Many stud­ies have been done to deter­min­ing how to tack­le crime. Various con­clu­sions arrived at, which sug­gest crime is a social mal­a­dy, fixed basi­cal­ly by ensur­ing every­one have jobs. Those who con­clude thus, have still not come up with an expla­na­tion for white col­lar crimes. Neither have they respond­ed to the fact that in many coun­tries, the peo­ple who are deeply involved in crim­i­nal behav­ior are wealthy peo­ple. In Jamaica there are var­i­ous groups which pur­port to be in the busi­ness of crime reduc­tion, yet their very exis­tence demand that there is ten­sion, and rival­ry. The so-called Peace Management Initiative head­ed by Horace Levy comes to mind. It is no sur­prise that Levy is one of the most vocal crit­ic of police. In a world where Levy’s role was right­eous, he would be a stri­dent sup­port­er of the police, work­ing hand in hand with them toward a com­mon good. Horace Levy has to con­tin­ue [ to eat a food ]so his rela­tion­ship with cops is adversarial.

Horace Levy

JAMAICANS HATE LAWS.

Jamaicans hate to obey laws, they com­plain if the police enforce infrac­tions they believe incon­se­quen­tial. How many times have you heard the say­ing, weh dem nuh gu look fi tief and mur­der­er? Yet if the Police dis­en­gages and (give a bly,)ignore the small stuff, many like my friend Kent Phillip Gammon Attorney at law crit­i­cizes them for not doing their jobs. So what is the police to do in a coun­try which clear­ly does not want to be policed?

During the 1970’s and 80’s New York City was a mess, mug­gings, rob­beries, rapes, mur­ders, graf­fi­ti was every­where, the smell of urine per­me­at­ed every sub-way sta­tion, every hall-way, every ele­va­tor. The city’s first African American Mayor David Dinkins insti­tut­ed a pro­gram called safe streets safe city, the thrust of that pro­gram was to tack­le minor offences, from squeegee men to graf­fi­ti artistes to those who peed in pub­lic places. Dinkins served one term, but his pro­gram was con­tin­ued and expand­ed on by his suc­ces­sor Rudolph Giuliani, today New York city is one of the safest places to live. And by the way the qual­i­ty of life is pret­ty good too, just ask New Yorkers.

For decades Jamaican cops have been put in an unten­able posi­tion to fail. They have been placed into a boil­ing caul­dron of law­less­ness ‚cre­at­ed by their polit­i­cal bosses,the very peo­ple who have a vest­ed inter­est in crime and chaos. Every cop who ever served in the JCF knows that the very politi­cian who makes the laws are the very peo­ple stok­ing the fires against him/​her when he tries to enforce the laws. Have you ever won­dered why the politi­cian is always on site when the police take strong action in the ghet­to? Jamaicans love crime, live by crime, they do not want crime elim­i­nat­ed. I once believed in the right­eous­ness of a crime free soci­ety, as such I vol­un­tar­i­ly signed up to serve. It did not take long for me to rec­og­nize that I would not be mak­ing a dif­fer­ence car­ry­ing a gun and badge there. So I sur­ren­dered them and took my leave, I pity those who can­not leave.

Jamaicans pre­dis­po­si­tion to crime does not stop at the water’s edge, many who leave end up right back home because they can­not stay away from crime. Out of the remain­der not deport­ed, many active­ly fund crime and even still more live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through crim­i­nals back home, active­ly cheer-lead­ing crime. So before the few of us not in that group talk about elim­i­nat­ing crime we may need to elic­it the ser­vices of pro­fes­sion­als to deter­mine the rea­son for Jamaicans crim­i­nal pre-dis­po­si­tion. Dr. Fred Hickling has char­ac­ter­ized the Jamaican soci­ety large­ly as mad. This assess­ment drew howls of con­dem­na­tion from many Jamaicans who weren’t too keen on being char­ac­ter­ized as mad . https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​y​w​p​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​343

Dr Fred Hickling.

Without the ben­e­fit of being a psy­chol­o­gist or soci­ol­o­gist it is impos­si­ble for me to make a clin­i­cal deter­mi­na­tion as to what ails our peo­ple , yet from a com­mon sense per­spec­tive it bears men­tion­ing that Jamaicans love crime hence the state of the coun­try. In order to change the crime sit­u­a­tion we will have to have a mon­u­men­tal psy­cho­log­i­cal change in the pop­u­la­tion. I do not see that hap­pen­ing, do you?

New York City Cops placed at the inter­sec­tion of 96^th street and Broadway on New York City’s upper west side to mon­i­tor pedes­tri­an traf­fic end­ed up beat­ing and blood­y­ing an 84 year-old man plac­ing him in Hospital. The NYPD says it’s offi­cers were there to issue sum­mons to jay-walk­ers who were improp­er­ly using the cross walk. Those tick­ets were report­ed­ly for a whop­ping $250.The NYPD said they decid­ed to tick­et pedes­tri­ans after a young woman was killed at the very inter­sec­tion just 12 hours earlier.

Mayor de Blasio’s spokesman, Phil Walzak, said Sunday, “We won’t sit by while lives are lost and fam­i­lies are torn apart. These lat­est crash­es under­score the urgent need to make our streets safer, which is why we are mov­ing deci­sive­ly to enact ‘Vision Zero’.” “The guy didn’t seem to speak English. The cop walked him over to the Citibank” near the north­east cor­ner of 96^th and Broadway, said one wit­ness, Ian King, a Fordham University law student.“[The offi­cer] stood him up against the wall and was try­ing to write him a tick­et. The man didn’t seem to under­stand, and he start­ed walk­ing away. 

Bill de Blasio ran as a Democrat promis­ing to put an end to New York city’s con­tro­ver­sial stop-and-frisk pol­i­cy. That pol­i­cy came under fire after the city’s minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty com­plained that young black and lati­no youths were being indis­crim­i­nate­ly tar­get­ed for harass­ment, even as the search­es yield­ed hard­ly any weapons. That issue and that issue alone caused the pre­vi­ous­ly lit­tle know de Balsio to surge ahead of the more rec­og­niz­able, then coun­cil speak­er Christine Quinn. Quinn endorsed the stop and frisk pol­i­cy put in place by the out­go­ing Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

de Blasio com­menced by hir­ing William Bratton to be his police Commissioner . For those who for­got, Bratton was the guy Rudolph Giuliani put in place when he was elect­ed may­or. How could that mes­sage be lost on any­one? Bratton was a tough guy who gave cops the impres­sion that they could do no wrong. The rela­tion­ship between New York City’s minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties and the NYPD was rot­ten under Bratton and Giuliani. The brash nar­cis­sis­tic Giuliani only got rid of Bratton after he got jeal­ous of the press Bratton was get­ting. That is the police com­mis­sion­er that the new Democratic Mayor brought back to mend fences with the minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty. Is it any won­der then that NYPD cops feel at lib­er­ty to pound an 84 year old man into the pave­ment, leav­ing him blood­ied and dazed neces­si­tat­ing stitch­es to the back of his head?

The vio­lence unfold­ed in front of sev­er­al news reporters, who had been at the inter­sec­tion doc­u­ment­ing an acci­dent that killed Upper West Side pedes­tri­an Samantha Lee 12 hours earlier.

Did any of you see this on the net-work news? Me nei­ther. It is a shame and a dis­grace that peo­ple hired to pro­tect cit­i­zens, young , old, mid­dle-age, could turn on the most vul­ner­a­ble among us. Police Officers should be in the busi­ness of pro­tect­ing peo­ple, that’s what they get paid to do. Yet cops now a days seem to be juiced up wan­na-be ‑Rambos out to inflict pain on oth­ers. Many of these guys are ex sol­diers, many have seen sev­er­al tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are the peo­ple pop­u­lat­ing your local depart­ments. Police are not there to pro­tect you any­more, they are there to con­trol you. The NYPD claims it was there to pro­tect lives, that pro­tec­tion came at the least cost of a $250 tick­et and at the pre­mi­um of the cracked skull of an 84 year old and con­coct­ed charges. People have to open their eyes before its too late, this is tyran­ny.Having spent 10 years as a law-enforce­ment offi­cer in Kingston Jamaica,one of the world’s tough­est cities, I can­not imag­ine any cir­cum­stance under which I could­n’t han­dle an 84 year-old with­out hurt­ing him.

The Police Commissioner should be ashamed to lie to res­i­dents of the city that the poor gen­tle­man sus­tained the injuries as a result of a fall. This hap­pened in front of wit­ness­es , cred­i­ble wit­ness­es, not wit­ness­es paid to lie. New Yorkers can­not depend on the press to tell them what hap­pened, even when it hap­pen in front of reporters. They had a chance to see what is hap­pen­ing in their name and on their dime. Nothing has changed, it is busi­ness as usu­al, dif­fer­ent wrap­per, same old crap inside.

Crime is lit­er­al­ly suf­fo­cat­ing the life-blood from Jamaica, already just under 40 Jamaicans report­ed dead to author­i­ties, and we are just about at the half-way mark of January. Whether we are at, or below the lev­els of homi­cide we were at lat year this time, the num­bers are just shock­ing. Imagine if we had a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter which snuffed out the lives of these peo­ple who were alive ‚just cel­e­brat­ed Christmas a cou­ple of weeks ago. They did not expect to be among the sta­tis­tics of the new year. Some of them prob­a­bly were not both­ered by the num­bers of last year. And even worse some prob­a­bly felt they are not both­er­ing any­one so the killings will affect the next guy, the next girl, not them. The prob­lem with that think­ing is that when we allow crime to fes­ter it does not dis­crim­i­nate. Ironically that is not how it works, we are all at risk when we see some­thing and we choose not to say some­thing. We are all part of the sta­tis­tic-in-wait­ing when we decide not to be inform­ers. There are many ways to say some­thing if you see some­thing with­out endan­ger­ing one’s self. Yet the (infama fi ded) men­tal­i­ty is so deeply embed­ded into pop­u­lar cul­ture that it’s not sim­ply that many chose not to say any­thing any­more, they are active cheer-lead­ers and ratio­nal­iz­ers at best and active par­tic­i­pants at worse.

Crime is a debil­i­tat­ing can­cer which eats away at the core of soci­ety. Apart from the more vis­i­ble loss of life, and phys­i­cal pain, it destroys qual­i­ty of life and cre­ates pover­ty for all except those who are active parts of that cul­ture. When we con­sid­er how the informer must die notion crept into pop­u­lar ver­nac­u­lar, it is almost laugh­able, weren’t it so tox­ic and dan­ger­ous. How can a peo­ple who pro­fess to be smart be duped by une­d­u­cat­ed dance-hall disc jock­eys? If the disc jock­eys’s are half-baked illit­er­ates , yet they are able to have such an impact on an entire pop­u­la­tion what does that say about the people?

I am not say­ing Jamaica’s crime prob­lem must be placed at the feet of dance-hall artistes. I am sim­ply say­ing, why did some­thing which had its Genesis in the dance-hall have such res­o­nance. Why do Jamaicans go out of their way to show sym­pa­thy for the most despi­ca­ble crim­i­nals, rather than empathize with vic­tims of crime? Remove law-enforce­ment from the equa­tion, there are still vic­tims involved. They make all kinds of non­sen­si­cal and igno­rant argu­ments about Cops, in their quest to cov­er up their affin­i­ty for crime. Seldom do we hear a word of empa­thy for the vic­tims. Just yes­ter­day one bril­liant light-bulb on Face-Book sought to explain why peo­ple in the Chinese com­mu­ni­ty are being tar­get­ed for crim­i­nal­i­ty. she recit­ed a litany of rea­sons which sup­pos­ed­ly jus­ti­fies the crim­i­nal­i­ty vis­it­ed on them. No one deserve to be sin­gled out to be robbed beat­en or worse. It is rep­re­hen­si­ble and dis­gust­ing, yet our coun­try’s crime prob­lem has deep roots in the dias­po­ra, many of whom are more than sup­port­ers on social media. Many are pro­vid­ing the means for the crim­i­nal acts being expe­ri­enced back home.The Country des­per­ate­ly needs tough well thought out anti-crime leg­is­la­tion. This is essen­tial so those who live a life of crime will think twice. If they chose not to, then they should be pre­pared for the con­se­quences. No one piece of leg­is­la­tion will be a panacea. Yet Jamaica can ill-afford to allow the argu­ments for social inter­ven­tion to dis­suade it from pass­ing tough mean­ing­ful laws which will over time cut and con­trol crime. Tough anti-crime laws and social inter­ven­tion are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive , the coun­try must do both, one should not impact the other.

This Administration does noth­ing about crime unless it is dragged kick­ing and scream­ing to the table. Lets not for­get they refused to sup­port the Security Forces in their efforts to solid­i­fy their gains after the Tivoli incur­sion of 2010. En-mass the PNP vot­ed as a unit, not to extend the already lim­it­ed state of emer­gency which was ear­li­er autho­rized. In the most ridicu­lous yet insult­ing spin imag­in­able, they told the coun­try that they did not sign on to allow the secu­ri­ty forces to do their jobs, because they were afraid they would abuse cit­i­zens rights. Never mind the Police Officers and cit­i­zens who were killed, sta­tions shot up and burned to the ground. Never mind the effort it took for the Security forces to annex Tivoli Gardens to the rest of the coun­try after it was hijacked by mer­ce­nar­ies from all over the coun­try. I will not write what thoughts came into my head on hear­ing that garbage. What they did not tell the coun­try and indeed the world which was watch­ing, was that they weren’t about to allow the secu­ri­ty forces to enter their zones of exclu­sions (gar­risons) to remove the guns and the Dons.

Anti-gang leg­is­la­tion lan­guished in Parliament while crim­i­nal sup­port­ers in both polit­i­cal par­ties allowed their cronies in the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty like Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) and oth­ers to water down the lan­guage in the Bill. I brought this to your atten­tion recent­ly and today I am report­ing that Bill has been signed into law. I will not speak to the specifics of what’s in it, I haven’t yet seen it. Nevertheless the ink has­n’t dried before the usu­al bleed­ing hearts are already yelling that the sky is falling. This bit of leg­is­la­tion will hope­ful­ly fur­ther assist the Country’s exis­ten­tial fight against crime and terror.

With the anti-gang law in place, polic­ing meth­ods are like­ly to alien­ate more youth and more com­mu­ni­ties. The police will now be able to arrest and charge inner-city youth with­out need­ing evi­dence that they com­mit­ted any crime. The flur­ry of arrests will no doubt bring about a lull in crime that will seem to prove that the new law is hav­ing the desired effect.Yvonne McCalla Sobers:http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​4​0​1​1​4​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​2​.​h​tml

Yvonne McCalla Sobers

These peo­ple have no solu­tion to the crime prob­lem. They have no empa­thy for vic­tims of crime. No appre­ci­a­tion for the eco­nom­ic cost to the coun­try, nei­ther do they care. Their busi­ness is crime, their rel­e­vance rests with high crime rates and the per­cep­tion of police excess. Too many peo­ple are invest­ed in crime in Jamaica (affi eat a food), That does not mean only those on the Island, but since the late 1980’s to date large parts of the crim­i­nal ele­ments sought refuge on oth­er shores. Many with­in the dias­po­ra leads what appears to be nor­mal law abid­ing lives in the UK, Canada and of course the United States, while they fuel the fire of crime back at home.

Jamaican law is very clear regard­ing evi­dence. It is up to the Investigating offi­cer to make sure that evi­dence per­tain­ing to the case he or she inves­ti­gat­ed is brought before the Court. Each time the Evidence is brought to court it is hand­ed to the pros­e­cut­ing Attorney. If and when the case is set for a future date, the inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer takes pos­ses­sion of the item/​s of evi­dence and return it to the sta­tion where it is hand­ed over to the offi­cer in charge of the Evidence room, where it is signed back into pro­tec­tive cus­tody. The process is reversed on the next court date.

I know there are bet­ter and more sophis­ti­cat­ed ways of deal­ing with evi­dence.. Our coun­try is not devel­oped yet, so it is what it is. The point of all this how­ev­er, is that as imper­fect as it is, there is absolute­ly no excuse for the pros­e­cu­tor to tell the court that evi­dence has dis­ap­peared or some­how can­not be found.

There has been a major devel­op­ment in the Vybz Kartel mur­der case as a key piece of evi­dence has gone miss­ing. Prosecutors have dis­closed that a com­pact disc or CD con­tain­ing tele­phone records can­not be locat­ed. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​5​0​437

Palmer

The pros­e­cu­tor did not explain where in the chain of cus­tody the breach occurred. Was this crit­i­cal piece of evi­dence in the care of the pros­e­cu­tion team when it dis­ap­peared or was it anoth­er case of police cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal col­lu­sion? It is impor­tant that this mat­ter be laid bare. Adija Palmer o/​c Vybz Kartel is fac­ing cap­i­tal mur­der . In the inter­est of Justice all evi­dence, both incrim­i­nat­ing and excul­pa­to­ry must be avail­able to the court, so that the cor­rect ver­dict may be arrived at. It is crit­i­cal in deter­min­ing the inno­cence or guilt of the accused as well as in the inter­est of jus­tice for the aggriev­ed fam­i­ly of the victim.

Kartel and oth­ers in a pho­to­graph bran­dish­ing guns before his arrest and the begin­ning of this case.

It can­not be that crit­i­cal evi­dence just dis­ap­pear with a sim­ple state­ment that it can­not be found. Who is in charge here? Are the inmates run­ning the Asylum? The absence of that crit­i­cal bit of evi­dence did not seem to be a sur­prise to Palmer’s Attorney Tom Tavares Finson. In fact it was Finson who asked the Court to have the Prosecutor show the cor­re­spond­ing disc which is crit­i­cal in explain­ing the one being tes­ti­fied to by a Digicel expert. Upon which the Prosecutor told the court the evi­dence was lost. Tavares-Finson then sug­gest­ed that since one of the CDs is miss­ing, the court would be unable to ver­i­fy the con­tents on the disc which was ten­dered into evidence.

Tom Finson

Was this crafty defense coun­sel have rea­son to believe that the disc was miss­ing, if so why? How could he pos­si­bly have known if he was­n’t privy to infor­ma­tion the court did not have, that some­how there was evi­dence tam­per­ing in this impor­tant case? As I asked before where in the chain of cus­tody did this evi­dence dis­ap­pear? Who was entrust­ed with it, was it the pros­e­cu­tor, we need to know? Was it the police? Whomever it is must be brought to court to explain and account. Who was respon­si­ble for the cus­tody of the Disc? There are estab­lished law­ful pro­to­cols ? This can­not be allowed to just die with the accused being set free. A crit­i­cal piece of evi­dence dis­s­a­peared, it can­not just be a return to busi­ness as usu­al. This is crim­i­nal­i­ty of the high­est order. My anger does not go to the guilt or inno­cence of the accused. This is big­ger than any one accused. This kind of ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is destroy­ing the sys­tem and is fuel­ing crime on the Island. It has to stop.

Yesterday, I brought to your atten­tion the issue of a juror hear­ing the mur­der case against Adidja Palmer, o/​c Vybz Kartel, dance-hall DJ, vis­it­ing a defense lawyer employed by Palmer.https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​y​w​p​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​6​093. I wrote an arti­cle on the sto­ry because I was shocked at the defin­i­tive way the tri­al judge, Lennox Campbell, sought to brush the issue aside, seem­ing­ly impa­tient and want­i­ng to move on. I wrote about it because the fideli­ty of the jus­tice sys­tem is of para­mount impor­tance if Jamaica’s fledg­ling democ­ra­cy is to sur­vive. I was also shocked that there did not seem to be any oth­er voic­es of dis­sent on the issue. I thought it was impor­tant that the juror, in fact, the entire jury, be dis­missed from hear­ing the case, even if the stri­dent dec­la­ra­tion of Lennox Campbell was ver­i­fi­able true. The judge had this to say about the juror’s vis­it. Quote: “We are firm­ly of the view that what tran­spired was an inno­cent inter­ac­tion. It is most unlike­ly to affect what we are going on with,”.

How can a judge under­stand how the jus­tice process is sup­posed to work and make such a state­ment in light of those devel­op­ments? How can he make those state­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the rea­son for the vis­it was not made pub­lic? One of the cor­ner­stones of any jus­tice sys­tem is the belief that jus­tice must not only be done, it must also seem to be done. I point­ed to this yes­ter­day. Jamaica’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is in cri­sis. Dirty cops, incom­pe­tent pros­e­cu­tors, lack of resources. Defense lawyers who are noth­ing more than Consiglieres to their crim­i­nal clients. Judges who sup­plant deco­rum and prece­dent with their own views and a com­plete break­down in the sys­tem that feeds the Don culture.

Today, how­ev­er, oth­ers are lend­ing their voice to this issue, the Jamaica Observer reports:Some legal experts have said that the juror or the entire pan­el of 12 jurors should have been dis­missed. The case, which start­ed in November, restart­ed. According to the experts, this should have been done to dis­pel any per­cep­tion of under-hand­ed­ness that may be in the mind of the pub­lic and to pro­tect the integri­ty of the jus­tice sys­tem. According to them, had it been any oth­er juris­dic­tion, the pan­el would have been dis­missed, even if it was found that noth­ing wrong had tak­en place.http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​J​u​d​g​e​-​s​a​y​s​-​v​i​s​i​t​-of – Kartel-juror – to-lawyer-s-office-innocent-_15748954

I am heart­ened that some peo­ple under­stand the impor­tance of judi­cial fideli­ty in this exis­ten­tial strug­gle in which our coun­try is engaged. I will once again use this medi­um to call for judi­cial reform as we work toward a bet­ter way for­ward for Jamaica.

For the last 14 days, 58 indi­vid­u­als have been mur­dered: week one, 28, week 2, 30, and dur­ing that peri­od, 15 per­sons have been mur­dered in St. James, alone, 1,160 mur­ders report­ed so far this year is a 10 per cent increase over the fig­ure for the same peri­od (up to the end of November, 2012) last year.http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​J​L​P​-​r​a​p​s​-​P​M​-​f​o​r​-​n​o​t​-​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​f​i​g​h​t​-​a​-​p​r​i​o​r​i​t​y​-​_​1​5​6​5​3​715.

Portia
These are num­bers attest­ed to in a press Conference held at their Belmont Road offices by the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party. At the press con­fer­ence the oppo­si­tion leader and oth­ers bemoaned the lack of lead­er­ship on the crit­i­cal issue of crime and vio­lence by the admin­is­tra­tion and the Prime Minister in par­tic­u­lar. I am not exact­ly sure whether the Opposition par­ty rec­og­nizes that the PNP exists as a polit­i­cal enti­ty because of crime. The streets under­stands that when the peo­ple’s National Party forms the Government it’s gen­er­al­ly a free-for-all. The per­cep­tion on the streets is that the par­ty allows every­one to (eat a food), col­lo­qui­al Jamaican ter­mi­nol­o­gy which means to tac­it­ly allow peo­ple to break the laws for per­son­al gain. Jamaicans do not like laws, so the People’s National Party has been a per­fect fit for most Jamaica’s since suffrage.

Carolyn Gomes

There are sev­er­al bills lan­guish­ing in the Parliament which could poten­tial­ly give law enforce­ment a leg-up despite the woe­ful inad­e­qua­cy of resources giv­en to them. Conversely, what the Government has done is to place a stran­gle-hold on effec­tive law-enforce­ment, by col­lud­ing with Jamaicans for Justice to imple­ment strate­gies which crim­i­nal­ize cops who do what they are sworn to do. Police Officers are not going after crim­i­nals, out of fear they will end up in prison on fraud­u­lent ghet­to evi­dence cooked-up by (inde­com). No one denies the need for effec­tive police over­sight, it is an absolute neces­si­ty. Oversight how­ev­er, can­not be a fish­ing expe­di­tion aimed at impris­on­ing Police offi­cers to con­form to the dic­tates of Carolyn Gomes and( jfj)

Let’s not kid our­selves into believ­ing that Portia under­stands the debil­i­tat­ing con­se­quences crime has on the Nation’s psy­che and finances. Many eval­u­a­tions have been done high­light­ing the trau­ma to both. Nevertheless there are peo­ple with­in that Administration who are capa­ble of assim­i­lat­ing the detri­men­tal and gen­er­a­tions long con­se­quences that crime will have on the nation. We then must pull our heads from the sand and accept the fact that crime thrives in Jamaica because this admin­is­tra­tion wants it to. All the evi­dence points to that con­clu­sion. From as far back as the 70’s, People National Party poli­cies have been crim­i­nal friend­ly and acqui­es­cent, if not total­ly and out­right complicit.

Percival Patterson

Gutting of law-enforce­ment capa­bil­i­ties in the 70’s under Michael Manley, allow­ing for crim­i­nals to march into police sta­tions and remove crim­i­nals from police con­trol. Guerrilla-style assaults on Police sta­tions, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions(gar­risons). A total decade, 10 years with­out a sin­gle detec­tive trained under Percival Patterson. The lat­ter saw crime explod­ing expo­nen­tial­ly, and the moral com­pass of our Nation for­ev­er changed for the worse.

How can Portia Simpson Miller be expect­ed to be part of any solu­tion to elim­i­nate or erad­i­cate crime when her very ascent was made pos­si­ble because of crime? As a police offi­cer in the late 80’s I watched Portia roll-around in the streets on White Hall Avenue, sur­round­ed by a bunch of red T‑shirt, motor­cy­cle rid­ing brig­ands. She was upset we did not allow them to steal the bal­lot box­es. Yes I said it. It’s naïve to believe that the par­ty which is soft on crime, which wins more elec­tions because of that stance can, or will fix crime. As Jamaicans we have to accept the stark and con­tra­dic­to­ry real­i­ty that most Jamaicans are not opposed to crime, they are opposed to those who work toward elim­i­nat­ing it. The labor par­ty will have a tough road to hoe, first in con­vinc­ing an illit­er­ate mass that it’s in their eco­nom­ic and exis­ten­tial inter­est to turn it’s back on crim­i­nal­i­ty. Then get­ting them to vote deci­sive­ly to root it out. That means keep­ing the People’s National Party out of Jamaica House.

Highly placed police sources have con­firmed that more than 200,000 litres of jet fuel has been stolen from the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, St James.The fuel, val­ued at $20 mil­lion.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​5​0​1​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​4​.​h​tml.

A group of gun­men staged a late-night raid on the Shell Company plant at Rockfort in East Kingston and made off with more than 133,000 litres of gaso­line val­ued at just over $15 million.“I can con­firm that the rob­bery took place,” Superintendent Arthur Brown of the Kingston Eastern police told the Jamaica Observer .“What I was told was that they were there from about mid­night until near 5:00 am,” anoth­er of our sources said.Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​-​1​5​-​m​-​g​a​s​-​r​o​b​b​e​r​y​_​1​4​0​5​8​7​5​4​#​i​x​z​z​2​m​S​8​6​V​iD8.

The police last night declared aid would be sought from inter­na­tion­al part­ners as a probe con­tin­ues in rela­tion to the seizure of a machine which can make ammu­ni­tion as well as thou­sands of war­heads.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​1​1​2​9​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​3​.​h​tml.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Devon Watkis i/​c crime.

I sup­port the Police every day, not par­tic­u­lar­ly because I believe they are smart, effec­tive, or are all hon­est. I sup­port their efforts because I under­stand that if Jamaica is to sur­vive, the rule of law must be strength­ened. Sometimes how­ev­er, they make it real­ly dif­fi­cult to con­tin­ue to take flack for them, when they con­tin­ue to do and say the stu­pid­est things. On the occa­sion of the gaso­line thefts Assistant Commissioner of Police Devon Watkis my old friend had this to say”.We believe this to be the work of orga­nized crime.We are con­duct­ing this inves­ti­ga­tion in a holis­tic way . We are ask­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic not to buy the stolen gaso­line as they will be prosecuted” .

I under­stand my old friend’s need to con­sid­er all the parts of this Investigation but the mes­sage we hear com­ing from this state­ment is that the lit­tle per­son will be bear­ing the brunt of the pun­ish­ment , yet the police is unable to get to the big fish who are orches­trat­ing these brazen crimes. At the risk of beat­ing a dead Horse I have just one ques­tion for the Assistant Commissioner. ” How do you pro­pose to go after the lit­tle peo­ple any­way? Whether it’s in their vehi­cle or in con­tain­ers they sim­ply have to con­tend that they pur­chased it at a leGal out­let. How will you or your men dis­prove that claim or bet­ter yet how will you prove gaso­line is stolen?.….…So the answer can­not be about the gaso­line, it must be about the per­pe­tra­tors of these crimes. That gaso­line is most like­ly used up real fast. Not doing a com­pre­hen­sive inves­ti­ga­tion which brings the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice only embold­ens them. Even if there was a way to lock up every per­son who ever pur­chased every gal­lon of the stolen petrol, or who helped in the com­mis­sion of the crime noth­ing would be solved if the plan­ner is not brought to justice.

One more thing regard­ing that sup­posed find at the Wharf involv­ing war-heads. Apart from the foul-up with the report­ing and the brouha­ha which fol­lowed. I just won­dered at the way the police han­dled the thing. After the find, what pre­vent­ed the police from 1) plac­ing a sim­ple track­ing device (avail­able in Jamaica) in the con­tain­er? 2) Placing under­cov­er detec­tives there in wait of whomev­er shows up to clear the ship­ment? 3)Follow the ship­ment to see who else is in on it? After blow­ing all of those oppor­tu­ni­ties how can the Police expect to con­vince the pub­lic that they are seri­ous about bring­ing the per­pe­tra­tors of this crime to Justice? How will they con­vince for­eign coun­ter­parts that they are sup­pos­ed­ly ask­ing help from they are seri­ous part­ners? How will they con­vince the pub­lic that they are capa­ble of bring­ing crime to tol­er­a­ble levels?

In most locales in the devel­oped world, Appellate Courts do not dis­turb low­er courts’ rul­ings unless a tri­al judge erred egre­gious­ly in a way that prej­u­diced a defen­dan­t’s case tilt­ing the case toward the pros­e­cu­tion. In fact, Appellate Courts sel­dom tam­per with the low­er courts’ deci­sions but may ask the low­er court to clar­i­fy a par­tic­u­lar ruling.
Unless there is new/​exculpatory evi­dence, Appellate Courts gen­er­al­ly side with low­er courts’ find­ings. Essentially, doing no harm. Constant med­dling by Appellate Courts brings the com­pe­tence of low­er courts into ques­tion, opens the court to ques­tions of cor­rup­tion and skewed affil­i­a­tions, and gen­er­al­ly erodes con­fi­dence in the rule of law. Jamaica is a prime exam­ple of this; she has excep­tion­al­ly high crime num­bers derived from sev­er­al issues, the least of which are pover­ty, archaic/​inadequate laws, and lib­er­al judges who sup­plant com­mon sense and the laws for their own emo­tion­al lean­ings. I am not a lawyer, so I will leave the legalese to oth­ers to argue. I will attempt to talk about anoth­er par­tic­u­lar case in a sim­ple, com­mon-sense way that every­one may understand.

Nothing, in my opin­ion, has caused more harm to our coun­try than the lib­er­al Judges, most of whom are Alums of the University of the West Indies. The lat­ter has been a hotbed of lib­er­al Marxist/​Leninist the­ol­o­gy from as far back as the 1960s. No one can pass through those doors untaint­ed by the cor­ro­sive poi­son of lib­er­al-social­ist dog­ma. Many Jamaicans point to pover­ty and lack of social inter­ven­tion as rea­sons for our coun­try’s high inci­dences of crime. To them, I say two words, Vietnam, and Indonesia. These two nations in Asia had tremen­dous­ly sup­pressed wages and low liv­ing stan­dards, yet their crime sta­tis­tics are much dif­fer­ent from ours. The Jamaican Nation is soft on crim­i­nal behav­ior. Jamaican laws encour­age crim­i­nal­i­ty. The coun­try’s judges are crim­i­nal-cod­dling elit­ists Jack-ass­es. There has been no short­age of out­cry from me in this medi­um about the crim­i­nal enabling Judges who pop­u­late the coun­try’s courts. As such, I have con­sis­tent­ly called for truth in sen­tenc­ing which essen­tial­ly removes the abil­i­ty of judges to cir­cum­vent the laws with their lib­er­al social­ist agen­da of social engineering.

Jamaican tri­al lawyers oppose manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tenc­ing for cer­tain crimes, which is a good indi­ca­tor of the rule of law. Of course, the pre­ten­tious nation and the crim­i­nal-lov­ing politi­cians would nev­er seri­ous­ly con­sid­er putting teeth into the nation’s penal code out of fear they become ensnared by it. So the coun­try saun­ters along with the old laws, lib­er­al judges, and a mon­u­men­tal­ly high crime rate. A few of the Judges actu­al­ly attempt to show fideli­ty to the laws, rec­og­niz­ing the nation­al secu­ri­ty impli­ca­tions. However, for the most part, the oth­ers go out of their way to be activists, using the bench to insti­tute their lib­er­al views on the coun­try.

Gilbert Kameka, a 48-year-old assis­tant com­mis­sion­er of Police, was shot and killed at a house in Irish Town, St Andrew, when he vis­it­ed his then 18-year-old girl­friend, who had pre­vi­ous­ly had a rela­tion­ship with Adams. The cop was shot by Adams and robbed of his ser­vice revolver. Adams had planned with his ex-girl­friend the day before the mur­der that “we will come up there to get the gun,” and she agreed.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​1​2​0​1​/​n​e​w​s​/​n​e​w​s​5​.​h​tml

The court found that although the mur­der entailed a planned, cold-blood­ed killing, it could not be regard­ed as falling with­in the most extreme or excep­tion­al cas­es. Justice Hazel Harris, Justice Hillary Phillips, and Justice Patrick Brooks held that the judge failed to con­sid­er the sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor as to whether there was any rea­son­able prospect of reform­ing the appel­lant. The court referred to the fact that Adams was gain­ful­ly employed up to his arrest.
The social inquiry report said that mem­bers of his com­mu­ni­ty had expressed sur­prise that he com­mit­ted the mur­der, and there were excel­lent reports of his good char­ac­ter. There was also a view Adams had “aca­d­e­m­ic poten­tial,” which the Appeal Court said all weighed favor­ably to sup­port his reformation.

This is the most nau­se­at­ing sum­ma­tion I have ever heard. If you can read, get some peo­ple to say they are sur­prised that you did it, you may go out and kill any cop you want to get his gun or what­ev­er rea­son you may have. That is exact­ly the mes­sage the three crim­i­nal-lov­ing trol­lops sent in over­turn­ing the death penal­ty for this pre-med­i­tat­ed slaugh­ter of a police offi­cer. As I argued dur­ing the con­clu­sion of this tri­al, it was an insult and an affront to the fam­i­ly of Gilbert Kameka that the woman behind it all was reward­ed with three years sus­pend­ed sentence.

A three-year sus­pend­ed sen­tence means you spend not one day in prison, despite hav­ing agreed to and helped orches­trate a pre-med­i­tat­ed mur­der. It mat­ters not what her con­tri­bu­tion was to the pros­e­cu­tion’s case, be it the total­i­ty or oth­er­wise; she should have received a 25-year sen­tence for her com­plic­i­ty and duplic­i­ty. With that said, these three men­tal retards have shown once again what smart police offi­cers have known for decades. These Elitists who pop­u­late the bench have no respect for the Jamaican peo­ple, no respect for the laws, and no respect for those who enforce them. That, my dear friends, is a big part of the rea­son I am writ­ing about this, hav­ing left the depart­ment after only 9 ¹⁄₂ years of ser­vice. It is a dis­grace and a damn shame that the fam­i­ly of Gilbert Kameka is fur­ther trau­ma­tized by those who are sup­posed to pro­tect them. The points in sum­ma­tion by the above three must shame Judges every­where. These are not judges; they are left-wing functionaries…

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

Information com­ing out of Jamaica reveals that a machine alleged­ly used to man­u­fac­ture bul­lets and war-heads were seized at the Kingston Wharves. The Jamaica Gleaner report­ed on the find­ings ‚yet I am unsure what the report meant by war-heads. every pro­jec­tile used in any weapon which is launched with the pur­pose of killing or caus­ing harm may be char­ac­ter­ized as a war-head. As such I found the Gleaner’s report­ing infan­tile and woe­ful­ly lack­ing in clarity.The report­ing indi­cates Custom offi­cers sim­ply hap­pened on the cache, they did not make the dis­cov­ery as part of a sys­tem­at­ic or con­cert­ed effort to erad­i­cate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of such con­tra­band enter­ing the Island. This did not stop the head of Customs from brag­ging about increased vig­i­lance on the part of his officers.

Police spokes-per­son DSP Steve Brown.

Anyone in the know must snick­er at the notion that Jamaican cus­toms are vig­i­lant. I would wager they were look­ing to see what they could steal from unsus­pect­ing ship­pers. The hap­less police not to be out­done issued a state­ment about the find. They claimed they were ask­ing their over­seas coun­ter­parts for help with the inves­ti­ga­tions and were active­ly look­ing for one man from Manchester whom they believe may be able to aid them in their inves­ti­ga­tions. Where have we heard this form-state­ment before? Why would they name the per­son they are look­ing for or even where he is from, why not sim­ply find the per­son tie him to the find if pos­si­ble and tie up the inves­ti­ga­tions? Nah that would actu­al­ly require that they show a lit­tle com­mon sense and we know the police have con­sis­tent­ly demon­strat­ed they are inca­pable of show­ing com­mon sense.

Police Commissioner Owen Ellington

The Police High Command says it is con­cerned about the fail­ure of some police per­son­nel to locate wit­ness­es for court. In a state­ment from the Constabulary Communication Network, Police Commissioner Owen Ellington says this action may result in crim­i­nals not being prosecuted.
Ellington com­ments came after Supreme Court Judge, Lennox Campbell, last week blast­ed police inves­ti­ga­tors involved in the mur­der case of St Catherine man Paul Brown. Brown was con­vict­ed last Friday in the Home Circuit Court of the 2007 mur­der of Clayton Black.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​4​9​209

The Police is a top-heavy Agency in my opin­ion, my per­son­al feel­ings are that the depart­ment could scrap and abol­ish half of the gazetted rank structure(those above the rank of Inspector) and be twice as effective.The police depart­ment I have always believed would be bet­ter served if many of those kha­ki-clad peo­ple who sit around in the sta­tions were on the streets doing police work. The coun­try would get a big­ger bang for it’s buck.

With that said, why is it the job of police offi­cers to hunt down wit­ness­es and haul them to court? Yeah I know, wit­ness­es have to be pro­tect­ed ‚yada yada yada , guess what, there is no evi­dence many of these wit­ness­es are in any dan­ger and if they are all they have to do is ask the police for help. The fact is that most Jamaicans are look­ing for a way out of every­thing, a short-cut, an easy fix. No one feels a sense of civic pride in doing what they should do. So they renege on what they are bound to do and place the blame on the police. Don’t get me wrong there is more than enough blame to go around when it comes to the police and it’s com­pe­tence or lack there­of. This issue is one of civic-duty, since peo­ple will not attend to those duties then they should be forced to, by means of leg­is­la­tion with teeth. Just saying.……

I have writ­ten about the need to repeal , review and re-autho­rize the INDECOM Act on suc­ceed­ing days. There has been live­ly debate on the sub­ject on Social media. I have dili­gent­ly sought to be bal­anced regard­ing the Law, acqui­esc­ing to the need for police over­sight, while at the same time delin­eat­ing out the bad parts of the law which needs fix­ing. I am heart­ened to see that there are oth­er peo­ple involved in think­ing through this issue ratio­nal­ly, not guid­ed by hatred for law-enforce­ment or oth­er per­son­al vendettas.

Damion Crawford 

Tourism State Minister, Damion Crawford, has drawn the ire of Twitter users after call­ing for the clo­sure of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM). http://​go​-jamaica​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​r​e​a​d​_​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​4​9​118.@shavarstar @jaevionn INDECOM has & will con­tin­ue to cause the police to not be proac­tive or even reac­tive but inactive.

True to form, this cre­at­ed a firestorm from crit­ics of the police sur­round­ing the tweet much the same way they have argued with me. It would do crit­ics of the police a great ser­vice to step back and rec­og­nize this is not about the police it is about the secu­ri­ty of an entire peo­ple. I have con­sis­tent­ly called for rank and file police offi­cers to stand down , not just because of the law, but because of the per­son head­ing the agency in ques­tion, who clear­ly has his own agenda.

Many who yelp the loud­est at calls for a revamp­ing and re-autho­riza­tion of the law, have no inter­est in the prob­lems the Act pos­es. Many have friends who have been tak­en out by police. Some have dirty hands. In fact many refuse to edu­cate them­selves about the Law and what’s in it, choos­ing to form opin­ions from oth­er peo­ple’s com­ments, and their hatred for law enforce­ment. They refuse to do a line item assess­ment of the ques­tions raised with this law. As such they have for all intents and pur­pos­es dis­qual­i­fied them­selves as seri­ous stake-hold­ers in this debate.

One of the most com­mon argu­ment to come out of this debate is” Oh if the Cops are act­ing with­in the con­fines of the law what do they have to fear” ? This state­ment is rife with naïveté’.

♦ Every case in which police uses lethal force is inves­ti­gat­ed with pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al intent. Not just cas­es where there are alle­ga­tions of abuse. No oth­er work­ers risk impris­on­ment sim­ply for doing their job. Yet the brain-dead-head of INDECOM Terrence Williams points to the Netherlands as a source of prece­dent, claim­ing that it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al for the police to actu­al­ly inves­ti­gate the killing of a cit­i­zen killed by police. What does Holland’s laws and prac­tices have to do with Jamaica?

♦ Criminals force , coerce, pay , threat­en and intim­i­date pro­fes­sion­al mourn­ers to lie about see­ing cops kill peo­ple in cold blood, gen­er­al­ly there are incred­i­ble amounts of evi­dence which shows that none of the demon­stra­tors could pos­si­bly have seen what they claim to have seen. This is the most lethal weapon crim­i­nal-dons have in their arse­nal against law enforce­ment offi­cers. Second is (JFJ’s ) smear cam­paign and (INDECOM’s)zealotry.

♦ The entire­ty of the law which seri­ous­ly infringes offi­cers rights, safe­ty, and abil­i­ty to do the job they are sworn to do, makes the law more of a prob­lem than a solu­tion to the issue of police excess.

What makes me piss angry is read­ing some of the garbage writ­ten by some of the know-noth­ings who pon­tif­i­cate about this issue while they live in coun­tries where police offi­cer are empow­ered and pro­tect­ed so they may do their jobs effec­tive­ly. The fact is once crim­i­nals know that peo­ple stand behind their law enforce­ment offi­cers they have a dif­fer­ent atti­tude toward break­ing the laws. Which enables soci­eties to fine-tune civ­il and human rights safe­guards, not the reverse.

The above was the title of yes­ter­days Blog-Post, unfor­tu­nate­ly many peo­ple who respond­ed to the arti­cle chose to see only the word (repeal). I do how­ev­er val­ue the dis­cus­sions we had on this issue and the thoughts shared by every­one. Today I want to expand on the INDECOM Act. It is said that a bad law is worse than no law. The INDECOM Act, is a bad law. For clar­i­fi­ca­tion pur­pos­es I must address one par­tic­u­lar crit­i­cism regard­ing the arti­cle, that is that I am opposed to INDECOM. My quar­rel is not with the Agency, my issue is with the way the law was writ­ten. As I have con­sis­tent­ly said, the law was not prop­er­ly though out. It is impos­si­ble to accuse me of being against INDECOM when I am advo­cat­ing repeal­ing , re-doing, and re-autho­riza­tion of the law.

If crit­ics of my posi­tion feel that they need a law which will put police offi­cers in their place as dumb, illit­er­ate, big-foot­ed morons, who could get noth­ing else to do so they joined the force, then this con­ver­sa­tion is not for them. You are free to have that con­ver­sa­tion with like-mind­ed folks as your­selves. If how­ev­er we want to find a way around the issues of alleged police excess­es and what are char­ac­ter­ized as bla­tant abuse of cit­i­zens rights, then we should have a debate about that. What we should not do how­ev­er, is design a sys­tem which makes vic­tims of one side, even as we seek to assuage anoth­er. I will not re-lit­i­gate the points I raised yes­ter­day which the Federation chair­man has also raised . Sufficient to say that the par­lia­ment was not total­ly brain-dead when it autho­rized the Act. Membes were at least sober enough to give the law a shelf life. This gives them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it and repair parts of the law which aren’t work­ing so well. Let me be clear INDECOM did not come into exis­tence because some­one came up with the idea that it was good to have trans­paren­cy in a Government Agency. If that was the case Jamaica would be hum­ming as a cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic hub to be envied. The law came into exis­tence because Police offi­cers con­tin­ue to betray the oath they took, with fright­en­ing fre­quen­cy and impuni­ty. This turned those with the worst intent into legit­i­mate crit­ics of the depart­ment. The depart­ment is then placed in an unen­vi­able ‚unten­able posi­tion. The voic­es of sup­port­ers are often drowned out respond­ing to crit­ics some of whom should be in jail.For those obsessed with the idea that Jamaican police offi­cers are opposed to what they refer to as (pres­sure groups) Oversight, they could­n’t be fur­ther from the truth. They also accuse the fed­er­a­tion Chairman of every­thing , includ­ing being opposed to INDECOM. That is also a lie. I have spo­ken to many offi­cers who wel­come over­sight. What they are opposed to is an agency with inves­ti­ga­to­ry pow­ers and an agen­da con­trary to it’s man­date. That is what INDECOM is . Terrence Williams is not a cred­i­ble head for that agency his friends and asso­ciates are Carolyn Gomes and oth­ers who are known anti-police agi­ta­tors. In a Country of laws Williams would have been fired when he had that Press con­fer­ence with Gomes. One of the foun­da­tion tenets of jus­tice is that it must not only be done , it must also appear to be done. Williams breached that trust of fideli­ty in his quest and desire to self-aggrandize.

There is absolute­ly noth­ing wrong with hav­ing a seaper­ate inde­pen­dent Agency with the same pow­ers as the Police. In fact it is need­ed, com­pe­ti­tion deliv­ers a bet­ter prod­uct to the cus­tomers, the Jamaican peo­ple. One of the rea­sons I have called for the INDECOM law to be repealed and re-done is exact­ly for that rea­son. I believe this new agency should inves­ti­gate all crimes, not just police abus­es. This will draw crit­i­cisms that it would be a dupli­ca­tion of efforts. To those I ask ” is the FBI’s job a dupli­ca­tion of efforts”? Lets have a clean un-encum­bered INDECOM ‚empow­er it to inves­ti­gate crimes includ­ing police, it guar­an­tees a bet­ter law enforce­ment prod­uct through com­pe­ti­tion. When INDECOM mem­bers fall afoul of the law they are sub­ject to being arrest­ed by police. When Police offi­cers fall afoul they are sub­ject to the same treat­ment, what’s not to like it works well for oth­er countries.

♦ The com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM is empow­ered to direct both secu­ri­ty agency heads, to car­ry out and effect change to their respec­tive agen­cies , even though they are ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble for the effec­tive­ness of their agen­cies. If this was not so poten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing it would be laugh­able. Whose idea was this? This autho­riza­tion by leg­is­la­tors is a clear abdi­ca­tion of leg­isla­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty. If changes are to be made by these impor­tant Agencies those changes should only be made by the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the cab­i­net after much con­sul­ta­tions and debate. This pow­er is now shoved into the purview of an ego­tis­ti­cal nar­cis­sist, Terrence Williams who seem to have a seri­ous Napoleonic com­plex. ♦ Sections of the Act lit­er­al­ly forces police offi­cers to self incrim­i­nate, it forces them to give state­ments prompt­ly when they are forced to use force even as they are trau­ma­tized and should have the ben­e­fit of coun­sel. This clear­ly is not a con­sti­tu­tion­al insert, and leg­is­la­tors should know that. It is anti­thet­i­cal to a per­sons right against self-incrim­i­na­tion. The Police and it’s Union should have guar­an­tees under the laws against self-incrim­i­na­tion. This is not a giv­en under Jamaica’s Banana-Republic Kangaroo-left­ist lib­er­al courts. ♦ The Act gives (inde­com) the pow­er to inves­ti­gate all cas­es of shoot­ing, fatal or oth­er­wise . This gives the impres­sion that every instance where the police uses force regard­less of pro­pri­ety, the police are left look­ing like sus­pects.   This par­tic­u­lar area of the law is not just counter pro­duc­tive to good law enforce­ment it is a colos­sal waste of time and mon­ey. It does a seri­ous dis-ser­vice to police offi­cers who, even when they risk their lives are left look­ing like crim­i­nals sus­pects and open to con­coct­ed crim­i­nal charges.This is borne out by the very find­ings of the very agency which is tasked with these inves­ti­ga­tions. In a sub­mis­sion to Parliament (inde­com) head Terrence Williams report­ed that in the major­i­ty of cas­es inves­ti­gat­ed by his office, police offi­cers act­ed prop­er­ly in the actions they took. What then is the need for all cas­es of police shoot­ings to be inves­ti­gat­ed in light of those com­ments, if not to intim­i­date and Hog-tie police hands? ♦The police fed­er­a­tion chair­man stat­ed that (inde­com )approach­es all cas­es from a pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al per­spec­tive. That hap­pens when you allow a nar­cis­sist to under­take an impar­tial task. There are no instances in the Industrialized world and I dare­say any place else, where police offi­cers are sec­ond-guessed in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of their duties, or sub­ject to inves­ti­ga­tions for doing their jobs. Investigations are ini­ti­at­ed when there are cred­i­ble rea­sons to con­duct inves­ti­ga­tions. Jamaican cops are sub­ject­ed to mak­ing life and death deci­sions against some of the world’s most deranged killers, if they sur­vive they like­ly risk lengthy impris­on­ment because the demon killed is con­nect­ed to the very peo­ple who write the leg­is­la­tion. this can­not be allowed to stand. In fact the police fed­er­a­tion chair­man has detailed the effect this is hav­ing on offi­cers he represents.

Wilson said mem­bers report­ed great men­tal stress brought on just by think­ing about their per­son­al wel­fare and inabil­i­ty to finance legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. According to the Police Federation head, INDECOM has been using coer­cion to com­pel mem­bers to give state­ments with­out the ben­e­fit of per­sons hav­ing legal con­sul­ta­tion. According to Wilson, the fre­quent demands by INDECOM for mem­bers, espe­cial­ly oper­a­tion sup­port units that play a crit­i­cal role in high crime areas, to vis­it their offices in pur­suance of their inves­ti­ga­tions have sig­nif­i­cant­ly deplet­ed the oper­a­tional strength of these units.“The man­ner and method­ol­o­gy employed by INDECOM could seri­ous­ly com­pro­mise nation­al secu­ri­ty espe­cial­ly if con­fi­den­tial sources are revealed,” Wilson added. He said there were clear instances which sug­gest­ed that INDECOM in their quest to pros­e­cute police offi­cers would go to any length to obtain infor­ma­tion, even if it means com­pro­mis­ing con­fi­den­tial sources. Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​C​o​p​s​-​g​e​t​t​i​n​g​-​u​n​f​a​i​r​-​t​r​e​a​t​m​e​n​t​-​f​r​o​m​-​I​N​D​E​COM – says-Wilson_15358222#ixzz2jnLUfVSG.

This law is a bad piece of leg­is­la­tion. There needs to be vig­i­lant police over­sight, this law is not the answer. The INDECOM Act needs to be repealed, there needs to be seri­ous dis­cus­sions involv­ing all stake-hold­ers. Serious police sci­ence research data must be applied con­fig­ur­ing such facts to Jamaica’s unique sit­u­a­tion. Jamaican researchers should be exclud­ed from this process because of their lack of under­stand­ing of law enforce­ment com­plex­i­ties and it’s impor­tance to a sta­ble soci­ety. As the inept Government empow­ers an over­sight agency to harass law-enforce­ment crime con­tin­ues to head north. Fewer and few­er peo­ple are return­ing to the coun­try to live. Less and less invest­ment dol­lars are head­ing to the coun­try. In fact reports show that over the last decade the num­ber of return­ing res­i­dents have been cut by 50% . This is not hap­pen­ing in a vac­u­um, the lead­er­ship of the coun­try is show­ing seri­ous inabil­i­ties to gov­ern the coun­try. Continued ero­sion of the rule of law is unacceptable.
This law places offi­cers lives at risk , caus­es the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of mas­sive loss of civil­ian lives and embold­ens crim­i­nals. It should be repealed and replaced.

All too often we hear the term Police shoot-out, in Jamaica this takes on par­tic­u­lar res­o­nance because of the high instances of vio­lent con­fronta­tion between police and mem­bers of the pub­lic which results in civil­ian death.Over the years there has been much said about this phe­nom­e­non both local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Various Agencies and Organizations have done their own stud­ies and made analy­sis most of which are slant­ed sen­sa­tion­al­ist opin­ions which has very lit­tle basis in facts or are at best poor­ly arrived at one sided con­clu­sions. A quick Google search (police in Jamaica) bears this out.

When we hear the term shoot-out what leaps to mind is an image of a clas­sic depic­tion of police and crim­i­nal both armed and a shoot-out occurs , lets see who sur­vives. In fact that mis­con­cep­tion is so ingrained in our psy­che that it forms the basis for seri­ous cri­tique and leg­is­la­tion in Jamaica which are hav­ing seri­ous con­se­quences on how law enforce­ment offi­cers car­ry out their func­tions and how they are judged when they do. The clas­sic wild-west men­tal mis­con­cep­tion of what qual­i­fies as a shoot-out con­tin­ues to inform the debate sur­round­ing police use of force in the country.

Needless to say pol­i­cy papers have been writ­ten, new Agencies formed which have over­sight of police actions and assump­tions are con­tin­u­ous­ly made about police shoot-outs with­out an in-depth look at how we arrive at those shoot­ing sta­tis­tics. For one, no one both­ers to ask law enforce­ment offi­cers about their expe­ri­ences in these mat­ters. Despite sup­posed changes in the edu­ca­tion­al require­ments par­tic­u­lar­ly for the gazetted ranks they are still treat­ed as night-watch­men. Because of these inequities in the way this issue is per­ceived and the inac­cu­ra­cies in the pub­lic sphere, I have con­sis­tent­ly sought to shine a light on the facts in the inter­est of fairness.

Out of that debate was born Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), The Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), The office of Public Defender and oth­ers. Consensus being, that dras­tic police over­sight is need­ed to cur­tail alleged police excess­es. No one can rea­son­ably say that police in Jamaica has act­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly or have not engaged in actions that are gross­ly anti­thet­i­cal to what are expect­ed of police offi­cers. As such even when offi­cers are killed defend­ing the very lives of cit­i­zens the con­ver­sa­tion cen­ters on beyond the pale alleged actions of police. Of course many who speak the loud­est are moti­vat­ed not by the need to see a pro­fes­sion­al agency root­ing out crime but are influ­enced by deep seat­ed hatred for cops because of crim­i­nal con­nec­tions or worse, or may have had crim­i­nal kit and kin tak­en out by police.

Many state­ments have been made regard­ing the issue of police use of force, many are cor­rect, many are ill-informed out­ra­geous alle­ga­tions which has no basis in facts, or are oth­er­wise col­ored by nefar­i­ous inter­est. No com­ment was as out­ra­geous as the one made by Carolyn Gomes , the pedi­atric doc­tor who heads (JFJ) and Earl Witter a Lawyer, who heads the tax-pay­er fund­ed Public defend­ers office, that not enough police offi­cers are get­ting killed com­men­su­rate with the amount of civil­ians killed by police. I con­tin­ue to be out­raged by this state­ment, not because of what it sounds like they are say­ing , (“that more cops should get killed”), but by their absolute igno­rance of what con­sti­tutes a shoot-out in a police sense. I am forced to con­tin­ue a cru­sade against this ill-informed men­tal­i­ty which is result­ing in seri­ous harm and death to Jamaican cops . I have heard all kinds of expla­na­tion of what Gomes and Witter could have meant or may have meant. One per­son had this to say.

quote:

I real­ly think this “not enough police offi­cers are being killed” state­ment by the JFJ pres­i­dent was most unfor­tu­nate, if only that she should have known bet­ter that those who mis­con­strue the real gist of the state­ment had the pow­er to make their opin­ions fly.
The edi­to­r­i­al as post­ed was a per­fect exam­ple of some­one under­stand­ing, but pre­tend­ing not to understand.
The fact is, each shoot­ing by the police should rep­re­sent an instant where there was a life and death strug­gle, between law enforce­ment and vio­lent, armed crim­i­nals. This, it should be not­ed, must NOT be con­fused with law enforce­ment com­ing into CONTACT with armed crim­i­nals. All police shoot­ings are orig­i­nat­ed from con­tact with some ele­ment of the cit­i­zen­ry, whether it be vio­lent, armed crim­i­nals, domes­tic abusers, vehi­cle traf­fic vio­laters, scam/​fraudists, etc. HOW MANY OF THESE CONTACTS, even with the armed crim­i­nals, actu­al­ly saw a LIFE AND DEATH STRUGGLE which result­ed in vic­to­ry and life for the police, and defeat and death for the criminal?
How many? This is where those who sup­port the Police’s moral­ly dis­eased pol­i­cy of “if yu have a gun, yu gwine dead” take a stand against Dr. Gomez and her state­ment. The edi­to­r­i­al not­ed that around fifty police offi­cers have been killed since 2002 ( I per­son­al­ly lodge a caveat that it is more). The police have killed well over 2000 peo­ple since that time. Well, since it is around fifty police dead, and each shoot­ing should basi­cal­ly rep­re­sent a vio­lent, life and death strug­gle between police and vio­lent, armed and fir­ing crim­i­nals, how MORE police­men have not been killed? In police shoot­ings where mul­ti­ple per­sons- as much as SEVEN AND EIGHT — have been killed, NOT ONE police offi­cer has ever been killed. How come? The real irony of this is how we have made our­selves con­ve­nient­ly igno­rant of the truth. The truth is, the police use AMBUSH TACTICS in MOST con­tact cir­cum­stances to sur­prise, ren­der help­less, and EXECUTE these pur­port­ed­ly “armed and vio­lent” crim­i­nals. There are 2 prin­ci­ples we over­look, in order to fur­ther over­look the pre­dom­i­nant­ly lie we hear in police shoot­ing reports:
1) The BEST WAY to face peo­ple with firearms on a REPEATED AND REGULAR basis AND COME BACK ALIVE is to AMBUSH, RENDER HELPLESS AND EXECUTE them.
2) How do police in Jamaica typ­i­cal­ly die? They’re AMBUSHED. When you’re ambushed, you are made sig­nif­i­cant­ly help­less by virtue that time is seri­ous­ly against your effort(s) to react to the threat. Those cap­i­tal­iz­ing with­out mer­cy on your demise — DESPITE YOUR DEMISE — would have basi­cal­ly exe­cut­ed you. That’s how police and crim­i­nals die in Jamaica. They typ­i­cal­ly ambush each other.
 Sure, we know about the sup­posed supe­ri­or­i­ty that police pos­sess through train­ing, but that train­ing should have made them aware that the typ­i­cal gun­fight between armed par­ties last only 2.5 sec­onds, the aver­age dis­tance between com­bat­ants starts at around eight-to ten feet apart, and end between 15 to 25 feet apart, and ALL COMBATANTS WILL GET HIT. The police know that a gun­fight does­n’t go like in the movies, but they fig­ure that YOU don’t have to know. They fig­ure you can keep on watch­ing TV, so they’ll catch you on the 7 ‘O‑Clock News. That is WHY Dr. Gomez asked the ques­tion that if police and crim­i­nals were fight­ing each oth­er fair and square, how come more police ain’t dead? A smart Jamaican would not be look­ing JUST at the dis­par­i­ty in num­bers between police and crim­i­nal dead, per se. They would have eas­i­ly deduced that the police force is an armed, legit­i­mate group, who sim­ply ambush their tar­gets more than their tar­gets ambush them. No MATTER wh
o is the big­ger force, if you come to fair gun­fight, a LOT OF PEOPLE from BOTH SIDES are going to die. Again, Dr. Gomez knows this, but she has some hope still that not all police­men are stu­pid enough to think that ALL Jamaicans are stu­pid. The first rule of the gun­fight­er is that you must NEVER GO TO A FAIR FIGHT.

I thank my friend, I did not name you as the per­son who wrote this impas­sioned assess­ment because I did not obtain your per­mis­sion to do so. I wish to thank you for your syn­op­sis which forms the heart of my argu­ment. This assess­ment is well put togeth­er, it seem to make per­fect sense, in fact to some­one not in the know, it would be dif­fi­cult to argue with what’s in it. Like math how­ev­er, one may mul­ti­ply 10 x 10 and arrive at 100, to a casu­al observ­er there is noth­ing to argue about 10 x 10 =100. If the method­ol­o­gy used in arriv­ing at the num­bers 10 was how­ev­er incor­rect, fraud­u­lent, decep­tive or oth­er­wise unscrupu­lous then the 100 total is wrong despite it’s appearance.

Once we divorce our­selves of the ill-con­ceived notion of what char­ac­ter­izes a shoot-out, we allow our­selves to be more informed on the sub­ject which should impact our per­cep­tions. As I said before what leaps to mind when we hear shoot-outs involv­ing police has no rela­tion­ship to Hollywood’s west­ern-movie drama­ti­za­tion. Laws giv­ing police the right to use lethal force are gen­er­al­ly the same in the west­ern Industrialized world. Officers may use dead­ly force In defense of the their own lives or that of anoth­er. These laws are designed by coun­tries seri­ous about law enforce­ment and copied by coun­tries like Jamaica with an under­stand­ing of the com­plex­i­ties sur­round­ing the need for offi­cer safety.

Those com­plex­i­ties includes, though not con­fined to the fact that an offi­cer may use lethal force to neu­tral­ize a sub­ject whom he believes is about to cause him seri­ous harm or worse. Even though in the end the sub­ject was unarmed. What mat­ters is the fear in the offi­cer’s mind at the time he used said force. Now that use of force can­not be just that the offi­cer is fear­ful, the fear must be imme­di­ate and be caused by some­thing , ie a sub­ject pulling some­thing from his waist-band when ordered to show his hand. An offi­cer has no duty to await get­ting shot, before using dead­ly force under such cir­cum­stances as is believed by many in the Jamaican community.

That right of self defense is not just extend­ed to law enforce­ment in Jamaica, every cit­i­zen may use dead­ly force to defend him/​herself in like man­ner. If some­one approach­es anoth­er mem­ber of the pub­lic even in the streets with his hand under­shirt , giv­ing the impres­sion he has a weapon, threat­ens that per­son and attempts to rob him , that per­son has the right to use lethal force to repel that assault, even though it is lat­er deter­mined that the per­son was not armed with a weapon, the belief in that per­son­’s mind that he/​she was in immi­nent dan­ger is enough.

Jamaican crim­i­nals are excep­tion­al­ly vio­lent, Police depart­ment like the (NYPD ) the (RCMP) and British law enforce­ment are painful­ly aware of this . NYPD offi­cers revised the way they treat­ed Jamaican crim­i­nals when one of their own was mur­dered while he sat in his patrol car in Queens. Over the last three decades lit­er­al­ly every front-line Jamaican cop has been shot, some on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent occa­sions. Many have been killed, Even more have sur­vived being shot-at a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of times. I am no stranger to this, I have been shot at many times , and was shot once. These instances of life and death occur­rences are not abstract num­bers on a spread sheet to be debat­ed. They are actu­al instances of seri­ous injury and death to actu­al peo­ple who went out to do the job they are asked to do. As such this issue can­not be left to lob­by groups and peo­ple with agen­das to decide.

Police depart­ments and oth­er secu­ri­ty agen­cies are faced with the unpleas­ant , un-envi­able task of hav­ing to deal with tak­ing the life of some­one they thought was armed , only to dis­cov­er the per­son was­n’t , or the per­ceived threat was not real. Yet even as they do, they have to go back to work and take the same actions the next day because they sim­ply can­not wait to find out whether the guy grop­ing in his waist-band intend to kill him. Just recent­ly Capital police in Washington DC used what they called jus­ti­fi­able lethal force to stop a woman in a speed­ing car near the White House and lat­er the Capitol build­ing. In the end it turned out the woman was not armed , and was prob­a­bly suf­fer­ing from a men­tal con­di­tion. Whether we believe the lev­el of force applied was incon­sis­tent with the threat posed by her, is imma­te­r­i­al , we sim­ply do not know what offi­cers tasked with pro­tect­ing those insti­tu­tions were think­ing at the time, tak­ing into con­sid­er­ing the world we now live in.

The night I was shot I was not part of any over­whelm­ing force lay­ing in wait to ambush any­one, as per my friend ill-informed analy­sis. I was a young offi­cer accom­pa­ny­ing a man home, he was ter­ri­fied that he was about to lose his life to a young punk who want­ed to kill him. In actu­al­i­ty we were ambushed and shot. When we read some­thing in a book or online, it does not qual­i­fy us to make qual­i­ta­tive judge­ment on an issue , it gives us a cur­so­ry idea how things pos­si­bly work not make us an author­i­ty. Even when we are trained in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline we don’t always know every­thing we need to know. Imagine when we have no for­mal train­ing, yet we seek to make alle­ga­tions and opin­ions facts. This brings us back to Carolyn Gomes and the (JFJ). How could Gomes com­pe­tent­ly argue about what con­sti­tutes jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide when she has no train­ing in polic­ing, nei­ther is she a lawyer. Does hav­ing a med­ical doc­tor­ate qual­i­fies her to speak with author­i­ty on every sub­ject? The answer is absolute­ly not , as such her state­ment was incen­di­ary and mali­cious. It is cost­ing offi­cers their lives.

Gomes:

Asking a doc­tor how to put out a fire would be ludi­crous. Asking a doc­tor how polic­ing is done and what con­sti­tutes jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide is equal­ly as ludi­crous. Here is an exam­ple.https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​y​w​p​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​144. Presidents , Prime Ministers and heads of Corporations bring in experts to advise them on what to do before they make deci­sions. Gomes should con­sid­er being more judi­cious and restrained before she opens her mouth to make unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions. So too are peo­ple who speak with­out the appro­pri­ate infor­ma­tion. However, every instance of Extra judi­cial killing by law enforce­ment must be con­demned. If we remain silent we are all at risk.

Jamaica records one of the high­est mur­der rate in the world. This tiny Island of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple kill each oth­er at such an alarm­ing rate many nations do not want Jamaicans on their shores. Even with­in the Caricom com­mu­ni­ty there is dis­crim­i­na­tion against Jamaicans seek­ing to enter oth­er Islands in search of employ­ment . Jamaicans are seen as loud abra­sive and excep­tion­al­ly vio­lent. Even as we seek to dis­pel that notion it seems we do very lit­tle to dis­prove it by our very actions.

I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly about the gaps with­in the leg­isla­tive real­i­ties and crime reduc­tion in our coun­try. Simply put our laws are archa­ic they do very lit­tle in the way of deter­rent to crime. Some intel­lec­tu­als, com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions and oth­er sec­tors of the soci­ety have argued stri­dent­ly for social inter­ven­tion as a rem­e­dy to the Island’s crime epi­dem­ic. I dis­agreed with that notion when I exit­ed the law-enforce­ment stage in 1991 as a young man, I still dis­agree today. Papering over a bad wall does not make a sound wall , it is still a bad wall. The police depart­ment is a part of the prob­lem also, just not the entire problem.

Some of my for­mer col­leagues argue that the police depart­ment has evolved, offi­cers are more focused, the upper cadre of the JCF are more edu­cat­ed and moti­vat­ed. This may all be true, and thank­ful­ly so, but a police depart­men­t’s man­date is to erad­i­cate crime, not be more won­der­ful in con­ver­sa­tions or seem­ing smarter​.It would be nice if we can have a crime free soci­ety and a smart police force. An edu­cat­ed police depart­ment and a crime rid­den soci­ety does no one any good.

As a small busi­ness own­er I am patent­ly aware that no com­pa­ny may point to its effec­tive­ness if it is los­ing mon­ey. So too, the Constabulary as a unit, may not point to inter­nal changes claim­ing suc­cess, if it fails at it’s core man­date of reduc­ing and con­trol­ling crime. An edu­cat­ed Police force is no use to the coun­try if it fails to put that edu­ca­tion to use, lob­by­ing the leg­is­la­ture for the tools it needs to deliv­er the ser­vices it promis­es. Education in that con­text then, can­not be an end but must be the means to an end. One of the prob­lem with the way crime is approached in Jamaica is, a dis­con­nect in under­stand­ing that crimes com­mit­ted as a con­se­quence of social and eco­nom­ic ills can­not be approached the same way orga­nized crime is han­dled, or vice ver­sa. Commissioner Owen Ellington allud­ed to this recently.

“We have seen where very recent­ly, very, very high-pro­file mul­ti­ple-mur­der, gun­run­ning, drug-traf­fick­ing indi­vid­u­als have estab­lished them­selves in Jamaica. They have opened offices, they have relo­cat­ed fam­i­lies here, they have trans­ferred huge amounts of finan­cial resources into Jamaica because they are see­ing Jamaica as a soft spot that can be exploit­ed,” the police com­mis­sion­er told a meet­ing of the Internal and External Affairs Committee at Gordon House in down­town Kingston Tuesday.http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​E​l​l​i​n​g​ton – Int-l-criminals-view-Jamaica-as-a-safe-haven_15314056

Some of the mis­in­formed who des­ig­nat­ed hard­ened crim­i­nals “cor­ner crews“have vest­ed inter­est in trib­al­ism, no trib­al­ism no job, no legit­i­ma­cy for them. Whether the Commissioner knew this all along or this is a moment of awak­en­ing for him (a come to jesus moment) is refresh­ing. Former street cops like myself and many oth­ers under­stood this con­cept decades ago. There is one solu­tion for seri­ous offend­ers and that is a very heavy-hand­ed approach. The Commissioner’s words will have fall­en on deaf ears as the leg­is­la­tors in Jamaica are in many cas­es defense coun­sel to the crim­i­nals and in some cas­es they are them­selves inte­gral parts of crim­i­nal gangs. Wherever there is low crime , leg­is­la­tors have enact­ed tough no-non­sense leg­is­la­tion on behalf of their con­stituents. This requires will and char­ac­ter, two things no one would accuse Jamaica’s politi­cians of possessing.

Every day Jamaica slips deep­er into the abyss of crim­i­nal­i­ty, which will ulti­mate­ly earn it failed state des­ig­na­tion. Never mind that though, there is an ever abun­dant litany of opin­ions by Jamaicans on what needs to be done in terms of mak­ing the job of law enforce­ment more dif­fi­cult. Social-Media is rife with instances of know noth­ing grand-stand­ing Jamaicans offer­ing opin­ions as facts, even when they have no idea about what they speak. The News papers are no bet­ter. The once Prestigious Gleaner is now a shell of it’s for­mer glo­ry, reduced to opin­ions and sen­sa­tion­al­ist garbage when it isn’t engaged in par­rot­ing the talk­ing points of the PNP Administration.

It was no sur­prise that it pub­lished this out­rage , penned by one of its jour­nal­ist George S Davis.http://​mobile​.jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​1​0​0​9​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​2​.​php. In his arti­cle Davis ref­er­eed to the Police Federation Chairman Raymond Wilson as quote: ” a rab­ble-rouser” close quote. By infer­ence that makes the Police “rab­ble”. dar­ing to stand for their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to due process and fair play under the law has earned them that dubi­ous title from the Gleaner. In no oth­er Democracy would this be allowed . This shows that Jamaica is not ready for prime time and will invari­ably sink deep­er into the abyss of crime and pover­ty before peo­ple wake up to the real­i­ties sur­round­ing their existence.

I will not give this George Davis unde­served atten­tion, it would be doing a dis-ser­vice to Police Officers to ele­vate the com­ments of this moron. suf­fi­cient to say this is fur­ther evi­dence of the den­i­gra­tion of the Gleaner from what was once the Prestigious Publication in the Caribbean to now an incon­se­quen­tial dish-rag wor­thy of the likes of George Davis.

I once again call on all Rank and File Police offi­cers to stand down and allow the gov­ern­ment to get its Legislative house in order. The Indecom Act is a trav­es­ty which needs revis­it­ing. Batt’s rul­ing does no harm to Police. The Judge’s Ruling says Police can­not “Arbitrarily” stop and search motorists vehi­cles. That is noth­ing new. Officers nev­er had that right and should­n’t. “Probable-cause” is the oper­a­tive term in stop­ping and effect­ing a search. The Government owes Police Officers more than talk . Police offi­cers must not be asked to do their jobs with their hands tied behind their backs. Jamaica’s politi­cians are not very bright, but sure­ly they can copy a piece of leg­is­la­tion from Barbados or Trinidad which offers over­sight of police while empow­er­ing cops to do what is asked of them.

Working in an inner-city can cause one to become immune to what hap­pens . Sirens, screech­ing tires, the excite­ment of rou­tine events. Yet some­times it comes home in real terms just how some peo­ple dai­ly live on the edge. I inter­act with many inner-city youths dai­ly. I enjoy talk­ing to them, I some­times give advice, they always seem recep­tive to what I have to say. In fact I am amazed at the calm­ness and recep­tive nature of these young men. I have nev­er had an uncom­fort­able expe­ri­ence relat­ing life expe­ri­ences to them. Many of them have nev­er had a father/​or father fig­ure in their lives. One young man con­fid­ed in me that no one ever told him they loved him in his entire life.

Walk-way over the Hudson River.

Rashan is one of these young men I met while he was in High School, I was sur­prised 4 years ago when he stopped by to see me, he was push­ing a stroller. He smil­ing said “hey Mike I just want­ed to show you my lit­tle man”. I thought he was tak­ing his lit­tle broth­er for a walk. I asked him if that was his baby broth­er? He laughed at me as he informed me the baby was his son! I was a lit­tle shocked. He was still a stu­dent at the Poughkeepsie High School, he need­ed a father I thought. He was cer­tain­ly not equipped to be a father. I kept those sen­ti­ments to myself. At the same time I was kin­da proud of him . Watching him lov­ing­ly tend­ing to the lit­tle bun­dle of joy he calls his lit­tle man in the stroller erased all the appre­hen­sion I felt about him being a father at such a young age. There is some­thing mature in a man who takes care of his kids, age is imma­te­r­i­al I con­vinced myself at that moment.

My city ‚pop­u­la­tion 32’790 is no stranger to homi­cide. The prob­lem of black men killing black men is as seri­ous as it is any­where else in America. The issues of pover­ty, bro­ken homes, drugs, and oth­er social ills per­pet­u­ates that cycle of hos­til­i­ty and vio­lence in Poughkeepsie as it does in oth­er metrop­o­lis­es. I had not seen Rashan for awhile until today Saturday September 14^th, he stopped by to see me. He seemed more seri­ous , a lit­tle angry. I asked him was he ok? He told me “Mike you did not see me because I was shot three times, and all I was doing was walk­ing a girl to her house.”

I real­ized just how close this young man had come to dying. I also remind­ed myself that the rea­son he was shot was prob­a­bly a lit­tle more com­plex than the pet­ty rea­son he gave. He also told me who shot him. They lived side by side, such is the val­ue of life in the inner cities. Silly argu­ments and beefs are set­tled with Bullets. One young man said today , it’s like some­one dumped a whole load of guns in Poughkeepsie, every kid has one. Just a few nights ago the Cops arrest­ed a 16 year old, they saw some­thing in one of the pock­ets of his bag­gy pants. They asked him what was in his pock­et, he told them it was his cell phone , it was called a 45 spe­cial, (smart ass).One cop was about to let him go , the oth­er was not so gullible , he tack­led him, took him to the ground, lo and behold what he had in his pock­et was a weapon loaded with hol­low point bullets.

• Every year in the U.S., an aver­age of more than 100,000 peo­ple are shot, accord­ing to The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence.
• Every day in the U.S., an aver­age of 289 peo­ple are shot. Eighty-six of them die: 30 are mur­dered, 53 kill them­selves, two die acci­den­tal­ly, and one is shot in a police inter­ven­tion, the Brady Campaign reports.
• Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 335,609 peo­ple died from guns — more than the pop­u­la­tion of St. Louis, Mo. (318,069), Pittsburgh (307,484), Cincinnati, Ohio (296,223), Newark, N.J. (277,540), and Orlando, Fla. (243,195) (sources: CDF, U.S. Census; CDC)
• One per­son is killed by a firearm every 17 min­utes, 87 peo­ple are killed dur­ing an aver­age day, and 609 are killed every week. (source: CDC).
• This is an epi­dem­ic of mon­u­men­tal pro­por­tions. I have a bul­let in me, a vic­tim of ran­dom vio­lence , just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This prof­it ori­ent­ed pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns has con­tin­ued unabat­ed, even as America’s schools , homes, parks, and streets have become killing fields and shoot­ing galleries.
• The Congress is too cow­ard­ly to act, despite the blood-let­ting. The pow­er of mon­ey is too strong a force to resist. They hide behind the sec­ond Amendment to the Constitution, deem­ing it sacro­sanct as they lie to them­selves that guns don’t kill, peo­ple do.
• Where will this all end.

The Cuban Light Bulb case is back before the Courts in Jamaica. This is a sim­ple case which involves defen­dants Kern Spencer a for­mer Junior Minister of the PNP Administration and his per­son­al assis­tant Colleen Wright. Spencer and Wright are on tri­al for illic­it enrich­ment and mon­ey laun­der­ing, aris­ing from the imple­men­ta­tion of the Cuban light bulb pro­gram. For those not famil­iar with this case, it is a sim­ple case alleg­ing that Kern Spencer a Minister of Government and his assis­tant ‚tasked with super­vis­ing the hand­out of light-bulbs to Jamaican house­holds, ille­gal­ly enriched them­selves with pro­ceeds of said light-bulbs. The ener­gy con­serv­ing bulbs were a gift to the Jamaican peo­ple from the Cuban Government.

Wright and Spencer

The case has seen sev­er­al twists and turns, with one par­tic­u­lar glar­ing first. The tri­al Magistrate Judith Pusey adopt­ing a pos­ture in the tri­al almost reserved for defense lawyers. Pusey has removed her­self as an impar­tial arbiter of facts in this non-jury tri­al, demand­ing that the Director Of Public Prosecution Paula Llewellyn, the Prosecutor tes­ti­fy in the case. Llewellyn cor­rect­ly refused. Pusey chal­lenged the Prosecutor’s right to use one accused as a pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness against Spencer and Wright, a right the Prosecutor has in law.

Defense Lawyer Kd Knight, l‑r , Kern Spencer cen­ter, and Colleen Wright

The Magistrate then ruled that the Prosecutor could not be in the court room when it’s own wit­ness Rodney Chin was giv­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny. Paula Llewellyn went to the High Court. The Supreme Court held that the Senior RM had no author­i­ty to instruct that Llewellyn leave the court­room when chief pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness Rodney Chin was tes­ti­fy­ing. Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey dis­sat­is­fied with the rul­ing of the Supreme Court, went to the Court of Appeals to have the order rescind­ed. In a unan­i­mous deci­sion, the Court of Appeal upheld the Supreme Court’s rul­ing and threw out Pusey’s application.
The appeals court also said the Cuban light-bulb tri­al, which has been stalled, should now go ahead.

The Lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the accused is none oth­er than KD Knight a sit­ting Senator of the said PNP Administration of Portia Simpson Miller. I know many of you are con­fused by now at what you have just read. Do not be con­fused this is busi­ness as usu­al in the Island of Jamaica.

The tri­al has restart­ed and a bank­ing wit­ness, Sasha Neil-Elliott tes­ti­fied that the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar wire trans­fer was done five days after Spencer and his co-accused, Colleen Wright, used cash total­ing $3.25 mil­lion to open a fixed deposit account at the finan­cial insti­tu­tion on July 25, 2007. Elliott, who was led through her evi­dence by lead pros­e­cu­tor Paula Llewellyn, gave evi­dence that on July 30, Spencer and Wright returned to the finan­cial insti­tu­tion with cash amount­ing to $3 mil­lion and opened a sec­ond fixed deposit account. She said the for­mer junior ener­gy min­is­ter informed her that the pur­pose of the accounts was to secure a loan. The JNBS cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive tes­ti­fied that while she was com­plet­ing the arrange­ments to open the sec­ond fixed deposit account, Spencer indi­cat­ed that he want­ed to take out two loans for $2.25 mil­lion each. According to Elliott’s tes­ti­mo­ny, the mon­ey was trans­ferred to a Florida bank account for Land Rover North Dade, locat­ed in Miami Lakes, Florida.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​9​1​2​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​3​.​h​tml.

I have been fol­low­ing this case from the very begin­ning. Have writ­ten exten­sive­ly in these blogs about this case. It is a trav­es­ty and an affront to the intel­li­gence of all Jamaicans that a Judge could be this polit­i­cal and sub­se­quent­ly moral­ly unfit for the office she holds. Every day we hear of Police offi­cers betray­ing their oath, where is the out­rage for this politi­cian and this Magistrate? Where is the dis­gust for this immoral Administration ? How can any­one get on social media and post fluff arti­cles about sup­posed pos­i­tives in the coun­try when the heart of the coun­try is rot­ting and decay­ing further?