American police offi­cers on black cit­i­zens. His crime not wear­ing a seat­belt. The ques­tion is, how long will peo­ple allow police to treat them this way and take it lying down?

A video post­ed on social media shows a Lakeland Police offi­cer repeat­ed­ly punch­ing a sus­pect while arrest­ing him after a traf­fic stop.

Witnesses used phones to record videos dur­ing the inci­dent that occurred short­ly after mid­night on Sunday. In two clips post­ed the Facebook page of the sus­pect, Antwan Glover, four LPD offi­cers can be seen help­ing to sub­due him dur­ing the episode in the Paul A. Diggs neighborhood.

According to arrest affi­davits pro­vid­ed by LPD, offi­cers from the Street Crimes Unit were patrolling the 400 block of West Ninth Street in a black, unmarked Ford Explorer. The report described it as a “high crime/​drug area” and said pre­vi­ous arrests for drug and weapons charges had been made there.

Maybe this has noth­ing to do with diver­si­ty. Maybe , just maybe there is a large domes­tic mili­tia called the police with strict orders to kill, oper­at­ing as if the streets are a war­zone. Just maybe.
I recall hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion some­time ear­li­er this year with a young Indian man who hap­pens to be a pros­e­cu­tor in New Jersey on the ques­tion of police excess­es. Listening to him, one would have walked away believ­ing there is no racism in America.
On the oth­er hand, the sys­tem has man­aged to con­vince the American peo­ple that unwar­rant­ed police vio­lence is unavoidable.
To an offi­cer trained in anoth­er coun­try, we know BS when we see it. We know that dis­cre­tion is the bet­ter part of val­or. We also know that the role of the police is not to kill sum­mar­i­ly but to be judi­cious asses­sors of events and make good deci­sions before using lethal force.
In a sit­u­a­tion like this one, the man they killed was wear­ing a robe, a clear sign that he is asso­ci­at­ed with the neigh­bor­hood and more specif­i­cal­ly a home nearby.
Additionally, there are over four hun­dred mil­lion guns in the hands of Americans, so this man most like­ly had a right to have the firearm he had in his hand.
Most impor­tant­ly, when a police offi­cer gives the order to drop a weapon it should not be a pre­cur­sor to jus­ti­fy mur­der; it should be a legit­i­mate com­mand to de-esca­late a sit­u­a­tion. American cops are using this order while they fire a bar­rage of bul­lets at American cit­i­zens and the courts are allow­ing them to get away with out­right mur­der in cold blood.
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Rajan “Raj” Moonesinghe (right) and his broth­er Johann Moonesinghe (left) pic­tured with their cousin (cen­ter). Image Credits: Johann Moonesinghe. For years, Austin has made head­lines as an evolv­ing tech hub where star­tups, large com­pa­nies and investors alike have flocked to set up a pres­ence. But as 2022 clos­es, the Texas cap­i­tal is in the news for a very dif­fer­ent, trag­ic rea­son — being home to the sud­den death of a start­up founder at the hands of a police offi­cer. On November 15, inKind co-founder Rajan “Raj” Moonesinghe was fatal­ly shot out­side of his south Austin home in what his fam­i­ly and col­leagues describe as a sense­less acci­dent that could have been avoided.

The 33-year-old had returned from a two-week trip to dis­cov­er that things looked out of place in his home, accord­ing to his broth­er, Johann. The afflu­ent neigh­bor­hood had recent­ly become a tar­get for crim­i­nals — to the point that one home­own­er had felt so unsafe after being robbed that she moved out. The new own­ers proac­tive­ly hired 24-hour-secu­ri­ty to stand guard in front of their house. A few weeks pri­or, Moonesinghe had pur­chased an assault rifle to pro­tect him­self should a bur­glar attempt to enter his home. In what would turn out to be a sad­ly prophet­ic warn­ing, his neigh­bor and inKind COO El Khattary had cau­tioned, “A brown man with a big gun does­n’t get the ben­e­fit of the doubt.”

It turns out he had rea­son to be concerned.

Moonesinghe had report­ed­ly talked ear­li­er with his neigh­bor across the street, express­ing con­cern that some­one might be in his home, and retrieved his rifle as he looked around his prop­er­ty. With his front door open, Moonesinghe yelled for who­ev­er might be in his home to get out. He also shot his rifle into the home. The neighbor’s secu­ri­ty guard called 911.

According to Moonesinghe’s broth­er, Ring cam­era footage showed police arriv­ing at his brother’s prop­er­ty with no sirens or lights, with one of the offi­cers fatal­ly shoot­ing Raj.

“The police didn’t announce them­selves or give him time to put the gun down,” Johann told TechCrunch. (A video of the inci­dent can be seen here. Warning: It may be inap­pro­pri­ate for some viewers.) 

The offi­cers said they per­formed life-sav­ing mea­sures on Raj, before he was ulti­mate­ly pro­nounced dead at a local hospital.

It was two days lat­er, though, before Raj’s fam­i­ly knew what hap­pened to him. The police at first held a press con­fer­ence, say­ing that “a white man” had been shot but did not dis­close details.

“We were super con­fused,” Johann said. “We knew the cops were there, and we couldn’t get a hold of Raj. At first we thought it was him, and then we thought it wasn’t. They said they killed a white man who had been shoot­ing up the neigh­bor­hood. We didn’t know what to think.”

The inci­dent took place at 12:30 am on Tuesday, November 15. But the Moonesinghe fam­i­ly claim they were not noti­fied by police of Raj’s death until the evening of Thursday, November 17.

“Raj was awe­some, absolute­ly phe­nom­e­nal. He just went out of his way to help oth­er peo­ple,” Johann told TechCrunch. “This is the worst thing that has ever hap­pened to me and my fam­i­ly. The hard­est part for me is that it was avoidable.”

“We’re lucky that we have a very strong fam­i­ly, incred­i­ble friends and super sup­port­ive peo­ple around us,” he con­tin­ued. “It’s not only hard to lose some­body you love, but it’s dou­bly, triply hard because of the way the police han­dled it.”

TechCrunch reached out to the Austin Police Department (APD) and was referred to a December 1 press release stat­ing the depart­ment con­tin­ued to inves­ti­gate the shooting.

At the top of the release, Raj was described as a deceased Middle Eastern male. In the body of the release, the APD said the 911 caller had described a man with a gun “as a white male, wear­ing a grey robe and dark pants.”

In that release, the police depart­ment iden­ti­fied Officer Daniel Sanchez as the indi­vid­ual who fatal­ly shot Raj. Sanchez is report­ed­ly on admin­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing the depart­men­t’s inves­ti­ga­tions. In its state­ment, APD said that it would con­duct two con­cur­rent inves­ti­ga­tions into the inci­dent — a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by the APD Special Investigations Unit in con­junc­tion with the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, and an admin­is­tra­tive inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by the APD Internal Affairs Unit, with over­sight from the Office of Police Oversight.

After mov­ing to Austin about five years ago, inKind this year leased 22,000 square feet of office space that was Facebook’s first office in Austin. Business is going well, accord­ing to Johann. The start­up, which launched in 2016 by fund­ing restau­rants by pur­chas­ing large amounts of food and bev­er­age cred­its upfront, has raised $27 mil­lion in growth equi­ty and $130 mil­lion in debt over the past year and has about 74 employ­ees. It’s oper­at­ing at a $48 mil­lion run rate, Johann said.

“What makes me real­ly sad is that star­tups are very, very hard, and Raj worked so hard for years and years. And now that the com­pa­ny is real­ly on a rock­et ship, he’s not here to enjoy that,” he added.

Johann told TechCrunch he also feels “guilty” because of the deci­sion sev­er­al years ago to move the start­up he helped co-found with his broth­er, Andrew Harris, Matt Saeta and Miles Matthias to Austin from Washington, D.C. An ear­ly investor in Uber and Twilio, Johann said he was hop­ing to relo­cate to a state with­out tax­es. Seattle and Miami were also considered.

“Obviously the shoot­ing was not my fault,” Johann told TechCrunch. “But I don’t believe this would have hap­pened in anoth­er place. I’m gay and brown, grew up in LA, and lived a long time in D.C. The only time I have ever expe­ri­enced racism was when I moved to Austin.” While the broth­ers’ fam­i­ly is from Sri Lanka, the pair were born in Los Angeles.

Khattary told TechCrunch he views the city’s lack of diver­si­ty as “a weird thing” con­sid­er­ing its so-called pro­gres­sive rep­u­ta­tion, and called police treat­ment of peo­ple of col­or “dis­heart­en­ing.” For exam­ple, dur­ing the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, 19 offi­cers were accused of seri­ous­ly injur­ing pro­tes­tors. Earlier this year, the offi­cers were indict­ed for using exces­sive force.

“Clearly, there’s some­thing in Austin and Black Lives Matter in 2020 high­light­ed a lot of it,” he told TechCrunch. “This is a nation­wide prob­lem but Austin def­i­nite­ly has more than its fair share. In this case, the offi­cer per­ceived him [Raj] as a major threat and didn’t give him a chance.”

The con­trast between the city’s pro­gres­sive­ness and a pop­u­la­tion that is most­ly “very hos­pitable” and inci­dents such as this one can be hard for out­siders to grasp, Johann said.

“I don’t think there’s overt racism. It’s more uncon­scious bias­es, with peo­ple mak­ing judge­ments around oth­ers in a split sec­ond,” he added. “And that’s real­ly prob­lem­at­ic. I do believe that if Raj were white, he prob­a­bly would­n’t have been killed.”

Austin’s lack of diver­si­ty is not a new prob­lem. As TechCrunch report­ed in March, the per­cent­age of Black res­i­dents, for exam­ple, steadi­ly decreased over time to an esti­mat­ed 7% in 2020. Many of Austin’s neigh­bor­hoods resem­ble those seen in Silicon Valley, with large­ly white and Asian res­i­dents and far few­er Hispanic and Black people.

Johann doesn’t want his broth­er to have died in vain. While he says he cur­rent­ly doesn’t “feel safe” in Austin and that it’s hard for him to con­sid­er ask­ing oth­er peo­ple to move here, he also knows that they can’t just move inKind. 

Instead, he’s hop­ing to help change Austin “to make it a place that’s safe for everyone.”

“I hope that the Austin police even start the dia­logue, give us some answers and explain to us what they’re going to do dif­fer­ent­ly so this doesn’t hap­pen again,” Johann said.

He also wants to poten­tial­ly raise cap­i­tal that would go toward specif­i­cal­ly invest­ing in com­pa­nies that through data, improved secu­ri­ty cam­eras and oth­er tech could pos­si­bly help pre­vent what hap­pened to Raj from hap­pen­ing to others.

An unarmed Detroit bounc­er has filed a $10 mil­lion fed­er­al law­suit after offi­cers assault­ed him while per­form­ing a rou­tine liquor license check at a club where he worked.
Michael Kennebrew wants the offi­cers who entered his place of work held account­able after vicious­ly attack­ing and wrong­ful­ly arrest­ing him. He has since filed an exces­sive force law­suit against Detroit and its offi­cers. He believes sur­veil­lance footage of the vio­lent arrest will help his case and bring about justice.
“I think any­body who watch­es it should be trou­bled to a cer­tain extent or a cer­tain degree,” Kennebrew said of his arrest on April 28

The 42-year-old father of three is a ship­ping super­vi­sor and a bounc­er for Minnie’s Bar and Grill. On the day of the arrest around 7 p.m., Kennebrew was mak­ing his rounds at the bar as nor­mal. He said he noticed three Detroit police offi­cers approach the bar but did not think much of their pres­ence at the time. “I saw them when they went in, and I was going to check to make sure every­thing was going well and noti­fy the own­er,” Kennebrew said. WJBK reports the offi­cers were work­ing with the department’s vice squad unit. The unit was at the bar to ensure its liquor license was in com­pli­ance. Kennebrew says the com­pli­ance check usu­al­ly hap­pens twice a year. Unlike pre­vi­ous vis­its where the rou­tine check would be unevent­ful, this vis­it had a dif­fer­ent out­come. Video sur­veil­lance from the bar cap­tures Kennebrew walk­ing past the female offi­cer in the vice squad, and things esca­late quick­ly after she grabbed his arm.

“I walked past her, and she asked me was I armed, and I said no,” Kennebrew recalled. Surveillance shows what hap­pened next. The female offi­cer pulls Kennebrew’s right arm, and he pulled his arm away. Another male offi­cer came from beside the female offi­cer and quick­ly approached Kennebrew, push­ing him back a few feet before the two fell to the ground. “He just start­ed punch­ing me, he didn’t say any­thing, no com­mands or any­thing like that,” Kennebrew said. Both Kennebrew and the male police offi­cer were on the ground, with the offi­cer on top of Kennebrew, the footage shows. The uniden­ti­fied offi­cer is seen punch­ing Kennebrew at least four times in the back of his head and neck; it is unclear the exact num­ber of times Kennebrew was punched. As the assault con­tin­ued, at least two more police offi­cers approached a downed Kennebrew and the attack­ing offi­cer. Two oth­er bar patrons also approached Kennebrew and the offi­cer from the oppo­site direction“I was going to attempt to get up and when I glanced up, one offi­cer had a Taser in my face, and a wit­ness told me anoth­er offi­cer had his pis­tol out,” Kennebrew said.

It is unclear exact­ly how long the attack occurred, but moments lat­er Kennebrew was arrest­ed and charged with assault­ing the police offi­cer. He says he sat behind bars for three days. “I didn’t even touch the oth­er offi­cers so when did the assault come in,” Kennebrew said of the assault charge. Kennebrew’s attor­ney, Todd Russell Perkins, helped get him out of jail. “It’s just an abuse of pow­er, these indi­vid­u­als have run amuck with­in the sys­tem and it’s all for noth­ing, this guy did absolute­ly noth­ing,” Perkins said of Kennebrew’s predica­ment. WJBK con­firmed pros­e­cu­tors dis­missed the assault charge, claim­ing it lacked suf­fi­cient evi­dence. In a news inter­view on May 9, DPD’s direc­tor of pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards and con­sti­tu­tion­al polic­ing Chris Graveline said he did not believe the offi­cers involved sent all the avail­able video footage to the Wayne County pros­e­cu­tor for the assault charge. “We’re look­ing at that as well, and that’s also one of the rea­sons why the [DPD Vice Squad] super­vi­sor has been moved,” said Graveline. Additional ques­tions Graveline says the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion may answer include what caused the offi­cers to react the way they did. “What could have caused this imme­di­ate esca­la­tion? On the face of the video, we see no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, but we’ll be ask­ing those ques­tions,” Graveline said. A spokesper­son for the Detroit Police Department con­firmed to Atlanta Black Star the case is still under inves­ti­ga­tion. The spokesper­son also said the depart­ment did not have any more infor­ma­tion to release at this time and direct­ed ABS to a state­ment released by Detroit Police Chief James White on May 9. White said, “I am deeply trou­bled and con­cerned after watch­ing the sur­veil­lance video. I have direct­ed our Force Investigations Unit to imme­di­ate­ly launch an investigation.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued with, “The actions of the offi­cer don’t appear to be con­sis­tent with our poli­cies or pro­ce­dures. Therefore, the offi­cer has been removed from the unit pend­ing the out­come. DPD is com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and will update both the com­mu­ni­ty and our media part­ners fol­low­ing a thor­ough and com­plete inves­ti­ga­tion.” Perkins says since the vio­lent arrest, DPD has been far from trans­par­ent. “We filed a suit because noth­ing is being done; they haven’t even giv­en us one police report.” He added that they have a Freedom of Information Act request pend­ing. Kennebrew hopes his exces­sive force law­suit brings account­abil­i­ty for what hap­pened to him. He wants to see pol­i­cy change and wants a citizen’s review board to review cas­es of police mis­con­duct. “I think there def­i­nite­ly needs to be pol­i­cy change. If I had to rec­om­mend some­thing, I would rec­om­mend a citizen’s review board. The cit­i­zens should decide if they want them to serve the city of Detroit or not,” Kennebrew said. The City of Detroit cur­rent­ly has a Board of Police Commissioners. The 11-mem­ber civil­ian board was cre­at­ed in 1974 and gives super­vi­so­ry author­i­ty over the police department. 

A clas­sic case of Prosecutors’ refusal, and unwill­ing­ness to pros­e­cute crim­i­nal cops.

A for­mer Philadelphia homi­cide detec­tive con­vict­ed of sex­u­al­ly assault­ing wit­ness­es and infor­mants through­out his 20-year career pos­si­bly will spend the rest of his life behind bars as a penal­ty for his crimes. 
The court claimed the offi­cer “groomed” his male vic­tims to engage in sex­u­al acts while extract­ing infor­ma­tion from them as inves­ti­gat­ed var­i­ous cases. 

On Dec. 15, a Philadelphia judge sen­tenced Philip Nordo, 56, to 24.5 to 49 years in prison after he was found guilty of rape, sex­u­al assault, stalk­ing, offi­cial oppres­sion, theft by decep­tion, and relat­ed charges ear­li­er this year, NBC 10 report­ed.
A jury found in addi­tion to hav­ing inap­pro­pri­ate sex­u­al rela­tions with and lying on the vic­tims. He also stole $20,000 in crime reward mon­ey that was being offered in a case about the 2015 mur­der of an off-duty offi­cer named Moses Walker.
Evidence revealed he spent the stolen loot on one of his victims.
A 2019 grand jury report alleged the for­mer detec­tive “groomed” the vic­tims while work­ing on cas­es and cre­at­ed a cli­mate that made those men “more sus­cep­ti­ble to his sex­u­al­ly assaultive and/​or coer­cive behav­ior,” which last­ed over a decade.
The ex-officer’s defense attor­ney Michael van der Veen said Nordo’s accusers could not be trust­ed because they are “crim­i­nals, liars, and thieves” whose accounts were incon­sis­tent and lacked cor­rob­o­rat­ing evidence.
One of those peo­ple was Milique Wagner.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports Wagner, then 21, was arrest­ed and inter­ro­gat­ed by Nordo regard­ing the fatal shoot­ing of 29-year-old Braheem King on Feb. 10, 2010. The then-detec­tive was deter­mined to asso­ciate Wagner with Reafeal Fields and Kelvin Bryant, who were co-defen­dants in the case of King’s killing.

Nordo used a man named Amine Payne to give a state­ment that linked Wagner to the oth­er men. The North Philly native was vul­ner­a­ble. In addi­tion to expe­ri­enc­ing the loss of his moth­er when he was 9 and wit­ness­ing his best friend get shot in front of him when he was 19, he start­ed to self-med­icate with drugs (mar­i­jua­na, opi­oids, and cough syrup) to deal with his men­tal trau­ma. The legal stacks were against him. It also made him an easy mark for his sex­u­al escapades. After the ini­tial ques­tion­ing about the King case, Nordo intro­duced anoth­er top­ic, accord­ing to Wagner. He probed the “sus­pect” about his desire to shoot porn. “He says … he has a porn ring from out in New Jersey,” Wagner recalled, describ­ing the detec­tive as slick and sneaky as he tes­ti­fied that Nordo asked him, “Would [I] ever con­sid­er doing guy-on-guy porn?” Later Payne would tes­ti­fy that he nev­er met Wagner; his state­ment was fab­ri­cat­ed and he admit­ted he was the one who mur­dered King.

A great friend of mine for­ward­ed this bit of per­ti­nent his­to­ry. I thought it would be a great idea to post it so that every­one can have a truer his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive of what tran­spired at Coral Gardens Montego Bay in 1963.
Much of the dia­logue that suc­ceed­ed the events at Coral Gardens has been san­i­tized and white­washed to cre­ate the per­cep­tion of an out-of-con­trol colo­nial police sys­tem out to get the poor law-abid­ing Rastafarians instead of the facts, which are clear and concise.
The true sto­ry was of Rastafarians opposed to the social order, who want­ed to take prop­er­ty that was not theirs and decid­ed to com­mit arson and murder.
Those are the facts.
What the san­i­tized nar­ra­tive cre­at­ed by the anti-police liars at the UWI left out are the fac­tu­al con­se­quences the Rastafarian anar­chists’ actions left, includ­ing the sto­ry of the valiant Police Constable Errol Campbell, who recent­ly transitioned.

Former Constable Errol Campbell, who recent­ly tran­si­tioned, was funer­al­ized at the Falmouth SDA church on Sunday, December 18^th, 2022.
He enlist­ed in the JCF in 1959 at 19 years old. While sta­tioned at the Barnett Street Police Station, he was on his day off when an Inspector Fisher instruct­ed him to join oth­er mem­bers and respond to a dis­pute at a gas sta­tion in Coral Gardens where the Rastafarian com­mu­ni­ty had set fire to a gas sta­tion on Holy Thursday, 1963. 

Constable Campbell was 23 years old at the time.
Upon arrival at Coral Gardens, the Police were ambushed. Constable Campbell fell and was chopped in the head, caus­ing his brain to become vis­i­ble. He also received injuries to his back, from which he nev­er recovered.
He was rushed to Cornwall Regional Hospital sit­u­at­ed on the Hip Strip and placed on ice, pre­sumed dead like the oth­ers. A doc­tor who lat­er both­ered to take a clos­er look at him real­ized he was still alive.
He respond­ed, ” This one has a lit­tle life left; take him out” he was then air­lift­ed to Kingston.
He has been bedrid­den from then until the time of his death on the 23^rd of November 2022 at the age of 82 years old.
In his life­time, he was vis­it­ed sev­er­al times by the Trelawny Police Division (espe­cial­ly dur­ing Police Week) and by JCF Retired mem­bers Association Islandwide.
Tributes were done by the Commissioner of Police, The Trelawny Police Division, the Jamaica Police Federation, The Retired Members Association of the JCF, and his fam­i­ly, to name a few.
His fam­i­ly and the Trelawny Division also planned the funer­al ser­vice and exe­cut­ed with Police pres­ence from the Division.

No. 931 Cons Errol Winston Campbell RIP.

Instead of con­demn­ing this trav­es­ty for what it tru­ly was, the Government of Jamaica (Party neu­tral), in asso­ci­a­tion with their elit­ist anti-police friends, have apol­o­gized to the mur­der­ous crim­i­nals who ter­ror­ized prop­er­ty own­ers, set their prop­er­ty afire, mur­dered police offi­cers, and com­mit­ted oth­er crimes against the state.
Is there any won­der that our coun­try has become the poster child for mur­der­ous crim­i­nal behav­ior upon which the nation’s lead­ers are now forced to be traips­ing over­seas in search of help to deal with the onslaught of vio­lent crim­i­nal­i­ty they cre­at­ed and nurtured?
The Coral Gardens débâ­cle is not the only time that the Jamaican Government sided with anti-gov­ern­ment sedi­tion­ists against the secu­ri­ty forces after they brave­ly defend­ed Jamaican democracy.
Regardless of the many and var­ied accounts of what may have been per­co­lat­ing between Rastafarians and the Jamaican state that led up to the Good Friday inci­dent, one thing is clear, the unlaw­ful acts com­mit­ted by Rastafarians, against the state and per­son­al prop­er­ty are undeniable.
It occurred again in 2010 in Tivoli Gardens, and the police and mil­i­tary restored the coun­try to san­i­ty. As is cus­tom­ary, instead of hon­or­ing their brav­ery, the Jamaican gov­ern­ment apol­o­gized to the crim­i­nals, gave them tax­pay­er’s mon­ey, and com­mis­sioned an inquiry aimed sole­ly at cas­ti­gat­ing and dimin­ish­ing the secu­ri­ty forces.
They did not even have the decen­cy and hon­or of choos­ing a Jamaican to do the dirty work, they chose a foreigner.
That is the lev­el of lead­er­ship that Jamaica enjoys.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The intractable issue of cor­rup­tion with­in the Jamaican pub­lic sec­tor is the burn­ing log in the fire of vio­lent crimes. Because the polit­i­cal lead­ers are them­selves com­pro­mised and, in some cas­es, cor­rupt, they are unable and unwill­ing to sup­port the ref­or­ma­tion of the Jamaican gov­ern­ment and place the coun­try on a real foun­da­tion where the rule of law replaces the rule of man.
Jamaicans need a new con­sti­tu­tion. One that is well thought out. One that rep­re­sents and pro­tects the Jamaican peo­ple, but most of all, one that sets Jamaica on a path to true self-governance.
Not the gov­er­nance we have today that is still tied to our old colo­nial masters.
Setting our coun­try on a path to real nation­hood will not be easy, and as one per­son said in our recent zoom con­fer­ence, it will take decades to do because it took decades to get us here.
The dan­ger, how­ev­er, is that we risk doing noth­ing. If we do noth­ing, we are giv­ing up on Jamaica, which is what the transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works want us to do.
We are also con­ver­sant about the dif­fi­cul­ty in even begin­ning a con­ver­sa­tion toward effec­tu­at­ing mean­ing­ful change in the face of intran­si­gent and igno­rant resistance.
We have begun that con­ver­sa­tion and will con­tin­ue to see where we go. Thank you to those who decid­ed to start with us. We intend to have a series of these dis­cus­sions on crime and corruption.
It is easy to stand aside and crit­i­cize, but we have decid­ed to begin the hard work.

For those who were too busy or oth­er­wise occu­pied to attend, we have attached the link below for your convenience.

https://​us06web​.zoom​.us/​r​e​c​/​s​h​a​r​e​/​U​C​M​m​P​2​N​C​l​J​e​R​i​n​W​-​z​R​w​F​C​K​8​a​9​T​p​-​f​o​R​q​r​2​d​z​d​R​H​S​X​s​M​N​-​7​u​j​i​X​t​N​-​e​3​W​J​q​w​0​i​2​C​A​.​1​A​H​V​2​I​a​v​X​4​N​t​P​lDl

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

A 29-year-old man who was pum­meled by a police offi­cer while in cus­tody in 2020 reached a $90,000 set­tle­ment with the City of Cranston and his attack­er over the assault.

Gian Mattiello, of Cranston, agreed to set­tle with the city and its police depart­ment over his assault in March 2020 by for­mer Police Officer Andrew Leonard as he was being booked at police head­quar­ters fol­low­ing a domes­tic dis­pute with his brother.

In May 2021, District Court Magistrate J. Patrick O’Neill found Leonard guilty of sim­ple assault after a bench tri­al. The judge reject­ed Leonard’s argu­ments that he used rea­son­able force and was try­ing to pro­tect him­self after Mattiello reached for his belt. Instead, O’Neill con­clud­ed that Leonard had missed oppor­tu­ni­ties to de-esca­late ten­sions with Mattiello, who appears to be try­ing to pro­voke the offi­cer in sur­veil­lance video footage.

O’Neill took notice, in par­tic­u­lar, of images that showed Leonard giv­ing Mattiello a shot with his knee after bar­rag­ing him with punches.

“That knee is an assault on a defense­less per­son who just caught a beat­ing,” O’Neill said.

Leonard, 47, ini­tial­ly appealed the ver­dict to Superior Court, but in September opt­ed to admit to the crime rather than head to trial.

Judge Richard Raspallo gave Leonard, who had been on the force for more than two decades pri­or to the inci­dent, one year of pro­ba­tion after he plead­ed no con­test to sim­ple assault.

Could your kids be at risk?A Central Falls cou­ple’s twins were strug­gling. Then a blood test showed high lead levels

Mattiello sued the city, the Police Department, Leonard, and Officers Zachary Burns and Thomas Levy in U.S. District Court fol­low­ing O’Neill’s ver­dict, argu­ing that his rights had been vio­lat­ed when he was sub­ject­ed to exces­sive force by Leonard. He accused Burns and Levy of fail­ing to inter­vene to pro­tect him from Leonard.

Mattiello sought $2 mil­lion in dam­ages for emo­tion­al dis­tress, med­ical expens­es, lost earn­ings and legal fees.

Mattiello agreed to release his claims and dis­miss the suit after reach­ing a nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment with the par­ties late last month. The agree­ment spec­i­fies that it should not be con­strued as an admis­sion of lia­bil­i­ty on the part of the City of Cranston or the Police Department.

Criminal Justice Reform:She was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of killing her tod­dler daugh­ter. Now, she wants RI to pay her

Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. entered an order accept­ing the set­tle­ment agree­ment on Dec. 5.

The city was rep­re­sent­ed by Patrick McBurney and William O’Gara, of Pannone Lopes Devereaux & O’Gara, with Michael J. Colucci also rep­re­sent­ing Leonard. Carl H. Hurvich rep­re­sent­ed Mattiello.

It is safe to assume he will turn up in another department nearby with his rank and most likely, a larger salary regardless of what he did wrong.

A Peoria police sergeant has resigned fol­low­ing an “alter­ca­tion” with a female offi­cer, the depart­ment announced.

This is typ­i­cal of how things get done. Rather than fire these mis­cre­ants and take their law enforce­ment cre­den­tials which pre­vent them from ever serv­ing as police offi­cers when they do things like these, they allow them to go where­upon oth­er depart­ments hire them.

By Alia Shoaib.

• A Texas police offi­cer was fired from the San Antonio police depart­ment after two inci­dents involv­ing feces.
• In one inci­dent, offi­cer Matthew Luckhurst fed a home­less man a sand­wich with feces in it.
• He was lat­er hired by the Floresville depart­ment but has been fired after an out­pour­ing of anger.

A Texas police offi­cer, who first lost his job in 2016 after giv­ing a home­less man a feces sand­wich, has been fired by a sec­ond Texan police depart­ment, reports said.

The San Antonio police depart­ment indef­i­nite­ly released Matthew Luckhurst after a sep­a­rate inci­dent in 2016. He was lat­er hired by the police depart­ment in Floresville, Texas, local out­let KSAT reported

The city’s may­or said there had been an out­pour­ing of emails from locals who were unhap­py Luckhurst had been re-employed as a police officer.

Mayor Cissy Gonzalez-Dippel said in a state­ment: “Matthew Luckhurst was released from employ­ment with the Floresville Police Department yes­ter­day Dec. 13^th.”

“Our city man­ag­er, Andy Joslin is imple­ment­ing stricter hir­ing poli­cies for all city of Floresville employ­ees. He is also work­ing with Chief Herrera on the Reserve program.”

Luckhurst was first ter­mi­nat­ed by the San Antonio police in 2016 after an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that he placed feces between slices of bread and gave it to a home­less man while on duty, accord­ing to KSAT.

The police offi­cer won an appeal over the feces sand­wich inci­dent due to a local gov­ern­ment code that pre­vents offi­cers from being dis­ci­plined for con­duct occur­ring over 180 days ago, the out­let reported.

He was lat­er giv­en a sec­ond indef­i­nite sus­pen­sion fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into a sep­a­rate inci­dent in which he alleged­ly failed to flush feces down a toi­let in the wom­en’s restroom at the down­town bike patrol office and spread a “brown tapi­o­ca-like sub­stance” on the seat.

Luckhurst took respon­si­bil­i­ty for the toi­let inci­dent but said it was a prank and apol­o­gized: “In hind­sight, it was imma­ture,” he said at a hear­ing, per KSAT.

However, he did not win his appeal against the toi­let inci­dent. The arbi­tra­tor assigned to the case decid­ing that SAPD Chief William McManus was jus­ti­fied in ter­mi­nat­ing him, cit­ing the “egre­gious nature of Luckhurst’s con­duct aimed at women.”

Sometimes I comment before posting these horror stories. At other times I prefer to remain silent and allow the depravity to sink in. This is what obtains in America as law enforcement to a large degree. People talk about good cops, which begs the question, where are they?

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By Pilar Melendez.
Harris Elias and his 15-year-old son were dri­ving home from din­ner at a local Fort Collins, Colorado, taco spot when they got pulled over.
Elias, a 51-year-old sin­gle father of three, told The Daily Beast that he imme­di­ate­ly “put his defens­es up” as he noticed Officer Jason Haferman walk­ing up to his dri­ver-side win­dow on Dec. 3, 2021.
“At first, he asked me if I knew why he had pulled me over, which I thought was a ridicu­lous ques­tion because I had no idea why he would pull me over,” Elias said. “As soon as he asked me what I had to drink, I knew it was hap­pen­ing all over again.”
The har­row­ing sense of déjà vu, he said, was spurred because just two years pri­or, he had been arrest­ed by a Loveland, Colorado, police offi­cer on sus­pi­cion of dri­ving under the influ­ence (DUI). The case was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed, but it instilled a deep fear of overzeal­ous law enforce­ment in Elias.

In a police report obtained by The Daily Beast, Haferman claimed Elias’ “eyes were glassy, pupils con­strict­ed, and his breath­ing was deep” and imme­di­ate­ly placed him under arrest to get test­ed for drugs and alco­hol at a local hos­pi­tal. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Services lab report lat­er detect­ed no drugs or alco­hol in his system.
But before those results came back, Elias was already halfway to hell.
“I can’t explain what it is like walk­ing through the hos­pi­tal hand­cuffed. To see how peo­ple look at you, and how the staff inter­acts with you,” Elias said. “It was real­ly degrading.”
The humil­i­a­tion, he said, was just the start. When he was allowed to bond out of jail three days lat­er, he said, he had to deal with child pro­tec­tive ser­vices and beg a judge to let him have con­tact with his son.
That’s because in Colorado, state law dic­tates that an indi­vid­ual who com­mits a DUI that involves a child can also be pros­e­cut­ed for child abuse, a charge Elias faced in addi­tion to dri­ving under the influ­ence and care­less dri­ving. Elias even­tu­al­ly got all charges dropped after approx­i­mate­ly two months — but, he said, the sting hasn’t gone away.

“Knowing that I couldn’t even dri­ve with my own kid and there was zero evi­dence that I vio­lat­ed any law… it made me feel six inch­es tall,” Elias explained. “By far, the thing that doesn’t go away from this case is the child abuse aspect of it. It is the ulti­mate way to hurt some­one who has spent the last 15 years as a sin­gle dad.”
Elias is not the only Colorado res­i­dent to be wrong­ful­ly accused of dri­ving under the influ­ence after being stopped by Haferman. In fact, the Fort Collins Police Department con­firmed to The Daily Beast that in the last two years, at least nine of Haferman’s DUI arrests were exe­cut­ed on dri­vers with no drugs or alco­hol in their systems.The shock­ing series of ques­tion­able arrests was first report­ed by Fox31.
Not includ­ed among those nine is the case of Harley Padilla — even though the severe­ly dis­abled man was forced to spend a year in jail when Haferman arrest­ed him after he said Padilla was slur­ring his words and that his bal­ance was uneven. After a motor­cy­cle acci­dent four years pri­or, the 52-year-old lost his left arm and is forced to speak through a hole in his throat.
“Because of his injuries, I don’t think Harley Padilla even has the capac­i­ty to slur words,” his attor­ney, Troy Krenning, told The Daily Beast. “He speaks through his throat and doesn’t use his tongue or lips. Haferman also talked about his bal­ance being uneven. No shit, he is disabled.”

At the end of his bench tri­al over the Feb. 18, 2021, arrest, Larimer County Judge Sarah Beth Cure found not only that Padilla was not guilty of dri­ving under the influ­ence, but also that Officer Haferman lacked “cred­i­bil­i­ty” and offered “incon­sis­tent” testimony.“It changed course on sev­er­al of the key facts. Some of his tes­ti­mo­ny is not sup­port­ed by the evi­dence,” Cure con­clud­ed in her rul­ing, accord­ing to a tran­script obtained by The Daily Beast. “In fact, some of it was con­trary to the evidence.”
But before Fort Collins Police Chief Jeff Swoboda could fire Haferman after an inter­nal police inves­ti­ga­tion, the 31-year-old resigned from the force, as the chief announced ear­ly this month. A police spokesper­son con­firmed the res­ig­na­tion came after Haferman had been reas­signed twice and ulti­mate­ly placed on leave after a review ini­tial­ly began at the start of the year — before inter­nal affairs began their own inves­ti­ga­tion in April. “The inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion did not iden­ti­fy any mal­in­tent or crim­i­nal vio­la­tions,” the spokesper­son said. “It did reveal a pat­tern of poor per­for­mance in terms of admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ties, pro­ce­dur­al con­sis­ten­cy, and adher­ence to the stan­dards of oper­a­tion that we train and expect from our offi­cers.” Three res­i­dents sub­ject­ed to Haferman’s arrest spree told The Daily Beast they were hor­ri­fied by the idea the now-for­mer cop has seem­ing­ly got­ten off “scot-free” while they are left with what they describe as phys­i­cal, men­tal, and emo­tion­al scars from encoun­ters with him.

All describe Haferman stop­ping them under the pre­tense that they com­mit­ted a minor traf­fic infrac­tion. Then — after claim­ing they exhib­it­ed signs of drunk dri­ving such as smelling like alco­hol or hav­ing glassy eyes or dilat­ed pupils — they say Haferman forced them into squad cars and took them to hos­pi­tals, hand­cuffed, to get a blood test. The peo­ple who spoke with The Daily Beast all pro­duced state blood test results show­ing that no alco­hol was found in their system.
All say they were forced to spend time and mon­ey to clear their name and even­tu­al­ly have the charges dropped. “It was hor­ri­ble,” Padilla told The Daily Beast.
Another woman told a local news out­let that she was forced to stay in jail overnight even though she repeat­ed­ly explained to Haferman that her eyes were red because she had just been dumped by her boyfriend and had been cry­ing for three hours.
Haferman did not respond to a request for com­ment for this sto­ry. And his record is not unblem­ished: if he were to apply to a new depart­ment, the state’s “Peace Officer Standards and Training” data­base would show the cop “resigned while under investigation.”
But the cop’s res­ig­na­tion, accord­ing to crim­i­nal defense lawyers and the police depart­ment, means that tech­ni­cal­ly, Haferman can move to anoth­er state (or even anoth­er Colorado coun­ty) and apply for anoth­er law enforce­ment posi­tion. A spokesper­son for the Fort Collins Police Department told The Daily Beast that even though Haferman was fac­ing ter­mi­na­tion, the state agency “does not pro­hib­it employ­ment if an offi­cer resigns from an agency, and ter­mi­na­tion is not auto­mat­ic grounds for decer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Colorado.”

That rais­es the prospect the cop could land in a new gig — infu­ri­at­ing those caught up in what they described as a sense­less drag­net that upend­ed their lives. “I can nev­er look at a police offi­cer the same way again,” Elias said. Haferman was not exact­ly shy about accus­ing peo­ple of drunk dri­ving. It was, after all, his job.
Of the 504 dri­ving-under-the-influ­ence arrests his depart­ment made last year, a police spokesper­son con­firmed that Haferman was involved in 191 — or about 37 per­cent— “either as the pri­ma­ry arrest­ing offi­cer or pro­vid­ing DUI inves­tiga­tive support.”
That num­ber is not, in and of itself, ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing giv­en that Haferman worked in a DUI enforce­ment assign­ment at the time.
But police say that eight of those cas­es in 2021 alone result­ed in arrests where blood tests indi­cat­ed no drugs or alco­hol detect­ed. Police also admit that Haferman was involved in at least one more arrest where no drugs or alco­hol were detect­ed this year.
“People still joke to this day, ‘Don’t Drink and Drive, but even if you’re not drink­ing, you could still get a DUI’” in Larimer County, Matthew Haltzman, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing a man whom Haferman arrest­ed in April on a DUI charge that was dis­missed, told The Daily Beast. “It was that bad.” Among his tar­gets was Padilla, who was dri­ving home after spend­ing the day vis­it­ing a friend in Fort Collins when he noticed the flash­ing behind him.
“I saw the lights and imme­di­ate­ly thought it was a plow­er because of all the snow on the ground,” Padilla told The Daily Beast. “Then I real­ized it was a cop car.”

Padilla was no stranger to being pulled over. He was also not inno­cent of dri­ving-relat­ed crimes, hav­ing plead­ed guilty or no con­test to sev­er­al DUIs over the years. But he told The Daily Beast that his­to­ry — and his phys­i­cal state — had left him try­ing hard­er than ever “to do every­thing right on the road.” So he was shocked when Haferman told him he had been swerv­ing while dri­ving and accused him of dri­ving under the influ­ence. Haferman imme­di­ate­ly placed Padilla in hand­cuffs and sent him to the hos­pi­tal for a blood test, which came back clean for alco­hol, accord­ing to a tran­script of a judge’s ruling.
During the trans­port via ambu­lance — at his own request, giv­en he had an infec­tion in his femur — Padilla said his wrist was hurt and his shoul­der knocked out of its sock­et.“At the hos­pi­tal, they sug­gest­ed I stay for a few days because of every­thing wrong with me,” Padilla said. “But instead I was sent to jail. And then I stayed there because I refused to admit I was drunk dri­ving when I wasn’t.” At the end of his bench tri­al, a judge agreed with him that he wasn’t drunk dri­ving. But Padilla was found guilty of pos­sess­ing an open mar­i­jua­na con­tain­er in his car and acknowl­edged that he had THC in his sys­tem — though the blood test result showed it was below the state lim­it for dri­ving, and he said it was pur­chased with his med­ical mar­i­jua­na card. For his part, Elias saw every charge against him dis­missed. But get­ting there was a struggle.

Haferman stat­ed in a police report that he stopped Elias after the dri­ver did not have his “head­lamps acti­vat­ed at night… failed to yield the right of way to the pedes­tri­ans and made a wide turn to get around the pedes­tri­ans.” The offi­cer also said that he turned into the wrong lane with­out using his right turn sig­nal. Haferman also not­ed that Elias refused to par­tic­i­pate in road­side tests to deter­mine his sobri­ety; Elias told The Daily Beast he refused to do so because he “shut down” and didn’t want any­thing he said to be mis­in­ter­pret­ed lat­er. “It took me longer to find my car insur­ance and reg­is­tra­tion than it did for him to con­duct his drunk dri­ving inves­ti­ga­tion and arrest me,” Elias said. Body-cam footage of the arrest obtained by The Daily Beast shows Elias remain­ing calm but refus­ing to answer Haferman’s ques­tions as he searched for his license and insur­ance. Eventually get­ting out of the car, Elias says in the footage that he refus­es to par­tic­i­pate in his sobri­ety tri­als and asks for him to “write him a tick­et and let him go.” Haferman refused and con­tin­ued to ask him whether he con­sumed alco­hol — in response to which Elias insist­ed on speak­ing to his attor­ney. In the footage, Elias is heard telling Haferman that the hand­cuffs were hurt­ing him. “It was a vio­lent arrest,” Elias said. “He quick­ly came behind me and grabbed my left wrist and put it in a painful wrist lock. It imme­di­ate­ly sent me into a panic.”

As Haferman was clos­ing the squad door behind him, Elias said, the cop “slammed the door on my knee” — a move that prompt­ed him to scream out “fuck, Jesus Christ!” in the body-cam footage. In the arrest report, Haferman wrote that he felt “some restric­tion when the door was almost closed.” After he was even­tu­al­ly released from jail, Elias said, he faced ran­dom drug tests that forced him to pee in front of a stranger — and a mir­ror — and lost mon­ey pay­ing an inde­pen­dent lab and a lawyer to clear his name. While it’s been months since the dis­trict attor­ney dis­missed charges against Elias, he stressed that the “prob­lem didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly go away.” In addi­tion to what he claims is emo­tion­al dis­tress from the arrest, he said he has lost his for­mer sense of safe­ty and secu­ri­ty in his com­mu­ni­ty that has him “con­stant­ly look­ing over my shoul­der.” “It’s hard to even think about it again,” he added. And the knowl­edge that Haferman was able to resign “feels like less than a slap on the wrist.” “It’s over­whelm­ing,” he said. “He got off scot-free.” The Fort Collins Police Department’s inter­nal affairs depart­ment offi­cial­ly began to look into alle­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing by Haferman in April. By then, Carly Zimmerman had already been arrest­ed after being stopped for alleged­ly dri­ving reck­less­ly past Haferman as he was exe­cut­ing anoth­er traf­fic stop.
In body-cam­era footage obtained by KDVR, Haferman asks Zimmerman how much she has had to drink — to which she replies that she had not had any, but has “been cry­ing for about three hours” because she had just gone through a breakup. Zimmerman’s charge was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed and her driver’s license was rein­stat­ed after a hear­ing, accord­ing to the out­let. (Zimmerman and her lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.)

Around the same time, Derrick Groves was arrest­ed, too. According to an April 7 arrest report obtained by The Daily Beast, Haferman stopped Groves after the man alleged­ly lost con­trol of his car and drove down an embank­ment. Noting that Groves was on pro­ba­tion for a pri­or DUI offense, Haferman said he quick­ly con­clud­ed that he had “blood­shot, glassy eyes, his pupils appeared to be dif­fer­ent sizes, and he [his] speech was slow and raspy at times,” the report states. Groves insist­ed that he “does not use alco­hol and drugs because he was on probation…[and] stat­ed that he was 100 per­cent sober.” Groves was even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed and forced to go to the hos­pi­tal to get a blood test before even­tu­al­ly get­ting placed in a jail cell for a day. The dis­trict attor­ney even­tu­al­ly dis­missed his DUI in June — and his care­less dri­ving charge two months lat­er. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation Forensic Services lab report said no drugs or alco­hol were detected.
“I can’t diag­nose PTSD, but he cer­tain­ly has all the symp­toms of being some­one who is trau­ma­tized,” Matthew Haltzman, his lawyer, told The Daily Beast.
The Larimer County District Attorney’s Office told The Daily Beast they were first made aware of the sus­pi­cious cas­es this sum­mer. That’s when the District Attorney’s office was informed by Fort Collins Police that they had already start­ed con­duct­ing an inter­nal review.
Matt Maillaro, an assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney, told The Daily Beast that by August — after going through case files and find­ing “more prob­lem­at­ic cas­es” — his office con­tact­ed the police depart­ment with the news. They would “no longer be pros­e­cut­ing cas­es in which for­mer offi­cer Haferman was an essen­tial wit­ness,” the pros­e­cu­tor said.

Maillaro added that the DA’s office con­clud­ed that sev­er­al of Haferman’s arrests were “made based on poor judg­ment, dis­re­gard for the prop­er pro­ce­dures and train­ing, and a mis­un­der­stand­ing or dis­re­gard of the legal require­ments regard­ing prob­a­ble cause.” But they did not find any­thing to sup­port crim­i­nal charges against him. “Through our review, it was appar­ent this had already been done on most of the cas­es by virtue of each pros­e­cu­tor dis­miss­ing Haferman’s bad cas­es when they saw the evi­dence didn’t sup­port a pros­e­cu­tion,” Maillaro added. It remains to be seen if Haferman can walk away com­plete­ly unscathed. Elias’ lawyer, Sarah Schielke, told The Daily Beast that she plans to file a law­suit against the Fort Collins Police Department and Haferman on behalf of Elias and sev­er­al oth­er clients who were also false­ly arrest­ed on DUI charges. Matthew Haltzman said he plans to file a sim­i­lar law­suit next year. “I think that Jason Haferman had an innate desire to be the best DUI cop out here or on his force, no mat­ter the cost. No mat­ter who was left in his wake,” Haltzman said. “But while he was just see­ing prey, he was not real­iz­ing he was leav­ing people’s lives for­ev­er changed.” “But that’s over now. His reign of ter­ror is over and it’s time to get justice.”

It is great to see the Jamaican Prime min­is­ter in the United States con­ven­ing meet­ings with American Officials on a plan between the two nations that would stem the flow of ille­gal guns into Jamaica.
It took mis­ter Holness and his gov­ern­ment a long time to do what peo­ple like myself have been say­ing he should have done years ago. Seeking help from the United States, the coun­try from which most guns are flow­ing, to stop or at least plug the dyke.
We should be clear-eyed about the help we ask from the Americans because the last thing we need in our polic­ing in Jamaica is the evi­dent bru­tal­i­ty across America’s over 18,000 police departments.
On the oth­er hand, Jamaica’s police offi­cers are seri­ous­ly lack­ing in train­ing, direc­tion, lead­er­ship, and exe­cu­tion of polic­ing duties. I believe the Americans can be of help in those areas.
The Americans have a stake in a sta­ble Jamaica and should be hap­py to help Jamaica fight against transna­tion­al criminals.
A safe Jamaica means her cit­i­zens will not be look­ing to live in the United States; that alone ought to be enough for the United States to give Jamaica the tools she needs to fight the fight she is engaged in.
Nothing is wrong with ask­ing for help, but the most crit­i­cal com­po­nent miss­ing from the sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica is a will­ing­ness on the part of the nation’s lead­ers to attack the prob­lem head-on.
Both the PNP & JLP con­tin­ue to refer to the out­dat­ed post-colo­nial era con­sti­tu­tion and laws that have the Island shack­led to unten­able non-deter­rent laws that no longer work.
We need a new Constitution!!!
Additionally, Jamaica has tied itself to region­al and glob­al treaties and con­ven­tions, mak­ing it incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to gov­ern itself appro­pri­ate­ly with­out undue con­dem­na­tion from for­eign pow­ers and lobbies.
Jamaica seeds to unshack­le and unteth­er her­self from some of those treaties.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

One of the most crit­i­cal com­po­nents in the vio­lent crime-fight Jamaica faces is arro­gance and stu­pid­i­ty on the part of Jamaica’s lead­ers. But most impor­tant is the inher­ent dis­re­spect for the dis­ci­pline of law enforcement.
Contrary to what they say in pub­lic, the coun­try’s lead­er­ship has all been schooled in the same dirty pool of igno­rance and a belief that cops are high school dropouts who could find no oth­er job, so they chose law enforcement.
There was some truth to that the­o­ry, as it is true that in all oth­er pro­fes­sions, there are total idiots, whether they man­aged to earn a degree or two degrees.
The Police depart­ment of today is vast­ly more for­mal­ly edu­cat­ed than the force that exist­ed three or four decades ago. Nevertheless, the stig­ma of dis­re­spect seems to linger, with law enforce­ment dealt with only as an afterthought.
Another dynam­ic at play is the belief in the coun­try that a degree in a sin­gle sub­ject qual­i­fies the hold­er to be an author­i­ty on every sub­ject. This insan­i­ty has hob­bled progress in the coun­try with grave con­se­quences for the people.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​w​o​r​s​e​-​o​f​f​-​w​i​t​h​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​a​n​d​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​-​t​h​a​n​-​i​t​-​w​a​s​-​t​h​r​e​e​-​d​e​c​a​d​e​s​-​a​go/

No one under­stands med­i­cine more than a sci­en­tist or doc­tor, and the same is true of nurs­ing- ques­tions on nurs­ing are best direct­ed at nurs­es. And you cer­tain­ly want to speak to teach­ers if you want to learn about the lit­tle thing we call edu­ca­tion because every­one got their edu­ca­tion from teachers.
However, when it comes to solv­ing the nation’s crime prob­lem, the coun­try’s lead­er­ship turns to pedi­a­tri­cians, talk­ing heads, and every­one but the peo­ple with the exper­tise. This is dis­re­spect of the high­est order that must be called out once and for all.
The nation’s last three nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ters have all been peo­ple thrust into the role with zero expe­ri­ence in nation­al secu­ri­ty. Let me has­ten to pre­empt those who con­tin­ue to be apol­o­gists by argu­ing that the secu­ri­ty min­is­ter is a pol­i­cy posi­tion. The best pol­i­cy deci­sions will come from peo­ple with inti­mate knowl­edge of the dis­ci­pline. There, I fixed that for you!!!!
Peter Bunting of the PNP was a busi­ness­man. The JLP’s Robert Montague is a Botanist, and Horace Chang is a med­ical doctor.
By that met­ric, we should have Andrew Holness a teacher, doing surg­eries in the hos­pi­tals. The sad real­i­ty is that both polit­i­cal par­ties’ lead­er­ship lack com­mon sense and cer­tain­ly sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness of the crit­i­cal impor­tance of secu­ri­ty in a nation.
But the dis­re­spect, arro­gance, and stu­pid­i­ty do not stop there; in recent times, three for­mer heads of the Island’s mil­i­tary have been appoint­ed head of the con­stab­u­lary with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to the morale and effec­tive­ness of the force.
The present com­mis­sion­er of police is one of those trans­plants. The results are clear.
Operating a lit­tle defense force whose main func­tion is to back up the con­stab­u­lary in no way, shape, or form pre­pared either of those three men to lead a police depart­ment of twelve thou­sand men and women on a mis­sion as cru­cial as enforc­ing the nation’s laws.
With all respect to their cre­den­tials, we may nev­er get to learn whether heads of the Jamaica Defense Force were or are remote­ly qual­i­fied, regard­less of the rank they attained. The acid test of a true mil­i­tary leader is per­for­mance as a com­man­der. Jamaica has not and is not engaged in any wars so our mil­i­tary lead­ers have zero lead­er­ship as com­man­ders under fire.
Need I say more?
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​c​f​-​g​a​v​e​-​u​p​-​t​h​e​-​s​t​r​e​e​t​s​-​t​o​-​h​o​o​l​i​g​a​ns/

The Prime Minister loves using the State Of Emergency Powers as a crime sup­pres­sant tool. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that mis­ter Holness was not always enam­ored with that pow­er while he was in oppo­si­tion.
In fact, he berat­ed and cas­ti­gat­ed the fact that police could, under those same pow­ers, barge into some­one’s home with­out a warrant.
Whenever you place pow­er into the hands of humans, they will abuse it. Place extreme pow­ers into the hands of humans, and they will abuse those pow­ers exponentially.
My entire ser­vice from 1982 to 1991 as a police offi­cer was under the so-called sup­pres­sion of crime Act, which allowed us addi­tion­al pow­ers to go after criminals.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties failed dur­ing that peri­od of pro­tract­ed use to write, debate, and pass leg­is­la­tion into law that had the nec­es­sary teeth to pro­tect the country.
Consequently, the coun­try has floun­dered like a ship with­out a rud­der bounc­ing off rock after rock with no clear anti-crime pol­i­cy from either par­ty while in government.
https://mikebeckles.com/a‑clean-unbiased-and-honest-judiciary-central-to-the-rule-of-law-in-a-democratic-society/

Year after year, the Island’s crime sit­u­a­tion wors­ens while the polit­i­cal lead­ers either play pol­i­tics or pon­tif­i­cate about band-aid approach­es they have imposed. It becomes more dif­fi­cult to uproot the ‘dons’ who are import­ing guns into the coun­try and wreak­ing hav­oc on the young peo­ple they bring into their gangs.
“No gang is gonna get fame by us for call­ing up their names. They are nobod­ies and we must treat them like that, because the rea­son why they have pow­er is because we big them up in the soci­ety.”(Andrew Holness PM)
The audio has­n’t always matched the video so we will keep a keen eye from now on.
Are the nation’s lead­ers dumb, or are they inten­tion­al­ly allow­ing crime, vio­lence, and may­hem to con­tin­ue because there is mon­ey to be made from crime?
We will explore that in anoth­er article.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Yesterday I wrote briefly about the hor­rors of dri­ving on Jamaican streets and high­ways. In the brief arti­cle, I assert­ed that the Constabulary all but ced­ed con­trol of the streets to taxi dri­vers and minibus dri­vers, much to the per­il of the trav­el­ing public.
In fair­ness to the two named groups, oth­er dri­vers have also tak­en a cue from them and are doing the same thing.
After expo­sure to dri­ving on the streets, it makes sense to drop to one’s knees and pray to God for his mer­cies to allow you to get back home safe­ly.https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​c​f​-​g​a​v​e​-​u​p​-​t​h​e​-​s​t​r​e​e​t​s​-​t​o​-​h​o​o​l​i​g​a​ns/

Up to Tuesday, the 2022 num­ber of Jamaicans killed in auto crash­es stood at 431. “It is on track to hit 472 by December 31… 41 peo­ple who are alive right now will be dead in 32 days, one pri­vate sec­tor exec­u­tive bemoans.
The irony is that the pri­vate sec­tor is con­cerned about this but seem­ing­ly not the police to the extent they should. At least not the high com­mand that seems con­tent with sit­ting in offices and giv­ing speeches.
The car­nage on the roads could be dras­ti­cal­ly reduced if the con­stab­u­lary deployed real traf­fic cops who are not afraid to issue sum­mons­es and make arrests for reck­less driving.
Then again, the gov­ern­ment has not done any­thing to add teeth to the traf­fic laws, so there is hard­ly any point in writ­ing tick­ets and issu­ing sum­mons­es when there are no real con­se­quences for scofflaws.
I read that a man shot and killed a celebri­ty’s dog in the United States and was sen­tenced to twen­ty-one years in prison. A mur­der con­vic­tion in Jamaica gets the offend­er sev­en years. The nation’s secu­ri­ty is cer­tain­ly not a pri­or­i­ty. Far too many pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial peo­ple make mon­ey from crime in Jamaica. Secondly, there are far too many self-impor­tant fools with undue influ­ence at the University of the West Indies impact­ing pol­i­cy for the gov­ern­ment to seri­ous­ly address the issue of crime and vio­lence in the country.
So the Prime Minister con­tin­ues to bull­shit the coun­try about the effects of ZOSOs & SOEs.
Drivers over­take on side­walks, around dead cor­ners, uphill down­hill, across con­tin­u­ous white lines, all reck­less dri­ving, all arrestable offens­es, but there are no cops around.
The inher­ent dan­gers on the roads are exac­er­bat­ed by the vio­lent crime that con­tin­ues to esca­late and con­tin­ue to plague the coun­try. Shockingly, the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion would rather play pol­i­tics with this issue to gain power.
But the oppo­si­tion is not in charge; the JLP admin­is­tra­tion has stuck its fin­gers in its own ears and con­tin­ued to shout, ” I can­not hear you on this exis­ten­tial issue.

Almost a decade ago, now dis­graced Prime Minister Bruce Golding intro­duced the coun­try to a new police over­sight agency. That agency was named the Independent Commission of Inquiries, or INDECOM.
At the time, it was hard­ly rea­son­able to argue against the for­ma­tion of an over­sight agency to look at abus­es and crimes com­mit­ted by the police, mil­i­tary, and cor­rec­tions departments.
There was no way any­one could seri­ous­ly over­look the crimes that police offi­cers were involved in. Additionally, the com­pe­tence and will­ing­ness of the police hier­ar­chy to deal effec­tive­ly with cor­rup­tion were well known, large­ly because of its own incom­pe­tence and corruption.
This writer was all for an over­sight agency that was well thought out and empow­ered. What Golding gave the coun­try was a very poor­ly con­fig­ured law that was, at best, the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of incom­pe­ten­cy and, worse case, an unbri­dled anti-police bloodhound.
The law, which has since gone through some changes, was not only bad and poor­ly writ­ten, it was inten­tion­al­ly writ­ten to be inju­ri­ous and destruc­tive to our police offi­cers. Many inno­cent offi­cers became vic­tims of the poor­ly writ­ten law, and the self-aggran­diz­ing zealot Golding named as the com­mis­sion­er of the neo­phyte agency.

The basis for the INDECOM Act was jus­ti­fi­able’ the way the law was writ­ten has been mali­cious. I warned at the time, and in sub­se­quent arti­cles over the years, that it would cause great harm to Jamaica (a) by killing the morale of offi­cers, (b) cause mass attri­tion from the agency, and © result in an expo­nen­tial increase in lawlessness.
No one lis­tened, and today all three pre­dict­ed out­comes are with us. The sad real­i­ty is that even as we mourn the destruc­tion of our way of life as we knew it, the loss of blood and trea­sure is even greater.
And so for Golding and his acolytes at the University of the West Indies, includ­ing the dis­graced pedi­a­tri­cian Carolyn Gomez who found her place advis­ing the Ministry of National secu­ri­ty, the blood will for­ev­er be on their hands.
Part of that advice was to do away with the time-hon­ored tra­di­tion of esprit de corps, a feel­ing of pride, fel­low­ship, and com­mon loy­al­ty shared by the mem­bers of a par­tic­u­lar group).
This Esprit de corps is essen­tial to any group activ­i­ties. For mem­bers of the mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary groups like police depart­ments, it is crit­i­cal because each mem­ber’s life depends on his com­rade hav­ing his back. It is a mat­ter of life and death, some­thing nei­ther the idi­ot­ic baby doc­tor nor the morons in the nation­al secu­ri­ty min­istry under­stand because they nev­er sac­ri­ficed any­thing for our country…
Today, despite a larg­er num­ber of cops in uni­form, offi­cers hav­ing more equip­ment than ever in the force’s his­to­ry, includ­ing tech­nol­o­gy, and bet­ter for­mal edu­ca­tion, the Constabulary is expo­nen­tial­ly worse than it was three decades ago.
So much for modernization.
Numbers are the met­ric we use to judge per­for­mance and com­pe­tence; the data does not add up. Our coun­try is worse off than it was decades ago on the issue of crime and violence.

This arti­cle has been updat­ed from its orig­i­nal publication.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

From time to time, you have seen me talk about how crime and law­less­ness impov­er­ish­es every­one except those engaged in crim­i­nal acts. It is not a con­cept that the author­i­ties in Jamaica seem to get; in fact, they seem to have walled them­selves off from hear­ing things that are not com­pli­men­ta­ry of what they are doing.
Jamaica is burst­ing with poten­tial there is no ques­tion about that; clear­ly, the gov­ern­ment is doing some great things with the econ­o­my and tourism sector.
Of course, there is much more that could be added to the tourism prod­uct, aside from the idea that our coun­try is a beach with reg­gae music where peo­ple go to smoke weed.
The dynamism of the young peo­ple and the excite­ment they share when you inter­act with them is heart­warm­ing. However, the coun­try’s lead­ers still haven’t fig­ured out how to max­i­mize or unleash our nation’s full poten­tial, one which is not beset by vio­lent crime.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​a​-​c​u​l​t​u​r​a​l​l​y​-​u​n​t​a​p​p​e​d​-​g​o​l​d​-​m​i​ne/

On a recent trip to Jamaica, I could not help but notice that despite the hype and big talk about progress (don’t get me wrong, there is some progress), the stark real­i­ty is that as it relates to safe­ty and secu­ri­ty, the coun­try is less safe than 31 years ago when I left the JCF.
To begin with, the pre­em­i­nent law enforce­ment agency, the JCF, has all but ced­ed the streets to the hooli­gans oper­at­ing as taxi oper­a­tors and mini-bus dri­vers. There is hard­ly a cred­i­ble con­ver­sa­tion in oppo­si­tion to this asser­tion anymore.
Driving all over the cor­po­rate area day after day, I could have count­ed the num­ber of police vehi­cles on the one hand and had fin­gers left over.
It was the same as my pre­vi­ous vis­it in Ochi Rios and Montego Bay a year ear­li­er. I observed a sin­gle police vehi­cle in Ochi Rios square parked in the crush of human bod­ies, both offi­cers uncon­cerned, scrolling through their cell phones.

Decades ago in Kingston, there were seri­ous motor­cy­cle traf­fic cops; offi­cers who were feared and respect­ed, but it was­n’t just in Kingston but what was then the Ferry high­way and all across the Island. Traffic cops main­tained a strong pres­ence, and traf­fic fatal­i­ties were minimal.
There were expo­nen­tial­ly few­er auto­mo­biles on our hor­ri­ble local roads and thor­ough­fares, but the force was much smaller.
Today there are rough­ly 12,000 police offi­cers on the job as opposed to some­where around 8’000 offi­cers three decades again. Again, I under­stand that as the num­ber of cops has increased over the years, so too has the pop­u­la­tion grown from rough­ly 2.5 mil­lion in the ear­ly nineties to approx­i­mate­ly three mil­lion today.
Understandably, the force is still gross­ly under­staffed by inter­na­tion­al stan­dards, and the agency is beset with the ever-present prob­lem of attrition.
Additionally, offi­cers are forced to work with­out the tools they need to do their jobs. No one asks doc­tors, nurs­es, fire­men, or oth­er work­ers to do their jobs with­out the appro­pri­ate tools. Yet mem­bers of the JCF do not have life-sav­ing bal­lis­tic vests, no tasers, pep­per spray, and oth­er accou­ter­ments of the trade.

Ironically, offi­cers who act in the moment in defense of life and prop­er­ty with­out the req­ui­site tools are at per­il of prison by the same sys­tem that is unwill­ing to equip them.
The Commissioner of Police, Antony Anderson, seems to be oper­at­ing in a cocoon away from the real­i­ties on the ground. I was told that police sta­tions are oper­at­ing with­out a sin­gle ser­vice vehi­cle. How can police oper­ate with­out vehi­cles when they are required to answer dis­tress calls from the pub­lic at rapid speed?
Sources con­firmed that Antony Anderson’s response to why there are police sta­tions with­out ser­vice vehi­cles is that offi­cers are crash­ing the vehicles.
Police offi­cers must respond to calls with the utmost alacrity; they are asked to deal with the worst actors in our societies.
Unfortunately, giv­en the job we ask offi­cers to do, cars will crash. Officers place their lives on the line to answer those calls. I seri­ous­ly doubt that there is a sin­gle offi­cer who wants to be involved in a poten­tial­ly life-threat­en­ing auto crash.
But I am will­ing to for­give Antony Anderson’s naïveté and igno­rance because, as I have said in pre­vi­ous arti­cles, he was nev­er a police offi­cer, so he has no lived expe­ri­ence of what it is those police offi­cers do.
What utter nonsense!!!

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The 28-year-old Virginia cop who killed three fam­i­ly mem­bers of a Riverside teenag­er had posed online as a teen to “groom” the 15-year-old girl, the Riverside Police Department said Wednesday.

Austin Lee Edwards por­trayed him­self as a 17-year-old while com­mu­ni­cat­ing online with the girl, using “groom­ing” meth­ods, which can include tac­tics such as ask­ing for or offer­ing sex­u­al­ly explic­it images, pro­vid­ing gifts and offer­ing com­pli­ments, Riverside Police Chief Larry Gonzalez said at a news conference.

Gonzalez said it is still under inves­ti­ga­tion how long the dig­i­tal rela­tion­ship between Edwards and the teen girl tran­spired and what plat­form they used to meet or com­mu­ni­cate, but inves­ti­ga­tors believe many of those typ­i­cal exploita­tive strate­gies for “sex­tor­tion” were used in this case.

“This type of vic­tim­iza­tion takes place across every plat­form, social media, mes­sag­ing apps, gam­ing plat­forms, etc.,” Gonzalez said. Read more here: https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​c​a​t​f​i​s​h​i​n​g​-​c​o​p​-​p​r​e​t​e​n​d​e​d​-​1​7​-​g​r​o​o​m​e​d​-​1​8​5​2​5​2​4​8​1​.​h​tml

Over the years the United States Supreme Court and var­i­ous branch­es of the Federal judi­cia­ry have seri­ous­ly erod­ed the rights of Americans in a series of nefar­i­ous and down­right uncon­sti­tu­tion­al rul­ings while giv­ing more pow­er to the state and, there­fore, to police who use their pow­ers to oppress and even com­mit murder.
From the deci­sion in Shelby County, Alabama v Holder to Citizens United to Roe V Wade and more, the court has made hor­ri­ble deci­sions that have result­ed in con­tin­ued ero­sions rather than the expan­sion of the rights of Americans.
This pat­tern of abuse by a court that enjoys unprece­dent­ed unpop­u­lar­i­ty and a wide belief that it is ille­git­i­mate can be expect­ed to con­tin­ue well into the future due to the six right-wing extrem­ists on the court.
Before this present court is done, it may very well dis­man­tle the 246-year exper­i­ment that is the United States.(mb)

Federal Court to Rule on Passengers Live Streaming Police During Traffic Stops

By Erin Marquis

Cars have always been a mine­field when it comes to pri­va­cy rights vers­es pub­lic safe­ty, and now, two impor­tant ques­tions are final­ly in front of a U.S. cir­cuit court: Is live stream­ing pro­tect­ed in the same way as record­ing, and does the pas­sen­ger in a stopped car have a First Amendment right to record or broad­cast a stop?

These ques­tions are now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit based on a law­suit brought by Dijon Sharpe. Sharpe was rid­ing in a car pulled over by Winterville, N.C., police in 2018. He began live stream­ing the traf­fic stop to Facebook Live when a Winterville Police Department offi­cer told him to stop. The offi­cer tried to grab Sharpe’s phone and threat­en­ing him with arrest if Sharpe didn’t sur­ren­der the phone to the officer.

Sharpe sued the police depart­ment, argu­ing that live stream­ing the inter­ac­tion was impor­tant in order to show that the footage was not edit­ed and to pro­tect the footage from being delet­ed should the police seize his phone. The Winterville Police Department, how­ev­er, argued that live stream­ing puts offi­cers at risk by adver­tis­ing to peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with stopped dri­vers exact­ly where they are. Such live streams could lead to a crowd gath­er­ing or revenge from asso­ciates angry over police stops in general.

While the right to free speech is in the mix — and you def­i­nite­ly have the right to at least record a traf­fic stop — the Fourth Amendment argu­ment is impor­tant too. Just where do pas­sen­gers’ pro­tec­tion against unrea­son­able search­es and seizures end and police offi­cers’ rea­son­able need to con­trol a traf­fic stop begin? From the Washington Post:

Previous courts have upheld citizen’s right to record the police, but this is the first time the ques­tion of a passenger’s rights have been called into ques­tion. The deci­sion could have rever­ber­a­tions for everyone’s rights while behind the wheel. We will update this sto­ry once there is a ruling.

There is a ten­den­cy with­in the jus­tice sys­tem to have strength only for the poor­est and least pow­er­ful Jamaicans. If you are a poor man who can­not feed your fam­i­ly, be advised that your deci­sion to steal some ack­ees from mas Joe’s tree will land you in prison if you are caught steal­ing them.
On the oth­er hand, if you are a polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed lawyer, a man can be stabbed repeat­ed­ly and shot in your home in which there was no oth­er per­son but your­self, no one broke into the house, and you will nev­er see the inside of a jail cell.
A young man who grabs a neck­lace and runs away is at greater risk of going to prison if caught than a politi­cian who alleges that he left his reg­is­tered firearm in his car, for­got or omit­ted to lock the vehi­cle, then dis­cov­ers that the weapon was gone and failed to noti­fy the police until he was ready to do so.….… the next day.

For the sys­tem to work, every Jamaican must have buy-in, mean­ing every Jamaican, regard­less of means, must have a brief that the sys­tem is there to pro­tect them. When those of less means har­bor the belief that the sys­tem only works for those at the top, they rebel. They do as they please; when the mass­es are in a state of dis­con­tent, the upper class is not in a safe place.
It is past time for the sys­tem to self-cor­rect. Jamaica needs to move expe­di­tious­ly from the present sys­tem of man to a sys­tem of laws. We need a new con­sti­tu­tion writ­ten by Jamaican aca­d­e­mics. We need a police depart­ment that is pro­fes­sion­al and delib­er­a­tive. A com­pe­tent pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al body and a less cor­rupt judi­cia­ry that is less inclined to work on behalf of vio­lent murderers.
Some have chas­tised me for repeat­ed­ly char­ac­ter­iz­ing the Jamaican judi­cia­ry as ‘cor­rupt.’ Their under­stand­ing of the term cor­rupt in this con­text is lim­it­ed to only tak­ing bribes. Yet, no one should be delu­sion­al about whether judges have tak­en mon­ey from defense lawyers to aid their clients. Even with that knowl­edge, some Jamaicans would rather pre­tend this dynam­ic does not exist rather than face the facts.
The term cor­rup­tion with­in the con­text of the judi­cia­ry is not con­fined to tak­ing bribes but extends further.
Transparency International, a world-renowned watch­dog agency, asserts ’ judi­cial cor­rup­tion fuels impuni­ty and cor­rodes the rule of law.’
Equal treat­ment before the law is a pil­lar of demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties. ‘When courts are cor­rupt­ed by greed or polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, the scales of jus­tice are tipped, and ordi­nary peo­ple suffer.’

Nowhere is this more self-evi­dent than right here in Jamaica, where at the very top of the judi­cial branch of gov­ern­ment, there appears to be cor­rup­tion, one that results in the inex­plic­a­ble minor tech­ni­cal­i­ties and inane argu­ments that are used to jus­ti­fy the release of vio­lent repeat mur­der­ers and gang­sters back onto to the streets.
Worse yet, this comes against the back­ground of a judi­cia­ry with no con­se­quen­tial over­sight that ensures fideli­ty to pro­to­col and adher­ence to prin­ci­ples and propriety.
To the extent that the judi­cia­ry is held to any stan­dard of pro­to­col and pro­pri­ety, they are self-polic­ing and, there­fore, answer­able to no one but themselves…
One of the main dri­vers of crime is the belief among a large seg­ment of soci­ety that the sys­tem does not work for them. Therefore they are pre­pared to do as they please and live with the consequences.
The sad real­i­ty is that while they are pre­pared to live with the con­se­quences, the rest of soci­ety is dying from their actions.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police detec­tive, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog Mikebeckles​.com.

Violent crimes, in vary­ing degrees, are fuelled by sev­er­al fac­tors; gang activ­i­ties, reli­gion, hatred, pho­bias, pover­ty, domes­tic dis­putes, and the abil­i­ty to get away with it are only a few of the rea­sons why peo­ple engage in this anti­so­cial behavior.
The mis­takes soci­eties make are the pre­sump­tions that we can cur­tail or elim­i­nate vio­lence among us sim­ply by throw­ing more police at the problem.
Pain in the body is not the prob­lem; pain is a warn­ing sig­nal that some­thing is wrong. So we take pain reliev­ing med­ica­tion to reduce the imme­di­a­cy of the issue, but we still need to get to what caused the prob­lem in the first place.
If we do not iden­ti­fy and treat the rea­son for the pain, not only does the pain return after the med­ica­tion’s ini­tial effect, the prob­lem wors­ens for the body.
When the gov­ern­ment throws a bandaid (ZOSO, SOE) at the vio­lence plagu­ing a com­mu­ni­ty, the flare-up sub­sides, sure but does the prob­lem go away?
No…
Arguably, in the same way, pain in the body can be tran­sient, mov­ing to anoth­er part of the body quick­ly, so too are the crim­i­nals able to move before law enforce­ment arrives.
When vio­lent crim­i­nals strike an area for some time, the author­i­ties flood the area with law enforce­ment offi­cers and sol­diers for peace­keep­ing. This prac­tice demon­strates that the gov­ern­ment has no oth­er tool to deal with said vio­lence’s producers.
What the prac­tice does is demon­stra­bly say to the crim­i­nals all they need to do is stay one step ahead of the flood of police offi­cers and sol­diers because there is noth­ing else coming.
And that is exact­ly what they do.
In a recent con­ver­sa­tion with one of my friends and men­tors, whom I admire for his street-savvy, tough­ness, brav­ery, and knowl­edge, he remind­ed me of how we oper­at­ed as cops.
We could not stop any­one who real­ly want­ed to com­mit mur­der but the peo­ple so inclined knew that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting away with it was next to zero.
Killing a cop, well, that was a whole oth­er sto­ry. And so, because of how we oper­at­ed, that became a crime sup­pres­sion mech­a­nism. That kind of aggres­sive, knowl­edge-based polic­ing is no longer in the tool­box, my friend lament­ed, because the Prime Minister said he did not want any of it.
This writer has repeat­ed­ly remind­ed you that Andrew Holness balked that cops are aggres­sive with criminals.
Why is that?
The net results are for every­one to see, well over a thou­sand homi­cides each year on his watch; that is the col­lat­er­al damage.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.