As news emerged that a bunch of police offi­cers may be arrest­ed soon for alleged breach­es of the law new infor­ma­tion sur­faced that police offi­cers from one of the branch­es of the force actu­al­ly accost­ed the men who assas­si­nat­ed busi­ness­man Richard Ramdial last Tuesday at around 4: 30 pm and released them.
According to Élan Powell Assistant Commissioner of Police with respon­si­bil­i­ty for crime “at the time, the cops were sat­is­fied that the men were clear, hav­ing searched them and checked their hands for gun pow­der residue”.
Shockingly, Powell says the vehi­cle was stopped after the police con­trol broad­cast a radio trans­mis­sion detail­ing the get­away car and its license plate number.
If you are in shock at read­ing this so am I from hear­ing it.

Having policed the streets of Kingston and oth­er towns and vil­lages with some of the very best anti-crime offi­cers any­where in the world I have tried to give the offi­cers in the case the ben­e­fit of the doubt.
I have tried plac­ing myself in their shoes and mulled the sce­nario as it may have occurred over and over in my head and I can­not find a sin­gle rea­son or sit­u­a­tion in which this would have hap­pened on my watch.

Whether it’s Bigga Ford or Parra Campbell, Dadrick Henry or Mckinnis, Allan Campbell or Little Wicked I can­not imag­ine any of these anti-crime cops stop­ping a car in which the plates on the vehi­cle match­es one from police dis­patch and the occu­pants are released.
Jamaican cops are par­tic­u­lar­ly hes­i­tant about get­ting involved, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it relates to the deten­tion of suspects.
With the traps and snares the gov­ern­ment placed in their way, I total­ly under­stand their appre­hen­sion about putting them­selves in legal jeopardy.

Because of the INDECOM Act, police offi­cers have to be dou­bly sure that they are 100% inhu­man­ly per­fect and cor­rect before and dur­ing their inter­ac­tion with even the most vio­lent and dan­ger­ous criminals.
In this case, how­ev­er, offi­cers on the streets respond­ing to infor­ma­tion put out by dis­patch is pro­tect­ed from lia­bil­i­ty because they are act­ing on infor­ma­tion from the con­trol room.

Set aside those con­cerns. The most con­se­quen­tial state­ment Powell made is that the offi­cers took it upon them­selves to car­ry out an arcane field test for gun­pow­der residue on the hands of the sus­pects before releas­ing them.
Powell the man tasked with han­dling the nation’s crime was nev­er a crime fight­er him­self but I want to be fair to him in this even though the ridicu­lous nature of the police sto­ry begs derision.

I was not aware that the police had the means to do field tests for gun­pow­der residue? I guess as far as the offi­cers are con­cerned the sus­pects passed the smell test[sic].
It is not every day that killers get appre­hend­ed min­utes after they kill. If the alle­ga­tions, in this case, are true, it makes it dou­bly dis­tress­ing that these men were released.

If the plates matched that giv­en by police dis­patch under no cir­cum­stances could the police ratio­nal­ly release the occu­pants of the car regard­less of who they are, what they had or did not have.
The most fun­da­men­tal piece of infor­ma­tion giv­en to the police was the plate num­ber. As a for­mer Investigator, I can tell you there are far too many changes which could have occurred between the time mis­ter Ramdial was gunned down and the car was stopped.
Regardless of weapons, gun­pow­der, or any oth­er excul­pa­to­ry fac­tor with the occu­pants of that par­tic­u­lar car they were not going any­where were I in the shoes of these officers.

So we are left with a sit­u­a­tion in which a few things comes to mind. In the first instance.
(1) Corruption in the mind of the anti-police trolls.
Hard to make that case as time and the sever­i­ty of the crime mil­i­tate against this. Possible yes prob­a­ble no.
(2)Incompetence. Possibly yes.
(3) Too col­le­giate? Possibly.
(4) Too timid and afraid? Highly Possibly.

No mat­ter how you slice this, if the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed is true this is sim­ply one of the most bone­head­ed occur­rences to ever hap­pen in the JCF. This is only one more log on the fire of dis­con­tent and dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
These are unforced errors which the JCF sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to use to beat itself.
For years the JCF has done a shit­ty job of recruit­ment, back­ground checks, spot­ting and root­ing out bad appli­cants to the agency.
Yes, the Jamaican soci­ety is as cor­rupt as most oth­er coun­tries, offi­cers have to come from that dirty pool. It can­not be ignored how­ev­er that the awe­some pow­er giv­en to the poor­est peo­ple would gar­ner immense scrutiny.

The incred­i­ble incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion dis­played by far too many in the JCF have caused even some who served to become crit­ics at large.
The truth is they knew they were no good yet they were able to get in.
Now they are the most vocal crit­ics of the force. Such is it when the agency allows itself time and again to be the Barney Fyffe of law enforcement.
The worse of the worse have much to say.

I’ll await the out­come of Élan Powell’s investigations.

Those who view the killings and the gen­er­al sense of law­less­ness in Jamaica with con­ster­na­tion may be miss­ing a fun­da­men­tal fact.

Jamaica, like oth­er Caribbean Islands, comes from a colo­nial past.
The Independence procla­ma­tion of August 1962 and the hand­ing over of Jamaica to its dark­er skinned sec­ond-tiered caste for lead­er­ship did not result in the end of either racism or casteism.

Today mon­ey and for­mal edu­ca­tion dic­tate who sit atop the social peck­ing order. This does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that skin pig­men­ta­tion or the lack there­of does not go a long way in decid­ing status.

Average Jamaicans still embrace the con­cept of the big man. The “big-man “accord­ing to Jamaican ver­nac­u­lar is any­one they view as vest­ed with power.
Those of a lighter skin col­or, monied or edu­cat­ed or all of the fore­gone is cer­tain­ly not shy about being the big fish in the lit­tle pond.
A con­vo­lut­ed sys­tem of patron­age and elitism.

Then there is the impov­er­ished urban black youth who were once tools of the polit­i­cal class. As a mat­ter of sur­vival, many were forced to align them­selves to either of the two polit­i­cal parties.
Often times not nec­es­sar­i­ly out of choice but because of the zip code in which they come of age.

Over the years the lure of the big city the prospect of an eas­i­er life has act­ed as a mag­net to draw young men and women to Kingston and to some extent Montego Bay.
In very short order the vast major­i­ty of them are forced to rec­og­nize that the lure and lights of the city are like an unat­tain­able mirage.
Ultimately they too end up in the slums of the city, des­ti­tute, dis­en­chant­ed and disillusioned.
Politicians are ill-equipped to hand out good­ies today as they once were able to do in yes­ter­year. As such con­trol of the cities, urban youth have grad­u­al­ly slipped from their grasp.

Urban sprawl became a fac­tor, many of the dis­il­lu­sioned seek­ing a bet­ter life in the cities and towns end­ed up on lands they cap­ture in and around the met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. Shanty towns emerged in and around the met­ro­pol­i­tan areas of Kingston, Spanish Town, Montego Bay, May Pen and others.
Those Shanty-towns are now incu­ba­tors which pro­duce a nev­er end­ing line of gang­sters who engage in mur­der for hire, lot­to scam­ming, extor­tion, rob­bery, human traf­fick­ing and a pletho­ra of oth­er crimes.

From the zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sion(gar­risons)cre­at­ed by the politi­cians and the zinc and ply­board, shan­ty towns emerged young men and women hope­less, yet deter­mined to have a life of excess which they view as a life of success.

These young­sters can­not be count­ed on to till the soil or wait their turn for the shiny objects mon­ey can buy, they want it now.
The advent of the Internet and cable Television vast­ly com­pressed the world bring­ing into sharp focus the way the rich and famous live.
Jamaica’s young, men and women are not going to be told to work and wait when they can take it now they have the means.
Lotto-scam, mur­der for hire, rob­bery, pros­ti­tu­tion, human traf­fick­ing, drug-deal­ing, extor­tion and every oth­er vice is accept­able as long as it brings in the money.

God and Church are scoffed at, derid­ed as out­dat­ed relics of the past, rep­re­sen­ta­tive car­i­ca­tures of the fail­ings of pre­vi­ous generations.
As a result, the Church is no longer sacro­sanct, they are prime tar­gets to be robbed, the hal­lowed halls of church­es and tem­ples no longer engen­der rev­er­ence, not for the men and women of the cloth not even for a high­er pow­er God.
High pow­ered weapons have sup­plant­ed the mys­ti­cism of divine pow­er for­mer gen­er­a­tions rev­er­enced and sought.
The num­ber of dead bod­ies cre­at­ed by a thug now defines the respect he receives in the streets. Like scalp on a Braves belt, they gath­er bod­ies unmind­ful or uncon­cerned about the val­ue of life.

The hal­lowed halls of the church are just anoth­er place to take a life and where bet­ter to do so?
Doing so sends the mes­sage, the man behind the weapon is more pow­er­ful than the god of their victims.
“Not even God can save you”, fear in the hearts of oth­ers is what they crave.
It is ter­ror­ism plain and simple.

It is with­in that envi­ron­ment that a Bill to deal with crime is con­tem­plat­ed and passed yet the focus is not on the bar­barism of the killers but on the actions and strate­gies to be used to root them out. It is on that basis that it is doomed to fail and it will fail.
God help us comes to mind but then again God helps those who help themselves.
This prob­lem requires deci­sive action, unfor­tu­nate­ly, the peo­ple tasked with the solu­tion are the peo­ple who cre­at­ed the prob­lem in the first place.
If you believe social inter­ven­tion will change this you are even more stu­pid than I thought.

Patrick Powell was found guilty in a Kingston crim­i­nal court of fail­ing to hand over his firearm to law enforce­ment offi­cers when he was ordered to do so by the police as the prime sus­pect in the mur­der of 17-year-0ld Kingston College stu­dent Khajeel Mais in 2011.
Mais was shot while trav­el­ing in a taxi in Havendale on July 1, 2011.

Patrick Powell was charged with the mur­der of the Kingston College stu­dent after ini­tial­ly flee­ing the Island and lat­er returning.
Since then Powell was tried for the mur­der and exonnerated.

Under Jamaican law, Powell faces a max­i­mum of one year in prison or J$300’000, that’s the equiv­a­lent of US$2’500.
It seems to me that Patrick Powell who is iden­ti­fied as a busi­ness­man will not have any prob­lem decid­ing what course of action to take.
As ridicu­lous as the puni­tive ceil­ing on this offense is, the tri­al judge Vaughn Smith offered Powell that if he sur­ren­ders the firearm before his sen­tenc­ing on August 9, it would help in pos­si­bly low­er­ing his sen­tence for fail­ing to hand over his gun and ammu­ni­tion to the police for inspection.
“Wow”

For those of you who are won­der­ing, how is it pos­si­ble that a sus­pect in a mur­der case, who is accused of using a reg­is­tered firearm in the com­mis­sion of that homi­cide, can refuse to hand over the weapon to police you are not alone.
That a tri­al judge could be hold­ing out car­rots to this offend­er as an induce­ment to turn the firearm in is an atrocity.

It is impor­tant that we con­sid­er the sequence of events and the respon­si­bil­i­ties each per­son have under the law.
Having a reg­is­tered firearm is a priv­i­lege, not a con­sti­tu­tion­al right in Jamaica. The firearms act has clear guide­lines which reg­is­tered own­ers must com­ply with in order to remain registered.

The moment a firearm is no longer reg­is­tered, for what­ev­er rea­son, it becomes an ille­gal weapon.
The legal­i­ty by which the hold­er is allowed to have a reg­is­tered weapon is pred­i­cat­ed on the hold­er’s fideli­ty to the core stip­u­la­tions of the gov­ern­ing act.

The rules gov­ern­ing ille­gal firearms are also clear. According to the records, Patrick Powell has not report­ed the weapon stolen. He nev­er report­ed it lost. Yet from what we have learned it is no longer registered.
This makes him guilty of hav­ing an ille­gal firearm.

MURDER 

Anyone who is a licensed hold­er of a firearm in Jamaica, who is accused of using such firearm in the com­mis­sion of a crime is bound by law to com­ply with the demand from law enforce­ment to hand over the weapon.
Now con­sid­er that Powell a licensed firearm hold­er who was accused of a homi­cide in which the firearm was alleged to be the weapon used, bla­tant­ly thumbs his nose at the sys­tem and refus­es to hand over the weapon to police on demand.
As a result of his bla­tant and unbowed defi­ance, he walked out of a Kingston court­room a free man while the fam­i­ly of Khajeel Mais is left to won­der where is the jus­tice for them.

Why would any legal firearm user turn over his/​her weapon giv­en sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances in the future?
I ask these ques­tions because it is impor­tant that these ques­tions get asked of the legislators>
“What are you doing why gap­ing holes like these are not plugged? “Why are there no laws which make the refusal to turn the weapon over com­men­su­rate with the penal­ty which would have been met­ed out to a per­son con­vict­ed of murder?

As crime con­tin­ues to sky­rock­et on the Island there is no short­age of ideas on what must be done to address this gal­lop­ing homi­cide rate.
Among the ques­tions asked is, why is the mur­der rate so high and the incar­cer­a­tion rate so low?
The answer to those ques­tions may be found in these gap­ing cause­ways in the laws which give poten­tial offend­ers like Patrick Powell and oth­ers much lever­age to break the most seri­ous laws know­ing there would be pre­cious lit­tle if any consequences.

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness con­tin­ue to harp on a non­sen­si­cal nar­ra­tive he con­coct­ed as he tries to save face against the con­stant­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ing secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in the country.
That nar­ra­tive is that the new­ly craft­ed Special Zones bill he is shep­herd­ing through the leg­isla­tive process will be very pro­tec­tive of human rights.
Holness has gone to great lengths to say repeat­ed­ly that police will not be kick­ing in doors to go after criminals.
If I am read­ing the PM’s state­ments cor­rect­ly the new law will not do Jack shit about the dis­mal secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion on the Island, it will fur­ther pla­cate human rights activists at the expense of inno­cent dead Jamaicans.

I do under­stand the pol­i­tics behind the Prime Minister’s del­i­cate bal­anc­ing act.
After all, Jamaica is large­ly a crim­i­nal sup­port­ing nation which does not take too kind­ly to the rule of law.
Secondly, the PM is forced to deal with the dete­ri­o­rat­ing secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion while try­ing to hold onto a sin­gle seat major­i­ty in the legislature.

Juxtapose that with the intran­si­gent Political Opposition which has nev­er whol­ly sup­port­ed anti-crime ini­tia­tives and the pletho­ra of sup­posed human rights lob­by groups and it becomes clear­er why the PM is going to such great pains to preach human rights as he tries to grap­ple with the dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion which is only get­ter worse.

Now some may find it incred­u­lous that my posi­tion on this is may be con­strued to be flip­pant and or dis­mis­sive of the impor­tance of human rights guarantees.
As a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer, I believe all crimes should be pun­ished. How that pun­ish­ment is admin­is­tered or what that pun­ish­ment should be should be com­men­su­rate with the specifics of each par­tic­u­lar crime.
I do not believe that aggres­sive­ly root­ing out Jamaica’s urban ter­ror­ists is anti­thet­i­cal to or con­flicts with human rights of decent law-abid­ing peo­ple who are too poor to move out of the urban slums.
It is a faux lie which has dom­i­nat­ed the dis­course, cre­at­ed by cer­tain ele­ments with a vest­ed inter­est in the chaot­ic mur­der sit­u­a­tion. Its intent is to shut down any mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sion or solu­tions which would effec­tive­ly cau­ter­ize the cycle of sys­temic vio­lence under the guise that going in and root­ing out ter­ror­ists is sim­i­lar to abus­ing inno­cent people.

The Prime Minister a prod­uct of the lib­er­al left­ist buf­foon­ery which emanates out of that Campus in Mona has latched onto the faux nar­ra­tive and is now shack­led to it.
As a can­di­date for the job he now holds Holness promised Jamaicans would be able to sleep with their win­dows and doors open if they elect­ed him Prime Minister.
Regardless of the verac­i­ty of the alle­ga­tions which will sure­ly come out of the secu­ri­ty forces inter­ac­tion with mem­bers of the pub­lic once the zones are autho­rized, Holness will also own those alle­ga­tions of abuse as well.
He has said cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly there will be no abuse, the goal is about pro­tect­ing human rights.

I have con­sis­tent­ly said this new law will have the effect of a child emp­ty­ing a pail of water in the Ocean.
The men with the high pow­ered weapons will sim­ply move to oth­er parts of the coun­try once the secu­ri­ty forces are sta­tioned in an area.
Imagine a law which is being sold as a law which will guar­an­tee human rights as against root­ing out ter­ror suspects.
As a for­mer front-line I cop I espouse root­ing out the shoot­ers then whomev­er and what­ev­er can move in and do their social inter­ven­tion , or what­ev­er the hell they do.

Jamaica Defense Force Major Basil Jarrett, the civ­il-mil­i­tary coöper­a­tion offi­cer at the JDF, told the Media that “The PMVs have been a great tac­ti­cal asset as we can now move into an area to quick­ly and safe­ly deliv­er troops or extract secu­ri­ty per­son­nel or detainees if need­ed,” Jarrett said. “The PMVs are rugged, impos­ing, and flex­i­ble enough to be used in a num­ber of emer­gency sit­u­a­tions, includ­ing inter­nal secu­ri­ty. They are resis­tant to small arms gun­fire, impro­vised explo­sive devices, and oth­er per­son­nel threats, and give the sol­diers increased con­fi­dence to go into the most hos­tile territories.”

While the Prime Minister line up the deck chairs on the sink­ing Titanic the pro­fes­sion­als who are tasked with deal­ing with events on the ground sees things differently.

Jarrett’s descrip­tion of what the armored per­son­nel car­ri­er is capa­ble of is not the lin­go of a used car sales­man try­ing to pass off a lemon to an unsus­pect­ing buyer.
Those char­ac­ter­is­tics are exact­ly what are required to breach the Urban slums in which the heav­i­ly armed mili­ti­a­men operate.
Jarrett fur­ther point­ed out that when a joint army/​police patrol team came under fire from gun­men in Denham Town, upon request and arrival of PMV sup­port, there was a ceasefire.

You only have a cease­fire in an active sit­u­a­tion of war.
That it would require armor to quell the fire­pow­er of the mili­ti­a­men is rather telling and ought to tell sen­si­ble Jamaicans exact­ly to what depths their coun­try has sunken.
The usu­al hacks and shills will tell you this is noth­ing new its all under con­trol. I agree it’s not new but it is cer­tain­ly not under control.
They will tell you it’s polit­i­cal to speak out about it because this par­ty is in pow­er or that par­ty is in power.
I per­son­al­ly do not give a rat’s ass about which par­ty holds pow­er. I care about my coun­try and it’s dis­in­te­gra­tion trou­bles me.

It required a Military response 7 years ago to annex Tivoli Gardens to Jamaica and depose a transna­tion­al crim­i­nal who was too big for the Island’s secu­ri­ty forces to even challenge.
It required a full-blown mil­i­tary cam­paign to bring that enclave under control.
Since then that International crim­i­nal has been arrest­ed and is serv­ing time in a United States Federal prison.
However, since the events of 2010, the West Kingston Constituency seat being held by for­mer KSAC Mayor Desmond McKenzie has con­tin­ued to dete­ri­o­rate into a frac­tured enclave for com­pet­ing gangs.

From reports, the gangs are all com­pet­ing for the con­trol once held by Christopher Duddus Coke the extra­dit­ed criminal.
The idea that this prob­lem can be addressed while cen­ter­ing the focus on human rights is sim­plis­tic, stu­pid and laugh­able in its idi­ot­ic naïveté.
If the PM and oth­ers know that their focus is bull­shit, an act of putting wall­pa­per over the huge gap­ing hole in the wall, then it leaves us to ques­tion their desire to take strong reme­di­al action against the Island’s killers.

Despite the high per­cent­age of self-absorbed, self-impor­tant ingrates among the 2.8 mil­lion Jamaicans on the Island and even some in the dias­po­ra the high­ly imper­fect police force con­tin­ue to plod on amidst the lack of ade­quate and respectable pay, lack of respect, lack of equip­ment, lack of sup­port, and lack of appreciation.
Not to men­tion the Administrative and insti­tu­tion­al imped­i­ments erect­ed by suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties to thwart their efforts.

It’s impos­si­ble to say just how many lives have been saved even tem­porar­i­ly, a reprieve even, to live a lit­tle bit longer as a result of the lat­est rev­e­la­tions by the police on the num­ber of ille­gal guns and ammu­ni­tion they have removed from the streets since the start of the year.

Four hun­dred and forty-nine (449) guns and almost 8’000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion is noth­ing to scoff at.
It is enough guns and ammu­ni­tion to sup­ply a small army or sev­er­al mili­tias as in Jamaica’s case.
Even though most of the shoot­ers have no mil­i­tary train­ing, almost 8’000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion could eas­i­ly have result­ed in the deaths of hun­dreds more than the over 700 who have met their end since the start of the year.

Amidst the grand­stand­ing and pos­tur­ing, it is very impor­tant that Jamaicans whether at home or abroad, take a moment to step back from these num­bers and digest what they mean.

If at all you are a Jamaican and you would like to see the blood­shed stop, it is impor­tant to con­sid­er what the removal of these caches of guns and ammu­ni­tion mean.
Bravo to the police offi­cers and mem­bers of the mil­i­tary who back them up, for stand­ing up and plac­ing them­selves between mer­ci­less mili­ti­a­men and the good law abid­ing peo­ple deserv­ing of their sacrifice.
Several of whom have already made the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice in ser­vice to an ingrate nation since the start of the year.

In a per­fect world, rain would fall only on the just. We live in an imper­fect world, so a ris­ing tide rais­es all boats.
The ingrates who should absolute­ly not ben­e­fit from your efforts actu­al­ly do ben­e­fit from your sacrifice.
It’s sim­ply the way the world works.
Keep remov­ing the guns but bet­ter yet find ways to stop them com­ing in-in the first place. If the police could ever get to the point where it is able to fol­low the caches com­ing in and fol­low­ing the evi­dence where it leads I would be a very hap­py man.
Why?

The lying hus­tlers who run the coun­try would all be in jail.
Those unjust who received the rain they did not deserve, the boats which should not be ele­vat­ed by the ris­ing tide…
It would be well worth it to see those unjust dry up for want of rain, how good it would be to see those cer­tain boats sink as the tide raise only the deserv­ing boats.

.….….….….….….….….….….….….……
COPS SEIZE NEARLY 8’000 ROUNDS OF AMMO, 449 GUNS SINCE JANUARY

KINGSTON, Jamaica — The police, through its com­mu­ni­ca­tion arm, the Corporate Communications Unit (CCU), is report­ing that 449 guns and 7,899 rounds of ammu­ni­tion have been seized across the island since January 01.

According to sta­tis­tics released today, Area Four, which com­pris­es of Kingston Central, Kingston East, Kingston West, St Andrew Central and St Andrew South, led the tal­ly with 135 guns seized up to July 9.

They were close­ly trailed by Area One — Hanover, St James, Trelawny and Westmoreland — which account­ed for 28 per­cent (128) of the firearms seized.

Meanwhile, 51 per­cent (4015) of the assort­ed rounds of ammu­ni­tion seized for the peri­od was found in Area One with St James alone account­ing for 3,476 rounds of the ammu­ni­tion, the police said, adding that Area Four account­ed for 20 per­cent or 1,556 rounds.

Portland and St Mary had the least sig­nif­i­cant fig­ures for both firearm and ammu­ni­tion seizures with only three firearms seized in Portland and eight in St Mary for the review period.
Both parish­es also record­ed remark­ably low fig­ures for ammu­ni­tion seizures with 21 and 39 rounds respec­tive­ly. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​C​o​p​s​_​s​e​i​z​e​_​n​e​a​r​l​y​_​8​0​0​0​_​r​o​u​n​d​s​_​o​f​_​a​m​m​o​,​_​4​4​9​_​g​u​n​s​_​s​i​n​c​e​_​J​a​n​u​a​r​y​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​228

Given nor­mal con­di­tions in which crime needs to be brought under con­trol, police offi­cers grap­ple with ways to pre­vent crime through deter­rence, through force of their pres­ence and in sit­u­a­tions where inci­dences of crim­i­nal­i­ty occur nonethe­less, they inves­ti­gate and arrest offenders.

That is man­ag­ing crime.
There are sev­er­al lev­els of crime, most law enforce­ment offi­cials, past and present will attest to the dis­tinct fact that; left to fes­ter crime is a can­cer­ous tumor which nev­er gets bet­ter with­out being reme­died, will not self-cor­rect, and it nev­er gets fixed by apply­ing the wrong antidote.

Given time crime becomes unman­age­able and will invari­ably need cau­ter­i­za­tion or amputation.
This is so as in an infect­ed part of the body which is left to fes­ter, even­tu­al­ly, the infec­tion will dic­tate the need for dras­tic action as a mat­ter of urgency or sure death will follow.
By the time it reach­es that stage the body will cer­tain­ly lose a limb or suf­fer severe trau­ma as a result of the negligence.

Let’s take Jamaica’s sit­u­a­tion for example.
We have a bunch of politi­cians and oth­er lead­ers who are as pre­ten­tious as the sun will rise tomor­row. Never mind the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion which is large­ly too dumb to real­ize the debil­i­tat­ing effect crime is hav­ing on their lives and that of their chil­dren and gen­er­a­tions to come.
They glo­ri­fy crime and tell you just look at the tourist arrival numbers.
If this met­ric was­n’t so sim­plis­tic and down­right retard­ed it would be laughable.

That nar­ra­tive will cer­tain­ly dis­ap­pear, real soon, we recent­ly learned that sev­er­al cruise ship oper­a­tors will not be stop­ping at the Falmouth pier anymore.
Wow !!!
Visitors are fed up with the aggres­sive atti­tude of peo­ple when they dis­em­bark the ships.
Oh, wait, “crime deh ebery weh an dem mus expec seh peo­ple a gu try sell dem tings.”
The only prob­lem with that the­o­ry is that they have the mon­ey Jamaicans need so they will take that mon­ey elsewhere.

The polit­i­cal lead­ers are large­ly crim­i­nal cod­dling oppor­tunists and in some cas­es plain crim­i­nals themselves.
Other sec­tors with and with­out pow­er are heav­i­ly invest­ed in crime. From the board­rooms to the under­tak­ers to the hard­ware store, from the sound sys­tem oper­a­tors to the pul­pit and even the hus­tlers’ mur­der is a way of life.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CRIMINAL CODDLING.

And now we are here a coun­try at war with itself, a pseu­do civ­il war some may argue. The mul­ti­ple shoot­ings and dead bod­ies each day tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, noth­ing pseu­do about those numbers.
Absolutely noth­ing pseu­do about the real­i­ty of this head­line in one of the dai­ly publication.

SECURITY FORCES FORM CRIME BUFFER IN WEST KINGSTON : http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​S​e​c​u​r​i​t​y​_​f​o​r​c​e​s​_​f​o​r​m​_​c​r​i​m​e​_​b​u​f​f​e​r​_​i​n​_​W​e​s​t​_​K​i​n​g​s​t​o​n​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​228

The prob­lem with the head­line is the head­line itself.
The secu­ri­ty forces are not form­ing a crime buffer, they are plac­ing their bod­ies between war­ring militias.

According to the (OBSERVER) Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) Major Basil Jarrett says that both the police and sol­diers have strate­gi­cal­ly locat­ed troops in key hot spots across the coun­try, act­ing as a buffer between rival gangs. “Right now, we have a tense sit­u­a­tion in Denham Town and Tivoli Gardens as rival gangs grap­ple for own­er­ship and con­trol of turf in West Kingston,” said Jarrett in giv­ing an exam­ple of the strate­gic positioning.

“These men have no reluc­tance to attack each oth­er in the com­mu­ni­ty and so our pres­ence forces them to recon­sid­er and reassess their options. As we have seen, this has by no means removed their deter­mi­na­tion to shoot at and kill each oth­er, but with our troops on the ground, it does make it a bit more dif­fi­cult for them.” The pres­ence of the secu­ri­ty forces in the com­mu­ni­ties has not only com­pro­mised the activ­i­ties of the rival fac­tions, but has also led to fre­quent con­tact between sol­diers, police, and criminals.

“Just last night there was con­tact between a JDF patrol team and gun­men in the vicin­i­ty of Tulip Lane, Denham Town when gun­men opened fire on the patrol team. Fortunately, no inno­cent civil­ians were hurt in the exchange but this demon­strates the frus­tra­tion of the gun­men and their will­ing­ness to engage us as a result of our inter­fer­ing presence”.

Jarrett com­ment quote ” this demon­strates the frus­tra­tion of the gun­men and their will­ing­ness to engage us as a result of our inter­fer­ing presence”. 
That he would char­ac­ter­ize the pres­ence of the secu­ri­ty forces from the mili­ti­a’s per­spec­tive as “inter­fer­ing,” should be lost on no one.
In light of that char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, one is tempt­ed to ask ratio­nal­ly who is in charge, the gov­ern­ment or the militias?

The world will know the answer to that and oth­er ques­tions soon enough as the pre­ten­tious Jamaican lead­er­ship and peo­ple con­tin­ue to pre­tend this is normal,
Nothing to see here it’s just crime/.Yah stu­pid­ly pre­ten­tious is just plain stu­pid the joke is on no one but the pretenders.
Other coun­tries are doing what they must to deal with their terrorism.
Jamaica in the mean­time is active­ly engaged in a sys­tem­at­ic pat­tern of pretense.

Other coun­tries send their best troops and police to erad­i­cate Terrorists from their midst, Jamaica pre­tends that the mer­ci­less killers who slaugh­ter men women and chil­dren are choir boys wor­thy of social intervention.
Given this stu­pid non­sen­si­cal atti­tude, it will only be a mat­ter of time until the secu­ri­ty forces will not have the pow­er to stand as a buffer between these war­ring factions.
If events of 2010 are any­thing to go by this lit­tle Island is in for a rude awakening,.The ques­tion is what will remain after the shit hits the fan?

Speaking at a news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the 38^th meet­ing of Heads of Governments in Grenada on Thursday night, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness said that he had request­ed of heads of CARICOM states that the issue of crime and vio­lence be placed on the agen­da for discussion.

Holness told reporters gath­ered after the meet­ing that while crime and vio­lence had not been a mat­ter on the agen­da for this sum­mit, he had tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to raise the mat­ter at that meeting.

“I raised the issue from the per­spec­tive of not just a secu­ri­ty issue but from a macro-social per­spec­tive that the use of vio­lence as a means of resolv­ing con­flict, as a means of social con­trol, as part of our social trans­ac­tions that it is becom­ing almost a fea­ture of our societies.”

The Prime Minister’s state­ments may be viewed in two or more lights depend­ing on where you stand.
(1) The Prime Minister is cor­rect this is a region­al issue in which the broad­er CARICOM com­mu­ni­ty has a stake and must take action.
(2) This is a cry for help from the Jamaican Prime Minister.

THE CASE FOR CARICOM’s POSSIBLE INVOLVEMENT

Of course, crime is a region­al issue best tack­led with all hands on deck. There are guns com­ing into Jamaica from Haiti. There are drugs com­ing through Haiti, into Jamaica from Colombia as far as the report­ing goes.
Jamaican farm­ers are expe­ri­enc­ing a sig­nif­i­cant loss of live­stock as Jamaican gangs are steal­ing and slaugh­ter­ing their live­stock and tak­ing the car­cass­es to Haiti to exchange for guns and ammunition.
Trinidad and to some extent Guyana have had issues with ter­ror­ism some export­ed from South America and in Trinidad’s case Islamic fundamentalism.
All of these fac­tors dic­tate that the region must come togeth­er in the fight against crime as it has for oth­er reasons

The issues of region­al crim­i­nal­i­ty and ter­ror­ism are best tack­led from a region­al per­spec­tive, while each state insti­tute their own sys­tems of deal­ing with their crim­i­nals as they see fit.
Only through col­lab­o­ra­tive effort and best prac­tices will this mon­ster be brought under control.
No mem­ber state is suf­fi­cient­ly rich, to com­bat on its own the grow­ing list of crimes affect­ing mem­ber states. Together CARICOM can have a sig­nif­i­cant effect in reduc­ing crime in the region.
Criminals should have no safe zones in the region, with coun­tries like the US, Canada, and Britain clamp­ing down on who enter their coun­tries, region­al coöper­a­tion on this issue would go a long way in con­trol­ling this problem.

A CRY FOR HELP?

You bet!
There is noth­ing wrong with ask­ing for help if a prob­lem seems too large to tack­le alone.
After decades of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, arm­ing crim­i­nals, shack­ling law-enforce­ment, INDECOM, erect­ing and insti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing oth­er bar­ri­ers to the rule of law, a Jamaican Prime Minister is by default acknowl­edg­ing that the prob­lem they cre­at­ed is big­ger than their control.

Nevertheless, despite the past region­al coöper­a­tion on crime is imper­a­tive as it is on eco­nom­ic and oth­er issues.
The Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty must come togeth­er on all rel­e­vant issues or face the bleak consequences.
All hands are required on deck to deal with the bur­geon­ing issue of crime and ter­ror not just in Jamaica, but across the region, on Trinidad and Tobago and yes even Barbados.
Member states can take a hands off approach (hi Barbados) and pre­tend that they are an Island, [sic] well they are indeed an Island, but not even Island’s can stand alone anymore.

The prob­lems fac­ing us are glob­al issues which if not attacked com­pre­hen­sive­ly will have cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences for our coun­try and the region.
Even as the Jamaican PM speak about crime on the region­al stage, I would have pre­ferred to see a dif­fer­ent point per­son oth­er than Delroy Chuck speak on the local stage about the imple­men­ta­tion of the of the yet to become law spe­cial zones Act.

If our coun­try is to climb out of this hell-hole it is in, Delroy Chuck, an anti-police, crim­i­nal apol­o­gist is cer­tain­ly not the per­son to be run­ning point on this.
I have absolute­ly no con­fi­dence that Delroy Chuck has the char­ac­ter or the know how much less the desire to see Jamaica’s gar­risons become a thing of the past.
Delroy Chuck attend­ed the funer­al of a know crim­i­nal gang­ster and as such he has zero cred­i­bil­i­ty or char­ac­ter to talk about the imple­men­ta­tion of anti-crime measures.

As long as Chuck is out front talk­ing about this new law, or have any­thing ng to do with nation­al secu­ri­ty and jus­tice on the Island I will be a skeptic.

The process by which Jamaica evolved into its present law­less state did not occur overnight, even as I am tempt­ed to say it will not be resolved overnight I won’t because that would be too predictable.

Jamaica’s Terrorism prob­lem has been a slow but steady burn. Needless to say that burn has ebbed and flowed based on the polit­i­cal admin­is­tra­tion’s atti­tude at any giv­en time.

Before we get to how are we going to deal deci­sive­ly with this lit­tle prob­lem we must first acknowl­edge that the fix­es employed over­time and the fix­es being pro­posed are mere reac­tions to the mur­der rate, not tan­gi­ble sus­tain­able solutions.

So even as the lit­tle pow­er play­ers in the Senate debate Special zones bill recent­ly passed in the low­er cham­ber, the antic­i­pat­ed results after pas­sage will be just as neg­li­gi­ble as all of the oth­er anti-crime ini­tia­tives before it.

I wish I had a dol­lar for my many friends who tell me to lay off and give the bill time. They say after pas­sage we will see whether it works or not.
With all due respect to my friends, I don’t need to wait to know that pour­ing water into a bas­ket is a futile effort.

The fact of the mat­ter is that the fix­es being put forth in this bill are a dol­lar short and a day late.
The Island does not need anoth­er anti-crime law, nei­ther does it require anoth­er spe­cial police anti-crime task force if the atti­tude toward the rule of law and law enforce­ment continues.

Jamaicans have a very high tol­er­ance for law­less­ness, the politi­cians know it, the crim­i­nal Dons know it and the gang lead­ers know it.
If I said it once, I must have said it a thou­sand times.
This law­less­ness is fed by the acqui­es­cence of not just the locals but by Government and civ­il society.
Here ‘s a nov­el concept .….….
What would hap­pen if the gov­ern­ment called out the mil­i­tary and police and tell them to go get the criminals?

The first push­back would be the howls of con­dem­na­tion from the usu­al quar­ters. You know them they act smart, act like they are human rights advo­cates, but are lit­tle more than cheap oppor­tunis­tic leech­es.
Then there are the legions of vil­lage lawyers who know how every­thing should be done but have nev­er done anything.
Not to for­get the prog­nos­ti­ca­tors and pun­dits, the pon­tif­i­cates and the purists who have access to the airwaves.
They who shape pub­lic opin­ions and per­cep­tions, night and day, telling the unin­formed mass­es that the skies are falling.

Unfortunately for the unin­formed mass­es, it seems that they alone are bleed­ing, not the self-pro­claimed elites who live behind the high walls of the gat­ed communities.
But what would hap­pen if the Government ignored the vil­lage lawyers, pun­dits, and prognosticators?
What if the admin­is­tra­tors sim­ply ignored the provo­ca­teurs and the bleed­ing heart frauds who only care about dead crim­i­nals but have no love for the thou­sands of inno­cents dead?

You know what would happen?
The mind­less ter­ror­ists would get the mes­sage that the gov­ern­ment will not tol­er­ate their shit any­more and things would change.
In order to erad­i­cate this mon­ster from our midst, a gov­ern­ment must first under­take its pri­ma­ry function,
That func­tion is the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion. Everything else is periph­er­al, incon­se­quen­tial until we have safe­ty and security.

These killers are killing because they know no one is com­ing after them.
The atti­tude of the admin­is­tra­tion must be to launch an all-out attack on Jamaica’s ter­ror­ists and if need be dri­ve them into the sea.
There should be no respite until these mur­der­ing scums are dealt full force with full force.

To the bleed­ing heart per­fec­tion­ist who have a prob­lem see­ing the blood of mur­der­ers, you hyp­ocrites have no prob­lem with the blood of inno­cent vic­tims, includ­ing chil­dren and lit­tle babies.
You are mod­ern day Pharisees who have no desire to see the end of the blood­let­ting as long as you can get some legit­i­ma­cy from it.
You are heathens.

The politi­cians, too pre­oc­cu­pied with the trap­pings of pow­er and the desire to get pow­er does not care a rat’s ass about the mul­ti­ple dead bod­ies each day, for them, it is a num­bers game which they see as a means to score cheap polit­i­cal points.
Up to June 24^th, 697 peo­ple were report­ed killed. That num­ber does not include the many oth­ers who have been shot but sur­vived or may have died later.

In a mat­ter of 181 days, 697 peo­ple were slaughtered.
That trans­lates to just under 4 liv­ing breath­ing Jamaicans hav­ing their lives snuffed out by the Island’s terrorists.
In addi­tion to the car­nage on the roads and the oth­er deaths, it is no won­der that funer­als are now sport­ing events.
No wor­ries, pour the rum and go heavy on the cur­ry goat and white rice , every­thing irie.

Jamaica got on a path of car­ing about the lives of known killers, In a twist­ed Orwellian alter­nate uni­verse that exists today the lives of heart­less mur­der­ers are much more trea­sured than the lives of their inno­cent victims.
This sick twist­ed love affair with crim­i­nals, taught by the bour­geoisie from upper St Andrew has brought our coun­try to the edge of ruin and there is none to say enough of this shit.
Those of you who believe this will be fixed by social inter­ven­tion and social engi­neer­ing are even more stu­pid that you sound.
A coun­try and a peo­ple who erect bar­ri­ers to their own suc­cess are doomed to fail­ure and disaster.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness says he’s mon­i­tor­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion in his West Central St Andrew con­stituen­cy fol­low­ing the mur­der of three peo­ple along Hill Avenue in Olympic Gardens on Monday evening.

Holness is cur­rent­ly in Grenada attend­ing the 38^th CARICOM Heads of Government meeting.

Today, he told jour­nal­ists that he has received an update on the mur­ders from the police.

Residents have called for the Olympic Gardens com­mu­ni­ty to be des­ig­nat­ed the first zone of spe­cial operations.

They argue that it is impor­tant to send the right sig­nal, say­ing the prime min­is­ter’s con­stituen­cy, or sec­tions of it, should be used as an example.

The Zones of Special Operations Bill, which was passed in the House of Representatives last month, is to be debat­ed in the Senate on Friday before becom­ing law.

If it becomes law, it will give the prime min­is­ter pow­er, in con­sul­ta­tion with the National Security Council, to declare an area a zone of spe­cial oper­a­tions to tack­le increased volatil­i­ty in a community.

However, the zone can only be estab­lished after the police com­mis­sion­er and the chief of defence staff make a request for such a dec­la­ra­tion in writ­ing to the prime minister.

More than 697 per­sons have been mur­dered across Jamaica up to June 24, up from 584 for the sim­i­lar peri­od last year. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​7​0​5​/​h​o​l​n​e​s​s​-​m​o​n​i​t​o​r​i​n​g​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​w​o​r​r​i​e​s​-​h​i​s​-​c​o​n​s​t​i​t​u​e​ncy

Florida sheriff’s deputy is out of a job after a pho­to sur­faced of him boast­ing about almost shoot­ing some­one to “set [his] head right.”

The Snapchat pho­to, which was post­ed June 25, shows Deputy Austen Callus, 23, sit­ting in a vehi­cle in plain clothes. The cap­tion read, “Nothing like almost shoot­ing some­one to set your head right lol. God I gate peo­ple with knives.” It is assumed that “gate” was a typo of the word “hate.” The inci­dent he was refer­ring to was a domes­tic vio­lence call involv­ing a knife.

On Thursday, Pinellas County Sherif Bob Gualtieri fired Callus, a patrol deputy, say­ing that the pho­to raised doubts about Callus’ mind­set when he’s out on the job.

Too right, because had Callus actu­al­ly shot some­one … well.

Anyway, it turns out that the Good Samaritan who called Callus out was a friend of his who report­ed the pho­to, along with sev­er­al oth­ers that were tak­en while Callus was on-duty in his cruis­er as well as off-duty. The woman told the sheriff’s office that Callus’ girl­friend has recent­ly bro­ken up with him and that he’d been drink­ing heavily.

Around the same time, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement ana­lysts caught wind of the pho­to, which was mak­ing rounds on social media.

“This is the kind of cop Pinellas coun­ty sheriff’s office hires?” wrote one Facebook user who shared the pho­to. “Someone who wants to shoot some­one just to get his head right?”

According to Gualtieri, through­out the inves­ti­ga­tion, Callus nev­er said any­thing that eased Gualtieri’s con­cern over what the pho­to depict­ed and said.

Read more at the Tampa Bay Times.

The recent­ly tabled (Law Reform (Zones of Special Operations) (Special Security and Community Development Measures) Act, 2017” )oth­er­wise called the (“spe­cial crime zones Bill”) was passed in the house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives last night.
The process is not over, there is a process which includes the Senate debat­ing and vot­ing on it , then to the Governor General for his sig­na­ture before it becomes law.
If Delroy Chuck has any­thing to do with it,-it is guar­an­teed to be anoth­er paper tiger.

Simultaneously, the month of June has been the most vio­lent in 7 years. The police reports ‚141 per­sons were killed up to Tuesday June 27^th.
That num­ber rep­re­sents the largest num­ber of per­sons to be killed in Jamaica since 2010 in a sin­gle month.

Now that the bill has gar­nered some sem­blance of bi-par­ti­san sup­port ‚there are enough rea­sons to believe it may actu­al­ly become law despite my per­son­al mis­giv­ings about it’s ulti­mate success.
As I said in a recent Article the fact that the likes of the PNP’s Paul Burke is sup­port­ing the bill is not only a sign of the times, but a glar­ing exam­ple Jamaica’s crime prob­lem has reached crit­i­cal mass.

The vil­lage lawyers are already out with their ill-informed prog­nos­ti­ca­tions. They will talk about the poten­tial for police abuse . They will talk about past instances of abuse. They will even talk about the press­ing need for restraint, because some­how we must pro­tect the human rights of crim­i­nals and their supporters.
What the Monday Morning quar­ter­backs won’t talk about is the fact that the coun­try is a ver­i­ta­ble zone of exclu­sion for law abid­ing people.
Decent law abid­ing cit­i­zens are lit­er­al­ly liv­ing , in fear that the next per­son killed may be them.

In response to the bill ‚the PNP’s Paul Burke spoke elo­quent­ly in a sin­gle statement.
“Our rights have already been tak­en away…I have wit­nessed first-hand the lev­el of fear…I used to be able to go across many com­mu­ni­ties, I am [now] reluc­tant to do so” .
Burke’s state­ments came in response to his par­ty’s con­tin­ued harangu­ing, and hid­ing behind the issue of human rights as a rea­son for not sup­port­ing anti-crime initiatives.

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the debate the Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said “The truth is that the Jamaican State only exists in some areas of Jamaica, and so from a nation­al secu­ri­ty point of view we want to ensure that every square inch of Jamaica has some pres­ence of the Jamaican State,” he said. “We are accept­ing it as the norm, and we are nor­mal­iz­ing a sit­u­a­tion that should nev­er be nor­mal,”
This is a remark­able state­ment from the Jamaican Prime Minister.
In that state­ment he acknowl­edged that Jamaica is now a frac­tured coun­try in which state pow­er exists only in some areas.
For the record Jamaica is an approx­i­mate 4411 square miles and a pop­u­la­tion of 2,7 mil­lion people.
That is a pro­found admis­sion. We have been warn­ing against this for years.

Now grant­ed that Holness just recent­ly seemed to have had this brush with real­i­ty , a con­tact aware­ness which may have hap­pened because of the num­ber of dead bod­ies , nonethe­less this writer feels oblig­at­ed to wel­come him to the plan­et real­i­ty.[sic]

According to Jamaican media 712 peo­ple were report­ed killed from the start of the year to June 27^th.
If that trend hold the coun­try is on track to record over 1400 homi­cides for the year. Those mur­der num­bers are much clos­er to the year 2005 than a sit­u­a­tion in which the coun­try’s homi­cide num­bers are being checked.

Now of all the idi­ot­ic, sil­ly things I have heard in this crime con­ver­sa­tion, noth­ing piss­es me off more than the request Tourism Minister Ed Bartlett made. Bartlett wants the local media to bury the crime num­bers in the nether regions of their publications.
This idi­ot­ic nar­ra­tive has tak­en on legs , not sur­pris­ing­ly , many Jamaicans believe hid­ing bad news is okay, as long as they are not killed while they are hav­ing cur­ry goat and rice, Guinness stout and Ganja. Many are not too con­cerned about the dead bod­ies they step over to get to the party .

I per­son­al­ly wel­come this bit of leg­is­la­tion ‚the “special crime zones Bill” ‚even though I am under no illu­sion that it will do much to take back the streets from the gangs which now rule them.
But because it seem to indi­cate an awak­en­ing of the peo­ple who run the coun­try to the grim real­i­ties of the time .

I dis­agree with the intent of the bill , I doubt when it becomes law it will be suc­cess­ful because the bill will be focus­ing on com­mu­ni­ties not indi­vid­u­als and entities.
When the secu­ri­ty forces swoop down on cer­tain areas as des­ig­nat­ed by the prime min­is­ter or whomev­er that author­i­ty is , it can almost be guar­an­teed they will not be swoop­ing down on Cherry Gardens or Norbrook.
They will not swoop down on Jacks Hill or up on Stillwell Road.

Based on that alone poor­er peo­ple who are con­fined to sec­tions of Three Miles, of Rema, Olimpic Gardens or Payne avenue will be penal­ized for being poor.
If the so-called human rights advo­cates want to make that argu­ment I am all for sign­ing on to that narrative.
What I will have no patience for ‚is the gib­ber­ish from those who talk about human rights for killers but have no com­pas­sion or empa­thy for crime victims.
This is why I con­tin­ue to speak about the val­ue of what Los Pepes did in Colombia.

Any effec­tive strat­e­gy which will have a pos­i­tive impact on Jamaica’s bur­geon­ing ter­ror prob­lem must begin with…

♦The under­stand­ing that whats going on is terrorism.
♦ Remove the hand­cuffs from the hands of the good police offi­cers, and place them on those of crim­i­nal cops.
♦ Fire Terrence Williams , repeal INDECOM, and replace it with a law and lead­er­ship which is not in con­flict with police , but roots out dirty cops.
♦ Ignore for­eign Government’s opin­ion of how we enforce our laws and what laws we pass to gov­ern our country.
♦ Make mon­ey avail­able and begin the task of train­ing enough detectives .

♦ Infiltrate the gangs.
♦ Take from judges hands the pow­er to deter­mine sen­tence in gun crimes( truth in sentences).
♦ Hire more judges who under­stand their roles as inter­preters of the law , not lawmakers.
♦ Hire more, (and )com­pe­tent prosecutors.
♦ Hire Judges who were prosecutors.

♦ Fast-track court cas­es so that jus­tice may be served and cit­i­zens may once again have con­fi­dence in the state to deliv­er justice.
♦ Get politi­cian’s grub­by lit­tle fin­gers off law enforce­ment by cre­at­ing a sys­tem of checks and balances.
♦ enact seri­ous laws which puts crim­i­nals caught with a gun in prison for a min­i­mum of two years, grant­ed the weapon was nev­er used in the com­mis­sion of a homi­cide or assault.
♦ In the event the weapon was involved in a n assault or Robbery the penal­ty should be twen­ty years in Prison.

♦ A crim­i­nal caught with a weapon , or who used a gun in the com­mis­sion of a homi­cide, the penal­ty should be life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
♦ Improve account­abil­i­ty in the JCF , using the CompStat  sys­tem , short for COMPuter STATistics), a sys­tem if applied judi­cious­ly and hon­est­ly cre­ates best prac­tices of account­abil­i­ty for Police Commanders. If you aren’t mea­sur­ing it, how do you know if you are fail­ing or succeeding?
♦ Create in the JCF and élite task-force to inves­ti­gate while col­lar crimes , that includes every Jamaican, no one is above the laws.
♦ It’s time for a nation­al Identification data­base, cre­ate one.

Jamaica must remove some of the voic­es from the debate if this thing is to be resolved . Many of the loud­est voic­es push­ing back against reform and solu­tions based sug­ges­tions, are the peo­ple ben­e­fit­ing from the cul­ture of crime on the Island.
This law will not do a damn thing to bring mur­der down, mur­der­ers will sim­ply slith­er out of what­ev­er zones are des­ig­nat­ed at a giv­en time, and move to oth­er areas as they did in 2010.

(Chubble ketch yu pickney shut fit yu )!!!
Old Jamaican proverb !
Translation when you get in trouble you are forced to do things you would normally never do.

The Jamaican Government is in a mad rush to pass by mid July a bill into law it calls the Special Security of Community Development Measure.
I com­mend the Government for now rec­og­niz­ing that some­thing dras­tic needs to be done to cor­ral the Island’s gal­lop­ing mur­der rate.
Since the start of the year almost 700 Jamaicans have been report­ed mur­dered. In addi­tion to those shot and injured oth­er types of assaults, includ­ing sex­u­al assaults and a gen­er­al sense of law­less­ness is the norm. This in addi­tion to the insane car­nage on the Island’s road­ways, which has result­ed in 156 fatal­i­ties up to May 8^th.

Ignore Bunting And Phillips On Crime: Not Long Ago Bunting Wanted Divine Intervention…

The new leg­is­la­tion is being tout­ed as a means toward bring­ing down the Island’s out of con­trol mur­der numbers.
Many Jamaicans at dif­fer­ent lev­els believe there is no need for more laws or emer­gency pow­ers for law enforcement.
What is need­ed they argue is a restruc­tur­ing of the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.
I concur.

There is much that the police can do with the immense pow­ers they have if they learn to use those pow­ers intelligently.
Since the long­stand­ing emer­gency pow­ers of the 70’s and 80’s have been pulled from the police they have strug­gled to deal effec­tive­ly with crime .
Nevertheless, intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, exploit­ing the flee­ing felon arrange­ments and oth­er built-ins, allows police offi­cers to do their jobs with­out undu­ly incon­ve­nienc­ing cit­i­zens, or abro­gat­ing their rights.

Sadly the arc of crime is not going to be bent by this bit of leg­is­la­tion even if it becomes law.
Another law which sin­gles out com­mu­ni­ties rather than indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties (gangs) are prob­a­bly going to yield neg­li­gi­ble results at best and worse case may even exac­er­bate rather than fix the prob­lems it is intend­ed to fix.

There is much which can be done with­out anoth­er bit of anti-crime legislation.

♦Hiring judges who respect the law , not judges who rely on their own emo­tions regard­ing bail and sentencing.
♦ Hire more judges and prosecutors.
♦ Remove cor­rup­tion from the Judiciary
♦ Remove cor­rup­tion from the police department.
♦ Repeal the INDECOM Act and reau­tho­rize a law which inves­ti­gates like the FBI does , not an agency of one per­son­’s ego , which cre­ate con­flict with law-enforce­ment and align itself with lob­by groups which are opposed to police.
♦ Train and equip hun­dreds of moti­vat­ed young offi­cers who want to serve in the CIB.
♦ Eliminate polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence from law enforce­ment and elim­i­nate polit­i­cal con­nec­tions to crim­i­nal gangs.
♦ Both polit­i­cal par­ties must come togeth­er and throw their unequiv­o­cal sup­port behind the police.

The fore­gone is not a panacea for the elim­i­na­tion of crime . It is a road map which if expand­ed upon will begin the slow and tedious return of Jamaica to some sem­blance of safe­ty and security.
Civility and respect must be taught in the home.

It is a wel­come change to see PNP stand­out Paul Burke come out in sup­port of the new anti-crime ini­tia­tives of the admin­is­tra­tion, despite intran­si­gence and obstruc­tion from lead­ers of his party.
If old front-line sol­diers of the PNP like Burke can now see the need to stop with the pussy­foot­ing I don’t know what it will take to wake up the lead­er­ship of the coun­try that the play time thing has long passed.

The PNP fraud­u­lent­ly main­tain that more pow­ers to law enforce­ment means the rights of Jamaicans will be tak­en away.
In a bril­liant rebut­tal to his par­ty Burke said “Our rights have already been tak­en away…I have wit­nessed first-hand the lev­el of fear…I used to be able to go across many com­mu­ni­ties, I am [now] reluc­tant to do so” .

In the mean­time , while the Government is dead set on get­ting this mag­i­cal bit of leg­is­la­tion passed by mid July ‚it has invit­ed the reg­u­lar shapers of pol­i­cy to make sub­mis­sion about the legislation.
Of course the inter­est groups which have always impact­ed anti-crime leg­is­la­tion are the very same groups which will be inform­ing the debate on this one as well.
In the end this bit of mag­ic will have the same degen­er­a­tive effect the INDECOM law has had on crime.
The Norman Manley Law School.
The Bar Association.
Anti-Police lob­by, Jamaicans for Justice(JFJ. FAST, PMI, and the oth­er crim­i­nal sup­port­ing cabal of deplorables, all of which make mon­ey or gain rel­e­vance from crime.

The per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of stu­pid­i­ty is doing the same old thing and expect­ing a dif­fer­ent result.…

The police Corporate Communications Unit (CCU) has con­firmed that one of Hanover’s most want­ed men is dead. 

He has been iden­ti­fied as 33-year-old Shenarda Leslie, oth­er­wise called ‘Blacks’, of Mount Pleasant dis­trict, Hanover.

According to the CCU, Leslie was among a group of men who fired shots at the police dur­ing an oper­a­tion in Green Island in the parish last night.

The CCU said about 8:50 p.m., a team of cops was con­duct­ing oper­a­tions in the area when they sig­naled the dri­ver of a Toyota Corolla motor­car to stop. The dri­ver dis­obeyed the sig­nal and men inside the vehi­cle opened gun­fire at the team.

The police coun­tered the attack and Leslie was lat­er found with gun­shot wounds and a 9mm Smith and Wesson pis­tol with four car­tridges was seized.

He was pro­nounced dead at hos­pi­tal. The oth­er occu­pants escaped in the area.

The mat­ter was report­ed to the Inspectorate of Constabulary as well as the Independent Commission of Investigations.

The police have report­ed that Leslie was the leader of the One Voice Gang, fol­low­ing the incar­cer­a­tion of Yasser James. He was impli­cat­ed in at least 15 mur­ders in the Hanover in the last eight months. These include:

- Andre McKenzie, oth­er­wise called ‘Kush’ who was killed in Williamsfield on November 12, 2016.
 — Malik Dixon who was killed in Williamsfield on December 24, 2016. Two oth­er men were injured in that incident.
 — Triple mur­der in Williamsfield, includ­ing one-year-old and five-year-old chil­dren. Three oth­ers were also shot and injured on January 18.
 — Triple mur­der in Dias on March 24. One man was also shot and injured.
 — Double mur­der in Middlesex on May 26.
 — Murder in Malcolm Heights on June 14. A woman was also shot and injured.
 — The most recent quadru­ple mur­der in Mount Pleasant dis­trict on June 13.  http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​6​2​4​/​a​l​l​e​g​e​d​-​m​u​l​t​i​p​l​e​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​e​r​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​h​a​n​o​ver

Once peace­ful Parishes which hard­ly record­ed a sin­gle case of mur­der in a month are now trans­formed into ver­i­ta­ble killing fields as gang­sters with high pow­ered weapons roam kill and burn with impunity.

In Hanover for exam­ple , a once sleepy ‚safe place where vio­lent crimes seemed worlds away , last year 17 mur­ders were report­ed to Police for the entire year.
Thus far this year already there have been 38 homi­cides report­ed , an over 125% increase over the pre­ced­ing year.

Among those sta­tis­tics is 71 ‑year-old butch­er Joel Malcolm,who was mur­dered in his own home as he and fam­i­ly mem­bers watched Television.
Mister Malcolm’s house was report­ed­ly razed with bul­lets killing him and injur­ing a 63 year old fam­i­ly friend who is fight­ing for his life in hospital.
Mister Malcolm’s wife Eugene Malcolm and her grand­chil­dren were spared instant death only because they hid in a cor­ner of the fam­i­ly’s kitchen.

As the car­nage con­tin­ue bureau­crats in Kingston dither on whether to unleash the full force of the law on the maraud­ing terrorists.
In the mean­time there is a cer­tain entrenched ele­ment in the soci­ety which must be root­ed out and dis­card­ed if the coun­try is to be saved.

That ele­ment does not pull the trig­ger or may not even pay for the guns and ammunition.
It is a cer­tain ele­ment in Kingston which hide behind tele­vi­sion and radio walls , behind newsprint and in NGO’s .
They hide in Academia, and in board­rooms. They can be found in the pul­pits and yes , they are cer­tain­ly in the parliament.
They are an elit­ist cabal of new age nig­gers who adopt a pos­ture of anti-law enforcement .

This is not new in our country .
For decades this cabal of nig­gers have used the edu­ca­tion they acquired at the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to (to chan­nel the late Wilmott (Mutty)Perkins), to aid and sup­port crim­i­nals and law­less­ness in the country.
The lib­er­al teach­ings they acquire have been used to destroy our once con­ser­v­a­tive and pros­per­ing Island , turn­ing it into a Serengeti of mur­der and mayhem.

Through the air­waves , print media and oth­er means they have sub­vert­ed the rule of law , like ter­mites in a struc­ture made of wood they have eat­en away at the foun­da­tion of our democ­ra­cy, .Intending to demon­strate they are the new­ly mint­ed intel­lec­tu­als, lib­er­at­ed from the shack­les of their colo­nial­ist past.

Their con­trol of the nar­ra­tive has not been good for our country.
They hide behind grilled fortress­es in gat­ed com­pounds in upper St, Andrew, safe for now, or so they think. They con­vince them­selves that they are immune , safe from the calami­ty which is hap­pen­ing and will cer­tain­ly metastasize.

In order to fix this lit­tle Island we must first deal with remov­ing from the equa­tion the imped­i­ments to progress.
They are not los­ing sons and daugh­ters , moth­er and fathers . It is the poor and rur­al folks who are dying while they sit in ivory tow­ers and pontificate.
This must stop !
As I have said repeatedly,when the Colombian state faced extinc­tion , faced being over-run and rel­e­gat­ed to a Narco-state ‚ele­ments of the Colombian peo­ple rose up and took their coun­try back.

If ever there was a time for right­eous con­scious Jamaicans to rise up and over­throw this entrenched cul­ture of sup­port for crim­i­nals it is now.
The Jamaican peo­ple know who they are , they hear them on the radio , the see them on tele­vi­sion, they hear them in the pul­pits, they see them in the par­lia­ment, and they see them in the colleges.
We must take our coun­try back from this destruc­tive path it is on.
Before we do that how­ev­er we must remove the imped­i­ments to change.
The new nig­gers in charge.

DEPUTY Commissioner of Police (DCP) Clifford Blake yes­ter­day sup­port­ed leg­is­la­tion which will, among oth­er things, allow the police to declare spe­cial zones of oper­a­tions in volatile areas, but said it is time for social agen­cies to step up to the plate to sus­tain peace through devel­op­ment in these communities.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Clifford Blake cit­ed the lack of ade­quate sup­port from these agen­cies results in gangs often regroup­ing and erod­ing what­ev­er progress is made by the secu­ri­ty forces.

He was mak­ing the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF’s) sub­mis­sion to the Joint Select Committee of Parliament which is review­ing the Law Reform (Zones of Special Operations) (Special Security and Community Development Measures). The com­mit­tee is hear­ing sub­mis­sions from var­i­ous inter­est groups, with a view to hav­ing a report ready for Parliament in just over a week.

DCP Blake cit­ed the exam­ple of Barrett Town in St James, where the secu­ri­ty forces seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­vene, after sev­er­al gang mem­bers were killed. He said projects were sub­se­quent­ly iden­ti­fied to cre­ate long-term peace. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​d​e​a​l​-​d​e​p​u​t​y​-​c​o​m​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​e​r​-​s​a​y​s​-​m​o​r​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​i​n​g​-​n​o​t​-​t​h​e​-​a​n​s​w​e​r​_​1​0​2​6​6​1​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​606

There is a seri­ous dis­con­nect in the way Jamaicans see what is hap­pen­ing to the Island as it relates to crime.

That dis­con­nect is obvi­ous in the way the issue of law­less­ness is quan­ti­fied by the soci­ety, includ­ing the high com­mand of the Police Department.

As along as these Interest groups see the crip­pling instances of hor­rif­ic Murder and Terrorism as a WAR to be aid­ed by social inter­ven­tion the prob­lem will remain. Jamaica is not at war a‑la the 70’s to 80′ s.

Back then the motive for the killings was pol­i­tics. The rudi­ments have changed, since the 80’s ‚there has been a par­a­digm shift in the moti­va­tion behind the crime Jamaica expe­ri­ence today.

Much of the crime today is about per­son­al greed which fuels mur­der. This con­tin­ues because of acqui­es­cence and fear. People in Jamaica kill because they know the like­li­hood they will ulti­mate­ly be held account­able is next to nil, despite the num­ber of arrests cit­ed by DCP Blake. The soci­ety is not at war, it is in love with mur­der­ers and that’s the issue.

An act of Parliament !

How many times have you heard that line?
It is a statement used to impress upon others the validity of the action being discussed, if the action came out of that legislative body.
It’s also used by certain interests to bludgeon others into accepting actions of the Parliament even though those actions may be demonstrably flawed.

.….….…

In the tor­tured 7 year his­to­ry since the INDECOM Act became law we have heard that term used almost dai­ly, “it is an act of par­lia­ment”, giv­ing God like sacro­cance to the par­lia­ment, as if that fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed body can­not pro­duce some­thing inher­ent­ly flawed.
And there­in lies the prob­lem , “it is an act of par­lia­ment” has become the buffer being used by sup­port­ers of the flawed and dan­ger­ous law , none more so than Terrence Williams the Commissioner of that body, and the lit­tle mon­grel dogs who pop­u­late the air­waves seek­ing to make a name for themselves.
The very fact that Terrence Williams is opposed to over­sight or review, is enough to cause Jamaicans to won­der why is he so reluc­tant to have the very body which autho­rized the law review it .

The law was not made for Terrence Williams!
Or was it ?
Terrence Williams work for the Jamaican tax-pay­ers and as such must be sub­ject to the dic­tates and scruti­ny of those elect­ed to act on behalf of the people.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness a few days ago issued a state­ment stat­ing that the INDECOM Act needs review in light of recent com­plaints from law enforcement.
However I believe that Holness could­n’t care less what the secu­ri­ty forces think , he sees the dead bod­ies pil­ing up,(sometimes sev­en in a sin­gle day) on his watch and he is start­ing to panic.

HERE IS WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD 

There was nev­er a prob­lem with the cre­ation of a pro­fes­sion­al over­sight body to over­see the actions of the secu­ri­ty forces.
That is an absolute­ly nec­es­sary require­ment , even with law enforce­ment engag­ing in best prac­tices , much less the lev­el of cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal activ­i­ties in which mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces engage.

With that said we must be clear-eyed that INDECOM was cob­bled togeth­er with­out input from the secu­ri­ty forces , and as such the law end­ed up becom­ing a huge Albatross around the necks of law abid­ing Jamaicans and hav­ing a resul­tant degen­er­a­tive effect on crime.
Despite our most base instincts to default to anti-police hatred , it behoove the soci­ety to acknowl­edge that with­out the police there is no society.
Flawed though the Jamaican secu­ri­ty forces are, there is no Jamaica with­out them.

From the begin­ning the INDECOM Commissioner adopt­ed a stance that he was not going to do what the law empow­ered him to do he would take on a more activist role a‑la JFJ ‚FAST , PMI etc.
Instead of inves­ti­gat­ing and charg­ing or absolv­ing , Williams joined anti-police ‚anti law ‑enforce­ment lob­by groups and engaged in a sys­tem­at­ic pat­tern of mis­in­for­ma­tion and dem­a­goguery against the nation’s law enforce­ment agencies.

Since being giv­en the job as head of INDECOM Williams has engaged in (1)A scorched earth pol­i­cy which is evi­denced in his rapa­cious and insa­tiable appetite for more power.
(2) A liti­gious path seek­ing that pow­er. (3) defama­tion and dem­a­goguery of those with whom he dis­agrees, includ­ing the Director Of Public Prosecution, the police Military and Corrections depart­ments (4) a vis­cer­al ral­ly­ing of Elitist forces in the print and elec­tron­ic media to wage cam­paigns against those who choos­es not to bow to him.

It is impor­tant that as a soci­ety, [what’s left of it] , the deci­sion mak­ers under­stand that despite their con­tin­ued sub­ver­sive behav­ior they have a coun­try to live in because of the Police and Military.
That coun­try is not in exis­tence because emp­ty head­ed mouth­pieces like Nationwide Radio’s Cliff Hughes one of Williams’ media ally blovi­ate about the virtues of INDECOM .

It is not unusu­al that lit­tle “grung gads”[sic] like Hughes get to sit in air con­di­tioned stu­dios and make grand pro­nounce­ments about INDECOM’s significance.
No one is argu­ing against over­sight for the agen­cies INDECOM pro­vides over­sight, . In fact the police are vin­di­cat­ed in the vast major­i­ty of times INDECOM investigates.
The prob­lem is Terrence Williams , Hamish Campbell and the crime enhance­ment tool the INDECOM Act has become.
Much more needs to be done about Hughes and oth­ers who offer sup­port and suc­cor to crim­i­nals, using their perch­es in the society.
In 2013 Cliff Hughes found him­self answer­ing to charges he defamed for­mer PM Percival James Patterson.
Obviously the M$12.5 Cliff Hughes was ordered to pay for­mer Prime Minister PJ Patterson has not served as a deter­rent to his lying defam­a­to­ry lips.

Under Examination from Counsel KD Knight Hughes was asked about his knowl­edge of Mr. Patterson’s char­ac­ter and whether the for­mer Prime Minister would have done some­thing illegal.
The flam­ing liar Cliff Hughes replied “No! Emphatically, no!”

The claim was relat­ed to a new item aired on NNN in 2009, con­cern­ing an inci­dent at the Norman Manley International Airport involv­ing a Digicel char­ter flight which arrived from Cuba with Patterson.

♦On that basis the Police , mil­i­tary and Corrections Departments must use the pow­er of their dol­lar, and what­ev­er lever­age they have to ensure that they do not sup­port adver­tis­ers who place ads on Nationwide Radio , giv­en the lev­el of dem­a­goguery which comes from that entity.

♦ They should answer no 119 call in real time, which comes from Cliff Hughes, any mem­ber of his fam­i­ly ‚or any per­son with whom he is associated.
Sure they have a duty to respond, but as police offi­cers they must know how to arrive late do the paper­work and go home.
Let them call INDECOM for help.

Until The Prime Minister Fires Terrence Williams He Is Responsible For Every Innocent Life Lost To Marauding Criminals ..

The Jamaican peo­ple have a choice to make . Do they allow a few blovi­at­ing fools to sit and grand­stand while their loved ones are being slaugh­tered, or do they take action and remove from the equa­tion those who place them­selves square­ly in defense of criminals?

The police will have to stand up for them­selves ‚like police across the globe do stand up for themselves.
The time has passed when lit­tle runts like Hughes are allowed to defame entire entities.
Tarring the entire police force , using the defam­a­to­ry lies of ille­gal plant­i­ng of guns ille­gal killings with­out the ben­e­fit of evi­dence must not be allowed to continue.

The Prime Minister was final­ly forced to acknowl­edge that the INDECOM Act needs review. Whether he was forced to acknowl­edge what most intel­li­gent peo­ple already knew, or the increas­ing num­ber of dead bod­ies forced that state­ment we may nev­er know.
What we do know is that the first order of busi­ness must be to fire Terence Willams and get rid of the ran­cor, nar­cis­sism and bad blood .

Neither Jamaicans For Justice nor their pro­tégée Terrence Williams gets to decide whether INDECOM gets reviewed.
If Williams does not like it he is free to go join a law firm, start one of his own or mow some­one’s lawn for all I care.
If the Administration refus­es to do what it must we will mil­i­tate for the removal of the Government…

The dirty cops who con­tin­ue to drag the name of the JCF in the mud must also be on notice .
This medi­um will sup­port every effort to weed you out from among the good men and women who want to do a good job.
Not only will we sup­port your removal, we will sup­port your pros­e­cu­tion and imprisonment.
One way or anoth­er we will bring this mon­ster under control.