When an offend­er is told he is under arrest that offend­er has every respon­si­bil­i­ty to sub­mit to being arrest­ed and have his day in court.
If the offi­cer is wrong, the arrestee has access to civ­il reme­dies under the laws.
One thing is cer­tain and should nev­er be forgotten !!!!!
When you decide to resist arrest you open your­self up to what­ev­er is com­ing your way and you alone bear that burden.
Simply put the offi­cer has a right to arrest you if he believes you are com­mit­ting an offense. You do not have the right to resist or fight with the officer.
He has the right under the law to use force to gain your compliance.

Slapping away at offi­cers and mov­ing aggres­sive­ly at offi­cers try­ing to make an arrest is tol­er­at­ed only in Jamaica.
I write dai­ly implor­ing offi­cers to put down this kind of behav­ior rather quickly.
My only prob­lem with what the offi­cer did was that he did not pro­ceed to cuff him as soon as he was subdued.

It was 1982 I was a young con­sta­ble at beat and foot, two of my col­leagues were mobbed at South Parade, I went to their assis­tance, one woman grabbed me by my uni­form shirt and ripped the but­tons apart in the ensu­ing mêlée.
I went to work with my baton and in short order, total order was restored, marched six peo­ple all hold­ing each oth­er’s clothes to Central.
From that day onward until I left Beat and Foot when­ev­er they saw me com­ing they part­ed like the red sea to Moses.
I will move moun­tains for you, I signed on to ensure your safe­ty but if put your hands on me and you will regret it. No Police offi­cer signed up to be assault­ed or killed doing their job.

I have been call­ing for these non-lethal tools to be giv­en to the police and for super­vi­sors to ensure that offi­cers on the beat be in pos­ses­sion of them at all times.
This kind of behav­ior sim­ply has to stop. The Police MUST have the right to make arrests regard­less of the offense, you do not get to fight a police offi­cer and just walk away as if noth­ing happened.

One friend now lives in the United States, the oth­er in a cer­tain parish in Jamaica, both young men worked the land, one caught a break and left, the oth­er remained.
Back at home, they raised goats, burned char­coal and they eked and scratched out a living.
The young man back at home still rais­es the goats, in fact, there were more goats. After all, now that his friend is able to send mon­ey back to pur­chase more goats.
He still chopped wood, build the kilns, cut the grass, stacks the wood and burns the char­coal, all while hav­ing only one arm.

The young man in the States is hard work­ing and respect­ful, a fam­i­ly man, he has been so since I first met him when he first came to the United States, he has remained so for the four years since he has been here.
The sto­ry he tells me warmed my heart until it did­n’t. His sto­ry gave me hope, true to my belief, not all of our young men are dis­pos­able, not all are blood­thirsty killers.
But some def­i­nite­ly are.

While the young man in the States was work­ing hard send­ing every spare dol­lar back to pur­chase the right Rams for sir­ing the best kids, mak­ing sure the pens are secure and every­thing was in place, oth­ers were watch­ing and bid­ing their time.
And so one day over a month ago as the man walked to his goat-farm they struck.
Armed with guns they attacked, he fought valiant­ly using his machete to ward them off, but with only one arm, a machete and three more preda­tors join­ing in, they quick­ly over­pow­ered him.

They chopped and stabbed and chopped and stabbed, they even stabbed him in his eyes try­ing to gouge out them out.
He even­tu­al­ly laid still, play­ing dead in a bid to save his life, what was left of it, if possible.
They dragged him by the feet and dumped him in a ravine where they left him for dead, then they took the goats, all of them.

The bad­ly muti­lat­ed man dragged him­self bleed­ing pro­fuse­ly until he got to help. Well over a month lat­er, he is unable to see from either of his eyes, even as he tries to recov­er from the vicious trau­ma inflict­ed on his body.
As is to be expect­ed no one has been arrest­ed, this grue­some bar­bar­ic case did­n’t even make the local news.

This begs the ques­tion, how many more inno­cent hard work­ing peo­ple have been mur­dered sim­ply for the sweat of their brow?
How can we pre­tend that all is well when hard-work­ing men who till the soil burn char­coal and raise some goats are treat­ed this way sim­ply because of the mea­ger liv­ing they extract for their efforts.

This sto­ry is not dis­sim­i­lar to the killing of 32-year-old Notoya Ricketts whose bul­let-rid­dled body was found by res­i­dents in ear­ly February. Her two-year-old daugh­ter, who was found next to the body, was not harmed.
Miss Ricketts was last seen alive on the way to tend to her ani­mals. Ms. Ricketts’s moth­er was mur­dered in the com­mu­ni­ty just two weeks pri­or to her own death.

These are the types of grue­some killings and assaults which are not being cov­ered in the news. As Tourism num­bers are bur­nished and a new Commissioner of Police is set to take over, the ques­tion must be how do we stop this?
The Police are seem­ing­ly inca­pable or unwill­ing to extend them­selves to do what it takes.
I can’t say I blame them frankly, the sys­tem is sup­port­ive of the killers, not those who work to remove them from soci­ety and to some degree the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion is high­ly sup­port­ive of crim­i­nal conduct.

We get the com­mu­ni­ties we want by our actions, that trans­lates into the parish­es and ulti­mate­ly the coun­try we end up with.
Whether we admit it or not this desire to align with crim­i­nals to the per­il of the rule of law will con­tin­ue to have dis­as­trous con­se­quences for Jamaicans.

Those who shape and make pol­i­cy can pre­tend that the fool­hardy path they are on will result in a utopi­an elim­i­na­tion of crime as against a sys­tem­at­ic and well-tar­get­ed attack on gangsters.
Ultimately we will see the results, like a preg­nan­cy there is a baby com­ing and we will all be forced to face the results.

Continue read­ing →

If the rum­blings in the Jamaican press is true that Major General Anderson the nation’s first nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er is being tapped to be the next Commissioner of Police then I would sug­gest that mem­bers of the police force with any brain in their heads lay down arms and walk away.

It would be the icing on the cake that this admin­is­tra­tion has zero respect for the men and women of the JCF, does not care about their many years of ser­vice and the fact that many are supreme­ly and immi­nent­ly aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly qualified.
In fact, there are serv­ing mem­bers of the JCF who are supreme­ly more qual­i­fied than the Nation’s Prime Minister, Andrew Holness.

We have not ver­i­fied that this sto­ry is cor­rect so we will with­hold fur­ther com­ment at this time.

In December 2012, a gun­man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 chil­dren, six adults, and him­self. Since then, there have been at least 1,607 mass shoot­ings, with at least 1,846 peo­ple killed and 6,459 wounded.

The most recent mass shoot­ing being at the Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida in which 17 school age human beings had their lives uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly snuffed out.
Despite the con­stant shoot­ings and the loss of inno­cent lives, the United States Congress has been frozen into immo­bil­i­ty out of fear of the pow­er­ful gun lob­by the National Rifle Association(NRA).

The NRA is not the only gun lob­by in the United States but it is by far the most vocif­er­ous of the twen­ty-two (22) or so oth­er lob­by groups includ­ing the pow­er­ful Gun Owners of America (GOA)…

The issue of guns in America con­tin­ues to be a seri­ous issue as inci­dents of mass shoot­ings, includ­ing school shoot­ings, con­tin­ue unabated.
The American war of inde­pen­dence was won against Great Britain by men with guns, not a stand­ing army but aver­age cit­i­zens who decid­ed to defend the land they them­selves had appro­pri­at­ed from the native Americans.

The sec­ond amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees Americans right to bear arms, the sec­ond amend­ment is next only to the first amend­ment which guar­an­tees the right to free speech. (see the rights).
https://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​L​i​s​t​_​o​f​_​a​m​e​n​d​m​e​n​t​s​_​t​o​_​t​h​e​_​U​n​i​t​e​d​_​S​t​a​t​e​s​_​C​o​n​s​t​i​t​u​t​ion

There is far more than the his­to­ry of America which goes into Americans love for guns. As impor­tant as the his­to­ry is, the future is prob­a­bly expo­nen­tial­ly more so to gun own­ers. That, how­ev­er, is for anoth­er con­ver­sa­tion at anoth­er time.
According to the New York Times, over 30% of Americans own guns. From pub­lished reports, of the 30% who do own guns, those house­holds own five or more weapons.

This presents a conun­drum for the fam­i­lies who are vic­tims of gun vio­lence. It is equal­ly dis­tress­ing that even as chil­dren are being slaugh­tered in their class­rooms, the Congress of the United States is either unable or too afraid to act.
There is much which can be done on guns in America, no one has an absolute right to own a sub­ma­chine or machine gun, the Supreme Court already assert­ed that.

Journalist Robert Creamer wrote in (2011) “Beyond the ques­tion of what the Constitution means by the “right to bear arms,” we must also remem­ber that no right is absolute. Each person’s rights are con­strained by the extent to which they impinge on anoth­er person’s rights.”
That truth is exem­pli­fied in the 1^st amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion which guar­an­tees the right to free speech, yet one does not have the right to shout “Bomb” on an air­plane or “Fire “in a crowd­ed theater.

Yet in case after case, the weapon of choice in school shoot­ings and oth­er mass casu­al­ty inci­dents seems to be the dread­ed AR15.
Surely these weapons and oth­ers in their class can be removed from the hands of civil­ians but the aver­age white male is not about to give up these fear­some weapons and truth­ful­ly there is no will any­where with­in the body politic to remove them from their hands.That includes even in Democratic circles.

The pow­er of the gun lob­by can­not be ignored in the era of cit­i­zens unit­ed and big Kock and Adelson mon­ey in politics.
But the chal­lenge for America is how does she extri­cate her­self from the tena­cious ten­ta­cles of big mon­ey pow­er on its every­day politics.

Big mon­ey and con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees do present a prob­lem for those who would like to see an end to these quite pre­ventable mass killings in the United States.
Smaller nations should take heed and learn from whats hap­pen­ing in America on this front and lim­it the pow­er of their lob­by groups in the shap­ing of policy.

In Jamaica, a small coun­try of 2.8 mil­lion the pow­er of the human rights lob­by can eas­i­ly be con­strued to be a crim­i­nal rights lob­by.
We have wit­nessed how their aggres­sive advo­ca­cy have hin­dered effec­tive leg­is­la­tion, result­ed in the cre­ation of INDECOM, arguably a crime enhance­ment Agency and has ham­pered the police’s abil­i­ty to do it’s jobs effectively.

Now is the time for the peo­ple of Jamaica to wake up and not allow for­eign-fund­ed lob­by groups like JFJ, INDECOM or oth­ers to dic­tate our pol­i­tics or poli­cies while the streets run red with the blood of our chil­dren, par­ents, and fam­i­ly members.
Now is the time to lay down some mark­ers in the sand.
There is no con­sti­tu­tion­al right to have for­eign-fund­ed lob­by telling us how to enforce our laws.

One of the things I have con­sis­tent­ly spo­ken to regard­ing the law­less­ness on the streets of Jamaica is the inabil­i­ty or reluc­tance of the police to effect arrests.
In a video this week­end we saw a senior offi­cer tak­ing charge.….….. (sort of).……and bring­ing order to a sit­u­a­tion which should have been under con­trol long before it was done.

The per­va­sive law­less­ness on the Island’s road­ways put the lives of the trav­el­ing pub­lic and police offi­cers at extreme risk.
Every year hun­dreds of Jamaicans are killed in traf­fic crash­es which are total­ly pre­ventable. Traffic crash­es are quite dif­fer­ent from traf­fic acci­dents which are occur­rences in which dri­vers played no cul­pa­ble part in creating.

Speeding. dan­ger­ous dri­ving. ille­gal over­tak­ing. impaired dri­ving. tail­gat­ing. over­load­ing. are only a few of the rea­sons that traf­fic crash­es occur.
On the oth­er hand, vehi­cles over­turn­ing on break­away roads in sit­u­a­tions in which the dri­ver was not guilty of any of the afore­men­tioned vices are more in the vein of what is quan­ti­fied as traf­fic acci­dents, et al.

Minibus dri­vers and the pha­lanx of taxi oper­a­tors now tra­vers­ing the road­ways have made the job of the police expo­nen­tial­ly and ever increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult even as it endan­gers the trav­el­ing public.

It is for this rea­son that I have said that senior cops must be on the streets (super­in­ten­dents, SSP’s and ACP’s ) to ensure that the laws are obeyed and just as impor­tant­ly, that our young offi­cers do not get preyed upon by the vul­tures in wait­ing, when they are forced to take action.

It can­not be overem­pha­sized that at the very first sign that a per­son being spo­ken to for an infrac­tion becomes abu­sive and bel­liger­ent he/​she must be brought under con­trol by plac­ing them in handcuffs.

In the video, I viewed the senior offi­cer has the bel­liger­ent, threat­en­ing and abu­sive motorist by the back of the pants, good, but there was anoth­er offi­cer stand­ing around with the cuffs and of course the ever-present wall­flower female offi­cer stand­ing around as a spectator.

In the chaot­ic scene, civil­ians are stand­ing around in the sphere of oper­a­tion which places them at risks and places the offi­cers at risks them­selves, includ­ing legal jeopardy.
Most impor­tant­ly after the cop final­ly placed the cuffs on the sub­ject he allowed him to walk away mouthing off in a threat­en­ing way when he should have been deci­sive­ly and imme­di­ate­ly placed in the police vehicle.

Many peo­ple cheered the arrests, the vil­lage lawyers crit­i­cize, per­son­al­ly, I hope that this video will be used as a train­ing tool (what not to do)even though luck­i­ly it end­ed well for the police this time.

Nothing deters peo­ple from resist­ing arrests than the dis­tinct knowl­edge that they will be deci­sive­ly and imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed. Officers must use the req­ui­site force to gain com­pli­ance, it must be done at the first sign of bel­liger­ence and done swiftly.

The Police can­not get the lib­er­al left­ist’s courts to admin­is­ter the laws as it relates to resist­ing arrests and assault­ing police offi­cers but they damn sure can effect arrests in a way that makes would be resisters think twice and maybe three times before doing it.

This is not idle talk at the time of my ser­vice when I tell you-you are under arrests you know not to resist. As I have said repeat­ed­ly, what­ev­er is in the train­ing man­u­al is not working.
What is being done at the Academy is out­dat­ed, it has no rela­tion­ship to what offi­cers face on the streets. It must be scrapped and real polic­ing train­ing brought into the curriculum.

Why are these types of sentences not applied to gun criminals?

The tri­al in what must have been one of the most vio­lent mur­der scenes ever, final­ly saw jus­tice done when a com­bined sen­tence of 110 years was hand­ed down by Judge Carol Lawrence-Beswick in the Home Circuit Court in down­town Kingston.
The accused were con­vict­ed and sen­tenced for the ani­mal­is­tic and inhu­mane ston­ing and chop­ping to death of a men­tal­ly dis­abled man, 29-year-old Stanley McLean.

The fam­i­ly of (5)accused, which includ­ed (1) Sixty-five-year-old Velma Dean, sen­tenced to life in prison must serve 30 years before being eli­gi­ble for parole.
(2) Her hus­band, 69-year-old Joseph Dean, was also sen­tenced to life in prison and must serve 25 years before he becomes eli­gi­ble for parole.
(3) Two of their chil­dren, Dwight and Richard were sen­tenced to 20 years in prison and will become eli­gi­ble for parole after serv­ing 12 years.
(4)Their sib­ling, Jermaine Dean, was sen­tenced to 15 years in prison and must serve 10 years before he is eli­gi­ble for parole.

The deceased man’s father tes­ti­fied that he saw Velma stand­ing over his son and chop­ping him mer­ci­less­ly after which her sons tied a rope around his feet dragged him into the streets where­upon they set upon him and com­menced chop­ping him.
We salute this judge [in this instance] for doing the right thing, con­sid­er­ing that the death penal­ty is no longer being applied. Given this judges deci­sion to make, I would per­son­al­ly have ensured that they nev­er see the sun again, but that is just me.

This fam­i­ly’s bar­barism and cal­lous dis­re­gard for human life encap­su­late in a real way how life is viewed in our coun­try. That a fam­i­ly of five peo­ple would set upon and slaugh­ter anoth­er human being, much less one of unsound mind is a tes­ta­ment to a derange­ment which is inex­plic­a­ble. Equally shock­ing is that no one with­in that fam­i­ly stood up and said “no”.

The most shock­ing state­ment com­ing out of the tri­al is that of the fam­i­ly’s attor­ney Ernie Smith who said that the sen­tences were exces­sive but he ’s hap­py there is a Court of Appeal.
Sentencing a fam­i­ly to prison for brutish­ly and sav­age­ly slaugh­ter­ing anoth­er human being, let alone one with a men­tal dis­or­der, is viewed as exces­sive by an offi­cer of the courts[sic].
A damn­ing indict­ment on our sense of wrong and right, our sense of decen­cy, moral­i­ty and on our sense of humanity.

We will be watch­ing this case fur­ther. In far too many instances cas­es which were appro­pri­ate­ly decid­ed over the years gets tossed on the slight­est bit of tech­ni­cal­i­ty at the appel­late level.
In more advanced democ­ra­cies appeals courts gen­er­al­ly do not dis­turb deci­sions hand­ed down by low­er courts, unless there is clear and unequiv­o­cal evi­dence of impro­pri­ety or new excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence is unearthed.

Not so in Jamaica, mere alle­ga­tions have demon­stra­bly been enough to cause cas­es to be tossed at the appel­late lev­el, this gives rise to the ques­tion, are dol­lars chang­ing hands and if so how much?
It appears many attor­neys pre­fer to have their fights at that lev­el which is curi­ous on its face, why at that lev­el? Are emo­tions less raw, are peo­ple less focused on cas­es after they have been decid­ed at the tri­al level?
This writer does not have that evi­dence but I aim to find out why it is that out of the glare of the pub­lic’s eyes, and with the cas­es, less fresh on peo­ple’s minds are, attor­neys more will­ing to fight like Custer’s last stand at the appel­late level?

Police-con­sta­ble Carl Anthony Bailey lost his life this morn­ing at around 5:15 am along the P J Patterson Highway in a fatal acci­dent east of the May Pen toll booth.

The 30-year-old con­sta­ble was dri­ving his blue Toyota motor-car along the high­way when he alleged­ly lost con­trol of the vehi­cle. The car hit the left embank­ment and overturned.
Constable Bailey was thrown from the vehi­cle and was run over by anoth­er vehi­cle and dragged for sev­er­al meters. Reports indi­cate his head was sev­ered from his body.

Three mag­a­zines con­tain­ing 33 rounds were alleged­ly found at the scene. Up to the time of this report­ing, the police had still not recov­ered his firearm.

I have been fol­low­ing case dis­po­si­tions and sen­tences met­ed out in indi­vid­ual cas­es and what I found gave me much cause for alarm.
This prompt­ed me to begin writ­ing about the dis­crep­an­cies, incon­sis­ten­cies, and dis­par­i­ties in the way the courts are approach­ing the dis­pen­sa­tion of justice.
Repeat mur­der­ers are grant­ed bail as a mat­ter of course. Judges argue the ques­tion of bail should not be seen as a means of pun­ish­ment and as such, every per­son accused of a crime is enti­tled to bail.

Not true, but they know it is what the pub­lic wants to hear.
The Bail Act. Categorically stip­u­lates that an accused may be denied bail (a) based on the nature of the crimes he is accused of com­mit­ting, (b) the like­li­hood he will inter­fere with[kill] wit­ness­es, © that the offend­er may not show up to answer to the charge(s) against him/​her.

So the next time you hear judges prof­fer the lies they have been spout­ing on this issue, under­stand that the law gives them ample cov­er to pro­tect the pub­lic from dan­ger­ous killers.
When they release alleged mur­der­ers back onto the streets they do so of their own voli­tion and not as a con­se­quence of the dic­tates of the laws.

One mur­der accused was grant­ed bail up to six sep­a­rate times, killing each of the six times he was allowed out on bail after being charged with mur­der, yes mur­der. Then he final­ly decid­ed to sim­ply flee the jurisdiction.
Light touch sen­tences for vio­lent egre­gious crimes under the guise that the courts must assist offend­ers, and a gen­er­al mind­set that the feel­ings of crime vic­tims do not count.
The social con­science and the lib­er­al think­ing of judges take prece­dence over the dic­tates of the laws they are sworn to fol­low and uphold.

Recently the Police pre­pared a doc­u­ment which out­lined some of those very dis­crep­an­cies in the sen­tences met­ed out for sim­i­lar crimes.
Having seen first-hand how cer­tain judges treat vio­lent and repeat offend­ers with a cav­a­lier atti­tude I was already con­ver­sant of what obtained in many court­rooms on a dai­ly basis.
For years the nation’s police offi­cers have com­plained about the light sen­tences and the revolv­ing doors which the jus­tice sys­tem became as a result of the non­cha­lance dis­played by most judges towards vio­lent criminals.
As a front­line cop, I know all too well how dan­ger­ous guys we arrest­ed would laugh and brag that they would be out on bail in no time.They were always right.
Sure Judges are sup­posed to oper­ate impar­tial­ly and free from polit­i­cal intru­sion into their work, that can­not be overem­pha­sized but we must nev­er for­get that with that degree of free­dom comes a tremen­dous respon­si­bil­i­ty to be judi­cious and be good stew­ards of that sacred trust.
That trust can­not be a foun­da­tion on which is built and cre­at­ed, a monar­chis­tic sys­tem of unac­count­abil­i­ty and malfeasance.

The unprece­dent­ed upris­ing of the Judges against the duly con­sti­tut­ed Prime Minister’s author­i­ty was icing on the cake and I believe that once and for all that veneer of impar­tial­i­ty has been removed from what most police offi­cers knew was a façade.
Sure each case is dif­fer­ent and each case has mit­i­gat­ing com­po­nents, nev­er­the­less, judges should not dis­re­gard the law and most impor­tant­ly the very real feel­ings and emo­tions of crime vic­tims and sup­plant them with their own sense of far-left social liberalism.

There have always been great judges in our coun­try and there are also real­ly bad judges as well. I know for a fact that many law enforce­ment offi­cers lit­er­al­ly gave up try­ing to run down crim­i­nals at great risk to them­selves only to see them returned to the streets the same day.
When Judges and the defense attor­neys grad­u­ate from the very same left-wing Institution a phone call fix­es many problems.
Certain attor­neys can get any­thing done regard­less of the crime his/​her client com­mit­ted, and oh by the way the law be damned.

The aver­age per­son looks at the police in the fight against crim­i­nal net­works, under­stand­ably because the police are the first and most vis­i­ble line of defense between us and those who would do us harm.
The ques­tion of cor­rup­tion is also viewed much the same way. It is, there­fore, an improp­er and mis­guid­ed attri­bu­tion of cul­pa­bil­i­ty to the police alone when in many cas­es they did their jobs.
The courts have a huge respon­si­bil­i­ty in the con­tain­ment of crime and it has failed mis­er­ably. As the final arbiter when the courts fail it cre­ates the domi­no effect which we are wit­ness­ing in the mas­sive fail­ure of the jus­tice sys­tem today.

The police cit­ed almost two hun­dred (200) ver­i­fi­able cas­es of mur­der in which the killers were allowed out on bail in cas­es they should be locked up for.
To date, there has been no mean­ing­ful response from the Court Management Services, the agency which speaks for judges, and nei­ther is there a response from Delroy Chuck the Justice Minister.
Those cas­es reflect only what the police can con­firm, which indi­cates that the prob­lem is far more seri­ous and sys­temic than we know.

Jamaican judges should not be allowed to usurp our democ­ra­cy with their far left lib­er­al world­views which are killing our peo­ple and destroy­ing our country.
There is only one way to deal appro­pri­ate­ly with crim­i­nals who kill and that is with max­i­mum force. Criminals must fear the pow­er of the state, the state must fear the pow­er of law-abid­ing citizens.
In 2010 a huge com­ing togeth­er of crim­i­nal gangs test­ed the pow­er and resolve of the state. The secu­ri­ty forces went in to re-estab­lish the author­i­ty of the state and were shock­ing­ly maligned by both polit­i­cal par­ties for polit­i­cal mileage.
Since then, the weapon­ry of the crim­i­nal under­world has got­ten expo­nen­tial­ly more mod­ern and sophisticated.
The ques­tion is, will the Government and peo­ple be able to count on the secu­ri­ty forces to save them the next time the gang­land forces decide to flex their muscles?
Chew on that for a moment.

The idea that change can­not be made through grass­roots advo­ca­cy is not borne out by the facts. In 2010 I began a per­son­al mis­sion of bring­ing to the fore issues of crime affect­ing our coun­try with a view to stim­u­lat­ing debate and dis­cus­sion on the issue.

Having served as a police offi­cer in our coun­try gave me a unique per­spec­tive to try and bring a voice to the issue of polic­ing in a way serv­ing offi­cers nev­er could because of the con­straints placed on their right to free speech.
I was under no illu­sion that this would be an easy endeav­or, I was not delu­sion­al about the lev­el of push­back which would come con­sid­er­ing our coun­try’s hatred for the rule of law.
As such, the death threats, name-call­ing, and oth­er neg­a­tives which have been hurled at me was no sur­prise to me, I allowed them to sim­ply roll off me like water from a Duck’s back.

I thought what­ev­er neg­a­tives were being hurled at me would pale in com­par­i­son to remain­ing silent, not speak­ing truth to pow­er. I thought if I could get one per­son to lis­ten to rea­son, just one per­son to under­stand that we need our police offi­cers in order to have a coun­try it would be worth it.
The very peo­ple who would like to see the dis­band­ment of the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the fir­ing of all its offi­cers’ clam­or for oth­er peo­ple to take their place, with­out real­iz­ing that what those oth­er peo­ple would be doing is called policing.
The moral of that lit­tle nugget is that we can­not have a soci­ety with­out the rule of law. There can be no real growth and pros­per­i­ty in an atmos­phere of crim­i­nal­i­ty and chaos.

Over sev­en years lat­er the mes­sage is final­ly seep­ing through.
Other Jamaicans are final­ly start­ing to real­ize that though we have far too many peo­ple in our police depart­ment who should­n’t be there we must give sup­port to our offi­cers while the sys­tems put in place remove bad actors from the stage.
Now a senior police com­man­der in Clarendon Superintendent David White, is call­ing for lim­its to judges dis­cre­tion in cer­tain instances.
He is going to take a lot of flack from the reg­u­lar peanut gallery, “who does he think he is talk­ing about their gods in that way, they have a right to do what they see fit, how dare you crit­i­cize them”[sic].

Come tomor­row the papers will be filled with the fiery ven­om from the blovi­at­ing fools who defend these ultra-lib­er­al, judges as if they are unac­count­able to any­one. They will blab on and on about the sanc­ti­ty of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers as if the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers were not enshrined into law by men and may be changed, altered, and amend­ed to fit the times by oth­er men and women.

The com­man­der argues that light sen­tences and undue delay in con­clud­ing cas­es are not in the best inter­est of jus­tice. You think.
This state­ment from the police was once unheard of in Jamaica, though not in police depart­ments in the mod­ern world.

Jamaican Judges A Large Part Of The Murder Problem/​Ask Dexter Pottinger

For years I have been push­ing the Government to change the gun laws by adding greater puni­tive com­po­nents which ensure that vio­lent offend­ers who com­mit crimes using firearms are locked away for good.
That process,(mandatory min­i­mum) for gun crimes is one step in reduc­ing vio­lent crimes by sim­ply keep­ing offend­ers in prison where they belong and deter­ring oth­ers from com­mit­ting vio­lent crimes.

Venesha Phillips, PNP coun­cilor for the Papine divi­sion and care­tak­er for the Eastern St Andrew con­stituen­cy, is now declar­ing there should be No More Asking Criminals To Cease Fire, Pursue Them Relentlessly she demands.
Hmm.…
Better late than nev­er, I nev­er quite under­stood the con­cept of beg­ging war­ring fac­tions to lay down their arms unless by that state­ment you are admit­ting that what the coun­try faces is indeed an unde­clared state of civ­il war.
Imagine hav­ing a peace man­age­ment unit, not to men­tion those who prof­fer such an idea and are a part of that anti-police growth industry?

Judges Have A Responsibility As Officers Of The Court To Follow And Apply The Law, Obviously Not In Jamaica..

It is on that basis that I have argued over the years that tra­di­tion­al polic­ing meth­ods does not apply. The coun­try has a duty to neu­tral­ize those threats before we begin any process of com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing much less the laugh­able con­cept of restora­tive jus­tice, (giv­en the context).
Anything short of an all-out war on the crim­i­nal gangs which result in body bags, or their mem­ber’s com­plete sur­ren­der and capit­u­la­tion to the rule of law is a mock­ery of law enforcement.

It will most assured­ly have dan­ger­ous under­ly­ing con­se­quences for the future like a sim­mer­ing vol­cano and a coun­try sit­ting idly wait­ing to be vapor­ized by boil­ing lava.
It is stu­pid, there is no respect com­ing from the Prime Minister or the Minister of National Security, there is no cohe­sive pol­i­cy which includes both polit­i­cal par­ties mak­ing it clear that there will be no refuge, no sanc­tu­ary for lawbreakers.

As such the prob­lem of mur­ders on the Island has been wrong­ly and incor­rect­ly framed for years, as mere crim­i­nals and cor­ner crews, not vio­lent mur­der­ous gangs which have no com­punc­tion about com­ing togeth­er to chal­lenge the author­i­ty of the state, as occurred in Tivoli Gardens in 2010.

Despite the glar­ing real­i­ty of this clear and present phe­nom­e­non the nation’s lead­ers look to and lis­ten to bot­tom-feed­ing crus­taceans like Horace Levy who heads the Peace Management Unit,( a group which is part of the anti-police growth industry).
People like Levy has a seat at the table on crime while the group he heads is against law enforce­ment offi­cers, even as Levy has been a vex­ing anti-police antag­o­nis­tic troll for years.

For years Horace Levy has stri­dent­ly and aggres­sive­ly refut­ed claims that the num­ber of crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing on the Island has been explod­ing in numbers.
Despite hav­ing zero data, train­ing or expe­ri­ence in law enforce­ment Levy argu­ments held sway.What Levy says are cor­ner crews was not what police faced.
The sense of inno­cence and youth­ful asso­ci­a­tions inher­ent in Levy’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion held sway, how­ev­er, when police face the very same men they are heav­i­ly armed vio­lent killers.

There is a search on for a new com­mis­sion­er of police, the pick­ers are flawed and so who­ev­er they chose will be flawed.
Nevertheless, chang­ing the com­mis­sion­er is only a tiny bit of what needs to be done. The longer the nation waits to place poli­cies on the table that are not about vote buy­ing and employ a real cop to exe­cute those strate­gies there will be no change.
They have it all wrong.

“We nuh inna di INDECOM busi­ness, straight up!” Said, one Resident.

“See da com­mu­ni­ty right now, we nuh need INDECOM.. INDECOM a buil’ a bag­ga gun­man inna Jamaica enuh,” chimed another

[Councillor for the Papine Division Venesha Phillips]

“What res­i­dents wit­nessed this morn­ing was as an assault on the police and on the com­mu­ni­ty”.

“Understand that while we have no dif­fi­cul­ty with INDECOM, we want to make sure that cit­i­zens feel safe. And any­thing that looks like the police will be placed in a sit­u­a­tion where they are going to pull back, for what­ev­er rea­son, then the cit­i­zens are not going to have it,” expressed Phillips.

“This com­mu­ni­ty is severe­ly bro­ken and the police must be able to take charge of the ground. So noth­ing that will get in the way of that will be tol­er­at­ed.”

Residents were respond­ing to the upsurge of vio­lence in their com­mu­ni­ty of Jungle August Town St. Andrew.
According to pub­lished reports, gun­men invad­ed and opened fire killing 35-year-old David Stewart, a cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer at the Tower Street Adult Correctional Center.

Two police offi­cers who respond­ed and were engaged in pro­cess­ing the crime scene were attacked by the heav­i­ly armed gang­sters result­ing in injury to one officer.
The police were report­ed­ly forced to retreat from the scene in the face of supe­ri­or firepower.

Guess who showed up?
You guessed it .….…INDECOM! In the face of the peo­ple’s anger and dis­gust the INDECOM agent clear­ly tone deaf at what was being con­veyed he went on to advance the fol­low­ing, ” we are always here to inves­ti­gate impar­tial­ly.”That non­sense train had long left the sta­tion, the agent was clear­ly try­ing to save his own ass.

That drew the ire of the belea­guered now less blink­ered res­i­dents. Seemingly at least some of them are begin­ning to awake to the real­i­ty that INDECOM in its present con­fig­u­ra­tion is a crime enhance­ment agency.
This writer and this pub­li­ca­tion is ded­i­cat­ed to the rule of law as such we want crooked cops in prison.

Nevertheless, as I have main­tained since the act was being debat­ed in 2010 the idea though not lack­ing in mer­it, was being done as a puni­tive redress to the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty, and as such the oper­a­tional tenets of the law were flawed.

Additionally, the Commissioner of INDECOM,Terrence Williams, dis­qual­i­fied him­self as an impar­tial inves­ti­ga­tor, cast­ing his lot with the oth­er rab­ble rous­ing bot­tom feed­ers who pre­tend to be human rights advocates.
As a result, Williams’s can­tan­ker­ous and unnec­es­sar­i­ly con­fronta­tion­al rela­tion­ship with the JCF, the nation’s chief law enforce­ment agency, was uncalled for and should not have occurred.

By his actions(meeting and con­fer­enc­ing with crim­i­nal rights activists )while in the role as com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM, Terrence Williams, by his own actions cre­at­ed a tox­ic atmos­phere which could only result in a rapid growth in crime.

Year over year mur­der con­tin­ues to climb, despite calls from the police and sup­port­ers like this pub­li­ca­tion to the author­i­ties that the INDECOM act is oner­ous, unjust and a dri­ver of crime, suc­cess­ful admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties have done noth­ing to repeal and redo a com­mon-sense law which we all can be proud of.

To add insult to injury the nar­cis­sis­tic media whore of a com­mis­sion­er Terrence Williams was giv­en a sec­ond term as “a direct fuck you” to the police.
Be it under­stood that there is no sin­gle issue dri­ving crime in our coun­try, there is a cor­nu­copia of issues con­tribut­ing to its growth.
None more than the alba­tross called INDECOM around the neck of the nation’s crime offi­cers in their abil­i­ty to do their jobs.

Maybe, just damn maybe, the peo­ple , the real own­ers of Jamaica, the every man/​woman from up in August Town to every nook a cran­ny in Salt Marsh St James will rise up and say no more.
No more for­eign fund­ed sell­outs to tell us how to police our com­mu­ni­ties with their satel­lites perched in their ivory tow­ers up at Mona and New Kingston.

Is this an awakening ?
Time will tell.…

From con­trib­u­tor Conrad Tucker.

Members of JCF Must be Respected.

Thirty years ago, I migrat­ed from Jamaica to Toronto, Canada, it was the first time I left the shores of Jamaica I was awestruck by the diver­si­ty of the city.
I was also tak­en aback by the vibran­cy of the black com­mu­ni­ty, and the impact and con­tri­bu­tions they have made to this remark­able city, pri­or to my arrival here.

Having said that, the black com­mu­ni­ty was a favourite tar­get for Toronto pre­dom­i­nant­ly white police ser­vice. We felt that we were tar­get­ed because of who we were, and sev­er­al young black men were shot and killed by the police, most­ly under ques­tion­able circumstances.
A lot has changed since 1988, Toronto has grown expo­nen­tial­ly in almost every facet , it’s now the fourth largest city in the North America and is con­sid­ered the most diverse city on the planet.

The major­i­ty of the mem­bers of the police ser­vice are still white, which does­n’t tru­ly reflect our diver­si­ty. However, on April 17, 2015, his­to­ry was made when Mark Saunders a black man of Jamaican lin­eage was appoint­ed the first black police chief in the ser­vices’ 181 year history.
Saunders who was born in England, is a vet­er­an of the ser­vice and has served in numer­ous capac­i­ties over his thir­ty plus years.
We as a peo­ple in this city have come a long way, but I nev­er envi­sion that in my life­time I would see a black police chief in Toronto.

We have black politi­cians, but those folks are elect­ed by the peo­ple, the chief on the oth­er hand, is select­ed by the police ser­vices board. And although the board­’s eth­nic make­up is diverse, I was still not expect­ing the appoint­ment of a black chief. To see that come to fruition was a major devel­op­ment for blacks in this city and a very proud moment for our community.

Toronto Police Service Transformation Since then, Toronto Police Service has under­gone a major trans­for­ma­tion to make the ser­vice more lean. The police board and the may­or want the ser­vice to change with the times, and so, they believe they can’t con­tin­ue with sta­tus quo.
Among oth­er things, the board is a pro­po­nent of using less per­son­nel and rely­ing more on tech­nol­o­gy to car­ry out their duties.

One of their pri­ma­ry con­cerns is the annu­al oper­at­ing bud­get, which has grown expo­nen­tial­ly to $M1005.1, in 2017.
Most of the mon­ey is paid in salary, so a strat­e­gy to shrink the bud­get evolved, they have decid­ed not hire any new offi­cers in 2017.
Backed by the police union, mem­bers of the ser­vice have become dis­grun­tled and began com­plain­ing that they are short staffed and over-worked. The offi­cers are argu­ing that their lives are at risk, and the pub­lic is underserved.

They have been cam­paign­ing through the media that their con­cerns have fall­en on deaf ears, and have decid­ed to have a no-con­fi­dence vote against Chief Saunders. This vote is sym­bol­ic, and will not remove Saunders as Chief. But doing this will ensure that their con­cerns will be addressed more expeditiously.

Should Members of the JCF Do Likewise? Toronto Police Service is mod­ern, equipped with some of the best tech­nol­o­gy, the offi­cer are well paid with an excel­lent pen­sion, they worked in a law-abid­ing soci­ety and oper­ate inde­pen­dent­ly of any polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence. On the oth­er side of the spec­trum, mem­bers of the JCF, worked in squalid con­di­tions, hard­ly any mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, are gross­ly under­paid, gets a measly pen­sion upon retire­ment and have to police some of the most vicious peo­ple on the plan­et, who have no regards for the rules of law.

And yet, they still per­form their duties under these conditions.
I think it’s time for mem­bers of the JCF to have a stronger voice to stand up to the politi­cians and demand bet­ter pay, bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, which includes reli­able ser­vice vehi­cles and bet­ter bar­racks to sleep in.
Recently, I received a video on WhatsApp, show­ing a roost­er crow­ing in rafters of in the bar­rack room of a police sta­tion. The offi­cer who made the video, made light of the fact they he was try­ing to get some rest and was awak­en by the crow­ing rooster.
It’s shame­ful to think that police offi­cers are treat­ed like this by the gov­ern­ment, and when they failed they are mer­ci­less­ly crit­i­cized, mean­while they are the ones risk­ing their lives to pro­tect those of their critics.

Look at the uphill bat­tle the Jamaica Police Federation is fight­ing for its mem­ber for a long over­due salary increase. I con­vert­ed the Jamaica dol­lar to Canadian and U.S. cur­ren­cies and what they are pay­ing police offi­cers in Jamaica is an insult, lit­er­al­ly a fias­co. Yet, the pub­lic demand so much of them, when they are ill-equipped to car­ry out their duties. They work in sub-human con­di­tions, abused by the pub­lic and is a scape­goat for cor­rup­tion in Jamaica.

They even passed a leg­is­la­tion which threat­ens to send mem­bers to prison if they leave with­out giv­ing six months notice. These dra­con­ian mea­sures will dis­cour­age smart peo­ple from join­ing the force and encour­age the exo­dus of per­son­nel who real­ize that being a cop in Jamaica isn’t worth it.
Compared to their Jamaican coun­ter­part, Toronto police offi­cers are work­ing in lux­u­ry, rel­a­tive­ly speaking.

Nevertheless, they have launched a no-con­fi­dence vote against their chief. Meanwhile, my for­mer col­leagues are threat­ened with impris­on­ment if they leave the force with­out prop­er noti­fi­ca­tion. If only these Toronto cops come to their sens­es and real­ize how good they have it.
Look at the dichoto­my, the poor Jamaican cops who are in the crosshairs of Jamaican gun­men are not allowed to leave the force on their own voli­tion and cops here in Toronto who seem­ing­ly have every­thing are whin­ing and com­plain­ing about their work­ing con­di­tions while being hand­some­ly compensated.

The time has come for some con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges for the rights of police offi­cers in Jamaica, who are con­trolled by sense­less laws and reg­u­la­tions. Some of these laws are anti­quat­ed, and do not reflect the mod­ern times we are liv­ing in.

They should be allowed to strike or protest just like any oth­er employ­ee of the gov­ern­ment. Although sym­bol­ic, the Jamaican police should emu­late their Toronto coun­ter­part and have a no-con­fi­dence vote against The Minister of National Security, whose per­for­mance has been abysmal. His poor man­age­ment of the crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica and his bla­tant attack on for­mer com­mis­sion­er Quallo are strong evi­dence of his failures.
Enough is enough.

One of the top­ics I have pound­ed on over the years that I have been involved in social com­men­tary is the need for bet­ter super­vi­sion at all lev­els of the JCF.
None of the sug­ges­tions I have out­lined and ham­mered on have been fol­lowed with the excep­tion of in a few iso­lat­ed cases.
Today I see head­lines with offi­cers who served in for­eign police depart­ments advanc­ing the very same ideas I have advanced years ago and almost daily.
Never mind that British Cops were brought into the coun­try to tell us what we who served in the JCF already knew and knew how to do.

I will con­tin­ue to ham­mer home these points until a for­eign­er of enough stand­ing brings it to the atten­tion of our pseu­do colo­nial­ist lead­ers forc­ing action on these issues.

WE NEED TO SEE LEADERSHIP FROM THE GAZETTED RANKS.

Young offi­cers in the streets wrestling with bel­liger­ent, aggres­sive sub­jects with no back­up sup­port. Obviously poor­ly trained in effect­ing sim­ple arrests it is clear that the tech­niques being taught at the acad­e­my are outdated.

This is a sta­ple, we have seen it in far too many instances and what has the police hier­ar­chy done? Absolutely nothing.
The lead­er­ship of the JCF has nev­er real­ly been high on qual­i­ty lead­er­ship, in fact, the gen­er­al gist of their under­stand­ing of their roles has always been ‘chief oppressors”.

The wel­fare of most has nev­er been cen­tral to their mis­sion and it could eas­i­ly be argued that for many young smart mem­bers just enter­ing the force the old guard would rather say farewell.
But this is not about what indi­vid­ual com­man­ders do. It is about the fact that there is no dis­cern­able strat­e­gy of lead­er­ship which exist out­side the pos­ing for cam­eras from behind desks and the puffery inher­ent in their state­ments which seeks to sep­a­rate them­selves from the foot sol­diers who are actu­al­ly doing the work.

Senior Police offi­cers in the streets is not a panacea for ensur­ing the pro­tec­tion and guid­ance of younger offi­cers. In fact, as we have seen in Boscobel St.Mary rece3ntly, hooli­gans blocked streets and brought traf­fic to a stand­still while Assistant Commissioner Norman Heywood stood there look­ing like a cock­roach in a yard full of chick­ens, as bed­lam reigned.

Norman Heywood’s Dereliction Of Duty A Disgrace And A Stain On The Constabulary…

If I had the pow­er Heywood would have been out of the force and could only rejoin as a District Constable based on what I witnessed.
When senior offi­cers are present it reduces the like­li­hood that younger offi­cers will make some of the mis­takes eas­i­ly made by young officers.
It also reduces the like­li­hood of offi­cers receiv­ing bribes.
The author­i­ty of the rule of law must be respect­ed or we must turn over the coun­try to the mur­der­ers and rapists who con­trol the streets and dis­pense with the charade.
That respect and def­er­ence must begin in Jamaica House, it must hap­pen in Kings House and it must be enshrined and cod­i­fied in Gordon House.

A young female con­sta­ble came up to me ear­ly one morn­ing at the Red Hills Police sta­tion, we had just returned from an oper­a­tion. I was one of the detec­tives from Constant Spring who went to assist in the operation.
I was an act­ing cor­po­ral, she a constable.
She: Corporal I want a trans­fer from up here I can­not make any mon­ey”!
Me: You mean to tell me that they don’t pay you each month?
She moved away from me some, looked at me scorn­ful­ly from head to toe, then slow­ly slith­ered away.

TIME TO DROP HANDS

With prin­ci­pled, no-non­sense sub-offi­cers and gazetted offi­cers engaged in day to day polic­ing those offi­cers with mal-intent are less inclined to engage in the dis­gust­ing prac­tice of solic­it­ing and accept­ing bribes.
It is beyond uncon­scionable, that young offi­cers are set upon in the streets and when they respond the police high com­mand is duplic­i­tous­ly silent.
How cow­ard­ly and spine­less are these idiots if they can­not stand on the prin­ci­ples of the JCF Act and defend their subordinates?

Given the lack of lead­er­ship from those who are sup­posed to lead and the Andrew Holness Administration’s blink­ered march to dis­em­pow­er­ing the police the men and women of the JCF must make a deci­sion whether or not they want to risk impris­on­ment by arrest­ing anyone.
They don’t want you to do your jobs then don’t do any­thing. Collect your salaries and go home to your families.

At a time when civ­i­lized nations are ful­ly exploit­ing their full poten­tials giv­en the tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments of the Internet and Social Media and oth­er break­throughs, Jamaica is hol­ler­ing on the top of moun­tains about 1.1% eco­nom­ic growth.
Now I rather see 1.1 % growth than a reces­sion in the econ­o­my but our coun­try can do expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter. The only thing ham­per­ing our progress is the Government’s reluc­tance to enforce the laws and pass new ones which send a strong mes­sage that crim­i­nals have no sanc­tu­ary in our country.

The Jamaican Government,(Opposition par­ty includ­ed ) can­not be dense to the extent it does not under­stand the con­se­quences crime has on the economy.
According to a pol­i­cy paper pro­duced by the world bank a high rate of vio­lent crime can have many adverse repercussions:
1 It has a neg­a­tive impact on the invest­ment cli­mate and can deter or delay both
domes­tic and for­eign invest­ment, and hence growth.
2 It leads to high­er cost of doing busi­ness, because of the need to employ
dif­fer­ent forms of secu­ri­ty, and diverts invest­ment away from business
expan­sion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty improve­ment, and may lead to a less than
opti­mal oper­at­ing strategy.
2 It leads to busi­ness loss­es, aris­ing from loot­ing, arson, theft, extor­tion, and
fraud.
3 It leads to loss of out­put because of reduced hours of oper­a­tion (includ­ing
avoid­ing night shifts) or loss of work­days aris­ing from out­breaks of
vio­lence, and avoid­ance of some types of eco­nom­ic activity.
4 It also reduces out­put because of the tem­po­rary (from injury) or permanent
(from mur­der) exit of indi­vid­u­als from the labor force. In the lat­ter case,
the loss is not just cur­rent out­put, but the out­put in the remain­ing years of
the individual’s work­ing life.
5 It can also cause a per­ma­nent shut-down of firms or relo­ca­tion to less
crime-prone coun­tries.
2 It erodes the devel­op­ment of human cap­i­tal as well as social cap­i­tal and thus
con­strains the poten­tial for growth. The crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica seems to be an
impor­tant rea­son for migra­tion since the fear of crime sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the
qual­i­ty of life. Crime and vio­lence have also been blamed for slow­ing down the
rate of return of migrants back to Jamaica. Also, crime forces otherwise
pro­duc­tive indi­vid­u­als to occa­sion­al­ly exit the labor force because of violent
injury to them­selves or close asso­ciates, or because of social unrest in the
com­mu­ni­ty. Violence in some com­mu­ni­ties also caus­es schools to close
peri­od­i­cal­ly. Moreover, home and com­mu­ni­ty insta­bil­i­ty is not con­ducive to
learn­ing and edu­ca­tion­al objectives. 

[“We have seen the evidence we will await the outcome of the Investigations in the meantime we stand with our officers”].

Where have I heard that state­ment before?
Oh, that is the stan­dard state­ment real police depart­ments put out to the media when their offi­cers are accused of doing some­thing wrong.
That curt yet pro­fes­sion­al state­ment says two things. (1) We are not going to engage in the demo­niz­ing of our offi­cers and (2) Don’t come to us wait for the inves­ti­ga­tions to conclude.

JAMAICA
The Police High Command has ordered an inves­ti­ga­tion into an inci­dent, cap­tured on video, depict­ing mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) embroiled in an alter­ca­tion with mem­bers of the pub­lic. During the inci­dent, Gleaner pho­tog­ra­ph­er Rudolph Brown was pep­per sprayed by a policewoman.
Persons who wit­nessed or who were involved in the inci­dent at the Silver Slipper Plaza in Cross Roads, St Andrew, on Tuesday, have been urged to con­tact the Inspectorate of Constabulary at 906‑5325 or 754‑8217 to share any infor­ma­tion they may have.

Notice the dif­fer­ence here?
What exact­ly do the idiots in the so-called high com­mand of the JCF expect that any­one who shows up to give evi­dence is going to say?
Are they going to show up to give evi­dence sup­port­ive of the police or are they 100% inclined to tell lies about what they saw even though they may not even have been there?
Whats wrong with the video why a deter­mi­na­tion can­not be made using the very footage the PAJ and its affil­i­ates are using to cry foul?

The very stance of the police high com­mand, jit­tery and pan­icked in its state­ments sends the wrong mes­sage, almost as if the offi­cers are in the wrong even with­out an investigation!

SO LET’S LOOK AT A FEW FACTS

Brown report­ed that he was in the Cross Roads area when he wit­nessed a com­mo­tion, which seemed to be caused by police attempts to arrest a man.

(1) A jour­nal­ist on assign­ment has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to obey police offi­cers com­mands to move away when they are exe­cut­ing their duties.
Rudolph Brown was­n’t even on assign­ment, which makes his argu­ments dou­bly dubi­ous and tenuous.

(2)He sub­se­quent­ly took out his smart­phone and began record­ing the inci­dent. He was instruct­ed by a police sergeant to stop record­ing, but he con­tin­ued to record the inci­dent after iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as a media work­er.

Why was there a need for Brown to iden­ti­fy him­self as a jour­nal­ist if he was at a safe dis­tance from the officers?
(3)Brown alleges, The sergeant then told a con­sta­ble to pep­per spray him.
Why would the sub­of­fi­cer give the order to pep­per spray Brown if he was a safe dis­tance away? Isn’t it clear that this has noth­ing to do with the fact that Brown who was not offi­cial­ly on duty took it upon him­self to get in the way of an active and flu­id arrest in which a sus­pect was­n’t even yet sub­dued and refused law­ful orders to move away?

(4) Isn’t the fact that Brown alleges that he was sprayed in his eyes a clear and deci­sive bit of evi­dence that he was very close to the offi­cers. That he rep­re­sent­ed a risk and a per­ceived threat to their safe­ty in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of their duties?

Does any­one real­ly believe that this is wor­thy of an inves­ti­ga­tion or is this just anoth­er exam­ple of anoth­er piece of shit who decides that the police can­not tell him what to do and got burned in the process?
You see the only thing I fault the offi­cers with, is not arrest­ing him and let him cool his heels in a cell so that the next time he is going about his busi­ness and he sees offi­cers arrest­ing a sub­ject he does either of two things,(1) keep walk­ing or (2) video­tape from a safe distance.

.….….….….….….….…..

There was not a sin­gle word of sup­port for the offi­cers from the act­ing Commissioner of Police who could­n’t wait for Commissioner George Quallo’s chair to be cooled before plop­ping his ass in it.
The Media Association of Jamaica Ltd (MAJ), The Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) all came out in defense of Brown and demand­ing all kinds of Investigations. Not a word from the known anti-police act­ing com­mis­sion­er of Police Clifford Blake.

Despite not hav­ing a sin­gle word of sup­port for the offi­cers who were doing their jobs Clifford Blake decid­ed to gain a lit­tle good­will for him­self at the expense of his colleagues.

In a state­ment, Blake said he’s aware of con­cerns being raised in the pub­lic domain that cops may be even more enticed to request and accept bribes from motorists. But he said mis­con­duct in any form is unac­cept­able and will not be coun­te­nanced by the Police High Command.

That ought to get him some raves in the peanut gallery, hope­ful­ly, he will be out of that office real soon.
No one wants our police offi­cers to ask for bribes and this writer is stri­dent­ly opposed to dirty cops. In fact, I was work­ing with a cop who stopped a minibus and asked the dri­ver for lunch mon­ey. The con­duc­tor threw a $5 bill into our car and sped off.

DCP Clifford Blake’s Talk To Cops Exposes Why Crime Has Taken Over Jamaica…

I demand­ed that he dri­ve the bus down which he reluc­tant­ly did and I got out of the car and hand­ed the mon­ey back to the con­duc­tor to cheers and praise from the pas­sen­gers. I ordered my col­league to take me back to the sta­tion which he did, I prompt­ly made a report to Mister Noël Asphall our boss.
The offi­cer in ques­tion was a Corporal, I was a con­sta­ble. I was able to order him around because he had com­pro­mised him­self and his author­i­ty to me.
The dam­age he did to him­self and the force was immea­sur­able. He knows who he is.

Nevertheless, DCP Blake could have cir­cu­lat­ed an inter­nal memo with­out seek­ing the glare of the pub­lic stage to embar­rass the offi­cers so unfor­tu­nate to be in his charge.
On a point of note, how­ev­er, I won­der how many mini-bus­es Clifford Blake owned as a police offi­cer and does he own any now?
Leadership DCP Blake is crit­i­ciz­ing in pri­vate and com­pli­ment­ing in pub­lic. You see Mister Blake, some peo­ple were born great and oth­ers had great­ness thrust upon them. you decide where you fit, do remem­ber my man you also had a mighty lot of luck and a lot of good­will you haven’t earned.
Walk good.….….……

I am so tired of the sense of enti­tle­ment Jamaicans have when it comes to sub­ject­ing them­selves to the author­i­ty of law enforcement.
We can talk all day about the fact that the coun­try is law­less, we can talk about cor­rup­tion in some police offi­cers as cor­rup­tion exists in Parliament, the judi­cia­ry and every cor­ner of nation­al life.
We can talk until we are blue in the face about cau­sa­tion and we still won’t solve this prob­lem of a peo­ple who think that they should obey no laws.

On the occa­sion that the Bruce Golding’s admin­is­tra­tion intro­duced leg­is­la­tion which we now know as the INDECOM (act), I argued that there were already lay­ers of police over­sight. Adding a sixth over­sight agency would crip­ple the abil­i­ty of the police to do their jobs on the one hand, and on the oth­er, there would be mas­sive increas­es in attacks and assaults on police and an inex­orable upward trend in vio­lent crimes as police offi­cers would drop their hands.

No one lis­tened, you see in Jamaican there are two polar oppo­sites and a thin line of peo­ple in the mid­dle, [deep rur­al folks] who pro­vide the bod­ies, the sac­ri­fice who join the police department.
The two polar points are of the same mind­set ulti­mate­ly they just have dif­fer­ent perch­es and power.

THE TWO POINTS

(1) A vast major­i­ty of illit­er­ates, high­ly opin­ion­at­ed, they can­not be edu­cat­ed out­side of their core beliefs.
(2) A small edu­cat­ed cadre who appoint them­selves the [elites], these are the new bour­geoisie, a lit­tle edu­ca­tion does that to them. Heads so far up their ass­es they would need a fire hose to clean the shit from their faces in order for them to appre­ci­ate their own stupidity.

In fair­ness to the bour­geoisie, I can­not blame them for plac­ing them­selves above the laws when the process they have used to make them­selves untouch­able have worked for decades.
The blame rests square­ly on the doorsteps of the lap­dog police high com­mand. This body, save for a few excep­tions, absolute­ly makes me nau­seous when I think about its cow­ardice and lack of backbone.

Years of being yard-boys to politi­cians and oth­ers in the upper crust, not to men­tion the low-lives from the low­er caste with some mon­ey to throw around have effec­tive­ly removed the lus­ter and shine which befits the office of senior police commanders.
No case more sums up that [lap­dog-ism] sic than that of James Forbes who threw away his career, his hon­or and dig­ni­ty not to men­tion his pen­sion. Forbes was fined $800’000 or six months impris­on­ment when all he had to do is tell his so-called friend “go pay for the fuck­ing tick­et.”
In case you are won­der­ing about the mas­sive fine, those are reserved for Police officers.[sic] Found guilty of per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice they showed Forbes no mercy.

Forbes and far too many in the upper ech­e­lons of the force still do not under­stand that the only rea­son some with­in the soci­ety crave asso­ci­a­tions with them is to use them when they get them­selves in scrapes such as a speed­ing tick­et. These elit­ists have no expec­ta­tion that they should be sub­ject to the courts like com­mon serfs. Once that police pow­er is gone so too are the fair­weath­er friends.

There are two sets of stan­dards one for the old mon­ey peo­ple and those who passed through the doors of the UWI (police exclud­ed) and then a set of rules for every­one else.
The cri­te­ria which sep­a­rat­ed the soci­ety into castes are blood-line, and mon­ey. Education has emerged as anoth­er com­po­nent which pro­pels some, once on the out­side front and cen­ter into the upper caste.
That of course if one nev­er made the mis­take of get­ting stained with the stink of being a police officer.

Some argue point­ed­ly that the Gleaner Article titled “JCF needs shock treatment“l writ­ten last week by (Keith trin­i­ty Gardner) was a weak attempt at being accept­ed into the upper crust club, now that he has a law degree and is work­ing on a Ph.D. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​a​r​y​/​2​0​1​8​0​2​1​1​/​k​e​i​t​h​-​g​a​r​d​n​e​r​-​j​c​f​-​n​e​e​d​s​-​s​h​o​c​k​-​t​r​e​a​t​m​ent

The event of over a hun­dred judges walk­ing off their jobs to make a state­ment in a clear pow­er play against the Prime Minister is a tes­ta­ment that the rules do not apply to them. The events trig­ger­ing the judge’s actions did not affect a sin­gle judge in that group. Clearly, their actions were one of pow­er and standing.

Generally, Police offi­cers, teach­ers, nurs­es and oth­er pub­lic sec­tor work­ers are penal­ized by their supe­ri­ors for dar­ing to stand up for their right to bet­ter wages and work­ing con­di­tions. Gums of all and sundry flap inces­sant­ly, each with their own opin­ions on the actions of those work­ers, very few with words of empa­thy and or support.
Judges walk off the job and no one utters a word of con­dem­na­tion at their pow­er play against the duly elect­ed Prime Minister.

There will not be any less­en­ing of vio­lent crimes by chang­ing who the com­mis­sion­er is, in the same way blam­ing the com­mis­sion­er for the state of affairs is n’t help­ful. We must begin to face some facts if ever we are going to begin the process of turn­ing back the epi­dem­ic of gun crimes.
There has to be an under­stand­ing that there are more peo­ple return­ing as depor­tees than as reg­u­lar return­ing residents.

Whose idea is it that lay­ers and lay­ers of over­sight and harass­ment with­out even decent uni­forms for our police offi­cers add up to a good law enforce­ment agency? These non­sen­si­cal stud­ies com­ing out of the UWI has no basis in real­i­ty but they are heavy on grandiosity.
Security guards have bet­ter uni­forms, bet­ter weapons, bet­ter vehi­cles, work in bet­ter build­ings and are bet­ter paid than our police offi­cers yet there are efforts afoot to change the des­ig­na­tion of the JCF from a police force to a police ser­vice. What utter and unadul­ter­at­ed bullshit.

The force cur­rent­ly stands at less than full strength, it is short approx­i­mate­ly 2’000 offi­cers. According to International stan­dards of police to cit­i­zen ratio, Jamaica is woe­ful­ly short of officers.
The JCF has approx­i­mate­ly 12000 mem­bers at present it is unable to meet recruit­ment goals and on the back end, offi­cers are leav­ing the depart­ment at a clip of over 50 each month. That num­ber does not include deaths, dis­missals, and retirements.

Recent attempts by the Government as part of its ZOSO leg­is­la­tion to hold cops against their will and crim­i­nal­ize them if the leave with­out first giv­ing 6 months advanced notice will not help.
As a con­se­quence poten­tial recruits will cer­tain­ly have sec­ond thoughts about join­ing up all things considered.

The stress derived from over­work, low pay and no appre­ci­a­tion will fur­ther erode the morale of offi­cers on the streets.
Crime will inex­orably increase giv­en that those with the pow­er con­tin­ue to blame and mis­char­ac­ter­ize the nation’s crime prob­lem as a func­tion of the police as against their own dis­mal failings.

The sim­ple solu­tions of mod­ern­iz­ing the force by treat­ing offi­cers bet­ter and with respect are ignored. As the Government aid­ed by the oppo­si­tion chas­es down hifa­lutin alien con­cepts cooked up in the (intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to).
Providing police offi­cers decent places in which to work, basics accou­ter­ments like uni­forms and com­put­ers would help as against expan­sive stud­ies and con­vo­lut­ed strate­gies anti­thet­i­cal to our unique circumstances.

Better pay and remu­ner­a­tions for over­time hours are help­ful when offi­cers are called on to pro­duce while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly weed­ing out dead-woods cops is rec​om​mend​ed​.How about leg­is­la­tion which removes from the hands of the nations [recent­ly declared Gods] hands, the abil­i­ty to release mur­der­ers back onto the streets regard­less of the num­ber of times they kill.

Truth in sen­tenc­ing and manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tenc­ing for vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted with the use of guns goes a long way in aid­ing law enforce­ment in doing what soci­eties expect from them​.How about show­ing some damn respect to these men and women who risk their lives for the sor­ry ass­es of those who sit and crit­i­cize. Why would I risk my life for a nation of peo­ple like that which exist in our nation today?

The answers are right there, the admin­is­tra­tion can apply sim­ple com­mon sense approach­es as I out­lined above, or it can con­tin­ue on this fool’s errand it is on devised by their idi­ot­ic left­ist friends up at Mona.

Jamaica is well on it’s way to becom­ing what Colombia was before and through the 80’s and 90’s. Events of 2010 ought to have been a clar­i­on call to make the nec­es­sary changes. The moron­ic lead­ers opt­ed instead to blame the last set of peo­ple who had cul­pa­bil­i­ty, (the secu­ri­ty forces), and the sheeple[sic] went along with the ridiculousness.
This coun­try is pay­ing dear­ly for that betray­al and will con­tin­ue to do so until some­one has the vision to do what is right.

Police offi­cers in the process of effect­ing an arrest have a right to expect a cer­tain degree of safe­ty not just their own but for that of the offend­er being arrest­ed.
As such the laws give offi­cers the right and pow­er to tell onlook­ers to step back and give them a wide berth to do their jobs.
When an offi­cer is so engaged in the law­ful pur­suits of his/​her duty and so orders onlook­ers to move on or move away the par­ty so ordered must move.
If they refuse to move the police may use as much force as is nec­es­sary to move the onlook­er who may and usu­al­ly is arrest­ed for fail­ing to move on.

No one, Press or oth­er­wise has a right to tell offi­cers they are not going to move away, it mat­ters not who you are.
A press ID is not a license to dis­re­spect or dis­obey a law­ful order giv­en by a law enforce­ment offi­cer in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of his/​her duties.
I plead with Jamaican offi­cers to be a lot more force­ful and decid­ed when effect­ing arrests as long as the offend­er being arrest­ed decides to resist.
Whether the per­son being arrest­ed is Andrew Holness, Peter Phillips or any­one else once you tell the offend­er they are under arrest and they are ordered to turn around and place their hands behind their backs and they refuse, imme­di­ate­ly apply the nec­es­sary force to effect the arrest.

That includes tak­ing the offend­er to the ground and plac­ing him/​her in hand­cuffs and remov­ing the offend­er from the scene immediately.
Any per­son who inter­feres must also be arrest­ed and placed in custody.
We can­not have a coun­try where any per­son believes they are above being respect­ful of our law enforce­ment officers.
No one is above the damn laws, I love the female offi­cer not just a flower in uniform.
What the lap­dog incom­pe­tent high com­mand should do is tell the Press Association to go to hell and stay there but they won’t they are too shit scared to under­stand the pow­ers the laws give them. There are far too many igno­rant, law­less, opin­ion­at­ed peo­ple liv­ing on this lit­tle swath of land and then there are oth­ers with over­in­flat­ed sens­es of self.

In Literally every con­ver­sa­tions the burn­ing issue of crime is cen­ter stage, and cor­rect­ly so. I looked at the Gleaner’s web­site and there a head­line jumped out at me,  Zero mur­ders in St.James last week.
How freak­ing awe­some is that? Finally, a week in which Jamaicans in a tiny geog­ra­phy were not killing each oth­er (at least as far as we know).
But it is a good thing, a won­der­ful thing, how great it would be if we could build that out.
Imagine the pos­si­bil­i­ties if we were to have zero mur­ders across the board for a week, how about a month and dare we dream, how about a year?

Imagine the pos­si­bil­i­ties as peo­ple in the dias­po­ra begin to dream again, dream that final­ly, maybe, they will be able to return to the land they love?
The land in which the sun­shine burns their souls and they love it. The wind cools the fire in them and they crave it, the land where it used to be alright every day and night. Imagine a Jamaica where when we say no prob­lem mon it is not just a mean­ing­less hook?
Imagine the resources return­ing to the coun­try in the form of pen­sions, sav­ings, and invest­ments. Imagine jobs, jobs, and more jobs.
It’s okay to dream, and so if we look at St James we real­ize that it is mere­ly a micro­cosm of our coun­try. Whatever pre­ced­ed or aid­ed the lack of blood­shed last week must be recognized.

No one will rec­og­nize the heroes who placed their bod­ies between zeal­ous killers and ordi­nary peo­ple. So let me say thank you to the Police offi­cers and mem­bers of the mil­i­tary who are there doing the grunge work and receiv­ing none of the credit.
When the final chap­ter is writ­ten politi­cians will be praised. The mass of police and mil­i­tary bod­ies which kept the killers at bay will not be rec­og­nized, it will be argued it was their polit­i­cal strategy.

And so I take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank those men and women who are out there day and night risk­ing their lives so that arm­chair heroes can make judg­ment calls and grandstand.
The liars who write edi­to­ri­als are uncon­scionable hea­thens. They have all of the answers to the prob­lems fac­ing the police depart­ment but they nev­er had the courage or the patri­o­tism to speak out against the bat­ter­ing and abuse the JCF took over the last (5) decades from cor­rupt, crim­i­nal politi­cians in both polit­i­cal parties.

Since 1962 the con­sis­tent and sys­tem­at­ic cor­rup­tion and abuse of the sys­tem by politi­cians in both polit­i­cal par­ties ren­der­ing each and every gov­ern­ment agency a cesspool of cor­rup­tion and inefficiency.
It is a bit rich that those who sit in judg­ment of the police have the gall to point fin­gers with­out the hon­esty and shame of their own hypocrisy.
No, you are not esteemed because you have a Ph.D. you are not an intel­lect when you dem­a­gogue, you are a cheap oppor­tunis­tic hack and no amount of let­ter behind your name changes that, in Jamaica maybe, but cer­tain­ly not among intel­li­gent peo­ple elsewhere.

At the same time, the gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion and the bunch of hea­thens in the civ­il soci­ety are com­fort­able with and duplic­i­tous­ly silent on the assault on the JCF by Anthony Harriot.
Andrew Holness is set to rein­stall him as part of the over­sight mech­a­nism even though he holds the men and women of the JCF in such low regard that he wants parts of the depart­ment sev­ered from it so that the remain­der may be set adrift.
Many find Harriot’s dis­re­spect tol­er­a­ble even refresh­ing, why? because he is a Ph.D. That mind­set epit­o­mizes why the big man cul­ture has per­se­vered in our coun­try allow­ing politi­cians and their cronies to bilk the coun­try and dis­re­spect ordi­nary peo­ple with­out consequence.
If we ever want t0 to fix our coun­try we must start accept­ing that we need a coun­try of laws in which each man is just a man. When he steps out of line he must be treat­ed like every­one else.
Maybe, just maybe then we can begin to real­ly expect the aver­age joe on the streets to be more respect­ful of the nation’s laws.