At the time that a Pennsylvania politi­cian was run­ning for office sole­ly on the basis that he would pros­e­cute Bill Cosby FOR alleged sex­u­al mis­con­duct, I opined that selec­tive jus­tice is wrong regard­less of who the accused is.
Kevin Steele, a Democrat, ran for office in Montgomery County to become the dis­trict attor­ney. He was sub­se­quent­ly elect­ed after he cam­paigned for dis­trict attor­ney on the promise of becom­ing the first in the United States to charge come­di­an Bill Cosby with sex­u­al assault.

Steele’s stead­fast ani­mus against Cosby, real or per­ceived, result­ed in a sin­gle felony charge against Cosby, who has been accused of drug­ging and sex­u­al­ly assault­ing dozens of women dat­ing back to the 1960s.
The evi­dence used in pros­e­cut­ing Bill Cosby was evi­dence giv­en in a civ­il pro­ceed­ing; Mr. Cosby was assured by a court the evi­dence was sealed and could not be used against him in a crim­i­nal proceeding.
Kevin Steel was able to use that evi­dence to gain a con­vic­tion against the entertainer.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday over­turned Bill Cosby’s sex assault con­vic­tion, set­ting the stage for the release of the 83-year-old come­di­an lat­er in the day.
The state’s high­est court tossed Cosby’s con­vic­tion due to an agree­ment he had with a pri­or pros­e­cu­tor that would have pre­vent­ed Cosby from being crim­i­nal­ly charged in the case. This new rul­ing bars any retri­al in the case, accord­ing to court documents.

Laws can be good or bad, depend­ing on the intent of the framers. The Georgia Voter Suppression Laws, which came out of the Trump elec­tion lies are bad because they intend harm to cer­tain seg­ments of the Georgia pop­u­la­tion and to ben­e­fit others.
The 90’s drug laws end­ed up caus­ing untold harm to Black and Brown Communities, even though tough laws were need­ed to stem the tide of killings with­in the Black com­mu­ni­ty from the trade of illic­it drugs.
In New York City, Rudolph Guiliani, a racist dem­a­gogue, rode to pow­er on an anti-black back­lash of the city’s first African-American Mayor, David Dinkins.
His racist con­tem­po­rary Donald Trump did the same thing nation­al­ly, on the back of the Nation’s first African-American President, Barack Obama.

The bro­ken win­dows pol­i­cy that Guiliani ini­ti­at­ed, and which Michael Bloomberg con­tin­ued may not have been bad, in that it allows police [act­ing with integri­ty] to use their local knowl­edge and polic­ing instincts to stop where war­rant­ed, peo­ple they rea­son­ably sus­pect of car­ry­ing weapons and frisk them.
If the police car­ried out that func­tion with respect, with­out vio­lat­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al rights or demean­ing, embar­rass­ing, and crim­i­nal­iz­ing peo­ple they do not like, it would have worked fine.
But NYPD offi­cers used the new pow­ers to cre­ate hell for peo­ple they did not like aid­ed and abet­ted by a dem­a­gog­ic socio­path­ic & racist Mayor.
Speaking as a for­mer police offi­cer, albeit in a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment, we had the legal option of stop­ping peo­ple we rea­son­ably sus­pect­ed of car­ry­ing weapons, and true to form, we uti­lized those options with marked success.
Those options were not with­out crit­i­cism; nonethe­less, despite those suc­cess­es, our depart­ment did not have the good sense to mea­sure them so that a cred­i­ble response could be formulated.

During Guiliani’s long and divi­sive tenure as Mayor of New York City, crime went down in the city as it did nation­al­ly. However, his time at the helm was fraught with anx­i­ety and dis­trust between the city’s many communities.
Guiliani would have been hap­py nev­er to see the face of an African-American per­son in New York City ever. That enmi­ty and hatred guid­ed how police exe­cut­ed his bro­ken win­dows policy.
Fast for­ward to Trump’s pres­i­den­cy, and that same enmi­ty and hatred guid­ed his National pol­i­cy, one that was always at odds with African-Americans, and one that would have but for wis­er heads, result­ed in American troops open­ing fire in 2020 on peace­ful African-American and oth­er pro­test­ers that were demon­stra­tion for racial justice.
It is not a bad idea for a crim­i­nal­ly intent per­son who picks up a gun and goes onto a New York City street to under­stand that there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that he will be stopped and arrest­ed by the police.
On the oth­er hand, every­one should feel safe that when they leave their homes, the last thing they have to fear is police offi­cers who are paid by their tax dol­lars throw­ing them against walls, beat­ing them, and man­u­fac­tur­ing crim­i­nal charges against them because of any iden­ti­fy­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics, usu­al­ly the col­or of their skin.

Guiliani’s anti-Black invec­tives aid­ed the NYPD in fol­low­ing a path along stop-and-frisk that was borne out in the num­bers. Disproportionate num­bers of African-Americans and Latin X peo­ple abused beat­en and arrest­ed while only a small amount of weapons were found.
In the end, the NYPD’s own record­ing showed that peo­ple of col­or suf­fered more than whites, were incar­cer­at­ed and abused even though they did not com­mit any crimes before their inter­ac­tions with mem­bers of the NYPD.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice; Concerns about the pro­gram first arose under Mayor Rudy Giuliani dur­ing William J. Bratton’s first tenure as police commissioner.2 After grow­ing slow­ly in the ear­ly 2000s, stop-and-frisk began to rapid­ly increase in 2006, when there were 500,000 stops city­wide. By 2011 the num­ber peaked at 685,000. It then began to fall, first to 533,000 stops in 2012. Stop-and-frisk became a cen­tral issue in the 2013 city may­oral race because of a con­cern that the pro­gram uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. The program’s sup­port­ers dis­put­ed this, insist­ing that stop-and-frisk was essen­tial for fight­ing crime in such a huge city.

By the num­bers, the Brennan Center con­clud­ed the fol­low­ing; Statistically, no rela­tion­ship between stop-and-frisk and crime seems appar­ent. New York remains safer than it was 5, 10, or 25 years ago. As analy­sis by the Brennan Center has shown, a part of this was the intro­duc­tion of CompStat, which allowed police to con­sult data when mak­ing deci­sions about where and how to respond to crime.
Police and good polic­ing tech­niques are very impor­tant in fight­ing crime. But to know what works and what doesn’t, we need to lis­ten to the data.
For the most part, nei­ther law enforce­ment agen­cies nor the gov­ern­ment has cred­i­bly point­ed to a sin­gle defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic that is respon­si­ble for the down­ward trend crime took over the last two decades or so.
Law enforce­ment agen­cies and their prox­ies would have you believe that the upward tick in crime sta­tis­tics nation­al­ly and local­ly is caused by calls to defund the police, and racial jus­tice calls for account­abil­i­ty in policing.
It is a lie.
It is a red herring.
Please do not allow them to give police more ille­gal pow­er to vio­late rights; they already receive more resources than is nec­es­sary to do the job they are paid to do. Let them get up and do the job they are paid to do with­out favor or affec­tion, mal­ice or ill-will.
The coun­try deserves no less; at every turn, it is racist, mal-inten­tioned police offi­cers who cre­ate the mess that the laws were not intend­ed to create.

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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 strat­e­gy to put the police and evi­dence in seri­ous crim­i­nal cas­es on tri­al is noth­ing new; it is the right of defense lawyers to pull out all of the stops to get their clients out of jail.
However, one can­not resist the thought of whether, as offi­cers [of the court], some defense lawyers are not doing irrepara­ble dam­age to the insti­tu­tions of the rule of law? Or should I say what­ev­er is left of it?
The prac­tice of con­coct­ing mas­sive con­spir­a­cies in which the police always suf­fer a pub­lic rela­tions night­mare is com­mon­place. Yet defense lawyers in it for the mon­ey do not seem to care about the harm they are caus­ing when they attack the jus­tice insti­tu­tions to win their clien­t’s freedom.
Yes, I under­stand the need to mount vig­or­ous defens­es, but does that include tear­ing down the rule of law for a con­vict­ed murderer?
At what point does a lawyer say to them­self, this is wrong; I can­not do this?

Even as the con­sci­en­tious pon­der these things, the real­i­ty that defense lawyers are only doing their despi­ca­ble best must be con­tem­plat­ed in jux­ta­po­si­tion with the propen­si­ty of the court of appeals to inter­fere with the deci­sions of tri­al courts consistently.
Based on the appeals court record, the tri­al courts reduce the func­tions once the res­i­dent mag­is­trate’s court remit. That func­tion was to do pre­lim­i­nary exam­i­na­tions before a case is sent to the tri­al court for trial.
The res­i­dent mag­is­trate court’s job was to see if a pri­ma face case was made out by the pros­e­cu­tion, not to deter­mine inno­cence or guilt. Once a pri­ma face case was deemed to have been estab­lished, the case would be ele­vat­ed to the high­er tri­al court for trial.
By con­sis­tent­ly ignor­ing the doc­trine of stare deci­sis (let the deci­sion stand), pre­dictably inter­fer­ing in the ver­dicts of tri­al judges because of false claims made by unscrupu­lous defense lawyers, the court of appeals is destroy­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the tri­al courts.

Convicted crim­i­nal defen­dants with deep pock­ets have lit­tle to fear; the court of appeals is extreme­ly amenable to grant­i­ng all kinds of con­ces­sions to the con­vict­ed, as long as they have the right lawyers and enough mon­ey to spread around.
In one recent case, the court shaved two years off a con­vict­ed mur­der­er’s sen­tence. By doing so, the court changed the tri­al court’s sen­tence and gave the defen­dant the open­ing he need­ed to make new claims of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al impropriety.
It was exact­ly the open­ing the rapa­cious vul­tures who pos­ture as defense attor­neys needed.….they pounced claim­ing that the tele­phone which held the evi­dence which was crit­i­cal to the con­vic­tion of their client was tam­pered with by.….….wait for it.. the police.
The court quick­ly grant­ed the defense lawyers what they want­ed, which was to have a so-called defense expert exam­ine the device to see whether it was tam­pered with.
Here is the rub, how­ev­er, which the pub­lic needs to under­stand; even if the paid defense expert was to con­clude that the device was tam­pered with, how would they be able to say who tam­pered with it forensically?
Secondly, what­ev­er infor­ma­tion that would be phys­i­cal­ly stored on the device would also be in pos­ses­sion of the ser­vice provider.
Did the pow­er­ful police get into their com­put­ers too?

But isn’t that the whole point? Isn’t the scam to throw up so much smoke that there will be enough stink in the court of pub­lic opin­ion that the con­vict­ed mur­der­er will walk free, like so many have done before, and con­tin­ue to make music?
Isn’t the whole idea to throw enough shit at the wall and see what sticks? After all, the court did find a rea­son to shave some time from the sen­tence; why not just fly the gate?
The lat­est infa­mous gang­land fig­ure the appeals courts sprang from prison, Christopher Dog-paw Linton, is sit­ting real­ly pret­ty laugh­ing at the shitism that pre­tends to be a jus­tice system.
Why would Vybz Kartel be any dif­fer­ent? He has a large fol­low­ing of sheep and deep pock­ets, I pre­sume? With his mon­ey and fol­low­ing, he will be able to have him­self sprung from prison in short order.
What a fuck­ing joke.

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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.

One of the worst crimes one could com­mit against an American cop is con­tempt of cop. But, of course, con­tempt of cop is [not] a real offense. Still, to the lit­tle men and women who are empow­ered to take life, giv­en guns and badges, a few months train­ing basi­cal­ly on how to abuse and kill, blan­ket immu­ni­ty from account­abil­i­ty, you com­mit that offense at the per­il of death.
Cops com­mit heinous crimes every sin­gle day against cit­i­zens, black, brown, and white. Under no illu­sion that they will be held account­able, they com­mit crimes at will.
For Black cit­i­zens, the lev­el of vio­lence is always great­ly aggra­vat­ed, the lev­el of ven­om even after the unlaw­ful assaults shock­ing to watch.
But it is not only Blacks that suf­fer from police abuse; whites do too. Not all egre­gious actions by police end up in death, but a lot do.
Regardless of the heinous nature of police actions, police depart­ments drag their feet or do noth­ing on the bet­ter end of the spec­trum or fal­si­fy evi­dence and reports to jus­ti­fy the crimes their mem­bers com­mit even when they kill out­side of what is per­mis­si­ble by law. Otherwise, their crimes are inves­ti­gat­ed by oth­er neigh­bor­ing police depart­ments, which are equal­ly or more cor­rupt. So much for their depart­ments, not inves­ti­gat­ing themselves.
These atroc­i­ties are pos­si­ble because the great­est brunt of police vio­lence is felt by peo­ple of col­or or, more to the point, blacks.
As long as blacks are kept in their place, there is no rea­son to change any­thing. The uni­verse, how­ev­er, has its own ideas on jus­tice and fair­ness. As Martin Niemoller, for­mer German U‑Boat com­man­der and promi­nent Lutheran pas­tor dur­ing Adolph Hitler’s reign of ter­ror wrote in his screed,
(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 Niemoller.
In the video below, you will see and hear the media refer to the inci­dent refer to the pit maneu­ver as a clear case of exces­sive force, lan­guage nev­er used when the vic­tims are black.

»»»»»

Last June, Arkansas res­i­dent Nicole Harper was dri­ving near Jacksonville, Arkansas when Arkansas State Police troop­er Rodney Dunn pulled in behind her and sig­naled to her to pull over. Nicole Harper then did exact­ly what the Arkansas Driver License Study Guide tells dri­vers to do: she slowed down, put on her haz­ard lights, and looked for a safe place to pull over. Since the high­way shoul­der was very nar­row at that loca­tion, Harper began to dri­ve toward an exit ramp.
But although she did what she was sup­posed to do to “com­ply,” she didn’t com­ply fast enough for troop­er Dunn. Within two min­utes of flash­ing his lights, Dunn used a so-called “PIT” (pre­ci­sion immo­bi­liza­tion tech­nique) to cause Harper’s car to spin out and flip over. Dunn rammed his front bumper into the left rear edge of Harper’s car. Harper, who was preg­nant at the time, then careened across three lanes of traf­fic and flipped over.
Dunn then approached Harper’s car and informed her that she got what she deserved, stat­ing that because she didn’t stop fast enough, “this is where you end­ed up.”
Harper is now suing Dunn and oth­er mem­bers of the Arkansas State Police for “neg­li­gent­ly” using a PIT maneu­ver which put Harper’s life and the life of her unborn child at risk.

Naturally, rather than admit the offi­cer act­ed rash­ly in response to what was a “text­book” and rec­om­mend­ed response to a police traf­fic stop, the State of Arkansas will now use tax­pay­er funds to fight the law­suit in court.
State police claim that Harper chose to “flee” and that she was a dan­ger to oth­er dri­vers. Of course, many ratio­nal peo­ple view­ing the dash­cam footage of Dunn’s actions could just as eas­i­ly come to the con­clu­sion that by flip­ping Harper’s car, it was Dunn who was endan­ger­ing the public.
Harper’s attor­ney cor­rect­ly notes that Dunn chose to use dead­ly force against a preg­nant woman who was in the process of slow­ing down and look­ing for a safe place to pull over. Moreover, it is unlike­ly that Dunn had any knowl­edge of who was in the car and whether or not small chil­dren were inside.
Unfortunately, this is just the lat­est case of police employ­ing dead­ly force on cit­i­zens in the process of com­ply­ing with police orders. For exam­ple, in the case of Philandro Castile — who did exact­ly what he was sup­posed to do as a con­cealed-car­ry dri­ver — was shot dead while com­ply­ing with police orders. And then there was the case of Atatania Jefferson, who was shot dead in her own liv­ing room with­out even being giv­en a chance to com­ply. One might also con­sid­er the case of Phillip White, a 77-year-old, 140-pound blind man whose face was slammed into a tick­et counter by police because he wasn’t com­ply­ing fast enough with police orders. White was already hand­cuffed at the time.
In the Arkansas case, Harper’s law­suit is unlike­ly to have any per­son­al effect on Dunn, who, in accor­dance with Arkansas law, enjoys immu­ni­ty from any per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty for his actions. Dunn, who has received a tax­pay­er-fund­ed gov­ern­ment salary for more than thir­ty years, enjoys immu­ni­ty from any per­son­al lia­bil­i­ty in vir­tu­al­ly all cases.

The Supreme Court gives those crim­i­nals immu­ni­ty from per­son­al civ­il lia­bil­i­ty. State Prosecutors give them immu­ni­ty from crim­i­nal culpability.
As they con­tin­ue to engage in those activ­i­ties that are result­ing in seri­ous injury and death, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that the rea­sons for the stops in the first place are usu­al­ly non-vio­lent minor infractions.
However, as you heard the cop, the car­di­nal sin she com­mit­ted was not stop­ping when he [com­mand­ed] her to.
Be care­ful nev­er to com­mit the unfor­giv­able sin of con­tempt of cop, even if you did not intend to, and even if it is an offense made up by pow­er-trip­ping egomaniacs.

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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 often won­der how long it would take for Jamaica to become a first-world coun­try if we had the dis­ci­pline to become one?
How long would it be for the young work­force to be employed through pri­vate-sec­tor hir­ing, which would expo­nen­tial­ly broad­en the tax base, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers to be paid a liv­able wage?
How long would it be for real pros­per­i­ty to take shape (real pros­per­i­ty, not a cam­paign slo­gan), in a coun­try 4411 in total square miles, with under three mil­lion cit­i­zens, a coun­try in which pol­i­tics is not an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get rich, but an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be of ser­vice to the nation, out of love for our nation?
Idealistic? No, it is the way to build a coun­try and fast. But, unfor­tu­nate­ly, despite the façade and the oblig­a­tory protes­ta­tions of patri­o­tism, “nu weh nu bet­ta dan yaad,” we all know that most of our peo­ple would head for oth­er shores giv­en a chance.

Of course, most Jamaicans love Jamaica; what’s not to love about our beau­ti­ful coun­try? There is hard­ly any­thing not to like about Jamaica; the sun shines bright, the wind blows, and the land is fertile.
Jamaica has all of the com­po­nents to be self-suf­fi­cient, giv­en the right kind of gov­er­nance. But as Jamaicans, we have nev­er been ones to be both­ered with rules and discipline.
There is no rea­son we should be spend­ing scarce for­eign exchange on for­eign oil when we have the sun shin­ing year-round and the wind blow­ing gen­tly to sup­ply us with the ener­gy we need. Our oil con­sump­tion should only be for back­up pur­pos­es. Our farm pro­duce is sec­ond to none in qual­i­ty and safe­ty, yet we shell out tens of mil­lions to import unsafe American food prod­ucts that we can grow our­selves. Our young peo­ple are sec­ond to none in smarts and inno­va­tion, but our inabil­i­ty to har­ness their tal­ents expos­es them to lives of crime and caus­es them to look for green­er pastures.
We yearn for the pros­per­i­ty of oth­er nations, yet we lack the dis­ci­pline and the vision to do what they did to acquire the wealth and sta­bil­i­ty they possess.

To hell, with good soci­etal order, we try to force water uphill with­out a water pump. We will show you that the short­est dis­tance between two poles is [not] a straight line.
So we go our own way to demon­strate that we are a unique peo­ple who can bring pros­per­i­ty by chas­ing away investors, expand­ing pub­lic sec­tor hir­ing, instead of encour­ag­ing pri­vate sec­tor investment.
By (a) rad­i­cal­ly improv­ing our infra­struc­ture (b) putting a bootheel on vio­lent crime, © elim­i­nat­ing graft and cor­rup­tion in the pub­lic sector,& (d) mov­ing away from the idea of the wel­fare state that came into being dur­ing the 70s we could rad­i­cal­ly change our fortunes.
Instead of deal­ing deci­sive­ly with crime, the great­est threat to the nation’s sur­vival and growth, we pla­cate vio­lent crim­i­nals in a way that not only encour­ages them to con­tin­ue on the path they are on but cre­ates a per­ma­nent incu­ba­tor that breeds and nur­ture vio­lent young crim­i­nals to con­tin­ue lives of crime.

Instead of suf­fo­cat­ing the crime mon­ster, our lead­ers thought it bet­ter to allow a whole cot­tage indus­try to spring up in sup­port of the mur­der cul­ture. Bands, funer­al par­lors every­where, large cel­e­bra­tions at wakes, push­carts sell­ing from a pin to an anchor at death yards.
The macabre nature of busi­ness­es spring­ing up around the slaugh­ter of our fel­low coun­try­men and women should be lost on no one. It is self-per­pet­u­at­ing because we now have to con­tend with the dis­tinct real­i­ty of mur­ders for hire and mur­der just to feed the beast.
It real­ly is not too com­pli­cat­ed, but both polit­i­cal par­ties ben­e­fit from pover­ty and divi­sion. Both polit­i­cal par­ties ben­e­fit from the lack of polit­i­cal account­abil­i­ty. Both par­ties con­tin­ue to be seen as nec­es­sary to the sur­vival of those who can not help them­selves finan­cial­ly, which ben­e­fits them both.
As long as the peo­ple are will­ing to dress in par­ty col­ors and sup­port politi­cians who have no idea how to change their lives, our coun­try will con­tin­ue to be mired in pover­ty and vio­lent crimes…
Regardless of the bull­shit nar­ra­tive they recite to you.

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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 ran across an arti­cle in one Jamaican dai­ly. The min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty, Horace Chang, respond­ed to state­ments a dias­po­ra group con­cerned about crime made in response to the Government.
The group, obvi­ous­ly con­cerned about the nation’s crime sit­u­a­tion, has embarked upon a plan to set up a fund with the aim of rais­ing US$10-million to help the police secure much-need­ed equipment.
The group is report­ed­ly head­ed by a for­mer lance-cor­po­ral of the JDF Mark Parkinson. Mister Parkinson, not hav­ing faith in the coun­try’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship, report­ed­ly said, “No funds col­lect­ed under the pro­pos­al will be turned over to the Government or its agen­cies. “Our help will be project-based and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the JCF.” [Jamaica Constabulary Force].

The state­ment obvi­ous­ly drew the ire of Horace Chang, most like­ly offend­ed that an ordi­nary sol­dier and his peers could have the temer­i­ty to want to col­lect such a nice tidy sum of mon­ey and not hand it over for them to pilfer.
Said Chang;.»»»»»

” Any con­tri­bu­tion of that sort that comes into the coun­try does not go into the con­sol­i­dat­ed fund. It nev­er goes there.”
“They are free to raise the mon­ey, but they would have to give it to the Jamaican Embassy in Washington and through that to the police com­mis­sion­er’s office. I told them that in my recent town hall meet­ing with them.“Everything must come through the appro­pri­ate chan­nels, which is the embassy and then to the com­mis­sion­er’s office.“If ‘John Brown’ gives police sta­tion ‘A’ $500,000 and he is a nice guy, fine, but if ‘Mr. Jones’ comes, who is a big-time wheel­er-deal­er around the road and says he is giv­ing $500,000, and we refuse it, it will look like we are par­ti­san. All funds must come through the com­mis­sion­er’s office, and there­fore the police sta­tions don’t owe anybody.“
“The Government has put $54 bil­lion in the police over the past four years because we are avoid­ing that kind of pet­ti­fog­ging thing with the police. We are going to equip them as we have done.

“The Government’s posi­tion is that pro­pos­als to assist the police force from the Diaspora must come through the appro­pri­ate chan­nel, which is the embassy, and then it is direct­ed to the appro­pri­ate chan­nel which is the com­mis­sion­er’s office,” Chang said. “Manpower help can­not be done ad hoc. If a man wants to come and give a moti­va­tion­al lec­ture, we don’t have a prob­lem. In fact, one mem­ber of the Diaspora came down with some tech­ni­cal knowl­edge which we thought was very use­ful, and he was direct­ed to go to the com­mis­sion­er, and they are work­ing out some­thing. “I don’t know any­body who has made any sen­si­ble offer that we have reject­ed… and we wel­come any help from the Diaspora, as we did in the case I spoke about earlier.«««««

I got­ta be hon­est; I do not know how to respond to this gib­ber­ish, suf­fic­ing to say that the rank igno­rance of the Minister’s rant is rem­i­nis­cent of the men­tal­i­ty among the idiots who make up the two polit­i­cal parties.
Is there any won­der that the nation is over­run with vio­lent crime under the lead­er­ship of these igno­rant clowns?
At the same time that the min­is­ter was try­ing to cre­ate bar­ri­ers against help for the JCF, the same medi­um report­ed that there were sev­en peo­ple killed in a 48-hour period.
Suppose a group of Jamaicans is inter­est­ed in help­ing, whether, through finan­cial sup­port or tech­ni­cal or oth­er help, that ought to be a pri­or­i­ty for the Minister to meet with those indi­vid­u­als or groups and find ways to chan­nel their help where pos­si­ble to the JCF. Why would the group or indi­vid­ual be forced to go to Washington DC to coör­di­nate with the Jamaican Ambassador? On the con­trary, most Jamaicans would be hap­py to hop on a flight to Kingston to help coör­di­nate with the JCF, to offer what­ev­er help they want to impart.
In typ­i­cal Jamaican ver­nac­u­lar, the min­is­ter ‘wrenk and brite’, Jamaicans send home so much mon­e­tary help that the mon­ey we send back amounts to the Island’s num­ber two for­eign exchange earn­er. Additionally, many Jamaicans return as tourists; their mon­ey helps to sup­port the hotel industry.
Horace Chang should watch his stu­pid mouth, Jamaicans liv­ing over­seas deserves much more respect from these igno­rant clowns, and could some­one tell me why the fuck Chang has a prob­lem with pet­ti­fog­ging?
The dias­po­ra has every right to want to iron out every detail; it is some­thing Horace Chang should learn about.
The min­is­ter’s response val­i­dates my own per­son­al view that they do not want a capa­ble, well-equipped policed Department, as such a depart­ment will be a threat to their corruption.
We will have to wrest Jamaica away from these peo­ple; they have a sys­tem that works to facil­i­tate their cor­rup­tion, they do not want to upset that applecart.

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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 all for redemp­tion; God has been gra­cious to me beyond anything that I deserve, so I am the last to want to deny anyone grace. So even though I believe that the Court of Appeals still functions as a defacto law firm for violent murderers, my belief in the truer ideals of the rule of law are stronger than my disgust for the courts actions.
I am opposed to the release of Christopher Dog Paw Linton from prison on the frivilous grounds on which he was released; and even though I believe the court operates from a utopian place, I believe in the sanctity of the rule of law; on that note, I will live with the decision.
I still believe that the Jamaican courts are essentially friends to criminals; that the judges who populate them hide behind the theory of " an independt judiciary" to subvert the course of justice and exact their brand of liberalism on the jamaican people. They function ouside of the control of the people as unelected technocrats and are therefore not asnwerable to the people for the consequences of their actions.
They disregard the much vaunted doctrine of (stare decisis), let the decision stand, as if they have no duty to respect and consider it.
I hope Christopher Linton will see this grave error on the part of the court as a second chance; a chance for redemption and redress and not an opportunity to be exploited by him, one that signals to him that he can do as he pleases. Only time will tell.
The media's fascination with Linton ought to be of grave concern to all Jamaicans who respect he rule of law.
There are many teachers, nurses, police officers, social workers, and others,who are vastly more deserving of recognition,yet the media is focused on a man everyone knows is a violent criminal, granting him interview after interview as if he is a celebrity to be admired..
This is a violent killer who have been a scourge on the society and but for the corruption and incompetence of the criminal justice system, would be doing life without parole behind bars..

Today in the house of par­lia­ment idiots exists who con­tin­ue to make the case that vio­lent lyrics do not shape the opin­ions and world­view of our young­sters, even as mur­ders and vio­lent assaults con­tin­ue to increase each year.

VIOLENT CRIME

As the JCF under­goes its much-need­ed trans­for­ma­tion, I would like to give the gov­ern­ment cred­it for some of the improve­ments that have been made in the Constabulary.
On the ques­tion of uni­forms, it is past time for the police depart­ment to be trans­formed from the ridicu­lous red seams and shirt into func­tion­al blue den­im. I see some offi­cers wear­ing the den­im with the JCF insignia embla­zoned along with a match­ing cap; final­ly, it can’t be too dif­fi­cult to move our police offi­cers into this sim­ple attire.
On Monday in the Trafalgar road area, the police shootout is anoth­er exam­ple of the need for more and more train­ing and coör­di­na­tion of our offi­cers who are forced to deal with an ever more embold­ened crim­i­nal class.

Even as I applaud the out­come of this encounter, the event as it played out again brings into sharp focus the need for a more focused type of train­ing for our police officers.
The events that played out from at least two of the offi­cers are vast­ly infe­ri­or to how we were oper­at­ing in these same cir­cum­stances three decades ago; it was shame­ful, to say the least.
On the oth­er hand, I encour­age Prime Minister Andrew Holness to sit down and view this video. It ought to edu­cate him a lit­tle on what police offi­cers are forced to deal with dai­ly. It may also inform and alter his igno­rant utter­ances on police behav­ior as they do their sworn duties. The real police offi­cers of our coun­try do not go out seek­ing to harm or kill any­one; they are forced into sit­u­a­tions like the one in the video; when those occa­sions arise, every­one expects them to run toward the dan­ger and neu­tral­ize the threat.
The least our offi­cers deserve is your unmit­i­gat­ed sup­port and not some mealy-mouthed bullshit.

.

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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. 

By Clarissa-Jan Lim

Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Kueng alleged­ly vio­lat­ed Floyd’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights dur­ing a dead­ly arrest in 2020.

Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Kueng alleged­ly vio­lat­ed Floyd’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights dur­ing a dead­ly arrest in 2020.

Four for­mer Minneapolis police offi­cers were indict­ed by a fed­er­al grand jury Friday on charges that they vio­lat­ed George Floyd’s civ­il rights dur­ing an arrest last year in which Floyd was vio­lent­ly restrained and killed. Derek Chauvin, who crushed Floyd’s neck with his knee, is charged with vio­lat­ing Floyd’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to be free from unrea­son­able seizure and unrea­son­able force by a police offi­cer. Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng are charged with vio­lat­ing Floyd’s right to be free from unrea­son­able seizure after fail­ing to inter­vene on Chauvin’s use of unrea­son­able force. The three men and Thomas Lane, anoth­er for­mer offi­cer, are also charged with fail­ing to pro­vide Floyd with med­ical care.

Chauvin also faces sep­a­rate fed­er­al charges for a 2017 inci­dent in which he alleged­ly held a 14-year-old by the neck, beat them with a flash­light, and pressed his knee on their neck and upper back as they were hand­cuffed and not resisting.

Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s defense attor­ney, declined to com­ment on the fed­er­al charges.

A police offi­cer for near­ly two decades, Chauvin was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Floydin a high-pro­file state tri­al last month and is cur­rent­ly await­ing sen­tenc­ing in prison.

Lane, Thao, and Kueng are fac­ing a joint state tri­al in August.

Floyd was killed dur­ing an encounter with the four offi­cers on May 25 last year, after a gro­cery store employ­ee alleged that he used a fake $20 bill. Bystander video cap­tured Chauvin push­ing his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than nine min­utes as Floyd repeat­ed­ly begged for air and said he could not breathe.

The graph­ic video sparked a nation­al out­cry against police bru­tal­i­ty and racial injus­tice that rever­ber­at­ed around the world, and the four offi­cers were fired from the Minneapolis Police Department.

Providence, Rhode Island, police released body cam­era video after a man who was hand­cuffed by offi­cers died.

The footage is from one of sev­er­al offi­cers who respond­ed to a call around 12:30 a.m. ET Friday about a man, iden­ti­fied as Joseph Ventre, 34, scream­ing in the mid­dle of the street.

When the video begins, Ventre is heard yelling. Two oth­er offi­cers are already on the scene.

The three police offi­cers walk around a chain-link fence to a grassy field, where Ventre is seen rolling around on the ground.

Several min­utes pass before offi­cers approach Ventre and try to calm him down. Paramedics and sev­er­al oth­er offi­cers have just arrived at this point in the video.

“Buddy, relax your body,” one offi­cer says. “Relax your body, you’re OK.”

Ventre yells out indis­cernible words and at one point tells the offi­cer his name is David.

One of the offi­cers sug­gests they hand­cuff Ventre in the front. Instead, they try to direct him toward the para­medics but Ventre is still rolling on the ground.

Eventually, sev­er­al offi­cers attempt to hand­cuff him. After a short strug­gle, Ventre is placed in cuffs and lift­ed onto a stretcher.

The Providence Police Department said that Ventre was pro­nounced dead at the hos­pi­tal just before 2 a.m.

According to a police press release, Ventre was “pos­si­bly under the influ­ence of nar­cotics.” He was placed in hand­cuffs “to pre­vent injuries and for the safe­ty of res­cue per­son­nel,” the depart­ment said, not­ing his “errat­ic behavior.”

“The sub­ject con­tin­ued to refuse to com­ply with police com­mands and after a minor strug­gle, the sub­ject was placed on a stretch­er and into the Providence Fire Department res­cue where PFD per­son­nel began to per­form CPR,” police said.

The iden­ti­ties of the offi­cers involved have not been released. The case remains under investigation.

A legit­i­mate point could be made that the Andrew Holness-led Government has pro­vid­ed more ameni­ties to the police than pre­vi­ous administrations.
I do not have the pre­cise dol­lar amounts, nei­ther do I have the num­bers nec­es­sary to deci­sive­ly account for infla­tion in those dol­lar amounts today as opposed to yesteryear.
However, with the advent of social media and a savvy admin­is­tra­tion that under­stands the val­ue of social media and optics, we can clear­ly see that some improve­ments are being made.
If the idea is to trans­form the JCF into a show­piece, I under­stand the polit­i­cal optics. But, on the oth­er hand, I hard­ly believe that the Jamaican peo­ple who are law-abid­ing care about fan­cy titles and optics while their loved ones are being gunned down and see­ing their killers walk around scot-free.

New Police Stations, com­put­ers, and oth­er ameni­ties are all pos­i­tives that should be lauded.
On the oth­er hand, lets us tem­per the acco­lades. Let us under­stand that the gov­ern­men­t’s pri­ma­ry duty is to keep the pop­u­la­tion safe.
Unfortunately, for decades, the JCF has been the bas­tard child of gov­ern­ment work­ers. Officers have been asked to work in the most dilap­i­dat­ed and unsan­i­tary con­di­tions. In con­trast, oth­er work­ers have been bet­ter treat­ed, giv­en new offices with state-of-the-art ameni­ties as a mat­ter of course.
A case in point is the new plush offices cre­at­ed for INDECOM, an agency that takes none of the risk police offi­cers are forced to take but were giv­en the best con­di­tions to do what­ev­er they do. They are gov­ern­ment work­ers deserv­ing of no greater respect than our hard-work­ing police officers.
We should not be in the busi­ness of heap­ing acco­lades on politi­cians for doing what they are elect­ed to do.
On that note, I ask police offi­cers, past and present, not to look at these issues through a polit­i­cal lens but to see issues affect­ing polic­ing and the secu­ri­ty of our coun­try through the lens of impar­tial police officers.
One of the much-par­rot­ted nar­ra­tives we hear is that the police depart­ment is being transformed.
Good!!!

WHAT EXACTLY DOES TRANSFORMATION MEAN FOR THIS GOVERNMENT

Transformation is good, but what is the force being trans­formed from and into?
Supplying the police force with cars and motor­cy­cles is not a trans­for­ma­tion; that is com­pa­ny policy.
The police need to have cars, motor­cy­cles, and oth­er means of trans­porta­tion to do their jobs effectively.
On the one hand, the Prime Minister has been caus­tic against the police depart­ment and how it does busi­ness; one fact remains, despite his attacks, the police depart­ment was vast­ly more effec­tive than it is today in every sta­tis­ti­cal category.
The much-maligned ways ‘things were done’ reaped rewards that this new force can only hope to accom­plish. Let me be clear; it has nev­er been that our offi­cers were unable to han­dle the vio­lence pro­duc­ers; it has always been the polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence that has always hob­bled law enforce­ment in Jamaica. It is not that the force of today can­not han­dle the vio­lence pro­duc­ers; the same prob­lem of pol­i­tics in overt and covert ways still hin­ders crime-fight­ing on the Island.
In the past, politi­cians like the Prime Minister, his National Security Minister Horace Chang, and cer­tain­ly the so-called jus­tice min­is­ter Delroy Chuck have been imped­i­ments to the police doing their jobs effectively.
The admin­is­tra­tion can cre­ate new squads and slap­ping on them new fan­cy-sound­ing names like “rapid response teams, but the real­i­ty is that the prime min­is­ter and his team are not recre­at­ing the wheel they maligned and demo­nized; they are squads.
The Mobile reserve had a rapid response team from as far back as the 1970s and ’80s. Then, it was called the Honda squad; yup, it was a squad then, the rapid response team today is a squad...
So they can malign the old ways, the old squads, but I am here to say slap­ping a new fan­cy name to a group of guys on motor­cy­cles and pre­tend­ing that it means that you are trans­form­ing the force is laughable.”
I am very sup­port­ive of a trans­formed JCF.
One of the rea­sons that have impact­ed the high attri­tion rate from the JCF has been the incom­pe­tence and cow­ardice of the Force’s lead­er­ship and the under­ly­ing prob­lems of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in the Force’s operations.
As I applaud the gov­ern­ment for chang­ing the face of police sta­tions and sup­ply­ing the police with uni­forms and oth­er accou­ter­ments of the trade, it is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that unless the depart­ment gets the leg­isla­tive help, train­ing, and sup­port it needs to root out vio­lent offend­ers, it will be for nothing.

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

By Nathalie Baptist

On April 21, while attempt­ing to serve a war­rant, North Carolina police shot and killed Andrew Brown Jr., a 42-year-old Black man in Elizabeth City. The entire inci­dent was record­ed, since the offi­cers involved were wear­ing body cam­eras. But actu­al­ly see­ing the footage of the shoot­ing has been a chal­lenge for Brown’s fam­i­ly, lawyers, and the wider public.

Body-worn cam­eras are intend­ed to pro­vide trans­paren­cy into polic­ing. But they stop being a tool to pro­tect the pub­lic from police bru­tal­i­ty when the only peo­ple who end up with pro­tec­tion appear to be the cops who did the shoot­ing, as seems to be the case with the offi­cers who killed Brown. Body cam­era laws vary by state, but in North Carolina, local courts have author­i­ty over releas­ing footage. After the shoot­ing, a North Carolina state judge ruled that Brown’s fam­i­ly could see the entire tape with­in 10 days, but there would be no release to the gen­er­al pub­lic. In fact, Superior Court Judge Jeff Foster ordered the depart­ment to blur the faces and name tags of the police offi­cers involved. “The release at this time would cre­ate a seri­ous threat to the fair, impar­tial and order­ly admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice,” he said in his rul­ing.

Brown joins an ever-grow­ing list of high-pro­file deaths caught on police cam­eras. But, in many cas­es, instead of pro­vid­ing account­abil­i­ty, the cam­eras have most­ly served as the con­duit for a seem­ing­ly end­less and trau­ma­tiz­ing stream of police vio­lence. In the short clip that the victim’s fam­i­ly was allowed to see, they say that Brown had his hands on the steer­ing wheel as police fired bul­lets into his car. They called it not just a police shoot­ing but “an exe­cu­tion.”

I start­ed writ­ing about police shoot­ings and body cam­eras back in 2015 when the devices were her­ald­ed as one neat trick to fix polic­ing. Six years lat­er, the par­al­lels are strik­ing. Back then, after a string of high pro­file shoot­ings includ­ing Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed local police depart­ments with mil­lions of dol­lars to out­fit their law enforce­ment offi­cers with body cams. “The impact of body-worn cam­eras touch­es on a range of out­comes that build upon efforts to mend the fab­ric of trust, respect, and com­mon pur­pose that all com­mu­ni­ties need to thrive,” then Attorney General Loretta Lynch said.

But it quick­ly became clear that police body cam­eras wouldn’t trans­form polic­ing in the ways the Obama admin­is­tra­tion had intend­ed. In 2016, after Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police offi­cers shot and killed Alton Sterling, both cops who were on the scene said their body cam­eras “fell off.” That same year, a Washington, DC, police offi­cer sim­ply didn’t turn on his cam­era until after he shot Terrence Sterling. In oth­er instances, police depart­ments have delayed releas­ing the tape alto­geth­er, which leaves the pub­lic and the victim’s loved ones to spec­u­late on what happened.

It some­times seems as if the mere pres­ence of body footage becomes so threat­en­ing that it can inspire an exces­sive police response. When police depart­ments and local offi­cials agree to release videos of police killings, they often use it as a weapon. This week in Elizabeth City, a most­ly-Black town of approx­i­mate­ly 17,000 peo­ple, a num­ber of demon­stra­tors demand­ed to see the video that depict­ed Brown’s final moments. In response, the may­or declared a state of emer­gency, set a cur­few for 8:00pm each night, and the police appeared at the peace­ful protests wear­ing full riot gear.

Body cams did not cre­ate police account­abil­i­ty for the same rea­son that many pre­vi­ous attempts of reform have failed: The rank and file in the depart­ments resist change. As my col­league Laura Thompson report­ed ear­li­er this month, cops fre­quent­ly ignore new reforms, such as restric­tions on neck restrains and no-knock war­rants. In the after­math of George Floyd’s death a year ago in May, there have been many calls and pro­pos­als for reform­ing the police, includ­ing a com­pre­hen­sive bill intro­duced by the Democrats. The use of body cams holds a promi­nent place in all these pro­pos­als. But it turns out, body cam­eras are only as use­ful as police allow them to be.

The more you get a chance to look at the American crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, the more you see just how slant­ed it is against peo­ple of col­or. A clos­er look opens up a bird’s eye view of the col­lu­sion between police, dis­trict attor­neys, judges, and all of the play­ers through­out the sec­tor. It gives a clear­er view of how the sys­tem col­ludes to pro­tect police, the foot sol­diers of white supremacy.
Why would a leg­is­la­ture decide that police body cam­era footage is not pub­lic record? The cam­eras are pur­chased with tax dol­lars. Those dol­lars come from the pub­lic. The police are paid and retained by the pub­lic. Tax dol­lars finance those salaries and benefits.
A leg­is­la­ture in North Carolina decid­ed that the very devices that were agreed upon as a nec­es­sary tool to hold police account­able are not a pub­lic record is direct evi­dence that the states will do any­thing to cov­er up police crimes.
Never mind what they tell you about com­pro­mis­ing investigations.
There are times that it may be impor­tant to pre­serve the iden­ti­ty of peo­ple who may be caught up in those record­ings; how­ev­er, the idea that the pub­lic has no right as a blan­ket pol­i­cy to what they paid for is an attempt at pro­tect­ing police, even when they have bro­ken the law.
The gov­ern­ment should not be in the busi­ness of pro­tect­ing rogue agents of the state, not just police offi­cers, but all pub­lic employ­ees should be held up to the high­est standards.

ON ANOTHER NOTE

If you pre­vi­ous­ly ignored the atroc­i­ties that American police com­mit every day against black peo­ple, I get it.
If, how­ev­er, the Derek Chauvin killing of George Floyd did not spur some­thing inside you.…..you, my dear sir/​madam, may be desen­si­tized to the violence.
I get how you could say, ‘why both­er? It’s not affect­ing me’. I total­ly get that the sheer bru­tal­i­ty of it is too much to watch if you don’t have to. I mean, how many of us haven’t scrolled past the fly-infest­ed mouths of the scrawny near-dead peo­ple in the Sudan and Darfur? We tell our­selves that view­ing those images is counter-pro­duc­tive; they live too far away, there is noth­ing we can do? But are we real­ly telling the truth, or are we sim­ply try­ing to con­vince our­selves that we can­not change it?
Many years ago, my friend “Dillo,” a man I went to the police acad­e­my with, served in the Jamaica Constabulary Force with, asked me as we chat­ted in the Bronx, “how can you crit­i­cize the police and we were such no-non­sense police officers”?
I remind­ed Dillo of that con­ver­sa­tion as we chat­ted a few weeks ago. Dillo lives in Maryland and I in New York; we laughed as we reliv­ed those moments. I respond­ed to his ques­tion with one of my own, ” Dillo, did we do any of the things these cops are doing”?
Dillo looked me dead in the eyes that beau­ti­ful sum­mer day as we sat in his father’s yard, “you are right; I hate it when you are right.”
Our con­ver­sa­tion that day was over two decades ago; at the time, there were no cell phone cam­eras, sto­ries of police abus­es were per­son­al sto­ries that were relayed word of mouth, sto­ries of per­son­al pain, indi­vid­ual sto­ries that hard­ly got men­tioned in the news­pa­pers or on tele­vi­sion. When the media did both­er to car­ry a sto­ry of police abuse, they came with heavy loads of pro-police pro­logue; they were san­i­tized by a media that felt it had to pay homage to police even in the face of their most egre­gious crimes.
Television and cable chan­nels were inun­dat­ed with cop shows; we all remem­ber the cop shows that glo­ri­fied law enforce­ment and dem­a­gogued the bad guys.
It just fol­lowed that nine­ty per­cent of the time, the cops were white, and the bad guys were black. Sure we all watched and enjoyed Magnum PI, Miami Vice, and the litany of oth­er cop shows, what we failed to real­ize, .….…yes even us blacks, at that time was the indoc­tri­na­tion val­ue of those tele­vi­sion shows that solid­i­fied in our minds what Hollywood want­ed us to mem­o­rize, white equals good, black equals bad.

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF POLICE WORST INSTINCTS; ON WHAT PLANET COULD THIS BE JUSTIFIED OR OKAY?

Some argue that American Policing is [not bro­ken]; they say it is work­ing exact­ly as it was intend­ed to. I con­cur with that point of view. However, the brand of polic­ing that is occur­ring across the United States is so hor­rif­ic that there is no hope of resus­ci­tat­ing it. It is fun­da­men­tal­ly anti­thet­i­cal to the auton­o­my and dig­ni­ty of African-Americans.
The idea that offi­cers may exer­cise dis­cre­tion when deal­ing with the elder­ly, or infirm, peo­ple with men­tal issues, under­age kids, peo­ple under the influ­ence of alco­hol or drugs does not apply any­more. Far too often, we see police show up to deal with sim­ple sit­u­a­tions and make the mat­ter expo­nen­tial­ly worse because of their frag­ile egos.
Far too many cops are robot­ic oppres­sors who ele­vate shit­ty traf­fic stops they orches­trate, they then goad and intim­i­date and final­ly end up abus­ing the motorist, usu­al­ly peo­ple of col­or, to gain felony arrests or worse, the dri­ver ends up dead at the hands of police for hav­ing com­mit­ted no crime, no offense.
Tasers are used to exact pun­ish­ment for con­tempt of cop, guns for lit­tle girls with knives, for a black man who dares to offend bul­lets to the back is the accept­ed punishment.
The American cop is now judge, jury, and exe­cu­tion­er, the judi­cial sys­tem mere­ly rub­ber-stamp the atrocities.
The police are not the only part of the equa­tion that’s rot­ten; it runs the gamut from the low-lev­el cops on the beat all the way to the leg­is­la­ture, the Governor’s man­sions, and all the way to the top at the fed­er­al lev­el. See; https://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​L​a​r​r​y​_​K​r​a​s​ner.
The cor­po­rate media does lit­tle or no report­ing on police mis­con­duct across the United States, save and except for the snip­pets flashed across their tele­vi­sion screens for a few sec­onds, before mov­ing on to oth­er fluff pieces. Nowadays, they are forced to report on the inci­dents of police vio­lence not out of jour­nal­is­tic pru­dence but out of necessity.
The pub­lic’s atten­tion is focused on social media nowa­days; there, events are uploaded in real-time, gar­ner­ing mil­lions of eyeballs.
But for inde­pen­dent report­ing from cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists, in the lynch­ing of George Floyd and the brav­ery and pres­ence of 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, the world would nev­er get to see what the police are doing. PBS has done good report­ing of late notice­ably in its project (Philly DA), speak­ing of District Attorney Larry Krasner.
Other pub­lic report­ing orga­ni­za­tions and blogs have now begun to focus on the prob­lem. Still, noth­ing has been more effec­tive than the cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists who have stood their ground and record­ed with their mobile phones.

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

THEY KILL BECAUSE THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT, NOT BECAUSE IT IS RIGHT OR EVEN NECESSARY.

A white sheriff’s deputy in the San Francisco Bay Area shot and killed a Black man in the mid­dle of a busy inter­sec­tion about a minute after try­ing to stop him on sus­pi­cion of throw­ing rocks at cars last month, the new­ly released video showed.
Graphic body cam­era footage show­ing Deputy Andrew Hall shoot­ing Tyrell Wilson, 33, with­in sec­onds of ask­ing him to drop a knife was released Wednesday, the same day pros­e­cu­tors charged Hall with manslaugh­ter and assault in the fatal shoot­ing of an unarmed Filipino man more than two years ago. The charges came a day after for­mer Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was con­vict­ed of killing George Floyd, a Black man whose death last May helped spark a nation­al reck­on­ing over racial injus­tice and police brutality.
The new video in California shows Hall call­ing out to Wilson and walk­ing toward him on March 11 as Wilson walked away. Wilson even­tu­al­ly turns to face the deputy, hold­ing a knife, and says, “Touch me and see what’s up.”
As they stand in the inter­sec­tion, Hall asks him three times to drop the knife as Wilson motions toward his face, say­ing, “Kill me.” Hall shoots once, and Wilson drops to the ground as dri­vers watch and record video.

The entire con­fronta­tion last­ed about a minute. An attor­ney for Wilson’s fam­i­ly released anoth­er video Thursday tak­en by some­one who stopped at the inter­sec­tion. “It doesn’t seem like he was doing any­thing,” some­one says. After Hall shoots Wilson, which can be clear­ly seen in the video, anoth­er per­son says, “Oh, my God. … This dude just got shot and killed, bro.” Attorney John Burris said Hall was unnec­es­sar­i­ly aggres­sive toward Wilson, who was not caus­ing any prob­lems and was back­ing away from the deputy before he was shot with­out warn­ing. “This is a home­less man, he’s walk­ing away, mind­ing his own busi­ness. He’s basi­cal­ly say­ing go away, leave me alone,” Burris said. “You felt com­pelled to kill him.” Contra Costa County Sheriff David Livingston said the videos show Wilson was threat­en­ing Hall and was pos­si­bly throw­ing rocks at dri­vers. “He did threat­en Officer Hall,” Livingston said. “And he did start advanc­ing toward Officer Hall in the mid­dle of a major inter­sec­tion. Officers are forced to make split-sec­ond deci­sions to pro­tect them­selves and the pub­lic, and that’s what hap­pened here.” Hall worked for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office, which was con­tract­ed by the city of Danville to pro­vide polic­ing ser­vices. Prosecutors have faced inten­si­fy­ing out­cry after Wilson’s death, with crit­ics say­ing they took too long to make a deci­sion in the 2018 killing that Hall car­ried out. The deputy shot 33-year-old Laudemar Arboleda nine times dur­ing a slow-mov­ing car chase.

Burris, who also is rep­re­sent­ing Arboleda’s fam­i­ly, said that if pros­e­cu­tors had act­ed more quick­ly in the Arboleda case, Wilson might still be alive. Burris said both men were men­tal­ly ill. The Contra Costa County dis­trict attorney’s office said it charged Hall with felony vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter and felony assault with a semi-auto­mat­ic firearm in Arboleda’s death. “Officer Hall used unrea­son­able and unnec­es­sary force when he respond­ed to the in-progress traf­fic pur­suit involv­ing Laudemer Arboleda, endan­ger­ing not only Mr. Arboleda’s life but the lives of his fel­low offi­cers and cit­i­zens in the imme­di­ate area,” District Attorney Diana Becton said in a news release.
Hall’s attor­ney, Harry Stern, said pros­e­cu­tors pre­vi­ous­ly deemed the deputy’s use of force in the 2018 case jus­ti­fied, “giv­en the fact that he was defend­ing him­self from a lethal threat. The tim­ing of their sud­den rever­sal in decid­ing to file charges seems sus­pect and overt­ly polit­i­cal.” Deputies slow­ly pur­sued Arboleda through the city of Danville after some­one report­ed a sus­pi­cious per­son in November 2018. The sheriff’s depart­ment video shows Hall stop­ping his patrol car, get­ting out, and run­ning toward the sedan dri­ven by Arboleda. Hall opened fire and kept shoot­ing as Arboleda’s car passed by, strik­ing him nine times. Hall tes­ti­fied at an inquest that he was afraid Arboleda would run him over. The dis­trict attorney’s office says Wilson’s shoot­ing is being investigated.

Now that a sim­ple release of the infor­ma­tion has addressed the vex­ing issue of the police com­mis­sion­er’s salary, it begs anoth­er question.
What exact­ly are the rea­sons that these kinds of infor­ma­tion are not avail­able to the pub­lic through cod­i­fied laws?
Other ques­tions include the pow­er giv­en to the Office of the Service Commission (OCS) to decide out­side the peo­ple’s say-so, whether the infor­ma­tion is released to the public.
On its face, it appears that we are not a coun­try of laws but one in which the tax­pay­ers are mere serfs; the lumpen that pro­duces the resources through their hard work, but which gets no say in the decision-making.
The Salaries of the Commissioner of Police, oth­er Senior Officers of the JCF, and oth­er pub­lic ser­vants, should not be a secret. If not for the amount they are paid, (of course, the pub­lic pre­vi­ous­ly had no idea how much), but for account­abil­i­ty and mea­sur­a­bil­i­ty. The secre­cy around those con­tract details and the reluc­tance to release those details to the tax-pay­ing pub­lic were not hall­marks of a demo­c­ra­t­ic society.
Jamaicans have always need­ed to know just how much the nation’s top secu­ri­ty offi­cials are being paid, and cor­rect­ly so. Even when not for­mal­ly edu­cat­ed, the peo­ple are ful­ly edu­cat­ed in their under­stand­ing of the need for account­abil­i­ty on this all-impor­tant issue of nation­al security.
Jamaicans, even the least for­mal­ly edu­cat­ed, under­stand the cost of vio­lent crime, the trau­ma it pro­duces to fam­i­lies and vic­tims who are left behind to pick up the pieces. This is so, even though not every­one may ful­ly appre­ci­ate the eco­nom­ic and soci­etal cost crime impos­es on the nation.
Consequently, the job per­for­mance of the Commissioner of police has always been tied to the crime sta­tis­tics; in fact, every sin­gle Commissioner of Police has been hired and fired sole­ly based on the crime sta­tis­tics. This is not a nov­el con­cept, it is the met­ric used across the board even in devel­oped soci­eties. What else is there?
Since com­mis­sion­er Antony Anderson was hired the nation has been kept in the dark about the terms of his con­tract. This is cer­tain­ly not Anderson’s fault, it goes to a lack of laws and accountability.
But at the end of Anderon’s first con­tract peri­od and the begin­ning of anoth­er, it can­not be that a small bunch of elites alone gets to decide whether Anderson did a good job, or gets to change the met­ric of mea­sure­ment pre­vi­ous­ly used to decide suc­cess and fail­ure, we do not live in a dictatorship.

It is hard­ly the amount that the Commissioner is paid. The $18 mil­lion pay pack­age is hard­ly a block­buster salary, (if the num­ber giv­en is cor­rect); you can nev­er trust what they tell you in Jamaica; it has to be about his performance.
It is the barom­e­ter that all ser­vants of the pub­lic are mea­sured by. Performance is what pri­vate-sec­tor employ­ees are mea­sured by; it is what gov­ern­men­tal admin­is­tra­tions are mea­sured by.
The shock­ing real­i­ty is that we are now being told that Antony Anderson should not be judged by the same stan­dards that oth­ers before him were, but we should not wor­ry about the num­ber of dead bod­ies; we should focus on oth­er things that they in their infi­nite wis­dom decree as per­for­mance indicators.
Local media report­ed that Gordon Shirley, who heads the ser­vice com­mis­sion, says that the com­mis­sion has month­ly meet­ings with the police com­mis­sion­er that deal with the force’s per­for­mance and Anderson’s own role.
Professor Gordon Shirley is a for­mer head of the University of the West Indies UWI). Another so-called secu­ri­ty expert[sic] Professor Anthony Clayton, you guessed it .….. from the UWI chimed in that quote; “The grav­i­ty of the crime prob­lem, linked to issues such as poor par­ent­ing and socio-eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal fac­tors, means com­mis­sion­ers like Anderson face an uphill task and could jus­ti­fy even more pay for the for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advisor.”
So true, but what about account­abil­i­ty? No men­tion of the crime sta­tis­tics but a case for even bet­ter pay for Anderson.
Why were the for­mer mem­bers who slaved their entire adult lives in the JCF not giv­en the same def­er­ence and understanding?

According to the Gleaner, Howard Mitchell, who was among the crit­ics of the OSC’s deci­sion to ini­tial­ly block access to the con­tract, and Rear Admiral Lewin sup­port­ed the prin­ci­ple of dis­clo­sure but cau­tioned against reveal­ing the per­for­mance tar­gets. “Targets are going to be a slid­ing thing. You’ve got to appre­ci­ate that cir­cum­stances and con­di­tions change, and those things can have an effect on tar­gets,” Lewin said, adding that he did not recall nego­ti­at­ing his terms of ref­er­ence with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary dur­ing his tenure. “One has to be real­is­tic and care­ful about tar­gets. I know what peo­ple will imme­di­ate­ly think about is the num­ber of mur­ders and shoot­ings. You don’t want to get into a posi­tion that the first thing you try to do is cre­ate dif­fer­ent squads because you are being pushed. It’s not just a ques­tion of sta­tis­tics,” said the for­mer commissioner.
“It is not a ques­tion of sta­tis­tics”? What is it about? Dead bod­ies do not count?
The sad real­i­ty is that Antony Anderson has friends in high places, some­thing many of the for­mer top cops did not have, even though they may have attend­ed the same putrid pool of intel­lec­tu­al dishonesty.
His friends are now ask­ing the Jamaican peo­ple to ignore the sole met­ric that defines per­for­mance and focus instead on a non-dis­tin­guish­able met­ric defined by them.
The gall of such a the­o­ry is stun­ning in its capri­cious­ness. In a recent report on his tenure, the Gleaner reports that Anderson not­ed mur­der reduc­tions in com­mu­ni­ties where SOEs were declared, the arrest of 167 gang­sters, and a clear-up rate (when the police charge a sus­pect), mov­ing from 39 per­cent in 2019 to 53 per­cent in 2020.
To a for­mer mem­ber like this writer, using the clear-up rate as a per­for­mance mark­er for the com­mis­sion­er is the equiv­a­lence of a drown­ing man clutch­ing at straws. If the clear-up rate is to define any­one’s suc­cess it ought to go to the detec­tives and oth­er offi­cers who remove vio­lent crim­i­nals from the streets, not the CP.
The truth is that using the stats from areas where SOEs were declared is decep­tive and dis­hon­est. Crime does go down in areas in which SOEs are declared, but they spike in oth­er areas as crime pro­duc­ers move to oth­er turfs.
Never before has a police com­mis­sion­er been judged because crime went down in a sin­gle area. The Police com­mis­sion­er is head of secu­ri­ty for the entire coun­try, not for areas in which SOEs are declared.
This attempt to dis­tort the nar­ra­tive on Anderson’s behalf is almost laugh­able in its weakness.
Absent from these dis­cus­sions are the views of the career offi­cers who have come up through the ranks, past and present.
We now have a police force that is ful­ly con­trolled by the views of left­ist elites from the University of the West Indies.
Success is what they say it is; ignore the dead bodies.

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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.