The attorney general’s latest memo “is like traveling back in time to the 1980s.”
BRANDON E. PATTERSON

Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a Department of Justice memo on May 12 reversed Obama-era guide­lines for how to deal with drug offend­ers, direct­ing fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to charge defen­dants with the “most seri­ous, read­i­ly prov­able” offense in near­ly all cas­es. Sessions said in a speech that day that the new guide­lines “un-hand­cuffed” pros­e­cu­tors in their law enforce­ment efforts and is “the right and moral thing to do.” His announce­ment has far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions for how fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors across the coun­try approach drug offens­es dur­ing Trump’s administration.

Criminal jus­tice reform advo­cates—includ­ing for­mer Attorney General Eric Holder, who put the ear­li­er guide­lines in place — and some mem­bers of Congress swift­ly crit­i­cized Sessions’ pol­i­cy shift. “The Sessions memo is like trav­el­ing back in time to the 1980s,” Bruce Western, a pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice pol­i­cy at Harvard University, said. “From the chief law enforce­ment offi­cer in the coun­try, you’ve got an endorse­ment of tough-on-crime crim­i­nal jus­tice policy.”

Holder had hoped to reign in the use of harsh fed­er­al sen­tenc­ing laws, and back in 2013, he sent a series of reform-mind­ed mem­os to fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors. He instruct­ed them not to charge cer­tain offend­ers, like low-lev­el or first-time drug deal­ers, with any­thing that would trig­ger a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence, which can require prison terms as long as 10 years or more for the pos­ses­sion of rel­a­tive­ly small amounts of drugs. The results were imme­di­ate. The num­ber of fed­er­al inmates sen­tenced to a manda­to­ry min­i­mum on a drug charge dropped in 2014 and has declined near­ly 40 per­cent since. The fed­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion also shrunkthat year for the first time in almost 35 years, due part­ly to Holder’s pol­i­cy changes and oth­er Obama admin­is­tra­tion efforts. Bipartisan sup­port for shift­ing away from manda­to­ry min­i­mums has grown in recent years, as research has shown that incar­cer­a­tion does lit­tle to improve pub­lic safe­ty and has had a dis­parate impact on com­mu­ni­ties of col­or — and as law­mak­ers have decid­ed that run­ning pris­ons costs too much.

On Tuesday, in response to Sessions’ pol­i­cy announce­ment, Republican Sen. Rand Paul and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy pro­posed leg­is­la­tion more in line with Holder’s approach: It would allow judges to tai­lor sen­tences on a case-by-case basis, regard­less of whether a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence applies. Paul said these min­i­mums have a racial­ly dis­parate impact, and that Sessions’ pol­i­cy shift would “accen­tu­ate” that “injus­tice.” He also said his bill would save the DOJ mon­ey — the depart­ment cur­rent­ly spends near­ly a third of its bud­get on cor­rec­tions. A group of House mem­bers plan to intro­duce sim­i­lar legislation.

A key prob­lem with manda­to­ry min­i­mums is that they lim­it judges’ abil­i­ty to decide what sen­tence is appro­pri­ate, says Mark Kleiman, an expert on crime deter­rence at New York University. In April, a fed­er­al judge in Tennessee resigned in protest over a life sen­tence he was forced to impose on a 28-year-old drug deal­er for a non­vi­o­lent offense. “If there was any way I could have not giv­en him life in prison I would have done it,” the judge told a local news­pa­per. Other fed­er­al judges have ruled that the sen­tences are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and have refused to abide by them, but their rul­ings were over­turned on appeal. Of the three fac­tors that influ­ence crime deter­rence — the cer­tain­ty of the pun­ish­ment, the speed with which it’s imposed, and the sever­i­ty of the sen­tence — sever­i­ty is least impor­tant, accord­ing to Kleiman, “part­ly because the last five years of a 20-year sen­tence start 15 years from now,” and most crim­i­nals like­ly don’t plan that far ahead.

Sessions’ charg­ing memo revived anoth­er trick used by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors that Holder sought to curb. It rescind­ed an instruc­tion that pros­e­cu­tors not charge offend­ers with sen­tenc­ing enhance­ments — or add-on charges that can sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the length of their sen­tence — in order to coerce coöper­a­tion. Prosecutors often charged defen­dants with enhance­ments in order to force them to plead guilty to anoth­er charge or to coerce them to give up infor­ma­tion or tes­ti­fy against some­one in court.

“There’s a lev­el of pow­er that comes with those drug laws that is very easy for them to get used exces­sive­ly or abused. Holder, through his series of mem­os, was real­ly try­ing to tame that urge,” said Mona Lynch, an expert on fed­er­al drug laws at the University of California-Irvine. “It’s a very small minor­i­ty that think the length or the kind of sen­tences that can get met­ed out under fed­er­al drug laws are appro­pri­ate. Unfortunately, Jeff Sessions is one of those people.”

As a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor in Alabama, Sessions aggres­sive­ly pros­e­cut­ed drug crimes, and he is adamant­ly opposed to mar­i­jua­na legal­iza­tion. He helped draft the 2010 law signed by President Barack Obama that reduced the sen­tenc­ing dis­par­i­ty between con­vic­tions for pos­ses­sion of crack and pow­der cocaine, but has since emerged as a lead­ing oppo­nent to sen­tenc­ing reform in the Senate.

In his speech on May 12, Sessions blamed drug traf­fick­ing for the recent uptick in the nation­al homi­cide rate. He’s repeat­ed­ly drawn a con­nec­tion between the homi­cide increase and drug traf­fick­ing by undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants and car­tels. Thomas Abt, for­mer chief of staff for the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs, told Mother Jones in an inter­view in February that there’s no evi­dence that the two are related.

In a cer­tain sense, the impact of Sessions’ pol­i­cy change could be be lim­it­ed, says Western. Less than 10 per­cent of the nation’s approx­i­mate­ly 2 mil­lion pris­on­ers — or around 190,000 peo­ple — are incar­cer­at­ed in fed­er­al prison. Of those, about half have been con­vict­ed of a drug offense. Last year, near­ly 9,000 peo­ple were sen­tenced on a fed­er­al drug charge that car­ried a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence, near­ly all of them for deal­ing. Still, the shift would like­ly have a dis­parate impact on peo­ple of col­or — who are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly incar­cer­at­ed and have been sen­tenced to manda­to­ry min­i­mums at much high­er rates than their coun­ter­parts in the past.

The on-the-ground impact of Sessions’ recent pol­i­cy change will par­tial­ly depend on who gets appoint­ed to fill the posts of the 94 fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors Trump fired in March, says Lynch. For those hop­ing for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, the prospects aren’t promis­ing — Lynch says she thinks Trump will rely large­ly on Sessions’ rec­om­men­da­tions. Still, pros­e­cu­tors who are more uncom­fort­able with manda­to­ry min­i­mums in some dis­tricts could be more selec­tive about what drug cas­es they bring. “My guess is that there’s going to be rel­a­tive­ly large geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties,” Lynch told me. Southern dis­tricts — where pros­e­cu­tors have been resis­tant to reform — will like­ly bring more drug cas­es than pros­e­cu­tors in the Northeast and Western districts.

Criminal jus­tice reform groups imme­di­ate­ly slammed Sessions’ pol­i­cy announce­ment last Friday. The Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, a police and pros­e­cu­tors group focused on smarter polic­ing, stat­ed that “decades of expe­ri­ence show we can­not arrest and incar­cer­ate our way out of America’s drug prob­lem.” Even before Sessions’ pol­i­cy announce­ment last week, the exec­u­tive board of the American Society of Criminologists released a state­ment say­ing that the Trump admin­is­tra­tions ear­ly actions and rhetoric “demon­strate an incon­gruity between admin­is­tra­tive pol­i­cy efforts and well-estab­lished sci­ence about the caus­es and con­se­quences of crime.”

Trump has charged his aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner with lead­ing crim­i­nal jus­tice reform efforts for the admin­is­tra­tion. It’s unclear what exper­tise Kushner — who has also been tasked with help­ing to bro­ker peace between Israel and Palestine — has in the area. Last fall, a bill that would have cut the min­i­mum sen­tence for sev­er­al drug and gun offens­es enjoyed bipar­ti­san sup­port, but it was pulled after then-Sen. Sessions led a ninth-inning charge against it. In March, Kushner met with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and oth­er spon­sors to dis­cuss the leg­is­la­tion. Grassley has said he plans to rein­tro­duce the bill and that he thinks it will be eas­i­er to get it passed now that the elec­tion is over.

Lynch is doubt­ful. “I am skep­ti­cal about that,” she said. “The appoint­ment of Sessions does not sug­gest that the admin­is­tra­tion is inter­est­ed in tam­ing crim­i­nal law at the fed­er­al lev­el.” Story orig­i­nat­ed @ http://​www​.moth​er​jones​.com/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​1​7​/​0​5​/​j​e​f​f​-​s​e​s​s​i​o​n​s​-​c​h​a​r​g​i​n​g​-​g​u​d​e​l​i​nes

AMI, United States (AFP) — The Caribbean and its pris­tine beach­es may be a tourist mag­net, but life in par­adise comes at a price: the soar­ing vio­lent crime rate is high­er than in Latin America or Africa.The study, made pub­lic Tuesday by the Interamerican Development Bank, is based on a sur­vey of 3,000 crime vic­tims in each of five coun­tries: the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Jamaica and Suriname.

While the non-vio­lent crime rate is low, vio­lent crime rates “are among the high­est in the world”, the report says.

“Nearly one in three said they had lost some­one to vio­lence. Guns are used about twice as often in rob­bery and three times as often in assault in the Caribbean as com­pared with the glob­al aver­age,” the report said.

The aver­age rate “of vic­tim­iza­tion by assault and threat (6.8 per cent) is high­er than in any oth­er region, includ­ing Latin America (4.7 per cent)” or Africa (5.2 per cent). The report states that almost half of all crimes go unre­port­ed to the police. The vic­tims are main­ly 18 to 25 year-old’s who live in poor neigh­bor­hoods far from the tourist resorts.

The Caribbean region “is right­ful­ly known for its beau­ty, warmth, cul­ture, music and, yes, beck­on­ing envi­ron­ment”, said Therese Turner-Jones, who heads the bank’s Caribbean Department.

“But the dark­er side of hav­ing some of the world’s high­est vio­lent crime rates remains a cause for concern.”

One area of spe­cial con­cern is vio­lence against women and children.

“We found that tol­er­ance of vio­lence against women and chil­dren is high­er than com­pa­ra­ble regions,” said Heather Sutton, the report’s lead researcher.

According to the study, one out of three adults approve beat­ing a woman if she is unfaith­ful, a rate high­er than in the United States or Latin America.

“The lit­er­a­ture shows that high tol­er­ance is pre­dic­tive of high lev­els of actu­al vio­lence. This is one impor­tant risk fac­tor that per­pet­u­ates the cycle of vio­lence and delin­quen­cy,” the report said.

At a private/​public sec­tor part­ner­ship forum on crime in New Kingston, on Thursday, attend­ed by Minister of National Security Robert Montague, Opposition spokesman on Tourism Dr. Wykeham McNeill, POJ rep Peter John Thwaites, Guardsman Group Chairman Kenneth Benjamin and oth­ers Andrew Holness the Jamaican Prime Minister had this to say.

“The need for part­ner­ship between all lev­els of the secu­ri­ty sys­tem, includ­ing pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards, Government, civ­il soci­ety and the pri­vate sec­tor, must work togeth­er to con­tribute to eco­nom­ic growth and the cre­ation of a secure soci­ety through col­lab­o­ra­tion and coöperation.”
“In addi­tion to their role in job cre­ation for over 23,000 Jamaicans, the pri­vate secu­ri­ty indus­try is an essen­tial com­po­nent of the nation­al secu­ri­ty frame­work pro­vid­ing val­ue; includ­ing pro­tec­tion of access con­trol points, employ­ees, clients, com­mu­ni­ties, homes, and cor­po­rate assets; and indeed as pro­tec­tors of nation­al indus­tries.”

Look for major changes to the National Security land­scape, and again it may not be ben­e­fi­cial to the JCF or the Country in the long run.
We will come back to this point.

Attending the con­fer­ence on behalf of the Police Department was Deputy Commissioner of Police Clifford Blake. Addressing the con­fer­ence, Blake said.
“Jamaica is awash with guns.” 
Stronger sen­tences are need­ed to fight the demand for and use of the weapon in com­mit­ting var­i­ous crimes, for­mer Police Commissioner Owen Ellington, who pro­posed that there should be a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence for gun offens­es, I sup­port that idea.” “I remem­ber him say­ing that there should be a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence of 15 years.

For the record, this writer has been call­ing for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for par­tic­u­lar cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes before Ellington had his come to Jesus Moment.
Blake went on to cite the high attri­tion rate, lack of tech­nol­o­gy, and cor­rup­tion as issues affect­ing the Police’s abil­i­ty to do an effec­tive job.
An issue I have been harp­ing on for years.
The coun­try spends much mon­ey on train­ing a police offi­cer, but as soon as they are trained, they are look­ing for a way out.
This is not hap­pen­ing in a vac­u­um, almost 600 peo­ple do not walk away from their jobs in one agency each year with­out some­thing being rad­i­cal­ly wrong.
When we throw teach­ers, nurs­es and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als into the mix, our coun­try is expe­ri­enc­ing a seri­ous brain drain, but in a weird way, it is actu­al­ly pay­ing its cit­i­zens to leave by virtue of the lack of returns on its investments.
Blake spoke to the fact that oth­er coun­tries are lur­ing away Jamaican cops using bet­ter pay and work­ing con­di­tions, an issue I have writ­ten about for years. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​s​e​n​i​o​r​-​c​o​p​-​s​a​y​s​-​j​a​-​a​w​a​s​h​-​w​i​t​h​-​g​u​n​s​_​9​8​6​4​1​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​606

RED FLAG..

While the Deputy Commissioner of Police was list­ing the ills plagu­ing the Police Department, the Prime Minister was in total dis­re­gard mode, list­ing what he believes are bet­ter strate­gies for deal­ing with crime.
Shouldn’t the Prime Minister be atten­tive­ly lis­ten­ing to the DCP?
Does the Prime Minister under­stand that for this crime mon­ster to be cor­ralled he needs to pay atten­tion to what the experts say?

Or as a lit­tle birdie told me recent­ly there are moves afoot to remove some polic­ing func­tions to pri­vate secu­ri­ty companies.
How this will enhance the respect and respectabil­i­ty of the duly con­sti­tut­ed Police Department is yet to be discussed.
As Bruce Golding and his cronies cob­bled togeth­er the INDECOM Act with the PNP’s bless­ings and gave it to Jamaica with debil­i­tat­ing con­se­quences, so too will giv­ing pri­vate secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies polic­ing pow­ers and duties cre­ate con­flicts and con­fu­sion and fur­ther deplete and erode the rule of law on the Island.

Before the Bruce Golding Government cob­bled togeth­er the INDECOM law at the behest of spe­cial inter­est, I warned it would have dan­ger­ous con­se­quences, not just for ordi­nary civil­ians but for the police safe­ty and secu­ri­ty as well.
Holness’ state­ment quote” “The need for part­ner­ship between all lev­els of the secu­ri­ty sys­tem, includ­ing pri­vate secu­ri­ty guard com­pa­nies,” is an omi­nous state­ment of intent which seems to indi­cate that Andrew Holness intends to go down the same Rabbit-hole Golding took the nation with INDECOM.
Again fail­ing to give due respect and regard to the opin­ion of the peo­ple who actu­al­ly know what they are talk­ing about.

Enough mis­takes have been made fol­low­ing after ideas from peo­ple who have no busi­ness hav­ing a say in nation­al secu­ri­ty matters.
Any empha­sis or resources avail­able must be spent on upgrad­ing the JCF with a view to mak­ing it a pro­fes­sion­al twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Police force.
Any resource divert­ed to pri­vate enti­ties under the guise of help­ing the fight against crime must be seen as yet anoth­er attempt to ren­der the Jamaica Constabulary fur­ther an even more impo­tent paper tiger than it already is.

Even as tourism con­tin­ue to show marked improve­ments in the Caribbean and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Jamaica , it is still a chal­lenge for small nations like CARICOM mem­ber states to tru­ly pull them­selves from the shack­les of pover­ty and pro­pel them­selves to first world status.

Two recent reports which had to do with the region has been less than com­pli­men­ta­ry , and could have far reach­ing con­se­quences not just for CARICOM but for indi­vid­ual mem­ber states like Jamaica.

.….….….….….….….….….…..

According to a new study pub­lished by prop­er­ty insur­ance group FM Global​.FM Global Resilience Index, which equal­ly weighs com­pos­ite mea­sure of three core resilience fac­tors: eco­nom­ic, risk qual­i­ty and the sup­ply chain — includ­ing cyber attacks, nat­ur­al haz­ards and sup­ply chain fail­ure — ranked Jamaica at 117 of 130 countries.

The index is based on data pro­vid­ed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Economic Forum and the World Bank.
The coun­try, which scored 19 marks by FM Global stan­dards, had an over­all eco­nom­ic rank of 124 of the list of coun­tries; con­sist­ing of scores of six for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, 65.4 for polit­i­cal risk, 19.3 for oil inten­si­ty, and 65.6 for urban­iza­tion rate.

The scores result­ed in Jamaica being ranked the sec­ond most risky coun­try to invest in the Caribbean, after Haiti which was at the low­est posi­tion over­all on the list of 130 countries.

Jamaica was ranked just below the African republics of Guinea at 116 and Cameroon at 115, and one posi­tion ahead of Iran — ranked at 118 of the 130 coun­tries. (Jamaicaobserver​.com).

Additionally , in anoth­er report ..

The 15-nation Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty is angry at the United States for label­ing vir­tu­al­ly all mem­bers of the region­al trade bloc as mon­ey laun­der­ing juris­dic­tions and plans to mount a stiff lob­by­ing effort in Washington, its leader said Friday.CARICOM Secretary General Irwin La Rocque said the United States’s list­ing 14 mem­ber states in its 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report could have dev­as­tat­ing effects on the region.

Most of the coun­tries have economies heav­i­ly depen­dent on tourism and finan­cial ser­vices such as off­shore bank­ing and eco­nom­ic cit­i­zen­ships. “I think these uni­lat­er­al black-list­ings are not help­ing any­thing,” he said, adding that “there ought to be some dis­cus­sion and trans­paren­cy on how these lists are arrived at.”

.….….….….….….….….….….….….

The United States is quite aware of the con­se­quences it’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tions have on small depen­dent states .
As such it behoove the United States to exer­cise cau­tion and due care in it’s characterizations.

Even as this writer endors­es some of the ini­ti­ates embarked on by the United States, (eg) seri­ous­ly tak­ing on Lotto scam­mers in Jamaica, and request­ing the extra­di­tion of Transnational crim­i­nals who seem­ing­ly are too big to be pros­e­cut­ed in Jamaica, we must insist on fairness .

Small states like Jamaica are total­ly depen­dent on the International Monetary Fund for their sur­vival. They hard­ly have the capac­i­ty to be International mon­ey laun­der­ing states to any degree that they would not be read­i­ly exposed.
Negatively label­ing them mon­ey laun­der­ing states does have seri­ous and debil­i­tat­ing con­se­quences on their abil­i­ties to extri­cate them­selves from the shack­les of lender agen­cies like the IMF and become sol­vent states.

Though it is incum­bent on each state to ensure that the rule of law is adhered to , many states do not have the resources to com­bat the scourge of drug deal­ing and oth­er crimes which pro­duces big bucks, and the ensu­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing schemes which result.
The United States with all it resources still strug­gle to deal with the emerg­ing chal­lenges posed by Drugs , cyber crimes and oth­er transna­tion­al threats.

Consequently the United States should stand ready to part­ner with Caribbean states to counter the scourge of crime .
A crime free Caribbean Community is in America’s National Security Interest.
In this case slap­ping a label of this sort on CARICOM does no one any good.

One of the tools used to erode the rule of law in Jamaica is demagoguery.
The Media, Criminal Rights activists, and oth­ers have used this tool rather effec­tive­ly to com­plete­ly turn the pop­u­la­tion against law enforce­ment over the last 30 years.
The nation’s teeth is now on edge from suck­ing that sour fruit.
Part of the dem­a­gog­ic approach has been to ridicule the sequence of events giv­en by Police in shoot­ing inci­dents. They do so by cast­ing doubt and cre­at­ing the impres­sion the events as out­lined were con­coct­ed by offi­cers, sole­ly to escape accountability.
From time to time police con­front armed crim­i­nals result­ing in some­one being shot, and no weapons are recovered.
That sce­nario has been a gift to the ene­mies of the rule of law who exploit these inci­dents to the fullest.

As a result, I wrote the fol­low­ing arti­cle below out­lin­ing some of the sce­nar­ios in which these events can and do occur.

How Terrain And Topography Affect Policing .….

As a con­se­quence of this sec­ond guess­ing an entire­ly new career genre has emerged against law enforce­ment, all sup­pos­ed­ly in sup­port of human rights, but which are instead cesspools of sup­port and com­fort to the Island’s killers and rapists.

As a for­mer police offi­cer in that ingrate incu­ba­tor, I have tried to shed some light on these issues with a view to bring­ing some truth and per­spec­tive to counter the lies and deceptions.
My attempts should not be con­strued to mean that there aren’t excep­tions to the rule.
They are cer­tain­ly not intend­ed to sug­gest that there are no crooked cops who step out­side the bound­aries of the law and shame their cho­sen profession.
Truth be told when I served I bare­ly tol­er­at­ed many of the cops with whom I worked, (that sen­ti­ment may have been mutu­al) and many years after I left, I am shocked at what I hear from some past and serv­ing members.
But that is true of any cho­sen pro­fes­sion, it has noth­ing to do with the pro­fes­sion, it is total­ly about the peo­ple who are in those disciplines.

I want to show­case two inci­dents which hap­pened on Tuesday which should add some per­spec­tive to my contention.

Constable Akeem McLean was shot and injured in the vicin­i­ty of Regent Street and Golden Heights, Denham Town.

Incident #1

The Police said McLean was a part of a team respond­ing to reports of explo­sions in the Race Course area about 2:10 am. Upon reach­ing the Metcalf Remand Centre, the offi­cers noticed men car­ry­ing out sus­pi­cious activ­i­ties but when they alight­ed from their vehi­cles to inves­ti­gate, they were shot at. The gun­fire was returned, and the men fled.
Anderson said McLean who was wear­ing a bal­lis­tic vest, was shot dur­ing the exchange. “The vest actu­al­ly cush­ioned the impact of the bul­let, but the frag­ments from the bul­let actu­al­ly inflict­ed the wound to his neck.”

So much for the lying dem­a­gog­ic vil­lage lawyers who have an opin­ion on everything.
This police con­sta­ble was almost killed, no weapon was recov­ered and as far as we know none of the assailants may have been injured.
Now if we flip the script a lit­tle and these offi­cers had come out of their vehi­cle guns blaz­ing, chances are Constable McLean would not have been shot and almost killed, a mere week after Constable Hanson was slaugh­tered on Constant Spring Road.
So let us imag­ine things a lit­tle bit fur­ther, what if one of the scum were hit and the oth­ers had fled leav­ing no weapons behind?

We all know what would have transpired!
Terrence Williams, the chief lying dem­a­gogue, would have called a press con­fer­ence to shed croc­o­dile tears about his con­cern for the shoot­ing of these malig­nant tumors.
There would have been much hoopla in the media and on social media about how the police are deranged lunatics.
But once it was the police who found them­selves on the busi­ness end of the gun it is crickets.…..Total silence.…

Incident#2

In anoth­er inci­dent on Tuesday, two men were fatal­ly shot by the police in a sec­tion of Arnett Gardens called Zimbabwe. Two guns — a rifle and a hand­gun — were seized fol­low­ing that shoot­ing, police said.
The two men remained uniden­ti­fied up to yesterday.
According to the police, a team was on patrol in the vicin­i­ty of Paradise Grove when the offi­cers were greet­ed with gun­fire. The law­men returned fire, and the men were shot.

The Police said it was the third attack on mem­bers of the police force in that area of the city in the past two weeks.

These two dirt­bags met their just due but just imag­ine if the police were shot at, returned fire, and their cronies had man­aged to scoop up those two weapons?
Yes, Terrence Williams and the bunch of leech­es who can­not cut it in the real world on their own with­out tax­pay­ers largess would have had a field day with this.

In sum­ma­tion let me say this, there is much that has been done over the decades to lead us to this point in Jamaica.
These actions have had a fer­til­iz­ing effect on crime, yet none has empow­ered crim­i­nals more than the work of Jamaicans for Justice, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Families against State Terrorism and oth­ers lead­ing to the cre­ation of INDECOM.
These attacks on our police offi­cers were even sub­tly called for by the for­mer head of the Government’s own pub­lic defend­er’s office.
Former head Earl Witter said that for police accounts of dead gun­men to be cred­i­ble there would have to be more dead cops.
That shock­ing state­ment came from a tax pay­er fund­ed bureaucrat.

In the mean­time, heav­i­ly armed gun­men are threat­en­ing to kill mem­bers of the JDF and JCF if they are seen in the low­er sec­tions of Maxfield Avenue.
In any oth­er nation in which these kinds of threats are made the Government would have sent in the best troops they have and bull­dozed the entire thing if nec­es­sary to root out this threat to the Nation.
In Jamaica, it is busi­ness as usual.
We also hear that key duties are on track to be removed from the Police and placed into the hands of pri­vate secu­ri­ty companies.
These events will invari­ably erode fur­ther what lit­tle effec­tive­ness the police has, cre­at­ing, even more, law­less­ness in the country.

I warn this Administration not to use any pub­lic resource to pay any secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny to do any duties which should fall under the nation’s police department.
Much dam­age has been done to our coun­try as a result of INDECOM it behoove the Government to gar­ner what­ev­er resources it can toward the mod­ern­iz­ing the legit­i­mate Police Agency of the country/
Unless of course, the end game is to destroy the JCF as part of a larg­er plan totally.

The vio­lence in Jamaica should give pause to every well-mean­ing per­son with any con­nec­tion to our country.
However one of the tragedies com­ing out of this wan­ton blood­shed is the fact that it can no longer be char­ac­ter­ized as just a high crime rate.

IT IS A WAR…

At the risk of being labeled alarmist, I respect­ful­ly point to the fact that at present rate we can no longer argue this is just crime.
Based on the raw num­ber of dead bod­ies our coun­try is in an unde­clared state of civ­il war.

Even more sig­nif­i­cant to the future of the coun­try is the killing of chil­dren, in what some would argue is col­lat­er­al damage.
Now we all know that as a mat­ter, of course, wars do pro­duce inno­cent dead, (col­lat­er­al damage).
What we should be con­cerned about how­ev­er is the killing of the nation’s chil­dren and the trau­ma which is being unleashed on count­less oth­ers as a consequence.

As a result of the killings and the fail­ings with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem the vio­lence has now tak­en on a cir­cu­lar direc­tion,( i.e.,) even when a killer is held account­able by the sys­tem, the penal­ty is so inad­e­quate that fam­i­lies and friends of the vic­tims feel they must take mat­ters into their own hands.
Not to men­tion that in most cas­es sur­viv­ing mem­bers of a fam­i­ly knows who their loved one’s killers are.
For the most part the vast major­i­ty of the nation’s mur­der­ers nev­er even get arrest­ed much less tried and con­vict­ed for their crimes.

Of the sev­en (7%) who do get con­vict­ed many are over­turned on appeal, and as you will see from the fol­low­ing sto­ry, even when they are not over­turned on appeal, they are turned loose back onto the streets in a few years even when con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal murder.

According to local Media:

The shoot­ing death of a 16-year-old Muschett High School stu­dent and her uncle in Cheesefield, St Catherine, ear­ly Sunday morn­ing has left her fam­i­ly and school com­mu­ni­ty severe­ly devastated.The deceased have been iden­ti­fied as 35-year-old Lerude Bartley of Fourth Street, Linstead, St Catherine, and his niece, Octavia Leslie of Deeside, Trelawny.

Bartley is said to have been released from prison last year after serv­ing a 15-year sen­tence for murder.
According to fam­i­ly mem­bers, Octavia, who was fond­ly called Tavia, her four sib­lings, and their par­ents, went to Linstead ear­ly Saturday morn­ing to attend her aun­t’s funer­al which was sched­uled for the fol­low­ing day.

After attend­ing the wake through­out Saturday night, dur­ing the wee hours of Sunday morn­ing, Octavia accom­pa­nied her uncle, who she was meet­ing for the sec­ond time, to the bor­der­ing Cheesefield com­mu­ni­ty where he walked home an elder­ly woman.
But tragedy struck while they were using a short­cut on their way back. They were both shot in the head by unknown assailants. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​o​b​s​e​r​v​e​r​-​w​e​s​t​-​f​r​o​n​t​-​p​a​g​e​/​d​o​u​b​l​e​-​g​r​i​e​f​-​f​a​m​i​l​y​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​c​o​m​m​u​n​i​t​y​-​m​o​u​r​n​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​g​-​o​f​-​1​6​-​y​-​o​-​s​t​u​d​e​n​t​_​9​8​4​0​8​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​606

On the face of it, every Jamaican should be com­plete­ly alarmed at the prospect that sim­ply walk­ing in a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty can get one mur­dered exe­cu­tion style.
That fact is par­tic­u­lar­ly chill­ing for some­one like me who hails from anoth­er rur­al St Catherine com­mu­ni­ty and knows the com­mu­ni­ty of Cheesfield quite well.

It is unnerv­ing to imag­ine that even in the most remote com­mu­ni­ties guns are a sta­ple for any­one who wants them.
I am not naïve to think that there is not some deep­er back sto­ry here, what is con­cern­ing to me is the idea that death can come so eas­i­ly even in the most remote community.

Could this dou­ble mur­der be a hit because the deceased Bartley him­self had killed and had spent time in prison for his crimes?
If I was inves­ti­gat­ing these homi­cides, you bet I would be look­ing at that angle for sure.
Yet if the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem had applied the appro­pri­ate penal­ty to Bartley for the crime of mur­der for which he was con­vict­ed he would be alive today.
And so would his niece…

Make no mis­take about it, I shed no tear for any­one who has killed anoth­er human being except in self-defense or in defense of another.
So there are no tears here for Mister Lerude Bartley.
I know I should for­give, yea, yea, it is up to the Lord God to for­give him for killing anoth­er person.
The Criminal jus­tice sys­tem failed every­one, includ­ing Lerude Bartley but more so it failed Octavia Leslie and by exten­sion all the stu­dents of Muschett High School.
This case is a clas­sic exam­ple of what I have been talk­ing about for years, these are vivid exam­ples of the not so obvi­ous con­se­quences of not keep­ing crim­i­nals in prison.

We are look­ing at the metas­ta­siz­ing of the vio­lence, some­thing I have been speak­ing to for some time now.
It’s like a cir­cu­lar fir­ing squad.
In a cir­cu­lar fir­ing squad, no one is safe.
Had the courts admin­is­tered the appro­pri­ate sen­tence to Lerude Bartley he would still be in jail and Tavia as she was affec­tion­ate­ly called, would still be alive.
She would have sung at her rel­a­tive’s funeral.
Now some­one will be singing at her’s even before she had a chance to live.
This is way too sad.….

On the sud­den pass­ing of Assistant Commissioner of Police Winchroy Budhoo ‚National Security Minister Robert Montague expressed con­do­lence on behalf of the Government and his min­istry to Assistant Commissioner Budhoo’s fam­i­ly, col­leagues, and friends.

Said Minister Montague…

“My thoughts and prayers are with them dur­ing this very dif­fi­cult time,” the min­is­ter said.

“The Ministry of National Security wants to once again under­score the impor­tant role that our police play in our coun­try.” “As Jamaicans we must not for­get that the free­dom and the sense of secu­ri­ty we enjoy are some­times achieved through our law enforce­ment offi­cers mak­ing enor­mous sac­ri­fices – often with­out much regard for self.
“We wish to assure ACP Budhoo’s imme­di­ate fam­i­ly of our sup­port as they go through this dif­fi­cult peri­od of grief and mourn­ing. We also ask that you take heart in know­ing that he lived well in ser­vice to this nation.” 
“On behalf of the entire law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty the min­istry thanks him for his ser­vice to the nation. We will work close­ly with the fam­i­ly in the days ahead to hon­or his mem­o­ry and main­tain his lega­cy.”

This medi­um has been crit­i­cal at times of this Minister when we feel it is warranted.
At the same time we also want to be fair in how we cri­tique the Minister as we always try to be when we cri­tique every­one else.
The Minister’s state­ment is one of the best I have per­son­al­ly seen any­where issued by a politi­cian at the pass­ing of a police officer .
Though ACP Budhoo did not die vio­lent­ly thank­ful­ly , the Minister’s response has been thought­ful, rea­soned yet inclu­sive of the con­tri­bu­tion police offi­cers make to society.
Thank you Minister Montague,

In an online poll conducted by the Jamaica Observer which included 1,175 respondents 50.2 per cent said that they were not confident in new Commissioner of Police, George Quallo, 49.8 per cent said that they were confident in his ability to successfully fight crime.

I don’t think this poll result require a PhD in psy­chol­o­gy to fig­ure out the thought process­es which led to the out­come of this poll.
According to some of the com­ments in the Observer, sev­er­al peo­ple expressed some of the same sen­ti­ments which I believe are rep­re­sent­ed in the poll results.
Said One person.:

“What did you expect.specially as its the same method of select­ing a com­mish from the ranks of the JCF which has not worked as the island suf­fers under the strain of criminal/​terrorists with no answers.and as the famous once said“keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.and expect a dif­fer­ent result.thats the def­i­n­i­tion of mad­ness”..

What Country in the world bring in for­eign­ers to head their secu­ri­ty apparatus?
None, Zero, Nada !!!!
But the poster’s com­ment was a syn­op­sis of a larg­er mind­set which brought Mark Shields and oth­ers from Britain to Jamaica to tell Jamaican Police how to Police Jamaica.
Oh sure ‚there is noth­ing wrong with using for­eign exper­tise, but plac­ing them in crit­i­cal posi­tions of pow­er over career natives is ridicu­lous and laughable .

Shields got a busi­ness and a bride from the deal, he did­n’t even both­er going back, why should he he is a god there.
Journalists run to him for his opin­ion on every­thing relat­ed to crime, to hell with the Jamaicans who came up through the ranks.
Never mind that when giv­en a chance to sit in a class­room with local cops these guys are left chok­ing on our dust.
Secondly Jamaican cops who leave the JCF and con­tin­ue in law enforce­ment careers in oth­er coun­tries rapid­ly become standouts.

If the peo­ple are still shack­led with the resid­ual chains of slav­ery and mass indoc­tri­na­tion how can they be expect­ed to sup­port even the best our coun­try has to offer?
Is it any won­der that over 600 peo­ple sim­ply walk away from the JCF each year?
Is there any won­der that coun­tries like Canada and the US are able to lure our nurs­es and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als away?”

No it’s not just about bet­ter pay, many Jamaicans do not want to live in any oth­er coun­try but our own .
If they are treat­ed right and appre­ci­at­ed, they are quite will­ing to stay and build Jamaica , they sim­ply need lead­ers who know how to moti­vate and lead.

Why would we expect a dif­fer­ent result from this poll however?
Jamaicans are reluc­tant to do any­thing to remove the mur­der­ers from their com­mu­ni­ties, choos­ing instead to point to the sins of the police.
Of course they also have faith in the low life politi­cians who give the youths guns to kill their neigh­bors from across the way.

They bow to the idiots who spend their time bang­ing on desks and hurl­ing insults at each oth­er in Gordon House,instead of updat­ing the laws so that they can have the req­ui­site deter­rent effect.
Instead of get­ting behind law enforce­ment to cre­ate the envi­ron­ment in which pros­per­i­ty can real­ly begin to become a real pos­si­bil­i­ty and not a jin­gle, they pro­tect the crim­i­nals with­in their con­stituen­cies, mak­ing law enforce­ment and the rule of law an alien to be feared and hated.

No, why would a peo­ple who wor­ship these men­tal midgets respect the life of accom­plish­ment and ded­i­ca­tion to ser­vice that a com­mis­sion­er George Quallo bring to the table.
He is not a for­eign­er , we all know how they wor­ship the for­eign goods at the expense of safe Jamaican foods .
We know how they love all things for­eign, why would they not want a for­eign­er to solve their problems?

Will be updat­ed as is appropriate.
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Well what do you know?

If you are still won­der­ing why there are so many homi­cides in Jamaica amidst the hype about“one love “and the oth­er b**s**t Jingles they use to lure unsus­pect­ing tourists in, look no fur­ther than the courts.
It’s not just the courts which are con­tribut­ing to the high kill rate , but they play a large role in con­tribut­ing to it.
It is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for the Police to take mur­der­ers off the streets, pri­mar­i­ly because of a lack of train­ing, tools and remu­ner­a­tions to name a few of the depart­men­t’s don’t have.

On the rare occa­sion that a mur­der­er is arrest­ed for a crime , one would log­i­cal­ly assume it would make sense to keep him in cus­tody and expe­dite his tri­al so that the soci­ety can send a clear mes­sage mur­ders will not be tolerated.
Well if you thought that is the strat­e­gy you are wrong.
As soon as they are brought in by the Police the Judges who are friends with the high priced lawyers who rep­re­sent the killers release them on bail.

Oh by the way if you are won­der­ing where poor inner- city res­i­dents (gen­er­al­ly the shooters)get mon­ey to afford these high priced lawyers to defend them ?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Now in order to under­stand the dynam­ics of the high mur­der rate you have to con­sid­er who pays the lawyers.
You also have to con­sid­er that the lawyers and judges gen­er­al­ly all grad­u­ate from the same col­leges , they hang out togeth­er and they all come from the same dirty pool.

So the strat­e­gy is to release them back onto the streets and drag the case on and on and on after which it’s thrown out for want of prosecution.
Victims and their fam­i­lies be damned.
Now it mat­ters not that the want of pros­e­cu­tion is some­times facil­i­tat­ed by the very sys­tem which is sup­posed to pun­ish offenders.

Out of that help from the sys­tem the crim­i­nal under­world craft­ed it’s own strat­e­gy to stay out of jail for good.
Simply kill the witnesses!!!
Check mate.

There is so much to unpack from whats dri­ving the homi­cide rate in our country.
In order to under­stand it one has to divest him­self of the notion that Government (par­ty nueteral)is act­ing in the best inter­est of cit­i­zens and the Judges are hon­est people.
If you are able to facil­i­tate that men­tal divorce you will then become out­raged to learn that the Island’s Justice Minister Delroy Chuck pro­posed that all cas­es on the court dock­ets over 5 years be purged for good.
Including Murder cases !!!

Every liv­ing per­son with the abil­i­ty to think, must know that ‑that is a homi­cide enhance­ment motion.
Much like the INDECOM Act, hasti­ly thrown togeth­er and forced onto the coun­try by Bruce Golding and his cronies , includ­ing Holness ‚with the bless­ings of the sim­ple mind­ed Portia Simpson Miller and her band of miscreants.

Since it is not too dif­fi­cult to under­stand that if you are pre­pared to toss mur­ders , rapes and oth­er seri­ous cas­es, crim­i­nals are going to do their part to make sure that cas­es do not get tried before the 5 year cut off date.
Delroy Chuck is no fool he is a well edu­cat­ed lawyer , so every­one must under­stand that he knows exact­ly what he is doing when he makes such a proposal.
Neither Chuck or any oth­er indi­vid­ual must have the right to make such momen­tous decisions.
There is a rea­son mur­der does not have a statute of limitation .
It is a vio­la­tion against com­mon law. That means there does­n’t have to be a statute cre­at­ed by man to make the tak­ing of anoth­er human life pun­ish­able with seri­ous puni­tive respons­es includ­ing the mur­der­ers own death.
From the begin­ning of record­ed his­to­ry it has been the ulti­mate crime.
Against man and God.
For my read­ers who do not under­stand what that means here goes. There are no time lim­its on pros­e­cut­ing a per­son for killing anoth­er human being.
Whenever you are caught you are going to be pun­ished 50 or a hun­dred years lat­er, it does not matter.

This is why Jamaicans have to look at the peo­ple they put in pow­er with a seri­ous eye . More impor­tant­ly they have to know what peo­ple stand for before putting them in office.
You don’t vote for an indi­vid­ual sim­ply because he/​she is part of the par­ty you like.
Purging court dock­ets under the guise that it will free up the courts and sub­se­quent­ly make the sys­tem more flu­id and effi­cient, will pro­duce the exact oppo­site. It Will cre­ate expo­nen­tial­ly more mur­ders by offend­ers who under­stand all they have to do is frus­trate the process for 5 years .
Their high priced lawyers and cor­rupt judges know exact­ly how to get that accomplished.

Docket purge hap­pens day in day out on it’s own . Hiring more judges at the Resident Magistrate lev­el quick­ly resolves the backlogs,.
These lawyers you hire to run the coun­try knows that. That’s the fix, not reward­ing mur­der­ers and oth­er dan­ger­ous felons with absolution.
So whats behind this idea to purge court dockets?
Could it be that they have peo­ple on them they do not want to face the courts?
Maybe ‚but that is hard­ly the rea­son they could sim­ply toss a judge some mon­ey at the tri­al lev­el or even cook up an appeal for those already con­vict­ed and with enough mon­ey they can get any­one off any charge.

So the rea­son has to be a pay­back to the crim­i­nals in their constituencies .
You nev­er see smoke with­out fire, there will be no one in that Gordon House to say , “wait just a minute this is not a good idea”.
Because it serves their inter­est not the inter­est of the public.
A pub­lic which have now fall­en in love with the killings and for the most part , are fix­at­ed on prof­i­teer­ing from the killculture

IN THE MEANTIME…

Peter Abrahams’ alleged killer gets bail

The 61-one-year-old farmer who was impli­cat­ed in the death of vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Peter Abrahams was offered $300,000 bail when he appeared in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court.Norman Tomlinson of Cyprus dis­trict in Red Hills, St Andrew, who is the hus­band of Abrahams’ helper, was offered bail by Parish Judge Sanchia Burrell last Friday.

Bail was offered on con­di­tion that he reports Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the Constant Spring Police Station and sur­ren­der his trav­el doc­u­ments. Abrahams was found dead at his home in Red Hills on January 18, with an injury to his head. The police say a post-mortem revealed that his injuries were delib­er­ate­ly inflict­ed. Tomlinson is sched­uled to return to court on June 26.
http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​p​e​t​e​r​-​a​b​r​a​h​a​m​s​-​8​2​1​7​-​a​l​l​e​g​e​d​-​k​i​l​l​e​r​-​g​e​t​s​-​b​a​i​l​_​9​7​6​6​6​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​607

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Watching Jamaican cops exe­cute arrests is like root canal , rather painful to live through.
As a pub­lic ser­vice I have tried to use this medi­um to not only cri­tique the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem but to inform , edu­cate, and opine on how we can make it better.

The Jamaican Legislature in this regard is like an old train track , it sim­ply lays there regard­less of what hap­pens, it gets over­grown with weeds, debris stays exact­ly where it is left on it, regard­less of the dan­ger to com­ing trains.
So since we can­not rely on the leg­is­la­ture to do any­thing about this epi­dem­ic of resist­ing arrest in our coun­try, it behoove the police to acquire and use best prac­tices , even if they have to sources those prac­tices from YouTube videos.

The longer it takes for offi­cers to exe­cute an arrest the more dan­ger­ous the sit­u­a­tion becomes.
It shows a lack of abil­i­ty on the part of the officer/​s , it embold­ens the offend­er and it encour­ages bystanders to get involved.

♦So the first order of busi­ness in exe­cut­ing an arrest is speed.
Once an offend­er is told in sharp , clear and con­cise lan­guage that he/​she is under arrest , the next com­mand must be , turn around and place your hands behind your back.
The rea­son for order­ing the offend­er to turn away from you the offi­cer, and place his/​her arms behind the back, is to mit­i­gate poten­tial harm to you the officer.
It also gives a clear indi­ca­tion right away to you the offi­cer whether this offend­er intends to resist arrest or not.

♦ The next step is to move swift­ly and decid­ed­ly to the offend­er and place him in hand­cuffs , always with hands cuffed behind the back.
If the offend­er is bel­liger­ent , argu­men­ta­tive , and non-com­pli­ant, officer/​s must bring the offend­er to the ground and exe­cute the arrest as swift­ly as possible .
♦In exe­cut­ing an arrest there should be no cir­cum­stances in which an offi­cer or two strug­gles with effect­ing an arrest while anoth­er offi­cer is stand­ing around like a casu­al observer.
In the event that hap­pens the depart­ment should forth­with send that offi­cer back for retrain­ing ‚or he or she should be dis­missed from the service.

♦ Officers must all move in to exe­cute the arrest swift­ly and safe­ly for all involved includ­ing the offender.
They should also ensure that no one inter­venes to inter­fere in the arrest.
As such, if there are sev­er­al offi­cers on scene one offi­cer must ensure that no one gets close to offi­cers engaged in effect­ing that arrest.
A bystander wish­ing to inter­vene can eas­i­ly grab an offi­cer’s gun and cre­ate untold harm to officers.

As such any bystanders who refus­es to move to a safe dis­tance from offi­cers, incites the per­son being arrest­ed to resist arrest or oth­er­wise inter­feres, must also be arrest­ed immediately.

The issue of exe­cut­ing arrests safe­ly is crit­i­cal to both offi­cer safe­ty and that of the offender .
Just last week two peo­ple lost their lives in a sit­u­a­tion from all indi­ca­tions which sug­gest that prop­er arrest pro­to­cols were not observed .
Constable Leighton Hanson of the Constant Spring Police was killed alleged­ly by an offend­er he tried to take into cus­tody, but clear­ly did not fol­low the estab­lished protocols.

He lost his life after the offend­er report­ed­ly grabbed his weapon and shot him. He was killed by mem­bers of the JDF who were pass­ing and wit­nessed the incident.
Every per­son who is told that he is under arrest is capa­ble of mur­der­ing a police officer.
No one wants to go to jail .
They snap and do things they nev­er thought they would do.
Subsequently each and every offi­cer must ensure that they are pre­pared to deal with any sit­u­a­tion the moment they decide to arrest an offender.

For the safe­ty of all, the arrest must be done swift­ly , deci­sive­ly, and with authority.
That does not mean abusively.
Every per­son who is told that he is under arrest has a duty under the law to sub­mit to being arrest­ed , regard­less of whether he/​she thinks the arrest is jus­ti­fied or not.
You do not have a right to fight with a police officer .
The police is giv­en the pow­er to use appro­pri­ate force to ensure that you sub­mit to the arrest .

It is impor­tant that every per­son under­stand this oblig­a­tion under the law.
If you resist and try to cause harm to the arrest­ing offi­cer , the offi­cer have a right to use the nec­es­sary force to bring you under compliance.
Here’s what is crit­i­cal to under­stand, the arrest­ing offi­cer has the lat­i­tude based on his/​her assess­ment of the dan­ger to him or her­self to use even lethal force to sub­due you as a result of the threat he/​she per­ceives to him/​herself.
Why would you engage in a fight with some­one who is autho­rized to use any lev­el of force, includ­ing lethal force to sub­due you?

What do you think is going to hap­pen when you resist arrest?
Do you think that a prop­er­ly trained offi­cer who knows he is doing his duty by the book is going to walk away because you decide to resist arrest?
Guess again .
You will have your day in court .You will also have a right to an attor­ney who will advise you of your rights includ­ing your right to civ­il action if you believe you were wronged .

We can­not have a soci­ety in which every arrest has to be accom­pa­nied by violence.
Constable Leighton Hanson is dead , I hear no state­ment which would indi­cate that a sin­gle leg­is­la­tor under­stand the need, much less have the inten­tion to pro­pose changes which would make resist­ing arrest a felony.
That law could be named the Hanson act in hon­or of that slain officer.
This prob­a­bly won’t hap­pen where there is no vision out­side the bang­ing on desks and the insults which per­me­ate what hap­pens in Gordon House when the 63 mis­cre­ants get in there.

Every time I ask, I am told that there is prop­er train­ing on how best to exe­cute arrests .
I have not seen that pro­fes­sion­al exe­cu­tion in arrest videos that make their way onto social media platforms.
Newly installed Commissioner of police George Quallo would be well advised to ensure that what­ev­er his depart­ment has on arrest train­ing, is revamped and re-redesigned .
Clearly what exist is not work­ing .Additionally his depart­ment issues the week­ly force orders to the pub­lic, a move I said was a bad one when Owen Ellington for­mer com­mis­sion­er embarked on it.
Nevertheless it can be a medi­um used to edu­cate the pub­lic about the dan­gers of resist­ing arrest until hope­ful­ly some­thing seri­ous is done about this practice.

The media may have start­ed los­ing inter­est in the Black Lives Matter move­ment, but new infor­ma­tion about the death of Texas teenag­er Jordan Edwards illus­trates that the under­ly­ing prob­lem of police vio­lence against African-Americans remains as per­va­sive as ever.

After Edwards, 15, was shot in the head through the front pas­sen­ger win­dow of a car leav­ing a house par­ty in the Dallas sub­urb of Balch Springs on Saturday, police claimed that the killing was nec­es­sary because the vehi­cle had been back­ing toward the offi­cers “in an aggres­sive man­ner,” accord­ing to a report by NPR. On Monday after­noon, how­ev­er, Chief Jonathan Haber had to retract that account and call into ques­tion whether the offi­cer who killed Edwards had jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for doing so.

“In fact, the car with five teenagers inside was mov­ing for­ward, not back­ward, and away from the offi­cers, not toward them. There was no alter­ca­tion, known or oth­er­wise,” writes NPR’s Wade Goodwyn. “Nevertheless one of offi­cers fired a rifle mul­ti­ple times into the pas­sen­ger win­dow, killing young Jordan Edwards. None of the teens were car­ry­ing weapons, nor were they drunk.”

Goodwyn added, “Chief Haber said his review of the officer’s body cam­era video indi­cat­ed the shoot­ing may not meet his department’s standards.”

Although the offi­cer has been put on admin­is­tra­tive leave, Edwards’ fam­i­ly attor­ney Lee Merritt insists this will not be enough.
http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​5​/​0​2​/​t​e​x​a​s​-​t​e​e​n​-​j​o​r​d​a​n​-​e​d​w​a​r​d​s​-​w​a​s​-​s​h​o​t​-​a​n​d​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​b​y​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​t​h​i​s​-​w​e​e​k​e​n​d​-​a​n​d​-​c​o​p​s​-​a​r​e​-​n​o​w​-​c​h​a​n​g​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​s​t​o​ry/

We thought we would shine a lit­tle light on the hypocrisy of anti-police group Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ);
How dare JFJ the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing , anti police lob­by cry croc­o­dile tears for fall­en police officers.
Having stabbed the Police in the back since 1999, this ene­my of the state lob­by has the unmit­i­gat­ed gall to pre­tend to care about dead cops after rous­ing the crim­i­nal rab­ble against law enforce­ment for almost 18 years.

Could it be that the tide is turning?
Could it be that in the court of pop­u­lar opin­ion enough Jamaicans are awak­en­ing to the fact that tear­ing down their police force is unsustainable?
Could it be that that dis­con­tent is start­ing to fil­ter out and they are hear­ing the rumblings”?
Is it pos­si­ble that the sight of a dead cop in uni­form with blood ooz­ing from his head or face may have lit a spark in the Jamaican people?

JFJ does not get to stir the pot, feed the flame, and add fuel to the fire of anti-police sen­ti­ment and as soon as the blood start flow­ing they wash their hands and pre­tend that there is no blood on their hands.
The blood has been on their hands as it has been on the hands of INDECOM, the Politicians and those who sup­port crim­i­nal­i­ty on the Island.

Jamaicans for Justice does not get to launch a pre­emp­tive strike to now cur­ry favor because the mood of the peo­ple are begin­ning to change.
You don’t get to spend 18 years sow­ing seeds and then deny the harvest.

Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) , INDECOM, Families against state ter­ror­ism, the Public defend­ers office all have a role in this and they must be held account­able for what they have done to our coun­try and the lack of respect for the rule of law.
Every hon­est , law abid­ing Jamaican know that the police must be scru­ti­nized, no ques­tion about that .
Nevertheless what they have done to our coun­try in embold­en­ing crim­i­nals and tear­ing down the rule of law is unforgivable.

This must come to an end and it must end now.

SAID THE ANTI-POLICE LOBBY

Human rights lob­by group, Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), is call­ing for more to be pro­vid­ed for the wel­fare of mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. 
This fol­lows Friday’s killing of Constable Leighton Hanson on Constant Spring Road in St Andrew. Hanson was appre­hend­ing a man when he was shot in the head.
Advocacy Manager at JFJ, Rodje Malcolm, in an inter­view with RJR News said the wel­fare of mem­bers of the force is “essen­tial to security”.
In a state­ment on Saturday, JFJ said the inci­dent brings into sharp focus the high-stress envi­ron­ment in which many police offi­cers work and the need for ade­quate psy­cho-social sup­port sys­tems for them.
The human rights lob­by group is urg­ing the Police High Command and the gov­ern­ment to give more sup­port to the well-being of police offi­cers on and off duty in par­tic­u­lar their work­ing con­di­tions, phys­i­cal safe­ty, and stress management.
JFJ says these must be among the pri­or­i­ties for Police Commissioner George Quallo.

READ AND SHARE TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR OUR COUNTRY AND THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO WORK TO KEEP IT SAFE

Our coun­try need a men­tal makeover.
There is too much tol­er­ance for misconduct.
Too much empa­thy for wrong.
Too much ratio­nal­iz­ing for wrongdoers.
Too much” it’s not a big deal”, to social disorder.
I watched this atti­tude devel­op as a kid.
I watched it take on a life of its own to the point the peo­ple who enforce our laws became the enemy.

They were labeled Babylon, a term coined by mis­guid­ed Rastafarians who are still fight­ing a war , their ene­my still undefined.
But Rastafarians were not the problem,they sim­ply coined the term.
The term Babylon became a pejo­ra­tive , a term of deri­sion and dis­re­spect for those who upheld the laws , for the Rastafarians the term was intend­ed for a wider sys­tem of injus­tice as they saw it.
For the soci­ety look­ing for scape­goats the term was appose. Society latched onto it and made it a scar­let let­ter of dis­dain for the Police.

So they demo­nized our law enforcement,and placed on them blame for every mal­a­dy which ailed the society.
Because the peo­ple who make the deci­sions are above reproach .[sic]
Beyond being held respon­si­ble for the cor­rup­tion , crimes and inequities they engage in.
They blamed the Police for every stu­pid igno­rant choice they ever made at the vot­ing booth, rather than hold the peo­ple they vot­ed for responsible.
The soci­ety sowed blame ‚dis­re­spect, hate, their every dis­ap­point­ment is pinned on the police.
The chil­dren grow up learn­ing to be dis­re­spect­ful of the Police bway , fire bun pan baby­lon .
While their par­ents curt­sied and pros­trat­ed them­selves at the feet of the so called big man the politi­cian.
The filthy decep­tive , thiev­ing scum­bags who give guns to their sons to kill their neigh­bor’s sons.
Shockingly they now feign won­der at the bla­tant dis­re­spect their young peo­ple have, not just for the rule of law, or our offi­cers, but for every soci­etal norm their par­ents valued.

Are the police to be blamed for some of the things which ails them ?
Yes , you bet !
But the police as a group, have giv­en much more in sweat,blood , and sac­ri­fice than any oth­er group of Jamaicans .Period !!!
Why won­der at the whirl­wind of anar­chy now?
You cul­ti­vat­ed and nur­tured it.
The ene­mies of the peo­ple ‚ene­mies of the state, they sit safe­ly in Gordon House and that makes me angry.
I have nev­er seen a sin­gle one of those scum­bags lying in the streets dead , blood ooz­ing from their heads.
I have nev­er seen any of them left to die in one of the Island’s shit­ty Hospitals like Detective Sergeant Lynch was ‚after he was shot chas­ing crim­i­nals who had mur­dered innocents.
Sergeant Lynch had very chance to sur­vive but his life was worth noth­ing to his civil­ian boss­es who sent him out to pro­tect and serve.
A headache, and they are off to Miami or new York for treatment.

My batch-mate Detective Sergeant Cowan too was shot and injured by men in the Rema Area years ago.
He too had all the chance in the world to sur­vive , but the gov­ern­ment did not think his life was worth sav­ing either, so he too died from his injuries.
The list of brave and not so brave Police Officers and our col­leagues in the Military who made the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice to our coun­try is endless.
Yet the nation’s ille­git­i­mate lead­ers have no idea how many .
Neither do they care.
And they have no inten­tion of stop­ping it.

THEY SIDED WITH SELF SERVING LIARS AND CHARLATANS:

Rather than side with our nations war­riors who risk life and limb to bend the arc of crime in our country,this band of mis­cre­ants sided with a bunch of elit­ists and arranged to fur­ther erode trust and con­fi­dence in our law enforce­ment by cre­at­ing and putting in place an agency dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to police.
One seen as a dear friend to mur­der­ers and gang­land oper­a­tives, INDECOM was born.

Well known street cop Renetto Adams spoke in-art­ful­ly about this years ago .
He said Jamaica would pay dear­ly for it’s sup­port for criminals.
His words have boomeranged with marks­man-like accu­ra­cy and alacrity.

Like moles , the Elitists are bur­rowed into the infra­struc­ture of the society.
They sit on boards , they are on the bench , the are in the legal fraternity.
They are in Ministries and Institutions of high­er learn­ing, they are everywhere.
Some got their because of their hatred. ani­mus and dis­dain for the police.
Just ask the media about that ‚for decades they dom­i­nat­ed the mes­sag­ing because they con­trolled the megaphone..
People were told to stone police sta­tions as a means to air their displeasure.
Police offi­cers were degrad­ed to jankru on nation­al tele­vi­sion, for dar­ing to stop and ques­tion a crack head news­cast­er, out buy­ing drugs in Barbican late at night.

So don’t shed your damn croc­o­dile tears now that your chil­dren are killing inno­cent peo­ple, includ­ing police offi­cers left right and center .
You taught them to do the things they are doing.
Stop act­ing damn sur­prised, you refused to place the blame where the blame real­ly belonged.
You took the dis­re­spect which should have been placed on Manley , Seaga, Patterson,Portia, Golding , Holness and the band of crim­i­nals around them and you dumped your anger on the police.

Deal with the mess you cre­at­ed, you pre­tend­ed that our coun­try can be policed the way devel­oped coun­tries are.
In the mean­time the politi­cians are safe with their police details.
They must think you are real­ly stupid.

DON’T FORGET TO SHARE THIS ARTICLE TO SHOW YOU STAND WITH THE RULE OF LAW IN JAMAICA.

Almost dai­ly I write about crime in Jamaica . I also get on the air­waves and talk about it at times.
I do so not because I am fix­at­ed with the neg­a­tive things hap­pen­ing in our country.
I do so because I under­stand that pre­tend­ing that we are going to build wealth and pros­per­i­ty with­in spaces dom­i­nat­ed by mur­der may­hem and chaos is sim­ply delu­sion­al at best, or worse a bla­tant lie being per­pet­u­at­ed on the nation.
As I said to a for­mer col­league ear­li­er today in pri­vate, when I con­sid­er the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of our coun­try I do not think of the People’s National Party as part of the solu­tion for rein­ing in the lawlessness.
There sim­ply has been no prece­dent in the his­to­ry of the PNP to act on crime and social disorder.
The PNP has cap­i­tal­ized on law­less­ness in order to craven­ly dom­i­nate state power.

The Party does so using the tac­tic of populism.
Their pop­ulist “do what­ev­er you want wink and nod: has turned Jamaica into what it is today, one of the world’s most vio­lent, crime rid­den nations tee­ter­ing pre­cip­i­tous­ly on the brink of becom­ing a failed state.

So we are left with the Jamaica Labor Party the oth­er major polit­i­cal party.
The labor par­ty was the par­ty of fis­cal dis­ci­pline, the par­ty of law and order, it was the par­ty which cared about workers .
It was Bustamante who spent almost two years in prison for dar­ing to chal­lenge the exist­ing mores of the rul­ing Colonial mas­ters on behalf of ordi­nary workers.
It was Bustamante who bared his chest to sol­diers and said “shoot me and let my peo­ple go”,
It was Bustamante who kept our coun­try out of a calami­tous West Indies Federation , which was to col­lapse soon after Jamaica withdrew.
It was under Bustamante that our coun­try was placed on a sol­id foot­ing of auton­o­my and self determination.
Not the Ivy league edu­cat­ed Norman Manley.

That par­ty is no longer around.
This Labor Party is not the par­ty of Herbert Eldemire , Donald Sangster and it damn sure isn’t the par­ty of the Rt. Hon Hugh Lawson Shearer.
Is it still an improve­ment over the pathet­ic pow­er hun­gry PNP which is only after steal­ing from state funds ?
Absolutely yes.
Nevertheless it was the Labor Party which refused to extra­dite Christopher Coke.
It was the new JLP which allowed Tivoli Gardens to mat­u­rate into the moth­er of all Garrisons.
It was the JLP which gave the nation INDECOM.
It is the JLP which refus­es to repeal the atro­cious cop killing law and for that the par­ty must be held accountable.
And it is the JLP which now has the pow­er to move deci­sive­ly against the nation’s ter­ror­ists, and it has not done so.

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

♦At the intro­duc­tion of the INDECOM act I said it would embold­en crim­i­nals , almost 7 years lat­er there is irrefutable evi­dence that crim­i­nals and ordi­nary folks alike are embold­ened to not only break the laws but they open­ly assault and kill Police officers.
♦ At the roll out of the law I said the atti­tude of the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM Terrence Williams, would send a clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sage that they have an ally and pro­tec­tor in INDECOM.
They do.
♦I said crime would increase and increase exponentially.
It has.
♦I pre­dict­ed a spike in homicide.
There has been.
♦I said cops would be killed .
The evi­dence is clear they are being killed.

And so yes­ter­day anoth­er cop had his life snuffed out in broad day­light, in his uni­form because two things occurred .
He was too scared of INDECOM to effect the arrest the cor­rect way .
And his killer knew it was okay to resist arrest and kill a cop.
The sit­ting Administration stead­fast­ly refus­es to say this was ill-con­ceived, we will revis­it the law. .
On that basis every dead cop, every law abid­ing cit­i­zen who dies is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the government .
The blood is on their hands.

As Police offi­cers and cit­i­zens lives con­tin­ue to be snuffed out in alarm­ing num­bers, the Government is death­ly silent.
In oth­er coun­tries when a police office is killed there is mas­sive push-back from their soci­eties and cer­tain­ly Government.
Under both Political par­ties stew­ard­ship, the ruth­less killing of Police offi­cers illic­it crickets.….…
Deafening silence.….…..
Not Portia, Not Peter Phillips and damn sure not Andrew Holness.
These mis­guid­ed lit­tle morons sit by and make no state­ment, as if the death of police offi­cers is beneath them, the per­rog­a­tive of under­lings to address.
Who the fuck do they think they are ?
The Police have not released an offi­cial state­ment on the mat­ter thus far.

Clearly this force is not learn­ing any­thing regard­ing mod­ern polic­ing pro­to­cols and it’s mem­bers are pay­ing a high price for the incom­pe­tence of it’s leadership.
The offi­cer was mur­dered and a senior offi­cer in kha­ki dress was seen on the scene no one lift­ed a fin­ger to offer first aid.
The scene was not closed off imme­di­ate­ly, anoth­er breach of protocol/​Passers by pho­tographed and video taped the dead officer.
The videos and images are plas­tered across social media .
Motorists drove on the side­walks to get to where they were going,in a sit­u­a­tion where the entire area ought to have been closed to all traffic.
Clearly there was no obser­va­tion of any estab­lished best prac­tices, an insult to the fam­i­ly of the dead officer.
This Police force con­tin­ue to be the Barney Fyffe of law enforcement .

On the issue of train­ing , I have been talk­ing about this for years. Simply observe estab­lished norms across oth­er police depart­ments, then train and oper­ate acordingly .
Only in Jamaica is it frowned upon when offi­cers order crim­i­nals to the ground at gun­point in order to effect an arrest.
Had this offi­cer observed these basic stan­dards, he would have been alive today.
I served in the JCF between January 1982 until October 1991 .
You best believe dur­ing my servuce when I order you to get down on your knees you are going to do as I say.

Every offi­cer has a right to go home to his/​her fam­i­ly, the same way Andrew Holness , Peter Phillips, and Terrence Williams does.
They should nev­er be appre­hen­sive that some bureau­crat will sit in judge­ment of them , when they are the ones risk­ing their lives.

This case brings tears to my eyes , I too was sta­tioned at Constant Spring.
Word is that the oth­er offi­cer with the slain offi­cer ran away.
On the night I was shot the oth­er two key­stone cops ran away, one was a detec­tive cor­po­ral, the oth­er a District Constable.
I under­stood the actions of the dis­trict con­sta­ble then ‚but the corporal.…?
He would lat­er be pro­mot­ed to the Rank of Senior Superintendent after I left the department.
A reflec­tion of how the force has regressed over the years because of polit­i­cal manip­u­la­tion and strangulation.
Despite being shot that night I was able to sin­gle hand­ed­ly remove anoth­er brand new weapon and ammu­ni­tion from the streets.

I offer my con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of con­sta­ble Leighton Hanson, your son gave his life to an ungrate­ful nation.
Notwithstanding you should be eter­nal­ly proud.
Your son’s sac­ri­fice was not in vain .
He died so that peo­ple less than him­self and unde­serv­ing of his life’s work and sac­ri­fice may live.
Unfortunately for you ‑you are now left to grieve his loss.
We offer our love and prayers.

PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO SHARE THIS ARTICLE , IF NOTHING IT DEMONSTRATES TO THE GOOD MEN AND WOMEN WHO RISK THEIR LIVES FOR OTHERS THAT WE CARE ABOUT THEM.

The sight of 8 Jamaicans cuffed and shack­led under the watch­ful eye of United States Federal law Enforcement Officials should be a wake up call for Jamaicans of all stripes.
One of the things Jamaicans cher­ish most is the idea of our right to self deter­mi­na­tion, auton­o­my and most of all our sovereignty.
The idea of Jamaicans shack­led and cuffed leav­ing our shores to face Justice abroad should wake even the most intel­lec­tu­al­ly indo­lent to the fact that our world has become expo­nen­tial­ly more interconnected.
As a con­se­quence actions tak­en by our Nationals at a home will have seri­ous con­se­quences abroad even though he/​she may have nev­er set foot out­side Jamaica.

These are the real­i­ties of today and the inter­con­nect­ed nature of our world is not unrav­el­ing despite Brexit or the rise of white Nationalism across Europe and the United States.

This writer takes no pride in say­ing I told you so . I would rather that Jamaican offi­cials move stri­dent­ly and deci­sive­ly to choke off the avenues of crim­i­nal­i­ty which are forc­ing Jamaicans to engage in these practices.
It may rea­son­ably be argued that the incred­i­bly poor gov­er­nance which the nations lead­ers have pro­vid­ed since 1962 has forced our peo­ple into lives of crime with Government’s silent acquiescence.

Because of the Interconnected nature of our world transna­tion­al crimes like the lot­to scam (wire fraud) are being com­mit­ted across continents.
This makes vic­tims of cit­i­zens of coun­tries the per­pe­tra­tors have nev­er set foot on.
With the ease of which large sums of monies can change hands these days in a mat­ter of min­utes the task of track­ing , appre­hend­ing and bring transna­tion­al crim­i­nals to jus­tice takes on added significance.

Jamaica’s oblig­a­tions to International char­ters and oth­er agree­ments makes it manda­to­ry that it adheres to, and hon­or law­ful request by oth­er mem­ber states when our nation­als have com­mit­ted crimes against their citizens.

For years this writer has warned that this would be hap­pen­ing . For years I wrote that if Jamaica refus­es to put in place strin­gent and effec­tive meth­ods to cur­tail the ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty in the soci­ety oth­ers will do it for us, and we will not be hap­py about the way they do it.

If the Tivoli incur­sion which led to Christopher (dudus) Coke’s even­tu­al arrest in 2010 and the oth­er instances of Jamaicans leav­ing in cuffs to face real jus­tice over­seas is not warn­ing enough,the new batch of 8 won’t make a dif­fer­ence to the brain dead.
Unfortunately for Jamaica this is only the tip of the ice­berg, this prac­tice will be stepped up with alarm­ing alacrity.

We under­stand that as much as 500 more are to be extra­dit­ed for their parts in this scam.
The num­ber of Jamaicans leav­ing in chains will even­tu­al­ly start resem­bling the images of our fore-par­ents com­ing to the west­ern world hun­dreds of years ago.

The dif­fer­ence being that our ances­tors were guiltless.
If you don’t dis­ci­pline your chil­dren soci­ety pro­vides a penal sys­tem to dis­ci­pline them for you.
Refusing to pay seri­ous atten­tion to crime, and unwar­rant­ed inter­fer­ence in law enforce­ment by Jamaica’s polit­i­cal lead­ers (many , crim­i­nals them­selves) have seri­ous­ly erod­ed the rule of law and placed our coun­try pre­cip­i­tous­ly close to being a failed state despite the noise to the contrary.

Lax law enforce­ment and a lack of seri­ous­ness about crime has served to attract crim­i­nals to our coun­try rather than repel them.
In fact Jamaicans liv­ing abroad who play by their host coun­try’s rules delib­er­ate­ly break Jamaica’s law once they step off a plane at either of the Island’s two International Airports.

Like flies to feces crim­i­nals flock to places where they are allowed to com­mit crimes with the least chance they will be held accountable.

We now see Jamaica attract­ing crim­i­nals from Europe and oth­er parts of the world , includ­ing Chinese crim­i­nals who would be sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed if the crimes they com­mit in Jamaica were com­mit­ted in China..

We also see a pro­lif­er­a­tion of Mosques in our country.
This does not mean that Muslims are all killers who blow up places, but where they go we can also see that those who share some aspects of the faith also attach them­selves to those locales with the intent to do harm to others.

Just Another Day Of Grenades And Dead Cops Welcome To Jamaica..

WARNING

Jamaica’s lead­er­ship can be stuck on stu­pid or they can cast off the unsus­tain­able man­tle of empa­thy, aid and com­fort they have afford­ed crim­i­nals in the past and begin to under­stand the seri­ous­ness of the times and the con­se­quences to our nation’s sur­vival in an ever chang­ing world.
This is not alarmist by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, those who think it is, should talk to the police offi­cers who were faced with grenade toss­ing crim­i­nals a few weeks ago.

There is noth­ing sov­er­eign about a coun­try’s nation­als being tak­en out of that coun­try to face tri­al in another.

Now I want you all to pic­ture this .
Imagine 500 Jamaicans being tak­en out in handcuffs.
They nev­er set foot in the United States but the crimes they com­mit­ted involved Americans.
On that basis they are removed , tried and sen­tenced and sent to prison only to add to the list of depor­tees already flood­ing the Island.

As if that is not scary enough, now imag­ine ter­ror­ists com­ing to our coun­try as a result of our lax atti­tude toward crime. 
They set up shop so they can car­ry out attacks against America’s Interests or Canadian, French, British or any oth­er Nation’s interests.

How do you think those nations are going to respond to Bombings which kill their nationals?

It behoove Jamaica’s lead­ers to pull their heads from their ass­es and stop lis­ten­ing to the Elitist and the ego-mani­a­cal lit­tle kings they cre­at­ed to talk about human rights.

It’s time to take the steps Jamaica must take to end this non­sense before it engulfs every­one and turn our coun­try into a ter­ror­ists wasteland.
What exact­ly is the rea­son behind Jamaica’s polit­i­cal lead­ers refusal to deal effec­tive­ly with crime ?

Even with the pas­sage of new leg­is­la­tion sup­posed to send a mes­sage to orga­nized crim­i­nals, con­vic­tions result in J$2000’000 fines or 6 months imprisonment.
Conversely those extra­dit­ed to the United States are sen­tenced to twen­ty years for their part in the same crimes.

Clearly the law­mak­ers are doing the nation’s law abid­ing cit­i­zens a ter­ri­ble dis-ser­vice which will have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences in the not too dis­tant future.
Pretty soon we will have reached a point of no return.

Two images of police officers caught on camera at the recent Jamaica carnival are drawing diametrically and viscerally different opinion in the way they are perceived.

I have no desire to dive into this debate myself, large­ly because of the lev­el of ener­gy a debate of this type requires with arguably neg­li­gi­ble returns.
As is cus­tom­ary the pros and cons are balka­nized in their posi­tions which no amount of per­sua­sion is ever going to change.
It is on that note that I refuse to get involved, except to point out a few facts.

It’s one thing to be caught in a snap moment in time as Steve Brown The super­in­ten­dent is, but the actions of the con­sta­ble in that video cer­tain­ly rais­es more than eyebrows.
It raised my blood pressure.

Those who see noth­ing wrong with the imagery of these two offi­cers argue stri­dent­ly that the dire need for bet­ter police com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions vast­ly super­sede any per­ceived neg­a­tives any­one could point to in these imagery.
To bol­ster their argu­ments they point to police offi­cers in devel­oped coun­tries engag­ing in sim­i­lar conduct.
Where the lines are in that think­ing, are yet to be defined by supporters.
What they nev­er both­er to say is that, those devel­oped coun­try’s police depart­ments also have a prob­lem with their offi­cer’s actions when they occur.

On the oth­er hand there are those opposed who say we can have good rela­tions with the pub­lic with­out engag­ing con­duct sim­i­lar to that of that constable .
In fact many say the uni­form of a police offi­cers is a sym­bol of respect ‚it should nev­er be degraded .
Engaging in behav­ior of this type they argue , dimin­ish­es the author­i­ty of the police and places every­one at risk when offi­cers lose focus from the task at hand.
All rea­son­able points , how­ev­er when we con­sid­er the crimes offi­cers have been accused of being engaged in, I won­der whether this is not mild in comparison.
It may rea­son­able be said how­ev­er that it is exact­ly actions of this type which has char­ac­ter­ized and pre­cip­i­tat­ed the decline in the qual­i­ty of our police ser­vice, not just in Jamaica but in larg­er coun­tries as well.

The actions of police are always scru­ti­nized, as such offi­cers have a duty to be as cir­cum­spect as is human­ly pos­si­ble at all times.
Younger offi­cers some­times get caught up in the moment of an event, and some­times have eye­brow rais­ing instances in their conduct.
Older more sea­soned offi­cers do not have such lux­u­ry , they know what is expect­ed of them and they have a duty to act accordingly.
They are sup­posed to have built-in reac­tions for all occur­rences with­out seem­ing cold uncar­ing or aloof.
The notion that these actions speak to lev­els of coöper­a­tion between police and pub­lic is hard to fath­om and may very well be tes­ta­ment to the lev­els to which the JCF has sunk.
Many cops remind me back in the day they were afraid to even smoke in their uniform.
Conversely my civil­ian friends are quick to remind me that cops in bars with assault weapons drink­ing alco­hol does not do it for them either.

Is it the end of the world that an offi­cer get caught up in the moment when a gyrat­ing rev­el­er gets way to close?
No!!
But the offi­cer is there to pro­tect the rev­el­er who may already have had too much to drink, or may have been to high on adren­a­line or some­thing else .
The offi­cer has to have an imag­i­nary line in his/​her head that he/​she does­n’t cross and does­n’t allow oth­ers to cross.
It’s not about being stiff and unfriend­ly , it is about being aware that as an offi­cer you have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to be on alert for the pro­tec­tion of all par­ty goers.
It is dif­fi­cult to argue you can be com­plete­ly alert while engag­ing in daggering.
The fact that it is hap­pen­ing all across dif­fer­ent police depart­ments in parts of the world does not mean it’s right.

Even when we argue that it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant to exploit all avenues which will fos­ter bet­ter com­mu­ni­ty police rela­tions, we still can­not lose sight of the fact that we are liv­ing in dan­ger­ous times. On that note offi­cers have to be cog­nizant that there are peo­ple will­ing to kill oth­er inno­cent human beings to vent their anger and dis­plea­sure at some per­ceived injustice..
Terrorists are always on the prowl for what are called soft targets .
Please do not say this does­n’t hap­pen here.
Crime and ter­ror hap­pen wher­ev­er oppor­tu­ni­ties are present.

It is always up to the Police and oth­er first respon­ders to be vig­i­lant and aware , ever ready to leap into action.
It is not that easy to act to pre­vent mass loss of life and to arrest poten­tial killers if as an offi­cer you place your­self in a posi­tion in which you become a vic­tim as well.
If we set aside the pros and cons of the optics and con­tem­plate only the fun­da­men­tals of what is like­ly to hap­pen in cir­cum­stances like these, it’s prob­a­bly a lot eas­i­er to know what side to come down on.