MORE PEOPLE LENDING THEIR VOICES TO THE CALL TO REVAMP. REVIEW. RE-AUTHORIZE THE (INDECOM) ACT:

I have writ­ten about the need to repeal , review and re-autho­rize the INDECOM Act on suc­ceed­ing days. There has been live­ly debate on the sub­ject on Social media. I have dili­gent­ly sought to be bal­anced regard­ing the Law, acqui­esc­ing to the need for police over­sight, while at the same time delin­eat­ing out the bad parts of the law which needs fix­ing. I am heart­ened to see that there are oth­er peo­ple involved in think­ing through this issue ratio­nal­ly, not guid­ed by hatred for law-enforce­ment or oth­er per­son­al vendettas.

Damion Crawford 

Tourism State Minister, Damion Crawford, has drawn the ire of Twitter users after call­ing for the clo­sure of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM). http://​go​-jamaica​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​r​e​a​d​_​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​4​9​118.@shavarstar @jaevionn INDECOM has & will con­tin­ue to cause the police to not be proac­tive or even reac­tive but inactive.

True to form, this cre­at­ed a firestorm from crit­ics of the police sur­round­ing the tweet much the same way they have argued with me. It would do crit­ics of the police a great ser­vice to step back and rec­og­nize this is not about the police it is about the secu­ri­ty of an entire peo­ple. I have con­sis­tent­ly called for rank and file police offi­cers to stand down , not just because of the law, but because of the per­son head­ing the agency in ques­tion, who clear­ly has his own agenda.

Many who yelp the loud­est at calls for a revamp­ing and re-autho­riza­tion of the law, have no inter­est in the prob­lems the Act pos­es. Many have friends who have been tak­en out by police. Some have dirty hands. In fact many refuse to edu­cate them­selves about the Law and what’s in it, choos­ing to form opin­ions from oth­er peo­ple’s com­ments, and their hatred for law enforce­ment. They refuse to do a line item assess­ment of the ques­tions raised with this law. As such they have for all intents and pur­pos­es dis­qual­i­fied them­selves as seri­ous stake-hold­ers in this debate.

One of the most com­mon argu­ment to come out of this debate is” Oh if the Cops are act­ing with­in the con­fines of the law what do they have to fear” ? This state­ment is rife with naïveté’.

♦ Every case in which police uses lethal force is inves­ti­gat­ed with pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al intent. Not just cas­es where there are alle­ga­tions of abuse. No oth­er work­ers risk impris­on­ment sim­ply for doing their job. Yet the brain-dead-head of INDECOM Terrence Williams points to the Netherlands as a source of prece­dent, claim­ing that it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al for the police to actu­al­ly inves­ti­gate the killing of a cit­i­zen killed by police. What does Holland’s laws and prac­tices have to do with Jamaica?

♦ Criminals force , coerce, pay , threat­en and intim­i­date pro­fes­sion­al mourn­ers to lie about see­ing cops kill peo­ple in cold blood, gen­er­al­ly there are incred­i­ble amounts of evi­dence which shows that none of the demon­stra­tors could pos­si­bly have seen what they claim to have seen. This is the most lethal weapon crim­i­nal-dons have in their arse­nal against law enforce­ment offi­cers. Second is (JFJ’s ) smear cam­paign and (INDECOM’s)zealotry.

♦ The entire­ty of the law which seri­ous­ly infringes offi­cers rights, safe­ty, and abil­i­ty to do the job they are sworn to do, makes the law more of a prob­lem than a solu­tion to the issue of police excess.

What makes me piss angry is read­ing some of the garbage writ­ten by some of the know-noth­ings who pon­tif­i­cate about this issue while they live in coun­tries where police offi­cer are empow­ered and pro­tect­ed so they may do their jobs effec­tive­ly. The fact is once crim­i­nals know that peo­ple stand behind their law enforce­ment offi­cers they have a dif­fer­ent atti­tude toward break­ing the laws. Which enables soci­eties to fine-tune civ­il and human rights safe­guards, not the reverse.