Jamaican Taxpayers Funding INDECOM And Public Defender’s Office In Support Of Criminals As Thousands Are Killed And Injured Annually..

At the time the Tivoli inquiry was com­mis­sioned by Portia Simpson Miller as a polit­i­cal witch hunt, this medi­um was not shy about speak­ing out against it.
The Commission was set up as a sup­posed fact find­ing mis­sion, not a judi­cial court with the pow­er to bring charges.
This medi­um believed then that this com­mis­sion was fraud­u­lent as (1) the wit­ness­es against the secu­ri­ty forces were man­u­fac­tured. (2) The com­mis­sion led by David Simmons, a retired chief jus­tice and for­mer attor­ney gen­er­al of Barbados was biased and dis­re­spect­ful of the Jamaican secu­ri­ty forces. (3) The com­mis­sion head had no under­stand­ing of the crime cul­ture of Jamaica and there­fore was ill-equipped and ill-pre­pared to hear and deci­pher evi­den­tiary data from man­u­fac­tured lies.

(4) Other mem­bers of the pan­el, retired jus­tice of the Court of Appeal of Jamaica Hazel Harris and Professor Anthony Harriott, direc­tor of the Institute of Criminal Justice and Security at the University of the West Indies not exact­ly friends of the secu­ri­ty forces,went into what was a fact find­ing exer­cise with pre­con­ceived ideas and made up minds. (5) That the mere exis­tence of a com­mis­sion of inquiry into this oper­a­tion by the secu­ri­ty forces was an affront to the sac­ri­fice of the two mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces who died annex­ing that law­less com­mu­ni­ty to the rest of the country.

Nevertheless, I was not sur­prised that the PNP used that hero­ic event by the secu­ri­ty forces as a polit­i­cal football.
It was clas­sic PNP-JLP modus operan­di to use the secu­ri­ty forces to clean up their mess then muster their lying unin­formed sup­port­ers to demo­nize the Police and military.
This time how­ev­er it was dif­fer­ent Simpson Miller went for the jug­gler she brought in a post colo­nial­ist ‑neo­colo­nial­ist inter­lop­er to come into our coun­try to be judge and jury over our long suf­fer­ing secu­ri­ty forces.

Simmons and the pan­el wast­ed no time demon­strat­ing that the so called fact find­ing mis­sion was not going to be a fact find­ing mis­sion but a griev­ance forum to allow lying crim­i­nals and their fam­i­lies to per­pet­u­ate more lies and pro­pa­gan­da against the secu­ri­ty forces. (As seen in video above).

According to a Jamaica Gleaner report in July 2016, the cost to Jamaica tax­pay­ers for high pow­ered lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the var­i­ous agen­cies involved in the inquiry was almost J$150 million.
The report detailed sep­a­rate­ly from doc­u­ments obtained through the Access to Information (ATI) Act that Chairman of the three-mem­ber com­mis­sion, David Simmons, has been paid US$459,170 (J$52.8 mil­lion). Retired Court of Appeal jus­tice, Hazel Harris, anoth­er com­mis­sion­er, was, up to the time of the report­ing [paid US$344,475 of the US$372,300 (J$42.8 mil­lion) she is due under her con­tract. The doc­u­ments showed a bal­ance of US$27,825. Meanwhile, the third com­mis­sion­er, Professor Anthony Harriott, has received his full pay­ment of US$372,300 (J$42.8 million).

Wow!
It must be remem­bered that Desmond McKenzie, the mem­ber of par­lia­ment for Kingston Western, who was in Opposition then, had him­self called for the scrap­ping of the commission.
After the Kangaroo com­mis­sion con­clud­ed the expen­sive cha­rade it issued a ram­bling report which rec­om­mend­ed among oth­er things that some mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces not be allowed to com­mand in the future.

The JCF also did it’s own review under the capa­ble lead­er­ship of Assistant Commissioner of Police Wray Palmer.
That review con­clud­ed that mem­bers of the JCF did noth­ing wrong. It went on to argue ..

“The Tivoli com­mis­sion did not iden­ti­fy any spe­cif­ic act of dere­lic­tion of duty or mis­con­duct on the part of any of the named offi­cers,” It fur­ther ques­tioned the integri­ty of the inquiry, say­ing that the tri­bunal — con­sist­ing of two for­mer judges and an inter­na­tion­al crime expert — engaged in spec­u­la­tion and was con­fused and biased in sev­er­al instances.

The review com­mit­tee is cor­rect in its assess­ment, an assess­ment I made in pre­vi­ous arti­cles as I detailed the rea­sons that the Tivoli Commission was an expen­sive far­ci­cal exer­cise intend­ed to defraud and con­fuse the Jamaican people.
Of the huge cost of that inquiry to the tax­pay­ers, it is safe to say hard­ly a pen­ny of those resources came from Tivoli gardens.

The Palmer review has infu­ri­at­ed the usu­al ene­mies of the Police, the tax­pay­er fund­ed Office of Public Defender and its head, atten­tion seek­ing Arlene Harrison Henry and Horace Levy of the so called peace man­age­ment unit start­ed their usu­al mon­grel bark­ing immediately.

Said Henry, “What we have now is the JCF impugn­ing a com­mis­sion of inquiry that was prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed under the laws of Jamaica, and this can­not be allowed to stand,”

“We say they need to with­draw it. It can­not be busi­ness as usu­al when 74 are dead on the pub­lic defend­er’s account and 69 on the police’s account.”
“What we have to ask our­selves as a coun­try is this: 74 dead on the pub­lic defend­er’s account, 69 dead on the police account, so what hap­pened? All these peo­ple were jus­ti­fi­able killings?”

This non­sense inher­ent in this ide­o­log­i­cal zealot’s irra­tional and hor­mon­al tirade is that 69 or 74 peo­ple could not be jus­ti­fi­ably killed by the secu­ri­ty forces.

Not to be out­done anoth­er media whore the lit­tle mon­grel Horace Levy would not allow a dis­cus­sion to go with­out push­ing his lit­tle snout in.
“The review was “dis­grace­ful” and an “insult”. “It is a very bad state­ment. It’s pathet­ic. The evi­dence that they cite for their con­clu­sions is very, very weak, and in many cas­es, non-fac­tu­al.”

Thus far the Commissioner of Police George Quallo has indi­cat­ed he stands by the review.
I salute the police Commissioner and sup­port his stance in stand­ing in defense of the men and women under his com­mand and the orga­ni­za­tion he heads against the lies and smears from these slan­der­ous anti-police demagogues.

I am unaware of any coun­try in which an arm of gov­ern­ment is open­ly hos­tile to law enforce­ment as the office of the pub­lic defend­er is in Jamaica.
I stand to be cor­rect­ed and so I will await respons­es from read­ers on this.

From the cre­ation of the office of pub­lic defend­er, Earl Witter cre­at­ed a decid­ed anti-police stance. That posi­tion is now the path of Arlene Harrison Henry, anoth­er mediocre lawyer who could­n’t cut it at the pri­vate bar much the same way Earl Witter couldn’t.
The atti­tude of INDECOM’s com­mis­sion­er Terrence Williams must be processed in the same light that these utter­ances are.

The Jamaican peo­ple, (out­side the leech­es in the inner cities) will have to make a deci­sion whether they want their tax dol­lars to fund crim­i­nal sup­port­ing anti-police agen­cies and elites while they and their chil­dren are being slaugh­tered daily.
It’s time for Arlene Harrison Henry and Terrence Williams to go.