Happy Belated Birthday Anthony Hewitt.… Etal..

Many years ago while I was sta­tioned at the Constant Spring Police Station there was a par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual who went by the name “Man-Saw”. I can­not recall his giv­en name at this point , much water has passed under the bridge.

Man-Saw who oper­at­ed in the Grant’s Pen Gully area was want­ed by us for his alleged involve­ment in sev­er­al cas­es of sex­u­al assaults and shoot­ings. To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion none of the alleged shoot­ings result­ed in harm to anyone.
They were most­ly instances where he fired a weapon at peo­ple but did not hit them.
It’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that at that time in the ear­ly nineties there was no police sta­tion in Grant’s Pen.
At the time it appeared that Man-Saw real­ly want­ed to scare the peo­ple who were opposed to his crim­i­nal­i­ty. From the reports we received he seemed more inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing a name for him­self but did not seem over­ly inter­est­ed in actu­al­ly killing anyone.

Nevertheless , this assess­ment in no way made him less of a threat than any oth­er crim­i­nal with a gun, at least not to me nor most of the oth­er offi­cers who worked at the Constant Spring CIB at the time. We want­ed him off the streets and we want­ed him gone in a hur­ry. We cul­ti­vat­ed good sources through­out the Constant Spring Police area .
I was per­son­al­ly able to get real­ly good intel­li­gence from con­tacts in the com­mu­ni­ty for three rea­sons. (1) My moth­er resided in the com­mu­ni­ty, she was well known and regard­ed . (2) I had per­son­al­ly cul­ti­vat­ed sev­er­al sources with­in the com­mu­ni­ty using dif­fer­ent tools I had at my dis­pos­al. (3) Along with oth­er ded­i­cat­ed offi­cers I had demon­stra­bly done good mea­sur­able work in the com­mu­ni­ty in remov­ing crim­i­nals from the streets.

Condensing those com­po­nents we were able to fig­ure out real quick who did what where and when. Unavoidably I devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion as a no-non­sense cop who could be trust­ed and could be depend­ed upon to quick­ly remove unde­sir­ables from their community .
Many peo­ple who want­ed to pass on infor­ma­tion to me would go sit on my mom’s veran­dah , pass on what they knew , which got to me right away.
The val­ue of the suc­cess­es we were able to extract from those rela­tion­ships are immea­sur­able , and were invaluable.

FEELING DECEIVED

One after­noon I was dri­ving my pri­vate car down Shortwood dri­ve when an elder­ly lady aggres­sive­ly waved her arms demand­ing that I stop.
I did not par­tic­u­lar­ly know the lady by name or even by face . However she knew me by name. As soon as I pulled over she walked up and leaned into my car through the pas­sen­ger win­dow . She com­menced telling me just how dis­s­a­point­ed she was in me for col­lect­ing mon­ey in order to release Man-Saw after I was able to catch him.. . She told me it was­n’t just her who knew about what went down, many peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty knew as well. She even pro­ceed­ed to tell me that I had received $4.000 in order to allow Man-Saw to go free.
I was stunned , it appeared that the only per­son who did not know about the dubi­ous trans­ac­tion was me.
I told the lady that her dis­ap­point­ment was real­ly flat­ter­ing in a weird way yet mis­placed, as I had no idea what she was talk­ing about .
I promised her that I would get to the bot­tom of it and that I would absolute­ly ingra­ti­ate myself back into her good graces.
There were three cours­es of action that I had to take immediately.
(1) Warn my boss Detective Inspector Noël Asphall, that some­one in the Office had bro­ken our sacred trust.
(2) Immediately find out who was involved .
(3) Most impor­tant­ly bring Man-Saw in off the streets.
It was always going to be eas­i­er to accom­plish the for­mer than the lat­ter so I got to work to seek out my sources. I under­stood how news got around in the ghet­to, peo­ple hear some­thing and the ascribe respon­si­bil­i­ty to the offi­cer they know best.
It did not take long for me to hear exact­ly which offi­cer among us had actu­al­ly caught ser­i­al rapist and gun­man Man-Saw and had col­lect­ed $4.000 and turned him loose back onto the community.
Detective Inspector Noël Asphall was a no-non­sense mid-lev­el super­vi­sor . That offi­cer was imme­di­ate­ly removed from our midst and word was imme­di­ate­ly cir­cu­lat­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty that he was the culprit.
My good name was restored .
Not long after that we nabbed Man ‑Saw . He told us that on many occa­sions when we came to seek him out he was able to see us and escape using the zinc fences which adorned both sides of Shortwood drive.

Much of what we see on social media today hap­pen­ing to law-enforce­ment in our coun­try can be placed at the feet of police offi­cers themselves.
However it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that we rec­og­nize what pol­i­tics has done in the process to hol­low out the inves­tiga­tive com­po­nent from the Jamaica Constabulary Force, ren­der­ing it use­less and impotent.
The lead­er­ship of the JCF , arguably much more edu­cat­ed than 2 – 3 decades ago, is demon­stra­bly less effec­tive, more timid, and at it’s core fun­da­men­tal­ly incompetent.
As a result of police cor­rup­tion and mis­con­duct the polit­i­cal class in cahoots with their spe­cial inter­est friends from Mona and oth­er parts of upper Saint Andrew gave the Island Terrence Williams and INDECOM.
Resources which went into the cre­ation and main­te­nance of a sep­a­rate Government agency which gen­er­ates no mea­sur­able return on invest­ment should have been spent on effec­tive­ly updat­ing the inves­tiga­tive capa­bil­i­ties of the JCF .
This would have guar­an­teed remark­able return on invest­ments for the Jamaican tax­pay­ers, in high­er clear-up rates of seri­ous felonies. The removal of seri­ous offend­ers from the streets. It would also have low­ered crime to lev­els which would have seen marked increas­es in invest­ment as a result of low­er crime num­bers and greater investor confidence.

Any Economic Recovery Must Begin With Suffocating The Crime Monster…

Instead they went to their default instinct, which was to do what they could to serve their nar­row­est polit­i­cal inter­est . That was to cre­ate anoth­er gov­ern­ment agency to gum up the works, staff it with known anti-police antag­o­nists and hope the Police will once and for all be neutered and ren­dered unable to inves­ti­gate it’s way out of a brown paper bag.
Check-mate !!!
The unin­tend­ed con­se­quence of this is high mur­der fig­ures. A pop­u­la­tion which has zero respect for the rule of law.
The major­i­ty with­in the pop­u­la­tion who are bla­tant­ly dis­re­spect­ful of law-enforce­ment are woe­ful­ly inca­pable of under­stand­ing the val­ue good effec­tive law enforce­ment brings to the qual­i­ty of their lives.
The cumu­la­tive con­se­quences of this, is no growth on the low­er end and at best lethar­gic uptick in growth but not enough to make life bet­ter for the 2.8 mil­lion cit­i­zens of the coun­try. Not to men­tion the inabil­i­ty of cit­i­zens to grow and pros­per, or the more detri­men­tal dai­ly loss of life and treasure.
The present Government is now report­ed­ly inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing a cor­rup­tion Czar. Yet anoth­er lawyer to big gov­ern­ment. The Administration has final­ly come to the real­iza­tion that there can be no worth­while eco­nom­ic growth unless crime and cor­rup­tion is effec­tive­ly con­strained and eliminated.
We point­ed this out in arti­cle above on March 1^st after the Labor par­ty won the elections.
Much of where the Island is today as it relates to crime is anoth­er unin­tend­ed con­se­quence of the mis­placed pri­or­i­ties of the Bruce Golding admin­is­tra­tion in cre­at­ing INDECOM as well as the cor­rup­tion and decades of PNP will­ful dec­i­ma­tion of the police department.

In the mean­time the Island con­tin­ue to won­der what is the solu­tion to the spi­ralling mur­der rate. Of course the incom­pe­tence of the Police high com­mand bears some respon­si­bil­i­ty for it . Nevertheless their share of the respon­si­bil­i­ty pales in com­par­i­son to the con­tri­bu­tion of both polit­i­cal par­ties in cre­at­ing the envi­ron­ment of law­less­ness which exists today.
The police can do bet­ter in a lot of areas. It can ask for laws which bound peo­ple pulled over to sit in their cars while the police write citations.
This sim­ple law would great­ly reduce the like­li­hood of con­fronta­tion between police and the pub­lic and great­ly increase offi­cer safety.
We would not have upstarts who break the road traf­fic laws push­ing their bod­ies and cell-phones into police cruis­ers. Again that goes to the qual­i­ty of the offi­cers these days.
Much of it may be attrib­ut­able to the incom­pe­tence and cow­ardice of the lead­er­ship of the police department.
Stalwarts like Anthony Hewitt must be turn­ing in their graves . Happy birth­day Tony Hewitt.
Let the hand wring­ing over for­eign agents in Jamaica begin.