Erik Ortiz 

The case against Aaron Dean, 35, led to a rare mur­der charge against a police offi­cer when he was ini­tial­ly arrest­ed just days after the October shooting. 

By Erik Ortiz

A Texas grand jury on Friday indict­ed a for­mer Fort Worth police offi­cer for mur­der after fatal­ly shoot­ing a woman who had been babysit­ting her nephew at home in a case that drew pub­lic out­cry for police accountability.

The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office con­firmed the indict­ment for the for­mer offi­cer, Aaron Dean, 35, in the shoot­ing death of Atatiana Jefferson, a 28-year-old pre-med grad­u­ate student.

Lee Merritt, an attor­ney for Jefferson’s fam­i­ly, tweet­ed that they are relieved with the indict­ment, but “remain cau­tious that a con­vic­tion and appro­pri­ate sen­tence is still a long way away.”

In the week after Jefferson’s death, Tarrant County pros­e­cu­tors said they had enough evi­dence to ask for the grand jury indict­ment, and said in a state­ment “we will pros­e­cute this case to the fullest extent of the law.”

The case led to a rare mur­der charge against a police offi­cer in the United States, when Dean was ini­tial­ly arrest­ed just days after the inci­dent occurred. He resigned from the Fort Worth Police Department pri­or to his arrest.

“Had the offi­cer not resigned, I would have fired him for vio­la­tions for sev­er­al poli­cies, includ­ing our use of force pol­i­cy, our de-esca­la­tion pol­i­cy and unpro­fes­sion­al con­duct,” Police Chief Ed Kraus told reporters.

Dean and anoth­er offi­cer were respond­ing to an ear­ly-morn­ing house call after a neigh­bor became con­cerned when they noticed the front door of a home, which belonged to Jefferson’s moth­er, was left ajar and request­ed a wel­fare check.

Jefferson had been babysit­ting her 8‑year-old nephew inside and play­ing video games. According to police and body cam­era footage, Dean failed to iden­ti­fy him­self before fir­ing his weapon, strik­ing Jefferson.

The body­cam video released pub­licly shows the per­spec­tive of an offi­cer out­side the home, peer­ing into a win­dow using a flash­light and spot­ting some­one inside stand­ing near a win­dow and telling her, “Put your hands up — show me your hands.” A sin­gle shot is fired sec­onds later.

Jefferson’s nephew told author­i­ties that she had tak­en a hand­gun from her purse when she heard nois­es out­side and point­ed it toward the win­dow, accord­ing to an arrest war­rant. But police have said she was with­in her rights to pro­tect herself.

Jefferson’s death came on the heels of the con­vic­tion of for­mer police offi­cer Amber Guyger in near­by Dallas. Guyger received a 10-year mur­der sen­tence in the fatal shoot­ing of unarmed accoun­tant Botham Jean last year, when she said she mis­tak­en­ly entered his apart­ment and believed he was a robber.

In both cas­es, the offi­cer is white and the vic­tim was black, lead­ing to protests against police abus­es and racial profiling.

The school resource offi­cer has report­ed­ly been placed on paid leave amid an inves­ti­ga­tion into the inci­dent in North Carolina.

By Nina Golgowski

A school resource offi­cer is on leave after sur­veil­lance video cap­tured him body-slam­ming a North Carolina mid­dle school­er to the ground twice while escort­ing him to the school’s office, accord­ing to local media reports.

The video tak­en at Vance County Middle School and obtained by local news out­lets shows the sheriff’s deputy walk­ing along­side the child, only described as being under the age of 12, before the deputy sud­den­ly lifts the boy up and throws him to the ground.

The deputy then grabs the boy’s limp body off the floor and throws him down again before pulling the child back onto his feet and drag­ging him down the hall. 

Vance County Schools filed a com­plaint with the sheriff’s office on Friday. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation will now inves­ti­gate the mat­ter, Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame told WNCN.

“We went over and when we first saw the video, we were stunned, we were shocked,” Brame told the local sta­tion. “We all are par­ents and grand­par­ents that have chil­dren at that same age, so it brought some great con­cern to us.”

Brame added that the school resource offi­cer, one of two assigned to the school, has been placed on paid leave amid an inves­ti­ga­tion into the incident.

Vance County Schools said it is ful­ly coop­er­at­ing with that investigation.

“I don’t expect my deputy or any deputy or law enforce­ment in North Carolina to car­ry out their duties in that way,” the school dis­trict said in a state­ment obtained by WNCN. “The safe­ty of our stu­dents has been and con­tin­ues to be of the utmost impor­tance to our dis­trict.”
A spokesper­son for the NCSBI con­firmed the agency is inves­ti­gat­ing the sit­u­a­tion but declined to com­ment fur­ther in an email to HuffPost on Sunday.
Story ; orig­i­nat­ed @(huffpost.com)

View on the​root​.com

Now that (a) the noise sur­round­ing the death of 16-year-old Immaculate Conception High stu­dent Vanessa Kirkland has died down (b) the three Police offi­cers have been sen­tenced and © the anti-police blood lust has been sat­is­fied, it is time to take an intro­spec­tive look at the alle­ga­tions around the case.
Before hand­ing the case to the jurors, the pre­sid­ing judge, Carol Lawrence-Beswick told them that they had the option of con­sid­er­ing the less­er charge of manslaugh­ter.
Whether or not this is prop­er judi­cial address to the jury, one can­not help but feel that the fix was in for the offi­cers. It gives rise to the idea that the tri­al judge under­stood that with no (mens re.a) guilty state of mind, the over-charge, *mur­der*, had no foot­ing on which to stand.
The offi­cers were found guilty, [lit­er­al­ly as direct­ed by the court] on manslaugh­ter.
Even though the stan­dard for mur­der was not met, the sen­tence of 14 ¹⁄₂ years was imposed by Lawrence-Beswick, on the less­er charge of manslaugh­ter.
This sen­tence giv­en to these brave pub­lic ser­vants was vast­ly in excess of the sen­tences of sev­en years and ten years the very same courts gen­er­al­ly hand out to the mur­der­ous crim­i­nals con­vict­ed for mur­der, the more seri­ous charge. This in and of itself demon­strates a bla­tant anti-police bias, even in the courts which are sup­posed to be lev­el head­ed arbiters of facts, not emo­tion­al eas­i­ly swayed tools of anti-police rage.
These offi­cers had zero chance of get­ting a fair tri­al any­where in Jamaica.
This case should not have seen the inside of a court­room.
The offi­cers were afford­ed not one scin­til­la of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty in the exe­cu­tion of their sworn duty to serve and pro­tect.
Inherent in all of that, is the tragedy that these young offi­cers took action as they were sworn to do, and were scape­goat­ed, dem­a­gogued, and crim­i­nal­ly con­vict­ed for doing exact­ly what they were trained to do.
Uninformed out­cry and unabashed anti-police bias in the crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it Jamaican soci­ety was suf­fi­cient to gin up the *per­se­cut­ing* mob, excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence and com­mon sense would not matter. 

On the night in ques­tion, the police report­ed the con­fronta­tion took place after sev­er­al per­sons were robbed in Portmore, St. Catherine after which the rob­bers made their escape to Kingston in a motor car. 
Following the shoot­ing inci­dent, it was dis­cov­ered that there were sev­en pas­sen­gers (four females and three males) trav­el­ing in the motor car. Four oth­er per­sons (three females and a male) were also shot and injured.
The oth­er two men escaped. Five of the per­sons involved in the inci­dent are from address­es in Greenwich Farm, while the oth­er two are from Norman Lane address­es.
A Taurus .38 revolver with three live rounds and sev­er­al spent shells were seized.

The fore­gone is the cen­tral tenet of what tran­spired. I have not seen an alter­na­tive nar­ra­tive that con­tra­dicts this report­ing from the police.
In light of that *fact* there are a few ques­tions which must be answered sur­round­ing how the police are sup­posed to respond to inci­dents in which lethal vio­lence is direct­ed at them.
It is impor­tant to also con­sid­er that this case was inves­ti­gat­ed by a demon­stra­bly biased neo­phyte INDECOM, then just estab­lished less than two years, and with a com­mis­sion­er, Terrence Williams, a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac with his own agen­da.
For the moment I will set aside Terrence Williams, and INDECOM and deal with the core of what report­ed­ly occurred on that fate­ful night result­ing in the crim­i­nal con­vic­tion of three police offi­cers, con­sta­bles Anna-Kay Bailey, Andrewain Smith, and Durvin Hayles. 

No one has stepped for­ward to sug­gest that the offi­cers were act­ing out­side of their giv­en man­date to serve and pro­tect. The evi­dence that they were in fact, part of a response to events com­ing over the police radio of rob­beries in Portmore Saint Catherine and a car with armed occu­pants.
No one has chal­lenged the fact that there were sev­er­al occu­pants in the car or that the offi­cers returned fire after being shot at.
No one has chal­lenged the fact that the dri­ver refused to stop when ordered to do so by the offi­cers.
No one has chal­lenged the fact that one weapon with live round s and spent shells was recov­ered. No one has chal­lenged the fact that two or so poten­tial­ly armed occu­pants fled after the car was brought to a stop.
No one chal­lenged the evi­dence that the dece­dent Vanessa Kirkland was in a vehi­cle that was involved in the com­mis­sion of sev­er­al felonies.
No one chal­lenged that the occu­pants of the car did com­mit sev­er­al rob­beries in Portmore before end­ing up in Kingston.
What was tes­ti­fied to by INDECOM’s foren­sic experts is that most of the shoot­ing came from out­side the vehi­cle in which Kirkland and oth­ers were trav­el­ing, as if the police have to ensure that they do not fire more rounds than those fired at them?
No one has denied that the stolen items were recov­ered from the car. So where is the crime that those brave offi­cers com­mit­ted?
As long as the order was giv­en by the police to stop and the dri­ver refused to stop, and as long as gun­fire came from that vehi­cle the police had every right to return fire at the vehicle.

There are so many incon­sis­ten­cies in this case which should nev­er have been brought in the first place, includ­ing a pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness who refused to tes­ti­fy to the lies they were put up to by INDECOM.
The pros­e­cu­tion asked the judge to declare her a hos­tile wit­ness.
Nowhere else in the world would police offi­cers doing their jobs be crim­i­nal­ized because of the fan­tas­tic notion that an angel­ic school­girl in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, can­not become a col­lat­er­al casu­al­ty as a con­se­quence of her actions.
We have heard all of the vil­lage lawyers and the bleed­ing heart anti-police pro­pa­gan­dists, and now it is our turn to speak out about what is hap­pen­ing in our coun­try. Jamaica has been turned into a ver­i­ta­ble killing field.
The police are *persecuted*whenever they dare go after the mur­der­ers and oth­er anar­chists, the gov­ern­ment makes sure that the killing remains even as it refus­es to repeal the Trojan horse called INDECOM.
The maraud­ing crim­i­nals kill with­out con­se­quence. On the rare occa­sion, they are cap­tured and con­vict­ed their penal­ties for heinous mur­ders are con­sid­er­ably less than that giv­en police offi­cer con­vict­ed for less­er charges.
The polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion is equal­ly as com­plic­it as the gov­ern­ment in this degra­da­tion of our coun­try.
It is in this envi­ron­ment of anti rule of law that police offi­cers are asked to oper­ate. Clean out the garbage and smut from the chi­na clos­et but do not break any­thing.
It is for this rea­son why the police have become ten­ta­tive, unsure, reluc­tant, and inef­fec­tu­al. The crim­i­nal under­world has won. The nation can­not fool itself any longer that the cur­rent strate­gies are going to do any­thing to change the mur­der rate in our coun­try.
The foun­da­tion on which the nation’s crim­i­nal jus­tice is built is inher­ent­ly sup­port­ive of crim­i­nals, not to the rule of law.
Those who run our coun­try are not igno­rant of these truths, they designed it this way to ben­e­fit them­selves.
And now the three offi­cers have been grant­ed bail pend­ing the out­come of their appeals.
The appel­late court has nev­er seen a case it does­n’t reverse no mat­ter the heinous nature of the crimes com­mit­ted by the defen­dant.
We will be watch­ing to see if the appel­late court will do what is right for once and toss this case out.
In the end, I hope these offi­cers will be reim­bursed tens of mil­lions in com­pen­sa­tion for lost wages and puni­tive dam­ages as well.
No amount of mon­ey will ever right the mon­u­men­tal wrong which has been done to them by this country.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid 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.

As a for­mer front line crime-fight­er who has been shot in the line of duty defend­ing my coun­try from vio­lent thugs, I did not expect any quar­ter and those with whom I worked will recall that I gave none to those who would extin­guish the lives of the inno­cent.
Nevertheless, it was the tar­di­ness, inter­fer­ence, lack of seri­ous­ness and focus on crime which caused me to make the crit­i­cal deci­sion 28 years ago to leave the JCF. It was a deci­sion I nev­er once regret­ted.
Even at this late stage, had I stayed I would still be a serv­ing mem­ber, and that is the rea­son that I con­tin­ue to speak out on the issue of crime and vio­lence, and the con­se­quences the com­plic­i­ty of the two polit­i­cal par­ties is hav­ing on our country.

Some of our for­mer law-enforce­ment prac­ti­tion­ers much smarter than I am, have argued that crime is mul­ti­di­men­sion­al, and that if a full­some approach is adopt­ed we will begin to reap rewards.
Others in the hal­lowed halls of acad­e­mia con­tend that the vio­lence we con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence in Jamaica will sim­ply van­ish, if a Utopian sce­nario is cre­at­ed in which every­one has a job and enough resources to pur­chase what­ev­er they want.
I sum­mar­i­ly rub­bish those argu­ments, as there is no evi­dence that pover­ty in Jamaica is the pri­ma­ry dri­ver of vio­lent crimes. That is not to say that as far as some crimes are con­cerned pover­ty does not play a part.
From the Lotto scam, there is data to be extrap­o­lat­ed which will show that pover­ty plays no part in its con­tin­u­ance.
Smart tech-savvy young men are able to scam huge sums of mon­ey from the vul­ner­a­ble. They then use the illic­it, ill-got­ten returns to pur­chase high pow­ered weapons and build-out dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal enter­pros­es which the Government should be extreme­ly star­tled by. 

Law enforce­ment has con­tin­ued to make the case that lot­to scam­ming is a major source of the resources fund­ing the crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing across the Island.
I have long called for anti-gang laws sim­i­lar to the US Rico Statute. The Jamaica anti-gang law, though nowhere close to the Rico Statute in strength, was a good first step.
Which brings us to the tri­al of alleged gang leader Uchence Wilson and his 17 co-accused.
Those watch­ing the case may also be con­cerned as the lawyers for the accused defen­dants at the long delay in announc­ing a ver­dict in the tri­al presided over by Chief Justice Bryan Sykes.
(The old adage *jus­tice delayed is jus­tice denied *) comes to mind in this instance.
The court is on record as say­ing that a ver­dict would have been announced on January 8^th, 2020. 

[However, in a December 6^th let­ter to attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the accused defen­dants, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, explained that due to soft­ware issues used to col­late, ana­lyze and anno­tate evi­dence, an alter­na­tive had to be sought. The pro­cure­ment for the new soft­ware, accord­ing to let­ter, was not com­plet­ed until last week. “Unfortunately, the pro­cure­ment process was not com­plet­ed until December 4, 2019, when the link to the soft­ware was acquired. This new soft­ware seems more promis­ing, but there is an inevitable learn­ing curve which was be suc­cess­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ed. The tran­scripts and oth­er evi­dence will not have to loaded unto this soft­ware, anno­tat­ed and man­aged,” Sykes said. ]

The time­ly, fair and equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice is some of the cor­ner­stones on which a just and thriv­ing soci­ety is built. Surely, in this heat­ed envi­ron­ment of vio­lent crimes and the urgency which ought to be attached to its res­o­lu­tion, the last thing which should be hold­ing up the time­ly res­o­lu­tion of an impor­tant case is appro­pri­ate com­put­er soft­ware.
The Chief Justice’s let­ter reveals some basic short­com­ings. Quote; “This new soft­ware seems more promis­ing”.
Sounds slip­shod, rather than a pro­fes­sion­al audit which would deter­mine qual­i­ta­tive­ly, exact­ly what is need­ed instead of what seems to be a guess­ing game as to its per­for­mance.
“There is an inevitable learn­ing curve which was to be suc­cess­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ed”.
In oth­er words, “we don’t know for sure whether the new soft­ware will work as we expect it to and even so we will have to then learn how to use it”.
Police and Prosecutors seem to have held up their end of the bar­gain. The ques­tion now is, have the jus­tice min­istry done its due dili­gence. Calls to the Ministry has not resolved that issue.

The optics are less than desir­able, here we have an impor­tant case, one which for bet­ter or worse can be a bench­mark in the way the law is enforced and unfor­tu­nate­ly, an agency of gov­ern­ment fell down on the job.
The par­ti­san apol­o­gist who defends every medi­oc­rity will also defend this lat­est iter­a­tion as well, you know, “things hap­pen.”
The fact of the mat­ter is that it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of some­one to pro­cure what­ev­er soft­ware is need­ed to ensure the smooth run­ning of the process.
That did not hap­pen and some­one should be held account­able.
This lev­el of pro­tract­ed tar­di­ness has been indica­tive of the way the pub­lic sec­tor oper­ates. For years much of the blame for the break­down of the process in the crim­i­nal jus­tice space has been laid at the feet of the police.
This can­not be.
The nation should be high­ly focused on the out­come of this case. On it hinges whether the prac­tices used by police and pros­e­cu­tors are good enough to secure con­vic­tions in a sys­tem which is high­ly hos­tile to the pros­e­cu­tion.
We too will be watching.

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

I hate to be the Gringe who brings the bad news of real­i­ty in this fes­tive sea­son, but I can­not in good con­science pre­tend that every­thing is okay.
The mur­der rate is high as hell, in fact, some esti­mates have the num­bers in excess of five vic­tims per day.
Still, oth­ers say that those num­bers are not ful­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the killings which are tak­ing place, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the miss­ing are tak­en into account.

The truth is that we real­ly want to enun­ci­ate the pos­i­tives in the stock mar­ket, the new con­struc­tions, and the ter­rif­ic pos­i­tives the tourism sec­tor has been expe­ri­enc­ing. Nevertheless, it would be high­ly irre­spon­si­ble of me to ignore the killings, and oth­er acts of vio­lence plagu­ing the coun­try. We sim­ply can­not paint a glow­ing pic­ture while ignor­ing the dark real­i­ty which lurks just below the surface.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force has seen Commissioners of Police come and go. So too has Ministers of National Security come and gone, but we are expe­ri­enc­ing a strange dose of unre­al­i­ty at the present time and I am per­son­al­ly watch­ing it with a mix of sar­casm and dis­gust.
It is rather strange the way the entire coun­try has decid­ed to look away and pre­tend on this issue.
I have always main­tained that Jamaicans are high­ly pre­ten­tious and this is absolute con­fir­ma­tion.
You are all gonna sit there, and pre­tend that the mur­der sta­tis­tics are not as bad and, may I say, far worse than when pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­ers of police were in charge?
Simply because the Commissioner of Police, Antony Anderson came from out­side the JCF?
Yes, you peo­ple are a bunch of hypocrites. 

Where are all the hand wring­ing and the calls from the bour­geoise uptown?
The truth is that the bour­geoisie sees Anderson as one of its own, and on the basis of that he gets a free pass. What a tan­gled web of deceit?
And so as vio­lent crime con­tin­ues to climb, the Commissioner of Police announced a raft of ini­tia­tives designed to paper over the huge craters in the wall, hop­ing that none of the partiers will lean onto the wall, amidst the glitz and glam­or of the fes­tiv­i­ties.
Well, I am sor­ry, I am an inquis­i­tive prod­der, I like to touch and prod and feel to make sure that I am not being sold a bill of goods.
And guess what I found? I found that this newest announce­ment is designed to pla­cate, yes placate.

Anderson says the Jamaica Constabulary Force will roll out a spate of tech­no­log­i­cal tools to boost the crime fight, start­ing next year. Anderson declares, “[relics like sta­tion diaries will become a thing of the past”]. Yea that should real­ly bring down vio­lent crime.
The idea that a police depart­ment would still be using sta­tion diaries in 2019 would be laugh­able if it was­n’t so archa­ic.
The Commissioner says the police will be fit­ting patrol cars with a license plate mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem. Also, inves­ti­ga­tors will ben­e­fit from a new train­ing school.
Am I say­ing these ini­tia­tives are not pos­i­tive if and when they become real­i­ty?
Not at all, what I am say­ing is that these are basic ini­tia­tive announce­ments. They are run of the mill things which need to be done. None of these ini­tia­tives will do a damn thing about low­er­ing vio­lent crime.

I can­not imag­ine that this Island would be so com­fort­able with Commissioner George Quallo hav­ing this kind of suc­cess rate?
Or should I say fail­ure rate?
It damn sure did­n’t give Commissioner Dr. Carl Williams that kind of def­er­ence. I guess the men who came up through the ranks, you know,.….…. the chil­dren of Jamaica’s poor­est, are not wor­thy of that respect, despite their careers of sac­ri­fice.
Oh, by the way, I hate to bring this up but the ZOSOs and SOEs have not done a damn thing to lessen the inci­dents of vio­lent crimes.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid 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.

Tesha Miller has been found guilty in rela­tion to the mur­der of for­mer chair­man of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), Douglas Chambers.

The deci­sion was hand­ed down a short while ago in the Home Circuit Court by a sev­en-mem­ber jury. The jury, com­pris­ing six women and a man, found Miller guilty of acces­so­ry before and after the fact to Chambers’ mur­der after more than three hours of delib­er­a­tion. Miller is to be sen­tenced on January 9, 2020. The for­mer JUTC chair­man was gunned down out­side the company’s depot in Spanish Town, St Catherine on June 27, 2008. In her sum­ma­tion, tri­al judge, Justice Georgiana Fraser, told the jurors that they would have to deter­mine for them­selves whether the tes­ti­mo­ny of the star wit­ness was true and make con­clu­sions on the valid­i­ty of his expla­na­tions for omissions.

In the tri­al, the Crown’s wit­ness, a self-pro­claimed for­mer mem­ber of the Spanish Town-based Clansman Gang, said Miller told him that Chamber’s mur­der was a con­tract killing. He also iden­ti­fied Miller as the leader of the gang and out­lined the hier­ar­chy of the crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion in which he said he was an area leader. The wit­ness, who can­not be named because of a court order, also dis­closed that he decid­ed to tes­ti­fy to put an end to the gang vio­lence and extor­tion tak­ing place in Spanish Town. Miller, how­ev­er, denied know­ing the wit­ness and refut­ed that he was involved in the killing. (Jamaicagleaner​.com)

It is nev­er a good idea when the tail wags the dog, but this seems to be the case in Albany, New York State’s cap­i­tal.
At issue is the recent crim­i­nal jus­tice reforms.
Activists and inter­est groups have long worked to have the state leg­is­la­ture take into con­sid­er­a­tion some key fac­tors they believe are anti­thet­i­cal to the fair and equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of Justice.
Those issues they believe end up affect­ing the poor­est peo­ple and peo­ple of col­or being incar­cer­at­ed because of their col­or and finan­cial status.

Beginning January 1^st, cash bail will be elim­i­nat­ed for hun­dreds of offens­es, and new dis­cov­ery and tri­al laws will also go into effect. The crim­i­nal jus­tice reforms were passed as part of the state bud­get ear­li­er this year. [wamc]
But despite the hard work of the peo­ple who rec­og­nize that these changes were need­ed, there are many Republicans at the state lev­el, pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment who believe that the recent­ly passed mea­sures should be watered down to lev­els police want them to be.

It is the duty of the Legislature to con­sid­er the issues and make laws, and where nec­es­sary make changes to laws that are oner­ous, or not work­ing in the inter­est of the cit­i­zens of the state.
In that process, leg­is­la­tors have a duty to con­sid­er all of the data avail­able and to lis­ten to every­one includ­ing police, and pros­e­cu­tors who are the pro­fes­sion­als on the front lines of enforc­ing the laws.

On the oth­er hand, many pros­e­cu­tors and police have been far less pro­fes­sion­al than they ought to be. As a con­se­quence, cit­i­zens least able to defend them­selves have become vic­tims of the sys­tem admin­is­tered by pros­e­cu­tors and police.
Additionally, cities, and munic­i­pal­i­ties across the state have been forced to fork over hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars each year to pay for police abuse.
Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have their lives destroyed because of dirty police offi­cers who arbi­trar­i­ly and cal­lous­ly frame the inno­cent who are then thrown in jail, and as a result of their state of impov­er­ish­ment or inabil­i­ty unable to pay for bail.
As a result of the indif­fer­ence and com­plic­i­ty of police and pros­e­cu­tors, many inno­cent peo­ple have spent inor­di­nate amounts of time locked up in jail for minor infrac­tions.
No case has been more heart wrench­ing than the case of 19-year-old Kalief Browder.

Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old, was thrown in the Rikers Jail by NYPD cops, alleged­ly for steal­ing a back­pack. Browder killed him­self after spend­ing three years in jail but nev­er saw the inside of a court­room. The estate of the young man was giv­en $3.3 mil­lion of the city’s tax dol­lars. No amount of mon­ey can bring Kalief Browder back.
According to the New York Daily News, New York City tax­pay­ers spent a whop­ping $230 mil­lion to pay off 6,472 law­suits set­tled against the NYPD in the last fis­cal year, accord­ing to an annu­al report released by Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office.
That is only for New York City alone. Nevertheless, the cost in human suf­fer­ing is incalculable.

The group against the reform includes Republican legislators,(big sur­prise there), pros­e­cu­tors and cops. This is where I believe the line ought to be drawn. Police are sup­posed to enforce the laws not dic­tate what they are.
According to [wamc] some law­mak­ers, police chiefs, and oth­er law enforce­ment per­son­nel have been ask­ing New York to delay the imple­men­ta­tion, and for the leg­is­la­ture to recon­vene to change the reforms they say are dan­ger­ous.
https://​www​.wamc​.org/​p​o​s​t​/​n​e​w​-​y​o​r​k​-​l​a​w​-​e​n​f​o​r​c​e​m​e​n​t​-​o​f​f​i​c​i​a​l​s​-​s​e​e​k​-​c​h​a​n​g​e​s​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​r​e​f​o​rms

The state should allow the changes to go through and not allow police and pros­e­cu­tors to fur­ther take away the rights of the poor­est cit­i­zens.
It is up to the leg­is­la­ture to cor­rect these injus­tices brought on the inno­cent, by the very peo­ple pre­tend­ing to care about the pub­lic.
This prac­tice of police and pros­e­cu­tors dic­tat­ing the rules as it relates to what is inside the laws have made the coun­try a ver­i­ta­ble police state.
As of 2019, the United States is 4.27% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, yet it has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing 25% of the world’s prison pop­u­la­tion.
That is what hap­pens when the police is allowed to dic­tate the laws rather than enforce them.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid 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.

Questions abound about the length of time it must have tak­en for crooks to dig their way into Bascho a pop­u­lar Orange Street store in down­town Kingston.
According to police, the break-in occurred between 7:15 pm on Tuesday and 6:30 am yes­ter­day morn­ing.
Police told local media that thieves gained access to the build­ing by cut­ting a hole in a sec­tion of the roof, broke into the admin­is­tra­tive office and gained access to a safe from which they stole an unde­ter­mined sum of mon­ey.”
Individuals then went on to access the adjoin­ing con­ve­nience store at the loca­tion, where they broke into the man­ager’s office and stole two lap­tops before pro­ceed­ing to anoth­er sec­tion of the build­ing where they stole anoth­er unde­ter­mined sum police confirmed.

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Bossier, LA — Police Officer Patrick Edmonds Jr., who is Black, fatal­ly shot Shannon Rupert, a 45-year old white woman, in a Louisiana hotel after she threat­ened and tried to attack him with a pair of scis­sors while scream­ing racial slurs at him. Edmonds, how­ev­er, has been cleared of any wrong­do­ing. On October 25^th, Edmonds respond­ed to a 911 call report­ing an inci­dent at LaQuinta Inn in Bossier where Rupert was walk­ing around the lob­by with a pair of scis­sors while scream­ing on the phone.

A dis­turb­ing video of the inci­dent showed Rupert threat­en­ing the police offi­cer, who was try­ing to stop her. Edmonds can be heard repeat­ed­ly ask­ing Rupert to put down the pair of scis­sors she had been bran­dish­ing to oth­er peo­ple in a hotel lob­by, but Rupert refused.

“You’re going to have to shoot me, n — –. You’re not tak­ing them. Shoot me,” Rupert said before charg­ing towards Edmonds with scis­sors in her hands.

Edmonds shot her twice, killing her. The local police depart­ment said that after the body­cam footage was reviewed, Edmonds was cleared from any wrong­do­ings in con­nec­tion to the incident.

In a state­ment, the District Attorney also stat­ed that Edmonds did not com­mit a crime as “his actions con­sti­tut­ed jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide.” He has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing the result of the inves­ti­ga­tion by the Internal Affairs Division.

Meanwhile, Melinda Peterson, Rupert’s cousin, was ques­tion­ing why the police offi­cer had to use lethal force and not use a taser instead. But Peterson admit­ted that Rupert had been using ille­gal drugs for long.

“I knew she had been into drugs real­ly bad. I tried help­ing her. I tried talk­ing to her to see if maybe we could get her some help, a recourse. Getting her into rehab or any­thing like that. She was just out of it,” Peterson told KSLA 12.

Philadelphia Eagle’s Malcolm Jenkins and oth­er pro ball play­ers release a video high­light­ing the death of col­lege foot­ball star at the hands of cops By Dawn Onley — November 6, 201 

Police bru­tal­i­ty and gun vio­lence are being high­light­ed in a series of pow­er­ful pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments that launch today.

The first video unveiled tells the sto­ry of 20-year-old Danroy “DJ” Henry, a col­lege foot­ball star who was killed nine years ago by police near Mount Pleasant, New York. The PSAs are part of a new ini­tia­tive by Philadelphia Eagles safe­ty, Malcolm Jenkins, and the Players Coalition to raise aware­ness of police bru­tal­i­ty and racial inequities.

Several years after Colin Kaepernick drew atten­tion to police bru­tal­i­ty and racial injus­tice by tak­ing a knee dur­ing the National Anthem, Jenkins and the Players Coalition are pick­ing up the torch by launch­ing “The Responsibility Program” to inform foot­ball enthu­si­asts on these long­stand­ing and per­sis­tent issues.

Henry was gunned down by police on Oct. 17, 2010, while they were alleged­ly respond­ing to a dis­tur­bance. Somehow the stu­dent became their target.

They claimed that DJ was shot because the car he was dri­ving in sped up, and that he tried to run peo­ple over instead of stop­ping. Witnesses paint­ed a dif­fer­ent pic­ture, say­ing the offi­cer was the aggres­sor and shot DJ unjust­ly. This claim was ulti­mate­ly backed up by anoth­er offi­cer, who came for­ward and told the truth with video footage shot at the time of the incident.

At the time of his killing, Henry played foot­ball at Pace University with dreams of going pro.

DJ’s PSA is nar­rat­ed by his moth­er, Angella.

“Never in a mil­lion years would we have thought this could have hap­pened to us, and it con­tin­ues to hap­pen to so many oth­er fam­i­lies,” Angella says in the video. “Our son is everybody’s son. We need to do more to cre­ate change.” The sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed here: https://​the​grio​.com/

The fight against dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals and the harm they do to soci­ety is an all hands on deck affair. Tragically, and to the detri­ment of the coun­try, this effort has been seen as pure­ly a polic­ing issue in Jamaica.
The (infama fi ded), [informer should die] mantra is a tes­ta­ment of the side that pop cul­ture has tak­en in this fight, per­son­i­fied and exem­pli­fied in the dance­halls.
The aver­age Jamaican cit­i­zen was not always opposed to giv­ing infor­ma­tion to the author­i­ties which would aid in the appre­hen­sion of dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals. However, as the cul­ture shift­ed, and cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal­i­ty became more main­stream, soo too has cit­i­zens balked at pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion to the authorities.

The tragedy inher­ent in Jamaica’s case, and I dare­say in oth­er areas of the Caribbean, is that there are stub­born resid­ual ves­tiges of the colo­nial past which refus­es to let go of old habits and think­ing.
In the case of Trinidad and Tobago for exam­ple, though the nation moved toward self-auton­o­my and offi­cial­ly became a repub­lic on August 1^st, 1976, some of the old think­ing still remains as I will get to later.

In Jamaica, one of the most intran­si­gent stum­bling block to deal­ing effec­tive­ly with the scourge of crim­i­nal­i­ty as it has been in Trinidad and Tobago, has been a Judiciary which is hell-bent on act­ing as a social work­force.
Nowhere is the judi­cia­ry more adamant that it is impor­tant to have an inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry than in Jamaica.
However, the local judi­cia­ry seems to believe that inde­pen­dence is syn­ony­mous with, answer­able to no one.
When the judi­cia­ry, like the elect­ed gov­ern­ment, begins to, or has act­ed in a way that is anti­thet­i­cal to the good of the coun­try, then it becomes nec­es­sary to change the way they are allowed to oper­ate.
We do that by cod­i­fy­ing into law cer­tain changes to the lat­i­tude that was allowed the judi­cia­ry, (eg) truth in sen­tenc­ing.
This means that what­ev­er sen­tence was hand­ed down at tri­al for vio­lent offend­ers is what they serve.
We also should cod­i­fy into law the sen­tences which should be hand­ed down for cer­tain vio­lent cat­e­gories of crimes.
Bail should also be revis­it­ed as it relates to vio­lent offend­ers who maim and kill.
It is brain-dead and pro­fuse­ly igno­rant to argue about guar­an­tees with­in a con­sti­tu­tion writ­ten over 57) years ago, when most of the issues affect­ing us today did not exist then.

The core issue of (Bail) or whether courts grant them, are crit­i­cal to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and to law enforce­ment.
If bail is grant­ed arbi­trar­i­ly as it has been in Jamaica’s case, it endan­gers wit­ness­es, destroys pros­e­cu­tors cas­es, frus­trates inves­ti­ga­tors, and ulti­mate­ly thwarts the process of jus­tice.
None of which seems to make any dif­fer­ence to the Jamaican judi­cia­ry and their chief cheer-lead­ers in the crim­i­nal defense pro­fes­sion.
And so the [peo­ple’s case], as all cas­es are, it becomes sole­ly the pre­rog­a­tive of the police and a few ded­i­cat­ed pros­e­cu­tors to pro­tect the peo­ple’s inter­est.
Jamaican judges seem to feel no oblig­a­tion to the [peo­ple] who pay their salaries, or about the detri­men­tal con­se­quences of their indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive actions on the society.

Though Trinidad & Tobago’s pop­u­la­tion is rough­ly half of Jamaica’s, and though Trinidad is arguably a rich coun­try, with oil and gas deposits and a vibrant man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. The coun­try over the last two decades or so has been plagued with a seri­ous gang prob­lem.
Murders have moved from rough­ly one hun­dred per year to over five-hun­dred per year.
An over four hun­dred per­cent increase in just fif­teen years.
As it is in Jamaica many of the char­ac­ter­is­tics which fac­tor into the exis­tence and enhance­ment of this cri­sis are the same.
Corrupt politi­cians who fun­nel mon­ey to their cohorts for gov­ern­ment projects. Warring gangs fight­ing for turf. The gangs get their pow­er from dirty politi­cians for whom they do favors, and are reward­ed with lucra­tive gov­ern­ment con­tracts.
Additionally, Trinidad and Tobago are only sev­en miles from Venezuela a major drug trans-ship­ment hub of drugs from Colombia to West Africa and oth­er destinations.

The sim­i­lar­i­ties between Jamaica and Trinidad are almost sur­re­al. in Trinidad, as in Jamaica, entire com­mu­ni­ties live in fear, in some instances, homes are aban­doned, oth­ers are set on fire, and even oth­ers are pot-marked with bul­let holes as rival gangs duel it out against each oth­er.
Activists argue that the rot is not out­side the pow­er of the gov­ern­ment to stop the mad­ness, they say the secu­ri­ty mea­sures and laws are not enough to make a dif­fer­ence.
The brunt of the pres­sure is on the Police depart­ment, a force which has been.….….….….….….….….get this, accused of extra-judi­cial killings, and over­ly aggres­sive tac­tics.
These are the exact bul­let points used in Jamaica, ( a)demonize the police and (b) get on with the busi­ness of cor­rupt gov­er­nance. Because of course, the pop­u­la­tion is too dunce on the one hand, and too pre­ten­tious on the oth­er to under­stand it.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​a​n​y​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​l​a​w​y​e​r​s​-​a​r​e​-​n​o​t​-​a​b​o​v​e​-​b​o​a​r​d​-​t​h​e​y​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​n​o​t​-​e​x​p​e​c​t​-​t​o​-​g​e​t​-​s​p​e​c​i​a​l​-​t​r​e​a​t​m​e​n​t​-​w​h​e​n​-​t​h​e​y​-​b​r​e​a​k​-​t​h​e​-​l​a​ws/

Enter Trinidad’s police Commissioner Gary Griffiths, a for­mer mil­i­tary cap­tain, for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, for­mer min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty.
The résumé of com­mis­sion­er Griffiths reads almost ver­ba­tim like that of Jamaica’s Antony Anderson.
Griffith’s résumé details that he received a Meritorious medal for duties per­formed dur­ing the 1990 attempt­ed coup in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
A leader who is unafraid to step in the mud and take the crit­i­cisms of the know-noth­ing Monday morn­ing quar­ter­backs, who crit­i­cizes every­thing, but has con­tributed noth­ing.
And maybe that is the dif­fer­ence between Griffiths and Jamaican police com­mis­sion­ers past and present…
Griffiths is unafraid, unde­terred or unbowed by the cor­rupt politi­cians in his coun­try. He is unmoved by the crim­i­nal lawyers, who he labels [lawyer-crim­i­nals], who are active cheer-lead­ers to the judges and mag­is­trates who return the dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to the streets as soon as the police arrest them.

In blast­ing a mag­is­trate who recent­ly released a gang­ster arrest­ed with mul­ti­ple ille­gal weapons, com­mis­sion­er Griffiths allud­ed to the rights and duty of lawyers to defend their clients.
Nevertheless, he poignant­ly assailed the lawyer-crim­i­nals who oper­ate out­side the laws, all while doing so as offi­cers of the courts.
This has been the trade­craft of Jamaica’s crim­i­nal lawyers, or should I say Jamaica’s [lawyer-crim­i­nas] as well?
Griffiths pulled no punch­es in respond­ing to a reporter’s ques­tion about lawyers who on tele­vi­sion ques­tioned his right to speak out against the mag­is­trate.
This is the kind of pre­his­toric medieval wall, that Caribbean mag­is­trates and judges oper­ate under as pub­lic ser­vants, not elect­ed by the peo­ple, but with a belief that they are immune from crit­i­cisms. In Jamaica, this non­sen­si­cal notion exists on steroids.
However, if you take a salary from the pub­lic, you are not immune to, or shield­ed from ques­tions and account­abil­i­ty to the pub­lic.
Judges across the region are quick to say they can­not respond to the crit­i­cisms lev­eled against them, but they are quite hap­py to have the crim­i­nal lawyers who ben­e­fit from their abuse of the process defend them in the media pro-bono.

One of the dif­fer­ences of the Trinidadian sys­tem from Jamaica’s, is that the police ser­vices in their repub­li­can democ­ra­cy are not sub­ju­gat­ed to, or answer­able to the Ministry of nation­al secu­ri­ty, and by exten­sion the rul­ing polit­i­cal par­ty.
It is that inde­pen­dence that allows Gary Griffiths to speak and oper­ate with such con­fi­dence and auton­o­my as opposed to Jamaica’s lit­tle pup­pet police lead­er­ship, which are shit scared of the dirty politi­cians and their sup­port­ers who are still stuck in the colo­nial­ist mind­set.
Gary Griffiths allud­ed to receiv­ing dai­ly death threats, he does not seem to mind them, he has a task to com­plete. The noise from the peanut gallery of well-con­nect­ed crim­i­nals in high places Griffiths brush­es aside, and warned, no one is above the law.
Jamaica’s offi­cials are far too com­pro­mised and con­flict­ed with process and form, to mat­ter in this exis­ten­tial fight.
Gary Griffiths gets it. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid 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 protest fol­lows dis­turb­ing videos show­ing police alleged­ly punch­ing teens on a tran­sit plat­form and storm­ing a sub­way car with guns drawn. 

Some 1,000 demon­stra­tors poured onto down­town Brooklyn streets and into at least one sub­way sta­tion Friday evening to protest police bru­tal­i­ty and aggres­sive polic­ing in the tran­sit system.

Marchers chant­ed, “Hands off black kids, NYPD,” and “Hey, hey, ho ho, NYPD has got to go.” Activists crit­i­cized the “over-polic­ing” of the tran­sit sys­tem amid a new crack­down on fare-beat­ers that they say is height­en­ing ten­sion between New Yorkers and an increased num­ber of police assigned to the sub­ways. They want the new pro­gram dropped. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the beefed-up oper­a­tion this sum­mer to place an addi­tion­al 500 uni­formed offi­cers on sub­ways and bus­es to bat­tle fare eva­sion and oth­er crimes.

Friday’s protest was trig­gered after a trou­bling video emerged last week­end on social media show­ing a police offi­cer appar­ent­ly punch­ing two teenagers near a fight on a Brooklyn sub­way plat­form.
One of them, a 15-year-old, and his fam­i­ly announced a $5 mil­lion notice of claim ahead of a planned law­suit against the offi­cer and the New York Police Department, WABC‑7 report­ed.

“I’m tru­ly con­cerned about what I saw on that video,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said at a press con­fer­ence after the video emerged. “You can­not open­ly punch a young per­son in the face mere­ly because you are caught up in the aggres­sion of the moment.” (See the video above.)

He called for an inves­ti­ga­tion and new train­ing for officers.

A sep­a­rate dis­turb­ing video showed police with guns drawn storm­ing a sub­way car filled with pas­sen­gers to appre­hend a 19-year-old sus­pect whose arms were raised in sur­ren­der for alleged­ly fail­ing to pay the $2.75 fare by hop­ping a turn­stile. “Call my mom,” he told some­one on the train. He was charged with fare eva­sion. A spokesman for the NYPD said police believed he had been car­ry­ing a gun, but no weapon was found.
Democratic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Julián Castro slammed the dan­ger­ous con­fronta­tion appar­ent­ly launched over a sub­way fare.
Protesters on Friday attacked both the vio­lence in the tran­sit sys­tem and the pro­gram that appeared to increase the like­li­hood of con­flict.
Story orig­i­nat­ed here: https://​www​.huff​post​.com/

INDECOM has been in exis­tence since 2010. The Agency’s head and the poli­ti-fools who cre­at­ed and main­tain it argues that it is an act of par­lia­ment. As if an act of par­lia­ment is some­thing that is irre­versible.
The agency releas­es it’s quar­ter­ly reports in grandiose fash­ion, replete with media gag­gle at it’s plush New Kingston Offices. All this, while the police which has served the Jamaican peo­ple for 303-years still occu­py run down delip­i­dat­ed work­spaces, unfit for habi­ta­tion.
That, how­ev­er, is a mat­ter for anoth­er time. The point is that the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM believes that the quar­ter­ly report must be crit­i­cal of, and con­fronta­tion­al with the police,. Terrence Williams does not believe that a report can be com­pli­men­ta­ry, or con­cil­ia­to­ry.
So every quar­ter he trots out like the lit­tle troll he is, to tear down the Police depart­ment with some cocka­mamie sto­ry or anoth­er, that he feels will gar­ner the most back­lash against the police when he bitch­es against some wrong­do­ing or another.

Never mind that all across Jamaica peo­ple are drop­ping like flies to the maraud­ing gun­men and nobody seems to have a clue how to stop the killings.
One of the most insane things that I have heard, is the total­ly ridicu­lous call for the police to stop shoot­ing crim­i­nals.
As far as Terrence Williams is con­cerned inno­cent dead Jamaicans is in no way con­nect­ed to the num­ber of vio­lent con­fronta­tions police have with crim­i­nals.
But he is not alone, there are many of these sanc­ti­mo­nious, self-indul­gent fools who Monday morn­ing-quar­ter­back what­ev­er police do with a crit­i­cal eye. Horace Levy and Peter Espeut are two of the lead­ing pro­pa­gan­dists,’ et al, as well. Never mind that nei­ther of these par­a­sites has ever been shot at, much less shot by crim­i­nals.
The oth­er non­sense we hear is that it is up to the police to min­i­mize the num­ber of gang­sters they kill.
In oth­er words, Jamaican cops oper­at­ing in one of the most volatile and hos­tile envi­ron­ments on the plan­et, must be the most sur­gi­cal in how they do their jobs.
Never mind that before one per­forms cos­met­ic surgery to remove the scars, the all-impor­tant work of life-sav­ing surgery must first be done.
That means that we first remove the mur­der­ers before we con­tem­plate any­thing else.

The idea of over­sight for police offi­cers is not a nov­el con­cept, this writer, a for­mer police offi­cer, under­stands this all too well. Accountability works for the good of cit­i­zens and police alike.
Where we run into prob­lems is when those who take on the task of over­sight turn their mis­sion into a cru­sade, because they are of the belief in that over­sight means lord­ing over, and being in con­trol of.
Terrence Williams exem­pli­fies that.

It is with that in mind that the com­ments of the police fed­er­a­tion chair­man were so appro­pri­ate in respond­ing to Terrence Williams’ out­ra­geous rec­om­men­da­tions to the gov­ern­ment.
Sergeant Patrae Rowe police fed­er­a­tion chair­man blast­ed Williams’ com­ments in INDECOM’s quar­ter­ly report as absurd.
Williams, in his usu­al glo­ry-hound per­sona, rec­om­mend­ed that cops charged with what he calls (egre­gious breach­es of law or prac­tice) be dis­charged from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) with­out await­ing crim­i­nal proceedings. 

In oth­er words, the con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tee of the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence afford­ed to all Jamaicans in the con­sti­tu­tion, is to be removed from police offi­cers.
What makes the demand more out­ra­geous is the fact that police offi­cers are not act­ing on their own when they don their uni­forms, they are act­ing on behalf of the state.
It is with that par­tic­u­lar thought in mind, that devel­oped coun­tries rec­og­nize that offi­cers need an added lay­er of pro­tec­tion. In the United States that pro­tec­tion is called qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty.
Qualified immu­ni­ty is a legal doc­trine in United States fed­er­al law that shields gov­ern­ment offi­cials from being sued for dis­cre­tionary actions per­formed with­in (their offi­cial capac­i­ty), unless their actions vio­lat­ed “clear­ly estab­lished” fed­er­al law or con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.
Of course, any breach has to first be proven before puni­tive sanc­tions are attached to the offend­ing party.

In his own words, Terrence Williams argued, “in egre­gious cas­es, where clear breach­es of pol­i­cy, prac­tice or law are appar­ent… offi­cers be dis­charged from the police ser­vice, with­out await­ing pend­ing crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings”.
Ha, so there you have it, this very promi­nent lawyer who want­ed to be Director of Public Prosecutions, is advo­cat­ing for a pre­sump­tion of guilt before tri­al. What’s more, he is advo­cat­ing for a pre­sump­tion of guilt in a sit­u­a­tion where arguably there should be a rein­force­ment of the pre­sump­tion of innocence.

At a time when crime is through the roof, at a time when Jamaicans are slaugh­tered in record num­bers, at a time when a sin­gle mur­der does not gar­ner a raised eye­brow, the coun­try needs to ensure that it’s resources and sup­port are square­ly behind its law enforce­ment offi­cers.
Additionally, the police depart­ment can­not retain the offi­cers it has, much less to meet recruit­ment quo­tas, because of shit­ty pay, bad work­ing con­di­tions, and INDECOM, it is way past time for Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell to go. It is way past time for INDECOM to be disbanded.

It is clear to Jamaicans who chose not to be blind­ed by pol­i­tics that Terrence Williams has one strat­e­gy, and that is to destroy what’s left of the JCF. He has sin­gle-hand­ed­ly done more to aid the expan­sion of crim­i­nal net­works in Jamaica through his Don Quixote style assault on the JCF, than any oth­er per­son ever has.
Sergeant Rowe argued “The nature of polic­ing requires fre­quent inter­ac­tion, vio­lent inter­ac­tion, with crim­i­nals. With the crime rate that Jamaica is cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing, if the num­ber of police offi­cers involved in a con­fronta­tion with crim­i­nals are to be removed off front-line duties, who does the job of the police? Everybody can’t be removed off front-line duties sim­ply because they are under inves­ti­ga­tion. I think INDECOM’s rea­son has to have more depth than this.”
Rowe’s com­ments were in response to Williams’ absurd rec­om­men­da­tion that “offi­cers under sus­pi­cion should be removed from front-line duties to ensure there is no appear­ance of col­lu­sion or tol­er­ance of such inci­dents.”

In oth­er words, val­i­dat­ed con­fir­ma­tion of wrong­do­ing is no longer the goal, mere sus­pi­cion that an offi­cer has done some­thing wrong should be enough to have offi­cers removed from their duties.

This is the kind of think­ing which could only come from (a) a men­tal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed indi­vid­ual, or (b) an indi­vid­ual who is so dement­ed, hate­ful and venge­ful that mag­gots have com­plete­ly eat­en away what­ev­er brain mat­ter he had.
That is the derange­ment syn­drome that INDECOM has come to rep­re­sent.
The Jamaican peo­ple have a choice to make.
They can con­tin­ue with this Albatros on the nation’s col­lec­tive back, and watch their loved ones mur­dered dai­ly. Or they can demand that the Act be repealed.
In the mean­time, it behooves those with the pow­er to remove this men­tal degen­er­ate before he does any more harm.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid 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.

One of my undy­ing wish­es as a young police offi­cer many years ago in Jamaica was to see our coun­try move from a nation of men and trans­form itself into a nation of laws.
Unfortunately, this did not seem to be in the cards any­time in my life­time, and since I had only one life I was not about to wait around for that change to hap­pen, I exit­ed the stage.
The inequitable and unjust dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice is one of the rea­sons crime con­tin­ues to be a stub­born prob­lem for our coun­try.
When pover­ty and aus­ter­i­ty force some peo­ple to tight­en their belts while they wit­ness oth­ers who are so fat they have to loosen theirs, that’s a problem.

In that cesspool of con­tra­dic­tion and irony, dwells the upper crust who came into promi­nence through edu­ca­tion. One would have thought that hav­ing wit­nessed the rav­ages of colo­nial dom­i­na­tion they would be more empa­thet­ic to a sys­tem that favors equi­ty and jus­tice. Not so, for the most part, they became the new colo­nial mas­ters them­selves.
It’s now 2019 and though many have died out leav­ing a younger gen­er­a­tion with the same val­ues they had, still some remain alive and still they believe they have a right to impose their will on the future of our nation.
There is still the lin­ger­ing assump­tions with­in that group that some­how they have the final say in how our coun­try should be run, and that what­ev­er they say is law.….……No they are not the law, every­one in pub­lic office must obey the laws and com­port them­selves as such.

Recently, the Minister of Justice, Delroy Chuck blast­ed the police for arrest­ing Ruel Reid and four co-accused for crimes asso­ci­at­ed with cor­rup­tion. Chuck’s daugh­ter is rep­re­sent­ing Reid as one of his attor­neys.
We thought that this was high­ly improp­er giv­en that (a) Chuck is the min­is­ter of jus­tice. (b) Chuck stat­ed that he did not know what the evi­dence was. © Chuck’s daugh­ter like we said before, is rep­re­sent­ing Ruel Reid as one of his lawyers.
As such, we called on the Prime Minister to relieve Delroy Chuck of his posi­tion as Minister of Justice, since it was bla­tant­ly obvi­ous that he would rather be in the role of defense attor­ney for Ruel Reid et al.
Our arti­cle was writ­ten before any­one in the local press saw or wrote about this inci­dent. After our arti­cle, Delroy Chuck with­drew his com­ments but did not apol­o­gize.
As we stat­ed in our arti­cle, we were not speak­ing about the accused’s pre­sumed inno­cence or guilt. We are just hap­py to see that at least some­one in gov­ern­ment has been arrest­ed for cor­rup­tion.….…. yes arrest­ed, we will take what we can at the moment.

Enter the erst­while pow­er­house lawyer Frank Phipps, Queen’s Counsel, in a rather lengthy arti­cle for one of the local papers.
Phipps: “The state­ment by Delroy Chuck, min­is­ter of jus­tice, that was crit­i­cal of the way the police act­ed in tak­ing for­mer min­is­ter of edu­ca­tion and oth­ers in cus­tody attract­ed nation­wide atten­tion with a call on the prime min­is­ter to demote him. This would be laugh­able but for the fact that so many believe it was mis­con­duct that deserves some form of rep­ri­mand, includ­ing Chuck him­self who with­drew the state­ment as being inap­pro­pri­ate for the min­is­ter of jus­tice.

Clearly, the dis­tin­guished Frank Phipps with whom I have tan­gled before, on issues of com­mon sense and pro­to­col, has for­got­ten about the impor­tance of the pre­sump­tion that jus­tice is done, and not just that it be done.
Now full dis­clo­sure, I am not a lawyer, and as such, I make no claim as to the speci­fici­ty or minu­tia of the laws, how­ev­er, if Mister Phipps believes that as Minister, Delroy Chuck can say what­ev­er he wants about a case which is still being adju­di­cat­ed, clear­ly he is off his bonkers.
As a Minister with­in the Government, (not to men­tion the min­is­ter with the Justice port­fo­lio), Minister Chuck, or any­one in that capac­i­ty, has no busi­ness attack­ing state agents, par­tic­u­lar­ly when there is no evi­dence of wrong­do­ing.
Delroy Chuck knew that his com­ments were inap­pro­pri­ate and that is the rea­son he with­drew them.

Nevertheless, in a ram­bling dia­tribe of vac­u­ous legalese, designed ulti­mate­ly to con­fuse the read­er Frank Phipps went on.

These alle­ga­tions, besides being a ridicu­lous restraint on free speech for Chuck, beg the ques­tion of whether he spoke on behalf of the Government, as a Cabinet min­is­ter, for which he should be sanc­tioned, and, more impor­tant­ly, whether what was said mer­its his com­ment — no one has said it did­n’t. His offence was a crime of omis­sion iden­ti­fied as selec­tive jus­tice in a vac­u­um, with­out evi­dence to be heard oth­er­wise.
Chuck’s with­draw­al has left me hang­ing out alone for this small-scale ver­sion of the greater prob­lem, defend­ing indi­vid­u­als against the State’s exces­sive use of force. Paradoxically, in this case the accuser became the accused – Delroy Chuck’s crit­i­cism of the police lands him being accused of pro­tect­ing an accused per­son for polit­i­cal rea­sons; a sit­u­a­tion not unknown on the plan­ta­tions. The rem­e­dy is not to deny Ruel Reid his rights and dig­ni­ty as an accused with the pre­sump­tion of innocence.

Frank Phipps express­es no under­stand­ing of the dis­tinc­tion between a reg­u­lar Jamaican, and the Minister of Justice. His argu­ments in defense of Chuck are so ridicu­lous, that not even Chuck, who hap­pens to be a lawyer, holds those beliefs, he with­drew his com­ments.
Phipps’ entire argu­ments seemed to be pred­i­cat­ed on a tri­an­gu­lar pil­lar, (a) his polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, (b) his oppo­si­tion to the police, © absence of men­tal lucid­i­ty and the inabil­i­ty to com­pre­hend the duty office­hold­ers have to be judi­cious.
See arti­cle here: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​t​h​e​-​i​m​p​e​a​c​h​i​n​g​-​o​f​-​d​e​l​r​o​y​-​c​h​u​c​k​-​q​c​-​_​1​7​8​3​6​5​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​096

It would be insane of me to try to dis­sect Mister Phipps’ Article point by point, as I would become exact­ly what I am cri­tiquing. Sufficing to say that the entire­ty of the arti­cle seemed to be a sprin­kling of law, feal­ty to friends and a polit­i­cal defense against the right of police to enforce the laws.


Noted and once revered, Harvard Law Professor Allan Dershowitz, has been a sta­ple on American tele­vi­sion for years. His views on the law were accept­ed as the final say, almost as a Supreme Court deci­sion. So too has Mister Phipps been revered in Jamaica.
However, Allan Dershowitz’s alleged affil­i­a­tions with Donald Trump seemed to have [trumped] com­mon sense, like most of the oth­er flunkies and toad­ies, Allan Dershowitz’s feal­ty and sup­port of Donald Trump makes him so tox­ic and reviled he is only wel­come on FOX, the pro­pa­gan­da arm of the polit­i­cal right.
Tragically, Mister Phipps has unwit­ting­ly cast him­self in the unten­able role as Jamaica’s Allan Dershowitz.
Despite dis­agree­ing with mis­ter Phipps on a num­ber of issues in the past, I have the utmost respect for his legal acu­men. He should seek to pre­serve that respect which he has earned over his life­time, and through his body of work, and not squan­der it as Dershowitz has squan­dered his.
Maybe, just maybe it’s time for the esteemed mis­ter Phipps to start think­ing about pack­ing it in.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid 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 cop was not par­tic­u­lar­ly aggres­sive or abu­sive toward the young lady.
He was pas­sive­ly aggres­sive, some­thing both he and the oth­er respond­ing cop cooked up to accuse the young woman of.
Whether he was this way with her because he real­ized there were sev­er­al peo­ple film­ing the encounter as he allud­ed to the oth­er respond­ing offi­cer and to dis­patch is open to spec­u­la­tion.
The larg­er ques­tion, how­ev­er, is whether this offi­cer would have both­ered stop­ping a young white woman rid­ing her bicy­cle under the very same sce­nario as he did with this stu­dent?
Since there is no way to know for sure what was in his heart pri­or to the stop, we may nev­er know if he would.
However if past is prece­dent, it is almost impos­si­ble to imag­ine a sce­nario in which a young white woman (stu­dent) would have been stopped and inter­ro­gat­ed sim­ply for rid­ing down the wrong side of the road.

Considering the many and vary­ing offens­es that a police offi­cer could con­cern him­self with while out on patrol, it seems rather strange that a cop would both­er to stop a young woman rid­ing her bike down the wrong side of the road and go to the lengths he did.
He was well with­in his right to stop her in my hum­ble opin­ion and maybe say to her “Maam you are rid­ing on the wrong side of the road”. and advise her that she could be tick­et­ed if she per­sist­ed. I mean the cop can be a total douche if he wants to. He does have that right, but rid­ing a bicy­cle down the wrong side of the road… really?

These are the kinds of encoun­ters that cause hatred and ani­mos­i­ty between com­mu­ni­ties and police.
It is non­sense stops like this one which gives more and more cred­i­bil­i­ty to the premise that when it comes to peo­ple of col­or police go out of their way to over-police, becom­ing oppres­sive over­seers rather than peace offi­cers.
Nothing was gained by this stop. It placed his depart­ment in a bad light and puts tax­pay­ers in that state in legal jeop­ardy in case she decides to sue.

I recent­ly read some­place that there are alle­ga­tions from some quar­ters of the JCF that some of it’s harsh­est crit­ics are past mem­bers.
I found that obser­va­tion curi­ous, because regard­less of the diver­gent views of past mem­bers they are gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive of the work the men and women still serv­ing are doing for our coun­try.
So, the first order of busi­ness as it relates to the JCF, is to under­stand just who its friends are.

At the same time, I also under­stand that there may be two or more groups of past mem­bers. Those who resigned and walked away, and those who retired after serv­ing out their careers.
It may be instruc­tive to rec­on­cile that the views of those two groups may be dis­sim­i­lar in some ways. 

Personally speak­ing, I am the least bit inter­est­ed in the opin­ions of the JCF per se, efforts are best direct­ed at those who are empow­ered to act for the bet­ter­ment of the agency and ulti­mate­ly the coun­try at large.
And in that vein, we see where the JCF has used rather sus­pect argu­ments to jus­ti­fy bad pol­i­cy and gross incompetence.

One of the first rules of apply­ing jus­tice is a sim­ple con­cept that “jus­tice must not only be done but it must also appear to be done.”
That means per­cep­tion is an inte­gral part of the process. That con­cept seems to be lost on the hier­ar­chy of the JCF which incom­pe­tent­ly refus­es or fails to devel­op poli­cies com­men­su­rate with the demands of todays polic­ing, and ensur­ing that mem­bers are ful­ly steeped and apprised of those policies.

Failure to do so has result­ed in an inci­dent like that which saw eggs on the face of the JCF as a result of the Gary Welsh ker­fuf­fle.
Citizens per­ceived that the mat­ter was han­dled with inequity and injus­tice and was not in line with the way aver­age Jamaicans are treat­ed by those who enforce the laws.
It mat­ters not that the intent is right­eous. The police depart­ment is a ser­vice provider to the Jamaican peo­ple, as such, it is their opin­ion, their per­cep­tion which mat­ters. Not that of some incom­pe­tent beau­ra­crat wear­ing a clown costume.

Another mat­ter which has irked mem­bers of the pub­lic and right­ly so, was how Ruel Ried and his co-accused turned up in court while in cus­tody with­out hand­cuffs.
For those of us in the know, we know that this is how the JCF does busi­ness. But this old way of doing busi­ness can­not and should not con­tin­ue to be the sta­tus quo.

According to one local pub­li­ca­tion some mem­bers of the pub­lic were up in arms recent­ly at what seemed to be pref­er­en­tial treat­ment hand­ed out to for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Ruel Reid and his four co-accused in the cor­rup­tion scan­dal envelop­ing the Ministry of Education and the Caribbean Maritime University, after they were led into court with­out being placed in the hand­cuffs usu­al­ly seen on detainees. 

True to form, one mem­ber of the police hier­ar­chy told the media, the threat lev­el of the per­sons being tak­en before the courts while in police cus­tody must be assessed and the deci­sion tak­en whether to use restraints. “It’s always about assess­ing if a per­son in cus­tody will pose a dan­ger to oth­ers or try to escape cus­tody. We do not always hand­cuff per­sons in our cus­tody as a hard and fast rule,” said the cop.
And there­in lies the prob­lem.
Every per­son arrest­ed or told he/​she is to be arrest­ed becomes a dan­ger, and a flight risk. That has got to be the men­tal­i­ty of offi­cers.
It is that mind­set that dras­ti­cal­ly reduces the risk of escape and crit­i­cisms of pref­er­en­tial treatment.

The arti­cle went on to side with the cop, by argu­ing that there is no hard and fast pol­i­cy requir­ing cuffs. Obviously, nei­ther the reporter nor the sup­posed police source has ever heard about safe cus­tody of pris­on­ers.
Every police offi­cer must under­stand the fun­da­men­tals of safe cus­tody of pris­on­ers, it is in the police train­ing man­u­al. (pre­cise)
Even so, if there was no such pol­i­cy, the ques­tion must be, why would there not be a pol­i­cy, con­sid­er­ing the many instances in which pris­on­ers have escaped police cus­tody?
Ineptitude and incom­pe­tence!
If there is no hard pol­i­cy on an issue as spe­cif­ic as safe cus­tody of pris­on­ers, how can there be a puni­tive rem­e­dy when there are pris­on­er escapes?
How do you enforce a pol­i­cy which does not exist?
How do you change the lax atti­tude of the rank and file to their duties when there are no hard and fast rules?

That aside, who did not think that this would have caused aver­age folks to argue there are two sets of enforce­ment rules, one for the rich and pow­er­ful, and anoth­er for every­one else?
This flies in the face of the con­sent decree between those who do the polic­ing and those who are policed.
When the police fail to catch these mis­takes before they hap­pen they will con­tin­ue to be crit­i­cized as inept and incom­pe­tent.
Inept and incom­pe­tent are adjec­tives which oth­ers per­ceive in us, it is up to us to fix those per­cep­tions, not for observers to change their per­cep­tions of us.
Not when they pay our salaries.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid 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.