THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF A JAMAICA GLEANER’S STORY OF THE SHOOTING OF A HANOVER TAXI OPERATOR WHO ATTACKED A UNIFORMED POLICE OFFICER WHO SIGNALED HIM TO STOP IN 2014.

A taxi oper­a­tor who alleged­ly attacked a traf­fic police­man, knock­ing him to the ground and rain­ing blows on him, was shot and injured by the law­man in Hopewell, Hanover, yes­ter­day morn­ing. In the inci­dent, which was video­taped on a cel­lu­lar phone by a bystander, five shots were fired by the uni­formed police­man, result­ing in the injur­ing of taxi oper­a­tor St Obrian Downey, who is of a Montpelier address, also in Hanover. According to an eye­wit­ness account, Downey was dri­ving his taxi through the town when he was sig­nalled to stop by the law­man. The two report­ed­ly got into a heat­ed argu­ment and Downey stepped out of his car and accost­ed the police­man, who was in uni­form. “I just see dem grab up and start wres­tle and then the two of them fell to the ground,” the eye­wit­ness said. In the video of the inci­dent, which was post­ed on Facebook, both men were seen on the ground flail­ing away at each oth­er. Downey, who appeared to be the aggres­sor, was seem­ing­ly get­ting the bet­ter of the law­man, lash­ing out with punch­es and kicks. “… But the police­man can’t man­age him,” one of the onlook­ers was over­heard say­ing on the video.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​a​r​-​o​n​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​f​o​r​-​d​o​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​j​o​bs/

Five shots fired

After the view of the cel­lu­lar phone was blocked momen­tar­i­ly by a pass­ing vehi­cle, the record­ing resumed with the police­man, who now had his gun in hand, still tus­sling with Downey. Suddenly one shot was heard, fol­lowed by four oth­ers, as the law­man broke free and Downey buck­led over in appar­ent pain. The law­man sub­se­quent­ly picked up what looked like a baton on the ground, beside the injured Downey. It was not clear who moved Downey from the scene, but he sub­se­quent­ly end­ed up at the Cornwall Regional Hospital, suf­fer­ing from gun­shot wounds to his leg and thigh. Yesterday, the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) said it had launched a probe into the shoot­ing, while the police said they would inves­ti­gate the attack on their colleague.(jamaicagleaner)

Jamaica’s Crime Not Rooted In The Ghettos.…

That Police offi­cer Constable Wayne Hamil was found guilty and fined $1 mil­lion or three years in prison. On July 1, con­sta­ble Hamil was con­vict­ed in the Trelawny Circuit Court for wound­ing with intent.
According to oth­er report­ing the taxi oper­a­tor was armed with a machete. Here is that reporting .…..
St Obrian Downey was dri­ving his taxi approach­ing a no-stand­ing area, and warned to dri­ve off, before park­ing his taxi ille­gal­ly. Instead of issu­ing a tick­et, the offi­cer motioned the taxi dri­ver to dri­ve off. The two report­ed­ly got into a heat­ed argu­ment before Downey stepped out of his taxi with a machete and assault­ed the uni­formed police­man. It is at this point the two have fall­en to ground, wrestling for con­trol of the machete, when the offi­cer drew his gun and fired at close range, strik­ing the attack­er in the legs, thighs and but­tocks. http://​www​.live​leak​.com/​v​i​e​w​?​i​=​9​e​d​_​1​3​9​5​7​7​1​9​5​4​&​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​s=1

I write about crime in Jamaica not because I want to make friends , frankly I could­n’t care less about my crit­ics. I write to sup­port police offi­cers on the Island who uphold their oath to serve and pro­tect. I lend my unmit­i­gat­ed sup­port to those offi­cers who avoid the lure of filthy mon­ey derived from mur­der­ing crim­i­nals or those who would prey on oth­ers for finan­cial gain.
For the offi­cers who risk life and limb to pro­vide san­i­ty and a mod­icum of nor­mal­cy in an oth­er­wise Serengeti of car­nage and may­hem I stand with you.
In the time it took me to write this blog sev­er­al per­sons would have been sex­u­al­ly or oth­er­wise assault­ed and one per­son would have lost his/​her life to vio­lent thugs .
As a for­mer police offi­cer trained in Jamaica I was told that a police offi­cer in uni­form or duly iden­ti­fied as a police offi­cer and act­ing law­ful­ly has a right to use as much force as is nec­es­sary in defense of his/​her life or that of anoth­er.

That force I was taught, can­not be before or after force was used against the offi­cer, it must be at the time the force was direct­ed at said offi­cer. What that means is that a police offi­cer is not allowed to use force against a sus­pect before that sus­pect indi­cates he intends to harm the offi­cer or anoth­er. Neither can the offi­cer use lethal force after an assault by a sub­ject , as along as that sub­ject sur­ren­ders. On the oth­er hand no police offi­cer has any oblig­a­tion to wait to be assault­ed , wound­ed , or killed before using the nec­es­sary force required to put down an assault on his/​her per­son or on the per­son of anoth­er. It is all up to an assailant to decide to sur­ren­der to police com­mands and not attack a police offi­cer. That is a uni­ver­sal pro­to­col , except on the Island of Jamaica.

I will con­tin­ue to write for peo­ple with­in the dias­po­ra and those look­ing to Jamaica as a place to set­tle or do busi­ness . I refuse to pre­tend that this is a place where the rule of law is prac­ticed or encour­aged. What Jamaica has is a façade of democ­ra­cy. It is a cul­ture which cul­ti­vates an adver­sar­i­al rela­tion­ship with the rule of law.
Ultimately Jamaica is a tin-pan crim­i­nal sys­tem run by a few peo­ple who are crim­i­nals or have con­nec­tions with criminals.
This tran­scend polit­i­cal fin­ger point­ing, it is about a sys­tem rather than about the two polit­i­cal par­ty. It is an entrenched sys­tem which is root­ed in crime and the cel­e­bra­tion of criminality.
It is a sys­tem in which those who occu­py the crim­i­nal court bench has no fideli­ty or respect for the laws except when sit­u­a­tions fit into their nar­row world-view.
Jamaica is a coun­try in which the rule of law is a fig­ment of good peo­ple’s imag­i­na­tion and an aber­ra­tion to the masses.
There is no per­fect sys­tem any­where as it relates to polic­ing. The art of polic­ing is a con­tin­ued process of tri­al and error. We must pros­e­cute rogue police offi­cers when they bla­tant­ly abro­gate the laws they are sworn to uphold. As we do that how­ev­er ‚we must endeav­or to send a strong mes­sage to those who would attack police offi­cers that we stand behind our police officer.
This is true in the United States of America and it is true on the Island of Jamaica.

What is absolute­ly sur­re­al is, under what cir­cum­stance could a sus­pect who attack a uni­formed police office in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of his duties be giv­en the ben­e­fit of the doubt?
This is a dement­ed and deranged sys­tem of lit­tle men and women who sit atop a shit-pile total­ly obliv­i­ous of the stench as long as they get to sit atop the pile.
This has been the men­tal­i­ty of Jamaicans since the colo­nial pow­ers returned to England or died out. The bunch of self appoint­ed elites have since grabbed the reins of pow­er and cre­at­ed for them­selves a fief­dom of corruption.
This is the real Jamaica, not the total bull-shit you hear about in the tired old com­mer­cials about our country.
This is a coun­try in which many at every lev­el wants crime to con­tin­ue. Policing in Jamaica is an effort in futility.
There are sim­ply too many entrenched inter­est which ben­e­fits from crime.

MONTEGO BAY, St James — Prominent west­ern Jamaica based attor­ney-at-law Delford Morgan has expressed con­cerns that mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces could be reluc­tant to tack­le crim­i­nals out of fear of being penalised by the Independent Commission of Investigation (INDECOM).

“…offi­cers are reluc­tant or refrain from tak­ing on crim­i­nals because they per­ceive that they run the risk of falling afoul of INDECOM,” Morgan argued. “How can we expect greater per­for­mance from serv­ing offi­cers in an envi­ron­ment where morale is low and work­ing con­di­tion is hap­haz­ard.” He bemoaned that INDECOM’s inves­tiga­tive strat­e­gy can be very “intru­sive and unfriend­ly towards the police”.

“This is very unfor­tu­nate and unnec­es­sary. A fair and impar­tial inves­ti­ga­tion does not have to be accom­pa­nied by hos­til­i­ty towards those being inves­ti­gat­ed.” He high­light­ed an exam­ple of the inves­tiga­tive body’s indis­cre­tion. “I will cite as exam­ple the recent charg­ing of a deputy super­in­ten­dent of police, who respond­ed to cit­i­zens’ call of strange men in near­by bush­es. The cop dis­charged two rounds in the air result­ing the flee­ing of four men fur­ther into the bush­es. The DSP was charged by INDECOM,” Morgan rued The west­ern Jamaica lawyer, who is a for­mer may­or of Savanna-la-Mar, not­ed that dur­ing the 17^th cen­tu­ry when Port Royal was deemed as the wickedest city in the world, the colo­nial leg­is­la­ture imposed dra­con­ian measures.

“Persons such as pirates, pick­pock­ets, rob­bers and mur­ders found guilty of seri­ous offences all received the death penal­ty,” Morgan recount­ed. In the mean­time, argu­ing that the police can­not fight fire with sticks, Morgan pro­claimed that with the bru­tal­i­ty and may­hem caused by the lot­to scam­ming, “it is no doubt in my mind that today’s Montego Bay is the wickedest city in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean”. “None can suc­cess­ful­ly dis­agree that sov­er­eign states have and should have legal means to counter and defeat any force that under­mines the secu­ri­ty of the State [and] to con­front vio­lence that threat­ens to under­mine the sanc­ti­ty of life and secu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens,” the for­mer may­or point­ed out.

“The JCF, the State secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus respon­si­ble for law and order, its suc­cess or fail­ure will large­ly depend on its mis­sion to con­front vio­lence where it exist.” Morgan was speak­ing last week at the annu­al gen­er­al meet­ing of the Past Members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force Chapter One at Verny House in Montego Bay. He point­ed out that in devel­oped coun­tries, “retired police asso­ci­a­tions play piv­otal and crit­i­cal roles in the man­age­ment, oper­a­tional and sup­port struc­tures of serv­ing mem­bers of police organ­i­sa­tion”. “Ex-ser­vice­men and women offer­ing assis­tance is wor­thy of dis­cus­sions and explo­ration,” Morgan remarked.
http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​w​e​s​t​e​r​n​n​e​w​s​/​C​o​p​s​-​f​e​a​r​-​I​N​D​E​C​O​M​_​6​7​797

Policing is an indispensable function of any society, democratic or autocratic. It’s effectiveness is solely within the remit of those who hold political power. As such we have to place responsibility for the failure or successes of this most important arm of Government squarely at the feet of Government and not on the arm itself.

As polic­ing in the United States con­tin­ue to come under con­tin­ued scruti­ny more and more inter­est groups are mak­ing their voic­es heard an how this crit­i­cal func­tion may be enhanced while pro­tect­ing and empow­er­ing those we ask to go out and place them­selves in harms way on our behalf.
Front and cen­ter in those dis­cus­sions are the police. Americans under­stand they can­not have a con­ver­sa­tion about police with­out the police and respect for the police.
They talk with their police . They do not talk with­out their police . And they cer­tain­ly do not talk at their police.

The President of the United States the most pow­er­ful man on the plan­et attend­ed a reli­gious ser­vice in Dallas to hon­or the five police offi­cers gunned down by a sin­gle man angry at what he sees as police misconduct.
Following on the heels of that reli­gious ser­vice he con­vened a meet­ing at the white house yes­ter­day which includ­ed the police, black lives mat­ter and oth­er inter­est groups. In that white house meet­ing the President of the United States sat for four(4) hours with the police and var­i­ous oth­er groups in dis­cus­sions on how the issue of police abuse may be resolved.

In Jamaica as the streets run with blood var­i­ous voic­es are giv­ing their two cents worth of opin­ions on what is real­ly hap­pen­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly in west­ern parish­es as it relates to the homi­cide rate.
The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) the agency respon­si­ble for polic­ing the entire Island has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that the crime in the west­ern end of the Island is being fueled by lot­tery scam­ming which has become a major headache for law enforce­ment on the Island.

What is sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent between the approach­es of the two coun­tries is that in Jamaica the dis­cus­sions regard­ing solu­tions is being done with­out the police. And absolute­ly no regard for the views and opin­ions of the police.
You can’t make this up , it is out­side the scope of my under­stand­ing that one coun­try could be so anti-police that it fun­da­men­tal­ly denies the very peo­ple they are dis­cussing and whom they ask to pro­tect them a seat at the table..
These are the worst cas­es of the resid­ual ves­tiges of colo­nial mind alter­ing imaginable.
Just yes­ter­day Hardley Lewin for­mer head of the Army and failed com­mis­sion­er of police joined the cho­rus of peo­ple talk­ing at the police .
He assert­ed that there are his­tor­i­cal facts to sup­port his belief that law enforce­ment author­i­ties in St James often get involved in vio­lent crimes.

Nothing here beyond join­ing in the unsub­stan­ti­at­ed bat­ter­ing of police with­out a scin­til­la of tan­gi­ble proof, but most impor­tant gen­er­at­ing some “Yaaas” from the online local papers.
If you want to be some­one in Jamaica demo­nize police.

Additionally one group call­ing itself the fourth floor con­vened a dis­cus­sion which includ­ed peo­ple with absolute­ly no polic­ing sense , train­ing , or expe­ri­ence and Hardley Lewin . Absent the dis­cus­sion as you may have guessed were any police offi­cer of any level.
Lewin whose stint as com­mis­sion­er of police was a colos­sal dis­as­ter was there talk­ing about polic­ing, some­thing he knows noth­ing about.

While all of the hand wring­ing is going on the local papers are report­ing on how lucra­tive the lot­tery scam is . According to the Gleaner a lot­tery scam­mer can become a mil­lion­aire long before he reach­es vot­ing age. Boys as young as 14 have report­ed­ly hauled in mil­lions via the ille­gal enter­prise, which has held Montego Bay and its envi­rons in a vise-like grip for more than a decade.

Not to be out­done the Commissioner of INDECOM not want­i­ng to be left out of the news cycle argued that police over­sight is here to stay whether cops like it or not.
Terrence Williams argue that no oth­er set of work­ers could say they will not do but the bare min­i­mum because they have oversight.
Everyone who knows me knows just how crit­i­cal I am of police . They also know just how sup­port­ive I am of police offi­cers as well.

Here is the prob­lem with this new asser­tion from this lit­tle grem­lin, most police offi­cers in Jamaica want over­sight . Most offi­cers want to have some­one else say this shoot­ing was not a bad shoot­ing. They want some­one else to say this alle­ga­tion of assault did not occur as was first report­ed or mis­in­ter­pret­ed. They under­stand that when an inde­pen­dent agency does that a lot of the cloud of sus­pi­cion will be lift­ed and they can car­ry out their duties as they are sworn to do.

The prob­lem with INDECOM is that it’s nei­ther inde­pen­dent nor fair. It is an agency built not to pur­sue fair­ness and jus­tice but an arm of Government head­ed and staffed by anti-police dem­a­gogues intent on per­se­cut­ing police officers.
Let me be clear on William’s ridicu­lous asser­tion that no oth­er cat­e­go­ry of work­ers could refuse to do the duty because of over­sight. No oth­er job is sim­i­lar to policing.
No oth­er set of work­ers are required to make split deci­sions as a mat­ter or life and death at the per­il of prison.

It’s very easy for a lit­tle gov­ern­ment par­a­site who can­not cut it in the real world to con­tin­ue to cre­ate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the blood mon­ey he receives, a lux­u­ry police offi­cers do not have.
I fore­saw crime esca­lat­ing . I fore­saw mur­der explod­ing . I fore­saw crim­i­nals embold­ened . It’s all doc­u­ment­ed on this medium.
When police offi­cers go out and do their jobs and are sum­mar­i­ly , with­out any calls for an inves­ti­ga­tion or out­cry required to sub­mit to humil­i­at­ing sec­ond-guess­ing why would they expose themselves?

The sil­ly unin­formed con­ver­sa­tions about the legit­i­ma­cy of these argu­ments can con­tin­ue , frankly I don’t care, whats impor­tant is that once police real­ize they are being treat­ed like crim­i­nals they have sim­ply laid down arms.
Check-mate!!!

Jamaican crim­i­nals are extreme­ly savvy they know they are being aid­ed and abet­ted by gov­ern­ment and the pop­u­la­tion in their activ­i­ties. When Hardley Lewin and the oth­er experts[sic] talk about police get­ting involved in crime here is what they should con­sid­er whether they like it or not.
Why would a young per­son who could become a mil­lion­aire before he/​she is able to vote want to be maligned , ridiculed , humil­i­at­ed and risk their lives in a job where doing their job could get them sent to prison while they earn pennies?

The math is quite sim­ple, the fix is dif­fi­cult but not insur­mount­able . The issue is that there are too many peo­ple on that lit­tle Island with their head too far up their own ass­es. They have this notion in this the 21^st cen­tu­ry that polic­ing should be debat­ed, and agreed upon by no-polic­ing actors and with­out the input of the police.
The left over Colonialist men­tal­i­ty in these peo­ple is pal­pa­ble they still see police offi­cers as night watch­men, regard­less of their education.

Subsequently poli­cies are debat­ed and giv­en to police to exe­cute with­out their point of view being includ­ed into the pol­i­cy. That was Bruce Golding’s lega­cy , he gave the peo­ple INDECOM . Until this law is re-vis­it­ed the mur­ders will continue.
Until they extract their heads from up their own ass­es and say we made a huge mis­take this INDECOM act is a mur­der enhance­ment law it’s busi­ness as usual.
I feel sor­ry for the inno­cent Jamaicans who will con­tin­ue to die as a result of this mon­stros­i­ty called INDECOM . Unfortunately this is not a com­mon sense coun­try with lead­ers capa­ble at look­ing at issues and address­ing them with balls and fortitude.
So they will con­tin­ue to look at less police shoot­ings and see it as sign of INDECOM’s effec­tive­ness in curb­ing alleged police abuse . In the mean­time mur­der and oth­er seri­ous crimes con­tin­ue to soar because police cor­rect­ly refuse to extend them­selves unnecessarily.

This is exact­ly what Terrence Williams and his bucky mas­sa deputy from England wants . I mean Terrence Williams could­n’t get a high court job in Jamaica. He can’t even get a low­er court job. He cer­tain­ly want­ed to be Director of Public pros­e­cu­tion, that went to Paula Llewelyn. So he went on to argue that his role is sim­i­lar to that of a high court judge . That is the essence of whats hap­pen­ing in Jamaica, lit­tle men puff­ing up to show how impor­tant they are while the blood of the inno­cent con­tin­ue to run.

Those who sup­port INDECOM in Jamaica are blind­ed to the fact that this agency has an agen­da which does not line up with the well-being of the Island, but may be defined fair­ly as a tax­pay­er fund­ed plat­form for Terrence Williams to be relevant.

One of the issues this writer con­tin­ue to ham­mer away at is the fact that the crim­i­nal courts are allow­ing tri­al lawyers to cir­cum­vent the process by ask­ing for unend­ing adjourn­ments which allows seri­ous cas­es like mur­der to be tossed out because wit­ness­es even­tu­al­ly die, emi­grate, or become frustrated.

This is a prob­lem across the board which all Jamaicans should be alarmed about. Why would any sane cit­i­zen, of any coun­try, want to have mur­der­ers walk­ing away with­out consequence?
It seem how­ev­er that there is a sick dis­joint­ed view that it’s okay for non-police killers to walk free as long as enough time has passed , regard­less of what caused the case to be lagging.
In fact the Island’s Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck wants the courts to toss out all cas­es of mur­der that has dragged on for over five years.

Chuck insists that he wants cas­es tossed regard­less of the mur­der­er’s guilt. What I am a lit­tle per­plexed about is how can a deci­sion be arrived at regard­ing inno­cence or guilt before a trial?
I thought that was the rea­son we had trials.….
Since I’m not a lawyer I will leave my Jamaican con­tem­po­raries to con­tin­ue to wal­low in the mis­con­cep­tion that these are actu­al­ly smart peo­ple who have the inter­est of the coun­try at heart as opposed to edu­cat­ed morons who have their own agendas.

No mur­der­er should walk away from a court of law with­out hav­ing to answer for his/​her crime. It mat­ter not whether the killer is a reg­u­lar cit­i­zen or police offi­cer. Police work is quite pos­si­ble with­out mur­der­ing any­one. I did it for ten (10) years with­out mur­der­ing any­one, even when I was shot in the line of duty.
Jamaica can ill-afford to allow crim­i­nals to walk free after they have killed, par­tic­u­lar­ly when only 7% of mur­der­ers actu­al­ly see the inside of a court­room as a defendant.
It high­lights the incom­pe­tence, com­plic­i­ty and utter shit­ty-ness of the crim­i­nal court sys­tem which can­not even deal with the pal­try 7% of mur­der­ers who come before the courts.

So even as we are out­raged that “any­one” be being allowed to walk after tak­ing anoth­er per­son­’s life, it is curi­ous to say the least that when civil­ian thugs do so it’s okay but when police do there is outrage.
According to Jamaican media a res­i­dent mag­is­trate dis­missed a case in which Nakiea Jackson was shot and killed by the secu­ri­ty forces under con­tro­ver­sial cir­cum­stances in January 2014. His rel­a­tives and res­i­dents of his Orange Villa com­mu­ni­ty cried foul and accused the cops of killing Jackson in cold blood. A spe­cial con­sta­ble attached to Area Four of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) was arrest­ed and charged with his death. However, the case did not reach the Supreme Court for tri­al because it was dis­missed by the mag­is­trate last Thursday in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court.

The Preliminary inquiry has been an inte­gral part of the sys­tem for­ev­er; it is faulty to say the least. However, as opposed as we all should be at any mur­der­er evad­ing jus­tice, there can­not be two sets of rules.
The pre­lim­i­nary Inquiry was designed to see whether a pri­ma facia case has been made out by the pros­e­cu­tion which would allow the case to be moved on to a high­er court to be tried.
If the sys­tem failed this fam­i­ly let us be out­raged at the sys­tem across the board but let us not be out­raged because the alleged offend­er just hap­pen to be a police officer.
INDECOM the agency respon­si­ble with car­ry­ing out inves­ti­ga­tions lied to the court that a crit­i­cal wit­ness in the case alleged that he was threat­ened and as such is fear­ful for his life.

As fam­i­ly mem­bers demon­strate their out­rage at the court’s deci­sion as they should be, INDECOM now revers­es that lie say­ing that the wit­ness did not say he was threat­ened, just that he is fearful.
According to Nigel Morgan a mem­ber of INDECOM the wit­ness insist­ed that he would not attend the inquiry because he feared for his life, even though a sub­poe­na was issued for him to attend.
What I find curi­ous is why was it report­ed that this wit­ness was threatened?
Why is there spe­cial out­rage at this case being dis­missed as against the oth­ers which gets tossed out week­ly even when the deca­dent are police offi­cers who are killed doing their jobs?

As crime escalate out of control in the western parishes of Jamaica one Government senator called for the resignation of the commissioner of police.
The commissioner Dr Carl Williams said initially crime was a social ill and as such he did not believe a state of emergency would solve it.
The commissioner argued after the state of emergency is lifted , then what?
I concur…

As should be expect­ed in Jamaica every­one and their moth­er has a an opin­ion about what should be allowed to go for­ward , hey as I have always said in Jamaica every­one is an expert in polic­ing except of course the police, but mov­ing on.
So the hote­liers met with min­is­ter of tourism Ed Bartlett and they insist they do not want a state of emer­gency . Ha, fan­cy that hap­pen­ing in Canada, Britain, or the United States , pri­vate sec­tor telling the Government how and what it can do about crime, but again mov­ing on.…

Not to be out­done the Mayor of Montego Bay Glendon Harris, you remem­ber him , yes that Glendon Harris whose swear­ing in cer­e­mo­ny was done under a paint­ing of the Jamaican flag with no green? Yes that Glendon Harris. Well he dust­ed off the old PNP play­book of 2010 . Jumping into the fray Harris said he is not sup­port­ive of a state of emer­gency either because all it does is result in extra-judi­cial killings by the secu­ri­ty forces.
Ah yes there you have it…

Does any­one recall after the Tivoli Gardens for­ay of 2010 what the PNP said was the rea­son it would not sup­port an exten­sion of the lim­it­ed state of emergency?
Well just to save time it was the very same state­ment , from the very same playbook.
Now let me has­ten to say that had Bruce Golding want­ed to fin­ish the job he could have gone to the Governor and request­ed an exten­sion with or with­out the PNP but he did not , so let us not con­flate his actions with the PNP’s and assume he was any better .

We all know that when it comes to the PNP that par­ty has nev­er shied away from stand­ing firm with it’s three G’s, Garrisons, Guns and Gangsters.
We also know that the par­ty was nev­er going to throw it’s sup­port to the secu­ri­ty forces over the inter­ests of the gang­sters who con­trol it’s gar­risons, so there was nev­er any sur­prise in Glendon Harris’ state­ments , that has always been the par­ty’s position.

While all of this was hap­pen­ing Uriel James, the alleged leader of the Discipline Gang, walked from the Home Circuit Court after the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) entered a con­di­tion­al nolle pros­e­qui ask­ing that the case be put on hold until she can find the main wit­ness in the mat­ter. James and his co-accused Roshane Bygrave were set to go on tri­al today for the June 2011 mur­der of James Anderson. However, Llewellyn sur­prised James’ lead attor­ney Jacqueline Samuels-Brown when she indi­cat­ed that her office would be putting the mat­ter on hold until police inves­ti­ga­tors are able to locate the main wit­ness Nicky Murray. Rooksie was orig­i­nal­ly charged with three mur­ders aris­ing from sep­a­rate inci­dents. A jury has already acquit­ted him of one of those murders.

He is on bail in rela­tion to the third case. In explain­ing why she entered a nolle pros­e­qui, the DPP also said the wit­ness has a neg­a­tive crim­i­nal his­to­ry which would raise issues of credibility.

Wonder what is going to hap­pen to that third case, or any wit­ness­es to that killing ?
Oh by the way won­der how many oth­er lives he took which the infan­tile cas­trat­ed and cor­rupt jus­tice sys­tem can­not find it with­in itself to con­vict him of even one?
This is par for the course, this is at the heart of the Island’s crime epidemic.
It is not about states of Emergency or the com­pe­tence or lack there­of of Commissioner Carl Williams , it’s about the cor­rup­tion, col­lu­sion and seri­ous lack of com­pe­tenc of a sys­tem which is pop­u­lat­ed and con­trolled by immoral cretins who should nev­er be admin­is­ter­ing to a sys­tem but in many cas­es should them­selves be wards of the penal system.

In 1999 Police sources told media out­lets that James was the sub­ject of sev­er­al inves­ti­ga­tions in rela­tion to the unprece­dent­ed mur­der of a num­ber of wit­ness­es in con­nec­tion with cas­es he had before the Court. When James was detained a few years ago, then Police Commissioner, Owen Ellington, not­ed that the names of wit­ness­es who’ve accused him of mur­der were found in a freez­er at his home. Ellington described Rooksie as one of the country’s most feared gang­sters who should be brought to jus­tice in the inter­est of the country.

Jacqueline Samuels-Brown the lawyer for the accused triple mur­der­er com­mend­ed Paula Llewellyn the Prosecutor for he actions.…
So there you have it , the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem does work in Jamaica.
For the crim­i­nals, those who pull the trig­ger and those who wear the black robes.….
Our coun­try needs a rev­o­lu­tion , it is a cesspool of cor­rup­tion that defies polit­i­cal labels, it is cor­rod­ed and infect­ed at ever lev­el with immoral dis­gust­ing peo­ple who advo­cate for evil killers with not a thought about inno­cent shed blood.
That is the Jamaica the world needs to know , not the lies about Jamaica every­thing nice, it’s all bull­shit dressed up in food, drink, song and gan­ja fog.

Head of the St James Police, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Marlon Nesbeth, is lament­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of guns in the parish, which he says crim­i­nals fire with­out dis­cre­tion when com­mit­ting crimes. 

His com­ment fol­lows last night’s killing of four peo­ple in the parish. Speaking with The Gleaner/​Power 106 News Centre this after­noon SSP Nesbeth said crim­i­nals are get­ting bolder.

Head of the St James Police Senior Superintendent of Police Marlon Nesbeth Two peo­ple were killed about 10 o’clock last night after men over­took and opened fire at the vehi­cle they where trav­el­ling in. The men who opened fire also injured two oth­er peo­ple who SSP Nesbeth says are now in sta­ble con­di­tion in hos­pi­tal. There were two oth­er shoot­ings, one in Flanker where one man was killed and anoth­er in the Green Pond area where a woman died. SSP Nesbeth is urg­ing Jamaicans to assist the police in their inves­ti­ga­tions. http://​jamaica​glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​6​2​9​/​b​r​a​z​e​n​-​s​t​-​j​a​m​e​s​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​s​-​p​r​e​y​i​n​g​-​g​o​o​d​-​i​n​n​o​c​e​n​t​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​s​s​p​-​n​e​s​b​eth

Back in the 70’s and 80’s when the issue of International terrorism came up it was largely viewed through the prism of hijackings and abductions. In many cases the victims would encounter the nerve racking ordeal of not knowing what their fate would be when hijackers commandeered airplanes and forced pilots to fly to countries friendly to them. Not all hijackings ended without loss of life but many did.

Today ter­ror­ism has tak­en on a much more dead­ly turn.
Generally if you are unlucky to be any­where around the epic cen­ter of a ter­ror attack you are like­ly to be dead or at best seri­ous­ly maimed. Those are the real­i­ties of present day ter­ror­ism. As a con­se­quence those who are tasked with pro­tect­ing the pub­lic must adopt new think­ing as they do their very best to pro­tect the inno­cent from those who would vis­it mas­sive casu­al­ty and death on non-combatants.
Most intel­li­gent pop­u­la­tions across the globe have already come to the real­iza­tion that there is a new normal .
That nor­mal is that the days of open bor­ders, and the sta­tus quo lais­sez-faire which once exist­ed may very well be a thing of the past.

Across the Globe secu­ri­ty experts are scram­bling to get ahead of the game as it relates to ter­ror­ism and in gen­er­al keep­ing pop­u­la­tion cen­ters free from mas­sive ter­ror­ist attacks . Regardless of the progress they make the game has changed when it comes to soft tar­gets. Despite the best efforts of police agen­cies the best they can hope for is to min­i­mize the poten­tial loss of life dur­ing an attack.
Terrorists only have to get it right once,police and intel­li­gence agen­cies have to be right a hun­dred per­cent of the time . On that basis we must rec­og­nize that we prob­a­bly will not be going back to the days when some indi­vid­ual guar­an­tees were in place.

There is a gen­er­al con­sen­sus it seem these days that all dis­putes must be set­tled with dead and man­gled corpses lit­ter­ing land­scapes. In this no one has clean hands, what we hear are jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for why peo­ple who kill do so, each believ­ing in the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of their actions.
Whether the killings are done using high tech drones or through crude explo­sive devices the pol­i­tics of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is an age old one which will not be set­tled any­time soon. What emanates from their ash­es are young minds cal­loused and seared in hatred and deter­mi­na­tion to exact death and destruc­tion on those to whom they are opposed.
Whether it be in the slums of Gaza the west bank, or cities across Europe , the man­gled ghost-like ruins of what was once Syria , Libya , or whether it is New York City, Orlando , or the count­less oth­er instances across the globe vio­lence is the way peo­ple iron out their differences.

We can argue all we want that this will not hap­pen where we are, guess what It won’t hap­pen until it actu­al­ly does. Yesterdays attack in Istanbul Turkey hap­pened despite incred­i­ble under­stand­ing and prepa­ra­tion by Turkish offi­cials which includ­ed check­points away from the inside of ter­mi­nal build­ings. Nevertheless the death and destruc­tion was mas­sive. Single shoot­ers with the right kind of weapon­ry and ammu­ni­tion has demon­strat­ed the extent of the death and destruc­tion they can inflict in the week­ly shoot­ings across America the lat­est being the Orlando night club massacre.

With infor­ma­tion eas­i­ly and read­i­ly avail­able across the web peo­ple are able to find com­mon cause with oth­ers across vast expans­es of oceans . They are able to com­mu­ni­cate, share ideas and in the process radicalize.
Mass killings or the quest to engage in killing as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble as a polit­i­cal state­ment seem to be on the rise. I do not want to blame any one reli­gious group as some do in the west with­out seek­ing to see things through the prism with which peo­ple in oth­er parts of the world do.

What we can­not ignore are the loom­ing clouds of rad­i­cal Islam and what it means for safe­ty of peo­ple in places once thought of as secure havens . Conversely many in the Middle East argue that they are mere­ly respond­ing to the aggres­sion of west­ern pow­ers and the state of Israel . For many in that part of the world they wit­nessed west­ern and Israeli bombs rain down on their cities and towns dec­i­mat­ing their lives and families.
The debate about that equiv­a­lence is a legit­i­mate one to which con­sen­sus will not come any­time soon.

Back here in the United States many of the young black men who are incar­cer­at­ed align them­selves with Islam . Just yes­ter­day a young man who was recent­ly incar­cer­at­ed revealed to me that in prison align­ing with a cause is a means of sur­vival . He argues some of his con­tem­po­raries do not want to be aligned with the Bloods or the Crips or any of the oth­er crim­i­nal gangs on the inside, so they self iden­ti­fy as Muslims.
Many of the young men of col­or who find them­selves behind bars are from oth­er places includ­ing the Caribbean. After doing their time these men are gen­er­al­ly deport­ed back to their coun­try of ori­gin with a rad­i­cal new world view and anger toward the United States or whichev­er coun­try they got deport­ed from.

In Trinidad there is an active Muslim com­mu­ni­ty , frac­tions of which has­n’t shied away from engag­ing in vio­lence against the state. On the Island of Jamaica there is an ever increas­ing Muslim pop­u­la­tion , parts of which came into exis­tence through depor­ta­tions as I allud­ed to. To date there has not been any real evi­dence that this com­mu­ni­ty has engaged in any acts of ter­ror­ism against the state or any oth­er inter­ests as for that mat­ter . At the same time the Island is present­ly gripped in the ten­ta­cles of an exis­ten­tial fight against home grown crim­i­nals many of whom are using ter­ror­ist meth­ods to make their point.
Incredibly the pop­u­la­tion spends its time and resources tear­ing down the insti­tu­tions which are try­ing their best to pro­vide some sem­blance of security.
Major coun­tries like the United States Britain France and oth­ers has the resources to strength­en secu­ri­ty around their facil­i­ties but what hap­pen to the inno­cent pub­lic with­in poor­er nations in which these assets are stationed?
Many small­er nations through­out Europe and even poor coun­tries across Africa has suf­fered untold loss of life and incred­i­ble dam­age and destruc­tion to their infra­struc­ture as a result of terrorism.
Even with lim­it­ed resources they are being forced to con­tend with the emerg­ing real­i­ties of a chang­ing world. Those coun­tries under­stand that they have to band togeth­er with the agen­cies try­ing to pro­tect them and as some say if you see some­thing say something.

As the stakes becomes high­er those who sur­vive will be those who aid in their own secu­ri­ty. Whether it is a man walk­ing into a bank in Guyana attempt­ing to rob the bank claim­ing ISIL bona fides ‚every instance is a poten­tial wake up call .
As it is on the Serengeti the week who decide to go it alone despite the rel­a­tive secu­ri­ty of the herd will be vic­tim­ized . Whether ter­ror­ism comes through reli­gion or sim­ply because we allow it to hap­pen through home grown punks , ter­ror is ter­ror. Those who would take lives will con­tin­ue to do so unless they are stopped .

INDECOM came into existence because of the bad behavior of some police officers that cannot be ignored or denied.Since it’s creation under the Bruce Golding Administration however this writer has consistently made the point that it was a necessary law , poorly thought out and implemented in a knee-jerk fashion with devastating consequences so far for law abiding Jamaicans.

I warned that INDECOM would increase crime under­stand­ing Jamaican cul­ture of course, crime increased as I pre­dict­ed. I said it would embold­en crim­i­nals, it has. I said it would do pre­cious lit­tle to root out crim­i­nal cops, it hasn’t..
Simply put, the resources placed into the cre­ation and oper­a­tion of INDECOM should have been placed into improv­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of the police depart­ment, pay­ing offi­cers bet­ter, hav­ing bet­ter super­vi­sion and account­abil­i­ty , bet­ter back­ground checks, bet­ter train­ing and a COMPSTAT type polic­ing model.
Instead the Golding Administration allowed Elitist Jamaicans like the Bar Association the group of crim­i­nal lawyers who make a liv­ing from crime, the pha­lanx of human rights lob­by groups which gained rel­e­vance as a func­tion of the Island’s inor­di­nate­ly high mur­der rate and oth­ers who ben­e­fit from crime to dic­tate the agenda..

Williams who came to the job after been reject­ed in his bid to get the job as Director of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tion, once served as a Judge in a neigh­bor­ing Island. Since then he has picked fights with the DPP Paula Llewelyn , the per­son who got the job he craved , Greg Christie the for­mer Contractor General , and the police high Command . It now appears that the rea­son Williams want­ed the job of DPP was to per­se­cute Police offi­cers, not to go after crim­i­nals of all stripes.
Since then Terrence Williams’ mis­sion may be best char­ac­ter­ized as a cru­sade against the police , while stat­ing he has no vendet­ta against the police.
If you have to say you have no vendet­ta , you have a vendet­ta . This medi­um is once again call­ing for the removal of Terrence Williams as head of INDECOM.
His tenure has been acri­mo­nious, undu­ly con­fronta­tion­al and in effect by his own words the vast major­i­ty of inves­ti­ga­tions his agency has under­tak­en has result­ed in no evi­dence of impro­pri­ety against police officers.

Nevertheless despite those protes­ta­tions Williams con­tin­ue to use the agency as a posi­tion to grand­stand and make friv­o­lous argu­ments not borne out by facts . Terrence Williams does not allow the truth to get in the way of his grand­stand­ing and pos­tur­ing even as crime goes through the roof as a result of the chill­ing dem­a­goguery and witch-hunt he has waged on the abil­i­ty of police to do their jobs.
Jamaica is now a place many view as a par­adise for crim­i­nals , this guy must go.

It’s not the first time that a coun­try has issued a trav­el advi­so­ry against anoth­er and it cer­tain­ly won’t be the last . So it comes as no sur­prise that Canada issued a trav­el advi­so­ry to it’s cit­i­zens wish­ing to vis­it Jamaica.
The sil­ly reac­tion of many Jamaicans to this rou­tine advi­so­ry by Canada to the Island’s crime prob­lem should come as no sur­prise either.
A trav­el warn­ing, trav­el alert, or trav­el advi­so­ry is an offi­cial warn­ing state­ment issued by a gov­ern­ment agency to pro­vide infor­ma­tion about the rel­a­tive safe­ty of trav­el­ling to or vis­it­ing one or more spe­cif­ic for­eign coun­tries or destinations.

In oth­er words it is the duty of Governments to warn their nation­als trav­el­ing to oth­er coun­tries of the risks and pos­si­ble dan­gers they may encounter and and how to nav­i­gate those risks. A trav­el advi­so­ry is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent than a trav­el ban, which ulti­mate­ly pre­vents peo­ple from trav­el­ling to cer­tain coun­tries for what­ev­er reason.
Canada recent­ly issued a trav­el advi­so­ry to it’s cit­i­zens trav­el­ling to Jamaica, the advi­so­ry not the first ‚warned Canadians how to pro­tect them­selves while on the Island. In 2007 Canada issued a sim­i­lar advi­so­ry to its cit­i­zens lead­ing up to the August 27^th gen­er­al elec­tions on the Island.
The advi­so­ry warned that “Canadians in Jamaica should main­tain a high lev­el of per­son­al secu­ri­ty aware­ness,” . “Canadians should avoid demon­stra­tions at all times and not attempt to pass through road­blocks, should they occur,”>
The advi­so­ry went on to state that although the two pre­vi­ous nation­al elec­tions were rel­a­tive­ly peace­ful , elec­tions in the 1980’s were vio­lent affairs.
Additionally it added that Jamaican offi­cials them­selves had advised that there is poten­tial for vio­lence and dis­tur­bances dur­ing that year’s elections.

It is there­fore a bit curi­ous that Jamaicans would have a prob­lem with Canada tak­ing steps to warn it’s nation­als of the risks inher­ent in trav­el­ling to Jamaica or any oth­er place for that mat­ter , par­tic­u­lar­ly when they just recent­ly lost one of their cit­i­zens and the United States recent­ly lost two aid work­ers just weeks apart to vio­lent crime.
THIS IS IT…
There is no nation­wide advi­so­ry in effect for Jamaica. However, you should exer­cise a high degree of cau­tion due to the high lev­el of vio­lent crime. https://​trav​el​.gc​.ca/​d​e​s​t​i​n​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​j​a​m​a​ica.

A trav­el advi­so­ry is not a per­son­al vendet­ta which larg­er nations have against their much poor­er weak­er neigh­bors. They are not Capitalistic tools used to pun­ish small­er coun­tries which does not do larg­er nation’s bid­ding (though they can be).
Canada does not have a sin­gu­lar focus on Jamaica as some seem to believe, as such Jamaicans can look at the link pro­vid­ed in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, that it’s noth­ing personal .
Canada has an A‑Z trav­el advi­so­ry on lit­er­al­ly all nations on Earth . Relax Jamaicans the world is not out to get you.
In fact the Jamaican Government would be derelict in it’s duty to Jamaicans look­ing to trav­el if it does not have it’s own trav­el advi­so­ry which informs Jamaicans on how to be safe while trav­el­ing abroad.
Jamaica is absolute­ly free to include Canada and all oth­er coun­tries which have issues which should be raised a s a mat­ter of precaution.

There is a con­found­ing prac­tice among some Jamaicans to cir­cle the wag­ons and become defen­sive when­ev­er any­one point to the excep­tion­al­ly high crime rate on the Island .Cursing and berat­ing even Jamaicans who are uncom­fort­able with crime. I see this issue as a two-fold issue really.(1) Jamaicans react neg­a­tive­ly because they are trau­ma­tized sig­nif­i­cant­ly and would rather bury their heads and pre­tend it does not exist. Or (2) They are involved some­how in what’s going on .
To a large extent , there is evi­dence that many Jamaicans in the dias­po­ra are active­ly fuel­ing crime by send­ing back high-pow­ered weapons to the Island.
When you pre­tend that those who point out the prob­lem are the prob­lem you miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to fix the prob­lem. When you cir­cle the wag­ons you end up with a cir­cu­lar fir­ing squad ‚before long you end up killing yourselves.

The Island’s crime prob­lem can­not be hid­den in the age of cell phones , the inter­net and the rapid dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion and images made pos­si­ble by a sin­gle click. There is no pri­va­cy , no hid­ing place , we live in an increas­ing­ly inter­con­nect­ed world . Pretending that trav­el advi­sories are tools designed to destroy Jamaica is the opti­mum insan­i­ty . Nationalistic pride is cool and com­mend­able but it will not fix a nation in a seri­ous state of denial about the expo­nen­tial­ly high rate of mur­der and oth­er seri­ous felonies.
It is absolute­ly mind bog­gling to see the idi­ot­ic attempts among many Jamaicans to ratio­nal­ize and device met­rics which seeks to prove that Jamaica’s crime rate is just fine. It caus­es me to won­der whether they are trau­ma­tized or sim­ply a part of the problem?

When you bury your head in the sand you expose your a** that is nev­er a good strategy.

There are some things which the police can do and there are others the Government can do . Of course there are things which the Government and the police can do better together . What is required though is leadership.

According to the Jamaica Observer the Westmoreland police are now in the cus­tody of over 1,000 motor­cy­cles, nei­ther licensed nor insured, more than 600 of which have been removed from the streets since the start of this year.
Additionally over 200 oth­er vehi­cles, includ­ing cars and trucks, have been seized this year, with over 300 indi­vid­u­als charged for breach­es of the Road Traffic Act over the period.
And 30.000 tick­ets were hand­ed out to errant motorists. Clearly this has not worked.

Commanding offi­cer for the Parish Deputy Superintendent David White report­ed that oper­a­tors of the motor­cy­cles, a num­ber of whom are play­ers in the lot­to scam, pur­chase oth­er bikes instead of tak­ing the nec­es­sary steps to repos­sess those con­fis­cat­ed by the police. “A lot of scam­ming is involved, so they can afford to pur­chase more. If we seize one, they do not come back for it, they just pur­chase a new one,” DSP Whyte argued. “They have easy access to pur­chas­ing them because it doesn’t require much to buy them; they [bik­ers] just go and pur­chase them. Quite a num­ber of them don’t even have a driver’s licence to dri­ve the bikes. A num­ber of them can­not read or write.”

This fol­lowed close­ly on the heels of sim­i­lar com­ments recent­ly by com­mand­ing offi­cer for Saint Ann Superintendent Wayne Cameron that many dri­vers can­not read or write.

For decades it has been an open secret that the Government Agency which grants dri­vers licences is a cesspool of cor­rup­tion and graft. Despite this there has been zero Investigations toward root­ing out the cor­rup­tion there. Literally every Jamaican knows that their abil­i­ty to be a safe dri­ver will not get them a dri­ver’s licence, a fat wal­let will.
As the police bemoan this car­nage on the road the hier­ar­chy of the force must take full respon­si­bil­i­ty for it’s gross abdi­ca­tion of it’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to root out crime using sim­ple inves­tiga­tive tech­niques. This nev­er required much more than a sim­ple audio record­ing device and the will to pros­e­cute crim­i­nal examiners.

Superintendent White made one poignant obser­va­tion how­ev­er ‚“They have easy access to pur­chas­ing them [bikes]because it doesn’t require much to buy them.”. ..
Clearly the tick­et­ing blitz is not work­ing ‚con­fis­cat­ing the motor­cy­cles is not work­ing because the offend­ers are flush with money .
This is where the Government must plug this loop­hole real quick , it’s not rock­et science .

It does not require much think­ing to draft leg­is­la­tion mak­ing it impos­si­ble to pur­chase a motor vehi­cle of any kind with­out a valid dri­vers licence . Also include seri­ous penal­ty for any­one who pur­chase a vehi­cle of any kind for some­one who does not have a valid dri­vers licence. Also attach seri­ous puni­tive sanc­tion for any­one who pur­chas­es a motor vehi­cle for oth­ers who engage in crim­i­nal con­duct. Essentially tying togeth­er all of the oper­at­ing parts as one crim­i­nal empire as the American Rico statute does.
If the coun­try is seri­ous about crime it must act now on this mat­ter in the way outlined .
Jamaican politi­cians in the par­lia­ment has tra­di­tion­al­ly left the police on it’s own to do an impos­si­ble task . Here is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for this admin­is­tra­tion to plug this loop­hole now.
The politi­cians of both polit­i­cal par­ties can­not con­tin­ue to sit on their hands and expect crime to go away with­out doing what they are elect­ed to do, which is to secure the nation.

ROCK, Trelawny — Members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force Marine Division who are sta­tioned at Glistening Waters mari­na in Trelawny are com­plain­ing bit­ter­ly about the lack of elec­tric­i­ty at the police post, a sit­u­a­tion they say has exist­ed for almost two years now.

One of the dis­grun­tled cops, who spoke to the Jamaica Observer West on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, claimed that vis­i­bil­i­ty at the facil­i­ty is zero after oper­a­tors of the mari­na where they are sta­tioned turn their lights off after clos­ing at nights. “Over two years now there is no elec­tric­i­ty. We can’t do any effec­tive polic­ing in the dark. During the course of the night after the oper­a­tions (at the mari­na) close off, di peo­ple them turn off dem light on the com­pound. And that leave the whole place in dark­ness,” the cop fumed. According to the police source, when­ev­er they are required to log reports at night, they do so with the assis­tance of the light from their cel­lu­lar phones.

The police also claimed that work­ing in the dark pos­es a secu­ri­ty threat.“ The offi­cers find it threat­en­ing because if any­body come up you can’t see them. Sometimes your own col­leagues use the bath­room and are return­ing but you can’t make them out in the dark,” the cop stat­ed. In addi­tion to not hav­ing light in the night time, the cops also have to endure heat despite there being an air con­di­tion­ing unit. The marine cop said the morale of the 16-mem­ber team is very low as a result. When the Observer West con­tact­ed act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the min­istry Karen Clarke Davis on the issue yes­ter­day, she said she was will­ing to look into the sit­u­a­tion at the Trelawny police post, but only after the cops report the issue to their supe­ri­ors. “If you have unsat­is­fac­to­ry work­ing con­di­tions the onus is on you to bring it to your supe­ri­ors. There is a process, “ Clarke Davis argued. “I will not inter­vene if they have not tak­en all the steps to bring to the atten­tion of the author­i­ties their plight and con­di­tion. So I am will­ing to help, but you have got to show me what you have done,” she continued.

The Observer West was informed that at least one high-rank­ing mem­ber of the marine divi­sion, who recent­ly vis­it­ed the post, is ful­ly aware of the sit­u­a­tion, but our police source expressed hes­i­ta­tion to report the con­di­tions, because of what the source described as pos­si­ble vic­tim­i­sa­tion from their supe­ri­ors. Recently, Minister of National Security Robert Montague address­ing town­hall meet­ings he host­ed in west­ern Jamaica, bemoaned poor work­ing con­di­tions of some mem­bers of the force. During a vis­it to the bar­racks at one of the sta­tions he toured, the secu­ri­ty min­is­ter, who said he wouldn’t sleep there, ordered the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary to pur­chase mat­tress­es for the facility.
Read more here : http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​w​e​s​t​e​r​n​n​e​w​s​/​C​o​p​s​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​d​a​r​k​_​6​4​764

With crime and lawlessness amok in Jamaica authorities of the four month old Labor party administration are contemplating a raft of issues which they hope will lead to a better system of justice delivery, less overcrowding in the Island’s prisons and a reduction in crime.

Jamaica’s Minister of National Security has no expe­ri­ence in secu­ri­ty , he is not a lawyer and he has nev­er held any law-enforce­ment or secu­ri­ty port­fo­lios to my knowl­edge but he does seem to have a grasp at least of the things which can be done bet­ter with­ing his broad portfolio.
Jamaica’s decrepit non-func­tion­ing jus­tice sys­tem did not hap­pen overnight , nei­ther will it be fixed overnight. Respect for law-enforce­ment and the rule of law must be part of any suc­cess­ful coun­try’s culture.
Disrespect for law-enforce­ment and the rule of law is a humon­gous part of Jamaican cul­ture. When we con­sid­er how the Island decayed to the extent even our Caribbean neigh­bors do not want our nation­als on their shores look no fur­ther than at indi­vid­ual Jamaicans actions and utterances.

Montague has pro­posed a num­ber of pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives which if adopt­ed could change the tra­jec­to­ry of crime. Nevertheless it will require a mon­u­men­tal and par­a­digm shift in the thought process­es of the peo­ple . Sadly I do not see that happening .
The min­is­ter will find his task tan­ta­mount to rolling a bar­rel up a steep hill while oth­ers are push­ing the bar­rel the oth­er way.
Whether it is as he sug­gest (1) arm­ing the cit­i­zen­ry , (2) mak­ing pris­on­ers sen­tenced to hard labor work for their keeps ‚Or (3) allow­ing low risk offend­ers to go home with ankle bracelets ‚or any of his oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions it shows that the min­is­ter is thinking.

Speaking to one media house on the Island Montague said :
“Not all Jamaicans will get it, but they must have a fair oppor­tu­ni­ty to apply for it and the sys­tem must come down on the side of the cit­i­zen. It is born out of a very, very sim­ple con­cept: when a crim­i­nal is break­ing through your win­dow, he must give pause and won­der how many guns are inside that house. Is it one or is it five? What are my chances if I go in and there is five? He must give pause and won­der. Our crim­i­nals have it too easy and decent law-abid­ing cit­i­zens should be giv­en a fair oppor­tu­ni­ty against the crim­i­nal,” .

Some of the Ministers sug­ges­tions are work­able and oth­ers not so much .Even though I believe ordi­nary cit­i­zens should not be at the mer­cy of crim­i­nals, arm­ing the pop­u­la­tion more than they are already armed can­not be the answer. For a small nation Jamaica already has way too many peo­ple affil­i­at­ed with gangs, and oth­er crim­i­nal enti­ties walk­ing around with reg­is­tered firearms.
When you want to put out a fire you don’t pour gaso­line on it.

The Island was allowed to set­tle into the great­est peri­od of rot and deca­dence dur­ing the tenure of Percival James Patterson the man who sin­gle-hand­ed­ly wrecked Jamaica.

Patterson destroyed both the econ­o­my and the police force .He placed detec­tives back in uni­form effec­tive­ly destroy­ing the inves­tiga­tive arm of the force . Patterson allowed crime to grow out of con­trol by not pro­vid­ing mon­ey to train a sin­gle detec­tive for almost a decade. Even if a leader/​s set out to will­ful­ly destroy a coun­try they could hard­ly have been more suc­cess­ful than Patterson has been.
Under Patterson the very nature of the peo­ple changed to any­thing goes , “any ting a any ting “. Patterson’s claim to fame “every man fi dri­ve car an hav nuff gyal”. Such has been the per­mis­sive and encour­ag­ing nature of the Island’s longest serv­ing Prime Minister a colos­sal fail­ure and a blight on the beau­ti­ful nation.

The Island we once knew as Jamaica took a fate­ful down­ward turn under Percival Patterson who should have been impeached and sen­tenced to prison for dere­lic­tion of duty and gross negligence.
Oh that only hap­pen in coun­tries which respect the rule of law.

As if that was not enough Patterson encour­aged a deca­dence and law­less­ness nev­er before seen in Jamaica.
Turning Jamaica around will require a lot of heavy lift­ing , the hard­est lift in my esti­ma­tion is the mind­set of the pop­u­la­tion toward the rule of law. Juxtapose that with the litany of groups who make a liv­ing from crime and the task becomes almost impossible .
Yet I sup­port any­thing which will bring san­i­ty to this cesspool of insanity.

So the Tivoli Report is out; final­ly, after a report­ed M$367 expen­di­ture, the three-mem­ber pan­el has made its find­ings known to the Parliament. I have not seen the report, and as such, I am restrained in my com­ments except on some salient points pub­lished in the Jamaican media.
Before I go into specifics, though, I won­der what could have been done with M$367 mil­lion out­side the colos­sal waste of this inquiry? Well, I take that back one man’s waste is anoth­er man’s trea­sure; the fool and his mon­ey will soon part.
And, the part they have.
In January 2015, Desmond McKenzie, the Member of Parliament for west Kingston, said that the com­mis­sion’s Chairman, Bajan, David Simmons, was being paid more than M$52.
Simmons, who came to Jamaica with an air of supe­ri­or­i­ty, cer­tain­ly will not need to wor­ry about mon­ey for the rest of his life. He can go back home to Barbados ghet­to rich and resume life as an hon­orary white man of the British Empire.
While we are at it, let David Simmons take some of Jamaica’s crim­i­nals back to his native Barbados, he seemed to like crim­i­nals and their way of life when he lived off the Jamaican dime. Let him take them back to Barbados and see how that turns out for them and him. As my grand aunt would say, “pop­py show.”

At the time, McKenzie called for an end to the inquiry argu­ing, ” We need to know how much mon­ey it cost the coun­try so far to put up the com­mis­sion­er, what is his phone bill, what is his food bill, and how much mon­ey to rent the con­fer­ence cen­ter and how much mon­ey for the sup­port staff, all that was not in the dis­clo­sure, and we need to know now.”
At the same time, Desmond McKenzie made those state­ments; he revealed a rather poignant truth about his think­ing. It should have giv­en pause to any per­son who serves in the secu­ri­ty forces or their fam­i­ly mem­bers who love and sup­port them.
As some­one who writes for the con­sump­tion of read­ers across oceans and not just Jamaica, I found the mem­ber of par­lia­men­t’s words rather telling.
“When will the peo­ple get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to point out a police or a sol­dier? Over one week of oper­a­tion, do you want to tell me that not one police offi­cer or sol­dier has been arrest­ed and charged for any offense against the peo­ple? You want to tell me that the behav­ior was so good that nobody down there can com­plain about their actions?”
Haha…
So there you have it, the ene­my was not Christopher Dudus Coke, the inter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal. In Desmond McKenzie’s mind, the peo­ple we ought to be look­ing to imprison are the sol­diers and police offi­cers. But who is sur­prised by this? Both Political par­ties are lit­tle more than crim­i­nal enterprises.

TRADITIONAL DISTRACTION

Much of the talk among the pub­lic seeks to cov­er or deflect atten­tion away from the events of 2010, which was the great­est threat against the con­sti­tut­ed Jamaican state in his­to­ry. A crim­i­nal Kingpin and his mer­ce­nar­ies picked up arms in a trea­so­nous assault against the Jamaican state. That alone should give pause to the blind par­ti­sans, but it doesn’t.
They deflect atten­tion from that momen­tous and crit­i­cal­ly-telling event, by cre­at­ing a kan­ga­roo pan­el to cre­ate a doc­u­ment telling us how bad­ly the secu­ri­ty forces operated.
No men­tion of the crit­i­cal and hor­rif­ic sequence of events that neces­si­tat­ed the actions in the first place. What they do is come up with sug­ges­tions of com­pen­sa­tion to the peo­ple who for decades encour­aged, nur­tured, and pro­tect­ed the type of crim­i­nal­i­ty which bred not just that indi­vid­ual king­pin Christopher (dudus) Coke, but an entire fam­i­ly and lin­eage of oth­er kingpins.
Regardless of polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, every Jamaican should be offend­ed by this, but they won’t be.
It’s the police and mil­i­tary’s fault. Please send them to prison.

♦Was it the police’s fault why the sta­tions were burned? ♦ Was it the police’s fault that police sta­tions were strafed with high-pow­ered weapons? ♦Was it the police’s fault that Max and his col­league were slaugh­tered? ♦ Was it the police’s fault why the com­mu­ni­ty of Tivoli Gardens was bar­ri­cad­ed and made a ver­i­ta­ble fortress? ♦Was it the police who pre­vent­ed com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from leav­ing the com­mu­ni­ty, or was it the trea­so­nous mer­ce­nar­ies? ♦ Was it the secu­ri­ty forces that turned that com­mu­ni­ty and oth­ers like it into vir­tu­al states with­in Jamaica, out­side the con­trol of the rule of law?♦ Was it the police who divid­ed up the Island into war­ring fac­tions pit­ting broth­ers against broth­ers and sis­ter against sis­ter, or was it the politi­cians you worship?

Apologize to the peo­ple and pay them, the sit­ting min­is­ter of jus­tice tells the admin­is­tra­tion of which he is a key component.

Such is the coun­try Jamaica; this is what they want to hide from International scruti­ny while telling investors to come and telling dias­po­ra mem­bers to return home to live out their lives.
What I find laugh­able yet instruc­tive is that many of the pro­po­nents of the luna­cy are, like myself, com­par­a­tive­ly secure in adopt­ed coun­tries while advo­cat­ing a regres­sive view that has had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the coun­try since 1962.

Whenever the seri­ous issue of crime comes up, they come up with a smoke screen: “the police are cor­rupt.” It is s straw man excuse that has worked for both polit­i­cal par­ties and their apol­o­gists since day one. Please show me a police depart­ment that does not have offi­cers with bad char­ac­ter, and I say wel­come to Utopia. We can elim­i­nate bad cops and hon­or the good ones; we are not play­ing that hate game with you.
Let’s dis­pense with the bull­shit the schools of high­er learn­ing are insti­tu­tions of anti-police pro­pa­gan­da and anarchy.
For self-right­eous apol­o­gists who want to talk about police cor­rup­tion, let’s talk. Still, I will also talk about your earth­ly polit­i­cal Gods and their cor­rupt­ing influ­ences on the nation.
Let’s talk about the crim­i­nal lawyers who actu­al­ly give new mean­ing to the term “crim­i­nal lawyers.”
Let us talk about some of the cor­rupt judges and oth­er pub­lic servants.
If you want to talk about the cor­rup­tion on the Island, let us do so, but let us include every­one, not scape­goat the poor police, you hyp­ocrites. Let us have that con­ver­sa­tion now.

Others come up with con­vo­lut­ed alter­na­tive met­rics to con­vince them­selves and the gullible that the crime mon­ster on the Island is com­pa­ra­ble to America, the default adver­sary they love to hate, just not their dollar…
Yet I have spo­ken to police offi­cers, past and present, who have served in depart­ments across the coun­try, many of whom nev­er need­ed to remove their ser­vice weapons from their hol­sters their entire career.
My neigh­bor is one of them. So go ahead and con­vince your­selves that America is just as vio­lent as Jamaica.
Most offi­cers who leave the JCF and con­tin­ue a life in law enforce­ment in oth­er coun­tries do so with dis­tinc­tion. Those depart­ments respect and hon­or what they do.
Others like myself who chose dif­fer­ent careers after leav­ing do well for themselves.
Wherever Jamaicans live abroad, they dare not assault police offi­cers, nei­ther phys­i­cal­ly nor ver­bal­ly. They know bet­ter, so they leave that bull­shit at the Donald Sangster and the Norman Manley International air­ports before they leave.
Those who for­get find their sor­ry ass­es back on the next flight. Even with­in the CARICOM com­mu­ni­ty, oth­er Islands have none of it. Threats of boy­cotts and law­suits will not change the atti­tudes of Jamaica’s neigh­bors, who do not want Jamaicans and their crim­i­nal cul­ture in their coun­tries and do not want Jamaica to add to their crime sta­tis­tics even with much crime.
Rather telling.

Following the crim­i­nal politi­cian’s play­book by mak­ing scape­goats of the Island’s secu­ri­ty forces makes goats of those so fooled.
.
.

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

CRIME BEAT

The police are report­ing that 12 firearms and over 100 rounds of ammu­ni­tion have been seized in oper­a­tions across the island in the last 24 hours.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s Corporate Communications Unit (CCU) says eight per­sons have been tak­en into cus­tody in con­nec­tion with the seizures, but adds that their iden­ti­ties are being with­held pend­ing fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions. CCU says six firearms were recov­ered in St James, which has already record­ed more than 100 mur­ders this year. According to the police, three firearms were seized in Kingston and St Andrew and one each in St Thomas, Mandeville and St Catherine. Police Commissioner Dr Carl Williams says the seizure of 12 firearms over a 24-hour peri­od demon­strates the resolve of the police to remove guns from the hands of crim­i­nals. Williams also not­ed that the weapons were seized with­out any gun­fire and said this was a clear demon­stra­tion of pro­fes­sion­al­ism. The police report­ed that in one of the oper­a­tions a Glock pis­tol was tak­en from two men trav­el­ling in a motor vehi­cle inside a plaza on Old Hope Road in St Andrew.

CONTRACT AGREEMENTS

The over­sight body divulged that up to the time of report­ing, the FCJ had not tak­en steps to recov­er $750,000 advanced on December 22, 2011, to the said attor­ney con­tract­ed at a cost of $3 mil­lion to review the cor­po­ra­tion’s pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dures man­u­al. According to the audi­tor gen­er­al, the attor­ney did not deliv­er the draft man­u­al and the ser­vice was ter­mi­nat­ed in September 2012. The FCJ sub­se­quent­ly engaged a for­mer employ­ee to devel­op the pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dures man­u­al at a cost of $750,000. “In none of the cir­cum­stances men­tioned above did the FCJ present for audit scruti­ny, con­tract agree­ments set­ting out the terms and con­di­tions for the engage­ment of all the attor­neys. The absence of con­tract agree­ments high­lights a lack of trans­paren­cy and com­pro­mis­es FCJ’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect pub­lic funds,” Monroe Ellis stated.

CONVEYANCE SERVICES

“The mat­ter above per­tain­ing to the attor­ney’s delay in hand­ing over the $109.6 mil­lion rein­forces the impor­tance of FCJ con­tem­plat­ing the use of inter­nal legal ser­vices to bring such trans­ac­tions ful­ly with­in the realm of the Government’s account­abil­i­ty frame­work,” she added. Monroe Ellis had ear­li­er high­light­ed that the FCJ took the deci­sion to engage attor­neys to pro­vide con­veyance ser­vices instead of using the attor­ney employed to the com­pa­ny. The FCJ is owned by the Government and falls under the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation. The cor­po­ra­tion’s man­date is to be a cat­a­lyst for job cre­ation, devel­op­ment, and sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth and includes the devel­op­ment and man­age­ment of indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial space in the pub­lic sec­tor. The cor­po­ra­tion’s pri­ma­ry activ­i­ty is the con­struc­tion, man­age­ment, and rental of fac­to­ries. It is the largest provider of indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial real estate in Jamaica to a wide cross sec­tion of indus­tries, includ­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing, food pro­cess­ing, and com­mer­cial activities.
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​6​1​1​/​a​t​t​o​r​n​e​y​-​f​a​i​l​e​d​-​h​a​n​d​-​o​v​e​r​-​7​0​m​-​p​r​o​p​e​r​t​y​-​s​a​l​e​-​p​r​obe

The police hier­ar­chy deci­sion to trans­fer Senior Superintendent of Police Steve McGregor from St James has not gone down well with some stake­hold­ers in the parish, espe­cial­ly in the com­mu­ni­ties where he had crime-pre­vent­ing ini­tia­tives in place. “I believe he was mak­ing an impact by con­nect­ing with the peo­ple. He has been steadi­ly win­ning the trust of the peo­ple and mak­ing an impact on the com­mu­ni­ty with his pro­grams,” said Pastor Knollis King, who heads the Rose Heights Covenant of Peace move­ment. “I am not hap­py to see him leav­ing at this time.” During height­ened law­less­ness in 2015, McGregor was trans­ferred from the Kingston Western Police Division to St James to deal with the upsurge in mur­ders and oth­er crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, which has earned the parish the dubi­ous title of the nation’s crime cap­i­tal. When McGregor was trans­ferred from Kingston Western, the res­i­dents in those com­mu­ni­ties, with whom he had devel­oped a spe­cial bond in the after­math of the extra­di­tion of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, protest­ed the deci­sion and called for his return.

FATHER FIGURE

During his one-year stint in St James, McGregor imple­ment­ed sev­er­al bold com­mu­ni­ty-polic­ing ini­tia­tives in his bid to build trust among res­i­dents. He was viewed as a father fig­ure in some com­mu­ni­ties, where he unof­fi­cial­ly adopt­ed chil­dren from homes with­out fathers. In the com­mu­ni­ties where he broke down the bar­ri­ers in terms of a his­to­ry of antag­o­nism between res­i­dents and the police, res­i­dents are open­ly express­ing the view that unless he is replaced by an equal­ly car­ing com­mand­ing offi­cer, the gains he made could go down the drain. “This is one police­man that I trust and believe in … when he gives you his word, he keeps it,” said a res­i­dent from Rose Heights. “I know that some politi­cians don’t like his style of polic­ing, but he was get­ting the job done … and in a humane way.” For per­sons like King, who rep­re­sents the com­mu­ni­ty as a coun­cilor in the St James Parish Council, the mere one-year stint that McGregor served was just too short of hav­ing the desired impact.

“I def­i­nite­ly believe one year was too short. Mr. Derrick Champagnie was an excel­lent, out­stand­ing offi­cer, and by the time we start reach­ing some­where, they moved him. It’s always the same thing, and I’m tired of the same type of game. Trust takes time to build,” said King. Rose Heights is one com­mu­ni­ty where McGregor recent­ly intro­duced the ‘Police Supervised Curfew Initiative,’ designed to keep chil­dren off the streets and away from anti­so­cial activ­i­ties at night. With McGregor gone, King told The Gleaner that he is now unsure of the pro­jec­t’s fate. However, he was told by anoth­er police offi­cer from the neigh­bor­ing Mt Salem com­mu­ni­ty, where there is a sim­i­lar ini­tia­tive, that the pro­gram would continue.

Calls For More Urgency In Finding Solutions To Crime

President of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce Warren McDonald is urg­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Robert Montague to estab­lish a com­mit­tee on crime com­pris­ing key stake­hold­ers. He told The Gleaner that the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce has been push­ing hard for a crime and jus­tice com­mit­tee that would play a crit­i­cal role in mon­i­tor­ing issues relat­ing to nation­al secu­ri­ty and cre­at­ing increased pub­lic aware­ness of efforts to stem the scourge of crime and vio­lence affect­ing the coun­try. McDonald argues that the police and the army alone can­not suc­cess­ful­ly cramp crime in Jamaica, not­ing that sup­port is need­ed from a wide cross-sec­tion of the pub­lic. “What needs to be said clear­ly is that we are in part­ner­ship with the peo­ple to try and stem the tide of crime. It’s not just more cars and more guns for the secu­ri­ty forces. It needs sup­port and infor­ma­tion from the peo­ple to deal with the issues.” Lieutenant Commander George Overton, pres­i­dent of the Jamaica Society for Industrial Security, indi­cat­ed that although it is ear­ly days for the new admin­is­tra­tion, there was a need for a greater sense of urgency in tak­ing on the surges in murders.

Police sta­tis­tics reveal that St James alone has record­ed more than 100 mur­ders with less than six months gone in the year. Up to last week­end, police data show that 103 per­sons have been report­ed killed in the parish since the start of the year. This rep­re­sents a 27 per­cent spike com­pared with the 81 mur­ders record­ed for a sim­i­lar peri­od in 2015. However, the police sta­tis­tics indi­cate that there has been a two per­cent decline nation­al­ly in the num­ber of per­sons report­ed killed. Both Overton and McDonald assessed the Ministry of National Security in the first 100 days of the new administration.

MANAGEMENT STYLE

However, Overton rea­soned that there was a dif­fer­ent man­age­ment style of the nation­al secu­ri­ty port­fo­lio, one in which the min­is­ter “pays a com­mis­sion­er of police to do his job… I tend to believe, and I hope, that behind the scenes, he is hav­ing dia­logue and apply­ing the pres­sure that needs to be applied. He is care­ful­ly pro­ceed­ing and get­ting his hands on the steer­ing wheel prop­er­ly”. Opposition Spokesman on National Security Peter Bunting said his coun­ter­part, Robert Montague, got off to a “rocky start” as mur­ders exceed­ed 100 for each of the first three months he has held the port­fo­lio. “The pre­vi­ous few months were aver­ag­ing about 80 mur­ders. This has prob­a­bly put him on the back foot as he grasps around for quick respons­es and solu­tions, some of which are more gallery-play­ing than sub­stan­tive, rein­tro­duc­ing hang­ing, for exam­ple, which is real­ly for pub­lic rela­tions val­ue as this will not real­ly take us forward.”

Bunting said the nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter had made some encour­ag­ing steps, such as main­tain­ing the Unite for Change ini­tia­tive, which involves build­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships with all stake­hold­ers. “My sug­ges­tion to him would be not to spend all his time respond­ing to the events of the day but focus on care­ful pol­i­cy analy­sis and let that inform the strate­gies that he pur­sues.” He said there was an absence of pol­i­cy sig­nals from the min­is­ter and the Throne Speech was devoid of any direc­tion on the way for­ward in terms of nation­al secu­ri­ty. However, he acknowl­edged that Prime Minister Andrew Holness has sought to forge some bi-par­ti­san approach to crime. “I wel­come that and look for­ward to it being trans­lat­ed into some­thing tangible.”

Eight Persons Shot As Guns Bark Out West…

Eight per­sons were shot and injured in west­ern Jamaica inci­dents on Wednesday night as gun-tot­ing thugs con­tin­ue to wreak hav­oc, giv­ing cre­dence to the region being dubbed the island’s undis­put­ed crime cap­i­tal. In Westmoreland, which has seen four mur­ders in recent days, Hartford res­i­dents got a major scare when shoot­ers, trav­el­ing on motor­cy­cles, opened fire on a busi­ness place, hit­ting four men and send­ing oth­ers flee­ing for their lives. According to an eye­wit­ness account, short­ly after 8 p.m., res­i­dents were stand­ing out­side of the busi­ness place when the men rode up, and with­out warn­ing, opened fire. The four per­sons were hit as pan­ic set in. “At first, I thought one of the bikes had back­fired, but when I looked close­ly, I could see fire com­ing out of the guns, and then I real­ized that we were under attack,” a res­i­dent told The Gleaner. “To be hon­est, it is a mir­a­cle that nobody got killed.”

When the shoot­ing sub­sided, and the gun­men rode away, the injured per­sons were hur­ried­ly placed in cars and rushed to the Savanna-la-Mar General Hospital, where they were all admit­ted in seri­ous but sta­ble con­di­tion. Based on pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tions car­ried out by the police, Superintendent David White, the com­mand­ing offi­cer for Westmoreland, believes that the shoot­ing was an act of reprisal for Friday night’s shoot­ing death of 45-year-old Carole Johnson, a res­i­dent of the com­mu­ni­ty. In St James, it was a night of hor­ror for Rose Heights, Bottom Pen, and Blood Lane res­i­dents as rifle-wield­ing thugs drove through their com­mu­ni­ties, fir­ing shots with impuni­ty. While the res­i­dents of Rose Heights and Blood Lane luck­i­ly escaped with­out suf­fer­ing any injuries, four men were shot and injured in Bottom Pen.

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT

According to Rose Heights res­i­dents, at approx­i­mate­ly 11 p.m., two cars with men armed with rifles drove into the com­mu­ni­ty. They began fir­ing shots wild­ly, caus­ing res­i­dents to flee in pan­ic. The car, which did not stop, drove over to near­by Bottom Pen, where they opened fire. This time, four men were shot and injured. On their way out of Bottom Pen, the men again opened fire in Blood Lane. However, those res­i­dents, who had seem­ing­ly tak­en cov­er after hear­ing the heavy gun­fire in Bottom Pen, escaped unscathed. “What gwaan a com­plete mad­ness … the man dem just a buss shot wild,” a res­i­dent told The Gleaner. “Montego Bay has become the Wild West again … every day we have shoot­ings and killings in this city.” While the police have not con­firmed any motives for the shoot­ings, sources famil­iar with the Montego Bay under­world told The Gleaner that it was an act of reprisal for the killing of Canterbury’s ‘top man’ (gang­ster), who res­i­dents iden­ti­fied only as Zekes. He was shot dead in down­town Montego Bay on Tuesday. Since the start of the year, St James has record­ed 105 mur­ders, Westmoreland 40, and Hanover 13.

The Police high command continue to re-arrange the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic singing ‚“nearer my God to thee” as the stern dips further and further below the surface. The country ask for divine intervention believing God will step in and do what they must do for themselves.

When has God ever stepped in to fix what man clear­ly is equipped to do yet stead­fast­ly refus­es to do for themselves?

Just over a year after SSP Steve McGregor was giv­en com­mand of the parish of Saint James he is already out and in his place is SSP Marlon Nesbeth.
I know the so called high com­mand have the right to trans­fer offi­cers at their plea­sure but what exact­ly could McGregor have accom­plished in a year ?

In fact McGregor open­ly spoke to his trans­fer at his out­go­ing cer­e­mo­ny. “I implore the pow­ers that be that they should give the new com­man­der a longer peri­od than they gave me, or else he’s not going to impact the thing in any ful­some way. You can­not change the sit­u­a­tion of St James in one year. But I am not in any way daunt­ed by this reas­sign­ment. I am 110 per cent in sup­port of the High Command because they know best,”.

Oops, sor­ry Steve !!!

Oh to be a fly on the wall to be in the brief­ing room before you were give that assignment .
You did get briefed did­n’t you Steve?
Oh to be a fly on the wall to see what was the strate­gic plan giv­en to Steve McGregor to execute.
Surely there must have been a plan to tar­get cer­tain play­ers and their operations .
Surely there was a plan to tar­get spe­cif­ic spots and indi­vid­u­als using sur­veil­lance and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing through well devel­oped assets with­in the com­mu­ni­ty right?
There must have been sig­nif­i­cant assur­ances giv­en cer­tain well placed peo­ple with­ing the com­mu­ni­ties that if they coöper­ate with law enforce­ment they could be assured no one would ever know they did?
Surely these assets are appro­pri­ate­ly nur­tured and devel­oped right?
Was there even a plan?
It would be inter­est­ing to know what exact­ly was the game plan , because what­ev­er it was it did not work .

I feel your pain Steve but I dis­agree with you that they know best.….Oh I get it you are are being care­ful, good luck on your new assign­ment at the Territorial Operations Portfolio.

Whatever the hell that is!
What is the prob­lem with these new age police offi­cers who seem not to want to be seen in their uni­forms? I stand to be cor­rect­ed on this but across the globe when we see police offi­cers in the news they are always in their uniform.
In many cas­es even detec­tives love and wear their uni­form at times.
Do these guys con­sid­er them­selves bet­ter than the JCF why they are con­stant­ly in civil­ian clothes? That apply to you too Commissioner Williams ?
Anyway.…

So they trans­ferred Steve McGregor out of the parish because mur­der con­tin­ue to climb not just in the tourism parish but in oth­er parish­es out­side the Kingston met­ro­pol­i­tan area. In the mean­time the police high-com­mand con­tin­ue to do the three card mon­ty , try­ing to con­vince us that crime is trend­ing down.

The fact of the mat­ter is that crime is not trend­ing down and even if there are down­ward ticks in cer­tain cat­e­gories of crime it is not as a result of any strate­gic pol­i­cy ini­tia­tive which the depart­ment can point to.
As I said yes­ter­day the reverse is actu­al­ly true in about the same time Steve McGregor took over the parish of Saint James , over two hun­dred offi­cers were added to beef of police strength in the parish .

Despite that mur­der and oth­er vio­lent crimes con­tin­ue to soar in the parish, so clear­ly any sup­posed strat­e­gy they put in place clear­ly is hav­ing the oppo­site effect than was intended.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​s​p​i​k​e​-​r​u​r​a​l​-​p​a​r​i​s​h​e​s​-​2​-​l​e​s​s​-​d​e​a​t​h​s​-​a​c​r​o​s​s​-​b​o​a​r​d​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​s​-​r​e​p​o​r​t​ed/

DO YOU RECALL WHEN THEY SAID THEY WANTED TO GET RID OF NAME BRAND COPS ?

Remember when they said they want­ed a dif­fer­ent police force, one where the offi­cers can“speeky-spok­ie”? Well we all agreed that some of the peo­ple real­ly need­ed to get a crash course in the Queens English, espe­cial­ly the kha­ki-clad brigade.
Back then the Khaki clad brigade were reviled and ridiculed because most of them could­n’t put a sen­tence togeth­er out­side the col­lo­qui­al (pat­wa) patios.
Back then police speak­ing pat­wa was seen as a sign of their intel­lec­tu­al infe­ri­or­i­ty, until of course the tap­pa­naris up by the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to sud­den­ly deemed it cool and decid­ed it should be a language.
All of a sud­den pat­wa is no longer an aber­ra­tion to be eschewed it is now cool because the self appoint­ed elites tell us it is. Many buoyed by this attempt to dumb us down now go out of their way to com­mu­ni­cate using the dialect. It’s now a badge of cool­ness and smarts , what bull !

Well they cer­tain­ly did a good job remov­ing the” pat­wa talk­ing dunce police dem” , can’t even imag­ine how they were able to under­stand the ter­rain and topog­ra­phy of the island , much less hav­ing local knowl­edge and street-smarts to know who did what, where and when. or even how to find them and bring them to jus­tice or in some cas­es bring jus­tice to them?
In their places are some real­ly edu­cat­ed peo­ple from up at Mona who cer­tain­ly seem to think they are bet­ter than the uni­form. They seem­ing­ly do their best to avoid it as much as possible.
As a mat­ter of fact while I’m on the sub­ject the high com­mand is always berat­ing the young offi­cers about the prop­er way to appear in their uni­form. Are the rules applic­a­ble to the rank-and-file only, or is every cop a con­sta­ble accord­ing to the JCF Act?

One thing is for sure we cer­tain­ly have a bunch of offi­cers who speak the Queens English now, as a mat­ter of fact it seem that talk­ing is all they are capa­ble of .
Rest in peace Anthony Hewitt, rest i n peace Spungie, rest in peace all of the real sol­diers who knew where to find the mur­der­ing scum who would ter­ror­ize the inno­cent and take their lives.
We nev­er cow­ered in fear of no Don, we feared no low-life scum­bag who would prey on the innocent.
The ques­tion at the moment is what per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion is as inno­cent as it was when I walked away ? When the real police offi­cers laid down arms and walked away
A nation gets the Government it deserves, the police is an arm of government.
Maybe , just maybe the crim­i­nal lov­ing , police hat­ing mass­es deserve what it’s getting.
Just saying !!!!!

According to the (JCF) Jamaica Constabulary Force’s report­ing on major crimes, there has been a sharp increase in homi­cides, 27% to be exact in the Parish of Saint James over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year.
This report­ing comes a mere day after the police report­ed a 10% drop in major crimes across the board. Last year St.James record­ed 210 mur­ders, the parish has seen 103 per­sons killed between January 1 and last week­end. This despite the addi­tion of over 200 police per­son­nel deployed to the parish to stem the ris­ing crime rate.

According to the JCF sta­tis­tics, St James is one of sev­en police divi­sions that have report­ed increased mur­ders so far this year. The oth­ers are St Ann, which saw a 39 per cent jump; St Mary, which report­ed a 25 per cent increase; Clarendon, which had a 23 per cent jump; Trelawny, which record­ed a 13 per cent increase; St Andrew Central, which had a four per cent increase; and Westmoreland, which record­ed a three per cent increase.
In a 180 degree turn the police also report a two per cent decline nation­al­ly in the num­ber of per­sons report­ed killed. It shows that 492 mur­ders have been record­ed across all 19 police divi­sions, 10 few­er than the 502 record­ed for the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year. Except for shoot­ings, which inched up by five per cent, the JCF sta­tis­tics also show that all oth­er cat­e­gories of seri­ous and vio­lent crime have decreased by between 18 and 40 per cent.

This is where the rub­ber meets the road I believe this is pro­found to those who fol­low crime trends in Jamaica. Despite a slight­ly low­er num­ber of dead peo­ple across the board nation­al­ly , more peo­ple have actu­al­ly got­ten shot .They have sim­ply not died as a result of being shot.
What do we attribute that to but luck?
Minister of National Security Robert Montague argues “Police Commissioner Dr Carl Williams and his team should be cred­it­ed for the fall-off in seri­ous crimes but cau­tioned against com­pla­cen­cy. “It is inescapable that the yeo­man efforts of the force, with lim­it­ed resources, have final­ly begun to bear fruit. It’s ear­ly days, and much more needs to be done. And the com­mis­sion­er and his team will now renew their efforts in mak­ing Jamaica the pre­ferred place to work, invest, live, and retire,”.

As Jamaicans who love our coun­try and want a coun­try free from crime I believe we can all asso­ciate with the pipe-dream of the min­is­ter but it is only that thus far a lofty dream, unat­tain­able in the present environment.
The JCF must learn to adapt to the real­i­ties of being asked to reduce crime in a crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it soci­ety, one in which not even the judges on the bench believe ful­ly in what it takes to have a nation of laws.
It must also learn to micro-tar­get crime and crim­i­nals, cut­ting off the heads before they metastasize.
The depart­ment has stead­fast­ly main­tained that the lot­to-scam is to be blamed for the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high rate of homi­cides and shoot­ings in the Island>
I am tempt­ed to believe there may be some mer­it to those asser­tions as it relates to Saint James alone but that’s it.
If lot­to-scam­ming is the issue then micro-tar­get scam­mers. Know the head , know the shoul­der , know the legs then embark on a sys­tem­at­ic process of decap­i­ta­tion of the mon­ster. prove to us you not only know the rea­son for the mur­der num­bers but you have the capac­i­ty to do some­thing about it.

If the efforts of the police were respon­si­ble for the slight drop in homi­cides across the board why would the sus­tained con­cen­tra­tion of over 200 offi­cers to the sin­gle parish of Saint James not elic­it the same result or better?
Conceivably it makes sense to sim­ply chalk up the slight­ly low­er num­ber of dead peo­ple to luck, par­tic­u­lar­ly since more peo­ple have been shot and shot at.
The police can do all they can but unless the nation dis­plays a sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent atti­tude than it’s present embrace of crim­i­nals, plac­ing an offi­cer on ever street cor­ner will not change a sin­gle thing.

This was exact­ly what prompt­ed my response yes­ter­day in which I ques­tioned the met­ric used in arriv­ing at these low­er numbers.

Crime Trial Lawyers And Human Rights Lobby.…

The addi­tion of 200 more chairs to a sink­ing Titanic will not stop the Titanic from going under. The Nation’s laws are archa­ic (zero deter­rent effect)> The Nation is far too lib­er­al in it’s con­cern for crim­i­nals. There is far too much con­cern for those who com­mit crimes as against those who are vic­tims of crime. There is no nation­al will to erad­i­cate crime. Too many pow­er­ful peo­ple are heav­i­ly invest­ed in crime. The entire jus­tice sys­tem is inept, incom­pe­tent and corrupt.

There needs to be a nation­al strat­e­gy which assid­u­ous­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly tar­gets crim­i­nals, those who aid, abet, and engage in crim­i­nal con­duct. This must be done through appro­pri­ate leg­is­la­tion. We must stop lis­ten­ing to tri­al lawyers, dirty politi­cians and the hordes of vul­tures who make a liv­ing tear­ing down the rule of law while hid­ing behind human rights.
The most fun­da­men­tal right giv­en man is the right to life by his cre­ator. Doesn’t it seem strange that those who pur­port to defend human rights only defend the rights of killers but nev­er have a kind word for the vic­tims and their families?
How much longer can a soci­ety con­tin­ue to be igno­rant-sheep used and abused by those who ben­e­fit from crime and pover­ty yet suf­fer none of it’s atten­dant consequences?
Police can­not reduce crime while Government sits on the side­lines and civ­il soci­ety does every­thing in it’s pow­er to empow­er criminals.
Until this approach is under­tak­en they can con­tin­ue to piss in the wind.