Who did not know that the new policy which demands that cops intervene to stop their criminal colleagues from assaulting civilians would run into issues like these?
A Florida police sergeant has been relieved of his supervisory responsibilities and is under investigation after he was filmed grabbing an officer by her throat, according to officials. Sunrise police shared body camera video of the Nov. 19 incident with NBC News, but the footage was muted with faces blurred, except for the sergeant’s. Police officers were arresting a “verbally and physically resistive” suspect, accused of a violent felony, when the unidentified sergeant arrived and became aggressive with him, Sunrise Police Chief Anthony W. Rosa said in a statement.The sergeant engaged in a verbal altercation with the suspect sitting inside a patrol vehicle and “escalated” the encounter, according to the chief. The police body camera footage showed the sergeant ducking his head inside the patrol vehicle to talk to the suspect and holding a can of pepper spray, though he did not deploy it. Rosa called the sergeant’s behavior “inappropriate and unprofessional” and said he “unnecessarily elevated the demeanor of the suspect.”
A concerned officer ran toward the sergeant and pulled him by the back of his duty belt, Rosa said. The video footage shows the sergeant turn around while backpedaling as he was pulled by the officer. He then momentarily places his hand at the throat of the officer and pushes her backward, until her back hits a nearby police vehicle, according to the clip and the statement from the chief. The sergeant then walks away. Rosa said the officer who pulled the sergeant was following the department’s policies and procedures that call for intervention when there’s “imminent fear of engagements escalating unnecessarily.” The police chief said he immediately relieved the sergeant of his supervisory responsibilities after hearing about the incident and ordered an internal affairs investigation that is ongoing. The sergeant involved has no contact or supervision over subordinate personnel, Rosa said. “I am very proud of the officer involved in this incident and believe that the actions taken were definitive and demonstrative of good leadership during a tense situation,” Rosa said. He noted that Sunrise officers are expected to “de-escalate emotionally charged situations” and intervene if an officer appears to lose control or display inappropriate conduct in interacting with the public.
The 911 call made by the sheriff’s deputy that shot and killed a Black man in North Carolina has been released. The city council has now requested that the U.S. Department of Justice get involved in the investigation. Deputy Jeffrey Hash called 911 after he shot Jason Walker on Saturday, Jan. 8, in Fayetteville, North Carolina The almost four-minute call records Hash as saying, “I just had a male jump on my vehicle and broke my windshield. I just shot him. I am a deputy sheriff.” “You said you shot him?” the dispatcher asked the deputy.
“Yes, he jumped on my car, please,” he responded. When the dispatcher asked for his name, Hash said, “I am a lieutenant with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.” Later in the call, the dispatcher asks Hash if he is near the victim, he replies, “I am. He’s gone. He’s gone, ma’am.” “Is he breathing?” the dispatcher inquires. The deputy answered, “No, ma’am, he is not. He’s gone.” Hash then asks for “units out ’cause there are people gathering.” During the call, the deputy tells the dispatcher that his vehicle is a red Ford F‑150. He then states, “He shattered my windshield.” Also heard on the call is an exchange that Hash had with a witness, Elizabeth Ricks, the woman who tried to assist Walker after he was shot. The call captures Hash telling her to leave the scene.
“Just keep moving, ma’am,” he says to Ricks. She replies to him, “I’m a trauma nurse.” To her qualifier, he says, “I’m a deputy sheriff. Come here. He jumped on my vehicle. I just had to shoot him.” The dispatcher joins in the conversation and asks for clarity on what actually happened, to which Hash submitted his version. “I was driving down the road and he came flying across Bingham Drive, running, and then I stopped so I wouldn’t hit him and he jumped on my car and started screaming; pulled my windshield wipers off, and started beating my windshield and broke my windshield,” Hash recalled. “I had my wife and my daughter in my vehicle.” The dispatcher asked, “Did he have any weapons, sir?” Hash said that Walker did not have a firearm, and again, asserted his version of the story, “He just tore my wipers off and started beating. … He busted my windshield.” Turning her attention to the victim, who Hash had already said was not breathing, the dispatcher asked about how many people are present at the site of the crime. “There are tons of cars and people gathering around,” he stated. The 911 call continued to pick up conversations from those who gathered around Walker’s body. One key voice is Ricks, the trauma nurse Hash told to “keep moving.” Ricks can be heard saying that the man is still alive. Hash finally asks for help, saying, “He has a light pulse right now. I need EMS now.” The dispatcher asks where the man was shot, but neither Hash nor Ricks has the information. Hash reveals to the dispatcher, “I’m seeing blood on his side, ma’am.”
Ricks is heard trying to save him, notwithstanding Hash’s request for EMS’s arrival on the scene. The call records her in the background asking for a shirt or something to stop the bleeding. Others in the background repeat the dispatcher’s questions about where Walker was shot, but Hash continues to say that he doesn’t know and repeats his version of what happened, “He was on the front of my vehicle. He jumped on my car.” Ricks snaps, “I don’t care about that, where is the entry point?” Hash responded to her and says to the dispatcher, who tells him to stop talking to the people on the scene, “People are hostile right now.” Hash’s “hostile” comment was captured on the two-minute cellphone video of the aftermath of the shooting, recorded by Chase Sorrell, Ricks’ boyfriend. Ricks and Sorrell are key witnesses to the fatal shooting.The Fayetteville Observer reports that the two say they were driving about two car lengths behind Hash when the nurse saw Walker standing on the side of the road. Ricks maintains that Walker waited for one car to go by before he started to cross the street. That is when Hash’s truck came by and struck the 37-year-old Black man, and Hash got out of the car and shot the man four times, the nurse says. After that, she got out of her car to attempt to save his life as he lay dying next to the back wheels of the Ford pickup truck.
Ricks’ account of Walker being hit by a car contradicts police claims released earlier this week. Fayetteville Police Chief Gina Hawkins said on Sunday, Jan. 9, the pickup truck had a “black box” that would have registered if the vehicle struck “any person or thing.” She also added that one eyewitness said to her office that Walker was not hit by the truck. The Fayetteville newspaper reports that Ricks says she gave a witness statement to police at the scene of the shooting. Since the shooting, Hash has acquired representation. Parrish Daughtry, his lawyer, shared on Tuesday that her client was “devastated” about the incident. She said, “Lt. Hash is devastated for Mr. Walker’s family, his own family, the greater community and devastated by these events. Beyond that, I’m really prohibited from discussing the facts.” Walker’s family also acquired the services of a lawyer. Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney that has represented victims in many high-profile cases such as those of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin, will represent the interests of the family of the deceased.
has been retained by the family of Jason Walker, a 37-year-old man who was shot and killed by off-duty Cumberland County deputy Jeffrey Hash on January 8.
His office released the following statement, “We have reason to believe that this was a case of ‘shoot first, ask later,’ a philosophy seen all too often within law enforcement. We look to the North Carolina SBI for a swift and transparent investigation so that we can get justice for Jason and his loved ones.” The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is solely handling the investigation around Walker’s death. The Fayetteville City Council voted unanimously during its first regular session meeting on Monday, Jan. 10, to invite the U.S. Department of Justice to assist in this case.
Parents who try to be friends with their children without the appropriate discipline find out real fast that they do as they please and are never friends with them. Governments that acquiesce to the principle of ‘anything goes’ find out real fast that people with a bent for flouting laws will do so indiscriminately when allowed to do so. It begins with what appears to be mundane and insignificant things-but they have vast consequences for how the citizens of any country respond to rules. For example, on my recent trip to Jamaica, I was stunned that there was zero police traffic enforcement. The police have all but ceded the streets to the unruly drivers. Taxis, buses, and private motor vehicles overtake on the left, on the right, around corners, up hills, irrespective of road markings against such behavior. Cars, buses, and minivans have colored headlights, some blue, some red, some amber, and some blinking, creating immense confusion to motorists not used to the different colored blinking headlights. All of this added to the maddening circus of confusion and chaos.
How can anyone convince me that these practices cannot be outlawed in a single day’s sitting of the Parliament? Which would effectively allow the police to remove these scofflaws from the streets? The sad reality is that there is no desire from those entrusted with the safety and security of the nation. Either they have no idea how to rein in the madness, or they are too afraid to take the necessary steps to correct these basic issues. On the one hand, the government is too timid to take the bold steps, while the opposition party relishes in the chaos, hoping to ride it back to power. If the government cannot bring sanity to the streets through strong enforcement, how can the Jamaican people have any hope that there will be a return to any appearance of normalcy as far as the wanton murders are concerned? I traveled the Edward Seaga Highway quite a bit on my recent trip. The posted speed limit is generally 80 kilometers along the highway, with a few exceptions. Drivers flew by me at speeds in excess of 140 kilometers with no concern that they would be apprehended. On two occasions, I saw a police highway patrol unit, and of course, they offered zero deterrent to the madness. The officers were parked and out of the patrol vehicle chatting as the traffic whizzed by them at breakneck speed.
On the night before Christmas Eve, I was in Ochi Rios square, and it was the same madness, one police vehicle parked on main street with blue lights flashing. I was curious why the officers had their lights flashing. As my car drew closer, I realized that both officers were on their cell phones chatting casually as if they had no care in the world. The flashing lights were the deterrent effect I imagined. I drove on by and minded my business. Preliminary reporting suggests that the country ended 2021 with 1,463 murders. That number does not include those killed and dumped that the police have no clue about, and it also does not include people shot or otherwise wounded who die at a later time from those injures. Nevertheless, the 1463 number represents an average of 4.008 Jamaican murdered daily. In simple terms, Jamaica continues to be one of the most dangerous places on earth to live. Last year saw homicides increase in most police divisions by as much as 60% in some cases. The Government’s strategy of SOEs and ZOSO’s has had little or no measurable effect on violent crimes. There is really no benefit in saying we told them it wouldn’t. Nevertheless, the Opposition party’s criminal supporting intransigence has precious little to do with principle or that they have better ideas. The opposition’s refusal to support the extension of the SOEs and ZOSOs is all about being part of the crime enhancement cabal that includes the judges and the criminal rights loudmouths that are destroying Jamaica.
The opposition party has zero compunction about seeing the country burned to the ground, and they are quite happy to govern over the ashes. Having access to the people’s money has always been the singular focus of the opposition party. However, the PNP is not in power now, and it is the responsibility of the administration in power to govern. It is not governing. It hasn’t looked outside the box, so the killings continue unabated. If they can’t fix the chaos on the roads, how would I expect them to attend to the violent crime pandemic?
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.
A Georgia sheriff’s deputy in middle Georgia has been “suspended without pay pending termination” after allegedly calling murder victim Ahmaud Arbery a “criminal” on social media. In addition to labeling the slain jogger as a criminal, he is accused of smugly writing, “he still got the death penalty.”
Houston County Deputy Paul Urhahn commented on the Macon outlet’s Facebook post about the recent sentencing of Arbery’s killers, Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Bryan. The deputy replied, “That criminal Arbery still got the death penalty though.” On Friday, Jan. 7, the three men were handed down life sentences for their roles in the 25-year-old’s death. The McMichaels both received life sentences with no possibility of parole, plus an additional 20 years. Bryan, a McMichael’s neighbor, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 30 years
Judge Timothy Walmsley stated at sentencing, “Ahmaud Arbery was then hunted down and shot, and he was killed because individuals here in this courtroom took the law into their own hands.”
Despite deleting the comment, screenshots have been shared across social media, landing in the Houston County Sheriff’s Office. Over the weekend, the sheriff’s office launched an investigation, and on the morning of Monday, Jan. 10, decided to suspend Urhahn without pay and pending termination.
Sheriff Cullen Talton wrote a letter detailing how the deputy violated several of the department’s policies, all relating to code of conduct:
Page 5 (4A) – An officer must at all times, on and off duty, conduct him/herself in a manner which does not bring discredit to the department or county.
Page 5 (4B) – Conduct unbecoming of an officer shall include that conduct
(2) – Which has a tendency to destroy public respect for employees and confidence in the department.
The blowback from the comment did not stop with the department. Activist Eli Porter, a member of the Poor And Minority Justice Association told WGXA, “That deputy represents that entire department, and for him to say something like that — I’m just … it got under my skin.”
Porter believed that the sheriff’s immediate response communicated a powerful message to the community, showing everyone that “the sheriff’s office does not stand with what Paul said.”
Few people have expressed solidarity with the disgraced officer.
Kimberly Ochelli wrote, “Exactly the type of person we do not need to be a Peace Officer not only in our beautiful city, but anywhere. He deserved exactly what he earned.”
“He deserves to lose his job,” Laurie Hardeman posted in the comment section. “When a racist shows his true colors they need to learn just how ignorant they act. And it reflects on how he or she was brought up and how ignorant their family is also.”
But some believed that his freedom of speech had been violated.
“The man has a right to his opinion, why should some people be denied their right to express themselves because they work in certain areas,” wrote Will Maddox.
Lawana Henrich asked, “I do not know what he said but what happened to freedom of speech?
Urhahn has an opportunity to appeal this decision over the next 10 days. If he does not, his termination will be effective on Jan. 20.
I will be the first to admit I’m no travel writer; however, it is hard, at least for me, to soak up Jamaica’s natural beauty without sharing a few snapshots with you. Thanks to the convenience of the iPhone, walking around with my Canon Easy-share seemed rather odd to everyone I imagined. So my iPhone it was.
At Dolphin’s Cove Ochi Rios, I a recent trip home.Pristine Jamaica land we love
There is so much to enjoy if we stop and understand how beautiful our country is.
Enjoying the serenityWhere swimming with the Dolphins is an actual thing…
Preservation of our coral reefs has allowed our marine life to flourish.
Locals and visitors lined up waiting to swim with the Dolphins at Dolphins Cove…
It is bad enough that the tools available to the police are substandard, that they are forced to buy their own uniforms (real uniforms), that the pay is shitty, on and on and on. I understand that the court system functions as an aid to violent criminals by turning them loose on bail and appeals and continuing to disrespect the hard-working officers when they haul the murderers before them to face justice. The behavior of judges is once again a sore point that both the police federation and the police officers association must act on immediately. Policing is a noble and respectable profession; police officers should [not] allow criminal-loving Jamaican judges an inch to disrespect them in the courts. Police have immense powers; learn your power to stop the disrespectful comments and actions of the criminals who disrespect you to curry favor with criminals. They will tell you they are upholding the judiciary’s integrity; they are not; they are supporting criminals.
That said, there should be no circumstances under which a prisoner walks out of a police lockup. This is an issue that continues to occur repeatedly, and it has been happening for decades. Poor management at the divisional level, commanders failure to apply the appropriate levels of leadership and oversight. This, however, comes from the top, where the top-tier of the force stumble from crisis to crisis without developing new policies and protocols to prevent these events from occurring again.
Instead, when prisoners walk out of police lockups, the constables and corporals are punished without a full top-down review to determine what happened to ensure it does not happen again. This is something Deputy Commissioners of police should be working on; they are the most senior officers in the Department. However, if these most senior people have no experience in actual policing but were fast-tracked to the positions they hold because they earned a degree or kissed some asses, we have the same problem in the department as we have in the judiciary.
The Freeport Police station in Montego Bay is not an old facility by any stretch of the imagination, and it is not a facility that some guys can saw through a metal bar and escape in a back alley. That someone could walk out of a facility like the Freeport police lockup and potentially kill a witness against him is inexcusable… The police must maintain its standard in doing its best to protect the Jamaican people. It is up to the judges to turn killers loose onto the Jamaican society to shoot and decapitate innocent citizens. Come on, JCF, you are better than that.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.
Some time ago, I posted an image of a cop on social media that I thought demonstrated where American policing really was. As a former Jamaican police officer who fully understands the importance of deportment and perceptions, I thought it important to raise awareness of what I perceived.
This is a screenshot of a cop on YouTube roughing up a homeless white man who had committed no crime. The ‘cop’ was not undercover, which could explain the ragged tattooed look, and he was actively patrolling the streets.
Here is another who was fired in Michigan for being really disrespectful to a Black man he arrested for collecting signatures for a Tenant’s Association in his housing development. It is important to understand that firing a cop in the United States is really not punishment. They go to another department where they are usually paid more money and promoted. Unless they are decertified and criminally prosecuted, no punishment meted out really matters.
This cop, who has remained nameless and refused to identify himself to the person filming, was fired. Note the bearded rough look.
This cop works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His name is Ian Lichterman.
Ian Lichterma. Note the tattoos he claims represent his German heritage. Now, look at the tattoo on his left arm and compare it with the one in the image below.According to Buzzfeed News, Lichterman does have ties to neonate groups. The Philadelphia PD did an investigation and declared they saw nothing wrong.
In 2016 Buzzfeed news said this about the Lichterman tattoos snapped after he was seen doing crowd control. It has become clear if it wasn’t before, that white supremacist ideology has permeated the halls of American authority — from the White House, where anti-immigrant nativists Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka were hired as advisers to Trump; to the prison system, where three Florida correctional officers, found to be Ku Klux Klan members, were convicted of plotting to kill a black inmate; to the church, where a Catholic priest and part-time history teacher in Virginia was forced to resign after a parishioner discovered that he‘d orchestrated at least six cross burnings during his time in the KKK; to the military, where a former Marine Corps recruiter and staff sergeant, who retired in January, became leader of the white supremacist group Vanguard America; to the fire station, where a firefighter in Ohio wrote in a Facebook comment that he’d rather save a dog than a black person because “one dog is more important than a million niggers.”
David Borst and George Hunnewell of the Fruitland PD were fired after a law enforcement report tied them to the Ku Klux Klan in 2014.In 2018 these Neo-Nazi cops in Alabama were suspended for openly displaying white power signs in this picture. from left to right #1 ‑2 ‑4 & 5.
How many of these people do you think are operating in plain sight in police departments across the country, killing, maiming, and lying on reports? In the image above, the white supremacists-cops in Jasper, Alabama, PD, celebrated with white power signs after collaring an African-American fugitive. The cowardly punks then lied that the signs were a kid’s game. Their punishment, two weeks without pay, they were allowed to continue to be slave catchers. As you know, American policing derived from slave-catching and remains so today. In August of 2020, the Brennan Center For Justice said in a Summary;The government’s response to known connections of law enforcement officers to violent racist and militant groups has been strikingly insufficient. This writer has made the very same point repeatedly over the years, albeit less articulate, since the FBI 2006 internal memo was made public that warned of white supremacists infiltrating police departments using what they refer to as ghost skins actors. At the time the memo was written, the FBI warned that the practice of white supremacists infiltrating police departments was a threat to national security. Ghost skins refer to hate group members and sympathizers who don’t overtly display their beliefs to blend into society then advance their white supremacist causes. Part of the reason they have chosen to enter law enforcement is to have members alert them to potential investigations against them, the Brennan Center For Justice said. It is safe to say that 15 years later, no serious steps have been taken to rein in, much less eradicate that cancer from law enforcement despite the increased incidences of police violence leading to the deaths of more people of color year over year. The Supreme Court has basically been mum while Federal appeals courts have given police more and more power to abuse the rights of citizens under the dubious cloak of qualified immunity.
In the 2020 Brennan Report Michael Graham stated; While it is widely acknowledged that racist officers subsist within police departments around the country, federal, state, and local governments are doing far too little to proactively identify them, report their behavior to prosecutors who might unwittingly rely on their testimony in criminal cases, or protect the diverse communities they are sworn to serve. In conclusion, Graham writes,The affinity some police officers have shown for armed far-right militia groups at protests is confounding given that many states, including California, Illinois, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington, have laws barring unregulated paramilitary activities. And it is most troubling because far-right militants have often killed police officers. The overlap between militia members and the Boogaloo movement — whose adherents have been arrested for manufacturing Molotov cocktails in preparation for an attack at a Black Lives Matter protest in Nevada, inciting a riot in South Carolina, and shooting, bombing, and killing police officers in California — highlights the threat that police engagement with these groups poses to their law enforcement partners. See the full report in the link below. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law
Rob Stamm
In 2019 the Antifascist group Seven Hills unearthed enough evidence on Rob Stamm, a 36-year-old sergeant in the Virginia Capitol police that had responsibility for protecting the then governor Ralph Northam. Stamm was uncovered through his likes on far-right-wing postings on social media. Activists noticed a large bandage on Stamm’s neck at a protest against the Governor and decided to dig into his background upon which where they found multiple links to the far-right. Stamm’s tattoos also show an alleged affinity for the far-right, the most obvious of which appears to be a large Iron Cross on his upper left arm, a German war medal. He also allegedly had a neo-Pagan Viking rune on his left bicep and what seemed to be a wolfsangel on his neck — an ancient Germanic symbol often used by far-right groups like the Aryan Nations — which he then attempted to cover up with a more generic design.
Hiding in plain sight, these monsters are policing communities of color with the awesome power of life and death.
None of this was discovered by the government whose job it is to protect all Americans, it was discovered by Anti-Fascist American citizens that have been demonized as anti-American in right-wing media like Fox noise and others. If unearthing dangerous and violent potential terrorists burrowed into law enforcement is anti-American, by definition they are saying being American means one must be a racist potential terrorist. This hardly scratches the surface, however. In September 2018, a cop in Georgia was suspended after it was discovered he had liked Facebook posts promoting the Ku Klux Klan. In July that year, a deputy at the Clark County Sherrif’s Office in Washington State was fired for making merchandise for the Proud Boys, a far-right gang. Rob Stamm Rob Stamm was eventually fired from his job after the exposure, however, the firing of a cop in the United States means very little. He can simply move to another department where he will almost certainly be hired and even promoted, not despite what he allegedly did but because of what he did. Unless they lose their accreditation to be a police officer losing their job when uncovered may actually mean a promotion to another more tolerant law enforcement agency.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.
No other medium highlights America’s deep race problem more than this one does fearlessly. Many people believe this is a police-only problem it isn’t. America’s race problem runs straight through every sector of American life. How many Black lives do you think this judge ruined.
A Louisiana judge has claimed that sedative drugs are to blame for her usage of a racial slur, after footage was leaked online
Judge Michelle Odinet, 52, can be heard using the racial slur in a viral video clip, which was recorded last weekend at her family home in Bendel Gardens, Lafayette.
While watching security footage of a Black male attempting to break into the house, Ms Odinet, alongside other members of the family, can clearly be heard using the n‑word, as well as other profanity.
After one of the younger children says, “And mom’s yelling n****r, n****r,” a female voice appears to respond, “We have a n****r. It’s a n****r, like a roach.”
I had no idea sedatives could bring out Racism;(sarcasm) even so, does this light-hearted banter sounds like she was sedated? I submit that she sounded rather elated, not sedated.
However, in response to her alleged usage of the racial slur, Judge Odinet blamed it on sedatives, which she claimed to have started taking following the burglary attempt.
“My children and I were the victim of an armed burglary at our home,” she explained to The Current (via the Daily Mail).
“The police were called and the assailant was arrested. The incident shook me to my core and my mental state was fragile.”
Judge Michelle Odinet (Via Lafayette City Court)
“Anyone who knows me and my husband, knows this is contrary to the way we live our lives. I am deeply sorry and ask for your forgiveness and understanding as my family and I deal with the emotional aftermath of this armed burglary.
The Republican judge is now facing calls within her community to resign from her position on the Lafayette City Court. She was first elected to the position just over a year ago, winning 57 per cent of the vote against rival candidate Jules Edwards.
Leading the calls for her to stand down is Lafayette city marshall, Reggie Thomas. “As a proud Black man, and the Lafayette City Marshall, I strongly believe Judge Odinet should be held accountable,” he told the Acadiana Advocate.
“I’m sure that people of color will find it impossible to trust that they will be treated fairly and equally when they have to stand for judgment before Judge Odinet.
“This type of language cannot be accepted or tolerated by anyone, especially those who serve as leaders in our city.”
You can package a dead Rat in a box, wrap the box in pretty Christmas wrapping paper, then place a pretty bow on it, but in the box is still the corpse of a dead Rat that will eventually smell up the damn place. The idea of SOEs and ZOSOs as a permanent crime-fighting strategy is as stupid and retarded as the people whose ideas they are. Throwing groups of soldiers and police into so-called hotspots to show that crime will go down in that area while ignoring and refusing to acknowledge the rise of violence in other areas is both duplicitous and dangerous. This is not rocket science; drop a huge rock into a small pool, it displaces some of the water from the pool. The displaced water does not cease to exist; it exists in a different place. So are criminals displaced by the security forces not forced out of their activities; they move their operations to other areas. The violent crime data coming from the same police department supports this irrefutable fact. https://mikebeckles.com/what-happened-to-jamaica-we-once-had-leaders-didnt-we/
Since the Island’s (“so-called independence”), both political parties have played politics with national security when in power; they play the same childish and dangerous games with national security when in opposition. This has not stopped; the present administration unable and unwilling to take the necessary steps to stop the slide into total lawlessness, still plays politics with the SOEs & ZOSOs, hoping to pull the wool over the people’s eyes. The opposition party desperate to gain power plays the same dangerous games. In the meantime, the dead Rat stinks to high heaven- Gangsters openly play war games, putting on display for all to see the awesome arsenal they have at their disposal. And while we are at it, might I add that this year’s murder statistics have already surpassed last year’s gruesome total, yet the Government still maddeningly talks about the successes of ZOSOs & SOEs. Incompetent and clueless, complicit and acquiescent, or both, you decide. https://mikebeckles.com/neither-political-party-in-jamaica-interested-in-controlling-violent-criminals/
The failed strategy of ZOSOs & SOEs can be quantified in the irrefutable facts I laid out. Ultimately, the administration’s go-to strategy does not reduce crime overall, burns out the security forces, and infringes in a burdensome way on the rights of innocent Jamaicans for far too long. But there are also exponentially more unseen negatives that competent security strategists [must] foresee and plan to offset. It must register in the minds of the nation’s leaders, for christ’s sake, that soldiers at checkpoints on a small Island of 2.8 million people are not normal. It is a dystopian nightmare that allows politicians to continue to lie to the people to remain in power. In a recent article, I spoke to the quality of leadership at the highest levels of the nation’s security apparatus; second rate. I spoke to the members of the police high command, including the Commissioner of police, holding a panel discussion at which top commanders of the JCF spoke of the virtues of ZOSOs & SOEs. I pointed out that I was not the least bit surprised that the police high command was parroting the government’s talking points. Conversely, I would be surprised if they had grown a backbone and chosen not to.
Ultimately it is up to the head of the Police and Military to execute the Government’s National Security Strategy. With that in mind, I will not fault the Government directly for what happened to a young soldier of the Jamaica Defense Force at a checkpoint last week. Jamaica Defense Force Private Jermaine Rose was hit at a checkpoint that was obviously manned by him, and another soldier, the driver of the vehicle that broke both his legs, among other serious injuries in Greenwood Saint James, left him bedridden today. The 29-year-old told the media from his bed at JDF Headquarters Up Park Camp that they heard gunshots on the night of the incident while he and his colleagues were on duty sometime after midnight. The two soldiers decided to check the vehicles that were passing. He recounted, “at around 12:30 [am], we saw four cars approaching the checkpoint and we tried to slow them down, and they stopped for a second and then dem tek time approach the checkpoint…, and then they were driving cross and cross in the road,” recounted the Tower Hill, St Andrew resident.“They (the cars) tried to hit down one of my colleagues first, and he jumped out the road, and just as I was about to jump [out of the road], a car hit me and broke my two feet and dislocated my right hand,” he said. According to Rose, the vehicle’s impact on his body resulted in him being flung in the air and landing on the sidewalk. The car did not stop.
Under what plausible scenario could security planners place young men and women into volatile situations like these without the proper support structure to ensure that this could not happen and the offender is not immediately apprehended? Police work is inherently dangerous,-yes police work, that’s what the soldiers were out there doing without police training. Common sense dictates that if there are checkpoints, there must be adequate resources, i.e., enough officers with assets and vehicles ready for any offender who would try to breach the checkpoint. The idea of a checkpoint only makes sense if those manning them can enforce every aspect of those checkpoints. Assuming that the motorists had something to do with the shots the soldiers heard, what incentive would they have to stop and be searched and arrested at a sad-sack checkpoint manned by a couple of soldiers on foot? In a country of laws, the leaders who placed the lives of these young people in that situation would have been subject to an inquiry and brought up on charges. We know that this will be shrugged away by the political leaders as nothing to be alarmed about; however, if the events happening in our country do not alarm the Jamaican people, I have no idea what will.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.
They say Democracy dies in the dark; I disagree; democracy dies when we fail to open our eyes to those killing it. Who can honestly say they did not see what Donald Trump was doing from as early as 2015 when he was touting a run for the United States presidency? You should not lie that in 2015 ‑2016 you did not see reporters repeatedly ask him if he lost the elections, would he concede, and he refused to say he would. You saw it, yet millions of you voted for him. This was the very first time in any of our lives that we had seen a presidential candidate refuse to say he would abide by the norms established by the founding fathers of this great republic. What did you think he would do if he refused to abide by the most basic established norms that had guided the actions of presidential candidates for the life of the republic?
Trump with Xi
When he attacked the foundation pillars of the republic, what did you think was behind that? The Courts, the Media, the Investigative Agencies of Government that we all trust to keep the nation safe from enemies from within and without; did you not see the strategy as alien to American political culture? You saw him go on a systemic crusade against media houses that refused to parrot his propaganda and lies; what did you think that was about? Are you going to pretend that you did not know that those characteristics were exactly indicative of the behavior of would-be dictators? Oh, by the way, in addition to taking on the persona of strongmen, he openly expressed adoration for them; Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, North Korea’s Kim Jon- Un, China’s Xi Jinping, Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and other despots around the globe.
Birds of the same feather flock together: Trump & Duterte
He also openly pretended to joke about being president for life if he was elected; after he was elected, he openly flouted the idea of remaining president for several terms. None of this has ever happened before, but Americans pretended that this was normal. In 2016, Americans elected the most immoral, reprehensible, amoral and corrupt human being to be their president over an accomplished woman. Donald Trump hammered away at American Democracy throughout his four-year presidency with help from surrogates inside and outside the Republican party. Trump committed every crime a president could commit, and he knew he would lose the 2020 elections. Still, he had a plan to stay in power. That plan was to stack the Supreme Court with as many Justices as he could; he added three in his single term with the help of the Mitch McConnell anti-democracy Republican conference. Trump planned to have some Republican states declare that they could not determine the winner of the elections in their state, which would toss the matter to the house of representatives, where Republicans had a 26 – 24 majority of state legislatures they control. This would ultimately toss the elections to the Supreme Court he had recently remade with his stooges Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amey Coney Barrett, in addition to the three that were there previously, John Roberts, Samuel Alito a hyper-partisan and of course Uncle Clarence Tom-Ass.
Whispering with Erdogan
Despite everything Donald Trump did before and during the 2016 presidential campaign, he was elected president, and thereafter he began dismantling American Democracy. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon said that Trump’s cabinet picks were aimed at the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” meaning weakening regulatory agencies and other bureaucratic entities. A dunce himself, Trump chose Betsy DeVos to run the education department, Louis Dejoy to head the US postal service, and a host of other flunkies vehemently opposed to how the agencies and cabinet positions they were heading operated. Steven Mnuchin at Treasury, Jeff Sessions at Justice, Ryan Zinke at Interior, Ben Carson at Housing, Scott Pruit at the E.P.A, confirmed what Bannon had bragged about to their CPAC Klan rally.
A vicious dictator and a clown wannabe
What exactly did Donald Trump, a failed businessman, bring to the table that caused him to be elected president of the United States after he was heard bragging on tape just before the elections that he grabbed young women by their genitalia? I mean, the popular Gary Hart was dead in the water for far less, Howard Dean tanked after letting off a freakish howl. Bush senior lost the election arguably because he did not know the price of a loaf of bread. American political history is replete with candidates of both political parties failing due to the proverbial October surprise. Usually, some issue came up that shocked voters. Donald Trump’s past and present were not just sordid; they were disgusting and completely unsuitable for dog-catcher, much less the presidency of the United States. So what was it about Trump that caused Americans to elect him the 45th United States president? Please do not tell me that he was a businessman from outside Washington DC, it is a crock, and you all know it. It is the same story that the mainstream media fed the nation for decades about white blue-collar workers, rather than calling them what they truly are, largely uneducated racist white people.
Here he is with M.B.S.
What was it that caused them to turn out to vote for Donald Trump in numbers never before seen for a Republican presidential candidate, 75 million? What was Donald Trump’s appeal despite all of his crimes and faux pas, racism, and being the first president in history to be impeached twice, and in a single term? Was anyone surprised that despite everything Donald Trump was allowed to get away with, he decided to orchestrate a coup d’ e’tat against the American Constitution and government to make himself president for life? Trump’s plan has always been to seize power then pass on leadership to his underlings as he sees fit, as is the case in the countries named above run by brutal dictators.
With Kim jun Un
Every one of those 75 million who voted for him knew what he was about. Some were not sophisticated enough to understand that he wanted to be King, but it would not have mattered even if they were that smart. Retaining an America in which whites are privileged, and every other race is subservient to whites has been far more important to some than retaining the world’s oldest democracy. That was what inspired them to turn out on January 6th in their thousands to overthrow the American experiment to install an imbecilic moron who would do whatever they wanted to further white domination over other races in America. He is an amoral character who will do anything to enrich himself, including tearing down the country he claims to love but is incapable of loving. President Joe Biden gathered over 100 world leaders at a summit and made a plea to bolster democracies, calling safeguarding rights and freedoms in the face of rising authoritarianism the “defining challenge” of the current era. Nowhere is Democracy in greater danger than in the world’s oldest democracy, right here in America, where the Trump-packed Supreme court and Republican legislatures across the country have placed American democracy on life support. For the court, precedent in voting and other rights mean nothing. At the same time, the legislatures use voter-suppression laws and gerrymandering to select the voters they choose rather than the voters choosing them. If and when American falls, so too will the remaining few democracies across the globe; some estimates say only 20-percent of the world’s people live in a free country. Only one in five people live in a society that can be called free, and it is getting worse.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.
One of the guiding principles of my life has been and still is that actions have consequences. I will explain how actions result in dangerous and deadly consequences imperiling the person who initiated the action and others around them. I speak of the killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Brooklyn Center Minnesota man who was killed in the community of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, a mere 10 miles from where Derek Chauvin was on trial in the killing of George Floyd.
20-year old Daunte Wright and his infant son.
Former senior police officer Kim Potter faces trial for killing the young father. I have thought about this case for a very long time, and I have read a lot of material on what transpired that led to the young man’s death; and I have also thought about the issue from the perspective of a former police officer. Most of all, I have given thought to some of the comments that people on all sides have made, mostly along balkanized racial and ideological lines.
Former police officer and killer of Daunte Wright Kim Potter
Let us drill down as reasonable people. Did officer Kim Potter commit murder? Murder is the killing of a person by another with malice aforethought. It is difficult to say that the officer wanted to murder Daunte Wright when she attempted to arrest him for having an outstanding warrant. Before The police stopped Daunte Wright, neither officer Kim Potter nor the other officers involved in the incident knew that mister Wright had an outstanding warrant. There are claims that Daunte Wright had no driver’s license, his tags were expired, there was an order of protection issued against him, and of course, there was a warrant out for his arrest on weapons charges. At the tender age of 20-years old, it is fair to say that mister Wright was on a slippery slope and heading for disaster. The seminal issue here is that the police were not privy to any of that information until they decided to pull over his car for an air fresher hanging over his rearview mirror.
Officer Potter is reported to have received extensive training in knowing the difference between a taser and a service weapon. Officers whose dominant hand is their right usually wear the taser on their left side, and their service weapon on the right. Left-handed cops would do the reverse. Some cops wear the taser on the front of their uniform. Regardless of how it is worn, the idea is to ensure there is no mistaking the use of each weapon. Officer Potter claimed that she mistakenly pulled her service weapon instead of her taser when she shot Daunte Wright. As a former police officer, I am fully conversant that actions have consequences; the immediate response of officer Potter after shooting mister Wright can be criticized, but it is difficult to argue that she was not traumatized immediately. That video will go a long way in her defense that she had no intention of shooting mister Wright. As we try to make sense of what occurred, we must remember that even if officer Potter did not intend to shoot Daunte Wright-Daunte Wright is no less dead, and officer Potter killed him. The fact that malice is not present does not mean there wasn’t negligence, carelessness, or recklessness, all aggravated, because mister Wright is dead.
Daunte Wright is dead; sorry, I made a mistake cannot change that fact. There may not have been malice aforethought, but that does not exonerate officer Potter of culpability. The jury is almost Lilly white, as is customary when police officers face trial. It is important to see how these people will honor their obligations. Daunte Wright made a series of mistakes in his life, including choosing not to submit to being arrested. Sometimes bad decisions have cumulative effects, and the case of Daunte Wright’s death is a classic example of the cumulative effect of bad decisions. The most important takeaway from this case is that the police profiled Daunte Wright using the air freshener to initiate an illegal pretextual stop. Daunte Wright is dead because of that pretextual stop. Officer Kim Potter is facing felony charges because of that pretextual stop. As long as police across the country are allowed to use pretextual stops to harass the people they want to, people will continue to die. Not just from mistakes as in this case, but the raft of killings of innocent unarmed motorists by tyrannical wannabe-Rambo cops.
This is a case where the defense for former officer Potter should show some class and not try to impeach the character of Daunte Wright.-Daunte Wright’s record already impeaches him. But nothing in his record warranted the death sentence. In defending his client, Kim Potter’s defense attorney has been on a tear in trying to make the case that mister Wright got what he deserved. They cannot help themselves even though the defense strategy hasn’t been that the officers were in fear for their lives; Potter’s defense lawyers are making the case that he deserved what he got. It is classic white man’s vitriol because neither he nor his children will ever face being racially profiled by the police in America. Officer Potter makes for a sympathetic figure even among the litany of the illicit police killing of minorities. Kim Potter was operating in a flawed system that empowers her to abuse rights, that system not only endangered the lives of Daunte Wright and his girlfriend but also placed her in the position she is in today. She should face the consequences for his death, and that is the reason there are lesser offenses. That is why prosecutors appropriately charged former officer Potter with first-degree manslaughter and reckless handling or use of a firearm. She should be convicted on both charges.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.A
Deterrent is an important part of any policing strategy; visible uniformed officers in specific areas are important to shore up the confidence of those that police seek to reassure and send a clear message to those they want to …deter. However, the deterrent aspect should only be the frontal part of any policing strategy and planning. The main strategy for planners cannot and should not be just about uniformed cops out in numbers at certain times like during the Christmas season. The most important part of the plan should work like a computer motherboard, not just what you see on the computer screen, but what happens behind the screen that you cannot see. Simply put, there better be a comprehensive plan that includes swat, detectives, the utilization of plainclothes assets, confidential informants, assets planted within the groups you are working to dismantle, eyes and ears on those groups, etc.
Trotting out some student constables you had at the academy marching up-down, up-down to the outdated and useless training manual for a few weeks or months, wearing that ridiculously impractical uniform should reassure no one, but rather should give pause and concern that even at this late stage this is the best that the nation’s security planners can muster. Gabbing has always been a problem of the police *high command*-*whatever that is. They never really mattered in any useful way in crime reduction in our country, and as I pointed out in a recent article, they only took credit for the work that the people at the bottom did. For those reasons, as a young man who passed through the JCF, I had zero regard for what existed as the *high-command* then; I don’t today. If you are no good at the thing you are best at, what good are you?
Assuming that what I saw in one of the local dailies this morning is the plan the police department has for the Western Parishes, and more specifically Area One, residents and business owners should be very concerned for the Christmas season. Laying out your strategy in detail to the media is actually telling the criminals what assets you have and how you intend to utilize those assets. It is reasonable to say that the transnational crime planners in Jamaica are heads and shoulders above the police planners. Political leaders and others have said so based on the sophistication of the crimes being carried out. This writer warned many years ago that this would happen largely due to the large number of criminal deportees coming in from industrialized nations. It is fair; I believe to assume that when the police detail comprehensively how they intend to counter the criminals, the criminals have the capability to develop countermeasures to go around police plans. I mean, for the love of God, why would a senior police planner detail to the media the measures he intends to execute to keep citizens safe, except that he likes to chat and be seen?
Throughout the years, the JCF and Jamaica have benefited from the name of some brave officers. Some have used varying methods, including unorthodox, to get results for the Jamaican people. Their methods have, without a doubt, resulted in the preservation of countless lives. Those officers, some well-known others not so much, have given incredible unsung service to our people and nation, some making the ultimate sacrifice in service to their beloved country. Whether we agree with them or not is not the issue. When we look at the cost-benefit ratio was their efforts worth it? And as Ronald Reagan asked voters in his campaign against President Jimmy Carter in 79, are you better off now than you were four years ago? I ask Jamaicans now,” are you better off now than when those officers had your back”? I salute you all: Joe Williams, Trinity, Bigga Ford, Parro Campbell, Noël Asphall, OC Hare, Isiah Laing, Spungy, Dadrick Henry, Tony Hewitt, and everyone in between, men and women. We were all imperfect men and women doing a difficult job with little or no help, but our hearts were in the right place. In some instances, yes, we used unorthodoxy, but we kept the people safe. We were not into talking to the media, we were about the people’s business. You can talk about modernization all you want but if the video doesn’t match the audio then it is all gibberish. The criminals are winning this war and you have no clue what you are doing. You cannot plan for what you never trained for, lived, or experienced. Reading something in a book does not a police officer make.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.
A man accused of racially profiling a Black worker in a Tennessee parking garage with his white mom has been charged with assault after a video of the altercation went viral on social media, the Nashville Metro police said.
According to an arrest warrant filed Dec. 2, Edward Brennan took a swing at Johnny Martinez, who was checking cars for parking permits in the Nashville garage, after his mom called the police because Martinez refused to show them identification. “A reasonable person would regard the contact as extremely offensive or provocative,” causing Martinez to fear “imminent bodily injury, the warrant states.
Martinez told The Daily Beast that he was working in the River House apartment building’s parking garage on the evening of Nov. 27, when he saw the white mother and son monitoring him.
Entitled white Karen and her Ken- son
“As I was doing my rounds…I noticed people watching me,” he explained.
As he continued to work, Martinez said he tried to avoid the pair until the mother allegedly told him, “You don’t belong here. How did you get here?”
In a video originally posted on YouTube, Martinez can be seen filming the mother and son as they question him. Brennan tells Martinez that he will call the police, and the mother — identified as “Bitsy” — asks for Martinez’s identification. Brennan then walks toward a car off-camera while the mother continues pestering Martinez.
When the son comes back on camera, he strikes Martinez, knocking a bottle opener off his keychain. Martinez told The Daily Beast that when he went to pick it up, Brennan allegedly tried to attack him again.
“When he attacked me, he swung, he almost hit me in the face,” Martinez said. “He broke this bottle opener off of my keys. When I went to go pick it up, he lunged.”
Martinez said that he waited for the police to show up, but the mom and son left.When reached for comment, Edward Brennan hung up on The Daily Beast.
Martinez explained that he worked for a booting company that has hundreds of contracts with properties across Nashville. His job was to make sure that vehicles at those properties had permits to park at those locations.
“If they didn’t have a permit, we would immobilize the vehicle. We would put a boot on it,” he said.
He explained that he thinks it’s normal for people to be curious about what he’s doing while checking cars. But with his large headlamp, knee pads, and lanyard, he should appear official enough for people to believe he’s working.
River House apartments declined to comment on the matter.
Martinez said that he was more shocked than anything about the incident, which left him feeling anxious days later.
“I felt like crap,” he said. “I thought I was going to have a typical Karen moment.” (This story originated at the dailybeast)
As a society, Jamaica has so far to go that it is sometimes easier to throw up the proverbial arm and say there is no point in trying to fix the problems. The level of corruption and stupidity is incomprehensible. Additionally, the people are not exactly educated on how modern societies are supposed to operate; we are in serious trouble. We can safely drill down on how the people educated at the University of the West Indies and the other leftist colleges on the Island have been able to do so much damage to our once pristine Island culture. We are pretty conversant by now that the Country’s leaders have all but for a few exceptions, been educated, or should I say indoctrinated.…. say it with me-“up by uwi,” dwl. You see the groupthink; you see the one-track monolithic thought processes of the actors, regardless of the branch of government in which they burrowed themselves. From the courts to Jamaica House and elsewhere, we see how those institutions have indoctrinated rather than educated resulting in dire consequences for our country.
Nowhere is that evidence more visible than in the quality of the political leaders we have running our country; dumbasses who are incapable of sitting together and looking at laws that have worked for other countries, seeing how they would fit Jamaica, and pass laws that protect the citizens of our country. Arrogant narcissists, mostly unlearned loudmouths, lacking the humility necessary to say I was wrong or I don’t know. So the country is caught up in an existential cyclone of ignorance and stupidity, created and nurtured by those the people chose to lead. But what could we expect when leaders are not chosen because of their intellect or track record of sound leadership? We have always been people impressed with form, not substance. We always valued soaring rhetoric over reasoned performance, flashy personas over level-headed reticent, proven leadership. Yup, we are the people who call for the release of convicted murderers and demagogue preachers of the gospel; we literally do these things.
It is easy then that they who have supped from the bitter cup of deception and brainwashing can so easily deceive the rest of us who got our education down by grass yard or at the university of hard-knocks. Of course, they take us for fools. How else could judges decide on what they want to do with murderers outside of the dictates of the laws? How else could defense lawyers ask police witnesses why they did not inform INDECOM that he had swiftly removed a cooperating witness from a crime scene? Do these defense lawyers know that INDECOM has nothing to do with police investigations and strategies? Or do they throw shit against a wall and see what sticks? Fortunately, Bryan Sykes presiding over the Klansman trial told the little twerp that this was a bench trial and that he would not be analyzing the evidence through the lens of a jury. Doing what they are used to doing, throwing innuendos and unsubstantiated allegations to ignorant juries that are sometimes made up of people with active criminals in their families in an effort to create doubt, resulting in guilty murderers being set free. What did we expect when we have defense lawyers defending criminals in court in the morning, then running over to the parliament building to decide on criminal statutes as members of parliament? How did we expect to have laws friendly to the good of ordinary law-abiding Jamaicans when we allowed this kind of conflict of interest? Worse yet, many judges come from the defense side of the aisle rather than the prosecutor’s side. Can we now see why judges in Jamaica are so hostile to the people’s interests?
The bottom line is that these little Tadpoles from up by Uwi, swimming around in the little pool, are really contemptuous of the Jamaican people. They do not care about the twelve hundred plus murders each year. They do not care that Travel agents are shunning jamaica, and major nations are issuing travel advisories to their nationals wishing to travel to our country. They have convinced themselves they are smarter than the rest of us; after all, they were all educated -“up by uwi.” And that makes them experts in all things, and they would rather burn the damn thing down and rule over the ashes. They can only feel good about themselves when they operate as lords among a population of serfs. It is another form of colonization, but the people are blind to it. That is their mindset until the rest of us put a stop to it.
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SHARETHISARTICLE
Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.
The Justice Department has officially closed its investigation into the infamous killing of Emmett Till without federal charges for a second time, leaving only more questions after a potentially significant claim from one of the last living witnesses led investigators on a fresh hunt for evidence.
(Original Caption) Friends restrain grief-stricken Mrs. Mamie Bradley (left) as her son’s body is lowered into the grave after a four day, open casket funeral. The 15-year old Negro youngster, Emmett Till, was shot and clubbed to death last week in Greenwood, Mississippi. He is believed to have been murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two men have confessed kidnapping the youth by deny killing him.
In 2017, professor Timothy Tyson unearthed what appeared to be a key piece of evidence in one of the most haunting and grisly murders documented in the Jim Crow Era: a recantation from the woman at the center of the case who had accused Till of making sexual advances at her over 60 years ago.
Yet after an exhaustive investigation, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has now concluded it cannot prove the woman lied to federal investigators about her story.
On December 2nd, I responded in a way that I am never proud of when I am pissed; my response was after the twelve (12) year sentence handed down to a double murderer by Bertram Morrison. In sentencing 21-year-old Linden Powell for double murder, Morrison also ruled that he would be available for parole after only ten (10) years. The double murderer was also previously convicted and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment at hard labor on each of two counts of firearm offenses. That 18 months sentence given by another judge was incredibly offensive given the nation’s crime pandemic. However, the tragedy is that he was given such a lenient sentence, and we see the direct result of how these unelected Judges are ruining our country from behind closed doors. My outburst on the 2nd lacked focus, I am the first to admit, but I cannot write in beautiful language when I see what they are getting away with. https://mikebeckles.com/the-mongrel-judges-who-are-turning-mass-murderers-loose-in-jamaica/
Bertram Morrison
The sentence handed down by Bertram Morrison is a travesty to the Judicial process, to the Jamaica people, and a clear wink and nod to the murderers who are running amok in our country. More than anything, the extraordinarily light sentence for what was two murders brings into sharp focus something I have been reporting on, corruption within the judicial system. I do not know whether this was a case where money changed hands. I am [not] saying that money changed hands; I am saying that these kinds of sentences cause speculation, which does no good to the process. If I had the slightest bit of information that money changed hands, I would report it here. If and when I get to the bottom of these acts of betrayal against the Jamaican people, I will not be shy about reporting it, as what passes for media in our country does daily.
Since I do not yet have evidence of malfeasance, let us examine the possible rationale for this outrageous sentence, which the Director Of Public Prosecution is appropriately appealing. ♦The suspect plead guilty. Pleading guilty to a crime is commendable when an offender is caught. Prosecutors have always sought to give the accused some concession for coming clean and helping police and prosecutors catch other dangerous criminals. In this case, prosecutors asked for more than double the time that Morrison gave the defendant. What mitigating circumstances could there be to overcome the aggravating circumstances of this cold-blooded killer’s double murders, in addition to his past criminal history? If there were any mitigating circumstances we certainly haven’t heard of any. Here we have a criminal whom the police removed from the streets after being arrested on firearms charges twice and was released by these criminal judges, and what did he do? He went out and murdered two people that we know of, and God knows how many more. As a former police officer, I strongly supported this move becoming a reality in Jamaica (granting some leniency to criminals who plead guilty and assisting law enforcement in further investigations). I should have remembered that there’s nothing righteous and good that Jamaicans in positions of power will not desecrate. What these Judges are doing is desecrating our judicial process. I categorically opposed Delroy Chuck’s scorched earth approach to cut the sentence an accused would receive in half simply because they plead guilty to the charge/s. Delroy Chuck serves the interest of criminals, as do many highly placed government officials in the Island nation; the consequences to the country have been devastating. I previously reported that Delroy Chuck’s drive to remove murder cases from courts dockets simply because they have been there for five years is tantamount to the taxpayers paying Chuck to represent Jamaica’s murderers. https://mikebeckles.com/why-pay-delroy-chuck-with-tax-dollars-to-lobby-for-criminals/
♦Sentencing guidelines.Sure, judges are guided by sentencing guidelines, but this case had nothing to do with sentencing guidelines. This judge blatantly said ‘fuck you” to the Jamaican people by imposing a twelve-year sentence on the double-murder accused. So I once again call for new laws and sentencing for murderers and those who commit other violent crimes. (See 10-point plan for Jamaica’s recovery below. https://mikebeckles.com/this-10-point-plan-has-been-on-the-table-for-a-decade/ We can understand the idea that police officers should exemplify a higher standard of conduct than the average citizen. I can live with that idea since cops are tasked with bringing criminals to justice. However, inside those police uniforms are human beings just like everyone else. Notwithstanding, I will not spend time arguing that police shouldn’t be held to a higher standard than most — I am in agreement. However, let us examine another case right there in Jamaica, adjudicated by another judge in which someone lost his life. The difference, in this case, was that a police officer was allegedly involved.
David Fraser
In 2017 former police constable Mark Russell was sentenced to life in prison for assisting in the execution-style killing of a 17-year-old gangster in 2007. Former constable Russell will have to serve 24 years in prison before being eligible for parole. Constable Russell was assigned to the Hunts Bay Police Station when he was accused of assisting in the crime. Judge David Fraser sentenced constable Russell. Fraser said Russell would not have been eligible for parole until after 30 years if he had not already spent six years in custody — one year in the United States, where he had fled, and the remaining years in Jamaica after being extradited. No one in their right mind could reasonably try to negate what the accused constable did and was found guilty of. I also agree that if the constable committed the act for which he was found guilty, the sentence handed down by the court is in line with the sentences that murderers should receive across the board, no exception… The glaring inconsistency in these two sentences demonstrates a couple of things. (1) There are two justice systems in Jamaica, one that aids violent criminals and highly placed Jamaicans, and another that punishes ordinary Jamaicans and errant cops. (2) That either of the two judges is dangerously wrong; that David Fraser demonstrated animus toward Constable Russell in the sentence handed down and his utterances; Or that Bertram Morrison directly used his trusted office to aid and give succor to a double murderer.
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