As a for­mer mem­ber who spent ten (10) years in the Jamaica Constabulary force acquir­ing a wealth of knowl­edge in street polic­ing and crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. And hav­ing spent the ensu­ing decades after leav­ing the (JCF) research­ing, and writ­ing in sup­port of law enforce­ment and the rule of law, but keep­ing a crit­i­cal eye out for those who would use their pow­ers to abuse or worse, Mike sober­ly unveils a sev­en (7) point intro­duc­to­ry doc­u­ment which point­ed­ly and cor­rect­ly exam­ines police use of force and how they are push­ing the bound­aries of not just what is legal, but also what is moral as they oper­ate under the col­or of law.

Cops Claimed Man Charged at Them, But Video Shows They Executed Him on His Knees

Houston, TX — Suicide by cop — in the land of the free — is an unfor­tu­nate, and oft-used option for those in men­tal dis­tress. All too often, police offi­cers respond to inci­dents in which men­tal­ly ill peo­ple need help, and then kill those peo­ple, so it makes it a rather easy option. As a case out of Houston, Texas illus­trates, some­times the details of these sto­ries that the pub­lic is told by author­i­ties, do not match up with what actu­al­ly unfolded. 

Read and share before they remove con­tent, @ The freethought project​.com

PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

The self-appoint­ed elites in Jamaica have always been high­ly offend­ed by the pow­ers of the police. They nev­er rec­on­ciled the idea of peo­ple from the poor­er caste hav­ing the pow­er to restrict their move­ment and free­dom.
If you under­stand that after the nation was hand­ed over to black & mul­la­to rule, the new­ly empow­ered for­mer down­trod­den, instan­ta­neous­ly became the new over­lords, (a new­ly mint­ed Bourjois‘).
Once we rec­on­cile that, we begin to bet­ter under­stand the ani­mos­i­ty between uptown and the police.
The con­sis­tent crit­i­cisms that the JCF was designed by the colo­nial mas­ters to con­trol blacks.
The con­sis­tent harp­ing about how the JCF was designed to sup­press the peo­ple after the Paul Bogle led Morant Bay Rebellion & there­fore anti­thet­i­cal and inher­ent­ly anti-Jamaican. 

That screed has always been based on the fact that the JCF was put togeth­er by the British, & that the pow­ers of the police were con­sis­tent with how polic­ing pow­ers were sup­posed to be autho­rized.
Those pow­ers were anti­thet­i­cal to the rigid caste sys­tem that devel­oped imme­di­ate­ly after the for­mer house slaves became the new [Massas].
The new Massas did not want a group of peas­ants from the under­class hav­ing such pow­ers.
An imme­di­ate crack appeared between those who enforced the rule of law & the new rulers who want­ed a clear under­stand­ing that the young nation’s laws would under no cir­cum­stances apply to them or any­one in their caste.
It is for those pur­pos­es that the unscrupu­lous politi­cians in the coun­try and those oth­ers who believed the laws ought not to apply to them were nev­er com­fort­able with the pow­ers of the police.

The police were instru­men­tal in the for­ma­tion of (INDECOM), The sup­posed Independent Commission Of Investigations, that was formed under the lead­er­ship and with the work of the JLP’s Bruce Golding.
The agency was sup­posed to be an answer to ram­pant Police abuse and acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty, much of which was true there­fore arguably jus­ti­fy­ing the cre­ation of the agency.
However, INDECOM pre­sent­ed to ene­mies of the police a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to sock it to the police, that they had always held in pure and unadul­ter­at­ed contempt.

The Act would be so oner­ous that it would lit­er­al­ly take away the fun­da­men­tal right mem­bers of the force had against self-incrim­i­na­tion.
The framers of the Act knew that the law was bad for the police, they knew that it would ulti­mate­ly be bad for crime in the coun­try as well.
However they did not care, the law offered them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to kick the police in the ass and at the same time give them­selves an exten­sion to con­tin­ue to live their lives as over­lords in the crime-rid­den soci­ety that Jamaica had become.
The poor­er parts of the pop­u­la­tion are always the most vul­ner­a­ble, and also the most gullible. With the unscrupu­lous & com­plic­it media pum­mel­ing them day and night about the evils of the police, the stage was set for the Jamaica that exist today .
A crime-rid­den pseu­do law­less & almost ungovern­able society.

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

A for­mer Michigan state troop­er was sen­tenced to at least five years in prison Monday for caus­ing the death of a 15-year-old Detroit boy who crashed an all-ter­rain vehi­cle after he was shot with a Taser. Judge Margaret Van Houten said Mark Bessner, a lawyer and expe­ri­enced offi­cer, used poor judg­ment when he fired the immo­bi­liz­ing device from the pas­sen­ger seat of a mov­ing patrol car. He was con­vict­ed of invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter after a sec­ond tri­al in April. ‘You abused the pub­lic’s trust. … It is the few offi­cers like you who have caused the dis­trust of police offi­cers that plagues our com­mu­ni­ty in Detroit, the state of Michigan and through­out the coun­try,’ the judge said.

The max­i­mum penal­ty is 15 years in prison, but Bessner will be eli­gi­ble for parole after five. He quit the state police after the August 2017 inci­dent. Bessner and a part­ner were patrolling a Detroit neigh­bor­hood when Damon Grimes, drove an ATV near their car and popped a ‘wheel­ie.’ The white troop­ers turned around and pur­sued the black teen. As they got clos­er, Bessner deployed the Taser, which releas­es stain­less steel barbs. Grimes crashed into a parked pick­up truck, flipped over, and died. Bessner said he believed the boy had a gun in his waist­band, but Grimes was unarmed

During Bessner’s sec­ond tri­al, his defense attor­ney claimed Grimes’ ATV was in poor con­di­tion and that the 22-year vet­er­an was in fear for his life because the teen had tak­en one of his hands off the han­dle­bars as if reach­ing for a weapon. ‘A child is a ter­ri­ble thing to lose,’ an aunt, Helen Stinson, read from an impact state­ment writ­ten by Damon’s par­ents. ‘To sit at the table and see his emp­ty chair. To look at his emp­ty bed­room has become more than we can bear.’

Damon’s par­ents said in a writ­ten state­ment that see­ing their son’s emp­ty room is unbear­able to them In their let­ter, Monique Grimes and John Hughes implored Bessner to think of their dead son when his own chil­dren expe­ri­ence mile­stone moments that Damon has been deprived of, like their first kiss, their high school grad­u­a­tion and their first day at col­lege, report­ed The Detroit News. Bessner acknowl­edged the ‘tragedy’ and turned to the fam­i­ly to apol­o­gize. He said he wished he could step into a ‘time machine’ and change what hap­pened. ‘It is a no-win sit­u­a­tion for the police out there,’ said Bessner, who added that it’s impos­si­ble to per­form per­fect­ly. Bessner appealed to the judge for lenien­cy so that he could return home to his five-year-old daugh­ter, adding that while he under­stands the Grimes fam­i­ly’s anger, he hopes that the court ‘will not be dri­ven by anger,’ report­ed WXYZ.

Judge Van Houten replied that while he would be able to com­mu­ni­cate with his daugh­ter on the phone while in prison, the Grimes fam­i­ly will nev­er get to speak to Damon again. Two months before Grimes’ death, an arbi­tra­tor had cleared Bessner of mis­con­duct in how he used his Taser while chas­ing a crime sus­pect in a dif­fer­ent inci­dent. State police want­ed to sus­pend him for 10 days.

During Bessner’s sec­ond tri­al, his defense attor­ney claimed Grimes’ ATV (pic­tured over­turned on the ground) was in poor con­di­tion His first tri­al end­ed in a mis­tri­al in October 2018 after Bessner tes­ti­fied in his own defense. He told jurors that the inci­dent was a ‘blur’ and he believed his life was ‘absolute­ly’ in jeop­ardy. When he learned that Grimes was only a teenag­er Bessner said he was ‘shocked’, call­ing it a ‘ter­ri­ble tragedy’. ‘All I could think of was that this fam­i­ly … had lost their son and all I could think of was my daugh­ter and what they must be going through,’ Bessner said on the stand. ‘And (all) I could think of (was) what hap­pens now? What do we do now?’ “I can’t imag­ine what it would be like to lose a child,” he said, turn­ing back to look at the Grimes fam­i­ly which spoke on the deceased teen’s behalf moments ear­li­er. “I under­stand their anger, the anger at me — but judge I hope this court will not be dri­ven by anger.” 

A Rancho Cordova police offi­cer beat this 14-year-old boy, his crime?
hav­ing in his pos­ses­sion a cig­a­rette prod­uct. Not mar­i­jua­na, even though hav­ing mar­i­jua­na in small; quan­ti­ties would not have been a crime. The 14-year-old boy was in pos­ses­sion of a sweet tobac­co product.

Now here is the new chief of police’s state­ments after first sug­gest­ing that the boy was respon­si­ble because he apol­o­gized for his actions.
Remember the kid is 14-years-old. These days one can get access to CBD prod­ucts here online.

Here is what hap­pened in Austin Texas just days ago. As Austin PD cops mur­der a man who had his arms raised when they decid­ed to esca­late the sit­u­a­tion, first shoot­ing him with some kind of non-lethal weapon, he got in the car and begun to dri­ve away when they opened up with a rifle killing him.

If you write to impact per­cep­tions it may be a good idea to write about things that peo­ple want to talk about or things that excite them. That is if you want to be lis­tened to by your tar­get audi­ence. If you are sell­ing books, for exam­ple, writ­ing to enter­tain may be the way to go.
If you cater to a social media audi­ence and care much about likes, com­ments & enter­tain­ment, smut & gos­sip is the way to go.
So if you are writ­ing about the way the rule of law pro­tects us all, while law- enforce­ment offi­cers are break­ing the laws they are sworn to uphold, it is only nor­mal that one would expect blow­back from the pub­lic who reads what you write.
In today’s world, politi­cians and pow­er­ful well-con­nect­ed peo­ple com­mit crimes and they often times escape the long arm of the law. It is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to con­vince the aver­age per­son that play­ing by the rules is in his best inter­est. It is dou­bly dif­fi­cult when he sees those who break the laws seem­ing­ly grow­ing in leaps and bounds when he seems to be stuck in a rut.

If your tar­get audi­ence is in Jamaica, you can for­get pleas­antries when you talk about how impor­tant it is that peo­ple obey the nation’s laws.
Sometimes it appears that there are only a few of us Jamaicans who both­er, or even dare to put our­selves out there to defend the rule of law.
This is so because cor­rup­tion runs so ram­pant through­out so many cells of nation­al life. I par­tic­u­lar­ly admire Garth Rattarary a med­ical doc­tor who has con­sis­tent­ly writ­ten, not only about the rule of law, but in defense of the police when it prob­a­bly isn’t in his best inter­est to do so. So why do we always write about obey­ing laws and reduc­ing crime?
Well, for me it is rather sim­ple, a ris­ing tide rais­es all boats. If I could snap my fin­ger and get all Jamaicans to under­stand how crime makes every­one poor­er, I would.
In 2017 [ukessay​.com], wrote; The num­ber of mur­ders and oth­er vio­lence caus­es Jamaica to have one of the high­est crime rates in the world. Police sta­tis­tics in Jamaica have shown that since the year 1999 Jamaica’s crime rate has steadi­ly risen. In 2005, accord­ing to International sta­tis­tics, Jamaica was the “Murder Capital of the World”. There has been a tremen­dous increase in the rate of homi­cides and shoot­ings, ille­gal drugs, arms and ammu­ni­tion, rape and car­nal abuse which con­tin­ues to neg­a­tive­ly impact the country’s social and eco­nom­ic growth.




Simply put, when vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics are so high invest­ments head the oppo­site direc­tion. If there is no invest­ment the bulk of the hir­ing is left up to the gov­ern­ment. The gov­ern­ment can only hire so many peo­ple with­out a tax base to sup­port salaries and ben­e­fits.
A vibrant pri­vate sec­tor allows for the gov­ern­ment to put in place much-need­ed infra­struc­ture, a low-crime soci­ety is attrac­tive to peo­ple look­ing for safe places to invest and live.
In Jamaica’s case, there are hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars left in the US, UK, Canada belong­ing to Jamaicans who would like to return to their home­land with those resources but are afraid because of the excep­tion­al­ly high crime rate.
The idea that Jamaica’s future is lit­er­al­ly in its own hands is cer­tain­ly not a cliché. Fix the crime and you begin to see pros­per­i­ty.
Keep the crime and you slide deep­er & deep­er into pover­ty.
The fact that the Island’s lead­ers of both polit­i­cal par­ties con­tin­ue to pussy­foot with crim­i­nals is lost on no one.
The nation’s lead­ers live lav­ish lifestyles, fan­cy homes in exclu­sive areas, replete with police body­guards.
Violence hard­ly pen­e­trates their lit­tle bub­bles. The cor­rupt crim­i­nal friend­ly sys­tem that keeps them in pow­er is built on crime.
They have no inter­est in the whole­sale erad­i­ca­tion of crime, doing so removes the foun­da­tion of their existence.

So for those of us who both­er to talk this way about crime, we do so in spite of the poten­tial blow­back.
We do not do it for likes or for pop­u­lar­i­ty. We real­ly do so because we fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that with­out the rule of law and a fair, just and equi­table sys­tem of gov­ern­ment, we are all at risk and the qual­i­ty of our lives is both reduced and deval­ued. It is in the best inter­est of all when the best prac­tices are observed.
As Black peo­ple, we have a vest­ed stake in the equi­table and just dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice. After all, in the over four hun­dred years that our ances­tors have been forced to engage in servi­tude in the west­ern world, we have been vic­tims of the laws being used in a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry fash­ion against us.
It is impor­tant to also rec­on­cile that this par­lia­men­tary sys­tem, and the pre­sent­ing of evi­dence in order to appear at a just con­clu­sion, was also tak­en from Africa along with our ances­tors.
Unfortunately for us, we have not ben­e­fit­ted from the equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice when we are not in con­trol.
So when we have con­trol, it is imper­a­tive that we both observe our own laws and that we equi­tably dis­pense jus­tice to all our people.

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

Tampa, FL — Joseph Edwards Williams, a 26-year old man from Florida who was released from prison as part of efforts to pre­vent fur­ther spread of the coro­n­avirus behind bars, was arrest­ed again after he alleged­ly shot and killed a man the very next day after being released.

Williams was fac­ing non-vio­lent drug charges when he was includ­ed in the 164 low-lev­el offend­ers that were released from Hillsborough County Jail on March 19, six days after he was arrest­ed. “The order was draft­ed in an effort to low­er the risk of the spread of COVID-19 with­in the Hillsborough County deten­tion facil­i­ties and to pro­tect the inmates, deputies and civil­ian staff work­ing with­in the jails,” the sheriff’s depart­ment said in a statement.

The next day since he was released, author­i­ties believe Williams was involved in the fatal shoot­ing of a man in the Progress Village area, accord­ing to WFLA. He was arrest­ed ear­li­er this week, fac­ing charges of sec­ond-degree mur­der, gun pos­ses­sion, vio­lent­ly resist­ing an offi­cer, drug pos­ses­sion, and para­pher­na­lia pos­ses­sion. Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a state­ment that Williams “took advan­tage of this health emer­gency to com­mit crimes while he was out of jail await­ing res­o­lu­tion of a low-lev­el, non-vio­lent offense.” Williams was arraigned via video appear­ance and was ordered held on a more than $250,000 bond.

Between the sophis­ti­cat­ed Levels of vio­lent crimes plagu­ing Jamaica, the num­ber of high-pow­ered weapons and ammu­ni­tion in the hands of the crim­i­nal under­world, and the lev­el of gen­er­al law­less­ness across the soci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly inner-city com­mu­ni­ties, it is incum­bent that the Governing author­i­ty now con­sid­ers new clan­des­tine meth­ods to root out cer­tain ele­ments from the soci­ety.
Those who have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to live or vis­it devel­oped soci­eties are thrilled at the lev­el of calm and sta­bil­i­ty that exist in those soci­eties. Even though no place is total­ly crime-free, the real­i­ty is that in many large cities, small cities, large towns and small towns and sub­urbs across the United States, Canada, the UK, all across Europe and even Asia peo­ple are able to live their lives with­out the stark real­i­ty of immi­nent death at every turn.
Countries do not get to this lev­el of calm and tran­quil­i­ty in a vac­u­um, or by wish­ing them so, or pray­ing for divine inter­ven­tion. Leaders take deci­sive steps to make them so.
What is unknown to the peo­ple who enjoy the sausage is how the sausage is made, and that’s okay.
But Governments can­not watch how the wind blows par­tic­u­lar­ly in a place like Jamaica in order to devel­op policy.

When you look at the inner-city com­mu­ni­ties and their love affair with mur­der­ers, rapists, thieves and child moles­ters, it is clear that seek­ing con­sen­sus from those com­mu­ni­ties on the way for­ward on deal­ing with crime is a total waste of time.
Collectively, those com­mu­ni­ties are the prob­lem and will not be a part of the solu­tion. Those com­mu­ni­ties can­not be seat­ed at the table, when cul­tur­al­ly they have resist­ed social-order and the rule of law.
Sure, there are great peo­ple liv­ing in those tough inner-city com­mu­ni­ties, nev­er­the­less, over­all, the gang­sters who shape and rule those com­mu­ni­ties deter­mine how they are run.
It is time that this admin­is­tra­tion begins the process of dis­man­tling those communities.

This fight has long exceed­ed the capac­i­ty of the local police to man­age. Even with the addi­tion of the 3’000-man army, the Jamaican secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus is woe­ful­ly under­staffed to deal with the lev­el of vio­lence and oth­er crimes in the soci­ety.
Soldiers are in the fight mere­ly as bod­ies or boots on the ground. A clas­sic exam­ple that more bod­ies, or boots on the ground are only one part of what is need­ed, is the fail­ure of States Of Emergencies & ZOSO’s to reduce the lev­el of vio­lent crime across the soci­ety.
Jamaica’s police to cit­i­zen ratio is not the best nei­ther is it the worst. One 2012 esti­mate placed Jamaica’s police depart­ment at 8’600, and a total offi­cer to cit­i­zen ratio of 315 offi­cers per 100,000 cit­i­zens.
Now I do under­stand that those num­bers hard­ly mean any­thing unless they are placed in con­text.
So, in Mexico, for exam­ple, anoth­er vio­lent coun­try, the same esti­mate was a total of 544,000 police offi­cers and a ratio of 464 offi­cers per 100,000 res­i­dents.
In Norway, a rel­a­tive­ly peace­ful European nation, their law enforce­ment num­bers in 2019 were 10,170 and a ratio of 188 offi­cers per 100,000 res­i­dents.
The num­ber of offi­cers to cit­i­zen ratio becomes an issue depend­ing on the lev­el of crime and vio­lence with­in the soci­ety.
Jamaican law enforce­ment is woe­ful­ly under­staffed and under-resourced, police offi­cers are at greater risk than most oth­er coun­tries due to the lev­el of vio­lent crim­i­nals in the country.

The Prime Minister just last March admit­ted that crime was out of the gov­ern­men­t’s abil­i­ty to con­trol. That is a stark admis­sion of fail­ure that should send shiv­ers down the spine of all Jamaicans at home and those abroad who have prop­er­ty there, and would one day like to retire in the coun­try of their birth.
Amidst the noise, chat­ter, and ban­ter about “Jamaica nice,”(which is indis­putable), our coun­try is beau­ti­ful, is a seri­ous sense of col­lec­tive self-doubt and deni­a­bil­i­ty about the nation’s future.
Those who engage in pre­tense and deni­a­bil­i­ty, must know that the false sense of con­fi­dence they try to project does not equate to patri­o­tism.
An (osac​.gov) report revealed that in 2017, Jamaica’s homi­cide rate was 56 per 100,000; in 2018, the homi­cide rate dropped to 47 per 100,000, but remains three times high­er than the aver­age for Latin America and the Caribbean. Forbes Magazine list­ed Jamaica as the third most dan­ger­ous place for women trav­el­ers in 2017. In 2018, Business Insider ranked Jamaica 10^th among 20 of the most dan­ger­ous places in the world. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recent­ly cit­ed crime as the num­ber one imped­i­ment to eco­nom­ic growth. The Jamaican gov­ern­ment con­clud­ed that cor­rup­tion and the transna­tion­al crime it facil­i­tates presents a grave threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty. 

The same report detailed; “Gangs are a major secu­ri­ty issue across the coun­try, and are the source of the major­i­ty of vio­lent crime nation­wide.” 
It is now time to make the hard deci­sions, clear­ly, the con­ven­tion­al meth­ods are not work­ing and will not work.
Within the gangs that are mur­der­ing ordi­nary Jamaican cit­i­zens, is a hard­ened sub­set that is dia­bol­i­cal and Sociopathic. They will not yield to con­form­ing to the rule of nor­mal soci­ety and must be made to.
The com­mu­ni­ties we have come to rec­og­nize as Garrisons will not be bull­dozed and replaced with beau­ti­ful con­do­mini­ums with beau­ti­ful gar­dens and swim­ming pools.
And so we must begin the process of decon­struct­ing the [Garrison men­tal­i­ty] that exist in the minds of the people.

(1) Remove from every wall every build­ing, every edi­fice, decals, por­traits, & every oth­er method used to make mar­tyrs of gang­sters, dead or alive.
(2) Systematically, use every legal law-enforce­ment tac­tic to tar­get arrest and charge known offend­ers who have lead­er­ship aspi­ra­tions and who present them­selves as (DONS) under the guise of (area leader.)
(3) Build a data­base of their every activ­i­ty, [where pos­si­ble doc­u­ment their every move, who they asso­ciate with, their famil­ial & oth­er con­nec­tions]
Databases are cost­ly to devel­op and main­tain and their con­tent is con­stant­ly chang­ing as gang mem­bers move, die, get locked up, buy new cars, divorce, remar­ry, change names, and so on. When used, they can be an effec­tive way of locat­ing sus­pect­ed gang­sters for whom war­rants have been issued and for pro­vid­ing law enforce­ment agen­cies with infor­ma­tion about migrat­ing gang mem­bers. 
(4) Gather intel­li­gence, gath­er intel­li­gence, gath­er intel­li­gence.
(5) Through intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, find ways to divert those mem­bers who may be influ­enced to engage in use­ful activities.

(6) Where pos­si­ble, estab­lish men­tor­ship pro­grams, encour­age cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion in becom­ing men­tors to at-risk youths.
(7) Police local knowl­edge is key, this is not just about one anti-gang oper­a­tion using covert assets, but about lit­er­al­ly every law-enforce­ment asset, every cop on the beat using his or her shift to gath­er intel­li­gence, then pass­ing that intel­li­gence to com­mand­ing offi­cers who must then dis­sem­i­nate that intel­li­gence to the Anti-gang units.
That intel­li­gence should include the name and address of every per­son the beat-cop comes across dur­ing his or her tour. Where pos­si­ble it should include a pho­to­graph to go with the name and address.
Members of the JDF should also work at pro­vid­ing intel­li­gence on routes of escape in the com­mu­ni­ties in which they live or may have poten­tial assets of infor­ma­tion. Knowing where sus­pects live, the kinds of cars they dri­ve, the motor­cy­cles they dri­ve, where their vehi­cles are usu­al­ly parked is crit­i­cal.
(8) Know each gang mem­ber and their par­ents, know their girl­friends, they can always be count­ed on to turn up to see their girl­friends and moth­ers.
Having that intel­li­gence is impor­tant.
(9) Know the mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ties who will sup­port the efforts of the police. Individual offi­cers who are part of anti-gang units must find ways to get their per­son­al cell phone num­bers to those assets. This allows for the free-flow of infor­ma­tion rather than going through the reg­u­lar bureau­crat­ic chan­nels.
(10) Where pos­si­ble sat­u­rate known areas of gang activ­i­ty with uni­formed police. This acts as a deter­rent, as well as serves to dis­rupt their illic­it activ­i­ties. Eventually, gangs move to oth­er areas with sus­tained law enforce­ment sat­u­ra­tion, this allows for com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing and build­ing trust.
The so-called ZOSO’s & declared states of pub­lic emer­gen­cies are proof that sat­u­ra­tion works to a cer­tain degree in low­er­ing crime in areas in which sat­u­ra­tion is employed, but it must be accom­pa­nied by build­ing trust and devel­op­ing assets through those rela­tion­ships for the long haul.
After the gangs have been forced out, it is crit­i­cal that com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing follows.

(11) Experts warn, Gangs, like any oth­er crim­i­nal enter­prise, or any orga­ni­za­tion for that mat­ter, need to com­mu­ni­cate inter­nal­ly in order to main­tain con­trol. The dai­ly activ­i­ties of a street gang gen­er­ate a con­stant stream of infor­ma­tion includ­ing orders from gang lead­ers, warn­ings, tips, threats, gang pro­pa­gan­da and street gos­sip. As gangs grow in size both numer­i­cal­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly, the need for effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes both more impor­tant and dif­fi­cult. Add to this the com­pli­ca­tions caused when senior gang mem­bers are incar­cer­at­ed and the need for secret com­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes more appar­ent. 
For exam­ple, when Adija Palmer (VybzKartel’s) voice was heard on voice-notes talk­ing about how an asso­ciate mis­han­dled his [shoes], it is impor­tant that law-enforce­ment under­stood that he was not talk­ing about shoes, but about guns.
There is much work to be done. It is time that the Government becomes pro-active in get­ting the police up to speed with these strate­gies, with a view to break­ing the back of the mon­ster.
Wishing away crime or worse, set­ting up road­blocks make the police, the mil­i­tary, and the gov­ern­ment look weak and pathet­ic.
I stand ready and will­ing to assist the Government and the secu­ri­ty forces in draft­ing & exe­cut­ing sus­tain­able anti-crime & anti-gang strate­gies that will help to bring the Island’s crime epi­dem­ic under control.

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

If Jamaica is ever to pull back from the brink of anar­chy, the aver­age man on the street who has no voice, no pow­er, must see that the laws of the coun­try applies to all Jamaicans and not just the pow­er­less.
The idea of gov­er­nance is a sacred covenant between the gov­erned and those who gov­ern.
The pow­er in the hands of those who gov­erned is bestowed upon them by those who sub­mit to the con­cept of being gov­erned
For police offi­cers and oth­er offi­cers who are vest­ed with pow­er to detain and or infringe on the rights of indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens, so too are their pow­er of author­i­ty derived from the cit­i­zens.
It is impor­tant than it is rec­og­nized, that where­in there is the appear­ance, (jus­ti­fied or not), that cer­tain seg­ments of the soci­ety is exempt from enforce­ment of the nation’s laws, there tend to be upris­ings and push­back which may take var­i­ous forms depend­ing on the local­i­ty.
Those forms of protests can take sev­er­al forms, rang­ing from the wan­ton break­ing of laws, as a means of get­ting back at the sys­tem they view as cor­rupt or unjust, to open rebel­lion result­ing in the over­throw of governments.

It is for those rea­sons that it is impor­tant that as a soci­ety we con­tin­ue to strive for a coun­try wher­ev­er we are domi­ciled, in which all are equal under the law.
Regardless of the defin­ing socio-eco­nom­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics that are used to sep­a­rate us, it is impor­tant that the laws apply even­ly & just­ly in the eyes of all cit­i­zens.
In the 2016 American Presidential elec­tions a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of the nation’s intel­li­gence agen­cies report­ed that the Russian counter-mea­sure cam­paign was designed to widen the cracks of divi­sion with­in the American soci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly along racial lines.
Those who fol­low the news and cur­rent events would know just how suc­cess­ful those mea­sures turned out to be.
Today, more than three years after those elec­tions and the instal­la­tion of a new pres­i­dent, America remains extreme­ly polar­ized and at war with itself.
If those dis­par­i­ties did not exist they could not have been exploit­ed in a way that is counter to the inter­est of the United States.

Even as the strug­gle con­tin­ues to lev­el the play­ing field in the United States, so too must the fight con­tin­ue to end the intran­si­gent resid­ual effects of colo­nial­ism and the resul­tant caste-sys­tem that has been left behind in Jamaica by the Island’s col­o­niz­ers.
In order to do so, the remain­ing ves­tiges of that caste sys­tem must be bro­ken down. We can begin that process by ensur­ing that all of our peo­ple have equal pro­tec­tion under the law.
When some­one breaks the law he or she can­not be shield­ed from the con­se­quences of their actions based on who they are, or their sta­tion in the soci­ety.
In Israel, the Prime Minister was recent­ly indict­ed on cor­rup­tion charges, in oth­er devel­op­ing coun­tries like Pakistan, we have seen for­mer President Musharraf indict­ed and con­vict­ed in absen­tia.
All across the Globe as coun­tries strug­gle to emerge from the dark­ness of pover­ty into the light of free­dom and democ­ra­cy, pow­er­ful lead­ers have been brought down and made account­able for their crim­i­nal actions.
Jamaican can be no excep­tion in this regard.
It is for those rea­sons that I will for­ev­er stand behind the rule of law and those who cor­rect­ly enforce the nation’s laws with­out fear or favor, mal­ice or ill-will.

Regardless of the out­come of the Kari Douglas arrest, I am heart­ened to see young police offi­cers risk­ing all by stand­ing true to their oaths and mak­ing arrests, even at the per­il of their careers.
As a past mem­ber of the JCF, I was forced to stand up to politi­cians, on sev­er­al occa­sions, many of them believed then, as they do today, that they are above the laws, or that the laws do not apply to them. That same lev­el of con­tempt for the laws, and by exten­sion, those who enforce them, is very self-evi­dent among the wealthy elites as well.
I was trans­ferred because I did exact­ly what the law autho­rized me to do in one inci­dent. A politi­cian still serv­ing in the present admin­is­tra­tion and a cor­rupt senior police offi­cer, col­lud­ed to ship me away from the divi­sion. (Speaking of the same Saint Andrew North)
That did not go down as they planned, the peo­ple who knew my ser­vice took to the streets, with block­ade and fire.
The Commissioner of Police, Herman Ricketts, was forced to send me back. That day I arrived to a hero’s wel­come from the peo­ple I served, among them, indi­vid­u­als I had pre­vi­ous­ly arrest­ed.
That day will for­ev­er live in my mind. Policing is about being fair, just, firm, respect­ful, hon­est and impar­tial.
It was those attrib­ut­es that inspired offend­ers I had inves­ti­gat­ed and arrest­ed and who were suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed and did time to seek me out after they did their time to thank me for doing my job fair­ly.
One man came back and thanked me for not shoot­ing him when I took a loaded gun from his waist­band.
He pro­fuse­ly thanked me for not shoot­ing him after he did his two years in prison.
It nev­er crossed my mind that shoot­ing him was an option when I took that loaded weapon from him. 

The Attorney General of Jamaica today, poignant­ly and metic­u­lous­ly cleared up some broad ambi­gu­i­ties with­in the pub­lic space on the issue of peo­ple who are exempt under the Disaster Risk Management Act.
Those mis­con­cep­tions include, but are not con­fined to the idea, that because one is exempt by virtue of their job descrip­tion they can­not be found to be in breach of the Disaster Risk Management Act.
Mrs. Malahoo Forte explained, that even if one is exempt, he or she can­not abuse that exemp­tion by run­ning per­son­al errands or to stop at a rum bar for drinks, and then claim exemp­tion.
The exemp­tion must be relat­ed exact­ly to that per­son­’s pro­fes­sion­al func­tion which neces­si­tat­ed the exemp­tion in the first place.
Also, when asked to pro­vide proof of exemp­tion, the exempt par­ty has a duty to do so. A dri­ver’s license is not proof of exemp­tion.
Additionally, a police offi­cer doing his duty has no bur­den to know whether a per­son is a parish coun­cilor, mem­ber of par­lia­ment, or a doctor.

When the police seek out and arrest a young man who vio­lat­ed the Disaster Risk Management Act, and when that young man apol­o­gized pub­licly, even as he still awaits his day in court, there should be zero tol­er­ance for any parish coun­cilor or prime min­is­ter who breach­es the act and believes that curs­ing out and abus­ing the police offi­cers is accept­able.
Corruption is an ene­my of growth, cor­rup­tion comes in many forms.
Regardless of who you are, under these cir­cum­stances that we have nev­er encoun­tered before, when stopped by the police tell them who you are and that you are exempt.
As I said before, that exemp­tion would be applic­a­ble based on whether the per­son was act­ing in an offi­cial capac­i­ty or not.
If the offi­cer is deter­mined to arrest you, sub­mit to the arrest and have your day in court.
I find it dif­fi­cult to believe that they would decide to arrest if they were not abused ver­bal­ly.
The only thing I fault the police offi­cers with, in Kari Douglas inci­dent is that they allowed her to dri­ve to the Constant Spring police sta­tion to be charged.
They were more than lenient.
She should have been hand­cuffed and tak­en to the police sta­tion, exact­ly like that young man was before her.
We can­not have two dif­fer­ent stan­dards for the same tiny country.

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

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We have been real­i­bly informed that a meet­ing is sched­uled by the Police Officers Association (POA) between the Deputy Superintended who alleged­ly authored the com­plaint in the Kari Douglas inci­dent involv­ing SSP Steve Mcgregor, and McGregor him­self.
We await the out­come of that meet­ing. it is also alleged that Kari Douglas who has been a parish coun­cil­lor for the PNP before switch­ing par­ties have had sev­er­al encoun­ters with law enforce­ment pri­or and was even arrest­ed but have not been held account­able because of her famil­ial and polit­i­cal affiliations.

In the mean­time, the Police Federation released the fol­low­ing state­ment on the inci­dent.
PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release, April 8, 2020, Kingston Jamaica.
The Police Federation has come out in sup­port of its mem­bers fol­low­ing the arrest of Jamaica Labour Party coun­cilor, Kari Douglas, who was arrest­ed under the Disaster Risk Management Act.

The Federation said, that notwith­stand­ing the exemp­tion, Miss Douglas should have giv­en a prop­er account of her­self, and should have had prop­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that would have explained her exemp­tion.
The Federation says the wan­ton dis­re­spect met­ed out to police offi­cers by some politi­cians is unbe­com­ing of pub­lic fig­ures and our nation’s leaders.

According to Detective Sergeant Rowe, chair­man of the Police Federation, this is not the first alter­ca­tion Miss Douglas has had with per­sons who were car­ry­ing out their legit­i­mate func­tion. He said, whilst not going into details as the mat­ter is under inves­ti­ga­tion, the account of the coun­cilor’s actions were very dis­turb­ing and trou­bling.
The Federation says they will stand by their mem­bers in the law­ful and pro­fes­sion­al exe­cu­tion of their duties, as no one is above the law.

THE APPEALS PROCESS

The court of appeals has ruled to reaf­firm the deci­sion of the tri­al court in the case of dance­hall DJ, Adidjah Palmer, oth­er­wise knowns as Vybz Kartel, and the two accused who were con­vict­ed along with him.
Attorneys rep­re­sent­ing the trio, President of the Senate Tom Tavares Finson, Valerie Neita-Robertson, Bert Samuels, & Oswett Smith are all dis­ap­point­ed in the deci­sion of the court.
It is nat­ur­al for the defense attor­ney’s to feign anger or sur­prise, or both, when they do not get their desired out­comes.
And so Finson was out­raged at the length of time it took for the court to arrive at the ver­dict it did.
“This is a trav­es­ty, it is unprece­dent­ed and it is out­ra­geous … and the Privy Council will no doubt have some­thing to say about that,” Finson told local journalists.

In December of 2019, Finson, wrote to the court with a view to find­ing out when a deci­sion would be made in the case. At the time 18-months had passed with­out a deci­sion.
One day before the ver­dict of the appel­late court was hand­ed down, I too won­dered why this deci­sion took the time it did.
As far as we know there has been no answer to that ques­tion, but it is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that the deci­sion of the court was a unan­i­mous one by the pan­el of three judges.
The defense attor­neys say they ful­ly expect­ed to go to the privy coun­cil, the final court of appeals based in London.
The main accused Palmer is a man of means so I’m sure attor­neys are not con­strained about the length to which they will go to get their way.
It is dif­fi­cult how­ev­er to see how they will receive the out­comes t they are hop­ing for in a crim­i­nal tri­al when in which they are not mak­ing argu­ments of uncon­sti­tu­tion­al actions against their clients.
We’ll see.….….

INCARCERATION

In recent times infor­ma­tion came to the fore that Kartel has con­tin­ued his record­ing career from behind bars. People close to the con­vict­ed mur­der­er have sought to down­play those claims and have argued that he had a port­fo­lio of unre­leased music that is just now being released.
But crit­ics are not so sure, they adamant­ly claim that issues the artist talks about were not around at the time he was incar­cer­at­ed.
More recent­ly he was alleged to have used a cell­phone from his cell to record and make an insta­gram post.
After an out­cry in which many claimed that Kartel is receiv­ing spe­cial treat­ment as a for­mer star, a search of his cell was alleged­ly car­ried out and items of con­tra­band were alleged­ly found in his cell.

I am just as hung-ho as any­one when it comes to crim­i­nals pay­ing their debt to soci­ety. I am also all for there to be no spe­cial treat­ment met­ed out to any con­vict­ed per­son, par­tic­u­lar­ly per­sons con­vict­ed for com­mit­ting vio­lent crimes.
On the oth­er hand, how­ev­er, if I was doing life and (a) I had the resources to be able to acquire some of the trap­pings free­dom allows, and (b) there are cor­rupt offi­cials will­ing to acqui­esce to my demands for a price I would cer­tain­ly want to have those trap­pings free­dom allows.
The real­i­ty is that even though we may feel one way or the oth­er about con­vict­ed crim­i­nals, we should not direct our anger at the peo­ple who are locked up but at the pub­lic offi­cials who cor­rupt­ly sell their dig­ni­ty whether for a few dol­lars or because they are star-struck.
Wherever there are oppor­tu­ni­ties for rewards there will be peo­ple will­ing to take advan­tage. It is for that rea­son that inci­dents like the afore­men­tioned per­sist in Kartel’s, it is for those same rea­sons they per­sist wher­ev­er there are pris­ons and jails the world over.

REMEDIATING THE BREACHES

It is for those rea­sons that I am ful­ly in agree­ment with the Opposition spokesper­son on Justice, Donna Scott Mottley who has called for a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into the actions of cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers mon­i­tor­ing incar­cer­at­ed dance­hall artiste Vybz Kartel, fol­low­ing a recent seizure of con­tra­band from his cell.
Where I dis­agree with her is that there should be an inves­ti­ga­tion involv­ing those mon­i­tor­ing Kartel. The sys­tem just does not work that way, sure there should be an inves­ti­ga­tion in this inci­dent but it should not be about any indi­vid­ual inmate.
It is com­mon knowl­edge that there is wide­spread cor­rup­tion in all of the gov­ern­men­t’s ser­vices, the depart­ment of cor­rec­tions is no excep­tion.
Nevertheless, the head of the depart­ment should be hauled before a House com­mit­tee to explain what is being done about con­tra­band enter­ing the nation’s pris­ons.
It is not aways cor­rup­tion that allows for these breach­es, incom­pe­tence plays a part, and some­times a short­age of offi­cers may allow for breach­es to occur.
Nevertheless, the com­mis­sion­er should be brought in to explain what step is being tak­en to reme­di­ate this issue and if he can­not stop the breech­es he should be shown the door.

Last year the com­mis­sion­er of cor­rec­tions Ina Hunter was essen­tial­ly demot­ed and trans­ferred to the post of Chief Programme Officer in the Ministry of nation­al secu­ri­ty.
Lt Colonel Gary Rowe a vet­er­an offi­cer of 32-years was appoint­ed to the post.
You may have missed the obvi­ous, but as far as posi­tions of pow­er go, this admin­is­tra­tion in pow­er, is of the view that past offi­cers of the (JDF) Jamaica Defence Force, are a panacea to all of the nation’s prob­lems. (See the com­mis­sion­er of police, et-al)
Because this per­cep­tion has been cre­at­ed and foist­ed upon our col­lec­tive intel­lect, it is pru­dent to point out that not only have they not done bet­ter at what­ev­er posi­tions they have been ele­vat­ed to, in many cas­es the data shows that they have done expo­nen­tial­ly worse than oth­ers before them.
Notwithstanding, the lie seems to have tak­en hold and so there is no out­cry when they fail. The gen­er­al con­sen­sus seems to be that if they fail then no one could have done bet­ter.
This mind­set is preva­lent even among those who ought to know bet­ter.
It is arguably the rea­son that there is no call for fir­ing the com­mis­sion­er of cor­rec­tions in this mat­ter. In fact, there has been noth­ing but silence on all fronts.
Oh, and while we are on the sub­ject, vio­lent crime con­tin­ues to esca­late and there is no out­cry, no demand to change the com­mis­sion­er of police.
Because as you know he is from the army, if he can­not fix the prob­lem it can­not be fixed.[sarcasm]
Such blind idio­cy is the rea­son we are at a stand­still, spin­ning our wheels as a nation.

Which brings me to the final thought. The job of the over­sight agency INDECOM we were told is to inves­ti­gate inci­dents of abuse by the secu­ri­ty forces.
Withing its man­date is the JCF, JDF, & cor­rec­tions depart­ments.
It seems, how­ev­er, that between demo­niz­ing the police and cry­ing like a lit­tle bitch, there is no time left for the lit­tle pow­er-hun­gry turd of an INDECOM com­mis­sion­er Terrence Williams, to actu­al­ly do some­thing for the huge salary he is receiv­ing.
He found time to com­plain just days ago, that the gov­ern­ment did not give him and his bunch of do-noth­ing cronies, exclu­sion from the list of exempt­ed orga­ni­za­tions under the new cur­few order.
In a let­ter to the min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty, the lit­tle Napoleonic nar­cis­sist bitched that, “cit­i­zen reas­sur­ance across all sec­tors is crit­i­cal, espe­cial­ly dur­ing times of a glob­al cri­sis such as this COVID-19 virus. Curfew impo­si­tions are nec­es­sary and ful­ly under­stood, but INDECOM’s remit also pro­vides com­mu­ni­ty reas­sur­ance in this dif­fi­cult time where the risk of cit­i­zens’ rights are fur­ther lim­it­ed”.

In what is now a glob­al pan­dem­ic, one in which we have no idea when we will reach a plateau, this crazed pow­er-hun­gry, self-absorbed man wants every­thing to be about him.
At a time when the secu­ri­ty forces in coun­try after coun­try, are strug­gling to get cit­i­zens to stay off the streets, Terrence Williams wants to be on the streets get­ting in the way of the police.
Because if the media isn’t tak­ing about Terrence Williams, he has to find a way to inject him­self into the nar­ra­tive for his per­son­al rel­e­vance.
You sim­ply can­not make this up.

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

The court of appeals has issued its ver­dict in the Vybz Kartel mur­der case: The three-judge pan­el reaf­firmed the deci­sion of guilt the tri­al court hand­ed down to the three accused mur­der­ers in 2011.
We applaud the deci­sion of the court not to inter­fere with the just deci­sion of the tri­al court, or to be blind­ed by sta­tus, or an igno­rant, hedo­nis­tic idol­a­trous pop-cul­ture in its deci­sion mak­ing.
By allow­ing this ver­dict of guilt to stand, it gives law-abid­ing Jamaicans hope. Hope that all is not lost. That even though our coun­try faces grave dan­ger from anar­chists, we have the abil­i­ty to pull back from the edge of the abyss, one step at a time, using the rule of law as our pointer.

The appel­late court did not hand down a rul­ing as to whether the [sen­tence] hand­ed down by the tri­al judge will stand or be reduced.
The court asserts that the tri­o’s defense team can make a sub­mis­sion for a reduced sen­tence if they chose to.
This is a stan­dard pro­to­col for appel­late courts to respond this way.
On the oth­er hand, the defense team of the trio of mur­der­ers, now have to con­tend with the dual sce­nario of whether to (a) seek redress from the Privy Council in England, which is the final court of appeals, with no new evi­dence or infor­ma­tion of inves­tiga­tive, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al or judi­cial mis­con­duct or mis­takes, or (b) to file a motion to the court for a reduced sen­tence with no new evi­dence that would go to the mit­i­ga­tion of those sentences.

Actions have con­se­quences, it as about time that the organs of gov­ern­ment are stood up to defend the Jamaican con­sti­tu­tion, the rule of law and by exten­sion the Jamaican peo­ple.
Those who would act con­trary to, and in defi­ance of our laws and norms, must be made aware in no uncer­tain terms, that the con­se­quences of their actions are going to be severe and unequiv­o­cal, regard­less of who they are or who they know.
And to the seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion that is deter­mined to cre­ate anar­chy and to give sup­port & suc­cor to law­less­ness, let this be a les­son to you that a new day is dawn­ing, you will be made to respect the laws of our coun­try.
This writer salutes the court for look­ing at the evi­dence and mak­ing a deci­sion that is in line with the law.
And most of all “letting the deci­sion stand” [stare decisis]

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

After an inor­di­nate­ly long time con­sid­er­ing the Vybz Kartel appeals, the court of appeals has indi­cat­ed to the lawyers of Kartel and his two co-accused that a ver­dict is forth­com­ing at 9:00 am Friday, April 3^rd.
Vybz Kartel, Shawn Storm, Kahira Jones, and Andre St. John were found guilty of mur­der in rela­tion to the killing of Clive ‘Lizard’ Williams in 2011.
The Appeals court has been con­sid­er­ing this case for approx­i­mate­ly 21 months, which gives rise to ques­tions as to what could have caused this appeals process to be tak­ing this long.
In December of 2019, lead defense lawyer for Kartel, Queen’s Counsel, Tom Tavares Finson, wrote to the court with a view to find­ing out when a deci­sion would be made in the case.
The court wrote to Finson that the three-judge pan­el’s deci­sion of his clien­t’s mur­der con­vic­tion was at an advanced stage.
We are in a new year and into the fourth month, final­ly, the court has indi­cat­ed that a ver­dict will be forth­com­ing.
But this writer can not feel con­fi­dent in the process of jus­tice one way or the oth­er when (a) this high pro­file appeals process has tak­en so long, & (b) giv­en the past lib­er­al his­to­ry of the court.
The ques­tion on my mind is why has it tak­en so long for this pan­el to reach a deci­sion in a case that has already been heard by a com­pe­tent jurist, the now-retired Justice Lennox Campbell?

No Jamaican who believes in the process of jus­tice and fair­ness should feel any degree of com­fort that this court is delib­er­at­ing this case.
The court of appeals has a his­to­ry of upend­ing per­fect­ly decid­ed cas­es and throw­ing out the con­vic­tions of dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers on the flim­si­est of alle­ga­tions of inves­tiga­tive, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al, or judi­cial imper­fec­tion.
That is nev­er how the sys­tem was sup­posed to work.
As a police offi­cer involved in seri­ous cas­es, I saw all too well how pow­er­ful peo­ple with mon­ey were able to have the ver­dict they want­ed at the appeals court lev­el.
I have seen up close how mon­ey and good lawyers can make mir­a­cles hap­pen and per­fect­ly decid­ed cas­es are dis­missed on the most flim­sy and fraud­u­lent of alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety or mis­take.
The appeals courts process does not con­sid­er the mur­dered or the oth­er­wise aggriev­ed vic­tims, or the heinous crimes per­pe­trat­ed on them by the Island’s vicious mur­der­ers.
All that seems to mat­ter to the Islands appeals process is that there is main­tained a purist stan­dard that con­sid­ers only the con­vict­ed crim­i­nal, regard­less of the heinous nature of the crimes they have been con­vict­ed on.

Just today I spoke to a process with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem on a social media plat­form, that process is known as {stare deci­sis.} [In in the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure I am not a lawyer].
Stare deci­sis is a legal doc­trine that oblig­ates courts to fol­low his­tor­i­cal cas­es when mak­ing a rul­ing on a sim­i­lar case. Stare deci­sis ensures that cas­es with sim­i­lar sce­nar­ios and facts are approached in the same way. Simply put, it binds courts to fol­low legal prece­dents set by pre­vi­ous deci­sions.
[Stare deci­sis] is a Latin term mean­ing “to stand by that which is decid­ed.“
Before I go on I am oblig­at­ed to also say that I have no evi­dence one way or the oth­er as to the guilt or inno­cence of either or all of the three con­vict­ed mur­der­ers.
Additionally, regard­less of how hor­ri­ble a per­son may be, no per­son should be con­vict­ed wrong­ful­ly for a crime he or she did not com­mit.
On the oth­er hand, it is a gross mis­car­riage of jus­tice, when a court at what­ev­er lev­el, allows con­vict­ed crim­i­nals to walk free because of minor tech­ni­cal­i­ties which do not detract from the body of evi­dence that was pre­sent­ed at tri­al, or worse, because they have been cor­rupt­ly com­pro­mised.
Jamaica’s court of appeal has been known time and again to ignore the estab­lished doc­trine of stare deci­sis and over­turn the tri­al court’s find­ings.
In some instances, the court went out of its way to allow new­ly man­u­fac­tured evi­dence into the appeals process, none of which was at the tri­al stage.
The case of Kartel and his two cronies also saw the appeals court allow in new evi­dence from the defense that was not at the tri­al 9 years ago.
An appeals court has no duty to inter­fere with a ver­dict that was arrived at fair­ly, just­ly and with­out malfea­sance.
An appeals court should let stand a ver­dict unless there is new sub­stan­ti­at­ed evi­dence of inves­tiga­tive, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al, or judi­cial mis­con­duct.
A ver­dict arrived at with­out those bul­let points should not be inter­fered with by an appel­late court.

The appeals court has a duty to the nation, not to pop­u­lar cul­ture, not to demigods, not to trail lawyers, but to the rule of law, to make a rea­soned deci­sion that even if there are minor imper­fec­tions in the prosecution’s case they do not rise to enough to change the ver­dict.
An acquit­tal would basi­cal­ly set up the state to even­tu­al­ly pay out tens, poten­tial­ly hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to three mur­der con­victs.
A retri­al of this case would also be the same as an acquit­tal as there is no way they would con­vict these con­vict­ed mur­der­ers 9‑years lat­er using the same evi­dence and wit­ness­es.
Literally, every demigod that has been removed from the streets has been removed either by police bul­lets, street jus­tice, or by the United States.
The court sys­tem has been an abysmal fail­ure when it comes to pros­e­cut­ing, con­vict­ing, and retain­ing the con­vic­tions of the very few it man­ages to con­vict, pre­cise­ly because of the vast lib­er­al­ism at the appel­late lev­el.
This fail­ure has turned our coun­try into one of the most vio­lent coun­tries on earth. Violent mur­der­ers have very lit­tle regard for the process. They have no fear that the sys­tem has the guts or the integri­ty to con­vict them, and when con­vinced, they are com­fort­able they will be able to buy the out­comes they desire.

UPDATED

The court of appeals has issued its ver­dict: The three-judge pan­el reaf­firmed the deci­sion of guilt the tri­al court hand­ed down to the three accused mur­der­ers in 2011.
We applaud the deci­sion of the court not to inter­fere with the just deci­sion of the tri­al court, or to be blind­ed by sta­tus or pop-cul­ture in its deci­sion mak­ing.
By allow­ing this ver­dict of guilt to stand, it gives law-abid­ing Jamaicans hope, that all is not lost. That even though our coun­try faces grave dan­ger from anar­chists, we have the abil­i­ty to pull back from the edge of the abyss, one step at a time, using the rule of law.

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

Baltimore, MD — During this time of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, sense­less vio­lence has con­tin­ued to increase in Baltimore, Maryland. Mayor Jack Young is appeal­ing to the res­i­dents to stop the mass shoot­ings so local hos­pi­tal can be bet­ter used to treat those infect­ed with COVID-19 instead of the vic­tims of crime.

To date, the city of Baltimore has 8 con­firmed cas­es, but the city has also seen an increase in vio­lent crimes. Last Tuesday, sev­en peo­ple were shot in the Madison Park neigh­bor­hood and all were tak­en to local hospitals.

Young urged peo­ple to stop the vio­lence because “we can­not clog up our hos­pi­tals and their beds with peo­ple that are being shot sense­less­ly because we’re going to need those beds for peo­ple infect­ed with the coro­n­avirus. And it could be your moth­er, your grand­moth­er or one of your rel­a­tives. So take that into con­sid­er­a­tion,” Young told CBS News.

Commissioner Michael Harrison said the inci­dent that hap­pened on Tuesday is still being inves­ti­gat­ed. A city offi­cer report­ed­ly chased the alleged sus­pect in the shoot­ing as he was flee­ing the scene.

The offi­cer tried to shoot the sus­pect, but it has yet been known if the sus­pect was struck. The offi­cer, how­ev­er, sus­tained some minor injuries.

The police depart­ment said they are increas­ing their vis­i­bil­i­ty in the areas where the crime has increased.

“For those of you who want to con­tin­ue to shoot and kill peo­ple of this city, we’re not going to tol­er­ate it,” Young said. “We’re going to come after you and we’re going to get you.”

It is hard to believe these things hap­pen, that these peo­ple who are paid by tax­pay­ers could under any cir­cum­stances do these things to the very peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect and serve.
In this video you will see for your­selves, two mem­bers of the NYPD not only plant evi­dence on a total­ly inno­cent man but phys­i­cal­ly bru­tal­ized a man who was still recov­er­ing from a stab wound to his abdomen.

After plant­i­ng mar­i­jua­na into the car they bru­tal­ized the injured man who had to be tak­en to the hos­pi­tal where to add insult to injury the man was hand­cuffed to a hos­pi­tal bed for five days.
Not know­ing that the video exist­ed the man plead guilt to the pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na charge.
The video was obtained through a free­dom of infor­ma­tion request done by the [Intercept].
The trag­ic thing is that the NYPD knew that the two crim­i­nals plant­ed evi­dence and bru­tal­ized this poor man, yet the depart­ment did noth­ing and allowed a total­ly inno­cent man to plead guilty to a crime he nev­er com­mit­ted.
Both crim­i­nals are still on the NYPD.

Continued reports that mem­bers of JATOO the Jamaica Association of Transport Owners and Operators, (taxi oper­a­tors to be pre­cise), are refus­ing to trans­port nurs­es out of igno­rant fear of the COVID-19 virus must be met with deci­sive gov­ern­men­tal action.
The Government had issued a warn­ing to taxi oper­a­tors who were engag­ing in this prac­tice, but warn­ings are not enforce­able if there are no laws to hold peo­ple account­able.
In times of cri­sis, worth­while gov­ern­ments leap into action and quick­ly draft leg­is­la­tion to deal with new even­tu­al­i­ties.
It is out of cri­sis sit­u­a­tions like the COVID-19 that loop­holes in our crim­i­nal codes are exposed and also exploit­ed.
This pan­dem­ic is a war, it is forc­ing peo­ple to change their ways of think­ing and their ways of liv­ing.
As a con­se­quence, the par­lia­ment must also spend extra time to come up with new leg­is­la­tion and get them to the Governor-General to be signed into law.
Warnings will not cut it, in the same ways that beg­ging crim­i­nals not to com­mit crimes does noth­ing to stop vio­lent crimes.

Some taxi oper­a­tors are decent peo­ple try­ing to make a liv­ing.
But it is unde­ni­able that among them, is a hard­core cadre of crim­i­nals who are extreme­ly dis­rup­tive, and law­less.
They fight & injury police offi­cers when they try to enforce the nation’s traf­fic laws, and what obtains as a par­lia­ment has done noth­ing to add teeth to the laws which would pro­tect our police offi­cers.
They kid­nap rape and mur­der women and lit­tle girls and turn their pas­sen­gers over to be robbed and killed.
They block streets and cre­ate pan­de­mo­ni­um, result­ing in major dis­rup­tions across the eco­nom­ic front of the coun­try.
It is for those rea­sons that as this cri­sis inten­si­fies, these crim­i­nals not be allowed to con­tin­ue to have their way and be a law unto them­selves by refus­ing to trans­port our health work­ers.
In order to bring this insan­i­ty to heel, the Parliament must go into an emer­gency ses­sion as if this is a shoot­ing war, and enact leg­is­la­tion to ensure the smooth run­ning of the coun­try.
Leaders lead, not beg or threat­en law­less peo­ple to obey laws that do not exist.
Draft new leg­is­la­tion now that makes it a crime to refuse to car­ry our nurs­es & oth­er health work­ers, pun­ish­able by a stiff fine on the first offense.
Any oth­er breach of the law should result in impris­on­ment and the total revo­ca­tion of all priv­i­leges to ever oper­ate a pub­lic pas­sen­ger vehi­cle again.

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

Police cor­rup­tion is a major rea­son that there is a lack of trust between law enforce­ment and the pub­lic.
As a for­mer police offi­cer myself, I always try to under­stand the point of view of offi­cers.
Over the many years after leav­ing law enforce­ment I have con­tin­ued to give my sup­port to the rule of law, abide by laws wher­ev­er I live, and to sup­port law enforce­ment to the best of my abil­i­ties.
This man wear­ing the uni­form in this sto­ry is not an iso­lat­ed indi­vid­ual or a bad apple in an oth­er­wise good bar­rel.
More and more it is becom­ing clear­er and clear­er that these types of behav­ior are not the excep­tion but more the rule when it comes to African-Americans.
At a time when (a) we see inno­cent black peo­ple released after spend­ing decades in prison for crimes, they did not com­mit.
And (d) peo­ple are exe­cut­ed in some states even when their guilt is in seri­ous doubt it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that the gov­ern­ment stop pro­tect­ing these racist criminals.

There is no group of peo­ple who are all bad, but when the peo­ple who are giv­en the respon­si­bil­i­ty to enforce the laws use those pow­ers in unscrupu­lous ways, they are no longer deserv­ing of respect or def­er­ence.
In actu­al­i­ty, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cell phone videos of police act­ing in ways that are bla­tant­ly thug­gish and crim­i­nal should not be pro­tect­ed by the government.

This crim­i­nal was report­ed­ly giv­en a secre­tive sweet deal of a whop­ping $123,000 by West Linn city lead­ers, even as he was accused of the alle­ga­tions he con­fessed to as well as drunk dri­ving alle­ga­tions against him by two of his own patrol officers.

In anoth­er report­ing by [koin​.com], this dis­graced cop even tried to extort a city leader, demand­ing an addi­tion­al $40,000 to $50,000, more than was approved, or else he would go pub­lic with embar­rass­ing per­son­al infor­ma­tion about her. https://​www​.koin​.com/​l​o​c​a​l​/​c​l​a​c​k​a​m​a​s​-​c​o​u​n​t​y​/​w​e​s​t​-​l​i​n​n​-​n​e​w​-​f​b​i​-​p​r​o​b​e​-​o​f​-​e​x​-​c​h​i​e​f​-​s​o​u​g​ht/