In an Observer Article dat­ed Feb 3^rd 2015, retired Jamaica Defense Force Colonel Allan Douglas wrote an Article which could only be con­strued to be in defense of Garrisons. In his Article Douglas said this.
Regrettably, through­out my mil­i­tary career, I have often heard from civil­ians the solu­tion of “flat­ten­ing” areas over and over; ‘Just flat­ten Rema, Tivoli, etc, and the crime prob­lem would be solved!’ they say. So, I have become very sus­pi­cious with pro­posed solu­tions like “dis­man­tling polit­i­cal gar­risons”. What exact­ly do peo­ple mean when they speak of dis­man­tling garrisons?
Clearly Douglas miss­es the feel­ing of exas­per­a­tion of cit­i­zens who make those state­ments. It appears that despite a car­rear in the JDF and hav­ing attained the rank of Colonel, Douglas has very lit­tle under­stand­ing of what obtains on the streets of Jamaica’s Garrisons, or what are often referred to as zones of polit­i­cal exclusions. 
It could be either that Douglas did not spend enough time out­side Duppy Gate, or that he is once again act­ing as a de-fac­to defend­er of the People’s National Party’s failures.
See Article here. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​c​o​l​u​m​n​s​/​W​e​-​c​a​n​-​t​-​j​ust – flat­ten – garrisons_18340450
Colonel Douglas in what could eas­i­ly be mis­in­ter­pret­ed as a stout defense of the poor, unwit­ting­ly showed his Orange col­ors ‚Quote:  I have become very sus­pi­cious with pro­posed solu­tions like “dis­man­tling polit­i­cal gar­risons”. What exact­ly do peo­ple mean when they speak of dis­man­tling garrisons?

Technically only the rul­ing peo­ple’s National Party has true gar­risons remain­ing . Having held state pow­er for most of the time since inde­pen­dence, the PNP is the sole par­ty with scarce resources to dole out. This has allowed the par­ty to increase and con­sol­i­date it’s hold on state pow­er because of it’s abil­i­ty to dish out scarce resources. This means that in actu­al­i­ty each elec­tion cycle less and less seats are actu­al­ly in play. 

Incredibly after a car­rear in the Nation’s secu­ri­ty forces, Allan Douglas could speak on the issue of Garrisons as if in defense of them. If the good­ly Colonel had spent some time out­side of the Banana Republic type con­fines of Up-Park Camp, where sub­or­di­nates cater to his demands, he would cer­tain­ly have rec­og­nized that the prob­lem of Jamaica’s Garrisons was nev­er the func­tion of the young sol­diers and police offi­cers who police and die in these gar­risons , but are well designed strate­gies aimed at divid­ing and con­quer­ing so that the archi­tects may hold state power.
Just maybe if Colonel Douglas had a sin­gle mod­icum of real empa­thy for those con­demned to a life­time of incar­cer­a­tion with­in the imag­i­nary walls of Jamaica’s gar­risons, he would be using his voice and posi­tion to trum­pet.….….. yes the dis­man­tling process of all garrisons.

They are not gar­risons in the strict mil­i­tary dic­tio­nary mean­ing of the word. The com­mu­ni­ties can’t be “flat­tened” as if one was strik­ing a mil­i­tary tent­ed camp or shut­ting down a mil­i­tary strong­hold and reduc­ing the build­ings to rub­ble. So just how is this dis­man­tling exer­cise to be done?I sus­pect that there are many who would still advo­cate and have imple­ment­ed some sort of “eth­nic cleans­ing” type of oper­a­tion. I also sus­pect that those advo­cat­ing dis­man­tling of gar­risons haven’t the slight­est clue as to how they are going to go about doing so. What are the fac­tors to be con­sid­ered in this dis­man­tling exer­cise? If the social, polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic fac­tors of this dis­man­tling exer­cise have been thor­ough­ly thought out, it cer­tain­ly must be one of Jamaica’s best-kept secrets. It is my opin­ion that, for far too long we have treat­ed these com­mu­ni­ties and the peo­ple who live there­in with scorn and deri­sion. We have tram­pled all over their rights, mur­dered their inno­cent young­sters, and so often com­fort­ed our­selves with the thought that they are all just a bunch of crim­i­nals and are deserv­ing of death by any means. And, if by chance a baby in a crib is slaugh­tered — and these things do hap­pen — col­lat­er­al death is accept­able. If the bod­ies of young­sters shot by our secu­ri­ty forces are left to rot on the road for dogs and crows to take their pick, then so be it, because they are all a bunch of hor­ri­ble crim­i­nals and deserve it. Their voic­es are very rarely lis­tened to when they cry out for jus­tice, and their lead­ers and defend­ers of their rights are demonised. Despite all of that, they sur­vive and are real, and out of what we regard as the cesspit of our coun­try, they have pro­duced many who have gone on to bring fame and glo­ry to Jamaica — and, oh, how we love them then!

My point is, if we are anx­ious, as Jamaicans, to stop the obvi­ous rot from with­in our soci­ety, we must be more car­ing of each oth­er, regard­less of our sta­tions in life. Our laws must be just and admin­is­tered fair­ly. If one inno­cent Jamaican is killed, it must be the busi­ness of all Jamaicans. If we “flat­ten” with­out a con­science, the back-blast is bound to hurt all Jamaicans in the long run, not just the criminals.

“They are not gar­risons in the strict mil­i­tary dic­tio­nary mean­ing of the word so they can’t be flat­tened” . Well Colonel they can be , but no one, no sane per­son at least, is sug­gest­ing that they be lit­er­al­ly flat­tened. Not because it is a bad idea to flat­ten them phys­i­cal­ly, does not mean they should not be dismantled.
The mind­set of depen­den­cy and enti­tle­ment which fer­til­izes and nur­tures the gar­ri­son cul­ture, does noth­ing to advance the pros­per­i­ty and well being of those who reside with­in those con­fines . Voting with una­nim­i­ty for one par­ty or the oth­er, believ­ing that scarce resources will come flow­ing is nev­er a sus­tain­able path to true inde­pen­dence and pros­per­i­ty. The prob­lem is that there is nev­er enough to go around after the prin­ci­pal play­ers have gouged them­selves with the slop

stolen from the pub­lic trough.
On that basis ‚the only true option for the poor and dis­pos­sessed is the utter dis­man­tling of all gar­risons and a return to the true entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it of the free and unencumbered.. 
You see Colonel as you stat­ed, Jamaica’s gar­risons are cer­tain­ly not Garrisons in the mil­i­tary sense. So no ‚flat­ten­ing them would be ill-advised. However, it is evi­dent that you suf­fer from the same type of blind­ness which struck Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller. After all she famous­ly stat­ed that her par­ty has no gar­risons because she does­n’t not see any walls. 
Yes Colonel, the walls are not lit­er­al they are men­tal, so yes, we must begin the slow painstak­ing process of dis­man­tling the mind­set of Garrison dwellers.
Then and only then, will all Jamaicans have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to live out the full promise of their lives, free and unshack­led from the promise of state fund­ed largess. In the end the only true bene­fac­tors are those with polit­i­cal pow­er and those who exert mus­cle on their behalf. 

The reduc­tion in the crime sta­tis­tics toward the lat­ter part of last year could not be pinned to a prov­able strategy. 
We did not feel there was any­thing in the speech of the Minister of National Security on the sub­ject which could be attrib­uted to the down­ward trend.
As such we said it was temporary

and at best prob­a­bly just luck.
The busi­ness of crime fight­ing as it is with almost every oth­er ven­ture must be pinned to a formula.

That for­mu­la must be goal ori­ent­ed with well artic­u­lat­ed, mea­sur­able steps to accom­plish­ing those goals.
Until the JCF devel­ops and exe­cute a strat­e­gy fol­low­ing those guide­lines it will sim­ply be putting out fires
Now we are aware there are socio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors at play as well as a decrepit crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, inad­e­quate laws, and polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, which are dri­ving crime in the Island. The police how­ev­er must hold up it’s end of the bargain.
In so far as crime is con­cerned in Jamaica, the JCF is fail­ing dis­mal­ly, based on their own num­bers, if the JCF was a busi­ness it would have fold­ed a long time ago.
Oh by the way crime is a busi­ness and so is crime fighting.1
Jamaica has a Government which is not about the rule of law.
She also have a police depart­ment that could­n’t find it’s way out of a barrel.
Our coun­try is in for a lot more dark days before it real­izes the light.

Jamaica has aver­aged 3.2 mur­ders per day for the new month of January, com­pared to 2.75 per day for all of 2014.
Imagine almost a hun­dred dead bod­ies laid out in a row , all killed in less than a month, in a small Island with a pop­u­la­tion of 2.7 million.
Despite these shock­ing , yet un-sur­pris­ing num­bers the coun­try’s min­is­ter of secu­ri­ty is ask­ing the nation not to panic.
Minister Bunting had this to say.
“If this rate con­tin­ues, we could see the month end­ing with approx­i­mate­ly 100 mur­ders. However, let me point out that, even in 2014, we had two months with mur­ders above 100, which points to the ran­dom­ness in how these crimes occur, and to demon­strate that we need not be undu­ly alarmed at this time,” 
let me point out that at the end of last year the Jamaican Police depart­ment and min­is­ter Bunting bragged about south­ward trend­ing crime statistics.
Murders they report­ed had dropped 16 per cent, shoot­ings were down 12 per cent, rape had fall­en by 23 per cent and aggra­vat­ed assault by 17 per cent. Of note is the fact that Police killings have dropped a pre­cip­i­tous 54% against the last cor­re­spond­ing period.

See. 16 % Reduction In Murder Rate Commendable Yet…

At the risk of sound­ing neg­a­tive we argued then that we con­grat­u­lat­ed the JCF/​JDF for their hard work under dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances with mar­gin­al to non-exis­tent sup­port from the Miller Administration. We also opined that we were very skep­ti­cal that the down­ward trend could be sus­tained in the absence of (1 a well artic­u­lat­ed prov­able for­mu­la , and (2 An econ­o­my that is at best anemic.
We also felt that nei­ther the Minister nor the Police depart­ment had pre­sent­ed any evi­dence to which they could rea­son­ably claim was attrib­ut­able to the low­er num­bers then.

Minister Bunting in try­ing to explain the spike in mur­ders yet allay fears simul­ta­ne­ous­ly , said “The secu­ri­ty forces are respond­ing oper­a­tional­ly to the gang sit­u­a­tion in St Catherine North, and in so doing, we will employ the approach­es that worked in 2014, name­ly tar­get­ing vio­lence pro­duc­ers, dom­i­nat­ing crit­i­cal hot-spots, pri­or­i­tiz­ing foren­sic and inves­tiga­tive resources to this area, and dry­ing up the fund­ing sources for these crim­i­nal organisations,”.
The state­ments of the min­is­ter to any­one in the know is a des­per­ate attempt to buy time.The Minister ear­li­er last year stat­ed that despite the best efforts of law-enforce­ment crime con­tin­ued to esca­late. He argued then for divine inter­ven­tion. If the best efforts of the police then were not enough to arrest the spi­ral­ing crime wave , how can the min­is­ter advance his lat­est argu­ments on how to low­er the num­ber of homicides?
Sources on the ground tells me the wave of homi­cides being com­mit­ted in the areas named by the min­is­ter are direct­ly attrib­ut­able to the Klans-man gang affil­i­at­ed to , you guessed it, the rul­ing People’s National Party Administration of Portia Simpson Miller.

All across You-tube there are videos of peo­ple fight­ing and being dis­re­spect­ful to police officers. 
Never before in the his­to­ry of our coun­try, save and except dur­ing the Manley débâ­cle of the 70’s, has Jamaica’s crim­i­nals have such crate-blanche to do as they please.
As a cop in the late 80’s, to ear­ly 90’s, I felt we were oper­at­ing with our hands tied behind our backs. Today’s cops are oper­at­ing with their hands tied behind their backs and are also blindfolded. 
There is no rule-of-law in Jamaica, our coun­try is essen­tial­ly a klep­toc­ra­cy. The present Administration is large­ly seen as bla­tant­ly cor­rupt and incompetent.
The litany of alle­ga­tions against the Government remains so, (alle­ga­tions only, because there is no redress in the courts for the peo­ple who want a func­tion­ing democracy. 

Being in pow­er for inor­di­nate stretch­es of time, has allowed the rul­ing PNP to place cor­rupt func­tionar­ies at all lev­els of civic life and con­sol­i­date it’s bases of pow­er. The court being no excep­tion. The last extend­ed stretch the par­ty had was for an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ years. 
Imagine how much harm a cor­rupt admin­is­tra­tion can do in that much time.
Notwithstanding the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party has also failed to offer strong deci­sive alter­na­tive for­ward-lean­ing lead­er­ship. Thus far the oppo­si­tion has been reduced to a cas­trat­ed dog which can only dream of a time when it was able to have it’s pick of bitches.
The nation in gen­er­al has been des­ig­nat­ed 84% cor­rupt by the European based Transparency International. In essence the vot­ers and the admin­is­tra­tion have been a per­fect match-made in corruption-heaven.

The INDECOM Act which was cre­at­ed by the Opposition JLP while in pow­er between 2007- to 2011, was draft­ed and passed in response to massive

police cor­rup­tion and abuse. The Act though well inten­tion-ed , was poor­ly craft­ed and imple­ment­ed. The Act may have mar­gin­al, yet unproven effect on police cor­rup­tion but it has mea­sur­ably had a chill­ing effect on offi­cers abil­i­ty to do their jobs.
If any­thing, the Act has embold­ened a law-less pop­u­la­tion to be even more abra­sive and abu­sive of the rule of law and those who enforce the laws.
From the off­set the Commissioner giv­en the task to head the neo­phyte Agency was more con­cerned about ele­vat­ing his own stature and self aggran­diz­ing than remov­ing rogue cops and work­ing with the Police depart­ment toward the rule of law.

Jamaicans at home who yearn for a crime-free coun­try hope against hope . There is no foun­da­tion being laid which will bear fruits of a just and crime/­cor­rup­tion-free country.
The nation needs a com­plete re-align­ment away from crim­i­nal­i­ty. This is no easy task there is sim­ply too much cor­rup­tion with­ing the body politic. The Government is inher­ent­ly cor­rupt, who will re-align and mobi­lize the people?
Jamaicans resid­ing in the dias­po­ra kid them­selves about the direc­tion of our coun­try. Many chose to pre­tend that the coun­try will some­how fix itself, while they give aid and com­fort to the crim­i­nal enhanc­ing Government in Kingston.
The rest of us are aware there will be a lot more blood-shed before peo­ple wake up from their slum­ber to the real­i­ties of what has hap­pened to our country.

Another People’s National Party politi­cian will soon face the courts, this time on charges he attempt­ed to per­vert the course of justice.
The inci­dent orig­i­nat­ed in St. Thomas and stemmed from an inci­dent where a polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed 46-year-old Pastor alleged­ly sex­u­al­ly assault­ed a minor.
It is alleged the Councillor and a busi­ness per­son attempt­ed to con­vince the moth­er of the child not to press charges.
The Director of Public Prosecution has since ruled that both men be charged with attempt­ing to per­vert the course of justice.
Recently we report­ed on this mat­ter when we learned that a female Police com­man­der was ver­bal­ly assault­ed at a coun­cil meet­ing in the parish as a result she walked out of that meeting.
It is becom­ing clear­er by the day that the Simpson Miller Government is an out of con­trol Kleptocracy which no one dare ques­tion. Media Houses are afraid of report­ing on the cor­rup­tion with­ing the Government out of fear of being dragged before the courts on slan­der charges to face par­ty hack/​s on the bench.
Others are cheer-lead­ers of the corruption.
The list of scan­dals are well known and well documented.
(1) Finsac.
(2)Cuban Light bulb.
(3) Outameni.
(4)Trafigura.
The list goes on. 
No need to get excit­ed about the immi­nent arrest of these two how­ev­er, crim­i­nal tri­als in Jamaica of the polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed rarely result in convictions. 
The like­li­hood that a Councillor or Member of Parliament will be con­vict­ed is next to nil.
Jamaica’s cor­rup­tion runs much deep­er than just cor­rup­tion with­in the admin­is­tra­tion, it’s endemic.
The Courts despite the hype, are more cor­rupt than many Jamaicans know. Judges have alle­giances and they exert polit­i­cal leverage.
Cases drag on and on and on sim­ply because a Magistrate says so.
Ask your­selves, “how was it pos­si­ble that Kern Spencer got out of an open and shut light bulb case”?
The Jamaican Government is not answer­able to any­one, the peo­ple them­selves do not rec­og­nize just how cor­rupt the admin­is­tra­tion is because gen­er­al­ly they are extreme­ly law­less and corrupt.
As a patri­ot­ic Jamaican it is an embar­rass­ment to list the dif­fer­ent scan­dals asso­ci­at­ed with this administration.

The New England Patriots are head­ing to the Super-Bowl sched­uled for February 1^st once again. Not without

con­tro­ver­sy how­ev­er, the Patriots Organization , no stranger to uneth­i­cal alle­ga­tions are sad­dled with League Investigations dubbed “Ballgate”. and in some quar­ters “Deflategate”. The inci­dent came to light after the Patriots defeat­ed the Indianapolis Colts, 45 – 7. Soon after that win, Bob Kravitz of Indiana’s WTHR TV tweet­ed: “A league source tells me the NFL is inves­ti­gat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty the Patriots deflat­ed foot­balls Sunday night, as report­ed by npr.

This is not the first time the Organization is fac­ing alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety and uneth­i­cal behav­ior. In 2007 the Patriots faced league sanc­tions in what was monikered “Spygate” when it was dis­cov­ered they video­taped the New York Jets sig­nals. The Patriots and coach Bill Belichick were found to have video­taped the New York Jets’ signals.The spy­ing inci­dent result­ed in the NFL strip­ping the Patriots of a first-round draft pick and fin­ing Belichick.

“Under NFL rules, the home team sup­plies most of the balls used in games; the vis­it­ing team brings foot­balls for its own offense to use. All the foot­balls must be inflat­ed with­in a range of 12.5−13.5 pounds per square inch and weigh between 14 and 15 ounces.

“In wet and slip­pery con­di­tions, an under-inflat­ed ball could be eas­i­er to grip and catch. And in last night’s game, an NFL offi­cial report­ed­ly took at least one ball out of cir­cu­la­tion after sus­pect­ing it did­n’t meet league requirements.

Patriots head coach Bill Belichick says he had “no knowl­edge” about the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing his team and deflat­ed footballs.

“In my entire coach­ing career, I have nev­er talked to any play­er or staff mem­ber about foot­ball air pressure,”

As I pre­pared to leave home for work this morn­ing I over­heard sports talk­ing-heads on Television dis­cussing the sto­ry. One par­tic­u­lar sport talk­er could not find enough words to try and absolve Patriots head coach Bill Belichick of wrong doing, he claimed the poor coach may not have had any knowl­edge of any­thing that transpired.
Disgusted by this fla­grant attempt at ratio­nal­iz­ing away this lat­est scan­dal I left home for work. I could not help think­ing to myself how sav­age the ver­bal onslaught was after Ray Rice knocked out his fiancé Jenae in an ele­va­tor. I also recalled some of the adjec­tives they used to describe Adrian Petersen . Petersen plead guilty to spank­ing his son, the spank­ing left welts on the child. I was not proud of Petersen’s meth­ods . Notwithstanding, I under­stood how a father could have seen the need to dis­ci­pline his own child, the meth­ods he used were once sacro­sanct now they are viewed as barbaric.
I thought to myself , how iron­ic it is that Petersen was all apolo­getic for spank­ing his own son albeit the marks, was pun­ished like a com­mon crim­i­nal, yet the state will not lift a fin­ger to to pun­ish crim­i­nal cops who sum­mar­i­ly kill inno­cent unarmed peo­ple with­out bat­ting an eye. I cer­tain­ly was not about to give Rice a pass for his actions , which by all accounts were clear­ly criminal.

On arriv­ing at work the sub­ject cen­ter stage was once again “Deflategate”. The team at the table Mat Lauer, Al Roker and Tamron Hall was aghast that one view­er dared to ask whether the Patriots would be banned from the super-bowl. I switched the chan­nel out of disgust.
Whether the Patriots coach and it’s Quarterback Tom Brady, knew that the balls were tam­pered with is imma­te­r­i­al. From all accounts some pres­sure was report­ed­ly removed from eleven of the twelve game balls. It defies com­mon sense that Tom Brady would not have real­ized he was bet­ter able to grip the balls dur­ing the game against the Colts played in rainy con­di­tions. Brady is no new com­er to the game, his expe­ri­ence is enough to cause any­one with a brain to say “he knew the balls were tam­pered with”.

This brings us to the ques­tion of why we play sports. Different peo­ple, play­ers, coach­es and spec­ta­tors have vary­ing rea­sons why we spend so much of our time prepar­ing to play or prepar­ing oth­ers to play. There must be a rea­son why we shell out hard earned cash to pay for seats to watch our favorite teams play. Why do we take our lit­tle ones to lit­tle league or oth­er pee-wee pick­up leagues ? We do so because we are con­vinced that despite the desire to see our lit­tle ones dom­i­nate their peers, we know that sports build char­ac­ter. We believe that sports helps us pre­pare for life, it shows us when we get knocked down we don’t quit, we don’t turn away and cry, we pick our­selves up try to be bet­ter and con­tin­ue to com­pete. And if we loose we dust our­selves off, go back to the draw­ing board, do what we must and come back bet­ter next time. We com­pete know­ing when we do our best and our oppo­nents do their best, and we win, That makes us the best.

What hap­pens if we destroy the puri­ty of sports? What hap­pens if sports become about those who can cheat the best? Where is the puri­ty and char­ac­ter in win­ning by being the most dis­hon­est? Is it real­ly win­ning? Whether or not one believe the Patriots Organization through the protes­ta­tions of it’s coach and star quar­ter-back is imma­te­r­i­al. This is one more black-eye, not just for the NFL , but for sports itself. This foot­ball fan will not watch the super-bowl this year. My not watch­ing will not change a sin­gle thing about foot­ball, it will not bring a dol­lar less to the game or the com­pet­ing teams. It will cer­tain­ly bring sat­is­fac­tion to me though, that at least in my small way I stood against dishonesty.
Yes if it is proven that the Patriots deflat­ed the balls they should be barred from the super-bowl. 
If the League’s inves­ti­ga­tions reveal that the Patriots did deflate game-balls, it is a big deal , it will mean they did not learn any­thing . It would mean los­ing a few hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars and a draft pick cer­tain­ly did not dis­suade the Patriots from being dis­hon­est. If that is the penal­ty to gain an unfair advan­tage why would they not take that path any­way. The penal­ty for cheat­ing should be ban­ish­ment, noth­ing else sends a clear enough mes­sage. Anything less sends a mes­sage that teams are allowed to cheat , pay a penal­ty but pro­ceed to take it all anyway.
That approach defeats the whole idea of sports.
To bor­row a line from “Shark Tank” , ” based on that alone I’m out”. 

After six years in office and hav­ing seen his par­ty lose the House and then the sen­ate in two elec­tion cycles, the pres­i­dent declared Tuesday night “This is a break­through year,“The shad­ow of cri­sis has passed, Tonight, we turn the page.”

The President did not seem per­turbed at the prospect of fac­ing for the first time in his pres­i­den­cy a con­gress con­trolled by Republicans.
Obama seemed in no mood to be pushed around, telling repub­li­cans if they pushed leg­is­la­tion he was opposed to like the key­stone pipeline project he would veto them. In some ways the Presidents speech seemed more like a plat­form for a third demo­c­ra­t­ic term, for whomev­er the par­ty choos­es as it’s stan­dard bear­er, than a state of the union address.
The President went into the address with a 46 % approval rat­ing , gas prices just over two dol­lars per gal­lon on aver­age, unem­ploy­ment at the low­est it has ever been since 1999 at the height of anoth­er democ­ra­t’s pres­i­den­cy, Bill Clinton.
Last year saw the strongest job growth in 15 years. The unem­ploy­ment rate dropped to 5.6 per­cent. Inflation was a not a fac­tor. And with gaso­line sell­ing for just over $2 a gal­lon in many parts of the coun­try, dri­vers are expect­ed to save hun­dreds of dol­lars at the pump this year.

The President had every right to crow about his accom­plish­ments after all the econ­o­my is on steady foot­ing. The auto indus­try is roar­ing. Businesses are cre­at­ing jobs. More Americans have health care. There has been no ter­ror­ist attack on American soil on his watch thus far. Two wars of choice has ended. 
The pres­i­den­t’s leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ments are impres­sive. Whats more, he accom­plished what he did with no help from republicans. 
As most repub­li­cans sat on their hands their faces reg­is­ter­ing hatred for him and his suc­cess­es , President Obama stat­ed “I have no more cam­paigns to run”.This drew applause from repub­li­cans, Obama briskly shot back, “I know, because I won both of them.” In refrence to his two pres­i­den­tial campaigns.

The pres­i­dent was cor­rect to remind the half-wits on the oth­er side of the isle there was no dis­crep­an­cy with either of his elec­tions. Notwithstanding sup­posed Democratic Senator Joe Manchin WV, believes the pres­i­dent should have just laughed it off. Manchin hard­ly a demo­c­rat , told MSNBC mis­ter Obama should have joked with repub­li­cans , you know say­ing “come on guys that at least deserves a stand­ing ovation”.
Manchin believes the pres­i­dent should shuck and jive to white con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives who hates his guts. Many observers believe Manchin, pro-coal, pro-gun for­mer Governor of West Virginia is no demo­c­rat. He has nev­er missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to crit­i­cize the pres­i­den­t’s lead­er­ship style. With friends like Manchin who needs enemies.

President Obama talked about his belief in the good­ness of Americans, he told the world the state of the union is good. I won­der though, how truth­ful are these state­ments ? How good are a peo­ple who hate Eric Holder for telling them they are cow­ards for not address­ing racial hatreds? How good are a peo­ple who are con­tent to look the oth­er way, while scores of unarmed peo­ple are mur­dered by police, or worse, sug­gest they deserve what they got?

How good are a peo­ple who refus­es to address the intrin­sic hatred they har­bor, not just for peo­ple of oth­er races, but oth­er reli­gious beliefs and even dif­fer­ent though? 
How good are a peo­ple who go out to sup­port a movie about a sniper who killed scores of peo­ple over­seas. Yet can­not find it in their hearts to sup­port the movie “Selma“which tells the sto­ry of America’s great­est moral leader, even as they pay lip ser­vice to his life work? 

No mis­ter pres­i­dent , even as we recent­ly com­mem­o­rat­ed the life work of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, we must still be res­olute in telling America it is still a racist , xeno­pho­bic soci­ety which is quite will­ing to bomb oth­ers into obliv­ion from a dis­tance. Unconcerned about the lives of the innocent.
No Mister pres­i­dent those are not the traits of good peo­ple. Look no fur­ther than across the isle at many look­ing back at you,those are not good peo­ple, those are some of the most racist , hate­ful peo­ple any­where . There is much work to be done.

Jamaica’s rul­ing People’s National Party issued a state­ment over the sig­na­ture of Minister of Water, Land, Environment and Climate Change Robert Pickersgill . The release harsh­ly crit­i­cized the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party for sug­gest­ing that the Tivoli inquiry be abort­ed. In the release the Party said.
Recent state­ments by the Opposition Leader (Andrew Holness), Member of Parliament for Western Kingston (Desmond McKenzie), and Opposition Senator Ruel Reid, among oth­ers, con­tin­ue the pat­tern of denial and obfus­ca­tion prac­tised by the Jamaica Labour Party with respect to their ini­tial han­dling of a legit­i­mate extra­di­tion request for now con­fessed felon Christopher “Dudus” Coke,”

The release went on to say “Jamaicans will nev­er for­get the events lead­ing up to the pro­mul­ga­tion on May 24, 2010 of a State of Public Emergency”. “The record con­firms that there was sig­nif­i­cant loss of lives, at least 70 Jamaicans are believed to have died. It is a dark and hor­rif­ic chap­ter in Jamaica’s his­to­ry, which, should nev­er be repeat­ed” Pickersgill report­ed in the release.

“As we see it, their argu­ment to end the enquiry because of cost is a ‘red her­ring’ of naked and vul­gar polit­i­cal convenience”.“They can­not sin­cere­ly or pos­si­bly be sug­gest­ing that a dol­lar cost can be placed against the val­ue of the lives which have been lost, and oth­ers which have been per­ma­nent­ly impaired, by the awful events of May 2010 which ensued under their watch and for which they must accept full respon­si­bil­i­ty to the Jamaican peo­ple,” he continued.

Of course God for­bid that some­one say ‚“You know this is cost pro­hib­i­tive at this time ” . Like every­thing else for the PNP, their peo­ple haf­fi eat a food su dis like every ting else nah stap.
What inter­est does the PNP have in the lives of res­i­dents of Tivoli Gardens ?
None !!!
Why then are they vehe­he­ment about con­duct­ing this inquiry ? To dam­age the JLP of course, they all but said so , quote:“They can­not sin­cere­ly or pos­si­bly be sug­gest­ing that a dol­lar cost can be placed against the val­ue of the lives which have been lost, and oth­ers which have been per­ma­nent­ly impaired, by the awful events of May 2010 which ensued under their watch and for which they must accept full respon­si­bil­i­ty to the Jamaican peo­ple,”

Talk about Red-her­ring ? Here is the Red-her­ring. The PNP is a trib­al par­ty which does every­thing for par­ti­san trib­al rea­sons. It is

there­fore a stretch that the very par­ty which unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed not to give law enforce­ment more time to arrest crim­i­nals run­ning back to their gar­risons, sud­den­ly care about 70 dead laborites. Whether or not the inquiry should be stopped is cer­tain­ly debat­able. The PNP’s moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for it’s con­tin­u­ance is insult­ing and hypocritical. 

The PNP has no moral author­i­ty to speak about loss of life. Why did the par­ty vote unan­i­mous­ly not to allow the secu­ri­ty forces more time to con­sol­i­date gains made after the Tivoli incur­sion? Everyone famil­iar with Jamaican pol­i­tics know that PNP Garrisons would have been over­turned as Tivoli was. When you have 11 gar­risons to the oth­er guy’s 1 , of course you want to keep those zones of exclu­sions which deliv­er elec­tions to you time and again . This was an almost trea­so­nous and sedi­tious act on the part of the PNP when they sided with Jamaica’s crim­i­nals . That is where a true inquiry should be directed.

You can­not moral­ly jus­ti­fy some­thing if you are immoral your­self. The deep cor­rup­tion per­va­sive in that admin­is­tra­tion makes it unfit to make state­ments on moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. The moral thing for this Administration to do is resign and present the Jamaican peo­ple with a gen­uine mea-cul­pa, for the decep­tion, decay and deca­dence it has unleashed on the nation over the last 40 years. Their stew­ard­ship has dec­i­mat­ed our man­u­fac­tur­ing , agri­cul­tur­al , edu­ca­tion, health and every oth­er sec­tor. Our peo­ple are refugees in many places where they are viewed as out­casts. The dam­age they wrought is equal to that done by sub-Saharan war­lords and their clans. For a coun­try with so many who claim to be intel­lec­tu­als it is hard to ignore the bla­tant igno­rance and stu­pid­i­ty of the voters.

Martin Luther King was born on the 15^th of January 1929. He was born Michael King, but his father changed his name in hon­or of the German reformer Martin Luther. Dr. King spent his life in ser­vice to human­i­ty and the cause of racial and human jus­tice. Today we hon­or Dr King and his accom­plish­ments. On Monday January 19^th we will com­mem­o­rate the life of Dr. King who would have been 86 years old had he lived. Martin King fell vic­tim to an assas­s­in’s bul­let in Memphis Tennessee on April 4^th 1968 , he was only 39 years old. The forces whose bul­lets silenced his voice thought they would win with demise, they were wrong, they cre­at­ed a mar­tyr. They ele­vat­ed him to heights not even they could imag­ine. Today many who want­ed him gone, now pub­licly sing his praise. Thank you Dr King.

When Union del­e­gates gath­er to seek a way for­ward meet­ings some­times get rau­cous. As a mat­ter of fact these meet­ings are where dis­agree­ments gets ironed out, as del­e­gates seek con­sen­sus on ways for­ward. So it’s not out of the ordi­nary that del­e­gates at the New York City’s Police Department Benevolent Association meet­ing on Tuesday got a lit­tle, should I say testy. The New York Daily News reports that at Antun’s in Queens PBA del­e­gates engaged in exchanges of heat­ed shout­ing and shov­ing between what they char­ac­ter­ized as an insur­gent group of del­e­gates opposed to long time Union head Patrick Lynch and Lynch’s supporters.

Lynch has been at the head of the PBA since 1993 and has ran unop­posed since then. Over the years how­ev­er Lynch has been more of an embar­rass­ment than a help to police offi­cers by his utter­ances and pub­lic stances. It appears that final­ly some mem­bers of the rank and file are start­ing to wake up to those realities. 
At Tuesdays meet­ing one cop — one of about 350 in atten­dance — took ver­bal jabs at Lynch, who has called on de Blasio to offer a mea cul­pa for what he see as a con­tin­ued lack of sup­port for police.
“They don’t want an apol­o­gy,” one cop said, as mem­bers near­ly came to blows. There was push­ing, shov­ing and lots of scream­ing at Patrick Lynch, pres­i­dent of the 23,000-member union. The in-house bat­tle erupt­ed over the issue of what patrol offi­cers real­ly need — an apol­o­gy from Mayor de Blasio or bet­ter equip­ment and more offi­cers to back them up on the streets. “This is what my mem­bers want!” one cop yelled near the end of the rau­cous meet­ing. “They want more cars, bet­ter vests, more man-pow­er!” The yelling , push­ing and shov­ing report­ed­ly con­tin­ued until Lynch stormed out.

By any mea­sure cops decid­ing to air their dis­af­fec­tion with Lynch’s lead­er­ship ‚does them­selves a tremen­dous ser­vice by oppos­ing Lynch. Most peo­ple who crit­i­cize police are not anti-police as Lynch seem to believe. In fact Lynch’s rhetoric makes it impos­si­ble to sup­port the NYPD unless one is a lack­ey , for whom the depart­ment can do no wrong. As a firm believ­er in the rule of law , and an ex-police offi­cer, I can­not in good con­science sup­port the NYPD based on Lynch’s behav­ior over the years.
In this medi­um I have repeat­ed­ly said that rank and file offi­cers of the NYPD would do well with­out Patrick Lynch as the head of their Union.
Being a loud mouth con­fronta­tion­al wan­na-be tough guy, who has acri­mo­nious rela­tion­ships with every Mayor and every­one except cops and blind cop-sup­port­ers is hard­ly the way to get cops the best deal pos­si­ble. In fact it could be argued that Lynch has cost cops sup­port based on many of the shock­ing state­ments he has made over the years.
Blaming Eric Garner for his own death, after the rest of the world watched Daniel Pantaleo squeeze the life out of the Staten Island res­i­dent, using an ille­gal choke-hold, was not only offen­sive it showed Lynch to be a un-car­ing sub-human cretin.
As the fam­i­ly griev­ed the loss of their loved one and the city erupt­ed in protest the least Patrick Lynch could have done is keep his mouth shut.
But being a self pro­mot­ing nar­cis­sist for whom cops can do no wrong, Lynch went pub­lic in December 2014,saying quote,
“We feel bad­ly that there was a loss of life but unfor­tu­nate­ly Mr. Garner made a choice that day to resist arrest.”
This was far from the only out­ra­geous state­ment com­ing from Lynch, June 2000,Bruce Springstein released a song in response to the killing of unarmed African Immigrant Amadou Diallo by NYPD cops who fired 41 shots at the young man with mul­ti­ple shots hit­ting his body, killing him instant­ly. Lynch said ‚Singer Bruce Springsteen has begun per­form­ing in con­cert a song called “American Skin” — the title seems to sug­gest that the shoot­ing of Amadou Diallo was a case of racial pro­fil­ing — which keeps repeat­ing the phrase, “Forty-one-shots.” I con­sid­er it an out­rage that he would be try­ing to fat­ten his wal­let by reopen­ing the wounds of this trag­ic case at a time when police offi­cers and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers are in a heal­ing peri­od, and I have let his rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the press know how I feel about this song.

July2010 Lynch defend­ed a cop who was video­taped shov­ing a bicy­clist from his bike and assault­ing him say­ing, “The anar­chists were look­ing for a con­fronta­tion with police and found it in an rook­ie offi­cer try­ing to do his job the best way he knew how. The con­di­tion­al dis­charge doesn’t mit­i­gate the fact that New York City has one less police offi­cer today who could have served the city well”.
Instances of Lynch’s unin­tel­li­gent and poor­ly thought-out dia­tribes are numer­ous and well doc­u­ment­ed. We hope that the rank and file mem­bers of the NYPD will wake up and remove this alba­tross from their necks. Clearly the respect, sup­port and secu­ri­ty they seek will not come with Lynch’s bel­li­cose rhetoric and con­fronta­tion­al style. The meet­ing in Queens Tuesday may not mean that Lynch is on his way out. However it appears that at least a small cadre of offi­cers would like to see a dif­fer­ent style of lead­er­ship. I agree with them. One is much more like­ly to attract Ants with hon­ey than Vinegar.
It is time for some­one oth­er than old Archie Bunker Patrick Lynch to lead the rank and file. Cops must take respon­si­bil­i­ty when they make mis­takes, not demo­nize vic­tims fur­ther. Lynch’s time has come and gone. We fer­vent­ly hope rank and file cops will show Lynch the door and that sergeants will send Ed Mullins right along with him.

Safaree Samuels put in work dur­ing his 11-year rela­tion­ship with Nicki Minaj, but he refus­es to be her “employ­ee.” Just before Christmas, the 32-year-old rap­per took cen­ter stage on Twitter to rant about his ex-love. On Tuesday, he had the chance to tell his side of the sto­ry. “I walked away,” he told New York City’s Power 105.1 FM’s “The Breakfast Club.” “I’m not going to say I broke up, but I’m the one who walked away,” he added. “I packed up my stuff and I left.” Minaj dished on their break up when she last inter­viewed with Power 105’s Angie Martinez. “This is some­body I grew up with,” the Queens-born rap­per said about Samuels. “I don’t even know how I’m going to func­tion with­out that per­son in my life. I nev­er lived my life as a famous per­son with­out him.”

When the “Bang Bang” rap­per did acquire fame, things start­ed to change in their rela­tion­ship. “Anything you don’t appre­ci­ate will be tak­en. God sees your ungrate­ful evil soul,”

She tweet­ed in late December. “Wanted fame. I gave u my bless­ing. I still love. I still love. I’ll always love. So dis­ap­point­ed,” she con­tin­ued, pulling lines from her hit “Pills N Potions” off her lat­est album “The Pinkprint,” which is said to have sev­er­al songs inspired by Minaj’s heart­break. While Samuels — whose rap name is Scaff Beezy — imme­di­ate­ly shot back on Twitter telling his ex-lady to “stop look­ing for pit­ty (sic),” he was reluc­tant to go fur­ther on the social media site. It was­n’t until Tuesday when he real­ly laid it all out. “I just got to the point where the respect was­n’t there,” he said. “Everyone around her works for her, you know?” he explained.

“So it got to the point where it was like, I’m your man. I’m who you go to sleep with every night. I’m who you wake up with every morn­ing. And it got to the point where I was being treat­ed like an employ­ee, instead of like her man.“Nydailynews.com

“The police must do every­thing they can to keep us safe”.

How many times have you heard this statement ?
Too often.
People say this with­out giv­ing a sin­gle thought to the con­se­quences of what it means to give police unfet­tered power.

Police Agencies and their offi­cers are wary and dis­trust­ful of over­sight and trans­paren­cy. Police fun­da­men­tal­ly believe they take risks so they deserve some lee-way. And they are giv­en much lee-way. But how much do they need? Does that mean they can­not and should not be held account­able for anything?

They believe many crit­ics are ardent anti-law-enforce­ment, anti-police anarchist.
True some are, there are many for whom cops can do noth­ing right.
Those are bal­anced out by those for whom cops can do no wrong.
Having left law-enforce­ment 24 years ago I am more sen­si­tized to some of the con­cerns cit­i­zens have and how they per­ceive law-enforcement.
It also brings into sharp­er focus how peo­ple are treat­ed, not just by law-enforce­ment offi­cers, but by the larg­er crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

Police offi­cers close ranks when out­siders ques­tion what they do. Nowhere is this more bla­tant than in the World’s largest Police Agency, the NYPD.

The NYPD has five Unions rep­re­sent­ing offi­cers at vary­ing ranks with­ing the struc­ture. The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association (NYPD-PBA being the largest rep­re­sent­ing approx­i­mate­ly 35,000 cops under the rank of Sergeant. At the head of the Union is Patrick Lynch.
Lynch is a loud-mouth rab­ble rous­ing self pro­mot­er who absolute­ly rel­ish­es the idea of hear­ing him­self talk. Ed Mullins is a sergeant, he heads the SBA the Union which advo­cates for sergeants. Recently Mullins referred to the Mayor as a nincompoop.
There’s respect for you!

Oversight and trans­paren­cy are good for police. It qui­ets crit­ics and pro­tects the lives of Officers. Yet cops are the first to resist over­sight and transparency. 
When cit­i­zens are unhap­py and believe there are cov­er-ups bad things hap­pen to police.
Immediately fol­low­ing the das­tard­ly and rep­re­hen­si­ble deci­sion by the Staten Island grand jury in the Eric Garner case, four cops were shot, two fatally.
Is that the kind of envi­ron­ment NYPD cops want to work in? How about vot­ing loud-mouthed right wing moron Lynch out and watch peo­ple coa­lesce around you? How about kick­ing Ed Mullins out, show respect to all cit­i­zens then watch peo­ple show you respect?

Respect? Where is the respect for the fam­i­lies who want­ed the Mayor to attend the funer­al of their loved ones? Where is the respect for the Mayor him­self? Where is their respect for their boss the Commissioner? Where is their respect for the city?
There is none !
The point is that the NYPD and it’s unions want the Mayor to agree with them killing peo­ple with­out account­abil­i­ty. They want to have every­one in their cor­ner so when they cir­cle the wag­ons there is no daylight.
How dare this Mayor, the father of a black son, tell his son to be cau­tious around police? Why would he do that? Police only unlaw­ful­ly and rou­tine­ly kill black men?
When they do no mat­ter the evi­dence there is no con­se­quence . So whats he talk­ing about ? This has gone on for hun­dreds of years, it’s noth­ing new, where does he get off not sid­ing with us?

The prob­lem with the NYPD as with any police agency is that there is a fail­ure of lead­er­ship. For the most part Rank and file cops are used as rev­enue agents and when it suits loud mouthed self-serv­ing idiots like Lynch and Mullins’ pur­pose, they are used for Political purposes.
When NYPD cops whine about not get­ting respect, whine about not get­ting sup­port, like cry-babies, they are actu­al­ly say­ing they are not sub­ject to civil­ian author­i­ty. The recent and ongo­ing dis­play of arro­gance and disrespect com­ing from mem­bers of the NYPD are not only the actions of cops who believe they are above the laws. It is a soft coup-de-ta to the duly con­sti­tut­ed author­i­ty vest­ed in the city’s Mayor,who hap­pened to cam­paign on Police reform.

The Police Union through it’s grand-stander-in-chief Patrick Lynch, swore that a 94% drop in tick­ets and sub­poe­nas issued does not rep­re­sent a work slow-down by cops unhap­py with the Mayor. They are incensed with the Mayor for allow­ing cit­i­zens to protest the unlaw­ful killing of Eric Garner by Daniel Pantaleo a Staten Island cop.

Even though Patrick Lynch and Ed Mullins lied that there was no work stop­page, he issued instruc­tions for cops to go back to doing their jobs to about 50% of their capacity.
His instruc­tions are do your job , just don’t be too zeal­ous. This we are told came as the chief of depart­ment threat­ens to crack down on cops , as he responds to pres­sure from com­mis­sion­er Bratton.

Crime con­tin­ues to drop with the absence of stop and frisk, or what is ref­er­eed to as the bro­ken win­dows pol­i­cy in new York City. Coupled with the 94% drop in low lev­el arrests and the issuance of sum­mons­es and sub­poe­nas, it proves that the City’s minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties are bear­ing the brunt of over-polic­ing , result­ing in extreme and undue fines and penal­ties. Many of the City’s pub­lic Defenders who watched a pre­cip­i­tous drop-off in the num­ber of peo­ple dragged before the courts, have stat­ed that New Yorkers are being brought before the courts on trumped up charges.

As it is in Ferguson Missouri, in cities and towns all across America, it is in New York City, Police are being used as rev­enue Agents.
Those who would give up their rights in pur­suit of secu­ri­ty end up with nei­ther. [Benjamin Franklin]

The more pow­er police gets is the more they crave. What they need is not more pow­er but more over­sight. We have already giv­en up too much of our rights and we still haven’t seen the secu­ri­ty we crave, At what point do we real­ize we have wound our­selves into a cocoon from which we may nev­er be able to extri­cate ourselves?
If the way America’s cops are behav­ing is a good met­ric by which we may mea­sure whether we have gone too far, we have already gone too far.