Changes In Leadership, Crime Plans, Approaches, I Say Throw Out Everything.

The idea that change can­not be made through grass­roots advo­ca­cy is not borne out by the facts. In 2010 I began a per­son­al mis­sion of bring­ing to the fore issues of crime affect­ing our coun­try with a view to stim­u­lat­ing debate and dis­cus­sion on the issue.

Having served as a police offi­cer in our coun­try gave me a unique per­spec­tive to try and bring a voice to the issue of polic­ing in a way serv­ing offi­cers nev­er could because of the con­straints placed on their right to free speech.
I was under no illu­sion that this would be an easy endeav­or, I was not delu­sion­al about the lev­el of push­back which would come con­sid­er­ing our coun­try’s hatred for the rule of law.
As such, the death threats, name-call­ing, and oth­er neg­a­tives which have been hurled at me was no sur­prise to me, I allowed them to sim­ply roll off me like water from a Duck’s back.

I thought what­ev­er neg­a­tives were being hurled at me would pale in com­par­i­son to remain­ing silent, not speak­ing truth to pow­er. I thought if I could get one per­son to lis­ten to rea­son, just one per­son to under­stand that we need our police offi­cers in order to have a coun­try it would be worth it.
The very peo­ple who would like to see the dis­band­ment of the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the fir­ing of all its offi­cers’ clam­or for oth­er peo­ple to take their place, with­out real­iz­ing that what those oth­er peo­ple would be doing is called policing.
The moral of that lit­tle nugget is that we can­not have a soci­ety with­out the rule of law. There can be no real growth and pros­per­i­ty in an atmos­phere of crim­i­nal­i­ty and chaos.

Over sev­en years lat­er the mes­sage is final­ly seep­ing through.
Other Jamaicans are final­ly start­ing to real­ize that though we have far too many peo­ple in our police depart­ment who should­n’t be there we must give sup­port to our offi­cers while the sys­tems put in place remove bad actors from the stage.
Now a senior police com­man­der in Clarendon Superintendent David White, is call­ing for lim­its to judges dis­cre­tion in cer­tain instances.
He is going to take a lot of flack from the reg­u­lar peanut gallery, “who does he think he is talk­ing about their gods in that way, they have a right to do what they see fit, how dare you crit­i­cize them”[sic].

Come tomor­row the papers will be filled with the fiery ven­om from the blovi­at­ing fools who defend these ultra-lib­er­al, judges as if they are unac­count­able to any­one. They will blab on and on about the sanc­ti­ty of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers as if the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers were not enshrined into law by men and may be changed, altered, and amend­ed to fit the times by oth­er men and women.

The com­man­der argues that light sen­tences and undue delay in con­clud­ing cas­es are not in the best inter­est of jus­tice. You think.
This state­ment from the police was once unheard of in Jamaica, though not in police depart­ments in the mod­ern world.

Jamaican Judges A Large Part Of The Murder Problem/​Ask Dexter Pottinger

For years I have been push­ing the Government to change the gun laws by adding greater puni­tive com­po­nents which ensure that vio­lent offend­ers who com­mit crimes using firearms are locked away for good.
That process,(mandatory min­i­mum) for gun crimes is one step in reduc­ing vio­lent crimes by sim­ply keep­ing offend­ers in prison where they belong and deter­ring oth­ers from com­mit­ting vio­lent crimes.

Venesha Phillips, PNP coun­cilor for the Papine divi­sion and care­tak­er for the Eastern St Andrew con­stituen­cy, is now declar­ing there should be No More Asking Criminals To Cease Fire, Pursue Them Relentlessly she demands.
Hmm.…
Better late than nev­er, I nev­er quite under­stood the con­cept of beg­ging war­ring fac­tions to lay down their arms unless by that state­ment you are admit­ting that what the coun­try faces is indeed an unde­clared state of civ­il war.
Imagine hav­ing a peace man­age­ment unit, not to men­tion those who prof­fer such an idea and are a part of that anti-police growth industry?

Judges Have A Responsibility As Officers Of The Court To Follow And Apply The Law, Obviously Not In Jamaica..

It is on that basis that I have argued over the years that tra­di­tion­al polic­ing meth­ods does not apply. The coun­try has a duty to neu­tral­ize those threats before we begin any process of com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing much less the laugh­able con­cept of restora­tive jus­tice, (giv­en the context).
Anything short of an all-out war on the crim­i­nal gangs which result in body bags, or their mem­ber’s com­plete sur­ren­der and capit­u­la­tion to the rule of law is a mock­ery of law enforcement.

It will most assured­ly have dan­ger­ous under­ly­ing con­se­quences for the future like a sim­mer­ing vol­cano and a coun­try sit­ting idly wait­ing to be vapor­ized by boil­ing lava.
It is stu­pid, there is no respect com­ing from the Prime Minister or the Minister of National Security, there is no cohe­sive pol­i­cy which includes both polit­i­cal par­ties mak­ing it clear that there will be no refuge, no sanc­tu­ary for lawbreakers.

As such the prob­lem of mur­ders on the Island has been wrong­ly and incor­rect­ly framed for years, as mere crim­i­nals and cor­ner crews, not vio­lent mur­der­ous gangs which have no com­punc­tion about com­ing togeth­er to chal­lenge the author­i­ty of the state, as occurred in Tivoli Gardens in 2010.

Despite the glar­ing real­i­ty of this clear and present phe­nom­e­non the nation’s lead­ers look to and lis­ten to bot­tom-feed­ing crus­taceans like Horace Levy who heads the Peace Management Unit,( a group which is part of the anti-police growth industry).
People like Levy has a seat at the table on crime while the group he heads is against law enforce­ment offi­cers, even as Levy has been a vex­ing anti-police antag­o­nis­tic troll for years.

For years Horace Levy has stri­dent­ly and aggres­sive­ly refut­ed claims that the num­ber of crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing on the Island has been explod­ing in numbers.
Despite hav­ing zero data, train­ing or expe­ri­ence in law enforce­ment Levy argu­ments held sway.What Levy says are cor­ner crews was not what police faced.
The sense of inno­cence and youth­ful asso­ci­a­tions inher­ent in Levy’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion held sway, how­ev­er, when police face the very same men they are heav­i­ly armed vio­lent killers.

There is a search on for a new com­mis­sion­er of police, the pick­ers are flawed and so who­ev­er they chose will be flawed.
Nevertheless, chang­ing the com­mis­sion­er is only a tiny bit of what needs to be done. The longer the nation waits to place poli­cies on the table that are not about vote buy­ing and employ a real cop to exe­cute those strate­gies there will be no change.
They have it all wrong.