One of the characteristics of growth and development is the ability to recognize one’s mistakes, admit them and move to correct them.
I am willing, in light of the foregone to say, I made a mistake in arguing for the elevation of Mister Keith Gardner to be elevated to the rank of Commissioner of Police to fill the vacancy which exists at the moment.

Mister Gardner clear­ly saw the arti­cle and he wrote a lengthy response detail­ing why he did not want to be con­sid­ered. He list­ed fail­ing health among the rea­sons why he no longer desires being con­sid­ered for the Job. I applaud the gen­tle­man for his can­dor and accep­tance of his own frailties.
I sup­port­ed Mister Gardner’s ele­va­tion on the basis of two (2) characteristics.

(1) Mister Gardner was a cop who under­stood the urban ghet­tos and how to tra­verse them, he had put in an immense body of work into street polic­ing which inher­ent­ly qual­i­fies him to under­stand the nuances and minu­tia of what local law enforce­ment offi­cers face par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when the streets are flood­ed with dan­ger­ous high pow­ered weapons and more than enough crim­i­nals with the desire to use them for evil.
(1a) Mister Gardner had been shot, I believe on five sep­a­rate occa­sions, as he sought to uphold the nation’s laws. I believed that mis­ter Gardner would have an inti­mate under­stand­ing of the chal­lenges oth­er offi­cers face in try­ing to enforce the laws and as such would be inti­mate­ly involved in try­ing to secure fund­ing for mate­r­i­al pro­tec­tive accou­ter­ments and train­ing for the men and women of the department.

(2) Keith Gardner ful­fills what Jamaicans clam­or for, some­one with advanced degrees to head the department.
At the moment Keth (Trinity) Gardner is work­ing on his Ph.D. and is a mem­ber of the Bar on the Island.
Given the mix of expe­ri­ence and aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing, I con­clud­ed that mis­ter Gardner would be a fit can­di­date to hold the office of the com­mis­sion­er of Police at a time when the nation needs a leader who can trans­form the depart­ment into a mod­ern police depart­ment while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hav­ing an under­stand­ing of the chal­lenges unique to Jamaican policing.
It is now clear to me that my sum­ma­tion of mis­ter Gardner’s tal­ents did not take into con­sid­er­a­tion his asso­ci­a­tions with the UWI and how his hav­ing rubbed shoul­ders with the nations caste elites may have informed his transformation.
In my desire to see the right per­son appoint­ed to the job I chose Mister Gardiner rather than a per­son with mis­ter Gardner’s bona fides and for that I apologize.
.….….….….….….

In an Article titled JCF Needs Shock Treatment writ­ten for the (Jamaica Gleaner) and pub­lished Sunday, February 11^th, mis­ter Gardner artic­u­lat­ed a num­ber of points includ­ing praise for one par­tic­u­lar Assistant Commissioner of Police whom he argued had recent­ly earned a Ph.D.
Mister Gardner who is him­self work­ing on his Ph.D. at the University of the West Indies and has earned a law degree at the same Institution has capit­u­lat­ed to the notion that the panacea for suc­cess is a Ph.D.
That think­ing dis­miss­es or ignores the tenure of for­mer com­mis­sion­er Carl Williams whom many with­in the soci­ety argued would be the end all be all for solv­ing our nations crime problem.

I have writ­ten con­sis­tent­ly that edu­ca­tion is the best way to pull our­selves from pover­ty and deprivation.
Education in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline or two, how­ev­er, does not nec­es­sar­i­ly guar­an­tee that one will have suc­cess in a par­tic­u­lar area like polic­ing which requires some basic understandings.
Modern polic­ing does require edu­ca­tion. Leading mod­ern police depart­ments going for­ward will require a wealth of under­stand­ing of emerg­ing threats and complexities.
William Bratton, for­mer NYPD Commissioner is prob­a­bly one of the most suc­cess­ful ever to lead a large depart­ment, the world’s largest to be pre­cise and he nev­er earned a Ph.D., he nev­er earned a Bachelor’s degree, he earned his edu­ca­tion in Policing.
We do need to con­sult with Ph.D.‘s as we seek solu­tions on issues, we need police offi­cers to do policing.
Mister Gardner’s asso­ci­a­tions with the elit­ist UWI have col­ored his vision and as such he has reduced his stature to just anoth­er elit­ist who has drunk the cool-aid and joined the club.

.….….….….….….….….….……
I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that the Police in Jamaica was nev­er giv­en a chance to do a good job if we want to be honest.
We may begin at the gen­e­sis of the depart­ment, how it was formed why it was formed, how it was viewed by the peo­ple it was sup­posed to serve even as the nation moved from British to self-rule.

I am sure that edu­cat­ed Jamaicans, (mis­ter Gardner includ­ed) under­stand all too well that ani­mus against law enforce­ment has always been a part of the Jamaican land­scape from before his or my time. ( see https: //www.jcf.gov.jm/about-us/history) .
It’s must be not­ed as well that the his­to­ry behind that ani­mus lies far deep­er and is far more com­plex than a sim­plis­tic ref­er­ence to the over­all prob­lems attrib­uted to the depart­ment today.

Any review and or crit­i­cisms of the depart­ment must be jux­ta­posed with the facts of its ori­gin and not just the easy lure which is the histri­on­ics desired in seek­ing to make a point.
The Force does need to change, no one could cred­i­bly deny it, yet in the urgent moment of now, the moment when final­ly the pow­ers are see­ing up close and per­son­al the fruits of their labor, the dis­ad­van­taged police can­not be the fall guy.

In an arti­cle I wrote weeks ago I spoke to the tran­si­tion peri­od when stew­ard­ship of the coun­try was hand­ed over to the locals. I point­ed to the cours­es of actions tak­en by the two polit­i­cal par­ties in balka­niz­ing the Island into two polit­i­cal camps which inex­orably placed the police between them as a ref­er­ee with­out a whistle.
Despite not giv­ing the ref­er­ees a whis­tle the two play­ers expects the game to be called tight­ly and right­ly. When a call is blown, or bet­ter yet, a call is made against one par­ty, that par­ty lines up with the bois­ter­ous hooli­gans in jeer­ing the ill-equipped referee.

With 1616 Jamaicans los­ing their lives last year and the Government now hav­ing to face up to its respon­si­bil­i­ties on crime, there is an attempt at mal-attribution.
Naturally, the Government and the Opposition, are quite com­fort­able with using their sur­ro­gates in Academia (a‑la Anthony Harriott)
and indeed at all lev­els of the food chain to dam­age the JCF in a way they do not want to aggres­sive­ly do it them­selves, con­sid­er­ing the pow­er of the JCF as a vot­ing block.

Whatever ails the JCF is not insur­mount­able, those ail­ments did not occur overnight, they were enhanced by both polit­i­cal parties.
For any polit­i­cal leader or their acolytes to advance a the­o­ry that Government over the decades has not been instru­men­tal in the state of affairs today is disin­gen­u­ous. It ren­ders them unwor­thy of seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion as cred­i­ble stake­hold­er in the debate.

Every year almost 600 offi­cers leave the JCF on their own voli­tion, out­side retirement.
That alone is proof that young men and women are uncom­fort­able with what they see. To sug­gest that these struc­tur­al defi­cien­cies are some­how the fault of the men and women of the force is at its heart ill-informed.
Police offi­cers who leave the JCF and join oth­er depart­ments even with­in the CARICOM region are doing just fine.

Keith Gardner argues.….… The major­i­ty of hon­est police per­son­nel at all ranks can­not afford to live in denial. Any writer on police cor­rup­tion will tell you that the first step to address­ing police cor­rup­tion is the admis­sion that it exists. The next step is to devise plans on how to erad­i­cate cor­rup­tion at every level.

The JCF, unlike any oth­er police depart­ment, has a pha­lanx of over­sight agen­cies, (six to be exact) , addi­tion­al­ly, there is a long line of oppor­tunis­tic preda­tors parad­ing as human rights advo­cates who enhance the con­tin­u­ous drum­beat about how bad the police depart­ment is.
Mister Gardner and oth­er recent con­verts to the hifa­lutin UWI con­cept of polic­ing should try offer­ing a word of encour­age­ment and use their time to advo­cate for bet­ter pay and work­ing con­di­tions for the men and women of the depart­ment and yes demand that the ref­er­ees get a damn whis­tle so that they can con­tin­ue to be impact­ful on the field of play.

It is about time that those who would com­ment on our coun­try’s state of affairs stop drink­ing the cool-aid out of the UWI and at least do some research or bet­ter yet not ignore the fac­tu­al data of our coun­try’s sor­did polit­i­cal past.

On Saturday, October 1^st, 2016 the Police launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into the mur­der of 51-year-old Germaine Junior, o/​c gul­ly at 56 Barbican Road, St Andrew, at the home of well know Attorney at Law Patrick Bailey. The body was found with mul­ti­ple stab wounds and a gun­shot wound to the head.
According to Police, the deceased man’s body was alleged­ly found at about 4 a.m by Bailey with mul­ti­ple stab wounds and what appeared to be a bul­let wound to the head inside the premises.

What Are The Police Afraid Of Why They Haven’t Arrested The Murderer/​s Of Germaine Junior

The deceased man was report­ed­ly found sprawled on a couch inside Bailey’s ran­sacked liv­ing room. He was report­ed­ly stabbed more than 20 times, and the bul­let wound dis­cov­ered only after a spent shell was found.

Bailey was said to be inside the house at the time of the inci­dent and told Police he slept through the inci­dent. The police report­ed no signs of forced entry to the premis­es, which is guard­ed by an elec­tron­ic gate.
Local report­ing at the time indi­cat­ed that long after the scene was processed and the body of the deceased was removed senior police Investigators were still at the premis­es inter­view­ing Patrick Bailey.
A lit­tle strange, if it was a lit­tle man down by Spanish Town Road his behind would have been dragged to the sta­tion and he would be cool­ing his heels in a cell right?.….…But I digress.

To date, this case which seems like an open and closed case has not been closed.
Fitz Jackson speak­ing in the Parliament recent­ly made ref­er­ence to this case. Fitz Jackson is the Opposition spokesper­son on National Security. Jackson cit­ed the case of mis­ter Junior to make his case for the sep­a­ra­tion of MOCA from the JCF, argu­ing that the JCF is inca­pable of doing the sim­plest investigation.
Point tak­en, yes I agree that the police have been pathet­ic in con­duct­ing many inves­ti­ga­tions and this is one of those investigations.
However, the irony is that Fitz Jackson was using this case to make the case of the PNP’s deci­sion to throw its sup­port behind the Government’s leg­is­la­tion which will sep­a­rate the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency, an arm of the JCF from the JCF.

It’s real­ly inter­est­ing how the two major polit­i­cal par­ties come togeth­er in uni­son when they want to do wrong by the coun­try but that’s a sep­a­rate issue.(seeINDECOM).
Jackson [con­ve­nient­ly] for­got a lit­tle bit of his­to­ry in his pre­sen­ta­tion, it was under his par­ty’s lead­er­ship that the JCF went to the dogs, or the dogs took over the JCF.
Under P J Patterson’s stew­ard­ship, not a sin­gle detec­tive was trained for a full decade. No mon­ey was made avail­able to the police depart­ment to train detec­tive, not even a sin­gle one. The depart­ment was left to be a tooth­less paper tiger as crim­i­nals con­sol­i­dat­ed their hold on the underground.

How iron­ic that the par­ty which basi­cal­ly over­saw the demise of such a crit­i­cal Government agency would have the gall to turn around and blame the same agency for non-per­for­mance? Even while draw­ing atten­tion to an arm of the very same depart­ment which is sup­pos­ed­ly doing well.
It was the actions of the police which caused the Bruce Golding’s Administration to sell out the JCF to for­eign inter­ests result­ing in the Albatros now known as INDECOM.

It is the inep­ti­tude of the police high com­mand, cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism, lap-dogism[sic] which caused them to take the Passport pro­cess­ing from the JCF.
It is the same vices which will see MOCA stripped away from the department.
Sure they can­not just dis­band the force in one fell swoop, they need the bod­ies of offi­cers in the streets and so what this JLP Administration under Andrew Holness is doing is dis­man­tling it bit by bit, brick by brick, and the Police high com­mand has no one but itself to blame.

I asked a few ques­tions last year which I will ask again here today, the fam­i­ly of the deceased have lost faith in the police and jus­ti­fi­ably so.
There is no rea­son why this case should not have been wrapped and the perpetrator/​s placed before the court. The police can­not sim­ply let this killer or killers to go free because they are scared shit­less by a mur­der­ing scum­bag regard­less of who that scum­bag is.
This is far too blatant.

♦ Patrick Bailey is a promi­nent attor­ney who eas­i­ly fits into the cat­e­go­ry of the prover­bial big man accord­ing to Jamaican culture.
♦ Was mis­ter Junior there as his guest, if not his, then whose?
♦ Who else lives in the home of attor­ney Patrick Bailey if anyone?
♦ Police report­ed that Bailey stum­bled upon the body about 4:30 am in his own house as he was asleep despite the fact that mis­ter Junior was alleged­ly shot.
♦ If the homi­cide hap­pened in a sec­tion of the res­i­dence out­side mis­ter Bailey’s earshot, (assum­ing the res­i­dence is large enough that Bailey would not have heard a gun­shot), nev­er­the­less who gets up and walk around the house at 4:30 am?

♦ How could Bailey sleep through what must have been a strug­gle much less the sound of a gun­shot in his house?
♦ The state­ment that he stum­bled upon the body at 4:30 am could only have come from Bailey him­self which gives it lit­tle cred­i­bil­i­ty under the circumstances.
♦ A prop­er coroner’s inquest should nail down approx­i­mate­ly what time was mis­ter Junior killed as against Patrick Bailey’s assertions.
♦ Does Patrick Bailey own a licensed firearm, if yes, was the weapon test­ed forensically?
♦ If Patrick Bailey does not own a licensed firearm was any weapon found in the home, if no who else had access to the home and would have killed the deceased and exit­ed leav­ing the doors locked?
♦ The Police report­ed that there was no forced entry to Bailey’s house.This is absolute­ly crit­i­cal evi­dence as it demon­strates that who­ev­er killed mis­ter Junior had access to the residence.
♦ A knife believed to be the one used to stab mis­ter Junior was alleged­ly found beside his body, was it checked for fingerprints.
♦ Was the per­son of Patrick Bailey checked thor­ough­ly for sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence which would also be found on the body of the dece­dent, if so why not?
♦ Was the body of the dece­dent sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly checked for not only marks of vio­lence but body flu­ids and marks of vio­lence of all kinds, if so why not?

♦ If Mister Junior was liv­ing abroad at the time and was only vis­it­ing the Island why would the police and oth­ers allege that he was a care­tak­er of the residence?
♦ The fact that mis­ter Junior’s body was found with mul­ti­ple stab wounds sug­gest a crime of pas­sion cou­pled with the fact that he was also shot.
♦What was his rela­tion­ship with Patrick Bailey and any oth­er per­son who may have been liv­ing at the residence?
♦ Was Patrick Bailey’s per­son checked for marks which would indi­cate whether he was involved in a strug­gle, or did the police sim­ply take his word that he slept through a stab­bing and a shoot­ing? If not why was it not done?
♦ Why was Patrick Bailey ruled med­ical­ly unfit to give state­ments to police at the time by Doctor Jephthah Ford, what was the nature of his illness?
♦ According to the Jamaica Observer report­ing Following the inci­dent, Patrick Bailey’s doc­tor and client Jephthah Ford instruct­ed that he be con­fined to bed after he report­ed­ly exhib­it­ed signs of being unwell. Ford also said he was not fit to give a state­ment at the time.

It is impor­tant to note that [The] Jephthah Ford is now a con­vict­ed Felon in an unre­lat­ed case.

♦ Why was Bailey giv­en spe­cial priv­i­leges when even police offi­cers trau­ma­tized by instances of fatal encoun­ters are forced to give a quick account­ing as to what occurred?
♦ Who else had access to the res­i­dence if any­one and what was their rela­tion­ship to mis­ter Junior?
♦ Did the police check Patrick Bailey’s house for bloody clothes or clothes recent­ly washed?
♦ Did the Police check out­hous­es (if applic­a­ble) and garbage recep­ta­cles for poten­tial bloody clothes?
♦ If the police deter­mined there was no forced entry to Bailey’s house how could they sum­mar­i­ly rule him out as a suspect?

This can­not be a dif­fi­cult case to solve one way or the other.
If the own­er of the premis­es a well-heeled lawyer did not kill the vic­tim some­one else did in his house.
It does not require rock­et sci­ence to fig­ure this case out, if no one broke into the house and there was no one else in the house, then the per­son in the house is the killer or the per­son in the house knows who killed mis­ter Junior and has aid­ed and abet­ted the coverup of this hor­ren­dous murder.

Police on Tuesday removed anoth­er dan­ger­ous weapon from the streets, this time in Lakes Pen St Catherine.Ralsford Hardy, head of Operations for the St. Catherine North Police, said the team has been tar­get­ing gang con­trolled com­mu­ni­ties in the division.

CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

On January 29^th of this year, news broke that head of the Police Civilian Oversight, Authority, a Professor Anthony Harriott declared that the Jamaica Constabulary Force was “TOXIC”.

The job of the Civilian over­sight agency is to ensure fair, impar­tial, and bal­anced over­sight of mat­ters relat­ing to the Police and the pub­lic, split­ting the dif­fer­ence square­ly down the middle.
In case you are won­der­ing, no, the PCOA is not the only Agency tasked with over­sight of the JCF. Overseeing the JCF are six such agen­cies, includ­ing PCOA, The Independent Department of Investigations (INDECOM) , and others.
This does not include the litany of crim­i­nal rights agen­cies which have tak­en up res­i­dence on the Island in sup­port of the rights of criminals.

Harriot argued that (MOCA)the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency, an arm of the force, be split apart from the JCF and declared a sep­a­rate elite Agency sep­a­rate from the JCF.
I fair­ness to Harriot the Island’s Parliament already has a Bill in front of it which would if passed into law, does sep­a­rate MOCA from the sup­posed [toxic]Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCF).

Moca is work­ing quite well accord­ing to reports. Because it has been work­ing so well they placed a for­mer mem­ber of the JDF in charge of the entity.
It should be not­ed that the Andrew Holness led Government is ful­ly behind split­ting this part of the JCF which is staffed large­ly with mem­bers of the JCf and was led by JCF lead­er­ship from its par­ent .…… you guessed it, the JCF.
The Minister of National Security Robert Montague is respon­si­ble for pilot­ing the process through the house.

So what is dif­fer­ent about MOCA which would cause the elites to like it?
Well, MOCA offi­cers are not on the streets deal­ing with the delin­quent, indis­ci­plined and law­less cretins who believe the laws do not apply to them.
So, of course, the lack of con­tact reduces or plain elim­i­nates com­plaints against MOCA officers.
When MOCA offi­cers do act and are seen in the news it is usu­al­ly in a pos­i­tive light in which they are seiz­ing con­tra­band and remov­ing crim­i­nals from the streets. Seizing prop­er­ty and fat­ten­ing gov­ern­ment cof­fers with the pro­ceeds of crime seized from crim­i­nals is what politi­cians want, whats not to like.
So if the police are prop­er­ly retro­fit­ted to be a lot more like that lit­tle part of itself nec­es­sar­i­ly com­plaints would trend down as the pos­i­tives would inex­orably trend up.
Checkmate!

RESPONSE

On the same day Harriot’s state­ments became pub­lic, this writer was stunned at the lev­el of dis­re­spect in the state­ment. As a con­se­quence, yet despite my anger and hunger to respond­ed I had to seek ver­i­fi­ca­tion that he had actu­al­ly made the state­ments attrib­uted to him.
“The occu­pa­tion­al cul­ture of the JCF is one where you take the car and you go off and drink rum and do no inves­ti­ga­tion. You are not called to account, and when the mur­der rate goes through the roof, you squeal that you don’t have enough of this or that.” (Anthony Harriot)
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​n​t​h​o​n​y​-​h​a​r​r​i​o​t​-​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​s​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​j​c​f​-​a​-​c​o​w​a​r​d​l​y​-​h​a​t​c​h​e​t​-​j​o​b​-​b​y​-​a​-​d​e​c​e​i​t​f​u​l​-​h​a​ck/

My God, as a young offi­cer in my ear­ly twen­ties I would work so hard and for so many hours on end that I would pick up a cup of cof­fee and my hands would some­times shake from lack of sleep and exhaustion.
A typ­i­cal shift for us at the CIB would begin at 7: 45 in the morn­ing until 1:00 pm we would return at 6:00pm after a 5‑hour break. We would recon­tin­ue our work through until 8:00 am the next day.Of course, leav­ing at 8:00 was pred­i­cat­ed on whether we were active­ly held up and or engaged in an ongo­ing investigation.
As mem­bers of the Criminal Investigations Branch we near­ly always had to attend court, some­times two sep­a­rate courts as we had crim­i­nal mat­ters on the dock­et either for pre­sen­ta­tion, men­tion or trial.

I was not sur­prised that there was absolute silence at all lev­els of the food chain in this coun­try which is now a crim­i­nal par­adise. But my lack of sur­prise did noth­ing to bri­dle my out­rage and so I respond­ed to his dis­grace­ful igno­rant broad­side immediately.
I total­ly under­stood and was com­plete­ly con­ver­sant that these despi­ca­ble blood par­a­sites who inform debates, shape opin­ion and con­trol the peas­antry was quite com­fort­able with Harriot’s divi­sive and dis­re­spect­ful language.
I nev­er expect­ed much amongst the robot­ic peas­antry to be out­raged either, once we set aside the close fam­i­ly mem­bers of our police officers.
It is now time for the Police Oversight to be reau­tho­rized and Andrew Holness is set to once again appoint Anthony Harriot as head and a part of that over­sight body.

On February 4^th a full (5) days Economist and Lecturer Mark Ricketts wrote a response to Harriot’s out­ra­geous state­ments demand­ing that he should apologize.
Professor Ricketts response is summed up in the very first state­ment quote :

So low is our police force in the eyes of our opin­ion mak­ers that until Wednesday, not one offi­cial stepped up and asked for an imme­di­ate apol­o­gy to the police from Harriott, as well as his res­ig­na­tion as head of the Police Civilian Oversight Authority. Not the prime min­is­ter, not the leader of the Opposition, not any church offi­cial, no uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent, no pri­vate-sec­tor leader.( Mark Ricketts is an econ­o­mist, author, and lec­tur­er liv­ing in California).

It was­n’t until February 7^th that the Police Federation issued a state­ment demand­ing Anthony Harriot’s Resignation.
What was the Federation expect­ing why it took so long to speak out about Harriot’s bla­tant disrespect?
Was the Federation expect­ing Holness or Montague to come out in sup­port of the police when it is Holness’s inten­tion to ren­der the JCF defanged?
Since Holness took Office he has been noth­ing but dis­re­spect­ful and slan­der­ous of the JCF, all from behind the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of Police Officers who risk their lives to pro­tect him.
Why would he crit­i­cize a Donkey’s ass when he was mere­ly par­rot­ing what Holness him­self believes?

Did the Federation expect Peter Phillips and or the PNP to step for­ward in defense of the JCF, if so when has the People’s National Party stood with the rule of law or under­stood it’s val­ue to our country?
Did the Federation expect the civ­il soci­ety which is pop­u­lat­ed with the left­ist from the UWI to speak out against Harriot’s slan­der, if so what would be the basis of the Federation’s expec­ta­tions when he was car­ry­ing out their agenda?

If none of the above apply, were the Police Federation wait­ing on oth­ers to come out against Harriot’s state­ments before it did? If so how can the Federation be suc­cess­ful if it is afraid or ten­u­ous in the defense of its own membership?
Now is the time for the Federation to gath­er some balls and push back against the filth which exists at the top in our country.
It can­not wait to defend its mem­ber­ship, it must be unre­lent­ing and proac­tive in self-defense and oth­ers will follow.

Jamaica is a crim­i­nal par­adise, the Government is infect­ed with crim­i­nals so is the Opposition​.At every lev­el of civ­il soci­ety, there is mor­bid cor­rup­tion. It fol­lows there­fore that the Constabulary should be patent­ly con­scious that there will not be across the board sup­port for its work if any at all.
As the Constabulary work to rid itself of its own cor­rupt­ing demons, it must be heart­ened that it will only be its best prac­tices and suc­cess­es which will even­tu­al­ly change our country.
Clean house of cor­rupt cops, inves­ti­gate and arrest offend­ers whether they con­trol Jamaica House or lives in Riverton.

Contributor Conrod Tucker

High-Level Crime Plan to Combat and Control the Crime Epidemic in Jamaica.

Since the begin­ning of the year, Jamaica has been under siege by maraud­ing gun­men who have mur­dered almost 200 peo­ple, and we are only in the month of February. If this mur­der rate con­tin­ues, it will eas­i­ly sur­pass last year’s 1616 total, and could poten­tial­ly become a record year for homi­cides in this country.

Last year, the parish of St. James record­ed an astound­ing 355 homi­cides, the most ever record­ed by a sin­gle parish in a cal­en­dar year, which prompt­ed the Andrew Holness led gov­ern­ment to invoke a lim­it­ed State of Emergency, now known as Enhanced Security Measures in the parish.

However, in oth­er parts of the coun­try, the killings have con­tin­ued unabat­ed and sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties have emerged as hotspots. The nor­mal­ly qui­et town of Linstead and its envi­rons in the parish of St. Catherine have account­ed for 7 homi­cides since the start of the year.
August Town, in St. Andrew, did not record a mur­der for 2 years, but since 2018, sev­er­al mur­ders have been com­mit­ted in that community.
St. Catherine, led by gang activ­i­ties in the old cap­i­tal of Spanish Town, has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing the most killings so far this year.

Clarendon could become the next St. James if crim­i­nals are allowed to con­tin­ue to com­mit brazen mur­ders in the parish. It is in the top three for mur­ders com­mit­ted in the coun­try this year. Although the Enhanced Security Measures in St. James, appears to be work­ing, it is only a tem­po­rary solu­tion. What is going to hap­pen when the Enhanced Security Measures are over?

Are the cit­i­zens of Jamaica to think the blood-let­ting in that parish is going stop? And what about oth­er parish­es where sev­er­al mur­ders are occur­ring dai­ly? Consequently, I believe the time has come for the gov­ern­ment to strate­gize and imple­ment a com­pre­hen­sive crime plan to com­bat and con­trol the crime mon­ster that has tak­en over the coun­try for many years.

I was stunned that the Minister of National Security Robert Montaque open­ly feud­ed with for­mer Commissioner of Police George Quallo. This absur­di­ty was more mag­ni­fied because the coun­try is in the mid­dle of a cri­sis with record amounts of peo­ple being killed dai­ly. That was not the time for any well-think­ing gov­ern­ment to even con­tem­plate remov­ing the Commissioner of Police, much less forced him into retirement.

The gov­ern­ment, the Police High Command, and the JDF should be work­ing on a plan to cur­tail the vio­lence that has affect­ed so many of our cit­i­zens. The seri­ous­ness of the prob­lem has prompt­ed the U.S., Canada and Great Britain to issues trav­el advi­sories to its cit­i­zens about vis­it­ing Island. The fol­low­ing is a 12 point high-lev­el crime plan that should be imple­ment­ed ASAP.

1. Establish a non-par­ti­san civil­ian board whose mem­bers have expe­ri­ence in law, crim­i­nol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions, and is respon­si­ble for recruit­ing, inter­view­ing, hir­ing and ter­mi­nat­ing the con­tract of the Commissioner of Police. This board should not have any polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions and should be giv­en full auton­o­my, free from any polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in man­ag­ing all aspects of their respon­si­bil­i­ty. The max­i­mum term lim­it for the board mem­bers should be 5 years.

2. The Commissioner of Police con­tract should be a max­i­mum of 5 years and he or she reports to the board. The indi­vid­ual should have the expe­ri­ence as a crime fight­er in Jamaica and under­stands the nuances and com­plex­i­ties of deal­ing with Jamaica’s volatile crime problem.

3. Hire an ombuds­man to be the watch-dog for the police board, the ombuds­man should be non-par­ti­san and giv­en full auton­o­my to inves­ti­gate the board activ­i­ties, free from any polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence. The ombuds­man must pro­vide annu­al pub­lic reports that are non-clas­si­fied in nature, detail­ing the actions of the board.

4. Police area and divi­sion­al com­man­ders should do min­i­mum 2 years stints in the parish­es they are trans­ferred to build rela­tion­ships and gath­er intelligence.

5. Employ a zero-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy to rid the force of cor­rupt per­son­nel, because there are crim­i­nal ele­ments in the force.

6. Outfit the police force with drones to covert­ly iden­ti­fy crim­i­nals activities.

7. Reduce some of The pow­ers of INDECOM, they should be allowed to inves­ti­gate the police but no author­i­ty to press charges. Pressing charges should only be under the purview of the DPP.

8. Increase the use of tech­nol­o­gy espe­cial­ly in foren­sics and intelligence.

9.Reimplement the death penalty.

10. All firearm-relat­ed con­vic­tions should car­ry a min­i­mum cus­to­di­al sen­tence of 10 years.

11. Establish bet­ter com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions with the pub­lic, so that peo­ple will be encour­aged to talk to the police.

12. Increase train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple to enable them to find mean­ing­ful employ­ment after their train­ing is com­plete. This would act a deter­rent to them join­ing gangs and becom­ing criminals.

The opin­ions expressed by our writ­ers are their own, they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the views of chatt​-abox​.com or it’s owners.

There is a State of Emergency in St James Parish, [no scratch that] it is now (enhanced secu­ri­ty), we can­not for­get that.
Remember that the forty-six-year-old (46) Prime Minister Andrew Holness prides him­self in remind­ing us that he is from a new Generation with dif­fer­ent ideas. Not to for­get also that right there in Salem St James was the very first so-called (ZOSO) ini­ti­at­ed, we are not sure how that is pan­ning out.

There is also a brouha­ha brew­ing about the appoint­ment of an act­ing Chief Justice, in the per­son of Justice Bryan Sykes for the Supreme Court. Now all of the Constitutional experts, Clergy, and polit­i­cal pun­dits have come out with their opin­ions of dire con­se­quences as a result of the PM’s actions.
Yadda, yad­da the sky is falling, when in actu­al­i­ty there is absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with the Prime Minister installing an act­ing Supreme Court chief jus­tice while a search is fine-tuned. One which should not exclude the emi­nent Justice Sykes.
The argu­ment that the search should have been going on ahead of time as the term lim­its of sit­ting chief jus­tices is well known is a legit­i­mate debate to have.

In the mean­time, the crime sit­u­a­tion is cen­ter stage, as the search is sup­pos­ed­ly in earnest for a new Commissioner of Police after Commissioner George Quallo decid­ed he could no longer car­ry the bas­ket he was giv­en to car­ry water.
Even as the search is in earnest for a Commissioner the Police Service Commission’s [PSC’s] mem­ber­ship is yet to be decided.
Local media Reports indi­cate the Prime Minister will make the appoint­ments soon with Professor Gordon Shirley, as chair­man. Dr. Marshall Hall. Retired Rear Admiral Peter Brady.Reverend Dr. Maitland Evans. And Anthony Harriott. The dis­re­spect­ful fraud who recent­ly labeled the entire police depart­ment “tox­ic” Has not issued an apol­o­gy nor has he been asked to.

Of note is the not too dif­fi­cult to spot slight, that of all of the retired com­mis­sion­ers and oth­er senior-lev­el retired offi­cers in the coun­try, no one is being con­sid­ered to serve on the commission.
This fits into the nar­ra­tive of Andrew Holness’s dis­dain for the police and may be summed up with local media push­ing for a mil­i­tary leader to be once again placed in charge of the police department.
To do some­thing once, and fail is, .….…… well not prob­lem­at­ic. To do the very same thing and expect a dif­fer­ent result from the first is sil­ly. To attempt the same a third time is utter­ly stu­pid and bone­head­ed some­thing I do not place out­side Holness’s modus operandi.

If they think that crime is high now let them place anoth­er sol­dier above the men and women in the JCF and they will see what God they are serving.
In fact, local media is ecsta­t­ic about their sup­port for a mem­ber of the mil­i­tary by point­ing to the JDF’s report­ing on the State of Emergency in St James.
They are gid­dy that in some instances the police offi­cers are cut out of brief­ing frames.
This, the media claim is as a result of police corruption.This writer did not miss it,I report­ed on it weeks ago.

The fal­la­cy of this chaos and dis­re­spect is summed up in an arti­cle writ­ten for the [Observer] by a local faith leader (monikered H Morgan)

Nothing that we have tried thus far has worked to per­ma­nent­ly quell the ram­pant spate of mur­ders that has for too long held our beau­ti­ful island home in a vice-like grip of fear and under­de­vel­op­ment. The many crime stud­ies and crime plans have not worked. Changing the Government, min­is­ters of nation­al secu­ri­ty and com­mis­sion­ers of police has not worked. Change in leg­is­la­tion, along with the intro­duc­tion of harsh­er penal­ties, has not worked. Killer cops who alleged­ly oper­at­ed death squads have not worked. Security oper­a­tions and cur­fews have not worked. Zones of spe­cial oper­a­tion have not worked, except in the imme­di­ate locale where they have been imple­ment­ed. Now, the Government has imposed a state of pub­lic emer­gency in the parish of St James. But past expe­ri­ence with this par­tic­u­lar response sug­gests that it too will not work. We are left with prayer but we have been pray­ing for a long time.

Now there is so much wrong here which I will address but it is impor­tant to grasp that this min­is­ter believes that the answer to the nation’s crime prob­lem lies in ( Pleading with dons, gun­men and shottas ).
Mind you these are the folks who are shap­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy, the peo­ple’s opin­ions that are lis­tened to on the Island.
More impor­tant­ly, it is that mind­set which guides the PrimeMinister’s think­ing. Shockingly this UWI indoc­tri­nat­ed ide­o­logue bone­head­ed­ly believes that there is a way to stop the doped up mon­sters with­out squash­ing them like bugs.

To begin with, the entire lay­out of fail­ures which this Parson claimed have not worked, absolute­ly could not work with­in the frame­work of the decrepit sys­tem which exists in the country.
Placing beau­ti­ful antique fur­ni­ture in a leaky old house result in destroyed antiques.
After all of their advo­ca­cy, the best we have now is prayer and plead­ings with dons and shottas?
In what coun­try does the gov­ern­ment beg crim­i­nals to stop killing people?
I say give us a chance. I echo for­mer SSP Adams, six-months, that’s it.
See that these are not real gang­sters, not real thugs but snivel­ing lit­tle bitch­es who are allowed to do as they please because the Government refus­es to car­ry out its pri­ma­ry func­tion of pro­tect­ing the nation from these punks..

Set anger aside, I feel drained, total­ly emp­ty, that this is where we are on this when the solu­tions to the crime sit­u­a­tion are right in front of our eyes.
The idea that all have failed is not the prob­lem, the issue is that they con­tin­ue to be stuck in the mind­set that the things they tried were, in fact, use­ful solu­tions to the problem.
The 46-year-old Holness, a prod­uct of the University of the West Indies him­self, was raised to have no respect for the police. His rhetoric has not only demon­strat­ed that dis­re­spect it has demon­strat­ed his will­ing­ness to con­tin­ue on this fools-fol­ly of a gloved hand approach he has been on.

RECOURSE

This writer has sub­mit­ted a (12 point plan out­line) to the Government which I have offered as a frame­work to begin a dis­cus­sion on in assess­ing how the crime Monster may begin to be tamed. Since then oth­er plans have emerged to include the PNP’s plan(which I haven’t seen ), as well as a plan sub­mit­ted by for­mer Deputy Commissioner of Police Mark Shields a British cit­i­zen who was sec­ond­ed to Jamaica.
Shield’s plan sound­ed eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of a plan already in the pub­lic space but I digress.

MY PLAN

(1) Shore up the ports of entry, effec­tive­ly stop­ping the guns com­ing in illic­it­ly and hold those gains.

(2) Tactically cor­don the areas to be searched then go in with trained Dogs to find the weapons and arrest offenders.

(3) Stagger where the secu­ri­ty forces go at any giv­en time, it should not be based sole­ly on the area with the high­est num­ber of killings.
By doing so you min­i­mize the like­li­hood that your next move can be anticipated. 

(4) Remove from the Prime Minister the pow­er to decide where the secu­ri­ty forces go in the ZOSO.
It mat­ters not that the PM sup­pos­ed­ly acts on the advice of the Security Council.
This Act hyper politi­cizes polic­ing and gives the next par­ty to hold pow­er the abil­i­ty to engage in tit-for-tat using the secu­ri­ty forces to car­ry out their nefar­i­ous bidding.
As long as secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions are green-light­ed by politi­cians those oper­a­tions stand to be politicized. 

(5) Stop the grant­i­ng of bail to accused mur­der­ers and oth­er dan­ger­ous felons. An inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry is extreme­ly impor­tant to any democ­ra­cy, yet the judi­cia­ry can­not oper­ate with­out account­abil­i­ty to the people.
Judges can­not be allowed to release crim­i­nals as they see fit while argu­ing bail is not a penal­ty, there are built-ins in the Bail act to keep vio­lent offend­ers behind bars.

(6) Stop dem­a­gogu­ing the secu­ri­ty forces. Give the Police the assur­ance they need that the Government and oppo­si­tion sup­port their efforts.
Use the air­waves to edu­cate the peo­ple about the ben­e­fits of adher­ing to the rule of law. Make it clear to crim­i­nals they have no safe haven.
Demand greater account­abil­i­ty from the Police high command.

(7) Stop giv­ing the nation the impres­sion that effec­tive hard-nosed polic­ing which arrest crim­i­nals and places them in jail is anti­thet­i­cal to cit­i­zens human rights.
The great­est right a per­son has is the right to life. You have no right if you are dead, as such the coun­try must place it focus­es on remov­ing from its midst the mind­less killers and throw its sup­port behind law enforcement.

(8) Citizens must be edu­cat­ed to desist from cor­rupt­ing pub­lic offi­cials, to report police and oth­er pub­lic offi­cials who ask for bribes.
Do not offer to bribe pub­lic offi­cials. Repeal the INDECOM Act, debate and pass a new law with safe­guards for the police. Ensure that the agency is total­ly unbi­ased and neutral.

(9) Enact truth in sen­tenc­ing for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes.
Mandatory 25 years to life for mur­der, 20 years for all crimes com­mit­ted with a gun.
This is absolute­ly nec­es­sary since the nation’s lead­ers have decid­ed to go against the wish­es of the peo­ple and have declared a mora­to­ri­um on hanging.
Twenty years min­i­mum for any crimes com­mit­ted using a firearm.

(10) Look at the US Rico statute, and draft a law which mod­els that statute effec­tive­ly pros­e­cut­ing gang­sters as a crim­i­nal enter­prise as the Rico Statute does.

(11) Institute Mandatory National Identification pro­gram, law enforce­ment needs to be able to iden­ti­fy each and every Jamaican.

(12) Remove all polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence from law enforce­ment. What this admin­is­tra­tion is doing is even more polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence not less.

I saw this and was stunned that this still per­sists even at a time when the Jamaican Government is in the process of hand­ing out huge sums of mon­ey to res­i­dents of Tivoli Gardens, despite that com­mu­ni­ty’s deci­sion to oper­ate out­side the laws for generations.

A Police Officer who was shot in the line of duty receives J$1000 per month, lives in squalor, does­n’t even have a radio or tele­vi­sion set.
This is how Jamaica treats it’s police officers.
My squad­mate was shot and injured many years ago he is wheel­chair bound as well. I called him a few weeks ago and asked how he was doing?
He tells me only for the mer­cy of God that he is surviving.

Now despite my sense of anger that a police offi­cer was shot in the line of duty is treat­ed this way I am not sur­prised. The JCF has been an agency which prid­ed itself on form but pre­cious lit­tle substance.
What the over bloat­ed high com­mand was always good at has always been the spec­ta­cle, show, and no performance.

Having been shot in 1988 while on duty ( not that it should mat­ter, cops are nev­er off duty) I under­stand all too well that by and large the men and women who make up the high com­mand did not under­stand their roles as supervisors.
Commanders nev­er grasped the con­cept of com­pli­ment­ing their juniors in pub­lic and chastis­ing them in pri­vate. The reverse has always been a sore point in the JCF. As a con­se­quence few com­man­ders had the abil­i­ty to har­ness the full poten­tial of the work­force under their com­mands and even if they were able to, I’m unsure they would know what to do with it.

I nev­er received a vis­it from my Divisional offi­cer when I got shot, I nev­er received a vis­it from the area offi­cer, not from the crime offi­cer and cer­tain­ly not a call from the then Commissioner Herman Ricketts.
It mat­tered not that it was not a seri­ous injury, good lead­er­ship entails look­ing after your charges before you con­tem­plate doing any­thing else.
You can­not secure the pub­lic with men and women who are bro­ken down and that seem to be a large part of the problem.

Across the seas, Police Departments look after them­selves and they do not allow any­one to dic­tate to them how they should go about doing so.
One thing is cer­tain is that they do not cow­er in fear from crit­i­cism of any­one out­side their depart­ments who do not know what it takes to do the job.
Congratulations to Steve McGregor a real leader and police com­man­der. Thank you, Steve, for lead­ing where Government and your own supe­ri­ors have failed.

Continue read­ing →

So low is our police force in the eyes of our opin­ion mak­ers that until Wednesday, not one offi­cial stepped up and asked for an imme­di­ate apol­o­gy to the police from Harriott, as well as his res­ig­na­tion as head of the Police Civilian Oversight Authority. Not the prime min­is­ter, not the leader of the Opposition, not any church offi­cial, no uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent, no pri­vate-sec­tor leader.( Mark Ricketts is an econ­o­mist, author, and lec­tur­er liv­ing in California) http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​f​o​c​u​s​/​2​0​1​8​0​2​0​4​/​m​a​r​k​-​r​i​c​k​e​t​t​s​-​p​r​o​f​e​s​s​o​r​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​a​p​o​l​o​g​i​s​e​-​p​o​l​ice

For years I have been writ­ing about these opin­ion mak­ers in our coun­try. I refer to them as the immoral elit­ists from above Cross Roads. For those famil­iar with Jamaica’s geog­ra­phy the term con­jure up a group with dif­fer­ent accents than the rest of us, the most pre­ten­tious fecal mat­ter laden par­a­sites imaginable.
For the most part, there is a com­mon thread which ties most if not near­ly all of them togeth­er, that thread is the University Of the West Indies.

The trans­par­ent duplic­i­ty is inher­ent in politi­cians from both sides of the polit­i­cal divide as well as the com­plic­it cheer­lead­ing by those in civ­il soci­ety includ­ing the media and what pass­es for the church (when they are not busy molest­ing lit­tle boys and girls) in tear­ing down the police depart­ment and the rule of law.

“But then, bash­ing the police has become Jamaica’s biggest growth indus­try, for which there is a ready-made audi­ence”.(Said @Mark Ricketts)
Haha, there you go, just ask Ronald Thwaites, Barbara Gloudon, Moutabaruka, Cliff Hughes, Garnett Roper and a long line of imbe­ciles who have made a name for them­selves on the blood of dead cops.
The harm Carolyn Gomes did will take gen­er­a­tions to reverse yet the groups named by Mark Ricketts were active cheer­lead­ers and enhancers of her wave of destruction.

My friend Coop exclaimed to me that two of the most pop­u­lar men in the coun­try are for­mer Commissioner of Police Trevor McMillian and Terrence Williams of INDECOM.
A sear­ing indict­ment of the groups Mark Ricketts exco­ri­at­ed and to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion at large, the tox­ic bile hav­ing now bled out across the coun­try in every nook and crevasse.
DPP Paula Llewelyn spoke out against Harriot’s inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric and we thank her for it. She of all per­sons knows and under­stands the work the police actu­al­ly put into bring­ing cas­es to her office and she under­stands what those offi­cers face.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​n​t​h​o​n​y​-​h​a​r​r​i​o​t​-​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​s​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​j​c​f​-​a​-​c​o​w​a​r​d​l​y​-​h​a​t​c​h​e​t​-​j​o​b​-​b​y​-​a​-​d​e​c​e​i​t​f​u​l​-​h​a​ck/

The thing is, police offi­cers past and present know shit when they see it. and we do not always both­er to use fan­cy ter­mi­nol­o­gy to call shit ‑shit.
I saw the shit the very day it was report­ed and I respond­ed in kind, good to see oth­ers now rec­og­niz­ing the gross dis­re­spect this hack per­pet­u­at­ed on our police officers.
Out of the mouth of Harriot came tox­ic shit and there is no pret­ty way to char­ac­ter­ize that, at least not for me, I’ll leave that to the more cul­tured amongst the local bourgeoisie‘.
At first, when I saw Harriot’s com­ments I thought, not only is the lan­guage com­ing from his pie-hole the only thing tox­ic, but that kind of shit could only come from a tox­ic shithouse.

See, I was nev­er one to care for these ass­holes. I have seen them up close. As a young offi­cer I inter­act­ed with these frauds, “oh so where were you trained”?
Because as you know Jamaican police offi­cers were total­ly inca­pable of speak­ing prop­er english[sic].
Where the fuck you think I was trained, at some fake loca­tion like your fake accent? No, I was trained right her m****r f****r!
My dis­dain was pal­pa­ble, my anger dan­ger­ous and so I thought I can no longer serve these infi­dels in this capac­i­ty or any other.

Mark Ricketts lives in the United States as do I.
For the most part, Jamaicans liv­ing in the dias­po­ra have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the impor­tance of law enforce­ment sac­ri­fice to the sta­bil­i­ty of our soci­eties. No, it’s not just a job for which we pay men and women, (imper­fect though some of them are), it is a call­ing which pro­pels those of us who took the plunge to risk it all for oth­ers we have nev­er met.

It is not some­thing which Andrew Holness, Peter Phillips, the imbe­ciles Anthony Harriot and Terrence Williams would ever under­stand. It is not some­thing the aver­age Jamaican would either because they have nev­er been taught respect for this indis­pens­able institution.
The cries com­ing from them now in rela­tion to the gath­er­ing whirl­wind is fear. Fear born out of the winds of divi­sive­ness, dis­re­spect, and dis­hon­or they sowed.

So it’s not shock­ing that none of the indi­vid­u­als or groups named by Mark Ricketts found Harriot’s state­ments objec­tion­able, demean­ing or down­right offensive.
They don’t know any bet­ter, they were raised in a coun­try which has since its infan­cy cut its teeth on an igno­rant embrace of dis­re­spect for the rule of law and law enforce­ment offi­cers.(See Babylon)

A shit hole country?
No!
A shit­hole people?
Yes, though not all, a whole slew of shitholes!

Are we ignor­ing or just plain miss­ing a crit­i­cal yet impor­tant fact in the crime cul­ture in our country?
Are we miss­ing the fact that there has been a par­a­digm shift in the char­ac­ter of the Nation over the last three decades?
On launch­ing the most recent state of emer­gency in Montego Bay Prime Minister Andrew Holness assert­ed that 99% of the Jamaican peo­ple are good, hon­est and decent peo­ple and that the nation should work to rid the coun­try of the [1% ]of the pop­u­la­tion which is engaged in crim­i­nal con­duct.(some­thing to that effect)

Sounds like a rea­son­able state­ment from a leader who wants to inspire coöper­a­tion and show con­fi­dence in his coun­try, but is it true?
Over the last three decades, the polic­ing of Jamaican com­mu­ni­ties have been defined by the extent to which the com­mu­ni­ty is
tied up under the con­trol of a polit­i­cal under­boss or Don (accord­ing to local par­lance).
These under­boss­es see to dis­ci­pline, [jungle jus­tice, usu­al­ly death for the sim­plest trans­gression] with­in the com­mu­ni­ties. [“gar­risons”]. Handouts, patron­age work and oth­er good­ies and most impor­tant­ly, the deliv­ery of votes come elec­tion time to the mem­ber of Parliament.

In this arrange­ment the mem­ber of par­lia­ment del­e­gates the day to day run­ning of the con­stituen­cy to the [Don]. He does what he sees fit, usu­al­ly, that means the oper­a­tion of a major crim­i­nal empire. For his /​her part the mem­ber of Parliament gets the votes he/​she needs come elec­tion time for run­ning defense against the Police for the com­mu­ni­ty [“Don”].

This arrange­ment has been a work­ing tem­plate for decades but one which saw some minor changes in the way some of the mov­ing parts operates.
The pow­er of politi­cians has waned in the gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties as calls for greater account­abil­i­ty in Government spend­ing ampli­fied. The award­ing of Governments con­tracts tak­ing cen­ter stage in that regard. (see the con­trac­tor gen­er­al act)

As the amounts of mon­ey politi­cians have to spend becomes less and how those monies are spent are more scru­ti­nized the con­trol mem­bers of par­lia­ments have on their con­stituen­cies have waned dramatically.
As their con­trol waned, the [“Don”] became even more influ­en­tial. To fill in the gap cre­at­ed by few­er slush dol­lars com­ing from the polit­i­cal boss­es the Dons expand­ed their own illic­it busi­ness­es, becom­ing more pow­er­ful and feared in the process.

Extortion. lot­to-scam­ming. mur­der for hire. drug deal­ing. pros­ti­tu­tion. human-traf­fick­ing. weapons trade and a whole slew of oth­er crimes, local and transna­tion­al, became far more lucra­tive to the [Dons] fur­ther erod­ing the impor­tance of the politicians.
As a result, the well doc­u­ment­ed polit­i­cal killings which came to crit­i­cal mass dur­ing the 1980’s gen­er­al elec­tion became a thing of the past.
No longer were the com­mu­ni­ties so heav­i­ly depen­dent on their par­ty’s con­trol of Jamaica House for their survival.

Despite their new­found finan­cial inde­pen­dence, the Dons still need­ed the politi­cians. They were still need­ed to run defense against the Police.
The movie “Shottas” depict­ed the afore­men­tioned renais­sance as the [Don Wayne] showed why he did not need the politi­cian [mis­sa Anderson].
In the final cut, [mis­sa Anderson] was sum­mar­i­ly exter­mi­nat­ed by Wayne and his cohorts after he no longer served their interest.

The wealth and influ­ence of the Ghetto under­boss­es became a tremen­dous lure to the youths. The Don has access to mon­ey, guns, they take what they want at the point of a gun. They have access to the women and girls they want, and they are revered.
The pow­er the dons accu­mu­late is envi­able and wor­thy of emulation.
Why would young­sters in under­served com­mu­ni­ties want to go to school when they can have all of the perks [now] through the pow­er their guns give them?

Everyone wants to be a Don and so the inevitable pro­lif­er­a­tion of gangs across the coun­try was only a mat­ter of time.
The spoils from the illic­it activ­i­ties in which the gangs are involved fuel the econ­o­my of many communities.
Large num­bers of the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ties are some­how tied to or are ben­e­fit­ting from the ille­gal cash flow to those communities.

Enforcing of the laws is not a part of the plan in the com­mu­ni­ties and so every­one comes out to demon­strate when­ev­er the police dare to enforce the laws, no mat­ter how jus­ti­fi­able their actions.
In the image above we see the reac­tion of one St Mary com­mu­ni­ty when a local crim­i­nal was shot by the police and an ille­gal weapon tak­en from him.
And so the ques­tion aris­es giv­en the facts as I out­lined them, why would the police not play the game some are play­ing, leave the depart­ment, or sim­ply turn a blind eye?

The fact of the mat­ter is that there is only one insti­tu­tion stand­ing between the anar­chist and our coun­try and it is the law enforce­ment community.
The behav­ior of large groups of peo­ple in response to police activ­i­ty in their com­mu­ni­ties have pre­cious lit­tle if any­thing to do with police mis­con­duct and every­thing to do with the solid­i­fy­ing and con­den­sa­tion of crim­i­nal­i­ty as a result of years of nurturing.
This has been sup­port­ed by Politicians of both polit­i­cal par­ties since 1962 to present day.

The lies of the rul­ing class and their cohorts in civ­il soci­ety ampli­fied by their mouth­pieces in the media can­not be left to stand.
We can in no way allow the con­tin­u­ance of mis­in­for­ma­tion and out­right lies as well as the mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of blame to the police which is but one of the sev­er­al arms of gov­ern­ment tasked with the dis­pen­sa­tion of the jus­tice product.

In light of the Prime Ministers asser­tion that 99% of the Jamaican pub­lic are good and decent peo­ple, there is no basis for those claims, his state­ments are not borne out by the facts.
The scene which played out in St Mary weeks ago have occurred thou­sands of time over and over all across the Island. These are not good and decent people.
These are not just 1 % of the pop­u­la­tion. Houston we have a problem.

From our street Reporters, organ­ic, uncut and uncensored.
This we are told is Rohan Masters o/​c Slabba Dog, a known crim­i­nal gang­ster from Fletchers Land who is report­ed­ly the right-hand man of Incarcerated Gangster Joel Andem. Killed in the Swallowfield area of Kingston today.

We are told, though we haven’t been able to con­firm this report­ing that he is a known hit­man who ordered killings even while in Jail.
Unfortunately, some of the report­ing indi­cates that some of his illic­it activ­i­ties were made pos­si­ble by cor­rupt cops who worked at the jail cells.

It is impor­tant that we bring these pic­tures and make these links to audi­ences both in Jamaica and across the Globe as we begin the process of show­cas­ing to the world how the killings are destroy­ing our beau­ti­ful coun­try as the Government cow­ers in fear as transna­tion­al crim­i­nals kill and com­mit all kinds of crimes and large­ly walk away with­out consequence.

As the killings con­tin­ue and the Jamaican Government blames the Police and destroy the morale of the offi­cers on the streets it is impor­tant that these images get out to you our readers.
We will con­tin­ue to write these sto­ries and show these graph­ic images until the Jamaican Government lines up behind the men and women of the Jamaica Constabulary force and allow them to do their work,

In the mean­time, we urge that the efforts to remove dirty cops from the depart­ment be intensified.
This pub­li­ca­tion also once again call for the repeal of the INDECOM Act and the pas­sage of a bet­ter law and the appoint­ment of a com­mis­sion­er to head that agency that all Jamaicans can be proud of.

See videos of the incident

From our organ­ic street Reporters who cap­tured the scene as it occurred in the New Kingston Area where two men went to Spartan Gym on Lady Musgrave Road and opened fire hit­ting Uriel James, the leader of the reput­ed Rose Town-based Discipline Gang as he was about to enter the gym com­pound about 7:50 am.
The assailants sprayed his vehi­cle with bullets.

In the videos, the assailants are seen lying on the ground while secu­ri­ty offi­cers took con­trol of the scene. Two firearms were recov­ered and hand­ed over to the Police.

More and more these scenes are play­ing out across the coun­try as crim­i­nals ride up on motor­cy­cles or in motor cars and open fire killing peo­ple and sim­ply dis­ap­pear­ing with­out con­se­quence. Regardless of what we think about the vic­tim in this regard, the act in itself is rep­re­hen­si­ble and should not be tolerated.
In the mean­time, the Government and the crim­i­nal rights lob­by are ful­ly engaged in ren­der­ing the police depart­ment less effec­tive.

Kudos to King Alarm offi­cers who did a great job hang­ing onto the two would-be mur­der­ers until the Police arrived and took them into custody.
On an obser­va­tion sidenote.
The Uniform of King Alarms secu­ri­ty offi­cers is pret­ty impres­sive. As a pro­po­nent of chang­ing the sil­ly uni­form of the police, I won­der what it would take for our police offi­cers to have the uni­form like those worn by King Alam secu­ri­ty guards?

Imagine Dennis Meadows tweet­ing the following.

“The next Commissioner of Police must be a trans­for­ma­tion­al leader, tena­cious in fight­ing cor­rup­tion, incor­rupt­ible and be pre­pared to go against the grain of the squad­die cul­ture.”

There is a mis­con­cep­tion among those who nev­er served in any mil­i­tary or para­mil­i­tary force that the so-called (squad­die cul­ture) is a bad thing.
It was the same decep­tive, duplic­i­tous dis­in­for­ma­tion Carolyn Gomes (for­mer head of the dis­graced JFJ) per­pet­u­at­ed and pushed on our coun­try that the term Esprit ‑de_​Corps is some kind of secret code police uses as a means to cov­er for wrongdoing.

Nothing can be fur­ther from the truth, but igno­rance is bliss, where there is no knowl­edge mis­in­for­ma­tion and half-truths become reality.

The fact of the mat­ter is that Military ser­vices mem­bers and police orga­ni­za­tions the world over have their own creed of broth­er­hood which speaks to the bond and kin­dred spir­it of cama­raderie they share with each oth­er the (JCF being no exception).

No one both­ered ask­ing Police Officers what it real­ly meant to them because accord­ing to pop­u­lar talk­ing points, police offi­cers were sup­posed to be just big foot idiots who could­n’t find any oth­er jobs so they chose to be police officers.
Imagine lying, decep­tive, untrust­wor­thy politi­cians lec­tur­ing any­one about their creed?

When you have to depend on your broth­er or sis­ter to be the guardian of your back in hos­tile sit­u­a­tions, yes you need that esprit de corps, the much-maligned squad­die mentality.

Speaking about the squad­die men­tal­i­ty in pejo­ra­tive terms denotes igno­rance, which is an appro­pri­ate adjec­tive to describe Dennis Meadows.
The likes of Dennis Meadows should engage his mind assum­ing he has one and close his mouth, maybe he will learn some­thing in the process.

This is get­ting quite tire­some, but as long as we have the abil­i­ty and the medi­um to speak out, even when our own par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances may not be imme­di­ate­ly threat­ened by what is going on, it behooves us to speak out.

Most of the Island’s laws were writ­ten and cod­i­fied long before Britain uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly jet­ti­soned the Island, )the process we Jamaicans call gain­ing Independence).
It is incon­ceiv­able to imag­ine that the puni­tive com­po­nents of laws passed in 1955 would have rel­e­vance or a deter­rent effect in 2018.
Yet to some degree, that is what obtains in Jamaica today. In fair­ness to the Legislature, some laws have been amend­ed, and new ones have been passed. However, miss­ing from the new laws and the updates done to the old ones are obvi­ous indi­ca­tors that the leg­is­la­ture rec­og­nizes the seri­ous­ness of the crime sit­u­a­tion in the country.

As such, the Independent Judiciary has tak­en it upon itself to deter­mine who goes to jail and who spends time in prison, if at all, after con­vic­tions and guilty pleas [regard­less of their crimes].
The bedrock of the com­mon law sys­tem is the doc­trine of stare deci­sis (“let the deci­sion stand”). The doc­trine has two limbs. First, the courts must fol­low the deci­sions and rul­ings in pre­vi­ous­ly decid­ed cas­es or prece­dents where the facts and issues are sub­stan­tial­ly the same. The sec­ond limb of the doc­trine – and this is real­ly an exten­sion of the first – dic­tates that a low­er court can­not depart from the prece­dents set by a high­er court where the issue is essen­tial­ly the same. http://​www​.nyu​law​glob​al​.org/​g​l​o​b​a​l​e​x​/​J​A​M​A​I​C​A​.​h​tml.

A gen­er­al prin­ci­ple of the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice is that [jus­tice must not only be done, it must also appear to be done]. This prin­ci­ple is read­i­ly voiced by lawyers, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the defense side and judges on the bench.
That prin­ci­ple is used to hold Police Officers account­able even by untrained mem­bers of civ­il soci­ety. Yet when Judges over­step their legal respon­si­bil­i­ty and make a mock­ery of the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice, every­one is silent except the police, of course.
When there is no equi­ty, or even a more under­stand­able com­mon­sense pat­tern of sen­tenc­ing, or even in the grant­i­ng of bail, it erodes the peo­ple’s con­fi­dence in the sys­tem’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect them.
As we have seen in our coun­try, mob killing has been on the rise over the years, and there is a gen­er­al silence on this emerg­ing and expand­ing phenomenon.
While every­one’s atten­tions are focused on the alle­ga­tions of police mis­con­duct, the dan­ger­ous epi­dem­ic of mob killings has gone on with­out the appro­pri­ate out­cry it deserves. Despite the well-worn prac­tice of blam­ing the police for all of the fail­ings of the jus­tice sys­tem, the dan­ger­ous phe­nom­e­non of mob killings can­not log­i­cal­ly be placed at the feet of the police, although some will cer­tain­ly try.

Recent com­plaints of Judges let­ting seri­ous felons off with slaps on the wrist were long over­due. Nevertheless, like every­one else, judges have a right to have their side of the sto­ry heard.
The expla­na­tion giv­en by one high court judge gives much more cre­dence to my per­son­al call to cod­i­fy into law the penal­ties for cer­tain cat­e­gories of crime. Since far too many judges under­stand the term [Independent judi­cia­ry] to mean the right to admon­ish and dis­charge crim­i­nals caught with guns and ammu­ni­tion, the leg­is­la­ture must take that option away from them.
When they take it upon them­selves to throw out cas­es of assault on police offi­cers while hold­ing police offi­cers crim­i­nal­ly cul­pa­ble for using force to effect law­ful arrests there is a prob­lem. Responding to claims of light sen­tences from the police cir­cuit court, Justice Glen Brown said the following.
“If a rich man’s son “com­mits a crime, they expect lenien­cy,” but if a poor man com­mits a crime, they expect him (as the judge) “to send him to prison.”
Brown cit­ed pro­ba­tion reports as being vital in play­ing a role in the sen­tenc­ing process. He argues that when the reports are looked at in some cas­es, many of the young boys involved had been involved in sport­ing activ­i­ties, includ­ing foot­ball. “You have to res­cue them.”

At the risk of sound­ing cliché, “I rest my case.”
Those com­ments were made in response to accu­sa­tions that per­sons con­vict­ed for ille­gal­ly pos­sess­ing guns and ammu­ni­tion in St James and three oth­er west­ern parish­es last year got off easy, as High Court judges opt­ed for sus­pend­ed sen­tences and fines as low as $70,000. The police cit­ed hun­dreds of ver­i­fi­able cas­es last year in which mur­der­ers and oth­er felons were released back onto the streets after they were arrest­ed them. They go out and kill or kill again.
The idea that judges see their roles as social work­ers instead of the fol­low­ing prece­dent as stip­u­lat­ed in paragraph(3) above demon­strates the need for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain crime cat­e­gories, effec­tive­ly remov­ing that func­tion from the hands of judges. The break­down of law and order and the gen­er­al law­less­ness in the coun­try are direct­ly attrib­ut­able to the lax, com­plic­it, cor­rupt, and incom­pe­tent jus­tice sys­tem led by the Islands judges who refuse to fol­low precedent.
Instead of fix­ing that prob­lem as police offi­cers have been demand­ing for decades[ a prob­lem I com­plained about over two decades ago while I was a serv­ing police offi­cer], they con­tin­ue blam­ing the police for com­plic­i­ty while ignor­ing this glar­ing prob­lem. Call your polit­i­cal representative/​member of par­lia­ment and demand that judges respect prece­dent and obey our laws.
They have no author­i­ty to ignore the crimes com­mit­ted by crim­i­nals, so they may per­form social work.
Demand seri­ous manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for gun crimes now.

JUDGES OF THE SUPREME COURT

The Honourable Mrs. Byran Sykes, Chief Justice

Supreme Court – Puisne Judges

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Carol Lawrence ‑Beswick – Senior Puisne Judge

The Honourable Mr. Justice B. Andrew Rattray

The Honourable Mr. Justice Courtney Daye

The Honourable Mr. Justice Bryan Sykes

The Honourable Miss Justice Jennifer Straw (Acting as Judge of Appeal)

The Honourable Mr. Justice Leighton Pusey

The Honourable Miss Justice Christine McDonald

The Honourable Mr. Justice Martin Gayle

The Honourable Mr. Justice Bertram Morrison

The Honourable Mr. Justice Glenworth Brown

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Sarah Thompson-James

The Honourable Mr. Justice David Fraser

The Honourable Miss Justice Carol Edwards

The Honourable Mr. Justice Kirk Anderson

The Honourable Mr. Justice Evan Brown

The Honourable Miss Justice Nicole Simmons

The Honourable Mr. Justice David Batts

The Honourable Mrs. Sharon George

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Vivene Harris

The Honourable Mr. Justice Kissock Laing

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Audre Lindo

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Cresencia Brown-Beckford

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Marcia Dunbar-Green

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Georgiana Fraser

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Lorna Shelly-Williams

The Honourable Mr. Justice Chester Stamp

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Vinette Graham-Allen

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Sonia Bertram-Linton

The Honourable Mr. Justice Dale Palmer

The Honourable Miss Justice Carolyn Tie

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Stephane Jackson-Haisley

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Sonya Wint-Blair

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Lisa Palmer-Hamilton

The Honourable Miss Justice Yvonne Brown

The Honourable Mrs. Andrea Pettigrew-Collins

The Honourable Miss Justice Calys Wiltshire

Acting Judges

The Honourable Miss Justice Judith Pusey (Ag.)

The Honourable Mrs. Justice Simone Wolfe-Reece (Ag.)

The Honourable Miss Justice Annmarie Nembhard (Ag.)

Masters-in-Chambers

Miss Rosemarie Harris

Miss Pamela Mason (Ag.)

Miss Andrea Thomas (Ag.)

Mrs. Natalie Hart-Hines (Ag.)

This arti­cle has been updat­ed to reflect a new Chief Justice; how­ev­er, oth­er high court jus­tices have not been updated.

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

FROM CONTRIBUTOR CHRIS PORTER.

Dr. Peter Phillips the man who went to the scene of death of the late Willie Hoggart as well as to his funer­al once stat­ed that name brand police offi­cers made crime in Jamaica worse.
What a lie, it is “fake news” his rhetoric was dis­hon­est, disin­gen­u­ous and at best stu­pid., Phillips is one of those politi­cians who hates mem­bers of the Jamaican Constabulary Force for var­i­ous reasons.
As a for­mer mem­ber of the Jamaican Constabulary Force and a Detective Constable whose last divi­sion was St. Andrew South, Hunts Bay Police Station, to be exact. I am one of the hap­pi­est ex-mem­bers I have no regrets about leav­ing the force. My only regret not leav­ing ear­li­er and wast­ed about nine more years of my life in the organization.

Mr. Reneto Adams and many Jamaicans do not know or under­stand that the “Jamaican Labor Party gov­ern­ment and the oth­er politi­cians” in Jamaica have declared “war” on the Jamaican Constabulary Force mem­bers from May 2010.

After, the secu­ri­ty forces incur­sion into Tivoli Gardens, to arrest and exe­cute the extra­di­tion war­rant on “Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke” politi­cians declared war on these Patriots.
The cur­rent Jamaican Labor Party gov­ern­ment is not inter­est­ed in reduc­ing crime in Jamaica they are the par­ty which “lob­bied” the American gov­ern­ment not to extra­dite one of their strong men.

The days of name brand police cer­tain­ly now seem like the good old days. Officers like1).Toney Hewitt (deceased). (2) Douglas Guthrie. (3) Tom Levine. (4) Isiah Laing. (5). Bigga Ford. (6) Donovan O’Connor o/​c Hucks. (7) Dadrick Henry. (8) Derrick Knight o/​c Cowboy.(9). Reuben Gunter o/​c Rambo. (10). Bobby Reds. (11). Brown Laing from Westmoreland. (12). Karate Georgie.(13). Bag and Pan. (14).

Troubles from Linstead.(15). Errol Thompson o’/c Gatta. (16). Roy ‘Denzil” Boyd (deceased)(17). Leroy Nicely (Deceased). (18). Faggoty. (19). Linroy Edwards o/​c Eddie. (20) Calvin Lewis o/​c Dibble. (21). Wayne Josephs. (22). Clive Coleman.(23). Errol Welby o/​c Captain from Kingston Central.(24). Hydol from Spanish Town.(25). Tony Frye. (26).Dalphi Graveny. (27).

Ivanhoe Thompson. (28). Dave Daley (Deceased). (29). Charlie Mendez. (30) Ludlo Mowatt (deceased). (31). Parro Campbell. (32) Mug from Radication Base. (33). Oswald Ayre. (34). Mevral Smith. (35).Mike Beckles and a pletho­ra of tal­ent­ed and feared detec­tives that dri­ve fear into the hearts of criminals.

Now, crim­i­nals are phys­i­cal­ly beat­ing up offi­cers because there are no laws that make it manda­to­ry for the offend­er to go to prison like in America. Criminals can shoot at the police, and they know that if they escaped and caught lat­er. Whenever they are brought before the courts, they are going to be acquitted.

Only a fool would want to serve in the Jamaican Constabulary Force espe­cial­ly when the gov­ern­ment is not a fan of those who are will­ing to risk their lives for the peo­ple of Jamaica.
It’s only a mat­ter of time before Jamaican crim­i­nals begin doing the things which the ter­ror­ists are doing over­seas. It may be only then that the politi­cians will feel the heat when it comes to the shore of Jamaica in that degree.

Last year offi­cers were attacked by gang­sters who lobbed grenades at them.
The inci­dent did not even move the [idiot, crim­i­nal lov­ing] Prime min­is­ter to act in the best inter­est of the Jamaican people.
If I were a man of crim­i­nal intent and look­ing for a place to set up my orga­ni­za­tion, Jamaica would be the ide­al loca­tion, the place to set-up my crim­i­nal organization.

The Jamaican government’s poli­cies are more favor­able to the crim­i­nals than to the law enforce­ment offi­cers. It is like Somalia and Mexico! Where I am liv­ing at this time, mem­bers of the local, city, state, and fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cies are treat­ed like Gods. Do you think that a politi­cian could sur­vive or even have a career here if he is known “anti-police and pro-crim­i­nal politician?”

That could nev­er happen.
Most Jamaicans are miss­ing the big­ger pic­ture when it comes to crim­i­nals: It is big busi­ness, and the play­ers who are mak­ing mon­ey are not your friends.
The peo­ple who live in the afflu­ent com­mu­ni­ties are the ones who are behind this mon­ster, and they are reap­ing mon­ey like rain, and the politi­cians know this.

In every­thing, there are cause and effect. The effect is that the best and bright­est will get fear­ful and migrate to Europe or North America and make those con­ti­nents and coun­tries bet­ter while Jamaica is uninhabitable.

Uninhabitable to live, work, or raise a family.
One mes­sage for the mem­bers of the Jamaican Constabulary Force, resign and migrate, and your lives will be much, much bet­ter, and your stress lev­el will be per­fect. Imagine your blood pres­sure 118/74…that’s more than per­fect. Why are will­ing to give away your life to a sys­tem that is designed to crim­i­nal­ize you and pro­tect criminals?

Your best bet is to leave the police force. I have left and had zero regrets. Every day when I read what the gov­ern­ment is doing, I know that I made the right, best deci­sion in my life. Resign!!!

Dr. Phillips is not a friend of the police, and he would like to treat the force as if it is per­son­al secu­ri­ty firm employ­ees. He is a char­la­tan, fraud, and .an oppres­sor of the police force.
Holness is no better.
Finally, the name brand police offi­cers are the thing of the past in Jamaica because the gov­ern­ment would make sure that they find some­thing to arrest and charged them with.

In America, in every com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly the “hoods” there is name brand police offi­cers in every precinct. Bad boys know them and are scared of them. The Jamaican Politicians have done away with name brand cops and now the coun­try is a criminal’s par­adise in the Caribbean Sea.

The views of our con­trib­u­tors are their own they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the opin­ions of chatt​-​a​-box​.com nor it’s own­ers and publishers.

My great­est wish is that I could hire the entire police depart­ment, [save for some of course] and give them jobs they love and pay them what they are worth. I would hire them so that Jamaicans may have their wish to have the crim­i­nal par­adise they want with­out any­one or any­thing stand­ing in the way.
I was raised believ­ing famil­iar­i­ty breeds con­tempt, at least that’s one of the things my elders taught me. The police depart­ment is expe­ri­enc­ing this famil­iar­i­ty first hand.

I would hire them away so these fool­ish Israelites could have their king Saul.
And for the record, I would move them and their fam­i­lies out of the country.
Sure I know this is a pipe dream, a sil­ly unat­tain­able dream, but I am enti­tled to have my own utopi­an escape. A moment of bliss at the prospect of such a pos­si­bil­i­ty, and it’s real time con­se­quences on these fool­ish deceit­ful peo­ple called Jamaicans.

On a bat­tle­field, if you are sus­tain­ing heavy loss­es the thing to do is to change strat­e­gy. Throwing large amounts of man­pow­er at the ene­my does not com­pen­sate for poor strategizing.
Jamaica is at war with the heav­i­ly armed gangs which have been empow­ered since the police have been pre­vent­ed from going after them. The Islands bor­ders have become gap­ing gate­ways for the pour­ing in of weapon­ry and ammu­ni­tion of all kinds.

Police in the Parish of Saint Ann had grenades lobbed at them last year, for­tu­nate­ly for those offi­cers only one mem­ber of the par­ty sus­tained minor injuries. On a dai­ly basis, the police all across the Island remove weapons and ammu­ni­tion of all kinds from the streets. Yet the num­ber of ille­gal weapons in the hands of gang­sters seem numberless.
I can­not recall a cir­cum­stance in which grenades have been used against law-enforce­ment in any west­ern coun­try so I stand to be cor­rect­ed on that.
The point of the mat­ter how­ev­er, is that the coun­try is engaged in a war that the Government is unwill­ing to acknowl­edge and the Opposition par­ty is all too will­ing to see continue.

How can the lead­ers fix a prob­lem they are wont to admit exist. Does any­one believe 10 peo­ple mur­dered over a 12 hour peri­od is just crime?
In what nor­mal soci­ety of 2.8 mil­lion would 1616 mur­dered peo­ple over the course of a sin­gle year be acceptable?
The very peo­ple who are respon­si­ble for the predica­ment in which the nation finds itself are the very peo­ple point­ing fin­gers at the peo­ple with the least to do with those problems.

Police offi­cers do not make policy.
In some devel­oped coun­tries which respect their law enforce­ment offi­cials their laws are draft­ed with detailed input from their law enforce­ment officers.
The crime sit­u­a­tion in a country[any coun­try] is hard­ly ever whol­ly the fault of the police. Whether or not some mem­bers of the police department[any depart­ment are cor­rupt] is nei­ther here nor there.

If there is cor­rup­tion in the[a] police depart­ment it is up to the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship to fix it. The con­cept of fir­ing the team is only a thing in a coun­try like Jamaica. In oth­er coun­tries polit­i­cal lead­er­ship iron out prob­lems in Government agen­cies police depart­ments being no exception.
When the rub­ber meets the road I don’t see any [hifa­lutin bull­shit-talk­ing, non-facts-get­ting, elit­ist] chas­ing down a sin­gle lit­tle boy with a sling-shot, much less remov­ing one gun from the streets.

At the end of the day, none of the gob­bly­gook writ­ten on paper pur­port­ing to know how to deal with Jamaican crim­i­nals from the rel­a­tive safe­ty of ivory tow­ers can com­pen­sate for good intel­li­gence-based policing.
Let me go a lit­tle fur­ther by say­ing we need ana­lysts for ana­lyz­ing sci­en­tif­ic sam­ples, we need pro­fil­ers, we need peo­ple who are super edu­cat­ed to for­mu­late for­ward-lean­ing poli­cies, we even need psy­chol­o­gists to help us to under­stand why peo­ple some­times do the things they do.
But all of that must be done as part of a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy geared toward effec­tive­ly deal­ing with crime which is an ever-chang­ing phenomenon.

None of those oth­er dis­ci­plines com­pen­sate or replaces policing.[Do you hear me, Professor Harriot and the brain­dead PSOJ].
The sad con­clu­sion is that the Jamaican pub­lic rich and poor and in between does not under­stand the val­ue of polic­ing to their lives.
Not kid gloves, not beg­ging crim­i­nals to behave, not wor­ried about how many of them end up dead if they refuse to hand over the guns, or worse yet, shoot at our police officers.

It will be accom­plished by the same old strate­gies being employed in every oth­er coun­try in which some quar­ters decide that they are above the laws.
You go after them with over­whelm­ing force and squish them like bugs.
A peo­ple too stu­pid, too crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it or too damn pre­ten­tious to under­stand that con­cept deserves what it getting.

An uniden­ti­fied male was shot and killed by mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with mem­bers of a joint police /​military team on patrol in New Market St Elizabeth yes­ter­day at around 3.30pm.

The secu­ri­ty team was fired on by a group of men who then ran, the fire was returned and one man was shot and killed.
An Uzi sub-machine gun and two mag­a­zines and a Browning pis­tol with one 9 mm round was also dis­cov­ered in close prox­im­i­ty to the body

Like a snow­ball cas­cad­ing down a moun­tain­side, increas­ing in mass with each rev­o­lu­tion it tum­bles on until it trig­gers a humon­gous avalanche dev­as­tat­ing and con­sum­ing every­thing in its wake. So has the assault on the JCF con­tin­ued over sev­er­al decades until it is now on life support.
But that’s what the polit­i­cal class want­ed all along.The trag­ic irony now, how­ev­er, is that they are shit­ting them­selves because they are com­ing to the real­iza­tion that the shit is about to hit their doorsteps and they are pan­ick­ing, so nat­u­ral­ly, they berate the police some more.

How iron­ic that the rul­ing class most of whom have passed through the left­ist University of the West Indies (UWI), or more appro­pri­ate­ly, the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to, accord­ing to the late Wilmott Perkins, have destroyed the Police force only to have one of their own head of the Police Civilian Oversight Authority, some Professor Anthony Harriot describe the Department as “Toxic”.
I’ll tell you what’s tox­ic. It is that shit­hole of a left­ist University which indoc­tri­nates idiots like this into think­ing they are [the] author­i­ty on National Security and crime.

The Police depart­ment cer­tain­ly could have done a bet­ter job of com­port­ing itself over the decades, there is no doubt about that. We all know that the salary is no good the man­age­ment is shit­ty and the lack of real and real­is­tic goal set­ting and attain­ment in its oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures have been woe­ful­ly lacking.
As such despite the tire­less work of most of the young men and women who self­less­ly join the depart­ment, the police depart­ment has been unable to seri­ous­ly impact crime in a mean­ing­ful way as a com­pa­ny would be able to show a prof­it as a result of a tar­get­ed growth agenda.

This is a result of the failed lead­er­ship of the depart­ment by those who have been ele­vat­ed for the wrong rea­sons forc­ing out oth­ers more moti­vat­ed and bet­ter suit­ed to serve. This is cer­tain­ly not unique to the JCF it cuts across all stra­ta of the pub­lic sector.
The Jamaican pub­lic sec­tor is inher­ent­ly cor­rupt and flawed.
The almost 600 mem­bers who leave the depart­ment each year, not through retire­ment is tes­ta­ment to the fact that they are unhap­py with their leadership.

Notwithstanding the fore­gone, the two polit­i­cal par­ties which have ruined (ruled)the Island since it’s so-called inde­pen­dence from Britain have done a bril­liant job of divid­ing the coun­try into two war­ring factions.
Additionally, they have set up the Police to stand between both fac­tions in an unen­vi­able and unwinnable task of ref­er­ee­ing which could only end in dis­as­ter on the field of play.
For any­one to talk about Toxicity with­in the JCF with­out first detail­ing who did the poi­son­ing or to lie about how the poi­son was ingest­ed is vast­ly dis­hon­est, and at the very min­i­mum is intel­lec­tu­al dishonesty.

To hear that kind of lan­guage from some­one who heads a body which has Police Civilian Oversight respon­si­bil­i­ty is shock­ing­ly illu­mi­nat­ing at the lev­el of unmit­i­gat­ed bias the police face form these Machiavellian frauds.
In mak­ing the argu­ments that the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) should be sep­a­rat­ed from the JCF Harriot said quote:

(“The occu­pa­tion­al cul­ture of the JCF is one where you take the car and you go off and drink rum and do no inves­ti­ga­tion. You are not called to account, and when the mur­der rate goes through the roof, you squeal that you don’t have enough of this or that.”
“It is crit­i­cal that it is removed. The JCF is tox­ic. And there is no point in spend­ing a lot of mon­ey, giv­ing peo­ple high-lev­el train­ing for them to become part of the JCF’s occu­pa­tion­al culture.”)

A shock­ing and igno­rant broad-brush stroke of tar­ring which makes no dis­tinc­tion for any of the chal­lenges the depart­ment faces logis­ti­cal­ly, oper­a­tional­ly. tech­ni­cal­ly, mon­e­tar­i­ly, polit­i­cal­ly, leg­isla­tive­ly, or otherwise.
Yet he went on to say the following.

(“That is the root of the prob­lem, and that is why this inves­tiga­tive police (unit), the core of which is in MOCA, must be tak­en off the JCF — split from the JCF imme­di­ate­ly. There has real­ly been an effort to have MOCA oper­ate sep­a­rate­ly, and it must be encour­aged.”
“With 1,616 per­sons killed across the island last year and more than 100 already killed in 2018, the Government must move quick­ly.”)

Well, there you have it.
Despite the fail­ings of the two polit­i­cal par­ties, the prob­lems fac­ing the coun­try accord­ing to some­one who occu­pies a posi­tion which is sup­posed to be patent­ly objec­tive and fair the prob­lems are all root­ed in the police.

This is the most igno­rant, deceit­ful, piece of garbage I have ever read. Imagine though that this moron heads the Police Civilian Oversight.
What chance does the Island’s police offi­cers have when these are the insects which have a say over them?
Is there any won­der that many of our police offi­cers have sim­ply dropped their hands?

With Transparency International assess­ing that the Government struc­ture is 84 % cor­rupt the immoral, elit­ists have decid­ed to lay it all at the feet of the Constabulary.
So I will sim­ply ask this of you, Professor. What have you done for Jamaica com­pa­ra­ble to the sac­ri­fices of the last joined con­sta­ble who risk life and limb every day, so that imbe­ciles like you can spout off at the mouth the garbage and bile you spew?

The fact that Harriot would car­ry out a hatch­et job on the over ten thou­sand men and women of the JCF with­out first at least acknowl­edge the fail­ings of the polit­i­cal sys­tems or the Judicial sys­tem demon­strates that he is a cheap hack car­ry­ing out the bid­ding of the polit­i­cal class to fur­ther blame the police for the dan­ger­ous mur­der statistics.
The com­ments in and of them­selves are designed to fur­ther erode what­ev­er good­will the cit­i­zen­ry may have toward the police mak­ing the police fur­ther irrel­e­vant and endan­gers the lives of offi­cers in the process.
Citizens who see the police as lack­ing in author­i­ty, cred­i­bil­i­ty, sup­port are inclined to resist and attack those offi­cers. No won­der attacks on our police offi­cers have gone up as the Andrew Holness Government and their cohorts step up their attack on our police in an effort to deliv­er a coup de grâce to it as an agency..
A dis­gust­ing, class­less, cow­ard­ly yet trans­par­ent act?

Like and share if you sup­port the good hard­work­ing men and women of the JCF

As we cred­i­bly report­ed two weeks ago, Commissioner of Police George Quallo will, in fact, be step­ping aside in a mat­ter of days.
At the time of our report­ing that was indeed what we report­ed, that he would not be clean­ing out his desk the very day he met with National Security Minister Robert Montague, but his future was already decid­ed for him.

Commissioner Quallo could have added some degree of cred­i­bil­i­ty to his name and show just a wee bit of balls as he was head­ing out the door by telling the nation that he was indeed asked to look at his options, which real­ly meant you are fired.
Of course, the Minister does not have the Constitutional author­i­ty to fire the Police Commissioner but he cer­tain­ly has the pow­er to con­vey to the Police Services Commission that the Government has lost con­fi­dence in Mister Quallo’s leadership.
So there’s that.

The nation’s mur­der rate is gal­lop­ing away and the Administration is panicking.
I say that with a heavy heart because I was real­ly bank­ing on the long­shot pos­si­bil­i­ty that Andrew Holness would be a trans­for­ma­tion­al Prime Minister who under­stood what is need­ed to set our coun­try on the right path.

Yet I heard the Prime Minister tell cit­i­zens in Montego Bay dur­ing the flood of police offi­cers and Soldiers into their com­mu­ni­ties that he had promised them that they would sleep with their win­dows and doors open and now they can. Of course, it was only so because the entire com­mu­ni­ty was flood­ed with mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces.
The fact that the Prime Minister would be so trans­par­ent­ly cyn­i­cal on such a seri­ous issue dis­qual­i­fies him sub­stan­tive­ly as part of the solution.
It makes a mock­ery of his Administration’s asser­tions that it ful­ly under­stands what needs to be done about crime in our country.

What is obvi­ous is that the Administration has made the deci­sion to make the police force the scape­goat as oth­ers had done before him.
I don’t think there are many peo­ple who har­bor any pre­con­ceived notions that Holness has any love for, or loy­al­ty to, the Police offi­cers who risk their lives to secure the nation as well as to pro­tect him and his family.

So it’s real­ly not out­side the realm of any­one’s imag­i­na­tion that he would throw Commissioner Quallo to the Wolves and have a lack­ey like Clifford Blake or any oth­er lap dog which will give the Administration cov­er on crime.
The fact of the mat­ter is that the Administration talks a good game about crime but its poli­cies are anti­thet­i­cal to solv­ing the nations seri­ous and dete­ri­o­rat­ing mur­der situation.

The exit of Commissioner Quallo is a dis­trac­tion designed to focus the nation on the police and who­ev­er emerges next. Naturally, the next per­son to take the job will require a bit of time to demon­strate what he/​she can do, that’s time for the Administration.
I want to make it clear that my crit­i­cism of the Administration should nev­er be con­strued to be sup­port for the Opposition par­ty, which I believe should be banned from rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics on the Island. I hope that — that clar­i­fies my dis­dain for that polit­i­cal par­ty as a legit­i­mate enti­ty in this debate in which we are engaged.

The prob­lem affect­ing our coun­try as it relates to crime is not a Police Problem, it is a pol­i­cy problem.
The Government and the Despicable crim­i­nal sup­port­ing Political Opposition have essen­tial­ly pros­ti­tut­ed them­selves to out­side Criminal Rights lob­by so much so that before they address the mas­sive blood­shed in the coun­try they have to pay homage and recite their def­er­ence to human rights.
I chal­lenge the Administration to buck the pup­peteers abroad and sub­mit the name of for­mer Assistant Commissioner of Police Keith Trinity Gardiner to the PSC to be the next Commissioner of police.
I ful­ly under­stand that his appoint­ment will not stop the blood­shed but it will at least guar­an­tee that at the very least there is an actu­al crime fight­er at the helm who under­stands what to do.

Developed Nations do not cater to, nei­ther do the allow human rights lob­by to influ­ence, much less dic­tate crime-fight­ing strategies.
Developing Nations wish­ing to extri­cate them­selves from the crip­pling ten­ta­cles of crime and ter­ror­ism do not allow human rights lob­by to dic­tate to them on the ways to deal with their ter­ror­ists, a‑la Colombia, Mexico, The Philippines, Cuba, et al.

Pretentious coun­tries like Jamaica will always be mired in the quick­sand of failed state sta­tus, while it con­vinces itself it is emerg­ing toward first world status.
The best and the bright­est, are run­ning away. Those who lack the means to do so along with the most enter­pris­ing and inno­v­a­tive are being killed in alarm­ing numbers.
In the mean­time, the Administration con­tin­ues to arrange the deck chairs on the sink­ing Titanic. While the despi­ca­ble polit­i­cal Opposition sits there sali­vat­ing, await­ing the total sub­mer­gence of the gov­ern­ment so it can present its own leaky old buck­et as a solution.
And on and on we go like a dog chas­ing its tail.