A Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) heli­copter has crashed in St Catherine.
The JDF’s civ­il-mil­i­tary coöper­a­tion and media affairs offi­cer Major Basil Jarrett told local media.
The heli­copter came down in the area of Dunbeholden, which runs between Portmore and Spanish Town.
Jarrett said the pilot, who was the sole occu­pant, was injured and has been tak­en to hos­pi­tal.
He said emer­gency work­ers are now at the scene.

The admission stopped well short of any type of apology.

Written By NewsOne Staff

Police respond­ing to a shoot­ing at a mall in Alabama appar­ent­ly shot and killed the wrong per­son — a Black man — leav­ing the sus­pect­ed gun­man at large fol­low­ing a vio­lent episode that wound­ed two oth­ers on Thanksgiving night.

Emantic “EJ” Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., “an active duty offi­cer for the Army,” was report­ed­ly shot in the face and died at the Riverchase Galleria in the town of Hoover as police iden­ti­fied him as their pri­ma­ry sus­pect. The 21-year-old, who was armed and licensed to car­ry a gun, was report­ed­ly home for the hol­i­days when he was killed.

Law enforce­ment was seem­ing­ly eager to announce how they were able to kill a sus­pect, even going so far as to announce it to the press before any appar­ent inves­ti­ga­tion had been launched. That proved to be one of a hand­ful of mis­takes the Hoover Police Department made Thursday, accord­ing to AL​.com.“We regret that our ini­tial media release was not total­ly accu­rate, but new evi­dence indi­cates that it was not,’’ Hoover Police Captain Gregg Rector said.

“We remain com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing the integri­ty of this inves­ti­ga­tion, help­ing deter­mine the facts involved, and assist­ing ALEA in their efforts.”According to AL​.com, “Rector said inves­ti­ga­tors now believe that more than two indi­vid­u­als were involved in the ini­tial alter­ca­tion. The infor­ma­tion indi­cates that there is at least one gun­man still at-large, who could be respon­si­ble for the shoot­ing of the 18-year-old male and 12-year-old female.”

The admis­sion stopped well short of any type of apol­o­gy for what on the sur­face appeared to be a case of police see­ing a Black man with a gun in an open car­ry state and assum­ing the worst. Chances were more than like­ly that police will claim they feared for their lives, a com­mon defense that killer cops rou­tine­ly rely on to elude any sort of pun­ish­ment or crim­i­nal charges.

The shoot­ing hap­pened ahead of Black Friday sales that drew shop­pers to the mall. It bore some sim­i­lar­i­ties to anoth­er in sub­ur­ban Chicago ear­li­er this month, when a Black secu­ri­ty guard try­ing to sub­due a gun­man was shot to death by police. Jemel Roberson was wear­ing a shirt embla­zoned with the word “SECURITY” and still got shot on Nov. 11. His funer­al was sched­uled for Saturday. https://​new​sone​.com/​3​8​3​7​9​3​5​/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​k​i​l​l​-​e​j​-​b​r​a​d​f​o​r​d​-​j​r​-​a​l​a​b​a​m​a​-​m​a​l​l​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​/​?​f​b​c​l​i​d​=​I​w​A​R​0​8​S​h​l​L​e​0​5​U​n​j​q​H​2​6​g​_​m​1​e​x​b​v​d​q​p​S​T​l​V​S​1​S​r​K​m​Q​J​Q​g​H​y​j​L​O​d​5​H​X​x​R​I​a​5Rk

One of the things I have argued over the years to much push-back from some of my friends is that police train­ing is inad­e­quate.
I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that the drills should be cur­tailed to 10% of what it is present­ly.
Drills are pure­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al, they lit­er­al­ly serve no use­ful pur­pose in real polic­ing prac­tices.
The 90% of the time tak­en from (drills) should be uti­lized in weight train­ing and swim­ming.
Hand-to-hand train­ing is crit­i­cal as this is per­haps going to be the most uti­lized ele­ment by offi­cers and may arguably be the dif­fer­ence between life and death of officers.

I make the fore­gone in light of an inci­dent involv­ing an offi­cer and a school­boy at the Kellits High School in Clarendon
In the inci­dent, the offi­cer was bad­ly man­han­dled and over­pow­ered by the school­boy in quick time.
Rather than crit­i­cize the offi­cer and what he may or may not have done wrong in the time in which he was assault­ed I would rather like to once again point to (a)the inef­fec­tive­ness of the train­ing in the Jamaica Constabulary Force and (b) the ease with which cit­i­zens feel free to assault offi­cers of the force as a con­se­quence of the lack of puni­tive com­po­nents in the law.

Assaulting a police offi­cer in most devel­oped coun­tries is a felony pun­ish­able by real jail time on con­vic­tion.
Jamaica is cer­tain­ly not a devel­oped coun­try but it has­n’t been shy in quick­ly adopt­ing prac­tices it lead­ers deem in their best inter­est from devel­oped coun­tries. 
What has­n’t hap­pened is a bill in the par­lia­ment which address­es appro­pri­ate­ly the dan­gers police face in this volatile envi­ron­ment.
Conversely, the INDECOM bill was intro­duced in 2010 under the Jamaica Labor Party’s (JLP) Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, with the full back­ing of the Opposition People’s National Party(PNP).
That bill became law with mar­gin­al results against crooked cops and dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for crime fight­ing on the Island.
Additionally, admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties have empow­ered oth­er agen­cies like the Peblic Defender’s Act which cre­at­ed anoth­er lay­er of state-fund­ed antag­o­nism against law-enforce­ment, unprece­dent­ed any­where in the world.
Arguably the only thing the two polit­i­cal par­ties in Jamaica can find com­mon cause around is their dis­gust for law-enforce­ment and the rule of law.

Changing police com­mis­sion­ers, putting friends into posi­tions of pow­er will not change the tra­jec­to­ry of crime.
Changing the struc­tur­al inad­e­qua­cies in the train­ing reg­i­men and giv­ing law enforce­ment the tools it needs to get the job done will.
Job one for all police offi­cers is self-preser­va­tion. 
The train­ing the police is receiv­ing is far from ade­quate hence these inci­dents. Thankfully this one did not result in the loss of life but offi­cers have lost their lives before in this way.
I call on the Government once again, shelve the archa­ic train­ing and intro­duce real train­ing, com­men­su­rate with the dic­tates of the times. 
The lit­tle thug will most like­ly get a brush on the wrist by a lib­er­al judge. The offi­cer is for­ev­er exposed to ridicule and the law­less­ness will con­tin­ue.
It will con­tin­ue because the Government which has the pow­er to put a stop to it refus­es to give law enforce­ment the nec­es­sary tools they need to do their jobs safe­ly and effectively.

There are roles with­in soci­eties which strive for the rule of law and the prin­ci­ples of basic human rights to have gen­uine, bal­anced and vig­i­lant over­sight of Governmental activ­i­ties.
Nevertheless, those over­sights have to be exe­cut­ed against a fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of the role and respon­si­bil­i­ty the gov­ern­ment has in pro­tect­ing the broad­er soci­ety from harm.
They must also be bal­anced against the lim­i­ta­tions of gov­ern­ment to ade­quate­ly ful­fill all best prac­tices with­in the frame­work of its finan­cial constraints.

It as against this back­ground that I am unsure whether in Jamaica’s case, the Office of Public Defender and it’s prin­ci­pal offi­cer, Arlene Harrison-Henry is ful­ly con­ver­sant of those respon­si­bil­i­ties to which the Government is oblig­at­ed.
There is always room for improve­ment and in the Jamaican pub­lic sec­tor, hard­ly any­one could rea­son­ably argue that there is due dili­gence in the dis­pen­sa­tion of all pub­lic func­tions.

Harrison-Henry was tes­ti­fy­ing before the Internal and External Affairs Committee of Parliament yes­ter­day, on the effects of the State Of Emergency (SOE) in the parish of Saint James.
The (SOE) was ini­ti­at­ed to stem the blood­shed and the mas­sive loss of life in the parish as a result of what the police con­tend is gang vio­lence.

The Public defend­er laid out a raft of issues which she tells the com­mit­tee her office have found lack­ing and are in breach of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.[sic]
Among the issues, she laid out are the following.….

(1)Up to October 9^th, 3,687 per­sons, pri­mar­i­ly young men, have been detained, since the dec­la­ra­tion of the SOE on January 18, 2018.

Typically, this is what hap­pens in (SOE), secu­ri­ty per­son­nel oper­at­ing in the dark (intel­li­gence wise) are forced to scrape up large num­bers of young men whom they believe may be involved in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties.
Given the lim­i­ta­tions tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, the police have to embark on a slow delib­er­a­tive process of sift­ing through latent fin­ger­prints which may or may not exist, of those who may have pre­vi­ous­ly passed through the sys­tem. 
This is a slow anti­quat­ed sys­tem which requires time. Admittedly, it is not the bests sys­tem but it is the sys­tem we have.
This is not the fault of the police.

(2) Only a frac­tion of the peo­ple detained are charged with actu­al crimes, accord­ing to Harrison-Henry.

It would be nice if the law of aver­ages were more in favor of the good guys who are risk­ing their lives, try­ing to pro­duce a safer Jamaica.
If they did they would­n’t be the law of aver­ages now would they? 
Since they aren’t, the over­worked, under­paid, police have to sort through the detainees the old-fash­ioned way.
The police would be glad to have real-time intel­li­gence if Harrison Henry has it, this would go a long way in elim­i­nat­ing some of the incon­ve­niences she com­plains about.

(3) Poor qual­i­ty of food for peo­ple picked up and detained and unsan­i­tary con­di­tions around food.

There is no excuse for this and there will be none com­ing from me.

(4) Detentions are main­ly men from com­mu­ni­ties such as Rose Heights, Norwood, Granville, Flanker. She point­ed out that the bulk of the detainees are young men between the ages of 19 and 25.

That is police busi­ness, the so-called pub­lic ‑defend­er must con­cen­trate on what it is that she and her staff are tasked with doing.
The secu­ri­ty forces have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to take the fight to crim­i­nals regard­less of where they are from, regard­less of their age group.

(5) Concern that police offi­cers and sol­diers some­times take pho­tographs of detainees on their mobile phone. This has impli­ca­tions for the fair­ness of an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion parade for exam­ple.

Members of the Security forces have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to act with pro­fes­sion­al­ism, nev­er­the­less, in the bar­ren intel­li­gence land­scape in which they oper­ate almost blind­ly, it is com­mend­able that mem­bers of the force whose respon­si­bil­i­ty it is to con­tain crim­i­nals are act­ing proac­tive­ly in this regard.

(6) Harsh con­di­tions under which detainees are held at the Freeport Police Station lock-up, which is the hub of the SOE activ­i­ties in St James.

This is a long­stand­ing issue which spawns admin­is­tra­tion of both polit­i­cal par­ties across sev­er­al decades.
It is impor­tant that gov­ern­ment under­stand that if its agents are going to vio­late peo­ple’s basic rights by detain­ing them the least it [must] do is pro­vide them with decent accom­mo­da­tions, food, and health­care for the dura­tion of their incarceration.

See sto­ry here. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​f​r​o​n​t​-​p​a​g​e​/​d​e​p​l​o​r​a​b​l​e​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​d​e​f​e​n​d​e​r​-​o​u​t​l​i​n​e​s​-​s​h​a​b​b​y​-​c​o​n​d​i​t​i​o​n​s​-​f​o​r​-​d​e​t​a​i​n​e​e​s​-​i​n​-​s​t​-​j​a​m​e​s​-​s​o​e​_​1​5​0​3​5​1​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​606

The tes­ti­mo­ny of the Public Defender is sched­uled to resume some­time in the near future to com­plete the delib­er­a­tions on its report.
In light of that, I will nat­u­ral­ly with­hold some of my com­ments.
Nevertheless, it is instruc­tive to observe that nowhere in the report­ing in [the link above] is there any acknowl­edg­ment of the fact that as a result of the actions of the secu­ri­ty forces there has been a marked drop in the num­ber of mur­dered St. James residents.

What I con­clude from this is that there are two com­pet­ing objec­tives at work, nei­ther of which works for the greater good of the Jamaican peo­ple.
On the one hand, the secu­ri­ty forces must find a way to bal­ance deal­ing with the exis­ten­tial issue of vio­lent crimes while tak­ing care as best it can to pro­tect the rights of the most vul­ner­a­ble.
For its part, those who pur­port to pro­tect the rights of the pub­lic must demon­strate that they under­stand the exi­gen­cies of the sit­u­a­tions the nation faces and the con­straints under which the gov­ern­ment is forced to oper­ate.
Neither of these two posi­tions is mutu­al­ly exclu­sive if the egos and per­son­al agen­das are discarded.

A 16-year-old stu­dent of the Spanish Town High School and a res­i­dent of Percy Bush, Lauriston Rojario Lynch was beat­en by cit­i­zens and hand­ed over to police last Friday.Residents claimed that the juve­nile attempt­ed to car­ry out an armed rob­bery and was over­pow­ered.
An Intra Tech TEC‑9 sub-machine gun, MOD99, with the ser­i­al num­ber erased, a mag­a­zine and four rounds of ammu­ni­tion was also hand­ed over to the police.

The Spanish Town Police are inves­ti­gat­ing the incident.

INTRODUCTION

At the risk of sound­ing like a bro­ken record, I will say this to the Jamaican Government again.
For years after leav­ing the JCF I have assid­u­ous­ly stud­ied crime pat­terns and looked at data involv­ing crime in devel­op­ing coun­tries.
As a con­se­quence, I have writ­ten hun­dreds of blog posts and have pro­duced count­less pages of data in sup­port of my the­o­ry that crime can­not be con­tained with­out a firm hand.

(QUALITY OF SERVICE)

In the 27 years since I left the JCF after a brief ten years stint, I have seen the qual­i­ty of ser­vice offered by the JCF dete­ri­o­rate and dis­trust of the Department increase expo­nen­tial­ly.
This two-fold event has cre­at­ed the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty for crime to flour­ish result­ing in the unnec­es­sary deaths of tens of thou­sands of Jamaicans and the entire nation now com­plete­ly trau­ma­tized and desen­si­tized to the hor­rors of the dai­ly bloodshed.

(THE EVOLUTION)

The approach by both polit­i­cal par­ties com­bined, both in admin­is­tra­tion and in oppo­si­tion, have left much to be desired and may log­i­cal­ly be argued to be one of the rea­sons which have caused the con­tin­ued explo­sion of vio­lent crimes across the Island.
For years I have warned that the approach [must] be a two-fold approach which(a) deliv­ers a heavy hand to vio­lent crim­i­nals, but(b) uses a vel­vet glove to mas­sage the rest of soci­ety.

This approach is exact­ly what oth­er soci­eties have used suc­cess­ful­ly and it is the approach safer soci­eties (not total­i­tar­i­an soci­eties) uses today.
Crime can­not be solved unless the appro­pri­ate resources are appro­pri­at­ed and direct­ed to the cause of law enforce­ment.
It is not a lia­bil­i­ty, it is an invest­ment in our sur­vival, lit­er­al­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly.
When we make the deci­sion to ignore the needs of law enforce­ment we have by default giv­en license to the cre­ation and expan­sion of under­ground economies which only ben­e­fits a few crim­i­nals.
Those deci­sions fright­en away legit­i­mate investors and return­ing res­i­dents and embold­en crim­i­nals to set up extor­tion rack­ets by cre­at­ing more fear.

(THE REAL ISSUE)

Administrations of both polit­i­cal par­ties have main­tained a curi­ous indif­fer­ence to this bur­geon­ing prob­lem which is now threat­en­ing the very via­bil­i­ty of the Jamaican state. (see the Tivoli incur­sion of 2010) and events there­after.
The incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion with­in the JCF is not an iso­lat­ed case of sim­ply peo­ple cor­rupt­ed by pow­er tak­ing advan­tage of the sys­tem.
It is a much deep­er across the board rot, not a stranger to oth­er parts of the pub­lic sec­tor. This rot has been made to fes­ter from low wages, lack of resources, lack of respect, insuf­fi­cient train­ing, insuf­fi­cient sup­port leg­isla­tive­ly and struc­tural­ly and a host of oth­er neglect.
The extreme­ly high attri­tion rate with­in the depart­ment is proof that con­trary to pop­u­lar per­cep­tion the lure of a gun and badge is not enough to off­set the burn­ing desire to leave for green­er pastures.

(THE #1 MISTAKE)

Instead of look­ing aggres­sive­ly at the prob­lems in the JCF, if not out of love for the rule of law but out of a recog­ni­tion that no soci­ety can grow and sur­vive in crime, Government’s actions have been to take steps to exac­er­bate the prob­lem.
Instead of cre­at­ing a struc­ture of sup­port to address the prob­lems of the police, admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties have shown open dis­dain and dis­re­spect­ful hos­til­i­ty to mem­bers of the force.
Instead of fix­ing what’s wrong with the force they went a full one hun­dred and eighty degrees by installing in place oth­er agen­cies which have demon­stra­bly cre­at­ed hos­tile rela­tion­ships with the JCF.
See (INDECOM & Office of Public Defender).

(CUMULATIVE EFFECT)

The fact that the small Island of 2.8 Million peo­ple is los­ing well over 1600 of its peo­ple to vio­lence annu­al­ly though ghast­ly, does not tell the whole sto­ry.
The raw death total regard­less of the num­bers, will cer­tain­ly not be the worst-case sce­nario for the coun­try.
The exis­ten­tial threat to the nation’s sol­ven­cy and sov­er­eign­ty will be far more con­se­quen­tial.

For years we have seen the num­ber of vio­lent crimes rise and remain high with the excep­tion of 2010 when the secu­ri­ty forces were forced to use over­whelm­ing force to put down what the coun­try [refus­es to accept] was a [mili­tia upris­ing] against the author­i­ty of the state.
Immediately after that event crim­i­nals large­ly kept their heads down, unsure of the secu­ri­ty forces next move and not want­i­ng to draw their ire.
This was a clear indi­ca­tion that force absolute­ly is the only thing they under­stand and will bow to.
After the Government sig­naled to them that it would be the secu­ri­ty forces which would be on tri­al for the Tivoli event, crime began a steady and deter­mined climb and has con­tin­ued to today.


I want to warn the Governing author­i­ty that the dec­la­ra­tion of States of Emergency (SOE) and declar­ing Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSO) are not panaceas for the nations crime prob­lem.
Let me be clear, you not only have a crime prob­lem.
What you have is a metas­ta­siz­ing mili­tia prob­lem, which is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent than gangs.
Criminal gangs do not oper­ate togeth­er to chal­lenge the author­i­ty of the state. Militias do.
We saw that this con­cept has been on the table since 2010 when hatred for the duly con­sti­tut­ed state far out­weighed polit­i­cal and oth­er dif­fer­ences.
In 2010 loose actors from dif­fer­ing polit­i­cal per­sua­sion found com­mon cause around a sin­gu­lar figure(Christopher Duddus Coke).
Unperturbed by what the state may do they came togeth­er in Tivoli Gardens and stood up to the state.
Eight years lat­er those actors are more close­ly aligned and more sophis­ti­cat­ed­ly armed.
It is no longer just guns, its grenades and silencers, scopes and oth­er more dev­as­tat­ing para­pher­na­lia of war­fare.
Notwithstanding, the Government has not coör­di­nat­ed a cohe­sive strat­e­gy around that real­i­ty, nei­ther has it demon­strat­ed that it under­stands ful­ly the dan­ger these well-armed crim­i­nals pose to the state despite the mass killings.


Right here in our hemi­sphere. Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua offers case stud­ies on the dan­ger of ignor­ing these trends.
Yet the Jamaican polit­i­cal class which has a respon­si­bil­i­ty first and fore­most to pro­tect the coun­try from harm refus­es to con­front that exis­ten­tial threat.
Rather than seek the nec­es­sary exper­tise to once and for all end this prob­lem, admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties have embarked on a sys­tem­at­ic head-in-the-sand approach which large­ly ignores the dan­ger of the bul­let in the body as long as they can hide the blood.
That fal­la­cy includ­ed bring­ing British police who know noth­ing about our cul­ture, envi­ron­ment or crime-fight­ing needs.
They sit in offices push­ing paper, mak­ing press state­ments and fat­ten­ing them­selves at our expense. 
On the oth­er hand, Government looks to their cronies at the University of the West Indies for solu­tions on how to resolve these crit­i­cal issues, an insti­tu­tion which has a ten­u­ous rela­tion­ship with police and has lib­er­al bias­es and ideas which have not been known to work anywhere.

(SOLUTION)
These mass killings in Jamaica are dif­fer­ent than the mass killings in the United States. In the US mass killers are usu­al­ly men­tal­ly deranged indi­vid­u­als, or killers with deep racial or reli­gious ani­mus. Either way, when they rear their heads they either kill them­selves, are cap­tured if they sur­ren­der or are put down with over­whelm­ing force by the state.
In Jamaica, the killings though tied to par­tic­u­lar motives are designed to dri­ve fear into the soci­ety. The actors intend to derive more con­trol for them­selves by par­a­lyz­ing the pop­u­la­tion through fear.
It is work­ing.
A cur­so­ry look at the Spanish-speak­ing coun­tries I named above will give an idea why Jamaica’s Criminal [gangs/​militias] are more in line with those coun­tries than they are with mass killers in the US.

It behooves the admin­is­tra­tion in Kingston to address this issue today with a deci­sive mil­i­tary response.
That response must be a full-throat­ed no holes barred response which leaves no ques­tion that their actions will not be tol­er­at­ed.
Jamaica is only 4411 square miles.
Under no cir­cum­stances, should mili­tias be ter­ror­iz­ing entire com­mu­ni­ties and wip­ing out entire fam­i­lies while there are sol­diers at Up Park Camp play­ing dominoes.

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News from Jamaica’s crime front; Delano ‘Prekeh’ Wilmot, the leader of the infa­mous Ratty gang, which has been ter­ror­iz­ing the com­mu­ni­ties of Cambridge and Retrieve, in St James, was report­ed­ly shot and killed in a con­fronta­tion with mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces in Cambridge this morn­ing.
According to the secu­ri­ty forces, the much-feared gang­ster was killed and an M16 assault rifle seized from his per­son.
His crony anoth­er much-feared gang­ster known only as ‘Cruz’, who was said to be in his com­pa­ny dur­ing the shoot­ing, man­aged to slip away.
The secu­ri­ty forces are report­ed­ly still in pur­suit with the aid of JDF heli­copter.

Parekh was want­ed for sev­er­al murders,

he alleged­ly shot to infamy when he orches­trat­ed an ambush of mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces in which two sol­diers were shot and injured.
He was report­ed­ly ele­vat­ed to the top spot after Ryan ‘Ratty’ Peterkin the leader of the gang was neu­tral­ized by the secu­ri­ty forces.
Bravo for the mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces who con­tin­ue to risk life and limb in sup­port of this crim­i­nal sup­port­ing nation, with­out the recog­ni­tion they deserve.

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H

A friend asked me a while back, “Why do you write”? I was a lit­tle tak­en aback at the ques­tion, but I inti­mat­ed to her that writ­ing was my cho­sen way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing my thoughts.
Some peo­ple rap, sing, write poet­ry, and play musi­cal instru­ments. I love to write; I believe the writ­ten word is intrin­si­cal­ly impor­tant; it leaves an indeli­bly cod­i­fied his­tor­i­cal record of events of the time and a win­dow into the writer’s soul.


She told me she some­times read my work, which I was thank­ful for; she did­n’t have to.
She went on to say that I am my own worst ene­my, as there was too much cussing in my writ­ing, she cau­tioned.
My writ­ing gave her a headache, she said. I would be advised to tone it down.
My friend had no idea that what she told me was music to my ears. I nev­er thought I would write so that peo­ple could feel com­fort­able; I do not write to val­i­date what peo­ple already believe.
I write to com­mu­ni­cate my thoughts in ways that jolt peo­ple to the real­i­ties of what I am try­ing to con­vey.
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I did that lit­tle lead-in to avoid a cussing rant because I am floored at the seem­ing state of back­ward­ness in my coun­try.
Wait, wait, please, you die-hard patri­ots, before you start cussing me out, hear me out first; thank you.
According to some recent report­ing, the Jamaican Government is again talk­ing about putting pris­on­ers to work.
Geez, what a nov­el idea.


PUTTING PRISONERS TO WORK WHAT A NOVEL IDEA

Here’s the shit which gets my blood boil­ing. On the rare occa­sion that a mur­der­er gets con­vict­ed for a frac­tion of his crimes, the sen­tence is usu­al­ly hand­ed down with a hard labor caveat.
That the gov­ern­ment is not car­ry­ing out the court’s orders means that this admin­is­tra­tion and oth­ers pri­or are in gross vio­la­tion and abdi­ca­tion of their duties and are vio­lat­ing court orders, which are anti­thet­i­cal to the con­cepts of a bud­ding democracy.

PRISON CLOTHES

The report­ing alleges that the gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing using con­victs to clean up the nation’s streets and gul­lies that are lit­tered with garbage. In fact, the state is now con­sid­er­ing pur­chas­ing spe­cial cloth­ing for pris­on­ers to wear when they engage in clean-up activ­i­ties.

Why are pris­on­ers not in spe­cial prison clothes, and why would it only be when they are engaged in work?
Why are Jamaican Government offi­cials so intent on half ass meth­ods rather than doing things the way they ought to be done?
If a pris­on­er man­ages to escape cus­tody, one of the eas­i­est ways to quick­ly iden­ti­fy and recap­ture that felon is the prison garb he is dressed in.
Why has the gov­ern­ment not done this sim­ple due dili­gence, giv­en those facts?

LOW-RISK PRISONERS

I have always argued that Jamaican author­i­ties are like a Jack ass with its ass where its head should be.
So it comes as no sur­prise,.…… to me at least, that Pearnel Charles Jr., the junior nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter, told the media quote; 

“Any per­son in the sys­tems with a non-cus­to­di­al sen­tence or a cus­to­di­al sen­tence that is low risk could be used in this cat­e­go­ry to clean the lit­ters in gul­lies.” 
So the idea is to basi­cal­ly pun­ish low-risk non-vio­lent offend­ers while [vio­lent shot­tas sit]around chat­ting on their cell phones, eat­ing, mak­ing music, and order­ing hits.
Actually, com­par­ing these dweebs to jack­ass­es is an insult to jack­ass­es.
“We need to reduce the num­ber of per­sons with­in our cus­tody. We have reclas­si­fied, and we are also look­ing at elec­tron­i­cal­ly mon­i­tor­ing con­vict­ed per­sons to engage in clean-up activ­i­ties that they might not be able to do before because of secu­ri­ty issues.”

This is the Jackasse’s ass where the head should have been.
If the admin­is­tra­tion wish­es to car­ry out the court’s orders final­ly, it would make sense to do the oppo­site of what this twit is rec­om­mend­ing.
(a) Here’s a clue, have low-risk offend­ers who have no moti­va­tion to escape with­out get­ting into more trou­ble do the work that is being rec­om­mend­ed, and (b) Have high-risk offend­ers get up off their ass­es and do seri­ous work wher­ev­er they are need­ed, to build the coun­try.

How do you ask?
I’m glad you asked. 
I ful­ly under­stand that sim­ple things that many of my coun­try folks do not under­stand are con­sid­ered impos­si­ble to do.
Other coun­tries have cre­at­ed ways to put vio­lent offend­ers to work safe­ly.
If, of course, we can eschew pre­tense and get our heads out of our own ass­es.
Look, China, Iran, Russia, the United States, and almost all of the major coun­tries across the globe exe­cute mur­der­ers.


Since we Jamaicans are sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrites who are too shit holi­er-than-though to kill these scum­bags, maybe we can get around to putting them to work so they earn their keep and repay their debt to soci­ety.
Shackle two togeth­er by the angles and give them three feet of chain to sep­a­rate them and put their crim­i­nal ass­es to work.
This is a net win for the coun­try as they pro­duce to feed them­selves. Please give them a tiny stipend; this results in less idle time for them to plan and scheme and order hits on inno­cent peo­ple from prison.

As straight­for­ward as the fore­gone is, I can­not wait to hear the sanc­ti­mo­nious bleed­ing hearts with their con­trar­i­an hand­writ­ing about how we can­not do this; we can­not do that.
Simple leg­is­la­tion, which ought to be a giv­en, becomes a major thing. A major announce­ment is required for this grand idea. Yup, putting pris­on­ers in uni­form is groundbreaking[sic]

Since scarce state resources are being spent to feed, med­icate, house, and what­ev­er oth­er ben­e­fits they receive, it is only fair that Prisoners are made to earn their keep.
It is unques­tion­ably the right thing to do, yet the gov­ern­ment is act­ing as if this is a mon­u­men­tal, ground­break­ing con­cept for which it must be con­grat­u­lat­ed.
On the oth­er hand, if the gov­ern­ment ever gets up off its ass and gets this done the right way, look for the pathet­ic polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion to find some­thing wrong in its imple­men­ta­tion on which to object and seek polit­i­cal mileage.

On that note, while we are on the sub­ject, it is high time that the JLP tags the PNP as a “crim­i­nal sup­port­ing par­ty” going for­ward.
If they want to sup­port crim­i­nal­i­ty, let them own it.

A Police Corporal, Jermaine Merril Powell o/​c Zigga of Rocky Settlement, Rockey Point, Clarendon, attached to the Hunts Bay PIU, was arrest­ed for breach­es of the dan­ger­ous drug Act yes­ter­day.

On Friday, November 9, 2018, about 4:20pm dur­ing Anti-nar­cotics and Illegal Guns oper­a­tions the Area 3 Narcotics Police along with the Porus Police stopped a White Toyota Probox along the Porus Main Road in the Vicinity of the Porus Police Station.
The vehi­cle was being dri­ven by Corporal Jermaine Merril Powell o/​c Zigga. 
In the vehi­cle with him was Steve Ray Moxam o/​c Guga Wray, Fisherman of Rockey Point Clarendon. 
During a search of the vehi­cle, approx­i­mate­ly 1kg of white Powder Substance Resembling Cocaine and One Million Jamaican Dollars, ($1,000’000.00) were found wrapped in a Black Plastic Bag and con­cealed between the spare wheel and the bot­tom of the vehi­cle.

Powell and Moxam were arrest­ed on rea­son­able sus­pi­cion of breach­es of the Dangerous Drugs Act. 
A Glock Pistol along with two mag­a­zines was seized from Corporal Powell.
Powell indi­cat­ed that the pis­tol and the motor car are both gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty.
Both accused, the vehi­cle and exhibits were tak­en to the Porus Police Station.
More Investigations are to follow.

Duncans Trelawny area close to St Ann Border we are told is a place my friend said where the grim reaper has set up shop.
The truth of the mat­ter is where the ridicu­lous stu­pid­i­ty of Jamaica’s dri­vers is play­ing out with con­se­quences too grue­some and macabre to look at.
We could not pub­lish most of the images.

Clearly this is unten­able, there will need to be action tak­en to erad­i­cate the scourge of reck­less dri­ving from our roadways.

Police con­tin­ue to remove these dan­ger­ous weapons from the streets despite the lack of resources they have to grap­ple with>
These were recov­ered in Tivoli Gardens two days ago.

WHEN WE SAY JAMAICA IS A CRIMINAL’S PARADISE DON’T QUESTION US.

The entire sys­tem is cor­rupt and shit­ty to the core. Despite the hard work of the Police to gath­er evi­dence and put mass mur­der­ers away the sys­tem does its’ lev­el best to find ways to return them to the streets through the dif­fer­ent loop­holes in the sys­tem.

According to the Jamaica Gleaner; Gangster mur­der­er Kevin Tyndale,(Richie Poo) a mem­ber of the Gideon Warriors gang based in August Town, St Andrew was released from Prison on parole with­out con­di­tions Tyndale
was sen­tenced to a total of 90 years in prison in 2005 after he was con­vict­ed of ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm, rob­bery with aggra­va­tion, and wound­ing with intent.

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​1​0​1​/​h​a​s​-​r​e​l​e​a​s​e​-​r​e​p​u​t​e​d​-​g​a​n​g​s​t​e​r​-​t​r​i​g​g​e​r​e​d​-​r​e​v​i​e​w​-​j​a​s​-​p​a​r​o​l​e​-​s​y​s​t​e​m​?​f​b​c​l​i​d​=​I​w​A​R​0​N​L​4​-​4​3​T​O​I​0​j​X​v​G​f​L​p​y​0​B​n​N​X​5​F​H​f​C​c​h​k​d​k​h​x​Z​f​9​C​G​i​j​x​G​L​O​2​1​g​B​C​A​n​0xs

PLEASE SHARE THIS POST FOR THE SAFETY OF THE POLICE AND POPULATION ALIKE. THE SYSTEMS WHICH ARE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT ARE FAILING THE INNOCENT

In October 1991 I dropped every­thing and walked away from the job I loved for two rea­sons.
(1) The pay was shit­ty, the sum of mon­ey I was get­ting paid once per month was nowhere near close to what was required to live a medi­an basic exis­tence. (1a) I did not want my life to be a medi­an basic exis­tence.
(2) I looked at polic­ing strate­gi­cal­ly and real­ized that the peo­ple who occu­pied the posi­tions I would be striv­ing to achieve were hard­ly any bet­ter off than I was.

Twenty-sev­en years lat­er my deci­sion is val­i­dat­ed day after day and it seems to me that despite the fact that near­ly three decades have passed since my own exit not only has police offi­cers work­ing con­di­tions and remu­ner­a­tions hard­ly changed, the qual­i­ty of the peo­ple they serve has dete­ri­o­rat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly.
What we are left with today is a soci­ety which has den­i­grat­ed expo­nen­tial­ly, cre­at­ing an ever-increas­ing dirty pool from which the nation is forced to draw it’s pub­lic sec­tor work­ers. 
It is hard to imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion in which water drawn from a tox­ic pool can be good for any­one’s con­sump­tion.
The spot­light in Jamaica is usu­al­ly focused on two sets of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, Politicians, and Police.
The Jamaican politi­cian is sup­posed to be the deliv­er­er of goods to every­one and the police is sup­posed to be the sav­ior of every­one.
In that blink­ered myopic envi­ron­ment, it is hard to near impos­si­ble, to focus atten­tion on the fact that the entire pub­lic sec­tor is lit­er­al­ly cor­rupt.…. they all came from the same dirty pool.

Despite the fore­gone, I have always main­tained that the Jamaican Police can eas­i­ly do a bet­ter job despite the chal­lenges if it choos­es to.
It does­n’t require any effort out­side just avoid­ing stu­pid mis­takes for Christ’s sake.
The JCF is nev­er going to be the dar­ling of Jamaica in my life­time lets face that real­i­ty but it can become an agency that fix­es itself, crit­ics be damned. 
It can make itself the envy of its hate­ful detrac­tors, it can make itself feared by its ene­mies, not feared out of a vio­lent ten­den­cy, feared because of its inves­tiga­tive and com­pe­tency capa­bil­i­ties.
The shine and lus­ter the JDF receives were always (a)because sol­diers weren’t out arrest­ing crim­i­nals, and (b) more sol­diers were in fact prod­ucts of the vio­lent inner-city com­mu­ni­ties.
Police offi­cers large­ly come from the Island’s rur­al com­mu­ni­ties. 
The lus­ter and shine will soon wear away as sol­diers are more and more thrust into the role of pseu­do police officers.

One way for the JCF to become a bet­ter agency is to devel­op bet­ter inves­tiga­tive capa­bil­i­ties. 
Of course, we know that the pub­lic sec­tor is cor­rupt, we know that con­trary to the mis­guid­ed per­cep­tions that Judges are above it all many are in fact just as cor­rupt as the worst crim­i­nals, so too are the crim­i­nal lawyers. They all come from the same dirty pool.
But the JCF must on its own move into the 21^st cen­tu­ry and drag the coun­try along if it is to sur­vive.
Improving itself will absolute­ly [not] be accom­plished by look­ing to the University of the West Indies, that incu­ba­tor of anti-police -ism.

The police can­not con­tin­ue to keep expos­ing its vul­ner­a­ble under­bel­ly by arrest­ing peo­ple sim­ply because they are known crim­i­nals with­out hav­ing hard evi­dence against them.
The arrest with­out charge of life­long gang­ster Tesha Miller by detec­tives from the Counter Terrorism and Organized Crime branch of the Constabulary, and the resul­tant order by a judge to release him if he is not charged by Friday, November 2^nd is shame­ful.

Why arrest him if the evi­dence is not ready? Why arrest his girl­friend if there is no evi­dence against her?
If she was arrest­ed for some breach of con­duct as a result of the arrest of her boyfriend why not charge her and place her before the court?
In as much as I loathe many of the crim­i­nal lov­ing hacks who sub­sti­tute as judges, I can­not fault them for respond­ing in like man­ner to writs of habeas cor­pus by defense counsel.

The much vaunt­ed [CTOC] has striv­en to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from oth­er parts of the [JCF].
[CTOC’s] has done good work before it must con­tin­ue to do good work going for­ward.
If the JCF and its dif­fer­ent arms want to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, not nec­es­sar­i­ly by the crim­i­nal lov­ing Jamaican pub­lic but at least in the CARICOM region, it has to do a bet­ter job at the fol­low­ing.


CASE MANAGEMENT
Brainstorming ses­sions not only help par­tic­i­pants to start talk­ing about why evi­dence col­lec­tion is impor­tant but also pro­vides the facil­i­ta­tor with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to assess offi­cers lev­el of knowl­edge and com­pe­tence.
According to @[reinventingtherules] these are some point­ers which may help police agen­cies, par­tic­u­lar­ly in devel­op­ing coun­tries deal with the ris­ing tide of crim­i­nal­i­ty.
a) inves­ti­gate crime scenes;
b) col­lect and pre­serve evi­dence;
c) inter­view and exam­ine vic­tims and wit­ness­es;
d) use tech­nol­o­gy and foren­sic sci­ence;
e) coör­di­nate inves­ti­ga­tions across police precincts and divi­sions; 
f) coör­di­nate among the var­i­ous actors in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem (police, inves­ti­ga­tors, prison offi­cials, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges).

The inabil­i­ty of the police to inves­ti­gate crime has very real con­se­quences, the most obvi­ous of which is the chal­lenge of pros­e­cut­ing and con­vict­ing crim­i­nals. 
Where seri­ous crimes are often preva­lent, the inabil­i­ty to address it can be immense­ly desta­bi­liz­ing for the coun­try.
Jamaica is a case study in this regard.
A lack of police train­ing in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion is often exac­er­bat­ed by a lack of the basic resources required to under­take it. For exam­ple, police in devel­op­ing coun­tries may lack com­put­ers, pens and paper, stor­age con­tain­ers for evi­dence, DNA kits, and so forth.
Inadequate laws, that are either out­dat­ed or do not pro­vide suf­fi­cient oper­a­tional guid­ance and more impor­tant­ly enough puni­tive teeth to deter crim­i­nal con­duct.
this fur­ther hin­ders efforts to ensure the effec­tive inves­ti­ga­tion of crimes con­sis­tent with inter­na­tion­al human rights stan­dards and best practices. 

Please like and share this Article for the good of our country.

Active duty Navy sailor Curtis Adams, 21, was dri­ving in Mountain View, Calif., Saturday morn­ing when he spot­ted a man near a vehi­cle Adams believed the man need­ed help with. Adams, who was with his girl­friend, pulled over to offer assis­tance. He didn’t know the man was attempt­ing to steal the car.

The “strand­ed motorist” shot Adams. His girl­friend called 911. Adams was tak­en to UC San Diego Medical Center, where he died.

According to NBC San Diego, the sus­pect, who was caught Sunday, was also involved in anoth­er shoot­ing min­utes before he shot Adams. The accused shoot­er has been iden­ti­fied as 21-year-old Brandon Acuna.

Acuna, who has a long crim­i­nal his­to­ry, “was booked into San Diego County Central Jail on charges of first-degree mur­der and sec­ond-degree bur­glary and held with no bail,” NBC San Diego reports. 

The police are still inves­ti­gat­ing the motive behind both shootings. 

With the most sophis­ti­cat­ed polic­ing tech­niques avail­able to law enforce­ment offi­cers, crimes, includ­ing vio­lent crimes, will per­sist and grow if cer­tain mixed com­po­nents are left unad­dressed.
The city of Chicago police depart­ment in Illinois is the sec­ond-largest munic­i­pal police depart­ment in the United States. It has about 12,244 offi­cers behind only the New York City Police Department.  Chicago has a pop­u­la­tion of 2,716,450.

After Mayor David Dinkins took over, he ini­ti­at­ed some­thing called “safe cities, safe streets”. This was.” a mul­ti-faceted approach aimed at increas­ing the num­ber of cops on the streets while improv­ing police-com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions.
The oth­er was pros­e­cut­ing minor offens­es, there­by lim­it­ing the process of small­er crim­i­nals grad­u­at­ing to larg­er, more vio­lent crimes.


A cleanup of the city began, and busi­ness­es start­ed to return. Rudolph Guliani suc­ceed­ed David Dinkins; he con­tin­ued Dinkins’ pol­i­cy and put them on steroids.
Getting caught with a gun in New York City meant manda­to­ry prison time, on the gun charge, as well as for the ammu­ni­tion.
Violent crimes plum­met­ted in NYC, as busi­ness­es returned, so did the jobs.
Today NYC is one of the world’s safest big cities.

It seems that the take­away, at least to me, is that when we tack­le the issues of pover­ty by pro­vid­ing jobs to peo­ple, ensure that we keep unreg­is­tered guns out of the hands of peo­ple. Most of all, ensure that offend­ers are duly penal­ized; the out­comes are positive.

If we co-opt the fore­gone and apply them to Jamaica, a coun­try with the pop­u­la­tion of Chicago, Illinois, we may be able to gar­ner the accom­plished results of New York City.
Today Chicago Illinois, remains one of America’s most dan­ger­ous and vio­lent cities because those who run the city failed to learn from the prin­ci­ples applied in New York City.
In Jamaica’s case, there is an (a) seem­ing lack of under­stand­ing of what it takes to reduce and ulti­mate­ly elim­i­nate vio­lent crimes, and (b) an absence of will to get the job start­ed.
Instead, they blame the police for some­thing far out­side the scope of what the police can accom­plish with­out exec­u­tive input.

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

A sus­pect has report­ed­ly been arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with more than 10 pack­ages con­tain­ing like­ly pipe bombs mailed in the past week to peo­ple crit­i­cal of President Donald Trump.

The Department of Justice con­firmed Friday that a man in Florida has been arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with the terrorism.

The sus­pect is report­ed­ly Cesar Sayoc, 56, of South Florida, accord­ing to Reuters, NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, cit­ing law enforce­ment officials.

DOJ offi­cials are set to brief reporters this afternoon.

Read more about Sayoc here.

In remarks at the White House before a youth lead­er­ship sum­mit, Trump con­grat­u­lat­ed local and nation­al law enforce­ment agen­cies for appre­hend­ing the sus­pect. The pres­i­dent pledged to pros­e­cute those respon­si­ble ― “them, him, her, who­ev­er it may be,” he said ― to the fullest extent of the law.

“We must nev­er allow polit­i­cal vio­lence to take root in America,” Trump said.

“The bot­tom line is that Americans must uni­fy,” he went on. His com­ments echoed those he has deliv­ered at ral­lies and sent over Twitter in the wake of the bomb scares, call­ing for uni­ty and a calmer dis­course but refus­ing to tone down his own inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric.

Minutes after address­ing the threats to promi­nent Democrats, Trump claimed Republicans are often attacked for sup­port­ing him. “Come to think of it, does any­one get attacked more than me?” Trump said.

The devel­op­ment came hours after two addi­tion­al pack­ages were dis­cov­ered, one addressed to Sen. Cory Booker (D‑N.J.), and the oth­er to for­mer Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Authorities have height­ened their search in Florida, as sev­er­al of the pack­ages may have passed through the state. The FBI said Friday that the pack­age for Booker was found in a Florida mail facility.

Throughout the week, more than 10 pack­ages con­tain­ing poten­tial explo­sive devices have been mailed to law­mak­ers and oth­er pub­lic fig­ures crit­i­cal of Trump, includ­ing for­mer President Barack Obama, for­mer President Bill Clinton, Trump’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial oppo­nent Hillary Clinton, Rep. Maxine Waters (D‑Calif.), actor Robert De Niro and for­mer CIA Director John Brennan.

The pack­age addressed Brennan was sent to CNN’s New York City bureau, spark­ing an evac­u­a­tion Wednesday. Brennan is an MSNBC and NBC con­trib­u­tor. On Friday, postal offi­cials inter­cept­ed the pack­age for Clapper, a CNN con­trib­u­tor, before it could reach the CNN offices, where it was addressed, accord­ing to the network.

All of the pack­ages list­ed the Florida office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D‑Fla.), the for­mer chair­woman of the Democratic National Committee, as the return address. Story orig­i­nat­ed here: https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​m​a​i​l​-​p​i​p​e​-​b​o​m​b​-​p​l​o​t​-​s​u​s​p​e​c​t​_​u​s​_​5​b​d​3​2​b​4​d​e​4​b​0​d​3​8​b​5​8​8​2​c​a62

The Police are report­ing that three (3) men were shot and killed in a shootout with them in Friendship District in the Parish of Trelawny.

According to the cops, the three are mem­bers of the Bunker’s Hill Gang which have been oper­at­ing in that Parish. The name Bunker’s Hill gang was alleged­ly derived from a District in the Parish bear­ing the same name.

Two of the dece­dents have been iden­ti­fied as Adrian Walker ( o/​c Lippy and Macka).
The oth­er is Robert Miller (o/​c Ghost and Tiler).

According to the Police, the encoun­tered occurred at about 5: pm Yesterday.
Two firearms and ammu­ni­tion were recovered.