JAMAICA’S BROKEN JUSTICE SYSTEM AND IT’S DANGEROUS CONSEQUENCES:

Mob killings. Extra-Judicial Police Killings. Police Corruption. Citizens Silence. Witnesses failing to turn up to give evidence in Court. High Crime Rates. What do all of these things have in common? A broken-down ineffective Justice System!

Jamaica is no stranger to Mob-killings, how­ev­er, any­one who cares about a civ­il soci­ety needs to be very con­cerned about the rash of Mob-killings that seem to be on the rise in Jamaica. As I stat­ed in the para­graph above, killings in Jamaica is com­mon-place, there are killings of all type to include Mob-killings.

Many of my fel­low Jamaicans argue with me on this, they dis­agree with me talk­ing about the crime sit­u­a­tion in my native Jamaica with such fre­quen­cy and open­ness. They argue we should not air our dirty laun­dry in pub­lic, they argue there is crime every­where, they implic­it­ly believe that if we don’t speak about it it will fix itself, or no one will notice.

With this approach, I respect­ful­ly beg to dif­fer with my friends. Covering up a sore under one’s clothes does noth­ing to make that sore bet­ter. An assess­ment must be done to deter­mine why that sore does­n’t heal, is it dia­betes? Is it as a result of a lack of white blood cells in the body? These are the ques­tions that would have to be asked to address that sore, not ignor­ing it ‚or pre­tend­ing it does­n’t exist.

A sore left unat­tend­ed will fes­ter it will devel­op a stench if left unat­tend­ed long enough could result in an ampu­ta­tion, or worse. Those are the stark real­i­ties of the crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica.

The con­se­quences of an ampu­ta­tion are dev­as­tat­ing, a sev­ered mem­ber is irre­versible, yes you may attach a pros­thet­ic limb but it is at best a replace­ment. Why wait until the need aris­es for an ampu­ta­tion when we can heal the sore and pre­vent the inevitable amputation?

I have been sound­ing the alarm on this run­away crime sit­u­a­tion for two decades since I walked away from law enforce­ment. Our coun­try sim­ply is being choked to death as a result of run­away crime and incom­pe­tent leadership.

Mob killings are par­tic­u­lar­ly alarm­ing on var­i­ous lev­els, they are blood­lust revenge killings, which allow peo­ple already pre­dis­posed to wan­ton acts of bru­tal­i­ty to act out their grue­some desires on the inno­cent with dev­as­tat­ing consequences.

They are irre­versible acts of vio­lence, per­pe­trat­ed on peo­ple who are many times, absolute­ly inno­cent of the crimes they are accused, con­demned, and exe­cut­ed for.

Recently well know anti-Police antag­o­nist Peter Espeut opined that the police are giv­ing tac­it sup­port to mobs who engage in mob killings.

Peter Espeut is a soci­o­logist and exec­u­tive direc­tor of an envi­ron­ment and devel­op­ment NGO. Espeute had a lot to say but I thought in his exten­sive dia­tribe this was what was noteworthy.

And what sort of exam­ple are we giv­en by agents of the State? The rea­son Jamaica has one of the high­est rates of police killings in the world is that of the same vig­i­lante spir­it that has caused the deaths of Michael Melbourne and Donovan Hazley. Many of our police­men — sim­i­lar­ly emo­tion­al­ly imma­ture — can­not con­trol them­selves, and when they are in the pres­ence of some­one they believe to be guilty, they choose to try, con­vict and sen­tence him them­selves. It is report­ed in yes­ter­day’s Gleaner that the Rev Karl Johnson, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Jamaica Baptist Union, refer­ring to the recent vig­i­lante killings, asks, “Could it be that there is a sense in which some of us, includ­ing our law-enforce­ment agents, are silent sup­port­ers of some of these acts, hence, are not as repulsed by them or as anx­ious to pros­e­cute the guilty ones as we should?” Rev Johnson wants to know why the police seem reluc­tant to pros­e­cute mem­bers of vig­i­lante mobs, and won­ders if the police are “silent sup­port­ers” of “the mob jus­tice, the com­mu­ni­ty penal­ty”? I would like to put it to Rev Johnson that one of the rea­sons the police are reluc­tant to pros­e­cute mob killers is obvi­ous: that mob killer and the police use the same tac­tics and oper­ate from the same phi­los­o­phy; and that should vig­i­lante killers begin to be brought to book, they, the police, are afraid they would be next! Both the police and vig­i­lante mobs have lit­tle con­fi­dence in our court sys­tem to deliv­er jus­tice. Too many guilty peo­ple hire smart QCs and get off on tech­ni­cal­i­ties. Police killings and mob killings do not con­tribute to clog­ging the courts and do not put stress on the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to make rul­ings and pros­e­cute cases.

Peter Espeut has long-held a grudge against law enforce­ment and police offi­cers, I am unaware of the rea­son for that ani­mus but once again Espeut miss­es the mark by blam­ing the victim.

Blaming the Police for mob killings is syn­ony­mous to blam­ing a rape vic­tim for wear­ing a short skirt in pub­lic. Espeuts ven­om and decades-old bias against police make it impos­si­ble for him to see that the police are as many vic­tims as the mobs doing the killings.

How do I rec­on­cile that phi­los­o­phy you ask?

Both the Police and the mob are exas­per­at­ed with the jus­tice sys­tem. Whatever their actions, their actions are symp­toms of a greater and deep­er prob­lem. The prob­lem of a bro­ken jus­tice sys­tem. I have warned that this would hap­pen for years, the chick­ens have come home to roost.

Peter Espeut the soci­ol­o­gist’ vision and per­cep­tion are cloud­ed by decades of hatred for law enforce­ment. Mister Espeut may want to take a deep­er look, or risk hav­ing his cred­i­bil­i­ty called into seri­ous ques­tion, if indeed he has any cred­i­bil­i­ty left, or had any, to begin with.

Mob killings are a prob­lem for police, as they are for ordi­nary cit­i­zens. They endan­ger the lives of every­one, includ­ing police offi­cers, a juiced up mob is inca­pable of mak­ing ratio­nal deci­sions, it is inca­pable of assess­ing any sit­u­a­tion or com­ing to rea­soned con­clu­sions. A mob is intent on one thing, the need for blood.

Many years ago a friend of mine was con­tract­ed to trans­port a group of peo­ple from Kingston to Saint Mary to attend a funer­al. My friend Neville was an enter­pris­ing young bus oper­a­tor, I was a young Police Officer, we had been friends for years, I oper­at­ed a small busi­ness on premis­es owned by Neville’s moth­er-in-law, and I lived across the street from that loca­tion. Neville came to my home and roused me from my sleep that day, he want­ed me to accom­pa­ny him to Saint Mary on the trip. He did­n’t know any of the peo­ple he was trans­port­ing. I was off from work, it was my only day off, I was dog-tired. I told Neville I could­n’t go I was tired and want­ed to sleep, he begged and plead­ed, and begged and plead­ed, I even­tu­al­ly relented.

We jour­neyed to Saint Mary, I can­not recall the exact loca­tion in that Parish, but on our arrival there, the peo­ple we trans­port­ed went up a hill to the funer­al and we were left in the vil­lage square to spend our time at the local water­ing hole await­ing their return so we could head back to Kingston.

We sat in the lit­tle water­ing hole nurs­ing a cou­ple of Red Stripe Beers, I noticed that a group of peo­ple had start­ed to gath­er, but I was­n’t alarmed, I just shrugged it off as coun­try peo­ple being curi­ous to see vis­i­tors to their com­mu­ni­ty, some­thing which did­n’t hap­pen every day.

Something even­tu­al­ly struck me as dif­fer­ent with those peo­ple, how­ev­er, as time went on they seemed agi­tat­ed, they whis­pered to them­selves, a few of them had machetes, and for some strange rea­son, I seemed to be the object of their attention.

One man pushed his way through the small crowd and came up to me, he looked me in the face and said: ” a yu dem a gu kill, dem say a yu poi­son de man we dead”.

It took me a while to mut­ter the sin­gle word, “what”?

The man con­tin­ued ” yu tan de , dem a gu kill yu, dem seh a yu poi­son dem fren”

Neville looked at me, I looked at him, we were both at a loss for words, prob­a­bly the only time I was ever at a loss for words in my entire life. A lot of things flashed through my mind. I did not know any of the peo­ple we trans­port­ed to Saint Mary that day, I damn sure did not know the deceased, nev­er met him, was this how I was sup­posed to die? hacked to death with my friend, accused and con­demned to death and exe­cut­ed for a crime I did not com­mit, or even know about?

All was not lost, how­ev­er, speech­less though I was, we were not with­out options. I pulled myself back from the bright lights and the winged Angels that I envis­aged, to a more earth­ly solu­tion, that solu­tion was my Browning Semi-Automatic pis­tol with an extend­ed clip loaded and one extra clip also loaded, and one in the breach. I fig­ured if I was to die there would be a lot of dead native Saint Mary res­i­dents going with me that day.

Before I went to the nuclear option I thought I would first try the art of nego­ti­a­tion. This is where train­ing comes in. I decid­ed if they were not respon­sive to nego­ti­a­tions then the first per­son who stepped toward me would get a 9mm bul­let square­ly in the fore­head, I would stand still, legs apart, weapon point­ed square­ly at the next hero, there would be no flinch­ing, that would be the way it would go down until I was out of ammu­ni­tion, or they came to their sens­es and break for safe­ty, whichev­er came first.

I stood up, pulled my weapon, and made sure it was vis­i­ble in my right hand, in my left hand I held my Badge. “People “I bel­lowed, “I am a Police Officer, I don’t know what your prob­lem is, but what­ev­er it is, you got the wrong guy, go home and no one will get hurt”.

It took awhile to sink in, then all of a sud­den it seemed like the ener­gy was vir­tu­al­ly let out of the crowd, shoul­ders droop­ing they said ” sor­ry offi­cer yu look like de man we dem seh poi­son de man weh dead”

I was mor­ti­fied but deeply angry, I could have end­ed up hacked to death sim­ply because some­one said I resem­bled some­one whom they sus­pect­ed of poi­son­ing someone.

Ok I’m sure it took you some time to deci­pher that one, the only rea­son I brought this sto­ry up was to illus­trate that those who claim to know why peo­ple do the things they do , or seek to dis­cred­it oth­ers or make charges based on old sores cov­ered over by fes­ter­ing scabs, ought to be care­ful with their asser­tions, the high­er a mon­key climb is the more he expos­es himself.

The Criminal Justice System in Jamaica is bro­ken, no one has faith in it, all of the resul­tant symp­toms I not­ed in the open­ing para­graph are sim­ply con­se­quences of that bro­ken sys­tem. Left unat­tend­ed there will be even greater and more con­se­quen­tial symp­toms to come.

Jamaica needs lead­er­ship, what the coun­try has is a bunch of lack­eys on both sides, immersed in pomp and for­mal­i­ty but lack the most basic under­stand­ing of what it takes to gov­ern effectively.

It is not too late, but that time is fast approaching.