Amidst the killings tak­ing place in Jamaica is a dark back­sto­ry which speaks to the seri­ous­ness of the mur­ders, it ought to send a shiv­er up the spine of every­one with an inter­est in our country.
Even as the Government pats itself on the back for the sta­t­ic sup­pres­sion mech­a­nism it has put in place, the blood­let­ting con­tin­ues unchecked.
All of this while sol­diers and police offi­cers are stand­ing around search­ing the back­packs of chil­dren going to school.

If you care about Jamaica it behoove you to care about what is hap­pen­ing to her, if you have a law enforce­ment back­ground you def­i­nite­ly under­stand that what has been insti­tut­ed as a crime sup­pres­sion mech­a­nism is a pub­lic rela­tions stunt designed to placate.
This is not about pol­i­tics it is about pro­fes­sion­al­ism and pro­duc­ing results. At some point in time, we have to shed the gang col­ors and think about the black gold and green.

For starters, there have been no few­er killings as a result of the cha­rade the Government has put in place. In fact look­ing at the imagery of the Zones of Special Operations it reeks of grade-school-ism, kids play­ing cops and rob­bers even.
Of course, this child’s play should have been expect­ed, I cer­tain­ly did all I could to draw atten­tion to its ridicu­lous nature. What else would any­one expect when we have rank ama­teurs and polit­i­cal hacks design­ing crime poli­cies and poor­ly trained feck­less and afraid ama­teurs exe­cut­ing those strategies?

Last July Richard Ramdial was mur­dered in broad day­light as he sat in his car in traf­fic, yes­ter­day October 23^rd his father Dennis Ramdial was mur­dered at his busi­ness place on Beechwood Avenue in Kingston.

Whenever these kinds of killings occur mem­bers of the pub­lic are left to spec­u­late as to the rea­sons they happen.
Because they were busi­ness­men, the ini­tial assump­tions in the absence of prop­er inves­ti­ga­tions and arrests, are that they were not giv­ing in to the demands of extortionists.
Fair assump­tions to make, which makes these killings even more ter­ri­fy­ing and the need to stop them more pressing.
Then there are those who jump to the con­clu­sion that maybe they were involved in some activ­i­ties which were unto­ward. As if that pos­si­bil­i­ty jus­ti­fies what­ev­er fate is met­ed out to them.
Those assump­tions unwit­ting­ly miss the deep tragedy of the killings them­selves, giv­ing thought instead to con­coct­ed maybe this and maybe that over the real and present dan­ger the killings indicate.

There is no short­age of experts in Jamaica, every­one has hifa­lutin ide­al­is­tic twen­ty-sec­ond-cen­tu­ry ideas [sic]on what to do to rein in this murder-monster.
In the ridicu­lous mud­dle of lawyers, philoso­phers, politi­cos and oth­ers who have no busi­ness shap­ing pol­i­cy but does any­way, amidst the omnipresent wannabes, they all miss a cru­cial fact.
We are liv­ing in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, our prob­lems require fix­es of now, not [super galac­ti­cal fix­es of the myth­i­cal star-trek type].
Our coun­try has become far too enam­ored with the ideals of the devel­oped world which we are not yet ready for. We have tak­en on a men­tal­i­ty befit­ting Scandinavia. Societies built on wealth accu­mu­lat­ed through cen­turies of African exploita­tion, racial homoge­nous soci­eties, soci­eties which first estab­lished the rule of law as the bul­wark of their foundations.

Most west­ern European soci­eties estab­lished the rule of law as their foun­da­tions, they are wealthy states which do not wel­come new and dif­fer­ent peo­ple into their societies.
Those soci­eties are bound to have low crime.
Jamaica has decid­ed to emu­late those coun­tries and is apt to point to their law enforce­ment meth­ods with­out under­stand­ing the fun­da­men­tals which are behind the low crime rates in west­ern Europe and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Scandinavian region.

In a sen­tence, after 55 years Jamaica has demon­strat­ed an unwill­ing­ness to estab­lish the rule of law as the foun­da­tion for our par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy but wants to have the rel­a­tive tran­quil­i­ty of the states which have.
In essence, like most of the African nations still strug­gling to shake off the last ves­tiges of their colo­nial­ist past Jamaica’s polit­i­cal lead­ers too have failed mis­er­ably at fig­ur­ing out how to set the coun­try on a sus­tain­able path forward.

Our coun­try is at a cross­roads, now is the time, if ever at all we are going to arrest the decline we must do so now.
The coun­try is awash in high pow­ered weapons and a seem­ing­ly end­less sup­ply of ammu­ni­tion. In 2010 we wit­nessed that there were the desire and the capa­bil­i­ty among ele­ments of the soci­ety to chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment through force of arms.

Prior to that and since then admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties have been derelict in ful­fill­ing their respon­si­bil­i­ties and in many cas­es may be char­ac­ter­ized as co-con­spir­a­tors in the wave of crime which con­tin­ue to wash over the coun­try tak­ing the final under­pin­nings of the coun­try we once knew.

While the rev­e­la­tions of large weapons and ammu­ni­tion finds at var­i­ous entry points by the secu­ri­ty forces are cause for cel­e­bra­tion they also leave many ques­tions unanswered.

Even as I say kudos to the secu­ri­ty forces, I can­not shake the uneasy feel­ing I have and the knot in my throat from think­ing that the caches found may rep­re­sent what the smug­glers want to give to author­i­ties as they slip larg­er quan­ti­ties of weapons right past their noses.

In addi­tion to that, I must again raise the ques­tion why?
Why are the secu­ri­ty forces unable to set up sting oper­a­tions to nab who­ev­er comes to claim the illic­it consignments?
Why can’t the police and mil­i­tary intel­li­gence coor­di­nate with their American coun­ter­parts to stop the flow of American guns and ammu­ni­tion into the Island?

It is a well-doc­u­ment­ed fact that drug car­tels have used this time-test­ed strat­e­gy to divert atten­tion away while they pass huge amounts of con­tra­band undetected.
If Jamaican author­i­ties are to have real suc­cess in this fight it has to think two steps ahead of the crim­i­nal net­works oper­at­ing bi-costal­ly in fur­ther­ance of crime on the Island.

The secu­ri­ty forces can­not allow itself to be lured down rab­bit holes chas­ing after lures intend­ed to dis­tract from the real prize.
We hear the very ger­mane ques­tion all the time, where do these poor urban kids get mon­ey to pur­chase these sophis­ti­cat­ed weapons and seem­ing­ly end­less sup­plies of ammunition?
The answers are star­ing us all in the face. There are Jamaicans liv­ing in the United States who are active­ly send­ing these weapons and ammu­ni­tion back into Jamaica in many cas­es using inge­nious meth­ods to avoid detection.

The method­olo­gies being employed by crim­i­nals in fur­ther­ance of their objec­tives are increas­ing­ly ingenious.
With the lim­it­ed train­ing, exper­tise, resources, and cor­rup­tion with­in the secu­ri­ty forces, Jamaica is at a dis­tinct disadvantage.
I can­not shake the feel­ing we are chas­ing the pen­nies while miss­ing the dollars.

I under­stand how size­able finds can be a cause of eupho­ria for the men and women in the field. In fact, when I served I was extreme­ly ecsta­t­ic when I removed a sin­gle gun from the streets.
Nevertheless, those finds must rep­re­sent the begin­ning of inves­ti­ga­tions, not the end.
In the lat­est find police revealed that they arrest­ed one per­son. The inves­ti­ga­tion must now begin in earnest. It should not be about run­ning To the near­est micro­phone but should be cen­tered now on secur­ing a war­rant for this sus­pec­t’s cell­phone with a view to see­ing who he has been talk­ing to over­seas in recent times and what are the con­tents of those conversations.

The idea that some­one can ship a con­tain­er out of the United States or any oth­er coun­try for that mat­ter with­out expos­ing him or her­self sub­stan­tial­ly is a con­cept which eludes me.
I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe Jamaican author­i­ties are not doing near­ly enough to fol­low up on these ship­ments with law enforce­ment over­seas with a view to iden­ti­fy­ing those who send guns ammu­ni­tion and oth­er con­tra­band into the country.

These cas­es are won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ties for the Jamaican police to demon­strate that they are capa­ble of inves­ti­gat­ing crimes.
Bringing those respon­si­ble to jus­tice wher­ev­er they are is the great­est deter­rent to those involved in these illic­it practices.
Failing which, the police will be left cel­e­brat­ing these finds, the lion’s share of the illic­it activ­i­ties will con­tin­ue and the nation will con­tin­ue to be inun­dat­ed with ille­gal guns.

I gen­er­al­ly avoid com­ment­ing on cas­es under police inves­ti­ga­tions for sev­er­al rea­sons. (1) You nev­er know how inves­ti­ga­tions will turn out; eat­ing crow is not some­thing I par­tic­u­lar­ly relish.(2) the police deserve all of the def­er­ence they can get to do an already dif­fi­cult job. With that said, one homi­cide has caught my atten­tion amidst the litany of oth­ers, not for any par­tic­u­lar defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic except that it seems that par­tic­u­lar homi­cide should not be too dif­fi­cult to solve.
Nevertheless, over a year has passed, and still, the deceased’s fam­i­ly has not got­ten clo­sure as the police have not made an arrest.
Now I under­stand that it’s easy to shrug and say, “join the line; there are thou­sands of unsolved mur­ders in Jamaica,” but again, the cir­cum­stances of this case cause me to sec­ond guess my def­er­ence to the police on this one.

The case involved the death of 51-year-old Germaine Junior at a home sup­pos­ed­ly owned by an attor­ney at law, Patrick Bailey, over a year ago.
According to local report­ing, the deceased was stabbed sev­er­al times and shot once in the head.
The deceased man was report­ed to be a nat­u­ral­ized American cit­i­zen and was sup­pos­ed­ly vis­it­ing the Island upon his death. Mister Junior’s fam­i­ly is incensed at the police for good rea­son. The fam­i­ly insists if their loved one were a promi­nent per­son, the case would have been solved long ago. They bemoan the fact that the police have been in con­tact with them only once in the last year since mis­ter Junior’s death.
A cou­ple of points have stuck out like a sore thumb, in this case, leav­ing much room for spec­u­la­tion in the absence of bet­ter report­ing and more infor­ma­tion forth­com­ing from the police.

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

♦ How could Bailey sleep through what must have been a strug­gle, much less the sound of a gun­shot in his house?
♦ The state­ment that he stum­bled upon the body at 4:30 am could only have come from Bailey him­self, which gives it lit­tle cred­i­bil­i­ty under the circumstances.
♦ A prop­er coro­ner’s inquest should nail down approx­i­mate­ly what time mis­ter Junior was killed, as against Patrick Bailey’s assertions.
♦ The Police report­ed that there was no forced entry to Bailey’s house. This is absolute­ly crit­i­cal evi­dence as it demon­strates that who­ev­er killed mis­ter Junior had access to the residence.
♦ A knife believed to be the one used to stab mis­ter Junior was alleged­ly found beside his body, was it checked for fingerprints?

♦ If Mister Junior was liv­ing abroad at the time and was only vis­it­ing the Island, why would the police and oth­ers allege that he was a care­tak­er of the residence?
♦ The fact that mis­ter Junior’s body was found with mul­ti­ple stab wounds sug­gests a crime of pas­sion cou­pled with the fact that he was also shot.
♦ Was Patrick Bailey’s per­son checked for marks indi­cat­ing whether he was involved in a strug­gle, or did the police take his word that he slept through a stab­bing and a shoot­ing? If not, why was it not done?
♦ Why was Patrick Bailey ruled med­ical­ly unfit to give state­ments to police by Doctor Jeptah Ford at the time?
♦ According to local media reports after the inci­dent, Patrick Bailey’s doc­tor and client, Jephthah Ford, instruct­ed that he be con­fined to bed after report­ed­ly exhibit­ing signs of being unwell. Ford also said he was not fit to give a state­ment at the time.

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

I am mak­ing no assump­tions about who killed this man; I am not say­ing any­one, in par­tic­u­lar, is respon­si­ble. I am say­ing that the Police should get up off their back­sides and do the inves­tiga­tive work, and who­ev­er killed mis­ter Junior should be ban­gled up and bun­dled off to jail. Bailey was report­ed to be arro­gant when con­tact­ed by the media assert­ing quote,” any­thing dem seh, mek dem seh it. I have no answer; just pub­lish what­ev­er they say. My back is broad. I have no com­ments, no com­ments, no com­ments! Just sim­ply, you report what­ev­er you want to,”
According to local media report­ing, Assistant Commissioner of Police Élan Powell, who had the crime port­fo­lio at the time of the homi­cide, insist­ed that the police were hid­ing noth­ing and the inves­ti­ga­tions would be done, and the chips would fall where they may.

This state­ment does lit­tle to assuage the anger and dis­trust the fam­i­ly of mis­ter Junior har­bors as it relates to the police’s abil­i­ty to bring the killer of their loved one to justice.
Clearly, what­ev­er the under­ly­ing assump­tions and pre­sump­tions in this case are, a human being was mur­dered, and some­one is respon­si­ble for his unlaw­ful killing. This can­not be a dif­fi­cult case to solve one way or the other.
If the own­er of the premis­es, a well-heeled lawyer, did not kill the vic­tim, some­one else did in his house.
It does not require rock­et sci­ence to fig­ure this case out; if no one broke into the house and there was no one else in the house, then the per­son in the house is the killer, or the per­son in the house knows who killed mis­ter Junior and has aid­ed and abet­ted the coverup of this hor­ren­dous murder.

This case is a trav­es­ty and should not stand; the police can­not be that incom­pe­tent or, worse, pissed-scared that they are unwill­ing to arrest the killer or killers.
Whatever the police know caused them to rule Patrick Bailey out as a sus­pect ought to be made pub­lic or told to the griev­ing family.
Bailey deserves no spe­cial treat­ment or def­er­ence under the law over and above any­one else, which would give the police rea­son not to divulge how they deter­mined he was not a suspect.

In February of 2016, Assistant com­mis­sion­er Powell told a Gleaner Editor’s forum that the police did not wish to name the sus­pects in the mat­ter but sought to assure that the police were active­ly pur­su­ing the case.
Since Powel was in charge of crime at the time, both he and the head of crime must now give a prop­er account­ing to this bereaved fam­i­ly as they are duty-bound to do.
There should be no more mur­ders swept under the rug because some­one knows some­one who knows someone.
This should not be allowed to stand, and the fam­i­ly should not stand for it; they are right in demand­ing answers.

.

.

.

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

There is a cer­tain sense of detached res­ig­na­tion asso­ci­at­ed with the killings going on today, whether they are in the United States or any oth­er nation includ­ing our own small Island of Jamaica.
We no longer process each death with the same amount of grief and rev­er­ence we did in times past. Whether the grue­some­ness of the images and the speed and fre­quen­cy with which the images bom­bard our brains have desen­si­tized us is for the experts to decide.

Whether the sense­less­ness of the killing of 59 inno­cent con­cert­go­ers in Las Vegas Nevada or the mur­ders of Horace and Daisy Lyn in May Pen Clarendon, the shock­ing real­i­ty is that we are so desen­si­tized to the mur­ders that we only respond to them as sta­tis­tics or based on the fame and impor­tance of the victims.

The truth is that every time an inno­cent life is snuffed out we are less­er as humans for the loss of that per­son­’s con­tri­bu­tion to mankind.
The tragedy now is in the care­free way in which we treat the death of indi­vid­u­als. Like a sin­gle leaf falling from a tree at the end of its time so too do we treat the many indi­vid­ual mur­ders each day, sav­ing our atten­tion and in some cas­es our out­rage for the mass casu­al­ty situations.

It does not mean that those of us who are yet alive are all cru­el uncar­ing peo­ple it means that we can only process the cru­el­ty of each act in a lim­it­ed amount of time before we are greet­ed with another.
Sometimes so many indi­vid­ual cas­es that we can no longer pay spe­cial atten­tion, we sim­ply glance at the headlines.

What is it which caus­es some­one to open fire on a group of inno­cent peo­ple whom he does­n’t know? What caus­es some­one to make the deci­sion to blow up inno­cent men women and chil­dren he has nev­er met?
What is it which caus­es any­one to slaugh­ter an inno­cent cou­ple when sim­ply rob­bing them in dis­guise would suf­fice if rob­bery was the motive?

How many more lives will be snuffed out before the Government stop lis­ten­ing to pre­ten­tious peo­ple with their own agen­das and take the req­ui­site steps to pro­tect­ing the Jamaican people?
According to the report­ing, the Las Vegas shoot­er took his own life, he was not the only killer to take his own life before author­i­ties could arrest him, he won’t be the last.
One thing is cer­tain every mass killer in the United States know that if caught he will nev­er see the light of day again.

Can we say the same for Jamaica?I think not, killers sim­ply walk away with pret­ty lit­tle fear they will be held account­able for their actions.
The few who are brought before the courts are prompt­ly grant­ed bail and allowed back onto the streets to kill again as many times as they wish.
Nothing in the nation’s laws or the sup­port giv­en to law enforce­ment sends a clear mes­sage that crime will not be tolerated.

Contrarily, the lack of unequiv­o­cal sup­port ded­i­cat­ed to law enforce­ment and the lax atti­tude of the courts sends a clear mes­sage that the lives of cit­i­zens are not impor­tant unless they are from upper St Andrew.
The clock is tick­ing on this issue before we reach a point of no return. In 2010 Jamaica received a very impor­tant mes­sage of the clear and present dan­ger immi­nent against the state

The United States has the law enforce­ment infra­struc­ture to repel an attack on the sov­er­eign­ty and legit­i­ma­cy of the state Jamaica does not.
Clearly, despite the killings, there is a sense of busi­ness as usu­al on the part of the admin­is­tra­tion, that the func­tions of Government can be advanced despite the dai­ly mur­ders with a lit­tle mag­ic act involv­ing smoke and mirrors.

The oppo­si­tion par­ty is far worse, it’s goal is the con­trol of state pow­er and the pil­fer­ing of scarce tax-pay­ers resources.
That has been its modus operan­di, there is noth­ing to indi­cate that any­thing will change with that party.
So the nation is left with the hope that the Holness admin­is­tra­tion will stop the pos­tur­ing, send the so-called human rights lob­by pack­ing and get to work secur­ing the nation.

In case the admin­is­tra­tion is won­der­ing where secur­ing the nation falls with­in its raft of respon­si­bil­i­ties, the answer is num­ber one.
Every Administration’s pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty is to ensure the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the people.
Advancing the idea that there will be pros­per­i­ty in this mur­der mad­ness is sim­ply anoth­er act in the smoke and mir­rors sideshow.

I write about the val­ue of truth from time to time, I do so because I believe fun­da­men­tal­ly in the impor­tance of truth as a moral prin­ci­ple on which we must build our societies.
As a kid, I prid­ed myself on speak­ing the truth to the best of my abil­i­ty. My guardians knew well, that what­ev­er my answer was to their ques­tions they could rely on it. I strove nev­er to let them down on that front.
As a par­ent now, I impress upon my own chil­dren the impor­tance of being hon­est with their answers so that when trou­ble comes I may count on their answers to guide me in my defense of them.

I recent­ly wrote about the times we are liv­ing in and in that arti­cle, I won­dered whether or not we have entered a post-fac­tu­al stage as some experts sur­mise. What is evi­dent is the fact that those who con­trol infor­ma­tion medi­ums do have the abil­i­ty to shape nar­ra­tives. Those peo­ple are not always hon­est players.
Does that mean we have entered a post-fac­tu­al world or have we sim­ply entered a phase in our his­to­ry in which those who pro­mul­gate infor­ma­tion under­stand the val­ue of shap­ing the nar­ra­tive to suit their own agendas?

EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS AND THOSE WHO CRY WOLF

Take for instance the fact that there are now few­er police shoot­ings in Jamaica since the Bruce Golding Administration passed the INDECOM act into law.
Does that fact mean that there were uni­ver­sal extra­ju­di­cial killings by the police?
Or rather does it mean that police offi­cers have cho­sen to be less proac­tive in going after crim­i­nals and there­fore vio­lent law-enforce­ment encoun­ters with crim­i­nals have gone down?
More impor­tant­ly, as a result, crim­i­nals have been vast­ly embold­ened and the nation has seen a sub­se­quent increase in homi­cides and oth­er vio­lent crimes includ­ing assaults on police offi­cers themselves.

In order to under­stand this ques­tion, one has to look at the def­i­n­i­tion of extra­ju­di­cial killings.
[Extrajudicial killings are char­ac­ter­ized as is the killing of a per­son by gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties with­out the sanc­tion of any judi­cial pro­ceed­ing or legal process].

In this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, there is noth­ing which speaks to the dan­gers police face when they are forced to use lethal force to save their own lives or the lives of oth­ers in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of their duties. And for good reason.
The fact that police are forced to shoot vio­lent crim­i­nals though regret­table, may be viewed three ways depend­ing on what nar­ra­tive a per­son choos­es to convey.
(a) vio­lent police officers.(b) vio­lent soci­ety.© both.
If a police offi­cer kills a per­son who pos­es no threat to him­self or the life of oth­ers that action would con­sti­tute an extra­ju­di­cial killing.
What is wrong and decep­tive is that there are those who take large swaths of data and use that data to make their argu­ments that police are killing large amounts of inno­cent peo­ple extrajudicially.

Carolynn Gomes did that and no one except myself chal­lenged her, instead, they gave her a nation­al hon­or for dis­tort­ing data, not just at home but in front of International Human rights agencies.
Terrence Williams learned the val­ue of that les­son to make his points. Of course, that kind of decep­tion could only fly in a soci­ety intent on sup­port­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty, a soci­ety igno­rant as hell or both.

DATA MANIPULATION

The Commissioner of INDECOM must sub­mit quar­ter­ly reports on its func­tions to the parliament.
Those reports indi­cate the nuances of how the agency is pro­gress­ing as per its man­date. Withing those reports are numer­i­cal data of peo­ple charged with crimes, files sub­mit­ted to the Director of Public Prosecution for action, files sub­mit­ted to the three agen­cies over which INDECOM has over­sight for action by those depart­ment heads among oth­er things.

Despite the fact that INDECOM is the agency tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions and arrest­ing errant offi­cers of the [3]departments, and despite hav­ing done it’s very best to do so, INDECOM’s prin­ci­pal offi­cers con­tin­ue to smear the police that its use of force is a cause for con­cern even though it[the chief inves­tiga­tive agency] have no evi­dence of wrong­do­ing by offi­cers involved in these use of force instances.

Gone are the days when there were cries and out­cries that the police are a law unto themselves.
There is an over­sight agency, a con­fronta­tion­al, inef­fec­tive one that pro­duces noth­ing over and above what the CCRB was doing but one nonetheless.
In fact, every Tom Dick and Henry[sic] is now an author­i­ty on police use of force protocols.
Truth can­not be what Terrence Williams or his sup­port­ers say it is or what the con­niv­ing duplic­i­tous media allows him to proffer.
Truth must super­sede rhetoric and dem­a­gog­ic smear.

We live in vio­lent times, we must hold our law enforce­ment agen­cies account­able, no one wants to live in an unac­count­able police state.
On the oth­er hand, it is disin­gen­u­ous and wrong to con­tin­ue to use the term extra­ju­di­cial killings when there is no evi­dence to sup­port those claims.
A lie is a lie no mat­ter how many times it is retold. As such, it is impor­tant that the nation under­stand that no mat­ter how many times Terrence Williams and his sup­port­ers lie about ques­tion­able killings it does not make them so, guns includ­ed or not.

It is very dis­turb­ing that Terrence Williams can con­tin­ue to give the false impres­sion to a gullible pub­lic that the police has no legal right to use lethal force if they are attacked with weapons oth­er than a gun.
In fact, the Police has the right to use lethal force to defend his life even if an assailant does not have a weapon of any kind, as long as the assault on his per­son con­vinces him/​her that his/​her life is in danger.

No police offi­cer has an oblig­a­tion to absorb assault in the pur­suit of his duty. When you attack an offi­cer of the law you must know that you by your actions have placed your life in danger.
What is even more despi­ca­ble is that those who ought to know bet­ter have gob­bled up fake news and embarked on the process of spread­ing it against the nation’s law enforce­ment Agencies.
If the tra­di­tion­al media is unable or unwill­ing to push back against this kind of mis­in­for­ma­tion maybe it’s a sig­nal to the rest of us that its time has come and gone.

WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR THE JCF TO CORRECT THIS?

From time to time I write about the lack of prop­er real police train­ing for mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
I also talk about a seem­ing lack of super­vi­sion and prob­a­bly just as impor­tant a sense of Esprit-de-corp which has vis­i­bly and demon­stra­bly been miss­ing Whenever mem­bers of the force attempt to effect arrests.

At a time when prop­er train­ing, lead­er­ship, super­vi­sion, and coör­di­na­tion are crit­i­cal to law enforce­ment the JCF seems to be hell-bent on wait­ing on the next big event at which it will fail.

The images in the video below are a tes­ta­ment that offi­cers are not being prop­er­ly trained. They are not being prop­er­ly super­vised and they are not exe­cut­ing their duties properly.

This video ought to be a must in lec­tures on what not to do.
Not only should the offi­cers have arrest­ed the assailant imme­di­ate­ly, the offi­cer who fired his weapon at the last moment fur­ther exac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion with a net zero effect.
Someone could have been killed as he fired his weapon.
These occur­rences are not new, we write about them, social media is replete with them yet the hier­ar­chy of the JCF has not done a damn thing to change this kind of thing and change it fast.

Just a day ago a sin­gle gun­man killed 59 peo­ple and seri­ous­ly wound­ed over 500, even though Jamaica is thou­sands of miles from Las Vegas Nevada the JCF can learn valu­able lessons from these incidents.
The JCF has got to be bet­ter, it has got to learn lessons from oth­ers and imple­ment plans to deal effec­tive­ly with the chal­lenges which are sure to come its way in this present reality.
If three and four offi­cers can­not effect a sim­ple arrest of an indi­vid­ual who assaults one of them with­out fir­ing a weapon in a futile attempt to stop that assailant how will it react to a seri­ous assault?

WHY SINGLE OUT HUNTS BAY?

For decades the dress code of the Jamaica Constabulary Force has been a sore subject for members of that police department.
For rank and file officers who are required to go out and make arrests and be responsive to the requirements of modern-day policing, the impracticality of the uniform is a real issue.

The uni­form still being worn by the police has not kept pace with the ever-evolv­ing face of policing.
The Federation which acts as a de fac­to union for rank and file offi­cers cer­tain­ly have not been as stri­dent as it should be in lob­by­ing for a more prac­ti­cal work dress for its members.
Additionally, the uni­form worn by senior mem­bers from Inspector to Commissioner depicts an image that they are not inter­est­ed in doing police work or worse that they are above actu­al policing.

In police depart­ments across the world, police offi­cers wear full dress uni­form with util­i­ty belt replete with accou­ter­ments of the trade. This is true of the last joined guy or girl all the way to the chief of the department.

There is no log­i­cal rea­son for the uni­form still in exis­tence except that this is the uni­form which they have had for decades.
I think it is safe to say that there are many things which we have had for decades which aren’t work­ing so well, that includes some of our laws.
Not only is the uni­form of the police cer­e­mo­ni­al and imprac­ti­cal the hier­ar­chy of the force in typ­i­cal utter obsti­na­cy con­tin­ue to insist on the wear­ing of dress uni­form as opposed to the blue den­im even in cas­es where it is a dan­ger to offi­cer’s lives.
I will come back to that.

There are offi­cers who are called upon to take on crim­i­nals in ways oth­er police offi­cers are not.
This has been true through­out the nations short his­to­ry, it will be true as long as this nation exists, it is sim­ply the way things work.
This is not unique to Jamaica, it is stan­dard pro­ce­dure in police depart­ments across the world.
That is the rea­son two offi­cers who have had dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences serv­ing in the same depart­ment will have dif­fer­ent opin­ions in dis­cus­sions on aspects of the very same department.

Some of those spe­cial func­tions include the Mobile Reserve offi­cers, CIB, and oth­er offi­cers, also there are offi­cers who are asked to pen­e­trate deep into depressed com­mu­ni­ties and bring polic­ing to those residents.
In depressed com­mu­ni­ties all across the coun­try and in places like Riverton City and oth­ers with­in the Hunts Bay police area of responsibility.
Some of these offi­cers are asked to ride motor­cy­cles and are gen­er­al­ly required to work night shifts.

The abil­i­ty to use stealth in the per­for­mance of their duties is absolute­ly crit­i­cal to these offi­cers who risk their lives dai­ly with­out the val­ue of back­up in short order.
Having prac­ti­cal uni­forms (not dress cer­e­mo­ni­al uni­form) is crit­i­cal as well.
These offi­cers we are told, have removed many guns from the streets and have saved many lives. Nevertheless, we have learned that Deputy Commissioner of Police Clifford Blake has sin­gled out the Hunts Bay offi­cers and demand­ed that they wear dress uni­form even though they are required to work nights and under less than ide­al circumstances.

Speaking to sources I was told that the DCP is demand­ing that only 20 offi­cers be allowed to wear the more prac­ti­cal Denim dress.
When I inquired what was the expla­na­tion giv­en for the fact that the DCP sin­gled out Hunts Bay, I learned that none was given.

Whatever the rea­son for this direc­tive from DCP Blake, it should not be that one divi­sion is sin­gled out for a pol­i­cy direc­tive. Particularly in a divi­sion which, for all intents and pur­pos­es serves some of the most depressed and vio­lent com­mu­ni­ties on the Island.
The con­di­tions the Hunts Bay police encounter each day direct­ly stip­u­lates that they need the best accou­ter­ments to do their job.
That includes the most prac­ti­cal uni­form available.
We would like to ask DCP Blake to look at this direc­tive and under­stand the impli­ca­tions of his direc­tive when con­sid­ered against the life and safe­ty of the men and women over whom he has super­vi­so­ry control.

The need to have offi­cers con­form to dress code can­not be overem­pha­sized, how­ev­er, the den­im uni­form is vast­ly supe­ri­or in prac­ti­cal­i­ty and functionality.
The den­im, or some­thing close to it, should be the way for­ward not dress to be scoffed at for the more imprac­ti­cal cer­e­mo­ni­al cum­mer­bund attire.
We urge DCP Blake to con­sid­er the lives of offi­cers over old cer­e­mo­ni­al norms.

“TRUTH”

“A tran­scen­dent fun­da­men­tal or spir­i­tu­al real­i­ty”(Merriam ‑Webster)

It’s has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to have a con­ver­sa­tion on how to solve some of our nation’s prob­lems these days.
Many peo­ple much smarter than I argue we are liv­ing in a post-fac­tu­al world. I am no intel­lec­tu­al so I don’t know whether we are or not, I still believe in the good in each per­son to see reason.
Whether true or not it is becom­ing clear­er, at least to me, that con­ver­sa­tions and debates get bogged down in the mundane.
In addi­tion to the ad hominem attacks that are com­mon­place when we dis­agree, it appears we can’t even agree on truths.

We are not going to solve the issues fac­ing us a race of peo­ple or even in small­er quan­ti­ties as Jamaicans if the basic require­ment of acknowl­edg­ing the truth is out­side our grasp.
As an opin­ion writer, I am thrilled to dive into the debate and defend my point of view. I believe that when we are able to hash out opin­ions and agree on truths we are that much clos­er to resolv­ing our problems.
We can always dis­agree on opin­ions but it becomes a waste of time talk­ing when we can­not accept facts such as cred­i­ble irrefutable data.
Of course, we can dis­agree about how the data was col­lect­ed, we can dis­agree on how it is inter­pret­ed, we may even argue on its rel­a­tiv­i­ty to the top­ic being dis­cussed but it does no one any good to argue when the data is unindictable.

A friend recent­ly told me that she dis­agrees with my writ­ing style, she tells me it’s too jar­ring, “I get a headache every time I try to read your work.”
I Love my friend but the truths that I try to com­mu­ni­cate, are not exact­ly palat­able to the poten­tial tar­get groups of which she is a part.
My friend, a real down to earth edu­cat­ed woman may find it dif­fi­cult to agree that the edu­cat­ed elit­ist class has no use for cer­tain truths which dis­rupts their decade’s long com­fort zones.

As much as I rel­ish the thought of appeal­ing to my friend’s group­ing I am more inter­est­ed in appeal­ing to the wider mass­es who must begin to take their own lives into their hands through the appro­pri­ate assim­i­la­tion of use­ful truth­ful information.
In order to make the best use of truth­ful infor­ma­tion, we must first iden­ti­fy truth and use that as a start­ing point. Essentially at some point in time, we have to accept that black is black and white is white instead of wast­ing time bick­er­ing over shades.
Or even more banal spend time tear­ing down the mes­sen­ger when the truth does not line up with the safe place you devel­oped on the issue.

It’s ridicu­lous to accuse your con­tem­po­rary of being a Democrat because his views do not line up with your Republican world-view.
It’s equal­ly unpro­duc­tive to spend time accus­ing your con­tem­po­rary of being PNP because your Government is in pow­er and I just hap­pen to chal­lenge them with facts.
How dumb are we real­ly when we believe the par­ty we sup­port can do no wrong and the one we despise can do no right?
I’ll tell you what that is, it is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of small-mind­ed­ness and ignorance.

So what if the per­son is a Democrat, so what if I just hap­pened to be a mem­ber of the PNP, does that then trans­form truth to fiction?
Does it change the fun­da­men­tal fact that we must come togeth­er to solve the issues which affect us?
I vot­ed once in Jamaica and it was for Edward Seaga It was my very first oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote.
Not only did I vote but at the ten­der age of 18 I signed up to be a return­ing offi­cer at the polling sta­tion because I believed in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.

It is that fer­vent belief in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process which makes it impos­si­ble to sit idly by and watch as our coun­try embarks on process­es which I know are absolute­ly the wrong path, regard­less of who sits in Jamaica house.
The only time I ever vot­ed was for the Seaga Government yet I was one of his harsh­est crit­ics and con­tin­ue to crit­i­cize Seaga today and give him cred­it where he deserves that credit.
The PNP has been demon­stra­bly destruc­tive for our coun­try, sub­se­quent­ly, I nev­er con­sid­er that par­ty wor­thy of much dis­cus­sion or debate.
I was always quite com­fort­able to see the PNP on the side­lines look­ing in, just not com­fort­able enough to allow the arro­gance of some with­in the labor par­ty to go unchecked.

I am Jamaican, not JLP and damn sure not PNP.
I will con­tin­ue to lob­by and speak truth to pow­er, not just in Jamaica but in my adopt­ed home, the truth is lib­er­at­ing it is refresh­ing we should all wel­come truth, regard­less how unpalat­able it is.

The much maligned and belea­guered Jamaica Constabulary force has been fight­ing through some of it’s most dif­fi­cult times.
In recent weeks the JCF has suf­fered sev­er­al attacks on it’s mem­bers in their own homes.
In fact in less that two weeks three offi­cers have been shot in their homes.
Though this is not new it marks an esca­la­tion in the war being waged on the Island’s Law enforce­ment by the crim­i­nal underworld.

In recent days the police has with­stood those assaults and have actu­al­ly tak­en out the cop killer Marlon Duppy film Perry .
They have been involved in sev­er­al shoot­ings in which dan­ger­ous killers have been removed from the streets and have with­stood ambushes.

Additionally, they have recov­ered sev­er­al guns and numer­ous amounts of ammu­ni­tion ren­der­ing the streets, high­ways and byways of the Island some­what safer.

Caches of guns the police recov­er almost daily.

All of this has gen­er­at­ed much pos­i­tive press for the police but more impor­tant­ly the chat­ter on social media has been changing.
The nar­ra­tive have been much more sup­port­ive of the police of late and that ter­ri­fies some peo­ple who eat the flesh of dead cops and drink their blood..
If you are a crim­i­nal or you are in the busi­ness of dem­a­goguery, lies and sen­sa­tion­al­ism against the police that is bad for business.
So what do you know, chief dem­a­gogue and media whore, the com­mis­sion­er of the crime enhance­ment agency INDECOM , decid­ed he want­ed some of the spotlight.

Williams aid­ed by his friends in the media was not about to allow the police a sin­gle moment of respite so he found a way to worm him­self into the limelight.

Big Gleaner headline.

JCF Slowly Responding To INDECOM On Sanctions.

(INDECOM) Terrence Williams yes­ter­day said that respons­es are slow­ly com­ing in from the hier­ar­chy of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Police Service Commission a day after he informed Parliament that the lead­er­ship has failed to take action against 138 senior cops rec­om­mend­ed for dis­ci­pli­nary sanc­tions.

The only trou­ble with this attempt to draw atten­tion to him­self, is that this was in rela­tion to INDECOM’s April to June report to the parliament.
Terrence Williams aid­ed by his loy­al lieutenant[sic] British trans­plant Hamish Campbell said that the police have respond­ed by let­ter in some cas­es say­ing that the depart­ment has decid­ed not to act on some of the reports.

“We have received some let­ters updat­ing us. Some of the let­ters are say­ing that they are going to con­duct fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions. Some are say­ing that too much time has passed and they are not going to take any fur­ther action or dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings, and some are say­ing that they agree with us.” 

Williams said that while the law allows for the con­stab­u­lary to explain to Parliament why no sanc­tions have been under­tak­en, no expla­na­tion has been tendered.

In oth­er words not only have Terrence Williams decid­ed to usurp the press the JCF is get­ting on it’s suc­cess­es, he has decid­ed­ly tak­en on the role of lec­tur­ing the Parliament.
Remember that in cas­es where the police decide not to act on a rec­om­men­da­tion of INDECOM, in the inter­est of trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty they are man­dat­ed to give rea­sons for their decision.
The Parliament have not issued a com­plaint or made any demand for addi­tion­al respons­es from the police.
In fact it is with­in the pre­rog­a­tive of the police to make the deter­mi­na­tion whether Williams’ rec­om­men­da­tions are act­ed upon as he suggest.
Upon mak­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion Williams’ job is done.

Even as a female offi­cer and her daugh­ter were shot, their wounds still raw, the glo­ry hunt­ing, media whor­ing Terrence Williams had one intention.
Get the cam­eras on him­self, how pathet­ic and inse­cure this lit­tle man must be?

Williams went on to rat­tle off num­bers which points to increas­es in police fatal shoot­ings. In the same breath he made no men­tion of the shoot­ings in which offi­cers are shot in their own homes.

Said Williams; ”

“Investigations by INDECOM show that a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of those shoot­ings are not in accor­dance with eye-wit­ness accounts pro­vid­ed. Of the 185 peo­ple who have either been shot and killed or shot and injured, 42 per cent of them did not have a firearm. A small­er num­ber had oth­er weapons like ice picks, stones, a piece of wood, and a num­ber hav­ing a machete or knife.”

So though he has the pow­er and the author­i­ty to pros­e­cute if there is evi­dence of wrong­do­ing, and even though he clear­ly has no evi­dence which could poten­tial­ly crim­i­nal­ly indict offi­cers who use lethal force in case where ice-picks and machetes are used, and even though we all know that the sup­posed wit­ness­es are gen­er­al­ly crim­i­nals them­selves, Terrence Williams chose demagoguery.
And at a time when the police high com­mand raised the threat lev­el against it’s offi­cers to severe.

Terrence Williams is a sick, dement­ed nar­cis­sist who is hell bent on doing what­ev­er he needs to do to remain relevant.
If Williams believes ice-picks and machetes pose no threat then he should do us a favor and take on the role of a police officer.
It would be a tremen­dous favor to our coun­try and to human kind.
The nation should reject INDECOM in’it’s present form and should unequiv­o­cal­ly reject the polit­i­cal plant Terrence Williams before he does more dam­age to our country.

Day in day out I per­son­al­ly take on the unen­vi­able and unpaid task of writ­ing about what is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica. I con­tin­ue to remark on crime’s influ­ence and how it is destroy­ing the qual­i­ty of life for my fel­low coun­try­men and women who only want to live a law-abid­ing and decent life.
I feel that to whom much is giv­en much is required and so it is not just about the lit­tle gifts that one may be able to give it’s also about the greater good ‚that one may help in shap­ing the pol­i­cy debates through legit­i­mate well-inten­tioned advocacy.

In the process I have tak­en a lot of per­son­al heat, crit­i­cism and even threats, enough to cause any­one to rea­son­ably say what do I care , I just wont both­er with this.
Others have accused me of try­ing to gain fame and noto­ri­ety from try­ing to bring atten­tion to whats hap­pen­ing as it relates to crime.
The peo­ple who actu­al­ly know me actu­al­ly do laugh at those accu­sa­tions, I am the last per­son to seek atten­tion , in fact I do my utmost to stay in the shadows.
Others say “you are doing it for mon­ey,” that’s laugh­able too, I use my own mon­ey to ensure that this plat­form remain on the web so that not just myself but who would nor­mal­ly not have a voice gets their opin­ions and points of views heard.
I am con­vinced that the Jamaican peo­ple, despite all of their intel­lect and exu­ber­ance can­not live out their God-giv­en poten­tial in an atmos­phere of ram­pant crime, cor­rup­tion, and violence.

It was that love of peo­ple and ded­i­ca­tion to duty which got me shot in a dark alley on Blackwood Terrace one night in 87 as I accom­pa­nied a com­plainant home after he made a report to us.
We could have tak­en his report and sent him home, instead we chose to accom­pa­ny him to his house. We were to learn lat­er that he had only told us half of the sto­ry, that omis­sion near­ly cost me my life on that fate­ful night.
A cow­ard with a brand new ille­gal gun and the inten­tion to kill wait­ed in the dark­ness, I was not about to go with­out a fight, though shot and bleed­ing I was not about to sur­ren­der my life to a use­less piece of human waste.

It is that ded­i­ca­tion to duty and com­mit­ment which gal­va­nizes my ener­gies and caus­es me to con­tin­ue to keep sup­port­ing the rule of law and the imper­fect men and women [many of whom dis­agree with me] who risk their lives to keep oth­ers they nev­er met safe.

It is for that rea­son that I con­tin­ue to point to the struc­tur­al defects in the laws which allows crime to con­tin­ue unchecked.
As for­mer SSP Reneto Adams allud­ed and I have been spo­ken to for years, there are no real deter­rent in the laws. That lack of deter­rent is hav­ing a dele­te­ri­ous effect on the abil­i­ty of the police to impact crime in a mean­ing­ful way.

The nation’s lead­ers have stead­fast­ly buried their col­lec­tive heads in the sand and ignored the advice and coun­sel of peo­ple who know and have opt­ed to take the advice of peo­ple with per­son­al vendet­tas and agen­das anti­thet­i­cal to the best inter­est of our country.
Pride will not allow them to say we made a mis­take, so they dou­ble down on the mis­takes, squan­der­ing scarce resources and pre­cious lives in the process.

No ZOSO will have any mean­ing­ful impact on crime. ZOSO is like a well run police precinct which cov­ers a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­i­cal area.
My expe­ri­ence taught me that crim­i­nals will not stick around where there are no-non­sense police, they sim­ply migrate to oth­er areas.
This I stat­ed repeat­ed­ly before the ZOSO was even enact­ed into law, imme­di­ate­ly after the first ZOSO was declared the police and oth­er enti­ties con­firmed that crim­i­nals were run­ning to oth­er areas.

the exis­ten­tial threat crim­i­nals pose to the coun­try can­not be ignored by the nation’s lead­ers. It is a gross dere­lic­tion of duty and an abject fail­ure to take active mea­sures to pro­tect law abid­ing cit­i­zens from ram­pag­ing crim­i­nals, who are unafraid and undeterred.
The Island’s lead­ers con­tin­ue to out­source the Island’s secu­ri­ty to Terrence Williams, an ego mani­a­cal nar­cis­sist with an agen­da and a vendet­ta, fund­ed by for­eign interest.
Additionally the Government have allowed anoth­er tax-pay­er fund­ed agency, [the pub­lic defend­ers office] to become a antag­o­nis­tic tool of crim­i­nals against the nation’s law enforce­ment agencies.

At what point does the Government say enough?
Chief among the rea­sons for the nation’s excep­tion­al­ly high mur­der rate is the fact that the Island’s judges act as a law onto themselves.
They sum­mar­i­ly release the most dan­ger­ous killers back onto the streets as soon as the police haul them before the courts.
This kind of behav­ior is stan­dard prac­tice regard­less of the grue­some nature of the crimes the accused are alleged to have committed.

The courts con­tin­ue to make the scur­rilous argu­ments that Bail ought not be used as pun­ish­ment while ignor­ing the guide­lines with­ing the very same bail act.
It is time that judges stand up and respect the con­sti­tu­tion of Jamaica and cease and desist from the nefar­i­ous prac­tices of grant­i­ng bail to accused mur­der­ers over and over and over and over regard­less of the amounts of time they kill while on bail.

SECTION OF THE BAIL ACT FOR CLARIFICATION

4.-(1) Where the offence or one of the offences in rela­tion to C~~CW which
the defen­dant is charged or con­vict­ed is pun­ish­able with which bail
impris­on­ment. Bail may be denied to that defen­dant in the following
cir­cum­stances­r­ta­nies
in
(U) the Court, a Justice of the Peace or police offi­cer is
sat­is­fied that there are sub­stan­tial grounds for believing
that the defen­dant, if released on bail would-
(i) fail to sur­ren­der to custody;
(ii) com­mit an offence while on bail; or
(iii) inter­fere with wit­ness­es or oth­er­wise obstruct
the course of jus­tice, whether in rela­tion to
him­self or any oth­er person;

(6) the defen­dant is in cus­tody in pur­suance of the sentence
of a Court or any author­i­ty act­ing under the Defense
Act;
the Court is sat­is­fied that it has not been prac­ti­ca­ble to
obtain suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion for the pur­pose of taking
the deci­sions required by this sec­tion for want of time
since the insti­tu­tion of the pro­ceed­ings against the
defen­dant;
(d) the defen­dant, hav­ing been released on bail in or in
con­nec­tion with the pro­ceed­ings for the offence, is
arrest­ed in pur­suance of sec­tion 14 (abscond­ing by person
released on bail);
(e) the defen­dant is charged with an offence alleged to have
been com­mit­ted while he was released on bail:

It is an affront to the dig­ni­ty of law-abid­ing Jamaicans that this kind of behav­ior is allowed to con­tin­ue to jeop­ar­dize their lives.
Aided and abet­ted no less than by paid ser­vants of the pub­lic whose duty it is to pro­tect them, but who does­n’t think enough of them to them­selves fol­low the laws.

This is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the nation’s homi­cide rate and the over­all sta­tis­tics of vio­lent crimes.
Two days ago the police act­ing on infor­ma­tion went to a loca­tion in Naggo Head Saint Catherine where they inter­cept­ed a man armed with a gun, dur­ing that con­fronta­tion the assailant was mor­tal­ly wounded.

The deceased turned out to have been out on Bail on a mur­der charge.
Incensed at his death, his cronies are report­ed to have gone to the home of one of the police offi­cers and opened fire at his wife and daughter.
Even though shot, Woman Inspector Grant returned fire killing one of the assailants and pos­si­bly injur­ing anoth­er ‚who from reports turned up at the Kingston Public Hospital claim­ing he was shot by gunmen.

This medi­um have received cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the idea of going to the Inspector’s house was to hold Inspector Grant and her fam­i­ly until her hus­band arrived home then kill all of them.
This is the lev­el of plan­ning which is going on against the offi­cers who uphold the laws.
Our offi­cers are receiv­ing no help from the Government, no help from the courts, no help from the civ­il soci­ety in prac­ti­cal­ly erad­i­cat­ing this men­ace from the society.

Instead the Government indulges in plat­i­tudes and smoke and mir­rors with a view to cre­at­ing the impres­sion that much is being done to aid in the fight against crime.
The ter­ror­ists who threat­en the sov­er­eign­ty and legit­i­ma­cy of the Jamaican state have not gone away, instead their ranks have swollen with depor­tees and oth­ers. Their arse­nals have been replen­ished and improved.

The lethal­i­ty and sophis­ti­ca­tion of the weapon­ry in the hands of the gang­sters is stunning.
Yet the Government aid­ed and advised by crim­i­nal enhance­ment groups like Jamaicans for Justice, the IACHR and it’s own cre­ation, INDECOM, con­tin­ue to ignore the clear and present dan­ger these gangs pose to the nation’s security.

I ask, “how long will this Government allow this con­di­tion to dete­ri­o­rate, how much is enough” ?
How long will it be before both polit­i­cal par­ties final­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly renounce vio­lence, con­demn gar­risons and com­mit to dis­man­tling the gar­risons which are the incu­ba­tors for these gangs?

Police sources revealed that this man turned up at the Kingston Public Hospital for treat­ment claim­ing that he was attacked and shot.
They believe he was one of the would-be assas­sins of Inspector Grant and her family.

This we are told may very well be the oth­er would be assas­sin of the Grant family.

Police sources con­firmed that their inves­ti­ga­tions have estab­lished that he was not shot where he alleged that he was but that he has stuck to his story.

UPDATE TO THIS STORY
 Assault at com­mon law, Fatal shoot­ing, recov­ery of firearm and ammu­ni­tion, com­mit­ted 26.9.2017 about 3pm nag­go head vic new lus­cious hq bar, Portmore, st Catherine. Circumstances are: mem­bers of the st Catherine south spe­cial ops act­ing on infor­ma­tion that a want­ed man was in the area went there and saw a man fit­ting the descrip­tion, on approach of the police the man pulled a hand gun from his waist­band and point­ed it at the police, the police in defence of their lives fired at him and he was hit, he was rushed to the Spanish town hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead by Dr Thomas @ 3:40 pm. One .380 semi auto­mat­ic pis­tol ser­i­al num­ber 98003311 loaded with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing 7 rds were tak­en from the deceased man. INDECOM was informed. Det Sgt Noël Bryan I/​o. Ssp Bennett,sp grey, ddi south on scene. Futher update follows.

LATER THE REPRISAL ATTACK ON WOMAN INSPECTOR GRANT AND HER FAMILY 

Three (3) counts of Wounding with Intent by gun­shot and a sus­pect­ed fatal shoot­ing, com­mit­ted about 8:15pm . Victims are Insp. Allison Grant-Johnson of MPD, Ashley Rochester, 23 year old Dist. Cons. of TSD and Bianna Johnson, 17 year old stu­dent of a Kingston high school all of the above address. Information is that all 3 vic­tims (moth­er and daugh­ters of the above address) were at home when one of the daugh­ters was about to exit the rear of the house to dis­card refuse when she was pounced upon by at least 3 gun­men, she screamed out and her moth­er who was in a bed­room went to her assis­tance.…. a gun bat­tle ensued dur­ing which all 3 per­sons were shot and injured. Inspector Grant-Johnson fired and based on the descrip­tion giv­en it is believed that one of the men was fatal­ly shot, he was found some dis­tance away. The injuries of the injured who are being treat­ed at KPH are not con­sid­ered life threat­en­ing. Of note, Insp. Grant-Johnson’s hus­band, Sgt. Ainsley Johnson was involved in a fatal shoot­ing and recov­ery of a pis­tol earlier.

Its impor­tant that the nation under­stand that the cir­cle begins because a man who mur­dered was grant­ed bail by the courts , turns around and attack police offi­cers and is tak­en out.
His cronies in turn went to one of the offi­cers home where they shot and injured his daugh­ter and wife who is also a police officer.
She returned fire killing one and wound­ing anoth­er who alleged­ly turned up at the KPH claim­ing he was shot by assailants.

These men did not turn up to kill the judge who grant­ed them bail, they turned up to kill police offi­cers after their crony who was giv­en bail by a crim­i­nals lov­ing judge was killed by police.
This is where our coun­try is today, mur­der­ers grant­ed bail attempts to kill cops , is killed in the con­fronta­tion and his cronies attacks one offi­cer’s fam­i­ly with a view to assas­si­nat­ing the entire family.

The Jamaican Government at all lev­els is in the process of pro­vid­ing aid and com­fort to the ter­ror­ists who are slaugh­ter­ing and maim­ing inno­cent Jamaicans.
Turning mur­der­ers loose through the courts and through INDECOM embold­en­ing crim­i­nals to do things once unimaginable.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force con­tin­ue to erad­i­cate from the small Island the bru­tal and mer­ci­less home grown ter­ror­ists who have tak­en over the coun­try since the Bruce Golding led JLP in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the People’s National Party gave the coun­try INDECOM.

Since this mon­strous police shack­ling law was passed in 2010 thou­sands of Jamaicans have lost their lives who would­n’t nor­mal­ly have.
Many are indeed inno­cents who should not have lost their lives.
On the oth­er hand many have died who are part of the problem .
With that said between the Government,Opposition, the crim­i­nal courts sys­tem and the agen­cies they cre­at­ed to ham­strung the police the job of the police have become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to near­ly impossible.

Over the years Administrations of both polit­i­cal par­ties have allowed lob­by groups opposed to the police and sup­port­ive of crim­i­nals to use police shoot­ing sta­tis­tics to solic­it funds from inter­ests, some of which are opposed to Jamaica’s interest.
Groups like Jamaicans For Justice under the lead­er­ship of Carolyn Gomez have done immea­sur­able harm to our coun­try by manip­u­lat­ing data in sup­port of her own interest .

Out of those actions we got INDECOM, and the Public Defender’s Office but we also got dra­mat­ic increas­es in homi­cides, Rapes, Sexual molesta­tion of women and chil­dren and over­all dra­mat­ic increas­es in vio­lent crimes.
As I have said in pre­vi­ous arti­cles Jamaica has peo­ple with immense tal­ents and intel­lect, there is no rea­son we should not be a first world state despite our late start.

Think for a moment at the immea­sur­able poten­tial peo­ple, all of us, look at what we have done in the dias­po­ra and at home.
Imagine if we are able to coa­lesce those pos­i­tives into devel­op­ing that 4411 square miles?
Now imag­ine if you are a lender to Jamaica and you want to keep mak­ing money.
Would it be in your inter­est in have a devel­oped sol­vent Jamaica?
Use your heads Jamaicans, there are peo­ple giv­ing mon­ey to anti police groups which have done the cal­cu­la­tion, they are hop­ing you will not do yours.

There are high­ly placed peo­ple with­in the present Government and the Opposition par­ty who have the good sense to rec­og­nize that the INDECOM act is hav­ing dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences on the enforce­ment of the Nation’s laws, none have had the char­ac­ter and balls to stand up and demand that this law which kills be repealed.

Just recent­ly and in the space of one week two police offi­cers were attacked in the sanc­ti­ty of their own homes.
I wrote about it argu­ing then that this is alarm­ing and that the police at least must be dou­bly vig­i­lant if that is at all pos­si­ble con­sid­er­ing what they face in Jamaica and the lev­el of sup­port that is giv­en to criminals.

I argued in my last arti­cle that attacks on police in their own homes is noth­ing new but should be watched to see if there is a pat­tern developing.
I believe we need look no fur­ther to come to the rea­son­able con­clu­sion that this is indeed a strat­e­gy being adopt­ed by the well armed crim­i­nal underworld.

Yesterday female cop, Inspector A Grant was attacked in her home and shot along with her 23 ‑year-old daughter .
The offi­cer report­ed­ly returned fire hit­ting one of her assailants killing him.
We under­stand that the offi­cer’s hus­band is a police offi­cer who was involved in a shoot­ing and that the attack on her and her fam­i­ly was a reprisal attack.
We have been unable to get con­fir­ma­tion on that angle of the story.

Since Bruce Golding gave the the coun­try INDECOM, the rule of law has gone to the dogs in Jamaica .
It is not that there should­n’t be over­sight of Government agen­cies includ­ing the ones over which INDECOM have over­sight responsibility.
The prob­lem is the col­lu­sion which occurred between the Bruce Golding Government, out­side lob­by groups with agen­das against the police the PNP with zero input from the police.
It is impor­tant to rec­og­nize that despite the tril­lions of dol­lars Jamaica’s politi­cians have stolen and the crim­i­nal­i­ty in which mem­bers of par­lia­ment have been involved, the Police and the Contractor General’s depart­ment has no pow­er to pros­e­cute them.

The Police Military and Corrections which INDECOM Investigates, have giv­en more than enough rea­sons for gov­ern­ment to lis­ten to the calls for trans­paren­cy com­ing from the people.
Nevertheless, it is the com­plic­i­ty with which Golding and his cronies cob­bled togeth­er INDECOM and placed his polit­i­cal oper­a­tive Terrence Williams at the helm which is the problem.

Out of the INDECOM Act came increased and more brazen mur­ders, attacks on law enforce­ment offi­cers and a gen­er­al unwill­ing­ness of police to go after criminals.
The polit­i­cal pup­pet Golding placed atop the INDECOM fecal pile nev­er miss­es an oppor­tu­ni­ty to trum­pet the fact that police shoot­ings have gone down.
That’s an absolute and irrefutable fact.
Those argu­ments are for his for­eign han­dlers who give mon­ey to INDECOM to ham­strung the police and turn Jamaica into a waste­land of crim­i­nal­i­ty, there­by keep­ing her impov­er­ished and in debt.

What Terrence Williams nev­er talks about is the fact that police shoot­ings have gone down because police offi­cers have large­ly dis­en­gaged while the mur­der­ers which have tak­en over the coun­try have been emboldened.
As a con­se­quences mur­ders have gone up marked­ly with no end in sight.
If the idea behind INDECOM was for less crim­i­nals to get shot and more inno­cent Jamaicans shot and mur­dered the INDECOM Act has been a strate­gic suc­cess for INDECOM’s financiers.

The arro­gance of these ter­ror­ists are on full dis­play for all to see ‚now that they are embold­ened by INDECOM , and the Office Of Public Defender, two tax pay­er fund­ed Government agen­cies which sup­ports criminals.

The killing of law enforce­ment offi­cers will not cause an awak­en­ing of the peo­ple seem­ing­ly drunk on las­civ­i­ous­ness and wine, some oth­er event will have to awak­en them, if of course the coun­try is not already too far gone and is large­ly pop­u­lat­ed with criminals.
Some with­in the Government con­tin­ue to use cruise ship arrivals and vis­i­tors to all inclu­sive resorts as a barom­e­ter of sta­bil­i­ty in the country.
I under­stand the need for sta­bil­i­ty and calm but the Government is woe­ful­ly mis­guid­ed if it mis­cal­cu­lates how quick­ly those arrivals will evap­o­rate if the ter­ror­ism in the coun­try is allowed to continue.

The for­eign press can do a lot of dam­age once this con­tin­ues, its only a mat­ter of time.
The images which many Jamaicans at home are not privy to and that which many in the dias­po­ra pre­tend does­n’t exist are out there for all to see.
People come to me and ask “I want to go on vaca­tion we would like to go to Jamaica what do you think”?
They hear and see whats going on.
What do you think?

A life well lived in ser­vice to human­i­ty is gen­er­al­ly mourned when that light is final­ly extinguished.
Not so Sunday morn­ing, when a hail of police bul­lets evis­cer­at­ed the dark­ness of a life which was des­tined to end the way it did.

Marlon Perry o/​c (dup­py film) lived his life out­side the bounds of decent mod­ern soci­etal norms, his claim to noto­ri­ety, the infamy of extin­guish­ing inno­cent human lives.
Marlon Perry is only the lat­est of a long line of infa­mous killers who decid­ed they would respect no laws.

From Coppa, Sandokan , Tony Welsh, George Flash, Natty Morgan, Rigen,Jim Brown, to Perry the list is long and varied.
As some­one said today, sure Duppy Film is gone but his spon­sors are walk­ing around in suits and ties.

There are hun­dreds of Duppy Films walk­ing around unen­cum­bered on the Island today, they are just as lethal and in many cas­es far more lethal than Marlon Perry ever was.
They make a name sole­ly out of the bar­bar­ic act of tak­ing inno­cent lives[making duppy].

The truth is that they emerge, grow and thrive because Jamaica has the per­fect storm of char­ac­ter­is­tics which aids and nour­ish­es crime.
We can con­tin­ue to talk about the crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty which exists in the two polit­i­cal par­ties spread­ing out across the hills and val­leys of the Island but that would be flog­ging a dead horse.

We also must con­cede that pol­i­tics have affect­ed the body politic to the extent that hav­ing a rea­son­able con­ver­sa­tion on caus­es and cures are inevitably instant­ly reduced to PNP JLP, instead of wrong and right.

The lack of edu­ca­tion, pover­ty, and mis­in­for­ma­tion have had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for any mean­ing­ful debate to devel­op, much less a strate­gic pol­i­cy ini­tia­tive which would begin to impact crime in a mean­ing­ful way.

Everyone knows about that, in fact, a PNP leader once said: “there is noth­ing that can be done about crime.”
Translation; We will not be doing any­thing about crime!
The for­mer Minister of National Security Peter Bunting once called for divine inter­ven­tion in the fight against crime, rather than push­ing for laws which send clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sages to crim­i­nals that their actions would not be tolerated.

There con­tin­ues to be a shock­ing tone deaf­ness, not just to the con­se­quences crime is hav­ing on the coun­try but to the strate­gies which are need­ed to walk back sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the gains crim­i­nals have made par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last two decades.

For years I have spo­ken to the need for a com­plete over­haul of our nations crim­i­nal laws.
Over the last sev­er­al years there have been minor fix­es here and there but by and large the con­se­quences for com­mit­ting crimes have not been enough to be a deter­rent to criminals.

Jamaica was quick to issue a mora­to­ri­um on hang­ing at the behest of the [mas­ters] who have the final say in the British Privy Counsel.
This came after the con­tin­ued non­sense being prof­fered by the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty that the death penal­ty is not a deter­rent to criminals.

I know of no crim­i­nal who was put to death by the state or any who met their end at the hand of police who returned to kill again.
They are deterred.
Fomer SSP Renetto Adams spoke to this recent­ly, argu­ing that there are no deter­rent com­po­nent in the Island’s laws.
Former ACP Keith [Trinity] Gardiner also broached that sub­ject from time to time.

In all of the obtuse polit­i­cal noise some­one must be the grown-up in the room.
The police moves which are net­ting weapons and want­ed crim­i­nals have noth­ing to do with large scale ZOSO’s done for the cameras.
They are intel­li­gence dri­ven police oper­a­tions which almost dai­ly result in caches of dan­ger­ous weapons removed from the streets.

Imagine if there was a will to sup­port the police with bet­ter train­ing, bet­ter equip­ment, bet­ter pay, bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, bet­ter leg­isla­tive sup­port and bet­ter over­all sup­port across the board?

There would be no need for any­one to give up their pre­cious rights which are so infringed when the police come to ask if there are any gun­men hid­ing in their homes?
No mas­sive police/​military joint force check­ing to make sure there are no mur­der­ers in the communities.
Imagine the incon­ve­nience of hav­ing to tol­er­ate the forces of law and order in the com­mu­ni­ties as opposed to mind­less killers hav­ing crate blanch in those com­mu­ni­ties to do as they please.

There is no tip-toe­ing around the fact that we are not deal­ing with a soci­ety of great people.
Even if you do not pull the trig­ger but you offer aid and com­fort to the trig­ger man you are equal­ly guilty.
The sup­port you give to those who hate the police and the rule of law means that you too have blood on your hands.

This beau­ti­ful coun­try is not too far gone but if there is a silent major­i­ty, now is the time for you to cause your voic­es to be heard.
Those hell-bent on turn­ing our coun­try into a failed state have vocif­er­ous trolls doing their bid­ding , its time to speak out, call your elect­ed offi­cials and demand that they pass laws which puts crim­i­nals away.
They refuse to hang them so police should go after them with a vengeance and the courts should throw away the key when they are convicted.

We need tough mean­ing­ful laws to deal with the [dup­py films] walk­ing around whether they wear suits and ties or mil­i­tary garb , they are all the same to me, and should be all the same to every con­sci­en­tious law abid­ing Jamaican.

We learned today that almost two years after tak­ing the lives of two police offi­cers this men­ace to soci­ety had jus­tice met­ed out to him.
This ought to serve as a reminder to those who would choose a life of crime which involve rap­ing and tak­ing the lives of others.
But it won’t, that is the rea­son I sub­scribe to a strat­e­gy of method­i­cal­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly stalk­ing and find­ing these ter­ror­ists and remov­ing them from the equation.

There is no short­age of peo­ple who make all kinds of excus­es for these demons who decide to take life and kick against soci­etal norms, those excus­es range from we should be kind to them to pover­ty made them do it.
There are those who say the death penal­ty does not solve the prob­lems these mis­cre­ants cause.
The demise of this cold blood­ed killer who we learned was dressed for war hav­ing an assault rifle and two hand­guns, will not stop crime.
One thing is sure is that it will stop crime from him.

What I do know is that whether the death penal­ty or the brand of jus­tice met­ed out to this mur­der­ous mon­ster today, one thing is sure, he will nev­er kill any­one again.
This brand of jus­tice works for those who would take the lives of the innocent.
Every rope has an end.
This thing reached the end of his rope today.

As the brave offi­cers final­ly put down this crea­ture today there are those who are cer­tain to sec­ond guess their actions.
Others will lump his killing into nation­al police killing sta­tis­tics as they dem­a­gogue our police officers.

We will con­tin­ue to stand with all of you brave offi­cers who do whats right and noble in this noble pro­fes­sion you chose.
Thank you for your service.

My great friend, a for­mer effec­tive Jamaican police offi­cer inboxed me this morn­ing, in my inbox was a video of an inter­view giv­en by for­mer Senior Superintendent of police Renetto Adams to local tele­vi­sion sta­tion CVM.
My friend told me he want­ed me to watch the video and say some­thing about what mis­ter Adams had to say.
I told him I would watch the inter­view as soon as I had a chance and get back to him.

I must say that I do not know mis­ter Adams and must has­ten to say that mis­ter Adams came to promi­nence after I did my brief ten-year stint and exit­ed the JCF.
In the inter­est of clar­i­ty and full dis­clo­sure, I must reveal that I have on occa­sions crit­i­cized some of the things mis­ter Adams have said and in par­tic­u­lar, I have been par­tic­u­lar­ly harsh in my cri­tique of some of the method­olo­gies assigned to mis­ter Adams’ way of policing.
I con­tin­ue to stand behind those crit­i­cisms today.

Even as I have crit­i­cized for­mer SSP Adams on occa­sions, I was always mind­ful that much of mis­ter Adams’ ampli­fied tenure as a police offi­cer came in the 90’s after I had already left the depart­ment and the nation had become much more law­less and the pop­u­la­tion much more tol­er­ant of criminals.

Despite the fore­gone and to the extent that the video was avail­able, mis­ter Adams struck some impor­tant themes. Themes which I have been scream­ing about for years.

EX-PATRIATES

The JCF has a morale prob­lem, this is not new, every con­sta­ble join­ing the force is taught to strive to be the best and to shoot for the high­est office.
That office is the Chief Constable’s chair(commissioner of police).
The pay has always been lousy, so the specter of pro­mo­tion takes on greater sig­nif­i­cance to mem­bers look­ing to feed their families.
The promise to mem­bers that if they have good con­duct, pass their exams when sched­uled, are up to speed in their first aid and work hard they will be pro­mot­ed also makes it dou­bly dif­fi­cult when offi­cers check the box­es and are not promoted.
That affects morale, it makes it dou­bly worse when out­siders are brought in and pro­mot­ed over long-serv­ing mem­bers, not to men­tion expa­tri­ates who bring absolute­ly noth­ing to the table but are paid enor­mous sums of money.

Bringing in peo­ple from England as well as appoint­ing peo­ple from the mil­i­tary to head the force have done immea­sur­able harm to morale with­in the force as pol­i­tics has, which I will get to.
There is no way that a for­mer com­mis­sion­er of Police would be hired to head the Army which real­ly does not require much because of its size and scope.
Why then would a for­mer mil­i­tary head be qual­i­fied to head the JCF, not once but twice?

Worse yet what has Mark Shields, Les Green and oth­ers con­tributed to the JCF for the huge salaries they received, which I must has­ten to say was expo­nen­tial­ly more than Jamaicans who held the same rank?
When a com­par­a­tive analy­sis is done the harm their hir­ing did far out­weigh any con­ceiv­able ben­e­fits which may have accrued.
That includes the incred­i­ble urge black Jamaicans have to be val­i­dat­ed by white Europeans.

OUTSIDE INFLUENCES IN THE WAY WE ENFORCE OUR LAWS

I have long main­tained that part of the rea­son our coun­try is inun­dat­ed with crime is that as a nation Jamaica has teth­ered itself to for­eign treaties, char­ters, and con­ven­tions which have had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for our country.
Of course, Jamaica does not want to be a rogue nation but it is impor­tant that for our own sur­vival we adopt mea­sures only if they will not have debil­i­tat­ing con­se­quences for us.

We must ask our­selves why are inter­na­tion­al donors will­ing to give undis­closed sums of mon­ey to enti­ties like INDECOM, and the pha­lanx of groups now oper­at­ing on the Island fund­ed by for­eign dark mon­ey under the guise of human rights.
Could it be that they know that a coun­try over-run with crime will inex­orably be an impov­er­ished coun­try which will per­pet­u­al­ly be forced to come beg­ging and borrowing?

Why would they not give that mon­ey to law enforce­ment and the jus­tice depart­ment to improve our jus­tice sys­tem so that the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice would be more time­ly, effi­cient and just?
Could it be that a Jamaica of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple hav­ing those hall­marks of jus­tice would rapid­ly become a coun­try attain­ing sol­ven­cy and self-suf­fi­cien­cy there­by not reduced to beg­ging for aid and grov­el­ing for loans?

The United States, Britain, and Canada are all eco­nom­ic pow­er­hous­es, nei­ther of those coun­tries accepts out­side influ­ence in how they make or enforce their laws.
Most donors to groups on the Island which give tac­it sup­port to crim­i­nals are from the three named countries.
Jamaica should nei­ther accept nor allow either of those coun­tries to shape its policies.

POLITICS 

The age-old prob­lem of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence is one lit­er­al­ly every cop who ever stepped out on the beat can attest to.
Adams spoke to this can­cer, detail­ing how he was trans­ferred because he dared to ignore a gazetted offi­cer’s ille­gal request to drop a case he had which was already before the courts.

Those who have fol­lowed my rant­i­ngs over the years already under­stand my dis­dain for the senior corps of the JCF with the excep­tion of a few of its mem­bers past and present.
I always believed that cor­rup­tion starts at the top and fil­ters downstream.
The cor­rup­tion detect­ed in some junior mem­bers of the force are only vis­i­ble because they are more in con­tact with the gen­er­al public.

The real cor­rup­tion and col­lu­sion are at the top. Senior mem­bers of the Police force are always respon­si­ble for the oper­a­tional pros and cons of what hap­pens inside the force.
It is the cor­rup­tion which trick­les down from them which infect­ed the body of the force.
Nevertheless, they were nev­er shy to throw the rank and file of the depart­ment under the bus, cre­at­ing in the process ‚the impres­sion that the young men and women are the problem.
Corrupt, col­lud­ing, cow­ard­ly, and incom­pe­tent are the descrip­tive words I always believed best described the major­i­ty of the forces most senior officers.

The gen­er­al pub­lic does not see the envelopes deliv­ered to their offices for work done by their semi-starv­ing sub­or­di­nates who nev­er received a cent.
No one sees the envelopes they receive for the cas­es they pres­sure the young ener­getic offi­cers to drop at the per­il of their jobs and careers.

Yes, pret­ty much all of the offi­cers under­stand this all too well. This writer is no exception.
I was uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly and with­out warn­ing trans­ferred back to the Mobile Reserve from St Andrew North by a cer­tain mem­ber of par­lia­ment col­lud­ed with his lap­dog, a now-retired deputy Commissioner to have me trans­ferred out of the Division.
My sin, not allow­ing any Dons or area lead­ers to devel­op with­in my sphere of influence.
The Parliamentarian, now a dinosaur, is a min­is­ter of Government.

They thought they had pulled off a coup until the peo­ple real­ized what had occurred and all hell broke loose.
All traf­fic head­ing to Manor Park came to a standstill.
The peo­ple want­ed their police offi­cer that they could trust back, so com­ing from Herman Ricketts was back you go.
Police offi­cers can be tough as nails take no shit and still be revered, loved and admired.
When you are that type of offi­cer your ene­mies are politi­cians, cor­rupt senior offi­cers, street thugs and their supporters.

ON WANTING TO BE COMMISSIONER OF POLICE

Renetto Adams spoke elo­quent­ly on why he was not seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered to be Commissioner of police at the time he applied.
He allud­ed to the lev­el of con­trol out­side play­ers have on who gets appoint­ed the com­mis­sion­er of police on the Island.
There are pow­er­ful forces pulling the strings out­side the coun­try and this has noth­ing to do with real and jus­ti­fi­ably need­ed human rights guar­an­tees for every Jamaican.

All in all the points raised by for­mer SSP Adams were spot on.
In two arti­cles writ­ten for local news­pa­pers recent­ly, for­mer Assistant Commissioner of Police Keith Gardiner made sim­i­lar obser­va­tions and pre­sent­ed work­able solu­tions to restor­ing order to the Island.
That advice fell on deaf ears as much of what I have per­son­al­ly been say­ing have fall­en on deaf ears.
Nevertheless, I will per­son­al­ly con­tin­ue to doc­u­ment these events and make sug­ges­tions because it is impor­tant that we do so for the good of the chil­dren and even those unborn.

As I was writ­ing this a friend inboxed me from Jamaica, she loves Jamaica and has lit­er­al­ly made Jamaica her home, quote:

Tell me one rea­son why Jamaica has this killing culture…killing mentality.…???no Carribean island has this violence.…and all of them are the 3.World.….that means poor.…maybe the gov­ern­ment has to send all Jamaican’s back to they roots.…..to clean the island.…and devel­op with Refugees from Syria…Afghanistan…Africa…maybe it would be bet­ter if China takes it over one day.…..I love this island.…don’t get me wrong.…but I am look­ing for an alter­na­tive island.…Trinidad…St Martin…Barbados…Guadeloupe...

Me: Our coun­try has a cul­ture which encour­ages vio­lence, gives com­fort and suc­cor to mur­der­ers and a pop­u­la­tion which is high­ly tol­er­ant of crim­i­nals.

Her: I know.…this is very bad for the Tourism Industry...

Me: Jamaica has always been a coun­try which sup­ports crim­i­nals. The coun­try is sim­ply reap­ing the rewards of those actions.

Her : This is awful.…there is no Future for a bet­ter life.…I think peo­ple have crime gene…There is only a future for crime.….

Me: Things can be turned around but they require strong lead­er­ship, unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is no lead­er­ship of that kind in Jamaica. So yes the future is quite bleak.
Be safe, please…

Her: Yep I try my best.…but it is dif­fi­cult for a ****************..to have always bad mind of people.…there is no relax­ing part…no Joy…

“One zone will not have an impact on the nation­al crime rate; the impact is sup­posed to be on the zone and the imme­di­ate areas of the zone.” [Andrew Holness]
But does it make sense if you stop the killing in one area if killings are increased in anoth­er as a con­se­quence of the replace­ment of the killers?

The PM’s state­ments though off, offered a sense of relief to me when he uttered those words in response to ques­tions posed by the press a few days ago.
It offered me hope that despite the protes­ta­tions of the bots who tra­verse social media, mak­ing blan­ket polit­i­cal state­ments and giv­ing sup­port to things they do not under­stand, at least he under­stands the lim­i­ta­tions of his own policies.

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

So now that we got some sem­blance of the truth from the Prime Minister, I hope his sup­port­ers will be more informed and less bel­li­cose in their attacks on peo­ple who under­stand crime policy.
By his own admis­sion, the PM con­ced­ed that his pol­i­cy is essen­tial­ly, at best, a whack-a-mole game. Create a zone, and the killers pop up some­place else.

Whether this was a Freudian slip or a real moment of hon­esty, I do not know.
I know that I nev­er heard this com­ing from the Prime Minister through­out the Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSO) debate discussion.

Nevertheless, now that we have heard the truth from the high­est elect­ed office­hold­er, it’s impor­tant to parse the real­i­ties in an hon­est and real way.
So I would like to walk the par­ti­san polit­i­cal hacks who name-call and label me with ad hominem attacks through the holes in this process in a sim­ple and unso­phis­ti­cat­ed way.

FACT

Since the ZOSOs are a sta­t­ic phe­nom­e­non, mean­ing large amounts of police per­son­nel backed by sol­diers are con­fined to a cer­tain geo­graph­ic area, crim­i­nals slith­er away to oth­er parts of the Island.
Before the ZOSO bill became law, I said crim­i­nals would go elsewhere.
That’s exact­ly what they did.
Local news reports have borne out those truths, which actu­al­ly were not earth-shat­ter­ing pre­dic­tions but com­mon sense assessments.

Murders have actu­al­ly gone up since the ZOSO law was passed, and the Prime Minister declared the first zone.
It is yet unclear if there are any con­nec­tions between the ZOSO and the esca­la­tion in homicides.
In pre­vi­ous arti­cles, I explained why I believed crime would increase after the ZOSO bill became law.
Not the least of which is that crim­i­nals some­times wait to see what author­i­ties are com­ing up with before con­tin­u­ing on with their activ­i­ties. They then adjust their activ­i­ties accordingly.
As far as the ZOSO is con­cerned, it did not require much for the crim­i­nal under­ground to fig­ure out that this was a noth­ing burger.
So it’s back to busi­ness as usu­al and with some intensification.

For ZOSO to have any chance of suc­cess, there would have to be, in my esti­ma­tion, one hun­dred thou­sand police and sol­diers simul­ta­ne­ous­ly swoop­ing down on polit­i­cal gar­risons and hotspots across the Island in a coör­di­nat­ed and well-exe­cut­ed exercise.
They would need to have snif­fer dogs which would sniff out weapons as the search teams go from house to house in search of weapons.
Additionally, the police would also have to be extra vig­i­lant on their look­out for stray crim­i­nals seek­ing to evade the heat.
Those resources would have to be sta­tioned in those com­mu­ni­ties for a pro­tract­ed peri­od of time, allow­ing for what­ev­er dress­ing the Government wants to add to the hard work law enforce­ment has already done.
At the same time, there would have to be spe­cial resources ded­i­cat­ed to pre­vent­ing guns and ammu­ni­tion from enter­ing the Island through the porous ports of entry.

Since the coun­try has noth­ing close to those resources, the next best thing to do is to attack the prob­lem through a sys­tem­at­ic out­ward build.
This means a few things that may seem regres­sive but are absolute­ly cru­cial in build­ing out a pol­i­cy to arrest crime on the Island.

♦This means ask­ing for help from non-European coun­tries if needed.
Jamaica can­not use Scandinavian or oth­er European polic­ing mod­els to deal with crime.
Scandinavian coun­tries have large­ly mono­lith­ic cau­casian soci­eties, which enjoy some of the best stan­dards of liv­ing on the planet.
Crime is low because of two fac­tors (1) Those soci­eties are intol­er­ant of crime; they have soci­eties found­ed on the rule of law.(2) Those soci­eties are wealthy, so they nat­u­ral­ly have few­er vio­lent crimes.
Lobbyists and oth­ers on the tax-pay­ers dime who trav­el to these coun­tries and then return with their mod­els should be stopped.

♦ Those who lob­by on behalf of crim­i­nals under the guise of human rights should have no seat at the table, and their views ought not to inform or impact policy.

♦ Repeal the INDECOM act.

♦ Re-do the INDECOM act, and ensure that the law in no way, nei­ther by spir­it nor the let­ter gives the impres­sion to crim­i­nals that they have a friend in the law.

Ensure that the law has safe­guards and con­sid­er­a­tions of law enforce­men­t’s points of view.
Attach puni­tive com­po­nents, which makes it a crime for any mem­ber of INDECOM to asso­ciate, meet with, or oth­er­wise col­lude with groups that lob­by against any of the groups INDECOM is investigating.

♦ Abolish the Public defend­er’s office.

The min­istry of jus­tice and the Director of Public Prosecution should be the Public Defenders.
Use the resources mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed by that depart­ment to improve the jus­tice system.
Pass laws that place crim­i­nals in prison and keep them there.
Change the laws to make it manda­to­ry no bail for mur­der defendants.
Make it manda­to­ry life with­out parole for those con­vict­ed of com­mit­ting mur­ders with a firearm.
Make it twen­ty years to life for any­one pos­sess­ing an ille­gal gun.
Five years are manda­to­ry for the pos­ses­sion of ille­gal ammunition.

♦ Create account­abil­i­ty stan­dards in the Police and all oth­er Government agencies.
The mis­in­for­ma­tion plagues the Island that police are the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of cor­rup­tion comes from the elit­ist camps.
We know that the Ministers of Government, regard­less of par­ty, are usu­al­ly cor­rupt, and so too are mem­bers of parliament.
That’s why the Contractor General’s depart­ment came into being but with­out pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al powers.
All Government agen­cies are cor­rupt; begin the process of clean­ing up the cor­rup­tion from the top down.
Better train, equip, pay, super­vise, and sup­port the police.

♦ Build Prisons. Courthouses. Hire Prosecutors. Appoint Judges from the pros­e­cu­tor’s office. Both Political par­ties must eschew gar­risons, and gangs and take a uni­fied stance against crime.
Anything out­side this com­pre­hen­sive approach is not a crime strat­e­gy but an attempt at deceiv­ing the public.

.

.

.

.

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

Yet anoth­er Police offi­cer has been mur­dered in Jamaica this time in his home.
This lat­est attack was on 29-year-old con­sta­ble Nicaldo Green who was assigned to the Stadium police station.

According to the Police, con­sta­ble Green arrived at his home at about 10: 10 pm and opened the grill gate to his home when assailants opened fire on him.
Neighbors called the police who rushed their mor­tal­ly wound­ed col­league to the hos­pi­tal but it was too late.
His killers who had the audac­i­ty to attack him in his own home also took his ser­vice pistol.

This lat­est attack fol­lows close­ly on the heels of the attack on a cor­po­ral of police again at his home in Stewart Town Trewlany.
The Stewart Town attack occurred around 2: pm as the offi­cer arrived at his house he real­ized that some­one had bro­ken into his home.
He was pounced upon and dur­ing a strug­gle with his masked assailants he was shot in the leg and stabbed in his arm.

In nei­ther of these inci­dents have the Government issued a sin­gle state­ment of con­dem­na­tion to those responsible.
Needless to say, the blood suck­ing leech­es who pre­tend to care about human rights, [nev­er human lives] are also silent.
It comes as no sur­prise that they are silent when the pro­tec­tors of the soci­ety pay with their lives, it is exact­ly because of the mur­dered offi­cers that the fakes, frauds, and char­la­tans can con­tin­ue to dem­a­gogue law enforce­ment officers.

I admit­ted­ly do not know whether there are back sto­ries to the attacks on these two offi­cers who are the lat­est to be attacked.
Nevertheless, what I do know, is that in less than a week two mem­bers of the police force have been attacked in their own homes.
That is enough to cause me alarm and moti­vate me to speak out even if it does­n’t stir any­one else.

Jamaica is a vio­lent crim­i­nal tol­er­ant soci­ety. There is pre­cious lit­tle, to no regard, for the rule of law.
Subsequently, there is pre­cious lit­tle, to no regard, for those who enforce the nation’s laws and that is true of those who occu­py tax­pay­ers hous­ing at Vale Royal, to those in the grit­ty inner-city gar­risons for free.
The dis­dain shown to law enforce­ment begins in Jamaica house and it spreads outward.

It is impor­tant to note that even though there is cor­rup­tion with­in the police depart­ment, it has been the cor­rup­tion com­ing out of Jamaica house for decades which have cre­at­ed the sense of anti-law enforce­ment dis­re­spect which has been a sta­ple on the Island through­out that time.
And I dare­say which has inspired and char­ac­ter­ized Jamaica’s law­less­ness, begin­ning in the ear­ly 1970’s.

The larg­er Jamaican soci­ety is pre­dom­i­nant­ly une­d­u­cat­ed, the peo­ple form opin­ions on hearsay.
The bet­ter known the pur­vey­or of false sto­ries, the more cred­i­bil­i­ty they attach to the story.
In this envi­ron­ment, lying, thiev­ing politi­cians are glo­ri­fied like deities.
Breaking through life­times of brain­wash­ing to sup­plant it with truth and valid infor­ma­tion can be an uphill bat­tle, to next to being impossible.

This writer will con­tin­ue nev­er­the­less to impress upon the Jamaican peo­ple that the very free­doms they cher­ish are being tak­en away from them as a result of the ram­pant mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes sweep­ing the entire Island.
No one is advo­cat­ing a police state, no one is more averse to a police state than I am.

It is impor­tant to note how­ev­er that you can have com­pe­tent and high­ly respon­sive law enforce­ment but you have to want it and play your part each and every Jamaican.
You are not hav­ing free­dom if you are dead, there is no free­dom if you are afraid to leave your home, there is no free­dom if you are being killed in your own home.

I ask all of you to look at the silence of the agen­cies which say they are look­ing out for your human rights.
Ask your­selves why are the fol­low­ing agen­cies silent no mat­ter how many inno­cent Jamaicans are raped muti­lat­ed and mur­dered but are pre­dictably incensed and vocif­er­ous as soon as a crim­i­nal is killed by agents of the state?

People do not have to have degrees from renowned uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges to be able to think for themselves.
Each and every Jamaican have the abil­i­ty to think for him or herself.
Ask your­selves why is that their sup­posed focus is only on the rights of those who are killers rapists and thieves?
Then ask your­selves why is it that all of them are receiv­ing fund­ing from for­eign donors?

It is not too dif­fi­cult to put two and two togeth­er to arrive at four.
Ask why are for­eign donors fund­ing INDECOM, JFJ, FAST, IACHR and the oth­er leech­es who have set up shop in Jamaica?
Why are for­eign enti­ties fund­ing INDECOM?
Why is the Jamaican Government fund­ing a Government agency (The Office Of the Public Defender) to harass and mil­i­tate against the Police?
Then ask your­selves whether the nations who give these groups mon­ey allow any­one to tell them how to enforce their laws?