Amidst the conversation of defunding the police in the United States is the idea that what people actually want is better policing; they don’t want to abolish the police.”
However, police unions and certain segments of the population have convinced the rest of the country that there is a movement afoot to get rid of the police. And for that segment of the population, God forbid that the institution that has been the single most dangerous to Black people be reformed or dismantled.
Unfortunately, black activists and other conscientious objectors to the rampant police violence have been inarticulate with their messaging and that has given an opening to the pro-police violence crowd to distort their message.
For the most part, many of the defunding that has been proposed hasn’t even taken place, haven’t even gotten off the ground.
In Minneapolis, where the idea of defunding the police was birthed after Derek Chauvin lynched George Floyd, voters resoundingly rejected a proposal to dismantle the city’s police force.
Emboldened, the same police department went into a home and murdered Amir Locke the same way they murdered George Floyd and countless others.
The people who support the lawlessness of wanton police violence and extrajudicial killings do not care about social justice; what they crave is social order. No amount of dead black bodies will change their hearts-dead black bodies is the point.

Criminals have cho­sen to take advan­tage of the uncer­tain­ty by engag­ing in more shoot­ing inci­dents and oth­er crimes. What has elud­ed every­one in this dis­cus­sion is that it has been the police who caused the out­cry for defund­ing in the first place.
Police have no way of stop­ping peo­ple from shoot­ing each oth­er; they have no way of stop­ping mur­ders if peo­ple are intent on mur­der­ing each oth­er. If the police could stop any of the fore­gone, the New York City Police Department, with its 36,000 uni­formed cops and 19,000 civil­ian employ­ees, would have ensured that no mur­der or shoot­ing occurred in their city year after year.
The sad real­i­ty is that the NYPD, with its army of cops, sup­port infra­struc­ture, and mam­moth bud­getary allo­ca­tion in 2020 of $10.2 bil­lion and $9.9 bil­lion in the fis­cal year 2021, would have ensured a safe and mur­der-free New York City.
The minus­cule amount of mon­ey removed from the police bud­get in New York in the fis­cal year 2021 was shaved from over­time and oth­er parts of the depart­ment that had noth­ing to do with oper­a­tional readiness.
For exam­ple, a class that was sup­posed to begin train­ing at the acad­e­my was canceled.
In New York City, two things of note happened,(1) the mam­moth out-of-con­trol police depart­ment was told that cops were no longer allowed to stop and frisk peo­ple mere­ly on a cop’s whim.
Police and their unions took umbrage at this direc­tive, and in many cas­es, they con­tin­ued doing it to poor Black men anyway.
(2) After Minneapolis cops mur­dered George Floyd, the cry around the coun­try has been to defund the police.
The idea behind the defund move­ment was to appro­pri­ate a part of the police bud­getary allo­ca­tion and divert those funds to youth pro­grams, drug treat­ment pro­grams, men­tal health pro­grams, and oth­er pro­grams that remove the prospect of armed cops show­ing up after every 911 call ready to shoot the peo­ple they are sup­posed to be helping.

The push­back against this sound pol­i­cy came from Republicans and Democrats, who believed that the answer to every prob­lem was to send armed police offi­cers with bat­ter­ing rams and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehi­cles (MRAPs).
Others in the cor­po­rate media, Brian Williams of MSNBC, Michael Smerconish on CNN, and oth­ers also joined in the push­back, claim­ing that the democ­rats lost seats in the US house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives because of the calls to defund the police.
This writer has seen no data that sup­ports that the­o­ry. They failed to explain that Joe Biden won the pop­u­lar vote and the pres­i­den­cy with the largest num­ber of votes cast for a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in the his­to­ry of the country.
Democrats’ loss of seats may have been that can­di­dates rest­ed on their lau­rels, believ­ing that anti-Trump sen­ti­ments were enough to get them elected.
It was not. None of the loss the feck­less Democrats suf­fered may be attrib­uted to calls to ‘defund the police.‘The mad­den­ing­ly stu­pid nar­ra­tive that defund­ing police is respon­si­ble for increased crime came from police unions and cops who take home hefty salaries through over­time pay for doing noth­ing, some as much as $200,000 annually.

There is no cor­re­la­tion between defund­ing the police and the rise in crime, but police and their unions want you to believe there is a cor­re­la­tion. Police depart­ments across the United States, all 18,000 plus of them, have the tools and the sup­port to fight crime; in many cas­es, they have what they do not need.
For example…

Rehoboth, Mass. (pop­u­la­tion 10,200), show­ing not only the town police department’s MRAP but also three Humvees, also obtained from the mil­i­tary. Orrville, Ohio (pop­u­la­tion 8,400), where the local police depart­ment also doesn’t have an MRAP, acquired a 1980s-era M‑113 armored fight­ing vehicle.
And then there’s Reeds Spring, Mo., which also has some oth­er sort of armored vehi­cle, as evi­denced by the pho­to the town’s police chief post­ed on the police department’s Facebook page. Reeds Spring’s pop­u­la­tion: 903.

Deming, N.M. (pop­u­la­tion: 14,800), got an MRAP in March 2013. You may remem­ber Deming as the site of a hor­rif­ic sto­ry last year in which a traf­fic stop for rolling through a stop sign esca­lat­ed into police sub­ject­ing a man to mul­ti­ple forced anal probes, X‑rays, and a colonoscopy because they sus­pect­ed him of hid­ing drugs in his rec­tum. There were no drugs.
Sweetwater, Fla. (pop­u­la­tion 13,500), elect­ed offi­cials approved the police chief’s request for an MRAP. The scan­dal-plagued police depart­ment also has a SWAT team (see a video of the SWAT team in action here) and at least one OH6 heli­copter, appar­ent­ly obtained from the Pentagon. Sweetwater has seen all of two mur­ders in 13 years.

Franklin Indiana MRAP — a bul­let­proof, 55,000-pound, six-wheeled behe­moth with heavy armor, a gun­ner’s tur­ret, and the word “SHERIFF” embla­zoned on its flank — a vehi­cle whose acronym stands for “mine-resis­tant ambush-protected.”
On and on, it goes all across the coun­try, police depart­ments gear­ing up for war. Who is the enemy?
You be the judge!!!

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The very premise of the term restora­tive jus­tice is an oxy­moron, and it sug­gests that jus­tice is being restored to offend­ers who break the laws and are giv­en a sec­ond or third chance.
The fact is that the oppo­site is actu­al­ly the truth. Still, by fram­ing it as “restora­tive jus­tice,” the push­ers of lib­er­al­ism and sup­port for crim­i­nal­i­ty fool the pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing the par­rots in the media, into think­ing that this is all for good because jus­tice is being restored.
It is a clas­sic bull puck­er sto­ry why our coun­try is mired in such vio­lent crimes. Lies become truth, and truth becomes an aberration.
The idea of giv­ing a youth­ful offend­er a sec­ond or even a third chance is admirable; how­ev­er, Jamaica’s lib­er­al judges are a large part of the Island’s crime pan­dem­ic because they fun­da­men­tal­ly believe it is up to them to deter­mine whether vio­lent offend­ers spend time in prison for com­mit­ting heinous crimes, not the people.
For those rea­sons, I con­tin­ue to call for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for vio­lent crimes and truth in sentencing.
(1) Twenty-five [25] years for mur­der with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole unless there are spe­cial mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances that would allow for mitigation.
(2) Fifteen [15] years for any per­son found with an ille­gal gun- manda­to­ry, cod­i­fied in law, there­by remov­ing from judges remit the abil­i­ty to sub­vert the process and the peo­ple’s will.

Judges are tri­ers of facts, not gods.
Therefore, it is impor­tant that no judge, from the top judge to the last [appoint­ed] res­i­dent mag­is­trate, under­stand this concept.
A judge is [not] the total­i­ty of the jus­tice sys­tem but a mere cog in the wheel of jus­tice. Let me be clear; judges are fun­da­men­tal­ly delu­sion­al about who they are and what their roles are.
Jamaica is a demo­c­ra­t­ic and free soci­ety. We do not have a monarch that can order that some­one’s head be chopped from their body.
We elect polit­i­cal lead­ers who appoint bod­ies and indi­vid­u­als, who appoint oth­er [pub­lic ser­vants] to pub­lic office. Public ser­vice is an hon­or, not an anoint­ing to become king.
A judge does not get to sup­plant the will of the peo­ple and the dic­tates of the law with their own opin­ion, but this has become the norm in Jamaica with the full acqui­es­cence of those who run the min­istry of justice.
We [can­not] and should not allow demigods to become entrenched into our cul­ture to the point their func­tions become tiny monar­chies that sub­vert our will.
This is hap­pen­ing as we speak.

There is no exam­ple of deco­rum and respect on the bench begin­ning at the top with Chief Justice Bryan Sykes.
Bryan Sykes sets the tem­po for how the judi­cia­ry behaves, and he cer­tain­ly has a prob­lem with the rule of law and those who enforce the laws. His intem­per­ate, mis­guid­ed, and unpro­fes­sion­al utter­ance from the bench is a dis­grace to our sys­tem of jus­tice and the rule of law.
Sykes’ lack of respect for law enforce­ment is pal­pa­ble and total­ly unsus­tain­able. I call on the rel­e­vant author­i­ties to rein Sykes in or ask him to step aside. Let me remind those in pow­er again; pub­lic ser­vice is an hon­or, not a right.
Neither Bryan Sykes nor any of the oth­er crim­i­nal-lov­ing char­la­tans on the bench have a right to the posi­tion they hold.
Bryan Sykes’ open and bla­tant dis­re­spect for police offi­cers while con­duct­ing tri­als is an affront to the rule of law any­where and a slap in the face to the risks and chal­lenges offi­cers face in bring­ing cas­es before the court.
In his efforts to be the [big man], Sykes has gone out of his way to be unnec­es­sar­i­ly dis­re­spect­ful and dis­parag­ing to officers.
Whose inter­ests does Bryan Sykes serve?
The sad irony is that Bryan Sykes is some­one that I know as a young offi­cer dur­ing his time as a pros­e­cu­tor. He hid his dis­dain for offi­cers well at the time, and Sykes, in real­i­ty, was at best a below-aver­age, lazy, and unin­spir­ing pros­e­cu­tor. I almost pissed my pants when I heard Bryan Sykes was nom­i­nat­ed to be Chief Justice.
Bryan Sykes’ ele­va­tion to be chief jus­tice of Jamaica is not about any­thing admirable about him but about how low our coun­try has sunk.
The mur­der spree rag­ing across the length and breadth of Jamaica is bet­ter under­stood, with Delroy Chuck head­ing the Ministry of jus­tice and Bryan Sykes head­ing the Judiciary. Jamaica is in deep trouble!

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

This is a systemic of police corruption and outright criminal conduct that should be prosecuted with vigor. However, despite years of evidence and complaints that these 15 cops were outright criminals with badges, absolutely nothing was done about it. They continued to fabricate evidence sending hundreds of citizens to prison for crimes they did not commit.
Rather than fix these criminals police chiefs two years ago banded together to declare they have no confidence in state attorney Kim Fox for being soft on crime.
The real reason they hated Ms. Fox and wanted her gone however had nothing to do with her not prosecuting criminals but her not acquiescing to their blatant abuse of the process by criminalizing people with felonies on bogus felony charges for assaulting police officers.
Undeterred, Kim Fox has been working to root out these criminals that the so-called chiefs, all-white, kept in place to terrorize and criminalize poor, innocent people living in housing projects in Chicago.
This has been a veritable cesspool of corruption resulting in hundreds of innocent people being sent to jail for crimes they did not commit.
However, despite the rampant corruption, all we see is one black criminal who desecrated his badge.

Cook County state’s attorney said dozens were involved in 134 cases.

More than 100 peo­ple have had their cas­es tied to dis­graced for­mer Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts vacat­ed, as of Tuesday morning.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is usu­al­ly pros­e­cut­ing sus­pects for crimes, but Tuesday, it was the oppo­site. Foxx vacat­ed the con­vic­tions of 19 men and women who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, accord­ing to her office.Last year, 88 peo­ple filed a peti­tion say­ing they were framed by Watts and his tac­ti­cal team. Most of them were res­i­dents of the for­mer Ida B Wells hous­ing com­plex and served time in prison.
“This is a sor­row­ful moment know­ing these indi­vid­u­als will nev­er get that time back in their lives. Their fam­i­lies will nev­er get that time back,” Foxx said.
Watts was con­vict­ed in 2012 and sen­tenced to almost two years in prison. Watts and one mem­ber of that team went to prison for cor­rup­tion, but many of the oth­er team mem­bers remain on the force.

Many of those he framed for drug and weapons crimes served time in the ear­ly 2000s.
“Watts and his crew sav­aged a com­mu­ni­ty. Brown and Black men and women, a whole gen­er­a­tion of them. And the city let it hap­pen,” said Sean Starr with the Exoneration Project. The Exoneration Project has worked with the state’s attor­ney’s office to deter­mine which con­vic­tions to vacate. Most have the sig­na­ture of Watts on the police report. “Sergeant Watts believed the peo­ple who lived there had less­er val­ue and would­n’t be believed,” Foxx said.
Foxx gave an update after the hear­ing, say­ing over 100 peo­ple involved in 134 cas­es had those vacat­ed, and more hear­ings are expect­ed next Tuesday and Feb. 16. Foxx said 30 addi­tion­al cas­es will be heard.
“The peo­ple whose names were read today are vic­tims, vic­tims of a failed sys­tem, and noth­ing will ever be able to give them back their time away from their fam­i­lies or their missed oppor­tu­ni­ties in life, but we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to act,” Foxx said. “The num­ber of claims against this one Sergeant is an exam­ple of why as pros­e­cu­tors, we approach every case with an eye toward the facts, the evi­dence, and the law for both the cas­es we’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on as well as those from the past. I’m grate­ful for the attor­neys in this office who con­tin­ue to seek jus­tice, restore trust, and address the his­toric inequities of Cook County’s crim­i­nal jus­tice system.”

“Having a con­vic­tion off your record makes a dif­fer­ence in employ­ment, hous­ing, and hav­ing an over­all feel­ing of jus­tice,” said Joel Flaxman, an attor­ney for one of the false­ly con­vict­ed. “It’s extra­or­di­nar­i­ly mean­ing­ful for them,” said Josh Tepfer with the Exoneration Project. On Tuesday, 19 had their cas­es dis­missed, and anoth­er five drug con­vic­tions tied to Watts were vacat­ed at a hear­ing in November.
“I feel like I won the lot­tery,” exoneree Darnell Harris told ABC7 by phone at the time.
The state’s attor­ney’s office plans to vacate the con­vic­tions of 60 more false­ly con­vict­ed next month. In the mean­time, the attor­neys said they’d like to see the offi­cers charged.

“Step back. I don’t care if you record me.” that’s a lie; they actu­al­ly care; that’s why they approach you record­ing their activities.
“You can record all you want; I don’t care.” Yes, they do care”; if they could stop you, they would do so in a heart­beat. In fact, there is a moun­tain of video evi­dence that shows that even though cit­i­zens have a right to pho­to­graph and video record them in the exe­cu­tion of their duties, they have a fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with it and have abused cit­i­zens engaged in that law­ful process.
Notice that regard­less of the dis­tance a per­son stands with a cell phone record­ing their activ­i­ties (and for the record, I agree they need room to work; no one should be obstruct­ing them), they find their way to that per­son to bark orders. “Move away, step back, go across the street, go down the block.” It is not about the dis­tance the per­son record­ing stands, even though the courts have agreed that a dis­tance of fif­teen feet is safe unless oth­er cir­cum­stances would ren­der that dis­tance unsafe. It is easy to under­stand why police and any­one doing any­thing wrong would oppose some­one with a cam­era or cell­phone record­ing their activities.
What appears to be the major­i­ty of police offi­cers in the United States seems to have no regard for the rights of cit­i­zens and, in par­tic­u­lar Black cit­i­zens. In fact, time and again, we see offi­cers going out­side their author­i­ty to abuse cit­i­zens they do not like.

A per­son record­ing from far away pro­duces a far less cred­i­ble video record­ing. Police offi­cers tell peo­ple record­ing them, “I don’t care if you record me,” gen­er­al­ly then walk up to the per­son record­ing and stand in front of the cam­era. This behav­ior effec­tive­ly makes it impos­si­ble for the cam­era to record what the cam­er­ap­er­son was ini­tial­ly recording.
This needs to be addressed with leg­is­la­tion. Police should not will­ful­ly attempt to stop con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty with impunity.
Rest assured, the rogue cops who engage in those ille­gal activ­i­ties do so with the bless­ings of their high­er-ups telling them to do it. Some will­ful­ly walk up to peo­ple record­ing their activ­i­ties, take out their phones and start play­ing music that gets swept up in the recording.
Because of own­er­ship rules, those video record­ings are not allowed on stream­ing plat­forms like Youtube; even though the per­son record­ing had no inten­tion of record­ing the music the rogue cop start­ed playing.
In oth­er words, police offi­cers who are sup­posed to act with deco­rum and respect for the pub­lic act like com­mon gang­sters and thugs toward the pub­lic that pays their salaries and lav­ish ben­e­fits packages.

Just imag­ine this, had 17-year-old Darnella Frazier not had the pres­ence to stead­fast­ly record their activ­i­ties in a man­ner befit­ting a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Derek Chauvin would still be polic­ing the streets of Minneapolis. His cohorts Thomas Lane, J. Kueng, and Tou Thao would not be fac­ing tri­al for assist­ing in mur­der­ing mis­ter Floyd.
Take a moment to process that, under­stand­ing that the Minneapolis Police depart­ment would not have vol­un­teered the body­cam footage so that the quar­tet could face jus­tice. In fact, they had ini­tial­ly craft­ed a lie about how mis­ter Floyd lost his life before they real­ized there was cred­i­ble video evi­dence that the four police offi­cers had com­mit­ted a day­light lynching.
This is the same police depart­ment despite the trau­ma the coun­try endured when it mur­dered George Floyd, still went ahead and released edit­ed body­cam footage of Amir Locke with a gun in his hand after they mur­dered him days ago.
As it turned out, the mur­dered 22-year-old had every right to have a gun, was not want­ed by police, was not named in their search war­rant, had no crim­i­nal record (not that it mat­ters), and the weapon was point­ed down toward the floor with his fin­ger run­ning par­al­lel to the bar­rel.
Jolted from a deep sleep and try­ing to deter­mine what was hap­pen­ing, he had every right to grab his gun. If legit­i­mate gun own­ers can­not legal­ly grab a gun in their own home with­out being gunned down by police who broke in, we are in dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry as the gov­ern­ment can choose to exe­cute us using any pretext.
If Wiliam (Roddie) Bryant had not record­ed the lynch­ing of Amhaud Arbery, he and the father-son mur­der­er-duo Gregory and Travis McMichaels, would be walk­ing around as free men today.
As soci­eties all across the globe are stitched togeth­er more and more dai­ly with CCTV cam­eras, American police would have you believe film­ing their illic­it activ­i­ties is unlaw­ful activity.

The chill­ing mes­sage the killing of Amir Locke expos­es is the dan­gers Black legal gun own­ers still face even when they have com­mit­ted no crime and are in what should be the safe and sacred sanc­tum of their own homes.
If this killing is allowed to stand, it will be prece­dent that the police can break into your home and mur­der you even though you com­mit­ted no crime and are not want­ed by them. White gun own­ers are cer­tain­ly not insu­lat­ed from this uncon­sti­tu­tion­al sec­ond & fourth amend­ment abrogation.
As a for­mer cop, I believe in giv­ing the police some lee­way in the exe­cu­tion of their duties; the police, how­ev­er, have a bur­den to be judi­cious with the pow­ers they are giv­en. They are heav­i­ly armed and sup­port­ed; they do not get to enter some­one’s home and mur­der them and then say, oops.
They do not get to kill some­one emerg­ing from deep sleep with­out order­ing the per­son to drop the weapon. This is a sit­u­a­tion in which police must be held account­able pre­cise­ly because of the cir­cum­stances of the case.
The Washington Post, on Wednesday, February 9^th, report­ed that American police shot and killed a Thousand and Fifty- Five peo­ple in 2021, the most since the WP start­ed keep­ing count. If you thought it was get­ting bet­ter, you are wrong; it is get­ting worse.
They are on pace to up the ante by killing more peo­ple this year, men­tal­ly ill, sleep­ing, unarmed, armed with a box-cut­ter, and at a dis­tance, none of it mat­ters. If they want to mur­der you, they will, and they most like­ly will not even be charged with a crime.

Police forces are armed mili­tias main­tained and retained by states and munic­i­pal­i­ties to main­tain order and pro­tect property.
Following Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shoot­ing in Parkland, Florida, some stu­dents held that local gov­ern­ment offi­cials were at fault for fail­ing to pro­tect stu­dents. The stu­dents filed suit, nam­ing six defen­dants, includ­ing the Broward school dis­trict, the Broward Sheriff’s Office, school deputy Scot Peterson and cam­pus mon­i­tor Andrew Medina. In 2018 a Federal Judge ruled the gov­ern­ment agen­cies ” had no con­sti­tu­tion­al duty to pro­tect stu­dents who were not in cus­tody.”
“Neither the Constitution nor state law impos­es a gen­er­al duty upon police offi­cers or oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials to pro­tect indi­vid­ual per­sons from harm — even when they know the harm will occur,” said Darren L. Hutchinson, a pro­fes­sor and asso­ciate dean at the University of Florida School of Law. “Police can watch some­one attack you, refuse to inter­vene, and not vio­late the Constitution.” The Supreme Court has repeat­ed­ly held that the gov­ern­ment has only a duty to pro­tect per­sons who are “in cus­tody,” he point­ed out.

So the mis­guid­ed notion that gets repeat­ed ad nau­se­am that police are there to serve and pro­tect is fic­tion. Police are not there for your pro­tec­tion. Worse yet, they cer­tain­ly aren’t there for the good of African-Americans.
There is no record of the idea of polic­ing ever being intend­ed for the good of Blacks in the United States of America. The cyn­ics of these facts, some melanat­ed, claim that police are in Black neigh­bor­hoods to save lives. That mis­con­cep­tion is laugh­able. Police in city after city all across the United States do not care one hoot about dead black peo­ple, regard­less of their pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign. The pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign gin up fears of vio­lent crimes intend­ed to scare gullible tax­pay­ers to pay them more and hire more of them.
What they care about is that Black peo­ple do not burn, loot, break glass, or turn a cor­ner with­out indicating.
In fair­ness to the Police, the fore­gone is not just about the police; it is a bor­der soci­etal prob­lem — a soci­ety that does not care about all of its cit­i­zens because it was not cre­at­ed to.
Since cit­i­zens decid­ed to fight back against them plant­i­ng drugs, phys­i­cal­ly and ver­bal­ly assault­ing and even mur­der­ing the inno­cent, police have devised a new tact. Listen for it when­ev­er they see some­one record­ing them.
“You are dis­tract­ing me from what I am doing, so now I have to divide my atten­tion between you and them.” That state­ment has become a reg­u­lar stan­za for them, but it has lit­tle to do with the per­son hold­ing a cellphone.
Every time it is uttered from the mouth of those liars, that state­ment is aimed at their cronies in munic­i­pal, state, and fed­er­al leg­is­la­tures who bend over back­ward to please them and their unions for blocks of votes.
They are hop­ing that new leg­is­la­tion will be advanced, mak­ing it even more dif­fi­cult for the aver­age per­son to cap­ture their crimes, even with the restric­tions already on cit­i­zens not to hin­der them. This may hap­pen soon­er than lat­er, and the courts are all too hap­py to grant them more lee­way to com­mit atroc­i­ties against a cer­tain seg­ment of society.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

South Carolina author­i­ties arrest­ed a police offi­cer Wednesday and charged her with vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter in the fatal shoot­ing of a dri­ver fol­low­ing a high-speed chase through a rur­al county.

The offi­cer, Cassandra Dollard of the Hemingway Police Department, was in pur­suit of Robert Junior Langley ear­ly Sunday when the inci­dent occurred, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a news release.

The agency said Langley, a 46-year-old Black man, of Hemingway was trans­port­ed to a hos­pi­tal where he died from his injuries. It declined to pro­vide fur­ther details, cit­ing an ongo­ing investigation.

An arrest war­rant for Dollard said she sought to pull over Langley for run­ning a stop sign, which led to the chase reach­ing speeds of more than 100 miles per hour, accord­ing to The Associated Press.

Langley then crashed into a ditch in rur­al Georgetown County, west of Myrtle Beach, and attempt­ed to get out of the car when Dollard opened fire and struck him in the chest, accord­ing to the arrest war­rant. Dollard, a 52-year-old Black woman, told inves­ti­ga­tors she was in fear for her life.

Authorities said the offi­cer, how­ev­er, did not have author­i­ty to arrest Langley out­side of Williamsburg County, where Hemingway, a town of about 500 peo­ple, is located.

During a news con­fer­ence Wednesday, attor­neys for Langley’s fam­i­ly said the father of 10, who had just become a grand­fa­ther, was unarmed and did­n’t have any out­stand­ing arrest warrants.

The fam­i­ly was ear­li­er per­mit­ted to view dash­board cam­era footage.

“They were able to hear him being shot unjus­ti­fi­ably. They were able to see him gar­gling blood and fight­ing for air,” fam­i­ly attor­ney Bakari Sellers, a for­mer South Carolina state law­mak­er, said.

Langley’s moth­er told reporters that her son’s life was tak­en for no jus­ti­fi­able reason.

“This was a spe­cial part of my heart. When they took him, they took my heart away,” Roslyn Langley, sur­round­ed by oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, said. “I don’t want nobody else to get killed by a mis­take some­body made,” she added.

Sellers said he believes the offi­cer was “out of her depth” and did­n’t fol­low her train­ing or was­n’t trained well.

It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear if Dollard has an attor­ney and Hemingway police did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment. A bond hear­ing was sched­uled for Thursday morning.

If con­vict­ed of vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter, Dollard faces two to 30 years in prison.

Historically, charges against offi­cers who use lethal force remain rare, and con­vic­tions for seri­ous charges are even more unusu­al. Last year, 21 police offi­cers in the United States were charged with mur­der or manslaugh­ter result­ing from on-duty shoot­ings, accord­ing to a data­base by Philip Stinson, a crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sor at Bowling Green State University.

Black Americans are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans, accord­ing to a Washington Post data­base analysis.

As I tackle the ever-changing topic of policing in this forum, I continue to be educated on some of the ways police continue to be such a volatile subject in America. Coupled with race, it creates a toxic mix that continues to be a dangerous destabilizing force unless remedied post haste.
As I go through some of the data, I form opinions that may or may not be 100% correct but cannot be ignored without data pointing in the opposite direction.
For example, when the average total cost of training and retaining a young recruit for a year is considered, around $149,362, including supervision, according to (ward43​.org), we may have a slight window outside the default thin blue line explanation, why departments continue to keep wayward, aggressive officers instead of cutting them loose. Simply put, the calculus may be, it’s cheaper to keep them.

Why are you sur­prised by these results?

The unin­tend­ed con­se­quence of those unwrit­ten con­sid­er­a­tions is that allow­ing young offi­cers to get away with issue after issue that is anti­thet­i­cal to good con­duct out of finan­cial or emo­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions devel­ops in them a sense of impunity.
Cost is increas­ing­ly pro­hib­i­tive, and it may explain why the reg­i­men is jam-packed into such a short peri­od of Academy time.
For exam­ple, a 2013 sur­vey by the Department of Justice found that the aver­age police acad­e­my in the United States is about 840 hours or 21 weeks. However, this can vary wide­ly by state and even with­in a state, depend­ing on the orga­ni­za­tion deliv­er­ing the training.
Police acad­e­my train­ing in the United States is deliv­ered by a vari­ety of insti­tu­tions that includes four-year uni­ver­si­ties, two-year col­leges, tech­ni­cal col­leges, and POST acad­e­mies. Some law enforce­ment agen­cies have their own police acad­e­mies. (police1 reports).
After Police mur­dered Breonna Taylor, the con­sen­sus was that no-knock war­rants would be a thing of the past; how­ev­er, noth­ing changed, and judges con­tin­ue to give these instru­ments of death to police to con­tin­ue to vio­late the rights of poor defense­less Black and Brown citizens.

The Institute for Criminal Justice Training Reform ana­lyzed police train­ing in 80 coun­tries. Only Iraq and Afghanistan had low­er train­ing require­ments to become a police offi­cer than the United States. The num­ber of train­ing hours required to become a cer­ti­fied police offi­cer becomes shock­ing when you look at the num­ber of hours required to be cer­ti­fied or licensed for oth­er pro­fes­sions. Wait,.….….….….….….….what? Oh well, that explains a lot.
I recent­ly watched a snip­pet of an inter­view with one police chief; he was asked, “how does an offi­cer qual­i­fy for a spe­cial squad-say SWAT, for exam­ple”? He respond­ed that senior­i­ty was one of the cri­te­ria used in deter­min­ing who does.
I won­dered whether that was a good for­mu­la con­sid­er­ing that old­er cops are gen­er­al­ly set in their ways-ways that does­n’t always serve the pub­lic interest.
Georgia requires 408 hours of acad­e­my train­ing to become a police offi­cer but requires 1,500 hours of train­ing to become a licensed bar­ber. It takes 3½ times more train­ing before Georgia says you can cut and style a person’s hair than arrest the same per­son and accuse them of a crime that can result in long-term incar­cer­a­tion, or worse, make the deci­sion to take his life.
The sad real­i­ty of the lat­est case of Amir Locke mur­dered with­out even hav­ing ful­ly awak­ened from his sleep; (a) was not want­ed by police,(b) had a per­mit for his gun, © had no crim­i­nal record, even if he had no weapon on him he prob­a­bly would have been mur­dered anyway.
A young black male in a room full of heav­i­ly armed, poor­ly trained, big­ot­ed white cops would most like­ly have got­ten him mur­dered regard­less, gun or not.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Striking a bal­ance between how much pow­er to give to police offi­cers and pre­serv­ing the rights of cit­i­zens is no easy task.
For the most part, putting immense pow­ers into the hands of any­one can be a Russian roulette-type gam­ble. Placing those pow­ers into the hands of poor­ly edu­cat­ed, poor­ly-trained, big­ot­ed peo­ple is a sure­fire way to end up with what has been hap­pen­ing across America daily.
As a [free­lance writer], peo­ple often reach out to me through social media to talk about things I write about. I use the term free­lance because I am not employed by any cor­po­rate enti­ty. I am my own per­son, and I do not do it for mon­ey or fame.
These are peo­ple of dif­fer­ent races, back­grounds, and opin­ions, peo­ple who look like America.
Surprisingly, we some­times have con­ver­sa­tions that last for over an hour; even when we dis­agree, our con­ver­sa­tions are always cor­dial and respect­ful, and we always come away hav­ing learned from each other.
Over the years, I learned that some of those peo­ple with whom I have dis­course have a total­ly dif­fer­ent view of American polic­ing prac­tices than I do. The sin­gle thread that binds those peo­ple is that they are all white.
We are some­times mys­ti­fied about the aver­age white American’s seem­ing apa­thy toward the sense the rest of us feel that the police are vio­lent, untrained thugs who are killing even the inno­cent unarmed, and men­tal­ly insane.
But do they see what we see? Are they real­ly privy to what we know if they are not policed that way and polic­ing is about pro­tect­ing their inter­est at the expense of the oth­er races?

To under­stand the apa­thy on the one hand and the out­right cop-wor­ship on the oth­er, we must exam­ine the ori­gins of polic­ing and come to grips with the real­i­ty that police were not cre­at­ed to be of ser­vice to blacks but were intend­ed to be inju­ri­ous enforcers against them.
In this regard, the American Bar Association declares; How You Start is How You Finish? The Slave Patrol and Jim Crow Origins of Policing.
The more com­mon­ly known his­to­ry — the one most col­lege stu­dents will hear about in an Introduction to Criminal Justice course — is that American polic­ing can trace its roots back to English polic­ing. Centralized munic­i­pal police depart­ments in America began to form in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry (Potter, 2013), begin­ning in Boston and sub­se­quent­ly estab­lished in New York City; Albany, New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Newark, New Jersey; and Baltimore. As writ­ten by Professor Gary Potter (2013) of Eastern Kentucky University, by the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, all major American cities had a police force.
This is the his­to­ry that doesn’t make us feel bad.
While this nar­ra­tive is cor­rect, it only tells part of the sto­ry (Turner et al., 2006). Policing in south­ern slave-hold­ing states fol­lowed a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry — one that has roots in slave patrols of the sev­en­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­turies and police enforce­ment of Jim Crow laws in the late nine­teenth to mid-twen­ti­eth cen­turies. As per Professor Michael Robinson (2017) of the University of Georgia, the first deaths in America of Black men at the hands of law enforce­ment “can be traced back as ear­ly as 1619 when the first slave ship, a Dutch Man-of-War ves­sel, land­ed in Point Comfort, Virginia.”(ABA)

We need to wrap our heads around these facts to under­stand police behav­ior in America. The sad real­i­ty is that American polic­ing has mor­phed into one big 18,000 plus slave-patrol instead of what­ev­er the English mod­el would have looked like today.
American cops did not sud­den­ly become bad. Using the met­ric of the slave patrols that I have allud­ed to on numer­ous occa­sions on this medi­um, and val­i­dat­ed by the American Bar Association. They are only now being exposed for what they are because of the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cell­phone cam­eras and the will­ing­ness of brave cit­i­zens jour­nal­ists to put their free­doms, safe­ty, and even their lives on the line to expose the stench of America’s rot­ten racist police culture.
I am so in awe of the cit­i­zen-jour­nal­ists of all races who risk being bru­tal­ized, arrest­ed, or even killed to bring the truth of what American police offi­cers rep­re­sent for the world to see.
God for­bid that the cor­po­rate media would do a lit­tle inves­ti­ga­tion into the hor­rif­ic sto­ries that police per­pet­u­ate on cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple of col­or, daily.
Instead, they accept news releas­es pre­sent­ed to them, you guessed it, by the police. They then put those dis­tor­tions on tele­vi­sion, and that’s the end of it.
When a video sud­den­ly turns up that con­tra­dicts those accounts of how an inci­dent occurred, they cre­ate more lies to jus­ti­fy the lies they fed the gullible, lazy, and com­plic­it cor­po­rate media.
That explains why they are so hate­ful to the aver­age joe stand­ing on the cor­ner record­ing their activ­i­ties. They can­not lie with­out being found out as they have been accus­tomed to.
Even so, when they are caught abus­ing and even mur­der­ing unarmed peo­ple, the courts jus­ti­fy the atroc­i­ties by stretch­ing the bound­aries of the applic­a­ble laws into grotesque exam­ples of increduli­ty to pro­tect the murderers.

America’s polic­ing prac­tices is [not] a polic­ing fail­ure; it is Government pol­i­cy val­i­dat­ed by the high­est courts.
As police com­mit more atroc­i­ties, the courts move the goal­posts by cre­at­ing new inter­pre­ta­tions of the con­sti­tu­tion to jus­ti­fy their crimes. If you own oper­ate a busi­ness, you must acquire insur­ance, doc­tors, lawyers, con­trac­tors, store own­ers, lawn care pro­fes­sion­als- just not police offi­cers. The tax­pay­ers pick up the tab in the rare instances they are held account­able civil­ly. The egre­gious Supreme Court doc­trine of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty lit­er­al­ly gives police blan­ket cov­er to com­mit crimes against cit­i­zens they do not like with impunity.
Qualified immu­ni­ty is [not] in the con­sti­tu­tion but, as I out­lined, was cre­at­ed by The US Supreme Court.
It is a prin­ci­ple that grants gov­ern­ment offi­cials per­form­ing dis­cre­tionary func­tions immu­ni­ty from civ­il suits unless the plain­tiff shows that the offi­cial vio­lat­ed “clear­ly estab­lished statu­to­ry or con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of which a rea­son­able per­son would have known.”
This is where American cit­i­zens are suf­fer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple of col­or. In the hands of the least edu­cat­ed, poor­ly trained, most big­ot­ed peo­ple are placed awe­some pow­ers, includ­ing the pow­er of life and death.
And take lives they do, more often than not Black lives. Police mur­der black peo­ple for sleep­ing in their beds,(Breonna Taylor) eat­ing ice cream,(Botham Jean) walk­ing home from the store. (Elijah McLain, alleged­ly fail­ing to use a turn sig­nal (Sandra Bland) dri­ving home with his family,(Philando Castille) Shopping in a Walmart (John Crawford), sell­ing loose cigarettes,(Eric Garner), alleged­ly ten­der­ing a fake bill, ( George Floyd), stand­ing at the front door of his apart­ment build­ing (Amadou Diallo), run­ning away (Walter Scott, Daunte Wright, being at a gas sta­tion (Alton Sterling) and hun­dreds more).…..
Unarmed Black Americans have been mur­dered by police doing every con­ceiv­able nor­mal day-to-day activ­i­ty. Usually, they get to inves­ti­gate them­selves, or a neigh­bor­ing agency inves­ti­gates and finds that every­thing was done by the book.
Corrupt Prosecutors and Judges move moun­tains to cov­er up their crimes.
In the end, they are shield­ed by qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty civil­ly and cloaked with impuni­ty against crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion by cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors who take mon­ey from their Unions, and of course, they get to inves­ti­gate themselves…

It is a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion that now goes beyond the risk American cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly Black and Brown peo­ple, take sim­ply for get­ting in their motor­cars. We know about the pre­tex­tu­al stops they use, fail­ure to sig­nal at least 100 feet before the turn, bro­ken tail light, tail­light bulb not work­ing, tire hit­ting the yel­low line, dri­ving too fast, dri­ving too slow, air fresh­en­er dan­gling from the rearview mir­ror, on and on .….and police are allowed to fol­low cit­i­zens around for any length of time they chose, then use any pre­tex­tu­al stop to jus­ti­fy an ille­gal stop.
So you get mad at the cop that abus­es you, but you give a pass to the leg­is­la­tors who vio­lat­ed you by mak­ing the ordi­nances. You give a pass to the pros­e­cu­tors who pros­e­cute the made-up vio­la­tions and offens­es and the Judges who do absolute­ly noth­ing even when cops are caught lying under oath.
The two sys­tems of jus­tice are so obvi­ous they don’t even both­er to try cov­er­ing it up any­more. A cit­i­zen who lies under oath is severe­ly pun­ished, usu­al­ly with prison time. A cop who is caught lying under oath to incrim­i­nate a cit­i­zen suf­fers .….zero penal­ties. These ladies and gen­tle­men are how the police devel­oped impunity.
There have always been two America’s, sor­ry Barack Obama, grow­ing up in Hawai, you had a com­plete­ly utopi­an idea of what America rep­re­sent­ed. Becoming pres­i­dent sure­ly brought that house of lies crash­ing down real fast.
American polic­ing is not bro­ken; it works exact­ly how it was cre­at­ed to work. It was always designed to keep Blacks in their place using what­ev­er means necessary.
The police are mere­ly the man­i­fes­ta­tion of an inher­ent­ly bro­ken and immoral sys­tem that was cre­at­ed in the blood of inno­cent Native and Black people.
Twenty-two (22) years old Amir Locke is mere­ly the lat­est iter­a­tion, the lat­est inno­cent vic­tim to have his inno­cent blood­shed by a rot­ten immoral, and cor­rupt system.
How do you ille­gal­ly enter a man’s cas­tle where he lays sleep­ing, then mur­der him as he is awak­en­ing and try­ing to fig­ure out what’s hap­pen­ing in his home? You then send images of the legal gun he has to the com­plic­it cor­po­rate media and lies that he point­ed it at you only to find out that the gun is appro­pri­ate­ly registered?
If a cit­i­zen can­not be in his home asleep with­out the gov­ern­ment enter­ing and killing him in his sleep, what kind of coun­try is that?
How You Start is How You Finish.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

We may have to recon­sid­er whether the fourth amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion is a real thing or just some­thing on paper.
The United States Supreme Court has so moved the goal­post that police can break into your home and kill you because you have a legal weapon in your home.
The oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion is whether the fourth and the sec­ond amend­ments apply to African-Americans.
The sec­ond amend­ment guar­an­tees the right of the peo­ple to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
The fourth guar­an­tees the right of the peo­ple to be secure in their per­sons, hous­es, papers, and effects, against unrea­son­able search­es and seizures, shall not be violated, …
Hahaha, what malarky?

Here is why these guarantees continue to ring hollow for Black people in America separate and apart from the institutionalized racism that send one person to prison for attempting to register to vote for six years while another who attempted to vote more than once gets probation. And these things continue to happen over and over again.
Guess which of these people are black and which is white?

New details have emerged about a 22-year-old Black man who was fatal­ly shot by Minneapolis police dur­ing the exe­cu­tion of a no-knock war­rant, with police offi­cials con­firm­ing the man was not named in any search warrant.
During a press con­fer­ence on Thursday held by the Minneapolis police depart­ment (MPD), offi­cials con­firmed that Amir Locke, who was shot ear­ly on Wednesday morn­ing dur­ing the search, was not named in any search war­rant car­ried out by MPD police. Locke was shot by the Minneapolis offi­cer Mark Hanneman, accord­ing to city offi­cials and doc­u­ments.
“My son was exe­cut­ed on 2 – 2 of 22,” said Karen Wells, Locke’s moth­er, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Friday. “And now his dreams have been destroyed.”
The video of the police shoot­ing, which was also released on Thursday, seemed to con­tra­dict ear­ly claims from police offi­cials that offi­cers had “loud­ly made them­selves known before enter­ing the apart­ment”, where Locke was. The video instead showed offi­cers announc­ing their pres­ence once they were already inside the apartment.
The video released by the Minneapolis police depart­ment shows offi­cers enter­ing the apart­ment unit by unlock­ing the door with a key, shout­ing “police, search war­rant, get on the ground, get on the fuck­ing ground,” as they entered the unit, report­ed Reuters.

I saw a report that a certain Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) told the media that raids were carried out in his area of command by his officers and that the raids were so intense men not on his most-wanted list but still wanted were captured.
The pronouncement came after one of the punks,Damion ‘Devil’ Henry, 21, from Burke Road in Old Harbour, handed himself over to the police yesterday; He is allegedly wanted for murder.(Well, duh), we’ll get back to this point of sarcasm.
(On a side note, a corrupt judge will almost certainly turn him loose in short order).

I have been fol­low­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of vio­lent crimes like every­one else, and I must say, “when trou­ble ketch yu pick­ney shut fit yu.”
The Commissioner of Police, under pres­sure from sev­er­al quar­ters as vio­lent crimes con­tin­ue to esca­late, caught a break in January, and that break has con­tin­ued into February. Many guns were recov­ered by the foot sol­diers, who are the real heroes in the JCF.
Bravo to the men and women of the JCF, the street war­riors who are get­ting action­able intel­li­gence that is bear­ing fruits.
Let me dis­abuse all of you, who, for your own rea­sons, want to attribute the suc­cess­es of the hard-work­ing mem­bers of the force to the hier­ar­chy and, more specif­i­cal­ly, the com­mis­sion­er of police.
Commissioners of police do [not] get or gath­er intel­li­gence; action­able intel­li­gence comes from the low­ly foot sol­diers who ingra­ti­ate them­selves into the com­mu­ni­ties and with mem­bers of the communities.
I am not mad at the Commish for soak­ing up the glo­ry, but let’s put things in perspective.

Having said that, It appears that Commissioner Anderson is a stand-up guy. Some have made the case that as far as com­mis­sion­ers go, he seems to be cut from a dif­fer­ent cloth in that he finds his way out onto the streets and min­gle with his offi­cers. That is indeed a plus, and this writer wish­es to con­grat­u­late the com­mis­sion­er for under­stand­ing the impor­tance of in-touch lead­er­ship in sit­u­a­tions like these.
Now, let’s back­track to the SSPs com­ments that the heat his offi­cers brought caused at least one want­ed man to turn him­self in. Whether those com­ments are just brag­gado­cio, we may nev­er know? Who knows, the man may have decid­ed to turn him­self in based on sev­er­al fac­tors- say,(a) maybe the cops real­ly have noth­ing tan­gi­ble on him, or (b) he knows his high-priced defense lawyer will slip some­thing to the judge, and he will be back on the streets in no time.
Many of you saw the reck­less dri­ver with mul­ti­ple unpaid tick­ets pur­sued and even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed recently.
You also saw how many lives he jeop­ar­dized before he was final­ly col­lared by the cops; well, we were informed that he was grant­ed bail despite the dan­ger he pos­es to the pub­lic. This is the insid­i­ous cor­rup­tion that now exists with­in the Jamaican judiciary.

See the video of that encounter below.

When has bring­ing the heat failed to con­tain crim­i­nals? Who thought the way to treat dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals like those who sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed two Chines busi­ness­peo­ple in Saint Elizabeth was to treat them kindly?
I can tell you who did, Andrew Holness did, even though I believe he is now hav­ing a come-to Jesus-moment, an awak­en­ing, going through a metamorphosis.
I believe he had that moment after the Haitian President was assas­si­nat­ed in his own home. Most of the peo­ple in the oppo­si­tion People’s National Party believe in shield­ing vio­lent crim­i­nals. They have a his­to­ry of doing so from as far back as the 70s when they sent cop-killers to Cuba and onto Canada and the United States.

See the video of the cold-blood­ed mur­der of a Chines couple.

Holness thought these mon­sters could be tamed; he berat­ed the police for going after them with the same ener­gy they com­mit the das­tard­ly acts they com­mit. He talked about not want­i­ng any name-brand cops. Andrew Holness talked about trans­form­ing the JCF; I, too, want a trans­formed JCF, one that can inves­ti­gate, gath­er intel­li­gence, and arrest and pros­e­cute sus­pects. However, Holness and his cabal, includ­ing Bruce Golding and oth­ers, want­ed a cour­tesy corps.
You all recalled that the University Of the West Indies, the so-called intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to, was hap­py to offer to help train cops?
I have been try­ing to find out what hap­pened to that idea, but I haven’t yet con­firmed whether that even­tu­al­ly occurred and how those paper cops turned out.
Let us be seri­ous, polic­ing is not pret­ty; tak­ing down crim­i­nal net­works is not some­thing you try to do for eight hours and then go home; it requires a 24 – 7 oper­a­tion with peo­ple who know what the hell they are doing.
You can keep your paper cops trained by the frauds and fakes up by uwi, and give me a dozen men trained at the Mobile Reserve; we will get it done.

Jamaica start­ed slid­ing into total anar­chy after Seaga left office in 88. After Manley won again and PJ Patterson took over, it was the death knell for Jamaicans peace and tranquility.
Jamaica lost its inno­cence between Patterson, Portia, and Bruce Golding and will nev­er get it back. Corrupt, immoral crim­i­nals run­ning our coun­try favored mur­der­ers over the rule of law, and that is the rea­son our coun­try is stuck in the ran­cid quick­sand of failure.
Two polit­i­cal par­ties, both com­plete­ly inju­ri­ous to the greater good, have dam­aged our coun­try beyond any­thing we could have imag­ined just so that they could steal and plun­der from the nation­al purse with­out a com­pe­tent law-enforce­ment infra­struc­ture to inves­ti­gate and imprison them.
You damn right that bring­ing the heat is the only way to cap­ture, kill, or run those mur­der­ous scum into the sea. I’ve been say­ing it for decades.
Contrary to what the fuck­ing liars up by UWI tells you, those mon­sters only respect force, the awe­some, over­whelm­ing force of the state. You do [not] tie up law enforce­ment resources in stu­pid ZOSOs & SOEs; you prop­er­ly train your offi­cers then give them good intel­li­gence to get the bad guys. That is how it’s done, period.
Anything else is piss­ing in the wind; it comes right back at you.……

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

An intel­li­gence-dri­ven oper­a­tion in Trewlany net­ted 13 guns; the police report­ed Thursday afternoon.
The police report­ed that one man was shot and killed in a con­fronta­tion with offi­cers before the cache of ille­gal weapons was recovered.

The dead man’s iden­ti­ty has not yet been ascer­tained; how­ev­er, the police have removed almost 100 ille­gal guns from the streets since the start of the year.

We have been reliably informed that the Government is considering a gun amnesty. An amnesty would allow criminals in possession of illegal weapons to turn them in, no questions asked, and be paid with tax dollars, upon which they walk away.
It should be understood that people with illegal guns acquire them to commit illegal acts. Using that logic, it is safe to presume that some of those weapons have already been used in violent acts against Jamaicans, and some may even have bodies on them, to borrow a street phrase.

There have been gun amnesties in Jamaica before. They net­ted quite a few weapons to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion, but there are more ille­gal guns in Jamaica today than when the author­i­ties did those gun buybacks.
Some will argue that regard­less of the num­ber of guns turned in, one less gun on the streets is worth it.
I say no unless we can stop the guns com­ing into the coun­try; buy­ing guns from crim­i­nals only serves to make the gov­ern­ment and tax­pay­ers cus­tomers to the illic­it gun run­ners flood­ing the coun­try with their dead­ly contraband.
This will undoubt­ed­ly fur­ther enrich the gun­run­ners while they con­tin­ue to flood the streets and alley­ways of our coun­try with dan­ger­ous ille­gal weapons. The gov­ern­ment should spend its time writ­ing and pass­ing leg­is­la­tion that removes the abil­i­ty to return vio­lent crim­i­nals onto the streets from the crim­i­nal-lov­ing judges. This means truth in sen­tenc­ing; what­ev­er sen­tence a vio­lent offend­er receives is the sen­tence served unless there are mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances involved in the case.
It also means manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for vio­lent crimes, includ­ing dan­ger­ous assaults with weapons and Murder.
The sen­tence must fit the crime to the extent that a poten­tial offend­er is ful­ly aware that no quar­ters will be giv­en if they com­mit a vio­lent offense and are convicted.
We can­not con­tin­ue to have judges insu­lat­ed from the scourge of vio­lent crime and, worse, involved in cor­rupt prac­tices releas­ing con­vict­ed mur­der­ers back onto the streets with slaps on the wrist.
The gov­ern­ment should also be heav­i­ly engaged leg­isla­tive­ly in redo­ing the bail act. A per­son who steals some ack­ee deserves bail; how­ev­er, a killer who goes out and mur­ders some­one is unde­serv­ing of bail.

The Island’s crim­i­nal-lov­ing judges have cow­ard­ly shel­tered under the out­dat­ed bail act for too long. At the same time, they do dam­age by releas­ing vio­lent mur­der­ers on bail, even after they have been arrest­ed on five pre­vi­ous sep­a­rate mur­der charges that have not yet gone to tri­al. In one case, the offend­er even fled the coun­try and was returned by the United States.
We can­not have a coun­try where unelect­ed bureau­crats claim inde­pen­dence while help­ing vio­lent crim­i­nals destroy life and property.
Gun buy-backs, no ques­tions asked, allow mur­der­ers to turn in weapons with bod­ies on them and receive pay­ment for those weapons. Why are Jamaican author­i­ties so dense? Why would they not under­stand that the evi­den­tiary val­ue is for­ev­er lost to inves­ti­ga­tors once they pay for those guns?
I say let them keep those weapons and allow the police to pluck them from their hands, dead or alive, their choice.
The Police com­mis­sion­er claims that he and his team are doing their jobs; it is time that the gov­ern­ment and the worth­less oppo­si­tion par­ty do theirs.
Come togeth­er to draft and pass less crim­i­nal-friend­ly leg­is­la­tion than the laws on the books. We need a coun­try in which gov­ern­ment agents respect human rights; how­ev­er, the con­tin­ued claim that ensur­ing that our secu­ri­ty forces have the tools to deal deci­sive­ly with dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers is tan­ta­mount to vio­la­tion of human rights is a crock full of shit.
The sit­ting Prime Minister once held the same views; he is now in lead­er­ship, and real­i­ty now stares him in the face.
Talking from the side of one’s mouth is dif­fer­ent than gov­ern­ing now, isn’t it?.
No to gun amnesty.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Kudos to the JCF for get­ting back to intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and cul­ti­vat­ing the assets that pass on crit­i­cal information.
Clearly, it is bear­ing fruits as we saw in January with 88 guns seized, includ­ing 13 rifles and 59 hand­guns, along with an assort­ed range of ammunition.
The police com­mis­sion­er, under pres­sure to pro­duce results, was more than hap­py to parade one of the AK47s recov­ered by offi­cers to the media, and why not? We all need a break from the crit­ics some­times. (smile)

This is one of the weapons of choice of the gun­men that cre­ate may­hem, pain, and death in our soci­ety. It has a 600-rounds-per minute rate of fire. You can get it with a 30‑, 50- or a 100-round mag­a­zine. This weapon, depend­ing on its con­di­tion, goes for any­where between $500,000 and $1 mil­lion, and this weapon and M16s and pis­tols are what we have been seiz­ing. [Recently], we seized six rifles, two shot­guns, and two pis­tols in a very small geo­graph­ic space.” Anderson reported.
The police is fight­ing a los­ing bat­tle-one that is sim­i­lar to using a cup to remove the water from a boat tak­ing ingal­lons per minute. Clearly the num­ber of weapons enter­ing the coun­try far exceeds any­thing the police could do to remove them from the streets.
And so the fight to stop the flow of ille­gal guns into the Island must be con­front­ed on two fronts, (1) intel­li­gence gath­er­ing on the Island and (2) even bet­ter intel­li­gence on the transna­tion­al crim­i­nals in the United States who are send­ing these weapons into the coun­try through the porous ports.

This means that as the United States penal­ized Jamaica and its for­mer car­ri­er Air Jamaica for mar­i­jua­na enter­ing the United States in the 80’s to the 90s, so too must Jamaica insist and demand that there are con­se­quences to the Unietd States for allow­ing the flood of ille­gal guns into Jamaica.
Imagine if the sit­u­a­tion was reversed and Jamaican guns were killing in excess of a thou­sand Americans each year; how long would that have been allowed to continue?
There can­not be two sets of rules for the way coun­tries oper­ate on the inter­na­tion­al stage. Small coun­tries are penal­ized for drugs and even mar­i­jua­na leav­ing their ports in the US while America’s guns kill tens of thou­sands around the globe with no con­se­quence to the United States.
Who cre­at­ed those rules- how can this iniequitous sys­tem con­tin­ue to prevail?

The police com­mis­sion­er told the press;“This is a sym­bol of it — an AK-47. The ille­gal firearms they car­ry are very often used to cre­ate fear, even when they aren’t killing peo­ple. It is the main source of intim­i­da­tion. An exam­ple is Travis Gilman, who was con­vict­ed in 2021 of 11 counts of mur­der and ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearm. He was sen­tenced to 210 years.“These gun­men and gangs are quite often part of sophis­ti­cat­ed crim­i­nal net­works that have transna­tion­al con­nec­tion and require us to use our man­pow­er, intel­li­gence, tech­nol­o­gy, and our part­ner­ships and oper­a­tional strate­gies to con­front what is essen­tial­ly a crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion whose pur­pose is to prof­it from the mis­ery of our society.”
The police chief also made sure that he got a dig in;“I assure Jamaicans that our part of the sys­tem is being worked effec­tive­ly, and we are using a range of oper­a­tional and crime strate­gies to get the results.”
Not sure that it is work­ing as effec­tive­ly as it could, how­ev­er his point was is well taken.
The Government and oppo­si­tion par­ty refus­es to give the police the leg­isla­tive sup­port they need. The judi­cial branch of the gov­ern­ment turn the vio­lent mur­der­ers back onto the streets as soon as the police arrests them.
So Commissioner Anderson is right that the police is work­ing over­time to get the job done but one hand can­not clap.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The rule of law is the guiding principle on which democracies are built. Fair, equitable, and just laws, their enforcement, and application give confidence to citizens that will be treated fairly; no one is more important than the other.
It is a noble concept, but even those who claim to be the best at formulating such concepts of fairness and justice have failed miserably, not just in the enforcement and application of such laws; they fail at the very conceptual stage because they are unjust, immoral and hateful.

That said, absent God’s laws, we are stuck with the rule of man-made laws as the best sys­tem of gov­ern­ment to date.
Even when the for­mu­la­tion process is exten­sive and exhaus­tive, if the objec­tive of the laws is immoral and nefar­i­ous, the con­se­quences are severe­ly inju­ri­ous to those they are intend­ed to hurt.
For those rea­sons, despite hav­ing more laws than any oth­er nation, the United States falls woe­ful­ly short of being a just and free soci­ety because its laws have gen­er­al­ly been for­mu­lat­ed to exclude seg­ments of the American peo­ple from cer­tain benefits.
Americanbar​.com writes; Even before the United States was a nation, there was talk among colonists that laws should gov­ern a new nation, not indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing kings or queens, as they’d seen in Britain and oth­er coun­tries. One colonist, Thomas Paine, pro­duced a book­let in 1776 called Common Sense, and it became a best­seller by today’s stan­dards. In it, he detailed how, “in America, law is king.”
That rosy assess­ment was not exact­ly true, as the laws were designed not only to be exclu­sion­ary to Black Americans but in many cas­es to be delib­er­ate­ly inju­ri­ous to them.

Joe Biden will get his chance to nom­i­nate his first Justice to the supreme court; not a fan of the supreme court myself because of how much it has got­ten wrong through­out its his­to­ry and how much harm it has brought to Black Americans as a result of its rul­ings. Nonetheless, dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in 2020, Joe Biden was report­ed­ly con­vinced by South Carolina African-American Representative James Clyburn to pledge to nom­i­nate a Black Woman to the high­est court as a means of reviv­ing his fledg­ing, or should I say dying campaign.
Biden even­tu­al­ly did so, and Black Women turned out in droves to give him the win In the Palmetto State, a win that cat­a­pult­ed him into becom­ing the nom­i­nee for his par­ty and beat­ing Donald Trump for the pres­i­den­cy of the United States Of America.
Biden will get a chance to name a jus­tice to the court because cen­trist Stephen Bryer, the old­est jus­tice at 83-years-old has decid­ed to step aside. Whether Breyer decid­ed to retire because of pro­gres­sive pres­sure or he made the deci­sion because of his age, we may nev­er know. However, it may be a safe bet to imag­ine that Breyer was pushed to the door because pro­gres­sives demand­ed that he step aside and allow the pres­i­dent to choose a younger lib­er­al successor.

(1)To under­stand exact­ly why it is cru­cial­ly impor­tant that jus­tice Bryer step aside now, one has to go back to two events that occurred sur­round­ing the nation’s high­est court and how those two events shift­ed the bal­ance of the high­est court arguably for gen­er­a­tions to come. It is also impor­tant to under­stand that when you hear the term “con­ser­v­a­tive” used in the American con­struct, be remind­ed that it irrefutably means “Racist.”
During the pres­i­den­cy of Barack Obama, one of the most conser­v­a­tive Justices on the court passed away. Antonin Scalia’s death would allow Democrat Barack Obama to choose his suc­ces­sor, flip­ping the court’s 5 – 4 con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty to a 5 – 4 lib­er­al one.
Scalia died more than ten (10) months before the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Although the pres­i­dent had a right to replace him with his choice for the court, Republican sen­ate major­i­ty leader Mitch Majority declared that the pres­i­dent would not replace Scalia.
Constitutionally the pres­i­dent is empow­ered to nom­i­nate a jurist to the court. The Senate is sup­posed to advise and con­sent-mean­ing hold hear­ings and give the nom­i­nee an up or down vote.
Mitch McConnel cre­at­ed a new rule that it was close to an elec­tion, and so the peo­ple should decide which pres­i­dent selects the next jus­tice to the court.
This was nev­er a rule, just one cre­at­ed by McConnell, and so the seat was held vacant for the bet­ter part of a year. Brack Obama did absolute­ly nothing.

http://Brett-Kavanaugh-Donald-Trump-Anthony-Kennedy

Donald Trump was elect­ed pres­i­dent in 2016, and he quick­ly nom­i­nat­ed Neil Gorsuch to the Court, main­tain­ing the court’s 5 – 4 con­ser­v­a­tive majority.
Trump would replace mod­er­ate Anthony Kennedy, who abrupt­ly announced his retire­ment in June 2018 with Brett Kavanaugh. Many insist there was some­thing fishy about Kennedy’s retire­ment and sur­mise that Donald Trump held some kind of trump-card (pun intend­ed) over Kennedy that forced his retirement.
Mitch McConnell would lat­er reverse his own rule to ram Amy Coney-Barrett through the process weeks before the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions slant­i­ng the court dan­ger­ous­ly to the right, which will have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the coun­try in lit­er­al­ly every area of life.
Mitch McConnell’s maneu­vers so cor­rupt­ed the process that many now look at the high­est court with a less than a favor­able eye. How the court is ulti­mate­ly viewed may be tame to the true real­i­ty of what hap­pens behind the scenes.

(2) Liberal jus­tice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s deci­sion not to retire even though her health was fail­ing will be one of the most con­se­quen­tial deci­sions of our lifetime.
Added to the mon­u­men­tal wrong that a sin­gle US sen­a­tor could stop a pres­i­dent from putting his choice of a jurist on the court-and the murky cir­cum­stances under which Anthony Kennedy stepped down allow­ing Donald Trump to place Brett Kavanaugh on the court; Justice Ginsberg’s deci­sion will for­ev­er neg­a­tive­ly impact the country.
On September 18^th, 2020, Ruth Baader Ginsberg died six weeks before the pres­i­den­tial elections.
Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell who pre­vi­ous­ly declared that Obama should not replace Antonin Scalia ten (10) months before a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, imme­di­ate­ly declared that Trump’s pick Amy Coney-Barrett would be quick­ly added to the court, and so they did.
A sin­gle cor­rupt United States Senator was able to sub­vert the process and change the coun­try’s tra­jec­to­ry for generations.
So much for the rule of law when the ones with pow­er who are sup­posed to ensure its equi­table appli­ca­tion are cor­rupt to the core.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.