Justice David Batts Jamaican Supreme court judge has ruled that the police have no pow­er, under the Road Traffic Act, to arbi­trar­i­ly stop and search motor vehi­cles, open­ing the door for a flood of lawsuits.

David Batts:

This was report­ed on in one of the coun­try’s news paper, the Jamaica Daily Gleaner. The sto­ry prompt­ed wide inter­est from the online com­mu­ni­ty this blog­ger includ­ed. The case which prompt­ed the rul­ing involved com­plainant Gary Hemans, a taxi dri­ver who was rep­re­sent­ed by attor­ney-at-law Sean Kinghorn, had sued the attor­ney gen­er­al to recov­er dam­ages aris­ing from his ordeal. Hemans tes­ti­fied that he and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers were com­ing from the Hellshire Beach in St Catherine on May 16, 2007, when they were stopped at the Hellshire round­about by three police offi­cers. He said when he inquired why they were so aggres­sive, he was beat­en and tak­en to the Portmore Police Station, where he was locked up until the next day. Hemans said that at the sta­tion, he was forced to strip and squat in a cor­ner, and he felt humil­i­at­ed and embar­rassed. He said he was charged with assault­ing the police, using abu­sive lan­guage, and using inde­cent lan­guage. The taxi oper­a­tor attend­ed court sev­er­al times, but the case was dis­missed for want of pros­e­cu­tion because the police did not attend. Batts award­ed Hemans aggra­vat­ed dam­ages of $1.2 mil­lion for being forced to strip and stoop at the sta­tion, and due to the fact that the police offi­cers did not attend court. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​6​3​0​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​1​.​h​tml

The judge went into a pro­tract­ed expla­na­tion of what he thought the law meant dur­ing the rul­ing which may be seen at the link above, we will get back to the rul­ing. Sometime ago in a let­ter pub­lished in the same medi­um I called on the Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington to take a stronger stance against offi­cers who arrest peo­ple , lock them up and do noth­ing more, it ends there. This prob­lem is an age-old one where cops make an arrest, writes up a complaint(information) sub­mits it to the court and does noth­ing else.

In my appeal to the com­mis­sion­er I indi­cat­ed to him that it falls on the mid­dle man­agers to make sure that these sim­ple yet crit­i­cal issues are addressed.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​0​1​1​0​5​/​l​e​t​t​e​r​s​/​l​e​t​t​e​r​s​1​.​h​tml

Quote: I ask the com­mis­sion­er of police to seri­ous­ly look at police­men who arrest peo­ple and do not com­plete the process of case prepa­ra­tion that is nec­es­sary to gain a con­vic­tion. I am all too famil­iar with lazy cops who bring the JCF into ridicule and dis­re­pute. End quote: This appeal was made as far back as November of 2010, my sug­ges­tion was not act­ed upon.

The result is 1) a cash award against the impov­er­ished state, 2) the poten­tial flood-gate of sim­i­lar law-suits to come, and 3) prob­a­bly most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, a mud­dy­ing of the rules gov­ern­ing Police abil­i­ty to use traf­fic stops to cut seri­ous crimes.

On read­ing the Judge’s rul­ing I was incensed, Jamaican judges are some of the most lib­er­al activist judges anywhere,they have demon­strat­ed by words and deeds that their views about the impact of crime on the fab­ric of soci­ety and social order are some­where in the 1950’s.

We have con­sis­tent­ly sought to bring atten­tion to this issue, we believe that despite strong puni­tive reme­dies in the law for seri­ous offences, in many cas­es Jamaican judges cir­cum­vent or sup­plant their own emo­tions and polit­i­cal feel­ings into the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice, result­ing in the jus­tice sys­tem becom­ing a laugh­ing stock. This has metas­ta­sized in a whole slew of oth­er prob­lems for the country .

It may be not­ed that despite the pro­lif­er­a­tion of social-media which makes access to infor­ma­tion much more read­i­ly avail­able, like a large cross sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion , Judges of the Island nation seem obliv­i­ous to what is real­ly hap­pen­ing out­side Jamaica. The tone and text or even the ver­biage they use does not always reflect the real­i­ties of the 21 st century.

In far too many instances their words and actions does not reflect their posi­tions as inde­pen­dent tri­ers of facts,but more so, as lib­er­al activists of the University of the West Indies. Many of the Island judges haven’t rec­on­ciled that they work for the people.

Having said that, I went back and looked at the rul­ing the fol­low­ing day, a sin­gle word jumped out at me. I sought to put my anger under con­trol as I read the rul­ing, despite get­ting the feel­ing that the rul­ing was writ­ten by the defense team of the plain­tiff, I was able to rec­on­cile in my mind that the learned judge did not break any new ground regard­ing the way police offi­cers do their job.

All because of one word, (arbi­trar­i­ly) in the first para­graph of the report that word actu­al­ly calmed my anger. I have no fur­ther quar­rel with the judge, and I will not ele­vate his rul­ing any fur­ther, suf­fice to say, he is cor­rect. This rul­ing puts the ball square­ly back onto the court of the police department.

The police does not and should not have the right to arbi­trar­i­ly pull peo­ple and search their vehi­cles with­out prob­a­ble cause. Probable cause in law is, sim­ply hav­ing a good law­ful rea­son for their actions. Police depart­ment all over the civ­i­lized world uses the road traf­fic law to thwart crim­i­nals who would use major thor­ough­fares to fur­ther their crim­i­nal undertakings.

Cops in Jamaica are obvi­ous­ly too stu­pid, or too lazy to intel­li­gent­ly lay out a cred­i­ble case for sim­ple traf­fic stops. I am total­ly aware that Jamaican law favors crim­i­nals, it is more prof­itable to break some than to obey them, most peo­ple the world over, rec­og­nizes this by now. However how dumb and unimag­i­na­tive are the cops in this par­tic­u­lar case?

Literally every motor vehi­cle ply­ing Jamaica’s thor­ough­fares may rea­son­ably and law­ful­ly be pulled over from one breech or anoth­er. Smart cop needs only be patient, fol­low and observe. In oth­er cas­es the vehi­cles have imper­fec­tions which makes pulling them over total­ly justified.

Didn’t many peo­ple argue that they would get offi­cers with degrees to do the job? How is it then that the force has gone from 70% clear-up of seri­ous crimes just over two decades ago to 7% today? Not just that, even then, the cas­es which result in a con­vic­tion are some­times over­turned on appeals. Are we to accept that with all the peo­ple with degrees join­ing the depart­ment from what Wilmott (Mutty )Perkins termed “the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to” the force is get­ting worse?

Commissioner Ellington I know you are con­strained by an intran­si­gent polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. The estab­lish­ment com­pris­es peo­ple from both polit­i­cal par­ties, many of whom are crim­i­nals. I am empa­thet­ic toward you because of the many crim­i­nals which are scat­tered through­out your own depart­ment. Of the many chal­lenges you face includ­ing the many and var­ied indi­vid­u­als, groups and orga­ni­za­tions ded­i­cat­ed toward aid­ing and com­fort­ing crim­i­nals, we under­stand and sup­port you.

But on this issue you get no sup­port from me. That a case would turn out this way, that a judge could grand­stand at the expense of an entire law enforce­ment agency because of the actions of a few tardy cops is unfor­giv­able. In that open let­ter I wrote to you I spoke about mem­bers bring­ing the Agency into disrepute,this affects how stops are con­duct­ed . Commissioner Ellington this is disrepute.

There is a sig­nif­i­cant yet unsus­tain­able lev­el of incom­pe­tence and utter dis­re­gard to sim­ple pro­to­col in your depart­ment. That mis­ter Commissioner is on you, when a team does bad­ly they don’t fire the team mis­ter Commissioner,they fire the coach.

Peter Bunting National Security Minister tabled the long-await­ed Anti-Gang Legislation in Parliament on behalf of the Portia Simpson Miller régime. This piece of leg­is­la­tion came after the oppo­si­tion JLP blast­ed the Miller Administration for not tabling the leg­is­la­tion despite the anti-gang leg­is­la­tion was ready to be tabled at the time when the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) lost pow­er in December, 2011.http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​A​n​t​i​-​g​a​n​g​-​l​e​g​i​s​l​a​t​i​o​n​-​t​a​b​l​e​d​#​i​x​z​z​2​X​K​d​P​D​U3j

We will with­hold judge­ment until we see whats in the leg­is­la­tion. At issue is whether the Jamaican Government final­ly table a piece of leg­is­la­tion which stands con­sti­tu­tion­al muster on the one hand, while deal­ing a death-blow to orga­nized crime in the small Island nation.

There are far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions for Jamaica, the issue of crime and vio­lence is an exis­ten­tial strug­gle for the small Independent nation. The details of this leg­is­la­tion will indi­cate to Jamaicans , at home abroad and indeed the rest of the world, whether the admin­is­tra­tion of Portia Simpson Miller, has final­ly got­ten the seri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion the coun­try is in.

I have my own ideas on that,I’ll be restrained I will await the details. This leg­is­la­tion will sig­nal to the world, whether Simpson Miller can divorce her­self, her régime, and our Country, from the destruc­tive ten­ta­cles of gar­ri­son pol­i­tics and the cor­ro­sive impact it has had on the lives of all Jamaicans.

Saying you care, hug­ging babies, cry­ing with the poor is not enough, here is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Miller through this leg­is­la­tion to say to inter­est­ed par­ties that she has matured, and is will­ing and indeed capa­ble, of mov­ing our coun­try into the 21^st cen­tu­ry, by tak­ing a seri­ous stance against gangs , crime, and crim­i­nals and those who would oper­ate out­side the law with impunity.

This blog­ger will not hold his breath, I do not believe she is capa­ble, I stand to be corrected.

President Barack Hussein Obama

November 2008 saw this man, Barack Hussein Obama ele­vat­ed to the high­est polit­i­cal office in America, it appeared and for all intents and pur­pos­es should be a sweet and fit­ting cli­max after almost 4 hun­dred years of Slavery, Emancipation, Chain-Gangs,Jim Crow, Separate but Equal, the klu-klux-klan ‚Segregated drink­ing foun­tains, poll tax­es water-hoses, dogs, and bil­ly clubs to that moment. Many black peo­ple did not believe they would live to see a black President in their life-time, oth­ers felt it would nev­er hap­pen at all. I watched both elec­tion vic­to­ries with a bit­ter sweet taste in my mouth. Sweet in hon­or of his accom­plish­ments, bit­ter because of the pain which has been vis­it­ed on black peo­ple in this land called America, even as black peo­ple were here before that crim­i­nal Christopher Columbus brought his brand of dis­cov­ery to these shores.

The entire spec­ta­cle of slav­ery and the road Blacks were forced to trod, rests on the igno­rance of one race. A race which fun­da­men­tal­ly believed that it had a right to dom­i­nate anoth­er. As if the Genocide vis­it­ed on African peo­ple in this coun­try was not enough, I was vis­cer­al­ly aware that Obama’s Victories would mean defeat for mil­lions. Anyone who ever met a bul­ly under­stands the impor­tance of not anger­ing him/​her fur­ther, out of fear he/​she will vis­it even more pain on you. Such is the sit­u­a­tion in America, with the major­i­ty white pop­u­la­tion and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the con­gress and the Supreme Court.

THE BROWNING OF AMERICA.

Did any­one believe that white America was going to roll over and just let the brown peo­ple come in here and take over their coun­try? Ok well it may already be a lit­tle late , minori­ties already make up the major­i­ty. The Democratic Party has lit­er­al­ly snagged all the lit­tle minor­i­ty groups, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews, Gays, Lesbians, Women,Native Americans. So who is left out of this group? Oh yeah, I for­got.…. white men !! White men the Republican par­ty has posi­tioned itself not just as an impen­e­tra­ble wall of oppo­si­tion of all things Obama, it has estab­lished itself as the par­ty of intol­er­ance racial hatred and vot­er sup­pres­sion. It is well estab­lished that they know they can­not win nation­al elec­tions by mere­ly win­ning the white male vote. Yet what is their strat­e­gy? Voter sup­pres­sion, vot­er intim­i­da­tion, mass-depor­ta­tion, fence build­ing, yes fence build­ing, laugh­able, even as they cham­pi­on Ronald Reagan’s 1980’s speech to Mikhail Gorbachev ” mis­ter Gorbachev tear down this wall” in ref­er­ence to the Berlin wall which sep­a­rat­ed east and west Germany.

On August 6, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, call­ing the day ‘‘a tri­umph for free­dom as huge as any vic­to­ry that has ever been won on any bat­tlefield’’ (Johnson, ‘‘Remarks in the Capitol Rotunda’’). The law came sev­en months after Martin Luther King launched a Southern Christian Leadership Conference.The Voting Rights Act of 1965 bans dis­crim­i­na­tion in the vot­ing prac­tice.

Little did Lyndon Johnson know when he signed the land-mark leg­is­la­tion which gave all Americans a chance to par­tic­i­pate in the deci­sions of their own lives , that the Act would still be under attack in 2013, 48 years lat­er. Can we erad­i­cate all prob­lems on this plan­et? Maybe not. Are some of the prob­lems which bedev­il us avoidable?

You bet.

I just had this nov­el idea. What if there were no white peo­ple who thought that the way for them to suc­ceed is at the cost of oth­ers? What if they weren’t racists ? What if so many Caucasians did not believe that they are genet­i­cal­ly supe­ri­or to oth­er races?

At issue here is the sig­nif­i­cant impact one igno­rant notion has had on the his­to­ry of civilization.

In State leg­is­la­tures all over America Republican majori­ties have used 1950’s type tac­tics to pre­vent blacks and oth­ers they fig­ured would vote Democratic from vot­ing, this is not hearsay , they acknowl­edged that they were doing it to ensure a vic­to­ry by Mitt Romney. In the case of Shelby County Alabama against Holder the American Attorney General, the much esteemed Supreme Court stunned the world with a shame­ful deci­sion, effec­tive­ly over­turn­ing the land-mark leg­is­la­tion signed 48 years ago. In a an impas­sioned dis­sent Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote that gut­ting the Civil Rights Act was tan­ta­mount to throw­ing out your umbrel­la in a rain­storm because you weren’t get­ting wet.

The deci­sion of the Court to gut sec­tion 5 of the Voting Right’s Act was a shock­ing dis­play of judi­cial activism which lit­er­al­ly threw out decades of set­tled law. It was a cal­lous and craven dis­play by the court in demon­strat­ing to the aver­age per­son that they do not count.

Those who thought the Citizens United Decision by this Court was as bad as this Roberts Court could get need to thing again. This is a rad­i­cal right wing court whose deci­sions will have earth shat­ter­ing impli­ca­tions for gen­er­a­tions to come.

It just demon­strat­ed that what 315 mil­lion peo­ple and their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the house and sen­ate decid­ed, does not mat­ter, every­one is sub­ject to their dic­tates. So much for Democracy.

Every time you hear some­one from the Republican Party talk­ing about democ­ra­cy and the rule of law shout shame, they are hyp­ocrites. Where is the moral high ground America once claimed it had, even as it has been a flawed work in progress? Will American Political lead­ers con­tin­ue to lec­ture coun­tries like China and Russia about human rights when right here in America the high­est court and leg­is­la­tures all across the coun­try has demon­stra­bly decid­ed that the right to vote is not sacred?

Some mem­bers of the hier­ar­chy of the Jamaica Constabulary force has inti­mat­ed that they are wor­ried about some recent trends. This relates to the num­ber of Ballistic Vests (bul­let proof vests) binoc­u­lars and oth­er para­pher­na­lia they recov­ered over a peri­od of sev­er­al months.

The National Intelligence Bureau revealed that police were shot at on 331 occa­sions by gun­men between January 1 and June 1 this year — an aver­age of 66 attacks per month.http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​S​e​i​z​u​r​e​-​o​f​-​m​o​r​e​-​b​u​l​l​e​t​p​r​o​o​f​-​v​e​s​t​s​-​w​o​r​r​i​e​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​_​1​4​5​1​8​867

Five police per­son­nel were report­ed­ly killed and close to 40 shot and injured dur­ing these dead­ly attacks, the police said. In a series of raids across the island over sev­er­al months, police have recov­ered over 20 bul­let­proof vests from mem­bers of the crim­i­nal underworld.

Public Defender Earl Witter:

At the rate of 66 encoun­ters per month it trans­lates to over two attempts (2) per day, these are indeed fright­en­ing sta­tis­tics in a coun­try as small as Jamaica. They are par­tic­u­lar­ly galling when they are para­dox­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered with state­ments from Jamaicans for jus­tice head Carolyn Gomes , and pub­lic defend­er Earl Witter’s state­ments sug­gest­ing that cas­es of crim­i­nals killed by cops are not jus­ti­fied because not enough cops are get­ting killed.

Jamaicans For Justice head Carolyn Gomes:

For the record and for the ben­e­fit of my read­ers whom are not Jamaicans, The Public Defender in Jamaica is paid from tax­pay­ers funds, the office is an arm of the Jamaican Government, and answer­able to the Portia Simpson Miller Administration.

But even as the police high com­mand engage in their woe-is-me hand-wring­ing, I sug­gest they suck it up and put their big-boy pants on. In free soci­eties we can­not be in the busi­ness of stop­ping busi­ness from sell­ing what they chose to as long as the prod­uct is legal.

If peo­ple are deter­mined to kill they will use rocks to do so. Even as the gun debate rages in America, Democratic President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are hav­ing a dif­fi­cult climb up the moun­tain of the sec­ond Amendment to the Constitution which guar­an­tees Americans the right to bear arms.

The United States of America will not law­ful­ly be able to take peo­ple’s guns, so con­gress will have to find oth­er ways to keep guns out of the hands of crim­i­nals. The only prob­lem with that is, a squeaky-clean per­son may pur­chase a gun then com­mits an ille­gal act. Now he/​she is a crim­i­nal, what do you do about that?

The fact is we will nev­er be able to get rid of crime, peo­ple com­mit crimes, what will have to be done is to focus on the per­pe­tra­tors of crime and less on the method­ol­o­gy. A killer may use a piece of cord to kill if he is so inclined.

Jamaican cops will have to find ways to com­bat the scourge of crim­i­nal­i­ty in the face of an intran­si­gent and com­plic­it government.

Even as I sup­port the police’s call for stiffer penal­ties and new leg­is­la­tion for pos­ses­sion of cer­tain items, the com­mis­sion­er of Police Owen Ellington could indi­cate that he at least under­stand the seri­ous­ness of this issue and walk back mak­ing pub­lic the Police week­ly Force Orders to the Public.

As I have said repeat­ed­ly in these posts, the pub­lic has no expec­ta­tion of right of access to this doc­u­ment, which is an inter­nal depart­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tion medi­um. This would be a good first step in the right direc­tion, as I have said time and again crim­i­nals have no right to know where police offi­cers are sta­tioned , where they will be moved to , sta­tion strength, or any oth­er crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion which affects the life of officers.

The com­mis­sion­er of Police Owen Ellington must forth­with cease and desist from putting the lives of the men and women under his com­mand at risk to suit and cur­ry favor with Jamaica’s élite and ene­mies of the state, some of whom are locat­ed at the Fagan Avenue offices of Jamaicans for Justice.

The police can­not do any­thing about the elect­ed Government of Portia Simpson Miller, it can­not make her com­pe­tent, it can­not make the gov­ern­ment more focused on erad­i­cat­ing crime, no more than it could make Bruce Golding see the fol­ly of his ways. What the police can do is be more effec­tive, more assertive, more intel­li­gent, more focused. Jamaica is far too small for the hand wring­ing and the com­plain­ing, Police must be police and dic­tate to crim­i­nals that they will not be allowed to have their way, even if the crim­i­nal lives at Vale Royal.

After Commissioner Ellington’s well rea­soned arti­cle titled (Dealing effec­tive­ly with guns and drugs for improved safe­ty) recent­ly, I wrote a com­pli­men­ta­ry Article in sup­port of the com­mis­sion­er’s stance.

I was in total agree­ment with the com­mis­sion­er, my only prob­lem was, what took him so long? However, even as I com­pli­ment­ed the coun­try’s police chief for what I thought was a seri­ous pol­i­cy doc­u­ment, I was vis­cer­al­ly cog­nizant that the vil­lage lawyers some trained , some not, would be out with their sharp­ened dag­gers ready to lam­poon him into oblivion.

As a result the penul­ti­mate Article I wrote asked the ques­tion “Is this Ellington’s farewell”?

The coun­try did not have to wait long , even as some promi­nent peo­ple have come out in sup­port of the Commissioner’s state­ments, prob­a­bly for their own self­ish rea­sons ‚the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing blood-hounds, are out yap­ping with their now pre­dictable lib­er­al sup­port for criminals.

Peter Champagnie.

As Jamaicans we must shout down peo­ple like these. Generally I am pre­dis­posed to lis­ten­ing to even the most intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged opin­ion, these frauds must be shout­ed down. Those of us who want to see Jamaica sur­vive must shout down and expose these fraud­u­lent [Benedict Arnold] for what they are.

Peter Champagnie is a guest Columnist at the Gleaner and a lawyer. In the Gleaner pub­li­ca­tion June 10^th 2013 Champagnie wrote (Judges Can’t Bail Out Cops) ..http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​6​1​0​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​2​.​h​tml

I have pro­vid­ed a link for your con­ve­nience, in his dia­tribe Champagnie showed with­out equiv­o­ca­tion that he is square­ly on the side of the crim­i­nals run­ning amok in Jamaica.

Lawyers are offi­cers of the court, as such their duty should be to the process, yet this upstart, obvi­ous­ly feel­ing total­ly insu­lat­ed from the per­ils of crime, launched into a dia­tribe against the police.

Let’s not for­get that these vul­tures feed on the car­cass­es of crim­i­nal­i­ty, no crime no food for them . It’s time we rec­og­nize them for what they are, total oppor­tunist, they ben­e­fit from the actions of these the most vile despi­ca­ble crea­tures on earth. What exact­ly does that make these lawyers?You decide!

The pre­sump­tion of inno­cence is not a mere term of art con­fined to prac­ti­tion­ers of crim­i­nal law but, rather, rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple upon which any civ­i­lized soci­ety exists. It is enshrined in our Constitution. Perhaps Mr Nelson needs to be remind­ed that the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of each and every cit­i­zen must be observed and is not lim­it­ed or ceas­es to exist in one geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion or one’s sta­tion in life.[Peter Champagnie]

I have very lit­tle patience and use for these present day uncle tom n*&^%$* .

” Oh I have some edu­ca­tion I’m going to impress upon the world how smart I am by putting togeth­er a bou­quet of impor­tant sound­ing phras­es , they will believe it makes sense”.

For the record, let me inform Champagnie of some­thing he prob­a­bly did not learn in law school. The ques­tion of bail can­not sole­ly be premised on the fact that it was not designed to be puni­tive. Wrapping sup­port for crim­i­nals in flow­ery words tied with the beau­ti­ful bow called Constitution ‚makes it noth­ing more than shit in a pret­ty package.

Jamaica is a par­tic­u­lar­ly vio­lent coun­try, the Bail Act makes pro­vi­sions to keep vio­lent crim­i­nals in Jail after they have been arrest­ed for cer­tain types of crimes, the lev­el of deprav­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with said crimes must also be con­sid­ered. This is not a new phe­nom­e­na, it is inter­na­tion­al pro­to­col, which Champagnie would do well avail­ing him­self to.

Criminals may be denied bail because they may flee.

Criminals may be denied bail because they may tam­per with the inves­ti­ga­tions ie: threat­en­ing and or killing witnesses.

Criminals may be denied bail because of the lik­le-hood they may re-offend.

Most of Jamaican crim­i­nals are ser­i­al mur­der­ers, not because of police as this light­weight would have you believe, they kill because Jamaican judges release them over and over and over so they and kill and kill and kill until they are killed eventually.

I sug­gest to the good Peter Champagnie that the next time he wants to write, choose a top­ic with which he may be viewed with more cred­i­bil­i­ty. On this top­ic he has made a total ass of himself.

Is this Owen Ellington’s farewell?

Former Commissioner of Police Hardley Lewin came out strong against crime and cor­rup­tion. He labeled Tivoli Gardens the moth­er of all Garrisons then he resigned.

Hardley Lewin.

Present police com­mis­sion­er Owen Ellington came out strong against what he saw as the real issues which has sti­fled growth and pre­vent­ed the Jamaican peo­ple from reach­ing their true poten­tial. Ellington’s Observations were refresh­ing yet bold con­sid­er­ing Jamaica’s polit­i­cal system.

Is this a sign that Ellington’s tenure is com­ing to an end? Over the last sev­er­al months there have been calls for the res­ig­na­tion of the Commissioner of Police, some of the most stri­dent calls com­ing from the People’s National Party’s Youth Arm,PNPYO). Not to mis­take the PNPYO with sub­stance, but it seem the Simpson Miller Régime is unable or unwill­ing to keep these young upstarts under control.

Commissioner Owen Ellington.

The PNPYO has nev­er been any­thing but a bunch of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven thugs ‚wait­ing in the wings to hold state pow­er, their claim to fame based on noth­ing more than communist/​socialist dog­ma that has no place in present day pol­i­tics. Nevertheless they are part of the gov­ern­ing admin­is­tra­tion and their bel­li­cose rhetoric may have had an impact on the admin­is­tra­tion of Miller as well as it may have impact­ed Ellington desire to con­tin­ue serving.

Ellington’s con­cise yet forth­right arti­cle, is a rad­i­cal depar­ture from the stan­dard norm for pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­er’s of police. In essence it is a pol­i­cy blue-print which is dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppo­site to the gov­ern­ing direc­tion of the coun­try. Ellington’s Article is a pro­found pol­i­cy direc­tion which if adopt­ed would change Jamaica from the way we have come to know it over the last three decades plus.

DEALING EFFECTIVELY WITH GUNS AND DRUGS FOR IMPROVED PUBLIC SAFETY.
Written by Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington https://​www​.face​book​.com/​p​e​r​m​a​l​i​n​k​.​p​h​p​?​s​t​o​r​y​_​f​b​i​d​=​5​3​6​3​0​6​3​8​6​4​3​2​6​8​1​&​i​d​=​1​7​7​0​0​6​5​5​2​3​6​2​668

One of the points the Commissioner advanced most stri­dent­ly was the revolv­ing door crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Judges seem to be a law onto them­selves. Either there are no guide­lines or they do not feel oblig­ed to fol­low set guidelines.

I have writ­ten numer­ous arti­cles point­ing to this almost crim­i­nal dis­con­nect in our coun­try between what law enforce­ment is try­ing to accom­plish and the actions of the courts. Time again crim­i­nals before the court are sum­mar­i­ly grant­ed bail, they kill are re-arrest­ed , grant­ed bail and the cycle con­tin­ues. On one occa­sion one par­tic­u­lar defen­dant who ini­tial­ly killed sev­er­al peo­ple was arrest­ed and was grant­ed bail. He left the juris­dic­tion and was brought back to Jamaica from the United States and was grant­ed bail five seaper­ate times after killing each time he was released.

The ques­tion of Bail may not have been intend­ed as pun­ish­ment, but it should be used to send a strong mes­sage that if an accused or any­one act­ing on his/​her behalf tam­per or attempt to tam­per with the process, the accused will spend the rest of his days locked away.

Jamaica sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to oper­ate this way. It seem that Jamaica’s incom­pe­tent and sopho­moric politi­cians not con­ver­sant with the chang­ing times and the sophis­ti­ca­tion of crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in that geog­ra­phy. It is indeed a graph­ic indict­ment on the char­ac­ter of leg­is­la­tors in that coun­try. Jamaica’s judges oper­ate on the prin­ci­ple that the ques­tion of bail should not be puni­tive. That may be true but there are over-rid­ing facets of the Bail Act which must be considered.

♦ The like­ly-hood of flight, (abscond).

♦ The like­ly-hood that the accused will re-offend.

♦ The like­ly-hood that the accused will tam­per with the inves­ti­ga­tion and or wit­ness­es, being of para­mount significance.

Based on the crime sit­u­a­tion all of these fac­tors are pret­ty much apart of the plans of crim­i­nals who offend in Jamaica.

Yet the coun­try’s far left lib­er­al judges seem to take a sin­gle line from the Bail Act when they con­sid­er Bail. And that is that Bail should not be used as punishment.

The Courts are staffed by judges who are large­ly prod­ucts of the University of the West Indies, not exact­ly a a place where one expects sane thought to emanate from, this is the same University which had Adija Palmer (Vybes Kartel )on Campus doing lectures.

Those who argue about extra-judi­cial killings must focus their atten­tion on the root caus­es of this phenomena.

Just last week the Police were ask­ing two men from Grants Pen to turn them­selves in to them . Hopeton Forrest (o/​c Buck ) and Man-Saw , whose real name has elud­ed me as a result of the pas­sage of time. Twenty Two years ago while I was at the Constant Spring CIB both men were car­rear crim­i­nals . Forrest was from a group of broth­ers who were all felons, they did time over and over for seri­ous crimes to include shootings.

Forrest was broth­er-in-law to a con­sta­ble named Clive Smith who lived in a small com­mu­ni­ty called Ackee-Walk in Kingston 8. When I went to Constant Spring I was told by detec­tives there that Smith was a dirty cop. I nev­er spoke to Smith and he took umbrage, he told me he was a senior cop and I treat­ed him like I was bet­ter than him, I told him blunt­ly, I was bet­ter than him because he was dirty and we would not be stay­ing in the same depart­ment. He reeled off a litany of exple­tives aimed at me which did not both­er me I knew my time would come.

Sometime lat­er I was inves­ti­gat­ing a shoot­ing which occurred in the Grant’s Pen area, the vic­tim was Hopeton Forrest(Buck), I went to the University Hospital to speak to him. Buck had been shot in the leg. Buck told me that Officer Clive Smith loaned him a gun to do a rob­bery, he did the rob­bery but did not share the spoils with Smith, nei­ther did he return the weapon to him, as a result Smith shot him.

Hopeton Forrest was not going to tes­ti­fy against Clive Smith, no one would, I asked Buck where he did the rob­bery and asked him to turn the weapon involved in the rob­bery over to me. He laughed at me and said “misa Beckles cool nuh man”. I knew Buck would nev­er tes­ti­fy against Clive Smith, he would exact his revenge the ghet­to way. I also knew that my hope of find­ing out where he did that rob­bery and find­ing any­thing to link him to that rob­bery was next to nil, so I con­cen­trat­ed on Clive Smith. Buck revealed to me that Smith had stolen goods which he would not be able to account for in the apart­ment he shared with his sister.

We gath­ered a team which includ­ed retired Ruddy Dwyer, and Noël Asphall , also there was now Assistant com­mis­sion­er of police Élan Powell then act­ing cor­po­ral. I was­n’t the only cop who want­ed to get rid of Smith from the depart­ment, DSP Dwyer hat­ed his guts and want­ed him gone. When we hit Smith’s house that morn­ing he could not even remove the Ganga Spliff he was smok­ing from his lips. I took the cig­ar from his lips and put it into an enve­lope. I said to Smith I told you I would get you out of the Force”. He did not utter a word .

Smith plead guilty to all the charges, and was dis­missed from the force, I nev­er saw him again. Despite all the crimes Man-saw and Hopeton Forrest com­mit­ted they were in and out of prison like it was a revolv­ing door. Just recent­ly a Judge in the United States sen­tenced a 9 time felon to 50 years in prison, as a habit­u­al offend­er, and an incor­ri­gi­ble rogue.

For the record there are pro­vi­sions in law for a judge in Jamaica to throw the book at a habit­u­al offend­er much the same way, they just don’t. Twenty two years after I left law- enforce­ment ‚Hopeton Forrest and Man-saw are still orches­trat­ing and car­ry­ing out seri­ous crimes to include armed robberies.

It does­n’t mat­ter how many times they are arrest­ed the crim­i­nal cod­dling judges turn the right back onto the streets.

At the risk of sound­ing like a bro­ken record I ask again does the Jamaican peo­ple real­ize that the bro­ken Justice sys­tem is lit­er­al­ly killing our coun­try. Some pay lip-ser­vice to human rights because they have an axe to grind, soon enough how­ev­er the truth will lay bare their true inten­tions for those with eyes to see. The tragedy is that even with an abun­dance of truths some still fall for the bull.(Wid an abun­dace of wata, di fool still ded fi thirst.Honorable Robert Nesta Marley)

We sim­ply have to face the facts which are star­ing us in the face, In our coun­try Jamaica a small Island 4411 square miles and rough­ly 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple we kill each oth­er with more fre­quen­cy than all the oth­er coun­tries in the world except about 3 to 5 oth­ers. So we ask our­selves ‚to what is this depar­ture from civil­i­ty attrib­ut­able? Those of us who were raised into believ­ing in God, argues that we have ceased believ­ing in the sov­er­eign­ty of God Almighty. We have turned to our own ways now, because we are way too intel­li­gent to believe in a God we have nev­er seen and who allows hor­ri­ble things to happen.

Some intel­lec­tu­als go fur­ther, label­ing the Bible an old book of fables, anti­quat­ed out-dat­ed and irrel­e­vant to our times. Ironically the Bible did pre­dict that in the end times , man would trust to his own under­stand­ing. It clear­ly states that knowl­edge will be the great­est vice for man and the cat­a­lyst for his down-fall. One truth has evad­ed the intel­lec­tu­als who are turned out of Institutions of high­er learn­ing, from the University of the West Indies to Harvard, Yale and Oxford is that God gave us free-will. So God does not sit around wait­ing for us to mess-up , like an umpire call­ing balls and strikes. You see the Élite have failed to real­ize that the Universe giv­en to us by God oper­ates on set prin­ci­ples. Simply put you chose a life of las­civ­i­ous, hedo­nis­tic plea­sures the end there­of is cor­rup­tion of the flesh and spir­i­tu­al death. If we chose to live our lives lov­ing each oth­er, car­ing for each oth­er, giv­ing to each oth­er, we by our own actions, cre­ate the Utopian par­adise we want. We get to decide, because God gave us free will he can­not and will not take back that free-will, he is not man that he should lie. Having a heart which fears God is not a heart that wants to kill, rape, or hurt any­one, if the world have a heart for God there would be none of those evils. To the Elitists and the pseu­do-Intellectuals, you don’t have to believe in my God, but you will find it impos­si­ble to suc­cess­ful­ly argue against the prin­ci­ples I just laid out. You don’t have to call him God, I will, but the prin­ci­ples are sound. Every day we read of chil­dren being raped and mur­dered, old men and women decap­i­tat­ed, entire fam­i­lies wiped out. Yet there are many peo­ple who ratio­nal­ize those killings as nor­mal. They have a mouth-full of idio­cy to try to make you believe what you see and hear hap­pen­ing is no big deal, crime is every­where. Of course crime is every­where, does that mean we should find com­fort that not only Jamaica has crime? It’s crazy how Satan has pulled the wool over our eyes on issue after issue.

With that said how­ev­er let’s take a look at crime and what dri­ves crime in Jamaica. It was heart­en­ing to see Jamaica’s police com­mis­sion­er Owen Ellington’s arti­cle on Face/​Book deal­ing with the issue. https://​www​.face​book​.com/​p​e​r​m​a​l​i​n​k​.​p​h​p​?​s​t​o​r​y​_​f​b​i​d​=​5​3​6​3​0​6​3​8​6​4​3​2​6​8​1​&​i​d​=​1​7​7​0​0​6​5​5​2​3​6​2​668

Singapore. Singapore

Security ana­lysts describe a failed state as one in which the state has lost the capac­i­ty and the polit­i­cal will to per­form basic gov­er­nance func­tions, such as effi­cient rev­enue col­lec­tion; assure pub­lic secu­ri­ty and safe­ty; build and main­tain crit­i­cal pub­lic infra­struc­ture; pub­lic ser­vices such as secu­ri­ty, pub­lic health, edu­ca­tion; enforce the rule of law and exer­cise sov­er­eign con­trol over the territory.

My only ques­tion to the com­mis­sion­er , even as I applaud him is ‚what the hell took you so long? It can­not be that it took him all this time since he became com­mis­sion­er to real­ize that crime is a busi­ness and the ser­vice he and the depart­ment offers is also a busi­ness. After all Ellington has a degree in Business admin­is­tra­tion that ought to count for some­thing oth­er than let­ters behind names as is cus­tom­ary in our Island home. I was also buoyed and elat­ed that the com­mis­sion­er seemed to have lift­ed the nar­ra­tive from our web­site , the very nar­ra­tive I have been expound­ing for the last sev­er­al years.

Singapore, Singapore.

I have long sought to raise aware­ness of the neg­a­tive con­se­quences crime is hav­ing on the social fab­ric of our country.

♦Politics and Political interference.

♥ An incom­pe­tent and cor­rupt Judicial system.

♣ Waste and theft of tax-pay­ers resources.

♠ Nepotism,corruption and graft.

♦ Abrasive ‚abu­sive and incom­pe­tent polit­i­cal lead­er­ship of both polit­i­cal par­ties which com­prised all the oth­er neg­a­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics laid out in the pre­vi­ous four lines.Jamaica’s politi­cians are large­ly crim­i­nals save and except a few.

Where there is no wis­dom the peo­ple per­ish. Many Jamaicans would read­i­ly give their lives for the two crim­i­nal gangs which runs the coun­try, in fact many will tell you they are born PNP or JLP. Those two acronyms rep­re­sent­ing the Peoples National Party and the Jamaica Labor Party. Between these two polit­i­cal gangs they have ren­dered Jamaica almost a failed state, reduced the coun­try to a International dis­grace and a pari­ah and the peo­ple almost to a man, hus­tlers and beggars.

Kingston Jamaica.

One need look no fur­ther than the present lead­er­ship of the coun­try, as well as the actions of Bruce Golding before this blind Bartimus at the helm, to get an idea why Jamaica is what it is today. We may chose to bury our heads in the sand of time and pre­tend, or we may face the truth. if we do not act fast we will not have a Jamaica the way we knew it, many say it’s already too late. Jamaica is fast becom­ing a failed state, even the peo­ple in gov­ern­ment are run­ning, the crim­i­nals have the police depart­ment issu­ing bul­letins to offi­cers to pro­tect their own lives. That my friend are the ingre­di­ents of a failed state. I encour­age you, as you read this, to read what Owen Ellington argued con­sti­tutes a failed state. I have pro­vid­ed the quote below and the link above for your information.

Security ana­lysts describe a failed state as one in which the state has lost the capac­i­ty and the polit­i­cal will to per­form basic gov­er­nance func­tions, such as effi­cient rev­enue col­lec­tion; assure pub­lic secu­ri­ty and safe­ty; build and main­tain crit­i­cal pub­lic infra­struc­ture; pub­lic ser­vices such as secu­ri­ty, pub­lic health, edu­ca­tion; enforce the rule of law and exer­cise sov­er­eign con­trol over the territory.

By those defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics you tell me if Jamaica is a failed state or not!

Kingston Jamaica.

In Jamaica, con­vict­ed gun offend­ers can walk out of court with a sus­pend­ed sen­tence or pro­ba­tion. Some pay a fine. Last year, for the peri­od January to September, 75 per cent of con­vic­tions in the Western Regional Gun Court result­ed in non-cus­to­di­al sen­tenc­ing, even as St James was record­ing twice the nation­al mur­der rate. In one case where a police raid net­ted four high-pow­ered rifles, over 1,200 rounds of ammu­ni­tion, bul­let­proof vests, tele­scop­ic lens and oth­er war-like equip­ment — enough to start a small war — the accused per­sons who plead­ed guilty were fined $80,000 and giv­en three years’ pro­ba­tion. This approach does not sig­nal any pol­i­cy intent to improve pub­lic security.(Owen Ellington com­mis­sion­er of Police).

Through the incep­tion of this pub­li­ca­tion I have labored to expose these truths , I am thrilled to see that Jamaica’s police com­mis­sion­er has final­ly grown the balls to call out the cor­rupt gov­ern­ment and the crim­i­nal cod­dling courts and crim­i­nal rights lob­by . Let me be clear they may fire Ellington for lay­ing out such broad-based pol­i­cy direc­tions as a civ­il ser­vant. I have asked him to do so in these blogs, in the news papers , chastis­ing him to step aside or speak out . I have no such fear, as such I have called them the thieves and mur­der­ers that they are, from the high­est office on down to the (dut­ty foot bwoy pon di street). Enough is enough.

In these blogs I am par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal, in my com­ments direct­ed at peo­ple I per­ceive to be sup­port­ive of crim­i­nal behav­ior. Whether they do so express­ly or implic­it­ly. What I’ve found, hav­ing been away from law-enforce­ment for over 2 decades, is that our coun­try’s secu­ri­ty has not improved over that peri­od. Conversely the crime sit­u­a­tion has got­ten worse, stud­ies have con­firmed that in the last 10 years the amount of Jamaicans return­ing home to live has dropped by fifty per­cent, we have com­ment­ed here about this as we seek to height­en aware­ness to the prob­lems that have beset Jamaica.

Dorian Dixon: Ronald Thwaites :

There is a mind­set that is a part of the prob­lem, we Jamaicans sim­ply wor­ship politi­cians and oth­ers we believe “the big man”. In an ongo­ing dis­pute between the Jamaica Teachers Association and the Minister of Education Ronald Thawaites, over study leave ‚Dorian Dixon prin­ci­pal lec­tur­er and head of Mico’s Social Sciences Department com­pared the asso­ci­a­tion’s dis­pute with the Ministry of Education to a fight between “a mon­grel dog” and “a lion-heart­ed cat”.

There are calls com­ing from many quar­ters for mis­ter Dixon to be canned. I mean are you kid­ding me? He did­n’t even call Thwaites a mon­grel dog, the term mon­grel dog char­ac­ter­i­za­tion was inher­ent­ly designed to dri­ve home his point and to make a state­ment, but it was a metaphor peo­ple. Ronald Thawaites, as a radio talk show host for many years, was cer­tain­ly not hes­i­tant about call­ing peo­ple names and using metaphors, as he fooled many into believ­ing he was an inde­pen­dent voice and not just anoth­er PNP shill. I’m vin­di­cat­ed on that one!

Father Richard Holung:

The irony of the brouha­ha sur­round­ing mis­ter Dixon’s com­ment is even more laugh­able when we think of what is hap­pen­ing in our coun­try. When we think of the things which comes out of the mouths of lit­er­al­ly every­one from the Prime Minister on down. The moral rot in Jamaica is pal­pa­ble. Well know Roman Catholic Priest father Richard Holung spoke to the moral decay in the coun­try in an arti­cle recent­ly.Jamaica: Conversion From Christianity To Paganism.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​5​2​0​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​2​.​h​tml

One of the rea­son the Constabulary Force have not been tak­en seri­ous­ly through­out the years is that the agency was divid­ed into minia­ture groups. Each with dif­fer­ent goals and objec­tives. The Police Officers Association, made up of mem­bers of the gazetted ranks are civ­il ser­vants, they are gov­erned by dif­fer­ent rules than rank and file mem­bers who are rep­re­sent­ed by the Federation, but which is still behold­en to the gazetted ranks whose strings are pulled by the politi­cians the chief pur­vey­ors of crime in Jamaica. The ISCF and District Constables Association also have their own rep­re­sen­ta­tive bod­ies and sub­se­quent­ly dif­fer­ent aspirations.

The prob­lem is to get these groups to adhere to a com­mon prin­ci­ple which would mean that all involved would be bet­ter off. Many mem­bers chose the safe way, which was to lay low, not stand for any­thing. They saw oppor­tu­ni­ties in being per­ceived as com­pa­ny guys, who does­n’t ruf­fle feath­ers. The police hier­ar­chy is filled with these men and women who are there because of boot-licking.

Even more laugh­able are some who are out of the depart­ment but are quite con­tent with things as they are today. They join groups which calls them­selves Ex-Police-Associations, but when the thin veneer is peeled back, they are noth­ing more than glo­ri­fied rum-drink­ing-rem­i­nisc­ing-fra­ter­ni­ties, which are pow­er­less to do any­thing to effect change.

I know I will be exco­ri­at­ed for say­ing this but I was nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about what police thought about me. I don’t care about pol­i­tics or their lean­ings, many are unable, even after they have left, to untan­gle them­selves from the cor­ro­sive ten­ta­cles of JLPNP.

I believe there are hun­dreds, per­haps thou­sands of for­mer Jamaican Police offi­cers, who could poten­tial­ly form a pow­er­ful lob­by which would have a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive impact on Jamaica going for­ward. Yet even when we meet on social sites like Face/​Book all we are capa­ble of doing is tear­ing down each oth­er, not much has changed.

The Independent com­mis­sion of Investigations (INDECOM)was cre­at­ed to inves­ti­gate civil­ian com­plaints against mem­bers of Jamaica’s secu­ri­ty forces. The Commissioner of the Independent Commission of Investigations, (INDECOM) Terrence Williams says he has asked the Minister of National Security to review a sub­mis­sion on the use of gear cov­er­ing the faces of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel while on oper­a­tions. The Independent Commission of Investigations is to under­take inves­ti­ga­tions con­cern­ing actions by mem­bers of the Security Forces and oth­er agents ofthe State that result in death or injury to per­sons or the abuse ofthe rights of per­sons; and for con­nect­ed mat­ters. The Independent Commission of Investigations Act, repealed the Police Public Complaints Act on April 15, 2010. http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​p​l​a​y​e​r​_​e​m​b​e​d​d​e​d​&​v​=​R​M​U​z​o​L​r​j​-uU Posted for your infor­ma­tion as to what the role of this Agency is as well as the lack of sup­port that is giv­en to the rule of law in Jamaica.http://www.japarliament.gov.jm/attachments/341_The%20Independent%20Commission%20of%20Investigation%20Act,%202010,.pdf 5:02 am, Sun December 18, 2011 Commissioner Williams says he has writ­ten to the Police Commissioner, ask­ing that he desists from per­mit­ting his offi­cers wear­ing masks as it is ille­gal. Mr Williams says the JCF’s Book of Rules does not pro­vide for the wear­ing of bal­a­cla­va or ski masks cov­er­ing the faces of offi­cers He notes that the rules can­not sim­ply be changed by the Commissioner, but by the Minister of National Security. Mr Williams point­ed out that while he under­stands that there may be cir­cum­stances when an offi­cer may need to wear a mask, t his need to be done under set pol­i­cy. The Indecom head wants the Minister of National Security to exam­ine the pro­pos­als pre­sent­ed and make rec­om­men­da­tions re the wear­ing of masks​.Mr Williams says he has giv­en the Commissioner of Police 60 days to reply to sev­er­al oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions made to assist the pub­lic in iden­ti­fy­ing secu­ri­ty forces.“The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber of police offi­cers should be worn on bal­lis­tic hel­mets and all out­er cloth­ing includ­ing high vis­i­bil­i­ty vests so the pub­lic can iden­ti­fy the police offi­cers they are deal­ing with. We have giv­en the Jamaica Defense Force six­ty days to respond to our rec­om­men­da­tions that where the JDF is involved in oper­a­tions in sup­port of the police so that the JDF sol­dier and Officer can be iden­ti­fied by the per­sons they are deal­ing with” said Mr Williams.

This is the Independent Commission of Investigations at the table with the adver­sar­i­al JFJ , address­ing their Press con­fer­ence even as the com­mis­sion is sup­pos­ed­ly active­ly engaged in inves­ti­gat­ing a case that involved fatal shoot­ing by the police the pre­vi­ous day, and which he referenced.

http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​F​H​G​g​l​c​S​h​pkU

We would like to know what it was that the com­mis­sion­er of police Owen Ellington said to mem­bers that made them decid­ed to halt their calls for Williams to step down.The three police groups had called for Commissioner Williams to step down, fol­low­ing his par­tic­i­pa­tion in a press con­fer­ence host­ed by crim­i­nal rights lob­by group Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ).We in the dias­po­ra want to know what did the com­mis­sion­er say , did he threat­en mem­bers with sanc­tions, what did he promise them, if any­thing? We live in coun­tries where the rule of law rules, we do not advo­cate that police run rough-shod over cit­i­zens rights, but we cer­tain­ly do not want to see reac­tionary forces spear­head­ed by Gomes and Goffe and Horace Levy to derail the rule of law and turn Jamaica over to crim­i­nal Dons or (cporner crews are whatever)as have been the case.

People who decide to be Police Officers has to be a spe­cial breed, after all in places like Jamaica it can­not be because of the mon­ey. Police offi­cers risk their lives every day in order to keep the rest of us safe. In some coun­tries and locales the risk are some­what greater than others.

Police in Mexico some­times wear masks:

Yet a police offi­cer nev­er knows what is going to hap­pen when he/​she ini­ti­ates a sim­ple traf­fic stop . As such a police offi­cer must always be on guard to pro­tect his/​her life. Something hard­ly any­one else has to do at work in a giv­en day. Many argue that police offi­cers make the choice will­ing­ly so they should­n’t speak of the risks. The infer­ence being that free-will dimin­ish­es or reduces the legit­i­ma­cy of the argu­ment con­cern­ing the risks.

Police in the United States some­time wear masks:

Over the last few years one of the charge lev­eled against cer­tain units with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force is that offi­cers wear masks on cer­tain operations.

The argu­ments put forth by con­cerned par­ties is that police offi­cers are more like­ly to abuse cit­i­zens rights if they know they can­not be iden­ti­fied. This is a legit­i­mate con­cern that should be addressed.

Police offi­cers should be giv­en all the tools they need so they may effec­tive­ly do what we ask them to do, which is to pro­tect us. At the top of that list and of utmost impor­tance is officer-safety.What that means is that the offi­cer’s secu­ri­ty is para­mount, his life must first be secured.

Cops in Egypt wear­ing masks:

On the oth­er hand the rights of cit­i­zens must be pro­tect­ed. Police offi­cers can­not have carte-blanche to abuse cit­i­zens. In the process of strik­ing the bal­ance between account­abil­i­ty and offi­cer-safe­ty, we are forced to rely on the integri­ty of those we empow­er and arm, to do the right thing by us, the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect and serve.

Cops in Haiti wear masks:

So the dis­cus­sion comes down, not to whether cops may wear masks on cer­tain occa­sions, but to the qual­i­ty of the peo­ple whom we empow­er to be police offi­cers. Many who posi­tion them­selves as com­men­ta­tors of every­thing police does, has zero knowl­edge of the dynam­ics or what it takes to be a cop in Jamaica. Frankly some sim­ply do not care. Many in posi­tions to shape leg­is­la­tion argues that not enough police offi­cers are get­ting shot.

Some in the Media gave peo­ple advice to stone police sta­tions years ago, oth­ers encour­age them to fight police offi­cers. politi­cians dis­trib­ute guns to kill peo­ple , cops included.

There are a few rea­sons why cops some­times wear face-masks on cer­tain oper­a­tions, chief among them are.

♦ They are work­ing undercover.

♦To keep their iden­ti­ties secret.

♦ Protecting them­selves and their fam­i­lies from reprisals.

♦ As a safe­ty precaution.

If an Officer wears a mask because that offi­cer wants to con­ceal wrong-doing on his/​her part, that offi­cer has already crossed the line, he is a criminal .

In Jamaica the need for offi­cers to be care­ful can­not be over-empha­sized, Jamaican crim­i­nals like to kill cops.

Noted Jamaican Doctor Garth Rattray was adamant in his col­umn in the dai­ly glean­er when he stated .

Quote:A patient of mine who is a mem­ber of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) was main­tain­ing a police pres­ence, parked in a marked police vehi­cle, close to an inter­sec­tion with a very major thor­ough­fare in St Andrew. As he observed the traf­fic and the gen­er­al sur­round­ings, a young man emerged from a neigh­bour­ing depressed com­mu­ni­ty. He walked right up to the dri­ver’s side win­dow and calm­ly announced, “One a unnu kill one a wi so wi a go kill back one a unnu.” The mes­sen­ger then dis­ap­peared back into the bow­els of his hon­ey­combed com­mu­ni­ty.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​5​2​0​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​/​c​l​e​i​s​u​r​e​3​.​h​tml

This is what Jamaican police offi­cers have to deal with, in a small coun­try that is rough­ly 4411 square miles. Everyone knows some­one who knows some­one who knows where some­one lives. It is no won­der then that Police offi­cers are being killed in the own homes. (See blog-posts on this site deal­ing with this issue.)

Many peo­ple believe police offi­cers have firearms to take home. Guess again , many offi­cers are forced to hand over the weapons they use on the job and are left to the mer­cy of Jamaican crim­i­nals by the hier­ar­chy of the police force, some offi­cers have acquired pri­vate weapons, not all, those with­out are left to fend for themselves.

Why are Jamaican cops pre­clud­ed from wear­ing masks when they are much more like­ly to be killed than their inter­na­tion­al counterparts?

When the Police Commissioner acqui­esces to the dic­tates of Reactionary forces which are hell-bent on mak­ing Jamaican a crim­i­nal Utopia, police offi­cers die.

There is an bunch of Elitist in Jamaica who are spear-head­ing this assault on the safe­ty of police offi­cers, they are strate­gi­cal­ly posi­tioned to do innu­mer­able dam­age to the the rule of law and the lives of ordi­nary Jamaican cops, they are suc­ceed­ing in this endeav­or with the tac­it acqui­es­cence of the Police high-com­mand who are large­ly polit­i­cal lap-dogs.

Heading that list is.

♦Carolyn Gomes heads the group which calls itself Jamaicans for jus­tice or (JFJ).

♦Earl Witter mediocre crim­i­nal lawyer now giv­en the job cre­at­ed obvi­ous­ly for him , Public Defender.

♦Terrence Williams Commissioner , pow­er hun­gry wannabe-cop ‚appoint­ed to the new agency INDECOM.

♦Horace Levy self pro­mot­er and head of the so-called Peace Management Unit.

These are all posi­tions which which are at odds with law-enforce­ment in the small Caribbean Island of Jamaica, these are not the only ones but they are among the pri­ma­ry ones who grand-stand at the expense of the Jamaican police.The tragedy is that when they do, police offi­cers die.

Witter and Gomes vehe­ment­ly asserts ‚that in order for the num­ber of civil­ians killed to be more believ­able more cops would have to be killed. That kind of atro­cious state­ment could not come from the mouth of any per­son who want­ed to retain any degree of pub­lic sup­port in any developing/​ed coun­try except Jamaica. Carolyn Gomes received the Order of Jamaica. The oth­ers are lin­ing up for their awards from the crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it Government(government not con­fined to party).

Jamaica has one of the high­est mur­der rates in the world, many argue that crime is a direct result of pover­ty and lack of oppor­tu­ni­ties. Yet there are coun­tries which have sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er stan­dard of liv­ing where crime is sub­stan­tial­ly low­er than Jamaica.

You ask what is it that dif­fer­en­ti­ates Jamaica from those coun­tries? The sim­ple answer is “vil­lage lawyers”, most of us present our­selves as an author­i­ty and have an opin­ion on everything.

We are impressed by stuff like, col­or, mon­ey, big hous­es, cars and Degrees, so it mat­ters not that a per­son who is a Pediatrician knows noth­ing about law-enforce­ment. That per­son­’s opin­ion is val­ued aver that of the real pros. But it goes even deep­er than that.

The poli­cies being fol­lowed are cost­ing the lives of cops, no one speaks for the cops who are being slaugh­tered, the forces head­ed by the char­la­tans above, are silent when cops are killed. Many peo­ple are now ask­ing the ques­tion why?

We don’t need croc­o­dile tears from them, what we have seen so far tells us what side they are on. The ques­tion is , has the Jamaican peo­ple real­ized who their ene­mies are . I real­ly don’t care for a lot of cops in the JCF , nev­er did, in fact some of them deserve to be treat­ed like sec­ond-class cit­i­zens in the job they ded­i­cate their lives to. Many of them deserve to have that pow­er-hun­gry ego-mani­a­cal ‚nar­cis­sis­tic shit-head Terrence Williams give speech­es to oth­er shit-heads about what police are sup­posed to do and what they aren’t sup­posed to wear. The top-tier or the police depart­ment, with the excep­tion of a few, are sim­ply polit­i­cal hacks who sim­ply do as they are told.

What I care about is the future of Jamaica, left up to Continue read­ing →

Citizens demon­strate against police killings in Jamaica:

Awhile back I wrote an Article which was fea­tured in the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, in The arti­cle I attempt­ed to dis­cuss the issue of extra-judi­cial killings. One of Jamaica’s lead­ing criminal/​constitutional lawyer Bert Samuels respond­ed that he would like to see police con­fess to killing inno­cent Jamaicans. I had known Bert for years as a cop sta­tioned at Constant Spring, he is a son of the soil, a man who has done well for him­self hav­ing come from the local com­mu­ni­ty of Glen Drive Kingston 8, just across from Cassava-Piece. Mister Samuels has the unique dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing come from the hood, while hav­ing pulled him­self up to the heights of pow­er through edu­ca­tion. I could empathize with his lit­tle out­burst, hav­ing under­stood his background.

There has been a lot of debate on the issue of extra-judi­cial killings by police offi­cers not just in Jamaica but across the world. Incidents of ques­tion­able police killings are most­ly con­fined to urban or depressed com­mu­ni­ties. I can­not give you a psy­cho­log­i­cal expla­na­tion for it, in coun­tries like the United States and Britain race is seen as a deter­mi­nant. In oth­er places like Jamaica the argu­ments are more con­vo­lut­ed, less rational.

In the US Police line up in antic­i­pa­tion of protest action:

The gen­er­al argu­ment which dom­i­nat­ed the dis­cus­sion in Jamaica is (“because dem poor”) because the vic­tims are poor. This line of argu­ment has lit­tle legit­i­ma­cy when we look at where police offi­cers come from. Jamaica’s Police Force is almost 100% from the poor­er class of peo­ple. So one would have to buy the argu­ment that police are against the poor, the very class from which they come. Thus far we have seen no data which would sup­port that theory.

Rastafarian’s have long argued that police take action against them because they are .….…. well Rastafarian. Criminals argue that police sin­gle them out because they are poor, nev­er because they are.….. well you guessed it, crim­i­nals. It fol­lows that the argu­ment that police treat peo­ple in so-called upscale neigh­bor­hoods bet­ter, is absolute­ly true. There is how­ev­er a rea­son for it, at least in the Jamaican sense, if your life is less threat­ened you are less like­ly to be aggressive.

Whether we agree on this or not is imma­te­r­i­al, police offi­cers get killed less in sub­ur­bia, that’s a fact. One does not have to be a police offi­cer in Jamaica to under­stand this, peo­ple sim­ply do not go into cer­tain areas, and if they have to, they are scared as hell with the hair stand­ing on the back of their necks. It’s no dif­fer­ent if you are a cop, only dif­fer­ence is that in the case of a cop, that fear is trans­lat­ed into awareness.

Dr. Carolyn Gomes is a pedi­atric doc­tor who is head of the group which calls itself Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ). The Group presents itself as a legit­i­mate Human Rights Agency. However time and again by their very actions, they have put that legit­i­ma­cy into ques­tion. Human Rights is a fun­da­men­tal right which is giv­en by God, not just to crim­i­nals, not just to peo­ple who have been vic­tim­ized by the state or it’s agents, but to everyone.

One of the most fun­da­men­tal right guar­an­teed to us is the right to life, yet the high­ly mis­guid­ed Dr. Gomes fail to rec­og­nize that sim­ple fact. As I have said every­one has the right to the life and human dig­ni­ty bestowed by our cre­ator. … … And yes Dr. Gomes even the mur­der­ers who you so stout­ly defend have a right to life.

My own view is that even though I respect the sanc­ti­ty of human life I would pre­fer to spend my time advo­cat­ing for the inno­cent. I would rather spend my time advo­cat­ing for the approx­i­mate­ly 1600 Jamaicans who are report­ed mur­dered each year for the last decade plus .

I would rather advo­cate for…

♦The inno­cent peo­ple burned out of their homes.

♦The count­less women vio­lent­ly raped , too scared to report it to author­i­ties because of threats to their lives and that of fam­i­ly members.

♦The lit­tle boys and girls forced into a life of pros­ti­tu­tion because a fam­i­ly mem­ber lost a gun belong­ing to the area don. Forced to pay, for the rest of their lives, with their lives, for some­thing they nev­er lost themselves.

♦The moth­ers and fathers who are forced to send their daugh­ters away to give them a chance to grow up free from rape from the don , then report them miss­ing to the police to save their own lives.

I could go on and on Dr. Gomes but you get the picture.

There are some who are fooled by the actions of peo­ple like Dr. Gomes and oth­ers, believ­ing that every­one who comes in the name of Human Rights are legit­i­mate, sor­ry I live in a coun­try where there are many prob­lems of Human Rights, and where Human Rights advo­ca­cy abounds.

One thing is cer­tain Human Rights can­not, and is not allowed to inter­fere with the rule of law. As impor­tant as the indi­vid­ual right is, it can­not come at the expense of the many.

Extra-Judicial killings are immoral and ille­gal, Police Officers who kill sum­mar­i­ly should and must be removed from the Force or any police depart­ment in any civ­i­lized coun­try. With that said Extra-judi­cial killings can­not be deter­mined by the amount of peo­ple killed by police. Each case of police shooting/​killing is a sep­a­rate inci­dent, has sep­a­rate and defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics which deter­mines whether they con­form to the use of lethal force guide­lines out­lined to officers.

If they don’t they are not nec­es­sar­i­ly ille­gal, they are not nec­es­sar­i­ly mur­der, there is a lot of space between jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide and mur­der. Officer made a mis­take, sus­pect act­ed like he had a weapon, sus­pect attacked offi­cer had no weapon, sus­pect is shot.….

Is that murder?

Where is the mal­ice aforethought?

You see Dr. Gomes, you alleg­ing extra-judi­cial killings is syn­ony­mous to me alleg­ing that you are sum­mar­i­ly and ille­gal­ly dis­pens­ing drugs to chil­dren who do not need it. Without know­ing how many babies you see each year, how sick they are, what ill­ness­es you dis­pense drugs for, or how many times per day you do write prescriptions.

You are still prac­tic­ing med­i­cine aren’t you? If not ‚you should con­cen­trate on what you have been trained to do. Go back to tak­ing care of babies and let the cops take care of the terrorists.

I believe that you fun­da­men­tal­ly care about what you do at the peace man­age­ment ini­tia­tive. I think you are shaped by your expe­ri­ences, I must inform you that despite what­ev­er suc­cess­es you may have achieved from your orga­ni­za­tion’s efforts, what you do is not a replace­ment for the rule of law. Criminals must pay for their crimes, it is through tough puni­tive mea­sures imposed by soci­ety that the del­i­cate bal­ance between anar­chy and civil­i­ty is main­tained. You have been known to argue that a large per­cent­age of what the Police char­ac­ter­ize as Gangs in our coun­try are in fact what you call ” cor­ner crews”.

With all due respect even if we are to accept your corner-crew designation as a legitimate alternative moniker , I must inform you that said corner crews and Gangs would not be, and aren’t mutually exclusive. You have a job to do, do your job, stay out-of-the-way of law enforcement.

I know that it is common for those who(“eat the proverbial food”” in situations as yours, feel that the way to continue to eat that food is through the demonizing of the police. I must also inform you that you are not doing neither yourself nor Jamaica any good through your actions. The rule of law is going nowhere, it will be there ;long after you and I are gone, or I shudder at what will obtain. Do your job and lament the innocent lives lost at the hands of the scumbag predatory monsters who prey on the weak. You have been at this demagoguery long enough. Just do what you can and let the rule of law do what it is supposed to do, and if that means eradicating murderous urban scum, then so be it. What are the police supposed to do? Are the police supposed to beg criminals not to shoot at them, are they supposed to refuse to fire back at criminals out of fear that they may kill too many criminals?

I suggest that you prepare and make public a detailed proposal that you feel should replace the measures which Police Agencies use all over the World when they are confronted with life and death decisions.Those decisions in most cases must be made in a fraction of a second. Failing to provide such a detailed proposal, I strongly suggest that you confine yourself to whatever it is you are educated or trained in, if anything.

Of note is your total failure/​refusal to mention the innocent Jamaicans whom have been slaughtered, not just since the start of this year but between the years 2001 to 2008, 2001 – 2008

Reported Cases of
Murder : 10, 836
Shootings : 11,229
Rape and Carnal
Abuse: 9119

Not one word from you about the innocent people killed, I suggest you and your friend Carolyn Gomez be very careful, criminals do not care who they kill, you are not immune, they will kill you too. Take care of what you understand and leave Law Enforcement to those trained and tasked with it.

Sincerely: Michael A Beckles:

I spent 10 years in the Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCf ), I loved what I did, Many argue that the police force was just a job for peo­ple who did­n’t qual­i­fy for any oth­er job, or who could­n’t find any­thing else to do. I can­not speak to why any­one else joined, but I know I qual­i­fied for Mico Teachers College , but was dis­suad­ed by my step-dad, who encour­aged me to become a police officer.

I know there are not many choic­es for jobs in Jamaica, so even if peo­ple joined because they could­n’t find oth­er jobs , so what? When the pros and cons are weighed it requires a lot of sac­ri­fice from every per­son who serves, irre­spec­tive of length of ser­vice. Low pay, hor­ren­dous work­ing con­di­tions, not enough leg­isla­tive sup­port, not enough polit­i­cal sup­port, not enough mate­r­i­al sup­port, the risks involved. On and on, the cons out­weigh the pros.

When I joined I hoped to make a dif­fer­ence from with­in, after 9 years I real­ized that I could­n’t, after leav­ing in 1991 I asked myself ” am I able to effect change from with­out”? The jury will be out on that long after I’m gone, but while I’m alive I have pledged to myself that I will try my best to see how I may help in chang­ing the land­scape in my lim­it­ed capac­i­ty. Rosa Parks changed a Nation sim­ply by sit­ting down.

One way I feel that change can come about, is exam­in­ing how we con­duct busi­ness from the inside, and doing a men­tal audit with a view to doing bet­ter with what we have.

Years ago while I was assigned to the Constant Spring CIB Superintendent Brooks was trans­ferred to take over the Division. One morn­ing I was on my way to my car which was parked at the back of the sta­tion, when I heard him yelling “cib, cib where is the crime report”? I real­ized he was talk­ing to me, despite the fact that my name was not “cib”. What real­ly pissed me off was that I had just com­plet­ed a tour of duty which com­menced 8.45 am the pre­vi­ous day, with a break at 1:pm to 6:pm, fol­lowed by an all nighter, prepar­ing a volu­mi­nous hand-writ­ten report of all the crimes in Saint Thomas, Saint Catherine, and St, Andrew North which made up Police Area 5. Did I men­tion that I was required to pre­pare 5 copies ?

In addi­tion I had done exact­ly what was required of me, by hav­ing some­one place the report on his desk, and was on my way home to show­er and go to court. I did not answer, I pro­ceed­ed to my car and drove away. He did­n’t both­er to look for the report, he did­n’t feel he need­ed to address me as “offi­cer”, or “cor­po­ral”, he saw me as a whole branch of the force. Despite this mis-step Brooks did not change his ways, he dou­bled down on stu­pid­i­ty by car­ry­ing a grudge against me from that day forward.

Sometime lat­er, as part of an Investigation into a stolen Motor-bike, I went to a home in the depressed com­mu­ni­ty of Cassava Piece , to speak to two broth­ers who were know to us as car­rear crim­i­nals. With me was con­sta­ble Francis and detec­tive cor­po­ral Wilford Gayle who lat­er went on to become a Senior Superintendent. Gayle was one of the offi­cers with me the night I was shot on Blackwood Terrace.

In addi­tion to the fact that these two broth­ers were crim­i­nals, the moth­er was also a drug-deal­er and facil­i­ta­tor of that crim­i­nal enter­prise oper­at­ing from her home. I spoke to the moth­er, indi­cat­ing why I was there, she told me her sons were not home, I asked her to relay to her sons that I would like to see them in order to exclude them as sus­pects in a my inves­ti­ga­tion. She was pret­ty civ­il dur­ing the whole con­ver­sa­tion, so we left. I went on to oth­er mat­ters, and con­clud­ed my tour for that day.

The next morn­ing on my arrival at the office I was told by detec­tive Seargant Jerry Wallace who was Sub-Officer in charge of Crime that Superintendent Brooks want­ed to see me. I found it odd, if Brooks want­ed to find some­thing out he could have got­ten that infor­ma­tion from Detective Inspector Noel Asphall the Divisional Detective Inspector(DDI), or Seargant Wallace the (SOIC) sub-offi­cer in charge of crime, what did he want with me? I had no idea so I picked up my note-book expect­ing that he prob­a­bly need­ed brief­ing on a indi­vid­ual case from the hors­es mouth. I asked Wallace to accom­pa­ny me, I nev­er did any­thing in the force with­out a witness.

Brook’s was on the phone when we entered his office, judg­ing from the con­ver­sa­tion he was on a per­son­al call, (yes that ear­ly in the work day). He con­tin­ued his con­ver­sa­tion chat­ting away mer­ri­ly as if Seargant Wallace and I were trans­par­ent. He did not offer us a seat, he did­n’t ask us to wait awhile, noth­ing, he just ignored us . Personally I nev­er allow myself to be dis­re­spect­ed in that way, and this was not going to be any dif­fer­ent, so I turned to walk away, upon which he hasti­ly hung up the phone.

Then he lit into me.

“Weh di blood claat yu gu dung a M.. yaad guy fire up shat fah, a weh di rass-claat du onuh , onuh blod claat nowa­days police”? I was stunned , what was he talk­ing about? Who did I fire shots at, nei­ther of the men was at the house when we went there, so what was he talk­ing about?

He con­tin­ued to berate me, I stood there and allowed him to con­tin­ue the tirade, when it appeared he was fin­ished, froth­ing at the mouth, I calm­ly asked him, “are you done? You are a damn dis­grace to the uni­form, I respect the rank you hold but you as a per­son is a dis­mal disgrace.

I turned to leave then turned back, pulled my weapon, eject­ed the round in the cham­ber, placed the round back into the mag­a­zine, placed the extra mag­a­zine and the weapon on his desk and told him the Force has a Ballistic Branch and walked out with Wallace in tow.

Back in the CIB Office Seargant Wallace placed his hands on his head and declared ‘jesus gad, 21 years inna di police force, an mi neva si one act­ing cor­po­ral dress dung wan super­in­ten­dent suh.

Gayle chimed in “if a did mi mi woul­da tell him bout him blod claat”.

Jerry Wallace retort­ed “shut up yu blood claat yu fraid a yu fuck­ing shadow”.

I did not know how prophet­ic those words would be until that night on Blackwood Terrace.

Later that morn­ing Detective Inspector Asphall called me to his office and told me Brooks told him what hap­pened ear­li­er. Inspector Asphall told me Brooks want­ed to know about who I was, Inspector Asphall told me laugh­ing­ly “Becks I told him “if you want to know who this man is look at the red ink in the morn­ing report”, mis­ter Asphall hand­ed me my weapon and the two magazines.

Back then red ink on the crime report indi­cat­ed crimes which were cleared up.

In fair­ness to Superintendent Brooks he also asked Inspector Asphall to apol­o­gize to me for his behav­ior. I would have much pre­ferred a per­son­al apol­o­gy, even as I under­stood how dif­fi­cult it must have been for him to acknowl­edge this error.

For the dura­tion of my stint there, Superintendent Brooks tried to mend fences, par­tic­u­lar­ly when cer­tain well placed per­sons called and asked him to have me stop by to see them when I’m on enquir­ers at night.

That woman in Cassava-Piece under­stood the val­ue of launch­ing a pre-pre­emp­tive attack on me in order to have me removed from the case. She knew that her sons were going down and down they went. I recov­ered the motor-cycle in Drewsland and all involved were giv­en their just due in court, includ­ing M..‘s sons.

My col­leagues who were sta­tioned there at the time knows exact­ly what fam­i­ly I am refer­ring to. I write of these encoun­ters to encour­age senior offi­cers to set the exam­ple that they want younger offi­cers to fol­low. If you hope to change the JCF , you must be the change you desire.

I spoke to a friend recent­ly who is a mem­ber of the Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCF) he has been a cop since 1987, hard-work­ing dis­ci­plined, he has been a Sargent for over a decade, at the ripe old age of 44 he is now look­ing to leave the job he loves because he is stuck. The fact is that he does not kiss up, he’s not into pol­i­tics, and he is not con­nect­ed. Every day we read of cops doing things we would be alarmed at even if they were com­mit­ted by reg­u­lar crim­i­nals. I recall an instruc­tor ask­ing the class while I was on CIB course which offense was on the books that police offi­cers had not com­mit­ted? We remained silent, the more we thought about it the longer the silence grew, this was back in 1991. The point of all this is that even as the force is strug­gling with an image that is bad­ly in need of resus­ci­ta­tion and repair, it con­tin­ues to frus­trate good offi­cers, forc­ing them to leave for green­er pas­tures. As an Agency the JCF has an abnor­mal­ly high attri­tion rate, high­er that any oth­er agency in the coun­try. This begs the ques­tion why? If as some say that police offi­cers are ego-mani­a­cal light­weights who gets high on the pow­er, why does offi­cers give up that pow­er so freely?

I joined the JCF in 1982, passed grade 1 exams at 2 years ser­vice, no promotion.Passed grade 2 at 4 years ser­vice, no pro­mo­tion .I was not made act­ing cor­po­ral until about 7 years ser­vice, despite pass­ing the exam at 2 years ser­vice, and had already passed the grade 2 years ear­li­er. I went on CIB course , as well as qual­i­fied and passed the accel­er­at­ed exams and the inter­view, had a clean record with numer­ous com­men­da­tions, yet I was­n’t pro­mot­ed Corporal until I had decid­ed to leave at 9 years plus ser­vice. My sin I did not take no bull and I did not kiss ass. I was laud­ed by sev­er­al Judges as a fine exam­ple of what a good and com­pe­tent police Officer should be. Their Honors, Basil Reid, Donald Macintosh, His wife her Honor Mrs Marva Macintosh were some of the Senior Judges who had incred­i­bly high praise for not just my work , or case prepa­ra­tion, but the way I tes­ti­fied in court. Many Lawyers were ter­ri­fied to face me and this is no idle boast, it is his­tor­i­cal fact, not intend­ed as puffery , just to make the point.

In fair­ness to trail lawyers who I am par­tic­u­lar­ly hard on today, I have friends who told me in con­fi­dence if I ever need­ed a lawyer, they would rep­re­sent me pro-bono, they know them­selves, they are prac­tic­ing today.The only peo­ple who could not appre­ci­ate the val­ue of my work were the peo­ple whose job it was to do so, well at least some of them.

There are many oth­ers who left the JCF, or more appro­pri­ate­ly the JCF left them, because of poor lead­er­ship on the part of senior offi­cers who were them­selves pro­mot­ed to posi­tions they were not qual­i­fied or equipped for. I write this because it impor­tant to note that the police depart­ment as an enti­ty, has no oth­er com­mod­i­ty on which to trade except its human resource. Yet one of the great­est fail­ure of the JCF is it’s con­tin­ued inabil­i­ty to ade­quate­ly pro­mote and exploit that which is it’s great­est asset.

A sim­ple push-poll of for­mer mem­bers, would sup­port my asser­tion, many for­mer mem­bers irre­spec­tive of where they emi­grat­ed to, are doing expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter for them­selves and their fam­i­lies than they ever did serv­ing in the JCF. We always spoke to the nobil­i­ty of the Agency,I some­times won­der whether we are not refer­ring to the way we would have liked it to be rather than the way it actu­al­ly is?

Unless you have walked a mile in my shoes then you can­not know how I feel. I crit­i­cize the Jamaican Police Commissioner’s use of force pol­i­cy, not because it is whole­sale abhor­rent, but because it was for­mu­lat­ed with­out any input from the prin­ci­pal play­ers, police offi­cers fac­ing the criminals.

It is not unusu­al that the Commissioner of police or his pre­de­ces­sors before him would for­mu­late work­ing doc­u­ments with­out any input from the cops on the beat or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the fed­er­a­tion. It bears say­ing also, that I was nev­er a fan of cops in the Federation, they cur­ry favor,and look for their own inter­est. Essentially the police in Jamaica are with­out any­one lob­by­ing on their behalf. The Commissioner of Police and mem­bers of the gazetted Ranks are Civil Servants,they serve at the dis­cre­tion of the polit­i­cal direc­torate. Rank and file, from the rank of Inspector to Constable are sub­se­quent­ly reliant on the Federation to look out for their inter­est, yet mem­bers vot­ed into the Federation, has tra­di­tion­al­ly been pup­pets of one or the oth­er polit­i­cal par­ty, they sit and wait to be pro­mot­ed out of there, some­times after nego­ti­at­ing hor­rif­ic deals for their members.

There is heavy human rights ele­ment to the com­mis­sion­er’s new pol­i­cy with a less than ade­quate counter-bal­ance for offi­cer safe­ty. In fact this doc­u­ment seem to have orig­i­nat­ed from the Fagan Avenue Office of Criminal Rights lob­by (JFJ). Owen Ellington is a prod­uct of the University of the West Indies,he holds two degrees includ­ing a Masters in busi­ness Administration from that hot-bed of left-wing ide­ol­o­gy. In short I applaud Ellington for get­ting an edu­ca­tion, but he is not a cop , nev­er was one, it is no won­der then that he pre­sent­ed this laugh­able doc­u­ment as a work­ing doc­u­ment on which offi­cers lives are hinged.

Jamaican crim­i­nals are demon­ic and heart­less, they rape and mur­der as a mat­ter of course, police depart­ments in the devel­oped world has found out first-hand the deprav­i­ty and cal­lous dis­re­gard they have for human life.

During the 1980’s when Jamaican cops became seri­ous with crim­i­nals, many ran to oth­er shores, there they demon­strat­ed their scant regard for human life, includ­ing those of law-enforce­ment offi­cers. Legislators and law-enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als in coun­tries like the USA, Canada, the UK and oth­ers, hasti­ly draft­ed seri­ous and sweep­ing leg­is­la­tion that made it clear that they were not going to tol­er­ate that kind of crim­i­nal­i­ty on their shores and that they were absolute­ly not going to have their law-enforce­ment offi­cers left unprotected.

Federal laws like the Rico statute and on the state lev­el, many states includ­ing New York and California, passed the there strikes and you are out and the Rockefeller laws which gave law-enforce­ment the tools they need­ed to do their jobs. I have spo­ken to many mem­bers of the NYPD who have relat­ed to me how seri­ous they were forced to take the Jamaican crim­i­nals, the cal­lous­ness of these crim­i­nals ‚these cops had pre­vi­ous­ly nev­er seen.

If a cop has to fire a warn­ing shot mis­ter com­mis­sion­er he does not need to pull his weapon. I do not expect you to under­stand this you nev­er had the need to pull a weapon to defend your­self and nei­ther has your close ally Carolyn Gomes.

Several years ago I was a mem­ber of the Rangers Squad based at the Mobile Reserve. Early one sun­ny after­noon four of us were on rou­tine patrol in a Toyota Land Cruiser in the Jacques road area of Mountain View Avenue, I can­not recall all the mem­ber of that patrol team that day but I remem­ber the dri­ver Acting Corporal Berry, a jovial guy who spoke with a stutter.

We were head­ing up Jacques road, for those of you old enough to recall, those land cruis­ers announced them­selves a half a mile away,

the engine had a cer­tain famil­iar sound. As we round­ed a cor­ner there were a group of about six men sit­ting on a wall, on see­ing the vehi­cle they all rolled off the wall like trained pro­fes­sion­als. In a flash we were out, I was the youngest mem­ber of that team, we raced into the yard after them, M16 at the ready. They round­ed the cor­ner of the house and we stopped abrupt­ly, not intend­ing to run into a hail of gun­fire. Berry being the dri­ver was the last per­son out, he raced to where we were and was about to run around the cor­ner when I grabbed him by the back of his belt and pulled him down.

On my stom­ach I peered around the cor­ner and there was the muz­zle of a gun point­ed to where my col­league Berry would have been. Thank God we did not lose any­one that day. The biggest take-away from that event was that these men were not con­tent to just escape from the police with their ille­gal guns, they want­ed to kill us.

On ever occa­sion that I pulled my weapon as a front line cop for the decade I served, I believed it was nec­es­sary to pre­serve my life and the life of oth­ers. When a pedi­atric doc­tor who has a vendet­ta against law-enforce­ment offi­cers gets to make pol­i­cy, Police Officers die.

Lets be clear, Carolyn Gomes, Terrence Williams, Susan Goffe,and Earl Witter does not care how many Police offi­cers die, in fact they con­tend that instances of police killings are not com­men­su­rate with the num­ber of dead cops, as such they are not credible.

Let me tell you what that means , not enough cops are get­ting killed.

Ellington has not stood with front line cops, police offi­cers are oper­at­ing with prison hang­ing over their heads for doing what they are sworn to do.

This must stop and I will not stop try­ing until I am able to effect change, I will not sit by while this lying char­la­tan, excite, encour­age, sup­port, and empow­er crim­i­nals to kill police officers.

Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington issued new direc­tives to cops on the streets regard­ing the use of lethal force. On the issuance of those direc­tives we argued that there was no need for a new use of lethal force pol­i­cy, because the exist­ing pol­i­cy is clear, unequiv­o­cal and is stan­dard pro­to­col in the west­ern world. Of course Commissioner Ellington who nev­er faced an armed crim­i­nal in his life is out on the ocean with­out a pad­dle on this ever so impor­tant policy.

That stan­dard is sim­ple, a police offi­cer may dis­charge his/​her weapon in defense of his life or that of anoth­er. Nothing that Ellington adds or take away from that uni­ver­sal pro­to­col ‚on Carolyn Gomes’ behalf will change the fact that cops have a right, every time and are jus­ti­fi­able every time that they have to dis­charge their weapons under the cir­cum­stances I laid out above.

Here are the direc­tives from the Commissioner Of Police.

In a release obtained by OG​.NR, Police Commissioner Owen Ellington has issued new guide­lines to JCF mem­bers in this week’s force orders.

This new direc­tive comes fol­low­ing the recent shoot­ing death of 16-yr-old Vanessa Kirkland who was killed in con­tro­ver­sial cir­cum­stances on Norman lane in Kingston ear­li­er this week. The Commissioner says fol­low­ing recent dis­cus­sions a review of Police pro­ce­dures in the use of Police Force is be done in two weeks by a team lead by the Deputy Commissioner of Inspectors who is expect­ed to make rad­i­cal changes.

Protecting Human Rights and Human Dignity: A JCF Priority

Among our strate­gic pri­or­i­ties is to pro­mote respect for and pro­tec­tion of human rights and human dig­ni­ty. Recent revi­sion of our Firearms and Use of Force Policy with accom­pa­ny­ing train­ing and sen­si­ti­za­tion efforts are the ini­tia­tives tak­en in pur­suit of this pri­or­i­ty. In the last five years, we have made con­sid­er­able progress in the train­ing and re-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of our front-line mem­bers in the safe use and care of firearms. We have made changes to our weapons sys­tem, reflect­ing an imper­a­tive to reduce the risk of col­lat­er­al injury when we are forced to engage crim­i­nal ele­ments in built up areas.

This is most evi­dent in the shift away from rou­tine use of M16 Assault Rifles and Carbines in street lev­el polic­ing to the lighter and less lethal MP5 Sub-Machine Guns and Glock Pistols. The re-intro­duc­tion of pep­per spray with the stat­ed inten­tion to equip 6000 front-line per­son­nel with a com­bi­na­tion of less lethal options to the use of dead­ly force, are all part of a process being under­tak­en with the ulti­mate aim of build­ing a response capa­bil­i­ty that can counter vio­lence direct­ed at front-line per­son­nel by civil­ians, while at the same time, reduce or pre­vent injury and death of attack­ers as well as bystanders.

Recent Shootings and Fatalities

In recent weeks, the Jamaica Constabulary Force has faced much crit­i­cism for an abnor­mal increase in civil­ian fatal­i­ties aris­ing from armed con­fronta­tion with crim­i­nal sus­pects in a very short peri­od of time. Tough ques­tions are being raised about the ade­qua­cy of our Use of Force Policy and the extent to which our front­line mem­bers sub­ject their thoughts and actions to said Policy. Those who crit­i­cize and raise ques­tions or con­cerns about the rate of police killings do so legit­i­mate­ly and iden­ti­fy with the grow­ing num­ber of cit­i­zens who have set high­er stan­dards of pro­fes­sion­al­ism from their police ser­vice. We should not see our crit­ics, on this mat­ter of use of force, as adver­saries, but rather, val­ued part­ners who may yet help us refine our tech­niques, thus enabling us to bet­ter achieve our strate­gic pri­or­i­ty of pro­tect­ing human rights and human dignity.

We are a Responsive Force

The Jamaica Constabulary Force must respond to the legit­i­mate con­cerns and expec­ta­tions of our cit­i­zens. The rate of police/​criminal con­fronta­tions, with atten­dant injuries and fatal­i­ties is unac­cept­ably high. Though we are see­ing decline in such inci­dence over recent years, we are nowhere near the point where we can be com­fort­able with this record.

Key Policy Considerations

The Minister of National Security has request­ed that a com­pre­hen­sive review of the Jamaica Constabulary Force Operating Procedures be con­duct­ed with a view to mak­ing adjust­ments where appro­pri­ate. Accordingly, at our last Executive Management Board Meeting on Monday, March 19, the senior lead­er­ship of the Force spent almost one hour dis­cussing the most recent inci­dents of mul­ti­ple casu­al­ties aris­ing from police/​criminal confrontations.

Arising from the dis­cus­sions, a team led by the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge Inspection, has been tasked to con­duct an urgent review of our Use of Force Policy and

Training and make rec­om­men­da­tion for rad­i­cal improve­ment with­in two weeks. Among the changes under con­sid­er­a­tion and which the High Command has asked Senior Officers to con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tions with rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tions and their juniors are:

• Standard of Care to be exer­cised when dead­ly force is to be used. The cur­rent view is that police offi­cers’ first reac­tion when faced with dan­ger is “offi­cer safe­ty”. We are seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing a pol­i­cy posi­tion which demands that police offi­cers exer­cise equal con­cern for “bystander safe­ty”, extend­ed to the attack­er as they do for their own safe­ty. That is to say our offi­cers must take rea­son­able and safe steps to pro­tect the lives of attack­ers and “pos­si­ble bystander” as they do to pro­tect their own lives. I sug­gest “pos­si­ble bystanders” to make it clear that our duty of care extends to per­sons seen and unseen. Others who may be out of view being shield­ed by pen­e­tra­ble bar­ri­ers such as fence, soft walls or pan­els of motor vehi­cles. Officers are called upon to seri­ous­ly con­sid­er the con­se­quences of shoot­ing into crowds, build­ings, through phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers or into motor vehi­cles. Let us all assume that there are inno­cent per­sons in those posi­tions whose lives may be put at grave risk when we shoot and in such sit­u­a­tions “do not shoot”. Our pub­lic’s expect a high stan­dard of care from us because we are sworn to pro­tect life. Our actions should con­vince our pub­lic’s that even in the face of dan­ger; we have no desire to take life.

• Threat to Use of Deadly Force. The exist­ing Force Policy insists that a police offi­cer should not remove a hand­gun from its hol­ster or train a rifle unless he is legal­ly and moral­ly pre­pared to take a life. The Policy posi­tion obvi­ous­ly reflects what must be the ulti­mate con­se­quence of deploy­ing dead­ly force and empha­sizes the seri­ous nature of the act of dis­charg­ing a firearm in any place. We believe such strict rule denies the police offi­cer the tac­ti­cal option of “threat­en­ing the use of dead­ly force” while demand­ing that an attack­er ceas­es an attack or drops a weapon. Consideration is being giv­en to a pol­i­cy to change allow­ing offi­cers to:

1. train a loaded weapon on an armed attack­er and demand that

he drops a weapon and ceas­es an attack under threat of being shot;

1. appeal to bystanders to move out of an arc of fire for their own safety;
2. relate to the attack­er the con­se­quence of con­tin­u­ing an armed attack on any per­son while call­ing wit­ness­es to the officer’s effort at dif­fus­ing a volatile situation;
3. ver­bal­ize an assur­ance to an attack­er that dis­arm­ing is in both the officer’s and attacker’s own safety.

• Firing of Warning Shots. This prac­tice is pro­hib­it­ed in our cur­rent pol­i­cy. We gave much thought to revis­ing this posi­tion along the lines of giv­ing front-line offi­cers the option of dis­charg­ing a warn­ing shot in a safe direc­tion as an esca­la­tion of threat to use dead­ly force, but stop­ping short of direct­ing force on a human tar­get. This, if applied as a tac­ti­cal option, will:
• force­ful­ly bring home to armed sus­pects the grave dan­ger to which they expose them­selves and oth­ers if they con­tin­ue an armed attack or the threat of attack of the police.
• enable an armed sus­pect to assess the infe­ri­or­i­ty of his fire pow­er to that of the police, mak­ing him real­ize that con­tin­ued attack or threats posed by him is futile and poten­tial­ly fatal.

1. cause bystanders to retreat from “hot zone” or take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tion to avoid injury, which may include sig­nalling their loca­tion to the police and mak­ing an appeal for safe extraction.
2. sig­nal attempts by the police to counter a threat of vio­lence with­out use of dead­ly force.
3. Containment and Waiting Out Armed Suspect. This is already a require­ment of the Firearms and Use of Force Policy but obvi­ous­ly not used as often as need­ed. Several inci­dents show that all oppor­tu­ni­ties of con­tain­ment and dif­fus­ing armed stand-offs were not ful­ly exploit­ed. We will insist in the revised Policy that no forced and armed extrac­tion of sus­pects from any premis­es, vehi­cle or bar­ri­cad­ed area should be under­tak­en until the police have exhaust­ed all options to effect an unarmed sur­ren­der and the sus­pects have giv­en all oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so. The only excep­tion is where the sus­pect pos­es immi­nent threat to the life of any per­son and delayed action from the police would wors­en the situation.
4. 

Criminal Rights activist Carolyn Gomes:

1. Tactical Retreat. Our police offi­cers are cul­tured to pay the ulti­mate price rather than retreat from armed crim­i­nal attack. We are work­ing on a set of pro­ce­dures which could accom­mo­date “tac­ti­cal retreat” as an option to pre­serve human life with­out under­min­ing the sense of pride and hon­or of front-line offi­cers. We will begin the con­ver­sa­tion with the idea that a tac­ti­cal retreat does not sig­nal aban­don­ment of the cause.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…
2. END OF GUIDELINES:
3. I ask all of you my read­ers, do update me on which Police depart­ment to your knowl­edge retreats from armed crim­i­nals as a strat­e­gy. This is mind blow­ing sur­ren­der to crim­i­nal ele­ments in Jamaica by those tasked with enforc­ing the coun­try’s laws. Jamaica is now see­ing acts of ter­ror syn­ony­mous to what is hap­pen­ing in sub-Saharan Africa.
4. Just last week scores of heav­i­ly armed men burned sev­er­al hous­es in one area, mur­dered some occu­pants and ordered oth­ers nev­er to return. This is the Jamaica run by Carolyn Gomes of the crim­i­nal Rights group Jamaicans for Justice. This they do not want you to know, don’t buy the lies about Jamaica no problem.

When groups of armed men, some­times scores, and in uncon­firmed cas­es hun­dreds, can amass toward a com­mon cause, as was the case in Tivoli Gardens in 2010, or in Gravel Heights and many oth­er instances, in Saint Catherine, St. James, Clarendon, and oth­er Parishes, do you still believe it’s just crime?

Do you still say “Jamaica nice” or does Jamaica have seri­ous prob­lems which needs address­ing now and with all seriousness?
What is to stop them from tak­ing out whomev­er they chose to?
Ask your­selves these ques­tions, even as you crit­i­cize us for air­ing the dirty laun­dry in public!!!
Who is safe, is the Prime Minister real­ly safe? Is any­one safe?
If these Mercenaries real­ly want to get some­one what’s to stop them?
It took a mass build-up of troops and police and help from the United States to dis­lodge Coke.

Burnt out homes:(cour­tesy­ja­maicaob­serv­er)
So ask your­selves this, if these heav­i­ly armed demons wants to do any­thing what’s to stop them?
You may dis­lodge them later.
But the dam­age will have already be done.
This is seri­ous busi­ness, we all must put pres­sure on the Administration in pow­er in Jamaica to take steps right away to remove this exis­ten­tial threat from the coun­try immediately.

Leroy Robinson mur­dered try­ing to save his neigh­bor after ter­ror­ists set her house on fire:
This is not pol­i­tics, it’s real­i­ty, your atten­tion to this will speak vol­umes, it’s not about jokes and bull, this is seri­ous, peo­ple are dying , young girls are being raped and forced into pros­ti­tu­tion, homes are being torched, some­times sev­er­al at a time.
We sim­ply can­not pre­tend any longer.

While these acts of domes­tic ter­ror­ism are hap­pen­ing the state charged sev­er­al police­men with mur­der on the demand of Carolyn Gomes of Jamaicans for Justice, (JFJ) local crim­i­nal rights lobby.

The case against the police offi­cers as out­lined in the Gleaners Story, may have bor­dered on reck­less­ness, but mur­der? It is alleged that a rob­bery occurred in Portmore Saint Catherine and the rob­bers were tailed to a Kingston loca­tion where they were engaged by police and a young woman was killed and sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple injured.

There is no indi­ca­tion whose bul­let hit who , of course Carolyn Gomes has demand­ed the offi­cers be charged with Murder. Terrence Williams INDECOM boss, drunk with pow­er and demand­ing more pow­er, obvi­ous­ly hot under the col­lar that the cops were not charged imme­di­ate­ly after he sub­mit­ted the file to the DPP, just this week went to the media demand­ing more pow­ers so he may pros­e­cute police officers.

Acquiescing to the howls for blood, the DPP has charged the offi­cers with mur­der, I am not ful­ly con­ver­sant with the facts of the case so I will with­hold com­ments on the case itself. Sufficing to say, there is law in Jamaica that gives the DPP the pow­er to charge a police offi­cer with a crime, in order to quell pub­lic dis­qui­et, even though there may not be evi­dence to sup­port the charge.

Many police offi­cers do not know this, yet when offi­cers are exon­er­at­ed peo­ple scream cov­er-up, because they do not know there was no evi­dence to begin with. Yet cops spend all their income, are ruined finan­cial­ly, and car­rear-wise, for doing what they were sworn to do.

Murder is a the unlaw­ful killing of a human being by anoth­er human being with mal­ice aforethought.

I am won­der­ing how they charged mur­der, where is the mal­ice, implied or expressed in this case? I will be watch­ing , you should too.