Senior Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey who has for all intents and pur­pos­es sub­vert­ed the process to set Kern Spencer free of all charges in the Cuban light bulb scan­dal has been ele­vat­ed to the Supreme Court.

Pusey is One of six women ele­vat­ed to the supreme court at a time when the coun­try is inun­dat­ed with crime and ter­ror­ism the coun­try needs Judges who are going to uphold their oaths to the con­sti­tu­tion, not judges who do all in their pow­ers to sub­vert the process of justice.

Jamaica’s Mad Liberal Judges:

RM PUSEY SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THIS CASE NOW:

Man Fined $50,000 For Driving Over Cop’s Foot

Magistrate: Not Guilty, But Is Kern Innocent ?

The Problem With Jamaica’s “Grung Gads”

In a new year’s speech which gives us a win­dow into his soul and a view of his think­ing, Prime Minister Andrew Holness had much to say about the dan­ger­ous spate of killings in Jamaica.
Holness made the fol­low­ing com­ments while address­ing the con­gre­ga­tion at the 13^th annu­al ‘Heal the Family Heals the Nation’ gath­er­ing at the National Arena staged by the Power of Faith Ministries.

Said the Prime Minister.

[“Leaders you have to bring it to your pul­pit. We can’t allow much of what is hap­pen­ing to be cov­ered up, par­tic­u­lar­ly the abuse that is hap­pen­ing with­in fam­i­lies. We must preach out against the fathers who are molest­ing their daugh­ters. And it is hap­pen­ing in our midst. Some moth­ers remain qui­et – don’t say any­thing about it: that daugh­ter grows up with a lot of anger in her. She has chil­dren and she takes it out on her chil­dren and all that those chil­dren will know, is vio­lence. If you see some­thing like that, it is not right. It can­not be accept­ed prac­tice in our cul­ture. We must expose it and preach against it.”]

[ “The church has an amaz­ing capac­i­ty for coun­sel­ing and out­reach, use it. That is one prac­ti­cal way in which we can start to address the issue of vio­lence”. “We talk about crime but we don’t talk enough about vio­lence. It is the vio­lence that dri­ves the crime: it is the vio­lence that makes the crime bru­tal and sav­age, we have to address this issue of vio­lence which is becom­ing part of our cul­ture, a part of our social trans­ac­tion”…]

INDECOM​.FAST. JFJ, IACHR. PMI. OPD. Silent On Murders Of Over 1600 Murdered Jamaicans In 2017…

NOTHING WRONG WITH HIS STATEMENTS REALLY, EXCEPT…

There is noth­ing wrong with the text or tenor of the Prime Minister’s state­ments real­ly. Except that what is miss­ing, is a fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing by the Prime Minister of what the nation is deal­ing with and more so what will be required to fix it.

Firstly and before we get into the prac­ti­cal mechan­ics of whats hap­pen­ing in Jamaica and what fix­es will be effec­tive, let us get some­thing real­ly straight.
God Almighty will not fix our prob­lems for us, he has already strength­ened us to do for our­selves. Through his pre-set principles,we decide out­comes based on our own actions.

Philippians 4:13. I can do all things through Christ who strength­ens me.
That include putting men on the moon, plac­ing satel­lites into orbit, mas­sive advances in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy as well as in Engineering. 

We are not going to win wars by kneel­ing and pray­ing, we win wars by train­ing and sup­port­ing our armies, know­ing our ene­mies, and ensur­ing that we do not under­es­ti­mate them.
God is not a magi­cian sit­ting atop the clouds wav­ing a wand one way or the oth­er based on how we respond to him.

Mister Prime Minister, well over 1600 Jamaicans was mur­dered in 2017. Compare that to Chicago Illinois, one of America’s most vio­lent cities, which had 675 homi­cides and rough­ly the same pop­u­la­tion as Jamaica.
There are Jamaicans who are giv­ing you the impres­sion that this is mere­ly crime.
I assure you it isn’t, I can also tell you, yes there is crime every­where but your mur­der num­bers are not mere crime numbers.
The coun­try is at war.

The homi­cide num­bers in Jamaica far exceeds that of Great Britain, Jamaica’s patron, which record­ed 723 mur­ders in 2017 and 524 in 2016. [www​.sta​tista​.com] Britain has a pop­u­la­tion of 65.64 mil­lion as com­pared to Jamaica’s 2.7 mil­lion.

We can poll nations around the world with larg­er and small­er pop­u­la­tions than Jamaica’s and we would be hard-pressed to find a nation with the per capi­ta mur­der sta­tis­tics of Jamaica.
A good place to start is with Cuba 90 miles off our shores, which has a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 12 mil­lion peo­ple rough­ly four times that of Jamaica which has 2.7 mil­lion people.
They have a stan­dard of liv­ing which is sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than that of Jamaican [thanks to over 50 years of American block­ade] yet their homi­cide num­bers are far less oner­ous, where available..

According to https://​www​.osac​.gov.

While there are no reli­able crime sta­tis­tics from the gov­ern­ment, the U.S. Embassy con­tin­ues to receive sev­er­al reports per month of non-vio­lent crimes against tourists. These num­bers are increas­ing slight­ly and are con­sis­tent with report­ing from oth­er diplo­mat­ic mis­sions. Most crime can be asso­ci­at­ed with pick­pock­et­ing, purse snatch­ing, fraud schemes, and thefts from unoc­cu­pied cars, hotel rooms, and dwellings. American trav­el­ers are gen­er­al­ly per­ceived to be wealthy. Most offens­es take place in areas fre­quent­ed by foreigners.

Although most tourist hotels are rel­a­tive­ly safe in Havana, pick­pock­ets, pros­ti­tutes, and oth­er crim­i­nals may con­gre­gate there. Cuba has an active com­mer­cial sex trade.

We could go on and on but you get the pic­ture. Our clos­est neigh­bor geo­graph­i­cal­ly, hard­ly has a homi­cide prob­lem. The crimes report­ed by this America Agency [hard­ly a friend of Cuba] makes men­tion of non-vio­lent crimes, the kind which may appro­pri­ate­ly be assigned to poverty.

Mister Prime Minister here is the prob­lem in our coun­try and I dare­say you are a sig­nif­i­cant part of that prob­lem, if not cul­pa­bly, culturally.
You have tak­en the posi­tion that crime can be approached using plat­i­tudes, beg­ging, beseech­ing, pray­ing, and a soft hand.
You and those who advise you are wrong. The fact that you and I dare­say the crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion have mort­gaged out the nation’s secu­ri­ty to Criminal sup­port­ing groups, is entire­ly why you are unable to prop­er­ly deal with the problem.
You can­not fix what you have decid­ed­ly and will­ful­ly refused to prop­er­ly diagnose.

What is going on in Jamaica will not be reme­died with com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing. We have long passed that stage, that is not to say that com­mu­ni­ty based polic­ing can­not oper­ate side by side with a more mil­i­taris­tic approach to the problem.
You sim­ply have to stop lis­ten­ing to the pre­ten­tious know-it-alls who dom­i­nate the pub­lic air­waves and the nation­al dialogue.
As I have said repeat­ed­ly in pre­vi­ous arti­cles, human rights and hard no-non­sense polic­ing are not opposed to each oth­er. The oppo­si­tion par­ty and your acolytes of the cler­gy and those in the media and crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty are quick to make the link that if police go after dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals they, by virtue of that fact alone are pre­dis­posed to abus­ing the rights of citizens.
Simply put it is bull-shit.

Young men who have engaged in the pow­er rush they seem to get from tak­ing inno­cent lives are not about to give up those weapons and return to irrelevance.
They are not going to go back to being nobody when the Prime Minister and oth­er lead­ers are in church beg­ging God for help from them.
They will not give up their weapons when politi­cians are meet­ing with them, essen­tial­ly rais­ing their pro­file and importance.

The shin­ing path in Peru, the ELN , and FARC in Colombia did not give up their weapons, nei­ther have the car­tels in Mexico done so.
Those weapons will have to be tak­en from their life­less fingers.
Jamaicans can pre­tend all they want that what is hap­pen­ing in our coun­try is dif­fer­ent. We have seen what it real­ly meant in 2010.
Shamefully, rather than laud the secu­ri­ty forces the nation through its polit­i­cal lead­ers on both sides of the aisle cre­at­ed a kan­ga­roo court to con­demn the secu­ri­ty forces for sav­ing Jamaica.
Paying Tivoli res­i­dents and apol­o­giz­ing to that com­mu­ni­ty cement­ed the fact that there is pre­cious lit­tle dif­fer­ence between the two polit­i­cal parties.

The two par­ties are basi­cal­ly the white col­lar seg­ment of the crim­i­nal gangs which rule the streets.
More con­se­quen­tial, pay­ing Tivoli and apol­o­giz­ing and demo­niz­ing the secu­ri­ty forces cement­ed the notion that Jamaica is a crim­i­nal state.

Regardless of what you think about slain police offi­cer Constable Courtney Linton, who was shot dead by gun­men in Orangefield on October 31, last year, what do you say about the killing of his girl­friend 40-year-old Zoe King who was nine months pregnant?

Ms. King was killed at her home in Orange field St Catherine, a once peace­ful rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of law-abid­ing families.
She was sched­uled to have her baby next week accord­ing to pub­lished reports.

The police say she was at home when 4 armed men invad­ed her home, the preg­nant Ms.King was chased by the men and sum­mar­i­ly slaughtered.

Let me be clear about this, I believe that the peo­ple who sit in their offices in Kingston and pon­tif­i­cate about human rights bet­ter be careful.
Whether they are from INDECOM, FAST, JFJ, IACHR. Peace Management Unit, Public Defender’s office or wher­ev­er, the blood of the peo­ple is cry­ing out.
If you are not for the peo­ple you are against the people.

There is no more fun­da­men­tal a right indued to any per­son than the God-giv­en right to life.
The over 1600 dead Jamaicans last year elicit­ed death­ly silence from every sin­gle group named and the ones not named.

For the most part lit­er­al­ly, all of the mur­dered vic­tims had their lives snuffed out ille­gal­ly, yet there has been no out­cry from the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty named above.
We are not unmind­ful of the fact that the only time we have heard from these char­la­tan crim­i­nal sup­port­ing groups have been on the occa­sions that mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces exter­mi­nate ele­ments of the crim­i­nal underworld.

As a con­se­quence let us be clear, INDECOM, FAST, JFJ, IACHR. The Peace Management Unit, The Public Defender’s office, and oth­ers are crim­i­nal sup­port­ing groups oper­at­ing in Jamaica.
Let us dis­pense with the lies and pre­tense and peel off the veneer of bull­shit. Each and every one of these enti­ties by them­selves and col­lec­tive­ly is work­ing toward the fur­ther­ance of the defense of those who kill inno­cent and defense­less Jamaicans.

Who mur­ders a preg­nant woman?
What will it take for the pow­ers that be in this coun­try to rec­og­nize that it has a seri­ous war on its hands?
How long will it take these peo­ple who clear­ly are in a drunk­en stu­por to come to the real­iza­tion that this is not just crime?

When will the blood of the inno­cent rise up and engen­der rage in the peo­ple to the extent they say “no more”?
How long will it take for the peo­ple to real­ize that God will not be fight­ing this bat­tle for them, they will have to fight it for themselves?

When will they real­ize that the wolves in sheep cloth­ing who pre­tend to care about them are indeed the ene­my with­in, pro­tect­ing and enhanc­ing their demise?

I call on the Holness Administration to stop play­ing pol­i­tics, sus­pend habeas cor­pus and send the mil­i­tary in to root out these killers.
To hell with the Opposition and the talk­ing head in the media and oth­er crim­i­nals sup­port­ing entities.

Failing which there will inevitably and inex­orably be a right­eous upris­ing and the results will not be pretty.
Act now and put an end to the car­nage Prime Minister.

The blood of well over 1600 Jamaicans is very well on the hands of these fraud­u­lent imposters as it is on the hands of those who pulled the trig­ger or uses a knife.

The coun­try must decide, as the new year begins with record num­bers which already sug­gest it will be a ban­ner mur­der year, whether it wants to con­tin­ue lis­ten­ing to these frauds.

If Jamaicans are okay with four armed men gun­ning down a preg­nant woman killing her and her unborn baby, then I will write not anoth­er line about this war being waged in Jamaica.
It will be enough to say this coun­try we all love is no more, it is now a killing field unwor­thy of our care.

It will mean, gone is the lit­tle rock I took a bul­let for and in its place is a Godless, las­civ­i­ous and hedo­nis­tic waste­land in which life has no value.

A place in which plea­sure cir­cum­vent every­thing else and every­day life con­tin­ues as the spilled blood of the inno­cent wash­es over the bar­ren waste­land our four father slaved and died for.

Sixteen hun­dred and six­teen (1,616) mur­ders were record­ed in Jamaica dur­ing the year 2017.

Of those mur­ders, 335 took place in the parish of St James. However, the tal­ly for total mur­ders could rise as fifty oth­er cas­es have report­ed­ly been list­ed as death investigations.

This means 2017 is among the blood­i­est years on record.

In the year 2009, 1,683 per­sons were killed in Jamaica – the high­est on record.

In 2005 a year also a year filled with blood­let­ting there was a record­ed 1,670 mur­ders. http://​jablogz​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​1​/​2​0​1​7​-​a​m​o​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​b​l​o​o​d​i​e​s​t​-​y​e​a​r​s​-​o​n​-​r​e​c​o​r​d​-​i​n​-​j​a​m​a​i​ca/

National Security Minister Robert Montague has reject­ed the report sub­mit­ted to him by Police Commissioner George Quallo.
Montaque had demand­ed a full report from the police on the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the traf­fic pile­up on new years day, on the sole road which leads into the Norman Manley International airport.

According to pub­lished reports, the traf­fic pile­up came as a result of rev­el­ers block­ing the road­ways pre­vent­ing the free flow of traffic.
Many trav­el­ers wish­ing to leave the coun­try were report­ed to have missed their flights.
Montague cor­rect­ly demand­ed a full report from Quallo as to the cir­cum­stances which led to what clear­ly was a dan­ger­ous and cost­ly foul-up.
For his part Commissioner, Quallo has said that the inci­dent was an embar­rass­ment to his Agency.

In a release, yes­ter­day Minister Montague said the report did not meet the stan­dards which the Jamaican pub­lic has come to expect from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

He said the report is inad­e­quate, as it has not addressed the ques­tions he raised. According to the release, the report did not out­line the con­di­tions of approval and did not clear­ly speak to a polic­ing plan that was put in place for the event. Montague said as the min­is­ter, he can­not accept the report as it is not reflec­tive of the hard work of the men and women who pro­tect Jamaica daily.

He said it is on their behalf that he had no choice but to reject it.
Additionally, the min­is­ter said based on reports from the pub­lic, the police per­son­nel on the ground dis­played the utmost pro­fes­sion­al­ism and cour­tesy, in the face of the hos­tile behav­ior from some peo­ple who attend­ed the party.
Montague remind­ed the Commissioner that he has total com­mand and super­in­ten­dence of the force and as such some­one must be held accountable.

National Security Minister Robert Montague is well with­in his rights to reject the report from the Police Commissioner based on the bul­let points he out­lined for the rejection.
The JCF has been under attack for decades, some­thing which the present com­mis­sion­er bears no respon­si­bil­i­ty for, the Island is sim­ply a crim­i­nal sup­port­ing enclave.

Nevertheless, the JCF can­not be absolved of respon­si­bil­i­ty for some of the prob­lems it faces. The chal­lenges are many and the options are few, notwith­stand­ing the police depart­ment had it with­in itself to do a much bet­ter job for the country.
Lack of resources, polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, sub­ver­sive attacks from crim­i­nal rights groups and a lack of prop­er remu­ner­a­tions are just a few of the chal­lenges which have plagued the agency.

Over the decades, how­ev­er, as the com­plaints rose to crescen­do lev­els, the police high com­mand has been con­tent to sit on the side­lines and allow the rank-and-file members,[the offi­cers with the least pow­er] to bear the full brunt of the crit­i­cisms and per­se­cu­tion from the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing public.
Clearly, the lat­est report of the com­mis­sion­er up the lad­der has been noth­ing more than an abbre­vi­at­ed doc­u­ment which was hasti­ly thrown togeth­er to deflect blame from the incom­pe­tence of the high command.

No Inspector, Sergeant or cor­po­ral much less a con­sta­ble has the author­i­ty to green-light sport­ing events like the one which cre­at­ed the log-jam on the Palisadoes road.
Minister Montague is exact­ly cor­rect in the stance he has tak­en in not allow­ing Commissioner Quallo to deflect blame from the senior aides under his command.

For years this writer has com­plained about the lev­el of incom­pe­tence with­in the high com­mand. Simple fix­es to prob­lems elude the senior cadre of the depart­ment and the con­se­quences are chan­neled to the men and women who have zero con­trol over deci­sion making.
Members of the Police High com­mand have no sense of shame in hog­ging the cam­eras when the hard-work­ing men and women of the depart­ment reap success.
They should not be allowed to hide away and chan­nel blame onto the pow­er­less offi­cers who do their best under try­ing circumstances.

It is a brand new year we should be focused on new ideas and new ini­tia­tives to keep our coun­try safe.
Unfortunately, our lead­ers have not moved to take con­trol of the crises fac­ing our coun­try so we are forced to be obsess­ing about issues which should have been addressed years ago.

Fortunately, the threats Jamaica faces are not from hos­tile state actors but from crim­i­nals with­in and with­out who would turn the Island into a Serengeti of blood­shed and lawlessness.
Our prob­lems are not insur­mount­able, nev­er­the­less, if the nation’s lead­ers con­tin­ue to pos­ture for cheap polit­i­cal lever­age it won’t be long before they become so.

Yesterday I spoke to how Jamaica got to the state of law­less­ness it’s present­ly mired in. I also point­ed to a few Nations which have had seri­ous prob­lems with law­less­ness and out­lined specif­i­cal­ly how the nation of Colombia has weath­ered the storm under the strong decid­ed lead­er­ship of pres­i­dent Álvaro Uribe Vélez.

My friend tells me that if Jamaica wants to fix its crime prob­lem it has to adopt New York City’s model.
Unfortunately for Jamaica the mod­el used by New York City which began under the lead­er­ship of David Dinkins the city’s first African-American Mayor begun with com­mu­ni­ty policing.

The prob­lem con­tin­ued under a more aggres­sive Rudolph Guliani but was infused with a far more decid­ed and no-non­sense approach as it relat­ed to enforce­ment prac­tices and procedures.
The so-called bro­ken win­dows approach which includ­ed pros­e­cut­ing offend­ers for all infrac­tions as well as a stop and frisk com­po­nent which many criticized.
I sup­port­ed the stop and frisk com­po­nent, I fun­da­men­tal­ly believed that a per­son who would take an ille­gal weapon into the streets who believes he will be stopped and arrest­ed for that weapon he would think twice about doing it.

As was the case in most sit­u­a­tions in America, it was the dis­parate appli­ca­tion of the stop and frisk com­po­nent which jus­ti­fied the courts step­ping in and end­ing it.
Jamaica is long past the place where sim­ply adopt­ing com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing will change the par­a­digm. Community polic­ing is invalu­able after the brush has been cleared. There is no sce­nario in which com­mu­ni­ty offi­cers can be inject­ed into com­mu­ni­ties war­ring with AK47 and oth­er auto­mat­ic weapons.
Which brings me to the issue of wars.

WARRING ACTORS ARE NOT MERE CRIMINALS THEY ARE A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY.

As long as the nation naive­ly con­tin­ue to pre­tend that the heav­i­ly armed war­ring fac­tions which oper­ate in parts of the Wareika foothills, Tivoli and Arnett Gardens, Riverton and all places in between, all the way to the west­ern parish­es, there will be no end to the bloodletting.
This is not mere­ly crim­i­nal con­duct, it was­n’t just crim­i­nal con­duct when the mur­der­ous over­lord Christopher Coke decid­ed that he would not sub­mit to an arrest warrant.
In the same way that Pablo Escobar the leader of the Medellin car­tel in Colombia and oth­er lead­ers of the Cali and oth­er car­tels act­ed when the Government sought to arrest them. They fought the state.

Today Mexico and Guatemala con­tin­ue to strug­gle to deal with nar­co-ter­ror­ists with­in their coun­tries pri­mar­i­ly because of the cor­rupt nature of many with­in the body politic.
Nevertheless, Mexico took the nec­es­sary steps to arrest El Chapo Guzman and ship him off to the United States where he is present­ly fac­ing real jus­tice for his crimes.
As it was in Colombia and it is in Mexico today so is it in Jamaica.
This is exact­ly what is hap­pen­ing in Mexico today, it was the norm in Colombia before Uribe’s Presidency in 2002.

Jamaicans on the streets have acknowl­edged that the exis­ten­tial threat the nation faces from these vio­lent actors is indeed a state of war.
People are ter­ri­fied and trau­ma­tized in their homes at the inces­sant sound of gun­fire, unsure whether this time it will be their doors kicked in and lights out for their entire family.
Children are unable to go to school and entire com­mu­ni­ties are placed under siege as maraud­ing gangs of urban ter­ror­ist parade their heavy auto­mat­ic weapons total­ly uncon­cerned about consequences.

The aver­age Jamaican have long under­stood that the coun­try was in a state of unde­clared civ­il-war, it is the two polit­i­cal par­ties which have con­sis­tent­ly refused to acknowl­edge it for what it is.
This year alone there are esti­mates which put the Island’s homi­cide num­bers above 1600 for the first time since 2005.

It is not only the polit­i­cal par­ties which are cul­pa­ble in this fias­co, there are oth­er actors which are equal­ly as cul­pa­ble in the con­tin­u­ance of this charade.
The fact that there is a so-called “Peace Management Unit”, is in and of itself an acknowl­edg­ment that the coun­try is in a state of war.
Ironically the Peace Management Unit and its lead­ers, begin­ning with Horace, Levy does not want peace. Peace would mean irrel­e­vance for Levy and his cabal of deplorables.

Instead of help­ing the Police to iden­ti­fy the ter­ror­ists in the com­mu­ni­ties Levy and oth­ers foment and nur­ture dis­sent and oppo­si­tion against the police all the while pre­tend­ing to want peace in the communities.
What we end up with are a bunch of peo­ple who attach them­selves to the body politic like the thou­sands of par­a­sitic plantlife which attach them­selves to the tall trees in the Amazon Jungle.

They fan the flames of anar­chy, all the time pre­tend­ing to care about Human Rights. They play a dan­ger­ous game of Russian roulette with the nation’s secu­ri­ty with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the aver­age Jamaican.
Some of these agen­cies are fund­ed by for­eign dark money.

The Jamaican Government has a respon­si­bil­i­ty as it’s pri­ma­ry func­tion to drown out the noise and deploy the mil­i­tary to go into the enclaves in which these ter­ror­ists are mur­der­ing and muti­lat­ing and erad­i­cate them once and for all as President Uribe did in Colombia.
There should be no fear of crit­i­cisms, crit­ics ben­e­fit from the mur­der may­hem which exists, with­out it they have no relevance.

That is the rea­son Uribe did not bow to them, it is why Duterte in the Philippines are not bow­ing to critics.
Various admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties have giv­en far too much def­er­ence to so-called human rights lob­by oper­at­ing in our country.
The con­se­quences are there for all to see. The idea that a Government in a coun­try like Jamaica would be def­er­en­tial and behold­en to armed thugs is shock­ing and embar­rass­ing to say the least.

There should be one state­ment com­ing from the Government to the heav­i­ly armed gangs oper­at­ing on the Island.
Turn in the weapons, all of them in 7 days, fail­ing which we will pluck them from your cold dead fingers.
The time has come for the Jamaican Government and those on the oppo­si­tion bench­es to rec­og­nize that if they do not act to remove the weapons from the hands of the mur­der­ous killers there will be hell to pay.
Events of 2010 will have been a cake­walk rel­a­tive­ly speaking.

Yes, if that means sus­pend­ing habeas cor­pus then so be it. These are des­per­ate times which requires deci­sive measures.
Those who sit on the side­lines and make grand state­ments are going to do what they do best “chat”, the nation’s nation­al secu­ri­ty can­not be exe­cut­ed with def­er­ence to them.
In many coun­tries, they can crit­i­cize and make their state­ments only from afar. It’s time that Jamaica fol­low suit.

Police offi­cers killed 1,129 peo­ple in 2017.

More peo­ple died from police vio­lence in 2017 than the total num­ber of U.S. sol­diers killed in action around the globe (21). More peo­ple died at the hands of police in 2017 than the num­ber of black peo­ple who were lynched in the worst year of Jim Crow (161 in 1892). Cops killed more Americans in 2017 than ter­ror­ists did (four). They killed more cit­i­zens than air­planes (13 deaths world­wide), mass shoot­ers (428 deaths) and Chicago’s “top gang thugs” (675 Chicago homi­cides).

Yet only 12 offi­cers were charged with a crime relat­ed to a shoot­ing death.

An exten­sive new study from Mapping Police Violence details the data for police vio­lence. The col­lec­tive tracks police shoot­ing num­bers and sta­tis­tics, maps the inci­dents and com­piles the data in real time. The site uses infor­ma­tion from a num­ber of sources, includ­ing Killed by Police, Fatal Encounters and the U.S. Police Shootings Database, to break down shoot­ings by race, loca­tion, weapons used, and whether or not the vic­tim was armed. It is a valu­able tool used by aca­d­e­mics, researchers and cer­tain writ­ers at The Root.

Aside from the fact that only 1 per­cent of the offi­cers who killed some­one were charged with a crime in 2017, some of the report’s most inter­est­ing facts include the following:

• Of the 534 killer cops Mapping Police Violence was able to iden­ti­fy, 43 had shot or killed some­one before. Twelve had pre­vi­ous­ly shot or killed mul­ti­ple people.
• Most of the peo­ple killed (718) were sus­pects in non­vi­o­lent offens­es, were stopped for traf­fic vio­la­tions or had com­mit­ted no crime at all.
• 13 per­cent of peo­ple killed by cops were unarmed.
• Most of the unarmed vic­tims were peo­ple of col­or. Of the 147 unarmed peo­ple killed by police, 48 were black and 34 were Hispanic.
• Black peo­ple account­ed for 27 per­cent of the peo­ple killed by law enforce­ment offi­cers. Of the unarmed vic­tims of police vio­lence, blacks made up 37 per­cent, almost three times their per­cent­age of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion (13 percent).
• Of the peo­ple who were unarmed and not attack­ing, but were still killed by cops, 35 per­cent were black.
• 95 peo­ple were killed when police shot at a mov­ing vehi­cle, a prac­tice that many say should be banned.
• 170 of the peo­ple killed were armed with a knife. in 117 of those inci­dents, police shot the per­son before try­ing any oth­er method to dis­arm the person.
• 20 per­cent of the peo­ple who had a gun when they were killed were not threat­en­ing anyone.
• Law enforce­ment train­ing spends sev­en times more hours train­ing offi­cers on the use of firearms than on how to de-esca­late situations.

Again, only 12 offi­cers were charged with a crime after killing 1,129 cit­i­zens they were sworn to pro­tect and serve. Here’s to anoth­er ban­ner year of police get­ting away with murder.
Can’t you feel America get­ting great again? Read more @ https://​www​.the​root​.com/​h​e​r​e​s​-​h​o​w​-​m​a​n​y​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​i​n​-​2​017 – 1821706614

Recent media report­ing that the police high com­mand is demand­ing the names of mem­bers who report­ed sick to press home their demands for bet­ter pay is shock­ing and should be seen as anoth­er attack on the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and free­doms of mem­bers of the rank-and-file.

Rest assured that this action if true as report­ed, is not mere­ly a func­tion of the incom­pe­tent high com­mand, it is com­ing direct­ly from Jamaica house.
What rea­son would the high com­mand of the force have for min­ing the iden­ti­ty of mem­bers who were sick unless their inten­tions are express­ly retaliatory?

The Police high com­mand have been a tool of politi­cians for decades. This is true across admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal parties.
This inep­ti­tude and bla­tant yard-boy pro­cliv­i­ty on the part of the men in the high­est ech­e­lons of the force have cre­at­ed a sieve-like effect which sees almost 600 young men and women leav­ing the force each year.

The lat­est bit of under­hand­ed chi­canery by the high com­mand is just the lat­est in a series of actions tak­en against aver­age hard work­ing offi­cers in which the high com­mand has dirty hands.
The recent­ly leg­is­lat­ed ZOSO act had as a crit­i­cal part of its infra­struc­ture a com­po­nent which makes it a crime for offi­cers to leave the police depart­ment with­out first sub­mit­ting a res­ig­na­tion let­ter six months in advance.

It was under the Bruce Golding Administration that the nation was giv­en INDECOM, a bla­tant­ly divi­sive and oner­ous law to law enforce­ment, which eas­i­ly could have been draft­ed bet­ter to deal appro­pri­ate­ly with errant cops with­out the ran­cor and chill­ing effects it has had on law enforcement.

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that the sit­ting Prime Minister Andrew Holness, has him­self now been forced to come around to the oner­ous nature of the INDECOM law. A full 7 years after we have been ham­mer­ing home almost dai­ly, the dan­ger­ous nature of the law.

From social media accounts, there is a gen­er­al feel­ing that mem­bers of the JCF are tack­ing toward the PNP and have been for some time now.
I respect­ful­ly ask the JLP Government and those who sup­port the admin­is­tra­tion slav­ish­ly, “are you not aware that peo­ple are able to think for them­selves”?

The police have been an impor­tant vot­ing bloc in the nation for decades. In fact, the say­ing was ” As goes the police so does the nation.”
There was nev­er any­thing wrong with the police vot­ing their con­science as long as they act impar­tial­ly in the dai­ly func­tions of their duties.

The vote swings of the police en-masse have always been reflec­tive of the gen­er­al mood of the nation at every giv­en time in the nation’s young history.
It’s down­right arro­gant of any­one to believe that the actions of the Golding admin­is­tra­tion as it relates to the INDECOM act would not have lin­ger­ing bad blood.

You can­not keep pok­ing the lion and not expect a response.
The Police high com­mand in place today is a prod­uct of a high com­mand which was before it.
What that means is that the con­niv­ing, puni­tive, incom­pe­tence and the cur­ry­ing of favor with politi­cians are learned behavior.
That is part of the real rea­son young men and women who join are leav­ing in droves.

They can try to crim­i­nal­ize attri­tion all they want, peo­ple are going to drop every­thing and walk away as I did many years ago.
The very same tired and despi­ca­ble puni­tive com­po­nents the police high com­mand employed two and three decades ago are still the very same pathet­ic tools it has in its deplet­ed tool­box today.
Demanding that offi­cers who have just returned from duty hand over their ser­vice weapons in a coun­try which just record­ed over 1600 homi­cides in the year just con­clud­ed, is a telling tes­ti­mo­ny that the police high com­mand has crim­i­nal intent.

If the report­ing is true that they are in fact demand­ing that offi­cers hand over their ser­vice weapons leav­ing them­selves defense­less it goes to the heart of their desire to see young offi­cers killed because they took a stand for bet­ter pay.

The police high com­mand has always pros­ti­tut­ed itself to politi­cians, the nation is gripped by a seem­ing end­less mur­der rate which the high com­mand has no solu­tions to.
Clearly, in the face of its inabil­i­ty to do any­thing sub­stan­tive about crime the high com­mand is now ded­i­cat­ed to bootlick­ing only, some­thing it has done quite well for decades.
The qual­i­ty of a police depart­ment is a direct result of its lead­er­ship, it is not the bad offi­cers who are leav­ing monthly.

At the top of the list of things being said in this lat­est round of demands by rank and file police offi­cers for bet­ter wages is the argu­ments that wages should be tied to performance.

As a gen­er­al rule, we Jamaicans are well known for offer­ing up opin­ions on every­thing even when we haven’t both­ered to take a minute to avail our­selves of the facts.
One per­son argued quote: Six/​seven of every ten mur­ders in Jamaica go unsolved! Yet, police, clas­si­fied as an Essential Service, had embraced indus­tri­al action for bet­ter wages. Any pay increase should be tied to tan­gi­ble per­for­mance as a crime mit­i­ga­tion strategy.…basic pay for all police but those in divi­sions where mea­sur­able results are record­ed, a bet­ter com­pen­sa­tion pack­age should be offered after the fact, say at the end of the year.”

Like every oth­er area of an econ­o­my, includ­ing the Jamaican econ­o­my, polic­ing oper­ates on a top-down system.
Meaning that for all intents and pur­pos­es the aver­age work­er, save and apart from those in the board­rooms are mere pawns on the chess­board to be moved around at the whim and behest of those in control.

To sup­pose that as a con­se­quence of high crime num­bers mem­bers of the police rank and file ought not to receive bet­ter remu­ner­a­tions ignores the fun­da­men­tals of that basic fact.

The vast dis­par­i­ty between the salaries of the gazetted Ranks (Assistant Superintendent to the Commissioner of police) is as a result of their des­ig­na­tion in the system.
Contrary to what many believe, includ­ing many rank-and-file police offi­cers, police offi­cers from the rank of con­sta­ble to Inspector are not civ­il servants.

Civil ser­vice work­ers salaries are cal­cu­lat­ed and approached quite differently.
For exam­ple, the salaries of gazetted mem­bers of the police depart­ment will nec­es­sar­i­ly be in the same group­ing as Doctors, Parliamentary sec­re­taries, and mem­bers of the judi­cia­ry and oth­er such groups of workers.

Police High Command Either Complicit Or More Stupid Than I Thought..

There is a rea­son when a team per­forms poor­ly that upper man­age­ment or own­er­ship does not fire the team. After all the team is the com­mod­i­ty no mat­ter how flawed it is you do not dis­band the team.
So the coach­ing staff has to go.
A new coach­ing staff brings new ideas and method­olo­gies and apply them to the team, with new ideas and meth­ods it may be nec­es­sary to trade part of the team or even retire others.

We arrive at bet­ter out­comes when we bring new ideas to the table and apply best prac­tices which are eas­i­ly measurable.
The JCF hier­ar­chy has done a tremen­dous dis­ser­vice to both the JCF, the junior mem­bers and to the nation on a whole as a result of its cor­rupt prac­tices and it’s less than per­fect oper­a­tional procedures.

Through it’s stead­fast attach­ment to both polit­i­cal par­ties, cor­rupt prac­tices and it’s incom­pre­hen­si­ble incom­pe­tence and inabil­i­ty to oper­ate as a mod­ern police depart­ment, the police high com­mand has man­aged to destroy the rep­u­ta­tion of the agency and the morale of its junior members.
As a result of that 50 junior offi­cers leave the force each month.
That is almost 2 offi­cers per day.

A top to bot­tom review is need­ed to deter­mine a new force structure.
That review should begin with an under­stand­ing of the dif­fer­ing roles we ask our police to play in today’s soci­ety and going into the future.
It is armed with that under­stand­ing that pol­i­cy­mak­ers will come to a deci­sion on whether or not the cur­rent lev­el of gazetted offi­cers in the depart­ment is actu­al­ly needed.
The lev­el of inef­fec­tive­ness must cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly be laid at the feet of those who lead the department.

In the same way, many in the low­er ranks through their actions neces­si­tat­ed INDECOM and oth­er detrac­tors, the gazetted ranks have brought the oper­a­tional effec­tive­ness of the force into seri­ous question.
Officers on the ground car­ry out their func­tions as com­mand­ed. Whatever the short­com­ing the senior lev­els must be held account­able for break­downs and lack of results as it relates to crime statistics.

None of it in any way negates the very valid and urgent need for offi­cers to be paid a liv­able wage.

Officers place their lives on the line every day some­thing no oth­er cat­e­go­ry of work­ers is asked to do.

As a con­se­quence, we must hold them account­able for their actions when they mess up but we owe them a greater debt of grat­i­tude sole­ly on the basis of what we have asked them to do for us, in many of those cas­es involv­ing events which we are unable or will­ing to do for ourselves.

That lev­el of grat­i­tude must begin with a fair lev­el of respect for our offi­cers and what they do.
Let us set aside the con­temp­tu­ous and dis­re­spect­ful dia­tribes uttered from behind the rel­a­tive safe­ty of com­put­er screens and begin to sup­port our law enforce­ment officers.

I have long called for a restruc­tur­ing of the police force begin­ning with the man­age­ment structure.
Having served in the depart­ment for rough­ly a decade I have seen first hand the incom­pe­tence and the lack of direc­tion or fol­low through that exist in the lead­er­ship of the JCF.

That is why even after sit­ting and pass­ing the accel­er­at­ed exams in 91 I too decid­ed that I would not be hav­ing a career in the JCF.

I real­ized then, what many young offi­cers do today, That’s why I head­ed for the exit, it is why they run for the exits now.
Policing in Jamaica is a thank­less job which despite one’s best efforts, is gau­ran­teed to result in only mar­gin­al pos­i­tive results.
Perhaps, most impor­tant­ly it is [servitude]to an ungrate­ful nation.

The JCF has long been a step­ping stone for many poor young peo­ple and it’s not about to change any­time soon.

The effec­tive­ness of the police can­not be mea­sured sole­ly on the basis of what appears on the stat sheets how­ev­er impor­tant it is to have declin­ing crime numbers.
Crime is not the pre­rog­a­tive of the police alone the soon­er Jamaicans awake to those real­i­ties the bet­ter off they will be in this fight against criminals.

Much has been said about the Industrial action being under­tak­en by the Police. Depending on who you speak to, the response is going to be bel­li­cose one way or the other.
Let us stop for a while and ask our­selves what are the police offi­cers sup­posed to do since they are not allowed to strike?
For the sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrites in the Media who write columns and those who opine on edi­to­r­i­al pages, I ask you when have you ever sup­port­ed the work of the police except to criticize?
Stick to what you do best, which is to talk and keep your snouts out of oth­er peo­ple’s lives.
If the cops ask for a raise for risk­ing their lives you hyp­ocrites chat, if they betray their oaths and take bribes you hyp­ocrites chat.

To the rank and file offi­cers who con­tin­ue to work to cur­ry favor with the gazetted ranks you are noth­ing more than scabs.
When you cross pick­et lines which are designed for your ben­e­fit you are the most despi­ca­ble of despicable.
And as for those senior ranks who tell the men and women under their com­mand that mon­ey is not all, SSP Carl Ferguson my for­mer squad­mate )please remem­ber that your salary is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent than the peo­ple you lec­ture about the right­eous­ness of service.

There are a pletho­ra of dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives which baf­fles me about the police’s action.
They should­n’t take action.
They refused more mon­ey under the pre­vi­ous administration.
They are PNP.
Crime is high so they do not deserve any pay increase.
They were forced to accept a pay freeze under the pre­vi­ous government.

The com­ments are as ridicu­lous as they are asi­nine and insidious.
The police have every right to take what­ev­er action they deem nec­es­sary in their best interest.
There is the[mout a massi] who have an opin­ion on every­thing police, they are nev­er with­out an opin­ion which they prof­fer as truth when it’s all con­vo­lut­ed opin­ions, sim­ply because they have the medi­ums through which to chat.
There are those in the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty who have done immense dam­age through their advo­ca­cy which has geld­ed police, caused many to drop their hands and oth­ers to look the oth­er way.
Members of the JCF should be wary of them and their state­ments which are designed clear­ly to cur­ry favor with the police.

I have nev­er heard any police offi­cer get­ting involved in salary nego­ti­a­tions of any oth­er group or entity.
In the event that work­ers have struck for what­ev­er rea­son and they decide to demon­strate their dis­plea­sure, cops are there march­ing side by side to ensure that their rights are guaranteed.

What I’m say­ing is give the offi­cers a chance to make their demands and please stop with the damn PNP/​JLP shit.

The long­time head of the Police Federation Seargent Raymond Wilson has been pro­mot­ed to Assistant Superintendent of Police.
The pro­mo­tion comes at a time when the out­spo­ken Wilson was involved in wage nego­ti­a­tions with the Government.

Wilson’s pro­mo­tion has set tongues wag­ging that the pro­mo­tion was timed to removed him from the nego­ti­a­tions at a time when the union and the gov­ern­ment are dead­locked in wage nego­ti­a­tions for the rank and file of the force.

Some have even asked whether he was pro­mot­ed to Assistant Superintendent instead of Inspector specif­i­cal­ly to silence his voice.
Police insid­ers argued how­ev­er that “He was inter­viewed from last year, and because he did so well in the inter­view, he was promised a posi­tion above the rank of inspector.”

Lost in the tongue wag­ging is one lit­tle fact, that is that Raymond Wilson has recent­ly earned him­self a law degree.
Why would the JCF not reward such accom­plish­ment after he has served in the depart­ment so faith­ful­ly and long?

It is unfor­tu­nate that instead of talk­ing about the tremen­dous accom­plish­ments of this police offi­cer who came from hum­ble begin­nings the con­ver­sa­tion is cen­tered on whether he was pro­mot­ed for the right reason.

At a time when the legal pro­fes­sion in Jamaica just admit­ted a twice-con­vict­ed felon to prac­tice at the bar, this writer takes this oppor­tu­ni­ty to say kudos to Assistant Superintendent of Raymond Wilson.
Job well done.

In June of 2016 Minister of National Security Robert Montague made a shock­ing announce­ment which ought to have had the nation aghast but the seri­ous­ness of his announce­ment had no mea­sur­able effect it seemed.

Minister Montague was argu­ing for a review of the man­ner in which bail is grant­ed in mur­der cases.
In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure I was not a fan of the Montague appoint­ment to fill the National Security Portfolio and as such, I was less than gra­cious in my cri­tique of his appointment.

However, it appears that despite his lack of bona fides on crime and secu­ri­ty Minister Montague is will­ing to learn and has demon­strat­ed a com­mend­able pre­dis­po­si­tion to lis­ten and apply what he has learned to his portfolio.
This writer is pleased that Minister Montague is show­ing that he is will­ing to appre­ci­ate ideas and ingra­ti­ate them into his plan of action for the country.

Jamaican Judge Releases Cop Killers, Without Explanation.

At the time Montague made the state­ments he revealed that 134 cas­es of mur­der before the courts involved defen­dants who were grant­ed bail in pre­vi­ous mur­der matters.
Here at chatt-a-box.com

I con­tin­ue to sound the alarm at what I see as a major loop­hole in the jus­tice sys­tem which is not only frus­trat­ing the efforts of law enforce­ment but is putting the secu­ri­ty of the nation in grave danger.
Montague made a point which I have lament­ed for years, mur­der­ers should not be giv­en bail espe­cial­ly in a hotbed of mur­der and may­hem like Jamaica.
The idea of grant­i­ng bail to mur­der accused is even more shock­ing when one con­sid­ers the num­ber of peo­ple being killed by mur­der accused who are out on bail after being charged with murder.

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

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that even as the police are able to say defin­i­tive­ly that for the pre­scribed peri­od 134 peo­ple were killed by peo­ple grant­ed bail after being charged with … you guessed it mur­der, we still do not know how many are tru­ly killed because the police real­ly do not know.

Montage talked about the part which angers me most of all “There is an instance where one man was arrest­ed for mur­der, offered bail, came out, mur­dered again, this time two times, appre­hend­ed, offered bail, came out, mur­dered again, appre­hend­ed, offered bail, took the bail, came out, mur­dered again, was appre­hend­ed, offered bail”.

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

How in God’s good heav­en is this even possible?
Actually, the more impor­tant ques­tion should be how in God’s good heav­en has the leg­is­la­ture allowed this to continue?
The coun­try is inun­dat­ed with mur­der, rapes, shoot­ings, vio­lent rob­beries and oth­er felonies. While the Nation looks to the police for solu­tions it bears men­tion­ing that the Police can only do so much.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​f​-​y​o​u​-​a​r​e​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​s​e​t​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​-​a​s​i​d​e​-​a​n​d​-​t​h​i​n​k​-​t​h​e​s​e​-​t​h​i​n​g​s​-​t​h​r​o​u​gh/

♦ Dont look to the Police to fix the mur­der mad­ness because as soon as the police arrest the mur­der­ers the Islands shit for brain crim­i­nal lov­ing judges release them on bail time and time and time and time and time and time and time again .…..
♦ Don’t blame the Police when INDECOM, the Justice Ministry, the Public Defender’s office, Elements of the Media want to cru­ci­fy them when they deal with the mur­der­ers as they are forced to.
♦ Don’t blame the police when the lib­er­al elit­ists’ judges who came out of the left-lean­ing UWI give them slaps on the wrist despite the heinous nature of the crimes they commit.
♦Don’t for once believe that the best efforts of the police will bear many fruits when they are poor­ly trained, make a pit­tance for the risks they take and hard­ly have the tools required to do the job effectively.
♦ Don’t blame the police when the Legislature refus­es to change the old archa­ic laws and make them more reflec­tive of the needs of today.
♦ Don’t blame the Police when much of the pub­lic at large are crim­i­nals who throw mis­siles at police offi­cers who arrest gun­men in their communities.

It’s time we stop with the bull and see our prob­lems for what they are. We have a seri­ous prob­lem of immoral­i­ty and unless we fix the immoral­i­ty and the exces­sive greed for things we can­not afford the shed­ding of blood will con­tin­ue until we are all drowned by it.

Driving down the high­way one has cer­tain respon­si­bil­i­ties, you try as best you can to obey the speed lim­its, you are required to stay in lane.
If you decide to change lane, it is high­ly advis­able that you indi­cate your inten­tions using the indi­ca­tor on your vehi­cle, then you make sure you will not be cut­ting before anoth­er dri­ver in the lane you wish to enter before you do so.

You fol­low the instruc­tions and do not stop in the mid­dle of the high­way if at all pos­si­ble but con­verse­ly pull over on the shoul­der if you have to stop.
If all users of the roads obey the rules of the road the dri­ving expe­ri­ence can be a relax­ing enjoy­able experience.
Nore than any­thing else it can be a safe experience.

If we jux­ta­pose the for­gone with a sit­u­a­tion in which no one obeys the speed lim­its, they change lanes with­out indi­cat­ing, stop in the mid­dle of the high­way dri­ve across the dou­ble yel­low or white line to get to the head of the line, effec­tive­ly plac­ing every­one’s lives in dan­ger and dis­obeys all of the rules the result is chaos.
But it’s not just about chaos, it is about the con­se­quences of that chaos which is usu­al­ly the tragedy of the loss of limb and life.

We could rea­son­ably apply the lat­ter to the Jamaican streets.
Or we could apply it to Jamaican life.
In each sit­u­a­tion, the lat­ter sce­nario would be appro­pri­ate and of course the con­se­quences of indis­ci­pline is quite obvious.

There is a type of coarse­ness which has char­ac­ter­ized our Jamaicaness for a while now.
The per­son who yells the loud­est gets heard and is uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed as the per­son who is right.
The least informed view­point is accept­ed because it is gen­er­al­ly what the crowd wants to hear.
The man or woman walk­ing into a place of busi­ness by default places his/​her cell phone on speak­er and blares out a con­ver­sa­tion in the crass­est man­ner to the dis­com­fort and cha­grin of others.

A dis­sent­ing voice which does not agree with a pop­u­lar point of view is not respect­ed with a view to learn­ing from the dis­senter how he arrived at his point of view, he is labeled and dem­a­gogued, reviled and ostracized.
As a con­se­quence meet­ing places have become echo cham­bers for views that mir­ror each oth­er, the result is that no one learns any­thing new.

LIFE

How we behave indi­vid­u­al­ly is reflec­tive of the homes in which we live. Each home impacts the com­mu­ni­ty, each com­mu­ni­ty impacts the parish or state, each parish or state reflects what kind of coun­try we have.
Every per­son has a choice to make in what kind of coun­try we have. Whether that per­son is a Lawyer, Dance-hall-DJ, Police Officer, Politician, Doctor Farmer or Priest.
We can choose to observe the rules of the road or we can decide to break the rules and suf­fer the consequences.
In my adopt­ed home state of New York, the rules are clear “do not drink and dri­ve” if you have to drink have a des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver if you do not have a des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver do not drink it’s real­ly that simple.

Your friends do not get to sub­mit ref­er­ences of your sup­posed good con­duct to the court when you drink and dri­ve and end up killing someone.
You knew before you decid­ed to take that first sip of alco­hol that you would be break­ing the law.
Any per­son who in defense of his life is forced to kill anoth­er human being is ful­ly enti­tled to be exon­er­at­ed from the com­mon law con­se­quences of murder.

A per­son who will­ful­ly goes out and kills anoth­er human being has no expec­ta­tion of mer­cy in the courts and the courts should not be swayed by any peti­tion for mit­i­ga­tion in cas­es of that nature.
We can­not build a civ­i­lized soci­ety by allow­ing mem­bers of that soci­ety to kill each oth­er, then get away with a slap on the wrist.
The courts need to speak loud and clear in mat­ters of vio­lent mur­der. There are signs now that at least one judge is begin­ning to get that mes­sage to some extent.

I call on the leg­is­la­ture to cod­i­fy into law stronger and stiffer penal­ty for felony murder.
Since the Island declared a mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment homi­cides has hit the roof. Those who make the argu­ment that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment does not work have not sup­plied a shred of evi­dence to back up their claim.
For starters, not one per­son to whom cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has been admin­is­tered has come back to kill again.

That is a 100% suc­cess rate. We know what the homi­cide rate was when cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was in the toolbox.
We also know what it is now with­out it. The empir­i­cal data is clear as to the effec­tive­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a puni­tive com­po­nent in the fight against crime. The evi­dence sup­ports those who believe that dan­ger­ous killers should be put down.
Some say it is vengeance, not justice.
I say whats wrong with vengeance?

It should not be left up to judges to deter­mine how long a mur­der­er spend behind bars. It is the pre­rog­a­tive of the peo­ple [who are now demand­ing stiffer penal­ties for killers], not unelect­ed judges.

(Courtesy of our friends at the Gleaner )

Entertainer Ninja Man and his co-con­victs have been sen­tenced to life in prison for the 2009 mur­der of a Kingston man. The enter­tain­er must serve at least 25 years in prison before he is eli­gi­ble to be released on parole. His son Janeil and fel­low co-con­vict Dennis Clayton will each have to serve 15 years behind bars. The sen­tences were hand­ed down by Justice Martin Gayle in the Home Circuit Court a short time ago.

Justice Gayle sen­tenced Ninja Man, whose real name is Desmond Ballentyne, to 25 years at hard labor for the mur­der of Ricardo Johnson, pop­u­lar­ly known as ‘Ricky Trooper,’ and 20 years for shoot­ing with intent in rela­tion to anoth­er per­son. “Thumbs up, judge,” Ninja Man said after his sen­tence was announced. The oth­ers showed no emo­tion. The three were con­vict­ed last month of mur­der and shoot­ing with intent.

Prosecutors Kathy Pyke and Nicholas Edmund led evi­dence, dur­ing the five-week tri­al, that the killing stemmed from a domes­tic alter­ca­tion in the St Andrew com­mu­ni­ty of Lower Mall Road. According to pros­e­cu­tors, there was an alter­ca­tion on the day before Johnson was killed. Ninja Man, his son, and Clayton report­ed­ly returned the fol­low­ing day with guns and oth­er weapons. They chased Johnson and anoth­er wit­ness through a fence, and as Johnson tried to fend off the attack­ers, shots were fired, and he was hit in the side.

He lat­er died.

.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…..

Kudos to Judge Martin Gayle, who did not allow star­dom to influ­ence the deci­sion he made; at the end of the day, some­one lost his life, and some­one killed him.
In a coun­try in which mur­der is at an all-time high and climb­ing, I salute this judge for stay­ing focused and not allow­ing him­self to be influ­enced by that stardom.
This is not about whether one likes the con­vict­ed mur­der­er Desmond Ballentine O/​c Ninjaman; it comes down to the rule of law.
We need a soci­ety in which jus­tice is objec­tive, a soci­ety in which the scales of jus­tice are not swayed one way or the oth­er by who the accused is or who he knows but that he will be judged on the evi­dence against him.

For years, dance­hall has been an incu­ba­tor for vio­lence and vio­lent lyrics.
As a con­se­quence, many with­in the cul­ture have been named as sus­pects in all man­ner of crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, includ­ing mur­der. Whether it’s life imi­tat­ing art or art imi­tat­ing life, dance­hall has been an out­let for the youth much the same way it has been a neg­a­tive medi­um of indoc­tri­na­tion into doing wrong.
I urge oth­er judges to do their part in help­ing to stem this mur­der mad­ness, as Judge Martin Gayle has.

A cou­ple of things came up recent­ly which are worth documenting.
(1) Ninjaman was con­vict­ed of mur­der, not to be dis­re­spect­ful of any­one’s intel­lect but it’s worth men­tion­ing that get­ting con­vict­ed of mur­der means that you inten­tion­al­ly killed someone.
Period!
With that said, we’ll wait to see if star­dom will impact jus­tice in this case as we expect it to, so I’ll have much more to say about this after he is sentenced.

THE PROOF

(2) Yesterday I wrote about the harm “sen­tence reduc­tion” is doing and will be doing going for­ward. In that arti­cle, I made men­tion of Phillip Brown who mur­dered his preg­nant ex-girl­friend then wrapped her body in a tar­pau­lin and dumped the tarp in a gully.
Since then the courts have sen­tenced the accused Brown to 15 years under the sen­tence reduc­tion day fiasco.
He basi­cal­ly got a slap on the wrist for what is a dou­ble mur­der and the state got noth­ing for its largess.

Phillip Brown.….

Phillip Brown was charged with crack­ing his girl­friend’s skull with a ham­mer he was sen­tenced to 15 years impris­on­ment and will be eli­gi­ble for parole after serv­ing 10 years. Brown took advan­tage of sen­tence reduc­tion day by plead­ing guilty to killing his preg­nant girl­friend and was prompt­ly reward­ed with a slap on the wrist.

CHUCK ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN MAKING IT HARDER TO IDENTIFY CRIMINALS

I want to be on the record once again mak­ing the case that Delroy Chuck’s attempt at return­ing dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to the streets will have seri­ous and even more far-reach­ing con­se­quences for the Island going forward.
Giving mur­der­ers and oth­er vio­lent felons the abil­i­ty to sim­ply plead guilty and receive 50% off the sen­tence they would nor­mal­ly receive is a give­away to crim­i­nals with­out ask­ing them for any­thing in return.
The penal­ty for cap­i­tal mur­der is already way too lenient, tak­ing into account that the Island already imposed on itself a mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal punishment.
How much more are law abind­ing Jamaicans expect­ed to take at the hands of these incom­pe­tent mon­grels who pur­port to be look­ing out for their interest?

It is impor­tant to under­stand that if this sys­tem of “men” being pushed by Delroy Chuck con­tin­ues what we are going to end up with under the guise of free­ing up court dock­ets is a sys­tem in which dan­ger­ous mass killers are giv­en a pat on the wrist and released after just a few years in prison.
It is a trav­es­ty of jus­tice, a slap in the face of the vic­tims of crime in this coun­try which should not be allowed to continue.
Chuck not only wants to toss mur­der cas­es from court dock­ets if they have been on for 5 years, through his efforts dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers are hav­ing their sen­tences slashed in half all for a guilty plea with­out any ben­e­fit derived for the people.
addi­tion­al­ly, Delroy Chuck wants to remove con­vic­tions from the records of con­vict­ed felons giv­ing them fresh new starts which does not reflect their past crimes.

Delroy Chuck is sin­gle-hand­ed­ly engaged in dis­man­tling the very foun­da­tions which are need­ed to help law enforce­ment read­i­ly iden­ti­fy crim­i­nals and build­ing pro­files on them using their past crim­i­nal conduct.
Said Chuck “my min­istry have been work­ing to have the crim­i­nal records of per­sons expunged after a peri­od of time if they prove they have been suc­cess­ful­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed”.

What kind of sys­tem allows a sin­gle indi­vid­ual or Ministry to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly do so much harm to a society?
At a time when law enforce­ment needs all of the tools it can to iden­ti­fy crim­i­nals with a view to remov­ing them from soci­ety, ele­ments of the gov­ern­ment itself are active­ly engaged in a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign to thwart their efforts to fight crime.

THE CASE IN QUESTION

Chuck, speak­ing to Jamaican media was ques­tioned about a twice-con­vict­ed crim­i­nal who was recent­ly admit­ted to prac­tice law on the Island. Chuck denied any knowl­edge of the case.

The twice-con­vict­ed  Isat Buchanan is now able to prac­tice law, you guessed it.….….….….….….…..in Jamaica.
According to the Jamaica Gleaner Isat Buchanan said that 21 years ago he was prepar­ing to trav­el over­seas when a neigh­bor asked him to deliv­er some cash to some­one in the United States. He says he was stopped at the Norman Manley International Airport and the author­i­ties con­fis­cat­ed the pack­ages and lat­er said that it con­tained drugs. He was even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed and paid a fine of approx­i­mate­ly $1 mil­lion, but that was just the begin­ning of his legal dilemma.

In 1999, Buchanan said he was on a flight to Florida, in the US, when drugs were linked to him and he was giv­en a 10-year prison sen­tence. Five years ago, he enrolled at the Mona cam­pus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), and on Tuesday Buchanan was for­mal­ly called to the Bar.

How con­ve­nient that on both occa­sions on which he was caught break­ing the law and appro­pri­ate­ly con­vict­ed he claimed innocence?
Now that is real­ly not the issue here, any­one can claim what­ev­er they want as long as the soci­ety hold them account­able for their actions if they are guilty.
The real trav­es­ty of jus­tice is that the legal pro­fes­sion which is hav­ing seri­ous prob­lems with lawyers com­mit­ting crimes and being struck from the list of those allowed to prac­tice is now admit­ting felons who are twice con­vict­ed and served a 10-year prison sentence.

THE POLICE

Members of the Constabulary need all of the sup­port they can get, in Jamaica sup­port for the police is a rare com­mod­i­ty as such the police must be strate­gic in appre­ci­at­ing how and when to lever­age support.
As I have cred­i­bly laid out there are ele­ments with­in the Government which are active­ly engaged in dis­man­tling the struc­tures which aid and enhances law enforce­ment even as there are astro­nom­i­cal increas­es in vio­lent crimes.

The office of pub­lic defend­er, the jus­tice min­istry, and INDECOM are only a few of the agen­cies which are active­ly aid­ing the esca­la­tion of crime.
Not nec­es­sar­i­ly through active com­mis­sion but through active omis­sion and by default.
These are not hyper­bol­ic rants but ver­i­fi­able facts, yet there is hard­ly any­one pay­ing atten­tion to these facts even as they com­plain about the police seem­ing inabil­i­ty to fight crime.

As I have said before there are some sim­ple steps the police can do to begin the process of lever­ag­ing sup­port as I believe there is a well of good­will out there for the police both at home and in the diaspora.
What is need­ed to acti­vate that good­will, how­ev­er, is a demon­stra­tion by the con­stab­u­lary that it is capa­ble of doing the most basic things correctly.

The police will be unable to lever­age sup­port for it’s more crit­i­cal tasks if it demon­stra­bly can­not com­plete the most basic of tasks.
For the aver­age per­son want­i­ng to sup­port the police begin­ning by believ­ing that they are capa­ble of hav­ing an impact on crime, there are some basic things which they need to see.
How about the police do the most basic things right, like safe­ly and deci­sive­ly mak­ing an arrest with­out look­ing like key­stone cops?
How about hand­cuff­ing all crim­i­nals, male and female with their hands behind their backs where their abil­i­ty to do harm to any­one while hand­cuffed is next to zero?

These are not things which can be laid at the feet of gov­ern­ment or any­one else, this is about police offi­cers incom­pe­tence and being clue­less about com­plet­ing the most basic parts of what they are sup­posed to do.

There is a case to be made for plea-bar­gain, many coun­tries use the mech­a­nism as a means to have a more flu­id sys­tem of jus­tice delivery.
According to nolo​.com, for exam­ple, Commander O.M. Pyre is charged with 20 counts of bur­glary after a spree of bur­glar­ies in his neigh­bor­hood. Assistant District Attorney Art Mills offers to drop the charges to two counts of bur­glary if Pyre pleads guilty right away. Pyre takes the deal because his sen­tence will be short­er and he will be eli­gi­ble for parole ear­li­er than if he were con­vict­ed on every charge at trial.
Another fair­ly obvi­ous ben­e­fit that defen­dants can reap from plea bar­gain­ing is that they can save a bun­dle on attor­neys’ fees, assum­ing they are rep­re­sent­ed by pri­vate coun­sel. It almost always takes a lot more time and effort to try a case than to nego­ti­ate and han­dle a plea bar­gain, so defense coun­sel typ­i­cal­ly charges a much high­er fee if the case goes to trial.

One of the key com­po­nents of the plea bar­gain mech­a­nism in the jus­tice sys­tem is to move cas­es along quick­ly to avoid a bot­tle­neck like that which exist in the Jamaican system.
However, it is impor­tant to note that the suc­cess of the mech­a­nism as it relates to nations like say the United States of America at the Federal lev­el there is a death penal­ty statute on the books.
Additionally, Most of the American States have the death penal­ty as a part of their penal code. Others that don’t have the death penal­ty, for exam­ple: New York State, they have strict laws which make cer­tain crimes pun­ish­able by life Imprisonment with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

On that basis for exam­ple when New York state nego­ti­ates with a mur­der arrestee who would nor­mal­ly face the death penal­ty if he was in Texas, New York begins from the posi­tion of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
So the offend­er who is of val­ue to law enforce­ment is able to avoid the por­tion of the law which would lock him up with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole yet he is faced with 20 – 25 years before he is eli­gi­ble for parole.
It is impor­tant to note that even then the offend­er would not be guar­an­teed re-entry into soci­ety unless his tenure while incar­cer­at­ed is exemplary.

Jamaica with its astro­nom­i­cal mur­der num­bers and clogged up courts sys­tem could ben­e­fit by using this mech­a­nism if its approached right.
However, Jamaica has cho­sen to adopt a piece­meal approach to this tried and proven mech­a­nism, spear­head­ed by the Justice Minister Delroy Chuch a crim­i­nal lov­ing lib­er­al who wants mur­der cas­es tossed from court dock­ets if they have been there for more than five years.

The course adopt­ed in Jamaica is one which is known as Sentence Reduction Day. In a nut­shell, in order to move cas­es along the Government declares cer­tain days as is char­ac­ter­ized before.
Defendants who take advan­tage of the deal the Government offers are guar­an­teed a 50% reduc­tion in their sen­tence, the peo­ple get noth­ing for that act of good faith.
Nothing!
The Government does­n’t even use the prospect of reduc­ing the sen­tence of dan­ger­ous killers by 50% to demand infor­ma­tion on oth­er dan­ger­ous criminals.
Nothing!

And so an ani­mal like Phillip Brown, the man who beat his preg­nant ex-girl­friend to death inside her Crystal Towers apart­ment in St Andrew last December, will see his sen­tence reduced by 50% and the fam­i­ly of the vic­tim gets nothing.
The police get noth­ing, but because he decid­ed to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for his bar­bar­ic act and the Government is unable to deliv­er on its most basic func­tion of secur­ing the pop­u­la­tion and deliv­er­ing jus­tice in a time­ly man­ner, this scum will receive a slap on the wrist.

Now, one could argue that I don’t know what his sen­tence will be.
True!
Nevertheless, when mur­der accused are giv­en 7 and 10 years in the same courts for felony mur­der it does not nec­es­sar­i­ly engen­der much con­fi­dence that this mon­ster, for exam­ple, will be real­ly made to pay for what is essen­tial­ly a dou­ble homicide.
And that ladies and gen­tle­men is the real issue.

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