Marvin Douglas a for­mer con­sta­ble of the Jamaica Constabulary Force and for­mal­ly of the Trelawny Division now a busi­ness man in fal­mouth died a few hours ago in a motor vehi­cle crash along the Spring Hill high­way in the parish.

We are told that a Detective Inspector of Police in charge of scenes of crime Investigations at the Spanish Tow Police sta­tion nar­row­ly escaped death at his home.
Detective Inspector Harris was attacked by gun­men who shot up his car.
In what seems to have been an attempt­ed rob­bery attempt, the men alleged­ly tailed the cop from the bank where he report­ed­ly went to trans­act busi­ness.
Several m16 shells were recov­ered from the scene of the inci­dent and the cop is report­ed to have escaped seri­ous injury.

UPDATE TO THIS STORY

At about 10am Detective Inspector Devon Harris, of the tech­ni­cal ser­vices divi­sion with­drew cash from the bank and drove home and parked in his dri­ve­way.
He alight­ed from the car when he noticed a grey hatch­back motor car dri­ving towards him, he became sus­pi­cious and stood in front of the car one man alight­ed from the rear seat of the car with a M16 rifle, and opened fire at him.
He took eva­sive action upon which two oth­er men with hand­guns also alight­ed from the car and they too opened fire at Inspector Harris.
Detective Inspector Harris ran into a near­by premis­es and hid him­self.

They went into the Inspector’ car and stole his lap­top- bag con­tain­ing his HP lap­top com­put­er val­ued at five hun­dred and fifty us dol­lars (US $550). The gun­men made good their escape.
Insp Harris suf­fered no gun­shot injuries but suf­fered cuts and bruis­es to his hands and knees from hav­ing fall­en dur­ing the encounter.

There is a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion to be had about the false sense of secu­ri­ty and brain­wash­ing Jamaicans are lulled into. An anti-police mind­set which cre­ates the per­cep­tion that an agency that was cre­at­ed to harass the police is in their best inter­est.
Just today threats were made by gangs that peo­ple in the once qui­et town of Mandeville will be slaugh­tered one each day if a gang­ster arrest­ed by the police is not released forth­with.
When the fake lay­ers of peace and con­tent­ment are peeled away Jamaica has a very seri­ous prob­lem with crim­i­nals and it is not get­ting bet­ter.

When a case which is brought by the police gets dis­missed by the courts for want of pros­e­cu­tion it is not the same as a case in which a police offi­cer was charged for a crime and walked free because the pros­e­cu­tion can­not sub­stan­ti­ate the case it brought.
The Jamaica Constabulary Force is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing crimes which involve 2.8 mil­lion Jamaicans and every sin­gle for­eign­er who ever set foot not just on Jamaican soil but may have com­mit­ted a crime against our coun­try 12 miles away from our coun­try’s shores.
As an over­sight agency INDECOM is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing a secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus of approx­i­mate­ly 12,000 peo­ple not count­ing the Corrections Department.
Most alle­ga­tions against the secu­ri­ty forces were, and still, are forced by gang lead­ers, or as they were called (area lead­ers). Common lowlife scum­bags, san­i­tized, pack­aged and sold to the Jamaican peo­ple by what pass­es for a media.
Fake mourn­ers became the norm, wail­ing away at the sup­posed killings of their choir­boy friends whom they watched get­ting mur­dered by the police as he slept in his bed at 3 in the morning.[sic]
Innocent com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, or as one anti-police agi­ta­tor Horace Levy labeled them, (cor­ner crews) not dan­ger­ous gang­sters.
That is not to say that the break­down in the nation’s social order and the neglect of the police over a peri­od of sev­er­al decades has­n’t result­ed in many peo­ple who should nev­er be police offi­cers becom­ing police offi­cers.
As a con­se­quence, the poor qual­i­ty of those can­di­dates nat­u­ral­ly end­ed up in out­comes which are anti­thet­i­cal to a good police depart­ment and the good of the coun­try overall.

On the 7^th of this month Detective Corporal Kevin Adams, Constable Carl Bucknor, and District Constable Howard Brown had their 8‑year night­mare come to a spec­tac­u­lar end when Queen’s Counsel Caroline Hay told the court, the pros­e­cu­tion would be unable to negate the defense’s posi­tion of self-defense. 
The three police offi­cers were charged with the mur­der of Andrew Bisson in a police oper­a­tion on September 5, 2011.
The Investigations were under­tak­en and con­duct­ed by INDECOM.
During the tri­al the judge, Chief Justice Byran Sykes spoke to the grave reser­va­tions he had about the case against the offi­cers.
Justice Sykes observed (1) [ that it seemed that the accused offi­cers were being tar­get­ed by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM)].
(2) Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, the tri­al judge expressed con­cern about whether the accused police­men were afford­ed an objec­tive and fair inves­ti­ga­tion?

On Tuesday, January 22^nd, 2019 Sergeant David Hutchinson and Constable Kenneth Daley were before the very same Judge Bryan Sykes. The two were charged with mur­der in a July 2013 inci­dent fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion by INDECOM into the fatal shoot­ing of a teenag­er, Derrick Bolton, and anoth­er man.
Like the case on January 7^th, pros­e­cu­tors told the court that they could not pro­ceed against the accused as they could not pro­duce the pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es.
The offi­cers were charged after 8 peo­ple were fatal­ly shot in an area of Saint Catherine and the police respond­ed and con­front­ed the two, who were report­ed­ly mem­bers of the noto­ri­ous Klansman gang.

The com­mon inves­tiga­tive thread in these two most recent cas­es in which offi­cers who have been charged with mur­der and have spent years await­ing tri­al, in some cas­es while locked away like com­mon crim­i­nals is INDECOM.
In response to charges by police offi­cers that INDECOM was charge ‑hap­py and was charg­ing offi­cers then doing inves­ti­ga­tions, Terrence Williams the head of the agency in 2016 sought to debunk claims he and his agency were abus­ing the pow­ers giv­en to the agency.
He argued that the com­mis­sion’s oper­a­tions does not allow for charges to be laid with­out prop­er inves­ti­ga­tions being car­ried out.
“The INDECOM Act oper­ates in a way that before any­body can be charged, it must come through the direc­tor of com­plaints and then be seen by me.
“The design of the INDECOM Act is to ensure that all inves­ti­ga­tions are super­vised by some­body with senior legal qual­i­fi­ca­tion and expe­ri­ence. So the com­plaint that is being made is com­plete­ly off the mark, based on sys­tems. Further, it is not our prac­tice to charge per­sons before the case is com­plet­ed, Williams told the Gleaner at the time.
So much for adher­ing to the dic­tates of the law!

In 2016 Terrence Williams told the same news­pa­per that
“of the six cas­es that have been com­plet­ed, mean­ing cas­es placed before the courts since the cre­ation of the agency in 2008, only one per­son was acquit­ted, and there is one where the DPP felt the case should not go on. We have five cas­es where there have been con­vic­tions, includ­ing one case with eight peo­ple.”
Only that there was no truth to Terrence Williams’ state­ments.
In Manchester, INDECOM charged a police offi­cer with using his hel­met to hit a man.
Case dis­missed.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Jason Anderson, who is assigned to the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA), has been charged with dis­charg­ing a firearm with­in 40 yards of a pub­lic road, con­trary to Section 23 of the Firearms Act and assault at com­mon law. Charged by INDECOM.
Case dis­missed.
There are oth­er cas­es that have also result­ed in dis­missals all of which are cas­es brought against the police by INDECOM.

The aver­age Jamaican has been raised, schooled and indoc­tri­nat­ed into hat­ing law enforce­ment. Even some who have worked as police offi­cers because they may have been unable to get jobs in the pri­vate econ­o­my has been known to be vehe­ment­ly against the very dis­ci­pline which puts food on their table.
The ques­tion of hav­ing cops opposed to the rule of law is cer­tain­ly more per­va­sive now than it was before.
With so many peo­ple enter­ing the depart­ment from the left-lean­ing University of the West Indies the prob­lem is now a seri­ous threat to the nation’s secu­ri­ty.
Enemies of polic­ing now doing polic­ing.
It can­not be overem­pha­sized that nei­ther of the two major polit­i­cal par­ties wants a com­pe­tent police depart­ment which is capa­ble of doing the type of inves­tiga­tive work which would have end­ed in the arrest of politi­cians involved in the Petrojam scam, Outameani, the Iran sug­ar deal, the Cuban light­bulb scan­dal, and the host of oth­er thefts in which bil­lions of dol­lars sim­ply dis­ap­peared.
That is why INDECOM serves the inter­est of both polit­i­cal par­ties.
That is the rea­son they do not care that Deputy Commissioner of INDECOM British trans­plant Hamish Campbell was alleged to have plant­ed evi­dence on an inno­cent black man while he worked in his home country.

No mat­ter how much you adore INDECOM and hate the police, it is pret­ty dif­fi­cult to ignore the obser­va­tions of the nations most senior jurist.
(1)That it seemed that the accused offi­cers were being tar­get­ed by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM)].
(2) Concerned about whether the accused police­men were afford­ed an objec­tive and fair inves­ti­ga­tion.
What is absent from this whole con­ver­sa­tion is a fair and just appre­ci­a­tion for the fact that these case are being approached and pros­e­cut­ed in a man­ner which is inju­ri­ous to police offi­cers and worse is dan­ger­ous to the nation’s secu­ri­ty.
Furthermore, the duplic­i­tous silence by what pass­es for an orga­nized media, or worse the fail­ure to put two and two togeth­er and report to the peo­ple the dan­ger they are in by allow­ing for the con­tin­u­a­tion of INDECOM. 
Because the sta­tus quo serves the inter­est of both polit­i­cal par­ties voic­es like mine will go unheed­ed.
Nevertheless, as the coun­try bounces from one dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion to anoth­er and as the gangs con­sol­i­date their pow­er, the peo­ple like sheep, are led to believe that the num­ber one prob­lem they face is threats to their human rights.
In the mean­time, Superintendent Wayné Cameron and his offi­cers are on high alert in Manchester, despite the forces arrayed against them this offi­cer and his men and women are deter­mined and vig­i­lant­ly out there pro­tect­ing the lives of the cit­i­zens with their own lives.
Undeterred by threats from gang­sters who would turn our beau­ti­ful Island into a Sub-Saharan waste­land, spilling inno­cent blood if their demands are not met.

LIKE AND SHARE THIS ARTICLE

I got to think­ing recent­ly and I arrived at a cou­ple of con­clu­sions (1) The gangs doing the killings are still oper­at­ing with impuni­ty. (2) The num­ber of gangs seems to be on the increase. And (3) just how easy it was for the peo­ple to be influ­enced that good no-non­sense polic­ing atti­tude toward dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals was bad for them and the coun­try. And so I want to have a lit­tle talk with you my read­ers, rather than just talk at you.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

It is impor­tant to remem­ber where we are com­ing from and where we are so that we may make informed deci­sions which will impact where we are going in the way we want to.
Because as the cliché goes, “if you don’t know where you are going you are already there”.
Now it is impor­tant to remem­ber that Jamaica has always been a high crime coun­try.
This is so because of the way polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence by the two polit­i­cal par­ties (a) cer­at­ed gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties, ren­der­ing them no go for law enforce­ment and havens for mur­der­ers and oth­er crim­i­nals. (b)Lack of resources for law enforce­ment and lack of prop­er train­ing also played a role. © The revolv­ing door for crim­i­nals cre­at­ed by the courts result­ed in apa­thy and in some cas­es crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty by law enforce­ment.
I will attempt to show you the tra­jec­to­ry of mur­ders over the years in order to demon­strate how cer­tain fac­tors both inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly have helped to shape the tra­jec­to­ry of the most seri­ous crimes in our coun­try.
Jamaica record­ed the fol­low­ing num­ber of homi­cides over the fol­low­ing years.

In the year 2017, 1,616 mur­ders were report­ed to the author­i­ties. And 2018 result­ed in around 1455 homi­cides, give or take a cou­ple either way.
Now, though these homi­cide num­bers are stark, I believe they are fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed, because they only rep­re­sent killings in which vic­tims of gun­shot wounds, stab­bings, and oth­er vio­lent assaults die imme­di­ate­ly.
Not all vic­tims of vio­lent attacks die imme­di­ate­ly and so there may be anoth­er 10, 20, or even 30% more deaths which can rea­son­ably be attached to those annu­al homi­cide num­bers.
At the risk of mak­ing myself part of the nar­ra­tive which is absolute­ly not my intent, I wish to point out that between the start of the sta­tis­tics above and when I left the force in 1991 mur­ders were far too many but not over­ly astro­nom­i­cal.
When we jux­ta­pose the num­bers which exist­ed between 1982 when I joined the depart­ment (405) and 1989 (439) and the facts I laid out about polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence and lack of resources ham­string­ing the police you will also notice that homi­cides remained gen­er­al­ly steady.
We may go back and look at the years 1980 to 1981, and we will notice that those years rep­re­sent­ed the elec­tion year 1980 and 1981 the year a new admin­is­tra­tion took office and so those num­bers were anom­alies as far as the homi­cide num­bers went.
Older Jamaicans will recall the 1980 elec­tions in which an esti­mat­ed 899 Jamaicans lost their lives, large­ly as a result of polit­i­cal vio­lence and 1981 although the num­bers had dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly to 490, those 1981 num­bers still rep­re­sent­ed a high, for a good sev­en (7) year peri­od and nev­er again reached or exceed­ed [490] until 1990 when the num­bers jumped dras­ti­cal­ly con­sid­er­ing the pre­vi­ous sev­en-year sta­bil­i­ty to 543 homi­cides.
By 1991 the year I exit­ed the force all bets were off homi­cides had moved up to 561.
Gone were the good old days in which mur­der­ers knew that it was not their streets.
So what hap­pened you ask, why is it that between the time you served and the time you left mur­ders got out of con­trol Mike?
Was it you keep­ing all those shot­tas under con­trol?
I wish I could take cred­it for it (smile) but we have to seri­ous­ly look at what hap­pened in our coun­try which caused basi­cal­ly (8) eight years of sta­ble homi­cide numbers?

THE SEAGA ADMINISTRATION
I gen­er­al­ly get killed(no not lit­er­al­ly) laugh, for dar­ing to write about pol­i­tics or the way I see it through my own eyes grow­ing up and liv­ing thir­ty (30) years of my life in my coun­try.
Many peo­ple are offend­ed they say talk only about law enforce­ment.
I gen­er­al­ly laugh at that because right here in this arti­cle we see just how pol­i­tics impacts every oth­er area of our lives.
Edward Phillip George Seaga won the 1980 gen­er­al elec­tions on a plat­form of con­ser­vatism.
It was easy for Seaga’s mes­sage to res­onate against the Manley mes­sage of self-suf­fi­cien­cy and nation­al pride.
Any mes­sage that was oppo­site to Manley’s would have res­onat­ed, peo­ple were hun­gry, store shelves were emp­ty, crime and vio­lence were every­where.
Seaga’s vic­to­ry was a dev­as­tat­ing blow to Michael Manley and the (PNP), his Conservative Jamaica Labor Party won 51 of the then 60 seats in the par­lia­ment. Many laborites sus­pect­ed Manley lost his seat but was allowed to keep it.
No evi­dence of that ever sur­faced but the whis­per­ing con­tin­ued for years.

Many Jamaicans who grew up dur­ing my time which is the 70’s and real­ly came of age in the ’80s will quick­ly argue that all politi­cians in Jamaica are cor­rupt, dis­hon­est, mon­sters.
I have no facts to counter those asser­tions but I will say that even if not total­ly true, what­ev­er Jamaicans say does have some truth in there some­where.
Edward Seaga cre­at­ed the satel­lite com­mu­ni­ty of Tivoli Gardens. Those who know a lit­tle about Jamaica’s his­to­ry will recall that Tivoli Gardens rose out of the God for­got­ten slums pre­vi­ous­ly known as (Back-o-wall).
Tivoli Gardens was a mod­ern apart­ment com­plex with ameni­ties like a park, com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter, a state of the art clin­ic etc.
[Full dis­clo­sure], my first child was born at that clin­ic because it was rumored to be the very best in the Island at the time.
Seaga was might­i­ly proud of what he cre­at­ed in that com­mu­ni­ty as he ought to be.
However, like an over-dot­ing par­ent, he failed to see that the child he gave life to was turn­ing bad.
And that was an egre­gious error in judg­ment, that baby became a mon­ster. When a child becomes that it reflects bad­ly on the par­ents.
Because of Seaga’s fail­ure to rein in Tivoli Gardens, he will for­ev­er and for the remain­der of his days be sad­dled with the infamy that that com­mu­ni­ty came to rep­re­sent.
And that is all too sad because when it came to law and order Edward Seaga nev­er stood in the way of the police doing their jobs, save and except for his delin­quent baby Tivoli Gardens.
The data demon­strates that it was under Edward Seaga’s tenure that homi­cides lev­eled off and remained con­stant.
Edward Seaga demit­ted office in (1988) and Michael Manley was back at the helm of our gov­ern­ment.
By 1990, just one year into Manley’s tenure, homi­cides jumped from (439) into the new ter­ri­to­ry of (543.

Homicides con­tin­ued at a mer­ry clip under Michael Manley and con­tin­ued so after he ced­ed pow­er to his inept deputy Percival Patterson.
By (2002) still with the PNP in pow­er, homi­cides had reached (1045).
In just over twelve(12) years under PNP lead­er­ship, homi­cides in Jamaica had increased by (238.041%).
We can argue along the mar­gins polit­i­cal­ly, what we can­not deny is the data.

A NEW NARRATIVE

In 2007 Orett Bruce Golding a for­mer min­is­ter of con­struc­tion under Seaga who had left the JLP and helped to form the then third par­ty the National Democratic Movement or (NDM) had returned to the JLP and was able to eke out a slim major­i­ty for the JLP.
The JLP vic­to­ry seemed at the time to be vot­er malaise and exhaus­tion from the PNP’s ¹⁴¹⁄₂ unbro­ken years in office and the back­ward direc­tion of the coun­try.
By (2011) Golding was forced to resign from entan­gle­ments with the Christopher Coke mat­ter.
Andrew Holness took over the lead­er­ship of the par­ty and the Government and soon sought his own man­date against the Portia Simpson Miller-led (PNP).
Holness was defeat­ed at the polls on the 5^th of January 2012 and Miller served as the Prime Minister until fresh elec­tions were called on the 3^rd of March 2016.
Andrew Holness’ par­ty won the elec­tions, albeit by a razor-thin one seat major­i­ty which was lat­er strength­ened by two by/​elections in which the rul­ing (JLP) pre­vailed.
The moral of the sto­ry sur­round­ing the peri­od which includ­ed Simpson Miller, Bruce Golding and Andrew Holness is sim­ply this.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties are respon­si­ble for the events as they occurred in that time peri­od and so we are left to ana­lyze what event or series of events caused both par­ties to become com­plic­it or incom­pe­tent, or both, in deal­ing with vio­lent crimes.

HUMAN RIGHTS

If I pre­tend­ed that the Jamaican police have not engaged in atro­cious behav­ior I would be lying.
If I pre­tend­ed that politi­cians, judges, lawyers, pros­e­cu­tors, and par­sons and peo­ple in every dis­ci­pline haven’s as well I would be lying.
And if I pre­tend­ed that peo­ple in lit­er­al­ly every dis­ci­pline, in every nation across the globe haven’t done the same thing.…again I would be lying.
The real­i­ty of the fore­gone is that peo­ple, regard­less of their jobs are only peo­ple who are prone to excess­es and abus­ing their pow­ers.
When that hap­pens the soci­eties in which they oper­ate must take steps to rem­e­dy those trans­gres­sions and put in place safe­guards to guard against recur­rence.
So if you have bad Pastors you do not tear down the church.
With the mul­ti­ple reports about Priest sex­u­al­ly assault­ing lit­tle boys the pow­ers that be has­n’t got­ten rid of the Catholic Church, they are work­ing to fix it.
When our police make mis­takes we fix the prob­lems and we sup­port our police, we should not tear them down.
Unfortunately, that is not what we do in Jamaica, we tear down our police and that pro­vides a wide open­ing to those who would ben­e­fit from the break­down in the rule of law.

As ridicu­lous as the lack of sup­port for the police is, the sin­gle great­est issue in my esti­ma­tion is the influ­ence the so-called human rights lob­by has been able to wield in our coun­try.
The faith­ful obser­vance of and fideli­ty to human rights are fun­da­men­tal tem­plates of any demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.
Nevertheless, human rights and nation­al secu­ri­ty are two fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent issues, nei­ther of which are dis­pens­able or mutu­al­ly exclu­sive in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.
Given that human rights lob­bies are not as vis­i­ble or influ­en­tial in the pow­er­ful democ­ra­cies, and since there is a kind of default pre­sump­tion that they are the tem­plate for good demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties, we tend to ignore the gross human rights trans­gres­sions which occur in these pow­er­ful nations.
Police abuse of peo­ple of col­or is the num­ber one human rights issue which has affect­ed peo­ple of col­or in the United States, Britain, and Canada today as it always has.
There is hard­ly any response or state­ments much less any mean­ing­ful steps tak­en on behalf of a sin­gle aggriev­ed par­ty any­where in any of the named pow­er­ful devel­oped coun­tries.
There has been zero advo­ca­cy on behalf of any killed or injured by police here in the United States to my knowledge.

SO WHY THE DEVELOPING WORLD?

The human rights lob­by in the devel­op­ing world in which Jamaica finds itself are gen­er­al­ly fund­ed by sup­port­ers or par­ent lob­bies in the west­ern pow­er cen­ters which are in turn fund­ed by dark mon­ey.
A coun­try which under­mines its law-enforce­ment is a coun­try with high crime sta­tis­tics. Jamaica’s crime-fight­ing efforts are direct­ed at its police offi­cers, not at the vio­lence pro­duc­ers.
Not that there can­not be an effec­tive crime-fight­ing mech­a­nism in place and vig­i­lant police over­sight simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Why would larg­er coun­tries want crime to increase in the devel­op­ing world?
Larger west­ern coun­tries are lenders to poor­er devel­op­ing coun­tries. They desta­bi­lize those nations because they need to keep them bor­row­ing.
A coun­try inun­dat­ed with crime has next to zero chance of climb­ing its way out of pover­ty.
Jamaica has made many tac­ti­cal mis­takes, not the least of which has been allow­ing the inter­na­tion­al human rights lob­bies to worm their influ­ence into the body politic of the coun­try.
It’s a ver­i­ta­ble dis­as­ter at this point as lit­er­al­ly every bit of leg­is­la­tion which is sup­posed to ben­e­fit the Jamaican peo­ple has to pass muster with human rights lob­bies which take orders from either the United States, Canada, or Great Britain.
Why would either of these nations care about human-rights?
They don’t!
They under­stand full well that the ques­tion of human rights is some­thing the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion will sign onto. What poor cit­i­zen­ry will not be enam­ored with the idea of a group of peo­ple who are pro­tect­ing them from the pow­er of the state?
Jamaica has long flirt­ed with wannabe police watch­dogs the likes of Flo O’Connor and oth­ers, but the coun­try com­plete­ly sold out to Carolyn Gomes and Jamaicans for Justice(JFJ).
If the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of Jamaicans were attend­ed to with the same dili­gence and fer­vor as the influ­ence the crim­i­nal enhance­ment lob­bies have had on the deci­sion mak­ing of our coun­try we would have a very good country.

THE END GAME

Ultimately, what will hap­pen is that the state will com­plete­ly lose con­trol. We are not far from that point, we had a glimpse of that in 2010.
In Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Brazil. and Venezuela, right here in our hemi­sphere we have seen the effects of their gov­ern­men­t’s com­plic­i­ty and cow­ardice in con­fronting the dan­gers posed by gangs which lat­er metas­ta­sized into mur­der­ous drug car­tels.
Unless the Jamaican peo­ple come out from the fog cast by the crime enhance­ment lob­by Jamaica will see peo­ple leav­ing on old rick­ety rafts and old canoes try­ing to find safe har­bor.
It can still be stopped but time is run­ning out.

The body of 29-year-old Nordia Markland was found hang­ing from a beam at her house last Saturday at around 4 a.m. on Shannon Lloyd Crescent in Clarendon. 

The fam­i­ly of the deceased are trau­ma­tized by the fact that a video show­ing miss Markland’s body dan­gling from the beam has been doing the rounds on social media.
They are also upset that peo­ple who have seen the video has char­ac­ter­ized her as wicked and has cre­at­ed their own nar­ra­tive as to the rea­son she alleged­ly took her own life. 

Distraught rel­a­tives say miss Markland was depressed after the death of her father, she had to bury a cousin short­ly after.
We have the video but have opt­ed not to post it out of def­er­ence and respect to her and her fam­i­ly.
Mental ill­ness and depres­sion are real issues which affect untold num­bers of peo­ple, many of whom suf­fer in silence. 

The grief and deep depres­sion which would cause some­one to see no way out forc­ing them to ulti­mate­ly take their own life can­not be reduced to some­one’s opin­ion of the deceased.
It must be under­stood against the pre­cious nature of life and the sheer hope­less­ness which the vic­tim must have felt which caused him/​her to end that one pre­cious life.

SCENARIO #1
Imagine being rav­en­ous­ly hun­gry yet you are close to an Ocean filled with fish but you have noth­ing with which to catch the fish. No net, no hook, no device or mate­r­i­al one could use to cre­ate a snare.
Chances are you could die from hunger right there, or you can flail away if you are able to swim and hope to catch some­thing to sat­is­fy the hunger.
Until of course the hunger pangs begin to gnaw at your gut again.

SCENARIO #2
How about being thirsty at an Oasis and you have to cross the desert, you can drink all you want from the brook but you have no con­tain­er to car­ry any of the life­giv­ing liq­uid with you?
Oh, by the way, you can’t tar­ry too long by the brook because there are some thirsty trav­el­ers who will be com­ing soon to refresh them­selves and they are car­ni­vores.
Difficult deci­sions and near impos­si­ble task if you have noth­ing with which to car­ry the water right?

Now that I have got­ten your atten­tion, I would like you to think about those two metaphors as it relates to the scourge of vio­lent crimes in our coun­try.
The moral of my con­tention is that if you do not have the tools it is almost dif­fi­cult to com­plete a task, no mat­ter how sim­ple or urgent the need.
The aver­age law-abid­ing Jamaican liv­ing in the Zones Of Special Operations and sub­ject­ed to the lim­it­ed State of Emergency would like to see those ini­tia­tives con­tin­ue.
Of course, those zones of oper­a­tions, or (ZOSO’s), as they are affec­tion­ate­ly known, (we Jamaicans are enam­ored with acronyms) requires plen­ty of human resources and mon­ey.
ZOSO’s and the State of Emergency are a great strain on the offi­cers who make them pos­si­ble. A fact which eludes both the plan­ners and the res­i­dents who are right­ly clam­or­ing for some respite from the dai­ly bloodletting.

Now as you all know there is one lit­tle prob­lem with ZOSO’s and the Limited State of Emergency declared in spe­cif­ic areas.
They can­not go on for­ev­er because they strain con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­its in some cas­es and exhaust finan­cial and human resources in oth­ers.
Additionally, when those mea­sures are insti­tut­ed in spe­cif­ic areas the pro­duc­ers of vio­lence sim­ply move to oth­er areas and we end up inex­orably look­ing like we are in a whack-a-mole sit­u­a­tion which does no good.
Since pulling up ZOSO’s and get­ting approval for insti­tut­ing a State of Emergency takes time, and since there are peo­ple in posi­tions of pow­er who val­ue the let­ter of the archa­ic con­sti­tu­tion over the lives of our cit­i­zens, it is clear that we have to find oth­er ways to deal with this cri­sis of vio­lent crimes.

There is no sil­ver bul­let with which to elim­i­nate vio­lent crimes from our midst. Dealing effec­tive­ly with crime will have to be approached method­i­cal­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly.
There is no sce­nario in which plac­ing huge amounts of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel in spe­cif­ic loca­tions will effec­tive­ly reduce crime for the long term, even if we could afford it.
Which brings us to some actu­al solu­tions which the gov­ern­ing par­ty is too timid to effec­tu­ate and the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion is too com­plic­it in its asso­ci­a­tions with crim­i­nals and their lob­bies to sup­port.
This is not to say that the gov­ern­ing par­ty does not have mem­bers who are knee deep in crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty and col­lu­sion as well.

POINT #1
Since it is clear that the solu­tion to this prob­lem is not adding more police,(even though more police offi­cers does not hurt), and since it is clear that plac­ing huge amounts of resources in one area results in a con­fla­gra­tion of vio­lent crimes in anothe, it may be time for us to look at the issue in a holis­tic way.

POINT#2
Reading through this site will pro­vide plen­ty of solu­tions for address­ing our coun­try’s crime dilem­ma.
The prob­lem is that one par­ty is too scared to use them and the oth­er is too com­plic­it to sup­port real and mean­ing­ful crime reduc­tion ini­tia­tives.

POINT#3
The Jamaican peo­ple are cry­ing out for lead­er­ship, that much we know. It is not as if Jamaicans can­not abide by rules or laws when those rules and or laws are fol­lowed up with strong con­se­quences for break­ing them.
The hun­dreds of thou­sands, (mil­lions per­haps) of Jamaicans liv­ing in the dias­po­ra fol­low rules. When they decide to not, they pay the price.
Jamaicans at home do the things they do because they are allowed to do them.

POINT#4
Steve McGregor an Assistant Commissioner of police spoke to a group at a Stonebrook Vista return­ing res­i­dents’ meet­ing in Falmouth, Trelawny, last Sunday.
McGregor not­ed: “We have to dri­ve some fear into these young­sters, who are respon­si­ble for 95 per­cent of the mur­ders. This is so because, at this time, we have the worst set of par­ents ever in Jamaica.”
“Older par­ents were less edu­cat­ed, but they paid atten­tion to young­sters of the day. Older peo­ple have to become involved to keep the young­sters on the right track.”

That fear of which he speaks must be fear of the con­se­quences of break­ing the laws.
The leg­is­la­tion the law­mak­ers pro­pose focus­es on the pro­tec­tion of crim­i­nals rather than focus­ing on the pain of their vic­tims.
Legislations are held up to get the input of the very peo­ple the laws would bring to heel.
This is the dystopi­an hell in which law-abid­ing peo­ple find them­selves.
The rights of killers trumps their basic right to life and the abil­i­ty to live their lives in peace.

POINT#5
Both polit­i­cal par­ties have been will­ing and con­tin­u­al enablers of this trag­ic posi­tion in which the coun­try finds itself.
Every day the cri­sis deep­ens because both polit­i­cal par­ties are behold­en to over­ly influ­en­tial lob­bies which are ham­per­ing effec­tive polic­ing of the nation.
No coun­try in west­ern Europe or North America let alone in oth­er regions of the world allow rights lob­by to dic­tate to them how they secure their pop­u­la­tions.
Jamaica is the only coun­try I know of which fash­ions its laws in accor­dance with the wish­es of those who advo­cate for crim­i­nals instead of with the inter­est of the inno­cent law abid­ing pop­u­la­tion front and cen­ter.
Those who break the laws know they have the law abid­ing peo­ple by the balls and over a bar­rel.
Their polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives are either crim­i­nals them­selves or are behold­en to the crim­i­nal lob­by.
Either way, the peo­ple are .….….I won’t say it.

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If the ulti­mate no case sub­mis­sion against the three police offi­cers charged with the mur­der of Andrew Bisson recent­ly does noth­ing, it demon­strates that the resources being wast­ed on INDECOM would be bet­ter uti­lized upgrad­ing the office of Director of Public Prosecution(DPP).
The three offi­cers, Detective Corporal Kevin Adams, District Constable Howard Brown and Constable Carl Bucknor were arrest­ed and charged for the killing of Andrew Bisson in a police oper­a­tion on September 5, 2011. 

As the Prosecution’s case ground to a screech­ing halt like a creaky old auto­mo­bile whose engine had com­plet­ed its final rev­o­lu­tion, the lead pros­e­cu­tor, Queen’s Counsel Caroline Hay told the court, the pros­e­cu­tion would be unable to negate the defense’s posi­tion of self-defense.
If the pros­e­cu­tion was unable, after 8 years to negate the defen­dan­t’s claims, [as police offi­cers car­ry­ing out their duties], why were they charged and held in cus­tody and sub­ject­ed to all the atten­dant neg­a­tive ram­i­fi­ca­tions which accom­pa­ny a crim­i­nal trial?

Why the case was brought in the first place must be the ques­tion, and that ques­tion should now be the cen­ter of any posi­tion for­ward for the Police Federation, [if for no-one else]?
It is imper­a­tive that the sys­tem of jus­tice be fair to all JAMAICANS, not just the priv­i­leged few who dwell in ivory tow­ers above Cross-Roads.
In that regard, Jamaicans can least afford to have the voic­es of those priv­i­leged few dom­i­nate pol­i­cy posi­tions as they are the least and last to be neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by vio­lent crimes.
Already there have been some pre­emp­tive salvos launched about what should hap­pen to police offi­cers who plant evi­dence in order to gain con­vic­tions.
None of those voic­es have said a sin­gle word about how Terrence Williams, Hamish Campbell and INDECOM manip­u­lat­ed a dis­grun­tled con­sta­ble [Chucky Brown], not only to con­fess and crim­i­nal­ly impli­cate him­self in mur­ders, but to lie on his colleagues.

It was clear dur­ing the tri­al that not only was the evi­dence before the court shaky but it appeared that the inves­ti­gat­ing agency INDECOM, pro­duced expert wit­ness­es who were.….….… let’s just say, less than experts.
During the tri­al, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes the tri­al judge expressed con­cern about whether the accused police­men were afford­ed an objec­tive and fair inves­ti­ga­tion? Mind you, not a fair tri­al, but a fair inves­ti­ga­tion, that ought to give every­one pause.
What I haven’t heard is a sin­gle peep from any of the self-right­eous crim­i­nal defense lawyers who have an opin­ion on every­thing speak to this com­ment from the chief jus­tice.
The Judge fur­ther added crit­i­cal­ly,[ that it seemed that the accused were being tar­get­ed by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM)].
Again, its crick­ets from the usu­al­ly vocif­er­ous self-pro­claimed author­i­ties on the law and moral­i­ty in our tiny ticky-ticky pond.
Is jus­tice for every­one but mem­bers of the police force? 

According to sources in the court­room, the Defense pre­sent­ed a doc­u­ment which indi­cat­ed that the error rate for a properly/​trained exam­in­er with the required com­pe­tence is between 3.4% — 6. 5%.
Additionally, those who were of sub­stan­dard train­ing, the error rate is between 15 – 25%.

Witnesses who tes­ti­fied on behalf of INDECOM dis­agreed with ter­mi­nolo­gies and set stan­dards used by renowned experts.
One wit­ness, in par­tic­u­lar, was unable to agree with clear incon­sis­ten­cies which were clear even to the untrained eye. 
Justice Sykes told the Home Circuit Court, in the absence of the jury, that he first became con­cerned when accused Detective Corporal Kevin Adams and District Constable Howard Brown were iden­ti­fied as ‘Gaza Man’ and ‘Chucky’, respec­tive­ly, by a Crown wit­ness.
That same wit­ness the next day admit­ted that he made a mis­take.

It is impor­tant to under­stand that the experts used by INDECOM were indeed sub­stan­dard.
And that the rea­son that the pros­e­cu­tion could not even meet the most basic pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al stan­dards which would have forced the three offi­cers to mount a defense, was the incom­pe­tence of INDECOM’s own expert wit­ness­es and the weak­ness of the evi­dence pre­sent­ed to the court.
On these fault lines in the sys­tem, the lives and lib­er­ty of mem­bers of the JCF are being decid­ed by the very tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en by these indi­vid­u­als on behalf of INDECOM.
On these types of fraud­u­lent and con­coct­ed evi­dence, INDECOM is ruin­ing the lives of hard-work­ing police offi­cers who are sim­ply try­ing to do an incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous and dif­fi­cult job. 

From the begin­ning of the process, which brought INDECOM into exis­tence I argued that before a body like INDECOM is cre­at­ed appro­pri­ate lev­els of resources, (as was eco­nom­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble), should be appro­pri­at­ed to bring the Justice sys­tem up to cred­i­ble stan­dards.
Which meant, upgrad­ing the police and courts so that deliv­ery of the jus­tice prod­uct can be time­ly and fair, crit­i­cal require­ments for reduc­ing crime.
I argued then, despite protes­ta­tions to the con­trary, that cre­at­ing INDECOM would cause crime to esca­late as peo­ple would be embold­ened to be dis­re­spect­ful not just to indi­vid­ual police offi­cers but to the col­lec­tive we refer to as the rule of law.
On that alone, I have been vin­di­cat­ed ten times over as INDECOM is turn­ing out to be an out of con­trol alba­tros around the nation’s neck.

Oversight of the Police is a fore­gone con­clu­sion. how­ev­er, there were effec­tive over­sight of the police, (sev­er­al lay­ers) which had greater mea­sur­able suc­cess beyond any­thing INDECOM has achieved since it came into exis­tence.
The argu­ments prof­fered by ene­mies of the police and those clam­or­ing for INDECOM was that the police can­not police the police.
Those catchy buzz terms sound­ed rather good to those detrac­tors but they nev­er both­ered to think about the sev­er­al civil­ian com­plaint bod­ies which exist­ed pre INDECOM.
The nar­ra­tive was far too juicy, it sound­ed far too ratio­nal, even for some ex-mem­bers who clam­ored for more over­sight with­out under­stand­ing the del­i­cate bal­ance which ought to exist between over­sight and qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty.
What those lay­ers of over­sight lacked were agen­das anti­thet­i­cal to the good of the nation.
INDECOM has no loy­al­ty to the nation, it has no com­mit­ment to nation-build­ing, as the JCF has done, giv­ing blood and tears through­out its exis­tence.
INDECOM is ded­i­cat­ed to the ego of an ego­ma­ni­a­cal nar­cis­sist, its mis­sion is geared toward decon­struct­ing the JCF to the delight of those who argued for its creation.

As an aside, what exact­ly has Antony Anderson done dif­fer­ent­ly, (no scratch that ) done bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous two com­mis­sion­ers of police who pre­ced­ed him?
There is no one clam­or­ing for a change of the com­mis­sion­er of police.
Could that be because he was nev­er a police offi­cer?
I believe the nation’s dirty draw­ers is show­ing on this and the odor is rather obnoxious.

As the man­hunt for the white man sus­pect­ed of killing 7‑year-old Jazmine Barnes con­tin­ues, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office has released a com­pos­ite sketch of the alleged killer. 

On Tuesday night, a Republican-dom­i­nat­ed Senate passed First Step, paving the way for the crim­i­nal jus­tice reform bill to clear the House and be signed into law by Donald Trump. The bipar­ti­san bill, which was over­whelm­ing­ly passed in an 87 – 12 vote, is wide­ly con­sid­ered to the most sub­stan­tial leg­is­la­tion affect­ing the fed­er­al prison sys­tem in decades.

As the New York Times reports, the leg­is­la­tion pack­ages togeth­er a num­ber of reforms aimed at reduc­ing recidi­vism and dra­con­ian sen­tences for peo­ple locked up in fed­er­al pris­ons.
Under the bill, thou­sands of fed­er­al inmates will be able to have their sen­tences reduced imme­di­ate­ly, and ear­ly-release pro­grams and job train­ing will be expand­ed. Mandatory min­i­mum sen­tences for non­vi­o­lent drug offend­ers would also be reduced, and judges will be giv­en more free­dom to go around manda­to­ry min­i­mums. The bill also ends the prac­tice of shack­ling preg­nant inmates in fed­er­al prison, as well as pro­hibits juve­nile soli­tary con­fine­ment in “almost all cas­es” accord­ing to the Times.

The new leg­is­la­tion has been in the works since Barack Obama was in office and has drawn a wide swath of sup­port from lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives. Kim Kardashian and Jared Kushner have pub­licly sup­port­ed the bill (with Kushner, in par­tic­u­lar, being cred­it­ed with orches­trat­ing Trump’s sup­port), as have the American Civil Liberties Union and a Koch broth­ers-backed group, Right on Crime.

Because race and America’s penal sys­tem are so deeply inter­twined, the First Step bill would the­o­ret­i­cal­ly have a dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact on com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. The Times not­ed that one pro­vi­sion of the bill could decrease the sen­tences of “sev­er­al thou­sand drug offend­ers serv­ing lengthy sen­tences for crack-cocaine offens­es.” During the “War on Drugs” era, black crack deal­ers were pun­ished far more heav­i­ly than white offend­ers deal­ing coke. Even a sen­a­tor like Ted “bury me under a que­so foun­tain” Cruz wasn’t afraid to put that at the fore­front in his com­ments last night.
Read more here ; https://​www​.the​root​.com/​f​i​r​s​t​-​s​t​e​p​-​i​s​-​o​n​e​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​b​i​g​g​e​s​t​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​r​e​f​o​r​-​1​8​3​1​2​1​4​003

In a con­ver­sa­tion I had with a friend yes­ter­day on the stub­born crime epi­dem­ic in Jamaica, I opined that the prob­lem with our small coun­try is the fact that there is such a high tol­er­ance for crim­i­nal behav­ior and the coun­try is deemed to be 84% cor­rupt.
We can ignore the num­bers and pre­tend that we are a first world coun­try. We may even sub­scribe to the inane the­o­ry prof­fered by the morons up at Mona that if we sim­ply guar­an­tee killers rights crime will disappear.

On the oth­er hand, while peo­ple like myself and oth­ers sim­ply want a crime-free coun­try in which chil­dren can play in peace and their par­ents can be all they can be, there may already be too many cor­rupt peo­ple for that to be a real­i­ty.
That ship may have already sailed.

Delroy Chuck the Justice Minister has placed the issue of Lay Magistrate (JP) front and cen­ter since tak­ing over that min­istry.
The way Chuck sells the Lay Magistrates pro­gramme one would walk away believ­ing it is a panacea for the nation’s crime prob­lem.
Now, for the record, I am not per­son­al­ly opposed to the (JP) pro­gram, it can be a force mul­ti­pli­er in the search for a more law-abid­ing soci­ety.
Nevertheless, the cor­ro­sive ten­ta­cles of pol­i­tics and the ever-present lure of a quick buck is more than enough to give pause to any­one when we hear the min­is­ter talk about this pro­gram.
And so now we hear that in the Montego Bay Bus park one can have any doc­u­ment val­i­dat­ed by jus­tices of the peace who are pros­ti­tut­ing their ser­vices for a drink or a lunch or two hun­dred dol­lars cash.

See sto­ry here: 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​8​1​2​1​6​/​j​o​k​i​n​g​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​j​p​s​-​i​l​l​e​g​a​l​l​y​-​c​e​r​t​i​f​y​i​n​g​-​d​o​c​u​m​e​n​t​s​-​s​t​r​a​n​g​e​r​s​-​m​o​b​a​y​-​bus

Now we all know the sto­ry with Justices of the peace in Jamaica but I real­ly thought that after all these years since I left law-enforce­ment the coun­try would be mov­ing for­ward not back­ward.
In speak­ing to the ZOSO issue in Montego Bay over a year ago Delroy Chuck by his own [fiat] placed Justices of the peace over the police and gave them the pow­er to decide whether crim­i­nal sus­pects could be held in cus­tody by law enforce­ment with­out the say-so of a JP.
Now I want you to imag­ine a sce­nario in any oth­er coun­try in which ordi­nary polit­i­cal hacks would be the decid­ing author­i­ty on whether crim­i­nal sus­pects may be detained over the wis­dom and author­i­ty of the police.

I spoke about the fol­ly of this move at the time, now we hear of the whole­sale sell­ing and pros­ti­tu­tion of (Governmental seal ) my these mis­cre­ant crim­i­nals parad­ing as upstand­ing citizens.

That is the rea­son why right­eous indig­na­tion at crim­i­nal con­duct comes up against such oppo­si­tion by Jamaicans.
We have a pos­si­ble sce­nario of two sit­u­a­tions. (a) either there is a silent major­i­ty of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens out there or (b) the pool is filthy and we have already lost this beau­ti­ful Island.
When we can no longer dif­fer­en­ti­ate between wrong and right when we cel­e­brate con­vict­ed felons and malign those who risk life and limb to defend oth­ers they do not know we may already be too far gone.

Look, we can talk all the shit we want to now and con­tin­ue with the pre­tense, (you know what I mean with your faux patri­o­tism)?
But when the rub­ber meets the road, every­one in Jamaica val­ues the abil­i­ty to trav­el out­side the small 4’411 square mile Island.
So set aside your bull­shit patri­o­tism and rec­og­nize these facts.
When the International com­mu­ni­ty has no faith in the doc­u­ments signed by the Government about who you are, or your crim­i­nal his­to­ry they close their doors.
When they close their doors our coun­try essen­tial­ly becomes a failed state and your pre­ten­tious ass­es stay put where you are.
That’s what’s at stake here.

Days ago we asked that you the cit­i­zens help the police to find this killer who sum­mar­i­ly and cal­lous­ly mur­dered Lincoln Graham a hard work­ing secu­ri­ty Officer as he did his job at a com­mer­cial enti­ty in Portmore Saint Catherine.

We do not yet know all the facts but we are reli­ably informed that this piece of garbage has been appre­hend­ed by the police and is in custody.

The infor­ma­tion we have so far indi­cates that he was cap­tured in the Old Harbor Bay sec­tion of the Parish.
As more infor­ma­tion becomes avail­able we will update this post.
In the mean­time, we salute the police for mov­ing with haste to cap­ture this real dan­ger to the soci­ety.

Unfortunately, for the fam­i­ly of the dece­dent, Mister Graham, jus­tice is not guar­an­teed as this piece of garbage will be in the sys­tem and the lib­er­al sys­tem which favors his kind will do all in its pow­er to ensure that he does not face justice.

This is the rea­son I per­son­al­ly advo­cate for a dif­fer­ent brand of jus­tice for these killers when we have no doubt that they did what they are accused of doing and we know that the sys­tem is dead set on work­ing on their behalf.
Nevertheless, we thank all who worked to make this arrest possible.

Recently, Minister of National Security Horace Chang stat­ed that when his par­ty took pow­er they inher­it­ed, a glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guard com­pa­ny, (speak­ing of the Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCF)).
I was unsure how to process that state­ment.
On the one hand, the JCF’s lead­er­ship have been woe­ful­ly lack­ing, derelict, incom­pe­tent even, in exe­cut­ing the lead­er­ship the agency needs.
Furthermore, even with the woe­ful lack of resources giv­en the depart­ment, the high com­mand has not demon­strat­ed the kind of for­ward think­ing nec­es­sary to max­i­mize the resources at its dis­pos­al.
But the JCF has nev­er been about hard results, its focus through­out its exis­tence has large­ly been about form rather than sub­stance.
Sure, the agency can put on a smart drill parade to impress the Island’s bour­geoisie and the poor commoners.

Officers of all ranks can be count­ed on to look smart in their imprac­ti­cal colo­nial-era uni­forms, per­form­ing all kinds of tricks and some­times stun­ning feats to the delight of the upper class.
All of this is rem­i­nis­cent of the spec­ta­cle of the old Roman amphithe­aters in which glad­i­a­tors per­formed to the death, to the delight of the upper class. 
But when the time comes for the JCF to be a mod­ern evolv­ing law enforce­ment agency which has strate­gic goals and test­ed strate­gies to go after crim­i­nals that is where the agency falls short.

On the oth­er hand, the men and women who do the grunge work can­not be fault­ed for the incom­pe­tence of their lead­ers.
Poor things many would not even under­stand that the lead­er­ship of the agency do not care about them and are only in it to secure their own inter­est.
Nevertheless hav­ing thought through the Minister’s state­ment I wrote a response and I stand by that response today.
Regardless of how Chang’s state­ment was viewed, his words could have been more art­ful, less dis­re­spect­ful.
In seek­ing to make polit­i­cal hay out of the fact that the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion had not done due dili­gence to law-enforce­ment, the sor­ry lit­tle man threw in a lit­tle uncalled for dis­re­spect to the men and women of the force.
Understandably, the ran­cid bel­li­cos­i­ty inside these lit­tle par­ti­sans makes decen­cy and respect impossible.

Now hav­ing said that, pejo­ra­tive­ly com­par­ing Jamaican police offi­cers to [secu­ri­ty guards] may not be such a dis­re­spect­ful thing after all.
In many cas­es, the guard’s uni­forms are bet­ter and more prac­ti­cal than that of police offi­cers.
Many are paid bet­ter than police offi­cers.
Their inter­est is para­mount to their employ­ers, who do not put them out there on their own with­out a sup­port struc­ture.
Their employ­ers are not part of the process of com­mis­sion and omis­sion which places their inter­est and well-being in jeop­ardy and expos­es them to prison and ridicule for doing what they are sworn to do.

In the recent death of [King Alarm]secu­ri­ty guard Lincoln Graham in a shootout in Portmore St Catherine .King Alarm exec­u­tives act­ed in a way that the Police High Command could only dream of.
Responding to the shoot­ing death of their col­league and employee.

STATEMENT FROM KING ALARM

“We con­firm the trag­ic and most unfor­tu­nate fatal shoot­ing of one of our ded­i­cat­ed secu­ri­ty offi­cers.”
“Preliminary inves­ti­ga­tions sug­gest that offi­cer Graham dis­played remark­able brav­ery in the car­ry­ing out of his duties, and ‎he sad­ly paid the ulti­mate price for his brav­ery and hero­ism.”
“Officer Graham’s hero­ic actions, in the face of the most adverse of cir­cum­stances, no doubt helped to pro­tect the lives and prop­er­ty of oth­ers, and he died doing what he pledged to do many years ago — serve and pro­tect.” 
“We at KingAlarm have already reached out to Crime Stop and encour­age those with infor­ma­tion relat­ing to this heinous crime to share it anony­mous­ly with them by call­ing 311, or to do so direct­ly with the Jamaica Constabulary ‎Force (JCF), which has already com­menced inves­ti­ga­tions.” 
“We thank our clients, mem­bers of the pub­lic and col­leagues from with­in the secu­ri­ty indus­try for their out­pour­ing of sup­port dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time, as we mourn the untime­ly pass­ing of a mem­ber of our KingAlarm family.” 

When has the JCF ever stood up and made a state­ment as force­ful, con­cise and unequiv­o­cal as this when a brave police offi­cer gives his life in ser­vice to his coun­try?
Does the lead­er­ship of the JCF even know how to put togeth­er a state­ment of this cal­iber?
That is the ques­tion.
I’m begin­ning to think that what Horace Chang meant for harm and dis­re­spect may actu­al­ly be a badge of hon­or.
I salute all police offi­cers, mem­bers of our mil­i­tary and secu­ri­ty offi­cers.
You are the good guys who put your lives on the line in defense of oth­ers, even those who do not deserve it.
Horace Chang being front and cen­ter, a recip­i­ent of what he does not deserve.
As you strive to secure the coun­try this hol­i­day sea­son for both the just and the unjust, remem­ber your fam­i­lies.
Make sure that what­ev­er you do, give enough thought to the well being of your own fam­i­lies, it is up to you to look out for their wel­fare.
No one else can be count­ed on to do so.

I am a con­stant crit­ic of the JCF’s senior lead­er­ship which(a) loves to make state­ments to the press it gen­er­al­ly can­not back up.(b) speaks out of turn on crit­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tions and © sits in offices rather than be out on the streets sup­port­ing the men and women under their command.

This lit­tle list of areas in which I can­not agree with the police high com­mand is by far not the only dis­agree­ment that I have as some­one look­ing in.
Certainly there are many areas that the police high com­mand can deliv­er a bet­ter qual­i­ty of ser­vice to the silent major­i­ty of Jamaicans who are not law-break­ers and who want to stand with their police officers.

Nevertheless, when I observe any glim­mer of hope that at least one mem­ber of the senior fra­ter­ni­ty gets it, I am oblig­at­ed to bring it to you just as I bring the crit­i­cisms.
So let’s shout out a “good job” to this senior offi­cer who is out there on a bicy­cle doing the rounds.
Good job officer.

The $15 mil­lion drug bust at Regents Gardens apart­ment com­plex in Westmoorings on Tuesday, has been linked to a St Ann’s busi­ness­man with close ties to one of the sus­pects held for the drug seizure.

The busi­ness­man was under sur­veil­lance for sev­er­al months and inves­ti­ga­tors believe he car­ried on a lucra­tive and brisk trade involv­ing mar­i­jua­na and cocaine between TT, oth­er Caricom coun­tries and North America. 

The man is believed to have very close ties with crim­i­nal ele­ments in Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico. According to intel­li­gence sources, the drugs may have entered Trinidad on Monday night close to a busi­ness­place in Carenage. 

The ille­gal port of entry which is close to a gas sta­tion in the West is also believed to be the area where drugs are usu­al­ly dropped off. Newsday under­stands the drugs was sup­posed to be re-pack­aged to be sold local­ly, in the Caribbean and in North America. 

The five who were detained fol­low­ing the seizure of the drugs at the apart­ment were first tak­en to the Four Roads Police Station but lat­er removed to dif­fer­ent sta­tions in Port of Spain Division. 

On Tuesday at 11 am, a joint team of offi­cers from the Special Operations Response Team act­ed on infor­ma­tion went to the apart­ment where the drugs were found. It is believed the drugs orig­i­nat­ed from Venezuela. No charges have been laid as yet and inves­ti­ga­tions are ongo­ing.
(Source: news­day.co​.tt)

Having served in the JCF for a brief ten years I have been a vocal crit­ic of the Agency in areas in which I know it can be bet­ter despite the chal­lenges it faces. I am also a staunch sup­port­er because I know we des­per­ate­ly need law enforce­ment if we are to sur­vive as a nation.

And so for us Jamaicans, not of mal-intent, it is impor­tant that we come togeth­er for the greater good of our coun­try.
It is with that in mind that I wrote an arti­cle in response to the Public Defender, Arlene Harrison-Henry’s par­tial sub­mis­sion to a select com­mit­tee of the par­lia­ment on a raft of issues to include the treat­ment of pris­on­ers in cus­tody and that pub­lic body’s per­cep­tions regard­ing the State of Emergencies declared and in effect in select areas.

Although the (OPD) said it’s sub­mis­sion was not com­plete, I thought that there were areas in which the Public Defender had dipped its nose that was vast­ly out­side its remit.
What was clear to me is that like Earl Witter and [stand-in] Matondo Mukulu before her, Arlene Harrison-Henry’s under­stand­ing of her role and that of her office was one which was cre­at­ed to be antag­o­nis­tic toward law ‑enforce­ment.
This may or may not be so, it could also be that [Arlene Harrison-Henry] who came from the Bar Association is mere­ly act­ing-out what are nat­ur­al instincts evi­dent in many lawyers to be unprin­ci­pled rapa­cious vul­tures rather than prin­ci­pled offi­cers of the court. 

Nevertheless, in writ­ing a response I tried to steer clear of specifics, con­ver­sant that the often­times inept Constabulary, should itself con­firm or refute the claims made by the Public Defender. 
In fact, I was hop­ing that a response would come from the JCF which sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly rub­bish­es the claims made by the Public Defender.
That response came today in a no-non­sense response from the com­mand­ing offi­cer Senior Superintendent of Police Anthony Morris, who is the offi­cer in charge of the SOE. 

Speaking to local media (SSP) Morris rub­bished spe­cif­ic areas of Harrison-Henry’s report on the num­ber of chil­dren in police cus­tody and oth­er areas.
Arlene Harrison-Henry lied to the Parliament that there were some 105 chil­dren up to the age of 17 detained as of October 31.
SSP Morris refut­ed that claim,“At no time did we ever have that num­ber of chil­dren in cus­tody.”
Police records show that in January, 10 chil­dren were in cus­tody; in February there were 12; in March, eight; April, 11; May, sev­en; June, five; July, 13; August, 12; September had eight; October, 11; and dur­ing this month, eight.
See link here. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​f​r​o​n​t​-​p​a​g​e​/​n​o​t​-​t​r​u​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​c​o​u​n​t​e​r​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​d​e​f​e​n​d​e​r​-​s​_​1​5​1​0​6​0​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​606

The larg­er issue here is this, what if there were the 105 chil­dren Harrison-Henry argued in cus­tody?
If these minors com­mit­ted crimes, are the police sup­posed to sim­ply walk away from arrest­ing them?
Minors are walk­ing around mur­der­ing peo­ple in Jamaica are the police sup­posed to sim­ply ignore them?

The Public Defender talked about the qual­i­ty of the food being giv­en pris­on­ers. The offi­cer point­ed out that the meals are pro­vid­ed for both police offi­cers and pris­on­ers alike. Asked about the qual­i­ty the senior offi­cer said, for bulk food, it was pret­ty good and encour­aged the media to go see for themselves.

On bath­room facil­i­ties that too was a [lie] the media found that no clean up was done in antic­i­pa­tion of their arrival and in fact dis­cov­ered that there were decent ablu­tion areas for pris­on­ers to prac­tice per­son­al hygiene.
According to the (Jamaica Observer) Police Officers were not too pleased with the fraud­u­lent report sub­mit­ted by Arlene Harrison-Henry.
“The infor­ma­tion that end­ed up in the pub­lic domain, which I think was meant to demean the (JCF) was broad­cast right through­out Jamaica,” said Deputy Superintendent Ainsley McCarty.

Suffice to say, the day before the pub­lic defend­er went to Parliament — because the pub­lic defend­er has spo­ken to me on numer­ous occa­sions and she knows that I am acces­si­ble 24 hours a day to her — she called me to clar­i­fy cer­tain infor­ma­tion. And if she want­ed [fur­ther] clar­i­ty, she could have asked dur­ing that peri­od of time and I would have said to the pub­lic defend­er that this was the sit­u­a­tion,” DSP McCarty said.

Which brings us to motive.
Being anti-police is Jamaica’s largest growth indus­try. Like every­one else, Arlene Harrison-Henry is cru­cial­ly aware of this, as is every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the streets.
Like Terrence Williams who heads INDECOM the Independent Commission Of Inquiries, every­one seek­ing rel­e­vance, nation­al awards, and oth­er acco­lades are crit­i­cal­ly aware that dog­ging the police depart­ment is a sure­fire way to get what they seek.
Arlene Harrison-Henry a duplic­i­tous, con­niv­ing, and rapa­cious lawyer did not make her­self avail­able for the job because of any burn­ing desire to do good.
Like count­less oth­ers before her, includ­ing the dis­graced for­mer head of (JFJ) Jamaicans for Justice Carolyn Gomes, she is seek­ing fame and recog­ni­tion and what bet­ter strat­e­gy than to ride on the backs of the police to get there?

And so there must be a recog­ni­tion that peo­ple have their own indi­vid­ual motives and agen­das.
As such the Parliament must move to cod­i­fy into law, safe­guards which appro­pri­ate­ly crim­i­nal­izes those who would lie to the par­lia­ment.
The exi­gen­cies of the times demand it. The leg­is­la­ture must act on it.

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The Police report­ed that at about 10:05 pm on Tuesday November 27^th, cit­i­zens in the Caymanas Bay area of Saint Catherine heard sev­er­al loud explo­sions sound­ing like gun­shots com­ing from an area of the com­mu­ni­ty.

On Wednesday the 28^th at about 7:30:am a res­i­dent went to enquire at a near­by house from where the explo­sions seemed to have come the day before.
The body of three men were dis­cov­ered lying face down in blood on the veran­dah.
The indi­vid­ual sum­moned the police who were on patrol in the area.
Police respond­ed and a search of the house revealed a fourth body of a male in a room to the rear of the house lying face down with what appeared to be gun­shot wounds.
The police have ten­ta­tive­ly iden­ti­fied the fourth decedant as Jerry Solomon, [o/​c Jerry Dawg]who is said to be the [area leader] in the com­mu­ni­ty, oth­er­wise called a [Don].

Two of the oth­er deceased have also been ten­ta­tive­ly iden­ti­fied by their alias­es, Bobby and Seafood( . The fourt per­son is yet to be inden­ti­fied.
Several 9mm spent cas­ings, live rounds, bul­let frag­ments and three Molotov cock­tail bombs were report­ed­ly dis­cov­ered at the scene.
Investigations con­tin­ues into these lat­est killings.

A for­mer South Florida police chief has been sen­tenced to three years in prison for fram­ing black peo­ple for crimes they didn’t com­mit, in order to boost his department’s crime-solv­ing stats.
Raimundo Atesiano, 53, for­mer­ly the chief of the Biscayne Park Police Department in Miami-Dade County, was sen­tenced by a fed­er­al judge on Tuesday for con­spir­a­cy to deprive indi­vid­u­als of their civ­il rights.
“When I took the job, I was not pre­pared,” Atesiano told U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore before his sen­tenc­ing, accord­ing to the Miami Herald. “I made some very, very bad decisions.”

Atesiano was report­ed­ly giv­en two weeks before hav­ing to report to prison, allow­ing him to spend time with his moth­er, who is ter­mi­nal­ly ill.One month ago, three oth­er for­mer Biscayne Park offi­cers — Guillermo Ravelo, Charlie Dayoub and Raul Fernandez — were sen­tenced for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the scheme.
Prosecutors said Aresiano on three occa­sions ordered them to false­ly arrest and charge three peo­ple for unsolved bur­glar­ies. One of those arrest­ed was just 16 years old when he was false­ly accused. Davoub and Fernandez were each sen­tenced to one year in prison; Ravelo was sen­tenced to 27 months.
“Putting an arrest sta­tis­tic above the rights of an inno­cent man instead of work­ing to pro­tect all our cit­i­zens under­mines the safe­ty goals of every Miami-Dade police depart­ment,” said State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in a state­ment on Tuesday. “Miami-Dade’s res­i­dents deserve hon­esty and integri­ty, qual­i­ties that Raimundo Atesiano delib­er­ate­ly failed to deliver.”One of the three vic­tims, who served five years in prison for a series of bur­glar­ies that he was false­ly accused of com­mit­ting, has filed a fed­er­al law­suit that accus­es the town and its for­mer offi­cers of vio­lat­ing his civ­il rights. His con­vic­tion was tossed by a judge in September. Story orig­i­nat­ed here;https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​e​x​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​c​h​i​e​f​-​s​e​n​t​e​n​c​e​d​-​f​o​r​-​f​r​a​m​i​n​g​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​m​e​n​_​u​s​_​5​b​f​d​9​4​9​d​e​4​b​0​3​b​2​3​0​f​a​7​b​293