A Phoenix police offi­cer who point­ed a gun and yelled pro­fan­i­ties at a Black fam­i­ly in May will be fired, the chief of police said Tuesday.

“The Disciplinary review board (DRB) rec­om­mend­ed [Meyer] receive a six-week unpaid sus­pen­sion, but the deci­sion on dis­ci­pline is mine,” Chief Jeri Williams said at a news con­fer­ence. “And after meet­ing with the offi­cer Chris Meyer per­son­al­ly, and con­sid­er­ing all the facts of the case, I have noti­fied him of my inten­tion to ter­mi­nate his employment.”

In June, the Phoenix Police Department opened an inves­ti­ga­tion into some of its offi­cers over their use of exces­sive force in a shoplift­ing-theft inci­dent involv­ing 22-year-old Dravon Ames.

We pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, viral video of the May 29 inci­dent shows offi­cer Meyer scream­ing threats at a fam­i­ly in a van; Dravon, his preg­nant fiancé Aisha Harper, 24, and their two young daughters.

“You’re gonna f*cking get shot!” the cop yells at one point. “I’m gonna put a f*cking cap in your f*cking head.”

Ames, Harper and their daugh­ters, Island, 4 and 1‑year-old London, were held at gun­point after Island walked out of a dol­lar store with a Barbie-like doll – unbe­knownst to the parents.

The arrest­ing cops lied in their reports, neglect­ing to men­tion their threats to kill the fam­i­ly. They also report­ed­ly turned off their dash and body cam­eras. As one Twitter user not­ed, “This is not uncon­scious bias. It’s mali­cious, cal­cu­lat­ed, life-threat­en­ing racism.

A dis­ci­pli­nary review board rec­om­mend­ed Meyer receive a six-week suspension.

“In this case, a 240-hour sus­pen­sion is just not suf­fi­cient to reverse the adverse effects of his actions on our depart­ment and our com­mu­ni­ty,” Williams said Tuesday.

“Unlike oth­er pro­fes­sions, we don’t have a lux­u­ry of a do-over,” she said.

Months after the inci­dent, Ames and Harper said they’re still shaken.

“Some nights we don’t get no sleep. Some nights you just still think about what hap­pened,” said Ames. “So to know that he’s been fired gives us some type of relief, but there is still a lot more work to be done.”

Ames is refer­ring to police reform and the family’s impend­ing set­tle­ment with the city.

“This is par­tial jus­tice for my clients. For them to get full jus­tice, the job is now mine to get them com­pen­sa­tion in the law­suit,” said attor­ney Tom Horne. “We will try to medi­ate, if the city is rea­son­able, we will settle.”

Doctors, lawyers, and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als study for many years to qual­i­fy for their cho­sen dis­ci­plines. They also have to stay informed on new find­ings, new rec­om­men­da­tions, and new poli­cies in their respec­tive fields, even though they under­went mul­ti­ple years of train­ing, and do not have the pow­er to take the life of any­one.
Additionally, they are required to car­ry large mal­prac­tice insur­ance in order to be able to prac­tice their trade. 

Police offi­cers are trained for six months and thrown out in the streets with awe­some pow­ers, (includ­ing the pow­er to kill peo­ple). Yet many of them do not even know the laws they are try­ing to enforce. In many cas­es, their inter­ac­tions with the gen­er­al pub­lic are ego-dri­ven, dis­re­spect­ful pow­er trips.
They are not required to pur­chase mal­prac­tice insur­ance to com­pen­sate for their mis­takes. And so when they step out­side the line as many often do, on the rare occa­sions they are held account­able civil­ly, tax­pay­ers are forced to pick up the tab. Sometimes to the tune of mil­lions of dol­lars.
It may be time for police to car­ry mal­prac­tice insur­ance.
It will not be a panacea for fix­ing reck­less and vio­lent cops but it is one more thing that ought to go toward rein­ing in rogue ele­ments with­in police departments. 

Fort Worth inter­im police chief Ed Kraus stressed at a news con­fer­ence on Tuesday that it “makes sense” that Jefferson “would have a gun if she felt she was being threat­ened or if there was some­one in the back­yard.”
“It’s only appro­pri­ate that Ms. Jefferson would have a gun,” Merritt said, accord­ing to the Dallas Morning News. “When you think there’s some­one prowl­ing around in the back at 2 in the morn­ing, you may need to arm your­self.”
Kraus said Tuesday that there was “absolute­ly no excuse for this inci­dent and the per­son respon­si­ble will be held account­able.”
The inter­im chief also acknowl­edged that his department’s ear­li­er deci­sion to release a still image of a gun found at Jefferson’s home — but with­out any con­text or expla­na­tion of its link to the case — had not been the right one.
The depart­ment had faced crit­i­cism for the image. Merritt, the attor­ney for Jefferson’s fam­i­ly, accused police of attempt­ing to alter the nar­ra­tive of the case and blame the vic­tim. Kraus said at a Monday press con­fer­ence that the depart­ment had released the image to show there had been a weapon “involved.” “However, we’re home­own­ers in the state of Texas. I can’t imag­ine most of us, if we thought we had some­body out­side our house who shouldn’t be, and we had access to a firearm — that we wouldn’t act very sim­i­lar­ly to how she act­ed,” Kraus said, CBS News report­ed. 
“The offi­cers, they try hard every day to try to make this city bet­ter,” Kraus said. “I likened it to a bunch of ants build­ing an anthill, and if some­body comes with a hose and wash­es it away they just have to start from scratch.”
Story orig­i­nat­ed @ ; https://​www​.huff​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​a​t​a​t​i​a​n​a​-​j​e​f​f​e​r​s​o​n​-​f​o​r​t​-​w​o​r​t​h​-​g​u​n​_​n​_​5​d​a​6​c​a​6​b​e​4​b​0​0​2​e​3​3​e​7​7​3​f6c

The release of the gun was designed to cre­ate the impres­sion that the vic­tim of this trag­ic mess was jus­ti­fi­ably killed.
Police offi­cers con­tin­ue to act out­side their train­ing and oper­a­tional pro­to­cols cre­at­ing tremen­dous pain for cit­i­zens and at extreme costs to tax­pay­ers.
Police offi­cers are peo­ple, they are allowed to make mis­takes, but when they make mis­takes they are expect­ed to fess up to those mis­takes.
Police offi­cers are giv­en extreme­ly wide lat­i­tude to do their jobs. Some would argue too much lat­i­tude.
Every cop, even the last joined rook­ie, has the pow­er of life and death in his hands. It is for that rea­son that this writer has con­sis­tent­ly argued that train­ing should not and can­not be suf­fi­cient as a one-off event.

No one will hear a peep out of me when crim­i­nals threat­en the lives of the inno­cent, or law-enforce­ment offi­cers, and are shot if nec­es­sary.
What I have a prob­lem with is the gung-ho atti­tudes of far too many police offi­cers for what­ev­er rea­son, which leads to the harm, and killing of inno­cent peo­ple.
It is shock­ing to watch the behav­ior of police offi­cers these days, when they deal with cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties. One would think that instead of ser­vants they are over­seers and mas­ters deal­ing with their slaves.
Police are esca­lat­ing triv­ial and incon­se­quen­tial non­sense and mak­ing them arrestable events, even though they insti­gat­ed the unrest in the first place.
This rests with their civil­ian boss­es in the state leg­is­la­tures, they should be held accountable.

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.

There are very good lessons to be learned from tak­ing the time to look close­ly at nature. As humans, we are mere­ly one of the many species which inhab­its this plan­et, how­ev­er, those of us who refuse to adapt to changes hap­pen­ing around us gen­er­al­ly do poor­ly and may even­tu­al­ly become extinct.

If ever there was a police depart­ment which should dot every (i’) and cross evert (T’), that depart­ment would be the Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCF).
As a result of its own actions, the JCF gave itself INDECOM and has con­tin­ued to bleed com­pe­tent peo­ple, much the same way that the coun­try on a broad­er scale, has not found a way to retain it’s best and brightest.

Whether we are in the dig­i­tal age or not, police offi­cers are pro­fes­sion­als and they should act like it. Today peo­ple are more intent on video­tap­ing police than crim­i­nals. Many will argue the lines between the two are some­times indis­tin­guish­able. I tend to agree.
Police, how­ev­er, have strict rules and pro­to­cols which they should fol­low. When they fol­low those rules they have noth­ing to fear from cit­i­zens who choose to video­tape their actions, this new real­i­ty is part of the land­scape and police offi­cers must adjust to it.

When offi­cers fol­low strict pro­to­cols those very same videos are excul­pa­to­ry. I have always said that the great­est asset a police offi­cer has is knowl­edge of the laws he is enforc­ing. Strict adher­ence to pro­to­cols is ger­mane to being safe and insu­lat­ed from crim­i­nal and civ­il lia­bil­i­ties.
When police offi­cers do not fol­low sim­ple pro­to­cols bad things happen.

And so they did, in that case in Western Kingston a few days ago. Regardless of the rea­sons that the police decid­ed to arrest Romaine Abrahams, there were enough offi­cers on the scene to sim­ply col­lar Abrahams and place him in hand­cuffs.
He was abu­sive, he was dis­re­spect­ful, he resist­ed arrest, and he assault­ed the offi­cers, but all of that could have been avoid­ed if offi­cers act­ed deci­sive­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, by sim­ply plac­ing him in hand­cuffs quick­ly and deci­sive­ly mov­ing him from the scene.
Interestingly, there was a sub-offi­cer on-scene even­tu­al­ly act­ing as peace-mak­er when he should have ordered the sus­pect cuffed from the start.

Jamaica is not the eas­i­est place to be a police offi­cer. Regardless of where an offi­cer is sta­tioned, he will be forced to deal with dis­re­spect­ful, opin­ion­at­ed, igno­rant, pompous and aggres­sive peo­ple. Officers must adjust by being delib­er­a­tive, pre­cise, no-non­sense, and they must fol­low pro­to­col.
The media will not report the truth, they are in it for the sen­sa­tion­al and sala­cious con­tent, so the police should expect no objec­tiv­i­ty from what exist as media there.

I am tired of hear­ing about how great the train­ing is, and how offi­cers are trained dif­fer­ent­ly now. (As if dif­fer­ent­ly equates to bet­ter)
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen that train­ing man­i­fest­ed in their actions on the streets. Instead, what we see time and again, are car­toon­ish dis­plays which makes one cringe and which are sure to land offi­cers in hot water. In a coun­try where police work is already hot water.

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 mad­den­ing real­i­ty that a cop could be sent to per­form a wel­fare check at a res­i­dence and ends up shoot­ing the home­own­er to death has got to be the dubi­ous opti­mum of the débâ­cle that American polic­ing has become.
Before we talk about the un-real­i­ty of this, we must not for­get the inevitable but oblig­a­tory attempts at char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion that these police depart­ments embark on when they unlaw­ful­ly mur­der inno­cent unarmed peo­ple.
Botham-Shem-Jean had weed dust in his home after Amber Guygher gunned him down in his own home; remem­ber that? Of course, after infor­ma­tion emerged that Jean was as clean as a whis­tle, clean­er than the cops and those who super­vise them, they aban­doned that tact.

the image of a gun sur­faced in media reports after Fort Worth, cop Aaron Dean gunned down Atatiana Jefferson in her own home. The idea was to lie that the dece­dent had pulled a gun. It is both legal to own guns in Texas and to open car­ry. So hav­ing a gun in her home had noth­ing to do with what the cops did. But they are stu­pid and crim­i­nal, so they decid­ed to bring the nar­ra­tive that there was a gun.
To the cred­it of the police chief and the may­or, they lashed out against that attempt at smear­ing the unfor­tu­nate young lady.
Continued pres­sure and atten­tion to these events today no doubt brought swift action in this case, as Aaron Dean resigned before the depart­ment could fire him, and he has since been charged with mur­der.
But it was hard for us to have missed that attempt­ed smear; it is one of the go-tos in their play­book. Criminalize, mur­der, demonize.

Police offi­cers are called upon to do all kinds of things and be all things to all peo­ple, and I get that. I hap­pen to know a lit­tle some­thing about that, hav­ing served a decade as a police offi­cer in a tough coun­try, Jamaica.
I can­not imag­ine a sce­nario where I could have fired a gun at some­one inside a house even if the per­son inside was armed with a gun [while mak­ing a wel­fare check]. (And yes, we did many).
Here’s why!
(a)The per­son inside the house may very well be the home­own­er; it is the thing that any offi­cer in that sit­u­a­tion must first think about. You were sent there to ensure the safe­ty of the home­own­er, for God’s sake)
(b) Even if armed, the per­son inside may have a right to be armed. © Under what cir­cum­stances does the police show up with­out announc­ing “Police,” then shoots some­one inside, with­out know­ing who the per­son is, or whether he/​she had a right or rea­son to be there?

We should not get caught up in the non­sen­si­cal excus­es of the police.
The call was a non-emer­gency wel­fare check call.
This means that the offi­cer was not told that there was a bur­glary in progress (not that that would have giv­en him a rea­son to employ lethal force killing a bur­glar). Burglary is not a death penal­ty case.
And so the idea of the call, even though cops have to be care­ful at all times, was about check­ing on who­ev­er was in the house. The lights were report­ed­ly on, and the door was part­ly ajar after 2: 00 am.
Neither of the two cops thought enough to approach the front door and announce, “Police, this is a wel­fare check” and see what hap­pens?
No.….….….….….. Just shoot at what­ev­er the hell moves and be done with it. Never mind that it is sup­posed to be a wel­fare check.

Police apol­o­gists would have you believe that an offi­cer’s job is so darn dan­ger­ous that you must give them the ben­e­fit of the doubt. It would help if you sus­pend­ed real­i­ty and good judg­ment a sup­plant your objec­tiv­i­ty with their inter­pre­ta­tion of real­i­ty.
You must give them more and more lat­i­tude to do their jobs; that’s what their apol­o­gists say. Unfortunately, that lat­i­tude has now giv­en the police so much pow­er and immu­ni­ty that they have lit­er­al­ly become the great­est threat to the lives of peo­ple of col­or and pret­ty soon to every­one else.
It is a trag­ic irony, but more than enough apol­o­gists will tell you about how dan­ger­ous their jobs are.
Well, let me tell you some­thing, I have met count­less cops who have told me they have nev­er been in a sit­u­a­tion where they have had to pull their ser­vice weapon.
On the oth­er hand, pulling a ser­vice weapon does not mean an offi­cer must use lethal force.
After all, an offi­cer has to ensure that he pro­tects his life; first, he is no good dead to any­one. Given a night­time sit­u­a­tion with unknown cir­cum­stances, I have no prob­lem with an offi­cer being prepared.

To the aver­age per­son who has nev­er been a police offi­cer, the hyper­bole about the sky-high dan­ger of every­day polic­ing gives police license to be reck­less and wan­ton.
The scene is set, an offi­cer is shot or almost run over by a perp, and the entire brass and their union come out, flanked by their civil­ian boss­es who con­tin­ue to give them more and more pow­er to kill you while tak­ing more and more of your rights away.
And don’t for­get that the courts are there to rub­ber-stamp what­ev­er they do, no mat­ter how egre­gious; they may even throw in a hug and a Bible to boot.
On and on, they go about what police face every day in their quest to keep you safe[sic].
So they take more pow­er, and you are no safer because the pow­er they take is nev­er about you; it is to sat­is­fy their frag­ile egos, not to ensure your safe­ty because their jobs are not about your safe­ty; it is about keep­ing you in line. But that is not exact­ly what is killing all of these Black peo­ple. It is out­ra­geous that any per­son can be killed on the streets by police offi­cers sup­posed to serve and pro­tect when they are unarmed and have com­mit­ted no crime.
Now mul­ti­ply that a hun­dred times in your head, that a per­son could be in the sanc­ti­ty of their own home and be mur­dered by state agents?
Agents of the state; because that is exact­ly what they are, the minute they approach a pub­lic mem­ber, their hands go to their weapons because they see the pub­lic as their ene­my.
Maybe they should not be giv­en weapons because research shows that if you give a man a gun, he will try to find a rea­son to use it.

(Psychology today​.com) Research also shows that dri­vers with guns in their cars are more like­ly to dri­ve aggressively.[2] A nation­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of over 2,000 American dri­vers found that those who had a gun in the car were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to make obscene ges­tures at oth­er motorists (23% vs. 16%), aggres­sive­ly fol­low anoth­er vehi­cle too close­ly (14% vs. 8%), or both (6.3% vs. 2.8%), even after con­trol­ling for many oth­er fac­tors relat­ed to aggres­sive dri­ving (e.g., gen­der, age, urban­iza­tion, cen­sus region, dri­ving fre­quen­cy). Recent research repli­cat­ed this find­ing in a dri­ving sim­u­la­tion exper­i­ment. https://​www​.psy​chol​o​gy​to​day​.com/​u​s​/​b​l​o​g​/​g​e​t​-​p​s​y​c​h​e​d​/​2​0​1​3​0​1​/​t​h​e​-​w​e​a​p​o​n​s​-​e​f​f​ect

Many pub­li­ca­tions have start­ed pay­ing atten­tion to these unlaw­ful killings in recent times, and some have start­ed to keep a record of them because your gov­ern­ment does­n’t. Gee, I won­der why?
In August, the Los Angeles Times report­ed that about 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in America could expect to die at the hands of police, accord­ing to a new analy­sis of deaths involv­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers. That makes them 2.5 times more like­ly than white men and boys to die dur­ing an encounter with cops.
This is not a prob­lem; it is a cri­sis; it is an exis­ten­tial cri­sis. And there is no real polit­i­cal lead­er­ship. Not from the fed­er­al, state, nor local lev­els. This state of affairs suits them just fine.
The Black Lives Matter – affil­i­at­ed group Mapping Police Violence dis­putes the idea that police only kill peo­ple when oper­at­ing under intense con­di­tions in high-crime areas. 
Mapping Police Violence found few­er than one in three black peo­ple killed by police in 2016 were sus­pect­ed of a vio­lent crime or armed.

Simply put, the option to pull the trig­ger has pre­cious lit­tle to do with the stress asso­ci­at­ed with work­ing in a vio­lent high crime area.
As a cop work­ing the tough neigh­bor­hood of Arnett Gardens, sure, I would be on edge if a young man walked up to me, but I would be less inclined to be on edge if that very same young man approached me in Cherry Gardens. It does not mean that I would be more inclined to shoot that young man sim­ply because I was in a height­ened sense of aware­ness in Arnett Gardens.
Not so for the American police, Black is Black, and that col­or deserves the very same dis­re­spect wher­ev­er they are found, regard­less of their inno­cence or guilt.
The unde­ni­able truth is that no cop would fire a weapon inside a per­son­’s house in a Lilly-white neigh­bor­hood. The deval­ued qual­i­ty of black lives and the impuni­ty with which they are allowed to treat peo­ple of col­or with vio­lence and dis­re­spect are the major rea­sons that we end up with all of these inno­cent peo­ple los­ing their lives.….. even in their own homes.
They are taught to dis­re­gard the human­i­ty of peo­ple who do not look like them and shoot and go home to their fam­i­lies.
Some peo­ple will argue about the job’s dan­ger­ous nature all day even though they have nev­er donned a uni­form or even done a ride-along.
What they relate to are the sto­ries told them by police unions.
I know all too well how dan­ger­ous the job can be; I was shot in the line of duty.
Instead of being gung-ho about shoot­ing peo­ple, my law enforce­ment expe­ri­ence taught me just how sacred the trust placed in me to be judi­cious with that pow­er was.
Over the years, I wrote a series of blogs implor­ing police offi­cers not to shoot sim­ply because they can get away with killing some­one.
Doing so dis­torts and destroys the very rea­son and mean­ing of good polic­ing.
Years ago, in some cas­es, police offi­cers would plead with sus­pects to drop their weapons. They would only resort to lethal force when it became essen­tial and clear that the assailant meant to harm some­one.
Today, in a sit­u­a­tion in which there are dozens of cops fifty feet away from a knife-wield­ing per­son (even of clear unsound mind), police open fire, killing that per­son!
They then claim that the per­son posed an exis­ten­tial threat to offi­cers who had no choice but to gun him down.
What would have hap­pened to that dis­turbed per­son if we did not allow police offi­cers to car­ry guns and shoot peo­ple with them?
It’s all lies .….….…. They know it, and you should too.

There has been evi­dence over the years that police depart­ments are not train­ing their offi­cers to de-esca­late sit­u­a­tions; in fact, the oppo­site is true.
Cops arrive on the scene, and as soon as they arrive, the dan­ger lev­el in what­ev­er was occur­ring imme­di­ate­ly esca­lates expo­nen­tial­ly. This is giv­ing con­sci­en­tious peo­ple pause, “do we even call the police know­ing that they may sim­ply kill who­ev­er is being a lit­tle dis­rup­tive”?
You may won­der what is hap­pen­ing and think to your­self, “how can the police be allowed to oper­ate this way? Who super­vis­es them”?
To begin with, many of America’s police depart­ments oper­ate as laws unto them­selves. Police depart­ments and their unions oper­ate along the mar­gins, and they flout the rules with impuni­ty.
They are giv­en wide lat­i­tude to do as they please, and they oper­ate with impunity.

They refuse requests for doc­u­ments until forced to by a judge. Prosecutors are so chum­my with the unions they become almost a part of the police appa­ra­tus rather than the oth­er way around.
Some say they are close to the police because they depend on the police to bring cas­es. It’s more like they depend on the police unions for endorse­ments and mon­e­tary sup­port in the polit­i­cal cam­paigns for pros­e­cu­tors and judges.
This prob­lem is far greater than the aver­age per­son imag­ines, and those elect­ed to look after the peo­ple do not care because they are not at risk of being gunned down in the streets or in their homes by police.
God for­bid that they would step for­ward and speak out and hav­ing to face the wrath of, you guessed it.…. the police unions who believe that no one should ques­tion them.

What obtains in America today is a cul­ture that encour­ages and active­ly par­tic­i­pates in police mis­con­duct and allows it to flour­ish. That runs the gamut, as pros­e­cu­tors and police depart­ments flout the laws, there­by help­ing to cre­ate the arro­gance and sense of impuni­ty with which some police offi­cers and even entire depart­ments oper­ate.
On October 15^th, (USA Today) detailed damn­ing evi­dence that pros­e­cu­tors are not fol­low­ing the laws across the coun­try in an eye-open­ing arti­cle.
In let­ting the defense have evi­dence of offi­cers’ improp­er con­duct.
According to the report, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that pros­e­cu­tors must tell any­one accused of a crime about all evi­dence that might help their defense at tri­al. That includes shar­ing details about police offi­cers who have com­mit­ted crimes, lied on the job, or whose hon­esty has been called into doubt.
People are being con­vict­ed and spend­ing decades in prison because pros­e­cu­tors and police depart­ments fail to fol­low the laws.
Over the years, hun­dreds of peo­ple have been released after evi­dence shows that they were improp­er­ly impris­oned or that police or pros­e­cu­tors have act­ed improp­er­ly to secure their convictions.

The investigation found:

• Thousands of peo­ple have faced crim­i­nal charges or gone to prison based in part on tes­ti­mo­ny from law enforce­ment offi­cers deemed to have cred­i­bil­i­ty prob­lems by their boss­es or by prosecutors.
• At least 300 pros­e­cu­tors’ offices across the nation are not tak­ing the steps nec­es­sary to com­ply with the Supreme Court man­dates. These places do not have a list track­ing dis­hon­est or oth­er­wise untrust­wor­thy offi­cers. They include big cities such as Chicago and Little Rock and small­er com­mu­ni­ties such as Jackson County, Minnesota, and Columbia County, Pennsylvania.
• In many places that keep lists, police and pros­e­cu­tors refuse to make them pub­lic, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to know whether they fol­low the law. 
• Others keep incom­plete lists. USA TODAY iden­ti­fied at least 1,200 offi­cers with proven his­to­ries of lying and oth­er seri­ous mis­con­duct that pros­e­cu­tors had not flagged. Of those offi­cers, 261 were specif­i­cal­ly dis­ci­plined for dis­hon­esty on the job.

See the arti­cle here; https://​www​.usato​day​.com/​i​n​-​d​e​p​t​h​/​n​e​w​s​/​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​2​0​1​9​/​1​0​/​1​4​/​b​r​a​d​y​-​l​i​s​t​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​s​-​d​i​s​h​o​n​e​s​t​-​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​-​s​t​i​l​l​-​t​e​s​t​i​f​y​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​i​o​n​-​d​a​t​a​b​a​s​e​/​2​2​3​3​3​8​6​0​01/.

Sure, they want you to believe these inci­dents are iso­lat­ed and fix­able by remov­ing that one rogue ele­ment. It is not true that it is a sys­temic cul­ture that breeds this con­tempt and lack of respect, and it’s not all the police’s fault.
This is a mat­ter that the Federal and state leg­is­la­tures should tack­le if they want to change.
It has to be tack­led in how judges oper­ate, and it rests with pros­e­cu­tors and police depart­ments.
The police offi­cer’s atti­tude treats a cit­i­zen like crap because he was giv­en a gun and badge, and six months of train­ing comes from what he was told he could do and get away with.
It comes.…..
(1)From brief­ing ses­sions where street crimes unit com­man­ders deval­ue entire com­mu­ni­ties’ lives, giv­ing license to their under­lings to exact vengeance on entire com­mu­ni­ties.
(2) From neo-nazis, white suprema­cists, and skin­heads infil­trat­ing police depart­ments.
(3)From the mil­i­ta­rized Israeli train­ing many American cops are receiv­ing in the state of Israel.
(4) From the over-pop­u­la­tion of police depart­ments with mil­i­tary vet­er­ans who have done sev­er­al com­bat zone tours.
(5)From police depart­ments’ acqui­es­cence, rogue cops can rack up dozens and dozens of dis­ci­pli­nary actions and refuse to fire them, there­by endan­ger­ing the pub­lic.
(6)And from Judges who see them lie under oath ( a felony) in their court­rooms and do noth­ing about it. The aver­age per­son who lies under oath com­mits per­jury and may be sen­tenced to five(5) years in prison.

PERJURY

(1)hav­ing tak­en an oath before a com­pe­tent tri­bunal, offi­cer, or per­son, in any case in which a law of the United States autho­rizes an oath to be admin­is­tered, that he will tes­ti­fy, declare, depose, or cer­ti­fy tru­ly, or that any writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny, dec­la­ra­tion, depo­si­tion, or cer­tifi­cate by him sub­scribed, is true, will­ful­ly and con­trary to such oath states or sub­scribes any mate­r­i­al mat­ter which he does not believe to be true; or(2)in any dec­la­ra­tion, cer­tifi­cate, ver­i­fi­ca­tion, or state­ment under penal­ty of per­jury as per­mit­ted under sec­tion 1746 of title 28, United States Code, will­ful­ly sub­scribes as true any mate­r­i­al mat­ter which he does not believe to be true; is guilty of per­jury and shall, except as oth­er­wise express­ly pro­vid­ed by law, be fined under this title or impris­oned not more than five years, or both. This sec­tion is applic­a­ble whether the state­ment or sub­scrip­tion is made with­in or with­out the United States. https://​www​.law​.cor​nell​.edu/​u​s​c​o​d​e​/​t​e​x​t​/​1​8​/​1​621

.

.

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

The mat­ter of Former Education Minister Mr. Ruel Reid wife Sheron Thomas-Reid and Daughter Sherrele Reid, also charged along­side them is President of CMU Fritz Pinnock and Kim Brown-Lawrence for the offens­es of Conspiracy to Defraud, etc.
The mat­ter was heard in the Kingston & St. Andrew Parish Court. Senior Parish Judge Mr. Vaughn Smith presided over the mat­ter.
(1) Bail appli­ca­tions were made by Attorney Hugh Wildman on behalf of Pinnock. He was offered bail in the sum of $2million with 1 – 2 sure­ty, sur­ren­der trav­el doc­u­ments, stop order made, report to Greater Portmore Police Station every Wednesdays and Saturdays between the hours of 6am to 6pm. Not to inter­fere with Witnesses.
Not to be seen at the Ministry of Education or CMU

(2) Bail appli­ca­tion made by Attorney Mr. Christopher Townsend on behalf of Ms. Kim Brown-Lawrence. Bail was offered in the sum of $1million with 1 – 2 sure­ty, report to Browns Town Police Station every Wednesdays and Saturdays between the hours of 6am to 6pm. Not to inter­fere with Witnesses.
Not to be seen at the Ministry of Education or CMU.

(3) Bail appli­ca­tions were made by Attorney Carolyn Chuck on behalf of The Reid’s fam­i­ly. Ruel Reid was offered bail in the sum of $3million with 1 – 2 sure­ty, Wife $1million with 1 – 2 sure­ty and daugh­ter $500,000 with 1 – 2 sure­ty. All are to sur­ren­der trav­el doc­u­ments, stop order made, report to Matildas Corner Police Station every Wednesdays and Saturdays between the hours of 6am to 6pm. Not to inter­fere with Witnesses. Not to be seen at the Ministry of Education or CMU. Accused (s) bail are extend­ed. Fingerprint Ordered. Disclosure by the end of the month. All out­stand­ing doc­u­ments are to be sub­mit­ted for the 23.1.2020

Over the years, as crime con­tin­ues to take cen­ter stage in Jamaica, calls have gone out from var­i­ous quar­ters about what to do about it.
Some of those sug­ges­tions have ranged from the inane to the down­right ridicu­lous.
Suggestions include becom­ing the 51^st state of the United States.
That inane sug­ges­tion missed the point that Washington DC, which is large­ly Black, and Puerto Rico, which is over­whelm­ing­ly Hispanic, are still unable to receive state­hood exact­ly because of their eth­nic com­po­si­tions.
Other sug­ges­tions include Divine Intervention.
Sure, let us drop our hands and wait for God to come down and fix this crime prob­lem we have.…… let us see how that will turn out!

The actu­al truth is that Jamaica has a prob­lem of lead­er­ship. Arrogance and igno­rance are the two char­ac­ter­is­tics most present in the mix; this brew is result­ing in the crime lev­els the coun­try is expe­ri­enc­ing.
Don’t expect that this prog­no­sis will make a lick of dif­fer­ence in the hyper-polar­ized swamp that our coun­try has become.
For one, we have lead­ers who have nev­er done a ride-along with the police, first because they would shit their pants at the inher­ent dan­ger; sec­ond­ly, they are too shit scared to risk their lives, so they can­not for a moment under­stand the polices point of view, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the pal­try remu­ner­a­tions the police receive any­way.
The total­i­ty of the Island’s crime prob­lem may be summed up in a sin­gle sen­tence. On the one hand, we have the arro­gant pricks in both polit­i­cal par­ties who are unwill­ing to sup­port tough anti-crime mea­sures because they are mixed up with the crim­i­nal gangs. On the oth­er, some have no idea about what they are leg­is­lat­ing out­side their myopic, parochial world­view. God for­bid they would say, “I need to be edu­cat­ed on this.”

If you don’t know where you are going, you may very well already be there. If you want to end up east, it would be good not to head west.
Jamaica’s law enforce­ment efforts may be described as head­ing east though it wants to end up west.
For years, admin­is­tra­tions in Kingston have rou­tine­ly starved the police depart­ment of sup­port as a means of estab­lish­ing bona fides with the crim­i­nals inside their bases of sup­port (gar­risons).
Not nec­es­sar­i­ly because all of the polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives who rep­re­sent­ed gar­risons were nec­es­sar­i­ly crim­i­nals, but because they want­ed the perks and trap­pings of polit­i­cal office, and stay­ing in pow­er was the way to have those perks.
Due to their rapa­cious and craven desires to hold onto pow­er, many start­ed as decent peo­ple but giv­en enough time, through omis­sion and com­mis­sion, they became just as dirty as the guys who pulled the trigger.

If the police clear­ly see that their polit­i­cal boss­es are sup­port­ing the peo­ple, they are sup­posed to be arrest­ing; not pay­ing them a liv­able wage, not giv­ing them the tools to do their jobs, active­ly and demon­stra­bly exact­ing puni­tive con­se­quences on them when they do their sworn duties in arrest­ing gang­sters from the gar­risons; why would they stay true to their oath?
If oth­er branch­es of the same gov­ern­ment are social­ized to hate the police because the politi­cians have so polar­ized the coun­try against the rule of law, how can the coun­try rea­son­ably expect to have a pro­fes­sion­al and com­pe­tent police force?
In a coun­try in which get­ting a gov­ern­ment job is impor­tant because the pri­vate sec­tor is too small, and there­fore unable to assim­i­late the avail­able tal­ent effec­tive­ly, the five to six hun­dred police offi­cers who leave the force each year is a telling sign that they do not like what they see with­in the department.

There are 63 so-called law­mak­ers in the low­er cham­ber of the leg­is­la­ture and appoint­ed sen­a­tors, and the oth­er ticky-ticky called parish coun­cilors and the oth­er hang­ers-on.
That is where Jamaica’s crime prob­lem lies.
The social­iza­tion of the Jamaican peo­ple to not hav­ing respect for the rule of law and those who enforce the laws did not hap­pen overnight.
It is a time-test­ed strat­e­gy designed, as I said pre­vi­ous­ly, to cur­ry favor with the mass­es.
Today, the dynam­ics are the same; even though there may be some desire to change the crime tra­jec­to­ry, hav­ing lost most of their con­trol over the gang­sters, today’s politi­cians car­ry a feel­ing of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.
Nevertheless, the desire to hold onto office is still para­mount. Politicians today have to cater to a wider vot­er base than their pre­de­ces­sors did a gen­er­a­tion ago.
This gen­er­a­tion was raised to have no respect for the rule of law.
No one wants to acknowl­edge that deal­ing harsh­ly and deci­sive­ly with the gang­sters is what’s need­ed; the trap­pings of pow­er are far too impor­tant.
No one wants to accept that deci­sive­ness must be cod­i­fied into laws and that it will be the deter­rent effect of those laws which will work toward chang­ing the matrix.
The Islands polit­i­cal lead­ers feel they have to appease this gen­er­a­tion of vot­ers, a gen­er­a­tion that has been schooled into believ­ing that cit­i­zen­ship is a right they have which comes with no respon­si­bil­i­ties.
A friend respond­ing to an arti­cle I wrote recent­ly about the taps on the wrist some cor­rupt judges were hand­ing out to gang­sters found with ille­gal guns asked me If I was aware that some of the judges might be scared them­selves to hand out appro­pri­ate­ly tough sen­tences?
I think remov­ing them from the streets through long sen­tences would be the way to go, but I under­stood the point he raised.

The range of sug­ges­tions con­tin­ues large­ly from the edi­to­r­i­al boards of the media hous­es — the very same media hous­es which told peo­ple to attack the police. The media hous­es told peo­ple to [throw stones] at police sta­tions. (Of course, they don’t stone the sta­tions any­more, they evolved into using auto­mat­ic weapons fire today).
And arguably most insid­i­ous of all, the media hous­es gave plat­forms to paid mourn­ers, and oth­ers sent out from the gar­risons to lie as they block roads and claim that police had mur­dered their loved ones in cold blood. These paid and forced sup­posed eye­wit­ness­es were always omnipresent at 3: 00 or 4:00 am when the police came call­ing on the mur­der­ous gang­sters.
Even though the unscrupu­lous media knew that the out­raged crowds were fakes and frauds, that they were lying, their lack of jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty was nowhere to be found. They allowed them to lie day in and day out, on radio and tele­vi­sion and in the print media. And now we have an almost ungovern­able country.

So, for exam­ple, when I was a mem­ber of the Ranger Squad in the mid-’80s, there were shoot­ings. Still, there is no way a sit­u­a­tion would exist on low­er moun­tain View Avenue where the “police” warn motorists not to enter the area because gang­sters with high-pow­ered weapons are in con­trol.
We would get them, and they know it; we weren’t play­ing around. But the Prime Minister of the coun­try, who is being mar­ket­ed as a one-man-know-it-all, will solve every prob­lem in the coun­try. He got him­self involved in the sym­me­try of law enforce­ment.
He tells the police what they can and can­not do, even though he nev­er did a ride-along and knows noth­ing about deal­ing with dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals.
He says the days of police offi­cers kick­ing down doors are over, and I am yet to fig­ure out where he gets the author­i­ty to make those dic­tates.
He even involves him­self in day-to-day polic­ing pro­to­cols by direct­ing the police com­mis­sion­er to inves­ti­gate things that clear­ly are not with­in his remit.

The idea that we can plant a field of corn and sit in antic­i­pa­tion of a har­vest of rice is the very def­i­n­i­tion of stu­pid­i­ty.
You and I know that the mea­sures employed will not have long-term pos­i­tive effects, and I have said so here for years. Applying aband-aid to a gun­shot wound can hard­ly stop the bleed­ing, much less repair the dam­age inter­nal­ly.
Jamaicans are dying from a cri­sis of will, a cri­sis of com­pe­tent and hon­est polit­i­cal lead­er­ship.
From the car­nage on the roads to the gang­ster par­adise that our coun­try has become, there is only one rem­e­dy, and it is not sweet and syrupy.

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 Mike Beckles​.com
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.

DALLAS (CBSDFW​.COM) – Local activists are call­ing for the fir­ing of a Dallas police offi­cer after pros­e­cu­tors revealed text mes­sages between him and Amber Guyger on the night Botham Jean was killed, along with the dele­tion of those messages.

Senior Cpl. Martin Rivera, who was Guyger’s patrol part­ner, tes­ti­fied Monday as she con­tin­ues to stand tri­al for alleged­ly mur­der­ing Jean inside his apart­ment, claim­ing she thought she was in her own unit and that he was an intruder.

During open­ing state­ments on Monday, pros­e­cu­tors showed the jury sex­u­al­ly-explic­it text mes­sages between Rivera and Guyger that were sent hours and min­utes before the shooting.

Prosecutors also said those mes­sages between the two were delet­ed a day after Jean was killed. The mes­sages were lat­er recovered.

It was also revealed by pros­e­cu­tors that Guyger had sent Rivera texts while she was on the phone with 911 after she shot Jean.

Rivera received a text from Guyger, “I need you. Hurry” at 10:02 p.m. A minute lat­er, Guyger sent a text that read, “I f***ed up.”

Rivera was also on the phone with Guyger three min­utes before the shoot­ing, and he claimed they were talk­ing about work. “To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion I remem­ber ask­ing about the sus­pects to see if they ever con­fessed and I real­ly don’t remem­ber a whole lot about the con­ver­sa­tion,” he said dur­ing his testimony.

Now, activists with Mothers Against Police Brutality are call­ing for Rivera to be fired from the Dallas Police Department, say­ing that he “destroyed evi­dence” and that he should be held accountable.

Activists with the Next Generation Action Network are also want­i­ng Rivera fired.

In keep­ing with my focus on the impor­tance of the rule of law in Democratic soci­eties, I am at pains to be laser-focused on the need to have good, com­pe­tent and pro­fes­sion­al police, all while hold­ing them firm­ly account­able.
If our soci­eties are to have peace and feal­ty to the con­cept that the laws are sacro­sanct, and there­fore where our loy­al­ties are sup­posed to be, the laws must be enforced fair­ly and equi­tably regard­less of defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics.
This makes the role of those tasked with enforc­ing the laws crit­i­cal to the peace and tran­quil­i­ty in the soci­ety.
It is arguable that some of the most severe instances of pub­lic anger unfold­ing and over­flow­ing into civ­il dis­obe­di­ence may be placed at the feet of bad polic­ing.
Interestingly, how­ev­er, it is usu­al­ly the pol­i­tics of a par­tic­u­lar coun­try that influ­ences the qual­i­ty of the polic­ing or the lack thereof.

My native Jamaica is no excep­tion to that con­cept. Politics, incom­pe­tence, lib­er­al­ism in the courts and oth­er mal­adies are a direct result of the poor qual­i­ty of the polic­ing ser­vices the pub­lic receives.
And of course, all of those mal­adies have their gen­e­sis at the doorsteps of cor­rupt and incom­pe­tent polit­i­cal lead­er­ship.
In the United States the sup­pos­ed­ly ost advanced soci­ety on plan­et earth, ad polic­ing is a sta­ple as it is in the poor­est devel­op­ing nation.
Race as a deter­mi­nant in how the laws are enforced has had a pro­found effect on how the police are viewed in the diverse and myr­i­ad com­mu­ni­ties through­out the US traditionally.

Today a pow­er dynam­ic of rich over poor has been added to the white over every­one else par­a­digm, inex­orably cre­at­ing an even greater degree of angst racial­ly.
As a con­se­quence, over forty mil­lion African-Americans (M$40.000,000, and prob­a­bly an even greater num­ber of Hispanics view American police with skep­ti­cism and dis­trust.
Additionally, oth­er small­er eth­nic minori­ties, includ­ing reli­gious minori­ties across the nation view police with dread and trep­i­da­tion.
They believe they will not be accord­ed the same degree of respect and def­er­ence giv­en their white neigh­bors or will be treat­ed fair­ly.
They are usu­al­ly correct.

Regardless of how one views polic­ing, the tone of polic­ing, neg­a­tive or pos­i­tive is set at the apex of the polit­i­cal food-chain. It is because of that why it is impor­tant not to demon­strate against police or hate indi­vid­ual police offi­cers.
Police offi­cers do the right thing when they know they will be held account­able for their actions.
The reverse is true when they know they are pro­tect­ed by the peo­ple above them.
In the United States today as it has always been, police abuse of peo­ple of col­or was the law. Arresting and incar­cer­at­ing Black peo­ple after the eman­ci­pa­tion dec­la­ra­tion and the peri­od known as recon­struc­tion was the law.
The gen­er­al con­sen­sus was that Blacks had no rights whites were oblig­at­ed to respect. Today that prin­ci­ple is no longer cod­i­fied into law but polic­ing across the board gen­er­al­ly fol­lows that principle.

Legislatures, from Federal to Municipal, have con­sis­tent­ly refused to draft and pass leg­is­la­tion which holds American Police respon­si­ble for civ­il rights and human rights vio­la­tions against peo­ple of col­or.
The Judiciary at both ends of that same spec­trum is also com­plic­it in the con­tin­u­a­tion of the police abuse cul­ture which is such a sore point in America.
Shockingly, politi­cians and Judiciary fall over them­selves to pay false homage to law-enforce­ment, even when it is clear that the cops are in the wrong.
Powerful police unions hold tremen­dous sway over politi­cians and judges alike which cre­ates the regres­sive result of the tail wag­ging the dog.
Ultimately, for peo­ple of col­or, it is often dire con­se­quences as their sur­vival depends on a deranged racist, trained for 4 – 6 months if at all, hav­ing the pow­er of life and death over them.
Usually, the results are deadly.

Even when a politi­cian grows some balls and tries to hold a dirty or cor­rupt racist cop account­able, oth­er politi­cians race to place the police even if it means lick­ing their boots.
The recent case in which a Florida city com­mis­sion­er called out a cop who had ille­gal­ly arrest­ed him, then lied on the arrest report was over­shad­owed by that city’s Mayor who stepped in imme­di­ate­ly after to lick the boots of the police is par­tic­u­lar­ly disgusting.

In a New York Times arti­cle; titled “‘You’re a Bad Police Officer’: Official Confronts Deputy at Awards Ceremony.”

An award cer­e­mo­ny hon­or­ing a sher­if­f’s deputy turned unset­tling after a city com­mis­sion­er called him out for “false­ly arrest­ing” him four years ago.
During the week­ly city com­mis­sion meet­ing last Wednesday in Tamarac, Florida, Commissioner E. Mike Gelin dis­rupt­ed the con­grat­u­la­to­ry tone of the cer­e­mo­ny with his brief con­dem­na­tion of the offi­cer.
“Joshua Gallardo, can you come down for a sec­ond?” he asked.
Minutes ear­li­er, Gallardo was hon­ored with a Deputy of the Month award for the month of April for arrest­ing a man want­ed for a mur­der com­mit­ted in El Salvador, per WBFS-TV. 

“It’s good to see you again,” he said as Gallardo walked down to the front of the cham­bers.
“You prob­a­bly don’t remem­ber me, but you’re the police offi­cer who false­ly arrest­ed me four years ago,” Gelin, who is black, told Gallardo. “You lied on the police report. I believe you’re a rogue police offi­cer, you’re a bad police offi­cer and you don’t deserve to be here.”

The may­or, afraid of the police union decid­ed to lick boots rather quick­ly, and true to form the police union began with the threats.

In an email, the may­or said she believed Mr. Gelin’s remarks “were high­ly inap­pro­pri­ate.” “This was nei­ther the time nor the forum to air per­son­al griev­ances,” she wrote. “This is NOT the way we treat employ­ees or peo­ple who work for our city. There are prop­er chan­nels to fol­low, but the com­mis­sion­er chose not to use them.”
The pathet­i­cal­ly weak bootlick­ing Mayor had no com­ments about the wrong­ful arrests or the alle­ga­tions the cop fal­si­fied the police report.
The trau­ma suf­fered by the Black com­mis­sion­er was of no con­cern to the grov­eller.
As I have said many times the fight needs to be waged against these pathet­ic politi­cians who see the police as their pri­vate armies and not at a bunch of peo­ple who have received 4 – 6 months training.

See full sto­ry here. https://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​9​/​2​8​/​u​s​/​b​r​o​w​a​r​d​-​c​o​u​n​t​y​-​d​e​p​u​t​y​.​h​tml

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.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez called it a “cold-blood­ed mur­der, ambush-style.” 

By Dennis Romero

A Texas deputy who drew nation­al head­lines when he was allowed to grow a beard and wear a tur­ban on the job to observe his Sikh faith was fatal­ly shot Friday in an “ambush-style” attack.

There was no evi­dence the shoot­ing of Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal dur­ing a 1 p.m. traf­fic stop, in an area where the city of Houston meets unin­cor­po­rat­ed Harris County, was a hate crime.

“He was on a traf­fic stop,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said at a news con­fer­ence. “The pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion that we have at this time is that a male sus­pect exit­ed the vehi­cle armed with a pis­tol and, in a cold-blood­ed mur­der, ambush-style shot Deputy Dhaliwal from behind.”

The sher­iff said Dhaliwal, 41, was tak­en by heli­copter to a hos­pi­tal but died.

The sher­if­f’s office tweet­ed Friday night that Robert Solis, 47, was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of cap­i­tal mur­der in con­nec­tion with the shooting.

NBC News affil­i­ate KPRC in Houston report­ed that the sus­pect fled to a near­by shop­ping cen­ter then hid in a store before being tak­en into cus­tody. A woman in the vehi­cle was also detained, the sta­tion reported.

“There are sim­ply no words to ade­quate­ly express our heart­break, our sad­ness at this time,” Gonzalez said. “Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal a 10-year vet­er­an, was a hero, was a respect­ed mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty, and he was a trailblazer.”

In 2015, Dhaliwal drew atten­tion when the Harris County depart­ment became the nation’s largest sher­if­f’s office to allow a Sikh to work the beat with his arti­cles of faith, includ­ing tur­ban and beard.

The deputy drew praise from Gonzalez for going to Puerto Rico after the island was dev­as­tat­ed by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

He also worked that year with human­i­tar­i­an relief non­prof­it United Sikhs to get truck­loads of sup­plies to first respon­ders after Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas and Louisiana coasts and caused flood­ing in Houston, accord­ing to the sher­if­f’s office.

“Deputy Dhaliwal is known to every­body as some­body with a giv­ing heart,” Gonzalez said.

He is sur­vived by three chil­dren, a wife and a broth­er, the sher­iff said.

Miami, FL — Hector Reyes, a 26-year old man from Miami, is fac­ing felony charges for an alleged shoot­ing after a ver­bal alter­ca­tion with a white man. He tried deny­ing the accu­sa­tions, but his 4‑year old daugh­ter spon­ta­neous­ly told the police that her father was shooting. 

According to reports, Reyes was with his daugh­ter and her moth­er vis­it­ing fam­i­ly when the inci­dent hap­pened. Reyes and his broth­er-in-law con­front­ed a man who was alleged­ly mak­ing obscene ges­tures toward Reyes’ daughter’s mother.

After a brief argu­ment, Reyes, his daugh­ter, and her moth­er got in a car and that’s when Reyes start­ed shoot­ing towards the direc­tion of the man he argued with, wit­ness­es said.

A few min­utes lat­er, police chased his car and pulled him over. Police were ques­tion­ing him when out of the blue, his daugh­ter told the police, ”My dad­dy was shooting.”

The girl’s moth­er, who was also in the car, imme­di­ate­ly refute what her daugh­ter was say­ing and said that she didn’t know why her daugh­ter would say some­thing like that. She added that it must be because the child was always talk­ing about police.

Reyes was arrest­ed on one felony count each of aggra­vat­ed assault with a dead­ly weapon and pos­sess­ing a dead­ly weapon while com­mit­ting an offense. He’s also fac­ing four counts of felony child abuse with no great bod­i­ly harm.

Despite that, Reyes main­tains he is not involved in the shooting.

Justice Nicole Simmonds deci­sion to quash the appli­ca­tion of the Inspector of Investigations for INDECOM, to com­pel a police con­sta­ble to answer ques­tions, is a step in the right direc­tion for the courts.
In right­ing a mon­u­men­tal and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al wrong done by the two polit­i­cal par­ties, the deci­sion should set the stage for the police to file a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to the INDECOM law as we have urged in this medi­um since 2011.
Unfortunately, rank and file should not hold their breath for the Federation to take action on their behalf. Having con­fer­ences and mak­ing speech­es at north coast hotels are far more impor­tant to-dos on the Federations agen­da..

The Bruce Golding admin­is­tra­tion gave unfet­tered pow­er to INDECOM to har­ras the police. At the same time, the PNP was more than hap­py to sign onto the mea­sure.
Every per­son has the right to remain silent and to refrain from self-incrim­i­na­tion, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly.
So too does police officers!

The deci­sion came after the attor­ney for Constable Delmond Grant, Chuck Cameron, filed an appli­ca­tion for judi­cial review against INDECOM.
The police­man’s attor­ney how­ev­er erred in my esti­ma­tion, when he told the media that he thought it is pos­si­ble that an offi­cer of the Commission has the pow­er to com­pel a Policeman to answer ques­tions, just not the Inspector of Investigations.
A cow giv­ing a pail of milk then kick­ing it over maybe? Just a thought!
If the attor­ney is speak­ing to what exists present­ly in the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly designed INDECOM law, that I under­stand.
On the oth­er hand, if he is mak­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al argu­ment, then, he too is out in left field. 

The con­sti­tu­tion is the pre­em­i­nent law of the land, each and every piece of leg­is­la­tion must pass con­sti­tu­tion­al muster.
The con­sti­tu­tion gives each and every Jamaican the right to remain silent. Police offi­cers do not have few­er con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees than oth­er cit­i­zens. As such, nei­ther can they be forced to answer ques­tions if they chose not to.
Sure, offi­cers must give a detailed writ­ten account of their actions, but under no cir­cum­stances should they be expect­ed to answer ques­tions of a hos­tile agency hell-bent on per­se­cut­ing 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.

There is no greater group of cheer-lead­ers for the light sen­tences being hand­ed down to mur­der­ers and crim­i­nals arrest­ed with ille­gal weapons and ammu­ni­tion, than the crim­i­nal lawyers in Jamaica.
As offi­cers of the court, the Jamaican bar has become a dis­gust­ing lob­by for crim­i­nals, in what appears to be a mis­un­der­stand­ing of their roles as defend­ers of the inno­cent and uphold­ers of the laws.

The fore­gone was a para­graph pulled from an arti­cle I wrote on September the 4^th of this year.
That para­graph was incor­po­rat­ed in a broad­er arti­cle which spoke to the inad­e­qua­cy of the method­olo­gies being employed in the crime fight. And more impor­tant­ly, the fact that the laws are more ben­e­fi­cial to crim­i­nals than they are to law-abid­ing citizens.

Just over a week lat­er and the most recent death of a young lawyer, Sashakay Fairclough in Ocho Rios, St Ann in a hail of bul­lets, Attorney at law Peter Champagnie found his voice as he addressed the court at the open­ing of the Michaelmas Term of the Supreme Court in down­town Kingston.
“It is a sad reminder that none of us are immune from the sav­agery in terms of crim­i­nal con­duct.”
Hmmm!!!
Addressing Vivene Harris the pre­sid­ing judge, Champagnie went on; “Having said that, my lady, I do believe that it behoves us at the pri­vate bar — espe­cial­ly those who prac­tise at the crim­i­nal bar — to be mind­ful that while we remain guardians of the rights of indi­vid­u­als and defend our clients to the best of our abil­i­ty with­in the con­fines of the law and all eth­i­cal stan­dards, we have a greater respon­si­bil­i­ty in this new dis­pen­sa­tion to …offer solu­tions in the way of crime-fight­ing and crime pre­ven­tion,” 

Really now?
What an epiphany!
It seems to me some peo­ple only care about crime when it affects them or oth­ers in their cir­cle or social class.
Crime has become a sta­ple and a way of life in Jamaica, in terms of its accept­abil­i­ty. I can­not recall, nei­ther as a young adult, a crime fight­er, or as a for­mer crime fight­er back in civil­ian life, ever hear­ing lawyers speak out against crime.
I stand cor­rect­ed if some­one can pro­duce evi­dence con­tra­dict­ing me on this.
I’m gen­er­al­ly not one to ques­tion the motives of oth­ers, but I had to dig a lit­tle deep­er to find out what was the rea­son for this total­ly unex­pect­ed call by one of the nation’s most promi­nent crim­i­nal defense attor­neys?
And then the answer was right there in front of me.
Three (3) attor­neys have been killed since the start of the year.
Conversely, since the begin­ning of the year up to August 25^th, Jamaica has record­ed 869 mur­ders — among them 30 chil­dren.
If we sub­tract the (3) attor­neys from that 869 num­ber, we are left with a total of 866 Jamaicans mur­dered, includ­ing as I allud­ed to, (30) chil­dren.
None of that was impor­tant enough to acti­vate the pan­ic but­ton in a sin­gle defense attor­ney, until their own began show­ing up on the stat sheets.

The truth of the mat­ter is that crime in Jamaica has large­ly been seen as a poor peo­ple’s prob­lem. Poor peo­ple live in under­served com­mu­ni­ties infest­ed with crim­i­nals.
Poor peo­ple’s kids become police offi­cers. Poor peo­ple’s kids join the army.
Poor peo­ple die at the hands of crim­i­nals, with the excep­tion of a few anom­alies which gen­er­al­ly gets ignored. Say for exam­ple when a politi­cian gets mur­dered for polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy and life goes on.
The élite class is able to live out their fan­tasies as lords over the peas­an­ty dur­ing the day. At night they retreat to the rel­a­tive safe­ty of their gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties uptown, replete with high fences and armed guards.
For the rest of the coun­try, it’s every man for himself.

Champagnie’s plea came as a result of the death of three of their own. The aver­age Jamaican has no one to lob­by on their behalf, so the deaths of (866) peo­ple are less sig­nif­i­cant than the deaths of (3).
Over the years using this medi­um, I have per­son­al­ly point­ed to the com­plic­i­ty of bench and bar in the growth of crime in our coun­try. In some cas­es, the lines between the guys who pull the trig­ger and their lawyers are so vague that they are indis­tin­guish­able.
In oth­er cas­es, through greed lawyers end up in the docks as ordi­nary crim­i­nals.
Champagnie’s call to his col­leagues for solu­tions to the Island’s crime prob­lems, is mere­ly a well couched acknowl­edge­ment of what we have been say­ing for years.
Surely, no one believes that tri­al lawyers com­ing up with solu­tions is what he is plead­ing for.
What he should say, is that his col­leagues should end their asso­ci­a­tions with the crim­i­nal under­world for the good of the coun­try and be done with 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.

SENIOR COP PANDERS TO THE CAMERAS.

Two men who attempt­ed an armed rob­bery at a Cash Pot on Molynes Road, tak­ing sev­er­al hostages in the process, locked them­selves into the busi­ness place as the police arrived in quick time.
The police have con­firmed that the dra­ma end­ed when two men who were inside the build­ing, sur­ren­dered after more than an hour.
A senior police com­man­der on the ground could be heard in a video on social media, plead­ing with the gun­men to exit the establishment.

The senior cop could be heard telling the men that the JCF is a [pro­fes­sion­al body], an obvi­ous attempt to con­vince them that they would not be harmed, (some­thing I believe could have been done with­out).
The whole thing sound­ed like an indoc­tri­nat­ed man speak­ing for the cam­eras, rather than to the men locked inside the estab­lish­ment.
Police have no duty to preach pro­fes­sion­al­ism to crim­i­nals, they only need to pro­fes­sion­al­ly car­ry out their duties and let the chip fall where they may.
All in all, this inci­dent end­ed with none of the hostages being harmed and both gun­men appre­hend­ed.
A good day for polic­ing and the Jamaican people.

It is now onto what pass­es for courts, where they will prompt­ly be released onto the streets, despite the seri­ous­ness of the crimes they com­mit­ted.
Either way, they will be giv­en a slap on the wrist and it will be busi­ness as usu­al.
Jamaica’s crime prob­lem will con­tin­ue to metas­ta­size because the crim­i­nal courts have a size­able cadre of judges, and mag­is­trates who are hell-bent on sub­vert­ing the rule of law.
There are judges and mag­is­trates who are col­lect­ing pay­ments from crim­i­nal defense lawyers, and are met­ing out sen­tences which are unre­lat­ed to the seri­ous crimes the offend­ers have com­mit­ted.
They are doing seri­ous dam­age to the crime-fight­ing efforts on the Island.
This medi­um is once again call­ing on the Jamaican gov­ern­ment to inves­ti­gate these ridicu­lous sen­tences, and the grant­i­ng of bail to mur­der­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in west­ern Jamaica.

An inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry does [not]mean a judi­cia­ry answer­able to no one.

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.

There have long been whis­pers that judges in the west­ern parts of Jamaica are on the take.
Several gang­sters have bragged about pay­ing off judges and being able to walk free.
Over the years the police have been extreme­ly vocal about the rather light sen­tences being met­ed out to crim­i­nal gun­men across the Island, but by judges in Saint James in par­tic­u­lar.
In the most recent exam­ple of this cri­sis, the police issued a state­ment which did not address the seri­ous­ness of the issue, but left lit­tle doubt they were as pissed as I and count­less oth­ers are about this.
“The police remains com­mit­ted in cre­at­ing safer com­mu­ni­ties for our cit­i­zens to enjoy and will con­tin­ue to put for­ward good crim­i­nal cas­es before the courts”, said the police.

The crim­i­nal lov­ing jus­tice min­is­ter, Delroy Chuck has been a staunch defend­er of the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing cor­rupt frauds on the bench who con­tin­ue to make a mock­ery of the work of the police by turn­ing loose crim­i­nals who are arrest­ed with ille­gal weapons.

Why would any­one have an ille­gal weapon, unless they intend to com­mit crimes with that weapon?
Even as the coun­try is awash in guns and ammu­ni­tion and peo­ple are afraid to walk the streets of the tiny Island, judges con­tin­ue to dis­hon­or their oaths by accept­ing pay­ments and turn­ing dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals back onto the streets, fur­ther frus­trat­ing the efforts of the police.
How much longer will the jus­tice min­is­ter allow him­self and the peo­ple’s min­istry to be a shill and a mouth­piece for these cor­rupt judges who are destroy­ing the jus­tice sys­tem?
Where is Horace Chang the Minister of National Security , he should be a strong advo­cate for the peo­ple of Jamaica who pay his salary?
Or, is he too chick­en shit a cow­ard to speak out at these sacred cows that con­tin­ue to make a mock­ery of our jus­tice system?

The most recent iter­a­tion of this abuse of our jus­tice sys­tem by these crim­i­nals, pos­ing as jurists.

(1) Michael Scott, a 29-year-old secu­ri­ty guard, was charged with two counts of ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm and ille­gal pos­ses­sion of ammu­ni­tion. He was sen­tenced to a fine of $200,000 or 18 months for each firearm and 3 years pro­ba­tion for the ammu­ni­tion, the police said.

(2)Cardell Spence, oth­er­wise called ‘Bredda’, a 19-year-old car­pen­ter, was sen­tenced to three years pro­ba­tion on each count for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm and ammunition.

(3) Dantae Thorpe, 19, was sen­tenced to a fine of $400,000 or two years in prison for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm and three years pro­ba­tion for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of ammunition.

(4) Kirk Russell, 43, was also con­vict­ed rob­bery with aggra­va­tion. He was sen­tenced to 18 months at hard labor, each for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm and rob­bery with aggravation.

The only way to stop this gross abuse of the sys­tem by these cor­rupt, on the take judges is truth in sen­tenc­ing.
We always knew there was cor­rup­tion in the sys­tem, some of us who have served in law enforce­ment knew that some of these judges were throw­ing cas­es and col­lect­ing cash from the equal­ly crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it defense attor­neys.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that we tend to look at cor­rup­tion when we look at dirty cops, as police offi­cers tend to be the face of gov­ern­ment.
However the real cor­rup­tion which is mak­ing an equal mock­ery of the sys­tem and dri­ving crime is the cor­rup­tion behind those long robes.

Having seen first hand how can­cer­ous these immoral acts by the judi­cia­ry can be, I have called for truth in sen­tenc­ing laws.
It is time for the morons in the leg­is­la­ture to stop bang­ing on the damn desks and pass manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain cat­e­go­ry of crimes.
Since we can no longer trust the judges the leg­is­la­ture must move to take out of their hands the abil­i­ty to return armed vio­lent offend­ers to the streets as they see fit.
This is no joke, these left wing judges are wreck­ing hav­oc on our coun­try, by impos­ing their ide­al­is­tic left-wing pol­i­tics rather than fol­low the laws.

There are states of emer­gency in the west­ern parish­es of Hanover Westmoreland and St James.
On Thursday morn­ing the Prime Minister Andrew Holness declared two more states of emer­gen­cies across the parish­es of Saint Catherine and Clarendon.
Where are the addi­tion­al secu­ri­ty force bod­ies sup­posed to come from?
As this writer, and this pub­li­ca­tion has main­tained, states of emer­gen­cies and zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions are not real solu­tions to the Island’s crime prob­lem.
The soft nature of the Island’s crime strat­e­gy is itself an accel­er­ant to crime.

The police and sol­diers who place their lives on the line to remove these dan­ger­ous weapons and crim­i­nals from the streets, damn sure deserve bet­ter than these judges kick­ing over the milk of their efforts.
The Government lit­er­al­ly have the hands of the secu­ri­ty forces tied behind their backs.
The judges return the killers back onto the streets as soon as they are arrest­ed.
The spread of crime across the coun­try may be traced back to the direct actions of the lead­er­ship of the coun­try at the time, when they warned gang­sters in Tivoli Gardens, that the secu­ri­ty forces were com­ing.
The pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns and ammu­ni­tion in the coun­try has made the lives of ordi­nary Jamaicans a liv­ing hell.
It is uncon­scionable that a few un-elect­ed bureau­crats can cir­cum­vent the will of the Jamaican peo­ple, who are over­whelm­ing­ly demand­ing that these crim­i­nals either face the hang­man or stay in prison.
These gun­men who are being fined, nev­er mind the pal­try sums they are being fined) are mur­der­ers, that is the rea­son their lawyers are pay­ing judges to release them back onto the streets.
Where is Chief Justice Byron Sykes, a man of char­ac­ter in this?

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 mike​beck​les​.com. 

“Crime deh ever weh,” says the peo­ple, when we talk about the high mur­der rate.
“Why weren’t you talk­ing about it dur­ing the PNP’s reign”? The infer­ence being if I talk about an issue which needs address­ing, I am auto­mat­i­cal­ly a mem­ber of what­ev­er par­ty is in oppo­si­tion at the moment.
Our polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions have become that bina­ry.
It has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to argue against the entrenched nar­ra­tive that crime is every­where these days, but those who see things through polit­i­cal lens do not care that there is ample evi­dence that I have been talk­ing about crime across mul­ti­ple admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties.
“The police have the appro­pri­ate train­ing”: Says the police and their apol­o­gists, when we say “police train­ing is not com­men­su­rate with what’s need­ed today”.
Even when the inci­dents we see play­ing out in front of our eyes indi­cate that the train­ing is spec­tac­u­lar­ly lack­ing.
Others con­tend that offi­cers receive the prop­er train­ing but they are not uti­liz­ing the train­ing they received.
How can one argue that offi­cers are trained in the cor­rect tech­niques if [the brain], the very part of the body, which should kick in, does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly default to the train­ing when the need aris­es?
So we are back to where we start­ed, [the inad­e­quate nature of the train­ing]. However, talk­ing about that issue is tan­ta­mount to flog­ging a dead horse.

Over the years I have become more and more skep­ti­cal of the police abil­i­ty to be effec­tive in crime reduc­tion in Jamaica. It goes with­out say­ing that there are forces work­ing against the police doing the job they should be doing under nor­mal circumstances.

For exam­ple, the very [Government] com­pris­ing both polit­i­cal par­ties which ought to give the police the tools they need leg­isla­tive­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, have spent more time and effort draft­ing laws which enhance the esca­la­tion of crime on the Island.
On the oth­er hand, the police have demon­stra­bly shown that they are woe­ful­ly inca­pable of doing even the sim­plest task pro­fes­sion­al­ly and with­out look­ing like car­toon char­ac­ters, as demon­strat­ed above.
In fair­ness to these two con­sta­bles, or should I say one and one-half offi­cers, this incom­pe­tence runs the gamut?
The media glee­ful­ly piled onto ACP Welsh for his attempt at for­give­ness, after all, poor Bishop Welsh had not tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion that the very peo­ple who said “Hosannah, Hosannah, glo­ry to God in the high­est “, to Yeshua, days lat­er said “cru­ci­fy him, cru­ci­fy” him to Pontious Pilate.
Every sin­gle per­son who berat­ed Gary Welsh for try­ing a new approach with the motorist, (wrong or right) would have loved to have received a reprieve as the BMW dri­ver did were they in his posi­tion.
Because it was­n’t them on the receiv­ing end of Welsh’s largess, they want­ed his head on a platter.

And when Welsh shift­ed gears to show the iron hand of the law, the very same peo­ple said: “Off with his head”. There was much to debate in the actions CP Welsh took, but the flash mob which came out with carv­ing knives and pitch­forks was more vis­cer­al than even Welsh must have imag­ined.
Curiously, the anger, deri­sion, and ven­omous stench unleashed against ACP Welsh, seemed to have com­plete­ly missed Commissioner of Police Antony Anderson, who was the one respon­si­ble for the place­ment of ACP Welsh.
But ACP Gary Welsh must have thought that his lit­tle media event with that motorist would endear him fur­ther with the media which the upper ech­e­lon of the JCF seems to believe are their friends.
Gary Welsh had no idea that that lit­tle media event would have been turned into the faux pas of the decade by the same vul­tures in the media.
After all, the hier­ar­chy of the JCF has tra­di­tion­al­ly allowed the media to dri­ve a wedge between the gazetted and rank and file of the force. As such the gazetted ranks have no com­punc­tion about throw­ing their sub­or­di­nates to the very same vul­tures in the media just to cur­ry favor.
I real­ly had to smirk at the non­sen­si­cal gib­ber­ish of those who argue that Commissioner Anderson shares no part of the blame.
Antony Anderson is the cap­tain of the team, he makes per­son­nel deci­sions, how can he be held blame­less, to the extent there is blame to go around?
Antony Anderson placed Gary Welsh in the posi­tion he fired him from.
Before Gary Welsh messed up to the extent that he is per­ceived to have done so, Antony Anderson messed up by choos­ing a total [com­mand novice] to head a high­ly oper­a­tional divi­sion.
For that Antony Anderson, Commissioner of Police failed the coun­try and the JCF.
But the larg­er prob­lem here is some­thing to which I have spo­ken for a long time. It is the whole bunch of peo­ple run­ning around with all kinds of lau­rel wreaths, stars, and crowns all over their stu­pid look­ing uni­forms and they have zero polic­ing expe­ri­ence.
UWI police I call them, the JCF has now co-opt­ed the fak­ery, lock stock and bar­rel from Mona, even the accents are fake as well. 

The trans­for­ma­tion of the JCF from an effec­tive force against crime, to the cour­tesy corps desired by the Jamaican polit­i­cal and crim­i­nal class, to the extent there is a dif­fer­ence, is all but com­plete.
What exists today are high flung con­cepts and showy depart­ments and sub-depart­ments with long names.
In the end, the JCF has become the Barney Fyffe of police depart­ments across the region and indeed the rest of the west­ern world.
As a con­se­quence, ZOSO’s and areas des­ig­nat­ed under the States Of Emergency, con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence vary­ing degrees of blood­let­ting, despite the large amounts of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel in the areas in which they are des­ig­nat­ed.
As I have main­tained for years these strate­gies, SOE’s, and now ZOSO’s are band-aid approach­es to crime. What is need­ed is a sys­temic, ded­i­cat­ed and deter­mined anti-crime process which sends a clear mes­sage that vio­lent crimes of all nature will be dealt with in the harsh­est pos­si­ble way under the law.
Instead, what we have is a crim­i­nal cen­tered approach which [first] takes into con­sid­er­a­tion the rights and feel­ings of the crim­i­nal with­out even a thought for crime vic­tims.
In the mean­time, the police are inca­pable of mak­ing a sim­ple arrest.

Officer Jon Crowder with the North Little Rock Police Department was arrest­ed and charged with mis­de­meanor Battery 3^rd. 

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — On Thursday, June 27, Officer Jon Crowder with the North Little Rock Police Department was arrest­ed and charged with mis­de­meanor bat­tery for his actions stem­ming from a call for ser­vice that occurred August 27, 2018, accord­ing to the depart­ment.
According to an arrest affi­davit, dur­ing this inter­ac­tion and arrest, Officer Crowder uti­lized a lev­el of force which result­ed in injuries to a sub­ject who was arrest­ed on felony charges. While con­duct­ing his law enforce­ment duties, Crowder respond­ed to the SuperStay Motel at on West Pershing Boulevard to assist anoth­er offi­cer on a call. The ini­tial respond­ing offi­cer stat­ed over the radio a male sus­pect involved in the inci­dent was attempt­ing to leave in a blue car. 

The dash­cam video from Crowder’s patrol car shows him con­duct­ing a traf­fic stop on a blue vehi­cle at the entrance of West Pershing loca­tion. Crowder had the male sus­pect step out of the vehi­cle and move to the rear of the car. Crowder then placed the sus­pec­t’s hands behind his back, with the assis­tance of anoth­er respond­ing offi­cer, and was able to place him in hand­cuffs. 
During the course of the arrest, the dash cam­era video shows Crowder lift the man’s arms up behind his back, pin­ning his tor­so to the car. Crowder then trans­port­ed the man to the North Little Rock Police Department Detective Division. 

While at the sta­tion, the sus­pect com­plained of a pain in his arms and was trans­port­ed by anoth­er offi­cer to Baptist Health Spring Hill Emergency Room where he was diag­nosed as hav­ing mild­ly dis­placed fea­tures of the ulna bone in both elbow joints. After this encounter, a Subject Control file was cre­at­ed per depart­men­tal pol­i­cy and reviewed by super­vi­so­ry per­son­nel. It was deter­mined that pol­i­cy vio­la­tions occurred and result­ed in dis­ci­pli­nary action being tak­en against Crowder. 

Crowder was sus­pend­ed for a peri­od of 30 days start­ing on October 25, 2018. Upon review­ing the ini­tial felony case file for the arrest­ed sub­ject, the Pulaski County Prosecutors Office found that the officer’s actions while affect­ing the arrest rose to a crim­i­nal lev­el. The Office of the Chief of Police was noti­fied that the Pulaski County Prosecutor would be seek­ing charges against the officer. 

Upon learn­ing this infor­ma­tion, Crowder was imme­di­ate­ly removed from patrol and placed on mod­i­fied duty. A crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion was ini­ti­at­ed and an affi­davit was com­plet­ed and sub­mit­ted to the Pulaski County Prosecutor on Wednesday, June 26, 2019 at which time, an arrest war­rant was issued for mis­de­meanor Battery 3^rd. The war­rant has since been served. Crowder was charged through the Pulaski County District Court. Chief Mike Davis has pro­vid­ed the fol­low­ing state­ment regard­ing the incident:

“Protecting the com­mu­ni­ty is at the core of what we do. Ensuring our offi­cers under­go exten­sive train­ing that empha­sizes the need to under­stand and appre­ci­ate their author­i­ty and lim­i­ta­tions is para­mount to ensure we ful­fill our mis­sion. We serve at the will of our cit­i­zens and we are account­able to our com­mu­ni­ty. Giving offi­cers the author­i­ty to use rea­son­able force and pro­tect the pub­lic requires mon­i­tor­ing, eval­u­a­tion and care­ful bal­anc­ing of all inter­est. As always, we real­ize that to be effec­tive in an ever-chang­ing world, train­ing and edu­ca­tion must con­tin­ue through­out an officer’s career.”

There were some real­ly great peo­ple in Jamaica when I was a kid, teach­ers, police offi­cers, and even postal work­ers. I assume there are still good and capa­ble peo­ple in every dis­ci­pline today as well.
Nevertheless, as a soci­ety, we have become too hyped on all things mate­r­i­al, things which can be seen.
Even when ask­ing loved ones abroad for some­thing, they have for­got­ten the sim­ple art of under­stand­ing and humil­i­ty.
So even though they may have no cell phone now, or at best have a [banger]sic, they demand the lat­est Samsung or Apple device that their loved ones can­not afford, and does not have for them­selves.
Not just that the phone or com­put­er they are ask­ing for must be the lat­est mod­el, it must have the max­i­mum amount of stor­age and speed pos­si­ble.
It’s that same hype with which some use edu­ca­tion, not to help oth­ers but to demon­strate that they are bet­ter than their fel­low man.
A per­son who has a Ph.D. is lit­er­al­ly deity, he or she is pre­sumed to be able to com­plete all tasks.
Inexorably this cre­ates a sys­tem in which all a per­son needs to do is to attain a degree and that per­son becomes qual­i­fied for all kinds of jobs for which they have zero training.

We are a coun­try of immense­ly tal­ent­ed peo­ple.
That is indis­putable, and we should be eter­nal­ly proud of our young peo­ple who are chew­ing up the tracks in aca­d­e­mics and in every field they are allowed to com­pete in.
It is the wider soci­ety which is fail­ing our young peo­ple.
When we adopt the ridicu­lous notion that a per­son with an advanced edu­ca­tion should be placed in a posi­tion for which he has absolute­ly no expe­ri­ence, we end up with the embar­rass­ing ker­fuf­fle the JCF found itself in, with Dr. Gary Welsh, Assistant Commissioner of Police.
The fact of the mat­ter is that as the entire Island is focused on the per­ceived mis­steps of Dr. Welsh, we ignore the fact that Dr. Welsh did not assign him­self to the posi­tion he was unsuit­ed for.
It is with­in the remit of the Commissioner of Police to assign his staff as he sees fit.
If how­ev­er, the com­mis­sion­er is a mis­fit, who was giv­en a job in which he was in over his head. And if that job was giv­en to him because of con­nec­tions, and his bona fides, (albeit for a dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pline).
Then the prob­lem is not of Dr. Welsh’s cre­ation, but the incom­pe­tence of the per­son who assigned him to that posi­tion for which he had no train­ing and was there­fore woe­ful­ly ill-suit­ed.
That per­son is the com­mis­sion­er of police Major General Antony Anderson. Commissioner of Police.
For my read­ers who are not Jamaicans, the (Major General rank), the Commissioner of police has, was brought over from the mil­i­tary. It has noth­ing to do with the job of the com­mis­sion­er of police.

On a local radio pro­gram recent­ly was a police sergeant who sup­pos­ed­ly devel­oped an App. The exu­ber­ant mod­er­a­tors laud­ed his work as they should. The offi­cer also revealed in the inter­view that he has been a sergeant for six years.
After the inter­view end­ed, the mod­er­a­tors com­ment­ed amongst them­selves that the offi­cer should be pro­mot­ed at least to a Deputy Commissioner of police, or else he may be leav­ing the force soon to find green­er pas­tures.
It is that kind of mind­set which has char­ac­ter­ized the JCF and has result­ed in the top-heavy bureau­cra­cy which exists today. Yet the force is unable to inves­ti­gate its way out of a brown paper bag, or offer any degree of assur­ance, even in the traf­fic depart­ment.
If the cop who devel­oped the [appli­ca­tion] believes that he can earn more mon­ey in the devel­op­ment of appli­ca­tions he would be sil­ly not to take advan­tage of those oppor­tu­ni­ties.
Nevertheless, devel­op­ing an appli­ca­tion should not arbi­trar­i­ly give him a clear path to a DCP rank as tout­ed by the [polic­ing experts] on that radio show.
Policing is a dis­ci­pline unto itself. It is not a place for peo­ple with degrees to go when they can­not find work.
Those who are pro­mot­ed to posi­tions in the police depart­ment because they earned a degree or devel­oped an appli­ca­tion should only be so pro­mot­ed if their high­er edu­ca­tion direct­ly improves the qual­i­ty of the ser­vice the police offers to the pub­lic.
Instead, what we have are peo­ple with MBA’s and degrees in cook­ing and oth­er dis­ci­plines, pro­mot­ed on the basis of the degree they have.
This effec­tive­ly cre­ates the park­ing lot which the JCF has become for peo­ple with degrees who are offer­ing noth­ing tan­gi­ble to the JCF or the coun­try.
This chokes off the pipeline of advance­ment for career police offi­cers who know their job.

There are still some tal­ent­ed offi­cers at the Gazetted lev­el, who deserve those com­mands, offi­cers who came up through the ranks the old fash­ioned way.
Officers who know what they are talk­ing about. However, many of them are lan­guish­ing at the Deputy and Superintendent ranks, as the Ph.D.‘s and MBA’s occu­py the lead­er­ship rungs of the JCF, nev­er mind that they have no idea about actu­al polic­ing, and those over whom they leap-frogged also have earned degrees.
ACP Welsh found him­self a square peg in a round hole, pro­mot­ed way over his head as a police com­man­der.
A Doctorate in any­thing else does not trans­late into lead­er­ship in polic­ing. This inci­dent should be a wake­up call to the lead­er­ship of the coun­try, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, it will not.
They will nev­er under­stand it because from to top to bot­tom they do not under­stand the val­ue of the dis­ci­pline, and as the streets would say(them nu rate police).
The police depart­ment will con­tin­ue to be a place where peo­ple with degrees park them­selves and earn big salaries for doing noth­ing.
Promoted way over their heads and giv­en tasks for which they are not equipped.

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.

If police depart­ments in the United States were mind­ful of what the black com­mu­ni­ty thinks about their per­for­mance, the fir­ing of NYPD mur­der­er Daniel Pantaleo would have been a good time to apol­o­gize to the fam­i­ly of Eric Garner.
When it comes to the thou­sands of police depart­ments across America, the unions and the com­plex agree­ments leg­is­la­tures agree to, which allows cops to act with impuni­ty, even when they com­mit mur­der in plain view,it is almost impos­si­ble for cit­i­zens to get jus­tice.
It is under­stand­able that police unions are going to stand up and fight like hell for their mem­bers, as they should.
Nevertheless, when mem­bers are found to have gone way over the line as Pantaleo did, it makes sense for the union to make a con­cil­ia­to­ry state­ment to the aggriev­ed fam­i­ly and move on. If the had respect for the peo­ple on whom they and their fam­i­lies lived like leech­es, but they don’t.
The fact that police unions con­tin­ue to pour salt into the wounds of griev­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers of the vic­tims they mur­der, shows that these clowns deserve zero respect and should not be seen as qual­i­fied to be tak­en seri­ous­ly.
The New Yorp Police Department, despite protes­tanta­tions to the con­trary, by the Mayor and pres­i­den­tial can­did­date Bill D’Blasio, has zero respect for the black and brown res­i­dents of the city.

The first thing that police unions such as the ones which rep­re­sents the dif­fer­et ranks in the NYPD should under­stand, is that the depart­ment does not belong to them.
They are ser­vants of the res­i­dents of the city and there­fore answer­able, and are bound to do what said res­i­dents want from their police depart­ment.
At any time that the union lead­ers and their fol­low­ers are not sat­is­fied work­ing under the con­di­tions the res­i­dents of the city dic­tate, they are free to go find jobs on a con­struc­tion sites or at Kosco.
The African-American pop­u­la­tion in New York city is 24.32% of an esti­mat­ed 8.55 mil­lion res­i­dents, that means that there are 2,079,360 peo­ple of African ances­try in New York city. They pay tax­es which sup­port the NYPD mem­bers whom they hire to pro­tect them , not mur­der them. Many of these poor­ly edu­cat­ed racist cops do not even live in the city or the four out­er bor­oughs they police.
As such it is no won­der the minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty sees their pres­ence as an invad­ing alien horde.
The point is that the head of the Unioin which rep­re­sents the rank and file, Patrick Lynch has nev­er respect­ed the peo­ple of col­or of the city.
Having served in the Union under Guiliani this hot­head is a dis­re­spect­ful obnox­ious punk who still main­tains the dis­re­spect­ful and intrasin­gent atti­tude that NYPD cops are so well known for which result­ed in the death of Ammadiou Diallo and the rape and sodomy of Haitian immi­grant Abner Louima by vile cop Justin Volpe NYPD thug.
Both Lynch, and Mullings who rep­re­sents the sear­gants, have been dis­re­spect­ful loud­mouths who have giv­en mem­bers of the NYPD the impres­sion that only some cit­i­zens of the city are deserv­ing of respect.

[Just recent­ly the pres­i­dent of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, New York City’s sec­ond-largest police union, says he should not face con­se­quences for cir­cu­lat­ing an explic­it­ly racist video — in which black peo­ple are referred to as “mon­sters” and pub­lic hous­ing as a “war zone” — because it was an “hon­est mis­take.
The hate-filled video was emailed to thou­sands of police sergeants over the week­end, along with a mes­sage from SBA President Ed Mullins, read­ing: “Pay close atten­tion to every word. You will hear what goes through the mind of real police­men every sin­gle day on the job. This is the best video I’ve ever seen telling the pub­lic the absolute truth.”
The 15-minute clip depicts a police shoot­ing in Los Angeles, and fea­tures nar­ra­tion by Willie Shields, a radio host and con­spir­acist, read­ing a let­ter from an unnamed police offi­cer. “The projects will always be dens of crime and vio­lence,” the nar­ra­tor asserts. “Cops will con­tin­ue to wade into that fray and blacks will con­tin­ue to attack and ambush us for­ev­er.”] According to https://​gothamist​.com

In a blaz­ing arti­cle for the Nation titled “A Killer Cop Gets Fired, and Somehow the Cops Are Angry.” Elie Mystal wrote; Daniel Pantaleo, the New York City police offi­cer who choked an unarmed black man to death in broad day­light, was fired this week. While announc­ing the move, New York City Police Department Commissioner James O’Neill — who had the sole dis­cre­tion to fire Pantaleo — blamed vic­tim Eric Garner for “resist­ing arrest” and being in “poor health.” O’Neill declared, “If I was still a cop, I’d prob­a­bly be mad at me” for fir­ing Pantaleo. And mad the cops are. Nobody is angri­er than Pat Lynch, head of the New York City Police Benevolent Association. Reacting to the fir­ing, Lynch said, “The rule of law has been ignored. The job has been dying; and today, the job is dead.”
Dead. Like Eric Garner, who was choked to death on the street while plead­ing for air? Dead. Like Tamon Robinson, a 27-year-old cashier from Brooklyn, who police allege ran into their patrol car while flee­ing from offi­cers? Dead. Like Ramarley Graham, an 18-year-old who was shot in his grandmother’s bath­room because police thought he had a gun, when in real­i­ty he was armed only with mar­i­jua­na? Dead. Like Sean Bell, who was shot at 50 times on the eve of his wed­ding by police who erro­neous­ly thought he had a gun? Dead. Like Amadou Diallo, who was 23 years old when police fired 41 shots at him after they mis­took his wal­let for a gun?

Elie Mystal went on to argue he would rather that NY City do with­out the Patrick Lynches of the world, quote; ” Nothing would make me safer on the streets of New York than for the Pat Lynches of the world to deter­mine that crack­ing black skulls is just not worth it any­more, hang up their jack­boots, and leave the black and brown peo­ple of New York City in peace. Assalamualaikum, “mad” cops. I’ll glad­ly take my chances with­out you. At least then, if I’m mur­dered, it will be an ille­gal act, as opposed to a death that you all will try to jus­ti­fy because I once got a demer­it in high school.”

The unmit­i­gat­ed truth is that the NYPD boss­es have a duty to dis­ci­pline errant cops who step out­side their man­dates. There is no way that a depart­ment intent on remov­ing bad cops could take five years to remove this despi­ca­ble mur­der­er from the depart­ment.
No one need­ed a sec­ond look to deter­mine that Daniel Pantaleo choked the life out of Eric Garner, even after he kept say­ing “I can’ breath”, for a total of eleven times until he was dead.
For years it has been stan­dard pro­ce­dure for NYPD cops to plant evi­dence, mur­der, rape, and fal­si­fy evi­dence to con­vict peo­ple of col­or for offences they nev­er com­mit­ted.
The courts are rub­ber stamps for their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, its just they way things gets done, it’s what they are used to.
The com­mis­sion­er James O’neil, in a pathet­ic attempt to save face with the gang inblue, all but placed the blame on Eric Graner for his own death.
” “If I was still a cop, I’d prob­a­bly be mad at me” for fir­ing Pantaleo”, said O’neil.
By so doing, the cul­ture of abu­sive behav­ior born out of racist atti­tudes and bla­tant dis­re­spect and hatred for the city’s minorty com­mu­ni­ty which pays their salaries, will con­tin­ue, because as far as O’neil is con­cerned resist­ing an ille­gal arrest is wor­thy of the death penaly.