Jamaica’s Crime Not Rooted In The Ghettos.…

As Prime Minister Holness seek to begin the process of dealing with the existential threat crime poses to Jamaica it cannot be lost on him that pretty much everything in Jamaica is a top-down affair.
Crime being no different has at it’s source , well placed powerful people who will fight tooth and nail to ensure that the monster is never tamed.

It is impor­tant to con­tem­plate the con­tin­ued growth of crime with­in those para­me­ters. If the pow­er­ful inter­est groups were inter­est­ed in Jamaica being crime-free I would not be writ­ing this blog.
One of the under­ly­ing prob­lem with­in the Criminal jus­tice sys­tem as I read it recent­ly is that the Island can­not find enough good lawyers will­ing to serve as judges.
The pri­ma­ry argu­ments com­ing out of lawyers polled is that the mon­ey is not good enough.
Remarkably, what jumped out at me was the self­ish­ness of the lawyers who respond­ed to the media query, not a sin­gle one felt the need to give back to their coun­try through pub­lic service.

Most coun­tries look­ing to devel­op a strong bench which will look out for the inter­est of the peo­ple, farm their judges from the pros­e­cu­tion side of the Isle.
In Jamaica they do not do that they source Judges from the pri­vate bar.
Is there any won­der that the Prosecutors have such a dif­fi­cult time gain­ing a con­vic­tion in the courts which give rad­i­cal new mean­ing to the term “crim­i­nal courts”?

There is a huge sub-set of the Jamaican pop­u­la­tion which has seri­ous fidu­cia­ry inter­est in the pro­lif­er­a­tion and pro­mul­ga­tion of crime.
Transparency International’s report­ing on this is quite illu­mi­nat­ing.( no pun intend­ed).
Whether it is the pha­lanx of sup­posed human rights lob­by­ists or the crim­i­nal defense lawyers, whether it’s the well placed upper Saint Andrew crowd who employ the con­tract killers, or the new breed which final­ly got exposed to a lit­tle edu­ca­tion at the hal­lowed left­ist halls of the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to, they are equal­ly opposed to seri­ous laws against criminals.

Some of those who seem most respectable in the busi­ness world are the worst crim­i­nal offend­ers yet, they make mil­lions and none are the wis­er to their lives of crime. Largely because of the incom­pe­tence of the Police Department and the inabil­i­ty of the “crim­i­nal courts sys­tem” to pros­e­cute peo­ple with yel­low col­or and curly hair.
Damn, it is so bad the sys­tem even refused to seri­ous­ly con­sid­er a clear cut crim­i­nal com­plaint against kinky-haired Kern Spencer , and he does­n’t have curly-hair nor yel­low skin.

Many years ago while I was young detec­tive aide at the Constant Spring CIB a man I had nev­er seen came to the office and report­ed that he brought into the coun­try a con­tain­er load of toys which he sourced out to a cer­tain man whose fam­i­ly name is a sta­ple in busi­ness cir­cles around the country.
As many Jamaicans are well aware some peo­ple are untouch­able at least as far as the Jamaican police are concerned.
The gen­tle­man in ques­tion was sent to me in per­son as he was at his wits end, unable to col­lect a cent for his entire con­tain­er load of toys from the par­tic­u­lar well placed, well con­nect­ed businessman.
After sit­ting him down and doing an inter­view I real­ized that he was not Jamaican even though he loved our coun­try. Unfortunately for him the per­son who was hold­ing his prop­er­ty knew he was in the coun­try illegally(overstayed his per­mit) and was pre­pared to exploit that to it’s fullest.

After tak­ing his affi­davit I con­tem­plat­ed my actions going for­ward, if the busi­ness man hold­ing his prop­er­ty took respon­si­bil­i­ty that he owes the enor­mous sum of mon­ey to the com­plainant, it becomes a civ­il mat­ter there is no more action that I as a police offi­cer could take , he would need a lawyer to sue to recov­er his prop­er­ty, or be finan­cial­ly compensated .
For a Jamaican in a sim­i­lar predica­ment that’s a daunt­ing prospect, he would like­ly die before the courts arrived at a resolution.
For a for­eign­er he could for all intents and pur­pos­es kiss his mon­ey good­bye and the busi­ness man was well aware of this.

I decid­ed to pay him a hail-Mary vis­it(long-shot), with me was my good­ly part­ner Dadrick Henry.
Dadrick Henry and I had a good-cop, bad cop thing going . I would lead with the pleas­antries and if needs be Dadrick would show the bad cop per­sona. It worked won­ders for us.
We sat in our car the morn­ing stak­ing out his store in one of the many plazas on Constant Spring Road with us was the com­plainant. I want­ed to get his reac­tion to the com­plainant when we walked into his office, the very rea­son he decid­ed not to pay the debt may be the very best thing I had going for my plan of get­ting him to say he does not intend to pay for the mer­chan­dise in which case his hold­ing them with­out pay­ing for them would amount to a crime.

We wait­ed only about 10 min­utes after which he drove up in his spank­ing new BMW auto­mo­bile and went to the upper lev­el of the two floor strip mall in which his busi­ness was located.
We gave him an addi­tion­al ten min­utes to get set­tled and with audio tape turned on in my coat pock­et we entered his office and iden­ti­fied ourselves.
He was extreme­ly cour­te­ous and accom­mo­dat­ing. To this day I believe he thought he would sim­ply pla­cate us then drop us a twen­ty dol­lar for lunch and that would have been the end of the mat­ter. Over-con­fi­dence, Arrogance, and high-mind­ed­ness did him in.
Wrong cop!

He gra­cious­ly offered us a seat upon which he closed his office door, he there­after went on to school me in the law gov­ern­ing ille­gal immi­grants and end­ed con­fi­dent­ly by telling me that the ille­gal immi­gra­tion sta­tus of the com­plainant gives him the right not to pay him a red cent.
Ah yes “if fish would sim­ply shut it’s mouth he would­n’t get caught with a hook” my great aunt always said.
I got what I came for those with whom I served know I rel­ished tak­ing down these big fish.
All true but I was not in his office as an immi­gra­tion offi­cer. I was not an Immigration offi­cer, I was there with a view to deter­min­ing whether or not a crime was com­mit­ted and yes he did com­mit a crime.
I got up from my seat and thanked him for his hos­pi­tal­i­ty , then I told him Mister ******* you are under arrest for fraud­u­lent con­ver­sion place your hands behind your back right now”.
In two shakes of a cat’s tail I had him cuffed he was in absolute shock , how could this hap­pen peo­ple like them do not get placed in handcuffs?
He begged to be allowed to call one of his employ­ees I allowed it . The look on the face of his well coiffed uni­formed employ­ee when she walked in was priceless.
He instruct­ed her to call his fam­i­ly mem­bers , which I also allowed , the com­plainant want­ed his mon­ey not a dragged out court case.

In a few min­utes the office was filled with fam­i­ly mem­bers , every­one clutch­ing their pearls at what had just occurred. ” Gasp” please keep this between us , please do not allow this to get to the media”.
Me ? this is all in your hands and you bet­ter be quick about it. In less than a half of an hour the com­plainant received every cent of his two hun­dred thou­sand dollars.
In the late 80’s that was a hell of a lot of money.

One thing about this skin­ny lit­tle detec­tive was that no one was above the laws in my book .
The thanks and offers of a com­pen­sa­tion com­ing from the grate­ful com­plainant was solace for a job well done.
We declined !!!

Seeing the reac­tion on the offend­er and his fam­i­ly mem­bers faces was worth more than gold to us.
No one was above the law in my book , as a police offi­cer I nev­er cared who broke the law , if the evi­dence leads to you , you are going to jail.
Yes that brought a cer­tain noter­i­ty which got me in the cross-hairs of the polit­i­cal class and when they chose to they trans­ferred me for a shoot­ing I was­n’t even involved in , on a night I was­n’t even at work. Now you under­stand my undy­ing affec­tion for the police hier­ar­chy [sic]
In the end the peo­ple spoke and the feck­less police high com­mand had no choice but to return me to where they trans­ferred me from.
I loved being the peo­ple’s cop.

I learned a long time ago that s**t does not flow upstream. Crime in Jamaica has pow­er­ful sponsors .
Maybe one day I will write a book, I had a great time serv­ing the Jamaican people.