Courts Continue To Grant Bail To Accused Murderers Who Attack And Kill Cops And Citizens

Day in day out I per­son­al­ly take on the unen­vi­able and unpaid task of writ­ing about what is hap­pen­ing in Jamaica. I con­tin­ue to remark on crime’s influ­ence and how it is destroy­ing the qual­i­ty of life for my fel­low coun­try­men and women who only want to live a law-abid­ing and decent life.
I feel that to whom much is giv­en much is required and so it is not just about the lit­tle gifts that one may be able to give it’s also about the greater good ‚that one may help in shap­ing the pol­i­cy debates through legit­i­mate well-inten­tioned advocacy.

In the process I have tak­en a lot of per­son­al heat, crit­i­cism and even threats, enough to cause any­one to rea­son­ably say what do I care , I just wont both­er with this.
Others have accused me of try­ing to gain fame and noto­ri­ety from try­ing to bring atten­tion to whats hap­pen­ing as it relates to crime.
The peo­ple who actu­al­ly know me actu­al­ly do laugh at those accu­sa­tions, I am the last per­son to seek atten­tion , in fact I do my utmost to stay in the shadows.
Others say “you are doing it for mon­ey,” that’s laugh­able too, I use my own mon­ey to ensure that this plat­form remain on the web so that not just myself but who would nor­mal­ly not have a voice gets their opin­ions and points of views heard.
I am con­vinced that the Jamaican peo­ple, despite all of their intel­lect and exu­ber­ance can­not live out their God-giv­en poten­tial in an atmos­phere of ram­pant crime, cor­rup­tion, and violence.

It was that love of peo­ple and ded­i­ca­tion to duty which got me shot in a dark alley on Blackwood Terrace one night in 87 as I accom­pa­nied a com­plainant home after he made a report to us.
We could have tak­en his report and sent him home, instead we chose to accom­pa­ny him to his house. We were to learn lat­er that he had only told us half of the sto­ry, that omis­sion near­ly cost me my life on that fate­ful night.
A cow­ard with a brand new ille­gal gun and the inten­tion to kill wait­ed in the dark­ness, I was not about to go with­out a fight, though shot and bleed­ing I was not about to sur­ren­der my life to a use­less piece of human waste.

It is that ded­i­ca­tion to duty and com­mit­ment which gal­va­nizes my ener­gies and caus­es me to con­tin­ue to keep sup­port­ing the rule of law and the imper­fect men and women [many of whom dis­agree with me] who risk their lives to keep oth­ers they nev­er met safe.

It is for that rea­son that I con­tin­ue to point to the struc­tur­al defects in the laws which allows crime to con­tin­ue unchecked.
As for­mer SSP Reneto Adams allud­ed and I have been spo­ken to for years, there are no real deter­rent in the laws. That lack of deter­rent is hav­ing a dele­te­ri­ous effect on the abil­i­ty of the police to impact crime in a mean­ing­ful way.

The nation’s lead­ers have stead­fast­ly buried their col­lec­tive heads in the sand and ignored the advice and coun­sel of peo­ple who know and have opt­ed to take the advice of peo­ple with per­son­al vendet­tas and agen­das anti­thet­i­cal to the best inter­est of our country.
Pride will not allow them to say we made a mis­take, so they dou­ble down on the mis­takes, squan­der­ing scarce resources and pre­cious lives in the process.

No ZOSO will have any mean­ing­ful impact on crime. ZOSO is like a well run police precinct which cov­ers a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­i­cal area.
My expe­ri­ence taught me that crim­i­nals will not stick around where there are no-non­sense police, they sim­ply migrate to oth­er areas.
This I stat­ed repeat­ed­ly before the ZOSO was even enact­ed into law, imme­di­ate­ly after the first ZOSO was declared the police and oth­er enti­ties con­firmed that crim­i­nals were run­ning to oth­er areas.

the exis­ten­tial threat crim­i­nals pose to the coun­try can­not be ignored by the nation’s lead­ers. It is a gross dere­lic­tion of duty and an abject fail­ure to take active mea­sures to pro­tect law abid­ing cit­i­zens from ram­pag­ing crim­i­nals, who are unafraid and undeterred.
The Island’s lead­ers con­tin­ue to out­source the Island’s secu­ri­ty to Terrence Williams, an ego mani­a­cal nar­cis­sist with an agen­da and a vendet­ta, fund­ed by for­eign interest.
Additionally the Government have allowed anoth­er tax-pay­er fund­ed agency, [the pub­lic defend­ers office] to become a antag­o­nis­tic tool of crim­i­nals against the nation’s law enforce­ment agencies.

At what point does the Government say enough?
Chief among the rea­sons for the nation’s excep­tion­al­ly high mur­der rate is the fact that the Island’s judges act as a law onto themselves.
They sum­mar­i­ly release the most dan­ger­ous killers back onto the streets as soon as the police haul them before the courts.
This kind of behav­ior is stan­dard prac­tice regard­less of the grue­some nature of the crimes the accused are alleged to have committed.

The courts con­tin­ue to make the scur­rilous argu­ments that Bail ought not be used as pun­ish­ment while ignor­ing the guide­lines with­ing the very same bail act.
It is time that judges stand up and respect the con­sti­tu­tion of Jamaica and cease and desist from the nefar­i­ous prac­tices of grant­i­ng bail to accused mur­der­ers over and over and over and over regard­less of the amounts of time they kill while on bail.

SECTION OF THE BAIL ACT FOR CLARIFICATION

4.-(1) Where the offence or one of the offences in rela­tion to C~~CW which
the defen­dant is charged or con­vict­ed is pun­ish­able with which bail
impris­on­ment. Bail may be denied to that defen­dant in the following
cir­cum­stances­r­ta­nies
in
(U) the Court, a Justice of the Peace or police offi­cer is
sat­is­fied that there are sub­stan­tial grounds for believing
that the defen­dant, if released on bail would-
(i) fail to sur­ren­der to custody;
(ii) com­mit an offence while on bail; or
(iii) inter­fere with wit­ness­es or oth­er­wise obstruct
the course of jus­tice, whether in rela­tion to
him­self or any oth­er person;

(6) the defen­dant is in cus­tody in pur­suance of the sentence
of a Court or any author­i­ty act­ing under the Defense
Act;
the Court is sat­is­fied that it has not been prac­ti­ca­ble to
obtain suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion for the pur­pose of taking
the deci­sions required by this sec­tion for want of time
since the insti­tu­tion of the pro­ceed­ings against the
defen­dant;
(d) the defen­dant, hav­ing been released on bail in or in
con­nec­tion with the pro­ceed­ings for the offence, is
arrest­ed in pur­suance of sec­tion 14 (abscond­ing by person
released on bail);
(e) the defen­dant is charged with an offence alleged to have
been com­mit­ted while he was released on bail:

It is an affront to the dig­ni­ty of law-abid­ing Jamaicans that this kind of behav­ior is allowed to con­tin­ue to jeop­ar­dize their lives.
Aided and abet­ted no less than by paid ser­vants of the pub­lic whose duty it is to pro­tect them, but who does­n’t think enough of them to them­selves fol­low the laws.

This is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the nation’s homi­cide rate and the over­all sta­tis­tics of vio­lent crimes.
Two days ago the police act­ing on infor­ma­tion went to a loca­tion in Naggo Head Saint Catherine where they inter­cept­ed a man armed with a gun, dur­ing that con­fronta­tion the assailant was mor­tal­ly wounded.

The deceased turned out to have been out on Bail on a mur­der charge.
Incensed at his death, his cronies are report­ed to have gone to the home of one of the police offi­cers and opened fire at his wife and daughter.
Even though shot, Woman Inspector Grant returned fire killing one of the assailants and pos­si­bly injur­ing anoth­er ‚who from reports turned up at the Kingston Public Hospital claim­ing he was shot by gunmen.

This medi­um have received cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the idea of going to the Inspector’s house was to hold Inspector Grant and her fam­i­ly until her hus­band arrived home then kill all of them.
This is the lev­el of plan­ning which is going on against the offi­cers who uphold the laws.
Our offi­cers are receiv­ing no help from the Government, no help from the courts, no help from the civ­il soci­ety in prac­ti­cal­ly erad­i­cat­ing this men­ace from the society.

Instead the Government indulges in plat­i­tudes and smoke and mir­rors with a view to cre­at­ing the impres­sion that much is being done to aid in the fight against crime.
The ter­ror­ists who threat­en the sov­er­eign­ty and legit­i­ma­cy of the Jamaican state have not gone away, instead their ranks have swollen with depor­tees and oth­ers. Their arse­nals have been replen­ished and improved.

The lethal­i­ty and sophis­ti­ca­tion of the weapon­ry in the hands of the gang­sters is stunning.
Yet the Government aid­ed and advised by crim­i­nal enhance­ment groups like Jamaicans for Justice, the IACHR and it’s own cre­ation, INDECOM, con­tin­ue to ignore the clear and present dan­ger these gangs pose to the nation’s security.

I ask, “how long will this Government allow this con­di­tion to dete­ri­o­rate, how much is enough” ?
How long will it be before both polit­i­cal par­ties final­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly renounce vio­lence, con­demn gar­risons and com­mit to dis­man­tling the gar­risons which are the incu­ba­tors for these gangs?