The prob­lem of cor­rup­tion of one kind or anoth­er exists in Jamaica as it does in every oth­er police depart­ment in every coun­try across the globe in which humans are the police offi­cers. It does not mean how­ev­er that we should not con­tin­ue the quest for a more per­fect res­o­lu­tion to this vex­ing issue. As we seek to bring greater account­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and fideli­ty to pub­lic institutions.

With that said, were we to give cre­dence to the Jamaican naysay­ers who crit­i­cize the police one would walk away believ­ing that the police depart­ment is so rot­ten that the only solu­tion is to scrape it all up and put it in a garbage bin to be picked up for the Riverton dump.

Sure they want you to believe that the police is total­ly and com­plete­ly cor­rupt. When they tell you that, put up a hand and say “hush” to the blath­er­ing gib­ber­ish and actu­al­ly look at the facts for the real story.
The cyn­ics and detrac­tors will tell you that doing a com­par­a­tive analy­sis is the equiv­a­lent of sup­port­ing slack­ness in the JCF. Of course, that kind of non­sense is a part of the cycle of unwill­ing­ness to deal with issues of this nature objec­tive­ly and honestly.

The truth of the mat­ter is that police cor­rup­tion is a seri­ous degen­er­a­tive can­cer which dimin­ish­es the moral high ground offi­cers of the law must have in order to effec­tive­ly do their jobs. Unlike in any oth­er dis­ci­pline, the stain and stench of cor­rupt police offi­cers tend to stain and stink their col­leagues with poten­tial­ly greater consequence.

In the United States, for exam­ple, a cop ask­ing an errant motorist for a cou­ple of dol­lars to pur­chase lunch is lit­er­al­ly non-exis­tent, because they are not des­ti­tute or unable to find mon­ey to pay for their own lunch. That is not to say that in many cities across the United States police offi­cers do not rob drug deal­ers of their illic­it gains, but they are gen­er­al­ly paid enough of a liv­ing wage so they do not have to scrounge ille­gal­ly in order to survive.

A cop who ask a motorist for a bribe is an embar­rass­ment to him­self and to his depart­ment, a cop who fal­si­fies a report and sends an inno­cent per­son to prison for a crime he nev­er com­mit­ted wrecks lives, fam­i­lies, and destroys communities.
And so when we hold both sce­nar­ios up nei­ther is good but one is far worse than the other.

In a per­fect world, I pre­fer not to have an offi­cer who pulls me over try to shake me down for mon­ey, but I would much rather a cop asks me for lunch mon­ey because he is hun­gry, rather than a cop who plant­ed drugs on me because he did not like the col­or. of my skin.
Now that we have done the par­al­lels I hope you at least under­stand that in the greater scheme of things the JCF is not irredeemable,despite what the naysay­ers tell you.

Listen as Mike break this issue down in a sim­ple yet hon­est and pre­cise way.

BERATING THE POLICE

Former Minister of National Security Robert Montague would cer­tain­ly not have been my first choice for Minister of National Security at the time he was giv­en the job. I guessed Montague real­ized that he did not bring much if any exper­tise to the job, and so he set out to learn on the job.
He did stum­ble like we all do, but if Bobby Montague did noth­ing else, he cer­tain­ly endeared him­self to the aver­age cop and he absolute­ly endeared him­self to this ex-cop.
Bobby Montague under­stood the impor­tance of morale in a job like polic­ing and he worked to restore morale with marked suc­cess before he was moved to a dif­fer­ent job.

Speaking on the con­stant bad mouthing of the police Bobby Montague spoke to a truth that many do not want to hear in our country.
The Inspectorate Branch of the JCF, Montague argues, esti­mates that the JCF is 5% cor­rupt. con­verse­ly, the dar­ling of the elit­ist class INDECOM, assess­es that the JCF is 3% corrupt.
Now we all would like to have a police depart­ment that is 0% cor­rupt but since we no longer source our offi­cers from the plan­et Utopia, we take the 3% and work to low­er that number.
So much for the notion police can­not police itself, nev­er­the­less, that is not the point of this arti­cle. It is impor­tant to under­stand that unless we fix some of the struc­tur­al defi­cien­cies in the police vis-a-vis low wages, poor lead­er­ship, and lack of resources as they also exist across the wider soci­ety, cor­rup­tion will per­sist and will be expo­nen­tial­ly dif­fi­cult to eradicate.

As was to be expect­ed, Bobby Montague’s call fell on deaf ears. In our coun­try which is essen­tial­ly one of the most, if not the most anti-police coun­tries in the world, hat­ing and berat­ing the police guar­an­tees instant fame and suc­cess. Given the high crime rate, the con­tin­ued tear­ing down and dis­re­spect­ful behav­ior direct­ed at the police is direct­ly tied to the tra­jec­to­ry of seri­ous crimes.
The Government has not led by set­ting an exam­ple. It has not devised a strat­e­gy for the coun­try to fol­low by sup­port­ing the police unequiv­o­cal­ly. In fact, the Minister of Justice is open­ly hos­tile to the police and the rule of law despite cos­met­ic appear­ances which seek to give an illu­so­ry effect that his min­istry does.

Not only that, shock­ing­ly, there are agen­cies with­in the Government which are active­ly hos­tile to the police, some­thing lit­er­al­ly unseen in any oth­er coun­try. It defies log­ic that a Government would tol­er­ate one agency active­ly mil­i­tat­ing against anoth­er agency of the said gov­ern­ment. Least of all, one as crit­i­cal as the agency tasked with nation­al security.

Not only is INDECOM antag­o­nis­tic to the police depart­ment, the jus­tice min­istry, under the lead­er­ship of Delroy Chuck is inher­ent­ly hos­tile and ded­i­cat­ed to being inju­ri­ous to the police. Additionally, the office of the pub­lic defend­er, anoth­er agency of the gov­ern­ment is open­ly hos­tile, that agency is con­spic­u­ous­ly and glee­ful­ly works against the police depart­ment. The Government does nothing.
It is the clas­sic per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of an enti­ty can­ni­bal­iz­ing itself to the detri­ment and cha­grin of the coun­try and its law-abid­ing citizens.

In recent times the Appeals Court ruled that INDECOM has no pow­er under the statute to arrest police offi­cers. That rul­ing also stat­ed cor­rect­ly that INDECOM must inves­ti­gate and sub­mit the find­ings of it’s inves­ti­ga­tions to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
At the same time, the courts opined that INDECOM’s agents may arrest police offi­cers using their com­mon-law pow­ers of arrests. The same pow­ers every cit­i­zen has to arrest an offend­er if he/​she observes a crime being committed.

The lat­ter part of the rul­ing which speaks to com­mon law arrests was indeed asi­nine as ordi­nary cit­i­zens may only arrest if they see a crime being com­mit­ted. INDECOM’s agents can­not and do not observe police offi­cers being com­mit­ted in their view and so what­ev­er arrests they may have made are illegal.
Immediately after the rul­ing the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM, Terrence Williams argued that the rul­ing was a win for him and his agency as they had only arrest­ed on com­mon law.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that since INDECOM’s agents can­not and have not seen police offi­cers com­mit­ting crimes then the arrests they made were ille­gal arrests and were a clear infringe­ment of the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of those officers.

Since then Terrence Williams has filed a motion to the Judicial Committee of the Privy coun­cil in England to stay the Appellate court’s deci­sion and has reversed his orig­i­nal state­ments to the local press that the rul­ing was a win for him and INDECOM, stat­ing that he spoke too soon after the ruling.
INDECOM as an agency of the Government is clear­ly a rogue agency which does not answer to the Government or is going about this clear­ly with the bless­ings of the Andrew Holness Administration.

Immediately after the rul­ing Delroy Chuck the min­is­ter of Justice jumped into the fray, stat­ing cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the intent of the par­lia­ment was to give the pow­er of arrest to INDECOM at the time the leg­is­la­tion was drafted.
That state­ment can­not be true, regard­less of the incom­pe­tence of the framers of the leg­is­la­tion, if the intent was to give pow­ers of arrests to INDECOM, which would essen­tial­ly be an act of cre­at­ing anoth­er police force, the lan­guage would have been clear and unequivocal.

Since then a few legal minds have argued that inves­ti­ga­tors should not pros­e­cute their own inves­ti­ga­tions. Despite the state­ment of intent com­ing from Delroy Chuck that he intends to see that the pow­er of arrest is giv­en to INDECOM, Terrence Williams has stat­ed that he can­not wait for that to happen.
This is a seri­ous breach of pro­to­col if ever there was one. It seems that INDECOM is oper­at­ing with­out any over­sight or supervision.
A super agency answer­able to no one, all while using the tax-pay­ers mon­ey, almost $300 mil­lion of it per year, in addi­tion to the slush of for­eign mon­ey which pours into the agen­cy’s cof­fers to mount legal bat­tles and chal­lenges in court.

PRECEDENT FOR THIS

Far from being an author­i­ty on this, I have decid­ed to look at oth­er coun­tries in our hemi­sphere to see whether there exist any police over­sight Agency which inves­ti­gates arrests and does its own pros­e­cu­tion. In New York city the Civilian Complaints Review Board (CCRB)is staffed by lawyers who hear com­plaints against the city’s 36’000 plus offi­cers but charges are referred back to the police Commissioner for dis­ci­pli­nary action.
In cas­es where there may be crim­i­nal con­duct by police, inves­ti­ga­tions are car­ried out and dealt with by the District Attorney as in all oth­er cases.

According to the Observer​.com, shock­ing­ly, the main rea­son police in the UK are unarmed is because the offi­cers refuse to car­ry guns. They have a sen­si­ble rea­son for not want­i­ng guns. Maybe Jamaican police should adopt this pos­ture and not take on the stress of real­ly doing polic­ing the real way.

Every time some­one is shot by the police in the UK, the case is referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). In prac­tice, this means the offi­cer is inves­ti­gat­ed by his pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards body auto­mat­i­cal­ly and can face the sack and pros­e­cu­tion if it rules against him. These inves­ti­ga­tions are lengthy, stress­ful, and car­ry a huge amount of risk for the offi­cer con­cerned. In fact, they are so feared that not only do the police refuse to be rou­tine­ly armed, spe­cial­ist firearms teams strug­gle to find can­di­dates will­ing to do the job.

The INDECOM act was draft­ed and mod­eled after this sys­tem in the UK, the fact that Hamish Campbell is in Jamaica is a tes­ta­ment to that fact. Nevertheless despite all of the for­gone, the Investigative Agency the (IPCC) still does not arrest and pros­e­cute cops who are to be charged with a crime.
The report went on to say quote: To be clear, police have worked out that it’s safer to be unarmed when fight­ing thugs and ter­ror­ists than it is to risk being hung out to dry by their lead­er­ship and the IPCC. http://​observ​er​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​4​/​r​e​a​s​o​n​-​b​r​i​t​i​s​h​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​u​n​a​r​m​ed/

Most vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted in the UK, even ter­ror­ist acts, are car­ried out by assailants who use knives or vehi­cles as their weapons of choice to kill and maim.
The rea­son for that is that it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to get their hands on guns in the UK, which has extreme­ly strin­gent gun laws, as opposed to the US which has more guns than peo­ple and Jamaica which is awash in legal and ille­gal guns.
For those advo­cat­ing for INDECOM, it is impor­tant that there is some clar­i­ty on this issue as it relates to why that kind of over­sight which may work for now in the UK, is extreme­ly haz­ardous and fool­ish for Jamaica.

If the Government per­sists in allow­ing INDECOM to do as it pleas­es cops must refuse to car­ry guns as the British police have done.
We can­not ask our offi­cers to go out and face dan­ger­ous killers then cru­ci­fy them when they use lethal force against those same killers.

From con­trib­u­tor Truthteller.

Recently we have seen a few videos on var­i­ous social media plat­forms depict­ing police offi­cers try­ing, yes try­ing, to arrest sus­pects. I’m not here to look at what the sus­pect did or didn’t do but let’s look at how the lack of account­abil­i­ty from the police high com­mand over the years is putting offi­cers who are on the front lines lives in seri­ous danger.

In any mod­ern police depart­ment, effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion is extreme­ly impor­tant as this helps to with quick­er response time to inci­dents. When the offi­cers go out there and step out of the ser­vice vehi­cle that has the radio that has direct con­tact with police con­trol and oth­er police units, you are basi­cal­ly on your own because you have no imme­di­ate access to con­trol or con­trol has no imme­di­ate access to you. When a sit­u­a­tion gets to the point where the offi­cers on the ground need assis­tance a sim­ple push to talk request­ing back up which can take less than 10 sec­onds can be the deter­min­ing fac­tor if a police offi­cer los­es his life while doing his job.

The videos being cir­cu­lat­ed we see where offi­cers are in uni­form doing their law­ful duty and face much resis­tance, threat and assaults from the sus­pects and cit­i­zens who choose to inter­vene to aid the sus­pect evade arrest. In the USA those same Jamaicans who read­i­ly inter­fere and obstruct police in the law­ful exe­cu­tion of their duties wouldn’t dare do it! No mat­ter how “right” you think you are or even how “right” you are. They know that inter­fer­ence can lead to a quick com­bi­na­tion of arrest, seri­ous injury or death.

Now you have a bois­ter­ous crowd while you are arrest­ing an offend­er if each police offi­cer were equipped with a portable radio and the nec­es­sary attach­ments for easy use and flex­i­bil­i­ty and with­in min­utes you see police units com­ing out of every nook and cran­ny peo­ple will respond to the effec­tive pres­ence. And yes the show of rapid force and coör­di­na­tion to make even one arrest then peo­ple will know to stand back. Of course, they have a right to video­tape what­ev­er they want but from a safe dis­tance as stip­u­lat­ed by the offi­cers on scene. However,you dare lay hands on the police try­ing to stop them from doing their job and that’s anoth­er matter.

Others will argue, oh the offense is com­mit­ted against the state not against you. This kind of thought process is one of lazi­ness and just an excuse to not do the job who­ev­er came up with it.
So if the offend­er com­mit­ted mur­der should the offi­cers put it off until a next time because the crowd says so? Police actions must be swift and deci­sive and this is where effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion equip­ment is need­ed for the front line offi­cers. This takes vision­ary lead­er­ship to see and push it through and it’s appar­ent that the pow­ers that be do not want a coör­di­nat­ed and effec­tive Jamaica Police Department. The high com­mand can get any­thing they want from the gov­ern­ment just that they have spaghet­ti backs and tend to feed into this anti-police rhetoric, so not sup­port­ing the police even though you are in its lead­er­ship is the order of the day.

Equipping the police depart­ment with ade­quate tech­no­log­i­cal tools will cost but this takes strong vision­ary lead­er­ship. Here’s an idea: roll it out in a phased basis through a divi­sion that oper­ates in a high­ly dense area and use that urban set­ting that the offi­cers fre­quent as a base­line and see how the sys­tem han­dles the load and do the nec­es­sary test and diag­no­sis, get out the bugs and then scale up through­out the island when you get it right. The coun­try is not short on exper­tise in this area. There is two major telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­ny on the island with the right incen­tive would help imple­ment such sys­tem plus its good pub­lic rela­tions for their brand.

Contributor ( Truthteller).
Contributor Truthteller has cho­sen to remain anony­mous at this time, he is a for­mer mem­ber of the JCF who has a wealth of expe­ri­ence as a police offi­cer in Jamaica.
We would like to wel­come him to our tal­ent­ed team of blog­gers who have decid­ed to speak out on top­i­cal issues affect­ing our country.

Mike talks about high com­mand incom­pe­tence on lead­er­ship and lack of action on assaults on young officers.

From con­trib­u­tor Conrad Tucker.

When a police offi­cer tells an offend­er that he is under arrest and reads him his rights, the offend­er must com­ply with the order of the offi­cer. However, that is not the real­i­ty in Jamaica today, there have been myr­i­ads of videos cir­cu­lat­ing on social media, show­ing police offi­cers being mobbed when they try to make an arrest. Some of these videos depict phys­i­cal and ver­bal assault on police offi­cers by peo­ple who show no respect to the rule of law.

Compounding the mat­ter is that fact that the major­i­ty of the police offi­cers exhib­it­ed igno­rance and inept­ness in effect­ing an arrest. As a for­mer police offi­cer, I received my basic train­ing on mak­ing an arrest thir­ty-sev­en years ago, and I vivid­ly remem­ber how to exe­cute it. It con­founds me by the actions of these offi­cers who allow offend­ers in their spaces with­out any con­se­quence. Many might argue that the offi­cers are scared to use the nec­es­sary force to effect the arrest, because they may become anoth­er INDECOM sta­tis­tic, and that may car­ry some validity.

That said, these videos show the real vic­tims are the offi­cers in these sit­u­a­tions. The videos por­tray vio­lence, threat, and anni­hi­la­tion of police offi­cers for doing their jobs. The videos could be the offi­cer best allies, which could exon­er­ate them if charges are brought and may pre­vent charges from being brought against them. What is often not dis­cussed is the fact that in most of these sit­u­a­tions, the offi­cer’s lives are at risk, when being sur­round­ed by so many angry, bois­ter­ous and hate­ful peo­ple, whose objec­tives are to see their demise.

Sometimes you have to won­der if they are obliv­i­ous to their safe­ty and secu­ri­ty to be so tol­er­ant of peo­ple who want to hurt them. What is shock­ing­ly dis­turb­ing is the apa­thy of their col­leagues to assist. What hap­pened to team­work? What hap­pened to hav­ing a col­league’s back? Where is the true spir­it of com­rade­ship? I am hor­ri­fied to see an offi­cer being assault­ed, and the other(s) just stood there and offered no assis­tance. During my tenure in the JCF, we looked out for each oth­er espe­cial­ly in those types of situation.

We were not always in agree­ment on many things, but we still show that we are unit­ed when deal­ing with an adver­sary. These offi­cers lack the gump­tion, grit, and deter­mi­na­tion to stand up these thugs. Honestly, they have become the laugh­ing stock, and get no respect from the peo­ple they serve. Stop blam­ing the gov­ern­ment, as police offi­cers they are giv­en pow­ers that oth­er peo­ple in soci­ety don’t have. If they under­stand the tenets of the law and they should, then most of these recal­ci­trant punks should be behind bars. Instead, they con­tin­ue to per­pet­u­ate this type of behav­ior, and it appears it has become con­ta­gious. Obstructing police offi­cer dur­ing the law­ful exe­cu­tion of their duties has become a pas­time, a fad, and a lifestyle for these law­break­ers. And they will con­tin­ue because there are no con­se­quences for their actions.

A press­ing issue which is affect­ing the rule of law in Jamaica is the pub­lic’s inter­fer­ence as police offi­cers try to make law­ful arrests. The inter­fer­ence has grad­u­at­ed sys­tem­i­cal­ly from trolling and taunts to actu­al phys­i­cal help to the per­son being arrested.

Given the most ide­al set of cir­cum­stances, the task of effect­ing an arrest is fraught with dan­ger and risk. An offi­cer does not know how the sus­pect will respond to los­ing his or her freedom.
As such the officer/​s has to con­tin­gency plan for all even­tu­al­i­ties just to make that arrest. The added dan­ger of a poten­tial out­sider who has no busi­ness inter­fer­ing with this most law­ful admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice is rather dangerous.
The dan­ger of a mob inter­fer­ing with this process should elic­it the most extreme of response from the officer/​s to ensure that their lives and safe­ty are guaranteed.

For years this most dan­ger­ous of prac­tices have endured yet the gross­ly incom­pe­tent so-called high com­mand has done absolute­ly noth­ing to edu­cate the pub­lic of the per­ils of inter­fer­ing in the admin­is­tra­tion of justice.
The Legislature has done absolute­ly noth­ing to make it extreme­ly painful under the law to inter­fere in arrests.

The new occu­pant of 103 Old-Hope Road is for all intents and pur­pos­es mute on this sub­ject, as he is on all oth­er sub­jects to do with the job which was thrust upon him. You can­not fix what you do not know about, you can­not fix what you have no con­cept of and so Antony Anderson should be no more ridiculed than the woe­ful igno­ra­mus­es who pre­ced­ed him.
In all fair­ness, it would be unfair to expect this inter­lop­er to have a seri­ous solu­tion to this rather crit­i­cal issue when his pre­de­ces­sors who rose through the ranks did noth­ing before him.
Nevertheless, this prob­lem to police offi­cers needs a solu­tion immediately.

SOLUTION

So I ask all police offi­cers who have to make arrests to re-exam­ine what your pow­ers are under the JCF Act.

Constabulary force Act.

38. If any per­son shall assault, obstruct, hin­der or resist,
or use any threat­en­ing or abu­sive and calum­nious language
or aid or incite any oth­er per­son to assault, obstruct, hinder,
or resist any Constable in the exe­cu­tion of his duty, every
such offend­er shall be liable to a fine not exceed­ing two
thou­sand dollars.

There is no right to inter­fere, even if an hon­est and rea­son­able mis­take about the law­ful­ness of the action is made unless there is immi­nent dan­ger of injury or urgency of a kind which requires an imme­di­ate decision.
If you are mak­ing an arrest and you are being hin­dered, it is up to you to deter­mine the threat lev­el to your­self and take appro­pri­ate action.
You have every right if you believe that your life is in dan­ger to use lethal force to repel those who would step in to impede your abil­i­ty to exe­cute your law­ful duties.

If you are an offi­cer who is will­ing to risk death and or the escape of your pris­on­er maybe the job is not for you. These anar­chists who are always on the prowl to mil­i­tate against Police will think rather seri­ous­ly when a seri­ous police offi­cer dis­patch­es one of them with seri­ous precision.
You have every right to do your job and go home to your fam­i­lies. You get to decide whether you will allow mob rule to take your life for doing your job.
It is that simple.

Police cor­po­ral Orane Boothe was seri­ous­ly wound­ed this morn­ing when he was attacked by a machete-wield­ing man.
According to reports Corporal Boothe was on duty in the Manchester Town of Christiana when he was attacked. It is alleged that cor­po­ral Boothe was able to shoot his attack­er before falling to the ground.

He was report­ed­ly aid­ed by res­i­dents of the town who assist­ed the offi­cer to the hos­pi­tal he was lat­er tak­en to the Percy Junior hos­pi­tal where he is in very seri­ous condition.

Listen to audio com­men­tary above.

The cronies of the for­mer mur­der­ous mon­ster Ryan Peterkin oth­er­wise called Ratty should be on notice that no mat­ter where they hide, no mat­ter how long they are sup­port­ed by their crim­i­nal lov­ing rel­a­tives and friends, the long arm of the law will even­tu­al­ly reach them.

There should be no mis­take that there haven’t been police offi­cers who are will­ing to go the extra mile, take that extra risk, to ensure that our coun­try is not over­run by these demons.
These offi­cers, over the decades, have risked life and limb to do their jobs while arm­chair pun­dits and prog­nos­ti­ca­tors offer up opin­ions on sub­jects they have no idea about.
Our coun­try is not going to be made safe by sol­diers on the ground it is not going to be ren­dered safe by some sil­ly per­cep­tion that sol­diers are hon­est and police are cor­rupt and incompetent.

Real offi­cers who served knows what is what, make no mis­take the police are not incom­pe­tent, they are not scared, they are shack­led and afraid to go after these mur­der­ers because of Government poli­cies which aid criminals.
I call on the gov­ern­ment to allow the police to go after these demon­ic killers with no holes barred. The future of our coun­try is teth­ered to the demise of these scum. They have made con­scious deci­sions to slaugh­ter inno­cent peo­ple and take what they want with­out consequence.
There should be no sup­port, for these kinds of indi­vid­u­als, tac­it or oth­er­wise from any tax­pay­er agency, civic group, or any­one else.
Those who offer com­fort, sup­port, and suc­cor to them must and will be exposed for what they are. Be it under­stood, that as far as is human­ly pos­si­ble we will do our part to expose and flush out those who are offer­ing sup­port to these creatures.

I call on police offi­cers who may be think­ing of break­ing our nation’s laws, stop it. If you find that you can­not live on the salary they pay you, step aside and find some­thing else which will sus­tain your lifestyle.
I call on the gov­ern­ment to rein in its mon­grel ken­nel, yes the one you call INDECOM, we want our nation’s laws respect­ed and observed, we do not want tax­pay­er resources to go to fund­ing any agency which per­se­cutes and hin­ders our officers.

We are call­ing on the Government to offer lead­er­ship, we are call­ing on the oppo­si­tion par­ty, stop look­ing to score cheap polit­i­cal mileage under the guise of look­ing after the poor.
We will have no coun­try if the actions of these mur­der­ers are not halt­ed and halt­ed immediately.
The great­est right a per­son has is the right to life. I remind both the admin­is­tra­tion and the oppo­si­tion if you are inter­est­ed in fight­ing for the human rights of the ordi­nary Jamaican how about you look to ensure their right to life?

There are those who talk about tak­ing in these demons with­out fir­ing any shots, and so I call on Terrence Williams, and Hamish Campbell to join the police when they go out to appre­hend these killers.
Do a ride along, please you don’t need any weapons, these guys will not harm you. I per­son­al­ly sup­port your desire to see few­er police killings and as a con­se­quence, I sup­port your right to help in appre­hend­ing them.
In fact, I sup­port the right of all peo­ple who want few­er police shoot­ings, go on the ride alongs and beg them to surrender.
Hopefully, we can solve some oth­er prob­lems by your doing so.

We are tired of the excus­es and the sec­ond-guess­ing by the pun­dits, who ben­e­fit from the efforts of the police but have no decen­cy and char­ac­ter to offer sup­port and give thanks.
Jamaica is a very small coun­try giv­en enough time it will reach your door don’t you wor­ry. In the mean­time, we salute the offi­cers who removed this men­ace from the streets, and with­out a doubt saved numer­ous lives in the process.
Thank you.….….….……

St James’ most want­ed man Ryan Peterkin 0/​c (Ratty) was cut down dur­ing a gun­fight with Police.
He was killed in the New Market area on the bor­der with St.Elizabeth and St. James, accord­ing to police sources.
Peterkin was alleged­ly want­ed for at least 5 murders.

The police report­ed that an AK-47 rifle and a .38 revolver were recov­ered from Peterkin.
Peterkin was report­ed to be the leader of the Ratty Gang which ter­ror­ized the area in which he was killed and adjoin­ing areas.

Listen to audio com­men­tary above.

I promised I would keep my mouth shut despite hav­ing to place one hand over it and use the oth­er to hold it in place to keep me from break­ing my promise not to ask Antony Anderson what his plans are?
I made the promise not to talk about major gen­er­al Antony Anderson’s appoint­ment and tenure as police com­mis­sion­er, large­ly for two rea­sons, (1) to allow time to the mem­bers of the pub­lic, includ­ing police offi­cers past and present, who say give him time and (2) because he need­ed to get into office and accli­mate him­self to the job before speak­ing out on what he intends to do differently.

Jamaica’s New Police Commissioner

Nevertheless, I am find­ing it hard to con­tain myself a month after Anderson assumed office and all we hear out of 103 Old Hope is an eerie silence. It real­ly is insignif­i­cant what I think or says. What is inter­est­ing is that the major opin­ion mak­ers in the coun­try are begin­ning to ques­tion Anderson’s silence since he took office.

The Gleaner’s edi­to­r­i­al board one of the most stri­dent anti-police enti­ties in the coun­try lashed out in Friday’s online pub­li­ca­tion claiming :
Indeed, it has been almost a month since he took over as Jamaica’s com­mis­sion­er of police from the light-foot­ed and unre­mark­able tenure of the career police offi­cer, George Quallo. Yet, the pub­lic does­n’t know what General Anderson’s pri­or­i­ties on the job are and, assum­ing that he has some, what his strate­gies are for get­ting them done. Nor are peo­ple aware what spe­cif­ic con­tri­bu­tions General Anderson wants from them towards his success.

Anthony Harriot Comments About JCF A Cowardly Hatchet Job By A Deceitful Hack…

Rather inter­est­ing to read, con­sid­er­ing that the elit­ists on that board would rather see a dog in the com­mis­sion­er’s chair than a police offi­cer who came up through the ranks. That aside, oth­ers are also crit­i­ciz­ing the gov­ern­ment on what they see as a lack of alacrity and dis­patch in mount­ing an effec­tive strat­e­gy to sup­press the coun­try’s mur­der rate.
Well- known crim­i­nal rights cam­paign­er Horace Levy lashed out at the admin­is­tra­tion as well:

Isn’t it obvi­ous that two ZOSOs, or even four, as cur­rent­ly con­struct­ed to each require 300 to 400 sol­diers and police, is not cut­ting it? Why? Because, to begin with, the human resources are lim­it­ed. But face it: We are on a path to anoth­er 1,600−1,800 mur­ders in 2018. Another route has to be cho­sen and cho­sen now. Which brings up the sec­ond crazy notion — that it is the advice of the secu­ri­ty forces that decides what to do about our vio­lence and mur­der. The police and the army only knows one kind of solu­tion that is more of only, or chiefly, the tried-and-failed repression.

If You Believe The ZOSO Will Have An Impact On Murders You Deserve To Be Conned .…

Well there you have it, where have I heard that log­ic before?

EVERYONE KNOWS HOW TO STOP THE CRIME MADNESS

Why would any­one depend on secu­ri­ty offi­cials for secu­ri­ty advise, what luna­cy? Maybe Mister Horace Levy would be kind enough to explain to the Jamaican peo­ple who require a coun­try free from vio­lent crime and the specter of immi­nent death dai­ly, why they should trust him over trained officials.
In the mean­time, I’ll call my plumber to see what he can do about my blood pres­sure which is get­ting a lit­tle high from this lunacy.

Brown-Burke’s Threats A Continuation Of Virago Representation In St Andrew Southwest?(audio)

In addi­tion to Anderson’s silence and what some are begin­ning to say is a lack of cred­i­ble crime-strat­e­gy, mem­bers of the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion have begun to assert that they are con­sid­er­ing embark­ing on street protest as a means to reg­is­ter dis­sent to what they claim is the lack of a cred­i­ble strat­e­gy to com­bat crime.

HERE’S THE DILEMMA

The stark real­i­ty sur­round­ing the silence of the new­ly installed com­mis­sion­er of police is that Anderson who left the JDF and was appoint­ed as the nation’s first nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er is using the time to claw his way around the rules and respon­si­bil­i­ties of what the job entails. More impor­tant­ly, what a chief con­sta­ble does.
The stu­pid idea that because some­one has train­ing in a cer­tain field, or may have a degree or two in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline it qual­i­fies that per­son as an author­i­ty on all oth­er dis­ci­plines. It is a remark­ably daft mill­stone around the col­lec­tive necks of Jamaicans.
Anthony Anderson is part of the men­tal­i­ty which fun­da­men­tal­ly believes that we must tread care­ful­ly around dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers rather than extin­guish them like bugs.

So as Anderson brings him­self up to speed on what it is that police do, the blood­let­ting con­tin­ues unabat­ed and with no end in sight? I do believe that Major General Anthony Anderson would like to do a good job. After all, it isn’t his fault that he has this momen­tous respon­si­bil­i­ty thrust upon him even though he does not have any idea about law enforce­ment and now needs the time to learn.
Fault the sys­tem of men which allows it.

Even if Anderson was to ful­ly accli­mate him­self to his new duties today and was ready to go, noth­ing would change because the crime rate in our coun­try is hard­ly a func­tion of who sits in the police com­mis­sion­er’s chair but a func­tion of the nation’s lax laws and sup­port for crim­i­nal conduct.
In this very medi­um, I have per­son­al­ly pub­lished sev­er­al crime plans which I believe giv­en the ide­al leg­isla­tive frame­work would begin to have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on crime. Nevertheless, it is almost insane to believe that with the present laws and the men­tal­i­ty in the coun­try, any police com­mis­sion­er, (much less one who does not even under­stand what he is sup­posed to do) will be able to pos­i­tive­ly change the tra­jec­to­ry of vio­lent crimes.

In all of that, it is remark­able that this Jamaican nation of peo­ple who are sup­posed to be so smart actu­al­ly believe that it is a good idea to put some­one with no train­ing or expe­ri­ence to do a job over career pro­fes­sion­als who are immi­nent­ly qual­i­fied. A para­dox no dif­fer­ent than that which pro­pelled Donald Trump to the pres­i­den­cy of the United States.

In our Parliamentary demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem of Government, as is the case in west­ern repub­li­can democ­ra­cies, it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that the checks and bal­ances which obtains holds, and are strength­ened if our demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and our nations are to survive.
As cit­i­zens, all of us have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to stick our hand in the prover­bial dike when­ev­er we see a breach, every­thing depends on it.

Last Wednesday High Court Judge jus­tice Glen Brown urged the Government to pay the attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Corporal Kevin Adams and six oth­er police offi­cers charged with mur­der in the case pejo­ra­tive­ly dubbed the death squad case.
Justice Brown inti­mat­ed that he would be giv­ing the Government over the week­end to deal with the 107 mil­lion dol­lars owed to the offi­cer’s attor­neys, a lit­tle fact which has ham­pered the case’s progress.

Listen to com­men­tary here.

Two events occurred as a result of jus­tice Brown’s threats to dismiss.
(1) The nation’s Justice Minister Delroy Chuck was out­raged, he labeled the judge “out of order” while insist­ing that the sum owed was out­ra­geous and extravagant.
Chuch went as far as to sug­gest that the gov­ern­ment only agreed to help with the offi­cer’s legal fees not bear the full extent of those costs.
Remember this is the very same Delroy Chuck who was a part of the admin­is­tra­tion of Bruce Golding which gave the Island INDECOM. Yet the learned attorney[sic] nev­er thought it pru­dent to have monies includ­ed to defend cops charged by INDECOM, what­ev­er hap­pened to the pre­sump­tion of innocence.
There is one lit­tle fact in all of this, and that is that the Government is com­mit­ted to pay­ing the legal fees of offi­cers charged by INDECOM.
This was not a part of the orig­i­nal frame­work of the law, it came into effect after struc­tur­al defi­cien­cies have been found in the eight-year-old law.
This writer has been on the tip of this spear, yelling at and to every­one who will lis­ten, at the clear uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the law and the ways it is infring­ing on the rights of the Island’s officers.

(2) Despite Chuck’s grand­stand­ing and argu­ments for a sys­tem of men rather than a sys­tem of laws, he found him­self meet­ing with the offi­cer’s attor­neys and resolv­ing the out­stand­ing issue.
We can look at Chuck’s expe­di­tious con­for­mi­ty with what the judge sug­gest­ed and extrap­o­late from it that(a)he gave in because he knew the monies had to be paid. Or (b) I rather argue that he made arrange­ments to pay because he was adamant that these offi­cers were not going to walk free.
We all know how much Delroy Chuck loves the police[sic]

So Chuck did not find him­self answer­ing to the court per­son­al­ly but Malahoo-Forte the Attorney General did.
The fact that any­one from the exec­u­tive was forced to show up and answer to anoth­er branch of Government is a step in the right direc­tion and a clear indi­ca­tion that flawed though our democ­ra­cy is, we are still on the right path toward a soci­ety of laws and not of men.

As I have said repeat­ed­ly INDECOM should not have the right to pros­e­cute its own investigations.
In a let­ter to one of the dai­ly pub­li­ca­tions, Attorney at law Valerie Neita Robertson said the following:

INDECOM must not arrest, charge, and pros­e­cute its own inves­ti­ga­tions but must be sub­ject to the con­sti­tu­tion­al buffer of the Office of the DPP if we are to ensure that jus­tice in Jamaica is not an illu­sion. Let us all be guid­ed by the oft-used phrase that “there can be no peace with­out justice.”

(Listen to the audio commentary).

Miss Neita’s words are time­ly on this mat­ter even as this issue has been of burn­ing import over the last eight years since the Act came into being.
When there is no con­sti­tu­tion­al buffer see the (DPP)INDECOM gets to run roughshod over our law enforce­ment offi­cers even when they are act­ing in con­for­mi­ty with the let­ter of the law.

In case after case, we see INDECOM over­step­ping the bounds of its man­date and the bounds of com­mon sense in its glee­ful zeal to embar­rass police offi­cers using the faulty jus­tice sys­tem as a tool of persecution.
I spoke about one such case in an arti­cle in November of 2017.

INDECOM’s Abuse Of Power Clear As Day In This Case

Supporters of the law know full well that the law is bad. Aspects of the law may even be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al but they would rather keep a bad law in place which injuries police offi­cers than do the work to change it.
One of the talk­ing points used by pro­po­nents of the law is that if offi­cers act appro­pri­ate­ly they have noth­ing to fear from hav­ing INDECOM there.
Many peo­ple out­side the cir­cle of pow­er of pol­i­tics and law enforce­ment who sim­ply want checks and bal­ances in the sys­tem fall vic­tim to this lie because they do not under­stand the minu­tia of how a bad law like INDECOM may have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for offi­cers who do exact­ly what they are sup­posed to do and are crim­i­nal­ized by a law which should nev­er have been autho­rized in its present state.

Dealing with law­break­ers at scenes of this nature are not easy for police offi­cers. In these scenes, the most docile per­son is empow­ered and embold­ened to be aggres­sive and unlaw­ful based sole­ly on the numer­i­cal strength of the group.
Police offi­cers are still expect­ed to clear thor­ough­fares and restore order. When they attempt to do their jobs there are no short­age of assaults on their persons.
If they act to pro­tect them­selves they are indicted.
This non­sense must stop.

The instances of the abuse of INDECOM are many the lat­est being the case of assault INDECOM brought against Corporal Delroy McDuffus and Constable Adrian Beckford, who was attached to the Morant Bay Police Station six years ago. McDuffus and Beckford were arrest­ed and charged by INDECOM for alleged­ly assault­ing a man dur­ing a road­block that was mount­ed by res­i­dents in the Whitehorse com­mu­ni­ty in the parish.The com­plainant was arrest­ed by the police after he was report­ed­ly seen block­ing the road­way and was ordered to move away from the scene but refused and resist­ed the police’s attempt to remove him.

This case should nev­er have been brought in the first place, there was no evi­dence out­side the complainant’s words to go by.
Point num­ber one is that he was arrest­ed for refus­ing to move away from the scene after he was caught block­ing a pub­lic thoroughfare.
If he refused the police com­mand to do as he was told why would we not believe he had to be forcibly sub­dued by the police in order to effect the arrest?

It is exact­ly because of abus­es of this nature that I am allud­ing to when I crit­i­cize the INDECOM law as a flawed law entrust­ed to a dem­a­gogue to execute.
Additionally, the police can­not sue INDECOM for wrong­ful arrest even when they act with haste, with­out due-care, a lack of cau­tion and maybe mal­ice as is seem­ing­ly the case here.
Police offi­cers are sued for doing exact­ly what they are tasked with doing and are being arrest­ed and treat­ed as crim­i­nals for doing so. INDECOM faces no legal jeop­ardy for abus­ing its powers.

(This post has been updat­ed since it was first published.)