A 29-year-old police con­sta­ble was on Tuesday night shot dead by unknown assailants as he arrived home in Portmore, St Catherine.

The con­sta­ble who worked at the Stadium Police Station had just entered his house when he was attacked and shot.

His attack­ers then took his firearm and escaped in a red motor car.
More to come.

It is a universally agreed fact that crime thrives where it is allowed to.
As it is in well-run nations in which democracy is built on the rule of law, so too are totalitarian nations conversant that crime must be suppressed at all cost.

Unfortunately for our small Island Nation of Jamaica, that memo seems to have got­ten lost in the shuffle.
Crime affects nations in vary­ing ways out­side the obvi­ous dan­ger it pos­es to life, lib­er­ty, and property.
Crime impov­er­ish­es nations and destroys gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple yet unborn.
The [Borgen Project] argues that Beyond the pro­tect­ed walls of the all-inclu­sive hotels, crime, vio­lence, and pover­ty plague the pop­u­la­tions of Caribbean nations. While tourism may be grow­ing back to pre-reces­sion lev­els in pock­ets of resorts, most of the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to bat­tle with ris­ing rape, mur­der, and pover­ty levels.

In 2013 Professor Anthony Clayton of the University of the West Indies, in a report pre­pared for the Ministry of National Security, called A New Approach: National Security Policy for Jamaica said, for exam­ple, that the direct med­ical cost of injuries due to inter­per­son­al vio­lence account­ed for near­ly 12% of Jamaica’s total health expen­di­ture in 2006, while pro­duc­tiv­i­ty loss­es due to inter­per­son­al vio­lence-relat­ed injuries account­ed for approx­i­mate­ly 4% of Jamaica’s GDP. If the lat­ter is added to the esti­mate of secu­ri­ty costs, then the com­bined total is 7.1% of Jamaica’s GDP.”
It is impor­tant to con­sid­er that seri­ous crime has con­tin­ued to rise each year since that report and has been done, which means that each year crime con­tin­ues to take a larg­er chunk of the nation’s gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP) with no clear end in sight.
More data is avail­able that shows in real dol­lars and cents just how crime dri­ves Jamaicans deep­er and deep­er into pover­ty year over year. Not pover­ty dri­ving crime as some would have you believe, but crime dri­ving poverty.

WHY?

Over the last sev­er­al decades, ’ var­i­ous stud­ies have been done which have all seem to con­clude that crime and vio­lence in the Caribbean and Jamaica, in par­tic­u­lar, may be attrib­uted to poverty.
Of course, it is easy to set­tle on pover­ty if you want to be intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est or plain lazy.
There is no deny­ing that if a per­son is hun­gry and has no mon­ey, they go into sur­vival mode and are like­ly to steal to survive.
On the oth­er hand, if you look at the real dri­vers of crime, a‑la greed, gangs, drugs, depor­ta­tions cou­pled with the nations refusal to put a foot on the neck of crim­i­nals, you begin to get a clear­er pic­ture of why Jamaica has con­tin­ued to have a per­va­sive and grow­ing crime problem.

TRUTH…

There are for­eign pub­li­ca­tions that have naive­ly writ­ten at length about the Government’s attempt to arrest crime with­out an atten­dant deep­er under­stand­ing of the role politi­cians and pol­i­tics play in cre­at­ing and exac­er­bat­ing seri­ous crime pro­lif­er­a­tion on the Island.
Those of us who came out of the trench­es and had a deep­er under­stand­ing of how the Island inner cities and towns work, is quite con­fi­dent when we say, “no, pover­ty is absolute­ly not respon­si­ble for the mas­sive esca­la­tion of shoot­ings, sex­u­al assaults, and mur­ders sweep­ing the Island.”
Additionally, many nations with far low­er liv­ing stan­dards do not have Jamaica’s astro­nom­ic crime problem.

SAD PROGNOSIS

It has been said that Jamaicans have a vio­lent predisposition.
I am not in a posi­tion to lit­i­gate that. I believe that many peo­ple in any place who are allowed to be vio­lent to each oth­er, with at worse a slap on the wrist, may very well con­tin­ue to use vio­lence as a con­flict res­o­lu­tion mechanism.
Unfortunately, there is a regret­table mind­set in the coun­try among the most influ­en­tial that despite the seri­ous­ness of the crimes com­mit­ted, the offend­ers should be giv­en a slap on the wrist as pun­ish­ment for their actions.
That per­cep­tion sup­ports my posi­tion that seri­ous crimes in Jamaica and a lack of a seri­ous puni­tive com­po­nent, has pre­cious lit­tle to do with pover­ty and every­thing to do with rich and pow­er­ful peo­ple want­i­ng to stay out of prison for their own crimes.
This writer has con­sis­tent­ly artic­u­lat­ed a cohe­sive and cogent path for­ward to deal with this mon­ster plagu­ing the nation.
Among my sug­ges­tions are the need to pass tougher laws, bet­ter train, equip and pay police offi­cers, build more cour­t­hous­es and hire more judges from the pros­e­cu­tion’s side of the fence and hire more pros­e­cu­tors as well.

FRUSTRATED

Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Paula Llewelyn recent­ly voiced frus­tra­tion at the grow­ing case­load her office is forced to han­dle with a staff that is not grow­ing to meet the demands.
Llewelyn argues that her plea for more pros­e­cu­tors has basi­cal­ly fall­en on deaf ears.
Her office was told that the min­istry was await­ing com­plet­ing a gen­er­al orga­ni­za­tion­al review before her request for addi­tion­al staff could be grant­ed. However, to date, she has not been giv­en the cour­tesy of a response. (jamaicaob​serv​er​.com)
As cas­es con­tin­ue to pile up at the DPP’s office, some con­tin­ue to scape­goat the police for not doing enough to cur­tail crime.
So my ques­tion to those who make those scur­rilous and mali­cious state­ments is this, have you asked Government, past or present, why they have refused to build cour­t­hous­es, improve the bail act, bet­ter train and pay police offi­cers, among the things need­ed to be done?

The police arrest mur­der­ers at a mer­ry clip, but lib­er­al judges with their own agen­das are thwart­ing their efforts.
Judges con­tin­ue to use the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as a revolv­ing door, result­ing in more homi­cides as a consequence.
While crim­i­nals are being let loose on the soci­ety and cas­es can­not get to tri­al because of the short­ages frus­trat­ing, the chief pros­e­cu­tor, the Island’s min­is­ter of jus­tice, is lob­by­ing for mur­der cas­es over five years to be purged from the court dockets.
When you con­sid­er the for­gone, a bet­ter pic­ture focus­es on where they are tak­ing the country.
This is not about par­ty pol­i­tics; it is about facts and fig­ures; nei­ther par­ty has clean hands.
Neither par­ty has demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to point the coun­try in the right direc­tion so that the hard work of tak­ing back the coun­try can begin.
It must be under­stood that even though every­thing has been done at the moment, if the poli­cies being employed are not com­men­su­rate with an appro­pri­ate res­o­lu­tion of the crime issue, it is all for naught.
The poli­cies being employed can­not resolve the Island’s crip­pling crime prob­lem, so that you may form your own conclusions.

The strate­gies need­ed to begin the south­ward trend in seri­ous crime once under­tak­en will leave no doubt in the minds of those who would engage in and or offer sup­port and suc­cor to crim­i­nals that this is different.
Nothing past or present has occurred, which would con­vince them that the Government can put the brakes on their activities.
The right strate­gies will inex­orably and cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly be clear to all that Jamaica has final­ly decid­ed to do some­thing about this problem.
Thus far, we have seen noth­ing, sug­gest­ing that there is even a recog­ni­tion, much less a declared will to seri­ous­ly tack­le the problem.
On that basis, crime will con­tin­ue to increase, more inno­cent peo­ple will, unfor­tu­nate­ly, become vic­tims in the process.

To begin the process, the gov­ern­ment must stand up so that those who would com­mit crimes may stand down.
That will only be accom­plished when the pol­i­cy is actu­al­ly made in con­sul­ta­tion with real Jamaicans and not with for­eign-fund­ed enti­ties with their own agen­das anti­thet­i­cal to Jamaica’s interests.
The aver­age Jamaican who plays by the rules is being sac­ri­ficed for the good of those who have killed time and again.
The human rights of the guilty super­sedes that of his victim.
Unless we dis­pense with those who pros­ti­tute human rights as a means to make a name for them­selves, crime will con­tin­ue to escalate.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast, all free to you, of course.

A British police offi­cer is now being inves­ti­gat­ed after being cap­tured on video jok­ing about shoot­ing a Black man.

One of the three officers that social media swooned over is being investigated for racist Facebook posts

RACHEL LEAH

The Gainesville Police Department said they were inves­ti­gat­ing one of the three “hot cops” — the one with the lush beard — who became known and loved after a self­ie of them assist­ing in the after­math of Hurricane Irma went viral. The offi­cer in ques­tion alleged­ly post­ed anti-semit­ic posts to his Facebook, the Gainesville Sun reports.

A spokesman from the Gainesville Police Department pub­lished a state­ment on the department’s Facebook and said they were “review­ing the alle­ga­tion” and fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the com­plaint would remain con­fi­den­tial until the inves­ti­ga­tion closed. “The Gainesville Police Department prides itself with our phi­los­o­phy and mis­sion of com­pas­sion, inclu­sion, and respect and will ful­ly review the mat­ter,” the state­ment said.
See sto­ry here: http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​9​/​1​5​/​h​o​t​-​c​o​p​s​-​h​u​r​r​i​c​a​n​e​-​i​r​m​a​-​s​e​l​f​i​e​-​r​a​c​i​st/

The long litany of anti-police groups death­ly silent on homi­cides of ordi­nary jamaicans/​JFJ/​FAST/​PMI/​IACHR /​etal, hyp­ocrites, and frauds.

This medi­um gives much respect to the always capa­ble Mobile Reserve Police and the Lotto Scam task force which seized five ille­gal firearms includ­ing assault rifles from an address on Ducketts Road in Cambridge Saint James yesterday.
This haul along with the almost week­ly caches seized at the Island’s ports are a stark reminder of just how the small Island is being inun­dat­ed with guns.

If Jamaica is ever to get its arms around vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted with guns the first order of busi­ness is to stop the guns com­ing in illegally.
Additionally sim­ply recov­er­ing the weapons must not be the goal of law enforcement.
There must be an inves­tiga­tive com­po­nent which tracks the con­tra­band to its des­ti­na­tion with a view to arrest­ing the top peo­ple behind this mas­sive impor­ta­tion of guns and ammu­ni­tion into the country.

The youths on the cor­ner down on Delacree Road and Fitzgerald lane in Kingston 13 do not have the resources to bring in ship­ments of guns.
Those guns are being import­ed by peo­ple in Kingston 5 and Kingston 8.
No one is above the law go after these ter­mite ene­mies of the state and expose them with open perp walks for all to see.

According to local report­ing, the items seized are an M16 assault rifle; two 12-gauge shot­guns; two 9mm pis­tols; 215 rounds of ammu­ni­tion; 76 lead sheets; six cel­lu­lar phones; three ski masks; a lap­top; and a note­book con­tain­ing iden­ti­ty infor­ma­tion of peo­ple resid­ing overseas.

This writer has always main­tained that actu­al polic­ing will only be suc­cess­ful when offi­cers are allowed to do their jobs.
That entails build­ing rela­tion­ships and cul­ti­vat­ing sources, it is as old a strat­e­gy as the press, cul­ti­vat­ing sources and receiv­ing good information.
So too is the cul­ti­va­tion of sources and infor­mants crit­i­cal to obtain­ing action­able intel­li­gence in crime fighting.
We need to get back to peo­ple trust­ing their offi­cers, like the man who pulled me aside in busy Cros Roads and told me where to find an M16 assault rifle in a ceil­ing in a house in Greenwich Farm.
As he said it was there it was when we went there.

Police offi­cers do not hap­pen upon five guns and an assort­ment of ammu­ni­tion and oth­er con­tra­band with­out good intel­li­gence sup­plied by good citizens.
That action­able intel­li­gence will only come when cit­i­zens trust offi­cers not just to act on the intel­li­gence sup­plied but in pro­tect­ing with their own lives, their right not to be out­ed as the source of the infor­ma­tion given.

Murder and oth­er seri­ous crimes will not begin to trend down because of some pol­i­cy dredged up in Jamaica House with full input from a bunch of mal-intent politi­cians and their anti-police friends with no input from police.
It will be solved with politi­cians step­ping the fuck back and allow­ing the JCF pro­fes­sion­als to do their jobs.

Politicians set pol­i­cy, they do not exe­cute law enforce­ment strategies.
What is even more stun­ning is that in Jamaica crime strate­gies are being for­mu­lat­ed, imple­ment­ed and exe­cut­ed with full def­er­ence to groups who are inex­orably opposed to police officers.

The police can do the job they are asked to do, what they need is for the crim­i­nals who are dou­ble dip­ping as politi­cians to step aside and end their dem­a­goguery of the depart­ment and for the mealy-mouthed know-noth­ings to shut their trap and allow the offi­cers to do their jobs.

I am tired of hear­ing politi­cians talk about human rights on every occa­sion the ques­tion of law and order comes up.
As if police offi­cers exe­cut­ing their man­date to go after crim­i­nals is equiv­a­lent to abuse of cit­i­zens rights.
Based on the mur­der sta­tis­tics alone the aver­age Jamaican will have no need to talk about human rights they will have no damn life to be respect­ed if cur­rent trends hold.

The coun­try is los­ing approx­i­mate­ly 1400 peo­ple to vio­lence each year yet the long line of anti-police groups arrayed in sup­port of crim­i­nals are death­ly silent.
The fun­da­men­tal right that each and every Jamaican who obeys the laws have to life and lib­er­ty are of no con­cern to them.
Whats impor­tant is the rights of mur­der­ers, child rapists, and oth­er degenerates.

In order for us to solve this prob­lem, peo­ple must give up the killers in their midst.
The Government and Opposition must give full sup­port to the rule of law and the offi­cers who sac­ri­fice for the safe­ty of others.
And most impor­tant­ly remove from among their ranks mem­bers of par­lia­ments who are still active­ly engaged in crim­i­nal conduct.

In order to under­stand the lev­el of law­less­ness and the astro­nom­i­cal mur­der sta­tis­tics grip­ping the Island of Jamaica, it’s impor­tant that you under­stand the crit­i­cal role vary­ing Government Agencies have been play­ing in enhanc­ing this trag­ic process.

Let’s exam­ine the mur­der of fash­ion design­er Dexter Pottinger.
Please fol­low me on this sequence of events which led to the death of Pottinger.

According to pub­lished reports, the accused killer of Pottinger is Tatoo and make­up artist Romario Brown of Rocky Valley, Stony Hill in St Andrew.

On July 31, Brown was grant­ed bail in the Home Circuit Court on a charge of mur­der, after he was arrest­ed fol­low­ing the death of Alexia Bepatt on April 8, 2016.

Less than a month lat­er on August 29 after he was grant­ed bail for the mur­der Brown was once again arrest­ed for being in pos­ses­sion of a dan­ger­ous weapon.
Brown was this time grant­ed sta­tion bail in the sum of J10,000. He was sched­uled to appear in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court on September 19 for that offense.

The Police argue they were not aware that he was out on bail for that mur­der when he was grant­ed bail for pos­ses­sion of an offen­sive weapon.
The Police need not be defen­sive about grant­i­ng him sta­tion bail for the offen­sive weapon.
The Police have that right and respon­si­bil­i­ty to grant bail for offens­es of that nature.

The police, in this case, are also vic­tims of not hav­ing com­put­er sys­tems with data which would tell them that the arrestee is a mur­der accused out on bail.
They too are vic­tims because the lib­er­al activists who sit as judges con­tin­ue to turn the mur­der­ers loose as soon as they arrest them.

In all of this, there are crickets.
The silence is deaf­en­ing, no one is talk­ing about the fact that the jus­tice sys­tem which has been fail­ing Jamaicans for decades failed Dexter Pottinger and it cost him his life.
Sure Pottinger may have post­ed bail for Brown but if a judge did not take it onto him­self to set free a man who already killed a woman Pottinger would be alive today.

For years I have waged a per­son­al cru­sade on these very pages against these very dan­ger­ous practices.
In some cas­es, men who kill have been grant­ed bail up to five sep­a­rate times, before fac­ing the courts on the first charge of murder.

In what real­i­ty is that accept­able, that a mur­der accused would be grant­ed bail kills again is arrest­ed imme­di­ate­ly grant­ed bail, goes out and kill is arrest­ed grant­ed bail, goes out and kill is grant­ed bail, goes out and kill grant­ed bail. Then tired of not being held account­able he sim­ply hops on a flight and leaves the country.

In June of 2016, National Security Minister Robert Montague spoke to this. Said the Minister .…

“There is an instance where one man was arrest­ed for mur­der, offered bail, came out, mur­dered again, this time two times, appre­hend­ed, offered bail, came out, mur­dered again, appre­hend­ed, offered bail, took the bail, came out, mur­dered again, was appre­hend­ed, offered bail. His moth­er was active­ly seek­ing bail and the com­mu­ni­ty said ‘don’t bail him’. She insist­ed and she was killed, and the offer of bail is still on the table”.

In oth­er words, the activist judges are stead­fast­ly going to inter­pret the bail act in the nar­row way they want to advance their own agendas.
They con­tin­ue to make the argu­ments that the issue of bail ought not to be punishment.
Great point if you are deal­ing with white col­lar crimes or a man who stole some ack­ee from Mister Brown’s tree.

The Bail Act specif­i­cal­ly says that bail can be denied based on the seri­ous­ness of the crime alleged.
Bail may also be denied if the accused may abscond (mean­ing the per­son takes flight and does not show up for trial.
That deter­mi­na­tion is arrived at based on what occurred after the accused com­mit­ted the offense.
In many cas­es, judges have cast aside this par­tic­u­lar spec­i­fi­ca­tion and have ordered accused per­sons to sur­ren­der trav­el doc­u­ments to police.

The prob­lem in Jamaica is there is no nation­al data base which prop­er­ly iden­ti­fies each person.
As a con­se­quence, after com­mit­ting mur­ders and sum­mar­i­ly grant­ed bail they sim­ply pull out a dif­fer­ent pass­port, boards a flight and is gone.

But the most fun­da­men­tal point the bail act makes for not grant­i­ng bail to accused mur­der­ers is that the accused may interfere/​kill poten­tial wit­ness­es against him.
Nowhere in the world is this more crit­i­cal than Jamaica. And it’s all made pos­si­ble because the judges take it onto them­selves to decide that no mat­ter how heinous the mur­der the accused com­mits they are going to grant bail.

The next time you are about to crit­i­cize the police for not doing enough about crime take a look at these sta­tis­tics and rec­og­nize where the prob­lem lies.
Just ask Dexter Pottinger how he feels about the Judge who grant­ed bail to his killer after he was charged with murder.
In fact, ask the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of oth­er Jamaicans who have suf­fered Pottinger’s fate because some judge decides to be an over­lord rather than obey the law.

We need ade­quate changes to the bail act as a mat­ter of urgency. We need truth in sen­tenc­ing now as well.

The Jamaican Government has embarked on what seems to be a strate­gic ini­tia­tive to deal deci­sive­ly with the Island’s crime mon­ster bypass­ing what it calls the Zones Of Special Operations law (ZOSO).

Many Jamaicans from both sides of the sharp polit­i­cal divide see this as a good move.
Of course, the aver­age bat­tle fatigued Jamaican is will­ing to try any­thing which may have a shot at stop­ping the killings.

That’s all well and good but though des­per­ate for solu­tions we can­not afford to be blind­ed to the faults and fail­ings of this bit of legislation.
Over the last sev­er­al years and months much of what has been done leg­isla­tive­ly in the coun­try has been more harm­ful than help­ful to the process of crime reduction.
Among those Mis-steps are …

INDECOM

No one is opposed to over­sight, cer­tain­ly not for the JCF/​JDF and Corrections.
What was cob­bled togeth­er and autho­rized has had a chill­ing effect on law enforce­ment and is seen large­ly as a tool of sup­port for the crim­i­nal underworld?
Pretending those police offi­cers who are doing their jobs right have noth­ing to fear as stip­u­lat­ed by Terrence Williams the head of that agency is intel­lec­tu­al dis­hon­esty and bla­tant and will­ful ignorance.

AMENDMENT TO THE JCF ACT

Using the Zones of Special Operations Act the Government has sought to use a back­door method to lim­it what is a mas­sive exo­dus of offi­cers from the JCF.
That method is to crim­i­nal­ize cops who try to resign the depart­ment with­out giv­ing 6 months advanced notice.

ZOSO
“The law seeks to con­tain crime while safe­guard­ing the human rights of res­i­dents and pro­mot­ing com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment through social inter­ven­tion ini­tia­tives”[jamaican/​gov]

Like most of my coun­try­men, I too want­ed to give my sup­port to what­ev­er ini­tia­tive the Government intend­ed which may have a pos­i­tive effect on crime.
Then the admin­is­tra­tion said the ini­tia­tive was intend­ed to con­tain crime with­out say­ing a sin­gle word about what they intend to do about the thou­sands, prob­a­bly tens of thou­sands of guns in the hands of dan­ger­ous killers.

That’s where we part­ed com­pa­ny, those guns should be plucked from the hands of these killers one way or the oth­er and they should not be paid to turn them in because what you are cre­at­ing by doing so is to sanc­tion a mas­sive illic­it gun trade with criminals.
If you can­not stop the guns com­ing in why would you be pay­ing crim­i­nals to turn in their guns?
You can­not rebuild com­mu­ni­ties and change the par­a­digm if the very same peo­ple who are killing close to 7 Jamaicans each day still pos­sess the means to do so.

FOR THE POLITICAL HACKS WHO REFUSES TO READ THE SOLUTIONS WE PROPOSE IN PLACE OF ZOSO

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

(2) You tac­ti­cal­ly cor­don the area you want to search then go in with trained Dogs to find the weapons and arrest the murderers.

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

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

(5) Stop grant­i­ng bail to accused murderers.

(6) Stop dem­a­gogu­ing the secu­ri­ty forces.
Use the air­waves to edu­cate the peo­ple about the ben­e­fits of adher­ing to the rule of law.

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

(8) Stop cor­rupt­ing pub­lic offi­cials, report police, and oth­er pub­lic offi­cials who ask for bribes.
Do not offer to bribe pub­lic officials.

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

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

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

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

These are some of the solu­tions which will work to begin the slow reduc­tion in the num­ber of mur­ders in our country.
None of these solu­tions sin­gu­lar­ly will do much to reduce crime, adopt­ed as a pol­i­cy posi­tion is the best way to attack the crime monster.

It’s now time for my crit­ics to sim­ply shut up about no solutions.
I have been propos­ing these mea­sures for years now.
You can­not rea­son­ably or cred­i­bly argue I haven’t pro­posed any­thing because you are a Laborite and you do not like my crit­i­cisms of the gov­ern­ment, or you are too darn lazy to read.
You should not like them as a Comrade sim­ply because you are in oppo­si­tion today, you should embrace them because you are Jamaican and you want to see our coun­try sur­vive and succeed.

Not real­ly con­cerned about the brain­less ad-hominem attacks.

I am on record detail­ing why the stu­pid ZOSO will not work.
No need to flog a dead horse, the damn thing will prove me cor­rect with­out my hav­ing to con­tin­ue a point by point break­down of why it won’t.

I will be an observ­er from this point on, watch­ing and cat­a­loging the faults in this process.
I will say this, how­ev­er, Robert Montague the National secu­ri­ty Minister has cer­tain­ly con­fessed the real intent of the so-called ZOSO act which bears out what I have been say­ing before the bill became law.

Said Montague at a town hall meet­ing a cou­ple of days ago.
“The law seeks to con­tain crime while safe­guard­ing the human rights of res­i­dents and pro­mot­ing com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment through social inter­ven­tion ini­tia­tives”.
Hmmm.

No, I absolute­ly do not want the law to fail. I just know that what the gov­ern­ment is doing is the oppo­site of what it should be doing and so I can­not sup­port it.
We now hear that the intel­li­gence data on which the deci­sion was made to make Mount Salem and it envi­rons the first ZOSO was flawed.

We under­stand there is much hand-wring­ing even though I don’t see what harm is done by hav­ing a mas­sive show of force in a com­mu­ni­ty, except the mas­sive show of force in that community.

I’m a lit­tle dis­turbed at the con­tin­ued incom­pe­tence of the police, assum­ing they are respon­si­ble as has been report­ed for fur­nish­ing flawed data to the pow­ers mak­ing the deci­sion on where to go.
We also hear that the whole grand cha­rade has not net­ted a sin­gle gun.
Is there any won­der that it hasn’t?

If the exer­cise is to con­tain crime while safe­guard­ing the human rights of res­i­dents and pro­mot­ing com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment through social inter­ven­tion ini­tia­tives, why would you expect to see high pow­ered weapons tak­en off the streets?
For the record the Government wants to safe­guard cit­i­zens right, (noble), they want to pro­mote com­mu­ni­ty development(commendable) and con­tain crime .….
I was with the Government until they said con­tain crime with­out say­ing a sin­gle word about what they intend to do about the thou­sands prob­a­bly tens of thou­sands of guns in the hands of dan­ger­ous killers.
That’s where we part com­pa­ny, those guns should be plucked from the hands of these killers one way or the oth­er and they should not be paid to turn them in because what you are cre­at­ing by doing so is to sanc­tion a mas­sive legal gun trade with criminals.
If you can­not stop the guns com­ing in why would you be pay crim­i­nals to turn in their guns?

You may do sev­er­al things to a rick­ety old house, (a) You may bull­doze the whole damn thing, which we can­not do in this case. (b) Tear down the old cracked and peel­ing walls and start over with new dry­wall and elec­tri­cal wiring.Or © paper over the whole thing and cre­ate an impres­sion to a gullible new buyer.

The Jamaican Government opt­ed for © to paper over the house but some of us are not buy­ing it.
We are quite capa­ble of doing our own inspec­tion even as some law abid­ing Jamaicans won­der out loud about the brave com­pe­tent cops we once had?

Bunch Of Smoke On Crime, No Fire: Cops Must Get A Clue As Well…

The gov­ern­ment itself told us that this exer­cise is not about fix­ing the old decrepit house, I mean Island, it’s about pla­cat­ing the public.
You know deceiv­ing the buy­er that here­in lies a beau­ti­ful house/​Island, only it’s not true.
It’s a decrepit old house with bad­ly rot­ting walls, faulty elec­tri­cal wiring, and leak­ing pipes.
Peel off the veneer of beau­ti­ful wall­pa­per and the whole façade collapses.

Sure many res­i­dents want to see the secu­ri­ty forces in their com­mu­ni­ties, who would­n’t want a mod­icum of peace and qui­et? What par­ent does­n’t want their chil­dren safe as they trek to school or even as they play as all chil­dren should?

In fair­ness to the Holness admin­is­tra­tion, I under­stand it’s cow­ardice even as I loathe it.
Holness has a razor thin one seat major­i­ty in the leg­is­la­ture, any dis­rupt­ing event and he is out as Prime Minister.

That’s one way to look at the Prime Minister’s cow­ardice in the approach he opt­ed for in the ZOSO act.
You see, it’s the path of least resis­tance, he can’t tear down the whole thing. He is not pre­pared to do the hard work and risk a pub­lic back­lash, par­tic­u­lar­ly with an oppo­si­tion par­ty which is quite will­ing to stoke the fires of crime and ben­e­fits from the fall­out and a pop­u­la­tion heav­i­ly invest­ed in crime.

As a result of the Opposition’s ‑oppo­si­tion and the pha­lanx of crim­i­nal rights lob­by input into the ZOSO law, it became a use­less bunch of crap not worth the paper it’s writ­ten on.
No damn coun­try make their laws while wor­ry­ing about for­eign human rights lob­by except Jamaica.
Stupid is as stu­pid does.

Whats a guy to do?
Holness was a part of the Bruce Golding admin­is­tra­tion when the Americans demand­ed the extra­di­tion of Christopher Coke.
He knows damn well what Tivoli Gardens was, let’s not rewrite his­to­ry, let’s not san­i­tize that com­mu­ni­ty’s past.

Despite his demon­stra­ble igno­rance and lack of respect for what police face dai­ly Mister Holness must know that when the secu­ri­ty forces move in to remove a crime leader from a com­mu­ni­ty like Tivoli Gardens, Arnett Gardens or any of the major gar­risons on the Island, unfor­tu­nate­ly, there will be bloodshed.

He does not want anoth­er exam­ple of what hap­pened in Tivoli to hap­pen on his watch, only the police did not cre­ate that sce­nario they did.
Politicians cre­at­ed these gar­risons, police sta­tions were burned before a sin­gle cop entered the com­mu­ni­ty and yes police offi­cers were shot and killed in that process.

Literally, every­one was giv­en a chance to leave the com­mu­ni­ty they chose to use the oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate their sup­port of Coke.
We have learned that many offi­cers did not turn up to go into Mount Salem recent­ly, accord­ing to one report­ing less than a third of the 140 offi­cers who were sched­uled for that oper­a­tion opt­ed out.

Let this be a les­son to this Government and the preda­to­ry one in waiting.These young peo­ple who step for­ward to be police offi­cers do so know­ing full well that their coun­try is heav­i­ly anti-police or to put it anoth­er way is a crim­i­nal cod­dling mecca.

Nevertheless, they step for­ward to serve.
What they are demon­strat­ing through the low num­bers of peo­ple now step­ping for­ward to sign up, the high attri­tion rate, or even their refusal to be used and abused like they were in Tovili is that they are not going to be scape­goat­ed any longer and for that, I am extreme­ly proud.

Not all Jamaicans are blind­ed by green or orange blinkers.
As a result, we are able to see through the smoke and the beguil­ing yet decep­tive illu­sions of his mirrors.
Some of us know what police work ought to look like it’s not whats hap­pen­ing today and it cer­tain­ly should not be about shoot­ing down any­one except by the let­ter of the law.

I urge the Prime Minister to stop the games and get real polic­ing and law enforce­ment advice with a view to end­ing this very seri­ous prob­lem the Island is experiencing.
Jamaicans can ignore our warn­ings but it behooves lead­er­ship to lis­ten the last thing we want is for our coun­try to be labeled a ter­ror­ist state.
I have been warn­ing about this for years. We ignore this at our peril.

It’s impor­tant to be on record telling the Jamaican peo­ple why the spe­cial zones law will not work.
With that said the mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion is real­ly this, of the 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing on the Island how many real­ly want a dif­fer­ent way of life?
Let me be clear I am not par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about the peo­ple who accuse me dai­ly of being neg­a­tive regard­ing the way crime is being handled.
Hope is not a strat­e­gy, throw­ing some­thing togeth­er and hop­ing that it works is not exact­ly the way things get done in the 21^st century.

I believe facts and his­to­ry are on my side.
If crime con­tin­ues to trend upward it’s dif­fi­cult or near impos­si­ble to con­tin­ue to accuse me of not giv­ing things time to work.
In the almost one year that I called on the Jamaican Prime Minister to take the nec­es­sary steps to fire Terrence Williams from INDECOM, more than a thou­sand Jamaicans have lost their lives.

In an Article I wrote then I warned the Prime Minister that he would be respon­si­ble for the dead Jamaicans if he refus­es to fire Willams and make INDECOM a less con­fronta­tion­al agency.
In the mean­time, I real­ized that the prob­lem of this Government are far deep­er than it’s refusal to fire Williams.

There is also the issue of the Office of Public Defender a tax-pay­er fund­ed enti­ty which has mor­phed into anoth­er antag­o­nist group which mil­i­tates against the police.
Additionally, the Andrew Holness led Jamaica Labor Party Administration and the Prime Minister him­self seem to have an unhealthy dose of dis­dain and dis­like for the Constabulary.

In all of the for­gone noth­ing sticks out like a sore thumb than the fact that Delroy Chuck heads the Justice Ministry.
Delroy Chuck should nev­er ever be allowed to be any­where near National Security much less to head the Justice Ministry or have any­thing t do with craft­ing legislation.

It was Delroy Chuck who had a trib­ute read on his behalf at the funer­al of Andrew Phang Stephens of North East Saint Andrew constituency .
Shot by Police no less.
Is that the rea­son Chuck is so vis­cer­al­ly opposed to police doing their jobs?
Chuck should not have clear­ance to enter a pub­lic library, much less being the min­is­ter of justice.

Look, Chuck is not the only mem­ber of the Ali Baba and the six­ty-two thieves crew on Duke Street to have paid trib­ute to gang­land fig­ures and in some cas­es have attend­ed gang­land funer­als but he is the one speak­ing out of his face about police and act­ing like he is a paragon of virtue.
It is now Delroy Chuch who is run­ning around the coun­try talk­ing about the rights of cit­i­zens and the need to improve the jus­tice system.
It’s baloney, it’s tan­ta­mount to the arson­ist lec­tur­ing peo­ple about hav­ing fire insurance.

The ZOSO can­not work because the sys­tems they are putting in place are the sys­tems which should have been on the chop­ping blocks to be discarded.
Chuck and Holness are run­ning around talk­ing about their expan­sion of the( Lay Magistrate pro­gram ) a hifa­lutin term they use nowa­days for JP’s.
Every Jamaican knows that for decades a large per­cent­age of peo­ple who were appoint­ed Justices of the peace were polit­i­cal activists and peo­ple with rather ques­tion­able characters.

One has to be real­ly stu­pid to believe that appoint­ing more JP ‘s will make a difference.
And while we are on the sub­ject there is a lit­tle fact which is becom­ing more and more obvi­ous with each pass­ing day.
The polit­i­cal lead­er­ship is strip­ping away police func­tions from the peo­ple who are trained and sworn to do polic­ing and plac­ing untrained polit­i­cal hacks over the police to make deci­sions on who should get arrested.
Delroy Chuck is the chief loud­mouth on this.

The non­sen­si­cal notion that police offi­cers whose jobs it is to arrest crim­i­nals will be forced to cede their pro­fes­sion­al author­i­ty and judg­ment to untrained polit­i­cal hacks who are now bear­ing the fan­cy name lay mag­is­trates is stun­ning­ly retrograde.
There is no prece­dent for any­thing like this in any west­ern democracy.

But it gets more laugh­able, addi­tion­al­ly, Chuck not­ed that the Mobile Justice Unit, will be sta­tioned in the zones to fur­ther guar­an­tee the pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens’ rights and freedoms.

“So, if cit­i­zens feel that their rights are being infringed they can go into the Unit and explain the issue, and if prop­er­ty is dam­aged or rights are infringed, and it can be proven, then they will get com­pen­sa­tion. This Government believes that the rights of the cit­i­zen and their dig­ni­ty must be upheld.” Said Chuck.

Ah so now we get to the truth of the mat­ter. As a cop I believed in let­ting peo­ple talk, I always said stop talk­ing and allow a per­son to talk and even­tu­al­ly they will tell you who they are and what they are about.
So this is just anoth­er scheme designed to bring in lying ghet­to hoodrats to show up and lie that police broke their 8^o inch flat screen tele­vi­sions which of course is in the card­board and zinc shack in which they live.
Better yet the police stole them.
Another way to bilk the few hard work­ing law abid­ing peo­ple who actu­al­ly do pay tax­es and in a mas­sive redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth pay peo­ple who would rather sup­port criminals.
Where have we seen this script before?

And while all of this activ­i­ty is hap­pen­ing in the so called zones, all of this social inter­ven­tion, where will the mur­der­ers be?
Will they be sit­ting around wait­ing for their redoubts to be searched and their weapons tak­en from them?
If you believe this smoke screen you are quite wel­come to the mas­sive con which is been per­pet­u­at­ed on you in the absence of real and mean­ing­ful law enforcement.

With well over a thou­sand peo­ple killed since the start of the year, Jamaica is well on track to record a ban­ner year in homicides.
According to some reports as much as 1014 peo­ple have been killed in the Island of 2.7 mil­lion as of yesterday.
This num­ber does not rep­re­sent those who most cer­tain­ly have been mur­dered and are not yet dis­cov­ered or who may have been shot or stabbed but have not yet suc­cumbed to their injuries.
At this pace, even with the unknown, the tiny Island of 4411 square miles is well on track to record around 1521 homi­cides sec­ond only to 2005 when there were over 1600 homicides.

The Island’s peo­ple are expe­ri­enc­ing a seri­ous cri­sis with accept­ing reality.
Rather than coa­lesc­ing to erad­i­cate the exis­ten­tial threat posed by this prob­lem they point fin­gers at those whose jobs it is to face down the heav­i­ly armed terrorists.
Government Agencies tasked with car­ry­ing out the most basic func­tions are inher­ent­ly cor­rupt from the high­est office to the lowest.

As we speak there is a cri­sis at the Firearms Licencing Authority, The nations Customs, Police, Military, and every depart­ment is corrupt.
So too are the Ministries of Government cor­rupt, and let’s not for­get the Government agen­cies which are sole­ly ded­i­cat­ed to mil­i­tate against the police department.

In all the chaos, how­ev­er, noth­ing is more dis­heart­en­ing than the pro­cliv­i­ty of so many Jamaicans to process infor­ma­tion through the nar­row lens of their polit­i­cal affiliations.
On that basis, the prob­lem of get­ting through to them is like beat­ing one’s head against a brick wall.

Even as they cow­er in fear behind lay­ers of steel for­ti­fi­ca­tions in their own homes they argue that there is crime everywhere.
With the bod­ies pil­ing up they would rather that peo­ple like me remain silent.
“Don’t talk about it, it will all go away, talk­ing about it is unpatriotic”.[sic]
What utter nonsense?

How numb must peo­ple be that they would rather pre­tend that the mass killings of their neigh­bors and fam­i­ly mem­bers are not as seri­ous as they real­ly are?
Are they numb or are they just plain dumb?

Why do they believe that peo­ple like me who con­stant­ly high­light the prob­lem day by day are the ene­my even as they make excus­es and ratio­nal­ize away the bla­tant incom­pe­tence and dis­re­spect met­ed out to them by their polit­i­cal idols?

Dr Joseph M Carver, PhD Tells this story.

On August 23^rd, 1973 two machine-gun car­ry­ing crim­i­nals entered a bank in Stockholm, Sweden. Blasting their guns, one prison escapee named Jan-Erik Olsson announced to the ter­ri­fied bank employ­ees “The par­ty has just begun!” The two bank rob­bers held four hostages, three women, and one man, for the next 131 hours. The hostages were strapped with dyna­mite and held in a bank vault until final­ly res­cued on August 28^th.

After their res­cue, the hostages exhib­it­ed a shock­ing atti­tude con­sid­er­ing they were threat­ened, abused, and feared for their lives for over five days. In their media inter­views, it was clear that they sup­port­ed their cap­tors and actu­al­ly feared law enforce­ment per­son­nel who came to their res­cue. The hostages had begun to feel the cap­tors were actu­al­ly pro­tect­ing them from the police. One woman lat­er became engaged to one of the crim­i­nals and anoth­er devel­oped a legal defense fund to aid in their crim­i­nal defense fees. Clearly, the hostages had “bond­ed” emo­tion­al­ly with their captors.

Dr. Carver con­clud­ed that the con­di­tion we now know as Stockholm syn­drome, in the final analy­sis, is an emo­tion­al­ly bond­ing with an abuser is actu­al­ly a strat­e­gy for sur­vival for vic­tims of abuse and intimidation.
If ever there was a case to be made for a diag­no­sis of the Jamaica psy­che it is now.

ARE YOU MAD?

In 2011 well known Professor Fredrick Hickling and clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist, Vanessa Paisley con­clud­ed that per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der is preva­lent in Jamaica.
In simp,e col­lo­qui­al lan­guage Dr. Hickling con­clud­ed that the Jamaican soci­ety is essen­tial­ly mad.
At the time he made his con­clu­sion there was much con­dem­na­tion of Dr. Hickling from the usu­al quar­ters which essen­tial­ly are the author­i­ty on everything.

Today Drs. Hickling and Paisley’s assess­ment has been proven to be dead on correct.
Jamaicans con­tin­ue to mas­sacre their con­tem­po­raries at a shock­ing pace with no real expla­na­tion for it out­side of the fact that they can.
The Government goes out of its way to be def­er­en­tial to those who give aid and com­fort to the killers while it shows pal­pa­ble dis­re­spect and dis­dain for those who try to uphold the rule of law.

In the final analy­sis both polit­i­cal par­ties are com­plic­it in the decline of our coun­try large­ly as a func­tion of ram­pant cor­rup­tion by the most senior mem­bers of both parties.
The aver­age Jamaican not engaged in crim­i­nal con­duct long accept­ed the blood­shed as their lot in life, the oth­ers have designed ways to ben­e­fit from the oceans of spilled blood.
Yup this is madness!

At the risk of adding cred­i­bil­i­ty to the PNP or Peter Phillips the Party’s leader on the issue of crime, I too would like to know what is the delay in imple­ment­ing the first install­ment of the Government’s much-hyped zones of spe­cial operations.

Though cha­grined that Phillips and his par­ty would be crit­i­cal of the oth­er par­ty’s response to crime his com­ments are in no way less true, just hyp­o­crit­i­cal com­ing from him.

“It sign now almost one month if you want to mea­sure it in time; but if you want to mea­sure it in lives, is almost a 100 lives or more and noth­ing done. This would sug­gest that the whole pas­sage of the law and the urgency and every­thing was just a face card,” the oppo­si­tion leader contended.(jamaicaobserver.com).

Neither Phillips nor his cohorts in the PNP have cred­i­bil­i­ty on this issue. The PNP has been in gov­ern­ment for much of the time that crime began its steady climb to its cur­rent state.
In that time the very same peo­ple includ­ing Peter Phillips, Portia Simpson Miller, Omar Davies, and the oth­er deplorables have had the option of (a) insti­tut­ing mech­a­nisms to elim­i­nate the crime scourge from the Island, (b) do noth­ing or © aid the growth of crime.
The par­ty chose © to aid the growth of crime.

It is in that vein that Peter Phillips’ assess­ment must be viewed, as pure­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal and self-serving.
Having said that the ques­tion still remains.
What’s hold­ing up the imple­men­ta­tion of the first zone of spe­cial oper­a­tions the Government has hyped, will begin reduc­ing seri­ous crimes?

Peter Phillips’ com­ment that the Special Zones law is a face card is not too far removed from my own com­ments regard­ing this law.
On the 20^th of July, I said that the spe­cial zones law was a sick joke and I was­n’t laughing.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​s​p​e​c​i​a​l​-​z​o​n​e​s​-​l​a​w​-​a​-​s​i​c​k​-​j​o​k​e​-​w​e​-​a​r​e​n​t​-​l​a​u​g​h​i​ng/

It does not require much think­ing to fig­ure out that if a spe­cif­ic area is flood­ed with law enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als crime will trend down in that area.
It’s not only cyn­i­cal but insult­ing for the Prime Minister and oth­ers who sup­port this far­ci­cal law to con­tend that it will low­er crime in any mean­ing­ful way.
Will it low­er crime wher­ev­er there is a large con­tin­gent of cops and sol­diers for a while?
That would be a rel­a­tive­ly safe bet.

Will crime go up some­place else on the Island?
That would be a safe bet yes as well.
After the secu­ri­ty forces were final­ly allowed by the gov­ern­ment to go into Tivoli Gardens and return some sem­blance of the rule of law to that set-aside com­mu­ni­ty, crim­i­nals fled to oth­er parts of the coun­try with their guns.

The rise in seri­ous crimes in once peace­ful parish­es like Hanover, Trelawny, and Portland did not hap­pen in a vacuum.
For its part, the police have stri­dent­ly main­tained that the ram­pant shed­ding of blood may be laid at the feet of lotto-scammers.
Much of that is true but many of those who are doing the killings are trans­plants from Tivoli Gardens and oth­er parts of West Kingston, hav­ing fled the onslaught of the secu­ri­ty forces in 2010 and estab­lished con­nec­tions in those parishes.

I can hope that the admin­is­tra­tion in Jamaica house is com­ing to its sens­es, rec­og­niz­ing that what it has pro­posed will be as effec­tive as pour­ing water into a basket.
But that would be stu­pid of me, when was the last time a Jamaican politi­cian sought to cor­rect a wrong or con­cede that maybe a plan they set in motion is a bad plan?

Here are some sim­ple rea­sons this idea can­not work in the long run.
The police force is gross­ly under­staffed and get­ting worse by the day​.It is under equipped. Added to that offi­cers are over­worked, under­paid, and unsup­port­ed by Government in lit­er­al­ly every cat­e­go­ry in which they need to be supported.

Pulling what­ev­er amount of cops from wher­ev­er they are sta­tioned to plug a so called spe­cial zone will dis­rupt oper­a­tional readi­ness and capa­bil­i­ty in the places from which they are pulled.

With heav­i­ly armed crim­i­nals emi­grat­ing from those spe­cial zones to oth­er areas, police in those areas in which they decide to set up shop will come under increased pres­sure to keep a lid on crim­i­nal activ­i­ties in the areas these migrat­ing crim­i­nals decide to set up shop.

It’s like plug­ging a hole in a weak levy, anoth­er breach will sim­ply pop up in the next weak­est area.
Of all the cyn­i­cal self-serv­ing things Jamaican politi­cians have done this has got to rate at the very top of the list.
Hatching a plan to place police offi­cers and mem­bers of the mil­i­tary into tough law­less inner city com­mu­ni­ties and then open­ly lec­ture them not to kill any­one has got to be the most dis­gust­ing­ly brazen attempt a politi­cian can make at set­ting up the police to fail while avoid­ing blame when trou­ble comes.

There is no per­son who can law­ful­ly tell a police offi­cer act­ing in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of his duties that he should not kill anyone.
Good police offi­cers do not go out intend­ing to harm any­one. They go out plac­ing their lives on the line to pro­tect oth­ers they do not know.
It is for that rea­son that police offi­cers are giv­en the right to use com­men­su­rate lethal force in pro­tect­ing their own lives and that of oth­ers when they are act­ing in enforc­ing our laws.

Andrew Holness has no legal stand­ing to tell offi­cers that they should not kill anyone.
He is out of order, pre­sump­tu­ous and down­right out of his league in mak­ing those admonishments.

The Prime min­is­ter’s admon­ish­ment is a cow­ard­ly attempt to place respon­si­bil­i­ty on the police in the event that they have to use lethal force, a clear sure­ty, in those law­less com­mu­ni­ties in which they will be thrust.
It is a trans­par­ent attempt to make nice with the litany of anti-police agen­cies with­in the gov­ern­ment itself and the crim­i­nal rights groups which have tak­en up res­i­dence on the Island.

Peter Phillips thinks the spe­cial zones law is a “face card”, I don’t know what his moti­va­tion is for mak­ing that claim.
What I do know hav­ing laid out specifics is that it is a far­ci­cal attempt to blow smoke up the Jamaican peo­ple’s col­lec­tive ass while pla­cat­ing crim­i­nal rights lob­by groups.

Radio has tra­di­tion­al­ly been the medi­um from which most of us poor­er Jamaicans received our information.
As a kid grow­ing up in rur­al Saint Catherine dur­ing the 70’s our insti­tu­tions were sacrosanct.
We did not have much in the way of choice, so those insti­tu­tions we had we believed in.
Radio was RJR and JBC, the oth­ers came lat­er. JBC was tele­vi­sion and at 12 mid­night it was a flick­er­ing sil­ver screen after the nation­al anthem. Those who still want­ed to be enter­tained had a choice of RJR or JBC radio.

Toothpaste was Colgate and Colgate was toothpaste.
The Gleaner was news­pa­per and news papers were the Daily Gleaner.
Office meant post office, where I grew up no one had a per­son­al office so the only office we knew was the lit­tle sin­gle room postal agency run by Mrs. Ford.

I say these things to high­light just how much we looked to those sim­ple insti­tu­tions and how much we were shaped by them.
Today’s young peo­ple are not con­strained by a short­age of choice. Cable tele­vi­sion and the inter­net has opened up the entire world to them mak­ing things we nev­er dreamed of par for the course for them.

Nevertheless, despite the tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments some of the sim­ple sta­ples of yes­ter­year are still rel­e­vant as they were in days gone by and accessed for infor­ma­tion much the same way they were decades ago.

TALK RADIO

Radio still con­tin­ue to be an inte­gral medi­um through which peo­ple source information.
To some degree, radio has con­tin­ued to be rel­e­vant even as print media con­tin­ue to fade in the wake of mobile phones and oth­er hand held devices.
Through the inter­ac­tive nature of talk radio and the advance­ments in the way radio pro­gram­ming is sourced through the inter­net and via satel­lite, radio con­tin­ues to be a viable and rel­e­vant medi­um through which infor­ma­tion is both dis­sem­i­nat­ed and assimilated.

Because of the con­tin­ued rel­e­vance of radio today those who have access to radio plat­forms should endeav­or to ensure that the infor­ma­tion they put out into the pub­lic air­waves is truth­ful and in the best inter­est of the country.

During the Obama Presidency, talk radio devel­oped a cult fol­low­ing of right wing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists who want­ed to believe the worse about the nations first African-American President.
As a con­se­quence, there was no short­age of peo­ple with bad inten­tions will­ing to feed that hunger.
Obama became a com­mu­nist, a Manchurian pres­i­dent, an ille­git­i­mate Kenyan inter­lop­er and every oth­er deroga­to­ry pejo­ra­tive their per­vert­ed minds could con­jure up.

The result is that they end­ed up vot­ing into office a per­son in whom all of those pejo­ra­tives are encapsulated.
So we went from a fine Presidency which worked assid­u­ous­ly on civ­il and human rights saved the econ­o­my and main­tained peace across the globe as best it could to one which reck­less­ly posi­tions the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

For years talk radio has been a sta­ple for Jamaica. Jamaicans used talk radio to bring atten­tion to myr­i­ad issues affect­ing their lives.
As a kid, I used Ronald Thwaites then radio show to bring atten­tion to the bad roads in North East St Catherine. I named and shamed every polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive I could until for the first time in their his­to­ry the roads lead­ing into Bonnet from Benbow was paved.
This meant that a trip from Benbow to Bonnett square which pre­vi­ous­ly took half an hour became an 8‑minute drive.

So talk radio has its val­ue but talk radio also took on a sin­is­ter dark char­ac­ter as the years progressed.
It became a place which attract­ed the most caus­tic and demean­ing char­ac­ters on both sides of the micro­phone. All unit­ed in vit­ri­olic con­dem­na­tion of the Police.
From Thwaites to Gloudon, from Perkins to Roper, and every­one in between and all the way down to Cliff Hughes, radio is now the sacred altar of anti-police vitriol.
Like the right wing in America, the anti police and the anti-Jamaican char­la­tans have used radio to poi­son the mind of the youth while wash­ing their hands and look­ing at oth­ers to fix the blood­shed they inspire.

The end result is at least two gen­er­a­tions which have absolute­ly no respect for the rule of law and a police depart­ment which has been reduced large­ly to peo­ple who can­not afford to leave.
Even so, those remain­ing are demo­ti­vat­ed, timid and afraid, result­ing in a nation now in which peo­ple are afraid to stay in their homes and equal­ly afraid to leave.

This has ben­e­fit­ted many,Thwaites is now a politi­cian, Gloudon and oth­ers have had lucra­tive careers on the blood and tears of police offi­cers and their families.
Elections are won and lost as a result and a litany of sup­posed human rights agen­cies have sprung up all pur­port­ing to be defend­ing the coun­try from the poor scape­goat­ed police.
This serves the inter­est of the polit­i­cal class as well as the crim­i­nal class, a dis­tinc­tion which is often times indistinct.

As mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes con­tin­ue to increase the inter­est of the politi­cians and the crim­i­nal class are well served.
Unfortunately for decent law abid­ing Jamaicans like my fam­i­ly, no one looks out for their interest.
Today and every day, peo­ple like Cliff Hughes of nation­wide radio con­tin­ue in that vein even as police offi­cers are been gunned down in the streets in broad daylight.
These par­a­sites have attached them­selves in a vice like grip to the anti-police band­wag­on in their rapa­cious quest for relevance.
As a result, these frauds and imposters who pre­tend to care about our coun­try have revealed them­selves to be shame­less, pathet­ic lit­tle anti-police trolls.

This medi­um will hence­forth be tak­ing a more proac­tive approach in speak­ing out against the present crime sit­u­a­tion in our coun­try Jamaica.
As a part of that approach, we will be tak­ing a series of actions which include but is not con­fined to nam­ing and sham­ing cer­tain indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties on the Island which pre­tend to sup­port the greater good but which are con­tribut­ing to the present cli­mate of crime and lawlessness.

#2 OFFICE OF PUBLIC DEFENDER

The Office of Public Defender is a cyn­i­cal exam­ple of big gov­ern­ment gone out of control.
It rep­re­sents a clear indi­ca­tion that there are peo­ple run­ning our gov­ern­ment who should­n’t be.
To begin with, Jamaica’s pol­i­cy­mak­ers lack vision, are woe­ful­ly unex­posed and sub­se­quent­ly ill-equipped to for­mu­late policy.

The office of the Director of Public Prosecution is the pub­lic defend­er’s office.
Additionally, there is an Attorney General’s Department and a Justice Ministry.

The cre­ation of a Public Defender’s Office was an unin­formed mis­guid­ed deci­sion which should nev­er have left the draw­ing board.
If we set aside the fact that the office is a waste­ful dupli­ca­tion of efforts, An ill-advised addi­tion to the mud­dled and incom­pe­tent gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy, we begin to see how that bud­getary set aside could have gone toward improv­ing the Chief Prosecutors office and the gen­er­al sys­tem of jus­tice overall.

This could be done by (a) cre­at­ing addi­tion­al space for the DPP, (b) Hiring more and bet­ter pros­e­cu­tors,© Hiring more Judges to hear cas­es at the cir­cuit lev­el (d) get­ting rid of the stu­pid Michaelmas, Hilary and Easter ses­sions which guide the cir­cuit courts and place judges in courts to hear cas­es all year round.

The resources could have gone toward build­ing 21^st cen­tu­ry Police Stations, train­ing detec­tives, pay­ing offi­cers bet­ter and giv­ing them bet­ter tools to do their jobs.
Instead of shoring up and adding to the exist­ing jus­tice infra­struc­ture they instead opt­ed to enlarge the over-bloat­ed dys­func­tion­al bureaucracy.

Below is a syn­op­sized mis­sion state­ment of the Public Defender’s office.

I am not mak­ing this up, this is their own mis­sion state­ment, with the excep­tion of the last three lines which promis­es to pro­vide attor­neys fees to aggriev­ed par­ties to pur­sue con­sti­tu­tion­al reme­dies in court this mis­sion state­ment could eas­i­ly have come from the Police or the DPP.
So why was this new office cre­at­ed and why was it empow­ered to become an antag­o­nist against the police department?

Why was Arlene Harrison-Henry placed in this job?
The Public Defender’s Office was not sold to the Jamaican peo­ple as anoth­er police watch­dog agency yet the for­mer head Earl Witter was an anti-police troll and the present head Arlene Harrison Henry has stead­fast­ly estab­lished her­self as an anti-police antagonist.

In fact, Harrison Henry had a his­to­ry before being giv­en this job.
♦ Chairman of the Independent Jamaican Council for Human Rights.
♦Member – Police Civilian Oversight Authority.
♦Member of the Police Service Commission.
Why are peo­ple like this allowed to sit on the police ser­vice com­mis­sion when they are vehe­ment­ly opposed to the police?

People who have made careers of being against the police should nev­er be allowed to sit on sen­si­tive com­mis­sions and boards which are respon­si­ble for nation­al security.
It is these rep­re­hen­si­ble kinds of actions which are caus­ing the lack of will to for­mu­late good effec­tive crime policy.
We can­not con­tin­ue to put the lions into the sheep­’s pen and expect the lion to look after the sheep.
Why do we con­tin­ue to place anti-police peo­ple any­where near law enforce­ment com­mis­sions sim­ply because they have a law degree?

It makes no nat­ur­al sense unless the goal is to turn the coun­try into a Sub-Saharan waste­land which it is fast becoming.
On that basis, Arlene Harrison Henry pub­lic Defender has earned the dis­tinc­tion as a mem­ber of the shame­ful hall of fame of anti-police dem­a­gogues wreck­ing our country.

ANTI POLICE HALL OF SHAME

This medi­um will hence­forth be tak­ing a more proac­tive approach in speak­ing out against the present crime sit­u­a­tion in our coun­try Jamaica.
As a part of that approach, we will be tak­ing a series of actions which include but is not con­fined to nam­ing and sham­ing cer­tain indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties on the Island which pre­tend to sup­port the greater good but which are con­tribut­ing to the present cli­mate of crime and lawlessness.

# 1 INDECOM

Police over­sight is not an idea any well-think­ing cit­i­zen should log­i­cal­ly be opposed to, as such over­sight of the JCF is war­rant­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the lev­el of cor­rup­tion which has come to light as inves­ti­gat­ed by police involv­ing their col­leagues, Not by INDECOM.
The Corrections Department, as well as the JDF which has been pressed into back­up polic­ing duties, also comes under scruti­ny and has been sub­ject­ed to over­sight from INDECOM.

However, INDECOM’s Commissioner Terrence Williams has cul­ti­vat­ed a cul­ture of antag­o­nism and ani­mos­i­ty against the Jamaica Constabulary Force which was total­ly unnecessary.
One of the first things taught a police offi­cer is that an offend­er com­mits an offense against the state and not against the officer.
Therefore each inves­ti­ga­tion should be approached with­out mal­ice and all excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence and leads should be followed.

Acting as chief Investigator of INDECOM Terrence Williams has vio­lat­ed every tenet of those prin­ci­ples, poi­son­ing the well of good­will INDECOM need­ed to have in order to be rel­e­vant and respect­ed as fair and balanced.
Had Terrence Williams approached his job pro­fes­sion­al­ly it would have been a win for both the JCF and INDECOM and he would have a greater suc­cess ratio to point to.
Because Terrence Williams aligned him­self with the most caus­tic anti police ele­ments in the coun­try and because Terrence Williams has proven that he is not an impar­tial inves­ti­ga­tor of facts but a par­tial ide­o­log­i­cal anti-police shill he has squan­dered a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to do good because of ego.

On that basis, Terrence Williams belongs in the hall of shame.
He is an ego­ma­ni­a­cal nar­cis­sis­tic who is unfit and unsuit­ed for the posi­tion he holds.

I have writ­ten an aver­age of one arti­cle per day for the last five years. For the most part, those Articles are ded­i­cat­ed to speak­ing to the issue of crime and the lev­el of cor­rup­tion endem­ic in the Jamaican society.
In those arti­cles, I con­tin­ue to point to the fact that admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties are not doing near­ly enough in the fight against crime.
Administrations of both par­ties cre­ate smoke screens to fool the pop­u­la­tion, while they con­tin­ue with busi­ness as usu­al, stok­ing the embers which sus­tain the cul­ture of mur­der on the Island.

Let’s be clear about the motives of both the Jamaica Labor Party and the People’s National Party.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties are pop­u­lat­ed with and led by peo­ple who have seri­ous vest­ed inter­est in crime.
In fact many have been named in mur­der for hire, dis­trib­ut­ing guns, drug deal­ing, assist­ing mur­der­ers, includ­ing cop killers to flee the coun­try and a long list of crimes which ought to land them in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

Others have been known to com­mit egre­gious embez­zle­ment of pub­lic funds and ser­vices all of which have been used to enrich themselves.
In brief, the aver­age Jamaican politi­cian is as cor­rupt as your aver­age Sub-Saharan crime lord, and are as addict­ed to pow­er as they are.

Justice Cannot Be Achieved Through A Corrupt System Presided Over By Corrupt People.…..

It is with that under­stand­ing that the Island’s crime rate must be viewed.
The coun­try which has been tagged as 84% cor­rupt by Transparency International is rot­ten to the core.
Nevertheless, Administrations of both polit­i­cal par­ties have co-opt­ed a strat­e­gy to scape­goat the police depart­ment for fail­ures which are their own.

As I have point­ed­ly said time and again, shit flows down­stream, the notion that the police depart­ment is the stan­dard of cor­rup­tion and inef­fi­cien­cy is bull­shit and a baloney sand­wich which only the intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged accepts.

The Police high com­mand has been a mod­el of fail­ure but that incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion can­not be laid at the feet of the young men and women who step for­ward to serve.
Those mal­adies must be laid square­ly at the feet of the polit­i­cal class and by exten­sion the police high com­mand which has tra­di­tion­al­ly been and still remains pre­cious lit­tle more than a neutered Mutt.

Vicious Killers Walk Free. Money .A Powerful Crime Lord .And A Complicit Court System…

The PNP as does the JLP has no inten­tion of com­pet­ing on a play­ing field of pro­gres­sive ideas to win sup­port for their agendas.
Instead, they com­pete using coer­cion, lies, vote buy­ing, mis­in­for­ma­tion and a strat­e­gy of gen­er­al­ly dumb­ing down an already low infor­ma­tion electorate.
The process is called gar­ri­son politics.

A for­mer Barbados Prime Minister once said he would not want to be the leader of Jamaica in light of the lev­el of igno­rance and illit­er­a­cy there.
The then Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga was high­ly cha­grined but his anger did not change the fun­da­men­tal facts with­in that statement.
Let it be under­stood that nei­ther of the two polit­i­cal par­ties can point to a sin­gle thing they have done while in Government or Opposition to aid the fight against crime which did not add polit­i­cal ben­e­fit to their party.

On the one hand, the PNP has been gross­ly incom­pe­tent and mali­cious in its han­dling of the rule of law.
Understandably the PNP with its major­i­ty in zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions( gar­risons) has a vest­ed inter­est in not hav­ing a coun­try in which the rule of law is the guid­ing principle.

This has been so through­out the PNP’s exis­tence, it was ampli­fied under Michael Manley and nei­ther of the lead­ers who came after Manley cared much about the rule of law either.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​s​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​-​l​o​v​i​n​g​-​j​u​d​g​e​s​-​s​h​o​w​s​-​d​i​s​d​a​i​n​-​f​o​r​-​c​o​p​s​-​b​y​-​o​v​e​r​t​u​r​n​i​n​g​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​p​e​n​a​l​t​y​-​o​f​-​c​o​p​-​k​i​l​l​e​rs/

On the oth­er hand, the JLP has flirt­ed with embrac­ing the rule of law, large­ly under Hugh Lawson Shearer, the Island’s most suc­cess­ful Prime Minister on the economy.
Shearer embraced a con­cept of law and order, it comes as no sur­prise, there­fore, that the Island had its great­est peri­od of eco­nom­ic suc­cess under his capa­ble and informed stewardship.
Hugh Lawson Shearer was a man of prin­ci­ple and impec­ca­ble character.
The same can­not be said about those who came after him.

Edward Seaga was hailed as a finan­cial wiz­ard of sorts, I beg to dif­fer. Sure Seaga was far bet­ter on the econ­o­my that Michael Manley every could be or ever knew how to be but Seaga main­tained Tivoli gar­dens and he gets no cred­it from me for that.

This Labor Party Government of Andrew Holness has demon­strat­ed that it will be a Government in the vein of Bruce Golding’s Government.
An admin­is­tra­tion in which gang­sters are pro­tect­ed and police are vilified.
Through his Justice Ministry and Delroy Chuck, through the Office of Public Defender and Arlene Harrison Henry, through INDECOM and Terrence Williams, through the Attorney General’s Department and Marlene Malahoo Forte and through sur­ro­gates like Nation Wide Radio and Cliff Hughes, Holness have been wag­ing a vis­cer­al and poi­so­nous cam­paign against the rule of law and the police.
All while wash­ing his hands and pre­tend­ing that he is try­ing to stem the blood­shed and cor­rup­tion on the Island.

It’s hard and darn near impos­si­ble for any­one to con­vince me oth­er­wise when the gov­ern­ment has infor­ma­tion like this and has not act­ed to end the prac­tice of grant­i­ng bail to dan­ger­ous felons.

“Up to March of this year, some 143 per­sons who were on bail were also charged with mur­der while being on bail. We’re going to enter into some dis­cus­sions with the Ministry of Justice that, for some cat­e­gories of crimes, the per­sons on bail should wear an elec­tron­ic bracelet as a con­di­tion of their bail,”.

I can just hear some of you ask­ing what does the Government have to do with the courts grant­i­ng bail to criminals?
The answer is that it is the Government’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to change the Bail Act so that the lib­er­al judges can­not return accused mur­der­ers to the streets after they are arrested.
There are hard­ly any nations on earth which grant bail to accused murderers.
With the inor­di­nate­ly high mur­der rate in the coun­try, there is no log­i­cal argu­ment to be made for releas­ing accused mur­der­ers so that they can elim­i­nate wit­ness­es against them and kill others.

The Minister of National Security Robert Montague made those dis­clo­sures as he demon­strat­ed an app at the UWI at the sign­ing of an MOU between the University and the JCF to train offi­cers on the University campus.
If I under­stand the Minister cor­rect­ly that is a shock­ing num­ber of peo­ple to be out on bail who have been charged with cap­i­tal murder.
Or who have com­mit­ted seri­ous crimes giv­en bail only to grad­u­ate to com­mit­ting more seri­ous crimes to include murder?
How do you con­trol the killings when killers are returned to the streets imme­di­ate­ly they after they are arrest­ed only to kill again?
Not only are they like­ly to kill again but fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends of those they kill are much more like­ly to take revenge against them.
This per­pet­u­ates the cycle of blood­shed aid­ed and abet­ted by the Government and the courts.

Just imag­ine for a moment 143 peo­ple which they know of, who have killed while on bail in a three month period.
The Minister of National Security’s response is that he will have a dis­cus­sion with Delroy Chuck, a man who advo­cates for the purg­ing of mur­der­ers from court dock­ets if their case has been in the sys­tem over five years.
That sug­ges­tion would increase mur­der and expo­nen­tial­ly cre­ate more log­jam in the court sys­tem all designed to wait out the five-year red line for the dis­pos­al of cases.
This ladies and gen­tle­men is what a coun­try of men looks like as opposed to a coun­try of laws.

The more I see the direc­tion our coun­try is head­ing the more I am con­vinced that the prob­lem of seri­ous crime is not get­ting bet­ter and for all intents and pur­pos­es will get expo­nen­tial­ly worse until some­thing real­ly cat­a­clysmic bring things to a head.

As some­one who opines about crime and the harm, it does to the social fab­ric of soci­eties , I do from time to time research polic­ing pro­to­cols as well as look at best prac­tices of police depart­ments which have been able to deal effec­tive­ly with the prob­lem of crime.
In doing so I am mind­ful that Geography, pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty, pover­ty, and oth­er defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics do play a part in crime and deter­mines whether it metas­ta­size or shriv­els up.

I hap­pened upon a video in which Former Commissioner of Police Carl Williams vowed to an American Journalist that the JCF would stamp out the Lotto scam scourge from the Island, “not a mat­ter of if” William asserts, “a mat­ter of when”.
The Journalists were on the Island as part of a greater aware­ness by American author­i­ties of the tens and maybe hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars being bilked from elder­ly Americans through the Lotto scam.

At the time Willaims was brag­ging to the Journalist he was­n’t yet Commissioner of Police.
Since then, Williams has been appoint­ed to the top cop posi­tion, done his stint and is long gone.
Needless to say, not only has the lot­to scam not gone away, it has grown leaps and bounds and so has every oth­er cat­e­go­ry of crime includ­ing vio­lent crimes.

In fact, the lot­to scam has been infa­mous­ly cred­it­ed with being the dri­ver of the homi­cide rate par­tic­u­lar­ly in the west­er­ly parish­es of St James, Westmoreland and Hanover .
In the ensu­ing peri­od since that infa­mous inter­view, dozens of lot­to scam­mers have been extra­dit­ed to the United States to stand tri­al for their crimes.
The Americans have pledged to extra­dite dozens more to stand tri­al as well.

It’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that despite the boasts of Jamaican author­i­ties it has been the efforts of American law enforce­ment and their exper­tise which has large­ly been respon­si­ble for the extra­di­tions and sub­se­quent con­vic­tions in American courts where all offi­cers of the court are focused on deal­ing effec­tive­ly with the issue of crime.

WHY IS THE FORGONE IMPORTANT?

It took the Americans to focus on the Lotto scam in order for peo­ple to begin to be held account­able for their crimes.
I am ful­ly con­ver­sant that many Jamaicans attuned to the issue of the scam has devel­oped a twist­ed and con­vo­lut­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for scam­ming argu­ing that it is repa­ra­tions of sorts.
Jailed mur­der­er Addijah Palmeer o/​c Vybes Kartel has memo­ri­al­ized scam­ming as a legit­i­mate act unwor­thy of ridicule.

“Reparation”
(feat. Gaza Slim)

[Gaza Slim:]
As long as dem
Nah buy no gun, Nah sup­port no war
Big up di man dem star from near and far
Dem call it scam
Mi call it reparation
Every ghet­to yute is a star
Yow Yow (vybz kartel)
So dem wah live like one, one

Which brings me to my point.
I recent­ly wrote that I know of no coun­try in which tax pay­ers funds are used to fund oth­er agen­cies which active­ly mil­i­tates against that same coun­try’s law enforce­ment agen­cies except Jamaica.
I asked my read­ers to edu­cate me if they know of any such coun­try. Thus far I have not heard from anyone.
It is a shock­ing yet telling indi­ca­tion that the tiny Island of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple has no inten­tion of deal­ing with the spi­ral­ing crime wave which has inun­dat­ed the Island.

I won­der from time to time who exact­ly is at the wheel of Government in Jamaica?
On oth­er occa­sions, I am appalled at the lack of aware­ness of the so-called edu­cat­ed peo­ple on crit­i­cal issues affect­ing our country.

Take for instance a recent announce­ment by the University of the West Indies that it intends to help to train cops in cer­tain crit­i­cal areas.
According to local media report­ing guest at an event at the University in which a Memorandum of under­stand­ing was signed were aghast at fig­ures revealed by Deputy Commissioner of Police Clifford Blake.

Which leads me to won­der who are these peo­ple and where do they live that they would be shocked at these rev­e­la­tions, Jamaica is a tiny coun­try are they res­i­dents of Uranus?
Under the MOU, the uni­ver­si­ty will pro­vide lodg­ing for 300 JCF recruits for a six-month peri­od, twice per year, among oth­er pro­vi­sions while they are in train­ing.

At cen­ter stage was the vex­ing issue of mass attri­tion which has plagued the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
This issue has been a long­stand­ing issue for the Agency despite the crit­i­cal lack of jobs in the coun­try offi­cers leave at an alarm­ing rate, usu­al­ly seek­ing bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties, some­times with­in the CAROICOM region which does not nec­es­sar­i­ly­ly mean more money.
This puts to lie the notion that the rea­sons offi­cers leave the JCF are sole­ly eco­nom­ic. I will come back to this.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Clifford Blake revealed that the JCF’s cur­rent estab­lish­ment stands at 14,092, but their work­ing strength as of the report­ing was 11,433.
Blake told the gath­er­ing In 2015, the JCF grad­u­at­ed 244 per­sons and dur­ing that same time 514 left the agency through res­ig­na­tion, retire­ment, and dis­missal, and in 2016 we grad­u­at­ed into the agency 495 per­sons (and) last year 544 per­sons exit­ed the agency, so we con­tin­ue to oper­ate at a deficit.”
He high­light­ed a recent instance where the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force wel­comed 13 new mem­bers, 12 of whom were for­mer mem­bers of the JCF.

What that means is that these Jamaican offi­cers are not run­ning away from polic­ing, they are run­ning away polic­ing in Jamaica.
In fact, as I was writ­ing this a young friend of mine who just hap­pened to be one of the bright young offi­cers who received crime scene train­ing walked in to see me.
I told him what I was work­ing on and he told me “Mike offi­cers are leav­ing the force and they aren’t even leav­ing the Island”.
He stri­dent­ly rub­bished DCP Clifford Blake’s asser­tion that the pri­ma­ry rea­sons cops are leav­ing are pri­mar­i­ly for eco­nom­ic reasons.
He lament­ed the dis­con­nect between the Commissioned Ranks and the Rank and file. The rank and file he remarked feels it is large­ly on its own
The Gazetted offi­cers he lament­ed, are large­ly as dis­con­nect­ed from the rank and file offi­cers who do the work, as the coun­try is vis­cer­al­ly anti-police.
To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion, many of those gazetted offi­cers are grad­u­ates of the University of the West Indies, and oth­er colleges.

It is impor­tant to look at these num­bers as the Government takes action to sur­rep­ti­tious­ly force police offi­cers to serve a pre­scribed length of time before they can leave and even there­after must inform the force six (6) months in advance of leaving.
The rea­sons the Government gave through the hier­ar­chy of the JCF for the move which is being chal­lenged in court are so flim­sy they are laughable.

If ever there was a means toward dis­cour­ag­ing tal­ent­ed free peo­ple from get­ting involved in pub­lic ser­vice for the right rea­sons this is it.
People are moti­vat­ed by their con­vic­tions. I was moti­vat­ed by my con­vic­tions when I signed up to serve but I darn sure would­n’t have served if I was con­strained by archa­ic rules which lim­it and infringes on my God-giv­en rights and free­doms which cer­tain­ly were not bestowed upon me by a tin-pan Government but by my creator.

Said Blake, “So not only do we con­tin­ue to lose peo­ple, we con­tin­ue to lose some of our best per­sons,” he said. “We need to look at a reten­tion strat­e­gy to see how do we keep our mem­bers in the orga­ni­za­tion.”
He went on, “it is clear that sev­er­al areas such as job sat­is­fac­tion, salary, bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, pro­mo­tion, among oth­ers need to be crit­i­cal­ly examined”.

So, on the one hand, Blake talks about a reten­tion pol­i­cy which is nec­es­sary, he named some of the things which should be con­sid­ered ‚as job sat­is­fac­tion, salary, bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, pro­mo­tion, among others.
Why then would the JCF co-opt the regres­sive pol­i­cy of the Government which will have the oppo­site effect of retain­ing good offi­cers with­out a fight?

The stark real­i­ty is that the leaky old buck­et which is the JCF is los­ing more water than it is tak­ing in.
The Andrew Holness Special Zones assault on rank and file mem­bers which it pur­ports will stop attri­tion will inex­orably lead to a mas­sive drop off of poten­tial recruits who do not wish to be con­strained against their will.
And sec­ond­ly, will has­ten those already in the agency to seek out the exits.

The log­i­cal con­clu­sions to all of this, as this writer has stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly before, is that the Holness Government is on a mis­sion to dis­man­tle the JCF.
Andrew Holness and the anti-police forces behind him know full well what they are doing, they would dis­man­tle the JCF this minute if they could get away with it.
Nevertheless, this anti-police cabal knows that if they make the agency suf­fi­cient­ly unat­trac­tive no one will want to join and those already in will be run­ning for the exits. Using that strat­e­gy it will only be a mat­ter of time before the agency collapses.
It is like Trump’s assault on the afford­able care act passed by his pre­de­ces­sor, he argues it is dying, on oth­er occa­sions he says it’s dead.
Only that it’s nei­ther dead nor dying but it will if the safe­guards built in to sup­port its exis­tence and growth are not main­tained it will ulti­mate­ly die.
Guess who has the pow­er to remove some of those safeguards?

The attempt to use the threat of prison as a means to keep cops in the JCF is a slick sleight of hand which on the face of it gives the appear­ance that it is designed to help but will have the oppo­site effect.
If of course, you can get past the pre­sump­tu­ous and cheeky nature of the prospect of cops being impris­oned because they made up their minds they did not want to be a part of polic­ing a coun­try that does not respect the rule of law any longer.
Clifford Blake sees it, at least his com­ments seem to indi­cate he under­stand it Quote” it is clear that sev­er­al areas such as job sat­is­fac­tion, salary, bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, pro­mo­tion, among oth­ers need to be crit­i­cal­ly exam­ined.”

If Clifford Blake knows it Andrew Holness knows it. The ques­tion is who exact­ly are the peo­ple behind Holness who are work­ing to destroy the Police force?
The effort of the University, in this case, is to be com­mend­ed, Pro Vice Chancellor and Principal of the UWI, Mona Professor Archibald McDonald said mod­ern polic­ing calls for not just fight­ing but also think­ing men and women, and so the UWI’s response to the crime sit­u­a­tion is not one of fear and retreat but proac­tive solutions.

He said that the uni­ver­si­ty will aim to take the police force to their full-ser­vice capac­i­ty of 14,000 through the train­ing of 300 recruits every six months, which will take about three years to achieve.

“This will pro­vide the JCF with 600 grad­u­ates per year to help negate the attri­tion rate,” he said. “Students will be housed in res­i­dence dur­ing the peri­od of train­ing on the Mona cam­pus and lec­ture rooms will be pro­vid­ed and con­fig­ured where necessary.”

As com­mend­able as this approach is the real issue is not about the full com­ple­ment of the force.
The issue of import is the con­di­tions in the coun­try which caus­es peo­ple who both­er to sign up, go through the train­ing then almost imme­di­ate­ly turn their backs on the agency in short order.
That is the issue, if the University does not under­stand this then it too is a part of the problem.