As American police con­tin­ue their dai­ly assault against cit­i­zens of col­or, we ask the ques­tions that the cor­po­rate media will not ask. Literally, every day more and more infor­ma­tion comes to light of police atroc­i­ties against cit­i­zens of the United States, cit­i­zens of col­or. If com­mit­ted by secu­ri­ty forces in oth­er coun­tries, some of these atroc­i­ties would receive rebuke, receive sanc­tions by the United Nations.
Why are these dai­ly human rights abus­es allowed to con­tin­ue with­out any atten­tion from Human Rights Agencies? Where is Amnesty International in all of this, or is it safe to say that Amnesty International and oth­er Fraudulent Agencies that pur­port to care about human rights only care when the offend­ers are Black or Brown?

In the land of the free, judges dish out no-knock war­rants to police on the flim­sy argu­ments (by cops) that if they announce them­selves, they will be in dan­ger. Imagine heav­i­ly armed cops dressed like pow­er rangers with semi-auto­mat­ic weapons and weighed down with ammu­ni­tion, afraid for their safe­ty when they are break­ing down cit­i­zens’ homes, destroy­ing every­thing in sight as they sup­pos­ed­ly search for drugs in a hate-filled frenzy.
The body cam­eras they are sup­posed to acti­vate and wear when inter­act­ing with the pub­lic — they get to decide whether or not they turn them on dur­ing those encounters.
• They decide when to mute the audio.
• They decide what to redact from the record­ings (actions that are the same as tam­per­ing with evi­dence, yet there are absolute­ly no con­se­quences when they erase evi­dence need­ed in court proceedings.
• They get to decide whether record­ings are hand­ed over to the fam­i­lies of their vic­tims, usu­al­ly pro­duced to fam­i­lies after intense court bat­tles even though police are pub­lic employ­ees paid by the tax­pay­ers. The equip­ment is also the prop­er­ty of the tax­pay­ing public.
• Even though there is free­dom of Information laws in the United States, police tend to flout the laws with impuni­ty, basi­cal­ly oper­at­ing out­side the laws that gov­ern every­one else.
• The abil­i­ty of police to flout the laws, com­mit per­jury even in court with­out con­se­quence makes it lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble for peo­ple of col­or to receive any jus­tice in the courts, even with­out the racial­ly biased pros­e­cu­tors and judges that pop­u­late the American Criminal Justice System.
WATCH THIS VIDEO

https://​www​.face​book​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​8​6​9​7​6​7​8​0​0​1​5​1​333

On what author­i­ty, you ask, can police jus­ti­fy the egre­gious instances of civ­il rights abuse with­out consequence?
In 2016 the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 6 – 3 deci­sion that in some cas­es, evi­dence of a crime can be used against a defen­dant even if police obtained it ille­gal­ly. According to the Associated Press, the 5 – 3 deci­sion drew “heat­ed dis­sents from lib­er­al jus­tices who warned that the out­come would encour­age police to vio­late people’s rights.” (ya think?) The rul­ing comes in a case in which South Salt Lake City Police Department nar­cotics detec­tive Douglas Fackrell stopped defen­dant Joseph Edward Strieff in 2006. Fackrell sus­pect­ed Strieff of being involved in drug activ­i­ty but didn’t actu­al­ly have “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion,” required by the U.S. Constitution for inves­ti­ga­to­ry stops.
During ques­tion­ing, Fackrell “relayed Strieff’s per­son­al infor­ma­tion to a police dis­patch­er — a rou­tine prac­tice dur­ing police stops — and learned Strieff had an out­stand­ing traf­fic war­rant.” The detec­tive then arrest­ed Strieff based on that war­rant and found a small amount of metham­phet­a­mine on his per­son; Strieff was charged and con­vict­ed for unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion. On Fackrell, U.S. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her pop­u­lar dis­sent, “In his search for law­break­ing, the offi­cer in this case him­self broke the law.”

Since then, we have seen that police have tak­en these Supreme Court Actions to mean that they have unfet­tered action to do as they please, includ­ing to take life with impunity.
This writer con­tin­ue to main­tain that the Supreme Court con­tin­ues to be a grave threat to the rights and free­doms of the aver­age American.
Coupled with the doc­trine of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty cre­at­ed by the court, American police offi­cers have a license to abuse the rights of cit­i­zens at will with lit­tle to no fear that they will be held accountable.
We now see police con­duct traf­fic stops by using lies that dri­vers failed to indi­cate before a turn, that the dri­ver hit a yel­low line, was dri­ving unsteady, or any num­ber of lies they dream up to jus­ti­fy their inten­tions to search a cit­i­zen’s auto­mo­bile and run their licens­es for warrants.
We have seen police ille­gal­ly stop motorists and spend an inor­di­nate amount of time hold­ing the motorist hostage as they fish for some­thing to charge the motorist with. These are [not]the actions of a free society.
These actions direct­ly con­tra­vene the Constitutional fourth amend­ment guar­an­tee a cit­i­zen has against ille­gal gov­ern­ment intru­sion into their per­son­al spaces.

In her moral and com­mon­sense dis­sent to the court’s 2016 rul­ing, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said:
The Court today holds that the dis­cov­ery of a war­rant for an unpaid park­ing tick­et will for­give a police officer’s vio­la­tion of your Fourth Amendment rights. Do not be soothed by the opinion’s tech­ni­cal lan­guage: This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and check it for out­stand­ing traf­fic war­rants — even if you are doing noth­ing wrong. If the offi­cer dis­cov­ers a war­rant for a fine you for­got to pay, courts will now excuse his ille­gal stop and will admit into evi­dence any­thing he hap­pens to find by search­ing you after arrest­ing you on the war­rant. Because the Fourth Amendment should pro­hib­it, not per­mit, such mis­con­duct, I dis­sent. I do not doubt that most offi­cers act in “good faith” and do not set out to break the law. That does not mean these stops are “iso­lat­ed instance[s] of neg­li­gence,” how­ev­er. Many are the prod­uct of insti­tu­tion­al­ized train­ing pro­ce­dures. The New York City Police Department long trained offi­cers to, in the words of a District Judge, “stop and ques­tion first, devel­op rea­son­able sus­pi­cion later.”
Most Americans of col­or and even poor­er whites are now liv­ing that dystopi­an night­mare in their every­day lives.
Scoop​.com argues, The United States and its allies do not call the U.S. a “police state,” but, if this phrase has any mean­ing, then it clear­ly does apply, and a strong case can be pre­sent­ed that the U.S. might even be more of a police state than is any oth­er nation on Earth.
In January of 2021, Scoop​.com​.nz reported

Since 2015, police offi­cers have fatal­ly shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women nation­wide, an NPR inves­ti­ga­tion has found. NPR reviewed police, court, and oth­er records to exam­ine the details of the cas­es. At least 75% of the offi­cers were white. The lat­est one hap­pened this month in Killeen, Texas, when Patrick Warren Sr., 52, was fatal­ly shot by an offi­cer respond­ing to a men­tal health call.

For at least 15 of the offi­cers …, the shoot­ings were not their first — or their last, NPR found. They have been involved in two — some­times three or more — shoot­ings, often dead­ly and with­out consequences.

In fact:

Of the offi­cers involved in the dead­ly shoot­ings of unarmed Black peo­ple over the last five years, 13 were charged with mur­der. Two were found guilty.NPR’s report alleged a num­ber of rea­sons for that “with­out con­se­quences,” but ignored the most impor­tant one: In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court cre­at­ed what is, in prac­ti­cal real­i­ty, a new law, almost a total ban against con­vict­ing a police offi­cer of mur­der if he kills some­one while on the job. The ‘Justices’ called this judge-made law (sub­se­quent­ly reaf­firmed by the Supreme Court many times, the lat­est being in 2020) “qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty,” but it is very close to being total immu­ni­ty, and thus vir­tu­al­ly all of the many abus­es that NPR report­ed there can be traced back to it. Being a main­stream ‘news’-medium, the deep­er lev­el of real­i­ty is cen­sored out by the edi­tors and managers.(scoop.com.nz wrote.)

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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. 

There is some­thing to be said about the para­bles old­er black peo­ple dish out to their, chil­dren, waste not, want not, what goes around comes around, spit at the sky it falls in your face.….…..a hit hog hollers.
Over the years, two of the loud­est and most dis­grace­ful­ly dis­re­spect­ful peo­ple on New York City pub­lic pay­roll have been Patrick Lynch, who heads the NYPD patrol­men’s union, and Ed Mullins, the sergeant who heads the union for oth­ers in his rank.
Make no mis­take about it, the vast major­i­ty of the close to approx­i­mate­ly 36,000 mem­bers of that orga­ni­za­tion, regard­less of col­or, are crude, coarse, and dis­re­spect­ful to mem­bers of the pub­lic who pay their salaries and benefits.
That is not to say that every­one who enters the depart­ment does so intend­ing to do harm; they just become accli­ma­tized to the cul­ture of dis­dain that the NYPD has had for the aver­age New York City res­i­dent who is not wealthy and white.

Both Patrick Lynch and Ed Mullins rep­re­sent the worst of the traits that have plagued the NYPD for decades.
Consequently, mem­bers are social­ized into under­stand­ing that no mat­ter how bad­ly they behave or treat the pub­lic, they will be defend­ed by the two insub­or­di­nate racists who head the two unions.
Neither Mullins nor Lynch has demon­strat­ed any regard or respect for their civil­ian boss­es, the Mayors elect­ed by the cit­i­zens of New York City, par­tic­u­lar­ly Democratic Mayors in the heav­i­ly Democratic city.
On the con­trary, the two union heads have been extreme­ly def­er­en­tial and respect­ful of Rudolph Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg, Republicans who have basi­cal­ly giv­en them carte blanch to abuse and vio­late rights as they see fit.
No one should be sur­prised then that the FBI Had cause to raid the office of Ed Mullins as well as his home on Long Island.
Ain’t it a bitch how these clowns go into New York City and abuse the black and brown cit­i­zens of the city then go home to Long Island where they live out their racist tendencies.
Why are they allowed to live out­side the city, draw a salary and huge ben­e­fits from city res­i­dents whom they despise and hate, dis­re­spect city lead­ers, and get away with it?

HERE IS THE STORY

The con­tro­ver­sial chief of a New York Police Department (NYPD) sergeants’s union has resigned after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raid­ed his home and the union head­quar­ters. Ed Mullins, the pres­i­dent of the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA), resigned on the request of the union’s board, accord­ing to a mes­sage it sent to its mem­bers. FBI spokesper­son Martin Feely told the Associated Press (AP) that agents were “car­ry­ing out a law enforce­ment action in con­nec­tion with an ongo­ing investigation.”Agents were seen com­ing out of Mullins’s home on Long Island and the SBA’s head­quar­ters in Manhattan, where they were seen clutch­ing big box­es and black garbage bags. “The nature and scope of this crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion has yet to be deter­mined,” the SBA mes­sage said. “However, it is clear that Mullins is appar­ent­ly the tar­get of the fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion. We have no rea­son to believe that any oth­er mem­ber of the SBA is involved or tar­get­ed in this matter.”

The union also said Mr Mullins was “enti­tled to the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence” and asked its mem­bers to “with­hold judg­ment until all the facts have been estab­lished.” The union’s day-to-day func­tion­ing and the “impor­tant busi­ness of the SBA” could not be dis­tract­ed by the “exis­tence of this inves­ti­ga­tion,” it said. Messages seek­ing com­ment over the raids were left with Mr Mullins by the AP but calls to him went to his voice­mail. Mr Mullins has court­ed con­tro­ver­sy many times in the past, often the result of his social media use. The for­mer union chief had last year attacked NYPD lead­er­ship and the city’s Mayor Bill de Blasio, a fre­quent source of his anger. He had come under fire and was slapped with charges after post­ing the arrest details of Chiara de Blasio, the mayor’s daugh­ter, over protests that had erupt­ed in the city after the death of George Floyd. Mr Mullins had also attacked Mr De Blasio for tak­ing an anti-police stance.

“Since first tak­ing office in 2014, De Blasio’s incen­di­ary anti-police rhetoric has already result­ed in three police offi­cers being exe­cut­ed while sit­ting in police vehi­cles, Molotov cock­tails being lobbed at offi­cers and into police vehi­cles, armed assaults on police facil­i­ties, cops being pelt­ed with debris, and whole­sale dam­age to police and pub­lic prop­er­ty,” he wrote in an arti­cle for the Daily Mail ear­li­er this year. Mr De Blasio shot back at Mr Mullins after the FBI raids, say­ing he had “dis­hon­ored his uni­form, his city and his union more times than I can count.” “It was just a mat­ter of time before his end­less hatred would catch up with him. That day has come.”

In anoth­er instance, Mr Mullins had tweet­ed, using the SBA’s offi­cial Twitter account, call­ing the city’s health com­mis­sion­er a “b***h” who had “blood on her hands” after she sparred with the NYPD over half a mil­lion hos­pi­tal-grade face masks. He had also report­ed­ly called Congressman Ritchie Torres a “first-class w***e.” Along with the FBI raids, Mr Mullins is also fac­ing an NYPD enquiry for his posts on social media and vio­la­tion of NYPD con­duct rules. He has open­ly sup­port­ed for­mer US pres­i­dent Donald Trump, who he met at the White House in 2020. He also appeared in a TV inter­view with a QAnon cof­fee mug in the back­ground. Mr Mullins, a police offi­cer since 1982, rose to the rank of sergeant in 1993 and was elect­ed pres­i­dent of the SBA in 2002.(https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​n​y​p​d​-​u​n​i​o​n​-​c​h​i​e​f​-​r​e​s​i​g​n​s​-​f​o​l​l​o​w​i​n​g​-​1​1​1​6​5​4​0​4​2​.​h​tml)

Full dis­clo­sure, I have not done the research to deter­mine whether or not the tri­al of 33 indi­vid­u­als under the Criminal Justice Suppression of Criminal Organisations) (Amendment) Act is the largest sin­gle tri­al in Jamaica’s history.
However, I believe that it is the largest under this rel­a­tive­ly new Act, and though it came late, I com­mend the author­i­ties for final­ly mov­ing to pass this legislation.
Frankly, this leg­is­la­tion should have been passed more than three decades ago. We will nev­er know how many lives could have been saved had the author­i­ties moved to end the car­nage by pass­ing laws like this that make it clear that vio­lent acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty will not be tolerated.
Even so, the law does not go near­ly far enough, par­tic­u­lar­ly when con­sid­ered against Jamaica’s unique sit­u­a­tion of judges that sup­plant the will of the peo­ple and the law with their own views and polit­i­cal feel­ings as to how vio­lent crim­i­nals are to be treated.

Literally every day, we see mur­der­ers grant­ed bail, have their sen­tences shaved by the court of appeals, or over­turned alto­geth­er by these judges who no one elect­ed, and who strong­ly believe they should not be questioned.
As some­one who stri­dent­ly lob­bied for this leg­is­la­tion, I believe it fell well short of what it should have been as it relates to manda­to­ry ‑min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes. It also does not go far enough on truth in sentencing.
The law adopts some of the US Rico statute’s tenets, yet leg­is­la­tors failed to add the nec­es­sary teeth that would demon­strate once and for all that the days of wan­ton mur­ders are indeed over in Jamaica.
Why they failed to add enough teeth to the leg­is­la­tion is any­body’s guess, but this writer will delve deep­er into the ‘why’ at a lat­er date.

The tri­al this time includes these defen­dants; Andre Bryan, Kevaughn Green, Tomrick Taylor, Damaine Elliston, Kalifa Williams, Daniel McKenzie, Michael Whitely, Pete Miller, Dylon McClean, Dwight Hall, Carl Beech, Lamar Simpson, Donavon Richards, Tareek James, Stephanie Christie, Fabian Johnson, Jahzeel Blake, Roel Taylor, Rushane Williams, Kemar Harrison, Joseph McDermott, Jermaine Robinson, Rivaldo Hylton, Jason Brown, Andre Golding, Marco Miller, Chevoy Evans, Brian Morris, Andre Smith, Dwayne Salmon, Ricardo Thomas, Ted Prince, and Owen Ormsby.
“Kudos” to the mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces that put the work in on behalf of their coun­try; it seems to any care­ful watch­er that despite its inabil­i­ty to shed itself of dirty cops and incom­pe­tence, the JCF and affil­i­ate agen­cies now han­dling crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions are the only agen­cies stand­ing between anar­chy and the law-abid­ing Jamaicans.
One of the things that caught my eyes, which comes as no sur­prise, is the forty (40) crim­i­nal defense lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the 33 accused.

We ful­ly appre­ci­ate the need for all defen­dants accused of crimes to have an appro­pri­ate defense. It is that vig­or­ous defense that guar­an­tees that Government does not steam­roll ordi­nary cit­i­zens who may be innocent.
But some­times, it bears not­ing that the defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion lev­el and the type of defense lawyers mount on behalf of oth­er­wise seem­ing­ly poor, une­d­u­cat­ed defen­dants are cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence of the defen­dan­t’s guilt.
Jamaica has cho­sen to build a cot­tage indus­try around vio­lent crim­i­nal­i­ty rather than cre­ate mea­sures to end it.
From the pro­lif­er­a­tion of funer­al par­lors, bands, and of course, the oppor­tu­ni­ty for rapa­cious lawyers to fight the sys­tem on behalf of crim­i­nals, Jamaica is ripe to con­tin­ue being a par­adise for the pro­lif­er­a­tion and growth of crim­i­nal gangs.
We watch with the rest of the world to see what this court does with this case, even as there is a con­tin­ued cry that judges in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem are destroy­ing the rule of law by inject­ing their own lib­er­al bias­es into their adjudications.
It is a dis­grace and it must end now.

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

The wit­ness­es’ chill­ing tes­ti­mo­ny in the Klansman gang tri­al bore out some impor­tant details that Byran Sykes will sure­ly miss.
According to one wit­ness who tes­ti­fied remote­ly, Klansman gang boss Andre “Blackman,” Bryan ordered the killing of a man known as [Outlaw]. The indi­vid­ual killed in Lauriston had been marked for death by Bryan. According to the self- con­fessed gang­ster turned state wit­ness, Bryan had asked him for a ride to the scene in a sep­a­rate vehi­cle from the shooter’s because the reput­ed Klansman leader “want­ed to see Outlaw before he was killed.”
He parked on an oppo­site side of the road so Bryan could have his wish, and they watched the soon-to-be vic­tim for about five min­utes. After pulling away from the area where shots were heard fired, Bryan start­ed laughing.
A phone call moments lat­er informed them that “Outlaw” had been killed, was met with more laugh­ter from Bryan, accord­ing to the witness.

Note; the fore­gone evi­dence was giv­en to the court on September 22^nd.
It is impor­tant to fol­low this sequence so that a bet­ter pic­ture may emerge as to the pathol­o­gy of these socio­path­ic killers oper­at­ing in our coun­try, even as the secu­ri­ty forces and the gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the courts, respond to them with incom­pe­tence and deference.
It is impor­tant to note that accord­ing to the wit­ness’s tes­ti­mo­ny, Andre Blackman Bryan burst into laugh­ter after watch­ing his intend­ed vic­tim and hear­ing the gun­shots. Like a beast of prey, he stalked his vic­tim, know­ing that he had ordered him killed and that the vic­tim’s life would be snuffed out in an instant based on his orders.
He want­ed the added sat­is­fac­tion of watch­ing him alive, know­ing that his words, his com­mand would end Outlaw’s life.
I warned in an arti­cle days ago, this very court will do every­thing in its pow­er to return these mur­der­ers to the streets to con­tin­ue their reign of ter­ror, giv­en the slight­est lie and non-issue raised by the CRIMINAL defense team.

Now let us look at some impor­tant fac­tors in the evi­dence giv­en to the court the next day, September 23^rd. I under­stand that the court has no oblig­a­tion to look for issues of sociopa­thy. Certainly, I would not expect a court in Jamaica to care enough about vic­tims of these sociopaths to note the degree of degen­er­a­cy in them, even as it is bla­tant­ly clear to every­one else.
The wit­ness, who has claimed to be the gang’s banker and Bryan’s per­son­al dri­ver, among oth­er things, made this asser­tion while detail­ing for the court the mur­der of a for­mer depor­tee on Jones Avenue in Spanish Town in 2019.
Asked by the pros­e­cu­tor lead­ing the evi­dence whether Bryan — who had report­ed­ly told his hench­men that, “Mi want [unnuh] to go kill di Rasta inna di lane,” — had offered any expla­na­tions as to why the man was to die and if he had par­tic­i­pat­ed in those dis­cus­sions, the wit­ness said, “I was tak­ing orders, Sir.”

As the wit­ness gave evi­dence and detailed the grue­some nature of the killings, Andre “Blackman” Bryan burst into uncon­trolled laugh­ter to the point he was seen wip­ing away tears from his eyes,-tears that flowed from laughter.
The court will not be called upon to deter­mine the psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion of Andre “Blackman,” Bryan. Neither will his sociopa­thy help to deter­mine inno­cence or guilt.
What is clear is that this defen­dant is a sociopath. He has a blood-lust and is total­ly indif­fer­ent to the sanc­ti­ty of human life, regard­less of who the per­son is. (Full dis­clo­sure, I am not a med­ical doc­tor, psy­chi­a­trist, or health professional…)

The chances that a crim­i­nal defen­dant will be found guilty in a Jamaican court are pret­ty low. The courts exact an undue and inor­di­nate bur­den on the pros­e­cu­tion, which is any­thing but “beyond a rea­son­able doubt,” which ought to be the standard.
Based on the court’s his­to­ry, that stan­dard has been cir­cum­vent­ed for the steep­er, ” with­out any doubt.” .….And that’s before the appeals process.
Given the remote chance of a con­vic­tion, the appel­late court is ready and will­ing to aid con­vict­ed mur­der­ers by let­ting them loose on a con­coct­ed tech­ni­cal­i­ty or shave some time off the light sen­tence hand­ed down by the tri­al court.
The derange­ment being exhib­it­ed by this defen­dant came about because this nation decid­ed to hug up don cul­ture. It came about because each lit­tle shit­head can vie to see who can be more ruth­less in tak­ing life-who can hand out the ill-got­ten spoils from the unchecked acts of extor­tion, mur­der for hire, and the gen­er­al macabre killings.
They laugh because they are cel­e­brat­ed rather than reviled. They laugh because they have zero respect for the process, not the police nor the pros­e­cu­tors. After all, they know that the tri­ers of facts are ready and wait­ing to give them a pass for their sociopathy.

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

It is still a mys­tery to me why it takes so long for police offi­cers to be arrest­ed when they com­mit crimes for every­one to see?
When ordi­nary mem­bers of the pub­lic com­mit crimes they’re imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed. When Black and Bron Americans com­mit the most minor infrac­tion they are sum­mar­i­ly gunned down at the drop of a hat.
So, I am yet to under­stand the long delays and tor­tured process that goes into arrest­ing those who have a high­er bur­den [not] to break the laws?
We have all seen the videos now mur­der in plain sight; yet to get jus­tice when police are involved is like find­ing water in the Saraha. It is as dif­fi­cult as putting a camel through a needle’s eye.
Why is that? (mb)

WATCH THE VIDEO AND PROSECUTOR’S STATEMENTS BELOW.

STORY

In a statement Thursday, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said that after receiving medical records and after further investigation into the July 26 incident at the Royal Palm Hotel, the misdemeanor charges that had been previously filed have been upgraded.

In a state­ment Thursday, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said that after receiv­ing med­ical records and after fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion into the July 26 inci­dent at the Royal Palm Hotel, the mis­de­meanor charges that had been pre­vi­ous­ly filed have been upgraded.“All aspects of this July 26^th police inci­dent are tak­en very seri­ous­ly by my pros­e­cu­tors,” Fernandez Rundle’s state­ment read. “The inves­ti­ga­tion has been and will be as thor­ough and com­plete as pos­si­ble since our entire com­mu­ni­ty has been shocked and offend­ed by what we have seen

Sgt. Jose Perez and Officer Kevin Perez now face felony bat­tery charges, while Officer Steven Serrano faces an offi­cial mis­con­duct charge. The new charges will be offi­cial­ly brought before a cir­cuit court judge next week.
Two oth­er offi­cers — Robert Sabater and David Rivas — face mis­de­meanor charges in the incident.
The inci­dent began when offi­cials said offi­cers approached 24-year-old Daltona Crudup for park­ing a scoot­er ille­gal­ly on 9^th Street and Ocean Court. Crudup fled from offi­cers and struck an offi­cer with the scoot­er, offi­cials said. The offi­cer had to be hos­pi­tal­ized with a leg injury that required crutches.
While try­ing to get away, Crudup ran into the lob­by of the hotel on Collins Avenue, where offi­cers took him into custody.
Surveillance footage showed Crudup run into an ele­va­tor at the hotel, where he had been stay­ing. Right behind him was an offi­cer who took him into cus­tody at gunpoint.

But moments lat­er, sev­er­al more offi­cers respond­ed and Crudup was kicked in the head mul­ti­ple times while he was on the ground and in hand­cuffs, Fernandez Rundle said. A sec­ond man, 28-year-old Khalid Vaughn, start­ed tak­ing video of Crudup’s arrest with his phone, and was arrest­ed on charges of resist­ing an offi­cer and inter­fer­ing with a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion, offi­cials said. Body-worn footage showed an offi­cer tack­ling Vaughn before anoth­er offi­cer is seen repeat­ed­ly punch­ing him in the rib cage area, Fernandez Rundle said. The charges were lat­er dropped against Vaughn. Fernandez Rundle said Crudup did not sign the HIPPA waiv­er to allow pros­e­cu­tors to view his med­ical records until Aug. 25, and that’s when pros­e­cu­tors were able to ful­ly review the extent of Crudup’s injuries.“A deep­er under­stand­ing of the actu­al injuries was nec­es­sary to file these felony bat­tery charges,” Fernandez Rundle said.
The five offi­cers were placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave fol­low­ing the inci­dent, and have been sus­pend­ed. (NBC Miami reports)

The tri­al of 33 defen­dants alleged to be mem­bers of the Klansman Gang should first inform the author­i­ties of the seri­ous nature and the com­plex­i­ties the nation faces as transna­tion­al crim­i­nals coa­lesce in fur­ther­ance of their crim­i­nal goals.
For years this writer has called for tough laws typ­i­cal to the Rico Statute used by the United States to break the back of orga­nized crime.
That Statute pros­e­cutes crim­i­nal defen­dants act­ing in con­cert in fur­ther­ance of crim­i­nal wrong­do­ings and pun­ish­es them harshly.
Jamaican author­i­ties, faced with the exis­ten­tial threat of gang takeover of our coun­try, cob­bled togeth­er a hap­haz­ard piece of anti-gang leg­is­la­tion that does not go near­ly far enough in send­ing the appro­pri­ate mes­sage to gang­sters that they will be held ful­ly accountable.

Even as the police depart­ment, in its hap­haz­ard way, was warn­ing the coun­try that there was an exis­ten­tial threat fac­ing the coun­try through the gang for guns trade, know- it ‑all mouth­pieces like Horace Levy were telling the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple, that the killer gangs were actu­al­ly not gangs at all,-they were “cor­ner crews,” just guys hang­ing out on the corners.
Of course, nei­ther of the PNP admin­is­tra­tions that pre­ced­ed this JLP admin­is­tra­tion did much to secure the nation against this rather seri­ous threat.
Things came to a head after years and years of implau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty and com­plic­i­ty. Prime Minister Andrew Holness was forced to con­cede that the threat posed by the transna­tion­al crime syn­di­cates oper­at­ing in Jamaica was out­side the abil­i­ties of the police to control.
Holness’s come to Jesus moment suc­ceed­ed the for­mer PNP’s min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty, Peter Bunting. He threw up his hands and declared that the only thing that could save Jamaica from the crim­i­nals ram­pag­ing unchecked was divine intervention.

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

But that was also a lie- a big lie. In fact, the Jamaican peo­ple know the truth, Christians and non-Christians, Theist and Atheist, Rasta and bald­head, no one is com­ing to save the coun­try from crim­i­nals. The Savior they seek is us; we are the change we seek.
It took decades of bad-mouthing the police, starv­ing the depart­ment of resources, inter­fer­ing in the job of the police, and refus­ing to pay offi­cers a liv­able wage, effec­tive­ly caus­ing a flood of migra­tion that still today, the depart­ment can­not stop. They allowed the media and oth­er “eat-a-food” enti­ties like Jamaicans for Justice and oth­ers to spread pro­pa­gan­da and lies against the police, which got us to where we are today.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties are respon­si­ble for it.

The net result is that we now have a bet­ter-equipped police depart­ment than three decades ago. However, they still haven’t ful­ly moved to the more pro­fes­sion­al blue den­im across the board, and female offi­cers are still wear­ing skirts.
The depart­ment is still encum­bered by the same polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, lack of ade­quate pay & leg­isla­tive sup­port. It is still hob­bled by train­ing that is so out­dat­ed that it is both shame­ful and laughable.
None of the issues fac­ing those who enforce the laws is more daunt­ing than the judges who sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly return dan­ger­ous gang mem­bers to the streets upon con­vic­tion with mere slaps on the wrists.
The police com­mis­sion­er Antony Anderson recent­ly spoke out against this prac­tice, albeit tongue-in-cheek and hav­ing arrived at the dance a day late and a dol­lar short.

The pros­e­cu­tion alleges that the defen­dants car­ried out a range of mur­ders, con­spir­a­cies to mur­der and extor­tion, and arson through­out St Catherine with­in the four years between 2015 & 2019. It said the gang’s head­quar­ters at Jones Avenue in Spanish Town was used by gang mem­bers for plan­ning their exploits and was also where brief­ing and debrief­ing in respect of crimes took place. The man said to be the leader of the gang, Andre Bryan, also known as Blackman and Teacha, is also among the 33.
Prosecutors also allege that defen­dants, which com­prise the “Blackman fac­tion” of the gang under Bryan’s lead­er­ship, had var­i­ous roles in which they act­ed as “killers, dri­vers, look­out men or watch­men, gun­smiths, and foot soldiers.
Even with the hard work put in by inves­ti­ga­tors and the chal­lenge pros­e­cu­tors have of win­ning con­vic­tions against these bru­tal, ani­mal­is­tic killers, the peo­ple face the daunt­ing prospect that the crim­i­nal cod­dling judges will let most defen­dants walk .”
And if that does­n’t hap­pen, there is always the court of appeals that is always will­ing to inject itself into the tri­al court’s deci­sions; if not to cut the con­vict­ed mur­der­ers loose, at least shave some time from their sentences.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​p​m​-​s​h​o​o​k​-​o​v​e​r​-​h​a​i​t​i​a​n​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​s​-​d​e​m​i​se/

It was only after Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was mur­dered in his own home in July of 2021 that the Jamaican Prime Minister final­ly woke up from his life­long stu­por on the seri­ous­ness of the gangs’ chal­lenges to nation­al security.
No, the videos were not depict­ing the heavy weapon­ry they unleashed against the secu­ri­ty Forces in May Pen as they robbed the Chinese busi­ness. It was­n’t because of any of the oth­er videos that he closed his eyes to, as the very peo­ple he said police would not be kick­ing down doors to get the crim­i­nals while he was cam­paign­ing and even after he was elect­ed to office, it was only when he felt that he was vul­ner­a­ble he decid­ed to speak out.
“We are mak­ing long-term invest­ments in infra­struc­ture and human devel­op­ment, but we have an urgent prob­lem that, if we don’t use excep­tion­al pow­ers to address, those gangs can become a seri­ous threat to the State.” 
“I don’t have to expand and unpack that state­ment any­more. Ninety miles away from here; you see what can hap­pen.”(Andrew Holness)
Only after a region­al leader was assas­si­nat­ed and his own mor­tal­i­ty became a real­i­ty did he final­ly awake from his damn slum­ber and begin to real­ize that being born in Spanish Town, or wher­ev­er, does not make a damn dif­fer­ence; this is an exis­ten­tial crisis.
Holness spent his entire polit­i­cal life bad-mouthing the police and polic­ing in gen­er­al, giv­ing def­er­ence to the vilest crea­tures over the men and women who risk life and limb to defend our coun­try so that he can sleep safe­ly at night.

So as this tri­al progress, be pre­pared to see the lib­er­al elites sit­ting in judg­ment use the posi­tions giv­en them by the peo­ple against the people.
Be pre­pared to see them decide on slaps on the wrists for these vicious mis­fits who made con­scious deci­sions to oper­ate out­side soci­etal norms.
Because the buck stops with them and no one should dare ques­tion them because ques­tion­ing them is bring­ing the jus­tice sys­tem into dis­re­pute. This is the stuff tyran­ny is made of.
Imagine the affron­tery; unelect­ed bureau­crats decid­ing that their actions should not be ques­tioned because they know what’s best for us; we don’t…

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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 talked about Judges as I reg­is­tered my sup­port for the Commissioner of Police. The Commissioner spoke, albeit years late and still tongue in cheek as he parsed his words, over­ly care­ful not to offend. He final­ly spoke out about the lib­er­al judges allow­ing dan­ger­ous con­vict­ed crim­i­nals back onto the streets(my words).
On the oth­er hand, I have con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that the lit­tle bureau­crats that work in the var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies oper­ate as demigods.
They are so drunk on pow­er that they often­times for­get to do their jobs. Flossing and media-hog­ging have become a way of life for these lit­tle tad­poles in this dirty lit­tle pond.
For years I com­plained about INDECOM, The Public Defender, The Judiciary, and oth­er pub­lic bod­ies that oper­ate not as impor­tant parts of a unit but as free-stand­ing units divorced from the body.
Terrence Williams’s tenure as head of INDECOM made the pub­lic office a grand­stand­ing stage for self-pro­mo­tion; Earl Witter and oth­ers have also hogged the lime­light as they sought out the micro­phones to get their names in the newspapers.
Unfortunately, when all is said and done, the pub­lic has pre­cious lit­tle to show for either of the two gen­tle­men’s tenure at their respec­tive posts.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​m​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​e​r​-​a​n​d​e​r​s​o​n​-​s​p​e​a​k​s​-​o​u​t​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​j​u​d​g​e​s​-​l​a​t​e​-​a​n​d​-​h​a​l​f​-​h​e​a​r​t​e​d​-​w​e​l​l​-​k​i​n​da/

So no one should be sur­prised that the present Public Defender, Arlene Harrison-Henry, is no dif­fer­ent from oth­ers. If they have any­thing to do with an issue gen­er­at­ing inter­est or dis­cus­sion, they will milk it for what­ev­er it’s worth to get all of the eye­balls they can get on themselves.
Knowing how these pub­lic ser­vants oper­ate, I called on the police com­mis­sion­er to imme­di­ate­ly con­duct a swift and thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into the alle­ga­tions that a Rastafarian woman was alleged­ly trimmed against her will at the Four Paths Police Station in Clarendon weeks ago.
Doing so would have earned some degree of ven­er­a­tion for the police, as opposed to the scorn that would be heaped on them were the inves­ti­ga­tions to drag on.
It would also deny the grand­standers a soap­box, at least for the long term.

Harrison-Henry claimed that as part of her duty to inves­ti­gate the alle­ga­tions sur­round­ing the 19-year-old Rastafarian Nzinga King being forcibly trimmed by an offi­cer, she went to the sta­tion to con­duct her investigations.
She alleges that she was accom­pa­nied by Deputy Public Defender Herbert McKenzie and Special Projects Manager Victor Hemmings.
She told the media that she spoke to a sergeant who told her he need­ed to speak to his supe­ri­ors about grant­i­ng her access to the station.
(Good job, Sergeant)
She said the sergeant left to speak to a supe­ri­or then returned to tell her that she must get the Commissioner of Police’s writ­ten permission.
Harrison-Henry argues that view­ing the lay­out of the police sta­tion is crit­i­cal to the inves­ti­ga­tion, as it would show where the alleged inci­dent occurred.
After she was denied access, she wrote to the Commissioner of Police, stat­ing that it was a breach of Section 25 (b) of the Public Defender (Interim) Act. Section 25 (b) states: Every per­son who (i) obstructs, hin­ders, or resists the pub­lic defend­er or any oth­er per­son in the exe­cu­tion of his func­tions under this Act; or (ii) fails to com­ply with any law­ful require­ment of the pub­lic defend­er or any oth­er per­son under this Act; or (iii) con­tra­venes the pro­vi­sions of sec­tion 14 (4); or © in a man­ner incon­sis­tent with his duty under sec­tion 21 (l), deals with doc­u­ments, infor­ma­tion or things men­tioned in that sub­sec­tion, shall be guilty of an offense and shall be liable on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion before a res­i­dent mag­is­trate [now parish court judge] to a fine not exceed­ing $50,000 or to impris­on­ment not exceed­ing 12 months, or to both such fine and impris­on­ment. She said her office told the com­mis­sion­er that it would warn the deputy super­in­ten­dent of police at the sta­tion for pros­e­cu­tion. “On September 9, we pre­pared our warn­ing for pros­e­cu­tion and had it served at the May Pen Police Station on September 14,” Harrison Henry said.

Here is the thing, the Public Defender has her pow­ers grant­ed to her by the Jamaican Parliament, so too does the Commissioner of Police. As a secu­ri­ty Agency, the Police have every right to have prop­er pro­to­cols fol­lowed at its facilities.
The Public Defender has every right to be allowed access to con­duct her inves­ti­ga­tions, but that right does not super­sede her need to fol­low protocol.
These lit­tle mat­ters war­rant no fuss, but these lit­tle bureau­crats are like lit­tle mon­grels piss­ing on every tree try­ing to estab­lish ter­ri­to­ry and authority.
In the same way that the Public Defender found the time and neces­si­ty to write to com­plain to the Police Commissioner why did she not write to let him know that she and her offi­cers would be vis­it­ing the sta­tion as part of the inves­ti­ga­to­ry process and that they would need access not open to ordi­nary mem­bers of the public?
I believe that the Commissioner of Police would have not only flung the gates open for her, but he would also have pro­vid­ed an escort for her and her team.
But fol­low­ing pro­to­col and avoid­ing the ker­fuf­fle would not have gen­er­at­ed any excite­ment as she went about doing what­ev­er she need­ed to do, cre­at­ing false dis­agree­ments does.
Jamaicans need these agen­cies to be there as bul­warks against tyran­ny from all quar­ters; it is, there­fore, imper­a­tive that the peo­ple who head these impor­tant agen­cies oper­ate less in the lime­light and more behind the scenes to car­ry out the man­date they were given.
A Government Agency fight­ing with anoth­er gov­ern­ment Agency in anoth­er Agency of Government does no one any good.
Enough with the grand­stand­ing already and get on with the task at hand.….

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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. 

These days, I hard­ly spend time talk­ing about what the JCF could be doing bet­ter; there are far more press­ing issues in my adopt­ed homeland.
I try to speak to the hypocrisy of how the United States uses its resources to help fight against transna­tion­al crime as a tool of sorts of dic­tate to devel­op­ing nations on what they can and can­not do to their crim­i­nals. Nevertheless, I can­not pre­tend not to see that some of the issues that plagued the JCF over three decades ago are still evi­dent despite the con­tin­ued talk of trans­for­ma­tion of the force.
I under­stand that there are resource short­ages and prob­a­bly will be for a very long time into the future. Those short­ages include human resources, equip­ment, tools, leg­is­la­tion, ade­quate pay, bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, train­ing, lead­er­ship, moti­va­tion, and a sim­ple com­mon sense…The lat­ter seem­ing to be the resource in the short­est supply.

One of the press­ing issues fac­ing the coun­try is the issue of cor­rup­tion. It is can­cer that cor­rodes all Government agen­cies, sti­fles progress, and frus­trates the pop­u­la­tion. This hap­pens because the leg­is­la­ture is far too lazy, incom­pe­tent, and moron­ic to pass laws that set clear time­lines in which gov­ern­ment func­tions must be addressed.
For exam­ple, a per­son apply­ing for a birth cer­tifi­cate should receive it in a set time. Same idea for pass­ports, police records, and oth­er doc­u­ments that the peo­ple depend on to get on with their lives. There is no excuse for these things not to be clear­ly set in law and pol­i­cy and enforced rigidly.
Failure to imple­ment these com­mon-sense leg­isla­tive process­es is a breed­ing ground for cor­rup­tion. It allows low-lev­el bureau­crats to frus­trate the pub­lic who real­ly need these doc­u­ments and coerces them to pay bribes.
These short­com­ings are with­in the remit of the elect­ed offi­cials who lack imag­i­na­tion, com­mon­sense, and the knowl­edge to draft and pass mean­ing­ful leg­is­la­tion to advance the nation’s interest.

However, as I have asked over the years, “what stops the police from stamp­ing out the fraud at the Registrar Generals’ office or the Motor Vehicle’s Department”? How dif­fi­cult is it to set up stings and arrest the rogue motor vehi­cle exam­in­ers, rogue Custom Agents, and oth­er leech­es who enter pub­lic ser­vice to rip off the public?
I’ll haz­ard a guess; it isn’t that the police hier­ar­chy lacks imag­i­na­tion (it does), but the force is itself far too cor­rupt to care about the cul­ture of cor­rup­tion that now char­ac­ter­izes Jamaican cul­ture, which it has a sworn duty to try to correct.
No one wants a job from which they can­not steal.
I was nau­se­at­ed sev­er­al days ago when some­one showed me a video on a social media plat­form of a Jamaican cop ask­ing a cou­ple in an auto­mo­bile, “have you done any good deeds for those who pro­tect and serve today” the occu­pants of the car real­iz­ing the pathet­ic attempt at a bribe solic­i­ta­tion hand­ed the cop a few bucks, laughed at him and drove away.
Police offi­cers demean­ing their uni­forms by beg­ging, solic­it­ing bribes, or as the old ver­nac­u­lar goes, “cut­ting,” is a rep­re­hen­si­ble prac­tice that demeans the entire force, even if was an iso­lat­ed incident.
In Jamaica this rep­re­hen­si­ble and shame­ful prac­tice isn’t.

Rather than set an exam­ple for the nation to fol­low, the JCF con­tin­ues to be an agency large­ly for show, form over sub­stance. Members of the JCF now have more degrees than a ther­mome­ter, yet nei­ther the force nor the coun­try ben­e­fits from the advanced learn­ing of these offi­cers who sit atop the hier­ar­chy of the JCF doing noth­ing but [floss­ing].
Instead of help­ing to seri­ous­ly address the prob­lems, the force has sur­ren­dered to being a part of the over­all problem.
The extent to which graft, cor­rup­tion, and crime have hob­bled the nation’s growth and devel­op­ment may all be attrib­uted to and laid square­ly at the feet of the var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies, the JCF being no exception.

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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. 

Whether we like it or not, all of us come with a sell-by date, like yogurt, we even­tu­al­ly expire and must be tossed out if not out of desire, out of how impos­si­ble it is for any­one to be around us.
Despite our stamped sell-by date, it is rather dif­fi­cult when our loved ones creep up to that date when we even­tu­al­ly have to say goodbye.
Sadness, shock, aban­don­ment, hurt, dis­ap­point­ment, and a whole range of oth­er emo­tions engulf us even as we rec­on­cile that, giv­en time, death is some­thing assigned to all of us.
Some of those very emo­tions washed over me yes­ter­day as sev­er­al for­mer col­leagues texted me the news that our men­tor and friend, Detective Deputy Superintendent Noël Asphall, had passed.

Having grad­u­at­ed from the Police Academy in December of 1982 as a mem­ber of the first batch to com­mence and com­plete train­ing at the Twickenham Park train­ing facil­i­ty, I would be involved in oth­er firsts in my decade-long career in the JCF.
Having been dis­persed to the Beat & Foot Patrol on West Street down­town Kingston in time for the Christmas hol­i­day, I was shocked a mere three months lat­er that I would be among a small group of young offi­cers to be sent to the Mobile Reserve.
It was the first time offi­cers not trained specif­i­cal­ly for, and by the Mobile, Reserve would be dis­persed to that division.
It was not some­thing I desired nor want­ed, so I did not arrive at that facil­i­ty a hap­py camper.
At the time, the Mobile Reserve was brand­ed as a place for big offi­cers who could swing a baton in times of riot. It was rumored to be a place where careers went to die if for noth­ing else, the sheer num­ber of offi­cers sta­tioned there.
I was a slight­ly built guy, 5 feet 8 inch­es tall on a good day and weigh­ing at best with my boots on 155 pounds. I did not feel that I had any busi­ness there-nei­ther did I want to be there.
Despite my ani­mus toward the place, I moved from the reg­u­lar ho-hum of the dai­ly grind to a sec­tor that suit­ed my style bet­ter; I was a mem­ber of the forty-some­thing strong Ranger Squad.
It was from that squad that, in my mind, I was res­cued as one of four offi­cers to go to Constant Spring CIB because the pop­u­lar Cornwall (Bigga ) Ford was being trans­ferred to CIB Headquarters.
The four were E Marston, Allen Gauntlett, Keith Scully, and Michael Beckles.

It was there that I start­ed to enjoy my work as a police offi­cer under the tute­lage and guid­ance of Detective Inspector Noël Asphall, a man we affec­tion­ate­ly called (stom­ach), just nev­er to his face. (smile) A man who was­n’t per­fect, only because per­fec­tion and human fal­li­bil­i­ty made that an impossibility.
Mister Aspall was a big man, not over­ly tall, but he had a com­mand­ing pres­ence, the kind of pres­ence that caus­es every­one in the room to stop doing what they were doing when he walked in com­pared to some­one like me, who no one looked up at.
Mister Asphall’s pres­ence and how we react­ed around him could nev­er be mis­con­strued as out of fear or dis­dain; we all respect­ed and loved him.
His strict dis­ci­pline, guid­ance, car­ing nature, and the way he guid­ed and pro­tect­ed us were some­thing many of today’s lead­ers can only hope to emu­late. His abil­i­ty to moti­vate caused us to work extreme­ly long hours with­out addi­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion in ser­vice to the res­i­dents of Saint Andrew North and our coun­try over­all. That will be his endur­ing legacy.
Under Noël Asphall’s guid­ance, the Saint Andrew North Detectives became the envy of the entire coun­try. It was not a func­tion of who the Area com­mand­ing offi­cer was, nor who the Divisional offi­cer was. Neither was it because of who the Divisional crime offi­cer was at any giv­en time.
During my time, we had Rudolph Dwyer, Garnett Daley, and Anthony Hewitt as Detective Area Crime offi­cers at dif­fer­ent inter­vals; all had their pos­i­tives, but it was Noël Asphall who got us to pro­duce what we did.

One of my esteemed for­mer col­leagues was kind enough to sup­ply me with a list of offi­cers who served in mis­ter Asphall’s CIB. Speaking of Detective Seargeant Keith Scully who is still serv­ing. We rem­i­nisced this morn­ing about the pos­i­tives of the man we pri­vate­ly called (Stomach) but to his face affec­tion­ate­ly referred to as (Spec).
We talked about those who served with us under his tute­lage and guid­ance; I list some here.
We all mourn your pass­ing, sir.
Female Detectives Yasmin Ankle & Webber the men Devon Watkiss, Cornwall Ford, Colin Pinnock, Wilford Gayle, Dayton Henry, Dean Taylor, Donald McInnis, Barrington Campbell, Dadrick Henry, Linval Henry, George Henry, Altimorth Campbell, Elwin Cameron, Eric Dawes, Sylvanus Ellison, Keith Scully, Michael Beckles, Allen Gauntlet, Walter Grant, Élan Powell, Errol Mcleish, Shane Foster, D Foster, Tony Frye, C Greene, Artel Antonio Morgan, Glasford Dacres, Leroy Hanson, Fitz Tracey, Carlton Henry, Leroy Hanson, Allan Campbell, and more.……
Any offi­cer I may have omit­ted to men­tion, please for­give me; it has been 30 plus years since I left.
The respect and love Mister Asphall com­mand­ed far exceed­ed the detec­tives who were his charge; uni­formed cops from far and wide loved and respect­ed him.
That love and respect were evi­dent in the way mem­bers of the pub­lic react­ed to his pres­ence. We will for­ev­er miss this tow­er­ing leader who, with­out try­ing, demon­strat­ed through his life work that doing the job of a police offi­cer is not about hype or fan­cy degrees- He got the job done by the char­ac­ter­is­tics I attrib­uted to him.
Walk good sir. In 1991, when I decid­ed to call it quits, you called me aside and told me that you were pained to see me go, that you would miss me but that if you were at my age, you would have made the same deci­sion I was making.
We spent many hours togeth­er both on and off the job, many of them at your grandad’s place in Brandon Hill, you called me your son, and I will miss you like hell. Part of who I am today is a result of the man you were.
My con­do­lences to his beloved wife Sonia and the rest of his fam­i­ly. Rest well, sir, until we meet again.….….

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

It simply isn’t possible to understand the criminal justice crisis in the United States without properly understanding how these officers of the court, ostensible stewards of justice, have worked for decades to build a system of overcriminalization, blatant race-based discrimination, rampant police brutality, and mass incarceration. (David S. D’Amato)

Where else in the world are police offi­cers con­vict­ed of crimes allowed to con­tin­ue serv­ing as police offi­cers except the United States? Is it any won­der then that cops com­mit felonies indis­crim­i­nate­ly against the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect with impunity?
Imagine being a law enforce­ment offi­cer and being allowed to plead down from a felony com­mit­ted as an offi­cer and allowed to remain a police officer!
I spent a decade as a police offi­cer in Jamaica from 1982 to 1992; I laugh at this because no offi­cer of the Jamaican Constabulary Force in its long his­to­ry has ever com­mit­ted a felony was ever allowed to plead guilty to a mis­de­meanor and remain an officer.
In fact, in my time, a mis­de­meanor con­vic­tion meant instant dis­missal from our depart­ment. Is it any won­der then that American police offi­cers steal drugs from deal­ers, steal their dirty mon­ey, sell the drugs back to oth­er deal­ers, plant drugs on peo­ple they do not like, lie in their state­ments, lie on the wit­ness stand, fal­si­fy evi­dence, bru­tal­ize and mur­der inno­cent unarmed citizens?
They are reg­u­lar gangs of bul­lies roam­ing around to see who they can rob and steal from as part of the con­cept of polic­ing for prof­it that is a sta­ple in American policing…U.S. polic­ing has also drawn con­tro­ver­sy over exces­sive fines, fees, and asset for­fei­ture, a wide­spread prac­tice in which depart­ments prof­it from seiz­ing the assets of cit­i­zens, many of whom are nev­er charged with a crime.

At least 630 police offi­cers have been con­vict­ed of a crime in California over the past decade — an aver­age of more than one every week. Nearly a fifth of those offi­cers are still work­ing or on the job more than a year after sen­tenc­ing. Their con­vic­tions range from dri­ving under the influ­ence to sex offens­es — some with minors — to domes­tic abuse and assault. Officers charged with felonies that would bar them from car­ry­ing a gun and, con­se­quent­ly, from work­ing as a police offi­cer fre­quent­ly plea down to less­er offens­es that enable them to keep their gun — and their job. And even offi­cers who are ter­mi­nat­ed from one depart­ment often con­tin­ue work­ing as cops by jump­ing from one depart­ment to the next. The United States’ own Council on Foreign Relations reports the following.

• Other advanced democ­ra­cies orga­nize, fund, train, arm, and dis­ci­pline their police offi­cers dif­fer­ent­ly than the United States does.
• Many coun­tries, includ­ing the United States, strug­gle with police bru­tal­i­ty and tense rela­tions between law enforce­ment and minor­i­ty communities.
• The United States far exceeds most wealthy democ­ra­cies in killings by police, and offi­cers sel­dom face legal consequences.

Why do you think that the United States sel­dom dis­ci­plines its police offi­cers when they run afoul of the laws? Could it be that the answer is right there in the Council’s sec­ond paragraph?
Could it be that polic­ing is still tan­ta­mount to slave catch­ing as it was when the idea was first con­cep­tu­al­ized despite all of the talks about American excep­tion­al­ism and American advance­ment? Researchers esti­mate that one in ten police calls in the United States is relat­ed to men­tal health. Approximately one-fifth of peo­ple shot and killed by police in 2019 showed signs of men­tal ill­ness. This means that twen­ty (20) per­cent of all the peo­ple they killed in 2019 were peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health issues. It is not that the offi­cers do not know that most of these peo­ple are expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal issues, they are often told by their dis­patch or told by rel­a­tives on arrival. Shooting a dis­traught per­son down in cold blood is done as soon as they can con­trive a legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to fit their nar­ra­tive that they were in fear for their lives. In some cas­es the vic­tim they gun down is stark naked and unarmed.

Basic U.S. train­ing pro­grams take twen­ty-one weeks on aver­age, where­as sim­i­lar European pro­grams can last more than three years. In Finland and Norway, recruits study polic­ing in nation­al col­leges, spend­ing part of the time in an intern­ship with local police, and earn degrees in crim­i­nal jus­tice or relat­ed fields.
With hun­dreds of police acad­e­mies, the United States lacks nation­al stan­dards for what recruits should learn. U.S. acad­e­mies tend to empha­size tech­ni­cal skills rather than com­mu­ni­ca­tion and restraint. According to a 2013 U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report, acad­e­mies on aver­age spent the most time — sev­en­ty-one hours — on firearm skills, com­pared with twen­ty-one hours on de-esca­la­tion train­ing (which teach­es how to use con­ver­sa­tion and oth­er tac­tics to calm a sit­u­a­tion with­out using force) and cri­sis-inter­ven­tion strate­gies. In Germany, firearms train­ing focus­es on how to avoid using force. Japanese offi­cers are trained in mar­tial arts.

The United States far sur­pass­es most wealthy democ­ra­cies in police killings. U.S. police killed an esti­mat­ed 7,638 peo­ple between 2013 and 2019. (According to the same data­base, they killed anoth­er 1,125 peo­ple in 2020.) In com­par­i­son, at least 224 peo­ple died in encoun­ters with Canadian police between 2013 and 2019. Some coun­tries, such as Finland and Norway, have gone years with­out police killings.
A study done by the US Department of Justice found that the lack of data on police crime is clear­ly a prob­lem; since the devel­op­ment of strate­gies to mit­i­gate police crime in the least requires that they be doc­u­ment­ed and described in some sys­tem­at­ic and gen­er­al­iz­able man­ner. You can’t fix what you don’t know.
If you do not want to fix it you do not keep a record of it; that has been the strat­e­gy of the United States on police vio­lence. If there is no data to look at there is no prob­lem, no data means they can­not be con­front­ed with the facts.
Failure to doc­u­ment in a uni­fied and sys­temic way the vio­lence com­mit­ted by law enforce­ment in the United States has embold­ened police to con­tin­ue to act with impuni­ty in minor­i­ty communities.
Most of the almost 18,000 police depart­ments are allowed to with­hold even basic infor­ma­tion regard­ing offi­cers’ per­son­nel records, much less to doc­u­ment and hold offi­cers account­able for com­mit­ting crimes.
After the George Floyd killing, a few local leg­is­la­tures have moved to make offi­cer’s per­son­nel records avail­able when accused of crimes.
Rather than throw the book at them when they com­mit felonies, local pros­e­cu­tors who receive polit­i­cal endorse­ments from police unions frat­er­nize with offi­cers and allow dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal cops to plead guilty to mis­de­meanors so they can stay in uniform.
Consequently, dirty cops are allowed to remain in depart­ments and pose a grave dan­ger to the minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties through­out the country.

As the issue of police crimes become more under the micro­scope, it is impor­tant to know that [still], there is no Federal data­base that com­piles the num­ber of peo­ple who are killed one way or anoth­er by police each year, much less the num­ber of crimes police offi­cers are com­mit­ting and are allowed to plead down to mis­de­meanors by cor­rupt local pros­e­cu­tors with the acqui­es­cence of local equal­ly cor­rupt judges.
In her aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cle “Can You Be a Good Person and a Good Prosecutor?” law pro­fes­sor Abbé Smith implored lawyers “com­mit­ted to social and racial jus­tice” not to join a prosecutor’s office, urg­ing them to think care­ful­ly about the moral impli­ca­tions of that choice. Smith was ahead of her time. When she wrote the arti­cle almost 20 years ago, the ques­tion was a provoca­tive one, one that few were ask­ing.
She demon­strat­ed then what more Americans than ever are begin­ning to under­stand now: Prosecutors play an inte­gral, even cen­tral, role in a pro­found­ly cor­rupt and immoral sys­tem that has unjus­ti­fi­ably destroyed the lives of mil­lions of Americans.
Judges, too, are deeply impli­cat­ed in the moral crimes of this sys­tem but, like pros­e­cu­tors, are high­ly regard­ed in polite soci­ety; indeed, the role of a judge is arguably among the most hon­ored posi­tions in American society.
We think of judges as peo­ple who have espe­cial­ly good judg­ment and a strong moral com­pass. But to prod the real­i­ty of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem even a lit­tle is to reveal the cold, cal­lous cru­el­ty of the peo­ple charged with uphold­ing jus­tice and the rule of law.
It isn’t that judges and pros­e­cu­tors have mere­ly turned a blind eye to the rot of sys­temic racism and injus­tice at the heart of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Rather, they have been active­ly com­plic­it in advanc­ing and rein­forc­ing this sys­tem, work­ing direct­ly at odds with efforts to reform it. Given the tiny frac­tion of crim­i­nal cas­es that pro­ceed to tri­al, judges have effec­tive­ly abdi­cat­ed their role, allow­ing pros­e­cu­tors to coerce defen­dants into plea bar­gains whose terms force defen­dants to give up their most impor­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

These judges are par­ties to an impos­ture, car­ry­ing on the pre­tense that crim­i­nal defen­dants enjoy the ben­e­fits of an adver­sar­i­al process and a pre­sump­tion of inno­cence. On the con­trary, crim­i­nal cas­es have been reduced to mere admin­is­tra­tive pro­ceed­ings in which defen­dants (even com­plete­ly inno­cent ones) accept long, harsh sen­tences under duress. Judges also rou­tine­ly fail to scru­ti­nize ques­tion­able evi­dence offered by pros­e­cu­tors, includ­ing, notably, false tes­ti­mo­ny from police offi­cers who lied under oath (the wide­spread phe­nom­e­non even has its own lit­tle name, “testi­ly­ing”). They vir­tu­al­ly always uphold ille­gal search­es and arrests, agree­ing with police offi­cers in find­ing that there was prob­a­ble cause, thus mak­ing the exist­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al stan­dard effec­tive­ly mean­ing­less. Prosecutors are unique among advo­cates; their client is the state, and the stakes are unusu­al­ly high, as a vic­to­ry for their client fre­quent­ly means the forcible depri­va­tion of a citizen’s lib­er­ty. Thus do their eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions reflect this cat­e­gor­i­cal dif­fer­ence, at least in the­o­ry and on paper. “A prosecutor’s duty is to seek jus­tice, not mere­ly to con­vict,” accord­ing to the American Bar Association’s mod­el eth­i­cal rules. Prosecutors can behave much less eth­i­cal­ly than oth­er lawyers, large­ly because they have lit­tle incen­tive to take their eth­i­cal duties seri­ous­ly. There are noto­ri­ous­ly very few con­se­quences for pros­e­cu­tor mis­con­duct, and of course, pros­e­cu­tors know it. They can­not be held civil­ly liable for their acts as pros­e­cu­tors, and state bars (the same orga­ni­za­tions that have writ­ten so many nice-sound­ing words in the wake of George Floyd’s mur­der) almost always refuse to hold them to account.(Excerpt is tak­en from the Hill​.com)

I know you felt that was is a sys­tem that was set up to ensure jus­tice, unfor­tu­nate­ly, that is an incred­i­ble lie. The sys­tem has pre­cious lit­tle to do with the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice; is a sys­tem designed to cement and fur­ther white pow­er and white con­trol over every­one else.
Every ten­ta­cle, every fibrous vein was designed to func­tion to the detri­ment of the Black race. We are mere­ly get­ting a tiny glance into its inner work­ings, those of us who both­er to care that is.
For the rest, it’s coon­ery and buf­foon­ery, as usu­al, shuck­ing jiv­ing right back into bond­ed servitude…

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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. 

California is one of the few U.S. states without a way to strip bad officers of their badges. The Kenneth Ross Jr. Police Decertification Act will change that.

On Wednesday, California law­mak­ers moved for­ward leg­is­la­tion that can cause law enforce­ment offi­cers to lose their badges. The leg­is­la­tion is await­ing a sig­na­ture from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has favored police reform in the past.

According to the Associated Press, the Kenneth Ross Jr. Police Decertification Act, a bill orig­i­nal­ly intro­duced a year ago by Democratic state Sen. Steven Bradford, aims to stop offi­cers from sim­ply chang­ing depart­ments after being found guilty of mis­con­duct. The bill will cre­ate a new cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that can be per­ma­nent­ly revoked by an 18-mem­ber coun­cil called the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

Among the seri­ous mis­con­duct issues that the bill names are “using exces­sive force, sex­u­al assault, intim­i­dat­ing wit­ness­es, mak­ing a false arrest or report, or par­tic­i­pat­ing in a law enforce­ment gang. Other grounds include “demon­strat­ing bias” based on race, reli­gion, gen­der iden­ti­ty, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or men­tal dis­abil­i­ty, among oth­er cri­te­ria,” AP reports.
Read the full sto­ry here: https://​www​.the​root​.com/​c​a​l​i​f​o​r​n​i​a​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​r​e​f​o​r​m​-​b​i​l​l​-​t​o​-​g​e​t​-​r​i​d​-​o​f​-​b​a​d​-​a​p​p​l​e​s​-​1​8​4​7​6​4​3​410.

Bradford named the bill after 25-year-old Kenneth Ross, a Black man killed by an offi­cer in Los Angeles County back in 2018. According to AP, the offi­cer was cleared of wrong­do­ing in Ross’ case but was pre­vi­ous­ly involved in three oth­er shootings.

The New York Police Department has always been a gang; it has been a racist gang pop­u­lat­ed with white inter­lop­ers from Long Island, Staten Island, and Queens since its inception.
The his­to­ry books are full of tales of cor­rup­tion, racism, and law­less­ness; City of New York res­i­dents are forced to pay for this crim­i­nal gang of wel­fare leech­es to bru­tal­ize them.
Unfortunately for peo­ple of col­or who live in New York City, this law­less, unac­count­able gang does as it please, and no one in author­i­ty has the pow­er to bell the cat.……no, not even the Mayor, this gang long belled him.

COMMON THUGS

From time to time, we talk about the cru­el­ty and bar­barism of American Police par­tic­u­lar­ly to mem­bers of the African American Community; when they are wrong, this medi­um tol­er­ates no cp-splain­ing on behalf of police who over­step their bounds and abuse mem­bers of the pub­lic or even show dis­re­spect toward the public.
However, hav­ing watched this par­tic­u­lar video and seen how this offi­cer spoke to the sus­pect in her charge, I found noth­ing unto­ward in how she treat­ed him. In fact, I thought she was extreme­ly cour­te­ous and accom­mo­dat­ing to his needs as she trans­port­ed him to jail.
On find­ing out that he had passed out, she imme­di­ate­ly com­menced chest com­pres­sion while shout­ing for help. I hon­est­ly do not see what she could have done dif­fer­ent­ly, except to stop at the time he said he felt like he was about to pass out, which could have been a ploy that would poten­tial­ly allow him to flee her cus­tody or do poten­tial harm to her.
Nevertheless, the fore­gone are my opin­ions only oth­ers may see this much dif­fer­ent­ly. (MB)

After the fam­i­ly of a Black man who died in police in 2019 filed a wrong­ful death suit against three Texas offi­cers, police cam­era footage of the moments lead­ing up to the man’s death has been made public.

Darren Boykin, 23, died in police cus­tody in August 2019 after Texarkana College police offi­cers con­front­ed him in a cam­pus build­ing under the sus­pi­cion that he had been involved in a theft. Boykin report­ed­ly fled the offi­cers and ran a half-mile before he was appre­hend­ed off-campus.

After Texarkana Police con­tact­ed Boykin and learned he had a felony war­rant in Ohio, offi­cers took him into cus­tody. They trans­port­ed him to jail, where­upon he was dis­cov­ered unre­spon­sive before he could be booked. Boykin was then tak­en to a hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead.

According to a law­suit filed by Boykin’s moth­er, Keisha Boykin, in the U.S. District Court in Texarkana, Texas, on Aug. 29, offi­cers ignored Boykin’s com­plaints of dis­tress and denied him med­ical care“.

It was clear that this wasn’t just some­one who hap­pened to die. It was some­one who was com­plain­ing that they were in dis­tress, that they need­ed help and they were in a sit­u­a­tion where they couldn’t pro­vide them­selves with that care,” said attor­ney James Roberts, an attor­ney for the fam­i­ly, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette report­ed

Texarkana Police Officers Jerrika Weaver and Brent Hobbs, and their super­vi­sor dur­ing the arrest, Sgt. William Scott is named as the defen­dant in the lawsuit.

The high tem­per­a­ture in Texarkana reached 91 degrees on Aug. 29, 2019, the day Boykin died after try­ing to flee Texarkana College Police on foot.

Boykin was lying down, hand­cuffed and breath­ing heav­i­ly before offi­cers car­ried him to a patrol car. Responding Texarkana Police dis­cov­ered that Boykin had an Ohio driver’s license and a felony war­rant in the state. Boykin told offi­cers he’d been in Texarkana for about six months. Texarkana offi­cers Weaver, Hobbs, and Scott, dis­cussed Boykin’s com­plaints about not being able to breathe on dif­fer­ent occa­sions, but the offi­cers nev­er act­ed on his concerns.

“Being the sergeant and super­vi­sor on scene, defen­dant Scott had the abil­i­ty to call for med­ical assis­tance or direct defen­dant Hobbs or defen­dant Weaver to call for med­ical assis­tance for Darren,” the law­suit says.

Video footage of the inci­dent shows Boykin sit­ting in the back of the patrol car. “Please help me,” Boykin said.

OK, can you help me back here?” Boykin said before com­plain­ing about his leg. Weaver replied, “I’m gonna help you get your way down to the jail.”

Weaver offered to roll the win­dow down, then agreed to keep the air con­di­tion­ing on after Boykin said an open win­dow would make it hot­ter in the vehicle.

“I’m gonna pass out,” Boykin said. Weaver told Boykin to “lean against the glass,” say­ing he’d be all right as Boykin appeared to lose con­scious­ness in the back seat and no longer respond­ed to Weaver’s questions.

“You know you’re still going to jail, either way, right?” Weaver said. “You know some­one that pass­es out isn’t able to stop them­selves from falling for­ward, right? Fun fact,” she added, as Boykin con­tin­ued not to respond.

When the patrol car arrived at the Bowie County jail, Weaver told Boykin she wasn’t going to drag him inside. “Come on, quit play­ing,” she said.

When Boykin con­tin­ued not to respond, Weaver pulled him out of the vehi­cle and began per­form­ing CPR.

“You know how he’s got the felony faint in the back­seat? ‘Oh, I’m gonna pass out.’ He’s fine. He kept say­ing he was tired, his legs hurt, he kept want­i­ng to lay down. Normal stuff when you’re get­ting charged with felonies,” Weaver told med­ical per­son­nel when they arrived.

Boykin was trans­port­ed to a hos­pi­tal and pro­nounced dead.

According to the law­suit, Boykin died because offi­cers “delib­er­ate­ly chose not to pro­vide med­ical care” and showed “delib­er­ate indif­fer­ence” to his distress.

A cus­to­di­al death report pre­pared by the Texarkana College Police says Boykin’s death was “nat­ur­al” and notes “com­pli­ca­tions of sick­le cell trait,” as found at autopsy.

Texarkana Police declined to com­ment on the mat­ter, cit­ing pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion. The law­suit alleges civ­il rights vio­la­tions and seeks puni­tive dam­ages and com­pen­sa­tion for Boykin’s suf­fer­ing and his mother’s men­tal anguish.

SIGH.….

Georgia police shot and killed a motorist who had been “dri­ving errat­i­cal­ly” before lead­ing offi­cers on a brief chase near Atlanta, author­i­ties said Thursday.

The dead­ly con­fronta­tion start­ed at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday when “a Cobb County Police Department offi­cer observed a vehi­cle being dri­ven reck­less­ly” near Powder Springs Road and State Route 120A in Marietta, about 20 miles north­west of down­town Atlanta, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

The dri­ver, iden­ti­fied as 28-year-old Austell res­i­dent Devonte Dawayne Brown, “ini­tial­ly pulled over, but then refused to com­ply and sped away,” accord­ing to the GBI.

Police and Cobb County Sheriff’s deputies chased Brown and at “one point, the offi­cers attempt­ed to box in the vehi­cle,” the state author­i­ties said.

“During this inci­dent, Brown attempt­ed to get away and hit mul­ti­ple police vehi­cles,” the GBI state­ment con­tin­ued. “As police offi­cers were try­ing to take Brown into cus­tody, a Cobb County Police Department offi­cer fired his gun, strik­ing Brown.”

The dri­ver was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead.

Monica Brown, the dri­ver’s bio­log­i­cal aunt, and adop­tive mom, said she’s trou­bled by the video and believes her loved one did­n’t need to be shot.

“I feel like this was exces­sive force,” she told NBC News on Thursday. “He could­n’t go any­where. They sur­round­ed him.”

Sergeant Geraint Jones, 47, shared the altered image to a WhatsApp group of other police officers and colleagues in May.

By Ruby ‑Lott Lavigna

A British police offi­cer has been giv­en a final writ­ten warn­ing after shar­ing a “gross­ly offen­sive” doc­tored image of George Floyd’s arrest, mean­ing he will remain in his job.

Sergeant Geraint Jones, 47, admit­ted to gross mis­con­duct dur­ing an Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) inves­ti­ga­tion, which found he had breached the pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards of author­i­ty such as respect and cour­tesy, equal­i­ty and diver­si­ty, duties and respon­si­bil­i­ties, and that he had behaved in a man­ner that dis­cred­it­ed the police.

Jones sent the image to a WhatsApp group con­tain­ing police col­leagues and civil­ian staff from Devon and Cornwall Police in May 2020, just days after Floyd’s death. The altered image depict­ed a naked pic­ture of Wardy Joubert III super­im­posed over Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin kneel­ing on the neck of Floyd. In June this year, Chauvin was sen­tenced to 22.5 years for mur­der­ing Floyd.

The meme came to light after it was report­ed by a col­league in the WhatsApp chat. Two col­leagues respond­ed with laugh­ing emo­jis, however.

Jones was acquit­ted of any crim­i­nal charges at a hear­ing before a dis­trict judge at Plymouth Magistrates’ Court on the 21^st of April ear­li­er this year. But he still faced sep­a­rate dis­ci­pli­nary action by the UK police watch­dog, the IOPC

At some point in time, there has to be a reck­on­ing and a cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis done to deter­mine whether the col­lat­er­al dam­age done by law enforce­ment is worth the life, trau­ma, mon­ey, and oth­er costs asso­ci­at­ed with our quest for the sup­posed secu­ri­ty they offer?
As far as polic­ing is con­cerned, there are the ever-present periph­er­al issues attached to this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject, which in real­i­ty has pre­cious lit­tle to do with the sem­i­nal issue of police violence.
Black lead­ers in their zeal to attract light to the heat of police vio­lence do them­selves and the Black com­mu­ni­ty a dis­ser­vice by insist­ing that those side issues are cen­tral to fix­ing police violence.
By attach­ing Housing dis­crim­i­na­tion, men­tal health issues, pover­ty, lack of good-pay­ing jobs, or oth­er such issues to this debate, it actu­al­ly takes away from the cen­tral issue of police vio­lence because even among the Black com­mu­ni­ty’s most ardent sup­port­ers there are diver­gent points of view on each of the sub­jects named.

And so rather than gal­va­nize sup­port around the all-impor­tant issue of police vio­lence, peo­ple tend to lose inter­est as they feel the total­i­ty of what they are being asked to sup­port is too great.
Every social ill that plagues the Black com­mu­ni­ty is sep­a­rate and must be addressed separately.
Police have nev­er cared about how they treat Black peo­ple rich or poor, they know that they are pro­tect­ed statutorily.
Neither have they ever cared how they treat Black peo­ple liv­ing in big man­sions. The point is that it does not mat­ter how much mon­ey Black peo­ple have, American cops, have nev­er been mind­ful of how they treat Blacks, they know the pro­tec­tions they enjoy in law and pol­i­cy and those are the rea­sons they act with impuni­ty, dis­re­spect, and disregard.
Of the more than 18,000 police depart­ments most cops have nev­er been forced to pull their ser­vice weapons, for many of those depart­ments, polic­ing duties are con­fined to extract­ing tax­es from errant motorists, some law­ful, oth­ers manufactured.
The website(vera.org) argues suc­cinct­ly,[Police spend an inor­di­nate amount of time respond­ing to 911 calls for ser­vice, even though most of these calls are unre­lat­ed to crimes in progress. Many are for qual­i­ty-of-life issues like noise, blocked dri­ve­ways, or pub­lic intox­i­ca­tion. Others are for prob­lems like drug abuse, home­less­ness, or men­tal health crises that would be bet­ter resolved with com­mu­ni­ty-based treat­ment or oth­er resources — not a crim­i­nal jus­tice response. But even when the under­ly­ing prob­lem is minor or not crim­i­nal in nature, police often respond to ser­vice requests with the tool that is most famil­iar and expe­di­ent for them to deploy: enforce­ment. All of this exhausts police resources and expos­es count­less peo­ple to avoid­able crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem con­tacts. And man­ag­ing this large call vol­ume also pos­es oper­a­tional chal­lenges for police agen­cies.]

(Justice​.gov) stip­u­lates, Police are entrust­ed with an enor­mous amount of author­i­ty, includ­ing the author­i­ty to use force, and it is impor­tant that the police under­take these tasks in a man­ner that is legal, and also is respect­ful to com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, and is in keep­ing with local pri­or­i­ties. (For exam­ple, dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties may vary in their approach to cer­tain issues, such as the enforce­ment of fed­er­al immi­gra­tion laws or drug decrim­i­nal­iza­tion or legal­iza­tion.) Police agen­cies must also pro­mote trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty to demon­strate to the com­mu­ni­ty that offi­cers act fair­ly and impar­tial­ly and that there are sys­tems in place to detect mis­takes or abus­es of police author­i­ty. Public trust and coöper­a­tion are key ele­ments of effec­tive polic­ing and are lost when police engage in uncon­sti­tu­tion­al or unpro­fes­sion­al con­duct.

On these fun­da­men­tal issues no per­son, no mat­ter how pro-police, can make the case that police agen­cies are act­ing constitutionally.

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A for­mer Los Angeles police offi­cer has been charged in con­nec­tion with a 2019 shoot­ing inside a Costco in the city of Corona, California, where a men­tal­ly ill man was killed, and his par­ents were crit­i­cal­ly wound­ed, CBS Los Angeles reports.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Monday that Salvador Sanchez, a sev­en-year vet­er­an of the LAPD, has been charged with one count of vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter and two counts of assault with a semi­au­to­mat­ic hand­gun. He was tak­en into cus­tody Monday morn­ing in Riverside County.
On the night of June 14, 2019, Kenneth French, 32, of Riverside, and his par­ents, Russell and Paola, were shot by off-duty LAPD Officer Salvador Sanchez while in line at a sam­ple sta­tion at the CostcoKenneth, who has been described by his fam­i­ly’s attor­ney as schiz­o­phrenic and non­ver­bal, was killed. His par­ents were crit­i­cal­ly wound­ed but sur­vived. Both were shot in the back.

In September of 2019, a Riverside County grand jury declined to bring crim­i­nal charges; in the case, a deci­sion that sparked major protests at the time, per CBS LA. Grainy sur­veil­lance video appeared to show a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion between French and Sanchez pri­or to the shoot­ing. Sanchez, who had been hold­ing his 18-month-old son, fired 10 rounds from a hand­gun. In March 2021, Corona police released body­cam footage of their offi­cers respond­ing to the scene. In the footage, Sanchez tells offi­cers that he opened fire after believ­ing that he him­self had been shot.

The shoot­ing cre­at­ed chaos in the store, send­ing shop­pers scur­ry­ing for the exits. Corona police offi­cers had ini­tial­ly respond­ed to reports of an active shoot­er. The Los Angeles Police Commission lat­er deter­mined that Sanchez act­ed out­side depart­ment policy.

The Associated Press con­tributed to this report.

LOOK AT THESE COPS CARRYING OUT AN ARREST. ARE THESE PROFESSIONAL COPS, OR ARE THESE COMMON THUGS WHO SHOULD BE TREATED AS COMMON THUGS IN RETURN?

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fkillmoenews1%2Fstatus%2F1424561411682885632%3Fs%3D25%26fbclid%3DIwAR2jC11mAkHXQxb5rK2RPM5X4MPlFYYaGzYK-9zEWgA2K1gaimFbABJc3XA&h=AT3Sl0JrZnXrrnMUcDmLezJkmXKz8IWMboDivGn2FBMSxWRvao3jg7We5gBtT24FKwE1BY0UpDkKXMPJi_9CWUHyOej2ETLRUB2uLl_JbgVD3qoZYUEA2r5bcOFnHW8r2BRUeEky3GCk

In some munic­i­pal­i­ties across the United States shoot­ing inci­dents have gone up, accord­ing to [police] reports. In New York City, for exam­ple, there has been a 35.4% increase in mur­ders in the last two years, accord­ing to NYPD data, though mur­ders are down 2.4% in 2021 year-to-date com­pared to last year. Shooting inci­dents have sky­rock­et­ed data shows. There’s been a 15.8% increase from 2020 to 2021, year-to-date, data shows, and a 100% increase over the past two years.
My point is not to tar­get New York nor malign the NYPD, but they have been known to use all kinds of under­hand­ed tac­tics to get what they want or to make a point.
It is for those rea­sons as there are cries to defund the police after the George Floyd mur­der in 2020, and res­i­dents in large cities like New York City and oth­ers are seek­ing to reimag­ine what polic­ing looks like going for­ward, that we are wit­ness­ing these spikes in shoot­ings and oth­er vio­lent crimes.
We all remem­ber that this same police depart­ment car­ried out the first insur­rec­tion in New York City against Mayor Dinkins led by Rudolph Guiliani. We can­not for­get also that they turned their backs en masse on their boss, Mayor Bill de Blasio, as he deliv­ered an address. not exact­ly a mod­el to emulate.
In fact, this depart­ment has been noth­ing but a group of thugs, its mem­bers have rammed pro­test­ers with their tax­pay­er-fund­ed vehi­cles and bragged about run­ning peo­ple over, who were mere­ly law­ful­ly demon­strat­ing against injustice.

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

When polic­ing is looked at in terms of what it ought to rep­re­sent, (a) to the cit­i­zens it is sup­posed to pro­tect, (b) the cit­i­zens who pay for that ser­vice; the NYPD has been a shame­ful self-serv­ing fas­cist tool that serves its own interest.
On the 25^th of June of this year, I posed the ques­tion to you my read­ers; who exact­ly are the peo­ple doing the shooting”?
The ques­tion in no way negates the fact that there are many crim­i­nals out there tak­ing advan­tage of COVID-19 and the sense of uncer­tain­ty with polic­ing to com­mit crimes of opportunity.
However, it seems that some­thing is hap­pen­ing just under the sur­face, con­sid­er­ing that the FBI report­ed a large num­ber of Law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary mem­bers, past and present, were actu­al­ly a part of the January 20^th insur­rec­tion at the US Capitol.|
Conspiracy?
No!!!
I pre­sent­ed you with data and a pat­tern of cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that tends to lead toward a cer­tain conclusion.

I would not put it past police across the coun­try to have a heavy hand in this uptick in vio­lence to show that they are need­ed. I do not put it past a gullible pub­lic to lap it up and hire more of these uni­formed terrorists.

And then there is this story.
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Georgia Deputy Who Bragged About Beating Black Man, Claimed He’d Charge People with Crimes to Keep Them from Voting Is Sentenced on Weapons Charges.

A for­mer Georgia deputy and U.S. Marine who bragged in mes­sages with mem­bers of an extrem­ist group that he had bru­tal­ized a Black man in cus­tody and that he intend­ed to charge Black peo­ple with felonies to keep them from vot­ing were sen­tenced to three years and eight months in prison, plus one year of super­vised release on Aug. 3 in con­nec­tion with a weapons charge. Cody Richard Griggers, 28, plead­ed guilty in fed­er­al court on April 26 to one count of pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered firearm and faced up to 10 years in prison. Federal author­i­ties revealed in court in April that while Griggers was still work­ing as a Wilkinson County deputy, he told mem­bers of the “Shadow Moses” group via text, “I’m going to charge them with what­ev­er felonies I can; to take away their abil­i­ty to vote.”In the mes­sages, Griggers used extrem­ist lan­guage, claim­ing he’d beat­en a Black theft sus­pect and talk­ing about killing lib­er­al politi­cians. He also dis­cussed acquir­ing ille­gal firearms, explo­sives, and sup­pres­sors and made pos­i­tive ref­er­ences to the Holocaust.

Griggers was fired from the depart­ment in November after the FBI con­tact­ed the sher­iff about an inves­ti­ga­tion regard­ing ille­gal guns and a man who had made vio­lent polit­i­cal state­ments on social media.
“This for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer vio­lat­ed his oath of office in many ways, the most egre­gious was by threat­en­ing the very cit­i­zens he was sworn to pro­tect with his words of racial­ly moti­vat­ed vio­lence,” Chris Hacker, FBI spe­cial agent in charge of the Atlanta field office, said in a statement.
“Now he is being held account­able by serv­ing time in prison and nev­er being able to wear the blue again.”
FBI agents dis­cov­ered the group text with Griggers as part of a California inves­ti­ga­tion into a man mak­ing vio­lent polit­i­cal state­ments on social media. Authorities were search­ing the San Diego home of Grey Zamudio when they dis­cov­ered the Shadow Moses group text and saw the messages.
On November 19, 2020, a search of Griggers’ res­i­dence and his ser­vice vehi­cle yield­ed mul­ti­ple firearms, includ­ing an unreg­is­tered short bar­rel shot­gun in his home and a machine gun with an oblit­er­at­ed ser­i­al num­ber in the vehi­cle. The machine gun was not issued to Griggers, and he was not allowed to have the weapon in his law enforce­ment car. Officers found 11 ille­gal firearms in total between Griggers’ home and car.
In August 2019, Griggers texted the group about hav­ing beat­en a Black man.
“Oh, got wrapped up in my AR and for­got to tell y’all that I beat the sh‑t out of a n‑gger Saturday. (Expletive) tried to steal (a gun mag­a­zine) from the local gun store. … Sheriff’s dept. Said it looked like he fell,” Griggers said, accord­ing to an affidavit.
He described the beat­ing as “sweet stress relief.”
He also explained how he’d use polit­i­cal vio­lence to keep Black peo­ple from vot­ing. “Castrate, kill, remove vot­ing rights,” he wrote in an October mes­sage. “The only prob­lem is you can’t expect to get them all that way.”
“Law enforce­ment offi­cers should be above reproach, and the vast major­i­ty of them are. Cody Griggers dis­graced that trust by espous­ing vio­lent extrem­ism and pos­sess­ing a cache of unreg­is­tered weapons while on duty, includ­ing a machine gun with a silencer and oblit­er­at­ed ser­i­al num­ber,” said act­ing U.S. Attorney Peter D. Leary. “Officers are nev­er above the laws they swear to uphold, and I thank our law enforce­ment part­ners for help­ing us hold this dis­graced for­mer deputy account­able. On Tuesday, Griggers claimed he was only jok­ing when he made the offen­sive com­ments in the group text.
“They were jokes, but it’s noth­ing to joke about. It has a real impact,” he said tear­ful­ly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution report­ed

On Tuesday, Griggers claimed he was only jok­ing when he made the offen­sive com­ments in the group text. “They were jokes, but it’s noth­ing to joke about. It has a real impact,” he said tear­ful­ly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution report­ed.
Wilkinson County Sheriff Richard Chatman said there’s no evi­dence Griggers act­ed on his beliefs while work­ing as a deputy for under a year. He said the claim about the beat­en Black sus­pect did not happen.

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Even after this igno­rant racist piece of shit was bust­ed with ille­gal weapons, con­fessed that he had beat­en a black man, that he had con­coct­ed felonies and charged Black peo­ple with those felonies to pre­vent them from vot­ing, and after he com­mit­ted numer­ous felonies, not to men­tion vio­lat­ing his oath as a police offi­cer, a piece of shit judge gave him three years.
That is white privilege.
And to make mat­ters even worse, if that is pos­si­ble, the piece of shit sher­iff said he nev­er beat any Black person.
And so I ask again,” who are the peo­ple real­ly fir­ing the shots”?

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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.