It is Godly and right­eous that we for­give our broth­ers as Christ so charged us. When we com­mit an infrac­tion we all wish that we may be for­giv­en and our record here on earth will remain pris­tine by our earth­ly judges. However, when we sin against God we nev­er give a sec­ond thought about those trans­gres­sions, because most of us auto­mat­i­cal­ly assume that God Almighty is true to his word and he wash­es away the evi­dence of our trans­gres­sions.
Sure God wash­es away our trans­gres­sions but the scrip­tures tell us that there are con­di­tions.
2 Chronicles 7: 14, If my peo­ple, which are called by my name,
(1)shall hum­ble them­selves, (2) and pray, (3)and seek my face,(4) and turn from their wicked ways;
Then will I hear from heav­en, and will for­give their sin, and will heal their land.
So there are four pred­i­cates on which God’s for­give­ness is premised, and most impor­tant­ly his for­give­ness does not absolve us from the phys­i­cal con­se­quences of our trans­gres­sions.
For exam­ple, a man who runs around hav­ing unpro­tect­ed sex with women he does not know, will not be pro­tect­ed from sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases, unwant­ed preg­nan­cies and the asso­ci­at­ed costs that come with those. Neither is he pro­tect­ed from jeal­ous rage of the para­mours of the women he lays with, or the finan­cial costs of inter­act­ing with the women.
Those are only a few of the con­se­quences which God’s for­give­ness will not wash away.

The dif­fer­ence with man’s for­give­ness and God’s, is that God’s for­give­ness, through premised on his stat­ed pred­i­cates, is not influ­enced by race, gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, sta­tion in life, or any oth­er defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics.
Man’s for­give­ness has not always fol­lowed divine lead­er­ship.
It may very well be the rea­son that some Jamaicans are angry at the head of the Island’s traf­fic police Assistant Commissioner of Police, Bishop Gary Welsh’s response to a motorist who per­formed a dan­ger­ous stunt at a busy Saint Andrew inter­sec­tion in a high-per­for­mance motor­car.
According to local report­ing, the head of the police traf­fic divi­sion [Assistant Commissioner of Police], [Bishop], Dr. Gary Welsh arranged for the offend­er to show up to the loca­tion.
In tow was a gag­gle of reporters and rub­ber­neck­ers. The offend­er then apol­o­gized and promised not to ever repeat the actions which inex­orably brought him to have to apol­o­gize. He then answered a series of ques­tions from the media.
With the Bishop/​Assistant Commissioner was a man whom, we are told is a lay mag­is­trate.
As part of the event, the offend­er was made to promise to assist the police with a road safe­ty cam­paign, which would teach motorist to respect the road traf­fic laws.

At issue in the minds of most crit­ics, it seems to me, is the fact that the offend­er seemed to have got­ten what they con­sid­er a sweet­heart deal because he fits the pro­file of a light-com­plex­ioned uptown rich kid.
They argue that the same def­er­ence would not have been giv­en to a dark­er-skinned Jamaican of less­er means.
It’s not always pos­si­ble to assess the motives of oth­ers, nei­ther is it always easy to weigh the cal­cu­la­tions which goes into anoth­er per­son­’s deci­sion mak­ing on an issue.
As a con­se­quence, I will leave the prog­nos­ti­ca­tion to oth­ers. Some pun­dits have even called for the res­ig­na­tion of the senior police offi­cer, that is how unusu­al and egre­gious they view this inci­dent.
The truth of the mat­ter is that hav­ing watched the video of the inci­dent sev­er­al times I agree that this offend­er cer­tain­ly com­mit­ted sev­er­al arrestable offens­es. At one stage he nar­row­ly missed col­lid­ing with anoth­er vehi­cle but it was­n’t enough to give him pause.
He per­sist­ed with the maneu­ver, obvi­ous­ly obliv­i­ous to the poten­tial con­se­quences of his actions.

The out­rage and anger in what they see as spe­cial treat­ment met­ed out to the young offend­er, may have its gen­e­sis in the way peo­ple of dark­er hue have been treat­ed in Jamaica and across the globe for­ev­er.
Nevertheless, the anger at the police who are search­ing for ways to bridge the divide between a bad­ly dam­aged police depart­ment and the pub­lic may be some­what mis­placed.
Sure, the senior cop may not have weighed the per­cep­tion the offend­er’s lighter hue would play to the larg­er soci­ety, but should we con­demn him if his inten­tions were pure?
The angst and anger at the soci­etal incon­sis­ten­cies based on sta­tion, edu­ca­tion, pig­men­ta­tion, and oth­er defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics can­not be denied or ignored.
On the oth­er hand, we should nev­er lose sight of the fact that the issue had the bless­ing of a lay-mag­is­trate who had the pow­er under the law to dic­tate what the offend­er’s pun­ish­ment would be.
As a firm believ­er in the rule of law and it’s equi­table, just and fair dis­pen­sa­tion, I am also aware that dis­pen­sa­tion of this sort is not nov­el or new.
Judges, Magistrates, and Lay-Magistrates alike, have used all kinds of dif­fer­ent reme­di­at­ing tech­niques to send the same mes­sage a mon­e­tary or cus­to­di­al sen­tence would send.
The prob­lem for most, is the fact that the senior cop may have abro­gat­ed the nor­mal process by inter­ven­ing in a mat­ter they felt should have gone through the nor­mal chan­nels, (assum­ing they haven’t).
As a man of the cloth, the senior cop may have been moved to be com­pas­sion­ate. However, his role as a prin­ci­pal law enforce­ment offi­cer may have col­lid­ed with his Christian faith.
The con­tention that the Senior offi­cer had no author­i­ty to abro­gate the nor­mal process of the courts is a stick­ing point.
That he had a Lay-Magistrate with him may give him some legal cov­er.
As for the court of pub­lic opin­ion and the optics, that’s a whole dif­fer­ent ket­tle of fish.
Perception is some­times real­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a soci­ety which reflex­ive­ly hates the police.

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.

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Retired Police offi­cer Paddon Manning is report­ed­ly in police cus­tody for killing his wife Pamela.
The cou­ple who are res­i­dents of Cumberland in Saint Catherine report­ed­ly had a dis­pute upon which he alleged­ly killed her.
According to the Police, the 62-year-old for­mer Inspector of Police and his 65-year-old spouse Pamela a retired teacher, had a dis­pute dur­ing which he used a knife to stab and kill her.

I sound the alarm that there are judges who are not on the right side of the law. Police do very good investigations only to have criminal coddling judges turn criminals loose.
(Hello, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes)

A Jamaican judge recent­ly imposed a sen­tence of six years in prison at hard labor on Jeffrey Campbell, a St Catherine man who plead­ed guilty to two counts of manslaugh­ter for the stab­bing deaths of 80-year-old return­ing res­i­dent Winnifred Williams and her 58-year-old son, Michael Williams. A Jamaican judge imposed recent­ly imposed.
The Islands Justice Minister, Delroy Chuck (an advo­cate for vio­lent mur­der­ers), defend­ed the judge’s slap on the wrist, argu­ing the fol­low­ing.
“The six-year sen­tence imposed by the judge, cou­pled with the four and a half years Campbell spent in cus­tody await­ing tri­al, meant that the con­vict­ed killer will serve a total of 10 and a half years for the crimes”.
“Therefore, the sen­tence imposed is with­in the range of sen­tences that would nor­mal­ly be imposed for manslaugh­ter. This is not an unusu­al sen­tence for manslaugh­ter.”

Before address­ing this crim­i­nal sup­port­ing embar­rass­ment pos­ing as a min­is­ter of jus­tice, first, let me say that the gen­er­al out­cry from the pub­lic is not ridicu­lous.
What is crazy is that the sys­tem designed by Delroy Chuck would have the pow­er to ignore the pain and grief of those who lost their loved ones while kow­tow­ing to the nation’s most vio­lent mon­sters.
There is an old Jamaican say­ing that where there is smoke, there is fire. So it is not exact­ly a mys­tery why the crim­i­nal cod­dling Delroy Chuck would rush to the defense of this pathet­ic judge.
As a mat­ter of fact, what Delroy Chuck has done is pave the way for the most vio­lent mur­der­ers to receive a slap on the wrist. All they have to do is take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their actions.
The stark real­i­ty is that Delroy Chuck’s con­tention that quote:” There is val­ue in not “impos­ing a sen­tence that is most severe and at the harsh­est lev­el” at times, “because per­sons who plead guilty have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reform and go straight,” is a bunch of horse manure.
These killers are not plead­ing guilty because they have any inten­tion of going straight. They are doing so because they want to take advan­tage of the 50% off the already light sen­tence they would have received on con­vic­tion.
To the crim­i­nal-lov­ing Delroy Chuck, this end jus­ti­fies the means, his brand of jus­tice cares noth­ing about the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, or the trau­ma these killers leave in the com­mu­ni­ties.
Which leaves us to ask, what is Delroy Chuck get­ting out of free­ing these mon­sters back onto the streets?

A recent report revealed that a 16-year-old boy molest­ed anoth­er boy sex­u­al­ly; he was arrest­ed by the police and was prompt­ly returned to the streets by the bro­ken sys­tem.
Last week the teen sociopath sex­u­al­ly assault­ed a four-year-old boy, then cut that baby’s penis off then, stabbed him repeat­ed­ly, and left him to die like a piece of garbage.
Had the sys­tem dealt ade­quate­ly with this mon­ster in the mak­ing, had the sicko pos­ing as a judge done the due dili­gence, that mon­ster would not have brought that pain to a lit­tle child.
What kind of soci­ety are we cre­at­ing when we allow dou­ble mur­der­ers to get out and con­tin­ue with their lives after only a few years in prison?
I’ll tell you; it is a soci­ety called Jamaica where the gov­ern­men­t’s focus is on the idea that reha­bil­i­tat­ing vio­lent mur­der­ers is a more appro­pri­ate course of action than secur­ing the soci­ety from their preda­to­ry prac­tices.
The onus is on con­vict­ed mur­der­ers to prove to soci­ety that they have changed their ways and are deserv­ing of a sec­ond chance into soci­ety.
It is not incum­bent on the soci­ety to make it easy for con­vict­ed mur­der­ers to get out of prison and then hope they will not return to killing inno­cent peo­ple.
The bro­ken sys­tem of jus­tice in Jamaica favors both the PNP and JLP, which togeth­er cre­at­ed it to ensure that their mem­bers see no jail time for their own crim­i­nal activ­i­ties.
For years the jus­tice sys­tem has been left to decay under the PNP even as its mem­bers pil­laged the pub­lic cof­fers. The JLP is now at the tiller, and they, too, are engaged in theft, graft, and all kinds of cor­rup­tion, even if not to the lev­els that the PNP has been.
What is rep­re­hen­si­ble is that there are moron­ic peo­ple on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide who (engage in what about-ism) on this sub­ject. Your side did, it so my side is enti­tled to do too.
Giving mur­der­ers half-off sen­tences which were way too mild, to begin with, is a real­ly bad idea. It may have some favor in Jamaica because the coun­try is fast becom­ing a hang­out for mur­der­ers and oth­er transna­tion­al crim­i­nals.
Every Jamaican who claims to love Jamaica should be alarmed at what is hap­pen­ing in the name of jus­tice by a sin­gle indi­vid­ual, Delroy Chuck.

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

Newly released police body cam­era footage shows the final moments of an unarmed man’s life as he was pinned face-down on the ground by Dallas offi­cers who mocked him when he appeared to fall uncon­scious instead of check­ing his pulse or mak­ing sure he was breath­ing. Tony Timpa, 32, died after his encounter with police on Aug. 10, 2016 ― a death lat­er ruled homi­cide by a Dallas County med­ical exam­in­er. Timpa had called author­i­ties that night from the park­ing lot of an adult video store seek­ing help. He told a dis­patch­er that he had schiz­o­phre­nia and had not tak­en his med­ica­tion. An autop­sy showed Timpa was high on cocaine at the time Body cam­era footage ― obtained by the Dallas Morning News and NBC-DFW after a lengthy legal bat­tle with Dallas police — shows what hap­pened next. The trou­bling footage, part of which was released Wednesday, shows offi­cers arriv­ing at the scene to find Timpa already in hand­cuffs. According to NBC-DFW, Timpa had been restrained by secu­ri­ty guards after he attempt­ed to run into traf­fic. As the offi­cers approached Timpa, who was writhing on the ground, he yelled, “You’re going to kill me! You’re gonna kill me!” An offi­cer pinned Timpa to the ground — his face in the grass and hands cuffed behind his back. NBC-DFW said the man was held in that posi­tion for 14 min­utes. “Will you let me go please?” Timpa is heard plead­ing with the officers.

Timpa even­tu­al­ly becomes unre­spon­sive. As the Morning News notes, the offi­cers noticed Timpa’s sud­den silence, but assumed he was asleep. Officers nei­ther felt for his pulse nor checked whether he was breath­ing. Instead, the offi­cers cracked jokes about wak­ing Timpa up “for school” and about mak­ing him waf­fles and scram­bled eggs for break­fast. “Tony, time for school, wake up!” one offi­cer is heard say­ing. “I don’t want to go to school, mom,” anoth­er offi­cer responds, mim­ic­k­ing the voice of a child. “Five more min­utes, mom.” When para­medics arrived at the scene, they admin­is­tered a seda­tive to Timpa and trans­ferred him to an ambu­lance. “He didn’t just die down there, did he?” one offi­cer says as an appar­ent­ly uncon­scious Timpa is moved. “Hope I didn’t kill him.” Paramedics tell the offi­cers that Timpa is not breath­ing. “He’s dead,” a para­medic says, point­ing to Timpa in the ambu­lance. The county’s med­ical exam­in­er, in rul­ing Timpa’s death a homi­cide, said the man died of sud­den car­diac arrest caused by the effects of cocaine and the stress of phys­i­cal restraint. In 2017, a grand jury indict­ed Sgt. Kevin Mansell and Officers Danny Vasquez and Dustin Dillard on a mis­de­meanor charge of dead­ly con­duct, say­ing they’d “engaged in reck­less con­duct that placed Timpa in immi­nent dan­ger of seri­ous bod­i­ly injury.” Prosecutors, how­ev­er, dis­missed the charges in March. All three offi­cers have since returned to active duty. A law­suit filed by Timpa’s fam­i­ly against the city of Dallas, claim­ing the offi­cers used exces­sive force, hasn’t been resolved. “He was expect­ing some­one to help him, that’s why he called,” Timpa’s moth­er Vicki Timpa told CBS-DFW last year. “He wasn’t expect­ing sev­er­al police to kill him.” A Dallas police spokesman told The Washington Post on Wednesday that because of “pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion … we are unable to com­ment on the actions of the officers.”

THE COUNTRY’S JUSTICE MINISTER IS AN ACTIVE LOBBYIST FOR THE MOST VIOLENT MURDERERS

In the sys­tem of jus­tice, it is taught to all prac­ti­tion­ers, [jus­tice must not only be done but it must also appear to be done]. Cops, lawyers, judges and every­one else in the food chain of jus­tice must be aware of that prin­ci­ple.
When crim­i­nals are let off too light­ly, the sys­tem becomes a joke as offend­ers, and would-be offend­ers see no deter­rent in the laws against their worst instincts.
Victims and their sur­vivors are also apt to shy away from the sys­tem when they are con­vinced that it does not engage in the fair and equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice.
When this hap­pens, crim­i­nals are embold­ened to com­mit more crimes, and sur­viv­ing vic­tims of crime and their fam­i­lies are pre­dis­posed to tak­ing the laws into their own hands.
The result is chaos, and a break­down of the sys­tem as we are wit­ness­ing in Jamaica today.
Each and every aspect of the sys­tem of jus­tice must work for equi­table and just dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice. Yet in Jamaica, the exis­ten­tial crime epi­dem­ic is viewed as a fail­ure of the police, which to my mind is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est and men­tal­ly lazy.
One of the most glar­ing aspects of the break­down of the sys­tem is the incon­sis­ten­cy and the less than ade­quate sen­tences met­ed out to vio­lent felons.
This break­down is to be placed at the feet of one and only one seg­ment of the jus­tice dis­pen­sa­tion process, judges.
For years police offi­cers and for­mer police offi­cers have com­plained pro­fuse­ly about the con­duct of cer­tain judges and the cav­a­lier atti­tude with which they treat vio­lent offend­ers.
This writer, as a for­mer police offi­cer too, has had occa­sion to gasp at the increduli­ty of some of the deci­sions, as they make absolute­ly no sense at all.

The bedrock of the com­mon law sys­tem is the doc­trine of [stare deci­sis] (“let the deci­sion stand”). The doc­trine has two limbs. First, the courts are oblig­ed to fol­low the deci­sions and rul­ings in pre­vi­ous­ly decid­ed cas­es, or prece­dents, where the facts and issues are sub­stan­tial­ly the same. The sec­ond limb of the doc­trine – and this is real­ly an exten­sion of the first, – dic­tates that a low­er court can­not depart from the prece­dents set by a high­er court where the issue is essen­tial­ly the same. 
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(a)The instances of bla­tant abuse,(b) the depar­ture from the prin­ci­ple of [stare deci­sis], © their dis­re­gard for process and prece­dent, (d) their refusal to just (“let the deci­sion stand”), on the part of Jamaican judges, have been shock­ing, to say the least. Not only has that depar­ture embold­ened crim­i­nals and crim­i­nal­i­ty over the years, but it has also lit­er­al­ly caused police offi­cers to become dis­in­ter­est­ed in the process, as the courts have tak­en it unto itself to become a social wel­fare agency.
As a result of this abuse of the sys­tem by cer­tain judges, this writer has over the years called for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences to be cod­i­fied into law, there­by remov­ing from the purview of these judges, the temp­ta­tion to abridge the laws with their own opin­ions and biases.

Today there is no trust in the sys­tem. Police offi­cers do not trust the sys­tem to dis­pense jus­tice so they are not moti­vat­ed to go after crim­i­nals fear­ing they will be out as soon as they are arrest­ed pos­ing exis­ten­tial threats to them and their fam­i­lies.
We have heard and seen video evi­dence of crim­i­nals threat­en­ing to kid­nap from schools, the chil­dren of police offi­cers and kill them.
None of this has changed the atti­tudes of judges. None of this has changed the atti­tudes of the Government.
In fact, the Government’s point per­son on Justice, Delroy Chuck, under­stands his port­fo­lio to be the defend­er in chief of vio­lent mur­der­ers and oth­er felons.
We have cat­a­loged empir­i­cal data show­ing that Delroy Chuck is a lob­by­ist for crim­i­nals, while being paid with tax dol­lars.
The coun­try must have con­sis­ten­cy, and that was evi­dent in two recent inci­dents recent­ly.
More to the point, all well-mean­ing Jamaicans want equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice, that includes the oft-maligned police who recent­ly crit­i­cized deci­sions in which rogue cops received slaps on the wrist for cor­rup­tion.
Additionally, a man who mur­dered a senior cit­i­zen and her son received a sev­en (7) year sen­tence for the dou­ble mur­ders. The judge argued that the felon spent five years in jail await­ing tri­al and even­tu­al­ly plead guilty.
What the liars did not tell the nation, is that the mur­der­ing scum­bag only plead guilty because, under Delroy Chuck’s lead­er­ship, felons, includ­ing dou­ble mur­der­ers, like this one, can have their sen­tence halved sim­ply by plead­ing guilty.
But the out­rage over the light sen­tences by civ­il soci­ety, imme­di­ate­ly drew push-back from Delroy Chuck who chid­ed those who argued for stiffer penal­ties for vio­lent crim­i­nals.
In sum­ming up the retard­ed defense of his posi­tion Chuck argued “impos­ing a sen­tence that is most severe and at the harsh­est lev­el, at times, is wrong, because per­sons who plead guilty have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reform and go straight.”
In oth­er words, “fuck the vic­tims and their pain, as long as you admit what you did in order to catch a break and receive a slap on the wrist we are good”.
This is jus­tice for sale Delroy Chuck style.

As we talk about a bro­ken sys­tem which leans heav­i­ly in sup­port of mur­der­ers, we should nev­er for­get that a car­load of hood­lums which start­ed a crime spree in Portmore Saint Catherine end­ed up shoot­ing at offi­cers who inter­cept­ed them and returned fire.
The offi­cers were con­vict­ed of manslaugh­ter in the crim­i­nal par­adise called Jamaica.
One com­men­ta­tor had this to say. Quote” A car loaded with hood­lums and their cheer­lead­ers com­mit­ted aggra­vat­ed rob­bery in Portmore then sped to Kingston. Got stopped by the police who had got­ten wind of their adven­tures, decid­ed not to stop, end­ed u[p being corned came out blaz­ing, cops respond­ed, one cheer­leader dead, one crim­i­nal injured. Years after all three cops are impris­oned”.” What a sweet place to live…If you are a no-good that is.“

Constables Durvin Hayles, Anna Kay Bailey and AndreWain Smith, who were on tri­al for mur­der in the Home Circuit Court were con­vict­ed of (manslaugh­ter) are in cus­tody pend­ing their appeal.
These offi­cers placed their lives on the line for the coun­try, sev­en retard­ed dunces found them guilty after an overzeal­ous INDECOM charged the offi­cers with mur­der.
Even though there was no way that INDECOM could prove [mal­ice], a key com­po­nent of mur­der, the offi­cers were charged with the cap­i­tal offense.
They were doing exact­ly what they were sworn to do, and the evi­dence bore it out, yet the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing court and the tri­al judge did not move to throw out the case.
This is Jamaica.
See sto­ry here: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​t​h​r​e​e​-​c​o​p​s​-​f​o​u​n​d​-​g​u​i​l​t​y​-​o​f​-​m​a​n​s​l​a​u​g​h​t​e​r​_​1​5​6​7​8​1​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​373

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 also writes occa­sion­al­ly for the web­site Medium​.com.
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.

In one of the most bla­tant and non­sen­si­cal attacks upon the JCF which could only be attrib­uted to (a) utter igno­rance of what polic­ing is about, or (b) a fee­ble attempt to get eye­balls on his pathet­ic arti­cle, or both, Gleaner Columnist Christopher Serju made a com­plete ass of him­self in a July 26^th arti­cle.
The writer’s unfor­tu­nate attack on the police seemed to indi­cate that he had a dead­line but did not both­er to do his home­work. Instead, he default­ed to what works in Jamaica, a cow­ard­ly, and unfound­ed attack on the police.
He chose to attack the police for doing exact­ly what they are tasked with doing and ensur­ing the exact out­comes they desired.
But in Jamaica when these poor excus­es, which pass for jour­nal­ists, do not do their home­work or worse, does not under­stand a sub­ject (intel­lec­tu­al defi­cien­cy), they default to what they were raised to do. That is to attack the police.
Unfortunately, the writer’s weak attempt to blame the police while try­ing to kiss up to a for­eign move­ment fell flat on its face.

YOU BE THE JUDGE

By Christopher Serju.
Jamaica Gleaner.…

Tuesday’s demon­stra­tion by Greenpeace International activists, sup­port­ed by local envi­ron­men­tal­ists and non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, caught the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) off guard for the rea­son that it was peace­ful. The envi­ron­men­tal activists had the audac­i­ty to announce in advance that they were going to turn up at the gates of the Jamaica Conference Centre, the International Seabed Authority head­quar­ters in down­town Kingston, at 8:30 a.m.Armed with that infor­ma­tion, the JCF pulled out all the stops to ensure that the protest did not unfold as planned. However, it appar­ent­ly did not antic­i­pate that the demon­stra­tors would be bright, intel­li­gent and able to hold a cogent con­ver­sa­tion.
“It’s a peace­ful, edu­cat­ed, sci­en­tif­ic posi­tion that we are putting for­ward, and that’s what I want to be able to do as the del­e­gates arrive today. This is the pub­lic side­walk, and I can’t see too much legal prob­lem with that. Obviously, the author­i­ties have a slight­ly dif­fer­ent opin­ion,” declared Frank Hewetson, Greenpeace co-ordinator.He was right, as the police had come to thwart what they must have antic­i­pat­ed would have been a show­down of epic pro­por­tions. With mem­bers of the bicy­cle squad, at least two motor­cy­clists on stand­by, an assis­tant com­mis­sion­er of police, a deputy super­in­ten­dent, an inspec­tor, and a host of rank-and-file mem­bers, the JCF was ready for any even­tu­al­i­ty. Instead, what tran­spired was the tri­umph of com­mon sense and log­ic over state intransigence. 

They were dis­armed by the calm, cool and col­lect­ed stance of Hewetson, who was polite and charm­ing and just as firm in the con­vic­tion that he was doing no wrong.“I want to stress that we will obey the police, but we are going to exer­cise our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights,” he insist­ed. But even after he had explained a cou­ple of times their rea­son for being there, Deputy Superintendent Alton Spencer was still unsure as to the type of dis­or­der he was try­ing to quell. “I am not even cer­tain what their mis­sion is, but we are here to basi­cal­ly ensure that there is no block­age. Nobody is imped­ed in terms of move­ment, and we are pro­tect­ing the inter­est of those per­sons who are attend­ing the con­fer­ence,” he con­fid­ed. The senior police offi­cer, how­ev­er, must be com­mend­ed for his mul­ti­task­ing skills: field­ing ques­tions from pesky jour­nal­ists, direct­ing his troops and attend­ing to the many and var­ied con­cerns of Enoch Allen, head of secu­ri­ty for the International Seabed Authority. He was a very busy man indeed.

UNDEFINED TERROR

Allen shared with The Gleaner his rea­sons for oppos­ing the Greenpeace International demonstration.“In gen­er­al, when we have our con­fer­ences, it is of para­mount impor­tance that we, being the host, and the Seabed Authority in par­tic­u­lar, ought to pro­tect the del­e­gates. There is a demon­stra­tion going on and we don’t know the enti­ties involved, so we have to have all hands on deck and do our job as best we can.” It bog­gles the mind that both men admit­ted to not know­ing what they were oppos­ing, while enun­ci­at­ing their strong oppo­si­tion to the unseen, unde­fined ‘ter­ror’. In fact, with time on their hands and the storm in the teacup not quite bub­bling to the boil, it must have been bore­dom that drove Assistant Commissioner of Police Steve McGregor to issue this warn­ing: “When you leav­ing, I don’t want you to leave any of your para­pher­na­lia any­where because I will pros­e­cute.” I sus­pect but could be for­giv­en for think­ing that Assistant Commissioner McGregor was guilty of try­ing to intim­i­date his audi­ence. If he was, it didn’t work, and the attempt sput­tered like a soak­ing wet squib. By refus­ing to be bait­ed, while firm­ly and respect­ful­ly toe­ing the line, Greenpeace International out­foxed the JCF, Hewetson telling Deputy Superintendent Spencer: “That’s not con­flict. That’s peace­ful assem­bly. If I dis­obey you it would be con­flict, but I am not here to fight with the Jamaican police author­i­ty in any way at all.”
For the Jamaican police who were antic­i­pat­ing a chaot­ic encounter, it was a dis­ap­point­ing and peace­ful end­ing, and some­thing to which they are obvi­ous­ly not yet quite accustomed.

The fore­gone is exact­ly why peo­ple should stick to what they know and not delve into what they do not know.
This guy writes about agri­cul­ture, the envi­ron­ment, and rur­al devel­op­ment.
Obviously, he did not do his home­work to meet his dead­line, or was too piss-lazy to write an arti­cle which made sense. Or he is too stu­pid to write a qual­i­ty arti­cle. So he decid­ed to do what they all do, become a par­a­site and try to suck the blood from the police.
The police showed up in num­bers to ensure that (a)no laws were bro­ken, (b)that no one was incon­ve­nienced by the protest (which did not have a per­mit), I might add. © That con­fer­ence-goers were able to tra­verse the facil­i­ty with­out fear.
What the orga­niz­er did was to demon­strate to Jamaicans that they know how to obey laws and get their point across, with­out being rau­cous dis­or­der­ly or dis­re­spect­ful to law enforce­ment.
Of course, he is from a coun­try which respects their law enforce­ment offi­cers.
I com­mend Steve McGregor and his offi­cers for doing a ster­ling job. The leader of the Greenpeace protest was very clear that he was not there to dis­obey rules, or be antag­o­nis­tic toward the police.
Serju, on the oth­er hand, should have learned some­thing from the Greenpeace Organizer. Respect the offi­cers who are out there doing their lev­el best to ensure that every­one gets their point across in safe­ty.
Were he an hon­est, intel­li­gent jour­nal­ist, he would have writ­ten an arti­cle explain­ing to the pub­lic the rea­son for Greenpeace’s pres­ence.
Instead, he wrote this, an arti­cle which turned out to be a fee­ble attempt to dis­cred­it the police. It fell flat, he fell flat.
He should hang his head in shame. 

POLICE REPORT

Between the hours of 4:30 am and 9:30 am, Sunday, July 14^th a joint police Military team from C‑TOC with sup­port of JDF assets from Air and two Coast Guard ves­sels car­ried out Special Operations in a sec­tion of the Swamps Behind Dagger Bay in search of Players in the gun for drugs trade between Jamaica and Haiti. ille­gal Haitian, guns, and ammu­ni­tion. The trade in met­al or preky­ba meta­lais as they call it is also quite pop­u­lar.

During the oper­a­tion the team found two(2) huts in the swamp equipped with elec­tric­i­ty and oth­er pow­er devices like solar pan­els. A total of one hun­dred and forty-five (145) assort­ed car­tridges of ammu­ni­tion bro­ken down as follows:

twen­ty-sev­en (27) 5.56 mm Cartridges, eight (8) 7.76 mm car­tridges, sev­en­ty-nine (79) .38 car­tridges, six (6).45 car­tridges, two(2) 9mm car­tridges, twen­ty two (22) 12 gauge car­tridges, one (1) .40 car­tridges, six (6) rifle mag­a­zine, sev­en (7) cel­lu­lar phones, One (1) LG tablet , one(1) DEL laptop.

One (1) 32″ inch black point TV, about 2lb of pack­aged pressed veg­etable mat­ter resem­bling gan­ja, two small pack­ages of white pow­dery sub­stance resem­bling cocaine, one(1)bulletproof vest, army shirt, life vest, one (1) smoke grenade, small quan­ti­ty of cash, All evi­den­tial mate­ri­als were seized pend­ing bal­lis­tic and foren­sic exam­i­na­tion where necessary.

A large quan­ti­ty of cloth­ing, mat­tress­es, shoes, stove, cylin­ders and oth­er per­son­al effects includ­ing med­ica­tion in the names of indi­vid­u­als who will be queried. The Huts were destroyed and the items burnt that could not be con­fis­cat­ed. It is to be also not­ed that water sup­ply and elec­tric­i­ty that were found at the huts traced back to premis­es on the Dagger Bay. 

Early reports indi­cate that Westmorelands most want­ed gang­ster Dushane Allen was gunned down in Moy Hall Saint James and an Uzi sub­ma­chine semi­au­to­mat­ic weapon was retrieved from his body today.
Details to follow.

Two punks on a motor­cy­cle decid­ed to rob a young man stand­ing at the side of a road in the Zaide Gardens neigh­bor­hood of Saint Andrew about 6:00pm on Saturday evening July 13^th.
According to Police reports the two onboard a motor­cy­cle, with no reg­is­tra­tion plates attached, rode up to the young man and robbed him of his Samsung Galaxy cell phone.

The young man turned out to be an off duty police offi­cer, who chal­lenged them. Another police offi­cer who was near­by assist­ed and both rob­bers were fatal­ly shot.
One Taurus 9mm pis­tol con­tain­ing 3 rounds of ammu­ni­tion was tak­en from one of the rob­bers.
A knap­sach con­taing a con­di­tion of bail book­let and oth­er items were also tak­en from one of the rob­bers.
All indi­ca­tions are, that at least he was report­ing to the Constant Spring police sta­tion as one of the con­di­tions of his bail.
A clear indi­ca­tion, that when these ver­min are let out on bail after offend­ing, they go right back to com­mit­ting crimes, as I out­lined in the pod­d­cast above.

These cops lit­er­al­ly act­ed improp­er­ly, then con­fis­cat­ed a cit­i­zen’s cell phone, bul­lied him, then real­iz­ing that he had done noth­ing wrong, they open­ly con­spired how to, then framed him for some­thing he nev­er did.

According to the news site Vox​.com. Police offi­cers in the US shoot and kill hun­dreds of peo­ple each year, accord­ing to the FBI’s very lim­it­ed data — far more than oth­er devel­oped coun­tries like the UK, Japan, and Germany, where police offi­cers might go an entire year with­out killing more than a dozen peo­ple or even any­one at all. 

This is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant because the US rate of gun deaths, which includes homi­cides and sui­cides, was 10.6 per 100,000 peo­ple in 2016. As opposed to a devel­op­ing coun­try like Jamaica whose vio­lent mur­der is 47 per 100,000 per annum.
That dwarfed com­pa­ra­ble devel­oped nations: Switzerland’s rate was 2.8, Canada’s was 2.1, Australia’s was 1, Germany’s was 0.9, the United Kingdom’s was 0.3, and Japan’s was 0.2.

In a 2014 Article for the nation, after the Ferguson inci­dent in which unarmed black teen Michael Brown was gunned down, Journalist, Chase Madar point­ed out that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment does not keep a strict nation­al tal­ly of police killings.
Madar argued that this shows just how seri­ous­ly the Government takes this prob­lem. A crowd­sourced data­base has sprung up to fill the gap, as has a wiki-tab­u­la­tion.
Perhaps the most dis­turb­ing thing about these police killings, many of them of unarmed vic­tims, Madar argues, is that our courts find them per­fect­ly legal.
In a bril­liant sum­ma­tion of police vio­lence in America Madar argued quote:” The first step to con­trol­ling the police is to get rid of the fan­ta­sy, once and for all, that the law is on our side. The law is firm­ly on the side of police who open fire on unarmed civil­ians.”
See arti­cle here: https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​w​h​y​-​i​t​s​-​i​m​p​o​s​s​i​b​l​e​-​i​n​d​i​c​t​-​c​op/

Despite the wide litany of cas­es in which American Police lit­er­al­ly mur­der unarmed cit­i­zens, Chase Mader warns,Quote: ” (A note on the IACHR and oth­er inter­na­tion­al forums: bring­ing these cas­es of police shoot­ings to them is a can­ny way to gen­er­ate pub­lic­i­ty and raise con­scious­ness, but no one should ever imag­ine for even a sec­ond that such bod­ies will ever wield any actu­al pow­er in American courts.”) closed quote.
That was an inte­gral part of my argu­ments in my most recent pod­cast.
Despite the heavy prsence of so-called human rights agen­cies in Jamaica, includ­ing the (IACHR) and their undue influ­ence in our law enforce­ment efforts they have zero influ­ence or pow­er over a sin­gle one of the thou­sands of police depart­ments in the United States, ragard­less of their crimes.

In Jamaica, we want an account­able police depart­ment, free from crim­i­nal con­duct. Nevertheless, we also want to see a police depart­ment uncon­strained by the likes of the IACHR, and oth­ers which has no pow­er in America, despite hun­dreds of bla­tant police killing of unarmed black cit­i­zens each year.

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 also writes occa­sion­al­ly for the web­site Medium​.com.
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.

Having spent the bet­ter part of a decade research­ing, writ­ing and talk­ing about the rule of law, race, and how law enforce­ment has affect­ed peo­ple’s lives through the years, I am dis­gust­ed to see the state of law enforce­ment today.
The hue and cry against those who enforce our laws are cer­tain­ly not just in Jamaica as some would like to have you believe. In the great big United States, with its thou­sands of police depart­ments, it is far worse. As a result, every police actions as it relates to peo­ple of col­or and African-Americans, in par­tic­u­lar, has come under immense scruti­ny because of the actions of police offi­cers.
In an age when images and video record­ings of police-civil­ian inter­ac­tions are broad­cast­ed viral­ly across the inter­net, it appears that police offi­cers have become far more bru­tal and uncar­ing about the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect.
Whether this is so or not, is not for me to say. The fact that images and live videos are so eas­i­ly avail­able for our view­ing may have some­thing to do with that.
What is patent­ly clear though is that the images are not pretty.

The United States, is a coun­try con­stant­ly embroiled in racial ani­mos­i­ty and strife. It is not always easy to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between good polic­ing and race-based polic­ing when white offices are involved with black sus­pects.
In Jamaica, the com­mon refrain by those who break the laws is that police arrest them because they are poor. Never mind that the offi­cers are gen­er­al­ly just as poor as they are, or poor­er.
Stopping a man in Cherry Gardens with a bag con­tain­ing imple­ments of house­break­ing, night or day, elic­its that same response.
As a con­se­quence, I am con­strained against my gut instincts, when inci­dents of alleged abuse sur­faces, involv­ing black cit­i­zens and white police offi­cers.
Nevertheless, the key ques­tion I gen­er­al­ly ask myself in thse instances is, ‘would the offi­cer black, white Latino or oth­er­wise have act­ed the way he/​she did were the sus­pects white”?
I am also mind­ful of the fact that the abil­i­ty to pro­file is a vital tool police offi­cers have in their toolk­it to help them make polic­ing deci­sions.
Done well, done right, that deduc­tive rea­son­ing serves our com­mu­ni­ties very well.
It becomes a prob­lem when rogue ele­ments in law enforce­ment use it to live out their racist bias­es in America.
It becomes a prob­lem when bru­tal cops use it to exact pun­ish­ment on those they deem pow­er­less in Jamaica.

The rule of law if applied fair­ly and pro­por­tion­ate­ly is the best method we have to main­tain demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties. When the laws are applied fair­ly, just­ly, equi­tably and pro­por­tion­ate­ly, in a man­ner in which all feel equal under the laws, it makes for bet­ter soci­eties and a pros­per­ous future for all.
When the poor is made to feel less than in the eyes of the law, or oth­ers are made to feel the same way because of their race, sex­u­al orientation,religion, or oth­er dis­tin­guish­able char­ac­ter­is­tic soci­eties are less peace­ful, less pros­per­ous.
As a con­se­quence the rule of law is heav­i­ly depen­dent of those who enforce our laws to be just and fair.
Unfortunately those who enforce our nation’s laws are weak humans pre­dis­posed to the weak­ness­es of human bias­es.
The fol­low­ing is one such sto­ry from our friends at CNN​.com.

Ex-deputy accused of planting drugs on Florida drivers is arrested

(CNN)Florida author­i­ties have arrest­ed a for­mer Jackson County deputy accused of mak­ing false arrests after plant­i­ng drugs on dri­vers, police said in a statement.The alle­ga­tions have prompt­ed pros­e­cu­tors to drop charges in scores of cases.Zachary Wester, 26, was tak­en into cus­tody at his Crawfordville home, about 20 miles south of Tallahassee, on Wednesday, accord­ing to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He is being held in Wakulla County Jail with­out bail, the FDLE said.He stands charged with felony counts of rack­e­teer­ing, offi­cial mis­con­duct, fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence, pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance and false impris­on­ment. He also faces mis­de­meanor charges of per­jury, pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance and pos­ses­sion of drug para­pher­na­lia, the FDLE said​.At least 11 peo­ple are suing Wester in fed­er­al court for alleged civ­il rights vio­la­tions as well.

100+ cases tossed out

At the request of the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, Wester’s for­mer employ­er, the FDLE began inves­ti­gat­ing the deputy in August after body­cam video from a February 2018 arrest appeared to show Wester plant­i­ng metham­phet­a­mine in Teresa Odom’s pick­up truck dur­ing a traf­fic stop, FDLE spokesman Jeremy Burns told CNN in September​.At the time, the FDLE was review­ing 254 of Wester’s cas­es, pros­e­cu­tors said.“The inves­ti­ga­tion shows Wester rou­tine­ly pulled over cit­i­zens for alleged minor traf­fic infrac­tions, plant­ed drugs inside their vehi­cles and arrest­ed them on fab­ri­cat­ed drug charges,” the FDLE said in its Wednesday news release, adding that it had reviewed more than 21 hours of footage in its investigation.

It added, “Wester cir­cum­vent­ed JCSO’s body cam­era pol­i­cy and tai­lored his record­ings to con­ceal his crim­i­nal activity.“Wester’s attor­ney did not imme­di­ate­ly return a phone call seek­ing comment.State Attorney Glenn Hess’ office said in September 2018 that 119 cas­es had been dropped and about 10 peo­ple had been released from prison. CNN could not imme­di­ate­ly reach Hess on Wednesday, but local media reports indi­cate the probe has widened since then.Wester was fired September 10. It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear how long Wester had been with the depart­ment, but the Tallahassee Democrat report­ed he resigned from the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office in May 2016 and lat­er took the job in Jackson County.

‘It damned sure ain’t mine’

Bodycam video from Odom’s February 2018 arrest in Cottondale shows Wester approach the car in a friend­ly man­ner and explain to the woman that her brake lights are malfunctioning.He leaves with her license, and as he returns to her vehi­cle he jokes that his hip almost gave out. Odom tells him her moth­er is in the hos­pi­tal and she’s expect­ing a call from a doc­tor. Wester tells her that a drug dog is on its way, but Odom says she has noth­ing in the car and gives him con­sent to search it.Wester appears to hold some­thing in his left hand as he dons black gloves before the search. His hand moves out of the frame for a few sec­onds and returns emp­ty. He fin­ish­es putting on the gloves and com­mences with the search.

Bodycam video appears to show Wester plant­i­ng drugs in Odom’s car last year.After “find­ing” a bag of white pow­der in her truck, he places it on the dri­ver seat but does­n’t alert two oth­er deputies on the scene. Instead, he moves it around, first plac­ing it on a spoon and then mov­ing it to the pas­sen­ger seat. All the while, he con­tin­ues the chum­my ban­ter with Odom.After search­ing the pas­sen­ger side of her vehi­cle, where he had just placed the bag­gie, he returns to Odom and anoth­er deputy with the spoon and pow­der. Odom says the spoon is for her yogurt but seems sur­prised by the bag of powder.“That is not mine. No, sir. No, sir,” she says.After the pow­der tests pos­i­tive for metham­phet­a­mine, Wester tells Odom she’s under arrest as she speaks on the phone with a relative.“He says it tests pos­i­tive for amphet­a­mine, so I guess I’m going to go to jail,” Odom tells the per­son on the phone. “It damned sure ain’t mine.”

Case remains open

Three fed­er­al law­suits have been filed against Wester. Eleven peo­ple arrest­ed by him claim the ex-deputy framed them, plant­i­ng some com­bi­na­tion of mar­i­jua­na, metham­phet­a­mine, pre­scrip­tion pills or drug para­pher­na­lia, includ­ing syringes and scales, in their vehi­cles after pulling them over for minor infrac­tions. Two law­suits were filed in December, and anoth­er was filed in May​.In the most recent­ly filed case, Lora Penn, one of nine plain­tiffs, says she was a pas­sen­ger in a vehi­cle pulled over June 7, 2018. During the stop, she alleged, Wester placed metham­phet­a­mine and a hypo­der­mic nee­dle in her purse.Penn was charged with drug and para­pher­na­lia pos­ses­sion and spent 12 days in jail before “her moth­er post­ed bond exhaust­ing her mea­ger finan­cial resources. Penn’s moth­er was there­after unable to afford med­ical care and died due to lack of such care,” the fed­er­al law­suit says.The FDLE, whose inves­ti­ga­tors have already logged 1,400 hours on the crim­i­nal case against Wester, says the probe remains open and encour­ages any­one with infor­ma­tion to come forward.“There is no ques­tion that Wester’s crimes were delib­er­ate and that his actions put inno­cent peo­ple in jail,” said Chris Williams, the FDLE’s assis­tant spe­cial agent in charge of the Pensacola office.Prior to his time with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, Wester worked in Liberty County. Jack Campbell, the state attor­ney there, told CNN affil­i­ate WCTV in May that inves­ti­ga­tors were in the process of “resolv­ing” some cas­es involv­ing the for­mer law­man. He would not elab­o­rate on how many cas­es, the sta­tion reported.The sta­tion has pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed Campbell was review­ing 26 cases.

CNN’s Amir Vera, Marlena Baldacci and Amanda Watts con­tributed to this report.

A sev­en-point anti-crime plan — with heavy empha­sis on intel­li­gence, foren­sics, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and anti-cor­rup­tion, which will bring togeth­er the best minds to tack­le Jamaica’s most debil­i­tat­ing prob­lem — was on Thursday pre­sent­ed by Police Commissioner Major General Antony Anderson, along with mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) High Command, dur­ing a Gleaner Editors’ Forum.
Though the Government has been hound­ed for an effec­tive strat­e­gy for fight­ing crime since tak­ing office in 2016, Deputy Superintendent Dahlia Garrick, head of the police Corporate Communications Unit, said a bud­getary increase pred­i­cat­ed on the anti-crime strate­gies was includ­ed in this year’s esti­mates of expen­di­ture.
The plan will see an over­haul of the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB), which spe­cial­izes in secu­ri­ty intel­li­gence and col­lab­o­rates with local and inter­na­tion­al law-enforce­ment agen­cies. The NIB also pro­vides intel­li­gence to the offi­cer corps and oper­a­tional units and was itself an over­haul of the JCF Special Branch.
Anderson, who has been in the post for over a year, out­lined a care­ful plan of action, to be done in three-month phas­es, but all run­ning con­cur­rent­ly.
The strat­e­gy includes mir­ror image rec­om­men­da­tions of the Strategic Review done in 2008, which pro­posed, inter alia, a road map for tack­ling cor­rup­tion, inter­nal and exter­nal account­abil­i­ty, a more effec­tive lead­er­ship and man­age­ment arrange­ment, to include improve­ment to inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and a sig­nif­i­cant upgrade to the phys­i­cal struc­tures used by the JCF. The wel­fare of the men and women who ‘serve and pro­tect’ will also receive an added boost, which will now be han­dled by com­mand cen­tral com­ple­ment­ing the role of the Police Federation.

The pro­posed nation­al secu­ri­ty tac­tic is anchored on sev­en pillars.“They are crime reduc­tion and con­trol; improv­ing pub­lic safe­ty and cit­i­zen secu­ri­ty; orga­ni­za­tion­al restruc­tur­ing and capac­i­ty build­ing; enhanc­ing staff wel­fare; enhanc­ing pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards; effi­cien­cy through tech­nol­o­gy; and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pub­lic engage­ment,” the com­mis­sion­er told the team of edi­tors and jour­nal­ists at The Gleaner’s North Street, Kingston office.
This was just days after police sta­tis­tics revealed that there was an increase in mur­ders, which threat­ens gains made with the intro­duc­tion of the state of emer­gency in three high-crime west­ern parish­es, and the con­tin­u­a­tion of zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions in two trou­bled com­mu­ni­ties.
“Our aim is to make Jamaica safe. And at the top of that is our con­cern about the num­ber of per­sons who die in Jamaica, which is some­thing that we real­ly need to get a han­dle on and deal with. For us as the police force, what we see as a sta­tis­tic of mur­der is very real. Those are real peo­ple who have been killed. We see every­one who is mur­dered in situ. We go to every scene and we are unique in that regard. We are the only ones who do that,” he not­ed.
Anderson said any mur­der was dis­heart­en­ing, hence, a major thrust of the JCF was geared towards reduc­ing that while tack­ling the wider, con­nect­ed issues.

TARGETED STRATEGIES

In March 2018, when he assumed the force’s top job, at the fore­front of his mind was the 1,643 per­sons mur­dered the pre­vi­ous year, and that year’s already high fig­ures.
His strate­gies then includ­ed focus­ing on polic­ing the new school year amid a flur­ry of road law­less­ness, which involved train­ing sev­er­al traf­fic cops.
Anderson also took aim at strength­en­ing the inves­tiga­tive arm of the force — then under the direc­tor­ship of Deputy Commissioner Selvin Hay — with a seri­ous push towards dis­man­tling gangs, which includ­ed inves­ti­ga­tions and pros­e­cu­tions of mem­bers.
One such is the mul­ti­ple-mem­ber Uchence Wilson Gang, which is cur­rent­ly before the courts and whose mem­bers are being pros­e­cut­ed under the Anti-Gang Legislation.

This year saw him tar­get­ing the inspec­torate of the con­stab­u­lary, with the rede­vel­op­ment of the JCF’s inter­nal anti-cor­rup­tion capa­bil­i­ty, which became the remit of the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA).“MOCA is obvi­ous­ly look­ing at big issues of cor­rup­tion across gov­ern­ment, and so to look at our own issues inter­nal­ly, it is crit­i­cal that we have our own capa­bil­i­ties. DCP Hay is in the process of devel­op­ing and build­ing that capa­bil­i­ty,” the com­mis­sion­er said.

Internal admin­is­tra­tive process­es and the wel­fare of the men and women under his com­mand are now Anderson’s focus. Jamaica-Eye — the Government’s much-tout­ed CCTV cam­eras crime reduc­tion tool, using eyes instead of boots — is cur­rent­ly being opti­mized and improve­ments are under­way for a work­ing roll-out by September. Much of the hard­ware will be replaced, many of which are out­dat­ed.
“How we use foren­sics, cyber foren­sics, DNA, bal­lis­tics, fin­ger­print, and relat­ed foren­sics are crit­i­cal. Last year, we took 5,457 crime-scene exhibits for DNA analy­sis; we also test­ed 9,275 indi­vid­ual sam­ples. In terms of dig­i­tal devices and data, through cyber foren­sics, we processed 3,395 devices, and this year we have done approx­i­mate­ly 1,500,” Anderson stat­ed. At least 1,037 bal­lis­tic sam­ples from crime scenes were done last year, some of which have helped to solve cold cas­es. Arrests as a result of transna­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tions have also been made.DCP Hay and Assistant Commissioner Kevin Blake are cur­rent­ly work­ing on estab­lish­ing effec­tive plat­forms for the pub­lic to com­mu­ni­cate with the con­stab­u­lary. The top brass is all in agree­ment with the JCF’s guid­ing prin­ci­ples. “The first is the rule of law, the sec­ond is respect for all, and third is that we are a force for good,” stat­ed the top cop.

Let’s all take a step back and admit that inso­far as crime is con­cerned this Jamaican Government, like the one before, has played its hand and lost.
Can we at least be hon­est with our­selves that declar­ing States of Emergencies and installing Zones Of Special Operations are only serv­ing to dis­perse and dis­trib­ute crim­i­nals to oth­er areas, away from those des­ig­nat­ed zones? 

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​a​c​k​-​a​-​m​o​l​e​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​s​t​r​a​t​e​gy/

So the Prime Minister has just returned to the Island from a CARICOM con­fer­ence, he announced that a State Of Emergency has been declared in the Saint Andrew South Police Area. For those of you not famil­iar with the geog­ra­phy of the Kingston Metropolitan area, that is in the area called the Hunt’s Bay Police division. 

At the same time, there are hot spots spring­ing up all across the Island. Clarendon is out of con­trol as gang­sters run the place in that parish so to speak. Elsewhere in the cor­po­rate area, crime has gone up in most police divi­sions wip­ing out the reduc­tions expe­ri­enced in 2018.
Even in Manchester, a Parish not exact­ly know for uncon­trol­lable crime, things have seem­ing­ly got­ten out of hand. We made some inquiries as to what could have caused the crime spike in that parish?
We want­ed to under­stand why Manchester which saw a 31% reduc­tion in mur­ders last year is expe­ri­enc­ing a 100% increase in mur­ders?
We learned that the Commanding offi­cer for that Parish, hands-on Superintendent Wayne Cameron has been away from that com­mand for the past six months and all hell seemed to have bro­ken loose.
A lit­tle bird has informed us that the Superintendent may be back at the helm of that divi­sion so hope­ful­ly, things will sta­bi­lize in that parish soon­er than later.

In Clarendon two mem­bers of the JDF have been gunned down in the space of 15 days the lat­ter was killed this morn­ing after a par­ty in the Clarendon Park area of the parish.
Dead is Private Paul Lindsay oth­er­wise called Gary who was shot rough­ly eight times by an assailant who report­ed­ly emerged from near­by bush­es and opened fire on Lindsay who had just con­clud­ed a round-robin par­ty.
On June 22^nd Private Garfield Williams was gunned down along ceme­tery road in Denbigh, in the same parish.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​r​o​n​g​-​h​e​a​d​e​d​-​a​p​p​r​o​a​c​h​-​t​o​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​f​u​e​l​i​n​g​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​v​i​d​eo/

Whether there is a sys­temic cam­paign of ter­ror against mem­bers of the JDF is still unclear, as two deaths do not estab­lish a full pat­tern. At the same time, there has been a steady increase in vio­lence in the parish, which has prompt­ed some to call for the removal of that com­mand­ing offi­cer Mrs. Cameron-Powell.
In fair­ness to Mrs. Cameron Powell and any oth­er com­man­der who would tack­le that divi­sion the strate­gies need­ed to bring crime to a screech­ing halt will not be tol­er­at­ed by this Prime Minister his cabal of crim­i­nal rights lob­by or the coun­try in general.

Just today I saw a post made by the Prime Minister, in it, he asked cit­i­zens to report inci­dents of crime to the author­i­ties. He had the JDF tip line ahead of the nation’s police tip line.
To some peo­ple, this may be incon­se­quen­tial, not to me. Since he came to office he has demon­strat­ed that he doesn’t care too much about the police, and as we have seen he even made a for­mer head of the JDF the police com­mis­sion­er.
Again, this may not seem like much to the aver­age non-skep­tic, but, to me, he has vir­tu­al­ly made the JDF his police depart­ment of choice. 

Now here is the kick­er, not only has he made the JDF the new police force, but the so-called awe and love that pre­vi­ous­ly exist­ed for the mil­i­tary because its mem­bers were not as exposed as the mem­bers of the JCF are, and they weren’t out there arrest­ing peo­ple, is now gone and the guns are turn­ing on them.
I warned that that would occur, giv­en time and his pen­chant for push­ing the JDF as a pseu­do-police force. 

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

The for­mer gov­ern­ment of the PNP did not have a clue how to end the crime scourge plagu­ing our coun­try. The for­mer Minister of National Security Peter Bunting, a man now locked in a strug­gle for the lead­er­ship of the par­ty, once said that the coun­try need­ed divine inter­ven­tion to deal with crime.
As Minister with respon­si­bil­i­ty for crime Bunting’s state­ment was shock­ing and trans­par­ent­ly clear that the par­ty and admin­is­tra­tion were bereft of ideas and need­ed to be put out to pas­ture.
Win or lose Peter Bunting and the PNP are still in the dark as to solu­tions for this crisis. 

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​b​l​i​n​k​e​r​e​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​a​l​-​a​l​l​e​g​i​a​n​c​e​s​-​b​l​i​n​d​-​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​d​a​n​g​e​r​s​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​p​o​s​es/

Jamaica got rid of hang­ing to suit great Britain and for what? Britain does not have heav­i­ly armed gun­men roam­ing their streets killing whomev­er they wish.
In Jamaica, there is a bat­tery of crim­i­nal rights advo­cates oper­at­ing as human rights activists, many of them with bases in Washington DC.
Additionally, Jamaica has cast aside its hard­core police offi­cers in search of a [Utopian]sic cour­tesy corps to sat­is­fy the Leahy amend­ment.
See Act here: https://​fas​.org/​s​g​p​/​c​r​s​/​r​o​w​/​R​4​3​3​6​1​.​pdf .
In addi­tion to that, they cre­at­ed INDECOM and oth­er lay­ers of over­sight of the JCF rather than spend those resources upgrad­ing and equip­ping the JCF.
This has result­ed in mass attri­tion from the force. In the process of try­ing to stem the mass exo­dus, back­ground checks have suf­fered and so the image of the force con­tin­ues to suf­fer.
Ironically, as it relates to the Leahy amend­ment, the help Jamaica would receive from the US for it’s con­for­mi­ty to the dic­tates of that act is so mar­gin­al it was not worth it.

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

According to the ACLU, the US has not rat­i­fied any inter­na­tion­al human rights treaties since December 2002, when it rat­i­fied two option­al pro­to­cols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Since that time, impor­tant new treaties have been adopt­ed and oth­er long-stand­ing treaties have gained new mem­ber states. Unfortunately, the US has too often remained out­side these efforts. For exam­ple, the US is the only coun­try oth­er than Somalia that has not rat­i­fied the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most wide­ly and rapid­ly rat­i­fied human rights treaty in his­to­ry. It is one of only sev­en coun­tries-togeth­er with Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, and Tonga- that has failed to rat­i­fy the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Simply put, the US does not allow any­thing to get in the way of uphold­ing its laws.

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 also writes occa­sion­al­ly for the web­site Medium​.com.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

IN THIS INCIDENT A MONTH AGO

Remember this?
Well, we have been informed that retired Deputy Superintendent of police Altamont (Parro) Campbell who was engaged in an inci­dent with a uni­formed offi­cer sev­er­al weeks ago has been charged and sched­uled to appear in court today.
Charges we are told, are, care­less dri­ving, not wear­ing a seat-belt, no insur­ance, and dis­obey­ing an offi­cer’s commands.

Developing sto­ry

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 also writes occa­sion­al­ly for the web­site Medium​.com.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

A police con­sta­ble has been arrest­ed by the Lacovia Police for alleged­ly steal­ing J$90,000.00 from premis­es in that Saint Elizabeth town.
At about 4:00 am, Yesterday morn­ing the offi­cer was among a team of offi­cers who went to the loca­tion to exe­cute a war­rant in an area known as Alley Lane.

The house was searched and the ini­tial sus­pect appre­hend­ed. According to sources after the oper­a­tion was con­clud­ed the con­sta­ble was searched by a senior offi­cer and the mon­ey tak­en from his bal­lis­tic vest.
He was arrest­ed and booked on the theft, his name is being with­held pend­ing fur­ther investigations. 

Side note:
This write con­tin­ues to make the point that when it comes to police recruit­ment short­cuts in back­ground checks are a sig­nif­i­cant part of why police depart­ments end up in trou­ble with their offi­cers.
The high attri­tion rate of offi­cers from the JCF has con­tin­ued to influ­ence the rush to put bod­ies on the streets.
Bad over­all poli­cies cre­ate high attri­tion rates, this forces the JCF to rush their back­ground checks which were hard­ly any­thing, to begin with.
The only thing pos­i­tive in this is that this con­sta­ble was arrest­ed by anoth­er police officer.

If you leave Harbor View intend­ing to reach Morant Point but trav­el west instead of east, you may even­tu­al­ly arrive, but the jour­ney will take far longer than nec­es­sary. The rea­son is sim­ple: the short­est dis­tance between two points is a straight line. While it is not always easy to take the most direct path, that does not jus­ti­fy wast­ing time and resources by mov­ing in cir­cles. This anal­o­gy applies direct­ly to Jamaica’s approach to crime.

Recently, there has been yet anoth­er shake-up with­in the upper ranks of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). Coincidentally — or per­haps not — this comes at a time when vio­lent crime is increas­ing across the island, includ­ing with­in the Kingston Metropolitan Area. According to the Jamaica Observer, 11 of the island’s 19 police divi­sions have record­ed more mur­ders than last year. Kingston Central has seen a 100 per­cent increase, ris­ing from eight mur­ders to 16, while Manchester has expe­ri­enced a 90 per­cent increase, from 10 to 19 mur­ders. Islandwide, there have been 675 mur­ders so far this year, four more than the 671 record­ed over the same peri­od last year. Other seri­ous crimes — such as shoot­ings and aggra­vat­ed assault — have also increased. Rape is the only major cat­e­go­ry show­ing a decline com­pared to 2018. There have been 660 report­ed shoot­ings so far this year, an 11 per­cent increase over 2018, and 183 cas­es of aggra­vat­ed assault, mar­gin­al­ly high­er than last year’s fig­ure. Meanwhile, 257 rape cas­es were record­ed in the first six months of the year, slight­ly below the 263 report­ed dur­ing the same peri­od in 2018.
I will return to the Manchester Police Division lat­er, as it is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to this dis­cus­sion. A clear and con­sis­tent pat­tern emerges from these sta­tis­tics: despite fluc­tu­a­tions, crime in Jamaica con­tin­ues to rise. It may not increase in a straight upward line, but the over­all trend is unmistakable.

As sug­gest­ed ear­li­er, crime is increas­ing­ly out of con­trol, even if its growth is uneven. Over the years, there have been count­less police reshuf­fles, trans­fers, and changes in lead­er­ship — includ­ing repeat­ed changes at the lev­el of Commissioner of Police. Ministers of National Security have also come and gone, each becom­ing anoth­er casu­al­ty of this seem­ing­ly untam­able problem.

In this con­stant reshuf­fling, many capa­ble pub­lic ser­vants have had their careers ques­tioned — not because they lacked abil­i­ty, but because the coun­try con­tin­ues to approach crime in fun­da­men­tal­ly the wrong way. The police high com­mand has nev­er func­tioned as a tru­ly cohe­sive unit. This is large­ly due to its rigid, top-down struc­ture. Orders are issued from the top and car­ried out by sub­or­di­nates who are dis­cour­aged from offer­ing inde­pen­dent thought or pro­fes­sion­al input. Political direc­tives — often devel­oped with lit­tle prac­ti­cal polic­ing insight — fil­ter down through this hier­ar­chy. Such an auto­crat­ic envi­ron­ment sti­fles crit­i­cal think­ing and encour­ages robot­ic com­pli­ance. It also fos­ters unhealthy com­pe­ti­tion, inter­nal pol­i­tics, and careerism, as offi­cers jock­ey for advance­ment. In this atmos­phere, gen­uine prob­lem-solv­ing becomes a casu­al­ty. This is not to say that capa­ble thinkers do not exist with­in the gazetted ranks. They do. However, the sys­tem is hos­tile to inde­pen­dent thought and pro­motes group­think instead. Officers who know what might work are often pow­er­less to act, con­strained by poli­cies they rec­og­nize as inef­fec­tive. Many parish com­man­ders are com­pe­tent and ded­i­cat­ed, but they lack both the author­i­ty and the resources to imple­ment mean­ing­ful solutions.

Manchester is a prime exam­ple. The divi­sion is led by an excel­lent com­mand­ing offi­cer, Superintendent Wayne Cameron, and there are oth­er com­man­ders across the island doing their best with­in a flawed sys­tem. Despite their efforts, crime in their divi­sions con­tin­ues to rise. Jamaica’s approach to crime requires a com­plete trans­for­ma­tion. I have said this repeat­ed­ly because it remains true. Our strat­e­gy resem­bles the way the United States approach­es health­care — spend­ing enor­mous sums on treat­ment rather than pre­ven­tion. In much the same way, Jamaica prac­tices “crime care” instead of crime pre­ven­tion. The cur­rent strat­e­gy is offend­er-focused rather than vic­tim-focused. We pri­or­i­tize the rights and com­forts of accused and con­vict­ed crim­i­nals over the rights of vic­tims and their fam­i­lies. Politicians, so-called experts, and an expand­ing crim­i­nal-rights lob­by con­tin­u­ous­ly dic­tate what law enforce­ment can­not do, regard­less of the bru­tal­i­ty of the crimes involved. Suspects must be brought before a judge quick­ly or released. Even those charged with mur­der are often grant­ed bail. If tri­als are delayed, senior offi­cials open­ly argue for cas­es — even mur­der cas­es — to be dis­missed. Once con­vict­ed, inmates are allowed extra­or­di­nary free­doms, includ­ing access to cell phones, the abil­i­ty to run crim­i­nal enter­pris­es from prison, intim­i­date wit­ness­es, and even con­tin­ue record­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing vio­lent music.

Every con­sid­er­a­tion is extend­ed to offend­ers, while vic­tims and sur­viv­ing fam­i­lies are large­ly ignored. This empha­sis must be reversed. Efforts should instead focus on pro­tect­ing poten­tial vic­tims through enhanced polic­ing sup­port­ed by stronger leg­is­la­tion. This includes longer sen­tences for vio­lent offend­ers, truth-in-sen­tenc­ing laws that lim­it judi­cial dis­cre­tion for cer­tain crimes, and bet­ter train­ing and pay for police offi­cers to reduce cor­rup­tion. The INDECOM Act should be repealed or seri­ous­ly recal­i­brat­ed to include mea­sures to cur­tail that agen­cy’s abil­i­ty to speak out about per­ceived police excess­es instead of inves­ti­gat­ing them. INDECOM’s resources should be reduced, with the pro­ceeds redi­rect­ed toward train­ing and equip­ping the police. Police account­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms should be restored, staffed by knowl­edge­able, impar­tial indi­vid­u­als who under­stand polic­ing and are free of per­son­al or polit­i­cal agen­das. Finally, there must be a sus­tained pub­lic edu­ca­tion cam­paign — using gov­ern­ment media such as the JIS — to improve pub­lic under­stand­ing of laws and civic respon­si­bil­i­ty. One of the great­est chal­lenges fac­ing the police is wide­spread igno­rance of legal oblig­a­tions and an increas­ing­ly opin­ion­at­ed but ill-informed pop­u­la­tion. This prob­lem has been ignored for decades, pro­duc­ing gen­er­a­tions who do not under­stand their respon­si­bil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly when inter­act­ing with law enforce­ment. Until Jamaica stops cir­cling the prob­lem and choos­es a direct path, crime will con­tin­ue to out­run us.