In the penul­ti­mate arti­cle I wrote I attempt­ed to address the issue of Politics. In that post I ref­er­enced the way pol­i­tics has col­ored our per­cep­tions that it is almost impos­si­ble for some peo­ple to oper­ate out­side the nar­row parochial con­fines of Jamaican pol­i­tics. I was always aware that in a way it was a form of iden­ti­ty for some to cling to, a sort of group­ing of sorts , being week mind­ed and fee­ble they are unable to strike out on their own and find their own way. Instead they teth­er their wag­ons to the nas­ti­ness of Jamaican pol­i­tics. In the 2008 Presidential cam­paign, then can­di­date Obama speak­ing to a group of donors behind closed doors, spoke to those truths when he exco­ri­at­ed cer­tain mid-west­ern­ers, for what he char­ac­ter­ized as their propen­si­ty to cling to their guns and bible.

What can­di­date Obama was frus­trat­ed with, was the almost kamikaze-like fanati­cism with which some peo­ple hold them­selves back because of their refusal to let go of some of the things they know, thus exclud­ing them­selves from the lim­it­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of the future. As I artic­u­lat­ed in the pre­vi­ous post, I too was once a part of that class, it took me awhile to rec­og­nize that what I was was a man first, then a Jamaican sec­ond. Anyone famil­iar with my com­men­tary over the years under­stand that I do not care about Jamaica’s two polit­i­cal gangs. I have seen them both at their worse. Interestingly, it seem even today there are some who can­not see any issue out­side the con­fines of JLP/​NP. Over the lasts sev­er­al decades thou­sands of our coun­try-men and women have been slaugh­tered, their homes reduced to ash­es, because of local pol­i­tics. No sec­tor of Jamaican life has been left free from the nox­ious fumes of Jamaica’s fetid rot­ten politics.

It was of no sur­prise then that even as I went to great lengths to try to show just how destruc­tive that infat­u­a­tion has been for our peo­ple, there are some who moron­i­cal­ly accused me of hav­ing an agen­da, that my writ­ings have a polit­i­cal stench. I will agree with the gen­tle­man it does have a polit­i­cal stench, it is the very same stench that has kept my coun­try in pover­ty to the point almost every Jamaican would leave if they had a chance. It is the stench that points to the almost 1600 of my countrymen/​women slaugh­tered annu­al­ly for no good rea­son. It is the stench of count­less rapes, assaults on our chil­dren, lit­tle chil­dren forced into pros­ti­tu­tion. The stench of the rise of the “don“culture which has divid­ed up our lit­tle coun­try into polit­i­cal zones of exclu­sions and turfs, the kind only found in sub-Saharan Africa. It is the stench of wit­ness­ing the Police Force I served in, reduced to an inept poor excuse of a secu­ri­ty-guard band of sad-sacks, which is so cor­rupt that peo­ple pre­fer to go to the don for help.

The stench which saw the dol­lar reduced to a worth­less piece of thrash that our peo­ple would rather receive a for­eign cur­ren­cy than our own. Yes the stench of failed lead­er­ship which stole and wast­ed bor­rowed mon­ey which has cre­at­ed a bal­ance of pay­ment sit­u­a­tion which makes our future worse than Greece. Yet I do not expect some to under­stand the dire con­se­quences this has for the future of our coun­try, after all( “you are nam­min a food rite now, arent you”)?I remind­ed myself that the rea­son the JCF has the rep­u­ta­tion it has is because of some of the peo­ple who entered through it’s doors. Part of the tragedy is some can bare­ly read or write yet they were allowed in, the dam­age they do will live for infamy.

He and I grad­u­at­ed from the Academy December 1982, we went to the Beat and Foot-Patrol Division then sit­u­at­ed at the bot­tom of West Street by the Craft Market. After our stints there I was sent to the Mobile reserve, this was unprece­dent­ed, nev­er before were offi­cers not specif­i­cal­ly trained at the Twickenham-Park Police train­ing facil­i­ty, ever sent to the Mobile Reserve, anoth­er first for me. Seiveright was sent to the Motorized Patrol Division at Elleston Road East Kingston, many young offi­cers were hap­py to be trans­ferred there, it was a place where clean ener­getic offi­cers got to shine, they were the face of the Force, they large­ly did only patrol duties. At the time I had a broth­er sta­tioned there, I was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly unhap­py about not being trans­ferred there. I was very unhap­py with being sent to the Mobile Reserve, some­how that did not fit into my plans of becom­ing a detec­tive. In fact that Division was called Harman-bruk-up, it was rumored to be a place where there were a lot of wasters, a dis­parag­ing moniker used to describe lazy non-pro­duc­tive cops. I will not lie, when I saw my name going to Mobile Reserve in that Force Orders I bust­ed out cry­ing. Seiveright was the nicest per­son you ever want­ed to meet, he always had an ear to ear smile, he was quite, nev­er cursed, nev­er swore, he was a born-again Christian who took his Bible with him to the Academy. To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion, not many of us took Bibles with us out of that batch of a hun­dred plus, I cer­tain­ly did­n’t. One night my friend Constable Seiveright was on patrol with a corporal,they pulled over a taxi-cab on what was then the Ferry road , now the Mandela Highway. Seiveright went up to the car, I can just imag­ine him then, smil­ing as he always was ‚get­ting ready to greet the occu­pants, as he would every­one in his good-natured well-man­nered way. That was the last thing my good chris­t­ian friend ever did. We received the news from Control, Seiveright was mur­dered by a ster­ling sub-machine-gun tot­ing scum­bag. Seiveright did not know what hit him, killed by a blast to his abdomen, he died instant­ly. The cor­po­ral obvi­ous­ly want­ed no part of that shoot­ing so he hid. R Seiveright was the first to die from our batch. Later Cowan, Steele, and oth­ers would fol­low, I too could have been one of those sta­tis­tics, years lat­er a cow­ard­ly piece of garbage thought he could ambush and kill me, in my case I refused to go down with­out a fight and fight I did. 

When some elit­ist talk about police shoot­ing crim­i­nals, as if they know what the hell they are talk­ing about, I say walk a mile in the shoes of a police offi­cer in Jamaica then tell me what you think after you do. No one deserves to die sim­ply because he/​she went to work. Seiveright was not award­ed a medal posthu­mous­ly, his fam­i­ly was not told how brave he was, how decent he was, they were just made to bury their son. Jamaica’s crim­i­nal politi­cians and their allies in the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty did not see fit to hon­or a decent law-abid­ing Jamaican who gave his life in ser­vice to the coun­try he loved. They hon­or Carolyn Gomes who has spent untold time and mon­ey dis­hon­or­ing the rule of law with aid and com­fort to those who destroys life and limb. This is the coun­try Jamaica we have, this is not fic­tion , it is real, even the rul­ing par­ty’s lead­ing mem­bers are run­ning with their fam­i­lies to oth­er coun­tries. We will not for­get you my friend may God give you peace.

There has been a lot of dis­cus­sion com­ing out of the 2010 Security Forces assault on mer­ce­nar­ies holed up in Tivoli Gardens in sup­port of con­fessed Don, Gun Runner and trans-nation­al crim­i­nal Christopher (Dudus) Coke.

This buzz has received new life after the Public defend­er and anti ‑police antag­o­nist Earl Witter released his report which did noth­ing to advance the debate.

Jamaicans are gen­er­al­ly inclined to buy into any­thing for­eign, our peo­ple cel­e­brate any and every­one over oth­er Jamaicans. This is true even when their coun­try­men make tremen­dous per­son­al sac­ri­fice on their behalf, they much rather exalt oth­ers over their own.

One such ben­e­fi­cia­ry of that largess is New Yorker Magazine award win­ning jour­nal­ist Mattathias Schwartz .http://​www​.newyork​er​.com/​r​e​p​o​r​t​i​n​g​/​2​0​1​1​/​1​2​/​1​2​/​1​1​1​2​1​2​f​a​_​f​a​c​t​_​s​c​h​w​a​r​t​z​?​c​u​r​r​e​n​t​P​a​g​e=7

I pro­vid­ed a link for your infor­ma­tion to Schwartz’s award win­ning Article titled: mas­sacre in Jamaica

On Thursday, thou­sands of Tivoli women marched in down­town Kingston on Coke’s behalf. They wore white and car­ried signs, writ­ten in mark­er on scraps of card­board: “Taking Di Boss Is Like Taking Jesus”; “After God, Dudus Comes Next!”; “Jesus Die for Us. We Will Die for Dudus!”

(1) By the week­end, Tivoli had filled with armed men. But, even as Coke pre­pared for war, he was nego­ti­at­ing his sur­ren­der with the police through a promi­nent mem­ber of Jamaica’s cler­gy, Bishop Herro Blair. Blair said that Coke was ter­ri­fied of dying, like his father, in a Jamaican prison cell. But the Bishop’s hopes for a truce fal­tered on Sunday morn­ing, when Coke’s forces attacked police patrols and four police sta­tions, set­ting fire to at least one. The police com­mis­sion­er cut off nego­ti­a­tions, and at six o’clock Golding declared a state of emer­gency in Kingston, giv­ing the secu­ri­ty forces expand­ed pow­ers of search, arrest, and deten­tion. In a brief­ing that night with Jamaica’s top secu­ri­ty offi­cials, the police com­mis­sion­er, accord­ing to some­one who spoke to him soon after­ward, warned that as many as two hun­dred peo­ple might die.

(2)Blair, who had served in the Jamaican National Guard, was skep­ti­cal of claims that a mas­sacre had tak­en place. He said that when he met with Coke in Java before the attack, to try to nego­ti­ate a res­o­lu­tion, he saw rough­ly a hun­dred gun­men with him. “There is a script that is writ­ten, when­ev­er police are involved,” he told me. “People will all say the same thing.” Witter, a for­mer jour­nal­ist, whose office inves­ti­gates con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions and cas­es of injus­tice, took the alle­ga­tions seriously.

Schwartz allud­ed to liv­ing and being around Tivoli Gardens for a lit­tle while before he wrote his 8 page Article. My first impulse was that I would not read what he wrote. My incli­na­tion is that I don’t need a New York inter­lop­ing elit­ists to tell me what I have lived and breathed, I refer to Jamaica, but I read the arti­cle nontheless.

Let me state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that I was not in Tivoli Gardens when the secu­ri­ty forces went in to annex it to Jamaica, nei­ther was Mattathias Schwartz. Moving to Langley Virginia and spend­ing some time at the Central Intelligence Agency cer­tain­ly does not make me a CIA agent and it damn sure does not make me an author­i­ty on spying.

Even though I pro­vid­ed a link to Schwartz’s Article, I have also pulled two para­graphs which I believe are a direct con­tra­dic­tion of the head­line of his arti­cle and the sen­sa­tion­al­ism sur­round­ing the very arti­cle itself, these two para­graphs are in blue ink.

In the first instance Schwartz said quote: “By the week-end Tivoli was filled with armed men”.

In the sec­ond instance he allud­ed to speak­ing to Bishop Herro Blair a promi­nent Jamaican cler­gy-man who is the polit­i­cal ombuds­man, and a known JLP affil­i­ate, who attest­ed to the fact that he saw rough­ly a hun­dred gun­men when he went into Tivoli to meet with Coke toward work­ing out a resolution.

So there were prac­ti­cal­ly scores of armed mer­ce­nar­ies ready to top­ple the state, con­ver­sa­tion over , let’s go home, lets make sure it nev­er hap­pens again right?

We Jamaicans did not need an inter­lop­er to tell us these things, we saw the attacks which killed police offi­cers and mem­bers of our mil­i­tary, we saw the police sta­tions burn­ing, we saw the bar­ri­cades, we saw the out­pour­ing of love and adu­la­tion for the don. we saw the desert­ed streets. Where in America or any oth­er coun­try in the civ­i­lized world would that be tolerated ?

The city of Boston was shut down tighter than a jail after the marathon bombers com­mit­ted their acts, the rule of law pre­vailed. Schwarts talks about police killings by the num­bers as it relates to killings of the NYPD, is this guy for real ? Does he seri­ous­ly com­pare Jamaica with New York City? Furthermore where is Schwartz over all the years when young minor­i­ty men are being gunned down by the NYPD? did he write an arti­cle con­demn­ing those cops in the Abner Louima case,? What about Ammadio Dialo? What about the scores of name­less face­less oth­ers? Is Schwartz too much of a cow­ard to crit­i­cize the pow­er­ful NYPD, or, are the lives of young African-American and Latino males not impor­tant to him?

Even as he tells the truth about Bishop Blair’s account of wit­ness­ing rough­ly a hun­dred armed men, Schwartz attempt­ed to cast doubt on the Bishops account by try­ing to link him to the secu­ri­ty forces. Bishop Blair has been a long time sup­port­er of the JLP, he had no axe to grind, he told the truth.

In the end, the ulti­mate source of schwartz’s sto­ry are the very same peo­ple whom he admit­ted, con­fessed they will be killed if they spoke to cer­tain truths. He report­ed about the large cache of weapons which was recov­ered, yet he coun­ters by say­ing ini­tial­ly that only a few guns were recov­ered, and yes he speaks with cer­tain­ty that there real­ly was not much of a fire-fight even though he was nowhere around.

Mattathias Schwartz is just anoth­er sen­sa­tion­al­ist media type who feed off the unfor­tu­nate plight of oth­ers for his own ben­e­fit, this case is no dif­fer­ent. To those who speak out of the sides of their mouths as if they know some­thing , let me say this.

Innocent peo­ple get killed in a war-zone, Tivoli was a war-zone, it is regret­table when any inno­cent per­son los­es his/​her life, some­times it is unavoid­able. I under­stand full well the sit­u­a­tion many res­i­dents faced that fate­ful day, do I leave and may nev­er be per­mit­ted to return, brand­ed an informer, or do I tough it out? After all they are sur­vivors, the police was nev­er able to do their jobs there, they were always ruled by one don or anoth­er, why would this time be any different.

However ‚some of us who have been on the front lines have long known that mer­ce­nar­ies in that com­mu­ni­ty use urban mil­i­tary tac­tics to fight and retrieve weapons dropped by fall­en com­rades . This tac­tic is made pos­si­ble by lay­ing down a sus­tained sheet of auto­mat­ic fire while they retrieve the weapons, leav­ing the police to explain the dead bod­ies. Then they bring out the women to mourn. This is now an effec­tive tool of Jamaica’s crim­i­nal underworld.

They under­stood the impor­tance of win­ning the pro­pa­gan­da war. Coke’s let­ter pur­port­ed­ly to the com­mu­ni­ty, was one more attempt at that charm offensive.

The gullible Mattathias Schwartz is noth­ing more than one more pawn to that end.

The long await­ed and much over-due report on the Tivoli Grades oper­a­tion has final­ly been tabled in the Jamaican Parliament. This report was long await­ed but for rea­sons unknown to us has being delayed time and again.

Earl Witter: Public defender.

This is the biggest task that Public Defender Earl Witter has been giv­en since this new Agency was cre­at­ed. That office was allo­cat­ed $76.098-million as against $76.56 mil­lion last year.
We have long main­tained that this office is a colos­sal waste of mon­ey, it is a dupli­ca­tion of efforts, mon­ey squan­dered in this ven­ture could be bet­ter spent updat­ing the office of Director of Public Prosecution.

In plain Jamaican ver­nac­u­lar, it is a (eat a food posi­tion), it was cre­at­ed to give jobs to polit­i­cal hacks who can­not cut it in the real world. The Ministry of Justice ought to look to dis­pens­ing jus­tice on behalf of the Jamaican peo­ple, not anoth­er body.

Earl Witter is a long time crim­i­nal defense attor­ney, he has been mediocre at best through­out his car­rear, he has been tasked with run­ning this new Agency. The demand for a com­mis­sion of inquiry into what hap­pened in Tivoli Gardens by Jamaica’s pre­ten­tious Elitists in 2010 fell to Witter’s office.

For the record he was asked to inves­ti­gate in a fair and dis­pas­sion­ate way, what occurred in the Garrison West Kingston com­mu­ni­ty of Tivoli Gardens in 2010. Tivoli Gardens is the for­mer strong-hold of reput­ed con­vict­ed Gun ‑run­ning drug deal­er Christopher Coke who is doing time in a Florida Federal facility.

Of course, Witter has long held anti police views, he has know­ing­ly asso­ci­at­ed him­self with known anti-police antag­o­nist and crim­i­nal-rights group (JFJ) head, Carolyn Gomes.

Witter shares the view, as does Gomes,that all instances of police shoot­ings are ille­git­i­mate, because not enough Jamaican cops are get­ting killed.

One can­not make these things up, these are facts hap­pen­ing in Jamaica. Many peo­ple naive­ly believe that Jamaica is a par­adise Island nation, con­form­ing with International stan­dards, mov­ing for­ward as a devel­op­ing nation behold­ing to the rule of law.

I have not read the report in a com­pre­hen­sive way, most of what’s con­tained in it from my cur­so­ry glance could have been gleaned from any man on the streets. Apart from instances of legalese jar­gon it’s noth­ing more than a run­ning nar­ra­tive of what happened,opinions, and con­jec­ture, and some imper­ti­nent false­hoods and assumptions.

This report will do noth­ing to alle­vi­ate any ill which may have occurred, real or pre­cieved. It glo­ri­fies and gives rev­er­ence to degen­er­ate gun­men and trans-nation­al crim­i­nals, rather than expound on the virtues of adher­ing to and build­ing on a foun­da­tion of the rule of law.

THE JAMAICAN PEOPLE DID NOT NEED THIS REPORT, IT DOES NOTHING TO MOVE THE DEBATE FORWARD, IT DOES NOTHING BUT CREATE VICTIM-HOOD IN THE MINDS OF SOME, WHO ARE NOW DEMANDING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN COMPENSATION. IN OTHER WORDS EXTORTION.