Move Forward With Stiffer Penalties; To Hell With The Detractors, We Tried It Their Way Part (2)

This Article is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of for­mer Inspector Dadrick Henry who lost his valiant strug­gle with can­cer. I wrote this arti­cle as a trib­ute to you, sir, a man who spent his entire life try­ing to make Jamaica bet­ter. Misunderstood and unaid­ed by a filthy sys­tem that was more sym­pa­thet­ic to the crim­i­nals than to you and your sac­ri­fices. Rest In peace, brother.

After my ten-year career in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, I left the depart­ment in 1991. I real­ized (1) that I could not accom­plish my eco­nom­ic goals and (2) that I could not effec­tu­ate real change in our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem from with­in a fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed agency that itself oper­ates in a sys­tem of law and order that was in name only.
In my view, two crit­i­cal com­po­nents pre­vent­ed our nation from being safer: (1) our incom­pre­hen­si­ble infat­u­a­tion with the celebri­ty gang­ster cul­ture and (2) the struc­tur­al built-ins that allow the well-con­nect­ed to oper­ate out­side the laws.
To the extent that Jamaica is seen as a law­less coun­try, these two com­po­nents have act­ed as an umbrel­la under which the nation’s crime pan­dem­ic mushroomed.
A care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of the fore­gone may be jux­ta­posed with oth­er crit­i­cal ele­ments such as con­flicts of inter­ests, such as defense lawyers walk­ing out of court­rooms where they are defend­ing vio­lent mur­der­ers and then walk­ing into Gordon House to leg­is­late on gun violence.
The JCF is far from the only agency to expe­ri­ence brain drain, but the high attri­tion from the JCF speaks for itself. Given the appro­pri­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties, the attri­tion rate would be expo­nen­tial­ly higher.

I felt that I could kill two birds with one stone if I left the JCF at the time I did. (1) I could attempt to achieve some of my finan­cial goals and (2) be more effec­tive in shin­ing a light on the sys­tem from the out­side with­out the con­straints of being inside an agency and a sys­tem that frowns upon con­struc­tive crit­i­cisms. Having said that, no one should be under any illu­sions as to where my loy­al­ties lie.
When I start­ed writ­ing in sup­port of polic­ing, many peo­ple encour­aged me, but they would­n’t go much fur­ther than that. The blow­back was intense; some even threat­ened my life (not some­thing I was par­tic­u­lar­ly per­turbed about). I was nev­er one to cow­er in fear.
The anti-police vit­ri­ol in our coun­try was intense, made worse because there was no active gov­ern­men­tal sup­port for the police.
I absolute­ly believed that there was a fun­da­men­tal need for police reform. 
But I also thought that reform­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was far more impor­tant as the police oper­ate in the wider jus­tice sys­tem that includes the pros­e­cu­tor’s office, the crim­i­nal courts, the prison sys­tem, and last but not least, the leg­isla­tive frame­work that dic­tates whether the police suc­ceed or fail.

I wrote hun­dreds of arti­cles mak­ing the case for (1) Constitutional reform, (2) reform­ing the pow­ers of the judi­cia­ry, (3) police over­sights, and (4) the anti­quat­ed penal­ties for vio­lent crimes.
There was zero attempts to trans­form the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem dur­ing the 90 to the ear­ly or mid-2000s’, it was,’ any­thing a anyt­ing’.
The Golding admin­is­tra­tion broke an 181/​2‑year cycle of PNP rule that saw our nation tee­ter­ing on the brink of collapse.
Instead of learn­ing while look­ing from the out­side, Bruce Golding took office and decid­ed that the prob­lem was with the police. So his response was to cre­ate an over­sight agency and ful­ly equip that agency with ameni­ties that the police still do not have today to do their jobs.
Bruce Golding had no prob­lem get­ting sup­port for form­ing that agency, as the PNP was will­ing to sup­port any­thing against the police and the rule of law.
We all saw where Bruce Golding’s head was as events came to a head in 2010. Bruce Golding will for­ev­er be remem­bered as the leader who refused to hand over a trans-nation­al gang­ster for tri­al. This is noth­ing any leader should be proud of. Golding’s opin­ion should nev­er fac­tor into dis­cussing Jamaica’s way forward.

Andrew Holness did not come to office under­stand­ing the crit­i­cal role the rule of law plays in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety — a prod­uct of the same sew­er that pro­duced past lead­ers. His dis­dain for the police was evi­dent from the start.
His love affair with the mil­i­tary and his use of sol­diers in his gov­ern­ment elicit­ed claims that he want­ed to turn the coun­try into a dic­ta­tor­ship. I nev­er thought that Andrew Holness har­bored strong man tendencies.
I believe that his per­ceived dis­re­spect for the police stemmed from a lack of under­stand­ing of the rule of law enhanced by the source of his for­mal education.
Holness, too, demon­strat­ed a strong belief that attack­ing the police and advanc­ing the JDF was the way to go. The idea is that mem­bers of the JDF have a bet­ter rap­port with the pub­lic than mem­bers of the JCF. The mis­guid­ed per­cep­tion many Jamaicans har­bor is also from a lack of under­stand­ing of the func­tions of the two agen­cies. We all love to see our mil­i­tary mem­bers, and we take pride in them, but the minute you have them do police duties, the shine is off the ball, and they become just as dis­liked by those who sup­port lawbreakers.
This writer has tried to explain this for years, and now we see the lus­ter of the JDF dimin­ished like a crick­et ball that has been bat­ted around for six­ty overs.

Governing is far dif­fer­ent than cam­paign­ing or sit­ting on the side­lines, a les­son Andrew Holness is begin­ning to learn. Thus, attack­ing the JCF under the guise of ref­or­ma­tion has exposed the need for a wider approach to reform­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, which this writer pro­posed a decade and a half ago. 
The JCF sure­ly need­ed reform­ing, not the destruc­tive approach demand­ed by reac­tionar­ies like Carolyn Gomes, Terrence Williams, and oth­ers. However, after your so-called reform of the JCF, what then?
I’ll tell you what, then: vio­lent crime is still trend­ing upward, the streets are just as law­less, and every­one is look­ing at each oth­er while wring­ing their hands.
I hate to say I told you so.….but I did. Reform the wide sys­tem, then reform the police. The police were nev­er the prob­lem; the police have always been a micro­cosm of the wider system.
I have pro­posed numer­ous sys­tem changes to save lives and pro­duce a bet­ter police department.
The Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion has recent­ly start­ed to pay atten­tion to some of these pro­pos­als, even though they will nev­er admit where those ideas came from.
There are no writ­ers, politi­cians, or any­one for that mat­ter who have con­sis­tent­ly demand­ed that the par­lia­ment pass much stronger laws for crim­i­nals with guns who com­mit mur­der. There has nev­er been any­one on the Island who has demand­ed that there be manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes.
No one on the Island has pro­posed remov­ing from the judge’s purview the sen­tences met­ed out to cap­i­tal mur­der­ers. But the bur­geon­ing crime sta­tis­tics have pro­mot­ed action, and many peo­ple are jump­ing on the band­wag­on. I want to wel­come them to the par­ty even though they are a dol­lar short and a day late.

This writer is unapolo­getic in stand­ing on the demand for manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences for vio­lent crimes regard­less of who com­mits them. I also strong­ly believe that Jamaica needs to sev­er its colo­nial ties with Britain and, there­fore, embark on a new con­sti­tu­tion­al order. 
Nevertheless, I applaud the UK Privy Council, which upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of manda­to­ry min­i­mums for vio­lent offend­ers in May last year.
The Privy Council dis­missed the garbage appeal of Tafari Morrison who was sen­tenced to 15 years by the local courts in 2013 for a rob­bery in which the vic­tim was robbed of his cell phone and shot mul­ti­ple times. The vic­tim was shot mul­ti­ple times despite hand­ing over his phone to Morrison and his cronies. 
Morrison was 16 years old at the time of the rob­bery and, at age 17, was sen­tenced to more than 15 years in prison. The Supreme Court had imposed a manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence of 15 years in prison on the teenager.
The Appeal Court upheld the sen­tence fol­low­ing an appeal by his attor­neys, who argued that the impo­si­tion of the 15-year min­i­mum sen­tence for the firearm offense was pro­hib­it­ed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and was, there­fore, unlaw­ful. The attor­neys then took the mat­ter to the Privy Council.
I believe that lawyers have a right to defend their clients vig­or­ous­ly. But I must ask, who is pay­ing these vul­tures for these expen­sive appeals?
Instead of mak­ing these friv­o­lous appeals, how about instruct­ing your clients that what they did was abhorrent?
There is noth­ing uncon­sti­tu­tion­al about sen­tenc­ing a vio­lent offend­er to prison for extend­ed peri­ods of time. If you do not want to be impris­oned, do [not] pick up a weapon to rob and then shoot an inno­cent per­son.… period!!!
My issue with this sen­tence is that it was not near­ly long enough.….. this vicious ani­mal will be out of prison in his ear­ly thir­ties, hard­ened to do it again. He should have been sent away for life with­out parole.

For a long time, many talk­ing heads in Jamaica have argued that long sen­tences do noth­ing to deter crim­i­nals. I have con­sis­tent­ly dis­agreed. Removing vio­lent mur­der­ers from the equa­tion essen­tial­ly means they can­not com­mit more crimes.
Notwithstanding this sim­ple real­i­ty, the idea that we should be lenient has pre­vailed and dev­as­tat­ing­ly affect­ed policy. 
The gov­ern­ment is final­ly chang­ing its tune now. Here’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness recent­ly in Salt Springs Montego Bay after a triple mur­der, includ­ing two chil­dren. Quote, “we have already start­ed to increase the penal­ties for mur­der and, in par­tic­u­lar, cap­i­tal mur­der. In our sys­tem, the way to sep­a­rate them is to give them long sen­tences and take them out of the space. Short of the death penal­ty, this is the next best thing.”
No shit Sherlock, I have been say­ing this same fuck­ing thing for almost two decades. Whether they are locked away or killed by the police, they [do not] come back to kill again; that’s the great­est deterrent.
For decades, there have been crit­i­cisms local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly about how Jamaica gov­erns itself, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the issue of crime. A quick review of the local groups reveals a com­mon denom­i­na­tor: they are fund­ed and assist­ed by for­eign dark money.
Why? 
Front and cen­ter in offer­ing unso­licit­ed opin­ions have been the“US Department of Justice’s Office of Justice pro­grams. In offer­ing an assess­ment of the Gun Court Act in 1992, the agency said the fol­low­ing: Jamaica’s prin­ci­pal gun-con­trol leg­is­la­tion, the Gun Court Act, man­dat­ed harsh sen­tences for crim­i­nals who used guns dur­ing a crime and denied some Jamaicans their legal rights; these harsh mea­sures proved to be inef­fec­tive in con­trol­ling crime.
Nowhere in the world are cit­i­zens more denied their legal rights than in the American Criminal Justice sys­tem, which is a race-based sys­tem. Secondly, who asked them? Jamaica streets are inun­dat­ed with guns that come main­ly from the United States.
If the United States cared about the rights of Jamaicans, they would plug the dyke and stop the flow of ille­gal guns into Jamaica. The most sacred right a per­son has is the right to life.

The US Department of Justice went on to state; The Gun Court Act was passed in 1974 and sur­vived in its most repres­sive forms through 1982. This act estab­lished a spe­cial court to deal with the offense of the ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearms and oth­er offens­es that involved firearms where the offend­er’s pos­ses­sion was ille­gal and pro­vid­ed for a manda­to­ry and inde­ter­mi­nate sen­tence for ille­gal pos­ses­sion and use of firearms. Despite the lim­i­ta­tions of the data and analy­sis, a gen­er­al empir­i­cal assess­ment of the Gun Court Act can be made. The data show that fol­low­ing an ini­tial decline, there were over­all increas­es for all firearm-relat­ed crimes through­out most of the study peri­od. Those inter­viewed about the caus­es of the firearm crime who were not direct­ly affil­i­at­ed with either polit­i­cal par­ty attrib­uted it to the use of strong-arm men, gun­men, and gang­sters in the polit­i­cal are­na; wide­spread vic­tim­iza­tion in the allo­ca­tion of jobs and con­tracts by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments and by local author­i­ties; and inter­fer­ence by politi­cians with the police in the exe­cu­tion of their duties. Statistics sug­gest that ille­gal firearms were still in the hands of many crim­i­nals dur­ing the years the Gun Court Act was imple­ment­ed. The attempt to con­trol firearm crim­i­nals through the pas­sage of manda­to­ry firearm leg­is­la­tion failed, and polit­i­cal moti­va­tions seem to have been impor­tant rea­sons for this fail­ure. Following the elec­tion of the JLP in 1980, the Gun Court Act remained in effect with its most oppres­sive fea­tures for two years. By ear­ly 1982, many indi­vid­u­als inter­viewed stat­ed the fail­ure of either gov­ern­ment to remove, or at least sub­stan­tial­ly amend, the act was a chal­lenge to all class interests.