The story of former Detective Isiah Laing, in Monday’s Jamaica Observer, is reminiscent of the stories many other front line officers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, now referred to as (name brand cops) will relate, and have already related.

http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​L​a​i​n​g​-​r​e​a​d​y​-​t​o​-​b​e​-​a​-​c​o​p​-​a​g​a​i​n​_​1​2​7​0​6​892

I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly regard­ing the same issues Isaiah Laing laments. I’ve done so in these blogs, in oth­er medi­ums and in a book I wrote detail­ing my one decade in the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

Laing, right­ly assess that crime in Jamaica is big busi­ness, it is fed by peo­ple at the very top, unscrupu­lous people,who head crit­i­cal areas of our Government and civ­il soci­ety who should have no clear­ance, even to enter through the doors of any Government facility.

Understandably, Laing still chafes, even as he airs his grouse with Former Army trans­plant, Trevor Macmillan, for retir­ing him and oth­ers from the depart­ment. Laing miss­es the deep­er issue, however,of what and who cre­at­ed the dys­func­tion which allowed an inter­lop­er and a car­pet­bag­ger to be placed in that crit­i­cal a law enforce­ment position.

The fact of the mat­ter is that Jamaica must have strong cops who are unafraid to tack­le crim­i­nals where they eat, sleep, and my favorite, where they have sex.

Jamaicans have a unique way in the way they see law enforce­ment offi­cers, many know-noth­ings argue that Jamaica’s police offi­cers must be like first world police forces. That strat­e­gy is all well and good, but the real­i­ty is we are not a first world coun­try. Jamaican’s go out of their way to demand that their offi­cers are tough and decisive.

If offi­cers are not tough they are deemed to be weak and incom­pe­tent, they get no respect, no information.

As a young Detective sta­tioned at the (CIB) Constant Spring, I would arrive at work and there would be some­times a dozen peo­ple wait­ing to see me even though there were over 20 detec­tives sta­tioned there.

As a young offi­cer on the Rangers Squad, a man walked up to me and said “offi­cer I saw you in action ear­li­er today, I’m going to tell you where to find an M16 Rifle“I was in civil­ian clothes head­ing home.

Cornwall (big­ga) Ford

He pro­ceed­ed to give me the exact address, told me there is a dread,(Rastafarian) liv­ing there, he said he knows noth­ing about the gun treat him well.

Next day that infor­ma­tion was dead-on cor­rect, as I led a team of my col­leagues to the very address he gave me in Greenwich Farm, where I recov­ered the retractable stock Rifle, exact­ly in the ceil­ing as he had said it would be.

The Rastafarian was there wash­ing his clothes, as I promised the gen­tle­man, I treat­ed him kind­ly and respectfully.

When the indomitable Cornwall (Bigga) Ford was trans­ferred from Constant Spring to Flying Squad I was one of 4 offi­cers sent to try to fill that gap. The fact that they thought to send 4 offi­cers to try to the fill the gap of one depart­ed name brand cop, speaks vol­umes as to the effect of said name brand cops.

It was exhil­a­rat­ing to me to be among those cho­sen to fill those large shoes. I swore to myself that I would make sure with every fiber of my being that I earned that spot on the CIB team. The very first day on foot Patrol at the cor­ner of Barbican Road and Grant’s Pen, in a build­ing owned by a Rastafarian called Coptic, I accost­ed a man and took from his waist­band a loaded Smith and Wesson Revolver.

I lat­er learned at the CIB office that man was the infa­mous (Chicken Toe). I was told that the Constant Spring Police were look­ing for Chicken Toe for a long time, Chicken Toe was sit­ting in a Tailor Shop sit­u­at­ed in the Coptic Building, unconcerned.

Chicken Toe received 2 years in prison for the ille­gal weapon, he was not pros­e­cut­ed for any oth­er offense, despite the age-old sto­ry of “we want him for questioning” .

After being released from prison Chicken Toe came to see me, he thanked me for not shoot­ing him dur­ing the arrest. For the dura­tion of the time I stayed at Constant Spring, Chicken Toe was neu­tral­ized as a poten­tial prob­lem for law enforcement.

Many Judges used me as an exam­ple of what they thought good offi­cers should be. Basil Reid lashed out at offi­cers who crit­i­cized him for turn­ing crim­i­nals loose,” do your inves­ti­ga­tions like Detective Beckles and you won’t have any­thing to com­plain about” Many oth­ers like Judge McIntosh and his wife were flow­ery with praise for my work. The point is where are we now? All of us are now out of the force.

I chose to leave, even after suc­cess­ful­ly sit­ting the accel­er­at­ed examination.I did not see the Constabulary as a viable career path for me. One can be tough and smart at the same time, those two defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics are not mutu­al­ly exclusive.

I took numer­ous guns off the streets, Guys like Dadrick Henry and myself were relent­less, we drove the fear of God into crim­i­nals, there were no Dons with­in my sphere of influ­ence, not one until I depart­ed the Police Force in 1991.

My attack on crime did not go unno­ticed how­ev­er, there were many run-ins with politi­cians, I arrived at work one morn­ing and learned that there was a fatal shoot­ing involv­ing offi­cers at Constant Spring overnight.

I was trans­ferred back to the Mobile Reserve even though I knew noth­ing about that shoot­ing and was not even at work that night.

Carl Samuda the Member of Parliament and Deputy Commissioner Ebanks cooked up that trans­fer. I had pre­vi­ous­ly forced Samuda to observe the rules regard­ing where he hung out with­in the con­fines of a polling sta­tion. Samuda though he was exempt from the laws, he was­n’t in my book.

What Samuda and Ebanks did not bar­gain for was the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences, of the reac­tion of the peo­ple I served, once they learned that I was sum­mar­i­ly shipped out they blocked the streets and demand that their police offi­cer is returned, all hell broke loose. Former Assistant Commissioner of Police Cleve Leon (jagg­amore) was then the head of the Mobile Reserve, he called me into his office and asked me ” young man what is it between you and those peo­ple demon­strat­ing out there”? I told him with three words, “mutu­al respect sir”.

Cleve Leon told me, ‘the Commissioner wants you to pick up your stuff and go back to your peo­ple” I told ACP Leon, “Sir I have noth­ing to pick up’, I was gone. The Commissioner of Police then was Herman Rickets.

People in Jamaica demand strong police offi­cers, they test offi­cers them­selves, if the police are neutered or shack­led they look to oth­ers to fill the void.

They have found oth­ers to fill the void. They found the Dons.

Dons are not bound by rules, they kill at will, no one dare ques­tion them, the politi­cians are quite hap­py with them.

I too felt that I would return if asked to give my ser­vice to restore san­i­ty to the coun­try, Doctorates, and Masters can­not end crime. On this Laing is cor­rect. It does not require rock­et sci­en­tists to erad­i­cate crime. Jamaica’s Scientists are hard­ly any good what are we to do pop­u­late the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty with cops?

Jamaica is on a down­ward slide toward anar­chy, sor­ry Isiah, enjoy your life they do not deserve you.

I won’t say much more, I ask you all to read it in my book.

Glendon Harris the Mayor of Montego Bay, Jamaica’s second City , has issued an impassioned appeal to criminals operating in his city, to cease and desist from their criminal ways. Harris’ appeal came against the backdrop of a 7% increase in homicides in the parish of Saint James over the corresponding period last year, which saw 123 people murdered.

Crimes against women also seem to be on the increase in Saint James , recent­ly 5 females includ­ing an eight (8) year old child was bru­tal­ly and vicious­ly raped in the com­mu­ni­ty of Irwing.

The Editorial page of the Jamaica Gleaner was very pre­cise in telling the Mayor to give what­ev­er infor­ma­tion he has to the rel­e­vant author­i­ties, the police, along with sworn affi­davits. On these blogs there is not much in com­mon between us and the Editorial Page of the Gleaner, but on this we agree.

What is evi­dent in the case of Montego Bays Glendon Harris, is a Mayor who has infor­ma­tion crit­i­cal to law enforce­ment but does not give that infor­ma­tion to the police.Harris takes it onto him­self to beseech crim­i­nals to quote:“stop it”.

Even as Harris begs crim­i­nals to stop com­mit­ting crimes there is news of 3 more peo­ple shot in Ewarton Saint Catherine, includ­ing two Police Officers .

As a for­mer law enforce­ment Officer I am deeply offend­ed that peo­ple elect­ed to lead can be this juve­nile with the pow­ers vest­ed in them.

From our expe­ri­ence, the Mayor of any city is at the top of the food-chain on all issues which affect the city. he/​she is the chief exec­u­tive officer.

Law enforce­ment strate­gies are planned and the Mayor is briefed, he/​she has their input and the plan is executed.

I am not sure that in the case of Jamaica, includ­ing a politi­cian into secu­ri­ty mat­ters is a good idea but in oth­er juris­dic­tions the may­or is in the loop as to what hap­pens in his/​her city.

The plea by Glendon to crim­i­nals to sim­ply stop what they are doing is a slap in the face of hard-work­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers , decent law-abid­ing Jamaicans and every­one not involved in crim­i­nal behav­ior. Begging crim­i­nals to stop com­mit­ting crimes ignores the crimes they already com­mit­ted, it belit­tles and negates the hurt and pain they already inflict­ed on oth­ers needlessly.

It is not up to the Mayor to extend Amnesty to criminals.

It’s not up to any­one to offer Amnesty to crim­i­nals, crim­i­nals who com­mit crimes must pay for their crimes.

Begging crim­i­nals to cease and desist from com­mit­ting crimes is not a strat­e­gy that works. Those pre­dis­posed to com­mit­ting and engag­ing in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty must be made painful­ly aware that if they so choos­es, there will be seri­ous con­se­quences for their actions, period.

Jamaica depends heav­i­ly on tourism, if Glendon Harris do not under­stand the impli­ca­tions to the city if tourists stop com­ing, how can he lead that city?

Of course, Glendon Harris’ is the Mayor who stood before a polit­i­cal­ly altered Jamaican flag and took the oath of office, with­out protest­ing the low-class deface­ment of our most rec­og­niz­able and sacred nation­al symbol,by imbe­ciles in his own party.

That was a defin­ing moment as it relates to the judge­ment , integri­ty, and intel­lect of Harris.

The Killing of Police Officers have restarted in earnest in Jamaica. Last week retired SSP Anthony Hewitt was slaughtered, last night a young detective Corporal was gunned down close to his home in yet another attack on the fabric of the society.

In yet anoth­er assault on the Jamaican psy­che and the exis­tence of the Jamaican Nation not to be seen as a failed State Jamaica’s crim­i­nals are once again unleashed onto Law Enforcement Officers, in brazen fusil­lade of dead­ly attacks.

This Government is prob­a­bly the most incom­pe­tent this coun­try has had, this real­ly does not bode well for our coun­try, which has bounced from one incom­pe­tent Administration to another.

The top lead­er­ship of the Country is bereft of a coher­ent pol­i­cy to Governing. It came to office after just 4 years in oppo­si­tion after being in pow­er for ¹⁸¹⁄₂ con­tin­u­ous years.

When the PNP was removed from Office it was clear that they were exhaust­ed, out of ideas and had wrecked the coun­try immea­sur­ably. It could rea­son­ably be argued they were relieved to be out of office on the one hand, but when Jamaican pol­i­tics are con­sid­ered contextually,where polit­i­cal pow­er means raid­ing the pub­lic purse for their own ends, we would hold off on that notion.

Detective Corporal Warren Campbell

The People’s National Party was returned to pow­er with­out a plan,they were stunned when they were once again giv­en the reins of pow­er on December 29^th last year. As such they did not table one sin­gle piece of Legislation in the House which would ben­e­fit the Jamaican peo­ple in 100 days, not one!

Crime is the sin­gle largest imped­i­ment to pros­per­i­ty in Jamaica. Contract killings are on the rise, just today Friday the Jamaica Daily Gleaner report­ed that the killing of Senior Superintendent Anthony Hewitt was a con­tract Killing.

We have no evi­dence beyond what that medi­um report­ed but it is com­mon knowl­edge that for a cou­ple of thou­sand Jamaican dol­lars, on any street cor­ner one may con­tract an assassin.

The killing of this young 26-year-old detec­tive is yet anoth­er, in a long line in the nar­ra­tive that Jamaica is fast becom­ing a failed state, char­ac­ter­ized by con­tract killings and wan­ton slaugh­ter even of law enforce­ment officers.

Detective Corporal Campbell was report­ed­ly shot 7 times, Anthony Hewitt was report­ed­ly shot 4 times, my expe­ri­ence in law enforce­ment tells me these are not just reg­u­lar killings. These char­ac­ter­is­tics lend them­selves to the modus operan­di of con­tract killers , or rage killings.

Jamaica was hand­ed over to crim­i­nal rights dur­ing the failed admin­is­tra­tion of Percival Patterson when our coun­try was reduced to lit­tle more than a dump heap, when most coun­tries record­ed tremen­dous growth fol­low­ing the American eco­nom­ic explosion.

Criminal sup­port­ing groups like the so-called Jamaican s for Justice has been giv­en carte-blanche in National Security and crime. Noticeably there are no com­ments com­ing from them when Police offi­cers or ordi­nary Jamaicans are killed. Their sur­ro­ga­cy have embold­ened Jamaica’s urban ter­ror­ists who now feel that they have a gov­ern­ment that is tru­ly com­mit­ted to let­ting them do as they please.

The fact of the mat­ter is that Jamaica as a coun­try ‚is still pre­tend­ing that (Jamaica nice). Everyone has an opin­ion on every­thing, there are no hard rules which must be obeyed that may not be altered by some­one in power.

The recent trans­porta­tion of an entire class of boys to the Police Station in Montego Bay over the theft of a back pack was rather reveal­ing. School offi­cials did what they could to deal with the theft with­out involv­ing the Police , with­out success.

On engag­ing the police, the offend­er revealed to offi­cers that he was respon­si­ble, the oth­er boys were turned over to their par­ents , of course, the vil­lage lawyers from top to bot­tom were out con­demn­ing school offi­cials for doing exact­ly what they ought to have done, which result­ed in the exact cor­rect result.

Is it any won­der that these young mis­fits who some­times lack parental super­vi­sion, turn out to be assas­sins, killing for a cou­ple of pennies?

That is what crim­i­nal rights and immoral pathet­ic gov­er­nance has brought on Jamaica.

This Publication must high­light a Jamaican Judge who have not ced­ed his judi­cial author­i­ty on the altar of polit­i­cal or crim­i­nal rights expe­di­en­cy. We salute jus­tice Lloyd Hibbert for his prin­ci­pled stance.

Justice Hibbert handed down two life sentences to Andrew Ennis, 24, construction worker and mechanic of 44 Highland Close, St Andrew, and Passmore Millings, also called Shane Brown, music writer and carpenter of Gregory Park, St Catherine. They were each sentenced to life imprisonment and 50 years before parole for the murder of 23-year-old Jhannel Whyte, and life imprisonment and 40 years before parole for the murder of Whyte’s boyfriend, 24-year-old Taiwo McKenzie. The sentences will run concurrently so the men cannot apply for parole until after 50 years.

Whyte and McKenzie were found with their throats slashed in Mount Salus, near Smokey Vale, St Andrew, on November 9, 2007.

In handing down the sentences, Hibbert said the murders were extremely distressing. The judge said that if people on King Street, downtown Kingston, were canvassed for the appropriate sentence, he was sure 90 per cent would say the men should get the death penalty. He said although the case could attract the death penalty, he had to look at the law and apply it along the line of the famous Jamaican case of Pratt and Morgan and see if the court would act in vain in passing such a sentence.

Hibbert said he would also have to consider, if the sentence of death was passed, if it would be carried out within five years given all the appellate processes. The judge said when he looked into all the circumstances which included the social enquiry report, the community reports and the antecedent reports of the men, he had to strike a balance and forgo the death penalty.

The Privy Council had recommended in the Pratt and Morgan case that if the death sentence was not carried out within five years then the sentence should be commuted to life.

McKenzie and Whyte were kidnapped on November 7, 2007, when they went to Havendale to deliver medical supplies to George Cooper, who was hit off a motorcycle by a car driven by McKenzie. Cooper, who was the main witness for the Crown, testified that when the couple came with the medical supplies they were tied up, gagged and led into bushes by the two accused.

Cooper pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kidnap and rob the couple and is now serving an eight-year prison sentence.(http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​2​0​9​1​8​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​6​.​h​tml)

In a cesspool of insane crim­i­nal sup­port from all sides to include the Judiciary, we are com­pelled to com­mend Justice Hibbert.

I am a con­stant crit­ic of Jamaica’s Judicial sys­tem for its lib­er­al almost insane deci­sions on the issues of Bail and sen­tenc­ing of Jamaica’s deranged accused and con­vict­ed crim­i­nals. I am con­ver­sant that the laws are archa­ic, out­dat­ed and in most cas­es inef­fec­tive both as deter­rent or punitively.

Despite the afore­men­tioned, many Judges go our of their way to release crim­i­nals back onto the streets after they have been arrest­ed and charged with heinous mur­ders ‚some­times over and over and over again.

This has made the deci­sion of Justice Hibbert more and more deserv­ing of praise as he not only put the two scum-bags away for life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole before they have spent 50 years in prison.

Justice Hibbert cal­cu­lat­ed that under Pratt Morgan it would be pos­si­ble that giv­en the death sen­tence , with Jamaica’s crim­i­nal lov­ing laws and soci­ety, these two degen­er­ates would not be exe­cut­ed with­in the 5 year time span dic­tat­ed by the UK Privy Council.

Given that sce­nario the two low lives would pos­si­bly be out of Jail in a few years.

I applaud Justice Hibbert on this com­mon sense heads up approach,this kind of Judicial con­sci­en­tious­ness is rather rare in Jamaica.

I hope these two degen­er­ates gets the ulti­mate jus­tice while in prison , from their own kind.

The killing of Retired Senior Superintendent of Police Anthony Hewitt once again brings to the fore the critical nature of Jamaica’s crime cancer.

:I served under Anthony Hewitt when he was the offi­cer in charge of crime at the Police Area five, Head-Quartered at Constant Spring. Tony Hewitt as he was referred to by all, was then a Deputy Superintendent of Police. I did not get day-to-day instruc­tions or guid­ance from Mister Hewitt, but we were pret­ty much all extreme­ly com­fort­able with such a com­pe­tent Senior Officer at the head of the (CIB) Criminal Investigation Branch.

:Tony Hewitt

We did not agree all of the time, one thing was cer­tain though, I respect­ed the hell out of Tony Hewitt. Hewitt exem­pli­fied him­self as a Cop who did a lot of heavy lift­ing before my time. I respect­ed that and he respect­ed Cops like myself who endeav­ored to con­tin­ue to uphold the law regard­less of the offend­er. He rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed that respect to me as a young Detective who took the job seri­ous­ly and did it to the best of my abilities.

I remem­ber Tony Hewitt call­ing me into his lit­tle office in a wood­en struc­ture that once housed the Superintendent Office, he was intrigued that I was able to get good intel­li­gence from the streets, some­thing he prid­ed him­self in and built a car­rear on.

Mister Hewitt told me con­se­quent­ly” come to my office at the start of every month and I will give you some­thing to keep your infor­mants happy”.

:Every month after that Mister Hewitt would hand me an enve­lope with Twenty Dollars, this was called (impress) a small gov­ern­ment allo­ca­tion to detec­tives to cul­ti­vate and main­tain sources of information.

Senior Superintendent Hewitt went on to work for the Firearm licenc­ing Authority . Tony Hewitt would have been a stand­out at that Agency as he had been through his long and dis­tin­guished car­rear in the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

As we await the out­come of the inves­ti­ga­tions, I implore the Security Forces to bring swift jus­tice to the despi­ca­ble scum/​s who so cal­lous­ly end­ed his life.

Those who knew Tony Hewitt either loved or hat­ed him, Those com­mit­ted to a life of crime would hate him, one thing was cer­tain he was a man of the peo­ple, men and women alike came to see him at his office , many came to see him from far and near, Tony Hewitt showed that a Cops do not have to have Doctorates to be effi­cient or productive.

No oth­er Cop in Jamaica has been more effective.

Rest in peace mis­ter Hewitt.

I haven’t written a blog on any issue in Jamaica recently.Truthfully I am simply exasperated at times, at some of the things which occur and the responses of the leadership and the people to them.

The recent killing of a preg­nant woman and the shoot­ing of anoth­er in a sin­gle inci­dent involv­ing the Police, in Yallhas St. Thomas are trag­ic indeed, any loss of life is a tragedy and must be seen as such, news reports as usu­al, detail the sequence of events com­pre­hen­sive­ly from one per­spec­tive, that of so-called eye­wit­ness­es at the scene.

The deceased woman is nev­er going to be able to tell her sto­ry, so we will have to rely on the accounts of the offi­cer and the injured woman. As is to be expect­ed the Police Officer is guilty of a crime in the minds of every­one except maybe some of his colleagues.

I have pro­vid­ed a link for you , this was indeed a tragedy, how­ev­er:http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​2​0​9​0​4​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​6​.​h​tml

Gleaner pho­to:

As I have said in many blogs over the last 21 years since I left law enforce­ment, if we would just stop resist­ing arrest, stop fight­ing with police, even if we believe we are being arrest­ed unlaw­ful­ly we should nev­er fight an officer.

On the oth­er hand there must have been anoth­er way for the offi­cer to deal with the offend­er, and yes she was an offend­er, oth­er offi­cers stand­ing around should be fired in the pub­lic’s inter­est, they should have stepped in and com­plet­ed the arrest, help­ing the oth­er offi­cer which would have pre­vent­ed all of this from happening.

Jamaican Cops work under tremen­dous stress, they have no sup­port from the peo­ple, nei­ther do they have sup­port from Government, many of whose mem­bers are crim­i­nals themselves.

Based on the fact that the woman was in an advanced stage of preg­nan­cy and there are no reports of weapons, there can be no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the use of lethal force on the part of the officer.

This does not absolve any­one , includ­ing the deceased and her sis­ters from obey­ing the laws. All of the hue and cry may be legit­i­mate, how­ev­er the offi­cer was enforc­ing the law.

If we do not agree with a law or we believe that cer­tain laws have become obso­lete or archa­ic we must lob­by our polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives to have them removed. Fighting police Officers who enforce them are counter pro­duc­tive and down­right dangerous.

There are no legit­i­mate rea­sons for any­one fight­ing a police officer,much less being involved in a ker­fuf­fle which sees the offi­cer being thrown to the ground.

What was the tip­ping point which saw the offi­cer mak­ing that fate­ful deci­sion of life and death?

Having said that, the real tragedy here, at least from this van­tage point, is that the oth­er Officers did not inter­vene to effect this arrest, or to walk that woman away force­ful­ly so that she would not end up fight­ing an offi­cer which result­ed in her death.

As a peo­ple we are pre­dis­posed to attack­ing the mes­sen­ger, we spend a tremen­dous amount of time tear­ing down those among us who have diver­gent views from those we share or sup­port. We go out of our way to demean opin­ions we are not in agree­ment with rather than try to learn from them.

Also in the Jamaican news is a state­ment attrib­uted to Robert Mugabe President of Zimbabwe: In that arti­cle Mugabe is report­ed to have charged men in his coun­try to shun the influ­ence of Jamaican men as they are drunk­en, mar­i­jua­na smok­ers: quote:“Mugabe brand­ed Jamaica as “a coun­try of mar­i­jua­na smok­ers, where women are now tak­ing charge since men are always sloshed (drunk),” while also stat­ing, “In Jamaica, they have free­dom to smoke mban­je, varume vanog­a­ra vakad­hak­wa (men are always drunk) and uni­ver­si­ties are full of women…The men want to sing and do not go to col­leges vamwe vanob­va vamon­wa musoro (some are dread­locked). Let us not go there.“http://​www​.exam​in​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​r​e​g​g​a​e​-​a​r​t​i​s​t​e​s​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​i​a​n​s​-​i​r​k​e​d​-​b​y​-​m​u​g​a​b​e​-​s​-​s​t​a​t​e​m​ent

Examiner pho­to:

Whether we like what Mugabe said,yes or no, it serves no use­ful pur­pose to den­i­grate, or demo­nize him, it will be a dif­fi­cult case to make against mis­ter Mugabe any­way, Jamaica once bestowed a nation­al hon­or on him.

Two lessons here, be more care­ful who you give National Honors to , and rather than demo­nize mis­ter Mugabe, it behooves all Jamaican men to do some seri­ous intro­spec­tion, there are a lot of truths in his statements.

We don’t have to like the mes­sen­ger to appre­ci­ate the message.

Throw all the stuff you can muster against the wall, see what sticks, never mind that some of that Stuff may actually come back at you because it was yours to begin with.

Mitt Romney’s cam­paign has been about one thing, “the econ­o­my”. This strat­e­gy has been at the heart of his cam­paign ever since he start­ed run­ning six years ago.

This strat­e­gy was con­sum­mat­ed at the con­ven­tion when Mitt Romney said quote: President Obama wants to slow the rise of the Oceans , he wants to heal the world, I just want to help you and your family”.

What that state­ment showed was the absolute cyn­i­cism with which Romney views peo­ple who do not have ele­va­tors for their cars, or don’t have cars at all. Throughout this nev­er-end­ing cam­paign every pub­li­ca­tion every objec­tive medi­um has point­ed to the litany of lies that per­me­ates the Romney/​Ryan cam­paign. Never before have we seen a Presidential Campaign this truth averse.

Presidential Campaigns have always stretched the truth, as observers to these spec­ta­cles we were always mind­ful that baked into the infor­ma­tion they pum­mel us with is a cer­tain ele­ment of dis­tor­tion. With that said we were always able to come to an under­stand­ing that when one politi­cian say some­thing is 6 and the oth­er says its 4 we know it’s prob­a­bly a 5.

All of that is now out the door, the Romney Ryan Campaign has decid­ed that it is so imper­a­tive to beat Barack Obama, that they are going to do what­ev­er it takes to defeat him.

This strat­e­gy though not the worst strat­e­gy ever, con­sid­er­ing they could have used vio­lence, has cre­at­ed great con­ster­na­tion in some of us to whom the truth matters.

My Grand Dad always taught me that you may hide your prop­er­ty effec­tive­ly from a thief but you can nev­er hide from a liar. A liar does­n’t have to see you to tell a lie on you. This Biblical teach­ing from my grand dad had a pro­found effect on me, to this day it is one of my great­est pet peeve, I can­not stand liars.

IF YOU THOUGH THAT LIES DISTORTIONS AND MISINFORMATION WERE ALL ROMNEY AND RYAN WERE CAPABLE OF YOU ARE MISTAKEN.

September 11^th. 2012 both cam­paigns agreed to sus­pend cam­paign­ing, this was respect­ful and the least they could do in hon­or of those who were tak­en from us ‚and those who gave their limbs and lives after, in an effort to bring jus­tice to the per­pe­tra­tors of that hor­ri­ble event that will be for­ev­er seared in our minds.

One would have thought, that at least on this day, on the solemn anniver­sary of this event, that Mitt Romney would show some char­ac­ter, it would have been fit­ting if Mitt Romney could under­stand that when you give your word it should mean some­thing. Over the course of this cam­paign we have been tru­ly intro­duced to Willard Mitt Romney and what we have seen is that this man(used lib­er­al­ly) has no stan­dard, no char­ac­ter, we have been exposed to a man who will pret­ty much say and do any­thing to get elect­ed, char­ac­ter and dig­ni­ty be damned.

Paul Ryan has now mor­phed into a mini Romney of sorts since join­ing the ticket,many argue that Ryan have prob­a­bly been dam­aged by Romney, pos­si­bly irrepara­bly because of the lies. I dis­agree, I believe that Ryan lacked char­ac­ter from the get go , hence ‚his and Romney’s mar­riage is one made in hell, no one lies that fre­quent­ly , and for no rea­son unless he or she is pathological.

Mitt Romney did not hon­or his word he went to Nevada to address National Guard con­tin­gent and he gave a clas­sic cam­paign speech which was in many regards dis­re­spect­ful to our president.

No mat­ter how you feel about for­mer pres­i­dent George Bush, he was a man of char­ac­ter, you may have hat­ed his pol­i­tics, but you had to agree that pres­i­dent Bush was a man of class, Mitt Romney is like a com­mon alley-cat.

Judge for your­self if this guy is qual­i­fied to be pres­i­dent, he is cer­tain­ly the worst can­di­date for pres­i­dent I have ever seen and cer­tain­ly the most class­less.http://www.c‑span.org/Campaign2012/Events/Mitt-Romney-at-Natl-Guard-Association/10737433977 – 1/

We take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to salute all the fam­i­lies of all those who died on September 11^th. We also salute the mem­bers of America’s intel­li­gence, law enforce­ment, and mil­i­tary com­mu­ni­ty all of whom have worked tire­less­ly to make America safer.

Kudos to for­mer President George Bush for some of the poli­cies he pur­sued to keep all of us assured dur­ing those dif­fi­cult days.

Kudos to President Barack Obama for his vig­i­lance for his stead­fast fideli­ty to his stat­ed objec­tives in this so-called war on ter­ror and the accom­plish­ments he attained that no wannabe pres­i­dent or any­one else can take from him or his legacy.

Obstruct, Obstruct, Obstruct, then when the guy throws up his arms and say“ok I will do my own thing, using the powers given me, “They scream, “see he doesn’t want to work with us”.

On the day President Barack Obama was being inau­gu­rat­ed in this momen­tous and his­toric occa­sion of what many peo­ple all over the world saw as America’s com­ing of age a group of Republicans to include Paul Ryan Republican Candidate for President , Jim DeMint , Tom Coburn and oth­ers were hud­dled in a despi­ca­ble Un-American con­spir­a­cy to obstruct the new pres­i­dent as a path back to polit­i­cal pow­er. Republican Senator from the State of Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader:quote “The sin­gle most impor­tant thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president”.

Republican Senator from the State of South Carolina Jim DeMint :quote “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo, it will break him,” DeMint said refer­ring to health-care.

Of course being the liars they are when con­front­ed with his own words DeMint said he was­n’t say­ing he want­ed to break Obama the man he was refer­ring to his momentum.

In absolute­ly no con­text could that be true as the pres­i­dent had no momen­tum going , repub­li­cans had thwart­ed the efforts of the White House at every turn to get health care leg­is­la­tion passed.

Mitch McConnell is now whin­ing that the pres­i­dent and his sup­port­ers are look­ing for peo­ple to blame for what he calls the pres­i­den­t’s fail­ure, nev­er mind that there are plen­ty of evi­dence to point to with­in that intran­si­gent bel­li­cose regres­sive Neanderthal excuse for a polit­i­cal party.

What the so-called Independent vot­ers in this coun­try needs to remem­ber, if there are any such vot­ers, is what tran­spired over the last four years. Monolithic and across the board Republican oppo­si­tion and obstruc­tion to the pres­i­den­t’s agen­da, many argue that the blan­ket oppo­si­tion was a strat­e­gy to get back to pow­er, that has worked and it may be true, how­ev­er there is a deep­er more sin­is­ter motive to their strategy.

That strat­e­gy is to make Obama’s pres­i­den­cy a fail­ure so much so that the coun­try would not even think of elect­ing anoth­er black man/​woman for anoth­er fifty years. Ask your­selves what is behind the hard lurch the repub­li­can par­ty took to the right, ask why the voic­es once on the fringe are now the most stri­dent voic­es with­in the par­ty, even to the extent of forc­ing out high lev­el repub­li­cans who dare to utter the word “com­pro­mise”.

They want a puri­fied par­ty, a par­ty that does not even con­sid­er work­ing with the pres­i­dent, an all white party.

DeMint dou­bled down on his Waterloo com­ment by say­ing b, quote: ““I’m not look­ing for vin­di­ca­tion but I do believe that was a call to arms ear­ly in this race. I was one of the first who was will­ing to take the pres­i­dent on direct­ly on an agen­da that I thought was out of con­trol,” DeMint said Wednesday. “So I cer­tain­ly don’t regret say­ing it.”.

Voters with a mod­icum of self-inter­est or patri­o­tism would kick these two par­ti­san hacks out of office at the next oppor­tu­ni­ty, don’t hold your breath for that to hap­pen these two are fix­tures with­in their respec­tive states where this kind of think­ing and utter­ances are accept­able, so these states will re-elect them the next time they are up for re-elec­tion and the peo­ple who elect them will have vot­ed against their own self-interest.

Jim DeMint, Mitch McConnell Paul Ryan, Michelle Bachman, Allan West, and all oth­er House and Senate office Holders who wants to undo Obama-Care, all of them, are ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the best health care, paid for by peo­ple who have none.

It is the great­est dis­play of intel­lec­tu­al dis­hon­esty that repub­li­cans talk about the fail­ures of Barack Obama even as they conspire/​d and did every­thing in their pow­er to ensure that he has/​add no accomplishment.What they are ask­ing the vot­ers in this coun­try to do is to reward them for bad behavior.

No, the American peo­ple should not reward these peo­ple who are mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment , live off Government , spend most of their lives in gov­ern­ment , yet demean and dis­par­age government.

They should not reward Paul Ryan with a pro­mo­tion for lying and being an Obstructionist.

The American vot­er must send a clear mes­sage to Republicans, that they rep­re­sent their inter­est, they the peo­ple they claim to rep­re­sent, and not Charles and David Koch, they must make it clear to them that the House of Representatives is not a place where par­ti­san and racial grudges are played out, rather they must assert , you do our busi­ness, not yours.

The American vot­er must once and for all show peo­ple in the repub­li­can par­ty that they are not fools, they must assert that they will not allow them to make America a place only for the very rich.

One year after the launch of this blog-site, it is a bitter-sweet experience for me as I celebrate the success of my passion, while at the same time paradoxically mourning the death of Khajeel Mais.

One year ago this young man whom I have nev­er met forced me to launch my web­site with a solo arti­cle, an arti­cle which reg­is­tered my out­rage at his death.

A full year lat­er the fam­i­ly of this young man has not seen any jus­tice in the death of their son, the shoot­er is out on bail and from report­ing in the Jamaican media he has­n’t even turned over the mur­der weapon to the police.

What that means is that both he and his lawyers have col­lec­tive­ly thumbed their noses of the joke of a crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem which obtains in Jamaica.

I will come back to this issue in a minute but there was a very good report­ing on this sto­ry in the Jamaica Gleaner:http://http://jamaica-gleaner.com/pages/x6/ of July 3^rd 2012.

We will make no judge­ment on the direc­tion of the case, nei­ther will I pre­dict the ulti­mate res­o­lu­tion. I will how­ev­er draw your atten­tion to the fact that the alleged shoot­er is a Jamaican so-called big man, he fled the juris­dic­tion after he alleged­ly com­mit­ted the act, have not turned over the weapon to police, and has not coop­er­at­ed with law-enforce­ment, any one of the afore­men­tioned cri­te­rias, com­bined or by themselves,these char­ac­ter­is­tics would ren­der an accused inel­i­gi­ble for bail in most juris­dic­tion, not so in Jamaica.

Despite the con­flu­ence of neg­a­tives by this accused as it relates to bail, he was prompt­ly giv­en bail. One of the biggest myth per­pet­u­at­ed on the unsus­pect­ing pub­lic in Jamaica is that Bail should not be puni­tive, as such crim­i­nals accused of seri­ous crimes are prompt­ly released back into the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, irre­spec­tive of the grav­i­ty of their crimes or the num­ber of times they com­mit the most egre­gious crimes. This is the largest piece of idio­cy being prop­a­gat­ed by the pen­ny mil­lion­aires who live above Cross-Roads.

As a result the job of law enforce­ment is made dou­bly dif­fi­cult,. If bail is not sup­posed to be puni­tive, then maybe it should be. Maybe it would pro­duce a degree of deter­rent to some of the killers oper­at­ing with impuni­ty if they knew that when caught they would not see the light of day. How about that bleed­ing hearts?

As the Mais fam­i­ly grieve the loss of their pre­cious son, there are no com­fort­ing words com­ing from the politi­cians, none from the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty, after all I’m sure Carolyn Gomes is watch­ing to ensure no one steps out of line when they deal with the killer of Khajeel Mais.

Carolyn Gomes Dir. JFJ

You see as I have said for years, decent peo­ple who are try­ing to do the right thing in Jamaica are endan­gered species, no one care for them, not politi­cians, not preists, not the crim­i­nal rights activists, there is no mon­ey to be made from their defence, no mon­ey to be had from abroad for advo­ca­cy on their behalf.

To the Mais fam­i­ly I empathize with your pain, I under­stand your exas­per­a­tion, feel free to grieve, at the same time what I can do is to con­tin­ue to shine a light on your case so that peo­ple all over the world may read , get out­raged and demand jus­tice for your family.

God bless you.

Thirty men all armed with high-powered weapons carried out the massacre in August Town Saint Andrew Jamaica last week-end:

Our coun­try is once again awash in blood, many on the ground there are begin­ning to come around albeit late to the fact that what the secu­ri­ty forces are up against is gueril­la warfare.

At least one of the coun­try’s news­pa­per The dai­ly Gleaner cap­tioned one of its arti­cles [GUERILLA WARFARE], this speaks vol­umes about what is real­ly hap­pen­ing in our coun­try. On April 18^th of this year I wrote a blog titled [JAMAICA A LEADERLESS NATION]. In that opin­ion piece I out­lined that our coun­try was essen­tial­ly like a ship rud­der­less on the ocean, filled with peo­ple, with no cap­tain on deck.,

As blood runs, the coun­try’s Prime Minister is not only clue­less, she is woe­ful­ly bereft of any idea what to do. Unfortunately for those who vot­ed for Portia Simpson Miller and those who did­n’t , her game plan and her idea of lead­er­ship is to be in pow­er, that’s it. Subsequently as Rome burns, the Empress con­tin­ues to glide around the car­ribean and the world attend­ing func­tions and receiv­ing gra­tu­itous awards in the naked­ness of her new clothes.

Jamaica glean­er photo

I have spent many days and nights as a mem­ber of the Rangers Squad, in the Wareika Hills over­look­ing East Kingston. I have spent count­less nights and days fac­ing down heav­i­ly armed urban ter­ror­ists in ever gar­ri­son with­in our coun­try, I have spent an entire week in the Montpelier Mountains of west­ern Jamaica in the quest to appre­hend and pre­vent drugs and weapons smug­gling into our coun­try, no real food oth­er than army rations, no drink oth­er than brack­ish water, and no shel­ter from the rain, heat, mos­qui­tos and oth­er pests. And then there are the armed drug and gun runners.

As a mem­ber of the CIB I have put many drug deal­ers in Jail only to see them walk out after a few months, I have assist­ed and per­son­al­ly removed guns from the streets ‚get­ting shot in the process. I have received valu­able infor­ma­tion from mem­bers of the pub­lic which has saved lives , recov­ered weapons and pre­vent­ed hard drugs from get­ting dis­trib­uted into our communities.

As the secu­ri­ty forces con­tin­ue to do the heavy lift­ing, short­com­ings and all , the Jamaican peo­ple con­tin­ue to be pris­on­ers in their own homes and in their com­mu­ni­ties as dan­ger­ous blood-thirsty demons run their com­mu­ni­ties using intimidation,murder and mayhem.

Here are three of the accused men as pub­li­cized by the police from left to right Michael Morgan alias Frisky, Dilton Foster alias Dil, and Owen Whitley alias Howie.(Photographs cour­tesy of the Jamaica Gleaner)

Thus far we have no evi­dence whether these men are guilty or not , but the police have pro­vid­ed these por­traits nam­ing them as men of inter­est in the mas­sacre of the four over the weekend.

Inner city com­mu­ni­ties all over our coun­try con­tin­ue to feed the mon­ster of crime and ter­ror with com­plic­it silence, the long-estab­lished cul­ture of “informer fi dead” has giv­en life to a gen­er­a­tion of blood-thirsty rabid killers who are hell-bent on hav­ing it their way. This rabid blood-lust did not occur in a vac­u­um, it ger­mi­nat­ed on the fer­til­ized bed of acqui­es­cence and was allowed to metas­ta­size on the bla­tant and overt sup­port it received from crim­i­nal rights orga­ni­za­tions , oper­at­ing as legit­i­mate human rights orga­ni­za­tions in our country.

Unfortunately for our coun­try , our police offi­cers are fight­ing this scourge with the same tac­tics it used 20 years ago when I was still a serv­ing mem­ber, for the most part reactive.

As more and more inno­cent , defense­less cit­i­zens are slaugh­tered the silence is deaf­en­ing from the froth­ing mouth lib­er­al char­la­tans at the crim­i­nal rights sur­ro­ga­cy group (Jamaicans for justice).

Pictured from left to right is Earl Witter pub­lic defend­er, exec­u­tive direc­tor of JFJ Carolyn Gomes and Susan Goffe also of JFJ.

These are three of the promi­nent Jamaicans who on a dai­ly basis give unmit­i­gat­ed sup­port to mur­der­ers, they wage and main­tain a blis­ter­ing cam­paign against the secu­ri­ty forces, the result of which we are see­ing in the grue­some mass slaugh­ter hap­pen­ing in com­mu­ni­ties all over our coun­try. They have stri­dent­ly argued that in order for the killing of crim­i­nals to be jus­ti­fied an equal amount of police offi­cers must also be killed.

They are all dubi­ous­ly silent when inno­cent Jamaicans are mur­dered in the sanc­ti­ty of their own homes. What hap­pen to the human rights of the inno­cent, are those not killed by police with­out rights? 

The deaf­en­ing silence comes from the fact that those faces above are of peo­ple scared shit­less of the maraud­ing mur­der­ers who are destroy­ing our beau­ti­ful coun­try. They only come out of the wood-work when police kill the scum, that is how they remain rel­e­vant, that is how they secure for­eign funding.

The acts of home-grown ter­ror­ism seen today are noth­ing new, this have been going on for decades, Jamaica’s crim­i­nal under-world has been wag­ing this kind of war­fare against inno­cent defense­less cit­i­zens for as long as I can remem­ber. Those cops stand­ing there are a buffer between the com­mu­ni­ty and the ter­ror­ists, for years I was one of those cops who stood there in places like Brook Avenue in Duhaney Park stand­ing between the killers who use the van­tage point of the high­er ter­rain to deter­mine when to strike.

We stood there fac­ing down killers with no bul­let proof vest and only the vehi­cle we drove as cov­er. We did it in Nannyville and Back-to, In places like Olympic vil­la and a pletho­ra of oth­er com­mu­ni­ties rav­aged by crime which is fed by silence.

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

Ask the clue­less Prime Minister what she plan on doing about the ter­ror­ism grip­ping the coun­try and she will prob­a­bly tell you to ask the PNP. That seem to be the only answer she is intel­lec­tu­al­ly capa­ble of giv­ing to every question.

Our coun­try is in for a rough time with no end in sight and no lead­er­ship on this and many more issues, God help the good peo­ple who did not ask or vote for this.

Jamaicans were officially told that one of the more effective arm within the police department was effectively disbanded.

Kingfish was launched in 2004 under the for­mer Government of the People’s National Party, after tremen­dous demands from a crime inun­dat­ed pub­lic. At it’s launch Kingfish was her­ald­ed as a unit that would go after orga­nized crime play­ers. I argued after it’s launch that Kingfish would die the same death as oth­er units which were suc­cess­ful in con­tain­ing crime. Many who dis­cuss crime and secu­ri­ty in Jamaica, whether they live on the Island or not , do so from their own per­cep­tions about the rule of law.The ques­tion of suc­cess as it relates to spe­cial­ized units and their impact on crime will always be subjective.

I speak from the dual van­tage point of an ordi­nary cit­i­zen but also from a posi­tion of hav­ing once being a part of one of those spe­cial­ized units. That perch gives one a bet­ter idea of the com­pre­hen­sive work that have been put in by these units and the suc­cess­es reaped as a result of this work. As I have writ­ten in a soon to be pub­lished book, I am con­vinced that the val­ues many of us hold dear, peace and tran­quil­i­ty in our com­mu­ni­ties, infra­struc­ture which will enable the intre­pune­r­i­al spir­it of our peo­ple to soar, and leg­is­la­tion which would make each and every cit­i­zen feel he/​she has a stake in our coun­try, are not the val­ues the coun­try’s polit­i­cal lead­ers espouse.

So like the Operations Squad (Eradication) based at the old pass­port office on Spanish Town Road, The Ranger squad out of the Mobile Reserves,the Crime man­age­ment Unit head­ed by Renato Adams, The Ocid squad and oth­ers we are now told that Operation Kingfish is gone. This has con­firmed what I stat­ed above, our lead­ers do not want to end crime they want the sta­tus quo.

The Jamaica Gleaner saw it this way.

KINGFISH KILLED:

http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​2​0​6​2​4​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​4​.​h​tml

The crux of the mat­ter as it relates to Kingfish is that it worked in secur­ing inves­tiga­tive integri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in its pur­suit of high-pro­file criminals.

High pro­file crim­i­nals such as Donald (Zekes) Phipps, local Matthews Lane punk and Joel Andem of the Gideon war­riors gang are doing time as a result of the work Kingfish did, accord­ing to the report.

The Country’s nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Peter Bunting seem hap­py to say “I did­n’t do it, it was some­one else”. Bunting was so intent on putting dis­tance between him­self and the dis­band­ing of Kingfish, he went on sug­gest that the unit may have been dis­man­tled before his pre­de­ces­sor Dwight Nelson’s time as secu­ri­ty min­is­ter. Well there you have it! If it works or was start­ed by the oth­er par­ty they do not want it, as such it leads cyn­ics like myself to argue and con­clude that the rea­son it was dis­band­ed was that the coun­try’s polit­i­cal lead­ers want to retain the sta­tus quo. According to the report,Les Green, Assistant com­mis­sion­er of police, and a British Transplant, is at a loss as to the rea­sons for the dis­band­ment of the unit. Here’s what Green had to say:

“I don’t know why it got dis­band­ed, but it has been qui­et­ly dis­band­ed and no longer exists … . It was nev­er announced or for­mu­lat­ed as a closure.” 

He argued that pol­i­tics and jeal­ousy played a part in the demise of Operation Kingfish, which was an intel­li­gence-dri­ven ini­tia­tive, involv­ing hand-picked mem­bers of the local police force work­ing close­ly with their coun­ter­parts in the United Kingdom and the United States. Juxtaposing that with the stark real­i­ties of what’s hap­pen­ing this week, over 10 peo­ple were slaugh­tered over this week-end with 4 killed in August Town Saint Andrew alone. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​B​l​o​o​d​-​r​u​n​s​-​i​n​-​A​u​g​u​s​t​-​T​own — 4‑year-old-boy-grazed-by-fly­ing-bul­let­s_11790969

Police in the com­mu­ni­ty of August Town

The blood-let­ting is con­tin­u­ing, the police are no clos­er to end­ing gang vio­lence and the wan­ton slaugh­ter of the nation’s 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple than when the com­mis­sion­er charged his divi­sion­al com­man­ders to end them. The Government for its part have no clue and seem to be say­ing Kingfish was on its way out before it came on the scene. There is only one prob­lem with the posi­tion tak­en by the Government, they are in gov­ern­ment. Even if Kingfish was being phased out, as a pol­i­cy of the pre­vi­ous government,the oppo­si­tion would have known this if they under­stood the dan­gers of crime. They sure­ly could have devised a crime pol­i­cy which includ­ed the ener­giz­ing or resus­ci­ta­tion of oper­a­tion Kingfish. Inner city com­mu­ni­ties like August Town where these killings are hap­pen­ing would have been cleared of the very urban ter­ror­ists that the People’s National Party,gave breath­ing room to, when they did not vote to extend the lim­it­ed state of pub­lic emergency.

The chick­ens have sim­ply come home to roost, and both sides of the polit­i­cal divide have dirty hands. It’s inter­est­ing to hear the min­is­ter now offer­ing plat­i­tudes to the fam­i­lies of the deceased. Will assur­ances from Bunting and Ellington bring back their loved ones? The answer is no, and as the com­mu­ni­ty grieve it must come to the real­iza­tion that the silence they engage in when crimes are being com­mit­ted against their neigh­bors is the silence that is killing them. The Police in Jamaica are large­ly capa­ble of arrest­ing only for offences com­mit­ted with­in their view,they are hor­ri­ble at inves­ti­gat­ing, intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and case prepa­ra­tion, so for all intents and pur­pos­es the mur­der­ers who killed those peo­ple in August Town over the week-end and the oth­er 6 in the oth­er parts of the coun­try, may rest assured they will nev­er be held account­able for their crimes. This is the new nor­mal in Jamaica, as eco­nom­ic con­di­tions wors­ens world-wide, small economies like ours should be look­ing to attract all kinds of invest­ments, our coun­try should be rolling out the red car­pet to Jamaican nation­als wish­ing to return home. Instead the gov­ern­ment has once again reneged on its core respon­si­bil­i­ty which is to pro­tect its cit­i­zens. Disbanding oper­a­tion Kingfish has been only one step in the total abdi­ca­tion of that duty,and both polit­i­cal par­ties are responsible.

Well over a month after the death of Senior Superintendent of Police Dathan (Duffy) Henry,the Jamaica constabulary force (JCF) has failed to tell the country what was the cause of his death.

The last thing we heard from the police was that they were await­ing the result of the tox­i­col­o­gy test with a view to deter­min­ing whether Senior Superintendent Henry was indeed poi­soned, as the street believe.

Senior Superintendent Dathan (Duffy) Henry

As I first blogged, I received word that SSP Henry died on or around May 6^th, of this year, since then, rumours have been swirling that mis­ter Henry was poisoned.

I have no evi­dence which would ver­i­fy or dis­prove this rumor, but the police seem to believe that there may be some­thing to it, or that he may have died oth­er than a nat­ur­al death due to the fact that the coro­ner ruled the cause of death incon­clu­sive.

In the sec­ond blog I wrote on the death of my friend ‚I also ques­tioned the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty . I won­dered whether that sec­tor let Dathan Henry down by fail­ing to diag­nose his con­di­tion on the one hand, or fail­ing to tell his fam­i­ly that they are unable to diag­nose him pro­fes­sion­al­ly and advise them to get him the help he need­ed in a time­ly and expe­di­tious man­ner, which could have pro­duced a dif­fer­ent result.

I also out­lined some things the police could be doing as they await the lab reports. I went on to opine that the longer it took to nab a sus­pect in a crime, the more like­ly it is that no one will be held account­able for that crime.

I am con­ver­sant that until the police receive the tox­i­col­o­gy report they will argue that they are unable to com­mence a homi­cide investigation.

On this par­tic­u­lar point I humbly dis­agree, what if the tox­i­col­o­gy report indi­cate there are no traces of tox­ins in his body , does that rule out poi­son­ing as a cause of death?

The answer is NO!

Today there are numer­ous types of tox­ins and phar­ma­c­ti­cal drugs which are almost impos­si­ble to detect even in the most sophis­ti­cat­ed crime labs in devel­oped coun­tries like the United States , Canada , and oth­er devel­oped countries.

As such ‚the police must com­mence and con­duct a vig­or­ous homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tion irre­spec­tive of what the tox­i­col­o­gy report says.

Too many Jamaicans have been mur­dered and no one held account­able for their deaths, some­times due to absence of evi­dence, intim­i­da­tion of wit­ness­es, lack of inves­tiga­tive skills and or will, and a res­ig­na­tion to the fact that the per­son is already gone and so every­one moves on.

If we are to change the cul­ture that is the norm in Jamaica, the police must do the nec­es­sary work to bring the killer/​killers of Dathan Henry to Justice if he was indeed murdered.

Where there is smoke there is fire, peo­ple on the streets are say­ing SSP Henry was mur­dered, it is up to the police to ensure that if this is true that his killer is brought to jus­tice, even it means they have to arrest one of their own.

THE IMPOSITION OF A 23-YEAR SENTENCE ON CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL (DUDUS) COKE BY FEDERAL JUDGE ROBERT. P. PATTERSON, TO RUN CONSECUTIVELY, SENDS A STRONG MESSAGE TO THOSE WHO FEEL THEY CAN CIRCUMVENT THE LAW WITH IMPUNITY.

Hidden in this sen­tence, notwith­stand­ing, is a deep­er, more sig­nif­i­cant les­son for Jamaica. The 23-year sen­tence to run con­sec­u­tive­ly, not con­cur­rent­ly, is sig­nif­i­cant for Christopher Coke. The greater sig­nif­i­cance for Jamaica and Jamaicans, how­ev­er, is that America’s Justice sys­tem is not the ridicu­lous crim­i­nal-friend­ly farce that obtains in Jamaica. Every defen­dant charged with a crime should be giv­en a fair and impar­tial tri­al; jus­tice demands it. On the oth­er hand, those who have been vic­tims of crime also deserve a rig­or­ous defend­er of their right to be safe in their per­sons, their homes, or wher­ev­er they law­ful­ly exist. That is where the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem comes in to ade­quate­ly inves­ti­gate, pros­e­cute, and effec­tive­ly apply nec­es­sary and suf­fi­cient­ly puni­tive and reha­bil­i­ta­tive reme­dies. Years ago, in anoth­er forum, I wrote that Jamaica would sub­mit to the rule of law in this new world order. I am vin­di­cat­ed to some degree, though still not sat­is­fied, that the peo­ple at the top of these crim­i­nal empires are still run­ning around Jamaica untouched.

Police sta­tions burned.Streets bar­ri­cad­ed

There is a pletho­ra of dif­fer­ent con­di­tions with­in Jamaica, which cre­at­ed Christopher (Dudus) Coke), Jim Brown, Claudie Massop, Skeng Don, George Pang, Feather Mop, Bury Boy, Jah T, Chubby Dread, Sandokan, Natty Morgan, and the seem­ing­ly end­less list of infa­mous degen­er­ates who have dis­graced our his­tor­i­cal land­scape. At the core of it all is a pop­u­la­tion that large­ly rel­ish­es and feeds on the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of all things ille­gal and wor­ships at the feet of these low-life hea­thens. The media and the local cul­ture duti­ful­ly feed this insa­tiable, rapa­cious desire for things illic­it, vis-a-vis dance hall music, the the­ater, etc.

This fer­tile cul­ture of accep­tance is the per­fect breed­ing ground for the exist­ing cul­ture of per­va­sive and debil­i­tat­ing cor­rup­tion, which is suf­fo­cat­ing the very lifeblood of the coun­try and sub­ject­ing gen­er­a­tions of our nation’s peo­ple to a life of abject pover­ty and many deaths. It was the cul­ture that pro­duced Dudus Coke. Not that he is with­out sin, as even he has allud­ed to, but had the sys­tem effec­tive­ly pun­ished and reha­bil­i­tat­ed him when he start­ed down that path, he would cer­tain­ly not have been in that court­room yes­ter­day hear­ing those dread­ed words from Justice Patterson. Despite being arrest­ed and charged sev­er­al times, Jamaica’s crim­i­nal cod­dling judges turned him back onto the streets with­out penal­ty time and again. How could he not feel above the laws?
The sys­tem that failed the peo­ple Dudus trans­gressed against also failed Dudus. The Culture that foment­ed and main­tained a state with­in a state is expo­nen­tial­ly respon­si­ble for those who died at his hands direct­ly or indi­rect­ly. Even as Coke now has time to con­tem­plate his actions, count­less oth­ers are doing what he did in the same tiny piece of real estate with its 2.7 mil­lion inhabitants.

Dirty politi­cians, Judges, and oth­er high­ly-placed bureau­crats, a woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate bro­ken jus­tice sys­tem, from top to bot­tom, an impo­tent, timid, lap-dog police force, and a cheer-lead­ing media add a crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it civ­il soci­ety, and the result is a per­fect storm, which cre­ates a coun­try that breads the Christopher Cokes of this world. As some seek to dem­a­gogue Christopher (dudus) Coke, we would be well remind­ed that if Jamaica had clear­ly estab­lished laws, judges who under­stood their respon­si­bil­i­ties in apply­ing those laws, and police who were capa­ble and will­ing to inves­ti­gate, we would not have this con­ver­sa­tion. Christopher Coke would have no choice but to be a legit­i­mate businessman.
As we Jamaicans express our vary­ing opin­ions on this sub­ject, we are remind­ed that there are more peo­ple in Jamaica doing the very same things that he was sen­tenced for. Some peo­ple occu­py posi­tions of pow­er, such as politi­cians, busi­ness­peo­ple, lawyers, and peo­ple from all walks of life. Dudus had a chance to do the right thing. He argued with Judge Patterson that he was a bene­fac­tor for his com­mu­ni­ty; no one denies that. Many in Jamaica see that kind of largess as wor­thy of saint­hood. Once again, that men­tal­i­ty is derived from the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of evil, all things crim­i­nal, and an unex­plain­able accep­tance of crim­i­nal­i­ty. Sentences met­ed out for infrac­tions to the most egre­gious crimes and acts of ter­ror send a mes­sage that the state does not attach any sig­nif­i­cance to crime’s cor­ro­sive and destruc­tive con­se­quences. The Media, or what pass­es for one, does sig­nif­i­cant­ly more dam­age than good to an already gullible, low-infor­ma­tion pop­u­lace by cheer­lead­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty and glo­ri­fy­ing crim­i­nals. In the end, those who seek fame do so at the expense of the agen­cies put in place to pro­vide for the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty, even as they clutch tight­ly their American visas, green cards, and, in many cas­es, citizenship.

Newspaper edi­tors con­stant­ly berate law enforce­ment about every minute detail while they ignore the over 200 gangs oper­at­ing with impuni­ty in the coun­try. The secu­ri­ty forces are ham­strung, too afraid to do any­thing for fear of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. Those in pow­er who make the rules are the very ones ben­e­fit­ing from crime. Absent the United States and its resolve to get transna­tion­al crim­i­nals irre­spec­tive of where they oper­ate from, Jamaica would have already been a failed state.
Day after day, the num­ber one print­ed dish-rag (THE DAILY GLEANER) from its Editorial pages screams out for inves­ti­ga­tions into the deaths of those who died in Tivoli Gardens. That’s when it can pull itself from homo­sex­u­al advocacy.
There is nev­er any men­tion by this garbage dis­penser about the police offi­cers killed when Coke’s mili­tia decid­ed to over-pow­er the Jamaican state. There is no men­tion of the death of mem­bers of our mil­i­tary. There is no men­tion of the death of the inno­cents killed, as bands of maraud­ing mili­ti­a­men went on a ram­page, killing at will. There is no men­tion of the police sta­tions torched in the images dis­played above. Inimitable and indeli­ble images seared into our con­scious­ness that our beloved coun­try was ever so close to being tak­en over by filthy hood­lums who decid­ed that the laws did not apply to them. Institution of high­er learn­ing churns out so-called intel­lec­tu­als whose only inter­est is their own. Higher learn­ing has no nobil­i­ty, com­mit­ment to ser­vice, or ded­i­ca­tion to nation­hood. Those who earn a degree in Jamaica use it sole­ly as an instru­ment to club oth­ers less for­tu­nate. So where will Jamaica be as it enters its 50^th year of so-called inde­pen­dence? Will it con­tin­ue to be a haven for crim­i­nal­i­ty run by two groups of crim­i­nal­s/crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing lead­ers who have visas and cit­i­zen­ship for coun­tries where the rule of law is respect­ed? Or will a leader or group rise to take the reins and tell the peo­ple your future is in your hands? It is not in crim­i­nal­i­ty or remit­tance from abroad, and it’s all up to you.

Only time will tell!

As major crimes con­tin­ue to be a seri­ous issue in Jamaica, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue to flail away half-heart­ed­ly seem­ing­ly bereft of any clue of what needs to be done to effec­tive­ly fix this cancer.

So what does the Portia Simpson Miller admin­is­tra­tion do? They announced the for­ma­tion of anoth­er squad with­in the Police force.

National Security Minister Peter Bunting:

I have fol­lowed devel­op­ments close­ly, both with­in the police depart­ment and the gov­ern­ment on a whole, as it relates to secu­ri­ty mat­ters, or should I say the lack there­of ? At this time all I can say to min­is­ter Bunting is, “mis­ter Minister are you serious”?

In recent times there have been numer­ous squads,mister min­is­ter what will anoth­er squad do that the oth­ers haven’t attempt­ed or done?

Flying squad.

Ranger squad.

Eradication squad.

OCID squad.

Crime man­age­ment unit.

Street crimes Unit.

Operation Kingfish.

And now MOCA, Major Organized Crime and Anti Corruption task Force. Mister Minister, I like a Moca every now and then but this is not the time to have a nice bev­er­age. On a seri­ous note though, it seem that the Portia Simpson Miller is not aware of the old adage “the def­i­n­i­tion of a fool is, doing the same thing and expect­ing a dif­fer­ent result” .

As I have writ­ten in every forum and in these blogs, over and over, and over, the solu­tion can­not be about any of the following.

NO’s

The for­ma­tion of more squads with­in the same inept police force.

Putting more cops on the streets, impor­tant though that may be.

Arresting more crim­i­nals, so they walk right back through the revolv­ing door.

Arming the police force more, impor­tant though that may be.

Having more and more police over-sight agen­cies, impor­tant though that may be.

CONVERSELY.

What is need­ed are clear­ly craft­ed laws which seri­ous­ly mil­i­tates against crime. Laws which have penal­ties that leaves no ambi­gu­i­ty, but puts crim­i­nals away for extend­ed peri­ods of time com­men­su­rate with the crime they commit.

Fixing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, which now over­whelm­ing­ly favors crim­i­nals and dirty defense lawyers.

Have truth in sen­tenc­ing, which removes dis­cre­tion from the coun­try’s far-left lean­ing lib­er­al judges for cer­tain cat­e­gories of crimes. This reduces or elim­i­nates their abil­i­ties to seek out ways to return crim­i­nals to the streets.

Effectively train and equip the police force in intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, foren­sics, and the admin­is­tra­tion of prop­er inter­na­tion­al police pro­ce­dures and protocols.

What we are forced to con­clude is that as we are used to see­ing this is just anoth­er attempt by polit­i­cal admin­is­tra­tions to kick the prover­bial can down the road.

This PNP admin­is­tra­tion came to office after the elec­tions of December 29^th 2011, after 4 years in oppo­si­tion, one would have thought it fair to assume they must have had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get a grasp of what ails the country.

Yet they did not table one piece of leg­is­la­tion, even after the first 100 days. Most duly elect­ed gov­ern­ments in oth­er coun­tries strive to accom­plish a broad raft of leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ments with­in the first 100 days of tak­ing office, if not for any­thing but for brag­ging rights.

The Portia Simpson Miller admin­is­tra­tion came to office with noth­ing, they sim­ply took pow­er. With this par­ty, it is, as it has always been, all about hold­ing state power.

They have lied about the crash pro­gramme (JEEP). They lied about rolling back tax­es on elec­tric­i­ty, in fact they increased tax­es on elec­tric­i­ty. They lied about the size of their cab­i­net, God knows what is left for them to lie about.

The gullible vot­ers have once again been tak­en for a ride, as they have been on so many oth­er pre­vi­ous occa­sions. The lat­est cha­rade is MOCA.

Any stick which forms a new par­a­digm as it relates to crime and pun­ish­ment , must be accom­pa­nied by a rig­or­ous and vibrant pro­gramme of car­rots. It can­not only be puni­tive. My expe­ri­ences with Jamaican youths who emi­grate is that they are no dif­fer­ent from any oth­er young peo­ple for the most part. They have the same dreams and aspi­ra­tions of any oth­er group of young peo­ple. The same dreams and aspi­ra­tions I had when I was their age. I mar­vel at the thought of how many young men have been lost because they have lit­er­al­ly been forced into a life of crime out of necessity.

Understanding that there are no mag­ic bul­lets, no panacea for any prob­lem , I am painful­ly aware of the lim­i­ta­tions of gov­ern­ments as it relates to the deliv­ery of ser­vices. This is not a Jamaican prob­lem, it is a glob­al one, it how­ev­er does not excuse a gov­ern­ment from the pri­ma­cy of its func­tion, that of pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty to its peo­ple, as a result of gross incom­pe­tence and dere­lic­tion of duty.

Governments, to include that which obtains in Jamaica, can­not any longer occu­py office just to secure and feath­er their nests, this kind of fal­la­cy is no longer accept­able and will not be tol­er­at­ed as is evi­denced in places like Egypt, Libya, and now Syria. These are coun­tries to which the word Democracy was alien. Though they are not yet shin­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic bea­cons on a hill, they cer­tain­ly have tak­en their futures into their own hands and over­turned thou­sands of years of oppres­sive tyranny.

Jamaica beware.

No longer will polit­i­cal par­ties and would be lead­ers, be allowed to fat­ten them­selves at the expense of the 99%. Electorates are now far more sophis­ti­cat­ed. It behoves the present cor­rupt regime in pow­er in Jamaica to take note, fail­ing which, their ill-con­ceived notion that “Jamaica is PNP coun­try” will fast become a grave misnomer.

Fix crime in Jamaica the coun­try’s prob­lems are half solved.

It’s that simple.

On the trag­ic event of the pass­ing of my friend Senior Superintendent (SSP) Dathan (Duffy) Henry, I was shocked and sad­dened beyond words.

Duffy was more than what is now ref­ered to as a (senior cop). Dathan Duffy Henry and I served togeth­er at the Constant Spring CIB when we were very young men. It is a remark­able thing which sep­a­rates police offi­cers in Jamaica from oth­er young men. One could join the police depart­ment at the ten­der age of 18 years. most of us joined fresh out of high school. Duffy was one of those young fresh-faced kid. He was not only young , he was smart and will­ing, he was intel­li­gent, and inno­v­a­tive, I close my eyes and I am right back in that upstairs office hear­ing Duffy par­tic­i­pate in those strat­e­gy ses­sions we had, dis­cussing how we would remove crim­i­nals from the streets.

The pass­ing of my friend, shock­ing, and painful as it has been, has now been exac­er­bat­ed by news that the cause of death has been ruled incon­clu­sive. This has sparked the rumor mill churn­ing, with the front-line argu­ment being that he was poisoned.

It seem to me that even if he was poi­soned, a prop­er autop­sy would not only have revealed that truth, it would also be able to in most cas­es, nail down with con­clu­sive speci­fici­ty, the tox­in which was used, if there is any truth to that rumor.

IS SSP HENRY’S DEATH AN INDICTMENT ON THE MEDICAL SYSTEM?

What I per­son­al­ly found shock­ing is the fact that Dathan laid dying in the Kingston Public Hospital and no one fig­ured that they could not save his life. Hospitals and med­ical staff are some­times unable to pre­vent some­one from dying. However as some­one who has been injured and arrived at a pro­fes­sion­al med­ical facil­i­ty clin­i­cal­ly dead, I am inclined to believe in the mir­a­cle of mod­ern med­i­cine, not only to diag­nose prob­lems but to effect recov­ery of even the most grave­ly ill persons.

It seem incom­pre­hen­si­ble to me a lay per­son, that irre­spec­tive of what ailed Duffy, that he could not have been bet­ter diag­nosed and effec­tive­ly treat­ed. If he could not be treat­ed in the coun­try his fam­i­ly and orga­ni­za­tion could have sought med­ical help in anoth­er jurisdiction.

WOEFUL INADEQUACY:

One night in 1987 I was shot on Blackwood Terrace off Red Hills road as I went to inves­ti­gate threats against a res­i­dent of that com­mu­ni­ty, that res­i­dent was also shot in the stom­ach and back. I was able to neu­tral­ize that threat that night and remove a 357 mag­num from the streets.

Bleeding from a wound to my hip, my shoes filled with blood, I took the gen­tle­man to the Kingston Public Hospital for treat­ment. Still bleed­ing pro­fuse­ly I helped to lift him and took him into what obtained for the emer­gency room, the gen­tle­man was scream­ing in pain on the stretch­er as we wield­ed him in. There was a man Sitting behind the counter with his feet up read­ing the Gleaner, he did not both­er to glance in our direc­tion despite the ago­nized groans com­ing from the man on the stretcher.

No one ran out to help us, no one both­ered to pay any atten­tion to us, I iden­ti­fied myself and asked for help, no one moved , I again asked for help and no one moved to help us , and the man kept read­ing his paper. I then lost it and went bal­lis­tic, upon which the Gleaner read­ing moron jumped up and iden­ti­fied him­self as the on-duty doc­tor. I won’t both­er to tell you what I said to him before I left for the University Hospital to be treated.

I obvi­ous­ly was not sur­prised yes­ter­day when my blog-post in that (dish-rag) the Gleaner was not post­ed. That incom­pe­tent poor excuse of a doc­tor was in fact read­ing a copy of the Gleaner, go figure.

SEEN FIRST HAND:

As a young detec­tive one of the require­ments of the job was to be present at autop­sies in cas­es where I was active­ly engaged in an inves­ti­ga­tion. I would also attend when asked to stand in, which also required me to poten­tial­ly tes­ti­fy in any court pro­ceed­ing that may poten­tial­ly emanate from that enquiry. In the way mod­ern autop­sies are con­duct­ed today with appro­pri­ate pro­fes­sion­als, tech­nolo­gies, care, and pur­pose, backed up with sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis of the most minute detail , those Jamaican exam­i­na­tions were as far as the East is from the West.

What obtained then as I am told obtains now, is as I saw it. A porter cuts open the corpse, the doc­tor stays two yards away and jots a few things on a note-pad, seem­ing­ly put-off at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of touch­ing it. That’s the way an autop­sy is done in Jamaica. The truth is these grave dis­ser­vice are passed off as pro­fes­sion­al behav­ior because the peo­ple do not demand better.

INEPT POLICE:

The Jamaica Constabulary Force for its part, is now ask­ing peo­ple to come for­ward if they have any infor­ma­tion regard­ing what seem to be a now active crim­i­nal investigation. 

The INEPT Police Department has now con­firmed that there is an active inves­ti­ga­tion going on by its Major Investigations Task-Force (MIT). They are also ask­ing peo­ple to come for­ward and tell what they know if any­thing at (92−922−−5344) or (92−948−9181) The police have also stat­ed that they are await­ing the tox­i­col­o­gy report to come back.

As the police await the tox­i­col­o­gy report, what are they doing in the mean­time? If the Hospital did not have the capac­i­ty to save the life of my friend while he laid there for days dying, can­not deter­mine what caused his death, what makes them think that this fias­co of a sys­tem will have the capac­i­ty to deter­mine cause of death, through tox­i­col­o­gy tests done by the same inept system?

(1) What about retrac­ing the steps SSP Henry took pri­or to him falling ill?

(2) How about talk­ing to every­one from fam­i­ly mem­bers to every per­son with whom he may have met over the pre­vi­ous 48 hours pri­or to him hav­ing fall­en ill?

(3) How about talk­ing to all of his col­leagues with whom he may have met over the same period?

(4) How about lit­er­al­ly walk­ing in Dathan’s shoes back­wards, in an attempt to see with whom he may have had a drink, shared a lunch,had a casu­al cock­tail, if any?

(4) Surely in this day and age even in Jamaica there are secu­ri­ty sys­tems that may tell more than the inept police are will­ing to acknowledge.

(5) How about look­ing at insur­ance to see who the ben­e­fi­cia­ries are?

(6) How about look­ing at peo­ple with­in the Department with whom he may have had a disagreement?

(7) How about look­ing at crim­i­nals who may have had it out for Henry because of his vig­i­lance in dis­rupt­ing their activ­i­ties, who poten­tial­ly may have plant­ed peo­ple into his inner cir­cle, to include police officers?

(8) How about look­ing to see if any­one may have threat­ened his life, at any stage, pri­or to his death?

(9) How about look­ing at Hospital staff to see who may have been admin­is­ter­ing treat­ment to him in an effort to see if they were com­pro­mised? His ini­tial hos­pi­tal­iza­tion may not have been life threat­en­ing, he how­ev­er could have been done in right there in the hospital.

There are a lot real detec­tives could be doing in the inter­im as they await tox­i­col­o­gy results. The longer an inves­ti­ga­tion drags, the less like­ly it is that a pos­i­tive con­clu­sion will be reached. Twiddling thumbs is not an option . If the Jamaican Police can­not inves­ti­gate the death of one of its bright­est most cel­e­brat­ed stars, how can it expect to engen­der trust and con­fi­dence in the Jamaican people?

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This is the fourth seg­ment in a series of blogs titled ” Crime in Jamaica”.In this seg­ment I will attempt to show you how we have got­ten to this point, a coun­try which is now liv­ing off the largess of peo­ple liv­ing abroad..

In this pic­ture is for­mer People’s National Party leader and prime Minister, and (center)Current par­ty leader and Prime Minister por­tia Simpson Miller.

National elec­tions held 1988 saw the return of the PNP to pow­er for what would turn out to be an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ year hold on polit­i­cal pow­er, a move that to some may have been the sec­ond most instru­men­tal fac­tor as it relates to the con­di­tion of the coun­try today.

Negative eco­nom­ic growth, pur­suance of poli­cies that has zero chance of grow­ing the econ­o­my, mas­sive cor­rup­tion, run away crime, no updat­ing of the coun­try’s archa­ic laws and a pletho­ra of oth­er acts that could only be char­ac­ter­ized as best case incom­pe­tence and worst case criminal.

For exam­ple the Jamaican Police Department, revealed that for a whole decade not a sin­gle dol­lar was pro­vid­ed for train­ing of a sin­gle detective.

Bear in mind peo­ple com­mit crimes if they know they will get away with it. If there is less and less like­li­hood that one will be brought to jus­tice for crimes he com­mit­ted he will nec­es­sar­i­ly be embold­ened to con­tin­ue to do so with impunity.

Of course, true to form crime esca­lat­ed, the “do as you please “seed which was plant­ed dur­ing the 70’s, “take what you want from the cap­i­tal­ists” had now come to full bloom.

During the 80’s under Seaga and the Jamaica Labor Party, 600 mur­ders annu­al­ly were then astro­nom­i­cal num­bers, at least for those of us who were on the fore-front of the war on crime. We thought at the time that in a coun­try then with a pop­u­la­tion of 2.5 mil­lion that num­ber of killings were untenable.

After I exit­ed law-enforce­ment in 1991 I was stunned at the lev­el of incom­pe­tence , com­plic­i­ty, and acqui­es­cence in the Governing PNP gov­ern­ment which saw mur­ders rock­et­ing to in excess of 1600 annu­al­ly. This was dou­ble the num­ber of homi­cides in just a cou­ple of years.

Most Jamaicans liv­ing abroad had one com­mon com­ment, ” I sim­ply do not rec­og­nize the coun­try, it is not a place I would ever live again”

One may argue about the lev­el of patri­o­tism in those com­ments, that’s a legit­i­mate con­ver­sa­tion to have , I do know this how­ev­er, most peo­ple want to live a long life.

People who built homes intend­ing to return home sim­ply just aban­doned their invest­ments, chos­ing instead to stay alive. The so-called busi­ness sec­tor, (so-called) because of what now remains of that sec­tor, ele­ments of civ­il soci­ety are now grap­pling with the rea­sons the lev­els of law­less­ness are so per­va­sive. They do so while they advo­cate for the very ingre­di­ents that sus­tains, encour­ages and nur­tures anar­chy.

Lenient sen­tenc­ing, giv­ing crim­i­nals amnesty, giv­ing aid and com­fort to crim­i­nals, sup­port­ing crim­i­nal rights over the rights of vic­tims, amongst a pha­lanx of oth­er myopic paths to soci­etal destruction.

If the peo­ple entrust­ed to make the laws are ben­e­fit­ing from criminality,why would they enact leg­is­la­tion that would effec­tive­ly put crim­i­nals in jail where they belong? Why would the soci­ety expect them to train and equip a pro­fes­sion­al police force capa­ble of fol­low­ing evi­dence wher­ev­er it leads,or train any detec­tives at all?

Most Jamaicans liv­ing over­seas pull their hair out won­der­ing why it is that Jamaica can­not arrest the run-away crime prob­lem in the coun­try? The truth is politi­cians from both side of the polit­i­cal divide ben­e­fits one way or anoth­er from crime and in some cas­es many of them are active crim­i­nals. What pass­es for media are real­ly polit­i­cal­ly aligned dic­ta­tion tak­ers who write fluff pieces. They are gen­er­al­ly more com­fort­able writ­ing about dance-hall gyra­tions. The edi­to­ri­als are large­ly advo­cates for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, and noth­ing more.

The coun­try is awash in high-pow­ered weapons, guns have report­ed­ly come from Haiti, in what is called the gun for drugs trade. Jamaicans take to the seas with mar­i­jua­na and return from Haiti with boat-loads of weapons. Information received indi­cate that every­thing , includ­ing food is exchanged by Jamaicans for weapons. Food which includes ‚we are told, the meat of don­keys, dogs and the car­cass of oth­er ani­mals we would­n’t eat in this part of the world

Weapons have come in from Colombia in the cocaine trade, from the United States through the ports, in bar­rels appli­ances and oth­er inge­nious ways.Weapons also enter the coun­try from the United States in air­craft and boats, drug smug­glers bring weapons in and leave with plane and boat-loads of cannabis. This has made many Jamaicans rather wealthy. This includes politicians,police,lawyers and businessmen.

With the recent dra­con­ian depor­ta­tion poli­cies being under­tak­en by the United States, Canada, and Britain the coun­try has seen a seri­ous spike in seri­ous and com­plex crimes which the police force is ill-equipped to deal with. Many of the peo­ple being mass deport­ed are intel­li­gent peo­ple versed in cyber crimes and are cog­nizant of how to breach the rules in coun­tries far more sophis­ti­cat­ed than Jamaica. This pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem for local law-enforce­ment, many of whom are them­selves deeply involved in criminality.

And so the soci­ety calls on the police to answer for the run-away crim­i­nal­i­ty over­tak­ing the coun­try , the police reacts the way they know how, they respond with bullets.

Once the rich had left the greed and envy was turned with­in. Which leads us to the present crime situation.

Not all of Jamaica’s rich or wealthy peo­ple fled dur­ing the Manley Years„ of course some of them were aligned to the PNP, they under­stood that there was mon­ey to be made even in the unfriend­ly busi­ness envi­ron­ment of that era.

They braved the dan­ger while they held on tight to their US Visas and green cards. The die was how­ev­er cast, Jamaica was now a (trop­i­cal Serengeti) where the strong sur­vived, and the weak gets eaten.

Fast for­ward and we saw crime trend down under Edward Seaga, now this is where the para­dox lies. Many will point to the fact that Seaga main­tained the so-called moth­er of all (gar­risons) Tivoli Gardens. Tivoli Gardens was is the com­mu­ni­ty that was the cen­ter of Seaga’s West Kingston con­stituen­cy. Many argue that any reduc­tion of crime under Seaga was despite him rather than because of him. As some­one who start­ed out in law enforce­ment dur­ing the Seaga Administration I have a more nuanced view of the matter.

Edward Seaga for­mer Prime Minister of Jamaica.

The defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic that will , and has influ­enced opin­ions expo­nen­tial­ly against Seaga is the per­cep­tion that he main­tained Tivoli Gardens as a sort of fief­dom that was hands off for the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces. As I said before my views are as nuanced as the facts allowed .

Seaga did allow Tivoli Gardens to be a fief­dom, he did favor ele­ments of the crim­i­nal under­world, he did inter­fere in law enforce­ment as it relat­ed to that com­mu­ni­ty. Seaga defied con­ven­tion­al wis­dom when he stood at the funer­al of Lester Lloyd Coke a know crim­i­nal and an archi­tect of the infa­mous show­er posse. Coke was no saint Seaga knew it, he deliv­ered the votes, kept the com­mu­ni­ty in line and han­dled the affairs of the com­mu­ni­ty day-to-day. Seaga also knew that Coke was a crim­i­nal want­ed by the Americans, he knew he was a drug-deal­er who had more seri­ous alle­ga­tions lev­elled against him. Yet Seaga stood at the funer­al of Coke and stat­ed emphat­i­cal­ly that he was a com­mu­ni­ty leader whom the peo­ple loved. When that state­ment is dis­sect­ed Coke may have been a com­mu­ni­ty leader of sort, he may have been loved/​feared. Even if those state­ments were indeed true he was still a criminal.

On the day Edward Seaga made those state­ments about Coke I lost any mod­icum of respect I may have had for him.

However on the oth­er side of the issue he changed the par­a­digm as it relat­ed to crime and the way the issue was approached under the Manley admin­is­tra­tion. Criminals were not being removed from police sta­tions, cops were not being out gunned and there were major efforts to low­er crimes, based on efforts his admin­is­tra­tion devot­ed to the fight against crime. Unfortunately Seaga did not see his baby (sic) Tivoli Gardens being part of that wider need to con­trol crime. In some ways he may have been blind­ed by his decades-long nur­tur­ing of that com­mu­ni­ty, as a mod­el to what urban com­mu­ni­ties may accomplish.

Like a dot­ing par­ent Seaga felt that because he loved his child every­one should feel the same way. He lost sight of the impor­tance of dis­ci­pline in that child’s life.

To this day Seaga believes that his baby Tivoli gar­dens is a per­fect child which need­ed no discipline.