Yesterday’s incident at the Hunts Bay police station in which a gunman thought that he would kill another on the grounds of the Hunts Bay police facility sends several messages.
The Island continue to ignore them at it’s peril.

According to Jamaican media the man who was attacked was report­ing on con­di­tion of his bail agree­ment arrived at after he was charged with murder.
This in and of itself is a huge part of the prob­lem which has dri­ven the Island’s mur­der rate and has helped it to con­tin­ue to metastasize.
It mat­ters not how many peo­ple you are alleged to have killed you are almost assured that the courts will slap some sil­ly con­di­tions to a piece of paper and you will walk out of jail almost immediately.
This bla­tant abuse of the bail act leaves con­sci­en­tious observers who are unafraid of speak­ing out to con­clude that sev­er­al of the Island’s judges are on the take.

On reach­ing the entrance to the sta­tion he was pounced upon by a lone gun­man who opened fire at him. The police offi­cers who were on the com­pound chal­lenged the gun­man and a shootout ensued. The gun­man was shot and injured; he was tak­en to the Kingston Public Hospital, where he was pro­nounced dead.

Separate and apart from the many and var­ied attacks on police sta­tions over the years , is the lack of fear that the crim­i­nal-under­world has, know­ing that the police are not allowed to go after them.
Over the years crim­i­nals attacked the Olympic Gardens Police sta­tion and killed police offi­cers. They have on more than one occa­sion opened fire on the Cross Roads Police Station, Denham Town , Rockfort and many oth­er police sta­tions. Additionally they have burned the Darling Street Police sta­tion and sev­er­al oth­ers to the ground.
Every year sev­er­al police offi­cers are mur­dered on and off duty on the Island.
Every year hun­dreds and hun­dreds of Jamaican cit­i­zens are mur­dered with the slaugh­ter reach­ing crit­i­cal mass in the year 2005 when over two thou­sand homi­cides were report­ed to police.

In 2010 after the Military and Police depart­ment went into the moth­er of all gar­risons , (Tivoli Gardens) to extract want­ed gang­ster Christopher (dudus)Coke , noto­ri­ous gang­land over­lord, hun­dreds of mer­ce­nar­ies took up arms against the state.
In the ensu­ing process lead­ing up to the entry of the secu­ri­ty forces into the com­mu­ni­ty, police offi­cers and mem­bers of the mil­i­tary were mur­dered. Police sta­tions were destroyed, mem­bers of the pub­lic were mur­dered. Heavily armed mem­bers of the crim­i­nal under­world loy­al to Coke through their asso­ci­a­tions and the entreaties he made to them with the promise of mon­ey, open­ly dis­played their weapon­ry as they await­ed the assault of the secu­ri­ty forces.

In the end the secu­ri­ty forces went in and kicked ass as they should.
Soldiers and police offi­cers lost their lives in the process of annex­ing the then crim­i­nal epic cen­ter Tivoli Gardens ‚to the Island. According to esti­mates some 74 com­bat­ants lost their lives.
Several weapons were recov­ered, but as they could be count­ed on to do, the tough talk­ing mer­ce­nar­ies slith­ered away like the cock­roach­es they are when the sheer force of the secu­ri­ty forces entered the enclave.
The untouch­able state with­in the state was once again part of Jamaica.

The sheer weight of Christopher Coke’s pow­er top­pled Bruce Golding the Labor Member of the Parliament for west­ern Kingston and Prime Minister at the time, and in whose con­stituen­cy Tivoli Gardens lie.
The PNP was swept into pow­er after the demise of Golding. What the PNP did should have rel­e­gat­ed that par­ty to the dust­bin of his­to­ry for­ev­er, but not in Jamaica.

Instead of hon­or­ing the mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces and their fam­i­lies for their sacrifice.
Instead of join­ing hands with law abid­ing cit­i­zens and declar­ing once and for all, that from that day onward, Jamaica would eschew polit­i­cal vio­lence as a strat­e­gy toward achiev­ing state power.

The PNP com­mis­sioned and impan­eled an elit­ist pan­el of know-noth­ings to con­duct an expen­sive witch-hunt against the secu­ri­ty forces ‚to see if and where they went wrong, in the process of annex­ing Tivoli Gardens to Jamaica.

Heading the pan­el was David Simmons a Barbadian Jurist who clear­ly came into the process with a chip on his shoul­der and a total dis­dain for the secu­ri­ty forces.
As rep­re­hen­si­ble as Simmons and the oth­er two mon­keys on the pan­el were, they paled in com­par­i­son to the trea­so­nous actions of the PNP and its sad excuse for a leader, the incred­i­bly intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged Portia Simpson Miller.

There is no evi­dence which sup­ports any the­o­ry that Jamaicans are ungovern­able or inca­pable of gov­ern­ing themselves.
The vast major­i­ty of Jamaicans who move to oth­er coun­tries are hard work­ing , pro­gres­sive mem­bers of their adopt­ed soci­eties, to which they make sig­nif­i­cant and mean­ing­ful pos­i­tive contributions.
Those who stead­fast­ly refuse to adhere to the rule of law which exist in their adopt­ed home­lands find them­selves back on the rock in short order.
The com­mon thread which runs through those adopt­ed coun­tries ‚which just hap­pen to be miss­ing from Jamaica, is the rule of law.

Sure Jamaicans are able to obey and respect laws.
When they are made to.
When penal­ties are attached to break­ing laws , Jamaicans do the right thing like peo­ple from oth­er places.
Jamaica has become a cir­cus in which politi­cians. judges. lawyers. pas­tors and police are on the take.
Our coun­try is on a col­li­sion course with des­tiny , the solu­tions are in the hands of the peo­ple as it was with the Colombian people.
The new­ly installed Prime Minister Andrew Holness reminds me of the vain Emperor in the Hans Christian Andersen’s clas­sic, the “Emperor’s new clothes”.

He believes he will pre­side over a growth agen­da in which crim­i­nals roam the street heav­i­ly armed with weapons capa­ble of snuff­ing out mul­ti­ple lives in a nano second.
He naive­ly envi­sions a pros­per­ous Jamaica in which a large sub-set are allowed to keep their weapon­ry in pover­ty, even as they some­how ignore lav­ish excess of oth­ers liv­ing next door.
In that soci­ety will also exist a Labor par­ty installed Terrence Williams and an agency which stands between law-enforcement .
Effectively ter­ror­iz­ing police offi­cers in the courts which are bought and paid for by the crim­i­nal under­world while pro­tect­ing the mur­der­ous blood-thirsty killers who kill when they feel like it.

Can crime be cor­ralled in Jamaica?
You bet your ass it can be.
But in the same way crim­i­nals burned and destroyed the ves­tiges of pow­er which stood between them and their goals, the good peo­ple remain­ing in Jamaica will have to decide for them­selves what their crit­i­cal mass is.
They will have to decide as the Colombian peo­ple did against the Medellin and Cali Cartels.
It will have to come from the peo­ple. The lead­ers are too taint­ed by cor­rup­tion and the trap­pings of pow­er to care about the pain the mur­ders and rapes cause.

It’s all up to them to decide when enough is enough !!!!

Measurable per­for­mance is the met­ric used in deter­min­ing suc­cess and of course the lack there­of deter­mines failure.
Truth be told if you are offered a job and you know you do not pos­sess the req­ui­site skills for the job you should have the hon­esty and char­ac­ter to say so .
You should only take a job if you are giv­en the tools to get the job done​.You must say “give me these tools (lay­ing out what­ev­er those tools are), allow me the free­dom and lat­i­tude to get the job done with­out interference”.
If you take a job in which the blame and respon­si­bil­i­ty rests with you , you must be giv­en the tools with which to get the job done. If you fail to ask for the tools and lat­i­tude you need ‚then you make the trag­ic mis­take of tak­ing on a sit­u­a­tion in which you were des­tined to fail.
Common sense must trump raw ambi­tion. If your ambi­tion to hold the office is greater than your desire to suc­ceed then you are respon­si­ble for the fail­ure which occurred on your watch.

Jamaica’s Crime Not Rooted In The Ghettos.…

It came as no sur­prise to me when I learned that Dr Carl Williams, Jamaica’s Police Commissioner had decid­ed to call it quits.
Williams deci­sion comes amidst ris­ing num­bers in mur­der and oth­er seri­ous crimes.
It was no sur­prise because I have per­son­al­ly been call­ing for him to step aside because he had not demon­strat­ed that he had a grasp of whats need­ed to fig­ure out the Island’s bur­geon­ing crime epidemic.

I have no sym­pa­thy for Williams as he exits the stage as oth­er serv­ing and past mem­bers seem to have for him.
My loy­al­ties lie with the near­ly 800 or so offi­cers who leave annu­al­ly after see­ing the total and utter bull­shit that the JCF has become and make the tac­ti­cal and cal­cu­lat­ed deci­sion to leave before it con­sumes them,.
That’s char­ac­ter, that’s bravery.
A man who decides to accept the job to sit atop a shit pile should expect to see turned up noses at the stench ema­nat­ing from him..

Williams lead­er­ship of the JCF may be summed up in one word,“FECKLESS”.
I want­ed to allow a few days to pass before I said any­thing about the com­mis­sion­er’s deci­sion to step aside,I did not want to respond impul­sive­ly even though it was the news I want­ed to hear.
One of my dear friends opined to me that “say what we want, Williams was a clean Commissioner who had good char­ac­ter”.
Incidentally the Commissioner has also report­ed­ly said he is leav­ing with his char­ac­ter intact.
As I said to my friend, it is remark­able if the best thing one can say about William’s, and trum­pet­ed by him, is that he was of good char­ac­ter, then his tenure was an even big­ger flop than any­one imagined.
Saying ice is cold is redun­dant. Saying the fire is hot is no com­pli­ment to fire, fire is sup­posed to be hot.
Police offi­cers are sup­posed to have good char­ac­ter. Good char­ac­ter is not a mea­sure­ment of one’s suc­cess. The office demand­ed it before he was even hired. The office demand that each con­sta­ble so too must have good character.
As chief con­sta­ble it is crit­i­cal that the com­mis­sion­er have impec­ca­ble character.

Carl Williams has been the most emi­nent­ly edu­cat­ed per­son to become com­mis­sion­er of Police on the Island.
What seemed to have slipped by the deci­sion-mak­ers is that supreme­ly edu­cat­ed does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean the best per­son for the job, or even the most qualified.
But since Jamaica is ‚and has always been a nation with lead­ers with their heads up their col­lec­tive ass­es they do not get that.
I have noth­ing against Williams the man. What I had a prob­lem with is Carl Williams the Commissioner of Police who failed to pro­tect the peo­ple who work under his com­mand from per­se­cu­tion by those who would use their perch­es to build names for themselves.
I am opposed to Carl Williams the com­mis­sion­er who failed to do the things he could do to make the JCF bet­ter and more respect­ed as a law-enforce­ment agency.

Carl Williams did not cre­ate the prob­lems which plague the JCF but he damn sure did­n’t make the force bet­ter in the time he presided over it.
He saw the video clips of police offi­cers being assault­ed in the streets.
He saw the clips of peo­ple in the face of offi­cers with cell phones.
He saw peo­ple who were pro­mot­ed under his watch walk away leav­ing junior offi­cers to strug­gle with offend­ers they are attempt­ing to arrest.
He nev­er did a damn thing to ensure that offi­cers are ade­quate­ly taught the prop­er tech­niques to effect arrests regard­less of protest.
He nev­er made them under­stand that the entire force would stand behind and along­side them when they do their jobs.
He nev­er told them that no fly by night piece of ass-wipe could pre­vent the police from doing their job and whomev­er has a prob­lem with that would find them­selves in cuffs before they fig­ured out what happened.
He saw female offi­cers stand­ing by like win­dow dress­ings as their male coun­ter­part strug­gle to make arrest.
He saw peo­ple step­ping in to take offend­ers being arrest­ed away from young offi­cers doing exact­ly what they are told to do.
Williams did nothing.
Williams said nothing.
Williams changed nothing.

If Carl Williams was a prod­uct of the streets he would have got­ten his ass out of 103 Old Hope Road and get into the streets like Joe Williams and Herman Rickets did and see what the young men are facing.
He would have told crim­i­nals there is no hid­ing place. He would have told them with­out equiv­o­ca­tion, that “we will use what­ev­er force nec­es­sary to bring you to justice”>Or we will bring jus­tice to you .
“You resist we will take you to the ground and we will pile on you until you stop resist­ing”. “you pull a weapon on a cop and you are dead, we will met force with com­men­su­rate force” .
Whether the likes of Terrence Williams and his crim­i­nal lov­ing cronies like it or or not, that what police brass do they stand with their offi­cers until they are proven to be in the wrong.
That is polic­ing, peri­od. It’s not always pret­ty but it does not have to be always ugly, if you break the law we are com­ing after you. That’s what police do. Issuing emp­ty threats only reveal how pathet­ic you are.
Where is Duppy film mis­ter commissioner?
Williams lacked the back­bone and the nec­es­sary under­stand­ing of lead­er­ship to effec­tive­ly lead, and because of that he had to go.

What Does Montagues Appointment Say About Administration’s Seriousness About Crime.…

In the same way that the mem­bers of the PNP paid lip ser­vice to crime in office, while active­ly sup­port­ing parts of the crim­i­nal under-world and in some cas­es engag­ing in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty sin­gu­lar­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, the admin­is­tra­tion of Andrew Holness no more intend to do any­thing about crime.
Where else but Jamaica would an agron­o­mist be cho­sen to head a secu­ri­ty apparatus?
I mean seri­ous­ly, what is he going to do grow crime?
Well he cer­tain­ly has.
Why has Holness not come out and cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly denounce crime and throw his unmit­i­gat­ed sup­port behind law-enforcement?
The sim­ple answer is that they have police pro­tec­tion, they believe fun­da­men­tal­ly they can accom­plish their nar­row polit­i­cal goals in the mad­ness of may­hem and mur­der with­out rock­ing the boat.

There is no grey area in this cav­al­cade of mur­der which has so fright­en­ing­ly become a part of Jamaica’s pop­u­lar cul­ture. Either you abhor and con­demn it, or you tac­it­ly sup­port it because it fur­thers your end game.
We know that the entire PNP with the excep­tion of a cou­ple of it’s prin­ci­pals can­not con­demn crime and mur­der, that polit­i­cal par­ty is too far gone, enmeshed in the slimy morass of the Island’s crim­i­nal under­world and corruption.
The Prime Minister has had every oppor­tu­ni­ty to take a prin­ci­pled stance against the scourge of crime. What he has done instead is make the most basic periph­er­al com­ments, effec­tive­ly brush­ing it aside.
As I said before his pick to head the crit­i­cal National Security Ministry spoke vol­umes about his com­mit­ment to the erad­i­ca­tion of crime from the get go.

No knock on Robert Montague he may be a good man, but he is a lousy Minister of National Security , through no fault of his own.
You sim­ply do not ask a butch­er to per­form brain surgery.
How in hell do you do the best job pos­si­ble if you have absolute­ly no train­ing in nation­al secu­ri­ty or have an under­stand­ing of polic­ing and law enforce­ment challenges?
Juxtapose that with a Commissioner of Police who sees his offi­cers under siege in the streets and cow­er in fear of Terrence Williams and you get a fucked up sit­u­a­tion in which crime can only increase.
Carl Williams abdi­ca­tion of his duties to pro­tect the young men and women under his com­mand , by allow­ing them to be wrong­ful­ly per­se­cut­ed is trea­so­nous to them and their families.

In the ensu­ing peri­od lead­ing up the selec­tion of the next per­son set up to fail by the cow­ard­ly and crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it polit­i­cal struc­ture on the Island, there will be much com­ments com­ing from past mem­bers of the high command.
Many of whom could not inves­ti­gate their way out of a brown paper bag, but wants to be commissioner.
This is not time for car­toon char­ac­ters and clown shows.
I sug­gest those past mem­bers take a seat.
The Police high com­mand is a colos­sal fail­ure, has always been.

Sadly I must con­clude It is time that a Commissioner of police be cho­sen from over­seas, one who is uncon­strained in his abil­i­ties to go after crim­i­nals wher­ev­er they are .Whether they are in Jamaica House , Kings House or any oth­er house.
The Island’s crime epi­dem­ic is made pos­si­ble because some peo­ple have placed them­selves above the laws.
This must come to an end.

A par­ty pro­mot­er and anoth­er man were shot dead Tuesday on Spanish Town Road in Kingston while three oth­ers were injured in the inci­dent. Dead are 24-year-old Akeem Brown, a pro­mot­er of Denham Town, Kingston and 25- year-old Dane Kerr. Reports from the Hunts Bay police are that about 1:50 am, Brown was at an event when armed men entered the premis­es and opened gun­fire at the crowd. They were tak­en to the hos­pi­tal where Brown and Kerr suc­cumbed to their injuries and the oth­er three men were admit­ted in sta­ble con­di­tion. see more here: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​F​i​v​e​-​s​hot – two-dead-at-party-in-Kingston

There is a sense of Karma in lit­er­al­ly every action we take .
The Religious ascribe the con­se­quences of our actions to a God who see to it that we are pun­ished for what­ev­er neg­a­tive actions we engage in, and reward­ed for the pos­i­tives we do.
Me, I believe in God, yet I am far less attuned to the notion of God sit­ting some­where keep­ing score of the actions of mankind with the inten­tion to pun­ish and reward as the case may demand.

I believe our world is set up on principles.
Those prin­ci­ples dic­tate but not guar­an­tee good results when we strive toward cer­tain goals. They also respond the same way when we engage in actions which are evi­dent­ly counterproductive.
We have the abil­i­ty to pick our­selves up and try again when we fall down, but we can also chose not to get up, it’s all up to us.

ACTIONS/​CONSEQUENCES 

For years we Jamaicans watched our soci­ety devolve into a law­less jun­gle where the priv­i­leged cre­ate a soci­ety in which they live above the laws they cre­at­ed. While the not so well con­nect­ed are allowed to tear at each oth­er like vul­tures rip­ping at rot­ten carcass.
What is the dif­fer­ence between the lives of women and chil­dren over that of men?
For years men have been mur­dered and the soci­ety hard­ly bats an eye. Children gets abused and killed no one cared really.
Now women are being killed and all of a sud­den the sky is falling?
I don’t think so!!!
Life is life. none is more impor­tant than the oth­er, this selec­tive out­rage about the killing of women is nauseating.

I am remind­ed of a joke I shared with a friend a cou­ple of years ago. He point­ed to a sil­ly trend in the dance-hall indus­try, lit­er­al­ly every­one has a trib­ute song to their mama.
He argued that many who sang about their mama were actu­al­ly raised by their sin­gle fathers who moved moun­tains to take care of them.
Even when they are raised in homes in which they had a moth­er and father they paid trib­ute to their moth­ers and not their fathers.
The sig­nif­i­cance of that is far deep­er than just whats like­ly to sell records or earn a few for­wards in the dance-halls but I will deal with that at anoth­er time.
It’s kin­da like the litany of girl’s schools against the few all boys schools.
The Bureau of wom­en’s affairs.
Still wait­ing for some­one to pro­vide me with the address to the bureau of men’s affairs.[sic]

Then they won­der why the young men are out in the streets rap­ing, maim­ing and killing while the women are fill­ing the halls of academia.
The women are get­ting killed like every­one else, the calls to “stop killing our women” are sim­ply anoth­er retard­ed way in which the soci­ety look at gen­der in Jamaica.
Not to be out­done, the dance-hall artistes ‚(remem­ber them)they have joined the cho­rus, call­ing for the killing of women to end.
That’s all good, but then they added the ridicu­lous, as they were cer­tain­ly expect­ed to do.
“How the race a gu con­tin­ue wen unuh kill aaf de woman dem”?
I know right?
No need to wor­ry about the killing of men.
Society can sim­ply source semen from the near­est riv­er or stream, but we got­ta pro­tect the women at all cost.[sic]
We real­ly don’t need men as long as we pre­serve the women.
You ever won­dered why through­out his­to­ry there has been poverty?
Well in many cas­es pover­ty is not just pover­ty of finan­cial resources, it is a pover­ty of com­mon sense. Poverty of intel­lect. People mil­i­tat­ing against their owns self-inter­est mak­ing the case of others.

Jamaican women were always side by side with the crime culture.
“Missa Beckles mi like yu but yu a police, yu nu have nu mon­ey, fi mi man haf­fi teef , mi like nice tings” 
You know how they say that in that down­town drawl lips turned up ? I smile at that even as the seri­ous­ness of that think­ing was nev­er lost on me.
Sure they know the men are rob­bing and killing inno­cent peo­ple for the mon­ey they bring them,> Does it mat­ter to them?
Hell no!!!
Sure they go out and demon­strate against the police claim­ing they saw the killing at 4:00 am and it was mur­der ‚know­ing they are lying .
They do so anyway.
When their men fight the timid poor­ly trained police offi­cers in the streets lis­ten to hear the loud­est voic­es egging on the men.

The chick­ens are com­ing home to roost. If you asso­ciate with blood thirsty killers sure­ly one day they are going to turn on you.
It’s extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to sleep with skunks and not have the stench rub off on you.
It is shock­ing to see what Jamaica has come to. Police offi­cers being mobbed in the streets, afraid to defend their own lives.
Supervisors leav­ing their juniors, to deal with grow­ing mobs while they hide and shel­ter away from the fray.
Don’t even men­tion the women cops who sim­ply stand there like win­dow dress­ing. I mean what pur­pose do they real­ly serve?
As I have asked repeat­ed­ly where is the train­ing, where is the esprit de corp?
Police offi­cers do not run from mobs, Police offi­cers do not show fear.

♦Real police offi­cers hold their ground in mob sit­u­a­tions, weapons point­ed steadi­ly at the leader of that mob.
♦Do not flinch.
♦Give clear, con­cise, loud , law­ful commands.
♦Officers have a right to be safe from assault and death in the exe­cu­tion of their law­ful duties.
♦Do not fire warn­ing shots.
♦Point the weapon straight at the fore­head as soon as he steps too close to assault you fire, drop­ping him dead.
♦Maintain your stance, the next per­son who steps up to assault you, same treatment.

That’s my train­ing , that’s police train­ing. No (i.n.d.e.c.o.m) law can take away any police offi­cer’s right to do their job, to pro­tect their lives first and foremost.
If the com­mis­sion­er of i.n.d.e.c.o.m attempts to assault an offi­cer in the exe­cu­tion of their sworn duties he is enti­tled to the very same treatment.
Period.

AN inex­pe­ri­enced selec­tor blasts music from portable speak­er box­es, pock­ets of smoke per­me­ate the air from the pots of ven­dors, young and old dance up a storm — it is grave-dig­ging time and grave dig­ging is a lucra­tive busi­ness in rur­al Jamaica.

“When it a gwaan good you sell, trust me, but when it poor a just suh,” said Charmaine Douglas-West, a ven­dor look­ing to ben­e­fit from the day’s business.

“Mi work inna bar in gen­er­al, but mi seh, ‘you know, bar slow inna di day’, so mi come out here. You see peo­ple do it and you seh ‘alright mek mi try it’. And it work, trust mi; it work because even when mi sell at di ninth night den mi get good sale. Mi fol­low some of the bands dem and dem will call mi some­times and tell mi where dem play­ing,” she con­tin­ued as she watched the day’s pro­ceed­ings at the Buff Bay ceme­tery in Portland.

Wednesday is the tra­di­tion­al grave-dig­ging day for parish­es in east­ern Jamaica and many seek to ben­e­fit from it. The Jamaica Observer North East team observed nine graves being dug in the neigh­bor­ing parish­es of St Mary and Portland.

“It’s a way to earn, trust me,” those attend­ing will tell you, while advis­ing that you exer­cise patience cou­pled with a socia­ble demeanour to meet your goal.

That is how you get by, that is how you cap­i­talise on earn­ings from those mourn­ing or cel­e­brat­ing the dead.

“Yuh have some places weh yuh can’t give it out in pri­vate to the funer­al home. Yuh have to give it to com­mu­ni­ty peo­ple or dem will vex and seh how yuh nuh mek dem help you bury your fam­i­ly and dig di grave,” Patrick Green said from the back of his van, which was loaded with items for sale.

Green not­ed that sales for the day depends heav­i­ly on the per­son who has died or that dead person’s family.

“Some peo­ple car­ry a big­ger crowd. The more famous the per­son is or fam­i­ly mem­ber, the big­ger the grave dig­ging. Normally mi bring mi sound, play some gospel, then some big peo­ple music, then lat­er on down inna di evening when it touch 5 o’clock mi play di young peo­ple dem song,” he said as he described how he oper­ates on a typ­i­cal grave dig­ging day.

For Calvin Hill, a man who has spent 27 years dig­ging graves, busi­ness is always good.

“Sometimes mi get five, some­times mi get six, accord­ing to how di peo­ple dem dead. Mi will bury five Saturday and four Sunday reg­u­lar­ly you know,” he explained, though admit­ting that he would dig graves every day if it were up to him.

For the Portlander, it is the eas­i­est way to make $8,000 — dig­ging the earth four feet deep, then fin­ish­ing up with six blocks.

“Yeah man, a suh mi mek mi mon­ey. Mi nuh work wid parish coun­cil; mi mek mi mon­ey offa di peo­ple. I work with di peo­ple. You come and doing a grave, I work with you, you give me something.

“Yuh come and mi seh, ‘Bwoy, gim­mi a $8,000,’ and yuh can’t pay dat, mi naah kill yuh. Yuh seh, ‘ras­ta­man, yuh know seh mi can’t pay eight,’ mi seh ‘give mi five’. A it help mi fi live,” Hill added.

While con­cur­ring that it’s a job many would shy away from, the 57-year-old said it is some­thing he loves.

“I don’t afraid of noth­ing. You see on earth, only live peo­ple can do you things. Dead peo­ple can’t do you noth­ing. A live peo­ple obeah yuh, a live peo­ple shoot yuh, a live peo­ple stab yuh. Mi an’ dem [dup­py] live an’ dem nev­er do mi noth­ing from mi an’ dem live.

“I am here every day and some­body soon come in and mi have a food to eat. A suh mi live. Wi must affi die; yuh think mi count out myself? I would nev­er do that. a nuh mi mek life, a God mek life,” Hill said. Story orig­i­nat­ed here : http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​G​r​a​v​e​-​d​i​g​g​ing – A‑lucrative-busi­ness-in-rur­al-Jamaica_84026

On December 22^nd 2015 at about 8: 00 Pm Corporal Kenneth Davis attached to Protective Services Division and Constable Craig Palmer, attached to the Kingston Western Division were killed in a hail of gunfire. The two were off duty and among a group of men enjoying a friendly game of dominoes at Poor Mans corner in the Parish of Saint Thomas when they were savagely slaughtered in cold blood ‚another person present was also injured in the incident.

At the time of the killings then Minister of National Security Peter Bunting issued the fol­low­ing statement.
“This demon­strates the risk that the police are con­stant­ly exposed to by virtue of their occu­pa­tion and inci­dents of this nature remind us of the extreme­ly dif­fi­cult chal­lenges fac­ing the secu­ri­ty forces, and the great sac­ri­fices they con­tin­ue to make in the fight to rid Jamaica of the scourge of crime and vio­lence.”
Bunting not­ed that one of the offi­cers killed was from the Kingston West Division, which had already lost two mem­bers of their team that year in vio­lent attacks.
Bunting plead­ed with mem­bers of the pub­lic to help the police in their inves­ti­ga­tions by pro­vid­ing them with infor­ma­tion that may lead to the appre­hen­sion of the per­pe­tra­tors. “I express deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies, col­leagues, and com­mu­ni­ties that have trag­i­cal­ly lost these police­men and call upon all law abid­ing cit­i­zens to sup­port the police in appre­hend­ing the cul­prits of this heinous crime, ” he said.

The Commissioner of Police said “no stone will be left un-turned in the quest to bring the killers to justice”.
Immediately after the killings the police high com­mand named Marlon (dup­py film) Perry as the shooter.

The speed with which the police released this infor­ma­tion at the time sug­gest­ed to this writer that the police had been sit­ting on infor­ma­tion that Perry was an immi­nent threat to offi­cers and had done noth­ing about it.
To cor­rob­o­rate my hunch local media report­ed that The West St Thomas MP James Robertson said he had received infor­ma­tion that one of the cops mur­dered in the parish had been receiv­ing threats over an inci­dent years ago. 

Robertson did not give details of the alleged inci­dent, but called for the police High Command to release all the infor­ma­tion they had and to seek help. According to him, oth­er police per­son­nel in the parish have also been receiv­ing threats. Robertson who is a Jamaica Labour Party MP mem­ber says he will meet with the High Command to pro­vide the infor­ma­tion he has received.

We are unsure whether Robertson ever met with the police lead­er­ship in the Parish or any oth­er police offi­cers to pro­vide the infor­ma­tion he sup­pos­ed­ly had.
We do not know whether he met with the Island’s crime Chief ACP Élan Powell and if so why not ?
Who did Robertson meet with to tell what he knew?
We are also skep­ti­cal as to the rea­son­ing as well. If Robertson had infor­ma­tion which clear­ly was impor­tant, (two police offi­cers are dead) ‚why did he not sim­ply pick up the phone and make that infor­ma­tion known to the Police ?
If Robertson pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion after the fact to the Police, what is the nature of that information?
Why has the police lit­er­al­ly not done any­thing about this case?
Powell is the Assistant Commissioner of Police with respon­si­bil­i­ty for crime .

Mister Commish My Sources Can’t Recall Seeing The Police Looking Under Any Rock.….…..

I want to know from Powell why noth­ing has been done regard­ing the death of these two inno­cent police officers?

Where is this filthy cop killer ?
If he is not on the small Island of 4411 square miles and 2.8 mil­lion cit­i­zens , where is he?
Who in posi­tion of pow­er and influ­ence helped him to evade justice ?
Don’t tell me that the police includ­ing Carl Williams and Élan Powell who has respon­si­bil­i­ty to bring killers to jus­tice do not know where this piece of scum is, and if so what is pre­vent­ing them from bring­ing him to jus­tice, or more appro­pri­ate­ly bring­ing jus­tice to him?

How pathet­ic is the police depart­ment that it allows a com­mon piece of garbage to snuff out the lives of two hon­est police offi­cers with­out bring­ing him to justice.
Where is the con­stab­u­lary force’s oblig­a­tion to the fam­i­lies of these two slain officers?
Where else on this plan­et could a com­mon low-life kill two police offi­cers and not be exterminated?
As crit­i­cal as it is for this scum to be brought to jus­tice or have jus­tice gift wrapped and deliv­ered to him , it is even more crit­i­cal that whomev­er is asso­ci­at­ed with, assist­ed his flight, or is sup­port­ing him in any way, that the very same stan­dards be applied to them.
Which means that the same plight those offi­cers suf­fered must be the rem­e­dy applied to whomev­er sup­ports , and enabled/​s him.
Whomever they hell they are.

LIKE AND SHARE THIS ARTICLE , LETS BRING THIS GARBAGE TO JUSTICE.

Almost three decades ago tac­ti­cal units like the Ranger Squad were front and cen­ter in the fight against Jamaica’s blood­thirsty killers and rapists.
After the high pro­file sweeps and oper­a­tions were con­clud­ed these offi­cers includ­ing myself would go back to the Mobile Reserve change into civil­ian clothes and go stand at a bus-stop wait­ing for one of the crammed rov­ing dis­as­ters which tra­versed South Camp Road under the guise of pub­lic trans­port to get home.

Nothing is wrong with pub­lic trans­porta­tion, in fact major devel­oped metrop­o­lis­es in Asia , Europe and even the United States has demon­strat­ed that pub­lic trans­porta­tion can be quite effec­tive in mov­ing huge amounts of peo­ple in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed centers.
Police offi­cers at that time were poor­ly paid and could bare­ly afford rental above cross roads , which effec­tive­ly forced us to live in com­mu­ni­ties with high inci­dents of crime.
In oth­er words offi­cers were forced to live in the very com­mu­ni­ties they just went in to remove the urban terrorists.
Thirty years ago there was an inor­di­nate amount of guns in the hands of the Island’s crim­i­nals, today the amount of guns and ammu­ni­tion in their hands is mind boggling.

Thirty years ago the hier­ar­chy of the JCF stead­fast­ly refused to allow rank and file police offi­cers the basic right to car­ry home their ser­vice weapons to pro­tect the lives of their fam­i­lies and their own lives.
Ironically the kha­ki-clad imbe­ciles who made those deci­sions did not take pub­lic trans­porta­tion home.
They car­ried firearm.
Could afford to live in decent low crime communities.
And they had min­i­mal to no neg­a­tive inter­ac­tion with the public.
So even though they were not tar­get­ed, they lived in safer neigh­bor­hoods , were not exposed to the dan­gers of deal­ing with the killers on pub­lic trans­porta­tion and had reserved and main­tained the means to defend them­selves , they denied the peo­ple under their super­vi­sion those same rights.

Many peo­ple crit­i­cize me because of the uncom­pro­mis­ing stance I took against the hier­ar­chy of the force not just after leav­ing it but also dur­ing my brief tenure as a police officer.
For the most part I thought they were gross­ly cor­rupt. Grossly incom­pe­tent. Grossly igno­rant. Grossly stu­pid, and gross polit­i­cal imbe­ciles but for a few exceptions.
On more than one occa­sion their cor­rupt prac­tices placed the lives of junior offi­cers includ­ing my own at risk. For those trans­gres­sions I will not be forgiving.
Today these imbe­ciles are doing the very same things they were doing yesteryear.
They are stead­fast­ly refus­ing to allow front-line offi­cers the basic right to car­ry their ser­vice weapons at all time.

Today Jamaica is flood­ed with high pow­ered weapons of all kinds and they are all in the hands of the crim­i­nal underworld.
They kill any­one, includ­ing police offi­cers with­out bat­ting an eye.
The Police high com­mand issues warn­ings to offi­cers about the threats against their lives. encour­ag­ing them to pro­tect them­selves at all times.
Even as Carl Williams the com­mis­sion­er of police and his bunch of bang-bel­lied lack­eys issue these advi­so­ry’s, they sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly take the weapons from offi­cers, mak­ing defense of their lives a cer­tain exer­cise in futil­i­ty, an impos­si­bil­i­ty even.
Sure they can apply for licences for per­son­al firearms but it takes approx­i­mate­ly six months to a year to a get a license from the FLA the agency respon­si­ble for issu­ing firearms licences. Police offi­cers get no spe­cial treat­ment even there. Their lives do not matter.
The JCF sets up the rank and file offi­cers to be killed .

This is noth­ing new . Years ago a small group of us were sent to Runaway Bay on spe­cial assign­ment , one evening a col­league and I were sit­ting in a bar and lounge in Priory when a group of well dressed men at one sec­tion of the bar sent us over four beers , we accept­ed the beers but almost imme­di­ate­ly sent them four beers as well.
One gen­tle­men bel­lowed” your mon­ey nu good ere offi­ca” , we were stunned, how could they have know we were cops?
The well dressed man pulled me aside to a cor­ner and hand­ed me an enve­lope with some cash, I took it opened it , thanked him and hand­ed it back to him, I thanked him but explained to him that we were okay.
I only want­ed answers to one ques­tion, “how could he have known we were police offi­cers”.
He told us our supe­ri­ors tell them every­thing, includ­ing that we were com­ing to the area.

On anoth­er occa­sion I was one of two uni­formed offi­cers and a small group of sol­diers dropped from heli­copter into the hills of Westmoreland , sup­pos­ed­ly to watch an ille­gal airstrip and inter­cept any air­craft land­ing to trans­port Marijuana out . Six days lat­er with­out any cov­er oth­er than that which the trees offered, rain-drenched then sun-dried I decid­ed to call the Mobile Reserve to find out when we would be picked up. The duty offi­cer told me he did­n’t even know we were there.
Upon break­ing camp a young man herd­ing some goats told us we were laugh­ing stock as his boss already knew we were there.
Our supe­ri­ors had told them.
Imagine the risk to our lives, being in the woods not know­ing that the very peo­ple who sent us were the very peo­ple who told the airstrip own­er exact­ly where we were.
Then came the irony of all ironies, the very same per­son sent his dri­ver to take us to the mil­i­tary base in Moneague, so we could hitch a ride back to Kingston that Saturday evening.
Having had only mil­i­tary dried rations, hav­ing been drenched with rain dried to a crisp in the sun and almost eat­en alive by Mosquitoes did noth­ing to kin­dle the anger in me as much as the betray­al did.

The moron­ic argu­ments the police brass used then, is the moron­ic argu­ment they use today.
They can­not trust young offi­cers to take guns home.
How can you entrust a per­son with the awe­some pow­ers of a police officer,which includes that of life and death over oth­ers, yet argue that you are unable to trust them with guns?
Some includ­ing past mem­bers have said sim­ply dis­band the force, I am now in agree­ment in the­o­ry, even as I am com­plete­ly con­ver­sant of its prac­ti­cal impossibility.
Notwithstanding, as a mat­ter of prac­ti­cal­i­ty ‚when a team per­forms poor­ly it is always up to the coach­ing and man­age­ment staff to assume responsibility.
Since we have to source Jamaican offi­cers from the same dirty pool from which we source the filthy dis­hon­est politi­cians, lawyers, judges and oth­ers , lets work on cre­at­ing a small cadre of com­pe­tent lead­ers in the JCF which under­stand lead­er­ship and not dis­hon­est grand­stand­ing and pro­fil­ing, the likes of which exists presently.

The prob­lem was nev­er with the young peo­ple enter­ing the JCF . The fact is that today the depart­ment is bleed­ing rough­ly 800 offi­cers through attri­tion annually.
Do the math on what it takes to train these young peo­ple only to see them do a cou­ple of years then decide to leave once they real­ize what they are up against.
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Next we will talk about real cor­rup­tion, and the job a sin­gle Prime Minister did, high­hand­ed­ly destroy­ing the abil­i­ty of the inves­tiga­tive branch of the depart­ment to do it’s job result­ing in the mur­der rate we have today and the woe­ful­ly low rate of mur­der incarcerations.

No greater task may be given any man than to bring the killer of the innocent to justice.

That was what moti­vat­ed me to strive to be a good detec­tive. That was a moti­va­tion­al theme on my CIB course. As pro­found as that theme was it came after I decid­ed to become a police officer.
I took the police plunge because I believed fun­da­men­tal­ly in the idea of good over evil. Standing up to bul­lies. That crimes ought to be punished.
I still believe now as I did then, that cit­i­zens have a right to be secure in their per­sons from per­son­al assault and death . I also believe that a per­son­’s prop­er­ty is their own, and should remain so until they decide to divest them­selves of said property.
In essence I am total­ly opposed to crim­i­nal con­duct of any kind.
Except speeding…cough, cough,(smile).

Losing a loved one is excru­ci­at­ing­ly painful, I can only imag­ine how dev­as­tat­ing it must be for fam­i­ly mem­bers of vic­tims of vio­lent crim­i­nal actions.
Having lost my own child , (albeit not through vio­lent means) , I am par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to those who have lost loved ones.
More than any­thing else , I am incred­i­bly empa­thet­ic to the fam­i­lies who have lost loved ones as a result of vio­lent crimes .
As a result I always felt that those who take the lives of the inno­cent should be held account­able for their crimes .
What that account­abil­i­ty looks like is the pre­rog­a­tive of the state.
Since Governments have tak­en it upon them­selves to be arbiter in these mat­ters of justice/​vengeance, it is impor­tant that it does what it says it will do and deliv­er jus­tice to those so aggrieved.
To hear the tes­ti­mo­ny of fam­i­ly mem­bers who man­age to sur­vive vio­lent crimes, even as their loved ones are not so lucky, is to under­stand the heart rend­ing pain they feel.
“It is a pain which does not dis­si­pate, you sim­ply try to sur­vive it” one woman said to me once.

This makes it more crit­i­cal that our police offi­cers are empow­ered with all the tools they need to go after murderers.
That pros­e­cu­tors under­stand the crit­i­cal nature of their respon­si­bil­i­ties in seek­ing jus­tice on behalf of those whom have been victimized.
It is impor­tant that judges under­stand that as tri­ers of fact they hold immense pow­er. They get to deter­mine whether a tri­al pro­ceeds even though a case may not be airtight.
They should nev­er allow a case to sim­ply be tossed on some tech­ni­cal­i­ty as if the vic­tim is unwor­thy of respect.
Like sur­viv­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers are col­lat­er­al dam­age of a sick soci­ety to be dis­card­ed on the dump heap of” oh well we tried”.
Finally it should be out­side the remit of any gov­ern­ment , much less a sin­gle politi­cian to deter­mine that mur­der cas­es should be tossed from court dock­ets so that those dock­ets may be freed up.

Several years ago I had a back and forth with a Jamaican defense attor­ney on a social media plat­form. She was offend­ed that I wrote about the fact that Lawyers are a huge part of the rea­son cas­es can­not come to a con­clu­sion in the Jamaican crim­i­nal jus­tice system.
She point­ed me to a sur­vey done by none oth­er than some of her cohorts at the you guessed it..
The University of the West Indies (the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to) which said that cas­es are adjourned large­ly as a result of pros­e­cu­tors ask­ing for more time not defense counsels.
Sure I’m about to accept a sur­vey from a lib­er­al bas­tion of social­ist gob­bledy­gook. One which trains the very same lawyers, and which is basi­cal­ly the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of lib­er­al thought.
Liberal thought which has poi­soned our cul­ture, turn­ing our coun­try into a cesspool of crim­i­nal sanctuary .

The fact of the mat­ter is that lawyers who are unpaid for their ser­vices was the num­ber one rea­son cas­es got stuck in the system.
Does that mean that police and pros­e­cu­tors are not tardy as well ?
Hell no !!!
However as time pro­gressed defense lawyers ask­ing for adjourn­ments so that they can be paid accom­plished the results mount­ing a suc­cess­ful defense would.
Dragging out cas­es was result­ing in dis­missals ‚includ­ing mur­der cas­es. Why risk going to trail if sim­ply ask­ing for adjourn­ment after adjourn­ment was going to be grant­ed and the defen­dant even­tu­al­ly set free?
The strat­e­gy of sim­ply ask­ing for adjourn­ments as a defense strat­e­gy was born.
It is a strat­e­gy which feeds on itself, the more adjourn­ments in the sys­tem the more jammed the bot­tle­neck becomes, the more chaot­ic it becomes.
The more dif­fi­cult it is to get jus­tice through the courts.
The more dif­fi­cult it is to get jus­tice through the courts the more crime increas­es because crim­i­nals are embold­ened into believ­ing that they will nev­er be held to account for their crimes.
Throw anoth­er hur­dle in the way of the police (inde­com) and crime sky­rock­ets out of control.

This is the rea­son it is so offen­sive, the pro­pos­al of Delroy Chuck that courts should sim­ply throw out cas­es that has not been con­clud­ed in five years.
Yes that includes mur­der cases.
Chuck is Jamaica’s Minister of Justice, he sin­gu­lar­ly made the pro­pos­al which he hopes will in his mind, clear up the court dock­ets. At least that’s what he says.
On clos­er scrutiny,if this hair-brain scheme is allowed to become pol­i­cy it would be a water­shed moment for the rule of law in the country.
It would not only see numer­ous mass-mur­der­ers freed on the say-so of a sin­gle indi­vid­ual with­out hav­ing to answer for their crimes.
But more than that it would be a defin­ing moment for the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice on the Island . One which would see stalling as a defense strat­e­gy enshrined in our cul­ture if not in actu­al law.

These are the kinds of actions being pro­posed and tak­en in their sup­posed fight against crime. The (inde­com) act being anoth­er such instance.
None of these pro­pos­als will do any­thing to improve the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, con­verse­ly they are assured to make a real­ly bad sit­u­a­tion even more critical.
This is what hap­pens when you have sys­tem where a sin­gle indi­vid­ual, with­out debate or con­sen­sus can make deci­sions and those deci­sions are allowed to change an entire country.
The impact is even more dev­as­tat­ing when the per­son mak­ing the pro­pos­al has zero inter­est in actu­al­ly reduc­ing crime but have their own per­son­al agendas.

Two want­ed men are among 23 peo­ple arrest­ed Monday as the police seized sev­en ille­gal firearms and over 200 rounds of ammu­ni­tion in sep­a­rate inci­dents. A 21-year-old man was killed in one instance. In the first inci­dent, which occurred in St James, a police/​military oper­a­tion was con­duct­ed on Peddlers Lane in Mount Salem, when two firearms and 150 rounds of assort­ed ammu­ni­tion were seized. Reports are that between hours of 4:00 am and 2:00 pm, dur­ing the search of a premis­es police seized two firearms:

• One Colt .45 pis­tol with six. 45 rounds of ammu­ni­tion and
• One Taurus .40 pis­tol with eleven .40 rounds of ammunition.

The law­men con­tin­ued their oper­a­tion and the search of an open lot in the area result­ed in the fol­low­ing rounds of ammu­ni­tion being found:

• Forty-four .44mm rounds
• Forty-five 12-gauge rounds
• Forty-five 7.62 mm rounds

Eighteen peo­ple, to include want­ed per­son Oniel Clarke oth­er­wise called ‘Goatie,’ were tak­en into custody.

In the sec­ond inci­dent which occurred in March Town, Green Island, Hanover, law­men were con­duct­ing spe­cial oper­a­tions about 6:00 am, when a red and black knap­sack was found. It con­tained six 5.56 car­tridges, twen­ty-four .45 car­tridges and eleven 9mm cartridges.

Five men were tak­en into cus­tody in rela­tion to this seizure.

The suc­cess of the law­men con­tin­ued when anoth­er want­ed man was arrest­ed and a Colt Commander .45 Semi-Automatic Pistol with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing nine rounds of ammu­ni­tion seized on Homestead Road in Rollington Town, Kingston 2.

Reports from the Elletson Road Police are that about mid­day, a team of offi­cers searched premis­es in the area when the firearm and ammu­ni­tion were seized and one of Kingston Eastern’s most want­ed men.

He is Paul Cassanova oth­er­wise called ‘Pablo’, 30-year-old of Bayshore Park, Harbour View, Kingston 17.

In August Town, Kingston 7, police were busy con­duct­ing oper­a­tions in the Jungle 12 area when the search of a premis­es revealed one Glock 19 pis­tol. No one was arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with this seizure.

Then, 21-year-old Jarvis Ramsey was shot dead dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with the police and one Taurus 9mm pis­tol along with eight 9mm rounds of ammu­ni­tion seized on Ramsey Road, Kingston 13 about 6:05 pm.

This inci­dent has been report­ed to the Inspectorate of Constabulary (IOC) and the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM).

The momen­tum con­tin­ued, lead­ing to the seizure of one AK-47 rifle along with a mag­a­zine con­tain­ing twelve 7.62 rounds of ammu­ni­tion, one M‑16 rifle, eigh­teen 5.56 rounds of ammu­ni­tion and a M16 mag­a­zine on Escarpment Road, August Town in Kingston 7. One man was tak­en into cus­tody for ques­tion­ing in rela­tion to the seizure.

The police are renew­ing their appeal to mem­bers of the pub­lic to tell what they know in order to assist in the cre­ation of safer com­mu­ni­ties. They can con­tact Crime stop at 311, police 119 emer­gency num­ber, the near­est police sta­tion or via the stay alert app.
Read more here : http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/2‑wanted-men-arrested

Problems do not fix themselves , if ever there are going to be solutions to our problems those solutions are going to have to come from within us . Not from divine intervention, luck, or any other cosmic force we conjure up in our minds.
It is important to say I do believe there is a powerful force which created the Universe the Galaxies and all that’s outside the scope and sphere of our understanding and knowledge.

Whatever that force , irre­spec­tive of the name one has for him/​her/​it , that force is it, that which we rev­er­ence as God. It is that force which cre­at­ed us, which also empow­ered us to do for our­selves that which we so waste­ful­ly spend so much of our time on our knees beg­ging him to fix.
I always fan­cied myself a prag­ma­tist . I believe every last word of the foregone.
Things oth­ers acquire and take for grant­ed I have always had to work dou­bly hard for, even so, some of those most basic things were not guar­an­teed. It was nev­er for want of prayer either, I came from a fam­i­ly of pray­ing peo­ple. Church for us was manda­to­ry no ques­tions asked.

As I read the Bible myself I learned that what­ev­er I want­ed out of life I was going to have to go get on my own.
I looked at the Biblical sto­ries of the mir­a­cles Jesus wrought, and I found a com­mon thread .
That thread was that what­ev­er mir­a­cle he wrought the recipient/​s of said miracle/​s had to be a part of the mir­a­cle. They had to par­tic­i­pate in the mir­a­cle, they weren’t allowed to sim­ply sit and be hand­ed the reward.
From his very first mir­a­cle . John 2 vs ⁷ Jesus said to the ser­vants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. ⁸ Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the mas­ter of the ban­quet.”

The rest is well known , heal­ing a man of the dread­ed lep­rosy he told him, “go show thy­self to the Priest’. The priest was the cer­ti­fy­ing author­i­ty , only they could allow cured lep­ers back into society.
“Pick up thy bed and walk ” after heal­ing a man lame from birth.
To the man born blind , John 9, Jesus spat on the ground, made some mud, and applied it to the man’s eyes. 7 Then He told him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing.
Liter­al­ly every sin­gle mirac­u­lous work was done through faith and obe­di­ence by the recipient/​s . So I learned pret­ty ear­ly that yes I would pray , rec­og­niz­ing God as the source of my strength, but rec­og­niz­ing that ‑that strength was already in me .
I not sure whether not hav­ing a moth­er or father grow­ing up was respon­si­ble for my hard nosed prag­mat­ic approach to life, or it was sim­ply a recog­ni­tion that prob­lems not fixed ear­ly only gets worse, they nev­er fix themselves.

That tiny sapling , soft and pli­ant could eas­i­ly be uproot­ed with a lit­tle tug or no effort at all. Left there long enough remov­ing it requires an Axe and or much more.
I spoke about this approach which I brought to policing.
Remove a sin­gle guy sell­ing weed and you don’t have to deal with fights for turf, com­mu­ni­ties rav­aged by more seri­ous drugs, thefts and rob­beries to sup­port habits , mur­ders from turf wars and com­mu­ni­ties dec­i­mat­ed by drugs and violence.
Just move the first guy..
And oh… the ever con­stant “well it’s nev­er that easy” .
Actually it is …

It gets hard because we con­vince our­selves that the things which needs doing are hard. What that does is make them hard­er, because not only does inac­tion embold­ens those who are pre­dis­posed to doing wrong , it solid­i­fies the prob­lems they create.
As I said to a friend just today there is a rea­son that peo­ple sur­ren­der to bullies.
Fear !!!
Fear that the bul­ly will hit hard­er if they fight back. Ironically fight­ing back may indeed get one beat­en , but it actu­al­ly dis­cour­ages the bul­ly from mess­ing with you, ulti­mate­ly the bul­ly wants to con­trol through fear not through hav­ing to fight.
Criminals who prey on the defense­less counts on their fear. That fear embold­ens them to push the enve­lope fur­ther and further .
The fear with­ing the pop­u­lace is an empow­er­ing com­po­nent in the suc­cess of the crim­i­nal underworld.
The refusal and hand-wring­ing which char­ac­ter­izes Jamaica’s crime prob­lem is exact­ly what the crim­i­nals want.

Bloody the bul­ly’s nose and watch the dif­fer­ence. Yes brute force is an answer to crime , it is the only lan­guage these mur­der­ers understand.
It is fol­ly to believe they fear get­ting arrest­ed and brought before a court of law . It is even more laugh­able that any­one would believe the vis­cous mur­der­ers in Jamaica wor­ry about being held account­able by the crim­i­nal enhance­ment sys­tem which exist in our country.
The Judges , pros­e­cut­ing attor­neys , defense attor­neys and police all have vest­ed inter­est in crime or are them­selves active­ly involved in crim­i­nal con­duct. It is a sim­ple incon­ve­nient truth that not many want to hear unfortunately.
How many times have you heard the say­ing that “killing crim­i­nals is not a deterrent” .
Have you ever seen a dead crim­i­nal return to kill any­one else?
Well I guess killing is a deter­rent then , isn’t it ?
Of course it is to that one.

Oh one more thing, Peter did pull out his word and cut the ear off the guard who came to take Jesus Christ away from the gar­den of Gethsemane.
Please don’t preach to me that Jesus replaced the ear. I know that. The fact that Peter car­ried a sword even in the com­pa­ny of the pious Savior is far more sig­nif­i­cant to me than that Jesus replaced a sev­ered ear.

In recent tes­ti­mo­ny before the Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) DCP Novelette Grant tes­ti­fied that “Whenever a police offi­cer is called upon to account in a court of law, that police offi­cer has to find the legal fees up front and then ask for reim­burse­ment at the end of the process.”
However, when police per­son­nel appear before INDECOM for a hear­ing and take an attor­ney, there is no mech­a­nism in place for reim­burse­ment at the pre­lim­i­nary stage. “This is what the police are say­ing, that this cost is so high on them that if they were to be cit­ed to go before a court, they would have already been broke before they actu­al­ly have any­thing to answer in a court of law”.

The (inde­com) Act A Reckless Law Which Kills Citizens And Police Officers Alike…

DCP Hinds. who pre­vi­ous­ly tes­ti­fied before the com­mit­tee argued then that the major issue the (JCF has is with the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM. They can’t come to any agree­ment that is going to bind INDECOM unless he (Williams) agrees to it, Hinds told the committee.
The com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM Terrence Williams , in his usu­al arro­gant above being ques­tioned stance brushed off DCP Hind’s com­ments claim­ing “DCP Hinds did not play any sig­nif­i­cant part in the pro­to­col arrange­ments, so he found it sur­pris­ing that he could make adverse remarks… DCP Hinds’ claim is unfound­ed Williams asserted.
In brush­ing aside the con­cerns of Novelette Grant ‚Williams blames the Police high com­mand , the Parliament and every­one else for not set­ting aside monies as remu­ner­a­tion when these inci­dents occurred.
There is a per­cep­tion that mem­bers of the con­stab­u­lary are unwill­ing to account; that’s far from the truth. If you make the process oner­ous, then peo­ple start to weigh whether or not they can afford that process,” argued DCP Grant.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​n​d​e​c​o​m​-​s​h​a​r​e​s​-​s​t​a​g​e​-​w​i​t​h​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​-​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​e​rs/

DCP Hinds had accused Williams of hold­ing up the sign­ing off of a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MOU) on agreed pro­to­cols between the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and INDECOM.
Williams ridiculed the need for a medi­a­tor between INDECOM and the JCF in the sign­ing of a MOU which would sup­pos­ed­ly smooth out a work­ing relationship.
In heap­ing scorn on the sug­ges­tion that he was a prob­lem Terrence Williams argued that there was ami­ca­ble com­mu­ni­ca­tion between him­self and Carl Williams the Police Commissioner , but it was the police Commissioner who had not signed off on the MOU.
“I don’t think there is a need for any medi­a­tor between our­selves and the JCF… we are already dis­cussing these things (pro­to­cols); these things are being implemented .”
Williams in play­ing the role of judge , jury, and exe­cu­tion­er. Not only has he stepped out­side his bounds as the com­mis­sion­er of an over­sight body in the way he han­dles those func­tions he is giv­en , he tells the Parliamentary com­mit­tee what it should and should­n’t do.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​r​e​v​a​m​p​r​e​-​d​o​-​r​e​-​a​u​t​h​o​r​i​z​e​-​i​n​d​e​c​om/

Williams how­ev­er was just get­ting start­ed, he told the com­mit­tee it should not pay any atten­tion to any anec­do­tal claims that the police are not report­ing to crime scenes out of fear of the wrath of INDECOM.
He argued if police offi­cers are shirk­ing their duties, then this is a seri­ous mat­ter that should be report­ed to INDECOM for action.
He said the police com­mis­sion­er has been asked to sub­mit reports of these occur­rences to INDECOM by November 2.
I have to laugh really,this is a very seri­ous mat­ter which is caus­ing lives , what will it take for them to fire this narcissist.
When was this with­in the remit of INDECOM ?

Terrence Williams Not About Investigating Dirty Cops But About Self Promotion, Grandstanding, And Smear.…

Being a for­mer cop I am par­tial to police offi­cers , I am also con­ver­sant of and def­er­en­tial to the chal­lenges they face , as such I am cha­grined by the illog­i­cal unin­formed notion that good cops need not fear pros­e­cu­tion if they are doing their jobs in accor­dance with the laws.
Policing is a chal­leng­ing endeav­or , in Jamaica it is almost a sui­ci­dal undertaking.
It is easy to make such claims igno­rant of the trap that the INDECOM Act is to polic­ing peri­od. This with­out an offi­cer step­ping out­side of the laws in the exe­cu­tion of his duties.

As such the tes­ti­mo­ny of for­mer chief of Defense staff of the Jamaica Defense Force Major General Antony Anderson was par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal. Anderson, as this writer has done since the incep­tion of the Act, said that leg­is­la­tion from oth­er juris­dic­tions, which Jamaica referred to in the craft­ing of the INDECOM Act, includes pro­vi­sions for over­sight bod­ies to gain the trust and con­fi­dence of the pub­lic and the agen­cies which they are overseeing.
Anderson stat­ed that this was­n’t even part of the dis­cus­sion when the law was being crafted.
“That is what has been miss­ing from the way we have been doing this here. When that philo­soph­i­cal posi­tion is not there, then there is no need to take any action to make the police con­fi­dent that they are going to be dealt with fair­ly, or any­one else. As long as it match­es the let­ter of the law, that’s good enough. Unfortunately, it is peo­ple we are deal­ing with and the peo­ple who are being over­seen are peo­ple who go out every day and risk their lives to pro­tect oth­er people.”

So why was that com­po­nent miss­ing when the law was being craft­ed? Why are they just now speak­ing out about this? I have writ­ten dozens of arti­cles on this very sub­ject detail­ing that very point.
Was it that the law-mak­ers are inept, poor­ly equipped to craft good leg­is­la­tion , incompetent ?
Or is it that they did not care about the con­cerns of the police and to a less­er extent the Military and cor­rec­tion­al services ?
No one in their right mind could want police to have crate blanche to do as they please. In fact INDECOM was cre­at­ed because of abuse and mis­con­duct of the police and military.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Novelette Grant allud­ed to the fact that offi­cers have no prob­lem with over­sight. Good cops under­stand that over­sight absolves them of smear and wrong­ful and con­coct­ed alle­ga­tions of impropriety.

Literally every young offi­cer I have per­son­al­ly spo­ken to who have left the depart­ment or are still serv­ing has said exact­ly that.
This makes Terrence Williams’ argu­ments more scur­rilous, disin­gen­u­ous and self-serving.
The fact is that more and more Jamaicans are rec­og­niz­ing that this law is indeed extreme­ly bad for police offi­cers, bad for the Jamaican cit­i­zen­ry and bad for crime reduc­tion on the Island.
Many includ­ing for­mer MP Damion Crawford and oth­er nota­bles have spo­ken out as I have about it.
To date this has basi­cal­ly fall­en on deaf ears, despite mem­bers of the PAAC itself being forced to con­front this atro­cious piece of leg­is­la­tion and its failings.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​s​-​s​e​c​u​r​i​t​y​-​f​o​r​c​e​s​-​s​t​i​c​k​-​n​e​c​ks/

Crime in Jamaica has been on an upward tra­jec­to­ry for decades. This is due to socio-eco­nom­ic con­di­tions among oth­er things, how­ev­er no sin­gle fac­tor has nur­tured and fer­til­ized crime as the crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty of the Jamaican polit­i­cal class.
They can com­mis­sion all the stud­ies they can pay for out of the com­mu­nist lean­ing University of the West Indies and the far left lean­ing aca­d­e­mics there, crime will con­tin­ue to climb and the bod­ies will con­tin­ue to pile up until police offi­cers are allowed to go after crim­i­nals with the full author­i­ty of the state and its full citizenry.
In 2015 crime increased 20% over the pre­ced­ing year . 2015 saw 1192 homi­cides report­ed to author­i­ties as against 1005 in 2014.
Think for a minute about 1192 dead bod­ies laid out side by side, then take a sec­ond to assim­i­late the fact these were liv­ing breath­ing friends , neigh­bors and fam­i­ly members .
Then under­stand that at the very min­i­mum some of those mur­dered vic­tims could have been alive , but for the nar­cis­sism of a sin­gle ego-mani­a­cal lit­tle man who was giv­en too much pow­er he was not equipped to han­dle and should nev­er have had in the first place.
How dumb are these PAAC members ?
Or are they?There are many ways police offi­cers can make a state­ment with­out endan­ger­ing them­selves their liveli­hood , their sol­ven­cy and their freedoms.
DCP grant spoke to the fact that crim­i­nals taunt police offi­cers on patrol , telling them INDECOM has their backs.
That is true the INDECOM act does sup­port and enable crime .
The lit­tle man who heads it is an all facil­i­ta­tor of crim­i­nal­i­ty on the Island.

In the mean­time I will con­tin­ue to sup­port offi­cers who turn on their sirens and dri­ve real slow when there are calls of shots fired.
Officers should make sure that by the time they get there whomev­er was shoot­ing are long gone.
Do the paper work and file them.
This is not a fight the police should be wag­ing. Law enforce­ment is sim­ply enforc­ing laws. If enforc­ing the laws become oner­ous or places the inter­est of offi­cers at risks then they must exer­cise com­mon sense and look out for their own self-interest.
This is a fight for law abid­ing Jamaicans to wage against the brain-dead moron­ic leg­is­la­tors. Police offi­cers sim­ply need to use their heads and stay out of the fray ,
Do not pur­sue any­one with a gun do not do any­thing which could result in the need for lethal force.
In time some­thing will give , it’s their call not that of the police .
This coun­try is a crim­i­nal par­adise and it is slid­ing pre­cip­i­tous­ly close to becom­ing a failed state.
In the mean­time those in charge are pranc­ing around like the emper­or in his none exis­tent new clothes.

Jamaica Police report they confiscated 590 illegal weapons in eleven months . The latest incident being, five pistols found in a car at the Vineyard Toll Plaza in St Catherine.

I salute my long time friend and for­mer col­league Senior Superintendent Colin Pinnock for his con­tin­ued, relent­less and ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice to our country.
Colin Pinnock was a fine cor­po­ral and sergeant back in the day when he served at the Red Hills Police sta­tion and I served at Constant Spring.
It is no sur­prise to see Colin Pinnock still fea­tured in rid­ding the coun­try of dan­ger­ous weapons over two and a half decades after I stepped aside.
During our time we removed many ille­gal weapons from the streets and arrest­ed numer­ous criminals.
To date Colin Pinnock con­tin­ue to give exem­plary ser­vice to our country.
This medi­um wish­es to rec­og­nize him and oth­er good and decent offi­cers who con­tin­ue to serve our coun­try in a thank­less capac­i­ty with­out ran­cor or complaint.

According to the Jamaica Observer the Police report­ed that they have removed more than 7,000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion from the streets so far this year as well.
There can nev­er be an account­ing of how many lives are saved as a result of these seizures .
For their part the Jamaican police includ­ing Colin Pinnock , will nev­er be thanked for the work they do , for a pop­u­la­tion gross­ly une­d­u­cat­ed on this issue, and a polit­i­cal lead­er­ship hap­py to exploit that igno­rance, it is easy to miss the enor­mi­ty of these statistics.

Whats appalling is that while the police are risk­ing life and limb the Island’s piece of shit jus­tice min­is­ter Delroy Chuck a long­time police hater gives speech­es laud­ing the work of INDECOM.

Now let it be under­stood this is an indi­vid­ual who nev­er appre­ci­at­ed the work police do. He has nev­er missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stick it to police .
In his most recent faux pas he laud­ed the work of the agency tasked with over­see­ing alle­ga­tions of police misconduct.
Said Chuck ” The reduc­tion seen in fatal shoot­ings by the police must be applaud­ed, as last year police shoot­ing fell below the 100 mark for the first time in decades. “The pub­lic can have con­fi­dence in the pres­ence of an inde­pen­dent over­sight body, with suf­fi­cient teeth to dis­cour­age mis­be­hav­ior and human rights abuse by agents of the State.”

What he did not speak to is what the Commissioner of INDECOM anoth­er anti-police dem­a­gogue has­n’t ‚and can­not speak to, because if they did the peo­ple would demand an instant repeal of the INDECOM Act.
That is that the dras­tic reduc­tion in police fatal shoot­ings has zero to do with any­thing INDECOM has done pos­i­tive­ly, unless the objec­tive is to save the lives of dan­ger­ous murderers.
This writer does not for one moment believe that this is not exact­ly what Delroy Chuck wants.

For the rest of ordi­nary Jamaicans who do not have the ben­e­fit of liv­ing in gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties with coun­try club style ten­nis courts and swim­ming pools the specter of immi­nent death is nev­er far away.
These Jamaicans whom are forced to dial 119 and wait and wait and wait before help arrives , if ever , do not have police pro­tec­tors assigned to them.

In the United States the Attorney General heads the Justice Department . The Justice Department over­seas Agencies like the FBI and oth­ers the AG is the Nations high­est Law ‑enforce­ment offi­cer , not the Nations anti-police agitator.

According to the Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCF) Jamaica expe­ri­enced at least 1,192 slay­ings in 2015, a rough­ly 20 per­cent increase from the pre­vi­ous year. There were 1,005 killings in 2014.
Jamaica had about 45 slay­ings per 100,000 peo­ple in 2015, keep­ing it ranked among the most vio­lent coun­tries in the world. In recent years, the UN list­ed the island as hav­ing the world’s sixth-worst homi­cide rate. The World Bank ranked Jamaica in the top five in 2013.
By com­par­i­son, Chicago, which has rough­ly the same pop­u­la­tion as Jamaica at 2.7 mil­lion, had 468 killings in 2015.

This year the killings con­tin­ue on a mer­ry clip with no end in sight . Since tak­ing office the new admin­is­tra­tion has done noth­ing on crime wor­thy of note out­side of the following.
(1) The new­ly appoint­ed attor­ney General Marlene Malahoo Forte chid­ing the police like lit­tle kids, that abus­es would not be tol­er­at­ed by her in her St James con­stituen­cy . St James is the mur­der parish on the Island.
(2) The Minister of National Security telling police offi­cers to wear con­doms as too many of them are end­ing up in court in child sup­port cases.
(3) Delroy Chuck Justice Minister call­ing for a purge of the court dock­ets , which would toss out all cas­es includ­ing mur­der cas­es which has been in the sys­tem over (5) five years.
(4) Delroy Chuck call­ing for more pow­er in the hands of his friend and col­league Terrence Williams of INDECOM to ham­strung the Island’s law-enforce­ment efforts.
(5) Delroy Chuck laud­ing the work INDECOM is doing.

No one knows what the final mur­der fig­ures will be by years end . What is obvi­ous is that the Islands Justice min­is­ter does not care about that . What he cares about is that the cha­rade is maintained .
Said Chuck, “the estab­lish­ment of INDECOM was intend­ed to bring Jamaica in com­pli­ance with var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al legal stan­dards, which, togeth­er, con­sti­tute an inter­na­tion­al frame­work of fun­da­men­tal safe­guards to pro­tect against abuses”..

Oh sure who cares about these duty fut peo­ple being killed?  This char­la­tan has police escort.
I call on his police escort to walk away and leave him to his own devices, as ordi­nary Jamaicans are left to face the music.
The bub­ble of police pro­tec­tion they are giv­en has cre­at­ed a sense of invin­ci­bil­i­ty and elit­ism in these low lives . It has allowed them to ignore the Islands dete­ri­o­rat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion and most impor­tant­ly allowed them to dis­re­spect law-enforcement.
Its time for them to face the music with­out the police pro­tec­tion they take for granted.

The Police High Command is remind­ing mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) that the threat lev­el for police offi­cers remains at extreme. This means that attacks against the police are high­ly prob­a­ble. The reminder comes as a result of recent devel­op­ments, where crim­i­nals aligned to major gangs oper­at­ing in west Kingston have been send­ing online threats and offer­ing rewards rang­ing from $100,000 to $1 mil­lion for the death of police offi­cers, the High Command said.

It added that crim­i­nals are mak­ing the threats on the lives of police offi­cers who have been work­ing and pre­vent­ing gang mem­bers from invad­ing the Denham Town and Tivoli com­mu­ni­ties. “These threats against the lives of the police are in a bid to reduce their effec­tive­ness,” the release said.

INCREASE VIGILANCE

Consequently, the High Command is advis­ing mem­bers, espe­cial­ly those who live and work in the Kingston Western Division and the Corporate Area, to increase their vig­i­lance on or off duty and take nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to pro­tect them­selves and their fam­i­lies. Additionally, police per­son­nel are being urged to con­tin­ue to per­form their duties with­out the fear of the threats from crim­i­nals as the JCF seeks to ful­fil its man­date of sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing crime and pro­tect lives. “Members are also being remind­ed to use law­ful jus­ti­fi­able force to defend them­selves and inno­cent law-abid­ing cit­i­zens from vio­lent attack by crim­i­nal ele­ments. The police are assur­ing the pub­lic that they will not relent in car­ry­ing out their duties, as the safe­ty of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens is a pri­or­i­ty,” the release said. see more here:  http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​6​1​1​2​1​/​t​h​r​e​a​t​-​l​e​v​e​l​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​r​e​m​a​i​n​s​-​e​x​t​r​eme

You sim­ply can­not make this up .!!!!
But why not ? This is Jamaica the coun­try where mur­der music is reward­ed with nation­al honors.
For some per­spec­tive here is SHABBA RANK’S SHINE AND CRISS..

From time to time you have seen me rail against what passes for a justice system . It has become one of the most criminally complicit systems to operate anywhere in the western hemisphere. The tragedy facing the average Jamaican is that they had gone all in on their support for the system placing immense trust in the judges more so . Unfortunately this has been a bad investment and the people are now beginning to wake up to the fact that this system is radically broken and only serves the interest of the wealthy and well connected.

.….….….….….….….….….….….….…

The sys­tem which exists absolute­ly work for the crim­i­nal under­world. It works for crim­i­nal defense lawyers. It works for the polit­i­cal class which sits atop the gar­ri­son cul­ture and of course the periph­er­al indus­tries which has sprung up around the death indus­try. That was borne out on Wednesday in an Observer arti­cle writ­ten by Attorney at law Linton P Gordon. Gordon’s arti­cle though cor­rect on the law revealed an incred­i­ble tone-deaf­ness of what peo­ple are com­plain­ing about that could only be made pos­si­ble by the insu­lar space he and oth­ers like him occu­py despite the rag­ing debate.
In an arti­cle ref­er­enc­ing the recent acquit­tal of Patrick Powell of the charge of mur­der Gordon wrote: Whether we like it or not, the jus­tice sys­tem worked perfectly.

I have con­sis­tent­ly spo­ken to the rapa­cious nature of crim­i­nal defense lawyers. In Jamaica it is even more evi­dent con­sid­er­ing the close asso­ci­a­tions between dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals and crim­i­nal defense lawyers. It must nev­er be for­got­ten that lawyers, even crim­i­nal defense lawyers are offi­cers of the courts.
In most cas­es the lines between lawyers and their clients are indiscernible.
In his arti­cle Gordon states what most Jamaicans who ever set foot in an ele­men­tary school already knew.

.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…..
Whether we like it or not, the jus­tice sys­tem worked perfectly.
For whom?

Following on the collapse of the case, and the inevitable verdict of acquittal in favour of the accused Patrick Powell, there have been widespread discussions and emotional outbursts as to how the case came to an end. Several of the discussions lack an understanding and appreciation of the process by which a person is tried in our courts. They also lack an understanding of the respective roles of the defence and the prosecution in a trial.

In our system of law, it is the duty of the Crown, ie the prosecutor, to prove the case brought beyond a reasonable doubt. That is to say, a judge or jury should only convict an accused person if they are sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is guilty as charged. To reach this stage of a guilty verdict the prosecution must adduce credible evidence, so that having heard the total case of the prosecution, the jury will be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Powell, in this case, is guilty. The prosecution therefore faced an insurmountable barrier to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt when the main witness stated that he could not identify the person who did the shooting.

Whether we like it or not, given that the prosecution was relying on this witness primarily, when the witness gave evidence of not being able to identify Powell as the shooter, the prosecution’s case was all but destroyed. The prosecution, from what is learnt, had no other evidence, forensic or otherwise, to place the then accused at the scene of the shooting, nor to identify him as the person who did the shooting. This is the harsh reality of what happened to this case and we must accept that the judge and prosecutor did what was professionally required of them. Indeed, the judge had no choice but to direct the jury to return a verdict of not guilty after the prosecution offered no further evidence, given that the evidence on record so far was not sufficient to convict the accused. We must also remember that an accused has no duty to prove his innocence. Powell therefore could not have been called upon to prove that he was not present at the scene of the shooting or that he was not the one who did the shooting. An accused person is entitled to remain silent from beginning until the end as there is no duty on him to prove his innocence.

Given what is said so far, it is wrong for people to seek to condemn the justice system as being defective. The justice system worked perfectly and properly in the X6 case. If anything went wrong, it was not with the justice system, but with the investigation of the case and evidence that was available. The main witness denied giving or signing a statement that was put to him as his statement. As in several cases that come before the court, we will never know for sure whether the denial is a truthful denial or if it’s a denial that is not factual. At the end of the day, we should respect the workings of our justice system and avoid emotional outbursts when results are rendered with which we are not happy. It is better for a thousand guilty individuals to escape conviction than for an innocent man to be convicted and punished based on emotions rather than facts and evidence.

Ours is a well-established, tested and reliable system by which we establish guilt in our courts. The system works fairly well in this country. If we replace it with subjective beliefs and emotionalism we will be submitting to the tyranny of those “in the know”, and several of us not “in the know” will find that our rights will be abrogated and we will be accused, convicted and punished by those “in the know” and not by a system of justice that we have now which is grounded in law. Our justice system worked properly and rendered the correct verdict based on the evidence available in the X6 case. It is therefore wrong to direct dissatisfaction with the verdict at our justice system.

.….….….….….….….….….….….……
Linton Gordon did not miss the let­ter of what is being borne out in the pain and dis­gust of the peo­ple, he got that . He recit­ed the let­ter of the law.
What he missed is the spir­it of the pain. !!!~!
There is the let­ter of the law , and then there is the spir­it of the law. Linton Gordon is a lawyer he nailed the let­ter down. What he missed is the spir­it of the law , the rea­son why the laws were passed in the first place.
The laws are made for the peo­ple , peo­ple are not made for the laws . The peo­ple have every right to com­plain , and mil­i­tate against the laws if their inter­est are not being served.
This small fact seemed to have elud­ed Gordon.
What I find par­tic­u­lar­ly galling is this nar­ra­tive that the flawed jus­tice sys­tem is above being crit­i­cized. I heard that very same argu­ment dur­ing the X6 tri­al , before the case was tossed of course.
The tri­al judge seemed to believe that there is some­thing sac­ri­le­gious about crit­i­ciz­ing the sys­tem . This is the very same argu­ment being prof­fered by Linton Gordon.
What is clear is that the tri­al judges and their cohorts with­in the crim­i­nal defense space are yet to receive the memo that the peo­ple are onto them and their schemes.

It is ridicu­lous to sit in ivory tow­ers and speak in grandiose terms about a jus­tice sys­tem which has turned out to be a shit-stem.
Reciting the let­ter of the law when peo­ple are cry­ing out that the very same laws are not work­ing does noth­ing to ame­lio­rate the con­cerns and pain of the people.
We know what the laws are , we are say­ing that the sys­tem as it exist is not working.
Ten times ten is equal to a hun­dred , yet if we arrived at the tens incor­rect­ly or through less than legit­i­mate means , it mat­ters not that the sum total is cor­rect the results will always be ques­tion­able, always be flawed.

Arguing that the sys­tem worked per­fect­ly is a poke in the eye of the fam­i­ly of Khajeel Maias. It is bla­tant dis­re­spect to the dead 17-year-old vic­tim and all of the oth­er Jamaicans who have been vic­tim­ized by the jus­tice sys­tem after being vic­tim­ized by crime.
The sys­tem itself has been ren­dered irrel­e­vant as is evi­denced by the crime statistics.
It has been ren­dered bro­ken by the Kern Spencer light bulb tri­al in which a par­ti­san polit­i­cal res­i­dent mag­is­trate moved every foun­da­tion pil­lar to free a politi­cian accused of a crime in a clear cut case in which he should have been impris­oned. Lets stop with the cha­rade that there is a jus­tice sys­tem there isn’t, where else in the west­ern hemi­sphere could a res­i­dent mag­is­trate over rule the law to set a crim­i­nal sus­pect free with­out a jury even hav­ing heard the case against him?
It has been ren­dered bro­ken in the fact that no politi­cian has ever been impris­oned despite the bil­lions and bil­lions of dol­lars of theft com­mit­ted by mem­bers of the past administration.

It has been proven bro­ken by the fail­ure of the sys­tem to pros­e­cute polit­i­cal thugs. Those in the gar­risons as well as those in the parliament.
It is a bro­ken sys­tem which has politi­cians who are not allowed to trav­el to the United States sit­ting in the parliament.
There is so much to be said about the bro­ken down decrepit sys­tem which keeps mur­der cas­es in the sys­tem until wit­ness­es are frus­trat­ed, dead , or just does­n’t care anymore.
The jus­tice sys­tem is a bro­ken sys­tem, which serves the inter­est of crim­i­nals and their defense attor­neys it serves the inter­est of cer­tain judges out­side what many Jamaicans are pre­pared to believe.

So of course the sys­tem worked per­fect­ly as far as Linton Gordon and oth­ers are con­cerned . Their inter­ests are guar­an­teed under this cha­rade which pass­es for a crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, it caters to the needs of depraved mur­der­ers and those who work for them are or oth­er­wise asso­ci­at­ed with them.
Maybe it’s time this lawyer begin by shed­ding the clown suit he is wear­ing and maybe , just maybe, he will begin to under­stand what the man on the street sees.
Word of warning,this igno­ble sys­tem is even­tu­al­ly going to come crash­ing down soon­er or later.

I am angry though totally not surprised that coming upon a year since the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) took over the government it has not figured out a way to deal with crime.

There is no excuse for the Administration , it has had more than ample time to fig­ure out at least that there will nev­er be pros­per­i­ty of any kind for the Jamaican peo­ple unless they are reori­ent­ed away from the accep­tance of crim­i­nal­i­ty as a way of life onto a path of sus­tain­abil­i­ty through hard work , edu­ca­tion and their entre­pre­neur­ial spirit.
The (JLP) is not a par­ty of total dunces , so there can be no legit­i­mate claim of bring­ing pros­per­i­ty to the peo­ple in this cesspool of mur­der and mayhem.
There are peo­ple with­in the par­ty who fun­da­men­tal­ly under­stand the cumu­la­tive neg­a­tive effect crime has on societies.
According to a study done by (uc​.davis​.edu) ear­ly life expe­ri­ences appear like­ly to have an espe­cial­ly strong influ­ence on the devel­op­ment of crim­i­nal­i­ty because indi­vid­u­als acquire their traits sequentially.
This makes it all the more impor­tant that a way be found toward reori­ent­ing the nation away from this love affair it has with crime and crime figures.
Jamaica has had more than enough warn­ings that this can­cer of crime is not get­ting bet­ter . In fact the Island’s crim­i­nals in 2010 showed what they had pre­vi­ous­ly not demon­strat­ed , that is that they are not afraid to chal­lenge the very legit­i­ma­cy of the state.
That oppor­tu­ni­ty should nev­er have been wast­ed. A deci­sive blow should have been dealt the crim­i­nal under­world . It was not done.
The peo­ple’s nation­al par­ty did not sup­port an exten­sion of the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency the JLP admin­is­tra­tion want­ed. The PNP has dozens of gar­risons and hun­dreds of crim­i­nal thugs under arms.

The (JLP) admin­is­tra­tion could have gone ahead and got­ten that approval from the Governor General if it want­ed to, let’s remind our­selves of that fact. The admin­is­tra­tion chose not to for pure­ly polit­i­cal purposes..
The larg­er issue how­ev­er was not about who sup­port­ed an exten­sion of a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency as against who did not.
The larg­er issue is about the fail­ure of both par­ties to come togeth­er and face up to the fact that the gar­ri­son sys­tem they both sup­port­ed was indeed an exis­ten­tial threat to the country.
Instead both par­ties went to their respec­tive cor­ners hard­ened in their desire to con­tin­ue with their nar­row par­ti­san ambi­tions to place per­son­al and par­ti­san gain over the wel­fare of the country.
This con­firms what most peo­ple already knew, that both par­ties are part of the prob­lem and are unlike­ly to be a part of the solution.

We sow an act and reap a habit: We sow a habit and reap a char­ac­ter: We sow a char­ac­ter and reap a des­tiny. William Black (1893.
The root caus­es of crime [are] pover­ty, unem­ploy­ment, under­em­ploy­ment, racism, poor health care, bad hous­ing, weak schools, men­tal ill­ness, alco­holism, sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­lies, teenage preg­nan­cy, and a soci­ety of self­ish­ness and greed. Patrick V. Murphy (1985) for­mer NYPD Commissioner.
The chal­lenge for the admin­is­tra­tion has always been and still remain how to craft a way for­ward in light of the exist­ing real­i­ties while deal­ing with the exis­ten­tial threat the nation faces as a result to the wors­en­ing crime situation.
It has had ample time to craft a seri­ous strat­e­gy while in oppo­si­tion (crit­ics go to hell), it clear­ly did not do so.
Selling pros­per­i­ty to peo­ple in a cesspool of crime and inse­cu­ri­ty is like sell­ing bas­kets to peo­ple who are in des­per­ate need of con­tain­ers to hold water.
Crime on the Island is not a thing which can be set to the side. It is an ever increas­ing phe­nom­e­non which will ulti­mate­ly enve­lope the coun­try and all with­in it . Grill for­ti­fi­ca­tions have seri­ous limitations.
There is no solu­tion to the Island’s crime prob­lem which will not result in dirty hands. There is no solu­tion which will not elic­it howls of con­dem­na­tion from mon­day morn­ing quar­ter­backs and grand­stand­ing pontificates.

Jamaica is not a devel­oped country.
Applying beau­ti­ful wall­pa­per to brit­tle old walls does not a house make. It cre­ates a safe­ty haz­ard for prospec­tive occu­pants of that house. Crumbling walls cre­ates a seri­ous haz­ard for peo­ple liv­ing with­in those walls.
People liv­ing in a coun­try with a faux sense of secu­ri­ty are prone to hav­ing seri­ous wake­up calls , or prob­a­bly not wak­ing up at all.
The Country has been mis­led for decades., Jamaica has been led by a few peo­ple most of whom attend­ed the same University which is by and large a caul­dron of left wing ideology.
They make the rules, they con­trol all of the power.
Defense Attorneys dou­ble as Legislators, who head Garrisons, the Garrisons are kept in place by hood­lums who kill, extort and ter­ror­ize cit­i­zens into submission.
The lawyer/​politician/​member of par­lia­ment all in the body of one per­son is friend to the judge who is hear­ing the case which he is defend­ing the mur­der­ing thug from the garrison.

The attor­ney and the tri­al judge drink at the same spot. They are part of the same lit­tle pen­ny-mil­lion­aire club. They coex­ist with­in the same small space.
What made you think you were about to receive jus­tice when your kid is gunned down by some­one with a lit­tle mon­ey to spread around?
What made you believe you mattered?
The aver­age per­son has­n’t mat­tered since the Island sup­pos­ed­ly gained its inde­pen­dence. They do not mat­ter now.

Criminal defense lawyers and peo­ple who head gar­risons are not going to all of a sud­den become ratio­nal law and order legislators.
The likes of KD Knight, Delroy Chuck, AJ Nicholson, Mark Golding, etal were nev­er going to be stal­warts fight­ing for the demise of criminality.
Granted that there are many more with­in both polit­i­cal par­ties who sure­ly will not sup­port strong leg­is­la­tion to reduce crime we also under­stand that as a rule the People’s National Party has zero inten­tion of root­ing out crime from the country.

The small city-state of Singapore is held up by many in Jamaica as a place mod­eled after the Jamaican sys­tem of gov­ern­ment. Singapore accord­ing to wikipedia is not­ed for its effec­tive, prag­mat­ic and incor­rupt gov­er­nance and civ­il ser­vice, which togeth­er with its rapid devel­op­ment poli­cies, is wide­ly cit­ed as the “Singapore model”.
While Jamaicans are quick to talk about the eco­nom­ic gains made by Singapore with­in a short span of time what they neglect to talk about is the strict laws which gov­ern the small city state nation. There is a manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der, as well as for cer­tain aggra­vat­ed drug-traf­fick­ing and firearms offences.
Amnesty International always quick to point out per­ceived faults of small devel­op­ing nations, argues that Singapore’s sys­tem con­flicts with the pre­sump­tion of innocence.
What is impor­tant is that accord­ing to Transparency International Singapore has been rat­ed one of the least cor­rupt coun­tries in the world.
Additionally the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index ranked Singapore among the top coun­tries sur­veyed with regard to “order and secu­ri­ty”, “absence of cor­rup­tion”, and “effec­tive crim­i­nal justice.wikipedia.

There is much hand-wring­ing in cer­tain quar­ters regard­ing the actions being under­tak­en by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Nicknamed “the pun­ish­er” for his hard-line approach to tack­ling crime while he was may­or of Davao city in the country’s south, Duterte had made fight­ing drug crime one of the main plat­forms of his elec­tion campaign.
Call Duarte what­ev­er you want, but there is no deny­ing that he rec­og­nizes the ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty which is utter­ly destroy­ing the very fab­ric of his country.
Duarte assured the police he would defend them if they were faced with charges of vio­lat­ing human rights while car­ry­ing out his anti-drug campaign.

No one has this kind of balls in our crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it country.
Whether one endors­es Duarte’s meth­ods is not the issue . The issue is that President Rodrigo Duarte under­stands the exis­ten­tial threat crime and cor­rup­tion pos­es to the Philippines and he is tak­ing a stand.
Whether one agreed with the meth­ods of Los Pepe in Colombia in that nation’s strug­gles against becom­ing a nar­co state does not mat­ter. What mat­tered is that the actions of los pepes saved Colombia from the chok­ing ten­ta­cles of nar­co ter­ror­ism which seri­ous­ly threat­ened the exis­tence of that country.
Allowing a few grandiose unex­posed pen­ny mil­lion­aires who all attend­ed a small third world col­lege to cause the death of an entire coun­try much larg­er than Singapore should nev­er be tolerated.
President Duarte told the Judiciary in his coun­try “I will impose “mar­tial law” if you infringe upon my plan to erad­i­cate drugs and cor­rup­tion our country —
Jamaican judges, legal schol­ars, and it’s elites should nev­er be allowed to stop con­crete mea­sures to seri­ous­ly send a clear mes­sage that crime will not be tolerated.
Unfortunately this gov­ern­ment does not have the balls to do it.
So the peo­ple will even­tu­al­ly have to do it on their own sadly.……

For years since the INDECOM Act was passed this writer has said that the law is bad , it is costing lives, it is driving crime upward.
Many good people have pushed back at my arguments understandably , they were just happy that there was now some real oversight of what they saw as an out of control police force.

Why Would Jamaica’s Security Forces Stick Their Necks Out .….….…

The truth is that among the good peo­ple, were some who weren’t as right­eous. They want­ed as much shack­les on the Police force as pos­si­ble. Without minc­ing words , it’s impor­tant that we call it as we see it.
There is no deny­ing that the police depart­ment has done much to bring onto itself some of the pick­le it has found itself in. But we also know that the polit­i­cal direc­torate has done even more to ren­der the force impotent.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​o​r​e​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​l​e​n​d​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​v​o​i​c​e​s​-​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​c​a​l​l​-​t​o​-​r​e​v​a​m​p​-​r​e​v​i​e​w​-​r​e​-​a​u​t​h​o​r​i​z​e​-​t​h​e​-​i​n​d​e​c​o​m​-​a​ct/
They cre­at­ed with­in the JCF the pos­si­bil­i­ty for the chil­dren of their friends in cer­tain cir­cles, to enter the depart­ment and attain the rank of assis­tant com­mis­sion­er of police with­out ever mak­ing an arrest or hav­ing the slight­est idea how to fill out a charg­ing affidavit.
The sto­ries my sources relate to me are many. People giv­en posi­tions of lead­er­ship yet hav­ing to ask the peo­ple they are lead­ing how to do the leading.
Owen Ellington was an enabler of this pol­i­cy. Many used these assis­tant Superintendent posi­tions as rest stops to con­tin­ue their stud­ies then move on after they receive their grad­u­ate degrees.
Of course the aver­age “Grunt” who play by the rules, can­not get time off to attend a sem­i­nar much less attend college.

It was dif­fi­cult for some­one like me who sup­port law enforce­ment to be heard amidst all the noise ema­nat­ing from the hoopla, that final­ly some­thing was being done to the wicked evil police.[sic] Speaking of the INDECOM Act.
Now, nev­er mind that over­sight is always need­ed , the police already had over­sight. Oversight which was far more effec­tive but far less acri­mo­nious . Oversight which was car­ried out by police and civil­ians com­bined that did not endan­ger police.
The prob­lem was nev­er a lack of over­sight for police as many believed . It was a fail­ure of recruit­ment and effec­tive back­ground checks.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​f​a​c​t​s​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​s​i​d​e​-​o​f​-​t​h​o​s​e​-​o​p​p​o​s​e​d​-​t​o​-​i​n​d​e​c​om/

It must be under­stood that when a police offi­cer goes out and join with oth­er crim­i­nals to rob and harm cit­i­zens that’s not a mat­ter for over­sight. When police offi­cers catch them they are treat­ed like every oth­er crim­i­nal. When Cops com­mit crimes that’s not some­thing which requires an INDECOM type investigation.
It is a fail­ure of recruit­ment, train­ing, super­vi­sion among oth­er things.
To con­flate the entire­ty of what police offi­cers do when they fall afoul of the laws is to ignore facts and embrace demagoguery.

Just As Oversight Was Warranted For The Police It Is Warranted For INDECOM.…

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO MERIT TO THE ARGUMENTS MADE BY TERRENCE WILLIAMS, THAT IF OFFICERS DO THEIR JOBS PROPERLY THEY HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT !!!!

When Terrence Williams say police offi­cers have noth­ing to fear if they do their jobs with­in the laws he is speak­ing as an igno­rant bystander who was giv­en much pow­er by a bunch of igno­rant law­mak­ers who did not do due dili­gence before they passed a bad law .
Scenario # 1
Police go into gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ty and con­front heav­i­ly armed men.
Men lay down fire.
Police take cov­er return fire.
Criminal gets killed , friends lay down cov­er­ing fire and retrieve the weapon.
By the time the police take con­trol of the scene the oth­er shoot­ers escape with the weapons.
The police are left with a dead man and no gun.
Community comes out on Don’s orders and cries murder.
Cops have body no gun.
Police gets charged , sus­pend­ed , five years with­out any income, .
Who feeds his family?
Who pays his legal bills?
Were these offi­cers in the wrong?
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​f​i​g​h​t​i​n​g​-​w​i​t​h​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​s​-​c​i​t​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​i​n​d​e​c​o​m​-​a​c​t​-​i​s​-​s​i​l​l​y​-​a​n​d​-​d​a​n​g​e​r​o​us/

Scenario #2
Police offi­cer tries to write a taxi dri­ver a tick­et after who refus­es his com­mand to move from an ille­gal­ly parked position.
Driver refus­es to hand over his dri­ver’s licence and starts to fight the officer.
Crowds quick­ly con­verge , egging the offend­er on.
The offend­er strug­gles with offi­cer and tries to dis­arm him of his weapon.
Officer man­ages to pull his weapon and neu­tral­izes the threat to his life.
Crowd alleges murder.
Media sells the sto­ry as “cop kills unarmed hard work­ing cab­bie”
Officer is sus­pend­ed with­out pay , los­es the weapon he has to pro­tect his life. Charged with Murder on con­coct­ed lies.
Loses his salary so he is unable to find legal fees to secure qual­i­ty defense.
Unable to feed his fam­i­ly, unable to pay his mortgage/​rental.
Was this offi­cer in the wrong?

INDECOM Boss Understands The Value Of Media-whoring.….

The stark real­i­ty is that this whole notion that police offi­cers doing the right thing has noth­ing to fear from this mon­strous crim­i­nal empow­er­ment law is ridiculous .
I say to the rank and file police offi­cers , as long as your free­doms are threat­ened and they refuse to see what you face shoul­der your weapons.
Let the bod­ies pile up . Let Terrence Williams go out and deal with it.
Committee chair­man Wykeham McNeill said that “if the prob­lems between both par­ties are not resolved the coun­try could see ris­ing crime rates”.
I won­der what rock this idiot has been liv­ing under,?
The coun­try could see ris­ing crime? This inane and total­ly moron­ic state­ment typ­i­fies what many of us already knew , these guys are woe­ful­ly obliv­i­ous of what is hap­pen­ing around them. When was crime not rising?

Conversely , here’s what Juliet Holness wife of the Prime Minister and mem­ber of par­lia­ment had to say.

“When you speak to offi­cers they tell you: They don’t give a darn what we are say­ing to them and what an MOU says because at the end of the day ‘my pay is what will be affect­ed. I am the one who will have to sit down at home until this is resolved and pos­si­bly I will have to find addi­tion­al mon­ey to pay an attor­ney, so it is safer for me to col­lect my pay and shut up my mouth and don’t stick my neck out if I see any­thing going wrong and go to my home because of INDECOM’.”

Jamaica Got To Where It Is By Ignoring Facts And Embracing This.….

It was utter dis­re­spect of the police , mil­i­tary and the men and women of the cor­rec­tion­al depart­ment why the gov­ern­ment of Bruce Golding with the acqui­es­cence of the oppo­si­tion PNP passed this mon­strous law on the demand of Jamaicans for Justice Carolyn Gomes and the pha­lanx of oth­er peo­ple who make a liv­ing on the blood of dead cops.
Then they gave a National hon­or to Gomes. That National Honor is a mill­stone around the neck of Carolyn Gomes .
It is tar­nished with the blood of dead cops. It ought to be like a dead weight tied to a drown­ing man around the neck of Carolyn Gomes. It should haunt her for as long as she live.-

Imagine the arro­gance of draft­ing leg­is­la­tion which will sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact the lives of peo­ple who are tasked with plac­ing their lives on the line for the pro­tec­tion of oth­ers with­out ask­ing their opinion.
Imagine the sense of elit­ism which pre­cedes the notion of draft­ing and pass­ing leg­is­la­tion sole­ly on the say-so of a spe­cial inter­est group.
Well this is Jamaica at it’s best, lazy, incom­pe­tent, dolts mas­querad­ing as lawmakers .
In this medi­um I point­ed out that the law can­not ade­quate­ly serve the pur­pose which it was sup­posed to pri­mar­i­ly because the mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces did not get to add their input.
We made it clear that the law would cost lives.
It has.
We made it clear the law would embold­en criminals.
It has.
We made it clear that the law would increase crime .
It has.

Committee mem­ber Fitz Jackson added that INDECOM reports to the Parliament and as such the PAAC, in its full report to the House of Representatives should pro­pose an inter­ven­tion strat­e­gy to address the senior cop’s con­cern. “None of us are God unto our­selves,” Jackson said not­ing that the INDECOM Commissioner has to be account­able to the Jamaican Parliament.

In our relent­less push to bring this to the atten­tion of the Jamaican peo­ple I have con­sis­tent­ly said that the very idea that INDECOM would agree to a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing between the agency and the police depart­ment is a tac­it under­stand­ing at the min­i­mum that the law is bad.
That some­one of the char­ac­ter of Terrence Williams would want to be par­ty to a MOU is a seri­ous sign that he wants the grow­ing real­iza­tion that the laws is inher­ent­ly bad to go away.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​s​e​n​i​o​r​-​c​o​p​s​-​b​l​a​m​e​-​i​n​d​e​c​o​m​-​b​o​s​s​-​s​t​a​n​d​-​o​f​f​-​p​o​l​i​ce/
As I said then it is appease­ment to those who are call­ing for the repeal of the law.
As I said then and con­tin­ue to believe today a MOU can­not fix this hor­rif­ic law. The Law should be repealed.
That the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) of Parliament hear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny of the rela­tion­ship between the two agen­cies now rec­og­nizes that a MOU can­not fix these struc­tur­al issues is encouraging.

What is need­ed now is lead­er­ship at the high­est lev­el. As the chief of defense staff said the law was enact­ed with­out zero input from the secu­ri­ty forces . Acknowledging what I have been say­ing for years. This INDECOM laws is a fraud­u­lent one sided piece of leg­is­la­tion which should nev­er have been passed.
Sure there has to be vig­i­lant over­sight of those in whom we have invest­ed great pow­er, politi­cians , police and all oth­ers. What we can­not do is ask peo­ple to risk their lives and limb to pro­tect us then imprison and ruin them when they act.
No one’s inter­est is served by the INDECOM act except Terrence Williams and criminals .
The Act must be repealed.

DEPUTY Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds yes­ter­day blamed much of the long-stand­ing ten­sion between the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) on Commissioner Terrence Williams.

The high-rank­ing police­man also con­tra­dict­ed the pleas­ant pic­ture paint­ed by Williams to Parliament about the rela­tion­ship between the police and INDECOM. Williams had assured the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) of Parliament, when he appeared before it sev­er­al months ago, that the rela­tion­ship between INDECOM and the police was “excel­lent”. PAAC mem­ber Fitz Jackson asked Hinds, in a can­did dis­cus­sion yes­ter­day, to direct­ly address Williams’ assertion.

“The work­ing rela­tion­ship is good, but in the best of rela­tion­ships there are going to be dis­agree­ments. We try from the lead­er­ship posi­tion to indi­cate to the mem­bers that both organ­i­sa­tions are indis­pens­able to the secu­ri­ty of the country…I would not say it’s excel­lent; it’s good,” Hinds stated.

He explained fur­ther why agree­ments aris­ing out of meet­ings between heads of the JCF and INDECOM often do not see the light of day.

“The major issue we have is with the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM. They can’t come to any agree­ment that is going to bind INDECOM unless he (Williams) agrees to it. So it is not disin­gen­u­ous of me to say that it is a good rela­tion­ship, although there are sev­er­al issues on the ground and it’s how INDECOM oper­ates, not the law, but how some per­sons in INDECOM, more so the com­mis­sion­er, applies his remit,” ACP Hines told the par­lia­men­tary committee.

Pointing to some of issues frus­trat­ing the rela­tion­ship between the JCF and INDECOM, Assistant Commissioner of Police Novelette Grant stressed that the way the police are being asked to account for their actions on the job is oner­ous. “That is the crux of the mat­ter. There is a per­cep­tion that mem­bers of the con­stab­u­lary are unwill­ing to account; that’s far from the truth. If you make the process oner­ous, then peo­ple start to weigh whether or not they can afford that process,” she said.

Meanwhile, chief of defence staff of the Jamaica Defence Force Major General Antony Anderson argued that leg­is­la­tion from oth­er juris­dic­tions, which Jamaica referred to in the craft­ing of the INDECOM Act, includes pro­vi­sions for over­sight bod­ies to gain the trust and con­fi­dence of the pub­lic and the agen­cies which they are overseeing.

He lament­ed that this was nev­er a part of the dis­cus­sion when INDECOM was being created.

“That is what has been miss­ing from the way we have been doing this here. When that philo­soph­i­cal posi­tion is not there, then there is no need to take any action to make the police con­fi­dent that they are going to be dealt with fair­ly, or any­one else. As long as it match­es the let­ter of the law, that’s good enough. Unfortunately, it is peo­ple we are deal­ing with and the peo­ple who are being over­seen are peo­ple who go out every day and risk their lives to pro­tect oth­er peo­ple,” he said.

Anderson said it is impor­tant to bring that bal­ance to the appli­ca­tion of the law in order to reas­sure the secu­ri­ty forces, as well as the public.

Permanent Secretary in the National Security Ministry Diane McIntosh said the mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MOU) which the JCF and INDECOM are to sign with­in anoth­er week should address some of the difficulties.

But PAAC Chairman Wykeham McNeill said the issues were too deep-root­ed to be resolved by an MOU. He insist­ed that the com­mit­tee itself need­ed to take action.

The PAAC sub­se­quent­ly agreed to express its “grave” con­cern to Parliament to have the mat­ter referred to the Internal and External Affairs Committee. That com­mit­tee is expect­ed to exam­ine all the doc­u­men­ta­tion and rec­om­men­da­tions that have been pre­pared to date by all the par­ties on mea­sures to improve the rela­tion­ship between the police and INDECOM.
http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​U​n​d​e​r​-​f​i​r​e​-​S​e​n​i​o​r​-​c​o​p​s​-​b​l​a​m​e​-​I​N​D​E​C​O​M​-​b​o​s​s​-​f​o​r​-​s​t​a​n​d​-​o​f​f​-​w​i​t​h​-​p​o​l​ice — — –_​78523