Recently we commented on the case of a magistrate in Jamaica sentencing an offender to three-months in jail for stealing ackee from the grounds of Kings House. King’s House is the official residence of the Governor General. Anyone who read my blogs knows I criticize judges everyday for turning criminals loose onto the streets and imposing ridiculously low sentences for very serious offences and crimes. This particular Magistrate has never been a favourite of mine ‚but on this issue I support her decision.
There has been howls of condemnation from the traditional criminal supporting sources in the our country, you know them ‚the village lawyers, the know it all, those who feel they should have unfettered access to the property of others , and of course the chief criminal supporting group in the country Jamaicans for justice.
Many argue that the Governor General should intervene in the decision of the court and grant the man pardon, this of course the GG is unable to do without consultation with the Privy Council In England. and he appropriately said as much in response to the silly calls for his intervention.
The governor-general has observed that while the Constitution grants him the power to exercise pardon or substitute a less severe form of punishment, it also protects the integrity and independence of the judiciary by stipulating that the governor-general must act in consultation with the Privy Council. This, therefore, means that the governor-general acts on the advice of the Privy Council, and any other course of action will be ultra vires the Constitution(jamaica gleaner.com)
Now our friends at the Gleaner we love them but we also chide them sometimes for putting insufficient information out to the public or putting stuff out that many of its readers do not understand unless they are reading with the aid of an encyclopedia. So we will briefly tell you what (ultra vires)means. Ultra vires a Latin term meaning “beyond powers. So the far left in Jamaica which usually is composed of mostly those who have attended the University of the West Indies and has been bathed in the doctrine of socialism/communism really wants the Governor General to break the law, in essence over-reach into territory he has no legal authority to interfere in.
Jamaica’s Governor General Sir Kenneth Hall
To many this is about ackees, to me it is not. One person commenting in a forum on the Gleaner’s website opined that since he was arrested at the spot no theft was committed, the fallacy inherent in that position is astounding, but is a good representative samplying of how some Jamaicans think. I guess a murderer arrested at the scene of the crime is no murderer. Nonetheless the barrage of criticisms being heaped onto the judge and the GG goes on unabated .
So lets take a look at what’s at stake here , while the different sides argue, more information comes to light and as such many are hardening their positions , none more so than the criminal rights group Jamaicans for justice. They contend that the thief was once a charge of the state and he never had the benefit of a proper home,he was hungry and, so he stole the ackees to sell in order to purchase food. Even if all of the aforementioned was true they do not give anyone the right to steal. If caught and convicted an offender may use those arguments toward getting a mitigated sentence , which of course would be totally up to the trier of facts. They are not arguments that legitimizes larceny.
This problem by the way is symptomatic of the pervasive criminality and innate corruption that forms the very DNA of our country, no longer a rash on the outside, this acceptance and support of all acts criminal is now a malignancy. What we can extrapolate from all of this is the difficulty that will form the way forward in bringing Jamaica back to a place of respectability and honor. A recent report again has Jamaica as one of the world’s most corrupt nations.
I personally have no problem the man who stole the ackees, after all he was arrested and a magistrate has ruled on what the penalty should be. What I have a problem with are the bleeding hearts who have nothing to do but support criminality and are apologists for those who decide to make crime a way of like.
There are no shortage of causes that could attract well-meaning people. There is poverty , hunger, child abuse, cancer, intolerance , victims of crime and the list goes on (ad infinitum) The frauds at Jamaicans for justice have taken it upon themselves to support, and speak for those who rob,rape, and murder. Not only have they done so but they have launched a systematic campaign of lies and misinformation against Jamaica’s police and military officers who patrol the densely populated garrisons where AK47 toting thugs parade openly with their weapons and have zero compunction about killing law enforcement officers or anyone else for that matter.
Susan Goff Carolyn Gomes
These are the faces of criminal support in Jamaica, make no mistake about it,there are many more who are using their positions of power to further the anarchy that prevails , but these two are the worst offenders. Those two are funded and supported by outside agitators in Europe and Washington DC , of course in order to secure these funds they must gather information on supposed instances of abuse that has gone un-addressed by Government. As you would expect Gomes and Goff has repeatedly supplied patently false and doctored data that has repeatedly been exposed to be just lies, or at best unsubstantiated.
They throw around terms like extra judicial killing as if they know what that is. Their narrative is void of any understanding of the circumstances under which an officer may shoot a suspect, or the time officers have to make those life and death decisions. Decisions that are made in a fraction of a second, have life altering consequences but which they have a lifetime to second guess and criticize.
Carolyn Gomes desire and attempts at telling police officers how to do their jobs is the same as police telling her how to treat a sick baby. Carolyn Gomes is a pediatrician , her job is treating sick babies, she has no training in police work and as such she should confine herself to that which she has training in . The issue of human rights is a fundamentally important issue, which cannot be overstated, it goes far deeper than police officers who may on instances overstep their authority. Let me be clear I have no desire in shielding or apologising for officers who overstep their authority and commit blatant and unprovoked abuse of any member of the public. An attack on any member of the public is an attack on all of us, and it ought not be condoned or tolerated.
Conversely I am patently aware of the difficulty police officers have in executing their duties in Jamaica’s inner cities, I was one of those officers, it was hard when I served, it is harder now. There is a significant increase in the number of weapons and ammunition available to criminals, there is also a significant improvement in the calibre weapons and the amount of ammunition available to them. there is also no shortage of village lawyers and monday morning quarterbacks with nothing better to do than hear their own voices on radio. I know the difficulty these men and women face in these split second situations, I was one of them, I took a bullet from a .45 calibre weapon. As such I will always err on the side of those who offered to serve,over those whose desire it is to kill and destroy. The lines are clear there is no middle, no fence to sit on , either you support the rule of law or you support terrorists.
The Jamaican Government for its part scared shitless about the consequences of the lies Gomes feeds to International Human Rights Agencies, have rewarded her with a National Honor. A national honor on the blood of all of the brave police officers and members of our military who have given their lives in the existential fight Jamaica has been engaged in with determined and heavily armed urban terrorists.
This spineless and cowardly act on the part of the Government is even more offensive when considered against the many police officers who have their lives extinguished every year, not to mention those shot and injured in defense of the very cowards who condemn them. I am one of those officers who had been shot in the line of duty and live to talk about it. That is the reason I am unapologetic and undettered by critics who think they know something . When the pages of history are written these charlatans and Jezebels will be remembered as heroines when the truth is they were nothing more than Benedict Arnolds in our country’s search for peace and justice.
In the 80’s New York City was a literal cesspool of crime, the streets were a hazard, from squeegee men to graffiti vandals, from murdering drug dealers to organized crime, living or doing business in the city was an occupational hazard. Ed Koch the three term Mayor had long ran out of ideas and zeal. businesses had been migrating from the worlds greatest city in droves. Times Square the epic-center of NY city was nothing more than porn alley where lasciviousness reigned, peep show, prostitution,and drug dealing sypnopsized what Times Square was all about.
David Dinkins
Giuliani
David Dinkins the City’s first African Mayor was elected with a fragile coalition, and given the task of returning the city to its former glory. Dinkins got to work, he trained and put thousands of cops onto the streets in a programme called safe streets safe city. He solicited and secured federal funds to pay for the additional cops and instituted a raft of other social programmes that removed youths from the streets. Dinkins was booted from Office at the end of his first term, and replaced by Rudolph Giuliani a tyrannical Italian American with a Napoleon complex. Giuliani had effectively used race to drive a wedge between the different communities that elected Dinkins. He agitated and sowed rifts between NY Jewish and black communities, and the city’s Asian and Black communities.Dinkins was unable to please all of these groups and his efforts were not helped by Koch ‚his Democratic predecessor who sided with Giuliani .
In the end Giuliani was rewarded with the fruits of Dinkins labor . NY City was restored to its former glory and remains so . It was returned to what is still one of the safest large cities in the world because the strategy of tackling small offences and attaching serious penalties to these offences ensured that those who commit those offenses did not graduate to more serious crimes, it works.
The hue and cry in our country today is about all of the criminals locked away in jails, at the same time they argue that the police is ineffective. Which is it ? Both statements cannot be true ! That aside, is the question about the large number of people incarcerated, or should it be about what is it that causes so many out of a population of 2.8 million to choose a life of crime ?
The fact is, the issue is not about Ackees at all. The real issue here is that this is someone who stole , got caught and got his just desert, a couple of months in jail. Many argue he was hungry, as if being hungry gives one the right to steal, some even argue hunger is a reason to steal. The truth is in this case jail is not a bad option as it would assure him a place to stay and free food for at least three months on the taxpayer’s dime. In many parts of the world this thief would have paid with the loss of a hand,some of these bleeding heart criminal supporters needs to be sent to Saudi Arabia and other places for an orientation, they want to talk about abuse let them go there and talk that rubbish.
I believe in Jamaica, I know Jamaica will become a country of laws, this will materialize as globalization spreads and take hold, I am not a fan or a supporter of globalization, I am just aware of the implications of a more centralized order in the world, we have already seen how that played out in the Christopher Dudus Coke extradition case, if change cannot happen from within it certainly will come from without.