Jamaican PM Shook Over Haitian Leader’s Demise…

Two issues arose in a sin­gle address by the Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Michael Holness recent­ly that war­rants seri­ous discourse.
Remarkably, the two are fun­da­men­tal cor­ner­stones of why this writer writes on crime, vio­lence, and politics.
The fol­low­ing is the lead-in para­graph from one of the nation’s dailies; Prime Minister Andrew Holness has expressed con­cerns that crim­i­nal gangs could threat­en the sov­er­eign­ty of Jamaica if they are not rig­or­ous­ly pur­sued and nul­li­fied with the use of extra secu­ri­ty pow­ers, such as the state of emer­gency (SOE).
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​h​o​l​n​e​s​s​-​s​i​l​e​n​c​e​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​f​a​c​e​-​o​f​-​e​x​i​s​t​e​n​t​i​a​l​-​g​u​n​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​-​i​s​-​a​s​t​o​u​n​d​i​n​g​-​a​n​d​-​i​n​e​x​c​u​s​a​b​le/

Wait, what?
Really now, mis­ter Prime Minister? What the f**k, what an epiphany, Isn’t that what I have been say­ing for well over a decade now on this very medi­um? What is the rea­son for the sud­den awak­en­ing? Oh, wait, before we go any fur­ther, the blink­ered par­ti­sans for whom you can do no wrong will be all over me, telling me that you have done more for the police than the PNP as if I am a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the PNP or gives a shit about the PNP.
But they will not agree that the Prime Minister had this come to Jesus moment because, for the first time, he real­ized that his ass is not pro­tect­ed even though he is soft on criminals.
So you dis­agree? I don’t real­ly care whether you agree; here is Andrew Michael Holness speak­ing to the issue of the pow­er of the crim­i­nal gangs he want­ed cour­tesy corps respons­es to previously.
Speaking dur­ing a vis­it to the Parish of Saint James, the Parish where his Minister of National Security Horace Chang main­tains one of the nations most for­mi­da­ble gar­risons, Holness said the fol­low­ing; “We are mak­ing long-term invest­ments in infra­struc­ture and human devel­op­ment, but we have an urgent prob­lem that if we don’t use excep­tion­al pow­ers to address, those gangs can become a seri­ous threat to the State.” 
“I don’t have to expand and unpack that state­ment any­more. Ninety miles away from here, you see what can hap­pen.”
Hahaha, in oth­er words, the only rea­son that the prime min­is­ter has grown some balls on this sub­ject is that he now feels threat­ened based on what hap­pened to the President of Haiti recently.
I mean, these are his own words. Would the Prime Minister be this res­olute unless he felt vul­ner­a­ble? You be the judge, and by the way, it is shame­ful because all lives matter.

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

The oth­er issue is what the courts have been doing for decades with crim­i­nal cas­es at all lev­els. I get the need for the police to be bet­ter, less slop­py, more pro­fes­sion­al in their work. Lord knows I have seen it myself, and on that note, a lit­tle bit of per­son­al back-slap­ping on the subject.
Long ago, when I was a serv­ing mem­ber of the JCF, the police would com­plain about the judges; on more than one occa­sion, a cou­ple of judges named me as they pushed back, “look at the way that offi­cer presents his case and tes­ti­fies under oath and you won’t have to worry.
So I do get that case prepa­ra­tion is crit­i­cal for con­vic­tion. I am told by col­leagues who left after I did that there are pro­to­cols in place that address­es case prepa­ra­tion ques­tions. I won­der, how­ev­er, how good those prepa­ra­tions are when the judges can toss cas­es with such care­free fre­quen­cy? And while we are on the sub­ject, what about the pros­e­cu­tors who are pros­e­cut­ing those cas­es? Do they not see the loopholes?
Having said the fore­gone, the Judges toss cas­es friv­o­lous­ly and with­out care for the vic­tims of vio­lent crimes. A seri­ous case can be made that there is seri­ous cor­rup­tion in the court sys­tem. Still, until a judge is caught red­hand­ed, this issue will con­tin­ue to be on the back burn­er because most Jamaicans naive­ly believe judges are gods..”
On the oth­er hand, when the court rules that a piece of leg­is­la­tion is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, it is not time for hand-wring­ing; it is time to sit down and draft leg­is­la­tion that will pass con­sti­tu­tion­al muster. If the old con­sti­tu­tion does not work for Jamaica, the appro­pri­ate thing to do is throw out that con­sti­tu­tion and change our sys­tem of gov­ern­ment by extri­cat­ing our­selves from the shack­les of British Colonialization and set­ting up a Republican Democracy.
Oh wait, that will not hap­pen under Andrew Holness, he was just appoint­ed to the Privy Council, a cer­e­mo­ni­al appoint­ment, but you know how we Jamaicans are hung up on titles.
I agree with the court that arrest­ing and lock­ing up indi­vid­u­als with­out charge for peri­ods out­side the peri­od stip­u­lat­ed in law is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and, there­fore, can­not be upheld by the court.

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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.