For the past (20) years after leav­ing my native Jamaica, I oper­at­ed two small busi­ness­es in a small city in New York State, one a bar­ber­ing busi­ness and the oth­er an elec­tron­ics busi­ness, both of which serve the com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing Jamaicans who live here. Those two busi­ness­es still serve the com­mu­ni­ty today.
Over the years, I have had arguably thou­sands of con­ver­sa­tions with my native coun­try­men and women, some more informed than oth­ers. I would like to think that we have learned from each oth­er. If noth­ing else, I have learned that it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to con­vince us Jamaicans of truths once we already hold an opin­ion on a par­tic­u­lar subject.
We have a dif­fi­cult time allow­ing facts to get in the way of our opin­ions. We argue with each oth­er and lit­er­al­ly say, “nu bady can’ tell me nut­ten.”

In one such con­ver­sa­tions a *friend* (*used loose­ly) of mine returned from Jamaica and began telling his tales of, “bway Jamaica nice nuh rass”. There are sev­er­al take-aways from these pro­nounce­ments, not the least of which are that they are the only Jamaicans who are true Jamaicans, or that they went, spent some time, ate some cur­ried goat or jerk pork and drank some rum and did­n’t get killed, then “nu weh nu bet­ta dan yard”.
Of course God for­bid that any­one should men­tion that Jamaica lit­er­al­ly has one of the world’s high­est mur­der rates and in fact the high­est homi­cide rate in Latin America and the Caribbean sur­pass­ing vio­lent nations such as Mexico, Honduras, Guatamala, Nicaragua and others.
Because that results in the oblig­a­tory , peo­ple a ded every weh.
The idea that homi­cide rates would be a part of the con­ver­sa­tion , at least with me is that it seems that peo­ple who are still alive seem to have no con­cern about the high mur­der rate in our country.
In fact, my *friend* spared no effort in detail­ing to a cou­ple of us that the peo­ple who are dying in Jamaica are respon­si­ble for their own deaths. You know the drill, “bway sup­pen inna sup­pen” , .….……me rolling y eyes.
So by that mea­sure the so called bad peo­ple who do some­thing are deserv­ing of the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment.…. to be gunned down.

My con­cern prompt­ed me to ask whether he was at all con­cerned about the inno­cent peo­ple who just hap­pened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? He told me if he goes into a bar and sees cer­tain peo­ple he walks out. I asked, since you know what to look for, <rolling my eyes again> what about the peo­ple who do [not] have a clue what to look for, peo­ple just pass­ing through who mere­ly stopped to get a drink of water?
Naturally he had no answer for that.…..
My ques­tion still stand for my *friend* and the oth­er Jumekans who con­tin­ue to advance the asa­nine the­o­ry that peo­ple are dying every­where as if it is rea­son to be tol­er­ant of Jamaican’s intol­er­a­ble mur­der rate.
What about the nine peo­ple who were shot at an event in Spring Village Saint Catherine result­ing in three dead, are we sat­is­fied that its okay for peo­ple attend­ing an event to be mur­dered because some­one stand­ing next to oth­er peo­ple has a beef with some­one else?
When we get to the place where we only care about our­selves and our own self­ish plea­sures includ­ing that it isn’t yet our time in this russ­ian roulette style exis­tence we have cre­at­ed for our­selves, you know we are lost.

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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.

On June 26, 2020 — the day 73-year-old Karen Garner was forcibly arrest­ed by Loveland police offi­cers — Reidesel Mendoza was “the sole per­son that did the right thing.”

Mendoza had stopped his car to con­front the offi­cers arrest­ing Garner because “the way they were han­dling that sit­u­a­tion was not the right way,” he said in an inter­view Saturday, after receiv­ing a cit­i­zen­ship award for his actions that day.

“I tried to do what was right,” Mendoza said.

Garner — who has demen­tia — was accused of leav­ing Walmart that day with­out pay­ing for $13.88 worth of mer­chan­dise, but staff stop­per her and retrieved the items before she left. Garner was walk­ing home when offi­cer Austin Hopp stopped her. About 30 sec­onds after Hopp got out of his car, he forced Garner to the ground and tried to arrest her.

Another offi­cer — Daria Jalali — arrived short­ly after to help Hopp restrain Garner. Sgt. Philip Metzler arrived after the two offi­cers got Garner in one of their patrol cars.

Mendoza saw how the offi­cers were treat­ing Garner and decid­ed he need­ed to intervene.

“Do you have to use that much aggres­sion,” Mendoza could be heard say­ing to Hopp in Hopp’s body cam­era footage, released to the pub­lic by an attor­ney who rep­re­sent­ed Garner’s fam­i­ly in a civ­il law­suit filed against the city.

Hopp then told him to “get out of here, this is not your busi­ness,” and fur­ther explained, “this is what hap­pens when you fight the police.”

Later, in a con­ver­sa­tion between Mendoza and Metzler on the scene cap­tured on Metzler’s body cam­era footage, Mendoza said, ““when you see a per­son walk­ing and the next thing you see is a cop throw­ing them to the ground with­out her using force or noth­ing, what’s going to be your reaction?”

ORIGINAL STORY BELOW IN LINK

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​p​s​-​t​a​c​k​l​e​d​-​a​-​g​r​a​n​d​m​a​-​w​i​t​h​-​d​e​m​e​n​t​i​a​-​p​i​c​k​i​n​g​-​f​l​o​w​e​r​s​-​b​o​d​y​c​a​m​-​f​o​o​t​a​g​e​-​s​h​o​ws/

“I’m not sure but usu­al­ly I would think that the police have a rea­son to arrest her,” Metzler replied and repeat­ed­ly told Mendoza he didn’t have all the infor­ma­tion so he can’t judge the offi­cers’ actions.

“You may think you’re defend­ing her but she’s the one that com­mit­ted a crime,” Metzler said in the body cam­era footage.

Garner had her shoul­der dis­lo­cat­ed and arm frac­tured dur­ing the arrest, accord­ing to a civ­il law­suit set­tled by the city with Garner’s fam­i­ly by the city for $3 million. 

Hopp and Jalali were both crim­i­nal­ly charged for their actions in this inci­dent. Hopp was sen­tenced to five years in prison for sec­ond-degree assault, and Jalali was sen­tenced to 45 days in jail and three years of pro­ba­tion for fail­ing to intervene.

In addi­tion to Hopp and Jalali, Metzler and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice offi­cer Tyler Blackett resigned from the depart­ment. Another offi­cer, Paul Ashe, was fired as part of the inves­ti­ga­tion into offi­cers’ actions dur­ing and after Garner’s arrest, but is suing the depart­ment for wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion.

‘Everybody has the right to speak up’

Mendoza was com­mend­ed for inter­ven­ing in Garner’s arrest dur­ing Loveland’s Latine Heritage Month Celebration at Foote Lagoon on Saturday, by being pre­sent­ed a cit­i­zen­ship award.

“Everybody has the right to speak up,” Mendoza said after being pre­sent­ed the award. “… If you see some­thing that is not right, you have the right to speak. That can change some­one else’s life.”

The award was pre­sent­ed in part by the Community Trust Commission, which was formed by the Loveland city coun­cil to aide in rebuild­ing trust with the com­mu­ni­ty and its police department.

Interim Loveland Police Chief Eric Stewart applaud­ed Mendoza’s courage in step­ping up that day, and said the pub­lic plays in key role in suc­cess­ful polic­ing, ref­er­enc­ing one of Robert Peel’s — who he said is con­sid­ered the father of mod­ern polic­ing — prin­ci­ples: “The pub­lic are the police and the police are the public.”

“Clearly we can’t police with­out the pub­lic. We cer­tain­ly didn’t do a great job that day,” Stewart said. “… I’m sor­ry we let you down that day.”

Loveland Mayor Jacki Marsh thanked Mendoza for over­com­ing fear to do the right thing in inter­ven­ing, some­thing not every­one would do in a sim­i­lar situation.

“You have my heart­felt appre­ci­a­tion and admi­ra­tion,” Marsh said to Mendoza. “… I can­not thank you enough, for in that hor­ri­ble day, you were the ray of hope, the ray of sun­shine for Karen Garner. You were the sole per­son that did the right thing that day.”

This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Man who inter­vened in Loveland Karen Garner arrest awarded

Donald Trump left the White House hav­ing appoint­ed more than 200 judges to the fed­er­al bench, includ­ing near­ly as many pow­er­ful fed­er­al appeals court judges in four years as President Barack Obama appoint­ed in eight.
Trump, the nation’s 45^th pres­i­dent, worked close­ly with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and oth­er Senate Republicans to reshape the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry – par­tic­u­lar­ly the appeals courts – for decades to come. Federal judges have life­time tenure and typ­i­cal­ly remain on the bench long after the pres­i­dents who nom­i­nat­ed them have left office. (Pewresearch)

Experts con­tend that to the extent strong­men have tried to take over gov­ern­ments as Donald Trump tried to do in his sin­gle term is to stack the judi­cia­ry with inex­pe­ri­enced lackeys.
Aileen Cannon, run­ning pro­tec­tion for Trump in Florida, is one of those inex­pe­ri­enced lack­eys that lit­er­al­ly owe being on the fed­er­al bench to Donald Trump and is work­ing assid­u­ous­ly to pro­tect him with the office she holds.
Not only is she inex­pe­ri­enced, she is unqual­i­fied but for Trump’s stan­dard, which is slav­ish loyalty.
This Hispanic 41-year-old was born in Colombia to a Cuban refugee mother.
With her feal­ty to the Republican par­ty and bla­tant dis­re­gard for the United States Constitution, Cannon align with oth­er Cuban-Americans who have wormed their way into American pol­i­tics. See Raphael Cruz, Marco Rubio et. al.

Federal Judge Aileen Cannon also appoint­ed Senior District Judge Raymond Dearie as a third par­ty (spe­cial mas­ter) to review records seized by the FBI for mate­ri­als that could be priv­i­leged and kept from fed­er­al investigators.
In one of the most shock­ing things a judge could say, Eileen Cannon said she is giv­ing Donald Trump spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion because he is the for­mer pres­i­dent. It runs against every grain of the United States Constitution.…no per­son, regard­less of who they are, has spe­cial privileges.
“The court does not find it appro­pri­ate to accept the government’s con­clu­sions on these impor­tant and dis­put­ed issues with­out fur­ther review by a neu­tral third par­ty in an expe­dit­ed and order­ly fash­ion,” Cannon wrote Thursday.
What the Trump-appoint­ed judge did was smear the Department of Justice as untruth­ful and untrust­wor­thy, so much so that it makes ratio­nal sense to have an inde­pen­dent third party(special mas­ter) act­ing as referee.
That is some­thing one would expect to hear from Donald Trump or one of his lawyers, not from a fed­er­al judge.
The DOJ can appeal the rul­ing, but there are no guar­an­tees that the out­come will be bet­ter. 6 of the 11 judges in the 11^th cir­cuit were placed in posi­tion by Donald Trump.

The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court recent­ly chas­tised peo­ple who crit­i­cized the Recent Dobbs deci­sion that unrav­eled Roe Versus Wade, the 49-year deci­sion that gave a woman the right to an abortion.
John Roberts famous­ly said that judges call balls and strikes on the supreme court. He argued that judges are not repub­li­cans or democ­rats, a state­ment that, to this writer, strains his cred­i­bil­i­ty. Either Roberts believes mak­ing those state­ments pro­tects the court’s integri­ty, or he believes fun­da­men­tal­ly that mem­bers of the court’s fra­ter­ni­ty are supe­ri­or to the rest of us.
Roberts said he’s con­cerned crit­i­cism of the Supreme Court over con­tro­ver­sial deci­sions has veered into attacks on its legit­i­ma­cy as an institution.
But why would he be sur­prised that peo­ple would gen­uine­ly and appro­pri­ate­ly ques­tion the rel­e­vance and legit­i­ma­cy of a gov­ern­ment agency that has removed rights two gen­er­a­tions of Americans have tak­en for granted?
How can the Supreme Court claim legit­i­ma­cy when it is in the busi­ness of tak­ing away the rights of American citizens?
“People can say what they want, but “sim­ply because peo­ple dis­agree with an opin­ion is not a basis for ques­tion­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of the court.”

I call [cap] lie. People can ques­tion the court’s legit­i­ma­cy when three judges on the court lied to the Senate pan­el that they would not inter­fere with Roe and set­tled precedent.
The three liars, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amey Coney-Barrett were all placed on the court by a crim­i­nal pres­i­dent Donald Trump.
What does John Roberts tru­ly feel about the three char­la­tans on his court, and what are his thoughts regard­ing Eileen Cannon’s bla­tant­ly polit­i­cal decision?

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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.

It seems almost point­less to talk about a sin­gle inci­dent of vio­lence in Jamaica these days; truth­ful­ly, it has been that way for decades. The sad real­i­ty is that Jamaica con­tin­ues to devolve into a total­ly law­less soci­ety; vio­lence is becom­ing the only con­flict res­o­lu­tion tool uti­lized by the people.
This phe­nom­e­non has become so accept­ed as part of the Jamaican cul­ture that even peo­ple opposed to law-break­ing imme­di­ate­ly default to join­ing in chop­ping, stab­bing, or drop­ping a large rock on the head of some­one they sus­pect may have com­mit­ted a seri­ous crime in their community.
And so we must seri­ous­ly con­sid­er why cit­i­zens take the law into their own hands. Ultimately, the law is always in the hands of the peo­ple. They vol­un­tar­i­ly agree to empow­er cer­tain enti­ties, i.e., the police, pros­e­cu­tors, and the courts, to act on their behalf. When they reach the point where they believe those they empow­er to act are not act­ing accord­ing to their wish­es, they revert to jun­gle justice.

The break­down of law and order in soci­eties stems inex­orably from the fail­ure of the state to deliv­er time­ly jus­tice in the courts.
It is impor­tant not to view this as pure­ly a polic­ing issue, as the police are only one cog in the wheel of justice.
The job of elect­ed offi­cials is to pass laws that are com­pas­sion­ate but strong enough to act as deter­rents to crim­i­nal conduct.
It is up to those elect­ed to cre­ate, train, and main­tain a com­pe­tent police depart­ment to hire enough com­pe­tent pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and sup­port staff to effec­tu­ate the smooth run­ning of the crim­i­nal jus­tice food chain.
The gov­ern­ment also has a duty to build pris­ons, staff them and ensure that those held in them are treat­ed fair­ly but not allowed priv­i­leges like record­ing music.
If there is a sit­u­a­tion in which an artiste is allowed record or a writer is allowed to write a book, all pro­ceeds from those endeav­ors should be giv­en to the vic­tims of their violence.
We must get away from being a soci­ety that rewards bad behav­ior. We must become a soci­ety of law so direct and no-non­sense that makes would-be offend­ers think twice about break­ing them.
Laws are guardrails that hold peo­ple from indulging their worst instincts; with­out them, we have .……well, we have Jamaica.

Whether it’s a woman pulling out a pair of scis­sors to stab a secu­ri­ty guard doing his job at the entrance of a school or a guy who guns down inno­cent men, women, and chil­dren, we must rec­og­nize the mind­set for what it is.
Why did the woman have a pair of scis­sors arguably in her bosom?
The sim­ple answer is that she intend­ed to use it at the first sign of con­flict, as she did. The penal­ties for such actions should be so severe that future assailants like the one at the Herbert Morrison Technical High School last Friday would nev­er pick up the pair of scis­sors in the first instance.
Some will argue that she may have been car­ry­ing the scis­sors as a defen­sive tool, and those argu­ments are negat­ed by the fact that she decid­ed to use vio­lence in a sit­u­a­tion, even when she was clear­ly wrong.
If we con­tin­ue to acqui­esce to those argu­ments, we become like a dog chas­ing its tail…
We must estab­lish clear demar­ca­tion lines that make it clear that vio­lence of any kind will be met with swift and deci­sive consequences.
Those not deterred by tough laws should have many years of hard labor to con­sid­er the con­se­quences of their actions.
We can­not con­tin­ue as a soci­ety to pla­cate crim­i­nals. As a soci­ety, Jamaica has become a laugh­ing stock for its inabil­i­ty to do the sim­ple things to cur­tail vio­lent crime.

Rather than strength­en the crim­i­nal jus­tice infra­struc­ture, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to pla­cate and pon­tif­i­cate about oth­er things that are far less con­se­quen­tial. The most impor­tant func­tion of gov­ern­ment is the secu­ri­ty of the people.
Fail at that, and hard­ly any­thing else mat­ters. Jamaicans can­not be all they can be in the present crime-infest­ed envi­ron­ment and lack of accountability.
The coun­try has con­tin­ued to lose its best and bright­est peo­ple from as far back as the ear­ly 1970s, nurs­es, doc­tors, police offi­cers, and teach­ers; as soon as they get a visa, they are gone.
We can delude our­selves into believ­ing they are leav­ing because they are only paid unliv­able wages. The real­i­ty is that the wages they are paid are a direct result of crime and violence…
Jamaica can­not attract the lev­el of pri­vate sec­tor invest­ment, return­ing res­i­dents, and oth­er entre­pre­neur­ial endeav­ors that would gen­er­ate tax rev­enues and employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties to make our young peo­ple stay.
It is so because of one issue and one issue only, the astro­nom­i­cal lev­els of vio­lent crimes and the gov­ern­men­t’s inabil­i­ty and unwill­ing­ness to do any­thing mean­ing­ful about it.
No coun­try can leg­is­late on crime while lis­ten­ing to tri­al lawyers and so-called human rights advo­cates. Both of those groups of peo­ple are rel­e­vant because of crime and criminals.
Legislate real con­se­quences for vio­lent crimes and watch the dif­fer­ence. Or are we too far gone to fix it?
Maybe too many peo­ple are eat­ing from crime; it is no longer a con­cern to the authorities.

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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 city of Baltimore has set­tled a law­suit with a Black man who was incar­cer­at­ed for a year-and-a-half after a cor­rupt offi­cer report­ed­ly plant­ed a firearm on him. Sources say the offi­cers involved in his case set up oth­ers and have cost the munic­i­pal­i­ty upwards of $15 mil­lion in payouts.

On Wednesday, Sept. 7, the Board of Estimates, a five-mem­ber com­mit­tee, vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to set­tle with Darnell Earl, end­ing his law­suit against the City of Baltimore, the Baltimore Police Department and three detec­tives of the Gun Trace Task Force who set him up for a gun crime, the Baltimore Sun reports.

Earl will now walk away from the com­plaint with $575,000 and an agree­ment to drop all charges against the three officers.

Ebony Thomas, the deputy city solic­i­tor, encour­aged the city to set­tle in an effort to avoid trial.

“We have trans­formed and con­tin­ue to improve our police depart­ment, includ­ing the train­ing, the pol­i­cy, and pro­to­cols to elim­i­nate these types of law­suits,” Thomas said, accord­ing to FOX Baltimore. “These law­suits exem­pli­fy the need for us to con­tin­ue this administration’s efforts and rebuild the trust of our police department.

The offi­cial said because of the cor­rupt task force the city has already paid out $15.48 mil­lion to more than 30 vic­tims with law­suits con­nect­ed to those being erro­neous­ly locked up or tar­get­ed by this group of crooked cops. In 2020, Umar Burley and Brent Matthews, who were vic­tims of the task force, received $7.9 mil­lion, almost half of what the city paid out.

And there are more set­tle­ments to be made by the city. Thomas shared there are “four remain­ing active cas­es” and of them, two “pose a seri­ous finan­cial risk.”

On Sunday, Oct. 18, 2015, Earl was dri­ving in the city when he was stopped by three mem­bers of the Gun Trace Task Force: offi­cers Marcus Taylor, Evodio Hendrix and Wayne Jenkins. At the time of the stop, the offi­cers claimed they found a weapon under­neath Earl’s pas­sen­ger seat – play­ing up his crim­i­nal record that con­sist­ed of pri­or con­vic­tions for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of guns – mak­ing him par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the charges asso­ci­at­ed with the nefar­i­ous traf­fic stop.

As a result, Earl felt he had to plead guilty to one of the charges, and thus was sent to prison.

Two years lat­er, the Gun Trace Task Force was exposed for its his­to­ry of crim­i­nal mis­con­duct, dat­ing back almost 10 years. A fed­er­al probe showed the force abused the priv­i­lege afford­ed them by their badge, robbed peo­ple dur­ing traf­fic stops, stole drugs and mon­ey, and plant­ed evi­dence on inno­cent people.

Some offi­cers in the unit con­nect­ed to the crimes that includ­ed rack­e­teer­ing, rob­bery, extor­tion, and over­time fraud, pled guilty and oth­ers were con­vict­ed in a court of law.

In 2017, Earl’s con­vic­tion was vacat­ed by Baltimore’s state attorney’s offi­cer, after all three of the offi­cers plead guilty to fed­er­al RICO violations.

In 2020, Earl filed a law­suit alleg­ing his civ­il rights were vio­lat­ed when he was stopped with no prob­a­ble cause, and offi­cers plant­ed the firearm in his vehicle.

That same year in April, Maryland’s high court refused to allow the city to curb sim­i­lar pay­outs by argu­ing that offi­cers act­ed out­side the scope of their employ­ment with the police depart­ment when they com­mit­ted the crimes. This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @ Atlantablackstar​.com

Despite the Mayor and Police Commissioner’s pon­tif­i­ca­tion there is now evi­dence that tye cops mur­dered this trou­bled young man and lied about it.
No one wat to have a city over­run with crim­i­nals, how­ev­er, when the police mur­der cit­i­zens , then lie about it, who is the good guy?
New York City now have a Black Mayor and Police Commissioner. Crime con­tin­ue to be a prob­lem in the city, the Mayor and police com­mis­sion­er seeming­ing­ly decid­ed it is pru­dent to side with the NYPD which has a sor­did his­to­ry of act­ing like anoth­er crim­i­nal gang, to cov­er up their murders.(mb)

The New York Police Department is fac­ing back­lash after the release of body-worn footage show­ing the fatal offi­cer-involved shoot­ing of a Black man that many say con­tra­dicts the NYPD reports of the incident.

The police agency released videos show­ing the May shoot­ing of Rameek Smith in the Bronx on Sept. 2

The day after the inci­dent, NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said Smith was involved in a shootout with offi­cers, leav­ing one offi­cer injured and Smith suc­cumb­ing to his head­shot wound.

However, many say the footage released near­ly four months lat­er does not show Smith shoot­ing at cops. The edit­ed videos also leave unan­swered ques­tions about what hap­pened before and after the fatal shooting.

Smith, who was await­ing sen­tenc­ing for a gun charge, was used as ammo for Mayor Eric Adams‘ argu­ments against bail reform and the need for his new neigh­bor­hood units. The shoot­ing was also applaud­ed by Sewell, who called Smith “a dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal who should not have been on the streets of the Bronx or any­where else.”

Still, after the release of the videos by the depart­ment, many in the com­ments labeled the offi­cers’ liars and murderers.

“Two shots to the back of the head and the media uncrit­i­cal­ly says that this was a shootout. MURDER,” wrote Avery Lane.

“Body cam­eras…… wow, police that lie and offi­cers that go along with the lie, every­one from top down should be charged with obstruc­tion of jus­tice. And offi­cers at the top should be held just as account­able as offi­cers at the bot­tom,” wrote Tristen Wright.

The NYPD said Officers Dennis Vargas and John Echevarria were patrolling in uni­form in an unmarked car near Third Avenue and Claremont Parkway when they spot­ted Smith.

Vargas got out of the vehi­cle and approached Smith on the side­walk, who start­ed to run. While Vargas pur­sued the man on foot, Smith pulled a 48 9mm firearm, which author­i­ties said was con­cealed. Police offi­cials said bal­lis­tic evi­dence shows Smith dis­charged the weapon at least three times. One bul­let struck Vargas in the left arm.

(This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @ the Atlantablackstar​.com)

“This type of hate­ful speech will not be tol­er­at­ed by any­one who works for the Cincinnati Police Department, sworn or civil­ian,” the inter­im police chief said.
By Tim Stelloh

A Cincinnati police offi­cer who appeared on a real­i­ty show about women in law enforce­ment was fired after she was record­ed on her own body cam­era using a racial slur, offi­cials said.

The city man­ag­er approved a rec­om­men­da­tion from the inter­im police chief that Rose Valentino be fired over the April 5 inci­dent, the city said in a state­ment Monday.

“This type of hate­ful speech will not be tol­er­at­ed by any­one who works for the Cincinnati Police Department, sworn or civil­ian,” inter­im Police Chief Teresa Theetge said in a statement.

Valentino, a 14-year vet­er­an of the force who reg­u­lar­ly appeared in the 2011 TLC series “Police Women of Cincinnati,” was removed from patrol duty last month after an inter­nal affairs probe found that she used the slur while she was upset over traffic.

According to an inter­nal affairs report, Valentino was angry that cars in line to pick up high school stu­dents didn’t move when she acti­vat­ed her lights. Valentino was espe­cial­ly upset about a Black stu­dent who raised his mid­dle fin­ger at her, accord­ing to the report.

She was record­ed on body cam­era say­ing “F — — [racial slur], I f — — hate them!” while punch­ing the steer­ing wheel of her squad car, accord­ing to the report.

Valentino told inves­ti­ga­tors that she does­n’t have racial bias­es or use racial slurs — but she acknowl­edged using the slur, say­ing it “was not intend­ed to refer to all African Americans but was specif­i­cal­ly and nar­row­ly in ref­er­ence to the teenag­er,” accord­ing to an inter­nal memo writ­ten by a police cap­tain that was released Monday.

She told the inves­ti­ga­tors that she had been “desen­si­tized to racial­ly offen­sive lan­guage by music and hear­ing peo­ple talk on the street, and fre­quent expo­sure allowed the slur to slip into her ver­nac­u­lar,” accord­ing to the memo.

The memo added that Valentino sought men­tal health treat­ment after the incident.

The cap­tain rec­om­mend­ed that Valentino remain on the force with a 56-hour sus­pen­sion and manda­to­ry training.

But Theetge reject­ed that rec­om­men­da­tion, say­ing in a sep­a­rate memo that Valentino had been trained in recent years on nondis­crim­i­na­tion, implic­it bias and fair and impar­tial policing.

“This leads me to believe that addi­tion­al train­ing will not change Officer Valentino’s behav­ior,” she said, adding that Valentino “demon­strat­ed an inabil­i­ty to main­tain her com­po­sure in the most offen­sive manner.”

Valentino could­n’t be reached for com­ment. In a state­ment to NBC affil­i­ate WLWT of Cincinnati, Dan Hils, the pres­i­dent of the local police union, said no police offi­cer should use any racial slur, “and any­one who does is wrong.”

“Officer Valentino is enti­tled to chal­lenge her ter­mi­na­tion if she choos­es and the FOP will rep­re­sent her if she does,” Hils added.

Every time you think you’ve seen it all, they kill and this inci­dent will cer­tain­ly not be the last. But we live in a police state in which police are admin­is­ter­ing or order­ing medics to admin­is­ter drugs to people.
We are told that the drug Narcan was admin­is­tered to this man who died at the hospital.
It is the same drug that was admin­is­tered to the inno­cent Elijah McLain, it killed him.
If it was­n’t so seri­ous one could have a real laugh at the buzz-words they use when they know they may be held account­able. They are words like, stop resist­ing, knock it off, you want to sit up? while they are apply­ing incred­i­ble pres­sure on the indi­vid­ual in an effort to kill him. We are try­ing to help you, relax dude, you got­ta be coöper­a­tive , we wan­na help you, you got­ta stop fight­ing with us. Those are words not direct­ed at the vic­tim they are killing but at the body cams they are wear­ing in case any­one both­ers to look at their actions.
It is despicable.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​g​a​n​g​-​a​c​t​i​v​i​t​i​e​s​-​a​l​l​-​p​a​r​t​-​o​f​-​n​o​r​m​a​l​-​p​o​l​i​c​i​n​g​-​a​c​r​o​s​s​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​d​e​p​a​r​t​m​e​n​ts/

These are dai­ly occur­rences, police offi­cers with myr­i­ad com­plaints against them from the pub­lic, some­times hun­dreds of com­plaints go on to maim and kill inno­cent mem­bers of the pub­lic because super­vi­sors and supe­ri­ors stead­fast­ly refuse to remove dan­ger­ous cops from police depart­ments all across the country.
This extreme­ly seri­ous issue runs much deep­er than delin­quent senior police brass. It includes cor­rupt, bul­ly­ing police unions, cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and polit­i­cal sponsors.
Even when these offi­cers are caught lying in court, judges who have the pow­er to take action refuse to act to stop bla­tant acts of per­jury because of the deep lev­els of crony­ism that exist between the judges, pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, pros­e­cu­tors, police, and con­nect­ed mem­bers of com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in small munic­i­pal­i­ties and towns.
One may imag­ine that since the police are allowed to inves­ti­gate them­selves and decide on their inno­cence and lack of cul­pa­bil­i­ty, or worse, they should be account­able to any­one, they would abuse those powers.
It also makes sense that since the supreme court says they can lie to cit­i­zens dur­ing inves­ti­ga­tions, they would take lying and decep­tion to galac­ti­cal new heights.

A clear exam­ple of their decep­tion and lies was the case of Ex-DetectiveKelly Goodlett of Louisville, Kentucky. The for­mer detec­tive mis­led a judge into wrong­ly autho­riz­ing a raid of Breonna Taylor’s apart­ment in Louisville, Ky., set­ting in motion the night­time oper­a­tion in which the police fatal­ly shot and killed Ms. Taylor in her own home.
The con­se­quence of her lies did not result in a bad arrest; it result­ed in the death of an inno­cent young woman.

The Innocence Project works to free the inno­cent, pre­vent wrong­ful con­vic­tions, and cre­ate fair, com­pas­sion­ate, and equi­table sys­tems of jus­tice for every­one. Founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the orga­ni­za­tion is now an inde­pen­dent non­prof­it. Its work is guid­ed by sci­ence and ground­ed in antiracism.
On March 19^th, 2018, the project report­ed in an expose that the Prevalence of Lying by Police is a Problem for the Innocent. The project went on; The New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle yes­ter­day that doc­u­ments the per­sis­tence of lies told by police to gain a con­vic­tion. Through their inves­ti­ga­tion, the Times dis­cov­ered that in more than 25 instances since 2015, judges or pros­e­cu­tors con­clud­ed that a New York City police offi­cer like­ly pre­sent­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny. Such cas­es — most of which are sealed — were iden­ti­fied through inter­views with lawyers, police offi­cers, and cur­rent or for­mer judges.
The Times arti­cle high­lights the com­mon lies about which police tes­ti­fy, includ­ing say­ing they saw a gun in a suspect’s hand or waist­band when it was actu­al­ly out of view; say­ing they wit­nessed an arrest for which they were not actu­al­ly present; claim­ing they watched a drug deal occur, only to lat­er recant or be proven to have lied. In two recent cas­es, offi­cers appeared to have giv­en false state­ments about eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny. “These cas­es,” says the Times, “are par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling because erro­neous iden­ti­fi­ca­tions by wit­ness­es have been a lead­ing cause of wrong­ful convictions.”

Why do police lie? According to the Times, in many cir­cum­stances, it’s to avoid restric­tions against uncon­sti­tu­tion­al stop and frisks. In oth­er cas­es, the motive is to con­vict some­one, regard­less of whether or not that per­son actu­al­ly com­mit­ted the crime. Some offi­cers have stat­ed they are pres­sured by their super­vi­sors to write more tick­ets, to reach an arrest quo­ta, or to close a case.
The 25 cas­es iden­ti­fied by the Times are a small por­tion of those in which offi­cers are believed to have lied. This is because a large major­i­ty of cas­es result in plea deals. With a plea deal, if an offi­cer lies, it is unlike­ly to be exposed: it is rare for a case to progress to a hear­ing where a defen­dant can ques­tion an officer’s ver­sion of events. “There’s no fear of being caught,” a Brooklyn offi­cer who has been on the force for almost a decade told the Times. “You’re not going to go to tri­al and nobody is going to be cross-exam­ined.” The per­cent­age of cas­es that progress to the cross-exam­i­na­tion of an offi­cer is quite small. According to the arti­cle, in 2016, for exam­ple, there were slight­ly more than 185 guilty pleas, dis­missals, or oth­er non-tri­al out­comes for each crim­i­nal case in New York City that went to tri­al and result­ed in a ver­dict. There were 1,460 tri­al ver­dicts in crim­i­nal cas­es that year, while 270,304 crim­i­nal cas­es were resolved with­out a trial.
The per­sis­tence of lying by the police has inevitably become a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to wrong­ful con­vic­tions in New York City and beyond. The Times writes: “Police lying rais­es the like­li­hood that the inno­cent end up in jail – and that as juries and judges come to regard the police as less cred­i­ble, or as cas­es are dis­missed when the lies are dis­cov­ered, the guilty will go free.”

There is the old say­ing that every per­son the police arrest claim to be inno­cent. As a for­mer police offi­cer, I real­ize that there is a small mod­icum of truth in that state­ment. Nevertheless, We were trained that it is more impor­tant that the guilty go free than an inno­cent per­son be con­vict­ed for a crime they did not com­mit. But that is not the American sys­tem of jus­tice where gain­ing a con­vic­tion at all costs jus­ti­fies all kinds of under­hand­ed meth­ods used to get those con­vic­tions-yes even lying.
Under no cir­cum­stances did I ever want the guilty to go free, so I worked twice as hard to ensure that any per­son I arrest­ed was the guilty party.
Below are a few tes­ti­mo­ni­als of ordi­nary peo­ple who con­tin­ue to suf­fer at the hands of law enforce­ment that is sup­posed to pro­tect them.

Eric Richardson, an officer involved in the vicious beating of the 25-year-old last month, has been reprimanded for incidents including physical violence and sex in his patrol car.

By Phillip Jackson

Brandon Calloway, 25, was severe­ly beat­en by Oakland, Tennessee, police offi­cers on July 16 fol­low­ing a minor traf­fic vio­la­tion. Family of Brandon Calloway.

The fol­low­ing is a full video record­ing of a police-cit­i­zen inter­ac­tion in Miami Dade, Florida, that should out­rage even the most ardent cop-apol­o­gist and cre­ate renewed calls for revamp­ing American polic­ing prac­tices as they exist.
But it won’t!
It won’t because the love affair with Rambo-style polic­ing and the atten­dant abuse that goes with it is far too entrenched in peo­ple’s minds. They actu­al­ly believe what­ev­er the cops do is some­how right.
In the imme­di­ate video, you will see a com­pressed ver­sion pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic by the lame-stream media that gives a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent impres­sion from what actu­al­ly occurred in the full video ver­sion, which will be in the linked arti­cle sup­plied below the video.

Inside the full video, you will see a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ver­sion of what real­ly occurred. This encounter deserves no inves­ti­ga­tion. It deserves imme­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion of this tyrant.

You be the judge; how in God’s name can this be accept­able in a coun­try that projects itself as a leader on the world stage?
These are the things cops are doing under the col­or of law, and they are get­ting away with it.
The stan­dard non­sense that usu­al­ly fol­lows these events is that they con­duct their inves­ti­ga­tions and will make the results known as soon as they are concluded.
In oth­er words, we are inves­ti­gat­ing our­selves and will let you know what we decide.
Weeks, months, or years lat­er, after pub­lic anger has dis­si­pat­ed, they will release a report that they found no wrong­do­ing in the offi­cer’s actions.
But it isn’t that they get to inves­ti­gate them­selves; the badged crim­i­nals are sent on paid vaca­tion at tax­pay­ers’ expense while these sham and cha­rade inves­ti­ga­tions are alleged to be undertaken.
It is not hyper­bol­ic to say that, in many cas­es, entire police depart­ments are lit­tle more than crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions that are in need of Federal intervention.
Even when the Department of Justice inter­venes, those pseu­do-crim­i­nal enter­pris­es con­tin­ue to oper­ate in near­ly the same ways they oper­at­ed that war­rant­ed inter­ven­tion in the first place.

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

Trump hosted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the White House one day after firing the man whose agency is investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election that brought Trump to power.

By Rebecca Shapiro

In May of 2017, the New York Times edi­to­r­i­al board blast­ed Donald Trump for fir­ing James Comey on Tuesday, accus­ing the pres­i­dent of dis­miss­ing the FBI direc­tor for hav­ing infor­ma­tion with “poten­tial­ly ruinous consequences.
The board said the need for a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor to inves­ti­gate Russian inter­fer­ence with the 2016 elec­tion and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s ties to the Kremlin “is plain­er than ever.”

Hatred of law enforce­ment, lax laws- or no laws, extreme­ly short prison sen­tences, cor­rup­tion, judges doing what they please instead of fol­low­ing the already archa­ic and inef­fec­tive ones that exist, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of a dance­hall cul­ture, and stars who are vio­lent crim­i­nals, all have con­tributed to Jamaica’s con­tin­u­ing decay.
As a peo­ple, we can deck our­selves out in gold, green, and black all we want as we extoll our inde­pen­dence. Everyone except us knows that we are still teth­ered to the frock tails of her Majesty the Queen[sic], still func­tion as a beg­gar nation, and are con­strained from gov­ern­ing our­selves because of our depen­den­cy on oth­ers to sup­ply our basic needs.
Constrained from ful­ly gov­ern­ing our­selves to receive hand­outs, we sold our sov­er­eign­ty to inter­na­tion­al pow­ers, which dic­tate what we can and can­not do in our own country.
You can talk about how much we have achieved in the sports field. I am proud of our ath­letes; they are doing their part, but not for a moment am I dis­tract­ed from the real task at hand.
As a nation, are we doing our part out­side of bask­ing in the glo­ry and the lime­light of what our ath­letes accomplish?
This arti­cle will not get dis­cussed in main­stream media out­lets because the bite is too great; I don’t do the bark thing.
The nation’s lead­ers and the peo­ple who influ­ence pol­i­cy oper­ate with­in echo cham­bers and spin the same out­dat­ed ideas among them­selves. The result is a coun­try slid­ing ever so pre­cip­i­tous­ly close to becom­ing a failed state.
The major­i­ty of our peo­ple would glad­ly move to a for­eign coun­try if giv­en a chance, even the crim­i­nals who are liv­ing lav­ish lifestyles from their ill-got­ten gains. The brain drain that has occurred from the 70s has left Jamaica weak­er, less able to chart a course that would attract the kind of invest­ments to pro­pel the nation into first-world status.
So what exact­ly are we cel­e­brat­ing when even the inde­pen­dence we say we achieved is not inde­pen­dence at all, and in some mea­sure, there are moves afoot to extri­cate our­selves from our old colo­nial oppres­sors finally.
How could proud peo­ple who claim excep­tion­al­ism allow them­selves to con­tin­ue being teth­ered to the very same slave­mas­ters who mur­dered, raped, and sodom­ized our ancestors?
What am I missing?

How can an alleged gun­run­ner sup­ply­ing guns to the streets ille­gal­ly, con­vict­ed in anoth­er juris­dic­tion, be allowed to have a legal­ly issued firearm, yet the head of that author­i­ty still has a job?
Worse yet, where is the inde­pen­dent police inves­ti­ga­tion of that agency that has long been known to sell gun licens­es to every­one, includ­ing criminals?
Where are the inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions into the politi­cians from the two polit­i­cal par­ties named in the ille­gal prac­tice of sign­ing off on gun licens­es for criminals?
These are the things rea­son­able Jamaicans need to ask and not accept the talk­ing points the two polit­i­cal par­ties feed them while it is busi­ness as usual.
The aver­age cit­i­zen, how­ev­er, is far too con­sumed in polit­i­cal trib­al­ism to real­ize that it is up to them to put a stop to the nonsense.
And so, like a herd of sheep, they are herd­ed to the slaugh­ter­house by a sin­gle Mutt. Now ask your­selves what the Mutt will do if each Sheep decides it will not enter the slaughterhouse.
When you are social­ized into believ­ing that some­one else is more impor­tant than you are, that based on a job or title, the bear­er is some big man; or as they say, big­ger heads, you are doomed to con­tin­ue to accept the sec­ond class cit­i­zen­ship they dole out to you.

The nation’s court sys­tem is a mess; judges act as over­lords unac­count­able to any­one even though the peo­ple do not elect them. This new breed of UWI over­lords has made a mock­ery of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, abro­gat­ing estab­lished stan­dards to exact their own brand of lib­er­al jus­tice even against the archa­ic stan­dards that remain in place today.
Slaps on the wrist for vio­lent mur­der­ers, pos­ses­sion of an ille­gal weapon, no big deal, let me pray for you and send you home.
Rape accused are released from prison even as there is a tiny chance that there is ever a con­vic­tion in the jus­tice sys­tem that can­not even find the resources to try mur­der­ers, so it allows them to plead guilty and slices their already mea­ger sen­tence in half.
If you have mon­ey to pay the vul­tures who dou­ble as defense attor­neys but are actu­al­ly con­siglieres to their mur­der­ous clients, you may get your mur­der case deferred until they throw it out of court.
For that, you have Delroy Chuck to thank…
Take the rape case of Siccature Alcock, who goes by the stage name Jah Cure; this is a crim­i­nal scum that was con­vict­ed of rape and ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm in 1999.
Despite those two con­vic­tions, which are both seri­ous felonies, the crim­i­nal cod­dling judge gave him a sen­tence of 15 years which may sound rea­son­able to most observers. However, in Jamaica, the proof of the pud­ding is always in the eating.
There were repeat­ed calls from his crim­i­nal cohorts in the dance­hall indus­try, ampli­fied by the star-gaz­ing morons in what pass­es for media on the Island, “free jah cure, free the cure.’
By July 2007, after serv­ing less than 8 of the 15-year sen­tence, the prison doors were flung open, and the scum­bag rapist was back on the streets because the world could not do with­out anoth­er crim­i­nal reg­gae artiste extolling the name of “Jah” to the rhythms of murder-music.

Law enforce­ment sources con­firmed to me that despite the one rape con­vic­tion Siccature Alcock received, it was not his only rape. He had com­mit­ted more crimes of rape for which he was nev­er held accountable.
Whether this is true, we may nev­er know because it is high­ly unlike­ly that any victm/​s will come for­ward to sub­stan­ti­ate these alle­ga­tions in Jamaica, a place that wor­ships crim­i­nals and reg­gae artists; Siccature Alcock is both a con­vict­ed rapist and a reg­gae artiste.
And so they will remain just that unproven allegations.
Undeterred by that con­vic­tion and buoyed by the hype sur­round­ing his release from prison, he obvi­ous­ly believed that the crim­i­nal laws in oth­er coun­tries were like in the crim­i­nal par­adise of Jamaica.
In October of 2021, Siccature Alcock stabbed a show pro­mot­er in the abdomen in broad day­light in Amsterdam.
The charge was attempt­ed mur­der; I guess in the court’s mind, the charge was not sub­stan­ti­at­ed based on an absence of Malice afore­thought, expressed, or implied.
He was con­vict­ed of attempt­ed manslaugh­ter, a less­er charge. Decades after leav­ing law enforce­ment, I still dis­agree with the idea that mur­der or attempt­ed mur­der can­not be proven with evi­dence of malice.
I believe the very idea that one would use a knife to stab some­one or a gun to shoot anoth­er per­son is intend­ed to kill.
Jamaica can course cor­rect; there is still time, but the cor­rec­tion must be a grass­roots move­ment, and that will not hap­pen when the pop­u­la­tion is so deeply root­ed in the morass of par­ty polarization.
As long as Jamaicans con­tin­ue to con­sid­er them­selves Laborites and Kumreds and not indi­vid­u­als deserv­ing of a bet­ter life, they will con­tin­ue to oper­ate as robots and be treat­ed as the Republican par­ty, and Donald Trump treats une­d­u­cat­ed racist whites.

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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 rea­sons that I, a for­mer police offi­cer, have become such a fierce crit­ic of American police are myriad.
Not the least among those rea­sons is their gen­er­al inabil­i­ty to think crit­i­cal­ly and over­all dis­re­spect for the forty mil­lion black Americans liv­ing in the country.
That is not to say that all police offi­cers are dumb racists; far from it. Still, far too often, we see instances where police offi­cers abuse their oath and esca­late infin­i­tes­i­mal infrac­tions, and some­times, no infrac­tions at all, into events where peo­ple of col­or lose their lives at the hands of police.
Many argue that most police offi­cers are good and decent peo­ple who go out to do a good job every day.
I do not quar­rel with that asser­tion that in almost all-white com­mu­ni­ties in some states, that asser­tion may be true.
Not so in larg­er, more racial­ly diverse com­mu­ni­ties. Members of the minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties expe­ri­ence police in ways that peo­ple in pre­dom­i­nant­ly white com­mu­ni­ties do not.
What still amazes me is, as it has done for decades, the American Government com­pris­ing both polit­i­cal par­ties con­tin­ues to chide and berate oth­er nations for alleged human rights abus­es but stead­fast­ly refus­es to address human rights abus­es here at home com­mit­ted by police.

One could rea­son­ably argue that in larg­er, more diverse com­mu­ni­ties with more crimes, the police are much more like­ly to encounter vio­lence direct­ed at them. There is some truth in that, even though that nar­ra­tive may be up for debate in light of the fre­quen­cy of mass shoot­ings and oth­er vio­lent crimes that have their gen­e­sis in white com­mu­ni­ties — addi­tion­al­ly, the rise pro­lif­er­a­tion and threat posed by white suprema­cist ter­ror­ist groups changes that par­a­digm undoubtedly.
Arguably, the threats posed by orga­nized white ter­ror groups are expo­nen­tial­ly greater not just to the police but to the entire nation than some ran­dom guy with a gun try­ing to pull off a rob­bery or defend­ing a street cor­ner he sees as his turf.
It is also rea­son­able to con­clude that on a day-to-day basis, a cop doing the rounds in Memphis, Tennesee, or on Chicago Southside may be more exposed to gun vio­lence than a cop in Beverly Hills, California.
Even with those con­sid­er­a­tions, it would be naïve to con­clude that the many instances of gun vio­lence in Chicago’s Southside stem from the fact that some peo­ple have a greater propen­si­ty to be vio­lent than others.
Were we even to accept that con­clu­sion, we would still be bet­ter served if we asked why.

If we lump human beings togeth­er, regard­less of race, ani­mals, or any oth­er species, deprive them of enough space, enough free­dom, enough oppor­tu­ni­ties, and food, they devel­op a sur­vival mentality.
They will kill each oth­er to sur­vive. It is as sim­ple as that, so when we con­sid­er vio­lence with­in com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and specif­i­cal­ly the black com­mu­ni­ties across America, the over­whelm­ing specter of insti­tu­tion­al­ized and sys­temic racism must be fac­tored into the equation.
There can be no ratio­nal or mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion about crime and vio­lence with­in the black com­mu­ni­ty or even black-on-black crime with­out an hon­est acknowl­edg­ment of the role insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism and redlin­ing play in the Black community.
Juxtapose that with the gen­e­sis of law enforce­ment grad­u­at­ing from slave patrols, and we bet­ter under­stand the atti­tudes of police and the reac­tion of many in the black com­mu­ni­ty towards what they see.
Not pro­tec­tors in the police but over­seers who come into their com­mu­ni­ties to sub­ju­gate and con­trol, not as ser­vants there to help.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​r​o​g​r​e​s​s​i​v​e​-​e​l​e​c​t​e​d​-​o​f​f​i​c​i​a​l​s​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​n​o​t​-​b​e​-​d​e​t​e​r​r​e​d​-​i​n​-​c​h​a​n​g​i​n​g​-​e​n​t​r​e​n​c​h​e​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​i​n​g​-​c​u​l​t​u​re/

The police are peo­ple from the com­mu­ni­ties; they are not aliens from Mars or Uranus, and so as prod­ucts of their envi­ron­ments, it is incred­i­bly disin­gen­u­ous to ask that rea­son­able peo­ple sus­pend their intel­li­gence and accept that a badge, gun, and a whole heap of pow­er cleans­es offi­cers of a life­time of racist socialization.
You have seen me argue that American polic­ing emanat­ed from slave patrols; you have also seen me point out that it was the nation’s law that a black man had no rights that a white man was oblig­at­ed to respect.
For the most part, those laws are not on the books any­more, but the men­tal­i­ty per­sists not just in the police but across the entire American spectrum.
Republicans have paint­ed those who speak truth­ful­ly about race in America as rad­i­cal extrem­ists and oth­er scary names. Afraid of being brand­ed extrem­ists, Democrats tread light­ly for their own polit­i­cal survival.
I find the Democrat’s posi­tion hyp­o­crit­i­cal on the cen­tral issues of race, as I am old enough to remem­ber when they were pet­ri­fied of being called liberals.
Now they open­ly embrace the mantra lib­er­al and pro­gres­sive; they also embrace the Bernie Sanders wing of the Party even though Bernie Sanders runs as a Democratic Socialist.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​d​e​f​u​n​d​-​t​h​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​o​u​n​d​-​p​r​i​n​c​i​p​le/

Even Black elect­ed Democratic lead­ers address police vio­lence and racism in nuanced terms, in mealy-mouthed lan­guage not to ran­kle police unions and the racist Republican extrem­ist par­ty and their followers.
Why would you care what they think when it is clear that every­thing they stand for is dan­ger­ous for black people?
That ques­tion remains true every day on even the issue of defund­ing the police. Media types and many in the Democrat Party have been run­ning scared of the issue of defund­ing the police.
Even Joe Biden, the President, is scared of even being asked whether he believes the police should be defund­ed. Prognosticators and pun­dits tell us that the rise in vio­lent crime results from talk about defund­ing the police.
What a load of balderdash.What a load of cocka­mamie. American police have more arma­ments than any oth­er coun­try in the world, yet there is more vio­lent crime across America than in most devel­oped coun­tries. In fact, Quora​.com places the United States as the sec­ond most vio­lent soci­ety in the world, but just by a tiny mar­gin, behind Saudi Arabia.
Here is the impor­tant part, accord­ing to Quora [The peace index is a com­plex indi­ca­tor con­sid­er­ing fac­tors like homi­cide rate, vio­lent protests and demon­stra­tions, and ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty. The US falls slight­ly behind Saudi Arabia, which is a devel­oped mid­dle east­ern coun­try. According to the index, inter­nal con­flict and polit­i­cal ter­ror are the things that put Saudi Arabia slight­ly above the United States because by homi­cide rate, for exam­ple, the Saudi Arabian rate is much low­er, and there’s an over­all low­er per­ceived crim­i­nal­i­ty].
Two things here it is doubt­ful that even on a per capi­ta basis, Saudi Arabia has a high­er homi­cide rate than the United States. It is debat­able whether one could even con­sid­er a soci­ety like Saudi Arabia a devel­oped one.
Additionally, with the increas­ing threats posed by white ‑suprema­cist ter­ror groups across the United States, it is a stretch to sug­gest that Saudi Arabia is more vio­lent, all things considered.
Even so, with over 18,000 police depart­ments across the coun­try, almost a mil­lion sworn law enforce­ment offi­cers, and arma­ments, includ­ing (MRAP) Mine-Resistant Ambush, Protected Tanks, politi­cians con­tin­ue to fool the pub­lic that the answer to America’s vio­lent crime epi­dem­ic is to give more mon­ey to police departments.
According to maneygeek​.com, the U.S. spent $205 bil­lion on law enforce­ment, amount­ing to $123 bil­lion spent on polic­ing and $82 bil­lion on cor­rec­tions in 2019 before the social jus­tice protests across the country.
Although police depart­ments are receiv­ing large sums of mon­ey, crime which has been decreas­ing for the past two decades has been on the rise.
It is impos­si­ble to make a case for throw­ing away more mon­ey on incom­pe­tent, racist cops when the fix has noth­ing to do with more mon­ey for cops or even more cops, for that matters.
The rev­e­la­tions in Uvalde, Texas, prove that we do not need more police or arma­ments; we need a dif­fer­ent mind­set and approach to law enforcement.

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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.

As a result of the ensu­ing gang feud in Gregory Park in the Portmore sec­tion of Saint Catherine, result­ing in eight hous­es being fire­bombed, the Police swooped down ear­ly this morn­ing to quell the lawlessness.

Operating in the Dyke Road area, the police report­ed the thugs fired upon them. When the smoke cleared, four high-pow­ered weapons and a hand­gun were recovered.
One punk went to meet his maker.

The rank and file mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force con­tin­ue to risk their lives for a pit­tance of a salary that is not even a liv­able wage; it is more like a stipend.
At the same time, the coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion is hard­ly deserv­ing of their sac­ri­fice. I am sor­ry that after serv­ing a decade there on the front lines and hav­ing defend­ed the peo­ple from these mer­ce­nar­ies, I am forced to con­clude that the loud­est peo­ple in the coun­try are a bunch of crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing hyp­ocrites who only have a prob­lem with errant cops but cares lit­tle about the car­nage being wrought on the coun­try by these scum.

At the head of the Constabulary sits a bunch of men­tal midgets who received police rank because they earned a degree or two at the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to, one of the most anti-police cesspools in the Caribbean.
Despite these chal­lenges, the rank and file mem­bers of the force con­tin­ue to do all they can with lit­tle sup­port from the gov­ern­ment, the pop­u­la­tion, or the retards who are their superiors.

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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.

#1 The disappearance of Donna-Lee Donaldson & the arrest of Constable Noël Maitland.

The out­cry and nation­al focus on the dis­ap­pear­ance of 24-year-old Donna-Lee Donaldson have sur­prised me. Don’t get me wrong; I am buoyed by the idea that there is nation­al vig­i­lance sur­round­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of any per­son. Nevertheless, it appears that fol­low­ing in line with Jamaicans’ affin­i­ty for hype and glo­ri­fy­ing peo­ple in the lime­light, some lives are more impor­tant than oth­ers, which is a nation­al disgrace.
Hundreds of peo­ple are report­ed miss­ing year­ly; many more dis­ap­pear and aren’t report­ed to author­i­ties. The dis­ap­pear­ances and the wan­ton killings report­ed on the Island each year hard­ly elic­it raised eye­brows across the nation­al spec­trum. So what is so dif­fer­ent about this young wom­an’s case?
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​q​u​e​s​t​i​o​n​i​n​g​-​a​t​t​o​r​n​e​y​-​p​a​t​r​i​c​k​-​b​a​i​l​e​y​-​i​n​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​n​-​t​o​-​2​0​1​6​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​a​t​-​h​i​s​-​h​o​me/

Admittedly, this writer is high­ly con­ver­sant that each case rests on its mer­it. Additionally, I have no idea what evi­dence the police pre­sent­ed to pros­e­cu­tors that war­rant­ed the charge of mur­der. I could, how­ev­er, guess that the police have sub­stan­tial *cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence* that embold­ened them to charge a per­son with mur­der, much less one of their own with­out a dead body.
I have seen a lot of com­ments in the pub­lic sphere, some argu­ing that there can be no con­vic­tion with­out a dead body. To those folks, I say, that is not true; a defen­dant [can] be con­vict­ed of mur­der with­out a body being found.
It is indeed risky, and a court will be dili­gent in look­ing at the evi­dence, cir­cum­stan­tial and foren­sic, before arriv­ing at a verdict.
Those clam­or­ing for blood must also under­stand that the pres­ence of foren­sic or DNA evi­dence, includ­ing blood sam­ples in the defen­dan­t’s home or car, does [not] mean he killed any­one, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the sup­posed vic­tim had access to the apart­ment and car.
With an abun­dance of oth­er cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, that evi­dence would be one more piece of evi­dence that would lead a tri­er of facts (Judge or Jury) to rea­son­ably con­clude that the vic­tim died and that the defen­dant killed her.
It is no easy task!

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​a​t​-​a​r​e​-​t​h​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​a​f​r​a​i​d​-​o​f​-​w​h​y​-​t​h​e​y​-​h​a​v​e​n​t​-​a​r​r​e​s​t​e​d​-​t​h​e​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​e​r​s​-​o​f​-​g​e​r​m​a​i​n​e​-​j​u​n​i​or/

Constable Noël Maitland is now charged with mur­der, and true to form, the police are busy giv­ing inter­views to the media.
This time it is Deputy Commissioner Fitz Bailey who has­n’t learned that the less you say pub­licly in these sit­u­a­tions, the bet­ter off you are.
Remember that there is still no dead body found. As the fam­i­ly mem­bers of Donna-Lee Donaldson plead with the arrest­ed police offi­cer to tell them where her body is, we share their grief and under­stand their res­ig­na­tion and accep­tance that she [is] dead.
The police have said that their inves­ti­ga­tions have moved from that of a miss­ing per­son to homi­cide, accord­ing to DCP Fitz Bailey.
So the Police are quite pre­pared to go out on a limb to arrest and charge one of their own on a charge of mur­der even with­out a body but with­er and dry up like daisies when they are required to arrest and charge well-con­nect­ed murderers.
Given the Patrick Maitland case and the case doc­u­ment­ed below, I ask rea­son­able Jamaicans to decide whether this is a fair sys­tem that treats all Jamaicans equally.

»»»»»»»
Below is one of sev­er­al arti­cles I wrote fol­low­ing the killing of a reg­u­lar Jamaican, Germaine Junior, at the home of a so-called promi­nent Jamaican, now dis­barred lawyer Patrick Bailey.
To date, nei­ther the fam­i­ly nor the cor­rupt and incom­pe­tent Constabulary has pro­vid­ed a shred of an answer to the dis­traught fam­i­ly of mis­ter Junior or to the queries of this hum­ble writer.
And so I ask the Jamaica Constabulary, what is the dif­fer­ence between these two cas­es except that one is a low­ly cop and the oth­er .…… well, we don’t exact­ly know just yet but trust me, we intend to find out who killed mis­ter Germaine Junior.
We also intend to find out whether or not Police cor­rup­tion taint­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion pre­vent­ing an arrest in this case.

On the one hand, we have a reg­u­lar Jamaican, Germaine Junior mur­dered in the home of a promi­nent Jamaican [sic] Patrick Bailey. Body found, no arrest.
Social Media clout-chas­er [alleged­ly killed] no body found, ordi­nary Jamaican arrest­ed.
JCF, Please explain.

What Are The Police Afraid Of? Why Haven’t they Arrested The Murderer/​s Of Germaine Junior?
A repost from 2017

I gen­er­al­ly avoid com­ment­ing on cas­es under police inves­ti­ga­tions for sev­er­al rea­sons. (1) You nev­er know how inves­ti­ga­tions will turn out; eat­ing crow is not some­thing I par­tic­u­lar­ly relish.

(2) the police deserve all of the def­er­ence they can get to do an already dif­fi­cult job. With that said, one homi­cide has caught my atten­tion amidst the litany of oth­ers, not for any par­tic­u­lar defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic except that it seems that par­tic­u­lar homi­cide should not be too dif­fi­cult to solve.
Nevertheless, over a year has passed, and still, the deceased’s fam­i­ly has not got­ten clo­sure as the police have not made an arrest.
Now I under­stand that it’s easy to shrug and say, “join the line; there are thou­sands of unsolved mur­ders in Jamaica,” but again, the cir­cum­stances of this case cause me to sec­ond guess my def­er­ence to the police on this one.

The case involved the death of 51-year-old Germaine Junior at a home sup­pos­ed­ly owned by an attor­ney at law, Patrick Bailey, over a year ago.
According to local report­ing, the deceased was stabbed sev­er­al times and shot once in the head.
The deceased man was report­ed to be a nat­u­ral­ized American cit­i­zen and was sup­pos­ed­ly vis­it­ing the Island upon his death. Mister Junior’s fam­i­ly is incensed at the police for good rea­son. The fam­i­ly insists if their loved one were a promi­nent per­son, the case would have been solved long ago. They bemoan the fact that the police have been in con­tact with them only once in the last year since mis­ter Junior’s death.
A cou­ple of points have stuck out like a sore thumb, in this case, leav­ing much room for spec­u­la­tion in the absence of bet­ter report­ing and more infor­ma­tion forth­com­ing from the police.

♦ Patrick Bailey is a promi­nent attor­ney who eas­i­ly fits into the cat­e­go­ry of the prover­bial big man accord­ing to Jamaican culture.
♦ Was mis­ter Junior there as his guest, if not his, then whose?
♦ Who else lives in the home of attor­ney Patrick Bailey if anyone?
♦ Police report­ed that Bailey stum­bled upon the body at about 4:30 am in his own house as he was asleep even though mis­ter Junior was alleged­ly shot.
♦ If the homi­cide hap­pened in a sec­tion of the res­i­dence out­side mis­ter Bailey’s earshot (assum­ing the res­i­dence is large enough that Bailey would not have heard a gun­shot), nev­er­the­less, who gets up and walk around the house at 4:30 am?

♦ How could Bailey sleep through what must have been a strug­gle, much less the sound of a gun­shot in his house?
♦ The state­ment that he stum­bled upon the body at 4:30 am could only have come from Bailey him­self, which gives it lit­tle cred­i­bil­i­ty under the circumstances.
♦ A prop­er coro­ner’s inquest should nail down approx­i­mate­ly what time mis­ter Junior was killed, as against Patrick Bailey’s assertions.
♦ The Police report­ed that there was no forced entry to Bailey’s house. This is absolute­ly crit­i­cal evi­dence as it demon­strates that who­ev­er killed mis­ter Junior had access to the residence.
♦ A knife believed to be the one used to stab mis­ter Junior was alleged­ly found beside his body, was it checked for fingerprints?

♦ If Mister Junior was liv­ing abroad at the time and was only vis­it­ing the Island, why would the police and oth­ers allege that he was a care­tak­er of the residence?
♦ The fact that mis­ter Junior’s body was found with mul­ti­ple stab wounds sug­gests a crime of pas­sion cou­pled with the fact that he was also shot.
♦ Was Patrick Bailey’s per­son checked for marks indi­cat­ing whether he was involved in a strug­gle, or did the police take his word that he slept through a stab­bing and a shoot­ing? If not, why was it not done?
♦ Why was Patrick Bailey ruled med­ical­ly unfit to give state­ments to police by Doctor Jeptah Ford at the time?
♦ According to local media reports after the inci­dent, Patrick Bailey’s doc­tor and client, Jephthah Ford, instruct­ed that he be con­fined to bed after report­ed­ly exhibit­ing signs of being unwell. Ford also said he was not fit to give a state­ment at the time.

♦ Why was Bailey giv­en spe­cial priv­i­leges when even police offi­cers trau­ma­tized by instances of fatal encoun­ters are forced to give a quick account­ing as to what occurred?
♦ Who else had access to the res­i­dence, if any­one, and what was their rela­tion­ship to mis­ter Junior?
♦ Did the police check Patrick Bailey’s house for bloody clothes or clothes recent­ly washed?
♦ Did the Police check out­hous­es (if applic­a­ble) and garbage recep­ta­cles for poten­tial bloody clothes?
♦ If the police deter­mined there was no forced entry to Bailey’s house, how could they sum­mar­i­ly rule him out as a suspect?

I am mak­ing no assump­tions about who killed this man; I am not say­ing any­one, in par­tic­u­lar, is respon­si­ble. I am say­ing that the Police should get up off their back­sides and do the inves­tiga­tive work, and who­ev­er killed mis­ter Junior should be ban­gled up and bun­dled off to jail. Bailey was report­ed to be arro­gant when con­tact­ed by the media assert­ing quote,” any­thing dem seh, mek dem seh it. I have no answer; just pub­lish what­ev­er they say. My back is broad. I have no com­ments, no com­ments, no com­ments! Just sim­ply, you report what­ev­er you want to,”
According to local media report­ing, Assistant Commissioner of Police Élan Powell, who had the crime port­fo­lio at the time of the homi­cide, insist­ed that the police were hid­ing noth­ing and the inves­ti­ga­tions would be done, and the chips would fall where they may.

This state­ment does lit­tle to assuage the anger and dis­trust the fam­i­ly of mis­ter Junior har­bors as it relates to the police’s abil­i­ty to bring the killer of their loved one to justice.
Clearly, what­ev­er the under­ly­ing assump­tions and pre­sump­tions in this case are, a human being was mur­dered, and some­one is respon­si­ble for his unlaw­ful killing. This can­not be a dif­fi­cult case to solve one way or the other.
If the own­er of the premis­es, a well-heeled lawyer, did not kill the vic­tim, some­one else did in his house.
It does not require rock­et sci­ence to fig­ure this case out; if no one broke into the house and there was no one else in the house, then the per­son in the house is the killer, or the per­son in the house knows who killed mis­ter Junior and has aid­ed and abet­ted the coverup of this hor­ren­dous murder.

This case is a trav­es­ty and should not stand; the police can­not be that incom­pe­tent or, worse, pissed-scared that they are unwill­ing to arrest the killer or killers.
Whatever the police know caused them to rule Patrick Bailey out as a sus­pect ought to be made pub­lic or told to the griev­ing family.
Bailey deserves no spe­cial treat­ment or def­er­ence under the law over and above any­one else, which would give the police rea­son not to divulge how they deter­mined he was not a suspect.

In February of 2016, Assistant com­mis­sion­er Powell told a Gleaner Editor’s forum that the police did not wish to name the sus­pects in the mat­ter but sought to assure that the police were active­ly pur­su­ing the case.
Since Powel was in charge of crime at the time, both he and the head of crime must now give a prop­er account­ing to this bereaved fam­i­ly as they are duty-bound to do.
There should be no more mur­ders swept under the rug because some­one knows some­one who knows someone.
This should not be allowed to stand, and the fam­i­ly should not stand for it; they are right in demand­ing answers.

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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.

Share this arti­cle and call the offices of Commissioner of Police Antony Anderson and demand answers to these killings. The police are hired to pro­tect and serve; we need answers in the Germaine Junior mur­der case.