Jamaica’s Police Commissioner has once again put his foot into his mouth, Owen Ellington the Police com­mis­sion­er seem to believe that pan­der­ing to pub­lic per­cep­tions is a safer and bet­ter bet in secur­ing the coun­try than build­ing morale, train­ing and fight­ing for liv­able wages for offi­cers, while weed­ing out crooked and cor­rupt members.

(Gleaner photo)

Owen Ellington has tak­en unprece­dent­ed steps to make sure that the pub­lic like him, he has made the con­fi­den­tial police com­mu­ni­ca­tion doc­u­ment (force orders) pub­lic. This is the first instance to my knowl­edge where a com­pa­ny , orga­ni­za­tion , or insti­tu­tion has made their pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial com­mu­niqué avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic, much less a secu­ri­ty or law Enforcement Agency.

I must say that the secu­ri­ty firm Guardsman is a bet­ter run Agency that the JCF. Ellington’s gam­ble is sim­ple, pro­vide the media with a con­stant stream of non-news by the week­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tions he has with the Department, this does give Jamaica’s lazy unpro­fes­sion­al and incom­pe­tent media prac­ti­tion­ers a con­stant stream of infor­ma­tion that they pass as news to a gullible law enforce­ment hat­ing pub­lic. Ellington looks like he is doing some­thing spec­tac­u­lar, the media has a steady stream of news and Police offi­cers look like idiots and their safe­ty is com­pro­mised, what’s not to like? Ellington has posi­tioned him­self as a reformer when the oppo­site is real­ly true, let’s take a clos­er look.

Ellington’s expe­ri­ence

Ellington joined the JCF in 1980 , a past stu­dent of Glengoff High School, Ellington was edu­cat­ed at the University of the West Indies where he holds a bach­e­lors degree in human resource and a Masters degrees in National secu­ri­ty and strate­gic stud­ies. He also par­tic­i­pat­ed in Certificate cours­es in var­i­ous coun­tries to include China and the United States. The fact is Ellington is aca­d­e­m­i­caly qual­i­fied to be Prime Minister of Jamaica he how­ev­er lacks the req­ui­site skills need­ed to be an effec­tive com­mis­sion­er of police. There are those who believe aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions are enough to make a good cop, the truth is good cops the world over do not have a bach­e­lors degree , much less a mas­ters, I am in no way try­ing to dimin­ish the impor­tance of being ade­quate­ly edu­cat­ed. What I am say­ing is that it does not require a rock­et sci­en­tist to be a good cop.

Ellington lack the most fun­da­men­tal asset that makes a good cop, that char­ac­ter­is­tic is street smart, Ellington was reared in one office or anoth­er, he spent pre­cious lit­tle time if any doing police work and as such he has no real expe­ri­ence in how actu­al polic­ing is done. Police Departments that wants a tech­no­crat at their helm are smart enough to rec­og­nize they need a police chief that came up through the ranks. As is almost the case with every­thing else in Jamaica that process is dys­func­tion­al , this sys­tem of want­i­ng a Technocrat at the helm with­out a cred­i­ble feel for the streets is one bourne out of fol­ly, pen­cil push­ers can­not do police work and damn sure can­not suc­ceed in doing that job in Jamaica of all places.

THREATS AGAINST COPS LIVES COPS PLACED ON HIGH ALERT

On the 14^th of this month we blogged about the seri­ous threats against police per­son­nel in the St. Catherine north , south and Clarendon Divisions made pub­lic by no oth­er than Ellington, who begged mem­bers to be on the high­est alert. Jamaican cops live in a vir­tu­al war zone , irre­spec­tive of where they are stationed,they are the guardians of the gate and as such they have much ene­mies, even some who should be friends are ene­mies This is not the first time Ellington has been forced to raise the threat assess­ment lev­el against mem­bers of the JCF by crim­i­nals who are deter­mined to kill cops at what­ev­er cost, if they can­not have their way in wreak­ing hav­oc in the country.

ELEVEN DAYS LATER

October 23^rd Ellington was again in the news, this time berat­ing cops for tak­ing home weapons to pro­tect their lives and that of their families.

Said Ellington.

There are numer­ous instances where per­sons who are stopped by the police declare them­selves to be police offi­cers. Sometimes these per­sons pro­duce police iden­ti­fi­ca­tion; how­ev­er, there is noth­ing pro­vid­ed for them to ver­i­fy that they are autho­rised to car­ry the firearm.“Ellington remind­ed his charges that only a cer­tain cat­e­go­ry of offi­cers with­in the JCF are giv­en ser­vice firearms to keep and care. He argued that the absence of a prop­er sys­tem to quick­ly ver­i­fy whether a mem­ber is autho­rised to be in pos­ses­sion of a ser­vice firearm presents a risk, espe­cial­ly to offi­cers per­form­ing duties in civil­ian attire.A police­man’s uni­form forms part of his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. It tells the organ­i­sa­tion the per­son is employed with (Jamaica Constabulary Force or Island Special Constabulary Force); the lev­el with­in the organ­i­sa­tion the per­son is at; and some­times gives an idea of the per­son­’s length of ser­vice from the insignia worn. This, there­fore, plays a very impor­tant role in aug­ment­ing the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card,” explained Ellington. He added: “This addi­tion­al form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is not extend­ed to per­sons per­form­ing duties in civil­ian attire because of the need for them to be less overt and less vis­i­ble than uni­formed police per­son­nel. In light of this, with­out an estab­lished sys­tem to quick­ly ver­i­fy that a per­son is autho­rised to car­ry a firearm, armed crim­i­nals may get by police road­blocks and spot checks with ille­gal weapons by claim­ing to be police per­son­nel if they are able to pro­duce a police iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card.” According to Ellington, when an armed per­son in civil­ian cloth­ing is stopped by the police and declares him­self to be a mem­ber of the police force, con­tact is usu­al­ly made with the divi­sion the per­son claims he is from to ver­i­fy the accu­ra­cy of the claim, as well as to estab­lish if the per­son is autho­rised to car­ry the pis­tol in his pos­ses­sion. “This process may be a very lengthy and com­pli­cat­ed one as the per­son in the divi­sion with whom the infor­ma­tion lies might not be avail­able. There are instances where it is ver­i­fied that the per­son being checked is a police offi­cer, how­ev­er, the divi­sion can­not con­firm at the time that the per­son is autho­rised to car­ry the firearm,” said Ellington.(Daily Gleaner)

What a load of excrement !!!

Is this guy for real ? If there are cops who can­not be trust­ed with a gun , clear­ly that cop can­not be trust­ed with mak­ing life and death deci­sions with the lives of our cit­i­zens, can’t you see this is the prob­lem? Jamaica has one of the high­est homi­cide rate in the world, cou­pled with that the land mass is one of the small­est for a coun­try with that high lev­el of mur­der­ing scum bags run­ning around, this places the lives of offi­cers and their fam­i­lies sig­nif­i­cant­ly in har­m’s way. Officers do not earn enough to live in gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties so they share the same com­mu­ni­ties with the killers. What Ellington is doing is play­ing a pop­ulist game with the lives of cops to please the pup­peteers who pull his strings. Cops are not allowed to take home weapons after they just removed the bal­lis­tic vests , hel­met and oth­er para­pher­na­lia after a tour, they are then forced to go out and face the music going home , and com­ing back to work, then they suit up to go pro­tect the lives of the rich and pow­er­ful and those who tol­er­ate Ellington at the cock­tail recep­tions, Does any­one won­der why even mid­dle class peo­ple do not allow their chil­dren to be cops in Jamaica. Does Ellington have a gun and police protection ?

DISGRACE 

I have pre­vi­ous­ly point­ed to this guys actions in mak­ing the secu­ri­ty doc­u­ment pub­lic, reveal­ing where offi­cers are sta­tioned , their move­ments, and oth­er logis­ti­cal details. I have argued that any right the pub­lic may claim to have in this regard, is trumped by the fact this is a National secu­ri­ty Agency , notwith­stand­ing, Ellington has made the Force Orders pub­lic, I am yet to hear what over­rid­ing pub­lic need is met by doing so. Ellington has sought to dis­tance him­self from rank and file mem­bers of the force, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of some past com­mis­sion­ers who nev­er did a day polic­ing in their lives, we have all seen how well that exper­i­ment worked out for the coun­try. Rank and file mem­bers of the force con­tin­ue to oper­ate in a vac­u­um with mar­gin­al to zero sup­port from their boss­es with­in the high com­mand and the polit­i­cal direc­torate, the crime sit­u­a­tion will not improve untill all are on board the same train head­ing in the same anti-crime direc­tion. In the mean­time Ellington con­tin­ues to make an ass of him­self . It just goes to show that hav­ing a degree or two or three does not make one smart.

mike beck­les.

have your say.

The Police High Command in Jamaica has raised the threat lev­el against its mem­bers to extreme, in the Saint Catherine, north , south and the Clarendon Divisions, this means that as far as they are con­cerned, offi­cers who live and work in those Divisions and their fam­i­lies , as well as oth­er police per­son­nel pass­ing through , doing busi­ness ‚or vis­it­ing those divi­sions are also under the threat of death.

Criminals in any soci­ety who threat­en the lives of agents of the state do so because they are embold­ened because of one rea­son or anoth­er. There are only a few states in the world that would bow to threats from domes­tic ter­ror­ists, or are ill-equipped to han­dle low-lev­el punks with a few guns and big egos. The secu­ri­ty forces last May forced into a cor­ner and with no help from the polit­i­cal direc­torate, demon­strat­ed unequiv­o­cal­ly that they were capa­ble and had the will to erad­i­cate any domes­tic threat posed by local punks.

So then , why am I writ­ing a blog on this sub­ject? This seem like a reg­u­lar cut and dry issue for any democ­ra­cy , crim­i­nals hav­ing the temer­i­ty to threat­en the state are exter­mi­nat­ed right? Not so fast my dear friends, I do agree that would be the way things gets done in any oth­er coun­try in the world , cap­i­tal­ist or com­mu­nist, dic­ta­tor­ship, or democ­ra­cy. Just recent­ly the Government of Trinidad and Tobago insti­tut­ed a State of Emergency, not a (lim­it­ed state of emer­gency as was the case in Jamaica). The Trinidadian Government resolved to do what it took to give the nec­es­sary tools to its secu­ri­ty forces to flush out and erad­i­cate home-grown ter­ror­ists. They are well aware that left unchecked, crim­i­nals will do what we allow them to do, the Universe does not like a vacuum.

Women demand­ing that mur­der accused Adija Palmer, aka Vybz Kartel be freed from custody

http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​M​o​r​e​-​t​r​o​u​b​l​e​-​f​o​r​-​K​a​r​t​e​l​_​9​8​9​4​526

So why is this not the case in Jamaica? It seem like a nice place down there, lots of sun, fun, beach­es, it’s like, Jamaica no prob­lem right?.….….….….….….….….…..RIGHT.….?????

Well not exact­ly , you can’t buy a prod­uct based on the pack­ag­ing alone, beau­ti­ful wrap­per , shit­ty prod­uct, all of the above is true except the no prob­lem part. Our pol­i­tics is con­trolled by peo­ple who are less than hon­est, as is true in most nations with a major­i­ty black pop­u­la­tion it does seem that Jamaica is stuck with below mediocre polit­i­cal lead­ers who are hell-bent on fat­ten­ing them­selves and their cronies at the expense of the nation, this has gone on for decades. Both Political par­ties are aligned to crim­i­nal gangs and the lead­ers and oth­er oper­a­tives with­in each par­ty are deeply enmeshed with crim­i­nals. On both sides of the polit­i­cal divide Jamaica’s politi­cians are affil­i­at­ed with criminals .

It is of the gravest con­se­quence when the Prime Minister refus­es to hon­or an extra­di­tion treaty untill he was forced to , a treaty that would see a con­fessed gun-run­ner and drug deal­er get his just due.

It is of the gravest con­se­quence when the leader of the oppo­si­tion and his entire par­ty refused to vote to give the secu­ri­ty forces more spe­cial pow­ers even for a lim­it­ed time ‚which would see them con­sol­i­date the gains they made when they rout­ed the afore­men­tioned gun-run­ning , drug deal­er from his redoubt.

The Governing par­ty refused to let a crim­i­nal get extra­dit­ed . the oppo­si­tion pre­vent­ed the secu­ri­ty forces from going into their enclaves where they have twen­ty times the crim­i­nals in their camp. Both Political par­ties are crim­i­nal gangs, the police and Military are oper­at­ing in a vac­u­um unable to get the req­ui­site sup­port to effec­tive­ly erad­i­cate crim­i­nal terrorists.

So the answer to the ques­tion of why is this not an easy thing to do is sim­ple. Criminal polit­i­cal leaders. 

Pictures cour­tesy of Google

Pictured above are dif­fer­ent seg­ment of crowds of peo­ple from west­ern Kingston demon­strat­ing against the impend­ing extra­di­tion of con­fessed gun-run­ner and drug deal­er Christopher dudus Coke, now in US custody.

Jamaica’s cur­rent Prime Minister Orett Bruce Golding is now in the final stages of step­ping down from office,or so he says, even before com­plet­ing a full term. Golding is severe­ly dam­aged from his han­dling of an extra­di­tion request made by the United States Government for Christopher Dudus Coke the pre­em­i­nent enforcer of the for­mer so-called moth­er of all Garrison com­mu­ni­ties in Jamaica, Tivoli Gardens, the cen­ter of labor par­ty pol­i­tics and the nerve cen­ter of Golding’s con­stituen­cy of west­ern Kingston. Coke is the adopt­ed son of Lester Lloyd Coke aka (Jim Brown) now deceased co-founder of the noto­ri­ous show­er posse , so named for show­er­ing their ene­mies with bul­lets, Jim Brown was burned alive in a Kingston prison cell as he await­ed extra­di­tion to the United States on crim­i­nal charges. He nev­er got to tes­ti­fy, and no one was ever held respon­si­ble for his death, despite the fact that he was in a prison and it must be fair­ly rou­tine to deter­mine who had access to his cell and when, some­one want­ed him dead before he could tes­ti­fy in America and they made sure of it.

Christopher coke in the cus­tody of US author­i­ties and his late father Lester Lloyd Coke in Jamaican police custody.

Many years ago as I served in the JCF I felt that if I worked hard and was able to take as many crim­i­nals off the streets as I could, I would be able to pos­i­tive­ly change my coun­try, I real­ly felt that it was up to the police to effect change in the cul­ture of per­va­sive crim­i­nal­i­ty that is at the core of the Jamaican psy­che. As a result I worked incred­i­bly hard to bring san­i­ty to the streets of Grant’s Pen, Red Hills road, Barbican and all places in between, some­times we passed on our days off, not because we weren’t tired but because we knew there was work to be done and we were the only ones that were going to get it done.

Officers Like Altamont (par­ra) Campbell , Now dis­missed Inspector Dadrick Henry, Cornwall Bigga Ford and a host of oth­er no-non­sense cops, all of whom were old­er men than me, were cops I looked up to. They made sure peo­ple could walk the streets of Saint Andrew North we were not going to have any dons in our sphere of influ­ence, when I exit­ed the Department in 1991 I nev­er had the ben­e­fit of hav­ing been issued a bul­let proof vest, we made pen­nies for our effort, but we made damn sure that crim­i­nals got their just deserts. Most times I did not take admin­is­tra­tive leave, an enti­tle­ment, many times cer­tain dead-wood cops would ask us why we did not take sick leave which the depart­ment allowed with pay, my posi­tion then, as it is now own­ing my own busi­ness and work­ing for myself is ” I am not sick”.

As the years went by I start­ed real­iz­ing that despite the work we were putting in it seemed crime was get­ting worse nation­al­ly, I per­son­al­ly start­ed tak­ing a seri­ous eval­u­a­to­ry look at what we were sup­posed to be accom­plish­ing. Having almost a decade of expe­ri­ence of the grit­ty nas­ti­ness the polit­i­cal choke hold pol­i­tics has on law enforce­ment in our coun­try I had by that time seen most of the polit­i­cal play­ers at their worst and had tak­en the informed deci­sion they were not on the side of Jamaica. I real­ized it was not con­fined to just the politi­cians we love to hate, but encom­passed all sec­tors of nation­al life. From Judges to tri­al lawyers, from Court staff, to Media, from Academia to the gar­risons it became abun­dant­ly clear that the goal we had as crime fight­ers in see­ing our coun­try adhere to the rule of law was by and large con­fined to us , a spat­ter­ing of poor peo­ple in the inner cities, rur­al folks, and some busi­ness people.

It became clear­er as time went by we were set up as fall guys for the fail­ings of the polit­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al élite, this epiphany was not con­fined to me, the extreme­ly high attri­tion rate from the JCF is ade­quate tes­ti­mo­ny to that fact. Many argue that some who enter the JCF do so sole­ly for the pay­check this is undoubt­ed­ly true,but on the flip-side that pay check is not enough to keep most mem­bers inter­est­ed once they real­ize what they are up against.

It became more and more evi­dent when crim­i­nals who had com­mit­ted the most seri­ous crimes, and tak­en the most elab­o­rate mea­sures to avoid detec­tion and appre­hen­sion were rou­tine­ly returned to the streets by Judges who smiled and greet­ed their defense lawyer friends as they stood in court usu­al­ly with one foot, on the floor and one on the bench. As Investigating Officers we watched help­less­ly as dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers we had bust­ed our ass­es to remove from the streets laughed at us as they are rou­tine­ly grant­ed bail for the most pal­try sums of mon­ey. This cre­at­ed a don’t care atti­tude amongst cer­tain offi­cers, a crim­i­nal atti­tude in oth­ers and drove oth­ers from the depart­ment. When law enforce­ment feel that their work is being sab­o­taged by those who should be sup­port­ing the rule of law the end result is that the tail start wag­ging the dog, the crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica did not devel­op because of the police. Incompetent some may be ‚but they can do the job. The fact is there is no nation­al con­sen­sus by rel­e­vant stake hold­ers to coa­lesce around a pol­i­cy of intol­er­ance to crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. Inevitably what we end­ed up with is a coa­lesc­ing by some of the same stake­hold­ers, join­ing the ranks of the crim­i­nal world, those who do not active­ly engage and ben­e­fit finan­cial­ly, give aid and com­fort to them, say hel­lo to the, Media, Judiciary crim­i­nal rights, and legal fraternities.

Criminals in Jamaica are no dif­fer­ent than crim­i­nals any­where else in the world, They watch trends , they look for weak­ness of resolve, and they know who to look to for sup­port. In most coun­tries in the civ­i­lized world they stay below the radar as much as pos­si­ble, they under­stand that well think­ing cit­i­zens are watch­ing, will­ing to do what it takes to remove them and the can­cer­ous scourge they per­pet­u­ate on oth­ers who want a life free from crime. Not so in Jamaica , as is evi­dent in some of the images above the reverse is true, the worst mur­der­ers and scum of the earth are cel­e­brat­ed, revered ‚and idol­ized, make no mis­take about it ‚it may seem as if this is only true of the poor­er class on the streets, think again , this crim­i­nal cod­dling runs deep­er than meets the eyes.

That my friends is the rea­son crim­i­nals can brazen­ly threat­en the lives of law enforce­ment offi­cers with impuni­ty. At every lev­el the sup­port for crim­i­nals is stun­ning ‚one would imag­ine that poor peo­ple in depressed areas would be sus­cep­ti­ble to being manip­u­lat­ed by those who wield influ­ence, hand out token treats and of whom they are afraid.

What is stun­ning is the lev­el of sup­port that obtains for crim­i­nals from those who prac­tice law, those who sit in judge­ment, those who are sup­posed to report the news, and many oth­er sec­tors of nation­al life. This whole notion of “Jamaica no prob­lem” is a farce which needs to be exposed. There are some who feel it is not right to wash one’s dirty linen in pub­lic, to them I say sweep­ing the house and stor­ing the dirt under the rug still results in a dirty house. As the Coke Extradition have exposed, there is a deficit of trust as it relates to the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship with­in the coun­try. They can­not even be count­ed on to hon­or International agree­ments as it relates to crim­i­nals. Others can­not be trust­ed not to leak crit­i­cal nation­al secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion to com­mon crim­i­nals, this runs the length and breadth of the polit­i­cal food-chain. What is most embar­rass­ing is that one par­ty act­ing in uni­son , vot­ed down a mea­sure that would allow the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces a lit­tle time and space to effec­tive­ly remove crim­i­nals from the equation.

That my friends is the most shock­ing, most un-Jamaican,most trea­so­nous of actions any indi­vid­ual or par­ty could take against Jamaica. Interestingly Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller and her cronies are run­ning around Jamaica with the same band of crim­i­nal sup­port­ing punks , again ask­ing for anoth­er chance to raid the bar­ren nation­al cof­fers,. Have they no shame ? No! Have the peo­ple no sense of what’s right for them ? No !

Peter Phillips National Security Minister under the PNP Administration of Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller did not trust Miller the Prime Minister, nor any of the jok­ers that made up her cab­i­net, with keep­ing state secrets, when he signed the Memorandums of under­stand­ing with the American Government. This spoke vol­umes of the lack of con­fi­dence Phillips had in any­one in the Government, much less the then oppo­si­tion not to reveal to dan­ger­ous trans-nation­al crim­i­nals that the JCF and oth­ers were lis­ten­ing in on their phone con­ver­sa­tions. Former Police Commissioner Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin revealed that he briefed Prime Minister Golding and National Security Minister Dwight Nelson at Vale Royal, Official res­i­dence of the Prime Minister on the Extradition request the United States made for Christopher Coke, he con­tend­ed it took him less than 10 min­utes to get back to his Office at 103 Old Hope Road, and by the time he got to his office it was clear to him that Coke had been warned that the Americans want­ed him. Remember the only two peo­ple he briefed was the Prime Minister, and National Security Minister of the country.

It can be under­stood when a down trod­den por­tion of any pop­u­la­tion cheer for the bad guy, the one that got away, the one who beat what they per­ceive to be an oppres­sive sys­tem. This is noth­ing new , nei­ther is it con­fined to Geography or Generation. It is anoth­er thing when those who should know bet­ter, those tasked with being keep­ers of the gate , turn around and betray the trust we place in them.

I am no longer con­fi­dent the change we seek can come from with­in. it is becom­ing appar­ent that irre­spec­tive of who gets placed in lead­er­ship, it will be tan­ta­mount to noth­ing more than a re-arrang­ing of the deck-chairs, as the Titanic sinks.

mike beck­les:

have your say:

Police at theSpanish Town sta­tion were kept out of their post for more than an hour yes­ter­day after a hand­cuffed man armed with a piece of bro­ken glass threat­ened to hurt any­one who dared approach him. The inci­dent unfold­ed about 6 p.m., short­ly after he was hand­cuffed and tak­en to the sta­tion for breach­es of the Road Traffic Act. It is unclear what hap­pened next but police sources said the man got into a rage after been there for a while. He report­ed­ly smashed a glass in a sec­tion of the sta­tion in anger. Police per­son­nel stood by and looked on in amaze­ment as the man who armed him­self with a piece of bro­ken glass kept the offi­cers away with his threats. A weh yuh a go? Mi know sey yuh a bad police but right now my head no good,” he said, while wav­ing the bro­ken glass men­ac­ing­ly at a police­man while still hand­cuffed ‚coer­cion and plead­ing. One hour lat­er, after much coer­cion and plead­ing, the police final­ly gained entry to the sta­tion but not before arm­ing them­selves with riot shields. By that time, the police said the man had smashed sev­er­al glass doors and there was blood splat­tered all over the floor. The man, in the mean­time, had retreat­ed to a near­by room where he locked him­self inside. He was sub­se­quent­ly tak­en from the room, but even while in the police vehi­cle he remained defi­ant. “Mi nah move a wah unnu a deal wid, in yah,” he said, while lying in the vehi­cle. Many per­sons who con­verged start­ed to mock the police, “A so much a dem and dem can’t deal with the one man? Mi sure sey him no mad. It real­ly wicked pon dem still,” a woman said. The man was even­tu­al­ly tak­en to the Spanish Town Hospital where he was seen bleed­ing pro­fuse­ly. Investigations have been launched with a view of charg­ing him with the dam­age to the Government’s property.(Jamaicastar.com)

One won­ders just how stu­pid these cops are? I am speech­less at the total inep­ti­tude of these peo­ple who pass them­selves off as cops, no won­der they get no respect. This is absolute­ly egre­gious, I mean there are no words to describe how stu­pid these cops are. A pris­on­er cuffed with hands in front can grab a weapon and kill as many peo­ple as the rounds in the weapon allows, even with hands cuffed behind some­one hell-bent on doing harm can inflict seri­ous harm if they man­age to get their hands on a weapon.

It fol­lows there­fore that all pris­on­ers must be hand­cuffed and mon­i­tored close­ly untill he or she is placed into the safe­ty of a cell. The Jamaica Constabulary Force through its mem­bers con­tin­ue to arrest peo­ple with­out hand cuff­ing them , pris­on­er and cop walk­ing side by side hands swing­ing, on the rare occa­sion they do cuff an arrestee, they cuff their hands in front . All of this can be avoid­ed if cops act pro­fes­sion­al­ly by cuff­ing all arrest­ed per­sons with their hands behind them, all Police Departments fol­low these sim­ple safe­ty pro­ce­dures, only in Jamaica does unpro­fes­sion­al cops refuse to fol­low sim­ple safe­ty guide­lines .Will this police depart­ment ever learn anything?

Wow!!

mike:

It’s easy to ignore a killing in Jamaica, after all we are talk­ing about Jamaica, that’s what Jamaicans do , we kill each other.

Ever so often how­ev­er, we are gripped with dis­gust at a killing that seem dif­fer­ent than the oth­ers. One that tears at our being , with ever fibre of our soul aching, demand­ing , and crav­ing for a chance to get our hands on the per­pe­tra­tors . Whether it’s the shoot­ing of Khajeel Mais who was just rid­ing in a cab ‚or the lit­tle girl who was killed off Maxfield avenue a cou­ple of years ago burned to a crisp while those who set fire to the house stood guard out­side with machine guns, so no one could escape the flames.

Or whether it is the case of the two women who were behead­ed in Lauriston St Catherine, and their heads dumped into the Rio Cobre riv­er. There are more instances of these egre­gious killings than we care to remem­ber or detail, sor­did as they were we for­get them at our per­il. Once again we hear of the dis­ap­pear­ance of a 20-year-old young man who dis­ap­peared in broad day­light in the Clarendon cap­i­tal of May Pen.

shane roshane mckenzie

Shane ‘Roshane’ McKenzie often trav­elled to May Pen in Clarendon with­out any prob­lems, but since he left his home at Paisley Avenue in the parish to go to May Pen on Monday, August 29, he has not been seen or heard from. McKenzie, 20, arrived in May Pen approx­i­mate­ly 10 a.m. that day, accom­pa­nied by his younger sis­ter. The two went into a bank to pay school fees, but on see­ing the long queues inside, McKenzie left his sis­ter to pay the fees and went near­by to pur­chase a pair of shoes and a cable for his lap­top. McKenzie was then report­ed­ly accost­ed by five men, who forced him on to Stork Street, en route to Duke Street. He has­n’t been seen since. The dis­ap­pear­ance of McKenzie, a past stu­dent of the Bustamante High School, has left his fam­i­ly in shock, fear, and with a lot of un-answered ques­tions. Mary Jane, McKenzie’s moth­er, believes her son is dead. “Me know me son, him not stay­ing out for an entire day and me don’t hear from him, much less a whole week,” she said “A kid­nap them kid­nap me son and car­ry him go kill him. Him dead, me sure of that now. You kill him already, so give me his body, let me bury him,” she said. The woman said that when the younger child returned home with­out Roshane, she became con­cerned and began to call his cell­phone, which rang with­out answer “How can you take away a man right under the clock, where two cam­eras are and nobody can’t tell me where Roshane is?” she asked. The dis­traught moth­er said that the May Pen police were inves­ti­gat­ing McKenzie’s dis­ap­pear­ance, but had not made any sig­nif­i­cant break­through in the case. The fam­i­ly remains in con­stant fear. If them (killers) can take away Roshane right under the clock, can you imag­ine what them would come over here and do to us?” said Roshane’s moth­er. (cour­tesy jamaica glean​er​.com)

You may ask “what is the dif­fer­ence with this boy’s dis­ap­pear­ance? peo­ple dis­ap­pear and die every day. Those are legit­i­mate argu­ments to make , but read­ing the moth­er’s com­ments changes things for me. During my years a s a police offi­cer , it was sto­ries like these that kept me work­ing when some of my col­leagues gave up , or got tired. It was sto­ries like these that made me work unflinch­ing­ly and tire­less­ly to the point of exhaus­tion, as a twen­ty some­thing year old cop who got so exhaust­ed my cof­fee cup would shake in my hand from total exhaus­tion on occasions.

No greater charge could any­one be giv­en than to bring the killer of anoth­er human being to justice. 

Surely some­one saw, they were able to state that he was abduct­ed by five men, some­one saw those five men, have the police attempt­ed to speak to these peo­ple who stat­ed that they saw these five men, ? have they sought to get the tapes from the cam­eras the moth­er alleged to be in that vicin­i­ty. Why were there no police offi­cers on foot and in plain clothes in a bustling town like May Pen after 10 in the morn­ing? This is not the first time that a major crime has been com­mit­ted in that town in broad day­light , with dire consequences.

Not too long ago there was a large armed rob­bery with peo­ple shot , as is cus­tom­ary there were no police around. This leads me to ask ” where are the police offi­cers”? What are the offi­cers doing at the sta­tion house at 10 in the morn­ing, and not on the beat look­ing out for the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of the peo­ple who pay their salaries. I am absolute­ly dis­gust­ed by the police who seem to be worse than mall-cops at doing their jobs.Where is the proac­tive approach that is need­ed to ensure crimes like these are non-exis­tent or kept to a bare minimum..

Without know­ing the full facts as it regards the absence of cops, and any logis­ti­cal inad­e­qua­cies of the May Pen Police, we are still com­fort­able with stat­ing that irre­spec­tive of the short­age of per­son­nel there is sim­ply no excuse for the mains strip of a town like May Pen not to have uni­formed offi­cers patrolling , as well as plain clothes cops min­gling with the crowds.

I hope that this young man is alive, I feel the pain of this moth­er, I empathize with the sense of help­less­ness she is feel­ing in not know­ing for cer­tain if her child is dead or alive. And assum­ing as she has, that he is dead she does not even have a body. How ago­niz­ing it must be for this moth­er and the fam­i­ly of Roshane Mckenzie. Stating that she knows he is dead seem to be a cop­ing mech­a­nism for her. One can imag­ine that while she states he is dead, she still looks and lis­tens as the father of the prodi­gal son did, hop­ing Roshane will return home to her.

One won­ders where are those who say the care about the rights of the innocent,and the deprived and the dis­pos­sessed? No greater right has any­one , than the right to life.

I implore the May Pen Police to get their act togeth­er and find out where this young man is and if he was killed bring swift jus­tice to his killers.

mike beck­les;

have your say. 

We note with inter­est, recent devel­op­ments regard­ing the sud­den res­ig­na­tion of sergeant Raymond Wilson as police fed­er­a­tion chairman.

Wilson has been a vocal advo­cate for the cause of rank and file of the JCF, he was recent­ly exposed to with­er­ing and sus­tained attack from mem­bers of the JLP, their affil­i­ates and elit­ists in Jamaican soci­ety and those liv­ing in the dias­po­ra. This arose from a speech he gave in which he blast­ed the JLP Administration of Bruce Golding as behold­en to crim­i­nals at the expense of mem­bers of the force.

We chose to stand with Wilson dur­ing that assault , we stead­fast­ly made known our sup­port for him on the Gleaner’s web­site, as well as oth­er blog sites in which the sub­ject was broached. At the time we felt that Wilson spoke from his heart and spoke pas­sion­ate­ly as a Jamaican who loved his coun­try. We believed he loved his coun­try and would have made the same state­ments if the oth­er par­ty was in government.

There are oth­ers whom have inti­mat­ed oth­er­wise, infer­ring a raft of rea­sons from polit­i­cal to self-serv­ing. We have no rea­son up to this point in time to believe any­thing oth­er than what we believed initially.

In the inter­im we are left won­der­ing what the real rea­sons are behind Wilson’s sud­den and uncer­mi­nous depar­ture as chair­man of the police fed­er­a­tion. And in his stead a Constable installed at the helm of this very impor­tant arm of the JCF. We are in no way impugn­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of this constable .

What we do wor­ry about is the caste sys­tem in Jamaica, as well as the caste rank­ing sys­tem in the JCF.

One won­ders if they attacked and assailed Wilson a sergeant with that amount of feroc­i­ty what will they do to a con­sta­ble three ranks beneath his?

The JCF is going through a trans­for­ma­tion, cor­rect­ly so, the Federation needs to be vig­i­lant ‚vocal,and in tune with the needs of rank and file members.

We will with­hold judge­ment on the ascen­den­cy of this con­sta­ble and what it may mean for the mem­bers of the JCF.

mike beck­les:

have your say:

Christopher (dudus) Coke has fig­ured out what his legions of fans and patrons still haven’t, and may nev­er fig­ure out . That is, our lit­tle pond, Jamaica land we love, is just that , a lit­tle pond, we are all lit­tle fish in a great big Ocean, answer­able to one pow­er, wel­come to glob­al­iza­tion and a new world order.

He cor­rect­ly adopt­ed the most sane and plau­si­ble course of action opened to him under the cir­cum­stances, tak­ing a plea. After all, there are those who argued that he is a smart man, not sure about pre­vi­ous actions on his part , but this guilty plea tend to indi­cate that he is not stu­pid. There have been a lot of talk about Lawyers and what they are able to do , the argu­ments they are able to make and what must hap­pen as a result of what high­ly paid lawyers can get done. I get that , with­out mon­ey if one is caught up in the sys­tem you are as good as dead. Even with mon­ey in the United States, one is guar­an­teed grand­stand­ing lawyers mak­ing loud argu­ments in the court of pub­lic opin­ion for pub­lic con­sump­tion and not much more. Those pro­nounce­ments are loud­er depend­ing on the finan­cial worth of the client, those grand com­ments are geared toward fleec­ing their high-pro­file clients of all the cash they can . America’s Justice sys­tem is one of laws , no one cares about your stand­ing in soci­ety, if any­thing that may actu­al­ly work against one who has promi­nence. Grandstanding lawyers know bet­ter than enter court rooms with arro­gance , and self-impor­tance. I recall Mark Myrie’s (buju) case and one News paper crow­ing about Myrie’s lawyer cry­ing about the fact that Myries was con­vict­ed. As I com­ment­ed then, that was great the­atre and noth­ing more on the part of Buju’s lawyer.

This leads us to the real rea­son I am writ­ing this blog.

Christopher(dudus) Coke

It is a seri­ous indict­ment and a damn shame that the America many love to hate, is the coun­try that is always clean­ing up Jamaica’s mess. Christopher Coke came to promi­nence dur­ing the 1990’s after the arrest and sub­se­quent death of his father Lester Lloyd Coke. Matter will occu­py any space left unfilled, the Universe does not like a vac­u­um. Coke sim­ply filled a vac­u­um, left by incom­pe­tence, cor­rup­tion, pol­i­tics, and impo­tence. Christopher Coke , his father, and oth­ers before them, were allowed to oper­ate and flour­ish in the vac­u­um left in Jamaica by impo­tent Law Enforcement and cor­rupt dirty crim­i­nal Politicians. despite their mete­oric ascen­den­cy in the lit­tle pond, they were brought down by glob­al­iza­tion, mak­ing them vic­tims of the sys­tem as all oth­er Jamaicans have been.

I would imag­ine there are quite a few peo­ple who are a lit­tle wor­ried at these new devel­op­ments , the truth is, a brave yet fed-up police offi­cer is now a true Jamaican hero, we must acknowl­edge Dr. Peter Phillips for sign­ing the mem­o­ran­dums of under­stand­ing with the Americans a move that made all of this pos­si­ble. Phillips took it onto him­self to do this , a move that has earned him the ven­om of par­ti­sans and crim­i­nals in Jamaica, (not sure if there is a dif­fer­ence between the two) .

Phillips did not trust to inform the Prime Minister under whom he served of his inten­tion to sign the MOU’S , this my fel­low Jamaicans, is rather telling ‚and should be explored. What is the rea­son behind Peter Phillips’ deci­sion not to inform the cab­i­net of which he was a part , or then Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

Whatever the rea­son for Phillips’ decision,we must accept that Jamaica was well served by the actions of the Police Officer and Phillips whether or not we agree with the path they chose to take to get the result they accom­plished. I am sick­ened that after Lester Lloyd Coke was arrest­ed Tivoli gar­dens was allowed to con­tin­ue to devel­op into a state with­in a state.

The Police depart­ment have done no inves­ti­ga­tions into what was com­mon knowl­edge of gun-run­ning ‚drug deal­ing, extor­tion , mur­der for hire, weapons for hire, and a pletho­ra of oth­er seri­ous crim­i­nal and ter­ror­is­tic activ­i­ties in that enclave. These vices are not con­fined to Tivoli Gardens , but as one past Police Commissioner labelled that com­mu­ni­ty quote “the moth­er of all gar­risons” Tivoli took the cake in terms of exclu­sion. When we speak of zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sion the for­mer read­out of the Cokes, was the stan­dard by which oth­er gar­risons were judged. There were, and still are crimes and acts of ter­ror with­in oth­er gar­risons, but in terms of the order of how things gets done Tivoli gar­dens was the template.

Many Jamaicans are still strug­gling to com­pre­hend how so many peo­ple could have come out and demon­strat­ed their undy­ing loy­al­ty to Dudus Coke, they fail to grasp the order of how things was in Tivoli Gardens. Those com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers were nev­er answer­able to the Jamaican state, they lived accord­ing to the order of a long line of com­mu­ni­ty thugs,culminating in Dudus Coke. This com­mu­ni­ty, built by Labor was the brain-child of Edward Phillip George Seaga, who ran that con­stituen­cy as his pri­vate fief­dom, with the enforcers admin­is­ter­ing day-to-day run­ning of the con­stituen­cy . All of the activ­i­ties of Tivoli has been divorced from the activ­i­ties of the Jamaican state, until it’s annex­a­tion last May.

On these posts we dai­ly ask Jamaicans to think for them­selves and look at the qual­i­ty of the peo­ple they are elect­ing to lead them, as those deci­sions have seri­ous con­se­quences for them and their chil­dren for gen­er­a­tions to come. We sug­gest that the peo­ple demand con­sti­tu­tion­al reform, reform that will tar­get them for human and civ­il rights , safe­ty and secu­ri­ty and the abil­i­ty for them to be guar­an­teed their God-giv­en right to be all they can be in a soci­ety free from crime and terror.

I post for you com­ments from a few Jamaicans after learn­ing of Coke’s guilty plea.

Shortly after learn­ing that Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke was ready to plead guilty in a United States court, for­mer National Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips char­ac­terised it as a vic­to­ry for Jamaica against transat­lantic crim­i­nal­i­ty. This rep­re­sents a suc­cess­ful out­come in the spe­cif­ic plea arrange­ments and, in gen­er­al, will serve to assist Jamaica in chart­ing the way for­ward … . We now have to await the out­come of the plea arrangements.”

Thank you Peter Phillips , I do not agree with your pol­i­tics, how­ev­er on the course of actions you took regard­ing the MOU’s , I com­mend you for doing some­thing about this dis­grace­ful betray­al to our nation­al sur­vival, and our way of life.

For Jamaica Labour Party Senator Tom Tavares-Finson, who as an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ed Coke dur­ing the extra­di­tion hear­ing at Up Park Camp, St Andrew, in June last year, the deci­sion to cop a plea is like­ly to be the cor­rect one.I knew of the devel­op­ments and was aware that they were final­is­ing some arrange­ments … after some stren­u­ous con­sul­ta­tions. The lawyers on the team who have an under­stand­ing of the sys­tem as well as the clien­t’s (Coke) men­tal state would be in a posi­tion to make a sen­si­ble decision

Really Tom? this new posi­tion does not jive with your for­mer rhetoric , but you are a lawyer and politi­co I under­stand how you could have changed your narrative.

Peter Bunting, who now han­dles the secu­ri­ty port­fo­lio for the Opposition, said the lat­est devel­op­ments were hard­ly sur­pris­ing. “Once Mr Coke’s request to reject wire­tap­ping evi­dence into evi­dence was turned down by the court, there would have been lit­tle chance of him get­ting away as the evi­dence, cou­pled with that of the wit­ness coöper­a­tion, has been so strong.” this lat­est devel­op­ment should have impli­ca­tions for oth­ers in Coke’s crim­i­nal organisation.

Veteran politi­cian K.D. Knight, the attor­ney who rep­re­sent­ed the People’s National Party at the Manatt-Dudus com­mis­sion of enquiry, said it was clear that Coke had tak­en this course after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and deter­min­ing that this would get him the low­est pos­si­ble sentence. 

These two com­ments are the two that nau­se­at­ed me, what damn Cowards !

Both of these clowns have had oppor­tu­ni­ties over the last ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years to do some­thing about crime and ter­ror in Jamaica . They have stood by and watched this crim­i­nal empire devel­op in Tivoli Gardens a labor gar­ri­son ‚and in many oth­er com­mu­ni­ties gen­tri­fied with pnp sup­port­ers. At every turn these two and their entire par­ty has vot­ed down the rule of law, unable to sup­port the police, or allow­ing the depart­ment to change to one that is com­pe­tent and pro­fes­sion­al in the per­for­mance of its duties. they have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sided with crim­i­nal rights groups against Jamaica’s secu­ri­ty forces, repeat­ing the same tor­tured repug­nant lie that giv­ing police more pow­er to do their jobs will lead to police abuse.

My posi­tion is this, even if the afore­men­tioned was true, I would still sup­port moves to empow­er police over crim­i­nals , then deal with any trans­gres­sions on their part as they arise.  Jamaica’s police depart­ment is prob­a­bly the most scru­ti­nized police depart­ment in the world. The par­ty of Bunting and show-boat­ing Knight, has nev­er seen a crim­i­nal they did not like.

The bot­tom line is that we Jamaicans will have a hard time inte­grat­ing into the promis­es of this new cen­tu­ry, we will also have a hard­er than nec­es­sary time nav­i­gat­ing the quick-sands of this new fron­tier . We con­tin­ue to hold onto failed strate­gies and social norms of the past, that have failed over and over again. We con­tin­ue to look to our colo­nial past for guid­ance , lead­er­ship, and sal­va­tion, not under­stand­ing that the future is in edu­ca­tion, infor­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies, and man­u­fac­tur­ing to help solve the prob­lems that will be part of the land­scape going for­ward. Our peo­ple are heav­i­ly invest­ed in the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of dance-hall disc-jock­eys , ath­letes, and peo­ple with Phd’s, ignor­ing at their own per­il the lit­tle farmer that toils to pro­duce life sus­tain­ing food, We dis­re­spect the guy that col­lects the garbage, but rev­er­ences politi­cians that are them­selves no more than garbage by their own actions.

Let this be a les­son to all who aspire to don-ship, let all who encour­age oth­ers to com­mit crimes in order that they may hold onto state pow­er, as I have stat­ed before , the rules are chang­ing , the world is get­ting small­er , crim­i­nal­i­ty will no longer stand.

mike beck­les:

have your say: