GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN:

He and I grad­u­at­ed from the Academy December 1982, we went to the Beat and Foot-Patrol Division then sit­u­at­ed at the bot­tom of West Street by the Craft Market. After our stints there I was sent to the Mobile reserve, this was unprece­dent­ed, nev­er before were offi­cers not specif­i­cal­ly trained at the Twickenham-Park Police train­ing facil­i­ty, ever sent to the Mobile Reserve, anoth­er first for me. Seiveright was sent to the Motorized Patrol Division at Elleston Road East Kingston, many young offi­cers were hap­py to be trans­ferred there, it was a place where clean ener­getic offi­cers got to shine, they were the face of the Force, they large­ly did only patrol duties. At the time I had a broth­er sta­tioned there, I was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly unhap­py about not being trans­ferred there. I was very unhap­py with being sent to the Mobile Reserve, some­how that did not fit into my plans of becom­ing a detec­tive. In fact that Division was called Harman-bruk-up, it was rumored to be a place where there were a lot of wasters, a dis­parag­ing moniker used to describe lazy non-pro­duc­tive cops. I will not lie, when I saw my name going to Mobile Reserve in that Force Orders I bust­ed out cry­ing. Seiveright was the nicest per­son you ever want­ed to meet, he always had an ear to ear smile, he was quite, nev­er cursed, nev­er swore, he was a born-again Christian who took his Bible with him to the Academy. To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion, not many of us took Bibles with us out of that batch of a hun­dred plus, I cer­tain­ly did­n’t. One night my friend Constable Seiveright was on patrol with a corporal,they pulled over a taxi-cab on what was then the Ferry road , now the Mandela Highway. Seiveright went up to the car, I can just imag­ine him then, smil­ing as he always was ‚get­ting ready to greet the occu­pants, as he would every­one in his good-natured well-man­nered way. That was the last thing my good chris­t­ian friend ever did. We received the news from Control, Seiveright was mur­dered by a ster­ling sub-machine-gun tot­ing scum­bag. Seiveright did not know what hit him, killed by a blast to his abdomen, he died instant­ly. The cor­po­ral obvi­ous­ly want­ed no part of that shoot­ing so he hid. R Seiveright was the first to die from our batch. Later Cowan, Steele, and oth­ers would fol­low, I too could have been one of those sta­tis­tics, years lat­er a cow­ard­ly piece of garbage thought he could ambush and kill me, in my case I refused to go down with­out a fight and fight I did. 

When some elit­ist talk about police shoot­ing crim­i­nals, as if they know what the hell they are talk­ing about, I say walk a mile in the shoes of a police offi­cer in Jamaica then tell me what you think after you do. No one deserves to die sim­ply because he/​she went to work. Seiveright was not award­ed a medal posthu­mous­ly, his fam­i­ly was not told how brave he was, how decent he was, they were just made to bury their son. Jamaica’s crim­i­nal politi­cians and their allies in the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty did not see fit to hon­or a decent law-abid­ing Jamaican who gave his life in ser­vice to the coun­try he loved. They hon­or Carolyn Gomes who has spent untold time and mon­ey dis­hon­or­ing the rule of law with aid and com­fort to those who destroys life and limb. This is the coun­try Jamaica we have, this is not fic­tion , it is real, even the rul­ing par­ty’s lead­ing mem­bers are run­ning with their fam­i­lies to oth­er coun­tries. We will not for­get you my friend may God give you peace.