Renowned for his decades-long quest for peace in the Middle East, Shimon Peres’s greatest triumph was his cunning and successful plan to bring nuclear weapons to Israel.
CHRISTOPHERDICKEY
09.28.16 4:12 AMET
PARIS —Shimon Peres is recognized as a great statesman and will be remembered after his death early Wednesday morning at age 93 as a passionate advocate of peace between Israel’s Jews and the Arabs of the Middle East.
With a longer view, historians will note that he managed to become prime minister twice and president of the State of Israel, but he never clearly won the powerful premiership in popular or parliamentary votes. He was always admirable, but in the end, proved almost unelectable, a brilliant rhetorician, but not nearly as successful a politician as, say, long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Even as a peacemaker, or perhaps especially as a peacemaker, Peres could articulate brilliantly and beautifully the desires for peace, the reasons for peace, the benefits of peace, and indeed he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO’s Yassir Arafat. But Peres could not bring home the goods, and the relative calm that exists in Israel and the occupied territories for the moment is far from the peace that Peres so often and so eloquently described.
So it is ironic that his greatest single accomplishment — the one that has protected his nation decade after decade in the savage landscape of the Middle East, is one the Israeli government still, as a matter of form, will not acknowledge. Because it was Peres who brought home to Israel the nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles that were and, for better or worse, still are the ultimate guarantor of its survival.
One key to the Israeli nuclear-weapons program launched in the mid-1950s was France, where the young Peres — still in his thirties and serving as the director general of Israel’s defense ministry — cultivated a vast array of important political and scientific contacts.
The other key was the systematic deception of the United States, which at first opposed Israel’s development of a nuclear-weapons capability, then failed to connect the dots that showed that’s what it was doing, then tried to buy it off with a huge increase in conventional weapons shipments, and finally, in 1969 accepted tacitly what it had failed to prevent explicitly.
Avner Cohen’s book Israel and the Bomb, published in 1998,still offers some of the most detailed and thoughtful information about what he calls Israel’s “nuclear opacity,” the refusal to admit what the world knows and what is, in fact, a vital source of deterrence. To study that history of 60 years ago is also to understand why Israel is so suspicious of Iran’s nuclear deceptions. It’s been there, done that, and Peres led the way.
When Criminals break the law they ought to know they will be punished . They ought to know they will be caught, not may be caught . They ought to know it’s not a matter of if , but a matter of when.
That was the attitude I brought to law-enforcement back in my day , it ought to be the attitude of police today and going forward. When the Commissioner of Police said that no stones will be left unturned until Duppy Film is brought to justice for killing two police officers he ought to have meant it. He ought not only mean it but he should only say it if he has the means to deliver on his promise. Almost a year later the name Duppy Film is a distant memory . Neither the Commissioner of Police nor his band of overweight khaki wearing paper tigers bother to talk about this assassin who summarily executed two law-enforcement officers without consequence.
As for me I would not have promised what the Commissioner of Police promised. Not only because I understood from the get go that the Commissioner was speaking from the side of his mouth to appease the officer’s families . I would most certainly have prefered bringing justice to him period. Those who like to pontificate and pretend that Jamaica is a place in which Policing can be done as it is in Scandinavia are free to exist in that utopian bubble, I share no such belief.
I am going to hazard a guess that cop killers would certainly not be on the loose during the days of Anthony Hewitt , Isiah Laing , Cornwall (bigga) Ford, OC Hare, Altamoth (parra )Campbell and the long list of valiant crime fighters who kept the streets safe and criminals in their place. The self appointed moralists can argue all they want. It does not change the fact that crime was kept to a minimum and they benefitted from the lower murder numbers.
Jamaica has got to be the only place on Earth which looks for policing solutions and strategies from talking heads rather than those who are actually trained in the discipline and have lived the experience. It’s little wonder that they passed a law supposedly to catch criminal cops , throwing out concerns from good cops and having the law increase crime exponentially as a result.. If the political class wanted a lid on crime as they contemplated a second policing agency, they would certainly have empowered that agency to go after all criminals , like the FBI is empowered.
As many average Jamaicans have alluded, the laws are designed to oppress the poorer class while rendering the upper class untouchable. Today that upper class characterization has been reduced to any two-bit lawyer or political thug. If you know someone who know someone who know someone in power you are untouchable. Our country is no different than a sub-Saharan tin-pan dictatorship.
Horace Levy
Murder is the topic of discussion once again as was in 2010 when it reached a crescendo leading up to the Tivoli Gardens annexation to Jamaica . Front and center in the conversation are the same cheap hustlers who play both sides of the conversation.\ Hustlers like Horace Levy has long been seen as a relevant voice in the discussion as it relates to the Island’s impoverished neighborhoods , crime and gangs. Levy once headed a NGO called the Peace Management Initiative.
https://mikebeckles.com/jamaica-human-rights-gravy-train/ As head of that NGO Levy found a seat at the table on the national discourse on crime, it also gave him a powerful megaphone much like JFJ and other hustlers have been allowed to dominate the conversation to the detriment of the Island. As a consequence of having that megaphone Horace Levy joined the long line of anti-police antagonists who use their perch to demonize the police and elevate criminals. Levy has led a visceral campaign against the Jamaica Constabulary Force, burnishing his image as a savior of sorts for the downtrodden while simultaneously ensuring his relevance within the context of what exist on the Island. https://mikebeckles.com/looking-to-continue-eating-a-food‑2/
Horace Levy viscerally excoriated the Police’ assessment of what constituted Gangs in many of the Island’s depressed communities back in 2013. In a deliberative pushback Levy said much of what the police counted as active gangs were what he characterized as Corner Crews. In a letter to then Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington,Levy said the following.
Some questions for the police, the commissioner of police, the minister of national security, and the people of Jamaica: Does every police encounter with criminals have to involve a shoot-out? Must every police encounter with criminals require the use of lethal force? Are our criminals really so more vicious than criminals in other countries that they can only be dealt with by lethal force? How come our more vicious criminals manage to shoot so few police? How much longer will Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington go on supporting, even encouraging, the killings carried out by his men? How much longer will Minister of National Security Peter Bunting go on endorsing the behavior of Commissioner of Police Ellington? How much longer will our citizens go on tolerating this kind of wanton killing of fellow citizens? Is the blood of only a few of us boiling? If this can happen in the first two weeks of the year, what will the other 50 be like?
At the time Horace Levy berated the Jamaican Police for battling the Island’s urban killers in which he outright said not enough cops are being killed in their encounters with criminals. These were some of the crime numbers which existed between the years 2001 to 2008, 2001 – 2008. Reported Cases of Murder : 10, 836 Shootings : 11,229 Rape and Carnal Abuse: 9119
At the time Levy wrote that letter no one challenged Levy on the insanity that more police officers should be getting shot if the number of armed men they were eliminating were actually truly engaging them in shoot-outs. Without one scintilla of evidence this line of ghastly reasoning was allowed to prevail without the proper level of outrage which should have been attached to it. I cannot think of any other country in which this line of argument would have been allowed to continue , much less coming from agencies of Government which are taxpayer supported as the Public defender’s office is. No one except this humble writer bothered to challenge that notion because it was the prevailing belief of literally all who hated police, including the head of the taxpayer funded office of public defender at the time Earl Witter and the long list of people who gained relevance by saying they were for human rights.
Today crime is out of control, the Island is awash in guns, the Police is effectively hollowed out to a shell of its former effectiveness , and lord knows it was far from perfect. The Island’s killers don’t bother to hide their faces when they parade their weapons, or when they kill .Why should they ‚who is going to go get them? There are effective taxpayer funded safeguards against them being pursued , prosecuted much less taken out. The American Federal Bureau Of Investigations(FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Agency(DEA) will now be operating supposedly out of the American Embassy in Kingston. There has been next to no discussion on the Sovereignty issue inherent in this revelation . The muted whimpers I have heard all seem to suggest well we’ll take any help we can get.
In Tuesday’s Edition of the Jamaica Gleaner Horace Levy’s narrative has seemingly come full circle . In a rambling diatribe titled: Containment Not Good Enough. Levy said quote:
Minister Bobby Montague’s presentation in Parliament last week on the measures taken to stem the violence in western Jamaica was detailed and comprehensive. It seems to have satisfied most people that the minister, the police, the Government are on top of the problem. The really sad thing is that satisfaction. It is because the violence, grim as it is, 100 murders a month and climbing is treated as intractable. It has been with us for so long that it has become a fixture in our environment, a grin-and-bear-it unease. So the counter-violence prescriptions, which focus solely on repression and containment, are taken as sufficient. It is not even noticed that containing for a time is all they are doing. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/commentary/20161004/horace-levy-containment-not-good-enough
In brief ‚Horace Levy demanded to know why wasn’t the slippery slide into anarchy prevented. Ha for the freedom to chat shit and not be held accountable .… Horace Levy simply believe that as always no one notices that he is playing both sides for his personal benefit. In the end Horace Levy’s comments not only showed his political stripes it reveals for the country the hypocrisy of these leeches who play the system for all it’s worth for their own use and benefit . Sorry Horace Levy not every Jamaican is ignorant or blind to what you are doing. You cannot have it both ways. I see you.….….….….…..
August 31st 2015 I wrote a lengthy Article titled TRUMP’S RISE A CONTINUATIONOFWHATPALINBROUGHTTOTHEPROCESS… In that article I spoke at length of the frightening rhetoric which had all of a sudden crept into the political discourse with a degree of anger we had not heard before.
I went on to say it was during the election period of 2008 and the introduction of Sarah Palin onto the American political scene that the filthy racist underbelly of America’s race problem came to the fore. For the first time a certain segment of the American population believed that the citadel of white supremacy they built was about to be taken over by a black man with a funny sounding name.
Whether McCain was pushed to select Palin a rabid divisive racist we may never know. Whether McCain knew just how rancid and corrosive her rhetoric would be toward the African-American Democratic candidate we may never know either. But note the time the Tea-Party rose to prominence and judge for yourself. I believe those old enough to remember the 2008 Elections doesn’t need a reminder of the Xenophobic, ignorant, Racist campaign Sarah Palin waged on behalf of John McCain’s candidacy. https://mikebeckles.com/trumps-rise-a-continuation-of-what-palin-brought-to-the-process/
John McCain’s decision to chose Sarah Palin unleashed a brand of racially polarized politics no one in my generation or younger had ever seen before . In a document titled Partisan Polarization and the Rise of the Tea Party Movement Professor Alan I. Abramowitz Department of Political Science Emory University wrote . The Tea Party movement has attracted enormous attention from journalists, candidates, and elected officials since it first appeared on the U.S. political scene in early 2009. However, there has been considerable disagreement among political observers about the numbers and motivations of those participating in Tea Party protests, the prevalence of racist sentiments among Tea Party activists, the role played by wealthy individuals, conservative groups and media figures in fomenting these protests, and the potential long-term impact of the movement (Judis 2010; Crabtree 2010; Parker 2010; Scarborough 2010).
President Barack Obama
In a rather revealing Article published in the New York Daily news Monday October 3rd, President Barack Obama spoke to exactly this truth. Said the President.
“I see a straight line from the announcement of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential nominee to what we see today in Donald Trump, the emergence of the Freedom Caucus, the tea party and the shift in the center of gravity for the Republican Party,”. “Whether that changes, I think, will depend in part on the outcome of this election, but it’s also going to depend on the degree of self-reflection inside the Republican Party,” “There have been at least a couple of other times that I’ve said confidently that the fever is going to have to break, but it just seems to get worse.” “It might not have been representative of Republicans across the country, but it meant that John Boehner or Mitch McConnell had to worry about that mood inside their party that felt that, ‘No, we shouldn’t coöperate with Obama, we shouldn’t coöperate with Democrats.’ That it represents compromise, weakness and that the broader character of America is at stake, regardless of whatever policy arguments might be made,”
The President is correct, we believed this to be true from the moment Senator McCain chose Palin. It’s as if someone had opened up a pandora box releasing an evil Genie emerging with it, a swarm of destructive Locusts none of which could be put back into the bottle. The President has consistently said he expect the fever to break sooner or later. Thus far the fever seem to be getting worse,even though Palin has demonstrated that she was by far a totally unfit person to be a heartbeat from the presidency. Even though Palin has proven her irrelevance the damage has been done. Whether or not Trump becomes President the toxicity Palin released into the political environment is here to stay. Just goes to show that one fool can make many. Or probably more appropriately awaken a lot more.
Unrest in Charlotte, NC, September 20, 2016. (Credit: Reuters/Adam Rhew)
As the 2016 campaign reaches fever pitch, the more heat there is and the less light is shed. Which is why evolutionary anthropologist Peter Turchin’s new book comes as such a breath of fresh air. “Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History” is not about this year’s presidential election, per se, but it’s a quantum leap forward in illuminating the disintegrative trends that America has experienced over the last several decades that are currently driving our politics.
Everything from skyrocketing inequality and political gridlock to white working class angst and the rise of mass shootings and other troubling signs of our times — these are all interconnected reflections of where America is in a cyclic historical process: social integration followed by disintegration, discord and violence. Turchin and others have observed this pattern repeatedly in civilizations from ancient Rome and early Chinese dynasties up to the present day.
Here are two summary snapshots of these long-term cycles from the book, the first from Europe:
As the nation’s murder rate contine to gallop toward what could be unprecedented amounts of dead Jamaicans this year the security forces are trying to do the best they can. They are placing their bodies between the marauding gunmen running around with the most sophisticated high powered weapons and the Jamaican people many of whom are totally undeserving of the risks they take. It’s important that as the calls go out for a limited state of emergency we recognize that those calling for it from certain sectors of the country are only doing so because their bottom line is being threatened. Their concerns are not based on the loss of life but on the potential loss of dollars.
As more and more Jamaicans bravely raise their heads amidst the constant barrage of ignorant barking and obfuscation in support of INDECOM, supporters of the irrational ‚poorly thought-out law are getting more desperate as they seek to find legitimacy for this irrational criminal supporting law. Amidst the noise is a TRUMPIAN[sic] refusal on the part of the Island’s most strident anti-police supporters to see facts as facts . An Orwellian refusal to face the bleak reality that this bad law and it’s leadership’s media whoring is emboldening the Island’s killers.
As we look on in horror at the unchecked murder and mayhem, the streets reduced to wild west shootouts without fear of the police it becomes clear by the day that those who stand in stubborn opposition to facts are indeed part of the problem. At some point in time during this discourse we have to begin the unsavory task of extrapolating from the smoke-screen and ignorant push-back that many Jamaicans who pass as decent people are supporters of criminals. This is true of Jamaicans both at home and abroad.
I cannot imagine anyone who would reasonably be opposed to police oversight . As a Jamaican who love my country, not because of what I can derive from it but because I have already given to it I support oversight of the Police department. Oversight however cannot be adversarial to the point that officers are exposed to financial ruin , the loss of their careers, or being set up by manufactured witnesses which invariably lands them in prison.
These mercenaries are not even concerned about showing their faces with these weapons. Why would they not care except that they know they are protected?
This is not about just support of police which we must do in a democratic safe society. It is about the future direction of the country,. Will we stand silently by and allow those who would benefit from a failed criminal state to shout us down. For my part I will not spend a single minute of my time making a distinction between the false parallel of standing up for the rule of law and corruption in the police department.
I stand with the rule of law because there is a binary choice between siding with the rule of law and our police officers(even in their imperfection) and supporting the marauding killers who are killing with impunity without consequence. The choice is clear , either one support the police, and continue to demand a real fix of the department or we throw our support behind the killers in the old adage of joining them because we cannot beat them.
Every second wasted talking about other things allows the murderous killers to be more established , more emboldened. There is strong well arrayed opposition to Jamaica ever becoming a country of laws. They are not who you think they are , they are powerful, they are monied, and they wield incredible political power. They do not all stand on the corner Guinness under one armpit , pants down their backsides crushing weed in their palm. Many of them are dressed in suits , they live in upscale neighborhoods and you refer to them as sir and look up to them as leaders.
Lord knows the Jamaican police need oversight like pretty much every police department anywhere. Placing the power of life and death in the hands of any human being must be subject to rigorous scrutiny . Yet those who risk life and limb for our safety deserve every bit of support we can give and they deserve certain latitude to do the job we ask them to do.
This is the reason I have systematically called for the repeal of the INDECOM act. Re-Debating every aspect of the act then reauthorizing a better law which protects police from frivolous prosecution. A better law which investigates impartially and without rancor abuses of power by members of the security forces will ultimately result in a regeneration of trust between decent law-abiding citizens and their police. In that Law should be civil remedies for members of the security forces who have been wrongfully accused. In that law should be clear criminal penalties for those who would seek to wrongfully incriminate hard working officers.
The INDECOM Act is a knee-jerk law thrown together to bring police to heel with zero consideration for the hard working police officers and members of the Island’s military who brave all for the country. What kind of country shows no respect for members of it’s security forces but gives a National honor to a lying agitator who openly support and defend crime syndicates and flood kindergarten and grade schools with homosexual pornographic literature?
This is an existential fight. Jamaicans bury their heads to their own detriment. For those of you who are able to see through the smoke and obfuscation, events of 2010 in which mercenaries challenged the state will be a cake-walk compared to what’s to come if existing trends are allowed to remain. There are many who are quite satisfied with things the way they are . Sorry to say it but pigs will not argue about mud , and Vultures are not offended by stench of rotting carcasses. You decide.
The headlines in the Jamaica DailyGleaner this morning spoke volumes today Thursday September 29th. ♦ Support growing for limited state of emergency. ♦Cops confident in war against MoBay thugs — We have a lot of assets, but there could always be more, says Commish. ♦Montague: We are reaping the whirlwind — Security minister cites social decay as he outlines response to St James violence. ♦Last Chance’ — Stakeholders Warn Of Business, Tourism Fallout If Crime Not Curbed Next Month. ♦Queen Ifrica’s Grim Picture Of Montego Bay. ♦Editorial | Attack The Emergency With Emergency. ♦Devon Dick| Visit from a gunman? ♦Letter Of The Day | Stop The Speeches And Start Hunting.
These were the leads on the digital version of the Daily Gleaner . Remarkably as the criminals push the envelope of what they can get away with the dithering and the sense of pretence continues. Front and center to the debate of the existential threat faced by the nation and the ever sliding scale of what’s acceptable, is the talk about rights.
I fundamentally respect the right of each and every one of those people to be dead right. To those people, each and every one of you I do not advocate for you , I do not assume to speak on your behalf. Now to the silent majority of ordinary Jamaicans like my family members and friends who have no connection to criminals and their nefarious activities I share your pain. For the families of the police officers and members of our nation’s military who are not involved in criminality , I share your pain. There is nothing I could possibly tell you that you do not already know. Nevertheless it is still important that you be reminded that you have the power in your hands .How you utilize that power is up to you.
Over the years you have seen the level of crime in our country gradually escalate on a continuous upward trajectory . What you have not seen is a lessing of those levels. Regardless of what your political or other leaders tell you, crime is not getting better. The goal-post is being continually moved on the levels of criminal conduct. The Envelope is being pushed on what the criminal underworld is allowed to get away with. Simply put, your elected leaders , your business leaders, and even some of your religious leaders are lying to you. Political leaders are still putting guns into the hands of the young people. Political leaders have turned their backs and allowed guns and ammunition to flood the Island through Haiti and other points of origin without lifting a finger to do anything about it.
Do not be fooled about what is happening even in the tourism sector there is only an outcry when their bottom-line is imperiled. The steps being taken supposedly in your interest are designed to placate you rather than to solve the problems. Your political leaders have no intention of solving crime in Jamaica . Look at the prolific rise and expansion of the garrisons in our country, ask yourselves whether the PNP or the JLP is interested in solving the crime Problem in our country. I point you to a Devon Dick Column in Thursday’s Daily Gleaner , read and decide for yourselves.
Crime is big business in our country , it is, and has been germane to who gets elected to political office for decades. Business leaders from top to bottom bring in contraband and stiff the country of much needed revenue. The Customs department has been a cesspool of graft , theft, and corruption for decades. Lowly custom officers have owned some of the most prestigious homes and driven luxury cars on their stipend salaries. No one bothered to demand to know from what sources are those revenues derived. Jamaicans returning to the Island knows quite well where they get the money from. Governments of both political parties commit the most egregious frauds and acts of corruption, subjecting yet unborn generations to lives of debt and impoverishment. In response to your outcry they empower a Contractor General law but gave the office no power to prosecute them. The contractor general can bark all he wants, your thieving politicians laugh with total disdain knowing full well they are untouchable..
Literally every Government agency is a bureaucratic cesspool of graft and extortion and a maze-like morass of incompetence . The RJD, Motor vehicle department. Passport department, everything depends on individuals ability to pay or more appropriately their ability to be extorted. No public sector department is free from Corruption, Nepotism, and Extortion. None !!!! As such, literally every private sector entity, every non governmental organization has been tainted to some degree with the corrosive taint of graft , theft, and corruption. What did you , all of you expect was going to happen to your police department? Did you think for a moment they would be the only public sector workers untouched by the corruption? Did you really believe they created INDECOM to root out police corruption? Or are you now recognizing that it was just another attempt at hollowing out the already ineffectual police department? Look at the numbers of corrupt cops successive Commissioners of police have rooted out on their own, using the tools they have at their disposal. Examine the numbers of dirty cops the CCRB removed while they were the primary oversight authority along with the department’s own internal mechanisms. Now juxtapose those numbers with what INDECOM has accomplished commensurate with it’s supposed mandate.
By INDECOM’s own admission most of the cases it has supposedly investigated resulted in a conclusion that officers acted properly. A cursory cost benefit analysis shows that resources used to fund INDECOM and the Public defender’s office could be better used to fund and improve the police’s investigative capabilities. Which would reveal who the major organized crime figures are. The major crime leaders in our country to a large degree are indistinguishable from the major political players in both political parties. Therein ladies and gentlemen is the crux of your problem.
The single most topical issue dominating the news in Jamaica is crime. It has become such a grave concern that it now dominates all the news cycles and the media stories literally. The single most oft-used term this writer has used to describe the fuel to the Island’s crime situation is the decision-makers’ pretentious nature.
Today we learned that a new tactical police unit would be heading to Montego Bay to work toward eliminating the main perpetrators of violence in the crime-ravaged city, according to the police. Not exactly sure why this information would be given to criminals, however according to the police hierarchy, this team is different from the other formations that are on the ground working with the military to restore law and order to the city. The police high command announced, “This team has not hit the road since the 2010 operation in west Kingston, and it has been given the duty to target the ‘big fishes”. If my memory serves me well, I believe the last time these police officers were called on to risk life and limb for our country, Portia Simpson Miller brought David Simmons from Barbados to demagogue, disrespect, demean and seek to incriminate them.
David-Simmons
Most importantly, when the Nation finds itself engulfed in a pickle, it turns to the police and military to bail it out from the clutches of the marauding gangsters while the Elitist decision-makers and other shit for brains, sit in their gated communities and pontificate about alleged breaches of human rights. Just yesterday, there was a constable in the news who clearly seemed to be having mental issues. According to the media, the officer attempted to jump from a building in the town of Mandeville.
Vendolyn Cameron-Powell
Shockingly, yet not surprisingly, the commanding officer for the parish, Superintendent Vendolyn Cameron-Powell, in response to the incident, responded that the obviously distraught constable is “known to create excitement when he becomes dissatisfied.” It’s tough to grasp that any supervisor in this day and age would be this crass, uncaring, or unlearned. However, it does not surprise me one bit; this is why I have had nothing but utter disdain for this police department’s hierarchy. However, that was not all; she went to cement further her own disqualification and lack of fitness for the job she holds. Quote: “He is not suitable to carry out the duties and responsibilities of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. “He is not a fit candidate for (this) kind of job.”
Once again, the Jamaican state is in a terrible state. Once again, the Jamaican state has members of the military and the police force, putting their lives on the line in defense of the nation while others are in their beds at night. Once again, the Police and the soldiers go in and give all for their country. They do not ask for much, and they are given nothing. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition nor any of the talking heads in either of the political parties have moved to give the police the cover and the guarantees they need to go in and do the job they are asked to do.
Just Yesterday, I spoke directly to the Jamaican Prime Minister in this very medium. I implored him to be great, like Hugh Lawson Shearer the great Labor Party Prime Minister who stepped up to the plate when duty called. He did so to ensure that our nation was guaranteed the security it needed and our country was better for it. The greatest impediment to crime-fighting in Jamaica is not the criminals who pull the trigger; it is the people who benefit from crime. Criminal Lawyers, and those who benefit from the plethora of fringe groups who are supposedly in the business of looking out for human rights abuses.
Terrence Williams (right), commissioner of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), Hamish Campbell, (center), IDECOM’s assistant commissioner, and Dave Lewis, INDECOM’s director of complaints central region.
National security is the number one priority of any Government. Only in secure environments are the other functions of government best realized. Once again, another Jamaican Administration is leaning heavily on the nation’s security forces for its own survival. Yet the Administration has not offered a single guarantee to these brave, unselfish men and women who risk their lives. They get no guarantees that they won’t be persecuted and hounded to the point of losing their sanity because of a taxpayer-funded agency.
Remarkable, the commissioner of Police, Dr. Carl Williams, is now awakening from his slumber and recognizing what I have said since the beginning of the INDECOM law. Speaking to Jamaican Media, the timid Williams echoed what he heard from his own officers that they were unwilling to engage because of Terrence Williams’s persecution.
“I went out to St James on the weekend, and the police officers told me that they have an excellent relationship with the local INDECOM officers, but the problem is what is directed from INDECOM headquarters.” “We are not daunted, because this is a calling and not just a job. We have taken an oath to make sure the safety and security of the people of Jamaica, and we go out to work every day to do just that, INDECOM or no INDECOM,” Williams stated.
This medium takes great pride in calling out commissioner Williams and is proud that he is seemingly beginning to get some guts. Officers on the ground have repeatedly complained to this writer. They have confirmed to Jamaican media their fear of doing their jobs only to be persecuted for years, losing their careers, and ending up in financial ruin…
Simply put, Terrence Williams must be fired for crime to be addressed as it should be. He is an ego-maniacal narcissist who is being allowed to single-handedly enhance the deaths of hundreds of Jamaicans to satisfy his ego while creating a name for himself, at the expense of taxpayers — this along with a horrific criminal empowerment law. No single person should be allowed this level of power in a democracy. No person should head any agency which is answerable to no one. This observation is not unique to this writer; other Jamaicans have spoken out about this, including Damion Crawford, Peter Bunting and others. This fiasco has to come to an end. Thus far in the parish of Saint James, over two hundred people have lost their lives. The Prime Minister, the Honorable Andrew Holness cannot pretend that he hasn’t heard. He cannot pretend he does not see the numbers. Consequently, for every person who is killed because the security forces are too scared for their legal security to go after the killers, the Prime Minister must take responsibility for their spilled blood. Unless there are enough guarantees given to police and soldiers going into that war zone by this government, that they will not become victims of ego-maniacal and narcissistic witch hunts. Guarantees that they will not be scapegoats and maligned after they have silenced the guns of the Island’s urban mercenaries as they were after 2010. Then my advice to each member of the security forces is “shoulder arms.”
A special police tactical team has been deployed to Montego Bay, St James with a mandate to target the main perpetrators of violence in the crime-ravaged city.
“This team has not hit the road since the 2010 operation in west Kingston and it has been given the duty to target the ‘big fishes’ who are the ones with the money to buy the high-priced, high-powered weapons which we are seeing in the hands of the criminals,” a senior police officer told The Gleaner a short while ago. “This team is different from the other formations that are on the ground working with the military to restore law and order to the city. The team is going to get the major players,” added the cop. Police Commissioner Dr Carl Williams is slated to tour some of the more crime-ravaged communities in and around Montego Bay today before hosting a media briefing where he is expected to announce additional plans to reduce the murders in St James. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20160928/just-special-police-tactical-team-deployed-crime-plagued-mobay
JAMAICAISHEAVILYDEPENDENTONTOURISMFORITSSURVIVAL, YETTHEVERYHEARTOFTHETOURISMHUB, MONTEGOBAY, HASFORYEARSBEEN A WILD ‚WILDWEST .
The Island’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness visited Montego Bay and spoke to citizens a couple days ago he also met with security personnel in the parish who gave him first-hand briefing of the challenges they face. The Prime Minister subsequently released a statement in which he said the following .
“We don’t have a switch to turn off crime … . The strategies we are putting in place will take some time to bear fruit, but we are working with the greatest speed and alacrity to ensure the results bear fruit,”. “There is a need for legislative reform to empower our police – and military in support of the police – legislation that is relevant and applicable to the crime situation we face.
I humbly submit to the Prime Minister and indeed the entire Nation that this fight is an existential fight. If the events of 2010 in Tivoli Gardens have not convinced you that there are enough guns, ammunition and the will to effectively challenge the authority of the state I do not know what will.
There is a series presently available on Netflix which tells the story of Colombia’s war with narco traffickers. It depicts the power and ruthlessness of the Colombian drug lords in that existential fight that nation had with determined narco traffickers. I suggest the Prime Minister , the Minister of National Security sit down and take a look at that series. Otherwise they may do a simple Google search which will reveal what the Colombian people did to break the back of that threat, saving their nation from becoming a Narco state.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness
Mister Prime Minister I supported your candidacy for the highest elected office in our country . At this time I support the work you are doing . You have demonstrated an understanding of what needs to be done . I also understand that there are strong forces arrayed against a change in our country which are quite comfortable with the status quo. Mister Prime Minister, I am sure that you are more conversant with what is occurring on the ground than most, including this writer. You live there , you receive briefings, you see it on television. It is up to you to change this.
It won’t be easy I understand that. At the risk of sounding grandiose I am speaking directly to you because I am aware that you and some well placed people in your administration do take a peek at this little medium from time to time. I implore you to get rid of INDECOM. It is a bad law which was poorly thought through, you know it, many in your Administration know it, and an ever increasing plurality of the Jamaican people are coming to that realization.
Terrence Williams
Mister Prime Minister I know that you understand that I am absolutely not advocating for unfettered policing with no oversight . I have a history of advocating for strong oversight of police but it cannot be an adversarial oversight determined to have gotcha moments of police officers who go out and risk their lives for your life and that of all of our citizens. Mister Prime Minister the future of our country cannot be mortgaged on the ego of a single person or even a small group of elites who are hell bent on a destructive path of social engineering which has been tried and proven to fail, not just in our country but in others.
Finally Prime Minister Holness, I do believe you are critically aware that your growth agendacannot and will not be successful in an atmosphere of murder and mayhem. Someone will have to bell the cat . If not you then who? You do not want to preside over the ashes of our country . Make no mistake if this regression is not halted with decisive action and soon, that will be the result. This is not the first time that this kind of threat has emerged in our country . It was another great Labor Party Prime Minister, the Rt Honorable Hugh Lawson Shearer who placed his boot-heels on that monster. You too can be great , if not for yourself , for the yet unborn children, for the future of our country. It’s up to you. You must send Terrence Williams packing and empower the police to go after the murderers. The world is watching !!!
Donald Trump should skip the next two debates unless he gets special guarantees from the moderators, former New York mayor and top Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani told reporters after the debate. Lester Holt, the NBC News anchor who moderated the debate, should be “ashamed of himself,” Giuliani said after the debate. He said Holt was wrong to attempt to fact-check Trump on the constitutionality of stop-and-frisk and his claimed opposition to the Iraq War.Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/giuliani-trump-debates-228756#ixzz4LSvQpfgj
military vehicle in Glendevon, St James Gleaner photo…
“We don’t have a switch to turn off crime … . The strategies we are putting in place will take some time to bear fruit, but we are working with the greatest speed and alacrity to ensure the results bear fruit,”. “There is a need for legislative reform to empower our police — and military in support of the police — legislation that is relevant and applicable to the crime situation we face.
Those words were uttered by Jamaica’s Prime Minister who is also the Minister of defense according to the Island’s constitution. The Prime Minister has my sympathy, not because of any political allegiance but because he has a full plate . He has an agenda which he ran on to turn around the lives of the 2.8 million Jamaicans. His mantra being from poverty to prosperity.
Police Commissioner Dr Carl Williams (left); Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Clinton Moore (second left), the officer in charge of the Montego Hills police station; DSP Marlon Nesbeth (centre), the commanding officer for St James; and Assistant Commissioner of Police Warren Clarke (right) in dialogue with Prime Minister Andrew Holness during his tour of crime-plagued Montego Bay, St James, yesterday. Gleaner photo.
The Prime Minister has a full plate unlike his predecessor who seemed to have delegated all of her core functions to minions whom were largely interested only in stuffing their pockets with the contents of the till. Nevertheless , the Prime Minister has a duty despite his many other functions to address the Nation’s galloping murder rate. It seem that with the best efforts of the security forces and the relatively inane leadership of his National security Minister no one has any idea how to stop the bleeding literally.
On Monday someone asked me on a social media platform what I would do differently if it was my job to bring crime to manageable levels. I had no time to respond in a way which would have made sense on that platform given the time I had. So I referred him to my website, I did so not because I needed the hits but because over the years I have articulated a raft of ideas which must be addressed if we are to gain control of crime.
Many critics have said some of my proposals cannot work because of Jamaican laws. To those I ask who made the laws? Most of the Nation’s laws were made at a time when people weren’t gunning down groups of people, or slitting the throats of infants. They are archaic , outdated and they simply have no deterrent effect. They need to go.
There can be no place in the search for solutions where police are poorly trained, poorly supervised, poorly supported and are allowed to go out and kill people indiscriminately.
I have no interest in spending my time debating the foregone so I highlighted it just for that reason. Many Jamaicans can harken back to the days when 300 homicides annually was a terrifying proposition for us . Today the small Island of 2.8 million people experience between 1000 and 1600 annually. Our police force had many problems not the least of which was Corruption♦ Poor-training♦ Poor supervision♦ Unlawful Political interference♦ Pathetic leadership♦ Poor remunerations♦ Lack of respect for our officers♦ Lack of respect for the rule of law and a range of other problems.
What the Island needed then was leadership and a decided policy of non-tolerance toward crime and those who commit them. As a police officer then I absolutely thought that 300 homicides annually was way too much and that it represented a paradigm shift which if not addressed would lead to where we are today . Guess what we are there. Instead of investing heavily in modernizing our police department the political class made the decision to take the country in a different direction. They gutted the police force , using some members as their personal gophers , removed funding for detective training while exponentially working to facilitate the garrison culture.
Despite the tremendous harm both political parties did to the Police department and by extension our country,the single greatest crime enhancement step ever taken in our nation’s history was the creation of INDECOM as an oversight agency to monitor the JDF /JCF/and the Corrections department. Jamaica’s criminals are no fools , many are incredibly smart young men who decided on a life of crime after realizing that the penalty for criminal behavior is so insignificant that not engaging in it is almost silly. Many have attended some of the most prestigious high schools these are young men who could be anything they put their minds to given the opportunity. It is no wonder however that each year more and more executive positions both in the public and private sectors are being filled by women . Simply put Jamaica’s young women are going to schools , young men are leaving and entering the lucrative business of crime.
One thing is certain the much ballyhooed modernization of the police department has not done a darn thing to change anything for the better if the actions of the officers on the streets and the crime statistics are anything to go by. Before the Island begin to bend the arc of crime, it must come to a point of “no mas” the infamous quote of a beaten Roberto Duran as Sugar Ray Leonard peppered him with unanswered blows on November 25, 1980 .
Like a dope addict who ultimately comes to the realization that the next needle up his arm will be his last and says “I need help” . The Island can get to that space, or it can continue with the bullshit narrative that it is a nation on the cusp of first world status if only it continue to pretend. Jamaica can continue to pretend it is actually on a path to prosperity or it can recognize that with a population of approximately 2.8 million people,it continues to have a high homicide rate (36÷100,000), which places it among the highest (per capita) national homicide rates in the world. It is estimated that because of youth crime, Jamaica loses US$4.3 million in potential investment each year while a further US$95 million, which would flow into Jamaica through tourism, goes elsewhere. The Island also spends more than US$529 million (J$46.5 billion) every year as a direct public and private cost to fight crime.
As I have said before in numerous articles the country did not get to this stage in a day and it will take much time to reverse what is happening in our country today. We cannot reverse people fighting our police officers in a day but we can put in place serious penalties for assaulting our police officers. We can put in place serious penalties for police officers who step outside the laws to abuse and kill people unjustly.
We can invest in the creation of an investigative bureau which is staffed with well trained officers of integrity, while legislating real penalties for violent crimes. We can reverse the policy of jailing predial thieves, putting them instead to work cleaning up our Cities and towns or working for their victims as payment for their crimes. This will free up prison spaces for violent felons. We can begin an education campaign to get adults to respect the rule of law while telling them what the penalties are for offending .
Most importantly repeal the INDECOM act now !!!!! Assign the INDECOM budget, and the Public defender’s budget to training and equipping the police department, improving the office of DPP and hiring more judges from the prosecution side of the fence. Most importantly is truth in sentencing for violent crimes . Truth in sentencing must come after a total revamping of the penalties for violent penalties and replacing them with life without parole where applicable.
To my friend who asked what I would do , I did not answer you because I do not have time to back and forth on social media . If the Government , any Government is serious about dealing with those blood thirsty criminals this is how it will be done . It will not be achieved by pussy-footing around and treating criminals with deference. It will be accomplished when we adopt a zero tolerance policy toward criminality in this a zero sum game.
After decades of building up Donald Trump as a legitimate businessman who took his father’s construction business and made it an empire, and framing Hillary Clinton as one half of a pair of pathological disgusting untrustworthy liars the media gets it’s moment in the sun.
PRIZEFIGHT
For months the media has been selling the first presidential debate as a prize fight , they have gone as far as to tell viewers it will be the most watched event in the history of television. At the end of it all Neilsen will tell just how many households tuned in for the spectacle. Ironically the narrative is baked in. Hillary Clinton is a pathological liar who cannot be trusted because she used a private server . [sic] The narrative is that Clinton is viewed as someone who cannot be trusted. The politically neutral Politico has pointed out that Donald Trump tells a lie every three minutes and fifteen seconds , over a five hour period.
There have been so much about Donald Trump which has disqualified him from the presidency yet none of it seem to matter to voters according to the polls. Which causes us to wonder whether the requirements for the presidency hasn’t already changed this election cycle. MSNBC’s Craig Melvin this morning asked Jack Kingston a former Georgia Congressman and a Trump supporter, whether the Moderator has a responsibility to fact check candidates who lie during this debate? Not surprising Kingston said no, moderators should not be in the business of fact checking the candidates on the lies they tell. A female Clinton surrogate on the same program said absolutely yes , they should be . Why would anyone seeking the presidency want to lie about policy positions or about their opponent’s record? That I believe is the defining issue in this debate .
Hillary Clinton
Now here is what I find troubling . It was the job of the Press to guard our democracy unless that too has changed as well this cycle. Debate moderators are journalists, how is it that it is not the guardians of our democracy’s job to fact check lying politicians seeking the world’s most powerful office? Presidential debates are job interviews. Candidates seeking the presidency should be preparing and studying up on policy positions and that of their opponents with a view to being able to appropriately debate the issues. They should not be seeking to lie and get away with lying their way to the nuclear codes. Why would the media be asking lying politicians and their surrogates whether candidates caught lying should be called out as CNN’s Candy Crowley called Mitt Romney out in 2012? It is their job to do so why would the media cede that most critical of function to either political party? Is there any wonder that the system is this corrupt? In the last general elections Mitt Romney insisted that President Obama had not called the Benghazi attack an “act of terror” for 14 days. Crowley correctly fact checked Romney that Obama had indeed used the term “act of terror” during remarks at The White House the day after the attack. Candy Crowley was right , Mitt Romney was wrong end of story. However it did not stop the usual barrage of attacks on Ms Crowley from the political right for doing what her profession trained her to do , get to the truth.
There is no point in litigating the negatives of Donald Trump. They are far too many, they are far too distinct, they are far too disqualifying. A voter who claim that he or she is still undecided about who they are voting for at the top of the ticket is a lying Trump voter. There is a binary choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, barring some unforeseen event one of these two people will be the next president of the United States. Gary Johnson will not be neither will Jill Stein. There is a hidden vote out there for Donald Trump I believe, despite the work President Barack Obama has done to return this country to a sound footing there is an element out there that is prepared to register a protest vote against him. Hillary Clinton’s negatives also plays into that somehow. Sure Donald Trump’s negatives are as stink as a Skunk but they are prepared to destroy everything by voting for him because he is white and male. They will vote for him without admitting that they did. The equivalent of breaking skin while washing their hands of the blood . Being able to say I did not vote for him when s**t heads south. That is the challenge for Hillary Clinton.
Donald J Trump
In a nutshell this presidential campaign may be summed up within the context of Ted Cruz’s recent endorsement of Donald Trump . Cruz said he does not get mad easily but when someone messes with his wife and his family he pulls the gloves off. During the Republican primaries Donald Trump made negative statements about Heidi Cruz’s appearance. He also said that Cruz’s father may have been involved with Lee-Harvey Oswald in the killing of President John F Kennedy. This infuriated Cruz to the point that at the Republican Convention Cruz took to the stage and asked voters to vote their conscience rather than ask them to vote for Donald Trump.
Despite all of that, last week in a lengthy facebook post Ted Cruz said he would be voting for Trump. Cruz’s capitulation can only be seen for what it was, a craven ‚calculated attempt to position himself for another run at the presidency in either 2020 or 2024. Country be damned it’s all about personal ambitions.
A young member of the Jamaica Defence Force told Robert Montague the Minister of National Security , if he should take on a gunman who threatens him with a weapon he will have to face INDECOM with attorneys for up to four years.
Montague said the matter was brought into focus last night as he gave a motivational talk to a group of soldiers heading to St. James to help contain crime there, according to Jamaican media. It’s important to understand the context in which the soldier made his views known to the minister. The Island is awash in crime , murder is on a constant northward spiral and authorities have not demonstrated they possess the balls to do what is necessary to fix the problem. https://mikebeckles.com/277971 – 2/
Responding to the soldier’s comment the clueless Montague responded Quote: “I am one who is a supporter of INDECOM, I am one who believes that we still can work harder to get the police fatal shootings down, but there comes a time when the circumstances dictate: when the State is threatened, the State has to respond in like manner.”
Many of my PNP readers will salivate at the fact that I refer to Montague as clueless. The Laborites will do what they always do castigate and label me a PNP shill, as if I care. Montague showed utter ignorance of what policing entails in responding to the soldier’s concern by arguing that when the state is threatened it has to respond in like manner.
Each and every member of the security forces have a responsibility over and above all else to protect their own lives. They owe it to themselves and their families to return home after every shift. Even though they operate as agents of the state, their bodies are not the property of the state. An attack on any of them must be seen as an attack on the state, but over and above that each attack on a member of the security forces is an individual attack which must be dealt with individually. Use of force has to be weighed by each officer so forced . It must comport with Jamaican law and should also square with that officers moral compass. Use of force must be within the remit of the individual officer which is enshrined in Jamaican law and the JCF’s use of force policy. That is why the collective labeling of all police shootings as extra judicial killings, is language of criminals and their supporters and not that of intelligent informed people. As the authorities dither and continue the embrace of pretentious postures and policies of advanced societies the bullet riddled bodies continue to pile up.
Remarkably, it took a soldier, and a young one at that, to articulate what most past and present cops and many well thinking Jamaicans already knew . That the INDECOM law is a shackle and a crime enhancement law. This writer have been sounding that alarm since it’s inception. Ironically it is not the members of the Jamaica Defense Force which faces and deals with the brunt of the crime and the resultant danger which comes from enforcing the laws it is the police department. Yet the incompetent posers who make up the hierarchy of the police force are silent . Silent as Terrence Williams uses the media as a whore seeking to extract all she can from a compliant John. Williams uses the media to undermine the police department and the rule of law, in the process empowering the criminal underworld and creating a fertile breeding ground for young criminals.
Terrence Williams
This writer is not opposed to police oversight. This medium was created to pass on what I learned as a police officer so that people may understand their responsibilities in society. It was designed to speak out against crime and injustice wherever I see it. Regardless of the offender’s status or station. What I do understand however, is that when the laws are slanted in support of criminals, when those in positions of power and influence use those positions to further the cause of criminality and mayhem we have a problem. It demonstrates that as a nation Jamaica has a serious crime problem which will only be fixed by people with balls and determination. Thus far I have not seen that kind of leadership in our country.
St James, especially the parish capital, Montego Bay, is now gripped by fear and anxiety as gun-toting thugs continue to wreak murderous havoc, killing and maiming with impunity as the parish’s murder count races towards 200 since the start of the year.
“I lived through the tribal war of the 1970s and I have never seen anything like this,” a former politician told The Gleaner yesterday shortly after news broke of another murder in the affluent Ironshore community. “This is past madness! Right now, I am feeling so much raw emotion that I feel like just screaming and bawling out. We can’t take any more of this.”
In yesterday’s incident in Ironshore, which occurred close to the popular Blue Diamond Complex, shots reportedly barked for several minutes as gangsters armed with rifles and handguns snuffed out the life of a Glendevon man identified only as ‘Bob’. Several persons, who were at the location, suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
Since the start of this week, there has been a spike in shootings across the parish, resulting in several persons being killed. The mayhem is happening despite the current high-visibility presence of joint police-military patrols across the parish in recent months.
At approximately 7:20 a.m. on Tuesday, all hell broke loose on Creek Street in downtown Montego Bay when a gunman opened fire on a bus crammed with schoolchildren. When the shooting subsided, it was discovered that the driver, Alvin ‘Strive Clarke, had succumbed to multiple gunshot wounds. Two students from MaldonHigh School were left nursing bullet wounds.
Later in the day, at approximately 2:00 p.m., students and teachers at the Glendevon Primary School were forced to take cover as warring factions traded heavy gunfire for well over half an hour. Based on reports from the community, the shooting was sparked by the killing of a man in the community on Monday night.
There were also other reports of shootings in communities such as Norwood, Tucker, Glendevon, Catherine Mount, Tangle River, and the Cambridge area.
In responding to the ongoing violence across the parish, Heroy Clarke, the member of Parliament for Central St James, made an impassioned plea to the thugs to lay down their guns and take up their Bibles with a view to putting their lives in God’s hands.
The Police work for you . You pay their salaries. You provide the pension plans and health-care for them and their families. You pay for the precinct houses from which they operate. You pay for the cars they drive. You pay for the dashcam videos in cases where they are provided them. Yet even though you pay for all of it, you are not entitled to see what is on the video when the videos have information which will show police officers doing what they shouldn’t be doing to citizens like you if North Carolina Republican legislators and Governor Pat McCrory have their way.
The unlawful killing and abuse of black citizens by some police officers have been a sore issue forever . Despite the protestations of black and brown people, white people who control power have largely ignored their cries for justice or have simply remained silent. Some have argued that whites largely remain silent because of racist tendencies, also that they are served by the status quo. Others have argued that whites see police in a different light because they are policed differently and most cops are white,. The latter view tends to support the arguments of people of color, that there are two separate justice systems , one for whites and another for everyone else.
Taxpayers investment in body and dashcams were supposed to either hold police accountable or exonerate them when they act appropriately. What the police are now doing through their unions and politicians beholden to them, is to make a determination when or if the footage is released at all. That means the very unjust system which is under scrutiny gets to set the parameters for that scrutiny. For those of us who believed that equipping police cruisers with dashcams and officers with body cameras would go a long way in removing most of the ambiguity from cases where police version of events differ from that of the public, we may need to rethink those beliefs. What bothers me is why on earth would police department’s push for measures which invariably will lead to more conflict with the public they serve.
Republican governor Pat McCrory said the law will strike a balance between improving public trust in the police and respecting the rights of officers. Respecting the rights of officers? Officers operate in public spaces supposedly on behalf of the public. What conceivable right could police have abridged by the release of videos of their actions ? The answer is none ! It is a red herring designed to give police one more layer of cover to continue to brutalize and kill people of color without being held accountable. If this is allowed to stand the next step will be to make it a crime to film illegal behavior of police. More and more states will follow North Carolina’s lead in making it impossible for police crimes to be uncovered when police get to determine whether the public have a right to see whether they broke the law. This only makes sense in a parallel universe. The longer police agencies get to hold video footage , the more likely it is that the public trust what they eventually release. The more that happens the less trust and confidence large sawths of the public have in the police. The longer the police hold video footage the more likely it is that those footage will be tampered with and altered to support the police version of events. There is nothing democratic or transparent about this. It is a slow steady march toward a police state in which the public has no say.
As a former police officer I am not naïve to the claims that releasing videos to the public may compromise aspects of an investigation. I am also mindful that evidence in certain video recordings may inflame passions and lead to violence or more violence in cases where violent protest has already occurred. Nevertheless when the totality of the distrust of police is taken into consideration, the police make a critical tactical mistake in not appearing to be transparent. I have long maintained that demonstrating against police is counter productive. Cops do not make laws , going into the streets may have some emotional value but beyond that it yields precious little substantively. The fact is that a large section of the population care exponentially more about broken glass than it does bullet riddled bodies. On that basis marching and protesting has zero effect in changing attitudes. If marching and singing was going to change circumstances they would have changed in the over half a century since the beginning of the civil rights movement. The seminal issue affecting the African-American Community when Dr King lived was police abuse. Over the half a century since Dr King was murdered the seminal issue affecting African-Americans is not poverty , or lack of jobs as some so called black leaders would have you believe, it is police abuse.
There is a reason black and brown people do not trust the police , there are decades and decades of reasons for them not to. When police get to decide whether video footages are released to the public which pays them, and pay for the video it reveals an intrinsic sick system of the tail wagging the Dog. ♦Laquan Mcdonald was killed walking away from Chicago police, the police refused to release the footage until they were forced to. The eventual release of the video showed that Mcdonald was summarily executed as he walked away , nevertheless cops on the scene lied that he posed a threat which necessitated them using deadly force. It was basically an assassination. ♦Walter Scott was summarily executed In North Charleston, South Carolina as he ran away from a police officer, a civilian video revealed that the cop placed a taser beside the body of mister Scott with the intended value of arguing Scott attempted to use it on him. ♦ Samuel Dubose was murdered in Cincinnati Ohio . The police contended that mister Dubose attempted to run him over with his car. Video evidence however showed that the officer lied that Dubose posed a threat . Importantly as well , other officers on scene corroborated the lie of the cop who murdered mister Dubose, So much for only a few bad apples. ♦Donald Andrews who operated a smoke shop in Schenectady New York became a target of police in that city for no reason but that he was a black man operating a smoke shop. Police routinely staked out his store and would routinely enter the store as part of their surveillance. On one occasion one of the officers was captured on mister Andrews surveillance video, planting crack cocaine on the counter. Not only was that officer criminal he was stupid, it defies logic that anyone would believe that a person selling crack cocaine would have it on the counter like candy. According to experts mister Andrews could have received four years for that bit of crack cocaine.
Dr. Boyce Watkins, Syracuse University Professor and founder of the Your Black World Coalition at the time said that this case is reflective of the slippery slope that exists for black men when it comes to the criminal justice system.
“If this is the case where the officer got caught planting the drugs, what about all the thousands of other cases where the officer wasn’t stupid enough to do it in a room full of cameras,” says Dr. Watkins. “The truth is that these incidents are not anomalies, and are reflective of the corruption that exists in a system that has found black men to be lucrative commodities for the prison industrial complex. It has destroyed our families and must be confronted in its entirety.” If police testimony is always valued above and beyond the defendant’s, how often do you think this happens? With black men being arrested for drug distribution more than any other group of people, it probably happens more than you know.
For years people of color in city after city across America have complained about police framing them and falsifying reports sending innocent people away for years on end sometimes for life. The innocence project founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, mission statement says it is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. Through Messers Scheck and Neufeld and their team’s effort to date 344 innocent individuals have been exonerated after serving lengthy periods of time in prison for crimes they did not commit. In some cases individuals have served over three decades in prison, as you may well imagine the bulk of those are people of color. The work of the innocence project is monumental when considered against the difficult and next to impossible prospect to get the system to say it was wrong or even to open up to a second look after convicting someone for a crime they did not commit.
The national Fraternal order of police which endorsed Donald Trump for President of the United States pushed back at Trump on Thursaday for suggesting that officer Betty Shelby who shot and killed an unarmed Terence Cutcher may have choked.
Speaking at the church of his supporter African-American Pastor Darrell Scott ‚Trump said this. “I must tell you I watched the shooting in particular in Tulsa and that man was hands up. That man went to the car, hands up, put his hands on the car, I mean to me it looked like he did everything he was supposed to do,” said Trump in remarks at a town hall style event addressing African-American issues in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
However the police Union which represents over 300,00 cops nationwide pushed back at Trump saying quote: “He must be mindful of the due process rights and presumption of innocence accorded to all, including police officers.” Trump won the support of the Police Union as he would because of his masculine pro-police stance . No surprise there, the Republican party has long been supported by the Military and police. Seen largely as a kind of Daddy party, supposedly catering to safety and security of the nation. Democrats on the other hand conversely is seen as the Mommy party, catering to health and well-being , taking care of those unable to take care of themselves.
The statement of the police Union though correct struck me as a bit odd. Many people of color who complain about police excesses would be happy to see police apply those same principles when officers interact with them and others like themselves. They too , each and everyone of them , have a right to due process and the presumnption of innocence. Imagine if these same principles were applied to every police vehicular stop. Every time officers knock on the door to someone’s home, their castle. Imagine if every instance of interaction of officers with the communities they serve are characterized by due process and the presumption of innocence. Literally most of the problems which exist between police and citizens would simply cease to exist. https://mikebeckles.com/americas-policing-problem/
In essence Mike Pence wants to curtail the first amendment constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech to be abridged and abrogated. In a Trump-Pence America, people like this writer could face serious consequences for speaking out about implicit biases in police departments which inform behavior. This is what makes a Trump-Pence Presidency such a dangerous proposition for people of color all across America and across the rest of the world.
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