I recently saw an article which suggested the cases of police shootings are out of fear on the part of officers. This notion is so laughable if it wasn’t insulting to Jamaica’s hero-cops, I would actually laugh.
I must admit I did not read the article as I was pressed for time. I however tried to find the article again and was actually directed to the Mail Online a British tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, there I was greeted with this headline. Life and death in the police state of Jamaica: The scandal of the officers who double as state executioners
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1352885/Jamaica-Life-death-police-state-officers-double-executioners.html#ixzz1TWDSYlsm
This article which may be accessed at the above link ‚was written by Johnathan Green. I generally reserve judgement on people or organizations when they are going through trials. However after reading the article I couldn’t help but harken to who owns this tabloid, and the methodologies that they use to get information.I wonder how much they paid these poor souls to get them to sell out Jamaica. This is a paragraph taken from that article: referencing the shooting the night sergeant Wayne Henriques and another officer was slaughtered, and six other officers ‚trying to help a motorist trapped on mountain view avenue was viciously ambushed and shot.
The Mail Online is one of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids that uses all kinds of dirty tactics to gain a scoop, including tapping phones, paying Police officers to give them information and other illegal means. The British Police Commissioner and one of his lieutenants recently resigned over this scandal,. These are the cops that are supposed to clean up Jamaica’s police Department , we all know how the mark Shields fishing expedition went, girls drinks , low morale in the force . In the end the country has nothing to show for his stay in Jamaica. Shields on the other hand has a security consultancy firm in Jamaica , what he was after all along. Serves the Authorities right , still stuck in the colonial mentality , of looking to the european masters for answers to our problems.
Green the author of the epistle was pretty sold on Shields , in this sentence he articulates the way he felt about Shields.
Quote ‚People are so desperate and traumatized that many have lost faith in criminal justice and the ability of the state to protect them,’ says Shields, a silver-haired, pragmatic man who stands at an imposing 6ft 6in. He now runs a security consultancy in Jamaica. Rational, university-educated people are advocating desperate measures which they think are acceptable. They say if a few innocent people get killed, “Well, that’s what happens.”’(mail online)
Well now we know Shields feel that people who haven’t attended University are irrational.
The bottom line about this whole piece of garbage, is that it failed to address the serious nature of urban terrorism in Jamaica and the seriousness that security force members face day in day out. Does Jamaica have rogue cops ? you bet, should they be rooted out , you bet, Is this unique to Jamaica ? no! The garrisons are replete with all kinds of high-powered weapons, something Green , Shields, or Felice do not have to deal with in their country. By his own admission the writer alluded to this from someone he spoke to. quote:
[As darkness falls, young men take up position at key vantage points, behind low walls. Buried in the ground are guns, loaded and ready. A raucous party gets under way. Thumping bass makes the ground tremble. I notice a monitor above the record decks linked to four CCTV cameras displaying entrances to the community. Recently gunmen from that neighbourhood killed the relative of a nearby don. Reprisals are expected.‘You are safer here than in a middle-class neighbourhood,’ Andy says with a sly smile We used to have M16s, but they jammed all the time, so now we use AK-47s.’After a moment he adds, ‘When you do good work in the community, people will kill for you or die for you.’Violence could be triggered at any time. Andy is particularly worried about the police.The don from the other area has the police in his back pocket,’ he declares. ‘It’s a time bomb here. We are walking dead.’Many of the young gunmen have regular jobs, but they stay up all night to protect the neighbourhood.The police can’t help you here; you have to defend your community,’ says Andy.He makes it clear that while some violence in Kingston is related to drugs and other criminal enterprises, it evolved from politicians arming communities loyal to them against other neighbourhoods .Some of the violence is due to the fact that the area falls between two political boundaries, so it has two MPs, which means that residents can demand new roads, funding and other perks, which make rival areas jealous.The politicians have created the problem,’ says Andy. ‘They are playing a numbers game. It’s divide and rule.’]
Reading this dribble is tantamount to an article Al jazeera did about the deadliness of Jamaican Police; Imagine al Jazeera, where is their reporting on the Killings of police officers in Pakistan, and Afghanistan,what about the beheading and stoning being done to women go clear out your own dirty backyard. I suggest the Mail online clean up their own dirty police force and let us clean up and imprison ours .
The article went on to talk about a man shot in the Mountain View are of St. Andrew.
[It was here that Ian Gordon, 34, came to visit the mother of his two young children, bringing them food and money as he often did. Gordon was a hard-working former art student. He built a small store from bamboo where he sold fried fish. He wasn’t to know that a few days earlier three gangsters had engaged in a shoot-out with police after their robbery attempt was foiled. Two officers were killed and six others wounded.](mail online)
This moron glossed over the fact that 8 police officers had been shot the previous night, 2 fatally . can anyone imagine if black men had shot 8 British police officers killing 2, how they would have reacted? . Would there be any Jamaicans left in England? that was not the narrative he wanted , what he wanted was to draw attention to the actions of the Police.Now let me be clear I have no information or evidence on the veracity of his statements regarding the man killed. I hope however that he did not loose his life innocently as some would have you believe. What I do know is that you really do not want to be caught anywhere in the wrath of any police department when one of their own has been murdered, much less when one considered the casualties the JCF takes.
I frankly wonder why anyone would want that job anymore? , then I think about my relatives and friends living there ‚who depend on them , so I salute all clean cops and give them my support. I must be clear , because there are some who accuse me of unconditionally supporting the Jamaican police, this could not be further from the truth, in fact anyone who follow my blogs can attest to the fact that I am one of their harshest constructive critic. As an officer I myself brought 3 of my colleagues to book and had them kicked out of the force. What I will not do is turn to wholesale condemnation, of the people who risk their lives and die ‚so that I can live in safety.
There are certain elements within the society that are fraudulent hypocrites , and blood sucking leeches , sucking the blood out of those who sacrifice, while they sit in air-conditioned offices , made possible by the blood and sweat of Police officers. I served 10 years but never worked in an air-conditioned office. The Commissioner of Police still operates out of the same buildings at 101 – 103 old hope Road in St. Andrew. Yet as the writer Green alluded to Justin Felice’s office is luxurious .
quote: Isolated from the killing streets, at the top of an air-conditioned tower block with mirrored yellow glass, is the JCF’s Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB). Beyond a biometric thumb scanner near a smoked-glass door, a poster declares, ‘Corruption: it takes two.’I am greeted by Justin Felice, head of the ACB, an avuncular and dapper former Scotland Yard officer who had great success working in Northern Ireland. In 2010 his unit removed 184 police officers.(mail online)
I am so insulted by this article, on so many levels, but we need to be humbled , untill we start respecting ourselves and each other ‚we will forever be the unwanted stepchild of the British empire, to be lord over and treated as half wit illiterates .
Just ask Mark Shields what he thinks of us..
mike beckles :
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