Deep Ties Between Pols And Gangsters Helping To Fuel Lawlessness…

I met a young man who was vis­it­ing the States from Jamaica recent­ly, he was intro­duced to me by his cousin, an asso­ciate of mine.
It was the sec­ond time that he had come by, hav­ing been in to see me when he first came into the coun­try.
This time he was get­ting ready to leave to go back home. Having met him the first time, I had already formed a favor­able opin­ion of him.
Great kid who just want­ed to enjoy life and have a good time, all while think­ing he was the best thing ever to have hap­pened to girls.
I saw a lot of me in him when I was his age, and so we hit it off immediately.

My per­cep­tions of him were the same pos­i­tive opin­ions I have always had as a police offi­cer work­ing the streets & alley­ways of Grant’s Pen Gully, Birdsucker Lane, Whitehall Terrace, Ackee-walk and the count­less oth­er depressed com­mu­ni­ties of Saint Andrew North, includ­ing Blackwood Terrace where I was shot one dark night in 88.
(When push comes to shove) as they say, the vast major­i­ty of those young peo­ple are good peo­ple who sim­ply want a chance.
The con­ver­sa­tion we had between us even­tu­al­ly turned to the high lev­els of vio­lent crime in our country.

And soon he vol­un­teered that his father is a politi­cian with some means in the cen­ter of the Island.
He vol­un­teered how he was arrest­ed by a (police-bway)[sic]. He rev­eled in the fact that bystanders berat­ed the offi­cer and told him he had no right arrest­ing (name with­held) bway.
More than all, he seemed ecsta­t­ic that the offi­cer was told that he would be out of the Parish with­in a week.
He detailed how peo­ple went to the sta­tion and demand­ed his release and that oth­er offi­cers at the sta­tion refused to book him into cus­tody, all because of a cer­tain big-name thug in the parish and their asso­ci­a­tions with, and prob­a­bly fear of him.

He went on in absolute & total delight, laugh­ing at the spec­ta­cle, as he recount­ed the events in his head, the look on his cous­in’s face was price­less, the young­ster had no idea of my past.
What he nev­er said was that the offi­cer relent­ed and caved in as a result of the abuse. He nev­er said the offi­cer relent­ed when his com­pro­mised col­leagues refused to do their sworn duty because of their asso­ci­a­tions with a filthy thug who has deep and long­stand­ing ties with the high­est ech­e­lons of the People’s National Party and has under­writ­ten many of their campaigns.

The dis­re­spect we see on the streets toward our police offi­cers as they strug­gle to do their duties, has deep­er roots than just mere law­less­ness.
Although a few of the politi­cians on either side pay lip ser­vice to the law­less­ness in the coun­try and the resul­tant vio­lence which comes from it, the thugs who run the gar­risons with their robin hood per­sonas, still hold tremen­dous sway over what hap­pens on the streets.
It is exact­ly for that rea­son that the politi­cians will not, and prob­a­bly can­not renounce and decon­struct the gar­risons they cre­at­ed since 1962.
The gang­sters who con­trol the gar­risons have too much eco­nom­ic pow­er now, and most of all they hold too many secrets for the politi­cians.
In many cas­es, it is the finan­cial back­ing of the thugs that made it pos­si­ble for the politi­cians to attain polit­i­cal office.
It is a com­plete 180-degree turn from what obtained just decades ago.

Honest Debate Needed About Our March Toward Anarchy.….

Many are the sto­ries we have heard of politi­cians at the high­est lev­els using their diplo­mat­ic sta­tus to bring large sums of dirty mon­ey into the coun­try.
Effectively using their offices and their trust­ed diplo­mat­ic sta­tus, to act as couri­ers for drug deal­ers.
Since we can­not val­i­date those sto­ries we will leave them alone, suf­fic­ing to say, that what­ev­er you hear in the streets have some sem­blance of truth to it.
Even if there is a 10 % truth to any of that, it should cause the stom­achs of law-abid­ing Jamaicans to turn.
Many years ago I decid­ed that I would leave the police force by sim­ply drop­ping every­thing and walk­ing away.
I want­ed to make a bet­ter life for myself than the police force could give me.

I want­ed to be reward­ed on mer­it, not by asso­ci­at­ing with crim­i­nals. Not by being a cor­rupt cop who betrays his oath.
But I left main­ly because I thought that had I stayed, I would not be able to make the change need­ed by being sub­servient to a broad­er polit­i­cal sys­tem that is cor­rupt inside and out, a sys­tem on which I would depend for my own upward mobil­i­ty, what­ev­er form that would take.
I thought that as they say, “the pen is might­i­er than the sword,” and maybe, just maybe, by con­stant­ly ham­mer­ing away, shin­ing a light at the cor­rup­tion with­in the sys­tem some changes will be made.
That some­how, we can build a bet­ter coun­try for gen­er­a­tions to come.
Sometimes, that has to be done with­out the naysay­ers and those who would rather attack a mes­sen­ger than face the mes­sage.
That has always been the black expe­ri­ence since our ances­tors were dragged away from their homes and brought to the west­ern world as chat­tel.
It is for that rea­son that Harriet Tumbam report­ed­ly car­ried a gun, not just for the white slave-catch­ers, but for the N****s who would run back and tell “massa” where the safe hous­es were in the under­ground railroad.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.