I wait­ed for it won­der­ing when it was going to come, I knew as night fol­lows day it was just a mat­ter of time before some brave-heart steps to the fore and demand the head of Commissioner Carl Williams on a platter.
And then it hap­pened, July fourth I awoke in a lit­tle hotel room in South Carolina, checked the Jamaican papers as I always do most morn­ings. This morn­ing I had more time on my hands , Aaah the fourth of July , no work for me I closed the lit­tle pat­ty shop and took the fam­i­ly on a Southern Road trip cul­mi­nat­ing in the Palmetto state.

The Observer Article was unmis­take­ably clear Take action or go, sen­a­tor tells police chief .
Government sen­a­tor Charles Sinclair , a for­mer Montego Bay may­or, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, said “It is becom­ing clear­er by the day that the com­mis­sion­er of police is out of his depth” as he has mis­in­ter­pret­ed the pro­pos­al for a state of emer­gency to help reduce crime in St James.“For him to have inter­pret­ed the pro­pos­al to cau­ter­ize the run­away mur­der rate with a state of emer­gency to mean it being the panacea to fix the prob­lem is disin­gen­u­ous to say the least.”

Okay there you have it, that response came after the Commissioner of Police Doctor Carl Williams was report­ed to have reject­ed the idea of a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency as a response to the spate of killings in Montego Bay and it’s envi­rons. Commissioner Williams is report­ed to have said that a state of emer­gency is not a panacea to the crime sit­u­a­tion there, as the prob­lem is social.
The Commissioner cor­rect­ly asked, after the state of Emergency , then what?
If I want to go shoot some­one or rob a busi­ness-place but I learned that the streets are flood­ed with cops , I believe I would stay put until they leave.
A state of emer­gency is a band-aid approach which does noth­ing to sus­tain­ably elim­i­nate crime, it tamps it down for the dura­tion of the exer­cise until the secu­ri­ty offi­cers leave.
The cost ben­e­fit analy­sis weighs heav­i­ly in not hav­ing one, pri­mar­i­ly because it is in-sus­tain­able and prob­a­bly does more harm than good.
They end up trau­ma­tiz­ing res­i­dents when their move­ments are cur­tailed and their pri­va­cy invad­ed. This inevitably has the oppo­site effect and fur­ther alien­ates the police from the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.

CRIME WILL GO DOWN THIS YEAR.….……really?

Let me first say that I have had my share of crit­i­cisms of Commissioner Williams, who by the way is the most qual­i­fied Commissioner of Police any­where in the west­ern Hemisphere . I have from time to time said he can accom­plish much more with what he has if he does a bet­ter job of mak­ing sure his top heavy high com­mand get out of the offices where they make grand pro­nounce­ments and noth­ing to back them up.

I have also stat­ed on sev­er­al occa­sions that he can do a bet­ter job of ensur­ing that his mid­dle man­agers get into the streets and super­vise the young offi­cers , which is a con­fi­dence boost­er to young offi­cers when their super­vi­sors are on scene.
However let it be know that when it comes to crime fight­ing, and police work I am going to toss my lot in with the Commissioner of police over a john­ny-come-late­ly who believes crime must be addressed now, on his demand. I do not know Carl Williams per­son­al­ly but lit­er­al­ly every­one I have spo­ken to, includ­ing peo­ple whose judge­ment I trust have tes­ti­fied to his integri­ty and ded­i­ca­tion to duty.
So before we pro­ceed I want to ask mis­ter Johhny-come-late­ly to match his resume’ on crime fight­ing against that of Carl Williams, Lawyer or not !!!

According to Sinclair A state of emer­gency, accord­ing to Sinclair, would reflect a pol­i­cy deci­sion of Government which facil­i­tates the State giv­ing addi­tion­al pow­ers, resources human and oth­er­wise to the Jamaica Constabulary in the parish to cau­terise the esca­lat­ing mur­ders. “At this moment there is a tremen­dous fear fac­tor in the cit­i­zen­ry; chil­dren are unable to go to school as they are afraid to cross the imag­i­nary bound­aries in com­mu­ni­ties; peo­ple are afraid to go out to church, resource and com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres can­not car­ry on pro­grams as par­tic­i­pants are fear­ful in going out to the events. If it is not police action that restores calm and peace in the first instance and in the short­est pos­si­ble time, I don’t know what else can do so,” he said In sup­port of his posi­tion Sinclair allud­ed to reports out of El Salvador where the mur­der rate was cut by one half in 2015 due to height­ened police activ­i­ty. He went on to say, “I guess to the com­mis­sion­er of police, Jamaica’s cir­cum­stances are dif­fer­ent.”(Jamaicaobservericom)

I fault com­mis­sion­er Williams for not push­ing the pre­vi­ous Government for a leg­isla­tive agen­da which gives him a work­ing shot at accom­plish­ing what some Jamaicans want , safe communities.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​m​m​i​s​h​-​v​o​w​s​-​n​e​w​-​a​t​t​a​c​k​-​b​l​o​o​d​-​d​r​e​n​c​h​e​d​-​s​t​-​j​a​m​e​s​-​d​i​v​i​s​i​on/

On the oth­er hand I sup­port his view that a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency will not have the effect suf­fer­ing Jamaicans expect it to have.
As I said ear­li­er the neg­a­tives are sure to out­weigh any pos­i­tive which could poten­tial­ly be gained from a state of emergency ..
The police have con­sis­tent­ly said that the upsurge of vio­lent crime in the west­ern parish­es may be attrib­uted to the infa­mous lot­to scam­ming which has become a tremen­dous source of income for a seg­ment of the crim­i­nal under­world on the Island.
Not only has it enabled those who were pre­vi­ous­ly engaged to be flush with cash it has attract­ed a huge sud-set of vio­lent crim­i­nals who also want in on the action.
This is where Commissioner Williams and the high com­mand as well as the fed­er­a­tion should have pushed for tough leg­is­la­tion to go after scam­mers tying them togeth­er as a crim­i­nal enterprise.
Go after them that way and they will be run­ning away from being asso­ci­at­ed with any­one involved .

Additionally there is word that mem­bers of the police depart­ment are involved in the scam, some­thing which would not sur­prise me.
The fact that the police depart­ment can bare­ly find itself out of a brown paper bag makes it lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble for the affect­ed areas to see a reduc­tion in crime any­time soon.
Since Charles Sinclair has been a for­mer Mayor and now a Government Senator I would like to see what his per­son­al leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ments are, you know beyond big chat. What has he pro­posed either as may­or or sen­a­tor which has been adopt­ed legislatively ?
It would be fool­ish for any­one to believe that as a crim­i­nal lawyer and a politi­cian he does not have infor­ma­tion which could aid the police in their crime fight­ing efforts.
What steps has he tak­en to do his civic duty by say­ing some­thing when he sees something?

Many Jamaican Lawyers Are Not Above Board, They Should Not Expect To Get Special Treatment When They Break The Laws…

Is he mad at the Commissioner of Police for his fac­tu­al and unequiv­o­cal state­ments that a state of Emergency will not solve the prob­lem or is he mad because the Commissioner called out busi­ness peo­ple who are active­ly engaged in the lot­to scam.….….?
Pigs have a ten­den­cy to squeal when they get hit !!!
They can­not have it both ways , giv­ing the com­mis­sion­er of police bas­ket to car­ry water and then crit­i­ciz­ing him when the water spills out.
It makes politi­cians and polit­i­cal hacks look good when they get out front of the news and place them­selves in front of cam­eras but ask them what are the solu­tions and they have no clue.
Big words designed to impress their friends will not do a damn thing to end this scourge of crim­i­nal­i­ty and may­hem sweep­ing the Island.
Charles Sinclair has nev­er been a friend of the police so no one is sur­prised at his posi­tion. Grandstanding is what many of these mem­bers of the par­ty love to engage in.

A spade is a spade polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion be damned , Jamaica over party.

Any per­son who believes plac­ing some police and sol­diers in a com­mu­ni­ty will stop crime is a light­weight and a damn fool.
Crime has to be tack­led from Gordon House not 103-Old-Hope Road and cer­tain­ly not from a blow-hard politi­cian who does­n’t know his head from his ass.
Crime must be tack­led in a three-tiered-way, they know how to do it I believe but I doubt they want to do it , too many pow­er­ful and impor­tant peo­ple are mak­ing big mon­ey from crime on the Island.

The United States Government cre­at­ed the Rico Statute to com­bat the scourge of the Sicilian Mafia or what was known as La Cosa Nostra.
Prior to the Rico Statute which inves­ti­gat­ed , pros­e­cut­ed and incar­cer­at­ed mem­bers of New York’s Bonano, Genovese, Gambino, the Luchese and the Newark-based DeCavalcantes fam­i­lies the most author­i­ties could get mem­bers on were tax eva­sion charges.

The Feds changed the game and as Mob expert Jerry Capeci, who writes the “Gang Land” col­umn for the New York Sun, looks at the state of the four oth­er clans in the city’s infa­mous Five Families, plus the Newark-based DeCavalcantes. All have book­mak­ing, loan-shark­ing, and extor­tion rack­ets. The Genovese fam­i­ly and, to a less­er degree, the Luchese fam­i­ly (like the Gambinos) also have viable labor-rack­e­teer­ing endeav­ors that let them invest and laun­der their ill-got­ten gains in “legit­i­mate” indus­tries. Every clan has declined of late, some more than others.

Holness Should Give Gammon A Talking-to , Maybe Show Him The Door.…

Lotto scam­ming is small pota­toes com­pared to what the Mafia were doing yet no one talks about the Sicilian mafia in the United States as a force as it exist­ed years ago . Back then the streets of New York City, Newark New Jersey, Las Vegas Nevada and Chicago ran with blood from the wan­ton killings by mafia hoodlums.
Cities like Chicago still face an uphill task with gang shoot­ings, most­ly by African-American hood­lums but despite hav­ing the same pop­u­la­tion as Jamaica Chicago only records about 450 homi­cides com­pared to Jamaica’s over 1200.

There Is Need For Popular Mobilisation Against Crime

Three strikes laws placed many who would flaunt the laws away for life, though not per­fect , those laws allowed cit­i­zens to take their neigh­bor­hoods back from mur­der­ous crim­i­nals who pushed the enve­lope to see just how much they would be allowed to get away with.
Jamaican crim­i­nals are heads and shoul­ders above the police and politi­cians . They know they are favored over the police and they are exploit­ing that for all it’s worth.
There is much we can crit­i­cize the police and Commissioner Williams for , this is not it. Some of these politi­cians who are now open­ing their pie-holes and cry­ing are the most anti-police dem­a­gogues around.
Don’t come cry­ing to Commissioner Williams about gun­men it was not Carl Williams who cre­at­ed INDECOM and placed a polit­i­cal ego-mani­a­cal nar­cis­sist in charge to per­se­cute police..
Look into the mir­ror before you all begin to point fin­gers you hypocrites.

It’s lit­er­al­ly com­e­dy hour at the Apollo lis­ten­ing to the com­ments of Dr Peter Phillips the for­mer finance Minister of the People’s National Party Administration recent­ly defeat­ed at the polls.
Dr Phillips has been tout­ed as the heir-appar­ent of the PNP ‚des­tined to suc­ceed par­ty leader and for­mer Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.
To date despite those rum­blings the for­mer Prime Minister has not indi­cat­ed whether she is quite ready to exit the polit­i­cal stage and the par­ty leadership.

Phillips who pre­vi­ous­ly chal­lenged Miller for lead­er­ship of the par­ty and lost seem to have gone rogue even before the nation­al elec­tions of February 25^th 2016. In what many char­ac­ter­ized as a kamikaze type fix­a­tion on the leader of the oppo­si­tion’s house , Phillips con­tin­ued his attacks which some say may have cost his par­ty the elections.
Despite vot­ers con­cern with cor­rup­tion in Government and the pub­lic sec­tor, many peo­ple argue that Holness’ man­sion could not have come from siphon­ing off pub­lic funds because Andrew Holness had no access to pub­lic funds.

Voters who opined on social media, pri­vate blogs and the Jamaican media stat­ed clear­ly they thought Peter Phillips fix­a­tion on the leader of the Opposition’s house amount­ed to plain old Jamaican “bad mind”.
I believe Peter is as sil­ly as a Fox , but I will get back to that.
Despite Holness mak­ing full dis­clo­sure about how he and his wife Juliet,a real estate devel­op­er are able to afford their home Phillips has moved the goal post as this writer pre­dict­ed he would.
Peter Phillips now insist that Holness now the Prime Minister ‚table his dis­clo­sure in the par­lia­ment despite (1) there being no law which forces him to do so,(2) he has made his dis­clo­sure to three sep­a­rate media houses,(3) nei­ther the leader of the opposition,Peter Phillips him­self , nor any of the oppo­si­tion mem­bers have done so except Julian Robinson.

In what appears to be a seem­ing­ly irra­tional and dis­joint­ed set of state­ments made by Phillips , many are argu­ing that the for­mer finance min­is­ter may be los­ing it, but is he?
Speaking to Party loy­al­ists in Saint James Phillips jok­ing­ly said “Many of us are upset, because it’s three months gone and we are not back in office yet,” .
Okay so this is not the worst thing he could have said to a room­ful of par­ty hacks but his com­ment was part of a larg­er address which was pure­ly delusional .

“The fact of the mat­ter, as men­tioned ear­li­er, is that we are see­ing an Administration in office now that is demon­strat­ing day after day, to put it in reg­u­lar lan­guage, demon­strat­ing say them nuh ready,” “We have the slimmest mar­gin in the Parliament; that has ever exist­ed, and the truth is that the [thing] we must [do] now is to ensure that the People’s National Party pre­pares itself to resume the task of lead­ing Jamaica for­ward,”

No sign of that PhD in this statement.
Slimmest mar­gin in Parliament yes, but no men­tion that in the 63 seat leg­is­la­ture and about 21 gar­ri­son seats nev­er in con­tention 15 – 6 in favor of his par­ty , the PNP lost 11 of the 42 seats which were in play. Of the so-called mar­gin­al seats (seats not char­ac­ter­ized as gar­risons) 42 , the JLP gained 11 with­out los­ing a sin­gle seat.
In a leg­is­la­ture of that size that is a mas­sive repu­di­a­tion of PNP policies .
That is what I find per­son­al­ly curi­ous about Phillips con­tin­ued fix­a­tion on the fan­ta­sy cam­paign against Holness and what he per­ceived to be only a mar­gin­al loss for his party.
Which leads me to believe Peter Phillips is not doing so out of conviction.

It was not so long ago that Peter Phillips was brand­ed a trai­tor by many in his par­ty, yet Phillips har­bor real aspi­ra­tions of becom­ing Prime Minister.
It was at the Manatt Commission of Enquiry in 2004 that it came to light that Phillips then the min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty signed two top secret mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing relat­ing to inves­ti­ga­tion of drug traf­fick­ing and organ­ised crime, with­out inform­ing the then prime min­is­ter and Cabinet. The MOUs were between Jamaica, the United States and the United Kingdom.
At the time Phillips told the com­mis­sion that Cabinet was not an appro­pri­ate body with which the infor­ma­tion should be shared.
I can agree that not every per­son in a gov­ern­ment must know every­thing .Many Governments oper­ate that way but it can­not escape com­mon sense that before Peter Phillips signed those Memorandums he did not dis­cuss them or the impli­ca­tions with his boss and Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller .
Neither did he reveal his actions to her after he did.

The Prime Minister is Minister of defense . If Phillips thought that the then prime min­is­ter could not be trust­ed with nation­al secu­ri­ty secrets whats does it say about the then Prime Minister?
Phillips was vil­i­fied by many in the PNP and there were rum­blings that his safe­ty may have been in ques­tion. Phillips weath­ered that storm and lat­er chal­lenged the ever pop­u­lar Simpson Miller for lead­er­ship of the par­ty after her loss to Bruce Golding but Miller prevailed.
Many con­tend that del­e­gates had not for­got­ten what Phillips had done.

Which brings me to my ear­li­er com­ment that Peter Phillips may be as sil­ly as a fox . Is Peter Phillips just yap­ping , hop­ing to keep his name in the media glare before anoth­er lead­er­ship chal­lenge ? Surely Phillips knows that Simpson Miller has made some dubi­ous his­to­ry of her own despite her incred­i­ble rise with­ing the PNP.
Despite her per­son­al suc­cess­es , she has lost two nation­al elec­tions in less than five years. That is not exact­ly a ring­ing endorse­ment of her skills as a force for good in the coun­try despite her con­tin­ued popularity.

Peter Phillips knows this is his moment if ever he is to become prime min­is­ter. The par­ty leader is silent why should he be? Phillips is bank­ing on keep­ing his name out front as he has been doing . He may have adopt­ed the cal­cu­lus that all pub­lic­i­ty (good or bad) is good pub­lic­i­ty but is he correct?
What he may be miss­ing in his quest for lead­er­ship of the par­ty and his ambi­tion of becom­ing prime min­is­ter is that the issue he has cham­pi­oned as his cause célèbre may have already cost his par­ty one defeat.
Peter Phillips must then decide whether it is worth win­ning a bat­tle while los­ing the war .
Only time will tell.

KINGSTON, Jamaica – Prime Minister Andrew Holness says the Government is work­ing with the police and the army to deal with the issue of gun vio­lence in Jamaica. The prime min­is­ter’s state­ment comes a day after the police revealed that the secu­ri­ty forces will be mount­ing more police/​military oper­a­tions in the west­ern end of the island. “We are giv­ing the law enforce­ment agen­cies the resources they need and sup­port in oth­er ways to ensure they can deal effec­tive­ly with crime gen­er­al­ly and mur­ders in par­tic­u­lar,” Holness said, adding that the resolve is to see a con­sis­tent reduc­tion in crime. “We are work­ing towards that aim,” he said.

Holness also extend­ed the Government’s sup­port and prayers to all vic­tims of crime. “We, as a gov­ern­ment, are deeply impact­ed when­ev­er a Jamaican is affect­ed by crime. Crime impacts fam­i­lies and by exten­sion, our econ­o­my. Our quest for growth and job cre­ation will be most effec­tive in a safe soci­ety. We must end gun vio­lence,” Holness said. The prime min­is­ter said that through a part­ner­ship with the United States, oth­er law enforce­ment teams, the com­mu­ni­ty, and the State, Jamaica will suc­ceed in its fight against crime. “Our com­mit­ment is sound and our resolve in strong,” Prime Minister Holness stat­ed. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​P​M​-​s​a​y​s​-​G​o​v​-​t​-​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​t​o​-​e​n​d​-​g​u​n​-​v​i​o​l​e​nce

Slain twins killed my son, says mom..

Carol Bailey, the moth­er of 17-year-old Shaquille Brown, who was shot and killed in Waterhouse on June 5, believes that twin broth­ers Ramone and Rameish Cummings, who were killed by the police in Maverley on Thursday, were behind her son’s death.

Bailey told the Jamaica Observer yes­ter­day that there was evi­dence to sup­port her alle­ga­tions, based on eye­wit­ness­es in Brown’s killing that the twin broth­ers were involved in his killing. He received 25 bullets.“See his cap here that he was wear­ing. Seven shots went through the cap alone. Twenty-five shots him get! Other peo­ple were there when the gun­men invad­ed and they ran, but they know the gun­men because they are from here,” she said. According to Bailey, Ramone and Rameish had fled the Waterhouse com­mu­ni­ty and set­tled in the Gully Bank area of Maverley, where they had joined the “West Bank Gang” which, she said, has been ter­ror­is­ing the Carlos Park area of Waterhouse, where Brown was killed.

The 24-year-old twin broth­ers were killed by South St Andrew police on Thursday on Denver Crescent in Maverley. The police said that two 9mm guns were found at the house after the shoot­ing, which alleged­ly fol­lowed a con­fronta­tion with the police. The Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) launched a probe into the inci­dent after the dead men’s moth­er, Claudette Matthews, claimed that they were killed while asleep. Residents at the crime scene sym­pa­thised with her. But Bailey and her sis­ter Sonia Henry insist that the broth­ers were involved in the killing of Brown and were being sought by the Hunt’s Bay police when they were killed.

“Police want­ed both of them. They ran from Waterhouse and went to Maverley,” Bailey told the Sunday Observer, adding that they were known in the com­mu­ni­ties as “Dreadie” and “Bleed Eye”. “But what about my child? He was using the Wi-Fi on his phone in Carlos Park and they run him down and shoot him. He died on the spot,” Bailey said. She claimed that with the emer­gence of the Gully Bank gang, there is no nightlife in the Waterhouse area. Residents want the police to step up their activ­i­ties against the gang.

Governing is never easy , it requires leadership which often times does not square with popular opinion. However the truly great ones know what is right and do them despite the howls of condemnation and consternation coming from those who have an opinion on everything but never did anything for anyone but themselves.

In under­stand­ing what needs to be done with­in the frame­work of any polit­i­cal real­i­ty, it is impor­tant to under­stand the val­ue of polit­i­cal cap­i­tal. Withing those con­fines it is imper­a­tive that before a polit­i­cal vic­to­ry is achieved, there in in place a plan to spend polit­i­cal cap­i­tal, under­stand­ing what may be achiev­able at par­tic­u­lar points in that term in office. Bolder ini­tia­tives ear­li­er , less far-reach­ing ini­tia­tives lat­er on.

I learned a long time ago that even as I con­tem­plate and dis­cuss ideas it is impor­tant that I rec­og­nize that my dreams and aspi­ra­tions as it relates to any giv­en issue does not nec­es­sar­i­ly coin­cide with that of others.
I am a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for a crime free soci­ety, as such I lead by exam­ple. Do I some­time dri­ve above the speed lim­it ? Yes.
Do I engage in any oth­er forms of unlaw­ful con­duct ? No.
My behav­ior choic­es does not mean that I am a goody-two-shoes , it sim­ply means that a life of crime con­flicts with my world view.

Having dis­cussed the crit­i­cal issue of crime and vio­lence with­in many forums and hav­ing seen the respons­es of Jamaicans on the sub­ject I have con­clud­ed that the aver­age Jamaican does not see the crip­pling issue of mur­der , shoot­ings, rapes, and oth­er assaults on their per­sons as too much of a “big­gie”.
In fact there is a per­va­sive con­tent­ment with crime in Jamaica despite the fact that peo­ple liv­ing in oth­er places in the world are aghast at the lev­el of vio­lence with­in the society.
Despite the fick­le nature of tourism, the emerg­ing Cuban des­ti­na­tion, Jamaica still con­tin­ue to active­ly sup­port crim­i­nal­i­ty while beg­ging tourist to come.
Come to what? Now the busi­ness peo­ple begin to pan­ic, this is not a joke anymore.
As I allud­ed to in pre­vi­ous arti­cles the Island has now set­tled into a new nor­mal in which mur­der and may­hem is the nor­mal. It pains me to say it but from all appear­ances Jamaicans love the killings.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​o​n​t​a​g​u​e​s​-​a​p​p​o​i​n​t​m​e​n​t​-​s​a​y​-​a​d​m​i​n​i​s​t​r​a​t​i​o​n​s​-​s​e​r​i​o​u​s​n​e​s​s​-​c​r​i​me/

The only killings Jamaicans are opposed to are police offi­cers killing crim­i­nals who con­front them . Police offi­cers are sum­mar­i­ly exco­ri­at­ed for killing the most vicious killers who con­front them. Agencies with­ing the Government fall over them­selves to make sure that the fam­i­lies of the most vile crim­i­nals the cops ter­mi­nate are appeased and consoled.
This leads to the log­i­cal ques­tions (1) whether the soci­ety is inno­cent and (2) whether peo­ple out­side look­ing in should feel com­pas­sion for the fam­i­lies of the dead.
I under­stand it is prob­a­bly not the right thing to do to lump every­one under the same umbrel­la. Truth be told I have many fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends liv­ing on the Island who are the fur­thest thing from being sup­port­ers of criminals.

I dare­say there are many peo­ple who would attest that their fam­i­ly mem­bers are indeed not sup­port­ive of crim­i­nals or def­er­en­tial to those who engage in lives of crime.
However it is instruc­tive to con­sid­er Transparency International“s con­tin­ued report­ing on the fright­en­ing degree of cor­rup­tion with­in the Jamaican society.
Jamaica is the 69 least cor­rupt nation out of 175 coun­tries, accord­ing to the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index report­ed by Transparency International. Corruption Rank in Jamaica aver­aged 72.06 from 1998 until 2015, reach­ing an all time high of 99 in 2009 and a record low of 45 in 2002. Corruption Rank in Jamaica is report­ed by the Transparency International. http://​www​.tradinge​co​nom​ics​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​/​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​i​o​n​-​r​ank

Not exact­ly the worst coun­try but not exact­ly some­thing we want to cel­e­brate either. Which leads me to the rea­son I am writ­ing this blog.
Did Andrew Holness sur­mise that the issue of crime and vio­lence with­in the Jamaican soci­ety was too endem­ic to spend pre­cious polit­i­cal cap­i­tal on?
It is fair to cred­it the Prime Minister with speak­ing to crime and vio­lence in his par­lia­men­tary con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get debate, as well as briefly at his Kings House swear­ing in as Prime Minister. Yet despite speak­ing on the sub­ject on sev­er­al oth­er occa­sions, this writer is uncon­vinced that the Prime Minister is (1) pre­pared to expend cap­i­tal in defense of the rule of law or (2) ful­ly cog­nizant that the growth agen­da of which he speaks is at best half-ass with the sti­fling crime and vio­lence in the country.

THE FOLLOWING ACCORDING TO THE JAMAICA DAILY GLEANER

Zero Rating For Crime In First 100 Day

The Government of Prime Minister Andrew Holness and his National Security Minister Robert Montague has scored low to no marks for fail­ing to imple­ment any new crime ini­tia­tives in its first 100 days to curb the homi­ci­dal mon­ster which has turned Jamaica into a bloody par­adise. In addi­tion, Montague’s now infa­mous sug­ges­tions — that police­men wear con­doms, because too many are in the fam­i­ly court for child main­te­nance; and that sec­ond-hand cars being used to ease the motor vehi­cle short­age in the con­stab­u­lary was bet­ter than no car at all — have not endeared him to com­men­ta­tors attend­ing Gleaner Editors’ Forum last week exam­in­ing the Government’s per­for­mance in its first 100 days in office. This upcom­ing Sunday will mark the 100^th day of Holness’ administration.

“My com­ments on secu­ri­ty are not spe­cif­ic to one admin­is­tra­tion or the next. Crime is a major prob­lem and so far it still exists as a major prob­lem,” said Gary Peart, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Mayberry Investments. According to Peart: “… Crime con­tin­ues to get worse. And there has to be a sys­tem­at­ic way in which we deal with major crime. We have gone through a 100 days and we have not seen any­thing.” Members of the secu­ri­ty forces have been deployed to sev­er­al parts of the island as crime, espe­cial­ly homi­cide has spi­raled out of con­trol, caus­ing senior crime fight­ers to scratch their heads. Police Commissioner Dr Carl Williams recent­ly moved com­man­ders to dif­fer­ent divi­sions with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), in a bid to stem the bleed­ing in Western Jamaica, Clarendon and oth­er sec­tions of the island.

Blood is now flow­ing in mul­ti­ples and last week’s dou­ble mur­ders in sev­er­al parish­es, includ­ing out­side a busi­ness place at Southdale Plaza in St Andrew, have caused fear to be at a paralysing lev­el. Yaneek Page, founder and man­ag­ing direc­tor of Future Services International Limited (FSIL) a pio­neer­ing com­pa­ny in legal fund­ing in Jamaica, said in the ini­tial stages of the Holness admin­is­tra­tion there were more feet on the ground. “That was the com­mu­ni­ca­tion we had heard, that we would actu­al­ly see more offi­cers on the ground. And we have heard a lot about using used cars and so on. But I don’t think we have seen any major pol­i­cy moves that would give us con­fi­dence that we are going to see any­thing that will see a reduc­tion in crime so far,” said Page. For insur­ance exec­u­tive Donovan Mayne, the admin­is­tra­tion’s per­for­mance on secu­ri­ty gets a low rat­ing. “If I were to use the rat­ing on some con­sump­tion goods… it would be a zero rat­ing just like GCT (gen­er­al con­sump­tion tax),” said Mayne.

“There is noth­ing hap­pen­ing in the Ministry of National Security, even though 100 days is a lit­tle hard to mea­sure. I think six months to a year (would pro­vide a bet­ter judge of per­for­mance). Nothing has come out as pol­i­cy, though.” Former Education Minister The Reverend Ronald Thwaites said it was com­mend­able that the min­is­ter (Montague) was con­sult­ing and that he has appeared to be approach­able. “In terms of lead­ing pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives, it is con­doms, used cars and death penal­ty,” Thwaites how­ev­er added. Management con­sul­tant Dr Henley Morgan said he has served on two com­mit­tees on crime so far and they have been the biggest waste of time he has expe­ri­enced. “Nothing ever comes of these rec­om­men­da­tions. I had a chance to watch the new min­is­ter up front at a recent func­tion and I watched the optics, man­ner­isms and words,” Morgan said. “One of the things I am sure of is that he will not make the mis­take of the pre­vi­ous ones in pre­tend­ing that he is a crime spe­cial­ist.” He added: “We have not seen him take on any big and con­tro­ver­sial issues so far.” Morgan said how­ev­er that min­is­ters of nation­al secu­ri­ty are stymied because their roles are not well defined.

The police have indi­cat­ed that, since the start of the year, there has been a 10 per cent reduc­tion in all cat­e­gories of crime, except mur­ders, when com­pared with the sim­i­lar peri­od last year. The St James divi­sion con­tin­ues to record a high rate of mur­ders with 103 since the star of the year, a 27 per cent increase over the same time last year. http://​jamaica​glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​6​0​9​/​z​e​r​o​-​r​a​t​i​n​g​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​f​i​r​s​t​-​1​0​0​-​d​ays

Generally speak­ing I am usu­al­ly wary of the mus­ings of the Gleaner but this deduc­tion by this par­tic­u­lar pan­el is dead on correct.
I have writ­ten at length on this offer­ing solu­tions free of charge to the Administration on how this mon­ster can be tamed but where is the will?
Even as these pan­elists speak to this crit­i­cal issue, I doubt whether they have the stom­ach to rec­om­mend what needs to be done.
This Jamaica nation unfor­tu­nate­ly is bla­tant­ly cor­rupt and pre­ten­tious . The peo­ple are either woe­ful­ly igno­rant but opin­ion­at­ed or some­what edu­cat­ed and inde­scrib­ably pretentious.

It is a dan­ger­ous mix of the igno­rant and the pre­ten­tious which got us into the shit we are in as a nation. The police kept the lid on things through the 80’s and 90’s when we took no bull­shit from criminals .
Criminals fled the coun­try to Cuba, Canada, England , the US and oth­er places.
The US cre­at­ed the Rico Statute and effec­tive­ly put these low life scum bags where they belonged, many are back on the Island cre­at­ing may­hem , many are dead.
The Police are no longer allowed to enforce the nation’s laws. In the place of law enforce­ment is a wannabe hero oper­at­ing as pro­tec­tor of the peo­ple, only thing is that this Napoleonic crea­ture is out to make a name for himself.
In this nation of the pre­ten­tious blind the one-eyed Terrence Williams and (inde­com) is king.

There needs to be a rad­i­cal shift to change the par­a­digm. There are peo­ple will­ing to drop every­thing and get to work clean­ing up the shit.

There was ten­sion at the Trafigura hear­ing this morn­ing as Queen’s Counsel K.D. Knight, the attor­ney for People’s National Party (PNP) President Portia Simpson Miller, react­ed to an instruc­tion by Justice Lennox Campbell before the mat­ter was adjourned indefinitely.

“Don’t shout at me, because I can shout as well,” Knight told jus­tice Campbell.

Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Andrea Martin Swaby had got up to address the court when Knight inter­ject­ed prompt­ing Campbell to tell him not to inter­rupt the crown coun­sel. Simpson Miller, PNP chair­man Robert Pickersgill, Region Three chair­man Phillip Paulwell, for­mer PNP gen­er­al sec­re­tary Colin Campbell and busi­ness­man Norton Hinds, appeared in court after being sub­poe­naed by Justice Campbell to answer to ques­tions under oath about a $31 mil­lion to the par­ty by Dutch oil trad­ing firm Trafigura Beheer. However, the hear­ing could not pro­ceed this morn­ing because of a rul­ing by the Appeal Court last Friday stay­ing the mat­ter until an appeal is heard as to whether the PNP func­tionar­ies should be ques­tioned in open court.

On Friday, the Appeal Court also instruct­ed that the court reg­is­trar con­sult with the rel­e­vant par­ties to set a date for the appeal to be heard. This morn­ing Campbell also asked Knight to agree on a date. “I am not set­ting any dates,” Knight respond­ed to Justice Campbell. In the mean­time, the hear­ing has been adjourned indef­i­nite­ly pend­ing the hear­ing of the appeal.

In November 2011, Campbell had ruled that Simpson Miller and the oth­er PNP func­tionar­ies should answer ques­tions from the Dutch author­i­ties under oath in open court.However, the PNP lawyers appealed against the rul­ing. Last week, the Director of Public Prosecutions filed an appli­ca­tion seek­ing to have the appeal struck out claim­ing that since November 2011, the PNP lawyers have done noth­ing to advance the mat­ter. Assistant DPP Swaby told the Appeal Court that the PNP lawyers were await­ing the tran­script of the hear­ing, which had been at the Supreme Court since December 2011.

However, Knight said he was nev­er informed. He also said the legal team had not yet received in writ­ing, Campbell’s rea­sons for his rul­ing that the PNP func­tionar­ies should answer in open court ques­tions about the $31 mil­lion Trafigura dona­tion. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​6​0​6​/​t​e​n​s​i​o​n​-​t​r​a​f​i​g​u​r​a​-​h​e​a​r​i​n​g​-​a​d​j​o​u​r​n​e​d​-​i​n​d​e​f​i​n​i​t​e​l​y​-​p​e​n​d​i​n​g​-​a​p​p​e​a​l​#​.​V​1​W​u​B​_​b​B​9​P​M​.​f​a​c​e​b​ook

PRIME Minister Andrew Holness has assured that the Government intends to pur­sue its pro­pos­al to amend the Bail Act to remand indi­vid­u­als accused of com­mit­ting murder.

“It is not the inten­tion of the Government to, in any way, dimin­ish human rights,” the prime min­is­ter told the Jamaica Observer in a one-on-one inter­view at Jamaica House on Tuesday. “But the Government has to weigh the bal­ance of human rights on a whole, and the human rights of those per­sons who are being mur­dered by per­sons who get bail and laugh in the face of jus­tice and law enforce­ment, and go out and com­mit more crimes,” Holness added.

The prime min­is­ter said he under­stood the attor­neys’ inter­est in ensur­ing that their clients can get bail, and that bail is part of the legal rights of their clients. However, he sug­gest­ed that the pro­posed mea­sure was nec­es­sary to deal with repeat offenders.

“The soci­ety has to be prac­ti­cal and rea­son­able and what we have done is to put the issue out there so that the views of the attor­neys who have a per­spec­tive can con­tend with the hun­dreds of Jamaicans who have suf­fered from the crim­i­nal activ­i­ties of repeat offend­ers,” he said.

“It is not just one view that should hold pre-emi­nence,” Holness insisted.

He indi­cat­ed that Attorney General Marlene Malahoo Forte would be deal­ing with the issue in Parliament.

“I don’t want to pre-empt the attor­ney gen­er­al, but we have giv­en nar­row para­me­ters for how we will seek adjust­ments to the Bail Act, and it will be for those crimes involv­ing mur­ders,” he stated.

Making his pre­sen­ta­tion in the ²⁰¹⁶⁄₁₇ Budget Debate in the House of Representatives on May 24, the prime min­is­ter said the Government would be amend­ing the Bail Act so that peo­ple charged with mur­der will be inel­i­gi­ble for bail in some circumstances.

He told the House of Representatives that the Government would be tak­ing “bold and deci­sive” steps to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce crime and vio­lence in the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly against the most vulnerable.

Also among the mea­sures he sug­gest­ed was a spe­cial process with­in the court sys­tem for the pros­e­cu­tion and tri­al of mur­ders, which will serve to expe­dite the cases.
Story orig­i­nat­ed here : http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​H​o​l​n​ess – Murder-victims-have-rights-too_62630

There is now more than a the­o­ret­i­cal chance that Hillary Clinton may not be the Democratic nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent. How could that hap­pen, giv­en that her nom­i­na­tion has been con­sid­ered a sure thing by vir­tu­al­ly every­one in the media and in the par­ty itself? Consider the pos­si­bil­i­ties. The inevitabil­i­ty behind Mrs. Clinton’s nom­i­na­tion will be in large mea­sure evis­cer­at­ed if she los­es the June 7 California pri­ma­ry to Bernie Sanders. That could well happen.

A recent PPIC poll shows Mrs. Clinton with a 2% lead over Mr. Sanders, and a Fox News sur­vey found the same result. Even a nar­row win would give him 250 pledged del­e­gates or more — a sig­nif­i­cant boost. California is clear­ly trend­ing to Mr. Sanders, and the expe­ri­ence in recent open pri­maries has been that the Vermont sen­a­tor tends to under­per­form in pre-elec­tion sur­veys and over-per­form on pri­ma­ry and cau­cus days, thanks to the par­tic­i­pa­tion of new reg­is­trants and young voters.

To this end, data from mid-May show that there were near­ly 1.5 mil­lion new­ly reg­is­tered Democratic vot­ers in California since Jan. 1. That’s a 218% increase in Democratic vot­er reg­is­tra­tions com­pared with the same peri­od in 2012, a strong­ly encour­ag­ing sign for Mr. Sanders. A Sanders win in California would pow­er­ful­ly under­score Mrs. Clinton’s weak­ness as a can­di­date in the gen­er­al elec­tion. Democratic superdel­e­gates — cho­sen by the par­ty estab­lish­ment and over­whelm­ing­ly back­ing Mrs. Clinton, 543 – 44 — would seri­ous­ly ques­tion whether they should con­tin­ue to stand behind her candidacy.

There is every rea­son to believe that at the con­ven­tion Mr. Sanders will offer a rules change requir­ing superdel­e­gates to vote for the can­di­date who won their state’s pri­ma­ry or cau­cus. A vote on that pro­posed change would almost cer­tain­ly occur — and it would func­tion as a ref­er­en­dum on the Clinton can­di­da­cy. If Mr. Sanders wins California, Montana and North Dakota on Tuesday and stays com­pet­i­tive in New Jersey, he could well be with­in 200 pledged del­e­gates of Mrs. Clinton, mak­ing a vote in favor of the rules change on super-del­e­gates more like­ly. Read more here : http://​www​.wsj​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​c​l​i​n​t​o​n​-​m​i​g​h​t​-​n​o​t​-​b​e​-​t​h​e​-​n​o​m​i​n​e​e​-​1​4​6​4​7​3​3​898

A high court judge has issued a sub­poe­na for oppo­si­tion leader Portia Simpson Miller in rela­tion to the long-run­ning Trafigura matter.

Additional sub­poe­nas have also been issued for People’s National Party (PNP) mem­bers Robert Pickersgill, Phillip Paulwell, Colin Campbell and Norton Hinds. Justice Lennox Campbell ordered the sub­poe­nas issued this morn­ing fol­low­ing a request from Director of Public Prosecutions, Paula Llewellyn, whose office is the des­ig­nat­ed author­i­ty in mutu­al legal assis­tance mat­ters. The sub­poe­nas are expect­ed to be issued by Thursday and all five will be required to be in court on Monday. Dutch Authorities want to ques­tion offi­cials of the People’s National Party about a $31-mil­lion dona­tion by Dutch com­pa­ny Trafigura Beheer to the par­ty in 2006. It is ille­gal for Dutch com­pa­nies to donate to polit­i­cal par­ties. At the time of the dona­tion, Trafigura had an oil-lift­ing con­tract with the then PNP admin­is­tra­tion. The des­ig­nat­ed cen­tral author­i­ty is pos­ing the ques­tions to the PNP offi­cials on behalf of the Dutch author­i­ties under Jamaica’s mutu­al legal assis­tance treaty with The Netherlands.
http://​jamaica​glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​5​3​1​/​b​r​e​a​k​i​n​g​-​n​e​w​s​-​p​o​r​t​i​a​-​s​i​m​p​s​o​n​-​m​i​l​l​e​r​-​s​u​b​p​o​e​n​a​e​d​-​t​r​a​f​i​g​u​r​a​-​c​ase

Like a long cool glass of ice cold water after being parched in the searing mid-day sun, Andrew Holness delivered his presentation of his new budget with brilliant clarity and wit. It felt like a veil of cloud was lifted , all of a sudden the brilliant rays of the sun exploded, bathing the scene with warm brilliance.
For the first time in four years the Jamaican people were not asked to tighten their belts , prepare for more austerity or to give more from the nothing that they have.
Andrew Michael Holness presented a budget to the Island’s 2.8 million Jamaicans living on the Island which ought to give hope to even the most hyper partisan observer .
Beyond that however his budget opened the way for Jamaicans living in the diaspora to dream once again of retiring in their beloved homeland.

For the first time in years the Jamaican peo­ple were pre­sent­ed with a bud­get which though still shack­led to International Monetary Fund (IMF) dic­tates, offered a clear path out of the clutch­es of con­sis­tent aus­ter­i­ty where meet­ing (IMF) tar­gets was the des­ti­na­tion not a road.
The Prime Minister out­lined new ini­tia­tives to make home own­er­ship a pri­or­i­ty for all Jamaicans, this was a goal of for­mer Prime Minister Michael Manley, Holness acknowl­edged that unde­ni­able fact.

HOUSING
Most of the crit­i­cal issues stand­ing in the way of the Nation’s devel­op­ment were addressed in the Prime Minister’s pre­sen­ta­tion. He allud­ed to the fact that peo­ple look­ing for jobs and those who found jobs in the tourism sec­tor pre­sent­ed a crit­i­cal prob­lem of hous­ing short­age around the tourism towns which result­ed in peo­ple cap­tur­ing lands and build­ing on those lands.
The Prime Minister out­lined that it will be dif­fi­cult to reg­u­lar­ize those prob­lems but promised his admin­is­tra­tion was com­mit­ted to doing so , while out­lin­ing bold new ini­tia­tives to han­dle future hous­ing needs which is expect­ed from a poten­tial eco­nom­ic boom.

The NHT will devel­op approx­i­mate­ly 2,000 ser­viced lots which will be deliv­ered over the next two years. The final sell­ing price of these lots will range from $1.8 mil­lion to $2.4 mil­lion, and will be sit­u­at­ed in the parish­es of Westmoreland, Trelawny, St Ann, Clarendon and St Catherine. These lots will be sold to indi­vid­u­als earn­ing below $12,000 weekly.“Large pri­vate devel­op­ers such as Gore, WIHCON, Select Homes and oth­ers have already com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing about 4,000 homes on our North Coast, which will reduce squat­ting, dri­ve con­struc­tion, pro­vide jobs and healthy com­mu­ni­ty, and bring­ing pros­per­i­ty to more Jamaicans,” said Holness.

This par­tic­u­lar area of the Prime Minister’s pre­sen­ta­tion con­firms to me that he fun­da­men­tal­ly under­stand what it takes to grow an econ­o­my. His words con­vey , at least to this low­ly blog­ger that the coun­try has at it’s head a Chief Executive Officer who under­stand the val­ue of home own­er­ship to a fam­i­ly, not just finan­cial­ly but on their psy­che as well.
For most peo­ple, own­ing a home is the sin­gle largest invest­ment they will make in their life­time. Home own­er­ship means every­one has a stake.
But most impor­tant­ly for the short term, home build­ing and home sale means that every­thing else sells . That kind of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty cre­ates more oppor­tu­ni­ties for employ­ment and the cycle continues.
When home sales are boom­ing every­thing else see an uptick in sales activ­i­ty, nails and oth­er build­ing mate­r­i­al , elec­tri­cal mate­r­i­al, plumb­ing mate­r­i­al, fur­ni­ture , house­wares it’s a bee-hive of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty . This admin­is­tra­tion has shown that it has lis­tened to the peo­ple and is respond­ing to the peo­ple accord­ing­ly, this bodes well for Jamaica.

SECURITY

Most who both­er to take the time to read what I have to say may accuse me of being hung-up or obsessed with the issue of crime in Jamaica.
I can­not become immune or dis­in­ter­est­ed in the effect crime is hav­ing on our people.
As a police offi­cer over two and a half decades ago I real­ized real quick that there were some real­ly , real­ly won­der­ful peo­ple who made up our country.
As a police offi­cer one can get real­ly hard hav­ing to deal with some of the least well adjust­ed mem­bers of soci­ety. The job offered an oppor­tu­ni­ty how­ev­er to see the soul of the peo­ple, I saw that soul.
I was com­mit­ted to doing what I could to help peo­ple as an offi­cer and after leav­ing I stayed com­mit­ted because of the love I have for coun­try and the good Jamaican peo­ple I came to know over the years.

I con­tin­ue to harp on the con­stant shed­ding of blood , the abuse of the nation’s chil­dren, the abuse of our beau­ti­ful women , and the incred­i­bly high propen­si­ty we have for lethal vio­lence at the drop of a hat.
We can­not real­ize our true poten­tial if we con­tin­ue to seri­ous­ly abuse the least and most vul­ner­a­ble among us.
Prime Minister Holness spoke to this issue.
“Once there is a report to a police sta­tion of an inci­dent of domes­tic vio­lence, the domes­tic vio­lence coör­di­na­tor will be alert­ed in par­al­lel with the for­mal inves­tiga­tive pro­ce­dure. He or she will vis­it with those alleged­ly involved and this vis­it will be fol­lowed up by vis­its from mem­bers of the con­sul­ta­tive com­mit­tee engag­ing those involved in a process of dia­logue and reconciliation.”

Most impor­tant­ly I thought was a recog­ni­tion on the part of the admin­is­tra­tion that some­thing is rad­i­cal­ly wrong with grant­i­ng bail to murderers .
This has been one of the sore spots which has con­tributed to the mur­der rate significantly .
Having done much research on how oth­er juris­dic­tions across the world approach the issue of bail I found that Jamaica is way out on a limb on it’s own . Simply put Jamaican judges are either stu­pid­ly insen­si­tive to mur­der vic­tims or they are on the take.
Even in coun­tries like Britain which is very lib­er­al on bail , mur­der­ers sim­ply do not walk out on bail before their tri­al. Needless to say that in the United States you are not get­ting bail, or bail is set at such a high bond that accused mur­der­ers can­not afford the bond.
We ful­ly under­stand the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence but we must bal­ance that with the rule of law and the right the mur­dered par­ty had to life.
Jamaican Judges have disin­gen­u­ous­ly argued that accord­ing to the bail act , the law should not be used as punishment.

Nevertheless Jamaican judges are quite com­fort­able with lock­ing away peo­ple they do not like .
The Bail Act is extreme­ly clear that there are con­di­tions which must be con­sid­ered when the ques­tion of bail comes up. This part is con­ve­nient­ly left out of their twist­ed nar­ra­tive when they talk about how tied their hands are by the bail act.

(1) The nature of the crime !
There is no ambi­gu­i­ty here, mur­der is the zenith when it comes to the lev­el of crime one can be involved with, so much so mur­der is not a statute , it is against com­mon law.
This means mur­der is against the con­science of human­i­ty in what­ev­er coun­try what­ev­er cul­ture, it does not require leg­is­la­tion, it is sim­ply wrong.
Hence there is no statute of lim­i­ta­tions on mur­der. A hun­dred years after com­mit­ting mur­der and you are caught you are to be punished.

(2) The like­li­hood that the offend­er will not show up for trial..
Hum , how many mur­der­ers have they grant­ed bail and nev­er see them ever again?

(3) The like­li­hood that the accused will inter­fere with witness/​es .…
How many poten­tial wit­ness­es more must be killed before the idi­ot­ic judges apply the laws and not their per­son­al lib­er­al agen­da on the courts?
For years they have had a free hand they are part of the problem.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​2​7​5​594 – 2/

In Jamaica mur­der­ers are sum­mar­i­ly let out on bail where they sim­ply kill wit­ness­es against them. When they do the case is over. Why would we expect mur­der to trend down when we are incen­tiviz­ing killers?
In one case one par­tic­u­lar mur­der­er was charged with five sep­a­rate mur­ders on five sep­a­rate occa­sions and was let out each time he was arrest­ed even before he answered to the first charge. He sim­ply got on a flight and fled the juris­dic­tion eventually.
Victims be damned.
Prime Minister Holenss spoke to this as well argu­ing that his admin­is­tra­tion will be push­ing to amend the bail act to pre­vent cer­tain mur­der­ers from receiv­ing bail even as he asked for bi-par­ti­san­ship in the fight against crime while mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion par­ty sat stone faced.
I have been argu­ing for this as well , but I also believe that more should be done. Simply keep­ing mur­der­ers in jail is not enough .
We need new leg­is­la­tion which would allow a case to pro­ceed against a mur­der accused whether the wit­ness dies or not and put in place spe­cial puni­tive com­po­nents if it is proven that an accused has any­thing to do with the death of a poten­tial wit­ness, eg auto­mat­ic death penalty.

Holness also touched on INDECOM he point­ed to the poten­tial the Act is hav­ing on the abil­i­ty of police to do their jobs effectively.
I use this medi­um once again to call on the Government to repeal the INDECOM Act, start over tak­ing into account the data from all sides , re-debate the leg­is­la­tion and come up with a law which effec­tive­ly tar­gets rogue cops but does not stand in the way of effec­tive law enforcement.
The INDECOM Act in it’s present form is the great­est enhancer of crime in Jamaica presently.

There are many fic­tion­al nar­ra­tions which may ade­quate­ly depict my Country Jamaica none comes clos­er in my mind how­ev­er than the Hans Christian Andersen classic.
THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES.

Many years ago there was an Emperor so exceed­ing­ly fond of new clothes that he spent all his mon­ey on being well dressed. He cared noth­ing about review­ing his sol­diers, going to the the­atre, or going for a ride in his car­riage, except to show off his new clothes. He had a coat for every hour of the day, and instead of say­ing, as one might, about any oth­er ruler, “The King’s in coun­cil,” here they always said. “The Emperor’s in his dress­ing room.” In the great city where he lived, life was always gay. Every day many strangers came to town, and among them one day came two swindlers. They let it be known they were weavers, and they said they could weave the most mag­nif­i­cent fab­rics imag­in­able. Not only were their col­ors and pat­terns uncom­mon­ly fine, but clothes made of this cloth had a won­der­ful way of becom­ing invis­i­ble to any­one who was unfit for his office, or who was unusu­al­ly stupid.

“Those would be just the clothes for me,” thought the Emperor. “If I wore them I would be able to dis­cov­er which men in my empire are unfit for their posts. And I could tell the wise men from the fools. Yes, I cer­tain­ly must get some of the stuff woven for me right away.” He paid the two swindlers a large sum of mon­ey to start work at once. They set up two looms and pre­tend­ed to weave, though there was noth­ing on the looms. All the finest silk and the purest old thread which they demand­ed went into their trav­el­ing bags, while they worked the emp­ty looms far into the night. “I’d like to know how those weavers are get­ting on with the cloth,” the Emperor thought, but he felt slight­ly uncom­fort­able when he remem­bered that those who were unfit for their posi­tion would not be able to see the fab­ric. It could­n’t have been that he doubt­ed him­self, yet he thought he’d rather send some­one else to see how things were going. The whole town knew about the cloth’s pecu­liar pow­er, and all were impa­tient to find out how stu­pid their neigh­bors were.

“I’ll send my hon­est old min­is­ter to the weavers,” the Emperor decid­ed. “He’ll be the best one to tell me how the mate­r­i­al looks, for he’s a sen­si­ble man and no one does his duty bet­ter.” So the hon­est old min­is­ter went to the room where the two swindlers sat work­ing away at their emp­ty looms. “Heaven help me,” he thought as his eyes flew wide open, “I can’t see any­thing at all”. But he did not say so. Both the swindlers begged him to be so kind as to come near to approve the excel­lent pat­tern, the beau­ti­ful col­ors. They point­ed to the emp­ty looms, and the poor old min­is­ter stared as hard as he dared. He could­n’t see any­thing, because there was noth­ing to see. “Heaven have mer­cy,” he thought. “Can it be that I’m a fool? I’d have nev­er guessed it, and not a soul must know. Am I unfit to be the min­is­ter? It would nev­er do to let on that I can’t see the cloth.” “Don’t hes­i­tate to tell us what you think of it,” said one of the weavers. “Oh, it’s beau­ti­ful ‑it’s enchant­i­ng.” The old min­is­ter peered through his spec­ta­cles. “Such a pat­tern, what col­ors!” I’ll be sure to tell the Emperor how delight­ed I am with it.” “We’re pleased to hear that,” the swindlers said. They pro­ceed­ed to name all the col­ors and to explain the intri­cate pat­tern. The old min­is­ter paid the clos­est atten­tion, so that he could tell it all to the Emperor. And so he did.

The swindlers at once asked for more mon­ey, more silk and gold thread, to get on with the weav­ing. But it all went into their pock­ets. Not a thread went into the looms, though they worked at their weav­ing as hard as ever. The Emperor present­ly sent anoth­er trust­wor­thy offi­cial to see how the work pro­gressed and how soon it would be ready. The same thing hap­pened to him that had hap­pened to the min­is­ter. He looked and he looked, but as there was noth­ing to see in the looms he could­n’t see any­thing. “Isn’t it a beau­ti­ful piece of goods?” the swindlers asked him, as they dis­played and described their imag­i­nary pat­tern. “I know I’m not stu­pid,” the man thought, “so it must be that I’m unwor­thy of my good office. That’s strange. I must­n’t let any­one find it out, though.” So he praised the mate­r­i­al he did not see. He declared he was delight­ed with the beau­ti­ful col­ors and the exquis­ite pat­tern. To the Emperor he said, “It held me spell­bound.” All the town was talk­ing of this splen­did cloth, and the Emperor want­ed to see it for him­self while it was still in the looms. Attended by a band of cho­sen men, among whom were his two old trust­ed offi­cials-the ones who had been to the weavers-he set out to see the two swindlers. He found them weav­ing with might and main, but with­out a thread in their looms. “Magnificent,” said the two offi­cials already duped. “Just look, Your Majesty, what col­ors! What a design!” They point­ed to the emp­ty looms, each sup­pos­ing that the oth­ers could see the stuff. “What’s this?” thought the Emperor. “I can’t see any­thing. This is ter­ri­ble! Am I a fool? Am I unfit to be the Emperor? What a thing to hap­pen to me of all peo­ple! — Oh! It’s very pret­ty,” he said. “It has my high­est approval.” And he nod­ded appro­ba­tion at the emp­ty loom. Nothing could make him say that he could­n’t see anything.

His whole ret­inue stared and stared. One saw no more than anoth­er, but they all joined the Emperor in exclaim­ing, “Oh! It’s very pret­ty,” and they advised him to wear clothes made of this won­der­ful cloth espe­cial­ly for the great pro­ces­sion he was soon to lead. “Magnificent! Excellent! Unsurpassed!” were bandied from mouth to mouth, and every­one did his best to seem well pleased. The Emperor gave each of the swindlers a cross to wear in his but­ton­hole, and the title of “Sir Weaver.” Before the pro­ces­sion the swindlers sat up all night and burned more than six can­dles, to show how busy they were fin­ish­ing the Emperor’s new clothes. They pre­tend­ed to take the cloth off the loom. They made cuts in the air with huge scis­sors. And at last they said, “Now the Emperor’s new clothes are ready for him.” Then the Emperor him­self came with his noblest noble­men, and the swindlers each raised an arm as if they were hold­ing some­thing. They said, “These are the trousers, here’s the coat, and this is the man­tle,” nam­ing each gar­ment. “All of them are as light as a spi­der web. One would almost think he had noth­ing on, but that’s what makes them so fine.” “Exactly,” all the noble­men agreed, though they could see noth­ing, for there was noth­ing to see.“If Your Imperial Majesty will con­de­scend to take your clothes off,” said the swindlers, “we will help you on with your new ones here in front of the long mirror.”

The Emperor undressed, and the swindlers pre­tend­ed to put his new clothes on him, one gar­ment after anoth­er. They took him around the waist and seemed to be fas­ten­ing some­thing — that was his train-as the Emperor turned round and round before the look­ing glass. “How well Your Majesty’s new clothes look. Aren’t they becom­ing!” He heard on all sides, “That pat­tern, so per­fect! Those col­ors, so suit­able! It is a mag­nif­i­cent out­fit.” Then the min­is­ter of pub­lic pro­ces­sions announced: “Your Majesty’s canopy is wait­ing out­side.” “Well, I’m sup­posed to be ready,” the Emperor said, and turned again for one last look in the mir­ror. “It is a remark­able fit, isn’t it?” He seemed to regard his cos­tume with the great­est inter­est. The noble­men who were to car­ry his train stooped low and reached for the floor as if they were pick­ing up his man­tle. Then they pre­tend­ed to lift and hold it high. They did­n’t dare admit they had noth­ing to hold. So off went the Emperor in pro­ces­sion under his splen­did canopy. Everyone in the streets and the win­dows said, “Oh, how fine are the Emperor’s new clothes! Don’t they fit him to per­fec­tion? And see his long train!” Nobody would con­fess that he could­n’t see any­thing, for that would prove him either unfit for his posi­tion, or a fool. No cos­tume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a com­plete suc­cess. “But he has­n’t got any­thing on,” a lit­tle child said. “Did you ever hear such inno­cent prat­tle?” said its father. And one per­son whis­pered to anoth­er what the child had said, “He has­n’t any­thing on. A child says he has­n’t any­thing on.” “But he has­n’t got any­thing on!” the whole town cried out at last.The Emperor shiv­ered, for he sus­pect­ed they were right. But he thought, “This pro­ces­sion has got to go on.” So he walked more proud­ly than ever, as his noble­men held high the train that was­n’t there at all. http://​ander​sen​.sdu​.dk/​v​a​e​r​k​/​h​e​r​s​h​o​l​t​/​T​h​e​E​m​p​e​r​o​r​s​N​e​w​C​l​o​t​h​e​s​_​e​.​h​tml

The moral of the sto­ry could eas­i­ly be attrib­uted to the Emperor’s haugh­ti­ness only, but we squan­der the greater mes­sage of the hypocrisy of all of the play­ers except the inno­cent lit­tle child who was uncon­strained by pre­ten­tious idio­cy. “He has­n’t any­thing on” !
For years I have been writ­ing much like that lit­tle child uncon­strained by hyp­o­crit­i­cal idio­cy that the crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica is get­ting worse in all fair­ness there have been a few oth­er uncon­strained lit­tle chil­dren like myself who have been will­ing to take a chance and risk being labeled unfit for our posi­tions a down­right fool or both.

As the mur­ders become more grue­some the peo­ple dou­ble down in their idio­cy , after all no one wants to be seen as unwor­thy of the posi­tion they hold no one wants to dis­agree with the con-men/­women and hus­tlers that what Jamaica needs is a revised sense of com­mu­ni­ty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty of each and every Jamaican to look out for each oth­er by say­ing to crim­i­nals “no not in my com­mu­ni­ty”.
Instead they kow-tow to the con artistes from Jamaicans for Justice, the Peace Management Unit , Families against State Terrorism, The Bar Association, The Council for Human Rights and the pha­lanx of (weavers ), I mean con-artiste who teach them that all crim­i­nals are crim­i­nals because they can­not find work. That Gangsters stand­ing on the cor­ners are not Gangsters who belong in jail, they are mere­ly cor­ner-crews and the pre­ten­tious peo­ple pre­tend­ed acqui­esced , they went along with the lies , even though they knew that each and every one of those gang­sters stand­ing on the cor­ners were dan­ger­ous killers, rapists and extortionists.
They went ahead with it because the con-artistes con­vinced them that not believ­ing it made them unwor­thy, mere fools.

So while Carolyn Gomes stacked away inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion and copped the Order of the Nation for cre­at­ing more hatred for the police who make life liv­able in the King’s domain Her pro­tégée Horace Levy the oth­er weaver is pro­mot­ed to con­tin­ue the decep­tion which is the JFJ.
Why should we not believe the (weavers) whoops I meant con-men-women after all they are smart and we are smart . Why would we let on that we know that the demo­niz­ing of our police force was counter pro­duc­tive, That INDECOM is a farce and a crime enhance­ment unit designed so Terrence Williams and his band of weavers can eat a food too?

No we can’t do that because we would be looked at and labeled a fool or unworthy.
I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful for the hon­esty and the inno­cent nature of the lit­tle child who had no con­cept of pre­tense, who did not need to cur­ry favor with esteemed ego-mani­a­cal narcissists.

As the Emperor con­tin­ue in his naked­ness a Honover cou­ple was tak­en from their home along with a fam­i­ly mem­ber they were shot and dumped in bush­es the mur­der­ers drove their vehi­cle back to their home and ran­sacked it telling the cou­ple’s minor child that his par­ents would be home soon>
Neither 56-year-old Balfour ‘Fire Bird’ Gordon, a bus oper­a­tor , nor his wife Aleth Brown Gordon, 45, will ever be return­ing home to their son.
They are mere sta­tis­tics, just two more lives snuffed out as if they nev­er existed.

In the mean­time the Emperor(Jamaica) con­tin­ue on it’s mer­ry way because after all This pro­ces­sion has got to go on.” So Jamaica walk more proud­ly than ever, as it’s noble­men hold high the train that isn’t there at all.

Seeking to score cheap political points is what politicians do. In a recent audio blog I made reference to that very issue as it relates to the ongoing blood-shed in Jamaica. The Minister of National Security Robert Montague’s said that among the issues his ministry was considering in attacking the crime monster is the resumption of hanging.

Montague said then quote: “Government remains committed to mobilizing all the resources at its disposal to wage a “relentless war” against criminal elements “intent on destroying our nation”. To this end, he said the Administration is currently exploring the possible resumption of hanging.”
The Minister also said that state minister, Pearnel Charles Jr, has been asked to consult with several stakeholders, including the Ministry of Justice and Attorney General’s Office, to determine if there are any “legal impediments” to be addressed.

I thought the Minister’s state­ment was a lit­tle naïve’ con­sid­er­ing that in rough­ly 28 years not a sin­gle per­son has been hanged in Jamaica. The UK Privy Council which hears final appeals of Jamaican cas­es is opposed to hang­ing and in addi­tion Jamaica has signed on to International treaties which ties it’s hands as far as effec­tive­ly deal­ing with hard­ened crim­i­nals are concerned.

Notwithstanding the Minister’s state­ments indi­cat­ed to me that he was means test­ing to see what could poten­tial­ly be done toward the extra­or­di­nary high mur­der rate on the Island.
In response to Montague’s state­ment, oppo­si­tion spokesper­son on jus­tice and for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Mark Golding opined that hang­ing won’t be hap­pen­ing. Of course he went on to out­line the rea­sons why he believed that there will be no resump­tion of hang­ing any­time soon.
Quote>“I do not regard min­is­ter Montague’s announce­ment, that the Government is seek­ing “to deter­mine if there are any legal imped­i­ments for the resump­tion of hang­ing in Jamaica”, as a seri­ous pol­i­cy ini­tia­tive that will be imple­ment­ed. The Government can’t hang more peo­ple; nor, as a prac­ti­cal mat­ter, can Parliament. Only the courts can make that hap­pen, and the courts are gov­erned by the rule of law and, in par­tic­u­lar, the human rights guar­an­tees in our Constitution,”

Ha ha , there you have it the Constitutional guar­an­teed shack­le. When the law becomes a shack­le then the shack­led becomes fools deserv­ing of being shackled.
This state­ment is proof pos­i­tive that the pre­vi­ous Administration had no inten­tion , desire or will do do any­thing about the run-away mur­ders which has gone on on it’s watch.
The fact of the mat­ter is that they view the issue of crime and law enforce­ment from the per­spec­tive of the accused mur­der­er , rather than from the per­spec­tive of the inno­cent victim.
Additionally , Golding said that “the reac­ti­va­tion of the death penal­ty after 28 years would bring con­dem­na­tion and adverse crit­i­cism on Jamaica from inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment part­ners that are not in sup­port of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment”.

You sim­ply can­not make this shit up.
Every so-called International part­ner of Jamaica have strict domes­tic laws and tough enforce­ment of those laws, no treaty super­sedes their indi­vid­ual con­sti­tu­tions. In the United States for exam­ple sev­er­al states do car­ry out the death penal­ty as opposed to oth­er states .Golding went on to say “Those states in the United States which retain and apply the death penal­ty (for exam­ple Texas) are not the states which enjoy the low­est mur­der rates in the US”.

I’m not sure where Golding gets his data from ‚here are the breakdowns.
States with the death penalty. 

States with­out the death penalty> 

The fact of the mat­ter is that most of the states which have done away with the death penal­ty are lib­er­al New England states. There are a few out­liers which are heav­i­ly con­ser­v­a­tive states ‚ie , Alaska, Iowa, West Virginia which has also abol­ished the death penal­ty as well.
My point is not in sup­port of the death penal­ty or against it . I sim­ply believe that Mark Golding’s argu­ments are not sup­port­ed by facts.
In fact, non-death penal­ty states like Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, New Mexico,Maryland, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia lit­er­al­ly dis­proves Golding’s arguments.
Now whether the death penal­ty is a deter­rent against vio­lent crimes I don’t know. What I do know is that the argu­ments that it’ isn’t are unproven and un-provable .
How does any­one know what the mur­der rates would be in states with the death penal­ty? Since we are unable to decide year by-by-year what the homi­cide rates would be in states with the death penal­ty, I don’t see how any­one can say it has­n’t worked at low­er­ing numbers.
Technically speak­ing whether or not one sup­port the death penal­ty , it may rea­son­ably be argued that those exe­cut­ed won’t return to kill again any­time soon.
So one can rea­son­ably say the death penal­ty is indeed a deter­rent, at least to those executed.

The real­i­ty is that Golding and many more like him do not care about reduc­ing crime.
They view crime as a nec­es­sary evil to be exploit­ed. In actu­al­i­ty that mind­set tran­scend polit­i­cal par­ty. It should come as no sur­prise that ele­ments in both par­ties do agree on crime. That is that noth­ing should be done about it.
Both Parties have cadres of Elitist lawyers and oth­er University grad­u­ates who believe in the lib­er­al crap­o­la that crime is fixed if you sim­ply give peo­ple jobs.
If every­one had jobs it’s quite pos­si­ble there would be less crime, or maybe cit­i­zens would have to deal with oth­er kinds of crimes.
In the Scandinavian region of Europe there are low­er crimes than say in the busy metrop­o­lis­es like New York or Los Angeles , but it is not exact­ly clear whether it’s because these soci­eties pro­vide jobs for their cit­i­zens or whether the fact that they are large­ly homo­ge­neous Caucasian soci­eties with built in social safe­ty nets. Or if they have a genet­ic pre-dis­po­si­tion not to com­mit crimes as some have argued.

Interest groups in both Jamaican polit­i­cal par­ties do see crime as some­thing to be lever­aged for polit­i­cal mileage. They approach crime from the per­spec­tive of the per­pe­tra­tors. Their default posi­tion is to secure the inter­est of the accused , not the abused.
It’s naïveté of the high­est order to assume that crime can be fixed once we make peo­ple prosperous.
The reverse is true, crime takes away from peo­ple’s lives, on that basis alone peo­ple’s lives can­not be made bet­ter with astro­nom­i­cal crime lev­els intact.
Crime and Safety in Jamaica

According to CHAPTER 6: CRIME AND ITS IMPACT ON BUSINESS IN JAMAICA Jamaica has the one of the high­est rates of vio­lent crime in the world.
A high rate of vio­lent crime can have many adverse reper­cus­sions: 1 It has a neg­a­tive impact on the invest­ment cli­mate and can deter or delay both domes­tic and for­eign invest­ment, and hence growth. 2 It leads to high­er cost of doing busi­ness, because of the need to employ dif­fer­ent forms of secu­ri­ty, and diverts invest­ment away from busi­ness expan­sion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty improve­ment, and may lead to a less than opti­mal oper­at­ing strat­e­gy. 2 It leads to busi­ness loss­es, aris­ing from loot­ing, arson, theft, extor­tion and fraud. 3 It leads to loss of out­put because of reduced hours of oper­a­tion (includ­ing avoid­ing night shifts) or loss of work­days aris­ing from out­breaks of vio­lence, and avoid­ance of some types of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty. 4 It also reduces out­put because of the tem­po­rary (from injury) or per­ma­nent (from mur­der) exit of indi­vid­u­als from the labor force. In the lat­ter case, the loss is not just cur­rent out­put, but the out­put in the remain­ing years of the individual’s work­ing life. 5 It can also cause a per­ma­nent shut-down of firms or relo­ca­tion to less crime-prone coun­tries. 2 It erodes the devel­op­ment of human cap­i­tal as well as social cap­i­tal and thus con­strains the poten­tial for growth. The crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica seems to be an impor­tant rea­son for migra­tion, since the fear of crime sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the qual­i­ty of life. Crime and vio­lence have also been blamed for slow­ing down the rate of return of migrants back to Jamaica. Also, crime forces oth­er­wise pro­duc­tive indi­vid­u­als to occa­sion­al­ly exit the labor force because of vio­lent injury to them­selves or close asso­ciates, or because of social unrest in the com­mu­ni­ty. Violence in some com­mu­ni­ties also caus­es schools to close peri­od­i­cal­ly. Moreover, home and com­mu­ni­ty insta­bil­i­ty is not con­ducive to learn­ing and edu­ca­tion­al objectives.

We won’t soon fix Jamaica’s crime sit­u­a­tion unless a 180 degree turn is exe­cut­ed in the approach present­ly being used. Jamaicans sim­ply are too tol­er­ant of crime, too many , includ­ed some in posi­tions of pow­er are involved or ben­e­fit­ing from crime. That includes vio­lent crimes.
Others are not exposed enough to under­stand that the approach­es they espouse are mak­ing a bad sit­u­a­tion worse.
Since crime was equal­ly as high under the for­mer admin­is­tra­tion it would behoove Mark Golding to at least work with the new National secu­ri­ty Minister to find solu­tions instead of grand­stand­ing for the cameras.
Those state­ments do noth­ing to aid the fight, Sometimes sim­ply remain­ing silent is way more valu­able than offer­ing up a non-solution.

Fifty four (54)-year-old Judith Williams had just left her home in East Kingston for work Thursday morning when two men rode up on a motorcycle, the pillion rider pumped six bullets into her body.
According to media reports the 54 year old was looking forward to retiring from her job. Ms Williams was rushed to the hospital where Doctors made an urgent plea for blood to save her life.
Colleagues and ordinary citizens alike responded to the call , they rushed to show their humanity by giving the life-giving liquid but no amount of blood would save her life, the trauma to her body was too much and she succumbed to her wounds.

Judith Williams was a police offi­cer who served her coun­try well. There is no expla­na­tion why she had to walk or take a bus to work , was it that she nev­er learned to dri­ve, was it that she was unable to afford a car, some con­cerned observers have even asked why she still lived in the grit­ty east Kingston neigh­bor­hood she did?
Though impor­tant none of these ques­tions mat­ter now Judith Williams most like­ly died because she dared to be a police offi­cer in a coun­try in which empha­sis is placed on pro­tect­ing crim­i­nals over pro­tect­ing the innocent.

Portia Quick On Athletes Bandwagon But Mute On Murders…

Corporal Williams worked at the com­mis­sion­er of police’s offices, she even shared her boss’s last name yet though she was near­ing retire­ment she had only made the rank of cor­po­ral. I doubt whether Commissioner Carl Williams even knew her?
The Commissioner as was to be expect­ed issued the fol­low­ing statement.…

“My heart goes out to the fam­i­ly mem­bers and col­leagues of Ms. Williams who has passed under very trag­ic cir­cum­stances. I too mourn with you as she was a mem­ber of my imme­di­ate staff,” Williams said. “To her killers, the Jamaica Constabulary Force remains undaunt­ed by this evil act. We will stop at noth­ing until her killers are brought to justice.”

Last December two police offi­cers were mur­dered as they engaged in a friend­ly game of domi­noes at poor-man’s cor­ner in the parish of Saint Thomas. On that occa­sion the Commissioner of Police issued much the same state­ment even as he and his depart­ment named Marlon (dup­py film) Perry as the shoot­er. Five months lat­er Marlon Perry is not sit­ting in a jail cell nei­ther is he lying on a con­crete slab at Madden’s funer­al home or rot­ting in a hole somewhere.
On that basis I will treat the Commissioner’s state­ment the way I treat oth­er refuse , I throw it in the garbage bin where it belongs.……

More despi­ca­ble than the Commissioner of Police’s form-state­ment is a state­ment com­ing from Portia Simpson Miller the for­mer Prime Minister who is now rel­e­gat­ed to the posi­tion of oppo­si­tion leader.
In a cyn­i­cal , trans­par­ent, cal­cu­la­tive self-serv­ing state­ment Miller issued a state­ment quote: “The wors­en­ing mur­der sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try is alarm­ing and requires deci­sive action and the full coöper­a­tion of all Jamaicans,”.

No s**t ? where were you when con­sta­ble Crystal Thomas was slaugh­tered on a bus head­ing home after her tour of duty ? Condolences poured in from far and near includ­ing from the American Government , yet you the Prime Minister was deaf­en­ing­ly silent?
Where were you when Constable Lynden Barrett was killed in west Kingston as he attempt­ed to appre­hend two gun-men?
Where were you when Constable Curtis Lewis Of the Westmoreland Division was mowed down by a motor­cy­clist who ignored his com­mand to stop .
Where were you when the litany of cops were mur­dered on your damn watch?
Silent.….…Because it was not polit­i­cal­ly expe­di­ent for you to lead from the front, shar­ing in the pain and hurt of the fam­i­lies of the deceased, because every­thing for you and your damn cronies is about polit­i­cal power.
Do your­self a favor and just shut the hell up.

TWO COPS KILLED IN AS MANY DAYS :THE SILENCE FROM JAMAICA HOUSE IN THE MEANTIME IS DEAFENING…

The list of police offi­cers killed under this new­ly rel­e­gat­ed Opposition leader is long yet she nev­er had a word of com­fort for their fam­i­lies. Her focus was on salut­ing sports stars and reg­gae artiste. How dare this oppor­tunis­tic polit­i­cal hus­tler dis­hon­or this slain offi­cers mem­o­ry and her fam­i­ly with polit­i­cal pandering?

In soci­ety police offi­cers do a job many do not want , it’s not too far removed from those who sign up to go die in for­eign wars in defense of oth­ers who would not step up to defend themselves.
For most in soci­ety we are more tol­er­ant of sol­diers because we are so far removed from the wars we are de-sen­si­tized to the car­nage ‚its as if they occur in the abstract. Real though they are we get to live out our self award­ed moral supe­ri­or­i­ty about the pros and cons of it as if we all do not play a part in their creation.
Police offi­cers on the oth­er hand inter­face with us on a more per­son­al lev­el in many cas­es they are asked to save us from ourselves.
Police offi­cers like oth­er humans make mis­takes and they betray our trust. Regardless they run toward the dan­ger when we seek cov­er for our­selves. Most of their mis­takes are made in crit­i­cal high-pres­sure sit­u­a­tions of life and death ., Situations most of us are not faced with in our jobs.

Jamaican police are not expect­ed to make mis­takes, every Tom, “DICK” and Harry has an opin­ion on how every sit­u­a­tion should have been han­dled , even though they were nev­er called on to act in sim­i­lar situations.
Those who wield pow­er con­tin­u­al­ly place the police in unten­able sit­u­a­tions in which there are no win­ners except they who cre­at­ed the sce­nar­ios in the first place.
Less than ade­quate pay, lack of resources, lack of sup­port, polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, open sup­port for pow­er­ful crim­i­nals are just a few of the hur­dles being placed in the way of effec­tive polic­ing on the Island.
Nevertheless noth­ing has been more detri­men­tal to polic­ing or more dan­ger­ous to the lives and secu­ri­ty of police offi­cers than the (inde­com) Act . This mis­guid­ed poor­ly thought-out law has been a crim­i­nal empow­er­ing tool which has seen crime explode and the lives of police offi­cers worth absolute­ly nothing.
Neither the oppor­tunis­tic Portia Simpson Miller’s pathet­ic and dis­gust­ing polit­i­cal play on the lives of police offi­cers, nor Andrew Holness’ less than ade­quate recog­ni­tion that crime must be dealt with as a mat­ter of urgency gives the nation hope that there will be any end in sight to the blood-shed.

Where is a Bustamante or a Hugh Lawson Shearer when they are needed ?
Gone are the days when the Jamaica Labor Party was the Conservative par­ty of law and order. Those Leaders under­stood that any sup­posed plan aimed at bring­ing pros­per­i­ty to the peo­ple must be twinned with seri­ous crime pre­ven­tion components.
Those who believe they can kow-tow to the lib­er­al elites at the University (intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to) of the West Indies or load up the police force with it’s func­tionar­ies and crime will vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­s­a­pear are in for a rude awakening.

In the mean­time the fam­i­lies of the Island’s police offi­cers must be pre­pared to bury their loved ones who have stepped for­ward to offer them­selves as liv­ing sac­ri­fices for the good of an ungrate­ful nation ruled by a bunch of self ‑serv­ing charlatans.
Every par­ent whose son or daugh­ter steps for­ward to serve in the Island’s secu­ri­ty forces must under­stand before they give their bless­ings that their Government has laws which active­ly empow­ers criminals .
If they are sat­is­fied about that they may then offer up their chil­dren as sac­ri­fi­cial lambs to the slaugh­ter, know­ing that nei­ther Holness nor Miller nor any of their under­lings are in dan­ger because they have police offi­cers pro­tect­ing them with their lives.

KINGSTON, Jamaica – The United States Department of State 2015 report on human rights prac­tices says Jamaica’s Government is cor­rupt and lacks transparency.

The 2015 report, which has very sim­i­lar find­ings to the 2014 report, said although there are exist­ing laws, which pro­vide crim­i­nal penal­ties for cor­rupt offi­cials, the Government has failed to effec­tive­ly imple­ment the laws, result­ing in offi­cials some­times engag­ing in cor­rupt prac­tices with impuni­ty. To bol­ster its claim, the report stat­ed: “The gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued efforts to inter­dict and pros­e­cute offi­cials’ cor­rupt prac­tices and raise pub­lic aware­ness on cor­rup­tion. Media and civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions, how­ev­er, con­tin­ued to crit­i­cise the Director of Public Prosecution for being slow and at times reluc­tant to pros­e­cute cor­rup­tion cas­es.” For exam­ple, the DPP did not order an inves­ti­ga­tion of a for­mer may­or for nepo­tism in the award of pub­lic con­tracts until after a court, in December, ruled in favor of the Contractor General in decid­ing the DPP could pros­e­cute, the report said.
In September, the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s Major Organized Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency arrest­ed and charged 10 offi­cials for pub­lic sec­tor cor­rup­tion and 22 police offi­cers for cor­rup­tion. During the same peri­od, courts reached 27 con­vic­tions, three acquit­tals and 14 dis­missals. Pending in the courts were 159 cor­rup­tion cas­es from 2008 to 2015.

In the 2014 report, the US also allud­ed to an Organisation of American States (OAS) report, which was crit­i­cal of Jamaica’s pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al agen­cies for their gen­er­al fail­ure to pros­e­cute cor­rup­tion cas­es, espe­cial­ly the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Read more here: http://Ja’s Government still cor­rupt, lacks trans­paren­cy — 2015 report

WHEN YOU CONSIDER THE CULTURE IN WHICH CRIME FLOURISHES IN JAMAICA CONSIDER WHAT WE HAVE BEEN HAMMERING HOME FOR YEARS, THESE ARE LAWYERS WHO ARE PRACTICING LAW WHILE THEIR CERTIFICATIONS ARE NOT RENEWED. IF THEY ARE NOT RENEWED THEY ARE NOT LAWYERS IN THE EYES OF THE LAW.

Delinquent Lawyers Threatened With Prosecution

The General Legal Council (GLC) has warned of pros­e­cu­tion for delin­quent attor­neys-at-law who have not renewed their prac­tis­ing certificates.

In a notice pub­lished in today’s Sunday Gleaner the GLC remind­ed attor­neys that those who have failed to renew their cer­tifi­cates do not have a right of audi­ence before the courts. Further, the GLC empha­sised that it was a crim­i­nal offence, accord­ing to the Legal Profession Act, for any per­son to act as an attor­ney in any mat­ter while not being duly qual­i­fied or enti­tled to act as an attor­ney-at-law. The GLC said it was in the process of com­pil­ing a list of delin­quent attor­neys, which will be post­ed on its web­site and dis­trib­uted to all courts across the island. The warn­ing comes as the coun­cil moves to increase renew­al fees on May 1. It is urg­ing attor­neys to, there­fore, move swift­ly to renew their cer­tifi­cates if they wish to avoid pay­ing the increased fees. http://​jamaica​glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​4​1​7​/​d​e​l​i​n​q​u​e​n​t​-​l​a​w​y​e​r​s​-​t​h​r​e​a​t​e​n​e​d​-​p​r​o​s​e​c​u​t​ion

There is a gen­er­al con­sen­sus that as a nation we have han­dled our affairs bad­ly since Independence, there is no deny­ing that.
However there is no longer a viable argu­ment to be made for stay­ing under the Crown out­side of what­ev­er val­ue the Island derive from hav­ing the UK Privy Council as it’s final court of appeals.
Jamaicans can’t hop on a plane and enter England like Puerto Ricans can the US.
Simply put there is real­ly no upside for Jamaica keep­ing the British Monarch as a head of state out­side the val­ue of the Privy Council.
Sorry Governor General I real­ly like you but you’ll be okay.
It is impor­tant that we rec­og­nize how­ev­er that if Jamaica remove the Queen as head of state we have by default signed on to a Caribbean court of Justice as our high­est court, or worse trust­ing our failed bro­ken down sys­tem which has been a colos­sal flop.
Not a thought I rel­ish in light of the record of the Island’s crim­i­nal Justice system.
If we decide to get rid of the queen maybe we should also get a new Constitution , why not?

The pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Caribbean court of appeals, or worse the final court of appeals being in Jamaica should give Jamaicans much pause.
Set aside the chest thump­ing and the patri­ot­ic gob­bledy­gook about our own abil­i­ties the record sim­ply has not matched the darn rhetoric.
So lets quit the non­sense and face real­i­ty , we have made a mess of things.
There is more than enough evi­dence that the judi­cial process have failed the Jamaican peo­ple and have through it’s inept­ness and lib­er­al stance sig­nif­i­cant­ly added to the Island’s crime situation.
When cit­i­zens believe they will get no jus­tice in the courts they exact their own brand of jus­tice which is nev­er jus­tice but vengeance.
When an alleged goat thief gets hacked to death its not jus­tice. Yes it may give future goat-thieves pause but it places the lives of all Jamaicans at risk . Merely pass­ing through a com­mu­ni­ty where you are not known makes you sus­pi­cious and a tar­get for those would kill you just for the hell of it.
Given the fail­ings of the Judicial process I am stunned that some peo­ple still believe in it’s fideli­ty. Though not the best enti­ty to point this out , even the US Government has point­ed to the Jamaican jus­tice sys­tem and it’s myr­i­ad prob­lems, which the very Jamaican gov­ern­ment agrees with.
That ought to be a dis-qual­i­fi­er as it per­tains to giv­ing it more responsibility.

The aver­age man on the street does not believe the Justice sys­tem works in his inter­est, no one is immune. The police which is the most vis­i­ble part of the jus­tice sys­tem gets all the blame when the police is prob­a­bly least to blame for the woes of the system.
The Judges are prob­a­bly the least con­spic­u­ous of all the play­ers in the process but they arguably have the most impact.
They are less vis­i­ble but the crim­i­nals they turn loose on tech­ni­cal­i­ty and with slaps on the wrist aren’t.
People have no con­fi­dence that the sys­tem will pro­tect them when mur­der­ers are sum­mar­i­ly returned to the streets time and time after being charged with homicides.
There is no rea­son for peo­ple to jeop­ar­dize their lives by coop­er­at­ing with a sys­tem which bends over back­wards to appease crim­i­nals at their expense.
Only in Jamaica are accused mur­der­ers grant­ed bail to go out and kill over and over and over again.
To hell with the argu­ment that the bail act is not sup­posed to be puni­tive. If some­one is arrest­ed for a mur­der a judge can gloss over the evi­dence and see whether the charge has mer­it before con­sid­er­ing bail, if at all.
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Most of the lead­ing Caribbean Islands are not a part of the CCJ. The new admin­is­tra­tion should think this through thor­ough­ly, . Bustamante worked hard to pull Jamaica from the West Indian Federation sup­port­ed by the PNP , soon after the West Indian Federation collapsed.
On Bustamante’s vision Jamaica’s sov­er­eign­ty and Independence was born.
It would be iron­ic if the labor par­ty now become the par­ty which guide Jamaica into a CCJ alliance .
Getting rid of the Monarchy also means get­ting rid of the UK Privy Council as well.

THE Government has sig­nalled that it intends to make good on its promise to sev­er colo­nial ties with Britain by bring­ing a Constitution amend­ment bill to Parliament to have the Queen of England Elizabeth ll, replaced with a non-exec­u­tive pres­i­dent as head of state.

This would do away with the gov­er­nor gen­er­al as the Queen’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive here, and make Jamaica a repub­lic. A non-exec­u­tive pres­i­dent, like the gov­er­nor gen­er­al, would still be a sym­bol­ic leader and per­form a rep­re­sen­ta­tive and civic role but with no pow­ers to make pol­i­cy. But he or she could use dis­cre­tionary pow­ers for extra­or­di­nary polit­i­cal inter­ven­tion, based on the Constitution.

Governor General Sir Patrick Allen, in the 2016/​2017 Throne Speech to mark the open­ing of the new ses­sion of Parliament, announced the plan to move to repub­li­can sta­tus, while out­lin­ing a raft of oth­er mea­sures that are now on the leg­isla­tive agenda.

The new Administration appears set on doing what for­mer Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller in her inau­gu­ra­tion speech fol­low­ing her party’s vic­to­ry in the 2011 gen­er­al elec­tion, had pro­posed to do. Simpson Miller said then that as Jamaica cel­e­brat­ed its 50^th anniver­sary of inde­pen­dence, the Government would “ini­ti­ate the process for our detach­ment from the Monarchy to become a repub­lic with our own indige­nous pres­i­dent as head of state”. Read more here : Removal of Queen as head of State, fixed elec­tion date and term lim­it for PM

In civilized societies out of necessity governments must engage in a challenging balancing act between ensuring citizens civil rights and ensuring the rule of law.. Representatives of the people enact laws in line with the demands of those they represent . The enforcement of those laws and the commensurate stability of said societies are a consent decree between the Governed and those who govern. This marriage works only when both parties show fidelity to the stated goals as is the case in any marriage.
No society can claim to want security, human and civil rights yet refuse to obey laws and show respect and give support to those who enforce said laws.

The chal­lenge inher­ent in strik­ing that bal­ance is not a job which will ever be com­plet­ed, it con­tin­ues to be a work in progress even in the most sophis­ti­cat­ed and advanced societies.
Nations which have accom­plished some of the best results in terms of less incar­cer­a­tion of their peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly soci­eties which are large­ly racial­ly homo­ge­neous soci­eties ie, the Scandinavian region of Europe. The seem­ing­ly more har­mo­nious nature of their soci­eties are gen­er­al­ly ones in which social and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions are attend­ed to with strict focus. On the oth­er hand there are soci­eties where laws are strict­ly enforced with stun­ning bru­tal­i­ty . The end result is that cit­i­zens are cowed into sub­mis­sion, they avoid run­ning afoul of laws , ie China , Suadi Arabia Iran etal.
Simply put the con­se­quences of get­ting caught does not jus­ti­fy the means.
It is rea­son­able to con­clude that many of us are not exact­ly lin­ing up to enter the lat­ter societies,

This leaves us with the oth­er soci­eties where there is an alpha­bet stew of dif­fer­ent types of peo­ple with dif­fer­ing views, tem­pera­ments and attitudes.
Such is the Jamaican soci­ety, a mass of opin­ions and a cor­nu­copia of atti­tudes not con­strained by total­i­tar­i­an edict.
How do we run such a soci­ety in which every­one is stri­dent­ly opin­ion­at­ed and vehe­ment­ly opposed to hear­ing the oth­er per­son out ? Yet every­one clam­or for the trap­pings of oth­er soci­eties , soci­eties which sub­ject them­selves to the con­sent decree between those who gov­ern and those they govern?

THE GOVERNED

That arrange­ment requires a dis­ci­plined approach by the gov­erned which eschew crim­i­nal activ­i­ties and a deci­sion to respect laws, under­stand­ing that laws are there for their pro­tec­tion. Citizens have a right and indeed a respon­si­bil­i­ty to lob­by, agi­tate and even peace­ably mil­i­tate to have laws deemed inju­ri­ous to their well-being removed and replaced with more appro­pri­ate ones.
The lat­ter is par­tic­u­lar­ly true for a nation like Jamaica in which many of the present laws were designed to keep the mass­es in check by pow­ers anti­thet­i­cal to their interest.
The same is true for soci­eties like the United States where eth­nic minori­ties are not always best pro­tect­ed by some laws which were designed to empow­er one race over another.
Citizens who demand secu­ri­ty must rec­og­nize and buy into the idea that the secu­ri­ty they crave is their secu­ri­ty not that of anoth­er. On that basis it is impor­tant that they become equal part­ners in the imple­men­ta­tion of what­ev­er strate­gies are employed toward ensur­ing that security.
Security of their per­sons, homes , com­mu­ni­ties, and coun­try is not an abstract con­cept to be ensured with­out indi­vid­ual participation.

A per­son whose life is seri­ous­ly threat­ened will report that threat to author­i­ties , he/​she will do what­ev­er it takes for agents of the state to pro­tect him/​her.
The same prin­ci­ple applies to homes and oth­er per­son­al properties.
Why then is that lev­el of coöper­a­tion removed or absent when the same coöper­a­tion is required to pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ty and by exten­sion the nation?
It reeks of utter self­ish­ness and myopia that once the threat is removed from the prop­er­ties we deem ours, we remove our coöper­a­tion with those whose task it is to pro­vide said security.
It is prob­a­bly one of the best barom­e­ter to mea­sure whether we speak with forked tongues when we utter the false words about love for Country when our com­mit­ment goes no far­ther than our own lives and our per­son­al properties.

THOSE WHO GOVERN

Those giv­en the priv­i­leged to serve in Government must divest them­selves of the notion they are rulers.
That priv­i­lege is fleet­ing, fick­le and can be tak­en away at a momen­t’s notice.
Government too must keep it’s end of the bar­gain if the rela­tion­ship is to have a chance to work. The pro­tec­tion of the cit­i­zen­ry is para­mount, after all gov­ern­ment is com­prised of rep­re­sen­ta­tives whom the peo­ple elect to car­ry out their wishes.
Government is sim­i­lar to a human body, each part of that body is equal­ly as impor­tant as the next.
Sure the eye can argue about it’s impor­tance but the blad­der though hid­den away holds uri­nal waste for dis­po­si­tion .This func­tion pre­vents lethal poi­son­ing of the entire body.
The moral of that anal­o­gy is that every part must work in tan­dem for the health of the body, a dead body also includes dead eyes.
So too should every arm of Government work togeth­er for the com­mon good. A house divid­ed among itself will not stand.

It does Government no good, and the peo­ple a tremen­dous dis-ser­vice when one part of Government seek to play both sides of the fence which ulti­mate­ly results in ani­mos­i­ty and enmi­ty. Each arm has a duty , each arm should do it’s duty with­out bring­ing undue ridicule, con­dem­na­tion and stress to the other.
The job of gov­ern­ing is dif­fi­cult enough with­out the hand stick­ing the eye to appear relevant .
In the end chop­ping off the nose to spite the face hurts the body and makes for a ugly picture.
We accom­plish much when we work togeth­er, not when we seek to set our­selves apart for cheap pop­u­lar­i­ty and self aggrandizement.

In what amounted to a shameless and gratuitous attempt at grandstanding, newly appointed Jamaican Attorney General Marlene Malahoo Forte speaking in St James told members of the security forces that she will be paying close attention to ensure that they do not abuse the rights of civilians. Forte was speaking in Montego Bay Cultural Center in Sam Sharpe Square, Montego Bay, during the third in a series of island-wide town-hall meetings put on by Security Minister Robert Montague.

QUOTE.  “I assure you sir (secu­ri­ty min­is­ter) that in my role as mem­ber of Parliament I will ensure that all coöper­a­tion is pro­vid­ed to the secu­ri­ty forces. But I say to the secu­ri­ty forces also, in my role as mem­ber of Parliament and as attor­ney gen­er­al, I will be watch­ing vig­i­lant­ly how the secu­ri­ty forces car­ry out their work in this chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ment. “I know SSP (Steve) McGregor under­stands my own view that the police — and com­mis­sion­er, you may be hear­ing it for the first time – are not enti­tled to break the law in their efforts to uphold the law, not enti­tled to abuse the rights of our cit­i­zens, how­ev­er chal­leng­ing the cir­cum­stances will be,”

Well I’ll be damned !

It was just a cou­ple of months ago ‚that while Andrew Holness ‚the very Malahoo Forte and oth­ers were at a mass meet­ing in Sam Sharpe Square that in that very meet­ing vio­lence reared it’s ugly head and a life was snuffed out. Not only was a life snuffed out , inno­cent bystanders became vic­tims of that violence.
On the occa­sion of that shoot­ing Malahoo Forte had no words of con­dem­na­tion for the crim­i­nal ele­ments who brazen­ly killed and wound at will . She could have spo­ken up then as one of the Jamaica labor Party’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the parish.
She didn’t !

Now all of a sud­den as soon as she tast­ed pow­er she becomes a grand­stand­ing caped cru­sad­er for the rights of the peo­ple in her constituency.
There are more than enough over­sight of police, much of which is act­ing as an accel­er­ant to crime on the Island.
Malahoo Forte would be best served by denounc­ing crim­i­nals in her con­stituen­cy and pro­vid­ing their names to police and quit bloviating.

As the coun­try grap­ples with crime every well mean­ing Jamaican has a part to play in work­ing toward find­ing solu­tions to this problem.
Many peo­ple have worked assid­u­ous­ly for a change in Jamaica because every­one wants a bet­ter Jamaica .
What we do not want are self-serv­ing show-offs adding to the problem.
Everyone knows what the Minister of Justice’s role is .
Malahoo Forte is best advised to accli­mate her­self to the job she hold, seek to see how best she can go about doing it and leave oth­ers to do theirs.
The coun­try does not need any more anti-police cru­saders who grand­stand against police while inno­cent blood con­tin­ue to flow .
Just shut up already.