Jamaica’s Ruling Class Complicit In Crime Culture

Yesterday we talked about the bla­tant hypocrisy of the Jamaica Observer’s Bill Johnson poll, which focus­es on sup­posed police cor­rup­tion.
We are not obliv­i­ous to police cor­rup­tion and would do any­thing in our pow­er to end that prac­tice.
Nevertheless, unlike the myopic and mis­guid­ed cabal and the low­er deck peanut-gallery in our coun­try, we are con­ver­sant that there is no coun­try with­out the rule of law. So we sup­port our police offi­cers who enforce our laws. We embrace our offi­cers who run to the dan­ger when we are too chick­en shit to stand up for our­selves.
And we reject the notion that the per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion in our police forces cit­i­zens to embrace crim­i­nal [DONS].
Bull, peo­ple embrace the so-called [Dons] because Government reneges on its respon­si­bil­i­ty to deliv­er basic goods and ser­vices.
As a con­se­quence, even though we are opposed to cor­rup­tions of all kinds, includ­ing in our beloved (JCF), we are also mind­ful that what the politi­cians and their sur­ro­gates are doing is scape­goat­ing the police by pro­ject­ing onto the police their crimes, to cov­er up their own dark deeds.
In 2017 Former Contractor General Greg Christie in an Oped in the very same [OBSERVER] wrote:
“Corruption in Jamaica is “entrenched and wide­spread”. “Jamaica must give seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to what lies ahead should the Government and the country’s law­mak­ers fail to deci­sive­ly and aggres­sive­ly con­front its cor­rup­tion prob­lem”.
Less than two years lat­er, the very same dishrag com­mis­sioned and pro­mot­ed a poll talk­ing about police cor­rup­tion, as if that is the source of our prob­lem.
https://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​c​o​l​u​m​n​s​/​J​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​s​-​f​u​t​u​r​e​-​c​h​o​k​e​d​-​b​y​-​c​a​n​c​e​r​-​o​f​-​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​i​o​n​_​9​3​6​09-

One of the things I talked about yes­ter­day, was the need to under­stand any cor­rup­tion in the police depart­ment, (real or per­ceived), against the unusu­al­ly high lev­els of cor­rup­tion across the wider soci­ety.
Having said that, and at the risk of re-lit­i­gat­ing what I wrote yes­ter­day, I will get to the task of today, which is to attempt to bring a wider per­spec­tive on police cor­rup­tion so that we may bet­ter under­stand police cor­rup­tion in our own coun­try.
Additionally, pos­si­bly to gain a bet­ter per­spec­tive so that we may relate in a less hyper­bol­ic sense to the prob­lem and devel­op strate­gies toward end­ing it with­out the ran­cor and lies which has char­ac­ter­ized it thus far.

Is it true that some unsa­vory char­ac­ters have infil­trat­ed the JCF over the years? Absolutely, they have always been there, much like some unsa­vory char­ac­ters have found their way onto the supreme court and into Jamaica House and God for­bid let us not even both­er men­tion­ing Gordon House.
In fact, the unsa­vory nature of some of the char­ac­ters who have graced our pub­lic insti­tu­tions, has had some impact on the size of the dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty.
By virtue of that, it becomes a sce­nario which feeds itself, the more that good peo­ple leave, the worse the insti­tu­tions become.
Let us put an end to the con­stant abuse of our hard­work­ing police offi­cers. For too long the two crim­i­nal gangs which run our coun­try, have suc­cess­ful­ly chan­neled the nation’s anger at their cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal asso­ci­a­tions onto the hap­less and defens­less police.

According to the United States Institute of Peace(USIP) , Police cor­rup­tion is a uni­ver­sal chal­lenge in peace­build­ing. On November 16, 2011, USIP host­ed a pan­el of dis­tin­guished experts who dis­cussed the root caus­es and poten­tial reme­dies.
Some experts argue that efforts to curb police cor­rup­tion are hope­less, or at best sec­ondary. Others main­tain that attack­ing oppres­sive, unfair abus­es is where reform efforts must start. 
The fact that these dis­cus­sions are occur­ring around polic­ing in the world’s most pow­er­ful, wealthy and sophis­ti­cat­ed nation proves that this is a uni­ver­sal prob­lem.
The ques­tion of police cor­rup­tion may be viewed in sev­er­al ways and is not con­fined to the gen­er­al knee-jerk per­cep­tions of some who would write or talk about this subject.

Tim Dees, A Retired cop and crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sor, Reno Police Department, Reno Municipal Court, and Pyramid Lake argues that most researchers clas­si­fied cor­rupt cops into two major groups: The “grass eaters” who did­n’t active­ly seek out oppor­tu­ni­ties to make ille­git­i­mate mon­ey, but took advan­tage of what came their way, and the “meat eaters,” cops who active­ly solicit­ed bribes and pay­offs, engaged in thefts and rob­beries (usu­al­ly of crim­i­nals with drugs or large sums of mon­ey), and gen­er­al­ly used their offi­cial posi­tion as a plat­form for crim­i­nal enter­prise. 
Nevertheless, Dees argues that these prac­tices are rel­a­tive­ly rare these days.
Unfortunately, the afore­men­tioned types of cor­rup­tion reflect only the top lay­er of veneer which gets pro­gres­sive­ly worse the more you peel from the Onion.
Police cor­rup­tion in most devel­oped coun­tries goes far deep­er than accept­ing a cup of cof­fee like the “grass eaters.”
It tran­scends the tak­ing of bribes or rip­ping off drug deal­ers like the ” meat eaters.”

One of the most stub­born types of police cor­rup­tion is the igno­ble prac­tice of man­u­fac­tur­ing evi­dence to frame and con­vict inno­cent cit­i­zens.
Hold on there, I am not talk­ing about Jamaica.……I am talk­ing about the coun­try most Jamaicans line up in 100-degree heat, hand over their bor­rowed cash, in the hopes of get­ting a visa to.
This is one of the most rep­re­hen­si­ble forms of cor­rup­tion, yet it is prob­a­bly one of the most per­va­sive types of cor­rup­tion which has haunt­ed American polic­ing since the begin­ning of time par­tic­u­lar­ly for African-Americans.
Yes, you know darn well that it is the very same America which all of you are lin­ing up to enter.
As a trainee at the Jamaica Police Academy, we were taught that it is bet­ter for the guilty to go free than for an inno­cent per­son to be pros­e­cut­ed and jailed.
As a result of this per­va­sive prob­lem across America, many police depart­ments have been forced to enter into con­sent decrees with the US Justice Department to work on end­ing those prac­tices.
Nowhere in the world are so many peo­ple arrest­ed, tried and impris­oned on evi­dence which is man­u­fac­tured by cor­rupt law enforce­ment and crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it prosecutors.

Domestic chal­lenges relat­ed to the abuse of entrust­ed pow­er for pri­vate gain, is Transparency International’s def­i­n­i­tion of cor­rup­tion.
According to Transparency International close to a third of African-Americans sur­veyed see the police as high­ly cor­rupt.
Whites gen­er­al­ly are less sus­pi­cious of the police, white suprema­cy is enforced by the police which ben­e­fits them.
In cities all across America, from New York to Baltimore, from Camden to Washington DC, all across Kansas City, to Los Angeles California, real cor­rupt prac­tices in police depart­ments dwarfs any­thing the poor­ly trained Jamaican police could ever dream up.

As long as there is col­lu­sion between politi­cians and their cronies in civ­il soci­ety, who are will­ing to lie to the Jamaican peo­ple about the police to dis­tract from their crimes, we will con­tin­ue to edu­cate those not too far gone.
When I write I don’t real­ly want to “cuss,” but I believe that the peo­ple I some­times refer to as shit­heads, have now grad­u­at­ed to shit­hous­es.
They con­tin­ue to beat the same old drums about the police, to the same old mis­in­formed peo­ple, about how the police are the cause of their prob­lems, while they rip off every buck they can, and get away with it.
We need a rev­o­lu­tion in our coun­try, you decide what kind you need.