Only a day ago, I wrote about the state of polic­ing in our coun­try, the lack of train­ing, the lev­el of law­less­ness in our soci­ety, the lack of leg­isla­tive sup­port from the gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion, and the com­plic­i­ty of the judi­cia­ry in fos­ter­ing attacks on our police officers.
But that’s not all. Not only are they not paid well, but they are not giv­en the tools to do their jobs. For its part, the force has a bunch of young offi­cers who are forced out into hos­tile inner-city com­mu­ni­ties that are volatile war zones with­out back­up sup­port and, worse, with­out senior supervision.
I guess this was what Commissioner Antony Anderson was hired to do. I mean, the much-vaunt­ed trans­for­ma­tion of the Force the Prime Minister bragged that Anderson was engrossed in, and what National Security Minister Horace Chang chas­tised us for and demand­ed that “we haf­fi gi tony a chance.”
This is an abject fail­ure if this is the result or even part of what a trans­formed JCF will look like.

No one should be under any illu­sion that there are not enough senior offi­cers in the force; in fact, there is an over­abun­dance of them, more than the aver­age per­son under­stands. Along with Anderson at the top of the force are, to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion, four (4) deputy com­mis­sion­ers. There are approx­i­mate­ly thir­teen (13) assis­tant Commissioners of police… If there have been changes to the struc­ture of the 12,000-member force in that regard, I stand to be cor­rect­ed, but the num­bers would be high­er, not few­er, which goes to my point.
Additionally, the force has a pha­lanx of Senior Superintendents, Superintendents, Deputy Superintendents, and Assistant super­in­ten­dents in what is char­ac­ter­ized as the gazetted ranks.
Then there are Inspectors, the rank between the gazetted and rank-and-file offi­cers. Still, Inspectors are not gazetted, even though their uni­forms are the same as those of mem­bers of the gazetted ranks. Their caps are ringed with a red band, while the caps of the gazetted ranks are all black.
It kills me to explain this tired, old, archa­ic struc­ture that I absolute­ly hat­ed even when I served, but I believe it is impor­tant that I do so for the ben­e­fit of my readers.

So ask your­selves why, when­ev­er there are these tense moments where offi­cers are forced to deal with these law­less ele­ments, there is nev­er back­up sup­port to put down the law­less­ness, nor are any super­vi­sors rushed to the scene.
No, it’s not that they do not have the vehi­cles; they have vehi­cles to dri­ve home, so there are vehi­cles. But why are they sit­ting in offices any­way and not out on the streets doing police work?
Why are sergeants and inspec­tors at the sta­tion and not on the street? Why are super­in­ten­dents and senior super­in­ten­dents not quick­ly rush­ing to the scene like the one in the video above?
Many peo­ple now see the nice new uni­forms that offi­cers wear today. Uniforms, I might add, that I have pushed for offi­cers to be equipped with for years.
They may even think that this means the force is bet­ter than the force of the past. To that idea, I call bullshit.
This force lacks cohe­sion, train­ing, and, most impor­tant­ly, the most impor­tant ele­ment for a police depart­ment: esprit de corps.
Carolyn Gomes, a Pediatric Doctor who gained her polic­ing bona fides dur­ing pedi­atric stud­ies, con­vinced the dunces in gov­ern­ment that esprit de corps was a bad thing, a blue wall of silence that should be abol­ished. She also con­vinced them that our police lead­er­ship should come from the same morass swamp from which she emerged.
So today, the force has a bunch of P.hDs who can­not tell you the dif­fer­ence between their heads and their asses.
As a con­se­quence, the young, untest­ed offi­cers are left to fend for them­selves on the streets, damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

The following is a list of senior people the JCF has on its webpage; it characterizes them as Portfolio Officers.
This is (not) a representative sample of the number of senior gazetted officers in the Constabulary Force.
It simply means that some people are created more equal than others. Missing from this list are many other Senior officers who, though given responsibilities, do not cut the mustard as portfolio officers.

Commissioner: Antony Anderson. CD, JP, MDA, B.Eng (Hons.)
Deputy Commissioners: Clifford Blake. Deputy Commissioner of Police Strategic Operations Portfolio.
Richard Stewart, OD, M.Sc., LL.B. (Hons.), B.Sc. (Hons.), attor­ney-at-law, psc. Deputy Commissioner of Police Administration and Support Services Portfolio.
Fitz Bailey, OD, M.Sc, A.Sc, psc. Deputy Commissioner of Police Crime and Security Portfolio.
Dr. Kevin Blake, OD, PhD, M.Sc., B.Sc. (Hons.), PC Deputy Commissioner of Police Force Development and Logistics Portfolio (FDLP).
McArthur Sutherland Assistant Commissioner of Police Inspectorate and Professional Standards Oversight Bureau.
Karina Powell-Hood Assistant Commissioner of Police Staff Officer. Stephanie Lindsay, Senior Superintendent of Police Corporate Communications Unit (CCU). Gary Francis, Senior Superintendent of Police Police Emergency Communication Center.
Clifford Chambers, Assistant Commissioner of Police Area One.
Vernon Ellis, Senior Superintendent of Police St. James Divis.
Wayne Josephs, Senior Superintendent of Police Westmoreland Division. Winston Milton Superintendent of Police (Actg) Trelawny Division.
Ian Mowatt, Superintendent of Police Hanover Division.
Calvin Allen, Assistant Commissioner of Police Area Two Commander.
Dwight Powell, Senior Superintendent of Police St. Ann Division.
Lloyd Darby, Superintendent of Police Portland Division.
Bobette Morgan-Simpson, Superintendent of Police.
Glenford Miller Assistant Commissioner of Police (Acting.) Area Three.
Carlos Russell, Superintendent of Police Clarendon Division.
Shane McCalla, Superintendent of Police Manchester Division. Coleridge Minto Deputy Superintendent of Police St. Elizabeth Division.
Donovan Graham, Assistant Commissioner of PoliceArea Four.
Marlon Nesbeth, Senior Superintendent of Police St. Andrew Central Division.
Tommilee Chambers, Superintendent of Police Kingston Eastern Division.
Berrisford Williams, Superintendent of Police Kingston Central Division.
Kirk Ricketts, Superintendent of Police St. Andrew South Division.
Michael Phipps, Senior Superintendent of Police Kingston Western Division.
Gary Griffiths Assistant Commissioner Area 5 Commander.
Allison Byfield, Superintendent of Police St. Thomas Division.
Howard Chambers, Senior Superintendent of Police St. Catherine North Division
Sherika Service Superintendent of Police St. Andrew North Division.
Christopher Phillips, Senior Superintendent of Police St. Catherine South Division.

The Government sends offi­cers to police ungovern­able mobs with­out prop­er tools; they get assault­ed and even killed. Yet if they use lethal force, the very gov­ern­ment sec­ond-guess­es them as well as every damn Tom, Dick, and Harry vil­lage lawyer. 
What pass­es for a court sys­tem has some of the most crim­i­nal-friend­ly actors in the world, so offi­cers may expect no jus­tice in the courts run by these left­ist reac­tionar­ies. So, it makes no sense to arrest those who assault them.
One of the lat­est iter­a­tions of a police encounter with some law­less gut­ter rats once again high­lights the gov­ern­men­t’s fail­ure to pro­vide the police with the tools they need to do their jobs effectively.
On the one hand, the offi­cers do not have the effec­tive non-lethal tools to do their jobs, yet when they are assault­ed in the course of their duties, if they resort to lethal force, the very same sys­tem tries to con­vict them of murder.
This is a dis­gust­ing sys­tem that no one should sub­ject them­selves to, but for the fact that there are not enough oppor­tu­ni­ties in the economy.

No one would ask a doc­tor to per­form surgery with­out the appro­pri­ate tools, and no one would ask a pilot to fly an air­plane with­out the right train­ing and tools. Firefighters, teach­ers, and farm­ers can­not per­form their tasks with­out tools.
Why do we ask our police offi­cers to do their jobs, absorb assaults, and not be able to fight back? (see the YouTube video at the top of this page).
So many felo­nious assaults were com­mit­ted against those offi­cers who were engaged in their law­ful duties. Yet, if the crim­i­nals were arrest­ed, the left­ist judges would not send these ani­mals a strong mes­sage because it’s okay to assault police offi­cers in the eyes of Jamaican judges. ( In case you were won­der­ing why every­one was­n’t arrested).
So, let me be clear. There is an old say­ing, (ash­es cold dogs sleep in deh).
You put your hands on me in any way, shape, or form when I tell you that you are under arrest, and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. You attack me, as we see in this video, and I shoot you dead. 

I would do a dis­ser­vice to this encounter if I failed to point out the fail­ings of the police… How the hell are you unable to sub­due this mon­grel in the black shirt by tak­ing him to the ground? Don’t answer.…… A lack of train­ing and pro­to­col. Three offi­cers must take this mag­got to the ground, and the oth­ers stand guard as they do so. Any per­son who steps into the space to assault an offi­cer should have their fam­i­ly mem­bers arrange for their funer­als. It is that simple.
There is absolute­ly no rea­son to be fight­ing with any­one this way; take him to the ground and use a supe­ri­or lev­el of force to get him to com­ply with being arrest­ed. You do not get to fight offi­cers; you fight in court.
We see anoth­er exam­ple of a police force that refus­es to acknowl­edge that the dis­joint­ed, dis­or­ga­nized dis­play we wit­nessed in this video is endem­ic to a force that needs to revamp what­ev­er it has pos­ing as police training.
It is not only shock­ing, it is dis­gust­ing and embar­rass­ing. Police offi­cers need tasers.
When they stand in your face and assault you, then tell you that you can’t shoot them, it makes me wish I was there. Let’s see if you are made out of steel. Put your hand on me in the exe­cu­tion of my duties, and you are dead…
Our police force has been reduced to a paper tiger by Carolyn Gomes, her cohorts, and the destruc­tive coun­ter­mea­sures she unleashed on a gullible and com­plic­it polit­i­cal class… It serves the inter­ests of crim­i­nals and their cahoots while turn­ing our coun­try into a law­less, ungovern­able wasteland.
And by the way, the crim­i­nal-lov­ing politi­cians gave Carolyn Gomes a nation­al honor.….What a fuck­ing disgrace.

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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.

Following an intel­li­gence memo roam­ing around the pub­lic, in which close rel­a­tives of a deceased gang­ster threat­ened the lives of police offi­cers, I asked the ques­tion, why isn’t this pun­ish­able by seri­ous prison time?
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​o​b​a​y​-​g​a​n​g​s​t​e​r​s​-​v​o​w​s​-​t​o​-​k​i​l​l​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​s​-​i​n​t​e​l​l​i​g​e​n​c​e​-​d​o​c​u​m​e​n​t​-​r​e​v​e​a​ls/

I have con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that since the state refus­es to pro­tect police offi­cers with leg­is­la­tion that sends a clear mes­sage that this will result in seri­ous prison time, the police must learn to defend themselves.
The late Colin Powell, a son of Jamaican immi­grants and for­mer US Secretary of State, Army General, and Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs, once said, ’ If you are con­tem­plat­ing war and there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty you can lose, don’t fight.
But if you must fight, take all your weapons to war, use them, win, and go home.
How a police depart­ment inter­prets this is up to it.
The best defense is to attack, not sit around and wait for your ene­my to come to you; find the ene­my and root it out.
Daily, we see video record­ings of law­less ele­ments fight­ing police offi­cers exe­cut­ing their duties; the stooges who com­mand the offices see these videos, and so does the commissioner.
The politi­cians from the two crim­i­nal gangs all see them, and so do the so-called police com­man­ders, and still, there is no change in the leg­isla­tive approach to these acts against the men and women we ask to pro­tect us.
It is time for the police to pro­tect them­selves, to hell with the system.

But I’m sor­ry, Houston. We have a prob­lem.….…..We have a police chief who is not a police offi­cer but a mil­i­tary offi­cer with­out under­stand­ing the nuances of police work. We have a police com­mis­sion­er who has no idea what to do with water, sug­ar, and no lemon. 
Additionally, he is sur­round­ed by a bunch of pre­tenders, many of whom nev­er made an arrest, but they are senior police com­man­ders, schooled at, you guessed it, the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to.
This is a total farce, they do not know their heads from their ass­es, and they stead­fast­ly refuse to accept that they don’t.
Worse yet, the Commissioner and his lack­eys are usu­al­ly too busy preen­ing for their polit­i­cal boss­es to care about imple­ment­ing effec­tive polic­ing strate­gies. Our police offi­cers need to unlearn every­thing they learned at the acad­e­my about how to phys­i­cal­ly be police offi­cers and be trained effec­tive­ly in deal­ing with the ele­ments they face on the streets. It’s all about train­ing, train­ing, training.
As a mat­ter of fact, they have no idea what that looks like. This bunch of so-called lead­ers have total­ly adopt­ed the notion that polic­ing is about secur­ing the rights of vio­lent mur­der­ers, not find­ing them and bring­ing them to jus­tice where pos­si­ble or bring­ing jus­tice to them where it’s not.

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

The fol­low­ing is an intel­li­gence doc­u­ment alleged­ly pre­pared by mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. The threat assess­ment itself is spar­tan, lacks nov­el­ty, and basi­cal­ly reveals main­ly what we already under­stand as par for the course when the secu­ri­ty forces take out known murderers.
The assess­ment has been tidied up for this pub­li­ca­tion, names removed, gram­mar cor­rect­ed, and sen­tences recon­struct­ed. However, noth­ing sub­stan­tive has been changed that would take any­thing away from the orig­i­nal­i­ty of the draft.
The points raised in this intel­li­gence doc­u­ment are seri­ous even as they con­tain no real break­ing news.
The pri­ma­cy of our crime-fight­ing is incor­rect­ly focused on the rights of crim­i­nals. As a con­se­quence, gang mem­bers and their sup­port­ers can take solace in that they can threat­en the lives of our police offi­cers with impuni­ty and even kill mem­bers of our secu­ri­ty forces in retal­i­a­tion when their crim­i­nal con­tem­po­raries are tak­en out when they chal­lenge police in a gun battle.
As a for­mer police offi­cer, I under­stand the con­straints the secu­ri­ty forces are forced to oper­ate under. In fact, it is rea­son­able to say that our police offi­cers have been asked to con­trol crime with their hands tied behind their backs.

It is not that Jamaica is law­less or ungovern­able; the real­i­ty is that Jamaicans can and do obey laws. Jamaicans are all over the world; in the United States, Canada, and Britain, where I imag­ine the largest dias­po­ra groups exist, Jamaicans obey those nation’s laws. Those who do not find out the hard way by way of stiff prison sen­tences and a one-way tick­et back to Jamaica.
Jamaican crim­i­nals engage in these kinds of out­ra­geous acts of dis­or­der and law­less­ness because of the com­plic­i­ty of the two polit­i­cal par­ties (one more than the oth­er). They refuse to pass laws that set clear lines of demar­ca­tion between what our soci­ety will tol­er­ate and vio­lent crim­i­nal conduct.
Those who oppose tough penal­ties for vio­lent crim­i­nals are crim­i­nals them­selves, or they are ben­e­fit­ting from crim­i­nal­i­ty, regard­less of the high stations.
People com­mit vio­lent crimes because they have a rea­son­able belief they will not be caught. In far too many cas­es, this belief is val­i­dat­ed because the police either refuse to act on clues that would bring mur­der­ers to jus­tice or they have no clue how to inves­ti­gate crimes.
People com­mit crimes because even when arrest­ed, the nation’s judges release the most vio­lent mur­der­ers on bail. In far too many instances, the police arrest an accused mur­der­er, and the judge hear­ing the bail appli­ca­tion sum­mar­i­ly grants bail. The accused then kills the witness/​es to the first mur­der, and he is arrest­ed for a sec­ond time and is again released on bail even as he is yet to face tri­al for the first mur­der, which by all accounts is now a weak­ened case with the death of the witnesses.

On record, these acts of crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty by the nation’s judges have hap­pened up to five times for a sin­gle accused.
Simply put, our coun­try is infest­ed with crim­i­nal sym­pa­thiz­ers at all lev­els of the pub­lic sec­tor. Politicians, judges, all the way down the lad­der. We have a sys­tem con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with peo­ple who large­ly come from the same poi­son tree of acad­e­mia. A tree that has not only con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed Jamaica but has its ten­ta­cles across the Caribbean.
Sadly, many mem­bers of the Constabulary are now proud fruits of this poi­son tree. And so this assess­ment of what ails our coun­try will not go down well with them.
They are now able to give a bet­ter account­ing of them­selves if speak­ing a lit­tle bet­ter English qual­i­fies as such, but they are no bet­ter at orga­niz­ing and main­tain­ing a bet­ter police depart­ment to serve the inter­ests of the silent major­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple and for future generations.

INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENT  

Intelligence gath­ered reveals that there are threats against the lives of two police offi­cers who work in the St. James division.
The threat result­ed from the fatal shoot­ing of (heinous gang­ster Peter Johnson o/​c Jolo in the Flankera com­mu­ni­ty last Monday, February 26, 2024, elec­tion day.
Johnson was linked to the Leroy Russell o/​c Tommy Lee o/​c Guzu, led vio­lent Downtown Sparta gang and the Alliance gang. He was fatal­ly shot after he engaged the police in a gun battle. 
Relatives and friends of Johnson are blam­ing the two offi­cers, who shall remain unnamed, for Johnson’s death.
Intelligence gleaned revealed that rel­a­tives and friends of the deceased Johnson are orches­trat­ing plans to kill the officers. 

The intel­li­gence revealed that threats against the lives of the offi­cers were made at the scene of the shoot­ing by close fam­i­ly mem­bers of the slain Johnson to kill police offi­cers who they believed were the offi­cers who end­ed Johnson’s life.
As a result of the inci­dent, fac­tions aligned with Johnson engaged in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties in the area in protest of the shoot­ing. There have been spo­radic inci­dents of road block­ages and inter­mit­tent gun­fire on sev­er­al days fol­low­ing the death of this gangster.
Members of the Downtown Sparta and Alliance gangs are known to be involved in sev­er­al mur­ders, shoot­ings, and con­tract killings over the years. Hence, their capac­i­ty to cause injury or death to offi­cers remains credible.
These threats are assessed to be real and true. It is there­fore strong­ly advised that all steps are tak­en to pre­vent this threat from com­ing to fruition. These actions should include:
 Advising the offi­cers of the threat against their lives (and pos­si­bly their fam­i­ly) and that nec­es­sary secu­ri­ty arrange­ments are made for them where appropriate. 
 Increased tar­get­ing of gang mem­bers and asso­ciates of the name crim­i­nal syndicates.
 Increased covert and high-vis­i­bil­i­ty patrol in the com­mu­ni­ty where the offi­cers reside.
 Police offi­cers liv­ing and work­ing in the divi­sion should be advised of pos­si­ble attacks by criminals.

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

A man was alleged­ly killed in Flankers St James, a short dis­tance from the Flanker Primary School being used as a polling sta­tion in Monday’s Local Government Elections.
The video below shows a typ­i­cal scene after a per­son dies at the hands of the Security Forces.…. Criminal sup­port­ing peo­ple always claim to see what occurred and that the vic­tim had done noth­ing wrong.……

Initial reports indi­cate that the deceased was killed in a con­fronta­tion with mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces.

I make no apol­o­gy for stri­dent­ly demand­ing that mur­der­ers such as the one in the sto­ry below be sen­tenced to the longest time pos­si­ble. In a coun­try like Jamaica that sup­ports mur­der­ers instead of the deceased vic­tim, the gov­ern­ment must send an unam­bigu­ous mes­sage to the pub­lic that it is seri­ous about mur­der­ers pay­ing for their crimes.
The out­ra­geous calls from the lumpen pro­lif­er­ate to free this mur­der­er and that rapist has become par for the course in our beau­ti­ful coun­try. Calls to free con­vict­ed killers come even from what pass­es for the press and many who should know better.
Worse yet, judges have also fall­en for the sil­ly idea that lenien­cy is a bet­ter approach than a clear and unequiv­o­cal strong sentence.
As the calls inten­si­fy for cer­tain con­vict­ed ele­ments to be freed from prison, it bears remem­ber­ing that the con­vict­ed cretin is being rep­re­sent­ed by anoth­er twice-con­vict­ed cretin who is now oper­at­ing as a crim­i­nal defense lawyer.
Such is the twist­ed state of our jus­tice sys­tem that has, for all intents and pur­pos­es, may now be referred to as an unjust shitstem… 
When soci­ety cares more about the celebri­ty sta­tus of a con­vict­ed mur­der­er than his vic­tim, soci­ety is in deep moral decay.
When the celebri­ty sta­tus of a con­vict­ed rapist takes cen­ter stage over the inno­cent woman whose very soul he vio­lat­ed, it demon­strates the deca­dent state of our moral clarity.
This is the rea­son the penal­ty for mur­der, rape, and oth­er crimes of vio­lence must be set in stone so that no judge gets to impose their opin­ion at sentencing.
Criminal defen­dants already have a huge leg up: (a) Even when they are seen com­mit­ting crimes, it is dif­fi­cult to get wit­ness­es to tes­ti­fy. (b) If they aren’t seen com­mit­ting the act, police must do the painstak­ing and ardu­ous task of col­lect­ing evi­dence, enough to bring it to tri­al. Even so, in our coun­try, huge swaths of the pop­u­la­tion cheer the degen­er­ates who com­mit mur­der and are con­vict­ed of these crimes and demand their release from incarceration.
© At tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors must prove the alle­ga­tions beyond a rea­son­able doubt, a dif­fi­cult and high bar in a nation high­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to crim­i­nals. When the judges love the crim­i­nals, the pros­e­cu­tors are incom­pe­tent, and defense attor­neys are for­mer con­vict­ed felons, it is a case of the Fox guard­ing the Hen-house.
When the dishrags are made into table­cloths, they bring germs and muck onto the din­ing table, con­t­a­m­i­nate the meal, and cause the din­ers to get sick.
When the pres­tige and hon­or of the courts are watered down to accom­mo­date con­vict­ed felons, the courts lose their lus­ter and author­i­ty. The felons are now in charge of the Asylum. (MB).

Man who killed lover in supermarket gets reduced sentence

Andre Bromfield, the for­mer deliv­ery super­vi­sor who was sen­tenced to 18 years and five months at hard labor for the mur­der of his then 24-year-old girl­friend Shantell Whyte just over four years ago, had his sen­tence reduced by two years and 15 months due to what the Appeal Court said were errors in the approach adopt­ed by the sen­tenc­ing judge. 
Bromfield had pumped five shots into Whyte’s head in a super­mar­ket in Mandeville, Manchester, in December 2019. Bromfield had plead­ed guilty to manslaugh­ter dur­ing his first court appear­ance after the killing. He was sen­tenced in May 2022. He will now serve 15 years and sev­en months impris­on­ment at hard labor after the Appeal Court deduct­ed the pre-sen­tence peri­od of two years and five months from the orig­i­nal 18 years and five months. The footage of the shoot­ing, which was cap­tured on a sur­veil­lance cam­era, was wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed via tra­di­tion­al and social media platforms.
According to the facts of the case unveiled dur­ing the tri­al, both Bromfield and Whyte, who were employed to MasterMac Food Store in Mandeville, Manchester, were involved in an inti­mate rela­tion­ship. On December 31, 2019, at approx­i­mate­ly 6:15 pm, Whyte was seat­ed in the lunch­room of MasterMac Food Store along with anoth­er co-work­er. Bromfield entered the lunch room and told the co-work­er, “Mi a go tell you some­thing weh hap­pen ear­li­er today. Keido come inna the lunch­room and hug har up and kiss har on her cheek.” To which Whyte respond­ed, “A shoul­da pon mi lip him kiss me”.

Bromfield then pulled his licensed firearm, fired sev­er­al shots at Whyte and ran out of the room. Whyte, accord­ing to a post-mortem report, died as a result of the injuries, which were not­ed as cra­ni­um cere­bral injuries and mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds to the face. The fol­low­ing day, January 1, 2020, Bromfield sur­ren­dered to the police and, while hand­ing over his firearm along with an emp­ty mag­a­zine, said, “Mi nuh know wah come over mi.” Upon being cau­tioned he said, “Mi tek up dis girl and give her every­thing, build her all two-bed­room house, pay off her cred­it card and mi realise seh she have anoth­er man [an audi­tor]. Mi see di youth a kiss-kiss har up. Mi talk to har and she a diss mi up. Mi just snap.” In his appeal Bromfield, who was rep­re­sent­ed by attor­ney Norman Godfrey, argued that his sen­tence was harsh, man­i­fest­ly exces­sive and can­not be jus­ti­fied. Furthermore he con­tend­ed that the sen­tenc­ing judge made sev­er­al errors and had deprived him of the ben­e­fit of a 50 per cent dis­count based on his guilty plea and instead had only giv­en him 10 per cent. The Appeal Court said, fol­low­ing its review of the case it had “iden­ti­fied some errors in the approach adopt­ed by the sen­tenc­ing judge as it relat­ed to the steps to be fol­lowed in the cal­cu­la­tion process, as well as the adjust­ment for the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors. We also iden­ti­fied a minor error in her appli­ca­tion of the mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors”. The court there­fore ruled that the “ulti­mate sen­tence to be imposed would, there­fore, be 15 years and sev­en months”. The Appeal Court, in not­ing the treat­ment by the judge of the mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors in the case, said it had “iden­ti­fied oth­er mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors that were not applied by the sen­tenc­ing judge to adjust the years to be imposed”. These, it said, were the expres­sion of remorse by the appli­cant and his coöper­a­tion with the police after the com­mis­sion of the offence by sur­ren­der­ing him­self to cus­tody, in addi­tion to his good antecedent report and good social enquiry report “In light of all of the above, we formed the view that the sen­tenc­ing process should be recom­menced as the learned judge erred in prin­ci­ple, in respect of some aspects of the sen­tenc­ing process,” the Appeal Court said in its rul­ing. A mit­i­gat­ing fac­tor is any fact or cir­cum­stance that low­ers the defendant’s cul­pa­bil­i­ty for a crim­i­nal offence, there­by result­ing in a decreased sen­tence. Aggravating fac­tors, on the con­verse, refer to cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing a crime that rais­es the lev­el of sever­i­ty, there­by result­ing in an increased sentence.(Observer)

Malachi Dowie, a 19-year-old man of 11 Olympic Way, Kingston 11, was fatal­ly shot by the police on the roof at the Hunts Bay Lock-Up, and one firearm was seized from him. The inci­dent occurred on Saturday Night at about 11:40 PM.
According to the Commanding Officer Senior Superintendent Kirk Ricketts, a man was seen on top of the lock push­ing con­tra­band in the lock-up. When con­front­ed by the police, he opened gun­fire at the police, who returned fire. A Glock 17 pis­tol was recov­ered. Ricketts also report­ed that one accom­plice was able to escape.

It is impos­si­ble to ana­lyze how the SSP knows how many men escaped, giv­en the inescapable tense sit­u­a­tion and that it occurred at night. Given the seri­ous­ness of the crime, I won’t go through the thoughts in my head as to why any­one could have escaped. Imagine for a minute that the intrud­er had man­aged to get weapons into the lock­ups and were suc­cess­ful in arm­ing the pris­on­ers. Given the lack of pre­pared­ness of the police, all of the pris­on­ers would have escaped; how many cops would have been killed?
If the police can­not mar­shal resources to appre­hend crim­i­nals on top of the sta­tion­house before they escape, how could they have pre­vent­ed an assault involv­ing freed, armed prisoners?
In the audio file below, SSP Ricketts out­lined what occurred with the oblig­a­tory police tak­ing the nec­es­sary action before defend­ing them­selves from peo­ple who would do them harm.
The Senior Superintendent may be right as to why the men were atop the sta­tion­house, but how can he be so assertive with­out due diligence?

To the aver­age observ­er, this is noth­ing new; some fools attempt­ed to breach secu­ri­ty at a police sta­tion, and one met his mak­er, end of sto­ry. To some­one who is not inclined to take things at face val­ue as is so cus­tom­ary from the police, this may be far more seri­ous than what was out­lined by the police.
The lead­er­ship of the JCF con­tin­ues to take things at face val­ue, neg­li­gent­ly refus­ing to pur­sue events to the last lead before issu­ing grand state­ments to the press. There is hard­ly any con­ti­nu­ity in the way they pur­sue inves­ti­ga­tions. Coming up with plau­si­ble, good-sound­ing state­ments to the press seems to take prece­dence over doing good inves­tiga­tive work and achiev­ing bet­ter outcomes.
Why am I not con­tent with the state­ment issued by the SSP?
Here’s why!!!!!

On November 20^th, 1986, a hor­rif­ic inci­dent occurred at the Olympic Gardens Police Station, a short dis­tance from the Hunts Bay Police Station and a part of the Saint Andrew South Police responsibility.
Here is how the New York Times report­ed the incident.
Six heav­i­ly armed men threw home­made gaso­line bombs at a police sta­tion in the cap­i­tal’s west­ern slums ear­ly today and shot three police offi­cers to death, the author­i­ties said. The attack occurred about 1 A.M. at the two-sto­ry police sta­tion in the Olympic Gardens neigh­bor­hood of Kingston. Police sources said the attack appeared to be ”more crim­i­nal than political.”
Witnesses said the attack­ers had been armed with M‑16 rifles and high-cal­iber weapons. They stole the slain offi­cers’ ser­vice revolvers and broke into the ammu­ni­tion lock­er, steal­ing a sub­ma­chine gun, two M‑16 rifles, and an unde­ter­mined amount of ammu­ni­tion, the police said.
Given the seri­ous assault that occurred 38 years ago, result­ing in the loss of mul­ti­ple offi­cer’s lives, would­n’t it be a good idea to fol­low every lead before issu­ing state­ments to the press?

Given a sce­nario in which SSP Ricketts’s assess­ment was cor­rect, and the men intend­ed to trans­fer weapons to oth­ers inside, what was the intent behind that trans­fer? How can the SSP be cer­tain that if the inci­dent were about trans­fer­ring non-lethal con­tra­band, lethal con­tra­band would not follow?
If crim­i­nals are caught trans­fer­ring con­tra­band into the cells, it is prob­a­bly safe to say they have suc­cess­ful­ly done so before.
If not, then the con­tra­band SSP Lewis noticed get­ting dis­cov­ered is allowed in by care­less or cor­rupt per­son­nel at the cells. Either way, it is anoth­er black eye for the JCF.
The killing of a sin­gle per­son in an inci­dent this seri­ous should not sig­nal the end of an inves­ti­ga­tion but the com­mence­ment of a wider, more com­pre­hen­sive inves­ti­ga­tion into exact­ly what is behind it.
I under­stand that the police have to do much with pre­cious lit­tle. The least of these are dilap­i­dat­ed build­ings and insuf­fi­cient tools to do their jobs. Nevertheless, these are dikes they [must] plug themselves..

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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.

This would be laugh­able if it was­n’t so preposterous.

A Florida sher­if­f’s deputy is seen on video open­ing fire on a Black man who was searched, hand­cuffed and placed in a patrol vehi­cle after the deputy mis­took the sound of a falling acorn for a gun­shot. The body cam­era video, released Monday by the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office, shows Deputy Jesse Hernandez yelling “Shots fired!” mul­ti­ple times as he falls to the ground and repeat­ed­ly fires into the patrol vehi­cle last year. 

Marquis Jackson was sus­pect­ed of steal­ing his girl­friend’s car ear­li­er that morn­ing and was restrained in the back seat. He was luck­i­ly unharmed by the gun­shots, but he said the inci­dent left him trau­ma­tized. Hernandez, who has resigned from the sher­if­f’s office, has not been charged.

Okaloosa County deputies respond­ed to a call on the morn­ing of Nov. 12 in Fort Walton Beach, about 65 miles west of Panama City on Florida’s Panhandle, the sheriff’s office said in a news release last week. A woman called to report her boyfriend, Jackson, was refus­ing to return her car and had been call­ing and tex­ting her threats, the release said. Deputies Javier Reyna, Deja Riley and Jesse Hernandez and Sgt. Beth Roberts responded

Jackson walked up to the scene around 10 min­utes after the offi­cers arrived. He was detained, searched, hand­cuffed and placed in the back of Hernandez’s patrol car.

The woman then com­plet­ed an affi­davit for the stolen vehi­cle. She told deputies that Jackson had a silencer, that she was not sure where it was and that he had more than one weapon, the release said.

Riley and Reyna left to search for the miss­ing vehi­cle. They found it about 3 miles away.

As Roberts con­tin­ued to work with the woman, Hernandez approached his patrol car to con­duct a sec­ondary search of Jackson when he heard “a pop sound.”

‘Shots fired! Shots fired!’

When Hernandez was approach­ing the pas­sen­ger side rear door, an acorn could be seen strik­ing the top of his patrol car, accord­ing to the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion report from January. Hernandez per­ceived the sound to be a gun­shot and believed he had been hit, it said.

He yelled “Shots fired!” mul­ti­ple times, fell to the ground, rolled and began fir­ing his semi-auto­mat­ic pis­tol into the patrol car, accord­ing to the body cam­era video of the inci­dent.

Roberts asks where the shots are com­ing from, to which Hernandez answers, “In the car.”

“Jesse, are you OK?” Roberts yells short­ly after. Hernandez is heard in the video say­ing, “I’m hit! I’m hit!”

After she saw Hernandez open fire, Roberts respond­ed with gun­shots of her own.

“He shot through the car,” Hernandez said as he crawled on his hands and knees to find cov­er behind a parked vehicle.

“I’m good. I feel weird, but I’m good,” he added.

‘All I could depend on was God!’

Jackson recount­ed the inci­dent on Facebook, writ­ing about the expe­ri­ence of being shot at while hand­cuffed and strapped down by the seat belts in the back seat of the patrol car.

“All I could do was lean over and play dead to pre­vent get­ting shot in the head,” Jackson wrote. “I was scared to death and I knew all I could depend on was God! I ignored every­thing and prayed!”

The win­dows shat­tered as bul­lets flew around the patrol car, he said. Jackson was unharmed, but the inci­dent left him traumatized.

“I was blessed not to get hit by any bul­lets or get hurt phys­i­cal­ly but men­tal­ly, I’m not okay,” Jackson said. “I haven’t been the same since, and I don’t think this feel­ing I have will ever change. I tru­ly believe I’m dam­aged for life!”

He says an ambu­lance took him to Fort Walton Beach Medical Center, still in hand­cuffs, to be checked for injuries. Jackson says he was tak­en to the Okaloosa County Courthouse and “sat in the cell for hours.” Eventually, he was released with no charges.

‘I mean, that’s what I heard’

Investigators sat down with Hernandez three days after the inci­dent to con­duct a sworn interview.

Hernandez says he heard what he believed was a “sup­pressed weapon” as he reached for the rear door han­dle of his patrol car. He “felt an impact” on the right upper tor­so area, accord­ing to the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion report.

“The orig­i­nal rea­son I was fir­ing was because I was sit­ting in the open there,” Hernandez told the inves­ti­ga­tors. “I had only moved a cou­ple feet from where I felt I had just been shot from the back of this patrol car. And I did­n’t know how I was gonna get up and move to that cov­ered area.”

Hernandez was shown still pho­tos tak­en from his body cam­era video of the acorn bounc­ing off the roof of his patrol car, the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion report says. Investigators asked whether it was pos­si­ble the noise he heard could have been the acorn.

“I’m not gonna say no, because, I mean, that’s what I heard,” Hernandez said. “What I heard sound­ed what I think would be loud­er than an acorn hit­ting the roof of the car, but there’s obvi­ous­ly an acorn hit­ting the roof of the car.”

Internal investigation

The sheriff’s Office of Professional Standards con­duct­ed an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into Hernandez and Roberts’ actions on Nov. 12.

Hernandez’s use of force was deter­mined not to be objec­tive­ly rea­son­able, and it vio­lat­ed the pol­i­cy regard­ing the “exces­sive use of con­trol to resis­tance,” the inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed. He resigned in December while under investigation.

Roberts was exon­er­at­ed, as the Office of Professional Standards found her use of dead­ly force to have been objec­tive­ly reasonable.

The sheriff’s Criminal Investigations Division reviewed the inci­dent for pos­si­ble crim­i­nal charges. The sher­if­f’s office also request­ed an inde­pen­dent review by the First Judicial Circuit state attor­ney’s office. No prob­a­ble cause for crim­i­nal charges was found, accord­ing to the news release.

“We under­stand this sit­u­a­tion was trau­mat­ic for Mr. Jackson and all involved and have incor­po­rat­ed this offi­cer involved shoot­ing it into our train­ing to try to ensure noth­ing sim­i­lar hap­pens again,” Sheriff Eric Aden said. “We are very thank­ful Mr. Jackson was­n’t injured and we have no rea­son to think for­mer Deputy Hernandez act­ed with any malice.”

On read­ing about Ninja Man’s let­ters to the Prime Minister, my ini­tial thought was to instinc­tive­ly dis­miss what­ev­er he had to say because, truth­ful­ly, he is a con­vict­ed murderer.
Then I remem­bered that even a bro­ken clock is right twice dai­ly. So I read the arti­cle, all while think­ing of the way Jamaican media glo­ri­fy and ampli­fy celebri­ties and their cul­ture, even those con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal murder.
My ini­tial thought was that Desmond Ballentine (Ninjam man), who enjoyed a remark­able life as a cel­e­brat­ed dance­hall artiste, was under­serv­ing of any largess as a now con­vict­ed murderer.
But as I read the full text of what was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the head of the Jamaican exec­u­tive, I was hum­bled that first, he asked for noth­ing per­son­al and that the themes he out­lined could be help­ful to the Country in the future.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​n​i​n​j​a​-​m​a​n​-​a​n​d​-​c​o​-​c​o​n​v​i​c​t​s​-​s​e​n​t​e​n​c​e​d​-​t​o​-​l​i​f​e​-​i​n​-​p​r​i​s​o​n​-​f​o​r​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​e​n​t​e​r​t​a​i​n​e​r​-​m​u​s​t​-​s​e​r​v​e​-​2​5​-​y​e​a​r​s​-​b​e​f​o​r​e​-​p​a​r​o​le/

I gen­er­al­ly do not waste brain space dis­cussing dance­hall artists, suf­fic­ing to say I absolute­ly love old-school reg­gae. But I knew Ninja Man when he first arrived in Kingston from Saint Mary. In the ear­ly 80s, I was a young Police Officer sta­tioned at the Then Mobile Reserve.
I lived with my sib­lings on Plantain Avenue off Bay Farm Road behind the New Yorker gar­ment fac­to­ry. I oper­at­ed a small bar I leased /​purchased from Miss Grant, a great Lady. Ninja man lived in the Marl Road Area a few blocks down the road.
Every Friday and Saturday night, I had a dis­co play­ing at my bar; food and soup were free, and patrons bought liquor. In his trench coat, Ninja Man was a fix­ture on the Microphone at my bar. ‘This was before him buss’.
Ninja Man would achieve fame and for­tune, only to fall vic­tim to the dance­hall cul­ture, which claims that its gun lyrics are about life expe­ri­ences and not a call to vio­lence.….. even though much of it explic­it­ly calls for mur­der­ing people.
I have always believed that the vio­lent lyrics were both expres­sions of the artis­te’s expe­ri­ences as well as a call to do vio­lence; both are actu­al­ly true. Ninja Man him­self, intend­ing to cre­ate a bad man per­sona, did hits titled My Weapon, Permit to Bury, Murder Dem, Write Your Will, etc. Titles and Lyrics direct­ly intend­ed to add to the gun cul­ture, not take away or defuse it.

I doubt whether the let­ter’s con­tent attrib­uted to Ninja Man came from him. I expect a shad­ow writer wrote it, but who cares?
The gist of the let­ter speaks to putting the hands of incar­cer­at­ed inmates to work. Whether or not this comes from Ninja, it has been some­thing I strong­ly believe in and have called for over the years.
Some quotes attrib­uted to Ninja Man include the following.
 ♦“Not every­one insti­tu­tion­al­ized had, or still has, bad inten­tions, so if they are offered options that can assist them in being pro­gres­sive mem­bers of soci­ety when they are released, the coun­try will benefit,”
 ♦The insti­tu­tion could offer class­es to help them gar­ner skills that will help them when they return to soci­ety. The aim would be not to have crim­i­nals return to soci­ety but peo­ple who will be geared for a more pur­posed lifestyle.”
 ♦People talk about pris­on­ers liv­ing on tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey; that can be a thing of the past. We need to uti­lize the facil­i­ties at Spanish Town Prison for live­stock farm­ing; there is a green­house that can be uti­lized to help fund the prison sys­tem as well. People who pay tax­es would like to see their tax­es used in oth­er ways to sup­port the coun­try, not feed non-dis­abled pris­on­ers, but fund­ing is need­ed to imple­ment these efforts.

♦ I have con­ver­sa­tions with the pris­on­ers, so you can see that many peo­ple with a lot of good inside are will­ing to be reha­bil­i­tat­ed. The Jamaica Defence Force can help in this feat. As we all know, team­work makes the dream work.”
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​r​i​s​o​n​e​r​s​-​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​t​o​-​e​a​r​n​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​k​e​e​p​-​w​h​a​t​-​a​-​n​o​v​e​l​-​i​d​ea/

Remarkably, these are not new ideas; on this site, a quick look back will reveal I have argued for these changes for years. The arti­cle linked imme­di­ate­ly above was writ­ten back in 2018.
I have nev­er seen the local media ampli­fy a sin­gle arti­cle with these views. The sad real­i­ty is whether the author­i­ties take up these great ideas or not, the local media showed its ass by car­ry­ing a full-page arti­cle ampli­fy­ing the views of a con­vict­ed mur­der­er but nev­er both­ered to when a for­mer police offi­cer offered these ideas years prior..

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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.

Welcome to the land of the free that has the temer­i­ty to issue warn­ings about oth­er coun­tries’ crime sit­u­a­tion. The great­est threat to peo­ple’s safe­ty and secu­ri­ty comes from their mad dog, over-hyped, heav­i­ly-armed thugs in uniform.
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Luke Weiland was dri­ving his sons and their friend to base­ball prac­tice when he was pulled over by a police offi­cer who inex­plic­a­bly held Weiland and the three chil­dren at gun­point, shout­ing bizarre orders at them before even­tu­al­ly let­ting them go with minor cita­tions. Weiland has now sued the police argu­ing that the offi­cers used exces­sive force and unrea­son­ably detained him.

The ordeal start­ed on January 29, 2023, when Weiland — an attor­ney in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin — was dri­ving his two sons, ages 14 and 12, and their 12-year-old friend to base­ball prac­tice in a near­by town. According to the suit, around 9:20 am, Weiland noticed a police cruis­er behind him with his emer­gency lights on. Believing the cruis­er to be try­ing to pass him, Weiland pulled along the shoul­der of the road to allow the offi­cer to pass. However, after a few min­utes, Weiland real­ized the offi­cer was try­ing to pull him over, so he turned onto the shoul­der of a side road.

However, instead of a typ­i­cal stop, Officer Rodney Krakow opened the door of his cruis­er and began yelling for Weiland to put his keys on the roof of the car and for every­one inside the car to keep their hands on the ceil­ing of the vehicle.

“Officer Krakow was act­ing errat­i­cal­ly, yelling, and shout­ing demands that made no sense,” the com­plaint reads. “His behav­ior was con­cern­ing to every­one in the Weiland truck to the point that they thought some­thing might be wrong with the offi­cer to be behav­ing in this manner.”

Soon after, a sec­ond offi­cer, Douglas Van Berkel, arrived and both began point­ing their guns at Weiland’s car. Krakow demand­ed that Weiland get out of his vehi­cle and kneel on the ground. At this point, it was only five degrees out­side. As Weiland com­plied, hold­ing his dri­ver’s license and reg­is­tra­tion, Krakow grabbed the paper­work and threw it on the ground with­out look­ing at it. 

Krakow hand­cuffed Weiland, while Van Berkel kept his gun point­ed at Weiland. At this point, Krakow asked who the car’s pas­sen­gers were, and Weiland told him they were his two sons and their friend. Eventually, after a third offi­cer arrived, the offi­cers picked up Weiland’s dis­card­ed ID and real­ized that Weiland was an attor­ney who was fam­i­ly friends with the local sher­iff. According to the com­plaint, one of the offi­cers even remarked that “he knew Weiland and his fam­i­ly and that they (the offi­cers) would be alright.”

Eventually, Weiland asked what was going on, and Krakow told him that the inci­dent was being treat­ed as a “high risk vehi­cle stop” because Weiland did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly pull over. 

“This whole ordeal right here with pulling your guns out on me is fuck­ing ridicu­lous,” body cam­era footage shows Weiland telling Krakow.

Eventually, Weiland was released and giv­en cita­tions for speed­ing and resisting/​fleeing a scene, though those cita­tions were even­tu­al­ly dropped. 

Weiland’s suit, which was filed last week, claims that the offi­cers vio­lat­ed Weiland’s “rights to be free from unrea­son­able seizures when they detained the Plaintiffs at the scene for sub­stan­tial­ly longer than was nec­es­sary to accom­plish the orig­i­nal pur­pos­es of the traf­fic stop” and that the offi­cers used “exces­sive force by point­ing their guns at” Weiland and the children.

Unfortunately, this is far from the first time police offi­cers have held inno­cent peo­ple — includ­ing kids — at gun­point dur­ing a rou­tine traf­fic stop.

In 2020, police in Aurora, Colorado, forced an inno­cent fam­i­ly — includ­ing a 6‑year-old girl — to lie face­down on the pave­ment at gun­point after alleged­ly mis­tak­ing their car for a stolen motor­cy­cle. In 2022, two elder­ly Texas res­i­dents filed a law­suit alleg­ing that a police offi­cer vio­lent­ly arrest­ed them and held them at gun­point dur­ing a traf­fic stop. And just last year, Texas police apol­o­gized over a strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar “high-risk traf­fic stop” that led police to hold an Arkansas fam­i­ly at gunpoint.

Only a day after I pub­lished an essay linked below, chastis­ing the police high com­mand for inep­ti­tude, incom­pe­tence, and gross neg­li­gence lead­ing to the death of Constable Rushane Lee, the Minister of National Security had the nerve to tell the local media the following: “.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​n​s​t​a​b​l​e​-​r​u​s​h​a​n​e​-​l​e​e​s​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​a​-​f​a​i​l​u​r​e​-​o​f​-​j​c​f​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​s​h​i​p​-​c​o​m​p​e​t​e​n​ce/

If a man com­mits a crime, we have to appre­hend and pros­e­cute him, but there is a path to get there. The police must not only be pro­vid­ed with the right tools to be able to quick­ly appre­hend the per­pe­tra­tors — mean­ing inves­tiga­tive tools and mobil­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion — but they also have to win the trust of the community.”
Duh, rolls eyes in disgust!!!
The fact that this archa­ic and obvi­ous point is com­ing from the high­est lev­el of the National Security Apparatus proves that the police depart­ment is unpre­pared to deal with the most basic of the nation’s nation­al secu­ri­ty needs.
To his cred­it, Horace Chang spoke to the need for train­ing, say­ing: “The trans­for­ma­tion not only involves increased num­bers but pro­vides a dif­fer­ent approach to train­ing and the over­all change in cul­ture where we expect to devote the high­est lev­el of professionalism.
Whatever that means.
Many read­ers have pushed back at me for insist­ing that the train­ing of the Jamaican police is insuf­fi­cient and needs to be revamped for a more prac­ti­cal train­ing reg­i­men, one that gives offi­cers the nec­es­sary tac­tics to deal with the threats they will cer­tain­ly face.
The train­ing, or lack there­of, is evi­dent in offi­cers’ actions when try­ing to effect arrests.
Chang’s men­tion of train­ing vin­di­cates this writer even as it ques­tions the integri­ty and verac­i­ty of those who insist the train­ing is appropriate.

According to one dai­ly pub­li­ca­tion, Chang cred­it­ed the JCF with its strides in improv­ing pub­lic per­cep­tion, thanks part­ly to its online presence. 
The JCF made his­to­ry in 2023, becom­ing the first law enforce­ment enti­ty to be nom­i­nat­ed for and win the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC) Excellence in Marketing Award. Chang told the media.
Ha ha… that ever­last­ing need to cre­ate false per­cep­tions was the goal of the JCF decades ago; it is the goal of the JCF today.
I spoke about that just one day ago, ‘the JCF is still an agency stuck on form, regur­gi­tat­ing and wal­low­ing in the archa­ic func­tions of the colo­nial era while ignor­ing the sub­stance of its core mis­sion. This effec­tive­ly makes the JCF decrepit the equiv­a­lent of an old build­ing with rot­ting walls and a new coat of paint.’
How quick­ly they always prove me right.….

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

There is a rea­son that peo­ple from over­seas police depart­ments have been offer­ing their ser­vices to the Jamaican Government to recre­ate and refo­cus the Jamaican Constabulary Force (JCF).
There are good rea­sons that many fine offi­cers con­tin­ue to leave the Jamaica Constabulary Force pre­ma­ture­ly. For many peo­ple look­ing at the JCF who are not famil­iar with the dis­ci­pline of polic­ing or what it should look like, the papered-over bro­ken sys­tem that is sup­posed to be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a bet­ter police force seems just great.
The police job is not always pleas­ant; it isn’t always good to look at when exe­cut­ed. Consequently, many are offend­ed when offi­cers act against offend­ers who refuse to com­ply with their law­ful instruc­tions. And so, the loud nois­es you hear from bystanders are under­stand­able to offi­cers as long as they do not phys­i­cal­ly intervene.
Ultimately, the true test of an effec­tive police depart­ment is the ful­fill­ment of its mis­sion state­ment. In the case of the JCF, whose mis­sion state­ment is the Protection of Life and Property, the Preservation of Peace and Good Order, and the Prevention and Detection of Crime, there is no ratio­nal case to be made that this is a worth­while police department…
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​t​s​-​t​i​m​e​-​t​o​-​s​e​n​d​-​a​-​c​l​e​a​r​-​m​e​s​s​a​g​e​-​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​b​l​e​a​c​h​e​d​-​o​u​t​-​f​a​c​e​d​-​k​i​l​l​e​r​s​-​t​h​a​t​-​w​e​-​w​i​l​l​-​n​o​t​-​p​l​a​y​-​b​y​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​r​u​l​es/

Let me be clear: the fail­ures of the JCF can­not and must not be laid at the feet of the Rank and file of the force. The police high com­mand was and still isn’t rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a com­pe­tent body that could pro­vide the coun­try with a state-of-the-art police service.
That is not to say qual­i­ty men and women of com­pe­tence haven’t served in the high com­mand. It means that the colo­nial pol­i­cy direc­tions of the JCF do not allow the force to be a qual­i­ty twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry police agency.
It also means that the JCF is still an agency stuck on form, regur­gi­tat­ing and wal­low­ing in the archa­ic func­tions of the colo­nial era while ignor­ing the sub­stance of its core mis­sion. This effec­tive­ly makes the JCF decrepit the equiv­a­lent of an old build­ing with rot­ting walls and a new coat of paint.
It does not require for­eign­ers to fix the prob­lems inher­ent in the JCF exe­cu­tion of its func­tions; in the same way, it does not require this writer, who left the force long ago. For God’s sake, look­ing at what works in oth­er places and learn­ing from them is not so hard.
https://mikebeckles.com/move-forward-with-stiffer-penalties-to-hell-with-the-detractors-we-tried-it-their-way-part‑2/

A hin­drance to true and last­ing com­pe­tence in the JCF, and I dare say in oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies, is the mis­in­formed idea many have that they can do dif­fer­ent peo­ple’s jobs in oth­er dis­ci­plines. This fal­la­cy is born out of the idea that once a per­son earns a lib­er­al arts degree, that per­son is con­sid­ered edu­cat­ed and, there­fore, com­pe­tent to do any­one’s job.
What is laugh­able is that, though this idio­cy is per­va­sive in our coun­try, they would not have the very same degreed per­son per­form heart surgery on them or fly an air­plane on which they are pas­sen­gers. But they stead­fast­ly believe they know how to do the police job.
Today, the Police high com­mand is pop­u­lat­ed with offi­cers who have under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate degrees. There may even be one or two with Doctoral degrees. I recall past com­mis­sion­er Carl William had a Doctoral degree.
In real­i­ty, none of that mat­ters in the dis­ci­pline of polic­ing. Being cre­den­tialed is a net pos­i­tive, but if it is just for being cre­den­tialed, it’s a waste of time.
The offi­cers of the high com­mand now speak the King’s English because we were told by the elit­ists at and out of the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to that the force was bad because offi­cers were dunce.
https://mikebeckles.com/a‑force-for-good-is-an-empty-slogan-without-results/

The irony today is that the same elit­ists from the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to are try­ing to per­suade Jamaica that the Patios dialect should become a writ­ten lan­guage and we should all speak it. 
Because they said so, what frauds!!!
My friend told me of a recent expe­ri­ence with some young offi­cers who stopped him on his way to work. He explained that the offi­cers were cour­te­ous and respect­ful, and he was soon on his way. It was heart­warm­ing to hear this bit of pos­i­tiv­i­ty about their police offi­cers from a Jamaican citizen.
His com­ments came against the back­ground of some harsh com­ments I made about the incom­pe­tence of the JCF. He insist­ed that the JCF today is bet­ter than the agency of the past.
I respect­ful­ly dis­agreed with my friend. By every met­ric, the JCF of the 80s was the most effec­tive the agency has ever been and con­tin­ues to be. Today, we have crim­i­nals grav­i­tat­ing toward Jamaica because of the lax laws and the incom­pe­tence of the police depart­ment. During the 80s, they ran away to for­eign lands to find refuge. As I said before, polic­ing is not always pret­ty, and though offi­cers can be effec­tive and cour­te­ous simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the job of the police is to live up to its mis­sion statement.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​o​l​y​a​n​-​s​i​l​v​e​r​a​s​-​a​r​r​e​s​t​e​d​-​b​u​t​-​m​a​n​y​-​m​o​r​e​-​w​e​l​l​-​c​o​n​n​e​c​t​e​d​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​e​r​s​-​w​a​l​k​i​n​g​-​f​r​ee/

The need­less death of Constable Rushane Lee along the north-south high­way in Saint Anne is a grave reminder of the incom­pe­tence of the police high command. 
According to the high com­mand, at about 11:40 pm on January 31, offi­cers were con­duct­ing vehic­u­lar check­point duties along the high­way in Unity Valley in St Ann when the dri­ver of a Toyota Probox motor car, report­ed­ly trav­el­ing at high speed, was sig­naled to stop. The dri­ver report­ed­ly slowed down and then sped off, hit­ting the police­man. The injured cop was rushed to the St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital, where he was admit­ted. He sub­se­quent­ly died.
There is so much wrong here that goes to incom­pe­tence and a glar­ing lack of appre­ci­a­tion for real­i­ty that eludes many peo­ple who care about this sub­ject, even some officers.
In one or more of the arti­cles I linked above, I con­sis­tent­ly point to the lack of vis­i­bil­i­ty of the police on the streets of our nation, and as such, the streets have become extreme­ly law­less. I have even argued that the police have sur­ren­dered the streets to law­less motorists. In rare instances, the police are vis­i­ble, out of their vehi­cles, stand­ing around talk­ing and laugh­ing or occu­pied with their cel­lu­lar devices. Let me repeat this: Officers have no log­i­cal rea­son to be out of their vehi­cles. If they need to move quick­ly, valu­able time is lost get­ting back in and start­ing. Driving along the North-South and Edward Seaga Highways, I see the occa­sion­al cop car, usu­al­ly with two offi­cers out­side the vehi­cle, sup­pos­ed­ly mon­i­tor­ing speed­ing motorists. What a joke. They are usu­al­ly not pay­ing atten­tion to the speed­ers, much less inten­tion­al about doing any­thing about them.

So, why would any com­man­der allow offi­cers to leave their vehi­cles at night? Before any­one begins to object and come up with some cocka­mamie rea­son, let me stop you. Jamaica is inun­dat­ed with ille­gal, high-pow­ered guns. Does the police sense that no one will pull up with weapons? However, what do they think those per­sons will do if some­one pulls up with weapons? What would be the offi­cers on the ground response giv­en the like­li­hood of such a plau­si­ble and prob­a­ble scenario?
The report fol­low­ing the killing of Constable Rushave Lee does [not] include the appre­hen­sion of the hit-and-run dri­ver. Some reports indi­cate that the dri­ver of the vehi­cle is also a mem­ber of the JCF. We have not inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied that report.
This is the clear­est indi­ca­tion that the offi­cers on the ground had no con­tin­gency plan to effec­tu­ate a mean­ing­ful vehic­u­lar check­point because the force’s lead­er­ship had no idea how to do it.
These direc­tives must be writ­ten poli­cies incul­cat­ed into the ongo­ing train­ing of offi­cers that are fol­lowed with mil­i­tary-style precision.
The vehic­u­lar check­point in which the con­sta­ble was killed was not set up to cor­ral crim­i­nals; it was set up with the mind­set that every dri­ver is a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen. Any argu­ment to the con­trary will be mer­it­less and argumentative.
If the mind­set was that all motorists are law-abid­ing, why was one need­ed in the first place?

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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.

This Article is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of for­mer Inspector Dadrick Henry who lost his valiant strug­gle with can­cer. I wrote this arti­cle as a trib­ute to you, sir, a man who spent his entire life try­ing to make Jamaica bet­ter. Misunderstood and unaid­ed by a filthy sys­tem that was more sym­pa­thet­ic to the crim­i­nals than to you and your sac­ri­fices. Rest In peace, brother.

After my ten-year career in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, I left the depart­ment in 1991. I real­ized (1) that I could not accom­plish my eco­nom­ic goals and (2) that I could not effec­tu­ate real change in our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem from with­in a fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed agency that itself oper­ates in a sys­tem of law and order that was in name only.
In my view, two crit­i­cal com­po­nents pre­vent­ed our nation from being safer: (1) our incom­pre­hen­si­ble infat­u­a­tion with the celebri­ty gang­ster cul­ture and (2) the struc­tur­al built-ins that allow the well-con­nect­ed to oper­ate out­side the laws.
To the extent that Jamaica is seen as a law­less coun­try, these two com­po­nents have act­ed as an umbrel­la under which the nation’s crime pan­dem­ic mushroomed.
A care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of the fore­gone may be jux­ta­posed with oth­er crit­i­cal ele­ments such as con­flicts of inter­ests, such as defense lawyers walk­ing out of court­rooms where they are defend­ing vio­lent mur­der­ers and then walk­ing into Gordon House to leg­is­late on gun violence.
The JCF is far from the only agency to expe­ri­ence brain drain, but the high attri­tion from the JCF speaks for itself. Given the appro­pri­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties, the attri­tion rate would be expo­nen­tial­ly higher.

I felt that I could kill two birds with one stone if I left the JCF at the time I did. (1) I could attempt to achieve some of my finan­cial goals and (2) be more effec­tive in shin­ing a light on the sys­tem from the out­side with­out the con­straints of being inside an agency and a sys­tem that frowns upon con­struc­tive crit­i­cisms. Having said that, no one should be under any illu­sions as to where my loy­al­ties lie.
When I start­ed writ­ing in sup­port of polic­ing, many peo­ple encour­aged me, but they would­n’t go much fur­ther than that. The blow­back was intense; some even threat­ened my life (not some­thing I was par­tic­u­lar­ly per­turbed about). I was nev­er one to cow­er in fear.
The anti-police vit­ri­ol in our coun­try was intense, made worse because there was no active gov­ern­men­tal sup­port for the police.
I absolute­ly believed that there was a fun­da­men­tal need for police reform. 
But I also thought that reform­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was far more impor­tant as the police oper­ate in the wider jus­tice sys­tem that includes the pros­e­cu­tor’s office, the crim­i­nal courts, the prison sys­tem, and last but not least, the leg­isla­tive frame­work that dic­tates whether the police suc­ceed or fail.

I wrote hun­dreds of arti­cles mak­ing the case for (1) Constitutional reform, (2) reform­ing the pow­ers of the judi­cia­ry, (3) police over­sights, and (4) the anti­quat­ed penal­ties for vio­lent crimes.
There was zero attempts to trans­form the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem dur­ing the 90 to the ear­ly or mid-2000s’, it was,’ any­thing a anyt­ing’.
The Golding admin­is­tra­tion broke an 181/​2‑year cycle of PNP rule that saw our nation tee­ter­ing on the brink of collapse.
Instead of learn­ing while look­ing from the out­side, Bruce Golding took office and decid­ed that the prob­lem was with the police. So his response was to cre­ate an over­sight agency and ful­ly equip that agency with ameni­ties that the police still do not have today to do their jobs.
Bruce Golding had no prob­lem get­ting sup­port for form­ing that agency, as the PNP was will­ing to sup­port any­thing against the police and the rule of law.
We all saw where Bruce Golding’s head was as events came to a head in 2010. Bruce Golding will for­ev­er be remem­bered as the leader who refused to hand over a trans-nation­al gang­ster for tri­al. This is noth­ing any leader should be proud of. Golding’s opin­ion should nev­er fac­tor into dis­cussing Jamaica’s way forward.

Andrew Holness did not come to office under­stand­ing the crit­i­cal role the rule of law plays in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety — a prod­uct of the same sew­er that pro­duced past lead­ers. His dis­dain for the police was evi­dent from the start.
His love affair with the mil­i­tary and his use of sol­diers in his gov­ern­ment elicit­ed claims that he want­ed to turn the coun­try into a dic­ta­tor­ship. I nev­er thought that Andrew Holness har­bored strong man tendencies.
I believe that his per­ceived dis­re­spect for the police stemmed from a lack of under­stand­ing of the rule of law enhanced by the source of his for­mal education.
Holness, too, demon­strat­ed a strong belief that attack­ing the police and advanc­ing the JDF was the way to go. The idea is that mem­bers of the JDF have a bet­ter rap­port with the pub­lic than mem­bers of the JCF. The mis­guid­ed per­cep­tion many Jamaicans har­bor is also from a lack of under­stand­ing of the func­tions of the two agen­cies. We all love to see our mil­i­tary mem­bers, and we take pride in them, but the minute you have them do police duties, the shine is off the ball, and they become just as dis­liked by those who sup­port lawbreakers.
This writer has tried to explain this for years, and now we see the lus­ter of the JDF dimin­ished like a crick­et ball that has been bat­ted around for six­ty overs.

Governing is far dif­fer­ent than cam­paign­ing or sit­ting on the side­lines, a les­son Andrew Holness is begin­ning to learn. Thus, attack­ing the JCF under the guise of ref­or­ma­tion has exposed the need for a wider approach to reform­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, which this writer pro­posed a decade and a half ago. 
The JCF sure­ly need­ed reform­ing, not the destruc­tive approach demand­ed by reac­tionar­ies like Carolyn Gomes, Terrence Williams, and oth­ers. However, after your so-called reform of the JCF, what then?
I’ll tell you what, then: vio­lent crime is still trend­ing upward, the streets are just as law­less, and every­one is look­ing at each oth­er while wring­ing their hands.
I hate to say I told you so.….but I did. Reform the wide sys­tem, then reform the police. The police were nev­er the prob­lem; the police have always been a micro­cosm of the wider system.
I have pro­posed numer­ous sys­tem changes to save lives and pro­duce a bet­ter police department.
The Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion has recent­ly start­ed to pay atten­tion to some of these pro­pos­als, even though they will nev­er admit where those ideas came from.
There are no writ­ers, politi­cians, or any­one for that mat­ter who have con­sis­tent­ly demand­ed that the par­lia­ment pass much stronger laws for crim­i­nals with guns who com­mit mur­der. There has nev­er been any­one on the Island who has demand­ed that there be manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes.
No one on the Island has pro­posed remov­ing from the judge’s purview the sen­tences met­ed out to cap­i­tal mur­der­ers. But the bur­geon­ing crime sta­tis­tics have pro­mot­ed action, and many peo­ple are jump­ing on the band­wag­on. I want to wel­come them to the par­ty even though they are a dol­lar short and a day late.

This writer is unapolo­getic in stand­ing on the demand for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for vio­lent crimes regard­less of who com­mits them. I also strong­ly believe that Jamaica needs to sev­er its colo­nial ties with Britain and, there­fore, embark on a new con­sti­tu­tion­al order. 
Nevertheless, I applaud the UK Privy Council, which upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of manda­to­ry min­i­mums for vio­lent offend­ers in May last year.
The Privy Council dis­missed the garbage appeal of Tafari Morrison who was sen­tenced to 15 years by the local courts in 2013 for a rob­bery in which the vic­tim was robbed of his cell phone and shot mul­ti­ple times. The vic­tim was shot mul­ti­ple times despite hand­ing over his phone to Morrison and his cronies. 
Morrison was 16 years old at the time of the rob­bery and, at age 17, was sen­tenced to more than 15 years in prison. The Supreme Court had imposed a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence of 15 years in prison on the teenager.
The Appeal Court upheld the sen­tence fol­low­ing an appeal by his attor­neys, who argued that the impo­si­tion of the 15-year min­i­mum sen­tence for the firearm offense was pro­hib­it­ed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and was, there­fore, unlaw­ful. The attor­neys then took the mat­ter to the Privy Council.
I believe that lawyers have a right to defend their clients vig­or­ous­ly. But I must ask, who is pay­ing these vul­tures for these expen­sive appeals?
Instead of mak­ing these friv­o­lous appeals, how about instruct­ing your clients that what they did was abhorrent?
There is noth­ing uncon­sti­tu­tion­al about sen­tenc­ing a vio­lent offend­er to prison for extend­ed peri­ods of time. If you do not want to be impris­oned, do [not] pick up a weapon to rob and then shoot an inno­cent per­son.… period!!!
My issue with this sen­tence is that it was not near­ly long enough.….. this vicious ani­mal will be out of prison in his ear­ly thir­ties, hard­ened to do it again. He should have been sent away for life with­out parole.

For a long time, many talk­ing heads in Jamaica have argued that long sen­tences do noth­ing to deter crim­i­nals. I have con­sis­tent­ly dis­agreed. Removing vio­lent mur­der­ers from the equa­tion essen­tial­ly means they can­not com­mit more crimes.
Notwithstanding this sim­ple real­i­ty, the idea that we should be lenient has pre­vailed and dev­as­tat­ing­ly affect­ed policy. 
The gov­ern­ment is final­ly chang­ing its tune now. Here’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness recent­ly in Salt Springs Montego Bay after a triple mur­der, includ­ing two chil­dren. Quote, “we have already start­ed to increase the penal­ties for mur­der and, in par­tic­u­lar, cap­i­tal mur­der. In our sys­tem, the way to sep­a­rate them is to give them long sen­tences and take them out of the space. Short of the death penal­ty, this is the next best thing.”
No shit Sherlock, I have been say­ing this same fuck­ing thing for almost two decades. Whether they are locked away or killed by the police, they [do not] come back to kill again; that’s the great­est deterrent.
For decades, there have been crit­i­cisms local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly about how Jamaica gov­erns itself, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the issue of crime. A quick review of the local groups reveals a com­mon denom­i­na­tor: they are fund­ed and assist­ed by for­eign dark money.
Why? 
Front and cen­ter in offer­ing unso­licit­ed opin­ions have been the“US Department of Justice’s Office of Justice pro­grams. In offer­ing an assess­ment of the Gun Court Act in 1992, the agency said the fol­low­ing: Jamaica’s prin­ci­pal gun-con­trol leg­is­la­tion, the Gun Court Act, man­dat­ed harsh sen­tences for crim­i­nals who used guns dur­ing a crime and denied some Jamaicans their legal rights; these harsh mea­sures proved to be inef­fec­tive in con­trol­ling crime.
Nowhere in the world are cit­i­zens more denied their legal rights than in the American Criminal Justice sys­tem, which is a race-based sys­tem. Secondly, who asked them? Jamaica streets are inun­dat­ed with guns that come main­ly from the United States.
If the United States cared about the rights of Jamaicans, they would plug the dyke and stop the flow of ille­gal guns into Jamaica. The most sacred right a per­son has is the right to life.

The US Department of Justice went on to state; The Gun Court Act was passed in 1974 and sur­vived in its most repres­sive forms through 1982. This act estab­lished a spe­cial court to deal with the offense of the ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearms and oth­er offens­es that involved firearms where the offend­er’s pos­ses­sion was ille­gal and pro­vid­ed for a manda­to­ry and inde­ter­mi­nate sen­tence for ille­gal pos­ses­sion and use of firearms. Despite the lim­i­ta­tions of the data and analy­sis, a gen­er­al empir­i­cal assess­ment of the Gun Court Act can be made. The data show that fol­low­ing an ini­tial decline, there were over­all increas­es for all firearm-relat­ed crimes through­out most of the study peri­od. Those inter­viewed about the caus­es of the firearm crime who were not direct­ly affil­i­at­ed with either polit­i­cal par­ty attrib­uted it to the use of strong-arm men, gun­men, and gang­sters in the polit­i­cal are­na; wide­spread vic­tim­iza­tion in the allo­ca­tion of jobs and con­tracts by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments and by local author­i­ties; and inter­fer­ence by politi­cians with the police in the exe­cu­tion of their duties. Statistics sug­gest that ille­gal firearms were still in the hands of many crim­i­nals dur­ing the years the Gun Court Act was imple­ment­ed. The attempt to con­trol firearm crim­i­nals through the pas­sage of manda­to­ry firearm leg­is­la­tion failed, and polit­i­cal moti­va­tions seem to have been impor­tant rea­sons for this fail­ure. Following the elec­tion of the JLP in 1980, the Gun Court Act remained in effect with its most oppres­sive fea­tures for two years. By ear­ly 1982, many indi­vid­u­als inter­viewed stat­ed the fail­ure of either gov­ern­ment to remove, or at least sub­stan­tial­ly amend, the act was a chal­lenge to all class interests.

A Black man who was detained by police dur­ing an ear­ly morn­ing walk in a qui­et com­mu­ni­ty north­west of Detroit says the white offi­cer who threw him against a squad car, cuffed him and accused him of plan­ning to break into a car also told a sig­nif­i­cant lie. Brian Chaney says he asked for a super­vi­sor dur­ing his arrest in Keego Harbor, Michigan, and Police Officer Richard Lindquist told him that anoth­er offi­cer was present and in charge. The prob­lem: That sec­ond offi­cer was not a super­vi­sor or even a mem­ber of the Keego Harbor Police Department. Lindquist was nev­er dis­ci­plined and his chief says that while a sus­pect has the right to request a super­vi­sor, what the offi­cer did was OK. “An offi­cer can lie in the field when he’s not under oath,” Keego Harbor Police Chief John Fitzgerald said in a depo­si­tion in Chaney’s $10 mil­lion wrong­ful deten­tion law­suit.
But with American trust in police plum­met­ing, but­tressed by cell­phone and body­cam videos that can expose untruths, a pro­fes­sion once broad­ly con­sid­ered above reproach has seen its rep­u­ta­tion suffer.

“It’s well accept­ed that the weak­est and most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of soci­ety are the biggest vic­tims of coer­cive prac­tices, like police being dis­hon­est and decep­tive prac­tices in inter­ro­ga­tions,” said James Craven, a legal asso­ciate with Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice and a for­mer crim­i­nal defense attor­ney. In a Gallup poll last year, 43% of respon­dents said they have a great deal or quite a lot of con­fi­dence in the police, down from 51% in 2021 and 64% in 2004. Gallup says 43% is an all-time low. “We need police we can trust,” Craven said. “We need to start envi­sion­ing a police force that’s built with integri­ty at the cen­ter.” Several recent cas­es under­score that need. In May, a Washington, D.C., police offi­cer was arrest­ed on charges that he obstruct­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion and lied about leak­ing con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to Proud Boys extrem­ist group leader Enrique Tarrio. A white police offi­cer and union leader in Portland, Oregon, was fired in 2022for leak­ing a false report from a 911 caller who claimed a Black city com­mis­sion­er had been involved in a hit-and-run. The depart­ment lat­er rein­stat­ed him.

A for­mer offi­cer in Louisville, Kentucky, admit­ted in court that she and anoth­er offi­cer fal­si­fied infor­ma­tion in a search war­rant that led to the 2020 fatal police shoot­ing of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman. Police are allowed to use decep­tion and present false evi­dence dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions to get sus­pects to admit guilt, accord­ing to a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing. New York State has con­sid­ered leg­is­la­tion that would ban police from lying to sus­pects dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tions, while Illinois,Colorado and Oregon pro­hib­it police from lying when inter­ro­gat­ing juve­niles. Chaney, a licensed ther­a­pist and cer­ti­fied hyp­nother­a­pist from sub­ur­ban Detroit, says in his law­suit that in July 2021 he dropped his two teenage sons off at a gym. He was walk­ing for exer­cise along a com­mer­cial street in Keego Harbor, about 30 miles (50 kilo­me­ters) north­west of Detroit, when Lindquist drove up behind and shout­ed: “Get your hands out of your pock­et!” According to the law­suit, Lindquist told Chaney, “I’m going to frisk you because you look like you have a weapon and were going to break into cars.”

Lindquist called him a “dog,” shoved him in the back and pushed him against the squad car, injur­ing his groin. His wrist was hurt from the hand­cuffs in the ordeal last­ing more than 20 min­utes, Chaney’s com­plaint says. Chaney said Lindquist only released him after he asked, “What are you going to do next, put your knee into my neck?” ref­er­enc­ing the killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.

Fitzgerald said in his depo­si­tion on July 18, 2022, that Lindquist was­n’t dis­ci­plined over the lie about the super­vi­sor, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as “an attempt­ed de-esca­la­tion, momen­tary spec­u­la­tion.” He insist­ed lying is not pol­i­cy in his depart­ment but that “it’s what they’re allowed to do.” Citizens who have been detained can ask for a super­vi­sor — in this case, Fitzgerald — and offi­cers should call him. Lindquist didn’t call and he did­n’t think the offi­cer gave Chaney his phone num­ber, Fitzgerald said. The chief declined to com­ment to The Associated Press, cit­ing the pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion, and sev­er­al nation­al and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions advo­cat­ing on behalf of law enforce­ment did not respond to mes­sages from the AP. Lindquist no longer works for the Keego Harbor police and the AP was unable to reach him. Attorneys rep­re­sent­ing Lindquist in Chaney’s case did not respond to requests for com­ment. “You should not have the right to lie,” said Leonard Mungo, Chaney’s attor­ney. “That’s some­thing that we’re writ­ing into the moral fab­ric of the most pow­er­ful insti­tu­tion of our soci­ety that has the author­i­ty to put you in jail.” Detroit-area attor­ney David A. Robinson said the lies are a disappointment.

“People hold police in high esteem,” said Robinson, who spent 13 years as a Detroit police offi­cer. “A cop’s fall from grace is high­er than that of a reg­u­lar per­son when he is caught in a lie, sim­ply because of this per­cep­tion.” Robinson is Black and most of his clients are Black peo­ple alleg­ing civ­il rights vio­la­tions by police. “My expe­ri­ence with the pro­fes­sion reveals police offi­cers seem often to take lib­er­ties in reports in order to jus­ti­fy force or but­tress an arrest,” Robinson said. “It is there­fore fool­ish to take an officer’s word at face val­ue.” Once some­one real­izes an offi­cer has lied to them, trust is dif­fi­cult to restore, accord­ing to Robert Feldman, pro­fes­sor of Psychological and Brain Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Basically, I think police offi­cers lie because they can,” Feldman said. “Most of the time they are not caught lying, and even if they are, they get away with it. If you come to an under­stand­ing the police are not cred­i­ble and they use deceit, it makes you sus­pi­cious of every­thing they are saying.”

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New York City Council Member Yusef Salaam, a mem­ber of the exon­er­at­ed group of men known as the Central Park Five, says he was stopped and pulled over by police with­out being giv­en an expla­na­tion. The police stop in New York City on Friday casts a renewed light on a police trans­paren­cy bill, called the How Many Stops Act, that City Council mem­bers are set to vote on Tuesday to over­ride Mayor Eric Adams’ veto. It would require offi­cers to pub­licly report on all inves­tiga­tive stops, includ­ing rel­a­tive­ly low-lev­el encoun­ters with civil­ians. In the encounter with Salaam, which last­ed less than a minute at 6:20 p.m., a police offi­cer — heard in body cam­era footage pro­vid­ed Saturday by the New York Police Department — asks Salaam to roll down the back win­dows of his car.

But after Salaam iden­ti­fied him­self as a coun­cil mem­ber and asked if every­thing was okay, the offi­cer quick­ly with­drew with­out pro­vid­ing fur­ther expla­na­tion for the stop. What Salaam says next is inaudi­ble. Police lat­er said in a state­ment that Salaam was stopped for dri­ving with a dark tint beyond legal lim­its. The police offi­cer con­duct­ed him­self pro­fes­sion­al­ly and respect­ful­ly, the NYPD said in the state­ment, adding that he used dis­cre­tion to allow the coun­cil mem­ber to com­plete his offi­cial duties. “This expe­ri­ence only ampli­fied the impor­tance of trans­paren­cy for all police inves­tiga­tive stops because the lack of trans­paren­cy allows racial pro­fil­ing and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al stops of all types to occur and often go under­re­port­ed,” Salaam, a Democrat, said in a statement. 

City Council Member Sandy Nurse said she was on a video call with Salaam and oth­er peo­ple when he was pulled over. Nurse said she heard Salaam ask the offi­cer for the rea­son for the stop, for which none was giv­en. Salaam and four oth­er Black or Latino men were false­ly accused and con­vict­ed of rap­ing and beat­ing a white jog­ger in Central Park in 1989. Salaam was arrest­ed at age 15 and impris­oned for almost sev­en years. Their con­vic­tions were even­tu­al­ly over­turned through DNA evi­dence. Salaam won a seat on the New York City Council in November and rep­re­sents a cen­tral Harlem dis­trict. “At a time when Black and Latino New Yorkers con­tin­ue to be dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly sub­ject­ed to uncon­sti­tu­tion­al stops that go under­re­port­ed, and civil­ian com­plaints of mis­con­duct are at their high­est lev­el in over a decade, the need for basic trans­paren­cy is clear,” New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a state­ment Friday about the leg­is­la­tion, before the traf­fic stop.(AP)

The recent arrest of for­mer PNP Member of Parliament Jolyan Silvera for the mur­der of his wife Melissa, who died late last year, should not elic­it any excite­ment from ordi­nary Jamaicans.
The real­i­ty is that no one should be exempt from the reach of the law when they break it. Sadly, the arrest, much less the suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of high-pro­file Jamaicans, remains a dis­tant dream rather than a reality.
I lis­tened to one very senior mem­ber of the JCF relat­ing to the media the arrest specifics, and I could bare­ly lis­ten to the whole thing. The case’s specifics make it so clear-cut that not arrest­ing Silvera would have been a clear abdi­ca­tion of duty. 
However, the JCF has a his­to­ry of abdi­cat­ing its respon­si­bil­i­ty to the coun­try when it suits them. 
This has cre­at­ed dis­trust, dis­re­spect, and a lack of con­fi­dence in the agency by most Jamaican people.
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The caus­tic com­ments on social media direct­ed at the police around this arrest can be brushed aside as cop-hat­ing gib­ber­ish. However, an agency that requires the pub­lic’s par­tic­i­pa­tion for much of its suc­cess must be mind­ful of pub­lic per­cep­tions. Perceptions are not always facts, but giv­en enough time and no fac­tu­al cor­rec­tion, per­cep­tion often­times becomes a reality.
Far too many well-con­nect­ed peo­ple are com­mit­ting crimes and fac­ing no con­se­quences. Ordinary Jamaicans are not blind to these things, and so they are in no mood to hear the police crow­ing about one arrest as if they want medals for doing their jobs.
The JCF has fum­bled the bag on numer­ous occa­sions that involve high-pro­file cas­es. Many Jamaicans alive today will recall the alle­ga­tions sur­round­ing the infa­mous Dianne Smith case in 1983 by the Constant Spring Police.
Dianne Smith, a young stu­dent, was alleged­ly raped and mur­dered while on her way to school. Allegations arose after the das­tard­ly crime that a well-known upper Saint Andrew man, the son of a well-con­nect­ed polit­i­cal fam­i­ly, had com­mit­ted the crime.
The man named who him­self became and is still a mem­ber of par­lia­ment has strug­gled over the decades to con­vince a skep­ti­cal Jamaica that he was inno­cent. Those strug­gles includ­ed threat­en­ing tort action against those who dared to men­tion his name in the Dianne Smith mur­der case.

Whether or not this polit­i­cal fig­ure was involved in the rape and mur­der of Dianne Smith is any­one’s guess because the Constant Spring Police tasked with the mur­der inves­ti­ga­tions have yet to arrest any­one, much less gain a con­vic­tion for that mur­der forty-one (41) years lat­er. The per­cep­tions sur­round­ing that crime remain that there have been no real inves­ti­ga­tions because of who the alleged sus­pect was.
The fail­ure of the police to inves­ti­gate and arrest the criminal/​s in the Dianne Smith case enabled the rumor to con­tin­ue and has done immense harm to the rep­u­ta­tion and good name of the per­son named by the streets. If the per­son named in that rape and mur­der was tru­ly guilty, the incom­pe­tence or com­plic­i­ty of those tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing that crime enabled him to walk away scot-free.
I served in the Constant Spring CIB office between 1987 and 1991, and nev­er once did I hear any­one talk about a Dianne Smith case file that was still open.
It is impor­tant to remem­ber that mur­der is not a statute; it is against com­mon law. As such, mur­der has no statu­to­ry lim­i­ta­tions as to when a guilty mur­der­er must be caught and con­vict­ed. I found it odd that though a mur­der­er may be arrest­ed for a mur­der he com­mit­ted a hun­dred years ear­li­er, by the time I arrived at the Constant Spring CIB in 1987, a mere four (4) years lat­er, there was no talk or inves­ti­ga­tions ongo­ing in the Dianne Smith rape/​murder case. There was absolute­ly no open, ongo­ing investigation.
Why was that?

WHY HAS THERE NOT BEEN AN ARREST IN THIS CASE?

In the link pro­vid­ed above in red, I wrote about a sim­i­lar case that the Constant Spring CIB office sup­pos­ed­ly inves­ti­gat­ed, sim­i­lar to the Dianne Smith case. Below is one of sev­er­al arti­cles I wrote in 2017 about the Germaine Junior case.
In 2021, here is what the police had to say.
We have not closed their probe into the mur­der of a man four years ago at the St Andrew home of promi­nent attor­ney Patrick Bailey. 
Germain Junior, a 51-year-old con­struc­tion work­er, was found with stab wounds and a sin­gle gun­shot wound to the head in the attor­ney’s liv­ing room on September 30, 2016. 
In an update on the case on February 1^st, 2021, at a police press con­fer­ence, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) in charge of crime, Fitz Bailey, said the probe into the killing is ongoing.
“Well, the mat­ter [Junior’s mur­der case] is ongo­ing. It is not yet closed, but the truth is we go by the evi­dence, and I don’t think we have the ade­quate amount of evi­dence to advance a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion at this time,” he disclosed.
“Even since I took over the [crime] port­fo­lio, we have had quite a num­ber of case reviews. We have actu­al­ly done sev­er­al lines of enquiries, but at this point we don’t have the evi­dence to mount a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion,” Bailey added.
Police reports at the time sug­gest­ed that Bailey stum­bled on the body short­ly after 4 am in his liv­ing room, and the police were alerted.
(How could a police depart­ment even men­tion clos­ing a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion when there are no statu­to­ry lim­i­ta­tions on mur­der)?

It seems that what the Minister of National Security, Horace Chang meant when he said ‘we hafi gi tony a chance’, speak­ing of Commissioner of Police Antony Anderson, was about effec­tu­at­ing cos­met­ic changes.
What am I yap­ping about? Well, it seems that one of the things I have sup­port­ed for a long time, speak­ing of out­fit­ting police offi­cers in a prac­ti­cal uni­form, is com­ing to fruition. 
This nice blue uni­form adorned with the Jamaican flag and crest insignia above the heart is prac­ti­cal for both male and female offi­cers and some­thing they can be proud of don­ning each day.
But that seems to be all we are get­ting from Tony’s stewardship.

I’m told that offi­cers are asked to pay for these nice-look­ing uni­forms. I have not been able to ver­i­fy whether this is true inde­pen­dent­ly. However, there may be some truth, as many offi­cers wear imprac­ti­cal red-seam black pants and striped grey shirts. Some may argue that that ensem­ble is not so bad; truth­ful­ly, I have not seen any offi­cers wear­ing that ensem­ble with the god-awful cum­mer­bund of late.
But the fact that offi­cers still wear the red seams seems to indi­cate that offi­cers may have been asked to pay for the blue ensemble.
One last thing of note: how can we have nice high­ways and no police offi­cers patrolling them? Driving on the nation’s roads, you may see a sin­gle cop car parked with the offi­cers out of the car chat­ting or on their cell­phones. All of this while vehic­u­lar traf­fic races by at break­neck speed. The cops are in total oblivion.
If we are to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, the nation’s pre­mier law enforce­ment agency must act pro­fes­sion­al­ly and give the impres­sion that it is at least one step above Deputy Barney Fyffe of Mayberry.
I’m still per­plexed when­ev­er I lis­ten to the Prime Minister speak on secu­ri­ty inside our coun­try; he refers to the Jamaica Defense Force and then the Jamaica Constabulary Force as an afterthought.

The JCF, As I have writ­ten for years, must do a bet­ter job at polic­ing. It must demon­strate that it is a force to be reck­oned with.… not some emp­ty slo­gan vis a force for good.
By inves­ti­gat­ing and arrest­ing guilty offend­ers, catch­ing crim­i­nals in the act, and pre­emp­tive­ly dis­man­tling crim­i­nal net­works, the JCF will gain the respect of the Jamaican peo­ple. The JCF must retake con­trol of the streets before it expects any respect and sup­port from the peo­ple as to its abil­i­ty to seri­ous­ly impact crime and vio­lence in any mean­ing­ful way.
That is a force for good.….. not an emp­ty slogan.
The few offi­cers I observed in pub­lic on my last vis­it home did not give me con­fi­dence that the JCF is inter­est­ed in law enforce­ment but is more inter­est­ed in floss­ing and being on their mobile devices.
This is a fail­ure of lead­er­ship at all levels.
The JCF has expo­nen­tial­ly more offi­cers than two or three decades ago. It has more up-to-date resources than it did pre­vi­ous­ly. Yet, there are few­er cops vis­i­ble on the streets, high­er lev­els of vio­lent crimes, and the streets have all but been ced­ed to unruly drivers.
How the agency expects to func­tion this way is a mys­tery to me.

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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.