A joint Police Military Operation in the Norwood sec­tion of Saint James this morn­ing result­ed in ille­gal weapons and ammu­ni­tion being recovered.
The secu­ri­ty forces also found a police offi­cer’s cap.

It is not yet clear if the cap has any con­nec­tion to the weapons and ammu­ni­tion found.
More to comes as infor­ma­tion becomes available.

Bullet cas­ings still lit­tered the ground on Friday in Coatepec Harinas, a trou­bled munic­i­pal­i­ty south­west of Mexico City, a day after 13 police offi­cers on patrol were bru­tal­ly mur­dered in an ambush by sus­pect­ed gang members.
Forensic teams and dozens of heav­i­ly armed police and mil­i­tary offi­cials gath­ered at the cor­doned-off crime scene with check­points in place after what was one of the worst mass slay­ings of Mexican law enforce­ment offi­cials in years.
Some res­i­dents looked on from their homes, shak­en by the vio­lence that rocked the small town nes­tled between ver­dant hills and corn­fields, where most peo­ple make their liv­ing cul­ti­vat­ing crops.
Local police said crime is com­mon there, but Thursday’s ambush was par­tic­u­lar­ly har­row­ing for local peo­ple, with bul­lets straf­ing some of their homes.

The con­voy of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel was attacked in broad day­light by gun­men as it patrolled the area about 40 miles (64 km) south of the city of Toluca, author­i­ties said.
The attack­ers round­ed up the bod­ies of the fall­en police offi­cers into a pile and con­tin­ued to spray them with bul­lets, accord­ing to a local offi­cer at the scene on Friday. “They fin­ished them off,” said the offi­cer, who declined to give his name. He had lost col­leagues in the ambush, he said.
Local res­i­dent Guadalupe Flores, 26, said she heard the shoot­ing direct­ly out­side her win­dow when it start­ed. She had just fin­ished feed­ing her baby and, fear­ing for their lives, took the child and hid at the back of the house until the vio­lence was over about a half-hour lat­er. “I was ter­ri­fied for my girl… It sound­ed hor­ri­ble,” Flores said, point­ing at the bul­let cas­ings in her dri­ve­way and bul­let holes on the cement wall of her home. Men cursed loud­ly at each oth­er in her dri­ve­way dur­ing the shoot­ing, she said.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday vowed to bring the killers to justice.
“We are filled with sor­row about what hap­pened in the State of Mexico,” he said at a reg­u­lar news con­fer­ence, refer­ring to the state where the killings occurred. There will be no “immu­ni­ty” for any­one, he added.

THE JAMAICAN PRIME MINISTER HAS DEMONSTRABLY MADE IT CLEAR, THAT HE CARES MORE ABOUT PRESERVING THE LIVES OF VIOLENT MURDERERS THAN PROTECTING THE JAMAICAN PEOPLE FROM THEM.

The Jamaican Prime Minister’s insis­tence in the Parliament on Thursday that Zones Of Special Operations have been an effec­tive crime-fight­ing tool is a win­dow into his state of delu­sion on crime.
As he berat­ed the hap­less Political Opposition for what he views as its non-sup­port for the con­tin­u­a­tion of the (ZOSO) mea­sure, Andrew Holness chid­ed the oppo­si­tion; “It is incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing that right when we had applied the right mea­sures, the right tools to show that [we can use the secu­ri­ty forces with­out vio­lence], we can give extra­or­di­nary pow­ers, greater account­abil­i­ty, as we can get results, for polit­i­cal rea­sons, it was oppose, oppose, oppose at every turn.”
Holness’s asser­tion that the secu­ri­ty forces were able to oper­ate with­in the Zones of Special Operations to car­ry out their func­tions, makes as much prac­ti­cal sense as say­ing that the police need to have a secu­ri­ty detail pro­tect­ing them, in order for them to do their jobs.
That infer­ence alone speaks to the seri­ous­ness and the lethal­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion the secu­ri­ty forces face as they try to bring order to the ghet­tos. It is exact­ly for those rea­sons that the Jamaican leader should butt-out of police work and allow the offi­cers to go after the bad guys.
I won’t both­er to address the Prime Minister’s state­ments on the per­ceived reduc­tions in vio­lent crime in areas where the ZOSOs were initiated.
The prac­ti­cal real­i­ty is that, of course, vio­lent crimes went down in the areas in which large groups of police offi­cers and sol­diers were camped out.
The real­i­ty is that vio­lent crimes went up in areas pre­vi­ous­ly untouched by vio­lent crimes.

Andrew Holness “There is no doubt that our use of the SOEs has worked to reduce mur­ders and shoot­ings wher­ev­er they have been dis­played. I remain proud that this Administration was able to deploy and imple­ment a frame­work to enable our secu­ri­ty forces to use extra­or­di­nary pow­ers and enhanced mea­sures with­out vio­lence to any cit­i­zen or result­ing in the death of any cit­i­zen.
Holness’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with “not doing vio­lence to any cit­i­zen” lies at the heart of the nation’s crime dilem­ma. Criminals do not care who they kill, but the Jamaican Prime Minister from the crime-infest­ed Spanish Town area is dead set that as long as he occu­pies Jamaica House, he will stand in the way of vio­lent mur­der­ers get­ting their just due.
Mister Prime Minister, when a crim­i­nal decides to mur­der their coun­try­men, they have no right to be referred to as ‘cit­i­zens.”
Why are you intent on sac­ri­fic­ing the Jamaican peo­ple for the blood-thirsty demons, many of whom hail from your area of Spanish Town?
While Andrew Holness con­tin­ues to run pro­tec­tion for the crim­i­nals run­ning around killing and rap­ing, unpro­tect­ed Jamaicans are ask­ing who is look­ing out for us?
To sug­gest that he is proud that crime went down in the areas in which ZOSOSs oper­at­ed is almost retard­ed in its inconsequentiality.
Tell the peo­ple in the peace­ful ham­lets and vil­lages who had their once peace­ful and tran­quil com­mu­ni­ties tak­en over by migrat­ing gang­sters how proud you are.
Tell them just how proud you are that you foist­ed upon them vio­lent killers who are now rob­bing and rap­ing their children.

The Prime Minister is engag­ing in the most trans­par­ent­ly cyn­i­cal form of pol­i­tics when he stands in the peo­ple’s House and berates the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion for with­draw­ing its sup­port from a failed strat­e­gy that burns out mem­bers of the Security Forces, pro­duces no last­ing pos­i­tive results, and trans­plants vio­lent crim­i­nals into once-peace­ful communities.
I urge the Prime Minister to tell the nation from the same par­lia­ment what coun­try he knows of that has police and sol­diers stand­ing around in com­mu­ni­ties as a law enforce­ment mea­sure for extend­ed peri­ods of time.
Holness’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with pro­tect­ing the lives of vio­lent mur­der­ers, as you have heard from his own mouth, goes to the heart of the cal­lous­ness and the dar­ing of the men who are tak­ing lives in our country.
They under­stand that they have a pro­tec­tor and a defend­er in the most pow­er­ful office in our country.
Why on God’s green earth would a leader of any coun­try wor­ry more about vio­lent mur­der­ers meet­ing their mak­er than inno­cent, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens being pro­tect­ed from them?

As vio­lent crimes, includ­ing mur­ders, con­tin­ue to over­whelm the Jamaican peo­ple on his watch, the Prime Minister and his team, includ­ing the Medical doc­tor Minister of National Security and [won­der­boy], the army gen­er­al is now a top cop, have no clue. So they revert to the tired old tropes and lies about the poten­tial of zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions and states of emergencies.
Holness’s obses­sion with pleas­ing his han­dlers in Washington DC can­not come at the expense of any more inno­cent Jamaican lives.
Since he can­not be a leader who is unafraid of get­ting his hands dirty, he should lev­el with the peo­ple so that they may choose a leader to lead them out of this quagmire.
This Prime Minister’s world-view is shaped by his upbring­ing and school­ing; it dis­qual­i­fies him from pro­vid­ing the lead­er­ship our coun­try needs at this time.
We can­not have a Prime Minister who loves the lives of mur­der­ers and wor­ries so lit­tle about the lives of the innocent.

Nine 9 peo­ple were mur­dered Tuesday, March 15^th, while anoth­er five (5) indi­vid­u­als were shot and injured.
Up to the time of this lat­est vio­lent onslaught, with 75 days gone in 2021, 312 peo­ple have been mur­dered, an aver­age of over 4 per day (4.16).
The three hun­dred & twelve mur­der sta­tis­tic rep­re­sents an 8% increase com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year.
At the cur­rent rate, Jamaica is head­ing to for fif­teen hun­dred (1500) mur­ders in 2021, up from 1323 in 2020.
Murders per hun­dred thou­sand of the pop­u­la­tion would increase from 48 to 56.
In a state of declared war, the kill rate per one hun­dred thou­sand stands at around 30 per 100’000.
Two hun­dred and sev­en­ty-sev­en (277) indi­vid­u­als have been report­ed shot and injured to police, a 3% increase over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year…

Like many oth­er coun­tries, Jamaica is no stranger to gun vio­lence; how­ev­er, there are few par­tic­u­lars that sep­a­rate the lev­el of vio­lence in Jamaica from oth­er coun­tries. Of course, if you live in Jamaica and have nev­er lived else­where, those nuances may be lost on you, and you may find your­self in the ‘vio­lence is every­where category.’
For exam­ple, Jamaica is a tiny nation of under three (3)million peo­ple, with a land­mass of 4411 square miles or about half the state of Connecticut, one of the small­est states in the United States.
So when we say there are shoot­ings in America too, a coun­try of 330 mil­lion peo­ple and a land mass of 3.797 mil­lion mi², there is real­ly no equivalence.
Yes, there are many shoot­ings in the United States each year, result­ing in thou­sands of deaths; nev­er­the­less, the mur­der rate in Jamaica far exceeds that of the city of Chicago, Illinois, one of America’s most vio­lent cities, that has approx­i­mate­ly the same pop­u­la­tion as Jamaica.
For exam­ple, in 2020, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) stats show more than 700 mur­ders in 2020 and near­ly 4,000 shootings.
Conversely, the Jamaica Constabulary Force, (JCF), report­ed 1,301 killings in 2020, and a kill rate of 46.5, per 100,000.
Another defin­ing dif­fer­ence between the two geo­gra­phies is the account­abil­i­ty rate; in American cities, killers are arrest­ed and imprisoned.
Even when they are arrest­ed in Jamaica, judges turn them loose as soon as they are arrest­ed, and they right back to killing.
Calls from this writer for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for vio­lent crimes have gone unheed­ed by wha6 pass­es for law­mak­ers on the Island.

As a for­mer police offi­cer from Jamaica, I con­stant­ly harp on the inad­e­qua­cy of the train­ing of our Jamaican police offi­cers. From time to time, peo­ple push back on those state­ments. They point to changes in the police train­ing, (what­ev­er that may be ), which they say now exists dif­fer­ent­ly from that which exist­ed years ago. This, they say, is also part of the restruc­tur­ing plan the Jamaican gov­ern­ment has embarked upon, and which the present Commissioner of Police must be giv­en time to execute.
The police’s activ­i­ties on the streets do not reflect any pos­i­tiv­i­ty from those struc­tur­al changes. Neither does the bur­geon­ing crime rate reflect it.
Training pro­fes­sion­als in today’s work envi­ron­ment must be an ongo­ing phe­nom­e­non; it must reflect the chang­ing dynam­ics of the times; this is hard­ly true of the JCF, which trains its recruits in colo­nial-era drills that has zero use­ful­ness in policing.
These are point­ers that I per­son­al­ly do not expect the Government at the high­est lev­els to under­stand, nei­ther do I expect the lead­er­ship of the force to under­stand it.
It is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to under­stand some­thing that you were nev­er taught. So, it is under­stand­able, that the lead­er­ship of the force would still believe that train­ing young police recruits in drills and sil­ly maneu­vers is appro­pri­ate and suf­fi­cient police training.
Drills are for cer­e­mo­ni­al events; they are use­ful for mak­ing the self-styled elites feel impor­tant in banana-republics. They get a sense of pow­er as they watch their sub­jects parade them­selves for their view­ing pleasure.
Drills serve no use­ful pur­pose in a mod­ern and evolv­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic nation. It gives a police offi­cer no leg up on an untrained crim­i­nal when he finds him­self in a life and death struggle.
Our police offi­cers need train­ing in strate­gic think­ing, how to envis­age sce­nar­ios before they occur, and how to come out of those pos­si­bil­i­ties on top.
They need to be taught how to sup­port each oth­er with­out hav­ing to shout com­mands, not run away at the slight­est sound of gunfire.
Officers must know how to max­i­mize their effec­tive­ness regard­less of num­bers based on their train­ing, effec­tive­ly coun­ter­ing threats as they evolve. A pre­ci­sion-like response should be auto­mat­ic for every situation.

In recent times the lack of train­ing has been evi­dent from the encoun­ters we wit­ness between bel­liger­ent offend­ers and our police offi­cers. We also see the same kinds of aggres­sion lev­eled at secu­ri­ty offi­cers, and the out­comes are always bad for the good guys.
The killing of an armed Hawkeye secu­ri­ty guard in Saint Catherine last Tuesday & the killing of an armed Guardsman guard in Santa Cruz, St Elizabeth, on March 3^rd, and the injur­ing of two of his col­leagues in the same inci­dent, begs the ques­tion, are they being trained appropriately?
A uni­form and gun/​s do not evoke any respect from Jamaica’s crim­i­nals; even when the secu­ri­ty offi­cers are in num­bers, the killers are not deterred.
Therefore, the dif­fer­ence lies in one thing, and one thing only, ‘train­ing’ and more of it.
But as I inti­mat­ed ear­li­er, if the peo­ple at the top can­not under­stand that what they are offer­ing their sub­or­di­nate is inad­e­quate, how can they change the offerings?
It seems that, at the very least, Hawkeye under­stands that train­ing and strat­e­gy are para­mount, even though they still have it wrong on Jamaica’s crime causation.

Sharon Laing, the gen­er­al man­ag­er in charge of group human resources and oper­a­tions at Hawkeye Electronic Security Limited, told local media enti­ties that steps to revamp the com­pa­ny’s tac­ti­cal pro­ce­dures are already tak­ing place, fol­low­ing the killing of one of its armed guards dur­ing a rob­bery in Portmore, St Catherine, on Tuesday.
That aware­ness is the sign of an agency that under­stands that every inci­dent is a teach­able moment that allows for intro­spec­tion and change. Attributes that will ensure bet­ter future outcomes.
“Of course, we will be rein­forc­ing our tac­ti­cal pro­ce­dures. We have not got­ten all the infor­ma­tion [about the shoot­ing] as yet from inves­ti­ga­tions, and even though we have seen some already, we are still gath­er­ing video footage,” Laing told local media.
But then she went down the usu­al rab­bit-hole; “There is an emo­tion­al esca­la­tion from COVID. There is des­per­a­tion; there is a lack of jobs, and peo­ple have got­ten fear­less and uncar­ing. The rob­bers are now uncon­scionable. They are bold, unafraid, and are reck­less to the point that makes them even more dan­ger­ous. In the past, a team being present, they would all depart. Now, there is min­i­mal cau­tion even towards the police force and any oth­er secu­ri­ty field mem­ber. This bold­ness has just put us on a high­er lev­el of alert, cau­tion, and wis­dom. If they can go to a church and attack in a church, it shows the coun­try’s moral decay. Somehow, we have to reach the hearts of peo­ple to make some change. The heart is now hard and cal­lous, and we have to find a way to reach those hearts.”
There is zero evi­dence that COVID-19, being asked to quar­an­tine, or any of the fac­tors out­lined by this man­ag­er impact the peo­ple who are killing others.
They kill because they are allowed to do so in Jamaica and get away with it, because of the lax-laws and gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence in police operations.

We can­not reme­di­ate a prob­lem if we are so gross­ly inca­pable of diag­nos­ing it. As long as we con­tin­ue to blame every­thing except the real caus­es of our coun­try’s vio­lence-prone propen­si­ty, we will con­tin­ue to admin­is­ter cures that do not affect the problem.
I give this man­ag­er and her com­pa­ny cred­it for at least rec­og­niz­ing the need to revamp and change course. A pri­vate secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny is account­able to the com­pa­nies that trust their resources to their care; thus, they are forced to act with expe­di­tious dis­patch to reme­di­ate issues like the one they encoun­tered in Saint Catherine. Failing to do so will severe­ly impact their bot­tom-line; worse yet, they could even­tu­al­ly be out of busi­ness if this persists.
The JCF, on the oth­er hand, is pop­u­lat­ed with tone-deaf ego­ma­ni­acs. They refuse to learn any­thing from the total­i­ty of the neg­a­tive events in which they are involved.
There is no hope that a sin­gle inci­dent gar­ners any­thing but a pass­ing glance for the force’s hier­ar­chy, and then it is back to busi­ness as usual.
The fact is that they are far too com­fort­able in the igno­rance that what­ev­er they may know is not even close to being enough.

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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. 

Over the decades, a per­cep­tion has exist­ed in Jamaica that there is a prob­lem with how the Jamaica Constabulary Force car­ries out its man­date. All and sundry have had ideas on what needs to be done to effec­tu­ate change.
Various enti­ties and indi­vid­u­als have done sur­veys, indi­cat­ing that the police are bad, do a shit­ty job, and that changes must be made.
There will be no excus­es com­ing from me on the ques­tion of com­pe­tence and char­ac­ter as it relates to the JCF and its mem­bers; nev­er­the­less, no sin­gle enti­ty has done more harm and dis­ser­vice to this debate than the media in the way it reports on issues involv­ing the police, and how it edi­to­ri­al­izes on the sub­ject itself.

Having had the hon­or of serv­ing in the JCF three decades ago, and hav­ing left after only a decade, I too share some of the anx­i­eties that oth­ers have of the agency, and the way it goes about its business.
In fact, I left the agency, not because of the poor pay and work­ing con­di­tions, but because of the way the agency is struc­tured, run, and viewed.
How peo­ple are pro­mot­ed, renu­mer­at­ed, and cared for, remains crit­i­cal issues that con­tin­ue to plague the agency, result­ing in an attri­tion rate that far exceeds that of any police depart­ment glob­al­ly, except in some Mexican provinces.
The ques­tion of com­pe­tence and char­ac­ter of the senior lead­er­ship has been, and con­tin­ues to be, a sore issue, one that earn­ing a degree or two will not solve, but only serves to exacerbate.
In a coun­try that hard­ly has any pri­vate-sec­tor jobs because of the per­sis­tent crime prob­lem, it is remark­able that the JCF can­not meet recruit­ment tar­gets, and is bleed­ing the peo­ple it man­ages to recruit and train to the tune of 50 per month.
Even more vex­ing is that some of the peo­ple who leave, don’t go off to work in oth­er Caribbean Islands police depart­ments; some stay right at home and find oth­er jobs.

What that tells me is that they are dis­sat­is­fied, not just with the agency, but they are unwill­ing to make the sac­ri­fices they are asked to make, based on the lev­els of appre­ci­a­tion and remu­ner­a­tion they receive for their troubles.
The arro­gance of the peo­ple who com­mis­sion and car­ry out the sur­veys is com­men­su­rate with the arro­gance that per­me­ates the entire civ­il society.
No one both­ers to ask the police offi­cers what they would like to see change, con­sid­er­ing that they are doing the work. No one both­ers to speak to the offi­cers’ fam­i­lies to deter­mine why they sup­port their loved ones leav­ing the force.
No one both­ers to under­stand that some fam­i­lies have two or more mem­bers serv­ing in the agency. And equal­ly galling, they do not seek to find out from the poor­er class of Jamaicans, why they now refuse to sur­ren­der any more of the young bright fam­i­ly mem­bers to a job that is high­ly dan­ger­ous and ridicu­lous­ly thankless.
In a coun­try that Transparency International rates inher­ent­ly cor­rupt, those who crit­i­cize cor­rup­tion in the JCF sin­gu­lar­ly, as opposed to oth­er Government bod­ies, or, bet­ter yet, against the broad­er soci­ety, only show their bias­es and ignorance.

There is noth­ing wrong with the JCF that is not wrong with the Bar Association, the Health Sector, the Teaching pro­fes­sion, or any other.
The chal­lenge for the police is its high vis­i­bil­i­ty and the pow­ers it is giv­en under the laws. It has become every­one’s whip­ping boy, even the suit & tie crim­i­nals in high soci­ety because of its powers.
There is noth­ing wrong with the JCF that is not wrong with Jamaica. It is incon­ceiv­able that one can scoop up a buck­et of clean water from a dirty pool.
Fix the bla­tant cor­rup­tion in our homes and com­mu­ni­ties, and gov­ern­ment agen­cies begin to change to reflect the soci­etal changes.
In the mean­time, the idea that the Commissioner of police needs time to make struc­tur­al changes that will reme­di­ate the Island’s vio­lent crime rate would be laugh­able if it weren’t so con­se­quen­tial to those dying and the loved ones they leave behind.
Crime thrives in an envi­ron­ment of acqui­es­cence. Jamaica is a crim­i­nal-acqui­es­cent soci­ety, chock-full of all-know­ing opin­ion­at­ed peo­ple who knows how to do oth­er peo­ple’s jobs, but are hor­ri­ble at theirs.
When we have laws that hold every­one account­able, from Jamaica house to the card­board & zinc house, we may begin to see a change in the nation’s crime statistics.
Continuing to sin­gle out the peo­ple who are mak­ing the sac­ri­fices for ridicule, only fur­ther reduces their efforts and makes it more dif­fi­cult to attract new peo­ple to the profession.
But then again, that makes no sense to the crit­ics, because they have nev­er borne any of the sac­ri­fices, now have they?

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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. 

Events of note in our soci­eties war­rant at least a sec­ond look to see if we may learn from them. If they are not what we want them to be, we may see whether we can reme­di­ate them.
The actions of 42-year-old Stephen Witter, a Stony Hill res­i­dent, when approached by Police on Hellshire Public beach is one such event that offers all stake­hold­ers a teach­able moment.
The police, the Public, the Government& Opposition Legislators, and even our children.
Stephen Witter was among a group of men approached by the police for alleged breach­es of the Disaster Risk Management Act,(gathering close togeth­er, with­out social dis­tanc­ing or wear­ing masks).

Stephen Witter’s actions were so hos­tile; they result­ed in the group of heav­i­ly armed police offi­cers walk­ing away, choos­ing, sup­pos­ed­ly to de-esca­late, out of fear of crowd intervention.
The inci­dent, from the mask, man­dates, the police approach to enforce­ment, Witter and his cronies response, the police own response all bears a real­ly clos­er look.
Inherent in all of those events, we see the soci­etal rot that con­tin­ues to plague Jamaica, result­ing in the volu­mi­nous vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics the Island con­tin­ues to experience.

The Disaster Risk Management Act

The police are report­ed to have approached the group of men because they were not adher­ing to the Disaster Risk Management Act.
I com­mend the offi­cers for also pay­ing atten­tion to the small things. When the small things are attend­ed to, it sends a mes­sage that big things will not be tolerated.
From what we have learned, the Act is not as plain as it could be in giv­ing the police clear and unequiv­o­cal sight on how the law is to be enforced. Credit the Jamaican Parliament for its inabil­i­ty to write a good piece of leg­is­la­tion that is unambiguous.
Witter is from Stony Hills; we don’t know whether he or his cronies were on the beach legit­i­mate­ly or not; that is some­thing it seemed that the police did not both­er to investigate.
It seems that a breach of the above-men­tioned act, was the least of which Witter could legit­i­mate­ly be charged with.

The Police Approach
One of the most absurd propo­si­tions I see being advanced today about polic­ing in Jamaica, is that cops should retreat and come back lat­er to arrest offend­ers, much like how they went back and arrest­ed Stephen Witter.
There are sce­nar­ios in which the police are forced to sus­pend actions to get bet­ter out­comes, for var­i­ous reasons.
What can­not become the norm is for the police to be forced to sus­pend mak­ing arrests for a future date, even in sit­u­a­tions where sev­er­al offi­cers are present, as in the Witter case.
At that rate, Jamaica will nev­er be able to hire enough police offi­cers to make arrests in a coun­try that is already a high crime, volatile and law­less country.
The alter­na­tive can­not become the norm; police must not step back from mak­ing arrests out of fear that bystanders will intervene.
We need penal­ties that dis­suade, and offi­cers who are unafraid. We must ensure that those who would inter­fere in an arrest, jus­ti­fied or not, will think long and hard about the length of time they will spend in prison for their actions.
The Police have demon­strat­ed that they are not up to the task. People respond based on the actions of the police. If the police are hes­i­tant and ten­ta­tive, the crowd is embold­ened. If the police are uni­fied and method­i­cal in car­ry­ing out their pur­pose, the voic­es in oppo­si­tion become a lot less bellicose.
We see the evi­dence of the police’s inabil­i­ty to make sim­ple arrests, even when they have num­bers; the train­ing’s inad­e­qua­cy is embar­rass­ing in its glar­ing obviousness.
The once trea­sured con­cept of esprit de corps that once guid­ed how offi­cers con­verged quick­ly to effec­tu­ate arrests have been replaced by feck­less­ness and hes­i­tan­cy, giv­ing rise to more lawlessness.

The pub­lic’s approach

Policing Jamaica’s streets has always been a chal­lenge; peo­ple gang­ing up on cops they believe to be weak and feck­less is noth­ing new.
In fact, peo­ple go out of their way to test police offi­cer’s met­tle, we can ques­tion the legit­i­ma­cy of their ways, but we may not deny that they do.
They will get in a new offi­cer’s face ad they will even assault offi­cers to see what they are made of. The chal­lenge for young cops in that Serengeti of chaos and crim­i­nal­i­ty, is that they are expect­ed to absorb the assaults to their per­sons, with­out any atten­dant puni­tive law to pun­ish offenders.
By that mea­sure, offi­cers are being asked to sac­ri­fice their bod­ies and lives to main­tain order in a hos­tile envi­ron­ment cre­at­ed and helped by politicians.
The options open to the Jamaican police offi­cer in Andrew Holness’s Jamaica are bina­ry, (a) go hard against offend­ers backed up by their pow­ers enshrined in the JCF Act, or (b) Ignore it all and go home to their families.
The Andrew Holness, Horace Chang, Delroy Chuck, Antony Anderson, UWI idea of polic­ing, has been a night­mare for law-abid­ing Jamaicans and their families.
The mur­der rate con­tin­ues to spi­ral out of con­trol because the police can­not do their jobs.
What we wit­nessed on that Hellshire beach must be laid square­ly at the feet of Andrew Holness, a Spanish Town pro­tégée’ who grew up resent­ing the police.
We wit­ness these events play­ing out across the coun­try because of his con­tin­u­ing inter­fer­ence in polic­ing and the poli­cies he has been putting in place to ham­string the police’s efforts to do their jobs effectively.

The Legislators
We know they are dumb, even to the point of being moron­ic. We know they can­not write a piece of Legislation that stip­u­lates clear intent. We even know that some of them have con­flicts of inter­est, and some are even mixed up in criminality.
But the leg­is­la­tors, too, have a job to do here; if the laws aren’t work­ing, change the damn laws.
At what point will it dawn on those morons that the coun­try is going to hell in a hand­bas­ket, because the laws are too criminal-friendly?
The Jamaicans who stri­dent­ly break laws do so because they know that they will not be pun­ished in any mean­ing­ful way, even if they are caught. They also know that even when caught break­ing the laws, they can fight or intim­i­date the police, a force that is so feck­less, sev­er­al offi­cers will retreat because they are afraid of a few loud­mouth punks.
Even though this pat­tern has been a sta­ple for decades, what pass­es for leg­is­la­tors in the peo­ple’s house have failed to enact leg­is­la­tion mak­ing it a felony to inter­fere in arrests, mak­ing it a felony to assault a police officer.
That is the rea­son this writer has zero respect for that body of mal­con­tents who are mere­ly cheap hus­tlers look­ing to make a buck.

The Police

It is tough to watch them effec­tu­ate even the sim­plest arrest. I have no more ener­gy to waste; these guys are what they are. They are them­selves, vic­tims of the envi­ron­ment they grew up in, and are now forced to police.
If this is the new and improved polic­ing that Andrew Holness unleashed on Jamaica in his grand restruc­tur­ing plan, head­ed by a med­ical doc­tor, and exe­cut­ed by a sol­dier, God helps our country.
The car­toon­ish idea of a police com­mis­sion­er beg­ging offend­ers not to resist arrest, is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Barney-Fyffe car­i­ca­ture the JCF has become under the assault of this bunch of losers.

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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. 

Yes, each per­son has a right to free­dom of speech, and sure, peo­ple have a right to voice their dis­plea­sure at author­i­ty figures.
My ques­tion is this; where exact­ly are the lines between sane and ratio­nal dis­plea­sure, and out­right abu­sive and dis­re­spect­ful behav­ior that has no place in a demo­c­ra­t­ic society?
Without hav­ing the facts of what occurred in this sit­u­a­tion before the cam­eras start­ed rolling, my ques­tion is, how can this kind of con­duct be allowed to continue?
Let us not be delu­sion­al about this, Andrew Holness has degrad­ed the police, bad-mouthed them, and inter­fered in their work, and this is the result.
The police have done more than enough to degrade their own author­i­ty, and they are not being trained in tac­ti­cal maneuvers.
One of the cocka­mamie sto­ries I heard from their high com­mand is that this offend­er will be arrest­ed even­tu­al­ly. I must also dis­agree with some of my for­mer col­leagues who seem to have bought into this new-age paper police tac­tics that you go back to arrest later.
They had sev­er­al offi­cers there, and there should have been an unspo­ken under­stand­ing that all of the offi­cers present con­verge on this punk in two sec­onds, throw him to the ground, and cuff him.
The next agi­ta­tor who opens his mouth gets the same treatment.
The idea that offi­cers must always be mind­ful of esca­la­tion sends the wrong mes­sage that a sin­gle cop or two can­not effect an arrest.

At issue here seem to be three stand­out issues.
(1) Government incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion in allow­ing pub­lic lands, includ­ing pub­lic beach prop­er­ties, to be occu­pied by crim­i­nals allow­ing for the con­struc­tion of shan­ty struc­tures. And as we can see in these videos, per­ma­nent struc­tures gen­er­al­ly with­out prop­er­ty own­er­ship, per­mits, and or any approval.
Jamaica’s num­ber one for­eign exchange earn­er is tourism, yet prime sea­side prop­er­ties are hang­outs for thugs and bad­men, whom the police seemed mighty afraid of.

(2) Lawless ele­ments who believe they are above the laws, and that they can do as they please with­out con­se­quence. This is not only hor­ren­dous for the present, but it is a tick­ing time-bomb with a younger gen­er­a­tion emerg­ing, that will have zero respect for the rule of law.

(3) An incom­pe­tent and poor­ly trained police force that does not know what laws they are enforc­ing, and is there­fore unsure of them­selves, result­ing in sit­u­a­tions like the some in the video.
I talk about the demon­stra­bly poor train­ing of the Police Department mem­bers, and I am con­tin­u­al­ly being told that they are being giv­en the appro­pri­ate train­ing levels.
If what we are wit­ness­ing here is appro­pri­ate train­ing, not just to quick­ly and effec­tive­ly arrest a dis­re­spect­ful loud-mouth piece of garbage, but know­ing what laws or ordi­nances he vio­lat­ed that would neces­si­tate his arrest, then obvi­ous­ly they are being trained to fail.

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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. 

Just today, I wrote about the lev­el of law­less­ness in our country.
Primarily because the Government has placed the lives of crim­i­nals over those of our law ‑enforce­ment officers.
Only in a soci­ety where the coun­try’s lead­er­ship encour­ages this kind of behav­ior by using var­i­ous arms of the said gov­ern­ment to mil­i­tate against law-enforcement.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​l​o​s​s​-​o​f​-​l​i​f​e​-​i​n​s​i​g​n​i​f​i​c​a​n​t​-​t​o​-​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​-​i​n​-​s​o​-​c​a​l​l​e​d​-​m​o​d​e​r​n​i​z​a​t​i​o​n​-​p​r​o​c​e​s​s​-​o​f​-​j​cf/

Criminals may pay INDECOM, The Justice Ministry, The Public Defenders office, and oth­er arms of the Government; for all intents and pur­pos­es, their jobs are to antag­o­nize the police.
This offi­cer was long with­in his rights to nat­u­ral­ize this direct threat to his life, why did he not.
That assailant could at any­time have removed his weapon and use it to take his life, or use the baton to cut off his air cir­cu­la­tion and killed him.

Why did he not use his weapon against his monster?
Because he was afraid of being made out to be the bad guy, by the gov­ern­ment by the press, and by the crim­i­nal-lov­ing public.

Looking back at the past is one of the best met­rics of mea­sure­ment for how far we have come, what we have accom­plished, what we can tweak or change, or whether we may even want to go back to some of the old strate­gies where the results may have been bet­ter than what we have at present.
Or we could change to say we are agents of change, even when the change we seek has result­ed in expo­nen­tial­ly more neg­a­tive con­se­quences when com­pared to the past.
With that said, I believe in chang­ing tac­tics; stand­ing still is stag­na­tion; it may even be char­ac­ter­ized as dor­man­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly when we are deal­ing with con­tin­u­ing evolv­ing sit­u­a­tions like vio­lent crimes.

Whereas we have a his­tor­i­cal record of low­er crimes, all things con­sid­ered, it is fool­ish to dis­re­gard the data of that peri­od sim­ply because we want to make a point that we know bet­ter today, we want to set a dif­fer­ent stan­dard, even to the detri­ment of hun­dreds of peo­ple’s lives each year.
As a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer, I have all but giv­en up on the Jamaican crime sit­u­a­tion, because it seems to me that those in pow­er would rather show­case struc­tur­al changes that they have insti­tut­ed, rather than deal with the real-life con­se­quence of the loss of human life.
And so it seems that the Government’s insis­tence on what it terms ‘the mod­ern­iza­tion of the Constabulary,’ (exe­cut­ed by a sol­dier no less), is far more impor­tant than any cumu­la­tive loss of lives that may accrue dur­ing this sup­posed process.

It behooves all Jamaicans who would like a way out of the seem­ing­ly per­ma­nent mess of spi­ral­ing vio­lent mur­ders, to con­sid­er ways on their own to get out of the mess, since the Government is demon­stra­bly not inter­est­ed in doing any­thing about it.
One way to do so is to look to the past at the low­est lev­els of vio­lent crimes in our mod­ern his­to­ry, then eval­u­ate the atten­dant issues that may have impact­ed the data and see how we can for­mu­late strate­gies based on the pos­i­tives from that era.
How do we do that?
Glad you asked; before we get to that, it is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that the gov­ern­ment of Jamaica has main­tained a stub­born and arro­gant stance on the issue of vio­lent crime, refus­ing to accede to peo­ple with knowl­edge choos­ing to lis­ten to talk­ing heads from the University of the West Indies who read some­thing in a book then regur­gi­tate it.
That is where the gov­ern­ment for­mu­lates crime pol­i­cy, aid­ed by anti-police crim­i­nal-rights activists, and exe­cut­ed by a paper gen­er­al who has nev­er seen combat.
This arrange­ment is one of the great­est acts of decep­tion ever per­pe­trat­ed on the Jamaican people.

Let us see where we were in our recent past and how we man­aged to accom­plish the rel­a­tive­ly low­er numbers.

mur­der-rate-jamaica

Let us begin with 1980, the peri­od dot­ted with three red dia­monds rep­re­sent­ed a crit­i­cal mass as it relates to polit­i­cal killings. We see that, but for 1977 where 409 mur­ders were report­ed to police, despite the tur­bu­lence, want, and short­ages in the coun­try, homi­cides were very low com­pared to where we are today.
After the 1980 elec­tions, mur­ders dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly, cut by almost 50% but did not exact­ly go back to pre-1980 num­bers. Still, the num­bers remained con­sis­tent­ly low for eight (8) straight years, after which there was a sig­nif­i­cant jump in 1990 by more than 25 per­cent­age points.
Of even greater note was the sig­nif­i­cance and alacrity with which the mur­der num­bers took of after 1990 to the present day.
This data is crit­i­cal if we are to under­stand what exact­ly occurred at the point where we had the low­est num­bers after the dra­mat­ic rise in killings dur­ing the year 1980, why they dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly and remained so for eight(8) years, then there­after took off like a rocketship?

So what was the sig­nif­i­cant sin­gle char­ac­ter­is­tic at play in the 8‑years dot­ted with a green tick?
Edward Seaga was elect­ed Prime Minister in 1980, and his par­ty remained in pow­er for those 8‑years. Let me has­ten to say that this analy­sis is not designed to make polit­i­cal points. Those who would read and ana­lyze it with blink­ered polit­i­cal lens­es, one way or anoth­er, may do so; please remem­ber your polit­i­cal deduc­tions are not mine.
Edward Seaga, the polit­i­cal leader, was far from per­fect. His polit­i­cal career is para­dox­i­cal, depend­ing on who is telling his story.
Seaga loved Jamaica; he under­stood that there could be no real eco­nom­ic growth in an envi­ron­ment of crim­i­nal­i­ty. Yet he cul­ti­vat­ed one of the most his­tor­i­cal gar­risons in our coun­try because his pride would not allow him to con­cede that the baby he cre­at­ed in trans­form­ing back-o-wall into what would lat­er become the thriv­ing mod­ern com­mu­ni­ty known as Tivoli gar­dens, in its struc­ture of Donmanship was anti­thet­i­cal to the rule of law and there­fore the effec­tive gov­er­nance of Jamaica.

Seaga’s sup­port­ers will argue that Tivoli gar­dens was a nec­es­sary evil to counter the PNP’s con­fla­gra­tion of gar­risons; I would counter that all things con­sid­ered, two wrongs do not make a right, but those are my per­son­al views.“Edward Seaga nur­tured Tivoli gar­dens as a par­ent his child, but he was not hes­i­tant about giv­ing to the police, the names of those he deemed to be out of [order] in the community.
Tivoli Gardens is a tiny slice of Jamaica; I would do a dis­ser­vice to the facts if I made the case, that by con­trol­ling crime in that enclave, you effec­tive­ly con­trol crime across the length and breadth of Jamaica.
So we must exam­ine the oth­er fac­tors that went into the mas­sive reduc­tion in mur­ders rel­a­tive to 1980 and when Seaga won the elec­tion and the peri­od after the PNP’s Michael Manley beat him in the 1989 General elections.

During Seaga’s stew­ard­ship„ many Jamaican crim­i­nals fled to oth­er coun­tries, by uti­liz­ing uncon­ven­tion­al means. Some went to Cuba; we lat­er learned, then moved on to Canada. Michael Manley cul­ti­vat­ed warm rela­tions with Pierre Trudeau of Canada and Fidel Castro of Cuba; thus, there were chan­nels open for them to exploit.
Others found ways into Britain and the United States.
The results of that peri­od of exo­dus are well known; Jamaican crim­i­nals took with them a kind of ruth­less­ness that forced leg­is­la­tures in those host coun­tries to adopt [dra­con­ian] mea­sures which ensnared and incar­cer­at­ed thousands.
After serv­ing lengthy prison sen­tences due to those mea­sures, the sig­nif­i­cant upward bound in homi­cides in the year, 2002 may very well reflect when those crim­i­nals were start­ing to be released from pris­ons and deport­ed to Jamaica.
That is not to say that depor­tees are direct­ly respon­si­ble for the mur­der­ous onslaught. Still, it is fair to assert that they brought back with them a lev­el of cal­lous­ness and sophis­ti­ca­tion Jamaicans nev­er knew before.

The Jamaica they returned to was not a Jamaica hos­tile to vio­lence-pro­duc­ers. There was an admin­is­tra­tion in pow­er that said quote; (‘any­thing a any­thing’).sic.
That col­lo­qui­al ter­mi­nol­o­gy was a wink and a nod to the crim­i­nals to do as they please. They also returned to a police depart­ment immersed from top to bot­tom in cor­rup­tion, a soci­ety cul­tur­al­ly social­ized into cor­rup­tion, and a jus­tice sys­tem inef­fec­tu­al to the req­ui­site task.
A change of Government in 2010 saw a dra­mat­ic reduc­tion in mur­ders from the pre­ced­ing three years, and a fur­ther reduc­tion for a few years there­after, up to 2016 when the num­bers went beserk again.
The log­i­cal deduc­tion from this the­sis is that itis rea­son­able to say that crime has thrived in Jamaica when the coun­try’s lead­er­ship has been most acqui­es­cent with its growth.
The coun­try has not had the lead­er­ship of the type of Seaga on this issue under either polit­i­cal par­ty, even though there has been a dip under the abbre­vi­at­ed Bruce Golding Administration.

The cur­rent lead­er­ship of Andrew Holness on [this] issue may be char­ac­ter­ized as rid­dled with arro­gance, igno­rance, spite, and a will­ing­ness to enact struc­tur­al changes in the Constabulary to the per­il of hun­dreds of Jamaicans each year.
In the end, Andrew Holness, Horace Chang, and Antony Anderson may get their wish to restruc­ture the JCF, just so that they may have brag­ging rights for the sake of change.
That changes will be a pyrrhic vic­to­ry as (a) the changes are already prov­ing to be at the expense of an effec­tive police depart­ment & (b) by the time those changes take effect, there may not be any­one left alive.
This Prime Minister has demon­strat­ed that he is a dis­re­spect­ful anti-police antag­o­nist, one who has caused a mas­sive attri­tion of com­pe­tent peo­ple from the depart­ment. Some of the peo­ple who have left the depart­ment haven’t even left the coun­try. That is a clear indi­ca­tion that they are fed up with him and what he has meant to the pro­fes­sion they love.
After con­tribut­ing to the con­tin­ued destruc­tion of the JCF, he engages in talk­ing points in which he argues that the crime sit­u­a­tion is out­side the abil­i­ties of the JCF to handle.
‘No buster’, you ham­strung the police with your words and deeds, then com­plain that the crime sit­u­a­tion is out of their abil­i­ties to control.
It is the equiv­a­lent of set­ting the house on fire then com­plain­ing about the fire­men’s inabil­i­ty to put out the blaze.
The JCF has nev­er been unable to cope; what the depart­ment needs are res­olute lead­er­ship, some­thing Andrew Holness should take a reme­di­al class in understanding.

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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. 

People are enti­tled to their opin­ions, just not their own facts. I have great respect for peo­ple who hold beliefs con­trary to mine, as long as they gen­uine­ly believe in the rea­sons they hold the beliefs they do.
I also under­stand that as peo­ple, we come from dif­fer­ent back­grounds and cir­cum­stances. Those cir­cum­stances help shape who we are as individuals.
As such, I try to under­stand each per­son­’s per­spec­tive and tread light­ly before crit­i­ciz­ing their views with­out first try­ing to see things their way.

I read Chief Justice Bryan Sykes’s com­ments regard­ing alle­ga­tions that judges are giv­ing light sen­tences to hard­core crim­i­nals, to the dis­plea­sure of police offi­cers and the larg­er community.
I knew Sykes as a young offi­cer in the ’80s when he was a court(pros­e­cu­tor) junior clerk at Half-way ‑Tree Resident Magistrate’s Courts.
No one was under any illu­sion that Sykes was ever going to amount to an aggres­sive pros­e­cu­tor, who had a pen­chant for going after bad guys.
As per my own assess­ment, Bryan Sykes was an even-keeled dude who seem­ing­ly did not care one way or the other.
As a for­mer police offi­cer who was gung-ho about remov­ing crim­i­nals from the streets, Sykes would not have been my choice of a pros­e­cu­tor, not by a long shot.
Outside of that, I will not engage in ad hominem attacks on the Chief Justice. I left law enforce­ment eons ago, and I am sure that Justice Sykes bust­ed his tail to get to where he is today, and that is not only admirable, it is commendable.

Before respond­ing to the Chief Justice’s state­ments, I will first say that the sen­tences met­ed out to vio­lent offend­ers are an inte­gral part of why Violent crime con­tin­ues to rise year over year.
In fair­ness, all of us must take stock that the penal code isn’t work­ing as the penal­ties are far too criminal-friendly.
When Judges hand down light sen­tences to vio­lent offend­ers, it com­pli­cates the already thorny issue of vio­lent crime in our coun­try. Neither Bryan Sykes nor any oth­er Jamaican should make any asser­tions that the penal­ties being hand­ed down to the nation’s most vio­lent offend­ers are any­where near where they ought to be.
This issue, how­ev­er, is not sole­ly with­in the remit of judges, but lies square­ly at the feet of the Legislature to bring the crim­i­nal code up to where it needs to be to respond to the wave of vio­lent crimes wash­ing over the country.
I have per­son­al­ly called for a total revamp­ing of the crim­i­nal code and com­ing up with penal­ties that bet­ter reflect the sever­i­ty of the crimes and the times’ seriousness.
In those calls, I have laid out in prac­ti­cal terms how that may be achieved, includ­ing (a) leg­is­lat­ing much stiffer penal­ties for vio­lent crimes, (b) leg­is­lat­ing truth in sentencing,(unless there are exi­gent cir­cum­stances, a ten-year sen­tence should result in ten years served), © manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain vio­lent crimes,(this removes from crim­i­nal friend­ly judges, the dis­cre­tion to turn them loose as soon as they are convicted.

So let us ‘con­sid­er the Chief Justice’s statements!
Remember, he respond­ed to the idea that cops are mad that judges are issu­ing light sen­tences to vio­lent offend­ers. We will hence­forth refer to the Chief Justice as CJ.
(CJ) “I have no prob­lem with crit­i­cisms of judges, but we must have all the infor­ma­tion before we crit­i­cize, and in any event, the solu­tion to this is a sim­ple one, which the min­istry is address­ing, name­ly right of appeal by the Crown. So all of these things will be addressed in due course.”
I agree with the Chief Justice, on the need to have all of the facts; how­ev­er, it can­not be that the CJ is tone-deaf to this issue that has been per­va­sive for decades.
In any event, the pros­e­cu­tor’s right to appeal the egre­gious cas­es of improp­er lenien­cy by some judges can­not come soon enough.

Sykes respond­ed in a spe­cif­ic case where the police are incensed at the sen­tence hand­ed down to a known gangster.
(CJ)“According to the news report, the police are report­ed­ly upset because of the light sen­tence; the point is that there is no offense known as ‘alleged gang­ster.’ There is a statute called the Criminal Justice (Suppression of Organisations) Act. If the police believe that they have suf­fi­cient evi­dence to con­vince a court of the req­ui­site stan­dard that this per­son is indeed a crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion mem­ber, then that is the charge that ought to have been laid. Then the per­son would have been tried or placed before a judge of the Supreme Court, but the judge at the Parish Court can’t take account of unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions.”
Agreed wholeheartedly!

(CJ)“And in any event with Parish Court judges, there is a lim­it to the sen­tence that they can give, and the report does not indi­cate the remarks by the sen­tenc­ing judge which the Court of Appeal has now oblig­ed all judges at what­ev­er lev­el in the tri­al courts to indi­cate why a par­tic­u­lar sen­tence was giv­en. I am sure that the judge did this, but, of course, those things are not usu­al­ly of inter­est. What is of inter­est now is the nine months it is said that he received.”
Hmm, I won­der why the Court of Appeals has now man­dat­ed that judges at all lev­els in the tri­al courts indi­cate why a par­tic­u­lar sen­tence is given?
Could it be that the Appellate court rec­og­nizes that there are vast unex­plained dis­par­i­ties in the sen­tences being hand­ed down for the same offens­es, and with no mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances, in dif­fer­ent courts by dif­fer­ent judges?
Is the CJ aware of these dis­par­i­ties occur­ring in the Saint James tri­al courts, for example?
I’ll move on.

Speaking to the claims that the con­vict­ed man was believed to be a mem­ber of the feared Hollywood Gang, the chief jus­tice said alle­ga­tions were insufficient.
(CJ)“Again, where is the evi­dence to sup­port this? Furthermore, leg­is­la­tion indi­cates that where the per­son has entered a plea, dis­counts should be tak­en into account. Interestingly, the report does not indi­cate any long list of pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions of any kind, so it would appear, even on this report, that this is a gen­tle­man [who] may very well have been, as far as the court is con­cerned, a first offend­er, no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tion and he is in a court that has a lim­it placed upon its sen­tenc­ing. The gen­tle­man has been in cus­tody for some eight months, so all of these are fac­tors that the judge would have to take into account.”
I agree with the CJ’s assump­tions; if they are assump­tions. On the one hand, how­ev­er, he seemed to want to cre­ate the impres­sion that he knew pret­ty lit­tle about the case in ques­tion. Still, his speci­fici­ty relat­ed to the offend­er’s crim­i­nal record and the court’s lim­i­ta­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the length of time the offend­er was in jail before tri­al, seem to tell a dif­fer­ent story.
Nevertheless, I will move on.

I want­ed to give the chief Justice due def­er­ence, and as such, I laid out his com­ments and gave him cred­it when he spoke the truth.
But for the Chief Justice to stand before reporters or wher­ev­er the hell he stood to make claims about lim­i­ta­tions on the court, first-time offend­ers, and the time dan­ger­ous offend­ers spend in jail before tri­al, with­out acknowl­edg­ing the ele­phant in the room is disin­gen­u­ous, to say the least.
To pre­tend that there is no prob­lem with the sen­tences hand­ed down by judges with­in the sys­tem, makes Bryan Sykes a hyp­ocrite and, for all intents and pur­pos­es, a damn liar.
He has been in the sys­tem long enough to know full well that this has been a sore sub­ject for decades.
Is he going to pre­tend also that the rea­son the court of appeals man­dat­ed that judges give rea­sons for the sen­tences they hand down is sim­ply arbi­trary and unre­lat­ed to this vex­ing question?

The instances in which Judges bring the jus­tice sys­tem into dis­re­pute through dis­parate sen­tenc­ing, are far too many for any­one, least of all the Chief Justice, to pre­tend it isn’t happening.
If Bryan Sykes were a leader, what he would do is sched­ule a sit­down with police offi­cers and allow for a dis­cus­sion to occur between him­self, his con­tem­po­raries, Prosecutors, and defense Attorneys so that the views of all can be aired out and a bet­ter under­stand­ing of all the roles appreciated.
Denying that judges are let­ting vio­lent crim­i­nals off the hook with slight slaps on the wrist by stat­ing the obvi­ous, is at its heart disingenuous.

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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. 

A Police Constable, Nicholas Brown of the St. Catherine ESM, was on his way to work at about 3:15 am this morn­ing February 27^th when a lone gun­man attacked him.
The offi­cer was attacked after leav­ing the May Pen Toll Booth when he stopped in the Savannah Crossing vicin­i­ty to change his punc­tured tire.
A lone assailant alleged­ly attacked him with a firearm; a strug­gle ensued; dur­ing the strug­gle, Constable Brown man­aged to dis­arm his attack­er and hit him with the weapon though receiv­ing 13 stab-wounds to his back.
Constable Brown is being treat­ed at the May Pen Hospital.
His con­di­tion is con­sid­ered sta­ble at this time.
The inci­dent is being investigated.

The Police Officers Association (POA), the enti­ty with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) that rep­re­sents gazetted offi­cers of the Force, issued an exu­ber­ant state­ment in sup­port of its for­mer col­league, Former Senior Superintendent of Police James Forbes, who on Friday had his 2014 con­vic­tion for attempt­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice con­vic­tion over­turned by the appel­late court.
The POA’s state­ments were issued under the sig­na­ture of its chair­man Senior Superintendent Wayne Cameron.
SSP Forbes was con­vict­ed in a case that involved Portland Member of Parliament Douglas Vaz, and Tankweld boss, Bruce Bicknell.
The case involved Bicknell receiv­ing a speed­ing tick­et and alleged­ly solicit­ed SSP Forbes help through his friend Douglas Vaz to make the tick­et go away.
An inves­ti­ga­tion was trig­gered, and all three men were arrest­ed and charged; Bicknell & Vaz was freed of all charges while Forbes was con­vict­ed and ordered to serve six months in prison or pay a fine of $800,000.
Forbes paid the fine and filed an appeal.
The appeal took almost sev­en years, which did not go unno­ticed by the court, apol­o­giz­ing for the long delay before the verdict.
On Friday, February 26, SSP James saw that con­vic­tion over­turned and his good name restored.

THE POA’s RESPONSE

February 24, 2021

Mr. A. James Forbes 

Senior Superintendent of Police

Dear Sir,

Re: Court of Appeal Decision

The Executive of the Police Officer’s Association, on behalf of its mem­bers, wish­es to con­vey our best wish­es on your vic­to­ri­ous out­come hand­ed out by the Court of Appeal this morn­ing. For many years dur­ing your tenure at the Jamaica Constabulary Force, you were the face rec­og­nized by Jamaica’s cit­i­zens, like that of Integrity, Safety, Reassurance and Standard Bearer for the insti­tu­tion.  

It is with utmost respect and regard, that we acknowl­edge the for­ti­tude which you dis­played dur­ing the past six years to demon­strate your inno­cence and to dis­play the integri­ty that you have been well-known for. We rec­og­nize the impact that the pre­vi­ous deci­sion, had on your fam­i­ly and the diver­sion of your career path; how­ev­er, we rest assured that jus­tice has indeed been served although pro­longed. In going for­ward, the POA cel­e­brates this vic­to­ry with you. and stands ready to offer not only our con­grat­u­la­tions but also to extend assis­tance to you and your fam­i­ly as nec­es­sary, in the days ahead. 

The POA encour­ages you to remain stead­fast in your actions and to hold true to your prin­ci­ples. 

Sincerely,

Wayne Cameron, Mr.

Chairman

S.S.P. Wayne Cameron S.P. David White S.P. Maldria Jones-Williams S.P. Christopher Phillips 

Chairman  Vice-Chairman  Secretary/​Treasurer Assistant Secretary/​Treasurer 

876−816−2436 876−833−8899 876−322−2500  876−423−1067  

Wayne.​cameron@​jcf.​gov.​jm  David.​white@​jcf.​gov.​jm  Maldria.​jones@​jcf.​gov.​jm  Christopher.​phillips@​jcf.​gov.​jm

S.P. Catherine Lord S.P. Alvin Allen A.S.P. St. George Jackson 

Member Member  Member 

876−325−8764 876- 351- 2389  876- 542‑9077/​876−771−0000

Catherine.​lord@​jcf.​gov.​jm Alvin.​allen@​jcf.​gov.​jm  Stgeorge.​jackson@​jcf.​gov.​jm 

Lawyers have a respon­si­bil­i­ty, as offi­cers of the court, to ensure that what­ev­er actions they take are not only legal but eth­i­cal, and do not bring dis­re­pute to the sys­tem of Justice.
Nevertheless, it appears that greed con­tin­ues to plague the legal pro­fes­sion, result­ing in Lawyers find­ing them­selves run­ning afoul of the very pro­fes­sion they are sworn to defend.
This is not only true in Jamaica, where the sto­ries are many and var­ied but in Trinidad & Tobago and oth­er parts of the Caribbean.
The per­ti­nent ques­tion in light of these events is; why are lawyers held to a dif­fer­ent standard?
If a cit­i­zen receives mon­ey on behalf of anoth­er and con­verts it to his own use and ben­e­fit, he is guilty of fraud­u­lent conversion.
Paying the mon­ey back does not negate the offense, even though it may go to mit­i­ga­tion in the offend­er’s sentencing.
Why are lawyers and politi­cians allowed to break the laws with impuni­ty and get away with it sim­ply by repay­ing the money?
This must stop!
For those rea­sons, I oppose a Caribbean court of jus­tice because all across the Caribbean, jus­tice has demon­stra­bly meant dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent people.

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»>

The Trinidad & Tobago High Court has issued an arrest war­rant against attor­ney Kathy-Ann Mottley for refus­ing to repay a man more than $.2 mil­lion paid to her ­after con­vinc­ing him he owed the mon­ey to one of her for­mer clients.
Upon her arrest, Justice Avason Quinlan-Williams ordered that Mottley be made to serve one-year imprison­ment unless, while behind bars, she can facil­i­tate the repay­ment. If that were to be done, then the attor­ney is to be imme­di­ate­ly ­released from cus­tody. The war­rant was issued on Monday after Canute Antoine ini­ti­at­ed legal pro­ceed­ings against Mottley.

In 2016, Antoine also filed a com­plaint with the Disciplinary Committee of the Law Association against her. The Express under­stands that up to yes­ter­day after­noon, Mottley had not yet been tak­en into cus­tody. In all, she has to ­repay Antoine the sum of $209,142.02 plus ­inter­est. This is not the first time the attor­ney has found her­self in such a dilem­ma before the court. In September last year, she was spared a jail term by Justice Frank Seepersad for refus­ing to pay a for­mer client more than $.1 mil­lion in dam­ages that she was ini­tial­ly with­hold­ing. That client’s son was killed in a vehic­u­lar acci­dent. Mottley had rep­re­sent­ed the woman at tri­al, and after receiv­ing com­pen­sa­tion on the woman’s behalf, she failed to hand over the money.

Again, pro­ceed­ings were brought against her before the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee and lat­er at the High Court. In his rul­ing, Justice Seepersad had ordered that if Mottley did not hand over the mon­ey with­in a cer­tain time, she would be made to serve 30 days’ impris­on­ment. On two occa­sions, she made appli­ca­tions for exten­sions of time to pay the woman last September, the mon­ey was repaid in full and the com­mit­tal war­rants recalled by Seepersad.

Former Senior Superintendent of Police James Forbes, who was charged with Portland MP Daryl Vaz and Tankweld boss Bruce Bicknell in 2014, had his con­vic­tion reversed by the appel­late court this morning.
Forbes was charged with attempt­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice in a case where Bicknell was issued a traf­fic tick­et for speeding.
SSP Forbes became embroiled in the affair after he was alleged­ly asked to inter­cede on Bicknell’s behalf by Vaz, a friend of Bicknell.
In a con­vo­lut­ed twist, Forbes was con­vict­ed of the charge, while Vaz and Bicknell were freed.
Forbes was fined $800,000 or six months in prison, the court of appeals ordered that the $800,000 be returned to Forbes immediately.

By Zack Linly

Cops real­ly seem to hate the idea of police dis­ci­pli­nary records being made pub­lic. If a civil­ian has a crim­i­nal record, courts, poten­tial employ­ers, renters and oth­ers would be able to access that infor­ma­tion through the sim­plest of back­ground checks, but for some rea­son, police offi­cers appear to think that putting on the uni­form should shield them from such scruti­ny. “If you’ve done noth­ing wrong, you have noth­ing to wor­ry about,” is log­ic that only seems to apply to peo­ple on the receiv­ing end of police work, not so much for offi­cers themselves.

On Tuesday, a fed­er­al appeals court in New York dealt a blow to police unions by, well, rul­ing in favor of police trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty by allow­ing for NYC to release “hun­dreds of thou­sands of police dis­ci­pli­nary records, a major mile­stone in a long and bit­ter polit­i­cal bat­tle to open the records to pub­lic scruti­ny,” the New York Times reports.

Mayor Bill de Blasio didn’t give a spe­cif­ic time­frame for when the records would be made pub­lic, but he said, “We look for­ward to releas­ing this data,” and that his office would “seek clar­i­ty” from the court as to when the process of releas­ing those records could begin.

Police offi­cers and “back the blue” enthu­si­asts are going to feel how­ev­er they’re going to feel about the rul­ing — which also extends to fire­fight­ers and cor­rec­tions offi­cers — but for activists, civ­il lib­er­ties groups and any­one else who thinks hav­ing access to a police officer’s report card is ben­e­fi­cial to soci­ety, this is, at the very least, a small victory.

From the Times:

For decades, the dis­ci­pli­nary records of police offi­cers in New York were shield­ed from pub­lic dis­clo­sure by the state’s civ­il rights law. Then, in June, the State Legislature repealed the sec­tion of the law, known as 50‑a, that had kept such records confidential.

The repeal was part of a pack­age of leg­isla­tive changes aimed at reduc­ing police mis­con­duct in the wake of the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police offi­cers, which had ignit­ed nation­wide protests against police brutality.

“For the past sev­en years, we’ve fun­da­men­tal­ly changed how we police our city, strength­en­ing the bonds between com­mu­ni­ties and the offi­cers who serve them,” Mr. de Blasio said in a state­ment on Tuesday.

“Now, we can go even fur­ther to restore account­abil­i­ty and trust to the dis­ci­pli­nary process,” he said. “Good rid­dance to 50‑a.”

Of course, the unions that sued to keep police bru­tal­i­ty police records sealed aren’t hap­py with the Tuesday rul­ing and they, appar­ent­ly, are not will­ing to give up the fight for police to be able to do what­ev­er the fuck they want with­out the pub­lic know­ing shit police privacy.

“Today’s rul­ing does not end our fight to pro­tect our mem­bers’ safe­ty and due process rights,” Hank Sheinkopf, a spokesper­son for the coali­tion of unions, said.

More from the Times:

The order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a low­er-court rul­ing and addressed com­plaints raised by the unions, includ­ing the fear that the dis­clo­sures could height­en the risks for police officers.

“We ful­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly respect the dan­gers and risks police offi­cers face every day,” the pan­el said. “But we can­not say that the District Court abused its dis­cre­tion when it deter­mined that the unions have not suf­fi­cient­ly demon­strat­ed that those dan­gers and risks are like­ly to increase because of the city’s planned disclosures.”

Again, if cops are going to argue — with­out suf­fi­cient evi­dence — that pub­lic view­ing of their records puts them at risk, then that ener­gy should be kept for everyone’s records. But we need to know about the back­grounds of teach­ers, politi­cians, coun­selors, physi­cians, retail work­ers, servers, babysit­ters, blind dates — lit­er­al­ly any­one who wants to do any­thing that affects the gen­er­al pub­lic. So why not police?

If polic­ing is such an impor­tant job, then police trans­paren­cy is just as impor­tant as it is for every­one else.

(Story orig­i­nat­ed at the root)

Retired DSP Altermoth “Parro” Campbell has been freed of all charges laid against him by a Constable who pep­per-sprayed him dur­ing a traf­fic stop in 2019.
Mister Campbell was rep­re­sent­ed by Attorney Law Bert SamuelS. With this acquit­tal, there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a law­suit against the arrest­ing offi­cer, the Commissioner of Police, the Government (the Attorney General, the Ministry of National Security, and the Ministry of Justice).
Breaking news . More to come.

As the admin­is­tra­tion in Kingston buries its head in the sand on the exis­ten­tial issue of crime, even mat­ters of basic safe­ty, seem to be out­side of the abil­i­ties and scope of the peo­ple tasked with the nation’s secu­ri­ty and safety.
A sto­ry caught my eyes in one of the local dailies today. Some res­i­dents of the west­ern tourist town of Negril in Westmoreland are demand­ing that medi­ans that were placed on the Norman Manley Boulevard,(rolling eyes at the idea of anoth­er edi­fice named after the Manleys), be removed forth­with. The medi­ans were placed there to reduce speed­ing that has been caus­ing crash­es on the strip.
The res­i­dents and their mouth­pieces argue that the medi­ans are now dam­aged by speed­ing motorists and are now, adding to the rea­sons seri­ous crash­es occur on that strip of roadway.

Cognitive dis­so­nance, I guess!
So, here we have a sit­u­a­tion in which the medi­ans were dam­aged by the same speed­ing motorists who refuse to adhere to the road traf­fic act’s dic­tates. The same motorists who con­tin­ue to crash and kill oth­er motorists and pas­sen­gers they trans­port, mak­ing demands that the reme­dies applied, be removed.
The clue­less mem­ber of Parliament, some­one named Morland Wilson, stu­pid­ly joined the call to remove the medians.
The Member of Parliament had this to say, quote; “In December, I got reports of four acci­dents as a result of the medi­ans. And when I say as a result – vehi­cle, lit­er­al­ly, dri­ve up on the medi­ans. Some turned over, some lost con­trol and hit walls and oth­er cars and pedes­tri­ans. So, it is hor­ri­ble.”
You can­not make these things up. This was the state­ment from a sup­posed leader of our country.
No mis­ter mem­ber of par­lia­ment, the cause of the crash­es can­not be attrib­uted to the medi­ans; they are direct­ly a result of speed­ing motorists.

We can­not keep mov­ing the goal­post of account­abil­i­ty so that we may appease law­break­ers. We are fail­ing the coun­try; we are march­ing the coun­try into a failed state, status.
Just an aside for the mem­ber of par­lia­ment mis­ter Wilson, there is a dif­fer­ence between what is con­sid­ered an acci­dent and what is con­sid­ered a crash.
Accident; an unfor­tu­nate inci­dent that hap­pens unex­pect­ed­ly and unin­ten­tion­al­ly, typ­i­cal­ly result­ing in dam­age or injury.
Crash; this hap­pens because of actions of one or more dri­vers through one or more events, i.e., speed­ing, reck­less and care­less dri­ving, speed­ing, drunk dri­ving, etc.
Therefore, it fol­lows that for the most part, these [crash­es] are result­ing in the death of cit­i­zens because of one or more of the caus­es I laid out in the def­i­n­i­tion of [crash].
The medi­ans were placed in the road­ways to slow down dri­vers, instead of abid­ing by the new rules, the speed­ers con­tin­ued speed­ing, dam­ag­ing the infra­struc­ture and snuff­ing out more lives.
The response from the res­i­dents and the mem­ber of par­lia­ment is noth­ing if not dystopian.

I am remind­ed of a joke my friend’s wife shared with me, (sor­ry Jackie, I had to bor­row this one). She loves pork, and so she had a meal of pork and rice, she devel­oped a stom­ach ache. She knew the pork caused her stom­ach ache, but she stopped eat­ing rice.
Common sense dic­tates that the peo­ple know what is caus­ing the crashes,(speeding), not the medi­ans placed there, not the medi­ans that the same speed­ing motorists now damage.
The mem­ber of par­lia­ment can­not be that dumb that he does­n’t under­stand that sim­ple con­cept. But, tak­ing stricter action to rein in these law­less motorists would be a bridge too far, so they want the medi­ans removed, and their polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive concurs.
Why are you writ­ing about parochial mat­ters like medi­ans in roadways?
Well, small things grow into big things; if we can­not stop motorists from speed­ing on a sin­gle strip of the road­way, how in God’s name can this same admin­is­tra­tion and police force stop crime on this Island?
Think about it!

Outside the obvi­ous ques­tion of the Westmoreland, police inabil­i­ty to take dras­tic steps against those motorists, lies the even deep­er issue of this admin­is­tra­tion back­ing away from tak­ing action to stop crim­i­nals. Choosing instead, to back away from the lawbreakers.
It is stu­pid to do the same things and expect a dif­fer­ent result, but that is only accept­able in ordi­nary peo­ple. When we elect lead­ers to rep­re­sent us, we expect that they will make mis­takes; what we do not expect, is to see our lead­ers make mis­takes, fail to rec­og­nize those mis­takes, and worse, refus­ing to reme­di­ate those mis­takes out of arrogance.
This Administration can no longer pre­tend that its poli­cies on crime are work­ing. We knew they would not work; there is a full body of work in this medi­um out­lin­ing why they would not work.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister exer­cised his pre­rog­a­tive and embarked on his fools mission.
We had no pow­er to stop him, so we were forced to wait for the con­se­quences; sad­ly, the results are many dead Jamaicans. As a for­mer offi­cer who walked those streets, path­ways, and alley­ways, I had seen the gory bod­ies laid bare as the blood dried in the dust on the sidewalks.
We did not need to see those dead bod­ies, the Prime Minister & his cab­i­net did, Andrew Holness, Horace Chang, Delroy Chuck, the cabal of crim­i­nal rights activists, et al. .…. oh, let us not for­get Tony Anderson[sic].

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