Kartel juror Livingston Cain in a queue wait­ing to be searched to enter the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court in Half Way Tree Friday morn­ing. Cain made every pos­si­ble attempt to avoid being cap­tured on cam­era by pho­tog­ra­phers at the scene. (Photo: Paul Henry)

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Embattled juror in the Vybz Kartel mur­der tri­al, Livingston Cain, is to return to court on April 24. Cain appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court on Friday, March 28 to answer to bribery charges. He is accused of offer­ing the jury fore­man in the Kartel mur­der tri­al $500,000 for a not-guilty ver­dict. It is also alleged that Cain told anoth­er juror that he would “take care of him” if he returned a not-guilty ver­dict as well. Cain was the only juror to vote not guilty in the con­vic­tion of Vybz Kartel, Shaw ‘Shawn Storm’ Campbell, Andre St John, and Kahira Jones. A fifth man, Shane Williams, was acquit­ted. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​K​a​r​t​e​l​-​j​u​r​o​r​-​r​e​t​u​r​n​s​-​t​o​-​c​o​u​r​t​-​o​n​-​A​p​r​i​l​-24

From the off­set the odds of jus­tice being served in the Kern Spencer crim­i­nal tri­al was next to zero. Yet despite the odds many Jamaicans includ­ing myself, hoped that maybe this time , just this once, a Jamaican politi­cian would be held account­able for just the sec­ond time in our his­to­ry. Kern Spencer walked out of Senior Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey’s Court-room, a free man ‚our hopes dashed , it was not to be.

In ret­ro­spect I ask myself “what was your hope based on”? There was hard­ly any prece­dent in sup­port of that hope. In fact, only one Politician, JAG Smith, for­mer Labor Minister in a 1980’s JLP Administration was ever sent to prison for steal­ing Farm Workers hard-earned sav­ings. Had he coop­er­at­ed and paid back the mon­ey it would have been swept under the rug and he would not have gone to prison. Ironically it was Portia Simpson Miller the cur­rent Prime Minister, then Minister of Labor ‚who pushed for the inves­ti­ga­tions. This 1990 SUN SENTINEL REPORT pro­vides details on the scheme. http://​arti​cles​.sun​-sen​tinel​.com/​1​990 – 04-01/busi­ness/9002010438_1_­farm-work­er-pro­gram-for­eign-guest-work­ers-bank-accounts.

Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey’s deci­sion to dis­pose of the case by way of Defense’s No case sub­mis­sion motion, smack of arro­gance and brava­do. I believe her actions have been the most egre­gious I have ever seen com­ing from the bench in Jamaica. It smells like a smack-down of chief Prosecutor Paula Llewellyn, I get the last laugh. I know Jamaica is cor­rupt to the core, but this is the most galling I have ever seen. It is a sad day for our coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the ver­dict of dance-hall Disc Jockey Adijia Palmer o/​c Vybez Kartel was Guilty. It fur­ther cements the pop­u­lar­ly-held belief that the laws do not apply to those with polit­i­cal power.

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS.

1] The Cuban Government donat­ed a quan­ti­ty of ener­gy-sav­ing light bulbs to the Jamaican peo­ple. Four mil­lion light bulbs were to be dis­trib­uted to res­i­dents and the project was hand­ed to Spencer who was Junior Energy Minister. Spencer along with his for­mer per­son­al assis­tant, Coleen Wright was freed on Monday by Senior Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey in the Corporate Area Criminal Court, of the charges of cor­rup­tion and mon­ey laundering.

2] The project was imple­ment­ed in July 2006. Allegations of irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the project were lev­eled against Spencer in Parliament in November 2007 by then Energy Minister Clive Mullings, who asked the audi­tor-gen­er­al and the con­trac­tor-gen­er­al to probe the mat­ter Clive Mullings, told Parliament that $114 mil­lion was improp­er­ly spent on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four mil­lion ener­gy-sav­ing light bulbs donat­ed by the Cuban Government to the peo­ple of Jamaica.

3] In January 2008, the audi­tor-gen­er­al report­ed that about 176,380 of the four mil­lion bulbs, cost­ing approx­i­mate­ly $92 mil­lion, could not be account­ed for. There was also an absence of an effec­tive sys­tem of bud­getary con­trol result­ing in the mak­ing of pay­ments and the incur­ring of unpaid oblig­a­tions of $185.3 mil­lion over the approved finan­cial sup­port. On 26 February 2008 Kern Spencer was arrest­ed and slapped with sev­en charges. He is fac­ing three charges of con­spir­a­cy to defraud, one charge for breach­ing the Prevention of Corruption Act, and three charges for breach­ing the Money Laundering Act. Spencer spent the night in jail and remained behind bars until he was able to post bail on 29 February 2008.

4] Contractor General Greg Christie released the find­ings of a probe by his office, which point­ed to sev­er­al breach­es of gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment guide­lines and leg­isla­tive provisions.

5]Spencer, Colleen Wright, his for­mer per­son­al assis­tant, and busi­ness­man Rodney Chin arrest­ed on charges of mon­ey laun­der­ing, con­spir­a­cy to defraud and breach­es of the Corruption Prevention Act .The Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, the state-owned com­pa­ny that financed the light bulb project, announced that Rodney Salmon, its direc­tor of admin­is­tra­tion and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, had been relieved of his duties as a result of the light bulb saga. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​5​1​860.

6] April 12, 2010 Prosecutors decid­ed to use Rodney Chin as a wit­ness for the Crown. Chin revealed, under cross-exam­i­na­tion by Spencer’s then attor­ney Patrick Atkinson, that he met with Llewellyn and police inves­ti­ga­tors at the offices of his attor­ney in 2009 and was inter­viewed and notes taken.

7] April 12, 2010 Defence attor­neys serve Llewellyn with sub­poe­na to obtain infor­ma­tion about what tran­spired at the meet­ing. The Magistrate also orders Llewellyn to remain out of court dur­ing Chin’s testimony.

8] April 13, 2010 – September 3, 2013 Trial is placed on hold as Llewellyn applies to the Judicial Review Court to quash Pusey’s order . The Judicial Review Court ruled against Pusey. Not sat­is­fied Pusey in an unprece­dent­ed move, appealed the deci­sion. The The Appeal Court ruled in favor of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP.

Critical evi­dence recov­ered from an apart­ment occu­pied by Coleen Wright was ruled inad­mis­si­ble by Judith Pusey, even though Wright lied to inves­ti­ga­tors that she did not have keys to the apart­ment on her arrival when the police attempt­ed to gain entry to the premis­es. She hand­ed over the keys only after she was told a lock­smith would be called to secure entry for the police. This was giv­en in evi­dence by Police Investigator Errington Malcolm. During those tes­ti­monies Defense attor­ney KD Knight accused the Prosecution of inef­fi­cien­cy. Retired Deputy Superintendent Errington Malcolm had just com­plet­ed his tes­ti­mo­ny about the search of the apart­ment and was about to be cross-exam­ined by defense attor­neys when lead pros­e­cu­tor Paula Llewellyn informed the court that she intend­ed to recall him to iden­ti­fy the war­rant and have it admit­ted into evidence.

“I hate inef­fi­cien­cy, espe­cial­ly in the shape and form I am see­ing it, Knight exclaimed.“In ref­er­ence to the DPP’S com­ments ‚Judith Pusey chimed in, quote: “I feel your pain”. Just one of the many instances when the mag­is­trate exer­cised con­tempt for the pros­e­cu­tion and the process. Tragically Jamaica’s Laws are archa­ic and out­dat­ed. The peo­ple select­ed to leg­is­late are them­selves crim­i­nals, so noth­ing gets done. On the few days they show up for the horse and pony show in the Parliament, they mere­ly bang on desks and hurl insults at each oth­er. There is no pro­vi­sion in Jamaican Law which gives the pros­e­cu­tor the pow­er to appeal a deci­sion. In a coun­try as cor­rupt as Jamaica this cre­ates a breed­ing ground for more corruption.

No good was done to the Justice sys­tem in Jamaica yes­ter­day. The jus­tice sys­tem con­tin­ue to be on tri­al. It’s no secret I have com­ment­ed on this case from its incep­tion. There is no secret I pre­dict­ed that this would be the out­come. Readers of these Blogs may go back and look at the many Articles I have writ­ten detail­ing why Kern Spencer would be set free. As I said in one of my lat­est com­ment, what is most egre­gious about this case, is that a sin­gle mem­ber of the once esteemed Judiciary, has uni­lat­er­al­ly hijacked the process , mak­ing a mock­ery of it. Throughout the process Judith Pusey made it clear that any­one want­i­ng to send Kern Spencer to Prison would have to go through her. Judith Pusey made a mock­ery of our jus­tice system.

We haven’s seen the entire­ty of the evi­dence, what we have seen is the pos­ture of this Magistrate. We have heard her utter­ances, we believe her actions telegraphed the deci­sions she announced yes­ter­day. Whether there was any­thing unto­ward on the part of Judith Pusey in this case that would rise to cor­rup­tion or seri­ous inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior we may nev­er know. What we do know is that Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey gave the Judiciary a hor­ri­ble black eye .

Rohan ‘Stone’ Reid and Damion ‘Bruno’ Walker were slapped with the sen­tence by Justice Bertram Morrison in the Home Circuit Court. Walker is to serve 35 years of his sen­tence before becom­ing eli­gi­ble for parole, while Reid was ordered to be paroled after serv­ing 30 years. The men, who are of Kingston address­es, were con­vict­ed by a pan­el of 12 jurors for the home inva­sion mur­der of Clive Baker and his com­mon-law wife Camille Daley on the morn­ing of July 11, 2011. The cou­ple was home at 4 Park Lane, off Red Hills Road, with their sev­en-month-old baby when the men invad­ed the premis­es. Baker ran but was chased and shot. Daley was shot sev­er­al times under her bed with the baby where she attempt­ed to escape the killers. The baby was shot in the hand. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​T​w​o​-​k​i​l​l​e​r​s​-​s​e​n​t​-​t​o​-​p​r​i​s​o​n​_​1​6​3​2​5​521

The tri­al of Adijia Palmer (o/c)Vybez Kartel has end­ed with the 11 per­son jury return­ing a ver­dict of Guilty against the accused. The Entertainer has been in jail for over two years pend­ing the out­come of this tri­al. Palmer was con­vict­ed for mur­der­ing Clive (Lizard) Williams. The pros­e­cu­tion alleged Williams was killed in a dis­pute over lost gun/​s. Kartel’s Attorneys have indi­cat­ed they will appeal the guilty ver­dict, as was to be expect­ed. There is also infor­ma­tion com­ing out of Jamaica that the Director of pub­lic Prosecution will be prof­fer­ing charges against one juror who alleged­ly approached the jury fore-per­son with an offer of $200.000 to vote to release the accused. We will talk more about this as more infor­ma­tion becomes available.

Kartel and his co-accused Shawn Campbell,Kahira Jones, Andre St John, were all found guilt as charged with the jury find­ing Shane Williams not guilty. This tri­al cre­at­ed a buzz , not just in Jamaica but in the Jamaican Diaspora. This was evi­dent on social media, where every­one felt at lib­er­ty to let their voic­es be heard. In these Blogs we argued that this was one of the very first time there has been so much incon­tro­vert­ible evi­dence against an accused, yet there was no corpse. It was not the first time an accused was found guilty in a mur­der case where no body was recov­ered. This cre­at­ed much hand wring­ing in social media, those want­i­ng a guilty ver­dict wor­ried about that fact in the case. Others want­i­ng an acquit­tal point­ed out there is no body,so there is no mur­der. There has been the usu­al igno­rant behav­ior from that fringe of the coun­try which defies log­ic. It seemed that the police were pre­pared this time. The jury is still out on whether this ver­dict will result in civ­il unrest as is cus­tom­ary when any­one from the under­world is placed in cus­tody. That speaks to the moral rot which has tak­en over our country.

In the end there did not need to be a body. The moun­tain of cir­cum­stan­tial evidence,including the words of the accused was enough to gain con­vic­tions against them.They nev­er quite chal­lenged the evi­dence put forth by the Prosecution. Reading what hap­pened in the court room dai­ly, I won­dered if his celebri­ty would allow him to wig­gle out of what I thought was a slam dunk case. Save and except for some alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety by police regard­ing a cell phone, the defense’s case appeared to be innu­en­dos, try­ing to cast doubt ‚alle­ga­tions of a frame up, but nev­er seri­ous­ly attempt­ing to indict the evi­dence pre­sent­ed by the state.

Those who want­ed an acquit­tal may want to hold their hors­es for awhile, in Jamaica any­thing is pos­si­ble. The Appeals court still gets to have a say. That court has nev­er seen a ver­dict it could just leave alone. I have con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to the Liberalism in Jamaican Judicial sys­tem, Jamaican Judges are large­ly prod­ucts of the University of the West Indies a well know far left lib­er­al insti­tu­tion. For now how­ev­er, Jamaicans who are tired of crime and vio­lence may down a cold one and heave a sigh of relief that for once the sys­tem worked. The sys­tem is bad­ly bro­ken, just not dead yet. Maybe, just maybe, it can be salvaged.

This is not a vic­to­ry for Clive Lizard Williams who clear­ly was no Saint. In fact Williams alleged­ly died because he lost Kartel’s gun. What Williams did, who he robbed or killed with that gun, we may nev­er know. This was a vic­to­ry for the few Jamaicans who still believe in the val­ue of God and coun­try, hard work and sac­ri­fice , edu­ca­tion and the rule of law, decen­cy and hon­est, good com­mu­ni­ties and good friends. It is a vic­to­ry for the Jamaicans who yearn for the inno­cence of yes­ter­year, when neigh­bors looked out for neigh­bors. When every­one raised every­one’s chil­dren, when peo­ple were secure in their right to enjoy their coun­try. Whenever, wher­ev­er, how­ev­er, and with whomev­er they chose. That Jamaica may be only a mem­o­ry on the dis­tant hori­zon in the rear-view mir­ror of time, but for one moment, just once more, these nos­tal­gic Jamaicans may dream of a time when their coun­try was theirs, just this once.….

Allan Douglas a for­mer Colonel of the Jamaica Defense Force wrote a scathing Article in the Jamaica observ­er crit­i­ciz­ing the pas­sage of the new Suppression of Criminal Organisations) Bill. Most of his ven­om was direct­ed at Opposition Jamaica Labor Party mem­ber Delroy Chuck. Now let it be under­stood , Delroy Chuck is no crime fight­er. Chuck is actu­al­ly a mem­ber of that Elitist club who believe crime can be wished away. Notwithstanding, Douglas blast­ed him for voic­ing his sup­port for the new piece of leg­is­la­tion designed to help law enforce­ment rid the coun­try of the scores of mur­der­ous gangs ter­ror­iz­ing cit­i­zens. It should also be not­ed that Douglas is present­ly employed by the Portia Simpson miller Administration. Was this guy speak­ing as a for­mer pro­fes­sion­al sol­dier or as a true orange-lath­ered mem­ber of the PNP cult? I recall it was his par­ty which stood in the way of the secu­ri­ty forces in 2010. The PNP vot­ed uni­tar­i­ly not to extend the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency after the Tivoli Gardens incur­sion. We know where they stand on crime! It is trou­bling nonethe­less when peo­ple who ought to know bet­ter allow polit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions and affil­i­a­tions to col­or their judge­ment. It is sad when they put par­ty over coun­try. This is exact­ly what’s at the heart of this broad­side by Allan Douglas.

Here is a syn­op­sis of what Allan Douglas had to say Quote :MP Chuck acknowl­edged that some pri­vate indi­vid­u­als and organ­i­sa­tions were con­cerned about the Bill but failed to say why there were more com­pelling rea­sons than the objec­tions raised for pass­ing this piece of leg­is­la­tion. I am sure the mem­ber of Parliament is aware of the man­ner in which mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) have con­duct­ed them­selves under the pro­vi­sions of the Suppression of Crime Act (1974), which stayed with us for 20 years. Wasn’t it Mr Chuck’s polit­i­cal par­ty that fought for the repeal of that very Act? Isn’t it that very Act that is wide­ly believed to have con­tributed to the dis­re­gard our present-day JCF shows towards cit­i­zens’ rights or what the Wolfe Report (1992) described as a ‘sup­pres­sion of crime cul­ture’?http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​c​o​l​u​m​n​s​/​C​a​n​-​w​e​-​r​e​a​l​l​y​-​e​n​t​r​u​s​t​-​t​h​e​-​J​C​F​-​w​i​t​h​-​t​h​e​-​a​n​t​i​-​g​a​n​g​-​l​e​g​i​s​l​a​t​i​o​n​-​_​1​6​1​4​9​216

Okay I’m not giv­en to name call­ing , but this guy is an absolute Jack-ass. Quote : Can we real­ly entrust the JCF with the new anti-gang leg­is­la­tion? Who should we empow­er with enforc­ing our laws? I have long argued that one of the great­est imped­i­ment to law and order in Jamaica is Elitism. Some peo­ple who live above Cross-Roads who ben­e­fit from the sac­ri­fice of oth­ers . Those who are so far removed from real­i­ties on the ground that they pon­tif­i­cate and pre­tend the crime and ter­ror­ism is hap­pen­ing some place else. I won­der whether Douglas ever had to deal with the feroc­i­ty of Jamaica’s urban ter­ror­ists? Maybe after Douglas grad­u­at­ed from one of the schools which turn out Liberal Elitists they slapped the Colonel Rank on him !! What did he do to earn that Rank. In real mil­i­tary estab­lish­ments Officers must show that they can com­mand to be a Colonel. If as I sus­pect Douglas was giv­en that rank for sit­ting on his ass at Up-Park-Camp, I sug­gest he leave law enforce­ment to the real heroes who brave the bul­lets. I have dodged bul­lets with many mem­bers of the JDF in almost every ghet­to in our coun­try. Most were fine men who under­stood what’s at stake. Douglas should be ashamed to call him­self a for­mer sol­dier. Where was he when the men of 1, 2 and 3JR were side by side with hero­ic cops, fight­ing, so he can pon­tif­i­cate about some­thing he knows noth­ing about? I do not believe Grenada qual­i­fies Douglas to be an author­i­ty on crime fight­ing and ter­ror­ism .The ques­tion is should Douglas’ broad­side be even debat­ed , or should it be seen as the attack of anoth­er polit­i­cal hack , unwor­thy of mention?

Αs Jamaica strug­gles to bring crime under con­trol, some res­i­dents are final­ly real­iz­ing that their safe­ty and secu­ri­ty are ulti­mate­ly their respon­si­bil­i­ty and as such they have to be proac­tive in ensur­ing same. If the Authorities are seri­ous about reduc­ing crime to a min­i­mum, they must launch a media cam­paign edu­cat­ing cit­i­zens on what their respon­si­bil­i­ties are. There is no short­age of peo­ple who pur­port to know their rights, but what of their respon­si­bil­i­ties as cit­i­zens? Usually know­ing their rights means a mis­guid­ed belief that they are some­how immune from law enforce­ment action. As Jamaica reluc­tant­ly move toward becom­ing a coun­try of laws , it is imper­a­tive that cit­i­zens are made aware of their respon­si­bil­i­ties so they may not only obey the laws, but are less like­ly to be ensnared by them.

Observer photo:

Recently pock­ets of peo­ple in some crime-rav­aged com­mu­ni­ties have tak­en the bold steps to march against crim­i­nal ele­ments with­in their com­mu­ni­ties. This was evi­dent in east and west Kingston recent­ly. This is not new, from time to time var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions have marched for peace and free­dom from crime. What is ulti­mate­ly need­ed though, is a sus­tained coa­les­cence of actions between all stake-hold­ers, includ­ing law enforce­ment agen­cies that will invari­ably send a strong mes­sage to the crim­i­nal under­world that cit­i­zens will not tol­er­ate their activ­i­ties any longer. Over the years com­mu­ni­ty Over-Lords have used demon­stra­tion against the police as a potent weapon, as they solid­i­fy their con­trol of com­mu­ni­ties. It is time cit­i­zens turn the tables using the very same meth­ods. What is need­ed from the police now, is less brava­do, less emp­ty rhetoric and more lead­er­ship. The Police depart­ment is top heavy with peo­ple who do not earn their pay, it has always been that way, it is time for these peo­ple to get up off their lazy ass­es and go into the com­mu­ni­ties and stay there. It can­not be that peo­ple are scared to report mat­ters to the police any­more because they are afraid of police cor­rup­tion and being labeled inform­ers. It is time for the stu­pid dance-hall jar­gon “infor­ma fi ded” to become a thing of the past.

I won­der where the Inter American Commission on Human Rights and Amnesty International are on these two New Mexico Stories. Recently Jamaican Cops were crit­i­cized and lam­bast­ed for fail­ing lie detec­tor tests. Amnesty International referred to The Jamaica 2013 Human Rights Report, in which that data sup­plied by the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) revealed that up to August last year, 95 of the 190 police offi­cers who opt­ed to take lie-detec­tor tests, did not pass or com­plete the test. Amnesty said it was unable to deter­mine whether Police Commissioner Owen Ellington would dis­ci­pline those offi­cers who failed the test.

I will con­tin­ue to post these incon­sis­ten­cies on the part of Human Rights Agencies regard­ing police in Jamaica and the devel­oped world. I will also con­tin­ue to ask why are there two stan­dards regard­ing polic­ing in the devel­oped and devel­op­ing world. We will do so even as we decry and con­demn any and all instances of police abuse of cit­i­zens rights all over the world. Those charged with uphold­ing and ensur­ing our safe­ty and secu­ri­ty can­not be the great­est threats to our safe­ty and secu­ri­ty. It should be not­ed that Polygraph (lie-detec­tor tests are incon­clu­sive and unre­li­able . That unre­li­a­bil­i­ty has ren­dered them inad­mis­si­ble in courts of law in the United States and oth­er coun­tries. It must be of con­cern that a source of infor­ma­tion which can­not be admit­ted in a court of law is being used to decide one’s employ­ment or suit­abil­i­ty for advancement.

MAN SEEKS MILLIONS AFTER N.M POLICE FORCE COLONOSCOPY IN DRUG SEARCH.

Police forced New Mexico scrap met­al trades­man David Eckert to under­go two dig­i­tal anal probes, three ene­ma inser­tions and ulti­mate­ly a colonoscopy after offi­cers incor­rect­ly assumed he was con­ceal­ing drugs, accord­ing to a law­suit filed in U.S. District Court on his behalf. http://​www​.usnews​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​2​0​1​3​/​1​1​/​0​5​/​m​a​n​-​s​e​e​k​s​-​m​i​l​l​i​o​n​s​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​n​m​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​f​o​r​c​e​-​c​o​l​o​n​o​s​c​o​p​y​-​i​n​-​d​r​u​g​-​s​e​a​rch.

TROOPER FIRES AT MINIVAN FULL OF KIDS FACES NO CHARGES.

TAOS, NM — A Tennessee fam­i­ly on vaca­tion in New Mexico end­ed up being shot at by state troop­ers after a vehic­u­lar mov­ing vio­la­tion went awry. What’s more, the troop­er who opened fire on them is fac­ing no charges, and has many sup­port­ers demand­ing he be put back on the streets with a badge and a gun. Oriana Farrell, 39, of Memphis, is a sin­gle moth­er who was haul­ing her five chil­dren (ages 6 – 16) through the American south­west on a fam­i­ly road-trip. The trip was intend­ed to be an edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence for her chil­dren whom were home-schooled . http://​www​.polices​ta​teusa​.com/​2​0​1​4​/​c​o​p​-​s​h​o​o​t​s​-​a​t​-​m​i​n​i​v​a​n​-​f​u​l​l​-​o​f​-​k​i​ds/

On October 28, 2013, on a desert high­way 1,200 miles from home, the fam­i­ly mini­van drew the atten­tion of the New Mexico State Police. Troopers had deter­mined that her mini­van had been trav­el­ing too fast and pulled the vehi­cle over to give her a speed­ing ticket.

As the tri­al of Dance-Hall per­former Adijia Palmer o/​c Vybez Kartel winds down, pret­ty much all the Nations 2.7 Million peo­ple liv­ing on the Island are anx­ious­ly await­ing the ver­dict. Jamaicans in the dias­po­ra are also tuned in to what appears to be the tri­al of the decade in Jamaica. I’m not quite sure why there’s so much atten­tion being paid to a bleached-skinned dance hall Dj , when the Kern Spencer tri­al is still yet to be concluded.

JUSTICE SYSTEM ON TRIAL !!!

Kartel has already beat­en one mur­der rap, main­ly because wit­ness­es refused to show to tes­ti­fy against him. Which brings us to the ques­tion of whether the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is itself on tri­al. It is a self per­pet­u­at­ing phe­nom­e­non when wit­ness­es are afraid to tes­ti­fy against accused crim­i­nals. Criminals are embold­ened and nat­u­ral­ly becomes more brutish. Police and Prosecutors around the world rec­og­nize that depend­ing on eye-wit­ness­es accounts to pros­e­cute mur­der­ers, is a fool’s errand. The sole remain­ing count of mur­der against Kartel from all accounts should be a pret­ty easy case to pros­e­cute and prove. But things are not always clear-cut ‚or easy in Jamaica. Even though there has been no real chal­lenge to the text evi­dence by the defense, the despi­ca­ble unpro­fes­sion­al actions of mem­bers of the police depart­ment has seri­ous­ly jeop­ar­dized the case. A crit­i­cal police wit­ness had to agree to defense grilling that the cell-phone used by the defendant,which was a cru­cial exhib­it in the case was used while it ought to have been locked away.

With mur­ders at all time highs and climb­ing, the JCF has not shown that it has a clue how to bring the killers of almost 1,600 Jamaicans a year to jus­tice. Courts dock­ets are clogged and over­flow­ing with cas­es which will nev­er be pros­e­cut­ed. This means dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals will face no con­se­quence for their crimes. The Judges are lib­er­al beyond belief. On the rare occa­sion in which an accused is found guilty the pun­ish­ment met­ed out is usu­al­ly an affront and insult to the vic­tims involved in the crime.

There has been calls from cer­tain quar­ters, sug­gest­ing that to fix the sys­tem court dock­ets should be purged. Meaning that in cas­es where wit­ness­es are reluc­tant to tes­ti­fy , those cas­es should be purged , there­by reliev­ing the log-jam with­in the sys­tem. On the one hand, it does seem like a good idea. After all keep­ing them there serves no use­ful pur­pose if wit­ness­es will nev­er tes­ti­fy. However on the oth­er, it seem like giv­ing Amnesty and carte-blanch to mur­der­ers Rapists and oth­er Felons.The idea of start­ing afresh is only use­ful if all the Agencies respon­si­ble for the dis­pen­sa­tion of Justice are brought up to first world stan­dards. Otherwise throw­ing out old cas­es would be embark­ing on a very slip­pery slope.(MB)

Conspiracy the­o­ries abound. Unsubstantiated alle­ga­tions of being tar­get­ed. Allegations of impro­pri­ety. Bringing a for­mer Senior Superintendent of Police, Carl Major, a peren­ni­al Prosecution wit­ness, to tes­ti­fy on their behalf. A mur­der case that has dragged on and on with seem­ing­ly no end in sight. If you ask me, the Defense in the Vybz Kartel case seems to hold all the cards. Yet the salient points of the case, i.e., the unequiv­o­cal voic­es on tape dis­cussing killing Lizard Williams, have not been seri­ous­ly chal­lenged in my esti­ma­tion. This leads me to con­clude that these are all dis­trac­tions by the defense. Let’s throw some s*** against the wall and see what sticks. This may very well work. In fact, the defense has cre­at­ed so many side-shows that it may be seen as rea­son­able doubt to a sym­pa­thet­ic, fear­ful, or cor­rupt­ed jury.

Add a lib­er­al defense-friend­ly judge (Lennox Campbell) to the mix; con­di­tions are ripe for this defen­dant to walk. So, how can I make such claims in a jury tri­al? You may even sug­gest that it’s not up to the Judge to decide inno­cence or guilt in a jury tri­al. You would be wrong. An accused is pre­sumed inno­cent or guilty based upon a pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence pre­sent­ed to a tri­er of facts. (Judge or Jury) . The defense has a duty to prove guilt beyond a rea­son­able doubt. The defen­dant has no such bur­den. In fact, the defen­dant may remain silent and say nary a word; the Prosecution must prove its case. However, the pre­sid­ing judge must main­tain tight con­trol of pro­ceed­ings, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the types of evidence/​exhibits he/​she allows in the tri­al. This must fol­low strict adher­ence to exist­ing laws and prece­dents. Allowing all kinds of dis­trac­tions into a case may cre­ate a sideshow. A sideshow usu­al­ly gives the appear­ance of rea­son­able doubt, result­ing in an acquit­tal for a guilty defen­dant. On that score, the pop­py-show Jamaican Criminal Justice System is liv­ing up to its own precedent.

MB

Old Jamaican Proverb (Tek time search an yu wi find ants gut). (Translation)Allow peo­ple to talk and they will basi­cal­ly give you a win­dow into their soul, they will tell who they are. I was taught that lit­tle nugget by my great Aunt who raised me. May God rest her soul in peace. I took that proverb to heart and used it as a guid­ing prin­ci­ple in inves­ti­ga­tions. I found it a valu­able tool in inter­views. Simply allow­ing some­one to relate a sto­ry to you un-inter­rupt­ed . Once, he/​she is fin­ished, ask them to relate the same sto­ry again. You will be sur­prised to see the dif­fer­ence between the two ver­sions of the sto­ry which was just relat­ed to you. This was a valu­able tool for me as a young Detective, it helped me sig­nif­i­cant­ly in deter­min­ing whether a sus­pect was involved in a par­tic­u­lar crime, and if so to what extent.

Today I am no longer in law-enforce­ment ‚hav­ing walked away at the ripe old age of 31. Yet I find that being able to assim­i­late what peo­ple put on social media tells a great deal about who they are. I can’t say I am sur­prised at the fact that Jamaican peo­ple are so sup­port­ive of oth­ers who are accused or even con­vict­ed of the most heinous and depraved crimes, because I’m not. I have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the worst of the Jamaican peo­ple, yes I have also been blessed to see the very best of them as well. I have been to count­less mur­der scenes, I’ve seen the bul­let wounds, I’ve seen the machete wounds , I’ve seen the stab wounds. And when your job dic­tates that you watch corpses being cut open, the bar­barism of these end­less mur­ders changes you forever.

Yet despite the Thousands of our fel­low-men and women who are slaugh­tered for no appar­ent good rea­son, Jamaicans still have not devel­oped an aver­sion to the car­nage. What will it take to sen­si­tize them to the sanc­ti­ty of life ? How dare any­one take the only life of anoth­er? Who is not angered by that, and why? Are we an emo­tion­less soul­less sub-human peo­ple devoid of feel­ing , devoid of emo­tions, that we treat the killing of our neigh­bors, our broth­ers and sis­ters as par for the course? How can a peo­ple be so unmoved by such car­nage yet con­verse­ly find it with­in them to ratio­nal­ize and make sup­pli­ca­tion for the aggres­sors? It is sick­en­ing, it makes me sick to my stom­ach to read their com­ments, hear them speak about the accused mur­der­ers as vic­tims being set upon by an evil sys­tem, with nev­er a word for the inno­cent vic­tims, most of whom nev­er stood a chance.

Then I stop think­ing and it dawns on me, there are killers and those who sup­port them. Then there are the rest of us. “It’s a dog eat dog world now ” my friend told me today.….…. it’s true, It’s a Serengeti. The Lionesses and the Tigers and oth­er beast of prey feast at will on the hap­less Wilder-beast, the Zebras and the Gazelles. Maybe it’s divine­ly ordained that the inno­cent and the help­less become prey for the strong and pow­er­ful . Maybe law-abid­ing Jamaicans have resigned them­selves to being slaugh­tered and devoured like prey on the Serengeti. There is only one dis­tinc­tion how­ev­er, Predators on the Serengeti kill in order that they may eat. Killers in Jamaica kill for sport. At this rate it won’t be long before the inno­cent becomes extinct.

Having done real time in Law-enforce­ment and hav­ing done research in crim­i­nol­o­gy over the years, I have con­clud­ed long ago crim­i­nals are com­mon cow­ards. They are preda­tors who prey on those they believe weak­er than them­selves. Research data shows most crimes are crimes of oppor­tu­ni­ty. People do things because oppor­tu­ni­ty presents itself. (1 A woman who leaves her pock­et-book on the seat of her car in plain sight, presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to some­one. Not just to steal her pock­et-book , but to cause sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to her car.( 2 Premeditated crimes. Crimes which are planned . Crimes orches­trat­ed by preda­tors who plot ways to destroy their prey . (3 Crimes of pas­sion , gen­er­al­ly cow­ard­ly acts per­pet­u­at­ed by so-called loved ones. In all these cat­e­gories there is a uni­ver­sal thread of cowardice.

• One Jamaican News Paper cov­er­ing the mur­der tri­al of Vybez Kartel naïve­ly post­ed the head­line .Kartel close to tears. Tears and entreaties , ha , as a for­mer Detective I have seen much of this. After leav­ing law enforce­ment I have seen this kind of behav­ior play out in court-room after court-room across America. When it comes time to pay the piper accused break down in tears. As I have stat­ed time and again, the great­est deter­rent to crime is the assur­ance that crim­i­nals will be brought to jus­tice. In Jamaica that sen­ti­ment is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant, because of the high mur­der rate. Experts, prog­nos­ti­ca­tors and pun­dits all opine about what needs to be done to arrest the bur­geon­ing mur­der rate. I have stat­ed repeat­ed­ly, make sure they are brought to jus­tice. Justice means a time­ly and fair tri­al, if found guilty the penal­ty must be severe. This dis­play by this accused Kartel, is proof pos­i­tive what most front line cops knew, they are not brave, they are not bad, the real bad-man is the rule of law.

In a plea for his free­dom, Vybz Kartel told the 11-mem­ber jury in the High Court yes­ter­day that his skin bleach­ing and tat­toos were tools of his trade and asked not to be judged by his appear­ance. In one of five unsworn state­ments from the dock by the accused men, Vybz Kartel asked Justice Lennox Campbell and the jurors to sep­a­rate Vybz Kartel from Adidja Palmer.“My Lord, I bleach my skin and I am heav­i­ly tat­tooed also . My Lord, that is mere­ly super­fi­cial, that is the per­sona of Vybz Kartel, not Adidja Palmer. My Lord, I think you will agree…,” he said. “Who me?” asked Justice Campbell. “Yes, My Lord, some­times a per­son can be judged by appear­ance. My Lord, I am not an alien who came from space and land­ed on Earth.

Drum Roll, please .….….…And the Oscar goes to Vybz Kartel. What a load of crock. Many have argued that Adidja Palmer is a smart, tal­ent­ed man. I will with­hold per­son­al judg­ment on either. This is Kartel at his vin­tage best. The lib­er­al Judge Lennox Campbell is being mes­mer­ized by a true Artiste. This Courtroom is Kartel’s stage. The tri­al Judge, Jury, and oth­ers in that room were a mere audi­ence to his mas­tery. He was await­ing this moment. The moment to woo his audi­ence and mes­mer­ize his sub­jects is what Kartel does on stage — the allu­sion to his tat­toos, his skin bleach­ing, and his becom­ing a vic­tim. The whole talk about being placed on the floor by the police is clear­ly a bril­liant attempt to evoke any neg­a­tive emo­tions jury mem­bers may have of the Police. Mentioning the actions of a less-than-pop­u­lar Minister of National Security Minister. All aimed at evok­ing an emo­tion­al response from the Jury.

A bril­liant strat­e­gy, he and his Attorneys may think. Yet, it is a strat­e­gy that shows he has no defense against the charges. This is smoke and mir­rors, the­atrics, innu­en­dos, and unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety. In a Courtroom where jus­tice is sacro­sanct, this dis­play of the­atrics can be seen for what it is. Yes, Adidja Palmer and Vybz Kartel would be allowed to say his piece, but at the end of his the­atrics, there would be one ver­dict: “Guilty.“Unfortunately, the few Jamaicans who want jus­tice done must still be ner­vous and appre­hen­sive. Despite the over­whelm­ing evi­dence against the accused, the sys­tem is so bro­ken that one should not be sur­prised if they walked. At best, even if con­vict­ed, they will prob­a­bly end up with a slap on the wrist from this par­tic­u­lar Liberal Activist act­ing as pre­sid­ing Judge.
Worse yet, I believe his deci­sion not to throw out the jury once told that there has been tam­per­ing will come back to bite both Lennox Campbell and the Prosecution.

People crit­i­cize the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) dai­ly. Well-inten­tioned Jamaicans, as well as yours tru­ly crit­i­cize those who crit­i­cize the agency when we feel their remarks are unfound­ed, unin­formed, or mali­cious. Yet I would be hyp­o­crit­i­cal if I did not acknowl­edge the glar­ing prob­lems which con­tin­ue to define the JCF. This, even as the Agency claims it is re-invent­ing itself. It appears even the sim­plest task, is a task too great for the Agency. Let alone the expec­ta­tion that it oper­ate as a pro­fes­sion­al and pro­duc­tive entity.
The com­mon mis­con­cep­tion being pro­mul­gat­ed is that if we can fix the JCF crime will be a thing of the past. Those of us who fought in the trench­es know bet­ter. Yet the JCF con­tin­ue to add fuel to that fire of mis-infor­ma­tion and naïveté, because of its absolute incom­pe­tence. The Murder tri­al of Adijia Palmer o/​c Vybes Kartel is front and cen­ter in the news, yet it seem the Police are hell-bent on destroy­ing what ought to be an open and shut case against the accused.

Kartel

Deputy Superintendent of Police Vernal Thompson shocked the court dur­ing the Vybz Kartel mur­der tri­al yes­ter­day when he declared that he was not sur­prised at cer­tain things that took place in the inves­ti­ga­tion of the mat­ter because crim­i­nals were with­in the police force.Thompson made the admis­sion, which solicit­ed audi­ble reac­tion from the jurors and oth­ers in the court, while he was being cross-exam­ined by defence attor­ney Pierre Rogers in the close­ly watched tri­al in the Home Circuit Court.http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Senior-cop-shocks-court-with-admission-about-JCF-at-Vybz-Kartel-trial.

This accused has already beat­en one mur­der rap. God knows how many peo­ple he may have ordered killed, or may have killed him­self. This is prob­a­bly the best chance the State has of putting this guy away . Despite that the Police depart­ment appears to be doing it’s lev­el best, to live up to its rep­u­ta­tion as a cor­rupt irre­deemable agency which time is past. One of the first thing a detec­tive learns is nev­er to vol­un­teer infor­ma­tion. Neither under exam­i­na­tion nor cross-exam­i­na­tion. It is imper­a­tive not to seek to clar­i­fy any­thing, it is the job of the Prosecutor to do so. If pos­si­ble answer in (mono-syl­la­bles) “Yes, No”. As a detec­tive I saw this many times. Police wit­ness­es depart from these sim­ple rules, jeop­ar­diz­ing crim­i­nal cas­es in the process. Generally these are cops who play sec­ondary or periph­er­al roles who want to talk the most. As an inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer it requires steely resolve to some­time resus­ci­tate your case. The JCF is sup­posed to be staffed with more edu­cat­ed , intel­li­gent offi­cers. My ques­tion to them is what exact­ly are you edu­cat­ed in? It seem despite the crit­i­cisms and howls of con­dem­na­tions, the JCF is deter­mined to self destruct.

Cop walks up to Cab-dri­ver informs him that there is a sum­mons at the sta­tion for him, the offi­cer then walks to the Station retrieved the Summons, returned to the Taxi-stand and served the Summons on the Cab-dri­ver in the pres­ence of his col­league and of course an ever vis­i­ble pha­lanx of so-called wit­ness­es . Driver takes the Summons and then threw it from the car. Officers told him he was under arrest upon which he attempt­ed to dri­ve away . The Police made sure he did not dri­ve away ‚he ran from the car, offi­cers chased and caught him.They used pep­per-spray and baton to sub­due and arrest him. Seem text-book arrest to me.….…

Cabbie alleged­ly beat­en, pep­per-sprayed by police.

Not so fast ‚this hap­pened in the town of Mandeville in what is fast becom­ing a hell-hole ungovern­able place called Jamaica ? There were protests from the col­leagues of the cab-dri­ver . Of course every­one had a dif­fer­ent account of the inci­dent. They claim an arrest was not nec­es­sary as their col­league did noth­ing wrong. I will leave that for you to decide.

So lets look at the facts as they were report­ed .1) Officer told dri­ver there was a sum­mons at the Station for him , did not attempt to arrest him. 2) The Officer went to the sta­tion leav­ing his col­lege on the scene, retrieved the sum­mons, returned and served it on the accused. Accused prompt­ly threw the Summons from his car. 3) The offi­cer then cor­rect­ly tells him he is under arrest. He refused to sub­mit to being arrest­ed and attempts to dri­ve away. 4) Officers blocked the path of the car upon which he fled on foot. 5) Officers gave chase and appre­hend­ed him, using pep­per-spray and baton to com­plete the arrest. 

I will now leave it to you the experts who com­plain about Jamaican Police to tell me what the Police did wrong. Clearly Jamaica is a coun­try des­tined to becom­ing a failed state. I would implore any­one vis­it­ing my coun­try to review their options. This coun­try has made the deci­sion to be an ungoverned , ungovern­able Serengeti of mur­der, rape and mayhem.

“There is gonna be, I sup­pose, a grey area in some instances that a per­son is act­ing pure­ly as a civil­ian who hap­pens to be a mem­ber of the force or is act­ing as a mem­ber of the force who is not on duty. I don’t think we could eas­i­ly attempt to address that through a def­i­n­i­tion,” Golding said. Said Bunting, “We may need to leave it to the dis­cre­tion of INDECOM. If it is clear that a man is on vaca­tion and gets into a fight with some­body else…I would not expect that INDECOM would get into that sit­u­a­tion but if the man is not ros­tered for work and while on the streets sees a sus­pi­cious act and then inter­venes and may have to use his ser­vice pis­tol in that case he is clear­ly act­ing as a constable”.“Yes, I would be hap­py to leave it to INDECOM’s dis­cre­tion. We have agreed on that,” Golding replied.http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/INDECOM-to-also-investigate-incidents-involving-off-duty-police_15917346 Mark Golding and Peter Bunting Of course those are not my words! Those are the words of these two Jack-ass­es, no dis­re­spect to Jack-ass. Jamaica is over-run with crime, one of the ways police have been able to appre­hend crim­i­nals is by being incon­spic­u­ous. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly under cov­er , just not in that bright red and black mon­key-suit they are forced to wear. Many offi­cers have nabbed crim­i­nals trav­el­ling in bus­es or just being in the right place at the right time. Numerous amounts of guns have been removed from the streets. Just last week the Jamaica Observer high­light­ed one such instance where an offi­cer dis­armed a man tot­ing a gun at a wake in St. Thomas http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​A​l​e​r​t​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​m​a​n​-​d​i​s​a​r​m​s​-​g​u​n​m​a​n​-​w​i​t​h​-​b​a​r​e​-​h​a​nds. Every sin­gle law enforce­ment offi­cer who ever served in the JCF have a sto­ry to tell of actions they took while off duty. So lets see what is at issue here. Before we do that how­ev­er lets estab­lish what the Jamaica Constabulary Force Act says as it relates to cops being off duty. A con­sta­ble is nev­er off duty. In fact the Act is clear, if a crime is com­mit­ted in the pres­ence of a cop whether on or off duty and he/​she does not act he or she will be dis­ci­plined. Now INDECOM wants the INDECOM Act clar­i­fied, so they may go after cops who act in good faith while sup­pos­ed­ly off duty. If you take into account the fact that under PJ Patterson not a sin­gle Detective was trained for 10 years and jux­ta­pose that with the crime rate in Jamaica present day, it is clear that this Government of Portia Simpson Miller and her acolytes have deter­mined they want to com­plete­ly erad­i­cate law enforce­ment in Jamaica. The hairy-faced pri­mate Mark Golding, who occu­pies the Justice Ministry, is a known Anti ‑Police antag­o­nist, but Peter Bunting must know bet­ter.  Terrence Williams (indecom)commissioner. It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that two men who are sup­posed to act with wis­dom could say what they are on record say­ing.»> Instead of hash­ing out the minu­tia of the law ‚with an under­stand­ing of the risks offi­cers face , the lev­els of brav­ery which goes into the actions offi­cer take, they chose to sim­ply leave the grey area up to the whims and wish­es of Terrence Williams. Where is the Police Federation on this ? Where is the Gazetted Rank ? Are they going to sit idly by as total lap-dogs while the men and women under their com­mand take the risks and gets sent to prison for act­ing in good faith?

It was just last year that Jamaica’s inept National Security Minister said quote :” That Agency has too much pow­er”. Bunting was relat­ing to the broad pow­ers giv­en the neo­phyte Agency (INDECOM) and it’s Napoleonic Commissioner Terrence Williams. Days lat­er Bunting walked back his com­ments and signed onto every­thing (INDECOM) want­ed. I asked then, who was behind the cam­paign to destroy the police force ? I asked why was Bunting forced to toe the line and by whom? Why is Bunting now walk­ing hand in hand with Mark Golding the anti ‑police Justice Minister in this cor­rupt Simpson Miller Administration? The Jamaican peo­ple know that Bunting is out of his league as a min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty. Yet I do not believe Bunting is seen as cor­rupt. On that basis we have to ask Minister Bunting to look at his role in this fias­co, this dis­man­tling of our coun­try can­not go unpun­ished. This lat­est action by the gov­ern­ment through its agents, sends a clear unequiv­o­cal mes­sage to crim­i­nals, cops will not come after you, if they do, we have peo­ple in place to make sure they go to prison. Surely there is an agen­da by the PNP to turn Jamaica into a one par­ty social­ist state. In fact they have opined that jamaica a pnp coun­try for years. Latest reports indi­cate they have brought recruit­ing into the schools. Democratic social­ism was sound­ly reject­ed as a prac­ti­cal pol­i­cy direc­tion for Jamaica in 1980. That did not change the ambi­tions of the Governing PNP they are using back-door means to turn Jamaica into a one par­ty state.They hope to do so while main­tain­ing appear­ances of a demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try. Jamaicans need to open their eyes to the goings-on . 1)Calls for a rein­tro­duc­tion of Home ‑Guards.Under Michael Manley home guards were trained and put in place, the police force forced to den­i­grate into inef­fec­tive­ness. 2) Jamaica’s present cozy rela­tion­ship with Cuba. Under Manley Jamaican men were sent to Cuba to train. These une­d­u­cat­ed Jamaicans were trained as killers called (brigidis­tas)on their return to Jamaica they mor­phed into a ter­ror­ist group which changed the way Jamaicans looked at crime on the Island. 3) The build­ing of zones of polit­i­cal exclusion(garrisons) . This is the per­fect way to steal elec­tions. The PNP has used tax­pay­ers funds to build homes to house PNP vot­ers at the expense of the mid­dle-class. Jamaica’s mid­dle-class is now only 18% of the coun­try, with 78% clas­si­fied as poor . The Prime Minister’s and her par­ty the (PNP) records 105% of the votes in her con­stituen­cy out of a max­i­mum 100%[sic]. 4)The return to wide-spread un-checked crim­i­nal­i­ty and the demo­niz­ing of the secu­ri­ty forces, eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the Manley years. The return of (JEEP) as a pork-bar­rel tax-pay­ers fund­ed give away to par­ty hacks, it’s the sec­ond com­ing of crash program,https://mikebeckles.com/mywpblog/?p=1860. What made the peo­ple think that the poli­cies of the 70’s which dec­i­mat­ed the coun­try , set­ting it back decades, would be bet­ter this time around? Manley and his acolytes did the very same thing this dunce is accused of doing, dec­i­mate the police, allow crime to rise, give peo­ple carte-blanche to do what they want. That strat­e­gy has wide appeal to Jamaicans who are large­ly an ungovern­able peo­ple. Even after Manley’s destruc­tive attempt at social engi­neer­ing the sta­bi­liz­ing hand of Edward Seaga ensured the Jamaican dol­lar was just 4 Jamaican dol­lars to 1 American dol­lars by the time he left office. Today the Jamaican dol­lar trades upward of J$107 to US$1. Where there is no vision the peo­ple perish.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is active­ly engaged in mon­i­tor­ing instances of alleged abuse by Jamaica’s secu­ri­ty forces. In fact, their local affil­i­ate (JFJ) Jamaicans for Justice, reports direct­ly to the Commission in Washington DC. The Inter America Commission on Human Rights is not the only Agency with an active inter­est in alle­ga­tions of Human Rights in Jamaica.
The London-based Amnesty International has large foot­prints on the Island, as they do in oth­er impov­er­ished coun­tries. The coun­tries which attract the atten­tion of these two major watch-dog groups, are gen­er­al­ly poor­er nations which have high crime-rates and scarce resources.

American Democracy is a work in progress even though that coun­try has basi­cal­ly exist­ed for over four hun­dred years. Jamaica, on the oth­er hand, has only exist­ed as an inde­pen­dent nation for 50 years. Smaller coun­tries are far more vul­ner­a­ble to crime and ter­ror­ism, as such they will more like­ly have instances of offi­cial mis­con­duct and mis­takes. The rea­son for these pos­si­bil­i­ties is gen­er­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with a lack of fund­ing over­sight and struc­tur­al support.

Large devel­oped nations like Canada, the US, and Britain have the resources and abil­i­ty to decrease if not end instances of abuse by their law-enforce­ment oper­a­tives. Yet they have not been able to do so. The state of California is the world’s 6^th largest econ­o­my.The state is home to over 4.000 law enforce­ment Agencies.http://www.post.ca.gov/le-agencies.aspx, pop­u­la­tion 39.5 mil­lion, that’s about one agency to every 9875.000 Californian.
With all the resources avail­able to these agen­cies across America, there are mas­sive amounts, and ever-increas­ing evi­dence of police abuse of cit­i­zens includ­ing killings. These abus­es gen­er­al­ly mean young men of col­or being victimized.

Yet in these instances of abuse, I have nev­er heard a word of con­dem­na­tion from nei­ther the Inter American Commission on Human Rights nor Amnesty International. Over the years cops in state after state in America, have engaged in the most egre­gious abuse of cit­i­zens imag­in­able. Yet there is nev­er a sin­gle com­ment from these groups. In many cas­es, the abuse is so egre­gious that it is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to process that cops could be involved in those acts.

♦Justin Volpe, NYPD cop, and his crim­i­nal cronies sodom­ized Abner Louima with a plunger in a police sta­tion rest-room.

♦ Amadou Diallo killed like a dog, NYPD rene­gade cops fired 41 bul­lets at him,(one man), killing him, he was unarmed.

Unarmed Groom Killed By NYPD Bullets — CBS News

♦Sean Bell killed in Queens after leav­ing a par­ty at a night-club, it was his bach­e­lor’s par­ty arranged for him by his friends. Bell was mur­dered and two of his friends received mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds. Bell and his friends were all unarmed. He was to be mar­ried the same day. They fired 50 bul­lets at Bell.http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/sean-bell-shooting.htm

♦Cop ‘Stops And Frisks’ African American Teen, Literally Destroying His Genitals..Http://earhustle411.com/­cop-stops-frisks-African-American-teen-literally-destroying-genitals/­ With all the law enforce­ment Agencies the best train­ing and laws to pro­tect them, American cops killed almost 600 cit­i­zens in 2012.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States_2012

I have nev­er heard any Human Rights Agency ques­tion even one of these killings. It does not mat­ter how grue­some, it mat­ters not the nation­al out­cry. Yet they find them­selves deeply engaged in law enforce­ment encoun­ters in devel­op­ing coun­tries like Jamaica. The notion that the sys­tem is capa­ble of sort­ing through the evi­dence to arrive at the cor­rect facts is bogus. Tell that to the thou­sands of black and Latino fam­i­lies who have seen police kill their loved ones and walk free. In most cas­es not even with a depart­men­tal charge, much less a conviction.

If we are to do jus­tice to human rights, it can­not be selec­tive. We must ask why are the Human Rights Agencies silent on First world killings of peo­ple of col­or, yet are falling over them­selves to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of abuse in the devel­op­ing world? Unless we hear and see a change in these Agencies regard­ing Human Rights Abuse in America, Canada, Britain, and oth­er devel­oped coun­tries, we will be forced to dis­miss them. In fact, it is dif­fi­cult to take them seri­ous­ly as cred­i­ble agents of change in light of their record. We must ques­tion their agen­da.

UPDATE

After George Floyd’s mur­der by a Minneapolis cop, the entire world awoke to the con­tin­ued sum­ma­ry lynch­ing of black men by American police.
Despite the world­wide out­cry nei­ther the Inter American Commission on Human Rights nor Amnesty International was heard from, nei­ther were they seen in the streets with (BLM) Black Lives Matter and oth­er activists.
There are no instances in the devel­oped world, or any­where with any degree of democ­ra­cy where an agency is allowed to inves­ti­gate, arrest, and pros­e­cute its own cases.

Promises made to Terrence Williams by the clear­ly incom­pe­tent and out of touch Delroy Chuck should be giv­en zero con­sid­er­a­tions.
There is ample evi­dence of what INDECOM is capa­ble of, giv­en an out of con­trol dem­a­gog­ic leader with his own agen­da.
The INDECOM Act has already caused the police to lay off going after the Island’s hun­dreds of mur­der­ous gangs.
As a con­se­quence, Jamaica is a much more dan­ger­ous place since INDECOM came into exis­tence almost a decade ago.
As I have said before if the issue about police mis­con­duct is a lack of time­ly pros­e­cu­tion the gov­ern­ment has an oblig­a­tion to expand the office of the Director of Public Prosecution and allow prop­er­ly inves­ti­gat­ed cas­es by INDECOM or whomev­er, to be brought in a time­ly man­ner.
Jamaica does not need an Agency ded­i­cat­ed to per­se­cut­ing police offi­cers for doing their jobs.
A word of warn­ing is enough for Andrew Holness and Peter Phillips, if you thing crime is crazy now, tin­ker with that law and give INDECOM more pow­ers than you stu­pid­ly already gave them.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Two years ago I wrote a series of short blogs, they were in rela­tion­ship to events on the ground in Jamaica. Gang war­fare was the issue then. At the time Police Commissioner Owen Ellington called on his divi­sion­al com­man­ders to come up with strate­gies to erad­i­cate gang activ­i­ty from their indi­vid­ual divi­sions. I thought that was odd, for sev­er­al rea­sons, not least of which was that the com­mis­sion­er want­ed divi­sion­al heads to come up with their own strate­gies. It seemed to me at the time that a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy should be devel­oped by the police high com­mand, fine tuned by the depart­ments lawyers and val­i­dat­ed by strong leg­isla­tive support.

Commissioner Owen Ellington

I argued then that the com­mis­sion­er’s approach would be noth­ing more than a patch­work of sim­ple raids which will even­tu­al­ly tar­get reg­u­lar peo­ple, while real crim­i­nals con­tin­ue with their crimes. I also argued that this com­mis­sion­er had no prac­ti­cal knowl­edge of crime reduc­tion, nei­ther did most of the top com­man­ders with­in the present JCF. As such I opined that crime would get worse. Since then I don’t believe any­one can hon­est­ly say I was wrong in my assess­ment, or that the Commissioner’s rhetoric has borne any fruit. Just yes­ter­day the Observer chron­i­cled ghast­ly alle­ga­tions of mass graves and rou­tine killings by gangs in the east­ern part of the coun­try alleged­ly involv­ing Police offi­cers aligned to the gangs. It would be naïve to believe that there is no truth to these alle­ga­tions, or that these graves would be con­fined to any one geo­graph­ic area of the Island. Over the years Jamaica has become a killing field, no one is safe any­where in Jamaica anymore.

How did we get here? The pol­i­tics of both polit­i­cal par­ties got us here. Two Political par­ties which are glo­ri­fied crim­i­nal gangs. One bet­ter at win­ning elec­tions, so it con­trol the turf. He who con­trols the purse strings con­trols the vot­ers, he who con­trols the vot­ers con­trols the purse strings. Why would either par­ty want a pro­fes­sion­al police depart­ment? Over the years the JCF has been pop­u­lat­ed with boot-lick­ers. Good com­pe­tent ded­i­cat­ed offi­cers exit­ed the stage leav­ing vast open­ings for crim­i­nals and polit­i­cal patrons to fill, and fill it they did. The Constabulary under­went a rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion dur­ing the régime of Percival Patterson, for a full decade the depart­ment was not giv­en the funds to train a sin­gle detec­tive. Patterson sim­ply did not care about crime as long as he was able to feath­er his fini­cal nest, and that of his cronies. The coun­try and police depart­ment is still reel­ing from the effects of the dev­as­ta­tion of the Patterson régime.

The Minister of National Security seem to want an end to the crime on one hand . His approach is that the coun­try needs divine inter­ven­tion. I agree with him yet I under­stand God will not come down and beg crim­i­nals to put their guns down. Criminals must be made to put the guns down, or the state must take the guns from their life­less hands. On the oth­er hand Minister Bunting says there is no indi­ca­tion crime is spi­ral­ing out of con­trol. What? .. Every year close to 1.600 Jamaicans are report­ed killed , that num­ber does not take into account the many oth­ers mur­dered and their bod­ies dumped. What is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica is shame­ful, it is fright­en­ing, it is das­tard­ly it reminds us of oth­er places where mil­lions are mas­sa­cred and no one held respon­si­ble. This Government must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the thou­sands of Jamaicans who are mur­dered every year and no one is held accountable.

It is a mon­u­men­tal fraud to pre­tend Jamaica is this hos­pitable place as they trum­pet the fact that 2 mil­lion peo­ple vis­it­ed in a year. At the same time peo­ple are being killed and their bod­ies dumped in mass graves. This can­not stand, this Prime Minister can­not con­tin­ue to fly around on the coun­try’s bor­rowed mon­ey, while this is hap­pen­ing on her watch. To say she is incom­pe­tent would be dis­re­spect­ful to the incom­pe­tent. This woman by virtue of her being Prime Minister is itself a mon­u­men­tal fraud and a trav­es­ty. Yet there is no short­age of apol­o­gists will­ing to see this once pearl of the Caribbean reduced to the stan­dards of sub Saharan Africa. Those of you who believe it can’t hap­pen need to have your heads exam­ined. All of the com­po­nents are already in place for it to hap­pen . In 2010 we saw for the first time what a defi­ant mili­tia can do. The entire coun­try is divvied up into turfs ‚each con­trolled by local low life punks who believe they are Dons. They have no short­age of guns and ammu­ni­tion, and damn sure no short­age of mer­ce­nar­ies. Sadly it appears some of those mer­ce­nar­ies are ‚mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces. When this issue is looked at in it’s total­i­ty it becomes clear that Jamaica is clos­er to sub Saharan Africa than many of you imag­ine. con­tin­ue to pre­tend , con­tin­ue to tell your­selves it’s not that bad. keep your heads buried in the sand.

According to the Jamaica Observer a young man who claimed to have been a mem­ber of an East Kingston Gang claimed to know where hun­dreds of peo­ple are buried near a river.http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Mass-Burial-Site-Claim_15872832

A stun­ning claim has been made by a for­mer gang mem­ber in the east­ern belt of the Jamaica cap­i­tal, that men in the crim­i­nal under­world, often assist­ed by rogue police­men, have been killing peo­ple and bury­ing their bod­ies in the vicin­i­ty of a sand mine. The prac­tice, accord­ing to the man, has been going on for “whole heap a years”, and is car­ried out by indi­vid­u­als who are based between the East Kingston com­mu­ni­ty of Rockfort, and the adjoin­ing Harbour View in East Rural St Andrew. One sec­tion of the area in Harbour View called ‘Crusher’, which is said to be a bur­ial ground for some of those exe­cut­ed by gang­sters. (PHOTO: MICHAEL GORDON)

In light of these devel­op­ments the much maligned, police depart­ment must move quick­ly to secure the area . The police can­not afford to ignore this sto­ry , they must elic­it help from rel­e­vant agen­cies to make sure that in the event there is any truth to this sto­ry each body exhumed may be prop­er­ly identified.

It can­not be busi­ness as usu­al , whether this sto­ry is true or not , we don’t know, nei­ther does the police hier­ar­chy. As such the area should now be treat­ed as an active crime scene. The Police high com­mand did not act to expel dirty cops, they had time yet they did not. Now they have a inde­com breath­ing down their ass­es. inde­com does not inves­ti­gate crime it inves­ti­gates police, the police hier­ar­chy cre­at­ed inde­com by default. They can save some face by active­ly inves­ti­gat­ing this and putting it to rest .On this one they have no choice they must move now.