JAMAICA IS HEAVILY DEPENDENT ON TOURISM FOR ITS SURVIVAL, YET THE VERY HEART OF THE TOURISM HUB, MONTEGO BAY, HAS FOR YEARS BEEN A WILD ‚WILD WEST .

The Island’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness vis­it­ed Montego Bay and spoke to cit­i­zens a cou­ple days ago he also met with secu­ri­ty per­son­nel in the parish who gave him first-hand brief­ing of the chal­lenges they face. The Prime Minister sub­se­quent­ly released a state­ment in which he said the following .

“We don’t have a switch to turn off crime … . The strate­gies we are putting in place will take some time to bear fruit, but we are work­ing with the great­est speed and alacrity to ensure the results bear fruit,”. “There is a need for leg­isla­tive reform to empow­er our police – and mil­i­tary in sup­port of the police – leg­is­la­tion that is rel­e­vant and applic­a­ble to the crime sit­u­a­tion we face.

I humbly sub­mit to the Prime Minister and indeed the entire Nation that this fight is an exis­ten­tial fight. If the events of 2010 in Tivoli Gardens have not con­vinced you that there are enough guns, ammu­ni­tion and the will to effec­tive­ly chal­lenge the author­i­ty of the state I do not know what will.

There is a series present­ly avail­able on Netflix which tells the sto­ry of Colombia’s war with nar­co traf­fick­ers. It depicts the pow­er and ruth­less­ness of the Colombian drug lords in that exis­ten­tial fight that nation had with deter­mined nar­co traf­fick­ers. I sug­gest the Prime Minister , the Minister of National Security sit down and take a look at that series.
Otherwise they may do a sim­ple Google search which will reveal what the Colombian peo­ple did to break the back of that threat, sav­ing their nation from becom­ing a Narco state.

Mister Prime Minister I sup­port­ed your can­di­da­cy for the high­est elect­ed office in our coun­try . At this time I sup­port the work you are doing . You have demon­strat­ed an under­stand­ing of what needs to be done . I also under­stand that there are strong forces arrayed against a change in our coun­try which are quite com­fort­able with the sta­tus quo.
Mister Prime Minister, I am sure that you are more con­ver­sant with what is occur­ring on the ground than most, includ­ing this writer. You live there , you receive brief­in­gs, you see it on tele­vi­sion. It is up to you to change this.

It won’t be easy I under­stand that. At the risk of sound­ing grandiose I am speak­ing direct­ly to you because I am aware that you and some well placed peo­ple in your admin­is­tra­tion do take a peek at this lit­tle medi­um from time to time.
I implore you to get rid of INDECOM.
It is a bad law which was poor­ly thought through, you know it, many in your Administration know it, and an ever increas­ing plu­ral­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple are com­ing to that realization.

Mister Prime Minister I know that you under­stand that I am absolute­ly not advo­cat­ing for unfet­tered polic­ing with no over­sight . I have a his­to­ry of advo­cat­ing for strong over­sight of police but it can­not be an adver­sar­i­al over­sight deter­mined to have gotcha moments of police offi­cers who go out and risk their lives for your life and that of all of our citizens.
Mister Prime Minister the future of our coun­try can­not be mort­gaged on the ego of a sin­gle per­son or even a small group of elites who are hell bent on a destruc­tive path of social engi­neer­ing which has been tried and proven to fail, not just in our coun­try but in others.

Finally Prime Minister Holness, I do believe you are crit­i­cal­ly aware that your growth agen­da can­not and will not be suc­cess­ful in an atmos­phere of mur­der and may­hem. Someone will have to bell the cat . If not you then who?
You do not want to pre­side over the ash­es of our coun­try . Make no mis­take if this regres­sion is not halt­ed with deci­sive action and soon, that will be the result.
This is not the first time that this kind of threat has emerged in our coun­try . It was anoth­er great Labor Party Prime Minister, the Rt Honorable Hugh Lawson Shearer who placed his boot-heels on that monster.
You too can be great , if not for your­self , for the yet unborn chil­dren, for the future of our coun­try. It’s up to you. You must send Terrence Williams pack­ing and empow­er the police to go after the murderers.
The world is watching !!!

“We don’t have a switch to turn off crime … . The strate­gies we are putting in place will take some time to bear fruit, but we are work­ing with the great­est speed and alacrity to ensure the results bear fruit,”. “There is a need for leg­isla­tive reform to empow­er our police — and mil­i­tary in sup­port of the police — leg­is­la­tion that is rel­e­vant and applic­a­ble to the crime sit­u­a­tion we face.

Those words were uttered by Jamaica’s Prime Minister who is also the Minister of defense accord­ing to the Island’s con­sti­tu­tion. The Prime Minister has my sym­pa­thy, not because of any polit­i­cal alle­giance but because he has a full plate . He has an agen­da which he ran on to turn around the lives of the 2.8 mil­lion Jamaicans. His mantra being from pover­ty to prosperity.

The Prime Minister has a full plate unlike his pre­de­ces­sor who seemed to have del­e­gat­ed all of her core func­tions to min­ions whom were large­ly inter­est­ed only in stuff­ing their pock­ets with the con­tents of the till.
Nevertheless , the Prime Minister has a duty despite his many oth­er func­tions to address the Nation’s gal­lop­ing mur­der rate. It seem that with the best efforts of the secu­ri­ty forces and the rel­a­tive­ly inane lead­er­ship of his National secu­ri­ty Minister no one has any idea how to stop the bleed­ing literally.

When The Police Are Constrained Crime Increases Placing The Lives Of Everyone In Jeopardy

On Monday some­one asked me on a social media plat­form what I would do dif­fer­ent­ly if it was my job to bring crime to man­age­able lev­els. I had no time to respond in a way which would have made sense on that plat­form giv­en the time I had. So I referred him to my web­site, I did so not because I need­ed the hits but because over the years I have artic­u­lat­ed a raft of ideas which must be addressed if we are to gain con­trol of crime.

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/

Many crit­ics have said some of my pro­pos­als can­not work because of Jamaican laws.
To those I ask who made the laws?
Most of the Nation’s laws were made at a time when peo­ple weren’t gun­ning down groups of peo­ple, or slit­ting the throats of infants.
They are archa­ic , out­dat­ed and they sim­ply have no deter­rent effect. They need to go.

REPEAL AND REPLACE THE INDECOM ACT: Part 2.

There can be no place in the search for solu­tions where police are poor­ly trained, poor­ly super­vised, poor­ly sup­port­ed and are allowed to go out and kill peo­ple indiscriminately.

I have no inter­est in spend­ing my time debat­ing the fore­gone so I high­light­ed it just for that reason.
Many Jamaicans can harken back to the days when 300 homi­cides annu­al­ly was a ter­ri­fy­ing propo­si­tion for us . Today the small Island of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple expe­ri­ence between 1000 and 1600 annu­al­ly. Our police force had many prob­lems not the least of which was Corruption♦ Poor-train­ing♦ Poor super­vi­sion♦ Unlawful Political inter­fer­ence♦ Pathetic lead­er­ship♦ Poor remu­ner­a­tions♦ Lack of respect for our offi­cers♦ Lack of respect for the rule of law and a range of oth­er problems.

What the Island need­ed then was lead­er­ship and a decid­ed pol­i­cy of non-tol­er­ance toward crime and those who com­mit them. As a police offi­cer then I absolute­ly thought that 300 homi­cides annu­al­ly was way too much and that it rep­re­sent­ed a par­a­digm shift which if not addressed would lead to where we are today . Guess what we are there.
Instead of invest­ing heav­i­ly in mod­ern­iz­ing our police depart­ment the polit­i­cal class made the deci­sion to take the coun­try in a dif­fer­ent direction.
They gut­ted the police force , using some mem­bers as their per­son­al gophers , removed fund­ing for detec­tive train­ing while expo­nen­tial­ly work­ing to facil­i­tate the gar­ri­son culture.

Despite the tremen­dous harm both polit­i­cal par­ties did to the Police depart­ment and by exten­sion our country,the sin­gle great­est crime enhance­ment step ever tak­en in our nation’s his­to­ry was the cre­ation of INDECOM as an over­sight agency to mon­i­tor the JDF /​JCF/​and the Corrections department.
Jamaica’s crim­i­nals are no fools , many are incred­i­bly smart young men who decid­ed on a life of crime after real­iz­ing that the penal­ty for crim­i­nal behav­ior is so insignif­i­cant that not engag­ing in it is almost silly.
Many have attend­ed some of the most pres­ti­gious high schools these are young men who could be any­thing they put their minds to giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty. It is no won­der how­ev­er that each year more and more exec­u­tive posi­tions both in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors are being filled by women . Simply put Jamaica’s young women are going to schools , young men are leav­ing and enter­ing the lucra­tive busi­ness of crime.

One thing is cer­tain the much bal­ly­hooed mod­ern­iza­tion of the police depart­ment has not done a darn thing to change any­thing for the bet­ter if the actions of the offi­cers on the streets and the crime sta­tis­tics are any­thing to go by.
Before the Island begin to bend the arc of crime, it must come to a point of “no mas” the infa­mous quote of a beat­en Roberto Duran as Sugar Ray Leonard pep­pered him with unan­swered blows on November 25, 1980 .

Like a dope addict who ulti­mate­ly comes to the real­iza­tion that the next nee­dle up his arm will be his last and says “I need help” . The Island can get to that space, or it can con­tin­ue with the bull­shit nar­ra­tive that it is a nation on the cusp of first world sta­tus if only it con­tin­ue to pretend.
Jamaica can con­tin­ue to pre­tend it is actu­al­ly on a path to pros­per­i­ty or it can rec­og­nize that with a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 2.8 mil­lion people,it con­tin­ues to have a high homi­cide rate (36÷100,000), which places it among the high­est (per capi­ta) nation­al homi­cide rates in the world.
It is esti­mat­ed that because of youth crime, Jamaica los­es US$4.3 mil­lion in poten­tial invest­ment each year while a fur­ther US$95 mil­lion, which would flow into Jamaica through tourism, goes else­where. The Island also spends more than US$529 mil­lion (J$46.5 bil­lion) every year as a direct pub­lic and pri­vate cost to fight crime.

As I have said before in numer­ous arti­cles the coun­try did not get to this stage in a day and it will take much time to reverse what is hap­pen­ing in our coun­try today.
We can­not reverse peo­ple fight­ing our police offi­cers in a day but we can put in place seri­ous penal­ties for assault­ing our police officers.
We can put in place seri­ous penal­ties for police offi­cers who step out­side the laws to abuse and kill peo­ple unjustly.

We can invest in the cre­ation of an inves­tiga­tive bureau which is staffed with well trained offi­cers of integri­ty, while leg­is­lat­ing real penal­ties for vio­lent crimes.
We can reverse the pol­i­cy of jail­ing pre­di­al thieves, putting them instead to work clean­ing up our Cities and towns or work­ing for their vic­tims as pay­ment for their crimes.
This will free up prison spaces for vio­lent felons.
We can begin an edu­ca­tion cam­paign to get adults to respect the rule of law while telling them what the penal­ties are for offending .

Most impor­tant­ly repeal the INDECOM act now !!!!!
Assign the INDECOM bud­get, and the Public defend­er’s bud­get to train­ing and equip­ping the police depart­ment, improv­ing the office of DPP and hir­ing more judges from the pros­e­cu­tion side of the fence.
Most impor­tant­ly is truth in sen­tenc­ing for vio­lent crimes . Truth in sen­tenc­ing must come after a total revamp­ing of the penal­ties for vio­lent penal­ties and replac­ing them with life with­out parole where applicable.

To my friend who asked what I would do , I did not answer you because I do not have time to back and forth on social media . If the Government , any Government is seri­ous about deal­ing with those blood thirsty crim­i­nals this is how it will be done . It will not be achieved by pussy-foot­ing around and treat­ing crim­i­nals with def­er­ence. It will be accom­plished when we adopt a zero tol­er­ance pol­i­cy toward crim­i­nal­i­ty in this a zero sum game.

A young mem­ber of the Jamaica Defence Force told Robert Montague the Minister of National Security , if he should take on a gun­man who threat­ens him with a weapon he will have to face INDECOM with attor­neys for up to four years.

Montague said the mat­ter was brought into focus last night as he gave a moti­va­tion­al talk to a group of sol­diers head­ing to St. James to help con­tain crime there, accord­ing to Jamaican media. It’s impor­tant to under­stand the con­text in which the sol­dier made his views known to the minister.
The Island is awash in crime , mur­der is on a con­stant north­ward spi­ral and author­i­ties have not demon­strat­ed they pos­sess the balls to do what is nec­es­sary to fix the problem.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​2​7​7​971 – 2/

Responding to the sol­dier’s com­ment the clue­less Montague respond­ed Quote:
“I am one who is a sup­port­er of INDECOM, I am one who believes that we still can work hard­er to get the police fatal shoot­ings down, but there comes a time when the cir­cum­stances dic­tate: when the State is threat­ened, the State has to respond in like manner.”

Many of my PNP read­ers will sali­vate at the fact that I refer to Montague as clue­less. The Laborites will do what they always do cas­ti­gate and label me a PNP shill, as if I care.
Montague showed utter igno­rance of what polic­ing entails in respond­ing to the sol­dier’s con­cern by argu­ing that when the state is threat­ened it has to respond in like manner.

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

Each and every mem­ber of the secu­ri­ty forces have a respon­si­bil­i­ty over and above all else to pro­tect their own lives. They owe it to them­selves and their fam­i­lies to return home after every shift.
Even though they oper­ate as agents of the state, their bod­ies are not the prop­er­ty of the state. An attack on any of them must be seen as an attack on the state, but over and above that each attack on a mem­ber of the secu­ri­ty forces is an indi­vid­ual attack which must be dealt with individually.
Use of force has to be weighed by each offi­cer so forced . It must com­port with Jamaican law and should also square with that offi­cers moral com­pass. Use of force must be with­in the remit of the indi­vid­ual offi­cer which is enshrined in Jamaican law and the JCF’s use of force policy.
That is why the col­lec­tive label­ing of all police shoot­ings as extra judi­cial killings, is lan­guage of crim­i­nals and their sup­port­ers and not that of intel­li­gent informed people.
As the author­i­ties dither and con­tin­ue the embrace of pre­ten­tious pos­tures and poli­cies of advanced soci­eties the bul­let rid­dled bod­ies con­tin­ue to pile up.

WAR ON JAMAICAN POLICE FOR DOING THEIR JOBS:

Remarkably, it took a sol­dier, and a young one at that, to artic­u­late what most past and present cops and many well think­ing Jamaicans already knew . That the INDECOM law is a shack­le and a crime enhance­ment law.
This writer have been sound­ing that alarm since it’s inception.
Ironically it is not the mem­bers of the Jamaica Defense Force which faces and deals with the brunt of the crime and the resul­tant dan­ger which comes from enforc­ing the laws it is the police department.
Yet the incom­pe­tent posers who make up the hier­ar­chy of the police force are silent . Silent as Terrence Williams uses the media as a whore seek­ing to extract all she can from a com­pli­ant John. Williams uses the media to under­mine the police depart­ment and the rule of law, in the process empow­er­ing the crim­i­nal under­world and cre­at­ing a fer­tile breed­ing ground for young criminals.

This writer is not opposed to police over­sight. This medi­um was cre­at­ed to pass on what I learned as a police offi­cer so that peo­ple may under­stand their respon­si­bil­i­ties in society.
It was designed to speak out against crime and injus­tice wher­ev­er I see it. Regardless of the offend­er’s sta­tus or station.
What I do under­stand how­ev­er, is that when the laws are slant­ed in sup­port of crim­i­nals, when those in posi­tions of pow­er and influ­ence use those posi­tions to fur­ther the cause of crim­i­nal­i­ty and may­hem we have a problem.
It demon­strates that as a nation Jamaica has a seri­ous crime prob­lem which will only be fixed by peo­ple with balls and determination.
Thus far I have not seen that kind of lead­er­ship in our country.

Western Bureau:

St James, espe­cial­ly the parish cap­i­tal, Montego Bay, is now gripped by fear and anx­i­ety as gun-tot­ing thugs con­tin­ue to wreak mur­der­ous hav­oc, killing and maim­ing with impuni­ty as the parish’s mur­der count races towards 200 since the start of the year.

“I lived through the trib­al war of the 1970s and I have nev­er seen any­thing like this,” a for­mer politi­cian told The Gleaner yes­ter­day short­ly after news broke of anoth­er mur­der in the afflu­ent Ironshore com­mu­ni­ty. “This is past mad­ness! Right now, I am feel­ing so much raw emo­tion that I feel like just scream­ing and bawl­ing out. We can’t take any more of this.”

In yesterday’s inci­dent in Ironshore, which occurred close to the pop­u­lar Blue Diamond Complex, shots report­ed­ly barked for sev­er­al min­utes as gang­sters armed with rifles and hand­guns snuffed out the life of a Glendevon man iden­ti­fied only as ‘Bob’. Several per­sons, who were at the loca­tion, suf­fered non-life-threat­en­ing injuries.

Since the start of this week, there has been a spike in shoot­ings across the parish, result­ing in sev­er­al per­sons being killed. The may­hem is hap­pen­ing despite the cur­rent high-vis­i­bil­i­ty pres­ence of joint police-mil­i­tary patrols across the parish in recent months.

At approx­i­mate­ly 7:20 a.m. on Tuesday, all hell broke loose on Creek Street in down­town Montego Bay when a gun­man opened fire on a bus crammed with school­child­ren. When the shoot­ing sub­sided, it was dis­cov­ered that the dri­ver, Alvin ‘Strive Clarke, had suc­cumbed to mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds. Two stu­dents from MaldonHigh School were left nurs­ing bul­let wounds.

Later in the day, at approx­i­mate­ly 2:00 p.m., stu­dents and teach­ers at the Glendevon Primary School were forced to take cov­er as war­ring fac­tions trad­ed heavy gun­fire for well over half an hour. Based on reports from the com­mu­ni­ty, the shoot­ing was sparked by the killing of a man in the com­mu­ni­ty on Monday night.

There were also oth­er reports of shoot­ings in com­mu­ni­ties such as Norwood, Tucker, Glendevon, Catherine Mount, Tangle River, and the Cambridge area.

In respond­ing to the ongo­ing vio­lence across the parish, Heroy Clarke, the mem­ber of Parliament for Central St James, made an impas­sioned plea to the thugs to lay down their guns and take up their Bibles with a view to putting their lives in God’s hands.

“Remove the guns from your pock­ets and waists and replace them with Bibles so peace can reign again,” urged Clarke. “Also, the lead­er­ship in the com­mu­ni­ties in west­ern Jamaica – pub­lic and pri­vate – must take up the man­tle and step up to the plate and lead from the front, not behind.” Read more here: http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​9​2​3​/​m​o​b​a​y​-​m​a​y​h​e​m​-​t​h​u​g​s​-​w​r​e​a​k​i​n​g​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​o​u​s​-​h​a​v​o​c​-​s​t​-​j​a​m​e​s​-​2​0​1​6​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​c​o​unt

Betty Shelby, the Tulsa police offi­cer who shot and killed Terence Crutcher last week, faces a charge of first-degree manslaugh­ter, Tulsa County District Attorney Stephen Kunzweiler announced Thursday. “In the mat­ter of the death of Terence Crutcher, I deter­mined that the fil­ing of the felony crime of manslaugh­ter in the first degree against Tulsa police offi­cer Betty Shelby is war­rant­ed,” Kunzweiler said. An arrest war­rant has been issued for Shelby, whose attor­ney said she opened fire because she feared Crutcher might have been reach­ing for a weapon. Police failed to find a weapon on Crutcher or in the car. http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​t​e​r​e​n​c​e​-​c​r​u​t​c​h​e​r​-​b​e​t​t​y​-​s​h​e​l​b​y​_​u​s​_​5​7​e​4​4​2​1​9​e​4​b​0​8​d​7​3​b​8​3​0​5​8​4​0​?​s​e​c​t​i​o​n=&

blob:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/0cc6c4bc-0d6c-494b-93a4-b92df69eee5e

Even under the most ideal conditions the job of policing is challenging.
There is a part of every human being which is opposed to losing it’s freedom, even when we consciously know that we are engaging in activities we have no business engaging in.
Given the most ideal hypothetical situation where race, class and other defining characteristics which influences behavior are non-existent, people would still be opposed to receiving a parking ticket from a police officer. And an officer would probably be more inclined to give a ticket to a male who gives him lip over a sweet old lady who doesn’t .

If we reverse that utopi­an sce­nario and put back in the mix , the defin­ing neg­a­tives of racism, clas­sism, dis­re­spect, as a result or racism or clas­sism the dis­ci­pline which is polic­ing becomes far more prob­lem­at­ic for some.
That seem to be the chal­lenge fac­ing police depart­ments across the United States today.
There are var­i­ous rea­sons giv­en for the fright­en­ing killing of Americans by police with­out hard­ly any offi­cer being held account­able. Even when there seem to be glar­ing evi­dence of wrongdoing.

Whether police are killing more peo­ple than years gone by, or we are see­ing more of these con­fronta­tions because of tech­no­log­i­cal advances remains to be defined.
For peo­ple in the black and brown com­mu­ni­ties, the almost dai­ly killings of unarmed peo­ple by police is what they have been com­plain­ing about for decades.
It is impos­si­ble to tell whether police are killing more peo­ple today because police depart­ments are not required to report to fed­er­al author­i­ties just how many peo­ple lose their lives at their hands each year.
Even today there are no legal require­ment for uni­formed report­ing to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Nonetheless pri­vate web­sites and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions are begin­ning to track as much as they can, these killings at the hands of police.

According to Eastern Kentucky University and Author Victor E. Kappeler, Ph.D.

The birth and devel­op­ment of the American police can be traced to a mul­ti­tude of his­tor­i­cal, legal and polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic con­di­tions. The insti­tu­tion of slav­ery and the con­trol of minori­ties, how­ev­er, were two of the more for­mi­da­ble his­toric fea­tures of American soci­ety shap­ing ear­ly polic­ing. Slave patrols and Night Watches, which lat­er became mod­ern police depart­ments, were both designed to con­trol the behav­iors of minori­ties. For exam­ple, New England set­tlers appoint­ed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were found­ed to pro­tect res­i­dents from Native Americans in that fron­tier city, and many south­ern police depart­ments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina devel­oped the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to main­tain the eco­nom­ic order and to assist the wealthy landown­ers in recov­er­ing and pun­ish­ing slaves who essen­tial­ly were con­sid­ered property.

It is impor­tant to con­sid­er these facts when we grap­ple with what we see hap­pen­ing today, even though we have come a long way since the days of slave patrols.
In my native Jamaica some experts have point­ed to the fact that the Jamaica Constabulary Force emerged out of the Morant bay rebellion.
They argue that because the force was cre­at­ed to quell the upris­ing of the oppressed mass­es, present day police still approach the task of polic­ing with the same mindset.
Whether there is truth to both sce­nar­ios or not is not up to me to decide . It’s inter­pre­ta­tion has to be with­in the remit of each and every one of us.

Clearly what is unde­ni­able is the uncon­scious bias­es which informs each offi­cer’s mind­set. Without a doubt, an offi­cer who pulls his/​her weapon in an inner city com­mu­ni­ty and shoots some­one who is unarmed, is informed and influ­enced by pre­con­ceived risks with­in that community.
The bias­es which inform those actions would most cer­tain­ly not be present in an upscale white com­mu­ni­ty. Therein lies the problem.
Within those real­i­ties, not all white offi­cers who end up killing an unarmed black per­son is nec­es­sar­i­ly racist.
In the same way that a Jamaican offi­cer, him­self from the poor­er class, who kills some­one in the ghet­to could rea­son­ably be accused of classism.
It is the per­cep­tion of inher­ent dan­ger, (wrong or right)and in some cas­es lack of respect, which cre­ates the vio­lent con­fronta­tions we see today.

As a young offi­cer patrolling parts of Western Kingston, Arnett Gardens, Waterhouse and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties we con­strued to be dan­ger­ous, my weapon was always at the ready. The same was not true when I patrolled Cherry Gardens and Norbrook.
I was not against peo­ple liv­ing in the inner city com­mu­ni­ties. I was just mind­ful that I was a lot more like­ly to be shot in those com­mu­ni­ties than I was in Cherry Gardens and Norbrook.

Black and brown peo­ple in America’s urban areas com­plain about aggres­sive and even oppres­sive police tac­tics in their com­mu­ni­ties. The police say they are mere­ly arrest­ing peo­ple where crimes are being committed.
There are ele­ments of truth to both arguments .
According to the Washington post .

Whites were about 45 per­cent more like­ly than blacks to sell drugs in 1980, accord­ing to an analy­sis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth by econ­o­mist Robert Fairlie. This was con­sis­tent with a 1989 sur­vey of youth in Boston. My own analy­sis of data from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 6.6 per­cent of white ado­les­cents and young adults (aged 12 to 25) sold drugs, com­pared to just 5.0 per­cent of blacks (a 32 per­cent difference).

This part­ly reflects racial dif­fer­ences in the drug mar­kets in black and white com­mu­ni­ties. In poor black neigh­bor­hoods, drugs tend to be sold out­doors, in the open. In white neigh­bor­hoods, by con­trast, drug trans­ac­tions typ­i­cal­ly hap­pen indoors, often between friends and acquain­tances. If you sell drugs out­side, you’re much more like­ly to get caught. Rothwell’s num­bers shoot some holes into some oft-repeat­ed drug war­rior talk­ing points: that peo­ple don’t get arrest­ed for non­vi­o­lent drug crime as much as they used to (false), and that legal­iz­ing and decrim­i­nal­iz­ing cer­tain drugs won’t mag­i­cal­ly solve racial dis­par­i­ties in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem true but it could help.

Essentially, police arrest peo­ple where they see crimes being com­mit­ted in the open.This usu­al­ly leaves the false per­cep­tion that there is mar­gin­al, or no crime in upscale neighborhoods.
The prison pop­u­la­tions shows the dis­par­i­ties and so are the crim­i­nal records of many inner city residents.
Years ago, police in my upstate city of Poughkeepsie patrolled on bikes and walked the streets inter­act­ing with busi­ness own­ers like myself on a per­son­al basis.
The city was able to claw it’s way back from the throes of drug infes­ta­tion and gun vio­lence, result­ing in a burst of new busi­ness­es and occu­pan­cy of build­ings which were once shut­tered, ren­der­ing the city a ver­i­ta­ble ghost town.
We prac­ti­cal­ly knew the names of all of the cops on the department.

All of a sud­den the foot and bike patrols dis­s­a­peared, in their place were cops in cruis­ers glar­ing at peo­ple as if they are aliens.
I asked sev­er­al offi­cers with whom I had become friends over the years,“what hap­pened to com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing”? To a man they all said they were told to write tick­ets and enforce qual­i­ty of life offences.
In oth­er words stop being so darn friend­ly. Community rela­tions be damned what we need are arrests.
Today , save for one Lieutenant on the depart­ment who goes out of his way to be what a police offi­cer should, I have no idea who the peo­ple we pay to police our city are.
That kind of polic­ing is a two-edged sword as experts have said , it cre­ates a chasm between police and the com­mu­ni­ties they are sup­posed to serve. It is prob­lem­at­ic when peo­ple see the peo­ple they pay to pro­tect them as occu­py­ing forces there to oppress and keep them in line.
It is a prob­lem when offi­cers come from out­side the com­mu­ni­ties in which they work and act as over­seers to those com­mu­ni­ties , mak­ing deter­mi­na­tions on their own how they decide to treat people.

A cou­ple days ago I drove west­er­ly on main street in my city of Poughkeepsie. Back on some of the cor­ners are some of the very things which result­ed in the demise of the city years ago. Young men stand­ing around at all times of the day , it does not require a great deal of thought to fig­ure out what they are doing on those corners.
These groups did not con­gre­gate dur­ing the foot and bike patrol days. The short-sight­ed approach of polic­ing from afar will yield seri­ous con­se­quences for my city and it has for count­less oth­er cities which have cre­at­ed mil­i­taries out of local law enforce­ment agen­cies result­ing in adver­sar­i­al rela­tion­ships with the com­mu­ni­ties they are sup­posed to serve.

An ill-informed polit­i­cal can­di­date run­ning for pres­i­dent can argue for stop and frisk as a strat­e­gy to con­tain crime out of igno­rance. It is how­ev­er dan­ger­ous tone-deaf­ness to con­tin­ue to ignore the cries of the oppressed which will have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences going forward.

Speaking after the verdict in the St Andrew Criminal court sentencing of Reverend Al Miller to one year in prison or a one million dollar fine , longtime clergyman Herro Blair said the following .

“We will have to rethink our posi­tions. We will have to reassess what we have done and what we will do because before such actions are tak­en by us as pas­tors, we will have to decide, is this worth it?”

Blair spoke to the long­stand­ing coöper­a­tion which exist­ed between the Clergy and police in get­ting want­ed crim­i­nals to sur­ren­der to police peace­ful­ly. He lament­ed that because of the indict­ment and con­vic­tion of Al Miller it was nec­es­sary to rethink this long­stand­ing coöperation.

I sub­mit it is not nec­es­sary to rethink any­thing except that it is not a good idea to break our nation’s laws.
Al Miller was found guilty in July of attempt­ing to per­vert the course of justice.

There is much to dis­cuss in the com­ments of Bishop Herro Blair a man for whom I had some respect . To begin with, that one errant mem­ber of the cloth was indict­ed and con­vict­ed for breach­ing the sacred trust which exist­ed between police and cler­gy, it in no way de-legit­imized the process or cre­ates a need for reassessment.
It is a wake­up call to mem­bers of the cler­gy and indeed the legal fra­ter­ni­ty to rec­og­nize that they are not above the nation ‘s laws.

The fact that this process bore fruit for all involved for lit­er­al­ly decades, is tes­ti­mo­ny that it is a worth­while process which should be nur­tured not reassessed.
One drip does not a levy breach make. Al Miller took it upon him­self to push the enve­lope and he got caught. As cit­i­zens , each and every Jamaican has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to obey and uphold the laws . As reli­gious lead­ers , mem­bers of the cler­gy bear a greater bur­den sole­ly on the mer­its that they took unto them­selves the mantra of leadership .
Shirking those respon­si­bil­i­ties dimin­ish­es what­ev­er bona fides the cler­gy has, it dimin­ish­es the good works Jesus charged reli­gious lead­ers to engage in.

THE VALUE OF.…. “IN”
Said Bishop Herro Blair.…

“I sat there today [in court yes­ter­day] and I felt that that could have been me, and that should have been me because I had lit­er­al­ly [the] first option to take him [Coke] in,”

It could only have been you Bishop Blair, if you failed to adhere to sim­ple adhered to rules and estab­lished protocols.
Instead of bemoan­ing Millers plight as a now con­vict­ed felon, it is impor­tant that you Bishop Herro Blair inform your­self that the rea­son we are hav­ing this dis­cus­sion is because the rev­erend Al Miller failed in one word which had seri­ous con­se­quences for him.
“In”
The Reverend Al Miller failed to rec­og­nize the seri­ous­ness of the word “in” with­in the con­text of what he took on himself.

Had Al Miller shown enough respect for Jamaican law, by telling Christopher dud­dus Coke that he had no author­i­ty to shut­tle him away from Jamaican author­i­ties , he would not now have a felony con­vic­tion on his record.
Had Al Miller told Coke in no uncer­tain terms, that regard­less of fears he may suf­fer the same fate as his father Jim Brown, he had no author­i­ty to bypass Jamaican law-enforce­ment author­i­ties, he would not be a con­vict­ed felon today.
Had Al Miller sim­ply turned Christopher Coke “in” to Jamaican author­i­ties there would have been no problem.

Al Miller gam­bled against Jamaican law in his quest to acqui­esce to the con­cerns of a want­ed hood­lum and he lost.
Let this be a les­son going for­ward , that no one is above the laws.
This should be a les­son for all . From Jamaica house through the Supreme Court ‚all the way to Grass yard.
The laws apply to all ‚not just a few poor duty fut peo­ple down there.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Reverend Merrick ‘Al’ Miller was a short while ago fined one mil­lion dol­lars or serve 12 months in prison when he appeared in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court. Miller was on July 22 con­vict­ed for per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice when he appeared before Parish Judge Simone Wolf Reece. The cler­gy­man was arrest­ed and charged in July 2010 after then fugi­tive Christopher “Dudus” Coke was cap­tured in a sport util­i­ty vehi­cle that he was dri­ving along the Mandela Highway in St Catherine.

“Dudus”, who was want­ed by United States law enforce­ment author­i­ties on drugs and gun charges, lat­er waived his right to an extra­di­tion hear­ing and was tak­en to the United States where he was con­vict­ed and is now serv­ing time in prison :Read more here .http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Al-Miller-fined-J-1‑m

Many years ago while I was sta­tioned at the Constant Spring Police Station there was a par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual who went by the name “Man-Saw”. I can­not recall his giv­en name at this point , much water has passed under the bridge.

Man-Saw who oper­at­ed in the Grant’s Pen Gully area was want­ed by us for his alleged involve­ment in sev­er­al cas­es of sex­u­al assaults and shoot­ings. To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion none of the alleged shoot­ings result­ed in harm to anyone.
They were most­ly instances where he fired a weapon at peo­ple but did not hit them.
It’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that at that time in the ear­ly nineties there was no police sta­tion in Grant’s Pen.
At the time it appeared that Man-Saw real­ly want­ed to scare the peo­ple who were opposed to his crim­i­nal­i­ty. From the reports we received he seemed more inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing a name for him­self but did not seem over­ly inter­est­ed in actu­al­ly killing anyone.

Nevertheless , this assess­ment in no way made him less of a threat than any oth­er crim­i­nal with a gun, at least not to me nor most of the oth­er offi­cers who worked at the Constant Spring CIB at the time. We want­ed him off the streets and we want­ed him gone in a hur­ry. We cul­ti­vat­ed good sources through­out the Constant Spring Police area .
I was per­son­al­ly able to get real­ly good intel­li­gence from con­tacts in the com­mu­ni­ty for three rea­sons. (1) My moth­er resided in the com­mu­ni­ty, she was well known and regard­ed . (2) I had per­son­al­ly cul­ti­vat­ed sev­er­al sources with­in the com­mu­ni­ty using dif­fer­ent tools I had at my dis­pos­al. (3) Along with oth­er ded­i­cat­ed offi­cers I had demon­stra­bly done good mea­sur­able work in the com­mu­ni­ty in remov­ing crim­i­nals from the streets.

Condensing those com­po­nents we were able to fig­ure out real quick who did what where and when. Unavoidably I devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion as a no-non­sense cop who could be trust­ed and could be depend­ed upon to quick­ly remove unde­sir­ables from their community .
Many peo­ple who want­ed to pass on infor­ma­tion to me would go sit on my mom’s veran­dah , pass on what they knew , which got to me right away.
The val­ue of the suc­cess­es we were able to extract from those rela­tion­ships are immea­sur­able , and were invaluable.

FEELING DECEIVED

One after­noon I was dri­ving my pri­vate car down Shortwood dri­ve when an elder­ly lady aggres­sive­ly waved her arms demand­ing that I stop.
I did not par­tic­u­lar­ly know the lady by name or even by face . However she knew me by name. As soon as I pulled over she walked up and leaned into my car through the pas­sen­ger win­dow . She com­menced telling me just how dis­s­a­point­ed she was in me for col­lect­ing mon­ey in order to release Man-Saw after I was able to catch him.. . She told me it was­n’t just her who knew about what went down, many peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty knew as well. She even pro­ceed­ed to tell me that I had received $4.000 in order to allow Man-Saw to go free.
I was stunned , it appeared that the only per­son who did not know about the dubi­ous trans­ac­tion was me.
I told the lady that her dis­ap­point­ment was real­ly flat­ter­ing in a weird way yet mis­placed, as I had no idea what she was talk­ing about .
I promised her that I would get to the bot­tom of it and that I would absolute­ly ingra­ti­ate myself back into her good graces.
There were three cours­es of action that I had to take immediately.
(1) Warn my boss Detective Inspector Noël Asphall, that some­one in the Office had bro­ken our sacred trust.
(2) Immediately find out who was involved .
(3) Most impor­tant­ly bring Man-Saw in off the streets.
It was always going to be eas­i­er to accom­plish the for­mer than the lat­ter so I got to work to seek out my sources. I under­stood how news got around in the ghet­to, peo­ple hear some­thing and the ascribe respon­si­bil­i­ty to the offi­cer they know best.
It did not take long for me to hear exact­ly which offi­cer among us had actu­al­ly caught ser­i­al rapist and gun­man Man-Saw and had col­lect­ed $4.000 and turned him loose back onto the community.
Detective Inspector Noël Asphall was a no-non­sense mid-lev­el super­vi­sor . That offi­cer was imme­di­ate­ly removed from our midst and word was imme­di­ate­ly cir­cu­lat­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty that he was the culprit.
My good name was restored .
Not long after that we nabbed Man ‑Saw . He told us that on many occa­sions when we came to seek him out he was able to see us and escape using the zinc fences which adorned both sides of Shortwood drive.

Much of what we see on social media today hap­pen­ing to law-enforce­ment in our coun­try can be placed at the feet of police offi­cers themselves.
However it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that we rec­og­nize what pol­i­tics has done in the process to hol­low out the inves­tiga­tive com­po­nent from the Jamaica Constabulary Force, ren­der­ing it use­less and impotent.
The lead­er­ship of the JCF , arguably much more edu­cat­ed than 2 – 3 decades ago, is demon­stra­bly less effec­tive, more timid, and at it’s core fun­da­men­tal­ly incompetent.
As a result of police cor­rup­tion and mis­con­duct the polit­i­cal class in cahoots with their spe­cial inter­est friends from Mona and oth­er parts of upper Saint Andrew gave the Island Terrence Williams and INDECOM.
Resources which went into the cre­ation and main­te­nance of a sep­a­rate Government agency which gen­er­ates no mea­sur­able return on invest­ment should have been spent on effec­tive­ly updat­ing the inves­tiga­tive capa­bil­i­ties of the JCF .
This would have guar­an­teed remark­able return on invest­ments for the Jamaican tax­pay­ers, in high­er clear-up rates of seri­ous felonies. The removal of seri­ous offend­ers from the streets. It would also have low­ered crime to lev­els which would have seen marked increas­es in invest­ment as a result of low­er crime num­bers and greater investor confidence.

Any Economic Recovery Must Begin With Suffocating The Crime Monster…

Instead they went to their default instinct, which was to do what they could to serve their nar­row­est polit­i­cal inter­est . That was to cre­ate anoth­er gov­ern­ment agency to gum up the works, staff it with known anti-police antag­o­nists and hope the Police will once and for all be neutered and ren­dered unable to inves­ti­gate it’s way out of a brown paper bag.
Check-mate !!!
The unin­tend­ed con­se­quence of this is high mur­der fig­ures. A pop­u­la­tion which has zero respect for the rule of law.
The major­i­ty with­in the pop­u­la­tion who are bla­tant­ly dis­re­spect­ful of law-enforce­ment are woe­ful­ly inca­pable of under­stand­ing the val­ue good effec­tive law enforce­ment brings to the qual­i­ty of their lives.
The cumu­la­tive con­se­quences of this, is no growth on the low­er end and at best lethar­gic uptick in growth but not enough to make life bet­ter for the 2.8 mil­lion cit­i­zens of the coun­try. Not to men­tion the inabil­i­ty of cit­i­zens to grow and pros­per, or the more detri­men­tal dai­ly loss of life and treasure.
The present Government is now report­ed­ly inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing a cor­rup­tion Czar. Yet anoth­er lawyer to big gov­ern­ment. The Administration has final­ly come to the real­iza­tion that there can be no worth­while eco­nom­ic growth unless crime and cor­rup­tion is effec­tive­ly con­strained and eliminated.
We point­ed this out in arti­cle above on March 1^st after the Labor par­ty won the elections.
Much of where the Island is today as it relates to crime is anoth­er unin­tend­ed con­se­quence of the mis­placed pri­or­i­ties of the Bruce Golding admin­is­tra­tion in cre­at­ing INDECOM as well as the cor­rup­tion and decades of PNP will­ful dec­i­ma­tion of the police department.

In the mean­time the Island con­tin­ue to won­der what is the solu­tion to the spi­ralling mur­der rate. Of course the incom­pe­tence of the Police high com­mand bears some respon­si­bil­i­ty for it . Nevertheless their share of the respon­si­bil­i­ty pales in com­par­i­son to the con­tri­bu­tion of both polit­i­cal par­ties in cre­at­ing the envi­ron­ment of law­less­ness which exists today.
The police can do bet­ter in a lot of areas. It can ask for laws which bound peo­ple pulled over to sit in their cars while the police write citations.
This sim­ple law would great­ly reduce the like­li­hood of con­fronta­tion between police and the pub­lic and great­ly increase offi­cer safety.
We would not have upstarts who break the road traf­fic laws push­ing their bod­ies and cell-phones into police cruis­ers. Again that goes to the qual­i­ty of the offi­cers these days.
Much of it may be attrib­ut­able to the incom­pe­tence and cow­ardice of the lead­er­ship of the police department.
Stalwarts like Anthony Hewitt must be turn­ing in their graves . Happy birth­day Tony Hewitt.
Let the hand wring­ing over for­eign agents in Jamaica begin.

I generally don’t want to laugh , but really?
This bit of news coming out of the Jamaican court system, actually made me laugh like hell really.
I mean Tom Tavares Finson is a decent guy , I really like Tom , I wish this little bit of courtroom drama was involving someone other than Tom.
However it goes exactly to what I wrote just a day ago.

FBI To Set Up Shop In Jamaica: Was Only A Matter Of Time .…..

It was just yes­ter­day that I wrote that the Federal Bureau of Investigations and ATF would be oper­at­ing out of the US Embassy in Kingston, in pre­vi­ous arti­cles I also spoke to the fact that US Federal Agents were in fact observ­ing court pro­ceed­ings on the Island .
The take-away from these devel­op­ments is that there sim­ply is an absent of trust on the part of the Americans in the abil­i­ty or will­ing­ness of the Jamaican courts sys­tem to deliv­er jus­tice to criminals.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​p​r​o​t​e​c​t​i​n​g​-​i​n​t​e​r​e​s​t​-​w​a​t​c​h​i​n​g​-​s​c​a​m​m​i​n​g​-​e​x​t​r​a​d​i​t​i​o​n​-​r​e​q​u​e​s​t​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​c​o​u​rt/

The sound you hear com­ing out of the court­room is from the chat­ter­ing of the teeth of the lit­tle grung gads who have destroyed the jus­tice sys­tem, reduc­ing it to a sham and and a joke.
I am sor­ry Tom is dis­com­bob­u­lat­ed about being pho­tographed, don’t wor­ry Tom if you are clean you are clean indeed you have noth­ing to wor­ry about.
The prospect of a for­eign pow­er in Jamaica observ­ing the sys­tem because it is so cor­rupt ought to send a chill down the spine of all Jamaican nation­als. However as I have allud­ed to over the months and years it was bound to hap­pen , made pos­si­ble by the same self-impor­tant deci­sion mak­ers who brought our coun­try to this.
These peo­ple who shield­ed crim­i­nals and destroyed our jus­tice sys­tem are the bane of our country…

The next event will not be the chat­ter of teeth and fear­ful glances they will be piss­ing their pants .
Clean up in isle Half way Tree please.

Jamaican attor­ney Tom Tavares-Finson today com­plained to a judge that he was video­taped by American law enforce­ment per­son­nel out­side the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court two months ago.

Tavares-Finson, said the film­ing hap­pened on July 28 fol­low­ing a hear­ing into the extra­di­tion case of five Jamaicans want­ed by America on lot­tery scam­ming charges. At the resump­tion of the mat­ter in court today sought to know why. “Can I know why I was being video­taped and can I have a copy of the tape?” the attor­ney asked.

“They don’t need to video­tape me… dem can just Google my name and they will see my pic­tures,” said Tavares-Finson, who is also the President of the Jamaican Senate. Parish Judge Vaughn Smith said while he could not deter­mine whether the com­plaint was true, he found it “curi­ous” for the Americans to be video­tap­ing Tavares-Finson.

Senior Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Jeremy Taylor appeared sur­prised by the com­plaint. “It’s the first I am hear­ing that,” said Taylor, who also revealed that the Americans have already left the island. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​9​1​2​/​t​a​v​a​r​e​s​-​f​i​n​s​o​n​-​c​l​a​i​m​s​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​l​a​w​-​e​n​f​o​r​c​e​m​e​n​t​-​o​f​f​i​c​i​a​l​-​v​i​d​e​o​t​a​p​e​d​-​him

As the spate of killings con­tin­ue Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams has vowed to find the killers of a nine-month-old girl, her 25-year-old moth­er and a 62-year-old man in Annotto Bay, St Mary.
I have to admit I have tuned out the com­mis­sion­er and prob­a­bly won’t be inter­est­ed in any of his pro­nounce­ments until he brings dup­py film to jus­tice for killing two police offi­cers at poor man’s cor­ner in St Thomas rough­ly nine months ago.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​w​o​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​m​e​n​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​c​i​v​i​l​i​a​n​-​i​n​j​u​r​e​d​-​i​n​-​d​r​i​v​e​-​b​y​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​s​t​-​t​h​o​m​as/

I was pret­ty con­vinced that Commissioner Carl Williams had no means of deliv­er­ing on his words to leave no stones un-turned after the vicious killer sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed two police offi­cers for no rea­son oth­er than that they were police officers..
At the time the com­mis­sion­er made the state­ment I thought to myself, “he is say­ing it because it sounds good and that’s all”.  It sound­ed good to him to say it for the ben­e­fit of the slain offi­cers fam­i­lies . But I found it nau­se­at­ing that he would utter them know­ing full well that he had no inten­tion of fol­low­ing on his words to deliv­er for the two bereaved families.

The prob­lem is not that the JCF lacks the abil­i­ty to find these mon­sters , it was­n’t 25 years ago when I was a young offi­cer there. The dif­fer­ence between this com­mis­sion­er of police and oth­ers of the past is that he has no balls , He is a wimp and a coward.
Carl Williams has demon­strat­ed an abject fail­ure of lead­er­ship . He has offered no clar­i­ty of pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dure to the young offi­cers on the beat.
He has been a total cow­ard , in essence Carl Williams has been like a bat­tered kid pet­ri­fied of a local school-yard bul­ly. That lit­tle bul­ly is Terrence Williams .
Like every bul­ly Williams is an inse­cure lit­tle man who des­per­ate­ly seeks approval.
Generally, ten­den­cies like those dis­played by Terrence Williams can eas­i­ly be fixed by blood­y­ing the bul­ly’s nose .
Carl Williams won’t be the one to do it , too afraid he’ll be hit even hard­er if he throws a punch, a punch which could down the lit­tle bul­ly but could also elic­it an even more severe beat­ing . Commissioner Carl Williams allows him­self to be beat­en with­out fight­ing back because he is sim­ply afraid of Terrence Williams.

Unfortunately , when the police com­mis­sion­er punks out, it does noth­ing to him every­one knows he is a punk, (not the term I real­ly want to use);
But his lack of tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude embold­ens crim­i­nals, increas­es the per­cep­tion that police offi­cers are afraid of INDECOM and places the lives and safe­ty of young rank and file cops at risk.

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME !

Over the years it has become clear that Jamaica lacks the will to put real crim­i­nals in Jail,. Administrations of both polit­i­cal par­ties have enhanced the decline of the Police depart­ment as a strat­e­gy which would make sure that the sin­gu­lar inves­tiga­tive agency tasked with bring­ing crim­i­nals to jus­tice would be a paper tiger, or worse an embar­rass­ment as a law-enforce­ment agency.
Additionally both polit­i­cal par­ties have stoked the embers of anti-police sen­ti­ments and added the accaler­ant which has result­ed in the infer­no of law­less­ness which has been sweep­ing the Island for years.
The icing on the cake was the cre­ation of INDECOM which cement­ed the lie that the police is use­less because they are corrupt.
Of course there are many cor­rupt cops and have been for decades .
The fact is how­ev­er, that the polit­i­cal class cre­at­ed the cor­rup­tion with­in the police depart­ment, by effec­tive­ly hol­low­ing out what­ev­er capa­bil­i­ties it had to inves­ti­gate, as insur­ance the depart­ment would nev­er have the abil­i­ty to put them in prison for their crimes.

In one of the most recent arti­cles I wrote I spoke to the ever increas­ing inter-con­nect­ed nature of our plan­et and the way it will affect all of the earth­’s peo­ple going forward.
That assess­ment has been val­i­dat­ed in an announce­ment in the Jamaican media that the Federal Bureau of Investigations will be set­ting up offices in Kingston along with the the Bureau of Alcohol, tobac­co, and firearms.
Yup it was only a mat­ter of time .
Over the years this writer have talked about the fail­ure of the Jamaican Government of (both polit­i­cal par­ties). Detailing how they have con­tributed to crime rather than work toward the elim­i­na­tion of it.
I hate to say I told you so but I did !
It was nev­er about the guns flood­ing into the Island , but the inces­sant stream of funds stream­ing out of the United States. It was not going to be allowed to continue .

BIG DEAL
As vice President Joe Biden once said to President Obama “this is a big f******g deal”.. It actu­al­ly is, for the first time a for­eign police agency will pub­licly be set­ting up shop on the Island .
There are no if”s and or buts about why this is hap­pen­ing Americans are being scammed out of their liveli­hoods and the Jamaican author­i­ties are either unwill­ing or inca­pable of stop­ping it.
The lot­to-scam has been going on for years .A select com­mit­tee of the United States Senate heard evi­dence years ago on it.
This is the result.
As was report­ed in this medi­um recent­ly American law-enforce­ment agen­cies have been attend­ing court pro­ceed­ings on the Island as observers, in cas­es in which the United States has an interest.
I can hard­ly wait to hear from the loud­mouths who con­stant­ly pon­tif­i­cate about Nationalism and sov­er­eign­ty . Most impor­tant­ly I want to hear from the so-called con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyers , you know the lit­tle grung gads inna jume­ka, you know them .They have strength for local police because of com­mis­sion­er Carl Williams , but guar­an­teed the lit­tle self impor­tant mouth­pieces will have noth­ing to say regard­ing the oper­a­tions of either American Federal Agency, and nei­ther will the lit­tle school­yard bul­ly Terrence Williams…

A problem is not a problem unless the people exposed to it believe it to be.
This is as true as the fact that an addict cannot be effectively helped until he/​she recognizes that he/​she has a problem and reaches out for help.

I am remind­ed of a graph­ic I saw some time ago , it depict­ed a man, the palm of one hand cup­ping one cheek, the oth­er hold­ing a gar­den hose water pour­ing from it into a per­fo­rat­ed laun­dry bas­ket. No soon­er that the water entered the bas­ket that it is out, soak­ing the earth and leav­ing a trail which mean­dered like a snake with no place to go.
It occurred to me that the graph­ic could eas­i­ly be used to explain Jamaica’s crime situation.

Jamaicans have always had a knack for the dra­mat­ic. Speaking in for­eign tongues even when they nev­er set foot on an airplane.
Wanting for­eign foods over our own safer more health local­ly pro­duced foods. Choosing for­eign fash­ions and trends over our own immac­u­late­ly tai­lored fashions.And of course tak­ing on oth­er peo­ple’s cus­toms which are imprac­ti­cal for our unique circumstances.
Simply put Jamaicans are ” pre­ten­tious , fake and fal­la fashin.”
Jamaicans are addict­ed to crime, in some sit­u­a­tions they may even be unaware that they are . Fundamentally how­ev­er the poli­cies they sup­port can have no oth­er out­come out­side of the astro­nom­i­cal­ly high mur­der rate the coun­try now experiences.

It is not a prob­lem unless the peo­ple real­ize “hell we do have a prob­lem”!
Until we get to that tip­ping point, the water will keep pour­ing out of the bas­ket and all the rest of us can do is sit with our palm cup­ping our cheeks in dejection.
It is entire­ly the busi­ness of the Jamaican peo­ple to decide the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty they want in their country.
On that basis as long as they con­tin­ue to blind­ly sup­port polit­i­cal par­ties which are mere gangs of crim­i­nals who pil­fer and steal at will and makes it so that they may not be held account­able, then the water flow­ing from the bas­ket is just okay. The blood flow­ing in the streets is just fine, par for the course.
The blood they wash from the side­walks is just anoth­er moment in time to be washed away and dis­s­a­pear for­ev­er as if it was nev­er spilled.

This is now big­ger than the police, we have a nation drunk and addict­ed to the pro­ceeds of crime. A gen­er­a­tion which places no val­ue on the sanc­ti­ty of life.
An immoral , amoral polit­i­cal class which has no shame, no sense of decen­cy , no sense of account­abil­i­ty to those they pur­port to serve.
A moral com­pass so dam­aged it has become clear that the only rule is that there are no rules.

I got a lit­tle heat­ed in an online con­ver­sa­tion recent­ly, one real­ly nice per­son imme­di­ate­ly default­ed to the tired old line that Jamaica’s crime can­not be equat­ed with crime in any oth­er country.
As if the mass killings and rapes are proud­ly Jamaican as our Blue Mountain cof­fee, Usain Bolt, Shelly-Anne, and our oth­er great ath­letes , Reggae music, or our white sandy beaches.
It is the old­est trick in the book . Quantifying, ratio­nal­iz­ing, and mak­ing excus­es for crim­i­nals when we should be seek­ing seri­ous solu­tions to root­ing them from amongst us once and for all.

Don’t ever be fooled into accept­ing the lie that crime is a prod­uct of pover­ty . As I stat­ed to my friend in no uncer­tain terms , some of the poor­est coun­tries have the least crime.
Conversely, I recall anoth­er time in Jamaica when the net worth of each indi­vid­ual was prob­a­bly much less and crime was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less.
Additionally if one is hun­gry one may steal some food , you don’t have the means to own high-pow­ered weapons and an an-unend­ing sup­ply of ammu­ni­tion to snuff out mul­ti­ple lives in mass attacks.
There is more than enough evi­dence that many of the homi­cides are relat­ed to the lot­to scam, in oth­er cas­es they may be traced to peo­ple decid­ing to kill oth­ers for what they have. The remain­der are domes­tic relat­ed . Nothing among those sta­tis­tics shows pover­ty, noth­ing among those stats jus­ti­fies the indis­crim­i­nate mass shed­ding of blood which obtains.

The sim­ple answer to these killings is greed. People want­i­ng to live above their means. Wanting the lat­est fash­ion, pock­ets bulging with cash, huge man­sions, expen­sive cars and the abil­i­ty to do what they want to get even more with­out con­se­quence. Without hav­ing to work for those things.
You know why they do it?
Because they are allowed to !!!

When a delu­sion­al and con­found­ed peo­ple drunk with greed ‚decide to be some­thing they are not, empow­er crim­i­nals , tie the hands of law-enforce­ment, they deserve what they get.
In the mean­time the water con­tin­ue to pour into the bas­ket which has no abil­i­ty to hold it .….….….….……
A smart man learn to scratch amongst the rocks and oth­er debris to find the pre­cious met­als he seek.

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) — Authorities in the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago have frozen the assets of three peo­ple and 75 enti­ties under the anti-ter­ror­ism act.

Attorney General Faris al-Rawi says the High Court recent­ly approved the des­ig­na­tions based on legal sub­mis­sions from his office. The peo­ple and enti­ties were not iden­ti­fied in a state­ment issued by the attor­ney gen­er­al late Thursday.

Trinidad’s gov­ern­ment has now des­ig­nat­ed 80 “ter­ror­ist” enti­ties in the coun­try. The attor­ney gen­er­al says more are expect­ed as a result of inves­ti­ga­tions involv­ing local and inter­na­tion­al agencies.

The US State Department has said that more than 70 nation­als of Trinidad and Tobago are believed to have joined Islamic State and a recent issue of the group’s mag­a­zine fea­tured a fight­er from Trinidad. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/80 — ter­ror­ist – enti­ties-iden­ti­fied-in-T‑T

Newly released body cam footage shows police in Oklahoma pep­per-spray­ing an inno­cent, 84-year-old woman in her own home — after offi­cers chased her son into the house.

The footage of the attack on Geneva Smith emerged Friday, just days after she threat­ened legal action over the vio­lent encounter. Smith said she did noth­ing to pro­voke the spray, and suf­fered a pan­ic attack as she lat­er sat in jail for no appar­ent rea­son. The video, obtained by Fox 23 News, shows Muskogee police offi­cers storm­ing into Smith’s home while search­ing for her son, Arthur Paul Blackmon. Police said the son drove through a stop sign, then ran away from offi­cers and into his mother’s house. In the chaot­ic clip, Smith seems clear­ly con­fused when offi­cers enter her home, search­ing for her son.

An offi­cer even­tu­al­ly shoots the son with a Taser as he appears to hold up his hands. As Smith demands to know what’s going on, an offi­cer lat­er iden­ti­fied as Michelle Casady warns her, “Turn around and face that way, now, or I’ll spray you.” Just moments lat­er, Casady sprays Smith’s face, and the octo­ge­nar­i­an col­laps­es to the ground as she is handcuffed.

Blackmon was charged with dri­ving under the influ­ence, obstruct­ing an offi­cer, dri­ving with a sus­pend­ed license and car­ry­ing a weapon, police said. Smith, mean­while, was not charged with a crime. But offi­cers lat­er said she brought on the spray by fail­ing to com­ply with orders. An attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the city told the Muskogee Phoenix the spray was a rea­son­able use of force “giv­en the total­i­ty of the cir­cum­stances.” The police depart­ment said it is still inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/woman-84-pepper-sprayed-body-cam-video-article‑1.2769941

Former Minister of National Security Peter Bunting told the Jamaica Gleaner ‚that upon tak­ing office in 2012 he tried to revive the probe of a Senior Government offi­cial by the police.
Bunting was speak­ing about the alleged mur­der for hire inves­ti­ga­tions which was being spear-head­ed by Former Scotland Yard Detective, and a then ACP in the JCF Les Green.
The sub­ject of the probe was the JLP ‘s St Thomas MP James Robertson.

Said Bunting…

“I indi­cat­ed to Mr Green that I would sup­port the renew­al of his con­tract and that we would be able to offer pro­tec­tion to the wit­ness­es,” . “In essence, revers­ing the deci­sion the min­istry had tak­en … . But by that time, the wit­ness­es were already spooked,” . “I lat­er wrote to the Police Service Commission express­ing sup­port for the renew­al of Green’s con­tract”. I thought that Mr Green was mak­ing an impor­tant contribution,however, six months into the new con­tract, a frus­trat­ed mis­ter Green decid­ed he could no longer con­tin­ue, bunting told the Gleaner.

In the mean­time the present min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty Robert Mantague has sug­gest­ed he will now ask that the mat­ter be reopened.

This case, loaded with pol­i­tics, and ref­er­ence to crim­i­nal col­lu­sion though stark, is just one case. It is one of many with­in a sys­tem of cor­rup­tion which has per­me­at­ed the Jamaican cul­ture since the Nation start­ed run­ning it’s own affairs.

Everyone knows that the well con­nect­ed in Jamaica are above the laws.
Les Green, set aside his accent, skin col­or and coun­try of ori­gin, was a cop no more no less.
He left over frus­tra­tion with the com­plic­it, cor­rupt sys­tem and every­one is talk­ing about his depar­ture and comments.
Yet every year hun­dreds of police offi­cers born in Jamaica, chat Jumekan , and wear dark skin leave with vol­umes of sto­ry to tell .
What’s the dif­fer­ence with Green speak­ing out? As against our own offi­cers say­ing the very same things for years?
The col­or of his skin!!!!
They were hired to do a job we were quite capa­ble of doing but our Jamaican police offi­cers received no sup­port. The
lead­er­ship was pret­ty hap­py to run to England for help , I’m
Les Green for­mer Acp, JCF .…..

still wait­ing to see the ben­e­fits from those contracts.

The Tivoli Gardens inquiry which the People’s National Party com­mis­sioned to embar­rass it’s adver­sary the JLP, wast­ed hun­dreds of mil­lions of dollars.
The witch-hunt which sought to do more that what was an open and shut case of annex­ing a way­ward com­mu­ni­ty to the rest of the Island was doomed to reveal noth­ing we did not know.
In the same way the lin­ger­ing residue of colo­nial­ist brain­wash­ing influ­enced the hir­ing of Mark Shields, Les Green and Hamish Campbell over the empow­er­ment of our own officers,having David Simmons of Barbados sit in judge­ment in our coun­try reveals the deep root­ed sense of inse­cu­ri­ty and self doubt which still exist in Jamaica despite the out­ward bravado.

Ultimately the Tivoli inquiry start­ed out as this writer said it would be. A drawn-out bull­shit p[aarde of much heat and lit­tle light.
Garnet Roper a Minister of Religion summed up the Commission’s work this way.

We have spent some $300 mil­lion on a com­mis­sion of enquiry that went out of its way to exon­er­ate mem­bers of the polit­i­cal class for their role in those mat­ters. In fact, the only peo­ple that the Tivoli com­mis­sion­ers were pre­pared to blame for the entire episode were the secu­ri­ty forces. The com­mis­sion­ers were par­tic­u­lar­ly sav­age in their find­ings on the mem­bers of the JCF. In fact, there is one par­tic­u­lar offi­cer who, if the com­mis­sion­ers had their way, would have his career end­ed and play no fur­ther role in polic­ing. Their beef with that offi­cer is that he failed to proof­read the state­ment he gave to the com­mis­sion before sign­ing it. The com­mis­sion­ers attrib­uted no per­son­al cul­pa­bil­i­ty to any­one but the police — even though the mem­bers of the JCF entered the zone of con­flict only after a sub­stan­tial num­ber of per­sons who were killed were already dead (read the post-mortem reports). They did not blame the JDF for fail­ing to tell the com­mis­sion where Dudus had been stay­ing before the Reverend Miller went and fetched him.

It’s time that this Island of 2.8 mil­lion rec­og­nize that irre­spec­tive of the qual­i­ty of the Les Green led investigation,the evi­dence or lack there­of to pros­e­cute the sub­ject of said inves­ti­ga­tion, the aver­age per­son on the streets ignore the laws because they fun­da­men­tal­ly believe the laws do not apply to the polit­i­cal class.
This inci­dent is not an out­lier, it is the norm.
There is noth­ing out­side the bounds of what the polit­i­cal class will not do to avoid get­ting arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed for their crimes.

There can be no defense of tar­di­ness in any body , pub­lic or pri­vate in this fast paced infor­ma­tion dri­ven age in which we live . On that basis ‚Governments, their indi­vid­ual arms ‚and even pri­vate enti­ties have to be up on their game if they are to succeed.
This is true not just of Government and pri­vate com­pa­nies but also of sports teams and every com­pet­i­tive enti­ty that com­petes with­in the pub­lic space. Every minu­tia of data has to be ana­lyzed and con­sid­ered with a view toward gain­ing a com­pet­i­tive edge.

This is why it is so sad that the Mobile Reserve Branch of the JCF allowed itself to be char­ac­ter­ized as unable to do the basic , as it relates to account­abil­i­ty of per­son­nel and their movements.
The move­ment of Police per­son­nel should be out­side the remit of the aver­age per­son for obvi­ous rea­sons. Even for INDECOM that infor­ma­tion should be gained through a court order in my esti­ma­tion, based on the hos­til­i­ty alone of that agen­cy’s Commissioner to police officers.

Shockingly the com­mis­sion­er of Police Carl Williams and indeed the police fed­er­a­tion has become like the three monkeys.
See no evil . Speak no evil. Hear no evil.
In yet anoth­er dis­joint­ed and irra­tional broad­side against the police, the INDECOM com­mis­sion­er said that the Jamaica Defense Force should take over the oper­a­tions of the Mobile Reserve, because in his words the hier­ar­chy of the Mobile Reserve divi­sion of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) should step down and the com­mand of the unit be turned over to the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) for an extend­ed peri­od — at least until the unit starts to devel­op respon­si­ble leadership.

This lat­est bit of media whor­ing by Williams comes as lit­tle sur­prise to plugged in observers like myself but to oth­ers not as plugged in, it demon­strates once again that the head of INDECOM will stop at noth­ing to demon­strate his dis­dain and utter hatred for the police force, even if it means show­ing that he is at best irrational,stupid or worse.

In an effort to give Williams the ben­e­fit of the doubt, I con­tem­plat­ed that he made the state­ment tongue in cheek.
However after tak­ing anoth­er look at his state­ment, I found that he was dead seri­ous, as seri­ous as he has pre­vi­ous­ly been, not just to per­se­cute police offi­crs but to embar­rass the entire depart­ment in the process.
This has been Terrence Williams’ modus operan­di from the moment he was empow­ered to inves­ti­gate the mil­i­tary , police and cor­rec­tions depart­ments on the Island.
It must be remem­bered that as the new­ly mint­ed head of INDECOM Williams sat at a table with then head of Jamaican’s for Justice (JFJ) Carolyn Gomes a lob­by group and then lob­by­ist vehe­ment­ly opposed to police.

Since it’s incep­tion INDECOM has had mod­est suc­cess at best ‚in pros­e­cut­ing real rogue cops. In fact accord­ing to Terrence Williams’s own account, the vast major­i­ty of the alle­ga­tions his office inves­ti­gat­ed have result­ed in evi­dence reveal­ing that the offi­cers had done noth­ing wrong.
Conversely the JCF’s inter­nal house-clean­ing meth­ods avail­able to the depart­ment and the ser­vice com­mis­sion, has demon­stra­bly done a mas­ter­ful job of root­ing out rogue cops from the department.
These tools, includes the abil­i­ty the Commissioner of Police has , to eval­u­ate an offi­cer through his/​her ser­vice record, and mak­ing an informed deci­sion whether an offi­cer should be allowed to re-enlist after each five year period.

Senior Gazetted offi­cers may, and have been root­ed out by the ser­vice com­mis­sion as well. That body has the pow­er to deter­mine when it’s prop­er that a senior offi­cer step aside in the pub­lic’s interest.
Additionally the Police has oth­er meth­ods which works effec­tive­ly to remove unfit offi­cers from the department.
On the face of it, it could eas­i­ly be con­strued that these process­es do not work well.
That hap­pens because the pub­lic is not privy to the fir­ings out­side of the force orders which Owen Ellington made a pub­lic document.

The fact of the mat­ter is that INDECOM has been pre­cious more than a mas­sive dupli­ca­tion of efforts, and a colos­sal waste of resources which ought to have gone to law-enforcement.
It kills police morale and demon­strates how tiny lit­tle bureau­crats and dupli­ca­tions can have dis­as­trous con­se­quences for a country.
In a coun­try like Jamaica where peo­ple are inca­pable of say­ing this was a mis­take, this mon­strous débâ­cle is not like­ly to be repealed and done away with.

In the inter­im, the INDECOM act has embold­ened crim­i­nals to kill with­out the vig­i­lance and deter­mi­na­tion of the police com­ing after them.
Sure police are engag­ing mur­der­ing crim­i­nals much less and the inci­dents of vio­lent con­fronta­tions are expo­nen­tial­ly less.
For the aver­age Jamaican this is a victory.
For peo­ple look­ing to raise a fam­i­ly, retire or do busi­ness this envi­ron­ment is cer­tain­ly not a wel­com­ing one.

Terrence Williams the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM under­stands full well the pow­er of the media. He sees the mur­der sta­tis­tics, he knows that soon enough some peo­ple with brains in their cra­ni­ums will start mak­ing the con­nec­tion between his per­se­cu­tion of police and the mur­der statistics.
Hence his shame­less media prostitution.

Carl Williams the inept police com­mis­sion­er could care less about optics. In fact the impor­tance of optics is lost on him .
The young offi­cers under his com­mand are well advised to col­lect their pay­checks and keep their heads low . There is absolute­ly no rea­son to rock the boat or do any­thing but watch the clock.