One of the things that I have writ­ten about over the years is the dan­ger inher­ent in allow­ing the inmates to run the asy­lum.
Whenever I invoke the inher­ent dan­ger in that idea, I always do so in a metaphor­i­cal sense.
Unfortunately, today we are at the place where the inmates are lit­er­al­ly run­ning the asy­lum. We are in trou­ble.
Societies are made up of indi­vid­ual homes; the val­ues we teach our chil­dren and those that we adhere to in our indi­vid­ual homes will inex­orably deter­mine the qual­i­ty of the broad­er soci­ety in which we live.
As I wrote recent­ly, I grew up in a Christian Conservative home in rur­al North East Saint Catherine.
In that home, it was God, fam­i­ly, and coun­try, in that order. As a child grow­ing up, I did not know any­one who had been to prison except a cousin who was arrest­ed for grow­ing mar­i­jua­na.
Not many Jamaicans can claim those val­ues today. As a con­se­quence, the soci­etal ills we are wit­ness­ing today may be traced right back to the break­down of the rules, and the relax­ing of stan­dards, under new and con­trived meth­ods of oper­a­tion, many of which have been derived from [for­eign] coun­tries.
It is a slip­pery slope when we not only relax estab­lished rules but throw out tried and proven norms and replace them with new and fash­ion­able ones. Once the Genie is out of the bot­tle, there is no putting it back in.

In a recent inter­view giv­en to a Radio Jamaica evening pro­gram, [Attorney] Isat Buchanan, in mak­ing a case for indi­vid­u­als detained under the emer­gency pow­ers giv­en the secu­ri­ty forces as a con­se­quence of the inor­di­nate­ly high crime rate, derid­ed and broad-brushed the entire Jamaica Constabulary Force as, quote; (une­d­u­cat­ed with five CXC sub­jects”).
The learned Attorney made no dis­tinc­tion as to whether he was speak­ing of a spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual offi­cer when he made those incen­di­ary and dis­re­spect­ful com­ments.
What the [learned Attorney] also did to demon­strate to the coun­try that the colo­nial­ists’ men­tal­i­ty that has char­ac­ter­ized Jamaica since its inde­pen­dence and has con­tin­ued the caste sys­tem to the present-day is alive and well.
That edu­ca­tion would be viewed as con­fined to degrees ver­i­fied by a piece of paper, by this [learned attor­ney] and pro­fes­sor, is proof that we should con­sid­er the very mean­ing of the word [learned]. That we still have a long way to go in under­stand­ing how soci­eties work.
The very tropes that are at the cen­ter of Buchanan’s unlearned tirade have been at the very heart of the ills from which he has been extri­cat­ed and allowed to sit. Buchanan’s sto­ry is one that should nev­er have been pos­si­ble, but the rules were relaxed, the stan­dards low­ered, and the gates opened to allow a dish­tow­el to become a tablecloth…

Over the years, I have point­ed to the dam­age being done across the entire Caribbean region by the University Of The West Indies, the far left-lean­ing out-of-con­trol lib­er­al cesspool of pro­pa­gan­da and elit­ism.
[Isat Buchanan] leaned into the police depart­ment.
“The uncon­sti­tu­tion­al aspect, to put it in lay­man’s terms, is that the min­is­ter is not allowed to twid­dle his thumbs or drink his cof­fee and decide who will I detain today and who will I say can nev­er go home until I say so. The con­sti­tu­tion, as you know, is the don of all dons…what was cer­tain­ly put before the court today and the deci­sion of the court is that you can­not arbi­trar­i­ly take away the lib­er­ty of the cit­i­zens of this coun­try because you are act­ing on the whim of une­d­u­cat­ed police offi­cers with their five CXC sub­jects — unac­cept­able, and I am very unapolo­getic about say­ing that, because all the infor­ma­tion that the min­is­ter flicks with his pen comes from the foot sol­diers who some­times have per­son­al vendet­tas against these young men, and we can­not turn ordi­nary men and women into crim­i­nals. That is not what the drafters of our con­sti­tu­tion, the Charter of Rights, which is recent, would have envi­sioned.” 

One of the things that have changed over the last sev­er­al years is that the old tropes and dog-whis­tles that once were lever­aged against the JCF can no longer be used with any degree of truth. Sure there are dumb cops, dumb doc­tors, dumb politi­cians, and dumb teach­ers’ and we all know that there are dumb lawyers. Isat Buchanan had no oblig­a­tion to con­vince us.
In response to Buchanan’s igno­rance, the head of the Police Officers Association, Senior Superintendent Wayne Cameron, shot back.
“No con­vict­ed felon has the moral author­i­ty to refer to the police as une­d­u­cat­ed.”
“We have mem­bers of the JCF who are lawyers. We have mem­bers with PhDs. We have lawyers at var­i­ous ranks, from con­sta­ble to deputy com­mis­sion­er of police. Any police­man in the coun­try today can make the deci­sion to go to law school once he or she sat­is­fies the pre­req­ui­sites… I dare Mr. Buchanan to join the JCF because no one with a crim­i­nal record can be enlist­ed in the Jamaica Constabulary Force. No indi­vid­ual, irre­spec­tive of your sta­tus in life in this coun­try. It does­n’t mat­ter. You can­not become a mem­ber of the Jamaica Constabulary Force with a crim­i­nal record, so he can­not become a police offi­cer. We can join the legal fra­ter­ni­ty any day,” SSP Cameron said. “Yes, he has angered some per­sons here. He said he was unapolo­getic about it, and we are unapolo­getic about any­thing we are say­ing now.”

Shots fired, haha­ha, I love this JCF; this is the part of the JCF that I fought and lob­bied for dur­ing my short tenure; this is the JCF I fight for today.
Isat Buchanan’s out­burst tells us exact­ly who he is, his true char­ac­ter came out in that inter­view, and it demon­strat­ed to the coun­try that the actions tak­en by the author­i­ties to allow him access to the Jamaican bar were a grave mis­car­riage of jus­tice and a prece­dent which ought to be struck down forth­with.
Isat Buchanan is a con­vict­ed Drug mule con­vict­ed in Jamaica and had his crim­i­nal record expunged. He was con­vict­ed in the United States sim­i­lar­ly and spent ten (10) years in an American prison for being a drug mule.
Isat Buchanan is a lawyer in Jamaica and a teacher at the University of the West Indies’ (intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to).
This exam­ple of soci­etal dis­in­te­gra­tion man­i­fest­ed through this igno­rant drug deal­er is that when there are no soci­etal stan­dards soci­ety suf­fers immense­ly.
But Buchanan, though [unapolo­getic] in throw­ing stones, was the pre­dictable cow­ard any real police offi­cer would imagine.

“…I said I was unapolo­getic about mak­ing that state­ment — the state­ment is that the con­sti­tu­tion is the don of all dons. Meaning, that if you are not in line with the con­sti­tu­tion, what­ev­er you are doing is wrong. In rela­tion to the con­sti­tu­tion, the offi­cers are not edu­cat­ed in the con­sti­tu­tion. They have not received the right train­ing. I could extend fur­ther by say­ing I am still learn­ing the con­sti­tu­tion, and I do law. The ‘une­d­u­cat­ed’ was not to say that the police offi­cers are dunces. I nev­er said that. If any­body knows Isat Buchanan, I’m an edu­ca­tor; I teach at the Faculty of Law [at The UWI]; my class­mates were police offi­cers, and some of my stu­dents are police offi­cers.”
“I have the high­est respect for the police force. I have the max­i­mum amount of love and would nev­er, in my exis­tence, dis­re­spect a police offi­cer. Similarly, all I am say­ing is, when it comes to my use of the word une­d­u­cat­ed, it was not about whether you have a degree. It is about the con­sti­tu­tion in terms of being learned in the con­sti­tu­tion. My use of the word was the very English def­i­n­i­tion in the Oxford Dictionary of une­d­u­cat­ed and not about whether you went to school or not. Most clear­ly, I would nev­er call a police offi­cer dunce. A lot of my court pro­to­cols I have learned from the respectable mem­bers of the JCF. Those mem­bers of the JCF that are with­in the precincts of the court have taught me a lot in terms of how to han­dle myself in court. So I am a stu­dent of mem­bers of the JCF. I would nev­er set out to dis­re­spect them.“
If any police offi­cer is offend­ed, I am com­plete­ly, unequiv­o­cal­ly say­ing I am sor­ry for offend­ing because that was not the con­text in which I used the word une­d­u­cat­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly with five CXC sub­jects. It was to say that you have not been trained in mat­ters of the con­sti­tu­tion, and that excludes lawyers who are police offi­cers and oth­er per­sons. This is the assump­tion that I am begin­ning there­with. I was not paint­ing a broad brush on the JCF, and I would nev­er do that. Anybody who knows me knows I am a human rights attor­ney. I nev­er dis­crim­i­nate.” 

The def­i­n­i­tion of being a man is to own up, fess up, and take respon­si­bil­i­ty for one’s actions.
What a punk ass bitch, he could­n’t. He went on dig­ging, and with every syl­la­ble, he dug him­self a deep­er hole.
As a detec­tive, I believed in let­ting peo­ple talk, they will tell you who they are, and in the silt and sand, you may find lit­tle nuggets of gold.
We have found the lit­tle nuggets of gold in the state­ments of this twice-con­vict­ed drug deal­er. He is vir­u­lent­ly anti-police, which is his right; after all, it was police offi­cers that arrest­ed him twice and had him pros­e­cut­ed for his crimes; why would­n’t he hate them?
His ven­om as an attor­ney and sup­posed lec­tur­er is where the prob­lem lies.
(This one rot­ten apple) is in a posi­tion to expo­nen­tial­ly cor­rupt and spoil the whole bar­rel.


NARRATIVE
Mr. Isat A. Buchanan (“the Applicant”) grad­u­at­ed from the Norman Manley Law School in September 2017 and short­ly there­after applied to the Council for a Qualifying Certificate and a Certificate pur­suant to sec­tion 6 of the Legal Profession Act. His appli­ca­tion was sup­port­ed by vol­un­tary dec­la­ra­tions or char­ac­ter ref­er­ence let­ters from eleven per­sons (“the Referees”).

1. The Applicant’s Voluntary Declaration dis­closed that he had been twice con­vict­ed for a crim­i­nal offence:

a) In 1997 when he was 17 years old, the Applicant was con­vict­ed in the Half-Way-Tree Resident Magistrates Court of pos­ses­sion of cocaine, deal­ing in cocaine, and tak­ing steps to export cocaine. He was ordered to pay a fine and serve 21 days impris­on­ment. He paid the fine and served the 21 days (“the Jamaican conviction”).

b) In 2000, the Applicant was con­vict­ed in the United States for con­spir­a­cy to import cocaine. He was sen­tenced to 10 years impris­on­ment and was released after serv­ing 81⁄2 years (“the US conviction”).

3. In 2014, the Jamaican Conviction was expunged from his police record pur­suant to a deci­sion by the Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) Board.
4. In view of these pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions, Council did not treat his appli­ca­tion as a hear­ing on paper as it did with the oth­er appli­ca­tions. It deferred his appli­ca­tion and required the Applicant to attend a meet­ing of the Council. It also invit­ed him to bring coun­sel to rep­re­sent him and any wit­ness­es as he thought fit.
5. On November 22, 2017, the Applicant and his coun­sel, Mr. Bert Samuels, attend­ed a meet­ing of Council. The Applicant and sev­en of the Referees made oral state­ments and respond­ed to ques­tions by mem­bers of Council. Mr. Samuels made legal submissions.

THE LAW

6. The General Legal Counsel is the Education Authority pur­suant to sec­tion 2 of the Legal Profession Act (“the Act”). Section 6 (1) of the Act pro­vides that:

A per­son shall be qual­i­fied for enrol­ment if he holds a qual­i­fy­ing cer­tifi­cate and sat­is­fies the Council that he has attained the age of twen­ty-one years, is not an alien, and is of good character.

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7. Section 9 (3) of the Act pro­vides that:The [Legal Education] Authority shall issue to any per­son who has sat­is­fied the [Legal Education] Authority that:(a) he has obtained ade­quate prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence in law, and (b) he is oth­er­wise qual­i­fied to prac­tise law
   a cer­tifi­cate to that effect (in this act, referred to as a qual­i­fy­ing certificate).
8. The Applicant had met the aca­d­e­m­ic require­ments to be enti­tled to a qual­i­fy­ing cer­tifi­cate, had attained the age of twen­ty-one years, and is a cit­i­zen of Jamaica. The only issue, there­fore, was whether he had sat­is­fied the Council that he was of good character.
9. In Council’s view, the applic­a­ble law was that set out by the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal in Re Joseph Ewart Layne1. In 1986, Mr. Layne was con­vict­ed of ten counts of mur­der. He had been the Operational Commander of the People’s Revolutionary Army (“PRA”) and was the one who had issued the direc­tive to recap­ture the PRA’s mil­i­tary head­quar­ters, which cul­mi­nat­ed in the exe­cu­tion-style mur­der of a num­ber of Grenadian cit­i­zens, includ­ing the then Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop, and sev­er­al of his cab­i­net colleagues.
10. Mr. Layne was sen­tenced to death. However, fol­low­ing a deci­sion by the Privy Council that the manda­to­ry death sen­tence which had been imposed on him was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, Mr. Layne’s death sen­tence was com­mut­ed to 40 years in prison. Based on remis­sion of sen­tence earned

1 GD 2015 CA 4

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for exem­plary con­duct in prison, he was released after hav­ing spent approx­i­mate­ly 23 years in prison.

11. While incar­cer­at­ed, Mr. Layne earned three aca­d­e­m­ic degrees, includ­ing a bachelor’s and mas­ter’s in law. After his release, he was admit­ted to the Hugh Wooding Law School, where he grad­u­at­ed with a cer­tifi­cate of mer­it. He applied to the Supreme Court of Grenada to be admit­ted to the bar in that country.
12. Section 17(1)(a) of the Legal Profession Act of Grenada was in sim­i­lar terms to sec­tion 6 of the Jamaican Act. It is pro­vid­ed in rel­e­vant part:

13. As is the case with the present appli­ca­tion, Mr. Layne held the qual­i­fi­ca­tions pre­scribed by law. The only issue was whether Mr. Layne had sat­is­fied the court that he was of good char­ac­ter. The court reviewed a num­ber of Commonwealth deci­sions and con­clud­ed that an appli­cant in these cir­cum­stances had to sat­is­fy two tests:

1. a) A sub­jec­tive test that con­sid­ers “whether the appli­cant is a per­son of integri­ty, hon­esty, and reli­a­bil­i­ty”2 (this would involve a con­sid­er­a­tion as to whether the appli­cant has been reha­bil­i­tat­ed) and
2. b) An objec­tive test that con­sid­ers the effect admit­ting the appli­cant would have on the rep­u­ta­tion of the profession.

2 Paragraph 11

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14. The learned judge at first instance con­clud­ed that Mr. Layne had sat­is­fied the first test but not the sec­ond, and she, there­fore, dis­missed his appli­ca­tion. The Court of Appeal refused to inter­fere with the first instance judge’s exer­cise of her discretion3.

THE EVIDENCE

15. The Council con­sid­ered vol­un­tary dec­la­ra­tions or char­ac­ter ref­er­ence let­ters and oral state­ments by the Applicant, Hon Mr. Justice C Dennis Morrison, Dr. Janeille Matthews, Miss Dorcas White, Miss Tracy Robinson, Dr. Leighton Jackson, Mr. Vuraldo Barnett, and Mr Andre Smith. Council also con­sid­ered char­ac­ter ref­er­ence let­ters from Dr. Brian Heap, Dr. Imani Tafari-Ama, Miss Myrna McKenzie, and Dr. Nuklan Hugh.
16. In sum­ma­ry, the Applicant stat­ed that:
    1. a) In rela­tion to the Jamaican Conviction, a neigh­bour had asked him to take a pack­age to the United States, telling him that the pack­age con­tained mon­ey in excess of US$10,000.00. When he was searched at the air­port in Jamaica, it was dis­cov­ered that the pack­age, in fact, con­tained cocaine. He was not aware of its contents.
    2. b) In rela­tion to the US Conviction, he was trav­el­ling with a friend, and the friend was car­ry­ing cocaine. This was dis­cov­ered when they arrived in the United States. He was not aware that the friend was car­ry­ing cocaine. The friend, how­ev­er, said that the cocaine must have been the Applicants.

3 See, e.g., para­graph 71

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17. The Applicant said that he has tak­en full respon­si­bil­i­ty for the out­come of both mat­ters and that he has learned valu­able life lessons. He said that in the years since the con­vic­tions, he had made vol­un­teerism an inte­gral part of his life, espe­cial­ly activ­i­ties geared towards men­tor­ing and guid­ing youth at risk.
18. Most of the Referees had taught the Applicant at the University of the West Indies or the Norman Manley Law School. Others had inter­act­ed with him in var­i­ous capac­i­ties. For exam­ple, Mr. Barnett is the man­ag­er of the Trench Town Restorative Justice Centre, where the Applicant served as a vol­un­tary trainer.
19. Mr. Smith and his twin broth­er (who was also present) were high school dropouts who had no inter­est in pur­su­ing fur­ther stud­ies, but as a result of being men­tored by the Applicant, they resumed stud­ies and are now study­ing engi­neer­ing at the University of the West Indies.
20. Dr. Jackson (who is the Dean of the Faculty of Law at Mona and prac­tis­es law in Jamaica and in the state of New York) also stat­ed that the tran­script of the evi­dence and judg­ments in rela­tion to the US Conviction indi­cat­ed that:
    1. a) The Jamaican Conviction was the main evi­dence that the pros­e­cu­tion had relied on, in par­tic­u­lar, because the pro­hib­it­ed sub­stances were not found on the Applicant;
    2. b) The pro­hib­it­ed sub­stances were found in the lug­gage of the Applicant’s co-defen­dant, but his defence was that they belonged to the Applicant. He gave evi­dence for the pros­e­cu­tion of the Applicant’s pre­vi­ous conviction.

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c) The co-defen­dant was acquit­ted even though he was the one who had phys­i­cal pos­ses­sion of the pro­hib­it­ed substances.

21. The ref­er­ees spoke to the Applicant’s bril­liance, social con­science, love of and com­mit­ment to the law, and his will­ing­ness to assist oth­ers. Some referred to his humil­i­ty, his polite man­ner, and his gen­tle­man­ly deport­ment. The Applicant had vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­closed his past con­vic­tions to all of them.
22. Some Referees observed that the Applicant was a very young man at the time of the con­vic­tions and that in the almost two decades since then, he had led an unblem­ished and, in many ways, exem­plary life.
23. Many expressed the view that in all the cir­cum­stances, he was ful­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed and that his admis­sion to the bar would not adverse­ly affect the rep­u­ta­tion of the legal pro­fes­sion. Some felt that, in fact, many per­sons would con­sid­er the Applicant’s his­to­ry an inspi­ra­tional exam­ple of reha­bil­i­ta­tion and redemption.

CONCLUSION

24. After con­sid­er­ing all the evi­dence, Council con­clud­ed (by a major­i­ty) that both the sub­jec­tive test and the objec­tive test had been sat­is­fied. As regards the sub­jec­tive test, mem­bers were in no doubt that the Applicant had been ful­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed and did not pose any undue risk to the public.
25. The objec­tive test was more chal­leng­ing. Council rec­og­nized that some mem­bers of the legal pro­fes­sion and of the pub­lic gen­er­al­ly might con­sid­er that admit­ting the Applicant would adverse­ly affect the rep­u­ta­tion of the

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pro­fes­sion, but con­clud­ed that most would share its view that in all the cir­cum­stances, the Applicant would be an asset to the profession.

26. For these rea­sons, the Council decid­ed by a major­i­ty to approve the appli­ca­tion and to issue the Applicant a qual­i­fy­ing cer­tifi­cate and a cer­tifi­cate pur­suant to sec­tion 6 of the Legal Profession Act.

B. St. Michael Hylton, Q.C.

»»»»»»»»»»»»»

The ref­er­ees spoke to the Applicant’s bril­liance, social con­science, love of, and com­mit­ment to the law.….…… This is prob­a­bly the most glar­ing state­ment from this nar­ra­tive of events.
Remember that based on these rec­om­men­da­tions and the deci­sion to stretch creduli­ty, a man who was twice-con­vict­ed for huge quan­ti­ties of sched­ule A drugs, impris­oned for ten years, still has­n’t tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty for his actions, was allowed at the Bar, and is now not only a pro­fes­sor of law but an offi­cer of the courts.
Let that sink in!
The first com­mit­ment to the law that I can think of is the deci­sion to obey them, not to prof­it from them, not to pur­port­ed­ly teach them.
I thank God that despite all of its chal­lenges to date, no known [con­vict­ed felon] has ever been admit­ted into the JCF; for that those who serve today and those who served and left are incred­i­bly proud and can hold their heads high.
Earning degrees is noble; it is good to get a job but are they real­ly being edu­cat­ed, that’s the real ques­tion?
This guy’s sto­ry should nev­er be twist­ed to con­form to the notion of redemp­tion and a sec­ond chance. It should nev­er be allowed to be mis­rep­re­sent­ed as an exam­ple of vir­tu­os­i­ty and the nobil­i­ty of reha­bil­i­ta­tion.
It is the very man­i­fes­ta­tion of cor­rup­tion and pol­i­tics; it is a clear exam­ple of how our most sacred insti­tu­tions can be cor­rupt­ed when those entrust­ed with pow­er, those giv­en stew­ard­ship over our insti­tu­tions that are pil­lars of our bud­ding democ­ra­cy and the rule of law, trade them away on the altar of cheap expe­di­en­cy.
His sto­ry is made pos­si­ble only on the basis of a peo­ple in love with the igno­ble celebri­ty derived from bla­tant crim­i­nal­i­ty.
Because of these incen­di­ary and cor­ro­sive prac­tices, even as I am for a new Constitution that gets rid of the British mon­archs our over­lords, I am equal­ly opposed to the Caribbean Court of Justice as the final court of appeals for Jamaica.

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

As Americans of all col­ors final­ly begin to wake up to the real and present dan­ger posed by killer cops, we are see­ing man­i­fest­ed in real-time what we have stat­ed for years, that the police are only one part of the prob­lem.
The pros­e­cu­tors, med­ical exam­in­ers, pathol­o­gists, judges, prison author­i­ties, and elect­ed offi­cials are built into the sys­tem, many of whom are ded­i­cat­ed to the cause of white suprema­cy in America.
Defunding the police will not solve racism in the jus­tice sys­tem but it would be a mean­ing full start.
Why do you think that so many of your tax dol­lars are used to give them what they want while your kids can­not get an edu­ca­tion, they are cut­ting food stamps and WIC, your kid’s schools are ver­i­ta­ble pris­ons, and you can­not afford ‑afford­able hous­ing and your net worth are.….
Well, I’ll let the (joint eco­nom­ic committee0 tell it.….
A 2019 study found that over 97% of respon­dents vast­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed the huge gap between the medi­an wealth held by Black fam­i­lies ($17,000) and White fam­i­lies ($171,000) — a ratio of 10 to one. Respondents esti­mat­ed the gap to be 80 per­cent­age points small­er than the actu­al divide.
Oh well.….

Approximately 70 % of America’s cops are white males, despite the small inroads that African-Americans have made in var­i­ous areas of American life since the civ­il rights fights of the ear­ly 1960“s.
A great deal of those (white men) police large urban cen­ters like Los Angels, New York, Houston, Boston, Philadelphia, etc., in which huge chunks of the pop­u­la­tion are black.
By that met­ric, the (AA) com­mu­ni­ty is forced to heav­i­ly sub­si­dize with their tax dol­lars American polic­ing, from which they have large­ly only derived neg­a­tive returns.
On that basis alone, the calls to defund the police and return the monies stolen to pay white cops to black com­mu­ni­ties are total­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly legit­i­mate.
Whenever these argu­ments come up, police groups and their white sup­port­ers point to the killings in the black com­mu­ni­ty as a rea­son that the police should not be defund­ed based on those num­bers.
The real­i­ty is that if poor black peo­ple’s tax dol­lars are being used to fund these huge armies of white cops to kill our peo­ple and those black-on-black crimes are still hap­pen­ing, tell me exact­ly why again should the black com­mu­ni­ty keep pay­ing for those cops?

The fact of the mat­ter is that as a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer … albeit from a dif­fer­ent coun­try, I know all too well that many of the crimes com­mit­ted in the black com­mu­ni­ty are part and par­cel of hun­dreds of years of mea­sures tak­en by the American gov­ern­ment against the AA com­mu­ni­ty, both overt­ly and covert­ly.
The ter­ror vis­it­ed upon African-Americans far exceeds the bat­ter­ing and mur­der they suf­fer at the hands of police but are built into covert plant­i­ng of dan­ger­ous drugs and lethal ill­ness­es in the AA com­mu­ni­ty designed both to elim­i­nate that minor­i­ty group and, at times to use the com­mu­ni­ty as guinea pigs for dan­ger­ous exper­i­ments.
This may sound hyper­bol­ic, but they are not; these are all prov­able, well-known facts.
The idea that speak­ing out about police sys­temic and con­tin­ued vio­lence against Black peo­ple should be viewed through the same lens as black-on-black vio­lence is [an unwit­ting acknowl­edg­ment] that the police are crim­i­nals as well.
Black crim­i­nals who com­mit crimes against Black peo­ple or any­one else are gen­er­al­ly held account­able for their crimes. In fact, the pris­ons are filled with them, so much so that count­less inno­cents are pop­u­lat­ing America’s pris­ons for crimes they nev­er com­mit­ted.
Literally every day, we read the hor­ror sto­ries of inno­cent black men and women who have been in prison, some­times for decades, on charges trumped up by racist, cor­rupt cops.
The next time that the (cop-apologists)[sic] counter your legit­i­mate dis­cus­sion on police crim­i­nal­i­ty (idi­ot­ic blacks as well) with the black-on-black non­sense tell them where to go.

The entire sys­tem was designed to bru­tal­ize and mur­der African-Americans, their police enact­ed from slave patrols. I have seen up close the bla­tant crim­i­nal­iz­ing of inno­cent peo­ple by police with agen­das, agen­das that do not care whether an inno­cent per­son­’s life will be ruined by a false arrest; they do it any­way.
Even so, there are judges and politi­cians that do every­thing in their pow­er to keep the pub­lic infor­ma­tion about police aggres­sion in their per­son­nel records.



(Root​.com) report­ed the fol­low­ing.
In the weeks fol­low­ing the first Black Lives Matter upris­ings, crim­i­nal jus­tice reform advo­cates scored sev­er­al major leg­isla­tive wins. In New York state, one of these was the repeal of Civil Rights Law 50‑A, which shield­ed the mis­con­duct records of law enforce­ment from the pub­lic. Last week, how­ev­er, a fed­er­al judge paused the release of those dis­ci­pli­nary records due to a police union law­suit filed against New York City. Under the rul­ing, the police depart­ment and the Civilian Complaint Review Board, a watch­dog group that over­sees the NYPD, are barred from shar­ing the records until at least Aug. 18, reports ABC News.

Not list­ed as a defen­dant — and there­fore exempt from the rul­ing — is ProPublica, a non­prof­it news orga­ni­za­tion with a focus on jus­tice and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. The pub­li­ca­tion announced Sunday it would be pub­lish­ing thou­sands of dis­ci­pli­nary records obtained by the CCRB before last week’s rul­ing. “We are mak­ing this infor­ma­tion pub­lic and, with it, pro­vid­ing an unprece­dent­ed pic­ture of civil­ians’ com­plaints of abuse by NYPD offi­cers as well as the lim­its of the cur­rent sys­tem that is sup­posed to hold offi­cers account­able,” Deputy Managing Editor Eric Umansky wrote in a post unveil­ing the com­plaints, which were com­piled in a search­able data­base. As Umansky not­ed, the data­base lists only active-duty NYPD offi­cers who have had at least one alle­ga­tion against them sub­stan­ti­at­ed by the CCRB. In total, there are 4,000 offi­cers rep­re­sent­ed out of the department’s 36,000-strong work­force. This means 11 per­cent of all NYPD offi­cers have had a cred­i­ble com­plaint of mis­con­duct lodged against them. According to ProPublica, 34 offi­cers have as many as 40 or more alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct against them.

The release of the records is meant to enlight­en the pub­lic about the scope and sever­i­ty of mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions against the NYPD, the nation’s largest police force. But the pub­li­ca­tion also aims to shed light on the review process. The CCRB has lim­it­ed inves­tiga­tive pow­ers, which means it can­not con­firm a sub­stan­tial amount of the thou­sands of com­plaints it receives every year. Part of this hinges on coöper­a­tion from the NYPD itself, notes ProPublica. While the NYPD has a legal duty to coöper­ate with the over­sight board’s inves­ti­ga­tions, includ­ing hand­ing over evi­dence such as body­cam footage, the depart­ment often doesn’t do this. The data­base also includes civil­ian com­plaints of mis­con­duct that the Board found did hap­pen but didn’t vio­late the NYPD’s rules.
“We under­stand the argu­ments against releas­ing this data. But we believe the pub­lic good it could do out­weighs the poten­tial harm,” said ProPublica Editor-in-chief Stephen Engelberg. “The data­base gives the peo­ple of New York City a glimpse at how alle­ga­tions involv­ing police mis­con­duct have been han­dled and allows jour­nal­ists and ordi­nary cit­i­zens alike to look more deeply at the records of par­tic­u­lar officers.”

Time and time, we see evi­dence of police mis­con­duct go with­out the pub­lic get­ting redress. Time and again, we see acts of egre­gious police mis­con­duct and crimes, and they inves­ti­gate them­selves, and the pub­lic is none the wis­er at the out­come of their [sup­posed] inves­ti­ga­tions.
Even when they com­mit crimes that are so egre­gious, depart­ments allow them to resign so that they can go to anoth­er depart­ment that wel­comes them with open arms.
Charles Ramsey, an African-American for­mer Philadelphia police com­mis­sion­er, spoke to the issue of vio­lent police encoun­ters with the pub­lic and agreed that the sheer num­ber of depart­ments in the coun­try might be a con­trib­u­tor to the problem.

Ramsey, who was a co-chair of a pres­i­den­tial polic­ing task force, teased out the con­nec­tions between law enforce­ment and race with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on July 10, 2016. Todd said major urban police depart­ments have been tak­ing steps to ease racial ten­sions and asked Ramsey if the small­er depart­ments had the same kind of resources. Ramsey paint­ed a pic­ture that went well beyond core fund­ing.
“There are approx­i­mate­ly 18,000 depart­ments in the United States,” Ramsey said. “I would try to cut the num­ber in half in the next ten years or so because you’re always going to have these kinds of issues as long as you have this many depart­ments with dif­fer­ent poli­cies, pro­ce­dures, train­ing, and the like.” The num­bers back Ramsey up on the num­ber of depart­ments. The final report from the task force he led said there are 17,985 U.S. police agen­cies. (According to Politifact)

Defunding the police would mean, in actu­al terms, cut­ting many of the police forces out and ensur­ing that the oth­ers do their jobs as pro­fes­sion­al offi­cers of the law, not steroid-pumped, doped-up tat­toed wannabe Rambos.
It would mean using the resources saved from the mas­sive mil­i­ta­rized police buildup to offer skills train­ing to young men and women in under­served com­mu­ni­ties, black and white.
It would mean pro­vid­ing jobs for them at the end of their train­ing peri­od, a pol­i­cy ensur­ing that the gang-relat­ed vio­lence would begin to dis­ap­pear.
Of course, as long as there are for-prof­it pris­ons that need black bod­ies to fill them, this kind of robo­cop buildup will con­tin­ue.
Despite what some politi­cians mum­ble under their breath about work­ing to change this destruc­tive tra­jec­to­ry, not much will change. It will con­tin­ue until it reach­es a cat­a­clysmic end.
They are not there just yet.

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

By Emma Andersson, Senior Staff Attorney, Criminal Law Reform Project

The Supreme Court just ruled that a police offi­cer could not be sued for gun­ning down Amy Hughes. This has vast impli­ca­tions for law enforce­ment account­abil­i­ty. The details of the case are as damn­ing as the deci­sion. Hughes was not sus­pect­ed of a crime. She was sim­ply stand­ing still, hold­ing a kitchen knife at her side. The offi­cer gave no warn­ing that he was going to shoot her if she did not com­ply with his com­mands. Moments lat­er, the offi­cer shot her four times.
Shoot first and think lat­er,” accord­ing to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, is what the offi­cer did.

As Sotomayor argued in dis­sent, the court’s deci­sion in Kisela v. Hughes means that such “pal­pa­bly unreason­able con­duct will go unpun­ished.” According to sev­en of the nine Justices, Hughes’ Fourth Amendment right to not be shot four times in this sit­u­a­tion is less pro­tect­ed than the officer’s inter­est in escap­ing account­abil­i­ty for his brazen abuse of author­i­ty. According to Justice Sotomayor, “If this account of [the officer’s] con­duct sounds unrea­son­able, that is because it was. And yet, the Court … insu­lates that con­duct from lia­bil­i­ty under the doc­trine of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty.” Worse yet, this deci­sion wasn’t a sur­prise. And it cer­tain­ly isn’t an aber­ra­tion.
In fact, it is just the lat­est in a long line of cas­es in which the Supreme Court has dec­i­mat­ed our abil­i­ty to vin­di­cate con­sti­tu­tion­al rights when gov­ern­ment actors over­step. And when law enforce­ment over­steps, as was the case with Hughes, the con­se­quences can be dev­as­tat­ing.
Read more here;

https://​www​.aclu​.org/​b​l​o​g​/​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​-​l​a​w​-​r​e​f​o​r​m​/​r​e​f​o​r​m​i​n​g​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​/​s​u​p​r​e​m​e​-​c​o​u​r​t​-​g​i​v​e​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​g​r​e​e​n​-​l​i​g​h​t​-​s​h​o​o​t​-​f​i​r​s​t​-​and

Amidst world­wide atten­tion being direct­ed at police for what are seri­ous issues of abuse and vio­lence, it is no won­der that those with ulte­ri­or motives would attach them­selves to this moment like a par­a­site to bare skin.
There should be no pro­tec­tion for bad cops who betray their oaths. As a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer myself, I have a record of speak­ing out in defense of law enforce­ment, while at the same time, exco­ri­at­ing dirty, vio­lent, and abu­sive cops.

There is a del­i­cate bal­ance to be struck between ensur­ing that police offi­cers are allowed to do their jobs with the back­ing of the peo­ple, while ensur­ing that police depart­ments and their offi­cers are held to the strictest stan­dards of account­abil­i­ty.
The two are not bina­ry choic­es, but are rather the tem­plate for the rule of law in a tru­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.
As the spot­light is being shone on wide­spread racism in American polic­ing, the world is awak­en­ing to the con­cept that the so-called, world’s old­est Democracy, is not so demo­c­ra­t­ic as it has sold itself to be.

In Jamaica, the anti-police lob­by that calls itself Jamaicans for Justice,(JFJ) the force behind the poor­ly designed gov­ern­ment agency (INDECOM), which became law and was unleashed on the police in 2010, would not allow this moment to pass with­out adding it’s two cents.
In a Tuesday Gleaner report (JFJ) asked [Are the police spe­cial) as it lob­bies the gov­ern­ment to give pow­ers of arrests & pros­e­cu­tion to INDECOM.
INDECOM’s com­mis­sion­er Terrence Williams was smacked down in the local courts, after he advanced the claim that the agency had pow­ers to inves­ti­gate, arrest & pros­e­cute.
Not sat­is­fied, Williams went to the UK Privy Council, where he was met with the same response.
As a result, he has deter­mined that not only will he not seek anoth­er term in office, but that he would step aside this com­ing July.
Before wag­ing his court bat­tles, Terrence Williams knew that nei­ther he nor his min­ions at INDECOM had the pow­er to arrest and pros­e­cute under the law.
He acknowl­edged that the com­mit­tee of Parliament had promised that- that pow­er would be added to the agency in due course. Nevertheless, Williams went ahead with a lengthy and expen­sive court bat­tle, argu­ing for pow­ers he already knew he did not have. 

The sad­ness in all of this con­tin­ued push by JFJ, is that the bunch of trai­tors in that anti-Jamaica group is again weaponiz­ing the pub­lic against the police right after six mem­bers of the JCF were shot down, two pay­ing the ulti­mate price in ser­vice to their coun­try.
In alleg­ing unsub­stan­ti­at­ed coverup between the Office Of The Director Of Public Prosecution (DPP) and the police, the lob­by argued:” police offi­cers were get­ting spe­cial treat­ment under the law because, unlike civil­ians, there is a dif­fer­ent process that could take up to months before per­son­nel is charged”.
Responding to the unsub­stan­ti­at­ed and scur­rilous claims, the DPP Paula Llewelyn shot back, quote: “Clearly JFJ, are not in pos­ses­sion of accu­rate sta­tis­tics; they have not done any empir­i­cal analy­sis on the sys­tem,” “They have not enquired from us in rela­tion to the sta­tus of any mat­ter. “They are clear­ly total­ly unin­formed .” 
That has been the modus Operandi of this bunch of atten­tion seek­ers since it’s incep­tion by Carolyn Gomez, out of JFK came a pathet­i­cal­ly dys­func­tion­al agency that has caused the lives of thou­sands of Jamaicans.
Carolyn Gomez was dis­graced and chased from the pub­lic stage but her hand­i­work still remains, both in JFJ and INDECOM.
These days JFJ is under the lead­er­ship of some­one by the name of Rodje Malcolm, whose title is exec­u­tive direc­tor.
The bod­ies of the slain offi­cers are not yet cold, but sure­ly that has nev­er been the con­cern of this anti ‑Jamaican agency, and the trai­tors who gen­er­ate hatred from under its umbrella.

I cau­tion both polit­i­cal par­ties not to go down the road of giv­ing INDECOM pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pow­ers. I know of no oth­er agency any­where in the world that has pow­ers to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute its own cas­es.
It is a dan­ger­ous road that will lead to mega abuse as we have seen demon­strat­ed by Terrence Williams. Williams abused pow­ers he clear­ly and demon­stra­bly knew he did not pos­sess, in order to harass and harangue police offi­cers who were mere­ly doing their jobs.
The law-abid­ing peo­ple of Jamaica will not stand idly by and allow any more of their coun­try­men and women to be slaugh­tered while [for­eign mon­ey] is used to per­se­cute their police offi­cers.
No one wants dirty cops to con­tin­ue to oper­ate with impuni­ty. If INDECOM believes in the strength of its cas­es, let it inves­ti­gate and present them to the DPP.
If this admin­is­tra­tion wants all cas­es of crim­i­nal­i­ty pros­e­cut­ed with more alacrity, it needs to spend more mon­ey build­ing more cour­t­hous­es and expand­ing the office of DPP, & staffing them appro­pri­ate­ly.
We have already seen what INDECOM does with unchecked pow­ers.
The Jamaica Labor Party cre­at­ed INDECOM with the full acqui­es­cence of the People’s National Party.
They bet­ter not do any more dam­age result­ing in the loss of thou­sands more Jamaican lives.



Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

The con­tin­ued malig­nan­cy of extor­tion at all lev­els of the Jamaican soci­ety is can­cer that [must] be exor­cized with rapid dis­patch.
Over the last three decades or so, suc­ces­sive Administrations in Jamaica House com­pris­ing both polit­i­cal par­ties, have paid lip ser­vice to this seri­ous issue, but have done pre­cious lit­tle to evis­cer­ate it once and for all.
Whether extor­tion comes from low-lev­el thugs at the bus parks, or those who demand pay­ment from busi­ness own­ers each week, to Government con­tracts that are held up, or end up with humungous cost-over-runs, it is a prob­lem that both polit­i­cal par­ties have exploit­ed rather than correct.

The House of Representatives could begin to send a strong mes­sage to would-be extor­tion­ists that this prac­tice will not be tol­er­at­ed by draft­ing and pass­ing tough anti-extor­tion leg­is­la­tion that effec­tive­ly locks up gang­sters who are con­vict­ed under the law and place the prison on top of them.
The con­cept of a [Don] punk-ass crim­i­nal demand­ing pay­ment from poor mar­ket ven­dors, strug­gling busi­ness peo­ple, or con­trac­tors on con­struc­tion sites, is one of the most debil­i­tat­ing imped­i­ments to growth and sta­bil­i­ty in our coun­try.
Extortionists back up their demands for illic­it pay­ments with [death], the gov­ern­ment [must] rec­i­p­ro­cate with life in prison, any­one caught engag­ing in this practice.

The Government can encour­age Businesses to have video record­ing secu­ri­ty devices to doc­u­ment those who would walk in and demand mon­ey from them.
The penal­ty must be so severe that those who would engage in the prac­tice will think twice about get­ting involved in the prac­tice and must under­stand ful­ly, that when caught the tri­al judge is giv­en no recourse but to sen­tence them to life in prison.
The prac­tice of crim­i­nals demand­ing mon­ey from indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties with­out work done for it is as old as our young democ­ra­cy.
Over the last three decades, cor­rupt polit­i­cal lead­er­ship in Jamaica House has allowed the prac­tice to go un-policed as a wink and a nod to the (mili­tia-wing ) of their oper­a­tions, to demand from hard-work­ing Jamaicans pay­ments for no work, at the per­il of their lives.
It is a prac­tice that runs in high places and deep trench­es.
It has been a steady stream of resources that have nur­tured and encour­aged ordi­nary punks oper­at­ing under the san­i­tized moniker of com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, but who are noth­ing more than com­mon low-life crim­i­nal punks.

It is for those very rea­sons that the Jamaican Government has been unable to bring charges against any of the mur­der­ous crim­i­nals who have oper­at­ed in the coun­try in the last three decades. With all of its flaws, thanks to the United States crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem some have been arrest­ed and are fac­ing real jus­tice in American pris­ons.
It is sim­ply uncon­scionable that poor peo­ple liv­ing in the rur­al parish­es who pur­chase prod­ucts, and pays to sell in the mar­kets in the cor­po­rate area, would be forced to pay extor­tion fees to lazy punks liv­ing in Tivoli Gardens or any oth­er enclave.
This prac­tice must stop.
I am call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to ensure that poor ven­dors are able to sell their wares in peace, so that they can sup­port their fam­i­lies with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about get­ting killed, because they have no mon­ey to dole out to men who do not work.
We must not go back to the days when Tivoli Gardens was a sep­a­rate and autonomous enti­ty from the Jamaican state.
Too many sol­diers and police offi­cers died annex­ing that enclave to Jamaica.
End the prac­tice now.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

If you ever donned the uni­form of a police offi­cer, you know what it feels like to see, or hear of a col­league get­ting cut down in a hail of bul­lets. You feel some­thing only the slain offi­cer’s fam­i­ly mem­bers feel, because the police fra­ter­ni­ty is a fam­i­ly.
That is not to say that con­sci­en­tious mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic do not feel the sor­row we feel at these killings, it is just dif­fer­ent.
The once-revered con­cept of Esprit de corps encap­su­lat­ed that cama­raderie that those who place their lives on the line feel toward each oth­er.
It comes not from any sin­is­ter dark place with mal-intent to cov­er wrongs, it comes from the knowl­edge that the per­son next to you is entrust­ed to pro­tect and defend my life with his or hers.
It is a sacred trust that we all placed in each other.

Over the years the insti­tu­tion of polic­ing has suf­fered immense­ly as a result of neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty, much of it earned, some of it unwar­rant­ed.
Today, the police are under­go­ing more scruti­ny as a result of bad actors. In the United States and oth­er coun­tries, get­ting peo­ple to focus on the nobil­i­ty of the dis­ci­pline is even more dif­fi­cult to do in this dis­tort­ed envi­ron­ment.
As police across the globe fall short of their own goals to serve and pro­tect, cit­i­zens are more and more divorced from empathiz­ing with police officers.

Notwithstanding, those of us who serve/​served are sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact­ed when offi­cers are cut down in ser­vice to the pub­lic.
As a for­mer offi­cer of the JCF who was shot in the line of duty, I under­stand all too well the chal­lenges our offi­cers face, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a coun­try like Jamaica.
Even with the best equip­ment and train­ing, remu­ner­a­tions, and sup­port, noth­ing can ful­ly pro­tect police offi­cers from the dan­gers that come with the job.
With inad­e­quate remu­ner­a­tions, poor and out­dat­ed train­ing, & a lack of full gov­ern­men­tal sup­port, Jamaican police offi­cers are at dou­ble the risk, dou­ble the expo­sure & at dou­ble the per­il if they make a mistake.

As we grieve the loss of two offi­cers, and the seri­ous injury suf­fered by two oth­ers, includ­ing Superintendent Leon Clunis, lessons must be learned from this sad event.
The Jamaica Constabulary Force can hard­ly depend on gov­ern­ment, regard­less of which par­ty forms the gov­ern­ment. As such, it is crit­i­cal that these events are used by the depart­ment to devel­op best prac­tices to change how the depart­ment does busi­ness.
I have con­sis­tent­ly argued that the train­ing that our police offi­cers are receiv­ing is not near­ly up to stan­dard, and in par­tic­u­lar, is insuf­fi­cient for the chal­lenges Jamaican police offi­cers face.
Of crit­i­cal import is the way the depart­ment oper­ates in stops and starts, and gets into val­leys of com­fort­a­bil­i­ty when there is wane in seri­ous incidences. 

Police depart­ments can ill afford to rest on their lau­rels. The job of devel­op­ing new tech­niques and strate­gies is crit­i­cal if they are to be on par with the crim­i­nal under­world, much less be steps ahead of them.
Under no cir­cum­stance should the police let down their guard, that goes for senior offi­cers of the force, many of whom go out in that kha­ki uni­form and pre­tend that gun­shots are repelled by the uni­form.
Some senior cops go out with­out a weapon and in some case are seen with a swag­ger cane, no actu­al accou­ter­ments of the trade.….…..I am yet to under­stand what uni­verse they are liv­ing in. 

Do mem­bers of the gazetted ranks believe they are no longer police offi­cers? Or do they think that their senior­i­ty sta­tus insu­lates them from harm? I make no judg­ments about what went down at that house in Horizon Park, on that fate­ful morn­ing, suf­fic­ing to say that what­ev­er tact those offi­cers took should become a part of the police train­ing man­u­al’s what not to do.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

We have been informed that the Police have killed the shoot­er who engaged and killed two police offi­cers this morn­ing, and wound­ing anoth­er two oth­ers in a sec­tion of Spanish Town, includ­ing a senior offi­cer Superintendent Leon Clunis.

We are yet to con­firm whether this image is the real image of the killer. We are told he was killed in a shootout in Coorevile gar­dens in St Andrew in a fire­fight with police.

Superintendent Leon Clunis is still in hos­pi­tal in very seri­ous condition.

This sto­ry has been updated.

This medi­um wish­es to con­vey to the JCF, its Auxiliaries, the offi­cers, those who have been injured or lost their lives in ser­vice to their coun­try this morn­ing, as well as their fam­i­lies, our deep­est con­do­lences.
The events in Spanish Town in which a marked police cruis­er was attacked result­ing in seri­ous injuries and death to mem­bers of the JCF can­not be con­doned.
This brazen and unpro­voked attack is a func­tion of decades and decades of tac­it sup­port to crim­i­nal ele­ments, and a brazen lack of sup­port for our law enforce­ment offi­cers from the high­est offices in our coun­try that ought to ensure that the rule of law is maintained.

America’s Police depart­ments con­firmed over the last sev­er­al weeks what black and brown Americans have been say­ing. That they are une­d­u­cat­ed, bru­tal thugs who are social­ized to act aggres­sive­ly by beat­ing, abus­ing, and even mur­der­ing inno­cent black and brown cit­i­zens.
Yesterday the Fraternal Order of Police in New York trot­ted out to begin its push against demon­stra­tions who take to the streets to reg­is­ter their dis­gust at their bru­tal & thug­gish aggres­sion.|
As per usu­al their ven­om was direct­ed at the politi­cians in the city coun­cil who have start­ed to grow some balls by stand­ing with the cit­i­zens.
The new ene­my is the press, they berat­ed the press for what they char­ac­ter­ized as attempts to shame them for being police offi­cers.
I thought that was par­tic­u­lar­ly rich con­sid­er­ing that the press duti­ful­ly wor­ships police in America.
Why would they feel shame at being a police offi­cer if they were act­ing as offi­cers are sup­posed to act?
If shin­ing a light on their crim­i­nal­i­ty is sham­ing them then the press is final­ly wak­ing up to the fact that many police depart­ments are cesspools of racism and white suprema­cy. The NYPD is no dif­fer­ent.



The spine­less politi­cians are now being forced to act by remov­ing some of the insu­la­tion that is cre­at­ing and nur­tur­ing the vul­gar bru­tal­i­ty they com­mit against vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens, and that angers them.
Once again the NYPD demon­strat­ed what most black and brown and even some whites will admit, that these pub­lic ser­vants are vast­ly out of con­trol and for all intents and pur­pos­es, are a bunch of crim­i­nal thugs.
Here is the press con­fer­ence they gave. Of course, they get to demon­strate their views with­out any­one bru­tal­iz­ing them, no one tear­gassed them, no one used rub­ber bul­lets or pep­per spray on them, no one ran them over with SUVs.
Here is the group of NYPD Union thugs draw­ing atten­tion to their cause in response to the weeks of mas­sive demon­stra­tions.
But where exact­ly have we heard this kind of attack on the press before?

Here is my response to their unmit­i­gat­ed tone-deaf arrogance.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

I guess the Minneapolis city coun­cil is as fed up as the pro­tes­tors are, at what that police depart­ment has become. Even after that police depart­ment set the entire world on fire with its pub­lic lynch­ing of George Floyd, [offi­cers] in that depart­ment seem not to care that the anger is direct­ed at them.
Either they do not care because they believe that they are lords and mas­ters over the peo­ple, or they do not give a damn what any­one says.

It is shock­ing, they lynch a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty and when the upris­ing start­ed they bru­tal­ize cit­i­zens who were demon­strat­ing against.
They arrest­ed a CNN jour­nal­ist and his crew while they were report­ing on live Television for absolute­ly no rea­son. In all fair­ness, the Minneapolis police are not alone in the abuse.
From Pacific to Atlantic and all places in between, as Americans black white and brown rose up to reg­is­ter their dis­gust at police abuse and racism in the soci­ety, so too did the police rise up with egre­gious acts of bru­tal­i­ty and disrespect.

In upstate Buffalo New York, two of those thugs pushed a 75-year old man to the ground almost killing him. The two were arrest­ed and charged and are fac­ing felony charges. None of the cops helped the man as he lay there bleed­ing. They will remain sus­pend­ed pend­ing tri­al.
In Atlanta, Georgia, six offi­cers were booked on crim­i­nal charges while two of the six were fired for bru­tal­ly attack­ing two col­lege stu­dents.
The young cou­ple was dri­ving through a protest when they were set upon and bru­tal­ly extract­ed from their car, as one offi­cer sum­mar­i­ly engaged in smash­ing the win­dows out of the vehicle.

In New York, well they are beyond redemp­tion, they just con­tin­ued right along with the beat­ings, bru­tal­iz­ing, and com­mit­ting all kinds of atroc­i­ties against demon­stra­tors, even the most peace­ful demon­stra­tors were not spared their ven­om.
They could be heard on their scan­ner encour­ag­ing oth­ers to dri­ve over inno­cent pro­tes­tors with their SUVs.
In all of the acts of police rage and vio­lent riots, one thing caught my eye & absolute­ly astound­ed me. It was [police offi­cers] van­dal­iz­ing cars in the city of Minneapolis by punc­tur­ing all of the tires on one par­tic­u­lar street. sev­er­al of the cars belonged to jour­nal­ists from out of town who rent­ed them to get around.
Other cars were the prop­er­ty of res­i­dents, yet the police that the peo­ple pay to pro­tect their lives and prop­er­ty, set upon their vehi­cles, and arbi­trar­i­ly set about dam­ag­ing them.
It was shock­ing as one jour­nal­ist affirmed that he had ver­i­fi­able infor­ma­tion that it was, in fact, police offi­cers who dam­aged his car and oth­ers leav­ing him strand­ed after com­plet­ing his assignment.

It is not too dif­fi­cult to under­stand how this kind of raw police aggres­sion could be unleashed in the coun­try. On peo­ple of col­or and on the media over the last three-plus or so years.
These events do not even begin to scratch the sur­face but they have been enough to open the eyes of many.
The police have been told not to be nice to cit­i­zens and the media has been made out to be the ene­my of the peo­ple.
And now the lit­tle tyrant at the head of the NYPD PBA is out cry­ing about how they are treat­ed. No apolo­gies for the way the NYPD has treat­ed peo­ple of col­or for decades and decades.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

E

(1) END QUALIFIED IMMUNITY
(2) ENSURE THAT POLICE PURCHASE MALPRACTICE INSURANCE
(3) STOP SENDING POLICE TO APARTHEID ISRAEL FOR TRAINING TO KILL AMERICAN CITIZENS
(4) STOP ALLOWING DIRTY RACIST COPS TO RESIGN WHEN THEY COMMIT CRIMINAL ACTS THEN GO JOIN ANOTHER DEPARTMENT
(5) END THE CONTROL POLICE UNIONS HAVE ON POLICE WHO ARE EMPLOYEES OF THE TAXPAYERS
(6) FIRE COPS WHO HAVE REPEATED USE OF EXCESSIVE FORCE COMPLAINTS
(7) TRAIN POLICE FOR LONGER PERIODS
(8) ROOT OUT WHITE SUPREMACIST FROM POLICE DEPARTMENTS, BEGINNING WITH THE NYPD

The stunt pulled by a bunch of cow­ards parad­ing as cops in the west­er­ly city of Buffalo New York, must be called out for what it is, “a bull­shit act, pulled off by a bunch of cow­ard­ly punks.”

We watched the large group of robot­ic morons lit­er­al­ly push an elder­ly 75-year-old man to the hard con­crete pave­ment caus­ing him to bleed from his head. To add insult to injury they kept on walk­ing with­out tak­ing cor­rec­tive action to help the man they had just vicious­ly assault­ed.
After the two respon­si­ble were sus­pend­ed by the brass, the entire bunch of crim­i­nal cow­ards quit the unit. 

They resigned from the force’s emer­gency response team fol­low­ing the sus­pen­sion of two offi­cers who alleged­ly pushed a 75-year-old man to the ground.
The police union said that the offi­cers were mere­ly doing what they were ordered to do, which was to clear the square.
It was a remark­able state­ment. If the police inter­pret­ed the order to clear the square to mean that they could vio­lent­ly com­mit a felo­nious assault against a senior cit­i­zen, fail to offer first aid to him, then lie that he fell on his own voli­tion in their state­ments, then they deserve all of the dis­re­spect I give to them. 

If these cow­ard­ly punks real­ly want­ed to make a state­ment based in prin­ci­ple on some con­vic­tion they believe in, they would have turned in their badges, rather than pull a [trumpian] stunt by resign­ing from the unit, instead of leav­ing the force.
Show us just how prin­ci­pled you are and resign, go become a lawn care expert, or get a job at Costco.
The 75-year old man Martin Gugino is still hos­pi­tal­ized in seri­ous but sta­ble con­di­tion.
in anoth­er dis­grace­ful twist, the city’s Mayor Byron Brown said he wants the two sus­pend­ed offi­cers to get due process.

In sim­pler lan­guage, he means he will drag out the inves­ti­ga­tions until peo­ple for­get about it and they will be back on the streets assault­ing old peo­ple again.
“I am not call­ing for them to be fired.“Speaking of the injured man, the may­or said, “He was asked to leave numer­ous times.“
Sure I could see how the police would be jus­ti­fied in com­mit­ting a vio­lent felony on a very senior mem­ber of our soci­ety because he did not bow down to police orders to go home.
I absolute­ly see how a sum­mons would not have worked in this case.
These are the kinds of cor­rupt pub­lic offi­cials I speak about as the rea­son for the abus­es being com­mit­ted by police.
These are the enablers who make police act with impunity.

In the State of Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced crim­i­nal charges against six Atlanta Police offi­cers involved in an inci­dent in which two col­lege stu­dents, Taniyah Pilgrim and Messiah Young, were pulled from their car and tased.
Two of the offi­cers have already been fired 

“I feel a lit­tle safer now that these mon­sters are off of the street and no longer able to ter­ror­ize any­one else,” said 22-year-old Messiah Young, who was dragged from the vehi­cle along with his girl­friend, 20-year-old Taniyah Pilgrim.

These are the kinds of hyped up mon­sters that police America’s streets and byways[ or should I say beat the hell out of peo­ple] each and every day. They are dressed as sol­diers and they oper­ate like they are on a bat­tle­field. The Black com­mu­ni­ty is their ene­my.
One would have thought that com­mon sense would pre­vail, there is a world­wide upheaval at the lynch­ing of Minneapolis res­i­dent George Floyd, yet these morons are still bru­tal­iz­ing the cit­i­zens who pay their salaries.
Clearly, they are not learn­ing anything.

In oth­er news, it took well over a week of protests and the Black Attorney General of the state of Minnesota for the oth­er three mur­der­ers who killed Mister Floyd to be charged with crimes.
In the city of New York, the NYPD has been very busy pom­melling and punch­ing and beat­ing peo­ple into sub­mit­ting to their will.
The city is home to the world’s largest most racist police depart­ment in the world.
Its unions are ver­i­ta­ble mafia-style fam­i­lies hard­ly any dif­fer­ent from the Gambino and oth­er mafia fam­i­lies.
Mayors are scared shit­less of them, includ­ing the weak and feck­less de Blasio who goes out of his way not to [tread] on them.
In the not too dis­tant past Guliani & Bloomberg have avoid­ed their ire by cow-tow­ing to their demands and allow­ing them to bru­tal­ize and kill black and brown res­i­dents of the city with­out consequence.

The NYPD has zero respect for civil­ian lead­er­ship. Those in com­mand see the depart­ment as their own to run as they please. Mayors and oth­er pub­lic offi­cials are shit-scared of these unions/​mafia clubs and they do their lev­el best to avoid cross­ing them.
On the oth­er hand, there are those politi­cians, on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide, Democrats & Republicans (gen­er­al­ly white) who con­tin­ue to heap more and more pow­er on the police, to abuse & kill black and brown res­i­dents of the city.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday announced that two men have been tak­en into cus­tody in con­nec­tion with the mur­ders of 19-year-old Vanita Richardson & her 30-year-old step-sis­ter, Truvenia Campbell.
The two, 28-year-old Desmond Brown and 26-year-old Devin Watts were arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with what the Georgia Bureau of Investigations char­ac­ter­ized as Brown arrest­ed on one count of obstruc­tion of a police offi­cer, and Watts was tak­en into cus­tody the fol­low­ing day on charges of theft by receiv­ing stolen prop­er­ty and pos­ses­sion of a firearm by a con­vict­ed felon.

Neither of the two has been for­mal­ly charged with the mur­der of the two women. The bod­ies of the two women were dis­cov­ered under the Etowah Bridge on May 13. According to law enforce­ment, the clothes of the two women were bad­ly torn and there were bags over their heads.

There is a back­lash brew­ing seem­ing­ly across the globe, this is evi­dent across social media plat­forms, as peo­ple who are forced to stay in their homes are becom­ing more and more agi­tat­ed and upset at their gov­ern­ments telling them what to do.
This is so, even though in many cas­es the direc­tives from their gov­ern­ment is pre­vent­ing expo­sure to the poten­tial­ly dead­ly virus COVID-19.
The prob­lem as many peo­ple see it, is that they are being asked to stay at home by gov­ern­ments that have made no prepa­ra­tions for their sur­vival, as it relates to food, pay­ing their mort­gages, rentals, or oth­er liv­ing require­ments.
The orders are result­ing in the clo­sure of their busi­ness­es and the loss of their livelihoods. 

This enforce­ment is left up to the police to ensure that peo­ple abide by the direc­tives hand­ed down to them to enforce.
In the United States with its bi-polar jus­tice system,(one for white peo­ple and anoth­er for blacks), enforce­ment range from hand­ing out masks to white sun­bathers in Manhattan’s west vil­lage to bru­tal­ly bat­ter­ing black cit­i­zens mere blocks away in anoth­er neighborhood.

Across sev­er­al states from New York, right-wing groups of angry whites have tak­en up arms in the state of Michigan and have demon­strat­ed their dis­dain at the Governor’s stay-at-home orders, which they deem to be tyran­ni­cal and exces­sive.
Heavily armed white resis­tance to Governmental orders result­ed in resis­tance mem­bers storm­ing the Michigan state leg­is­la­ture, elic­it­ing no police response.
A woman of col­or in the New York City Subway sys­tem walk­ing with her baby daugh­ter was vio­lent­ly assault­ed and arrest­ed by a horde of NYPD thugs in uni­form for not wear­ing a mask.

The clue­less police com­mis­sion­er Dermott Shea said his thugs did noth­ing wrong, the police union sup­ports and encour­ages crim­i­nal­i­ty with­in the NYPD said the police should not be enforc­ing social dis­tanc­ing rules, though not address­ing the vicious assaults on inno­cent cit­i­zens includ­ing a vicious assault on a young moth­er of col­or in the sub­way sys­tem in front of her infant child.
The infan­tile Mayor of the city called that inci­dent “trou­bling,” clear­ly not want­i­ng to offend the 38,422 strong uni­formed-gang of thugs.
The state’s Democrat Governor, Andrew Cuomo, is too busy rais­ing his nation­al pro­file to care about police abuse. He had noth­ing to say about the abuse of the state’s cit­i­zens hap­pen­ing on his watch.

People are skep­ti­cal, as stay at home orders are extend­ed small mom & pop busi­ness­es are forced to remain closed while major cor­po­ra­tions like Facebook, Walmart, Amazon and oth­ers are dec­i­mat­ing Main Street.
It is for that rea­son that the stock mar­kets in America has been on a tear even as more and more small busi­ness­es close their doors for ever.
As small busi­ness­es close their doors large cor­po­ra­tions gob­ble up the remain­ing mar­ket share they did not already have.
This will inex­orably cre­ate a wider income gap and broad­en the chasm between the haves and the have nots.
Brace your­selves for tougher times ahead .….……

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

A sin­gle instance where a cit­i­zen stands up to police against unlaw­ful assaults and arrest can get that per­son a long stretch in jail & even prison.
It is a neat­ly com­plic­it arrange­ment between police, pros­e­cu­tors & the judi­cia­ry, autho­rized by state and local leg­is­la­tors, gov­er­nors, and may­ors.
Now, as a for­mer police offi­cer myself, I, too, want to see some lev­el of pro­tec­tion for agents of the law while they are car­ry­ing out their duties. On the oth­er hand, I am also con­ver­sant with the need to keep a tight rein on those pow­ers that pro­tect police because of the actions of unscrupu­lous police actors.

LEAKED VIDEO OF AHMAUD ARBERY’S ENCOUNTER WITH POLICE DESIGNED TO MURDER HIM FURTHER.

We have got­ten to the place where police offi­cers’ words mean noth­ing. They com­mit all kinds of crimes, fur­ther­ing the break­down of social order and the rule of law.
The gov­ern­ing author­i­ties have decid­ed that rather than hold police account­able, they rather pro­tect cor­rupt & abu­sive offi­cers at all costs, includ­ing the total break­down in the rule of law.
This myopic strat­e­gy may help indi­vid­ual police offi­cers but at what cost?
How do the author­i­ties expect cit­i­zens to react to police offi­cers they know unlaw­ful­ly mur­dered their loved ones?
How are cit­i­zens expect­ed to react to police offi­cers who steal drugs from drug deal­ers and then turn around and sell the drugs right back in the very same neigh­bor­hoods?
How are cit­i­zens sup­posed to respect police offi­cers who demon­strate noth­ing but hos­tile con­tempt for them by their abu­sive actions and utter­ances?
Many police depart­ments have become a law unto them­selves, dri­ving the fear of God in even the polit­i­cal direc­torate. Take. Look at the New York City Police Department, a huge gang, which has the may­or shak­ing in his boots.

The police offi­cer who sees the peo­ple he is sworn to pro­tect as ene­mies to be con­quered and sub­ju­gat­ed is not only a dan­ger to the com­mu­ni­ty in which he works. He is a dan­ger to his col­leagues.
By exten­sion, police depart­ments that are con­temp­tu­ous of the res­i­dents they are sup­posed to serve are even greater threats to that com­mu­ni­ty.
Some police depart­ments don’t even both­er con­ceal­ing the fact that they no longer serve the peo­ple. They have become tax-pay­er-fund­ed organs of gov­ern­men­tal tyran­ny.
Despite over­whelm­ing evi­dence that many police depart­ments have become cesspools of cor­rup­tion, crim­i­nal­i­ty, and graft, a large part of the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to heap adu­la­tion and praise on them, essen­tial­ly ele­vat­ing them to Gods.

Police depart­ments leak mate­r­i­al they believe will aid in tar­nish­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of peo­ple they despise, even if it aids mur­der­ers who no longer serve police offi­cers.
These actions ought to send a chill down the col­lec­tive spine of the nation.
However, when it comes to police crimes, the white com­mu­ni­ty across America is duplic­i­tous­ly silent as long as the vic­tims are black.
Take, for instance, the new­ly released video of a Glynn County police encounter with the now mur­dered Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of a for­mer Glynn County cop Gregory McMichael & his song Travis McMichael.
Even after police & pros­e­cu­tors mucked up the inves­ti­ga­tions and refused to arrest Gregory McMichael because of his work his­to­ry as a cop & inves­ti­ga­tor in the office of the County Prosecutor Jackie Johnson, they were not done with their ille­gal activities.

Even after the McMichaels have been arrest­ed and are cool­ing their heels in jail after a nation­al out­cry, cor­rupt police offi­cials are arguably still work­ing behind the scenes to aid the defense of the two mur­der­ers by releas­ing the video encounter of Glynn Country cops and Ahmaud Arbery.
The video’s intent can only be inter­pret­ed as an attempt to com­mit anoth­er mur­der of the deceased, this time on his char­ac­ter.
The prac­tice by police of releas­ing the record of peo­ple they assault and mur­der, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the black com­mu­ni­ty, is not only a com­mon prac­tice; it is a strate­gic pol­i­cy aimed at pulling out the stops to make the vio­lat­ed par­ty guilty for their own demise.
Even though these encoun­ters are record­ed on police body cam­eras and there­fore can only be released by the police them­selves, it is clear that these ille­gal activ­i­ties are not being car­ried out by indi­vid­ual rogue cops but by entire rogue depart­ments.
Based on the com­ments in response to this video, this tac­tic back­fired on the police. Viewers of the video were out­raged at the abuse of pow­er and the cor­rupt intent in releas­ing it to smear Ahmaud Arbery.

LIKE AND SHARE IN THE INTEREST OF JUSTICE

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