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Deterrent is an impor­tant part of any polic­ing strat­e­gy; vis­i­ble uni­formed offi­cers in spe­cif­ic areas are impor­tant to shore up the con­fi­dence of those that police seek to reas­sure and send a clear mes­sage to those they want to …deter.
However, the deter­rent aspect should only be the frontal part of any polic­ing strat­e­gy and planning.
The main strat­e­gy for plan­ners can­not and should not be just about uni­formed cops out in num­bers at cer­tain times like dur­ing the Christmas season.
The most impor­tant part of the plan should work like a com­put­er moth­er­board, not just what you see on the com­put­er screen, but what hap­pens behind the screen that you can­not see.
Simply put, there bet­ter be a com­pre­hen­sive plan that includes swat, detec­tives, the uti­liza­tion of plain­clothes assets, con­fi­den­tial infor­mants, assets plant­ed with­in the groups you are work­ing to dis­man­tle, eyes and ears on those groups, etc.

Trotting out some stu­dent con­sta­bles you had at the acad­e­my march­ing up-down, up-down to the out­dat­ed and use­less train­ing man­u­al for a few weeks or months, wear­ing that ridicu­lous­ly imprac­ti­cal uni­form should reas­sure no one, but rather should give pause and con­cern that even at this late stage this is the best that the nation’s secu­ri­ty plan­ners can muster.
Gabbing has always been a prob­lem of the police *high command*-*whatever that is.
They nev­er real­ly mat­tered in any use­ful way in crime reduc­tion in our coun­try, and as I point­ed out in a recent arti­cle, they only took cred­it for the work that the peo­ple at the bot­tom did.
For those rea­sons, as a young man who passed through the JCF, I had zero regard for what exist­ed as the *high-com­mand* then; I don’t today.
If you are no good at the thing you are best at, what good are you?

Assuming that what I saw in one of the local dailies this morn­ing is the plan the police depart­ment has for the Western Parishes, and more specif­i­cal­ly Area One, res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers should be very con­cerned for the Christmas season.
Laying out your strat­e­gy in detail to the media is actu­al­ly telling the crim­i­nals what assets you have and how you intend to uti­lize those assets.
It is rea­son­able to say that the transna­tion­al crime plan­ners in Jamaica are heads and shoul­ders above the police planners.
Political lead­ers and oth­ers have said so based on the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the crimes being car­ried out.
This writer warned many years ago that this would hap­pen large­ly due to the large num­ber of crim­i­nal depor­tees com­ing in from indus­tri­al­ized nations.
It is fair; I believe to assume that when the police detail com­pre­hen­sive­ly how they intend to counter the crim­i­nals, the crim­i­nals have the capa­bil­i­ty to devel­op coun­ter­mea­sures to go around police plans.
I mean, for the love of God, why would a senior police plan­ner detail to the media the mea­sures he intends to exe­cute to keep cit­i­zens safe, except that he likes to chat and be seen?

Throughout the years, the JCF and Jamaica have ben­e­fit­ed from the name of some brave offi­cers. Some have used vary­ing meth­ods, includ­ing unortho­dox, to get results for the Jamaican people.
Their meth­ods have, with­out a doubt, result­ed in the preser­va­tion of count­less lives. Those offi­cers, some well-known oth­ers not so much, have giv­en incred­i­ble unsung ser­vice to our peo­ple and nation, some mak­ing the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice in ser­vice to their beloved country.
Whether we agree with them or not is not the issue. When we look at the cost-ben­e­fit ratio was their efforts worth it? And as Ronald Reagan asked vot­ers in his cam­paign against President Jimmy Carter in 79, are you bet­ter off now than you were four years ago?
I ask Jamaicans now,” are you bet­ter off now than when those offi­cers had your back”?
I salute you all: Joe Williams, Trinity, Bigga Ford, Parro Campbell, Noël Asphall, OC Hare, Isiah Laing, Spungy, Dadrick Henry, Tony Hewitt, and every­one in between, men and women.
We were all imper­fect men and women doing a dif­fi­cult job with lit­tle or no help, but our hearts were in the right place.
In some instances, yes, we used unortho­doxy, but we kept the peo­ple safe.
We were not into talk­ing to the media, we were about the peo­ple’s business.
You can talk about mod­ern­iza­tion all you want but if the video does­n’t match the audio then it is all gibberish.
The crim­i­nals are win­ning this war and you have no clue what you are doing. You can­not plan for what you nev­er trained for, lived, or expe­ri­enced. Reading some­thing in a book does not a police offi­cer make.

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

As a soci­ety, Jamaica has so far to go that it is some­times eas­i­er to throw up the prover­bial arm and say there is no point in try­ing to fix the problems.
The lev­el of cor­rup­tion and stu­pid­i­ty is incom­pre­hen­si­ble. Additionally, the peo­ple are not exact­ly edu­cat­ed on how mod­ern soci­eties are sup­posed to oper­ate; we are in seri­ous trouble.
We can safe­ly drill down on how the peo­ple edu­cat­ed at the University of the West Indies and the oth­er left­ist col­leges on the Island have been able to do so much dam­age to our once pris­tine Island culture.
We are pret­ty con­ver­sant by now that the Country’s lead­ers have all but for a few excep­tions, been edu­cat­ed, or should I say indoc­tri­nat­ed.…. say it with me-“up by uwi,” dwl.
You see the group­think; you see the one-track mono­lith­ic thought process­es of the actors, regard­less of the branch of gov­ern­ment in which they bur­rowed themselves.
From the courts to Jamaica House and else­where, we see how those insti­tu­tions have indoc­tri­nat­ed rather than edu­cat­ed result­ing in dire con­se­quences for our country.

Nowhere is that evi­dence more vis­i­ble than in the qual­i­ty of the polit­i­cal lead­ers we have run­ning our coun­try; dum­b­ass­es who are inca­pable of sit­ting togeth­er and look­ing at laws that have worked for oth­er coun­tries, see­ing how they would fit Jamaica, and pass laws that pro­tect the cit­i­zens of our country.
Arrogant nar­cis­sists, most­ly unlearned loud­mouths, lack­ing the humil­i­ty nec­es­sary to say I was wrong or I don’t know.
So the coun­try is caught up in an exis­ten­tial cyclone of igno­rance and stu­pid­i­ty, cre­at­ed and nur­tured by those the peo­ple chose to lead.
But what could we expect when lead­ers are not cho­sen because of their intel­lect or track record of sound leadership?
We have always been peo­ple impressed with form, not sub­stance. We always val­ued soar­ing rhetoric over rea­soned per­for­mance, flashy per­sonas over lev­el-head­ed ret­i­cent, proven leadership.
Yup, we are the peo­ple who call for the release of con­vict­ed mur­der­ers and dem­a­gogue preach­ers of the gospel; we lit­er­al­ly do these things.

It is easy then that they who have supped from the bit­ter cup of decep­tion and brain­wash­ing can so eas­i­ly deceive the rest of us who got our edu­ca­tion down by grass yard or at the uni­ver­si­ty of hard-knocks.
Of course, they take us for fools.
How else could judges decide on what they want to do with mur­der­ers out­side of the dic­tates of the laws?
How else could defense lawyers ask police wit­ness­es why they did not inform INDECOM that he had swift­ly removed a coop­er­at­ing wit­ness from a crime scene?
Do these defense lawyers know that INDECOM has noth­ing to do with police inves­ti­ga­tions and strate­gies? Or do they throw shit against a wall and see what sticks?
Fortunately, Bryan Sykes pre­sid­ing over the Klansman tri­al told the lit­tle twerp that this was a bench tri­al and that he would not be ana­lyz­ing the evi­dence through the lens of a jury.
Doing what they are used to doing, throw­ing innu­en­dos and unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions to igno­rant juries that are some­times made up of peo­ple with active crim­i­nals in their fam­i­lies in an effort to cre­ate doubt, result­ing in guilty mur­der­ers being set free.
What did we expect when we have defense lawyers defend­ing crim­i­nals in court in the morn­ing, then run­ning over to the par­lia­ment build­ing to decide on crim­i­nal statutes as mem­bers of parliament?
How did we expect to have laws friend­ly to the good of ordi­nary law-abid­ing Jamaicans when we allowed this kind of con­flict of interest?
Worse yet, many judges come from the defense side of the aisle rather than the pros­e­cu­tor’s side. Can we now see why judges in Jamaica are so hos­tile to the peo­ple’s interests?

The bot­tom line is that these lit­tle Tadpoles from up by Uwi, swim­ming around in the lit­tle pool, are real­ly con­temp­tu­ous of the Jamaican peo­ple. They do not care about the twelve hun­dred plus mur­ders each year. They do not care that Travel agents are shun­ning jamaica, and major nations are issu­ing trav­el advi­sories to their nation­als wish­ing to trav­el to our country.
They have con­vinced them­selves they are smarter than the rest of us; after all, they were all edu­cat­ed -“up by uwi.”
And that makes them experts in all things, and they would rather burn the damn thing down and rule over the ashes.
They can only feel good about them­selves when they oper­ate as lords among a pop­u­la­tion of serfs.
It is anoth­er form of col­o­niza­tion, but the peo­ple are blind to it.
That is their mind­set until the rest of us put a stop to it.

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

On December 2^nd, I respond­ed in a way that I am nev­er proud of when I am pissed; my response was after the twelve (12) year sen­tence hand­ed down to a dou­ble mur­der­er by Bertram Morrison.
In sen­tenc­ing 21-year-old Linden Powell for dou­ble mur­der, Morrison also ruled that he would be avail­able for parole after only ten (10) years.
The dou­ble mur­der­er was also pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to 18 months impris­on­ment at hard labor on each of two counts of firearm offenses.
That 18 months sen­tence giv­en by anoth­er judge was incred­i­bly offen­sive giv­en the nation’s crime pan­dem­ic. However, the tragedy is that he was giv­en such a lenient sen­tence, and we see the direct result of how these unelect­ed Judges are ruin­ing our coun­try from behind closed doors.
My out­burst on the 2^nd lacked focus, I am the first to admit, but I can­not write in beau­ti­ful lan­guage when I see what they are get­ting away with.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​m​o​n​g​r​e​l​-​j​u​d​g​e​s​-​w​h​o​-​a​r​e​-​t​u​r​n​i​n​g​-​m​a​s​s​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​e​r​s​-​l​o​o​s​e​-​i​n​-​j​a​m​a​i​ca/

The sen­tence hand­ed down by Bertram Morrison is a trav­es­ty to the Judicial process, to the Jamaica peo­ple, and a clear wink and nod to the mur­der­ers who are run­ning amok in our country.
More than any­thing, the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly light sen­tence for what was two mur­ders brings into sharp focus some­thing I have been report­ing on, cor­rup­tion with­in the judi­cial system.
I do not know whether this was a case where mon­ey changed hands. I am [not] say­ing that mon­ey changed hands; I am say­ing that these kinds of sen­tences cause spec­u­la­tion, which does no good to the process.
If I had the slight­est bit of infor­ma­tion that mon­ey changed hands, I would report it here.
If and when I get to the bot­tom of these acts of betray­al against the Jamaican peo­ple, I will not be shy about report­ing it, as what pass­es for media in our coun­try does daily.

Since I do not yet have evi­dence of malfea­sance, let us exam­ine the pos­si­ble ratio­nale for this out­ra­geous sen­tence, which the Director Of Public Prosecution is appro­pri­ate­ly appealing.
♦The sus­pect plead guilty. Pleading guilty to a crime is com­mend­able when an offend­er is caught. Prosecutors have always sought to give the accused some con­ces­sion for com­ing clean and help­ing police and pros­e­cu­tors catch oth­er dan­ger­ous criminals.
In this case, pros­e­cu­tors asked for more than dou­ble the time that Morrison gave the defendant.
What mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances could there be to over­come the aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances of this cold-blood­ed killer’s dou­ble mur­ders, in addi­tion to his past crim­i­nal his­to­ry? If there were any mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances we cer­tain­ly haven’t heard of any.
Here we have a crim­i­nal whom the police removed from the streets after being arrest­ed on firearms charges twice and was released by these crim­i­nal judges, and what did he do? He went out and mur­dered two peo­ple that we know of, and God knows how many more.
As a for­mer police offi­cer, I strong­ly sup­port­ed this move becom­ing a real­i­ty in Jamaica (grant­i­ng some lenien­cy to crim­i­nals who plead guilty and assist­ing law enforce­ment in fur­ther investigations).
I should have remem­bered that there’s noth­ing right­eous and good that Jamaicans in posi­tions of pow­er will not desecrate.
What these Judges are doing is des­e­crat­ing our judi­cial process.
I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly opposed Delroy Chuck’s scorched earth approach to cut the sen­tence an accused would receive in half sim­ply because they plead guilty to the charge/​s.
Delroy Chuck serves the inter­est of crim­i­nals, as do many high­ly placed gov­ern­ment offi­cials in the Island nation; the con­se­quences to the coun­try have been devastating.
I pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that Delroy Chuck’s dri­ve to remove mur­der cas­es from courts dock­ets sim­ply because they have been there for five years is tan­ta­mount to the tax­pay­ers pay­ing Chuck to rep­re­sent Jamaica’s murderers.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​y​-​p​a​y​-​d​e​l​r​o​y​-​c​h​u​c​k​-​w​i​t​h​-​t​a​x​-​d​o​l​l​a​r​s​-​t​o​-​l​o​b​b​y​-​f​o​r​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​ls/

♦Sentencing guide­lines. Sure, judges are guid­ed by sen­tenc­ing guide­lines, but this case had noth­ing to do with sen­tenc­ing guide­lines. This judge bla­tant­ly said ‘fuck you” to the Jamaican peo­ple by impos­ing a twelve-year sen­tence on the dou­ble-mur­der accused. So I once again call for new laws and sen­tenc­ing for mur­der­ers and those who com­mit oth­er vio­lent crimes. (See 10-point plan for Jamaica’s recov­ery below.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​i​s​-​1​0​-​p​o​i​n​t​-​p​l​a​n​-​h​a​s​-​b​e​e​n​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​t​a​b​l​e​-​f​o​r​-​a​-​d​e​c​a​de/
We can under­stand the idea that police offi­cers should exem­pli­fy a high­er stan­dard of con­duct than the aver­age cit­i­zen. I can live with that idea since cops are tasked with bring­ing crim­i­nals to justice.
However, inside those police uni­forms are human beings just like every­one else. Notwithstanding, I will not spend time argu­ing that police should­n’t be held to a high­er stan­dard than most — I am in agreement.
However, let us exam­ine anoth­er case right there in Jamaica, adju­di­cat­ed by anoth­er judge in which some­one lost his life.
The dif­fer­ence, in this case, was that a police offi­cer was alleged­ly involved.

In 2017 for­mer police con­sta­ble Mark Russell was sen­tenced to life in prison for assist­ing in the exe­cu­tion-style killing of a 17-year-old gang­ster in 2007. Former con­sta­ble Russell will have to serve 24 years in prison before being eli­gi­ble for parole.
Constable Russell was assigned to the Hunts Bay Police Station when he was accused of assist­ing in the crime. Judge David Fraser sen­tenced con­sta­ble Russell.
Fraser said Russell would not have been eli­gi­ble for parole until after 30 years if he had not already spent six years in cus­tody — one year in the United States, where he had fled, and the remain­ing years in Jamaica after being extradited.
No one in their right mind could rea­son­ably try to negate what the accused con­sta­ble did and was found guilty of.
I also agree that if the con­sta­ble com­mit­ted the act for which he was found guilty, the sen­tence hand­ed down by the court is in line with the sen­tences that mur­der­ers should receive across the board, no exception…
The glar­ing incon­sis­ten­cy in these two sen­tences demon­strates a cou­ple of things.
(1) There are two jus­tice sys­tems in Jamaica, one that aids vio­lent crim­i­nals and high­ly placed Jamaicans, and anoth­er that pun­ish­es ordi­nary Jamaicans and errant cops.
(2) That either of the two judges is dan­ger­ous­ly wrong; that David Fraser demon­strat­ed ani­mus toward Constable Russell in the sen­tence hand­ed down and his utter­ances; Or that Bertram Morrison direct­ly used his trust­ed office to aid and give suc­cor to a dou­ble murderer.

In respond­ing to pleas from mem­bers of the cler­gy (a) who knew Russell since he was a child,(b) that he was not a ser­i­al crim­i­nal,© and that he did not even fire the shot that killed the dead crim­i­nal who had fired at mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces; Fraser said he had to con­sid­er those police offi­cers are entrust­ed to pro­tect and serve the pub­lic, but that the ver­dict of the jury indi­cat­ed their belief that Russell did the oppo­site of that.
Fraser added that he con­sid­ered that Russell was not the shoot­er and that the social inquiry report spoke high­ly of him and echoed the sen­ti­ments of the cler­gy members.
Constable Russell though guilty, aid­ed and abet­ted a sin­gle mur­der. Constable Russell’s life was spent being a police offi­cer; he did not even pull the trigger.
What would have been the sen­tence hand­ed down to Constable Russell had David Fraser not (a) tak­en into account the social inquiry report, (b) had Russel pulled the trig­ger, © Russell had assist­ed in more than one homi­cide, (d) Constable Russell was accused of actu­al­ly aid­ing in more than a sin­gle murder,(e) had cold-blood­ed­ly killed two people,(f) had a vio­lent back­ground and (g) pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed on weapons and ammu­ni­tion charges?
Double mur­der­er Linden Powell killed two peo­ple, and those are only the ones we know of.
These two sen­tences are the most egre­gious abuse of the con­cept of aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing con­sid­er­a­tions when crim­i­nals are to be sentenced.
This abuse of our jus­tice sys­tem can­not be allowed to stand.

Both ver­dicts can­not be cor­rect in the same small country.

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This arti­cle was updat­ed after its first posting.

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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.

Reality dic­tates that you can­not suc­cess­ful­ly build a sus­tain­able nar­ra­tive on a foun­da­tion of lies. It fol­lows also that you can­not expect a high-rise tow­er built on faulty foun­da­tions to sur­vive earth­quakes, hur­ri­canes, and the like.
And so, as we risk sound­ing like a bro­ken record, it is still worth that risk to men­tion that the gov­ern­men­t’s crime-fight­ing strate­gies were the equiv­a­lent of apply­ing a bandaid to a gun­shot wound;(sorry for the gun­shot metaphor).
We can­not help but notice the pan­ic in the Jamaican Prime Minister’s state­ments that any­one caught with a hand­gun should be put to death. (smile).
During a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with a for­mer col­league and friend recent­ly, we cracked up at the fact that the Prime Minister’s shrill utter­ances amount­ed to a far greater threat to indi­vid­ual human rights than any­thing police offi­cers ever did in their right­eous inten­tions to rid the streets of vio­lent criminals.

And so, I want Jamaicans to jux­ta­pose the Prime Minister’s jour­ney from the cam­paign trail to Jamaica House. “No police will be kick­ing down doors as long as I am Prime Minister.”
To, ‘look at what hap­pened in Haiti,’ in ref­er­ence to the mur­der of that nation’s pres­i­dent- and onto the pan­icked posi­tion of “death penal­ty for any­one caught with an ille­gal gun.” ( Buss ‑out-a-laff)
No, per­pet­u­al crit­ics, I am [not] mak­ing light of the coun­try’s crime prob­lem; I am amused at the con­se­quences for reck­less actions and words.
If I were a guy seek­ing elec­tive office who was raised in an anti-law enforce­ment envi­ron­ment, edu­cat­ed at a left­ist lib­er­al col­lege, sur­round­ed by anti-law enforce­ment bot­tom-feed­ers, and rep­re­sent­ed a con­stituen­cy in which crim­i­nal­i­ty abounds, I would prob­a­bly say some of the things Andrew Holness said and did to dis­tance him­self from the police.
(Actually, I would­n’t), I mere­ly want to show cau­sa­tion for his actions…

I won­der where the so-called human rights bot­tom-feed­ers are now? The Prime Minister’s pan­icked out­burst is exact­ly what the bot­tom-feed­ers would have a feed­ing fren­zy over were they uttered by the police. Like glut­to­nous pira­nhas, they would have torn the last shred of meat from the car­cass of any­one who dared to sug­gest such a trav­es­ty, all in fur­ther­ance of their agenda.
By the way, have you ever noticed that no mat­ter how many inno­cent Jamaicans are mur­dered each year, the so-called human rights frauds oper­at­ing in Jamaica are silent?
Ask your­selves then, ‘whose inter­est do they serve’? Certainly not the inter­est of inno­cent, law-abid­ing citizens.
However, these are the peo­ple Bruce Golding lis­tened to-these are the peo­ple his pro­tégée Andrew Holness takes coun­sel from.
No one is advo­cat­ing for a police state, cer­tain­ly not your hum­ble ser­vant. However, we must acknowl­edge that the same Jamaican peo­ple who are clam­or­ing for our coun­try to remain an iso­lat­ed crim­i­nal out­post are the same ones clam­or­ing to get visas to America where they would have to obey laws or face the full brunt of what it means to be black in the American jus­tice sys­tem. In fact, many of the present crime pro­duc­ers have actu­al­ly felt that hand and have been sent back home.

The idea of check­points in Zones of oper­a­tion as a long-term crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy speaks to the igno­rance inher­ent in those poli­cies, both in con­cept, and execution.
But the data does not lie. Regardless of what the Prime Minister and his lack­eys say (includ­ing the police) who held a pan­el dis­cus­sion trum­pet­ing the great­ness of Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSOs) and States Of Emergencies SOEs, the under­ly­ing fact is that mur­ders con­tin­ue to climb over­all.
They can lie all they want, but the math does­n’t; it mat­ters lit­tle if you sup­press mur­ders in a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­i­cal area and crime goes up else­where; you do not get to crow about decreased murders.
By doing that, you are being disingenuous.

I expect noth­ing less from the police high com­mand, how­ev­er. The police high com­mand has nev­er been any good at any­thing, not on com­mand, not on per­son­nel man­age­ment, not on craft­ing and exe­cut­ing crime-fight­ing strate­gies, not on devel­op­ing a train­ing man­u­al that reflects the chal­lenges offi­cers face today, not on effec­tu­at­ing mean­ing­ful account­abil­i­ty in crim­i­nal investigations.
In fact, the police high com­mand has been noth­ing but a bunch of lap­dogs who walk behind politi­cians and serve as pho­to props for them.
The suc­cess­es of the JCF three decades ago when our annu­al mur­der num­bers were just over 500 could not be attrib­uted to the high command.
The suc­cess­es we cre­at­ed in the past by erad­i­cat­ing the killers and forc­ing oth­ers to flee the coun­try have nev­er been a top-down affair but rather a bot­tom-up endeavor.
Hard-nosed cops on the ground (name brand cops) doing the work, cor­rupt rum drink­ing pot-bel­lied dead­wood at the top tak­ing credit.
The JCF’s sol­ven­cy through the years was nev­er about who was at the top; it was about who was at the bot­tom. Bottoms up.

When they decid­ed to fol­low the dic­tates of Carolyn Gomes and lat­er cre­ate the troll, Terrence Willams, Jamaica, by default, signed the death war­rant for thou­sands of Jamaicans who oth­er­wise would have been alive today.
Let me be clear, (a)had Carolyn Gomes a Jamaica mulat­to, not become a [thing] in how our laws are enforced, and (b)Bruce Golding not foist­ed the lit­tle anti-police troll Terence Williams on the nation, thou­sands of mur­dered Jamaicans would still be alive today.
That same Bruce Golding who refused to send Duddus to face tri­al in the United States is [still] influ­enc­ing pol­i­cy today, even though he was forced to demit office in disgrace.
Do not act surprised.

Jamaica is reap­ing the bit­ter fruits of years of farm­ing crim­i­nals. No, my friends, all is not lost; we can turn this around quickly.
We need a set of new laws, a set of new cops, a dif­fer­ent nation­al mind­set; we can keep the shit­head judges just take away the pow­er they have to fur­ther cor­rupt our sys­tem by let­ting dou­ble mur­der­ers off the hook with 12-year sentences.

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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.

I am again pub­lish­ing my plan to the Jamaican Government, a plan I believe is not a panacea but one that will begin the slow and tedious process of extri­cat­ing Jamaica from the jaws of failure.
Each of the pil­lars of this plan will need dis­cus­sion, and some will require new leg­is­la­tion to be passed to effec­tu­ate the desired out­comes. Additionally, this plan will be most effec­tive if exe­cut­ed with a par­al­lel eco­nom­ic plan that revi­tal­izes depressed areas pro­vid­ing jobs to dis­pos­sessed youths.
Jamaican lead­ers have con­sis­tent­ly led the Jamaican peo­ple into believ­ing the lie that we can achieve first-world sta­tus on old-world infrastructure.
The Soviet Union crum­bled when it engaged with America, which had a robust mod­ern econ­o­my. The Americans could spend what they want­ed; the Soviets could­n’t because their econ­o­my was large­ly propped up by sub­sis­tence farm­ing in the satel­lite states.

Jamaica, too is head­ed for finan­cial and soci­etal col­lapse as suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions of the two polit­i­cal par­ties have con­tin­ued on the same path of lying to the peo­ple that we can achieve pros­per­i­ty on old laws which (a) have lit­tle to zero deter­rent effect, (b) dri­ves away the pri­vate sec­tor, © increas­es crime, (d) sends a larg­er share of the dimin­ish­ing gross domes­tic prod­uct to the fleet­ing con­cept of secu­ri­ty with­in the present construct.
We need a new con­sti­tu­tion that reflects the Jamaican peo­ple’s needs today and for centuries.
We need to extri­cate our­selves from the colo­nial shack­les still on our brains as we remain teth­ered to Britain for no rea­son oth­er than being afraid to be independent.
We need new laws that man­date no zinc fences any­where as we encour­age our peo­ple, regard­less of their finan­cial stand­ing to learn to live in an open and free society.
Only when we take these rather sim­ple steps will we begin to see a reduc­tion in the num­ber of vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted in our country.
No plan will be a panacea or a sil­ver bul­let against what has been decades in the mak­ing, speak­ing of the entrenched crime situation.
Nevertheless, we need a cit­i­zen-focused plan that con­sid­ers the inter­est of law-abid­ing Jamaicans over those of crim­i­nals who decide to engage in a life of crime.

MY CRIME PLAN

(1) Strong penalties for violent crimes.

The penal­ties present­ly in place for vio­lent crimes, includ­ing mur­ders, are far too lenient and offer pre­cious deter­rent effects, if any.
Additionally, to clear court dock­et back­logs, the gov­ern­ment has devised poli­cies that offer mur­der-accused and oth­ers a 50% reduc­tion in their sen­tence in exchange for a guilty plea.
To begin with, the sen­tences hand­ed down for mur­der some­times are as low as sev­en (7) years; a 50% reduc­tion takes it down to ³¹⁄₂ years. If the accused is already in cus­tody because he was­n’t giv­en bail, they receive con­sid­er­a­tion for time served. Using this met­ric, a per­son final­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der may walk free from incar­cer­a­tion on the day they have been con­vict­ed of the crime.
In response to his sen­tenc­ing pat­terns in west­ern Jamaica, one of the judi­cia­ry mem­bers said the fol­low­ing. “If a rich man’s son “com­mits a crime, they expect lenien­cy,” but if a poor man com­mits a crime, they expect me to send him to prison.”
The judge cit­ed pro­ba­tion reports as being vital in play­ing a role in the sen­tenc­ing process. He argues that when the reports are looked at in some cas­es, many of the young boys involved had been involved in sport­ing activ­i­ties, includ­ing foot­ball. “You have to res­cue them,’ he said.
This judge spoke about mur­der­ers he released back into soci­ety after they were con­vict­ed, some­times on mul­ti­ple mur­der charges.
Here is an unelect­ed judge that is not answer­able to the peo­ple sup­plant­i­ng the already lax penal­ties in the laws with his idea of jus­tice. This must come to an end.

(2) Truth in sentencing.

Murder should car­ry a penal­ty of twen­ty-five (25) years on the low end and the high-end life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
Judges should only be giv­en dis­cre­tion when vio­lence is used to cause some­one’s death when there was no intent. As in manslaugh­ter. For exam­ple, two peo­ple fight­ing, one push­es or punch­es the oth­er, who falls, hits his head, and dies.
In such a case, a judge may use their dis­cre­tion if the offend­er does not have a ver­i­fi­able vio­lent past on record.
The police cit­ed hun­dreds of ver­i­fi­able cas­es in which mur­der­ers and oth­er felons were released back onto the streets after they were arrest­ed. In most cas­es, offend­ers are charged with mur­der, and some­times sev­er­al counts of mur­der are grant­ed bail. Once released, they con­tin­ue on their mur­der spree, which usu­al­ly ends when they con­front the police with guns blazing.
The idea that judges see their roles as social work­ers instead of the fol­low­ing prece­dent as stip­u­lat­ed in paragraph(3) above demon­strates the need for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain crime cat­e­gories, effec­tive­ly remov­ing that func­tion from the hands of judges. The break­down of law and order and the gen­er­al law­less­ness in the coun­try are direct­ly attrib­ut­able to the lax, com­plic­it, cor­rupt, and incom­pe­tent jus­tice sys­tem led by the Islands judges who refuse to fol­low precedent.
Instead of fix­ing that prob­lem as police offi­cers have been demand­ing for decades [a prob­lem I com­plained about over two decades ago while I was a serv­ing police offi­cer], they con­tin­ue blam­ing the police for com­plic­i­ty while ignor­ing this glar­ing problem.

(3) Mandatory Minimum sentences for violent crimes.

The sen­tences applied for mur­der and oth­er crimes of vio­lence are insuf­fi­cient to con­vey that vio­lence will not be tol­er­at­ed. As such, vio­lence has become almost the only con­flict res­o­lu­tion tool used by cit­i­zens who no longer fear the con­se­quences of their vio­lent actions.
Some peo­ple talk about human rights when­ev­er the sub­ject of penal­ties is being dis­cussed for vio­lent offend­ers as if their vic­tims are not enti­tled to con­sid­er­a­tion or have the right to life and free­dom from violence.
Our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem [must] be focused on the rights of crime vic­tims and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens over the rights of crime producers.
Pass laws that pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion and allow the apol­o­gists to do what they do ‑apol­o­gize and lob­by on behalf of murderers.

(4) Remove from the control of judges the sentence violent gangsters receive.

This sub-sec­tion is direct­ly relat­ed to sub-sec­tion 2 & 3 and is, for the most self-explanatory.

(5) Mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison and a maximum life without the possibility of parole for murder

See sub-sec­tion (2)

(6) No bail for accused murderers.

The bail act stip­u­lates that a defen­dant may be refused bail if he is like­ly to(a) re-offend, (b) like­ly to abscond and © like­ly to inter­fere with wit­ness­es. Despite these strong points for refusal of bail, the judi­cia­ry con­tin­ues to allow vio­lent mur­der­ers back onto the streets after arrest, with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to inno­cent, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens under the guise that bail should not be used as punishment.
When a judge advances this argu­ment, it becomes clear that the life of the accused is more impor­tant than the vic­tims they are accused of tak­ing. This must stop.

(7) Speedy trial for murder accused.

The law guar­an­tees an accused per­son­’s right to a speedy tri­al. A speedy tri­al is cen­tral to the rights of per­sons accused of a crime and the aggriev­ed party.
It isn’t easy to make the case that the Jamaican state has ful­filled that guar­an­tee to per­sons it takes into custody.
The Justice Ministry has embarked on ill-advised mea­sures to free up court dock­ets, ulti­mate­ly aimed at speedy future trials.
I’m not con­vinced that allow­ing mur­der­ers to walk free if they do not receive a time­ly tri­al is the way to fix this problem.
But then again, the sys­tem was not built to care about crime vic­tims’ rights.
Because this plan espous­es no bail for the mur­der accused, a speedy tri­al is a crit­i­cal under­pin­ning of the former.

(8) Change criminal-focused strategy to victim-focused.

Every per­son has a right to be treat­ed with respect even when arrest­ed and accused of com­mit­ting a crime. The idea that a per­son is inno­cent until proven guilty is not an aca­d­e­m­ic or the­o­ret­i­cal con­cept but a fun­da­men­tal right that gov­ern­ments must respect.
Even con­vict­ed crim­i­nals enjoy cer­tain but not all, rights they had pre-con­vic­tion. The fact that crim­i­nals do not enjoy the same rights they had before they com­mit­ted crimes seems to be lost on leg­is­la­tors because of pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial lob­by­ing efforts from spe­cial inter­ests in JAMAICA.
Lost in the shuf­fle is the fact that there are vic­tims and their fam­i­lies whom every­one for­gets who suf­fer due to the crimes their assailants com­mit­ted against them.
At every turn, there are pon­tif­i­ca­tors and self-aggran­diz­ing, self-appoint­ed experts advo­cat­ing for mur­der­ous crim­i­nals. The Government has a sacred duty to pro­tect the rights and safe­ty of the Jamaican people.

(9) Create national security policy based on Jamaica’s unique needs, not what foreign interests want.

Jamaica has woven itself into a web of inter­na­tion­al treaties, mak­ing it almost impos­si­ble to gov­ern itself. A tru­ly inde­pen­dent nation has no oblig­a­tion to sign on to every treaty and con­ven­tion it sees to seem a part of the crowd.
A nation [must] exam­ine each treaty and con­ven­tion to see whether or not the needs of its peo­ple are best served.
A new con­sti­tu­tion would allow the Jamaican peo­ple to say through a bal­lot mea­sure whether it approves or dis­ap­proves of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, for exam­ple, and not be dic­tat­ed to by a court of the colo­nial master.
No inde­pen­dent demo­c­ra­t­ic nation should give away its right to self-gov­ern by sign­ing on to inter­na­tion­al treaties and con­ven­tions that are anti­thet­i­cal to the good of its people.

(10) Invest heavily in criminal investigation techniques.

Two of the more effec­tive things that a police depart­ment can do to reduce crime are (1) deter would-be crim­i­nals and (2) have the capac­i­ty to find and pros­e­cute those who do com­mit crimes.
Jamaican law enforce­ment has demon­strat­ed that it can bring crim­i­nals to jus­tice if giv­en the prop­er train­ing and tools to do the job. However, the inter­est of the force and the Jamaican cit­i­zens have not been served as it should for decades, as the JCF has been starved of the train­ing, resources, and remu­ner­a­tions it needs to get the job done.
The JCF, as a law enforce­ment agency, through­out its exis­tence, has not demon­strat­ed or shown the prop­er respect detec­tives deserve. Detectives are not com­pen­sat­ed or pro­mot­ed com­men­su­rate with the val­ue of their work.
I know that the same argu­ments could be made for the entire force, and I may be some­what biased, hav­ing served in crim­i­nal investigations.
Nevertheless, those who served in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions know it is not a depart­ment where shifts and clock-watch­ing matter.
The gov­ern­ment must show respect to crim­i­nal detec­tives and give them the respect and reward they deserve.

(11) Hire more judges that were former prosecutors.

This plan has com­po­nents that would remove cer­tain func­tions from judges’ purview. To effec­tu­ate bet­ter out­comes with greater clar­i­ty, the gov­ern­ment should, as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, hire more lawyers who come from the pros­e­cu­tion side of the aisle to become judges.
Even with inef­fec­tive legal penal­ties for the most seri­ous crimes, judges con­tin­ue to mock the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem through polit­i­cal and cor­rupt means.
From Parish courts to the Supreme court, judges and’ jus­tices’ con­tin­u­al­ly act as defense attor­neys to the most dan­ger­ous killers brought before the courts.
Not only are they act­ing as defac­to lawyers for the defense, but they also have, over the decades, gone out of their way to be dis­re­spect­ful and hos­tile to police offi­cers and prosecutors.

(12) Build Prisons.

Whenever gov­ern­ments decide to build pris­ons, it cre­ates a flur­ry of heat­ed con­ver­sa­tions for and against them. However, gov­ern­ing is dif­fer­ent from talk­ing. Therefore, as the gov­ern­ment has a duty to build schools, hos­pi­tals, police and fire sta­tions, roads, and oth­er infra­struc­ture, it is also oblig­at­ed to build pris­ons to house seri­ous offenders.
Because Jamaica is forced to accept the dic­tates of its for­mer colo­nial mas­ter that it can­not hang mur­der­ers, it must ensure that they are not released back into soci­ety to cre­ate the may­hem they have been allowed to cre­ate for decades.

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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.

Every day we talk about these fuck­ing retard­ed ass­holes sit­ting as tri­ers of facts, pre­tend­ing to be judges in our country.
Let me first name this asswipe.
Bertram Morrison.

Here is a report from the Jamaica Gleaner

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) has revealed that the Westmoreland man today sen­tenced to 12 years in prison on two counts of mur­der had two pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm.

Linden Powell, 21, was on August 21, 2019, sen­tenced to 18 months impris­on­ment at hard labor on each count of the firearm offenses.
Today, Justice Bertram Morrison sen­tenced him to 12 years in prison for the January 2017 mur­der of Oral McIntosh and anoth­er 12 years for the March mur­der of Ida Clarke, both in Westmoreland.
Both sen­tences are to run at the same time and Morrison ruled that Powell should become eli­gi­ble for parole after 10 years behind bars.
In a state­ment today, the ODPP revealed that after pass­ing down the sen­tence, the deputy direc­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions indi­cat­ed on the record that when the plea was being entered, the Crown had rec­om­mend­ed a sen­tence of life impris­on­ment on each count of mur­der with eli­gi­bil­i­ty for parole after 21 years “The learned judge respond­ed by say­ing he would be pro­ceed­ing with this sen­tence,” said a spokesper­son in the state­ment. The deputy direc­tor then told the court that the sen­tence of twelve years impris­on­ment would shock the pub­lic’s con­science giv­en the nature of these offens­es. However, Justice Morrison main­tained the sen­tence of 12 years impris­on­ment at hard labor with 10 years before the accused becomes eli­gi­ble for parole. The pros­e­cu­tion then decid­ed that it would appeal the sen­tence. In October this year, pros­e­cu­tors were giv­en a lim­it­ed right of appeal after Parliament passed the Judicature (Appellate Jurisdiction) (Amendment) Act 2021 and the Judicature (Parish Courts) (Amendment) Act 2021. The leg­is­la­tion came into effect on November 2, legal insid­ers dis­closed. Powell is one of six men who were found not guilty of var­i­ous breach­es of the anti-gang leg­is­la­tion dur­ing the Kings Valley gang tri­al in July last year.

What pos­si­ble ratio­nale could there be for a judge.….….any judge to pre­side over a dou­ble mur­der tri­al in which a defen­dant is found guilty, or plead guilty of mur­der­ing not one but two peo­ple and hand down a sen­tence of 12 years with the option for parole after ten (10) years?
These are the dirty, dirty, dirty, crim­i­nal sup­port­ing ass­holes that are destroy­ing our coun­try. These are the dirty left­ists who have tak­en it upon them­selves to sin­gle­hand­ed­ly sub­vert the will of the mass­es of the Jamaican people.
Am I mad?
No, not yet!!!

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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.

When a Kenosha Wisconsin cop Rusten Shensky delib­er­ate­ly and cal­cu­lat­ing­ly placed 7 shots into the back of an unarmed Jacob Blake last year. Many folks with a con­science thought that those actions were so uncon­scionable and inde­fen­si­ble that there was no way that Rusten Shensky would not be sent to prison for the remain­der of his life for the betray­al of his oath, and for being a rot­ten excuse of a human being.
Those folks were wrong. Rusten Shensky was inves­ti­gat­ed by oth­er cops who said noth­ing to see here it is total­ly cool to shoot some­one in the back.….….. In fact, it is per­fect­ly fine to shoot anoth­er human being in the back as many times as you feel is nec­es­sary, on one condition.
You must be wear­ing the uni­form of an American police officer.
And just so you know those of you who tend to believe that the United States Justice Department is real­ly about jus­tice you may want to recon­sid­er that mind­set. The Justice Department looked at the shoot­ing of mis­ter Jacob Blake who will nev­er walk again and decid­ed, we looked at the evi­dence and we don’t see any­thing here either, move along folks”.
Jacob Blake is Black.
Rusten Shensky who is white was returned to the streets to kill and maim again.

The shoot­ing of Jacob Blake in that fash­ion set off a firestorm of protests in Kenosha Wisconsin and across the state and country.
Out of that inci­dent, Kyle Rittenhouse Supremacist-inspired AR15 tot­ing thug went to Kenosha Wisconsin from his home in Illinois sup­pos­ed­ly to counter the Black Lives Matter pro­test­ers who were protest­ing the shoot­ing of Jacob Blake.
There Kyle Rittenhouse mur­dered two pro­test­ers and seri­ous­ly injured another.
Rittenhouse was even­tu­al­ly charged for those crimes but was quick­ly exon­er­at­ed of all charges by a Kenosha jury and a judge who made it clear whose side he was on.
At the time of the uncon­scionable shoot­ing of Jacob Blake by a cop who is sup­posed to under­stand restraint and the com­mit­ment to pro­tect life many peo­ple, (whites) choose as usu­al to cre­ate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the rep­re­hen­si­ble actions of the cow­ard­ly cop.
Those jus­ti­fi­ca­tions ranged from the eye-rolling, to too dis­gust­ing to dig­ni­fy. The thing about those jus­ti­fi­ca­tions is that from one end of the spec­trum to the oth­er, they were all influ­enced by the race of Blake and Shensky.
This brings me to a quote I have bor­rowed through­out the years that I have been a writer.

First, they came for the social­ists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade union­ists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me. (Martin Niemöller).
The mur­der­er and his rapa­cious and uncon­scionable defend­ers will use the deceased man’s past to cre­ate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for his mur­der and they may well pre­vail in a sys­tem in which police are allowed to sum­mar­i­ly be judge, jury, and executioner.
I say take the guns away from these ani­mals and see how many of them resign; that I believe, is the best way to bring san­i­ty to this state of madness.

THEN THERE IS THIS

Harrowing footage caught the moment an off-duty Arizona cop work­ing as a Walmart secu­ri­ty guard shot a 61-year-old man in a wheel­chair nine times in the back, killing him — after the dis­abled man alleged­ly shoplift­ed. The offi­cer, Ryan Remington, was on assign­ment at the Walmart in Tucson on Monday when an employ­ee alert­ed him about 6 p.m. that a cus­tomer in a motor­ized wheel­chair had swiped a tool­box, KGUN report­ed. The employ­ee caught up with the sus­pect, iden­ti­fied lat­er as Richard Lee Richards, and asked him to show a receipt in the park­ing lot. “Instead of pro­vid­ing the receipt, Mr. Richards bran­dished a knife and said, ‘Here’s your receipt,’” Police Chief Chris Magnus said in a state­ment, accord­ing to CNN.

The chief said Remington, a four-year mem­ber of the Tucson police force, also fol­lowed Richards while “attempt­ing to gain his coöper­a­tion” and sur­ren­der the blade. “Mr. Richards refused to com­ply, and instead con­tin­ued to head through the Walmart and Lowe’s park­ing lots,” Magnus said. “According to the Walmart employ­ee, Mr. Richards said, ‘If you want me to put down the knife, you’re going to have to shoot me.’ A sec­ond offi­cer then joined Remington at the scene, where they warned the sus­pect not to enter the Lowe’s but he again report­ed­ly ignored the commands.
The graph­ic video shows Richards begins to enter the store as Remington tells him, “Do not go into the store, sir.” He then opens fire at the sus­pect, who slumps over and crum­ples to the ground after being hit nine times. Remington is then seen hand­cuff­ing the man, who is not moving.

“To be clear, I am deeply dis­turbed by Officer Remington’s actions, his use of dead­ly force in this inci­dent is a clear vio­la­tion of depart­ment pol­i­cy and direct­ly con­tra­dicts mul­ti­ple aspects of our use of force train­ing,” Magnus said in a press con­fer­ence Tuesday “As a result, the depart­ment moved ear­li­er today to ter­mi­nate Officer Remington,” he said, adding that the shoot­ing will be reviewed by the Pima County Attorney’s Office. Magnus said med­ical per­son­nel was called to the scene “but a short time lat­er Mr. Richards was declared dead.” Mike Storie, an attor­ney for the Tucson Police Officers Association, said: “What you saw was the police department’s edit­ed ver­sion of this event, which was cut and past­ed pieces of video of this event,” KGUN report­ed. “He thought it was appro­pri­ate at the time he used it and he still does,” Storie added, refer­ring to Remington In a state­ment, Mayor Regina Romero said: “The actions of the offi­cer involved in last night’s dead­ly shoot­ing are uncon­scionable and inde­fen­si­ble. The County Attorney’s Office has my full sup­port as they pro­ceed with their inves­ti­ga­tion. “It is moments like this that test our resolve to ensure jus­tice and account­abil­i­ty. We owe this to all Tucsonans. I ask our com­mu­ni­ty to remain calm and be patient as inves­ti­ga­tions ensue,” she added.

Murder along Red Hills Road we are reli­ably informed at the same ser­vice sta­tion that two men were mur­dered last week.

‘Incredible’, is the word that comes to mind as I watch our country implode into a failed state. ‘Incredible’, because the fix is not hard; the problem is that the country is being run by a bunch of egomaniacal narcissists who operate in an echo chamber.
They hear the echoes of their own voices and that of their sycophants, and nothing else…(The country is teetering on the brink)
This writer thanks the Police Officers Association (POA) under the leadership of the able and competent stewardship of Senior Superintendent Wayne Cameron for supporting the rank and file of the JCF in its just fight for wages they earned and deserve.

The Political Party present­ly in the oppo­si­tion is a weak knock­off of the American Republican Party. To the PNP, it is pow­er at all costs; desta­bi­liza­tion, lies, vot­ing against the stop­gap mea­sures the gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es, which by default aids the crim­i­nal gangs.
The People’s National Party would rather burn the coun­try to the ground to rule over the ashes.
It would be total­ly laugh­able if it weren’t so seri­ous that some­one like Peter Bunting, who was (a)Minister of National Security in a past PNP administration,(b) was sound­ly reject­ed by the vot­ers in his con­stituen­cy, © as min­is­ter threw up his hands and declared only divine inter­ven­tion could help jamaica’s crime prob­lem, (d) is propped up in the upper cham­ber at Gordon House as a Senator,(e) now is open­ing his mouth about crime. Peter Bunting had no clue as Minister of National Security; he has no clue now.

Make no mis­take about it Holness’ Zones Of Special Operations(ZOSOs) and States Of Emergency dec­la­ra­tions are not cred­i­ble crime-fight­ing strate­gies; he can­not be that naïve that he does­n’t know that.…..or is he?
On the oth­er hand, no one should be fooled into think­ing that the deci­sion by the PNP dum­b­ass­es in the upper cham­ber to vote against a new ZOSO has any­thing to do with core beliefs, con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty, or that they have a bet­ter plan that they pre­sent­ed to Holness.
The People’s National Party is the Party that allowed crim­i­nals to take over our coun­try unchecked. The PNP is still the par­ty with zero inten­tion of curb­ing the vio­lence in our coun­try. The PNP ben­e­fits from the gangs and the vio­lence that dri­ves busi­ness­es out of Jamaica.
As for this writer, I do not expect any­thing from that par­ty except thiev­ery, cor­rup­tion, more sup­port for crim­i­nals, scan­dals, and pover­ty for Jamaicans. That par­ty would be dis­band­ed and barred from con­test­ing elec­tions in Jamaica for­ev­er if it was up to me.
Twenty-two and one-half years ²²¹⁄₂ of PNP rule for­ev­er changed and dam­aged our coun­try irreparably.
Now onto the gov­ern­ment and its failures.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness gen­uine­ly wants to see vio­lent crime go down; how­ev­er, arro­gance will not allow him to con­cede, “I total­ly fucked up when I lam­bast­ed the police.” “I fucked up when I did not lis­ten that ZOSOs & SOEs are not real crime-fight­ing strate­gies.” “I fucked up when I decid­ed to put a sol­dier in charge of polic­ing.” “I fucked up when I caused the nin­com­poops asso­ci­at­ed with the University of the West Indies to influ­ence me on how I approach crime-fight­ing with their bull­shit thesis.”
Now, look where all of that; hifa­lutin bull­shit has got­ten the country?
The prob­lem with the choice for Commissioner of Police is that Antony Anderson also gen­uine­ly wants to make a dif­fer­ence. Of course, he has been giv­en more resources, grace, lat­i­tude, and agency to bring about the gov­ern­men­t’s change. Still, the vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics tell a dif­fer­ent story.

All of the police offi­cers who knew the streets are long gone. We now have a force that is larg­er than two decades ago, bet­ter equipped (rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing);. However, they have to pur­chase their own uni­forms, afraid to do their jobs because the Holness admin­is­tra­tion and its cre­ation INDECOM will imprison them.
Police need over­sight, but I warned that there would be con­se­quences for the direc­tion Holness was taking.
The top-tiered rung of the lead­er­ship of the JCF, deputy com­mis­sion­ers, and assis­tant com­mis­sion­ers, sure­ly sound like intel­lec­tu­als when they speak. Still, they have no idea what actu­al crime-fight­ing is.
In a forum the JCF spon­sored recent­ly, I saw brava­do and balder­dash; not a sin­gle speak­er seemed to know a damn thing out­side of try­ing to sound impres­sive. Not one seemed to have a sin­gle strat­e­gy for root­ing out and elim­i­nat­ing the gangs, but they were heavy on par­rot­ing talk­ing points.
The sad real­i­ty is that the data point­ed in the oppo­site direc­tion as they par­rot­ed what the gov­ern­ment want­ed them to say.
The fact that the forum was nec­es­sary is evi­dence that the gov­ern­men­t’s strat­e­gy has failed.
So while the rank and file mem­bers were demon­strat­ing in front of the supreme court for monies earned, and oth­ers were bemoan­ing the con­di­tions they are being asked to work under in the ZOSO’s & SOE’s, their so-called lead­ers were in a pan­el dis­cus­sion par­rot­ing the admin­is­tra­tion’s talk­ing points like wound-up robot toys.

Let’s hear from the police com­man­ders them­selves.

Having watched the pan­el dis­cus­sion, do you under­stand why I have always said that these so-called lead­ers are incom­pe­tent lapdogs?
The offi­cers are in these zones of oper­a­tion with­out toi­lets for long hours, and here are their lead­ers telling the forum that they are well tak­en care of.
No one men­tioned that these offi­cers need to be paid the monies owed to them, which would boost morale and make them want to con­tin­ue serv­ing and sac­ri­fic­ing for the country.
Listening to them, one would walk away believ­ing that they have a crime under con­trol. Here ladies and gen­tle­men are why they do not qual­i­fy to lead the JCF. This is why they are not respect­ed. This is why crime is out of control.
ZOSO’s & SOEs move crim­i­nals from one area to anoth­er; it does [NOT] low­er vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics. I lis­tened to some ques­tions in that forum that sought to debunk points I have con­sis­tent­ly raised.
For exam­ple, the air in the bal­loon anal­o­gy; you squeeze the bal­loon, and air rush­es to anoth­er sec­tion of the balloon.
Commanders swore that it was­n’t so because the num­bers went down in the areas under occupation.….smile.
They failed to rec­og­nize that over­all crime went up in oth­er areas, borne out in the vio­lent crime statistics.
How can we achieve a seri­ous reduc­tion in vio­lent crimes with lead­ers of this caliber?
Our coun­try is in seri­ous trouble.

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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.

We were cred­i­bly informed that this inci­dent occurred yes­ter­day at a Red Hills Road gas sta­tion. The killers drove up, stopped in a way that cuts off the pos­si­ble escape of their tar­get vehi­cle, after which one assailant exit­ed the car and opened fire, report­ed­ly killing two people.
In the first video, we see the assailants tac­ti­cal­ly dri­ve up and stop their vehi­cle. One assailant then exit­ed the vehi­cle and sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed the vehi­cle’s occu­pants with cold, cal­cu­lat­ed precision.
Look at the place­ment of the rounds he fired into the vehi­cle strik­ing the victims.
These were not wild­ly fired rounds that just hap­pened to hit their tar­gets. They were well-placed, designed to strike cen­ter mass.

In the sec­ond video, you will see one vic­tim slumped on the ground as he attempt­ed to flee. This is the lev­el of brazen­ness with which these killers oper­ate with no appar­ent fear that they will be inter­cept­ed or ever held to account.

Heavily armed police continue to show up to situations that require patience & persuasion, itching for any sliver of legal justification to shed blood. The common thinking is that there is a cut-off time, and thereafter, they are legally justified to end the situation by extra-judicially murdering the person they were called to help.
How much more innocent blood will American police be allowed to shed because the twisted laws created to murder Black people with no consequences to the killers, are still being used today?

Following on in the series of Articles we have cho­sen to bring to your atten­tion, this sto­ry involves anoth­er liv­ing, breath­ing per­son just expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal dis­tress being gunned down by police.
Police offi­cers whose job is to save lives have become one of the great­est threats to the lives of Americans of col­or and those who are suf­fer­ing from men­tal distress.
In the fol­low­ing arti­cle, you will see that not only has a police com­man­der deemed it nec­es­sary to order an under­ling to end the life of the 19-year ‑old; quote, “If he does­n’t drop it, just take him. In con­junc­tion with the local District Attorney, they lied to the par­ents of the young man they mur­dered and then tam­pered with crit­i­cal evi­dence that deter­mines ‘jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.’
Police offi­cers are not sol­diers; they are not sup­posed to be ordered to kill any­one. Each police offi­cer bears full respon­si­bil­i­ty for their actions.

The idea that any police offi­cer at a scene can order that the life of some­one be end­ed because he is not com­ply­ing with police orders to drop a weapon should be fright­en­ing to everyone.
The idea that local pros­e­cu­tors would have access to video evi­dence of a crime against an indi­vid­ual, regard­less of who that indi­vid­ual is, and know that the evi­dence was tam­pered with and refuse to act even more frightening.
In the video, you will see that the account­ing of the police and the lat­er lies they told as they tried to jus­ti­fy killing an inno­cent was not sup­port­ed by the real facts as they evolved in the video.

The video below shows how cor­po­rate media reports these killings and gloss­es over these atroc­i­ties by accept­ing police ver­sions of those crimes.

Here also is NBC news report­ing on the incident.

Fatally shot by Pennsylvania State Police last year, a Chinese American teenag­er had his hands in the air when troop­ers opened fire. New videos reveal, prompt­ing calls for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion. The videos, record­ed by the State Police, show the final moments of Christian Hall’s life on the after­noon of Dec. 30, 2020.
Hall, 19, who had been diag­nosed with depres­sion, was stand­ing on the ledge of a high­way over­pass near Stroudsburg, in north­east­ern Pennsylvania, when troop­ers arrived. They tried to per­suade him to get down, but they backed away when they saw he had a gun — lat­er deter­mined to be a real­is­tic pel­let gun.
Video pre­vi­ous­ly released by the Monroe County dis­trict attor­ney shows Hall rais­ing his hands in the air, with the gun in one hand, after a troop­er fired bul­lets that struck the bridge.
But the final sec­onds before he was killed were blurred by author­i­ties.
https://​www​.nbc​news​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​c​h​r​i​s​t​i​a​n​-​h​a​l​l​-​p​e​n​n​s​y​l​v​a​n​i​a​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​-​v​i​d​e​o​-​r​c​n​a​5​626

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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.

When politi­cians play pol­i­tics with nation­al secu­ri­ty, these are the con­se­quences of their actions. If there is a prob­lem with a gov­ern­ment agency, get in there and cor­rect it. That is not what Andrew Holness did; he bad-mouthed the police and made them feel disrespected.
Even you are unaware of what can hap­pen as a leader, you are by default empow­er­ing the transna­tion­al crim­i­nals that find a haven in Jamaica.
Now no one is safe.….…..Not even the Prime Minister, who recent­ly point­ed to the coun­try’s dilem­ma as he ref­er­enced events in Haiti where the pres­i­dent of that neigh­bor­ing nation was mur­dered in his home.

TRAINEE-CONSTABLE MURDERED

A police stu­dent con­sta­ble was shot and killed in the Whithorn dis­trict of Westmoreland last night. Dead is stu­dent-con­sta­ble Duvaughn Brown, a trainee at the National police col­lege. Reports from the police are that at about 9:50 p.m, Brown went to a shop and was shot mul­ti­ple times. He died on the spot.
Constable Brown’s killing is in line with the esca­lat­ing mur­der rate in the Island Nation that has the nation once again find­ing itself as one of the mur­der cap­i­tals of the world.

The mur­der­ers in Jamaica know that they have the Government of the defense, so they are not wor­ried about consequences.
For the coun­try’s lead­er­ship that decid­ed to bad­mouth the police before being forced to face the con­se­quences, this is the con­se­quence of their actions.

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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.

Here is the dilem­ma for Jamaica, the peo­ple who inter­pret the Constitution have no imag­i­na­tion. Consequently, the 1962 Independence Constitution is inter­pret­ed as a sta­t­ic uncom­pro­mis­ing bul­wark rather than a liv­ing, breath­ing doc­u­ment rep­re­sent­ing our time.
Oh, and on that note, it is for those rea­sons that I con­tin­ue to believe and call for a new con­sti­tu­tion. One that is free from lan­guage that is remote­ly def­er­en­tial to our past colo­nial slavers.
The Government is to some degree con­strained as to )(a) what it can do legal­ly to bring the run­away mur­der rate down because of the court’s myopic inter­pre­ta­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion; (b) the law­less ele­ments and their apol­o­gists now believe that the law­less­ness in Jamaica is an enti­tle­ment and they will not allow that to be wrest­ed away from them. (Anything a any­thing”)
The sad real­i­ty is that there are not enough sane peo­ple in the nation of 2.8 mil­lion who real­ize that this is not a nor­mal prob­lem; there­fore, nor­mal enforce­ment pro­ce­dures will not suffice.
What pass­es for the judi­cia­ry is a crim­i­nal-friend­ly cabal of left­ist elit­ists that releas­es mur­der con­victs and oth­er vio­lent felons back onto the streets as soon as they are convicted.
Judi­cial bias must be exposed, and reforms to increase court­room hon­esty imple­ment­ed. To ensure a fair adju­di­ca­tion of each and every case, the judi­cia­ry has to be inde­pen­dent, impar­tial, and act with integri­ty. (Transparency. Org).
It is time for a new con­sti­tu­tion, new and effec­tive crime-sup­pres­sion laws. Jamaica’s judges are mak­ing a mock­ery of our sys­tem, cost­ing lives and expos­ing our coun­try to crim­i­nal overthrow.
It is time that they can no longer hide behind the cov­er of sen­tenc­ing guide­lines while scream­ing about the need for judi­cial inde­pen­dence. Independence comes with responsibilities.
One of the most press­ing dan­gers fac­ing our coun­try is that judges con­tin­ue to grant not just repeat mur­der accused bail (some hav­ing killed five sep­a­rate times after being giv­en bail and are yet to be tried on the first arrest); they release con­vict­ed mur­der­ers, tiny slaps on the wrist , then back onto the streets on the day they are con­vict­ed of murder.
What incen­tive does a con­vict­ed mur­der­er has for not going on a killing spree?

There is the feel­ing among some Jamaicans that our tiny coun­try should be a place where any­thing goes. They have no respect for the nation’s laws; the roads and high­ways are a case study in that lawlessness.
No one believes in join­ing a cue to be served; we all gath­er around shout­ing because the idea of an order­ly line is an alien con­cept to us.
We view obnox­ious coarse behav­ior as vir­tu­ous; def­er­en­tial, rev­er­en­tial & respect­ful behav­ior is scoffed at as weakness.
Badness is glo­ri­fied by what pass­es for media. For exam­ple, the radio, which once was a medi­um that attract­ed pro­fes­sion­als like Marie Garth, Don Toppin, Winson the Whip Williams, Allan Magnus, Tony Vertie, and oth­ers, is now pop­u­lat­ed with the likes of .….…Oh well, I won’t… you do the naming.
But there is sig­nif­i­cant data that proves that Jamaicans are not hea­thens who kill each oth­er at the drop of a hat. There are prob­a­bly twice as many Jamaicans liv­ing and thriv­ing in the dias­po­ra than Jamaicans liv­ing on the Island.
The com­mon thread that ties all Jamaicans over­seas togeth­er, allow­ing them to remain in their adopt­ed home­lands, is respect for the laws of those coun­tries. Those who have oth­er ideas.…… .…..receive a first-class one-way tick­et back.

This medi­um is loaded with infor­ma­tion going back over a decade, con­tribut­ing writ­ers and I have been warn­ing about what Jamaica would become if we failed to put guardrails in place to pro­tect inno­cent JAMAICANS from the mind­less socio­path­ic killers in our coun­try. Neither the PNP admin­is­tra­tions of the past nor the JLP took those warn­ings seriously.
Because, of course, those morons believed in their hearts that they knew bet­ter than the experts.…..actual crime fight­ers who did the hard work in the trench­es to keep the coun­try safe.
They ele­vat­ed antag­o­nists like Flo Oconnor, Carolyn Gomez, Mark Witter, Horace Levy, Terrence Williams, and oth­er dum­b­ass mouth­pieces who did not know their heads from their stu­pid ass­es. They demo­nized the valiant offi­cers who placed their bod­ies between the killers and ordi­nary society.
Finally, the street cops who knew the ropes knew how to deal with the threats pulled back. ( I warned about that too).
The idea of mod­ern­iza­tion became a ral­ly­ing cry. Police must now oper­ate as a cour­tesy corps, among some of the most blood-thirsty, mind­less killers, whose mantra is, ‘kill and col­lect, drink and for­get.’
Sure we rub­bished ZOSO’s and SOEs; we rub­bished the strate­gies employed because, as a for­mer street cop, I argued that as far as vio­lent crim­i­nals are con­cerned, the coun­try was actu­al­ly incen­tiviz­ing crim­i­nals. Added to the dilem­ma is the con­stant stream of depor­tees being dumped back onto the Island. Many of these peo­ple are sea­soned and hard­core crim­i­nals who spent decades hon­ing their craft against sophis­ti­cat­ed enforce­ment infra­struc­tures in devel­oped nations.
(We warned about that too, these pages are chock-full of those warn­ings), yet here we are. So while the peo­ple liv­ing in their gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties pat them­selves on the back believ­ing they are safe, may I remind them that the gang­sters have mon­ey too, they live right beside you in those gat­ed communities.
The sup­posed head of the Klansman gang, Andre “Blackman” Bryan, did not live in a Spanish Town hov­el; he lived uptown Saint Andrew. ( Money talks bull­shit walks). Uptown is now a haven for gang­sters and white-col­lar crim­i­nals alike.

WARNED ABOUT WHAT CONSTITUTES A FAILED STATE.

(1) Failed state, a state that is unable to per­form the two fun­da­men­tal func­tions of the sov­er­eign nation-state in the mod­ern world-sys­tem: it can­not project author­i­ty over its ter­ri­to­ry and peo­ples, and it can­not pro­tect its nation­al bound­aries. The gov­ern­ing capac­i­ty of a failed state is atten­u­at­ed. It can­not ful­fill the admin­is­tra­tive and orga­ni­za­tion­al tasks required to con­trol peo­ple and resources and pro­vide min­i­mal pub­lic ser­vices. Its cit­i­zens no longer believe that their gov­ern­ment is legit­i­mate, and the state becomes ille­git­i­mate in the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty’s eyes. A failed state is com­posed of fee­ble and flawed insti­tu­tions. Often, the exec­u­tive bare­ly func­tions, while the leg­is­la­ture, judi­cia­ry, bureau­cra­cy, and armed forces have lost their capac­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al inde­pen­dence. Source- (Britannica).
(2) Nation-states fail because they are con­vulsed by inter­nal vio­lence and can no longer deliv­er pos­i­tive polit­i­cal goods to their inhab­i­tants. Governments lose legit­i­ma­cy, and the very nature of the par­tic­u­lar nation-state itself becomes ille­git­i­mate in the eyes and hearts of a grow­ing plu­ral­i­ty of its cit­i­zens. Source- (Brookings Institution).
(3) A failed state is a gov­ern­ment that has become inca­pable of pro­vid­ing a sov­er­eign nation’s basic func­tions and respon­si­bil­i­ties, such as mil­i­tary defense, law enforce­ment, jus­tice, edu­ca­tion, or eco­nom­ic sta­bility. Fail states’ com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics include ongo­ing civ­il vio­lence, cor­rup­tion, crime, pover­ty, illit­er­a­cy, and crum­bling infra­struc­ture. Source- (Thoughtco​.com).
Typical fac­tors con­tribut­ing to a state’s fail­ure include insur­gency, high crime rates, inef­fec­tive and impen­e­tra­ble bureau­cra­cy, cor­rup­tion, judi­cial incompetence.

Some of the broad­er con­se­quences to the aver­age cit­i­zens in failed states are pret­ty steep; revo­ca­tion of visas, no grant­i­ng of new ones, the lim­it­ed abil­i­ty of cit­i­zens to trav­el to oth­er coun­tries because those coun­tries that [mat­ter] are unable to trust the gov­ern­ment bod­ies that they rely on to attest to the char­ac­ter of the cit­i­zens, brain drain, peo­ple try­ing to leave in droves, etc.
In sum­ma­ry titled “Bad Neighbors: Failed States and Their Consequences,” gsdrc​.org pro­claimed quote; ” When states fail, neigh­bor­ing states are also like­ly to expe­ri­ence high­er lev­els of polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, unrest, civ­il war, and inter­state con­flict. State fail­ure is not con­ta­gious, but some of its most neg­a­tive con­se­quences dif­fuse to oth­er states. (gsdrc​.org)
For exam­ple, the inabil­i­ty of Haiti to form and main­tain a sta­ble and com­pe­tent gov­ern­ment has result­ed in a flood of Soviet-era weapons into the hands of Jamaican crim­i­nals through our porous borders.
That is not to say that all of the guns com­ing into our coun­try are being sourced through Haiti; much of it is still get­ting in from the United States.
Partly because (a) American author­i­ties have not attached the same vig­or and enthu­si­asm to pre­vent­ing its guns from get­ting out and into the hands of peo­ple who should not have them, as it does in try­ing to con­trol the drugs get­ting into the nos­trils and veins of its insa­tiable addicts. (b) due to the incom­pe­tence of the Islands cus­toms offi­cials who are more con­cerned with extort­ing mon­ey from peo­ple with goods to clear at the wharves than they are at pro­tect­ing our coun­try from con­tra­band com­ing in.
The peo­ple will­ing to pay can still bring in guns and oth­er con­tra­band because of cor­rupt cus­toms officials.

I had high hopes for Jamaica after the PNP was defeat­ed at the polls. I hoped against hope that the new admin­is­tra­tion would have had a greater under­stand­ing of what it takes to bring the vio­lent mur­der sta­tis­tics down.
Unfortunately, I was quick­ly dis­il­lu­sioned by the rhetoric of Andrew Holness. I real­ized ear­ly on that this was not going to be a change gov­ern­ment, just the lat­est iter­a­tion of the sta­tus quo.
And so, no.…… Jamaicans can­not sleep with their win­dows and doors open; the coun­try faces an exis­ten­tial cri­sis from the hun­dreds of gangs scat­tered through­out the coun­try. The type bot­tom feed­ers like Horace Levy renamed cor­ner crews.
No, ZOSOs and SOEs will not change the par­a­digm; those restric­tions are now time-worn. They will only serve to frus­trate and antag­o­nize an already edgy pop­u­la­tion that has already been asked to stay inside from COVID-19.
But by all means, if that is all that’s left, then it is what it is; this admin­is­tra­tion, too, is out of ideas.

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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.

Real leaders make tough decisions not spit on their fingers and turn to the wind. The burgeoning killing spree is out of control and the nation’s leaders in power refuse to take the steps necessary to end it.
On the other hand, the opposition party seeks to make hay of the situation rather than proposing workable solutions.
At this rate soon there will be no one left.

If you believe that the role of a Police Commissioner is pure­ly admin­is­tra­tive and that the most senior exec­u­tive posi­tion in a police agency can be occu­pied by some­one who has a cou­ple of degrees in a dis­ci­pline unre­lat­ed to polic­ing; then I sug­gest the next time you need surgery ask the jan­i­tor to do it. (He may even do it on the cheap for you).
Conventional wis­dom in Jamaica is that a per­son who has a degree in any sub­ject auto­mat­i­cal­ly makes them an expert in all things.
It’s a real­ly regres­sive think­ing process, but that helps the ego of the peo­ple who labor to earn their degrees; they now get to feel good about them­selves at the expense of the peo­ple who chose not to go that route.
Even as I con­tin­ue to advo­cate for high­er education,-education has pre­cious lit­tle to do with earn­ing degrees.
This brings me to my point; I am still sur­prised at the num­ber of police offi­cers and for­mer mem­bers who actu­al­ly believe that the present Commissioner of Police is right for the JFC.

Because real talk, the man was the head of the Jamaica Defense Force (JDF),so he must know how to be a bet­ter com­mis­sion­er than the career offi­cers, right?
(In fact, that exper­i­ment of for­mer heads of the JCF tak­ing over the force has real­ly worked out well for the country).
Hardly Lewin. Trevor Mac Millan and now Antony Anderson, the awe­some­ness of that exper­i­ment has been astound­ing. (sar­casm)
Maybe the next time there is a fire, I will call the teach­ers to put it out. A lack of respect for all dis­ci­plines, and a healthy under­stand­ing that every cat­e­go­ry of work­ers is as impor­tant as the oth­er, has been crit­i­cal in decid­ing what the coun­try is going through with vio­lent crime.
Too many knuck­le­heads and too many talk­ing heads had too much time on their hands, so a dai­ly dose of anti-police invec­tive both on radio and tele­vi­sion for decades cre­at­ed gen­er­a­tions that have zero respect for the rule of law.

That aside, senior lead­ers of the JCF have not com­port­ed them­selves in a way that inspires and engen­ders trust in their leadership.
The cor­rupt prac­tices of nepo­tism, polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, news car­ry­ing, etc., have forced men to become boys. They jock­ey for advance­ment not on mer­it, but by cur­ry­ing favor with whomev­er they feel can best serve their self­ish interest.
This facil­i­tates a break­down in morale and even worse results in a lack of respect from their juniors.
This has giv­en cov­er to polit­i­cal admin­is­tra­tions from both polit­i­cal par­ties to side­line senior lead­ers who would nor­mal­ly be in con­tention for the top spot.
And seri­ous­ly, who amongst us could rea­son­ably make a case for any of the top lead­er­ship of the force to come up with strate­gies that would begin to trend vio­lent crime downwards.
So even as we rub­bish bring­ing in for­mer heads of the mil­i­tary, there is no argu­ment to be made for some­one from the present crop of Deputy Commissioners to become com­mis­sion­er of police.
The present cri­sis neces­si­tat­ed the Prime Minister declar­ing that it is out of the scope of the JCF to han­dle and that the crime sit­u­a­tion is now a pandemic.
Both state­ments are indeed true, three of the force’s offi­cers can­not effect the arrest of a sin­gle sub­ject, so there is that.
Even as Commissioner Anderson laments the high inci­dences of vio­lent crime, quote,“We have a mur­der rate that per­sists at a lev­el of 3 times our region­al aver­age and 8 times the glob­al aver­age.” ‑This writer is at least glad that he is start­ing to real­ize some­thing that I have been bang­ing the drums about for well over a decade in this medium.
Unfortunately, a com­mis­sion­er of police who came up through the ranks, with the coun­try fac­ing this pan­dem­ic of mur­ders, would have been long scape­goat­ed and fired.
So as we con­tin­ue to ‘give Tony a chance’ (more sar­casm), we are also painful­ly aware that he has got­ten expo­nen­tial­ly more grace than any of his pre­de­ces­sors who came up through the ranks. It is a bit­ter pill to swal­low that some­one com­ing from zero police knowl­edge, can poten­tial­ly be bet­ter at polic­ing tac­tics, train­ing, per­son­nel, lead­er­ship, strate­giz­ing, security,etc than career officers.

Having out­lined the fore­gone, it is impor­tant to assert that at this point, it does­n’t mat­ter who the com­mis­sion­er of police is. With the lax laws in our coun­try being what they are, and the judges aid­ing and abet­ting the shot­tas, this coun­try is in for a bumpy ride.
(‘Many more will have to suf­fer, many more will have to die) Hon Robert Nesta Marley.
This writer has con­sis­tent­ly called for stricter laws. Better train­ing for our police. Longer sen­tences for crim­i­nals who com­mit vio­lent crimes. Stricter gun laws send a clear mes­sage that gun crimes will not be tol­er­at­ed. Mandatory min­i­mum sen­tences remove from the judge’s con­trol the length of prison time a vio­lent offend­er receives. The Jamaican judi­cia­ry is a large part of the exis­ten­tial threat the nation faces.
Truth in sen­tenc­ing, ten years must mean ten years locked away, unless offend­ers take mea­sur­able steps that demon­strate to a com­pe­tent body that they are reformed.
It is cliché to argue that doing the same things brings the same results, but it is also true. Decisions that bring mea­sur­able pos­i­tive results require tough choic­es that are not always pop­u­lar. Since politi­cians depend on pop­ulism to get elect­ed, it is nat­ur­al that they shun tough deci­sions. This is not unique to Jamaica, but Jamaica has a par­tic­u­lar strain of law­less­ness that comes from its lead­ers’ cow­ardice and silent acquiescence.
Jamaica’s vio­lent crime prob­lem will remain until a nation­al awak­en­ing rec­og­nizes that this is not in the nation’s inter­est. Until then, the police and mil­i­tary will con­tin­ue to pour water into the bas­ket and won­der why the water lev­el nev­er rises?

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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.