In a recent conversation my wife and I debated whether humans are killing each other at more alarming rates today as compared to centuries ago?
Or whether information which flows ²⁴⁄₇ into our spaces creates the impression the sky is falling?
Needless to say at the end of the discussion we were no nearer an answer than when we first started the conversation.
The fact is that regardless of the truth behind this issue, what is not in question is that humans have always had a desire to kill each other.
Whether it was barbaric medieval slaughter which saw battlefields littered with the corpses of thousands of gored and impaled once breathing human beings, or the dropping of Atom bombs which obliterated entire cities vaporizing hundreds of thousands in an instant and many more as time passed, our specie has constantly sought out new ways to inflict maximum pain and death on each other.

So what is it which makes humans so cal­lous , so bru­tal, so indif­fer­ent to the life oth­er humans? I do not pre­tend to have the answer.
What I do know is that through­out his­to­ry humans have built mas­sive for­ti­fi­ca­tions to keep them­selves safe.
Despite the fact that America dropped two Atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sup­pos­ed­ly to end the car­nage of world-war two, it may be argued that oth­er nations arm­ing them­selves with nuclear weapons , may have some­thing to do with the fact that no oth­er coun­try has used a weapon of that mag­ni­tude since 1945.

Our innate desire to kill is cat­a­loged in the Biblical book of Genesis, Cain in a fit of jeal­ousy alleged­ly mur­dered his only broth­er Abel.
David a revered sym­bol of the Old Testament killed Goliath and count­less oth­ers. He even had his trust­ed sol­dier Uriah sent to the front of the bat­tle so he could be killed because he had impreg­nat­ed his wife.
Yet David is said to be a man of God’s own heart.
Does this means that the God of the Bible sanc­tion killings?
After all, the old tes­ta­ment is replete with sto­ries detail­ing God’s inter­ven­tion in sup­port of those in whom he found favor. He is said to have deliverd their ene­mies into their hands.
In instance after instance the ene­mies of the friends of God usu­al­ly end up on the busi­ness end of the sword.
According to the New Testament book of John chap­ter 18 – 10 ‚Simon Peter then, hav­ing a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear’ the slave’s name was Malchus. They had come to take Jesus to take him away to be crucified.
Would Peter have cut off the ear of a mighty Roman sol­dier or did Peter cut the ear from the ser­vant of the high Priest sim­ply because he could?

My point is that some­times vic­tims are vic­tims because they are seen as week , inca­pable of defend­ing them­selves. A per­son car­ry­ing a gun is like­ly to feel pow­er­ful if he is the only per­son armed with a gun.
Even the odds a bit by arm­ing all cit­i­zens with­out crim­i­nal records, and put in place seri­ous penal­ties for improp­er use of guns. That ought to reduce the sense of pow­er crim­i­nals have over the unarmed population.
There is evi­dence that in cas­es where this is done ‚gun crimes are dras­ti­cal­ly reduced.

In 1982 the Town of Kennesaw Georgia saw crime drop 89% after Legislators passed a law which man­dat­ed that all homes have at least one firearm with ammunition.
Framers of the law said though crime was not the rea­son for the law the drop in crime can­not be ignored as a byprod­uct of the law. Since then crime in Kennesaw has remained and has­n’t gone back to for­mer num­bers even though crime has spiked in neigh­bor­ing coun­ties of Decatur and others.

The nation of Switzerland has a some­what sim­i­lar his­to­ry as the United States hav­ing won its inde­pen­dence in a rev­o­lu­tion­ary war fought by an armed cit­i­zen­ry. In 1291, sev­er­al can­tons (states) began a war of nation­al lib­er­a­tion against Austria’s Hapsburg Empire.
In Switzerland almost every adult male is legal­ly required to pos­sess a gun. One of the few nations with a high­er per capi­ta rate of gun own­er­ship than the United States, Switzerland has vir­tu­al­ly no gun crime.
Additionally dur­ing World War II, Hitler want­ed the Swiss gold reserves and need­ed free com­mu­ni­ca­tions and tran­sit through Switzerland to sup­ply Axis forces in the Mediterranean. But when mil­i­tary plan­ners looked at Switzerland’s well-armed cit­i­zen­ry, moun­tain­ous ter­rain, and civ­il defense for­ti­fi­ca­tions, Switzerland lost its appeal as an inva­sion tar­get. While two World Wars raged, Switzerland enjoyed a secure peace.

Jamaica like many of the world’s oth­er nations have seen incred­i­ble amounts of it’s cit­i­zens cut down by thugs with guns while the inno­cent are forced to jump through hoops to secure a reg­is­tered firearm. The fact is that those who use guns to inflict death on oth­ers hard­ly uses reg­is­tered weapons to do so.
In the United States where School shoot­ings occur with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy the data shows they occur in areas where all guns are banned.
I am not sug­gest­ing that every per­son be allowed to car­ry a gun but it cer­tain­ly evens the odds if inno­cent law abid­ing cit­i­zens have the same rights maraud­ing crim­i­nals do.
Citizens who own firearms and are well trained in the safe and effi­cient use of them are a seri­ous deter­rent to those who would prey on the innocent.

As more and more cit­i­zens become prey to crim­i­nals it may be time that a more seri­ous pol­i­cy deci­sion be tak­en to arm the citizenry.
This can eas­i­ly be done through leg­is­la­tion which puts in place seri­ous back­ground checks. This would include psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion and manda­to­ry con­tin­u­ous train­ing while increas­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly the penal­ties for gun crimes.
This by itself is not a sil­ver bul­let which will dri­ve down crime, but it is one more thing which will seri­ous­ly pos­i­tive­ly impact this out of con­trol crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica which nei­ther the Government nor the police know how to handle.

Oh by the way From age 21 to 32, a Swiss man serves as a “front­line” troop in the Auszug, and devotes three weeks a year (in eight of the 12 years) to con­tin­ued train­ing. From age 33 to 42, he serves in the Landwehr (like America’s National Guard); every few years, he reports for two-week train­ing peri­ods. Finally, from ages 43, to 50, he serves in the Landsturm; in this peri­od, he only spends 13 days total in “home guard courses.”
Jamaica too should imple­ment a pol­i­cy of manda­to­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice which does not nec­es­sar­i­ly include weapons training.
Recruits would be trained in life’s skills which will aid their devel­op­ment after they leave the service.

Government could aid with Job place­ment and loans for them to start their own busi­ness­es after they com­plete their service.
If a high school grad­u­ate is head­ing to col­lege that indi­vid­ual should be exempt from mil­i­tary service.
In most devel­oped nations mil­i­tary ser­vice pro­vides worth­while skills , Jamaica can emu­late these ideas to it’s benefit.
Additionally the dis­ci­pline derived from mil­i­tary ser­vice is sure to have a pos­i­tive impact on the young peo­ple who ben­e­fit from it.
This ought to trans­late into more round­ed pro­duc­tive citizens.

Arming law abid­ing cit­i­zens and exer­cis­ing social con­trol of the young is prob­a­bly all a coun­try like Jamaica is left with if it is ever to con­trol the rag­ing crime monster.
The chal­lenge is how to do so over the howls of con­dem­na­tion which is sure to emanate from the legions of peo­ple who con­demn every attempt to deal effec­tive­ly with crime.

Lee Carroll Brooker, a 76-year-old disabled army veteran, says he was growing the marijuana in his Alabama back yard to alleviate his own health problems.

The US supreme court is poised on Friday to decide whether to take on the case of a 76-year-old dis­abled army vet­er­an hand­ed a sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole for grow­ing mar­i­jua­na in his back yard to alle­vi­ate his own health prob­lems. If the court does not review the case, Lee Carroll Brooker is des­tined to die behind bars even though judges in his native Alabama have declared this was not an appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment. Brooker is argu­ing that such a hefty sanc­tion for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion vio­lates the eighth amend­ment to the US con­sti­tu­tion because it amounts to cru­el and unusu­al punishment.

He has been sub­ject­ed to strict sen­tenc­ing manda­to­ry min­i­mum laws in Alabama because the cannabis offense involves a cer­tain weight of the drug and comes on top of con­vic­tions for armed rob­bery more than 30 years ago in Florida when Brooker held up a series of liquor stores, his tri­al lawyer John Steensland said on Wednesday. Brooker was arrest­ed in 2011 when police vis­it­ed his address in Cottonwood, south­ern Alabama, on an unre­lat­ed mat­ter and found that he was grow­ing mar­i­jua­na behind the house. The police seized 34 plants. They were sent for foren­sic analy­sis and weighed in their entire­ty, includ­ing the stalks, which are not used in cannabis con­sump­tion. The plants weighed a total of 2.85lb, which placed the haul above the thresh­old of pos­sess­ing 2.2lb of the drug that, in con­junc­tion with cer­tain pri­or felony con­vic­tions, trig­gers the use of life with­out parole as the manda­to­ry sen­tence under Alabama law.

“The actu­al usable amount of mar­i­jua­na from the con­tra­band was a frac­tion of the 2.85 lbs and clear­ly under the thresh­old of 2.2 lbs,” accord­ing to court doc­u­ments filed in Brooker’s case. “The evi­dence clear­ly indi­cat­ed that Brooker was sim­ply grow­ing said mar­i­jua­na plans for his own per­son­al use in an effort to self-med­icate,” the doc­u­ment added. But in announc­ing the state supreme court’s deci­sion, Alabama’s chief jus­tice, Roy Moore, issued a lengthy expla­na­tion point­ing out that the orig­i­nal tri­al judge, Larry Anderson, had said: “If the court could sen­tence you to a term that is less than life with­out parole, I would. However, the law is very spe­cif­ic … there is no discretion.”

And Moore him­self added that Brooker’s sen­tence was “exces­sive and unjus­ti­fied” and urged the Alabama leg­is­la­ture to “revis­it the statu­to­ry sen­tenc­ing scheme” for the state. Brooker’s attor­ney Steensland said: “The judges’ hands were tied.” Now his for­mer client is tak­ing his case to the US supreme court, and is being rep­re­sent­ed by Bryan Stevenson, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Montgomery-based advo­ca­cy group Equal Justice Initiative. Marijuana for med­ical use is now legal in 23 states and the District of Columbia. In addi­tion, the Pennsylvania leg­is­la­ture on Wednesday sent a bill legal­iz­ing med­ical mar­i­jua­na to the state gov­er­nor to sign. Last September, Roy Moore, the chief jus­tice of Alabama, said sen­tenc­ing laws need­ed to be changed in the state in light of Brooker’s plight, after the state’s supreme court reluc­tant­ly refused to over­turn an appeal to the man’s sen­tence. Moore said there were “grave flaws” in Alabama’s sen­tenc­ing sys­tem when a per­son could be sen­tenced to life with­out parole for a non-vio­lent drug offense.

Steensland sub­mit­ted mate­r­i­al dur­ing his client’s tri­al and sen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings that showed he was in the US army for nine years after join­ing up at the age of 17 and was fre­quent­ly post­ed abroad, com­ing under ene­my fire on tours in Lebanon and the Dominican Republic. He rose to the rank of sergeant in the 82^nd air­borne divi­sion and was award­ed the com­bat infantry­man badge for par­tic­i­pat­ing in active ground com­bat, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. “It’s a bru­tal case, egre­gious. He was using mar­i­jua­na for his own use for lin­ger­ing trou­bles with his per­son­al health, some relat­ed to his mil­i­tary ser­vice. We had hoped for a more rea­son­able set­tle­ment, but the judges at tri­al and appeal had their hands tied,” Steensland said. The attor­ney said there was no evi­dence and had been no claims that Brooker had ever tried to sell the drug. He said his crimes in Florida as a much younger man were linked to a time in his life when he drank heav­i­ly instead of seek­ing med­ical treat­ment for phys­i­cal and men­tal ailments.

“It doesn’t excuse any of this but it puts it in some per­spec­tive. He robbed some liquor stores and no one was hurt. It’s seri­ous but he served time for that. When I rep­re­sent­ed him I found him to be a nice man,” he said. Families Against Mandatory Minimums (Famm), a Washington DC-based lob­by­ing and advo­ca­cy group, has filed a friend of the court brief with Scotus on Brooker’s behalf.“It is hard to under­stand how, in a civ­i­lized soci­ety, the law can tol­er­ate that a 76-year-old dec­o­rat­ed, dis­abled com­bat vet­er­an is sen­tenced to die in prison for grow­ing mar­i­jua­na in his back­yard for per­son­al use,” the brief states. Famm’s brief adds that the way manda­to­ry min­i­mum laws shift dis­cre­tion in sen­tenc­ing away from the “inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry … can lead to arbi­trary, capri­cious and unfair sentences”.

Mary Price, Famm gen­er­al coun­sel, said that if Scotus decid­ed to take Brooker’s case, and ulti­mate­ly ruled in his favour, it would send a mes­sage “far and wide” that manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences “can be so arbi­trary and so inhu­mane that they offend the US con­sti­tu­tion”. http://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​s​o​c​i​e​t​y​/​2​0​1​6​/​a​p​r​/​1​5​/​l​e​e​-​c​a​r​r​o​l​l​-​b​r​o​o​k​e​r​-​a​l​a​b​a​m​a​-​m​a​r​i​j​u​a​n​a​-​s​e​n​t​e​nce 

In response to the wrong-headed zealous over-reach of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) former minister of National security Peter Bunting spoke out.
The investigation is a protracted witch-hunt into the actions of the security forces as they entered Tivoli Gardens in 2010 to arrest Christoper duddus Coke a reputed gangster wanted by the United States on an arrest warrant.
The neophyte Agency which was created to have oversight over the Military, Police and Corrections Departments has waged a campaign of prosecutorial witch-hunt against Agents of the state, the majority of which has resulted in it’s own findings of no wrongdoing.

As a result of the secu­ri­ty forces actions in annex­ing the gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ty of Tivoli Gardens to the Jamaican state, the secu­ri­ty forces employed mil­i­tary tac­tics to wrest con­trol from the mili­tia loy­al to Coke and return a sem­blance of nor­mal­cy to the state.
It is against this back­ground that this Government agency INDECOM is wag­ing a cam­paign to search the Military facil­i­ties to look for evi­dence of Mortar use dur­ing the oper­a­tion under the guise of oversight.

Minister Bunting in his wis­dom, and on the Constitutional Authority vest­ed in him then, used his pow­ers to grant mem­bers of the Jamaica Defense Force immu­ni­ty from prosecution.
Defending his actions which bars mil­i­tary mem­bers from any action, suit, pros­e­cu­tion, “or oth­er pro­ceed­ings” aris­ing from “any act done in good faith” while car­ry­ing out their duties dur­ing an emer­gency peri­od and not­ing that mem­bers of the JDF put their lives on the line while serv­ing the peo­ple of Jamaica in good faith, Bunting said “the min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty is oblig­ed to pro­tect them from unnec­es­sary pros­e­cu­tion “and not leave those brave sol­diers out in the cold”. 

“Having act­ed legit­i­mate­ly and in good faith pur­suant to the state of emer­gency, the offi­cers and ranks of the JDF were enti­tled to the evi­dence pro­vid­ed by my cer­tifi­cate,” he insist­ed. “Were it not so, how could we expect sol­diers to put them­selves at risk in such dire cir­cum­stances when Jamaica needs them again? The immu­ni­ty pro­vi­sions relat­ing to states of emer­gency are in the law for good rea­son and should be applied accord­ing­ly,“Gleaner report­ing.

WHY THE HELL ARE WE EVEN TALKING ABOUT THIS NONSENSE?
Whether the Powers had expired as it relates to the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency should­n’t the immu­ni­ty pow­ers be a tool of the Minister to pro­tect the peo­ple under his com­mand when they do what is asked of them?
Should mem­bers of our secu­ri­ty forces be held to strict stan­dards of course. Should we cow­er in fear in the face of intractable dan­ger then per­se­cute those who brave death to return out streets and com­mu­ni­ties to normalcy?
Hell no!
It’s astound­ing that this crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant fact can be lost on so many. This medi­um has ded­i­cat­ed numer­ous Articles specif­i­cal­ly speak­ing to this very issue.
How can peo­ple say they want secu­ri­ty and peace in their per­sons, homes , com­mu­ni­ties and coun­try when the peo­ple empow­ered to pro­vide said secu­ri­ty are pil­lo­ried and per­se­cut­ed while the killers and rapists and oth­er anar­chists stand aside unscathed?

I have often asked the ques­tion of myself rhetor­i­cal­ly , why did I serve in this coun­try, why does any­one serve in this coun­try which is seen by many as a crim­i­nal paradise?
Then I recall that those who speak the loud­est , in my esti­ma­tion are not the most impor­tant peo­ple. The impor­tant rur­al folks want peace and har­mo­ny in their com­mu­ni­ties like most nor­mal peo­ple do. Unfortunately the vast major­i­ty of those peo­ple do not con­trol the megaphone.
The mega­phone is gripped tight­ly in the blood-stained hands of the most despi­ca­ble bot­tom ‑feed­ing social ‑climbers.
That is the rea­son it is so easy to assume that Jamaicans want a life of crime. It was not true two decades ago , it isn’t true today.
There sim­ply are too many peo­ple in pow­er who should be in jail and that’s the bot­tom line.
Well done Peter Bunting !!!

Leader of notorious criminal outfit, two cronies escape security dragnet.

ONE mem­ber of the noto­ri­ous ‘Duppy Flames’ gang was yes­ter­day shot and killed, while one of his cronies was found hid­ing in a church build­ing dur­ing a mas­sive police/​military oper­a­tion in MelBrook Heights in Harbour View, St Andrew yes­ter­day morn­ing. However, the reput­ed leader of the crim­i­nal out­fit, Marlon ‘Duppy Film’ Perry, and two of his cronies man­aged to escape the drag­net which includ­ed 100 mem­bers of the con­stab­u­lary force and 90 mem­bers of the army.

The heav­i­ly armed gang­sters, despite being small­er in num­bers, took on police and sol­diers in a run­ning gun­fight, in which gang­ster Jason Foster was cut down in a hail of bul­lets, which awoke and fright­ened res­i­dents of Harbour View. The escapees, who ran for shel­ter from bul­lets, man­aged to crawl their way to free­dom in a riverbed north of the com­mu­ni­ty and were believed to be head­ed to August Town to hide out, but ran leav­ing their prized pos­ses­sion — an Uzi sub­ma­chine gun — which was seized by the police.

Deputy com­mis­sion­er of police in charge of oper­a­tions, Glenmore Hinds, would not divulge much infor­ma­tion when con­tact­ed by the Jamaica Observer yes­ter­day, but said that Perry was the main tar­get of the oper­a­tion. Perry is want­ed in con­nec­tion with the mur­ders of Corporal Kenneth Davis, who was assigned to the Protective Services Division, and Constable Craig Palmer, who was assigned to the Kingston Western Division. The men were gunned down at Poor Man’s Corner in St Thomas last December. The Police High Command has since increased the reward for any­one who pro­vides “reli­able” infor­ma­tion lead­ing to the arrest of Perry from $1 mil­lion to $1.5 mil­lion. In the mean­time, police yes­ter­day asked Kevin Eldermire, oth­er­wise called ‘Harry Patta’, of St Thomas, to turn him­self in to the police. It was not clear, how­ev­er, if he had any link with the gang. ‘Duppy Flames’ gang­ster shot dead, one held

In August, 1999, documents were uncovered which indicated that during the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas, the FBI used a limited number of flammable tear gas canisters. This revelation contradicted assertions of the FBI and the Department of Justice that the government had done nothing that could have contributed to the start or spread of the fire. In response, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed a special counsel, former Republican senator John C. Danforth, to reexamine the assault to determine how the fire started and whether there was a cover-up of information implicating law enforcement officials or the Justice Department.

On July 21, 2000, after a 10 month inves­ti­ga­tion, Danforth issued a pre­lim­i­nary report exon­er­at­ing the gov­ern­ment and its agents. His report con­clud­ed that fed­er­al agents did not start the fire, direct gun­fire at the com­plex, or improp­er­ly employ US armed forces. Danforth assigned respon­si­bil­i­ty for the tragedy to the Branch Davidians and David Koresh. According to the report, they con­tributed to the tragedy by refus­ing to exit the com­pound dur­ing the 51 day stand­off, direct­ing gun­fire at FBI agents, shoot­ing mem­bers of the com­pound, and ulti­mate­ly set­ting the fire that burned the com­pound down.
http://​www​.pbs​.org/​w​g​b​h​/​p​a​g​e​s​/​f​r​o​n​t​l​i​n​e​/​w​a​c​o​/​t​i​m​e​l​i​n​e​.​h​tml

As a result of the siege it is report­ed that 76 peo­ple died includ­ing cult leader David Koresh.

Christopher (Duddus) Coke the head of the infa­mous Jamaican show­er posse was want­ed on a war­rant to be extra­dit­ed to the United States to face var­i­ous crim­i­nal charges. Word leaked to the crime boss that author­i­ties were about to appre­hend him . This cre­at­ed a tense sit­u­a­tion in the cap­i­tal city of Kingston and through­out the entire Island in 2010.
The then Jamaica Labor Party Government head­ed by then Prime Minister Bruce Golding was the mem­ber of par­lia­ment for west Kingston and the Tivoli Gardens strong­hold from which Coke wield­ed con­trol of his crim­i­nal empire.
Coke’s pres­i­den­tial click offices was a qua­si gov­ern­ment onto itself from which orders of all sorts were issued , alleged­ly includ­ing who lived and who died.

The admin­is­tra­tion under pres­sure from Washington DC was forced to acqui­esce and prepa­ra­tions com­menced to enter the heav­i­ly armed com­mu­ni­ty of Tivoli Gardens to arrest the kingpin.
As ten­sions increased between the admin­is­tra­tion and the mili­tias loy­al to Coke, police sta­tions were torched and offi­cers mur­dered. Additionally armed mer­ce­nar­ies from across the Island picked up arms and pledged their sup­port to the Kingpin against the duly con­sti­tut­ed state of Jamaica.
Tivoli Gardens became a ver­i­ta­ble fortress !

On the 23 May 2010 the Island’s secu­ri­ty forces entered the heav­i­ly for­ti­fied , heav­i­ly defend­ed com­mu­ni­ty, to exe­cute the arrest war­rant, most impor­tant­ly to annex the com­mu­ni­ty to the Jamaican state. The for­mer on the war­rant the lat­ter for posterity.
Before attempt­ing the breach the secu­ri­ty forces pro­vid­ed bus­es to trans­port mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty away from the emerg­ing conflict.
Members of the com­mu­ni­ty decid­ed to stay in their homes and the mil­i­tary and police went in.
The vio­lence, which large­ly took place through 24 – 25 May, killed at least 73 civil­ians and wound­ed at least 35 oth­ers. Four mem­bers of the security

forces were also killed and more than 500 arrests were made.
Christopher Duddus Coke was not arrest­ed in that encounter, he was arrest­ed sev­er­al days lat­er as police pulled over the vehi­cle in which he was trav­el­ling dressed in dis­guise in the com­pa­ny of a promi­nent mem­ber of the clergy .
The Clergyman knew Coke was want­ed on a crim­i­nal war­rant. Aiding and abet­ting a want­ed crim­i­nal is a felony, yet he did it any­way. He was even­tu­al­ly charged with aid­ing and abet­ting and is yet to be tried for his crimes over five years later.
This is the crim­i­nal .….Justice sys­tem in Jamaica .
Coke has long tak­en the easy way out by tak­ing a plea and is cur­rent­ly serv­ing time in a fed­er­al facil­i­ty in the United States.

After the débâ­cle of the Coke affair the JLP was vot­ed out of office. The PNP’s Portia Simpson Miller Government decid­ed to waste uncon­scionable sums of mon­ey in a witch-hunt called the Tivoli Inquiry. This inquiry has already cost the impov­er­ished island way in excess of ($100m )one hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars with no end in sight.
The inquiry is dead set one way or anoth­er at find­ing impro­pri­eties in the way the secu­ri­ty forces did their jobs while under fire.
At the cen­ter of this colos­sal waste of mon­ey is the insa­tiable quest of the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM to exert influ­ence over the secu­ri­ty forces oper­a­tional specifics. Since the incep­tion of INDECOM, the com­mis­sion­er Terrence Williams, has shown a rapa­cious desire for pow­er and a seem­ing­ly strange desire to destroy the Island’s secu­ri­ty forces abil­i­ty and will to pur­sue the Island’s blood thirsty criminals.

Shockingly the Agency was grant­ed a war­rant to search the Jamaica Defense Forces facil­i­ties for mor­tars which INDECOM alleged were used in the assault on Tivoli Gardens.
That war­rant was not exe­cut­ed as the then Minister of National secu­ri­ty Peter Bunting gave the JDF immu­ni­ty from a search by INDECOM. This was with­in the pow­er of the Minister of National secu­ri­ty to do.
The crime enhance­ment Agency is now telling the judi­cial review court that the Minister relied on emer­gency pow­ers which expired more than five years ear­li­er to grant immu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion to mem­bers of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) who used mor­tars in the Tivoli operations.
Member of the secu­ri­ty forces car­ry out the orders they were giv­en . That order was to go out and arrest a crim­i­nal who wield­ed incred­i­ble influ­ence and pow­er and had tremen­dous fire­pow­er at his dis­pos­al, enough to top­ple the state.

Not a sin­gle crim­i­nal has been impris­oned for killing mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces, nor for burn­ing police sta­tions. To date the so called cler­gy­man who was dri­ving Coke when he was arrest­ed has not even been tried for his crimes.
Yet the Jamaican Government , through the crime facil­i­tat­ing agency (INDECOM) , is dead set on going after the mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces and now the for­mer Minister for doing their jobs.
The INDECOM Act is a poor­ly thought out mon­stros­i­ty which have increased crime and con­tin­ues to cost the lives of Jamaicans. It has been a tremen­dous suc­cess in sav­ing the lives of crim­i­nals and feed­ing the ego of the nar­cis­sist who lead the agency.
The Agency should under no cir­cum­stances have the pow­er to enter any JDF facil­i­ty to effect any search.
The Military and Police did what had to be done to annex Tivoli Gardens to the Jamaican state.….….…. Job well done !

The United States Government stood with and hon­ored it’s offi­cers who did their jobs in Waco Texas .
The Jamaica Government threat­ened with over­throw was saved by the secu­ri­ty forces. The Military and Police wrest­ed con­trol from mil­i­tants and hand­ed total con­trol back to Jamaica’s filthy immoral politi­cians, sev­er­al lost their lives in the process.
The pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion decid­ed to play pol­i­tics with their sac­ri­fice instead of trum­pet­ing and hon­or­ing their ser­vice to country.
There is no mon­u­ment in their honor.
There is noth­ing to hon­or the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice they made in ser­vice to their country.
Instead what they get is a witch-hunt spear­head­ed by a for­eign­er hos­tile to our val­ues , our secu­ri­ty ser­vices and our way of life.
Welcome to Jamaica where crim­i­nal rights and the ego of nar­cis­sist trumps secu­ri­ty and the rule of law.

A Texas school police offi­cer seen throw­ing a 12-year-old girl to the ground on video was fired Monday for his “absolute­ly unwar­rant­ed” con­duct, offi­cials said.Footage sur­faced online last week of Officer Joshua Kehm sub­du­ing Janissa Valdez March 29 at Rhodes Middle School in San Antonio. Police said she and anoth­er girl were about to fight in a hall­way that after­noon when Kehm intervened.

District offi­cials promised a full inves­ti­ga­tion, and they decid­ed Monday to ter­mi­nate Kehm’s employ­ment, effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly, said San Antonio Independent School District Superintendent Pedro Martinez. “We under­stand that sit­u­a­tions can some­times esca­late to the point of requir­ing a phys­i­cal response; how­ev­er, in this sit­u­a­tion we believe that the extent of the response was absolute­ly unwar­rant­ed,” Martinez said in a statement.

“Additionally, the officer’s report was incon­sis­tent with the video, and it was also delayed, which is not in accor­dance with the gen­er­al oper­at­ing pro­ce­dures of the police depart­ment. We want to be clear that we will not tol­er­ate this behav­ior.” Texas school police offi­cer fired for ‘absolute­ly unwar­rant­ed’ body slam of 12-year-old girl 

News of a decline in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty must always be applauded.

In the lat­est sce­nario, Jamaicans are being told by the police that there has been a 32 per cent reduc­tion in seri­ous and vio­lent crimes for the peri­od January 1 to April 2, when com­pared to the same peri­od last year. Just to damp­en any exces­sive enthu­si­asm, the fig­ures show that mur­ders — tra­di­tion­al­ly used by peo­ple as the most impor­tant mea­sure — fell by just six per cent, while shoot­ings fell by eight per cent. We are told that those two sub­ject areas were the only ones to show sin­gle-dig­it declines. Nonetheless, the trend is in the right direction.

This news­pa­per notes a 66 per cent reduc­tion in seri­ous crime in St Elizabeth which, we sus­pect, may well be con­nect­ed to a seem­ing­ly sus­tained effort by the police com­mand in that parish to main­tain high vis­i­bil­i­ty in the main pop­u­la­tion cen­ters. We are expect­ing that the con­cert­ed dri­ve to tar­get lot­to scam­ming will reap yet more div­i­dends for law­men and women, espe­cial­ly in west­ern and cen­tral Jamaica. The dai­ly reports of mur­ders and crim­i­nal atroc­i­ties of all kinds mean there can be no relax­ation in the dri­ve to stop crim­i­nals. This news­pa­per is there­fore very pleased that National Security Minister Mr Robert Montague has hit the ground run­ning since his ele­va­tion, post the February 25 par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. His pro­pos­al for used cars to boost police mobil­i­ty may be open to debate, but it reveals fresh think­ing which deserves com­men­da­tion. The min­is­ter has also demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to con­tin­ue with pro­grammes from the pre­vi­ous Administration which are per­ceived to be work­ing. One such is the Unite for Change ini­tia­tive of Mr Montague’s pre­de­ces­sor, Mr Peter Bunting, which has been cred­it­ed for spark­ing uni­ty against crim­i­nals in a num­ber of communities.

All well-think­ing Jamaicans rec­og­nize that the police can­not com­bat crime on their own. They urgent­ly need con­struc­tive help from those whom they serve. Unfortunately, large por­tions of the Jamaican pop­u­la­tion are yet to ful­ly absorb that mes­sage. For that rea­son, ini­tia­tives such as Unite for Change should be giv­en as much sup­port as pos­si­ble by those in author­i­ty. We are also hap­py that the min­is­ter has already start­ed a pro­gramme of com­mu­ni­ty vis­its and town hall meet­ings to inform peo­ple of his think­ing, but per­haps most impor­tant­ly to lis­ten to the peo­ple. “… the answers to a lot of our prob­lems lie with the peo­ple,” said Mr Montague recent­ly fol­low­ing a vis­it to Westmoreland. That has to be the way to go. Crucially, Mr Montague can’t be left out there on his own as he strives to ral­ly Jamaicans against crim­i­nals. Prime Minister Andrew Holness and the entire Government must pro­vide as much sup­port as pos­si­ble — not just mate­ri­al­ly, but cru­cial­ly in terms of com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tion — in this effort to mobi­lize Jamaicans to sup­port the police. An uncom­fort­able per­cep­tion for this news­pa­per dur­ing the rule of Mrs Portia Simpson Miller’s People’s National Party Administration was that Mr Bunting was out on a limb, all on his own. If Jamaicans are to con­quer crime, every­one should pull togeth­er as hard as they can. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​e​d​i​t​o​r​i​a​l​/​T​h​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​a​n​d​-​n​e​w​-​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​s​e​c​u​r​i​t​y​-​m​i​n​i​s​t​e​r​-​m​u​s​t​-​g​e​t​-​f​u​l​l​-​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​_​5​7​347The police and new nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter must get full support

Vendors in Westmoreland are unhappy with the strategies being employed by the Commanding officer of the Parish Deputy Superintendent of Police David White,.
Part of Deputy Superintendent White’s strategy is to remove illegal vending from the major towns in the Parish. Superintendent White has correctly pointed to the correlation between quality of life infractions like the illegal occupation of streets by vendors and those who would engage in the commission of more serious crimes.

It is safe to imag­ine that the strat­e­gy to go after ille­gal vend­ing is a strat­e­gy which has the bless­ings of the Commissioner of Police. Even if it isn’t and it is an ini­tia­tive of Deputy Superintendent White alone, it is com­mend­able that he has the vision to rec­og­nize the nexus between qual­i­ty of live infrac­tions and more seri­ous crimes. In fact Deputy Superintendent White cat­e­gor­i­cal stat­ed that one of his pri­or­i­ties is to rid the town cen­ters, includ­ing Savanna-la-Mar, of ille­gal vending.
“We know that a num­ber of the ven­dors are there as a result of the pro­ceeds from crime. We also know that some of them have been strate­gi­cal­ly placed by some crim­i­nal ele­ments with­in the town,”White said.

RUSHING TO PUT OUT FIRES IS NOT A PLAN TO ERADICATE CRIME.

One of the points I con­stant­ly sound off on at the risk of being repet­i­tive is the lev­el to which Jamaican author­i­ties have allowed crime to metas­ta­size and the rule of law to denigrate .
As the Island grap­ples with the ever increas­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics the police are left hold­ing the bag as there has been no real polit­i­cal sup­port behind law enforce­ment to go after crim­i­nals in a con­cert­ed way.
In fact the well is so con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed even the courts are sym­pa­thet­ic to criminals.

The Town and Community Act empow­ers the Police to go after any­one who breach­es the Act. Nevertheless before we look at Police respon­si­bil­i­ty we must first exam­ine what gives peo­ple the right to set up vend­ing stalls on side­walks and in some cas­es in the streets and in front of the very doors of legit­i­mate tax pay­ing businesses.
It is the same lethar­gy and sense of per­mis­sive­ness which caused entire com­mu­ni­ties to spring up on Gully-banks , on Government lands and on pri­vate­ly owned prop­er­ties across the country.
It is not heart­less or uncar­ing to ask peo­ple to obey laws. No one can rea­son­ably argue against peo­ple mak­ing a liv­ing. What I believe is that cit­i­zens of Jamaica, or any coun­try for that mat­ter, must make a liv­ing with­in the bound­aries of the laws. If cit­i­zens do not like the laws it is their right to lob­by their polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives to have those laws changed . |
No Nation can rea­son­ably allow it’s cit­i­zens to flout laws with­out descend­ing into chaos.
I believe it is safe to say that both polit­i­cal par­ties have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly avoid­ed get­ting tough with what are deemed minor infrac­tions for decades.
Today it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for author­i­ties to embark on doing their jobs of uphold­ing the laws with­out seem­ing to be bul­lies using state pow­er and resources to sup­press the poor.
Unfortunately the peo­ple most affect­ed by crime are the poor­est peo­ple, yet the strate­gies which are need­ed to improve their lives are the strate­gies against which they are most opposed

Some of the peo­ple who ply their wares for a liv­ing are decent peo­ple who sim­ply want to make a liv­ing. That is under­stand­able but though heart rend­ing as their pleas are, author­i­ties have a duty to remove them from the streets. It is not just a qual­i­ty of life issue it’s is a safe­ty and secu­ri­ty issue>
First respon­ders must have clear streets to get to where they are need­ed. It is that simple.
Over the last four decades in Kingston alone we have seen where unchecked dis­re­gard for the Town and Community Act has done tremen­dous harm to the city and result­ed in much loss of life and property.
From King Street to Orange Street, from Princess street to Heywood Street , Spanish Town Road, and myr­i­ad oth­er arter­ies beyond.
Let’s not ignore the impact Sound sys­tems have had on the psy­che of work­ing peo­ple who are forced to suf­fer in silence , ter­ri­fied of open­ing their mouths because the “Don” decid­ed to have a dance every week. Many sim­ply gave up because they are unable to get police to enforce the laws.
Of course it was the con­fla­gra­tion of ven­dors in these local­i­ties which caused crime to increase expo­nen­tial­ly. It was dif­fi­cult and impos­si­ble to tell who was hig­gler from who was rob­ber, in many cas­es the lines weren’t just blurred they were non-existent.
This is where the Governing admin­is­tra­tion must expend some polit­i­cal cap­i­tal. It may not sound good in the Media which rel­ish­es the role it cre­at­ed for itself as a mouth­piece for crim­i­nal elements.
Down Town Kingston is a case-study in what occured when ven­dors are left to do what­ev­er they please.
In the ear­ly 80’s as a young cop on foot patrol I saw clear­ly what ille­gal vend­ing did to that area of the city and by exten­sion adjoin­ing sub­urbs of down­town Kingston.
Criminals from all of the inner city enclaves came out and hung out among so-called legit­i­mate ven­dors. When they broke the laws and we attempt­ed to arrest them the ven­dors all of a sud­den became an added lay­er of prob­lem we had to con­tend with just to effect those arrests.

Robbers, chain’­grab­bers, and all kinds of crim­i­nal activ­i­ties emerged in those vend­ing enclaves. More opu­lent areas like the con­stant Spring and Half Way Tree Police areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty suf­fered as house-break­ings ‚home inva­sions and armed rob­beries and even mur­ders went through the roof .
Later as a mem­ber of the Constant Spring CIB I saw first hand, and was instru­men­tal in deal­ing with the surge of crime as a result of the under­ground mar­ket which opened up down­town Kingston for stolen merchandise.
Our Police work took us to the bed­room com­mu­ni­ties of Portmore St Catherine and as far-away places as Saint Elizabeth ‚Westmoreland and oth­ers where we recov­ered prop­er­ty robbed or stolen from our police area.
Downtown vend­ing areas became a new under­ground econ­o­my which had pre­cious­ly lit­tle to do with reg­u­lar vend­ing . It was a place where every­thing could be sourced illegally.
This prog­no­sis by Supt White is noth­ing new.

During A question and answer segment of the recent town hall meeting held in Westmoreland’s capital, Savanna-la-Mar — where National Security Minister Robert Montague, Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams, permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security Major General Stewart Saunders, Assistant Commissioner of Police Winchroy Budhoo and DSP White were in attendance — several vendors urged the police to revisit the anti-vending initiative. “I am begging on my bending knees, Sir. Please, please, Sir. I have a loan with Access Finance for $50-odd thousand and from the ninth of January [this year] until now, I haven’t made $9,000. I had to beg some money just to clear some of my loan so that my place don’t put up [for sale],” a female vendor told the commissioner. The vendors were supported by councillor for the North Savanna-la-Mar Division Devon Thomas, who argued that the anti-vending initiative has impacted negatively on the lives of the vendors. “… Superintendent White came into the area with some strategies to fight crime, and I am saying that this has affected vending on the street side, we are saying that people like the jerk man…we need to revise the situation, so we can have organised vending,” Thomas argued.

These sto­ries tug at the heart­strings but none of these accounts, legit­i­mate though they are, mil­i­tates against restor­ing san­i­ty and the rule of law to the streets of the Island’s cities and Towns.
In a pre­vi­ous Article I asked who would bell the cat on this very issue? This is not the first time that this issue has come to the fore, in fact it keeps pop­ping up as admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties seek to apply band-aid approach­es to this metas­ta­siz­ing tumor only to give up when accused of pres­sur­ing poor people.
The Island’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion sug­gest that this is a prob­lem which is going nowhere soon . The new Administration must get behind the Police in deal­ing with this problem.
However it can­not be done arbi­trar­i­ly or in a venge­ful man­ner. It is not an easy prob­lem because admin­is­tra­tions regard­less of par­ty will be asked to pro­vide ade­quate alter­na­tive accom­mo­da­tions to house vendors .
Even then ven­dors may refuse to use those facil­i­ties, it hap­pened sev­er­al time before, they want max­i­mum vis­i­bil­i­ty the streets pro­vide that.
Street vend­ing has become an entrenched part of the Island’s pop­u­lar cul­ture, peo­ple have sim­ply become accus­tomed to doing as they please, they are not about to change overnight even at their own peril.

SAVANNA-LA-MAR, Westmoreland — Westmoreland ven­dors, who ply their wares in sev­er­al town cen­tres in the parish, are up in arms with the recent­ly assigned offi­cer in charge of the parish, Deputy Superintendent of Police David White, over new guide­lines imple­ment­ed by the police aimed at assist­ing with crime reduc­tion in the parish. DSP White, who took over com­mand of the Westmoreland Police Division ear­li­er this year, has said that one of his pri­or­i­ties is to rid the town cen­tres, includ­ing Savanna-la-Mar, of ille­gal vend­ing. Adamant that there exists a link between crim­i­nal activ­i­ty and street vend­ing, DSP White, in January, spear­head­ed an anti-street vend­ing cam­paign in the Savanna-la-Mar, Grange Hill and Negril areas of Westmoreland. “We know that a num­ber of the ven­dors are there as a result of the pro­ceeds from crime. We also know that some of them have been strate­gi­cal­ly placed by some crim­i­nal ele­ments with­in the town,” he told the Jamaica Observer West, short­ly after the launch of the initiative.

“There is a very strong link of crime in Westmoreland and vend­ing in the dif­fer­ent town­ships. And, there­fore, our activ­i­ty is to remove many of them to cre­ate that pub­lic safe­ty with­in.” But dur­ing the ques­tion and answer seg­ment of the recent town hall meet­ing held in Westmoreland’s cap­i­tal, Savanna-la-Mar — where National Security Minister Robert Montague, Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Ministry of National Security Major General Stewart Saunders, Assistant Commissioner of Police Winchroy Budhoo and DSP White were in atten­dance — sev­er­al ven­dors urged the police to revis­it the anti-vend­ing ini­tia­tive. “I am beg­ging on my bend­ing knees, Sir. Please, please, Sir. I have a loan with Access Finance for $50-odd thou­sand and from the ninth of January [this year] until now, I haven’t made $9,000. I had to beg some mon­ey just to clear some of my loan so that my place don’t put up [for sale],” a female ven­dor told the com­mis­sion­er. The ven­dors were sup­port­ed by coun­cil­lor for the North Savanna-la-Mar Division Devon Thomas, who argued that the anti-vend­ing ini­tia­tive has impact­ed neg­a­tive­ly on the lives of the ven­dors. “… Superintendent White came into the area with some strate­gies to fight crime, and I am say­ing that this has affect­ed vend­ing on the street side, we are say­ing that peo­ple like the jerk man…we need to revise the sit­u­a­tion, so we can have organ­ised vend­ing,” Thomas argued.

“Mr Minister [Montague], there are some grey areas in this sit­u­a­tion. Vending uptown (Savanna-la-Mar) has been the bread­win­ner for many peo­ple. It has been going on for years, and they have got per­mis­sion from busi­ness peo­ple to vend at night-time. It has cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple, even those com­ing in at night on the hotel bus­es can get some­thing to eat from the ven­dors.” Montague lat­er encour­aged peo­ple in the gath­er­ing who had issues with the no-vend­ing order to attend the parish council’s com­mer­cial com­mit­tee meet­ing, which is held on the sec­ond Monday of each month. He also asked DSP White to be present at the next meet­ing, sched­uled for April 11. However, Councillor Milton Miles told the Observer West that the com­mer­cial com­mit­tee meet­ing would be “too small”, adding that as soon as may­or of Savanna-la-Mar Bertel Moore returns to the island after the Easter hol­i­days, he would be seek­ing to have a date set for a spe­cial meet­ing with the ven­dors and DSP White. Last year, a record 110 mur­ders were record­ed in the parish of Westmoreland. Westmoreland ven­dors knock police’s anti-vend­ing stance

How many times have we seen news reports of weapons and ammunition finds at Jamaica’s wharves with the caption the Police are investigating?
The answer is too many to remember . Yet how many times have we heard that detailed investigations resulted in arrest of the members of an intricate gun smuggling network ?
Never !
Or at least I cannot recall ever hearing that this has ever happened.

Law enforce­ment offi­cials have made a major arms and ammu­ni­tion find at the Kingston Wharves.

The items com­prise an AR-15 assault rifle, two hand guns, a .44 mag­num, a .45 pis­tol, a smoke grenade and some 1,011 assort­ed rounds of ammu­ni­tion. The police are now inves­ti­gat­ing. PHOTOS: Major Gun, Ammunition Find At Kingston Wharves.

It’s nat­ur­al and total­ly under­stand­able that we cel­e­brate and feel a sense of relief that at least these weapons and ammu­ni­tion did not make it to the streets. Who knows just how many lives will be saved just because this par­tic­u­lar ship­ment did not make it out. As a pri­vate cit­i­zen I share the sense of relief which comes with know­ing that they caught this one.

As a for­mer police offi­cer I have an addi­tion­al response to this as well as every weapon/​ammunition and con­tra­band find for that matter.
I under­stand that each indi­vid­ual case has it’s own unique set of char­ac­ter­is­tics which nec­es­sar­i­ly deter­mine how a poten­tial inves­ti­ga­tion would pro­ceed going forward.
My con­tention is that a mere con­tra­band find should nev­er be the end of the road, it should be the begin­ning. I total­ly under­stand the eupho­ria and the adren­a­line rush such finds must elic­it. I am not too far removed from the suc­cess­es of the late 80’s ear­ly 90’s of the suc­cess­es of the Constant Spring CIB to for­get those adren­a­line rushes.
The adren­a­line rush should not be a way to say “see we are on the job” . It should serve as an accel­er­ant to the engines of investigators.

POINT OF ORIGIN

Every ship­ment has a point of ori­gin. Every ship­ment has a man­i­fest. In today’s world there are cam­eras every­where , even if the ship­ment was deliv­ered to the wharf by third par­ty shipper/​trans­porta­tion that per­son know from whom he/​she received the shipment.
It is not dif­fi­cult to trace the ship­ment back to it’s point of ori­gin. We are oper­at­ing in a inter-con­nect­ed world where law-enforce­ment agen­cies coöperate >
The police depart­ment must oper­ate on the premise that for every one ship­ment it con­fis­cate, sev­er­al more gets through.
Why ?
If the method was­n’t seen as a viable option those behind it would not have opt­ed for it. The police depart­ment must begin to think this way .
It must also assume the way crim­i­nals think, that ship­ment may also have been a” gimme”, mean­ing “here take this lit­tle gift and get exit­ed while we sneak the real ship­ment through”.

DESTINATION POINT

In order for Jamaican police to access the point of ori­gin it may have to train offi­cers to bet­ter inves­ti­gate crimes. I know despite the fluff there isn’t much inves­ti­gat­ing being done by the JCF.
It can­not be out­side the scope of whats pos­si­ble for the JCF how­ev­er to track a ship­ment at home.
Why reveal that a ship­ment of guns and ammu­ni­tion was discovered?
That ship­ment and every oth­er was con­signed to some­one or some orga­ni­za­tion. This is where inves­ti­ga­tors should patient­ly wait until the ship­ment is signed for and picked up. The next step is to fol­low it to see where it lead to before arrest­ing the perpetrators.
If a ship­ment of guns and ammu­ni­tion are arriv­ing at a loca­tion I believe it is a safe bet to imag­ine that the prin­ci­pal play­ers are in place at the des­ti­na­tion point.

Making arrests at this point is like­ly to yield a trea­sure trove of valu­able prin­ci­pal play­ers. If Investigators are inter­est­ed in fol­low­ing the trail to where it leads.
If the Police depart­ment is seri­ous about crime it must first fix the per­cep­tion it has about it’s methods.
As for this writer , the method­olo­gies being use does not exact­ly elic­it or engen­der con­fi­dence that there is a desire to find out who are behind these ship­ments of weapons into our country.
Just this morn­ing I read that the JCF will be train­ing some mem­bers to deal with domes­tic vio­lence. This train­ing is sup­posed to be made pos­si­ble with out­side help.
I stand to be cor­rect­ed but why is it not stan­dard pro­ce­dure that offi­cers are trained in domes­tic vio­lence aware­ness and how-to at the acad­e­my? Why aren’t the for­eign Governments not offer­ing help in fight­ing crime?

There seem to have been a step­ping up of police raids and aggres­sive­ness in recent weeks . Whether it is relat­ed to the change in Government is yet to be determined.
What appears evi­dent is that there is entrenched oppo­si­tion to aggres­sive law enforce­ment in the coun­try . The for­mer admin­is­tra­tion and pre­vi­ous PNP admin­is­tra­tions was not pre­pared to expend any polit­i­cal cap­i­tal to get crim­i­nals off the streets.
As such crime fight­ing in Jamaica has been total­ly politicized.
If the new Administration uses even a lit­tle of the polit­i­cal cap­i­tal it has in the fight against crime it will be char­ac­ter­ized as being against poor people.
There is a com­mon non­sense-notion which per­me­ate a wide cross sec­tion of Jamaica which believes peo­ple have a right to com­mit crimes.
A gov­ern­ment which make deal­ing with crime a pri­or­i­ty is by default a Government against the people.
Welcome to Jamaica !
There is a huge sub-sec­tion, maybe the major­i­ty of Jamaicans who are inher­ent­ly opposed to the rule of law . This sub-set is quite will­ing to have a one-par­ty state in order to avoid con­form­ing to the rule of law.
I much rather see great inves­tiga­tive polic­ing ‚it is the great­est deter­rent to crime. I know that the courts have not yet received the memo that crim­i­nals belong in pris­ons but the police can at least do it’s job.

Everyone in Jamaica knows who Tesha Miller is , in fact Jamaicans living abroad who pay attention to whats happening in our country also know who this guy is .
Yesterday the 31^st of March the United States Government deported him back to Jamaica .
The process is that deported Jamaicans are taken to the Mobile Reserve where they are fingerprinted then released if there are no charges pending against them.

According to the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) Miller is the boss of the mur­der­ous People’s National Party affil­i­at­ed Spanish Town based Klansman gang .
Miller was returned to the Island after he fled to the United States, was appre­hend­ed and impris­oned for two years for ille­gal entry .
He is now back on the Island.
The Klansman Gang is one of the most vio­lent crim­i­nal Gang oper­at­ing on the Island. The Gang spe­cial­izes in Murder for hire, Extortion, Robberies and oth­er crim­i­nal activities.

HOW THE COURTS FACILITATE AND ENCOURAGE GANGLAND

Tesha Miller the gang leader was freed of the triple mur­ders of Oraine Jackson, Jeffery Johnson and Nicole Allen in Braeton, St Catherine, in January 2005. Classic exam­ple of the cor­rupt crim­i­nal court sys­tem on the Island.
Again in 2004 Miller was freed of the gun mur­der of John Haughton in the Circuit Court .
These releas­es should come as no sur­prise to any­one famil­iar with the crim­i­nal lov­ing lib­er­al cor­rupt court sys­tem on the Island.
For decades there as been this mys­tique sur­round­ing the Jamaican judi­cia­ry, it’s a myth­i­cal notion that the courts are sacro­sanct and incorruptible .
At best the courts are pop­u­lat­ed with opin­ion­at­ed left wing lib­er­al judges whom are basi­cal­ly pulled from the defense side of the Isle as opposed to the pros­e­cu­tion side which would give the peo­ple a bet­ter shot at get­ting justice.
Worse case any­one believ­ing the Island’s judi­cia­ry is insu­lat­ed or untouched by polit­i­cal or oth­er cor­ro­sive, cor­rupt­ing influ­ences may con­tact me, I have a few bridges for sale.
The clear-cut Cuban light Bulb scan­dal is just one exam­ple of what goes on in Jamaica. It puts to rest the non­sense that the courts are not corrupt.
The real­i­ty is that the Island’s lib­er­al judges are as much to blame for the Island’s run away crime rate as any oth­er factor .
The Police can catch crim­i­nals and even with the slim pos­si­bil­i­ty they are con­vict­ed in that hos­tile pros­e­cu­tion envi­ron­ment, they are usu­al­ly let go on appeal.
These head scratch­ing high­er court over-reach, over-rule goes with­out any­one say­ing any­thing about it, it’s par for the course.
The pre­sump­tion is that the courts do the right thing , It’s the biggest bull-shit . Personally I don’t buy it the courts are sus­cep­ti­ble to cor­rup­tion as any oth­er branch of Government.

POLICE INEPTNESS

On Miller’s return to the Island yes­ter­day Deputy Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds warned Tesha Miller quote that no act of crim­i­nal­i­ty will be tol­er­at­ed by him Hinds, or any oth­er mem­ber of the Police department.
I am sure Tesha Miller is quak­ing in his boots at this warn­ing . Remember Donovan ‘Bulbie’ Bennett for­mer gang leader who was top of the police’s most want­ed list for over ten (10)years. From all reports he lived like a king, was revered like a king and was buried like a king. He hid in plain sight from the inept Police Force for a decade on the tiny island half the size of the US state of Connecticut a small state.
Initially the police bragged that their spe­cial­ized units were mon­i­tor­ing Bennett’s activ­i­ties after he was returned to the Island and was liv­ing in a new Kingston Hotel from which he ran his crim­i­nal empire.
Despite that mon­i­tor­ing Bennett dis­ap­peared and lived like roy­al­ty for a decade before they man­aged to track him down.
Donovan (Bulbie) Bennett a com­mon scum­bag with polit­i­cal con­nec­tions , aid­ed abet­ted by crooked ele­ments with­ing the Police depart­ment thumbed his nose at the law with impunity.

Jamaica’s fas­ci­na­tion with and rev­er­ence for the most vile ele­ments of the crim­i­nal under­world has sus­tained and enabled crim­i­nal­i­ty to flour­ish and grow, mak­ing the likes Of Donovan (Bulbie) Bennett, Christopher (dud­dus) Coke and Tesha (rat) Miller possible.
For the record it is nev­er the rank and file of the police force which enables crime on the Island.
It is the feck­less , weak, incom­pe­tent lap-dog men­tal­i­ty of the senior ranks which has allowed crime to metas­ta­size out of control.

Making idle threats and beg­ging a com­mon dirt-bag crim­i­nal not to com­mit crimes is like beg­ging the sun not to shine . The sun will shine and crim­i­nals will com­mit crimes.
The younger police offi­cers are rar­ing to do their jobs what they lack is focused lead­er­ship with backbone.
I am tired of hear­ing about polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence , Jamaican law gives the police ade­quate pow­ers to go after crim­i­nals, there is noth­ing politi­cians can do when top-down lead­er­ship go after crim­i­nals, the eyes of the world are watching.
The senior lead­er­ship are mere lap-dogs and that’s the bot­tom line.

All talk noth­ing more, Tesha Miller will con­tin­ue to run his crim­i­nal enter­prise as if he nev­er left. Either that or he will be eat­en by his own, not the inept threat-mak­ing police force.
|This new Administration can show it is seri­ous about crime by tabling tough anti-gang leg­is­la­tion with teeth . If it intends to do so the present Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck should have no input, or any law which emanate will be noth­ing but anoth­er piece of crime-enhanc­ing leg­is­la­tion as (inde­com) has been.

DEPUTY Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds yes­ter­day warned alleged Klansman gang boss Tesha Miller that no act of crim­i­nal­i­ty will be tol­er­at­ed by him or oth­er mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

The senior law­man made the state­ment in light of Miller’s return to the island yes­ter­day after being deport­ed from the United States where he spent two years behind bars on a charge of ille­gal entry. He was processed yes­ter­day at the JCF’s Mobile Reserve and released.

Reports last year that he would have been released ear­ly trig­gered anx­i­ety among res­i­dents in Spanish Town and the wider St Catherine, as there was an intense bat­tle at the time for lead­er­ship of the Klansman gang.

“We are aware that there have been some chal­lenges to his lead­er­ship while he was abroad. We are also aware that as a result of the intra-gang strug­gle we have expe­ri­enced a num­ber of mur­ders in St Catherine North and its envi­rons. We are resolved to ensur­ing that any­one involved in the com­mit­ting of any crime on behalf of any­one, that we will inves­ti­gate, get the evi­dence; and put those per­sons in jail so that they can in fact face the courts and answer to the alle­ga­tions made against them or evi­dence that we have gath­ered against them,”.

The senior cop said a strong mes­sage was being sent to Miller, mem­bers of the gang, and his rivals that the police are res­olute in ensur­ing that Spanish Town and the wider Jamaica remain calm, and that no form of crim­i­nal­i­ty by any gang mem­ber in Spanish Town or any­where else in the coun­try will be tolerated.

“We are resolved to lever­age what­ev­er leg­is­la­tion we have to ensure that these crim­i­nals behave them­selves and begin to recog­nise that there should not be any ben­e­fit from crim­i­nal activ­i­ty,” Hinds insisted.

Hinds also appealed to Miller to refrain from par­tic­i­pat­ing in any act of reprisal as a result of the death of his broth­er while he was locked away. Miller’s broth­er was shot dead last April by unknown assailants on the Spanish Town Bypass in St Catherine.

“I will appeal to him… that any­body relat­ed to him who has been killed, we urge him to co-oper­ate as best he can if he has evi­dence. There is only one body charged with inves­ti­gat­ing crimes in Jamaica and that is the Jamaica Constabulary Force, so we’re ask­ing him to allow us to do our job. How he can help us? Provide infor­ma­tion if he has it and use his influ­ence to help us to get the evi­dence to ensure that we can arrest those involved in his brother’s killing,” said Hinds.

Miller fled to the United States after he was freed of gun and rob­bery charges by the Court of Appeal in March 2013.

He was sen­tenced in the High Court Division of the Gun Court to sev­en years’ impris­on­ment for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm and 15 years for rob­bery with aggra­va­tion, which led to him fil­ing the appeal.

In June 2010, Miller, also called ‘Rat’, was acquit­ted of the 2004 gun mur­der of John Haughton in the Home Circuit Court because of insuf­fi­cient evidence.

Months before, Miller was freed of the triple mur­ders of Oraine Jackson, Jeffery Johnson and Nicole Allen in Braeton, St Catherine, in January 2005.
See sto­ry here : Tesha Miller deport­ed, police issue warning

Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams recent­ly expressed shock and out­rage at the recent upsurge of mur­ders in the Parish of Saint James , cul­mi­nat­ing in two sep­a­rate dou­ble mur­ders just over the pre­ced­ing Easter weekend.
Speaking on the issue the Commissioner said ” “l am shocked and out­raged at the sense­less killings that have resumed in Montego Bay and the sur­round­ing areas. And I am here today (Saturday) to vis­it the loca­tions and sit with the police offi­cers to see how well their strate­gies are work­ing, and to work with them to devise even more effi­cient and effec­tive strate­gies so that we can prop­er­ly cur­tail mur­ders in this divi­sion,”
COMMISH VOWS NEW ATTACK ON BLOOD-DRENCHED ST JAMES DIVISION

I am a lit­tle con­fused at the Commissioner’s use of the word “resumed” I don’t believe any Jamaican believe killings had sub­sided any­where in Jamaica. I stand to be cor­rect­ed on this maybe I’m wrong or the JCF and the Commissioner has a high water mark which he and his depart­ment view as tol­er­a­ble or per­mis­si­ble even., Anything above that water mark would then be seen as a resump­tion in the Commish’s mind.

In response to the com­mis­sion­er’s state­ments about the upsurge of mur­ders in the sec­ond city I wrote yes­ter­day chal­leng­ing the notion that there is even a seri­ous plan afoot in Jamaica to counter the scourge of homi­cides and oth­er felonies.
RUSHING TO PUT OUT FIRES IS NOT A PLAN TO ERADICATE CRIME.

In the Article I detailed what I believe are clear signs that the issue of seri­ous crimes are not being addressed with the seri­ous­ness and dis­patch nec­es­sary to put a dent in it. I total­ly under­stand that the Commissioner of Police and his depart­ment are lit­er­al­ly work­ing with hands tied behind their backs. The (inde­com) Act is a very good exam­ple of the shack­les the police are forced to work with even as they do their jobs in one of the most vio­lent , least edu­cat­ed, anti law-enforce­ment nation on earth.

A day lat­er new infor­ma­tion com­ing out of the JCF seem to con­firm what I artic­u­lat­ed just yes­ter­day. In a release which seeks to show that the JCF is on the ball car­ried in this medi­um but ema­nat­ing from Jamaican media the JCF’s Corporate Communications Unit said it’s recent­ly launched “Operation Tidal Wave” has been reap­ing success.

SEE STORY HERE:

The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) recent­ly launched oper­a­tion ‘Tidal Wave’ has report­ed­ly been reap­ing success.

Tidal Wave start­ed after the JCF con­clud­ed its three-year crime fight­ing strat­e­gy, Operation Resilience on March 18, to make way for this new oper­a­tional phase, which will see a surge in polic­ing activ­i­ties across the island for the next three months. According to the JCF’s Corporate Communications Unit, since the launch of the ini­tia­tive, four per­sons have been arrest­ed and charged for Operation ‘Tidal Wave’ Reaping Success, Says JCF Larceny, 65 Farm Watch meet­ings have been held and the Police have vis­it­ed 12 abattoirs.

Additionally, 273 per­sons have been charged for var­i­ous offences and four want­ed per­sons were held. During the same peri­od, 15 firearms, 96 assort­ed rounds of ammu­ni­tion and 517 offen­sive weapons were seized. In addi­tion, over 95,000 search­es – includ­ing premis­es, vehi­cles and per­sons – were car­ried out, while $200,000 and US$50,000 and cash in oth­er cur­ren­cies were seized. A total of 598.5 pounds of gan­ja, with an esti­mat­ed street val­ue of approx­i­mate­ly J$3 mil­lion was also seized along with, five pounds of cocaine. One point five acres of gan­ja has been destroyed. Police/​citizen rela­tions have also been tar­get­ed under the ini­tia­tive. Since the start of the ini­tia­tive there have been 14 wide­ly pub­li­cized meet­ings, 245 Neighborhood Watch meet­ings and 208 Domestic Dispute Interventions.

I may be way too cyn­i­cal but isn’t all of this sim­ple police ‑work? Isn’t this what Police do every­day ? Why is there a spe­cial Operational ini­tia­tive to get these sim­ple things done.
Set aside the chit-chat, this seem like an aver­age day of polic­ing for Dadrick Henry and myself, or some­thing Mikey Scott and his team would do in Half-Way-Tree, or Laing and his team in Admiral Town, and the list goes on and on . I won­der why there has to be a surge in polic­ing activities?
Additionally if the surge is reap­ing rewards why is the surge not the norm. If some­thing is work­ing why would the JCF announce that it plans to end it after three months?
It would be of some val­ue if the Commissioner tell the nation what those offi­cers which make up the surge will be revert­ing to once the three months surge is over.

I love the Police Department and I want to see it suc­ceed. To some degree I want to see it suc­ceed because in a way the JCF has been an alma mater of sorts for me or at least one of them.
But I believe that any rea­son­able per­son look­ing at the release above will arrive at the rea­son­able con­clu­sion that there is no there there.
Based on what’s in the release the JCF has no real strat­e­gy with which to attack seri­ous crimes with any sus­tained effort.

At a time when Terrorism has reared it’s ugly head across the globe , in once peace­ful nations it is incred­i­bly impor­tant that the JCF puts it’s big boy pants on a cut out the bull.
The depart­ment can learn a lot from what is hap­pen­ing in oth­er coun­tries so that when Jamaica’s time comes it will at least have a sem­blance of an idea what to do.
Those who served the depart­ment but are locked in the past default­ing to the argu­ments that the force can­not do bet­ter are best where they are today in the also served col­umn, like myself.
The depart­ment seem to have retained noth­ing from the lessons of 2010. Terrorism will come to Jamaica , it’s not a ques­tion of if , it’s a ques­tion of when.

The Department can do much bet­ter despite the myr­i­ad constraints.
It can train it’s offi­cers better .
It can super­vise them better.
It can deploy them better.
It can sup­port them better.
And it damn sure can strate­gize better .…

The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) recent­ly launched oper­a­tion ‘Tidal Wave’ has report­ed­ly been reap­ing success.

Tidal Wave start­ed after the JCF con­clud­ed its three-year crime fight­ing strat­e­gy, Operation Resilience on March 18, to make way for this new oper­a­tional phase, which will see a surge in polic­ing activ­i­ties across the island for the next three months. According to the JCF’s Corporate Communications Unit, since the launch of the ini­tia­tive, four per­sons have been arrest­ed and charged for Operation ‘Tidal Wave’ Reaping Success, Says JCF Larceny, 65 Farm Watch meet­ings have been held and the Police have vis­it­ed 12 abattoirs.

Additionally, 273 per­sons have been charged for var­i­ous offences and four want­ed per­sons were held. During the same peri­od, 15 firearms, 96 assort­ed rounds of ammu­ni­tion and 517 offen­sive weapons were seized. In addi­tion, over 95,000 search­es – includ­ing premis­es, vehi­cles and per­sons – were car­ried out, while $200,000 and US$50,000 and cash in oth­er cur­ren­cies were seized. A total of 598.5 pounds of gan­ja, with an esti­mat­ed street val­ue of approx­i­mate­ly J$3 mil­lion was also seized along with, five pounds of cocaine. One point five acres of gan­ja has been destroyed. Police/​citizen rela­tions have also been tar­get­ed under the ini­tia­tive. Since the start of the ini­tia­tive there have been 14 wide­ly pub­li­cized meet­ings, 245 Neighborhood Watch meet­ings and 208 Domestic Dispute Interventions.

At the risk of sound­ing like a bro­ken record I must reit­er­ate that if there is no strate­gic plan with mea­sur­able met­rics aimed at root­ing out crime in Jamaica the prob­lem will not only per­sist but get expo­nen­tial­ly worse.
Commissioner Carl Williams may be among the most qual­i­fied Police Commissioners in the world but aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly qual­i­fied does not equals being up to the task.
Commissioner Williams a PhD is the head of a force of over ten thou­sand offi­cers and a depart­ment which is a third world force with third world strate­gies and third world infra­struc­ture and gov­ern­ment support.

New York City’s police Commissioner William (Bill) Bratton attend­ed Boston Technical High School, grad­u­at­ing in 1965. From there, he served in theMilitary Police Corps of the United States Army dur­ing the Vietnam War.[w] Bratton now heads the NYPD the world’s largest and most sophis­ti­cat­ed police depart­ment. Presently Bratton is on his sec­ond stint as Commissioner of the NYPD hav­ing served under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

In most col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties in the United States life expe­ri­ences are vital cred­its toward obtain­ing degrees. Bratton’s pub­lic pro­file is a case study on how a life of expe­ri­ence can be just as impor­tant as being a Scholar . In addi­tion to being Commissioner of the world’s largest police depart­ment he was for­mer­ly the Commissioner of the Boston PD,. Prior to becom­ing Commissioner of that Department he held sev­er­al senior posi­tions with­ing the depart­ment. Additionally he is also the co- founder of Bratton tech­nolo­gies . He also has inter­est in sev­er­al oth­er pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies includ­ing the Bratton Group.

Commissioner Bratton’s resume stands as a strong counter argu­ment to the nar­ra­tive that Good Policing requires a litany of let­ters behind one’s name. I say this with the utmost respect for what mem­bers like Commissioner Carl Williams and some oth­ers in the Jamaica Constabulary Force has accom­plished academically.
However it is because of my intrin­sic knowl­edge of the unique nature of Jamaican polic­ing that I argue that the time it takes to get the PhD’s and the Masters Degrees makes it lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble for a serv­ing mem­ber to ful­ly grasp Jamaican style polic­ing in the practical.
A PhD may be good for writ­ing pol­i­cy papers but good crime fight­ing tech­niques are devel­oped over time and that is indis­pens­able in the fight against ruth­less criminals.

I too am extreme­ly proud that the Commissioner of Police can address the Media with­out me hav­ing a vio­lent cringe attack. In fact I am hap­py that the Prime Minister can address the Media with­out me hav­ing a cringe attack … Oh hell ‚I’m going to get attacked for this …

Okay that was a low blow, I’ll just take the fact that Jamaica now has a PM who actu­al­ly speak to the Media.
However the Police Department can­not be about speak­ing bet­ter only. The Island needs a police Department that actu­al­ly oper­ates better.
Commissioner Williams does seem to care about the high lev­els of crime and he does show the nec­es­sary empa­thy with vic­tims of vio­lent crime. Despite that , what the fam­i­lies of crime vic­tims need from the Police most of all is cer­ti­tude that per­pe­tra­tors will be brought to justice.
Because Commissioner Carl Williams can­not deliv­er on bring­ing per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice he has been reduced to consoler-in-chief .

In 1991 I sat in on a basic detec­tive train­ing course at the Police Academy which to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion was a 6 week sem­i­nar which taught basic crim­i­nal inves­tiga­tive techniques.
One of the things I learned in that train­ing course which is indeli­bly etched in my mind to this very day is this. “No greater task may be giv­en any man that the respon­si­bil­i­ty to bring the killer of the inno­cent to jus­tice”.
I held and still hold that charge dear to my heart because it encap­su­lat­ed every­thing I ever believed as a police offi­cer. From the very first time I put on a uni­form and stepped out in the streets I had a core belief deep inside me that no major crimes should go unpunished.
More impor­tant­ly I held fast to the belief that when offend­ers com­mit crimes and they are not held account­able it embold­ens them to com­mit more seri­ous crimes . I believed then as I do now, that this sets in motion a process which if not addressed erodes the rule of law and sup­plant it with anarchy.

That ship may have already sailed for Jamaica despite protes­ta­tions to the con­trary. The dis­ci­pline known as polic­ing has been reduced to media clips and sound-bites laced with plat­i­tudes and promis­es which are nev­er ful­filled. As I have said pre­vi­ous­ly ‚it requires a spe­cial kind of per­son to run to explo­sions when every­one else runs away .
Many peo­ple are brave and have a whole lot to say as long as some­one else is tak­ing the risks. I nev­er wor­ried about those who has the most grandiose argu­ments about what needs to be done and how to do it , but they would nev­er step for­ward to actu­al­ly get involved.
Every real police offi­cer is con­ver­sant of the Monday-morn­ing quar­ter­backs and the key-board Generals who know exact­ly what to do though they have nev­er done it.

In the ear­ly 1990’s Mayor David Dinkins new York City’s first Africa-American Mayor embarked on a pro­gram with the police depart­ment called” safe city safe streets”.
The pro­gram was a coör­di­nat­ed strat­e­gy between City Hall and One Police Plaza which was geared toward using the polit­i­cal clout of the admin­is­tra­tion and the City ordi­nances to tack­le pet­ty offences in the city.
It was a strat­e­gy which saw offi­cers walk­ing the beat and tak­ing action where nec­es­sary to clamp down on squeegee-men, graf­fi­ti-artists and oth­er qual­i­ty of life offences. The strat­e­gy was not one of sticks only there were car­rots as well, police offi­cers built seri­ous bonds with the com­mu­ni­ties which helped sig­nif­i­cant­ly in low­er­ing crime.

The pro­gram took on an omi­nous turn when Dinkins was suc­ceed in City Hall by Rudolph Giuliani who adopt­ed a more stri­dent brand of polic­ing which had racial end eth­nic com­po­nents with­ing it in a pro­gram called ( COMPSTAT) , com­bi­na­tion of man­age­ment, phi­los­o­phy, and orga­ni­za­tion­al man­age­ment tools. COMPSTAT is now used by many police depart­ments across America . Supporters of the pro­gram believes in data dri­ven polic­ing which they say pro­duces results. Detractors say the num­bers arrived at using COMPSTAT are noth­ing more than quo­tas , which forces street cops to engage in undue or over-polic­ing of minor­i­ty communities.
That debate rages as America’s police forces become more and more mil­i­ta­rized and iso­lat­ed from many of the com­mu­ni­ties they are sup­posed to serve.

The Administration which was just replaced in Kingston did not seem to have a desire to empow­er the Police to go after crim­i­nals. Even though the Administration mouthed the words which would make it seem that crim­i­nal­i­ty would not be tol­er­at­ed . It was unwill­ing to expend any polit­i­cal cap­i­tal to bell the cat. As a result the poor­ly trained , poor­ly equipped, poor­ly remu­ner­at­ed police depart­ment was left hold­ing the bag on crime.
Instead of seri­ous­ly going after crim­i­nals the Administration gave more and more pow­er to the INDECOM Act to go after police officers.
This medi­um have said repeat­ed­ly that Government can go after crim­i­nals wher­ev­er they are whether they wear police uni­forms or they oper­ate in the inner cities and enclaves of the Island.
We can guar­an­tee cit­i­zens rights while empow­er­ing and sup­port­ing our police offi­cers , these two ini­tia­tives are not mutu­al­ly exclusive.

The Commissioner has nei­ther imple­ment­ed a work­able strat­e­gy to inter­act and inject mas­sive amounts of foot patrol offi­cers into com­mu­ni­ties. Neither has there been as seri­ous approach to get­ting the inves­tiga­tive capa­bil­i­ties of the force up to stan­dard . Putting up crime scene tape and bring­ing in a scene of crime van does not an inves­ti­ga­tion make.
The Commissioner of Police is nei­ther blind nor deaf he must see the litany of videos where police offi­cers on the streets are being assault­ed , berat­ed, ridiculed , and total­ly dis­re­spect­ed when­ev­er they try to make sim­ple arrests.
In may cas­es it is a sin­gle offi­cer against the com­mu­ni­ty, at oth­er times there may be anoth­er offi­cer but he or she stand by as a spec­ta­tor. This is absolute­ly a lack of prop­er police training.
At the first inkling that a sus­pect is going to be bel­liger­ent that sus­pect must be tak­en to the ground hand­cuffed and cart­ed off to jail.
The longer the scene plays out the more agi­ta­tors join the fray the more embold­ened the sus­pect becomes the less like­ly it is things will end well.

There is no unwa­ver­ing sup­port from the Commissioner nor any of the oth­er top offi­cers in sup­port of the offi­cers on the streets. Subsequently offi­cers are unsure, and hes­i­tant. The high com­mand of the JCF seem more suit­ed for a fan­cy dress par­ty in their ridicu­lous cos­tumes than actu­al­ly get­ting the job done.
The police train­ing which is still the old , “left right left right , up down up down” is as car­toon-ish as the cum­mer­bund-clown suits offi­cers are forced to wear.
The Commissioner of Police would be bet­ter served if he places before the new admin­is­tra­tion a plan to pro­tect police offi­cers as they do their jobs.
That plan should include com­po­nents which remove the INDECOM Act from the equation.
The present Government is formed by the par­ty which tabled and passed the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing piece of leg­is­la­tion that has seen crime go up with no end in sight. The for­mer admin­is­tra­tion hid behind it effec­tive­ly while doing noth­ing about crime. Sure there are less police killings but it’s not because there aren’t gun­men wreak­ing havoc.
The stark real­i­ty is that offi­cers sim­ply do not want to get tan­gled up in the non­sen­si­cal bureau­cra­cy of the INDECOM Act.
Sure Jamaica’s police offi­cers need to have strict rules gov­ern­ing the use of force includ­ing lethal force as does all police departments.
The INDECOM Act is not it.

This Administration oper­at­ing on a one seat major­i­ty in the leg­is­la­ture is less like­ly to do much about crime as can be deduced by the deaf­en­ing silence on the issue.
I am inclined to believe that with pre­cious lit­tle polit­i­cal cap­i­tal this admin­is­tra­tion will be even more cau­tious on the issue .
It will not want any per­cep­tions it is sid­ing with the police to root out crime, after all” every man haf­fi eat a food”. Simply remov­ing a street ven­dor from the streets in Jamaica , though the cor­rect thing to do, risks an uproar which cast the Government as insen­si­tive to the plight of poor people.
Such is the case when polit­i­cal par­ties politi­cize law enforce­ment by allow­ing crim­i­nals to hold sway over the rule of law.
The chal­lenges for the new admin­is­tra­tion are many, not the least of which is how to exe­cute it’s growth agen­da amidst a riv­er of blood and even with will, pre­cious lit­tle polit­i­cal capital.

MONTEGO BAY, St James — Jolted by a spate of killings, includ­ing two sep­a­rate dou­ble mur­ders on Good Friday in the St James Police Division, Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams vowed to launch a new attack on the area, which has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of top­ping the 19 police divi­sions in homicides.

“l am shocked and out­raged at the sense­less killings that have resumed in Montego Bay and the sur­round­ing areas. And I am here today (Saturday) to vis­it the loca­tions and sit with the police offi­cers to see how well their strate­gies are work­ing, and to work with them to devise even more effi­cient and effec­tive strate­gies so that we can prop­er­ly cur­tail mur­ders in this divi­sion,” said a vis­i­bly trou­bled Commissioner Williams.

The nor­mal­ly qui­et Good Friday, one of the holi­est of the Christian hol­i­days, turned out to be a bloody day in south­ern St James where the police record­ed two unre­lat­ed dou­ble murders.

The deceased in the sec­ond dou­ble killing have been iden­ti­fied as Rose-Marie Green, 28, and Douglas Tinglin, a 41-year-old taxi oper­a­tor, both of Blue Hole, Montpelier.

Reports are that about 3:30 pm, the two were head­ing home when they were pounced upon and shot dead by uniden­ti­fied assailants in their com­mu­ni­ty. Police did not imme­di­ate­ly pro­vide a motive for the homicide.

Earlier that day, 50-year-old ven­dor, Victor Kerr and 27-year-old Michael Thompson, both of Stone Mill, St James, address­es were gunned down in their community.

Police said Thompson, who was return­ing from a par­ty about 7:00 am, stopped by Kerr’s road­side stall to pur­chase an item when he was pounced upon by men who alight­ed from a motor car. Kerr was shot mul­ti­ple times by his assailants who then board­ed the wait­ing motor vehi­cle and sped away.

But the car returned short­ly after and this time the shoot­ers turned their guns on Kerr before flee­ing the scene. Police the­o­rise that the gun­men returned to kill the ven­dor, whom they saw as a poten­tial witness.

Another uniden­ti­fied com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber, who was shot and injured dur­ing the inci­dent, was tak­en to hos­pi­tal in a crit­i­cal, but sta­ble condition.

The num­ber of peo­ple who lost their lives vio­lent­ly in St James climbed to 46 since the start of the year, four less than the num­ber for the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year.

Commissioner Williams, his face a mask of con­cern and anger, walked through the com­mu­ni­ties where the dou­ble killings took place, after a meet­ing with head of the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB), Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Ealan Powell; head of Area One, ACP Winchroy Budhoo; com­man­deer of the St James Police Division Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Steve McGregor and oth­er high rank­ing Jamaica Constabulary Force per­son­nel at the Area One head­quar­ters at Sewell Avenue, Montego Bay.

The top cop lament­ed the rever­sal of the gains the police were mak­ing up until the spate of mur­ders start­ed last Wednesday, say­ing: “Up to last week the police were record­ing few­er mur­ders this year than last year. Then all of a sud­den we had these sense­less killings, start­ing about Wednesday and peak­ing yes­ter­day (Good Friday) with two dou­ble murders.

“This is not some­thing that we are going to sit idly by and see hap­pen. St James has to return to once again being a peace­ful divi­sion,” declared the police commissioner.

He not­ed that the police were fol­low­ing strong leads in the two dou­ble mur­ders and called on res­i­dents of the south St James com­mu­ni­ties to refrain from tak­ing the law into their own hands.

“If you hear any­body say­ing they are going to defend it, let them know that the police will defend it bet­ter than them. It don’t make no sense a man go try a thing and then the police come after them as well,” Williams, who offered con­do­lence to the fam­i­ly of the deceased, told res­i­dents of Stone Mill. Read more here : Commish vows new attack on blood-drenched St James Division

After the Black-Lives-Matter protests, the riots and other protest actions across America ‚Media houses grew tired packed up their cameras took down their satellite antennas and went home . While it was going on there was wide expectation and hope that much of it would stop. That finally this ugly , filthy part of America would finally go away but it hasn’t . It hasn’t subsided , the cameras are gone now, the wall to wall coverage has subsided but it goes on as if there was no outcry. There are far more important things to talk about . People are getting killed in Europe, important white people. So the incessant and unnecessary killings of unarmed people of color continue unabated by American police.

According to the [Tech insid­er] American Police kill more peo­ple in a sin­gle day than the coun­try of Norway kill in nine (9) years. Now in all fair­ness Norway has a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 5.2 mil­lion as against the American Population of over 300 mil­lion. However it is instruc­tive to note that the rea­son the com­par­i­son is made is that American cops con­tin­ue to kill unarmed men women and chil­dren at a uncon­scionable clip at the slight­est, or with­out any provocation.
In oth­er instances they kill peo­ple armed with small knives , sticks, screw­drivers, and oth­er objects which places no police offi­cer in dan­ger if the offi­cer stays a clear dis­tance away.

American state laws give police unprece­dent­ed pow­ers to use force on mem­bers of the pub­lic. What is hap­pen­ing now is that the very bound­aries of whats allowed inso­far as the legal­i­ty of those killings are con­cerned are being exploit­ed to the maximum.
It is no longer a ques­tion of am “I jus­ti­fied in this killing”?  There is lit­er­al­ly no instance of police killing inno­cent cit­i­zens where the killing is not jus­ti­fi­able under states laws.
However when the videos are replayed over and over in those killings which are record­ed the stark real­i­ty of these mur­ders become more and more nauseating.

No one is exempt , not the drug addict­ed , not the men­tal­ly dis­turbed, not the upset, not Black , not the Hispanic, not women and cer­tain­ly not Black men or boys, the tar­get of their mur­der­ous rage.

According to Rutgers University soci­ol­o­gist Paul Hirschfield The pub­lic has reached a boil­ing point in its tol­er­ance of police vio­lence, evi­denced by nation­al protests. But local gov­ern­ments and law enforce­ment groups look upon these mass respons­es as proof that firearms serve a jus­ti­fied need in soci­ety. To break that cycle, those in pow­er must reeval­u­ate their pri­or­i­ties, Hirschfield says.

Failing to enact reform puts more unarmed or light­ly armed peo­ple at risk of being unnec­es­sar­i­ly shot by the police. “Current poli­cies in the United States are extreme­ly effec­tive at pro­tect­ing police from civil­ians but woe­ful­ly inef­fec­tive at pro­tect­ing civil­ians from the police,” he said. “The pub­lic should be giv­en a say in the rel­a­tive val­u­a­tion of police and civil­ian lives.”

Simple put American laws val­ue police lives in ways they do not val­ue the lives of civil­ians and in cer­tain cas­es the laws places no val­ue on the lives of some civilians.
Alice Goffman a 33-year-old assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, In a ter­rif­ic Book titled: On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City ‚doc­u­ments how the expan­sion of America’s penal sys­tem is reshap­ing life for poor black fam­i­lies who exist under the watch of police, prison guards, and parole officers.

Goffman reports that Starting in the mid-1970s, the United States stiff­ened its laws on drugs and vio­lent crime and ratch­eted up the police pres­ence on city streets. The num­ber of peo­ple in American jails and pris­ons has risen five-fold over the past 40 years. There are now rough­ly sev­en mil­lion peo­ple under crim­i­nal-jus­tice super­vi­sion. “In mod­ern his­to­ry,” Goffman writes, “only the forced labor camps of the for­mer U.S.S.R. under Stalin approached these lev­els of penal con­fine­ment.”

In an April 2015 Article appear­ing in the Los-Angeles Times Timothy McGrath,of the GlobalPost writes : There’s so much we don’t know about why and how often peo­ple die dur­ing police encoun­ters, and yet, we know enough to know that American police are killing far, far too many peo­ple com­pared to police in oth­er devel­oped countries.
Yet in a shock­ing dis­play of tone-deaf­ness and polit­i­cal pan­der­ing Republican Candidates for President pay homage and cheer-lead on police praise while refus­ing to appro­pri­ate­ly address an issue which is a dan­ger­ous­ly sim­mer­ing caul­dron wait­ing to explode.
McGrath points out that Police in peer nations like Germany, Denmark, the UK and oth­er lib­er­al democ­ra­cies — mean­while — rarely kill civil­ians. Even account­ing for pop­u­la­tion size, the fre­quen­cy with which American police kill civil­ians is shock­ing. Not twice as often, or three times as often. We’re talk­ing fac­tors of 20 to 70.

In case after case ‚after case American police esca­late sit­u­a­tions even when fam­i­ly mem­bers call them to help calm men­tal­ly unsta­ble or irate indi­vid­u­als they end up esca­lat­ing sit­u­a­tions which ulti­mate­ly result in them killing the individual.
It’s got­ten so bad that under no cir­cum­stance would I vol­un­tar­i­ly call police to my home unless a seri­ous inci­dent occurred which demand­ed that they be noti­fied be notified.
If the police is called to speak to an Black man argu­ing with his wife, on their arrival the man is sweep­ing his front yard the broom auto­mat­i­cal­ly becomes a dead­ly weapon in their estimation.[sic]
His col­or alone is seen as a dan­ger­ous weapon , let alone if he is above five feet tall he is auto­mat­i­cal­ly a beast wor­thy of death.
On that basis they imme­di­ate­ly demand the per­son drop the broom and if there isn’t instan­ta­neous com­pli­ance he dies an instant death from a bar­rage of bullets.

As a police offi­cer I was told to be dou­bly care­ful when I deal with cit­i­zens in their homes. This extra dili­gence and care was born from the prin­ci­ple that a man’s home is his cas­tle. American cops bom­bard their way into peo­ple’s homes with brute force and lengthy-exple­tive laced tirades and any protest from res­i­dents are met with crush­ing and lethal force. This kind of behav­ior is reserved for Black and brown peo­ple but is also extend­ed on occa­sions to poor whites for whom they have pre­cious lit­tle to no respect either.

Since this issue took promi­nence the web­site the Guardian​.com began a count of all the peo­ple who die at the hands of American Police . On it’s page titled The Counted is a ver­i­ta­ble grave­yard of faces of once breath­ing live human beings gunned down by police. It is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to know exact­ly just how many peo­ple are killed as there are no Federal require­ments to report to Federal Authorities when local or state police kill people.
There are some report­ing which are clas­si­fied as jus­ti­fi­able, of course that des­ig­na­tion is done by Law-enforce­ment mak­ing those deter­mi­na­tion that their actions are jus­ti­fi­able. Those reports do not include the many peo­ple who are killed with­out any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Or peo­ple who are beat­en or suf­fo­cat­ed by police who die lat­er as a result of the abuse they take at the hands of police.

Despite these obsta­cles the Guardian came up with a total of 1134 peo­ple killed in 2015 at the hands of American police. The year 2016 began with a mer­ry clip as police con­tin­ue to kill and phys­i­cal­ly assault cit­i­zens of col­or at alarm­ing rates. In many cas­es they open­ly threat­en cit­i­zens in exple­tive laced tirades before they snuff out their lives and there are no con­se­quences for these actions. In fact there are hard­ly any cas­es where any per­son shot by police sur­vive being shot.
Young black men were nine times more like­ly than oth­er Americans to be killed by police offi­cers in 2015, accord­ing to the find­ings of a Guardian study that record­ed a final tal­ly of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforce­ment offi­cers this year.
The sto­ry is always the same some­one lunged at the police or made threat­en­ing moves in the direc­tion of offi­cers upon which offi­cers open fire and the vic­tim is stuck.
In case after case it becomes evi­dent with clos­er scruti­ny that the deceased died from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds .
Generally all kill shots.
American peo­ple of col­or have become tar­gets for assas­si­na­tion mere­ly based on the col­or of their skin. They are told to shoot to kill .
It is not out of the ordi­nary for per­sons to be vicious­ly beat­en or killed while their hands are cuffed behind their backs.

Yet American offi­cials con­tin­ue to per­pet­u­ate the non­sen­si­cal notion that the American sys­tem is the best. Despite these ridicu­lous state­ments hard­ly any cop gets pros­e­cut­ed for mur­der no mat­ter how bla­tant­ly obvi­ous their crimes are.
It lead to the log­i­cal con­clu­sion then that police mur­der is sanc­tioned by the sys­tem, and is designed to keep the minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tion in it’s place at the per­il of death.
Regardless of the bar­barism of the killings white Prosecutors put togeth­er Grand Juries with­out pre­sent­ing evi­dence of crim­i­nal con­duct to the jury. These Kangaroo events are designed to pla­cate the aggriev­ed seg­ment of the pub­lic but has noth­ing to do with jus­tice. The Grand Jury process is mere­ly a process to clear cops of wrong-doing regard­less of the crimes they commit.

The http://​the​freethought​pro​ject​.com/​c​o​p​s​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​8​-​h​o​u​r​s​-​2​0​1​5​-​e​a​r​l​y​-​g​r​a​v​e​s​-​d​a​y/reports that in 2015 cops in the United States kill at a rate of 3 each day or one per­son every 8 hours.