POLICE REPORT

Between the hours of 4:30 am and 9:30 am, Sunday, July 14^th a joint police Military team from C‑TOC with sup­port of JDF assets from Air and two Coast Guard ves­sels car­ried out Special Operations in a sec­tion of the Swamps Behind Dagger Bay in search of Players in the gun for drugs trade between Jamaica and Haiti. ille­gal Haitian, guns, and ammu­ni­tion. The trade in met­al or preky­ba meta­lais as they call it is also quite pop­u­lar.

During the oper­a­tion the team found two(2) huts in the swamp equipped with elec­tric­i­ty and oth­er pow­er devices like solar pan­els. A total of one hun­dred and forty-five (145) assort­ed car­tridges of ammu­ni­tion bro­ken down as follows:

twen­ty-sev­en (27) 5.56 mm Cartridges, eight (8) 7.76 mm car­tridges, sev­en­ty-nine (79) .38 car­tridges, six (6).45 car­tridges, two(2) 9mm car­tridges, twen­ty two (22) 12 gauge car­tridges, one (1) .40 car­tridges, six (6) rifle mag­a­zine, sev­en (7) cel­lu­lar phones, One (1) LG tablet , one(1) DEL laptop.

One (1) 32″ inch black point TV, about 2lb of pack­aged pressed veg­etable mat­ter resem­bling gan­ja, two small pack­ages of white pow­dery sub­stance resem­bling cocaine, one(1)bulletproof vest, army shirt, life vest, one (1) smoke grenade, small quan­ti­ty of cash, All evi­den­tial mate­ri­als were seized pend­ing bal­lis­tic and foren­sic exam­i­na­tion where necessary.

A large quan­ti­ty of cloth­ing, mat­tress­es, shoes, stove, cylin­ders and oth­er per­son­al effects includ­ing med­ica­tion in the names of indi­vid­u­als who will be queried. The Huts were destroyed and the items burnt that could not be con­fis­cat­ed. It is to be also not­ed that water sup­ply and elec­tric­i­ty that were found at the huts traced back to premis­es on the Dagger Bay. 

Early reports indi­cate that Westmorelands most want­ed gang­ster Dushane Allen was gunned down in Moy Hall Saint James and an Uzi sub­ma­chine semi­au­to­mat­ic weapon was retrieved from his body today.
Details to follow.

Two punks on a motor­cy­cle decid­ed to rob a young man stand­ing at the side of a road in the Zaide Gardens neigh­bor­hood of Saint Andrew about 6:00pm on Saturday evening July 13^th.
According to Police reports the two onboard a motor­cy­cle, with no reg­is­tra­tion plates attached, rode up to the young man and robbed him of his Samsung Galaxy cell phone.

The young man turned out to be an off duty police offi­cer, who chal­lenged them. Another police offi­cer who was near­by assist­ed and both rob­bers were fatal­ly shot.
One Taurus 9mm pis­tol con­tain­ing 3 rounds of ammu­ni­tion was tak­en from one of the rob­bers.
A knap­sach con­taing a con­di­tion of bail book­let and oth­er items were also tak­en from one of the rob­bers.
All indi­ca­tions are, that at least he was report­ing to the Constant Spring police sta­tion as one of the con­di­tions of his bail.
A clear indi­ca­tion, that when these ver­min are let out on bail after offend­ing, they go right back to com­mit­ting crimes, as I out­lined in the pod­d­cast above.

These cops lit­er­al­ly act­ed improp­er­ly, then con­fis­cat­ed a cit­i­zen’s cell phone, bul­lied him, then real­iz­ing that he had done noth­ing wrong, they open­ly con­spired how to, then framed him for some­thing he nev­er did.

According to the news site Vox​.com. Police offi­cers in the US shoot and kill hun­dreds of peo­ple each year, accord­ing to the FBI’s very lim­it­ed data — far more than oth­er devel­oped coun­tries like the UK, Japan, and Germany, where police offi­cers might go an entire year with­out killing more than a dozen peo­ple or even any­one at all. 

This is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant because the US rate of gun deaths, which includes homi­cides and sui­cides, was 10.6 per 100,000 peo­ple in 2016. As opposed to a devel­op­ing coun­try like Jamaica whose vio­lent mur­der is 47 per 100,000 per annum.
That dwarfed com­pa­ra­ble devel­oped nations: Switzerland’s rate was 2.8, Canada’s was 2.1, Australia’s was 1, Germany’s was 0.9, the United Kingdom’s was 0.3, and Japan’s was 0.2.

In a 2014 Article for the nation, after the Ferguson inci­dent in which unarmed black teen Michael Brown was gunned down, Journalist, Chase Madar point­ed out that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment does not keep a strict nation­al tal­ly of police killings.
Madar argued that this shows just how seri­ous­ly the Government takes this prob­lem. A crowd­sourced data­base has sprung up to fill the gap, as has a wiki-tab­u­la­tion.
Perhaps the most dis­turb­ing thing about these police killings, many of them of unarmed vic­tims, Madar argues, is that our courts find them per­fect­ly legal.
In a bril­liant sum­ma­tion of police vio­lence in America Madar argued quote:” The first step to con­trol­ling the police is to get rid of the fan­ta­sy, once and for all, that the law is on our side. The law is firm­ly on the side of police who open fire on unarmed civil­ians.”
See arti­cle here: https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​w​h​y​-​i​t​s​-​i​m​p​o​s​s​i​b​l​e​-​i​n​d​i​c​t​-​c​op/

Despite the wide litany of cas­es in which American Police lit­er­al­ly mur­der unarmed cit­i­zens, Chase Mader warns,Quote: ” (A note on the IACHR and oth­er inter­na­tion­al forums: bring­ing these cas­es of police shoot­ings to them is a can­ny way to gen­er­ate pub­lic­i­ty and raise con­scious­ness, but no one should ever imag­ine for even a sec­ond that such bod­ies will ever wield any actu­al pow­er in American courts.”) closed quote.
That was an inte­gral part of my argu­ments in my most recent pod­cast.
Despite the heavy prsence of so-called human rights agen­cies in Jamaica, includ­ing the (IACHR) and their undue influ­ence in our law enforce­ment efforts they have zero influ­ence or pow­er over a sin­gle one of the thou­sands of police depart­ments in the United States, ragard­less of their crimes.

In Jamaica, we want an account­able police depart­ment, free from crim­i­nal con­duct. Nevertheless, we also want to see a police depart­ment uncon­strained by the likes of the IACHR, and oth­ers which has no pow­er in America, despite hun­dreds of bla­tant police killing of unarmed black cit­i­zens each year.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He also writes occa­sion­al­ly for the web­site Medium​.com.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Having spent the bet­ter part of a decade research­ing, writ­ing and talk­ing about the rule of law, race, and how law enforce­ment has affect­ed peo­ple’s lives through the years, I am dis­gust­ed to see the state of law enforce­ment today.
The hue and cry against those who enforce our laws are cer­tain­ly not just in Jamaica as some would like to have you believe. In the great big United States, with its thou­sands of police depart­ments, it is far worse. As a result, every police actions as it relates to peo­ple of col­or and African-Americans, in par­tic­u­lar, has come under immense scruti­ny because of the actions of police offi­cers.
In an age when images and video record­ings of police-civil­ian inter­ac­tions are broad­cast­ed viral­ly across the inter­net, it appears that police offi­cers have become far more bru­tal and uncar­ing about the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect.
Whether this is so or not, is not for me to say. The fact that images and live videos are so eas­i­ly avail­able for our view­ing may have some­thing to do with that.
What is patent­ly clear though is that the images are not pretty.

The United States, is a coun­try con­stant­ly embroiled in racial ani­mos­i­ty and strife. It is not always easy to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between good polic­ing and race-based polic­ing when white offices are involved with black sus­pects.
In Jamaica, the com­mon refrain by those who break the laws is that police arrest them because they are poor. Never mind that the offi­cers are gen­er­al­ly just as poor as they are, or poor­er.
Stopping a man in Cherry Gardens with a bag con­tain­ing imple­ments of house­break­ing, night or day, elic­its that same response.
As a con­se­quence, I am con­strained against my gut instincts, when inci­dents of alleged abuse sur­faces, involv­ing black cit­i­zens and white police offi­cers.
Nevertheless, the key ques­tion I gen­er­al­ly ask myself in thse instances is, ‘would the offi­cer black, white Latino or oth­er­wise have act­ed the way he/​she did were the sus­pects white”?
I am also mind­ful of the fact that the abil­i­ty to pro­file is a vital tool police offi­cers have in their toolk­it to help them make polic­ing deci­sions.
Done well, done right, that deduc­tive rea­son­ing serves our com­mu­ni­ties very well.
It becomes a prob­lem when rogue ele­ments in law enforce­ment use it to live out their racist bias­es in America.
It becomes a prob­lem when bru­tal cops use it to exact pun­ish­ment on those they deem pow­er­less in Jamaica.

The rule of law if applied fair­ly and pro­por­tion­ate­ly is the best method we have to main­tain demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties. When the laws are applied fair­ly, just­ly, equi­tably and pro­por­tion­ate­ly, in a man­ner in which all feel equal under the laws, it makes for bet­ter soci­eties and a pros­per­ous future for all.
When the poor is made to feel less than in the eyes of the law, or oth­ers are made to feel the same way because of their race, sex­u­al orientation,religion, or oth­er dis­tin­guish­able char­ac­ter­is­tic soci­eties are less peace­ful, less pros­per­ous.
As a con­se­quence the rule of law is heav­i­ly depen­dent of those who enforce our laws to be just and fair.
Unfortunately those who enforce our nation’s laws are weak humans pre­dis­posed to the weak­ness­es of human bias­es.
The fol­low­ing is one such sto­ry from our friends at CNN​.com.

Ex-deputy accused of planting drugs on Florida drivers is arrested

(CNN)Florida author­i­ties have arrest­ed a for­mer Jackson County deputy accused of mak­ing false arrests after plant­i­ng drugs on dri­vers, police said in a statement.The alle­ga­tions have prompt­ed pros­e­cu­tors to drop charges in scores of cases.Zachary Wester, 26, was tak­en into cus­tody at his Crawfordville home, about 20 miles south of Tallahassee, on Wednesday, accord­ing to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He is being held in Wakulla County Jail with­out bail, the FDLE said.He stands charged with felony counts of rack­e­teer­ing, offi­cial mis­con­duct, fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence, pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance and false impris­on­ment. He also faces mis­de­meanor charges of per­jury, pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance and pos­ses­sion of drug para­pher­na­lia, the FDLE said​.At least 11 peo­ple are suing Wester in fed­er­al court for alleged civ­il rights vio­la­tions as well.

100+ cases tossed out

At the request of the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, Wester’s for­mer employ­er, the FDLE began inves­ti­gat­ing the deputy in August after body­cam video from a February 2018 arrest appeared to show Wester plant­i­ng metham­phet­a­mine in Teresa Odom’s pick­up truck dur­ing a traf­fic stop, FDLE spokesman Jeremy Burns told CNN in September​.At the time, the FDLE was review­ing 254 of Wester’s cas­es, pros­e­cu­tors said.“The inves­ti­ga­tion shows Wester rou­tine­ly pulled over cit­i­zens for alleged minor traf­fic infrac­tions, plant­ed drugs inside their vehi­cles and arrest­ed them on fab­ri­cat­ed drug charges,” the FDLE said in its Wednesday news release, adding that it had reviewed more than 21 hours of footage in its investigation.

It added, “Wester cir­cum­vent­ed JCSO’s body cam­era pol­i­cy and tai­lored his record­ings to con­ceal his crim­i­nal activity.“Wester’s attor­ney did not imme­di­ate­ly return a phone call seek­ing comment.State Attorney Glenn Hess’ office said in September 2018 that 119 cas­es had been dropped and about 10 peo­ple had been released from prison. CNN could not imme­di­ate­ly reach Hess on Wednesday, but local media reports indi­cate the probe has widened since then.Wester was fired September 10. It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear how long Wester had been with the depart­ment, but the Tallahassee Democrat report­ed he resigned from the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office in May 2016 and lat­er took the job in Jackson County.

‘It damned sure ain’t mine’

Bodycam video from Odom’s February 2018 arrest in Cottondale shows Wester approach the car in a friend­ly man­ner and explain to the woman that her brake lights are malfunctioning.He leaves with her license, and as he returns to her vehi­cle he jokes that his hip almost gave out. Odom tells him her moth­er is in the hos­pi­tal and she’s expect­ing a call from a doc­tor. Wester tells her that a drug dog is on its way, but Odom says she has noth­ing in the car and gives him con­sent to search it.Wester appears to hold some­thing in his left hand as he dons black gloves before the search. His hand moves out of the frame for a few sec­onds and returns emp­ty. He fin­ish­es putting on the gloves and com­mences with the search.

Bodycam video appears to show Wester plant­i­ng drugs in Odom’s car last year.After “find­ing” a bag of white pow­der in her truck, he places it on the dri­ver seat but does­n’t alert two oth­er deputies on the scene. Instead, he moves it around, first plac­ing it on a spoon and then mov­ing it to the pas­sen­ger seat. All the while, he con­tin­ues the chum­my ban­ter with Odom.After search­ing the pas­sen­ger side of her vehi­cle, where he had just placed the bag­gie, he returns to Odom and anoth­er deputy with the spoon and pow­der. Odom says the spoon is for her yogurt but seems sur­prised by the bag of powder.“That is not mine. No, sir. No, sir,” she says.After the pow­der tests pos­i­tive for metham­phet­a­mine, Wester tells Odom she’s under arrest as she speaks on the phone with a relative.“He says it tests pos­i­tive for amphet­a­mine, so I guess I’m going to go to jail,” Odom tells the per­son on the phone. “It damned sure ain’t mine.”

Case remains open

Three fed­er­al law­suits have been filed against Wester. Eleven peo­ple arrest­ed by him claim the ex-deputy framed them, plant­i­ng some com­bi­na­tion of mar­i­jua­na, metham­phet­a­mine, pre­scrip­tion pills or drug para­pher­na­lia, includ­ing syringes and scales, in their vehi­cles after pulling them over for minor infrac­tions. Two law­suits were filed in December, and anoth­er was filed in May​.In the most recent­ly filed case, Lora Penn, one of nine plain­tiffs, says she was a pas­sen­ger in a vehi­cle pulled over June 7, 2018. During the stop, she alleged, Wester placed metham­phet­a­mine and a hypo­der­mic nee­dle in her purse.Penn was charged with drug and para­pher­na­lia pos­ses­sion and spent 12 days in jail before “her moth­er post­ed bond exhaust­ing her mea­ger finan­cial resources. Penn’s moth­er was there­after unable to afford med­ical care and died due to lack of such care,” the fed­er­al law­suit says.The FDLE, whose inves­ti­ga­tors have already logged 1,400 hours on the crim­i­nal case against Wester, says the probe remains open and encour­ages any­one with infor­ma­tion to come forward.“There is no ques­tion that Wester’s crimes were delib­er­ate and that his actions put inno­cent peo­ple in jail,” said Chris Williams, the FDLE’s assis­tant spe­cial agent in charge of the Pensacola office.Prior to his time with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, Wester worked in Liberty County. Jack Campbell, the state attor­ney there, told CNN affil­i­ate WCTV in May that inves­ti­ga­tors were in the process of “resolv­ing” some cas­es involv­ing the for­mer law­man. He would not elab­o­rate on how many cas­es, the sta­tion reported.The sta­tion has pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed Campbell was review­ing 26 cases.

CNN’s Amir Vera, Marlena Baldacci and Amanda Watts con­tributed to this report.

A sev­en-point anti-crime plan — with heavy empha­sis on intel­li­gence, foren­sics, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and anti-cor­rup­tion, which will bring togeth­er the best minds to tack­le Jamaica’s most debil­i­tat­ing prob­lem — was on Thursday pre­sent­ed by Police Commissioner Major General Antony Anderson, along with mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) High Command, dur­ing a Gleaner Editors’ Forum.
Though the Government has been hound­ed for an effec­tive strat­e­gy for fight­ing crime since tak­ing office in 2016, Deputy Superintendent Dahlia Garrick, head of the police Corporate Communications Unit, said a bud­getary increase pred­i­cat­ed on the anti-crime strate­gies was includ­ed in this year’s esti­mates of expen­di­ture.
The plan will see an over­haul of the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB), which spe­cial­izes in secu­ri­ty intel­li­gence and col­lab­o­rates with local and inter­na­tion­al law-enforce­ment agen­cies. The NIB also pro­vides intel­li­gence to the offi­cer corps and oper­a­tional units and was itself an over­haul of the JCF Special Branch.
Anderson, who has been in the post for over a year, out­lined a care­ful plan of action, to be done in three-month phas­es, but all run­ning con­cur­rent­ly.
The strat­e­gy includes mir­ror image rec­om­men­da­tions of the Strategic Review done in 2008, which pro­posed, inter alia, a road map for tack­ling cor­rup­tion, inter­nal and exter­nal account­abil­i­ty, a more effec­tive lead­er­ship and man­age­ment arrange­ment, to include improve­ment to inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and a sig­nif­i­cant upgrade to the phys­i­cal struc­tures used by the JCF. The wel­fare of the men and women who ‘serve and pro­tect’ will also receive an added boost, which will now be han­dled by com­mand cen­tral com­ple­ment­ing the role of the Police Federation.

The pro­posed nation­al secu­ri­ty tac­tic is anchored on sev­en pillars.“They are crime reduc­tion and con­trol; improv­ing pub­lic safe­ty and cit­i­zen secu­ri­ty; orga­ni­za­tion­al restruc­tur­ing and capac­i­ty build­ing; enhanc­ing staff wel­fare; enhanc­ing pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards; effi­cien­cy through tech­nol­o­gy; and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pub­lic engage­ment,” the com­mis­sion­er told the team of edi­tors and jour­nal­ists at The Gleaner’s North Street, Kingston office.
This was just days after police sta­tis­tics revealed that there was an increase in mur­ders, which threat­ens gains made with the intro­duc­tion of the state of emer­gency in three high-crime west­ern parish­es, and the con­tin­u­a­tion of zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions in two trou­bled com­mu­ni­ties.
“Our aim is to make Jamaica safe. And at the top of that is our con­cern about the num­ber of per­sons who die in Jamaica, which is some­thing that we real­ly need to get a han­dle on and deal with. For us as the police force, what we see as a sta­tis­tic of mur­der is very real. Those are real peo­ple who have been killed. We see every­one who is mur­dered in situ. We go to every scene and we are unique in that regard. We are the only ones who do that,” he not­ed.
Anderson said any mur­der was dis­heart­en­ing, hence, a major thrust of the JCF was geared towards reduc­ing that while tack­ling the wider, con­nect­ed issues.

TARGETED STRATEGIES

In March 2018, when he assumed the force’s top job, at the fore­front of his mind was the 1,643 per­sons mur­dered the pre­vi­ous year, and that year’s already high fig­ures.
His strate­gies then includ­ed focus­ing on polic­ing the new school year amid a flur­ry of road law­less­ness, which involved train­ing sev­er­al traf­fic cops.
Anderson also took aim at strength­en­ing the inves­tiga­tive arm of the force — then under the direc­tor­ship of Deputy Commissioner Selvin Hay — with a seri­ous push towards dis­man­tling gangs, which includ­ed inves­ti­ga­tions and pros­e­cu­tions of mem­bers.
One such is the mul­ti­ple-mem­ber Uchence Wilson Gang, which is cur­rent­ly before the courts and whose mem­bers are being pros­e­cut­ed under the Anti-Gang Legislation.

This year saw him tar­get­ing the inspec­torate of the con­stab­u­lary, with the rede­vel­op­ment of the JCF’s inter­nal anti-cor­rup­tion capa­bil­i­ty, which became the remit of the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA).“MOCA is obvi­ous­ly look­ing at big issues of cor­rup­tion across gov­ern­ment, and so to look at our own issues inter­nal­ly, it is crit­i­cal that we have our own capa­bil­i­ties. DCP Hay is in the process of devel­op­ing and build­ing that capa­bil­i­ty,” the com­mis­sion­er said.

Internal admin­is­tra­tive process­es and the wel­fare of the men and women under his com­mand are now Anderson’s focus. Jamaica-Eye — the Government’s much-tout­ed CCTV cam­eras crime reduc­tion tool, using eyes instead of boots — is cur­rent­ly being opti­mized and improve­ments are under­way for a work­ing roll-out by September. Much of the hard­ware will be replaced, many of which are out­dat­ed.
“How we use foren­sics, cyber foren­sics, DNA, bal­lis­tics, fin­ger­print, and relat­ed foren­sics are crit­i­cal. Last year, we took 5,457 crime-scene exhibits for DNA analy­sis; we also test­ed 9,275 indi­vid­ual sam­ples. In terms of dig­i­tal devices and data, through cyber foren­sics, we processed 3,395 devices, and this year we have done approx­i­mate­ly 1,500,” Anderson stat­ed. At least 1,037 bal­lis­tic sam­ples from crime scenes were done last year, some of which have helped to solve cold cas­es. Arrests as a result of transna­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tions have also been made.DCP Hay and Assistant Commissioner Kevin Blake are cur­rent­ly work­ing on estab­lish­ing effec­tive plat­forms for the pub­lic to com­mu­ni­cate with the con­stab­u­lary. The top brass is all in agree­ment with the JCF’s guid­ing prin­ci­ples. “The first is the rule of law, the sec­ond is respect for all, and third is that we are a force for good,” stat­ed the top cop.

Let’s all take a step back and admit that inso­far as crime is con­cerned this Jamaican Government, like the one before, has played its hand and lost.
Can we at least be hon­est with our­selves that declar­ing States of Emergencies and installing Zones Of Special Operations are only serv­ing to dis­perse and dis­trib­ute crim­i­nals to oth­er areas, away from those des­ig­nat­ed zones? 

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​a​c​k​-​a​-​m​o​l​e​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​s​t​r​a​t​e​gy/

So the Prime Minister has just returned to the Island from a CARICOM con­fer­ence, he announced that a State Of Emergency has been declared in the Saint Andrew South Police Area. For those of you not famil­iar with the geog­ra­phy of the Kingston Metropolitan area, that is in the area called the Hunt’s Bay Police division. 

At the same time, there are hot spots spring­ing up all across the Island. Clarendon is out of con­trol as gang­sters run the place in that parish so to speak. Elsewhere in the cor­po­rate area, crime has gone up in most police divi­sions wip­ing out the reduc­tions expe­ri­enced in 2018.
Even in Manchester, a Parish not exact­ly know for uncon­trol­lable crime, things have seem­ing­ly got­ten out of hand. We made some inquiries as to what could have caused the crime spike in that parish?
We want­ed to under­stand why Manchester which saw a 31% reduc­tion in mur­ders last year is expe­ri­enc­ing a 100% increase in mur­ders?
We learned that the Commanding offi­cer for that Parish, hands-on Superintendent Wayne Cameron has been away from that com­mand for the past six months and all hell seemed to have bro­ken loose.
A lit­tle bird has informed us that the Superintendent may be back at the helm of that divi­sion so hope­ful­ly, things will sta­bi­lize in that parish soon­er than later.

In Clarendon two mem­bers of the JDF have been gunned down in the space of 15 days the lat­ter was killed this morn­ing after a par­ty in the Clarendon Park area of the parish.
Dead is Private Paul Lindsay oth­er­wise called Gary who was shot rough­ly eight times by an assailant who report­ed­ly emerged from near­by bush­es and opened fire on Lindsay who had just con­clud­ed a round-robin par­ty.
On June 22^nd Private Garfield Williams was gunned down along ceme­tery road in Denbigh, in the same parish.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​r​o​n​g​-​h​e​a​d​e​d​-​a​p​p​r​o​a​c​h​-​t​o​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​f​u​e​l​i​n​g​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​v​i​d​eo/

Whether there is a sys­temic cam­paign of ter­ror against mem­bers of the JDF is still unclear, as two deaths do not estab­lish a full pat­tern. At the same time, there has been a steady increase in vio­lence in the parish, which has prompt­ed some to call for the removal of that com­mand­ing offi­cer Mrs. Cameron-Powell.
In fair­ness to Mrs. Cameron Powell and any oth­er com­man­der who would tack­le that divi­sion the strate­gies need­ed to bring crime to a screech­ing halt will not be tol­er­at­ed by this Prime Minister his cabal of crim­i­nal rights lob­by or the coun­try in general.

Just today I saw a post made by the Prime Minister, in it, he asked cit­i­zens to report inci­dents of crime to the author­i­ties. He had the JDF tip line ahead of the nation’s police tip line.
To some peo­ple, this may be incon­se­quen­tial, not to me. Since he came to office he has demon­strat­ed that he doesn’t care too much about the police, and as we have seen he even made a for­mer head of the JDF the police com­mis­sion­er.
Again, this may not seem like much to the aver­age non-skep­tic, but, to me, he has vir­tu­al­ly made the JDF his police depart­ment of choice. 

Now here is the kick­er, not only has he made the JDF the new police force, but the so-called awe and love that pre­vi­ous­ly exist­ed for the mil­i­tary because its mem­bers were not as exposed as the mem­bers of the JCF are, and they weren’t out there arrest­ing peo­ple, is now gone and the guns are turn­ing on them.
I warned that that would occur, giv­en time and his pen­chant for push­ing the JDF as a pseu­do-police force. 

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​n​d​r​e​w​-​h​o​l​n​e​s​s​-​i​s​-​a​-​l​i​g​h​t​w​e​i​g​h​t​-​a​n​d​-​a​n​-​a​b​y​s​m​a​l​-​f​a​i​l​u​r​e​-​o​n​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​l​i​k​e​-​t​h​e​-​p​n​p​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​s​-​b​e​f​o​r​e​-​h​im/

The for­mer gov­ern­ment of the PNP did not have a clue how to end the crime scourge plagu­ing our coun­try. The for­mer Minister of National Security Peter Bunting, a man now locked in a strug­gle for the lead­er­ship of the par­ty, once said that the coun­try need­ed divine inter­ven­tion to deal with crime.
As Minister with respon­si­bil­i­ty for crime Bunting’s state­ment was shock­ing and trans­par­ent­ly clear that the par­ty and admin­is­tra­tion were bereft of ideas and need­ed to be put out to pas­ture.
Win or lose Peter Bunting and the PNP are still in the dark as to solu­tions for this crisis. 

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​b​l​i​n​k​e​r​e​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​a​l​-​a​l​l​e​g​i​a​n​c​e​s​-​b​l​i​n​d​-​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​d​a​n​g​e​r​s​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​p​o​s​es/

Jamaica got rid of hang­ing to suit great Britain and for what? Britain does not have heav­i­ly armed gun­men roam­ing their streets killing whomev­er they wish.
In Jamaica, there is a bat­tery of crim­i­nal rights advo­cates oper­at­ing as human rights activists, many of them with bases in Washington DC.
Additionally, Jamaica has cast aside its hard­core police offi­cers in search of a [Utopian]sic cour­tesy corps to sat­is­fy the Leahy amend­ment.
See Act here: https://​fas​.org/​s​g​p​/​c​r​s​/​r​o​w​/​R​4​3​3​6​1​.​pdf .
In addi­tion to that, they cre­at­ed INDECOM and oth­er lay­ers of over­sight of the JCF rather than spend those resources upgrad­ing and equip­ping the JCF.
This has result­ed in mass attri­tion from the force. In the process of try­ing to stem the mass exo­dus, back­ground checks have suf­fered and so the image of the force con­tin­ues to suf­fer.
Ironically, as it relates to the Leahy amend­ment, the help Jamaica would receive from the US for it’s con­for­mi­ty to the dic­tates of that act is so mar­gin­al it was not worth it.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​h​o​l​n​e​s​s​-​u​t​o​p​i​a​n​-​f​o​r​c​e​-​f​o​r​-​g​o​o​d​-​w​i​l​l​-​n​o​t​-​p​r​o​t​e​c​t​-​y​o​u​-​f​r​o​m​-​t​h​e​-​k​i​l​l​e​r​s​-​i​t​s​-​a​-​l​o​a​d​-​o​f​-​c​r​o​ck/

According to the ACLU, the US has not rat­i­fied any inter­na­tion­al human rights treaties since December 2002, when it rat­i­fied two option­al pro­to­cols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Since that time, impor­tant new treaties have been adopt­ed and oth­er long-stand­ing treaties have gained new mem­ber states. Unfortunately, the US has too often remained out­side these efforts. For exam­ple, the US is the only coun­try oth­er than Somalia that has not rat­i­fied the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most wide­ly and rapid­ly rat­i­fied human rights treaty in his­to­ry. It is one of only sev­en coun­tries-togeth­er with Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, and Tonga- that has failed to rat­i­fy the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Simply put, the US does not allow any­thing to get in the way of uphold­ing its laws.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He also writes occa­sion­al­ly for the web­site Medium​.com.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

IN THIS INCIDENT A MONTH AGO

Remember this?
Well, we have been informed that retired Deputy Superintendent of police Altamont (Parro) Campbell who was engaged in an inci­dent with a uni­formed offi­cer sev­er­al weeks ago has been charged and sched­uled to appear in court today.
Charges we are told, are, care­less dri­ving, not wear­ing a seat-belt, no insur­ance, and dis­obey­ing an offi­cer’s commands.

Developing sto­ry

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He also writes occa­sion­al­ly for the web­site Medium​.com.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

A police con­sta­ble has been arrest­ed by the Lacovia Police for alleged­ly steal­ing J$90,000.00 from premis­es in that Saint Elizabeth town.
At about 4:00 am, Yesterday morn­ing the offi­cer was among a team of offi­cers who went to the loca­tion to exe­cute a war­rant in an area known as Alley Lane.

The house was searched and the ini­tial sus­pect appre­hend­ed. According to sources after the oper­a­tion was con­clud­ed the con­sta­ble was searched by a senior offi­cer and the mon­ey tak­en from his bal­lis­tic vest.
He was arrest­ed and booked on the theft, his name is being with­held pend­ing fur­ther investigations. 

Side note:
This write con­tin­ues to make the point that when it comes to police recruit­ment short­cuts in back­ground checks are a sig­nif­i­cant part of why police depart­ments end up in trou­ble with their offi­cers.
The high attri­tion rate of offi­cers from the JCF has con­tin­ued to influ­ence the rush to put bod­ies on the streets.
Bad over­all poli­cies cre­ate high attri­tion rates, this forces the JCF to rush their back­ground checks which were hard­ly any­thing, to begin with.
The only thing pos­i­tive in this is that this con­sta­ble was arrest­ed by anoth­er police officer.

If you leave Harbor View intend­ing to reach Morant Point but trav­el west instead of east, you may even­tu­al­ly arrive, but the jour­ney will take far longer than nec­es­sary. The rea­son is sim­ple: the short­est dis­tance between two points is a straight line. While it is not always easy to take the most direct path, that does not jus­ti­fy wast­ing time and resources by mov­ing in cir­cles. This anal­o­gy applies direct­ly to Jamaica’s approach to crime.

Recently, there has been yet anoth­er shake-up with­in the upper ranks of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). Coincidentally — or per­haps not — this comes at a time when vio­lent crime is increas­ing across the island, includ­ing with­in the Kingston Metropolitan Area. According to the Jamaica Observer, 11 of the island’s 19 police divi­sions have record­ed more mur­ders than last year. Kingston Central has seen a 100 per­cent increase, ris­ing from eight mur­ders to 16, while Manchester has expe­ri­enced a 90 per­cent increase, from 10 to 19 mur­ders. Islandwide, there have been 675 mur­ders so far this year, four more than the 671 record­ed over the same peri­od last year. Other seri­ous crimes — such as shoot­ings and aggra­vat­ed assault — have also increased. Rape is the only major cat­e­go­ry show­ing a decline com­pared to 2018. There have been 660 report­ed shoot­ings so far this year, an 11 per­cent increase over 2018, and 183 cas­es of aggra­vat­ed assault, mar­gin­al­ly high­er than last year’s fig­ure. Meanwhile, 257 rape cas­es were record­ed in the first six months of the year, slight­ly below the 263 report­ed dur­ing the same peri­od in 2018.
I will return to the Manchester Police Division lat­er, as it is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to this dis­cus­sion. A clear and con­sis­tent pat­tern emerges from these sta­tis­tics: despite fluc­tu­a­tions, crime in Jamaica con­tin­ues to rise. It may not increase in a straight upward line, but the over­all trend is unmistakable.

As sug­gest­ed ear­li­er, crime is increas­ing­ly out of con­trol, even if its growth is uneven. Over the years, there have been count­less police reshuf­fles, trans­fers, and changes in lead­er­ship — includ­ing repeat­ed changes at the lev­el of Commissioner of Police. Ministers of National Security have also come and gone, each becom­ing anoth­er casu­al­ty of this seem­ing­ly untam­able problem.

In this con­stant reshuf­fling, many capa­ble pub­lic ser­vants have had their careers ques­tioned — not because they lacked abil­i­ty, but because the coun­try con­tin­ues to approach crime in fun­da­men­tal­ly the wrong way. The police high com­mand has nev­er func­tioned as a tru­ly cohe­sive unit. This is large­ly due to its rigid, top-down struc­ture. Orders are issued from the top and car­ried out by sub­or­di­nates who are dis­cour­aged from offer­ing inde­pen­dent thought or pro­fes­sion­al input. Political direc­tives — often devel­oped with lit­tle prac­ti­cal polic­ing insight — fil­ter down through this hier­ar­chy. Such an auto­crat­ic envi­ron­ment sti­fles crit­i­cal think­ing and encour­ages robot­ic com­pli­ance. It also fos­ters unhealthy com­pe­ti­tion, inter­nal pol­i­tics, and careerism, as offi­cers jock­ey for advance­ment. In this atmos­phere, gen­uine prob­lem-solv­ing becomes a casu­al­ty. This is not to say that capa­ble thinkers do not exist with­in the gazetted ranks. They do. However, the sys­tem is hos­tile to inde­pen­dent thought and pro­motes group­think instead. Officers who know what might work are often pow­er­less to act, con­strained by poli­cies they rec­og­nize as inef­fec­tive. Many parish com­man­ders are com­pe­tent and ded­i­cat­ed, but they lack both the author­i­ty and the resources to imple­ment mean­ing­ful solutions.

Manchester is a prime exam­ple. The divi­sion is led by an excel­lent com­mand­ing offi­cer, Superintendent Wayne Cameron, and there are oth­er com­man­ders across the island doing their best with­in a flawed sys­tem. Despite their efforts, crime in their divi­sions con­tin­ues to rise. Jamaica’s approach to crime requires a com­plete trans­for­ma­tion. I have said this repeat­ed­ly because it remains true. Our strat­e­gy resem­bles the way the United States approach­es health­care — spend­ing enor­mous sums on treat­ment rather than pre­ven­tion. In much the same way, Jamaica prac­tices “crime care” instead of crime pre­ven­tion. The cur­rent strat­e­gy is offend­er-focused rather than vic­tim-focused. We pri­or­i­tize the rights and com­forts of accused and con­vict­ed crim­i­nals over the rights of vic­tims and their fam­i­lies. Politicians, so-called experts, and an expand­ing crim­i­nal-rights lob­by con­tin­u­ous­ly dic­tate what law enforce­ment can­not do, regard­less of the bru­tal­i­ty of the crimes involved. Suspects must be brought before a judge quick­ly or released. Even those charged with mur­der are often grant­ed bail. If tri­als are delayed, senior offi­cials open­ly argue for cas­es — even mur­der cas­es — to be dis­missed. Once con­vict­ed, inmates are allowed extra­or­di­nary free­doms, includ­ing access to cell phones, the abil­i­ty to run crim­i­nal enter­pris­es from prison, intim­i­date wit­ness­es, and even con­tin­ue record­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing vio­lent music.

Every con­sid­er­a­tion is extend­ed to offend­ers, while vic­tims and sur­viv­ing fam­i­lies are large­ly ignored. This empha­sis must be reversed. Efforts should instead focus on pro­tect­ing poten­tial vic­tims through enhanced polic­ing sup­port­ed by stronger leg­is­la­tion. This includes longer sen­tences for vio­lent offend­ers, truth-in-sen­tenc­ing laws that lim­it judi­cial dis­cre­tion for cer­tain crimes, and bet­ter train­ing and pay for police offi­cers to reduce cor­rup­tion. The INDECOM Act should be repealed or seri­ous­ly recal­i­brat­ed to include mea­sures to cur­tail that agen­cy’s abil­i­ty to speak out about per­ceived police excess­es instead of inves­ti­gat­ing them. INDECOM’s resources should be reduced, with the pro­ceeds redi­rect­ed toward train­ing and equip­ping the police. Police account­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms should be restored, staffed by knowl­edge­able, impar­tial indi­vid­u­als who under­stand polic­ing and are free of per­son­al or polit­i­cal agen­das. Finally, there must be a sus­tained pub­lic edu­ca­tion cam­paign — using gov­ern­ment media such as the JIS — to improve pub­lic under­stand­ing of laws and civic respon­si­bil­i­ty. One of the great­est chal­lenges fac­ing the police is wide­spread igno­rance of legal oblig­a­tions and an increas­ing­ly opin­ion­at­ed but ill-informed pop­u­la­tion. This prob­lem has been ignored for decades, pro­duc­ing gen­er­a­tions who do not under­stand their respon­si­bil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly when inter­act­ing with law enforce­ment. Until Jamaica stops cir­cling the prob­lem and choos­es a direct path, crime will con­tin­ue to out­run us.

Acting on Information as a result of a Robbery Investigation, a joint Police Military team went to Halls Delight Hill, St. Andrew at about 6:30 am Monday, July 1^st.

On approach­ing an area in the com­mu­ni­ty the par­ty was fired on by a group of men. The fire was returned and two men were shot and killed accord­ing to law-enforce­ment cources.

Three 9 mm pis­tols along with sev­er­al rounds of ammu­ni­tion was recov­ered from their bodies

The men were pro­nounced dead at the University Hospital of the West Indies.