One of the essen­tial prin­ci­ples of crim­i­nal law is that the state or peo­ple must prove their case beyond a [rea­son­able] doubt; it is a dif­fer­ent prin­ci­ple than that which applies to civ­il cas­es with a low­er bur­den of proof. I placed the word ‘rea­son­able’ in brack­ets because when defen­dants are brought before the courts, the ver­dicts must be just, whether the defen­dant faces a jury or *a bench trial*(*trial by a judge).
The word rea­son­able is intend­ed to ensure that a defen­dant receives a fair tri­al when a com­pe­tent tri­er of facts, be it a judge or jury, con­sid­ers the full pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence and makes a ratio­nal deci­sion of inno­cence or guilt.
Though crit­i­cal to the equi­table and fair dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice, the word “rea­son­able” was nev­er intend­ed to be insurmountable.
It was not intend­ed to be a get-out-of-jail-free card for mass-mur­der­ers or to be used by left or right-wing judges to ful­fill their polit­i­cal agen­das instead of their sworn oaths to be impar­tial tri­ers of facts and to dis­pense sen­tences that are com­men­su­rate with sen­tenc­ing guide­lines set out in law by the peo­ple’s representatives.

Jamaica’s high­ly left­ist judi­cia­ry has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the Jamaican pub­lic for decades as it relates to this issue, and it must stop. Let me reit­er­ate for those who are quick to crit­i­cize what they haven’t under­stood because they are ser­i­al crit­ics; the impor­tance of ensur­ing that a guilty ver­dict is beyond a rea­son­able doubt can­not be over-empha­sized, nev­er­the­less; it is not an impen­e­tra­ble fortress to shield the guilty from being convicted.
Us Jamaicans have always been known to be a lit­tle extra and pre­ten­tious. We are deeply enam­ored with things over peo­ple. We indulge celebri­ties, even ticky-ticky Z‑list celebri­ties. We wor­ship at the altar of degrees and sta­tus while den­i­grat­ing the aver­age work­ing joe.
This mind­set glo­ri­fies fak­ery over orig­i­nal­i­ty and hon­ors and respects thieves and mur­der­ers, over hon­est work and decency.
It cre­at­ed a per­fect breed­ing ground for the kind of coun­try we have today in which gang­sters are heroes while teach­ers, police offi­cers, and farm­ers are treat­ed with zero respect. It is a prime breed­ing ground for exploita­tion by those with pow­er in both the polit­i­cal and legal fraternity.
It cre­at­ed the men­tal­i­ty that we can have a first-world twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry coun­try on an anti­quat­ed, out­mod­ed 20^th-cen­tu­ry infra­struc­ture. Jamaicans are indoc­tri­nat­ed into believ­ing that we can use white gloves on dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals and attain the kinds of soci­ety that exist in Scandavanian or some Asian societies.

Today the essen­tial prin­ci­ple of *beyond a rea­son­able doubt* that ought to pro­tect the inno­cent from wrong­ful con­vic­tion is being used sur­rep­ti­tious­ly to pro­tect the guilty from con­se­quences right before our eyes. The guid­ing prin­ci­ples that ought to engen­der trust and con­fi­dence in our jus­tice sys­tem have been hijacked by the very peo­ple we appoint­ed to be stew­ards of our trust.
Our coun­try is infect­ed with a pro-crim­i­nal cabal of left­ist moles bur­rowed deep in the infra­struc­ture of every part of the pub­lic sec­tor. It is chal­leng­ing to wean Jamaicans off the ideas their left­ist indoc­tri­nat­ed lead­ers all gain from a sin­gle insti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing. Those left­ist ideas have been prop­a­gat­ed and pro­mul­gat­ed through­out the Caribbean to the detri­ment and impov­er­ish­ment of the peo­ple forced to live under those policies.
The one thing stand­ing in the way of Jamaica going the way of Venezuela, or sub-Saharan Africa, is Bustamante’s par­ty. Even it is infect­ed with the destruc­tive left­ist ide­ol­o­gy that has destroyed once bur­geon­ing soci­eties. It took a life­time for Andrew Holness, the present JLP Prime Minister, to real­ize that crime is an exis­ten­tial prob­lem that can­not be remind­ed with finesse and soft touch. So it is not just the oth­er side that is infect­ed with this stupidity.
We must con­tin­ue to reori­ent and edu­cate the mass­es that a soci­ety in which crim­i­nals hold sway over the mass­es is a soci­ety stuck in pover­ty and want.
A soci­ety in which white-col­lar crim­i­nals exist at the top and gun-tot­ing blue-col­lar crim­i­nals at the bot­tom is a soci­ety where those in the mid­dle get squashed.
It is the very def­i­n­i­tion of Jamaican soci­ety today in which politi­cians, judges, tri­al lawyers, and their friends at the top and gun-tot­ing hood­lums at the bot­tom devour every­one else.
It is a Jamaica in which left­ist bureau­crats on the courts release the most dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals into soci­ety and then blame the police using the very prin­ci­ple in law designed to pro­tect the innocent.
“Beyond a rea­son­able doubt.”\.

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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.

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I am hap­py to see that PrimeMinister Andrew Holness has arrived at the frus­tra­tion lev­el that the Jamaican peo­ple have been at for over four decades on crime. It has been a long slow climb for Holness, but he began see­ing the light after the Haitian President was assas­si­nat­ed in his own home. Influential peo­ple in Jamaica have been insu­lat­ed from the ram­pant vio­lence that plagues oth­er Jamaicans. As such, they have lofty and even Utopian ideas about the laws passed in Jamaica and the penal­ties met­ed out to dan­ger­ous and vio­lent offenders.
The con­se­quences to Jamaicans who want peace is that the poor are vic­tims of vio­lence while the priv­i­leged are pass­ing observers to the carnage.
The result on the International stage is that Jamaica is the most vio­lent coun­try in the Caribbean and the entire Latin-American region, sur­pass­ing dan­ger­ous coun­tries like Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and others.
There is seri­ous oppo­si­tion to mean­ing­ful laws that would help to cau­ter­ize the vio­lence; essen­tial­ly, vio­lence is a way of life in Jamaica from which many sec­tors make mon­ey, or as we say in Jamaican ver­nac­u­lar, ‘eat a food”.
Now I do under­stand that the Kumreds will be pissed at this arti­cle. The Laborites hate me when I speak out against their par­ty. Frankly, any­one who knows me knows that I do not give a shit. And, oh, by the way, if my lan­guage offends you, this is not for you take your fake ass some­where where they care because I don’t give two shits.

Some vocal groups include the tri­al lawyers who depend on crim­i­nals to eat; (the coun­try can go to hell). Others include the par­a­sites human rights lob­by that has tak­en up res­i­dence in Jamaica like flies take to shit.
Of all the groups push­ing against reform on the tiny Island nation, none is more offen­sive than the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), on whose ²²¹⁄₂ year unbro­ken reign the nation den­i­grat­ed from a pros­per­ing and grow­ing nation to a nation whose peo­ple are shunned, reviled, and deemed per­sona non gra­ta in oth­er coun­tries includ­ing our Caribbean neighbors.
This polit­i­cal par­ty has done so much harm to the coun­try that it is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that the elec­torate does not force it to dis­solve and disband.
I lis­tened to one of the local radio sta­tions on Friday morn­ing at the prompt­ing of a friend; on the pro­gram was the PNP’s so-called shad­ow cab­i­net mem­ber on Justice, Donna Scott-Mottley. To be hon­est, I did not want to waste my time lis­ten­ing to any­thing any­one from the PNP had to say; I should have fol­lowed my gut.
The sad real­i­ty is that the PNP has noth­ing to offer Jamaica out­side more of the same, which is more fail­ure, pover­ty, hyper­bole, and non­sen­si­cal gib­ber­ish wrapped and pack­aged in flow­ery bullshit.
It was more of the same, pol­i­tics, pol­i­tics, more craven hunger for pow­er and no solu­tion. The People’s National Party has not reformed. Therefore, it has noth­ing to offer Jamaica; it is still the same old Manley par­ty of fail­ure that it offered Jamaica in the 70s and the unfor­tu­nate 221/​2‑year peri­od of dis­as­ter that has stunt­ed Jamaica’s growth and devel­op­ment to this day.

The PNP is a par­ty that cares noth­ing about crime and vio­lence; what mat­ters to them is that the whole thing is burned to the ground so they may gov­ern over the ash­es. It is the same take no pris­on­ers par­ty influ­enced by Cuban com­mu­nism that cloaks itself in pop­ulism ‑dan­ger­ous pop­ulism that the poor believe is in their inter­est. That has been how left-wing pop­ulist par­ties through­out the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa man­age to cor­ral the votes of the lumpen and keep them in pover­ty. At the same time, they line their pock­ets at the poor’s expense.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties are hard­ly worth shit, but on the sem­i­nal issue of crime, the PNP must cease and desist from play­ing pol­i­tics with peo­ple’s lives and sup­port the Government’s push to bring seri­ous pain to the murderers?
When asked whether the view that crim­i­nal rights take prece­dent over the rights of crime vic­tims, Donna Scott-Mottley stam­mered her way through a long litany of non­sen­si­cal argu­ments, includ­ing the point that Jamaica has been plagued with vio­lence for over forty years.
Criticizing leg­is­la­tion that would make it a manda­to­ry 15 years for an offend­er caught with a gun Donna Scott-Mottley, the mouth­piece for the crim­i­nal-cod­dling PNP, argued that it is gross­ly unfair because a per­son can bor­row a car from a friend and had no idea that a gun was in the bor­rowed car.

Arguably, this rein­car­na­tion of Albert Einstein has no idea that those issues are sort­ed out in a tri­al in a court of law…
But what the Jamaican peo­ple [must] con­sid­er is that like so many before her in both polit­i­cal par­ties, this grifter, Donna Scott-Mottley is a tri­al lawyer who earns a liv­ing from crim­i­nals hav­ing their way. These are the con­flicts of inter­est that are allowed to flour­ish in Jamaica. Grifters like Donna Scott-Mottley do not give a shit about dead Jamaicans. What they care about are the illic­it dol­lars that flow into their bank accounts from the killers who employ them to get them out of jail. These grifters have zero care for where those monies come from.
But the People’s National Party nev­er cared about the safe­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple; the par­ty has always been about gain­ing and hold­ing onto state pow­er. The par­ty always tried to cur­ry favor with the mass­es, posi­tion­ing itself as the par­ty of the poor. Its poli­cies keep peo­ple poor; that’s by design so that it may manip­u­late them. But it is the poor who are get­ting killed, day in and day out.
The PNP is sell­ing more of the bull­shit it has been sell­ing for decades, noth­ing new but the same old snake oil.
Fortunately, the Jamaican peo­ple saw through the bull­shit and rel­e­gat­ed them to the out­side, where the small incon­se­quen­tial group, like lit­tle mon­grels, bark at pass­ing cars. That is where they should remain.

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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.

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There is a gra­tu­itous default nar­ra­tive that many low-infor­ma­tion Jamaicans use when­ev­er the ques­tion of vio­lence on the Island is broached. That is that there is crime every­where. Even those who ought to know bet­ter and had the good for­tune of trav­el­ing to oth­er coun­tries still make non­sen­si­cal ‘what-about’ statements.
Chicago, Illinois, is one of the American cities with an inor­di­nate num­ber of shoot­ings; the city report­ed a pop­u­la­tion of 2.699 mil­lion (2020). According to the Chicago police depart­ment, 2021 end­ed with 797 homicides.
Jamaica has a pop­u­la­tion of 2.961 mil­lion (2020) and a slight­ly larg­er pop­u­la­tion of over two hun­dred thou­sand residents.
Despite hav­ing almost the same pop­u­la­tion, the jamaica con­stab­u­lary force report­ed that the Island Nation record­ed 1,463 killings in 2021. Jamaicans killed 666 more of their fel­low Jamaicans than res­i­dents of Chicago did their own.
Additionally, for the sec­ond year in a row, Jamaica had the high­est mur­der rate in the Caribbean and Latin American region, sur­pass­ing such nations as Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador, and Chile, known as vio­lent hotspots of homicide.
Jamaica has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing the high­est kill rate of any nation in the Caribbean-Latin-American region, with a kill rate of 49.4 per 100,000 residents.
The sit­u­a­tion in Chicago does not per­turb res­i­dents of near­by Evanston, Illinois; they do not live in fear as res­i­dents all across the Island are because they are always so close to the ground zero of the violence.
Mass shoot­ings in America pose a sig­nif­i­cant risk to all Americans; there is no deny­ing that, nev­er­the­less, because of the size of the United States, it is impos­si­ble to com­pare report­ed inci­dents of vio­lence in the United States and vio­lence in tiny Jamaica.
If you do not under­stand the dif­fer­ence, I can­not help you.

I am past the stage where I believe that most Jamaicans want a crime-free soci­ety. There is a prac­ti­cal argu­ment to be made that most Jamaicans have nev­er seen the peace­ful and serene Jamaica of the 1960s. It is, there­fore, rea­son­able to con­clude that since they do not know what a peace­ful Jamaica looks like, they are unable to imag­ine liv­ing in a safe and peace­ful country.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness spoke to the upsurge in vio­lence in Spanish Town, St Catherine, label­ing it a nation­al emer­gency and the need to get civ­il soci­ety to ‘come along with stronger mea­sures to pro­tect the country.
“The lev­el of orga­nized crim­i­nal activ­i­ty there is a nation­al emer­gency. I do not have the lux­u­ry to be dither­ing on these mat­ters any­more; we have to act on it. We have to act to pro­tect inno­cent, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.”
I must pause to make the point that the word ‘any­more’ in the prime min­is­ter’s state­ments, which in his own words, is an admis­sion that he has been dither­ing on the issue of crime.
Touché to my detrac­tors who con­tin­ued to argue that the prime min­is­ter has been doing all he can on this exis­ten­tial issue of vio­lent crime; he has­n’t; he just acknowl­edged it.
I wish I had a dol­lar for all the times I wrote that the gov­ern­ment is [not] doing all it could to cau­ter­ize this issue.
Addressing the National Disaster Risk Management Council, Holness said. In our lib­er­al democ­ra­cy”, there are cer­tain changes that require the coöper­a­tion of the Parliamentary Opposition.
Let us stop there, mis­ter prime min­is­ter, do what you can with­out them. If you can edu­cate the peo­ple, use what­ev­er tools you have but leave the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion out.
There are no cir­cum­stances under which the (People’s National Party (PNP) would side with the Jamaican peo­ple or the coun­try over their own rapa­cious and craven desire to attain power.
This par­ty and all of its func­tionar­ies are inher­ent­ly pro-crim­i­nals, which goes for the PNP moles in the pub­lic sec­tor, includ­ing the courts.
The PNP has opposed and fought tooth and nail to oppose every bit of leg­is­la­tion that would put a seri­ous dent in vio­lent crime. The par­ty has con­sis­tent­ly placed itself square­ly in the camp of the killers while talk­ing out of the side of its mouth about crime, only as a means to gain state power.
For all intents and pur­pos­es, it is dif­fi­cult to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the People’s National Party and the mur­der­ous scum destroy­ing the coun­try. That par­ty has always been a crim­i­nal sup­port­ing par­ty; it will not change under the present leadership.
Personally, I have seen no dif­fer­ence between PNP and the killers run­ning the streets.

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

I’ve heard it before, so hear­ing it again did not sur­prise me. Nevertheless, it does­n’t make more sense today than when these non­sen­si­cal ideas were broached pre­vi­ous­ly, speak­ing of police sit­ting down with gang­sters to iron out feuds.
Without try­ing to shame any­one for the sug­ges­tion, we must first rec­og­nize that sug­ges­tions that police sit down with gang­sters are by def­i­n­i­tion an acknowl­edg­ment that the sit­u­a­tion is out of the con­trol of the secu­ri­ty forces and, there­fore, up to the war­ring gang­sters to main­tain peace.
By mak­ing that default acknowl­edg­ment, we are turn­ing over peace, tran­quil­i­ty, and law and order to gangsters.
How did that exper­i­ment work out in Tivoli Gardens when suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments of both polit­i­cal par­ties ced­ed Tivoli Gardens to the Coke fam­i­ly- a fam­i­ly of ardent criminals?
This writer is tired of the fan­cy gob­bly­gook lan­guage that accom­pa­nies this sub­ject in Jamaica as it does with oth­er sub­jects; the nar­ra­tive is always couched in hifa­lutin lan­guage that goes back to slav­ery and the atten­dant con­se­quences to us as a peo­ple with­out address­ing the issue at hand.
Being a prag­ma­tist, I much rather leave the pos­tur­ing to the log­ger­heads and apply myself to find­ing prac­ti­cal solu­tions to the problems.

Sure, we under­stand that the nation’s crime prob­lem has deep­er roots in the coun­try’s socio-eco­nom­ic con­di­tion. We also under­stand that the prob­lems of vio­lence that have man­i­fest­ed them­selves across all spec­trums of the soci­ety as a con­flict res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nism [may] have even deep­er roots dat­ing back to the peri­od after slav­ery and even the peri­od of slav­ery itself.
But what are we to do with that infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge? Are we to con­tin­ue to delude our­selves into think­ing that rec­og­niz­ing a prob­lem is a fix to the problem?
Are we going to con­tin­ue with the inane per­spec­tive that pover­ty is the dri­ver of crime in Jamaica yet the pur­vey­ors of crime are able to afford high-pow­ered weapons, exces­sive amounts of ammu­ni­tion, man­sions, cars, boats, motor­cy­cles, and lav­ish lifestyles?
When are we going to ask where they get the mon­ey to afford the fan­cy (liars)? Sorry, I meant lawyers when they get caught?
The coun­try is in a state of ver­i­ta­ble warfare…let that sink in. As we have seen in the United States, with the mass killings across the coun­try, ide­ol­o­gy and polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy [trump] com­mon sense and duty to the country.
The American polit­i­cal right hijacked the sec­ond amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion that guar­an­teed gun own­er­ship and made it a super­im­pos­ing amend­ment that can­not be touched, even though the framers had no idea that there would be weapons capa­ble of killing scores of peo­ple in sec­onds when James Madison pro­posed the sec­ond amend­ment to the constitution.
In the United States, not all in the polit­i­cal spaces are naïve enough to believe that the sec­ond amend­ment means that there can be no safe­guards in law about who owns guns and what kinds of guns they are allowed to have.
However, the polit­i­cal right holds this view, so they are stock­ing up on guns because they fear a race war is coming.
In Jamaica, the stu­pid­i­ty in deal­ing with crime runs the gamut of both polit­i­cal par­ties and all spec­trums, except for the peo­ple who sur­ren­der their chil­dren to join the secu­ri­ty forces.
What could poten­tial­ly be gained from a sit­down with war­ring mur­der­ers? To begin with, when we take action for the nation­al good, we must pon­der the cost-ben­e­fit of our actions. Is it pos­si­ble that there could be a tem­po­rary lull in the hos­til­i­ties that war­rant­ed the sit­down in the first place? Sure it’s pos­si­ble, but what kind of mes­sage would the police be send­ing when they ele­vate com­mon punks to sit­ting at the table with the government?
Those are the kinds of things weak gov­ern­ments do with guer­ril­la move­ments that are fight­ing for state pow­er, and they nev­er end well. We need to under­stand the pow­er of optics and how those will affect the young and impressionable.
Years ago, I implored the police to remove the graf­fi­ti imagery of so-called dons that adorn com­mu­ni­ties. It took a long time before that mes­sage sunk in and the police began to remove those images; whether it was a con­tin­u­ing process or just a flash in the pan I do not know.

I nev­er under­stood why Jamaicans are opposed to strong penal­ties for vio­lent offend­ers? I nev­er under­stood why peo­ple care more about the dan­ger­ous offend­ers who take life with­out care, than they do the vic­tims of those monsters.
I have long writ­ten off the nin­com­poops who look to the University Of The West Indies for guid­ance on crime and oth­er top­i­cal issues. In real­i­ty, Jamaica is in the sit­u­a­tion it is in large­ly because of the log­ic that emanates from that cesspool of insanity.
Providing the lead­er­ship for our coun­try, that sin­gle insti­tu­tion has turned out a buck­et­ful of idiots and morons at all lev­els. We see the con­se­quences of the edu­ca­tion the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to has pro­vid­ed to Jamaicans and the English-speak­ing Caribbean. (Rest in peace, Mutty Perkins).
We can get to where we police com­mu­ni­ties that once had war­ring fac­tions with high-pow­ered weapons shoot­ing at each oth­er with finesse; we are not there yet.
The coun­try is awash in dan­ger­ous weapons and untold amounts of ammu­ni­tion. This real­i­ty will not change any­time soon because of the nation’s porous bor­ders, cor­rupt offi­cials, and gov­ern­ment incom­pe­tence. The Jamaican peo­ple who still want the rule of law must avail them­selves of the real­i­ty that between the two polit­i­cal par­ties, there will be no seri­ous attempt leg­isla­tive­ly to end this scourge once and for all.
They are too in love with the mur­der­ers who run around in the con­stituen­cies they rep­re­sent and in which they oper­ate as mini-kings and queens.
There are no real con­se­quences for mur­der­ers; there­fore, we must rub­bish this idea of the police sit­ting down with gang­sters to end feuds.
Even the judi­cia­ry is in the pock­ets of the gang­sters; Jamaica is, for all intents and pur­pos­es, slid­ing fur­ther into failed state cat­e­go­ry. It did not have to be this way, but Jamaican are too pre­ten­tious. Jamaica is [not] at the place where it can finesse its law enforce­ment. We are not Scandanavia, and even they make dras­tic changes when the need aris­es, as the Fins did after the shoot­ing that took sev­er­al lives.
As I go, I would just like to ask this ques­tion; has any­one noticed that there is no out­cry about get­ting rid of the police com­mis­sion­er? Why is that?

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.This arti­cle was updat­ed after its publication.

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

International out­rage has been sparked after a Black man died from smoke inhala­tion as Brazilian police trapped him in a tear gas-filled SUV. While law enforce­ment says he was “active­ly resist­ing” arrest, oth­er reports offi­cers were using cru­el and exces­sive force. The pub­lic is call­ing foul and lin­ing the streets in São Paulo in protest. A video, released on social media, shows sev­er­al cops from the Brazilian Federal Highway Police (FHP) forcibly hold­ing the hatch­back of the truck down on Genivaldo de Jesus Santos, a man of African descent diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia, while thick smoke from a tear gas can­is­ter they released seeped through the cracks. Observers described the encounter as offi­cers cre­at­ing an impro­vised gas chamber.

Reports stat­ed the inci­dent hap­pened on Wednesday, May 25, in Umbauba, a town in the north­east­ern state of Sergipe. 
The man is approached by the FHP for rid­ing a motor­cy­cle with­out a hel­met, WSWS​.org reports. A record­ing shows the armed offi­cers, car­ry­ing assault rifles, aggres­sive­ly inter­ro­gat­ing Santos — and at one point curs­ing at him. His nephew, Wallyson de Jesus, who wit­nessed the alter­ca­tion, said the police took his uncle’s med­i­cine for his schiz­o­phre­nia out of his pock­et. “They threw some kind of gas inside the trunk and went to the police sta­tion,” de Jesus said. “But my uncle was uncon­scious. They took him to the hos­pi­tal, but it was already too late.” 
The video cap­tures three offi­cers, Kleber Nascimento Freitas, Paulo Rodolpho Lima Nascimento, and William de Barros Noia, vio­lent­ly engag­ing the man, for what wit­ness­es say last­ed for about 30 min­utes. And then after get­ting him into the patrol vehi­cle, the offi­cers decid­ed to toss a tear gas can­nis­ter inside of its trunk, the wit­ness­es say. 
Before his death, Santos, 38, can be heard scream­ing in the video, as his legs seem to flail des­per­ate­ly through the white clouds of smoke. As he calls out in agony, a crowd can be seen gath­er­ing. At no point did the offi­cers seem fazed by the onlook­ers and pro­vid­ed no relief for the man before he expired.
Later the offi­cers report­ed Santos was strick­en with a “sud­den ill­ness” on the way to the police sta­tion. The police divert­ed from the precinct and took him to the munic­i­pal hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead. A med­ical exam­in­er, George Fernandes, a spokesper­son for Sergipe state’s foren­sic insti­tute, declared he died of “mechan­i­cal asphyxia.

The institute’s report, accord­ing to Reuters news agency states, “This obstruc­tion can occur through sev­er­al fac­tors, and at this first moment it was not pos­si­ble to estab­lish the imme­di­ate cause of the asphyx­ia, nor how it occurred.”

The foren­sic insti­tute is required to sub­mit its final, more in-depth report to the country’s fed­er­al police with­in 10 days of the death. The FHP released a state­ment about Santos’ killing call­ing it a “fatal­i­ty.” According to the Brazilian pub­li­ca­tion, Poder 360, the depart­ment said the death was “unre­lat­ed to the legit­i­mate police action.” The offi­cers admit­ted in their report they ordered him to “dis­em­bark” and “lift his shirt,” after stop­ping him for dri­ving his motor­bike with­out his hel­met. An English trans­la­tion of the police’s account of the event reads, “Continuously, it was deter­mined that the indi­vid­ual put his hands on his head and opened his legs, so as to make pos­si­ble the per­son­al search, but this order was like­wise dis­obeyed.” It con­tin­ued, “At all times passed his hands along the waist­line and through his pock­ets.” The cops fur­ther claimed because of the “agi­ta­tion of the approached,” “restraint” of his per­son­age was nec­es­sary. Further claim­ing Santos had “resis­tance” to his arrest and that the vic­tim “began to strug­gle and vio­lent­ly oppose the police, even get­ting into fights with them.” The offi­cers claimed they had to use “immo­bi­liza­tion tech­niques,” in addi­tion to pep­per spray and tear gas, the only tech­niques “avail­able.” Santos is said to have calmed down at a cer­tain point, and was then tak­en to the police sta­tion, but “began to feel sick” and was “prompt­ly res­cued.” “The team quick­ly pro­ceed­ed to the local hos­pi­tal, where the nec­es­sary med­ical pro­ce­dures were adopt­ed,” the offi­cers wrote. FHP attrib­uted Santos’ death to a “sud­den ill­ness.” Once the video and images were released on social media, view­ers react­ed by blast­ing the police force, par­tic­u­lar­ly when his men­tal ill­ness was made pub­lic. By the next day, protests start­ed emerg­ing as dozens of peo­ple took to the roads of the town to block high­ways and burn tires.According to Democracy Now, one pro­test­er said, “Genivaldo was tor­tured for a crime he did not com­mit, a Black man with men­tal health issues. The fam­i­ly begged for his life, but they were not heard.” Some Brazilians likened Santos’ death to that of George Floyd, an African-American mur­dered also in a police-involved killing on the same day two years prior. 

Charles Preston tweet­ed, “I went to a protest in Rio for Genivaldo de Jesus Santos. He was killed Wednesday by police trap­ping him inside the trunk of his car and throw­ing tear gas inside. George Floyd was killed on the same day two years ago. I’ll post some pic­tures.” A mem­ber of the Coalition for Black Rights civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion tweet­ed his dis­gust, “These two pieces of ver­min know they are being filmed and yet they still applied a death sen­tence. There is no more decen­cy or embar­rass­ment. They tor­tured and exe­cut­ed the guy.” Others said it is anoth­er exam­ple of police bru­tal­i­ty in that South American nation, also point­ing to the more than 20 peo­ple killed by offi­cers dur­ing a raid on a favela in Rio de Janeiro a few days pri­or. The Brazilian Public Security Forum, an inde­pen­dent group, said in a state­ment, Santos’ death “shocked Brazilian soci­ety due to the lev­el of its bru­tal­i­ty, expos­ing the institution’s lack of pre­pared­ness to guar­an­tee that its agents obey basic procedures.”

There have been dozens of shoot­ings and oth­er attacks in U.S. schools and col­leges over the years, but until the mas­sacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999, the num­ber of dead tend­ed to be in the sin­gle dig­its. Since then, the num­ber of shoot­ings that includ­ed schools and killed ten or more peo­ple has increased. (Courtesy DailyMail)
Columbine High School, April 1999, twelve(12) slaughtered.
Red Lake High School March 2005, Seven(7) were slaughtered.
Virginia Tech, April 2007, thir­ty-two (32) peo­ple were killed on the cam­pus, and more than two dozen oth­ers were wounded.
At the Sandy Hook Elementary School, December 2012, 20 first-graders and six edu­ca­tors were slaughtered.
Umpqua Community College October 2015, nine peo­ple at the school in Roseburg, Oregon, wound­ed nine oth­ers injured; the cow­ard­ly punk then killed himself.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, February 2018, four­teen (14) stu­dents and three staff mem­bers were mur­dered at the school in Parkland, Florida.
Santa Fe High School, May 2018, ten (10) peo­ple were mur­dered, most of them students.
Robb Elementary May 2022, nine­teen (19)students and two teach­ers were murdered.

The afore­men­tioned data tells only a small part of the sto­ry of the gun epi­dem­ic plagu­ing America. The bod­ies of the slain 10 in Buffalo, New York, were not yet buried when the Uvalde shoot­ing occurred. Law Enforcement opines that some­times the fre­quen­cy of the shoot­ings sug­gests some may be copy­cats. The prob­lem is not just about the over four hun­dred mil­lion guns float­ing around in the hands of a minor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion; the real ques­tion is, why are the laws not upgrad­ed to ren­der the shoot­ers domes­tic terrorists?

While we are on gun own­er­ship, it is impor­tant to under­stand that it is a minor­i­ty of the US pop­u­la­tion that owns the bulk of the weapons float­ing around. Three-in-ten American adults say they cur­rent­ly own a gun, and anoth­er 11% say they don’t per­son­al­ly own a gun but live with some­one who does. (PewResearch).
The police response in Uvalde, Texas was not an anom­aly; cops in Connecticut wait­ed five (5) min­utes before enter­ing the school while the gun­man wreaked hav­oc inside.
No real action will be tak­en; no one will be fired; it is par for the course.….. Texas Governor Gregg Abbott lied to his state that the law enforce­ment response was spec­tac­u­lar (para­phras­ing). It turned out that it was a lie, so he back­tracked. The fact of the mat­ter is that not only was their response atro­cious, but rather than enter the school and do what they swore to do, they were busy out­side pep­per-spray­ing and tas­ing the par­ents of the chil­dren stuck inside.
The par­ents want­ed to go in to save their chil­dren, they did not have guns, but the police who had guns were too pissed-scared to enter the school.
Their blind sup­port­ers at FAUX news argued had they entered, they could have been killed. Every damn per­son who takes the oath of a police offi­cer knows that they may be called upon to put their lives on the line to save that of a total stranger. That is what they sign up to do; I signed up to do the same many years ago.

As I was work­ing on this arti­cle, I received a noti­fi­ca­tion that at least three peo­ple were mur­dered at a Hospital com­plex In Tulsa, Oklahoma. There are over 18,000 police depart­ments across the United States. As I said, the small­est inci­dent draws two, three, and up to five agen­cies at any giv­en time.
More than 800,000 sworn law enforce­ment offi­cers are now serv­ing in the United States, rep­re­sent­ing the high­est fig­ure ever. I keep remind­ing you, my read­ers, that they will tell you when­ev­er there are crises like the mass killings that what is need­ed is more police offi­cers. The truth is that they are lying to you, but they have already con­vinced their vot­ers that what is real­ly need­ed is more guns.
Texas’ Harvard edu­cat­ed junior Republican US Senator Raphael Cruz argues all that is need­ed is a good guy with a gun to counter the band guys. Ironically, the so-called good guys with guns are gen­er­al­ly too busy harass­ing and bru­tal­iz­ing the inno­cent to stop any shooter.
Their brav­ery is reserved for unarmed African men and women; even unarmed preg­nant black women stand no chance against their bar­rage of bul­lets. Those are the mon­sters cel­e­brat­ed by FAUX news.
Let us cut to the chase and stop with the bull-shit, the main­stream media won’t say it, but I damn sure will; the Republican US Senators in Texas, Oklahoma, and every state run by Republicans know that they have noth­ing to fear from their voters.
They under­stand that their vot­ers will not pun­ish them at the bal­lot box.
In Texas, nei­ther John Cornyn, Raphael Cruz, nor Governor Gregg Abbott needs to wor­ry about con­se­quences to them from voters.
The sad real­i­ty is that even as those Mexicans who set­tled in Uvalde, Texas, grieve the loss of their chil­dren, they will march right back into the vot­ing booths come November and vote Republican like the Racist whites who vote col­or over issues.

Democrats are raked over the coals by repub­li­cans for alleged­ly oper­at­ing an open-door pol­i­cy that allows ‘hordes’ of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants from Latin America access to the coun­try so they may vote for them.
Of course, there is no truth to it; it is a xeno­pho­bic attack on Spanish-speak­ing peo­ple seek­ing asy­lum in America, but their racist con­stituents gob­ble it up like hun­gry free-range chick­ens in a Texas farmyard.
Unfortunately, even the griev­ing Hispanics in Uvalde, Texas vote for the racist, xeno­pho­bic repub­li­can par­ty, hop­ing to be clas­si­fied as the newest iter­a­tion of whiteness.
This is true from Texas to Florida and places beyond; there is no evi­dence that Hispanics vote with the par­ty that best rep­re­sents their interests.
In fact, new data from Gallup sug­gests that 26 per­cent of Hispanics iden­ti­fy as Republicans, 56 per­cent of Hispanic Americans iden­ti­fy as Democrats or as inde­pen­dents. If that 56 per­cent is split even­ly between Independents and Democrats, Democrats are only pulling 28 per­cent of the Hispanic votes, with the oth­er 28 per­cent up for grabs as swing votes by both par­ties. Even if the split between Democrats and inde­pen­dents comes down in the Democrats’ favor, it does not mean that Hispanics are turn­ing out in droves to sup­port the Democratic par­ty that has been cham­pi­oning their causes.
More than any­thing this ought to be a les­son to Black activists who hitch their wag­on to Hispanics when they talk about dis­ad­van­tages to Black & Brown people.
These peo­ple have their own agen­da but they do not mind pig­gy-back­ing on the Black civ­il rights struggle.
Gays and les­bians were allowed to mar­ry and live nor­mal lives because of the Democratic par­ty and President Barack Obama yet many of them turn right around and vote for a Republican par­ty that votes to take their rights at every turn.
I am not sug­gest­ing that vot­ers should be sin­gle issues vot­ers, what I am say­ing is that the Republican par­ty cares more about white suprema­cy than any oth­er issue, and so too does their voters.
The United States Senate is dead­locked at 50 – 50, this November there will be elec­tions in which sev­er­al Republican Senators are up for reelection.
There are crit­i­cal issues to be addressed, vot­ing rights, abor­tion rights, infra­struc­ture, gun vio­lence, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of white suprema­cist groups, and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of dan­ger­ous guns on our streets, among oth­er issues.
All of these issues Republicans have stood in the way of solv­ing. Voters in states like Texas and all across the south and else­where will vote the repub­li­can obstruc­tion­ists’ clowns right back into office.

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

In 2001 while work­ing as a design con­sul­tant for Thomasville Home Furnishing in Poughkeepsie, I decid­ed to try my hand at busi­ness. I con­sid­ered long and hard; what kind of busi­ness could I invest the least bit of mon­ey in that I was the least like­ly to fail at? The fact is that I had no mon­ey to speak of and even less busi­ness experience.
Along the way, I had picked up some basic point­ers from some great Hudson Valley folks, like Fran Pamarico of Poughkeepsie Nissan, Vince Lamerillo of Vince’s auto­body, and John Zoitas of Westside Market On Manhattan’s west side, John was kind enough to hire me when I first arrived from Jamaica…
I decid­ed on a Barbering busi­ness, which I thought would not require a great deal of cap­i­tal, and, if oper­at­ed cor­rect­ly, stood a great chance of sur­vival and maybe even turn­ing a profit.
I won’t delve too much into the busi­ness, but I will tell you about Poughkeepsie. The city of Poughkeepsie had one main street that was blocked off, so motorists could not dri­ve through the lone main street. Some ‘astute politi­cians’ had decid­ed that the way to ensure that city res­i­dents shopped at the main street stores that were slow­ly dying was to pre­vent them from dri­ving through the main street. Of course, they nev­er both­ered to think that the west arte­r­i­al led to the Town of Poughkeepsie on the route nine cor­ri­dor where the South Hills Mall and the new­ly built Galleria malls were in full swing.
Shoppers no longer need­ed the small stores on Main Street; they had spa­cious cov­ered malls in which to shop.
Main street Poughkeepsie died a swift death, and the drug deal­ers came.

To be fair, the drug deal­ers may have been there before the death of com­mer­cial Poughkeepsie. By the time I moved to Poughkeepsie at the end of 1998, I did not go into the city. My then-wife need­ing her Jamaica ground pro­vi­sions, was less risk-averse. So she would go to the cor­ner of Main and Hamilton streets to pur­chase Jamaican sta­ples from Pancho, a Mexican shop­keep­er who claimed he was Jamaican. (Whatever hap­pened to Pancho)?
At the time, one could count the num­ber of Mexicans liv­ing in the city on one hand and have two fin­gers left over.
I thought a bar­ber­shop would be the ide­al invest­ment since the hair busi­ness was the only busi­ness guar­an­teed to receive sup­port from the black com­mu­ni­ty if you are a black investor. I also thought that it would offer men who had been on the wrong side of the law a sec­ond chance to get their lives together.
Ultimately, I would be forced into con­clud­ing that some of those same men were on the wrong side of the law and were impris­oned because they were not exact­ly mod­el citizens.
I knew noth­ing about cut­ting hair, but I had met an African-American mas­ter Barber with whom I became fast friends.
Phil would super­vise and run the shop, and I would con­tin­ue doing what I was doing at my job.

My first thought in 2001, when I decid­ed to invest in the city, was to speak to police offi­cers and get their per­spec­tive on what was real­ly hap­pen­ing. I had left my own Jamaican law enforce­ment career in 1991, and so at that time, I felt a kin­ship with police officers.….…..Tragically, my per­spec­tive on law enforce­ment in the United States has tak­en a decid­ed­ly 180-degree turn from how I felt about some of the offi­cers I met who patrolled the drug-infest­ed streets of Poughkeepsie in 2001.
I pulled up to an offi­cer at the petrol sta­tion on the cor­ner of Main and Rose streets and asked him what he thought about the city, was it get­ting bet­ter or worse?
Matt Nataro was not only a great police offi­cer; he was a Plumber and a super chill guy. Matt and I became great friends. Through our friend­ship, I was intro­duced to the major­i­ty of the offi­cers in the depart­ment, includ­ing Sergeant Wilson, who was even­tu­al­ly ele­vat­ed to the rank of captain.
Matt Nataro would even­tu­al­ly move on to join the Westchester County police; he would joke that his wife spent a lot, so he need­ed to make more money.
Based on Matt’s advice, I decid­ed to take a chance to rent premis­es at the cor­ner of Main & Rose. At the time, the city streets were main­ly tra­versed by drug deal­ers and drug users, and one could take their pick of avail­able com­mer­cial spaces-no one was start­ing busi­ness­es in that drug-infest­ed hellhole.
Some friends thought I was out of my mind, but I cal­cu­lat­ed that the city could not remain in that state for­ev­er. So I fig­ured that at $350 month­ly, I could tough it out until change arrived.
I told the land­lord that I would pay $350 month­ly; he said yes imme­di­ate­ly; I imme­di­ate­ly real­ized I should have said $250, and he would have been equal­ly will­ing to say yes. No one was rent­ing anything.
Around the cor­ner, on Rose Street from my new­ly mint­ed bar­ber­shop, the police would arrive in a large bus and bust the crack­house …some­times twice per week.
As soon as they marched out one group of deal­ers in shack­les, a new group would begin the oper­a­tion the same day.

I hired up to six Barbers at the time, and busi­ness was encour­ag­ing. I was not mak­ing mon­ey, but I felt com­fort­able know­ing that I had start­ed some­thing that was offer­ing a ser­vice to the com­mu­ni­ty and pro­vid­ing a place for soci­etal­ly maligned men to work and avoid prison recidivism.
I had made it known that I did not want any drug deal­ing in front of my busi­ness, which did not sit well with one group of street hustlers.
Frankly, as a for­mer no-non­sense cop com­ing out of Kingston, Jamaica, I won­dered how it was pos­si­ble that there could be so much drug deal­ing hap­pen­ing in such a small city with­out the police com­ing down on the deal­ers with a sledgehammer.
Much to my cha­grin, I would learn from some cred­i­ble sources that some peo­ple who were sup­posed to stop drug deal­ing were heav­i­ly invest­ed in its pro­lif­er­a­tion. My heart dropped, and my atti­tude changed. Not against the guys I had become friends with; these were stand-up guys, but that some police offi­cers would stoop so low. I real­ized then that the very same greed that char­ac­ter­ized some Jamaican offi­cers was evi­dent in offi­cers in the good old USA.
One morn­ing after I opened the bar­ber­shop for the guys to begin work, I stood out­side in the warm morn­ing air sip­ping on a cup of cof­fee. The cof­fee and a cig­a­rette were oblig­a­tory after I opened up each morn­ing before leav­ing for my job. The cig­a­rette would even­tu­al­ly be dropped from the rou­tine a few years lat­er, but the cof­fee stayed.
It is hard to describe what main street looked like in 2001; you had to be there to ful­ly under­stand the sense of dere­lic­tion and hope­less­ness that pre­vailed. Old build­ings were board­ed up, and Drug-deal­ers were everywhere.
Main street vehic­u­lar traf­fic main­ly con­sist­ed of push­ers and users, police, and johns for the drug-addict­ed pros­ti­tutes who tra­versed up and down the strip day and night. It was not a black or white thing; it was both.
I heard loud voic­es com­ing from Rose street as if a group of men were argu­ing loud­ly; it did not both­er me; loud nois­es, fights, and gun­shots were commonplace.
I nev­er lost my sense of alert­ness, so I stayed poised and ready to react if I need­ed to. About twelve guys walked up to my bar­ber­shop and began curs­ing, “we been here sling­ing for years, ain’t nobody gone stop what we do.” I had seen these guys before, drug deal­ing lowlives who believed they could intim­i­date whomev­er they chose. One pulled up his shirt to reveal a semi-auto­mat­ic weapon.
I summed them up quick­ly and con­clud­ed that there would­n’t be that much pos­tur­ing if they had come to kill me; they want­ed to intim­i­date me and get me to back down from my drug-free zone around my busi­ness place.

One thing about me is that as a for­mer cop, I under­stand the lan­guage of the street, and I would nev­er argue with a group of men bran­dish­ing guns.
However, con­vinced about the right­eous­ness of my cause, I expect­ed to teach them a les­son first to do their home­work before attempt­ing to intim­i­date some­one like me. I told them, ‘wait, right here, I will be back. I jumped into my lit­tle hon­da and sped off to my house; I returned a few min­utes lat­er to find the streets desert­ed. The next morn­ing the father of one of the would-be gang­sters who oper­at­ed a drug house came to apol­o­gize to me. He tried to con­vince me that the guys were sor­ry and want­ed to make peace. I told him that as far as I was con­cerned, they were indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly respon­si­ble for the secu­ri­ty of my place of busi­ness; if a glass were bro­ken, they would be held accountable.
That did not mean going to the police.
I had no more problems.
Years lat­er, there would be a steady influx of Mexicans. Poughkeepsie was on the upswing; women were push­ing strollers on main street again. Empty build­ings were reha­bil­i­tat­ed, and life returned. Did I tell you that the main street became a thor­ough­fare? Yea that.….
I would even­tu­al­ly move my busi­ness fur­ther up Main street to a plaza and added anoth­er facet to it. I had moved from one busi­ness to two and was work­ing full-time for myself. Upper Main and low­er Main were always pris­tine regard­less of the upheaval, and white-owned busi­ness­es thrived on the book­ends. During the Christmas sea­son, trees and lamp­posts are adorned with beau­ti­ful lights, and peo­ple, most­ly white, wan­der about sam­pling the restau­rants and oth­er spots of inter­est with­out a care in the world. The mid­dle main street was left to its own device.

And then, the opi­oid cri­sis took over from the crack epi­dem­ic. In the ear­ly 2000s, the addicts were both black and white but most­ly black. Both deal­ers and users were picked up and cart­ed off to jail with equal ease and dai­ly frequency.
Nowadays upper Main street is a crazy house of drug addicts, the fire depart­ment and EMS are kept busy dai­ly deal­ing with cas­es of over­dosed addicts. Hoffman Avenue vehic­u­lar traf­fic belies the fact that it is a cul-de-sac. Motorists dri­ve up and park in my park­ing spaces, they walk down Hoffman Avenue and pur­chase drugs as if it is the most nat­ur­al thing in the world.
The police do not both­er them.
Do you care to ask the col­or of the push­ers and buy­ers? No? Okay then.
Curious as to the seem­ing lack of inter­est by the Poughkeepsie Police I reached out to the Mayor’s office last week to under­stand why the white peo­ple using and buy­ing drugs with such ease does not elic­it a response from the police? I also told them I was work­ing on a sto­ry and would appre­ci­ate a response from Mayor Robert Rollison before pub­lish­ing the article.
The Mayor’s assis­tant respond­ed to my voice mes­sage and assured me that the Mayor would give me a call the fol­low­ing day.
The fol­low­ing day she called to say that she had emailed me the Mayor’s response.
I thanked her, even though I expect­ed to ask hard ques­tions of the Mayor and would have pre­ferred a one and one conversation.
Here is Mayor Rollison’s response.

The City of Poughkeepsie is com­mit­ted to address­ing these chal­lenges that unfor­tu­nate­ly adverse­ly affect our neigh­bor­hoods. We use every resource at our dis­pos­al and the help of our law enforce­ment part­ners to address these problems.
Due to some of the changes in our Criminal Justice System in this State, it is much more dif­fi­cult to have a long-last­ing impact on mit­i­gat­ing an end­ing to these activ­i­ties. I want to be per­fect­ly clear on one thing, we are absolute­ly com­mit­ted to keep­ing this City, its streets and neigh­bor­hoods safe.
I know it is frus­trat­ing and upset­ting to so many and we appre­ci­ate all the help and sup­port from our cit­i­zens and busi­ness own­ers” said Mayor Rob Rolison.

I will wait.

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

There are times when we elders should shut up, sit and lis­ten; this was one such time. Let me be the first to say that even though she is thir­teen years old, (13) I am not as smart as she is.
So since it will be their world, I believe we should let them have a say in how they want it to be shaped.
Idiotic and com­pro­mised politi­cians both on the polit­i­cal right and left con­tin­ue to lie to a gullible and low infor­ma­tion pop­u­la­tion that the answer to the crime prob­lem is more police.
The answer to home­less peo­ple sleep­ing on the streets is to hire more cops to arrest them and throw them in jail, not to get to the root of home­less­ness, which usu­al­ly stems from the widen­ing income gap.
The answer to mass shoot­ings is to hire more cops and turn our chil­dren’s schools into armed con­cen­tra­tion camps where the police body slam chil­dren in their own class­rooms and oth­er­wise abuse them.
The soci­etal prob­lems that we face give the peo­ple who want to turn our soci­ety into a mas­sive police state gives sup­port­ers of police state what they want. Even those among us who ought to know bet­ter fall right in line with the ever-tight­en­ing grip of the evolv­ing author­i­tar­i­an police state.

The 13-year-old in the video above gives us cause to hope that despite what appears to be a world full of old fools, there is rea­son to have hope because of the next generation.
Despite the mas­sive buildup of police resources, I guess courage is not a part of some they hire. Vice News report­ed that as the shoot­er wreaked hav­oc in the Texas Elementary school, there were active 911 calls from inside the school beg­ging police to do something.
Police offi­cials now admit that there were active 911 calls from with­in the class­room while dozens of police wait­ed out­side the door for a tac­ti­cal team and keys from a janitor.
They should all be fired and face charges of crim­i­nal neg­li­gence. But what the politi­cians will tell you is that we need more of these incom­pe­tent bul­lies to ter­ror­ize our neighborhoods.

Payton S. Gendron, 18, shot 13 peo­ple on Saturday after­noon, May 14^th, at a Tops super­mar­ket in east Buffalo, killing 10, police said. Almost all the vic­tims were Black. Needless to ask, the race of Gendron.
It was­n’t the first time that a cau­casian despot had decid­ed to cow­ard­ly snuff out the lives of unsus­pect­ing peo­ple of col­or as they go about their dai­ly lives; it will most assured­ly not be the last.
The tri­als ad tra­vails of Black peo­ple at the hands of demons like these are far too many to doc­u­ment, and God knows far too numer­ous to men­tion in this short essay.

On the night of June 17, 2015, 21-year-old Dylann Roof entered the pre­dom­i­nant­ly black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., and opened fire on a group of con­gre­gants dur­ing Bible study. The Black con­gre­gants had wel­comed the evil degen­er­ate warm­ly after he entered the sacred place of wor­ship. Nine (9) parish­ioners lay dead by the time he was done, includ­ing senior pas­tor and state sen­a­tor Clementa C Pinckney. Their only crime was the col­or of their skin; the rea­son for their untime­ly demise was the cor­ro­sive and poi­so­nous hatred in the hearts of their killers.
The poi­son is being spewed on the polit­i­cal right, enam­ored with the intel­lec­tu­al but cor­ro­sive racist gib­ber­ish from Donald Trump and his fol­low­ers and embraced by the Republican Party.
Like tens of thou­sands of peo­ple of all col­ors, my wife Cheryl and I went to South Carolina. We stood on the ground at Mother Emanuel AME Church and paid our respects to the inno­cent vic­tims, our names scratched in sharpie on a wall, des­per­ate to con­nect and grieve for the vic­tims like thou­sands before us did.
Dillon Roofe was arrest­ed and tak­en into cus­tody; he did not sus­tain a sin­gle injury from the offi­cers who arrest­ed him. in fact, offi­cers who arrest­ed Roofe treat­ed him to a Burger King meal. They claimed the mass killer was hun­gry, so offi­cers went out of their way to get him a meal.

Sadly in America, a 12-year-old Black child play­ing with a toy gun is mer­ci­less­ly gunned down by Police, while a 21-year-old dement­ed mass killer is arrest­ed with­out inci­dent and treat­ed to a meal by police.
Time and again, we see police vicious­ly gun down inno­cent peo­ple of col­or for the slight­est infrac­tion, often­times for no infrac­tion; yet white males who mer­ci­less­ly and cow­ard­ly gun down unsus­pect­ing peo­ple just going about their dai­ly lives are arrest­ed and treat­ed with def­er­ence and respect.

A Black man shop­ping in a Walmart that sells guns was mur­dered by police for hav­ing a gun in the store that sells guns. A 75-year-old Hispanic woman who suf­fered from demen­tia and had a men­tal episode was mur­dered in her New Mexico home by police for hav­ing two knives and not fol­low­ing orders to drop the weapons.
Family mem­bers rued the thought that made them call the police for help.
What is it about American Police that makes them so def­er­en­tial to white killers and bit­ter­ly vio­lent toward peo­ple of color?
Writing for News, one Bruce C T Wright said, ‘only in America can police respond to sep­a­rate calls for sim­i­lar inci­dents and have two dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent results depend­ing on the race of the sus­pect.’
‘That truth was impos­si­ble to ignore on Saturday when 18-year-old Payton Gendron drove four hours to a super­mar­ket in a Black com­mu­ni­ty in Buffalo, New York, where he opened fire with an assault rifle and killed at least 10 peo­ple and injured at least three oth­ers. He was safe­ly tak­en into cus­tody fol­low­ing the carnage’.

An armed white man who alleged­ly shot and injured a police offi­cer after bar­ri­cad­ing him­self in a home dur­ing a stand­off with police man­aged to be peace­ful­ly arrest­ed in North Hollywood, California, in June of last year. Police respond­ed to a report­ed active shoot­ing and some­how took the armed man into cus­tody with­out resort­ing to the lethal force we see offi­cers use so many times with unarmed Black people.
Peter Manfredonia was arrest­ed in Maryland six days after he alleged­ly killed a 62-year-old man with a machete, held anoth­er man hostage, stole the hostage’s guns and vehi­cle, killed a for­mer class­mate, and kid­napped the for­mer classmate’s girl­friend in her car in Connecticut.
Roger Hedgpeth was arrest­ed a block away from the White House after threat­en­ing to kill the pres­i­dent of the United States. The Florida man was armed with a sheathed knife on his left hip, accord­ing to a report from The Washington Post.

Benjamin Murdy of Harford County, Maryland fired near­ly 200 rounds from a rifle and a hand­gun, while “police nev­er fired a sin­gle shot,” accord­ing to WMAR Baltimore. After an hour-and-a-half stand­off with Harford County police, the Maryland man even­tu­al­ly called 911 and turned him­self in. Despite the evi­dent threat Murdy posed to the arrest­ing offi­cers – a threat that has result­ed in the killing of many Black sus­pects – Murdy was tak­en into cus­tody peace­ful­ly and lat­er charged.

Florida woman Serina Probus was accused of two sep­a­rate vio­lent felonies, one of which the 20-year-old admit­ted to being “too high on cocaine to remem­ber,” the Tampa Bay Times report­ed. Despite the clear threat to the safe­ty of the arrest­ing offi­cers — a threat that police have quick­ly killed Black sus­pects over — Probus was some­how able to be peace­ful­ly tak­en into cus­tody and as a result, smiled proud­ly in her mugshot. Her treat­ment stood in stark con­trast to how cops typ­i­cal­ly react to Black sus­pects accused of the same or less.

Jerri Kelly decid­ed the best reac­tion to four Black teenagers who knocked on her door while fund-rais­ing for their high school was to pull a gun on them and keep her firearm aimed at them until police arrived. While the obvi­ous­ly racist episode that unfold­ed in Arkansas result­ed in Kelly being arrest­ed, it took the Wynne Police Department — which arrived on the scene to see Kelly hold­ing the boys at gun­point while they were forced to lie on the ground — five days to actu­al­ly take her into custody.

Bryan Riley, high on metham­phet­a­mines, killed four peo­ple he didn’t know on Sept. 2, 2021, includ­ing a baby, a moth­er, and a grand­moth­er before shoot­ing at police and lat­er sep­a­rate­ly attack­ing a dif­fer­ent offi­cer in Florida. And yet, in spite of those truths, police nev­er felt a threat to their lives enough to do any­thing more than take Riley safe­ly into cus­tody with­out resort­ing to lethal force.
What do all of these vio­lent offend­ers have in com­mon White skin, these exam­ples are thank­ful­ly com­pli­ments to Bruce Wright’s research.
The num­ber of inci­dents in which police safe­ly take vio­lent white mass killers into cus­tody while mur­der­ing Black and Brown peo­ple, even the sick, elder­ly, and para­plegics are stun­ning. It speaks to the deep-seat­ed racism that exists in American polic­ing and may even mean as some believe that the only rea­son the KKK is not des­ig­nat­ed a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion is that they are no longer wear­ing white sheets but police uniforms.

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

Writer: A serv­ing mem­ber of the JCF who shall remain anony­mous for obvi­ous reasons.

I am mere­ly offer­ing a few words of advice to Members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), espe­cial­ly those with under five years remain­ing before their exit from the agency.
For those of you who’ve not seen any upward mobil­i­ty despite your years and even decades of hard work and ded­i­ca­tion, for those who feel left behind and neglected.
Those feel­ing as if you are not a part of the JCF, my advice is to you is to desen­si­tize and detach your­selves from the JCF.
Put your mind in a state that will pre­pare you for your exit.
Prepare your mind to join the pop­u­la­tion as a civil­ian to cope with the same issues fac­ing our reg­u­lar Jamaican broth­ers and sisters.

The force’s lead­er­ship is head­ed by a civil­ian Commissioner who is inca­pable of under­stand­ing or rec­og­niz­ing that the force was built on the idea that hard work would be rewarded.
We are now see­ing the oppo­site and the mar­gin­al­iza­tion of those who are over 35 years old.
It is now get­ting worse, now that the age has been reduced to under 25, under the guise of prepar­ing new lead­ers; lead­ers with­out the req­ui­site expe­ri­ence in the discipline.
These Leaders will now be trained by the Army, leav­ing one to won­der what type of Police Officers those will be?
It seems the hier­ar­chy led by Commish clue­less has not seen the mas­sive migra­tion of senior police personnel.

Editor’s note

A serv­ing mem­ber of the JCF sub­mit­ted the pre­vi­ous obser­va­tion; it high­lights some of the griev­ances that rank & file offi­cers have faced for decades.
The force’s morale seems to be suf­fer­ing as the gov­ern­ment is dead set on build­ing a sec­ond JDF with­in the JCF, one that is built on the lead­er­ship of senior offi­cers in the mold of mil­i­tary offi­cers with zero polic­ing knowl­edge and or acumen.
This writer has warned that this is not the way to go; regard­less of the edu­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tion of a serv­ing mem­ber, that per­son should not be ele­vat­ed to any lead­er­ship posi­tion with­out the years of polic­ing skills required of a sea­soned officer.
The JCF is now top-heavy, with lead­ers who have no polic­ing skills or experience.
Jamaica does not need intel­lec­tu­als and aca­d­e­mics as police offi­cers, and in fact, nowhere does. Policing is a dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pline that requires a cer­tain type of ded­i­ca­tion and exper­tise, not degrees and braggadocio.

Please tell me under what set of circumstances this could be justified? This is a burgeoning crisis that is spiraling out of control and will only be stopped when the population says,’ no more’.
It has become clearer by the day that if you are a person of color living in the United States, regardless of your needs the worst of all outcomes will inevitably be calling the police to your home.
There is nothing good that will come from calling the police for help; as a consequence, I have personally taken the decision that unless there is a situation that requires me to lawfully inform the police of an event, they will never set foot on my property.
For the record, police are [not] supposed to use lethal force [unless] their lives or that of someone else is in [imminent] danger.
We have a country that empowers these ignorant uneducated murderers with impunity to kill, and so they use every opportunity to take life, even in situations like these that require calm reassuring understanding.
To every fool with a hammer, everything is a nail.

By Josephine Harvey
Police in New Mexico have released dis­turb­ing body cam­era footage show­ing an offi­cer fatal­ly shoot­ing a 75-year-old woman with demen­tia in her home last month.
The woman, Amelia Baca, had become agi­tat­ed at fam­i­ly mem­bers in the Las Cruces home when her daugh­ter called the police for help on April 16. According to fam­i­ly mem­bers, Baca was hav­ing a men­tal health crisis.

Every inci­dent that occurs offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty for eval­u­a­tion, intro­spec­tion, and poten­tial reme­di­al action. How do we fine-tune the laws we have on the books, and where amend­ments and addi­tions are nec­es­sary, make changes with prop­er safe­guards for the population.
My atten­tion was drawn to a recent police chase in the cor­po­rate area. A sin­gle unit man­aged to safe­ly com­plete and bring to a safe end­ing an errant female motorist who seem­ing­ly believed the rules did not apply to her.
Police offi­cers who serve in Jamaica, past, and present, under­stand that this is the mind­set of the thugs on the streets and the igno­rant so-called educated.
I applaud the offi­cers in the chase for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism, with one slight caveat, despite the wom­an’s igno­rant insis­tence on not exit­ing the vehicle.

I must admit that hav­ing left Jamaican law enforce­ment for so long, I am present­ly unsure what the pro­to­cols are for a sit­u­a­tion in which the offi­cers boxed the car in, and the dri­ver refus­es to exit the vehicle.
My thought process was that as it per­tains to pur­suit of a per­son who runs into a premis­es, his or oth­er­wise, the police are empow­ered to go in with­out a war­rant and retrieve that offender.
A per­son who flees the police is sub­ject to the same rules, mean­ing the police can law­ful­ly smash the win­dow and retrieve the offend­er from the automobile.
Notwithstanding, I reached out to a cou­ple of sources who are still serv­ing, and they assured me that my think­ing is sound.
I asked why the offi­cers did not remove the errant and bel­liger­ent woman from the vehi­cle, forth­with all things considered.
One source explained that the police know that remov­ing her by break­ing the win­dow despite all that we saw would have trig­gered an INDECOM inves­ti­ga­tion fol­lowed by end­less blath­er of bull­shit on radio and tele­vi­sion about police dam­ag­ing the wom­an’s car.
Unconvinced, I asked what would have hap­pened if the woman had decid­ed she was not ever get­ting out of the car? As long as the woman decid­ed she would not exit the auto­mo­bile, the police would have to remain there beg­ging and plead­ing, I was told.
This is not law enforce­ment. I do not espouse a sit­u­a­tion in which police offi­cers arbi­trar­i­ly dam­age peo­ple’s prop­er­ty; nei­ther do I believe the police should be stand­ing around beg­ging a crim­i­nal who has bro­ken sev­er­al laws to fol­low orders.

People flee the police for var­i­ous rea­sons, but in the end, none of those rea­sons ever make sense. What could have jus­ti­fied her killing a child, an old­er adult, or any­one after she decid­ed she would not stop for the police? Could she lie her way out of a manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion, giv­en that the chase was video recorded?
Or was she con­fi­dent that the idiots who per­form the duties of judges would find a loop­hole to let her loose?

The igno­rance of the motorist was pal­pa­ble; it reeked of a brand of faux sophistry that has dom­i­nat­ed the psy­che of Jamaicans of all stra­ta but one that is most deplorable when we hear it from those with the speakie-spok­ie voices.
Her refusal to stop and exit the vehi­cle made her mind­set worse. Her argu­ment that because she was on her way from work and her resul­tant belief that the police had no pow­er to stop her for a traf­fic offense is laughable…
And, of course, the oblig­a­tory lies that fol­lowed, that the police hit her vehi­cle only for that lie to be rub­bished when she was informed that the whole inci­dent was video recorded.
This is what our offi­cers, includ­ing myself, were forced to deal with in this crim­i­nal par­adise where the words of liars are gospel in the courts even when they com­mit the worst crimes.
These inci­dents gar­ner days and weeks of illog­i­cal gib­ber­ish on tele­vi­sion. Moronic talk­ing-heads and their brain-dead callers make a liv­ing on talk radio by demo­niz­ing the police on inci­dents rid­dled with lies and innuendos.

The JCF is a top-heavy police agency with great offi­cers at the rank and file lev­el and many pre­tenders at the top.
The offi­cers on the streets have lit­tle sup­port from their gazetted supe­ri­ors, who, but for a few exam­ples, are mere­ly in the posi­tions they are in because it offers a paycheck.
The major­i­ty of the senior corps of the JCF are in uni­form to floss and give orders; the young offi­cers do not have the pol­i­cy under­stand­ings they need to have, which makes them timid and unsure of how to act.
All of this is because their polit­i­cal boss­es, despite the rhetoric to the con­trary, do not want the police ful­ly empow­ered to stop the may­hem in our country.
We need a coun­try of laws, not of men. We need the Government to untie the hands of the police so they can do their jobs but hold them account­able when they step out of line.
An effec­tive police force can­not oper­ate in an atmos­phere of uncer­tain­ty and fear in doing its jobs.
Policing is a job that will not change; it does not require fan­cy titles and rank. Unless you walked the beat and dealt with the worst of soci­ety, you have no busi­ness call­ing your­self a police officer.

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

By Josh Meyers

America has a vio­lence prob­lem. And it doesn’t seem to be going away any­time soon.

Late last month, on April 22, a gun­man in Washington, D.C., opened fire at a col­lege prep school from across the street, rid­dling it with more than 200 bul­lets and wound­ing four peo­ple. A mall shoot­ing in South Carolina that same week wound­ed 10. A shoot­ing on a Brooklyn sub­way ear­li­er that month wound­ed over a dozen. New Orleans recent­ly report­ed its blood­i­est week­end in near­ly 10 years.

Overall, recent data shows that the U.S. expe­ri­enced its largest-ever record­ed annu­al increase in homi­cides in 2020, com­pared to 2019, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the FBI.The homi­cide rate rose near­ly 30% in 2020 and increased again by 5% in 2021. Violent crimes such as mass shoot­ings and assaults have also increased since 2019

In inter­views with Yahoo News, sev­er­al experts attrib­uted the spike in vio­lence to three fac­tors. They say the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic dis­rupt­ed all aspects of life, forc­ing nation­wide lock­downs that led to increased stress and anx­i­ety among the population.

Dr. Howard Kurtz, pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy and crim­i­nal jus­tice at Southwest Oklahoma State University, believes that as peo­ple were locked away from the out­side world, vio­lence and frus­tra­tion ensued.

“There was this plague men­tal­i­ty that has to take a toll on peo­ple,” Kurtz told Yahoo News. “Then you start see­ing increas­es in vio­lent crime with a lack of social interaction.”

While COVID cas­es have plunged in the past few months and most lock­downs have end­ed, new vari­ants and con­tin­ued mask restric­tions are still dis­rupt­ing every­day life. Two years after lock­downs began, peo­ple still can­not agree on mask guid­ance, and many are reach­ing their break­ing point, Kurtz argued“.
We have peo­ple that are on edge. People that don’t want to wear masks on pub­lic trans­porta­tion, in crowd­ed indoor set­tings,” he said. “The cli­mate lends itself to peo­ple tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands.

Experts believe anoth­er rea­son for con­cern is the grow­ing polit­i­cal polar­iza­tion and dis­trust in U.S. insti­tu­tions. Alongside this dis­trust is also a sense of law­less­ness stem­ming from police vio­lence. Americans’ lack of trust in law enforce­ment, edu­ca­tion, the gov­ern­ment and the econ­o­my feeds social dis­cord, Dennis Kenney, a pro­fes­sor at John Jay College told Yahoo News.

“The fac­tors over the last cou­ple of years have begun to erode the social con­tract that many peo­ple had formed,” he said. “As a result, you see con­flict in society.”

In many ways, Americans are feel­ing frus­trat­ed with the U.S. gov­ern­ment, the econ­o­my and their fel­low cit­i­zens. According to a March study from Gallup, rough­ly three-quar­ters of Americans are dis­sat­is­fied with where the coun­try is head­ing. This has risen sig­nif­i­cant­ly since 2002, where the sit­u­a­tion was near­ly reversed, the study shows.

Political polar­iza­tion is push­ing a nar­ra­tive that Americans need to take mat­ters into their own hands. Liberals and con­ser­v­a­tives are slow­ly begin­ning to see each oth­er as ene­mies rather than fel­low Americans, Dr. Kurtz claimed.

“You have this group on the right that wants to take back the coun­try and a group on the left that wants to defund law enforce­ment,” he said. “People who dis­agree are going to lash out. Sometimes very violently.”
Read te full sto­ry here; https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​h​e​r​e​s​-​w​h​a​t​-​e​x​p​e​r​t​s​-​s​a​y​-​i​s​-​c​a​u​s​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​u​n​i​t​e​d​-​s​t​a​t​e​s​-​r​e​c​e​n​t​-​s​p​i​k​e​-​i​n​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​-​0​9​0​0​0​6​6​4​9​.​h​tml

Constable Donald Carr of the St Andrew South Police Division died after being in a motor vehi­cle acci­dent on the toll road in the vicin­i­ty of the Golden Grove com­mu­ni­ty in Saint Ann.
Constable Carr died after los­ing con­trol of the motor­car he was dri­ving and in which his girl­friend was a passenger.

The trag­ic loss of this police offi­cer and the seri­ous injury of his girl­friend is exac­er­bat­ed by alle­ga­tions that some police vehi­cles did not have the nec­es­sary tags to access the toll road and there­fore were unable to access the highway.
Other accounts say some offi­cers arrived on the scene but refused to remove the vic­tims from the scene in their ser­vice vehicle.

We have not been able to inde­pen­dent­ly cor­rob­o­rate the verac­i­ty of this part of the report­ing, suf­fic­ing to say that sources say the vic­tims were not removed to the hos­pi­tal for hours after the accident.
Allegations are that even with the vic­tims dying they were not allowed to pass in the emer­gency vehi­cles before pay­ing the toll.
If true, this is an exam­ple of the dan­gers of incom­pe­tent gov­er­nance that have failed to appro­pri­ate­ly leg­is­late how our soci­ety is sup­posed to operate.

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

Well, this is just down­right embar­rass­ing and disgraceful.

The pre­mier of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) has been arrest­ed in a sting oper­a­tion in Miami on charges of con­spir­ing to import cocaine into the United States and mon­ey laundering.

The BVI gov­er­nor, John Rankin, con­firmed in a state­ment that Andrew Fahie had been arrest­ed on Thursday morn­ing, say­ing: “I real­ize this will be shock­ing news for peo­ple in the ter­ri­to­ry. And I would call for calm at this time.” Oleanvine Maynard, the man­ag­er direc­tor of the Caribbean territory’s port author­i­ty, and her son Kadeem were also detained in the oper­a­tion. Court papers filed in Florida alleged Fahie, who was also referred to as “head coach”, was involved in con­spir­a­cy to import at least 5kg of cocaine and mon­ey laun­der­ing between 16 October last year and 28 April 2022.

DEA agents allege in the doc­u­ments that Oleanvine and Kadeem Maynard agreed with under­cov­er agents – who were pos­ing as mem­bers of Mexico’s Sinaloa car­tel – to set up a meet­ing between Lebanese Hezbollah oper­a­tives and Fahie in order to estab­lish a place to store thou­sands of kilo­grams of drugs arriv­ing from Colombia. The plan offered by the agents was to store the drug, bun­dled inside 5kg buck­ets of paint, in the BVI for one or two days before ship­ment to Miami or New York, the papers said. Fahie and Oleanvine Maynard were arrest­ed at a Miami air­port after being invit­ed by under­cov­er agents to see a ship­ment of $700,000 in cash that BVI offi­cials expect­ed to receive for their part in the alleged plot, the court papers alleged.

Liz Truss, the British for­eign sec­re­tary, said she was “appalled” by the arrest. Truss said: “This after­noon, the pre­mier of the British Virgin Islands, Andrew Fahie, was arrest­ed in the United States on charges relat­ed to drugs traf­fick­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing. “I am appalled by these seri­ous alle­ga­tions.” She said she had held talks with Rankin and stressed the impor­tance of the recent inquiry into cor­rup­tion on the Caribbean arch­i­pel­ago. Last year, the UK set up a com­mis­sion of inquiry into mis-gov­er­nance in the British over­seas ter­ri­to­ry, which has heard alle­ga­tions of sys­temic cor­rup­tion, crony­ism, jury intim­i­da­tion and mis­use of pub­lic funds. In his state­ment, Rankin said Fahie’s arrest was the result of a US oper­a­tion led by the US Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) and was not linked to the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) report.

“The remit of the Commission of Inquiry focused on gov­er­nance and cor­rup­tion, and was not a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the ille­gal drug trade. To avoid unnec­es­sary spec­u­la­tion, I intend to move ahead urgent­ly on pub­li­ca­tion of the inquiry report so the peo­ple of the BVI can see its con­tents and its rec­om­men­da­tions in the areas it addressed,” he said. Addressing the com­mis­sion of inquiry last year, Fahie denied that there was any cor­rup­tion in the BVI. He said: “The key to any coun­try is its rep­u­ta­tion, but so far, and thank God for that, there is no evi­dence pro­vid­ed in the CoI show­ing that the BVI is cor­rupt.” This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @ the Guardian.

The solu­tions to Jamaica’s crime epi­dem­ic are not to be found in a sil­ver bul­let or mag­ic beans; they are in a series of com­mon-sense ini­tia­tives that I have writ­ten about for years. Common-sense mea­sures do not require much crit­i­cal think­ing; in fact, some of those ini­tia­tives are not nov­el ideas but ideas that have worked in oth­er countries.
Much of the answers lie in the Jamaican peo­ple, includ­ing past and present law enforce­ment offi­cers who left out of frustration.
It is impor­tant to note that the laws do not appro­pri­ate­ly deter crim­i­nal con­duct, and in many cas­es, they encour­age it.
We need a new Constitution; this means sev­er­ing the colo­nial ties with Britain, giv­ing our­selves a chance to embark on a bet­ter path toward self-suf­fi­cien­cy even in this ever-increas­ing inter­con­nect­ed world.
Thankfully the Government has now begun doing the work to get us on that track, and this means that this admin­is­tra­tion is listening.

I wrote for years that because the laws are old and archa­ic, they encour­age law-break­ing. For exam­ple, if the penal­ty for ille­gal fish­ing is ten dol­lars Jamaican, why would any­one not break that law and catch some fish and, if caught, pay the fine.
Thirty-one years ago, while I was a young cop, some of the laws were so archa­ic there was no rea­son to enforce them, so we did not both­er doing so. Enforcing them would not even gar­ner a con­vic­tion; judges would admon­ish and dis­charge defen­dants mak­ing a mock­ery of our officers.
Today, most of those laws are still there not updat­ed. This lapse, or rather acts of delin­quen­cy by the leg­is­la­ture, result­ed in two gen­er­a­tions of Jamaicans who are uncon­strained by the prospect of con­se­quence, so they do as they please.
Other laws are direct gifts to law­break­ers; there is no oth­er way to view them; ‘squat­ter’s rights, whose idea was it to leg­is­late that if one crim­i­nal­ly occu­pies some­one’s prop­er­ty over a cer­tain peri­od, they auto­mat­i­cal­ly become the own­er of the property?
Why would peo­ple who need a place to live not set up res­i­dence on oth­er peo­ple’s prop­er­ty? In many cas­es, they begin build­ing per­ma­nent struc­tures on land they know they do not own- land belong­ing to some­one else.

Given that green­light by the state to break the laws, Jamaicans embark on build­ing ille­gal set­tle­ments on cap­tured lands, some­times argu­ing it’s ‘Jah’s land’; of course, once they estab­lish ille­gal own­er­ship, no one dares set foot on the prop­er­ty, it is no longer Jah’s land but theirs.
For as long as I can remem­ber, admin­is­tra­tions of the two polit­i­cal par­ties have allowed urban sprawl across the cor­po­rate area and the entire coun­try. This is not unique to Jamaica, but oth­er nations are respon­si­ble for their problems.
These squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties became incu­ba­tors of vio­lent crime. It is easy to fol­low the nexus of how allow­ing for what is viewed as small, incon­se­quen­tial infrac­tions to metas­ta­size into mam­moth epi­demics like the one we are fac­ing today.
Allowing squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties from Sufferers Heights to Flankers and From Back-To to Riverton and places beyond has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the vio­lent epi­dem­ic of crime that has claimed the lives of tens of thou­sands of inno­cent Jamaicans over the last sev­er­al decades.
This result­ed from incom­pe­tent and acqui­es­cent poli­cies that encour­aged law­break­ing to solid­i­fy blocks of votes to attain and hold on to polit­i­cal power.
Lazy and incom­pe­tent leg­is­la­tors hired to make the right deci­sions spend their time fig­ur­ing out ways to defraud the pub­lic instead of mod­ern­iz­ing the nation’s laws.
Feuds that emanate from cap­tured prop­er­ty almost always end up with vio­lence as a solu­tion, vio­lence encour­aged and made pos­si­ble by a delin­quent state.

Simple fix­es like pass­ing laws with sun­set pro­vi­sions give law­mak­ers time to see how leg­is­la­tion works and whether to reau­tho­rize or allow them to expire.
There is no sur­prise that Jamaica is viewed as one of the most vio­lent places on earth; its gov­ern­ment, since 1962, has active­ly and unwit­ting­ly enhanced crim­i­nal conduct.
The present admin­is­tra­tion, too, approached the job of gov­er­nance with the same non­cha­lance as its pre­de­ces­sor, uncon­vinced that you can­not build a soci­ety in which there is ram­pant crime and corruption.
However, it seems clear­er nowa­days that the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion, at least on the face of it, real­izes that Jamaica has no chance of com­pet­ing with­out an end to the ram­pant criminality.
So the jus­tice min­is­ter Delroy Chuch has tabled leg­is­la­tion that would add some teeth to mur­der con­vic­tions. Some argue cor­rect­ly it does not go near­ly far enough
It still isn’t law..

Who has a vest­ed inter­est in bring­ing back vio­lent mur­der­ers from prison except for tri­al lawyers? Where is the lob­by for vio­lence pro­duc­ers? What I am ask­ing is, whose cause is served by short­er prison sen­tences for those who have been found guilty of tak­ing the lives of others?
The Prime Minister recent­ly told William, a future king of England, “we are going our own way”, Good, and none too soon. That state­ment should have been uttered six­ty years ago back in 1962, not 2022.
I hope this is more than just words but action that will be fol­lowed up with a shiny new con­sti­tu­tion well debat­ed and backed up by expert advice and craft­ed using data. And for God’s sake, when I say expert opin­ion, I do not mean from the University of the West Indies..”
That Institution’s left­ist bull­shit has all but destroyed our coun­try and much of the Caribbean.
A new con­sti­tu­tion and updat­ed laws are Jamaica’s best chances of pro­pelling itself into the 21^st cen­tu­ry, albeit already 22 years late. Jamaicans can obey laws; we do when we live in oth­er coun­tries; let us ensure that we build a nation of laws that pro­tects the weak and inno­cent and appro­pri­ate­ly sit­u­ate those who refuse to adhere to our social order.

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

Two ATM’s explod­ed ear­ly Saturday morn­ing at the Scotia Bank in the Portland town of Port Antonio, at this time we do not know what caused the explosions.

Scattered debris, bro­ken glass every­where, but thank­ful­ly no reports yet of injuries.

It is report­ed that this man, a secu­ri­ty offi­cer was found at the rear of the premis­es in an incin­er­a­tor and was trans­port­ed to hos­pi­tal by the police.

More to come as new infor­ma­tion becomes available.

It’s been a year since 35-year-old Matthew Zadok Williams was killed by DeKalb County Police after a woman wrong­ly claimed she saw a home­less man in the woods lurk­ing near her home in Decatur, Georgia, a sub­urb of Atlanta

“The fact that it’s been a year, and noth­ing has been done,” Zadok Williams’ frus­trat­ed moth­er, Chris Ann Lewis said.

The fam­i­ly of Zadok Williams says they’ve mulled over count­less hours of body­cam footage to wrap their minds around how and why police killed their broth­er and son. “We can talk about this in such detail because we watched eight hours of the footage, eight hours or more,” Zadok Williams’ sis­ter Zeporah Williams said.

Zadok’s sis­ters, Hannah and Zeporah and his moth­er, Chris Ann Lewis, have spent count­less hours mulling over their loved one’s final moments on April 12 of last year. They say their broth­er and son was known for his big heart, thirst for learn­ing and dry sense of humor, but all of those endear­ing qual­i­ties have been over­shad­owed by the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing his death.

“He was try­ing to get back in, he had locked him­self out, he had been doing some work around his home and he was try­ing to reen­ter his home when police saw him, and it had been report­ed that he was a tres­pass­er,” said Mawuli Davis, the Williams’ fam­i­ly attorney.

DeKalb County Police said in a news release on its Facebook page a day after the shoot­ing, “[Zadok Williams] lunged at offi­cers with the knife caus­ing one of them to dis­charge their firearm.”

The fam­i­ly says Zadok Williams had a knife and buck­et in hand for some plumb­ing-relat­ed work around his home. Released body­cam video picks up moments after offi­cers are heard con­clud­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with the woman who has been described as the house­mate of the woman who called 911. Officers can be seen approach­ing Zadok at his home.

“Hey what’s up man, what you are doing around here, you live here?” one of the respond­ing offi­cers is heard ask­ing Zadok Williams. “Do you know why we’re here?” the offi­cer asked, and at this moment in their inter­ac­tion, Zadok Williams can be seen walk­ing down the steps on the frontside of his town­house-style home. As he reach­es the ground he runs.

One of the offi­cers seen in the body­cam video fires one shot, but Zadok Williams was able to run back toward his home.

Moments lat­er, Zadok Williams climbs atop his roof to break into his home from an upstairs win­dow. Bodycam video does not ful­ly cap­ture this visu­al but debris on top of the roof can be seen falling to the ground near Zadok Williams’ front door.

As Williams was on the roof, he kicked in an upstairs win­dow to enter his home — he appar­ent­ly had locked him­self out. By this time, three offi­cers hud­dle around Zadok Williams’ front door on the porch.

“Put the knife down, put the knife down,” offi­cers can be heard scream­ing at Williams, who’s just on the oth­er side of his front door inside the home before the offi­cers kick open the door. 

The body­cam video shows the front door clos­ing moments after police kicked it open. At this moment one of the offi­cers fired a shot at the door. Audio from the body­cam picks up Zadok Williams telling offi­cers, he’s defend­ing his property.

“I’m defend­ing my prop­er­ty” Williams says repeat­ed­ly. “Come out and talk to us,” one of the offi­cers on the porch said to Williams while stand­ing in an aggres­sive pos­ture and gun drawn. Again, Williams says, “I’m defend­ing my prop­er­ty,” as one of the offi­cers responds with, “If you put the knife down you don’t have to defend nothing.”
Read the full sto­ry here:https://​atlantablack​star​.com/​2​0​2​2​/​0​4​/​1​4​/​i​m​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​g​i​v​e​n​-​t​h​e​-​m​i​d​d​l​e​-​f​i​n​g​e​r​-​m​a​t​t​h​e​w​-​z​a​d​o​k​-​w​i​l​l​i​a​m​s​-​f​a​m​i​l​y​-​d​e​m​a​n​d​s​-​a​c​c​o​u​n​t​a​b​i​l​i​t​y​-​o​n​e​-​y​e​a​r​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​s​u​b​u​r​b​a​n​-​a​t​l​a​n​t​a​-​c​o​p​s​-​g​u​n​n​e​d​-​h​i​m​-​d​o​w​n​-​i​n​-​h​i​s​-​h​o​m​e​-​l​e​t​-​h​i​m​-​b​l​e​e​d​-​o​ut/