After the People’s National Party was returned to pow­er in Jamaica on the 29^th of December, crime start­ed to trend upward. Jamaica gen­er­al­ly record approx­i­mate­ly 1600 homi­cides annu­al­ly which places her near to the very top of the most mur­der­ous coun­try on earth on a per capi­ta basis. With her pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple and land mass of rough­ly 4’411 square miles, the like­li­hood on get­ting slaugh­tered can­not be far from any­one’s mind. The slaugh­ter of anoth­er Jamaican is nev­er far away geo­graph­i­cal­ly. That includes those who wield polit­i­cal pow­er, of course the stark real­i­ties of that wan­ton slaugh­ter are not of much con­cern to them. Of course not all Jamaicans have large police secu­ri­ty detail at the expense of poor exposed and vul­ner­a­ble tax­pay­ers.

There are con­flict­ing expla­na­tions for the rea­sons crime trends upward under Governments formed by the People’s National Party(PNP) as against the con­di­tions which obtain under Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) admin­is­tra­tions. Like every­thing else in Jamaica this issue is viewed under polar­ized lens. Most Jamaicans are com­plete­ly unable to see things in an objec­tive way, inca­pable of accept­ing facts even when they are borne out with data, as long as it runs counter to their philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal beliefs. Many would rather die in igno­rance than live with the truth.

This is the extent of the polar­iza­tion of Jamaican pol­i­tics, to a large extent there is very lit­tle mid­dle which would allow for objec­tiv­i­ty, free of polit­i­cal taint. PNP sup­port­ers and sym­pa­thiz­ers will argue that the esca­la­tion of crime under their lead­er­ship is attrib­ut­able large­ly to peo­ple from the oth­er par­ty desta­bi­liz­ing the gov­ern­ment by com­mit­ting heinous crimes. It nev­er mat­tered to those mak­ing that argu­ment that there were nev­er one shred of data in sup­port of those claims. In essence they were sim­ply crim­i­nal activ­i­ty which were not com­mit­ted by any spe­cif­ic group, or indi­vid­ual, and were not con­fined to any geo­graph­i­cal area which would bear out those claims. Conversely JLP sup­port­ers and sym­pa­thiz­ers will argue that peo­ple feel free to do as they choose under PNP lead­er­ship , as that par­ty is lax and do not make crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty a priority.

Let’s exam­ine the facts, pri­or to Manley assum­ing office in the 70’s crime was not a seri­ous prob­lem in Jamaica, com­par­a­tive­ly speak­ing. Under the lead­er­ship of Hugh Lawson Shearer the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces had a leader who sup­port­ed the rule of law and those who enforced the laws. Everyone was cog­nizant of those real­i­ties, the prime Minister made it known he was not going to allow it.

The coun­try was record­ing its great­est peri­od of growth and devel­op­ment, which by all sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis makes Hugh Lawson Shearer Jamaica’s most effec­tive Prime Minister. Then came demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, the great­est peri­od of social engi­neer­ing in the coun­try’s his­to­ry. In 1972 Michael Manley swept to pow­er on what would be the for­mal begin­ning of a pop­ulist mes­sage of “bet­ter must come”.

Yesterday whilst attend­ing a wed­ding I real­ized I had missed a call from my friend George. Despite our friend­ship George does­n’t call often. So I thought it must be impor­tant, I’ll return his call right away.

George nev­er missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to remind me that I was one of the few peo­ple who always answered my phone when­ev­er he called. I always remind­ed myself that George nev­er answered his phone when I call. I decid­ed to call back as soon as I saw the missed call. He picked up the phone and I hur­ried­ly told him I was attend­ing a wed­ding , hence I had dis­abled the ringer tem­porar­i­ly. He told me “I won’t keep you, I do how­ev­er have some dev­as­tat­ing news”.

My heart stopped..

Then he uttered the fate­ful words Duffy Henry is dead.

Senior Superintendent Dathan (Duffy) Henry

George, (Duffy) Henry and a lot of oth­er good cops served with yours tru­ly at the Constant Spring CIB dur­ing the late 80’s, a great group of guys, hard-work­ing, ded­i­cat­ed, smart. That group includes now Assistant Commissioner of Police Ealan Powell, Superintendent Colin Pinnock, SSP Wilford Gayle, Devon Watkis, Dean Taylor and a num­ber of oth­er men who now make up the upper ech­e­lons of the Constabulary gazetted ranks. Many ben­e­fit­ed from the accel­er­at­ed pro­mo­tions which placed them on a fast track to the lead­er­ship spots they now occupy.

After I emi­grat­ed in the ear­ly 90’s some men left the depart­ment, oth­ers stayed and con­tin­ued serv­ing. I nev­er missed a oppur­tu­ni­ty to ques­tion those who stayed on the occa­sion we speak , ” why do you con­tin­ue to do it”?

Today I mourn the loss of my friend.

Those he served knew him as mis­ter Henry, to us his friends he was sim­ply “Duffy” Broad smile, big laugh, effer­ves­cent, gre­gar­i­ous, affable,available, hon­est , hard work­ing, ambi­tious, , intel­li­gent, car­ing, will­ing to learn, smart, brave, capa­ble. Those are some of the adjec­tives which I assign to my friend, and they do not begin to tell the sto­ry of the man, the friend, the professional.

You were big­ger and bet­ter than any­thing they may say about you from the cor­ner of their mouths my friend . You were sim­ply big­ger and bet­ter than they can ever articulate.

Rest in peace my friend.….….….….….….….….….….. Rest in peace.

Below is an email from Kenneth Chamberlain Jr., whose father, a 68-year-old vet­er­an of the U.S. Marines, was killed in his home by the police in White Plains, NY, on November 19, 2011. Kenneth cre­at­ed his peti­tion on SignOn​.org, a new site that allows any­one to start their own online petitions.

On November 19, 2011, my father, 68-year-old Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., was shot and killed in his home in White Plains, New York.

My father was a 20-year vet­er­an of the Westchester County Department of Corrections and proud­ly served the United States of America as a Marine. He stood about 5 feet, 9 inch­es tall, and he suf­fered from a heart condition.

The events that led to his killing began around 5 a.m., when his med­ical alert device was acci­den­tal­ly set off, send­ing a call to the City of White Plains Department of Public Safety. Everything that hap­pened after that was record­ed by an audio device installed in my father’s home as part of his med­ical alert system.

When the police arrived at my father’s home, he and the staff for his med­ical alert ser­vice told them that there was no med­ical emer­gency and asked them to leave. And yet they insist­ed that my father let them into his home, bang­ing loud­ly on my father’s door for over an hour. On the record­ing, the police can be heard call­ing my father a “nig­ger.”

Ultimately they broke through his apart­ment door and first shot him with a Taser. He was wear­ing noth­ing but box­er shorts when the police began their assault against him. Shortly after that, he was shot with two 40-cal­iber rounds and killed.

My fam­i­ly is ask­ing the Westchester County District Attorney to bring a crim­i­nal indict­ment, and we call on the United States Department of Justice or the New York State Attorney General to pros­e­cute this as a hate crime.

It has been well over a month and still there has been no arrest in the killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, pic­tured above in hoodie.

Despite what appear to the aver­age onlook­er as enough to arrest, nei­ther the Sanford Police now out of the inves­ti­ga­tions, nor the spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor assigned to the case, has seen fit to do what the fam­i­ly and peo­ple all over this coun­try and the world are say­ing , arrest George Zimmerman !!

Instead we learn that there seem to be a colos­sal coverup and gross acts of impro­pri­ety by Sanford Police and oth­ers, to make the killing of Trayvon mar­tin go away.

We now know that George Zimmerman is the son of a retired Judge./ Interesting

We have learned that the lead Investigator want­ed to arrest Zimmerman but was over ruled by the pros­e­cu­tor who drove over 50 miles to over rule the lead investigator.

We are now told that the lead Investigator wrote an affi­davit detail­ing exact­ly what his find­ings were. In essence a cov­er your ass move.

We are told that the lead Investigator told some­one close to the fam­i­ly of Trayvon Martin that there are some stereo­typ­ing going on here. He obvi­ous­ly was dis­gust­ed with the way things were being handled.

We are told that Zimmerman claimed that he suf­fered a bro­ken nose and a bust­ed head, he alleged­ly told police that Trayvon Martin attacked him, knock­ing him to the ground, broke his nose pum­meled his head into the side­walk. He also claimed Trayvon attempt­ed to dis­arm him of his firearm and as such he was forced to kill Trayvon Martin.

Did Trayvon Martin know that Zimmerman have a firearm? If the answer is yes , did that not give Trayvon Martin even more right to fight like hell to defend his life?

We were for­mer­ly told that the Police stat­ed that Zimmerman had grass stains on the back of his jack­et and a bloody nose when they arrived. Yet a video record­ing released by the police shows George Zimmerman in the same jack­et 30 min­utes lat­er , there appeared to be no blood, and Zimmerman showed no signs that he was involved in a fight.

We are left won­der­ing who told who to say what?

Zimmerman’s father , broth­er, lawyer, and friend have all stat­ed that Zimmerman told them he was beat­en by Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman alleges he was forced to shoot Trayvon Martin. Despite Judge Zimmerman’s tes­ti­mo­ny on behalf of his son, he nev­er once men­tioned an apol­o­gy or empa­thy to the fam­i­ly of Trayvon Martin for the loss of their son.

Instead he sought to blame the President of the United States, the con­gres­sion­al black causus, the NAACP, and every­one whom have spo­ken out in defense of the rule of law, fair­ness equi­ty and the right of Trayvon Martin to the fun­da­men­tal right to life .

One won­ders what kind of Justice was dis­pensed to black peo­ple in Orange coun­ty Florida by Judge Zimmerman?

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE: Circumstantial evi­dence is direct evi­dence of a fact from which a per­son may rea­son­ably infer the exis­tence or nonex­is­tence of anoth­er fact. A per­son­’s guilt of a charged crime may be proven by cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, if that evi­dence, while not direct­ly estab­lish­ing guilt, gives rise to an infer­ence of guilt beyond a rea­son­able doubt.

As such, you draw your own con­clu­sion of a coverup either way you chose. The insult­ing thing to peo­ple’s intel­li­gence are the trans­par­ent attempts by the Zimmerman camp to impugn the integri­ty of the vic­tim Trayvon Martin. Clearly this is an effort to dis­tract peo­ple from the fact that a mur­der was com­mit­ted . This is a time-hon­ored ruse that have been used on African Americans for­ev­er and they have got­ten away with it, demo­niz­ing the vic­tim. Whenever a black man is mur­dered they trot out his crim­i­nal record , or make one up and in com­plic­it acqui­es­cence with the media we are made to believe that he had it com­ing to him because 30 years ago he was arrest­ed for fight­ing whilst in mid­dle school.

We see a sup­posed 53-year-old black man trot­ted out as a friend of Zimmerman . We see a black man giv­en the inter­im job of police chief . We see black peo­ple attest­ing to the fideli­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty of the new state pros­e­cu­tor. These are smoke screen appease­ment meth­ods designed to quite dis­sent and noth­ing more. How many 53-year-old men have 28-year-old friends? How stu­pid and moron­ic do these peo­ple think we in the black com­muin­i­ty are?

STAND YOUR GROUND: Stand your ground is premised on the notion that a per­son being attacked has no duty to retreat and may use force to defend him/​herself. Hold that thought for a while.

George Zimmerman is a 28-year-old wannabe cop who has a record of three arrests one for resist­ing a police offi­cer with­out vio­lence. One for domes­tic vio­lence, and one arrest for resist­ing an offi­cer with vio­lence, in any oth­er place that is a felony yet all three arrests are mys­te­ri­ous­ly closed and we are told as we pon­der how this could hap­pen, that he is the legal owner/​car­ri­er of a semi auto­mat­ic weapon.

George Zimmerman had called 911 a total of 46 times over a peri­od of 56 days . That is a call placed to a 911 oper­a­tor every 1.217 days. Essentially George Zimmerman called 911 almost every day on aver­age. This pat­tern shows a man ter­ri­bly dis­turbed or ter­ri­bly obsessed with being a cop.

Zimmerman was told not to fol­low Trayvon Martin.

Zimmerman was not appoint­ed as watch cap­tain , he appoint­ed himself.

Zimmerman ought not to have a gun even if he was a legit­i­mate watch captain.

Zimmerman had no legal author­i­ty to approach Trayvon Martin.

Zimmerman had no legal author­i­ty to ask Trayvon Martin quote: “what are you doing around here“as explained by Trayvon Martin’s girl­friend who was on the phone with him as he told her he was being fol­lowed by a man.

I asked you to hold the “stand your ground thought”.

In light of the afore­men­tioned , who had an absolute right to stand his ground? Trayvon Martin did !

If Trayvon Martin had the right to stand his ground but end­ed up mur­dered , yet to date no one has been arrest­ed or charged for his killing.

We must ask our­selves does laws in America apply equi­tably to the pro­tec­tion of black people?

This is a legit­i­mate ques­tion, when­ev­er the rights of African-Americans are vio­lat­ed the strat­e­gy is to argue some­how that the aggriev­ed par­ty had no expec­ta­tion of pro­tec­tion of the very law that ought to be a shel­ter to pro­tect every­one. As we see in the Trayvon Martin case the vic­tim is once again the culprit.

This is noth­ing new, a Long Island New York Black man has been impris­oned for defend­ing his home. The inci­dent occured when a group of white thugs invad­ed his prop­er­ty in an attempt to kill his son. The law which gives every white home own­er the right to defend his home­st­ed , by shoot­ing first and ask­ing ques­tions lat­er, when that home stead is breached did not apply to that African American home own­er. All over America we see cas­es where the laws do not pro­tect all Americans, just cer­tain peo­ple. We must ask our­selves what kind of soci­ety dis­crim­i­nates against its own cit­i­zens? What kind of soci­ety allows law enforce­ment offi­cers and aver­age cit­i­zens the lat­i­tude to treat the life of cer­tain seg­ments of the soci­ety with impuni­ty and scant regard? What goes through the mind of a police offi­cer when he kills a 19-year-old col­lege stu­dent , despite the fact that they did not point their weapons on any of the white stu­dents involved in a so-called mele?

What caus­es a police offi­cer who pulls over a black man then ask what’s up guy? Not “how are you sir”? 

Many includ­ing the black intel­li­gentsia nuance and parse, refus­ing to call a spade a spade. The fact is, it is “entrenched and sys­tem­at­ic racism”, and it is learned behav­ior. We can­not fix what we fail to con­front, when the President of the United States says if I had a son he would look like Trayvon Martin, he was say­ing I am the President of the United States and if my son was walk­ing through that com­mu­ni­ty he would have been gunned down just like Trayvon Martin was.

How many black pres­i­dents are we killing? How many black attor­ney gen­er­als are we killing? This has got to stop. As we speak there are protests spring­ing up all over the coun­try. The world is watch­ing and wait­ing for jus­tice American style. America must show the world that when it says it stands for jus­tice and human rights it is not just for a cho­sen few . America pur­ports to sow democ­ra­cy around the world but it must begin at home. America’s cred­i­bil­i­ty is on the line. The world is watch­ing while minori­ties are killed dai­ly in America because of the col­or of their skin, it can­not con­tin­ue to be just anoth­er day at the office.

There must be jus­tice for Trayvon Martin now. We are count­ing the days to see how long it will take, before George Zimmerman is arrest­ed and charged for the cap­i­tal mur­der of Trayvon Martin.

In the age of tech­nol­o­gy, Youtube is a gold mine where police excess­es, as well as cit­i­zens mis­be­hav­ior is evi­dent. My col­league was shot in Olympic Gardens as an old woman grabbed him so that her grand son could shoot him. Legitimate though con­cerns of ques­tion­able shoot­ings are, the ques­tion of (sup­posed cit­i­zens) inject­ing them­selves into the scene when­ev­er police arrive are real. They cre­ate shields for their crim­i­nal men, warn­ing them with loud nois­es, and yes putting them­selves and their chil­dren in front of police guns as a means of pro­tect­ing the men who oper­ate in these com­mu­ni­ties, even when the shoot­ing starts. There are those who sit around gath­er­ing num­bers and sta­tis­tic about crim­i­nals whom are killed, with a motive of indict­ing the nar­ra­tive or expla­na­tions of police. The Police has no such luxury,they have respon­si­bil­i­ties, that of pro­tect­ing life and prop­er­ty. Sad though instances of acci­den­tal shoot­ings are Jamaica, will have to stop the pre­tence , it is a coun­try at war and in war there are casu­al­ties, and yes col­lat­er­al dam­age is a part of the equa­tion. Their sto­ries nev­er get told, Cops whom are shot and injured and killed, or who end up with life alter­ing injuries are forced onto the side­lines to live in pover­ty and squalor who tells their sto­ry? Who grieve for them and their fam­i­lies? As blood con­tin­ue to run in Jamaica polit­i­cal lead­ers are clue­less as to how to stop it, our coun­try needs lead­er­ship, and solu­tions. The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem must change , leg­is­la­tors must enact laws that looks out for the coun­try , not for par­ty sup­port­ers, laws that puts crim­i­nals in prison and lets them stay there. There must be truth in sen­tenc­ing. There must be con­se­quence for hin­der­ing gov­ern­men­tal admin­is­tra­tion, real penal­ty. There must be com­plete and unequiv­o­cal removal of pol­i­tics from the oper­a­tions of police. There must be a com­plete and com­pre­hen­sive re-ori­en­ta­tion of the pub­lic to respect the rule of law and those who enforce them. There must be social inter­ven­tion and jobs cre­at­ed that will dis­in­cen­tivise peo­ple from engag­ing in crim­i­nal behav­ior. I am will­ing to sub­mit to Government , irre­spec­tive of who forms that gov­ern­ment , a blue print on how to pro­ceed to a bet­ter Jamaica, one that is not a panacea , but one that will lay the foun­da­tion toward a more man­age­able, liv­able country.

Gleaner pho­to: Taken March 5^th 2012

Today March 23^rd Jamaicans are going back to the polls to elect those they want to rep­re­sent them at the local Government lev­el. While they do so ‚the Prime Minister still walks around in orange cloth­ing, com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous that the General elec­tions are over and now it’s time to gov­ern. As crime esca­late var­i­ous groups have come out against the amount of peo­ple who have been killed by police bul­lets since the start of the year. This is a legit­i­mate con­cern for any­one who is rea­son­able and fair. I can­not imag­ine los­ing a child , moth­er or any mem­ber of my fam­i­ly ‚or even a friend to bul­lets fired by police officers.

Why is this though?

We hold our police offi­cers to a dif­fer­ent stan­dard they are the ones who are sup­posed to pro­tect us , as such when we become vic­tims of police abuse or error it is par­tic­u­lar­ly hard­er to under­stand or process. As such it is total­ly under­stand­able that peo­ple are up in arms when police bul­lets kill their loved ones whom the police are unable to say are threat­en­ing their lives or the lives of oth­ers. As such I hope the police will learn from protests planned by civic groups, and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly see this as oppo­si­tion to them , but as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for each indi­vid­ual offi­cer to take as much care as pos­si­ble in pre­serv­ing the life of the inno­cent as is placed in offi­cer safety.

DPP TRIUMPHS OVER RM PUSEY:

Director of pub­lic Prosecutions Paula Llewelyn has pre­vailed against Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey in the Judicial Review Court.

There is ample evi­dence in the pub­lic’s domain that tells both sides of the sto­ry which now bedev­ils Jamaica.I refer to alle­ga­tions of police per­ceived excess. Many do not use the word per­ceive because it does not fit the sto­ry they want to tell. Others who want change will like to get both sides out, so that the change we seek will be one all can live with. Anyone who have fish as pets, know that the water with­in the aquar­i­um has to be changed from time to time, how­ev­er one would be mind­ful nev­er to total­ly remove all of the orig­i­nal water putting his fish in an alien envi­ron­ment. This blog is not about fish despite my love of fish. It is about the con­ver­sa­tion I would like to have with you about some­thing that needs to be changed as we seek des­per­ate­ly to keep it because with­out it we are doomed.

Jamaica’s police force has a pub­lic rela­tions prob­lem, this is noth­ing new . For decades the force through inept man­age­ment has allowed itself to be car­i­ca­tured into a woe­ful­ly inept shoot-first ask ques­tions lat­er bunch of half-wits. The pow­ers which cre­at­ed and main­tained the Agency knew exact­ly how to con­trol the force as an enti­ty through divide and rule. As I have stat­ed before rich peo­ple from upper St. Andrew do not allow their chil­dren to join the JCF . For the most part chil­dren of inner city com­mu­ni­ties are also dis­al­lowed large­ly because of their zip code. This leaves the bulk of the force’s enlist­ment to chil­dren of work­ing poor peo­ple from rur­al parishes.

To the best of my knowl­edge these are not peo­ple who are exposed to killings and I’m darn sure are not trained to wan­ton­ly kill peo­ple at the Police acad­e­my. Which brings us to the facts: Jamaicans liv­ing in rur­al areas of the Island up to recent times , before the influx of crim­i­nals run­ning from Kingston, were peace-lov­ing peo­ple . These were peo­ple who cel­e­brat­ed some­one becom­ing a bus dri­ver from their District. So when a mem­ber of their com­mu­ni­ty become a nurse, teacher , or yes a police offi­cer they are very proud.

So what caus­es police offi­cers born and raised by rur­al chris­t­ian folks of mod­est means to become what some would have you believe to be cal­lous mean killing machines? I ran across this arti­cle in the Jamaica Observer I would like to link you to.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com The Article I thought revealed an inter­est­ing truth , a truth I have toiled to bring to the fore in these blogs. That truth is that police kill peo­ple wrong­ful­ly , when that hap­pen they should fess up , and the fam­i­ly of the deceased per­son must be treat­ed with the utmost care and empa­thy, where pos­si­ble max­i­mum com­pen­sa­tion must be made to the fam­i­ly with a view to try to ease the pain. This must be done tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the lim­it­ed resources the coun­try has at its dis­pos­al , but tak­ing into account that no amount of mon­ey may ade­quate­ly com­pen­sate for the life of a loved one.

With that said a greater empha­sis must be placed on the con­di­tions under which our police offi­cers work, the dan­gers they face and the lev­el of sup­port they get in car­ry­ing out their duties. I have writ­ten at length in pre­vi­ous blogs as to the rea­son offi­cers are forced to use force, and in many cas­es dead­ly force. I left the police force from as far back as 1991. Back then we faced M‑16 assault rifles, shot guns, hand guns and on the rare occa­sion oth­er auto­mat­ic weaponry.

Despite the dan­gers we faced then , it pales in com­par­i­son to the pro­lif­er­a­tion and veloc­i­ty of weapon­ry that the coun­try is now awash in. Despite slight improve­ments made in pro­tec­tive gear avail­able to them, police offi­cers face vast­ly ampli­fied and more dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions because of the sheer num­ber of guns on the streets. The veloc­i­ty of weapons avail­able to mur­der­ers is ter­ri­fy­ing, and the crim­i­nals who own them have no com­punc­tion about using them on whomev­er they chose, to include police officers.

As I allud­ed to pre­vi­ous­ly, the pow­ers which put the force togeth­er did not intend to have a force that would one day be pop­u­lat­ed with intel­li­gent peo­ple who could talk back or demand prop­er work­ing con­di­tions. They nev­er fore­saw a force which would see itself on par with oth­er Jamaicans irre­spec­tive of their sta­tion. After all the police were night watch­men appoint­ed to serve Port Royal, Kingston, Saint Catherine, and Saint Andrew. After the Morant Bay rebel­lion of 1865 the need for an orga­nized police force became more urgent and 984 peo­ple were com­mis­sioned into a police force under an Inspector General appoint­ed by the British governor.

Many of Jamaica’s so-called upper class still can­not visu­al­ize mem­bers of the police force as their equals, and as such they fight any and every effort of the police to orga­nize or lob­by for bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions , or worse inves­ti­gate them when they are accused of impropriety.

One such group is the Editorial board of the Daily Gleaner:

THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE JAMAICA DAILY GLEANER HAS TAKEN A STRIKINGLY COWARDLY STANCE AGAINST JAMAICA’S POLICE OFFICERS , DESPITE KNOWING THE INFORMATION THEY PRINT ARE WOEFULLY DISHONEST.

Two weeks in suc­ces­sion their edi­to­r­i­al page has car­ried bold head­lines in sup­port of INDECOM ‘s Terrence Williams with­out address­ing the heart of the dis­con­tent of the police groups. The Editorial board chose instead to make claims against the police not even Williams him­self has made, at least pub­licly. They have char­ac­ter­ized the grouse of the police regard­ing Williams’ atten­dance at the press con­fer­ence as quote” ludi­crous”. As I did the first time they wrote their head­line in sup­port of Williams ‚I again called them on their disin­gen­u­ous biased and lying stance in sup­port of Williams. See arti­cle here.jamaica​glean​er​.com The Editorial board of the Gleaner obvi­ous­ly have no greater con­tri­bu­tion to make to nation build­ing than lies innu­en­dos, and dis­in­for­ma­tion, and as such it has dou­bled down on the garbage it pub­lished days before . The idea it seem ‚at least in their view is ‚if they keep repeat­ing a lie it will some­how become truth.

Everyone now have an opin­ion from University pro­fes­sors to med­ical doc­tors to news­pa­per edi­tors , every­one is enti­tled to their opin­ion, maybe it’s good that the con­ver­sa­tion has picked up in earnest. Maybe Jamaicans will see that their sur­vival is tied to the rule of law and irre­spec­tive of who enforces the laws , the title is the same POLICE. Those with­in the soci­ety who have a prob­lem adher­ing to the rule of law, whether they are Editors , Politicians lawyers or whomev­er , know this, the police is going nowhere. Get used to it , obey the laws, that’s it. Former Illinois gov­er­nor Rod Blagojevich this week sur­ren­dered to fed­er­al author­i­ties, he com­menced serv­ing a 14 year term in fed­er­al prison.He was con­vict­ed of cor­rup­tion stem­ming from his attempts to sell the sen­ate seat once held by now President Barack Obama. Rod Blagojevich was a gov­er­nor , and a lawyer, he joined a long list of once pow­er­ful men who thought they were above the law . I would sug­gest the high and mighty in Jamaica take a long hard look at them­selves in the mir­ror and exam­ine what hap­pened to Christopher (Dudus) Coke, a man vast­ly more pow­er­ful than they ever will be . The way things used to be soon will be no more.

Many argue that the police vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly for Portia and her par­ty, hence their request for her to inter­vene into the impasse between INDECOM and them­selves. I am unsure how the vil­lage lawyers know how peo­ple vot­ed. But with that said I hope for their sakes the police are not await­ing a response from either Bunting or Miller that will have any val­ue to them as a group. This gov­ern­ment has no clue and are sim­ply in it for what they can rip for them­selves. A bet­ter day is com­ing to Jamaica, and it means adher­ence to the rule of law, get used to it.

This old build­ing sit­u­at­ed at 103 Old Hope Rd. Kingston still hous­es the Offices of the Commissioner of police and the 911 call cen­ter that man­ages all emer­gency calls for the country.

Recently we spoke about the despi­ca­ble posi­tion tak­en by Earl Witter Jamaica’s pub­lic Defender regard­ing police officers.Witter shares the view as does Carolyn Gomes head of (JFJ) that police offi­cers do not get shot pro­por­tion­al­ly with the amount of crim­i­nals they shoot.

Many crit­i­cize me for stand­ing with police offi­cers, and as such I want to be real clear where I stand. As a lit­tle boy grow­ing up I recall police offi­cers killing a young Rastafarian man sim­ply because he ran. He was asleep on a counter in his father’s shop where oth­er men were play­ing cards, the police just hap­pened to make their bi-annu­al vis­it to the dis­trict that night, every­one shout­ed police, abrupt­ly awak­ened from a deep sleep he ran from his house and was shot dead. Nothing ever came of his killing!!!! 

The Jamaican his­tor­i­cal land­scape is replete with sim­i­lar sto­ries of instances of abuse by those who took an oath to pro­tect and serve. If we told a thou­sand sto­ries sim­i­lar to this one it would not be overem­pha­siz­ing that this is a prob­lem, and so those whom are tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing , and lob­by­ing for the use of less lethal force must be sup­port­ed where practicable.

With that said if we do not sup­port the rule of law where does it leave us? As a young nation it will not be easy to get to first world sta­tus by pre­tence, nei­ther will we get there with­out adher­ing to the rule of law. As we hold our police feet to the fire of account­abil­i­ty , we must stead­fast­ly demand adher­ence to the rule of law from all cit­i­zens. It is dan­ger­ous to believe we can have a sta­ble coun­try if we tear down the rule of law and those who enforce them . If we believe we can gain safe­ty by sid­ing with crim­i­nals we are woe­ful­ly mis­guid­ed, a scor­pi­on is a scor­pi­on and it will sting.

I served in the JCF and walked away years ago. I will for­ev­er be proud of the ser­vice I gave to my coun­try in that capac­i­ty, if any­thing I feel indebt­ed to my coun­try for hav­ing allowed me to serve. I have met many won­der­ful peo­ple who were exem­plary human beings, some not so much. Many have paid the ulti­mate price, many still serve. One thing is cer­tain I nev­er saw a rich per­son­’s child in the JCF, many feel their kids are too good to serve as police offi­cers. Because of that I per­son­al­ly refused to serve them ‚so I left. Until the men­tal­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple change to reflect the real­i­ties of the 21^st cen­tu­ry, Police offi­cers will con­tin­ue to feel under siege and they will lash out. Policing is a covenant between offi­cers and the peo­ple, much like gov­er­nance, each par­ty has to hold up their end of the bar­gain. Earl Witter:Gomes:

Public Defender Earl Witter is sup­port­ing a direc­tive from Police Commissioner Owen Ellington for cops to exer­cise restraint and avoid using unnec­es­sary lethal force in con­fronta­tions with criminals.
But Witter says crim­i­nals should also refrain from attack­ing police per­son­nel, so the cops are not placed in a posi­tion to use lethal force.
According to Witter this could help stem the unend­ing flow of alle­ga­tions of police excess and abuse.
Witter says this would also reduce the com­plaints to the pub­lic defend­er, the Independent Commission of Investigations and oth­er organ­i­sa­tions as well as end the cost­ly and unnec­es­sary drain upon the nation’s mea­gre resources.
Witter made the appeal in a media release in which he con­demned the attack on a police­man in Bathsheba, St. Elizabeth on Tuesday.
Corporal Anthony Watson had report­ed­ly gone to arrest a want­ed man for ille­gal wound­ing, when he was chopped on the arm by the machete wield­ing man.
The pub­lic defend­er says the inci­dent high­lights the per­ils faced dai­ly by police per­son­nel in the exe­cu­tion of their duty.(Jamaicagleaner story)

I HAVE CONSISTENTLY ARGUED THAT ALLEGATIONS OF EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLINGS BY JAMAICAN POLICE OFFICERS CONTRARY TO PERCEPTION, IS NOT LARGELY THE FAULT OF THE POLICE DESPITE GRAND PRONOUNCEMENTS FROM AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL AND THEIR SURROGATES JAMAICANS FOR JUSTICE.

For years I have argued that the prob­lem of police killings are not total­ly the fault of the police. Crawling out of every wood­work are sup­posed wit­ness­es to these acts, I am not in a posi­tion these days to indict nor con­firm if these cas­es are true or not. What I do know is nei­ther are the detrac­tors of the police.

Local groups like Jamaicans for jus­tice which pro­fess­es to be legit­i­mate human rights groups, have com­pro­mised their legit­i­ma­cy based on their fix­a­tion on alle­ga­tions of police abuse. Stake hold­ers are now tak­ing a deep­er look at their oper­a­tions and are com­ing away with the con­clu­sion I came to years ago. Simply put JFJ is a group that looks out for the rights of crim­i­nals. There are many who cor­rect­ly argue that crim­i­nals have rights too. I total­ly agree that they do . I sim­ply refuse to pay atten­tion to their rights over the rights of their victims.

Make no mis­take, police offi­cers do kill peo­ple ille­git­i­mate­ly. Even though many would have you believe that police killings are con­fined to Jamaican cops, the facts do not bear out those asser­tions. Police Departments all over the world have to deal with offi­cers killing civil­ians under ques­tion­able circumstances.

This does not excuse the police from what crit­ics refer to as heavy-hand­ed tac­tics by police depart­ments the world over. The United States of America with its thou­sands of police depart­ments, is cer­tain­ly not immune to harsh crit­i­cism of heavy-hand­ed tac­tics by police offi­cers in areas where there are large pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty and racial diver­si­ty. What is an absolute fact is that groups like Amnesty International and oth­er human rights groups, do not influ­ence how inves­ti­ga­tions are done, and they cer­tain­ly do not get to influ­ence pros­e­cu­tion of police offi­cers when they take action in the line of duty, regard­less of pub­lic outcry. 

There are no rush to arrest, there are no rush to impugn the integri­ty or motive of offi­cers because any group says so, while there are yet inves­ti­ga­tions going on. Amnesty International which has tremen­dous influ­ence and lever­age in small devel­op­ing coun­tries like Jamaica, are large­ly silent , and are nowhere to be found when blacks and Latinos com­plain about police killings in the United States Canada and their base coun­try Britain.

From the sadom­iz­ing of Haitian immi­grant Abner Louima in a New York police sta­tion to 41 shots fired at unarmed African immi­grant Amadou Diallo snuff­ing out his life , to the scores and scores of oth­er ques­tion­able killings by police in New York city alone they are silent,impotent and nowhere to be found.

Yet these same peo­ple have gone to Jamaica and oth­er coun­tries in which they seek rel­e­vance and dis­tort­ed the truth to sup­port the angle they want to advance. No antag­o­nist group for­eign or local, has sought to get the per­spec­tive of the prin­ci­pal play­ers in the whole affair, the Jamaica con­stab­u­lary force. And I do not mean the gazetted ranks ‚who are gen­er­al­ly sec­ond-rate civ­il ser­vants , removed from the streets , heav­i­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by pol­i­tics and the desire for their own sur­vival to be con­sid­ered objec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the police force.

Each coun­try has its own unique prob­lems , as such each nation’s prob­lems must be addressed in a unique man­ner. Jamaica’s crim­i­nals are extreme­ly savvy, they under­stand the val­ue of per­cep­tion, they under­stand the val­ue of good press and they play to those under­stand­ings. People in depressed neigh­bor­hoods are pres­sured to go out and demon­strate against police, they are forced through fear or cohe­sion to attest to see­ing things that lat­er demon­stra­ble turn out to be lies.

Garrison com­mu­ni­ties have pro­fes­sion­al mourn­ers who on que, delve into mourn­ing for the cam­eras, but revert to social­iz­ing as soon as cam­eras are turned off or removed, these are fac­tu­al hap­pen­ings with­in Jamaica’s inner cities, yet these very peo­ple become wit­ness­es for groups like Amnesty International and their sur­ro­gates. Their tes­ti­monies have formed the frame-work for exten­sive and expan­sive doc­u­ments on which Jamaica and it’s secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus is judged.

Not to be out­done for­eign tele­vi­sion net­works have joined the band­wag­on. Television net­works like al Jazeera and ITN have found it nec­es­sary to crit­i­cize police in Jamaica using the same sources oth­ers use. I ref­er­ence Al Jazeera because no one in their right mind take what they have to say seri­ous­ly . When one con­sid­ers what hap­pens in Arab nations as it relates to civ­il rights par­tic­u­lar­ly as it relates to women. It is astound­ing that Al-Jazeera would find time to crit­i­cize oth­ers. These are peo­ple who most­ly oper­ate in the 12^th cen­tu­ry but have the gall to crit­i­cize our coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces for sen­sa­tion­al and rat­ings pur­pos­es. They dare not ques­tion their own despot­ic regimes regard­ing their atro­cious human rights record. As such let us fall back and with­out deny­ing that we have a prob­lem, not over­re­act throw­ing out the baby with the prover­bial bath-water.

Those who under­stand the utmost impor­tance of the rule of law, also under­stand that they will not be able to con­vince every one of the need to be sup­port­ive of police and the rule of law. It is impor­tant that those who risk being called snitch­es, inform­ers, and what­ev­er oth­er names are out there, do so with the knowl­edge that some peo­ple will have to be dragged along, oth­ers nudged, and oth­ers coaxed along. After all, we all have dif­fer­ing opin­ions, and appro­pri­ate­ly so.

If our peo­ple are to be lift­ed out of igno­rance and despair . If they are to be freed from the shack­les of gen­er­a­tional pol­i­tics which con­demns them to vot­ing the same way ‚cycle after cycle for the same peo­ple, and then their chil­dren. If their lives are to be changed so they too have a shot at get­ting an edu­ca­tion the only real way out of pover­ty, then we have to low­er crime. Jamaicans if not for coun­try, must for them­selves, rec­og­nize that invest­ment that fuels growth shuns crime. Investors must feel rel­a­tive­ly safe, if they are not total­ly safe they must feel that polit­i­cal lead­er­ship is doing what it takes to reverse crime and root out cor­rup­tion. Jamaicans will have to rec­og­nize the gov­ern­ment will not be their sav­ior, there real­ly can nev­er be enough gov­ern­ment jobs to go around. Secondly gov­ern­ment jobs are fuelled by monies com­ing in from the pri­vate sec­tor. The absense of a vibrant pri­vate sec­tor because of crime, those gov­ern­ment jobs dis­s­a­pear real­ly fast. Simply put it is impos­si­ble to pay gov­ern­ment work­ers with­out a sus­tain­able stream of cash com­ing in.

The Jamaican peo­ple can­not expect to pre­tend to want secu­ri­ty if they are unpre­pared to share the respon­si­bil­i­ty of look­ing out for them­selves. The non­sen­si­cal notion of no snitch­ing, no inform­ing, made pop­u­lar by even more igno­rant dance hall artists must be shunned . The only ben­e­fi­cia­ries are the crim­i­nals who exert con­trol of their lives, through fear, intim­i­da­tion, fuelled by the peo­ple’s own silent acquiescence.

I lost three col­leagues whose mem­o­ries will for­ev­er remain with me.

Constable R Seivright:Motorized Patrol.

Detective con­sta­ble Cowan: Western Kingston.

Sergeant Leroy Steele:Eastern Kingston:

These were three of the best men, jovial ‚loved their job, the best our coun­try had to offer . Why do I men­tion these three? These were three of the offi­cers that were clos­est to me, we had attend­ed the Academy togeth­er , gone through the ups and downs of spend­ing a full year between Port Royal and Twickenham Park togeth­er. Our group was the last to have been at the for­mer Port Royal facil­i­ty, but was forced to move as the deci­sion was made to move police train­ing to the for­mer Jamaica school of Agriculture.

As recruits it was a tumul­tuous, but fun peri­od for us, we were involved in the lit­er­al move­ment of the school. because of the pro­tract­ed demands of the mov­ing process, we spent a full year in the train­ing facil­i­ty, an excep­tion not the rule. To this day we still take great pride in the fact that we were the last batch of recruits at Port Royal and the first batch to be trained at the Jamaica Police Academy. 

Constable Seivright was a young man always smil­ing, as soon as you came face to face with Seivright his face lit up in an ear to ear smile, he believed fun­da­men­tal­ly in his chris­t­ian faith, he was one of the only recruits to have tak­en his Bible with him to train­ing school. From the onset many of us thought that Seivright was too quite, too accom­mo­dat­ing to all to be effec­tive as a police offi­cer in the crim­i­nal jun­gle which is our coun­try. In the 80’s lit­tle did we know that our coun­try would be get­ting worse than what we saw then. Unfortunately we were right Seivright was far too good. One night as he walked up to a cab they pulled over on the Mandela Highway and leaned over to say hel­lo a pas­sen­ger opened up with a ster­ling sub-machine gun killing him on the spot. Constable Seivright nev­er had the priv­i­lege of being issued with a bul­let proof vest.

Steele and Cowan gave their lives much the same way . They died believ­ing that they could rea­son with peo­ple. They bought the lie that peo­ple will respect them enough not to attack them because they were cops. Both paid the ulti­mate price because they bought into the lies that Jamaican peo­ple will respect any­thing but hard-nosed policing.

Community polic­ing is the pref­ered form of polic­ing, I embrace it ful­ly, how­ev­er it is naïve’ and disin­ge­nous to sug­gest or infer that com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing can achieve any mea­sur­able result in Jamaica’s urban com­mu­ni­ties. First the ter­ror­ists hid­ing there must be removed then com­mu­ni­ty offi­cers are insert­ed to inter­act with the peo­ple. But it must be clear, those who har­bor crim­i­nals will be pros­e­cut­ed to the fullest extent of the law.

Last week there was an uproar over a rash of killings involv­ing Jamaican offi­cers and urban ter­ror­ists. According to reports 21 peo­ple lost their lives at the hands of the Jamaican police, the reports also stat­ed that a cou­ple of peo­ple got caught in the cross­fire. There is already a lot of con­clu­sion made on this mat­ter, even though the inves­ti­ga­tions has not yet deter­mined who fired the shots that killed the inno­cents. The men­tal­i­ty is that the bul­lets can only come from the guns of offi­cers. Of note is the fact that sev­er­al weapons have been removed from the streets by the police dur­ing those con­fronta­tions, includ­ing AK47 rifles.

I will now intro­duce to you some faces that you ought to know and remem­ber when you hear that crime is over-run­ning Jamaica. Do remem­ber these faces these are the faces of crim­i­nal sup­port in Jamaica, I will tell you who they are and quote for your their posi­tions on crime in our coun­try. You decide if this sit­u­a­tion is ten­able and tell us how long our coun­try should tol­er­ate this kind of behavior.

Public Defender Earl Witter JFJ’s Carolyn Gomes INDECOM comm. Terrence Williams

Witter is paid with tax dol­lars to inves­ti­gate instances of abuse on behalf of the pub­lic, frankly I do not under­stand the need for this failed crim­i­nal lawyer to be on the pub­lic pay­roll, but this is Jamaica, (every­one affi eat a food) every­one has to be fed, from the pub­lic purse no less. Carolyn Gomes a pedi­atric doc­tor who has been wag­ing a cam­paign of mis­in­for­ma­tion and per­son­al vendet­ta against the police force, her orga­ni­za­tion is fund­ed by for­eign human rights groups which has gen­uine inter­est in human rights. Gomes has used that mon­ey and influ­ence, par­lay­ing it into a per­son­al cam­paign of lies and innu­en­dos against defense­less Jamaican cops who do not have the soap box Gomes have to defend them­selves. Gomes was award­ed the order of Jamaica for her cam­paign against law enforce­ment . My per­son­al feel­ings regard­ing a National hon­or in Jamaica is, it’s not worth being spat on, in light of Gomes being award­ed one. Terrence Williams was hired to head the new agency, INDECOM that would inde­pen­dent­ly inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of police abuse. He has turned out to be a pow­er grab­bing nar­cis­sis­tic ego­ma­ni­a­cal turd. His inves­ti­ga­tions so far has not unearthed any­thing that the police through its own inves­ti­ga­tions have not unearthed when it inves­ti­gates its own.

INDECOM ASIDE GOMES AND WITTER HAS STRIDENTLY ARGUED THAT FOR THE KILLING OF CRIMINALS TO BE JUSTIFIED AN EQUAL AMOUNT OF POLICE OFFICERS MUST BE KILLED.

Yup! one can­not make that stuff up. Williams is the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM, the agency charged with look­ing into alle­ga­tions of police shoot­ings in an inde­pen­dent and pro­fes­sion­al man­ner. Despite a lot of grand­stand­ing and pon­tif­i­cat­ing mis­ter Williams has not been able to inde­pen­dent­ly con­clude an inves­ti­ga­tion which shows a sin­gle case of unlaw­ful killing. This has not stopped Williams from being on tele­vi­sion and radio every chance he gets mak­ing state­ments and com­pro­mis­ing inves­ti­ga­tions in which his agency is active­ly engaged.

As if that was not bad enough INDECOM Terrence Williams joined the most vit­ri­olic anti police group in the country,(JFJ) Jamaicans for Justice, in a joint press con­fer­ence berat­ing the police for shoot­ing crim­i­nals and remov­ing sev­er­al guns from the streets, to include AK47 rifles. The Police Federation through its chair­per­son has cor­rect­ly hit back at Williams for being at that press con­fer­ence, and demand­ed he resign.The Federation has sent let­ters of com­plaint to the Governor General, the Prime Minister,and the Parliament to have Williams removed. In response INDECOM has fired back that it’s com­mis­sion­er has done noth­ing wrong and as such he should remain in his job.

“We make no apolo­gies for shar­ing the con­cerns of organ­i­sa­tions such as Jamaicans for Justice or the Office of the Public Defender and air­ing our con­cerns in that regard,” the state­ment read. The state­ment indi­cat­ed that those con­cerns do not rep­re­sent an attack on the secu­ri­ty forces and should not be con­strued as such”.

This state­ment from the morons at INDECOM shows two things , (1) that they are com­plete­ly and unequiv­o­cal devoid of ratio­nal thought. If the agency sees noth­ing wrong with hav­ing a press con­fer­ence with JFJ it clear­ly is inca­pable of engag­ing in unbi­ased investigations.(2) That they are inca­pable of under­stand­ing their mandate.

That state­ment from INDECOM , what hubris? So here’s a new agency just formed recent­ly, stat­ing we make no apolo­gies , should­n’t hubris be left out of this par­tic­u­lar debate? How could this new agency not see some­thing wrong with its actions in shar­ing stage with Carolyn Gomes. Gomes advo­cates the killing of police offi­cers, she has stri­dent­ly argued that even if the killings of crim­i­nals are indeed jus­ti­fi­able , it is unac­cept­able for offi­cers to kill them. What that means is that offi­cers should be killed in equal num­bers as crim­i­nals, . That is the view of Carolyn Gomes and Earl Witter. Clearly this has got to be the tip­ping point. Decent Jamaican will have to take a stand and demand that the police do more to root out bad apples with even more alacrity, but they must col­lec­tive­ly also put their foot down on the neck of JFJ and make sure that kind of non­sense is stopped once and for all.

As if all of this is not enough the recent­ly embar­rassed Jamaica labour par­ty has decid­ed to fur­ther destroy that par­ty by sid­ing with the peo­ple who are fight­ing tooth and nail against the police. Already Andrew Holness, Delroy Chuck, and Derick Smith have thrown their sup­port behind Williams cement­ing the wide­ly held belief that INDECOM was a tool of the JLP. The JLP would be wise to watch its words very carefully,sour grapes?The Police just vot­ed with the Jamaican peo­ple to boot them from office, and I must say that even though I loathe the PNP I would be more inclined to sup­port the PNP if the Labour par­ty sides with those who sides against the police.

I stand with decent law-abid­ing cops , my sup­port is with the rule of law, that com­mit­ment is unwa­ver­ing and unequivocal.

After Bruce Golding was forced to con­front the real­i­ty that Tivoli Gardens the epic cen­ter of his West Kingston con­stituen­cy was unten­able he act­ed. Golding act­ed because he was forced to act. I wrote an open let­ter to Golding which was car­ried in the Daily Gleaner upon his ascen­den­cy. In that let­ter I asked the then Prime Minister to be dif­fer­ent, I implored him to take on the man­tle of Bustamante , Hugh Shearer in a renewed com­mit­ment to Jamaica, I told him if he was pre­pared to do the heavy lift­ing, the peo­ple would fol­low him and he would be remem­bered as the Prime Minister. Not just anoth­er, in a line of prime ministers.

Mister Golding either did not read that let­ter, or he bla­tant­ly ignored it. Either way Mister Golding end­ed up the worse for it. Despite his short-com­ings, and we could spend our life­time argu­ing those from a polit­i­cal per­spec­tive, Golding was forced to rec­og­nize that the gar­ri­son cul­ture as it exist­ed could not be main­tained in this new world. Golding gave our coun­try Portia Simpson Miller and the sad incom­pe­tent lot the coun­try has today. And reduced his lega­cy to a foot note in his­to­ry. Leaders are not made they are born, one can­not lead from behind, one must make tough unpop­u­lar deci­sions to be a leader,buck the trends, remove the sta­tus quo. Golding in the end was capa­ble of neither.

As such Mister Golding was forced to release the pow­er of the state to repel what was a well orches­trat­ed and defi­ant attack on the rule of law and the Jamaican state by exten­sion. In the end over 70 peo­ple were report­ed­ly killed and Tivoli Gardens was annexed to Jamaica. Whether the peo­ple of that com­mu­ni­ty uses this oppor­tu­ni­ty to ingra­ti­ate them­selves with the oth­er com­mu­ni­ties which make up our coun­try, is up to them to decide. They have been released from the ten­ta­cles of gar­ri­son pol­i­tics. What they do with that oppor­tu­ni­ty will deter­mine whether or not the secu­ri­ty forces will ever have to enter that com­mu­ni­ty with force of arms, or they will ben­e­fit from the ser­vices of com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing which all civ­i­lized peo­ple are enti­tled to.

Scene: Military APC nav­i­gat­ing streets in Hannah town after ter­ror­ists went on a rampage. 

Revisionist his­to­ri­ans and crim­i­nal sup­port­ing groups if allowed will rewrite the sto­ry of what hap­pened, they will lie to the world that 70 inno­cent peo­ple were mur­dered by agents of the state. Nowhere in those litany of lies and dis­tor­tions will you see the Police sta­tions which were razed, burned to the ground by Jamaica’s urban terrorists.

Pictures of the Hannah Town Police Station on fire, and the Cross Rds. Police Station after a ter­ror assault on them

Nowhere will you see them talk­ing about the offi­cers killed in that assault. Nowhere will you hear about the scores of armed thugs who pledged their alle­giance to Christopher (Duddus) Coke. And nowhere will you hear these char­la­tans speak about the thugs who picked up their weapons and moved to Tivoli Gardens to do bat­tle against the state. When their lies are writ­ten and the revi­sion­ist sto­ries told there will be no men­tion of Officers of this Cop.Police Sargeant Wayne (Max) Henriques, who was called away from cel­e­brat­ing his wed­ding anniver­sary with his beau­ti­ful wife. In the Jamaican police ser­vice it is called (exi­gen­cies of the ser­vice).Sargeant Henriques could have said no when he was called, upon which he would have faced dis­ci­pli­nary action. He chose to hon­or his oath, the next time his fam­i­ly saw him again was when they iden­ti­fied his body at the morgue. Sergeant Henriques and his col­leagues were cut down in a hail of bul­lets on moun­tain view avenue as they tried to help strand­ed motorist. Wayne and oth­er police offi­cers who lost their lives will not be remem­bered by nei­ther of the two polit­i­cal gangs which alter­nate in rip­ping off our coun­try. They will not be remem­bered by the Editorial board of the news papers. They will not be hon­ored by the lap-dogs at the top of the con­stab­u­lary. And they damn sure will not be remem­bered by the crim­i­nal sup­port­ers at the for­eign fund­ed Jamaicans for Justice. The con­sol­ers and enablers of crim­i­nal­i­ty in our coun­try. We how­ev­er will nev­er let their sac­ri­fice be for nought. We will nev­er stop men­tion­ing their names.

This mas­sive crowd most­ly clad in white , were not march­ing to be free from the ten­ta­cles of orga­nized crime. They were march­ing , show­ing their sup­port for a thug that came from a long line of thugs, who ruled their com­mu­ni­ty with iron fists, doled out largess, and took advan­tage of their depen­den­cy. They knew no bet­ter, it is with­in those con­text police offi­cers are forced to enforce Jamaican laws, with zero sup­port from their polit­i­cal boss­es. Political boss­es who them­selves have bloody hands.

Today Coke is gone but the prob­lem remains, these same peo­ple are unem­ployed and some are unem­ploy­able, every­one has to eat and sleep some­where. Unless gov­ern­ment can offer the peo­ple what ghet­to enforcers like Coke and oth­ers pro­vid­ed , the secu­ri­ty forces will for­ev­er be seen as the ene­my to be shot at and pil­lo­ried. Those with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight will argue with­out any real knowl­edge that offi­cers should take all pre­cau­tions when they are shot at not to hurt inno­cent bystanders, this is para­mount for all mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces. As a for­mer mem­ber who was on the front­lines, I am all too aware of the dif­fi­cult nature of fight­ing a bat­tle where the ene­my observes no rules yet I am restrained at the per­il of life in prison, if my split sec­ond deci­sion of life and death is the incor­rect one.

Policing inner city com­mu­ni­ties in Jamaica is com­pa­ra­ble to the slums of Rio de Jenero Brasil, Bogata Columbia, Johannesburg South Africa, and the drug car­tel con­trolled areas of Mexico. As such I must point out that in 10 years of ser­vice in the JCF and hav­ing been shot at count­less times and hav­ing been involved in hun­dreds of high risk oper­a­tions, and hav­ing being shot ‚I was nev­er issued with a bal­lis­tic vest. Officers are asked to police a peo­ple who demon­stra­bly refus­es to con­form to the rule of law. There is ample evi­dence of mem­bers of iner city com­mu­ni­ties run­ning toward offi­cers doing their jobs and open­ly defy­ing and jeer­ing offi­cers in an attempt to shield the men who shoot at offi­cers. People in these com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly women are active par­tic­i­pants in the com­mis­sion of seri­ous crimes to include assaults which results in death of police offi­cers. They remove weapons and spent shells from scenes of shoot­ings cre­at­ing the impres­sion there was no shoot out .

Well mean­ing peo­ple who want to live their lives free from the scourge of crime would cer­tain­ly like a coun­try where cops do not car­ry guns.

We were at that place and what did we do? We start­ed fight­ing our police offi­cers, yes assault­ing an offi­cer in Jamaica became a sport. The same peo­ple who claim police aggres­sion nev­er opened their pie-holes to denounce those so-called (rude boys)who assault­ed our offi­cers and in many cas­es killed our offi­cers. They were silent. The same frauds were silent then as they are now when the inno­cent are slaugh­tered. There are places where police can be less aggres­sive, Jamaica is not one of those places. Olof Palme of Sweden thought as Prime Minister he was immune from vio­lence, he nev­er knew what hit him.

Olof Palme

Criminal sup­port­ing groups like JFJ is walk­ing a fine line. They sup­port mur­der­ers as a secu­ri­ty mea­sure, one day soon of the degen­er­ates who did not receive the memo will bring real­i­ty painful­ly home to these frauds. 

A Young col­league who went by the alias (fudge) was almost killed in Olympic gar­dens when an elder­ly woman grabbed him allow­ing her son to shoot him point-blank range ear­ly one morn­ing. Fudge sur­vived that bul­let, the elder­ly woman was let go by Jamaican crim­i­nal lov­ing judges, no con­se­quence. The son was not that lucky, Officers did not allow a judge to let that would be cop-killer walk free. When the mon­day morn­ing quar­ter­backs are doing with their pon­tif­i­cat­ing, talk­ing as if they know some­thing about being police offi­cer in Jamaica, let them vol­un­teer to ride with cops for a week. guar­an­teed they would piss what­ev­er they are wear­ing, and that includes the grand­stand­ing Zealots in the pub­lic defend­ers office, INDECOM, JFJ, the vil­lage lawyers in the media and whichev­er rock they live under.

These are some of the peo­ple whose car­rers it is to sec­ond guess every action of the police, though they nev­er have any­thing to say about the killing of police offi­cers. Earl Witter Public defend­er . Carolyn Gomes Criminal rights advo­cate. And Terrence Williams INDECOM commsisioner.

Has any­one noticed that the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group JFJ nev­er make men­tion of the weapons that are recov­ered from hood­lums in the west Kingston shoot out, or any oth­er? Do you know why they make no men­tion of the weapons tak­en off the streets? Because it would dele­git­imize their argu­ments! Jamaica is a pre­ten­tious soci­ety that pre­tends we have a sta­ble democ­ra­cy. As we saw in 2010 with the killing of law enforce­ment offi­cers and the burn­ing of police station,there are ele­ments with­in the soci­ety who are quite will­ing to take on the Jamaican state. Make no mis­take they are not com­mon crim­i­nals. When some­one picks up a weapon against the state that act becomes trea­so­nous. Any coun­try seri­ous about the rule of law would pros­e­cute these offend­ers and those who sup­port them to the full extent of the law. The fact of the mat­ter is, Jamaica despite what the crim­i­nal sup­port­ers tell you, is not an ordi­nary place . Police doing their jobs there do not do so with­in the frame-work of nor­mal polic­ing, there are a series of sit­u­a­tions that makes the par­a­digm dif​fer​ent​.To include. Terrain ‚types of weapons,types of crim­i­nals, men­tal­i­ty of the peo­ple being policed.

In devel­oped coun­tries when a person/​persons decide to use the kind of force that is used by Jamaican crim­i­nals , and the weapons they use comes into play. Police use over­whelm­ing force, and the first shot they get that threat is neu­tral­ized. Those who pon­tif­i­cate as if the know some­thing , do not know what they are talk­ing about. It’s always easy to sit and Monday-morn­ing quar­ter back , some­thing Jamaicans are very good at doing. Everyone has an opin­ion, irre­spec­tive of their lack of knowl­edge, they are will­ing to offer an opin­ion notwithstanding.

Having left the JCF I won­dered, “why did I risk my life to serve”? Then I con­soled myself “I did not serve because I loved the ingrates, I served because I love my coun­try”. We will nev­er sur­ren­der to crim­i­nal thugs or their sup­port­ers. If the bat­tle needs to be ele­vat­ed to anoth­er lev­el , then that may be what peo­ple will have to do. The peo­ple of Columbia took back their coun­try, we will take back our country.

SUBMITTED HERE FOR YOUR INFORMATION IS THE MOST RECENT NARCOTICS CONTROL STRATEGY REPORT RELEASED TO THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS:

The 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) has raised grave wor­ries about Jamaica’s progress in drug fighting.
The report was sub­mit­ted today to the United States Congress.
The report notes that the Commissioner of Police faces inter­nal, judi­cial, and polit­i­cal road­blocks that are hin­der­ing reforms man­dat­ed by Jamaica’s 2007 Police Strategic Review Implementation Plan.
But the doc­u­ment notes that the Commissioner has tak­en a strong pub­lic stance against cor­rup­tion, and is con­tin­u­ing to imple­ment and expand the plan.
It also claims that high-pro­file orga­nized crime gangs con­tin­ued to suc­cess­ful­ly oper­ate with­in Jamaica and gang lead­ers are often afford­ed com­mu­ni­ty and, in some cas­es, police protection.
The INCSR reviews con­di­tions in the major illic­it drug-pro­duc­ing coun­tries, the major drug-tran­sit coun­tries, and the major source coun­tries for pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals used in the pro­duc­tion of illic­it nar­cotics. In addi­tion, the INCSR dis­cuss­es con­di­tions in the major mon­ey-laun­der­ing countries.
This is the 29^th edi­tion of the annu­al report to Congress and cov­ers the cal­en­dar year 2011.
See full report on Jamaica below.
A. Introduction
Jamaica con­tin­ues to be the largest Caribbean sup­pli­er of mar­i­jua­na to the United States. Although cocaine and syn­thet­ic drugs are not pro­duced local­ly, Jamaica is a tran­sit point for drugs traf­ficked from South America to North America. Drug pro­duc­tion and traf­fick­ing are both enabled and accom­pa­nied by orga­nized crime, domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al gang activ­i­ty, and police and gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion. The gun trade for illic­it drugs exac­er­bates the prob­lem as undoc­u­ment­ed hand­guns are moved into the coun­try in exchange for drugs.
Drugs flow into, through and from Jamaica in small boats and large ves­sels (both inside the ves­sel and in par­a­site con­tain­ers attached to the hull), as con­tra­band car­ried by ship and air­craft pas­sen­gers, with­in ship­ping con­tain­ers, and to a lim­it­ed degree by pri­vate air­craft. Most drugs leav­ing Jamaica are bound for North America. However, some amounts of mar­i­jua­na and cocaine are smug­gled from Jamaica into England, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, either using per­son­al couri­ers, car­go on com­mer­cial air­craft, or by insert­ing the drugs into ship­ping con­tain­ers that pass through Kingston’s busy con­tain­er ter­mi­nal and con­tin­ue onto Europe.
Factors that con­tribute to drug traf­fick­ing are the country’s con­ve­nient posi­tion as a point for nar­cotics being traf­ficked from Latin America; its lengthy, rugged and dif­fi­cult-to-patrol coast­line; a high vol­ume of tourist trav­el by indi­vid­u­als and pri­vate boats; its sta­tus as a major trans­ship­ment point for ship­ping con­tain­ers between Asia, Latin America, Europe and Africa; and, a strug­gling econ­o­my that encour­ages cul­ti­va­tion of mar­i­jua­na in remote swamps and moun­tain areas.
Law enforce­ment author­i­ties are mod­er­ate­ly effec­tive in com­bat­ing illic­it traf­fick­ing with com­pe­tent and ded­i­cat­ed lead­er­ship, but their efforts are under­cut by a slow and mar­gin­al­ly effec­tive crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, a lack of suf­fi­cient resources, and cor­rup­tion. Jamaican law stip­u­lates that pos­ses­sion or use of cocaine; hero­in, mar­i­jua­na, and ecsta­sy are ille­gal and sub­ject to crim­i­nal and civ­il penal­ties. The ille­git­i­mate pos­ses­sion of pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals is also pro­hib­it­ed by law.
Jamaica is a sig­na­to­ry to the 1988 UN Drug Convention.
B. Drug Control Accomplishments, Policies, and Trends
1. Institutional Development
Coöperation remains strong between the Governments of Jamaica and the United States in an effort to curb nar­cotics and relat­ed transna­tion­al crime. The United States’ pri­ma­ry part­ners are the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), Jamaica Customs, and the Ministry of Finance’s Financial Investigation Division.
The Jamaican gov­ern­ment and the United States have a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) that assists in evi­dence shar­ing. Both gov­ern­ments have a rec­i­p­ro­cal asset shar­ing agree­ment and a bilat­er­al law enforce­ment agree­ment gov­ern­ing coöper­a­tion to stop the mar­itime flow of ille­gal drugs. Jamaica is a par­ty to the Inter-American Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, the 1961 UN Single Convention as amend­ed by the 1972 Protocol, the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the 1988 UN Drug Convention, the 1996 Inter-American Convention Against Corruption, the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and its three pro­to­cols, and the UN Convention Against Corruption. The Jamaican gov­ern­ment has signed, but has not rat­i­fied, the Caribbean Regional Maritime Counterdrug Agreement.
The 1991 extra­di­tion treaty between the United States and Jamaica is active­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly used by the United States to extra­dite sus­pect­ed crim­i­nals from Jamaica. Extradition requests are nor­mal­ly processed in a rou­tine and effi­cient man­ner by Jamaican polit­i­cal and judi­cial authorities.
Realizing that fight­ing gangs, drugs, and transna­tion­al crime begins at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, the JCF increased com­mu­ni­ty-based polic­ing (CBP) efforts with U.S. sup­port. CBP is now the offi­cial pol­i­cy of the JCF and is incor­po­rat­ed into pre-ser­vice train­ing for all police recruits. The CBP pro­gram spread from three pilot com­mu­ni­ties in 2008 to 360 com­mu­ni­ties in 2011. Of the JCF’s 8,444 front line offi­cers, 5,609 received train­ing in CBP prac­tices with the remain­der sched­uled for train­ing. Civilian accep­tance of CBP is facil­i­tat­ed through pro­grams such as a safe schools pro­gram and youth civic engagement.
The Commissioner of Police faces inter­nal, judi­cial, and polit­i­cal road­blocks that hin­der reforms man­dat­ed by Jamaica’s 2007 Police Strategic Review Implementation Plan. The Commissioner has tak­en a strong pub­lic stance against cor­rup­tion, is con­tin­u­ing to imple­ment and expand the plan, and has made steady progress toward insti­tu­tion­al reform. However, it is unclear whether the Commissioner will secure con­tin­ued leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive sup­port, both in fund­ing and polit­i­cal back­ing, to make sig­nif­i­cant and endur­ing progress in com­bat­ing police cor­rup­tion and trans­form­ing the institution.
2. Supply Reduction
Marijuana is grown in all four­teen parish­es of Jamaica. An esti­mat­ed 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of mar­i­jua­na is gen­er­al­ly found in areas inac­ces­si­ble to vehic­u­lar traf­fic on small plots in moun­tain­ous areas and along the trib­u­taries of the Black River in Saint Elizabeth parish. The JCF and JDF employ teams of civil­ian cut­ters to cut grow­ing plants and who are escort­ed by the mil­i­tary or police. Teams seize seedlings and cured mar­i­jua­na and burn them in the field. Jamaican law pro­hibits the use of her­bi­cides, and only man­u­al erad­i­ca­tion is conducted.
Eradication of mar­i­jua­na (cannabis, seedlings, seeds, and nurs­eries) increased from 2010: 707 hectares of cannabis were erad­i­cat­ed; 1,900,630 seedlings destroyed and 480 kilos of seeds destroyed in 2011 when com­pared to 447 hectares, 956,300 seedlings and 255 kilos of seeds in 2010. Additional progress in erad­i­ca­tion efforts is hin­dered by the Jamaican government’s fis­cal con­straints and the unavail­abil­i­ty of JDF air­craft to locate mar­i­jua­na fields and trans­port per­son­nel to the remote areas where the crops are grown.
Jamaica pro­hibits the man­u­fac­ture, sale, trans­port, and pos­ses­sion of ecsta­sy, metham­phet­a­mine, and reg­u­lates the pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals used to pro­duce them. Jamaica does not pro­duce pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals or oth­er chem­i­cal sub­stances and, relies on coun­tries export­ing goods to con­form to inter­na­tion­al stan­dards gov­ern­ing export ver­i­fi­ca­tion. The impor­ta­tion and sale of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts and chem­i­cal sub­stances are reg­u­lat­ed and rein­forced with fines or impris­on­ment. Other con­trols exist to mon­i­tor the usage of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts and chem­i­cal sub­stances includ­ing reg­is­ter con­trols, inspec­tions, and audits.
Smugglers con­tin­ued to use mar­itime ship­ping con­tain­ers, ships, small boats, air­craft and couri­ers to move drugs from and through Jamaica to the United States. Seizures of mar­i­jua­na-relat­ed prod­ucts improved in 2011, with 47,691 kilos of cannabis and 170 kilos of hash oil in 2011, com­pared to 39,291 kilos and 121 kilos in 2010, respec­tive­ly, although hashish decreased to 9 kilos in 2011 from 13 in 2010. Seizures of cocaine increased to 552 kilos in 2011 from 176 kilos in 2010, though crack cocaine dropped to 1.3 kilos in 2011 from 5.98 in 2010.
High- pro­file orga­nized crime gangs con­tin­ued to suc­cess­ful­ly oper­ate with­in Jamaica. Gang lead­ers are often afford­ed com­mu­ni­ty and, in some cas­es, police pro­tec­tion. Nevertheless, drug-relat­ed arrests increased to 20,216 in 2011, com­pared to 10,255 in 2010.
3. Drug Abuse Awareness, Demand Reduction, and Treatment
The JCF reports that mar­i­jua­na is used by nine per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, mak­ing it the most abused illic­it drug among Jamaicans, while cocaine abuse reached a plateau of less than 0.1 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion over the last 10 years. There is evi­dence that new drugs, such as hero­in and ecsta­sy, entered the Jamaican domes­tic mar­ket in small amounts.
To com­bat the use of illic­it drugs, the Ministry of Health’s National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA) was estab­lished by statute in 1982. NCDA field offi­cers pro­vide sup­port to the pri­ma­ry care sys­tem through the assess­ment of sub­stance abusers in the men­tal health sys­tem. Also, the Jamaican government’s National Health Fund (NHF) estab­lished and fund­ed 18 com­mu­ni­ty med­ical clin­ics across the island, pri­mar­i­ly through faith- based insti­tu­tions, that pro­vide pri­ma­ry treat­ment ser­vices with refer­rals to hos­pi­tals, clin­ics, physi­cians, psy­chol­o­gists, and psy­chi­a­trists. The clin­ics pro­vide drug-relat­ed coun­sel­ing and trau­ma services.
The Jamaican gov­ern­ment oper­ates one detox­i­fi­ca­tion cen­ter locat­ed at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Organization of American States Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), Jamaica offers a uni­ver­si­ty-lev­el cer­tifi­cate pro­gram in drug addic­tion and drug pre­ven­tion. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) works direct­ly with the Jamaican gov­ern­ment and NGOs on demand reduc­tion; how­ev­er, due to lim­it­ed resources, these pro­grams have lit­tle impact.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) reg­u­lates phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, includ­ing the impor­ta­tion of pseu­doephedrine, both in pow­der and final prod­uct forms. The NCDA, the Pharmacy Council, and the MOH work to expand aware­ness among health pro­fes­sion­als about the poten­tial dan­ger of pseu­doephedrine and ephedrine when they are divert­ed to pro­duce metham­phet­a­mine. The NCDA col­lab­o­rates with oth­er non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions to pro­vide non-res­i­den­tial drug coun­sel­ing services.
4. Corruption
As a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, the Jamaican gov­ern­ment does not encour­age or facil­i­tate ille­gal activ­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with drug traf­fick­ing; nor are any senior Jamaican offi­cials known to engage in such activ­i­ty. Nevertheless, cor­rup­tion of pub­lic offi­cials con­tin­ues to be a major con­cern to the Jamaican and U.S. gov­ern­ments as well as most Jamaicans. The law penal­izes offi­cial cor­rup­tion; how­ev­er, cor­rup­tion is entrenched, wide­spread, and com­pound­ed by a judi­cial sys­tem that is poor­ly equipped to han­dle com­plex crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions in a time­ly manner.
Corruption under­mines efforts against drug and oth­er major crimes and is a major fac­tor in allow­ing the pas­sage of drugs and drug pro­ceeds through Jamaica. An improv­ing anti-cor­rup­tion stance with­in Jamaican cus­toms enforce­ment, the JCF, the Jamaica Tax Administration, and the Office of the Contractor General has shown encour­ag­ing signs. Additionally, the USAID-sup­port­ed National Integrity Action Forum helped focus increased pub­lic and gov­ern­ment atten­tion on anti-cor­rup­tion reforms.
The Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) of the JCF has shown suc­cess in iden­ti­fy­ing and remov­ing offi­cers engaged in cor­rup­tion. Since the ACB’s incep­tion in 2008, 319 JCF per­son­nel have been dis­missed for uneth­i­cal or cor­rupt behav­ior, with 69 of those dis­missed in 2011. Another 44 offi­cers faced crim­i­nal cor­rup­tion charges dur­ing the year. The JCF’s suc­cess is due part­ly to mech­a­nisms that allow it to dis­miss cor­rupt or uneth­i­cal offi­cers when evi­dence is insuf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. For exam­ple, the JCF requires high lev­el police offi­cers to sign employ­ment con­tracts that improve account­abil­i­ty and facil­i­tate speedy dis­missal for cor­rupt or uneth­i­cal behav­ior. Vetting and a poly­graph exam­i­na­tion are also required for pro­mo­tions into key positions.
The JDF has been effec­tive in iden­ti­fy­ing and respond­ing to cor­rup­tion with­in its ranks. The JDF, while not immune from cor­rup­tion, takes swift dis­ci­pli­nary action when war­rant­ed in fur­ther­ance of its zero tol­er­ance policy.
A bill cre­at­ing an Anti-Corruption Special Prosecutor is being con­sid­ered by Parliament, but no action is expect­ed soon. Efforts by leg­is­la­tors from both polit­i­cal par­ties to dilute the effec­tive­ness of the mea­sure threat­en its prospec­tive impact on curb­ing gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion. There has not been leg­isla­tive action to cre­ate a National Anti-cor­rup­tion Agency, which is required by the Inter-American Convention against Corruption to which Jamaica is a signatory.
C. National Goals, Bilateral Coöperation, and U.S. Policy Initiatives Supporting Jamaica’s trans­for­ma­tion into a more secure, demo­c­ra­t­ic, and pros­per­ous part­ner rep­re­sents a major U.S. pol­i­cy goal. Narcotics traf­fick­ing, cor­rup­tion, and crime under­mine the rule of law, demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance, eco­nom­ic growth, and the qual­i­ty of life for all Jamaicans. In response, the United States is work­ing to enhance the effec­tive­ness and capac­i­ty of Jamaica’s law enforce­ment and crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Within the fab­ric of all U.S. aid to Jamaica, beyond that relat­ing only to law enforce­ment and jus­tice, is the acknowl­edge­ment that suc­cess depends on a com­pre­hen­sive approach that rec­og­nizes the link between drugs, gangs, orga­nized crime, pover­ty, unem­ploy­ment, lack of edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and gov­ern­ment corruption.
The U.S. sup­port to com­bat nar­cotics pro­duc­tion and traf­fick­ing in Jamaica includes train­ing, equip­ment and logis­ti­cal assis­tance to the JCF and JDF. For exam­ple, fund­ing sup­ports con­tin­ued mar­i­jua­na erad­i­ca­tion oper­a­tions, logis­ti­cal sup­port to the JDF Coast Guard and JCF Marine Division for inter­dic­tion of nar­cotics traf­fick­ing in coastal waters, and enhance­ment of bor­der secu­ri­ty at air and sea ports for Jamaica Customs. Additional sup­port focus­es on spe­cial­ized JCF units that tar­get nar­cotics and gangs, on JCF crime scene inves­tiga­tive and foren­sic analy­sis capac­i­ty, and on train­ing for pros­e­cu­tors involved in pros­e­cut­ing nar­cotics, cor­rup­tion and finan­cial crimes. Indirect sup­port for coun­ternar­cotics efforts is fur­nished through the devel­op­ment of effec­tive com­mu­ni­ty-police rela­tions, improve­ment of JCF train­ing facil­i­ties, and anti-cor­rup­tion ini­tia­tives with­in the JCF, plus edu­ca­tion and work­force devel­op­ment pro­grams tar­get­ing at-risk youth who are sus­cep­ti­ble to nar­cotics and gang influence.
The pri­ma­ry source of U.S. fund­ing in sup­port of law enforce­ment and jus­tice reform is through the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), which con­tains both bilat­er­al and region­al fund­ing mech­a­nisms. The pro­gram­ming of region­al funds is guid­ed by tech­ni­cal work­ing groups com­prised of rep­re­sen­ta­tives from par­tic­i­pat­ing Caribbean coun­tries. The region­al com­po­nent of CBSI is instru­men­tal in achiev­ing U.S. goals in Jamaica because the chal­lenges it faces are large­ly shared by Caribbean neighbors.
D. Conclusion
Through essen­tial­ly sol­id demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and the efforts of strong lead­ers with­in the gov­ern­ment, Jamaica is mak­ing slow, but steady progress in com­bat­ing the crim­i­nal scourges that plague the country’s polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and social well-being, name­ly the illic­it traf­fick­ing of nar­cotics and firearms, vio­lent crime, cor­rup­tion, gangs and orga­nized crime. Carefully tar­get­ed U.S. sup­port, com­bined with efforts from oth­er inter­na­tion­al part­ners – in par­tic­u­lar Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union – is help­ing to make a dif­fer­ence in that battle.
Success sto­ries can be found in JCF efforts to root out cor­rup­tion through its ACB, by its ini­tia­tive to inoc­u­late com­mu­ni­ties from crime and gang influ­ence using com­mu­ni­ty ‑based polic­ing, and with spe­cial­ized JCF vet­ted units attack­ing nar­cotics and gangs. Successes are also found with­in the offices of INDECOM, the Financial Investigation Division and the Contractor General, where com­pe­tent, ded­i­cat­ed and vet­ted per­son­nel are strug­gling with lim­it­ed resources to turn the tide against police killings, finan­cial crime and gov­ern­ment corruption.
Despite encour­ag­ing signs with­in Jamaica’s law enforce­ment agen­cies, progress is less evi­dent with­in Jamaica’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as a whole. The judi­cial branch remains ill-equipped to han­dle a large num­ber of crim­i­nal cas­es and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al effi­ca­cy is also lack­ing. As a result, there are a large num­ber of gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion cas­es for await­ing pros­e­cu­tion, and con­vic­tions are few as the cas­es may be put off for years with­out result.
Future U.S. efforts should con­tin­ue to sus­tain the momen­tum gained with­in Jamaica’s law enforce­ment agen­cies, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the areas of mar­itime secu­ri­ty, cor­rup­tion, gangs and orga­nized crime. The United States should focus enhanced sup­port and pres­sure for demon­stra­ble progress by pros­e­cu­tors and the courts in mov­ing crim­i­nal sus­pects through the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

Treasonous crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group Jamaicans for jus­tice, more com­mon­ly referred to as JFJ, has launched a broad­side against the Jamaican police for tak­ing out ter­ror­ists who engage them in shootouts with high-pow­ered weapons

(Jamaica Gleaner photo)

The lat­est ver­bal assault against the police in sup­port of Jamaica’s crim­i­nals was launched by Susan Goffe today. In her speech at a press con­fer­ence at their head­quar­ters Goffe said quote: This is the largest loss of life at the hands of the State since the end of slav­ery.” “This orgy of blood­let­ting by the police must end now.” 

Goffe called on Police Commissioner Owen Ellington to imme­di­ate­ly remove all police per­son­nel involved in the most recent inci­dents from front line duties.“They must remain off front line duty until the courts have deter­mined that they act­ed legal­ly,”(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

In what oth­er coun­try where the rule of law is para­mount ‚would this Charlatan even have the nerve to sug­gest that hero­ic law-enforce­ment offi­cers be removed for tak­ing out ter­ror­ists? These are some of the most dead­ly crim­i­nals armed with lethal high-pow­ered weapons. Anyone famil­iar with Jamaica knows they are not afraid to use them on anyone.

Crime has gone up sig­nif­i­cant­ly under this Government since it took office after the most recent elec­tions of December 29^th 2011. There is a gen­er­al con­sen­sus on the streets that this gov­ern­ment is one that is soft on crime. Criminals open­ly state that this is the gov­ern­ment which allows them to “eat a food” (Eating a food is )col­lo­qui­al ver­nac­u­lar that trans­lates into being allowed to make mon­ey, irre­spec­tive of the ille­gal­i­ty of the methodology.

Carolyn Gomes.

Goffe and Gomes parade as defend­ers of the oppressed, but they are not defend­ers of rights they have end­ed up being the biggest sup­port­ers of the most ruth­less crim­i­nals run­ning around slaugh­ter­ing men, women and chil­dren all over the country.

Their cam­paign against law-enforce­ment has being bor­der­ing on aid­ing and abet­ting the most ruth­less crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in the coun­try today.

There is a war going on, The secu­ri­ty forces in Jamaica are not< let me re-empha­size NOT oper­at­ing under nor­mal polic­ing pro­ce­dures. There is an exis­ten­tial fight going on with some of the world’s most blood thirsty urban ter­ror­ist. As such, any causal­ly that accrues can­not be looked at with­in the con­text of nor­mal polic­ing. Of note, absent from the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing JFJ’s dia­tribe is any men­tion of the peo­ple being killed by their maraud­ing friends. There is no men­tion of the guns removed from the bat­tle field. Four in the west Kingston inci­dent alone. There is no men­tion of the lethal­i­ty of the weapons ‚to include the most feared weapon of all the AK47 rifle. This crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group must now be looked at for what it is . If the police was a com­pe­tent police force they would and should be inves­ti­gat­ing this group for sedi­tion and trea­son. Law abid­ing cit­i­zens will have to make a deci­sion ‚as to how long they will be will­ing to tol­er­ate this crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group to exist with­in our coun­try, fund­ed and direct­ed by over­seas interests.

While the police are busy tak­ing out crim­i­nal ele­ments. The call of the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group JFJ is not falling on deaf ears. Not want­i­ng to be out­done the coun­try’s nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Peter Bunting has ordered the com­mis­sion­er of police Owen Ellington to review police operations.

(Peter Bunting Jamaica’s nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter)(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

As I point­ed out to you in a recent post this is exact­ly what crim­i­nals incar­cer­at­ed at the Horizon Remand cen­ter want­ed. Recent flare-ups are designed to have mem­bers of the mil­i­tary removed from con­trol over high risk inmates incar­cer­at­ed there. They have achieved the desired results, inso­far as the inmates and their sup­port­ers are con­cerned. As I told you those mem­bers of the mil­i­tary would be removed, well they have been removed. This is a mul­ti pronged approach launched by crim­i­nals in prison, on the streets and the forces that inter­cede on their behalf. They know this gov­ern­ment is a weak on enforc­ing the laws and they are not let­ting up. Recently Jamaican disc jock­ey Adijah Palmer aka Vybes Kartel who is also incar­cer­at­ed await­ing tri­al on mul­ti­ple mur­der charges had a promi­nent mem­ber of the University of the West Indies(UWI) Carolyn Cooper argu­ing in the Daily Gleaner that Palmer who is charged with mul­ti­ple cas­es of mur­der could not be so stu­pid to com­mit those mur­ders. This despite the misog­y­nis­tic garbage that Palmer puts out in the name of music, and her not hav­ing a shred of excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence that would prove Palmer’s inno­cence on nei­ther of the charges. Her entire the­o­ry is hinged on her premise that Palmer could not be that stu­pid. Carolyn Cooper lec­tures at the University!! See sto­ry here:(jamaica​glean​er​.com).

The great­est threat to the Jamaican state is the weak­ness of the present gov­ern­ment. This is a dan­ger­ous­ly feck­less gov­ern­ment that is still pop­u­lat­ed with the same peo­ple of the last PNP admin­is­tra­tion which last­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ years and turned out to be a colos­sal fail­ure. During the afore­men­tioned peri­od the nation­al secu­ri­ty of our coun­try was left hang­ing, mort­gaged out to those who fight for the most bru­tal­ly mur­der­ous ele­ments amongst us. During this débâ­cle, crime went up and busi­ness­es fled as they did in the 70’s. Every year under the past PNP Administration over 1600 Jamaicans were slaughtered.A new Government came into being and they were forced to release the secu­ri­ty forces to do their jobs. As a result of the un shack­ling of the secu­ri­ty forces crime went down 40% after Tivoli Gardens rean­nex­a­tion to Jamaica. In the three months since the PNP has been returned to pow­er, crime has explod­ed to wit crim­i­nals feel ener­gised and con­fi­dent to once again take on the secu­ri­ty forces, now claim­ing “this is PNP time”, this is the infor­ma­tion com­ing from the streets.

As the prime min­is­ter attends galas thrown in her hon­or, and as she ingra­ti­ate her­self into mat­ters like crick­et that she was not elect­ed to fix, the coun­try is once again being over-run by the most heart­less crim­i­nals. Once again our coun­try has a deci­sion to make , the Jamaican peo­ple must, as oth­er coun­tries are doing, take their future into their own hands. Jamaicans must tell this gov­ern­ment that if they do not unshack­le the police they will take the laws into their own hands , and the gov­ern­ment must live with the consequence.

Jamaica’s crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty are fight­ing to have some of the coun­tries most bar­bar­ic pris­on­ers removed from the com­pe­tent super­vi­sion of the coun­try’s mil­i­tary. These men are housed at a facil­i­ty called the Horizon Remand Center in Kingston. We are reli­ably informed some of them are on a hunger strike in an attempt to draw atten­tion to their claims of being abused. My heart felt sug­ges­tion is to let these mur­der­ers have their wish let them starve to death. As I have talked about in two pre­vi­ous blogs, at the heart of this now report­ed hunger strike, are ser­i­al con­vict­ed mur­der­ers who are final­ly made to con­form with dis­ci­pline. They have devised a plan to assault mem­bers of the mil­i­tary guard­ing them, throw­ing fae­ces on them and when they are sub­dued they have high-priced defense lawyers fil­ing legal briefs in the coun­try’s high­est court claim­ing abuse.

No one is sug­gest­ing that any pris­on­er incar­cer­at­ed by the state should be rou­tine­ly or sum­mar­i­ly abused, far from it, These men are absolute­ly not the aver­age run of the mill inmates these are large­ly con­vict­ed mur­der­ers, who have fig­ured out how to manip­u­late the sys­tem in order to con­tin­ue to run their crim­i­nal enter­pris­es from inside the prison sys­tem This is a well thought out strat­e­gy that is being enhanced by the gov­ern­ment which has assigned every agency they can get their hands on to com­mence inves­ti­ga­tions. Exactly what these mur­der­ing slime balls want­ed in the first place.

Leading the charge in con­demn­ing the sol­diers and demand­ing their removal, for doing what they were sup­posed to do, con­trol vio­lent mur­der­ers is this woman Carolyn Gomes a pedi­a­tri­cian who has found­ed a far left lob­by group called Jamaicans for justice(JFJ). She has used every tool at her dis­pos­al includ­ing align­ing her­self with International Human Rights Organizations which actu­al­ly do real Human rights work for the advance­ment and uplift­ing of humanity.

Gomes how­ev­er has used her immense influ­ence in Jamaica , to impact leg­is­la­tion heav­i­ly in favor of crim­i­nals. Gomes we are told has a per­son­al vendet­ta against police offi­cers, of course in Jamaica being against the police is a cer­tain path­way to fame, and suc­cess. The Government has bestowed the Order of Jamaica on her , a high nation­al Honor. She has also received the 2008 human rights prize for her state­ments alleg­ing Extra-judi­cial killings by police. This is not to say there haven’t been and still aren’t cas­es of eye­brow rais­ing accounts of police shoot­ing. The fact is Gomes has no inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion that will indict accounts of events giv­en by police inves­ti­ga­tors or any oth­er agency that are part of the coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem, to include the office of the Director of Public Prosecutor. Gomes a soft-spo­ken woman ‚eas­i­ly like­able is a decep­tive char­la­tan whom has wormed her way into the hearts and sym­pa­thy of those with whom she cross­es paths.America’s quar­ter­ly 

Every year thou­sands of Jamaica’s 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple are direct­ly or indi­rect­ly impact­ed by crime and acts of ter­ror, per­pet­u­at­ed by heart­less, heav­i­ly armed men whom have decid­ed­ly adopt­ed a pos­ture of liv­ing by their own rules. They mur­der , rape, and com­mit all types of egre­gious acts against some of their own kind, but large­ly against inno­cent Jamaicans. The coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem is a revolv­ing door which allows crim­i­nals arrest­ed on mul­ti­ple mur­der charges back onto the streets time and again only to see them kill over and over again, only to be arrest­ed and grant­ed bail again and again. The police are under­paid, under­staffed, cor­rupt in some instances, under appre­ci­at­ed, and un sup­port­ed by ade­quate leg­is­la­tion which would make their work eas­i­er and the coun­try safer.

The courts are over-bur­dened with case loads to the point cop killers are told by Judges to go home, after the court is unable to empan­el a jury 11 years after they were arrest­ed . These are men who ambushed a police offi­cer slaugh­tered him and stole his pis­tol. They are walk­ing the streets of Jamaica free men, That is what the lives of police offi­cers are worth in Jamaica.

This is just the tip of the ice­berg, the sys­tem is gross­ly over­bur­dened. As we speak there are tens of thou­sands of seri­ous cas­es that are before the courts that may nev­er see a res­o­lu­tion. In essence those offend­ers, some of them mur­der­ers, will nev­er pay for their crimes.

In addi­tion only about 32% of mur­ders are actu­al­ly cleared up by the JCF and an even more depress­ing 7% con­vic­tion rate in the courts. Due large­ly to shod­dy inves­tiga­tive work by police, inept pros­e­cu­tion, reluc­tant wit­ness­es, and in many cas­es sim­ple things like no copi­er in the court’s office to repro­duce doc­u­ments. This in a coun­try which spends 10’s of mil­lions of dol­lars upgrad­ing gov­ern­ment hous­es for Ministers of Government.

I have placed here for your infor­ma­tion and analy­sis the facts as they are made avail­able, due to the invalu­able work of the peo­ple at the Jamaica Observer .These are the peo­ple mem­bers of Jamaica’s mil­i­tary are being per­se­cut­ed for subduing.

THIS A SHAMEFUL AND DISGUSTING ASSAULT ON MEMBERS OF OUR FINE MILITARY. MEN AND WOMEN WHO RISK THEIR LIVES WITHOUT GOVERNMENT SUPPORT TO DEFEND JAMAICA FROM ANARCHY. THESE ARE THE SLIME BALLS ON WHOSE BEHALF THE GOVERNMENT AND CRIMINAL RIGHTS LOBBY ARE PERSECUTING OUR SOLDIERS :

Yesterday I spoke to you about the state of Criminal Justice in Jamaica in part one of what I intend to be a two-part series on the sub­ject. This is not the first time that I have spo­ken about Jamaica’s bro­ken and woe­ful­ly inept crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and it cer­tain­ly will not be the last. As long as the sys­tem is as decrepit as it is, I will con­tin­ue to shine a light on it. I am unre­strained from telling the truth as I am not in the employ of that sys­tem any­more , nei­ther do I intend to be a part of it in the future. One thing is cer­tain, is that one does­n’t need to be inside a fire to know that it is hot, one does not need to be an expert to know that if one jumps off the Flat Bridge he will land in water. We live in a tech­no­log­i­cal age which makes access to infor­ma­tion rather easy. Under free­dom of infor­ma­tion laws gov­ern­ments and agen­cies are not allowed to be Judge and Jury in deter­min­ing whether the pub­lic has access to per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion it needs. The Jamaican Supreme Court for exam­ple has a web­site where all the per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion that may be required by inter­est­ed par­ties are post­ed. Subsequently it is a lit­tle naïve’ for any­one to believe or sug­gest that one has to be immersed with­in the sys­tem in order to under­stand or ful­ly appre­ci­ate what the inner work­ings are. Conversely I dare­say it is rather unique­ly Jamaican that we con­tin­ue to delude our­selves into think­ing that only cer­tain peo­ple who are indeed heav­i­ly invest­ed and or immersed with­in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline may appro­pri­ate­ly address that par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline. What we have found is that mis­con­cep­tion is direct­ly attrib­ut­able to some of the prob­lems that are plagu­ing our coun­try today.

I incor­po­rat­ed the for­gone para­graph in response to my very good friend and for­mer col­league who was real­ly kind to respond to the pre­vi­ous blog. I appre­ci­ate his response and find him cred­i­ble and hero­ic in voic­ing his opin­ion with­out hid­ing behind a moniker even as he still resides in Jamaica.

Carolyn Gomes Director of Jamaicans for Justice.

Yesterday I told you Jamaica’s nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy could be summed up in a sin­gle sen­tence (“spend all you can to pro­tect the most despi­ca­ble mur­der­ers”) It did not take long after I wrote that blog for the most notable face of crim­i­nal sup­port in Jamaica to emerge in sup­port of the most heart­less, bru­tal, cold-blood­ed mur­der­ers on our planet.

Carolyn Gomes is prob­a­bly a decent woman, but she is woe­ful­ly mis­guid­ed. I too believe every­one is enti­tled to pro­tec­tions under the laws, but Gomes by her actions have made it sig­nif­i­cant­ly and abun­dant­ly clear that she has used the Agency she heads (Jamaicans for Justice) as a tool against law enforce­ment and as a source of sup­port for the most hard­ened mur­der­ers oper­at­ing in Jamaica. There is no ratio­nal expla­na­tion for the craven posi­tions she and her agency takes in the defense of crim­i­nals, with­out even an attempt to bal­ance that unmit­i­gat­ed sup­port with empa­thy for crime vic­tims who have suf­fered at the hands of these mur­der­ers. As one could rea­son­ably expect she wast­ed no time in com­ing out in defense of these crim­i­nals , not sug­gest­ing, but demand­ing that mem­bers of the mil­i­tary be removed from the remand cen­ter, and effec­tive con­trol of prisoners. 

Make no mis­take this will hap­pen. Never mind that author­i­ties have cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly stat­ed that the high-pro­file crim­i­nals at the heart of this issue are doing so because they want exact­ly what Gomes wants for them. They want to be removed from the con­trol of the Military, they want to be returned to gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion where they will be under the super­vi­sion of inept, poor­ly trained,corrupt cor­rec­tion offi­cers(warders).

This begs the ques­tion was this response coör­di­nat­ed with the brief filed in the Supreme Court on behalf of the same crim­i­nals? As I point­ed out yes­ter­day these crim­i­nals have no estab­lished source of income as far as this blog­ger knows, so where does the mon­ey come from to pay the high-priced crim­i­nal lawyers who fall over them­selves to rep­re­sent them in the high­est court in the coun­try? Is the mon­ey com­ing from the same source as the funds that keep (JFJ) in busi­ness? Or does (JFJ) gets fund­ed from the same pool that pays the high-priced (vul­tures)? Ask your­selves the ques­tion , where do these men get the funds to pay these high-priced lawyers (vul­tures)? And yes my dear friend Mac They are vul­tures, and they do dou­ble as law-mak­ers , there is no dis­crep­an­cy there. That state­ment is a fact, you see my friend it may be an incon­ve­nient truth ‚but the truth nonetheless.

There are innu­mer­able cas­es, too many to men­tion of Justices on courts at var­i­ous lev­els of the Judiciary in Jamaica who rou­tine­ly grant bail to crim­i­nals after they are arrest­ed for seri­ous crimes like mur­der and rape , they prompt­ly go out kill or rape again are grant­ed bail again and again and again to com­mit the same crimes some­times up to five times over, even as they await tri­al for the first case on which were charged.

Jamaican Judges argue that bail was not intend­ed to be puni­tive, they argue bail was not intend­ed to be pun­ish­ment. That may be all well and good accord­ing to British Judges, (which I will come back to). Since bail was not meant to be pun­ish­ment who argues for the vic­tims who are rou­tine­ly gunned down on almost every street cor­ner of Kingston and oth­er cities in Jamaica, in broad day­light, as onlook­ers stand there trans­fixed, too scared to move, too scared to tell police who did it, even though they know the per­pe­tra­tors? Too scared to speak , know­ing if they tell they will be next. From Hagley Park road to Slipe road, from Tower Street to Matthews lane the blood of Jamaicans con­tin­ue to run while Judges fid­dle over seman­tics, refus­ing to lock crim­i­nals away for the max­i­mum time allowed by law. If Judges con­tin­ue to make the same argu­ments then yes the law is an ass and the Judges are even big­ger Asses. 

England ‚the for­mer colo­nial pow­er Jamaicans quote, and seek to emu­late, do not make the same argu­ments in defense of their cit­i­zens. London is one of the most pro­tect­ed cities in the world, there are hun­dreds of thou­sands of cam­eras that lit­er­al­ly stitch togeth­er the secu­ri­ty of the city into man­age­able nerve cen­ters where secu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als mon­i­tor the every move of Londoner in an effort to make sure the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of that city is pre­served. Whether one believes in big broth­er hav­ing that much con­trol is a legit­i­mate argu­ment to be debat­ed, but the results are impos­si­ble to deny. 

In a sen­tence, coun­tries which val­ue their cit­i­zens under­stand that secu­ri­ty is job num­ber one.

It is not about crash pro­gramme work, it is not about faux tears of car­ing , nations do not thrive on hugs and plat­i­tudes. Jamaica’s Judges like the politi­cians are com­plic­i­ty respon­si­ble for the high rate of crim­i­nal­i­ty that con­tin­ue to plague the nation. I spent 10 years in the Police force and I left it know­ing that I could not make a dif­fer­ence serv­ing in that depart­ment, I refused to be con­sumed by a sys­tem in which the peo­ple who risk their lives are set up to fail. Many peo­ple are fooled by the “mis­ter bigs” who hand over a car to the com­mis­sion­er or a cou­ple of motor­cy­cles here and there. I would much rather see peo­ple with pow­er in Jamaica use those pow­ers to lob­by for leg­is­la­tion which puts crim­i­nals in prison where they belong.

Then again I won’t hold my breath, some of the most pow­er­ful in the suits and tie, are the most pow­er­ful gang leaders.

I hate to say I told you so. I am refer­ring to the PNP gov­ern­ment, Yea, yea, I know I sound par­ti­san, that’s the sim­plis­tic way to think. I prob­a­bly will not be able to change the minds of those of you who think that way. If your minds are already made up, a mind made up will learn noth­ing new. I urge you to put that aside and be objec­tive for a minute. Study my posi­tions a lit­tle clos­er, I crit­i­cize both polit­i­cal par­ties, the PNP more than the JLP because I feel that the PNP at its core is a far more destruc­tive par­ty for our coun­try. On every occa­sion that I have crit­i­cized the PNP I have pre­sent­ed doc­u­ment­ed ver­i­fi­able fac­tu­al basis for doing so. My posi­tions have noth­ing to do with polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion , the truth is I care about nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty in Jamaica, I care about Jamaica. It mat­ters not who is in charge, as long as they make deci­sions that are in the best inter­est of Jamaica.

There is a debate rag­ing in Jamaica as we speak at the heart of this debate is this image below:

(Jamaica Gleaner photo)

This is a pic­ture of Livity Coke , broth­er of Christopher Coke ‚dis­play­ing what has been ruled super­fi­cial wounds received at the hands of mem­bers of the mil­i­tary who are in charge of secu­ri­ty at the Horizon Remand cen­ter In Kingston.

Livity Coke is in jail await­ing tri­al on charges of shoot­ing at police offi­cers stem­ming from the incur­sion into Tivoli Gardens by mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces to arrest his broth­er Christoper (dudus) Coke on gun run­ning and nar­cotics charges to which he has sub­se­quent­ly pled guilty in the United States. This charge would have been a very seri­ous charge in any oth­er coun­try which respects the rule of law. let me point out, this is not so in Jamaica, even if he is con­vict­ed, which is a 7% pos­si­bil­i­ty, he may very well get a sus­pend­ed sen­tence, if that much. Such is the state of crim­i­nal jus­tice in Jamaica. At the cen­ter of this non­sense is a group of gang lead­ers who want sol­diers removed from enforc­ing dis­ci­pline at Horizon, so they may return to the care of inept large­ly cor­rupt, intim­i­nat­ed cor­rec­tion offi­cers(prison warders ) where they know they will be able to con­tin­ue run­ning their gangs that are on the outside.

Coke and oth­ers now have high-pro­file lawyers fil­ing brief in Jamaica’s Supreme Court on their behalf, argu­ing that they are being abused. The Government is falling all over itself to have INDECOM the Jamaican FBI (sic), Criminal rights activists, Earl Witter the so-called pub­lic defend­er and every force they can pos­si­bly Marshall to fight the sol­diers on behalf of these filthy scum bags.

I could wan­der off and actu­al­ly tell the world that INDECOM was cre­at­ed to inves­ti­gate the police while crime surges. Which is real­ly a smoke screen while politi­cians involve them­selves in all kinds of crim­i­nal actions. But I won’t.The dif­fer­ence is that the FBI can actu­al­ly inves­ti­gate, and does inves­ti­gate crim­i­nals. INDECOM’S man­date is to inves­ti­gate police offi­cers , they have no man­date to inves­ti­gate seri­ous crimes, not so in Jamaica.

But I won’t talk about that, that’s a dif­fer­ent conversation.

According to prison offi­cials the men at the cen­ter of this dis­rup­tion are crim­i­nals already con­vict­ed of very seri­ous crimes, most are infa­mous, and some even though not yet con­vict­ed , are known to have com­mit­ted mul­ti­ple mur­ders. Prison Officials are con­tend­ing some of these vio­lent acts have been cap­tured on secu­ri­ty cam­eras that were recent­ly installed at Security Post 11 where some of the most high-risk inmates are housed.

That list includes Tesha Miller, Christopher Linton, Joel Andem, Kevin Tyndale and Michael McLean — “very dan­ger­ous indi­vid­u­als”, Prendergast charged that “many of them vio­lent­ly oppose” prison rules.

You think?

(por­trait for Tyndale and Mclean not available)

These are some of the most dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals in the entire world. They have no com­punc­tion about gun­ning down any­one ‚any­where, at any­time, and if they are unable to do so them­selves, have their oper­a­tives do so on their behalf.

Yet after law enforce­ment have safe­ly and effec­tive­ly removed these filthy scum­bags from the streets, with­out hurt­ing them , the Government of the coun­try in league with the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty are falling over them­selves to defend these degen­er­ates. They com­plain about extra-judi­cial killings, if these low lives are killed in the process of appre­hend­ing them. When they are appre­hend­ed and locked up, and they con­tin­ue to mis­be­have the gov­ern­ment per­se­cute those tasked with the dan­ger­ous job of keep­ing them locked up. It is clear that the Government wants these men on the streets where they may con­tin­ue with their geno­ci­dal rampage.

Here’s how Officials of the Prisons explain what these men have been up to in the facility.

The JDF, in dis­miss­ing the alle­ga­tions, sug­gest­ed that it was a ploy by the inmates to force prison offi­cials to trans­fer them back to the gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion where they can con­tin­ue their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties.“As we con­tin­ue to frus­trate their attempts to influ­ence their gangs, inmates have resort­ed to doing every­thing in their pow­er to have them­selves removed from JDF cus­tody and incor­po­rat­ed into the gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion,” said Captain Basil Jarrett, JDF civil/​military co-oper­a­tion offi­cer.Jamaicagleaner​.com

Captain Basil Jarrett, sin­gu­lar­ly, by this state­ment alone, has demon­strat­ed that he is heads and shoul­der above any­one in the Administration of Portia Simpson Miller.

My only crit­i­cism with the process as artic­u­lat­ed by mem­bers of the JDF is that these degen­er­ates must be iso­lat­ed from each oth­er. My crit­i­cism how­ev­er is not made with any knowl­edge of the geo­graph­i­cal lay­out or capa­bil­i­ties of the facil­i­ty. As such I am not sure that my cri­tique is even a fair one, in light of the afore­men­tioned admis­sion. Knowing the inad­e­qua­cies of the jus­tice sys­tem in Jamaica I would haz­ard a guess that facil­i­ty does not have com­mon sense capa­bil­i­ties that would argue for the safe­ty of offi­cers or the secu­ri­ty and effec­tive con­tain­ment of accused criminals.

Here we have crim­i­nals who are known ser­i­al mur­der­ers who under­stand the system.

They have mon­ey to hire the most cel­e­brat­ed high-pro­file (vul­tures) called defense lawyers to push their agendas.

Gaming the system.

And whip­ping up reli­able, depend­able sup­port from the polit­i­cal left which sup­ports them in the country.

This Government is a dis­grace, a shame­ful exam­ple of how Governments in small devel­op­ing coun­tries like Jamaica are them­selves vic­tims when they acqui­esce to the far left dic­tates from Agencies like the Inter American com­mis­sion on Human Rights, The United Nations com­mis­sion on Human Rights, Amnesty International and the pletho­ra of oth­er so-called Human Rights Organizations around the world.

These far left Agencies along with prox­ies like Jamaicans for Justice, have pres­sured small coun­tries into aban­don­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, even though pub­lic opin­ion over­whelm­ing­ly sup­ports these mea­sures in their fight against demon­ic crim­i­nals who are hell-bent on may­hem and mur­der. These far left Elitist oper­ate in coun­tries like the United States, Canada among oth­er devel­oped coun­tries. In each of the coun­tries from which they oper­ate they do not get to dic­tate to nei­ther State nor Federal Officials how nation­al secu­ri­ty, or crime is han­dled. They take their scare tac­tics to the United Nations where they tie loan and aid guar­an­tees to acqui­es­cence of their rad­i­cal far left agen­da. It is a vicious form of coher­sion that lit­er­al­ly guar­an­tees that small­er depen­dent states will con­tin­ue to be inun­dat­ed with crime. No investor wants to do busi­ness in a crime rid­den coun­try, coun­tries like Jamaica, Mexico, or Colombia with high crime rates are tar­get­ed. Mexico has oil, Columbia has Cocaine, Jamaica has.…..

So they stay poor and depen­dent on the satel­lite states. Check mate.

One would rea­son­ably assume that politi­cians run­ning for office, or hav­ing being elect­ed to office, would real­ize that their pri­ma­ry duty is to pro­tect cit­i­zens. Not so in Jamaica, politi­cians in Jamaica are large­ly crim­i­nals, Judges are so lib­er­al with sen­tenc­ing and the lat­i­tude they give defense attor­neys , it rais­es eye­brows as to whether most of them are not taint­ed with blood mon­ey. And that does not even begin to address the crim­i­nal defense attor­neys who rep­re­sent the most despi­ca­ble ser­i­al mur­ders. Oh by the way most of the defense attor­neys dou­ble as Legislators. The coun­try has been caught in this vicious cycle for decades. The coun­try’s entire nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy may be summed up in a sin­gle sen­tence” Spend what­ev­er it takes to pro­tect the most mur­der­ous crim­i­nals” Jamaica has nev­er seen a char­ter it does­n’t want to sign, they have nev­er seen a piece of paper being float­ed in International cir­cles that they take a pass on.

This is a coun­try that is run by those schooled at what the late Wilmott )Mutty) Perkins called the “intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to” The University of the West indies. They are a cadre of pre­tenders, first and sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of blacks who have final­ly clawed their way out of abject pover­ty . They have gained edu­ca­tion and they want to be asso­ci­at­ed with the ways of their for­mer mas­ters whom have long retreat­ed to Europe. they are the new bour­geoise’ and they are damn sure going to let every­one know it.

Only prob­lem with this, is they pre­tend that Jamaica is Switzerland,or Denmark, so they live in some dis­tant place in their minds, as the killings sur­round them. They bar­ri­cade them­selves in their homes, hav­ing to breach lay­ers and lay­ers of iron grille for­ti­fi­ca­tion which sep­a­rate room from room. And as they sur­vive day-to-day they are lulled into believ­ing that this is the way to live, they tell them­selves Jamaica is not bad, there is crime everywhere.

They con­vince them­selves that the prob­lem is with the police and sol­diers who in their minds are spoil­ing the nar­ra­tive in their mind,disrupting their fan­tas­tic utopia,causing inter­na­tion­al con­ster­na­tion of their Island par­adise. The par­adise they rule.….….

Then they awake from their dream and sep­a­rate them­selves from their prison room by room, and they watch their new­ly crowned Empress naked in igno­rance and they mar­vel at her new clothes.

Police in the Island of Jamaica have all but con­ced­ed that they are unable to deal with the mon­ster of crime in that country.

There are sig­nif­i­cant signs that the police depart­ment and the inept gov­ern­ment have no clue how to arrest the crime prob­lem, (no pun intended).

Yesterday in these blogs we dis­cussed some issues we feel are key in under­stand­ing why police offi­cers fab­ri­cate evi­dence to gain con­vic­tions. We will not re-lit­i­gate that blog what we will do is talk about what seem evi­dent to those who are inter­est­ed in knowing.

Assistant com­mis­sion­er of Police Élan Powell

Yesterday we fea­tured this man assis­tant Commissioner of Police Élan Powell in charge of crime in Jamaica. Assistant Commissioner Powell is a good man who loves his job, he means well. Both Powell and Senior Superintendent Wilford Gayle direct­ly involved in crim­i­nal Investigations are two pro­tegé of the Constant Spring CIB under the tute­lage of Noël Asphall and Rudolph Dwyer. Dwyre a superb inves­ti­ga­tor who over­saw crime and Noël Asphall a tow­er­ing ted­dy-bear who could get the lazi­est of the lazy to work for free through moti­va­tion. Your blog­ger ben­e­fit­ted great­ly from hav­ing being part of that office, and was priv­i­leged to play a part in keep­ing crime in check in our area of influ­ence. There are many more unsung heroes who will nev­er be reward­ed or remem­bered because they do not fit the nar­row prism of what cops are sup­posed to be these days in Jamaica.

The fol­low­ing is a tran­script from the Gleaner one of Jamaica’s dai­ly publications.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) has released chill­ing sta­tis­tics and we are still in the mid­dle of the sec­ond month of the year. The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) week­ly crime sta­tis­tics indi­cate that up to February 11, last year, the homi­cide fig­ures stood at 114. There have been 137 cas­es of mur­der for the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od this year. The crime sta­tis­tics fur­ther sug­gest­ed that gang vio­lence has been the motive behind the vio­lent killing of at least 50 per­sons. The gun has been used in more than 100 of the report­ed cas­es of homi­cides. Last month, 104 per­sons were mur­dered, while up to yes­ter­day, close to 40 have been killed since the begin­ning of February. 

Most dan­ger­ous places

According to the sta­tis­tics, the most dan­ger­ous places at the moment are in the St Catherine North Police Division where more than 25 per­sons have been killed.(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

Here’s what this means folks, over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year less Jamaicans have been killed than this year. As a prag­ma­tist I promise you I will not over com­pli­cate this issue. Irrespective what the police and the gov­ern­ment tell you these num­bers reveals a strik­ing tale. That tale is that this gov­ern­ment attracts crim­i­nal­i­ty as flies fol­lows feces.

As I have said on so many occa­sions this gov­ern­ment is seen as a cod­dler of crim­i­nals. I opined that this gov­ern­ment aligned itself with crim­i­nals whilst in oppo­si­tion. As the oppo­si­tion par­ty they vot­ed not to allow the secu­ri­ty forces to con­tin­ue with their momen­tum in pur­suit of crim­i­nals after Christopher Coke was rout­ed from Tivoli Gardens. There were no dis­senters, they vot­ed as a uni­tary block.

This I thought was a trea­so­nous act which should have been pun­ish­able with ban­ish­ment from rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics. Jamaicans being who they are vot­ed them into office.

Of course the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom on the street is that The People’s National Party then in oppo­si­tion, could not allow the police to con­sol­i­date their gains as they have sig­nif­i­cant­ly more gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties than the then gov­ern­ment of the Jamaica Labor Party.

The sto­ry the PNP which now forms the gov­ern­ment gave for not sup­port­ing the secu­ri­ty forces is scan­dalous, quote: “We do not want the secu­ri­ty forces to vio­late the rights of cit­i­zens”. So they sided with the criminals !!!!

Powell report­ed­ly told the Gleaner, a mouth­piece for the Government that , quote“We are fac­ing some try­ing times and all of us will have to bond togeth­er with our effort. With this col­lab­o­ra­tion, we should get on top of things,” Assistant Commissioner Ealan Powell, head of the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB).(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

Spanish Town is excep­tion­al­ly chal­leng­ing and I am appeal­ing to the moth­ers, the sis­ters and girl­friends to come for­ward and talk to us. It is going to take all hands on deck to ensure suc­cess,” Powell told The Gleaner.

This is a SOS folks:

Assistant com­mis­sion­er Powell still a friend, clear­ly is sig­nalling a “SOS”. That is a dis­tress call for help. I have long main­tained that Police and gov­ern­ment can­not acqui­esce to crim­i­nal rights groups. I have long writ­ten that the rule of law must be sacro­sanct. I have long argued that the rule of law must be the foun­da­tion that any soci­ety is built on. After the rule of law has been estab­lished as a cor­ner­stone, then soci­ety must move to make sure that the rights of indi­vid­u­als are pro­tect­ed. Not the reverse.

Percival James Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller have mort­gaged the secu­ri­ty of Jamaica on the altar of cheap polit­i­cal games­man­ship and vote-get­ting. Groups like Jamaicans for Justice which argue that their man­date is to ensure cit­i­zens rights, have over the years thrown their sup­port to crim­i­nals at the expense of the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty. As a result they have lost the sup­port of a lot of ordi­nary Jamaicans, seen as just anoth­er crim­i­nal cod­dling enti­ty in the coun­try. This group in par­tic­u­lar has been giv­en carte blanch in help­ing to shape nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy. The result is the Police beg­ging for mer­cy from Jamaica’s urban terrorists.

Let me just say this, Assistant Commissioner Powell well-inten­tioned though he may be, is a sup­port­er of the par­ty in Government . He most cer­tain­ly will be pro­mot­ed before they are removed from office even if they are only allowed a sin­gle term. This sug­gest Powell and some close to him, have a bright future in the JCF . The prob­lem with that is that it offers a dim future for Jamaica.

Powell and oth­ers came to promi­nence as the way for­ward for the JCF. The coun­try was told that the police is a para-mil­i­tar force that must be mod­ern­ized, that we agreed with. What we do not agree with is that the JCF should be made into a paper tiger that is reduced to beg­ging crim­i­nals to behave 

PS: Assistant Commissioner Powell and I passed the accel­er­at­ed Examinations togeth­er, we worked togeth­er at Constant Spring. Powell was a guy who loved the Office , I loved remov­ing crim­i­nals from the streets. I knew where they lived , I knew where they dined, I knew where they slept, I knew where they pro­cre­ate, I caught them where they procreate.

“Shottas” love sex and that is where I caught them, where their girls lived. 

Powell stayed I left.

In 2008 Jamaican Police Detective Constable Carey Lyn-Sue admit­ted that he had fab­ri­cat­ed state­ments to secure con­vic­tions. Two weeks ago, an arrest war­rant was issued for Detective Sergeant Michael Sirjue for his alleged role in fab­ri­cat­ing a wit­ness state­ment in a case involv­ing mem­bers of the stone crush­er gang and in par­tic­u­lar a lead­ing mem­ber Eldon Calvert. Police sources yes­ter­day con­firmed that a Montego Bay-based female detec­tive cor­po­ral is sus­pect­ed to have fab­ri­cat­ed a wit­ness state­ment in a case involv­ing alleged Stone Crusher gang leader Eldon Calvert.

Assistant com­mis­sion­er of police Élan Powell i/​c crime.

The com­mon thread in all three instances ? Detective Sergeant Michael Sirjue !!!!

Detective sergeant Sirjue report­ed­ly super­vised both the detec­tive cor­po­ral and con­sta­ble Lyn-Sue. Over the years we have heard com­ments and innu­en­dos advanced from all and sundry, about how polic­ing should be done and what ought to be done to fix our prob­lems as it regards law enforce­ment in the coun­try. In the midst of it all, no one both­ers to ask the police how they feel about any of the issues which affect their lives or effec­tive­ness on a dai­ly basis. The inevitable con­clu­sion it seem has always been that the police (from the poor­er class) ought to be told what to do.

Even though many police offi­cers now serv­ing, are now twice as smart and in many instances are more edu­cat­ed than their polit­i­cal boss­es, the stig­ma remains of the police boy wear­ing short pants guard­ing the rich man’s house. As a black man who served proud­ly in the JCF for a decade before I took my leave of the depart­ment, I have heard it all from the experts who told us the rea­son there is cor­rup­tion in the force. Alleged rea­sons range from, because it’s large­ly a male dom­i­nat­ed body, oth­ers tell us it’ large­ly due to the fact that it is dom­i­nat­ed by blacks.

This sin­gle case tied togeth­er, turns all those sil­ly notions on their heads.

Many will point to these two recent­ly revealed instances of impro­pri­ety as a trend, of course it ‚mat­ters not that they do not have evi­dence or enough infor­ma­tion to form those opin­ions. Notwithstanding , three instances over a peri­od of a few years does not a pat­tern make, if any­thing it points to the fact the that the sys­tem is work­ing. It may be cold com­fort to those whose jobs it is to pon­tif­i­cate to learn that police depart­ments all over the world deal with these issues all the time. Also the rea­son this prob­lem exist has noth­ing to do with quo­tas as some have sug­gest­ed, there are no quo­tas in the JCF. This issue is all about trust or the lack there­of. We may lit­i­gate the mer­its and demer­its of police offi­cers per­jur­ing them­selves in order to gain con­vic­tions, those are legit­i­mate ques­tions which the coun­try has every right to demand answers to. One thing is cer­tain, is that it fur­ther erodes the mea­gre trust cit­i­zens have in the abil­i­ty of the sys­tem to serve them in a just and fair way.

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) tout­ed to be one of , if not the pre­mier police ser­vice in the world from time to time is forced to deal with alle­ga­tions and some­times proven instances where this hap­pens. It is despi­ca­ble and should not be tol­er­at­ed , but it does speak to an under­ly­ing ques­tion of why. In the case of the NYPD there are sev­er­al rea­sons why offi­cers fab­ri­cate evi­dence, none of which has to do with a break­down in their jus­tice sys­tem. American Police Officers large­ly com­mit these acts to fill quo­tas, to remain on plum details, and in a lot of cas­es out of racial prej­u­dice. (Amer­i­can civ­il lib­er­ties union)

As we look for answers to the ques­tion of what is behind offi­cers fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence we would be well advised to look at the fail­ure of the jus­tice sys­tem to deliv­er jus­tice to the pop­u­la­tion , to include police offi­cers. I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly about this issue and still we see crim­i­nals returned to the streets after being arrest­ed and charged for mul­ti­ple cas­es of mur­der, over and over again. On many of those occa­sions they imme­di­ate­ly elim­i­nate wit­ness­es for the pros­e­cu­tion that would poten­tial­ly tes­ti­fy against them. In a coun­try like Jamaica where a large per­cent­age of mur­der cas­es are built on eye­wit­ness­es accounts the need to keep wit­ness­es alive is of the utmost impor­tance. Yet Jamaican Judges con­tin­ue to release cal­lous mur­der­ers onto the streets using the flim­sy argu­ments that bail was not intend­ed to be a pun­ish­ment. One would rea­son­ably con­clude that if a jurist erred they would err on the side of cau­tion, on the side of the aggrieved.

Not so, they argue for legal argu­ments long, out­dat­ed and which even the framers do not find use­ful in this era of mul­ti­ple mur­ders and urban ter­ror­ism. London is one of the most close­ly mon­i­tored cities in the world , a crim­i­nal accused of mul­ti­ple mur­ders in the United Kingdom will cer­tain­ly not be released onto the streets untill the courts finds him inno­cent. Yet Jamaican judges con­tin­ue to turn them loose quot­ing British Laws.

I have pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten on this sub­ject, large­ly explain­ing that the ques­tion of extra-judi­cial killings, evi­dence fab­ri­ca­tion, mob killings, wit­ness­es not turn­ing up to give evi­dence, lack of jurors, the rise of the don cul­ture, and myr­i­ad oth­er soci­etal ills can be traced right back to the doorsteps of a mal­func­tion­ing jus­tice sys­tem. Let me be clear this does not mean that Judges are sole­ly the rea­son for all of soci­etal ills, far from it. What I am say­ing is that Legislators, Judges, Prosecutors, Police, Prison offi­cers, Defense Attorneys and all oth­er play­ers with­in the sys­tem have been colos­sal failures,beginning with the Legislators.

Crime will con­tin­ue to increase under this Administration. The gen­er­al mind­set is that this par­ty in gov­ern­ment is a crime cod­dling par­ty, there is more than ample evi­dence to sup­port that the­o­ry. Police Officers are caught between a rock and a hard place in want­i­ng to make dif­fer­ence in the crime Serengeti that is Jamaica, though this method can­not be con­doned at least for this blog­ger there is at least an under­stand­ing as to its cause.