thought either. Any per­son of col­or, least of all an African-American who allows him/​herself to be used in that degrad­ing and trans­par­ent a racist man­ner, deserves to be used in that degrad­ing and racist man­ner.
As the late, great James Baldwin said “I am not your negro.”

We have had some real­ly nin­com­poop Ministers of National Security over the years, but Horace Chang seems to be in the hunt to be a Jackass extra­or­di­naire.
Yes, I know it may seem like I’m just beat­ing up on the guy, but the man is a lit­er­al walk­ing con­tra­dic­tion.
It is like every time he opens his mouth the only thing he man­ages to do is to stuff his foot in it.
I mean the guy is a Doctor, so he can­not be that dense, but he is demon­strat­ing what I have always believed that smarts in one field do not mean a lack of igno­rance in every­thing else.
Lord knows I have met a bunch of edu­cat­ed dunces in my lifetime.

Chang start­ed off by say­ing that the police force, his par­ty inher­it­ed was noth­ing more than “a glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guard com­pa­ny.” Kudos to those poor low esteem stiffs putting their lives on the line to pro­tect this piece of shit.
There are many peo­ple who actu­al­ly hate the shit out of the PNP, I am one of those peo­ple, but with peo­ple like this guy mak­ing stu­pid state­ments about a group of peo­ple num­ber­ing over 8’000, it is no won­der that for decades peo­ple have said that the JLP is an elit­ist par­ty of and for the rich.
Sure the pre­vi­ous Administration was a bunch of thieves and crim­i­nal sup­port­ing punks who gave gov­ern­ment con­tracts to know crim­i­nals.
That is where the focus ought to be. Instead of speak­ing to those truths Chang opened his mouth and out flowed a tor­rent of shit.
As if the ini­tial foul-up was not cringe-wor­thy enough, last week in the heat of a well-pub­li­cized assault on a police sergeant in Spalding Manchester, Chang spoke out of turn again demon­strat­ing his utter igno­rance on polic­ing mat­ters.
Now don’t get me wrong, the guy is a med­ical doc­tor, but that is exact­ly why he should­n’t be speak­ing on the intri­ca­cies of polic­ing with­out con­sult­ing with actu­al police offi­cers.
Much the same way a police offi­cer should not be speak­ing about inter­nal med­i­cine.
Speaking to a Lion’s Club of Kingston lun­cheon at the Jamaica Pegasus, Chang told his elit­ist friends. “Had he had any of the equip­ment of mod­ern polic­ing, he could have been eas­i­ly trained that in the face of a hos­tile crowd of ven­dors and taxi dri­vers who can be quite aggres­sive to the police, to use one of the non-lethal weapons to inter­cept and con­trol the crowd.” 
In ref­er­ence to the police sergeant who was forced to use lethal force to repel a deter­mined attack on his person.

Here again, Chang dove in head first giv­ing a bunch of up-town­ers, (sip­ping cham­pagne in the mid­dle of the day), infor­ma­tion on polic­ing tech­niques.
The only prob­lem is that Chang did not know what the hell he was talk­ing about, but this seems to be a pat­tern with this Minister.
The police offi­cer in ques­tion respond­ed in a split sec­ond sce­nario, in which his very life was threatened.

(#1) Neither a taser, baton, or pep­per spray would have come close to neu­tral­iz­ing the threat of that attack on that offi­cer. Even if the offi­cer was so equipped with those tools, the offi­cer cer­tain­ly would not have had enough time to pull and deploy either of those weapons and for all intents and pur­pos­es he would have been over­pow­ered and poten­tial­ly harmed or worse, had he not gone to his nuclear option in response to that threat. 

(#2) Chang also told the gath­er­ing that quote,” guns would be for a killer crowd. Those (the absent tools) are basic equip­ment and we have not equipped our police force effec­tive­ly.” 
The idea that a crowd which egged on a bus dri­ver to phys­i­cal­ly attack a uni­formed police offi­cer, threat­en the lives of the offi­cers after the dri­ver was shot, to the point they had to seek refuge in a super­mar­ket, and dam­age a police ser­vice vehi­cle was not a “killer crowd” is nau­se­at­ing­ly stu­pid.
That was the crowd which the two offi­cers should have used their baton or taser on, accord­ing to Horace Chang the expert[sic] (A taser is only par­tial­ly use­ful against a sin­gle offend­er).
A Baton is not a use­ful weapon against an angry ginned-up crowd.

But this kind of talk is noth­ing new, it is part and par­cel of the method­olo­gies which are used to talk down the seri­ous­ness of attacks on police offi­cers.
The left­ist judges mete out admon­ish­ments for attacks on police offi­cers, while police offi­cers are per­se­cut­ed and impris­oned for using force against crim­i­nals in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of their duties.
This is a sick upside down con­cept of jus­tice which has turned a once pris­tine place to live and raise a fam­i­ly into a ver­i­ta­ble killing field.
The idea is to ren­der the attacks less seri­ous with a view toward mak­ing offi­cers lethal response less cred­i­ble.
This has been occur­ring for decades and as you have seen in the sec­ond video, there is nev­er any short­age of lying sup­posed wit­ness­es to inci­dents of police use of force but no one sees any­thing when crim­i­nals gun down cit­i­zens in broad daylight.

This seems to be the strat­e­gy of the Holness Administration. The idea it seems, is to han­dle vio­lent indi­vid­u­als and groups of peo­ple with kid gloves, even when they attack police offi­cers in uni­form.
That explains their silence when there is incon­tro­vert­ible evi­dence that these hooli­gans are attack­ing police offi­cers and the force the offi­cers are using are pro­por­tion­al to the attacks on them.
The lives of the police offi­cers are dis­pos­able in this sce­nario as lethal force is nev­er jus­ti­fied, no mat­ter the lev­el of threat to offi­cers.
As I have said on count­less oth­er occa­sions, if the PNP and JLP were inter­est­ed in solv­ing this crime prob­lem INDECOM would be dis­band­ed or bet­ter it would not have been cre­at­ed in the first place.
The idea that hun­dreds of mil­lions are wast­ed on INDECOM each year, and the humil­i­at­ing fact that a white British over­lord is brought in to help in the process of crime main­te­nance, a‑la his admin­is­tra­tion at INDECOM is astounding.

Imagine what those hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars could do to improve crime-fight­ing capa­bil­i­ties on the Island?
Britain, is send­ing back plane-loads of Jamaican peo­ple to the Island. There is report­ing that there are also sub­stan­tial one-time pay­ments to the gov­ern­ment by the Brits for tak­ing back each per­son returned to the coun­try.
Some of these peo­ple are crim­i­nals, some have com­mit­ted only minor infrac­tions, oth­ers have nev­er even been to Jamaica as adults.
Additionally, the Canadians and the Americans are deport­ing huge num­bers of peo­ple in what can only be described as mod­ern-day eth­nic cleans­ings.
With the con­ver­gence of all of these crim­i­nals from these devel­oped coun­tries and the waste of mon­ey on INDECOM instead of putting that mon­ey to improv­ing the Police depart­ment does any­one think that crime is about to decrease in Jamaica any­time soon?

The truth is that the coun­try has a two-par­ty polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture which is heav­i­ly invest­ed in the sta­tus quo. That is, they do not care to remove the build­ing blocks of crime as long as the tourists are will­ing to keep com­ing.
They starve the police of resources and remu­ner­a­tion and set them up to fail, then put INDECOM in place to ensure that crime stays high. I’ve been doing some research, but I can­not find any coun­try which is not a failed back­wa­ter hell-hole which brings in peo­ple from oth­er coun­tries to inves­ti­gate their police offi­cers.
Worse yet, from a hos­tile for­mer col­o­niz­er which is strate­gi­cal­ly cleans­ing the off­springs of the gen­er­a­tion who helped to rebuild that coun­try. A coun­try Hitler dec­i­mat­ed it with his bombs.
Why is Hamish Campbell in our coun­try encour­ag­ing liars to con­coct false sto­ries on which INDECOM is indict­ing and crim­i­nal­iz­ing our police offi­cers?
I am demand­ing that Hamish Campbell and any oth­er Brit in our coun­try work­ing against our police be returned on one of the flights tak­ing Jamaicans home.

It is a tragedy that Jamaica’s lead­ers stick their noses into places where they ought not to, yet are total­ly clue­less about how to fix the exis­ten­tial crises the Island faces at home.
The Prime Minister trav­elled all the way to apartheid Israel to hob­nob with the racist, mega­lo­ma­ni­ac Benjamin Netanyahu last year. And of course the pathet­ic oppo­si­tion (PNP) is dead set on it’s sup­port for the Venezuelan wannabe strong­man Nicolas Maduro.

While Jamaica sticks it’s nose into inter­na­tion­al affairs which it has no busi­ness doing, the unchecked killings con­tin­ue unabat­ed across the coun­try as a result of poli­cies enact­ed by both the gov­ern­ing (JLP) and the oppo­si­tion(PNP).
Front and cen­ter of the debate is how to con­trol the spate of killings across the Island, the vast major­i­ty of which nev­er gets solved.

The thugs who take life when they feel like it, has long demon­strat­ed that they are no longer afraid or con­cerned about the police.
Additionally, the sup­posed awe that they once har­bored at the sight of the mil­i­tary in the streets has long fad­ed.
On that score, the old adage ” familir­i­ty breeds con­tempt” is appro­pri­ate. Soldiers have been doing some polic­ing duties for years. The shock and awe at the sight of the mil­i­tary on the streets are replaced with shrugs and yawns. 

The nation’s laws are made by imper­fect peo­ple, many of whom are heav­i­ly invest­ed in the per­son­al out­comes, coun­try be damned.
Trial lawyers with no alle­giance to the coun­try dou­ble as leg­is­la­tors. They pass laws which fur­ther ham­strung the police and empow­er those who would be their future clients.
But it’s not just as sim­ple as tri­al lawyers being leg­is­la­tors, it is as seri­ous as actu­al leg­is­la­tors being active crim­i­nals.
The pathet­ic excuse for a nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter (Horace Chang) stands before a crowd in St James and tells the police not to infringe on the rights of any of the peo­ple in the parish ( sur­round­ed by his police detail).
Not that he need­ed the police detail, the real secu­ri­ty are the goons in the gar­risons whom their poli­cies pro­tect.
He had not one syl­la­ble of [charge] to the peo­ple to obey the laws, to be respect­ful of the police and to help the police in their fight against crime.

Of course, this should come as no sur­prise, Horace Chang is in charge of one of the tough­est gar­risons in the parish of St James if not the entire Island.
The peo­ple who head the nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus are also in charge of the [fave­las] in which the crim­i­nals have safe-haven with dan­ger­ous high pow­ered weapons.
No, this is not about par­ty pol­i­tics, the Opposition leader also over­sees a gar­ri­son in which the num­ber of votes cast always exceed the num­ber of elec­tors liv­ing in the constituency.

It has nev­er been that the police were inca­pable of deal­ing with the killings. What has tran­spired over the years is that the two polit­i­cal par­ties have embarked on a process which under­mines the rule of law in the coun­try while they pil­fer from the scarce resources which ought to go toward run­ning the coun­try.
They rel­ish in tak­ing away choice from the pop­u­la­tion, which is large­ly illit­er­ate and total­ly behold­en to the polit­i­cal dog­ma they are fed.
In order to pull that scam on the mass­es they need­ed a scape­goat and so the police found itself caught between the two gangs which run the coun­try and those which enforces the code on the streets.

Because we can­not afford to vio­late their human and civ­il rights.
By the 22^nd of Janauary last year 100 homi­cides were report­ed to the police.
That num­ber meant that just under 5 Jamaicans were killed each day.
This year has start­ed off on a gal­lop as well but nev­er mind peo­ple are dying every­where right?
I won­der how those peo­ple feel about their human rights, or bet­ter yet, I won­der how they feel about los­ing the most pre­cious gift ever giv­en, the gift of life?
I guess we will nev­er know.

June 2013, in a stun­ning and incom­pre­hen­si­ble deci­sion the US Supreme Court in a 5 – 4 ide­o­log­i­cal deci­sion struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in the case of Shelby vs Holder.
Holder being, Eric Holder the then sit­ting Attorney General of the United States.
The Ruling freed up nine states, most­ly in the South, to change their elec­tion laws with­out advance fed­er­al approval.
“Our coun­try has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the major­i­ty. “While any racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in vot­ing is too much, Congress must ensure that the leg­is­la­tion it pass­es to rem­e­dy that prob­lem speaks to cur­rent con­di­tions..“
In lay­man’s lan­guage, [the law worked too well so it’s time for us to roll it back]. Never mind that there is an inces­sant assault against the vot­ing rights of racial minori­ties today in dif­fer­ent forms in dif­fer­ent states.

December 2018 the People’s National Party announced it no longer sup­ports the states of emer­gency in the Parish of Saint James because what­ev­er the police are doing now they can pro­ceed along the same path with­out the emer­gency pow­ers which gives them the author­i­ty to lock up vio­lent crim­i­nals for extend­ed peri­ods of time with­out charge.
Now here is the sober­ing real­i­ty. The state of emer­gency was declared in St James as a direct result of a vio­lence lev­el which was unprece­dent­ed.
The extent of the killings was such that it scared the rich hote­liers who were skit­tish about their bot­tom line.
Now, as I have said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle there are only two or three rea­sons why vio­lent crime would take a pre­cip­i­tous 72% drop in the parish of St James and those rea­sons are (a) the vio­lence pro­duc­ers have tak­en flight (b) they are locked up by the police or © a com­bi­na­tion of both (a&b).

We can have a debate about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of lock­ing up killers we have no evi­dence to charge crim­i­nal­ly and I am pre­pared to debate the legit­i­ma­cy of doing so.
Desperate time calls for des­per­ate mea­sures. If a state is to sur­vive by tak­ing dras­tic mea­sures what bet­ter time to do so than send a mes­sage through how it treats its most vio­lent crim­i­nals?
We may talk until we are blue in the face as the Nation’s Opposition par­ty has done about not break­ing the law to enforce the law. We may even pull out graphs and dia­grams using graphs to make our point as to why we believe there is no need for a con­tin­u­ance of the mea­sures.
Or we can talk to the peo­ple who are on the ground, the peo­ple who live in the com­mu­ni­ties and are ter­ri­fied that if the pow­ers are removed which gives the secu­ri­ty forces the author­i­ty to hold vio­lent crim­i­nals, their com­mu­ni­ties will in short order be awash in their blood and that of their loved ones.

What I find dis­gust­ing and indeed mind-numb­ing­ly igno­rant is the argu­ment being used by the PNP, that a drop in homi­cide in 2018 ought not be cel­e­brat­ed because on the Government’s watch last year 1616 homi­cides were report­ed to the police.
The con­tention being, since the JLP presided over the 1616 num­ber in 2017, it should receive no cred­it for the fact that hun­dreds few­er have been mur­dered this year.
So if there was any doubt in any­one’s mind about the polit­i­cal nature of the PNP’s deci­sion to pull its sup­port, the lat­ter con­tention ought to put those doubts to rest.

In the final analy­sis, the reduc­tion in mur­ders this year what­ev­er the final count turns out to be should give no one com­fort that the state had to flood the streets with the bod­ies of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel to real­ize few­er homi­cide num­bers in spe­cif­ic geo­graph­i­cal areas.
The take­away from this is that sure, the crim­i­nals are run­ning away from the secu­ri­ty forces when they flood the streets in force, but as soon as they deter­mine the move­ments of the secu­ri­ty per­son­nel they are right back at work killing and doing what­ev­er else they do.

So clear­ly the solu­tion is not in flood­ing the streets with bod­ies, even though that has an effect tan­ta­mount to that of cot­ton can­dy.
The prob­lem is that a nation can­not sur­vive on cot­ton can­dy but the coun­try’s lead­ers are too heav­i­ly invest­ed in the idea of fillers and fast food stop­gap meth­ods to take the time to pre­pare the right kind of diet which will give the nation sus­te­nance for gen­er­a­tions to come.
The prob­lem here is that the nations une­d­u­cat­ed are cry­ing out for lead­er­ship and the edu­cat­ed which are sup­posed to give that lead­er­ship are self-cen­tered moron­ic idiots who have their heads too far up their own ass­es to do any­thing about crime.
It behooves them to take a lis­ten to Damion Crawford, but the self-impor­tant bour­geoisie are reluc­tant to pull their heads from their ass­es and lis­ten to any­one but the sound of their own voic­es.
And so we get an echo cham­ber of non­sense from the very same dogs chas­ing their sil­ly tails.