Kari Douglas Arrest Expose Glaring Caste-system In Jamaica…

WHEN ORDINARY PEOPLE FEEL THAT THE LAWS ONLY APPLY TO THOSE ON THE LOWEST RUNG OF THE LADDER, HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO GET SUPPORT & CONSENT TO GOVERN?

The Tuesday night arrest of for­mer PNP turned JLP coun­cilor, Kari Douglas, of the Trafalgar Division in the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation by the police, should not have raised any eye­brows.
You break the law you get arrest­ed you go to court and take your med­i­cine.
If you did not break the law you sub­mit to being arrest­ed you go to court you win you sue the police.
At least that is what civ­i­lized soci­eties do, because, no one is above the laws and when you are wrong .…. you are just wrong.
Not so in Jamaica, there is a his­to­ry of filthy-mouthed peo­ple, some in pol­i­tics and some affil­i­at­ed with the politi­cians, some from polit­i­cal fam­i­lies who believe that laws don’t apply to them, and so they can ignore the laws because of who they are or who they know.
A Portmore pas­tor is fac­ing fines of up to a mil­lion dol­lars (M$1000,000.00) for hav­ing a group of wor­shipers at her house.
Kari Douglas is arrest­ed for (a) alleged­ly fail­ing to pro­vide proof that she is a coun­cil­lor, & there­fore exempt under the Disaster Risk Management Act& (b) hurl­ing curse words and abu­sive lan­guage at the offi­cers, gets spe­cial treat­ment.
An SSP sent to find out why the arrestee was in fact arrested?

And so it is not sur­pris­ing that this non-issue arrest for a fly-by-night parish coun­cilor who thinks she is more impor­tant than she is, would berate the police when stopped and asked to pro­vide iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to sub­stan­ti­ate the claims she made that she was a parish coun­cilor, & there­fore exempt under the Disaster Risk Management Act.
According to a text cir­cu­lat­ing on social media pur­port­ing to be from a deputy super­in­ten­dent of the police, this is what occurred.
At about 9:28 pm, a police traf­fic stop was ini­ti­at­ed, Kari Douglas (address withed) was even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed and charged.

She was stopped along Meadowbrook Avenue and failed to iden­ti­fy her­self as a mem­ber of the essen­tial ser­vice as laid down by the law. She became bois­ter­ous and start­ed hurl­ing abu­sive lan­guage stat­ing that the police were idiots and dunce to the annoy­ance and dis­tur­bance of the pub­lic. She was bailed at the sum of $20,000 to appear in the HWT RM court on May 6, 2020. Cons. R. Deans is investigating.

At about 10:30 pm SSP Steve McGregor attend­ed this police sta­tion stat­ing that he was sent by the Commissioner of Police to inter­vene in the mat­ter. He ques­tioned the police as to why he was charg­ing the coun­cilor and that was to hur­ry up and advised her that the entire com­ple­tion of the CR form was not rel­e­vant.[ He went on to ridicule the team and stat­ed that she could call the police any­thing she want­ed even if she want­ed to tell them bad words.]

At this junc­ture, I told the SSP that she was wrong in her behav­ior and I would not tol­er­ate her brusque behav­ior espe­cial­ly as a prospec­tive leader in this coun­try. All was expect­ed of her is a lit­tle respect and dig­ni­ty shown to the men and women who put there lives on the line for there coun­try. I told the may­or and deputy may­or who were also present that it does­n’t mat­ter who you are that the law is the law and respect must be shown.

First of all, I must say that I strong­ly sup­port the sen­ti­ment: I told the SSP that she was wrong in her behav­ior and I would not tol­er­ate her brusque behav­ior espe­cial­ly as a prospec­tive leader in this coun­try. All was expect­ed of her is a lit­tle respect and dig­ni­ty shown to the men and women who put there lives on the line for there coun­try. I told the may­or and deputy may­or who were also present that it does­n’t mat­ter who you are that the law is the law and respect must be shown.

I find it curi­ous that SSP Steve McGregor was there quite con­ve­nient­ly at the same time as the may­or & deputy may­or. Did they all arrive togeth­er? Did they coör­di­nate their arrival to embar­rass and intim­i­date the junior offi­cer who made the arrest?
We have con­tact­ed the Police com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work to get their ver­sion of events before we pub­lished this arti­cle, we have not received a response.
In the mean­time, we have infor­ma­tion that Steve McGregor insist­ed he was only sent by Antony Anderson (the stand-in for a real com­mis­sion­er of police) because he was work­ing last night.
We will leave that as it is, for now, trust me I will be doing some real dig­ging to fer­ret out the facts, to deter­mine whether or not Steve McGregor was sent there to force the release of Kari Douglas. Or to deter­mine whether he was even sent at all?

If the so-called com­mis­sion­er of police want­ed the facts, & if he want­ed to use McGregor to gain the minu­tia sur­round­ing the arrest, all McGregor had to do was to pick up the phone to glean those facts.
The habit of senior offi­cers try­ing to use their rank to bul­ly younger offi­cers to make arrests go away, is not lost on any­one, cer­tain­ly not this writer.
I do not know what occurred but I have a hunch that Steve McGregor far over­stepped his bounds to impress the lit­tle local gov­ern­ment politi­cians and that he fun­da­men­tal­ly believed that the police arrest­ed her wrong­ful­ly.
These are the words of Steve Mcgregor in response to ques­tions about his involve­ment.
Quote: (This is the weak­ness of some of our inex­pe­ri­enced offi­cers, when they are sup­pos­ed­ly dissed”, they let emo­tions dic­tate actions.“
They could have called con­trol, use the lady ID and ask for guid­ance if she is, in fact, a coun­cil­lor, but because she “Diss” the rest is his­to­ry” .closed quote.
This is the same Steve McGregor Senior Superintendent of Police, who embar­rassed the young man for [diss­ing] the Prime Minister, he has now made a full 180-degree turn and is sup­port­ing a lit­tle incon­se­quen­tial law-break­ing non-enti­ty who did the very same thing to police offi­cers.
For the edi­fi­ca­tion of the Senior Superintendent and indeed the Jamaican pub­lic, even if one is exempt under the Disaster Risk Management Act, it does not give the par­ty carte blanche to be out in pub­lic, unless on offi­cial busi­ness relat­ing to his or her office.

Steve McGregor obvi­ous­ly (a) for­got that he was once a con­sta­ble. (b) Never had to deal with enti­tled punks who think that the laws do not apply to them,© That McGregor for­got or does not know that hurl­ing abu­sive & calu­mi­nous lan­guage at the police in their view is a breach of the Town & Community Act, and there­fore arrestable. (stand cor­rect­ed on the Act itself. & (d) that as a senior offi­cer he is now the stereo­typ­i­cal per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the bul­ly­ing senior offi­cer who auto­mat­i­cal­ly defaults to sup­port­ing those who abro­gate our laws & abuse our offi­cers, rather than stand up for the young offi­cers in the streets car­ry­ing the bur­den of enforc­ing the laws at the per­il of their very lives.
Then they won­der why they get no respect from their juniors and are unable to get max­i­mum per­for­mance and par­tic­i­pa­tion from them.
See Observer arti­cle here: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​K​a​r​i​_​D​o​u​g​l​a​s​_​c​h​a​r​g​e​d​_​w​i​t​h​_​b​r​e​a​c​h​i​n​g​_​C​O​V​I​D​-​19_

The Jamaica Observer did an exten­sive arti­cle on the arrest, but duplic­i­tous­ly and trans­par­ent­ly failed to include the police ver­sion of events. Not just that, the JLP-lean­ing Observer, went over­board to include com­pre­hen­sive­ly, the sto­ry that Kari Douglas told them of her ver­sion of events.
And so I want to ask the fol­low­ing ques­tions in this medi­um.
(1) If Kari Douglas failed to prove that she is a coun­cilor why should she not be arrest­ed?

There was no prob­lem when the young man was sought out and arrest­ed with the very same SSP Steve McGregor stand­ing there crow­ing that he was arrest­ed while hid­ing under a bed.
What is the dif­fer­ence between that young man and Kari Douglas?
If Kari Douglas used exple­tives against the offi­cers, which is an arrestable offense under Jamaican law, why should she be exempt from arrest, par­tic­u­lar­ly when she has a his­to­ry of abu­sive, abra­sive, and dis­or­der­ly behav­ior, and have been pre­vi­ous­ly arrest­ed, but was nev­er held account­able for her actions?

(2) If true, why did the Commissioner of Police send Steve McGregor as alleged, to find out why the coun­cilor was arrest­ed, when a sim­ple phone call to the Area or Divisional offi­cer could have suf­ficed? Is a parish coun­cilor, mem­ber of par­lia­ment, min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment, the prime min­is­ter, a high court judge or the Governor-General above the laws?
If so, Jamaicans who are asked to respect the laws must be told that there is a caste sys­tem alive and well in JAMAICA, and it should be made abun­dant­ly clear as to who exact­ly is above the laws of the country.

(3) If Kari Douglas was still a mem­ber of the PNP would Antony Anderson send Steve McGregor to inter­vene in the arrest as alleged?
(4) Why is a com­mis­sion­er of police inter­ven­ing in an arrest any­way?
There is infor­ma­tion in the pub­lic space that indi­cates that Douglas is linked to the Mayor of the coun­cil, we are unable to ver­i­fy those claims & so we will not elab­o­rate on them.
In the mean­time, I stand square­ly behind the arrest­ing offi­cers, until more facts become avail­able.
It is dis­gust­ing to me that police offi­cers past and present would allow their polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions to cloud their vision and shape their view of how the laws ought to be applied.
Those of you who do so are despi­ca­ble, unwor­thy ever to have donned the uni­form of a police offi­cer.
You are a disgrace.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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