There is absolute­ly no one in our coun­try that has not been touched one way or anoth­er by vio­lent crime.
That speaks vol­umes about the emo­tion­al toll it takes on indi­vid­u­als and the nation as a col­lec­tive. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly trau­mat­ic to those who are not con­tribut­ing to the wave of law­less­ness that has tak­en over our streets and our schools.
As I sat to write this arti­cle, I am also hum­bled that I was hon­ored by the beau­ti­ful daugh­ter and moth­er of my life­long friend Elvis Richards, or ( Dozi), who offered me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to say a few words in trib­ute to his life.

Elvis, a lov­ing kind (Rastaman), became a vic­tim of the rabid crim­i­nal­i­ty that has now char­ac­ter­ized our coun­try.
Elvis loved his coun­try, so much so that he would ask me (suh wen yu a cum bak cum liv Inna di place bredrin)?

Here was a man work­ing to take care of his fam­i­ly, tak­en away by rabid degen­er­ates, and for what.….. a few thou­sand dol­lars in his pock­et? His life was tak­en from him, leav­ing his fam­i­ly to grieve, includ­ing his minor child, left to grow up with­out her lov­ing dad.
This sto­ry is of hun­dreds of fam­i­lies each year who do not have lav­ish police pro­tec­tion or cas­tles in the hills. Across the length and breadth of the tiny Island and all across the dias­po­ra, the con­se­quences of these killings res­onate and impact the psy­che of those left behind.
The dai­ly killings have now been baked into the cul­ture; they no longer evoke alarm, nei­ther do they gar­ner grass­roots resis­tance against them.
Rather than lis­ten to what works from peo­ple who have actu­al­ly worked at this, the nation’s lead­ers embarked on cos­met­ic ini­tia­tives designed to pla­cate the nation, designed to give a false sense of com­fort, that just around the cor­ner a respite awaits, with­out doing the hard work to guar­an­tee it.
Because of this admin­is­tra­tion’s mis­guid­ed stance on crime, we have seen a rapid and sus­tained rise in vio­lent crimes, but that is not all, the police are lit­er­al­ly unable to enforce the nation’s road traf­fic Act, as they are being attacked even as they try to write tick­ets to the law­less motorist who plies the road­ways as taxi-oper­a­tors. In the schools, the stu­dents now fight their teach­ers.
No laborites, I don’t want to hear your shit that the PNP is to blame; your par­ty is in pow­er now; save it.
This is big­ger than nar­row par­ti­san politics.

And now we hear the top-most leader admit that the lev­el of vio­lent crimes across the coun­try is out­side of the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to deal with.
The coun­try is at the mer­cy of the killers.
On tak­ing office, this Prime Minister decid­ed that he want­ed a pol­i­cy of hug­ging up and cod­dling the most vio­lent crim­i­nals in the coun­try.
No, he did not actu­al­ly say he want­ed to hug them, but his attacks on polic­ing prac­tices and pro­ce­dures, some­thing he knows noth­ing about, all but told the crim­i­nals they had a friend in Jamaica house. They already knew they had one in INDECOM.
When the prime min­is­ter was embark­ing on this path, I wrote sev­er­al arti­cles warn­ing that he was open­ing up a pan­do­ra box, that the nation would not be able to con­tain what comes out of it.
Talk about police kick­ing in doors to peo­ple’s hous­es, talk about not on my watch will they, (the police), con­tin­ue to shoot peo­ple, was Holness’s call­ing card, as he embraced the anti-police activist Terrence Williams.
In the streets, the mur­der­ers were laugh­ing; they knew they had a friend in this guy.

Instead of hir­ing a police com­mis­sion­er who knew about polic­ing, Holness hired his friend Antony Anderson, an army man, and made him com­mis­sion­er of police. Not that a com­mis­sion­er who came up with­in the ranks is a panacea to what’s going on, but at least he would be able to speak to the nation defin­i­tive­ly on the issue.
Instead of insti­tut­ing train­ing for the police that gives them the edge they need to fight the crim­i­nals, he insist­ed on human rights train­ing, not just for the police but for the mil­i­tary, and placed them in some­thing cre­at­ed and named Zones Of Special Operations or (ZOSOS’s).

Officers start­ed leav­ing in droves rather than try to moti­vate and incen­tivize them to stay; Holness dou­bled down on dra­con­ian mea­sures designed not just to make it dif­fi­cult for dis­grun­tled offi­cers to leave but crim­i­nal­ize them with stiff prison time if they fail to give advanced warn­ings that they intend to resign.
Not only are these mea­sures uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, but they also did not stop the attri­tion. And so Holness was forced to send stu­dent con­sta­bles to man his ZOSOS & SOEs for a frac­tion of what they should be paid and for pro­tract­ed peri­ods of time over which they should be exposed with­out the appro­pri­ate train­ing.
The police are in an exis­ten­tial fight with zero back­ings from the gov­ern­ment. The failed Commissioner of Police Antony Anderson has no solu­tion to the killings; he does not know what to do, he was nev­er a cop.
At the same time, his lev­el of fail­ure has been far worse than any com­mis­sion­er of police who has come up through the ranks.
The silence is deaf­en­ing; there is no demand to fire the com­mis­sion­er com­ing from the usu­al quar­ters. What we hear now (crick­ets) is deaf­en­ing silence because Anderson is their boy.
Set of fuck­ing sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrites.
It is only the gov­ern­men­t’s stat­ed com­mit­ment that will send a mes­sage to the crim­i­nals that the coun­try’s lead­er­ship is solid­ly behind the secu­ri­ty forces.
Now it is abun­dant­ly clear that ZOSO’s & SOE’s will not stop the killings; they have thrown up their hands in despair.
They dug them­selves a hole of pre­tense from which they can­not remove them­selves.
There is only one solu­tion to deal­ing with these ver­min, and that is to exter­mi­nate them.
The pre­ferred route to remov­ing them from soci­ety is to arrest them and have them face the courts. But in Jamaica, even the damn judges seem to be in bed with the mur­der­ers.
That leaves just one solu­tion, but the pop­u­la­tion has its head too far up its own ass that it is stuck talk­ing about the human rights of mur­der­ers while no one talks about the human rights of those who have their lives tak­en from them.
A few cars and the like are not a com­mit­ment to law enforce­ment.
This Administration has stead­fast­ly refused to step back from its com­mit­ment to obstruct the efforts of law enforce­ment; as a con­se­quence, the nation must con­tin­ue to weep and bury its dead.
Until the peo­ple decide to rise and do some­thing about it themselves.

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.

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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. 

ANOTHER CASE TO BE MADE FOR A NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION DATA BASE

The police said that they received reports of loud explo­sions com­ing from the area about 9:10 pm, and went to inves­ti­gate. According to the police, on their arrival, four peo­ple were seen — two men and two women. The premis­es was searched and sev­er­al 9mm spent cas­ings were observed on the ground. A black 9mm Glock pis­tol with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing one 9mm round was found on top of fur­ni­ture in a sec­tion of the house, while one of the men hand­ed over a black Glock case to the officers.

Ammunition and a car­ry­ing case recov­ered at the scene

According to the police, when they enquired about the weapon, they were told that the firearm belonged to a licensed firearm hold­er who is present­ly over­seas; how­ev­er, no firearm doc­u­men­ta­tion was pre­sent­ed. The two men were sub­se­quent­ly arrested.

Identification report­ed­ly tak­en from one of the men

This sto­ry has been updated.…

WE NEED THIS SHOOTER OFF THE STREET NOW, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

Please be on the look­out for this punk, he is report­ed­ly from Lilliput in Saint James. He is said to be in and out of police lock­up but has not been sen­tenced for any of his crimes.

It is report­ed that ear­li­er this morn­ing he opened fire on a police patrol in Barrett Town. Cons Aarons who was one of the offi­cers in the vehi­cle was report­ed­ly shot in the face and has been under­go­ing treat­ment at an Area Hospital.

If you see this man do not approach him, noti­fy the near­est police sta­tion or sim­ply call 119 and have him brought to jus­tice as soon as possible.

I met a young man who was vis­it­ing the States from Jamaica recent­ly, he was intro­duced to me by his cousin, an asso­ciate of mine.
It was the sec­ond time that he had come by, hav­ing been in to see me when he first came into the coun­try.
This time he was get­ting ready to leave to go back home. Having met him the first time, I had already formed a favor­able opin­ion of him.
Great kid who just want­ed to enjoy life and have a good time, all while think­ing he was the best thing ever to have hap­pened to girls.
I saw a lot of me in him when I was his age, and so we hit it off immediately.

My per­cep­tions of him were the same pos­i­tive opin­ions I have always had as a police offi­cer work­ing the streets & alley­ways of Grant’s Pen Gully, Birdsucker Lane, Whitehall Terrace, Ackee-walk and the count­less oth­er depressed com­mu­ni­ties of Saint Andrew North, includ­ing Blackwood Terrace where I was shot one dark night in 88.
(When push comes to shove) as they say, the vast major­i­ty of those young peo­ple are good peo­ple who sim­ply want a chance.
The con­ver­sa­tion we had between us even­tu­al­ly turned to the high lev­els of vio­lent crime in our country.

And soon he vol­un­teered that his father is a politi­cian with some means in the cen­ter of the Island.
He vol­un­teered how he was arrest­ed by a (police-bway)[sic]. He rev­eled in the fact that bystanders berat­ed the offi­cer and told him he had no right arrest­ing (name with­held) bway.
More than all, he seemed ecsta­t­ic that the offi­cer was told that he would be out of the Parish with­in a week.
He detailed how peo­ple went to the sta­tion and demand­ed his release and that oth­er offi­cers at the sta­tion refused to book him into cus­tody, all because of a cer­tain big-name thug in the parish and their asso­ci­a­tions with, and prob­a­bly fear of him.

He went on in absolute & total delight, laugh­ing at the spec­ta­cle, as he recount­ed the events in his head, the look on his cous­in’s face was price­less, the young­ster had no idea of my past.
What he nev­er said was that the offi­cer relent­ed and caved in as a result of the abuse. He nev­er said the offi­cer relent­ed when his com­pro­mised col­leagues refused to do their sworn duty because of their asso­ci­a­tions with a filthy thug who has deep and long­stand­ing ties with the high­est ech­e­lons of the People’s National Party and has under­writ­ten many of their campaigns.

The dis­re­spect we see on the streets toward our police offi­cers as they strug­gle to do their duties, has deep­er roots than just mere law­less­ness.
Although a few of the politi­cians on either side pay lip ser­vice to the law­less­ness in the coun­try and the resul­tant vio­lence which comes from it, the thugs who run the gar­risons with their robin hood per­sonas, still hold tremen­dous sway over what hap­pens on the streets.
It is exact­ly for that rea­son that the politi­cians will not, and prob­a­bly can­not renounce and decon­struct the gar­risons they cre­at­ed since 1962.
The gang­sters who con­trol the gar­risons have too much eco­nom­ic pow­er now, and most of all they hold too many secrets for the politi­cians.
In many cas­es, it is the finan­cial back­ing of the thugs that made it pos­si­ble for the politi­cians to attain polit­i­cal office.
It is a com­plete 180-degree turn from what obtained just decades ago.

Many are the sto­ries we have heard of politi­cians at the high­est lev­els using their diplo­mat­ic sta­tus to bring large sums of dirty mon­ey into the coun­try.
Effectively using their offices and their trust­ed diplo­mat­ic sta­tus, to act as couri­ers for drug deal­ers.
Since we can­not val­i­date those sto­ries we will leave them alone, suf­fic­ing to say, that what­ev­er you hear in the streets have some sem­blance of truth to it.
Even if there is a 10 % truth to any of that, it should cause the stom­achs of law-abid­ing Jamaicans to turn.
Many years ago I decid­ed that I would leave the police force by sim­ply drop­ping every­thing and walk­ing away.
I want­ed to make a bet­ter life for myself than the police force could give me.

I want­ed to be reward­ed on mer­it, not by asso­ci­at­ing with crim­i­nals. Not by being a cor­rupt cop who betrays his oath.
But I left main­ly because I thought that had I stayed, I would not be able to make the change need­ed by being sub­servient to a broad­er polit­i­cal sys­tem that is cor­rupt inside and out, a sys­tem on which I would depend for my own upward mobil­i­ty, what­ev­er form that would take.
I thought that as they say, “the pen is might­i­er than the sword,” and maybe, just maybe, by con­stant­ly ham­mer­ing away, shin­ing a light at the cor­rup­tion with­in the sys­tem some changes will be made.
That some­how, we can build a bet­ter coun­try for gen­er­a­tions to come.
Sometimes, that has to be done with­out the naysay­ers and those who would rather attack a mes­sen­ger than face the mes­sage.
That has always been the black expe­ri­ence since our ances­tors were dragged away from their homes and brought to the west­ern world as chat­tel.
It is for that rea­son that Harriet Tumbam report­ed­ly car­ried a gun, not just for the white slave-catch­ers, but for the N****s who would run back and tell “massa” where the safe hous­es were in the under­ground railroad.

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.

At every turn where law­less Jamaicans abuse police offi­cers doing their duty, one acronym is heard com­ing from their mouths.
“INDECOM” !!!
The Jamaican Prime Minister final­ly con­ced­ed yes­ter­day quote” ‘The country’s crime prob­lem has “evolved cur­rent­ly, over and above our estab­lished capac­i­ty to address it”
I have repeat­ed­ly chal­lenged this PM to step away from his charged rhetoric against the police and begged him to sup­port our police.
Yesterday he con­ced­ed defeat, but still refus­es to repeal the INDECOM Act, and return to the CCRB which was far more effec­tive, far less confrontational.

I call on the JAMAICAN Prime Minister to repeal the INDECOM Act forth­with.
It took an act of par­lia­ment to cre­ate it, it requires an act of par­lia­ment to repeal it.
Table the repeal in the house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives and let mem­bers vote on it.
Tell the United States, England And Canada to stand down, it is their dark mon­ey that is par­tial­ly sup­port­ing the crime enhanc­ing Trojan horse.
The secu­ri­ty forces must have over­sight, but more than any­thing else, they need our sup­port.
The United States Embassy in our coun­try days ago issued restric­tions to their staff and cit­i­zens about where not to in our coun­try.
The list of places is shock­ing to all peo­ple who know the Island. The list was so expan­sive there was hard­ly any­place that their staff is allowed to go.

Repeal the dis­as­trous INDECOM Act, and return to the for­mer CCRB which was far more effec­tive and with none of the acri­mo­nious bag­gage that comes with INDECOM.
Free up the police to go after the crim­i­nals and hold them account­able when they vio­late their oaths.
Enforcing or nation’s laws has noth­ing to do with vio­lat­ing cit­i­zens’ rights.
Your mis­guid­ed approach to this issue may not have brought our coun­try to this point, but it has cer­tain­ly cement­ed the dis­re­spect being met­ed out to our police and has strength­ened the hands of crim­i­nals.
Stop this mad­ness now.

Updated…

A police patrol report­ed­ly just accost­ed a group of three young men push­ing a hand-cart. This alleged­ly drew the sus­pi­cion of the team and so they decid­ed to inves­ti­gate.
On the approach of the law-men, all three men ran leav­ing the cart and the drum. 

The cops checked the drum and in it was a dead body.
Up to the time of this report, the police have not appre­hend­ed either of the three men.

People eli­gi­ble to poten­tial­ly have their con­vic­tions thrown out include any­one 50 years of age or old­er, peo­ple who have not been con­vict­ed of a crime over the past 10 years

Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey is ask­ing the court to throw out near­ly 66,000 mar­i­jua­na con­vic­tions, some of which date back decades. At a news con­fer­ence Thursday, Lacey said her motion rep­re­sents some­thing that has nev­er been done before in state his­to­ry. It is believed that heal​ife​health​.co​.uk will help in buy­ing mar­i­jua­na alter­na­tives and sup­ple­ments.
“We believe it is the largest effort in California to wipe out old crim­i­nal con­vic­tions in a sin­gle court motion,” Lacey told CBS Los Angeles.
Initially, Lacey said pros­e­cu­tors had been work­ing to reduce past mar­i­jua­na con­vic­tions from felonies to mis­de­meanors after Proposition 64 passed in 2016. But she said she didn’t think this went far enough.

“I’ve instruct­ed my deputy dis­trict attor­neys to ask the court to dis­miss all eli­gi­ble cannabis-relat­ed con­vic­tions,” Lacey said at the press con­fer­ence, accord­ing to CBS Los Angeles. “I also took the will of the vot­ers one step fur­ther. I expand­ed the cri­te­ria to go above and beyond the para­me­ters of the law to ensure that many more peo­ple will ben­e­fit from this his­toric moment in time.”
People eli­gi­ble to poten­tial­ly have their con­vic­tions thrown out include any­one 50 years of age or old­er, peo­ple who have not been con­vict­ed of a crime over the past 10 years, peo­ple with con­vic­tions who suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed pro­ba­tion and peo­ple under the age of 21 with convictions.

“As a result of our actions these con­vic­tions should no longer bur­den those who have strug­gled to find a job or a place to live because of their crim­i­nal record,” Lacey explained.
Lacey filed the motion on Tuesday, also request­ing that the court seal the con­vic­tions. In total, this would impact about 62,000 felony cannabis con­vic­tions and 3,700 were mis­de­meanor pos­ses­sion con­vic­tions, across L.A. County, includ­ing Burbank, Pasadena, Inglewood, Santa Monica, and Torrance.
“If you have a record, you don’t have to wor­ry about even going through and hav­ing it sealed…We’re mak­ing a motion to seal it because we real­ize that’s the issue,” Lacey said, report­ed CBS Los Angeles. “When you go to apply for a job, you go to apply for hous­ing and your record comes up, even though we’ve expunged it, that may not give you help.”
Lacey made the move three weeks before the March 3 Primary, where she is hop­ing to get re-elect­ed to a third term. Her chal­lengers include George Gascon, the for­mer San Francisco DA, and Rachel Rossie, a for­mer fed­er­al pub­lic defender.

People can call the L.A. County Public Defender’s Office to see if their case is eli­gi­ble for dis­missal at 323−760−6763.
The sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed here; https://​the​grio​.com/​2​0​2​0​/​0​2​/​1​7​/​l​a​-​c​o​u​n​t​y​-​d​a​-​f​i​l​e​s​-​m​o​t​i​o​n​-​t​o​-​d​i​s​m​i​s​s​-​n​e​a​r​l​y​-​6​6​0​0​0​-​m​a​r​i​j​u​a​n​a​-​c​o​n​v​i​c​t​i​o​ns/

Ever so often we see inci­dents of alleged mur­der­ers walk­ing out of court­rooms released by a judge.
I for one crit­i­cize judges when they sup­plant the law with their own lib­er­al views and turn dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals back onto the streets.
On the oth­er hand, Judges can­not be fault­ed when defense attor­neys make no-case sub­mis­sions on behalf of their clients.
They have no recourse but to oblige, because pros­e­cu­tors do not pro­vide the court with evi­dence enough to force defen­dants to answer the charges against them.

It is almost incom­pre­hen­si­ble that in so many instances, it is the pros­e­cu­tors who are telling the court that they do not have enough evi­dence to pro­ceed.
How is it pos­si­ble that a case can be before the court and Investigators do not have the evi­dence to sup­port the charge/​s against the accused/​s, at least in order for the case to be tried before a jury?
We wrote about this recent­ly because almost dai­ly we see reports of this hap­pen­ing. This means that although only a small amount of actu­al mur­der­ers are ever arrest­ed we are wit­ness­ing an even small­er per­cent­age of those arrest­ed being con­vict­ed for their crimes.
These are exact­ly the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a fail­ing soci­ety. When crim­i­nals are not being held account­able, cit­i­zens lose faith in the sys­tem.
The result is chaos, we are wit­ness­ing that law­less chaos today.

Take for instance the mur­der case against 38-year-old Audley Duvall, who the police said was one of Jamaica’s most want­ed crim­i­nals in 2017.
Duvall was set free by a Judge of the high court when the pros­e­cu­tion admit­ted it could not pro­ceed for want of evi­dence.
Duval and anoth­er man were accused of the shoot­ing death of Craig Grey on August 16, 2016, at his farm in Coolie dis­trict in Bog Walk, St Catherine. The wit­ness in the case report­ed­ly gave evi­dence that the men wore masks and as such he was unable to see their faces.
He sub­se­quent­ly tes­ti­fied that he saw the faces of the accused and that he pre­vi­ous­ly denied see­ing his face because he was afraid. He also report­ed­ly tes­ti­fied that he was able to see his face because of light from a pig­pen. This was report­ed­ly con­tra­dict­ed by pho­tos from the crime scene and the evi­dence of the scene of the crime inves­ti­ga­tor who tes­ti­fied that he did not see a light in the pig­pen.
At the end of the prosecution’s case, the judge agreed with the defense that the wit­ness’ evi­dence was unre­li­able and instruct­ed the jury to return a for­mal ver­dict of not guilty. (Gleaner reporting)

If this accused was a seri­ous threat as the police said he was pri­or to his arrest, how could they not do all in their pow­ers to ensure this guy paid for his crimes?
Without point­ing fin­gers, I am forced to won­der whether the inves­ti­gat­ing officer/​s did all they could in this instance or did he/​she sim­ply decid­ed to go with the sin­gle eye-wit­ness’s state­ment?
There are sev­er­al rea­sons not to depend on eye-wit­ness state­ments alone, not the least of which is that a skilled defense attor­ney can always poke holes in that wit­ness­es’ tes­ti­mo­ny at tri­al.
Secondly, in high crime geo­gra­phies like Jamaica, wit­ness­es are eas­i­ly threat­ened, or oth­er­wise tam­pered with, (being paid off for exam­ple).
With the length of time that elaps­es between when a defen­dant is arrest­ed and brought to tri­al, eye­wit­ness accounts are eas­i­ly dis­cred­it­ed by a com­pe­tent defense attor­ney.
Witnesses leave the coun­try, they receive pay­offs, they are threat­ened and even killed.
Combined, the case for not depend­ing on a sin­gle eye­wit­ness account is rather com­pelling.
But it seems to me at least, that once a wit­ness turns up and gives a state­ment, inves­ti­ga­tors and pros­e­cu­tors are ecsta­t­ic and they do noth­ing more.

Which brings us to the def­i­n­i­tion of [Murder].….…..(“the unlaw­ful pre­med­i­tat­ed killing of one human being by anoth­er”).
Other def­i­n­i­tions say with mal­ice [afore­though]. The term ‘pre­med­i­tat­ed’, con­sti­tutes and cov­ers the ele­ment of mal­ice in mur­der.
So what is the rea­son for out­lin­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of mur­der? The answer is sim­ple.
If an inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer has evi­dence iden­ti­fy­ing a killer, there is a strong like­li­hood that if the offi­cer digs a lit­tle deep­er he will find a motive for the killing.
Once a motive is devel­oped, it becomes eas­i­er to deter­mine why the killing may have been planned [pre­med­i­tat­ed] [mali­cious], stitch­ing that evi­dence togeth­er some­times opens up new streams of evi­dence as well. Leading to more state­ments from oth­er wit­ness­es (eg) a wit­ness may attest to hear­ing the defen­dant say he was going to kill the dece­dent.
There may also be doc­u­men­tary evi­dence, a let­ter, streams of text mes­sages or voice mes­sages, between the defen­dant and decedent. 

The defen­dan­t’s where­abouts at the time of the mur­der are also cru­cial. Ask him to give an ali­bi for his where­abouts at the time the dece­dent was mur­dered.
Then test the ali­bi.
If he lies about the ali­bi he is lying about every­thing else.
Doing the tough unsexy work involved in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions may not always prove guilt beyond a rea­son­able doubt, but the [cir­cum­stan­tial] nature of the sec­ondary evi­dence devel­oped around the eye­wit­ness’s sto­ry may very well be enough to get the case to tri­al.
In today’s world in which busi­ness­es and house­holds have secu­ri­ty cam­eras, it is worth can­vass­ing an area with a view to find­ing out whether a secu­ri­ty sys­tem may have cap­tured some­thing a per­son may have missed. It is well worth the effort. 

It is for this rea­son that I have chal­lenged the JCF, and my beloved CIB to learn from oth­er coun­tries, assign teams of two or more detec­tives to run­down leads and work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and swift­ly on cas­es to ensure that cas­es are inves­ti­gat­ed the right way.
A sim­ple thing like a cig­a­rette butt is some­times a crit­i­cal bit of evi­dence, as a defen­dant may have been smok­ing at the scene of the crime and left that tiny bit of evi­dence there.
A killer may have walked into a bar and ordered a dring before killing some­one. He walks out and every­one who was in that bar says they have nev­er seen that per­son before.
The police come and do their inves­ti­ga­tions, col­lects state­ments, none of which means any­thing unless the assailant is caught and the wit­ness can be brought into an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion parade to iden­ti­fy the assailant.
But nobody remem­bers that the killer ordered a Guinness or a Heineken, or may even have ordered a drink in a glass.
So all of the bot­tles are gath­ered and placed with oth­er emp­ties and the glass­es are washed, and away goes all of the valu­able DNA evi­dence from that shoot­er drink­ing from that con­tain­er.
There is no statute of lim­i­ta­tions on mur­der,(mur­der is a vio­la­tion of com­mon law), so as long as that DNA evi­dence is stored in a data­base, there is a chance that he will even­tu­al­ly be brought to justice.

Nowadays with DNA test­ing, those bits of evi­dence may be enough to ensure that a mur­der­er does not walk free.
We know that despite offi­cers and pros­e­cu­tor best efforts killers stand a chance of being released if not on bail they are released for want of enough pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al evi­dence.
Even when they have been con­vict­ed the court of appeals is incred­i­bly lenient in find­ing a tech­ni­cal­i­ty to return them to the streets.
The prin­ci­ple of prece­dent, (Stare deci­sis) let the deci­sion stand, is one that seems lost on Jamaican jurists.
I know that it is an uphill fight when the Government refus­es to give offi­cers the tools they need, and refus­es to pro­tect the coun­try with sen­tences that ensure that for vio­lent crimes, crim­i­nals are not returned to the streets.
That would include remov­ing from judges the dis­cre­tion to allow dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to walk with a slap on the wrist.
But with this admin­is­tra­tion that will not hap­pen, because the Justice Minister is giv­ing mur­der­ers half-off their would-be sen­tences if they sim­ply plead guilty.
In addi­tion to that, he also wants to wipe clean the record of vio­lent mur­der­ers and rapists.
Those are the hall­marks of a fail­ing state.….….….….….….….….….……

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.

Constables Nigel Brown and Andrew Simmonds of SAS were involved in a seri­ous auto­mo­bile acci­dent at the inter­sec­tion of Port Royal and Pechon Streets.
Constable Simmonds is report­ed­ly bleed­ing from the head while his col­league, con­sta­ble Nugel Brown is report­ed­ly unresponsive.

The two police­men were return­ing from court with an inmate from the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre, when their vehi­cle was struck by a Toyota Probox motor car.
The dri­ver of the Probox and his two female pas­sen­gers were also injured. Workers at a near­by fur­ni­ture mak­er estab­lish­ment helped the offi­cers from their vehi­cle.
According to them, one offi­cer, bare­ly able to stand, much less walk, imme­di­ate­ly grabbed the hand­cuffs of the inmate and secured his ser­vice rifle until help came.
All six pas­sen­gers from both vehi­cles were tak­en to the hos­pi­tal and treat­ed for non-life threat­en­ing injuries.

This sto­ry has been updat­ed from since it orig­i­nal posting.

For years suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions from the two polit­i­cal par­ties have done every­thing in their pow­er to fool the coun­try and the world into believ­ing that they are doing some­thing about the cul­ture of law­less­ness in the coun­try.
At the same time, they stead­fast­ly refuse to address the root caus­es of vio­lence, because they are active par­tic­i­pants in the cul­ture of crime for which the coun­try has now become infa­mous.
Various pol­i­cy papers have been writ­ten by their friends from Mona Commons, usu­al­ly, those papers are heavy on super­flu­ous gib­ber­ish that has no bear­ing on Jamaica’s crime prob­lem.
So-called experts have been brought in from England, sup­pos­ed­ly to fix our police force. Mind you, England, with a pop­u­la­tion of 56 mil­lion has few­er vio­lent crimes in a year than Jamaica a coun­try of 2.89 mil­lion peo­ple has in a month.
They want­ed you to believe that vio­lent crime is intractable and can­not be removed so you should live with it.
They want­ed you to believe that effec­tive­ly deal­ing with the vio­lence is so com­plex that you will devel­op a sense of apa­thy and a sense of res­ig­na­tion.
And you know what they have won.
Dealing with Jamaica’s crim­i­nals is not com­plex, it requires stiff penal­ties and a pro­fes­sion­al police force trained and paid to do their jobs.
It requires most of all, that the pol­i­cy-mak­ers stop being the law-break­ers.

They brought in offi­cers from England which has a well-doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of cor­rup­tion of all sorts. The fram­ing of minori­ties for crimes they did not com­mit. Planting evi­dence and lying under oath are but a few of the mal­adies plagu­ing some of those British police com­mands.
Despite not hav­ing to deal with the lev­el of crime our offi­cers face, not receiv­ing the pal­try pit­tance our offi­cers are paid, and despite receiv­ing tremen­dous sup­port to do their jobs, they still engage in crim­i­nal con­duct.
Those com­mands include the Begravia Police Station. We should also note that the Deputy Commissioner of INDECOM who now helps to per­se­cute our police offi­cers, comes from those cor­rupt com­mands with his own taint.

The lie told our coun­try regard­ing the state of crim­i­nal­i­ty, is that it is dri­ven by pover­ty.
Here is the rub, the Government and oth­er agen­cies release data show­ing that unem­ploy­ment is at the low­est lev­el it has been in recent times.
Conversely, every mea­sure­ment index indi­cates that crime is on the increase and most impor­tant­ly vio­lent crimes, includ­ing homi­cides.
It is a clear indi­ca­tion that in Jamaica there is not a lot of cor­re­la­tion between vio­lent crimes and pover­ty.
I have writ­ten quite a few arti­cles in which I laid out dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios that demon­strate clear­ly that cer­tain cat­e­gories of crime have noth­ing to do with pover­ty.
In fact, the evi­dence sug­gests that because of the com­plex­i­ties of some of the crimes we have seen report­ed in the media, the resources used in their com­mis­sion, they absolute­ly could not be com­mit­ted by poor peo­ple, at least the plan­ning, if not the exe­cu­tion.
I have also shown that there are coun­tries far poor­er, and with stan­dards of liv­ing below Jamaica’s, which hard­ly reg­is­ters on the meter of high crime sta­tis­tics.
It is hard to argue that a hun­gry man will not steal some food, that is sur­vival. I will not make that kind of argument. 

It is also hard to make the case for pover­ty as the cause, when you have a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Sunday morn­ing com­man­do-style heist in the mid­dle of May Pen.
After the deci­sive actions of the secu­ri­ty forces in 2010, we saw crime dip expo­nen­tial­ly. Ask your­selves why did that hap­pen?
It hap­pened because, by that sin­gle action, the gov­ern­ment made it clear that it was in charge. (Now we all know that it was with the boot of the American Government up Bruce Golding’s ass, that prompt­ed that deci­sive action). Despite that, the coun­try breathed a col­lec­tive sigh of relief after that incur­sion. (Law-abid­ing cit­i­zens that is).
As soon as the mur­der­ers real­ized that the Portia Simpson Miller régime was about to make scape­goats out of the secu­ri­ty forces, they went back to busi­ness as usual.

Since then, vio­lent crimes have trend­ed steadi­ly upward, (with one or two minor excep­tions).
One does not need a pol­i­cy paper from the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to, nei­ther do we need for­eign cops to come in and tell us what is wrong in our coun­try, much less how to fix it.
The data is irrefutable.
We need good intel­li­gence-based polic­ing backed up by tough no-non­sense exe­cu­tion.
Most of all we need the two polit­i­cal par­ties to back the fuck away from polic­ing, if we are to fix this dilem­ma.
The rea­son they are unwill­ing to step away from inter­fer­ing in how the coun­try is policed is evi­denced by the fact that the two polit­i­cal par­ties are heav­i­ly involved in the crim­i­nal­i­ty plagu­ing the country.

No, the politi­cians are not all in the streets with AK47’s, are some of them involved in the guns for drugs trade? I don’t know. (some of their cohorts are). They are involved in Lotto-scam­ming, they are involved in the theft of pub­lic funds, they are involved in all kinds of crim­i­nal­i­ty that dri­ve the killings, includ­ing tak­ing fund­ing from trans-nation­al crim­i­nals to fund polit­i­cal cam­paigns and giv­ing them con­struc­tion con­tracts when they gain office.
These are the rea­sons that the two polit­i­cal par­ties will not come togeth­er on crime. It is the rea­son they will not tear down the gar­risons. It is the rea­son they will not sup­port law enforce­ment.
The idea that the prob­lem of crime and vio­lence will be fixed by social inter­ven­tion is a slap in the face of law-abid­ing Jamaicans.
Social inter­ven­tion pro­grams have their place in under­served com­mu­ni­ties. Sure, if those pro­grams can catch and rem­e­dy some of the mal­adies that emanate from pover­ty, there is rea­son to believe that gang activ­i­ty and teenage preg­nan­cies may be min­i­mized if not total­ly avert­ed.
Nevertheless, it is naïve to believe that social inter­ven­tion has any impact on gang­sters who have already expe­ri­enced the awe­some pow­er the gun gives them.
Not to men­tion the pro­ceeds they derive from hav­ing those weapons.
Advancing the social inter­ven­tion the­o­ry, is the same as advis­ing peo­ple to jump over twen­ty dol­lar bills to pick up a bunch of pen­nies.
It is time that these so-called pro­fes­sors stop with the lies.
You women who are now all over the Jamaican pub­lic sec­tor, stop prop­a­gat­ing this bull­shit.
Hugging up crim­i­nals is not the way to fix this prob­lem.

The longer it takes for what is left of the law abid­ing cit­i­zen­ry to raise up against the killers and their fam­i­ly mem­bers and say we know who is doing what, we will slide for­ev­er deep­er into a place of no return.
Speaking truth to pow­er is [PATRIOTISM].
I chal­lenge every well-mean­ing Jamaican to join me in this cru­sade against crim­i­nal­i­ty.
Your lives and that of our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren depends on it . Our coun­try’s sur­vival depends on it.
Don’t be fooled into accept­ing the idea that the def­i­n­i­tion of Patriotism is nev­er hav­ing left the coun­try, nev­er speak­ing out against the wrongs you see.
That is not Patriotism, that is called silent acqui­es­cence. It is what those who ben­e­fit from crime wants you to believe.

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.

According to Police reports, Jamaica Defense force sol­dier pri­vate Stanford Thomas 51-years-old attached to the JDF 3JR, and of a Spanish Town address and who is in a rela­tion­ship with Office Manager Suzette Thomas of an Eltham Vista address in the said parish, went to her house and found anoth­er man there.

According to reports, The sol­dier on see­ing the oth­er man (name with­held), accused Ms. Thomas of cheat­ing.
An argu­ment ensued upon which Ms. Thomas opened the rear grill-gate and allowed the man to exit the premis­es.

The sol­dier then went to the rear of the premis­es as the oth­er man fled, and dis­charged his firearm in the direc­tion on the flee­ing man who jumped a neigh­bor’s fence.
Indications are that the flee­ing man was not hit. According to sources, peo­ple who knew him con­tact­ed him via tele­phone and he con­firmed that he was not injured.

The St Catherine Police who are inves­ti­gat­ing has report­ed­ly con­fis­cat­ed MR Thomas’s firearm for bal­lis­tic test­ing.
The Investigations continue.

Subject Security Alert: Update to Prohibited Travel Areas

From <kingstonacs@​state.​gov> Date Today at 3:10 PM

Security Alert - U.S. Embassy Kingston, Jamaica (February 21, 2020)

Location: Parishes through­out Jamaica

Event: The U.S. Embassy in Kingston advis­es U.S. cit­i­zens that U.S. gov­ern­ment per­son­nel are pro­hib­it­ed from trav­el­ing to areas list­ed below, from using pub­lic bus­es, and from dri­ving out­side of pro­scribed areas of Kingston at night.

Kingston

Do not trav­el to the fol­low­ing areas:

• · Cassava Piece
• · Downtown Kingston, defined as between Mountain View Avenue and Hagley Park Road, and south of Half Way Tree and Old Hope Roads. Downtown Kingston includes Trench Town, Tivoli Gardens, and Arnett Gardens.

• · Grants Pen
• · Standpipe
• · Duhaney Park
• · Mountain View Avenue betweenDeanery Road and Windward Road

· Neighborhoods including

Olympic Gardens, Cockburn

Olympic Gardens, Cockburn Gardens, Seaview Gardens, and Denham Town.
· The approved pri­ma­ry route to Norman Manley International Airport (NMIA) is South Camp Road to Normal Manley Boulevard. The approved sec­ondary route is Mountain View to Deanery Road to South Camp Road and then Norman Manley Boulevard.

Clarendon Parish

Do not trav­el to the fol­low­ing areas:
· All of Clarendon Parish except

pass­ing through the Parish using the T1 and A2 highways.

St. Catherine Parish

Do not trav­el to the fol­low­ing areas:

• · Spanish Town
• · Central Village
• · Areas in Portmoreto include Old Braeton, Naggo Head, Newland, and Waterford
  
  St. James ParishDo not trav­el to the fol­low­ing areas:

· Neighborhoods in Montego Bay

to include Flankers, Norwood, Glendevon, Paradise Heights, Rose Heights, Canterbury, and parts of Mount Salem.

Actions to Take:

• · Avoid the areas above.
• · Be aware of your surroundings.
• · Use cau­tion when walk­ing or dri­ving at night.

· Do not phys­i­cal­ly resist any

· Do not phys­i­cal­ly resist any rob­bery attempt.
· Stay alert in loca­tions fre­quent­ed by tourists.
· Review your per­son­al secu­ri­ty plans.

Assistance:

· U.S. Embassy Kingston, Jamaica +1 – 876-702‑6000 KingstonACS@state.govhttps://jm.usembassy.gov/

· U.S. Consular Agency Montego Bay
+1 – 876-953‑0620 MobayACS@​state.​gov

· U.S. Consular Agency Cayman Islands
+345 – 945-8173 CaymanACS@​state.​gov

· State Department — Consular Affairs
+1 – 888-407‑4747 or +1 – 202-501- 4444

• · Jamaica Country Information
• · Cayman Island Country Information

Do not trav­el to the fol­low­ing areas:
· All of Clarendon Parish except

pass­ing through the Parish using the T1 and A2 highways.

St. Catherine Parish

Do not trav­el to the fol­low­ing areas:

• · Spanish Town
• · Central Village
• · Areas in Portmoreto include Old Braeton, Naggo Head, Newland, and WaterfordSt. James ParishDo not trav­el to the fol­low­ing areas:

· Neighborhoods in Montego Bay

to include Flankers, Norwood, Glendevon, Paradise Heights, Rose Heights, Canterbury, and parts of Mount Salem.

Actions to Take:

• · Avoid the areas above.
• · Be aware of your surroundings.
• · Use cau­tion when walk­ing or dri­ving at night.

· Do not phys­i­cal­ly resist any

· Do not phys­i­cal­ly resist any rob­bery attempt.
· Stay alert in loca­tions fre­quent­ed by tourists.
· Review your per­son­al secu­ri­ty plans.

Assistance:

· U.S. Embassy Kingston, Jamaica +1 – 876-702‑6000 KingstonACS@state.govhttps://jm.usembassy.gov/

· U.S. Consular Agency Montego Bay
+1 – 876-953‑0620 MobayACS@​state.​gov

· U.S. Consular Agency Cayman Islands
+345 – 945-8173 CaymanACS@​state.​gov

· State Department — Consular Affairs
+1 – 888-407‑4747 or +1 – 202-501- 4444

JAMAICA Defense Force Corporal 30-years old Omar Williams has been arrest­ed and charged with wound­ing with intent and Assault Occasioning Bodily Harm on Constable K Bedward of the Saint Catherine South Proactive Investigations UNIT(PIU).

The facts are that on Wednesday, February 19^th at about 11: 45pm Corporal Williams returned to his home in Greater Portmore to find Constable Bedward in a com­pro­mis­ing posi­tion with his wife.
It is alleged that Williams pulled his licensed Glock pis­tol and used it to hit Bedward on the forehead.

The naked Bedward report­ed­ly ran from the house leav­ing his clothes and his firearm but not before Williams shot him once in the shoul­der.
Bedward was tak­en to the Spanish Town Hospital by a pass­ing motorist while Corporal Williams was turned over to the police by a Major Gordon of the JDF.
Investigations into the inci­dent are ongoing.

Police and gun­men are report­ed­ly engaged in a heat­ed gun bat­tle in Gutters Saint James.
Unconfirmed reports sug­gest that one per­son has been killed so far.

This a devel­op­ing story.

The issue of American Police mur­der­ing unarmed black peo­ple in cold blood has been a sore issue from as long as polic­ing has exist­ed in the United States.
From as far back as the slave patrols, into the peri­od called Reconstruction, the new dis­ci­pline called polic­ing which came out of the slave patrols were dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to the exis­tence of Black peo­ple.
And so all of these years lat­er it is almost an after­thought when police mur­der peo­ple of color.

There is no out­rage across the board when Black cit­i­zens are killed in America, it has always been the law for police to do what­ev­er they want with­out con­se­quence, it is dif­fi­cult to make the case that any­thing has changed even today.
African-Americans have had to con­tend with being beat­en, have drugs plant­ed on their per­sons and in their vehi­cles, mur­dered and have weapons plant­ed on their bod­ies, and have been sub­ject­ed to lit­er­al­ly every crime that can be com­mit­ted inflict­ed upon them by police.

There has been cos­met­ic changes in the way police con­duct them­selves but hard­ly any­thing has changed in their behav­ior toward Black peo­ple.
They are gen­er­al­ly dis­re­spect­ful, abu­sive, abra­sive, dis­mis­sive, vio­lent- toward and down­right-dan­ger­ous, when­ev­er they come in con­tact with African-Americans.
It is a cul­tur­al epi­dem­ic that came out of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy that says the Black man has no right that white peo­ple are oblig­at­ed to respect.
American Police still oper­ates under those pre­sump­tions.
That is not to say that all police offi­cers are bad, far from it. I have met some of the most won­der­ful human beings who hap­pen to be police offi­cers over the years.
Ironically as a for­mer police offi­cer myself albeit from a dif­fer­ent coun­try, I have found that pri­vate­ly many of the silent cops will tell hor­ror sto­ries about their own col­leagues with whom they dis­agree as much as civil­ians do.

Police abuse of African-Americas cit­i­zens is the rule rather than the excep­tion. In fact, any black per­son who has ever been involved with a white coun­ter­part who hap­pens to be in the wrong, will attest that as soon as the police arrive they instinc­tive­ly default to going to talk to the white offend­er and treat the aggriev­ed black per­son as the offend­er.
This is what African-Americans have been forced to live with in America and pay for it too boot, with their tax dollars. 

But what hap­pens when the vic­tim is white, what hap­pens when police kill white peo­ple, what is the response of the Police Department, do they all of a sud­den become more trans­par­ent and treat the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly with respect?
Do they do due dili­gence in the inves­ti­ga­tions with a view to arriv­ing at the truth, and to ensure that it nev­er hap­pens again?
That is what this video aims to expose as Police are allowed to Police them­selves, inves­ti­gate them­selves and are account­able to no one.

We apol­o­gize for the fea­tured image which was inad­ver­tent­ly uploaded to this site. It was from anoth­er coun­try.
We apol­o­gize for the error. s soon as we were noti­fied we cor­rect­ed the error.

We crit­i­cize them when they fail to act pro­fes­sion­al­ly and so we should com­mend them when they act accord­ing­ly and pro­duce pos­i­tive results for Jamaica, speak­ing of the secu­ri­ty forces.
This medi­um wish­es to give cred­it to the CTOC team and to DPP Paula Llewelyn in the case involv­ing Jamaican gun­run­ner Jermaine Rhoomes .
Rhoomes was giv­en a 57 months sen­tence by a Florida judge for ille­gal­ly ship­ping a num­ber of guns and mul­ti­ple rounds of assort­ed ammu­ni­tion to Jamaica.
Jamaica’s DPP Paula Llewelyn attend­ed the hear­ing and addressed the court. The accused plead guilty, avoid­ing a poten­tial 20-year prison sen­tence.
Rhoomes was bust­ed at his res­i­dence in Saint Petersburg Florida after law enforce­ment bust­ed into his house and even­tu­al­ly found mul­ti­ple, guns and assort­ed rounds of ammu­ni­tion being read­ied for ship­ment along with foodstuff.

The DPP report­ed that it was mem­bers of Jamaica’s Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigation Branch (CTOC), who found the bar­rels, the guns and ammu­ni­tion inside the bar­rels on the wharf hid­den under pack­ages of flour, rice, and sug­ar. [Llewelyn said CTOC, through sci­en­tif­ic means, made the link between Rhoomes and the weapons and enlist­ed the assis­tance of US Homeland Security inves­ti­ga­tors in Florida which led them to find him, search his house, and find the ship­ment of guns and ammu­ni­tion being pre­pared accord­ing to local report­ing].

As a crit­ic of the law enforce­ment process in Jamaica, I am encour­aged by the news that col­lab­o­ra­tion between local and American law enforce­ment are being pur­sued result­ing in pos­i­tive results for both coun­tries.
I have long stat­ed that the end game can­not sim­ply be to inter­cept the ship­ments, it must be a long game that includes strate­gi­cal­ly tar­get­ed col­lab­o­ra­tive inves­ti­ga­tions that traces the ship­ments of illic­it arms and ammu­ni­tion to the gen­e­sis of their existence.

The DPP laud­ably spoke to the lives that will be saved because this scum was caught and will be cool­ing his heels in an American prison.
Nevertheless, what is more, astound­ing is the DPP’s warn­ing that had Rhoomes been tried in Jamaica he would like­ly have walked free.
As I have tried to remind the Jamaican peo­ple in this medi­um, the polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives are not doing due dili­gence on crime. This is result­ing in untold unnec­es­sary mur­ders and the resul­tant trau­ma those killings bring to ordi­nary Jamaican fam­i­lies.
The bang­ing on desks and the moron­ic infan­tile ban­ter that goes on in Gordon house does pre­cious lit­tle, if any­thing, to advance the inter­est of the nation.
The DPP can­not say it so I said it.

According to Llewelyn, “Section 4 of the Firearms Act pro­vides that the impor­ta­tion of firearms and ammu­ni­tion into Jamaica, with­out the req­ui­site license being a breach of the law. However, the Firearms Act does not pro­vide for arms traf­fick­ing as an offense. The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this case would be on all fours with arms traf­fick­ing”.
This is a gap­ing loop­hole in the law, no rea­son­able per­son in Jamaica or any­where else who reads this should be under any illu­sion that this is unbe­knownst to the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide.
This forces the ques­tion of why?
Why would this gap­ing hole in this crit­i­cal law be left open? Could this have some­thing to do with who exact­ly is involved in bring­ing guns and ammu­ni­tion into the coun­try?
As the Government and Opposition polit­i­cal par­ty pay lip ser­vice to the epi­dem­ic of mur­der which is wreak­ing hav­oc on nor­mal peo­ple, the evi­dence sug­gests that well-con­nect­ed peo­ple are mak­ing a killing from this illic­it trade.

The DPP should be com­mend­ed for tak­ing the ini­tia­tive to spear­head the move to have the weapons found in Jamaica sent back to the United States and hav­ing the accused tried in the US know­ing the inad­e­qua­cy of local laws.
At the same time, I must chas­tise the Director for not being proac­tive enough. In fact, she has been total­ly reac­tive on this issue accord­ing to her own account­ing.
“I also under­stand that the Jamaica Constabulary Force has made rec­om­men­da­tions to the com­pe­tent author­i­ties here,(JAMAICA) for ‘a deal­ing in firearms’ pro­vi­sion to be put into the Act, and what we will do is lend sup­port to that, because it is very impor­tant”.
It is unclear whether or not there were con­sul­ta­tions between the office of the DPP and the JCF before the afore­men­tioned JCF rec­om­men­da­tions were made to the Government?
What is clear is that there should have been con­sul­ta­tions between police and pros­e­cu­tor on a mat­ter this impor­tant.
What is also cru­cial, is that the DPP knew about the police rec­om­men­da­tion and clear­ly did not add the weight of her office to it.
Actions of this nature, or more to the point a lack of action of this nature, are cer­tain­ly not to her credit.

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.
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