The Court Management Service (CMS) has respond­ed with a weak response to what is a detailed doc­u­ment from senior police inves­ti­ga­tors which high­lights the total­ly inad­e­quate sen­tences they mete out for seri­ous gun offens­es. Police Investigators have point­ed to a litany of cas­es, to include one in which Justice Bertram Morrison imposed total fines of $170,000 on a man con­vict­ed for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm and ammu­ni­tion and a fine of $70,000 on a man con­vict­ed for pos­ses­sion of ammunition.

light sen­tences in cas­es of ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearms and ammu­ni­tion, in which an American woman who was admon­ished and dis­charged by Justice David Fraser the woman was an American tourist who plead­ed guilty to pos­ses­sion of ammunition.
Police doc­u­ment report­ed that she was con­vict­ed of ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm and ammunition.

But these instances are a mere drop in the buck­et, the real harm the courts are doing is large as it relates to bail. The astro­nom­i­cal num­ber of Jamaicans killed by arrest­ed mur­der­ers who are sum­mar­i­ly grant­ed bail far exceeds those who are con­vict­ed and giv­en light sentences.
Killing com­plainants and oth­er pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es has been a strate­gic approach of the Island’s killers, police have com­plained about this for decades but those cries have fall­en on deaf ears.
No one in Jamaica seems con­cerned about the avalanche of blood­shed except the police of course.

The CMS argued that the woman was held at the air­port at the end of her vaca­tion with her moth­er and imme­di­ate­ly informed author­i­ties that the firearm mag­a­zine dis­cov­ered belonged to her hus­band, who is a licensed firearm hold­er in the United States.“Despite her tech­ni­cal guilt, there was no evi­dence of a delib­er­ate or will­ful inten­tion to breach our laws, and no one with­in the bor­ders of Jamaica was placed at any risk by the inad­ver­tent com­mis­sion of the offense,” the agency not­ed. CMS said the “young moth­er of four small chil­dren” had very lit­tle mon­ey left to pay “even a nom­i­nal fine” and was “vis­i­bly dis­traught and utter­ly dev­as­tat­ed..” “She would not be allowed to leave the island if she had an unpaid fine. It was Friday It was in those whol­ly excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances that the sen­tence of admon­ished and dis­charged was deemed appropriate.”

This pub­li­ca­tion asks what about the case of thir­ty-six-year-old Michael Abrahams, who was found with cocaine with a street val­ue of more than $90 mil­lion dol­lars at a house he occu­pied at Caribbean Estate in Portmore, St Catherine on July 7^th.
Abrahams plead guilty. In exchange for his guilty plea, he received a fine of JMD $500,000 or the serv­ing 6 months in prison. On his sec­ond count of the crime, Abrahams struck a plea deal with the court for Dealing in Cocaine and received 9 months hard labor, which will be sus­pend­ed for two years. He was also grant­ed bail for JMD $300,00.

This is a graph­ic indi­ca­tor of the clear and present dan­ger in which the courts have placed our coun­try. It exem­pli­fies the very rea­son I have per­son­al­ly called for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain cat­e­gories of crime.
The sup­posed mis­con­duct of Police, Military and Corrections offi­cials gave the coun­try INDECOM. Despite the mount­ing pile of evi­dence and empir­i­cal data against the courts and the legal fra­ter­ni­ty, the Legislature has not lift­ed a fin­ger to stop the abuse of pow­er. [Good of the police to now com­pile data to show what we have been say­ing for decades].

Jamaica is the coun­try with the most depor­tees in the Caribbean, there is a rea­son for it.
American courts do not make accom­mo­da­tions for peo­ple who break their laws, regard­less of the mit­i­gat­ing circumstances.
That is the rea­son so many Jamaicans have been deport­ed back to the Island despite some of the very same mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances of which CMS referenced.
In many cas­es, some of the peo­ple deport­ed by the United States have not com­mit­ted any offens­es but were caught up in police drag­nets which incrim­i­nat­ed them effec­tive­ly ruin­ing their lives.

These Judges who sup­plant the laws with their own weak­ness­es and bias­es are woe­ful­ly mis­guid­ed and delu­sion­al if they believe that a jus­tice sys­tem can be oper­at­ed that way. And that is premised on whether we believe their expla­na­tion instead of ascrib­ing more sin­is­ter motives behind their actions.
This is why the leg­is­la­ture must stop bang­ing on desks in the house and hurl­ing insults at each oth­er and change the laws, effec­tive­ly remov­ing from these judges the dis­cre­tion to turn the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem into a revolv­ing door.

We can ill-afford to have these unin­formed, unex­posed lit­tle over­lords in their sil­ly lit­tle robes define and deter­mine the kind of coun­try we have going for­ward. Judges are sup­posed to fol­low the laws, not sup­plant them with their own feelings.
The direc­tion of the coun­try must come out of the nation’s parliament.

As I watched the images of JDF assets rolling into parts of Saint James yes­ter­day I was filled with hope that this would not be anoth­er show of force laced with the worn out overem­pha­sis on rights, so much so that it will become incon­se­quen­tial and worth­less as ZOSO turned out to be. More than any con­cerns I have for the effec­tive­ness of any action to be tak­en by the secu­ri­ty forces, how­ev­er, is a deep tre­pedi­tion of here we go again.
As I con­tem­plat­ed a response to what I saw I also felt anger, an anger born out of the thought of how this ingrate nation abus­es those who risk their lives for it.

Born out of that anger I want­ed to write about the events which neces­si­tat­ed the Military and police hav­ing to enter the Garrison com­mu­ni­ty of Tivoli Gardens in Western Kingston.
A com­mu­ni­ty I have risked my life in, get­ting shot at and hav­ing to take cov­er as com­mon punks fire at us with high pow­ered weapons.

I am tempt­ed to lash out at the fact that police sta­tions were attacked and burned to the ground. Those police offi­cers, sol­diers, and aver­age cit­i­zens were mur­dered as the entire com­mu­ni­ty came out in white T‑shirts extolling their loy­al­ty and love for Christopher Coke.
That despite it all busses were pro­vid­ed to res­i­dents who want­ed to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to leave the com­mu­nity so that the secu­ri­ty forces could go in and do their jobs with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of col­lat­er­al dam­age being dras­ti­cal­ly reduced.
That they all refused that offer.

That despite the Government of the day rolling over in the blood of those mar­tyred mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces to appease a com­mu­ni­ty which oper­at­ed out­side the bounds of the laws, the next admin­is­tra­tion con­vened a Kangaroo pan­el to judge the secu­ri­ty forces, demo­nize them, chas­tise them, for sav­ing Jamaica and hand­ing it back to them.

More infu­ri­at­ing the new Government went ahead and rubbed salt into the wounds of the secu­ri­ty forces by apol­o­giz­ing to the com­mu­ni­ty and are pay­ing them off with tax­pay­ers money.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties have rolled over and made con­ces­sions to ter­ror­ists who kill mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces, burn Government prop­er­ty and thumb their noses at the nation’s laws?

Additionally, the PNP while in Opposition took the trea­so­nous steps of refus­ing to sign on to an exten­sion of the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency which would have giv­en the secu­ri­ty forces the time to con­sol­i­date its gains by uproot­ing those ter­ror­ist killers who find safe haven in PNP garrisons.
By so doing the PNP chose to keep the pri­vate mili­tias it has in the var­i­ous gar­risons under its control.
The PNP chose to keep the pil­lars of failed states when it had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be great. As a con­se­quence, nei­ther the PNP nor the JLP has the moral author­i­ty to end the crime scourge eat­ing away at our country.

There are many who feel as I do that the cure is not out­side of our grasp but that our polit­i­cal lead­ers would rather play pol­i­tics than solve the problems.
I share the sen­ti­ments of my friend whose response on the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency is far more art­ful than I could ever express myself.

My only con­cern is for the mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces whose every action in the heat of bat­tle will be scru­ti­nized by men and women who nev­er ever even got involved in a ver­bal con­fronta­tion much less life and death sit­u­a­tions as a mat­ter of course.
The civ­il soci­ety groups are lurk­ing to pounce. The said gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing which of their rich retired friends they will hire to chair and pre­side over anoth­er witch hunt. It is strange and iron­ic how we chas­tise and treat the secu­ri­ty forces yet they are the only ones who put lives on the line to save Jamaica time and again. The rest of us are like spec­ta­tors in the are­na while the glad­i­a­tors bat­tle to the death.[adapt­ed RS]

The shit­heads who sit in judg­ment ought to be ashamed of their hypocrisy, these char­la­tans [Jesus warned about] who walk about the mar­ket­place in their long robes.
What frauds? They no longer wear the long robes of the Pharisees they wear coats and tie nowa­days, as they were when Jesus walked the earth so too do they exist today, liars, thieves, and frauds, the deceivers who ben­e­fit from the sta­tus quo but pre­tend they care.

I have no desire to be art­ful in my dis­dain for them, I loathe them. and As my friend said they are ready to pounce,. I will be watch­ing to see which one of these lying scrubs will begin the ver­bal onslaught against the secu­ri­ty forces their lips drip­ping with the vile hypocrisy befit­ting eter­nal perdition.

There is cur­rent­ly a major mil­i­tary oper­a­tion under­way in St. James.

The parish is report­ed to be in a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency that has been imposed by the Government.

Soldiers can report­ed­ly be seen stop­ping and search­ing motor vehi­cles at sev­er­al points in the parish where 335 homi­cides were record­ed last year.

The height­ened secu­ri­ty mea­sures come after two brazen attacks by gun­men close to the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay yes­ter­day. One per­son was killed and two oth­ers wound­ed in the attacks.

Both attacks occurred with­in a time span of few­er than two hours. http://​jablogz​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​1​/​m​a​j​o​r​-​m​i​l​i​t​a​r​y​-​o​p​e​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​i​n​-​s​t​-​j​a​m​es/

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We know the sta­tis­tics, and we know what has been tried.
We also know that what has been tried in crime con­trol has not been work­ing, and for good reason.
The car­nage on the streets.The mul­ti­ple killings. The sense of law­less­ness has police stand­ing by help­less as riot­ers do as they please — the use of Government Agencies as tools of self-aggran­dize­ment and per­son­al vendet­tas. And don’t for­get the inevitable trav­el advisories.
It all sounds like an ungovern­able Serengeti, and to a cer­tain extent, it is, but is it too far gone?
I don’t think so!
But if noth­ing changes in direc­tion, there will come a time in the not-too-dis­tant future when we will have passed the point of no return.
I con­tin­ue to ask the ques­tion: At what point will the nation’s lead­ers say they do not want any more spilled blood?
At what point will decen­cy and char­ac­ter trump polit­i­cal considerations?

There is a con­sen­sus among many Jamaicans, both at home and in the dias­po­ra, that the Government is not inter­est­ed in solv­ing the nation’s crime dilem­ma. Neither is the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion; it may rea­son­ably be argued that our crime prob­lem has been intran­si­gent and intractable because politi­cians have inject­ed them­selves into law enforcement.
The most recent exam­ple being the appalling exam­ple we were forced to wit­ness in Boscobel Saint Mary.
I agree that some of the Prime Minister’s utter­ances could rea­son­ably be con­strued as anti-police and, by exten­sion, against resolv­ing the coun­try’s crime problem.
The Political Opposition must also take respon­si­bil­i­ty for its con­sti­tu­tion­al role in gov­ern­ment, even from its side of the chamber.
It can­not be a zero-sum game for the PNP, which sees its role in Jamaica as either the gov­ern­ing par­ty or the par­ty that sab­o­tages what­ev­er the rul­ing par­ty does. Consequently, the two par­ties must change their views of gov­ern­ment and their roles, whether in gov­ern­ment or oppo­si­tion, as inte­gral parts of the gov­ern­ing structure.
If we can accom­plish that par­a­digm shift, if only in how they per­ceive their roles as ser­vants of our coun­try, we may reach a con­sen­sus on how the exis­ten­tial issue of crime must be approached.

I left law enforce­ment in Jamaica as a young adult after ten years of ser­vice in my country.
Today, almost 27 years lat­er, the images that grace reg­u­lar and social media of police oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures and process­es seem far more regres­sive and irra­tional than when I walked away in 1991. The con­stant sec­ond-guess­ing. Demonizing. Politicizing. Persecution. Morale killing. And oth­er neg­a­tives thrown at the police, in addi­tion to their anti­quat­ed train­ing and lack of leg­isla­tive and moral sup­port, have done much to cre­ate the Jamaica which exists today.
The experts and the talk­ing heads haven’t real­ized that the coun­try’s progress is in its own hands. Progress comes from a sta­ble, low-crime society.

Jamaica is nei­ther sta­ble nor low crime. As a result, any talk of pros­per­i­ty, even at its best, must be seen as hyped rhetoric.
We must receive answers to some seri­ous ques­tions. Those answers will give us a win­dow into why the crime prob­lem in Jamaica is like an intractable cough regress­ing into pneu­mo­nia. Why is it that an Assistant Commissioner of Police[the one pic­tured here, Norman Heywood] arrived on the scene on the Boscobel main road and saw a litany of crimes being com­mit­ted and did absolute­ly nothing?
Why was traf­fic allowed to pile up, total­ly incon­ve­nienc­ing the pub­lic while a senior police com­man­der stood by like one of the anarchists?
The pile-up of traf­fic that occurred last week in Boscobel incon­ve­nienced many peo­ple; it effec­tive­ly shut down com­merce and inex­orably cost count­less Jamaicans who had noth­ing to do with those law­less anar­chists in that town immense finan­cial and oth­er harm.

It is no dif­fer­ent from the pile-up on the road to the Norman Manley International Airport a week ear­li­er. It is no dif­fer­ent from the con­stant block­ing of roads, which, in addi­tion to the ram­pant crime, is destroy­ing the island’s eco­nom­ic and human life. What was the paper police offi­cer Norman Heywood afraid of? Why did he do noth­ing to stop the crime inci­dents while the junior offi­cers there with him were itch­ing to uphold their oath?
Why did it take a politi­cian [Robert Montague’s] arrival to quell the law­less anar­chy we saw play out before our eyes?

Why do politi­cians con­tin­ue to offer them­selves up as buffers between the police and the crim­i­nals, know­ing it has the effect of caus­ing those who break the laws to have no respect for the police?
What does the world not know in the sys­tem that caus­es a senior police com­man­der to abdi­cate his sworn duty?
Was it fear, and if so, fear of whom?
Was it a sense of not know­ing what to do [as I sus­pect is the case] with these paper cops who got into the police depart­ment because they earned a degree some­where and were giv­en command?

When he took com­mand of Police Area Two in September of last year, the hap­less Norman Heywood told a gath­er­ing at the Evansville Conference Centre in St Ann’s Bay, attend­ed by National Security Minister Robert Montague, that police in the area would oper­ate using the ‘Three‑R’ approach — rapid response, respect, and reassurance.

Neither of those char­ac­ter­is­tics was vis­i­ble in ACP Norman Heywood’s actions or lack thereof.
But Heywood’s lack of lead­er­ship [which I must admit makes me piss­ing mad] is direct­ly in line with the phi­los­o­phy of his col­league DCP Clifford Blake who deliv­ered an entire lec­ture to junior traf­fic cops on the virtues of rolling over and turn­ing a blind eye instead of enforc­ing the nation’s traf­fic laws.

Even as the nation’s crime increas­es and mur­ders con­tin­ue to ter­ri­fy the pop­u­la­tion, elic­it­ing trav­el advi­sories from for­eign nations, the Island’s top law enforce­ment offi­cers are teach­ing pas­siv­i­ty and rolling over to lawlessness.
The Police Commissioner must tell the nation whether or not this is the new direc­tion of the police force so that cit­i­zens can know not to expect pro­tec­tion from anar­chists and murderers.
This new breed of police lead­er­ship teach­es respect and human rights but does not enforce the nation’s laws.
Their stu­pid phi­los­o­phy is exact­ly from the play­book of for­mer Jamaican for Justice head Carolyn Gomez, that the role of the police is to observe human rights.
|There are more than enough safe­guards to pro­tect human rights, so much so that there is no enforce­ment of the laws right now. The rights of the most blood-drenched crim­i­nal now super­sede the fun­da­men­tal right to life an inno­cent Jamaican pre­vi­ous­ly had.

The same play­book that Owen Ellington allowed to be insti­tut­ed across the police force. It crim­i­nal­izes and demo­nizes Esprit-de-corp, the uni­ver­sal con­cept of broth­er­hood shared by mil­i­tary and police orga­ni­za­tions worldwide.
It is a con­cept that those who have nev­er signed up or vol­un­teered for any­thing can nev­er under­stand. A baby doc­tor out of her league has evis­cer­at­ed and dem­a­gogued it in Jamaica. We want to know who behind that demon­stra­tion ren­dered Norman Heywood impo­tent. Who ren­dered him unable to do his job as a com­man­der? Why did he not imme­di­ate­ly take com­mand of the scene and have the men and women under his com­mand issue direc­tives to per­sons gath­ered there to move to the side­walks imme­di­ate­ly or face being forcibly dis­persed? Citizens can gath­er peace­ably and air griev­ances against their gov­ern­ment or what­ev­er they are aggriev­ed by.
They have no right to block roads and pre­vent the free flow of traf­fic, incon­ve­nienc­ing and endan­ger­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic. After those com­mands are issued, if they refuse, the batons and tear gas imme­di­ate­ly come out to end the nonsense.
We must get back to enforc­ing the laws.
As much as I loathe these two par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives, I do not believe they were involved in Heywood’s abdi­ca­tion of his oath.
As such, the Commissioner of Police must deter­mine whether ACP Norman Heywood’s dere­lic­tion of duty rep­re­sents the police force he wants to lead for the dura­tion of his tenure at the helm of this department.

The shop­keep­er who slapped a school­girl was report­ed­ly charged by the Police. Social Media has been ablaze with pret­ty much all the com­ments laced with vit­ri­ol against the woman.
The poor school­girl was ter­ri­fied and was par­tic­u­lar­ly respect­ful to the woman. I am glad that action is being tak­en when these images are record­ed and a report made to police.

What I found appalling how­ev­er is the anger direct­ed at the woman in the video. Granted that the woman was way out of line in slap­ping some­one’s child, the take­away from the respons­es seemed to be fueled sole­ly because of who she isn’t, or more to the point who she is.
At a time when there are much angst and dis­may about Donald Trump’s shit­hole com­ments about Haitians and Africans, many are zeroed in on the Racism inher­ent in the state­ment attrib­uted to Trump.
It bears ask­ing, how­ev­er, whether the anger direct­ed at the woman may be about her race? Would there be such an out­pour­ing of anger at her if she was black?
Isn’t there some log­ic to the idea that the anger may be because of the fact that she is in fact Chinese?
It seems to me that she is as Jamaican as any­one call­ing for her head, yet the ani­mus seems to be cen­tered on her Chinese ancestry.

People look at the way we con­duct our­selves, they make deci­sions how to inter­act with us based on how we treat our own kind.
Her lan­guage and the act of vio­lence toward the child is exact­ly the way we act. That explains why she felt empow­ered to act that way.
We can cry racism all we want but unless we begin to val­ue our­selves, oth­ers will feel no need to val­ue us.

The year 2017 saw a report­ed 1616 Jamaicans mur­dered by crim­i­nals. The new year is on par to reg­is­ter even greater num­ber of the murdered.
The United States State Department, as a result, has issued a trav­el advi­so­ry to Americans trav­el­ing to our country.
Yet the seri­ous­ness of the wan­ton killings has elicit­ed no demon­stra­tions, no out­cry from the citizenry.

What has brought out the anger in them is the fact that the police shot and killed one of them and recov­ered a weapon. The nar­ra­tive com­ing from many of the imbe­ciles is that if you got off the bus late the deceased would accom­pa­ny peo­ple home, a lit­tle fact which tells me that he was some kind of enforcer or wannabe don.
We have to come to the grim real­i­ty that these com­mu­ni­ties, these peo­ple, are them­selves crim­i­nal imbe­ciles unwor­thy of our care.

At some point in time, we have to come to the real­iza­tion that the peo­ple we are fight­ing for, the peo­ple we are ask­ing the Government to act to save, may not be worth saving.
At some point in time, we have to rec­on­cile that in many cas­es these peo­ple are inde­fen­si­ble hea­thens unwor­thy of our efforts.

This is what INDECOM has brought Jamaica to‑, to a place where the police are on scene and are afraid to lift a fin­ger to stop the car­nage and the threat and incon­ve­nience to the trav­el­ing public.
This is what Bruce Golding gave Jamaica, it is what Portia Simpson Miller and Percival Patterson and Andrew Holness have done to our country.
Effectively turn­ing our coun­try into a crim­i­nal state.This is what the polit­i­cal par­ties have done to our police department.

At this time it makes no sense to talk about the Commander on the scene who total­ly abdi­cat­ed his respon­si­bil­i­ty to the rule of law.

Having lis­tened to Deputy Commissioner of Police Clifford Blake’s speech to grad­u­at­ing traf­fic cops I was stunned. Yet his ram­bling charge to the junior offi­cers con­vinced me that with lead­er­ship like Blakes, the coun­try is in for a rough future.

The nation’s streets are a chaot­ic mess of unruly dri­vers which requires a much more strin­gent enforce­ment régime yet Blake’s charge to the grad­u­at­ing offi­cers pret­ty much amount­ed to rolling over and allow­ing the sta­tus quo.

Blake a senior offi­cer bear­ing the title of deputy commissioner[a heart­beat from the com­mis­sion­er’s chair] failed to rec­og­nize a fun­da­men­tal flaw in the argu­ments he prof­fered to the men and women under his command.
Policing is not like the military.

Each and every offi­cer makes deci­sions to arrest or not on their own voli­tion. The last joined con­sta­ble’s pow­er of arrest is no less than that of the chief con­sta­ble [the com­mis­sion­er of police].
The actions each con­sta­ble takes in their dai­ly rou­tine must be backed up and sup­port­ed by the laws of Jamaica. As a con­se­quence, each con­sta­ble is respon­si­ble for the fall­out from his/​her actions if they are out­side the bounds of what the laws allow.

Police depart­ments can devel­op poli­cies but they can­not change laws, nei­ther do com­man­ders [a‑la], Clifford Blake has author­i­ty under the law to direct offi­cers [under his com­mand or not] to cir­cum­vent their own judg­ments with his desire for less enforce­ment and a more dis­cre­tionary approach to their jobs.

I was not sur­prised that Blake’s ram­bling address would be geared at chid­ing offi­cers for doing their duties, at a time when the coun­try needs much more offi­cers who are ded­i­cat­ed to enforc­ing the nation’s laws instead of cut­ting deals or turn­ing a blind eye to the carnage.
There is always a need to exer­cise dis­cre­tion yet the police offi­cers on the ground should not be in the busi­ness of cut­ting slack to a woman going to church dri­ving an unreg­is­tered automobile.
What if she hit and injured or God for­bid, kill some­one, what then would Blake do or say, would he step to the fore and defend that junior cop who cut that motorist some slack?
Or would Clifford Blake be first in line to talk about junior offi­cers not fol­low­ing the law as is his modus operandi?

Many who know Clifford Blake tells me that is his modus operandi.
One offi­cer told me of his career com­ing to a screech­ing halt because he wrote a traf­fic tick­et for Robot Car owned by Blake years ago, accord­ing to the offi­cer Blake was an inspec­tor at the time.
It seems to me that it is that kind of con­nivance which Blake brought to the Commissioner Rank and to that traf­fic offi­cers graduation.

What does it say about the JCF, at a time when the coun­try is suf­fo­cat­ing from crime, that a senior com­man­der who has oper­a­tional respon­si­bil­i­ty for the over­all coun­try wants con­ces­sion as against enforcement?
It is against this back­ground that this pub­li­ca­tion comes to the posi­tion that the senior man­age­ment of the force is not up to the job of return­ing the coun­try to any degree of safe­ty or is far too com­pro­mised to do so.

It is against that back­ground that it may be time to end the employ­ment of every sin­gle offi­cer above the rank of Inspector and below the Commissioner of Police and have a sea­soned pan­el of police com­man­ders from respect­ed police depart­ments in the United States or Canada inter­view appli­cants from those who wish to rejoin the JCF as commanders. 

The nation needs to get bet­ter returns on its invest­ments, this is where the prob­lem lies, it is where it has always lain. At the most senior lev­els of the force.
As I have said repeat­ed­ly s**t does not flow upstream. The rot and lack of lead­er­ship are in the senior core of the police depart­ment not in the rank and file.

♦It has always been senior offi­cers who con­tin­ue to dri­ve home the police cars which should patrol the streets even though they receive allowances for travel.
♦It has always been senior offi­cers who stood in the way of enforce­ment of our laws through their affil­i­a­tions with law­break­ers and those in the soci­ety who believe the laws should not apply to them.

♦It was always senior offi­cers who received envelopes stuffed with cash from law-break­ers effec­tive­ly erod­ing the author­i­ty of the junior offi­cers on the streets who do actu­al policing.
♦It was always senior offi­cers who col­lud­ed with politi­cians to trans­fer hard work­ing cops from divi­sions because gun­men loy­al to the politi­cians are being hounded.

♦It was always senior offi­cers who lack lead­er­ship and con­ti­nu­ity of focus which affects not just enforce­ment but the out­come of investigations.
♦It was always senior offi­cers who lacked lead­er­ship skills forc­ing the high attri­tion that has plagued the force.
♦It is the incom­pe­tence of senior offi­cers which caused the traf­fic pile-up on the sole high­way lead­ing into the (NMIA)inconveniencing the trav­el­ing pub­lic greatly.
♦ It is the senior offi­cer’s corp which has not demon­strat­ed the nec­es­sary polic­ing tech­niques com­men­su­rate with 21^st-cen­tu­ry crime fighting.

With that under­stand­ing, the time has come to have greater account­abil­i­ty from that group of pub­lic servants.
Given a sit­u­a­tion in which the Government adopts the posi­tion I artic­u­late it would be shock­ing to see the num­ber of senior offi­cers who would fail to qual­i­fy for the posi­tions they now hold.

Head of the Northeastern Division Snr Supt Surrendra Sagramsingh said police offi­cers will have more pow­er to put gang mem­bers behind bars if the Anti-Gang leg­is­la­tion is approved.

He was com­ment­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing a vis­it to the Morvant/​Laventille Secondary School where he accom­pa­nied the man­ag­er of the TTPS Victim and Witness Support Unit Asha Corbie, to offer sup­port in the wake of the mur­der of 15-year-old school­boy Joshua Andrews on Monday.

Since Monday’s inci­dent, where Andrews and “PH” taxi dri­ver Devon Fernandez were killed, res­i­dents and stu­dents of the school claimed they are being threat­ened by crim­i­nals in the area that “snitch­es get killed.”

Sagramsingh is now lob­by­ing for leg­is­la­tion that will pro­tect wit­ness­es, sim­i­lar to laws in the Bahamas where wit­ness­es can tes­ti­fy under anonymity.

“We realise that crime has tak­en a spi­ral upwards posi­tion. We have seen in dif­fer­ent juris­dic­tions that there is leg­is­la­tion that actu­al­ly sup­port the police inter­ven­tion with regards to gang-relat­ed offences…this is my hum­ble opin­ion,” he said.

Corbie said her unit has devised a plan and com­mu­ni­cat­ed it to the prin­ci­pal of the school.

“We will be vis­it­ing affect­ed fam­i­lies and not just pro­vid­ing coun­selling ser­vices but will be look­ing at oth­er needs that may exist and see how best we can con­nect them with oth­er agen­cies that can assist,” she said.

She offi­cers are now see­ing how best they can alle­vi­ate that sense of fear and pain that the stu­dents, prin­ci­pals, teach­ers and fam­i­ly mem­bers are experiencing.

Sagramsingh said that there exists the pos­si­bil­i­ty of arrests soon in the case. A joint police and army raid in the dis­trict on Tuesday net­ted four peo­ple want­ed for recent shoot­ings, wound­ings and out­stand­ing war­rants. http://​www​.guardian​.co​.tt/​n​e​w​s​/​2​018 – 01-10/se­nior-cop-anti-gang-laws-can-help-police

CLIFFORD BLAKE’S TALK EXPOSES A DEEP ROT STILL IN THE SYSTEM, WHICH WILL HAVE TO BE ERADICATED IF THE NATION WANTS TO DIG OUT FROM UNDER THE CRIME AND TERRORISM IT FACES.

For years the Island’s traf­fic police have been accused of solic­it­ing and accept­ing bribe sul­ly­ing the name of the depart­ment and sham­ing their col­leagues in the process.
One of the many things police offi­cers are taught is that they are the very first judge of sit­u­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it relates to traf­fic offens­es and dis­cre­tion hap­pens to be one of the tools in their toolbox.
Because of that dis­cre­tion, the road­ways have become lit­er­al dev­ils high­way of death and a chaot­ic mess of con­fu­sion and lawlessness.

Many offi­cers have inter­pret­ed dis­cre­tion to mean that traf­fic infrac­tions are not crim­i­nal acts and so they should turn a blind eye.
Many offi­cers, as a result, have become like the three blind mice, see, hear, and do no evil on traf­fic, much to the cha­grin of many who crit­i­cise them for everything.
They com­plain that the police allow bus and taxi oper­a­tors as well as pri­vate motorists to do as they please on the nation’s road­ways. Others accuse them of being too harsh in hand­ing out tick­ets and seiz­ing vehicles.

In the end, the police on the streets are left in a no-win sit­u­a­tion in which if they enforce the laws they are wrong and when they exer­cise dis­cre­tion they are wrong.
The sad irony is that the more things change is the more they remain the same. Their very lead­er­ship tells them that enforc­ing the laws are wrong. That they should sup­plant their duty with [dis­cre­tionary guid­ance ], effec­tive­ly let­ting motorists off the hook, none of which are required of offi­cers in the exe­cu­tion of their duties.
This sup­posed dis­cre­tion in many instances leads to cor­rup­tion, fla­grant dis­re­gard of the nation’s laws and trou­ble for officers.

DCP Clifford Blake, the head of the police’s Strategic Operations Portfolio, as he addressed a batch of 35 police­men and women who grad­u­at­ed from a motor­cy­cle dri­ving and main­te­nance course recently.

I took the time to watch this video and I can tell you that I was gross­ly offend­ed by it. Let me be clear if the police are caus­ing peo­ple to pay exor­bi­tant wreck­er fees that is wrong and they should desist forth­with. However, Blake’s talk could be summed up as capit­u­la­tion and a ral­ly­ing cry for the con­tin­u­a­tion of the sta­tus quo in our country.

Why did his Blakes friend the pas­tor call him when the offi­cers did exact­ly what the law gives them the author­i­ty to do, which was to seize the unli­censed motor vehicle?
What was on his mind, did­n’t Blakes friend the Pastor call him the Deputy Commissioner of Police because he believed that he could make the mat­ter go away?
I’ll tell you what, that’s exact­ly what it was.
Why was this woman dri­ving an unreg­is­tered vehi­cle regard­less of where she was going, church or no church?
What were the offi­cers to do, as far as Clifford Blake was con­cerned, were they to allow her to dri­ve the unreg­is­tered vehi­cle and kill some­one?
What would Clifford Blake say then, Wouldn’t Blake be the first to tell the media the pro­ce­dures offi­cers ought to have fol­lowed after they stopped an unli­censed operator?

The idea of using dis­cre­tion is a long time idea of polic­ing but it fur­ther dri­ves crime, cor­rupts offi­cers and embold­ens peo­ple to con­tin­ue to break the laws.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Clifford Blake, a man many believe should have been the Commissioner of police and may yet become Commissioner has demon­strat­ed in that speech alone that he is clue­less to law enforcement.

Small infrac­tions metas­ta­size into larg­er crimes. Stop the small things [cor­rect­ly] and you avoid the big things.
No police offi­cer, much less a senior com­man­der [for what his posi­tion is worth] should be in the busi­ness of telling offi­cers on the ground that they should sup­plant writ­ing tick­ets and remove unli­censed vehi­cles from the streets with their discretion.

It shows that for the few peo­ple left in Jamaica who haven’t giv­en up on a crime-free Jamaica in which cor­rup­tion is a thing of the past, they may as well throw in the towel.
For decades mem­bers of the JCF has done it Clifford Blake’s way and look where it has got­ten us.
It is not the fault of the police that the woman going to church was dri­ving an unreg­is­tered vehi­cle. She has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to reg­is­ter her car.
If we need to remove any­thing from the force it is the Clifford Blakes whose friends call them because of their rank with the express intent of hav­ing them over­rule the law­ful actions of offi­cers on the ground who are doing their duties in uphold­ing the laws as they are sworn to.

This must stop.
Clifford Blake has demon­strat­ed that he is unfit to be a leader of offi­cers and darn sure should nev­er be giv­en the job to lead the men and women look­ing for real lead­er­ship in the JCF.
Jamaica’s traf­fic cops should and needs to be far more deci­sive if san­i­ty is to be returned to the nation’s streets not less deci­sive and resolute.
Blake should be ashamed of him­self, traf­fic offi­cers have a job to do. Yes the job of the police is to serve and pro­tect but it is a damn law enforce­ment agency, not a day care agency,it’s time Clifford Blake receive that memo.