After Bruce Golding was forced to con­front the real­i­ty that Tivoli Gardens the epic cen­ter of his West Kingston con­stituen­cy was unten­able he act­ed. Golding act­ed because he was forced to act. I wrote an open let­ter to Golding which was car­ried in the Daily Gleaner upon his ascen­den­cy. In that let­ter I asked the then Prime Minister to be dif­fer­ent, I implored him to take on the man­tle of Bustamante , Hugh Shearer in a renewed com­mit­ment to Jamaica, I told him if he was pre­pared to do the heavy lift­ing, the peo­ple would fol­low him and he would be remem­bered as the Prime Minister. Not just anoth­er, in a line of prime ministers.

Mister Golding either did not read that let­ter, or he bla­tant­ly ignored it. Either way Mister Golding end­ed up the worse for it. Despite his short-com­ings, and we could spend our life­time argu­ing those from a polit­i­cal per­spec­tive, Golding was forced to rec­og­nize that the gar­ri­son cul­ture as it exist­ed could not be main­tained in this new world. Golding gave our coun­try Portia Simpson Miller and the sad incom­pe­tent lot the coun­try has today. And reduced his lega­cy to a foot note in his­to­ry. Leaders are not made they are born, one can­not lead from behind, one must make tough unpop­u­lar deci­sions to be a leader,buck the trends, remove the sta­tus quo. Golding in the end was capa­ble of neither.

As such Mister Golding was forced to release the pow­er of the state to repel what was a well orches­trat­ed and defi­ant attack on the rule of law and the Jamaican state by exten­sion. In the end over 70 peo­ple were report­ed­ly killed and Tivoli Gardens was annexed to Jamaica. Whether the peo­ple of that com­mu­ni­ty uses this oppor­tu­ni­ty to ingra­ti­ate them­selves with the oth­er com­mu­ni­ties which make up our coun­try, is up to them to decide. They have been released from the ten­ta­cles of gar­ri­son pol­i­tics. What they do with that oppor­tu­ni­ty will deter­mine whether or not the secu­ri­ty forces will ever have to enter that com­mu­ni­ty with force of arms, or they will ben­e­fit from the ser­vices of com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing which all civ­i­lized peo­ple are enti­tled to.

Scene: Military APC nav­i­gat­ing streets in Hannah town after ter­ror­ists went on a rampage. 

Revisionist his­to­ri­ans and crim­i­nal sup­port­ing groups if allowed will rewrite the sto­ry of what hap­pened, they will lie to the world that 70 inno­cent peo­ple were mur­dered by agents of the state. Nowhere in those litany of lies and dis­tor­tions will you see the Police sta­tions which were razed, burned to the ground by Jamaica’s urban terrorists.

Pictures of the Hannah Town Police Station on fire, and the Cross Rds. Police Station after a ter­ror assault on them

Nowhere will you see them talk­ing about the offi­cers killed in that assault. Nowhere will you hear about the scores of armed thugs who pledged their alle­giance to Christopher (Duddus) Coke. And nowhere will you hear these char­la­tans speak about the thugs who picked up their weapons and moved to Tivoli Gardens to do bat­tle against the state. When their lies are writ­ten and the revi­sion­ist sto­ries told there will be no men­tion of Officers of this Cop.Police Sargeant Wayne (Max) Henriques, who was called away from cel­e­brat­ing his wed­ding anniver­sary with his beau­ti­ful wife. In the Jamaican police ser­vice it is called (exi­gen­cies of the ser­vice).Sargeant Henriques could have said no when he was called, upon which he would have faced dis­ci­pli­nary action. He chose to hon­or his oath, the next time his fam­i­ly saw him again was when they iden­ti­fied his body at the morgue. Sergeant Henriques and his col­leagues were cut down in a hail of bul­lets on moun­tain view avenue as they tried to help strand­ed motorist. Wayne and oth­er police offi­cers who lost their lives will not be remem­bered by nei­ther of the two polit­i­cal gangs which alter­nate in rip­ping off our coun­try. They will not be remem­bered by the Editorial board of the news papers. They will not be hon­ored by the lap-dogs at the top of the con­stab­u­lary. And they damn sure will not be remem­bered by the crim­i­nal sup­port­ers at the for­eign fund­ed Jamaicans for Justice. The con­sol­ers and enablers of crim­i­nal­i­ty in our coun­try. We how­ev­er will nev­er let their sac­ri­fice be for nought. We will nev­er stop men­tion­ing their names.

This mas­sive crowd most­ly clad in white , were not march­ing to be free from the ten­ta­cles of orga­nized crime. They were march­ing , show­ing their sup­port for a thug that came from a long line of thugs, who ruled their com­mu­ni­ty with iron fists, doled out largess, and took advan­tage of their depen­den­cy. They knew no bet­ter, it is with­in those con­text police offi­cers are forced to enforce Jamaican laws, with zero sup­port from their polit­i­cal boss­es. Political boss­es who them­selves have bloody hands.

Today Coke is gone but the prob­lem remains, these same peo­ple are unem­ployed and some are unem­ploy­able, every­one has to eat and sleep some­where. Unless gov­ern­ment can offer the peo­ple what ghet­to enforcers like Coke and oth­ers pro­vid­ed , the secu­ri­ty forces will for­ev­er be seen as the ene­my to be shot at and pil­lo­ried. Those with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight will argue with­out any real knowl­edge that offi­cers should take all pre­cau­tions when they are shot at not to hurt inno­cent bystanders, this is para­mount for all mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces. As a for­mer mem­ber who was on the front­lines, I am all too aware of the dif­fi­cult nature of fight­ing a bat­tle where the ene­my observes no rules yet I am restrained at the per­il of life in prison, if my split sec­ond deci­sion of life and death is the incor­rect one.

Policing inner city com­mu­ni­ties in Jamaica is com­pa­ra­ble to the slums of Rio de Jenero Brasil, Bogata Columbia, Johannesburg South Africa, and the drug car­tel con­trolled areas of Mexico. As such I must point out that in 10 years of ser­vice in the JCF and hav­ing been shot at count­less times and hav­ing been involved in hun­dreds of high risk oper­a­tions, and hav­ing being shot ‚I was nev­er issued with a bal­lis­tic vest. Officers are asked to police a peo­ple who demon­stra­bly refus­es to con­form to the rule of law. There is ample evi­dence of mem­bers of iner city com­mu­ni­ties run­ning toward offi­cers doing their jobs and open­ly defy­ing and jeer­ing offi­cers in an attempt to shield the men who shoot at offi­cers. People in these com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly women are active par­tic­i­pants in the com­mis­sion of seri­ous crimes to include assaults which results in death of police offi­cers. They remove weapons and spent shells from scenes of shoot­ings cre­at­ing the impres­sion there was no shoot out .

Well mean­ing peo­ple who want to live their lives free from the scourge of crime would cer­tain­ly like a coun­try where cops do not car­ry guns.

We were at that place and what did we do? We start­ed fight­ing our police offi­cers, yes assault­ing an offi­cer in Jamaica became a sport. The same peo­ple who claim police aggres­sion nev­er opened their pie-holes to denounce those so-called (rude boys)who assault­ed our offi­cers and in many cas­es killed our offi­cers. They were silent. The same frauds were silent then as they are now when the inno­cent are slaugh­tered. There are places where police can be less aggres­sive, Jamaica is not one of those places. Olof Palme of Sweden thought as Prime Minister he was immune from vio­lence, he nev­er knew what hit him.

Olof Palme

Criminal sup­port­ing groups like JFJ is walk­ing a fine line. They sup­port mur­der­ers as a secu­ri­ty mea­sure, one day soon of the degen­er­ates who did not receive the memo will bring real­i­ty painful­ly home to these frauds. 

A Young col­league who went by the alias (fudge) was almost killed in Olympic gar­dens when an elder­ly woman grabbed him allow­ing her son to shoot him point-blank range ear­ly one morn­ing. Fudge sur­vived that bul­let, the elder­ly woman was let go by Jamaican crim­i­nal lov­ing judges, no con­se­quence. The son was not that lucky, Officers did not allow a judge to let that would be cop-killer walk free. When the mon­day morn­ing quar­ter­backs are doing with their pon­tif­i­cat­ing, talk­ing as if they know some­thing about being police offi­cer in Jamaica, let them vol­un­teer to ride with cops for a week. guar­an­teed they would piss what­ev­er they are wear­ing, and that includes the grand­stand­ing Zealots in the pub­lic defend­ers office, INDECOM, JFJ, the vil­lage lawyers in the media and whichev­er rock they live under.

These are some of the peo­ple whose car­rers it is to sec­ond guess every action of the police, though they nev­er have any­thing to say about the killing of police offi­cers. Earl Witter Public defend­er . Carolyn Gomes Criminal rights advo­cate. And Terrence Williams INDECOM commsisioner.

Has any­one noticed that the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group JFJ nev­er make men­tion of the weapons that are recov­ered from hood­lums in the west Kingston shoot out, or any oth­er? Do you know why they make no men­tion of the weapons tak­en off the streets? Because it would dele­git­imize their argu­ments! Jamaica is a pre­ten­tious soci­ety that pre­tends we have a sta­ble democ­ra­cy. As we saw in 2010 with the killing of law enforce­ment offi­cers and the burn­ing of police station,there are ele­ments with­in the soci­ety who are quite will­ing to take on the Jamaican state. Make no mis­take they are not com­mon crim­i­nals. When some­one picks up a weapon against the state that act becomes trea­so­nous. Any coun­try seri­ous about the rule of law would pros­e­cute these offend­ers and those who sup­port them to the full extent of the law. The fact of the mat­ter is, Jamaica despite what the crim­i­nal sup­port­ers tell you, is not an ordi­nary place . Police doing their jobs there do not do so with­in the frame-work of nor­mal polic­ing, there are a series of sit­u­a­tions that makes the par­a­digm dif​fer​ent​.To include. Terrain ‚types of weapons,types of crim­i­nals, men­tal­i­ty of the peo­ple being policed.

In devel­oped coun­tries when a person/​persons decide to use the kind of force that is used by Jamaican crim­i­nals , and the weapons they use comes into play. Police use over­whelm­ing force, and the first shot they get that threat is neu­tral­ized. Those who pon­tif­i­cate as if the know some­thing , do not know what they are talk­ing about. It’s always easy to sit and Monday-morn­ing quar­ter back , some­thing Jamaicans are very good at doing. Everyone has an opin­ion, irre­spec­tive of their lack of knowl­edge, they are will­ing to offer an opin­ion notwithstanding.

Having left the JCF I won­dered, “why did I risk my life to serve”? Then I con­soled myself “I did not serve because I loved the ingrates, I served because I love my coun­try”. We will nev­er sur­ren­der to crim­i­nal thugs or their sup­port­ers. If the bat­tle needs to be ele­vat­ed to anoth­er lev­el , then that may be what peo­ple will have to do. The peo­ple of Columbia took back their coun­try, we will take back our country.

SUBMITTED HERE FOR YOUR INFORMATION IS THE MOST RECENT NARCOTICS CONTROL STRATEGY REPORT RELEASED TO THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS:

The 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) has raised grave wor­ries about Jamaica’s progress in drug fighting.
The report was sub­mit­ted today to the United States Congress.
The report notes that the Commissioner of Police faces inter­nal, judi­cial, and polit­i­cal road­blocks that are hin­der­ing reforms man­dat­ed by Jamaica’s 2007 Police Strategic Review Implementation Plan.
But the doc­u­ment notes that the Commissioner has tak­en a strong pub­lic stance against cor­rup­tion, and is con­tin­u­ing to imple­ment and expand the plan.
It also claims that high-pro­file orga­nized crime gangs con­tin­ued to suc­cess­ful­ly oper­ate with­in Jamaica and gang lead­ers are often afford­ed com­mu­ni­ty and, in some cas­es, police protection.
The INCSR reviews con­di­tions in the major illic­it drug-pro­duc­ing coun­tries, the major drug-tran­sit coun­tries, and the major source coun­tries for pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals used in the pro­duc­tion of illic­it nar­cotics. In addi­tion, the INCSR dis­cuss­es con­di­tions in the major mon­ey-laun­der­ing countries.
This is the 29^th edi­tion of the annu­al report to Congress and cov­ers the cal­en­dar year 2011.
See full report on Jamaica below.
A. Introduction
Jamaica con­tin­ues to be the largest Caribbean sup­pli­er of mar­i­jua­na to the United States. Although cocaine and syn­thet­ic drugs are not pro­duced local­ly, Jamaica is a tran­sit point for drugs traf­ficked from South America to North America. Drug pro­duc­tion and traf­fick­ing are both enabled and accom­pa­nied by orga­nized crime, domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al gang activ­i­ty, and police and gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion. The gun trade for illic­it drugs exac­er­bates the prob­lem as undoc­u­ment­ed hand­guns are moved into the coun­try in exchange for drugs.
Drugs flow into, through and from Jamaica in small boats and large ves­sels (both inside the ves­sel and in par­a­site con­tain­ers attached to the hull), as con­tra­band car­ried by ship and air­craft pas­sen­gers, with­in ship­ping con­tain­ers, and to a lim­it­ed degree by pri­vate air­craft. Most drugs leav­ing Jamaica are bound for North America. However, some amounts of mar­i­jua­na and cocaine are smug­gled from Jamaica into England, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, either using per­son­al couri­ers, car­go on com­mer­cial air­craft, or by insert­ing the drugs into ship­ping con­tain­ers that pass through Kingston’s busy con­tain­er ter­mi­nal and con­tin­ue onto Europe.
Factors that con­tribute to drug traf­fick­ing are the country’s con­ve­nient posi­tion as a point for nar­cotics being traf­ficked from Latin America; its lengthy, rugged and dif­fi­cult-to-patrol coast­line; a high vol­ume of tourist trav­el by indi­vid­u­als and pri­vate boats; its sta­tus as a major trans­ship­ment point for ship­ping con­tain­ers between Asia, Latin America, Europe and Africa; and, a strug­gling econ­o­my that encour­ages cul­ti­va­tion of mar­i­jua­na in remote swamps and moun­tain areas.
Law enforce­ment author­i­ties are mod­er­ate­ly effec­tive in com­bat­ing illic­it traf­fick­ing with com­pe­tent and ded­i­cat­ed lead­er­ship, but their efforts are under­cut by a slow and mar­gin­al­ly effec­tive crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, a lack of suf­fi­cient resources, and cor­rup­tion. Jamaican law stip­u­lates that pos­ses­sion or use of cocaine; hero­in, mar­i­jua­na, and ecsta­sy are ille­gal and sub­ject to crim­i­nal and civ­il penal­ties. The ille­git­i­mate pos­ses­sion of pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals is also pro­hib­it­ed by law.
Jamaica is a sig­na­to­ry to the 1988 UN Drug Convention.
B. Drug Control Accomplishments, Policies, and Trends
1. Institutional Development
Coöperation remains strong between the Governments of Jamaica and the United States in an effort to curb nar­cotics and relat­ed transna­tion­al crime. The United States’ pri­ma­ry part­ners are the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), Jamaica Customs, and the Ministry of Finance’s Financial Investigation Division.
The Jamaican gov­ern­ment and the United States have a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) that assists in evi­dence shar­ing. Both gov­ern­ments have a rec­i­p­ro­cal asset shar­ing agree­ment and a bilat­er­al law enforce­ment agree­ment gov­ern­ing coöper­a­tion to stop the mar­itime flow of ille­gal drugs. Jamaica is a par­ty to the Inter-American Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, the 1961 UN Single Convention as amend­ed by the 1972 Protocol, the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the 1988 UN Drug Convention, the 1996 Inter-American Convention Against Corruption, the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and its three pro­to­cols, and the UN Convention Against Corruption. The Jamaican gov­ern­ment has signed, but has not rat­i­fied, the Caribbean Regional Maritime Counterdrug Agreement.
The 1991 extra­di­tion treaty between the United States and Jamaica is active­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly used by the United States to extra­dite sus­pect­ed crim­i­nals from Jamaica. Extradition requests are nor­mal­ly processed in a rou­tine and effi­cient man­ner by Jamaican polit­i­cal and judi­cial authorities.
Realizing that fight­ing gangs, drugs, and transna­tion­al crime begins at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, the JCF increased com­mu­ni­ty-based polic­ing (CBP) efforts with U.S. sup­port. CBP is now the offi­cial pol­i­cy of the JCF and is incor­po­rat­ed into pre-ser­vice train­ing for all police recruits. The CBP pro­gram spread from three pilot com­mu­ni­ties in 2008 to 360 com­mu­ni­ties in 2011. Of the JCF’s 8,444 front line offi­cers, 5,609 received train­ing in CBP prac­tices with the remain­der sched­uled for train­ing. Civilian accep­tance of CBP is facil­i­tat­ed through pro­grams such as a safe schools pro­gram and youth civic engagement.
The Commissioner of Police faces inter­nal, judi­cial, and polit­i­cal road­blocks that hin­der reforms man­dat­ed by Jamaica’s 2007 Police Strategic Review Implementation Plan. The Commissioner has tak­en a strong pub­lic stance against cor­rup­tion, is con­tin­u­ing to imple­ment and expand the plan, and has made steady progress toward insti­tu­tion­al reform. However, it is unclear whether the Commissioner will secure con­tin­ued leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive sup­port, both in fund­ing and polit­i­cal back­ing, to make sig­nif­i­cant and endur­ing progress in com­bat­ing police cor­rup­tion and trans­form­ing the institution.
2. Supply Reduction
Marijuana is grown in all four­teen parish­es of Jamaica. An esti­mat­ed 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of mar­i­jua­na is gen­er­al­ly found in areas inac­ces­si­ble to vehic­u­lar traf­fic on small plots in moun­tain­ous areas and along the trib­u­taries of the Black River in Saint Elizabeth parish. The JCF and JDF employ teams of civil­ian cut­ters to cut grow­ing plants and who are escort­ed by the mil­i­tary or police. Teams seize seedlings and cured mar­i­jua­na and burn them in the field. Jamaican law pro­hibits the use of her­bi­cides, and only man­u­al erad­i­ca­tion is conducted.
Eradication of mar­i­jua­na (cannabis, seedlings, seeds, and nurs­eries) increased from 2010: 707 hectares of cannabis were erad­i­cat­ed; 1,900,630 seedlings destroyed and 480 kilos of seeds destroyed in 2011 when com­pared to 447 hectares, 956,300 seedlings and 255 kilos of seeds in 2010. Additional progress in erad­i­ca­tion efforts is hin­dered by the Jamaican government’s fis­cal con­straints and the unavail­abil­i­ty of JDF air­craft to locate mar­i­jua­na fields and trans­port per­son­nel to the remote areas where the crops are grown.
Jamaica pro­hibits the man­u­fac­ture, sale, trans­port, and pos­ses­sion of ecsta­sy, metham­phet­a­mine, and reg­u­lates the pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals used to pro­duce them. Jamaica does not pro­duce pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals or oth­er chem­i­cal sub­stances and, relies on coun­tries export­ing goods to con­form to inter­na­tion­al stan­dards gov­ern­ing export ver­i­fi­ca­tion. The impor­ta­tion and sale of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts and chem­i­cal sub­stances are reg­u­lat­ed and rein­forced with fines or impris­on­ment. Other con­trols exist to mon­i­tor the usage of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts and chem­i­cal sub­stances includ­ing reg­is­ter con­trols, inspec­tions, and audits.
Smugglers con­tin­ued to use mar­itime ship­ping con­tain­ers, ships, small boats, air­craft and couri­ers to move drugs from and through Jamaica to the United States. Seizures of mar­i­jua­na-relat­ed prod­ucts improved in 2011, with 47,691 kilos of cannabis and 170 kilos of hash oil in 2011, com­pared to 39,291 kilos and 121 kilos in 2010, respec­tive­ly, although hashish decreased to 9 kilos in 2011 from 13 in 2010. Seizures of cocaine increased to 552 kilos in 2011 from 176 kilos in 2010, though crack cocaine dropped to 1.3 kilos in 2011 from 5.98 in 2010.
High- pro­file orga­nized crime gangs con­tin­ued to suc­cess­ful­ly oper­ate with­in Jamaica. Gang lead­ers are often afford­ed com­mu­ni­ty and, in some cas­es, police pro­tec­tion. Nevertheless, drug-relat­ed arrests increased to 20,216 in 2011, com­pared to 10,255 in 2010.
3. Drug Abuse Awareness, Demand Reduction, and Treatment
The JCF reports that mar­i­jua­na is used by nine per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, mak­ing it the most abused illic­it drug among Jamaicans, while cocaine abuse reached a plateau of less than 0.1 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion over the last 10 years. There is evi­dence that new drugs, such as hero­in and ecsta­sy, entered the Jamaican domes­tic mar­ket in small amounts.
To com­bat the use of illic­it drugs, the Ministry of Health’s National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA) was estab­lished by statute in 1982. NCDA field offi­cers pro­vide sup­port to the pri­ma­ry care sys­tem through the assess­ment of sub­stance abusers in the men­tal health sys­tem. Also, the Jamaican government’s National Health Fund (NHF) estab­lished and fund­ed 18 com­mu­ni­ty med­ical clin­ics across the island, pri­mar­i­ly through faith- based insti­tu­tions, that pro­vide pri­ma­ry treat­ment ser­vices with refer­rals to hos­pi­tals, clin­ics, physi­cians, psy­chol­o­gists, and psy­chi­a­trists. The clin­ics pro­vide drug-relat­ed coun­sel­ing and trau­ma services.
The Jamaican gov­ern­ment oper­ates one detox­i­fi­ca­tion cen­ter locat­ed at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Organization of American States Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), Jamaica offers a uni­ver­si­ty-lev­el cer­tifi­cate pro­gram in drug addic­tion and drug pre­ven­tion. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) works direct­ly with the Jamaican gov­ern­ment and NGOs on demand reduc­tion; how­ev­er, due to lim­it­ed resources, these pro­grams have lit­tle impact.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) reg­u­lates phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, includ­ing the impor­ta­tion of pseu­doephedrine, both in pow­der and final prod­uct forms. The NCDA, the Pharmacy Council, and the MOH work to expand aware­ness among health pro­fes­sion­als about the poten­tial dan­ger of pseu­doephedrine and ephedrine when they are divert­ed to pro­duce metham­phet­a­mine. The NCDA col­lab­o­rates with oth­er non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions to pro­vide non-res­i­den­tial drug coun­sel­ing services.
4. Corruption
As a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, the Jamaican gov­ern­ment does not encour­age or facil­i­tate ille­gal activ­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with drug traf­fick­ing; nor are any senior Jamaican offi­cials known to engage in such activ­i­ty. Nevertheless, cor­rup­tion of pub­lic offi­cials con­tin­ues to be a major con­cern to the Jamaican and U.S. gov­ern­ments as well as most Jamaicans. The law penal­izes offi­cial cor­rup­tion; how­ev­er, cor­rup­tion is entrenched, wide­spread, and com­pound­ed by a judi­cial sys­tem that is poor­ly equipped to han­dle com­plex crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions in a time­ly manner.
Corruption under­mines efforts against drug and oth­er major crimes and is a major fac­tor in allow­ing the pas­sage of drugs and drug pro­ceeds through Jamaica. An improv­ing anti-cor­rup­tion stance with­in Jamaican cus­toms enforce­ment, the JCF, the Jamaica Tax Administration, and the Office of the Contractor General has shown encour­ag­ing signs. Additionally, the USAID-sup­port­ed National Integrity Action Forum helped focus increased pub­lic and gov­ern­ment atten­tion on anti-cor­rup­tion reforms.
The Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) of the JCF has shown suc­cess in iden­ti­fy­ing and remov­ing offi­cers engaged in cor­rup­tion. Since the ACB’s incep­tion in 2008, 319 JCF per­son­nel have been dis­missed for uneth­i­cal or cor­rupt behav­ior, with 69 of those dis­missed in 2011. Another 44 offi­cers faced crim­i­nal cor­rup­tion charges dur­ing the year. The JCF’s suc­cess is due part­ly to mech­a­nisms that allow it to dis­miss cor­rupt or uneth­i­cal offi­cers when evi­dence is insuf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. For exam­ple, the JCF requires high lev­el police offi­cers to sign employ­ment con­tracts that improve account­abil­i­ty and facil­i­tate speedy dis­missal for cor­rupt or uneth­i­cal behav­ior. Vetting and a poly­graph exam­i­na­tion are also required for pro­mo­tions into key positions.
The JDF has been effec­tive in iden­ti­fy­ing and respond­ing to cor­rup­tion with­in its ranks. The JDF, while not immune from cor­rup­tion, takes swift dis­ci­pli­nary action when war­rant­ed in fur­ther­ance of its zero tol­er­ance policy.
A bill cre­at­ing an Anti-Corruption Special Prosecutor is being con­sid­ered by Parliament, but no action is expect­ed soon. Efforts by leg­is­la­tors from both polit­i­cal par­ties to dilute the effec­tive­ness of the mea­sure threat­en its prospec­tive impact on curb­ing gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion. There has not been leg­isla­tive action to cre­ate a National Anti-cor­rup­tion Agency, which is required by the Inter-American Convention against Corruption to which Jamaica is a signatory.
C. National Goals, Bilateral Coöperation, and U.S. Policy Initiatives Supporting Jamaica’s trans­for­ma­tion into a more secure, demo­c­ra­t­ic, and pros­per­ous part­ner rep­re­sents a major U.S. pol­i­cy goal. Narcotics traf­fick­ing, cor­rup­tion, and crime under­mine the rule of law, demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance, eco­nom­ic growth, and the qual­i­ty of life for all Jamaicans. In response, the United States is work­ing to enhance the effec­tive­ness and capac­i­ty of Jamaica’s law enforce­ment and crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Within the fab­ric of all U.S. aid to Jamaica, beyond that relat­ing only to law enforce­ment and jus­tice, is the acknowl­edge­ment that suc­cess depends on a com­pre­hen­sive approach that rec­og­nizes the link between drugs, gangs, orga­nized crime, pover­ty, unem­ploy­ment, lack of edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and gov­ern­ment corruption.
The U.S. sup­port to com­bat nar­cotics pro­duc­tion and traf­fick­ing in Jamaica includes train­ing, equip­ment and logis­ti­cal assis­tance to the JCF and JDF. For exam­ple, fund­ing sup­ports con­tin­ued mar­i­jua­na erad­i­ca­tion oper­a­tions, logis­ti­cal sup­port to the JDF Coast Guard and JCF Marine Division for inter­dic­tion of nar­cotics traf­fick­ing in coastal waters, and enhance­ment of bor­der secu­ri­ty at air and sea ports for Jamaica Customs. Additional sup­port focus­es on spe­cial­ized JCF units that tar­get nar­cotics and gangs, on JCF crime scene inves­tiga­tive and foren­sic analy­sis capac­i­ty, and on train­ing for pros­e­cu­tors involved in pros­e­cut­ing nar­cotics, cor­rup­tion and finan­cial crimes. Indirect sup­port for coun­ternar­cotics efforts is fur­nished through the devel­op­ment of effec­tive com­mu­ni­ty-police rela­tions, improve­ment of JCF train­ing facil­i­ties, and anti-cor­rup­tion ini­tia­tives with­in the JCF, plus edu­ca­tion and work­force devel­op­ment pro­grams tar­get­ing at-risk youth who are sus­cep­ti­ble to nar­cotics and gang influence.
The pri­ma­ry source of U.S. fund­ing in sup­port of law enforce­ment and jus­tice reform is through the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), which con­tains both bilat­er­al and region­al fund­ing mech­a­nisms. The pro­gram­ming of region­al funds is guid­ed by tech­ni­cal work­ing groups com­prised of rep­re­sen­ta­tives from par­tic­i­pat­ing Caribbean coun­tries. The region­al com­po­nent of CBSI is instru­men­tal in achiev­ing U.S. goals in Jamaica because the chal­lenges it faces are large­ly shared by Caribbean neighbors.
D. Conclusion
Through essen­tial­ly sol­id demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and the efforts of strong lead­ers with­in the gov­ern­ment, Jamaica is mak­ing slow, but steady progress in com­bat­ing the crim­i­nal scourges that plague the country’s polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and social well-being, name­ly the illic­it traf­fick­ing of nar­cotics and firearms, vio­lent crime, cor­rup­tion, gangs and orga­nized crime. Carefully tar­get­ed U.S. sup­port, com­bined with efforts from oth­er inter­na­tion­al part­ners – in par­tic­u­lar Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union – is help­ing to make a dif­fer­ence in that battle.
Success sto­ries can be found in JCF efforts to root out cor­rup­tion through its ACB, by its ini­tia­tive to inoc­u­late com­mu­ni­ties from crime and gang influ­ence using com­mu­ni­ty ‑based polic­ing, and with spe­cial­ized JCF vet­ted units attack­ing nar­cotics and gangs. Successes are also found with­in the offices of INDECOM, the Financial Investigation Division and the Contractor General, where com­pe­tent, ded­i­cat­ed and vet­ted per­son­nel are strug­gling with lim­it­ed resources to turn the tide against police killings, finan­cial crime and gov­ern­ment corruption.
Despite encour­ag­ing signs with­in Jamaica’s law enforce­ment agen­cies, progress is less evi­dent with­in Jamaica’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as a whole. The judi­cial branch remains ill-equipped to han­dle a large num­ber of crim­i­nal cas­es and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al effi­ca­cy is also lack­ing. As a result, there are a large num­ber of gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion cas­es for await­ing pros­e­cu­tion, and con­vic­tions are few as the cas­es may be put off for years with­out result.
Future U.S. efforts should con­tin­ue to sus­tain the momen­tum gained with­in Jamaica’s law enforce­ment agen­cies, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the areas of mar­itime secu­ri­ty, cor­rup­tion, gangs and orga­nized crime. The United States should focus enhanced sup­port and pres­sure for demon­stra­ble progress by pros­e­cu­tors and the courts in mov­ing crim­i­nal sus­pects through the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

Treasonous crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group Jamaicans for jus­tice, more com­mon­ly referred to as JFJ, has launched a broad­side against the Jamaican police for tak­ing out ter­ror­ists who engage them in shootouts with high-pow­ered weapons

(Jamaica Gleaner photo)

The lat­est ver­bal assault against the police in sup­port of Jamaica’s crim­i­nals was launched by Susan Goffe today. In her speech at a press con­fer­ence at their head­quar­ters Goffe said quote: This is the largest loss of life at the hands of the State since the end of slav­ery.” “This orgy of blood­let­ting by the police must end now.” 

Goffe called on Police Commissioner Owen Ellington to imme­di­ate­ly remove all police per­son­nel involved in the most recent inci­dents from front line duties.“They must remain off front line duty until the courts have deter­mined that they act­ed legal­ly,”(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

In what oth­er coun­try where the rule of law is para­mount ‚would this Charlatan even have the nerve to sug­gest that hero­ic law-enforce­ment offi­cers be removed for tak­ing out ter­ror­ists? These are some of the most dead­ly crim­i­nals armed with lethal high-pow­ered weapons. Anyone famil­iar with Jamaica knows they are not afraid to use them on anyone.

Crime has gone up sig­nif­i­cant­ly under this Government since it took office after the most recent elec­tions of December 29^th 2011. There is a gen­er­al con­sen­sus on the streets that this gov­ern­ment is one that is soft on crime. Criminals open­ly state that this is the gov­ern­ment which allows them to “eat a food” (Eating a food is )col­lo­qui­al ver­nac­u­lar that trans­lates into being allowed to make mon­ey, irre­spec­tive of the ille­gal­i­ty of the methodology.

Carolyn Gomes.

Goffe and Gomes parade as defend­ers of the oppressed, but they are not defend­ers of rights they have end­ed up being the biggest sup­port­ers of the most ruth­less crim­i­nals run­ning around slaugh­ter­ing men, women and chil­dren all over the country.

Their cam­paign against law-enforce­ment has being bor­der­ing on aid­ing and abet­ting the most ruth­less crim­i­nals oper­at­ing in the coun­try today.

There is a war going on, The secu­ri­ty forces in Jamaica are not< let me re-empha­size NOT oper­at­ing under nor­mal polic­ing pro­ce­dures. There is an exis­ten­tial fight going on with some of the world’s most blood thirsty urban ter­ror­ist. As such, any causal­ly that accrues can­not be looked at with­in the con­text of nor­mal polic­ing. Of note, absent from the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing JFJ’s dia­tribe is any men­tion of the peo­ple being killed by their maraud­ing friends. There is no men­tion of the guns removed from the bat­tle field. Four in the west Kingston inci­dent alone. There is no men­tion of the lethal­i­ty of the weapons ‚to include the most feared weapon of all the AK47 rifle. This crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group must now be looked at for what it is . If the police was a com­pe­tent police force they would and should be inves­ti­gat­ing this group for sedi­tion and trea­son. Law abid­ing cit­i­zens will have to make a deci­sion ‚as to how long they will be will­ing to tol­er­ate this crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group to exist with­in our coun­try, fund­ed and direct­ed by over­seas interests.

While the police are busy tak­ing out crim­i­nal ele­ments. The call of the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing group JFJ is not falling on deaf ears. Not want­i­ng to be out­done the coun­try’s nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Peter Bunting has ordered the com­mis­sion­er of police Owen Ellington to review police operations.

(Peter Bunting Jamaica’s nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter)(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

As I point­ed out to you in a recent post this is exact­ly what crim­i­nals incar­cer­at­ed at the Horizon Remand cen­ter want­ed. Recent flare-ups are designed to have mem­bers of the mil­i­tary removed from con­trol over high risk inmates incar­cer­at­ed there. They have achieved the desired results, inso­far as the inmates and their sup­port­ers are con­cerned. As I told you those mem­bers of the mil­i­tary would be removed, well they have been removed. This is a mul­ti pronged approach launched by crim­i­nals in prison, on the streets and the forces that inter­cede on their behalf. They know this gov­ern­ment is a weak on enforc­ing the laws and they are not let­ting up. Recently Jamaican disc jock­ey Adijah Palmer aka Vybes Kartel who is also incar­cer­at­ed await­ing tri­al on mul­ti­ple mur­der charges had a promi­nent mem­ber of the University of the West Indies(UWI) Carolyn Cooper argu­ing in the Daily Gleaner that Palmer who is charged with mul­ti­ple cas­es of mur­der could not be so stu­pid to com­mit those mur­ders. This despite the misog­y­nis­tic garbage that Palmer puts out in the name of music, and her not hav­ing a shred of excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence that would prove Palmer’s inno­cence on nei­ther of the charges. Her entire the­o­ry is hinged on her premise that Palmer could not be that stu­pid. Carolyn Cooper lec­tures at the University!! See sto­ry here:(jamaica​glean​er​.com).

The great­est threat to the Jamaican state is the weak­ness of the present gov­ern­ment. This is a dan­ger­ous­ly feck­less gov­ern­ment that is still pop­u­lat­ed with the same peo­ple of the last PNP admin­is­tra­tion which last­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ years and turned out to be a colos­sal fail­ure. During the afore­men­tioned peri­od the nation­al secu­ri­ty of our coun­try was left hang­ing, mort­gaged out to those who fight for the most bru­tal­ly mur­der­ous ele­ments amongst us. During this débâ­cle, crime went up and busi­ness­es fled as they did in the 70’s. Every year under the past PNP Administration over 1600 Jamaicans were slaughtered.A new Government came into being and they were forced to release the secu­ri­ty forces to do their jobs. As a result of the un shack­ling of the secu­ri­ty forces crime went down 40% after Tivoli Gardens rean­nex­a­tion to Jamaica. In the three months since the PNP has been returned to pow­er, crime has explod­ed to wit crim­i­nals feel ener­gised and con­fi­dent to once again take on the secu­ri­ty forces, now claim­ing “this is PNP time”, this is the infor­ma­tion com­ing from the streets.

As the prime min­is­ter attends galas thrown in her hon­or, and as she ingra­ti­ate her­self into mat­ters like crick­et that she was not elect­ed to fix, the coun­try is once again being over-run by the most heart­less crim­i­nals. Once again our coun­try has a deci­sion to make , the Jamaican peo­ple must, as oth­er coun­tries are doing, take their future into their own hands. Jamaicans must tell this gov­ern­ment that if they do not unshack­le the police they will take the laws into their own hands , and the gov­ern­ment must live with the consequence.

Jamaica’s crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty are fight­ing to have some of the coun­tries most bar­bar­ic pris­on­ers removed from the com­pe­tent super­vi­sion of the coun­try’s mil­i­tary. These men are housed at a facil­i­ty called the Horizon Remand Center in Kingston. We are reli­ably informed some of them are on a hunger strike in an attempt to draw atten­tion to their claims of being abused. My heart felt sug­ges­tion is to let these mur­der­ers have their wish let them starve to death. As I have talked about in two pre­vi­ous blogs, at the heart of this now report­ed hunger strike, are ser­i­al con­vict­ed mur­der­ers who are final­ly made to con­form with dis­ci­pline. They have devised a plan to assault mem­bers of the mil­i­tary guard­ing them, throw­ing fae­ces on them and when they are sub­dued they have high-priced defense lawyers fil­ing legal briefs in the coun­try’s high­est court claim­ing abuse.

No one is sug­gest­ing that any pris­on­er incar­cer­at­ed by the state should be rou­tine­ly or sum­mar­i­ly abused, far from it, These men are absolute­ly not the aver­age run of the mill inmates these are large­ly con­vict­ed mur­der­ers, who have fig­ured out how to manip­u­late the sys­tem in order to con­tin­ue to run their crim­i­nal enter­pris­es from inside the prison sys­tem This is a well thought out strat­e­gy that is being enhanced by the gov­ern­ment which has assigned every agency they can get their hands on to com­mence inves­ti­ga­tions. Exactly what these mur­der­ing slime balls want­ed in the first place.

Leading the charge in con­demn­ing the sol­diers and demand­ing their removal, for doing what they were sup­posed to do, con­trol vio­lent mur­der­ers is this woman Carolyn Gomes a pedi­a­tri­cian who has found­ed a far left lob­by group called Jamaicans for justice(JFJ). She has used every tool at her dis­pos­al includ­ing align­ing her­self with International Human Rights Organizations which actu­al­ly do real Human rights work for the advance­ment and uplift­ing of humanity.

Gomes how­ev­er has used her immense influ­ence in Jamaica , to impact leg­is­la­tion heav­i­ly in favor of crim­i­nals. Gomes we are told has a per­son­al vendet­ta against police offi­cers, of course in Jamaica being against the police is a cer­tain path­way to fame, and suc­cess. The Government has bestowed the Order of Jamaica on her , a high nation­al Honor. She has also received the 2008 human rights prize for her state­ments alleg­ing Extra-judi­cial killings by police. This is not to say there haven’t been and still aren’t cas­es of eye­brow rais­ing accounts of police shoot­ing. The fact is Gomes has no inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion that will indict accounts of events giv­en by police inves­ti­ga­tors or any oth­er agency that are part of the coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem, to include the office of the Director of Public Prosecutor. Gomes a soft-spo­ken woman ‚eas­i­ly like­able is a decep­tive char­la­tan whom has wormed her way into the hearts and sym­pa­thy of those with whom she cross­es paths.America’s quar­ter­ly 

Every year thou­sands of Jamaica’s 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple are direct­ly or indi­rect­ly impact­ed by crime and acts of ter­ror, per­pet­u­at­ed by heart­less, heav­i­ly armed men whom have decid­ed­ly adopt­ed a pos­ture of liv­ing by their own rules. They mur­der , rape, and com­mit all types of egre­gious acts against some of their own kind, but large­ly against inno­cent Jamaicans. The coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem is a revolv­ing door which allows crim­i­nals arrest­ed on mul­ti­ple mur­der charges back onto the streets time and again only to see them kill over and over again, only to be arrest­ed and grant­ed bail again and again. The police are under­paid, under­staffed, cor­rupt in some instances, under appre­ci­at­ed, and un sup­port­ed by ade­quate leg­is­la­tion which would make their work eas­i­er and the coun­try safer.

The courts are over-bur­dened with case loads to the point cop killers are told by Judges to go home, after the court is unable to empan­el a jury 11 years after they were arrest­ed . These are men who ambushed a police offi­cer slaugh­tered him and stole his pis­tol. They are walk­ing the streets of Jamaica free men, That is what the lives of police offi­cers are worth in Jamaica.

This is just the tip of the ice­berg, the sys­tem is gross­ly over­bur­dened. As we speak there are tens of thou­sands of seri­ous cas­es that are before the courts that may nev­er see a res­o­lu­tion. In essence those offend­ers, some of them mur­der­ers, will nev­er pay for their crimes.

In addi­tion only about 32% of mur­ders are actu­al­ly cleared up by the JCF and an even more depress­ing 7% con­vic­tion rate in the courts. Due large­ly to shod­dy inves­tiga­tive work by police, inept pros­e­cu­tion, reluc­tant wit­ness­es, and in many cas­es sim­ple things like no copi­er in the court’s office to repro­duce doc­u­ments. This in a coun­try which spends 10’s of mil­lions of dol­lars upgrad­ing gov­ern­ment hous­es for Ministers of Government.

I have placed here for your infor­ma­tion and analy­sis the facts as they are made avail­able, due to the invalu­able work of the peo­ple at the Jamaica Observer .These are the peo­ple mem­bers of Jamaica’s mil­i­tary are being per­se­cut­ed for subduing.

THIS A SHAMEFUL AND DISGUSTING ASSAULT ON MEMBERS OF OUR FINE MILITARY. MEN AND WOMEN WHO RISK THEIR LIVES WITHOUT GOVERNMENT SUPPORT TO DEFEND JAMAICA FROM ANARCHY. THESE ARE THE SLIME BALLS ON WHOSE BEHALF THE GOVERNMENT AND CRIMINAL RIGHTS LOBBY ARE PERSECUTING OUR SOLDIERS :

Yesterday I spoke to you about the state of Criminal Justice in Jamaica in part one of what I intend to be a two-part series on the sub­ject. This is not the first time that I have spo­ken about Jamaica’s bro­ken and woe­ful­ly inept crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and it cer­tain­ly will not be the last. As long as the sys­tem is as decrepit as it is, I will con­tin­ue to shine a light on it. I am unre­strained from telling the truth as I am not in the employ of that sys­tem any­more , nei­ther do I intend to be a part of it in the future. One thing is cer­tain, is that one does­n’t need to be inside a fire to know that it is hot, one does not need to be an expert to know that if one jumps off the Flat Bridge he will land in water. We live in a tech­no­log­i­cal age which makes access to infor­ma­tion rather easy. Under free­dom of infor­ma­tion laws gov­ern­ments and agen­cies are not allowed to be Judge and Jury in deter­min­ing whether the pub­lic has access to per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion it needs. The Jamaican Supreme Court for exam­ple has a web­site where all the per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion that may be required by inter­est­ed par­ties are post­ed. Subsequently it is a lit­tle naïve’ for any­one to believe or sug­gest that one has to be immersed with­in the sys­tem in order to under­stand or ful­ly appre­ci­ate what the inner work­ings are. Conversely I dare­say it is rather unique­ly Jamaican that we con­tin­ue to delude our­selves into think­ing that only cer­tain peo­ple who are indeed heav­i­ly invest­ed and or immersed with­in a par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline may appro­pri­ate­ly address that par­tic­u­lar dis­ci­pline. What we have found is that mis­con­cep­tion is direct­ly attrib­ut­able to some of the prob­lems that are plagu­ing our coun­try today.

I incor­po­rat­ed the for­gone para­graph in response to my very good friend and for­mer col­league who was real­ly kind to respond to the pre­vi­ous blog. I appre­ci­ate his response and find him cred­i­ble and hero­ic in voic­ing his opin­ion with­out hid­ing behind a moniker even as he still resides in Jamaica.

Carolyn Gomes Director of Jamaicans for Justice.

Yesterday I told you Jamaica’s nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy could be summed up in a sin­gle sen­tence (“spend all you can to pro­tect the most despi­ca­ble mur­der­ers”) It did not take long after I wrote that blog for the most notable face of crim­i­nal sup­port in Jamaica to emerge in sup­port of the most heart­less, bru­tal, cold-blood­ed mur­der­ers on our planet.

Carolyn Gomes is prob­a­bly a decent woman, but she is woe­ful­ly mis­guid­ed. I too believe every­one is enti­tled to pro­tec­tions under the laws, but Gomes by her actions have made it sig­nif­i­cant­ly and abun­dant­ly clear that she has used the Agency she heads (Jamaicans for Justice) as a tool against law enforce­ment and as a source of sup­port for the most hard­ened mur­der­ers oper­at­ing in Jamaica. There is no ratio­nal expla­na­tion for the craven posi­tions she and her agency takes in the defense of crim­i­nals, with­out even an attempt to bal­ance that unmit­i­gat­ed sup­port with empa­thy for crime vic­tims who have suf­fered at the hands of these mur­der­ers. As one could rea­son­ably expect she wast­ed no time in com­ing out in defense of these crim­i­nals , not sug­gest­ing, but demand­ing that mem­bers of the mil­i­tary be removed from the remand cen­ter, and effec­tive con­trol of prisoners. 

Make no mis­take this will hap­pen. Never mind that author­i­ties have cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly stat­ed that the high-pro­file crim­i­nals at the heart of this issue are doing so because they want exact­ly what Gomes wants for them. They want to be removed from the con­trol of the Military, they want to be returned to gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion where they will be under the super­vi­sion of inept, poor­ly trained,corrupt cor­rec­tion offi­cers(warders).

This begs the ques­tion was this response coör­di­nat­ed with the brief filed in the Supreme Court on behalf of the same crim­i­nals? As I point­ed out yes­ter­day these crim­i­nals have no estab­lished source of income as far as this blog­ger knows, so where does the mon­ey come from to pay the high-priced crim­i­nal lawyers who fall over them­selves to rep­re­sent them in the high­est court in the coun­try? Is the mon­ey com­ing from the same source as the funds that keep (JFJ) in busi­ness? Or does (JFJ) gets fund­ed from the same pool that pays the high-priced (vul­tures)? Ask your­selves the ques­tion , where do these men get the funds to pay these high-priced lawyers (vul­tures)? And yes my dear friend Mac They are vul­tures, and they do dou­ble as law-mak­ers , there is no dis­crep­an­cy there. That state­ment is a fact, you see my friend it may be an incon­ve­nient truth ‚but the truth nonetheless.

There are innu­mer­able cas­es, too many to men­tion of Justices on courts at var­i­ous lev­els of the Judiciary in Jamaica who rou­tine­ly grant bail to crim­i­nals after they are arrest­ed for seri­ous crimes like mur­der and rape , they prompt­ly go out kill or rape again are grant­ed bail again and again and again to com­mit the same crimes some­times up to five times over, even as they await tri­al for the first case on which were charged.

Jamaican Judges argue that bail was not intend­ed to be puni­tive, they argue bail was not intend­ed to be pun­ish­ment. That may be all well and good accord­ing to British Judges, (which I will come back to). Since bail was not meant to be pun­ish­ment who argues for the vic­tims who are rou­tine­ly gunned down on almost every street cor­ner of Kingston and oth­er cities in Jamaica, in broad day­light, as onlook­ers stand there trans­fixed, too scared to move, too scared to tell police who did it, even though they know the per­pe­tra­tors? Too scared to speak , know­ing if they tell they will be next. From Hagley Park road to Slipe road, from Tower Street to Matthews lane the blood of Jamaicans con­tin­ue to run while Judges fid­dle over seman­tics, refus­ing to lock crim­i­nals away for the max­i­mum time allowed by law. If Judges con­tin­ue to make the same argu­ments then yes the law is an ass and the Judges are even big­ger Asses. 

England ‚the for­mer colo­nial pow­er Jamaicans quote, and seek to emu­late, do not make the same argu­ments in defense of their cit­i­zens. London is one of the most pro­tect­ed cities in the world, there are hun­dreds of thou­sands of cam­eras that lit­er­al­ly stitch togeth­er the secu­ri­ty of the city into man­age­able nerve cen­ters where secu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als mon­i­tor the every move of Londoner in an effort to make sure the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of that city is pre­served. Whether one believes in big broth­er hav­ing that much con­trol is a legit­i­mate argu­ment to be debat­ed, but the results are impos­si­ble to deny. 

In a sen­tence, coun­tries which val­ue their cit­i­zens under­stand that secu­ri­ty is job num­ber one.

It is not about crash pro­gramme work, it is not about faux tears of car­ing , nations do not thrive on hugs and plat­i­tudes. Jamaica’s Judges like the politi­cians are com­plic­i­ty respon­si­ble for the high rate of crim­i­nal­i­ty that con­tin­ue to plague the nation. I spent 10 years in the Police force and I left it know­ing that I could not make a dif­fer­ence serv­ing in that depart­ment, I refused to be con­sumed by a sys­tem in which the peo­ple who risk their lives are set up to fail. Many peo­ple are fooled by the “mis­ter bigs” who hand over a car to the com­mis­sion­er or a cou­ple of motor­cy­cles here and there. I would much rather see peo­ple with pow­er in Jamaica use those pow­ers to lob­by for leg­is­la­tion which puts crim­i­nals in prison where they belong.

Then again I won’t hold my breath, some of the most pow­er­ful in the suits and tie, are the most pow­er­ful gang leaders.

I hate to say I told you so. I am refer­ring to the PNP gov­ern­ment, Yea, yea, I know I sound par­ti­san, that’s the sim­plis­tic way to think. I prob­a­bly will not be able to change the minds of those of you who think that way. If your minds are already made up, a mind made up will learn noth­ing new. I urge you to put that aside and be objec­tive for a minute. Study my posi­tions a lit­tle clos­er, I crit­i­cize both polit­i­cal par­ties, the PNP more than the JLP because I feel that the PNP at its core is a far more destruc­tive par­ty for our coun­try. On every occa­sion that I have crit­i­cized the PNP I have pre­sent­ed doc­u­ment­ed ver­i­fi­able fac­tu­al basis for doing so. My posi­tions have noth­ing to do with polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion , the truth is I care about nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty in Jamaica, I care about Jamaica. It mat­ters not who is in charge, as long as they make deci­sions that are in the best inter­est of Jamaica.

There is a debate rag­ing in Jamaica as we speak at the heart of this debate is this image below:

(Jamaica Gleaner photo)

This is a pic­ture of Livity Coke , broth­er of Christopher Coke ‚dis­play­ing what has been ruled super­fi­cial wounds received at the hands of mem­bers of the mil­i­tary who are in charge of secu­ri­ty at the Horizon Remand cen­ter In Kingston.

Livity Coke is in jail await­ing tri­al on charges of shoot­ing at police offi­cers stem­ming from the incur­sion into Tivoli Gardens by mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces to arrest his broth­er Christoper (dudus) Coke on gun run­ning and nar­cotics charges to which he has sub­se­quent­ly pled guilty in the United States. This charge would have been a very seri­ous charge in any oth­er coun­try which respects the rule of law. let me point out, this is not so in Jamaica, even if he is con­vict­ed, which is a 7% pos­si­bil­i­ty, he may very well get a sus­pend­ed sen­tence, if that much. Such is the state of crim­i­nal jus­tice in Jamaica. At the cen­ter of this non­sense is a group of gang lead­ers who want sol­diers removed from enforc­ing dis­ci­pline at Horizon, so they may return to the care of inept large­ly cor­rupt, intim­i­nat­ed cor­rec­tion offi­cers(prison warders ) where they know they will be able to con­tin­ue run­ning their gangs that are on the outside.

Coke and oth­ers now have high-pro­file lawyers fil­ing brief in Jamaica’s Supreme Court on their behalf, argu­ing that they are being abused. The Government is falling all over itself to have INDECOM the Jamaican FBI (sic), Criminal rights activists, Earl Witter the so-called pub­lic defend­er and every force they can pos­si­bly Marshall to fight the sol­diers on behalf of these filthy scum bags.

I could wan­der off and actu­al­ly tell the world that INDECOM was cre­at­ed to inves­ti­gate the police while crime surges. Which is real­ly a smoke screen while politi­cians involve them­selves in all kinds of crim­i­nal actions. But I won’t.The dif­fer­ence is that the FBI can actu­al­ly inves­ti­gate, and does inves­ti­gate crim­i­nals. INDECOM’S man­date is to inves­ti­gate police offi­cers , they have no man­date to inves­ti­gate seri­ous crimes, not so in Jamaica.

But I won’t talk about that, that’s a dif­fer­ent conversation.

According to prison offi­cials the men at the cen­ter of this dis­rup­tion are crim­i­nals already con­vict­ed of very seri­ous crimes, most are infa­mous, and some even though not yet con­vict­ed , are known to have com­mit­ted mul­ti­ple mur­ders. Prison Officials are con­tend­ing some of these vio­lent acts have been cap­tured on secu­ri­ty cam­eras that were recent­ly installed at Security Post 11 where some of the most high-risk inmates are housed.

That list includes Tesha Miller, Christopher Linton, Joel Andem, Kevin Tyndale and Michael McLean — “very dan­ger­ous indi­vid­u­als”, Prendergast charged that “many of them vio­lent­ly oppose” prison rules.

You think?

(por­trait for Tyndale and Mclean not available)

These are some of the most dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals in the entire world. They have no com­punc­tion about gun­ning down any­one ‚any­where, at any­time, and if they are unable to do so them­selves, have their oper­a­tives do so on their behalf.

Yet after law enforce­ment have safe­ly and effec­tive­ly removed these filthy scum­bags from the streets, with­out hurt­ing them , the Government of the coun­try in league with the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty are falling over them­selves to defend these degen­er­ates. They com­plain about extra-judi­cial killings, if these low lives are killed in the process of appre­hend­ing them. When they are appre­hend­ed and locked up, and they con­tin­ue to mis­be­have the gov­ern­ment per­se­cute those tasked with the dan­ger­ous job of keep­ing them locked up. It is clear that the Government wants these men on the streets where they may con­tin­ue with their geno­ci­dal rampage.

Here’s how Officials of the Prisons explain what these men have been up to in the facility.

The JDF, in dis­miss­ing the alle­ga­tions, sug­gest­ed that it was a ploy by the inmates to force prison offi­cials to trans­fer them back to the gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion where they can con­tin­ue their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties.“As we con­tin­ue to frus­trate their attempts to influ­ence their gangs, inmates have resort­ed to doing every­thing in their pow­er to have them­selves removed from JDF cus­tody and incor­po­rat­ed into the gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion,” said Captain Basil Jarrett, JDF civil/​military co-oper­a­tion offi­cer.Jamaicagleaner​.com

Captain Basil Jarrett, sin­gu­lar­ly, by this state­ment alone, has demon­strat­ed that he is heads and shoul­der above any­one in the Administration of Portia Simpson Miller.

My only crit­i­cism with the process as artic­u­lat­ed by mem­bers of the JDF is that these degen­er­ates must be iso­lat­ed from each oth­er. My crit­i­cism how­ev­er is not made with any knowl­edge of the geo­graph­i­cal lay­out or capa­bil­i­ties of the facil­i­ty. As such I am not sure that my cri­tique is even a fair one, in light of the afore­men­tioned admis­sion. Knowing the inad­e­qua­cies of the jus­tice sys­tem in Jamaica I would haz­ard a guess that facil­i­ty does not have com­mon sense capa­bil­i­ties that would argue for the safe­ty of offi­cers or the secu­ri­ty and effec­tive con­tain­ment of accused criminals.

Here we have crim­i­nals who are known ser­i­al mur­der­ers who under­stand the system.

They have mon­ey to hire the most cel­e­brat­ed high-pro­file (vul­tures) called defense lawyers to push their agendas.

Gaming the system.

And whip­ping up reli­able, depend­able sup­port from the polit­i­cal left which sup­ports them in the country.

This Government is a dis­grace, a shame­ful exam­ple of how Governments in small devel­op­ing coun­tries like Jamaica are them­selves vic­tims when they acqui­esce to the far left dic­tates from Agencies like the Inter American com­mis­sion on Human Rights, The United Nations com­mis­sion on Human Rights, Amnesty International and the pletho­ra of oth­er so-called Human Rights Organizations around the world.

These far left Agencies along with prox­ies like Jamaicans for Justice, have pres­sured small coun­tries into aban­don­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, even though pub­lic opin­ion over­whelm­ing­ly sup­ports these mea­sures in their fight against demon­ic crim­i­nals who are hell-bent on may­hem and mur­der. These far left Elitist oper­ate in coun­tries like the United States, Canada among oth­er devel­oped coun­tries. In each of the coun­tries from which they oper­ate they do not get to dic­tate to nei­ther State nor Federal Officials how nation­al secu­ri­ty, or crime is han­dled. They take their scare tac­tics to the United Nations where they tie loan and aid guar­an­tees to acqui­es­cence of their rad­i­cal far left agen­da. It is a vicious form of coher­sion that lit­er­al­ly guar­an­tees that small­er depen­dent states will con­tin­ue to be inun­dat­ed with crime. No investor wants to do busi­ness in a crime rid­den coun­try, coun­tries like Jamaica, Mexico, or Colombia with high crime rates are tar­get­ed. Mexico has oil, Columbia has Cocaine, Jamaica has.…..

So they stay poor and depen­dent on the satel­lite states. Check mate.

One would rea­son­ably assume that politi­cians run­ning for office, or hav­ing being elect­ed to office, would real­ize that their pri­ma­ry duty is to pro­tect cit­i­zens. Not so in Jamaica, politi­cians in Jamaica are large­ly crim­i­nals, Judges are so lib­er­al with sen­tenc­ing and the lat­i­tude they give defense attor­neys , it rais­es eye­brows as to whether most of them are not taint­ed with blood mon­ey. And that does not even begin to address the crim­i­nal defense attor­neys who rep­re­sent the most despi­ca­ble ser­i­al mur­ders. Oh by the way most of the defense attor­neys dou­ble as Legislators. The coun­try has been caught in this vicious cycle for decades. The coun­try’s entire nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy may be summed up in a sin­gle sen­tence” Spend what­ev­er it takes to pro­tect the most mur­der­ous crim­i­nals” Jamaica has nev­er seen a char­ter it does­n’t want to sign, they have nev­er seen a piece of paper being float­ed in International cir­cles that they take a pass on.

This is a coun­try that is run by those schooled at what the late Wilmott )Mutty) Perkins called the “intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to” The University of the West indies. They are a cadre of pre­tenders, first and sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of blacks who have final­ly clawed their way out of abject pover­ty . They have gained edu­ca­tion and they want to be asso­ci­at­ed with the ways of their for­mer mas­ters whom have long retreat­ed to Europe. they are the new bour­geoise’ and they are damn sure going to let every­one know it.

Only prob­lem with this, is they pre­tend that Jamaica is Switzerland,or Denmark, so they live in some dis­tant place in their minds, as the killings sur­round them. They bar­ri­cade them­selves in their homes, hav­ing to breach lay­ers and lay­ers of iron grille for­ti­fi­ca­tion which sep­a­rate room from room. And as they sur­vive day-to-day they are lulled into believ­ing that this is the way to live, they tell them­selves Jamaica is not bad, there is crime everywhere.

They con­vince them­selves that the prob­lem is with the police and sol­diers who in their minds are spoil­ing the nar­ra­tive in their mind,disrupting their fan­tas­tic utopia,causing inter­na­tion­al con­ster­na­tion of their Island par­adise. The par­adise they rule.….….

Then they awake from their dream and sep­a­rate them­selves from their prison room by room, and they watch their new­ly crowned Empress naked in igno­rance and they mar­vel at her new clothes.

Police in the Island of Jamaica have all but con­ced­ed that they are unable to deal with the mon­ster of crime in that country.

There are sig­nif­i­cant signs that the police depart­ment and the inept gov­ern­ment have no clue how to arrest the crime prob­lem, (no pun intended).

Yesterday in these blogs we dis­cussed some issues we feel are key in under­stand­ing why police offi­cers fab­ri­cate evi­dence to gain con­vic­tions. We will not re-lit­i­gate that blog what we will do is talk about what seem evi­dent to those who are inter­est­ed in knowing.

Assistant com­mis­sion­er of Police Élan Powell

Yesterday we fea­tured this man assis­tant Commissioner of Police Élan Powell in charge of crime in Jamaica. Assistant Commissioner Powell is a good man who loves his job, he means well. Both Powell and Senior Superintendent Wilford Gayle direct­ly involved in crim­i­nal Investigations are two pro­tegé of the Constant Spring CIB under the tute­lage of Noël Asphall and Rudolph Dwyer. Dwyre a superb inves­ti­ga­tor who over­saw crime and Noël Asphall a tow­er­ing ted­dy-bear who could get the lazi­est of the lazy to work for free through moti­va­tion. Your blog­ger ben­e­fit­ted great­ly from hav­ing being part of that office, and was priv­i­leged to play a part in keep­ing crime in check in our area of influ­ence. There are many more unsung heroes who will nev­er be reward­ed or remem­bered because they do not fit the nar­row prism of what cops are sup­posed to be these days in Jamaica.

The fol­low­ing is a tran­script from the Gleaner one of Jamaica’s dai­ly publications.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) has released chill­ing sta­tis­tics and we are still in the mid­dle of the sec­ond month of the year. The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) week­ly crime sta­tis­tics indi­cate that up to February 11, last year, the homi­cide fig­ures stood at 114. There have been 137 cas­es of mur­der for the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od this year. The crime sta­tis­tics fur­ther sug­gest­ed that gang vio­lence has been the motive behind the vio­lent killing of at least 50 per­sons. The gun has been used in more than 100 of the report­ed cas­es of homi­cides. Last month, 104 per­sons were mur­dered, while up to yes­ter­day, close to 40 have been killed since the begin­ning of February. 

Most dan­ger­ous places

According to the sta­tis­tics, the most dan­ger­ous places at the moment are in the St Catherine North Police Division where more than 25 per­sons have been killed.(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

Here’s what this means folks, over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year less Jamaicans have been killed than this year. As a prag­ma­tist I promise you I will not over com­pli­cate this issue. Irrespective what the police and the gov­ern­ment tell you these num­bers reveals a strik­ing tale. That tale is that this gov­ern­ment attracts crim­i­nal­i­ty as flies fol­lows feces.

As I have said on so many occa­sions this gov­ern­ment is seen as a cod­dler of crim­i­nals. I opined that this gov­ern­ment aligned itself with crim­i­nals whilst in oppo­si­tion. As the oppo­si­tion par­ty they vot­ed not to allow the secu­ri­ty forces to con­tin­ue with their momen­tum in pur­suit of crim­i­nals after Christopher Coke was rout­ed from Tivoli Gardens. There were no dis­senters, they vot­ed as a uni­tary block.

This I thought was a trea­so­nous act which should have been pun­ish­able with ban­ish­ment from rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics. Jamaicans being who they are vot­ed them into office.

Of course the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom on the street is that The People’s National Party then in oppo­si­tion, could not allow the police to con­sol­i­date their gains as they have sig­nif­i­cant­ly more gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties than the then gov­ern­ment of the Jamaica Labor Party.

The sto­ry the PNP which now forms the gov­ern­ment gave for not sup­port­ing the secu­ri­ty forces is scan­dalous, quote: “We do not want the secu­ri­ty forces to vio­late the rights of cit­i­zens”. So they sided with the criminals !!!!

Powell report­ed­ly told the Gleaner, a mouth­piece for the Government that , quote“We are fac­ing some try­ing times and all of us will have to bond togeth­er with our effort. With this col­lab­o­ra­tion, we should get on top of things,” Assistant Commissioner Ealan Powell, head of the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB).(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

Spanish Town is excep­tion­al­ly chal­leng­ing and I am appeal­ing to the moth­ers, the sis­ters and girl­friends to come for­ward and talk to us. It is going to take all hands on deck to ensure suc­cess,” Powell told The Gleaner.

This is a SOS folks:

Assistant com­mis­sion­er Powell still a friend, clear­ly is sig­nalling a “SOS”. That is a dis­tress call for help. I have long main­tained that Police and gov­ern­ment can­not acqui­esce to crim­i­nal rights groups. I have long writ­ten that the rule of law must be sacro­sanct. I have long argued that the rule of law must be the foun­da­tion that any soci­ety is built on. After the rule of law has been estab­lished as a cor­ner­stone, then soci­ety must move to make sure that the rights of indi­vid­u­als are pro­tect­ed. Not the reverse.

Percival James Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller have mort­gaged the secu­ri­ty of Jamaica on the altar of cheap polit­i­cal games­man­ship and vote-get­ting. Groups like Jamaicans for Justice which argue that their man­date is to ensure cit­i­zens rights, have over the years thrown their sup­port to crim­i­nals at the expense of the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty. As a result they have lost the sup­port of a lot of ordi­nary Jamaicans, seen as just anoth­er crim­i­nal cod­dling enti­ty in the coun­try. This group in par­tic­u­lar has been giv­en carte blanch in help­ing to shape nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy. The result is the Police beg­ging for mer­cy from Jamaica’s urban terrorists.

Let me just say this, Assistant Commissioner Powell well-inten­tioned though he may be, is a sup­port­er of the par­ty in Government . He most cer­tain­ly will be pro­mot­ed before they are removed from office even if they are only allowed a sin­gle term. This sug­gest Powell and some close to him, have a bright future in the JCF . The prob­lem with that is that it offers a dim future for Jamaica.

Powell and oth­ers came to promi­nence as the way for­ward for the JCF. The coun­try was told that the police is a para-mil­i­tar force that must be mod­ern­ized, that we agreed with. What we do not agree with is that the JCF should be made into a paper tiger that is reduced to beg­ging crim­i­nals to behave 

PS: Assistant Commissioner Powell and I passed the accel­er­at­ed Examinations togeth­er, we worked togeth­er at Constant Spring. Powell was a guy who loved the Office , I loved remov­ing crim­i­nals from the streets. I knew where they lived , I knew where they dined, I knew where they slept, I knew where they pro­cre­ate, I caught them where they procreate.

“Shottas” love sex and that is where I caught them, where their girls lived. 

Powell stayed I left.

In 2008 Jamaican Police Detective Constable Carey Lyn-Sue admit­ted that he had fab­ri­cat­ed state­ments to secure con­vic­tions. Two weeks ago, an arrest war­rant was issued for Detective Sergeant Michael Sirjue for his alleged role in fab­ri­cat­ing a wit­ness state­ment in a case involv­ing mem­bers of the stone crush­er gang and in par­tic­u­lar a lead­ing mem­ber Eldon Calvert. Police sources yes­ter­day con­firmed that a Montego Bay-based female detec­tive cor­po­ral is sus­pect­ed to have fab­ri­cat­ed a wit­ness state­ment in a case involv­ing alleged Stone Crusher gang leader Eldon Calvert.

Assistant com­mis­sion­er of police Élan Powell i/​c crime.

The com­mon thread in all three instances ? Detective Sergeant Michael Sirjue !!!!

Detective sergeant Sirjue report­ed­ly super­vised both the detec­tive cor­po­ral and con­sta­ble Lyn-Sue. Over the years we have heard com­ments and innu­en­dos advanced from all and sundry, about how polic­ing should be done and what ought to be done to fix our prob­lems as it regards law enforce­ment in the coun­try. In the midst of it all, no one both­ers to ask the police how they feel about any of the issues which affect their lives or effec­tive­ness on a dai­ly basis. The inevitable con­clu­sion it seem has always been that the police (from the poor­er class) ought to be told what to do.

Even though many police offi­cers now serv­ing, are now twice as smart and in many instances are more edu­cat­ed than their polit­i­cal boss­es, the stig­ma remains of the police boy wear­ing short pants guard­ing the rich man’s house. As a black man who served proud­ly in the JCF for a decade before I took my leave of the depart­ment, I have heard it all from the experts who told us the rea­son there is cor­rup­tion in the force. Alleged rea­sons range from, because it’s large­ly a male dom­i­nat­ed body, oth­ers tell us it’ large­ly due to the fact that it is dom­i­nat­ed by blacks.

This sin­gle case tied togeth­er, turns all those sil­ly notions on their heads.

Many will point to these two recent­ly revealed instances of impro­pri­ety as a trend, of course it ‚mat­ters not that they do not have evi­dence or enough infor­ma­tion to form those opin­ions. Notwithstanding , three instances over a peri­od of a few years does not a pat­tern make, if any­thing it points to the fact the that the sys­tem is work­ing. It may be cold com­fort to those whose jobs it is to pon­tif­i­cate to learn that police depart­ments all over the world deal with these issues all the time. Also the rea­son this prob­lem exist has noth­ing to do with quo­tas as some have sug­gest­ed, there are no quo­tas in the JCF. This issue is all about trust or the lack there­of. We may lit­i­gate the mer­its and demer­its of police offi­cers per­jur­ing them­selves in order to gain con­vic­tions, those are legit­i­mate ques­tions which the coun­try has every right to demand answers to. One thing is cer­tain, is that it fur­ther erodes the mea­gre trust cit­i­zens have in the abil­i­ty of the sys­tem to serve them in a just and fair way.

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) tout­ed to be one of , if not the pre­mier police ser­vice in the world from time to time is forced to deal with alle­ga­tions and some­times proven instances where this hap­pens. It is despi­ca­ble and should not be tol­er­at­ed , but it does speak to an under­ly­ing ques­tion of why. In the case of the NYPD there are sev­er­al rea­sons why offi­cers fab­ri­cate evi­dence, none of which has to do with a break­down in their jus­tice sys­tem. American Police Officers large­ly com­mit these acts to fill quo­tas, to remain on plum details, and in a lot of cas­es out of racial prej­u­dice. (Amer­i­can civ­il lib­er­ties union)

As we look for answers to the ques­tion of what is behind offi­cers fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence we would be well advised to look at the fail­ure of the jus­tice sys­tem to deliv­er jus­tice to the pop­u­la­tion , to include police offi­cers. I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly about this issue and still we see crim­i­nals returned to the streets after being arrest­ed and charged for mul­ti­ple cas­es of mur­der, over and over again. On many of those occa­sions they imme­di­ate­ly elim­i­nate wit­ness­es for the pros­e­cu­tion that would poten­tial­ly tes­ti­fy against them. In a coun­try like Jamaica where a large per­cent­age of mur­der cas­es are built on eye­wit­ness­es accounts the need to keep wit­ness­es alive is of the utmost impor­tance. Yet Jamaican Judges con­tin­ue to release cal­lous mur­der­ers onto the streets using the flim­sy argu­ments that bail was not intend­ed to be a pun­ish­ment. One would rea­son­ably con­clude that if a jurist erred they would err on the side of cau­tion, on the side of the aggrieved.

Not so, they argue for legal argu­ments long, out­dat­ed and which even the framers do not find use­ful in this era of mul­ti­ple mur­ders and urban ter­ror­ism. London is one of the most close­ly mon­i­tored cities in the world , a crim­i­nal accused of mul­ti­ple mur­ders in the United Kingdom will cer­tain­ly not be released onto the streets untill the courts finds him inno­cent. Yet Jamaican judges con­tin­ue to turn them loose quot­ing British Laws.

I have pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten on this sub­ject, large­ly explain­ing that the ques­tion of extra-judi­cial killings, evi­dence fab­ri­ca­tion, mob killings, wit­ness­es not turn­ing up to give evi­dence, lack of jurors, the rise of the don cul­ture, and myr­i­ad oth­er soci­etal ills can be traced right back to the doorsteps of a mal­func­tion­ing jus­tice sys­tem. Let me be clear this does not mean that Judges are sole­ly the rea­son for all of soci­etal ills, far from it. What I am say­ing is that Legislators, Judges, Prosecutors, Police, Prison offi­cers, Defense Attorneys and all oth­er play­ers with­in the sys­tem have been colos­sal failures,beginning with the Legislators.

Crime will con­tin­ue to increase under this Administration. The gen­er­al mind­set is that this par­ty in gov­ern­ment is a crime cod­dling par­ty, there is more than ample evi­dence to sup­port that the­o­ry. Police Officers are caught between a rock and a hard place in want­i­ng to make dif­fer­ence in the crime Serengeti that is Jamaica, though this method can­not be con­doned at least for this blog­ger there is at least an under­stand­ing as to its cause.