In Syracuse New York, alleged­ly over a bag of stolen chip.
By Rachel Kiley

https://​twit​ter​.com/​i​/​s​t​a​t​u​s​/​1​5​1​6​0​6​9​2​8​9​3​6​2​7​0​6​437

A video of police putting a young Black boy in a police vehi­cle over an alleged­ly stolen bag of chips went viral on Tuesday.

The per­son who record­ed the video appeared to have just hap­pened upon the scene, which involved at least three Syracuse Police Department (SPD) offi­cers putting a boy into a squad car, as anoth­er child stood by.

The boy screams, cries, and tries to get away, as the man record­ing asks what is going on and tells the offi­cers to stop.

“He look like a baby to me,” the man says.

“He’s steal­ing stuff,” a cop says. “Keep walk­ing, dude. You don’t even know what you’re talk­ing about.”

A sin­gle bag of chips is on the ground near­by. The oth­er boy present at one point screams at the cops that the oth­er kid didn’t steal, while the man record­ing offers to pay for the chips if that is the issue. “I’ll pay for them,” the man says.

Another man shows up and tells police that the boy looks too young to legal­ly be arrest­ed, like­ly refer­ring to a recent­ly passed law that pro­hibits chil­dren under the age of 12 from being arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed in New York under most cir­cum­stances, bar­ring homi­cide. However, the law doesn’t take effect until next year.

The video ends with the boy scream­ing from the back of the police vehicle.

On Facebook, the SPD said in a state­ment it is review­ing the incident.

“We are aware of a video being shared on social media involv­ing sev­er­al of our Officers and juve­niles accused of steal­ing from a store on the City’s north­side. The inci­dent, includ­ing the Officers’ actions and body-worn cam­eras, are being reviewed. There is some mis­in­for­ma­tion involv­ing this case. The juve­nile sus­pect­ed of lar­ce­ny was not placed in hand­cuffs. He was placed in the rear of a patrol unit where he was direct­ly brought home. Officers met with the child’s father and no charges were filed,” it wrote.

It went viral on both Reddit and Twitter Tuesday.

It’s unclear when exact­ly the inci­dent took place, or what hap­pened with the child involved. Attempts doc­u­ment­ed by Twitter users to learn more from the SPD were unproductive.

“They trau­ma­tized that lit­tle boy over a bag of chips? Unbelievable,” one Twitter user said.

Redditors also brought up the idea of adul­ti­fi­ca­tion bias, where Black kids are often viewed as old­er, and there­fore “less inno­cent,” than white kids.

Policing is not exact­ly an easy job; the lev­el of sup­port that police offi­cers receive in exe­cut­ing their duties may be dic­tat­ed by the lev­el of matu­ri­ty and suf­fi­cien­cy of the com­mu­ni­ties they police. Poorer, dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties that are incu­ba­tors of crim­i­nal­i­ty tend to be less tol­er­ant of gov­ern­ment agents (police), whom they view less favor­ably as oppres­sors than protectors.
This is not a con­cept con­fined to Jamaica but rather one that per­me­ates poor­er soci­eties in which the police is the face and force of Government.
As a for­mer police offi­cer who spent a decade polic­ing the grit­ty com­mu­ni­ties of Kingston & Saint Andrew and many places across Jamaica, I under­stood ful­ly the psy­chol­o­gy that binds com­mu­ni­ties that view gov­ern­ment in an unfa­vor­able light, regard­less of who is in power.

Poverty, lack of oppor­tu­ni­ties, and lack of resources in those com­mu­ni­ties become soil, water, and sun­light for the ger­mi­na­tion and growth of crime.
Government agents are the least wel­come vis­i­tors to those com­mu­ni­ties; gov­ern­ment agents are seen as ‘stop­ping their food.’(sic)
Regardless of the right­ness of police action with­in those com­mu­ni­ties, there is lit­tle sup­port for what they do; law­ful police action is viewed as ‘evil by the wicked police.’
So arrest­ing some­one who has been steal­ing elec­tric­i­ty, water, or food is a crime by the wicked police, not the right thing to do as they are tasked.
Anti-police hatred should be anti-gov­ern­ment hatred, but as I said ear­li­er since the police are the face and force of gov­ern­ment, that ven­om is direct­ed at them. In Jamaica, in par­tic­u­lar, that ven­om is spread by a lazy and decep­tive media that know­ing­ly par­tic­i­pates in dis­sem­i­nat­ing false information.
Of the two main secu­ri­ty agen­cies, the JCF & JDF, the Jamaica Defence Force has long enjoyed def­er­ence and respect from inner-city com­mu­ni­ties that the police as an agency could only hope for. Individual police offi­cers who exem­pli­fied them­selves in dif­fer­ent ways enjoyed sup­port and respect, not the force as a collective.
The JDF was more revered and respect­ed because (a) many rank-and-file mil­i­tary mem­bers lived in those com­mu­ni­ties, but (b) more so because sol­diers were not tasked with doing police duties. They were only called out for spe­cial events.
Over the last sev­er­al decades, the JDF has been pressed more and more into com­pli­ment­ing police num­bers in law enforce­ment duties. As com­mu­ni­ties real­ize that polic­ing is a con­cept, not a per­son or group of peo­ple, the lus­ter has grad­u­al­ly worn off the JDF. Soldiers are essen­tial­ly now police in a dif­fer­ent uniform.

The young men and women of the JDF who are thrust into these unten­able sit­u­a­tions live the night­mare that young men and women of the JCF have been exposed to for decades after independence.
They have expe­ri­enced the anger from com­mu­ni­ties pissed at gov­ern­ment fail­ures, incom­pe­tence, cor­rup­tion, and bad policies.
Young mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces are vic­tims of the sys­tems like the peo­ple who live in those communities.
Members of the Jamaica Defense Force are now liv­ing the night­mare their coun­ter­parts in the Constabulary have always lived, deal­ing with oblig­a­tory accu­sa­tions they are mur­der­ers and the lies that every­one wit­nessed events of police abuse that occurred at four in the morn­ing. An irre­spon­si­ble and lazy press enhances the process of spread­ing the poison.
Young sol­diers in west Kingston and wher­ev­er else their polit­i­cal boss­es thrust them into cov­er­ing up the smoke of polit­i­cal incom­pe­tence must now nav­i­gate paths to their sur­vival, which is to col­lect their pay­check and go home to their fam­i­lies. The same dilem­ma young police offi­cers face that leads to the high attri­tion the Constabulary faces, despite the lack of jobs in the country.
The JDF is now a police force in a dif­fer­ent uni­form, bye-bye luster.…..

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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.

*On May 23, 1934, a posse com­posed of police offi­cers from Louisiana and Texas, includ­ing Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, con­cealed them­selves in bush­es along the high­way near Sailes, Louisiana. In the ear­ly day­light, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in an auto­mo­bile, and when they attempt­ed to dri­ve away, the offi­cers opened fire. Bonnie and Clyde were killed instant­ly. (fbi​.gov)*.
Clyde Champion Barrow and his com­pan­ion, Bonnie Parker, were want­ed for crimes that ranged from mur­ders, bank rob­beries, and theft of motor cars to abduc­tion. The Bureau of Investigations was pur­su­ing them, (now the FBI), along with local police and Sheriff’s officers.

At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have com­mit­ted 13 mur­ders and sev­er­al rob­beries and bur­glar­ies. Barrow, for exam­ple, was sus­pect­ed of mur­der­ing two police offi­cers at Joplin, Missouri, and kid­nap­ping a man and a woman in rur­al Louisiana. He released them near Waldo, Texas. Numerous sight­ings fol­lowed, link­ing this pair with bank rob­beries and auto­mo­bile thefts. Clyde alleged­ly mur­dered a man at Hillsboro, Texas; com­mit­ted rob­beries at Lufkin and Dallas, Texas; mur­dered one sher­iff and wound­ed anoth­er at Stringtown, Oklahoma; kid­naped a deputy at Carlsbad, New Mexico; stole an auto­mo­bile at Victoria, Texas; attempt­ed to mur­der a deputy at Wharton, Texas; com­mit­ted mur­der and rob­bery at Abilene and Sherman, Texas; com­mit­ted mur­der at Dallas, Texas; abduct­ed a sher­iff and the chief of police at Wellington, Texas; and com­mit­ted mur­der at Joplin and Columbia, Missouri.

It would be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that any law-abid­ing per­son would not want the author­i­ties to col­lar the pair before they could do any more harm. This brings us to the mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion; *are law-enforce­ment offi­cers jus­ti­fied in sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ing crim­i­nal sus­pects with­out tri­al by a court of law*?
The killing of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker was cer­tain­ly not the first time that American law enforce­ment offi­cers had sum­mar­i­ly mur­dered with­out tri­al peo­ple they sus­pect­ed of crimes-some­times minor infrac­tions if they were Black.
Their killing was a high-pro­file sum­ma­ry exe­cu­tion that cap­tured the nation’s imag­i­na­tion. Their sto­ries have been told in movies, com­ic books, and doc­u­men­taries. No one both­ered address­ing why they were sum­mar­i­ly mur­dered with­out any attempt to trap and cap­ture them so they could face tri­als for the crimes they were accused of?

The answer to that ques­tion may be tied to a peri­od that pre­dates the killing of Parker and Barrow.… a time when a *sus­pect­ed* horse or cat­tle thief was tried in the salon while a gal­lows was being erect­ed outside.
At the end of the kan­ga­roo tri­al, the blood­thirsty whiskey sod­den hood­lums would stum­ble out of the salon and string up the sus­pect until he was dead-inno­cent or not.
*Being so high-pro­file, the Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker killing rep­re­sents one of the bet­ter-known inci­dents in which law enforce­ment sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed cit­i­zens with­out a tri­al and suf­fered no consequence.
Barrow and Parker’s killings were auto­mat­i­cal­ly jus­ti­fied not because they refused to sur­ren­der; they were not giv­en a chance to sur­ren­der; they were exe­cut­ed for their alleged­ly com­mit­ted crimes.

The sum­ma­ry exe­cu­tion of Barrow and Parker became prece­dent on how to han­dle alleged crim­i­nals, whether they were guilty or not. People of col­or, already suf­fer­ing under the irre­versible yoke of black skin, were already hav­ing their lives snuffed out by police with no ques­tions asked. The nation did not care; the word of the police was enough; they deserved it.
Today, they still kill with­out con­se­quence, just a lot more so.
The idea of crim­i­nal­iz­ing Blacks and using their crim­i­nal record to deval­ue their lives became a neces­si­ty and a main­stay of law enforce­ment; it remains so today.
The wear­er of black skin is pre­sumed guilty until proven inno­cent, one hun­dred & eighty degrees oppo­site of what an American cit­i­zen is enti­tled to under the nation’s con­sti­tu­tion. Black skin means unde­serv­ing of respect, unde­serv­ing of deference.

The ele­va­tion of police offi­cers’ lives above that of the cit­i­zens they serve and the prac­tice of ignor­ing police crimes has cre­at­ed an unac­count­able police cul­ture, one rife with impuni­ty and arrogance.
The badge they wear sym­bol­izes state pow­er, impuni­ty, and immu­ni­ty. The gun on their hips makes them care­free and gives them a lais­sez-faire atti­tude about cer­tain lives. They kill whomev­er they want under the col­or and cov­er of law, uncon­cerned about con­se­quence. Paid vaca­tions, pro­mo­tions, and awards they give to them­selves are the rewards they reap for out­right murder. 
Patrick Lyoya, a 26-year-old Black man, was the lat­est to suf­fer that fate. A Grand Rapids, Michigan cop with whom he strug­gled, put a bul­let in the back of his head even as he had Lyoya face down in the mud.
The Grand Rapids police did not even feel the need to fur­nish the name of the cop; he is on paid leave. Police con­tin­ue to kill in the name of the state, and the state pro­tects its own.

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After Minneapolis mon­ster-cop Derek Chauvin and his three side­kicks mur­dered George Floyd, America erupt­ed in a social jus­tice out­cry many say exceed­ed the social jus­tice upheaval of the 60s.
Police across America did not stop abus­ing cit­i­zens, not by a long shot; some data points to increased aggres­sion and abuse by many police depart­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in large cities and towns.
In New York City, Buffalo, New York, In Oregon, right here in Minnesota, and places in between-police increased aggres­sion, abuse, and vio­la­tion of cit­i­zens’ rights.
Even more fright­en­ing is that though the coun­try was in an upheaval about police vio­lence, includ­ing their use of lethal force, police across the coun­try did not change their pat­terns and prac­tices relat­ed to the use of lethal force.

The New York Times report­ed in November of last year that just sev­en hours before pros­e­cu­tors opened their case against Derek Chauvin, a for­mer Minneapolis police offi­cer charged with mur­der­ing George Floyd, a Chicago offi­cer chased down a 13-year-old boy in a West Side alley and fatal­ly shot him as he turned with his hands up.

One day lat­er, at a hotel in Jacksonville, Fla., offi­cers fatal­ly shot a 32-year-old man, who, the police say, grabbed one of their Tasers. The day after that, as an eye­wit­ness to Mr. Floyd’s death broke down in a Minneapolis court­room while recount­ing what he saw, a 40-year-old men­tal­ly ill man who said voic­es were harass­ing him was killed in Claremont, N.H., in a shootout with the state police. On every day that fol­lowed, through the close of tes­ti­mo­ny, anoth­er per­son was killed by the police some­where in the United States.
The killings con­tin­ued unabat­ed to three (3) per day, but that is hard­ly the only issue Americans face at the hands of out-of-con­trol police. The Times recount­ed, even as Americans con­tin­ue to process that case — and anx­ious­ly wait for a ver­dict — new cas­es of peo­ple killed by the police mount unabated.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​r​b​i​t​r​a​t​o​r​-​c​l​e​a​r​e​d​-​m​o​n​s​t​e​r​-​c​o​p​s​-​w​h​o​-​p​u​s​h​e​d​-​7​5​-​y​e​a​r​-​o​l​d​-​m​a​n​-​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​g​r​o​u​n​d​-​f​r​a​c​t​u​r​i​n​g​-​h​i​s​-​s​k​u​ll/

In New York City, mem­bers of the NYPD used the vehi­cles paid for by the tax­pay­ers of that city to attempt to ram and run over pro­tes­tors who had the nerve to protest their bar­bar­ic actions. In Buffalo, New York, robot­ic mon­sters in police uni­forms pushed a 75-year-old man to the ground frac­tur­ing his skull-Martin Gugino spent over a month in hos­pi­tal recov­er­ing from a con­cus­sion and frac­tured skull. The mon­sters who vio­lent­ly assault­ed mis­ter Gugino were cleared by an Albany Arbitrator named Jeffrey Selchick, who argued mis­ter Gugino‘was def­i­nite­ly not an inno­cent bystander. Selchick called the offi­cers’ use of force “absolute­ly legit­i­mate. Selchick added that “Gugino may also have been sur­prised when the offi­cers used force to push him away because he may have enter­tained the unfound­ed belief that the offi­cers would let him inter­fere with the per­for­mance of their duties.”
In oth­er words, the police are well with­in their rights to use any lev­el of force they deem fit to pun­ish cit­i­zens if their orders are not imme­di­ate­ly com­plied with. Mister Gugino was report­ed­ly out after a declared curfew.
Jefferey Selchic was an Adjunct Professor who taught Arbitration and Collective Bargaining cours­es at Albany Law School, Union University.

As the atten­tion of Americans is direct­ed at events hap­pen­ing thou­sands of miles away in Ukraine, the cor­po­rate American media con­tin­ue to harp on human rights abus­es sup­pos­ed­ly com­mit­ted by Russian troops. Interestingly they fail to report on the dai­ly assault on human rights right here in the United States. Frighteningly, at every lev­el of the courts sys­tem in the United States, there is con­tin­ued sup­port for police abuse of cit­i­zens and a total dis­re­gard for the constitution.
The supreme court con­tin­ues to bend and twist the con­sti­tu­tion to facil­i­tate a com­pre­hen­sive police state right here in America.
While Americans watch and crit­i­cize Russia’s gov­ern­ment for abus­es in Ukraine, American police are slow­ly turn­ing the streets of cities and towns into a com­pre­hen­sive dystopi­an night­mare for Americans- par­tic­u­lar­ly Americans of color.
Police have noth­ing to fear from the courts; aggriev­ed cit­i­zens will have to decide what course of action they will take if they can­not get jus­tice from the branch­es of gov­ern­ment tasked with hon­or­ing the con­sti­tu­tion because they are more inter­est­ed in fos­ter­ing a police state.

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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.

While you weren’t look­ing after the tumul­tuous events that pre­ced­ed the police mur­der of George Floyd, local admin­is­tra­tors have been busy putting crim­i­nal cops back on to police depart­ments after they have been fired or sus­pend­ed for egre­gious crimes against mem­bers of the pub­lic they are sworn to protect.
As those mon­sters are returned to the streets, look for them to become more embold­ened in their attacks on civilians.
Worse, it is log­i­cal to expect oth­ers with sim­i­lar mind­sets to act out their vio­lent ten­den­cies against inno­cent cit­i­zens, regard­less of their age or gender.

Two Buffalo Police offi­cers were cleared of wrong­do­ing after an elder­ly pro­test­er was pushed to the ground.

Violent cops who pushed a 75-year-old man to the ground crack­ing his skull, and did not help him were cleared by an arbi­tra­tor who basi­cal­ly said he deserved what he got.
Mister Gugino suf­fered a con­cus­sion and frac­tured skull and remained in the hos­pi­tal for near­ly a month before being released, accord­ing to a civ­il rights law­suit filed against the officers.

Officers Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe were found not guilty on Friday by an arbi­tra­tor who said Martin Gugino ‘was def­i­nite­ly not an inno­cent bystander.’

Prosecutors announced Wednesday that the Minneapolis police offi­cer who fatal­ly shot Amir Locke dur­ing a predawn, no-knock raid in February will not face charges in the killing.

Silent body cam­era footage released ear­li­er this year showed a Florida police offi­cer chok­ing his female col­league after she pulled him away from a Black man’s arrest. Recently released audio shows what the cop had said to the sus­pect and what like­ly caused the junior offi­cer to inter­vene. Sunrise police were respond­ing to a call about a man accused of attack­ing peo­ple out­side a con­ve­nience store in November. Officers hand­cuffed a 25-year-old man and tried to get him into a police vehi­cle. Sgt. Christopher Pullease then arrived on the scene, tak­ing an aggres­sive lead on the arrest and point­ing a Mace can­is­ter at him while curs­ing at the man.

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

“Hey, hey, look at me. Look at me! You wan­na fuck­ing play fuck­ing games? You’re play­ing with the wrong moth­er­fuck­er,” Pullease tells the hand­cuffed man enter­ing the police cruis­er, accord­ing to the audio ini­tial­ly obtained by Miami TV sta­tion WSVN and pub­lished on March 23.

“Do what you got­ta do, man,” the sus­pect responds. “You gonna Mace me? Mace me.” According to Pullease’s body cam­era footage, the sergeant then leans into the vehi­cle to get clos­er to the hand­cuffed man.
“Look at me, moth­er­fuck­er. You wan­na play fuck­ing games? You wan­na be dis­re­spect­ful with my fuck­ing offi­cers?” Pullease shouts. “I will remove your fuck­ing soul from your fuck­ing body.” (a threat to kill)
It was at that point when the 28-year-old female offi­cer inter­venes by grab­bing the back of Pullease’s belt to pull him out of the car, as shown in body cam­era footage belong­ing to anoth­er offi­cer on the scene. The junior cop, who has about two years of expe­ri­ence on the force, appears to be try­ing to deesca­late Pullease’s con­fronta­tion with the suspect.

The sergeant then turns around and grabs her by the throat, back­ing her up against a patrol car. “What the fuck? Don’t ever fuck­ing touch me again,” the sergeant screams at her. “Get the fuck off me.”
Pullease then tells the junior offi­cer, “I’ll fuck­ing see you in about five min­utes.” The sergeant briefly goes to his police vehi­cle before com­ing back and demand­ing all offi­cers on the scene “turn off your fuck­ing cam­eras.” The footage ends at that point.
Sunrise police spokesper­son Justin Yarborough told HuffPost on Monday that the depart­ment released the video with sound after WSVN-TV pub­lished their copy of the video. *note that the sun­rise police depart­ment held the video with sound and only released it after the media released the sound ver­sion they had*.
Sunrise police sus­pend­ed Pullease, who has been with the depart­ment for over 21 years, in November with pay after launch­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into his behav­ior. The Broward County State Attorney’s Office launched a crim­i­nal probe into the sergeant in January. Yarborough said that the depart­ment is work­ing with State Attorney Harold Pryor’s office and has paused its inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion due to the crim­i­nal allegations.

“The need to with­hold audio has run its course,” the spokesper­son said. “Once the inves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete, the find­ing will be avail­able.”*nope you with­held it until the media made it avail­able to the pub­lic and you want­ed to save face*
Yarborough said that the female offi­cer invoked Marsy’s Law, which allows crime vic­tims and police offi­cers to remain anony­mous in order to main­tain safe­ty against peo­ple who may retal­i­ate. As a vic­tim, the 28-year-old junior offi­cer request­ed that her iden­ti­ty be protected.
“I’m very proud of this police offi­cer. She took some defin­i­tive action,” Sunrise Police Chief Anthony Rosa told WSVN in an inter­view. “I can only imag­ine what she must be feel­ing. She’s a new­er offi­cer, and he’s a very senior sergeant.”
Rosa said that the depart­ment has already imple­ment­ed poli­cies requir­ing inter­ven­tion and de-escalation.
“This offi­cer inter­ven­ing and stop­ping a sit­u­a­tion from get­ting any worse is a direct reflec­tion of the train­ing that we do with the police depart­ment,” the chief told the Miami sta­tion. “And I think that it’s impor­tant to note that the behav­ior is very unac­cept­able by the sergeant, but the behav­ior of the offi­cer that inter­vened is exact­ly what society’s ask­ing their police offi­cers to do right now.”

Flushed with sup­port from the supreme court on down, American police have decid­ed they will kill any­one who dares to show con­tempt of cop. Multiple shots as long as their vic­tims are black.
They con­tin­ue to do it because they know they will get away with it, until of course, the peo­ple decide enough is enough.

Unarmed Black New Jersey Man Steps Outside to Retrieve Bottle of Tea from Vehicle, Winds Up Paralyzed After Being Ambushed By Plainclothes cops.

An unarmed Black man sit­ting in his car out­side of his home was shot by a police offi­cer, leav­ing the major­i­ty of his body par­a­lyzed. Jajuan Henderson, 29, is now suing the city and mem­bers of the police force for dam­ages incurred by the incident.
A copy of the law­suit, names the city of Trenton; the direc­tor of Trenton police, Steve E. Wilson; and the four offi­cers from the scene of the inci­dent, list­ed only by their ini­tials (M.G., C.H., J.C., and J.L.), as defen­dants and alleges the arrest­ing offi­cers used exces­sive force, neg­li­gence, and racial pro­fil­ing dur­ing the encounter.
The Burlington City native was par­al­lel parked out­side of his home on Feb. 12, accord­ing to the fil­ing, when four police offi­cers are said to have boxed his car in, ambushed him with a fusil­lade of bul­lets, and left him with injuries that caused him to be par­a­lyzed from the chest down.

Richard Smith, pres­i­dent of the state chap­ter of the NAACP, intro­duced the com­plaint dur­ing a press con­fer­ence, say­ing, “This inci­dent and inci­dents like it are all too famil­iar. These offi­cers — sworn to pro­tect and serve all —rushed to exe­cu­tion. These offi­cers deval­ued the life of anoth­er Black man.”

Despite it being a lit­tle past mid­night, Henderson said he went out­side to retrieve a bot­tle of iced tea from the vehi­cle that he acci­den­tal­ly left ear­li­er. He decid­ed to get into the car and sit.

As he “sat law­ful­ly parked in a car with the engine turned off when an uniden­ti­fied dark car approached and parked next to him, box­ing him in,” the fil­ing claims. “A group of men, ful­ly masked and in dark plain clothes, then jumped out of this mys­te­ri­ous vehi­cle and began yelling at Jajuan. As many oth­ers would do in this esca­lat­ing sit­u­a­tion, Jajuan used his cell phone to call for support.”

Civil rights attor­ney Greg Zeff con­tends the men were actu­al­ly mem­bers of Trenton police’s Street Crimes Unit and did not iden­ti­fy them­selves as they approached his client’s vehi­cle, even though they were all in plain civil­ian clothes. Henderson was con­fused and tried to call for aid.

Shortly after arriv­ing, one of the offi­cers smashed the win­dow of the car.

“This group of men, appear­ing as any oth­er group of dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals from a hor­ror movie, turned out to be from the Trenton Police Department,” the lawyer wrote in the doc­u­ment. “A Black man sit­ting in a car at mid­night while on a cell phone was all the uniden­ti­fied police need­ed to smash the driver’s side window.”

Henderson was “unarmed, non­threat­en­ing, and mind­ing his own busi­ness,” when the police “used lethal force” and shot him “in the neck.”

Police reports state the offi­cers stopped the man as “a part of a motor vehi­cle stop,” even though he was parked and “the engine of the car … was turned off.”

The cops acknowl­edged Henderson was talk­ing to some­one on the phone when they approached him. The report also admit­ted one of the badges broke the Black man’s win­dow. After the glass shat­tered, police not­ed Henderson turned on his car and “attempt­ed to flee.”The lawyer stat­ed in the claim Henderson could not get away because by this time mul­ti­ple police cars and a util­i­ty pole were block­ing him. It was then that “at least one” of the offi­cers, accord­ing to the police report, shot the man four times — includ­ing a bul­let shot(s) “that struck his spinal cord ren­der­ing him par­a­lyzed him from the chest down.”

Henderson still main­tains he had no idea at the onset of the con­fronta­tion that the men were police.

NJ​.com reports that Henderson was charged with four aggra­vat­ed assault charges, includ­ing try­ing to run the cops over with his vehi­cle. The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office has con­firmed these charges have since been dropped. Bodycam from the police offi­cers that night could not eas­i­ly sub­stan­ti­ate those claims. He still faces resist­ing arrest and obstruc­tion charges. 

After ini­tial­ly being treat­ed at a Trenton hos­pi­tal, he was trans­ferred to a hos­pi­tal in Philadelphia.

Henderson’s moth­er, Gia Henderson shared at the press con­fer­ence that she had already lost one son, and after hear­ing about Jajuan being shot, her “heart almost broke.

“We want jus­tice for Jajuan,” she said. “We want change, trans­paren­cy, and accountability.”

The law­suit alleges the offi­cers used an unrea­son­able degree of force regard­ing Henderson, made no efforts to de-esca­late the events of the night, nor did they make any effort to “pre­serve and pro­tect human life and the safe­ty of all persons.”

It fur­ther states the offi­cers failed to fol­low the New Jersey Attorney General Guidelines on the use of force and dead­ly force dur­ing that ear­ly February morning.

In addi­tion to announc­ing the law­suit, the NAACP and Henderson’s lawyers are call­ing on Mercer County to release the officer’s body­cam footage. According to the 2018 New Jersey Attorney General direc­tive, the footage should have been released to the pub­lic approx­i­mate­ly 20 days after the incident. 

No one from Henderson’s camp has seen the videos.

According to a detec­tive from the coun­ty who saw the body­cam videos, they show a very dif­fer­ent account than com­mu­ni­cat­ed in the law­suit and aligns with the police report of the incident.

Their report states Henderson was being unco­op­er­a­tive when they ini­ti­at­ed their motor vehi­cle stop. The offi­cers allege he would not pro­vide iden­ti­fi­ca­tion such as a driver’s license, reg­is­tra­tion, or insur­ance doc­u­ments. The affi­davit notes his win­dows were also par­tial­ly rolled down and he was on the phone when they approached.

In the report, Henderson was said to be fid­get­ing with some­thing inside a pas­sen­ger com­part­ment and under seats. It also claims he ignored the com­mands of the police, prompt­ing one offi­cer to smash the win­dow and the father to turn on the car to “dri­ve away.” This account men­tions Henderson crash­ing into a car behind him.

Officials stat­ed after the shoot­ing, all four were placed on rou­tine admin­is­tra­tive duty. 

The inves­ti­ga­tion of the offi­cers’ use of dead­ly force has been trans­ferred out of Mercer County because of con­flict between the police depart­ment and the prosecutor’s office. The neigh­bor­ing Union County will review the case. 

Henderson is suing for com­pen­sato­ry dam­ages, puni­tive dam­ages, attorney’s fees, costs, fees, and any oth­er appro­pri­ate relief. 

Jamaica is not in the busi­ness of man­u­fac­tur­ing guns unless you think the one-pop qual­i­fies as a gun; nev­er­the­less, the coun­try is awash in guns and ammunition.
There is a whole cot­tage indus­try around gun crimes, mor­tu­ar­ies, cof­fin-mak­ing, setup-bands(sic), etc.
The gun and sta­tus cul­ture that Jamaicans so read­i­ly idol­ize cre­at­ed the need for pri­vate secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies that have become major play­ers on the Island.
Institutionalized gov­ern­men­tal dis­in­ter­est caused those with mon­ey to invest in the macabre death indus­try rather than a vio­lence-free Jamaica where all can ful­fill their full poten­tial. In oth­er words, crime will always be with us so let’s ben­e­fit from it. We should not be fooled into think­ing that there may not be a direct need for dead bod­ies to feed the grow­ing mor­tu­ary indus­try that has sprung up around the country.
The police say some of the guns are com­ing into the coun­try from Haiti in what is known as the guns for drugs trade. This pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for the secu­ri­ty forces, the Government, the peo­ple of Jamaica. Largely so because the coun­try’s bor­ders are extreme­ly porous and dif­fi­cult to police.

A sig­nif­i­cant amount of ille­gal guns and ammu­ni­tion enter the Island through manned ports; this is inex­cus­able. The gov­ern­ment must ensure that the per­va­sive cor­rup­tion that has char­ac­ter­ized the Customs Department for years becomes a thing of the past using technology.
Jamaica has one of the world’s low­est police-cit­i­zen ratios; in 2012, there were 316 police offi­cers to every one hun­dred thou­sand Jamaicans.
Barbados, by com­par­i­son, had 489 to every hun­dred thou­sand sur­veyed a year lat­er, and Trinidad &Tobago had 482 to each hun­dred thou­sand cit­i­zens in 2012.
We may not want to admit it, but there is a direct cor­re­la­tion between one of the world’s low­est police to cit­i­zen ratios on the one hand and, on the oth­er, the world’s high­est mur­der rate per one hun­dred thou­sand cit­i­zens. Jamaica ticks the box in both scenarios.
That is not to say that if Jamaica were to hire more police offi­cers, we would have less crime in the not too dis­tant future.…..However, if we sud­den­ly had more hon­est police offi­cers to man and patrol our ports and har­bors, it is quite like­ly we would con­fis­cate more guns and ammu­ni­tion. If that strat­e­gy is built out, over time, with less access to guns and ammu­ni­tion, we would inex­orably have few­er mur­ders and oth­er vio­lent gun-relat­ed crimes.

Some of the most press­ing issues com­pound­ing the nation’s crime-fight­ing efforts are inef­fec­tive laws, an incom­pe­tent judi­cia­ry, and cor­rup­tion in pub­lic bod­ies. I com­mend the present admin­is­tra­tion and the min­is­ter of National Security for tabling leg­is­la­tion that adds seri­ous teeth to the gun laws. The present draft, if passed, would give offend­ers 15-years impris­on­ment if they are con­vict­ed on an ille­gal weapons charge.
[per­son­al­ly , I would have pre­ferred if the pro­pos­al was for 25-years and a much larg­er penal­ty if one is con­vict­ed of hav­ing an ille­gal rifle capa­ble of tak­ing mul­ti­ple lives in a sec­ond. We must break the back of this gun-lov­ing mur­der culture.
If you do not want to go to prison for a long time, do [not] pick up an ille­gal weapon. As I have said repeat­ed­ly, the fight against the young killers must be enjoined by every arm of the gov­ern­ment, instead of what cur­rent­ly exists where the courts are going in one direc­tion and the pros­e­cu­tion and police anoth­er. In addi­tion to that, oth­er arms of the Government have agen­das that do not align with the inter­est of law-abid­ing Jamaicans.
The unavoid­able truth is that the nation’s laws and courts make it easy for crim­i­nals to com­mit crimes and encour­age would-be crim­i­nals to become lawbreakers.

Currently, the aver­age Jamaican is caught up between the gang­sters who kill for fun and a sys­tem that gives gun licens­es to wealthy and influ­en­tial Jamaicans and crim­i­nals who have mon­ey to pay. The poor are left to fend for themselves.
Those of us who worked in law enforce­ment have long heard whis­pers that you have to pay to get a license to car­ry a firearm legal­ly. Let us not kid our­selves. This has been going on since the police ran the thing. To add some con­text, the FLA’s rules make it so that some police offi­cers who risk their lives for oth­ers do not qual­i­fy to get a license. How non­sen­si­cal is that?
It is as ridicu­lous as the police depart­ment say­ing, ‘we can­not allow offi­cers to keep their firearms because we do not trust them.’ But you trust them to car­ry a firearm to police the pub­lic; how come they can­not be trust­ed to keep the weapon when they go home to pro­tect them­selves and their families?
After all, why would those who have total con­trol not sell access to guns? If you need a pass­port or birth cer­tifi­cate, you have to pay; the same is true for a dri­ver’s license. How could we expect cor­rupt offi­cials not to cap­i­tal­ize on this goldmine?

The new leg­is­la­tion by Minister Chang is long over­due; it will begin to set the stage that final­ly, the gov­ern­ment is get­ting seri­ous about the blood­shed in our coun­try. The Government also float­ed a gun amnesty amid over­whelm­ing firearm-relat­ed crimes in the coun­try. “This amnesty would allow per­sons who have ille­gal firearms to sur­ren­der firearms and ammu­ni­tion with­out pros­e­cu­tion,” [Chang said]. I am opposed to a gun amnesty, as stat­ed in the arti­cle linked on the subject.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​n​o​t​-​b​e​-​c​o​n​s​i​d​e​r​i​n​g​-​g​u​n​-​a​m​n​e​s​t​y​-​h​e​r​e​s​-​w​hy/

It will not be a panacea or a sil­ver bul­let, ‘if passed,’ but it will at least remove from the judge’s hands the abil­i­ty to turn mur­der­ous gun-tot­ing killers back onto the streets as soon as the police arrest them.
If there are peo­ple on the judi­cia­ry receiv­ing mon­ey to let gang­sters walk or if there are any judges with oth­er rea­sons for want­i­ng those crim­i­nals on the streets, this leg­is­la­tion would go a long way in end­ing that corruption.
Sure, more gang­sters will spring up and pick up guns; that’s okay, put them away for long stretch­es until they get the message.
I will be watch­ing the debate on this bill very close­ly to see which mem­bers of the People’s National Party will be oppos­ing this legislation.
We will do our best to ensure that they wear the brand crim­i­nal sup­port­er very well.
The oppo­si­tion PNP has pledged its full sup­port for the bill through its leader Mark Golding; how­ev­er, one oppo­si­tion MP and a tri­al lawyer Peter Champagnie already rebutted the idea of strong sen­tences, insist­ing that fin­ger­print DNA must be tied to the con­vic­tion of offenders.
In oth­er words, if there is no fin­ger­print, no con­vic­tion. I’ll tell this clown what will hap­pen in light of his stu­pid argu­ments; gang­sters will wear gloves. The insin­u­a­tion that the word of the police is no good for recov­ered firearms is as ludi­crous as the motive of Champagnie is questionable. 

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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.

Those of you who both­er to care to read my work or lis­ten to me com­plain about Jamaica’s lax laws know just how long I have per­son­al­ly been beg­ging for tougher sen­tences for crim­i­nals caught with ille­gal guns. I can­not tell how many arti­cles I have writ­ten beg­ging the author­i­ties to change the mean­ing­less laws that make it worth­while for peo­ple to com­mit vio­lent crimes.
In almost every arti­cle I write I have con­tin­ued my cru­sade for what is known as truth in sen­tenc­ing and manda­to­ry min­i­mums for cer­tain vio­lent crimes.
I will get to the rea­sons but first (a) truth in sen­tenc­ing means just what the sen­tenc­ing judge hand­ed down, a ten (10) year sen­tence should not be whit­tled down to six years, (b) manda­to­ry min­i­mum means for cer­tain cat­e­gories of crimes judges [must] hand down a cer­tain sen­tence, unless there are mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances that are met in the statute that would allow an offend­er to receive a less­er sentence.
For exam­ple, two men fight­ing one push­es the oth­er who fell, hit his head, and dies, there was no prov­able intent to com­mit mur­der but the per­son is no less dead.
I am extreme­ly pleased that the leg­is­la­ture has seem­ing­ly awak­ened from its dan­ger­ous slum­ber and is doing its job. There is a new firearms act on the table, and the new manda­to­ry min­i­mum is fif­teen years for any­one caught with an ille­gal firearm.
Bravo, clap, clap, clap, when politi­cians meet the moment, we should com­mend them, and so I am com­mend­ing them for final­ly real­iz­ing that they must take action.
This bill is not yet law, how­ev­er, I am hop­ing that every­one will vote to pass this leg­is­la­tion; in the mean­time, I will be keep­ing my eyes open to see which politi­cian votes against it.

It is not exact­ly advis­able for mem­bers of one branch of gov­ern­ment to speak on the actions of anoth­er branch. As I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle about the judi­cia­ry and Sykes in par­tic­u­lar, the court seems to have got­ten more argu­men­ta­tive, opin­ion­at­ed and arro­gant under Sykes’ leadership.
Bryan Sykes knows that the new leg­is­la­tion is com­ing, so he is try­ing to get out ahead of the leg­is­la­ture by pre­tend­ing to hear the cries of the peo­ple about doing some­thing about the sen­tenc­ing that is being hand­ed down.
When you are giv­en a free hand you should be judi­cious with it or it will be tak­en from you.
He could not help him­self; how­ev­er, he had to speak on the work of anoth­er branch of gov­ern­ment as he hand­ed down sen­tenc­ing to a career criminal.
Judge Sykes sen­tenced 48-year-old Mark Shepherd to 15 a year sen­tences on the first count, which was even­tu­al­ly reduced to 10 years based on mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stance; sev­en years on count two; and the manda­to­ry 15 years on count three. The sen­tences are to run con­cur­rent­ly, so Shepherd, who has five pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions dat­ing from 1996 — will serve the longest of the three sen­tences, 15 years over­all.
Five pre­vi­ous felony con­vic­tions and the sen­tences hand­ed down did noth­ing to deter him. Here is a bit of news for those opposed to long sen­tences, from as far back as our laws were writ­ten when crime was extreme­ly low there were pro­vi­sions for a judge to put away a repeat offend­er as an ;incor­ri­gi­ble rogue.’ Had the court done it’s job he would not have brought harm to any­one else.
Societies have rule, those who refuse to live by those rules have no place in civ­i­lized soci­eties if they are unable to refrain from harm­ing others.

“We are now at the point where it is said 80 per­cent of homi­cides are com­mit­ted with the use of a firearm. So, in a sense, one can under­stand why the leg­is­la­ture respond­ed in the way that they have because here you have a sit­u­a­tion in which a firearm is being used to com­mit very seri­ous crimes — and the range of sen­tenc­ing does­n’t seem to have reflect­ed that gen­er­al fact. So, the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are say­ing of judges, ‘We take a dim view of what you have been doing, so we are now going to con­trol your dis­cre­tion and set the min­i­mum posi­tion.’ And, if I must be can­did, I can’t say that I dis­agree.”(Bryan Sykes)
Ha haha­ha, it mat­ters not whether or not you dis­agree; the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives are speak­ing for the peo­ple, final­ly. This revolv­ing door for vio­lent crim­i­nals must end; as far as this hum­ble writer is con­cerned, I will con­tin­ue to fight with every drop of ener­gy I have until the leg­is­la­tors wake up and stop the wan­ton blood­shed in our country.
Violent crimes war­rant tough penal­ties, and if you are caught with an ille­gal weapon, you will spend a very long time in jail. Save me the damn sad stories.

“Quite a ratio­nal and rea­son­able response to the grow­ing prob­lem for a coun­try that does not man­u­fac­ture firearms. This is quite a rea­son­able position.”
“The leg­is­la­ture has tak­en the view that they are very dis­sat­is­fied with how the judi­cia­ry has been deal­ing with firearm offens­es. I have to assume that leg­is­la­tors are ratio­nal per­sons (note the unnec­es­sary dig at anoth­er branch of gov­ern­ment as it attempts to do what the peo­ple are ask­ing for)? Had they been sat­is­fied, they would not have embarked on the process of amend­ing var­i­ous bits of leg­is­la­tion since 2010 to insert min­i­mum manda­to­ry sen­tences.”(Sykes)
“I am not going to get into whether the leg­is­la­ture is wrong or right, but it seems as if there has been a lev­el of dis­qui­et with how the judi­cia­ry has been deal­ing with firearm offens­es.(Sykes)
Yes, that is why con­cerned Jamaicans like myself demand­ed that it be removed from the hands of you unelect­ed bureau­crats who con­tin­ue to show a wan­ton dis­re­gard for the killings or worse, are cor­rupt­ed based on the dis­parate sen­tences we have seen in the sen­tenc­ing of vio­lent killers.

So par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, as they are enti­tled to do, have tak­en a dif­fer­ent view of the mat­ter and decid­ed to reduce the dis­cre­tion that the tri­al judge has in some instances. Whether they are right or wrong is nei­ther here nor there at this point — it is just what is.”(Sykes)
Absolutely cor­rect, all of you have abused that dis­cre­tion the peo­ple gave you, and now they are tak­ing it back!!!
Remember how the police had very lit­tle over­sight and so they con­tin­ued to com­mit all kinds of ille­gal acts and end­ed up with INDECOM as a result?
Consider then just how the Jamaican judi­cia­ry has abused the dis­cre­tion giv­en it to be just, mer­ci­ful, yet firm with the peo­ple who come before the court.
The courts’ have betrayed the trust of their boss­es,( the Jamaican peo­ple). The peo­ple are now say­ing we are tired of your abuse, no more. It is for those rea­sons the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives have been forced to move on the peo­ple’s behalf or end up them­selves removed by the boss­es, the Jamaican people.
The peo­ple left it up to judges to deter­mine how much time a con­vict would spend behind bars as there was no min­i­mum sen­tence.; judges have been hor­ri­ble stew­ards of that trust.
I applaud National Security Minister Horace Chang for tabling the leg­is­la­tion, he cer­tain­ly has start­ed to listen.

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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.
 Feedback wel­come @ excellence@​hvc.​rr.​com

(Chief Judge), Bryan Sykes, ( note *judge* instead of [*jus­tice*] for obvi­ous rea­sons), chose to chide and chas­tise police wit­ness­es who have done the heavy lift­ing to the per­il of their own lives to bring a bunch of Klansman thugs to trial.
In one such episode, Sykes took DCP Fitz Bailey to task for the deci­sion of the police not to crim­i­nal­ly charge a coop­er­at­ing wit­ness who gave invalu­able infor­ma­tion and tes­ti­mo­ny which helped the pros­e­cu­tion’s case.
Sykes insist­ed to Bailey in open court that decid­ing not to charge the coop­er­at­ing wit­ness meant that gang­sters can decide to turn on their col­leagues if they believe they can avoid pros­e­cu­tion. (Can some­one explain to me what is wrong with that con­cept)? I do under­stand that tech­ni­cal­ly a tri­al judge may want to see all of the play­ers brought before the court, how­ev­er, this con­ver­sa­tion could be had by call­ing the pros­e­cu­tor and defense lawyers up to him for a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion about it, not lash out at the police.
There is so much to unpack in his stu­pid out­burst that it hard­ly war­rants an intel­li­gent response, but one that asks,” where did they find this dude?
To add insult to injury, the ‘chief judge’ went on to tell Bailey that the deci­sion of the police did not bind him and that it is actu­al­ly, [wait for it].…..a judi­cial deci­sion whether the crown wit­ness should be charged.
So the judge is cor­rect; the deci­sion of the police can­not bind the tri­al judge; how­ev­er, the asser­tion that it is a judi­cial deci­sion whether the coop­er­at­ing wit­ness becomes a defen­dant is total balderdash.
Unless the judge is pre­pared to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute the case, he should shut his mouth; it is up to pros­e­cu­tors whether or not to charge a coop­er­at­ing witness.

Bryan Sykes ques­tioned how a wit­ness who con­fessed to seri­ous felonies was­n’t charged, which brings me to the ques­tion of just how smart and exposed is this man? Fitz Bailey explained to the self-absorbed Sykes that for the greater good, the police decid­ed that after a cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis, it was not in their inter­est to charge the witness.
Now I under­stand that not many peo­ple can under­stand this con­cept if the most senior jurist can­not grasp it.
♦Fisherman uses small fish to catch big fish.
♦ You give up some­thing to get something.
♦You bait a trap with cheese to catch a rat.
Of course, you would like to see all of these mur­der­ers in prison, but what if the only way you get to the head is to cut the shoul­der some slack?
I am real­ly try­ing to explain it to Sykes for the love of God here. What if the pros­e­cu­tion’s case is a lot shaki­er if you charge a coop­er­at­ing wit­ness? Using Bryan Sykes’ log­ic, it is okay to cut off your nose to spite your face. What if you have no case at all with­out that wit­ness­es’ coöper­a­tion? Do you still insist on a zero-sum out­come of all or nothing?
From the way the chief judge has been han­dling this case, it leaves many ques­tions; chief among them is, does the tri­al judge real­ly want a con­vic­tion of the defen­dants, or is he more inter­est­ed in grand­stand­ing against the process and the police?

The Klansman Gang tri­al is actu­al­ly a test case, the first case that will be a barom­e­ter for the new anti-crime leg­is­la­tion that this writer is proud to have pushed for repeat­ed­ly for over a decade. To break the back of crim­i­nal enter­pris­es, it is impor­tant to have Rico-style leg­is­la­tion to inves­ti­gate crim­i­nals. (See Rico statute; https://​www​.ojp​.gov/​n​c​j​r​s​/​v​i​r​t​u​a​l​-​l​i​b​r​a​r​y​/​a​b​s​t​r​a​c​t​s​/​r​i​c​o​-​r​a​c​k​e​t​e​e​r​-​i​n​f​l​u​e​n​c​e​d​-​a​n​d​-​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​-​o​r​g​a​n​i​z​a​t​i​o​n​s​-​a​c​t​-​s​t​a​t​ute
Sykes seems to have a seri­ous prob­lem with crim­i­nals get­ting their just due, and no one should be fooled by his seem­ing desire to have the wit­ness charged. His con­tin­ued hos­til­i­ty toward the police should not be lost on any­one watch­ing this case as it crawls through his courtroom.
The Gambino crime fam­i­ly is one of five Mafia fam­i­lies oper­at­ing in the United States. With the Gambino fam­i­ly, are the Lucchese, Bonano, Genovese, and Colombo families.
Facing a moun­tain of crime and peo­ple who sel­dom rat­ted on each oth­er, fed­er­al author­i­ties were forced into action, the result was that the Congress passed the Rico Statute in 1985.
The Rico Statute allowed Federal author­i­ties to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute mob fam­i­lies as a sin­gle group, all belong­ing to a sin­gle crim­i­nal enterprise…
As for the Gambino fam­i­ly, John Gotti, its col­or­ful and flam­boy­ant boss, he beat two pre­vi­ous fed­er­al raps and thumbed his nose at authorities.
By the time John Gotti was again in a fed­er­al court for his third tri­al, his famed lawyer Bruce Cutler was barred from rep­re­sent­ing him. Federal author­i­ties deemed Cutler a con­sligerie rather than a true defense lawyer, and as such, he was barred from Representing Gotti.
That was hard­ly Gotti’s only prob­lem; his infa­mous under­boss Sammy the Bull Gravano had flipped and became a coop­er­at­ing gov­ern­ment witness.

Gravano reached a deal with Federal author­i­ties which allowed him to plead guilty to 19 mur­ders for his tes­ti­mo­ny against his boss. He was also charged and sen­tenced to five years impris­on­ment; how­ev­er, since he had already spent four years in prison, in 1992, when John Gotti was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to life with­out parole, Sammy, the Bull Gravano, only served one addi­tion­al year before enter­ing the wit­ness pro­tec­tion program.
Criminals do not fight fair, gov­ern­ments must be cre­ative in find­ing new ways to deal law­ful­ly with present and emerg­ing threats. Critical think­ing seems to be an entrenched prob­lem with some of Jamaicas’ lead­ers in posi­tions of pow­er, some mem­bers of that body seem more intent on asser­rt­ing their own per­cep­tion of pow­er, rather than hon­or­ing their oaths.
You have to bait a line to catch a fish. We will be watch­ing this case along with the rest of the coun­try to see whether the judi­cia­ry will con­tin­ue to make a mock­ery of our sys­tem of justice.
In 2018 (97) of the Island’s judges took umbrage to the tem­po­rary des­ig­na­tion giv­en Bryan Sykes to act as Chief Justice. In a terse­ly word­ed let­ter to Prime Minister Andrew Holness, they voiced their dis­qui­et with his deci­sion to place Sykes on pro­ba­tion rather than a per­ma­nent appointment.

Central to their dis­sat­is­fac­tion was the idea that the Honorable Prime Minister had the gall to sub­ject Sykes to his evaluation.
They per­ceived that the con­sti­tu­tion­al sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers grants judges inde­pen­dence, and makes them answer­able only to the peo­ple. Jamaican judges are all appoint­ed, as such, the idea that the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple to whom they claim to be answer­able have no respon­si­bil­i­ty to ensure that only the best can­di­dates are appoint­ed to those posi­tions is mind-boggling.
The judges fired off a lengthy let­ter to the Honorable Prime Minister after they had sum­mar­i­ly shut down court pro­ceed­ings to attend a meet­ing in the nation’s cap­i­tal to reg­is­ter their dis­gust at the Prime Minister’s actions.
It is impor­tant to process those actions with­in the con­text of the then Opposition leader Peter Phillips’ con­dem­na­tion of the Prime Minister’s deci­sion to appoint ‘Sykes’ on a pro­ba­tion­ary basis.
The out­burst of the unelect­ed judges and their fraught anger at the Honorable Prime Minister’s deci­sion seemed to be more about what they see as an affront to their right to unfet­tered pow­er, couched in con­sti­tu­tion­al lan­guage of sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, rather than any real trans­gres­sion by the Prime Minister.

THIS IS THEIR ‘HOW DARE YOU’ LETTER

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, a busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.
You mays send feed­back to mike @ excellence@​hvc.​rr.​com

A St Ann woman who fab­ri­cat­ed a sto­ry that she was raped in January 2021 was had her case con­clud­ed in the rather crim­i­nal-friend­ly man­ner one would expect in Jamaica.
To begin with, she dis­ap­peared, caus­ing those who knew her to be alarmed, and when she turned up, she con­coct­ed a mouth­ful of lies that she was raped; I sus­pect that the full intent of her lies was to cre­ate the impres­sion that she was abduct­ed then raped.
Thankfully the police did due dili­gence, and her sto­ry was found to be made up, and she was arrest­ed and charged for pub­lic mischief.
Now imag­ine for a minute that some man was sus­pect­ed of rap­ing her, imag­ine that man was seen, he could have been chopped to death, shot, and killed, if the police appre­hend­ed some­one, that per­son could have spent years in jail await­ing tri­al and even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed on a lie.
I laid out that sce­nario just so that there is a fuller under­stand­ing of the seri­ous­ness of her false alle­ga­tions. The men­tal, phys­i­cal and finan­cial trau­ma she could have caused some inno­cent man is incalculable.

Now for the sen­tenc­ing, the woman plead guilty to the charges, and by the way, we do not know her name. Now I could see if a woman was legit­i­mate­ly raped and the jus­tice sys­tem chose to keep her iden­ti­ty pri­vate; I am in total agree­ment with that.
But why is the iden­ti­ty of a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal being kept a secret?
It requires police resources to inves­ti­gate these alle­ga­tions when they are report­ed, and it requires court resources to adju­di­cate the case to a conclusion.
The peo­ple have an inter­est in just out­comes; after all, it is the peo­ple’s mon­ey that pays the police, court staff, and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, the judges.
But those con­sid­er­a­tions were sec­ondary to senior parish judge Michele Salmon, who decid­ed against prison time for the con­fessed crim­i­nal, decid­ed against a mon­e­tary fine, decid­ed against com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as a means to repay the people.
She opt­ed instead for a sen­tence of two years pro­ba­tion and counseling.
Well, there you have it, folks; it pays to com­mit crimes in Jamaica. You can rest assured that regard­less of the crimes you com­mit, a judge will allow you to walk out of court after plead­ing guilty or being con­vict­ed scott- free.
Please do not try to con­vince me that pro­ba­tion is a just penal­ty for this crime.

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

Yesterday I again wrote on the seri­ous and con­se­quen­tial issue of judges repeat­ed­ly releas­ing mur­der sus­pects on bail even after they have killed on numer­ous occa­sions. In addi­tion to that, they sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly short-cir­cuit the crime-fight­ing process by grant­i­ng extreme­ly light sen­tences to con­vict­ed murderers.
As I indi­cat­ed yes­ter­day, judges hide behind the sec­tion of the bail act that says *when bail is con­sid­ered, it should not be used as a penalty*.(*paraphrased). https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​u​d​g​e​s​-​r​e​l​e​a​s​i​n​g​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​a​c​c​u​s​e​d​-​o​n​-​b​a​i​l​-​a​-​m​a​j​o​r​-​d​r​i​v​e​r​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​g​s​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​i​s​l​a​nd/

The idea that when a judge is tasked with con­sid­er­ing bail for a mur­der-accused, the fore­most thing in that judge’s mind is not to be puni­tive runs counter to where their focus should be.
The rights of crime-vic­tims’ and that of their fam­i­lies must take prece­dent over that of an accused mur­der­er. Weeks ago, I called on the gov­ern­ment and the oppo­si­tion par­ty to come togeth­er instead of try­ing to score cheap polit­i­cal points and put the Jamaican peo­ple first. The Administration in Jamaica House has demon­strat­ed a new will­ing­ness to engage the crim­i­nals; the oppo­si­tion People’s National Party has decid­ed to wait to see if the high mur­der rate will sour vot­ers on the gov­ern­ment and there­by return them to power.
It is a macabre cal­cu­la­tive and cyn­i­cal cal­cu­lus that should keep them away from Jamaica House for decades to come.
For its’ part, the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion is nowhere near tough enough on the mind­less killers that con­tin­ue to pro­pel Jamaica into infamy, dubbed, the worlds’ mur­der capital.

One mem­ber of the JLP has con­sis­tent­ly earned my per­son­al ire by tak­ing steps that seem to cater more to crim­i­nals than crime vic­tims; that mem­ber is Justice Minister Delroy Chuck. Chuck has advo­cat­ed for a 50% reduc­tion in sen­tences for crim­i­nals who plead guilty to their crimes, includ­ing mur­der­ers. His rea­son­ing is that it clears court dock­ets, Imagine halv­ing the sen­tence deserved by a killer because it is impor­tant to clear court dock­ets? The log­ic of pol­i­cy-mak­ers bor­ders on the ridicu­lous and there­in lies the nations’ problems.
I have been opposed to that pol­i­cy from the start. The options should be the dif­fer­ence between death and life in prison for murderers.
However, since Jamaica refus­es to extri­cate itself from the rear end of her majesty the queen and since there is a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty hand­ed down by the colo­nial ‘mas­ters,’ jamaica has by default dis­en­fran­chised itself from the option to send the killers home to their maker.
Delroy Chuck then turned tail as soon as there was a mas­sive out­cry from the pub­lic, a pub­lic that has grown exhaust­ed with the dai­ly killings, killings that have sapped their abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly grieve.
Chuck then tabled leg­is­la­tion that would grant pros­e­cu­tors the right of appeal in cas­es where they see incon­sis­ten­cies after he real­ized that crim­i­nals were being let out the door in a dis­grace­ful and dan­ger­ous man­ner by judges that did not care.
Though the leg­is­la­tion did not go near­ly as far as it should, as is the case with leg­is­la­tion to fight crime in Jamaica, it even­tu­al­ly became law in its watered-down form. The oppo­si­tion PNP has nev­er seen a bit of anti-crime leg­is­la­tion it did not hate; there­fore, it is chal­leng­ing to get any­thing mean­ing­ful done.

Last Year, Delroy Chuck, star­tled by pub­lic out­cry and from activists like this writer, begged the nation’s judges to be less lenient with vio­lent offend­ers. (wonders of won­ders).
On May 4^th, 2021, con­tribut­ing to the sec­toral debate, the jus­tice min­is­ter [begged] judges to hand down length­i­er sen­tences. (The absur­di­ty of a mem­ber of the elect­ed leg­isla­tive body beg­ging an unelect­ed and unre­spon­sive aloof body to respect the peo­ple’s wish­es was cer­tain­ly not lost on this writer).
During his speech, Chuck said the exec­u­tive branch of ‘Government was look­ing to the judi­cia­ry to tele­graph to crim­i­nals that vio­lence had severe consequences.’
Delroy Chuck failed to real­ize that in Jamaica, the exec­u­tive branch of Government is also the Legislative branch of gov­ern­ment under our par­lia­men­tary sys­tem of gov­ern­ment. And so, instead of beg­ging unelect­ed bureau­crats to respect the laws, the gov­ern­ment should table leg­is­la­tion that dic­tates manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain vio­lent crimes.
The jus­tice min­is­ter said: “Where the crime, be it mur­der or oth­er seri­ous offens­es, is so gross, so grue­some, whether or not the offend­er pleads guilty, the court should send a soli­tary mes­sage, the strongest mes­sage pos­si­ble, that that indi­vid­ual, when he is sent to jail, won’t see out­side again.”
You think?
And that is the rea­son that this mat­ter should be treat­ed with Legislation, not beg­ging. As was to be expect­ed, Bryan Sykes, the chief jus­tice, was dis­mis­sive of the Minister, argu­ing, ” judges have to take into account the facts before them as well as the offense for which an indi­vid­ual has been charged.”
Yes, but they do not get to thumb their noses at the process and admin­is­ter their social­ist brand of jus­tice. In actu­al terms, Bryan Sykes seems to have lit­tle or no respect for the process, in my opinion.

In its final report to the par­lia­ment, the 2007 jus­tice reform task force chaired by Barry Chevvannes found the following.

Under Chief Justice Byran Sykes, the court has tak­en on an argu­men­ta­tive and some­what con­fronta­tion­al tone, with­out the req­ui­site respect for the con­cept of ‘we the peo­ple.’ Instead of explain­ing why cer­tain deci­sions are made and mak­ing cor­rec­tions where there is grave injus­tice done to the peo­ple’s cause, Sykes has been aloof, dis­mis­sive, and bla­tant­ly arrogant.
For those rea­sons, this mat­ter must once and for all be removed from the hands of unelect­ed bureau­crats and cod­i­fied into law so that the major­i­ty’s wish­es can be respected.
If Jamaica is to sur­vive and thrive, the leg­is­la­ture must act with alacrity to shut this door.

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. We can get the word out if each per­son who agrees with what we are doing shares this arti­cle to their social media page!

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

In a recent arti­cle, I asked the police fed­er­a­tion and the Police Officers Association to become more proac­tive in their crime-fight­ing strate­gies. Among those strate­gies should be data col­lec­tion on the judges who con­tin­ue to sup­plant the rule of law with their own per­son­al feelings.

Jamaica is caught up in a death grip, being crushed between a young and vio­lent gen­er­a­tion of killers and a judi­cia­ry decid­ed­ly intent on exact­ing its’ own will, regard­less of the con­se­quences to the public.
The Government (includ­ing the oppo­si­tion par­ty) and the law-abid­ing seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion want the police to bring the mur­der num­bers down; what they are unwill­ing to do is to remove the hand­cuffs from the hands of law enforcement.
However, more detri­men­tal to the nations’ sur­vival is the dan­ger the judi­cia­ry pos­es to the every­day sur­vival of ordi­nary Jamaicans.
The con­tin­ued prac­tice of judges grant­i­ng bail to vio­lent mur­der accused, some sev­er­al times over while they await tri­al on pre­vi­ous mur­der charges, is a dan­ger­ous prac­tice that must be stopped imme­di­ate­ly as an impor­tant part of reduc­ing the killings on the Island.

This writer has been a con­sis­tent voice stand­ing with law-abid­ing Jamaicans and the police against the vio­lent killers and their facil­i­ta­tors in the judi­cia­ry. I have writ­ten dozens of arti­cles on this sub­ject detail­ing not just incon­sis­ten­cies in the grant­i­ng of bail and sen­tences hand­ed down but the rea­sons judges give for grant­i­ng bail while ignor­ing a salient pil­lar of the bail act, the pos­si­bil­i­ty to re-offend.
To begin with, the penal­ty for mur­der is already far too lenient; some mur­der con­victs are giv­en a mere seven(7) years for tak­ing some­one’s life. This tells us that at the bare min­i­mum, the penal­ty for mur­der on the Island does [not] have any deter­rent effect based on the high num­ber of killings report­ed to police each year.
As rep­re­hen­si­ble as these sen­tences are, the issue of bail is at the heart of the prob­lem, one that the leg­is­la­ture refus­es to attend to.
Judges trained at the Islands’ lib­er­al-pro-Marxists col­leges and uni­ver­si­ty tend to have a defense lawyer men­tal­i­ty, more detri­men­tal to the process; they share a belief that they have a duty to reha­bil­i­tate vio­lent offend­ers, con­se­quences to the pub­lic be damned.
Instances of mur­der accused grant­ed bail before tri­al com­mit­ting more mur­ders are well doc­u­ment­ed; some com­mit­ting more mur­ders are again arrest­ed and charged and grant­ed bail up to six times before fac­ing the first trial.

In recent times com­mis­sion­er Antony Anderson spoke out on this sub­ject, the com­mis­sion­er is a pub­lic ser­vant, and as such, he was con­strained as to what he could say and how he said them.
However, the mes­sage was clear, yet the stu­pid prac­tice of releas­ing vio­lent mur­der­ers on bail con­tin­ues unabated.
As this prac­tice con­tin­ues, the police report­ed that one of two men in their cus­tody con­nect­ed with Wednesday night’s killing of three young sib­lings in Irwin Heights St James was out on bail on oth­er mur­der charges.
Eleven-year-old Peta-Gaye Cook and her 19-year-old twin broth­ers, Givaughn and Givaughnie Stewart, were gunned down at their residence.
We can­not ignore the con­sti­tu­tion­al and moral premise of inno­cent until proven guilty; how­ev­er, the state has the duty to pro­tect life as its’ first obligation.
As pub­lic ser­vants, judges are bound to fol­low the law and use their dis­cre­tion in all mat­ters they adju­di­cate. Supplanting the law with per­son­al feel­ings and lean­ings has tak­en over the Jamaican judi­cia­ry with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to the pub­lic, as we con­tin­ue to see.
The Islands’judges con­tin­ue to claim that they fol­low the law, but they are actu­al­ly fol­low­ing the parts of the bail act that serve their own interest.
They claim cor­rect­ly that bail should not be used as pun­ish­ment; what they fail to address is the part of the act that stip­u­lates that bail can be denied (a) based on the seri­ous­ness of the crime the accused is charged with & (b) the like­li­hood that the offend­er will re-offend.

In a recent arti­cle, I asked the police fed­er­a­tion and the Police Officers Association to become more proac­tive in their crime-fight­ing strate­gies. Among those strate­gies should be data col­lec­tion on the judges who con­tin­ue to sup­plant the rule of law with their own per­son­al feel­ings when they sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly return mur­der­ers onto the streets as soon as they are arrested.
We need to know their names have a detailed under­stand­ing of their judi­cial his­to­ry so that we can bet­ter mount a defense against their assault on the rule of law.
We can­not have unelect­ed judges rid­ing roughshod over the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in the cor­rupt and oth­er­wise uneth­i­cal man­ner they have been engaged.
We know they love to trav­el on their for­eign visas; it is time that we approach the Justice depart­ment and Home Office with their pat­tern of crim­i­nal sup­port and have their visas revoked.
Let them stay in the filth they are help­ing to create.
Jamaica is an extreme­ly vio­lent nation; author­i­ties say gangs are respon­si­ble for 70% of the coun­trys’ homi­cides, which rose 10% last year to reach 47.7 per 100,000 inhab­i­tants, giv­ing it the world’s high­est mur­der rate.
In a June 2017 arti­cle in one of Jamaicas’ dai­ly papers Omar Hawthorne a lec­tur­er at one of the Islands’ pre­mier insti­tu­tions of advanced learn­ing, had this to say about judi­cial corruption.
Often, when we talk about judi­cial cor­rup­tion, the image is that of judges tak­ing bribes. However, judi­cial cor­rup­tion is a lot more. It includes all forms of inap­pro­pri­ate influ­ence that may dam­age the inde­pen­dence of jus­tice and may involve any play­er with­in the jus­tice sys­tem, includ­ing lawyers and admin­is­tra­tive sup­port staff. The ques­tion of cor­rup­tion is not only a mat­ter of rela­tions between judi­cial per­son­nel and court users; it is also about inter­nal rela­tions in the judi­cia­ry.
I strong­ly sub­scribe to most of the find­ings and sug­ges­tions with­in the Integrity Commission’s pol­i­cy paper linked here.
https://​www​.van​der​bilt​.edu/​l​a​p​o​p​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​/​0​3​2​7​1​1​.​T​h​e​G​l​e​a​n​e​r​.​pdf

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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.

This is an inter­est­ing bit of news that I per­son­al­ly haven’t seen on the lamestream media. Okay, I seri­ous­ly do not both­er watch­ing tele­vi­sion-who does anyway?
But the facts of this case are both star­tling and interesting. 
Here a white crim­i­nal shoots three police offi­cers, killing one and seri­ous­ly injur­ing anoth­er, yet we heard noth­ing about it in the news.
Another thing- the police have released no infor­ma­tion on this alleged cop-killer whom they even­tu­al­ly killed. Why is that?
Imagine the uproar if a black per­son had shot three cops, basi­cal­ly killing two of them; it would be a round-the-clock con­dem­na­tion of the Black race on the (FIX) pro­pa­gan­da net­work, the race-mon­ger­ing crus­taceans who feed in the putrid bile of that swamp would be hav­ing a field day.
Here is the full sto­ry from the asso­ci­at­ed press.

A Joplin, Missouri, police offi­cer who was shot along with two oth­er offi­cers this week “will not recov­er” from his injuries, Police Chief Sloan Rowland said Thursday.
Rowland announced that patrol offi­cer Jake Reed’s fam­i­ly said he was being pre­pared to donate organs.
“We’re so proud, so thank­ful, and for­ev­er in debt for his ser­vice to this com­mu­ni­ty. … Jake is an out­stand­ing young man,” Rowland said. Cpl. Benjamin Cooper died after being shot in the ini­tial con­fronta­tion on Tuesday. A third offi­cer, Rick Hirshey, was also shot and was in seri­ous but sta­ble con­di­tion Thursday, Rowland said.
Reed joined the police force in 2017. He and Cooper were among the first offi­cers to con­front 40-year-old Anthony Felix at a shop­ping mall in Joplin Tuesday afternoon.
Felix shot the two offi­cers, stole a patrol car, and fled. He crashed the car and was on foot when Hirshey saw him try­ing to steal anoth­er vehi­cle and posi­tioned his patrol vehi­cle to stop the theft. Felix shot Hirshey through the wind­shield and hit him in the face, Rowland said.
Hirshey retired from the police force three months ago after more than 20 years of ser­vice but then returned to the depart­ment. He will face seri­ous health prob­lems and sev­er­al surg­eries in the days to come, the chief said.
Felix was then shot and killed by police Capt. William Davis, Rowland said. Davis, a vet­er­an of more than 15 years, left cov­er and exposed him­self to stop the sus­pect. “If not for Capt. Davis’ actions, addi­tion­al offi­cers and cit­i­zens could have been killed,” Rowland said. Rowland asked every­one to pray for all the offi­cers involved. He also thanked the com­mu­ni­ty for its out­pour­ing of sup­port since the shoot­ing. Police have not released any infor­ma­tion about Felix.

New York Mayor Eric Adams and the New York Police Department are under fire after a Bronx judge found incon­sis­ten­cies in a police officer’s recount of a drill rapper’s arrest that end­ed with a sus­pect and an offi­cer shot this year. NYPD offi­cer Taulant Gjonbalaj said they approached 16-year old Camrin’ C Blu’ Williams after he ignored their orders to remove his hands from his pock­ets dur­ing the Jan. 18 encounter.

Gjonbalaj alleged Williams start­ed fight­ing one of the offi­cers when they respond­ed to a “dis­or­der­ly crowd” in a Bronx neigh­bor­hood. The offi­cer said Williams’ gun went off in his pock­et dur­ing the scuf­fle strik­ing Officer Kaseem Pennant in the leg and Williams in the groin. Bronx Supreme Court Justice Naita Semaj said dur­ing a March 8 hear­ing that Gjonbalaj’s tes­ti­mo­ny runs counter to video footage of the inci­dent. Semaj said even though Williams, who has a his­to­ry of gun charges, was ille­gal­ly pos­sess­ing a weapon, author­i­ties had no rea­son to search the teen. She said Williams raised his hand when he was ordered and com­plied with offi­cers before being roughed up by Gjonbalaj and Pennant, which led to the gun’s acci­den­tal firing.

“He lit­er­al­ly does every­thing you tell your child to do when they’re approached by cops. He lit­er­al­ly kept his hands up. He lit­er­al­ly tried to record to make sure there was proof. He answered ques­tions he had no oblig­a­tion to answer,” Semaj said.
The judge ruled the rap­per, who recent­ly signed a deal with Interscope Records, be tried as a juve­nile and not an adult. The rul­ing received instant back­lash from the NYPD and Adams, who has been a loud crit­ic of drill music. Williams used an advance from the record deal to pay his $250,000 bail. “I agree with the judge that there is no deny­ing Mr. Williams had an ille­gal gun on him that night — a gun that end­ed up injur­ing both him and a police offi­cer,” said Adams, a for­mer NYPD cap­tain. “This was Mr. Williams’ sec­ond gun-relat­ed arrest and exact­ly the rea­son why we need to work to get guns off the streets.”

Drill music is often cat­e­go­rized by its vio­lent lyrics. The hip-hop sub­genre orig­i­nat­ed in Chicago, where the slang word “drill” report­ed­ly means to kill or mur­der. The may­or has crit­i­cized the music for its asso­ci­a­tion with a string of mur­ders in the city and has called for an inter­net ban of drill music videos that depict gang violence.
However, Adams report­ed­ly walked back the com­ments after meet­ing with drill rap­pers last month.
Adams said he was con­cerned about “vio­lent peo­ple who are using drill rap­ping to post who they killed, and then antag­o­nize the peo­ple who they are going to kill.” He vowed to work with the group of rap­pers, led by Maino, after the Feb. 15 meet­ing, but no fur­ther announce­ments have been made… Williams’ release on bond reignit­ed a push by Adams for stricter bond restrictions.

Under cur­rent New York law, cash bail is grant­ed for vio­lent felonies based on a suspect’s risk of flight. Adams believes a suspect’s “dan­ger­ous­ness” should also be con­sid­ered in deter­min­ing bail. While Semaj slammed the NYPD offi­cer for his “self-serv­ing” tes­ti­mo­ny, com­mu­ni­ty advo­cates said Adams owes res­i­dents an apol­o­gy after the judge’s rul­ing. “The may­or wrong­ly blamed bail reform for the release of a 16-year-old. Now, unsur­pris­ing­ly, we learn that the police fab­ri­cat­ed the cir­cum­stances lead­ing up to the inci­dent,” Marvin Mayfield, a direc­tor at the Center for Community Alternatives, said. “Video proved that this young per­son was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly assault­ed, and it is now clear that he was the only per­son seri­ous­ly injured as a result of police action.” Daily News reporters said the police depart­ment and the may­or dodged direct ques­tions about Gjonbalaj’s testimony.

Deputy Commissioner of Public Information John Miller said the NYPD dis­agrees with Semaj and intends “to lit­i­gate this case in the court­room.” “A 16-year-old and a police offi­cer were each shot and wound­ed in this inci­dent. The bul­let came from a gun being car­ried by a teenag­er who was released in a pri­or gun arrest. The offi­cers were on patrol that night for the sole pur­pose of keep­ing our cit­i­zens safe. Those are the most crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant ele­ments of this case,” Miller said. “This is dan­ger­ous work, but the intent is to fos­ter peace and achieve just out­comes for all New Yorkers whether they are vic­tims, wit­ness­es, or young peo­ple who make wrong deci­sions to car­ry firearms.”(This sto­ry first appeared in the Atlanta Black Star)

The Lame-stream media sim­ply gob­bles up the script­ed police ver­sion of events and ran with it as if it was gospel. Is there any won­der that no-one cares about what is said on tele­vi­sion anymore?

Publisher’s note
I guess all of the abuse met­ed out to the young offend­er is jus­ti­fied if we sub­scribe to John Miller’s log­ic. By his log­ic, the end jus­ti­fies the means…because to them (police) it is a war and war is ugly, as is evi­denced by his com­ments; “The offi­cers were on patrol that night for the sole pur­pose of keep­ing our cit­i­zens safe. Those are the most crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant ele­ments of this case,” Miller said.
Not the fact that his offi­cers roughed up a teenag­er then lied about the sequence of events and the mate­r­i­al tenets of the case.“This is dan­ger­ous work,” mean­ing police may use what­ev­er tools they deem nec­es­sary to achieve the out­comes they desire.
John Miller has every right to defend his offi­cers, par­tic­u­lar­ly when a repeat offend­er is bailed and caught with a gun which end­ed up injur­ing a cop. I also under­stand the Mayor’s desire to have a safer city as well.
The thing that police offi­cers and blind zealots fail to under­stand is that the laws must be enforced with­out abro­gat­ing and vio­lat­ing the rights of cit­i­zens and that goes for crim­i­nal sus­pects as well.
We can­not have a soci­ety where police offi­cers sum­mar­i­ly lie in affi­davits and in court in order to gain con­vic­tions and to cov­er their ass­es because they refuse, or, are too stu­pid to fol­low rules.
We can­not have police offi­cers beat­ing up peo­ple who com­mit offens­es against the state and then lying about what occurred.
Police offi­cers do not get to exact vengeance on offend­ers regard­less of their crimes.
In a civ­i­lized soci­ety, we have an entire sys­tem of jus­tice that includes the police, pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, tiers of tri­al courts, and a whole range of oth­er agen­cies that make the sys­tem of jus­tice work.
It is for those rea­sons that we can­not tol­er­ate police offi­cers tak­ing on the role of judge, jury, and executioner…
In light of that John Miller does not get to gloss over phys­i­cal assault com­mit­ted by NYPD cops and per­jury as well, to add insult to injury.
Even bat­tle­fields have rules.….……(mb)

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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.

Certain mark­ers must be laid down when cer­tain events occur, if not for any oth­er rea­son than to estab­lish prece­dent, day date, and time included.
The case of a Florida Special Education (5) year-old stu­dent alleged­ly beat­ing a female teacher neces­si­tat­ing a hos­pi­tal vis­it is one for the ages.
We are painful­ly aware that it is dif­fi­cult to bring crim­i­nal charges against chil­dren of a cer­tain age; nev­er­the­less, the ques­tion remains if the crime com­mit­ted by a young­ster of that age is any less painful to the vic­tim because the injury was inflict­ed by a child that young?
I cer­tain­ly do not have all the answers, but I find the Pembroke Pines Police Departments’ deci­sion [not] to charge the boy with any crimes a bit baf­fling. Shouldn’t that be the deci­sion of the pros­e­cu­tor’s office?

Jason B. Blank, chair­man of the Florida Bar’s Criminal Law Section, agreed with the deci­sion, espe­cial­ly with the attack hap­pen­ing in a spe­cial edu­ca­tion set­ting. “I have nev­er seen a 5‑year-old crim­i­nal­ly pros­e­cut­ed for any­thing like this, espe­cial­ly with the set of spe­cial cir­cum­stances on top of it,” Blank said. “I don’t think that was ever practical.”
The nar­ra­tive being that a five-year-old is inca­pable of form­ing intent seems strange. If a five-year-old is mad at his par­ent because he did not get his way goes into a room, picks up a gun, returns, and shoots his par­ent, is that par­ent any less seri­ous­ly hurt or dead because the child is only five?

The ulti­mate deci­sion rests with pros­e­cu­tors whether or not to bring charges. I am cer­tain­ly not advo­cat­ing that charges be brought against a child that young; how­ev­er, I can­not help won­der­ing whether the Pembroke Pines Police Department would have been that mag­nan­i­mous if the assailant was a lit­tle black boy?
I think not, that boy would have been charged with all kinds of felonies, and the ques­tion, “should he be charged as an adult,” would have been on the tongues of all the talk­ing heads.
For those rea­sons, mem­bers of the African-American com­mu­ni­ty must doc­u­ment these deci­sions as they are made so that they may demand equal treat­ment when the shoe is on the oth­er foot.

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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.