In our Parliamentary demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem of Government, as is the case in west­ern repub­li­can democ­ra­cies, it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that the checks and bal­ances which obtains holds, and are strength­ened if our demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and our nations are to survive.
As cit­i­zens, all of us have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to stick our hand in the prover­bial dike when­ev­er we see a breach, every­thing depends on it.

Last Wednesday High Court Judge jus­tice Glen Brown urged the Government to pay the attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Corporal Kevin Adams and six oth­er police offi­cers charged with mur­der in the case pejo­ra­tive­ly dubbed the death squad case.
Justice Brown inti­mat­ed that he would be giv­ing the Government over the week­end to deal with the 107 mil­lion dol­lars owed to the offi­cer’s attor­neys, a lit­tle fact which has ham­pered the case’s progress.

Listen to com­men­tary here.

Two events occurred as a result of jus­tice Brown’s threats to dismiss.
(1) The nation’s Justice Minister Delroy Chuck was out­raged, he labeled the judge “out of order” while insist­ing that the sum owed was out­ra­geous and extravagant.
Chuch went as far as to sug­gest that the gov­ern­ment only agreed to help with the offi­cer’s legal fees not bear the full extent of those costs.
Remember this is the very same Delroy Chuck who was a part of the admin­is­tra­tion of Bruce Golding which gave the Island INDECOM. Yet the learned attorney[sic] nev­er thought it pru­dent to have monies includ­ed to defend cops charged by INDECOM, what­ev­er hap­pened to the pre­sump­tion of innocence.
There is one lit­tle fact in all of this, and that is that the Government is com­mit­ted to pay­ing the legal fees of offi­cers charged by INDECOM.
This was not a part of the orig­i­nal frame­work of the law, it came into effect after struc­tur­al defi­cien­cies have been found in the eight-year-old law.
This writer has been on the tip of this spear, yelling at and to every­one who will lis­ten, at the clear uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the law and the ways it is infring­ing on the rights of the Island’s officers.

(2) Despite Chuck’s grand­stand­ing and argu­ments for a sys­tem of men rather than a sys­tem of laws, he found him­self meet­ing with the offi­cer’s attor­neys and resolv­ing the out­stand­ing issue.
We can look at Chuck’s expe­di­tious con­for­mi­ty with what the judge sug­gest­ed and extrap­o­late from it that(a)he gave in because he knew the monies had to be paid. Or (b) I rather argue that he made arrange­ments to pay because he was adamant that these offi­cers were not going to walk free.
We all know how much Delroy Chuck loves the police[sic]

So Chuck did not find him­self answer­ing to the court per­son­al­ly but Malahoo-Forte the Attorney General did.
The fact that any­one from the exec­u­tive was forced to show up and answer to anoth­er branch of Government is a step in the right direc­tion and a clear indi­ca­tion that flawed though our democ­ra­cy is, we are still on the right path toward a soci­ety of laws and not of men.

As I have said repeat­ed­ly INDECOM should not have the right to pros­e­cute its own investigations.
In a let­ter to one of the dai­ly pub­li­ca­tions, Attorney at law Valerie Neita Robertson said the following:

INDECOM must not arrest, charge, and pros­e­cute its own inves­ti­ga­tions but must be sub­ject to the con­sti­tu­tion­al buffer of the Office of the DPP if we are to ensure that jus­tice in Jamaica is not an illu­sion. Let us all be guid­ed by the oft-used phrase that “there can be no peace with­out justice.”

(Listen to the audio commentary).

Miss Neita’s words are time­ly on this mat­ter even as this issue has been of burn­ing import over the last eight years since the Act came into being.
When there is no con­sti­tu­tion­al buffer see the (DPP)INDECOM gets to run roughshod over our law enforce­ment offi­cers even when they are act­ing in con­for­mi­ty with the let­ter of the law.

In case after case, we see INDECOM over­step­ping the bounds of its man­date and the bounds of com­mon sense in its glee­ful zeal to embar­rass police offi­cers using the faulty jus­tice sys­tem as a tool of persecution.
I spoke about one such case in an arti­cle in November of 2017.

INDECOM’s Abuse Of Power Clear As Day In This Case

Supporters of the law know full well that the law is bad. Aspects of the law may even be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al but they would rather keep a bad law in place which injuries police offi­cers than do the work to change it.
One of the talk­ing points used by pro­po­nents of the law is that if offi­cers act appro­pri­ate­ly they have noth­ing to fear from hav­ing INDECOM there.
Many peo­ple out­side the cir­cle of pow­er of pol­i­tics and law enforce­ment who sim­ply want checks and bal­ances in the sys­tem fall vic­tim to this lie because they do not under­stand the minu­tia of how a bad law like INDECOM may have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for offi­cers who do exact­ly what they are sup­posed to do and are crim­i­nal­ized by a law which should nev­er have been autho­rized in its present state.

Dealing with law­break­ers at scenes of this nature are not easy for police offi­cers. In these scenes, the most docile per­son is empow­ered and embold­ened to be aggres­sive and unlaw­ful based sole­ly on the numer­i­cal strength of the group.
Police offi­cers are still expect­ed to clear thor­ough­fares and restore order. When they attempt to do their jobs there are no short­age of assaults on their persons.
If they act to pro­tect them­selves they are indicted.
This non­sense must stop.

The instances of the abuse of INDECOM are many the lat­est being the case of assault INDECOM brought against Corporal Delroy McDuffus and Constable Adrian Beckford, who was attached to the Morant Bay Police Station six years ago. McDuffus and Beckford were arrest­ed and charged by INDECOM for alleged­ly assault­ing a man dur­ing a road­block that was mount­ed by res­i­dents in the Whitehorse com­mu­ni­ty in the parish.The com­plainant was arrest­ed by the police after he was report­ed­ly seen block­ing the road­way and was ordered to move away from the scene but refused and resist­ed the police’s attempt to remove him.

This case should nev­er have been brought in the first place, there was no evi­dence out­side the complainant’s words to go by.
Point num­ber one is that he was arrest­ed for refus­ing to move away from the scene after he was caught block­ing a pub­lic thoroughfare.
If he refused the police com­mand to do as he was told why would we not believe he had to be forcibly sub­dued by the police in order to effect the arrest?

It is exact­ly because of abus­es of this nature that I am allud­ing to when I crit­i­cize the INDECOM law as a flawed law entrust­ed to a dem­a­gogue to execute.
Additionally, the police can­not sue INDECOM for wrong­ful arrest even when they act with haste, with­out due-care, a lack of cau­tion and maybe mal­ice as is seem­ing­ly the case here.
Police offi­cers are sued for doing exact­ly what they are tasked with doing and are being arrest­ed and treat­ed as crim­i­nals for doing so. INDECOM faces no legal jeop­ardy for abus­ing its powers.

(This post has been updat­ed since it was first published.)

The Supreme court on Monday ruled for an Arizona police offi­cer who shot a woman out­side her home in Tuscon.

The court’s deci­sion was unsigned and issued with­out full brief­ing and oral argu­ments, and an indi­ca­tion the major­i­ty found the case to be easy.

In an impas­sioned dis­sent jus­tice, Sonia Sotomayer said the major­i­ty had gone bad­ly astray.
www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​0​2​/​u​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​s​u​p​r​e​m​e​-​c​o​u​r​t​-​r​u​l​e​s​-​f​o​r​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​i​n​-​e​x​c​e​s​s​i​v​e​-​f​o​r​c​e​-​c​a​s​e​.​h​tml

rom time to time I have touched on this sub­ject as more and more evi­dence sur­faces which reveals the gap­ing holes in one of the most basic func­tions police offi­cers are tasked with car­ry­ing out.
That task is the func­tion of effect­ing an arrest in a time­ly fash­ion using the most effec­tive means avail­able to the office/​s.

As a for­mer offi­cer of the JCF myself, I found the train­ing of recruits at the Academy woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate as far back as in the 80’s. Juxtapose that with what offi­cers are required to do in the field and the dis­par­i­ty is glar­ing. This is not just on the issue of effect­ing arrests but in oth­er crit­i­cal areas, young offi­cers are almost always left unsure of how to act and what to do when real life sit­u­a­tions present them­selves and they find that their train­ing did not address the how and when of that situation.

Make The Damn Arrest With Authority.….

The train­ing may have evolved and grown to some minute degree but far too much time is wast­ed on drills and forms which are more befit­ting of banana republics than a mod­ern police depart­ment train­ing facility.
Take away the drill and cer­e­mo­ni­al non­sense and teach recruits how to effect arrests, how to deal with hostage sit­u­a­tions, teach them how to res­cue drown­ing cit­i­zens, teach them how to han­dle ter­ror threats.

If you have to drill, (a)drill down on crowd con­trol, (2)Drill down on how to safe­ly and effec­tive­ly do a traf­fic stop, clear­ly offi­cers have no clue how to safe­ly exe­cute traf­fic stops. ©Teach them how to do pit-stops, there is so much that is not being taught to our police offi­cers it makes it lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble for these young men and women to do a good and pro­fes­sion­al job.

THE UNENVIABLE TASK OF ARRESTING A SUBJECT
Police offi­cers are tasked with the unen­vi­able job of tak­ing sus­pects who have bro­ken our laws into custody.
On every occa­sion that an offi­cer sees an offense being com­mit­ted or receives a report from some­one else about an offense com­mit­ted that offi­cer is in a lose-lose situation.

(a)I will begin by address­ing those per­sons who believe that offi­cers who effect arrests may be char­ac­ter­ized as overzeal­ous. This ridicu­lous pos­ture would be laughed at in every sit­u­a­tion in which an offi­cer tries to arrests some­one who breaks the laws.
If an offi­cer decides to give some­one a break after he wit­ness­es a minor infrac­tion, (not a felony) it is his/​her right to do so.
If the same Officer decides against giv­ing that same offend­er a break, that is (not overzeal­ous­ness) it is his or her right not to do so.

To the best of my knowl­edge, no offi­cer gets spe­cial pay for effect­ing arrests, that is not how it works, even in sit­u­a­tions where offi­cers do very well work­ing overtime.
On every occa­sion that an offi­cer decides to effect an arrest, he sets him/​herself up to be crit­i­cized for the way the arrest is executed.
If he/​she decides against the arrest he/​she places him/​herself in dire jeop­ardy of fail­ing to car­ry out the dic­tates of the office he or she holds.

(b)Arrests are ugly when a per­son decides to resist. Police detrac­tors are quick to point to the ugli­ness of vio­lent arrests as if good police offi­cers chose to be vio­lent with peo­ple they are about to arrest.
The per­son being arrest­ed decides how that arrest is going to go down even how it will end. There is no law­ful argu­ment to be made for resist­ing offi­cers when one is told he/​she is under arrest. (That goes for sit­u­a­tions in which the arrestee is being wrong­ful­ly arrested)
There are carve­outs in the law which gives cit­i­zens recourse in our courts if they are wrong­ful­ly arrested.
Arrests become expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult in sit­u­a­tions in which there are bystanders active­ly effec­tu­at­ing the escape of the offender.
It becomes almost an exer­cise in futil­i­ty when there are peo­ple active­ly assist­ing the offend­er to evade arrest rather than help­ing offi­cers to make the arrest.

©Most arrests in Jamaica has to hap­pen with a cer­tain degree of force, because of the envi­ron­ments of hos­til­i­ty and law­less­ness per­va­sive in the coun­try. This has become more per­va­sive in recent times for a con­flu­ence of rea­sons. Many have become more bel­liger­ent and defi­ant, some are oper­at­ing on the mis­guid­ed notion that the INDECOM act pro­tects them from being arrest­ed or gives them the pow­er to fight with officers.
Officers improp­er­ly trained and unsure of their pow­ers add fuel to this fire which inex­orably will lead to death before offend­ers real­ize the dan­ger in what they are doing.
God for­bid that the Ministry of National Security, the Justice Ministry or the JCF lead­er­ship would edu­cate the pub­lic about this issue.
The Justice Ministry is more focused on pro­tect­ing the rights of crim­i­nals than uphold­ing and enhanc­ing the rule of Law under Delroy Chuck.

(d) If there is more than one offi­cer at a scene where a sus­pect is to be arrest­ed both offi­cers must be on the same wave­length as to when to step in and make the arrest.
It must be assumed at all times that the sus­pect will resist, offi­cers attuned to their jobs can pick this up imme­di­ate­ly after telling the sub­ject he/​she is under arrest so both or all three offi­cers must move quick­ly to arrest the suspect.

(e) Speed is a crit­i­cal friend of the police when mak­ing arrests, two or three offi­cers must simul­ta­ne­ous­ly grab a bel­liger­ent strug­gling sub­ject take him/​her to the ground and cuff his/​her hands behind his/​her back.
In a sit­u­a­tion in which there are two offi­cers, both offi­cers must take down the fight­ing sub­ject and as quick­ly as pos­si­ble cuff the subject.
If there are bystanders get­ting too close there must be loud bark­ing orders com­mand­ing them to step back.
It is a mat­ter of life and death that offi­cers have this safe­ty zones around them as they work to arrest a bel­liger­ent subject.

(f) After the ini­tial sub­ject is hand­cuffed, offi­cers must grab any offend­er who vio­lat­ed their order to step away and place them under arrest.
Officers are empow­ered to use appro­pri­ate force to ensure their own safe­ty are guar­an­teed, they should set an exam­ple that they are not going to stand for the behav­ior we are wit­ness­ing on our streets.

(g) Removing arrest­ed sus­pects from the scene of the arrest is crit­i­cal for con­trol. Officers should endeav­or to be quick, decid­ed, pro­fes­sion­al, and sure of what they are doing.
Bystanders who would be inclined to inter­fere in arrests also observe the offi­cers involved in the process, they do not inter­fere in sit­u­a­tions in which deci­sive, no-non­sense offi­cers are operating.
Offenders(usually male) who shout out instruc­tions to oth­ers to fight offi­cers and demand that oth­ers help in the release of the per­sons being arrest­ed usu­al­ly do so from behind front-line obstructionists.
They must be force­ful­ly brought under arrest swift­ly and deci­sive­ly. These actions send an unequiv­o­cal mes­sage that this kind of behav­ior will not be tolerated.

The police high com­mand con­tin­ues to brag about its train­ing though clear­ly its train­ing needs to be thrown out and a train­ing pro­gram adopt­ed which reflects the chal­lenges offi­cers face.
The changes being made today, includ­ing the change at the top in which a non-police com­mis­sion­er is foist­ed on offi­cers are made against the police, not for the police.
It is not the first time it has been done, but we lose sight of the real­i­ty if we ignore the inep­ti­tude of the high com­mand to effec­tu­ate prac­ti­cal com­mon sense approach­es which made the inter­lop­ing pos­si­ble in the first place.

For most of the thou­sands of rank and file offi­cers of the JCF who have the option to leave the depart­ment I would humbly sug­gest that you find alter­na­tive employment.
Simply put, many Jamaicans are inher­ent­ly cor­rupt anti-law enforce­ment peo­ple, Transparency International year­ly report­ing gives a rea­son­able assess­ment of the true numer­i­cal depth of that corruption.

To oth­ers who do not have the means to leave study up on your laws and police duties. Use the laws to your advan­tage, do the job and do it well.
If their crim­i­nal enhance­ment agency INDECOM charge you when you car­ry out your sworn func­tion fight them to the privy coun­cil, you will win.
When you win sue for hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, you will win.

or eight long years, this rather small pub­li­ca­tion stood like a flick­er­ing light in a sea of dark­ness and brave­ly offered a glim­mer of light to the decent hard work­ing mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure I am a for­mer mem­ber and so my world­view is always going to be influ­enced by my 10-years expe­ri­ence serv­ing in the depart­ment, good and bad.

I am the first to con­fess that my impres­sion of the (JCF) lead­er­ship or lack there­of, sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact­ed my deci­sion to make an ear­ly exit from the agency.
However, it was nev­er my opin­ion that the depart­ment did not play a sig­nif­i­cant part in nation build­ing, and must con­tin­ue to do so.
I was also unique­ly mind­ful that the neg­a­tives attrib­uted to the (JCF) were not unique to the agency, but to the extent that those attri­bu­tions were cor­rect, those attri­bu­tions should be laid at the feet of the leadership.

The (JCF) top man­age­ment struc­ture oper­at­ed not from an enlight­ened posi­tion of moti­va­tion and guid­ance prin­ci­ples but from an over­lord posi­tion of bul­ly­ing befit­ting despot­ic strong­men in banana republics.
That is not to say that there haven’t been real­ly fine lead­ers in the recent his­to­ry of the JCF, there has been. It isn’t total­ly a ques­tion of men its a ques­tion of the culture.

The for­gone was an acknowl­edg­ment that the Police depart­men­t’s lead­er­ship can in no way deny it’s part in the fail­ures of the JCF to the extent that fail­ures exist, and they do.
It is impor­tant that while the(JCF) take respon­si­bil­i­ty for its fail­ings that there is full recog­ni­tion that the depart­men­t’s fail­ures, to the extent they exist, are not fail­ings in a vacuum.
Neither can those fail­ings be cred­i­bly viewed out­side the larg­er sys­temic fail­ings all across the pub­lic sec­tor since the Independence dec­la­ra­tions of 1962.

Importantly as well, the (JCF) is one of the most vis­i­ble, most con­se­quen­tial agency of gov­ern­ment, as such, what­ev­er ails the depart­ment is going to be high­ly vis­i­ble, high­ly amplified.
It is the only agency of the gov­ern­ment which has sev­er­al lev­els and lay­ers of over­sight and account­abil­i­ty. The only agency which con­tin­ues to purge itself all toward a bet­ter self. So much over­sight that the Agency is now an inef­fec­tu­al top-heavy behe­moth ripe and ready for a final coup de grâce by the very same peo­ple who ensured its fail­ure through active mea­sures and neglect.

That coup de grâce is evi­denced by the con­tin­ued install­ments of out­side forces to head the depart­ment. By the Bill, they have to cod­i­fy into law their attempt to tear away the Major Organized Crime Anti Corruption Agency, a part of the depart­ment which has been work­ing well, and make it a sep­a­rate agency.
God for­bid that they would give the req­ui­site sup­port need­ed to the (JCF) to make it a mod­ern police agency with the pow­er and com­pe­tence to deliv­er the qual­i­ty ser­vice required of a 21^st-cen­tu­ry police department.

Instead, they have embarked on a process of demo­niz­ing the (JCF) remov­ing parts of which are work­ing and installing their upper St. Andrew cronies over those parts. This has been a sys­tem­at­ic approach of the two polit­i­cal par­ties which for all intents and pur­pos­es are cod­i­fy­ing the depart­men­t’s offi­cers into a set of sec­ond-class cit­i­zens who must die for their coun­try in a (JCF) that they are no longer good enough to lead.

It began when they removed the Passport pro­cess­ing from the purview of the police in order to reward their cronies. The next arm of the Police to go was the Firearm Licencing Authority(FLA). That depart­ment need­ed much fix­ing under the police but it has since become a colos­sal cesspool of graft, polit­i­cal malfea­sance and a true exam­ple of what polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion can do to a country.

The bill before the Parliament will effec­tive­ly sev­er (MOCA) from the (JCF), of course, they had already placed their cho­sen one, you guessed it from the paper mil­i­tary to head it even as the peo­ple doing the real grunge work there are .….….….….….….….….….….mem­bers of the hat­ed (JCF).
All of the peo­ple now head­ing the agen­cies which make up the nation­al secu­ri­ty land­scape are polit­i­cal place­hold­ers. Many are immi­nent­ly qual­i­fied to be sol­diers, lawyers, none have law enforce­ment bona fides. Terrence Williams, (INDECOM)Anthony Harriot,(PCA) Anthony Anderson,(JCF) Desmond T Edwards(MOCA) Shane Dalling(FLA).

The cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence inher­ent in the place­ment of peo­ple who have zero law enforce­ment expe­ri­ence into crit­i­cal posi­tions usu­al­ly reserved for law enforce­ment exper­tise is proof enough of a sys­temic cam­paign to reduce mem­bers of the (JCF) to blue-col­lar roles in the nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus despite their aca­d­e­m­ic accomplishments.

Clearly what they have done is to move around their choice picks from role to role to role as they have done With Anthony Anderson the now com­mis­sion­er of police) from the (FLA) to cre­at­ing a new role, National secu­ri­ty advis­er which nev­er exist­ed before, just for him, and final­ly to place him in charge of the (JCF).
Anderson’s case is only one of the many exam­ples but you would have grasped my gist at this point, all of this has been hap­pen­ing while you weren’t even pay­ing attention.

It is absolute­ly crit­i­cal that mem­bers of the (JCF) are clear-eyed about what is hap­pen­ing to them and the agency they love. (1) Never be ashamed of your ser­vice to the coun­try, (assum­ing you are true to your oath of office. The fail­ings of the depart­ment where they exist, are not your bur­den to bear.
Those of us who served under­stand well that with­in the force of over 12,000 there are some bad actors but by and large the vast major­i­ty of offi­cers who step out each day to do the job are hon­est hard work­ing patriots.

Can the 63 who occu­py the low­er cham­bers on Duke street say the same? That’ss the real question.
Don’t be daz­zled by a few used cars and some motor­bikes, they do not belong to you. Surely you must see these things as essen­tial to the trade and should not be daz­zled by these shiny objects they place in front your eyes while they are empow­er­ing the rogue INDECOM to imprison you for doing exact­ly what you were sworn to do.

INDECOM’s dem­a­gog­ic tac­tics came straight from JFJ’s play­book….…

In a sim­ple word­ed well-rea­soned Article appear­ing in Sundays, Gleaner Dr.Garth Rattary evis­cer­at­ed the argu­ments of Terrence Willaims regard­ing Police fatal shootings.

The bril­liant sum­ma­tion of Dr.Rattary a sup­port­er of the INDECOM act and of the Police argued : If an offi­cer of the law feels threat­ened by any­one, even an unarmed indi­vid­ual, he or she will be with­in his or her rights to use dead­ly force because the aggres­sor may over­pow­er him or her and use the acquired dead­ly weapon to kill, as hap­pened on April 28, 2017, when a sus­pect wrest­ed the ser­vice pis­tol away from a police­man and killed him with it.
We need INDECOM to help pro­tect us and improve the police force. They can’t achieve their goal when they so often appear adver­sar­i­al towards the police.

Dr. Rattary went on to reveal. Many police tell me that they have noth­ing against INDECOM, but they have prob­lems with the man­ner­ism of the head of the orga­ni­za­tion and with the way that sta­tis­tics are pro­duced and made pub­lic.
The obser­va­tions and argu­ments of Dr. Garth Rattary sup­port and bears out 8‑years of work that I have per­son­al­ly pro­duced on this subject.
In fact, I have con­sis­tent­ly said that the secu­ri­ty forces and maybe the Police, in Particular, have no one to blame for the cre­ation of INDECOM and as such they must live with it.

My con­tention is and has always been that a law can­not be a tool of sup­pres­sion, or oppres­sion (which INDECOM) is, laws must be clear lines of demar­ca­tion for all parties.
Regardless of the num­ber of time that we make this argu­ment that we are not opposed to over­sight, there will be a bunch of igno­ra­mus­es who are intel­lec­tu­al­ly unable to move past their hatred for the police.
Unfortunately, this mind-numb­ing idio­cy is not con­fined to civil­ians but even some half-baked idiots who claimed they were police officers.

Terrence Williams con­tin­ues to manip­u­late and cher­ry-pick data to sup­port his point of view as it relates to police shootings.
Dr. Rattary bril­liant­ly spoke to Williams’ lack of verac­i­ty. “For my part, I feel that INDECOM sta­tis­tics regard­ing police killings need to con­comi­tant­ly reveal the num­ber of cit­i­zens killed by crim­i­nal ele­ments dur­ing that rel­e­vant peri­od. That would pro­vide a more bal­anced per­spec­tive on the lev­el of dead­ly crimes that require a response from the police”.

Criminal Rights Society:

Terrence Williams, in a March 12, 2018, Observer Article, talked about Police offi­cer shoot­ing and killing more sus­pects than they are wounding.
The idea that police offi­cers use of force which results in the death of the sus­pects. Seated at the table with Williams was Hamish Campbell the British import sec­ond­ed to Jamaica.
INDECOM claimed that there is an expec­ta­tion that casu­al­ties from secu­ri­ty force shoot­ing inci­dents would result in more indi­vid­u­als being wound­ed than killed.…
I am unsure where the data in sup­port of that claim comes from, or even whether there is any evi­dence in sup­port of such friv­o­lous claim com­ing from some­one who has no train­ing or expe­ri­ence to make those claims.
On the very face of it, the cher­ry-pick­ing of data is not only disin­gen­u­ous it is down­right dis​hon​est​.It goes to the lack of char­ac­ter of Williams and the senior lev­el man­age­ment of INDECOM.

Jamaica is one of the most mur­der­ous places on earth, last year alone 1616 homi­cides were report­ed to the police in a coun­try of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple crammed togeth­er in a land space of 4411 square miles.
The sug­ges­tion that offi­cers are killing more than they are wound­ing gives the impres­sion that police chose to get into gun bat­tles in which they stand a 50 – 50 chance or worse to get killed.
It also sug­gests that offi­cers get to deter­mine whether they respond to shoot­ers when they do engage Jamaica’s mur­der­ous gangsters.

As some­one who has been shot in the line of duty, I can tell you that the dif­fer­ence between life and death is almost always a mat­ter of instinc­tive reflex.
The fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between the fac­tu­al response to life and death sit­u­a­tions which war­rant lethal force and the dem­a­goguery prof­fered and pro­mul­gat­ed by INDECOM is simple.
(1) Police offi­cers are trained to shoot at the upper extrem­i­ties of a sus­pect if and when the neces­si­ty aris­es to use lethal or dead­ly force. Many offi­cers will go through their entire career and may nev­er have to fire a sin­gle shot at any­one. Conversely, those offi­cers who are pressed into dai­ly ser­vice in the most vio­lent neigh­bor­hoods are not only duty bound to respond to threats against their lives, that of their col­leagues and the cit­i­zens they are sworn to pro­tect, they get no joy at hav­ing to defend their lives for a few dollars.

Let Examine Shootouts

(2) The notion that police offi­cers have the option to shoot to injure some­one when the offi­cer’s life or that of anoth­er per­son is in per­il is fan­tas­tic and down­right unin­formed of what occurs in a shootout.
Police offi­cers do not get to say to a vio­lent heav­i­ly armed sus­pect,“wait, stand still so that I may shoot to injure you”. Said Dr. Rattary on that matter:

“INDECOM’s insin­u­a­tion that police should aim to wound and not kill dimin­ish­es its vaunt­ed objec­tiv­i­ty and author­i­ty and makes it seem total­ly unaware of the basic tenets of mor­tal engage­ment.”
“If an offi­cer of the law feels threat­ened by any­one, even an unarmed indi­vid­ual, he or she will be with­in his or her rights to use dead­ly force because the aggres­sor may over­pow­er him or her and use the acquired dead­ly weapon to kill, as hap­pened on April 28, 2017, when a sus­pect wrest­ed the ser­vice pis­tol away from a police­man and killed him with it”.

(JFJ) ENEMY OF THE STATE?

Terrence Williams has been using the play­book of Jamaicans for Justice the anti-police for­eign-fund­ed lob­by and its ini­tial con­venor Carolyn Gomes for years. Gomes was even­tu­al­ly exposed as a decep­tive con­niv­ing decep­tive fraud who pro­vid­ed explic­it, homo­sex­u­al mate­ri­als to vul­ner­a­ble under­age kids and was forced to step aside in dis­grace. As the leader of JFJ she mali­cious­ly and duplic­i­tous­ly used cher­ry-picked data in for­eign forums to smear the police.

Unders Gomes’ lead­er­ship JFJ ‘s prin­ci­pals would attend con­fer­ences in Washington DC and used cher­ry-picked data to report on what they char­ac­ter­ized as extra-judi­cial police killings.
The data was usu­al­ly raw num­bers of peo­ple killed in con­fronta­tions with the secu­ri­ty forces.
The data did not include the num­ber of Police offices killed or injured in those con­fronta­tions, did not include the num­ber of weapons recov­ered from those encoun­ters, did not include the inher­ent vio­lence in the gang mem­bers who engage law enforce­ment, did not include the num­ber of inno­cent Jamaicans killed with­in the peri­ods of their reporting.

Under Carolyn Gomes’ instruc­tions, the raw num­ber of those killed were lift­ed and used to make their argu­ment for extra­ju­di­cial killings and alleged police mis­con­duct so they could get more mon­ey from her for­eign handlers.
From the moment INDECOM became a real­i­ty Terrence Williams shared stages with Gomes and oth­er crim­i­nal rights lob­by, the police object­ed on the grounds that Williams was lob­by­ing as JFJ was, which dis­qual­i­fies INDECOM and Terrence Williams as an impar­tial investigator.
The Bruce Golding Government did noth­ing to muz­zle Terrence Williams. This carte blanch to do as he please gave rise to spec­u­la­tion that the for­ma­tion and sub­se­quent word­ing of the act were dic­tat­ed elsewhere.

Terrence Williams has been play­ing from that play­book ever since and it needs to come to an end if our coun­try is to have reli­able objec­tive over­sight of agen­cies of the state and a soci­ety which empow­ers its offi­cers to go after dan­ger­ous criminals.
Jamaica will con­tin­ue to pay a very high price in blood because its lead­ers have mort­gaged out our sov­er­eign­ty in order to be able to obtain loans and grants.
The Appellate court has ruled that INDECOM has no pow­er to effect arrests. That has been my per­son­al con­tention for the 8‑years that this destruc­tive law has been in effect. Jamaica has tal­ent­ed Lawyers, Jamaica has 63 mem­bers of Parliament some of whom are lawyers, not one of the 63 frauds have ever stood up in sup­port of the Police.
Now that the courts have spo­ken not a sin­gle one of the 63 retards have stood up in defense of the Police department.
What a rep­re­hen­si­ble bunch of crim­i­nal sup­port­ing imbe­ciles? In no oth­er coun­try on earth would you see this except Jamaica.

Terrence Williams knows quite well that nei­ther the JLP nor the PNP will move to change any­thing fun­da­men­tal in the act. After all almost half of INDECOM’s bud­get comes from dark monies com­ing in from overseas.
The most impor­tant take­away, how­ev­er, is that the fun­ders of INDECOM would not tol­er­ate an INDECOM in their coun­try. They pay homage to their law enforce­ment agen­cies every chance they get.
They are cru­cial­ly aware that if they can keep Jamaica impov­er­ished they can keep her depen­dent on their loans. That depen­den­cy is a sure­ty in a vio­lent crime-rid­den soci­ety like Jamaica.

Contributor Chris Porter

To Miss Paula Llewelyn:

Please issue war­rants of arrest for Terrence Williams et al imme­di­ate­ly! I am ask­ing Miss. Paula Llewellyn, the Director Of Public Prosecutions to issue a/​several war­rants of arrest for Mr. Terrence Williams and mem­bers of Indecom who have arrest­ed, and charged any mem­bers of the Jamaican Constabulary Force for any offens­es that they did not wit­ness to be a charge for:

Impersonating a Police Officer. (2) False Imprisonment and oth­er charges that can be levied against all of them INDECOM prin­ci­pals. The Jamaican Police are the most hat­ed gov­ern­ment work­ers in Jamaica, yet it is their job to pro­tect the peo­ple of Jamaica? But who is pro­tect­ing or look­ing out for their wel­fare and their rights to lib­er­ty, free­dom, and happiness?

Not a sin­gle per­son with pow­er, influ­ence, or for­ti­tude. the Prime Minister of Jamaica, St. Andrew Holiness [sic] and the Opposition Leader Dr. Peter Phillips, silence on the mat­ter regard­ing the recent INDECOM rul­ing are resound­ing, unam­bigu­ous, and com­plic­it with “Terrence Williams behav­ior at “INDECOM”. Williams actions have been embar­rass­ing, demor­al­iz­ing, and belit­tling to the men and women of the Jamaican Constabulary Force.

Where is the con­dem­na­tion from you guys? The agency was oper­at­ing as “pat­ty-shop” with its own rule and oper­at­ing out­side the purviews of the laws of Jamaica. Why not fire Terrence Williams for mis­lead­ing all of you at par­lia­ment? The man is illit­er­ate and dumb like a stone. He is a media whore which makes an idiot! It seems like the polit­i­cal lead­ers in Jamaica are illit­er­ate, inept, and igno­rant because they do not know what was in the INDECOM Act and Terrence Williams him­self can read, but do not under­stand what he has been reading.

As young who was born at 38 Asquith Street Jones Town, Kingston 12. My birth cer­tifi­cate let­ter starts with BM because I was born at home, not Jubilee Hospital; and a for­mer mem­ber of the Jamaican Constabulary Force. I know that a major­i­ty of your sup­port­ers are crim­i­nals, crim­i­nal bene­fac­tors, enablers, sup­port­ers, and lovers of criminality.

I don’t expect any bet­ter from both of you or mem­bers of your polit­i­cal par­ties (PNP & JLP). My par­ents told me grow­ing up that the politi­cians are our biggest ene­mies because they are the ones who have to feed the nar­ra­tive to the peo­ple to hate the police and that all of their prob­lems are because of them. It is going one week since the Jamaican Courts have ruled that INDECOM have no pow­ers of arrest, to arrest and charge or pros­e­cute any mem­ber of the Jamaican Constabulary Force.

To date, not a sin­gle mem­ber of par­lia­ment or care­tak­er came out in sup­port of the police or have pub­licly called for the arrest of the ego­tist, char­la­tan, con­man Terrence Williams.
Where are the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens in Jamaica who have mon­ey, influ­ence, and social stand­ings? Why the silence? Is it that because your friends are in the crime busi­ness and mak­ing big bucks? In Jamaica, all the politi­cians includ­ing the Prime Minister are crim­i­nal enablers, lovers, and supporters.

Imagine there are six­ty-three mem­bers of par­lia­ment, to date, not one politi­cian or wannabe politi­cians made a pub­lic state­ment sup­port­ing the mem­bers of the police force by call­ing for the arrest of Terrence Williams for arrest­ing and charg­ing the police offi­cers with­out any law­ful authority.
The idi­ot­ic politi­cians in Jamaica are the ones who are respon­si­ble for the crimes that are com­mit­ted by these mur­der­ers because they have been pro­tect­ing them and beg­ging them to behave.

In what juris­dic­tion does gov­ern­ment beg crim­i­nals to behave? Only in the crim­i­nal’s par­adise Jamaica, and the “Jamaican University for International Criminals.” No won­der why Jamaica has the most depor­tees from the Caribbean from any coun­try around the world because they do not know how to behave due to the cul­tur­al rel­a­tivism that is embed­ded into their psy­che and they think that is how the oth­er coun­tries cit­i­zens behave.

Not know­ing that it is only in Jamaica such behav­ior is accept­able. Jamaica is going to pay dear­ly for cud­dling of the Jamaican crim­i­nals, and in about four years, it is going to be a failed state. The idiot Prime Minister is hav­ing press con­fer­ences with pub­lic offi­cials as if he is doing something!
Only the Americans do such press con­fer­ences when their mil­i­tary is over­seas fight­ing wars with mem­bers of the mil­i­tary upper echelon.

He is so pow­er hun­gry he is putting on a show that keeps flap­ping What kind of war is Jamaica fight­ing? The crim­i­nals are win­ning, so it is a waste of man­pow­er and who­ev­er is advis­ing these “boasie-slaves” in Jamaica how to get crime under con­trol are doing a very poor job! In ear­ly February 1989 is when Jamaican crim­i­nals were giv­en sta­tus in the coun­try when the late Michael Manley won the gen­er­al elec­tions. Only a fool would believe what the Prime Minister is doing is going to work. It won’t work one iota. Since May 2010, Jamaica has fall­en into the abyss when it comes to crim­i­nal­i­ty. There is no pro­tec­tion of the peo­ple by those in pow­er on the island with the excep­tion of those who are get­ting filthy rich off the carnage.

As a man who under­stands “macro­eco­nom­ics if some peo­ple with­in the Jamaican soci­ety weren’t ben­e­fit­ing from the car­nage, there would not be so much lob­by groups with­in gov­ern­ment and out­side of gov­ern­ment? Their actions show which oth­er enti­ties in Jamaica have been under sus­tained attack from the 1970’s until now. Only the police force! In the 1980’s the war against the police force was over because as a Jamaican I could walk from “Concrete Jungle” Scarface Pathyway, Arnette Gardens, Kingston 12 through Craig Town, Hannah Town all the way to down­town Kingston, not even a fly would both­er me.

The only time the police were able to oper­ate in a way that the crim­i­nals would live in fear was in the 1980’s. Yes, when the most hat­ed man who was Prime Minister Of Jamaica: Edward Seaga.
I am not a polit­i­cal activist, and I am not a fan of either par­ty (PNP or JLP) in Jamaica. Jamaican peo­ple do not know that their true ene­mies are the Jamaican politi­cians espe­cial­ly St. Andrew Holiness and the Jamaican Labor Party that have declared “War” against the Jamaican Constabulary Force for the extra­di­tion of their strong­man: Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke to our shores.

The Jamaican Labor Party COULD NOT declare war on us, America, for extra­dit­ing their don, so they declared it on the Jamaican Constabulary Force and mem­bers of the police force by enact­ing a law name “INDECOM” to the force as a buffer between the police and the crim­i­nals. The only group that is win­ning the “War” is the crim­i­nals because they can kill with­out wor­ry­ing about reper­cus­sion from the police, the jus­tice sys­tem and account­ing for their actions. In America, we don’t play with mur­der­ers; we kill them one way or the other.

The Jamaican gov­ern­ment hatred for the police is affect­ing the pop­u­lace. So the Jamaican peo­ple must retal­i­ate against the gov­ern­ment of the day by demon­strat­ing, lob­by your politi­cians, or write let­ters to your rep­re­sen­ta­tives because they work for you and not the crim­i­nals who have their cell-phones and house num­bers. If the American President Donald Trump real­ized that the war against the police force is, in fact, a war against America, then heads will undoubt­ed­ly roll in Jamaica.

In the end, all the anti-police activists will be put out of work and eco­nom­ic boy­cott and finan­cial inves­ti­ga­tions against them. The courts have spo­ken, and we have read where the ego­ist, self-aggran­diz­ing, and boast­ful Terrence Williams said that he won the case in the courts, and he is hap­py that he is vin­di­cat­ed for doing his job.

Finally, those of us who can read, have deci­phered the oppo­site, so I don’t know which school or where he got his law degree from or did he BUY it because the man is dumb as a stone and should not be giv­en any job to inves­ti­gate or pros­e­cute anyone.
In light of the court’s rul­ing, as a for­mer mem­ber of the Jamaican Constabulary Force, I’m call­ing on Miss. Paula Llewellyn to issue sev­er­al war­rants to arrest Terrence Williams and mem­bers of “INDECOM” who have infringed, arrest­ed, and charged mem­bers of the Police force when he/​they knew for a fact that he had no pow­ers of arrest or persecution.

:Mister Chris Porter is a for­mer detec­tive Constable of the JCF, he is also a US mil­i­tary vet­er­an who has kept him­self abreast of law enforce­ment best prac­tices and is a vocal sup­port­er of the rule of law.
The views of our con­trib­u­tors do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect those of chatt​-​a​-box​.com.

From con­trib­u­tor Chris Porter.

As a for­mer mem­ber of the Jamaican Constabulary Force who was a Police Cadet and a Detective Constable, sta­tioned at Hunts Bay Police Station I do not sup­port, any out­sider to lead the Jamaican Constabulary Force, period!
I know that Mr. Anderson has a dirty lit­tle secret: Deep down he knows and feels like a com­plete fraud because he has no law enforce­ment expe­ri­ences or accom­plish­ments. His ele­va­tion is the result of serendip­i­tous luck, polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, and nepo­tism why he is giv­en a job that he is NOT qual­i­fied to do or fit to even sit in the chair.

There are sev­er­al mem­bers in the Jamaican Constabulary Force who are more edu­cat­ed than the cur­rent Prime Minister, Members of the Parliament, and Mr. Anthony Anderson.
How on God’s earth he is giv­en a job that he has no busi­ness, or expe­ri­ence doing at any stage of his life? The man, despite evi­dence that indi­cates he is skilled and quite suc­cess­ful in the Jamaican Defense Force, is fraud­u­lent. He was nev­er a police offi­cer, but a paper tiger in the army and a cof­fee boy for the Prime Minister.

Only in Jamaica, a sol­dier can be the Commissioner of Police. This is mad­ness he doesn’t have the req­ui­site skillset to be a police offi­cer because he has no cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as a “Law Enforcement Officer!”
As a Jamaican, and a for­mer mem­ber of the Jamaican Constabulary Force, I am appeal­ing, beseech­ing and ask­ing every mem­ber of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, not to sup­port or encour­age this man: Major Anthony Anderson.

The resis­tance must start as of March 19, 2018, work smarter, not hard­er! If he suc­ceeds on your dime, you guys can kiss that chair good­bye! Look what hap­pened the oth­er day when the same Prime Minister and his cronies tried to put the Chief Justice on pro­ba­tion? The judges knew that they were com­ing after the head judge’s chair and they called a meet­ing and locked down the courts in Jamaica.They sent a mes­sage to the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment: If your friends want to be the Chief Justice of Jamaica, let he/​she go to law school, work in the deplorable con­di­tions, and wait your turn due to your qual­i­fi­ca­tion by expe­ri­ences (QBE).

That’s how the judge’s got the atten­tion of the Jamaican Labor Party gov­ern­ment, and they backed off…Do you think for a minute that the Judge’s didn’t hear the rumors that the Chair was going to be giv­en to one of their polit­i­cal hacks! Police offi­cers, it is time for you to unite against the sys­tem which is con­trolled by elect­ed crim­i­nals who have no love for the police and they have lots of friends who are mak­ing crazy mon­ey in the criminal’s under­world! If he, Mr. Anderson want­ed to be a police offi­cer he should have gone through Basic train­ing at the Jamaican Police Academy: go to class­rooms, learn about the laws, the pow­ers of arrest, grad­u­ate, and gained expe­ri­ence of being a police offi­cer in Jamaica.

I spent twen­ty-three months at the Jamaican Police Academy because I want­ed to be a police offi­cer. He is an appointee and, his place is not in our midst because he does not know the strug­gles of a police officer’s life. Mr. Anderson can­not empathize with us (Members of the Jamaican Constabulary Force). And his appoint­ment by the polit­i­cal class, elit­ists, and crim­i­nals in gov­ern­ment is a sig­nal to every mem­ber of the Jamaican Constabulary Force that you are NOT good enough to lead an orga­ni­za­tion that you have giv­en your all, most of your life to.

So, they are mak­ing sure that this chair is a reserve for their uptown friends and not the poor man’s chil­dren. And this is the way they are telling you to stay in your place, poor coun­try peo­ple chil­dren. Its incum­bent on every mem­ber to unite against this man and the sys­tem, because it is stack against all of you. It is a pity that no one would file an injunc­tion pre­vent­ing him from tak­ing the chair as the top cop.

The man has no qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be the Commissioner of Police, and should not be giv­en the job, But in Jamaica nepo­tism, crony­ism, and mal­adroit peo­ple are giv­en jobs that they have no busi­ness doing at all! If the pipes in your house are leak­ing and caus­ing flood­ing, do you hire a plumber or a bak­er? The bak­er bakes bread, and the plumber is trained to install and repair the pipe sys­tem for water to flow freely.

Finally, I am beseech­ing, appeal­ing and beg­ging every mem­ber of the Jamaican Constabulary Force: Gazetted offi­cers, to the rank and file, resist, do not sup­port, or wel­come this out­sider (Mr. Anderson) into our midst, he is NOT a police offi­cer; he is an impos­tor. To date has the polit­i­cal class ever installed one of our for­mer Commissioner of Police to be the head of the Jamaican Defense Force?

No! Work smart, not hard! Let him (Major Anderson) fail mis­er­ably like the oth­er two before. He is NOT a police offi­cer, but a wannabe police offi­cer who has no busi­ness being the Commissioner of Police of our pres­ti­gious organization!

Mister Porter is a for­mer Detective con­sta­ble in the JCF, he is also a US mil­i­tary vet­er­an with active duty expe­ri­ence. Mister Porter con­tin­ues to ral­ly around and avail him­self to law enforce­ment best prac­tices in our country.

The views of our con­trib­u­tors do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the views of chatt​-​a​-box​.com

By Contributor Conrad Tucker
INDECOM HAS ITS EGO CHECKED.

Last Friday, the Appeals Court ruled that INDECOM does not have the right to arrest or charge police offi­cers. For cur­rent mem­bers of the JCF and for­mer offi­cers alike, this rul­ing is like a breath of fresh air. Since the incep­tion of the INDECOM Act, police offi­cers have com­plained that they have been treat­ed unfair­ly by its mem­bers. There are even reports that offi­cers were dis­armed in pub­lic and some­times bul­lied to give state­ments to its investigators.

The ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the Appeals Court’s rul­ing is vital for the future of INDECOM, but more impor­tant­ly for the cas­es pend­ing, and for oth­er cas­es where offi­cers have been con­vict­ed? Does this mean that those cas­es will be dis­missed and all the con­vic­tions over­turned? Does this mean INDECOM will cease and desist from inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cers and stop bring­ing charges against them? The Appeal Court’s rul­ing dis­tinct­ly states that they have no author­i­ty to car­ry out their man­date as stip­u­lat­ed by the cur­rent law.

However, they like any cit­i­zen can arrest any­one under Common Law. Does that mean they will arrest offi­cers under Common Law, to show that they still have the pow­er to car­ry out their man­date? Arresting offi­cers under Common Law would be con­trary to the INDECOM Act, as they are man­dat­ed to arrest offend­ing offi­cers not as a pri­vate cit­i­zen but as an offi­cer of the com­mis­sion, which the Appeals Court ruled against. Based on the rul­ing by the Appeals Court, INDECOM’s man­date is, in essence, lim­it­ed to being an over­sight body.

They should only be able to mon­i­tor or inves­ti­gate the actions of the police, but bring­ing charges should be under the purview of the DPP. So, what role would the DPP play in this saga? That is the answer I am eager­ly wait­ing to have. The Prime Minister at the last JLP annu­al gen­er­al meet­ing hint­ed at mak­ing changes to the INDECOM Act, because he felt that they are hold­ing offi­cers hostage and are neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing the morale of the men and women of the JCF. The con­sen­sus by many Jamaicans is that offi­cers are afraid of charges been brought against them by INDECOM, and so, they are reluc­tant to put their lives on the line to con­front dan­ger­ous criminals.

If this is true, and this writ­ers believes it is, then we have seen how embold­ened crim­i­nals have become. The blood­let­ting has con­tin­ued unabat­ed­ly through­out most of the island, because crim­i­nals are aware that offi­cers are not risk­ing their lives to com­bat them, thanks to INDECOM. There are numer­ous videos cir­cu­lat­ing on social media, show­ing offi­cers being assault­ed, ver­bal­ly abused, some­times left with their uni­forms torn and are ridiculed by these thugs, much to the delight of the peo­ple they risk their lives dai­ly to protect.

In many of these instances the offi­cer don’t even retal­i­ate fear­ing that if they do, INDECOM will come to inves­ti­gate and per­haps bring charges against them. As we know, cops are abhor­rent­ly under­paid in Jamaica, so most offi­cer can’t afford to hire a lawyer and that is a major fac­tor why they do not react to the assaults met­ed out on them. Maybe this is why The Prime Minister has promised to set up a fund to help offi­cers pay for legal fees after being charged by this pho­ny organization.

The com­ing days and months will be sig­nif­i­cant as we await INDECOM’s appeal to the Privy Council. But yes­ter­day’s rul­ing should sure­ly improve the morale of the men and women of the JCF, and is an impor­tant win not only for the offi­cers, but for all law-abid­ing peo­ple of Jamaica. The offi­cers will be more encour­aged to per­form their duties with­out the fear of being hunt­ed and charged by these zeal­ous pri­ma don­nas, whose sole pur­pos­es are to humil­i­ate the peo­ple who are pro­tect­ing them from crim­i­nals. Jamaica has myr­i­ads of eco­nom­ic and social issues that have plunged the coun­try into chaos, result­ing in a chron­ic prob­lem with crime.

Jamaica has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing one of the high­est homi­cide rates on the plan­et and def­i­nite­ly in the Western Hemisphere. However, the coun­try is still a vibrant democ­ra­cy and unlike some coun­tries that set up kan­ga­roo courts, which try and imprison their oppo­nents, Jamaicans of any stripe can go to court to seek jus­tice. This is exact­ly what tran­spired with mem­bers of the JCF, from gazetted offi­cers to District Constables chal­leng­ing the INDECOM Act and winning.

Continue read­ing →

We knew the INDECOM act was flawed, we knew it’s exe­cu­tion was flawed and we said so. Today this writer was vin­di­cat­ed in the Jamaican high court.
We have con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that though over­sight of our law enforce­ment agen­cies is crit­i­cal there has to be a bal­ance in its appli­ca­tions as we must be def­er­en­tial to the chal­lenges law enforce­ment offi­cers face.

It is not a blank check as some detrac­tors are wont to accuse because they are unable to defend their point of view, but rather an under­stand­ing that unless we have first-hand knowl­edge of an issue we must give cre­dence to the views of those who do.
It is against that back­drop that I per­son­al­ly opposed the INDECOM bill even before it became law and have writ­ten dozens of arti­cles explain­ing in depth why it would cre­ate a chill to law enforce­ment and would do pre­cious lit­tle in a pos­i­tive way over and above what the oth­er sev­en over­sight agen­cies were already doing.

For eight years (8) I argued that this law is dri­ving crime, for eight years INDECOM argued crime was high before it’s creation.
For eight years INDECOM crowed that police fatal shoot­ings have gone down because of its vig­i­lance. For eight years I have argued that police fatal shoot­ings have gone down not because crim­i­nals are any less lethal but because police offi­cers are stand­ing down.
For eight years I have tak­en the abuse of the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty in the coun­try for dar­ing to call for the repeal of the INDECOM act.
Neither polit­i­cal par­ty in Government has done any­thing to revis­it the law despite the glar­ing incon­sis­ten­cies in it and their own obser­va­tions that it is indeed flawed.

See rul­ing here: http://www.courtofappeal.gov.jm/sites/default/files/judgments/Police%20Federation%20%28The%29%20et%20al%20v%20Commissioner%20of%20Indecom%20%28The%29%20and%20anor_0.pdf

We are proud of the many long hours of hard work and research we have put into bring­ing aware­ness to the Jamaican pub­lic and peo­ple across the Globe about what is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica.
We are proud that in the face of a near blan­ket smear cam­paign against the police offi­cers who risk their lives dai­ly to cre­ate a mod­icum of peace and safe­ty to the indoc­tri­nat­ed anti-police vio­lence we decid­ed to speak truth to power.
With the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the author­i­ties vio­la­tion of mem­bers right to free speech rights which effec­tive­ly sanc­tions them for speak­ing out against the injus­tice met­ed out to them any advo­ca­cy on their behalf is incred­i­bly valu­able to their morale.

It is with that thought in mind that this medi­um was born in 2011. (1)Out of a sense of help­less­ness, I felt for the nations police offi­cers who do so much under hor­ri­ble work­ing con­di­tions, with less than appro­pri­ate tools of the trade and with their hands tied behind their backs.
(2) Out of an under­stand­ing that the vast major­i­ty of the une­d­u­cat­ed peo­ple in our coun­try deserve a life, a life free from crime and ter­ror. Out of an under­stand­ing that it is those same peo­ple who sur­ren­der their chil­dren to become police officers.
Out of an under­stand­ing that with­out the rule of law we don’t have a country.
Out of an under­stand­ing that despite its flaws (which we have to fix) it is the police who are called when we need help.

It is that sense of duty why I made this per­son­al call to arms so that those of us who walked away do not sim­ply sit on the side­lines because we may be doing bet­ter with our lives. We owe a debt of grat­i­tude to that beau­ti­ful lit­tle coun­try we all love so very much.

The court of appeals has just made an earth-shat­ter­ing rul­ing today.
In a 2 – 1 deci­sion, the court ruled that INDECOM has no pow­er of arrest and as such has no pow­er to arrest and charge any mem­ber of the JCF.
We will say more after we have seen the decision.

UPDATE TO THIS STORY>
This pub­li­ca­tion wish­es to con­grat­u­late DSP Dyer who stood up to a bul­ly and was not swayed in the face of what this pub­li­ca­tion and this writer has long main­tained was the action of a rogue com­mis­sion and a nar­cis­sis­tic media hog­ging com­mis­sion­er whose sole goal it seems is to solid­i­fy pow­er in order to use it against the nation’s secu­ri­ty forces.

In 2014 Dyer was con­vict­ed for inter­fer­ing with an INDECOM probe and fined $800,000.Dyer chal­lenged the rul­ing and took the mat­ter to the high court.
We also wish to con­grat­u­late the Appeals court which inter­pret­ed the law as it is con­fig­ured and made the appro­pri­ate ruling.
The Dyer case emerged from an inci­dent in which INDECOM went to the Central Village Police Station to con­fis­cate the weapons involved in a shoot­ing case involv­ing the police.

https://​www​.inde​com​.gov​.jm/​w​p​-​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​2​0​1​6​/​1​1​/​I​N​D​E​C​O​M​-​A​c​t​.​pdf

DSP Dyer refused to hand over the weapons and was sub­se­quent­ly sub­poe­naed to appear in the Half Way Tree Resident Magistrate Court where he was fined the out­ra­geous sum.
Fortunately, DSP Dyer was not cowed by that rul­ing and decid­ed that the courts are there for all Jamaicans, not just a few. This rul­ing by the high court quash­es Dyer’s con­vic­tion and sends an earth-shat­ter­ing mes­sage to INDECOM that tyran­ny will not suffice.

The agency has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to impar­tial­ly inves­ti­gate and turn over it’s find­ings to the duly con­sti­tut­ed office of the Director of Public Prosecution.
We can­not have a rogue agency of Government going off on its own sow­ing dis­cord in the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty as hun­dreds of Jamaicans are mur­dered each month.

This rul­ing is not a vic­to­ry for rogue cops, it is bal­anced rul­ing for good cops who want to do their jobs. Advocacy works.
My regards to my young intel­lec­tu­al friend who just told me this rul­ing paves the way for the new­ly appoint­ed Commissioner of Police Major General Anthony Anderson to be successful.
An awe­some point of view in light of the mur­der rate.

I once again call on this Government to repeal this oner­ous crime enhance­ment law now.

A new Police Post opened in Green Acres, Spanish Town St. Catherine on Thursday, March 15^th. Whatever can be done to reduce response time by the police is always a good thing. In fact, I recent­ly wrote that who­ev­er the new com­mis­sion­er of police is he/​she should work hard to ensure that response time is cut exponentially.

People are con­soled immense­ly when they have an idea that when they call the police the police is going to be there in record time.
Citizens can expe­ri­ence no greater sense of ter­ror than to be in trou­ble with no recourse or expec­ta­tion of help com­ing from the police.

And so with that in mind, it is a wel­come sign to see a new facil­i­ty erect­ed which will poten­tial­ly bring a cer­tain degree of con­so­la­tion to res­i­dents in and around the imme­di­ate area of Green Acres Spanish Town.
At the risk of sound­ing hyper­crit­i­cal, I made peace with being del­uged with con­dem­na­tion from those who see this as a great achieve­ment for the peo­ple in the area.

Should I wor­ry about the poten­tial blow­back though, when the thing seems like it is actu­al­ly a trail­er? Ok so I am told it is actu­al­ly a trail­er with some paint and accou­ter­ments slapped onto it.

There are parts of the world where peo­ple are putting these con­tain­ers to good use, includ­ing retro­fitting them to house the home­less. Nothing wrong with that at all, in fact, I would be glad to have had one of those as my home as a young offi­cer work­ing in Jamaica based on the stipend we were giv­en then.

Retrofitting these con­tain­ers to house those who can­not afford to pur­chase a home makes a lot of sense, but does it make sense that we are ask­ing our police offi­cers to be caged in these death traps con­sid­er­ing the high-veloc­i­ty weapons in the hands of the gangsters?

I hate to be the guy who pricks the bal­loon, but peo­ple are ask­ing why should the police set­tle for this death trap when one cer­tain min­is­ter of Government’s cell phone bill was J$18.000,000?

Ok, I’m just the mes­sen­ger I real­ly only care about the wel­fare of the young men and women who are going to be risk­ing life and limb in that cage.
I have a cer­tain respect for the par­ents who allow their chil­dren to enter the ser­vice of their coun­try in the JCF, con­sid­er­ing the law­less­ness of the coun­try and the lack of thanks, offi­cers get for risk­ing their lives work­ing in dan­ger­ous and shit­ty con­di­tions for a pal­try stipend.

In the final analy­sis, we have to con­sid­er what we are doing here, what are we spend­ing mon­ey on, regard­less of the cost? Other nations build infra­struc­ture which lasts for cen­turies, Jamaica build for today and so we will have to keep build­ing into perpetuity.

This is anoth­er stop-gap invest­ment in the police and law enforce­ment, at the expense of police offi­cers lives as long as it seems that we are doing some­thing polit­i­cal­ly. Like ZOSO and the State of Public Emergency are also stop-gap par­ti­san mea­sures designed to allay fear and anxiety.

HERE IS WHERE NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE .……WELL TO ME.

With the main­te­nance of law and order high on the agen­da of the Government, a sum of $8.4 bil­lion has been bud­get­ed to bol­ster the capa­bil­i­ties of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF).

This includes $1.77 bil­lion for cyber­se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives by the JDF; $1.36 bil­lion to increase the mobil­i­ty of the JDF; $2.45 bil­lion to pur­chase heli­copters to assist in search and res­cue, casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion, med­ical eval­u­a­tion and train­ing; $1.32 bil­lion to strength­en the capa­bil­i­ty of the JDF with­in Jamaica’s mar­itime zone; and $1.5 bil­lion for the con­struc­tion of new inte­grat­ed train­ing, accom­mo­da­tion, office and stor­age facilities.

Details of the project are out­lined in the ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ Estimates of Expenditure. The Estimates were recent­ly tabled in the House of Representatives by Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Hon. Audley Shaw.(Source JIS)

Well, at least we are now up to speed and ready to take on North Korea, eat your heart out Kim Jong-un.

Police Commanders Must Work On Lowering Response Time.….

This is not the first time that I have spo­ken on this sub­ject and so I will be as brief as pos­si­ble even though I am not con­vinced I won’t have to do so again.
(Two things really).

(1) THE RIGHT OF POLICE OFFICERS TO HAVE AND EXPRESS AN OPINION

I wish I had a dol­lar for each time an offi­cer of the JCF tells me, please Mr. Beckles con­tin­ue to speak out on our behalf, no one else does.
This real­ly breaks my heart.
“The gazetted ranks do not speak out for us and in many cas­es, they are used to per­se­cute us” they lament.
Shocking, yet they tell me, “we can­not wait to see what you have to say but we do not com­ment or share your arti­cles because they will use that to penal­ize us”.
I nev­er hes­i­tate to tell them that there are a lot of us ex-police offi­cers who do wor­ry about their con­cerns, their safe­ty, and their wel­fare if no one else does. A great many of us are not just ex-cops who gath­er to drink rum and play domi­noes. (noth­ing wrong with the lat­ter real­ly), it’s just not our thing.

Sure , I under­stand that law enforce­ment depart­ments gen­er­al­ly have rules gov­ern­ing media pol­i­cy and admit­ted­ly offi­cers have to be cir­cum­spect in what they do, includ­ing on web­sites and social media.
Nevertheless, the police have had oner­ous restric­tions placed on their right to free speech which clear­ly has con­sti­tu­tion­al impli­ca­tions not to men­tion the moral considerations.

I write facts. Facts which are not always palat­able to Jamaica’s social elites. I write facts which are gen­er­al­ly incon­ve­nient to the polit­i­cal caste as well as the crim­i­nal fra­ter­ni­ty. The lines between the lat­ter two are some­times very dif­fi­cult to distinguish.
It fright­ens me that our police offi­cers would be bul­lied by their own Government to the point they are pet­ri­fied to respond to an arti­cle they find lib­er­at­ing. This brings into ques­tion the authen­tic­i­ty of our so-called Democracy in real ways.

But the very same Government has tabled a bill and passed an INDECOM law which takes away their right to have a few days to gath­er their wits before giv­ing a full writ­ten account­ing of their actions in shootouts in cas­es in which they are trau­ma­tized and some­times injured and seen their col­leagues killed.
Former Commissioner George Quallo spoke out about this detail­ing accounts he has seen with young offi­cers emerg­ing from shootouts shak­ing and cry­ing from the enor­mi­ty fo their encounter, yet the INDECOM law forces them to give state­ments even in their men­tal­ly trau­ma­tized state.

Commissioner George Quallo was forced out for not fol­low­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s ortho­doxy, on this and on oth­er issues con­cern­ing the wel­fare of his officers.
Despite the detrac­tors, this medi­um and this writer salutes Commissioner Quallo for not car­ry­ing water for the government.

The Police again had their rights impugned in the recent­ly passed Zones of Special Operations law(ZOSO), in which the admin­is­tra­tion attached an amend­ment which crim­i­nal­izes them for leav­ing the depart­ment with­out giv­ing a six-month notice.
The police is not a mil­i­tary force, offi­cers should have no restric­tions placed on their God-giv­en right to leave when­ev­er they want to, includ­ing with­out even sub­mit­ting a res­ig­na­tion like I did in 91, I sim­ply dropped every­thing and walked away.

(2) “SQUADDY”

One of the things which have been used pejo­ra­tive­ly to bash Police offi­cers in Jamaica over the years is the word “SQUADDY”. That assault was basi­cal­ly engi­neered by Carolyn Gomes the pedi­atric doc­tor turned human rights advocate.[sic]
Carolyn Gomes was even­tu­al­ly exposed for push­ing homo­sex­u­al lit­er­a­ture on under age Jamaican kids in Government care. Of course not before receiv­ing the Order of Jamaica. Go figure.

The word squad­dy con­tin­ue to be tarred and feath­ered in pejo­ra­tive terms as a kind of ter­mi­nol­o­gy which gives aid and com­fort to dirty cops, some kind of code of silence if you will.
The only prob­lem is that Carolyn Gomes had no more idea about what squad­dy meant to cops than I know how to treat a col­icky baby.
The one endear­ing term which police offi­cers had to refer to their col­leagues was too much for them to have and so they launched a cam­paign of demo­niza­tion against it. The poor peo­ple’s chil­dren should not have any­thing, not even a term of endear­ment to their col­leagues with whom they sac­ri­fice togeth­er for their country.
And so it is not out­side the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty that some of the bot­tom-feed­ing social climbers who have invad­ed the police depart­ment and have been pushed to the top do not them­selves under­stand es.prit de corps. They are not cops and nev­er will be.
The anti-police vil­lage lawyers who nev­er served in any­thing but gos­sip groups were quick to gob­ble up the dem­a­goguery, like a run­ning back they grabbed it and ran with it.

And now the nation’s chief dem­a­gogue, Terrence Williams has it and he is run­ning with it.Every chance that Charlatan gets he speaks about the squad­dy men­tal­i­ty in a way that belies the endear­ment police offi­cers feel when we say “squad­dy”.
If only this igno­rant nar­cis­sis­tic lit­tle media whore took the time to ask an offi­cer what the word means to him or her he would not con­tin­ue to embar­rass him­self the way he does when­ev­er he opens his mouth to speak. The wall of silence he sees encap­su­lat­ed in the word “squad­dy” exist only in his twist­ed mind.

“SQUADDY”

Although I have writ­ten about this on pre­vi­ous occa­sions, I will do so once again in the inter­est of clar­i­ty, or until this far­ci­cal liar stops.
Military, police offi­cers and oth­er groups the world over devel­op spe­cial bonds of friend­ship and cama­raderie. That bond of kin­dred spir­it is evi­dent in cadet corps, girls and boys scout troupes, cub scouts etc.
It is evi­dent in col­lege fra­ter­ni­ties some­thing Carolyn Gomes and Terrence Williams should have been con­ver­sant of since they are both col­lege educated.
I guess they missed those cam­pus activ­i­ties as they were too busy mak­ing mis­chief to engage in pos­i­tive cam­pus activities.

Whether it’s cub scouts, girls/​boys scouts col­lege fra­ter­ni­ties police depart­ments or what­ev­er, those bonds are the mem­o­ries we car­ry in our hearts for the peo­ple whom we spent those times with. They form the ties which bind us into ser­vice and com­mon cause. Those bonds pro­vide net­work­ing for col­lege grad­u­ates which ensures if one suc­ceeds all succeed.
They are the ties which bind police offi­cers when we say “squad­dy,“because we depend on one anoth­er not to leave our broth­ers on the bat­tle­field when we are shot and lay there bleed­ing. We are not ashamed of it, we will nev­er be ashamed of it ‚get used to it.

It is that kin­dred spir­it which says we stand with you when no one else will. That spir­it of cama­raderie which cel­e­brates and com­mem­o­rates our col­leagues who we depend on to pro­tect our backs as we engage those who would destroy society.

This is some­thing dear to us and we will nev­er feel bad about it.
We will nev­er be told, nei­ther will we ever aban­don the es.prit de corps, that feel­ing of pride, fel­low­ship, and com­mon loy­al­ty we feel and share.
And so to the lying, self­ish self-serv­ing Saul of Tarsus oth­er­wise called (Terrence Williams) I say try ser­vice to oth­ers. Try doing some­thing oth­er than self-pro­mo­tion and self-aggran­dize­ment. Try belong­ing to some­thing big­ger than your­self and your nar­row self-inter­est and maybe, just maybe you will feel a lit­tle bit of the pride we feel when we say “SQUADDY”.

Read about Saul of Tarsus, take heed.……

At the time Andrew Holness was run­ning around talk­ing about what ZOSO was going to do as it regards crime I coun­tered that giv­en any sce­nario in which a flood or mil­i­tary and police bod­ies are thrown into a small geo­graph­i­cal area crime would inex­orably decline.
The down­side to that strat­e­gy I argued is that that strat­e­gy was vast­ly unsus­tain­able as that process would have to be a nation­wide strat­e­gy for it to have the desired effect.

If You Believe The ZOSO Will Have An Impact On Murders You Deserve To Be Conned .…

Since Jamaica does not have hun­dreds of thou­sands of sol­diers and police offi­cers that strat­e­gy was, there­fore, a stop-gap mea­sure which could only pla­cate and paci­fy the area in which the strat­e­gy is applied.

The stop-gap strat­e­gy was nev­er­the­less applied and to the delight and crow­ing of the polit­i­cal class, the area in which the ZOSO was insti­tut­ed has pre­dictably been paci­fied to the cha­grin and detri­ment of oth­er areas. The crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in that area of St James sim­ply packed up and moved their trade to oth­er areas and con­tin­ued ply­ing their nefar­i­ous and das­tard­ly trade.

It is on this par­tic­u­lar point which I want to focus my read­ers. Some of who were a lit­tle bit offend­ed as they chid­ed me for not wait­ing to see whether the thing would work. As I respect­ful­ly said to many of you over the peri­od before and since it’s cre­ation, ZOSO could not have the desired results we all craved because it does noth­ing to remove from the equa­tion the chief pro­duc­ers of violence.

The process of low­er­ing crime and remov­ing the threat of vicious vio­lence and death from the equa­tion requires a strat­e­gy which first and fore­most rec­og­nizes that the coun­try is in a state of unde­clared civ­il war.
I have tried to make this point ad nau­se­am over the years, our coun­try must attend to the state of unde­clared civ­il war she is in. I have writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles point­ing to that very fact.

Yesterday I talked about the phe­nom­e­nal amounts of mon­ey the Nation waste each year through an act cre­at­ed in 2010 by the Parliament under the lead­er­ship of Bruce Golding the then Prime Minister.
In the 2016/​2017 bud­get, the Government allo­cat­ed to INDECOM M$366.492, for the peri­od 2017/​2018, M$353.35.
After a 22 year neglect of the police depart­ment by the pre­vi­ous PNP Administration, and a grow­ing mur­der prob­lem Bruce Golding had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take steps to recre­ate the police depart­ment by infus­ing the nec­es­sary resources in retrain­ing and equip­ping the police department.

Instead of rec­og­niz­ing the built-in polit­i­cal and leg­isla­tive fail­ings which result­ed in the fail­ings of the police, Golding in col­lu­sion with the PNP, cre­at­ed INDECOM not just to appease the huge anti-police growth indus­try which had devel­oped in the coun­try but also their for­eign han­dlers who dole out huge sums of mon­ey in sup­port of INDECOM as opposed to assist­ing the prin­ci­pal law enforce­ment agency.
In fact, for the same report­ing peri­ods, 2016/​2017 M$230.616 and 2017/​2018 M$202.476 of INDECOM’s bud­get came from over­seas donors.
Why?

The new JLP Administration in Kingston has demon­strat­ed the very same dis­dain for law enforce­ment that the pre­vi­ous JLP admin­is­tra­tion of Golding did, this time on steroids.
Hundreds of mil­lions of dol­lars allo­cat­ed to the 3’000 man defense force which is not like­ly to engage in a war any­time soon except in sup­port of the police.
The Defense force was giv­en a lead role in the So-called ZOSO cur­rent­ly in effect in St James Parish. Selling the false sense of calm in that par­tic­u­lar sec­tor as an exam­ple of suc­cess when the Military is giv­en the lead and that nar­ra­tive being adopt­ed and prof­fered by none oth­er than INDECOM the JLP’s brain­child. If you are not will­ful­ly blind the cir­cle of dis­re­spect is pret­ty hard to miss.

The JCF with all of its short­com­ings has been book­end­ed by the two polit­i­cal par­ties the PNP which decid­ed­ly starved it of resources over a 22-year ‑peri­od and the JLP which demon­stra­bly have decid­ed that its intent is to invest in the demise of polic­ing on the Island.

AS AN ASIDE.…

Just in case you missed it, Speaking at a St James inter­faith prayer break­fast a JDF Colonel Daniel George Pryce an intel­li­gence offi­cer told the con­gre­ga­tion that demon­ic forces are influ­enc­ing crime in St James, where a state of pub­lic emer­gency was imposed in January, and the author­i­ties are not equipped to deal with it.
If this was­n’t so retard­ed it would be laugh­able, this is the same JDF which has the lead over the ZOSO in the parish.This offi­cer is an intel­li­gence officer[sic]

“We wres­tle not against flesh and blood. This war is not phys­i­cal, and there­fore it takes a spir­i­tu­al response to this,” stat­ed Colonel Pryce.
Pryce, who said he was giv­ing the address in two parts — as a sol­dier and as a Christian — not­ed that “me in a my uni­form, the police in their uni­form can’t take on the spir­i­tu­al warfare”.

Pryce spoke to the num­ber of Gangs oper­at­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty of Cambridge 29 to be exact, num­bers sup­plied by the police of course. The Colonel men­tioned demon­ic prac­tices, such as Illuminati and Baphomet, engaged in by gangs. Most notably the gath­er­ing was by a sup­posed Church group which calls itself the Supernatural Encounter Jamaica (SEJ) .

Pryce point­ed out that the gun was respon­si­ble for 253 of the 335 mur­ders com­mit­ted in the parish last year, and not­ed that the mur­der toll was the high­est record­ed in the coun­try’s his­to­ry for a police divi­sion. The fig­ure equates to 67 more mur­ders than were report­ed in 2016. Thank God for ZOSO Colonel Pryce said. There is that rep­re­sen­ta­tion to ZOSO again.

“At this rate, we are almost at a civ­il war”. No Colonel Pryce, we are not almost in a civ­il war, we are in a state of civ­il war!
That war will not be won by indulging in non­sen­si­cal belief in the occult. It will not be won by prayer and fast­ing. It will be won when the Jamaican Government gives the secu­ri­ty forces the tools they need and get out of the way so that they may go after mur­der­ers rapists and oth­er dan­ger­ous felons.

With illog­i­cal rant­i­ngs of this kind, our coun­try is not only des­tined to be the laugh­ing stock of the Caribbean region we will be the laugh­ing stock of the world, in addi­tion to our high mur­der designation.
The only super­nat­ur­al force affect­ing crime is the igno­rant and unex­plained idi­ot­ic approach being applied to the Islands crime epidemic.
It is intel­lec­tu­al rot, not Illuminati. 
If only the lead­ers would pull their heads from their own ass­es that much would be clear.

Last year alone Jamaican Police report­ed that they inves­ti­gat­ed the death of 1616 of their fel­low coun­try­men and women. This num­ber rep­re­sent­ed an increase of about 20% in the homi­cide num­bers report­ed to them the pre­vi­ous year.
The astro­nom­i­cal num­ber of deaths which are large­ly firearm relat­ed tells only a frac­tion of the car­nage hap­pen­ing as it relates to crime and vio­lence, as the num­ber of those shot and injured are expo­nen­tial­ly high­er than those killed.

As the Government strug­gles to appear to be doing some­thing through a series of hap­haz­ard mea­sures, aver­age law-abid­ing Jamaicans are at their wit’s end and are demand­ing dras­tic reme­di­al actions.
None of the actions, (ie) ZOSO zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions law, the state of emer­gency in the parish of Saint James or any oth­er stop-gap mea­sure has had any mean­ing­ful impact on crime reduction.

The intractable crime con­di­tions plagu­ing the Island had it’s Genesis in the 60’s and was nur­tured and enhanced by the two polit­i­cal par­ties since then.
We have got­ten to the point now where vio­lent crime is lit­er­al­ly chok­ing the lifeblood out of the coun­try con­trary to what the polit­i­cal lead­ers tell you, and they refuse to take the steps to stop it.
It is remark­able that in a tiny coun­try of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple over 1600 could be mur­dered in a sin­gle year with­out a real sense of urgency anywhere.

With that said, there are struc­tur­al carve-outs which if insti­tut­ed could have a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive effect yet polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions have ham­pered the imple­men­ta­tion of com­mon­sense approaches.
Some of those com­mon sense approach­es include but are not con­fined to pass­ing laws which puts dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals in prison and keep them there.
Making the com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing the sup­port (leg­isla­tive­ly and oth­er­wise), equip­ment, and remu­ner­a­tions and of course prop­er train­ing which are nec­es­sary for the police to do their jobs effectively.
The Government can­not con­tin­ue to refuse to sup­port the efforts of law enforce­ment while pre­tend­ing to do just that publicly.
Governmental sup­port for the police can­not be only to their para­chut­ed friends that they place above the men and women of the department.

More than any­thing else the Government can repeal the INDECOM Act! It must be clear to all except the will­ful­ly blind, that Terrence Williams is not an inde­pen­dent Investigator but a cheap media whore of a rabble-rouser.
Commissioner Terrence Williams please see Independent Investigator(Robert Muller).

The over­worked under­paid, under-equipped poor­ly sup­port­ed police have been doing their best to deal with the oner­ous crime mon­ster which is stran­gling the coun­try with not much sup­port for their efforts.
Even as they do so Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell sits on the side­lines and active­ly take actions to divert the atten­tion of the coun­try from the task at hand with a view to slime the police.

In address­ing media enti­ties the anti-police, for­eign-fund­ed gov­ern­ment agency chose to slime the police through its com­mis­sion­er and inter­lop­ing assis­tant com­mis­sion­er Hamish Campbell.
Hamish Campbell out­lined that 168 of the 264 shoot­ing inci­dents report­ed against the secu­ri­ty forces last year involved per­sons who were fatal­ly shot. This, he said, rep­re­sent­ed an increase from 2016 when 111 of the 180 gun-relat­ed reports were for fatal shoot­ings. In 2015, there were 169 shoot­ing incidents.

“One mea­sure of assess­ing police use of force and whether it may or may not be exces­sive is a dis­tinc­tion between those who are shot and injured and those who are killed,” Campbell said. “In Jamaica’s secu­ri­ty forces, there are always sig­nif­i­cant­ly more peo­ple shot and killed than there are shot and injured; and it is for the JCF to reflect on those pat­terns.”

The job of INDECOM was sold to the nation as that of an inde­pen­dent agency which would “inde­pen­dent­ly” inves­ti­gate all inci­dents of police shoot­ings as well as all alle­ga­tions of abuse by the police, Military, and cor­rec­tions departments.
Since the JCF is the Agency in the pub­lic’s eye and is the very first agency tasked with deal­ing with those opposed to the rule of law it fol­lows that the over­whelm­ing bulk of the com­plaints would be against the Police.

Nevertheless, from its Genesis, the Commissioner of INDECOM has shown him­self to be an atten­tion seek­ing media whore who seems to go into with­draw­al as a crack or opi­um addict does when he does not see his name in the news.
Terrence Williams’ job is to find bad shoot­ings and rec­om­mend charges. If his Agency can­not find any­thing wrong with the shoot­ings, (shoot­ings in which I might add police offi­cers are shot and killed and injured) , why is Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell allowed to slime the police with dis­tort­ed data?

I once again call for the repeal of the INDECOM Act, we sim­ply can­not have an agency par­tial­ly fund­ed by tax­pay­ers mon­ey which is active­ly bent on sub­vert­ing the role of the police, and enhanc­ing anar­chy in our country.
INDECOM is an ene­my of the peo­ple and by exten­sion an ene­my of our country.
I call on the Jamaican peo­ple who care about crime, its time to demand an end to this farce. Demand a full repeal of the INDECOM act and the resources ded­i­cat­ed to train­ing equip­ping and sup­port­ing the police in their fight for the soul of our country.

It’s time that this despi­ca­ble mod­ern-day Joe McCarthy be shown the door