Amber Guyger a 30-year-old white female Dallas Police offi­cer, a five year vet­er­an of the depart­ment who shot and wound­ed a Hispanic man in May of 2017, shot and killed a man in his own home on Thursday, September 6^th.
Media reports indi­cate she was in full duty dress at the time but was off duty.

Dead is 26-year-old Botham Shem Jean, a St Lucian native and a 2016 grad­u­ate of a pri­vate Christian school Harding University, in Arkansas. He stayed in the United States to do an intern­ship with a Dallas loca­tion of PricewaterhouseCoopers, NBC. News reported.

The sto­ry sur­round­ing the shoot­ing has been con­fus­ing at best. Some media hous­es have report­ed that Guyer had returned home to the apart­ment com­plex [after a full shift]where both her and Botham Shem Jean are ten­ants and mis­took his apart­ment for hers, opened his door and upon see­ing him she opened fire killing him, believ­ing he was an intruder.

I am unsure what the infer­ence of her work­ing a[full shift] is sup­posed to con­vey? Is it that once a police offi­cer has com­plet­ed a full shift he or she is ful­ly allowed to ille­gal­ly enter some­one else’s home and mur­der them?
Also, the media has co-opt­ed the nar­ra­tive that she entered his apart­ment, which we have learned is on anoth­er floor and entered his apart­ment believ­ing it to be hers, this could only(a) come from her or (b) could only be spec­u­la­tive at best.

The absur­di­ty of presumption(a) is too pre­pos­ter­ous to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. if she had a key or fob for her apart­ment how could she have entered anoth­er per­son­’s apart­ment with her key/​fob?
If the nar­ra­tive being pushed is to be believed, and if she tried open­ing his door and he went to the door to see who was try­ing to enter his apart­ment would­n’t she have seen that she made a mis­take once she saw the inte­ri­or of the apartment?

If she could not (a)differentiate what floor she was on, and if she could not (b) dif­fer­en­ti­ate that the apart­ment she was try­ing to breach was not her own what was her state of mind?
Was the men­tion of her hav­ing done a full shift and being in full duty dress designed to place her in a polic­ing role?

If she was not ine­bri­at­ed or under the influ­ence of oth­er mind-alter­ing sub­stances how could she have made such an egre­gious sequence of mis­takes result­ing in the loss of this pre­cious life?
Why was she not arrest­ed prompt­ly as any oth­er per­son who goes to some­one’s home and mur­dered them would be?

Members of Jean’s fam­i­ly ques­tioned Guyger’s expla­na­tion for the shoot­ing and claimed that the fact she had remained free days after the shoot­ing showed she was receiv­ing favor­able treat­ment. “If it was a white man, would it have been dif­fer­ent?” Jean’s moth­er Allison asked Friday. “Would she have react­ed differently?”

Of course, she has been receiv­ing favor­able treat­ment. The shock­ing fact in all of this is that the Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall who is a black woman has argued that in the inter­est of trans­paren­cy her depart­ment has turned over the inves­ti­ga­tions to the Texas Rangers.
Hall said police drew a blood sam­ple from the offi­cer to test for drugs and alco­hol. She didn’t say why the offi­cer entered the wrong apart­ment [as the sto­ry does]nor what hap­pened once she and Jean came face-to-face.

Ya, the Texas Rangers are going to be judi­cious in doing an end-to-end inves­ti­ga­tion involv­ing a white female cop who kills a black man.
As chief Hall speaks out of the side of her face I believe the deci­sion to move the inves­ti­ga­tions out of the Dallas Area was made for her and not by her.

On Sunday, September 9^th Amber Guyger was for­mal­ly charged with manslaugh­ter as a result of the killing of Botham Shem Jean and bond­ed out of jail imme­di­ate­ly in the sum of $300,000
“Somebody has to be crazy not to real­ize that they walked into the wrong apart­ment,” Jean’s moth­er told NBC News. “He’s a bach­e­lor. Things are dif­fer­ent inside.”
She did not real­ize that the apart­ment was not hers because the sto­ry is total­ly made up in my esti­ma­tion. none of it makes sense.
The dece­dent moth­er has already talked about forgiveness.
Black moth­er, how can you talk about for­give­ness when there has been no con­fes­sion of guilt, no con­tri­tion, no request for for­give­ness, the pre-req­ui­sites for forgiveness?

Maybe no one knows exact­ly what hap­pened except for two peo­ple and one of them is lying on a slab in a mortuary.
If there is a shred of truth to the sto­ry that the police offi­cer went to Botham Shem Jean’s apart­ment by acci­dent and end­ed up killing him, that truth is prob­a­bly known only to her.
Why then was she not treat­ed like any oth­er per­son by her col­leagues? And if there is one iota of cred­i­bil­i­ty to the idea that she thought he was an intrud­er why was her first option dead­ly force?

There is much more to this sto­ry than the Dallas Police chief and Department is let­ting on. This is a case in which the dece­dent is a col­lege grad­u­ate with impec­ca­ble char­ac­ter, he was in his house so they can­not smear him as a crim­i­nal wor­thy of exe­cu­tion, deserv­ing of what he got.
So it seems that the fix is in to make her an object of pity. That may not be all, it appears they do not want her to face tri­al in Dallas where she may receive a jury which includes black folks.
It is rep­re­hen­si­ble that the fam­i­ly of this young man will have to bury him under these cir­cum­stances, par­tic­u­lar­ly when we all know that had he been white he would absolute­ly be alive today.

Life in Jamaica should nev­er be as com­pli­cat­ed and un-nec­es­sar­i­ly antag­o­nis­tic as it is in her large and pow­er­ful neigh­bor to the north. Politics and the insa­tiable desire to occu­py the halls of pow­er has turned our beloved lit­tle Island Paradise into a rag­ing infer­no of fuss and chaos which is total­ly uncalled for.

Take for instance the recent brouha­ha about the lime green bikes and accou­ter­ments recent­ly brought in for the police. The Opposition People’s National Party has sought to make polit­i­cal hay out of the col­or claim­ing that the choice of col­or for the bikes is tan­ta­mount to politi­ciz­ing the police depart­ment. This not only applies to the motor bikes, but also the elec­tric bikes as well, espe­cial­ly the ones from elec­tric bike for sale UK

This car is sport­ing red streaks and let­ter­ing which could be con­strued to be polit­i­cal if we are intent on nit-pick­ing, tak­ing into account that the stan­dard col­ors have been tra­di­tion­al­ly blue.
A clos­er look will also reveal anoth­er truth, the offi­cer in the car is also wear­ing a lime or neon-green vest, there was no out­cry about this either. This was under PNP leadership.

Australian Metropolitan Police

I have no idea what was in the mind of the Governing author­i­ty when the deci­sion was made to chose that col­or which just coin­ci­den­tal­ly is the col­or asso­ci­at­ed with the rul­ing JLP, albeit a dif­fer­ent shade.
My ques­tion to the Opposition PNP, how­ev­er, is, whether they would have been offend­ed if the col­or was orange or red, the par­ty’s col­ors of choice?

Tasmanian Police
Have we become so polit­i­cal­ly polar­ized that rather than work on the real press­ing issues we would rather quib­ble over nothing?
Are we so polar­ized that we would actu­al­ly stoop so low to make the deci­sion to col­or the bikes green based on politics?

Police in London

Here’s the thing, the idea that politi­ciz­ing the force should not be tol­er­at­ed, (by either polit­i­cal par­ty) is a valid argu­ment to make. I am just not sure when was it that the PNP had this epiphany?

I don’t want to bela­bor the point, but the Opposition PNP has been in pow­er for a very long time, the JLP is now the Governing party.
Being in oppo­si­tion does not mean oppos­ing every­thing, least of all, mak­ing sil­ly argu­ments which only serve to embar­rass the party.
(Hi Fitz Jackson)

There are many ways in which the oppo­si­tion par­ty can be the watch­dog the nation deserves until the nation is ready again to entrust it with state pow­er. At the moment that time is not yet here. Acting like a des­per­ate psy­chot­ic brat on every issue is not a good look and it does pre­cious lit­tle to endear the par­ty to the elec­torate which is get­ting more and more sophisticated.

A good idea may be to retool and gath­er fresh per­spec­tives to see how best the par­ty can serve the nation in the 21^st century.
One way of doing that could be shed­ding the par­ty col­ors, and encour­age the oth­er par­ty to do the same, a move which would have ren­dered this whole issue moot.
We all remem­ber the politi­ciz­ing of every­thing over the past 20 years, lit­er­al­ly every­thing paint­ed Orange. Come on PNP do better.

Remember this shame­ful episode in April of 2012

We could also con­tin­ue to point to the des­e­cra­tion of our flag by the hyper-par­ti­sans who lacked decen­cy and hon­or in the image above. The nation does not need a reminder of just how crass the PNP can be. So in the inter­est of our lit­tle nation let us stop with the trib­al pol­i­tics and this inces­sant rapa­cious attempt all aimed at mak­ing a pow­er grab.

A few days ago I wrote a short arti­cle in which I spoke to asser­tions made by the Gleaner’s Editorial page cri­tique of the Commissioner of Police Major General Antony Anderson,s silence since he took office, over five months ago.
Many read­ers were aghast, some angry that I dared to argue that Anderson was silent large­ly because he was learn­ing on the job.
My com­ments weren’t exact­ly pejo­ra­tive, they were sim­ply stat­ing indis­putable facts.
Anderson, [regard­less of how sharp he is], can­not speak to issues which he knows noth­ing about.

Those are facts, so every­time Jamaican author­i­ties con­vince you that they are about to place a square peg in a round hole and you are all glee­ful because you are told by the media elites that no one else can do the job, be pre­pared to lose some of your lives wait­ing for results.

Faux- Shock At Antony Anderson’s Silence: He’s Learning On The Job, Hello…

Though no fan of out­siders run­ning the force by any stretch, I have zero abil­i­ty to impact polit­i­cal deci­sions any­where in the world, least of all in Jamaica.
I have to live with their choic­es like every­one else, but since hope is not a strat­e­gy those of us with a voice must raise them where nec­es­sary to con­grat­u­late their suc­cess­es but cer­tain­ly to speak out when they fall short of their mandates.

I loved the JCF because of the nobil­i­ty of its mis­sion nev­er­the­less, I was moved to exit rather quick­ly because of what I saw dur­ing my brief stay.
Not only was the lead­er­ship bereft of ideas and exper­tise, those who aspired to replace those in lead­er­ship large­ly sub­scribed to the very same brand of lead­er­ship. A lead­er­ship which was defined by crony­ism, nepo­tism, slav­ish polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, news car­ry­ing and a gen­er­al cul­ture of incom­pe­tence and dysfunction.
In the jock­ey­ing for atten­tion amidst that chaos, there was pre­cious lit­tle time left for crim­i­nal intel­li­gence continuity.
The fore­gone though not com­pre­hen­sive in speak­ing to the ills of the lead­er­ship, gives a bird’s eye view of what obtains, as well as the way that dys­func­tion cre­at­ed a rank and file which was forced to jock­ey for atten­tion as well, in many cas­es act­ing against their own long-term self-interest.

As a con­se­quence, many of the mem­bers of the rank and file who spent their work­ing lives in the depart­ment with­out reach­ing the gazetted ranks still strug­gle unfor­tu­nate­ly to under­stand how the force is and has been less than effi­cient on all fronts, includ­ing the way they were treat­ed dur­ing their service.
Whether this is a result of a lack of edu­ca­tion and or expo­sure I will leave that judg­ment call to oth­ers, suf­fic­ing to say that far too many are stuck in the nar­row con­fines of the force even years after they were liberated.

ANDERSON SPEAKS THE TRUTH, WILL MY CRITICS TAKE IT FROM HIM?

I don’t know Antony Anderson but It seems to me that unlike some of his sup­port­ers that there is one pos­i­tive thing to be said about him, he speaks the truth.
Speaking at a Gleaner’s Editor’s forum on Thursday Anderson speak­ing to the very same silence per­cep­tion said the following.

“So I have been in for five months, and the first thing you have to do when com­ing into the job is to pay atten­tion to the most press­ing con­cerns in the pub­lic space, which at the time, was the rate of mur­ders. We were trend­ing down­wards, but we were still above last year,”

Anderson went on, “As some­one who came to the JCF from the out­side, I did not know every­thing about the orga­ni­za­tion even though I spent a career close to it.
There’s still a lot to learn when you come in, and, obvi­ous­ly, you want to see how much tal­ent there is, where it is, and why it is that the pub­lic feel the way they do about the JCF. I had to under­stand that and what con­cerns the police offi­cers inter­nal­ly also.”

Understanding what con­cerns the police offi­cers should not be an after­thought, it ought to be job one. It’s inter­est­ing that he had to artic­u­late that, even though he was close to the force he did not know any­thing about it’s operations.
A les­son for those who believe that a mechan­i­cal engi­neer is qual­i­fied to per­form brain surgery.
Yes, learn­ing on the job con­sumes time, valu­able time which cost lives and mas­sive hurt for inno­cent people.
Anderson is ben­e­fit­ting from the dec­la­ra­tion of the state of emer­gency which saw large con­tin­gents of police and sol­diers being dropped into parts of Saint James and St Catherine.

This though real­ly impor­tant, is unsus­tain­able. Those with a lit­tle mem­o­ry will recall just how seri­ous crimes took a pre­cip­i­tous drop after the secu­ri­ty forces show of force in Tivoli Gardens.
This is no dif­fer­ent, and so the idea that he is strate­giz­ing , bring­ing him­self and the Agency up to speed, will only hold as long as the state of emer­gency is in place.
The def­er­ence and sup­port he is receiv­ing are remark­able though it is not infinite.

Drop the Mic.

Reports are that this man( blue arrow) raped and killed a 14-year-old girl and burned her body some­where in the Denham Town or Arnett Graden’s area of Saint Andrew.

Unconfirmed reports are that some res­i­dents of the area ren­dered their own brand of jus­tice and the result was cer­tain­ly not what this alleged accused expected.

This medi­um cer­tain­ly does not sup­port this kind of jus­tice, the chances of the wrong per­son get­ting caught up in the mad­ness are all too real and the con­se­quences far too dire.
how­ev­er, if he is guilty of the crimes alleged against him and with the pre­vail­ing sys­tem of jus­tice being met­ed out at all lev­els of the Jamaican jus­tice sys­tem these images are going to con­tin­ue into the future.

This sto­ry has been updat­ed since post­ing (Area of killing still uncon­firmed fully)

ST ANN, Jamaica — A woman and a young boy were chopped to death in the com­mu­ni­ty of Linton Park in Watt Town, St Ann last evening, while anoth­er child has been hos­pi­tal­ized with injuries sus­tained dur­ing the incident.

According to reports, 32-year-old Alecia Francis was walk­ing along the road­way with 12-year-old Teco Jackson and the oth­er child about 10:30 pm when they were attacked by a man, who chopped them sev­er­al times.

The police said they were sum­moned by res­i­dents who were alert­ed by cries of help.

The three were tak­en to hos­pi­tal where Francis and Teco were pro­nounced dead and the oth­er child admit­ted in sta­ble condition.

Investigations are ongoing.

Before we delve into what is or isn’t work­ing let’s give thanks to Almighty God and to the hard-work­ing unap­pre­ci­at­ed men and women of the JCF and the JDF for the 18% reduc­tion in homi­cides this year against last year’s numbers.

Last year the police report­ed that 1617 Jamaicans were mur­dered over the course of the year. If the present trend holds it means that a cal­cu­lat­ed 291 few­er Jamaicans will be killed this year. That is rea­son to celebrate!

ATTRIBUTION

In the same way that 1617 peo­ple were slaugh­tered last year it is rea­son­able to con­clude that there are read­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able rea­sons which thus far this year has caused few­er peo­ple to lose their lives.
The state of emer­gency in parts of St. James and St. Catherine has seen a dra­mat­ic reduc­tion in crime, not just homi­cides but oth­er major crimes as well.

Though com­mend­able, it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize that the ben­e­fits derived from the state of emer­gency declared and enforced in those areas is not a sus­tain­able strat­e­gy for the long run.
The Jamaican dai­ly, (Jamaica​-glean​er​.com) Editorialized that fact argu­ing that “lim­its are placed on cit­i­zens’ rights and that their com­mu­ni­ties are under watch by large num­bers of police and soldiers”. 
Ahh yeah, that is gen­er­al­ly what a state of emer­gency is.

I have no quar­rel with the idea of the unsus­tain­abil­i­ty of the emer­gency pow­ers giv­en to the secu­ri­ty forces. But of course, the Editors of that dai­ly news­pa­per can­not make a sen­si­ble state­ment with­out act­ing like a cow which gives a pail of milk and then turns around and kicks it over.
Pomposity, grandios­i­ty and pure [bull-shit-tery] always take over with these folks.

“States of pub­lic emer­gency, with their impinge­ment of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms, were not intend­ed to be long-term polic­ing tools in demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties, but short-term respons­es to secu­ri­ty threats. In that regard, we ques­tion the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the exist­ing ones. Further, with less than five per­cent of the well over 2,000 peo­ple detained in St James not charged for any crime, it is moot whether it is the state of emer­gency per se or the height­ened pres­ence of the secu­ri­ty forces, that is respon­si­ble for the decline in killings”.

It is always the obnox­ious nature of these edi­to­ri­als which gets me upset. Of course, we all agree that states of emer­gen­cies are not long-term, not sus­tain­able but for God’s sake why are you talk­ing about “long-term polic­ing tools in demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties, but short-term respons­es to secu­ri­ty threats”.

Should the Government not do some­thing about the blood­shed? The state of emer­gency declared in St James and St Catherine are exact­ly short-term respons­es to the threats res­i­dents faced.
Would the edi­to­r­i­al board of the Gleaner be more com­fort­able with 18% more Jamaicans killed in order to main­tain a façade of a demo­c­ra­t­ic society?

I sug­gest that the Gleaner edi­tors take a first aid class where they will learn the pro­ce­dures and pro­to­cols of treat­ing a casu­al­ty. If there is bleed­ing stop the bleed­ing where pos­si­ble, make the casu­al­ty com­fort­able, reas­sure the casu­al­ty, get the casu­al­ty to a hospital.

The Government has stopped some of the bleed­ings in some of the more vio­lent com­mu­ni­ties, (hence the drop in homi­cides). Talk to some of the peo­ple in those areas, based on their past expe­ri­ences and they are ecsta­t­ic that the secu­ri­ty forces are vis­i­ble in their communities.

Look, I am not one who believes that the show of force in high-risk com­mu­ni­ties is a sus­tain­able polic­ing strat­e­gy. Nevertheless, I believe that over the span of a year the idea of 291 few­er dead Jamaicans is not such a bad idea.

As I have stat­ed in pre­vi­ous arti­cles, there is no way that the elites, includ­ing those at the Gleaner and the fake upper crust of the soci­ety, would give a police offi­cer who came up through the ranks the lever­age and def­er­ence giv­en Antony Anderson.

Anderson spent his life in the mil­i­tary, a mil­i­tary which has nev­er seen a war of any kind, yet he attained the rank of major gen­er­al with­out any bat­tle experience.
Nevertheless, the idea that he was qual­i­fied to be com­mis­sion­er of police for Jamaica based on his bona fides, impres­sive though they are, was as laugh­able as the prospect of a real­i­ty TV star becom­ing a com­pe­tent President of the United States.

The Gleaner’s shock that Antony Anderson is death­ly silent on any strate­gic crime pol­i­cy (out­side of the imple­men­ta­tion of the state of emer­gency) is real­ly laugh­able if they weren’t so pathet­ic. They were all clam­or­ing for him to be named com­mis­sion­er of police because of course, he has a cer­tain skill-set.

He can­not for­mu­late strate­gies in areas in which he has no exper­tise. Being com­mis­sion­er of police requires polic­ing and legal know-how. No, the fact that one has a cer­tain skillset does not give that per­son exper­tise in all disciplines.

Anderson is learn­ing on the job and as such, the nation will have to be sat­is­fied with what it gets. In the mean­time, we pray for the police offi­cers and sol­diers who are putting their bod­ies between the anar­chists and the public.

We pray for the inno­cent peo­ple who are denied cred­i­ble and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vice based on our coun­try’s stub­born insis­tence on pre­tend­ing it is a devel­oped country.

Thanks to those who con­tin­ue to do the heavy lift­ing against the coun­ter­pro­duc­tive unveil­ing of murals hon­or­ing criminals.
Thank you for your ser­vice, even though many absolute­ly do not deserve it.

Another of the nation’s most want­ed crim­i­nals, 28-year-old, Donovan ‘Tim’ Roach, was cut down by police bul­lets when the house in which he was stay­ing was sur­round­ed by mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. According to the police, at approx­i­mate­ly 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, a police team, act­ing on intel­li­gence, went to a house in Hermitage, Bethel Town in the Parish of Westmoreland.

On the approach of the law­men, Roach respond­ed by lay­ing down fire, forc­ing the law­men to take cov­er and return fire. The police breached the premis­es and ter­mi­nat­ed Roach.

A 23-year-old female, who was in the home was tak­en into cus­tody.” A 9mm semi-auto­mat­ic pis­tol, which was loaded with five 9mm bul­lets sev­er­al spent shells and an emp­ty mag­a­zine was report­ed­ly recov­ered at the scene.
The Parish of Westmoreland has been grap­pling with an inor­di­nate amount of high pro­file crim­i­nals includ­ing the infa­mous Ratty Peterkin who was killed in a shootout with mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces ear­li­er this year.

As the Police face these demons and strug­gle to remove them from among decent law-abid­ing Jamaicans, the anti-Jamaican crim­i­nal rights lob­bies, includ­ing Jamaicans for Justice and oth­ers are engaged in cre­at­ing murals to com­mem­o­rate the deaths of crim­i­nals killed in shootouts with police.
Jamaicans have a deci­sion to make, they must deter­mine whether they want to fall for the baloney the­ses lob­bies are sell­ing or are they will­ing to stand up for our country.

Stark and graph­ic image.…

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The recent inci­dent involv­ing a Jamaican sprint­er (who shall remain name­less out­side the video tag, because he does not deserve to have his name men­tioned, at least in this medi­um), and police offi­cers, con­tin­ue to high­light the huge gaps in basic polic­ing protocols.
This is not about the lit­tle lout who clear­ly believes that own­ing a car and being able to run makes him some­thing special.
That kind of igno­rance is larg­er than the indi­vid­ual sprint­er, it is a cul­tur­al malig­nan­cy which will only be fixed through pub­lic edu­ca­tion cam­paigns, prop­er train­ing and best prac­tice adher­ence by officers.

The inci­dent in ques­tion began with a vehic­u­lar stop in which the occu­pants, includ­ing the sprint­er, was asked to leave the vehi­cle so that an ad-hoc vehic­u­lar search could be executed.
As the Corporal con­duct­ed the search and seemed to have a legit­i­mate desire for trans­paren­cy, a‑la the film­ing by one con­sta­ble, the entire episode was painful­ly rem­i­nis­cent of a skit from the the­atri­cal circuit.

A Florida traf­fic stop

The behav­ior of the imbe­cil­ic sprint­er, who has since offered an apol­o­gy to the police, is to be expect­ed, after all, this is Jamaica a coun­ty in which every moron is above the law, or so they feel.
This cor­po­ral and his team clear­ly could be good offi­cers in a police depart­ment which has com­pe­tent lead­er­ship. However, this JCF con­tin­ues to be a lead­er­less the­atri­cal car­i­ca­ture of actu­al polic­ing, clear­ly inca­pable of offer­ing the men and women on the streets the focused lead­er­ship they need and deserve.

Washington state traf­fic stop

As a con­se­quence, the pub­lic, includ­ing the men in this video, believe they have a right to be hyped when deal­ing with officers.
I can­not recall ever hear­ing the police high com­mand reg­is­ter sup­port for the actions of its offi­cers on the streets, out­side of this instance.
This time the small team of three had a video which forced a response from the high com­mand, bra­vo to the offi­cers on that.
Unfortunately, the grudg­ing sup­port of the brain dead high com­mand must be processed in the con­text of what was wrong with the entire cin­e­mat­ic episode and not some nugget of what may have been right from this pantomime.

NYPD traf­fic stop.

Jamaica’s ter­rain is con­ducive to motorists remain­ing in their vehi­cles when they are pulled over by police.
(1) There are decades, and a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of instances in which motorists alight from vehi­cles, shoot at police and sim­ply dis­ap­pear in bush­es and gullies.
In the instances in which police are able to respond with force, they are often­times left with­out evi­dence to jus­ti­fy the use of lethal force because the cul­prits have in fact escaped with their weapons.
This par­tic­u­lar trend helped to cre­ate mis­trust of the police and has helped to fos­ter the gen­er­al law­less­ness in the coun­try, some­thing the incom­pe­tent high com­mand has done noth­ing to remedy.

You get the picture .

(2) The unavail­abil­i­ty of ade­quate back­up in a time­ly man­ner as well as the short­age of resources and lack of prop­er train­ing of offi­cers also mil­i­tate against motorists being allowed to leave their vehi­cles when stopped by police.
There is no data which sup­ports allow­ing motorists leav­ing their vehi­cles when pulled over by police, cer­tain­ly noth­ing which would come close to ade­quate­ly coun­ter­ing the need for them to remain in their vehicles.
That is the rea­son why police depart­ments across the devel­oped world adhere to these best prac­tices. In Jamaica, the need to adhere and adapt is far more pressing.
Despite this, the police high-com­mand does noth­ing to change this practice!

The attempt of the offi­cers in this video to police them­selves through the use of cell phone and oth­er cam­eras is com­mend­able, even as it left the team vul­ner­a­ble to being exploit­ed in this instance. In one instance the offi­cer doing the film­ing had his back turned to one occu­pant of the vehi­cle. If these men want­ed to exact cost on those offi­cers we would be hav­ing a whole dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tion about this traf­fic stop.
Mind you, I won’t both­er to delve into the whole painful episode of the cor­po­ral’s inane “Jamaican ambas­sador”. state­ments, It was just too painful to watch. Maybe its time to stop hero-wor­ship­ing those who run fast.
If this débâ­cle is wor­thy of praise, we must expect that Jamaica will con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence the lev­els of crime it has been expe­ri­enc­ing with the same and esca­lat­ed impuni­ty going forward.

Then there are the Jamaican cops.

An inte­gral part of polic­ing is the author­i­ty offi­cers exude through the exe­cu­tion of prop­er pro­to­cols. Many Jamaicans have trav­eled over­seas and have seen how it is done. Others have been deport­ed hav­ing expe­ri­enced effec­tive polic­ing, whether one agrees or not. Then there are social media plat­forms which are rife with citizen/​police encoun­ters, those wish­ing to show out or break the laws are con­stant­ly prob­ing for laps­es and ways to breach police defenses.
It is the respon­si­bil­i­ty and indeed the duty of police lead­er­ship, not just to keep abreast, but be steps ahead of those who would trans­gress the nation’s laws.
On this issue, the police hier­ar­chy has been woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate and incompetent.

Despite the protes­ta­tions of sup­port for these glar­ing­ly regres­sive prac­tices, what is abun­dant­ly clear, is that inso­far as effec­tive respectable and pro­fes­sion­al polic­ing is con­cerned, the JCF is light years away from where it ought to be.
If we are cel­e­brat­ing the fact that these offi­cers did not ask for a bribe, then we need to say so, because this encounter cer­tain­ly is befit­ting a times­lot on the car­toon network.

Far from accom­plish­ing the desired result of few­er mur­ders and vio­lent crimes ‚the mea­sures adopt­ed by the Government to date has demon­stra­bly only accom­plished a thin veneer of safe­ty to a few Jamaicans.
My com­ments are nev­er designed or intend­ed to cas­ti­gate, rather, they are intend­ed to guide pol­i­cy-mak­ers toward a dif­fer­ent way of accom­plish­ing their goals.

I know this is gets bor­ing and repet­i­tive, I under­stand how many Jamaicans both at home and in the dias­po­ra feel like sim­ply throw­ing up their hands,accepting the cur­rent state of affairs as the new nor­mal, the way things have to be.
Only, that is not true.

Over the years we have watched help­less­ly, mouths agape, as vio­lence and aggres­sive behav­ior have been nor­mal­ized in our soci­ety. Violence and the accep­tance of it as an effec­tive con­flict-res­o­lu­tion tool, are now a thing.
The pop­u­lar cul­ture has not only nor­mal­ized it through music and the­ater, it has become a way of demon­strat­ing the bona-fides of impres­sion­able young men across the Island.
The media not to be out­done, has aid­ed in the malig­nan­cy by incul­cat­ing into its own day-to-day report­ing, praise and ado­ra­tion for the cul­ture, co-opt­ing the street’s ver­nac­u­lar into its presentations.

The polit­i­cal class on both sides of the divide, not inter­est­ed in strong effec­tive lead­er­ship, have sim­ply cosigned and adapt­ed to the norms cre­at­ed by the youths and as a con­se­quence con­tin­ue to pre­side over the rapid and inevitable dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Jamaican society.
Instead of lead­ing, pol­i­cy­mak­ers con­tin­ue to co-opt and pur­sue paths which makes enforc­ing the laws more dif­fi­cult and break­ing them less consequential.

.

The Institutions of law con­tin­ue to dete­ri­o­rate, though not for a lack of will­ing­ness to uphold their oaths, by most in those agen­cies, but out of a lack of leg­isla­tive leadership.
The Police, the office of DPP and oth­ers all strug­gle with car­ry­ing out their man­dates, despite an incred­i­ble short­age of resources and Legislative support.
One can eas­i­ly under­stand how a poor devel­op­ing coun­try could have dif­fi­cul­ty pro­vid­ing ade­quate salaries and equip­ment to these crit­i­cal arms of the Government.
What is not read­i­ly under­stood is the con­tin­ued addi­tion of more gov­ern­ment agen­cies which mil­i­tate against the effec­tive admin­is­tra­tion of justice.

(INDECOM), The Independent Commission of Investigations and the Public Defender’s Office, both have hos­tile agen­das which are anti­thet­i­cal to the nation’s law enforcement.
In addi­tion to that, there are unprece­dent­ed lev­els of human rights med­dling in Jamaica’s leg­isla­tive process which are hav­ing dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the rule of law, and peace and tran­quil­i­ty on the Island.
As a con­se­quence, despite the well know ills of oth­er nations includ­ing right there in the CARICOM region, the vast major­i­ty of Jamaicans would emi­grate if only they could. Those who say they want to stay may be con­strued to be those with polit­i­cal pow­er and oth­ers who have the rest of the pop­u­la­tion liv­ing under the ter­ror of their bootheels.

We do not own the rights to this video.
The above video gives an indi­ca­tion of what is hap­pen­ing as entire fam­i­lies are mas­sa­cred when­ev­er these hood­lums feel like it, some­times up to sev­en lives extin­guished in one fell swoop.
Groups of police offi­cers, though well armed them­selves find­ing them­selves engaged in gun­fights which lasts for hours.

There are some who argue that there are killings every­where. There is no deny­ing that in the United States, for exam­ple, a coun­try with more guns than peo­ple, the reg­u­lar mas­sacre of large groups of peo­ple are rather com­mon. There may even be legit­i­ma­cy to the argu­ments that suc­ces­sive Administration in the United States [Republicans]have refused, [Democrats]unable to get sup­port to effect mean­ing­ful change to the nation’s gun laws
What is unde­ni­able is that despite the self-serv­ing way Conservatives in the United States inter­pret the 2^nd amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion, vio­lent offend­ers have no hid­ing place when they com­mit crimes.

Our coun­try has long tran­si­tioned from one with a high mur­der rate to one in which heav­i­ly armed thugs exact their will on entire com­mu­ni­ties with pre­cious lit­tle push-back from the government.
The stark real­i­ty is that despite the show of force, by way of the use of the bod­ies of police offi­cers and sol­diers, there is real­ly a sys­tem­at­ic hack­ing away at the fire­wall which is sup­posed to pro­tect inno­cent peo­ple from these maraud­ing thugs.

On the one hand the Police are ham­strung through the lack of resources and remu­ner­a­tions but on the oth­er hand, the same gov­ern­ment which employs the police employs, pays and empow­ers oth­ers to throw up crit­i­cal bar­ri­ers to the police abil­i­ty to do their work.
On the rare occa­sion that the Police and pros­e­cu­tor’s office are able to put away a mur­der­er, the appel­late court always seems to find some tech­ni­cal­i­ty on which to over­turn those convictions.
On that basis, pop­u­lar mur­der­ers are gen­er­al­ly guar­an­teed a get out of jail card. It may not be free but get out they do.

All told, the efforts of Government may be con­strued to look like they are work­ing for the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the com­mon man but a clos­er look reveals that they are enhanc­ing and empow­er­ing murderers.
The pre­ten­tious nature of the aver­age Jamaican who grad­u­at­ed from high school to those indoc­tri­nat­ed at the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to is a per­fect storm which has exis­ten­tial con­se­quences for our country.

Before we show our smiles to the rest of the world under the stu­pid and inane mantra “Jamaica no prob­lem” we may want to clean the garbage from our house and put out the trash.
The mur­der­ers have enough peo­ple work­ing hard on their side, it is time that good and decent Jamaicans have some­one on theirs.

Earl McNeil’s family is demanding answers from the National City, California, police department.

In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of Saturday, May 26, Earl McNeil, a 40-year-old African American man with a his­to­ry of men­tal health issues, walked up to the tele­phone attached to the front of the police depart­ment build­ing in National City, California. According to police, McNeil told the dis­patch­ers on the oth­er end of the phone that he was high, had a war­rant out for his arrest, and “want­ed to kill Jesus.”

The National City Police Department is housed in an impos­ing con­crete build­ing on National City Boulevard, the main thor­ough­fare of the low-income, a pre­dom­i­nant­ly Latinx city that sits just to the south of San Diego, and a lit­tle more than 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico bor­der. It was a few miles from where McNeil had been liv­ing, accord­ing to his rel­a­tives. Prompted by the con­ver­sa­tion with dis­patch­ers, offi­cers met McNeil out­side the police sta­tion, and soon after arrest­ed him on sus­pi­cion of being under the influ­ence of drugs.

When McNeil was tak­en out of the sta­tion sev­er­al hours lat­er, he was secured in the stiff nylon blan­ket and restraints known by police offi­cers as the “WRAP.” Officers put him in the back of a police car to check him into San Diego Central Jail for pro­cess­ing. But by the time he arrived at the jail, McNeil was in med­ical dis­tress, and he died 16 days later.

His death has sparked an out­cry from fam­i­ly mem­bers and com­mu­ni­ty activists who have demand­ed more infor­ma­tion from the police about the cir­cum­stances of his death.

An unexplained death

McNeil’s fam­i­ly is des­per­ate for answers about what hap­pened on May 26. According to a spokesper­son from the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, McNeil was “reject­ed” for book­ing by the sheriff’s depart­ment, and remained in the cus­tody of the police depart­ment. “The Sheriff’s Department can­not com­ment on what may or may not have tran­spired while he was in the cus­tody of NCPD,” the spokesper­son told The Appeal. After he was reject­ed by cen­tral book­ing, para­medics were called to assist him — and McNeil lost con­scious­ness soon after they arrived, accord­ing to a state­ment released by the police department.

Credit: Max Rivlin-Nadler

But the police have released lim­it­ed details about the inci­dent, despite a grow­ing pub­lic out­cry — nobody cam­era footage, no names of offi­cers involved in McNeil’s arrest, no sur­veil­lance footage from the precinct itself. The results of McNeil’s autop­sy have yet to be released to the fam­i­ly, although the police chief told the San Diego Union-Tribune that pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion from inves­ti­ga­tors present dur­ing the autop­sy found that there was no trau­ma on McNeil’s body.

McNeil’s fam­i­ly isn’t so sure. Photos they took while he was in the hos­pi­tal show bruis­es to his head and lac­er­a­tions to his body that they believe were caused at some point dur­ing the hours he was in National City police custody.

In the state­ment released in the days fol­low­ing McNeil’s death, the police said that McNeil was “inten­tion­al­ly hurt­ing him­self” dur­ing the trip to the coun­ty jail, despite being con­fined to the WRAP. The police did not respond direct­ly to the family’s alle­ga­tions or to a request for com­ment from The Appeal.

Tammy Davis, McNeil’s aunt, said she had to leave a meet­ing with the police chief, Manuel Rodriguez, because he kept smil­ing, and he refused to apol­o­gize for or elab­o­rate on what hap­pened to McNeil when he was in custody.

“There was a smile on the chief’s face and he was shak­ing his head. Every ques­tion we asked, he couldn’t give an answer,” Davis said. “He had a smile on his face from the time we start­ed the meet­ing to the time we left the meet­ing.” Rodriguez did not respond to requests for com­ment.

At a City Council meet­ing on June 19, Rodriguez lis­tened to com­ments from com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with a vis­i­ble smirk on his face, enrag­ing advo­cates and McNeil’s fam­i­ly mem­bers (Rodriguez dis­putes that he was smirk­ing and instead says he was just try­ing to keep a “calm” face.) At the same City Council meet­ing, Tasha Williamson, a com­mu­ni­ty activist who has been work­ing with the McNeil fam­i­ly, was arrest­ed after she went over her allot­ted speak­ing time and refused to leave the podium.

She said the police’s asser­tion that he hurt him­self is ridicu­lous. “I was hor­ri­fied by their state­ments because we had actu­al­ly gone to the hos­pi­tal the day they pulled the plug and saw his body,” Williamson said. She wants to know why they won’t release footage from his time in cus­tody. “It just feels like a cov­er-up. It feels like they think we’ll go away.”

All body cam­era footage cap­tured by the National City police is acces­si­ble by the San Diego dis­trict attorney’s office. The police department’s pol­i­cy for offi­cer-involved shoot­ings is not to release the video “until the dis­trict attorney’s inde­pen­dent review of the inci­dent has been com­plet­ed and the find­ings have been pro­vid­ed to the law enforce­ment agency involved.” The police depart­ment could not con­firm if the same pol­i­cy applies to sur­veil­lance footage, or whether there’s a dif­fer­ent pol­i­cy for inci­dents involv­ing arrestees injured while in custody.

Last month in Sacramento, police released body cam­era video of a man who died in police cus­tody just a week after his death and released exten­sive sur­veil­lance footage with­in the month.

A Distressed Man Came to a Police Station Looking for Help. Hours Later, He Was In a Coma.

Suspended Special Reserve Policeman Sgt Gary Alexander had been liv­ing in his car for sev­er­al months after the court award­ed his wife Debbie occu­pa­tion of their mar­i­tal home at Avocat Village, Fyzabad.

A quar­rel over the prop­er­ty on Sunday morn­ing is what police believe is what may have trig­gered off the home­less Alexander to attempt sui­cide by set­ting him­self on fire in the car which he called home.

President of the Police Social Welfare Association (PSWA) Insp Michael Seales said he did not know the cir­cum­stances of the court award but under­stands that Alexander had been liv­ing in his car for the greater part of the year since he was eject­ed from the mar­i­tal home.

“He had no fixed place of abode,” Seales con­firmed in a tele­phone interview.

He said Alexander’s sit­u­a­tion was not known to the PSWA before Sunday because he was an SRP and out of the sys­tem after being charged with mali­cious dam­age and attempt­ed arson.

Seales said rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the PSWA were assigned to vis­it Alexander to deter­mine how best they can assist.

“At this time, I have no report on his cir­cum­stances. The offi­cers on a fact-find­ing mis­sion. I am wait­ing for them to present us with some­thing so we would know how best to assist. We don’t know if there are chil­dren, how many, it is pro­mo­tion time we don’t know if the chil­dren are of school age if we may need to assist with books.”

Newsday under­stands that Alexander and his wife Debbie had two children.

Sources at the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH) told Newsday Alexander con­tin­ues to fight for his life. “He suf­fered 75 per­cent burns to his body and remains in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion. He is ward­ed at the Intensive Care Unit at the hos­pi­tal,” the source said.

Oropouche police are inves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances under which the SRP alleged­ly set him­self ablaze out­side his home at Jebodhsingh Avenue, in the pres­ence of his wife Debbie and their two chil­dren Shenise and Jacy.

Eyewitnesses told the police that short­ly after 10 am Alexander drove up before the house. They said their peace­ful Sunday morn­ing was dis­turbed by loud talk­ing mixed with exple­tives between Alexander who was on the road­way and his wife who was in the gallery. Read more here: https://​news​day​.co​.tt/​2​0​1​8​/​0​7​/​0​9​/​f​i​r​e​b​a​l​l​-​c​o​p​-​w​a​s​-​l​i​v​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​h​i​s​-​c​ar/

There is much back and forth regard­ing a video in which a Jamaican so-called disc jock­ey who goes by the moniker “POPCAAN” is seen fir­ing two weapons.
On the one hand, he fires a weapon which appears to be an AR15 then sim­ply drops the weapon on the ground and pulls a semi-auto­mat­ic weapon from his waist­band and com­mences to fire the weapon as he jumps around like a pre­vi­ous­ly caged mon­key hap­py to be free from bondage.

In a state­ment, Popcaan’s man­age­ment team said they want­ed to assure fans that the “gun-shoot­ing exer­cise took place in a super­vised and safe set­ting, an offi­cial shoot­ing range, a spe­cial­ized facil­i­ty designed for firearms qual­i­fi­ca­tions, train­ing, or prac­tice”. According to the dee­jay’s han­dlers, he was at the Lower Trent Valley Fish and Game Club, in Ontario, Canada where the enter­tain­er had been on tour at the time.

Whether the shoot­ing occurred in Canada or Cassava piece what we wit­nessed was a lunatic care­less mis­use of weapon­ry the mani­ac had no busi­ness handling.
The moron­ic dis­play regard­less of where he was, was a case study in how nev­er to han­dle dan­ger­ous weapons and why those dan­ger­ous weapons should be kept out of the hands of imbeciles.

The way in which he dis­card­ed the auto­mat­ic weapon after use and the mind­less dis­charge of the hand­gun is eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of what Jamaican police offi­cers and inno­cent civil­ians face at the hands of these moron­ic cretins.
As for the argu­ments that this was done in a super­vised set­ting„ that gib­ber­ish makes a mock­ery of any sane per­son­’s under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes a safe and super­vised setting.

See video here:

This is what’s hap­pen­ing in Lancaster coun­ty Pennsylvania, while in Maryland a white mass shoot­er killed five peo­ple yes­ter­day and was tak­en into cus­tody with­out a shot fired.
He was not assault­ed or tased, they sim­ply took him into cus­tody with­out incident.

Please call the Lancaster Police Department in Pennsylvania & ask them if this is how they treat unarmed & non-vio­lent black men who are com­ply­ing. The num­ber is: (717) 735‑3300.pic​.twit​ter​.com/​d​t​G​e​l​c​g​xvh

— Simar (@sahluwal) June 28, 2018

The FBI has long warned that police depart­ments all across America are being infil­trat­ed by neo-nazis and white suprema­cists. As far as we know noth­ing has been done about it. In fact, it appears that pros­e­cu­tors and the courts have gone out of their way to both avoid charg­ing these mur­der­ous fas­cists for the crimes they com­mit, or con­vict them on the rare occa­sion that they have mur­dered maimed and seri­ous­ly assault­ed peo­ple of color.

Despite these warn­ings, the FBI itself has gone out of its way to report on a fic­ti­tious straw­man which exists only in their minds.
“Black iden­ti­ty extrem­ists” a term coined by the FBI to legit­imize law-enforce­ment attack on Black peo­ple whom it says are like­ly to attack law enforce­ment officers.

Not only is there no such group, all attacks against police are by white shoot­ers. All of the mass shoot­ings being car­ried out in schools and oth­er work­places across the coun­try are being done by white ter­ror­ists not peo­ple of color.
This kind of esca­la­tion, in order to abuse cit­i­zens through the use of unwar­rant­ed force. It is a direct result of what Donald Trump told them to do.

This is not hap­pen­ing in the abstract, it is hap­pen­ing right here in New York State. Eric Garner was bait­ed and harassed sim­ply for sell­ing loose cig­a­rettes before he was mur­dered by NYPD cop Daniel Pantaleo on Staten Island.
The then dis­trict Attorney destroyed the case by hav­ing a cor­rupt and fraud­u­lent grand jury decide that the mur­der­ous Pantaleo would face no charges despite what we all saw with our own eyes, mur­der in real time.
The dis­trict Attorney Dan Donovan is now a mem­ber of Congress, Pantaleo has not faced jus­tice and Eric Garner is still dead.

You have seen me talk about the mad­den­ing­ly out­ra­geous sen­tences met­ed out by Jamaican judges even as the coun­try con­tin­ue to be drenched in blood.
A moth­er beats to death her two-year-old tod­dler for defe­cat­ing on her­self. A retard­ed judge gives her a three ‑year sen­tence sus­pend­ed for two years.

Murderers who are arrest­ed by the police are sum­mar­i­ly grant­ed pal­try cash bail and returned to the streets, regard­less of the fact that they were already on bail for hav­ing mur­dered and had gone back to kill, some­times up to six sep­a­rate times.

Instead of fix­ing these glar­ing incon­sis­ten­cies in the jus­tice dis­pen­sa­tion process the brain-dead deci­sion mak­ers will lec­ture you on the virtues of secur­ing the rights of mur­ders. Never mind that the mur­dered and assault­ed par­ties had their right to life and safe­ty tak­en from them with­out any­one speak­ing on their behalf.

Shockingly, as gang­sters con­tin­ue to mur­der whomev­er they want with­out any vis­i­ble or dis­cern­able fear of the law, the author­i­ties con­tin­ue to embark on a process which may only be char­ac­ter­ized as the response of the peo­ple who pre­tend­ed that the naked emper­or was in fact clothed.
Those in the dias­po­ra who brave the killings and return to set­tle are tar­get­ed by gang­sters, some­times with the aid and bless­ings of their rel­a­tives and are usu­al­ly vicious­ly and sense­less­ly murdered.

The mur­ders are gen­er­al­ly car­ried out in the most graph­ic and bar­bar­ic of fash­ion. They sim­ply wash away the blood and con­tin­ue on as if they nev­er existed.
We have been talk­ing about these con­tra­dic­tions which are eas­i­ly fix­able in our coun­try, yet admin­is­tra­tions of both the JLP and the PNP have ignored the seri­ous­ness of the con­se­quences of crime on the soci­ety, focus­ing instead on adding more and more lay­ers of over­sight to the already feck­less police depart­ment ren­der­ing it even more use­less to the fight at hand.

We have decid­ed that wher­ev­er pos­si­ble we will bring you the graph­ic images of what is real­ly hap­pen­ing even while the world’s atten­tion is hijacked and forcibly divert­ed to the car­ni­val in Washington DC.
We can in no way con­tin­ue to pre­tend that this wan­ton and grue­some way of life is nor­mal. We can­not con­tin­ue to hide these images and pre­tend that we do not have prob­lems. We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to hide these fac­tu­al images while pre­tend­ing that it’s not so bad, all the while telling our­selves that there are killings everywhere.

I call on the leg­is­la­ture to stop play­ing pol­i­tics with this exis­ten­tial prob­lem and get to the task of draft­ing, debat­ing and pass­ing laws which make it clear that killings, rapes, vio­lent crimes will no longer be tolerated.
At the same time, it is imper­a­tive to attach manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences to vio­lent crimes, there­by remov­ing from the Island’s crim­i­nal-lov­ing judges the abil­i­ty to set mur­der­ers and oth­er vio­lent felons free with the slight­est of slap on the wrist even for murder.

The court’s sab­o­tage of the process has over the last sev­er­al decades con­tributed to the nation’s crime tra­jec­to­ry. It has undoubt­ed­ly cre­at­ed and aid­ed malaise and apa­thy in law-enforce­ment on the one hand and on the oth­er hand cre­at­ed cor­rup­tion in some members.
The aver­age law abid­ing Jamaican are left to won­der whether they will ever again have a life when they can live their lives in ways that are less than caged ani­mals dread­ing the butcher’s knife.
This sit­u­a­tion can be reme­died all is required is the will to do it but both sides of the polit­i­cal divide must stop pan­der­ing to the faux forces of human rights which have set up shop in our country.

The Supreme Court ruled 5 – 4 Tuesday to uphold President Donald Trump’s ban on allow­ing trav­el from six coun­tries in a major deci­sion that inspired out­rage from the court’s lib­er­al jus­tices. In a sep­a­rate writ­ten dis­sent joined only by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Sonia Sotomayor used Trump’s inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric about Muslims to under­score the “stark par­al­lels” between the major­i­ty opin­ion and one of the high court’s most shame­ful moments: Korematsu v. United States, the deci­sion that upheld Japanese intern­ment dur­ing World War II. .

“A rea­son­able observ­er would con­clude that the Proclamation was moti­vat­ed by anti-Muslim ani­mus,” Sotomayor wrote. “The major­i­ty holds oth­er­wise by ignor­ing the facts, mis­con­stru­ing our legal prece­dent, and turn­ing a blind eye to the pain and suf­fer­ing the Proclamation inflicts upon count­less fam­i­lies and indi­vid­u­als, many of whom are United States citizens.”

In the major­i­ty opin­ion, the jus­tices explic­it­ly over­ruled the 1944 Korematsu deci­sion, but Justice Sotomayor reject­ed their argu­ments, say­ing that their actions “mere­ly replaces one ‘grave­ly wrong’ deci­sion with another”

In the inter­ven­ing years since Korematsu, our Nation has done much to leave its sor­did lega­cy behind … Today, the Court takes the impor­tant step of final­ly over­rul­ing Korematsu, denounc­ing it as “grave­ly wrong the day it was decided.”…This for­mal repu­di­a­tion of a shame­ful prece­dent is laud­able and long over­due. But it does not make the majority’s deci­sion here accept­able or right. By blind­ly accept­ing the Government’s mis­guid­ed invi­ta­tion to sanc­tion a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pol­i­cy moti­vat­ed by ani­mos­i­ty toward a dis­fa­vored group, all in the name of a super­fi­cial claim of nation­al secu­ri­ty, the Court rede­ploys the same dan­ger­ous log­ic under­ly­ing Korematsu and mere­ly replaces one “grave­ly wrong” deci­sion with another.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote the major­i­ty opin­ion and dis­pensed with the reli­gious debate in order to focus sole­ly on whether Trump sat­is­fied the demands of the Immigration and Nationality Act. In response, Sotomayor argued that Trump’s exec­u­tive order should have been struck down based on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which ensures that the gov­ern­ment “can­not favor or dis­fa­vor one reli­gion over another.”

In reach­ing that con­clu­sion, Sotomayor flat­ly reject­ed the government’s request to ignore Trump’s mul­ti­ple state­ments about Muslims and his ear­li­est descrip­tion of the exec­u­tive order as a “total and com­plete shut­down” of Muslims enter­ing the US. “Given President Trump’s fail­ure to cor­rect the rea­son­able per­cep­tion of his appar­ent hos­til­i­ty toward the Islamic faith, it is unsur­pris­ing that the President’s lawyers have, at every step in the low­er courts, failed in their attempts to laun­der the Proclamation of its dis­crim­i­na­to­ry taint,” Sotomayor wrote.

Sotomayor com­pared Trump’s many broad­sides against Islam, which com­prise sev­er­al para­graphs of her dis­sent, with the Court’s recent 7 – 2 rul­ing in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, not­ing, “The Court recent­ly found less per­va­sive offi­cial expres­sions of hos­til­i­ty and the fail­ure to dis­avow them to be con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant.” In the after­math of the Masterpiece case, some legal experts had sug­gest­ed that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s rul­ing, which depend­ed on hos­tile state­ments made about reli­gion by Colorado pub­lic offi­cials, might fore­shad­ow his rejec­tion of Trump’s trav­el ban on sim­i­lar grounds. It didn’t.

Sotomayor said Trump’s order fails to even clear the stan­dard set by “ratio­nal-basis review,” the low­est bar of judi­cial scruti­ny, because the “admin­is­tra­tive review” under­gird­ing it is too uncon­vinc­ing in its aims and secre­tive in its process to dis­tin­guish the order from its pub­lic his­to­ry as a Muslim ban.

She was sim­i­lar­ly uncon­vinced by the government’s con­tention that the trav­el ban did not tar­get Islam specif­i­cal­ly, call­ing the inclu­sion of North Korea and Venezuela on the list of pro­hib­it­ed regions “insub­stan­tial, if not entire­ly sym­bol­ic.” The order still “over­whelm­ing­ly tar­gets Muslim-major­i­ty nations,” she wrote, adding that the US “remains whol­ly unable to artic­u­late any cred­i­ble nation­al-secu­ri­ty inter­est that would go unad­dressed by the cur­rent statu­to­ry scheme absent the Proclamation.” If any­thing, the ben­e­fits of such an order would be redun­dant giv­en exist­ing immi­gra­tion vet­ting pro­to­cols, she argued.

As a fine point in con­clud­ing her dis­sent, Sotomayor bor­rowed an approach pop­u­lar­ized by her late, con­ser­v­a­tive col­league, Justice Antonin Scalia. When he espe­cial­ly dis­agreed with a Court rul­ing, he would dis­pense with tra­di­tion­al pro­to­col and end his dis­sent­ing opin­ions with­out the usu­al “I respect­ful­ly dis­sent” in favor of some plain­er lan­guage. Sotomayor opt­ed for the harsh­er option: “Our Constitution demands, and our coun­try deserves, a Judiciary will­ing to hold the coör­di­nate branch­es to account when they defy our most sacred legal com­mit­ments. Because the Court’s deci­sion today has failed in that respect, with pro­found regret, I dis­sent.” https://​www​.moth​er​jones​.com/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​1​8​/​0​6​/​s​o​t​o​m​a​y​o​r​-​d​i​s​s​e​n​t​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​t​r​a​v​e​l​-​b​an/

This man lying face down was report­ed­ly mur­dered on a con­struc­tion site this after­noon. Details are still sketchy, we will update this sto­ry as soon as more infor­ma­tion becomes available.

Police report that the deceased is sub-con­trac­tor Keith Osbourne, 56, oth­er­wise called ‘Smoker’, who was mur­dered in Palmers Cross last Thursday.

Osbourne, who is from New Harbour Village in St Catherine, was said to be con­duct­ing repairs with his team in the area when he was approached by armed men who shot him mul­ti­ple times.

The streets report that Osbourne has deep polit­i­cal con­nec­tions and con­trary to the police san­i­tized descrip­tion of the deceased he is a “Don” in the area. Word on the street is that there are threat­ened reper­cus­sions for his death.
Story updated.