The Court of Appeal came into being at the time of inde­pen­dence. The judges of this court exer­cise great care in review­ing the deci­sions of the low­er courts and tri­bunals, against which com­plaints are made. We give rea­sons for all of our deci­sions and invite the pub­lic at large to inform them­selves of these rea­sons by access­ing them on the web­site of the court. An informed pub­lic helps in the build­ing of a strong nation.
The court said. [http://​courto​fap​peal​.gov​.jm/]
The Jamaican Judiciary takes spe­cial pride in argu­ing for its inde­pen­dence, and right­ly so. An inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry is one of the last bul­warks the aver­age cit­i­zen has against tyran­ny from the Government and injus­tice across the board.
Just in case a low­er court gets it wrong, the founders, in their wis­dom, cre­at­ed the Appellate court as a sec­ond chance for anoth­er look, this time gen­er­al­ly com­pris­ing of a three-mem­ber pan­el or more in some coun­tries.
And in case they get it wrong in the opin­ion of the peti­tion­er, there is a final court of adju­di­ca­tion, in Jamaica’s case, the Privy coun­sel In England.
Even as we cel­e­brate the ven­ti­la­tion the tiered sys­tem of jus­tice pro­vides the peti­tion­er, more and more nowa­days, we are left to won­der whether the idea of a Judiciary that real­ly does not answer to the vot­ers is the cor­rect way to go?
Sure the court says it fol­lows a strict code of con­duct.
But does it?
Let’s face it, peo­ple run afoul of the law, and yes, when we fall, we deserve a chance at redemption.

Over the years, we have had just cause to won­der at the actions of the Jamaican court sys­tem, as it relates, not just to its atti­tude to the peo­ple’s cas­es before it, but as it relates to con­vict­ed felons who must pay their debt to soci­ety.
More and more, the courts have usurped the peo­ple’s will by hand­ing down ridicu­lous­ly low sen­tences for vio­lent crimes or have low­ered the sen­tence imposed by low­er courts or worse.
Rather than adju­di­cate, the courts seemed to have tak­en on the role of Defense coun­sel to some defen­dants.
Defendants who com­mit vio­lent assaults on oth­er human beings or even on ani­mals deserve to feel the full brunt of the nation’s laws.
It goes with­out say­ing then that defen­dants who rape and mur­der have will­ful­ly and pre­med­i­tat­ed­ly decid­ed to vio­late their vic­tims in the most egre­gious ways imag­in­able.
It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for police to iden­ti­fy and arrest per­pe­tra­tors of vio­lent crim­i­nals due to a litany of fac­tors.
On the rare occa­sions that they do man­age to iden­ti­fy sus­pects and amass enough evi­dence to go to tri­al, there are oth­er issues that mil­i­tate against a con­vic­tion, not the least of which is a court sys­tem that grants inor­di­nate amounts of adjourn­ments to defense lawyers, which helps inex­orably to clog up the sys­tem and delay jus­tice.
When cas­es slow­ly weave their way through the sys­tem to a con­clu­sion that ends in a guilty ver­dict, it helps to give a morale boost to police and pros­e­cu­tors who work to bring these cas­es.
More impor­tant­ly, it gives some mea­sure of clo­sure to vic­tims and their fam­i­lies who defen­dants have vio­lat­ed.
Those ver­dicts and the accom­pa­ny­ing fair sen­tences are pil­lars of the demo­c­ra­t­ic, and safer soci­eties all of us crave.
We hope that stiff sen­tences act as a deter­rent to future crim­i­nals and gives those sen­tenced time to think about the pain they have caused oth­ers and the harm they have brought onto society.

THESE ARE THE ACTIONS OF THE COURTS THAT ARE UNHELPFUL TO JAMAICA’S CRIME PROBLEM.

A man who raped a woman three times while hold­ing her hostage inside her home for three ter­ri­fy­ing hours has had his 40-year sen­tence slashed by 16 years.
In a rul­ing hand­ed down last Friday, the Court of Appeal ordered that Neville Barnes, 44, should instead serve 23 years and 10 months in prison for the June 2005 attack.
The court also ordered that October 2, 2012 – the day the 40-year sen­tence was imposed – should be regard­ed as the date Barnes began serv­ing his reduced prison term.
The rul­ing pro­vid­ed dis­turb­ing details about the attack, dur­ing which the vic­tim said Barnes told her: “I know what I am doing is wrong, but is just suh it guh in Jamaica.”
According to court doc­u­ments, the woman tes­ti­fied that she was awak­ened by a man enter­ing her bed­room dur­ing Barnes’ tri­al. She said that because her bed­side lamp was turned on, she observed that the shirt­less man was wear­ing a pair of navy-blue casu­al shorts and a pair of briefs drawn “half across his face.”
She gave evi­dence that her ordeal last­ed for three hours and that the man, who she lat­er point­ed out to police inves­ti­ga­tors as Barnes, had sex­u­al inter­course with her three times in dif­fer­ent posi­tions with­out her con­sent. He assault­ed her and stole $3,000 before leav­ing, she said. 
The court doc­u­ments, which cit­ed tran­scripts of the closed-door tri­al, revealed that the woman asked Barnes why he was rap­ing her at one point dur­ing her ordeal. “Because I choose you,” she said he responded.“The appli­cant (Barnes) com­mand­ed her to give him good lov­ing like she gives her boyfriend.
He also com­mand­ed her to say words to him in effect request­ing him to have rough inter­course with her,” the rul­ing by the appeal court detailed.

“He demand­ed that she say the words loud­er when she did not do so loud­ly enough for him. He also asked her if she want­ed him to impreg­nate her (using less foren­sic lan­guage),” it con­tin­ued.
Further, the doc­u­ment revealed that Barnes asked the woman if any­one had ever per­formed oral sex on her and whether she want­ed him to do it. “At some point, he also forced, or tried to force, his tongue into her mouth,” the doc­u­ment said.
He was charged with bur­glary, rape, and inde­cent assault aris­ing from the attack and, by unan­i­mous ver­dict, was found guilty of all three offens­es fol­low­ing a tri­al in September 2012.
The High Court judge Marjorie Cole-Smith sen­tenced Barnes to 10 years in prison for bur­glary, 40 years for rape, and three years at hard labor for inde­cent assault.
However, through his attor­neys, Barnes chal­lenged the con­vic­tions and sen­tences on the grounds that the pre­sid­ing judge erred in her direc­tion to the jury on the pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness of the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion parade and that the 40-year term for rape was “man­i­fest­ly exces­sive.”
In explain­ing its deci­sion, the Court of Appeal not­ed that the length of the victim’s ordeal and the fact that she was raped three times made the low­est start­ing point of 15 years in prison “inap­plic­a­ble.” “We find a start­ing point of 18 years to be appro­pri­ate,” the court found.
The three-mem­ber pan­el added a fur­ther 15 years, cit­ing the aggra­vat­ing fea­tures of the case, includ­ing the trau­ma endured by the vic­tim and the fact that Barnes had a pre­vi­ous conviction.“It is not unrea­son­able to infer that the whole expe­ri­ence must have caused the vir­tu­al com­plainant severe psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma, although not much phys­i­cal vio­lence was used in this case,” the judges wrote, explain­ing the pro­posed sen­tence of 33 years in prison.
Barnes was cred­it­ed with the sev­en years and two months he spent in cus­tody await­ing tri­al and two years for the fact that there was no phys­i­cal vio­lence dur­ing the attack.[http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​9​0​3​2​5​/​r​a​p​i​s​t​-​h​a​s​-​4​0​-​y​e​a​r​-​s​e​n​t​e​n​c​e​-​s​l​a​s​hed]

This writer has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly called for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for vio­lent offens­es against the per­son.
Mandatory min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain vio­lent crimes remove from wob­bly judges the dis­cre­tion to sup­plant the laws with their own feel­ings.
The Appellate court is sup­posed to hear the cas­es before it but is not oblig­at­ed or required to change ver­dicts, par­tic­u­lar­ly if police and pros­e­cu­tors have no breach­es of con­duct.
The sen­tence of the low­er courts is sup­posed to stand if there are no impro­pri­eties or new evi­dence from the accused.
(1)
Barnes, through his attor­neys, chal­lenged the con­vic­tions and sen­tences on the grounds that the pre­sid­ing judge erred in her direc­tion to the jury on the pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness of the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion parade and that the 40-year term for rape was “man­i­fest­ly exces­sive.”
That was a sub­jec­tive argu­ment that the defense had every right to make, but it does not mean that the tri­al judge was wrong in her sen­tence.
(2)
Barnes was cred­it­ed with the sev­en years and two months he spent in cus­tody await­ing tri­al and two years for the fact that there was no phys­i­cal vio­lence dur­ing the attack.
The three-judge pan­el demon­strat­ed some com­mon sense when they cred­it­ed the defen­dant with time served. They also demon­strat­ed com­mon sense when they con­clud­ed that the length of the victim’s ordeal and the fact that she was raped three times made the low­est start­ing point of 15 years in prison “inap­plic­a­ble.” “We find a start­ing point of 18 years to be appro­pri­ate,” they argued.

Then their ratio­nale fell apart.
Barnes was cred­it­ed with two years for the fact that there was no phys­i­cal vio­lence dur­ing the attack.
I won­der how either of or all three of those judges would like to have their homes invad­ed by assailants who rape them not once, not twice, but three times before leav­ing?
The idea that a judge, much less three judges, could all be so intense­ly dunce to the fact that the absence of oth­er forms of vio­lence on a rape vic­tim does not negate the egre­gious vio­lence rape does to the body and soul of vic­tims.
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble to under­stand how any judge could utter those words, much less make that argu­ment at the appel­late lev­el for reduc­ing the sen­tence of a con­vict­ed ser­i­al rapist.
The phys­i­cal harm rape does to its vic­tims is only a small part of the oth­er issues vic­tims are left with psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, men­tal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and yes, the idea that they may be impreg­nat­ed by their assailant or worse, giv­en an incur­able vene­re­al dis­ease.
The Appellate court could sim­ply have left well enough alone. Instead, it chose to inter­fere with the learned tri­al judge’s ver­dict on a deserv­ing ser­i­al rapist.
But that was noth­ing com­pared to the fact that the Appellate court does not believe rape in and of itself is an intrin­si­cal­ly vio­lent act..

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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. 

At the risk of wad­ing too deep into the his­tor­i­cal­ly thorny and pre­cip­i­tous issue of police pro­mo­tions, I want to observe a few points regard­ing the rul­ing of the United Kingdom’s Privy Council in the case involv­ing now retired Senior Superintendent Delroy Hewitt. 

Before I delve into the case argued by the anti-police JFJ, I will talk a lit­tle about the Delroy Hewitt I knew, and with whom I worked.
My com­ments are a result of hav­ing the priv­i­lege of work­ing for years with a man whom many offi­cers young and old­er, weren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly keen on, because of his fideli­ty to dis­ci­pline, hon­esty, and adher­ence to the let­ter of the JCF’s code of ethics.
It is sad that a bunch of anti-police trolls can gar­ner such pow­er in a coun­try inun­dat­ed with mur­ders and oth­er vio­lent crimes, as to besmirch the char­ac­ter of a good man who does not have the same plat­form to clear his good name from the stain and stench cre­at­ed by these peo­ple with agen­das.
The shock­ing real­i­ty in all of this is that Delroy Hewitt has not even been charged with a sin­gle crime or breach of oper­a­tional protocol. 

It was in the year 1983 that I was trans­ferred to the Mobile Reserve from the then Beat-And-Foot patrol Division which was locat­ed at the bot­tom of West Street in Kingston.
Delroy Hewitt was a cor­po­ral of Police who had already tak­en it upon him­self that he would work full time and pur­sue high­er aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies.
This was before the unavail­abil­i­ty of jobs in the econ­o­my forced col­lege grad­u­ates to decide that they want­ed to become police offi­cers.
It was also before peo­ple with degrees were giv­en police Uniforms and com­mand, with­out street polic­ing creds.
And it was cer­tain­ly before raw civil­ians were giv­en the Uniform of Assistant Superintendents. 

Corporal Hewitt was pro­mot­ed to Sergeant while I was still attached to the Mobile Reserve.
As I said pre­vi­ous­ly many offi­cers weren’t too keen on work­ing with Hewitt because he was seen as too strict.
I loved doing patrols with Hewitt exact­ly because of the fact that he was a strict no-non­sense cop who oper­at­ed by the let­ter of the law. His qui­et author­i­ty was exem­plary and was a buffer to some of the things which befalls less focused police offi­cers.
I felt a kin­ship with him because I was that same cop.
Hewitt was a cop of impec­ca­ble cre­den­tials who no one could point a fin­ger to.
It is because of my knowl­edge of that Delroy Hewitt, which caused me to decide to write this Article.
Long after I left the Force, Delroy Hewitt con­tin­ued to serve our coun­try as an upstand­ing police offi­cer of impec­ca­ble char­ac­ter and deter­mi­na­tion to the cause of law enforce­ment and jus­tice.
The idea that a pub­lic ser­vant can have is name besmirched and dragged through the mud even though he has not been charged with any wrong­do­ing is dis­grace­ful and rep­re­hen­si­ble.
Police offi­cers in Jamaica who do not hide and wait until crim­i­nals are gone before attend­ing to cit­i­zens calls are always going to fea­ture in vio­lent con­fronta­tions with the Island’s blood­thirsty thugs.
The fact that offi­cers names fea­ture into these inci­dents is cause for com­men­da­tion, not con­dem­na­tion.
And it cer­tain­ly is not cause for the self-serv­ing char­la­tans at JFJ to impugn their char­ac­ter for per­son­al agendas.

NOW TO THE RULING

Both low­er courts reject­ed the asser­tion that the Police Services Commission has legal a duty to con­duct, or to instruct anoth­er enti­ty to con­duct, inde­pen­dent, impar­tial and effec­tive inves­ti­ga­tions into an officer’s mis­con­duct when they are being con­sid­ered for a pro­mo­tion. 

The main issue aris­ing in the appeal was in rela­tion to what steps the PSC, as the enti­ty tasked with decid­ing on the pro­mo­tion and dis­ci­pline of police offi­cers, should take to inform itself about offi­cers rec­om­mend­ed for pro­mo­tion. JFJ raised this chal­lenge in response to a sys­temic prob­lem of pro­mot­ing police offi­cers against whom there were/​are alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct to senior ranks with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, which under­mines attempts at police reform and taints the pro­mo­tion process with­in the police force. The legal chal­lenge sought to estab­lish in jurispru­dence that the Police Services Commission is legal­ly required to seek and con­sid­er reports of human rights vio­la­tions against offi­cers when con­sid­er­ing an officer’s pro­mo­tion – some­thing the Police Service Commission argued it was not legal­ly required to do. 

The argu­ments prof­fered by JFJ is that [if the PSC had done more Investigations it would like­ly have come up with a dif­fer­ent result].
On that score, it is like­ly that it may not have, and on that alone, since JFJ can­not prove a neg­a­tive the con­tention is moot.
Needless to say that Former SSP Delroy Hewitt is now retired and so as it is char­ac­ter­ized this res­o­lu­tion is pure­ly aca­d­e­m­ic as far as he is con­cerned.
Surely, as it relates to pro­mo­tions there is much work to be done. The high attri­tion rate from the Agency is one of the signs that peo­ple do not have con­fi­dence that their mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice will result in upward mobil­i­ty.
What we can­not have is an out­side lob­by with its own anti-police agen­da dic­tat­ing who gets pro­mot­ed in the police depart­ment and who does­n’t.
If that is allowed the coun­try may as well hand over the run­ning of the force to this par­tial­ly for­eign-fund­ed group which has no con­cern about the mur­der­ous ram­page crim­i­nals have been on over the last sev­er­al decades.
Neither does it have any con­cerns about the tens of thou­sands of Jamaicans(police offi­cers includ­ed) who have been mur­dered by the ram­pag­ing thugs.
That is of no con­cern for Jamaicans For Justice.
What con­cerns JFJ is the pro­tec­tion and enhance­ment of crim­i­nals and their con­duct in Jamaica.
And so we are call­ing on the Government once again, to tell the coun­try where JFJ is get­ting fund­ing to mount these legal chal­lenges from, and for what purpose?

Cpl. Jason Bennett attached to the St. Catherine North OST was shot and injured a short while ago and is present­ly under­go­ing emer­gency surgery.
Information received was that a team from the St. Catherine North OST to include Cpl. Jason Bennett was on patrol along Old Harbour Road, Spanish Town, St. Catherine when they came under gun­fire.
Cpl. Jason Bennett was shot in the chest and was rushed to hos­pi­tal where he is present­ly under­go­ing an emer­gency surgery. 

Myself along with Sgt. Patrae Rowe and Sgt. Lloyd Duncan are at the facil­i­ty ensur­ing that the mem­ber’s wel­fare is tak­en care of. Retired Commissioner George Quallo, DCP Clifford Blake, SP Clunis, DSP Andrew Edwards, Insp. Linroy Edwards, Insp. D. Linton, Insp. Hepburn and a host of rank and file mem­bers from St. Catherine North, DWTT and oth­er Divisions are also on loca­tion.
Please pray earnest­ly for Cpl. Jason Bennett, his injuries are con­sid­ered seri­ous. Pray also for the oth­er mem­bers who were on the oper­a­tion.
Regards, Tameca Thomas Det/​Cons.
Executive Member
Director of Welfare, Projects & Healthy Lifestyle
Jamaica Police Federation

These weapons were report­ed­ly recov­ered by the police in the Salt Spring area in the trou­bled Parish of Saint James.

We are yet to learn if there are any arrests in con­nec­tion with these finds. As more infor­ma­tion becomes avail­able we will update this post.

Those in pow­er tell the Jamaican peo­ple that they want a bet­ter Police Department because the Police are cor­rupt. So cor­rupt that they have to bring in the Army’s head to take over.
Remember now, this was not done once, not twice, we are on the third iter­a­tion of this freak show in which the head of the 3’000-man army is brought in to head the 10’000 man police force.
As far as things look noth­ing has changed for the bet­ter.
Those who hate Police and want their beliefs to be val­i­dat­ed will have their beliefs read­i­ly val­i­dat­ed by the deci­sion mak­ers.
To the rest of us who under­stand that when we go to the super­mar­ket we want gro­ceries for our mon­ey, much like we expect gas when we go to the gas sta­tion, when we pay police we want secu­ri­ty.
With that said when we look at the crime sit­u­a­tion those who are will­ing to think, read­i­ly under­stand that noth­ing is being done to put the boot heels on the neck of the crim­i­nals.
Some will make the argu­ment that crim­i­nals are being empow­ered more and more each day. I am among those people.

I do not care too much who leads the JCF as long as they do a good Job.
In fact, I believe we should have a civil­ian com­mis­sion­er of Police and a police chief in the JCF and I have said so in numer­ous arti­cles.
I also believe that the force has every right to source exper­tise wher­ev­er pos­si­ble or nec­es­sary but that does not mean stu­pid­ly giv­ing those civil­ian work­ers police rank. Doing so is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.
Rank is earned not some­thing bestowed on some­one because they have a skill you would like to exploit.
In the great­est Military in the world, the US mil­i­tary, rank is award­ed on mer­it. Education and bat­tle-test­ed com­mand com­pe­tence.
In police Departments across America, con­sul­tants give invalu­able ser­vice to the thou­sands of depart­ments nation­wide, they are not giv­en rank.
My prob­lem with Antony Anderson, is that he paid lip ser­vice that he would eschew cor­rup­tion but as soon as he took office he brought his boy with him.
Make no mis­take about it that is cor­rup­tion and it is wrong.
As far as the senior ranks of the JCF are con­cerned, (with the excep­tion of a cou­ple of them) I don’t care whether they are over­looked or not, or they nev­er get anoth­er pro­mo­tion.
They have been abysmal with the pow­er they have had over the decades.
As a con­se­quence, there has been an astro­nom­i­cal­ly high attri­tion rate of tal­ent­ed peo­ple who would not tol­er­ate their BS.
Because of nepo­tism, polit­i­cal lean­ings, gross incom­pe­tence, envy, igno­rance, and a gen­er­al sense of not want­i­ng to see tal­ent­ed young peo­ple advance they brought the JCF to where it is today.

Both polit­i­cal par­ties have been all too will­ing to help push the wag­on over the ledge, all while talk­ing about crime as if they are doing some­thing about it.
Because the senior corps of the JCF aligned itself to the two polit­i­cal par­ties in ways that make them sub­servient yard-boys to the par­ty boss­es, they gam­bled away the pow­er of the JCF, ren­der­ing it inef­fec­tive and unable to impact crime pos­i­tive­ly.
Simply put, if the Commissioner of Police is a slav­ish tool to the rul­ing class, he is also a tool to their crim­i­nal hench­men, if they are tools to the hench­men they are tools to the shot­tas.
What author­i­ty then, does a con­sta­ble have to do his job against these peo­ple?
Whether we acknowl­edge it or not, the fact remains that the Jamaica Constabulary Force is com­plete­ly inca­pable of bring­ing charges against a politi­cian regard­less of his/​her crimes.
This is a direct result of the feck­less incom­pe­tence of the Gazetted Ranks from the com­mis­sion­er of police on down, through­out the years
By that Metric the JCF is inca­pable of bring­ing charges against any major crim­i­nal play­er, (a‑la Christopher dud­dus Coke), his father before him and that goes for the litany of PNP thugs who have been major pro­duc­ers of vio­lent crimes which have tak­en untold amounts of lives.

It is for that rea­son why crime has tak­en hold and flour­ished in our coun­try.
Pervasive igno­rance, arro­gance and the crim­i­nal pro­cliv­i­ty of far too many of our peo­ple are only accel­er­ants to that fire, not the cause of the fire.
In this medi­um, we have sought to shed some light on some of those short­com­ings, because we under­stand the crit­i­cal role police play in suc­cess­ful soci­eties.
And so, for a large sub-sec­tion of the Jamaican pop­u­la­tion, oth­ers will inex­orably have to advo­cate for a bet­ter Jamaica for them, despite them.

When the Commissioner of Police brings his dri­ver and head of his secu­ri­ty detail from the army with him, and that untrained per­son is made an Assistant Superintendent of Police under the guise that his pay in the JDF was com­men­su­rate with the pay he is now receiv­ing as an ASP , they made it about the indi­vid­ual and not about the coun­try and the JCF.
It is cor­rup­tion, but the rank and file are like dis­grun­tled chil­dren who once giv­en a lit­tle talk­ing to sulk away and con­tin­ue with life as chil­dren.
Antony Anderson did that talk­ing to recent­ly and Joel Hamilton was instruct­ed to write a let­ter of apol­o­gy and all is well now.
In the mean­time, the Federation which removed cor­po­ral McBeam as gen­er­al sec­re­tary in a pow­er­play recent­ly was seem­ing­ly rebuffed by the courts.
We were informed she will be rein­stat­ed, we have not been able to inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy that report­ing.
The Gazetted offi­cers who should have object­ed to the promotion/​appointment of Joel Hamilton on prin­ci­ple have uttered not a sin­gle word and have sulked away like lit­tle pup­pies as well.

What they are strong on is cas­es like the above let­ter in which a mem­ber of the depart­ment, who no longer wish­es to be in the agency is being told that he can­not leave the force as he desires.
In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, I am not a lawyer, but these rules to which the JCF mem­ber­ship are sub­ject­ed seem eeri­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. to me.
(1) Six months of advanced notice before resign­ing.
Rules were not in effect when most of the force joined.
(2) Must give state­ments to INDECOM imme­di­ate­ly after an inci­dent of force.
Rules were not in effect when prob­a­bly half of the depart­ment joined.
(3) How can you con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly stop any per­son from leav­ing a job they no longer wish to serve in?

Ladies and gen­tle­men what kind of police offi­cers do you expect to have come to your res­cue if they are slaves unable to leave the police depart­ment on their own voli­tion?
At the time the JCF decid­ed to insti­tute this 6‑month pre­clear­ance rule before res­ig­na­tions I said it was a bad idea. This admin­is­tra­tion in cohorts with the oppo­si­tion par­ty is destroy­ing the police depart­ment
Creating rules designed to stem attri­tion is not a solu­tion for stop­ping attri­tion.
There is a rea­son that 50 peo­ple leave the Jamaica Constabulary Force each month.
Truthfully, a large per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion does not deserve the sac­ri­fices those young peo­ple make on their behalf.
The job is an ungrate­ful, dan­ger­ous, thank­less and shit­ty one which pays peanuts.
Those leav­ing are mak­ing the deci­sion to take their chances else­where.
The JCF hier­ar­chy has done some real­ly dumb things, try­ing to pre­vent offi­cers wish­ing to leave from doing so , is right up there with the real­ly dumb things they are doing. 

We have been on this sto­ry before Jamaican media got wind of it. We report­ed on it fac­tu­al­ly and we said that the com­ments attrib­uted to Joel Hamilton, (if the voice on the record­ing was in fact, his voice), demon­strat­ed (1) that he does not belong in the JCF, (2) that he has scant regard for the JCF as an institution,(3) he has even less regard for the men and women of the JCF whom he just got promoted/​appointed to join and lead.
We said that we would not ele­vate that dis­re­spect­ful out­burst on this site and we stand by that deci­sion.
Nevertheless, the fol­low­ing let­ter released by Hamilton today is a clear and unequiv­o­cal con­fir­ma­tion that the voice note in which Hamilton berat­ed the JCF and mem­bers of that Agency was repug­nant and utter­ly dis­re­spect­ful.
We believe that on that basis this man has no right to the rank and def­i­nite­ly should not be in the JCF.

Even worse, we lis­tened to the Commissioner of Police as he addressed mem­bers of the JCF on the issue and the take­away is that Anderson spoke a lot of words but essen­tial­ly said very lit­tle.
He argued that he was not sure what the uproar was about, a clear indi­ca­tion that they expect­ed this to sim­ply slip by with­out any noise from mem­bers of the JCF.
After all, why would he not expect this to pass muster, the Police are not exact­ly known for stand­ing up for them­selves.
The disin­gen­u­ous thing ulti­mate­ly, is that Anderson’s asser­tion that every­one thought he would have brought along a whole group of sol­diers to take over senior jobs from senior JCF com­man­ders has no bear­ing on the events of the day.
Here’s the thing, Anderson made those argu­ments to jus­ti­fy his rec­om­men­da­tion for an Assistant Superintendent, an untrained JDF sol­dier who is his dri­ver to be accept­ed by the JCF, and to be a police offi­cer of zero train­ing.
The lie in all of this, is that Antony Anderson could only have brought over senior mem­bers of the JDF to replace senior mem­bers of the JCF on one con­di­tion.
That they fire the senior offi­cers whose jobs the sol­diers would have tak­en. How exact­ly would they have pulled that off with­out cre­at­ing a major stink in the coun­try?
The pyra­mid scale of the JCF allows only for so many Deputies, and Assistants to the Commissioner as well as oth­ers in the gazetted Ranks.
So the idea that he did not bring but two peo­ple with him, is an attempt to prove a neg­a­tive. A total­ly fraud­u­lent asser­tion.
There is absolute­ly no way they could have pulled it off so that argu­ment is meritless.

Is the com­mis­sion­er of Police enti­tled to an Assistant Superintendent of police to head his secu­ri­ty detail?
That is the ques­tion for the coun­try to con­tem­plate.
If the present com­mis­sion­er of police who came to the JCF with­out any polic­ing expe­ri­ence does not trust the mem­bers of the JCF with his per­son­al secu­ri­ty and on that basis, he wants his long­time body­guard, does that, there­fore, mean that his secu­ri­ty is more impor­tant that the nation’s chief exec­u­tive?
Throughout my life­time the JCF Protective Services Branch has done a stel­lar job of secur­ing, not just Prime min­is­ters and min­is­ters of Government but oth­er dig­ni­taries as well.
To date, there has been no inci­dent that I know of which has cast a neg­a­tive light on the Protective Services Branch of the JCF.
Not even the US Secret Service has that good a record as, they have been accused of all kinds of mis­be­hav­ior in the exe­cu­tion of their duties, includ­ing get­ting drunk on duty and acquir­ing the ser­vices of prostitutes.

This is a bad sto­ry for Anderson and the Administration. Unfortunately, peo­ple are seg­ment­ed and brain­washed into com­plete feal­ty to the two polit­i­cal par­ties that they are unable to under­stand the harm these cor­rupt prac­tices are hav­ing on the coun­try.
So this too will blow over and the grum­bling will stop among the cops because Anderson pat­ted them on the back and every­thing is fine now.
But his dis­re­spect­ful Assistant Superintendent body­guard will still be in place and mem­bers of the JCF from the Rank of Inspector down will salute and say yes sir.
Such a pathet­ic sad affair, the kind which we read of in back­wa­ter banana republics.
Oh, wait just one minute.…..Banana Republic?

Reports are that a man was mur­dered on Jarret Street In Montego Bay St. James this Morning at about 8 – 10 am.
Early report­ing sug­gests that the slain man was the dri­ver of a Chinese National and that two Hawkeye secu­ri­ty offi­cers who were sit­ting in their vehi­cle near­by were shot and are seri­ous­ly injured.
We are also told that a sub­stan­tial sum of mon­ey was tak­en from the vic­tims. This account of events has been uncon­firmed.
As more infor­ma­tion becomes avail­able we will update this reporting

Jamaica front and cen­ter in US Law-Enforcement focus.

A joint oper­a­tion today between the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the Customs depart­ment at a con­tain­er ter­mi­nal result­ed in the seizure of 20 firearms, includ­ing four(4) High pow­ered Rifles, One sub machine gun, nine pis­tols six revolvers and 791 rounds of assort­ed ammunition.

Investigations are ongo­ing.
As we applaud the find, we are still left won­der­ing, how come these mas­sive finds are not result­ing in fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions and the arrest of the peo­ple at both the points of ori­gin and entry.
Sure we want to remove the guns from the streets but I am con­vinced that who­ev­er sent those weapons sent them to some­one.
And who­ev­er those weapons were sent to, that per­son or those per­sons want­ed to get their hands on those weapons.
What then, is stop­ping the police from fol­low­ing through on these inves­ti­ga­tions and bring­ing them to the appro­pri­ate conclusion?

We are also left to won­der at the amounts of weapons and ammu­ni­tion being dis­cov­ered pour­ing into this tiny Island, what quan­ti­ties are actu­al­ly get­ting through unde­tect­ed.
To what pur­pose are these weapons and ammu­ni­tion being sent and received into the Island and who are the play­ers behind it.
Is it polit­i­cal, or intend­ed to enhance the lot­to-scam?
We do not know because the police depart­ment seems inca­pable of mount­ing the appro­pri­ate sting oper­a­tions and coör­di­nat­ing with their American coun­ter­parts for assist­ing on their end.
Where are the Police Investigators.…isn’t that what all of the real­ly smart peo­ple from the UWI now in the JCF loaded down with degrees were sup­posed to bring to the JCF?
Or are cor­rup­tion and incom­pe­tence too ram­pant to allow for seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tions to pro­ceed which would ensure that these trans-nation­al crim­i­nals behind bars for good?

In the ongo­ing back and forth about crime in Jamaica, the nar­ra­tive seems to cen­ter inex­orably on the 8’000 man police depart­ment for some rea­son.
Understandably the aver­age Jamaican feel this is a good place to start because “they[the police] are sup­posed to be above it all, they are the guardians of the gate.“
I can­not dis­agree with the idea that our police offi­cers are indeed the gate­keep­ers and as such our expec­ta­tions that they are bet­ter stew­ards of our trust is not mis­placed.
On the oth­er hand, I look at the wider soci­ety which strug­gles with cor­rup­tion and I find it hard to blame 8’000 peo­ple for the sins of 2.8 mil­lion.
The fact that I per­son­al­ly look at the wider soci­etal prob­lems does not mean abso­lu­tion for the police, I just seek to under­stand the prob­lems of the police in a larg­er context.

It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to under­stand a sce­nario in which we have a depart­ment of well-round­ed police offi­cers who come from a depart­ment which is head­ed by some liars, thieves, and a bunch of polic­ing neo­phytes at the top. The depart­ment itself comes from a soci­ety which is viewed as inher­ent­ly cor­rupt by rat­ing agen­cies. Some of the leg­is­la­tors are out and out crim­i­nals.
In an online thread this morn­ing I point­ed to the futil­i­ty of the American war on drugs over the last sev­er­al decades.
Sure, I am all for aggres­sive polic­ing but in a coun­try like the United States where racial prej­u­dice is most egre­gious­ly man­i­fest­ed through the actions of law enforce­ment, it was a colos­sal dis­as­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple of col­or not val­ued by seg­ments of law enforcement.

Despite the mas­sive incar­cer­a­tion rate, (large­ly of peo­ple of col­or). Despite the mass depor­ta­tions for pot infringements(including of inno­cent peo­ple who nev­er smoke or dealt pot but got caught up in fren­zied pot raids. and despite the tril­lions spent in mil­i­ta­riz­ing America’s police depart­ments, main­ly to fight the drug war, America’s drug epi­dem­ic is worse today that when the war was first start­ed.
The fact of the mat­ter is that the inge­nious meth­ods illic­it drug sup­pli­ers have gone to,- to get sup­plies into the United States are dri­ven by the insa­tiable appetite of the American pub­lic for nar­cot­ic drugs.
And despite the unde­ni­able suc­cess­es of law enforce­ment and pros­e­cu­tors in rack­ing up arrests and incar­cer­a­tion, the prob­lem only seems to be get­ting worse.
To a large extent now, the prob­lem can hard­ly be laid at the feet of pot, because to a large extent, pot is legal in some states and white men and women are get­ting incred­i­bly rich, while blacks are still being incar­cer­at­ed for the very same drug on tech­ni­cal­i­ties.
The prob­lem now is pre­scrip­tion drugs. Or bet­ter yet over pre­scrip­tion by white col­lar crim­i­nals, (or should I say white coat­ed crim­i­nals) who over­pre­scribe them?
The mor­tal­i­ty rate among drug users is through the roof, yet the cha­rade of fight­ing the drug wars remain. Instead of edu­cat­ing the pub­lic they con­tin­ue on the mass over polic­ing of the prob­lem, feed­ing the prison indus­tri­al com­plex and mak­ing crim­i­nals out of addicts.

Years ago I stopped smok­ing cig­a­rettes, I was not a pack a day smok­er. I was more like a pack for three days kind of guy who smoked casu­al­ly, that includ­ed giv­ing away a cou­ple here and there. They raised the price of cig­a­rettes but that did not cause me to stop smok­ing. If any­thing it made me more defi­ant that I would pay the ten dol­lars per pack of cig­a­rettes because I worked hard and could afford it.
I would not allow Government bureau­crats to tax me out of pur­chas­ing some­thing per­fect­ly legal, that I enjoyed hav­ing.
When I saw the imagery of dirty dam­aged lungs on tele­vi­sion and saw peo­ple gasp­ing and labor­ing to breathe how­ev­er, that influ­enced me to stop smoking.

Despite the atro­cious behav­ior of some mem­bers of the JCF, the anti­dote for fix­ing the police lies in build­ing a bet­ter soci­ety one house­hold at a time.
The police are asked to do way too much for the pal­try sum they are paid. Nevertheless, even if they were well paid the many demands soci­ety places on the police are far too great.
Former Chief of the Dallas Police Department in the state of Texas argued in 2016, “every soci­etal fail­ure, we put it on the cops to solve,” Brown said, before lament­ing that police are left to solve prob­lems that gov­ern­ment fails to address:

“Not enough men­tal health fund­ing, let the cop han­dle it”. “Not enough drug addic­tion fund­ing, let’s give it to the cops”. “Here in Dallas we have a loose dog prob­lem, Let’s have the cops chase loose dogs”. “Schools fail, give it to the cops”. “70 per­cent of the African-American com­mu­ni­ty is being raised by sin­gle women, let’s give it to the cops to solve as well”. “That’s too much to ask”. “Policing was nev­er meant to solve all those prob­lems”. “I just ask oth­er parts of our democ­ra­cy along with the free press to help us”.

Quartz​.com]

The actions of peo­ple on the streets are indica­tive of a soci­ety tee­ter­ing on the brink of becom­ing a failed state.
The gen­er­al law­less­ness and unwill­ing­ness of the peo­ple to sub­mit to the dic­tates of the laws are telling signs of a soci­ety in seri­ous trou­ble.
Those charged with leg­is­la­tion are too heav­i­ly invest­ed in the chaos to real­ize that their actions are direct­ly tied to the chaos and law­less­ness on the streets, because the peo­ple are experts at read­ing the mes­sages they send, even when the mes­sage is wrapped in new leg­is­la­tion that seems intend­ed to rem­e­dy the prob­lems.
When a cop is attacked in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of his duty and the gov­ern­ment does not respond with leg­is­la­tion right away which tight­ens the screws on would be attack­ers of state agents, the mes­sage sent is, we don’t care. 

When crim­i­nals burn police sta­tions and the gov­ern­ment responds by giv­ing aid and com­fort to the same com­mu­ni­ty the gov­ern­ment is say­ing we are with you against the secu­ri­ty forces.
When crime esca­lates ad the Government’s response is to fill entire areas with law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary bod­ies, then chide the same mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces about human rights, the crim­i­nal under­world knows it is all for show, (a shit-show).
And when both polit­i­cal par­ties make the con­scious deci­sion that the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the nation would be the barom­e­ter on which to lam­poon each oth­er, the oppo­si­tion par­ty always has an inter­est in high­er crime sta­tis­tics.
How they arrive at those high­er crimes sta­tis­tics are up to the Jamaican peo­ple to see for themselves.

Jamaica is receiv­ing an inor­di­nate amount of depor­tees from England The United States, and oth­er parts of the world.
These peo­ple are [not all vio­lent crim­i­nals] nev­er­the­less, many of them are and they are gen­er­al­ly hard­ened crim­i­nals who will stop at noth­ing to con­tin­ue the lav­ish lifestyles they had before they were nabbed.
On the oth­er hand, the schtick that the Government and oppo­si­tion par­ty has engaged in pulling over the eyes of law-abid­ing Jamaicans is hav­ing dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the aver­age cit­i­zen.
Gruesome mur­ders and mass killings are now the norms while the police are scared to go after the enlight­ened crim­i­nals, many of whom are depor­tees who brought their knowl­edge from the devel­oped coun­tries from which they were deport­ed.
Instead of drop­ping the ham­mer on crim­i­nals the coun­try’s polit­i­cal lead­ers gave the nation INDECOM.
That agen­cy’s claim to rel­e­vance has been the gangs it has embold­ened.
Violent crim­i­nals now cel­e­brate INDECOM.
When the crim­i­nal under­world’s great­est friend is a gov­ern­ment agency that coun­try is in deep trouble.

Help the Police find this guy. He goes by the name Prekeh Bwoy .
The Police believe he is dan­ger­ous and as you can see he is armed.

Former Jamaica Labour Party coun­cilor Barrington Bailey has been charged with ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm.
Bailey, oth­er­wise called ‘Junior’, of Kirkland Heights in Red Hills, St Andrew, is sched­uled to appear in the St Catherine Parish Court on Tuesday, February 19.
The police say the 40-year-old was arrest­ed dur­ing a joint police-mil­i­tary check­point in Innswood on Old Harbour Road, Spanish Town in St Catherine on Sunday, February 10^th.
Bailey was arrest­ed about 5:40 a.m., after an Acura motor­car he was dri­ving was stopped by the police.
The police say Bailey account­ed for a licensed firearm. However, upon search­ing the vehi­cle, the police say an ille­gal Taurus 9 mil­lime­tre pis­tol was also found.

Whether you are a fan of the Zones Of Special Operations ini­tia­tive or not, it is dif­fi­cult to argue against the fact that large amounts of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel in an area invari­ably low­ers crime in that area.
(ZOSO) As the ini­tia­tive is known, sure­ly has its detrac­tors for vary­ing rea­sons.
This writer cer­tain­ly is no fan of it for the sole rea­son that it bails out the cor­rupt politi­cians and the incom­pe­tent police high com­mand by low­er­ing crime tem­porar­i­ly.
This allows them to gloat about low­er­ing crime with­out com­ing up with sus­tain­able crime policies.

States of pub­lic emer­gency (SOE’s)are impor­tant for main­tain­ing pub­lic order under the spe­cial cir­cum­stances in which the secu­ri­ty forces may need addi­tion­al pow­ers. (ZOSO’s are no dif­fer­ent, though both ini­tia­tives squeeze out the pro­duc­ers of vio­lence from the oper­a­tional areas, it dis­pers­es them into oth­er­wise calmer areas.
This process gen­er­al­ly results in a lull in the vio­lence as those dis­placed by the ini­tia­tives accli­mate them­selves to their new oper­a­tional bases.

Despite the lies and dis­trac­tions by the Political Opposition and their sur­ro­gates in the Public Defender’s office and the media about the two ini­tia­tives, they remain quite pop­u­lar with the major­i­ty of Jamaicans.
I have not done any polling as it relates to peo­ple who actu­al­ly sup­port crim­i­nal con­duct in our coun­try.
Nevertheless, the fact that the major­i­ty of Jamaicans are will­ing to sup­port ini­tia­tives which dis­rupt and incon­ve­niences their lives gives me hope that there is a silent major­i­ty of our peo­ple who sin­cere­ly want the coun­try we once had.
The polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion is as heav­i­ly invest­ed in old-style pol­i­tics as the Governing admin­is­tra­tion.
Neither par­ty wants to dis­en­gage from the Garrison-style pol­i­tics which secures entire con­stituen­cies dis­hon­est­ly, despite the fact that it dimin­ish­es our democ­ra­cy and takes away the fran­chise of the populace.

Last year, because of the twin ini­tia­tives, the coun­try expe­ri­enced what the police say was a 20% drop in vio­lent crimes.
Conscientious observers, includ­ing this writer, cheered, because we believe that regard­less of the meth­ods employed, few­er dead peo­ple is a net pos­i­tive.
The down­side to the dip in homi­cides and oth­er vio­lent felonies is that the homi­cide and vio­lent felony sta­tis­tics were still too high.
Thus far this year, vio­lent crimes and homi­cides are tick­ing upwards. Whether this sup­posed uptick rep­re­sents a trend or an anom­aly is yet to be decid­ed. We will only be able to tell after the year is over.
If past is pro­logue we should be very con­cerned because we have seen these hor­ren­dous homi­cide num­bers in the not too dis­tant past.

The dis­con­nect with this uptick and pre­vi­ous ones is the gen­er­al lack of pan­ic. “Oh, mur­ders are on the rise again, yawn.“That seems to be the gen­er­al atti­tude this time around. So what exact­ly is dif­fer­ent this time?
I vivid­ly recall the sense of anger and pan­ic which suc­ceed­ed the past surges and the calls for the heads of Owen Ellington, Carl Willaims and the very nice and gen­tile George Quallo?
None of those recent for­mer com­mis­sion­ers of police were pol­i­cy­mak­ers. They were men who became com­mis­sion­ers of police, because they were police offi­cers.
No one both­ered to try to under­stand the dynam­ics at play in which the police is giv­en straws and required to spin them into gold.
Until now!

The dif­fer­ence now is that the force is head­ed by an out­sider. Antony Anderson, past head of the (JDF). Past National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, (a post-tai­lor-made for Anderson).
Of course, the men and women who came up through the ranks and bust­ed their tails to edu­cate them­selves, some more than Holness is, obvi­ous­ly were not qual­i­fied enough to advise the Prime Minister on National secu­ri­ty, though their entire careers have been spent in the secu­ri­ty port­fo­lio.
Which got me think­ing. Antony Anderson has got­ten a whole lot of def­er­ence and good­will from the pub­lic. Many of the elites came out in glee­ful sup­port, when he was select­ed over the men and women of the depart­ment to lead their depart­ment.
I have no quar­rel with the guy, he seems like a decent and lik­able enough per­son. But nei­ther of those traits insu­lates him from cri­tique.
A whole lot of elit­ist stinkers came out in sup­port of Anderson’s appoint­ment, none of whom had any­thing good to say about the com­mis­sion­ers of police who were actu­al police offi­cers.
Those stinkers are silent now, because once again their insis­tence on social engi­neer­ing is failing.

It is not the first time that an out­sider has been brought in and placed over the men and women of the JCF. We remem­ber the trav­es­ty which was Trevor Macmillan and lat­er Hardly Lewin.
My dis­qui­et with the whole thing has noth­ing to do with any love one would imag­ine I have for the hier­ar­chy of the JCF. Far from it.
I raise the sub­ject because when there is a cop’s cop at the helm of the JCF, no quar­ters or lat­i­tude is giv­en to them. They are expect­ed to work mir­a­cles, they are basi­cal­ly required to spin straw into gold.
Antony Anderson has thus far expe­ri­enced a charmed exis­tence. No one is call­ing for his head, despite the unchecked killings and oth­er vio­lent crimes.
Here’s a real bit of fact, in addi­tion to the hypocrisy, if we take away (ZOSO) and the (SOE’s) which have basi­cal­ly propped up Anderson’s tenure, he would inex­orably be pre­sid­ing over a run­away mur­der rate over and above any­thing his more recent pre­de­ces­sors expe­ri­enced dur­ing their tenures.

On this issue, I will not allow Jamaica’s snob­bish, lying and decep­tive elites to rewrite his­to­ry. We are going to stay vig­i­lant on this and record it for pos­ter­i­ty. Neither of the EX-JDF heads who were brought in to usurp the senior peo­ple in the JCF has a made a lick of a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence wor­thy of men­tion.
The excus­es about lack of coöper­a­tion from the senior lead­er­ship and the lack of sup­port from the rank and file were spu­ri­ous at best.
None of it comes close to the dis­re­spect the JCF gets from the two polit­i­cal gangs which have divid­ed up the coun­try and their well-placed sur­ro­gates through­out civ­il soci­ety.
This is a coun­try in deep trou­ble because the two polit­i­cal par­ties have the coun­try in a death-grip for their own survival.

Some mem­bers of the pub­lic have called for the dis­band­ment of the force, in fact, even Renetto Adams has called for the dis­band­ment of the depart­ment.
Me, I believe in no such non­sense. Those propos­ing the dis­band­ment of the depart­ment, includ­ing some sup­posed intel­lec­tu­als suf­fer­ing from over-inflat­ed egos, fail to under­stand that the chal­lenges the police face are soci­etal issues which can hard­ly be laid at the feet of the police.
I nev­er per­son­al­ly liked most of the senior offi­cers with whom I inter­act­ed dur­ing my brief 10-year stint.
I thought they were gen­er­al­ly poor man­agers who believed in chew­ing out their juniors in pub­lic and begrudg­ing their suc­cess­es.
They were gen­er­al­ly polit­i­cal hacks who kissed the ass­es of the politi­cians in the par­ty of their choice.
Additionally, the senior corps of the con­stab­u­lary has been more focused on being puni­tive to their sub­or­di­nates than teach­ing and guid­ing them in prepa­ra­tion for ser­vice, or work­ing on strate­gies aimed at elim­i­nat­ing crime in their areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty.
More than any­thing else in my esti­ma­tion, the senior offi­cers of the JCF have been a cow­ard­ly bunch of hacks who wilt and with­er away at the slight­est con­tro­ver­sy leav­ing their sub­or­di­nates to face the music unsup­port­ed.
At the time I decid­ed to leave the depart­ment my opin­ion of them was some­where in the sin­gle dig­its and dete­ri­o­rat­ing fast.

I guess by now you do get that I had/​have scant regard for the lead­er­ship of the force. That does not mean that the JCF has not had exem­plary offi­cers over the years. I was a big fan of for­mer SSP Bailey, who once led the Ranger Squad, a true moti­va­tion­al leader and despite his faults, Noël Asphall was a leader who made you want to go the extra mile.
Today not much has changed since I left the depart­ment, except that the lead­er­ship of the force may be a tad more edu­cat­ed. Unfortunately, the ben­e­fits of their edu­ca­tion have not shown up in the stat sheets, so sure­ly the edu­ca­tion they earned seems to be for self and brag­ging rights.
Fish rots from the head so if we dis­card the non­sense that the police is inept because the police are inher­ent­ly cor­rupt. Or that the police are even close­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what is wrong in our coun­try, we may be able to rec­og­nize that the police is only a small sam­pling of a soci­ety that is inher­ent­ly cor­rupt and dys­func­tion­al.
If we tune out the noise and face that fact that our coun­try has been a pre­ten­tious place for a long time, and that we do have a cor­rup­tion prob­lem, we may begin the hard work of turn­ing around our country.

One of the endur­ing qual­i­ties of lead­er­ship is the abil­i­ty of those in posi­tions of lead­er­ship to be able to moti­vate those whom they super­vise.
Leadership is not about boss­ing around and embar­rass­ing sub­or­di­nates.
It is about prais­ing pub­licly and chastis­ing pri­vate­ly. Those ele­ments are virtues which have elud­ed the lead­er­ship over the years. More and more they become stick­lers look­ing for trans­gres­sions of the archa­ic JCF Act with which to pun­ish and sub­se­quent­ly hold down their juniors.
As a con­se­quence, the rank and file have basi­cal­ly giv­en up. Faced with the twin pres­sures of deal­ing with the chal­lenges of the job on the streets and pro­tect­ing their safe­ty, while con­tend­ing with the nit­pick­ing over­lords in the depart­ment once they return from the streets.
This dual sided pres­sure has wrought undue harm and psy­cho­log­i­cal dam­age to the rank and file result­ing in mis­takes, hes­i­tan­cy, and a gen­er­al lack of con­fi­dence in the way they exe­cute their duties.
Other pres­sure points from oth­er Government agen­cies which have added addi­tion­al undue stress to a rather shit­ty job to begin with, has result­ed fur­ther in one of the high­est attri­tion rates of any police depart­ment any­where in the world. Except in parts of Mexico where some depart­ments have seen offi­cers drop­ping arms and walk­ing away in sur­ren­der to the drug cartels.

A GLIMMER OF HOPE

As I said before, my dis­dain for the lead­er­ship of the JCF though pal­pa­ble, does not mean that there are no good senior offi­cers in the depart­ment.
And I want to speak briefly to one such offi­cer who exem­pli­fies some of the qual­i­ties which ought to be the rule rather than the excep­tion in the (JCF).
The recent viral encounter in which a bus dri­ver in Spalding Manchester vicious­ly attacked a uni­formed police offi­cer was a sem­i­nal moment for the rule of law in our coun­try.
That one inci­dent revealed some struc­tur­al flaws which exist in the body politic. These are hav­ing dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for our very small and eas­i­ly man­aged country.

(1) Both Prime Minister Andrew Holness, and Peter Phillips the oppo­si­tion leader saw that vio­lent attack on a police offi­cer last week in Spalding Manchester.
Additionally, anoth­er offi­cer was attacked and shot in a sep­a­rate inci­dent as he sat in his car, he was hit sev­er­al times.
He valiant­ly fought off his attack­ers, though seri­ous­ly wound­ed.
He is still in very seri­ous con­di­tion in hos­pi­tal.
To date, nei­ther of the two pathet­ic lit­tle men seized on the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reaf­firm the need for, and their com­mit­ment to the rule of law.
Jamaica is NOT a par­adise as they would have you believe.
Crime is out of con­trol, it ben­e­fits both polit­i­cal par­ties. That is the rea­son bla­tant attacks on police offi­cers elic­its death­ly silence from both polit­i­cal lead­ers and their polit­i­cal parties.

(2) Those of you who saw the inci­dent also wit­nessed a lying bas­tard nar­rate a full sequence of the events. The only prob­lem was that it was all lies aimed at incrim­i­nat­ing the offi­cers and absolv­ing the attack­er of crim­i­nal cul­pa­bil­i­ty.
Conscientious observers who care about fair­ness and the rule of law, would be hard pressed not to think that this is a pat­tern which has unjust­ly incrim­i­nat­ed untold police offi­cers. Many of whom han­dled them­selves exact­ly as they were trained to do and was incrim­i­nat­ed on fraud­u­lent tes­ti­mo­ny, the likes of what we saw from that sup­posed wit­ness.
As a for­mer police offi­cer, I can tell you that most of those accounts are exact­ly false and concocted.

(3) The offi­cer dis­played cool tem­pera­ment despite the ver­bal onslaught and the ges­tic­u­la­tion from the bus dri­ver, even as the crowd egged the stu­pid dri­ver to attack him.
I can tell you with­out equiv­o­ca­tion that I would not have act­ed as calm and patient as he did. The minute he start­ed ges­tic­u­lat­ing and ver­bal­ly assault­ing me he would have been tak­en down and cuffed.

(4) After the inci­dent occurred, the com­mand­ing offi­cer for the Parish, Superintendent Wayne Cameron, did some­thing which has been miss­ing from Jamaican polic­ing.
That senior offi­cer did not run away and hide, hop­ing that if there were ques­tions he would be shield­ed from the media glare.
He stepped for­ward and made it abun­dant­ly clear that those who would attack his offi­cers should rethink their strat­e­gy as offi­cers would not be back­ing down.
Cameron’s stead­fast stance was refresh­ing not just for the offi­cers under his com­mand, but for the rule of law across the coun­try.
Superintendent Cameron’s unwa­ver­ing sup­port for the offi­cers under his com­mand is the kind of lead­er­ship which is lack­ing across the entire law enforce­ment spec­trum. It ought to be the rule, yet sad­ly, it is the excep­tion and sub­se­quent­ly, the law-abid­ing peo­ple of Jamaica pay the price for it.

None of the cow­ard­ly senior offi­cers in the Department, from the Commissioner on down, had a word of praise for the offi­cer.
None sought to use the inci­dent to speak to the coun­try on the virtues of adher­ing to the rule of law.
Sadly, there is zero day­light between the pathet­ic polit­i­cal lead­er­ship and the cow­ardice which heads the (JCF).
All in all the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing polit­i­cal par­ties and the spine­less bootlick­ing senior lead­er­ship of the JCF, has demon­strat­ed that they are incom­pe­tent and unde­serv­ing of the posi­tions they hold.
It is time for bet­ter and more capa­ble lead­er­ship in the (JCF).
If they were seri­ous about real lead­er­ship and the erad­i­ca­tion of crime they would look no fur­ther than the parish of Manchester and place Wayne Cameron in that lead­er­ship chair at 103 Old Hope Road.
We would begin to see some real lead­er­ship on crime in our country.

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The mis­take the cops made in Spalding yes­ter­day was in not shoot­ing the attack­ing mob lead­ers dead!!!

Attack a police offi­cer in any coun­try on this plan­et and if you live to regret it you will real­ly regret it, I mean real­ly regret it.
In America attack­ing a police offi­cer even with­out a weapon could be auto­mat­ic death, and if you sur­vive to talk about it, you will have years in prison to con­sid­er your actions.
I recent­ly watched a video of a woman who attacked Russian cops with her hands and their response was brutish.
Literally shock­ing was the lev­el of force the offi­cers employed to the attack­er who was a woman no less.
Whether we agree with the lev­el of force employed by the offi­cer under attack is nei­ther here nor there. Wrong or right that is his/​her call to make when he/​she feels his/​her life threat­ened.
Every offi­cer of the law, like every­one else, has an expec­ta­tion that they will fin­ish their shift and go home to their fam­i­lies with­out being assault­ed, abused or worse.
He/​she alone gets to make that call and the laws should back that offi­cer ful­ly everywhere.

Why is it then that Jamaicans liv­ing at home feel that they have a license to attack police offi­cers who are doing their jobs?
Before we exam­ine those rea­sons, it is impor­tant to acknowl­edge that when Jamaicans set foot over­seas, they are keen­ly con­ver­sant that what they do at home will not fly in oth­er coun­tries.
Even with­in the CARICOM region in which Jamaicans are sup­posed to be able to trav­el rel­a­tive­ly freely, mem­ber states still some­times nuance the rules of the CARICOM char­ter to allow their law-enforce­ment to be par­tic­u­lar­ly wary and vig­i­lant to the pres­ence of Jamaicans trav­el­ing to their coun­tries. The record of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty is unde­ni­able and there should be no con­ver­sa­tion around what are unde­ni­able facts.
In the past police offi­cials have ridiculed Jamaicans who com­plain about the treat­ment they receive when they vis­it their coun­try and are sin­gled out for spe­cial treat­ment, “this is not Jamaica.“
Clear ref­er­ences that they will not tol­er­ate the kind of law­less­ness which exist in Jamaica in their countries.

There is no secret that Jamaica is and has always been a very vio­lent and law­less coun­try. In response to the law­less­ness and vio­lence, the strat­e­gy has been to tight­en con­trol over the police ser­vice, effec­tive­ly ren­der­ing offi­cers “paper tigers” through a series of leg­is­la­tion under the guise that they are trans­form­ing the police force into pro­fes­sion­al police ser­vices.
Now, there is a con­ver­sa­tion to be had around the rea­sons behind the strat­e­gy to muz­zle and hand­cuff the police.
Not the least of which is the cor­rupt nature of the politi­cians who pop­u­late both polit­i­cal par­ties.
A police depart­ment behold­en to them and inca­pable of con­duct­ing intel­li­gent inves­ti­ga­tions is inca­pable of stop­ping their rapa­cious assault against the peo­ple’s resources.

Rather than change the par­a­digm after the mili­tia upris­ing of 2010 in sup­port of drug lord Christopher Duddus Coke both polit­i­cal par­ties dou­bled down on stu­pid, or should I say dou­bled down on crim­i­nal acqui­es­cence and gave the coun­try INDECOM.
That is the lega­cy of the Duddus sup­port­er Orett Bruce Golding, who was forced from office for stand­ing in the way of the extra­di­tion of a known drug lord and crim­i­nal king­pin, who has been accused of being a mer­ci­less mur­der­er.
After the secu­ri­ty forces lib­er­at­ed Tivoli Gardens from the con­trol of that scum king­pin and annexed it to the rest of the Island, both polit­i­cal par­ties band­ed togeth­er to con­demn the secu­ri­ty forces for act­ing deci­sive­ly toward the king­pin and his mili­tia.
Although the Americans pre­vailed in hav­ing Coke extra­dit­ed, the mes­sage to the crim­i­nal under­world was clear.
“We are with you don’t wor­ry”.

The inci­dent in Manchester yes­ter­day in which a bus dri­ver felt embold­ened to psy­chi­cal­ly attack a uni­formed police offi­cer doing his job, and the ensu­ing mêlée and destruc­tion of prop­er­ty by the band of dumb ani­mals must be laid square­ly at the feet of the polit­i­cal class.
My prob­lem with the actions of the offi­cers is that because of fear that the Government has insti­tut­ed in them through INDECOM as a harass­ment agency, the offi­cers missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to send a clear mes­sage.
Jamaica has far too many opin­ion­at­ed idiots to func­tion as a mod­ern soci­ety.
My only prob­lem with the cops involved is that they retreat­ed, that’s not police train­ing. 
Police train­ing dic­tates that in sit­u­a­tions like the one they faced they stand their ground back to back, train their weapons to the head of the lead attack­ers and as soon as they step for­ward to cause harm to them, method­i­cal and sys­tem­at­i­cal shoot to kill.
Let’s see how many would keep step­ping for­ward.
That’s what I fault the offi­cers with, but they do not make them like they used to.

At the end of the day what we need to do is to ignore the con­tin­u­ous talk­ing from the shit­heads and come to the real­iza­tion that there is no pros­per­i­ty to be deliv­ered by the JLP, and damn sure no alter­na­tive growth path by the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing PNP in this mad­ness and chaos.
That is why we need to shut INDECOM down now, send Hamish Campbell home and take back our coun­try from this mad­ness.
If any of these offi­cers are charged with any­thing there should be hell to pay by INDECOM.
The fact that Jamaica con­tin­ues to strug­gle with cor­rup­tion accord­ing to Transparency International is proof pos­i­tive that the facts are on our side and not on the side of the Island’s lead­er­ship.
The fraud­u­lent wit­ness­es whom I have been writ­ing about for years, who are nur­tured and pro­mot­ed by the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing press must not be allowed to place anoth­er police offi­cer on sus­pen­sion.
If INDECOM con­tin­ues to be a clear enhancer of this kind of assault on our police, steps must be tak­en to ensure that INDECOM does not destroy the life of anoth­er hard-work­ing police offi­cer.
The same method­olo­gies which are applied to INDECOM should be applied to those who sup­port that crim­i­nal enhance­ment agency.
No coun­try which sup­ports crim­i­nals at the expense of its law enforce­ment agents can be suc­cess­ful, cor­rupt coun­try, no invest­ment.
Jamaica’s crim­i­nal politi­cians sure­ly can­not con­tin­ue to fool the major­i­ty of the peo­ple forever.

Most impor­tant­ly, through the pro­lif­er­a­tion of smart­phones and CCTV cam­eras, the lie which the anti-police media gave legit­i­ma­cy to are being exposed.
The real ques­tion after many years in which lying crim­i­nals turn up to give false evi­dence against the police must be, how many police offi­cers lives have been ruined as a result?
This writer has been mak­ing the case that this prac­tice which is aid­ed and abet­ted by the media has result­ed in a lot of the cas­es against offi­cers end­ed up fail­ing to meet the most basic pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al stan­dards because they were fraud­u­lent from the start.

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THIS HAPPENED LAST WEEK

Detectives assigned to the Spanish Town Criminal Investigation Branch are prob­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the shoot­ing deaths of a man and a woman on Old Harbour Road in Spanish Town, St Catherine on Thursday. Those killed are 21-year-old Vaughn Smith, oth­er­wise called ‘Mr. Cool’, and 19-year-old Serena Kerr, both of Shelter Rock in Spanish Town. The police say about 2:30 p.m, res­i­dents heard explo­sions in the area went to inves­ti­gate and dis­cov­ered the bodies.The police say Smith and Kerr were found lying in blood with gun­shot wounds to the upper body.

As per usu­al, the report to the police is just that it will take time for a full inves­tiga­tive nar­ra­tive to take shape., so we await the results of a full inves­ti­ga­tion.
In the mean­time, the streets are talk­ing and the sto­ry being told while sad caus­es one to won­der what was the dece­dent Vaughn Smith’s inten­tion?
Word on the streets is that Vaughn encour­aged Serena to accom­pa­ny him to go pur­chase a gun and that did not go so well.
Unconfirmed reports indi­cate the young cou­ple was robbed of their cash and then mur­dered by the men who were sup­posed to sell them the weapon/​s.

It is always sad when some­one los­es his or her life, nev­er­the­less, these are some of the con­se­quences of those kinds of actions.
If the report­ing is cor­rect, one has to assume that the inten­tion of the deceased were less than pure.
As trag­ic as this case is, it may very well be a case of ear­ly karma.

Ex-Police Constable Collis Chucky Brown has been sen­tenced to life in prison in the so-called death squad case. His sen­tence stems from three counts of mur­der and wound­ing with intent.
He must serve 51 years in prison before he is eli­gi­ble for parole.
More to come.….