At the time the Tivoli inquiry was com­mis­sioned by Portia Simpson Miller as a polit­i­cal witch hunt, this medi­um was not shy about speak­ing out against it.
The Commission was set up as a sup­posed fact find­ing mis­sion, not a judi­cial court with the pow­er to bring charges.
This medi­um believed then that this com­mis­sion was fraud­u­lent as (1) the wit­ness­es against the secu­ri­ty forces were man­u­fac­tured. (2) The com­mis­sion led by David Simmons, a retired chief jus­tice and for­mer attor­ney gen­er­al of Barbados was biased and dis­re­spect­ful of the Jamaican secu­ri­ty forces. (3) The com­mis­sion head had no under­stand­ing of the crime cul­ture of Jamaica and there­fore was ill-equipped and ill-pre­pared to hear and deci­pher evi­den­tiary data from man­u­fac­tured lies.

(4) Other mem­bers of the pan­el, retired jus­tice of the Court of Appeal of Jamaica Hazel Harris and Professor Anthony Harriott, direc­tor of the Institute of Criminal Justice and Security at the University of the West Indies not exact­ly friends of the secu­ri­ty forces,went into what was a fact find­ing exer­cise with pre­con­ceived ideas and made up minds. (5) That the mere exis­tence of a com­mis­sion of inquiry into this oper­a­tion by the secu­ri­ty forces was an affront to the sac­ri­fice of the two mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces who died annex­ing that law­less com­mu­ni­ty to the rest of the country.

Nevertheless, I was not sur­prised that the PNP used that hero­ic event by the secu­ri­ty forces as a polit­i­cal football.
It was clas­sic PNP-JLP modus operan­di to use the secu­ri­ty forces to clean up their mess then muster their lying unin­formed sup­port­ers to demo­nize the Police and military.
This time how­ev­er it was dif­fer­ent Simpson Miller went for the jug­gler she brought in a post colo­nial­ist ‑neo­colo­nial­ist inter­lop­er to come into our coun­try to be judge and jury over our long suf­fer­ing secu­ri­ty forces.

Simmons and the pan­el wast­ed no time demon­strat­ing that the so called fact find­ing mis­sion was not going to be a fact find­ing mis­sion but a griev­ance forum to allow lying crim­i­nals and their fam­i­lies to per­pet­u­ate more lies and pro­pa­gan­da against the secu­ri­ty forces. (As seen in video above).

According to a Jamaica Gleaner report in July 2016, the cost to Jamaica tax­pay­ers for high pow­ered lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the var­i­ous agen­cies involved in the inquiry was almost J$150 million.
The report detailed sep­a­rate­ly from doc­u­ments obtained through the Access to Information (ATI) Act that Chairman of the three-mem­ber com­mis­sion, David Simmons, has been paid US$459,170 (J$52.8 mil­lion). Retired Court of Appeal jus­tice, Hazel Harris, anoth­er com­mis­sion­er, was, up to the time of the report­ing [paid US$344,475 of the US$372,300 (J$42.8 mil­lion) she is due under her con­tract. The doc­u­ments showed a bal­ance of US$27,825. Meanwhile, the third com­mis­sion­er, Professor Anthony Harriott, has received his full pay­ment of US$372,300 (J$42.8 million).

Wow!
It must be remem­bered that Desmond McKenzie, the mem­ber of par­lia­ment for Kingston Western, who was in Opposition then, had him­self called for the scrap­ping of the commission.
After the Kangaroo com­mis­sion con­clud­ed the expen­sive cha­rade it issued a ram­bling report which rec­om­mend­ed among oth­er things that some mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces not be allowed to com­mand in the future.

The JCF also did it’s own review under the capa­ble lead­er­ship of Assistant Commissioner of Police Wray Palmer.
That review con­clud­ed that mem­bers of the JCF did noth­ing wrong. It went on to argue ..

“The Tivoli com­mis­sion did not iden­ti­fy any spe­cif­ic act of dere­lic­tion of duty or mis­con­duct on the part of any of the named offi­cers,” It fur­ther ques­tioned the integri­ty of the inquiry, say­ing that the tri­bunal — con­sist­ing of two for­mer judges and an inter­na­tion­al crime expert — engaged in spec­u­la­tion and was con­fused and biased in sev­er­al instances.

The review com­mit­tee is cor­rect in its assess­ment, an assess­ment I made in pre­vi­ous arti­cles as I detailed the rea­sons that the Tivoli Commission was an expen­sive far­ci­cal exer­cise intend­ed to defraud and con­fuse the Jamaican people.
Of the huge cost of that inquiry to the tax­pay­ers, it is safe to say hard­ly a pen­ny of those resources came from Tivoli gardens.

The Palmer review has infu­ri­at­ed the usu­al ene­mies of the Police, the tax­pay­er fund­ed Office of Public Defender and its head, atten­tion seek­ing Arlene Harrison Henry and Horace Levy of the so called peace man­age­ment unit start­ed their usu­al mon­grel bark­ing immediately.

Said Henry, “What we have now is the JCF impugn­ing a com­mis­sion of inquiry that was prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed under the laws of Jamaica, and this can­not be allowed to stand,”

“We say they need to with­draw it. It can­not be busi­ness as usu­al when 74 are dead on the pub­lic defend­er’s account and 69 on the police’s account.”
“What we have to ask our­selves as a coun­try is this: 74 dead on the pub­lic defend­er’s account, 69 dead on the police account, so what hap­pened? All these peo­ple were jus­ti­fi­able killings?”

This non­sense inher­ent in this ide­o­log­i­cal zealot’s irra­tional and hor­mon­al tirade is that 69 or 74 peo­ple could not be jus­ti­fi­ably killed by the secu­ri­ty forces.

Not to be out­done anoth­er media whore the lit­tle mon­grel Horace Levy would not allow a dis­cus­sion to go with­out push­ing his lit­tle snout in.
“The review was “dis­grace­ful” and an “insult”. “It is a very bad state­ment. It’s pathet­ic. The evi­dence that they cite for their con­clu­sions is very, very weak, and in many cas­es, non-fac­tu­al.”

Thus far the Commissioner of Police George Quallo has indi­cat­ed he stands by the review.
I salute the police Commissioner and sup­port his stance in stand­ing in defense of the men and women under his com­mand and the orga­ni­za­tion he heads against the lies and smears from these slan­der­ous anti-police demagogues.

I am unaware of any coun­try in which an arm of gov­ern­ment is open­ly hos­tile to law enforce­ment as the office of the pub­lic defend­er is in Jamaica.
I stand to be cor­rect­ed and so I will await respons­es from read­ers on this.

From the cre­ation of the office of pub­lic defend­er, Earl Witter cre­at­ed a decid­ed anti-police stance. That posi­tion is now the path of Arlene Harrison Henry, anoth­er mediocre lawyer who could­n’t cut it at the pri­vate bar much the same way Earl Witter couldn’t.
The atti­tude of INDECOM’s com­mis­sion­er Terrence Williams must be processed in the same light that these utter­ances are.

The Jamaican peo­ple, (out­side the leech­es in the inner cities) will have to make a deci­sion whether they want their tax dol­lars to fund crim­i­nal sup­port­ing anti-police agen­cies and elites while they and their chil­dren are being slaugh­tered daily.
It’s time for Arlene Harrison Henry and Terrence Williams to go.

We had two choices to deal with the ever emerging reign of terror in Jamaica for years and we made our choice.

(1) We could stop polit­i­cal med­dling in law enforce­ment. Take seri­ous­ly the rule of law by (a) Modernizing the police depart­ment. (b) Establishing the rule of law as the gov­ern­ing phi­los­o­phy as the bedrock on which our par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy is built. © Disentangling the two polit­i­cal par­ties from crime, cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal con­duct and affil­i­a­tions and (d) Begin the metic­u­lous process of upgrad­ing and improv­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

(2) We could do the reverse of (1) by (a) Demonize the rule of law and its agents. (b) Allow the police depart­ment to dis­in­te­grate through attri­tion, lack of sup­port, chas­ing crime fight­ers from the force, direct­ly and indi­rect­ly, recruit­ing into the depart­ment and pro­mot­ing peo­ple with no love and ded­i­ca­tion to the job. © Continue polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, sup­port, and shield­ing of crim­i­nals. (d) Allow the jus­tice sys­tem to crum­ble to the point the aver­age per­son has no faith in it and as a result take mat­ters into their own hands.
Faced with the two choic­es Jamaica chose the latter.

As a child I was an avid read­er, I would read every­thing in sight. I had an insa­tiable appetite for books, the knowl­edge I derived from them was an accel­er­ant which fur­ther drove me to read even more.
My jour­ney, through those pages, made me real­ize that to a large extent our peo­ple were not exact­ly keen on obey­ing rules.
I gleaned that there was a sub-cul­ture which not so secret­ly rev­eled in the exploits of the most deranged killers in our country.
From Three fin­ger Jack, Rigen, Coppa, Natty Morgan and the list of oth­er mass mur­der­ers, these infa­mous can­cers on our nation’s psy­che became icons of our pop­u­lar culture.
In places con­sid­ered nor­mal, the mem­o­ry of these men would be reviled and shunned, not in Jamaica.
In a sick and dement­ed Orwellian way a cer­tain seg­ment of the peo­ple cheered the exploits of the mur­der­ers even as they ply their mor­bid trade and evade the rule of law.
Today the con­di­tions which bred those can­cers have mul­ti­plied and are ampli­fied cre­at­ing expo­nen­tial­ly more of the same degenerates.
Sadly as the num­ber of mur­der­ing degen­er­ates grows so too has the sup­port for them and their cause.

We nev­er had a real dis­cus­sion on how we were going to deal with the vilest killers our coun­try produced.
We sim­ply swept crime under the car­pet. On oth­er occa­sions we say there is crime every­where. Pressed even fur­ther with the stark­ness of the killings we get into a defen­sive pos­ture, like Porcupines we roll into balls, spikes pro­trud­ing out­ward ready to spike any­one who dares to speak out against Jamaica’s crime culture.
With a twist­ed inane log­ic which makes sense only to us, we pre­tend speak­ing out is tan­ta­mount to a lack of patriotism.

We nev­er dis­cussed or worked out the con­se­quences, not hang­ing mur­der­ers would have on our fledg­ling democ­ra­cy and ultra-vio­lent killers.
We sim­ply marched to Britain’s drum­beat, even though we did not have their infra­struc­ture or desire to lock up for life these dement­ed killers.
Rather than send them to prison for life where they belong we opt­ed instead for a lib­er­al per­spec­tive from the Island’s insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing which argues for redi­rec­tion for crim­i­nals over seri­ous puni­tive reme­dies which has both components.
As a con­se­quence, we end up with a lib­er­al inef­fec­tu­al sys­tem which pro­vides no deter­rent effect on crime and a hard­ened crim­i­nal under­world unde­terred by the prospect of being held accountable.

We nev­er quite dis­cussed the con­se­quences to the coun­try of mov­ing away from hard nosed polic­ing which though not a total panacea kept mur­ders to under five hun­dred each year for a long time.
We sim­ply acqui­esced to a mis­guid­ed egal­i­tar­i­an con­cept that if we pro­vide every­one with jobs crime would be a thing of the past.
This sil­ly notion ignores the fact that in gen­er­al, the pup­peteers behind the pup­pets who pull the trig­gers are indeed wealthy well to do peo­ple with more than aver­age finan­cial resources.

There was no nation­al dia­logue when INDECOM was cre­at­ed on the damp­en­ing effect it would have on actu­al real polic­ing (not the show­boat­ing which exist today).
Sure the police need­ed to be held accountable.
Sure per­cep­tion is impor­tant in the way cit­i­zens view the han­dling of police abuse complaints.
But was it nec­es­sary to cre­ate a state fund­ed adver­sary to the police?

Did it make sense to send home real crime fight­ers while merg­ing the JCF and ISCF with­out retrain­ing mem­bers of the ISCF or weed­ing out those who could not qualify?
Was it good pol­i­cy to cre­ate a top heavy high com­mand with lit­tle or no real com­mand and con­trol expe­ri­ence and in many cas­es with peo­ple who have no knowl­edge of crime fighting?
I believe we all know the answers to these questions.

Over and above the obsti­na­cy of our mis­guid­ed direc­tion we refuse to send pris­on­ers to pris­ons for the most heinous crimes.
Instead of send­ing a clear mes­sage when we do con­vict them, vio­lent mur­der­ers are being giv­en 7 and 10-year sentences.
Since we do not send them to the gal­lows why would we not send them to prison for life?

The sick per­vert­ed egal­i­tar­i­an poli­cies which fail to rec­og­nize that not all peo­ple are equal, that some peo­ple will kill no mat­ter the soci­ety in which they live, has done a tremen­dous dis­ser­vice to the Island’s crime fight­ing efforts.
Neither Obeah nor divine inter­ven­tion, nei­ther tears nor brava­do will bend the arc of crime in Jamaica.
What is required is a metic­u­lous well thought out pol­i­cy which ensures that crim­i­nals get the mes­sage that the rule of law is the gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ple, not gangsters.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Businessman, Patrick Powell, who was last month found guilty of fail­ing to hand over his firearm to the police for inspec­tion, was today sen­tenced to nine months in prison.

Judge Vaugh Smith hand­ed down the sen­tence in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court in Half Way Tree.

The busi­ness­man was found guilty after pros­e­cu­tion led evi­dence that Powell, who was a licensed firearm hold­er in July 2011, failed to hand over his weapon to police offi­cer, Superintendent Clive Walker.

The police want­ed the weapon for inspec­tion in rela­tion to the July 2011 shoot­ing death of school­boy Khajeel Mais.

Powell, in his social inquiry report, told pro­ba­tion offi­cer that his gun was stolen from his safe while he was in police cus­tody. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​P​a​t​r​i​c​k​_​P​o​w​e​l​l​_​s​e​n​t​e​n​c​e​d​_​t​o​_​9​_​m​o​n​t​h​s​_​i​n​_​p​r​i​son

One of the most con­se­quen­tial build­ing blocks on which a demo­c­ra­t­ic and pros­per­ous soci­ety is built is the rule of law.
The rule of a law is not com­plex it is sim­ply a set of rules that soci­ety sets for itself which if fol­lowed argues for a smooth run­ning society.
By exten­sion that soci­ety may then go on with its anoth­er busi­ness of pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion, health­care, infra­struc­ture, and oth­er neces­si­ties which allow for the entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it of the peo­ple to then cre­ate wealth.

It is in that order that Western European nations, Some Asian coun­tries like Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the American soci­ety and oth­ers are built.

ORDER

It is naïve and mis­guid­ed to believe that any­thing out­side that social order will bear any fruit oth­er than chaos and con­fu­sion which result in pover­ty and ram­pant criminality.
To some extent that sim­ple mem­o­ran­dum has not found its way into the spaces of the Jamaican soci­ety where it matters.
As a result, what obtains there is a social order which relies on the man rather than the law. A social order which is any­thing but social or orderly.

There is a peck­ing order in which lit­tle sprats vie and com­pete to see who can speak the loud­est over oth­ers and who can demon­strate that he is bet­ter edu­cat­ed so he should be mas­ter over all things.
The end result is a tiny caul­dron of boil­ing bile in which a bunch of scald­ing min­nows strug­gles to out­ma­neu­ver each oth­er to get to the top in an end­less yet futile strug­gle which inevitably results in every­one get­ting scald­ed to death.

It is in this vein that the state­ments com­ing from Jamaicans for Justice, the Nation’s most vis­cer­al anti-police group and the tax pay­er fund­ed Public Defenders office is so inher­ent­ly offensive.
Commissioner of Police George Quallo has a right, the sole right and respon­si­bil­i­ty to place his assets, includ­ing his human resources where he believes they will be of opti­mum effectiveness.

That per­og­a­tive should not be sub­ject to polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence or consultation.
It cer­tain­ly should not be influ­enced by out­side lob­by groups which have demon­strat­ed their vocal and sys­temic hatred for the rule of law and law enforce­ment officials.

On the part of the tax-pay­er fund­ed office of pub­lic defend­er, it is shock­ing that a gov­ern­ment office could exist in the coun­try which seem­ing­ly is ded­i­cat­ed to the destruc­tion of the rule of law.
It was from that very same office that for­mer pub­lic defend­er, at best mediocre attor­ney Earl Witter,said that in order for police accounts of fatal shoot­ings to be cred­i­ble there should be more dead cops.

Now it’s Arlene Harrison Henry turn. In response to Commissioner Quallo’s appro­pri­ate and right­ful trans­fer of senior per­son­nel under his com­mand which takes effect today Arlene Harrison Henry, in col­lu­sion with the ene­my of the state JFJ is demand­ing that Assistant Commissioner of Police Donavan Graham who head­ed Police Area Three, which com­pris­es Clarendon, Manchester, and St Elizabeth not be trans­ferred to head police Area One.

“It should be put on hold, espe­cial­ly in light of the con­cerns and espe­cial­ly in light of the fact that he inevitably will be in charge of a spe­cial zone,” said John Clarke, JFJ’s legal officer.
“We are say­ing that in light of the find­ings and the rec­om­men­da­tions of the [West Kingston Commission of Enquiry], he ought nev­er to have been in charge of the Manchester area, and this trans­fer ought to stop.”

Were the Commissioner of Police to accede to this demand he would have effec­tive­ly ced­ed his author­i­ty over per­son­nel trans­fers to out­side forces hos­tile to the rule of law.
The non­sen­si­cal yet pre­sump­tu­ous argu­ment that an Assistant Commissioner who already heads a police Division should not be allowed to head anoth­er police Division in the same small coun­try of 4411 square miles is beyond ridicu­lous even with­out both­er­ing to pay atten­tion to the lack of stand­ing that the com­plain­ers have to make such demands.

Jamaica is a coun­try that is tee­ter­ing pre­cip­i­tous­ly on the brink of all out chaos con­trary to what the politi­cians and faux patri­ots tell you.
The coun­try is expe­ri­enc­ing civ­il war type homi­cide num­bers. No, not every killing is relat­ed to the illic­it Lotto-scam.
It is intel­lec­tu­al indo­lence and worse to sug­gest that the peo­ple dying are scammers.

It is a lazy and easy answer which is not sup­port­ed by the facts. If that asser­tion was true then each and every home­own­er should remove the iron grille for­ti­fi­ca­tions from their homes and sleep with their doors open at nights as the prime min­is­ter assured them would hap­pen were he elect­ed to office.
The stark real­i­ty is that con­trary to the plat­i­tudes and protes­ta­tions that crime is every­where, clos­er to seven(7) Jamaicans are slaugh­tered each and every day as opposed to the four they would have us believe.

Even if the num­ber was four peo­ple mur­dered each day, the year­ly num­ber of slaugh­tered Jamaicans would be 1460.
Those are the num­bers the so called human rights cru­saders should chew on for a while.
No greater right does a per­son have than the right to life. Without life, noth­ing else matters.
If they want to con­tribute to Nation build­ing what bet­ter place for them to direct their efforts than at help­ing to reduce murders?
Instead, like so many oth­er enti­ties in the tiny, fish­bowl they cozy up the worse ele­ments in the soci­ety and demo­nize the police.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Donavan Graham and oth­ers did their duty at a time when oth­ers were cow­er­ing in fear of the takeover of our coun­try by a transna­tion­al war­lord and his militiamen.
He was slimed by a Kangaroo court made up of three fee­ble legal pros­ti­tutes two from with­in and one from without.
Unless their find­ings were find­ings of crim­i­nal cul­pa­bil­i­ty which it weren’t, Jamaicans for Justice and the oth­er Slimers at the Public Defender’s office have no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their con­tin­ued besmirch­ing of this pub­lic ser­van­t’s character.

Their opin­ions and utter­ances should be col­lect­ed with the remain­der of Kingston’s garbage and dis­posed of in the Riverton Dump where they belong.

Act #1 scene #1

1 According to Jamaican media, Former police con­sta­ble Mark Russell wept open­ly after he was sen­tenced to life in prison for assist­ing in the exe­cu­tion-style killing of a 17-year-old boy in 2007.

He will have to serve 24 years in prison before he is eli­gi­ble for parole.

The 34-year-old ex-con­sta­ble, who was assigned to the Hunts Bay Police Station in St Andrew, was sen­tenced by Justice David Fraser. The judge said that he (Russell) would not have been eli­gi­ble for parole until after 30 years if he had not already spent six years in cus­tody — one year in the United States, where he had fled, and the remain­ing years in Jamaica after he was extradited.

Act #2 scene #2

A Westmoreland man who admit­ted his involve­ment in the 2012 exe­cu­tion-style killing of three per­sons employed to Guardsman Security Company today thanked the judge after he was told he could regain his free­dom in 15 years. Twenty-sev­en-year-old Jason Buckland was today sen­tenced to life in prison for the gris­ly mur­ders, but pre­sid­ing judge Justice Bertram Morrison stip­u­lat­ed that he must serve 15 years before he is eli­gi­ble for parole.

Morrison said that was the best he could do after announc­ing the sen­tence in the Home Circuit Court in down­town Kingston. He said he took into con­sid­er­a­tion the fact that Buckland plead­ed guilty and coop­er­at­ed with the police and has been in cus­tody for five years. Buckland whis­pered “thank you” to Morrison and glanced over at a rel­a­tive before he was led out in handcuffs.

♥ ♥ ♥

I hold no brief for mur­der­ers, so let me say I am thrilled that the jus­tice sys­tem worked, at least against these two alleged murderers.
What I would like to briefly respond to, is the appar­ent glar­ing dif­fer­ence in the sen­tenc­ing of the two sus­pects after they were found guilty of mur­der in the same small coun­try in two sep­a­rate court­rooms and by two dif­fer­ent judges.

♦In the one case, there is a cop who alleged­ly betrayed his oath and assist­ed in what has been char­ac­ter­ized as an exe­cu­tion of a young man they say shot at a joint police mil­i­tary patrol.
I was not there so I can only speak to what has been report­ed and ten­dered in evidence.
Verdict, 30 years!

♦On the oth­er, there is a sce­nario in which the defen­dant Jason Buckwald plead guilty to assist­ing in tak­ing the lives of not one, not two but three inno­cent Jamaicans who had done noth­ing wrong.
Verdict, 20 years.

In both cas­es, the defen­dants are being allowed dis­cre­tion for time served.
Notwithstanding, the ten years dif­fer­ence can­not be ignored when one con­sid­ers that the mur­der­er who helped to take sev­er­al lives was sen­tenced to a short­er time in prison than the law enforce­ment offi­cial who went out to enforce the laws and is alleged to have tak­en a sin­gle life…
The mes­sage inher­ent here it seems is that if you must kill, kill sev­er­al people.
Based on this the­o­ry the mass killer will be out of jail in 10-years while the cop who assist­ed in the killing of a sin­gle per­son will not get out for anoth­er 24-years.
What is the ratio­nale for the vast­ly dis­parate dif­fer­ence in the two sentences?
As for­mer police offi­cers those of us who spent time in the court­rooms under­stand all too well the bla­tant bias­es which has exist­ed in these halls for decades against police officers.

If this for­mer police offi­cer did what he was accused of doing there is noth­ing that I would per­son­al­ly say in his defense.
Regardless of what an offend­er does, once he is cap­tured the police can­not under any cir­cum­stances begin to phys­i­cal­ly abuse that offend­er, much less kill that offender.

Once an offend­er is cap­tured and is placed in hand­cuffs, even if he was just try­ing to kill the offi­cer that offi­cer has a duty to ensure safe cus­tody of that pris­on­er to a pre­scribed place.
The prospect of killing an offend­er who has been cap­tured and as per the alle­ga­tions, was already shot, is out­side of any­thing I can envisage.
There is absolute­ly no place in a civ­i­lized soci­ety in which that kind of bar­bar­ic behav­ior can be tolerated.

With that said the fact that an offend­er con­fess­es to being a part of tak­ing three lives is mon­u­men­tal­ly significant.
It is for that rea­son that I have con­sis­tent­ly called for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for murder.
There has to be uni­for­mi­ty in the sen­tences which are met­ed out for the most heinous crimes.
This must be removed from the hands of judges. Once a per­son takes anoth­er per­son­’s life he or she must know what the con­se­quences are going to be on conviction.

There are instances where pros­e­cu­tors may ask for a lighter sen­tence for a con­fessed offend­er who has been instru­men­tal in assist­ing law enforcement.
That should stop at manslaugh­ter. Giving a triple mur­der­er a 15-year sen­tence then telling him “this is the best I can do” reeks of empa­thy, some­thing a tri­al judge should nev­er express for a con­vict­ed mass mur­der­er.
On the con­trary, the judge over­see­ing the tri­al of the errant cop was quick to point out that had he not already served 6‑years in jail he would have to serve 30 ‑years before he could expect to be paroled, even though he only assist­ed in one killing.

Outside of the fact that the cop ought to have known bet­ter there seem to have been an inher­ent bias against the cop, some­thing we have not seen dis­played against the mass mur­der­ers who on occa­sion do pass through the court’s system.

With the con­stant, he said, he said, he said-she said between police and motorists when offi­cers ini­ti­ate traf­fic stops and the ensu­ing prob­lems which emanate from these encoun­ters there must be a bet­ter way for­ward oth­er than offi­cers body cams, which they can choose to turn on and off at their discretion.

Motorists can use their cell phones to record encoun­ters with police.
Of course, police can always say the cell phone use pre­cip­i­tat­ed the stop in the first place.
See what hap­pens when we can­not trust the peo­ple we should be able to trust?

AUTO-CAM

It is now time for auto mak­ers to place cam­eras in every auto­mo­bile, both inside, and outside.
Motorist should have the option of acti­vat­ing those record­ing devices not just in encoun­ters with law enforce­ment but under nor­mal conditions.
This will go a long way in help­ing police in the inves­ti­ga­tions of traf­fic accidents.
The poten­tial for this kind of tech­nol­o­gy is endless.
Imagine hav­ing this tech­nol­o­gy in your car and you are able to press a but­ton which not only alerts police of your where­abouts in the event of a car­jack­ing, it gives them a play by play account of events as they happen.

We should expect and demand this from automak­ers in light of some of the gad­gets they have crammed into auto­mo­biles to date.
Nevertheless, we should not hold our breath for this to hap­pen any­time soon.
If it will clear up some of the ambi­gu­i­ties in the cit­i­zen to police encoun­ters there may not be any action on it.
Recording devices which actu­al­ly cap­ture and store the speed one was trav­el­ing at the time he was pulled over will go a long way in light­en­ing the cof­fers of munic­i­pal­i­ties which depend on traf­fic fines as a form of tax­a­tion to fund their budgets.
So this may be a non-starter for automak­ers as this idea is cer­tain­ly not a nov­el idea.

In the mean­time in places like Jamaica motorists who are con­stant­ly being approached by traf­fic cops for bribes should take steps like acti­vat­ing a record­ing device as a means of elim­i­nat­ing corruption.
In States with­in the United States, it is always a good idea to record encoun­ters with law enforcement.
Even so, as we have seen with the killing of Philando Castille it may not be enough to save your life.

“I never expected not to see my son again.”

An Indiana police offi­cer was fatal­ly shot while respond­ing to a car wreck by a gun­man who repeat­ed­ly fired his weapon despite being upside down in his vehicle.

Lt. Aaron Allan of the Southport Police Department was respond­ing to a call Thursday regard­ing peo­ple trapped inside a car that had flipped over in Indianapolis. As he approached the vehi­cle, Allan was shot mul­ti­ple times and lat­er died at a near­by hospital.

Two oth­er offi­cers at the scene — includ­ing one who was off-duty — returned fire, wound­ing the shoot­er, iden­ti­fied by the Indianapolis Star as Jason Brown.

Brown has been arrest­ed on a pre­lim­i­nary charge of mur­der, accord­ing to the news­pa­per. Brown and a sec­ond per­son injured in the crash were hos­pi­tal­ized and in cus­tody with non-life-threat­en­ing injuries.

“You show up to a vehi­cle acci­dent and I don’t want to say we let our guard down, but that’s not what we are look­ing for,” Southport Police Chief Thomas Vaughn said, accord­ing to WISH.

“We are look­ing to help that per­son in the car. It is hard to imag­ine why this inci­dent hap­pened when he was there to help that per­son who was in that accident.”

Allan, 38, had near­ly 20 years of law enforce­ment expe­ri­ence, accord­ing to Vaughn. He was a six-year vet­er­an of the department.

“Lieutenant Allan was a hard work­er, and today was no dif­fer­ent. He respond­ed to a crash with urgency to pre­serve life. Tragically, his was lost,” Vaughn said at Thursday’s press conference.

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett called Allan’s death “a shock­ing and trag­ic reminder of the dif­fi­cult, often dan­ger­ous work of police officers.”

Allan had pre­vi­ous­ly told a local news­pa­per that he want­ed to be an offi­cer ever since he was a child, accord­ing to the Star. Vaughn said Allan’s nick­name was “Teddy Bear.”

“That’s because he tried to act real macho, but when a cit­i­zen or some­one need­ed help, he was one of the first guys that were there,” Vaughn said, accord­ing to the Star. “He didn’t always like that nick­name, but it fits him.”

Local res­i­dent Bryan McGary told WXIN that the shoot­ing was unusu­al for the area.

“It’s just hard to believe that this would hap­pen here,” McGary told the sta­tion. “I mean I’ve lived here since 1976 and we real­ly haven’t had much … We do have a lot of police­men in our area that lives here so it’s just one of those things.”

Southport is an enclave with­in the city lim­its of Indianapolis. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/indiana-police-officer-killed-responding-car-wreck-article‑1.3364596

Dealing effec­tive­ly with ter­ror­ists and oth­er crim­i­nal offend­ers demand that those whose tasks it is to keep them in check are con­stant­ly think­ing and devel­op­ing new strategies.

There is no com­fort zone for law enforce­ment, crim­i­nals only have to be right once while those who uphold the laws are required to get it right a hun­dred per­cent of the time.
Vigilance and dogged atten­tion to detail are just a few of the qual­i­ties cops and inves­ti­ga­tors must learn if they are to have a chance at hav­ing any suc­cess against crim­i­nals who are incred­i­bly savvy and for­ward leaning.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force needs resources, moti­va­tion, and remu­ner­a­tions, but most of all it needs sup­port leg­isla­tive­ly, cit­i­zens sup­port and gov­ern­ment sup­port to effec­tive­ly car­ry out its tasks..

With that said, despite the sup­posed large infu­sion of more edu­cat­ed peo­ple to the top, the agency has not demon­strat­ed that it under­stands how to get around some very basic impediments.

As such, even when the depart­ment releas­es infor­ma­tion on crim­i­nals, the infor­ma­tion serves only to absolve the depart­ment of crit­i­cisms that it isn’t doing any­thing about crime, rather than gar­ner help in remov­ing dan­ger­ous killers from the streets.

If the police releas­es names and alias­es of mur­der­ers and oth­er crim­i­nals it helps a lit­tle. Some peo­ple may know who these offend­ers are. However, the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty will have no idea who these peo­ple are.
Those who know who they are, are usu­al­ly the peo­ple to whom they are clos­est, those peo­ple are the least like­ly to give infor­ma­tion to the police about them.

Which brings us to the recent­ly released list of the most want­ed issued by the Westmoreland police under the lead­er­ship of my batch­mate SSP Egbert Parkin.
In address­ing the Media, which the police seem to have become experts at of late, Parkins released the names of the Parish’s 10 most wanted.

According to Parkins, the men are all from the Parish of Westmoreland.
They are…
 — Dushane Allen (Nigel)
 — Glenroy Roach (Eye)
 — Burton Shearer (Bap)
 — O’Brian Ellis (Joe Grine)
 — Kenroy Clarke (Max)
 — Jermaine Gordon (Dangles/​Ding Dong)
 — Orlando Jarrett (Andre)
 — Steve Vassell (Buss Mi Strength)
 — Dwayne Clarke (Buju)
 — Ashwayne Campbell (Cappy).

Roach is want­ed for a quadru­ple mur­der while Allen is want­ed for two oth­er killings com­mit­ted in the parish.

Senior Superintendent Parkins also released the names of oth­ers he says are per­sons of inter­est who may assist the police in their investigations.
They are .
Lundy Whyte (SK)
 — Wellesly Cunninham (Junior of Zeeks)
 — Garnett Burch
 — Odane Taylor (Reno Man)
 — A man known only as Mobay Man
 — Rohan Black (Thickman)
 — Tallone Thompson (Poison)
 — Frank Nelson (Duguy)
 — Ronald Hall (Dwayne or Fago).

Of these ten per­sons of inter­est, who are also from the parish, six are being sought for ques­tion­ing in rela­tion to mur­ders, two for shoot­ings and two for rape. 

Absent from the release were pho­tographs, address­es, known hang­outs, known asso­ciates, etc.
So, for the peo­ple in Westmoreland who want to rid their parish of crim­i­nals, short of walk­ing up to men on the streets list of names in hand and request­ing their names, then match­ing the respons­es with whats on the list, there is pre­cious lit­tle recourse for them.

How then does the police get around prob­lems like this con­sid­er­ing that there is pre­cious lit­tle to no help com­ing from Government as it relates to a nation­al Identification data base?
The first order of busi­ness is good intel­li­gence, detec­tives and uni­formed cops alike have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to gath­er intelligence.
Intelligence gath­er­ing should not be left up to just detec­tives as some uni­formed cops seem to believe. That mind­set belongs in the dust­bin, it is outdated.
Good intel­li­gence gath­er­ing is rather sim­ple, each cop on the beat devel­op and nur­ture con­tacts. Each and every per­son a cop comes in con­tact with knows some­thing that is going on.
It is up to that offi­cer, whether on foot or mobile patrol to cul­ti­vate con­tacts. Once rela­tion­ships are devel­oped the ben­e­fits derived are invalu­able as long as offi­cers are pro­fes­sion­al, hon­est and devoid of corruption.

Long before I ever donned civil­ian clothes and pre­tend­ed to be a detec­tive, I was get­ting cru­cial infor­ma­tion which was pro­duc­ing action­able results.
That includ­ed infor­ma­tion which yield­ed an M16 assault rifle hid­den in the ceil­ing of a house in Greenwich Farm, even though I was sta­tioned at the Mobile Reserve.

In the age of smart phones and cheap cam­eras, offi­cers must do a bet­ter job of get­ting the names of crim­i­nals they come across and pho­tograph­ing them as well. This has to be the focus of all cops but it must be taught them by the kha­ki clad peo­ple if they can drag them­selves from behind their desks or ignore the request for inter­views long enough to do so.

That, of course, is all pred­i­cat­ed on whether the senior offi­cers them­selves even under­stand how to cap­ture peo­ples’ pro­files in pub­lic spaces.
Or when they are scooped up on raids. The police have got to be more crime focused, again it is up to the senior staff of the Gazzetted Ranks to estab­lish account­abil­i­ty standards.
They must lead, espe­cial­ly in the CIB offices. There must be bet­ter tar­get­ing of crim­i­nals through intel­li­gence dri­ven data.
The police must know who heads each and every gang. They must know the peck­ing order. Who is in the line of suc­ces­sion. Who each and every mem­ber is. Whom they are relat­ed to.
If the police are ever to achieve some suc­cess against gang­sters they must begin by show­ing some com­mon sense and leadership.

This polit­i­cal admin­is­tra­tion says it wants to do some­thing about crime. If that is to be believed the Government needs to begin with a nation­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion database.
We can pay lip ser­vice to crime or we can get down to the seri­ous busi­ness of doing some­thing about this scourge.
The gov­ern­ment must get seri­ous and the police must get a clue.

Trial lawyers sit down and shut your mouths you are some of the worst sup­port­ers of crim­i­nal­i­ty in the country.Just shut up.

You need a lit­tle rest and relax­ation in Jamaica just take a life, no big deal you will not be seen as a dan­ger to soci­ety, every­one will vouch for your char­ac­ter and you get a tiny slap on the wrist.
Oh did I men­tion that- that is in the event you are caught?
Right, because the vast major­i­ty of mur­ders on the Island are nev­er solved and those which are solved if not over­turned in the court of appeals the defen­dants are giv­en a slight slap on the wrist.

Diandra Jarrett was sen­tenced by Justice Nicole Simmonds in the Gun Court at the Supreme Court after she was found guilty of the mur­der of Damian Bowen. The 27-year-old ven­dor will be eli­gi­ble for parole after serv­ing 10 years. Bowen, a 34-year-old welder, died after he was stabbed in his neck and chest dur­ing an alter­ca­tion at a par­ty on Montpelier Road in Hanover, on June 1, 2013.

Bowen’s baby moth­er and Jarrett were involved in a fight. He tried to sep­a­rate them but was stabbed twice with a knife. Bowen’s baby moth­er was also stabbed in her chest, leg, arm, breast, and chin. The dis­pute between the women alleged­ly stemmed from an ear­li­er argument.

Jarrett’s lawyer, Martin Thomas, also begged for lenien­cy and urged the judge to treat her as some­one who had made a mistake.He told the judge to bear in mind that his client was not an aggres­sive per­son and that the inci­dent was com­plete­ly out­side of her usu­al behavior.Martin also told the judge that mem­bers of Jarrett’s com­mu­ni­ty have attest­ed to the fact that she was not a trou­ble­mak­er, and have also asked for mer­cy for her as she did not pose a threat to the com­mu­ni­ty.http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​t​e​a​r​s​-​f​l​o​w​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​w​o​m​a​n​-​g​e​t​s​-​l​i​f​e​-​s​e​n​t​e​n​c​e​-​f​o​r​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​g​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​_​1​0​5​8​1​6​?​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​=​1​373

Here is a sit­u­a­tion in which a vio­lent per­son com­mits mur­der and attempt­ed mur­der and the defense lawyer argues that she is not vio­lent and that she pos­es no threat to the society.
In what world is that ratio­nal think­ing, tell us please what would qual­i­fy as a dan­ger to the Jamaican pub­lic now that we know a homi­cide and the attempt to kill anoth­er per­son does not qual­i­fy as dangerous?
Now I do under­stand the num­bers game, in a coun­try as vio­lent as Jamaica I do under­stand that mur­der and attempt­ed mur­der does­n’t real­ly cre­ate a stir, after all, there are so many mass mur­der­ers walk­ing around with­out con­se­quence I do get the arguments.
Tell that to the deceased man and the seri­ous­ly injured woman whom she intend­ed to kill as well.
Jamaica does not have one of the high­est mur­der rates in the world in the abstract. The char­ac­ter­is­tics which foment mur­der are all there in a per­fect storm of acqui­es­cence and complicity.

She left the scene then returned to com­mit mur­der and felo­nious wound­ing. Now every­one says this is not her char­ac­ter. It is exact­ly her char­ac­ter, this is exact­ly who she is, she had ade­quate time to cool off.
I once again call for min­i­mum sen­tences in the law which remove from the hands of judges the abil­i­ty to issue sen­tences like these. The sen­tence in this regard ought not be in the hands of any judge. The sen­tence should have been manda­to­ry 25 to life mean­ing you do not get out until you have served 25 years and have demon­strat­ed that you have adjust­ed enough to be allowed back into soci­ety. Mandatory min­i­mums of 25 years to life or life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is to pun­ish offend­ers and pre­vent would be offend­ers. This cav­al­cade of mur­der will con­tin­ue in this mur­der incu­ba­tor as all of the com­po­nents of mur­der growth are encour­aged in this country.

As if this was not enough the Minister of National Security Robert Montague announced that pris­on­ers will be receiv­ing con­ju­gal visits.

Montague said he believes that allow­ing inmates to have sex­u­al rela­tions with their part­ners will be ben­e­fi­cial. On the mat­ter of prison reform, the nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter indi­cat­ed that the Government con­tin­ues to intro­duce more ini­tia­tives to reha­bil­i­tate inmates. He not­ed that the coun­try has a recidi­vism rate of 47 per cent.

With almost half of the peo­ple con­vict­ed and jailed return­ing to prison, it seems to me that prison is not serv­ing the pur­pose for which it was intend­ed. Prisoners have cell phones, drugs, are allowed out to vis­it their girls and men, are allowed to make music and now to reg­u­lar­ize sex while they live at tax­pay­ers expense is a bridge too far.

But this is what the peo­ple vot­ed for when they vot­ed for Andrew Holness.
Don’t get me wrong if I was reg­is­tered to vote in Jamaica and was there I would have vot­ed for him as the PNP is not an option for me based on its policies.
Our coun­try is on a col­li­sion course with real­i­ty and it’s all because the lame rum head peo­ple in posi­tions of lead­er­ship ought not to have been giv­en those posi­tions of trust. Simply put the dis­tance between the lead­ers and the crim­i­nals on the streets are a mighty short hop.
That explains the absolute lack of desire on their part to leg­is­late and sup­port a pol­i­cy which seri­ous­ly says to crim­i­nals “no more”.