Armed mer­ce­nar­ies erect bar­ri­cades to an entry point into Tivoli Gardens as they pre­pared for war against the Jamaican State in 2010.

This coun­try we know as Jamaica, some of us love, some claim to love, is fast descend­ing into a cesspool which will only attract the worst types of crim­i­nals, if we do not put a stop to it now.

Decent peo­ple are already shun­ning our beloved coun­try because of what’s hap­pen­ing there, we are fast-track­ing to becom­ing anoth­er sub-Saharan hell-hole.
Why is the National empha­sis on what is alleged­ly done by mem­bers of the Military, most of which are like­ly dis­tor­tions and dis­trac­tions ? (NOT argu­ing there should be no accountability).!!!
The National con­sen­sus must expo­nen­tial­ly be cen­tered on find­ing out how a com­mu­ni­ty got to what Tivoli Gardens mat­estacised into.

More impor­tant­ly, how could a local crim­i­nal become so pow­er­ful, that he was vir­tu­al­ly untouch­able locally.
Why the hell are we re-writ­ing history ?

Police sta­tion burns:

The Office of Public Defender has final­ly released the long await­ed Report, of what exact­ly tran­spired in the West Kingston Community of Tivoli Gardens in 2010. This has revived a vibrant debate on the issue, most of which so far has been in my esti­ma­tion fright­en­ing­ly mis­guid­ed and unpatriotic.

Someone not con­ver­sant with what led up to the Jamaican State annex­ing Tivoli Gardens to the rest of the coun­try, could seri­ous­ly walk away believ­ing that the peo­ple are seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion from a for­eign gov­ern­ment which ille­gal­ly invad­ed their enclave.

Bullet rid­dled police station:

The truth of the mat­ter is, since it’s incep­tion Tivoli Gardens has long enjoyed a type of favored sta­tus, one that is un-earned, but which has been bestowed on it nonethe­less ‚much like the fabled old­er sis­ters in the Cinderella story.

Tivoli Gardens, the brain-child of it’s patron Edward Seaga, for­mer Prime Minister and peren­ni­al mem­ber of Parliament, had a split per­son­al­i­ty. At best it was a great exam­ple of com­mu­ni­ty, a great com­mu­ni­ty clin­ic, my old­est son was born in that very clin­ic. A great Comprehensive High School, and oth­er social ameni­ties. Tivoli Gardens was ground zero for cul­ture and sports, much to the delight of Seaga who saw his efforts at social engi­neer­ing sim­i­lar to a par­ent child relationship.

Darling Street Police Station destroyed:

But like a dot­ing par­ent Seaga failed to heed the prob­lems ema­nat­ing from that com­mu­ni­ty, much like a par­ent ignor­ing and deny­ing the wrongs been done by his teenag­er. Many argue that Seaga more than ignored those prob­lems, he was the cre­ator of those problems.

The Don cul­ture which evolved from the Tivoli com­mu­ni­ty mod­el, is now pos­ing an exis­ten­tial threat to the social order of Jamaica as we knew it. Seaga fun­da­men­tal­ly believed in the social mod­el he cre­at­ed, which was one of a hier­ar­chi­cal struc­ture with him at the polit­i­cal zenith. He also cre­at­ed the space for a Don or so-called(com­mu­ni­ty leader) who saw to the day to day affairs of the community.

This com­mu­ni­ty leader han­dled the affairs of the com­mu­ni­ty, the prob­lem with this how­ev­er is that it removed Tivoli from the sphere of influ­ence of the broad­er Jamaican soci­ety. This includes the abil­i­ty of the Police to arrest felons who take up res­i­dence there after they had com­mit­ted egre­gious crimes in oth­er parts of the country.

Seaga famous­ly asked years ago , quote: “What was Adams doing in Tivoli Gardens”? in ref­er­ence to then leader of the crime man­age­ment unit going into the com­mu­ni­ty to appre­hend want­ed men. Seaga unwit­ting­ly gave a peek into how he real­ly saw the com­mu­ni­ty, appar­ent­ly as his fief­dom not sub­ject to the reach or dic­tates of the rule of law.

As a boy grow­ing up in Saint Catherine, I was a fan of Tivoli Gardens, I saw that com­mu­ni­ty as a nec­es­sary counter-bal­ance to the con­fla­gra­tion of PNP gar­risons which had lit­er­al­ly sprung up every­where in the Kingston and Saint Andrew met­ro­pol­i­tan area. Years lat­er I changed my mind­set when as part of a Special Police unit from the Mobile Reserve I took sus­tained auto­mat­ic fire from that com­mu­ni­ty at the Denham Town Police Station, hun­kered down and ordered by the Superintendent not to return fire.

When the fir­ing ceased a police truck parked in front of the sta­tion was destroyed, bul­let holes pot-marked the walls of the sta­tion, where panes of glass exist­ed min­utes ear­li­er shards of shat­tered glass told a jagged tale of hor­ror. No one was ever held respon­si­ble. The prob­lem with what hap­pened that day is this, it hap­pened sim­ply because one boot-lick­ing, lap-dog Superintendent had his nose too far up Seaga’s ass to get out of our way, or was too much of a cow­ard to get out-of-the-way and let us do our jobs. My per­cep­tion of the JCF changed that day, it has­n’t improved since.

How could that com­mu­ni­ty not take on a brazen don’t care atti­tude of being untouchable?

The group of Ranger Squad mem­bers, of which I was a part, were more than capa­ble of han­dling those scum­bags that day. We were ide­al­ists who would have made the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice for the Jamaican state. Politics drove a nail in the cof­fin of the Jamaican state on that day.

In any coun­try where the rule of law is usurped, the empha­sis lat­er is gen­er­al­ly to make sure that those opposed to the nat­ur­al order are dealt with quick­ly and deci­sive­ly. This is true even in states that does not nec­es­sar­i­ly adhere to demo­c­ra­t­ic norms.

In Jamaica today, the con­ver­sa­tion is cen­tered around com­pen­sa­tion for res­i­dents of Tivoli Gardens. From the bull-shit report com­ing out of Witter’s office, to the par­lia­ment, to the reg­u­lar vil­lage lawyer, the argu­ment is about appor­tion­ing blame to the foot sol­diers of the secu­ri­ty forces who went in and restored san­i­ty to that vol­canic situation.

In most coun­tries those mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces would have received com­men­da­tions and have acco­lades heaped on them. In Jamaica the out­ra­geous sen­ti­ment is that a com­mis­sion of inquiry must now be con­vened to dig fur­ther to see what ille­gal act was com­mit­ted by those brave mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces, (if any) in what was a the­ater of war.

If you are final­ly appalled and out­raged you should be, this is in addi­tion to the wast­ed $76.098-million which has been allo­cat­ed to Witter’s office for this year. For that mon­ey, tax-pay­ers received a report call­ing for a com­mis­sion of inquiry, and yes that the peo­ple in Tivoli Gardens should be paid handsomely.

You ask what they should be paid for ? Your guess is as good as mine.

Jamaica just secured anoth­er loan from the International Monetary Fund, this mon­ey though nec­es­sary for the short term, will be part­ly respon­si­ble for dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to the coun­try’s attempt at sol­ven­cy in the future.

This will add to the coun­try’s bur­geon­ing debt cri­sis. Working police offi­cers, nurs­es teach­ers , fire­men and oth­ers, who apply to the National Housing Trust for mort­gages are turned down, years ago I was one of them. The Jamaican Prime Minister recent­ly announced a plan to build hous­ing units for urban dwellers, to peo­ple famil­iar with Jamaica, these are peo­ple who are unable finan­cial­ly to pay for those homes. They are polit­i­cal hand­outs for votes.

In effect, it is a dis­gust­ing­ly cyn­i­cal attempt at vote buy­ing, while work­ing pro­fes­sion­als are turned away , unem­ployed peo­ple will be housed at no cost to them­selves. If you ever won­dered why Jamaica is the way it is you should digest what you just read here today.

Kern Omar Spencer, MP (born 21 June 1974 in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica) is a Jamaican politi­cian. A mem­ber of the People’s National Party, Mr. Spencer served as Member of Parliament (MP) for St. Elizabeth North Eastern from 2007 to 2011.

Kern Spencer. And his assis­tant Coleen Wright.

While a state min­is­ter in the ener­gy min­istry in the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment led by the PNP, Spencer was placed in charge of an ener­gy-sav­ing project. The project involved the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four mil­lion free Cuban light bulbs island-wide. The project was imple­ment­ed in July 2006.^[3] Allegations of irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the project were lev­eled against Spencer in Parliament in November 2007 by then Energy Minister Clive Mullings, who asked the audi­tor-gen­er­al and the con­trac­tor-gen­er­al to probe the mat­ter ^[3] Clive Mullings, told Parliament that $114 mil­lion was improp­er­ly spent on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four mil­lion ener­gy-sav­ing light bulbs donat­ed by the Cuban Government to the peo­ple of Jamaica.^{[4]wikipedia.}

The Court of Appeal upheld a Supreme Court rul­ing that Senior Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey does not have the pow­er to sub­poe­na Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewelyn as a wit­ness in the tri­al. Pusey, who is pre­sid­ing over the tri­al, had chal­lenged the Supreme Court rul­ing.(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

Let me be clear about one thing, irre­spec­tive of my per­son­al dis­like for politi­cians, and my per­son­al feel­ings as to what hap­pened in this case, the accused, Kern Spencer must be giv­en due process. He must be pre­sumed inno­cent until proven guilty by a court of law.

All fair mind­ed Jamaicans want in this mat­ter is that jus­tice be done. I have no infor­ma­tion about the guilt or inno­cence of the accused, so I am thrilled that the high court has now cleared the way for the tri­al to go ahead.

From the begin­ning that this case came to the nation’s atten­tion I opined in these blogs and wher­ev­er else my views are allowed, that there would be mas­sive stone-walling which would see this case delayed and delayed until it is tossed from the cal­en­dar for want of prosecution.

There is prece­dent which sup­ports my cyn­i­cism, the pow­er­ful and well con­nect­ed in Jamaica sim­ply do not get con­vict­ed in a court of law or gets sent to prison. Despite mas­sive cor­rup­tion , graft , and acts of thiev­ery which per­me­ates Jamaica’s polit­i­cal system,I stand to be cor­rect­ed but to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion there has only been one politi­cian ever con­vict­ed and sent to prison. That was for­mer labor Minister in the JLP ‚JAG Smith, (now deceased).

We don’t know what will hap­pen in this case, Spencer and the PNP can afford to pay some pret­ty com­pe­tent defense coun­sel, which is nev­er in short sup­ply in Jamaica. In fact I thought that like so many oth­er cas­es involv­ing the con­nect­ed, defense coun­sel would be able to use the laws to Spencer“s advan­tage to pre­vent a tri­al. When the loop-holes in the penal code are con­sid­ered , shod­dy police work, added to poor prepa­ra­tion and just bad pros­e­cu­tion, it’s a won­der any­one gets con­vict­ed for crimes in Jamaica.

Even when there are con­vic­tions they gen­er­al­ly gets over­turned on appeal.

I nev­er imag­ined that the stone-walling would come from the Bench. 

From the incep­tion of this medi­um, I have report­ed and com­ment­ed on the judi­cial activism of Judith Pusey. Case after case, com­ment after com­ment she has over­stepped the nor­mal deco­rum of judi­cial restraint. This per­for­mance how­ev­er takes the cake. There are not many instances if any, where a Magistrate has so inject­ed her/​himself into a case, that defense coun­sel did not need to get involved. The Magistrate appoint­ed her­self default-defense coun­sel for Kern Spencer.

She picked a fight with the Director of Public Prosecution on her author­i­ty to decide who should be used as wit­ness, as against who should be the prin­ci­pal offend­er, she chal­lenged the evi­dence, she chal­lenged the way the evi­dence was col­lect­ed, and she used tax­pay­ers mon­ey to chal­lenge the DPP to the High Court.

As I said then, this Magistrate needs to be tak­en down a peg, her brand of activism is bet­ter suit­ed for defense coun­sel, she should do the hon­or­able thing and resign upon which she can join Spencer’s defense team. The Jamaica peo­ple can­not and will not get jus­tice in this case as long as Judith Pusey is allowed to hear this case.

It is incum­bent on the Chief Justice to remove her from this case now in the inter­est of Justice.Whether she did any­thing wrong is not impor­tant, Justice must not only be done it must seem to be done. Her actions before have been eye­brow rais­ing on instance, ques­tion­able on oth­ers, on this case her behav­ior has been disgraceful.

Our coun­try do not need Magistrates or Judges who see their role as that of crim­i­nal defend­er, it is about time that some com­pe­tent author­i­ty take a real close look at her. Justice can­not be hostage to a Resident Magistrate whose moti­va­tions are unclear.

Ok scratch that there is no com­pe­tent author­i­ty in Jamaica to do that, God help our lit­tle Island.

Cops in Jamaica have point­ed to what they char­ac­ter­ize as the re-emer­gence of cocaine com­ing from South America. They brag that they have smashed the Lotto scam and cites that as the rea­son cocaine is once again flood­ing the streets of the small car­ribean country.

Even as a sup­port­er of law enforce­ment in Jamaica I some­times have to shake my head in dis­be­lief at some of their utter­ances. First they con­tend­ed that they smashed the cocaine ring which result­ed in the lot­to rack­et, now they claim they smashed the lot­to scam so cocaine is back.

Ok, if you are con­fused you may not be alone, because none of this is true and nev­er will be true. Cocaine nev­er went any­where, and nei­ther will the lot­to scam or any oth­er crime which has the poten­tial to net the actors illic­it income.

The Jamaican Police does not serve the inter­est of the pub­lic or itself as an Agency when it refuse to name the South American Country from which the major­i­ty of cocaine is flow­ing into Jamaica.

It dimin­ish­es what­ev­er lit­tle cred­i­bil­i­ty the Agency may still have left, if any. Much the same way it con­tin­ues not to name dirty crim­i­nals who are attached to either polit­i­cal par­ty when they com­mit crimes.

One of the most effec­tive crime fight­ing tools law enforce­ment has at it’s dis­pos­al is exact­ly the oppo­site of what the Jamaican police does with crim­i­nals, hid­ing their iden­ti­ty. All crim­i­nals must be arrest­ed with fan­fare and made to do what is called a perp-walk for the cam­eras. Shaming crim­i­nals must be exploit­ed for what it’s worth, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a coun­try which is lit­er­al­ly inun­dat­ed with crime and terror.

But of course it would be remiss of me to think that the cas­trat­ed lap-dog police force in Jamaica would be able to pull this off. Criminals are crim­i­nals, be they rogue states or peo­ple, whether it be Portia or Azan, Columbia or Panama, the peo­ple need to know that the laws apply to all.

I cau­tion and implore the JCF to stop being a car­toon Police Force and once and for all start learn­ing how to be a cred­i­ble law enforce­ment Agency. The first order of busi­ness is to stop mak­ing stu­pid and inane statements.

Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, by a human being, with malice afore- thought. It is contrary to common law. What that means is that it is a given, it doesn’t need to be legislated , you simply do not unlawfully take the life of another human being.

There are real­ly no absolutes in any­thing, there are always oth­er ways of doing things, we may not agree , but because we can­not see an alter­na­tive way of doing things does­n’t mean there is no oth­er way. The Death penal­ty is one such issue. There are strong opin­ions on both sides of the death penal­ty issue and it’s appli­ca­tion. In many coun­tries it has been out­lawed as a form of pun­ish­ment. Opponents argued suc­cess­ful­ly in those local­i­ties that it is cru­el and inhu­mane pun­ish­ment. Never mind that those to whom the death penal­ty is admin­is­tered, are deemed mur­der­ers who nev­er gave a thought to the cru­el inhu­mane treat­ment they were met­ing out to their victims.

Some argue it is inef­fec­tive as a deter­rent to mur­der and as such it should be abol­ished. Others argue the death penal­ty from religious/​moral per­spec­tives. They make the case that soci­ety should for­give. My con­tention about the moral/​religious argu­ments are as fol­lows. If we believe the Bible’s account of Jesus’ death on the cross, be remind­ed that two peo­ple were also exe­cut­ed with him. As far as the Bible’s account of that con­ver­sa­tion between Jesus and the two men are con­cerned, at least one of the men agreed that he deserved the pun­ish­ment met­ed out to him. Also be remind­ed Jesus in his mer­cy for­gave that man for his sins, he was still made to pay the price for his sins.

That man was a thief not a mur­der­er, yet he and the oth­er paid the ulti­mate price for the acts they com­mit­ted, with the guilt­less Savior. Jesus nev­er once rebuked the author­i­ties for admin­is­ter­ing the death penal­ty to the thieves , much less him­self an inno­cent man. The notion that Capital pun­ish­ment is not a deter­rent is ludi­crous at best and at worst can­not be proven by those who make those claims. People who kill and are found guilty, who have exceed­ed all of their appeals under the law, and are put to death, are deterred. As I have said before there are no sil­ver bul­lets to any prob­lem but for that one mur­der­er, soci­ety need not wor­ry anymore.

Of all the things which infu­ri­ates me about those who are anti-cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, noth­ing both­ers me more than their hyp­o­crit­i­cal silence on the issues of vic­tims rights. They pre­tend that the vic­tims nev­er exist­ed, or show bla­tant and dis­re­spect­ful dis­re­gard for the rights of the inno­cent, even as they lob­by for that of the guilty.

In Jamaica Authorities have accept­ed the notion, that putting beast­ly demon­ic crim­i­nals who kill mul­ti­ple peo­ple with­out com­punc­tion to death, is cru­el and inhu­mane treat­ment. They have accept­ed what many in the Industrialized devel­oped world does­n’t, that we should sim­ply for­give those demons. As such a free for all exists as it regards the tak­ing of human life, there is no fear of con­se­quence, be it impris­on­ment or death. Anti death penal­ty lob­by­ists are as much at risk as those peo­ple who are will­ing to see the law take it’s course in a just and prop­er way.

Jamaicans in the know, are aware that on the streets it is to one’s cred­it to claim how many peo­ple he has killed, in local ver­nac­u­lar(how much dup­py him mek). It is dis­gust­ing to hear fraud­u­lent Elitist make anti-death penal­ty argu­ments, when they live in coun­tries which embrace and use the death penal­ty as an effec­tive tool in the fight against seri­ous crime and terror.

Those who argue that the death penal­ty should not be used because of the risk of killing the inno­cent do so with some legit­i­ma­cy. There have been cas­es where the inno­cent have been put to death due to impro­pri­ety by law enforce­ment offi­cers and pros­e­cu­tors who reused to pay atten­tion to excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence for var­i­ous rea­sons to include race and oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions. The emer­gence of DNA evi­dence as a crime fight­ing tool has freed a con­sid­er­able amount of peo­ple wrong­ly convicted.

The con­clu­sive nature of DNA evi­dence also makes the case for the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, even as it weeds out the inno­cent. Those opposed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment on the grounds that the inno­cent may be wrong­ly con­vict­ed, have no legit­i­mate quar­rel with the death penal­ty, their issue ought to be with unscrupu­lous cops and pros­e­cu­tors and tardy crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tems like the one which obtains in Jamaica.

You sim­ply do not throw out the baby with the bath-water, I urge the Jamaican Authorities to get on with the busi­ness of car­ry­ing out the will of the elec­torate and hang the cal­lous mur­der­ers on death row.

I have consistently said in these blogs that the present leadership in Jamaica will not be able to turn the country around, from the plague of serious crimes and poverty.

I have post­ed for your infor­ma­tion a speech giv­en by the coun­try’s National Security Minister Peter Bunting. I must con­grat­u­late Minister Bunting for the can­did elo­quence and heart-felt empa­thy which is inher­ent in his speech. I am not a fan of politi­cians and cer­tain­ly no fan of Bunting, but for this moment and this speech I do believe the Minister is being sin­cere. But in as much as Minister Bunting was being sin­cere, his speech gave a not often seen win­dow into the soul of how he and the Miller Administration feels at least on the sub­ject of crime. On this issue I am vin­di­cat­ed in my pro­nounce­ments that they do not have the answers , but I’m also fear­ful for the Jamaican peo­ple whose lead­er­ship is at their wit’s end on how to con­tain crime.

I would like to draw your atten­tion to this sen­tence I pulled from para­graph 3 of the Minister’s speech.

Quote: “However, I think that after 15 months I am con­vinced that the best efforts of the secu­ri­ty forces, by itself, will not solve the crime prob­lem in Jamaica.”

By this state­ment alone, the Minister revealed that they had no plan as an admin­is­tra­tion to curb, much less cure the crime epi­dem­ic, as I have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly point­ed out.

I can­not write too much on this issue, my site admin­is­tra­tor tells me my blogs are too long wind­ed, but I just want to give the Minister a few point­ers. He may con­tact me for details.

(1) Tough uncom­pro­mis­ing leg­is­la­tion which puts crim­i­nals away for good, look at the American Rico Statue.

(2) Set per­for­mance stan­dards for all police Officers, to elim­i­nat­ing dead-wood cops from the depart­ment, start­ing with the Commissioner of Police down.

(3) Remove the Police Department from polit­i­cal con­trol. Create an effec­tive Police review board from civ­il soci­ety. Each mem­ber of that pan­el should have impec­ca­ble cre­den­tials, (as per crim­i­nal record), like that of police offi­cers. Panelist must be sup­port­ive of the rule of law and of the needs of law enforce­ment officers.

(4) Equip the Police with the tools they need to do their jobs.

(5) Divide the coun­try into grids, keep tight con­trol of each grid by posi­tion­ing offi­cers at strate­gic loca­tions in vehi­cles so they may respond to the needs of the cus­tomers , the Jamaican public.

(6) This would effec­tive­ly remove cops from sta­tion hous­es and place them with the public.

(7) Sub Officers and offi­cers must be out with the men aug­ment­ing staff strength, day and night .

(8) The way patrols are done must be revamped. There is no need for offi­cers on patrol to be dri­ving around for an 8 hour shift, it is a colos­sal waste of gas and wear and tear on the vehi­cles which are already in short sup­ply> (see parked strate­gi­cal­ly in grid per­spec­tive).

(9)All ser­vice vehi­cles must be added to grid sup­port, no gazetted or sub-offi­cer should dri­ve a ser­vice vehi­cle home. All use of vehi­cles must be for doc­u­ment­ed police duties.

(10) Increase expo­nen­tial­ly, penal­ties not just for prin­ci­pal offend­ers who com­mit crimes ‚but also for sec­ondary offend­ers who aid or are oth­er­wise involved.(see rico statute)

(11) Hire and train more detec­tives, give them mer­it pay/​promotions.

(12) Remove cops from office duties except in super­vi­so­ry positions.

(13) No police depart­ment makes pub­lic its inter­nal mem­os. Stop mak­ing the Force Orders pub­lic, giv­ing away staff strength, , where cer­tain offi­cers are sta­tioned, or will be trans­ferred to and oth­er infor­ma­tion the pub­lic has no expec­ta­tion of hav­ing. You are endan­ger­ing offi­cers lives, and threat­en­ing nation­al security.

I give the Minister a 13 point plan com­men­su­rate with the list of thir­teens attrib­uted to his speech. Bunting’s addressed was on April 13^th, 2013 to the “13^th Annual Prayer and Thanksgiving Service for the Security Forces of Jamaica”

The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) has long lamented the shortage or absence of resources to get the job done effectively.

Police Station ‚Constant Spring:

Recently the Force announced it was oper­at­ing with 50% of the resources it needs to get the job done. Having served in the JCF I under­stand the seri­ous­ness of not hav­ing even the most basic resource to do the job.

On the oth­er hand I was also wit­ness to the JCF’s lack of man­age­ment, which result­ed in excep­tion­al waste and dupli­ca­tion of efforts, fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the resource issue.

These waste gen­er­al­ly are clear, first in the qual­i­ty of a por­tion of the Force, there have always been too many offi­cers who should find alter­na­tive employ­ment. This is attrib­ut­able to their lazi­ness, lack of focus, lack of integri­ty, lack of love for the job, lack of com­mit­ment to the cause.There are legit­i­mate argu­ments to be made for a lack of com­mit­ment. I would sim­ply argue that though those argu­ments are legit­i­mate, they are not rea­son enough to be a slack­er . Those opposed to work­ing for the wages , or are offend­ed by oth­er sit­u­a­tions are free to leave.

Then there is the treat­ment of the vehi­cles , which gen­er­al­ly are not suit­ed to Jamaica’s ter­rain, no fault of the Police and sec­ond­ly the round the clock oper­a­tion of the vehi­cles, again this is not some­thing that should rea­son­ably be pinned on the depart­ment, it is attrib­ut­able to the shortage.

The way patrols are done are inef­fec­tive and counter-pro­duc­tive even. This needs a com­plete reassessment .

On the gen­er­al issue of waste, the same argu­ments may be made about many busi­ness­es and agen­cies in Jamaica and oth­er coun­tries. Jamaica sim­ply can­not afford it.

When both sides of the resource issue is con­sid­ered, the truth lies some­where in between the two sides, with a lean­ing toward not near­ly enough of any­thing to do the job. With that said the true test of any man­ag­er or man­age­ment com­pa­ny, is to do the best job pos­si­ble with lim­it­ed resources.

In the American civ­il war between North and South, Union General, Westmoreland com­plained to President Abraham Lincoln about not hav­ing enough Troops to attack the Confederate South, Lincoln replaced Westmoreland with General Ulysses S Grant. We all know that Grant won the war sav­ing and cement­ing the Union and the United States as we know it today.

My point is that Jamaica is a poor devel­op­ing coun­try, many peo­ple will chal­lenge me even on the notion of Jamaica being a devel­op­ing coun­try. There will nev­er be enough resource to go around. Neither polit­i­cal par­ty is par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of the rule of law, in fact some of the peo­ple at the high­est lev­el of Government/​Opposition are crim­i­nals, or at a bare min­i­mum, main­tain crim­i­nal con­tact. They do not want a pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­tent and inde­pen­dent police department.

Late 1987 I was tem­po­ral­ly trans­ferred to Constant Spring along with three oth­er men, Allen Gauntlet, Keith Skully and O Marston oth­er­wise called (Fat-Ball), Marston was some­what port­ly, hence the moniker. None of us was full trans­ferred in Force Orders from The Mobile Reserve where we were offi­cial­ly sta­tioned, we were sim­ply sent to fill the vac­uüm which was left from the trans­fer of then Detective Sargent Cornwall (big­ga) Ford, a leg­end, who had just been trans­ferred to the Flying Squad, based at the Kingston Central Police compound.

For the record, nev­er let any­one tell you that name brand-cops do noth­ing to bend the crime curve south. Determined crim­i­nals have esca­lat­ed crime, deter­mined cops bend the curve south. 

Throughout our coun­try’s his­to­ry there have been noto­ri­ous­ly dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals, these men have large­ly gained their noto­ri­ety, through dif­fer­ent means , brutality,callousness, aid­ed and abet­ted by sym­pa­thet­ic mem­bers of the pub­lic, Politics, cor­rupt-cops, the ter­rain of our coun­try, and oth­er means.

Conversely we have pro­duced deter­mined cops who knew how to remove crim­i­nals from the streets, Cops like Keith (trin­i­ty) Gardener, Joe Williams, Anthony Hewitt, Altimoth (par­ra) Campbell, Isiah Laing, are some of the more rec­og­niz­able names, of course there are men, and yes Women, Like Hortense Brown, who in many cas­es were just as effec­tive, Dick Hibbert, Ruddy Dwyer, Benjamin, O C Hare, and a long line of valiant sol­diers of urban polic­ing who under­stood our coun­try’s ter­ror­ists and how to deal with them.

The men and women whom I did not men­tion need not doubt their con­tri­bu­tion to our coun­try’s sta­bil­i­ty, you know your­selves, the point was about the most cel­e­brat­ed, the most well known.

I nev­er wore , nei­ther did I ever see a bul­let-proof vest dur­ing my decade of ser­vice from 1982 to 1992, we did not have com­put­ers, we did not even have type-writ­ers, at the Constant Spring CIB which serves some of the most depressed com­mu­ni­ties and some of the most upscale, we did not have a typewriter.

I sug­gest­ed to detec­tive Seargant McInnis that we use col­ored pins and a map of our geo­graph­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty to assist us. Different col­or pins rep­re­sent­ed dif­fer­ent types of crimes. Red for mur­der, blue for rapes, green for break-ins, yel­low for shoot­ings and so on.

This very sim­ple ‚unso­phis­ti­cat­ed method, allowed us to see, in real terms ‚what type of crimes were being com­mit­ted where. Complainants sup­plied us with the when, it made it eas­i­er for us to find the who.

I sought and gained per­mis­sion to approach inter­est­ed par­ties oper­at­ing in our precinct, and asked for old dis­card­ed type-writ­ers. Business-peo­ple were more than hap­py to give us usable type-writ­ers and desks, this made the demand from the kha­ki-clad clowns for a tor­rent of paper-work more pos­si­ble. At the time I was at the CIB office, they demand­ed 5 copies of all crimes com­mit­ted in the Parish of St. Thomas, St. Catherine and St. Andrew North, which con­sti­tut­ed Police Area 5.

It gen­er­al­ly took hours to record the crimes from St Catherine, a sin­gle detec­tive work­ing the office on any giv­en night would start writ­ing as soon as he entered the office at 8:pm some­times he would still be writ­ing at 9:am when the morn­ing shift arrived and some­times , long after. All of those crimes in detail had to be record­ed by hand and dupli­cat­ed 5 times.

I came up with the nov­el idea of car­bon paper, they put the brakes on that com­plain­ing that car­bon cre­at­ed smudges, which ren­dered the doc­u­ment illeg­i­ble, so it was back to writ­ing and writ­ing and writing.

One copy for the Commissioner’s Office, one for the Divisional Officer, one for the Area Officer,one for the crime chief. one for the Divisional Detective Inspector. A colos­sal waste of paper and man­pow­er to large­ly sat­is­fy the egos of lazy pompous over­weight dead-woods.

My point in all of this is this. The Commissioner will nev­er have all the resources he needs, what he does have is the infi­nite resource called the brain. Commissioner Ellington must devel­op strate­gies in con­junc­tion with capa­ble offi­cers at his dis­pos­al, to stop the scourge of crime. That will not get done with most of the kha­ki-clad crew he has, most should be retired to save tax-pay­ers money.

Pushing paper, or sit­ting behind a desk is not polic­ing. Most of these peo­ple, some I served with, are more con­cerned with the way a piece of fools-cap paper is fold­ed, so they may write non­sense on it, than how to remove crim­i­nals from the streets. In fact, many of them nev­er arrest­ed any­one, nev­er been to court, but they are car­rear cops, and don’t ever let them hear an explo­sion, Usain Bolt would have to seri­ous­ly strug­gle to keep his world record.

No won­der the coun­try is inun­dat­ed with crime, the kha­ki-clad clowns are more cor­rupt, more cor­rod­ed by pol­i­tics than the young men. Money being the only thing which flows upstream.

I would be hap­py to sup­ply the Commissioner with a detailed plan, out­lin­ing how to reduce crime by 20 to 30% in the first year. By the time the sec­ond year comes around, crime will begin to take a seri­ous trend downwards.

All he has to do is ask.

More to come on this issue:

Commissioner Owen Ellington :

The Police High Command has raised the threat levels against it’s members to extreme. They say they have credible information that certain criminals are determined to kill cops even in their own homes.

I can­not say what ben­e­fit cops will derive from the ele­vat­ed threat lev­els, what I can say is I’m appalled that cops are now cow­er­ing in fear of being slaugh­tered in front of their fam­i­lies because of the war waged on them by one Mulatto
 woman from uptown St Andrew.

Jamaicans for Justice Head Carolyn Gomes :

It is a damn shame when we as Jamaicans live to see the day our coun­try is forced to the brink of col­lapse and ruin, by an inept and cor­rupt Government, which gives tac­it sup­port to crim­i­nal ele­ments, who ruth­less­ly mur­der police offi­cers on and off the job.

I am par­tic­u­lar­ly appalled at the Police Department, that it has allowed vice, to reduce it to a paper tiger.

The Jamaican pub­lic has allowed itself to be brain-washed by elit­ist pedi­atric Doctor Carolyn Gomes and oth­ers, into believ­ing that our coun­try is a first world coun­try, that crim­i­nals should be treat­ed with kids gloves. First of all Gomes is a Doctor, I have no idea where she stud­ied laws or police pro­ce­dures, to be dic­tat­ing pol­i­cy to police , but that“s anoth­er sub­ject for anoth­er day.

Elitist present them­selves as legit­i­mate human rights agen­cies, they fool the pub­lic into believ­ing that Jamaican crim­i­nals can be reha­bil­i­tat­ed by just ignor­ing the mur­der rape and oth­er vis­cous crimes they unleash on soci­ety. Gomes is not alone there are numer­ous ele­ments with­in the coun­try who are ben­e­fit­ing, and( eat­ing a food) from crime.

The truth is that Jamaican Criminals have nev­er been ordi­nary run of the mill crim­i­nals, from Three Finger Jack , to Sandokan ‚Natty- Morgan , Rigen, Bucky-Marshall , Tony Brown and George Flash, Copper, Burry-Boy, Chubby Dread, Jim Brown, and the list goes on and on, these crim­i­nals were hard­ened mon­sters who deserved noth­ing but the ulti­mate justice .

Be not fooled ‚the present sit­u­a­tion in our coun­try must be con­tained and elim­i­nat­ed, Police offi­cers are involved in seri­ous crim­i­nal activ­i­ties and that com­pli­cates the prob­lem, but it does not ren­der it unsolvable.

As I read the Commissioner’s emp­ty words my blood boils, they have shack­led name brand cops who know how to get things done , Laing, Ford, Dadrick Henry, Parra Campbell, and all the great sol­diers of urban polic­ing, yes we know how to find them and we know how to bring jus­tice to them. The Courts could nev­er be trust­ed to do jus­tice, they cer­tain­ly can­not be trust­ed today.

The Jamaica Observer report­ed today that the same gun which killed Assistant Commissioner Gilbert Kameka almost six years ago was the same gun which killed Deputy Superintendent Denzil Boyd,

Yester­day, a high­ly placed police source told the Observer that the sus­pects are linked to the dead­ly Klansman gang in Spanish Town and have ties to a tough Corporate Area neigh­bor­hood off Spanish Town Road. The police source also said that bal­lis­tic reports indi­cat­ed that the weapon used to kill Boyd was also the one used to slay Kameka at a premis­es in Irish Town, St Andrew on November 29, 2007. Kameka was report­ed­ly vis­it­ing 18-year-old Tina-Gaye McGowan when he was attacked and shot. Read more: 

The police must adopt a new approach to secure the coun­try, and in the process their own lives.

(1) Create a grid sys­tem, which locks down and encir­cles neigh­bor­hoods when crim­i­nals strike, then close the cir­cle until they find the perpetrator/​s.

(2) Carry out their duties to the fullest extent of the law pos­si­ble with­out fear or favor, mal­ice or ill will.

(3) Remove cops from Police Stations and place them in strate­gic loca­tions, mobile ready and equipped to han­dle any and all sit­u­a­tions. Only a skele­ton staff should be left to man stations.

(4) Device strate­gies to make sure that when a cop is killed, not even the killers moth­er will shel­ter him. Lean hard, very hard on every­one and do not rest until they give up the suspect.

(5) Do a bet­ter job con­duct­ing inves­ti­ga­tions, know crim­i­nals , where they live, know their moth­er, and most of all know the bitch­es who they sleep with, make their lives so mis­er­able they have nowhere to hide.

(6) Make sure inves­ti­ga­tions are done pro­fes­sion­al­ly and thor­ough­ly to ensue that those charged will be convicted.

(7) Make sure those who refuse to be tak­en alive are sum­mar­i­ly and expe­di­tious­ly dealt with accord­ing to law.

Jamaica is a small coun­try with less than 3 mil­lion peo­ple, this police force must stop being the Barney Fyffe of Police Departments.

October of 1991 saw me walking away from the Jamaica Constabulary Force after serving a mere 10 years. I really loved my job. I could make a difference in people’s lives. Making that difference meant protecting and serving in the traditionally understood sense, but anyone familiar with policing in Jamaica knows it requires much more than that narrowly defined way we understand policing.

A Jamaican police offi­cer must be a coun­selor, medi­a­tor, tire chang­er, and pret­ty much every­thing to include being a gopher. (A low-rank­ing employ­ee is made to do the bid­ding of their supe­ri­ors). The (JCF) Jamaica Constabulary Force was formed after the Morant Bay Rebellion; it was a Night Watchman Force designed to pro­tect the inter­est of the monied upper caste from the poor underclass.

Paul Bogle:

Because of this part of its his­to­ry, the Constabulary is under­stand­ably viewed with sus­pi­cion by the poor­er class. This poor­er class is large­ly Black peo­ple of African ances­try. The Constabulary though viewed with sus­pi­cion by the under­class was not pop­u­lat­ed by Martians, it has always been pop­u­lat­ed with Black Jamaicans even though in its ear­ly years run by whites.
To this day, the police force is pop­u­lat­ed with the chil­dren of the poor­est, most hum­ble of our peo­ple, large­ly from rur­al parish­es. Jamaicans of a lighter skin tone and a lit­tle mon­ey would absolute­ly not con­done their kids becom­ing police offi­cers. In oth­er Jurisdictions being a police offi­cer is a respectable job, not so in Jamaica; many peo­ple say, “well, the police have basi­cal­ly caused it on them­selves,” there is some truth to that; God knows some of the peo­ple who have come and gone and are still a part of the Agency are of the worst kind. Despite that, I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe the best peo­ple leave ear­ly, and the oth­ers remain. There is hard­ly any oth­er expla­na­tion for the high attri­tion rate of offi­cers from the JCF.
As a young police offi­cer, I was put off by the upper crust, time and again, when they asked me,” why are you in the police force”? The ques­tions came despite them hav­ing called us to their homes to inves­ti­gate one thing or anoth­er. The irony was that though they want­ed their issue dealt with expe­di­tious­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, they fun­da­men­tal­ly believed Jamaican police offi­cers should not or cer­tain­ly could nev­er be intel­li­gent or equal to them intellectually.

I wish I had a dol­lar for each time, as a young detec­tive sta­tioned at the Constant CIB, that an upper Saint Andrew res­i­dent asked me “where were you trained’? As much as they felt they were com­pli­ment­ing me for some per­ceived dif­fer­ence between me and some of my col­leagues, it also cre­at­ed a cer­tain dis­dain with­in me for what I per­ceived to be a Bourjois sense of faux aris­toc­ra­cy. It made me angry and dis­dain­ful of them; con­trary to what many of the poor­est peo­ple felt, many offi­cers pre­ferred them to the self-aggran­diz­ing, pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al left-over aris­to­crats, many of whom had dark­er skin than we had.

The police Department has sur­vived despite a pha­lanx of forces arrayed against it. From my per­spec­tive, a Police Force, any Police force, would do pre­cious lit­tle more than sur­vive in Jamaica. I am sure you will be anx­ious to know what the hell I’m talk­ing about here? Think about this.

•A police depart­ment formed to pro­tect the rich from the poor masses:

•An emerg­ing Cult (Rastafarian’s) opposed the nat­ur­al order, and by exten­sion, the police, which wor­ships a false God Haile Selassie, a man who allowed his peo­ple to starve. At the same time, he fed the best foods to his pet lions:

•A polit­i­cal class that wants acri­mo­ny between the poor and the police for their own self­ish reasons:

•A Monied class which sees itself above the laws:

•A gen­er­al dis­dain for the rule of law by a large group of the population:

Those by them­selves would be a per­fect brew, enough to make any police force inca­pable of per­form­ing its man­date; only those are not the extent of the chal­lenges the police face. There are sec­ondary issues like Political inter­fer­ence, lack of fund­ing for police sta­tions, vehi­cles, train­ing, pro­tec­tive gear, arma­ment, crim­i­nal agi­ta­tion from groups pos­ing as legit­i­mate Human Rights Groups, an unruly pop­u­la­tion, and prob­a­bly the most fun­da­men­tal tool a police depart­ment or a peo­ple needs, tough leg­is­la­tion that puts crim­i­nals in jail and keep them there.

At the core of Jamaica’s present crime prob­lem lies the issue of the bour­geoisie and the new­ly edu­cat­ed blacks( nev­er si cum si) that police are above speak­ing to them. This does not mean they nec­es­sar­i­ly see them­selves as above the laws; they resent being policed by peo­ple they seri­ous­ly believe are beneath them. 

Some of the worst among offend­ers are those from the grass-roots who man­aged to claw their way from the clutch­es of abject pover­ty to respectabil­i­ty. Many are Lawyers; to date, some of the most cel­e­brat­ed and promi­nent Defense Attorneys are blacks who have been lib­er­at­ed from pover­ty through grit­ty dili­gence and hard work by their par­ents. Unfortunately, many still keep the street men­tal­i­ty and phys­i­cal ties to the crim­i­nal under­world, even though they will not hes­i­tate to tell you they are offi­cers of the court.

Supreme Court Kingston Jamaica:

In my 31 years liv­ing in Jamaica, I nev­er thought that the coun­try’s judges were cor­rupt; some were arro­gant, some lib­er­al but not cor­rupt. The Same is true of the coun­try’s Judges; as a law enforce­ment offi­cer dur­ing the 90’s I must say that with only a few excep­tions, I had a healthy respect for Judges, in my judg­ment, many seemed to under­stand the seri­ous task they are giv­en and the degree to which soci­ety’s sta­bil­i­ty rests with them even though I per­ceived that they were large­ly too lib­er­al. I was also mind­ful that out­dat­ed and archa­ic laws con­strain them. I can­not say I still feel that way.

Jamaica’s Judiciary may still be among the least cor­rupt group in the coun­try, but not all judges are hon­est players.

The pow­ers who cre­at­ed the police force under­stood the need for the most bang for their buck; they knew exact­ly how to strike the del­i­cate bal­ance between many black men with guns and the pow­er to use them, and hav­ing a buffer between them and those men. They want­ed the police to pro­tect them and their prop­er­ty from the maraud­ing mass­es, but they also need­ed to keep a cer­tain degree of con­trol, so they employed the strat­e­gy of “divide and conquer.”

Officers from the rank of con­sta­ble to Inspector are lumped togeth­er; they are the guys who do the heavy lift­ing and take all the risks. Then there are the gazetted ranks, from Deputy Superintendent to the com­mis­sion­er; these peo­ple are told they are civ­il ser­vants. They cer­tain­ly are not treat­ed or paid like civ­il ser­vants, but they are the ones who make sure the dic­tates of the monied inter­ests are main­tained. Politicians and oth­ers com­ing into posi­tions of author­i­ty from the ground up main­tained that con­trol even after the white plan­ta­tion own­ers had died out or had long left for England.

The kha­ki-clad crew gen­er­al­ly acquired their rank through long-ser­vice, Political ties, lick­ing boots, and in the minor­i­ty cas­es, through intel­li­gence and mer­it. I admit that the Constabulary has made attempts to recruit a smarter cadre of peo­ple to the gazetted corps over the last few years. However, the prob­lem with that strat­e­gy is that the qual­i­ty of the peo­ple who inter­act with the pub­lic on the streets seem to stay the same, or as some would argue, has got­ten worse. The impact of polit­i­cal manip­u­la­tion can­not be denied or over­stat­ed; the fall­out has helped ensure the present crime lev­el today. Many peo­ple who passed through the doors of the JCF will read­i­ly tell you that they left because they were not effec­tive. An ide­al­is­tic police con­sta­ble suf­fers trans­fer, have their records sul­lied, and worse for doing their job. The gazetted ranks have been the bain of the depart­ment, con­trary to what many peo­ple believe, shit does not flow upstream. The rank and file of the police depart­ment leave the Academy want­i­ng to do the right thing. The behav­ior of the senior offi­cers is respon­si­ble for the change in their atti­tudes and behavior.

It’s rather dif­fi­cult for a con­sta­ble to respect his job or com­mand­ing offi­cer if they are intel­li­gent peo­ple who see that com­mand­ing offi­cer as a lap dog to some filthy politi­cian or oth­er unde­sir­able. They will not accept dis­ci­pline or direc­tion from that offi­cer. Senior offi­cers have col­lud­ed with politi­cians to trans­fer good, hard-work­ing cops who play by the rules and uphold the laws. How do I know? I was trans­ferred for some­thing which hap­pened on a night when I was off duty, nev­er mind that that act was legal above board police work.….….… and I was­n’t there.

A Deputy com­mis­sion­er and a politi­cian had me trans­ferred until the peo­ple I served found out what tran­spired and all hell broke loose. Yes, peo­ple actu­al­ly demon­strat­ed on behalf of good cops. That Politician is still active­ly engaged in pol­i­tics as we speak; the lap-dog Deputy com­mis­sion­er has retired from the department.

Twenty-two years after I left the depart­ment, despite all the efforts at mod­ern­iza­tion, the police depart­ment is still embar­rass­ing­ly and woe­ful­ly inept at con­duct­ing the sim­plest inves­ti­ga­tion to put a low-down scum bag in prison.

In Jamaica, all you need is an appeal to the high­er Court with some lie or point to some tech­ni­cal­i­ty, real or per­ceived; you are almost guar­an­teed a rever­sal of the low­er court’s deci­sion. Nowhere is this more evi­dent than the recent release of the Spanish Town Terror group leader, Tesha Miller, the Klan’s Man Gang leader, affil­i­at­ed to the rul­ing People’s National Party. Miller was sen­tenced to prison for a series of felonies, includ­ing shoot­ing at Police Officers.

This means the Magistrates are nin­com­poops, or the Judges are being paid to release crim­i­nals back onto the streets.

Criminal Defense Lawyer Bert Samuels:

There may be legit­i­mate legal rea­sons why the Miller ver­dict was over­turned. There may be rea­sons why any appeals court may look at the argu­ments raised by an astute and com­pe­tent defense team in any case. This case is not the excep­tion; the rule, Magistrate rules and the appeals court reversed the low­er court. The Jamaican peo­ple and the cause of jus­tice are not being served when crim­i­nals walk free, blue or white collar.

This case is just anoth­er nail in the cof­fin of the Jamaican jus­tice sys­tem; every­one knows how bad it is. Only 5% of crim­i­nals are actu­al­ly held respon­si­ble for their crimes, irre­spec­tive of the sever­i­ty or fre­quen­cy. It is a slap in the peo­ple’s face when the same judges go back and over­turn deci­sions with­in that measly and mea­ger 5%. Our coun­try is fast becom­ing a failed state, a place where it is safe for no one to live. I would bet that all of the judges have American green cards, much like their polit­i­cal counterparts.

Miller’s always avail­able crim­i­nal defense lawyer, the omnipresent Bert Samuels, was quick to point out that his client did not beat the rap on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty but point­ed to what he sees as a pletho­ra of incon­sis­ten­cies in the pros­e­cu­tion’s case. Not unusu­al for Jamaica’s lawyers to pon­tif­i­cate, but what Samuels argu­ment points to, as far as he is con­cerned is, incom­pe­tence on the part of the Police, pros­e­cu­tor, and tri­al Magistrate.

It is not unusu­al for air­tight cas­es to be revis­it­ed by high­er courts in Jamaica and over­turned years lat­er, even after just­ly con­vict­ed crim­i­nals have been con­vict­ed and are serv­ing their sen­tences. This usu­al­ly hap­pens with high-pro­file gang­sters who can afford to pay high-priced unscrupu­lous lawyers to wran­gle them from the clutch­es of the law. In Jamaica, that is pret­ty easy; most judges are quite hap­py to oblige.

This does not absolve the police from blame, how­ev­er. How dif­fi­cult is it to pre­pare a case of Robbery with Aggravation and shoot­ing with intent? It“s 2013, and still, Jamaica’s cops con­tin­ue to be the laugh­ing-stock of the coun­try, resort­ing sim­ply to brute force, seem­ing­ly inca­pable of much else. It has become a source of embar­rass­ment to see sim­ple cas­es thrown out for bad police work or shod­dy pros­e­cu­tion. No doubt the coun­try will pay dear­ly for this.

Whether mon­ey is chang­ing hands or not, we have no proof, .….……not yet, but it’s impor­tant to note, anoth­er dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal was returned to the streets by Jamaica’s crim­i­nal lov­ing judges.

As long as Jamaica’s Criminal Justice System is so unjust to the inno­cent and the pow­er­less, we will con­tin­ue to see the Police screw up cas­es. They will have to con­tin­ue bring­ing jus­tice to crim­i­nals rather than bring­ing crim­i­nals to justice.

[adapt­ed]: scenes from Jamaica:

I yell and scream about the need to low­er, if not erad­i­cate crime in Jamaica for years. I am heart­ened to see that oth­er medi­ums are rec­og­niz­ing what is hap­pen­ing and report­ing on it.

I believe and main­tain that the astro­nom­i­cal­ly high crime rate does impact the num­ber of Jamaicans return­ing home. High inci­dences of crime also neg­a­tive­ly affect invest­ment from over­seas prospects. The fact that Nations like the United States, Canada and England have decid­ed to use depor­ta­tion as a means of remov­ing some of it’s crim­i­nals, has had dire con­se­quences for our Island Nation.

Jamaica’s Blue Mountain Range:

The unwill­ing­ness and lack of resolve on the part of Jamaican Authorities to design and exe­cute seri­ous anti-crime Policies geared at clamp­ing down on the Island’s crim­i­nals has only served to make the prob­lem worse. Several International Rating Agencies have report­ed on this includ­ing Transparency International which rat­ed Jamaica 84 % cor­rupt out of a pos­si­ble one hundred.

This does not bode well for invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. It also presents a seri­ous prob­lem for Law abid­ing Jamaicans and those wish­ing to return when the per­cep­tion remains that the Legislators do not want to improve the sys­tem because they are afraid their crim­i­nal con­duct will come to an end.

Yahoo news report­ed on this issue some­time ago:

Irwine Clare, man­ag­ing direc­tor of the New York-based advo­ca­cy group Caribbean Immigrant Services, believes crime is the biggest prob­lem keep­ing Jamaicans from reset­tling on the island. “We rec­og­nize the impact of what crime and vio­lence has done to our beloved nation. It is cause for major con­cern. But we are very much a God-fear­ing peo­ple so we nev­er give up in spite of all the odds that are against us,” Clare said in a tele­phone inter­view. “It is also for us in the dias­po­ra to help find a solu­tion.“http://​news​.yahoo​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​f​r​e​t​s​-​o​v​e​r​-​s​l​o​w​d​o​w​n​-​r​e​t​u​r​n​i​n​g​-​i​s​l​a​n​d​ers

When I talk about crime par­tic­u­lar­ly in Jamaica I nev­er do so in the abstract, I don’t talk or write because I like to hear myself talk or want to be seen. I do so because I am pas­sion­ate about Jamaica, I am pas­sion­ate about the coun­try I grew up in, the good­ness of the peo­ple, that we did­n’t have two pen­nies to rub against each did­n’t mat­ter, at least to me.

Scenes of Jamaica many of it’s inhab­i­tants nev­er see:

We basi­cal­ly accept­ed that we were poor, and we aspired to change our lives through hard work and edu­ca­tion. However over the last cou­ple of decades we have watched as our coun­try has been dras­ti­cal­ly trans­formed from that peace­ful fun dia­mond in the Caribbean sea, to a place peo­ple talk about with trep­i­da­tion , scorn, and a place to be shunned.

Our coun­try is now broke, inca­pable of pay­ing pub­lic sec­tor workers,even though they have been forced to accept manda­to­ry wage freezes. As I wrote pre­vi­ous­ly, there would be some sem­blance of hope going for­ward, if the peo­ple in pow­er under­stood that the sin­gle great­est dan­ger to Jamaica is the exis­ten­tial threat crime poses.

It is indeed a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat when the greater part of the coun­try’s net earn­ings are used to ser­vice the inter­est on the suf­fo­cat­ing debt. Over recent months some pub­li­ca­tions to include the Chicago Tribune have report­ed on the seri­ous­ness of Jamaica’s debt cri­sis, which the Tribune say is worse than that of Greece.

So while the Overseas media reports on the seri­ous­ness of the chal­lenges Jamaica faces , there is no change in the way the lead­ers go about doing busi­ness. Even many of us who reside in oth­er coun­tries have got­ten sucked into the false nar­ra­tive of (jamaica nice) this bull**** is a mis­nomer of the worst order.

With about the same pop­u­la­tion as the city of Chicago Jamaica records between 3 & 5 times the num­ber of homi­cides annu­al­ly, depend­ing on the year. And homi­cides are just a sin­gle com­po­nent of Jamaica’s crime cri­sis. Rapes, assaults, shoot­ings, child abuse, spousal abuse, rob­beries, are just a few of the oth­er seri­ous vio­lent offences which has now result­ed in a 50% drop in the num­ber of peo­ple return­ing to the coun­try of their birth to live out their retirement.

If the num­ber of peo­ple who want­ed to return dries up, it will be a seri­ous blow to the coun­try’s floun­der­ing econ­o­my, con­sid­er­ing return­ing res­i­dents con­tribute up to 15% of the coun­try’s for­eign exchange inflow.

About 3 mil­lion Jamaicans live abroad, more than the 2.7 mil­lion who live on the Island. The $2 bil­lion they send home each year is a major source of invest­ment and wealth for this poor island. It accounts for more than 13 per­cent of GDP. The Bank of Jamaica says retirees who move back home are a key fac­tor, esti­mat­ing that their pen­sions pro­vide 15 per­cent of the inflow of for­eign currency.

I hate to say I told you so.….……But whether you like it or not, I have been warn­ing that we would one day get here. We sim­ply can­not build a nation on drink , drug, sex, music, and mur­der, not to sug­gest that those are all our coun­try has to offer, there sim­ply is too much of the aforementioned.

Yesterday March 13^th, Jamaica’s National Security Minister and anoth­er high-rank­ing Government Official arrived in Washington DC to tes­ti­fy before a select Senate Committee. 

The spe­cial select com­mit­tee yes­ter­day heard tes­ti­mo­ny from rel­a­tives of vic­tims of the lot­tery scam as well as law-enforce­ment offi­cials. The hear­ing fol­lowed the air­ing of a CBS doc­u­men­tary on the scam, and came a day after Jamaica’s National Security Minister Peter Bunting met with Collins and Nelson.(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

There’s noth­ing wrong with Allied Nations meet­ing under prop­er cir­cum­stances to share infor­ma­tion or dis­cuss strate­gies so that they may come up with solu­tions. One gets the feel­ing from the report­ing, that this was not exact­ly what hap­pened in this case. Judging from the tone of Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins, it appeared this was not nec­es­sar­i­ly a meet­ing between equals, but rather that the Jamaicans were there to receive a tongue lash­ing from their supe­ri­ors in Washington DC. “I sus­pect that the Jamaican phone scam is one of the worst,” Collins said. She not­ed that to most Americans, Jamaica was a trop­i­cal par­adise with beau­ti­ful white sand beach­es, lush green moun­tains and vibrant sun­shine. “We have all seen those ads full of gor­geous scenery and upbeat music call­ing Americans to come and feel the spir­it of Jamaica,” she said. Collins also said bil­lions of dol­lars are spent year­ly by mil­lions of Americans who answer the call for a vaca­tion on the island par­adise, not­ing that the mon­ey is essen­tial to the island’s econ­o­my. “But beneath the Jamaica of those entic­ing ads and the tourists’ dreams lurks anoth­er Jamaica, one that brings night­mares to elder­ly Americans tar­get­ed by Jamaican crim­i­nals intent on swin­dling them out of their life sav­ings. She told the com­mit­tee that an esti­mat­ed 30,000 phone calls are made dai­ly by Jamaican scam­mers, who she described as “mas­ters of manip­u­la­tion” who play to their vic­tims fears and emo­tions “until they drain them of every dime”.

Whoa there, lets back up a lit­tle, The United States pos­sess­es expo­nen­tial­ly more resources in a sin­gle State in the Union than minus­cule Jamaica ever could muster in a mil­lion years , not to men­tion at the fed­er­al lev­el, yet Collins berate Jamaica for not doing enough?

In order for Collins to assert that scam­mers make 30,000 phone calls dai­ly, I have to pre­sume that the Senator has intel­li­gence on what con­sti­tutes a scam call. If my pre­sump­tion is cor­rect, then the log­i­cal ques­tion has to be what has the United States done with this intelligence?

The United States has the tech­nol­o­gy and the staff to coör­di­nate with its Jamaican coun­ter­parts in nab­bing scam­mers and once and for all putting an end to this menace.

Let’s be clear it takes a cer­tain kind of stu­pid­i­ty, naiveté’ and greed for any American cit­i­zen who has nev­er entered a Contest of any kind in Jamaica a third world coun­try, to hand over their finan­cial infor­ma­tion to some­one they have nev­er met, who lives in anoth­er coun­try, because they were told they won a lot­tery. At last check it required over 90 Jamaican Dollars to buy 1 Dollar American, the dri­ving force on the part of the scammed is greed.

The fact that peo­ple who turn over their life sav­ings to scam­mers are stu­pid and greedy does not absolve those who prey on them from crim­i­nal cul­pa­bil­i­ty. It requires a sense of under­stand­ing and coöper­a­tion how­ev­er from both coun­tries with a lit­tle respect and a sense of real­i­ty on the part of the Americans. Susan Collins seem to believe this is a Jamaican prob­lem which ought to be solved by Jamaica. I am sor­ry to tell the good Senator this but, she should first learn some respect in deal­ing with oth­ers, pon­tif­i­cat­ing and pos­tur­ing sounds good to her con­stituents but does noth­ing to solve the problem.

We know that respect has nev­er been the strong suit of cer­tain peo­ple in the United States, par­tic­u­lar­ly when deal­ing with small­er weak­er con­tem­po­raries. But we also have to acknowl­edge that Jamaican Authorities have not exact­ly done much to engen­der respect either.

The Government is inher­ent­ly cor­rupt and incom­pe­tent, not vices exact­ly unique to Jamaica, but ampli­fied because of the degree to which it exists there. The cor­rup­tion Index com­piled by inter­est­ed par­ties to include Agencies of the US Government dras­ti­cal­ly deval­ues the worth of all Public Officials in Jamaica.

As is to be expect­ed the Jamaican Government respond­ing to the issue, could not for one moment put parochial polit­i­cal bick­er­ing aside for the National good.

Yesterday, Sandrea Falconer, the min­is­ter with respon­si­bil­i­ty for infor­ma­tion, speak­ing dur­ing a Jamaica House press brief­ing, said the Government had used pub­lic edu­ca­tion as well as leg­isla­tive and inves­tiga­tive tools to shut down the scam. Falconer also shot down sug­ges­tions from the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party that the Government had not respond­ed effec­tive­ly to the lot­tery-scam cri­sis. “Sometimes peo­ple say a lot because they don’t know or they just have to talk because they want to be rel­e­vant,” Falconer said.(jamaicagleaner.com)

In my esti­ma­tion this is part of the prob­lem which has plagued our coun­try, this is some­thing which the President’s Press Secretary would nev­er say about any mem­ber of the Republican lead­er­ship. How can a Minister rep­re­sent­ing the Government not under­stand that she is rep­re­sent­ing the offi­cial posi­tion of the sit­ting Government when she makes utter­ances like this to the Press?

This Spanish Town Road type of a response pret­ty much sums up the qual­i­ty of Jamaica’s Government, dis­re­spect and igno­rance are the hall­marks, the par­ty which forms the Government does not feel that the Leader of the Opposition is rel­e­vant. What does it say about the Government when the Minister tasked with artic­u­lat­ing the Governments posi­tions fails to under­stand that the Opposition is part of the Government?

So while Susan Collins talk down to the Jamaican Minister, we give them ammu­ni­tion with which to burn us , because of our crass and cal­lous dis­re­spect for our­selves and others.

The so-called Lotto Scam has been in exis­tence since around 2006 – 2007 to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion. Like all oth­er aspects of crime in Jamaica it has been left to fes­ter and devel­op until it got out of con­trol. This occur main­ly because of police inept­ness, and cor­rup­tion, and the dis­grace­ful and woe­ful lack of leg­is­la­tion to com­bat the ever-increas­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion of the coun­try’s criminals.

Anyone feel­ing hurt or offend­ed by the posi­tion of the Senate Select Committee on this issue should take a seri­ous look at the crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica. Many peo­ple argue that there is crime every­where, sug­gest­ing that the heinous crime sit­u­a­tion be ratio­nal­ized away.

For years the Jamaican Government knew that there was a prob­lem with scam­mers bilk­ing peo­ple of their earn­ings, they did noth­ing, in fact there is ample intel­li­gence from the Jamaican streets which shows that many peo­ple in posi­tions of pow­er are behind this scam. In some com­mu­ni­ties par­tic­u­lar­ly on the west­ern end of the Island many peo­ple live lav­ish life styles, flaunt­ing huge Mansions, fleets of lux­u­ry Automobiles and Millions of American Dollars, yet they have no vis­i­ble job or profession.

Lavish Parties are the order of the day, this allows the Government to shirk it’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to Govern, Police Officers are cor­rupt­ed and every­one turns a blind eye. The prob­lem with this sce­nario is that the prac­ti­tion­ers behind the scam also report­ed­ly use some of the pro­ceeds of their nefar­i­ous activ­i­ties to buy high-pow­ered weapons which they in turn sell and rent. So the lit­tle prob­lem of lot­to scam has metas­ta­sized into a full-blown cancer.

Today we learned that the death of Senior Superintendent of Police Dathan Henry o/​c Duffy was ruled a homicide, as a result of poisoning.

At the time of his death I opined that it was shame­ful that Henry spent days in the Hospital before he died, although I’m not a Doctor I con­clud­ed that the evi­dence seemed to sug­gest that despite com­plain­ing about stom­ach pains, Doctors at the Kingston Public hos­pi­tal was unable to even diag­nose what was the cause of his aliment.

I thought that Senior Superintendent Henry’s fam­i­ly and the Agency he served may have dropped the ball in not treat­ing his ail­ment with the due dis­patch it deserved. Clearly between the time he start­ed com­plain­ing that he was feel­ing ill, and to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion, hav­ing seri­ous stom­ach cramps, and the time he died, any com­pe­tent Doctor could have the­o­rized that he may have been poisoned.

That lev­el of diag­nos­tic com­pe­tence was cer­tain­ly not going to come from that facil­i­ty how­ev­er, so essen­tial­ly Dathan Henry died for want of com­pe­tent med­ical help

The Kingston Public Hospital is one of the most poor­ly run filthy facil­i­ty that could ever be called a med­ical facility.

It has always been and under the present lead­er­ship of both polit­i­cal par­ties , prob­a­bly will be for­ev­er. I mean that place is so bad I refused treat­ment there though I was shot and bleed­ing in 1987. The hor­ror sto­ries asso­ci­at­ed with that facil­i­ty are too many to men­tion. As numer­ous and hor­ren­dous as those sto­ries are they real­ly are not the focus of this article.

Duffy Henry laid in that facil­i­ty for days un-diag­nosed, and end­ed up ( dead fi wants) Jamaican ver­nac­u­lar for dying for lack of of prop­er assistance.

The focus of my argu­ments how­ev­er is on the inves­ti­ga­tions sur­round­ing this now declared homi­cide. From the off­set I com­ment­ed in these blogs that despite the lack of con­clu­sion in the first reports, the Police still had a job to do in run­ning a full inves­ti­ga­tion, focused as a homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tion, until the evi­dence or lack of it deter­mines otherwise.

SSP Cornwall (big­ga) Ford i/​c Flying Squad.

The report shows that at the time of his death, the senior super­in­ten­dent had the sub­stance Warfarin in his body. 
Checks with online med­ical ref­er­ences show that Warfarin is used to pre­vent the blood from clot­ting, so that it takes longer than usu­al for some­one to stop bleed­ing if they have a cut or is injured.(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

The Gleaner reports that head of the (MIT) Superintendent Michael Phipps, was tight-lipped about the report. This would be laugh­able if it was­n’t seri­ous. Having spent 10 years in the JCF and 5 of them at the CIB I have seen my share of tight lipped inves­ti­ga­tions. In fact the so-called big-wigs were so clue­less they had no option but to be tight-lipped, in fact if they dared open their mouths they would have stuck their feet down their own throats.

Next Sunday March 10^th the Jamaica Observer will fea­ture a sto­ry detail­ing the death of for­mer Wailers drum­mer Carlton Barrett, Barrett was gunned down at his gate as he returned from Ligunea with Jerk Chicken for his fam­i­ly. The sto­ry if detailed cor­rect­ly will show how inves­ti­ga­tions revealed that Barrett was set up by his own wife , the very wife he went to get jerk chick­en for that week­end evening.

The report will most cer­tain­ly tell how Police Detectives cracked the case with good old-fash­ioned detec­tive work.

What that report will cer­tain­ly not tell you is that case was solved because a young gung-ho cop just recent­ly assigned at CIB walked into the CIB office at Constant Spring that morn­ing and picked up the phone as it rang. On the phone was a woman who iden­ti­fied her­self as the wife of the mur­dered Barrrett, she want­ed to know how far the Police had reached in their investigations.

That fate­ful tele­phone call nev­er left the mind of that young cop as he watched the big-wigs run­ning around chas­ing after sup­posed leads like a dog chas­ing it’s tail, to no avail.

After going back to his boss, the then Detective Inspector Noël Asphall, the young cop final­ly got him to lis­ten to his sus­pi­cion about that tele­phone call. What woman who just lost her hus­band overnight in such a fash­ion would be call­ing the police the morn­ing after want­i­ng to know where they were in their inves­ti­ga­tions< unless she had some­thing to wor­ry about of course?

That young cop was me, that was what cracked that case wide open. There will be no men­tion of my name when the Article is writ­ten. The truth is these guys could not inves­ti­gate a loud music report if it was in their front yards.

Dathan Henry was a young con­sta­ble in that CIB office,he is now dead. Retired Superintendent Anthony Hewitt was gunned down in broad day­light , no one has been held account­able. Retired Superintendent Denzil Boyd was mur­dered just over a week ago, to date no one has been held accountable.

No life is more impor­tant than the oth­er but , more than 3 Jamaicans are slaugh­tered dai­ly in a coun­try of 3.6 mil­lion, how can there be con­fi­dence on the part of the pub­lic ‚if the Police can’t even solve mur­ders of their high­est rank­ing officers?

The Jamaica Constabulary Force must bring the killers of these three pub­lic ser­vants to jus­tice, not bring jus­tice to them. The Police has made the task of polic­ing much more dif­fi­cult, through cor­rup­tion, incom­pe­tence, nepo­tism, and a whole host of oth­er vices they ought not be involved in.

They are fac­ing irrel­e­vance, polic­ing is a lot more than guns and brute force.

Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty or more security.

Benjamin Franklin was cred­it­ed with utter­ing those words. Franklin was one of the found­ing fathers of the United States.

Franklin earned the title of “The First American” for his ear­ly and inde­fati­ga­ble cam­paign­ing for colo­nial uni­ty; as an author and spokesman in London for sev­er­al colonies, then as the first United States Ambassador to France, he exem­pli­fied the emerg­ing American nation.^[2] Franklin was foun­da­tion­al in defin­ing the American ethos as a mar­riage of the prac­ti­cal val­ues of thrift, hard work, edu­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty spir­it, self-gov­ern­ing insti­tu­tions, and oppo­si­tion to author­i­tar­i­an­ism both polit­i­cal and reli­gious, with the sci­en­tif­ic and tol­er­ant val­ues of the Enlightenment.http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​B​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​_​F​r​a​n​k​lin

After the events of September 11^th 2001, Americans anx­ious to be safe from the onslaught which was unleashed by Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda net­work were more than will­ing to give their Government unbri­dled lat­i­tude to do what was nec­es­sary to keep them safe.

The prob­lem with that is that Government can­not be trust­ed with pow­er, wher­ev­er Governments is allowed pow­er the result is tyran­ny. That is the rea­son the American sys­tem of checks and bal­ances seemed like such a good idea.

The American sys­tem of checks and bal­ances appeared to do a cred­i­ble job of pre­vent­ing tyran­ny until now. Americans being a free-spir­it­ed peo­ple, decid­ed to do what they feel nec­es­sary to pre­vent their Governments from being tyranical.

How do they do this you ask? Look no fur­ther than the present debate rag­ing about guns. Many Americans will tell you that the sec­ond Amendment to the Constitution gives them the right to bear arms and it does.

Politicians and Police Agencies look­ing to lim­it the types of guns, and many argue all guns, in the hands of the cit­i­zen­ry, will have to scale the high wall of the sec­ond Amendment.

Some Political lead­ers argue that no per­son needs an assault rifle to defend his home or to hunt, these statements,though some­what legit­i­mate, real­ly bears the hall­mark of naivete.

Many Americans do not hold onto their guns for hunt­ing or home­stead defense, they seri­ous­ly believe that they need to have ade­quate defense against their own Government.

Many peo­ple find this con­cept laugh­able, they crit­i­cize and ridicule these views as absurd, anti­quat­ed and out of the main­stream,.….…. but are they?

As new infor­ma­tion begin to sur­face about the Obama Administration’s drone pro­gram, Americans are being made painful­ly aware that their Government which told them that they were using drones to kill ter­ror­ists over­seas, before they could kill them over here, are also now telling them” we will use drones to kill you if we sus­pect you of ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty”.Did you get that? .….….…. The whole con­cept was to keep Americans safe right?

Well, no more, this is no longer about using drones to kill Americans over­seas who are sus­pect­ed of being involved in ter­ror­ism but killing Americans on American soil with­out due process.

Most Police Agencies across America are clam­or­ing for Drones to aid in what they char­ac­ter­ize as their efforts to fight crime. No one both­ers to ask these cops what the hell they need drones for?

They argue that it will be intel­li­gence dri­ven, of course we all know that American Intelligence is infallible[sic] just ask the Iraqis.

Some United States Senators who signed the Patriot Act dur­ing the Administration of George W Bush America’s 43^rd President, admit­ted they did not read it.

Some sim­ply signed the Bill, fren­zied to pro­tect America from anoth­er attack but some Democrats signed out of fear of being labeled soft. No Democratic Senator would risk the wrath of the Bush/​Cheney pro­pa­gan­da cliché, “either you are with us or you are against us”.

America is now like a cat play­ing with a ball of yarn, it start­ed out quite inno­cent­ly, kit­ten tug­ging at the end of the yarn, but the longer it plays with the yarn the more entan­gled it gets, until the kit­ten has no way of extri­cat­ing itself from the entanglement.

Every President, Governor, Senator Congressman right down to the dog catch­er, runs as a tough guy, they all trum­pet the need to keep America safe (impor­tant), but they lack the vision to dis­cern the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of a Police State they are rapid­ly cre­at­ing. They keep tight­en­ing the screws, elim­i­nat­ing their very own lib­er­ty in the elu­sive quest for safe­ty and security.

Of course safe­ty and secu­ri­ty were always abstract and sub­jec­tive, it’s sim­i­lar to a dog chas­ing it’s tail, or a Hamster on a wheel on a nev­er end­ing trek to nowhere.

If Americans ever won­dered what a police state is, all they have to do is look around them, it is here.

There are now reports not yet con­firmed by the lame stream media, that for­mer California Cop Christopher Dorner 33 may be tar­get­ed with drones, Police did not deny the alle­ga­tions when asked by mem­bers of the Press, except to say they will use all avail­able tools at their dis­pos­al to bring the sit­u­a­tion to a close.

Dorner is accused of com­mit­ting three mur­ders, he has not been con­vict­ed of any­thing in a court of law, not yet.

Many Americans have no idea what they are clam­or­ing for when they unwit­ting­ly give pow­er-hun­gry politi­cians the pow­er to do what they please. The Government is no longer the ser­vant of the peo­ple, when that hap­pens it is time to be concerned.

As of June 2000, State and local gov­ern­ments in the United States oper­at­ed 17,784 full-time law enforce­ment agen­cies — those that employed at least one full-time sworn offi­cer with gen­er­al arrest pow­ers or the equiv­a­lent in part-time offi­cers.http://​bjs​.ojp​.usdoj​.gov. 

Yet every dog catch­er run­ning for office, talks about the need to hire more cops, schools are crum­bling, kids are fail­ing, over 2 mil­lion peo­ple are incar­cer­at­ed some for minor infrac­tions, yet they keep hir­ing more and more cops.

Have you ever asked your­selves why? Despite the bil­lions and bil­lions spent each year on Policing the vast major­i­ty of what police do does not nec­es­sar­i­ly ben­e­fit the pub­lic, try call­ing them when you real­ly need help in cer­tain communities.

The images above ought to tell it all, we are in deep trouble.

For the first time, at least to my knowledge, the Police High Command has shown some balls, and have actually stood up to the Criminal Rights Lobby (JFJ).

Hopefully the Khaki-Clad-Klutzes at the helm of the JCF will now use this more proactive approach to push back at those lying frauds.

In an Article pub­lished in the Daily Gleaner of Monday January 14^th in ref­er­ence to the killing of 18 peo­ple over a 13 day peri­od, the Police Department through its spokes-per­son Karl Engel took its firmest stance yet, at least that I am privy to.

“We are appeal­ing to all Jamaicans, includ­ing the human rights lob­bies, to turn their voic­es of influ­ence towards these ruth­less crim­i­nals, and appeal to them to stop slaugh­ter­ing and maim­ing their fel­low cit­i­zens and attack­ing the police when they stand in the law­ful defense of the cit­i­zens,” the High Command said in its state­ment. “By doing so, we will all achieve our vision of mak­ing Jamaica a safer and gen­tler society”.

Let’s cut to the chase, the face of this woman is the face of a pub­lic­i­ty hound. Without crim­i­nals dying she is nobody, nothing!Without police tak­ing out Jamaica’s urban insur­gents whom have demon­stra­bly show their will­ing­ness to take on the author­i­ty of the state in 2010 , Carolyn Gomes is irrel­e­vant. The monies com­ing under her con­trol from legit­i­mate Human Rights Organizations over­seas would lit­er­al­ly dry up.

This woman is about mon­ey , pow­er, and influ­ence, what is shock­ing is that Jamaicans have refused to take their coun­try and their indi­vid­ual lives into their own hands, by .

(1) Ceasing and desist­ing from a path of criminality.

(2) Supporting Law Enforcement in their fight against crim­i­nals, with an under­stand­ing that the fight is their fight also!

(3) Refrain from offer­ing, or being seduced into giv­ing bribes to police officers.

(4) Reporting, in an expe­di­tious man­ner, the activ­i­ties of dirty cops, with a view to erad­i­cat­ing them from the Department.

(5) Reporting all acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty and fol­low­ing up at the high­est lev­els of the JCF to ensure that their reports are inves­ti­gat­ed properly.

(6) Understanding that Criminals who chal­lenge cops do not take count how many inno­cent peo­ple they have killed pri­or. In fact they are embold­ened by how many inno­cents they have killed (how many dup­py dem mek), when they chal­lenge and kill Law Enforcement Officers.

If our peo­ple can begin to take their coun­try back, if it’s not already too late to act, then Carolyn Gomes and the bunch of crim­i­nal sup­port­ing leech­es who sup­port her will sim­ply dis­ap­pear, they will fade into irrelevance.

We must sim­ply res­cue our coun­try from ter­ror before we con­tem­plate niceties.

Each and every life is valued the same, none has more value than the other, at least in the sight of our Lord God Almighty, our Creator.

Here in Earth some lives are def­i­nite­ly more valu­able than oth­ers, some blood more trea­sured than oth­ers. Bad though that con­cept be, there are unin­tend­ed con­se­quence to shed­ding the blood of those who are high­ly placed or very vis­i­ble with­in our societies.

Every time the blood of the inno­cent is shed it leaves soci­ety poor­er, it leaves us all weak­er. Our soci­eties are no greater than the indi­vid­u­als who make up those soci­eties. If that con­cept is true, then the Island of Jamaica is expo­nen­tial­ly weak, if the amount of Jamaicans slaugh­tered annu­al­ly per 100.000 is a reli­able met­ric by which to judge that weak­ness, then we are cor­rect in our pro­nounce­ments. Most points in any conversation,are sub­jec­tive, that includes who may be char­ac­ter­ized as innocent.We may even argue the mean­ing of inno­cent, as well as we may argue the con­text in which we assume that inno­cence, all of that is true, so I am aware that the first response from some will be that killings hap­pen every­where. Of course who could rea­son­ably argue with that? It is indeed true, killings hap­pen everywhere,and they hap­pen with bru­tal and fright­en­ing impuni­ty by those who are pre­dis­posed to killing. Though true that killings hap­pen every­where, have we become so desen­si­tized to the shed­ding of blood that we are will­ing to con­tin­ue to low­er the bar of accept­abil­i­ty, and con­tin­ue to ratio­nal­ize away the most egre­gious acts of bar­bar­i­ty as nor­mal­cy? Have we become so immersed in the con­cept of self-preser­va­tion and our own indi­vid­ual sur­vival that we are inca­pable of dis­cern­ing that when any mem­ber of our com­mu­ni­ty is unsafe we are all unsafe?

Once again, as is cus­tom­ary, anoth­er Jamaican had his life uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly snuffed out, this is noth­ing new (a nu nut­ten) killing peo­ple in Jamaica is as casu­al as hav­ing a glass of water.

Melvin Chung, who oper­at­ed five Total ser­vice sta­tions in the Corporate Area, was attacked and shot mul­ti­ple times out­side one of his places of busi­ness, on East Street, on Saturday after­noon. Two firearms belong­ing to his secu­ri­ty firm, Melan Security Services Limited, were stolen, along with cash esti­mat­ed to be over $2 mil­lion, Superintendent Steve McGregor, who heads the Kingston Central Police Division, told the Jamaica Observer yes­ter­day. “He’s hard-work­ing, very jovial, full of life and full of spir­it. Always help­ing the poor. He hired a lot of peo­ple from the inner city, both at the gas sta­tions and the secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny,” the rel­a­tive said. Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​F​i​n​d​-​C​h​u​n​g​-​s​-​k​i​l​l​ers – Heaven-pleads_13333843#ixzz2HJt6IhKS

I have no infor­ma­tion which per­tains to the cause or rea­son for this man’s death beyond what has been report­ed in this sto­ry, how­ev­er what is clear is that Melvin Chung has giv­en his life, as so many oth­er Jamaicans have, sim­ply because they decid­ed to believe in their country.

Clearly,this man could have done what so many of us did years ago, he could have decid­ed that he would be safer or even bet­ter off liv­ing in anoth­er geog­ra­phy, he did­n’t, and he has paid a price for it.

Our Country is run by peo­ple who are still aston­ish­ing­ly inca­pable of under­stand­ing the con­se­quences ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty is hav­ing on the eco­nom­ic life of the coun­try and it’s inhabitants.

The Country’s Prime Minister is way over her head, if pop­ulism and empa­thy were gov­ern­ing cur­ren­cy, Jamaica under Portia Simpson Miller would be in great shape, how­ev­er that is the extent of Miller’s capa­bil­i­ties, so our coun­try is in bad shape.

Portia Simpson Miller​.PM:

The job cre­ators are being slaugh­tered because of the fail­ings of an incom­pe­tent Government who runs an incom­pe­tent National Security appa­ra­tus. Over the last two and a half decades the list of Business peo­ple killed by local crim­i­nal scum have been mind-boggling.

As incred­i­ble as those killings have been for the eco­nom­ic life of the coun­try, not to men­tion the loss to their fam­i­lies, it tells only a small part of the larg­er sto­ry. There is the total­ly untold sto­ry of incal­cu­la­ble finan­cial loss/​disadvantage to the nation, Simply put, no one is beat­ing down the doors to enter and invest in Jamaica. Jamaicans liv­ing abroad are not beat­ing down the doors to reen­ter Jamaica to retire, peo­ple are actu­al­ly beat­ing down the doors to exit Jamaica, tak­ing their tal­ents and skills with them.

The loss from all of those com­bined is mon­u­men­tal, added to that is the incom­pre­hen­si­ble inane bureau­crat­ic and cor­rupt tax and import pol­i­cy of the coun­try which makes it vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for the coun­try to claw its way out of the down­ward tra­jec­to­ry its on.

The names of count­less slaugh­tered Jamaicans con­tin­ue to lit­ter the dump heap of his­to­ry, Jamaicans like you and me, who did not need to die, they died sim­ply because of a cor­rupt and incom­pe­tent Government.

For all intents and purposes, the United States of America is effectively over he fiscal cliff, slope, incline , whatever you want to call it.

The much bal­ly­hooed fis­cal cliff is noth­ing more than a cri­sis cre­at­ed by the American Congress for no real rea­son. Truth be told , if the intent of the Framers were being respect­ed the degen­er­ates who make up the Congress, Particularly those in the House would not be able to do the dam­age they are doing to the Country’s econ­o­my through their intran­si­gence, because they would be home where they belong.

The framers nev­er intend­ed that Congress become a life­time job, that is the rea­son Congressional Representatives are giv­en two-year terms. They were sup­posed to go to Washington as stipend Legislators, get their agen­da passed and go home.

Somewhere along the lines the wires got crossed, big mon­ey got involved, Congress became a cesspool of spe­cial inter­est influ­ence and it’s mem­bers behold­en to the hold­ers of big money.

Every year it seem to get worse, the last 4 years which coin­ci­den­tal­ly has been the term of the first African-American President has lit­er­al­ly been the worst with Congress hav­ing approval rat­ings in the sin­gle digits.

As America and the world waits for 535 men and women to come to a com­pro­mise, it has become increas­ing­ly clear that what start­ed out as a strat­e­gy by Republicans, to defy and deny this President any leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ment, has now metas­ta­sized into some­thing uncontrollable.

Republican intran­si­gence has now mutat­ed into a T‑Party dom­i­nat­ed Party which has forced out rea­son­able mind­ed mem­bers and replaced them with wild-eyed rabid lunatic ide­o­logues who are inca­pable of under­stand­ing that Government needs com­pro­mise in order to work.

Tea Party mem­bers of the Republican Party did not go to Washington to make Government more effi­cient, they went there to stop Government from functioning.

As the world watch­es, the inabil­i­ty of America to Govern itself is on full dis­play. It is a shame­ful dis­play of child­like tantrum throw­ing, by lunatics on the right in this Country who for some rea­son are still fight­ing the Civil war, or who some­how believe that the South will one day rise again.

The finan­cial cost to the coun­try may nev­er be known , yet all of the mem­bers of the Republican Right will tell you they love America, they will tell you they are Patriots, you decide!

If you believe that the last-minute cha­rade which passed the House on Tuesday night is real­ly a com­pro­mise, think again, Obama want­ed to raise the tax rate on Americans mak­ing more than a quar­ter mil­lion dol­lars annu­al­ly, in the end he got an increase on those mak­ing ($450.000), the thornier issue of enti­tle­ments and spend­ing cuts are sim­ply kicked down the road for anoth­er knock down dragged out fight.

Republicans sim­ply allowed the mea­sure to go through because hey did not want to be blamed for allow­ing what would have been the largest tax increase in American history.

They swapped that nar­ra­tive for one that made them seem to have vot­ed for avert­ing one.

Essentially, what was passed last night was a dis­hon­est manip­u­la­tive cha­rade, designed to fool those who are unable to think for them­selves. It was sim­ply an attempt to be able to avoid con­se­quence for their actions and con­tin­ue to do what they have always done, only next time they will have more leverage.

Yesterday I spoke about the fallacy within the media in not calling out the Republican Party for their obstruction and intransigence.

If you are fooled into get­ting your infor­ma­tion from Network or Cable Television you will even­tu­al­ly become, well.. a fool, not because you were born with a debil­i­tat­ing learn­ing dis­abil­i­ty, but because the lame stream media will even­tu­al­ly turn you into a bum­bling ignaramus.

If you don’t believe me just step back and look at what comes out of the mouths of peo­ple who get their news from Fox, and Right-Wing talk Radio. I mean one would have to be liv­ing under a rock for the last cen­tu­ry to har­bor such thoughts and ideas as some on the right does.

What is hap­pen­ing in Washington DC today with the so-call fis­cal cliff is seri­ous business. 

There real­ly is not much to fig­ure out, at the cen­ter of this debate is the need to cut spend­ing and increase rev­enues into the Federal cof­fers with a view to bal­anc­ing the bud­get and reduc­ing the nation­al debt.

The pres­i­dent cam­paigned on elim­i­nat­ing the Bush Tax-cuts, (not sure why they are still called the Bush tax cuts since Obama was cor­nered by Republicans into extend­ing them last year).

The pres­i­dent won re-elec­tion and believes there is nation­al con­sen­sus for him to raise tax­es on the top 2% of the top wage earn­ers, those mak­ing over ¹⁄₄ mil­lion annu­al­ly. Polls con­duct­ed based on the pres­i­den­t’s assump­tion bears out his argu­ments, with 68% of respon­dents agree­ing with the president.

From my per­son­al per­spec­tive, there is no need for polls, the President cam­paigned on this very issue and won re-elec­tion, case closed.

Republicans argue disin­gen­u­ous­ly, that rais­ing tax­es on the rich, or more accu­rate­ly return­ing them to the Clinton years when almost every­one did extreme­ly well would kill jobs and send the coun­try into anoth­er recession.

The truth is actu­al­ly the reverse of that posi­tion , dur­ing the Clinton years when tax rates were high­er on top wage earn­ers, the econ­o­my cre­at­ed 20 mil­lion jobs, and the coun­try cre­at­ed the most mil­lion­aires ever.

Contrast that with the Bush Presidency when tax rates were low­ered to where they are present­ly for top wage earn­ers, the econ­o­my went into a deep reces­sion , mil­lions of jobs were lost. There is absolute­ly no cor­re­la­tion between tax cuts and job growth.

The truth of the mat­ter is that Republicans pledged to a Washington Lobbyist Grover Norquist that they would not raise tax­es under any cir­cum­stance. The top wage earn­ers and rich­es Americans are the most loy­al part of the Republican base.

Tea-Party Senator Rand Paul KY:

This is at the heart of the conun­drum in Washington DC today. Despite years of low tax­es for the rich­est Americans, and two unfund­ed wars, Republicans in Washington, par­tic­u­lar­ly those Tea-Party fund­ed lunatics in the House of rep­re­sen­ta­tives, are will­ing to hold up a tax cut for aver­age work­ing peo­ple and poten­tial­ly push the coun­try and the world into anoth­er reces­sion to demand that the rich­est 2% be not only allowed to keep their tax cuts , but that they be made permanent.

Conversely they are also demand­ing that the argu­ment be shift­ed to what they char­ac­ter­ized as enti­tle­ments. Generally what that means is that they want to cut school lunch for poor and indi­gent chil­dren, they want to dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduce food-stamps. The want to reduce and in some case elim­i­nate Pell grants to col­lege age kids, they want to gut every pro­gram that ben­e­fits the most needy in society.

They want Medicare cut even though Medicare does not add a sin­gle pen­ny to the nation­al debt. What Republicans do not want to touch is the Defense Department, this sacred cow has long been untouch­able for Republicans for decades, and for weak-kneed Democrats afraid of being called weak on defense they sim­ply do not bring up cut­ting the over bloat­ed Pentagon Budget.

Rank	Country	Spending ($ Bn.)[3]	% of GDP	World share (%)	Spending ($ Bn. PPP)[4]
—	World total	1,735	2.5	100	1562.3
1	United States	711.0	4.7	41	711
2	Chinay	143.0	2.0	8.2	228
3	Russiay	71.9	3.9	4.1	93.7
4	United Kingdom	62.7	2.6	3.6	57.5
5	France	62.5	2.3	3.6	50.1
6	Japan	59.3	1.0	3.4	44.7
7	Saudi Arabiaz	48.2	8.7	2.8	58.8
8	India	46.8	2.5	2.7	112
9	Germanyy	46.7	1.3	2.7	40.4
10	Brazil	35.4	1.5	2.0	33.8
11	Italyy	34.5	1.6	2.0	28.5
12	South Korea	30.8	2.7	1.8	42.1
13	Australia	26.7	1.8	1.5	16.6
14	Canaday	24.7	1.4	1.4	19.9
15	Turkeyy	17.9	2.3	1.0	25.2

^ SIPRI estimateWikipedia 

This is the heart of the mat­ter, Republicans are quite will­ing to see the coun­try default on its debt oblig­a­tions, see the tax­es of ordi­nary strug­gling Americans go up expo­nen­tial­ly, and the econ­o­my thrust back into anoth­er reces­sion to pro­tect the rich­est Americans, many of whom have said they are more than will­ing to pay more, they believe in shared sacrifice.

There is an almost demon­ic obsti­na­cy which seem to char­ac­ter­ize the posi­tion of House Republicans, yet many of these white men who form the Tea-Party wing of their par­ty will read­i­ly tell you that they are patriots.

As I argued in the pre­vi­ous blog, the Media takes com­fort in talk­ing about the dys­func­tion in Washington, there is no dys­func­tion in Washington DC. There is a dys­func­tion­al Republican Party which has gone so far to the right out of hatred of Barack Obama , it does not know how to get back to the cen­ter, and would­n’t rec­og­nize the cen­ter anymore.

That hatred is pal­pa­ble, it has awak­ened and ener­gized every res­i­dent racist and embold­ened them to emerge from under every rock and out of every hole in which they were hid­ing. Those who did not share those extreme view points were pri­maried and forced out, oth­ers kept their mouths shut, the rest sim­ply joined the pitch-fork bear­ing throng.

Mitch McConnell more than doing his sworn duty, cared only that Obama be made a one term President, that was his only goal. The record num­ber of Senate fil­i­buster is proof pos­i­tive that Mitch McConnell meant to obstruct every­thing, coun­try be damned.

So noth­ing gets done because pledges to Washington Lobbyists, loy­al­ty to Rich Industrialists and racial ani­mus now take prece­dent over the nation’s busi­ness. All this is hap­pen­ing while the mealy-mouthed Press seek to make it a two-par­ty prob­lem, rather than report it for what it is.

Jim DeMint want­ed to make the Affordable-Care-Act Obama’s Waterloo, he pre­dict­ed it would break and destroy Obama. That did not work so well for DeMint, he has announced he is leav­ing the Senate to head the Heritage Foundation a Right Wing Think Tank. Please don’t let the door hit you Senator.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell KY: Tea-Party Senator Jim DeMint :SC

No need to wor­ry where there is no vision the peo­ple per­ish, Republicans are doing a lot to stop peo­ple from vot­ing or hav­ing their votes count­ed, but when it comes down to it they are not the ones pulling the levers in vot­ing booths and elect­ing Republican Governors or State and Federal Legislators.

No mat­ter the amount of mon­ey Charles and David Koch pours into an Election it would not move me to cast a vote for a Republican can­di­date. The rich­est 2% of Americans amounts to rough­ly 6 mil­lion peo­ple scat­tered over the entire United States, it requires a lot of poor peo­ple vot­ing against their own self-inter­est to give the 2% the pow­er they have.

The infor­ma­tion reg­u­lar Americans are seek­ing will not come from the lame stream media which is owned lock, stock and bar­rel by the very rich.

Mob killings. Extra-Judicial Police Killings. Police Corruption. Citizens Silence. Witnesses failing to turn up to give evidence in Court. High Crime Rates. What do all of these things have in common? A broken-down ineffective Justice System!

Jamaica is no stranger to Mob-killings, how­ev­er, any­one who cares about a civ­il soci­ety needs to be very con­cerned about the rash of Mob-killings that seem to be on the rise in Jamaica. As I stat­ed in the para­graph above, killings in Jamaica is com­mon-place, there are killings of all type to include Mob-killings.

Many of my fel­low Jamaicans argue with me on this, they dis­agree with me talk­ing about the crime sit­u­a­tion in my native Jamaica with such fre­quen­cy and open­ness. They argue we should not air our dirty laun­dry in pub­lic, they argue there is crime every­where, they implic­it­ly believe that if we don’t speak about it it will fix itself, or no one will notice.

With this approach, I respect­ful­ly beg to dif­fer with my friends. Covering up a sore under one’s clothes does noth­ing to make that sore bet­ter. An assess­ment must be done to deter­mine why that sore does­n’t heal, is it dia­betes? Is it as a result of a lack of white blood cells in the body? These are the ques­tions that would have to be asked to address that sore, not ignor­ing it ‚or pre­tend­ing it does­n’t exist.

A sore left unat­tend­ed will fes­ter it will devel­op a stench if left unat­tend­ed long enough could result in an ampu­ta­tion, or worse. Those are the stark real­i­ties of the crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica.

The con­se­quences of an ampu­ta­tion are dev­as­tat­ing, a sev­ered mem­ber is irre­versible, yes you may attach a pros­thet­ic limb but it is at best a replace­ment. Why wait until the need aris­es for an ampu­ta­tion when we can heal the sore and pre­vent the inevitable amputation?

I have been sound­ing the alarm on this run­away crime sit­u­a­tion for two decades since I walked away from law enforce­ment. Our coun­try sim­ply is being choked to death as a result of run­away crime and incom­pe­tent leadership.

Mob killings are par­tic­u­lar­ly alarm­ing on var­i­ous lev­els, they are blood­lust revenge killings, which allow peo­ple already pre­dis­posed to wan­ton acts of bru­tal­i­ty to act out their grue­some desires on the inno­cent with dev­as­tat­ing consequences.

They are irre­versible acts of vio­lence, per­pe­trat­ed on peo­ple who are many times, absolute­ly inno­cent of the crimes they are accused, con­demned, and exe­cut­ed for.

Recently well know anti-Police antag­o­nist Peter Espeut opined that the police are giv­ing tac­it sup­port to mobs who engage in mob killings.

Peter Espeut is a soci­o­logist and exec­u­tive direc­tor of an envi­ron­ment and devel­op­ment NGO. Espeute had a lot to say but I thought in his exten­sive dia­tribe this was what was noteworthy.

And what sort of exam­ple are we giv­en by agents of the State? The rea­son Jamaica has one of the high­est rates of police killings in the world is that of the same vig­i­lante spir­it that has caused the deaths of Michael Melbourne and Donovan Hazley. Many of our police­men — sim­i­lar­ly emo­tion­al­ly imma­ture — can­not con­trol them­selves, and when they are in the pres­ence of some­one they believe to be guilty, they choose to try, con­vict and sen­tence him them­selves. It is report­ed in yes­ter­day’s Gleaner that the Rev Karl Johnson, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Jamaica Baptist Union, refer­ring to the recent vig­i­lante killings, asks, “Could it be that there is a sense in which some of us, includ­ing our law-enforce­ment agents, are silent sup­port­ers of some of these acts, hence, are not as repulsed by them or as anx­ious to pros­e­cute the guilty ones as we should?” Rev Johnson wants to know why the police seem reluc­tant to pros­e­cute mem­bers of vig­i­lante mobs, and won­ders if the police are “silent sup­port­ers” of “the mob jus­tice, the com­mu­ni­ty penal­ty”? I would like to put it to Rev Johnson that one of the rea­sons the police are reluc­tant to pros­e­cute mob killers is obvi­ous: that mob killer and the police use the same tac­tics and oper­ate from the same phi­los­o­phy; and that should vig­i­lante killers begin to be brought to book, they, the police, are afraid they would be next! Both the police and vig­i­lante mobs have lit­tle con­fi­dence in our court sys­tem to deliv­er jus­tice. Too many guilty peo­ple hire smart QCs and get off on tech­ni­cal­i­ties. Police killings and mob killings do not con­tribute to clog­ging the courts and do not put stress on the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to make rul­ings and pros­e­cute cases.

Peter Espeut has long-held a grudge against law enforce­ment and police offi­cers, I am unaware of the rea­son for that ani­mus but once again Espeut miss­es the mark by blam­ing the victim.

Blaming the Police for mob killings is syn­ony­mous to blam­ing a rape vic­tim for wear­ing a short skirt in pub­lic. Espeuts ven­om and decades-old bias against police make it impos­si­ble for him to see that the police are as many vic­tims as the mobs doing the killings.

How do I rec­on­cile that phi­los­o­phy you ask?

Both the Police and the mob are exas­per­at­ed with the jus­tice sys­tem. Whatever their actions, their actions are symp­toms of a greater and deep­er prob­lem. The prob­lem of a bro­ken jus­tice sys­tem. I have warned that this would hap­pen for years, the chick­ens have come home to roost.

Peter Espeut the soci­ol­o­gist’ vision and per­cep­tion are cloud­ed by decades of hatred for law enforce­ment. Mister Espeut may want to take a deep­er look, or risk hav­ing his cred­i­bil­i­ty called into seri­ous ques­tion, if indeed he has any cred­i­bil­i­ty left, or had any, to begin with.

Mob killings are a prob­lem for police, as they are for ordi­nary cit­i­zens. They endan­ger the lives of every­one, includ­ing police offi­cers, a juiced up mob is inca­pable of mak­ing ratio­nal deci­sions, it is inca­pable of assess­ing any sit­u­a­tion or com­ing to rea­soned con­clu­sions. A mob is intent on one thing, the need for blood.

Many years ago a friend of mine was con­tract­ed to trans­port a group of peo­ple from Kingston to Saint Mary to attend a funer­al. My friend Neville was an enter­pris­ing young bus oper­a­tor, I was a young Police Officer, we had been friends for years, I oper­at­ed a small busi­ness on premis­es owned by Neville’s moth­er-in-law, and I lived across the street from that loca­tion. Neville came to my home and roused me from my sleep that day, he want­ed me to accom­pa­ny him to Saint Mary on the trip. He did­n’t know any of the peo­ple he was trans­port­ing. I was off from work, it was my only day off, I was dog-tired. I told Neville I could­n’t go I was tired and want­ed to sleep, he begged and plead­ed, and begged and plead­ed, I even­tu­al­ly relented.

We jour­neyed to Saint Mary, I can­not recall the exact loca­tion in that Parish, but on our arrival there, the peo­ple we trans­port­ed went up a hill to the funer­al and we were left in the vil­lage square to spend our time at the local water­ing hole await­ing their return so we could head back to Kingston.

We sat in the lit­tle water­ing hole nurs­ing a cou­ple of Red Stripe Beers, I noticed that a group of peo­ple had start­ed to gath­er, but I was­n’t alarmed, I just shrugged it off as coun­try peo­ple being curi­ous to see vis­i­tors to their com­mu­ni­ty, some­thing which did­n’t hap­pen every day.

Something even­tu­al­ly struck me as dif­fer­ent with those peo­ple, how­ev­er, as time went on they seemed agi­tat­ed, they whis­pered to them­selves, a few of them had machetes, and for some strange rea­son, I seemed to be the object of their attention.

One man pushed his way through the small crowd and came up to me, he looked me in the face and said: ” a yu dem a gu kill, dem say a yu poi­son de man we dead”.

It took me a while to mut­ter the sin­gle word, “what”?

The man con­tin­ued ” yu tan de , dem a gu kill yu, dem seh a yu poi­son dem fren”

Neville looked at me, I looked at him, we were both at a loss for words, prob­a­bly the only time I was ever at a loss for words in my entire life. A lot of things flashed through my mind. I did not know any of the peo­ple we trans­port­ed to Saint Mary that day, I damn sure did not know the deceased, nev­er met him, was this how I was sup­posed to die? hacked to death with my friend, accused and con­demned to death and exe­cut­ed for a crime I did not com­mit, or even know about?

All was not lost, how­ev­er, speech­less though I was, we were not with­out options. I pulled myself back from the bright lights and the winged Angels that I envis­aged, to a more earth­ly solu­tion, that solu­tion was my Browning Semi-Automatic pis­tol with an extend­ed clip loaded and one extra clip also loaded, and one in the breach. I fig­ured if I was to die there would be a lot of dead native Saint Mary res­i­dents going with me that day.

Before I went to the nuclear option I thought I would first try the art of nego­ti­a­tion. This is where train­ing comes in. I decid­ed if they were not respon­sive to nego­ti­a­tions then the first per­son who stepped toward me would get a 9mm bul­let square­ly in the fore­head, I would stand still, legs apart, weapon point­ed square­ly at the next hero, there would be no flinch­ing, that would be the way it would go down until I was out of ammu­ni­tion, or they came to their sens­es and break for safe­ty, whichev­er came first.

I stood up, pulled my weapon, and made sure it was vis­i­ble in my right hand, in my left hand I held my Badge. “People “I bel­lowed, “I am a Police Officer, I don’t know what your prob­lem is, but what­ev­er it is, you got the wrong guy, go home and no one will get hurt”.

It took awhile to sink in, then all of a sud­den it seemed like the ener­gy was vir­tu­al­ly let out of the crowd, shoul­ders droop­ing they said ” sor­ry offi­cer yu look like de man we dem seh poi­son de man weh dead”

I was mor­ti­fied but deeply angry, I could have end­ed up hacked to death sim­ply because some­one said I resem­bled some­one whom they sus­pect­ed of poi­son­ing someone.

Ok I’m sure it took you some time to deci­pher that one, the only rea­son I brought this sto­ry up was to illus­trate that those who claim to know why peo­ple do the things they do , or seek to dis­cred­it oth­ers or make charges based on old sores cov­ered over by fes­ter­ing scabs, ought to be care­ful with their asser­tions, the high­er a mon­key climb is the more he expos­es himself.

The Criminal Justice System in Jamaica is bro­ken, no one has faith in it, all of the resul­tant symp­toms I not­ed in the open­ing para­graph are sim­ply con­se­quences of that bro­ken sys­tem. Left unat­tend­ed there will be even greater and more con­se­quen­tial symp­toms to come.

Jamaica needs lead­er­ship, what the coun­try has is a bunch of lack­eys on both sides, immersed in pomp and for­mal­i­ty but lack the most basic under­stand­ing of what it takes to gov­ern effectively.

It is not too late, but that time is fast approaching.