Reality dic­tates that you can­not suc­cess­ful­ly build a sus­tain­able nar­ra­tive on a foun­da­tion of lies. It fol­lows also that you can­not expect a high-rise tow­er built on faulty foun­da­tions to sur­vive earth­quakes, hur­ri­canes, and the like.
And so, as we risk sound­ing like a bro­ken record, it is still worth that risk to men­tion that the gov­ern­men­t’s crime-fight­ing strate­gies were the equiv­a­lent of apply­ing a bandaid to a gun­shot wound;(sorry for the gun­shot metaphor).
We can­not help but notice the pan­ic in the Jamaican Prime Minister’s state­ments that any­one caught with a hand­gun should be put to death. (smile).
During a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with a for­mer col­league and friend recent­ly, we cracked up at the fact that the Prime Minister’s shrill utter­ances amount­ed to a far greater threat to indi­vid­ual human rights than any­thing police offi­cers ever did in their right­eous inten­tions to rid the streets of vio­lent criminals.

And so, I want Jamaicans to jux­ta­pose the Prime Minister’s jour­ney from the cam­paign trail to Jamaica House. “No police will be kick­ing down doors as long as I am Prime Minister.”
To, ‘look at what hap­pened in Haiti,’ in ref­er­ence to the mur­der of that nation’s pres­i­dent- and onto the pan­icked posi­tion of “death penal­ty for any­one caught with an ille­gal gun.” ( Buss ‑out-a-laff)
No, per­pet­u­al crit­ics, I am [not] mak­ing light of the coun­try’s crime prob­lem; I am amused at the con­se­quences for reck­less actions and words.
If I were a guy seek­ing elec­tive office who was raised in an anti-law enforce­ment envi­ron­ment, edu­cat­ed at a left­ist lib­er­al col­lege, sur­round­ed by anti-law enforce­ment bot­tom-feed­ers, and rep­re­sent­ed a con­stituen­cy in which crim­i­nal­i­ty abounds, I would prob­a­bly say some of the things Andrew Holness said and did to dis­tance him­self from the police.
(Actually, I would­n’t), I mere­ly want to show cau­sa­tion for his actions…

I won­der where the so-called human rights bot­tom-feed­ers are now? The Prime Minister’s pan­icked out­burst is exact­ly what the bot­tom-feed­ers would have a feed­ing fren­zy over were they uttered by the police. Like glut­to­nous pira­nhas, they would have torn the last shred of meat from the car­cass of any­one who dared to sug­gest such a trav­es­ty, all in fur­ther­ance of their agenda.
By the way, have you ever noticed that no mat­ter how many inno­cent Jamaicans are mur­dered each year, the so-called human rights frauds oper­at­ing in Jamaica are silent?
Ask your­selves then, ‘whose inter­est do they serve’? Certainly not the inter­est of inno­cent, law-abid­ing citizens.
However, these are the peo­ple Bruce Golding lis­tened to-these are the peo­ple his pro­tégée Andrew Holness takes coun­sel from.
No one is advo­cat­ing for a police state, cer­tain­ly not your hum­ble ser­vant. However, we must acknowl­edge that the same Jamaican peo­ple who are clam­or­ing for our coun­try to remain an iso­lat­ed crim­i­nal out­post are the same ones clam­or­ing to get visas to America where they would have to obey laws or face the full brunt of what it means to be black in the American jus­tice sys­tem. In fact, many of the present crime pro­duc­ers have actu­al­ly felt that hand and have been sent back home.

The idea of check­points in Zones of oper­a­tion as a long-term crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy speaks to the igno­rance inher­ent in those poli­cies, both in con­cept, and execution.
But the data does not lie. Regardless of what the Prime Minister and his lack­eys say (includ­ing the police) who held a pan­el dis­cus­sion trum­pet­ing the great­ness of Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSOs) and States Of Emergencies SOEs, the under­ly­ing fact is that mur­ders con­tin­ue to climb over­all.
They can lie all they want, but the math does­n’t; it mat­ters lit­tle if you sup­press mur­ders in a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­i­cal area and crime goes up else­where; you do not get to crow about decreased murders.
By doing that, you are being disingenuous.

I expect noth­ing less from the police high com­mand, how­ev­er. The police high com­mand has nev­er been any good at any­thing, not on com­mand, not on per­son­nel man­age­ment, not on craft­ing and exe­cut­ing crime-fight­ing strate­gies, not on devel­op­ing a train­ing man­u­al that reflects the chal­lenges offi­cers face today, not on effec­tu­at­ing mean­ing­ful account­abil­i­ty in crim­i­nal investigations.
In fact, the police high com­mand has been noth­ing but a bunch of lap­dogs who walk behind politi­cians and serve as pho­to props for them.
The suc­cess­es of the JCF three decades ago when our annu­al mur­der num­bers were just over 500 could not be attrib­uted to the high command.
The suc­cess­es we cre­at­ed in the past by erad­i­cat­ing the killers and forc­ing oth­ers to flee the coun­try have nev­er been a top-down affair but rather a bot­tom-up endeavor.
Hard-nosed cops on the ground (name brand cops) doing the work, cor­rupt rum drink­ing pot-bel­lied dead­wood at the top tak­ing credit.
The JCF’s sol­ven­cy through the years was nev­er about who was at the top; it was about who was at the bot­tom. Bottoms up.

When they decid­ed to fol­low the dic­tates of Carolyn Gomes and lat­er cre­ate the troll, Terrence Willams, Jamaica, by default, signed the death war­rant for thou­sands of Jamaicans who oth­er­wise would have been alive today.
Let me be clear, (a)had Carolyn Gomes a Jamaica mulat­to, not become a [thing] in how our laws are enforced, and (b)Bruce Golding not foist­ed the lit­tle anti-police troll Terence Williams on the nation, thou­sands of mur­dered Jamaicans would still be alive today.
That same Bruce Golding who refused to send Duddus to face tri­al in the United States is [still] influ­enc­ing pol­i­cy today, even though he was forced to demit office in disgrace.
Do not act surprised.

Jamaica is reap­ing the bit­ter fruits of years of farm­ing crim­i­nals. No, my friends, all is not lost; we can turn this around quickly.
We need a set of new laws, a set of new cops, a dif­fer­ent nation­al mind­set; we can keep the shit­head judges just take away the pow­er they have to fur­ther cor­rupt our sys­tem by let­ting dou­ble mur­der­ers off the hook with 12-year sentences.

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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.

I am again pub­lish­ing my plan to the Jamaican Government, a plan I believe is not a panacea but one that will begin the slow and tedious process of extri­cat­ing Jamaica from the jaws of failure.
Each of the pil­lars of this plan will need dis­cus­sion, and some will require new leg­is­la­tion to be passed to effec­tu­ate the desired out­comes. Additionally, this plan will be most effec­tive if exe­cut­ed with a par­al­lel eco­nom­ic plan that revi­tal­izes depressed areas pro­vid­ing jobs to dis­pos­sessed youths.
Jamaican lead­ers have con­sis­tent­ly led the Jamaican peo­ple into believ­ing the lie that we can achieve first-world sta­tus on old-world infrastructure.
The Soviet Union crum­bled when it engaged with America, which had a robust mod­ern econ­o­my. The Americans could spend what they want­ed; the Soviets could­n’t because their econ­o­my was large­ly propped up by sub­sis­tence farm­ing in the satel­lite states.

Jamaica, too is head­ed for finan­cial and soci­etal col­lapse as suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions of the two polit­i­cal par­ties have con­tin­ued on the same path of lying to the peo­ple that we can achieve pros­per­i­ty on old laws which (a) have lit­tle to zero deter­rent effect, (b) dri­ves away the pri­vate sec­tor, © increas­es crime, (d) sends a larg­er share of the dimin­ish­ing gross domes­tic prod­uct to the fleet­ing con­cept of secu­ri­ty with­in the present construct.
We need a new con­sti­tu­tion that reflects the Jamaican peo­ple’s needs today and for centuries.
We need to extri­cate our­selves from the colo­nial shack­les still on our brains as we remain teth­ered to Britain for no rea­son oth­er than being afraid to be independent.
We need new laws that man­date no zinc fences any­where as we encour­age our peo­ple, regard­less of their finan­cial stand­ing to learn to live in an open and free society.
Only when we take these rather sim­ple steps will we begin to see a reduc­tion in the num­ber of vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted in our country.
No plan will be a panacea or a sil­ver bul­let against what has been decades in the mak­ing, speak­ing of the entrenched crime situation.
Nevertheless, we need a cit­i­zen-focused plan that con­sid­ers the inter­est of law-abid­ing Jamaicans over those of crim­i­nals who decide to engage in a life of crime.

MY CRIME PLAN

(1) Strong penalties for violent crimes.

The penal­ties present­ly in place for vio­lent crimes, includ­ing mur­ders, are far too lenient and offer pre­cious deter­rent effects, if any.
Additionally, to clear court dock­et back­logs, the gov­ern­ment has devised poli­cies that offer mur­der-accused and oth­ers a 50% reduc­tion in their sen­tence in exchange for a guilty plea.
To begin with, the sen­tences hand­ed down for mur­der some­times are as low as sev­en (7) years; a 50% reduc­tion takes it down to ³¹⁄₂ years. If the accused is already in cus­tody because he was­n’t giv­en bail, they receive con­sid­er­a­tion for time served. Using this met­ric, a per­son final­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der may walk free from incar­cer­a­tion on the day they have been con­vict­ed of the crime.
In response to his sen­tenc­ing pat­terns in west­ern Jamaica, one of the judi­cia­ry mem­bers said the fol­low­ing. “If a rich man’s son “com­mits a crime, they expect lenien­cy,” but if a poor man com­mits a crime, they expect me to send him to prison.”
The judge cit­ed pro­ba­tion reports as being vital in play­ing a role in the sen­tenc­ing process. He argues that when the reports are looked at in some cas­es, many of the young boys involved had been involved in sport­ing activ­i­ties, includ­ing foot­ball. “You have to res­cue them,’ he said.
This judge spoke about mur­der­ers he released back into soci­ety after they were con­vict­ed, some­times on mul­ti­ple mur­der charges.
Here is an unelect­ed judge that is not answer­able to the peo­ple sup­plant­i­ng the already lax penal­ties in the laws with his idea of jus­tice. This must come to an end.

(2) Truth in sentencing.

Murder should car­ry a penal­ty of twen­ty-five (25) years on the low end and the high-end life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.
Judges should only be giv­en dis­cre­tion when vio­lence is used to cause some­one’s death when there was no intent. As in manslaugh­ter. For exam­ple, two peo­ple fight­ing, one push­es or punch­es the oth­er, who falls, hits his head, and dies.
In such a case, a judge may use their dis­cre­tion if the offend­er does not have a ver­i­fi­able vio­lent past on record.
The police cit­ed hun­dreds of ver­i­fi­able cas­es in which mur­der­ers and oth­er felons were released back onto the streets after they were arrest­ed. In most cas­es, offend­ers are charged with mur­der, and some­times sev­er­al counts of mur­der are grant­ed bail. Once released, they con­tin­ue on their mur­der spree, which usu­al­ly ends when they con­front the police with guns blazing.
The idea that judges see their roles as social work­ers instead of the fol­low­ing prece­dent as stip­u­lat­ed in paragraph(3) above demon­strates the need for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain crime cat­e­gories, effec­tive­ly remov­ing that func­tion from the hands of judges. The break­down of law and order and the gen­er­al law­less­ness in the coun­try are direct­ly attrib­ut­able to the lax, com­plic­it, cor­rupt, and incom­pe­tent jus­tice sys­tem led by the Islands judges who refuse to fol­low precedent.
Instead of fix­ing that prob­lem as police offi­cers have been demand­ing for decades [a prob­lem I com­plained about over two decades ago while I was a serv­ing police offi­cer], they con­tin­ue blam­ing the police for com­plic­i­ty while ignor­ing this glar­ing problem.

(3) Mandatory Minimum sentences for violent crimes.

The sen­tences applied for mur­der and oth­er crimes of vio­lence are insuf­fi­cient to con­vey that vio­lence will not be tol­er­at­ed. As such, vio­lence has become almost the only con­flict res­o­lu­tion tool used by cit­i­zens who no longer fear the con­se­quences of their vio­lent actions.
Some peo­ple talk about human rights when­ev­er the sub­ject of penal­ties is being dis­cussed for vio­lent offend­ers as if their vic­tims are not enti­tled to con­sid­er­a­tion or have the right to life and free­dom from violence.
Our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem [must] be focused on the rights of crime vic­tims and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens over the rights of crime producers.
Pass laws that pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion and allow the apol­o­gists to do what they do ‑apol­o­gize and lob­by on behalf of murderers.

(4) Remove from the control of judges the sentence violent gangsters receive.

This sub-sec­tion is direct­ly relat­ed to sub-sec­tion 2 & 3 and is, for the most self-explanatory.

(5) Mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison and a maximum life without the possibility of parole for murder

See sub-sec­tion (2)

(6) No bail for accused murderers.

The bail act stip­u­lates that a defen­dant may be refused bail if he is like­ly to(a) re-offend, (b) like­ly to abscond and © like­ly to inter­fere with wit­ness­es. Despite these strong points for refusal of bail, the judi­cia­ry con­tin­ues to allow vio­lent mur­der­ers back onto the streets after arrest, with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to inno­cent, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens under the guise that bail should not be used as punishment.
When a judge advances this argu­ment, it becomes clear that the life of the accused is more impor­tant than the vic­tims they are accused of tak­ing. This must stop.

(7) Speedy trial for murder accused.

The law guar­an­tees an accused per­son­’s right to a speedy tri­al. A speedy tri­al is cen­tral to the rights of per­sons accused of a crime and the aggriev­ed party.
It isn’t easy to make the case that the Jamaican state has ful­filled that guar­an­tee to per­sons it takes into custody.
The Justice Ministry has embarked on ill-advised mea­sures to free up court dock­ets, ulti­mate­ly aimed at speedy future trials.
I’m not con­vinced that allow­ing mur­der­ers to walk free if they do not receive a time­ly tri­al is the way to fix this problem.
But then again, the sys­tem was not built to care about crime vic­tims’ rights.
Because this plan espous­es no bail for the mur­der accused, a speedy tri­al is a crit­i­cal under­pin­ning of the former.

(8) Change criminal-focused strategy to victim-focused.

Every per­son has a right to be treat­ed with respect even when arrest­ed and accused of com­mit­ting a crime. The idea that a per­son is inno­cent until proven guilty is not an aca­d­e­m­ic or the­o­ret­i­cal con­cept but a fun­da­men­tal right that gov­ern­ments must respect.
Even con­vict­ed crim­i­nals enjoy cer­tain but not all, rights they had pre-con­vic­tion. The fact that crim­i­nals do not enjoy the same rights they had before they com­mit­ted crimes seems to be lost on leg­is­la­tors because of pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial lob­by­ing efforts from spe­cial inter­ests in JAMAICA.
Lost in the shuf­fle is the fact that there are vic­tims and their fam­i­lies whom every­one for­gets who suf­fer due to the crimes their assailants com­mit­ted against them.
At every turn, there are pon­tif­i­ca­tors and self-aggran­diz­ing, self-appoint­ed experts advo­cat­ing for mur­der­ous crim­i­nals. The Government has a sacred duty to pro­tect the rights and safe­ty of the Jamaican people.

(9) Create national security policy based on Jamaica’s unique needs, not what foreign interests want.

Jamaica has woven itself into a web of inter­na­tion­al treaties, mak­ing it almost impos­si­ble to gov­ern itself. A tru­ly inde­pen­dent nation has no oblig­a­tion to sign on to every treaty and con­ven­tion it sees to seem a part of the crowd.
A nation [must] exam­ine each treaty and con­ven­tion to see whether or not the needs of its peo­ple are best served.
A new con­sti­tu­tion would allow the Jamaican peo­ple to say through a bal­lot mea­sure whether it approves or dis­ap­proves of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, for exam­ple, and not be dic­tat­ed to by a court of the colo­nial master.
No inde­pen­dent demo­c­ra­t­ic nation should give away its right to self-gov­ern by sign­ing on to inter­na­tion­al treaties and con­ven­tions that are anti­thet­i­cal to the good of its people.

(10) Invest heavily in criminal investigation techniques.

Two of the more effec­tive things that a police depart­ment can do to reduce crime are (1) deter would-be crim­i­nals and (2) have the capac­i­ty to find and pros­e­cute those who do com­mit crimes.
Jamaican law enforce­ment has demon­strat­ed that it can bring crim­i­nals to jus­tice if giv­en the prop­er train­ing and tools to do the job. However, the inter­est of the force and the Jamaican cit­i­zens have not been served as it should for decades, as the JCF has been starved of the train­ing, resources, and remu­ner­a­tions it needs to get the job done.
The JCF, as a law enforce­ment agency, through­out its exis­tence, has not demon­strat­ed or shown the prop­er respect detec­tives deserve. Detectives are not com­pen­sat­ed or pro­mot­ed com­men­su­rate with the val­ue of their work.
I know that the same argu­ments could be made for the entire force, and I may be some­what biased, hav­ing served in crim­i­nal investigations.
Nevertheless, those who served in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions know it is not a depart­ment where shifts and clock-watch­ing matter.
The gov­ern­ment must show respect to crim­i­nal detec­tives and give them the respect and reward they deserve.

(11) Hire more judges that were former prosecutors.

This plan has com­po­nents that would remove cer­tain func­tions from judges’ purview. To effec­tu­ate bet­ter out­comes with greater clar­i­ty, the gov­ern­ment should, as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, hire more lawyers who come from the pros­e­cu­tion side of the aisle to become judges.
Even with inef­fec­tive legal penal­ties for the most seri­ous crimes, judges con­tin­ue to mock the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem through polit­i­cal and cor­rupt means.
From Parish courts to the Supreme court, judges and’ jus­tices’ con­tin­u­al­ly act as defense attor­neys to the most dan­ger­ous killers brought before the courts.
Not only are they act­ing as defac­to lawyers for the defense, but they also have, over the decades, gone out of their way to be dis­re­spect­ful and hos­tile to police offi­cers and prosecutors.

(12) Build Prisons.

Whenever gov­ern­ments decide to build pris­ons, it cre­ates a flur­ry of heat­ed con­ver­sa­tions for and against them. However, gov­ern­ing is dif­fer­ent from talk­ing. Therefore, as the gov­ern­ment has a duty to build schools, hos­pi­tals, police and fire sta­tions, roads, and oth­er infra­struc­ture, it is also oblig­at­ed to build pris­ons to house seri­ous offenders.
Because Jamaica is forced to accept the dic­tates of its for­mer colo­nial mas­ter that it can­not hang mur­der­ers, it must ensure that they are not released back into soci­ety to cre­ate the may­hem they have been allowed to cre­ate for decades.

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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.

Every day we talk about these fuck­ing retard­ed ass­holes sit­ting as tri­ers of facts, pre­tend­ing to be judges in our country.
Let me first name this asswipe.
Bertram Morrison.

Here is a report from the Jamaica Gleaner

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) has revealed that the Westmoreland man today sen­tenced to 12 years in prison on two counts of mur­der had two pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm.

Linden Powell, 21, was on August 21, 2019, sen­tenced to 18 months impris­on­ment at hard labor on each count of the firearm offenses.
Today, Justice Bertram Morrison sen­tenced him to 12 years in prison for the January 2017 mur­der of Oral McIntosh and anoth­er 12 years for the March mur­der of Ida Clarke, both in Westmoreland.
Both sen­tences are to run at the same time and Morrison ruled that Powell should become eli­gi­ble for parole after 10 years behind bars.
In a state­ment today, the ODPP revealed that after pass­ing down the sen­tence, the deputy direc­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions indi­cat­ed on the record that when the plea was being entered, the Crown had rec­om­mend­ed a sen­tence of life impris­on­ment on each count of mur­der with eli­gi­bil­i­ty for parole after 21 years “The learned judge respond­ed by say­ing he would be pro­ceed­ing with this sen­tence,” said a spokesper­son in the state­ment. The deputy direc­tor then told the court that the sen­tence of twelve years impris­on­ment would shock the pub­lic’s con­science giv­en the nature of these offens­es. However, Justice Morrison main­tained the sen­tence of 12 years impris­on­ment at hard labor with 10 years before the accused becomes eli­gi­ble for parole. The pros­e­cu­tion then decid­ed that it would appeal the sen­tence. In October this year, pros­e­cu­tors were giv­en a lim­it­ed right of appeal after Parliament passed the Judicature (Appellate Jurisdiction) (Amendment) Act 2021 and the Judicature (Parish Courts) (Amendment) Act 2021. The leg­is­la­tion came into effect on November 2, legal insid­ers dis­closed. Powell is one of six men who were found not guilty of var­i­ous breach­es of the anti-gang leg­is­la­tion dur­ing the Kings Valley gang tri­al in July last year.

What pos­si­ble ratio­nale could there be for a judge.….….any judge to pre­side over a dou­ble mur­der tri­al in which a defen­dant is found guilty, or plead guilty of mur­der­ing not one but two peo­ple and hand down a sen­tence of 12 years with the option for parole after ten (10) years?
These are the dirty, dirty, dirty, crim­i­nal sup­port­ing ass­holes that are destroy­ing our coun­try. These are the dirty left­ists who have tak­en it upon them­selves to sin­gle­hand­ed­ly sub­vert the will of the mass­es of the Jamaican people.
Am I mad?
No, not yet!!!

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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.

When a Kenosha Wisconsin cop Rusten Shensky delib­er­ate­ly and cal­cu­lat­ing­ly placed 7 shots into the back of an unarmed Jacob Blake last year. Many folks with a con­science thought that those actions were so uncon­scionable and inde­fen­si­ble that there was no way that Rusten Shensky would not be sent to prison for the remain­der of his life for the betray­al of his oath, and for being a rot­ten excuse of a human being.
Those folks were wrong. Rusten Shensky was inves­ti­gat­ed by oth­er cops who said noth­ing to see here it is total­ly cool to shoot some­one in the back.….….. In fact, it is per­fect­ly fine to shoot anoth­er human being in the back as many times as you feel is nec­es­sary, on one condition.
You must be wear­ing the uni­form of an American police officer.
And just so you know those of you who tend to believe that the United States Justice Department is real­ly about jus­tice you may want to recon­sid­er that mind­set. The Justice Department looked at the shoot­ing of mis­ter Jacob Blake who will nev­er walk again and decid­ed, we looked at the evi­dence and we don’t see any­thing here either, move along folks”.
Jacob Blake is Black.
Rusten Shensky who is white was returned to the streets to kill and maim again.

The shoot­ing of Jacob Blake in that fash­ion set off a firestorm of protests in Kenosha Wisconsin and across the state and country.
Out of that inci­dent, Kyle Rittenhouse Supremacist-inspired AR15 tot­ing thug went to Kenosha Wisconsin from his home in Illinois sup­pos­ed­ly to counter the Black Lives Matter pro­test­ers who were protest­ing the shoot­ing of Jacob Blake.
There Kyle Rittenhouse mur­dered two pro­test­ers and seri­ous­ly injured another.
Rittenhouse was even­tu­al­ly charged for those crimes but was quick­ly exon­er­at­ed of all charges by a Kenosha jury and a judge who made it clear whose side he was on.
At the time of the uncon­scionable shoot­ing of Jacob Blake by a cop who is sup­posed to under­stand restraint and the com­mit­ment to pro­tect life many peo­ple, (whites) choose as usu­al to cre­ate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the rep­re­hen­si­ble actions of the cow­ard­ly cop.
Those jus­ti­fi­ca­tions ranged from the eye-rolling, to too dis­gust­ing to dig­ni­fy. The thing about those jus­ti­fi­ca­tions is that from one end of the spec­trum to the oth­er, they were all influ­enced by the race of Blake and Shensky.
This brings me to a quote I have bor­rowed through­out the years that I have been a writer.

First, they came for the social­ists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade union­ists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me. (Martin Niemöller).
The mur­der­er and his rapa­cious and uncon­scionable defend­ers will use the deceased man’s past to cre­ate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for his mur­der and they may well pre­vail in a sys­tem in which police are allowed to sum­mar­i­ly be judge, jury, and executioner.
I say take the guns away from these ani­mals and see how many of them resign; that I believe, is the best way to bring san­i­ty to this state of madness.

THEN THERE IS THIS

Harrowing footage caught the moment an off-duty Arizona cop work­ing as a Walmart secu­ri­ty guard shot a 61-year-old man in a wheel­chair nine times in the back, killing him — after the dis­abled man alleged­ly shoplift­ed. The offi­cer, Ryan Remington, was on assign­ment at the Walmart in Tucson on Monday when an employ­ee alert­ed him about 6 p.m. that a cus­tomer in a motor­ized wheel­chair had swiped a tool­box, KGUN report­ed. The employ­ee caught up with the sus­pect, iden­ti­fied lat­er as Richard Lee Richards, and asked him to show a receipt in the park­ing lot. “Instead of pro­vid­ing the receipt, Mr. Richards bran­dished a knife and said, ‘Here’s your receipt,’” Police Chief Chris Magnus said in a state­ment, accord­ing to CNN.

The chief said Remington, a four-year mem­ber of the Tucson police force, also fol­lowed Richards while “attempt­ing to gain his coöper­a­tion” and sur­ren­der the blade. “Mr. Richards refused to com­ply, and instead con­tin­ued to head through the Walmart and Lowe’s park­ing lots,” Magnus said. “According to the Walmart employ­ee, Mr. Richards said, ‘If you want me to put down the knife, you’re going to have to shoot me.’ A sec­ond offi­cer then joined Remington at the scene, where they warned the sus­pect not to enter the Lowe’s but he again report­ed­ly ignored the commands.
The graph­ic video shows Richards begins to enter the store as Remington tells him, “Do not go into the store, sir.” He then opens fire at the sus­pect, who slumps over and crum­ples to the ground after being hit nine times. Remington is then seen hand­cuff­ing the man, who is not moving.

“To be clear, I am deeply dis­turbed by Officer Remington’s actions, his use of dead­ly force in this inci­dent is a clear vio­la­tion of depart­ment pol­i­cy and direct­ly con­tra­dicts mul­ti­ple aspects of our use of force train­ing,” Magnus said in a press con­fer­ence Tuesday “As a result, the depart­ment moved ear­li­er today to ter­mi­nate Officer Remington,” he said, adding that the shoot­ing will be reviewed by the Pima County Attorney’s Office. Magnus said med­ical per­son­nel was called to the scene “but a short time lat­er Mr. Richards was declared dead.” Mike Storie, an attor­ney for the Tucson Police Officers Association, said: “What you saw was the police department’s edit­ed ver­sion of this event, which was cut and past­ed pieces of video of this event,” KGUN report­ed. “He thought it was appro­pri­ate at the time he used it and he still does,” Storie added, refer­ring to Remington In a state­ment, Mayor Regina Romero said: “The actions of the offi­cer involved in last night’s dead­ly shoot­ing are uncon­scionable and inde­fen­si­ble. The County Attorney’s Office has my full sup­port as they pro­ceed with their inves­ti­ga­tion. “It is moments like this that test our resolve to ensure jus­tice and account­abil­i­ty. We owe this to all Tucsonans. I ask our com­mu­ni­ty to remain calm and be patient as inves­ti­ga­tions ensue,” she added.

Murder along Red Hills Road we are reli­ably informed at the same ser­vice sta­tion that two men were mur­dered last week.

‘Incredible’, is the word that comes to mind as I watch our country implode into a failed state. ‘Incredible’, because the fix is not hard; the problem is that the country is being run by a bunch of egomaniacal narcissists who operate in an echo chamber.
They hear the echoes of their own voices and that of their sycophants, and nothing else…(The country is teetering on the brink)
This writer thanks the Police Officers Association (POA) under the leadership of the able and competent stewardship of Senior Superintendent Wayne Cameron for supporting the rank and file of the JCF in its just fight for wages they earned and deserve.

The Political Party present­ly in the oppo­si­tion is a weak knock­off of the American Republican Party. To the PNP, it is pow­er at all costs; desta­bi­liza­tion, lies, vot­ing against the stop­gap mea­sures the gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es, which by default aids the crim­i­nal gangs.
The People’s National Party would rather burn the coun­try to the ground to rule over the ashes.
It would be total­ly laugh­able if it weren’t so seri­ous that some­one like Peter Bunting, who was (a)Minister of National Security in a past PNP administration,(b) was sound­ly reject­ed by the vot­ers in his con­stituen­cy, © as min­is­ter threw up his hands and declared only divine inter­ven­tion could help jamaica’s crime prob­lem, (d) is propped up in the upper cham­ber at Gordon House as a Senator,(e) now is open­ing his mouth about crime. Peter Bunting had no clue as Minister of National Security; he has no clue now.

Make no mis­take about it Holness’ Zones Of Special Operations(ZOSOs) and States Of Emergency dec­la­ra­tions are not cred­i­ble crime-fight­ing strate­gies; he can­not be that naïve that he does­n’t know that.…..or is he?
On the oth­er hand, no one should be fooled into think­ing that the deci­sion by the PNP dum­b­ass­es in the upper cham­ber to vote against a new ZOSO has any­thing to do with core beliefs, con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty, or that they have a bet­ter plan that they pre­sent­ed to Holness.
The People’s National Party is the Party that allowed crim­i­nals to take over our coun­try unchecked. The PNP is still the par­ty with zero inten­tion of curb­ing the vio­lence in our coun­try. The PNP ben­e­fits from the gangs and the vio­lence that dri­ves busi­ness­es out of Jamaica.
As for this writer, I do not expect any­thing from that par­ty except thiev­ery, cor­rup­tion, more sup­port for crim­i­nals, scan­dals, and pover­ty for Jamaicans. That par­ty would be dis­band­ed and barred from con­test­ing elec­tions in Jamaica for­ev­er if it was up to me.
Twenty-two and one-half years ²²¹⁄₂ of PNP rule for­ev­er changed and dam­aged our coun­try irreparably.
Now onto the gov­ern­ment and its failures.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness gen­uine­ly wants to see vio­lent crime go down; how­ev­er, arro­gance will not allow him to con­cede, “I total­ly fucked up when I lam­bast­ed the police.” “I fucked up when I did not lis­ten that ZOSOs & SOEs are not real crime-fight­ing strate­gies.” “I fucked up when I decid­ed to put a sol­dier in charge of polic­ing.” “I fucked up when I caused the nin­com­poops asso­ci­at­ed with the University of the West Indies to influ­ence me on how I approach crime-fight­ing with their bull­shit thesis.”
Now, look where all of that; hifa­lutin bull­shit has got­ten the country?
The prob­lem with the choice for Commissioner of Police is that Antony Anderson also gen­uine­ly wants to make a dif­fer­ence. Of course, he has been giv­en more resources, grace, lat­i­tude, and agency to bring about the gov­ern­men­t’s change. Still, the vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics tell a dif­fer­ent story.

All of the police offi­cers who knew the streets are long gone. We now have a force that is larg­er than two decades ago, bet­ter equipped (rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing);. However, they have to pur­chase their own uni­forms, afraid to do their jobs because the Holness admin­is­tra­tion and its cre­ation INDECOM will imprison them.
Police need over­sight, but I warned that there would be con­se­quences for the direc­tion Holness was taking.
The top-tiered rung of the lead­er­ship of the JCF, deputy com­mis­sion­ers, and assis­tant com­mis­sion­ers, sure­ly sound like intel­lec­tu­als when they speak. Still, they have no idea what actu­al crime-fight­ing is.
In a forum the JCF spon­sored recent­ly, I saw brava­do and balder­dash; not a sin­gle speak­er seemed to know a damn thing out­side of try­ing to sound impres­sive. Not one seemed to have a sin­gle strat­e­gy for root­ing out and elim­i­nat­ing the gangs, but they were heavy on par­rot­ing talk­ing points.
The sad real­i­ty is that the data point­ed in the oppo­site direc­tion as they par­rot­ed what the gov­ern­ment want­ed them to say.
The fact that the forum was nec­es­sary is evi­dence that the gov­ern­men­t’s strat­e­gy has failed.
So while the rank and file mem­bers were demon­strat­ing in front of the supreme court for monies earned, and oth­ers were bemoan­ing the con­di­tions they are being asked to work under in the ZOSO’s & SOE’s, their so-called lead­ers were in a pan­el dis­cus­sion par­rot­ing the admin­is­tra­tion’s talk­ing points like wound-up robot toys.

Let’s hear from the police com­man­ders them­selves.

Having watched the pan­el dis­cus­sion, do you under­stand why I have always said that these so-called lead­ers are incom­pe­tent lapdogs?
The offi­cers are in these zones of oper­a­tion with­out toi­lets for long hours, and here are their lead­ers telling the forum that they are well tak­en care of.
No one men­tioned that these offi­cers need to be paid the monies owed to them, which would boost morale and make them want to con­tin­ue serv­ing and sac­ri­fic­ing for the country.
Listening to them, one would walk away believ­ing that they have a crime under con­trol. Here ladies and gen­tle­men are why they do not qual­i­fy to lead the JCF. This is why they are not respect­ed. This is why crime is out of control.
ZOSO’s & SOEs move crim­i­nals from one area to anoth­er; it does [NOT] low­er vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics. I lis­tened to some ques­tions in that forum that sought to debunk points I have con­sis­tent­ly raised.
For exam­ple, the air in the bal­loon anal­o­gy; you squeeze the bal­loon, and air rush­es to anoth­er sec­tion of the balloon.
Commanders swore that it was­n’t so because the num­bers went down in the areas under occupation.….smile.
They failed to rec­og­nize that over­all crime went up in oth­er areas, borne out in the vio­lent crime statistics.
How can we achieve a seri­ous reduc­tion in vio­lent crimes with lead­ers of this caliber?
Our coun­try is in seri­ous 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.

We were cred­i­bly informed that this inci­dent occurred yes­ter­day at a Red Hills Road gas sta­tion. The killers drove up, stopped in a way that cuts off the pos­si­ble escape of their tar­get vehi­cle, after which one assailant exit­ed the car and opened fire, report­ed­ly killing two people.
In the first video, we see the assailants tac­ti­cal­ly dri­ve up and stop their vehi­cle. One assailant then exit­ed the vehi­cle and sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed the vehi­cle’s occu­pants with cold, cal­cu­lat­ed precision.
Look at the place­ment of the rounds he fired into the vehi­cle strik­ing the victims.
These were not wild­ly fired rounds that just hap­pened to hit their tar­gets. They were well-placed, designed to strike cen­ter mass.

In the sec­ond video, you will see one vic­tim slumped on the ground as he attempt­ed to flee. This is the lev­el of brazen­ness with which these killers oper­ate with no appar­ent fear that they will be inter­cept­ed or ever held to account.

Heavily armed police continue to show up to situations that require patience & persuasion, itching for any sliver of legal justification to shed blood. The common thinking is that there is a cut-off time, and thereafter, they are legally justified to end the situation by extra-judicially murdering the person they were called to help.
How much more innocent blood will American police be allowed to shed because the twisted laws created to murder Black people with no consequences to the killers, are still being used today?

Following on in the series of Articles we have cho­sen to bring to your atten­tion, this sto­ry involves anoth­er liv­ing, breath­ing per­son just expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal dis­tress being gunned down by police.
Police offi­cers whose job is to save lives have become one of the great­est threats to the lives of Americans of col­or and those who are suf­fer­ing from men­tal distress.
In the fol­low­ing arti­cle, you will see that not only has a police com­man­der deemed it nec­es­sary to order an under­ling to end the life of the 19-year ‑old; quote, “If he does­n’t drop it, just take him. In con­junc­tion with the local District Attorney, they lied to the par­ents of the young man they mur­dered and then tam­pered with crit­i­cal evi­dence that deter­mines ‘jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.’
Police offi­cers are not sol­diers; they are not sup­posed to be ordered to kill any­one. Each police offi­cer bears full respon­si­bil­i­ty for their actions.

The idea that any police offi­cer at a scene can order that the life of some­one be end­ed because he is not com­ply­ing with police orders to drop a weapon should be fright­en­ing to everyone.
The idea that local pros­e­cu­tors would have access to video evi­dence of a crime against an indi­vid­ual, regard­less of who that indi­vid­ual is, and know that the evi­dence was tam­pered with and refuse to act even more frightening.
In the video, you will see that the account­ing of the police and the lat­er lies they told as they tried to jus­ti­fy killing an inno­cent was not sup­port­ed by the real facts as they evolved in the video.

The video below shows how cor­po­rate media reports these killings and gloss­es over these atroc­i­ties by accept­ing police ver­sions of those crimes.

Here also is NBC news report­ing on the incident.

Fatally shot by Pennsylvania State Police last year, a Chinese American teenag­er had his hands in the air when troop­ers opened fire. New videos reveal, prompt­ing calls for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion. The videos, record­ed by the State Police, show the final moments of Christian Hall’s life on the after­noon of Dec. 30, 2020.
Hall, 19, who had been diag­nosed with depres­sion, was stand­ing on the ledge of a high­way over­pass near Stroudsburg, in north­east­ern Pennsylvania, when troop­ers arrived. They tried to per­suade him to get down, but they backed away when they saw he had a gun — lat­er deter­mined to be a real­is­tic pel­let gun.
Video pre­vi­ous­ly released by the Monroe County dis­trict attor­ney shows Hall rais­ing his hands in the air, with the gun in one hand, after a troop­er fired bul­lets that struck the bridge.
But the final sec­onds before he was killed were blurred by author­i­ties.
https://​www​.nbc​news​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​c​h​r​i​s​t​i​a​n​-​h​a​l​l​-​p​e​n​n​s​y​l​v​a​n​i​a​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​-​v​i​d​e​o​-​r​c​n​a​5​626

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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.