Is there a rea­son that the Government of Jamaica can­not step for­ward and say unequiv­o­cal­ly to crim­i­nals,” there will be no sanc­tu­ary or respite we will hunt you down and we will find you,” out­side the mealy-mouthed plat­i­tudes we hear of course?

Is there a rea­son the Opposition Party can­not do the same?
Is it pure­ly because the Government does not want to push too hard con­sid­er­ing that the coun­try is such a crim­i­nal lov­ing sanctuary?
Is it that the Opposition par­ty knows there is always trac­tion to be gained by par­rot­ing the worn out line about their con­cern for human rights?
Is this all there is to it or is there some­thing else at play here in Jamaica as it relates to the crime wave which makes it impos­si­ble for the polit­i­cal lead­ers to come out with one voice against the inces­sant bloodshed?

A friend recent­ly called my atten­tion to the state­ment of the Prime Minister of Trinidad who told his nation that his admin­is­tra­tion would not allow for law­less­ness in Trinidad and Tobago, instruct­ed the police and the secu­ri­ty forces to take “any and all resources’ to ensure law and order.
Responding to a spe­cif­ic inci­dent of law­less­ness in his coun­try and in a thin­ly veiled swipe at Jamaica, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley warned he would not allow Trinidad and Tobago to go down the road that exists in some Caribbean coun­tries where cer­tain peo­ple believe that they must be in con­trol of areas and even try to pre­vent mem­bers of the law enforce­ment agen­cies from enter­ing those areas.

The inci­dent in ques­tion saw res­i­dents block­ing the roads and the high­way lead­ing in and out of the cap­i­tal Port of Spain fol­low­ing the arrest of two “com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers” who were released hours lat­er. But the action by the res­i­dents led to bumper to bumper traf­fic for hours as motorists fled the cap­i­tal in droves to escape being trapped dur­ing the after­noon rush hour.
Some car own­ers report­ed that their vehi­cles were hit by stray bul­lets and police said they received reports that motorists were robbed as they remained stuck in traf­fic. Some report­ed that their win­dows were dam­aged while some deliv­ery trucks were report­ed­ly looted.

Dr. Rowley told reporters that his admin­is­tra­tion’s sup­port for law enforce­ment is “unwa­ver­ing” and that all nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies “have the full sup­port of the state to enforce the law in Trinidad and Tobago regard­less of who you are, where you are and what your sta­tus is in this country”.
“I am here­by let­ting the cit­i­zen­ry know that this is the time when all good men, all good women, should stand on the line of law enforce­ment and let all those who have crim­i­nal intent in this coun­try know that they stand alone where these mat­ters are concerned.

That state­ment from the Trinidadian Prime Minister is f****** lead­er­ship! That’s the kind of lead­er­ship which is miss­ing from our discourse.
It is cer­tain­ly not the first time our CARICOM neigh­bors have swiped at us on the issue of crime and lawlessness.
Unfortunately for the sec­tion of the Jamaican soci­ety which is the most vocal on top­i­cal issues when­ev­er oth­ers crit­i­cize us for our stu­pid­i­ty on crime rather than fix our prob­lem we dou­ble down on stupid.

In 2015 Acting Police Commissioner Errol Alexander of Saint Lucia told crim­i­nals who chose to attack Police offi­cers quote: “I am send­ing a mes­sage out there that if the crim­i­nals think that we are in Jamaica, we are not in Jamaica, we are in Saint Lucia, and we will take what­ev­er mea­sures nec­es­sary to pro­tect the safe­ty of our police officers.”

That’s f****** lead­er­ship, not equiv­o­cat­ing, not mealy-mouthed crim­i­nal cod­dling bullshit.
Every day the news­pa­pers and online pub­li­ca­tions are flood­ed with the sto­ries of the wan­ton bloodshed.
Will that kind of talk end criminality?
No, but it sends a strong mes­sage to the force of anar­chy and may­hem that we the peo­ple are com­ing after them.
That there are more of us than there are of them, well in Jamaica’s case that may be hard to reconcile.

I am sick to my stom­ach at the killing in the coun­try, the pre­ten­tious bull­shit nature of many in the soci­ety who talk about human rights as if dead peo­ple can enjoy rights, and a gov­ern­ment which pre­tends that it’s sup­posed good inten­tions will solve this problem.
Let’s be clear-eyed about this killing spree, it is not about to get bet­ter until the Government and oppo­si­tion par­ty gets their heads out of their col­lec­tive ass­es and rec­og­nize that this is not mere­ly crime anymore.
We have a seri­ous prob­lem here which will not be solved by try­ing to bring these blood-thirsty scums to jus­tice, they will have to be ter­mi­nat­ed and ter­mi­nat­ed with dispatch.
It is only then that they will get the mes­sage that the nation is not fuck­ing around any­more and think long and hard about their own mor­tal­i­ty when they decide to ter­mi­nate someone.

Much of what is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica has hap­pened before, in Colombia.
In the process of the shame­ful blood­let­ting in that nation, no one was blame­less, politi­cians, par­sons, police, judi­cia­ry too many had bloody hands, they dirt­ied them­selves as they dived into the caul­dron of blood grasp­ing for the dirty dol­lars, the by-prod­uct of anguish and pain.

In the end, it took cit­i­zens who decid­ed that they did not want their coun­try to be a nar­co-state (meth­ods aside) and they took action.
That time is here that time is now for decent law-abid­ing Jamaicans (what­ev­er is left if any) to band togeth­er and take action.
To hell with the mealy-mothed pre­ten­tious par­a­sites who bray about human rigts.
The most impor­tant right a per­son has is the right to life.

The year was 1980 I had just moved from North East St. Catherine as a fresh-faced young adult who had pre­vi­ous­ly grad­u­at­ed high school.
Edward Seaga had just trounced Michael Manley at the polls and the nation looked toward a new future free from trib­al pol­i­tics, a future of hope.

I moved to upper Marl road where I stayed with my sib­lings and step­dad on Hyde Park Road.
I would lat­er enter the Port Royal police train­ing facil­i­ty but was to lat­er leave to begin train­ing at the Jamaica Police Academy as the very first batch of recruits to begin train­ing and grad­u­ate from the new­ly mint­ed old school of agriculture.
I thought it was strange that the police nev­er seemed to have any­thing built for them, they always seemed to occu­py facil­i­ties oth­ers had vacat­ed, but I digress.

After grad­u­a­tion, I was sent to the old west street facil­i­ty, bet­ter known as the beat and foot patrol divi­sion, after a six-month stint I was one of a few offi­cers ever to be trans­ferred to the Mobile Reserve who were not trained specif­i­cal­ly for that divi­sion, anoth­er first.

I did­n’t like it there one bit but it even­tu­al­ly grew on me as I made the then high­ly respect­ed Ranger’s squad.
My love of busi­ness, my pro­fes­sion today, began around then when I pur­chased a small bar from a lady who oper­at­ed the bar right there where she lived on Plantain Avenue behind the old New Yorker Factory on Waltham Park and Bay Farm Roads.

It was there that I met Desmond Ballantine oth­er­wise called (Ninjaman). Ninjaman was a bud­ding DJ then, every Friday and Saturday night we had the sound sys­tem African Star, based on Marl Road play­ing at my lit­tle joint.
Ninjaman fol­lowed that Soundsystem then. He would walk up to the bar wear­ing a full-length dress coat in the siz­zling Jamaican heat, his trade­mark I guess?

In the time since those ear­ly days when I was a young cop and Ninja man was a bud­ding disc jock­ey try­ing to make a name for him­self much water has flown under the bridge.
Despite the many suc­cess­es in his rise to the top of the dance­hall pyra­mid, Ninjaman nev­er seemed to be able to extri­cate him­self from the beguil­ing ten­ta­cles of crime.

Ninjam man did not have to choose that path, sure he lived in the com­mu­ni­ty of Marl Road a some­times grit­ty com­mu­ni­ty as did I. He arrived from St Mary as I arrived from St Catherine around the same time.
The choic­es we make are our own not a func­tion of where we come from.

That is the rea­son I have no sym­pa­thy for Desmond Ballyntine (nin­ja man) on his con­vic­tion for murder.
A life is a very pre­cious commodity.
Each per­son gets a sin­gle life, in my esti­ma­tion, it is an egre­gious injus­tice, a ter­ri­ble trans­gres­sion to take some­one’s life unless it is in defense of your own.

It is now time that the Artical Don, stand like a man and face his pun­ish­ment. After all, he will be liv­ing his life regard­less of the penal­ty they mete out to him.
An option he and his son Jahneil took from Ricardo Johnson in 2009 when they uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly snuffed out his life.
Desmond Ballentine and his son will nev­er receive the jus­tice they deserve. Under the Jamaican shit-stem of jus­tice, they will not be exe­cut­ed as they should be for tak­ing the life of Ricardo Johnson.
They will receive a slap on the wrist upon which they may very well appeal, who knows? Some mon­ey may change hands and even­tu­al­ly they case may get tossed on some minor technicality.

Welcome to Jamaica.….……

Among the per­sons being tar­get­ed, declared Selvin Haye, deputy com­mis­sion­er in charge of crime, are the financiers behind the ille­gal impor­ta­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of firearms, as well as those involved in drug trafficking.

“We will be build­ing more and bet­ter enter­prise cas­es to tack­le this type of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. We will be using spe­cial­ized teams now armed with bet­ter inves­tiga­tive skills and ana­lyt­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties to track these crim­i­nals,” Haye said.

Well, I guess we have got­ten over the cha­rade that ZOSO was going to be a sig­nif­i­cant dri­ver of crime in a souther­ly direction.
We are now onto the next smoke screen.
Inherent in those com­ments com­ing from the police high com­mand is a con­fes­sion that there have been zero empha­sis to link those ship­ping the weapons and ammu­ni­tion from over­seas to the con­tra­bands they ship.
The police high com­mand has been com­plic­it in sim­ply bask­ing in the glo­ry of an occa­sion­al find here and there and tak­ing the cred­it for the work the cops on the streets do.
That has been the modus operan­di of the bloat­ed top heavy bureau­cra­cy that is known as the police high command.
A com­mand struc­ture which has nev­er done much in the way of gar­ner­ing real com­mand and is any­thing but structured.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​e​r​e​-​a​r​e​-​t​h​e​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​o​rs/

So now they admit that despite the crime wave over the last sev­er­al decades, hell, since I left the force after my brief stint in 91 that the depart­ment was­n’t doing what they ought to have been doing even now?
The Deputy Commissioner’s state­ment was a real expose’ into what is real­ly hap­pen­ing or more like, what is not hap­pen­ing in the force that is con­tribut­ing to the wave of homi­cides and oth­er seri­ous crimes sweep­ing the country.

Though it is 2017 the force seems to be more focused on record­ing reports onto com­put­ers (mov­ing away from those God-awful big old books ) than solv­ing seri­ous crimes.
I was nev­er one who had much con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of the police high com­mand to get any­thing done or to sus­tain a good thing estab­lished by the rank and file. As such I nev­er gave any cre­dence to the grand pro­nounce­ments which come out of that body. Neither do I both­er pay­ing atten­tion to those who are con­vinced that there is new inno­va­tion hap­pen­ing in the force which will amount to any­thing pos­i­tive today.

In his first report­ing to the Parliament hav­ing been man­dat­ed by law after the launch of the first Zone of spe­cial oper­a­tions in Mount Salem St James prime Minister Andrew Holness told the nation quote:

The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the ZOSO des­ig­na­tion was based on the rel­e­vant legal cri­te­ria, intel­li­gence, as well as strate­gic and oper­a­tional con­sid­er­a­tions of the joint com­mand of the secu­ri­ty forces. He said that, fol­low­ing 32 spe­cial oper­a­tions con­duct­ed by the joint force in the first 10 days, five ille­gal firearms were recov­ered, two want­ed men were tak­en into cus­tody and a num­ber of “lead sheets” used in lot­to scam­ming activ­i­ties recov­ered. “The next 10 days will see the con­tin­u­a­tion of inter­nal secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions to rid the zone of ille­gal weapons, ammu­ni­tion, and con­tra­band,” the prime min­is­ter told the House.

The leader of the Opposition Peter Phillips coun­tered that despite the oper­a­tion haul of “five guns and two arrests in 10 days”, 54 mur­ders have occurred at the same time across the island. He insist­ed that since the dec­la­ra­tion of the ZOSO, the dai­ly nation­al rate has increased. “That is to say that we had been going nation­al­ly at about 4.2 mur­ders per day…and in the peri­od since the zone, the nation­al aver­age has been about 5.5 mur­ders per day.”

I nev­er thought that there would be a crime ini­tia­tive that would have any mea­sur­able effect on crime in the present envi­ron­ment that exists in the coun­try today.
There has to be a seis­mic atti­tu­di­nal shift in the way peo­ple see crime affect­ing their lives and what they are will­ing to do to change that paradigm.
Jamaica has nev­er been a place which was sup­port­ive of crime ini­tia­tives, it has always been high­ly opin­ion­at­ed with­out the facts as well.
Those char­ac­ter­is­tics are a per­fect storm which caus­es the Island of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple to be one of the high­est pro­duc­ers of crime on the planet.

One of the prin­ci­ples I applied as an offi­cer was to allow sus­pects to talk, they will tell you pret­ty much what you need to know. Today as a per­son who oper­ates in the busi­ness space I still lis­ten intent­ly to all who I do busi­ness with-with a view to deter­min­ing their authenticity.
The state­ments of the police high com­mand have been extreme­ly revealing.

Which brings me to my final point.
The police high com­mand is even more stu­pid than I pre­vi­ous­ly thought they were.
If the Police high com­mand real­ly intend­ed to final­ly get up off their tired decrepit behinds and do some­thing about trac­ing the caches of weapons pour­ing into the Island why would they announce it?

One of the things those con­cerned about crime harp on is polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in law enforcement.
Politicians are cul­pa­ble as it relates to the crime wave sweep­ing the coun­try but as it relates to the police announc­ing its inten­tions to crim­i­nals politi­cians bear zero responsibility.
That col­lu­sion or utter stu­pid­i­ty is the police’s and theirs alone.

No one stands in the way of the police if they chose to go after prin­ci­pals in the weapons trade, not even the politicians.
If the police are inter­est­ed in bust­ing the peo­ple at the top who are import­ing guns and ammu­ni­tion into the coun­try the police can do it.
Announcing that they intend to go after prin­ci­pals now when it should have been doing that as a mat­ter, of course, tells a skep­tic like me that they are not going after the big fish they are sim­ply telling them to be more discreet.

I have always sup­port­ed the police but I can in no way turn a blind eye to bla­tant incom­pe­tence at the bare min­i­mum and gross com­plic­i­ty at worse on the part of the police.
Trust me it is not as hard as the police tell you it is to track down and bring these crim­i­nals to justice.
If the police real­ly want­ed to bring these prin­ci­pal offend­ers to jus­tice they would seek the war­rants they need and go about their inves­ti­ga­tions with­out mak­ing announcements.
After all the politi­cians are some of the worst crim­i­nals, why would the police tell them what they intend to do?
That ladies and gen­tle­man is the rea­son I decid­ed to walk away from this depart­ment as soon as the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself.

The Police high com­mand which includes the Inspectorate Branch seems ded­i­cat­ed to one pur­pose only, that is to assist the work of the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing law INDECOM to fur­ther cre­ate hes­i­tan­cy with­in the rank and file of the police depart­ment dri­ving crime even high­er in the process.

I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly about the lack of clar­i­ty com­ing from the police high com­mand as it relates to cit­i­zens respon­si­bil­i­ty to stay away from inter­fer­ing in arrests.
Despite the many arti­cles I have writ­ten bemoan­ing the of lack lead­er­ship on this, the hier­ar­chy of the incom­pe­tent polit­i­cal­ly slav­ish police force has not lift­ed a fin­ger to give guid­ance to young offi­cers left out to dry. It has done noth­ing to edu­cate the pub­lic that they place them­selves at risk when they inter­fere with arrests.
Most impor­tant­ly it has done noth­ing to lob­by for tougher penal­ties for those who inter­fere with arrests.

For all intents and pur­pos­es, the police high com­mand is demon­stra­bly a use­less lap dog to the gov­ern­ment and spe­cial inter­ests to the dis­tinct per­il of the young offi­cers who are giv­en bas­kets to car­ry water.
I am at the point now where I would not be mad to see the entire bas­ket of deplorable incom­pe­tents from the gazetted Ranks fired, with the excep­tion of a few.

An offi­cer mak­ing an arrest have every right to ensure that his per­son is secure. There are count­less videos which show peo­ple active­ly inter­fer­ing in arrests, in many cas­es caus­ing the escape of the pri­ma­ry offender.
These videos depict­ing these events does not begin to scratch the sur­face of this real and present dan­ger offi­cers face when they make arrests.

The Inspectorate and the oth­ers with­in the high com­mand are gen­er­al­ly polit­i­cal hacks, oth­ers who could­n’t find employ­ment else­where so they park their behinds in the force because they attained a degree.
Many nev­er made an arrest, nev­er wrote up a charg­ing doc­u­ment, nev­er pre­sent­ed a sworn affi­davit to a pros­e­cu­tor to remove a sin­gle crim­i­nal from society.
Yet these frauds sit in judg­ment of the actions real cops take as they deal with the ani­mals who refuse to sub­mit to arrests.

The Inspectorate and the remain­der of the high com­mand only claim to fame is to issue press releas­es about dis­ci­plin­ing hard work­ing cops.
I call on Commissioner George Quallo to forth­with cause all gazetted offi­cers who sit behind desks to go out on foot patrol in the urban centers.
There is no such thing as SSP or ACP, in real­i­ty, all are constables.
It is uncon­scionable for these dead weights to con­tin­ue to sit and pon­tif­i­cate to the press with­out hav­ing to face the vile crea­tures who break the laws and the illit­er­ate punks who mil­i­tate on their behalf.

As I have said many times offi­cers have a right to expect a wide arc around them for their safe­ty when­ev­er they are mak­ing an arrest, their very lives depend on it.
They should nev­er sur­ren­der that safe­ty to the throngs of ani­mals who get involved when they make arrests, they should nev­er sur­ren­der it for INDECOM, not for the Inspectorate Branch and damn sure not for any politician.
Officers should ensure that if they feel threat­ened that they use appro­pri­ate force to secure their safe­ty, that includes lethal force if it is warranted.
When I was a serv­ing offi­cer if you inter­fered with me when I was mak­ing an arrest you would cer­tain­ly regret ever doing so.
But then again we had an air of author­i­ty which made this kind of non­sense lit­er­al­ly impossible.
You put your hands on me and shit just got real­ly seri­ous. Our coun­try needs to stop with this col­lud­ing with crim­i­nal and law­less behav­ior and throw down the gauntlet.
This shit must stop now.

The coun­try is gone to the dogs or more appro­pri­ate­ly the dogs are run­ning the streets. The Police force is incred­i­bly inept and corrupt.
The young offi­cers are out on the streets on their own. The lead­er­ship of the force is inca­pable of lead­ing the force and are inca­pable of pro­vid­ing the secu­ri­ty the nation needs.
It is high time I believe to start over. The force needs an infu­sion of police offi­cers, not grand­standers, posers and Media whores.
Over to you Commissioner Quallo and Andrew Holness.

If a so-called Don gets killed one way or the oth­er, it is prob­a­bly a safe bet that there are going to be oth­er crim­i­nal thugs at his interment.
If that is true, depend­ing on the noto­ri­ety of the scum which was erad­i­cat­ed, it is rea­son­able to pre­sume that they will have guns with them.

There is a gen­er­al unwrit­ten rule which cops across the globe have stuck to as it relates to places of wor­ship and moments in which fam­i­lies are in grief, they are treat­ed with a cer­tain degree of deference.
That def­er­ence is gen­er­al­ly giv­en to some degree, as long as those attend­ing funer­als for the deceased crim­i­nals do not them­selves break the laws.

In a coun­try like Jamaica where crim­i­nals are pre­dis­posed to doing exact­ly what they please it ought to be in the inter­est of law enforce­ment to be much more proac­tive in its approach.
You know the thugs are going to be at the funer­als and you know they are like­ly going to bring their weapons and in far too many cas­es are going to use them to offer salutes to the imbe­cile who met his just due.
Why would the police not have resources in place to deal appro­pri­ate­ly with this practice?

The police must not only show strength in deal­ing with the scourge of law­less­ness and brazen deprav­i­ty we see in the killings, it must demon­strate cun­ning and dex­ter­i­ty in coun­ter­ing those who would unleash their brutish brand of bar­barism on the nation.
Simply put, the Police must keep crim­i­nals off bal­ance in order to have a chance at suc­cess. As it stands crim­i­nals have the Police off bal­ance and that does not bode well for law-abid­ing Jamaicans.

The Police must have under­cov­er cops at funer­als. Apart from guns and ammu­ni­tion which are like­ly to be at these events they are a poten­tial trea­sure trove of intel­li­gence for law enforcement.
These are the events which bring out crim­i­nals aligned to crim­i­nals, these are the times the police should bring out the cam­eras to make the connections.

This intel­li­gence is crit­i­cal in forg­ing link­ages and are invalu­able to future investigations.
Is it too much to expect the Police to show a lit­tle bit of crit­i­cal thinking[not a great deal which may actu­al­ly make the force seem like a real police depart­ment] sic, just enough to con­vince the peo­ple to keep this department?

I mean come on Commissioner Quallo, you have a large bunch of paper push­ers who should­n’t even be on your staff, why are they not being required to pro­duce results?
Policing to a large extent is com­mon sense, it is a chess game which requires offi­cers to pre­empt the moves of those who would break the laws and be one step ahead of them.
Presently the JCF is not play­ing chess, it is still learn­ing to play checkers.

Having served in the depart­ment for a decade I have seen the lethar­gy and lack of imag­i­na­tion, I have seen the lack of for­ti­tude and the lack of fol­low up.
Despite the much-hyped improve­ments to the force since I served in the ear­ly 90’s, there has not been much evi­dence to sup­port the hype.
The depart­ment is work­ing with expo­nen­tial­ly more than we ever hoped to have back in my days, and under­stand­ably the chal­lenges the force faces today are greater.

With that said, I under­stood when I served that we could accom­plish a great deal more and we could have been far more effec­tive if we had effec­tive lead­er­ship in my time.
The same is true today, the police depart­ment has not demon­stra­bly shown that it can be trust­ed to pro­duce results over and above that which it already does.

If one can over­look the juve­nile nature of the the­atrics which pass­es for a leg­isla­tive process in the Jamaican Parliament then we may take a moment to cel­e­brate the pas­sage of a National Identification Bill in the Senate.
If you are won­der­ing what I’m jab­ber­ing about, you decide whether this is dia­logue fit­ting of a delib­er­a­tive body in this day and age.
During delib­er­a­tions on sec­tions three and four, tem­pers flared. Opposition sen­a­tor K.D. Knight ref­er­enced the activ­i­ties as a “kan­ga­roo Senate” after Senator Lambert Brown was denied an oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to the motion seek­ing to allow the sit­ting to go beyond the 4:20 time.

If you ever won­der why I’m so dis­mis­sive and dis­re­spect­ful of the process and the prac­ti­tion­ers, it is because of these old dinosaurs which con­tin­ue to con­t­a­m­i­nate the process which irks me.
In response Senate President Tom Tavares Finson flew into the usu­al rage, stat­ing that he took offense to Knight’s call­ing the sit­ting a kan­ga­roo Senate. “I know when I leave my yard I don’t come here to pre­side over any kan­ga­roo Senate,” Tavares-Finson said. Knight would lat­er apol­o­gize, say­ing he was forced to make such a com­par­i­son. Finson would also find him­self apol­o­giz­ing, as he said it was point­ed out to him that he “hissed his teeth or kissed his teeth” dur­ing the sitting.

I am not one steeped in the inner work­ings of the leg­isla­tive pro­to­cols of the Jamaican Parliament but suf­fic­ing to say that the lan­guage seems more suit­ed to anoth­er venue and the process­es more appro­pri­ate for a 6^th-grade civics class we’ll take this vic­to­ry for the rule of law nontheless.

For years I have per­son­al­ly called for a nation­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem as part of the process of law enforce­ment account­abil­i­ty and bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion of all Jamaicans.
Though the process is not ful­ly com­plete all Jamaicans once edu­cat­ed on the ben­e­fits of the law should be encour­aged by this law.

There are not many pieces of leg­is­la­tion which has come out of the Parliament which has been good for the Jamaican people.
The (INDECOM Act) as well as a Contractor’ Generals Act (with­out pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pow­ers) are just a cou­ple which read­i­ly comes to mind.
I have not read the bill and as such, I am still skep­ti­cal about it because of local law­mak­ers propen­si­ty to load up these bills with amend­ments which gen­er­al­ly end up water­ing down the bill.
This bill I under­stand is no dif­fer­ent, and as such there are already much hand­wring­ing about it from some quarters.

Nevertheless, it is 2017, there can be no legit­ime expla­na­tion for not hav­ing a National Id law in place.

The Government has placed the cart before the horse as was to be expect­ed. It will now bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for explain­ing to the peo­ple the mer­its of this new legislation.
The People’s National Party now under the lead­er­ship of Peter Phillips has once again demon­strat­ed that the par­ty has no con­cept of Governance.

What I find most juve­nile about the way the leg­isla­tive process is approached are the things which become stick­ing points which should be eas­i­ly overcome.
One such triv­ial issue which result­ed in a major brouha­ha was who should bear the cost of replac­ing the card if it became dam­aged by an enti­ty to which it was pre­sent­ed upon request, or if it was not delib­er­ate­ly destroyed by a holder.

You lose the damn card or destroy it you bear the cost of its replace­ment peri­od, what is so dif­fi­cult about that?
I promised that I would not men­tion Peter Phillips but it appears the new­ly mint­ed leader of the oppo­si­tion have no con­cept of what Jamaica needs as a nation in the 21^st century.

Phillips as did the hap­less Portia Simpson Miller hangs his hat on crit­i­ciz­ing what­ev­er the Government does in the hope of gain­ing trac­tion from any failures.
Peter Phillips must know that as a mem­ber of the International com­mu­ni­ty Jamaica must be able to iden­ti­fy its cit­i­zens fail­ing which they will not be able to leave the coun­try going forward.

The inabil­i­ty to account ade­quate­ly for cit­i­zens lands nations in the failed states cat­e­go­ry whether we agree or not, just ask Sudan, Somalia, et al.
Jamaicans line up to give up every­thing for­eign nations demand just for a chance to enter their coun­tries and on the rare instances, they are allowed to enter they have to give up much more to be iden­ti­fied and account­ed for by law enforcement.
The Government must go full tilt with this process and ensure that all Jamaicans are identified.

This is a good first step in the right direc­tion despite the crit­ics, naysay­ers and Monday morn­ing quarterbacks.

Within the Serengeti of chaos that the Jamaican cul­ture has devolved, is still the inces­sant chat­ter about Police cus­tomer ser­vice, or to put it more suc­cinct­ly the lack thereof.
Built into that non­sense notion is a belief that despite com­ing from a cor­rupt, aggres­sive and dis­re­spect­ful pop­u­la­tion and despite forced to deal with the worse of the worse, offi­cers must be the equiv­a­lent of saints while cit­i­zens bear no bur­den to be respectful.

The infer­ence inher­ent in the con­stant gnash­ing of teeth is still a con­found­ing and retard­ed one-sided expec­ta­tion that crass dis­re­spect­ful behav­ior must be reward­ed with cour­tesy as long as the dis­re­spect and crass­ness are direct­ed at police officers.

On the one hand, there are those from the self-styled “upper crust” who believe that laws do not apply to them. They have no respect for the laws and by exten­sion, they have no regard for those who enforce the laws.

Then there is the oth­er sub­sec­tion or the sup­posed “low­er tier” which believes that vio­lence and dis­re­spect should be direct­ed at offi­cers and offi­cers should retreat from their aggres­sive behavior.
Insofar as polic­ing is con­cerned since it’s incep­tion, to present day and going far into the future that is a dan­ger­ous posi­tion to take.
Officers have every expec­ta­tion that they should go home after the end of their shift, they have no respon­si­bil­i­ty to absorb ver­bal or phys­i­cal abuse for doing their job.

Having a cour­te­ous soci­ety is and should be in the inter­est of all Jamaicans, nev­er­the­less, it is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that the entire­ty of boor­ish behav­ior would be laid at the feet of the police when Politicians, judges, lawyers, doc­tors, nurs­es, and oper­a­tives from every stra­tum of the soci­ety demon­strate the same gut­ter behavior.

The Police which has earned more than it’s fair share of demer­its con­tin­ue to be the scape­goats of every talk­ing head regard­less of the issue under discussion.
The real ques­tion is how do we extract from a dirty pool, clean water with­out the process of fil­tra­tion and con­stant purification?
And if we place the puri­fied water back into the same dirty pool does­n’t that once puri­fied water return to its for­mer state of impurity?

The unmis­tak­able fact is that rude behav­ior should not be tol­er­at­ed from any indi­vid­ual which deals with the public.
With that said mem­bers of the pub­lic have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to con­duct them­selves with the great­est cour­tesy and respect when deal­ing with ser­vice providers.
It is a two-way street.

Maybe Jamaicans need to under­stand that no one cares about their con­ver­sa­tions when they barge into spaces pub­lic and pri­vate talk­ing at the top of their voic­es on cell phones.
How about speak­ing soft­ly while on the phone, how about hang­ing up the phone when you enter a place of business?
How about join­ing the line at the back? How about wait­ing to board the bus and if it’s full await the next bus? How about not yelling over those stand­ing in line?
How about giv­ing some of that which you crave?

You know you want respect, how about giv­ing respect and act­ing respectfully?
The aver­age Jamaican is over­ly opin­ion­at­ed and underinformed.
Those who con­sid­er them­selves from the upper-crust com­plain that offens­es are being com­mit­ted in front of offi­cers and they do noth­ing about it.
Realistically when offi­cers act with cour­tesy they are ignored and phys­i­cal­ly assaulted.(social media plat­forms are filled with instances of such assaults, which only hap­pen to Jamaican cops ).

When they do act with force in order to gain com­pli­ance they are cas­ti­gat­ed as brutish vio­lent, aggres­sive and abusive.
It’s a no-win sit­u­a­tion in which the police is damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
What the Albert Einsteins in the soci­ety fail to under­stand is that respect is a two-way street in which you get as much as you give.

Unfortunately for Jamaican offi­cers who strive to do the right thing in uphold­ing their oaths even some who served in this cesspool of crim­i­nal acqui­es­cence are now skeptics.
Well over a quar­ter cen­tu­ry ago being a young beat cop in South parade, West Street, Heywood streets required grit and determination.
Every arrest had to be made with force, today the lev­el of hos­til­i­ty and dis­re­spect met­ed out to offi­cers is vast­ly and expo­nen­tial­ly, multiplied.

There is no short­age of vil­lage lawyers who have opin­ions on what police should have done in the heat of the moment, to those opin­ion­at­ed know-noth­ings I ask where have you served your coun­try, what would you have done as an offi­cer faced with any of the sce­nar­ios in the post­ed videos?

Jamaicans have a choice to make if they want to return the coun­try to any mod­icum of civility.
Stop look­ing at the oth­er per­son to be civ­il and cour­te­ous. You be cour­te­ous and civ­il and maybe, just like a peb­ble in a brook, there will be a rip­ple effect.
Just maybe the cour­tesy and civil­i­ty you give to that offi­cer on the street or on the phone will be rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed. You are the change you seek instead of look­ing to oth­ers to give you what you crave.

The change you seek begins with you. Police work is dirty, it’s some­times ugly and yes some­times cops step out of line, there should be no tol­er­ance for that but they need all the sup­port they can get to do a thank­less shit­ty job that many who crit­i­cize them would not and can­not do.
Let’s stop the crit­i­ciz­ing and give them the sup­port they need as they place their lives on the line to pro­tect your mis­er­able hide.

Nothing gets my blood boil­ing like hear­ing police offi­cers who are empow­ered to enforce the laws make state­ments regard­ing crime which amount to surrender.

The Spanish Town Bus park has long been a source of extor­tion accord­ing to cit­i­zens, bus oper­a­tors, and police.
In fact, the Klans-man and One order Gangs have shed much blood for con­trol of the park which has been a source of illic­it cash­flow for gang­sters for many years.

Before we address this issue it is impor­tant that there be a recog­ni­tion of this fact, crim­i­nals are always on the prowl for new and inno­v­a­tive ways to exploit weak spots in the appa­ra­tus of the nation’s security.
Thus far, as is evi­denced by the wave of seri­ous crime plagu­ing the coun­try, gang­sters are not hav­ing many prob­lems in find­ing those breach­es in the levy.

The Jamaican Police have a propen­si­ty for allow­ing small issues which could eas­i­ly be stamped out to metas­ta­size into can­cer­ous tumors which even­tu­al­ly require major oper­a­tions some­times with dis­as­trous consequences.
That is a fail­ure of lead­er­ship, period.

The Problem of extor­tion in bus parks, Lotto-scam­ming, and truth­ful­ly the esca­la­tion of some major crimes could have been eas­i­ly con­trolled if not erad­i­cat­ed, had the police act­ed with deter­mi­na­tion and dis­patch in deal­ing with those problems.

Word on the street is that Police are always involved in crimes like the illic­it Lotto-scam­ming which has mush­roomed into an inter­na­tion­al cri­sis. In fact, in a recent batch of alleged scam­mers extra­dit­ed to the United States, one police offi­cer was among the sus­pects hand­ed over to the Americans.
The prob­lem how­ev­er in instances as these is a fail­ure on the part of the senior man­age­ment tier of the force to gath­er intel­li­gence on these occur­rences in a time­ly man­ner and move deci­sive­ly toward erad­i­cat­ing these can­cer­ous crimes from the country.

Unfortunately for law-abid­ing Jamaicans, it appears that the last peo­ple to know whats real­ly hap­pen­ing with crime are the peo­ple tasked with its eradication.
Such is the case with the prob­lem of the extor­tion rack­et in the Spanish Town bus Park and the response of the Police com­man­der Senior Superintendent Anthony Powell who has respon­si­bil­i­ty for St Catherine North Police Division.

According to cit­i­zens, bus oper­a­tors are forced to pay a $5,000 to extor­tion­ists, in a rack­et which allows so-called [shot­ta busses] to jump the line, load and go.
It is alleged that the dri­vers of oth­er bus­es, don’t escape the extor­tion­ists, as they are forced to pay $2,500 to use the park anyway.
According to local report­ing, It is believed that bus dri­ver Ervin McLeggan, who was mur­dered in the bus park last Tuesday, was on that “shot­ta bus” list but was removed after a meet­ing among the gangsters.

There are reports that bus oper­a­tors do not report the extor­tion to the police and that because they do not report these inci­dents the police can­not act on it.
The larg­er issue it seems to me is that the police are inex­cus­ably inept if they are not aware of the long­stand­ing prob­lem of extor­tion in the Spanish Town bus park.

The response com­ing from Senior Superintendent Anthony Powell is that cit­i­zens rea­son­able demand for a police post will not solve the problem.
He insists he is unaware of any shot­ta-bus list, that part is quite under­stand­able as the police are always last to know whats going on.

Powell said a team had looked at the facil­i­ty and had rec­om­mend­ed the instal­la­tion of closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion cam­eras and oth­er mea­sures. He also not­ed that a police post was in the park before, but it was “burnt down by crim­i­nals”. “The police don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need a post there because they should be out there in the field,” Powell said, adding that the police were, in fact, in the park when gun­men attacked McLeggan on Tuesday morn­ing. “Police are always present in the park, it is just that they were not sit­u­at­ed to engage the trig­ger­man, and he man­aged to escaped.”

What a bunch of bull-shit?
It is real­ly quite sim­ple to sug­gest (1) that crim­i­nals burnt the police post to the ground and as a result, one is not nec­es­sar­i­ly whats need­ed in light of a pro­lif­er­a­tion of crime at the facil­i­ty is remark­able pure­ly on the face of it.
That’s exact­ly why a police post should be placed there with cops who take no non­sense from any­one who is not sup­posed to be in the park.

On the oth­er hand, closed cir­cuit cam­eras are always a wel­come addi­tion to law enforce­ment efforts but they in no way absolve the police of their enforce­ment obligations.
Whats most regret­table about Powell’s state­ments are that there were offi­cers in the park but they weren’t sit­u­at­ed to engage the trig­ger man and so he escaped.

If killers can sum­mar­i­ly take some­one’s life in a sit­u­a­tion where offi­cers are present (regard­less of where they are sit­u­at­ed in the gen­er­al vicin­i­ty) and escape, what chance does the nation have in this exis­ten­tial fight in which it is engaged?

SSP Anthony Powell and I entered the police train­ing school togeth­er we grad­u­at­ed togeth­er, I applaud his ser­vice to our nation, how­ev­er, I part com­pa­ny with his think­ing on this issue. Said Powell,  “The police don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need a post there because they should be out there in the field.”

No SSP Powell, the Police need to be where crimes are being com­mit­ted in the same way you place fire­men to fight a fire where there is a fire, not just out there in the field.

After decades of mis­man­age­ment and med­dling in law enforce­ment, there is now an epi­dem­ic of crime fac­ing the Island.
Both Political par­ties bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for politi­ciz­ing the process of law enforce­ment, both par­ties bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for the law­less­ness in the country.

Yet decades after repeat­ed instances of state-sanc­tioned law­less­ness like the 1963 Coral Gardens Rasta upris­ing which result­ed in the deaths of Police Officers, through to the events which neces­si­tat­ed the secu­ri­ty forces incur­sion into Tivoli Gardens not much has been learned.

The unde­ni­able fact is that the Police depart­ment is more learned than at any oth­er time in the 185-year his­to­ry of the Constabulary.
At the same time, the depart­ment has nev­er been more inept at car­ry­ing out the most basic func­tions which police are required to do dai­ly and as a mat­ter of course.

Truthfully the Police can be let off the hook for some of its inad­e­qua­cies, as a mat­ter of fact, no police force is required to work with such sec­ond-guess­ing and crit­i­cisms from lawyers and experts some trained at the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to and oth­ers sim­ply by the ghetto.

The con­stant crit­i­cism and sec­ond-guess­ing cou­pled with the specter of prison hang­ing over them has made offi­cers ten­ta­tive, unsure, and afraid to make even the sim­plest arrests.
The down­side to this is that those who would break the laws are expo­nen­tial­ly embold­ened and are made increas­ing­ly aggres­sive, not just in the lev­el of bru­tal­i­ty they unleash on their vic­tims but in their aggres­sive atti­tude against those who enforce the laws.

The lax, lib­er­al atti­tude of the courts in what can only be con­strued as adver­sar­i­al pos­tur­ing against the peo­ple’s busi­ness in case after case, has only giv­en the forces of law­less­ness ammu­ni­tion in its war against the rule of law.

Most of all, every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has nev­er served in any­thing much less risked their lives a sin­gle day has grandiose opin­ions and have writ­ten the­ses on what needs to be done to return the coun­try to a state of normalcy.

So now the University of the West Indies (Intellectual ghet­to à la the late Wilmott Mutty Perkins) has offered to help train and in the process house police recruits. Other insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing have also stepped for­ward to offer their ser­vices to train police officers.

The lat­est being the Montego Bay Community College in St James.
For the record, there is noth­ing wrong with hav­ing edu­cat­ed cops, in fact, the times demand that we have smarter cops.

However, at this present time out­sourc­ing police train­ing to peo­ple who are not police offi­cers, peo­ple have no expe­ri­ence in law enforce­ment or law enforce­ment prac­tices and pro­ce­dures is stu­pid, ridicu­lous and will have dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the nation in the future.
Remember that the JCF is more edu­cat­ed now that it has ever been in its his­to­ry, yet crime is at the high­est it has ever been in our history.
So clear­ly hav­ing police offi­cers with Assc, Bachelors, Masters and PhD’s is not going to solve the Island’s crime problem.

What the nation needs are police offi­cers who know how to do the job of polic­ing effec­tive­ly and a polit­i­cal class which rec­og­nizes that it must get its grub­by lit­tle fin­gers out of law enforcement.
The crime prob­lem the nation faces now will be dwarfed going for­ward if law enforce­ment can­not get it’s col­lec­tive act together.

Mass shoot­ings, acts of ter­ror­ism and oth­er transna­tion­al crimes have already shown their ugly heads on the Island, they will not go away because we wish them away.
Jamaica needs a com­pe­tent police force trained by police offi­cers who know policing.
That’s it!

Jamaica’s non­sen­si­cal pos­ture which has been pro­mul­gat­ed by the nit-wit elites who make pol­i­cy have always been that sim­ple solu­tions should be dis­card­ed and replaced with hifa­lutin alien con­cepts they read about hap­pen­ing in oth­er parts of the world.
In many cas­es, those con­cepts and prac­tices are as fake and unwork­able as their fake upper Saint Andrew Accents.

There is an expan­sive cam­pus out there in Twickenham Park which is quite enough to train the Island’s police offi­cers effi­cient­ly and effectively.
What is in short­age is a lack of qual­i­ty can­di­dates, mod­ern police train­ing tech­niques and the sup­port nec­es­sary for those young recruits to do the job they are asked to do.

More and more cops are announc­ing they have earned degrees, com­mend­able indeed, yet despite these per­son­al advance­ments crime con­tin­ue to increase.

The nation is not being served in this regard, let’s be real if this was ever going to be solved by advanced degrees we would have hit that plateau with the ele­va­tion of Dr. Carl Williams to the rank of Commissioner of Police.
Those in pow­er con­tin­ue to apply fix­es to prob­lems which do not exist rather than apply the fix­es nec­es­sary to alle­vi­ate those prob­lems which do exist.

For every claim, there may be a coun­ter­claim, for every glow­ing trib­ute one offer about an indi­vid­ual some­one may have remained silent with a sto­ry which is not so complimentary.

Such is the sto­ry regard­ing Dr. Jephtah Ford a med­ical doc­tor who for decades oper­at­ed a prac­tice on Red Hills Road in Kingston 8.
Ford and his twin broth­er Jeptah are col­or­ful fig­ures who are icon­ic not just by virtue of their med­ical prac­tice but by virtue of their involve­ment in politics.

Jephthah Ford has a long and sto­ried his­to­ry on Red Hills Road and in the wider Jamaica sole­ly on the basis of his med­ical prac­tice. Throw in his con­nec­tions and a life of pol­i­tics and the guy is freak­ing rock star.
You do not spend years and years in a neigh­bor­hood doing busi­ness and not build up a well of goodwill.,
At the same time, Ford has anoth­er side unknown to many, known to some who do not care as long as he stretched his hand and gave them a gift or a pat on the back

Many oth­ers know the man Jephthah Ford and their view of him is not so favorable.
Yet Jamaica is a coun­try in which one can have a Robin Hood per­sona and no one cares. Jamaica is the coun­try which roman­ti­cized ThreeFinger Jack.
It is the Country which roman­ti­cizes Lester Lloyd Coke, Christopher dud­dus Coke, Coppa, Rigen, Sandokan, and a long list of anoth­er scum­bag murderers.

In Jamaica, the nation which has an 84% cor­rup­tion rat­ing accord­ing to Transparency International, those who hand out the good­ies are the sec­ond com­ing of Jesus Christ personified.

That is metaphor­i­cal­ly speak­ing, whether Jephthah Ford is a Robin-hood type per­son­al­i­ty depends on who you speak to.
So it’s not out of the ordi­nary in a coun­try like Jamaica where pol­i­tics and the big man per­sona earns a Doctor Jephthah Ford type plau­dits and praise in the com­mu­ni­ty in which he oper­ates and beyond, regard­less of his alter ego dual personality.

It’s not extra­or­di­nary that politi­cians and Police, Pastors and Peasants are lin­ing up, call­ing for a non-cus­to­di­al sen­tence for Ford who was recent­ly con­vict­ed on two counts of attempt­ing to per­vert the course of justice.
None of that mat­ters in Jamaica as long as the trans­gres­sor is con­nect­ed and benev­o­lent it does not mat­ter what bad he/​she does, it’s all a‑okay.
To those who tes­ti­fy on his behalf he is a hero, to the police offi­cers who patrol the streets who are not blind­ed by par­ty pol­i­tics Ford rep­re­sents the worse of his profession.
To the silent who have been wronged not just by Ford but by the [shit-stym] which nur­tures and cul­ti­vate the Jephthah Fords, they don’t think that six months is enough.

Ford has had a tumul­tuous rela­tion­ship with many cops, good cops who cor­rect­ly believe that no Doctor should treat a per­son who com­mits crimes and turn up to him with gun­shot wounds and not noti­fy police.
Many will quick­ly say he has an oblig­a­tion to treat every­one, they may also say he treats crim­i­nals because his life could poten­tial­ly be in dan­ger from those criminals.
I say speak to the cops involved in those cas­es past and present and see if Ford was a Robin Hood. Get their opin­ions on whether he was doing it because of his hip­po­crat­ic oath?

This is big­ger than Ford how­ev­er, it demon­strates the rot­ten core of a deca­dent soci­ety which has sur­ren­dered all mod­icum of decen­cy and integri­ty and gone astray.
It does not mat­ter what an indi­vid­ual does in the dark as long as he steps into the light with clean hands it’s all good.
This not to sug­gest that Jephthah Ford is a mon­ster but nei­ther is he Mother Theresa. Jamaicans have a his­to­ry of cod­dling the most per­verse and despi­ca­ble human crea­tures all because they hand out a few trin­kets and a few bot­tles of beers.

If I treat a bunch of peo­ple kind­ly what does any of it have to do with any­thing if I com­mit a crime,? Should I sim­ply walk free because of my pre­vi­ous good deeds?
Throw in the peo­ple I treat­ed shit­ty and the ques­tion is what right do I have to expect def­er­ence from the jus­tice sys­tem when I com­mit myself?
It makes absolute­ly no sense, what do Ford’s per­ceived good deeds have to do with the courts’ decision?
The court has a duty to hear them but the court is duty bound to bal­ance what­ev­er char­ac­ter evi­dence may be prof­fered on his behalf against the greater good of the com­mu­ni­ty and it’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to the fideli­ty of the rule of law.

The court was beyond gra­cious in tap­ping Ford on the wrist with two six-month sen­tences to run concurrently.
In my esti­ma­tion, the court should have sent a strong mes­sage with this sen­tence, which would encour­age oth­er police offi­cers to fol­low suit in avoid­ing cor­rup­tion and those who would cor­rupt pub­lic officials.
The courts have an oblig­a­tion to do it’s part in the equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice regard­less of one’s affil­i­a­tions and connections.

Was there any won­der that Christopher Coke was nev­er con­vict­ed of a crime in Jamaica?
What hap­pened to the Kern Spencer cor­rup­tion case? It was the same sto­ry when Al Miller was pros­e­cut­ed for his crimes and found guilty.
Prison can­not be only for the poor­est class of peo­ple while the big man receives a tap on the wrist.
What hap­pened to FINSAC? Is there any won­der that ordi­nary peo­ple feel they have the right to ignore the nation’s laws?
Unless this coun­try ignores the cries for lenien­cy on the rare occa­sions when renowned peo­ple are caught red-hand­ed there will be hell to pay as the coun­try is engulfed more and more with crim­i­nal­i­ty, because the men­tal­i­ty of the peo­ple is becom­ing increas­ing­ly per­verse and twisted.

The laws are there for the pro­tec­tion of all Jamaicans, no one is big­ger than the laws no one is sub­servient to the laws.
All we have to do is to do our best to avoid break­ing them.
Good inten­tions are not a free pass for break­ing the laws, at best it may mit­i­gate one’s sen­tence but no one should expect that regard­less of their crimes they will be allowed to go home, that is not jus­tice and it should not hap­pen in this case.

So the court slapped Jephthah Ford with a six-months cus­to­di­al sen­tence on each of the two counts of attempt­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice charges he was con­vict­ed on.
In the greater scheme of things this offend­er should have been sent a strong mes­sage by the court that cor­rupt­ing pub­lic offi­cials is a seri­ous crime.
As was to be expect­ed and as I pre­dict­ed, the courts gave the defen­dant a tap on the wrist.

What I found curi­ous is that the defen­dan­t’s attor­ney Bert Samuels all but admit­ted that his client broke the laws Quote: “He has allowed his good inten­tion to cloud his bet­ter judg­ment.”
Samuels said the fore­gone while [petion­ing the court for a non-cus­to­di­al sentence.
According to report­ing Bert Samuels told the court that he acknowl­edged his client com­mit­ted a seri­ous offense but lec­tured the court that it involved no vio­lence and result­ed in no mon­e­tary val­ue to Ford as if that negates the seri­ous­ness of the offens­es. He said Ford’s action was out of a desire to assist, but con­ced­ed that this was a wrong intervention.

After Samuels made his sub­mis­sion the court announced the sen­tence of six months in prison on each of the two counts as charged to run (con­cur­rent­ly) mean­ing he would only serve six months or less in prison.

Now here’s the kick­er, there is much talk of too many cas­es clog­ging up the ros­ters at all lev­els of the jus­tice sys­tem to include the appeals court.
Yet imme­di­ate­ly Samuels learned that Ford was going to spend time in prison, despite his own admis­sion that his client com­mit­ted the crimes, and despite admit­ting to the court that the crimes his client com­mit­ted were seri­ous crimes, Bert Samuels announced he would be fil­ing an appeal.
This was the very same Attorney who asked the court to impose a fine on his client.

Now to the casu­al observ­er, this seems ridicu­lous, gen­er­al­ly, an appeal may only be suc­cess­ful if the defen­dant can show new evi­dence which was sup­pressed by pros­e­cu­tors or wrong­do­ing on the part of inves­ti­ga­tors and or pros­e­cu­tors. Samuels admit­ted that his client com­mit­ted the crimes in his summation.
On what grounds then will his appeal be enter­tained except because of who his client is?

The idea in this case as I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, is to do what­ev­er it takes to make sure that Ford does not spend a day in jail, that’s okay that’s what defense lawyers are sup­posed to do.
There was no sug­ges­tion of police impro­pri­ety, there was no sug­ges­tion of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al impro­pri­ety. In fact, Bert Samuels con­ced­ed his client com­mit­ted the crimes he was charged with committing.
But dur­ing the appeals process which will drag on and on, new alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety will begin to creep into the nar­ra­tive until the appeals court make a deci­sion to toss the case.

I will be watch­ing this case as it lan­guish­es in the appeals court and Jephthah Ford con­tin­ues with his life unobstructed.
Justice demands that some­one keep and an eye open, fair­ness and our Democracy demand that we keep a can­dle­light on so that the dark forces of injus­tice are kept at bay.
I will be watch­ing this one.

For as long as INDECOM has exist­ed I have called for the repeal of the law and if nec­es­sary a com­pre­hen­sive review of the prin­ci­ples which neces­si­tat­ed the law in the first place with the view to the pas­sage of a bet­ter law.

The sup­port­ers of INDECOM are vehe­ment­ly opposed to any­one touch­ing the law regard­less of the harm it is caus­ing. Those sup­port­ers range from inside Jamaica House to PNP HQ and places beyond.
The ques­tion which must be asked then is, why are they opposed to a com­pre­hen­sive top to bot­tom review of the law?
If the law is right­eous it will stand any scruti­ny so there is noth­ing to fear.

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

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

This case should nev­er have been brought in the first place, there was no evi­dence out­side the com­plainan­t’s words to go by.
Point num­ber one is that he was arrest­ed for refus­ing to move away from the scene after he was caught block­ing a pub­lic thoroughfare.
If he refused the police com­mand to do as he was told why would we not believe he had to be forcibly sub­dued by the police in order to effect the arrest?
It is exact­ly because of abus­es of this nature that I am allud­ing to when I crit­i­cize the INDECOM law as a flawed law entrust­ed to a dem­a­gogue to execute.
Additionally, the police can­not sue INDECOM for wrong­ful arrest even when they act with haste, with­out due-care, a lack of cau­tion and maybe mal­ice as is seem­ing­ly the case here.
Police offi­cers are sued for doing exact­ly what they are tasked with doing and are being arrest­ed and treat­ed as crim­i­nals for doing so. INDECOM faces no legal jeop­ardy for abus­ing it’s powers.

If police offi­cers are unnec­es­sar­i­ly rough or abu­sive to a sus­pect they are arrest­ing, offi­cers involved in the arrest open them­selves up to legal jeopardy.
On the oth­er hand, police offi­cers have tremen­dous lee­way as it relates to use of force when they are mak­ing arrests.
For the record and for the edi­fi­ca­tion of those who opine on this sub­ject with­out objec­tiv­i­ty or the nec­es­sary knowl­edge, that lat­i­tude includes the pow­er to take life.

Regardless of the rea­son for the arrest if an offend­er fights with an offi­cer that offi­cer has the right under the law to use the force nec­es­sary to make the arrest. Without the ben­e­fit of video evi­dence which showed that offi­cers, in this case, act­ed against their oath in mak­ing the arrest the case brought against the offi­cers should nev­er have been brought.
Even with video evi­dence, it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to argue with the force used by an offi­cer in the heat of arrest­ing a bel­liger­ent suspect.
After the sus­pect is cuffed, offi­cers are at much more legal expo­sure if alle­ga­tions of unnec­es­sary force are alleged.
That was not the case here,

On the basis of cas­es as these INDECOM is oper­at­ing with­out account­abil­i­ty a license to com­mit more egre­gious breach­es against offi­cers with­out any account­abil­i­ty or with­out incur­ring any penalty.
This law needs to go.

I will be brief as I vent on a few items which made the news recent­ly in my beloved Jamaica.
In the mean­time, I want decent law-abid­ing Jamaicans who sim­ply want a good and peace­ful life to know just how the peo­ple they put in charge of their affairs are deceiv­ing them using the police as scapegoats.

The Police have to sim­ply walk away as they have no means of get­ting their sto­ries told and the pow­ers that be in con­junc­tion with the com­plic­it deceit­ful media is all too will­ing to car­ry the mes­sage for the liars.
It shows how some activist judges, crim­i­nal lawyers and oth­ers come togeth­er to defame and dis­man­tle the sys­tem because of their dis­dain for the police.

Item # 1 Murder Case Collapses After Cops Are Caught Lying.

Anthony ‘Bugussu’ Powell, a 56-year-old hig­gler beats a mur­der rap.
According to the com­plaint in an affi­davit more befit­ting a dying dec­la­ra­tion, on January 26, 2010, 43-year-old Richard Burke was shot in the back of the neck while he was stand­ing at the inter­sec­tion of East Street and Tower Street in down­town Kingston.
The police tes­ti­fied that they vis­it­ed Burke at the Kingston Public Hospital on the day of the inci­dent and he said it was Bugussu (Powell) who shot him.

According to the police, they returned to the hos­pi­tal the fol­low­ing day and spent two hours tak­ing a state­ment from Burke, but he could not sign it because he was par­a­lyzed. A police­man signed as a wit­ness to the state­ment, which was not com­plet­ed because they claimed that Burke said he had a headache. The police also claimed that on the third day, they returned to the hos­pi­tal to com­plete the state­ment and Burke asked if they had caught Bugussu yet.

Two of Burke’s rel­a­tives also told the court that he had told them that Bugussu had shot him before he died on the evening of the third day that he was in the hos­pi­tal. During cross-exam­i­na­tion, the doc­tor who treat­ed Burke told the court that she did not see any police vis­it­ing at the time they claimed, and from the injury, he had suf­fered, he could not give a state­ment for two hours when the police claimed he did. The doc­tor said that based on the nature of the surgery, Burke was not able to speak and, there­fore, could not give a state­ment last­ing two hours the next day, as claimed by the police.

In doing what they do best whether they are paid or oth­er­wise, the tri­al judge Evan Brown said the case was a “trav­es­ty of justice”.
There was no evi­dence that the police offi­cers knew the accused Anthony Bugussu before they got the case, since they did not know the accused there was no way that they could have had mal­ice against him.

Additionally, fam­i­ly mem­bers of the deceased told the court that their loved one told them that he was indeed shot by the accused Anthony Bugussu,
Dying dec­la­ra­tions are sacro­sanct by law in most munic­i­pal­i­ties and it ought to be in Jamaica accord­ing to Jamaican law.
Yet on the tes­ti­mo­ny of one Doctor who may have lied or who may have sim­ply got­ten the facts wrong the clear-cut mur­der case was tossed and the defen­dant was set free.

Worse yet, the Judge, defense, and attor­ney decid­ed to pile on the police, sole­ly on the evi­dence of one per­son who could have been lying or have got­ten her facts wrong.
What was the motive of the police for charg­ing the accused con­sid­er­ing that there is no evi­dence that they knew the offend­er and as such could have zero mal­ice toward him?
Why was the tes­ti­mo­ny of the Doctor giv­en more cre­dence over the fam­i­ly mem­bers and inves­ti­gat­ing officers?

Item # 2 Corporal Melvin Smith killed in Mandeville town cen­ter try­ing to stop the rob­bery of a motor cycle.

No damn motor­cy­cle is worth an offi­cer’s life, so it was­n’t the motor­cy­cle which caused Corporal Melvin Smith to inter­vene on see­ing a rob­bery in progress. It was the call of duty and the com­mit­ment to serve. Corporal Smith was shot sev­er­al times as he attempt­ed to appre­hend a rob­ber who had just stolen a motor­cy­cle in the Mandeville town cen­ter. The own­er of the motor­cy­cle was also shot and remains hos­pi­tal­ized in sta­ble condition.
This offi­cer gave his life while in the same breath the Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck con­tin­ues on his mis­sion to defame them using all of the tools at his disposal.
I urge the fam­i­ly of this fall­en offi­cer to shun and rebuff all attempts at plat­i­tude com­ing from INDECOM in this their hour of grief.

Item# 3 Cpl Marsh of the Trelawny Division goe to New York for treatment.

Corporal Marvin Marsh who was shot in his leg at his home on September 18^th this year was told that he may lose his leg if he does not get treat­ment abroad.
Corporal Marsh who was injured in his right leg was treat­ed at the Mandeville Hospital, read­mit­ted and is now forced to leave the Island because he can­not receive the treat­ment or one of the med­ica­tion he needs on the Island.
According to reports, the con­di­tion of Corporal Marsh’s leg con­tin­ues to dete­ri­o­rate and his fam­i­ly and col­leagues were giv­en the grim news that if he did not receive the treat­ment he would lose his leg.
Corporal Marsh is now in the United States through the quick work and ded­i­ca­tion of his col­leagues at the Federation and his family.
We wish him well.

Item#3 Joking With Our Jails — INDECOM Still Concerned About The Treatment Of Persons In Police Lock-Ups

Amidst the death of Cpl Smith and the sense of good­will which has begun to turn toward the Police Chief Media pros­ti­tute and anti-police antag­o­nist, Terrence Williams made a grab for some media atten­tion as well.
Knowing full well that if the police are able to get their act togeth­er no one cares about him he went back to the tra­di­tion­al well.

He argued that this is not the case at many police sta­tions island­wide, and indi­cat­ed that since 2010, INDECOM has received 131 com­plaints of unlaw­ful deten­tion and 59 com­plaints of undu­ly long deten­tion. The Mandeville Police Station account­ed for 16 of the com­plaints, the most from any indi­vid­ual sta­tion over the peri­od, while 12 were from per­sons held at the Constant Spring Police Station and 11 from detainees at the Half-Way-Tree lock-up. Williams said that per­sons are often sub­ject­ed to over­crowd­ing and inhu­mane con­di­tions in lock-ups as some cops use delay tac­tics to keep them behind bars.
Williams said that since 2010, it has received almost 200 com­plaints from per­sons detained by the police.

First of all, I encour­age offi­cers who are forced to arrest sus­pects to take them to Terrence Williams’ home and house them there.
If the Police do not do their jobs this scribe chat if they do their job this scribe chat, where are the police sup­posed to put these suspects?
All across the world police are forced to some­times keep vio­lent sus­pects in cus­tody for a lit­tle over the times pre­scribed by statute.
In many cas­es, this is done using inge­nious ways like charg­ing the sus­pect for the lit­tle weed he had when he was held on sus­pi­cion of murder.

Even though detec­tives would gen­er­al­ly not both­er with the weed charge under nor­mal cir­cum­stances if they had all of the evi­dence, they are forced to charge the sus­pect for it in order to buy time.
In many cas­es, this is a valu­able tool for the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of the cit­i­zen­ry, espe­cial­ly in a coun­try like Jamaica which is a crim­i­nal revolv­ing door even for the most vio­lent mur­der­ers who are sum­mar­i­ly giv­en bail regard­less of the num­ber of peo­ple they kill.
Finally on this, in a coun­try like Jamaica with the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty and the anti-police envi­ron­ment which exist there, it is absolute­ly shock­ing that in sev­en years there have only been 200 complaints.

At that rate, there is a grand shock­ing total of 2.380 reports to INDECOM per month. If the Police can have num­bers this good in all of it’s oper­at­ing cat­e­gories Jamaica would be in great shape.
Nevertheless, the atten­tion-grab­bing Terrence Williams is a drown­ing man who is quite des­per­ate to grab at any straw he can. That makes him dan­ger­ous and he must be called out for the lying decep­tive dem­a­gogue that he is.

Item#4 Mark Rickets Article. Mark Ricketts | It’s A Disgrace How We Treat The Police (Part 2) — Jamaica’s Crime Cop-Out.

Some months ago, the min­is­ter of jus­tice, in a rather unfor­tu­nate pre­sen­ta­tion cap­tured on TV, used sleight of hand trick­ery, depict­ing move­ment of an invis­i­ble object from the right hand to the left, accom­pa­nied by the words, that’s the sort of thing the police will do.
In so far as the medi­um is the mes­sage, the imagery being rein­forced is that the JCF is insti­tu­tion­al­ly cor­rupt, is inclined to exces­sive use of force, and is not enti­tled to respect. Listen to the ‘curse-out’ the police get if they insist on giv­ing a tick­et for an offence.
Last Monday, most peo­ple saw on TVJ instances of police pow­er­less as they were jos­tled and arm-wres­tled by motorists they had stopped for infrac­tions. It was a dis­grace, affirm­ing that law­less­ness has no bound­aries. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​a​r​y​/​2​0​1​7​1​0​2​9​/​m​a​r​k​-​r​i​c​k​e​t​t​s​-​i​t​s​-​d​i​s​g​r​a​c​e​-​h​o​w​-​w​e​-​t​r​e​a​t​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​p​a​r​t​-​2​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​s​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​cop

A recent event of much impor­tance is play­ing out in the upper ech­e­lons of the Jamaican soci­ety which has tremen­dous sig­nif­i­cance with­in the larg­er con­ver­sa­tion on crime and it is large­ly being ignored.

At the cen­ter of that storm is Red Hills Road Medical Doctor Jephthah Ford who has been con­vict­ed in the courts on charges that he attempt­ed to per­vert the course of justice.
The case demon­strates in clear unequiv­o­cal ways, polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, pow­er and how the over­ar­ch­ing sense of enti­tle­ment over-rides the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and the impact it is hav­ing on crime overall.

It demon­strates how politi­cians, pow­er­ful monied cit­i­zens, and senior police offi­cers con­tin­ue to be the back­bone of the crime cul­ture through affil­i­a­tions and asso­ci­a­tions while using tear-jerk­ing sto­ries to jus­ti­fy col­lu­sion and com­plic­i­ty with uneth­i­cal and crim­i­nal behavior.
Additionally, it shows how the much-maligned low­er ranks of the police are used at dif­fer­ent points as scapegoats.
We see how good police work in the final analy­sis which net­ted a big fish can be the sub­ject of sub­ver­sion by senior police offi­cials and politicians.

The case involv­ing Jephthah Ford began in 2014 when he was arrest­ed and charged after he attempt­ed to bribe a police offi­cer to release two Surinamese men who had been caught with near­ly $60 mil­lion. He also request­ed the return of the con­fis­cat­ed funds. During the 10-day tri­al that start­ed in May, pros­e­cu­tor Joel Brown led evi­dence that Ford was caught on cam­era offer­ing a per­cent­age of the mon­ey seized to a police offi­cer in exchange for the release of the men and the funds.
The two for­eign­ers — Roshen Daniels and Murvin Reingold — were held after police inter­cept­ed a motor vehi­cle on Half-Way-Tree Road in St Andrew on April 7 and found US$533,886 and J$1.3 mil­lion. The men were lat­er tak­en to their apart­ment where the police seized an addi­tion­al US$3,000, J$700 and 55 Surinamese dol­lars. The two were sub­se­quent­ly charged with pos­ses­sion of crim­i­nal prop­er­ty and con­spir­a­cy to pos­sess crim­i­nal prop­er­ty but were freed of the charges when they appeared in court. Dr. Ford had con­tact­ed the offi­cer while the men were in cus­tody and request­ed a meet­ing to dis­cuss the case. During the meet­ing, Ford was cap­tured on cam­era ask­ing for the case against the men to be dis­missed. Ford told the court, dur­ing the tri­al, that he was try­ing to assist the Surinamese men by pre­vent­ing them from remain­ing in cus­tody because he feared they were going to be killed by the police. According to the JamaicaObserver​.com.

The charges and ulti­mate con­vic­tion of Ford is not the real issue here, even though it is extreme­ly rare and almost unheard of, that the promi­nent and well con­nect­ed upper-crust are charged, convicted,much less held account­able for their crimes.
The real issue in my esti­ma­tion are the peo­ple who have come out of the wood­work try­ing to influ­ence the already use­less lib­er­al courts not to impose a cus­to­di­al sen­tence on the now con­vict­ed felon, Jephthah Ford.

Getting lost in all of this is the integri­ty and com­mend­able actions of the police offi­cers involved in the inves­ti­ga­tions who could have done what many of them would have done giv­en the same set of cir­cum­stances but who chose to do the right thing.
Lastly, it demon­strates that despite the protes­ta­tions of those who would step for­ward to give char­ac­ter tes­ti­mo­ni­als on behalf of Ford he is no dif­fer­ent than any crit­ter which gets its tail caught in a crack.
Even as a retired Assistant Commissioner who is a known People’s National Party sup­port­er steps for­ward to give char­ac­ter evi­dence for Ford, the very accused Ford is on record smear­ing the police as a defense strategy.

POLITICIAN

Stepping to the fore to give char­ac­ter evi­dence on behalf of Jephthah Ford was #1 Minister of Culture, Gender Affairs, Entertainment and Sports Olivia Babsy” Grange.

Grange told the court that despite their polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, Grange being a mem­ber of the Jamaica Labour Party and Ford a for­mer People’s National Party politi­cian, he is her fam­i­ly doctor.
The min­is­ter explained that Ford was the one who diag­nosed her late moth­er with stage-four can­cer, after the doc­tors in Canada, where she was resid­ing, were unable to detect what was wrong with her. Grange said she felt respon­si­ble to give evi­dence in sup­port of Ford spite of her busy schedule.
Grange told the court she believed it would be a trau­mat­ic event were Jephthah Ford was to be giv­en a cus­to­di­al sen­tence for his crimes.
She described Ford as a car­ing per­son who has saved many lives and pro­vid­ed free health care to count­less indi­vid­u­als, admit­ted yes­ter­day that she was a “lit­tle emo­tion­al”.

In what could eas­i­ly pass as a won­der­ful exam­ple of bi-par­ti­san­ship, an exam­ple of how far we have come since the days when Labourites and Kumreds[sic] were killing each oth­er over pol­i­tics en-masse, this effort to influ­ence the courts is noth­ing more than an attempt to keep a mem­ber of the upper class from fac­ing real justice.
There is absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with giv­ing char­ac­ter evi­dence on behalf of some­one, in fact, it is a use­ful tool which gives the tri­al judge a work­ing idea of who the defen­dant real­ly is and is usu­al­ly instru­men­tal in mit­i­gat­ing what­ev­er sen­tence the court would nor­mal­ly apply.
However, in a small coun­try like Jamaica where it seems that only the lit­tle fish gets fried while the big fish gets thrown back, con­trary to con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, this sends a bad mes­sage, the optics are not good.

It demon­strates at the very least, a craven yet trans­par­ent attempt to once again usurp the process, to per­vert the course of jus­tice only this time using plat­i­tudes and sap­py tales instead of pounds of cash.
It is a vile attempt to con­tin­ue to keep the upper crust of the soci­ety from the hum­bling con­fines of penal confinement.
I have nev­er seen or heard of a sin­gle case where Ms. Grange have ever attempt­ed to offer char­ac­ter evi­dence for any­one from below Cross-Roads.

SENIOR POLICE

Forner Assistant Commissioner of Police Garnett Daley. #2

Former Assistant Commissioner of Police Daley anoth­er of the char­ac­ter wit­ness­es for Ford told the court the following.
That he came in con­tact with Ford while he was assigned to the Constant Spring Police Station, tes­ti­fied that he had known Ford for 40 years. He said he met Ford when he was a detec­tive inspec­tor and tes­ti­fied that dur­ing his tenure at the sta­tion Ford would assist the police with sick pris­on­ers and police offi­cers who were injured. The retired cop explained that for more than 20 years Ford would have treat­ed police offi­cers at his office if the envi­ron­ment at the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) was not safe.

“I recalled an offi­cer who was shot and he was rushed to KPH — and this was the time when the vicin­i­ty of the KPH was very volatile — and I called Dr Ford and he rushed to KPH, where he exam­ined him and trans­ferred him to St Andrew Hospital, and that patient became his patient at that time,” Daley said. Samuels, dur­ing the exam­i­na­tion-in-chief, asked Daley if there were any oth­er med­ical doc­tors in the vicin­i­ty who would offer such services.

“I can’t recall,” Daley replied. “How would you view that?” Samuels asked Daley.“[As] a good ges­ture,” Daley replied. Daley told the court that Ford still main­tains a good rap­port with indi­vid­u­als in the com­mu­ni­ty. On cross-exam­i­na­tion, the pros­e­cu­tor ques­tioned Daley’s rela­tion­ship with the med­ical doc­tor. “For 20 years most of your inter­ac­tion would be work­ing?” the pros­e­cu­tor asked. “Yes, and I would see him from time to time,” Daley replied. jamaicaob​serv​er​.com

Garnet Daley was an Assistant Superintendent while I was there as a con­sta­ble attached to the CIB office.
Daley’s tes­ti­mo­ny though true in most regards does not tell the whole sto­ry. As a med­ical doc­tor, Ford is a sig­na­to­ry to what is known as the Hippocratic oath.
The Hippocratic oath is a pact to treat the ill to the best of one’s abil­i­ty, to pre­serve a patien­t’s pri­va­cy, to teach the secrets of med­i­cine to the next gen­er­a­tion, and so on. His ded­i­ca­tion to ser­vice as a doc­tor as artic­u­lat­ed by Daley and Grange is not unique to Ford, it is his job.
What they do not tell the court and won’t tell the court is that Ford’s prac­tice was well renowned in police cir­cles for treat­ing crim­i­nal gun­men who shunned the pub­lic med­ical facil­i­ties out of fear of being caught.
Ford’s atten­tion to the Hippocratic oath had pre­cious lit­tle to do with com­mu­ni­ty or ser­vice it was about his own nar­row self-interest.

Renowned lawyer Bert Samuels who is rep­re­sent­ing Ford has also offered him­self up to the court to give char­ac­ter evi­dence on behalf of his client.
Bert Samuels, Garnet Daley, and Ford com­plete the nice tight lit­tle tri­an­gle of PNP oper­a­tives cur­ry­ing favor to avoid the fair and jus­ti­fied dis­pen­sa­tion of Justice.
Grange is allow­ing her­self to be used in this process and it sends a bad mes­sage to the aver­age joe that the law applies only to the guy on the cor­ner and not the connected.

At a time when every tongue is wag­ging about police cor­rup­tion real or per­ceived, these offi­cers did the right thing and the courts have a duty to impose a sen­tence com­men­su­rate with the crime regard­less of the protes­ta­tions before it.
Those offi­cers could eas­i­ly have tak­en a bribe and walked away, they chose to do the right thing.
It is up to this court to do the right thing and send a mes­sage that regard­less of who you are and what you may have done with your life all are equal in the sight of the law.
Failing which we are all wast­ing our time talk­ing about cor­rup­tion and the esca­la­tion of crime.
We will await the outcome.

With seri­ous crimes at an all-time high and cit­i­zens clam­or­ing for answers, the Government is under tremen­dous pres­sure from both the Opposition and civ­il soci­ety to come up with solutions.
The Government while in Opposition did promise that if elect­ed to office Jamaicans would be able to sleep with their doors open.

I sup­port­ed this Administration’s push for elec­tive office because of the inept­ness and cor­rup­tion with­in the rul­ing PNP. I was nev­er delud­ed into think­ing that if the JLP was elect­ed to office the coun­try would go from over 1200 homi­cides annu­al­ly to peo­ple being able to sleep with their doors open.
Neither did I think that if elect­ed the JLP would be this inept on crime and con­cil­ia­to­ry to lob­by groups which are par­tial­ly dri­ving crime on the Island.

This Government’s absolute weak­ness and unwill­ing­ness to empow­er the secu­ri­ty forces has been a green light of acqui­es­cence to Gangland to con­tin­ue with their activities.
They have ele­vat­ed their activ­i­ties to nev­er before seen lev­els al-la Montego Bay which is now a ver­i­ta­ble war zone.

I thought that the JLP could in no way be worse than the PNP on the sin­gu­lar issue of crime, the jury is still out on that thought.
If one under­stand how soci­eties work then one begins to grasp why the issue of crime has been such a focus of mine.
If we fix our crime prob­lem we begin the process of fix­ing our eco­nom­ic and social ills, it is imper­a­tive there­fore that we invest the appro­pri­ate ener­gy and resources into ensur­ing that we have a cred­i­ble jus­tice sys­tem and a coun­try built on the rule of law.
All things which enrich peo­ple’s lives are derived from those principles.

The Opposition PNP has zero cred­i­bil­i­ty on the issue of crime, it has been in pow­er for much longer peri­ods of time than the gov­ern­ing JLP and has, in fact, presided over much of the decline in our coun­try, finan­cial­ly, moral­ly, eth­i­cal­ly and as it relates to the nation’s security.
The Government has now embarked on uti­liz­ing the plea-bar­gain mech­a­nism as one of the tools in the deliv­ery of jus­tice, not a ground­break­ing move by any stretch but wor­thy nonetheless.

Many peo­ple are upset about this move as they see it as yet anoth­er attempt by the sys­tem to allow the guilty to go free with a slap on the wrist.
This is not an unrea­son­able fear to have con­sid­er­ing that the courts have been will­ing and active co-con­spir­a­tors in the Island’s incred­i­ble crime rate.
The courts con­tin­ue to grant bail to defen­dants who have been charged with mur­der over and over and over, in some cas­es up to five or more times before they are required to answer the first mur­der charge.
Killing, receiv­ing bail and knock­ing off wit­ness­es in the case is the favorite course for the Island’s killers, the courts are all too will­ing to oblige.

In seek­ing to assuage those fears, the Island’s jus­tice Minister Delroy Chuck told local media “The pub­lic at large must appre­ci­ate that, when you offer a less­er sen­tence, it’s not being weak on crime but you have to take into con­sid­er­a­tion the strength of your case going for­ward,” the min­is­ter insisted.
“On the face of it, it may seem pre­pos­ter­ous or repug­nant that you’re giv­ing a non-cus­to­di­al to a per­son who is charged with a seri­ous crime, but if the evi­dence is unavail­able, which means the man will go total­ly free, it might be in the inter­est of jus­tice for him to plead guilty and get a sen­tence to com­plete the file.”

I’m unsure why a case would be on the dock­et for any peri­od of time with­out case com­ple­tion but that’s a ques­tion for a dif­fer­ent day.
It’s remark­able how a total­ly rea­son­able sound­ing posi­tion can become a bit­ter taste in one’s mouth because of the char­ac­ter of the messenger.
Much of what Chuck had to say are sim­ply com­mon sense issues which can be fixed with greater super­vi­sion of the peo­ple who han­dle the cas­es from inves­ti­ga­tors to pros­e­cut­ing attorneys.
There is noth­ing ground­break­ing in his state­ments, how­ev­er, this is the very same Delroy Chuck who wants cas­es over five (5) years old tossed from court dock­ets (includ­ing mur­der cas­es) as a sup­posed path to clean­ing up those same dockets.
To the casu­al observ­er, those demands seem like a some­what rea­son­able posi­tion to take if you exclude the mur­der cas­es from the equation.

“What is impor­tant is for the cas­es to be com­plet­ed, and it seems to me that the best way to ensure that is the pros­e­cu­tion in all the cas­es now on tri­al should make it a point of duty to start a for­mal nego­ti­a­tion – maybe a writ­ten let­ter to the accused’s attor­ney and hope that a response comes back from the attor­ney to say they have dis­cussed it with their client (and) they are reject­ing the offer, or they are pre­pared to go into a nego­ti­a­tion.”Said Chuck.

Nonsense, those pro­ce­dures should be cod­i­fied in law not left up to let­ter writ­ing in this day and age, with a hope that some­one will reply in order for an agree­ment to be reached on an issue as impor­tant as a plea deal.
The best approach is to have those pro­ce­dures cod­i­fied, it should be on the table for all cas­es (unless oth­er­wise spec­i­fied in law).
Since the death penal­ty is no longer on the table mur­der accused should be giv­en the option to take a plea for life with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole as against with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
It is because of the tar­di­ness and lack of seri­ous­ness in the penal­ties why cit­i­zens are incensed about this procedure.

A clos­er look reveals that it is usu­al­ly defense attor­neys who cause some of the delays because they have not been paid for their ser­vices, or sim­ply because they under­stand the sys­tem and know full well that drag­ging cas­es out will end in a non-pros­e­cu­tion for their clients.
So in essence, were the coun­try to take Delroy Chuck’s path it would be reward­ing mur­der­ers and adding legit­i­ma­cy to those prac­tices which were start­ed by defense attorneys.

It’s impor­tant to pay atten­tion to what some defen­dants said: ” we can buss di case”.
That trans­late into there are ways to beat being held account­able in the sys­tem, so there is no need for them to take a plea.
We have the tail wag­ging the dog in Jamaica and things are not about to get better.
The rea­son behind Jamaica’s two polit­i­cal par­ties reluc­tance to stand against crim­i­nal­i­ty is an open question.

A man walk­ing through a short­cut one day in haste and with the desire not to be late, unfor­tu­nate­ly, lost his left eye from a low hang­ing branch. Instead of doing the right thing by remov­ing the branch, he told him­self he would leave it there so some oth­er per­son could lose an eye like he did.
On his way home that evening he walked the same route and lo and behold the next per­son to lose an eye to the branch was him.
This time his right eye was gouged and he was left total­ly blind.

One of the morals of this lit­tle sto­ry is, be care­ful what you wish for oth­ers, as that which you wish for oth­ers may very well befall you.
There are how­ev­er oth­er morals we may extrap­o­late from that same sto­ry. For example
When faced with a threat remove it deci­sive­ly or it will even­tu­al­ly over­whelm you.

There is a pre­vail­ing tone-deaf­ness on crime which is evi­dent to every­one except for Jamaicans themselves.
The shock­ing loss of life which has become a reg­u­lar part of pop cul­ture leads one to con­clude that the Island has reached a crit­i­cal mass , which indi­cates that the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple left in Jamaica are either crim­i­nals or in some way asso­ci­at­ed with criminality.

I under­stand that-that is an insid­i­ous and shock­ing state­ment to make but how else can we explain the sense of res­ig­na­tion with the present condition?
How does one explain the dai­ly butcher­ing of our busi­ness­peo­ple who make up the back­bone of our country?
How do we explain the con­stant car­nage and blood­shed which elic­it not much more than raised eyebrows?
Do we con­tin­ue to make the same asi­nine state­ments about crime even as com­mu­ni­ties and homes look more and more like the admin­is­tra­tive­ly seg­re­gat­ed sec­tions of some American prisons?

In what nor­mal sit­u­a­tion does a small town like Montego Bay which depends on tourism for its very sur­vival have pro­longed gun­bat­tles between maraud­ing gun­men and law enforce­ment offi­cials? Which leads us to the only log­i­cal con­clu­sion we must all come to.
Separate and apart from the vicious polar­iza­tion of our soci­ety which pits laborites against Comrades, the ad hominem attacks one attract for demand­ing qual­i­ty ser­vice from those who are sup­posed to deliv­er them, the soci­ety has def­i­nite­ly changed and for the worse.

Remarkably, even some in the dias­po­ra who ben­e­fit from stricter rules which neces­si­tate bet­ter account­abil­i­ty have become cheer­lead­ers for the state of anar­chy which con­tin­ue to evolve, devolv­ing the soci­ety in the process.
Why would one send back guns instead of school­books and com­put­ers? Why would we be active apol­o­gists and cheer­lead­ers for the law­less­ness from the rel­a­tive safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of our safer com­mu­ni­ties overseas?

The San Diego Union-Tribune in June 2009 said, “Ships from Miami steam into Jamaica’s main har­bor loaded with TV sets and blue jeans. But some of the most pop­u­lar U.S. imports nev­er appear on the man­i­fests: hand­guns, rifles and bul­lets that stoke one of the world’s high­est mur­der rates.
The vol­ume is much less than the flow of U.S. guns into Mexico that ends up in the hands of drug car­tels – Jamaican author­i­ties recov­er few­er than 1,000 firearms a year. But of those whose ori­gin can be traced, 80 per­cent come from the U.S., Jamaican law enforce­ment offi­cials have said in inter­views with The Associated Press”.

The nar­ra­tive that crime is every­where has been a talk­ing point for many peo­ple for far too long. Unfortunately, the nar­ra­tive is chang­ing with each pass­ing day. We don’t hear that line so much these days because the killers are demon­strat­ing that this is no joke, they are in charge.
Nevertheless, there are still more than enough illit­er­ates who are inca­pable of extri­cat­ing their faces from the ass­es of politi­cians long enough to rec­og­nize that this is not about pol­i­tics it’s about the sur­vival of a nation.

Any polit­i­cal par­ty, politi­cian or any oth­er per­son who is not a part of the solu­tion they are a part of the prob­lem. Our coun­try needs solu­tions not mind­less bots who tra­verse social media look­ing to attack others.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties have con­tributed to the destruc­tion of our cul­ture and our nation since 1962, not all to the same degree but both are guilty.
When I speak out I do so in my own medi­um, I answer to no trash nei­ther am I behold­en to any irrel­e­vant polit­i­cal hack who spend their time on Mark Zuckerberg’s medi­um, I own mine which makes me answer­able to .……
Me.
My love of coun­try tran­scend the nar­row con­fines of polit­i­cal alle­giances cen­tered on what one can derive.
We owe it to our­selves and our off­springs to leave this land our fore-par­ents toiled and died for a bet­ter place. We have no oblig­a­tion to sur­ren­der it to mur­der­ers. and rapists.

As a Jamaican who served my coun­try I have a stake in my coun­try, I own prop­er­ty there, I have fam­i­ly there.I have no vest­ed inter­est in either polit­i­cal par­ty, I call balls and strikes regard­less of who’s at bat.
It is silence and blind igno­rant alle­giance to polit­i­cal par­ties which has brought us to this.
It will be vig­i­lance and unmit­i­gat­ed demand for account­abil­i­ty and action which will get us out of it.
There is lit­er­al­ly no one who does not have a fam­i­ly mem­ber friend or acquain­tance who has been gunned down raped or robbed on that tiny sliv­er of land.
It has to come to an end and the time to do it is now. There must be bet­ter and more sophis­ti­cat­ed law enforce­ment best prac­tices, not the kind we see play­ing out every day on social media plat­forms in which the police seem clue­less and help­less in the face of law­less onslaughts.

The imagery we see of heav­i­ly armed brazen punks are no dif­fer­ent than the images we see in Sub-Saharan Africa, in parts of South America and the Middle East or even some sec­tions of Mexico.
There is one word which char­ac­ter­izes those areas, it is “ungovern­able.”
Jamaica’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship may con­tin­ue to put the love of pow­er over the coun­try or it can rec­og­nize the dire straits fac­ing the nation and begin an edu­ca­tion­al cam­paign which tells of the exis­ten­tial fight the nation is facing.

Jamaicans are not ungovern­able, Jamaicans are forced to fol­low laws in oth­er coun­tries. The prob­lem is that the lead­er­ship of the coun­try com­pris­ing both polit­i­cal par­ties have ced­ed the coun­try to inter­na­tion­al lob­by groups which have zero pow­er in their home coun­try to impact policy.
The Government made a good first step recent­ly by not send­ing a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the con­fer­ence in Uraguay host­ed by the Inter America Commission on Human Rights.

It was a good first step even as the admin­is­tra­tion bun­gled the response by sug­gest­ing it did not send a rep­re­sen­ta­tive because of the title of the conference.
The first order of busi­ness is to tell those lob­by groups, we will pun­ish those who go out and will­ful­ly abuse our cit­i­zens but don’t ever tell us how to enforce our laws and keep our coun­try safe. If they can­not accept those assur­ances they should be shown the door.
The Government must unshack­le the police and ensure once again that those who would take inno­cent lives are under no illu­sions that theirs is fair game.

Police offi­cers are called on to set­tle dis­putes, save lives, be coun­selors, deliv­er babies, act as secu­ri­ty guards, secur­ing many who should be left to their own evil devices and do a pletho­ra of oth­er tasks.
Officers are expect­ed to be all things to all people.
And just in case you for­got, they are expect­ed to run toward the bul­lets when every­one else is run­ning away.

In today’s soci­eties, they are also required to be babysit­ters, it is instruc­tive to note that even when they do the babysit­ting and gath­er up the unwant­ed, unpro­tect­ed chil­dren and place them in the only place they have to place them, there are those who crit­i­cize them for plac­ing them in jail cells.
The idea that cops should always be on the look­out for stray­ing unpro­tect­ed chil­dren is one thing, the idea that they should not be placed in jails is another.
This issue is now off the table as there are now so-called places of safe­ty which cater to those needs.

It is against the back­ground of par­ents reneg­ing on their core respon­si­bil­i­ties to be good stew­ards of the chil­dren they bring into the world that these prob­lems still linger.
There is a seri­ous cri­sis as it relates to the way chil­dren are being cared for, which will only be fixed by seri­ous leg­is­la­tion which attach­es ade­quate puni­tive com­po­nents for par­ents who leave minor chil­dren alone to fend for themselves.
The police can­not be expect­ed to babysit peo­ple’s chil­dren and take care of the oth­er func­tions they are asked to attend to.
This crime wave the coun­try is present­ly engulfed in will only be exac­er­bat­ed if these minor chil­dren are left to their own devices.

Against that back­ground Superintendent of police in charge of the Parish of Manchester, Wayne Cameron told a meet­ing of the Manchester Council
“We do make the effort to get our stu­dents off the road, but I just want to say to you that parental respon­si­bil­i­ties must not real­ly rest with the police. Parents real­ly need to take a hold of their chil­dren and if they are to get home by a cer­tain time then that is real­ly the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the moth­er and father.”
Superintendent Cameron was respond­ing to a mem­ber of the parish coun­cil who want­ed an update on the cur­few orders in place for chil­dren to be off the street by a des­ig­nat­ed time.

The idea that cur­fews and con­tin­ued pres­sure on the police to fix every prob­lem are unre­al­is­tic on the front end.
As crime con­tin­ues to esca­late it is imper­a­tive that those in pow­er rec­og­nize that the chil­dren who roam the streets unpro­tect­ed today are the killers of tomorrow.
There is much talk with­in the pub­lic spaces about social inter­ven­tion as it relates to deal­ing with crime.
There is an old Jamaican proverb which says “you can­not bend a grown tree,“If social inter­ven­tion is to be added to the range of tools aimed at cor­rect­ing the nation’s down­ward tra­jec­to­ry now is the time to do it.

Social inter­ven­tion is uptown jar­gon which rolls of the lying decep­tive tongues of those with­in the elit­ist class who gov­ern and shape pol­i­cy. It is-is a dis­tant con­cept which absolves them from the hard work of actu­al governance.
Taking care of the youth through the process­es which ensure that those who bring chil­dren into the world take care of them, makes social inter­ven­tion a prac­ti­cal con­cept rather than an intel­lec­tu­al argument.

Many of the nation’s lead­ers at low­er lev­els of the food chain should in actu­al­i­ty be at the apex of the pyramid.

I hate to say “I told you so.”
But I did tell you so!
When the so-called ZOSO bill became pub­lic knowl­edge I wrote exten­sive­ly on the futil­i­ty of what the act rep­re­sent­ed, out­lin­ing fun­da­men­tal weak­ness­es in the frame­work of the pro­posed law, I went to great pains to tell the Jamaican peo­ple why this pro­pos­al was a non-starter.

Now accord­ing to our friends over at the Jamaica Gleaner (MoBay In Panic — 13 Murders In Six Days Spark Questions About ZOSO’s Effectiveness)

Business lead­ers, stake­hold­ers, and cit­i­zens in St James are now in pan­ic, tak­en aback at the state of crime in the parish after an aston­ish­ing 13 mur­ders over the past week.The spate of killings has left fright­ened res­i­dents won­der­ing if the calm brought on by the zone of spe­cial oper­a­tions (ZOSO) still under­way in Mount Salem is now com­plete­ly shat­tered. “We are in a cri­sis! The secu­ri­ty forces and the min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty seem clue­less of any method or process that would sup­port the ordi­nary cit­i­zen in secur­ing safe pas­sage as we go about our busi­ness,” declared attor­ney-at-law Nathan Robb, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MBCCI).

“We all have to tra­verse the streets day and night, and at any point in time any­where in Montego Bay, a life can be tak­en, as these shoot­ings are not tak­ing place in some remote sec­tion of the city, or our so-called ghet­to com­mu­ni­ties, it is in the cen­ter of the city.”
He added, “Our lead­ers in Montego Bay have remained silent for fear of embar­rass­ing Government and their friends, out of fear that it will dam­age tourism, but crime is already dam­ag­ing those who work in the pro­duc­tive sec­tor, so devel­op­ment is ulti­mate­ly affected.”
Read more here: http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​7​1​0​2​4​/​m​o​b​a​y​-​p​a​n​i​c​-​1​3​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​s​-​s​i​x​-​d​a​y​s​-​s​p​a​r​k​-​q​u​e​s​t​i​o​n​s​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​z​o​sos

As I said after the leg­is­la­tion became law, I would step aside and be silent so that the law can unrav­el in front of the eyes of the Jamaican people.
The pri­ma­ry point I have con­sis­tent­ly made is that this law was designed to pla­cate the pub­lic with an extreme­ly low like­li­hood it could pos­si­bly have any mea­sur­able pos­i­tive results to point to.

Many peo­ple thought I was too harsh on the law, oth­ers believed I was being polit­i­cal, go figure.
As I said then I did not need to wait to see that a bar­rel rolling down­hill unob­struct­ed toward the ocean, would actu­al­ly end up in the ocean.
It is at best naive and worse case rather stu­pid to expect good results from bad policy.

Here’s the unadul­ter­at­ed fact, at this rate Jamaica is going to end up a failed state, we are extreme­ly close to it.
This is pos­si­ble because the peo­ple elect­ed to lead have demon­strat­ed their alle­giance to inter­est groups with roots over­seas, rather than attend to the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the country.

To those adopt­ing the talk­ing points of the clue­less class of upper Saint Andrew, talk­ing about meth­ods of polic­ing, I say many of you even as cops were at best win­dow dress­ings, “what do you know about effec­tive policing”?
There is only one solu­tion for deal­ing with these mur­der­ing scums who kill at will, tough, no-non­sense take no pris­on­ers polic­ing, their choice.
As long as the Government and oppo­si­tion par­ty con­tin­ue to give tac­it sup­port to crim­i­nals by shack­ling the secu­ri­ty forces, the lives of peo­ple will have zero val­ue in this coun­try which has become a par­adise for criminals.