Look for JLP to retroac­tive­ly add more pow­er to INDECOM it created.

He will be suc­cess­ful, he has the back­ing of the polit­i­cal direc­torate. (Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin for­mer Commissioner of Police)
The polit­i­cal direc­torate is the group of indi­vid­u­als which makes deci­sions for a coun­try, in the case of Jamaica it includes mem­bers of both the JLP and the PNP.

I have been turn­ing over in my mind this state­ment from the for­mer Rear Admiral, turned Police Commissioner and a cou­ple of things came to mind.
(a)Lewin seems to be say­ing that his tenure at the helm of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF)was a fail­ure because he did not receive the req­ui­site lev­el of sup­port from his polit­i­cal superiors.
(b) Acknowledging that the very same peo­ple who he inferred did not pro­vide him the sup­port he need­ed has now decid­ed to pro­vide that mate­r­i­al sup­port and oth­er­wise to Anthony Anderson.

In post-Colonial Jamaica, there have been 16 Commissioners of police begin­ning with N A Crosswell, and cul­mi­nat­ing with George Quallo.
I would haz­ard that each of those gen­tle­men could make the very same claim, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who came much lat­er after 1962.
Nevertheless, it is rather telling to hear some­one who spent his life in the Army and rough­ly 2‑years at the helm of the Constabulary insin­u­ate that the polit­i­cal direc­torate does not sup­port the rule of law.

What is even more crit­i­cal and ger­mane to this con­ver­sa­tion is that with­in our fledg­ling, yet envi­able par­lia­men­tary demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem, there are politi­cians who have had their United States Visas yanked because of alleged crim­i­nal con­duct and or affiliations.

So what has changed which has brought about this sup­posed epiphany which would cause the same polit­i­cal direc­torate to now throw its sup­port behind this new­ly announced Commissioner of Police?
Surely, they are not hav­ing a come-to-Jesus moment because they see the writ­ing on the wall.
If that was the case they would have had that moment of [wokeness][sic] from as far back as 2010 when the thugs all but took over the country.

http://​www​.jamaical​abour​par​ty​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​t​i​m​e​-​p​a​r​l​i​a​m​e​n​t​-​c​r​e​a​t​e​-​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​f​r​a​m​e​w​o​r​k​-​d​p​p​-​a​n​d​-​o​t​h​e​r​-​a​g​e​n​t​s​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​w​i​l​l​i​ams

I don’t claim to have the answers to these ques­tions, yet we could argue that they see him as one of them. They may even want to deal a death knell to the JCF as we know it, in fact, there have been whis­per­ing to that effect in recent times.
On the oth­er hand, there have been a cou­ple of shoot­ings which has direct­ly impact­ed the polit­i­cal class in recent times, albeit that it has­n’t reached any of the real­ly big fish yet, unfortunately.

The new­ly elect­ed head of the Police depart­ment major gen­er­al Anthony Anderson takes office today, there are rum­blings that he may bring mem­bers of the JDF senior man­age­ment team to the Deputy Commissioner’s rank which would effec­tive­ly side­line the senior offi­cers at that lev­el and sti­fle career offi­cers of the department.
I am unable to ver­i­fy the verac­i­ty of these alle­ga­tions so I will refrain from spec­u­lat­ing fur­ther in the inter­est of hon­esty and integrity.

One thing is sure is that as was to be expect­ed the tra­di­tion­al ene­mies of the police are up in arms. The Nation’s anti-law enforce­ment Justice Minister Delroy Chuck has stepped for­ward to make it clear that Parliament did intend to give INDECOM the pow­er to arrest and pros­e­cute police officers.
On the face of it, we could shrug off the fact that Delroy Chuck should nev­er be in any gov­ern­ment posi­tion due to his sup­port of gun­men killed by the police. It speaks vol­umes about the abil­i­ties of the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans who draft­ed and debat­ed the INDECOM bill before it became law. It makes a strong case that they were intrin­si­cal­ly unable to com­mu­ni­cate their intent on paper in clear and unam­bigu­ous ways.

The Gleaner Editorial page could not wait to jump on the band­wag­on of sup­port for the froth­ing mouth deranged Terrence Williams, declar­ing, Give INDECOM The Powers in their Monday online publication.
The larg­er issue here it seems is that this JLP Administration is decid­ed­ly focused on the destruc­tion of the Constabulary force and are blind­ed by the taste of power.

The JLP sat in oppo­si­tion for an unprece­dent­ed 14 ¹⁄₂ years look­ing into Jamaica House like the rest of us. The JCF is a large orga­ni­za­tion and I hope for its sake that it also has an expan­sive mem­o­ry. In the mean­time, the Police should begin to exert its influ­ence in ways that hurt peo­ple who are against them in their pocketbooks.
That should begin at all lev­els includ­ing not spend­ing mon­ey pur­chas­ing goods and ser­vices of com­pa­nies which adver­tise on the Jamaica Gleaner.

The time will come soon enough when police offi­cers, their fam­i­lies, and their sup­port­ers once again get to chose a gov­ern­ment. It would be anoth­er decid­ed affront to the Police by this admin­is­tra­tion as it seeks to find new ways to demor­al­ize the police and fur­ther place the lives of law-abid­ing Jamaicans at risk.

If that pro­vi­sion is added to the INDECOM act retroac­tive­ly, at a time when the court just ruled that it was nev­er there, it will be a water­shed moment in our coun­try’s mod­ern history.
The Jamaican peo­ple have clear­ly had enough time to see the destruc­tive pow­er of INDECOM over the past 8‑years. Andrew Holness him­self has argued the law needs revis­it­ing, yet there are pow­er­ful forces in the coun­try mar­shaled in sup­port of this law because the sta­tus quo suits their fidu­cia­ry interest.
They have also had 8‑years to see the harm a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed law and a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed flunky at its head can do.

AT SOME POINT IN TIME WE HAVE TO FACE THE FACTS, INDECOM IS NOT AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIVE AGENCY, IT IS A GOVERNMENT AND FOREIGN-FUNDED ENEMY OF THE SECURITY FORCES…

If (INDECOM) is not adher­ing to what was it’s stat­ed man­dat­ed, then we must acknowl­edge that it is a rogue agency which is a black hole for tax-pay­ers money.
Under Terrence Williams and Hamish, Campbell INDECOM has mor­phed into a dan­ger­ous tool which encour­ages and brews dis­sent on the Island and embold­ens Jamaica’s heav­i­ly armed crim­i­nal gangs.

The Government has a respon­si­bil­i­ty, in fact, its first duty is the secu­ri­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple, that includes the Police. It is incum­bent on the Government to either rein in Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell or bet­ter yet dis­band this rogue agency which has become an ene­my of the people.

According to INDECOM’s web­site: The Commission is fund­ed by the Government of Jamaica from the con­sol­i­dat­ed fund. Since incep­tion it has also received sup­port by way of spon­sor­ship from inter­na­tion­al part­ners: the Department for International Development (DFID), the United States International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL), European Union (EU) and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Even as INDECOM com­plains about dwin­dling fund­ing com­ing from the Government, it’s own report­ing indi­cates that the Jamaican Government con­tin­ues to waste tremen­dous amounts of mon­ey on fund­ing the Commission while the police do not have cars to answer cit­i­zens dis­tress calls, Officers are forced to occu­py filthy rat and roach infest­ed ram­shackle struc­tures, which pass for police stations.

Additionally, police sta­tions have no com­put­ers, offi­cers have no uni­form or boots, and police offi­cers can­not pay their bills. Even ass the IMF con­tin­ue to height­en its calls for the Government to trim its pub­lic sec­tor wage bill and teach­ers are on strike the gov­ern­ment waste hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars each year on an agency which pro­duces noth­ing tan­gi­ble for the Jamaican people.

The fol­low­ing fig­ures rep­re­sent the monies doled out to INDECOM by the Government and shad­ow over­seas donors each year in an effort to antag­o­nize, harass and dem­a­gogue the nation’s secu­ri­ty forces.

The appoint­ment of Major General Anthony Anderson as Commissioner of Police in Jamaica should not be viewed in the nar­row parochial way many of us tend to view issues.
There has to be an accep­tance in a ful­some way of the many sides to each and every issue. It is always bet­ter to air out ideas, giv­ing equal time and atten­tion to all sides before arriv­ing at a conclusion.

Of course, those like myself who oppose Anderson’s appoint­ment have no per­son­al vendet­ta against the man, I don’t even know him. Neither am I on a per­son­al cru­sade against the JDF as some closed-mind­ed, intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged peo­ple are wont to accuse.
Nevertheless, it is always eas­i­er to make ad hominem attacks rather than hav­ing the chutz­pah to have an open debate on the merits.

Look, I could roll over and sim­ply sing praise to General Anderson like Keith Trinity Gardner now an attor­ney at law and for­mer Assistant Commissioner of Police, but I can’t, despite what­ev­er suc­cess­es I may have attained the elit­ist club in upper Saint Andrew was nev­er on my buck­et list.

So I have a cou­ple of sug­ges­tions to make (1) I would like to see for­mer Commissioner of Police Carl Williams appoint­ed Governor of the Bank of Jamaica.
By the stan­dard of think­ing in Jamaica being supreme­ly qual­i­fied in one dis­ci­pline qual­i­fies one to do every job right?
Former Commissioner Dr.Carl William Ph.D. has an impres­sive record in law enforce­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the area of nar­cotics and he has writ­ten pol­i­cy papers on crime in Jamaica, most notably ‘Consequences of the War on Drugs: The Jamaican Experience. http://​dig​ja​maica​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​2​0​1​4​/​0​9​/​0​9​/​w​h​o​-​i​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​c​o​m​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​e​r​-​d​e​s​i​g​n​a​t​e​-​c​a​r​l​-​w​i​l​l​i​a​ms/

I’m not sure what Dr. Williams is doing these days but I say let’s remove the BOJ head and make him the Governor[sic].
While we are at it (2) Portia Simpson Miller has attained the high­est exec­u­tive office in our coun­try, she is now out of work I’m sure Sista P would like to be back being use­ful so why not make her head of neu­ro­surgery up there at Mona?

You see qual­i­fi­ca­tion is qual­i­fi­ca­tion so it does not mat­ter if you have a lib­er­al arts degree you are cer­tain­ly qual­i­fied to fly an air­plane right?[sic]
What do you mean no? So you are say­ing whats good for the Goose isn’t good for the Gander? Oh, I see.….…So the fal­la­cy of the Anderson appoint­ment as the sav­ior of polic­ing in Jamaica just crum­bled under the light of a lit­tle scrutiny.

Like I said I have zero desire to move to Upper St Andrew or rub shoul­ders with the large­ly pre­ten­tious hyp­ocrites who live there. I have no desire to go to their lit­tle Kiwanis club­hous­es, and I cer­tain­ly do not crave their friendship.
Sorry, Mister Keith Gardner.
I cer­tain­ly could buy a house where they live if I want­ed to, by I’m a sim­ple coun­try boy from rur­al St, Catherine who like real peo­ple, and oh despite liv­ing in a for­eign land since 1991 my Jamaican accent is still the same.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The bot­tom line is that Jamaica has resilient peo­ple many of whom have accom­plished excep­tion­al things par­tic­u­lar­ly in the area of Education and Sports. Whatever we put our minds to we gen­er­al­ly stand out and are eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied. Unfortunately, there is anoth­er side of our Jamaican-ness the fame of Usain Bolt and Anthony Anderson is always coun­tered by the infamy of our worst criminals.

As we cel­e­brate the accom­plish­ments of our best we have to be guard­ed that the actions of our worse are appro­pri­ate­ly coun­tered by the best trained, best expe­ri­enced to do the job.
We have to have the best doc­tors treat­ing our sick, not the best bankers. We must have the best lawyers defend­ing our inter­est in a court of law, not the best firemen.

Despite Anderson’s impres­sive resume,^ as a sol­dier, he is exact­ly that, a sol­dier, not a cop. The best indi­ca­tor for a way for­ward is to look at precedent.
Twice before have for­mer heads been para­chut­ed in to save the Constabulary with dis­as­trous consequences.
The best way to fix the Constabulary is to fix the constabulary.
Imagine drag­ging an unwell pilot out of the cock­pit and plac­ing the flight atten­dant in his seat with the hope of a pleas­ant landing.
If the Pilot can­not be resus­ci­tat­ed it’s up to the co-pilot to take over not the flight attendant.
What is it in the his­to­ry of the JDF which makes it’s ex-offices equipped to fix every prob­lem in our country?
From Football to the vot­ing rolls to every­thing in between, I don’t get it?

Apart from the many years of train­ing and edu­ca­tion which goes into the ele­va­tion to the top­most posi­tions in police depart­ments the exper­tise gar­nered over the course of time is invalu­able to the discipline.
Even more con­se­quen­tial to the debate is the ques­tion of morale at the entry lev­el. As I point­ed out in a recent arti­cle, morale is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in a job like the police force in which offers sub-stan­dard remu­ner­a­tions, lack of polit­i­cal sup­port, poor work­ing con­di­tions, lack and a short­age of equip­ment and tools and an over­abun­dance of dan­ger at all levels.
That dan­ger is ever present even when they do their jobs by the book in a coun­try like Jamaica in which the jus­tice sys­tem is heav­i­ly slant­ed toward the pro­tec­tion of criminals.

The idea that each con­sta­ble can be com­mis­sion­er has been a valu­able car­rot to the oth­er­wise harsh stick of being a police offi­cer in the hos­tile Jamaican work­ing envi­ron­ment. Take that away and the harm will be catastrophic.
At present, the police force strug­gles to attract enough new can­di­dates to fill recruit­ment require­ments. On the oth­er hand, rough­ly 600 offi­cers are walk­ing away from the JCF each year.

The Minister of National Security recent­ly bragged that few­er police offi­cers are leav­ing the depart­ment which is actu­al­ly laugh­able because under the recent­ly passed ZOSO law the Government cod­i­fied into law pro­vi­sions which crim­i­nal­ize police offi­cers for dar­ing to leave the JCF with­out giv­ing a 6‑month advanced notice to the department.

How the Minister is able to deter­mine that few­er offi­cers are leav­ing as a result of any strat­e­gy out­side that dra­con­ian pro­vi­sion in the ZOSO law, giv­en insuf­fi­cient time for the data to be cred­i­ble is beyond me.
Former JDF head Hardly Lewin, who was also one of the fire­men asked to do heart surgery[sic] claims Anthony Anderson will be suc­cess­ful because he has the sup­port of the polit­i­cal directorate.
His state­ment is con­fir­ma­tion of what I have per­son­al­ly believed and spo­ken to. The high crime rate is not a prob­lem attrib­ut­able to the police but a prob­lem of a lack of leg­isla­tive sup­port so that offi­cers may have a rea­son­able shot at get­ting it right.

When all is said and done, if we do not fix the areas of resources, leg­isla­tive sup­port, bet­ter pay, and respect for our police offi­cers, crime will not ever decrease. You can pre­tend the prob­lem is the police and point fin­gers in order to avoid responsibility.
There may even be some sil­ly offi­cers past and present who believe the police will do bet­ter by hav­ing an over­lord para­chut­ed in.
The fact of the mat­ter is that there are some fun­da­men­tal changes need­ed which has noth­ing to do with who sits in a chair at 103 Old Hope Road but with the 63 dimwits who bang on desks in that build­ing on Duke Street.

Continue read­ing →

Let’s estab­lish some facts in this Machiavellian process of select­ing a Commissioner of police present­ly before the Police Services Commission (PSC).
(1) If the Prime Minister and or the Minister of National Security tells you they do not know who will be next Commissioner of police they are lying to you.
(2) The Prime Minister knows who he wants to hold that office regard­less of who applies. If you believe that a Commissioner of Police is ever going to be select­ed by the (PSC) and foist­ed onto the Prime Minister I have a bridge to sell you, in fact, I’ll throw in the flat bridge free of charge in the deal.

Furthermore, even if the Prime Minister and or the Minister of National Security did not have advanced knowl­edge of who would be select­ed, is there a sin­gle per­son alive who believes that the PM would not sim­ply pick up the phone to speak to the head of the PSC to make his views known?
These obser­va­tions are not meant to crit­i­cize the PM for want­i­ng whom he wants to be com­mis­sion­er of police. Unlike many peo­ple, I believe that the Nation’s Prime Minister’s num­ber one job is to keep the nation safe.

On that basis and that basis alone the Prime Minister, [regard­less of par­ty,] ought to have a free hand in select­ing the best per­son in his/​her esti­ma­tion to exe­cute what­ev­er strate­gies he/​she has for com­plet­ing that mandate.
I have no quar­rel with a Commissioner of [police com­ing onboard with polit­i­cal con­nec­tions, polit­i­cal con­nec­tions and labels have not hin­dered them from doing their jobs effec­tive­ly in oth­er coun­tries, it should­n’t negate their poten­tial in Jamaica.

HYPOCRISY

The idea that a Commissioner of Police will make much of a dif­fer­ence in Jamaica’s tox­ic envi­ron­ment is the epit­o­me of naïveté ^. It’s the equiv­a­lence of send­ing a poor­ly equipped, untrained army to do bat­tle with their hands tied behind their backs but nonethe­less led by a new­ly mint­ed General.
To foist some­one onto the police who has not come up through the ranks and have their trust and respect in my esti­ma­tion is a clear sign that there is no intent to begin­ning the ardu­ous task of rolling back vio­lent crime.

If any­one believes that morale is an insignif­i­cant char­ac­ter­is­tic in bod­ies in which cohe­sion and stick-to-itive­ness are required they are wrong.
Believing that it can be dis­re­gard­ed in mil­i­tary and police forces is bor­der­ing on lunacy.
There are two Prime Ministers who have led Jamaica who will be on my shit list for­ev­er. The two are Percival James Patterson of the PNP and Orett Bruce Golding of the JLP.
The unmit­i­gat­ed truth in this blame game which has land­ed on the doorsteps of the police is that the depart­ment was nev­er giv­en the tools to succeed.
Success for the JCF would have meant no illic­it wealth for the Island’s polit­i­cal class after they were hand­ed the reins of the country.
The cor­rup­tion in Jamaica has rel­a­tives in Africa, Central and South America and oth­er col­o­nized parts of the world. The new boss­es were not about to embark on a process of law and order, they had to enrich themselves.

Neither men are sole­ly respon­si­ble for crime in our coun­try per se, but Patterson presided over the most dra­mat­ic peri­od of rot in our cul­ture which result­ed in the great­est growth in law­less­ness and vio­lent crimes and the destruc­tion of the JCF.
Bruce Golding watched it hap­pen and when he took office he did not have a plan to fix it, in fact, he took actions which had the oppo­site effect of fix­ing the prob­lems, a‑la INDECOM et al, his tenure was par­tic­u­lar­ly harm­ful to the rule of law. Jamaica was well served when he was forced to step aside.

The chal­lenges fac­ing the Constabulary will cer­tain­ly not be reme­died by chang­ing the Commissioner, that’s like putting a shiny new cov­er on a leaky old pot.
The struc­tur­al defi­cien­cies which the police depart­ment faces are inher­ent­ly dif­fer­ent than a teacher not hav­ing the req­ui­site num­ber of text­books to effec­tive­ly teach a class.
Cops can­not answer calls if they have no cars.

One of the key ways in which I thought the police could improve its ser­vice deliv­ery over the years has been in response time. People are con­soled immense­ly when they have an idea that when they call the police the police is going to be there in quick time.
As a cit­i­zen, there can be no greater fear than to be in trou­ble with no recourse or expec­ta­tion of help com­ing from the police.

Over the years I have called for seniors to dri­ve their own cars and leave the vehi­cles at the sta­tion to ser­vice the needs of the cit­i­zens they serve.
I can tell you that as mem­bers of the CIB sta­tioned at the Constant Spring Police Station Dadrick Henry and myself made it our duty to try to be at the scene as soon as was human­ly pos­si­ble after receiv­ing direc­tives from police control.

As con­se­quence, cit­i­zens knew when Dadrick Henry and I were work­ing because of our ded­i­ca­tion to answer­ing calls as quick­ly as possible.
That area of police ser­vice deliv­ery is only one com­po­nent but it is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in the reas­sur­ance of the peo­ple who depend on the police for their safe­ty and security.
It must be under­stood that when cit­i­zens can­not depend on the police to come to their res­cue, to their defense, come to their aid, they are forced to acqui­esce to the demands of the crim­i­nal underworld.

What we have seen over the last three decades in our coun­try has been a par­a­digm shift in the loy­al­ty of the pop­u­lace from the police to the gangs and Dons.
The rea­son for this is that this uni­verse does not like vac­u­ums if the police are unable to fill the secu­ri­ty needs of the pop­u­la­tion they have to make friends with those they would not nor­mal­ly be friend­ly to. It is a mat­ter of sur­vival in many cases.
I sug­gest that the next Commissioner of police look at response time as his/​her first pri­or­i­ty, this will go a long way in bring­ing some reas­sur­ance to a skep­ti­cal pop­u­lace and would be an impor­tant deter­rent to those who break our laws.

California’s veteran senator couldn’t get the party’s endorsement. She’ll probably win anyway, but it’s a big shift.

What hap­pens when a blue wave crash­es into one of the bluest states in the union? Ask Dianne Feinstein.

Could the Florida School Shootings Bring About Change to American Gun Laws?

Since the 1992 Columbine High School shoot­ing, 122 inno­cent peo­ple have been killed in numer­ous school shoot­ings in the United States of America. The biggest loss of life was at Virginia Tech, where 33 peo­ple were killed. However, the most heinous, was at Sandy Hook Elementary, when 27 young kids had their lives grue­some­ly ter­mi­nat­ed. That inci­dent shocked the con­science of mil­lions of Americans, and non-Americans alike.

An angry then President Obama, called on Congress to pass leg­is­la­tion to make it hard­er for any­one to buy a gun. His appeal was also sup­port­ed by mil­lions of Americans who were unre­served in denounc­ing this bru­tal act, but Congress did noth­ing. The motive behind Congress’ inac­tion is the pow­er­ful National Rifle Association (NRA). This is a wealthy orga­ni­za­tion with a lot of influ­en­tial peo­ple. The NRA gives mil­lions in cam­paign fund­ing to politi­cians from both the Democratic and Republican Parties, but main­ly to Republicans. In Obama’s sec­ond year in office, the Republicans became the major­i­ty in both the House and the Senate and so they did not con­sid­er the wish­es of the Americans peo­ple includ­ing the president.

However, last week’s mas­sacre at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High school, in Parkland, Florida, which result­ed in the death of 14 stu­dents and 3 teach­ers, could be the cat­a­lyst for a long over­due change to gun laws, in a coun­try where the sec­ond amend­ment is revered. The sec­ond amend­ment is the law that gives all law-abid­ing Americans the right to bear arms. Students, some from the same Florida school where the most recent shoot­ing occurred, and oth­ers from across the coun­try have become activists. Many open­ly blast­ed President Donald Trump, for blam­ing the shoot­ings on men­tal ill­ness, rather than blam­ing it on how easy it is to buys guns. Guns that are get­ting into the hands of the wrong peo­ple who have no regard for human life. Some stu­dents even staged a “die in” out­side the Whitehouse’s com­pound to protest their anger and displeasure.

This move­ment is gain­ing trac­tion and could be a game chang­er. Consequently, Trump has announced that the so-called Bump Stock — a kind of con­trap­tion that con­verts a semi-auto­mat­ic weapon to ful­ly auto­mat­ic be banned. This was the same device used by the deranged gun­man in Las Vegas to kill 58 peo­ple attend­ing a con­cert. After the Las Vegas car­nage, many peo­ple includ­ing this writer heard of Bump Stock for the first time, and although so many lives were lost, Trump and the Congress of the United States did noth­ing to ban the device.

But now, he has decid­ed to act. It shows that the stu­dents’ voic­es are been heard, that an obsti­nate, self-cen­tered pro­tag­o­nist like Trump, may final­ly capit­u­late to the demand of the stu­dents and oth­er pro­po­nents, who favor changes to the cur­rent gun laws. This osten­si­bly caus­es the Whitehouse to pay atten­tion, per­haps much to the cha­grin of the NRA, who gave an esti­mat­ed 300 hun­dred mil­lion dol­lar to Trump’s suc­cess­ful pres­i­den­tial campaign.

I am not naïve, how­ev­er, to believe that there will be any sig­nif­i­cant changes to guns laws in the US. Lawmakers in Florida recent­ly vot­ed down a motion to dis­cuss ban­ning the AR-15 rifle, the same Semi-Automatic weapon used to mur­der the afore­men­tioned 17 peo­ple in that state.

You have to ask where are their con­science? Is the NRA that pow­er­ful or some American politi­cians don’t have the con­vic­tion to stand up for the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, or, are they down­right stupid?

As long as the NRA con­tin­ues to exist, you can bet your bot­tom dol­lar that no sig­nif­i­cant change will be made to gun laws in that coun­try, although I would be the first to wel­come it. They will lob­by the politi­cians in Washington and state hous­es through­out the U.S., which will influ­ence them not to even vague­ly con­sid­er any change. Some Americans are obsessed with guns, and they are aware that it is their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to bear arms, and will not con­cede an inch to ensure that guns don’t get into the hands of the wrong people.

I don’t know what it will take before the Americans real­ize that guns kill peo­ple. Let’s wait and see if there will be any tan­gi­ble change after this protest ends.

The views expressed by our con­trib­u­tors are their own, they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of chatt​-​a​-box​.com it’s own­ers and publishers.

The actions of a large num­ber of the Jamaican judi­cia­ry [unelect­ed by any­one] two days ago demon­strate that they believe they are above over­sight and that they should oper­ate by fiat.
That mind­set places them above the laws and above the over­sight of the Jamaican peo­ple who pay their salaries.
The Prime Minister is well with­in his right to ensure that who­ev­er he choos­es (as autho­rized by the con­sti­tu­tion) is the best per­son for the job.
Judges are not kings and as such, the per­son who has the respon­si­bil­i­ty to select a chief jus­tice has every right to ensure that the per­son cho­sen is qual­i­fied to do the job effectively.

The very same enti­ties and indi­vid­u­als who insist that the Jamaican Judiciary must be above polit­i­cal over­sight of any sort, do not believe that anoth­er Government enti­ty the Jamaica Constabulary Force should enjoy the same freedoms.
In fact, they clam­or for mul­ti­ple lay­ers of over­sight for the Police so much so that the police has six (6) offi­cial over­sight bod­ies and a litany of oth­er Agencies which pur­port to be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the inter­est of those whose rights have been violated.
“But then, bash­ing the police has become Jamaica’s biggest growth indus­try, for which there is a ready-made audi­ence”. — Mark Ricketts, econ­o­mist, author and lecturer.

What is the rea­son for the bipo­lar posi­tion on two sep­a­rate arms of gov­ern­ment tasked with the very same out­come, just with dif­fer­ent functions?
To get the answer to that ques­tion one has to under­stand the his­to­ry of our coun­try, the way Jamaicans see those who wield pow­er and how they view them­selves in that equation.
That must also be viewed in the con­text of how the JCF came into exis­tence, the strained rela­tion­ship the agency has had with the pop­u­la­tion over the decades, and final­ly who staff the department.

In many ways, Jamaica has been unable to shake off some of the most destruc­tive ves­tiges of her colo­nial past. Deeply embed­ded in those ves­tiges is the omnipresent caste sys­tem which stub­born­ly exists to this day. Jamaican cops are prod­ucts of the poor­er caste of the Island. Jamaican Lawyers not so much. In essence, based on the trap­pings of being in the upper caste, even those who some­how claw their way out of abject pover­ty and make it through law school would rather pre­tend that their past nev­er exist­ed. Such is the way those who have acquired some degree of edu­ca­tion see them­selves and that is the way the pop­u­la­tion views them.

It’s incred­i­ble that any­one could prof­fer the notion that the Prime Minister does not have the author­i­ty to install some­one on a tem­po­rary basis while he does due dili­gence to ensure that the per­son final­ly cho­sen is the best fit for the job.
The mere fact that Justice Sykes was installed sug­gests that the PM had duly informed him­self of jus­tice Syke’s bona fides and want­ed to make sure as he should, hav­ing been tasked with choos­ing the right per­son under the constitution.
The idea that what the Prime Minister did is tan­ta­mount to Political inter­fer­ence is ridicu­lous when it is his duty to select a can­di­date, the best can­di­date to fill the post.

Judges are not elect­ed by the peo­ple, it is the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives who appoint them, there­fore it must be the right of the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to ensure best prac­tices are adhered to as the PM intend­ed (PM par­ty neutral).
Judges can­not be allowed to con­tin­ue allow­ing crim­i­nals back onto the streets as soon as they are arrest­ed, and stop­ping cas­es from pro­ceed­ing with­out being answer­able to any­one.

Last year alone, 1616 peo­ple were report­ed mur­dered, some esti­mates indi­cate those may have been mod­est numbers.
Several of those homi­cides could have been avoid­ed if judges across the Island had done their jobs with­out sup­plant­i­ng the laws with their own per­son­al bias­es and opinions.
In hun­dreds of cas­es police ver­i­fi­ably demon­strat­ed that these monarchs,[sic] sum­mar­i­ly and sur­rep­ti­tious­ly grant­ed bail to mur­der sus­pects in a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of instances. This they do in cas­es where sus­pects are allowed out to kill over and over and over with­out fac­ing a sin­gle jury to answer for their crimes.

In oth­er instances, vio­lent offend­ers who com­mit egre­gious felonies using firearms are giv­en sus­pend­ed sen­tences, some are admon­ished and dis­charged. On the occa­sions in which they both­er to arrive at a cus­to­di­al sen­tence the time giv­en in rela­tion to the crimes com­mit­ted leaves observers aghast at the obvi­ous sense­less­ness of the sen­tences hand­ed down.
Their behav­ior has severe­ly cor­rupt­ed the process and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly destroyed the con­fi­dence of the pub­lic in the abil­i­ty of the sys­tem to dis­pense jus­tice in a fair and equi­table way.
The end result is a dra­mat­ic increase in vio­lent crimes and a seri­ous uptick in assaults on the per­sons of our law enforce­ment officers.

In our par­lia­men­tary demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem as in a repub­li­can democ­ra­cy, it is the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives who appoint judges, they must be account­able to the peo­ple. This is only pos­si­ble when those tasked with select­ing Judges use best prac­tices and apply due dili­gence when choos­ing mem­bers to fill vacan­cies on the bench.
The clos­ing down of the courts by activist judges two days ago final­ly peeled back the thin veneer which gave the impres­sion that they were any­thing but polit­i­cal prac­ti­tion­ers oper­at­ing as inde­pen­dent tri­ers of fact.

The vacan­cy cre­at­ed by the retire­ment of chief jus­tice Zaila McCalla’s retire­ment has cre­at­ed a firestorm reveal­ing things some of us knew all along.
There is a strong argu­ment to be made that the Administration fell down on the job, clear­ly, it is the pre­rog­a­tive of the Prime Minister to appoint a com­pe­tent replace­ment to fill the vacancy.
With that under­stand­ing, who­ev­er advis­es the PM on these issues be it Justice Minister Delroy Chuck or Attorney General Marlene Malahoo Forte or who­ev­er, that per­son should be sanc­tioned by the Prime Minister. He or she should have brought it to the Prime Minister’s atten­tion in a time­ly man­ner that that crit­i­cal posi­tion would have to be filled.(granted that it was­n’t done)

Under the Jamaican Constitution, it is the Prime Minister who rec­om­mends a replace­ment to be con­firmed by the Governor General to be the Chief Justice.
It is a bit rich to sug­gest that the Prime Minister must then have no con­trol over the judi­cia­ry inso­far as delib­er­a­tion is con­cerned when the Prime Minister as the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive holds the most senior exec­u­tive posi­tion in the coun­try and is required to do due dili­gence to fill that very vacancy.

Whatever the rea­son that the PM decid­ed to place Justice Sykes in an act­ing role is nei­ther here nor there. He has the right to place a com­pe­tent per­son to fill the slot until such time that he has con­sid­ered ful­ly what his best options are for this most impor­tant job.
By plac­ing Justice Sykes in posi­tion to fill the slot of chief jus­tice albeit tem­porar­i­ly, is evi­dence that the PM believes that he should do fur­ther due dili­gence in the best inter­est of the country.
If the Prime Minister did not do that he would have abdi­cat­ed his sacred respon­si­bil­i­ty to the coun­try and the peo­ple who elect­ed him to serve their best interest.

There is a legit­i­mate argu­ment to be made on the ques­tion of why a suit­able per­son was not select­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, with the knowl­edge that jus­tice McCalla was near­ing retire­ment age. However, this much to do about noth­ing, is clear­ly an attempt at politi­ciza­tion by the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion, mem­bers of the Bar Association and shock­ing­ly, the over one hun­dred judges who locked down the sys­tem yes­ter­day so that they could engage in what seems eeri­ly like a bold exer­cise of par­ti­san brinkmanship.

Nowhere in the indus­tri­al­ized world has this hap­pened in my rec­ol­lec­tion, (I stand to be cor­rect­ed). Every non­sen­si­cal argu­ment about the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­er just got tossed out the win­dow with the actions of the judges yesterday.
Judges are appoint­ed by politi­cians they are not elect­ed by the peo­ple. As a con­se­quence, this purist notion of non-inter­fer­ence is not root­ed in reality.
The notion that judges should not be answer­able to any­one enhances the con­cept of total­i­tar­i­an­ism, only of a dif­fer­ent kind.

The long-held purile claims of judi­cial inde­pen­dence and excep­tion­al­ism just got washed away yes­ter­day in an avalanche of polit­i­cal brinksmanship.
The unelect­ed over­lords who fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that they should not be sub­ject to any­one’s super­vi­sion and their sup­port­ers peeled back the decep­tive veneer and exposed the putrid sore many of us knew exist­ed all along.
A sore which is far more putrid and infect­ed than the aver­age cit­i­zen care to acknowl­edge, one that lets dan­ger­ous killers go free time and time and time again and refus­es to allow charges against their polit­i­cal asso­ciates to proceed.

They fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives should not tell them what to do, despite the fact that they are placed in the posi­tions they occu­py by the peo­ple’s representatives.
There is the nev­er-end­ing cheer­lead­ing in the pet­ty sec­tion called the Bar Association, the ran­cid pool from which they are pulled. No one has a prob­lem with their sup­port for their col­leagues but God for­bid Police offi­cers stand up for them­selves and all hell breaks loose.

The larg­er issue, how­ev­er, is the bla­tant hypocrisy of the Jamaican soci­ety, the gov­ern­ing admin­is­tra­tion, the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion and every oth­er sec­tor of the soci­ety, in their lack of response to Anthony Harriot’s cow­ard­ly attack on the JCF.
Now every­one is up in arms at the appoint­ment of Byran Sykes to fill a posi­tion he will ulti­mate­ly get, albeit the tem­po­rary hold that the PM has insti­tut­ed as he clear­ly has the right to do.

Justice Sykes will get the job, but the nation’s hyp­ocrites who sit in judg­ment will nev­er reclaim the sense of “above it all “they pre­vi­ous­ly enjoyed.
The hoods are off and it is plain to see that they were nev­er what they pur­port­ed to be.
Hate to say I told you so but I did.

Israeli police chiefs will rec­om­mend to the coun­try’s attor­ney gen­er­al that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indict­ed on cor­rup­tion charges, accord­ing to reports in local media.

The Times of Israel report­ed Wednesday that police chiefs, includ­ing the gen­er­al com­mis­sion­er of Israel’s police force, were in “unan­i­mous agree­ment” that Netanyahu should be indict­ed for alleged­ly accept­ing bribes and receiv­ing lav­ish gifts from wealthy bene­fac­tors, includ­ing Israeli-born Hollywood pro­duc­er Arnon Milchan.

Any rec­om­men­da­tion for an indict­ment would be sent to Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who will decide whether to indict the prime minister.
In a Facebook video Netanyahu acknowl­edged that the police would like­ly move to rec­om­mend his indict­ment, but dis­missed the alle­ga­tions against him and pre­dict­ed Mandelblit would not move to press charges.

“The State of Israel is a state of law. The law says that the one to deter­mine whether there is evi­dence against the prime min­is­ter is the attor­ney gen­er­al and he con­sults with the state attor­ney. The state pros­e­cu­tor recent­ly said in the Knesset that about half of the police’s rec­om­men­da­tions end with noth­ing,” Netanyahu said Wednesday.

“So do not be ner­vous … I am sure that at the end of the day the com­pe­tent legal bod­ies will come to one con­clu­sion, to the sim­ple truth: There is noth­ing,” he added.

Netanyahu’s cur­rent tenure as Israel’s prime min­is­ter began in 2009; he pre­vi­ous­ly held the office from 1996 to 1999. He was reelect­ed in 2015 with just over 23 per­cent of the vote share, with his Likud par­ty win­ning 30 seats in Israel’s parliament.

The right-lean­ing Israeli leader is a top ally of President Trump, who last year declared that the U.S. would rec­og­nize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The move was wide­ly pop­u­lar with Netanyahu and Israelis, but inflamed ten­sions with Palestine and Arab coun­tries across the Middle East. http://​the​hill​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​y​/​i​n​t​e​r​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​/​3​7​2​7​7​2​-​i​s​r​a​e​l​i​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​r​e​c​o​m​m​e​n​d​-​i​n​d​i​c​t​i​n​g​-​n​e​t​a​n​y​a​h​u​-​f​o​r​-​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​i​o​n​-​r​e​p​ort

According to police sta­tis­tics, 14’868 Jamaicans have been mur­dered between the decade which spawned the year 2007 and 2017.
Those num­bers do not include miss­ing per­sons who have not been heard from again or those killed who haven’t been report­ed to author­i­ties. Missing from the equa­tion also, are those who have been shot or oth­er­wise injured who did not die immediately.

Those num­bers reflect law enforce­ment offi­cers and ordi­nary Jamaicans, not the type of Jamaicans which would real­ly jog the con­sciences of those in power.
No Member of Parliament, no University Professors, no Minister of Government. In oth­er words hard­ly any­one from the gild­ed elites but for an out­lier or two.

2017.….….….….….….….….….….….1616.….….

So the 14’868 Jamaicans who lost their lives in the unde­clared decades-long civ­il war have become mere sta­tis­tics, throw-aways, col­lat­er­al dam­age and life con­tin­ue as if noth­ing happens.
How have our lead­ers dealt with the issue? A quick look at the num­bers year over year, gives a pret­ty good indi­ca­tion that what­ev­er has been tried clear­ly has not been working.

SO WHAT EXACTLY HAS THE GOVERNMENT BEEN DOING

From my van­tage point both the pre­vi­ous PNP Administration and the Governing JLP Administration, either mis­un­der­stand the impor­tance of the rule of law to a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety or they have col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly made the deci­sion that pol­i­tics and the trap­pings of pow­er are more impor­tant than country.

Additionally, the oner­ous over-reach of for­eign-fund­ed, local­ly based crim­i­nal rights lob­by groups, have vir­tu­al­ly tied the hands and sealed the lips of politi­cians on both sides of the polit­i­cal divide with the excep­tion of a few.
Groups like Jamaicans For Justice has com­piled Police fatal shoot­ing data and have pre­sent­ed those data to their han­dlers in Washington DC in con­texts which have been dis­fa­vor­able to both the Government and the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

The crit­i­cal sup­port which nor­mal­ly comes from the United States to assist in the fight against Gangsters and Terrorists are sum­mar­i­ly dis­con­tin­ued when alle­ga­tions of extra­ju­di­cial killings are made against law enforce­ment enti­ties like the JCF as per the Leahy Law.
The Leahy Law is the col­lo­qui­al term for a pro­vi­sion of the Foreign Assistance Act (sec­tion 620M) and its twin pro­vi­sion in the National Defense Authorization Act. See Act here: https://​www​.just​se​cu​ri​ty​.org/​4​2​5​7​8​/​l​e​a​h​y​-​l​a​w​-​p​r​o​h​i​b​i​t​i​n​g​-​a​s​s​i​s​t​a​n​c​e​-​h​u​m​a​n​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​a​b​u​s​e​r​s​-​p​u​l​l​i​n​g​-​c​u​r​t​a​in/

The shock­ing truth is that agen­cies may not tech­ni­cal­ly be in breach of Human rights pro­to­cols to be penal­ized and for assis­tance to be cut off.
“Credible Information”: Although meet­ing the thresh­old of cred­i­bil­i­ty is less for “infor­ma­tion” than it is for “evi­dence,” the bar is still sur­pris­ing­ly hard to meet, con­trary to com­mon per­cep­tion. The State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor, appro­pri­ate­ly in my view, coun­seled that infor­ma­tion need only be cred­i­ble to a “rea­son­able” per­son in order to com­pel a restric­tion of assis­tance. And in the­o­ry, accord­ing to State Department Guidance, “the stan­dard should gen­er­al­ly be regard­ed as low.”

It is this law which has been used to penal­ize mem­bers of the JCF and the insti­tu­tion itself on the flim­si­est of evi­dence sub­mit­ted to the Inter American Commission on human rights by JFJ under the lead­er­ship of pedi­atric doc­tor and then head of JFJ Carolyn Gomes.
It is that mis­use and duplic­i­tous manip­u­la­tion of data which has changed the par­a­digm in how the JCF address­es crime, a small detail which has elud­ed the ordi­nary Jamaican.

It is that law which is behind the expan­sion, growth, and pow­er of the lob­by which has hov­ered over law enforce­ment, influ­enced leg­is­la­tion and has ter­ri­fied the Island’s lead­ers into submission.
The prospect of not receiv­ing grants, being cut off from loans, is ter­ri­fy­ing just on the face of it.
Losing visas and not being allowed into the United States as some mem­bers of the JCF has been sub­ject­ed has been more than enough to get the police to back off from aggres­sive­ly enforc­ing our laws.

The bor­row­er is a slave to the lender accord­ing to the Bible, (accord­ing to com­mon sense).Simply put it’s economic.
When Law enforce­ment is afraid to engage because of the con­se­quences of that engage­ment crim­i­nals are embold­ened. When mur­der­ers are embold­ened peo­ple die, peo­ple are raped, chil­dren are abused.
The lev­el of law­less­ness in the coun­try has gone up dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the years, so it’s not just homi­cides, there is a gen­er­al sense that the rule of law does not exist anymore.

Are there some cor­rupt cops you bet, so too are there cor­rupt judges, politi­cians, lawyers, doc­tors, busi­ness­men, Pastors and in every sin­gle discipline.
The hem and haw about police cor­rup­tion is mere­ly an attempt to dis­tract from the real rea­sons crime has been going up and up each year.
The chal­lenge for the lead­ers now is how do they get some sem­blance of con­trol with­out upset­ting the peo­ple in Washington DC?
Remember their Rottweilers, Pugs, and Mongrels are there watch­ing and wait­ing to file their fraud­u­lent reports.

Contributor Richard Porter.

Criminology is an area of Sociology that focus­es on the study of crimes and their caus­es, effects, and social impact. A crim­i­nol­o­gist’s job respon­si­bil­i­ties involve ana­lyz­ing data to deter­mine why the crime was com­mit­ted and to find ways to pre­dict, deter, and pre­vent fur­ther crim­i­nal behavior.

With regards to Professor Anthony Harriott’s com­ments about the Jamaica Constabulary Force being tox­ic, my views are as follows.

If the Professor is what the paper says he is and I have stat­ed clear­ly & con­cise­ly what he does then he being head of the Police Civilian Oversight Authority then it is fair to say then that has­n’t done his civic duty.

The so-called “Toxic cul­ture” does­n’t exist only in the Jamaica Constabulary Force but much of our cit­i­zen­ry as well.The soci­ety at large has been the bedrock, pil­lars, and cor­ner­stone of corruption.
I would nev­er argue that there aren’t cor­rupt police offi­cers. They do exist and they must be iden­ti­fied, alle­ga­tions against them proven upon which they are either sent to prison or dismissed.

A soci­ety can nev­er be seen as tak­ing crime and cor­rup­tion seri­ous­ly when peo­ple point fin­gers at one orga­ni­za­tion and turn a blind eye to the cor­rup­tion in oth­er seg­ments of the society.…corruption comes in many forms but the Professor either refused to accept that fact. or is sim­ply disingenuous

The peo­ple of this coun­try should also demand that the Minister of National Security also be sent pack­ing. We won’t hold our breaths though because crony­ism and nepo­tism are the order of the day.

This Professor won’t talk about that because it is eas­i­er for him to blame oth­ers and not his friends. Sir there are near­ly (3) mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing on this rock [and give or take a few ]about twelve thou­sand 12,000 police officers.
Do you real­ly believe that they can be every where at the same time!

So even if one idler decides to go against force pol­i­cy and stop for a drink how is he to blame for a mur­der com­mit­ted 80 miles away?
It seems to me that your anti police stance /​rhetoric is seep­ing through your pores and your think it is civility.

It is your fail­ure to real­ize that you are also a part of the prob­lem con­ve­nient­ly for­get­ting facts. I hate crim­i­nals, I hate cor­rupt politi­cians, I hate cor­rupt cops. I also hate those that poss­es the know how to help to make this bet­ter but choose to find a media house to high­light the fault in others.

Pointing fin­gers, solves noth­ing, We have a prob­lem sir and we need to rid the coun­try of this scourge, the police aren’t the ones killing people.

Encourage your fam­i­ly and friends to tell what they know. Encourage your friends to speak with their con­stituents to give infor­ma­tion on who the crim­i­nals are. The police need the resources to fight this monster.

Police offi­cers fight each day to uphold the image and poli­cies of the JCF. Most are hon­est peo­ple who sac­ri­fice their time, fam­i­ly and them­selves to fight crime and to pre­vent it…they need all the help they can get. Richard Porter

Crime is only a prob­lem if it is affect­ing rich people.….
Before you think I have gone com­plete­ly berserk it was a tongue in cheek com­ment designed to get you to pay attention.

With the num­ber of mur­ders and a gen­er­al rise in seri­ous felonies, I want­ed to bring a few facts to the atten­tion of our people.
Recently a woman who hap­pened to be a lawyer and a sup­posed crim­i­nal rights advo­cate was report­ed­ly killed by a crim­i­nal she alleged­ly took into her home.
No tears here, there are hun­dreds of thou­sands of Jamaicans who have been vic­tim­ized by crime, if any per­son wants to be of help, those per­sons could use some sup­port, not know and con­vict­ed criminals.
That is the rea­son I will not rec­og­nize them as human rights activists, they are crim­i­nal rights activists.

I learned also that the father of for­mer PNP Politician Kern Spencer was shot and injured. I am relieved that the elder Spencer sur­vived the ordeal and was able to get off a few shots at his assailants, sor­ry he was unable to lay them out.
His son took to social media to berate the police for not answer­ing the phone at the Balaclava Police sta­tion. [Under what sce­nario would the police not answer the damn phone], that is indefensible?

Kern Spencer alleged that the 911 oh sor­ry 119 oper­a­tor took too much time col­lect­ing the infor­ma­tion after they called to report that his father was shot.
Sorry to break it to the [enti­tled] younger mis­ter Spencer but that is what emer­gency oper­a­tors do they try to get all of the salient infor­ma­tion possible.
What is told them is relayed to respond­ing offi­cers enabling them to make good deci­sions on their arrival at the inci­dent scene.

Information giv­en to emer­gency oper­a­tors also some­times becomes crit­i­cal evi­dence for court pro­ceed­ings later.
So unless Kern expect­ed that the oper­a­tor should have changed the rules at the mere men­tion of his fam­i­ly name his crit­i­cism of the police is.… oh well.
Here’s the thing Kern issued an impas­sioned plea about the gun crime in our coun­try and how it needs to end. Commendable but crime is crime Kern, white col­lar, blue col­lar, it’s all crime you know what I mean right?

As a state Minister in the for­mer PNP Administration, you could have kept your nose clean but you did­n’t. No crime is good, the crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it court threw out the case but that does not mean you were innocent.
When we get on our high horse about crime we bet­ter make sure that we don’t have skele­tons in our own closets.
Criminals are no respecter of per­sons, it may seem like they are for a minute but soon­er or lat­er there will be a clear recog­ni­tion that these hood­lums do not respect life, they do not care who they kill.

CRIMINAL RIGHTS SILENCE

Young unem­ployed youths who nev­er got their voic­es heard, nev­er had pow­er, are nev­er going to give back the pow­er the gun gives them.
They com­man­deer women to have sex with them. They take the prop­er­ty of oth­ers when­ev­er they chose to, they are feared, revered, they become infa­mous, and they have the pow­er of life and death.
That’s pow­er they will not give back only to return to the shad­ows of incon­se­quen­tial and unknown.
Those weapons will have to be plucked from their cold life­less fingers.

We are a coun­try at war but there is a trag­ic irony which needs report­ing on so we will attempt to bring it to the atten­tion of you my read­ers once again today.
Have you noticed the blan­ket yet pal­pa­ble silence of the many crim­i­nal rights lob­by oper­at­ing in Jamaica despite the hor­ren­dous nature and vol­ume of mur­ders occur­ring daily?
The silence is deafening.

We just thought it would be inter­est­ing to point out to the Jamaican peo­ple the incon­sis­ten­cy of these groups who com­plain about so-called abus­es by the secu­ri­ty forces. Yet they are death­ly silent when inno­cent Jamaicans are slaugh­tered by thugs. So we will name but a few of the groups we have labeled .….
[ENEMIES OF THE STATE]

Want To Stop The Killings In Jamaica/​Here’s How…

Independent Jamaica Council For Human Rights.
Jamaicans For Justice.
Amnesty International.
Jamaica Forum for Lesbians All-sexuals and gays.
INDECOM.
Families Against State Terrorism(FAST).
Citizens Advocacy Group International (CAGI).

Litany Of Anti-police Groups Silent On Homicides/​JFJ/​FAST/​PMI/​IACHR /​etal Hypocrites And Frauds

These are but a few of the groups sup­pos­ed­ly advo­cat­ing for rights on the Island, crim­i­nal rights that is.
These groups oper­ate inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er but declare that they Constantly cam­paign against any denial of Human Rights and civ­il lib­er­ties in Jamaica and to under­take or spon­sor all actions nec­es­sary and pos­si­ble to secure redress and pub­lic dis­ap­proval for all infringe­ments of these rights. To coöper­ate and asso­ciate with oth­er groups and orga­ni­za­tions which have sim­i­lar aims.

In 2014, (CAGI) blast­ed the Jamaica Observer in a scathing let­ter under the sig­na­ture of Jeremy Soutar, who is the admin­is­tra­tor of Citizens Advocacy Group International. CAGI’s attack on the pub­li­ca­tion was for dar­ing to praise the then Administration for act­ing proac­tive­ly in the han­dling of the Mario Deane case.
Even though the Government act­ed expe­di­tious­ly to deal with the alle­ga­tions in the case as they were pre­sent­ed to it (CAGI) want­ed the Government to jump high­er and was angered that any­one would dare side with the Government instead of pil­ing onto the entire police force.

Nations Not Hamstrung By Over-reach­ing Human Rights Advocacy Are Economic Models For The World…

Being proac­tive is also demon­strat­ed in the fol­low­ing cir­cum­stances: (CAGI) claimed.

- When a gov­ern­ment impress­es upon its secu­ri­ty forces that the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of cit­i­zens are uncon­di­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed and that any act or omis­sion which infringes upon those rights could land offend­ing offi­cers in prison and/​or defend­ing civ­il suits for con­sti­tu­tion­al contraventions.

- When a gov­ern­ment aggres­sive­ly mon­i­tors the con­duct of its ser­vants to ensure adher­ence to pol­i­cy guide­lines and force orders.

- When a gov­ern­ment puts mea­sures in place to ensure those police offi­cers pay all or part of the mon­ey dam­ages award­ed by the Supreme Court to vic­tims when they abuse the rights of citizens.

It was CAGI that was first to take action on August 7, 2014, by demand­ing the Government of Jamaica act, forth­with, to remove all the on-duty police offi­cers from the Barnett Street Police Station who breached the duty of care owed to the civil­ian vic­tim, Mario Deane.

Other actions of the group against the Government in rela­tion to the unfor­tu­nate and untime­ly demise of Mario Deane were:

1) rec­om­men­da­tions to the direc­tors of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour in the US State Department to cut aid in the area of nation­al secu­ri­ty because we felt that “such aid is only fuelling abuse by the high-hand­ed, reck­less, mali­cious and unpro­fes­sion­al mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force”.

Selective Human Rights Vigilance By Amnesty & Others…

2) urged INDECOM to con­duct a speedy and thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into the matter

3) called for inter­ven­tion from the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), Human Rights Watch (HRW), Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and Amnesty International

The first response and/​or inter­ven­tion by Citizens Action for Principle and Integrity (CAPI), the Government, and oth­er local human rights inter­ests were made sub­se­quent to the actions tak­en by CAGI which we, nonethe­less, ful­ly support.

CAGI is com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing uni­ver­sal respect for human rights for all cit­i­zens of Jamaica and, by exten­sion, the world, and will endeav­or to demand that the Government of Jamaica respect the inter­na­tion­al treaties to which it is bound.

We will also endeav­or to uti­lize the pow­er of our inter­na­tion­al part­ners and affil­i­ates to enforce our demands.

Human rights orga­ni­za­tions like CAGl can nev­er be “put out of busi­ness”. We are as rel­e­vant today as we will be tomor­row, so long as there are rights to pro­tect and promote.

Unless the Government of Jamaica acts deci­sive­ly and proac­tive­ly in respect­ing the rights of cit­i­zens in pre­vent­ing abuse and loss of life by the actions and omis­sions of its ser­vants, then the Mario Deane tragedy of 2014 will become the Mario Deane tragedy of the future.

The Jamaica Human Rights Gravy Train.……

These are the groups which are hold­ing our coun­try hostage. These are the for­eign-fund­ed groups which I have writ­ten about year after year with their Jamaican counterparts[house slaves] which have dri­ven fear in Portia and her band of thieves and has Andrew Holness shit­ting his pants.
So it is clear that in order to fix the crime sit­u­a­tion in our coun­try we have to acknowl­edge that these groups are an imped­i­ment to any solution.

Every year thou­sands of Americans are killed by police all across the coun­try under dubi­ous and often­times bla­tant­ly crim­i­nal ways. In addi­tion to that, the wide dis­par­i­ty in the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice between blacks and whites is well doc­u­ment­ed and vast­ly wor­thy of human rights vigilance.
Immigrants are round­ed up and herd­ed into con­cen­tra­tion camps and moved around the coun­try so that they may not have con­tact with attor­neys who wish to lit­i­gate on their behalf.
Yet these groups are silent…
There is nev­er a whim­per from either of these groups in any way that would be con­se­quen­tial to these bla­tant and obvi­ous vio­la­tions of human rights and human dig­ni­ty by the most pow­er­ful coun­try on the plan­et with the resources to do the right thing.

Why then are they all in Jamaica and oth­er poor nations which are strug­gling with crime and vio­lence, mak­ing demands they know the Governments can­not hon­or and which will lead to even greater desta­bi­liza­tion of their societies?

We Intend To Let Our Voices Be Heard Loud And Clear Against The Trial Lawyers And Rights Lobbyists Who Want Criminals To Continue To Kill Innocent People…

MONEY.…

There is no doubt that these groups have small impov­er­ished nations by the balls, I fun­da­men­tal­ly under­stand that the Prime Minister has to con­sid­er the real and present threats expressed by Jeremy Soutar, in 2014.
The Government changed hands but the threat against the nation’s sov­er­eign­ty remains. In fair­ness to Prime Minister Holness who cam­paigned on a plat­form of “Prosperity,” he is dealt a bad hand.
I don’t know whether Holness would have had the balls to tack­le crime head-on were he not con­strained by the specter of the eco­nom­ic guil­lo­tine and sab­o­tage hang­ing over our country.
But I do under­stand his pan­der­ing even though I give him no respect for not stand­ing up against them.

I will attempt to explain what is at play here.
Poor coun­tries which are unable to deal deci­sive­ly with crime are unable to attract or keep invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. Governments with the best inten­tions are still unable to hire more than just so many work­ers because they depend on tax­a­tion and levies to pay their oper­a­tional expenses.
So the true dri­vers of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty can­not be Government [as is believed in Jamaica] it is the pri­vate sec­tor which is the true cre­ator of eco­nom­ic growth, not Government.

Since WW11 the world’s pop­u­la­tion has more than dou­bled, Jamaica’s pop­u­la­tion is not exempt from those growth trends. Governments have to find new ways to attract employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for their populations.
If they are unable to because of crime the prob­lem tends to self-mul­ti­ply as we have seen in Jamaica’s case.
And so it con­tin­ues when crime is in the news no one wants to invest and few­er peo­ple want to visit.

If there are no new eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty coun­tries become slaves to lend­ing Institutions a- la the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Paris Club et al.
These mega mon­e­tary insti­tu­tions are all head­quar­tered in pow­er­ful Industrialized countries.
Rich nations do not bor­row mon­ey from these insti­tu­tions, poor nations do.
Why would these insti­tu­tions and their share­hold­ers want the nations which are slaves to them to find their way out of pover­ty and dependency?
Who would they lend to if poor African, Asian, Latin and South American and Caribbean nations were to sud­den­ly become rich?

If you are unable to see why the con­nec­tions between the groups oper­at­ing in our coun­try and crime are so intri­cate­ly linked then I can­not help you under­stand it.
Michael Manley’s phi­los­o­phy [not his actions] was ahead of his time and so he had to go .……
They were not going to have it. They are not going to have it today. It’s just slav­ery of a dif­fer­ent kind and we are way too blind to see it.
Nations which ben­e­fit from the fleec­ing of poor­er nations lit­er­al­ly wor­ship their secu­ri­ty forces[not sug­gest­ing we do].
They under­stand that they must keep crime and ter­ror­ism at bay, they also know how to do it and they do.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness told mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces that there are ele­ments in the coun­try work­ing to dri­ve a wedge between the Police and Military.
I laugh at this because if what he says is true, that infor­ma­tion would most like­ly have come from .….….… well the mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces themselves.
If the Prime Minister has cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion as he asserts, he should make that infor­ma­tion pub­lic as soon as possible.

Holness main­tained that there was a con­spir­a­cy involv­ing both mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces and crim­i­nals, who are threat­ened by the oper­a­tions and who fear the lev­el of coöper­a­tion between both arms of the secu­ri­ty forces — the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the Jamaica Defence Force.

What non­sense, the police, and mil­i­tary have been work­ing togeth­er from as far back as I can remem­ber and beyond. There is noth­ing new about this so I would guess that if there are any plans to cre­ate dis­rup­tion between the forces it is not because they are collaborating.
The Prime Minister would be bet­ter served by look­ing at his friends in the Media and over at INDECOM there he will see the vile demoguges who are fight­ing valiant­ly to dri­ve a wedge between the two forces.
It is the vile divi­sive enti­ty which pass­es for Media which is and has been doing the dam­age cut­ting the police out of pic­tures and sow­ing dis­cord, no one else.

A friend asked me recent­ly why I thought peo­ple hat­ed the police?
First of all Soldiers are not on the streets dai­ly lock­ing up peo­ple for the crimes they com­mit, so nat­u­ral­ly when a joint force par­ty of police and sol­diers attempt to arrest an offend­er, of course, that offend­er will appeal to the sol­dier whom they see as the last line of help before they are cart­ed off to jail.
But I also thought the ques­tion required a deep­er look and a more com­pre­hen­sive response.

My response to him.
Police offi­cers are the peo­ple autho­rized to take people’s free­dom away.
Even when those actions are car­ried out by the mil­i­tary as in some total­i­tar­i­an states, those actions are gen­er­al­ly char­ac­ter­ized as secret police actions.

For the most part in the con­text of Jamaica over the decades since inde­pen­dence, we have had an inter­est­ing paradox.
After gov­er­nance of the coun­try was hand­ed over to the natives, both polit­i­cal par­ties saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enrich them­selves at the expense of the poor.
This was not con­fined to Jamaica or the wider Caribbean region alone.

It was also the norm in post-Colonial Africa, Latin and South America where cor­rup­tion after col­o­niza­tion became a seri­ous problem.
In Jamaica, the strat­e­gy was to keep the peo­ple igno­rant and inex­orably loy­al to the two polit­i­cal par­ties with the police as the scape­goat in the middle.
They had to have the police, but their sup­port was with their bases of oper­a­tions, the areas we call con­stituen­cies. O/​C [GARRISONS]
That is the rea­son politi­cians always show up to their bases of oper­a­tions when­ev­er the police take action against crim­i­nals in those areas.
As such the police are seen as vil­lains and the politi­cians are seen as saviors.

My friend dis­agrees, he argues that the fact that the JCF was formed as a response to the Morant Bay Rebellion and was seen inevitably as a force in sup­port of the Powerful monied elites against the peas­antry are the rea­sons behind the hatred.
I don’t deny him the his­to­ry of the for­ma­tion of the JCF but the 11^th of October 1865 and the Morant Bay rebel­lion is a long way away.

There is a non­sen­si­cal nar­ra­tive preva­lent in Jamaica that if some­how you were to place sol­diers to patrol the streets there would be few­er shoot­ings and more coöper­a­tion between the peo­ple and mem­bers of the military.
I would laugh if that asser­tion was­n’t so incred­i­bly sophomoric.
First of all, tell that to the fam­i­ly of Mister Keith Clarke who was gunned down in his home by mem­bers of the JDF.

My state­ments are not designed to impugn the integri­ty or the efforts of mem­bers of the military.They are the com­ments of some­one con­ver­sant with the dif­fer­ences between the roles the two agen­cies serve.
It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to con­vince Jamaicans that peo­ple are peo­ple and not police offi­cers or sol­diers. Police offi­cers are not from Mars and sol­diers from Pluto.
Most, if not all of the young peo­ple who step for­ward to serve, do so out of love for their agency of choice and a sense of how they want to be seen when they vol­un­teer for either force.
What dif­fer­en­ti­ates them is their dis­ci­pline of choice.

The Prime Minister and his Minister of National Security would be bet­ter served by using their air­time to edu­cate the peo­ple on their respon­si­bil­i­ties as citizens.
The Prime Minister speaks with forked tongue about cit­i­zens rights while he igno­rant­ly and duplic­i­tous­ly ignores their respon­si­bil­i­ty to obey the laws and respect of our law enforce­ment officers.

He should be ashamed to keep talk­ing about mon­i­tor­ing reports for alle­ga­tions of abuse while he has already con­vened a pan­el [as I warned he would do] of his elit­ist friends, to sit in judg­ment of the secu­ri­ty forces.[remem­ber Tivoli Gardens].
He should be ashamed to keep talk­ing about rights with­out a sin­gle word of charge to the vira­gos and hood­lums who tear off their cloth­ing, reveal­ing their most pri­vate parts when the forces attempt to do their jobs.

This is the embar­rass­ment and dis­gust­ing affront to their dig­ni­ty that Andrew Holness wants mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces to endure while car­ry­ing out their duties with­out upset­ting the sen­si­bil­i­ties of these hoodlums.
In oth­er words, he wants them to place their lives on the line to save his polit­i­cal back­side with­out cre­at­ing a stir, with­out mak­ing waves, and that should include stop­ping the high­ly doped-up and hal­lu­ci­nat­ed killers and bring them in with their weapon­ry with­out fir­ing a shot.

What Andrew needs to do is to ask the Rights lob­by he so obe­di­ent­ly fol­lows and Terrence Willams and tell them to go do that job. Jamaica will indeed owe them a great debt of grat­i­tude if they can pull that off.
Failing which Andrew Holness should take sev­er­al seats and shut up. Clearly, he has no idea what it takes to stop these grue­some killings and his lack of sup­port for the secu­ri­ty forces is caus­ing more harm than good.

Jamaica needs a state of emer­gency not a par­tial state of emer­gency or a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency. There needs to be a sense of awak­en­ing. An awak­en­ing which rec­og­nizes that the coun­try is rapid­ly slid­ing into anarchy.
Talk and plat­i­tudes will not stop the slide.
Most impor­tant­ly keep­ing up appear­ances instead of doing the dirty work is apply­ing paint to a bro­ken down and dilap­i­dat­ed struc­ture which inevitably will collapse.

THE GOVERNMENT IS FLAILING AWAY AT CRIME, DEMONSTRATING THAT IT HAS NO BALLS TO SERIOUSLY TACKLE CRIME, SO IT’S STRATEGY IS TO DESTROY & DISCREDIT THE POLICE FORCE.

Jamaican Politicians are large­ly pig-head­ed fools, we all know that. Well, Member of Parliament Horace Dalley from Clarendon con­firmed it recent­ly in a sub­mis­sion to the parliament.
Expressing him­self in the house Dalley demand­ed that the Government cre­ate a spe­cial squad to inves­ti­gate what he said was approx­i­mate­ly six behead­ings in the parish over the course of about a year.

Seemingly angry the mem­ber of par­lia­ment berat­ed the admin­is­tra­tion for not being [“jerked”] into recog­ni­tion that some­thing is wrong. He demand­ed over and over that a spe­cial squad be formed to inves­ti­gate behead­ings, a clear reminder that peo­ple with no idea what they are talk­ing about should leave secu­ri­ty mat­ters alone, even though I under­stand what appears to be gen­uine con­cerns on Dalley’s part.

Then he said it, “call in the FBI “the mem­ber demanded!
Whoa, there mis­ter mem­ber, when did Jamaica become a state of the United States? I mean,I total­ly get that because of you guys the JCF has become a total­ly inef­fec­tive and almost use­less agency.
I also under­stand why you guys did it, why would you all want an effec­tive police force that can actu­al­ly inves­ti­gate and lock up politicians?
That would be peo­ple like you mem­ber Dalley , but what author­i­ty does the FBI have to inves­ti­gate crimes in Jamaica?

What mis­ter Dalley’s state­ment revealed was anoth­er truth which I have spo­ken to repeat­ed­ly, whether PNP or JLP nei­ther par­ty under­stands the com­plex­i­ty of the prob­lem and nei­ther par­ty has the answers.
Ain’t this a bitch though, that Jamaicans love to talk about sov­er­eign­ty and human rights but as soon as shit begins to hit the fan they want oth­ers to clean up their filth?

I mean the only time Jamaican crim­i­nals real­ly face jus­tice is when they are cart­ed off to America. Sorry, mis­ter Dalley you are one of the mem­bers of Parliament who rep­re­sent the parish, don’t tell me you don’t have action­able intel­li­gence which may help the police?
I do know that the police leaves a lot to be desired but come on/.

.….….….….….….….….….….….….….…..

So Minister of National Security Robert Montague is kind of at it again, reveal­ing that the Administration has revamped the ear­ly retire­ment pol­i­cy that was once in effect.
Montague indi­cat­ed that bad cops had to go[wonder when all the bad politi­cians are going to leave[?
Anyway, The Minister insist­ed that “ a minor­i­ty” of JCF mem­bers has remained a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge in an atmos­phere in which “there is an inher­ent desire from cit­i­zens of the coun­try to sup­port the police in their efforts”.

“That same cit­i­zen­ry, in addi­tion to var­i­ous civ­il soci­ety groups, have been very vocal in their call for the force to be rid of cor­rupt elements.
As a Government, we have been respon­sive to the demands made by the pub­lic and oth­er groups.
As such, last year we pro­vid­ed a mech­a­nism, in the form of a revamped Early Retirement Scheme for police offi­cers, that would help achieve this objective”.

So let me get this straight, old­er mem­bers are by virtue of their age cor­rupt?
Maybe I’m miss­ing some­thing here but if the intent of the pol­i­cy is to send home mem­bers who are cor­rupt, why have these so-called cor­rupt mem­bers not being pros­e­cut­ed, using the very same infor­ma­tion that the Government intends to use to send them home?
So now every mem­ber who takes the ear­ly retire­ment option will leave the force with a cloud over their heads” see he was one of the crooked ones”.
Not cool…

These announce­ments and the ensu­ing on air chat­ting from the likes of Cliff Hughes of Nationwide Radio the pro­pa­gan­da arm of the gov­ern­ment demon­strates when dish tow­el tun tablecloth.
This is a clear demon­stra­tion of what hap­pens when lit­tle boys are giv­en grown men’s jobs and they can­not cope.
Separate and apart from Montague’s inart­ful and mis­lead­ing state­ments on the Government’s new pol­i­cy, why could­n’t this be han­dled in-house?
I don’t think this is good pol­i­cy, at best I know it’s bad pol­i­tics to sug­gest that mem­bers who take advan­tage of the option to leave ear­ly are by virtue of their deci­sions, corrupt.

What will the nar­ra­tive be when these peo­ple leave and there is more [not less] cor­rup­tion in the force, what then?
Why would the Administration sul­ly the char­ac­ter of mem­bers even as it cod­i­fied into law mak­ing it a crim­i­nal offense for offi­cers to leave the force with­out giv­ing a pri­or six months notice to the Commissioner?
It’s hard to imag­ine how the Government is mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for offi­cers to leave freely, going to the extent of cod­i­fy­ing impris­on­ment into the law while pur­port­ing to be plan­ning to cut some loose?

Is this real pol­i­cy or just fod­der for Cliff Hughes to chat about?

Good move mis­ter President. Your first job is to pro­tect your peo­ple from killers. The idea that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is not a deter­rent is stu­pid and deceptive.

No one who has ever been giv­en the death penal­ty has ever returned to kill. Those opposed to the death penal­ty have no data to sup­port the neg­a­tive. They can­not show how many peo­ple who nor­mal­ly would have killed, did not because they knew they will be killed in turn.

What we do know is that we see the upward trend of vio­lent crimes in coun­tries where there is no death penal­ty. It’s time for that lie to be shred­ded and exposed.

This writer has long argued that the nations who have reached Industrialized sta­tus did not do so by ignor­ing the crim­i­nals in their midst. In fact Canada Britain, most of west­ern Europe and the United States have had very strict laws and poli­cies in place which got them to where they are today.

Now that they have fixed their soci­eties they are able to finesse the broad­er issues of rights because they have estab­lished their jus­tice sys­tems, estab­lished effec­tive law enforce­ment struc­tures and estab­lished appro­pri­ate leg­isla­tive frame­works which inter­dict, indicts and incar­cer­ate felons and keep them in jail where they belong.

All of these infra­struc­tur­al frame­works did not occur overnight they hap­pened after deci­sive actions have been tak­en by their secu­ri­ty ser­vices to clear out those who would destroy life and property.
It is instruc­tive to rec­og­nize that in none of these coun­tries does Amnesty International or any oth­er so-called rights lob­by get to tell west­ern democ­ra­cies how to run their countries.

Neither have they both­ered with the inci­dents of human rights abus­es in pow­er­ful west­ern nations.
So we are left to con­tend with the glar­ing facts, poor coun­tries with peo­ple of col­or are best kept in the sta­tus quo of crime and pover­ty which results in more crime and pover­ty so that they may con­tin­ue being slaves to the rich lenders in the pow­er­ful indus­tri­al nations which just hap­pen to be large­ly white-dom­i­nat­ed nations.

Small nations lead­ers like those in Jamaica can con­tin­ue on their path to failed state sta­tus by pre­tend­ing Jamaica has arrived while hid­ing behind grill fortifications.
We will see how long those grill for­ti­fi­ca­tions will hold.

You have seen me crit­i­cize Jamaican politi­cians PNP and JLP alike where war­rant­ed and to be frank, it’s gen­er­al­ly always warranted.
Some of the Island’s Politicians do mean well [ a small and shrink­ing minor­i­ty if you will].
It’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett does not mean well for Tourism even though he is a long­time politi­cian who has to bear some respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­di­tion of the coun­try to some minute degree.
The same may be said of Christopher Tufton the Health Minister who has not been dirt­ied by the stains of Garrison Politics.

On both sides of the polit­i­cal divide, there may only be a few good men and women who are not sul­lied, one way or the oth­er by graft, cor­rup­tion, and deceit of some kind.
Even those who may not have com­mit­ted crim­i­nal acts [or rather have not been held account­able], deceit and com­plic­i­ty even by their very silence are omnipresent. This, when they should have spo­ken up and out against the wrong­do­ings of their col­leagues in a non-polit­i­cal way.
Deceit and com­plic­i­ty endure in oth­ers when they do speak up and out when they should have remained silent.‘

In no oth­er Politician prac­tic­ing today have I seen more deceit and com­plic­i­ty than in the Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck.
In him I see a hyp­ocrite extra­or­di­naire who speaks with forked tongue, as native Americans once char­ac­ter­ized the white men who nev­er signed a treaty they did not break.

Chuck’s dis­dain for offi­cers of the law and his pro­cliv­i­ty to appease the local aris­to­crat­ic rab­ble which dwells in the enclaves of upper Saint Andrew rivals only his forked tongue on issues of relevance.
I have writ­ten expan­sive­ly on Delroy Chucks harm­ful imprint on the rule of law in our coun­try but by and large in the Orwellian uni­verse in which our coun­try oper­ates Chuck will inevitably go down as a hero who has advanced Jamaica’s jus­tice system.

Just days ago police released a report they com­piled in which they out­lined extra­or­di­nar­i­ly light sen­tences being met­ed out by the courts in the west­er­ly parts of the country.
The law-enforce­ment report detailed a com­pre­hen­sive case by case analy­sis of indi­vid­ual cas­es in which Judges in the same cir­cuit have inex­plic­a­bly giv­en felons what could only be char­ac­ter­ized as tiny slaps on the wrist.

Court Management Services Response Weak And Demonstrative Of Deeper Scars.

Delroy Chuck, expe­ri­enc­ing what could eas­i­ly pass for a pang of decen­cy and dare I say real­i­ty and duty to coun­try, if not hon­esty, declared that he has con­cerns about the dis­par­i­ty in the sen­tences being imposed by judges. “There needs to be greater con­sis­ten­cy by judges,” he said, adding that sen­tences should send a strong sig­nal to soci­ety about the repug­nance of crim­i­nal activities.

I was stunned at that state­ment from Chuck so much so that I wrote the above arti­cle on the CVM’s response but did not men­tion Chuck’s response.
I thought his state­ment was self-serv­ing, and could only have been giv­en because he thought there was lever­age there for himself.
It did not take long for my sus­pi­cions to be con­firmed Sunday Gleaner of January 21^st.
Justice Minister Delroy Chuck has hit back at the police and oth­er crit­ics who have tak­en issue with per­ceived light sen­tences being imposed by judges for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm and ammu­ni­tion.

It was not just this writer who found Chuck’s about-face duplic­i­tous and self-serv­ing, the glean­er admit­ted as much stating.
Days after pub­licly admit­ting that he also has con­cerns about the dis­par­i­ty between some of the sen­tences being imposed, Mr. Chuck says crit­ics should under­stand that sen­tenc­ing is not a sci­ence and that every case can be explained.

But this is vin­tage Delroy Chuck, the very man who paid homage to a deceased crim­i­nal area” don” on the occa­sion of his demise but has noth­ing pos­i­tive to say about valiant police offi­cers who give their lives for their country.
Chuck stu­pid­ly crit­i­cised the police, for what he char­ac­ter­izes as a sin­gling out of cas­es with light sen­tences, to make the argu­ment that the jus­tice sys­tem should be blamed for the esca­la­tion in crime.
When fac­tu­al­ly what pass­es as a jus­tice sys­tem in the coun­try is objec­tive­ly and demon­stra­bly part­ly to be blamed for the esca­la­tion in seri­ous crimes.
The catch and release of mur­der­ers back onto the streets on a dai­ly basis only so that they may kill again is a good place to start if Chuck in an edu­ca­tion on basic indis­putable facts.

The very same Delroy Chuck who just last week agreed with the sober assess­ment of the police doc­u­men­tary report­ing flips and makes the scur­rilous claim that empir­i­cal data should not be used to form objec­tive conclusions.
The shock­ing trav­es­ty in Delroy Chuck’s shame­less about-face may only be attrib­uted to a weak yet trans­par­ent attempt to cur­ry favor and run defen­sive cov­er­age for his crim­i­nal lov­ing cohorts on the bench who are sub­vert­ing the rule of law.

A shame­less dis­play of col­lu­sion by the rul­ing class as it clos­es ranks even as the peas­antry eats itself alive and the streets run red with the blood shed by the very demons they release back onto them.