The pri­vate sec­tor says new cur­fews result­ing from COVID-19 could see some rever­sal of the recent eco­nom­ic gains and the recov­ery of jobs.
At the rate, Jamaica is going in mur­ders, road fatal­i­ties, and, covid death pret­ty soon there will be no short­age of jobs, there won’t be any­one to fill those jobs.
It is a del­i­cate bal­ance that the gov­ern­ment is forced to strike in try­ing to pre­vent spikes in COVID-19 cas­es while con­sid­er­ing the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic health. I am yet unsure whether forc­ing peo­ple to stay inside their homes from 8;00 is the right way to go?
The coun­try’s lead­er­ship will have to decide whether it is fea­si­ble to lock peo­ple in their homes under the penal­ty of jail to fight the virus, as against the per­cep­tion that these cur­fews are intend­ed to main­tain the drop in non-vio­lent crimes the coun­try has been witnessing.

A few days ago, the Minister of National Security Horace Chang and his deputy told local media that the prime strate­gies they have in place are work­ing, despite the spate of killings across the Island. Chang point­ed to police sta­tis­tics that show a dip in non-vio­lent offens­es like house­break­ing, in that data were few­er rapes and robberies.
Murders were con­ve­nient­ly left ut of Chang’s presentation.
I point­ed out that crime is not a polit­i­cal issue; I sup­port the admin­is­tra­tion in oth­er areas, not nation­al secu­ri­ty. To sug­gest that “we have to give Tony Anderson more time to set­tle in” is an insult to every cop from District Constable to Deputy Commissioner.
More than all, it is an insult to the Jamaican peo­ple as mur­ders con­tin­ue unabat­ed to tell us that you are renew­ing Anderson’s con­tract because he is mod­ern­iz­ing the force.
What does that mod­ern­iz­ing entail, that we are forced to accept the dai­ly mur­ders of our fam­i­ly mem­bers while some bureau­crat mod­ern­izes the force?
If “Tony Anderson” can­not walk and chew gum simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, he has no busi­ness being in the job he has. It is up to Horace Chang to mod­ern­ize the force; the police chief’s job is to ensure that crime is con­tained to a minimum.
In fact, Tony Anderson had no cre­den­tials in polic­ing, law, or any oth­er dis­ci­pline close­ly relat­ed to the task of being a chief con­sta­ble. He got the job out of bla­tant pol­i­tics, and we are being forced to accept him whether we like his work or not.

I hate to find myself mak­ing a case for the police high com­mand, and I do so in prin­ci­ple, not out of affec­tion, or respect for that club’s mem­bers. Nevertheless, it is a slap to their faces the way this admin­is­tra­tion treats them. No, no, the PNP is far worse, so in actu­al­i­ty, the police find them­selves between dumb and dumb­er, more arro­gant and most arrogant.
Many mem­bers of the police high com­mand are mere polit­i­cal lap­dogs to the cor­rupt lit­tle politi­cians; it is nauseating.
That is the rea­son Andrew Holness has no respect for them. For those rea­sons, we are ordered to “give Tony Anderson time”[sic].
No com­mis­sion­er of police to come up from the con­sta­ble rank would have received such grace and deference.
But this is hard­ly about mak­ing the case against Anderson; I have nev­er met him; as I have said in oth­er forums, the guy seems like a great guy. I may have had a Red Stripe with him, assum­ing Holness allows him to drink a beer.
I believe that he is over his head, although I do not believe any police com­mis­sion­er can suc­cess­ful­ly use the anti-crime strate­gies the gov­ern­ment is using.
You can­not work in cement with­out expe­ri­enc­ing cement dust. You can­not paint and not get some col­or on what­ev­er you are wear­ing as sur­face apparel.
The point is that police [can­not] work with the worst crim­i­nals with­out get­ting push­back about exces­sive force?
As a for­mer police offi­cer myself, I know the streets, I have worked them with some of the best cops, and I have seen some of the worst. All in all, police offi­cers need some lat­i­tude to do their jobs with­out the pha­lanx of know noth­ing opin­ion­at­ed Monday morn­ing quar­ter­backs pass­ing judg­ment with­out know­ing the facts of alle­ga­tions against them.

I am a crit­ic of abu­sive and overzeal­ous polic­ing; I have seen it in the United States, I have seen the destruc­tive con­se­quences of race-based polic­ing. And yet, in each case, that offi­cer sare under the micro­scope for unlaw­ful behav­ior; I wait for the facts to emerge before div­ing in against the officers.
As an offi­cer in Jamaica, I was shot doing my job, but I nev­er stopped believ­ing in the good­ness of the peo­ple I served, and I know the qual­i­ty of the infor­ma­tion they gave to me.
Our offi­cers must get back to build­ing rela­tion­ships with the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.
In every sit­u­a­tion in which a team fails, the focus [must]be on man­age­ment, not on the team. If the team is bad, it is the coach­es’ fault (com­mis­sion­er & lead­er­ship team) or the team owner,(Government).
Coaches and own­ers do not get to blame play­ers (police offi­cers) for fail­ing to win, ( con­tain & erad­i­cate crime).
Regardless of cir­cum­stances of bad out­comes, it is always the lead­er­ship that’s at fault.
This Administration can­not con­tin­ue to blame police offi­cers for crime surges and esca­la­tion. It is the job of the Government to find solu­tions and exe­cute those solutions.

Andrew Holness’s try­ing to appease for­eign nations like the United States and Canada, which have their own domes­tic ter­ror­ism prob­lems, is both fool­ish and counterproductive.
Bear in mind that it will be these same nations, includ­ing England, that will declare Jamaica a failed state when it serves their purposes.
Jamaican lead­ers are not quick to grasp the con­cept of inter­na­tion­al machi­na­tions and the way large, pow­er­ful nations manip­u­late small­er, less pow­er­ful coun­tries to do their will. Many Jamaicans have already had their US visas yanked; these events ought to be a warn­ing that pow­er­ful nations still believe it is their right to cur­tail the free trav­el of humans across the globe. They can place any­one on a ter­ror watch list, and that per­son will not be able to board a flight, guilty or innocent.
Nelson Mandela was on a ter­ror watch list.
Jamaica needs a raft of new laws to com­bat dan­ger­ous trans-nation­al crim­i­nal­i­ty. The coun­try needs an expand­ed judi­cia­ry. It requires an expand­ed pros­e­cu­tor’s office. The gov­ern­ment needs a bet­ter trained, bet­ter-paid police department.
It needs an inde­pen­dent police review board made up of intel­li­gent peo­ple, includ­ing for­mer police offi­cers who served in street units.
The coun­try needs the repeal of the INDECOM Act. We should all be clear that the INDECOM act was forced onto Bruce Golding by for­eign pow­ers, it must be repealed.
Only when we adopt these mea­sures will we begin to see a mea­sur­able reduc­tion in vio­lent crime, one that is sustainable.
lock­ing peo­ple in their homes all night is not the answer, sure if peo­ple are in their homes hard­ly any­one will break-in and if they are not on the streets they are less like­ly t be robbed or raped.
So there you have it dear min­is­ter Horace Chang the dip in those crimes is eas­i­ly explained it has noth­ing to do with any­thing your boy [Tony Anderson] is doing, it’s COVID.
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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. 

“You have to give ‘Tony’ Anderson time to set­tle in. If he does­n’t set­tle in, you are just going to appoint anoth­er com­mis­sion­er, and you do the same tra­di­tion­al things all over again.” [Horace Chang, Minister of National Security.
Ha, yes, so there you have it, the prob­lem with Jamaica’s crime prob­lem is, and has always been, the tra­di­tion­al ways of doing things, as far as this Administration is concerned.
Consequently, They threw out the bath­wa­ter, baby and all, then they real­ized, that the water was not the prob­lem, but not only did they throw out the water, they also dis­card­ed the baby in the process.
This shit is not fun­ny; it is as asi­nine as George Bush telling his FEMA direc­tor, “good job, Brownie,” even as peo­ple were on rooftops in Louisiana threat­ened by flood­wa­ters, beg­ging to be rescued.
Let me not relit­i­gate Andrew Honess’ BS; let me not give expo­sure to Delroy Chuck, and oth­ers who adopt­ed Carolyn Gomes’ lies, (you remem­ber her lies), about name brand cops!
Gomes built a name for her­self on dead police offi­cers’ blood and was award­ed nation­al hon­ors on that blood.
Andrew Holness came out of that anti-police world view, and so no one should be sur­prised that he placed Anthony Anderson over the JCF. He and his min­ions are now mov­ing the goal­post of account­abil­i­ty that was the barom­e­ter for pre­vi­ous Commissioners who came up through the ranks and told us that mur­der sta­tis­tics are not a true met­ric of suc­cess and fail­ure of crime management.
I can­not think of a more press­ing measurement. .

How fuck­ing stu­pid do they real­ly think we are. Even if we ignore the obvi­ous friend­li­ness of,‘you have to give Tony Anderson time to set­tle in,’ bull­shit, we are still left with a Commissioner of Police on whose watch mur­ders have con­tin­ued to esca­late. In con­trast, his friends in the polit­i­cal are­na run pro­tec­tion for him by blow­ing smoke up our ass­es that esca­lat­ing homi­cide num­bers are not a true mea­sure­ment of fail­ure, because he is mod­ern­iz­ing the force.
Chang to the media.
“That’s why you sep­a­rate homi­cide from a lot of the real­i­ties. Homicides are a big prob­lem. For every com­mis­sion­er, we have put there and min­is­ter and Government, to deal effec­tive­ly with the gangs will take us a lit­tle while. All I can say to the pub­lic is that the things that we are doing, I am con­fi­dent that they can work, but it will not hap­pen in three years. We should see some reduc­tion in the num­bers in the next 18 months, but three years is a short time to deal with many of the third-gen­er­a­tion gangs.”
I won­der how this new nar­ra­tive plays with peo­ple like George Quallo, and oth­ers who were pil­lo­ried for the ris­ing crime even though they were not giv­en half the resources that have been made avail­able to Antony Anderson.
I find it inter­est­ing that this nar­ra­tive is being pushed after our arti­cle on January 28^th. We asked salient ques­tions as to why Anderson still has a job even as vio­lent crimes con­tin­ue to increase?

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​3​5​0​-​i​n​c​r​e​a​s​e​-​i​n​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​s​-​i​n​-​s​t​-​j​a​m​e​s​-​w​h​e​r​e​-​a​r​e​-​t​h​e​-​c​a​l​l​s​-​t​o​-​f​i​r​e​-​a​n​t​o​n​y​-​a​n​d​e​r​s​on/

In that arti­cle, linked above, we said the following.
It is no won­der then that since the start of 2021, the Parish of Saint James has seen an increase of 350 per­cent in mur­ders against the pre­vi­ous year.
Saint James may be expe­ri­enc­ing the largest increase in vio­lent crime, but it is not the only Parish expe­ri­enc­ing a surge in vio­lence. The shock­ing uptick of mur­ders in the Island’s tourism mec­ca has gone on unabat­ed; it is a pre­cise met­ric of the country’s fail­ure to get its arms around this crime monster.
Pride and arro­gance will cause us to lose this once pearl of the Caribbean; igno­rance, and pre­tense are citadels of defense against the strate­gies that would inex­orably begin to turn the hell­ish crime mon­ster around.
Like pour­ing water into a bas­ket, they con­tin­ue to nib­ble around the edges. They con­tin­ue to admin­is­ter band-aids to gun­shot wounds, while con­sol­ing the casu­al­ty with plat­i­tudes, even as he bleeds to death.
Braggadocio’s pre-writ­ten state­ments of resolve, a reac­tionary show of force, only to pull back because of its unsus­tain­abil­i­ty, are noth­ing if not comical.

A week lat­er, the Nation’s Deputy Prime Minister/​Minister of National Security and his Deputy trots out a nar­ra­tive sup­port­ing Anderson, one that dis­torts the killings’ real­i­ty while point­ing to low­er num­bers in non-vio­lent offences, as a shiny thing for the local media to chase. To the local medi­a’s dis­cred­it, they did not have the courage to hold the gov­ern­ment account­able based on the facts we laid out.
Horace Chang’s con­stituen­cy sits smack dab in the mid­dle of Saint James, which over the years has become Jamaica’s most vio­lent parish.
It is rep­re­hen­si­ble that Chang, who now holds the nation­al secu­ri­ty port­fo­lio and should not have been appoint­ed to head that min­istry, much less con­tin­ue with this lev­el of fail­ure, now finds him­self mak­ing excus­es and ratio­nal­iz­ing away the admin­is­tra­tion’s fail­ures on the issue of crime.
On the one hand, sup­pli­cants to the sta­tus quo argue that the Government and the Police com­mis­sion­er can­not be held account­able for mur­ders, and in par­tic­u­lar, mur­ders that emanate from domes­tic disputes.
If that is true, then Chang’s deputy Matthew Samuda’s state­ments are to be treat­ed the same way we treat the rest of our garbage. Samuda argued; that under Major General Anderson’s stew­ard­ship, lar­ce­ny cas­es have dropped by 70 per­cent, rob­bery 50 per­cent, break-ins 30 per­cent, rape over 40 per­cent, and aggra­vat­ed assault cas­es have dropped by over 50 percent.

Notice that there is no talk about the esca­lat­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics? There is a rea­son for that, and as I have said in pre­vi­ous arti­cles, and the video above, from time to time, events in Jamaica lead to sharp drops in cer­tain cat­e­gories of crimes, that the police can­not claim cred­it for.
In the Youtube video above done in 2019, I made the very same case against the deflec­tions and dis­trac­tions that the Government was engag­ing in, even as it pur­sued fail­ing and failed strate­gies that were bear­ing no fruits, but were result­ing in more and more Jamaicans being killed, some need­less­ly, oth­ers as a direct con­se­quence of the gov­ern­men­t’s incompetence,stubbornness and arrogance.
As far as I know, those drops have nev­er been stud­ied, but world cup soc­cer has always been one such event when even heart­less crim­i­nals take a break from their ghoul­ish practices.
This down­turn in non-vio­lent offens­es, and rapes may be attrib­uted to the COVID-19 out­break that has sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed the way peo­ple operate.
For exam­ple, as a detec­tive sta­tioned at Constant Spring, I real­ized that house­break­ings were rife in Havendale Saint Andrew for the sim­ple rea­son that Havendale was a beau­ti­ful bed­room com­mu­ni­ty of mid­dle-class peo­ple who left their homes to go out to work.
These folks did not have helpers, so their homes were prime targets.
On the con­trary, the more upscale com­mu­ni­ties of Norbrook and Cherry Gardens had rob­beries. Those homes had helpers, so the preda­tors would pounce on house­hold helpers when they ven­tured out­side to com­plete a task. 

I am not a crim­i­nol­o­gist; it is up to the experts to fer­ret the truth that lies deeply buried in the data. But let us not be fooled by bureau­crats and politi­cians who would try to use num­bers to deceive and mislead.
If Horace Chang has a strate­gic plan that deliv­ered those low­er num­bers in non-vio­lent crimes, let us see them.
In fact, we will be mak­ing a for­mal request come Monday, February 8^th to the Ministry of National Security and the Office of the Commissioner of Police for evi­dence of those strate­gies that led to those reductions.
All law-abid­ing Jamaicans want a crime-free soci­ety, but if it comes down to hav­ing few­er break-ins and rob­beries against few­er mur­ders, I believe the major­i­ty of the peo­ple would pre­fer few­er killings.

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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. 

Harry McLeod, the reput­ed ‘ex-lieu­tenant’ of for­mer Tivoli Gardens don, Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, was killed along Darling Street in the vicin­i­ty of Coronation mar­ket in Western Kingston on Sunday morning.
McLeod was 51 years old.
Reports are that about 7:50 am, McLeod, wide­ly known as ‘Harry Dog,’ who was a labor­er of Tivoli Gardens, was stand­ing along the road­way when a sil­ver motor­car with sev­er­al men aboard was dri­ven up.
The men opened gun­fire on McLeod before mak­ing good their escape.
McLeod was assist­ed to the hos­pi­tal, where he was pro­nounced dead on arrival.
Some five years ago, McLeod was acquit­ted of sev­er­al crim­i­nal charges, includ­ing lar­ce­ny, receiv­ing a stolen motor vehi­cle, and forgery after the pros­e­cu­tion could not build a case against him in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court.

The charges against McLeod arose after the vehi­cle in ques­tion was alleged­ly found in Tivoli Gardens with some 4,000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion in it dur­ing the May 2010 oper­a­tion to appre­hend Coke, who was then want­ed in the United States on drugs and gun­run­ning charges.
With McLeod’s doc­u­ments in it, the vehi­cle was alleged­ly found in front of Coke’s ‘Presidential Click’ office.
That acquit­tal came two years after McLeod was freed of ille­gal pos­ses­sion of ammu­ni­tion charge after 42 rounds of ammu­ni­tion were alleged­ly found in his Oxford Road, New Kingston apart­ment when he was held in 2011.
He has also been arrest­ed sev­er­al oth­er times after the police list­ed him as a “major per­son of inter­est” relat­ed to crimes com­mit­ted in the Kingston Western Police Division.

Talk about paint­ing your­self into a cor­ner.….. Prime Minister Andrew Holness cam­paigned on the promise that peo­ple would sleep with their win­dows open under a Holness admin­is­tra­tion. I will not hold the prime min­is­ter to that promise; politi­cians make crazy state­ments, I am not here to nit-pick or make polit­i­cal points.
As I have said repeat­ed­ly, if you read my work and take from it that I am a syco­phant for one side or the oth­er, you are out of your mind.
But let us look at the oth­er things the Prime Minister said before win­ning the elec­tions, after he won, and the things he con­tin­ues to say today.
“Police will not be kick­ing down peo­ple’s doors while I am Prime Minister.”& ” We can­not just form anoth­er squad and send them to shoot up gun­men.” .…..Who the hell does this guy think he is any­way? But wait, you are lit­er­al­ly telling shoot­ers that they have a friend in you when you make state­ments like that.
What is the Prime Minister’s inter­est in keep­ing shoot­ers alive, at the per­il of law-abid­ing Jamaican citizens?
The Prime Minister con­tin­ues to embar­rass him­self by sup­pos­ing that police offi­cers go out to exe­cute shoot­ers. That is usu­al­ly a choice made by the gun­men themselves.
As I said pre­vi­ous­ly, I will not hold the prime min­is­ter to his sil­ly cam­paign promise. Still, I will con­tin­ue to hold him account­able based on the direc­tion he has been tak­ing the coun­try, which has been the oppo­site direc­tion required to begin to turn the coun­try around.

The Prime Minister’s arro­gance and his bull­ish­ness on the sub­ject cre­at­ed ani­mos­i­ty in many offi­cers past and present. Many of those offi­cers placed their lives on the line for a pal­try salary and con­tin­ue to do so.
The Prime Minister joined the anti-police antag­o­nist to Monday morn­ing quar­ter­back vio­lent con­fronta­tions, even those in which police are killed and injured.
By tak­ing that tack and bring­ing in his friend Antony Anderson from the mil­i­tary to exe­cute what I cau­tioned would be a failed strat­e­gy, he basi­cal­ly sig­naled that he want­ed a clean break from tra­di­tion­al polic­ing; police offi­cers guns must fire sweet-smelling ros­es, offi­cers must walk around kiss­ing every ass and every jack­ass and call­ing them sir and ma’am..”
Emboldened by the buf­foon­ery, every punk decid­ed to drape up offi­cers who approach them, regard­less of their transgression.
Several offi­cers lost their lives because they were scared to defend them­selves, out of fear that Holness’ boy Terrence Williams would take their gun away, then per­se­cute them to the fullest extent of [INDECOM], not by Jamaican law.
The res­ig­na­tions poured in up to fifty per month, so they insti­tut­ed mea­sures to make it a crime for offi­cers to leave the JCF, with­out first giv­ing a 6‑month pri­or notice before they do so.

Still, the offi­cers kept on leav­ing, not car­ing about their new rules.
The chick­ens have now come home to roost, mis­ter Holness paint­ed him­self into a cor­ner, he told us our old ways were out­dat­ed, he knew bet­ter than the offi­cers who are in the field doing the work, the peo­ple he so resent­ed that he does­n’t even con­sult them to talk about polic­ing, he con­sults sol­diers, on polic­ing. He placed sol­diers to super­vise career police offi­cers. He cre­at­ed the gen­er­al per­cep­tion among the rank and file that the best they could ever aspire to in the JCF after the best edu­ca­tion, and years of polic­ing expe­ri­ence, is Deputy Commissioner of Police.
They are not good enough to head the agency they spent their entire work­ing careers serv­ing. Holness did not need to say those words; the infer­ence was bla­tant­ly clear.
Holness’s arro­gance has been caus­ing count­less lives; it will con­tin­ue to cause the lives of much more inno­cent Jamaicans.
The Prime Minister’s arro­gance will be his undo­ing. The Zones of Special Operations he tout­ed has done noth­ing to stem the blood-let­ting. The States of Emergencies he derid­ed then was forced to ini­ti­ate did not do it either, and nei­ther has his charm offen­sive done a damn thing to stop the killings.
Now that peo­ple can­not sleep with their win­dows open, .… (ok, that was a low blow), okay, peo­ple can­not sleep, period.
What now?
The Prime Minister and his Police Commissioner have revert­ed to blam­ing the media and the Opposition par­ty. The Prime Minister insin­u­at­ed that some sin­is­ter force is dri­ving up the mur­der sta­tis­tics. His Commissioner of Police blames media head­lines for sen­sa­tion­al­iz­ing mur­der statistics.
How in God’s name can one sen­sa­tion­al­ize facts?

The Jamaica Labor Party won 49 seats in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions, oblit­er­at­ing the Opposition People’s National Party. The vic­to­ry was so resound­ing it sent Opposition Leader Peter Phillips into retire­ment. It was the first time since 1967 that the Jamaica Labor Party had won back to back con­test­ed elec­tions. The mag­ni­tude of the 16 seat pick­up by the JLP was a clear man­date for the JLP to reshape Jamaica and set a new course for the coun­try after years of stag­na­tion and regres­sive per­for­mance under PNP leadership.
The Prime Minister’s state­ments blam­ing shad­owy bogey­men for his watch’s esca­lat­ing mur­ders is a shock­ing admis­sion that his secu­ri­ty poli­cies are an abysmal fail­ure.
Come on, guys, are you seri­ous right now? It is okay to say you were wrong. It is okay to say that the bull­shit you have been ped­dling was .….……well, like I said, cow manure.

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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. 

Yesterday I wrote an arti­cle that was less than com­pli­men­ta­ry of the Jamaican Prime Minister and his han­dling of the Nation’s crime-fight­ing strategy.
I want to con­tin­ue address­ing the island’s crime surge today with the same clear-eyed focus I tried to use in the January 27^th article.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​o​-​t​h​o​s​e​-​w​h​o​-​s​a​i​d​-​t​a​k​i​n​g​-​o​u​t​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​e​r​s​-​h​a​s​-​n​o​t​-​w​o​r​k​e​d​-​h​o​w​-​i​s​-​r​o​l​l​i​n​g​-​o​v​e​r​-​a​n​d​-​s​u​r​r​e​n​d​e​r​i​n​g​-​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​f​o​r​-​y​ou/.
For decades, the two polit­i­cal par­ties that rule Jamaica have done noth­ing to advance the coun­try’s rule of law. In fact, they have advanced mea­sures that have expo­nen­tial­ly cement­ed a cul­ture of crim­i­nal­i­ty that lit­er­al­ly tran­scends any police depart­men­t’s abil­i­ty to erad­i­cate, least of all, the poor­ly trained, poor­ly equipped, poor­ly paid, and super­vised JCF.
Members of the two polit­i­cal par­ties have been sur­ro­gates for dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals and still are today.
They send cop-killers away in the dead of night. They encour­age mem­bers of their con­stituen­cies to demon­strate against the police. They get involved in police inves­ti­ga­tions; they encour­age puni­tive mea­sures against decent police offi­cers who try to do their jobs; of course, this is only pos­si­ble because the lead­er­ship of the JCF has been slav­ish lap­dogs, always look­ing to serve their mas­ters for a pat on the back. Members of the two par­ties have been con­nect­ed to gang­land activ­i­ties, includ­ing the mur­der of Jamaican citizens.
It is impos­si­ble then to have a coun­try where the rule of law is respect­ed when the head of the stream is as filth and cor­rupt­ed as that which exists in our country.

It ought to come as no sur­prise that, accord­ing to [Transparency International, our beau­ti­ful lit­tle island con­tin­ue to be one of the most cor­rupt nations on earth.
In fact, a recent report indi­cates that Jamaica is the Caribbean’s fifth most cor­rupt coun­try. In Transparency’s lat­est report, for the year 2020, Jamaica inched up from a score of 43 to 44 out of 100, in a con­text where zero is deemed very cor­rupt, and 100 is very clean.
In sim­ple terms, Jamaica has­n’t even yet reached the halfway mark away from the worst cor­rup­tion indi­ca­tor, which is zero.
This ought to give us some per­spec­tive as we pon­der the entrenched crim­i­nal­i­ty wash­ing over the tiny island of 2.8 mil­lion people.
Members of par­lia­ment dou­ble as defense lawyers to vio­lent mur­der­ers. They leave the court­room then head over to Gordon house to leg­is­late on the nation’s vio­lent crime rate.
To say that this is uneth­i­cal is to state the obvi­ous. To accept the con­flict of inter­est inher­ent in this kind of prac­tice is to begin to under­stand the com­plex lev­el of cor­rup­tion which brought Jamaica to the point where the Island is tee­ter­ing on the brink of becom­ing a failed state.

As we plug into those real­i­ties, we see the con­se­quences of these entrenched yet unad­dressed issues. It is no won­der then that since the start of 2021, the Parish of Saint James has seen an increase of 350 per­cent in mur­ders against the pre­vi­ous year.
Saint James may be expe­ri­enc­ing the largest increase in vio­lent crime, but it is not the only Parish expe­ri­enc­ing a surge in vio­lence. The shock­ing uptick of mur­ders in the Island’s tourism mec­ca has gone on unabat­ed; it is a pre­cise met­ric of the coun­try’s fail­ure to get its arms around this crime monster.
Pride and arro­gance will cause us to lose this once pearl of the Caribbean; igno­rance, and pre­tense are citadels of defense against the strate­gies that would inex­orably begin to turn the hell­ish crime mon­ster around.
Like pour­ing water into a bas­ket, they con­tin­ue to nib­ble around the edges. They con­tin­ue to admin­is­ter band-aids to gun­shot wounds, while con­sol­ing the casu­al­ty with plat­i­tudes, even as he bleeds to death.
Braggadocio’s pre-writ­ten state­ments of resolve, a reac­tionary show of force, only to pull back because of its unsus­tain­abil­i­ty, are noth­ing if not comical.

In pre­vi­ous years the thing to do would be to fire the Commissioner of Police. Blaming the vic­tim worked up until they paint­ed them­selves into a cor­ner that belies every­thing they told the coun­try before.
Previous com­mis­sion­ers who came up through the ranks were inca­pable of doing the job they were trained to do, so they had to bring in peo­ple from outside.
Of course, those out­siders had to come from the fix-it sad sack army with its own moun­tain of prob­lems with crim­i­nal­i­ty, but I digress. I am real­ly not look­ing to burst any star­ry-eyed bub­ble that may still exist about the Army’s pro­fes­sion­al­ism. Not today.
So this is their gold­en boy, for­mer head of the Military, intel­li­gent, with the let­ters to match, not taint­ed by the squad­die men­tal­i­ty; what’s not to like?
Only that he has presided over the worst increas­es in homi­cides and oth­er vio­lent crimes in the nation’s history.
So what now? What is the sto­ry now, crickets?
Why are there no calls for the res­ig­na­tion of Anthony Anderson? I’ll tell you, they knew that chang­ing Commissioners of police would do noth­ing to alle­vi­ate ris­ing crime, but they need­ed a scapegoat.
Moving around deck chairs on the sink­ing Titanic will do noth­ing to stop the ship from sink­ing; who exact­ly were they fooling?

Having shone a lit­tle light on cau­sa­tion, let’s now pro­vide a few solutions.
(1)Watered down laws do noth­ing to deter crim­i­nals. Pass laws that send clear mes­sages to vio­lent offend­ers that if you com­mit mur­der, you will not see the light of day.
(2) Remove for­eign-fund­ed groups from the leg­isla­tive table. No oth­er nation allows so-called human rights lob­by a seat at the table, much less allow them to dic­tate legislation.
(3) Law ‑Enforcement is not always pret­ty; some­times it gets messy. Allow the police to do their jobs with­in the frame­work of the law. When they vio­late their oath, hold them accountable.
(4) Discontinue doing the things I laid out in para­graph one.
(5) Provide the police with the resources they need to get the job done.
(6) Get out of the way of the Police.

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Mike writes for thinkers.

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

It is clear at least to [me]that there will be no direc­tion­al change in the num­ber of killings in Jamaica any­time soon. For one, the present Prime Minister’s arro­gance pre­vents even the most cur­so­ry re-exam­i­na­tion of what has been hap­pen­ing so far, to find out where changes may be made.
The present sys­tem of one man mak­ing deci­sions on a sub­ject in which (a) he has zero edu­ca­tion and (b) where he has an obvi­ous bias against police, will result in far more mur­ders, not fewer.

See spec­ta­cle in link below

https://​www​.face​book​.com/​k​e​i​s​h​a​.​m​a​c​.​9​0​6​/​v​i​d​e​o​s​/​2​4​5​0​7​9​7​3​3​8​1​5​753

The insane arro­gance of the Jamaican Prime Minister on the issue of crime is breath­tak­ing­ly shock­ing. In his most naked igno­rance, the prime min­is­ter still arro­gant­ly insists today, as he did when he cam­paigned for office, we can­not just form a squad and send them to shoot up gunmen.
Any crim­i­nal pro­fil­er will tell you that a part of the arse­nal of deal­ing with vio­lent crim­i­nals is the fear that they must feel at the pow­er of the laws and those who enforce them. By remov­ing the ele­ment of resolve, that every­thing is on the table at the high­est lev­el, the Island’s crim­i­nals are com­fort­ed in the idea that they have a friend in Jamaica house.
This is far more seri­ous than JLP/​PNP; it is a threat that has exis­ten­tial ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the island’s stability.
If we set aside the absolute mock­ery of the exer­cise in the peo­ple’s house that pass­es for par­lia­men­tary dis­course, the utter non­sense of the Prime Minister’s super­cil­ious address should shock all law-abid­ing Jamaicans.

If we ignore the woe­ful­ly pathet­ic fail­ings of Mark Golding and what remains of the PNP, even if we remove from our con­scious­ness the idea that the PNP could do a bet­ter job, we are left with the more fright­en­ing specter, that as a nation, Jamaica is in seri­ous trouble.
There is no under­stand­ing that [yes] there is only one lan­guage that means any­thing to Jamaica’s vio­lent mur­der­ers; that is the lan­guage of the law­man’s guns.
Modern-day sophistry pop­u­lar­ized by this Prime Minister has bled into the lumpen pro­lif­er­ate is noth­ing but fal­la­cious argu­ment, that has demon­stra­bly failed. Jamaicans have seen what that kind of uptown pre­tense is capa­ble of, and they are fed up with it. Law-abid­ing Jamaicans are fed up with this abdi­ca­tion of duty, but they have no one to stand up on their behalf.
A look at the mem­bers’ behav­ior in the peo­ple’s house informs with­out a shad­ow of a doubt that this sor­ry lot will not res­cue the coun­try. It also demon­strates why there are no stan­dards of deco­rum and civil­i­ty in our country.

The Prime Mister’s promise that there are greater efforts at shoring up bor­der secu­ri­ty is not an excuse to ignore the killings that are hap­pen­ing with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy dai­ly. Even if the secu­ri­ty forces could stop every gun com­ing into the coun­try, it would not stop the killings; it would cut off the sup­ply of weapons and ammu­ni­tion, and oth­er con­tra­band, but it would do noth­ing about the will­ing­ness of killers to kill indiscriminately.
I had long advo­cat­ed that the Island made a hor­ri­ble gam­ble under Percival Patterson when it decid­ed not to train a sin­gle detec­tive for a full decade. The records will show that-that peri­od rep­re­sents where the police lost the fight.
As some­one who came from the force’s inves­tiga­tive arm, I am a bit par­tial to it, even as I under­stand the need for the var­i­ous arms of the force, inves­tiga­tive pro­fi­cien­cy can­not be overstated.
One thing that must be made clear to this Prime Minister, even with the great­est intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, when it’s time to go after the blood­thirsty killers, it requires com­pe­tent, well-trained officers.

The death of Superintendent Leon Clunis and anoth­er offi­cer in June of last year in Horizon Park, St Catherine, was a stark reminder of that.
I don’t expect the Prime Minister to con­cern him­self with the minor con­se­quence of the on-duty death of two police offi­cers due to his poli­cies; the rest of us do.
Stopping guns com­ing in and pro­tect­ing the streets from the killers are not zero-sum issues. We have to do both simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Ramping up intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and advanc­ing strong enforce­ment are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive.
This Government has been one of the most crim­i­nal friend­ly admin­is­tra­tion since our inde­pen­dence. Shockingly, a Labor Party Administration could be this tone-deaf on such a sem­i­nal issue, as the crit­i­cal issue of pro­tect­ing the Jamaican people.
Andrew Holness’ seems to be caught up in read­ing his own press clip­pings. The idol­a­trous title [bro­gad] bestowed upon him by his sup­pli­cants, seems to have com­plete­ly eat­en away the part of his brain that would be recep­tive to com­mon sense.

The Jamaican Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, has zero train­ing or knowl­edge about law-enforce­ment. The Minister of Nation Security, Horace Chang, is a med­ical doc­tor. The Commissioner of Police, Antony Anderson, is a Soldier. Justice Minister Delroy Chuck, is a Lawyer, opposed to the rule of law, who should nev­er be allowed close to our coun­try’s nation­al secu­ri­ty apparatus.
The best argu­ment to be made for any­one that is part of the Security & Justice appa­ra­tus is Attorney General Marlene Mahaloo Forte, who real­ly has pre­cious lit­tle to do with crime-fight­ing strategies.
Again, I chan­nel my friend,” to the peo­ple who say tak­ing out mur­der­ers has not worked; how is rolling over and sur­ren­der­ing work­ing for you”?
In the 1980s, under Edward Seaga, shoot­ers knew that we were com­ing for them; there was no if’s and or buts. They sought refuge in oth­er coun­tries. At the time, the Island was reg­is­ter­ing 500 plus homi­cides. As law enforce­ment offi­cers, we worked night and day to reduce those num­bers because we thought that num­ber was far too many.
The fake elites com­plained that our strat­e­gy was not work­ing. How are the abject and shame­ful sur­ren­der work­ing for you know-noth­ing opin­ion­at­ed fools now?

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Mike writes for thinkers.

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

Amidst the pan­dem­ic and the blood­shed, the coun­try is cry­ing out for lead­er­ship. Leadership that nei­ther the Governing Jamaica Labor Party nor the Opposition People’s National Party is equipped with, or will­ing to give.
The most impor­tant func­tion of any Government is the secu­ri­ty of the population.
Medieval rulers under­stood that sim­ple con­cept, and they took steps to pro­tect their sub­jects. Rulebreakers were dealt with in ways that I will not endorse here; those who would enter their cities to pil­lage and kill, were kept out with elab­o­rate for­ti­fi­ca­tions. If invaders man­aged to breach those for­ti­fi­ca­tions no quar­ters were giv­en, because none was expected.

We are not in medieval times any­more, but the grue­some­ness of the killings and the killers’ cal­lous­ness are rem­i­nis­cent of the bar­barism that exist­ed dur­ing that peri­od we like to refer to as the dark ages.
It begs a cou­ple of ques­tions; since there was noth­ing dark about the era except for humans’ cal­lous nature and how they treat­ed each oth­er, what sep­a­rates us from the peo­ple of that era?
Certainly, it can­not be the trap­pings of moder­ni­ty; that’s just stuff. It has to be more than sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs that sep­a­rate us from the dark past, or we are no like­wise any more advanced than we were thou­sands of years ago, if we con­tin­ue to act as sav­ages towards others.

The dichoto­my that guides dis­course on crime in Jamaica through com­pet­ing ideals is both destruc­tive and anti­thet­i­cal to putting an end to the pro­tract­ed peri­od of wan­ton killings.
On the one hand, the lead­ers are so immersed in crime that they can­not leg­is­late against it in any mean­ing­ful way. Doing so would lit­er­al­ly take mon­ey from their pockets.
On the oth­er hand, there are those who though not ful­ly appre­cia­tive of the ben­e­fits of a crime-free soci­ety, are less invest­ed in its con­tin­u­ance and there­fore would not mind hav­ing less violence.
However, their world-view is shaped by a left­ist ide­ol­o­gy that does not believe in con­se­quences for actions for the lat­ter group. The oth­er unfor­tu­nate com­po­nent to this lat­ter group, is the edu­ca­tion they earned and, to wit, they believe is an organ that sep­a­rates them from the work­ing class over which they rule.

This lat­ter group pos­es the great­est risk, in my esti­ma­tion to any efforts to sal­vage what’s left of the coun­try. This group would rather burn the damn thing to the ground then rule over the ashes.
There is a tone-deaf­ness to their meth­ods, that may be attrib­uted to their sense of pre­tense and elit­ism. In that mind­set is a stub­born desire to project a sense that Jamaica is a devel­oped coun­try, despite the coun­try being any­thing but.
Like Dame Patricia Routledge, star of the old Brtish sit­com keep­ing up appear­ances, they pre­tend to be some­thing they are not.

This men­tal­i­ty is not that the prac­ti­tion­ers hide behind high walls and gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties; their pre­tense affects all Jamaicans’ lives.
There is a rea­son that the large west­ern nations that we Jamaicans immi­grate to, one and all, make law enforce­ment a cor­ner­stone to their societies.
Those of us who have been priv­i­leged to vis­it and live in those envi­ron­ments know all too well what it means to have the rule of law as guardrails around our­selves and our families.
Sure there are prob­lems with Law enforce­ment in America, that prob­lem is race-based, what is not in ques­tion is resources put toward law enforce­ment, which means leg­isla­tive­ly more than any­thing else.

Our coun­try has become a cir­cus; the penal­ties for vio­lent crimes are a joke. Minsters of Government are active lob­by­ists for crim­i­nals. The vio­lent mur­der­ers in Jamaica have no greater friend than the Minister of Justice, Delroy Chuck. Members of the Police depart­ment have no greater ene­my than the same Minister Delroy Chuck.
Simultaneously, the tiny per­cent­age of the mur­der­ers arrest­ed and even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed spend their time liv­ing the high life in what pass­es for the prisons.
Recording music, drink­ing booze, tex­ting and talk­ing on their cell phones, and God knows what else.
For many of these crim­i­nals, the only dif­fer­ence with their lifestyles on the inside, is that the tax­pay­ers sub­si­dize their lifestyle, the oth­er half paid for by the pro­ceeds of their crim­i­nal enter­pris­es that they con­tin­ue to run from inside.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties have made a mock­ery of our coun­try, all the time con­tin­u­ing to feed the peo­ple with bull­shit sto­ries about progress on the one hand, and pros­per­i­ty on the other.

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Mike writes for thinkers.

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

If the January 21^st Editorial in the Jamaica Observer weren’t such bull­shit, it would be wor­thy of being fea­tured on com­e­dy hour.
The sheer hypocrisy of the Editorial page drib­ble was breath­tak­ing, to put it mild­ly. “Gov’t seem­ing­ly bank­rupt of ideas on fight­ing crime.”

[After acknowl­edg­ing the lat­est “bloody week­end” in Jamaica, fea­tur­ing sev­er­al triple and dou­ble mur­ders, total­ing 25 peo­ple between January 16 and 19, the min­is­ter, for the umpteenth time, con­demned the bru­tal killers and promised yet again: “The police intend to increase activ­i­ties and we are not deterred by these kinds of brazen­ness.” In addi­tion, the secu­ri­ty min­is­ter let us know that, before the week­end slaugh­ters, mur­ders were trail­ing last year’s rate by 18.5 per­cent. To add insult to injury, Attorney General Marlene Malahoo Forte gave us this gem: “The coun­try has been call­ing on the State to act, and the State will act. The lev­el of brazen­ness and utter dis­re­gard for lives and pub­lic order can­not be accepted.”
We sup­pose that the coun­try should be com­plete­ly reas­sured by the fight­ing words of Dr. Chang and Mrs. Malahoo Forte, and we should expect the shoot­ers to be quak­ing in their boots as they scram­ble to get rid of their guns, take up law­ful employ­ment, and start going back to church. It is ridicu­lous that that is all we can expect from an Administration that con­tin­ues to bam­boo­zle with words while fail­ing to keep the coun­try safe — the most sacred duty of a Government.
The Government appears at this stage to be bank­rupt of ideas to fight crime. Well-inten­tioned as he is, Prime Minister Andrew Holness gave away the game when he did just what the much-jeered for­mer Security Minister Peter Bunting did in call­ing for divine inter­ven­tion].Jamaica Observer​.com
Read more here; http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​e​d​i​t​o​r​i​a​l​/​g​o​v​-​t​-​s​e​e​m​i​n​g​l​y​-​b​a​n​k​r​u​p​t​-​o​f​-​i​d​e​a​s​-​o​n​-​f​i​g​h​t​i​n​g​-​c​r​i​m​e​_​2​1​2​7​5​9​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​100

At the heart of the pick­le in which Jamaica now finds itself, lies the Pharisees who wrote the fore­gone. For decades they cheer led the lion­iz­ing of crime fig­ures, while at the same time influ­enc­ing the two crim­i­nal gangs that dou­ble as polit­i­cal par­ties, on how to water down anti-crime leg­is­la­tions. Now that crim­i­nals have the upper hand to do as they please, those same arson­ists stand there with the gas cans and lighters while crit­i­ciz­ing the fire depart­ment for not doing enough to put out the blaze.
Jamaica did not get to this stage in which all the author­i­ties can do is issue pre-writ­ten absurd state­ments of resolve; we now have an entire coun­try that was weaned on the idea that they can do as they please, rules be damned.
As a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer, I walked away from the JCF after a mere ⁹¹⁄₂ years because I real­ized that in addi­tion to the shit­ty pay, noth­ing that I did would make a darn dif­fer­ence because of the cul­ture of law­less­ness and cor­rup­tion in our country.
Jamaica had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a brand new rebirth at the time of the pseu­do-Independence dec­la­ra­tion in 1962. The truth is that Britain, hav­ing emerged from the sec­ond world war, bat­tered and bro­ken, was in no posi­tion to main­tain an empire.
Jamaica did not win her inde­pen­dence; Britain was hap­py to jet­ti­son the Island as it had done oth­er colonies before jamaica.
Instead of kick­ing the old colo­nial hea­thens to the curb, and set­ting their sights on Republican state­hood, Jamaican lead­ers allowed Britain to retain con­trol of our coun­try’s sovereignty.
Almost fifty-nine (59) years lat­er, Jamaican lead­ers stead­fast­ly refuse to extri­cate them­selves from the aprons of the vicious colo­nial­ists that mur­dered, raped, and muti­lat­ed our fore-parents.

Like lead­ers across the African con­ti­nent, Asia, and Latin ‑America, they saw the end of phys­i­cal col­o­niza­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enrich them­selves. As a con­se­quence, they opt­ed for lax laws that do pre­cious lit­tle to deter crim­i­nal conduct.
Today 59-years lat­er, we are at the tip­ping point on crime; 25 peo­ple were mur­dered between January 16 and 19.
Make no mis­take about it; there is no sense of urgency with­in the pop­u­la­tion either; after all ‘peo­ple get killed everywhere.[sic]
To a large extent, the vast major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion has no mem­o­ry of a peace­ful and tran­quil nation where the rule of law is respect­ed and applied. No one should expect that there will be any sense of urgency due to those killings; we have been there before. This has been Jamaica for a long time, it will be Jamaica for a long time to come.
This pop­u­la­tion is not fazed, this is nor­mal to them; noth­ing mat­ters as long as they are not killed, until they are.….., there is no need to wor­ry. I guess you can’t miss or appre­ci­ate what you nev­er had?
Restoring Jamaica to a peace­ful place where one can feel safe to raise a fam­i­ly will not be easy. The peo­ple would have to be reori­ent­ed, reed­u­cat­ed into under­stand­ing that they deserve bet­ter than the blood­shed and may­hem that sur­rounds them. That will not be an easy job as I inti­mat­ed ear­li­er, the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion may be too far gone.
Jamaicans who real­ly crave a life free from the dai­ly blood­let­ting choose to leave. It is a sad real­i­ty, for those who are unable to leave, their exis­tence becomes a dead­ly game of Russian roulette, nev­er know­ing when the round will be right­ly posi­tioned to kill.
The peo­ple who pull the trig­ger know that there is sup­port for them at every lev­el of soci­ety. Criminals fear the laws in oth­er soci­eties, in Jamaica, the law fears the criminals.

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

A Virginia man with fake inau­gur­al cre­den­tials, a loaded hand­gun, and more than 500 rounds of ammu­ni­tion was bust­ed while try­ing to pass through a U.S. Capitol Police check­point in down­town Washington on Friday, accord­ing to authorities.
The arrest was made at about 6:30 p.m., accord­ing to a police report tweet­ed Saturday by a Washington TV sta­tion. CNN first report­ed the arrest

More and more police depart­ments across the coun­try’s length and breadth are forced to admit that their mem­bers were in Washington DC on January 6^th and have played a part in the trea­so­nous insur­rec­tion. Up to the [pub­li­ca­tion of this arti­cle, sev­er­al cops have been arrest­ed and even more placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the January 6^th insur­rec­tion against the United States Government.

Let me first say, there are many good offi­cers, black, white, and brown, who go out and risk their lives to pro­tect oth­ers; it is a job that I per­son­al­ly under­stand. But there are far too many that brings the dis­ci­pline into seri­ous disrepute.
If the pop­u­la­tion can not trust cops, who then can they trust?
New Hampshire to Texas and places beyond, Departments are forced to own up to the white suprema­cists in their depart­ments after being exposed by the media or reg­u­lar cit­i­zen journalists.
The social media accounts of many police offi­cers are trea­sure troves of racist, vio­lent rhetoric. Yet, their depart­ments allow them to police com­mu­ni­ties of col­or they hate and want to elim­i­nate. When they kill mem­bers of the pub­lic, their depart­ments defend and pro­tect them from prosecution.

In Washington DC, African-American mem­bers of the Capitol force say that their com­plaints about their white col­leagues’ racist atti­tudes have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ignored.
A length Buzzfeed report­ing argues that the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of white cops start­ed after Laquan McDonald was mur­dered by a white cop Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. The report sug­gest­ed that cops believed that the protest against them lacked appre­ci­a­tion for the work they do.
This writer, believes that is one part of the prob­lem. Still, the larg­er issue (a) of white suprema­cists infil­tra­tion into police departments,& (b) the fer­tile soil they find in those depart­ments, have gone a long way in foment­ing the cri­sis the nation faces today.

Additionally, police depart­ments have always been ene­mies to the black com­mu­ni­ties they serve. Police depart­ments have more auton­o­my and pro­tec­tion under the laws than the cit­i­zens they are sworn to protect.
Across the United States, Police Departments are unable to dis­ci­pline or fire rouge ele­ments in their ranks because of Union con­tracts. The result is that as states and munic­i­pal­i­ties are sup­posed to run depart­ments, those roles have been flipped, and the tail ends up wag­ging the dog. Caught in the mid­dle are peo­ple of col­or who are sum­mar­i­ly mur­dered large­ly with zero con­se­quence to their killers.
(Injustice Watch), report­ed thatThe North Charleston, SC, police depart­ment fired an offi­cer for post­ing a pho­to of him­self wear­ing Confederate flag under­wear, days after a white suprema­cist killed nine black wor­shipers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church just miles away. He lat­er set­tled a wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion suit.
In oth­er words, despite the offen­sive nature of his offense, the depart­ment was forced to pay off a white suprema­cist who should nev­er have been a cop in the first place.

The Chicago Police Department has tried unsuc­cess­ful­ly to fire an offi­cer whose own com­man­der com­plained of his “big­ot­ed views.” A Facebook page called Chicago Code Blue attract­ed atten­tion for inflam­ma­to­ry com­ments — such as “Every Thug Deserves a Slug” — after an offi­cer was found guilty in the death of Laquan McDonald.“Just anoth­er sav­age that needs to be exter­mi­nat­ed,” wrote Booker Smith Jr., a Dallas police sergeant, about a homi­cide at a Dollar General store. “Execute all involved,” he wrote sep­a­rate­ly about a group of teens who were accused of killing a 6‑year-old. (One defen­dant plead­ed guilty to aid­ing in the kid­nap­ping. The alleged shoot­er and anoth­er defendant’s tri­als are sched­uled for lat­er this year.)
The Plain View Project, which mon­i­tors these behav­iors, said when they con­tact police depart­ments with evi­dence of their offi­cer’s behav­ior, they are told that the infor­ma­tion is for­ward­ed to their inter­nal affairs bureaus for review.
The lack of account­abil­i­ty that has become a sta­ple in American polic­ing is now becom­ing a nation­al secu­ri­ty nightmare.
Separate and apart from the African-American com­mu­ni­ty’s com­plaints about police behav­ior, law enforce­ment is a wider threat to the nation’s security.

From the Federal Level to Municipalities, politi­cians of both polit­i­cal par­ties have turned a blind eye to police’s egre­gious con­duct since polic­ing emerged from the slave patrols.
No one would bell the cat; now, police depart­ments are gar­gan­tu­an orga­ni­za­tions that gen­er­al­ly make their own rules and play by their own rules.
It is so bad that cit­i­zens can­not have inde­pen­dent and mean­ing­ful over­sight to the peo­ple they pay with their tax dol­lars. It is the great­est exam­ple of the tail wag­ging the dog.
Politicians who bow at the altar of police feal­ty are reward­ed with cash and polit­i­cal sup­port. This ren­ders elect­ed offi­cials pow­er­less to act to pro­tect the pub­lic from rogue departments.
New York City, with its mas­sive 30’000 plus depart­ments, politi­cians who dare to speak out against the crimes of that depart­ment face all kinds of threats, includ­ing threats to their fam­i­lies’ safety.
In a nor­mal world, those actions would not be com­ing from law enforce­ment that respects civil­ian authority.
The NYPD is not a nor­mal depart­ment but an orga­ni­za­tion of thugs that mur­der, assault cit­i­zens, fal­si­fy reports, and lie through their teeth in court.
Even when they are caught lying under oath, no mean­ing­ful action is tak­en against them.

Even when they pur­port to [put meth­ods in place to cur­tail racism, it turns out to be a bad joke.
(The Guardian reports)Deputy Inspector James Kobel had been relieved of his com­mand in November while offi­cials inves­ti­gat­ed the alle­ga­tions he penned mes­sages that the New York police depart­ment (NYPD) com­mis­sion­er, Dermot Shea, called “abhor­rent” and “utter­ly dis­gust­ing”. According to inves­ti­ga­tors, Kobel post­ed threat­en­ing, racist rhetoric on the plat­form known as Rant, a chat board for NYPD per­son­nel, using the pseu­do­nym “Clouseau,” draw­ing from the French detec­tive in the Pink Panther film series. For more than a year, he attacked pri­mar­i­ly Black and Jewish peo­ple and women, and the LGBTQ+ community.
The irony, James Kobel was tasked with lead­ing its work­place anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion office. .…..Don’t laugh.
Philadelphia police detec­tive Jennifer Gugger who attend­ed the Trump insur­rec­tion on January 6^th, react­ed to Vice President Mike Pence’s tweet.

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

The uniden­ti­fied cop is on admin­is­tra­tive leave and will like­ly face fed­er­al charges, the police chief said. A Houston police offi­cer could face fed­er­al charges after alleged­ly tak­ing part in the U.S. Capitol riot, HPD Chief Art Acevedo said Wednesday.
The uniden­ti­fied offi­cer has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave Wednesday and faces a dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ing with the chief on Friday.
“He has a date with me,” Acevedo said. “There’s a high prob­a­bil­i­ty this per­son will be charged with fed­er­al charges.”

The chief said he received a tip Sunday that one of his offi­cers stormed the Capitol.
After check­ing his Facebook page, Acevedo con­firmed the offi­cer attend­ed the ral­ly, which is his con­sti­tu­tion­al right.
But a joint inves­ti­ga­tion with the FBI lat­er found the offi­cer was part of the mob that stormed the Capitol.“There’s no excuse for crim­i­nal activ­i­ty – espe­cial­ly from a police offi­cer,” Acevedo said. “I can’t tell you the anger I feel at the thought of a police offi­cer or oth­er police offi­cers think­ing they get to go storm the Capitol; or any mem­ber of the mil­i­tary or mem­bers of the Secret Service.”
The sus­pect is a patrol offi­cer and 18-year vet­er­an, and it appears he trav­eled alone to Washington, D.C.
“As an American, when I saw the con­fed­er­ate flag in the Capitol — in the rotun­da — that angered me. And the thought of off-duty police offi­cers par­tic­i­pat­ing in that, I can’t tell you what that does to me.”

The chief also said they are beef­ing up police pres­ence city­wide in advance of the inau­gu­ra­tion, but there are no known threats to the Houston area.
Earlier this week, an FBI bul­letin warned all cap­i­tal cities in the U.S. to be on the alert.

By Ryan J. Reilly

Federal author­i­ties have arrest­ed and charged two Virginia police offi­cers who took a self­ie dur­ing the attack on the U.S. Capitol last week, when hun­dreds of sup­port­ers of out­go­ing President Donald Trump stormed the seat of the leg­isla­tive branch in an attempt to over­turn the results of the election.

Thomas Robertson and Jacob Fracker, two mem­bers of the Rocky Mount Police Department in Virginia, took a self­ie in front of a statute of John Stark, a gen­er­al in the Continental Army dur­ing the American Revolution.

Robertson and Fracker are charged with know­ing­ly enter­ing or remain­ing in any restrict­ed build­ing or grounds with­out law­ful author­i­ty and vio­lent entry or dis­or­der­ly con­duct on Capitol grounds.

Vincent Veloz, a spe­cial agent with the U.S. Capitol Police, wrote in a state­ment of facts that Robertson post­ed on social media that “we actu­al­ly attacked the gov­ern­ment,” and wrote that they “took the fuck­ing U.S. Capitol” in one day. He also wrote that he was proud to have “put skin in the game.”

“If you are too much of a cow­ard to risk arrest,being fired, and actu­al gun­fire to secure your rights., you have no words to speak I val­ue,” Robertson wrote in a message.

Fracker, on Facebook, wrote that he didn’t think he’d done any­thing wrong.

“Lol to any­one who’s pos­si­bly con­cerned about the pic­ture of me going around… Sorry I hate free­dom?” Fracker wrote on Facebook, author­i­ties said. “Not like I did any­thing ille­gal, WAY too much to lose to go there but, y’all do what you feel you need to.”

The state­ment of facts also says there’s prob­a­ble cause to believe that both defen­dants vio­lat­ed a law that makes it a crime to “will­ful­ly and know­ing­ly utter loud, threat­en­ing, or abu­sive lan­guage, or engage in dis­or­der­ly or dis­rup­tive con­duct” at the U.S. Capitol when intend­ed to “impede, dis­rupt, or dis­turb the order­ly con­duct of a ses­sion of Congress or either House of Congress.”

The duo will appear at a video con­fer­ence in fed­er­al court in the Western District of Virginia on Wednesday afternoon.

A num­ber of law enforce­ment offi­cials took part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, while a num­ber of police offi­cers are under inves­ti­ga­tion for assist­ing or cod­dling the riot­ers who vio­lent­ly over­took the building.

U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died dur­ing the attack

The con­tin­ued unfold­ing of last week’s white suprema­cist coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol is now rais­ing ques­tions about the poten­tial com­plic­i­ty and out­right dan­ger posed by some mem­bers of Congress them­selves dur­ing the insur­rec­tion — even beyond their role in incit­ing the mob by push­ing the lie that the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was stolen from Trump.

On the heels of New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson’s announce­ment that she test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 after shel­ter­ing with col­leagues at the Capitol who refused to wear a mask, two addi­tion­al Democratic mem­bers of Congress have since revealed they now have the virus — which they attribute to being on lock­down with Republican mask-deniers.

Following those announce­ments, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D‑Mass.) said on Tuesday that she chose to leave a des­ig­nat­ed safe room for elect­ed offi­cials dur­ing the riot when she clocked that some of her co-work­ers on the oth­er side of the aisle them­selves also posed a safe­ty threat.

“The sec­ond I real­ized our ‘safe room’ from the vio­lent white suprema­cist mob includ­ed trea­so­nous, white suprema­cist, anti masker Members of Congress who incit­ed the mob in the first place, I exit­ed,” Pressley said on Twitter.

The ease with which the coro­n­avirus was appar­ent­ly allowed to spread was only one of many seem­ing­ly delib­er­ate dan­gers let loose inside the Capitol on that har­row­ing day. Pressley’s chief of staff, Sarah Groh, told the Boston Globe that dur­ing the incur­sion she dis­cov­ered that the pan­ic but­tons in her office had been removed.
Read more here: https://​www​.the​root​.com/​s​u​s​p​i​c​i​o​n​s​-​b​u​i​l​d​-​i​n​-​c​a​p​i​t​o​l​-​a​t​t​a​c​k​-​a​s​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​t​s​-​c​a​l​l​-​o​u​-​1​8​4​6​0​4​9​763

The Jamaica Constabulary is report­ing anoth­er major gun and ammu­ni­tion find, once again com­ing through the ports.
According to the Police, 19 firearms, includ­ing six high pow­ered rifles, and just over 470 assort­ed rounds of ammu­ni­tion have been seized.

The police report­ed that the find was made at the wharf in St James on Monday, January 12^th. We con­grat­u­late the police on the find, even as we are left won­der­ing about the inves­tiga­tive tech­niques the police con­tin­ue to use in try­ing to root out those responsible?
They report­ed that the
They say a major mul­ti-agency inves­ti­ga­tion is now under­way as inves­ti­ga­tors seek to iden­ti­fy the indi­vid­u­als responsible.
However, we are left won­der­ing at the wis­dom of reveal­ing the find when the inves­ti­ga­tions are still underway?
It seems that announc­ing the find and sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tions, helps those respon­si­ble to take cov­er, rather than it helps the investigations.

The Jamaican Government must demand that the United States Administration takes the influx of guns into Jamaica as seri­ous­ly as the United States took Ganga arriv­ing in the United States from as far back as the 1980s.
The American Government was not shy about seiz­ing Ar-Jamaica planes on which Ganga was found. Those planes were not released to Air Jamaica until the humungous fines the Americans levied were paid.
No coun­try, Jamaica includ­ed, should sur­ren­der its dig­ni­ty on the altar of expe­di­en­cy, or affil­i­a­tions. Jamaica must demand to be treat­ed like a sov­er­eign nation, the lack of size or the fact that Jamaica bor­rows like oth­er actions do not mean sur­ren­der­ing its autonomy.
The American Government is no more respon­si­ble for the guns enter­ing Jamaica, than Jamaica was for the Ganga enter­ing the United States.
Notwithstanding, the National air­line, and, by exten­sion, the Jamaican tax­pay­ers paid a hefty price; those fines no doubt [helped] force the air­line into its demise.

Joe Biden intends to nom­i­nate fed­er­al appeals court Judge Merrick Garland, who was once President Barack Obama’s nom­i­nee for the Supreme Court, to serve as the next U.S. attor­ney gen­er­al, a Biden tran­si­tion offi­cial said on Wednesday.

Garland serves as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Obama, a Democrat, nom­i­nat­ed him to the Supreme Court while Biden was vice pres­i­dent, but the Republican-con­trolled U.S. Senate refused to hold hear­ings on the nomination.

For those of us who are con­cerned about law­less­ness in Jamaica, and more so, those of us who ven­ture to speak out about the Jamaican author­i­ties fail­ure to pro­tect the nation from crim­i­nals, we must also be pre­pared to defend Jamaica’s sov­er­eign­ty, and our Jamaican nation­als when oth­ers wrong them.
The con­tin­ued deten­tion of four men by American Immigration Authorities must be cause for alarm and out­cry from law-abid­ing peo­ple every­where who believe in the rule of law, and equal treat­ment under the law, be they local or inter­na­tion­al laws.
People and nations respect and fol­low laws when they are con­vinced that all are equal under said laws. No per­son or coun­try should be above the laws, be they local or inter­na­tion­al laws.

Jamaican Attorney Bert Samuels, a part­ner at the law firm Knight, Junor, and Samuels, has every right to be indig­nant about the fir­m’s clients, four Jamaicans who were arrest­ed by the United States Coast Guard under alle­ga­tions that they were a part of a nar­cot­ic smug­gling ring and their boat destroyed.
According to Bert Samuels, the men were ini­tial­ly detained for 73 days between October 11, 2020, and December 23, 2020, after alle­ga­tions that they were found with 150 gal­lons of liq­uid cocaine that turned out to be gasoline.
The men have been acquit­ted of all charges by a Florida Judge, yet they are being held by the US immi­gra­tion offi­cials, and are not allowed to return to their homes in Jamaica.
Being locked up in an immi­gra­tion jail after being exon­er­at­ed in a crim­i­nal court is the same as being pun­ished even though they have been found not guilty in a court of law.

SEE FULL STORY HERE: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​l​a​w​y​e​r​-​q​u​e​s​t​i​o​n​s​-​u​s​-​i​m​m​i​g​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​s​-​h​o​l​d​i​n​g​-​m​e​n​-​c​l​e​a​r​e​d​-​b​y​-​c​o​u​r​t​_​2​1​0​9​4​3​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​373

The attor­ney is well with­in his rights to be pissed at the Jamaican Government for not strong­ly advo­cat­ing for these Jamaican cit­i­zens’ release. According to the attor­ney, the silence from Jamaica’s attor­ney gen­er­al and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the men’s plight has been deafening.
He also [wants to know whether there will be an apol­o­gy to the own­er of the boat, his crew mem­bers and their fam­i­ly; an apol­o­gy to Jamaica, a treaty State; and com­pen­sa­tion for the loss of the ves­sel and its earn­ing capac­i­ty — with­out their clients hav­ing to go through the expense of fil­ing — and com­pen­sa­tion for the vir­tu­al tor­ture of Jamaicans and the tar­nish­ing of their rep­u­ta­tion on the pre­tense that they were involved in a mas­sive cocaine trade].
The United States can­not have one set of rules for itself and anoth­er for every­one else.
Institutions like the United Nations, the International Court Of Justice, and oth­er Organizations that the United States helped to cre­ate have kept the world out of a third world war for 75-years.
Before cre­at­ing those Agencies, there was only a 25-year span between world wars one and two.
If there is going to be con­tin­ued adher­ence to International laws, civ­i­lized nations must all have the con­fi­dence that all nations play by the same rules.
Might, can­not be the deter­mi­nant of right, or we are all doomed.
It is now over to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Jamaican Attorney General to see to these four Jamaicans’ civ­il and human rights.

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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. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

“Insanity,” “the state of being seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill; mad­ness, extreme fool­ish­ness or irrationality.
Psychology today char­ac­ter­izes (insan­i­ty) this way; Mental ill­ness of such a severe nature that a per­son can­not dis­tin­guish fan­ta­sy from real­i­ty, can­not con­duct her/​his affairs due to psy­chosis, or is sub­ject to uncon­trol­lable impul­sive behav­ior. … men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als inform it, but the term today is pri­mar­i­ly legal, not psychological.
Haha, and there it is, folks.….colloquially, we Jamaicans refer to insan­i­ty as doing the same thing over and over, yet expect­ing a dif­fer­ent result.
In prac­ti­cal terms doing the same thing over and over will result in the same result; it is like math; it does not mat­ter how many times you mul­ti­ply 10 x 10, you will end up with 100, as long as you do so correctly.

For those rea­sons, the hand­wring­ing from the likes of Horace Chang, min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty, at the rash of killings in the Farm com­mu­ni­ty of Clarendon, is so utter­ly dis­gust­ing to me.
Speaking at the May Pen Police Station, Chang lament­ed the com­mu­ni­ty’s lack of sup­port against lawlessness.
(‘I urge com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with infor­ma­tion about these killings to come for­ward and lend sup­port to the police so we can erad­i­cate these crim­i­nals.”
(“These crim­i­nals behave in an almost sav­age way, and that is a result of the fail­ure of our soci­ety in pre­serv­ing aspects of social order.”
What BS, Horace Chang is the mem­ber of Parliament for one of the strongest gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties in the Parish of Saint James. Before he became Minister of National [Security], which is an oxy­moron when con­sid­ered along­side some­one like Chang, he was a defend­er of the crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in his gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ty on the one hand, while pay­ing lip ser­vice to the rule of law on the other.

The real sto­ry is not the hypocrisy of the likes of Horace Chang, and in fair­ness, all of the Island’s politi­cians and cer­tain seg­ments of the social class. It is about how they set the house on fire then bemoan the destruc­tion caused by the flames.
Gone are the days when our coun­try had four to five hun­dred homi­cides per year. We now live in an exis­tence where a thou­sand dead Jamaicans annu­al­ly, would be seen and cel­e­brat­ed as a work­ing law enforce­ment strategy.
The fak­ery and pre­ten­tious­ness of that area of the Jamaican soci­ety that influ­ences and make deci­sions that mat­ter, makes it impos­si­ble for this intractable prob­lem of endem­ic vio­lence to be dealt with decisively.
No one wants a soci­ety in which police offi­cers oper­ate with impuni­ty. Certainly not con­sci­en­tious police offi­cers past or present. This writer, him­self, a for­mer mem­ber of the JCF, has zero-tol­er­ance for that polic­ing; as a young offi­cer, I had sev­er­al con­fronta­tions with offi­cers who would abuse their oaths by mis­treat­ing mem­bers of the public.
I left the JCF a long time ago, but not long enough that my ser­vice record can­not be traced. Many of my for­mer col­leagues are still serv­ing; they knew where I stood then, they know where I stand now, based on my years of writ­ing on this subject.
My adher­ence to the rules should nev­er be con­strued to be pas­siv­i­ty or a lack­lus­ter approach to how vio­lent crim­i­nals should be dealt with.

Keeping homi­cides under five hun­dred per year in Jamaica was no easy feat; it cer­tain­ly did not occur in a vac­u­um, and it cer­tain­ly was not accom­plished by implor­ing mur­der­ers to obey the laws.
Social pro­grams are worth­while steps to take to end the vicious cycle of vio­lence pro­duc­ers and cor­ralling vio­lent criminals.
But the Island has strayed so far away from what kept the mur­der num­bers low dur­ing the ’80s, that beseech­ing the com­mu­ni­ties to report crim­i­nals to the police today, is tan­ta­mount to ask­ing the crim­i­nals to turn them­selves in.
Entire com­mu­ni­ties are arguably havens of crim­i­nal­i­ty in which decent law-abid­ing mem­bers are in the minor­i­ty and are ter­ri­fied to open their mouths to any­one about what they know.
They have zero con­fi­dence in the police, and would rather live under the crim­i­nals’ bootheels instead of risk­ing a vio­lent and bloody end­ing by giv­ing the police infor­ma­tion. Information they cor­rect­ly believe may end up right back with the vio­lent mur­der­ers they want to be removed from their communities.
To a cer­tain degree, many police offi­cers’ atti­tudes today are sym­pa­thet­ic and more reflec­tive of the views and beliefs that exist in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties, than they reflect a belief in the rule of law.
That is the inher­ent tragedy that the nation now grap­ples with, and the divide that the crim­i­nals con­tin­ue to exploit.

A Jamaican soci­ety was cre­at­ed that gives every ben­e­fit of the doubt to vio­lent mur­der­ers. The law-mak­ers head gar­ri­son con­stituen­cies that are ver­i­ta­ble havens of crim­i­nal­i­ty. Consequently, the laws are not par­tic­u­lar­ly slant­ed to the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Jamaican State as a viable enti­ty that is larg­er than the indi­vid­ual; the laws are undu­ly acqui­es­cent to the rights of the most vicious murderer.
The cause of all this is now debat­ed as the fault of the large pow­ers that loans mon­ey to keep the Jamaican state afloat.
Whether or not Jamaica is now sub­servient to America and oth­er nations because it depends on them for loans is a plau­si­ble con­ver­sa­tion to have.
However, long before Jamaica was inun­dat­ed with crim­i­nal rights activists and lob­by­ists telling the lead­ers what they can and can­not do leg­isla­tive­ly, the lead­ers them­selves were active lob­by­ists and pro­tec­tors of the vio­lent crim­i­nals that preyed upon the weak and defenseless.
The so-called human-rights lob­by, bet­ter knows as crim­i­nal rights activists, mere­ly exploit­ed the space that already exist­ed between the crim­i­nals and those enforc­ing the laws.

The habit of the Minister of National Security and the com­mis­sion­er of Police of show­ing up in com­mu­ni­ties after the may­hem inflict­ed by the mur­der­ers, are tired, worn-out, and frankly pathetic.
The words ring hol­low and use­less. They are exer­cis­es in futil­i­ty. Begging peo­ple to come for­ward is a waste of time; it will not happen.
There was a rea­son that things were dif­fer­ent in the past; the police were more respect­ed; a large per­cent­age of the JCF was more revered. Call them super cops, call them name brand cops, or what­ev­er. The ter­mi­nol­o­gy does not mean bru­tal or law­less; it meant effective.
We got the infor­ma­tion we need­ed; we knew the crim­i­nals because cit­i­zens trust­ed us.
The trust and love many com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers had for us made it impos­si­ble for crim­i­nal ele­ments to gar­ner the courage to set up shop in the spaces we oper­at­ed in.
Despite the hifa­lutin the­o­ries being bandied about how polic­ing should be done, some­thing that has cor­rupt­ed JCF mem­bers’ minds, polic­ing remains large­ly the same.
Officers must car­ry them­selves with dig­ni­ty and pur­pose and show respect to the com­mu­ni­ty, which will result in reci­procity if cul­ti­vat­ed over time.
That is what I mean when I say polic­ing remains the same. We can argue that com­mu­ni­ties in which police have been suc­cess­ful, (let us say in the United States), are the same com­mu­ni­ties to which the police show respect.
The oppo­site is true of those com­mu­ni­ties in which the police act as overlords.

The sad real­i­ty is that the Gangsters who oper­ate as shot-callers in com­mu­ni­ties across the Island knew the impact name brand cops had on their abil­i­ties to operate.
They put the pow­der in the water that col­ored the nar­ra­tive. They knew that soci­ety would go along with their idea that name brand cops were bad for Jamaica. They knew that the elites would drink the cool-aid, and that the crim­i­nals who oper­ate out of Gordon House would fol­low suit.
It has been a sys­temic strat­e­gy employed by them to dis­cred­it the police; it includ­ed lay­ing down cov­er­ing fire so that weapons fall­en from dead gang­sters may be retrieved by oth­er gang­sters, there­by cre­at­ing the impres­sion that the cops mur­dered inno­cent choir boys. It grad­u­at­ed to send­ing out mourn­ers to demon­strate that cops mur­dered inno­cent men, paid mourn­ers, oth­ers forced at the per­il of their lives.
The crim­i­nal under­world under­stood that weak­en­ing the Police depart­ment was the best strat­e­gy for turn­ing the Island into the gang­ster’s par­adise it has become. Unfortunately, the fakes and frauds at the UWI did not under­stand it.
Out of that insti­tu­tion came some of the vapi­dest attacks on the police.
The JCF lead­er­ship, failed to respond, like neutered dogs, total­ly sup­pli­cant to their polit­i­cal boss­es, they allowed the nar­ra­tive to take root with­out fight­ing back.
Today, the JCF is the UWI; the force’s entire senior lead­er­ship has one con­nec­tion or anoth­er with that insti­tu­tion. An insti­tu­tion that is one of the most anti-law enforce­ment any­where in the world.
One that has com­plete­ly cor­rupt­ed and cor­rod­ed the process that the lead­er­ship of the JCF is unable to find its way out of a brown paper bag, despite the long list of let­ters they boast beside their names.

It was nev­er about let­ters and degrees. It was nev­er about brava­do, and pos­tur­ing. It has always been about com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion, love of coun­try, which should not be attrib­uted to the Island’s lead­ers of either polit­i­cal party.
That is what we brought to the table when we strapped up and stepped out to do our jobs. We want­ed a Jamaica in which all peo­ple could go about their busi­ness in peace and with the assur­ance that they would be secure.
The pay was no good, but it was not what drove so many away; it has been the lack of sup­port for the rule of law, by the peo­ple who made the laws.
The soil is now far too con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed to pro­duce good crops. The gang­sters know it. They also know that the Minister of National Security and the Commissioner of police’s pos­tur­ing is just that.
Posturing!

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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. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
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