No One Has Done More To Dismantle The Rule Of Law Than They…

Years ago I warned that our con­tin­ued affin­i­ty for fol­low­ing blind­ly behind, and accept­ing the nar­ra­tive of any­one with pale skin would prob­a­bly lead to our undo­ing as a nation.
Sadly, despite the fact that slav­ery was abol­ished in 1834, and Jamaica gained its Independence (of sorts) in 1962, Many Black Jamaicans to this day, seem to be stuck believ­ing that white peo­ple are supe­ri­or to them­selves.
This sense of dark-skinned infe­ri­or­i­ty, and feal­ty to Caucasians, is also extend­ed to Mullatos and pret­ty much any­one, not Black.
Most of you can relate to this, what I call the (big­ger-heads )syn­drome.
The unfor­tu­nate truth is that like in Blacks in oth­er parts of the world, some Jamaican Black peo­ple have resigned them­selves to what they have been told about them­selves, (that they are infe­ri­or to oth­er races).
Sure, I know that this kind of talk may be offen­sive to some peo­ple, but some­times these things need to be said. There is no point sweep­ing the garbage under the car­pet and pre­tend that the house is clean.

In the ear­ly, to mid-1990s Jamaica’s mur­der rate was at what I thought at the time was an intol­er­a­bly high lev­el. I had entered the law enforce­ment space in 1982 believ­ing that I could make a dif­fer­ence.
I was not the only one who felt that way, I know for sure guys who had left the teach­ing pro­fes­sion to become police offi­cers, oth­ers had left oth­er jobs includ­ing in the pri­vate sec­tor. I for one had decid­ed on law enforce­ment after they made the Jamaica school of agri­cul­ture defunct. My dream was to pur­sue stud­ies in agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence as a career. That dream was enhanced by my high school teacher Mister Bascoe who thought he saw some­thing in me, and gave me an all-expense-paid trip to the Jamaica school of agri­cul­ture (JSA) sit­u­at­ed on the Twickenham Park cam­pus. This facil­i­ty now hous­es the Police acad­e­my.
As a teenag­er, I was in hogs-heav­en dur­ing that vis­it. However, before I could get into that insti­tu­tion it was made defunct.
I even­tu­al­ly spent the bet­ter part of the year 1982 on the same cam­pus, not as an agri-sci­ence stu­dent, but as a police trainee.

As I said ini­tial­ly, I was aghast at the num­ber of homi­cides being com­mit­ted dur­ing the time I served. In ret­ro­spect, I believe that every ‑law-abid­ing Jamaican would do any­thing to get back to where we were between the years 1982 the year I joined & 1991 when I depart­ed the JCF.
What is evi­dent in the num­bers below is that though the mur­der sta­tis­tics were high­ly intol­er­a­ble and should pro­vid­ed no com­fort to any­one, par­tic­u­lar­ly because the coun­try is so small.
The num­bers were what they were, and so we worked assid­u­ous­ly to make the streets safe for Jamaicans and vis­i­tors alike.
It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that in the year 1980 dur­ing the blood­i­est nation­al elec­tions in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, 899 were killed, large­ly as a result of polit­i­cal vio­lence.
After the elec­tions of 1980 mur­ders dropped by almost 50% to 490 in 1981, this was under the JLP’s Edward Seaga’s Government. We do not have accu­rate num­bers for the year 1985.

1982	405
1983	424
1984	484
1986	449
1987	442
1988	414
1989	439
1990	543
1991	561

By the end of 1988, Edward Seaga was gone from office, Michael Manley had been returned to Jamaica House by the short-mem­o­ry elec­torate.
Prime Minister Manley was ail­ing not long after tak­ing office again, and as a result, he was forced to turn over lead­er­ship of the coun­try to his Deputy Percival Patterson by 1992.
What hap­pened in Jamaica after­ward, is up to any­one’s inter­pre­ta­tion, those pay­ing atten­tion can come to their own con­clu­sions.
One thing is cer­tain, it is that Percival Patterson became the only Prime Minister in Jamaica’s his­to­ry to be sworn into office for a fourth term, con­sec­u­tive or oth­er­wise.
The People’s National Party occu­pied Jamaica House for an unprece­dent­ed ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years between 1988 and 2007.
The mur­der sta­tis­tics below are reflec­tive of those four terms and beyond.

1992	629
1994	690
1995	780
1998	953
1999	849
2000	887
2002	1045
2003	975
2004	1471
2005	1674
2006	1340
2007	1574
2008	1601
2009	1680
2010	1428
2011	1125
2012	1097
2013	1200
2014	1005
2015	1192
2016	1350

In the September 2007 gen­er­al elec­tions, Bruce Golding eeked out a mar­gin­al win for the JLP, break­ing the PNP’s stran­gle­hold on Jamaica House. Murders which seemed to have tak­en on an even more omi­nous tra­jec­to­ry in the same year con­tin­ued through 2008 and 2009 before tak­ing a dive in 2010.
The over 200 few­er killings in 2010 than 2009 is attrib­uted to the actions the secu­ri­ty forces took to annex the JLP strong­hold of Tivoli Gardens to the rest of the coun­try.
The south­ward tra­jec­to­ry con­tin­ued even after the JLP was oust­ed from office as a result of Bruce Golding’s han­dling of the Christopher Duddus Coke extra­di­tion request by the United States.
A clos­er look at the num­bers reveals a rather telling sto­ry. In the num­bers is the appear­ance that a cul­tur­al shift occurred.
Something hap­pened dur­ing those ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years that unde­ni­ably changed the way Jamaicans viewed the sanc­ti­ty of life, or should I say, for many Jamaicans life was no longer a thing of val­ue.
What I do recall is that the Jamaican peo­ple were told that quote; “any­thing a any­thing, run wid it”.
Out of that wink and nod by the Patterson Administration to crim­i­nals to do as they please, was a resul­tant mas­sive esca­la­tion of killings.
Those were not polit­i­cal killings as had obtained dur­ing the 1980 elec­tion cycle.
Those killings were gang-relat­ed and were large­ly attrib­uted to the crim­i­nal under­world mur­der­ing peo­ple who had refused to bow down to their extor­tion demands.

During this time not a sin­gle detec­tive was trained by the Patterson admin­is­tra­tion for over a full decade. As ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty esca­lat­ed, the police became more inef­fec­tive. Patterson who seemed to have hat­ed Detectives issued through his lack­eys in the JCF hier­ar­chy, a decree that all police offi­cers were to be back in uni­form.
By that decree, Percival James Patterson effec­tive­ly gave crim­i­nals carte blanch to do as they please with­out con­se­quence.
The JCF is still reel­ing from the harm done to it and the coun­try as a result of the Patterson gov­ern­ment.
Another sig­nif­i­cant event occurred dur­ing that peri­od. A mass smear cam­paign against the hard-work­ing mem­bers of the JCF who were keep­ing the mur­der­ers on the run was ini­ti­at­ed. It was exe­cut­ed across the board with pre­ci­sion-like mas­tery.
Literally, every police shoot­ing was brand­ed as an extra­ju­di­cial killing in the media.

It was a mas­ter­ful stroke of genus ini­ti­at­ed by the thugs who ran the innerci­ty com­mu­ni­ties. Those com­mu­ni­ties had become ver­i­ta­ble incu­ba­tors, pro­duc­ing a nev­er-end­ing sup­ply of young men ready for a life of crime.
The media in total feal­ty to the cam­paign of smear, will­ing­ly gave a plat­form to the throngs of man­u­fac­tured mourn­ers who turned out to mourn every police shoot­ing.
Throngs of women gave exact eye-wit­ness account­ing of how those events occurred con­trary to police account­ing of events.
Never mind that many of those shoot­ings occurred in the dead of night, or ear­ly in the morn­ing when they could not have been present and clear­ly were lying.
No one both­ered to check the verac­i­ty of those sto­ries, no one both­ered to take notice that it was the very same faces who claimed to have seen each and every shoot­ing in the respec­tive communities.

The mur­der­ers who oper­at­ed under the san­i­tized name of (Area Leaders) giv­en them by the media and the self-styled NGOs like the Peace Managemen Unit oper­at­ed by Horace Levy, had all but tak­en over.
The PMI and oth­er groups that had sprung up sup­pos­ed­ly in the fight to pro­tect civ­il rights, were essen­tial­ly run­ning inter­fer­ence for the Gangsters.
When the police des­ig­nat­ed a cer­tain gang as such, Horace Levy refut­ed the police des­ig­na­tion and claimed they were not gangs at all, but [cor­ner crews].
The gross­ly under­staffed, poor­ly paid, unsup­port­ed, poor­ly trained, gross­ly under-equipped police depart­ment was on its own.
The Patterson destruc­tion of the Police depart­ment and the rule of law was com­plete.
Between the slew of for­eign-fund­ed groups like JFJ that had sprung up and the false infor­ma­tion being bandied about, for­eign pub­li­ca­tions like the [Guardian] and oth­ers engaged in a feed­ing fren­zy.
They Blared out insid­i­ous head­lines like “JAMAICAN POLICE FINALLY BEING MADE TO ACCOUNT”.
Tragically for Jamaicans, not a sin­gle one of those enti­ties care about the blood­shed occur­ring today, except to high­light their home coun­try’s trav­el advi­sories to their nation­als wish­ing to trav­el to Jamaica. 

Not only had the gang­sters seized the ini­tia­tive based on the sup­port they were get­ting from all quar­ters, but they also went on the offen­sive by using the pro­ceeds of their ill-got­ten wealth to import more guns and ammu­ni­tion into the coun­try.
Communities were sole­ly run by these over­lords, none more pow­er­ful than Christopher Dudus Coke.
By now Lotto scam­ming and oth­er trans-nation­al crimes, includ­ing human traf­fick­ing( et al) had now found their way into the arse­nal of the Islands crim­i­nals.
Battered bruised and con­fused, mem­bers of the JCF began to look for the exits. The force not only could not keep the peo­ple it had, but it was also unable to replace those who were head­ing for the exits.
In all of the fore­gone, no sin­gle indi­vid­ual had been more impact­ful in chang­ing con­tem­po­rary Jamaica than a mul­la­to pedi­atric doc­tor named Carolyn Gomez.

Gomez cre­at­ed a group she named Jamaicans For Justice, (JFJ). Like the white angel she was, Carolyn Gomez con­vinced her­self that it was her call­ing to ride in and save Jamaicans from the police who were sup­pos­ed­ly killing every­one pre­med­i­tat­ed­ly and extra-judicially.[sic]
It was not hard for Gomes to gain trac­tion, she has pale white skin and she is a doc­tor to boot.
Jamaicans, even some of whom had sent their daugh­ters and sons to risk their lives to keep the coun­try safe, fell hook-line-&-sinker for the smear cam­paign against the police.
That is not to sug­gest by any stretch that the police are with­out bad actors. Like any police depart­ment, the JCF has always had its share of incom­pe­tent and cor­rupt cops.
This real­i­ty was not any­thing close­ly relat­ed to what was being pro­mul­gat­ed in the media. Nevertheless, by then, an expan­sive pha­lanx of anti-police agen­cies had sprung up in the space.
Anti-police dem­a­goguery had now become the nation’s largest growth indus­try, out­side what the crim­i­nal under­world was doing.

Anti-police dem­a­goguery now had a rec­og­niz­able face, a white face, a face Jamaicans could not for once believe may be wrong, or have ulte­ri­or motives.
Simple con­cepts like (esprit de corps) the spir­it of broth­er­hood, that we were taught we need­ed, each one look out for the oth­er, some­thing crit­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary in police work was slan­dered and demo­nized.
The nation’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship bought into the defama­tion, so too did the inept police hier­ar­chy. Esprit de corp was now a blue wall of silent crim­i­nal acqui­es­cence. It was gone.
What the Jamaican peo­ple clam­or­ing for Gomez and JFJ nev­er both­ered to find out was where exact­ly was the fund­ing com­ing from?
They did not draw the line when Gomez jet­ted off to Washington DC to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, with the names of hard-work­ing police com­man­ders whose jobs it was to keep crime under con­trol in tough depressed com­mu­ni­ties like Western Kingston and Saint Andrew Southern.
Those offi­cers were brand­ed as extra­ju­di­cial killers by Gomez and JFJ with­out a sin­gle scin­til­la of evi­dence.
Other bot­tom feed­ers like (FAST), Families Against State Terrorism one of the many human rights groups had joined the fray to pro­tect the Jamaican peo­ple from the extra-judi­cial killers in police uni­forms.
The strug­gling police depart­ment tried to hold down crime even while it was los­ing its mem­bers to the gang­ster’s guns. This same police depart­ment accord­ing to FAST was for all intents and pur­pos­es A ter­ror­ist group.
Merriam’s: def­i­n­i­tion of the word “Terrorism”, the unlaw­ful use of vio­lence and intim­i­da­tion, espe­cial­ly against civil­ians, in the pur­suit of polit­i­cal aims.
The poor police depart­ment that may have been a lot of things was nev­er this.

Carolyn Gomez, Horace Levy, and the oth­ers con­tin­ued with the tar­ring and feath­er­ing of the Police Department, too piti­ful to defend itself the depart­ment absorbed the body blows with­out fight­ing back.
The Government did noth­ing to defend the police,
and so the vio­lence pro­duc­ers stepped up their game. By the time Bruce Golding took over the coun­try the police depart­ment was so bat­tered, demor­al­ized and deplet­ed, the dam­age was already done.
Golding was to add the coup de grâce, INDECOM was born.
Today mur­ders are trend­ing dan­ger­ous­ly high, it harkens back to the peri­od in 2002 when mur­ders topped a thou­sand for the very first time.
That peri­od includ­ed the twi­light of Patterson’s régime, through the March 2006 Portia Simpson Miller take over as Prime Minister, through to the Bruce Golding tenure.
What the homi­cide num­bers por­tend is that the endem­ic vio­lent crime has incu­bat­ed, tak­en hold and metas­ta­sized under Percival Patterson.
It con­tin­ued unchecked under Portia Simpson Miller and Bruce Golding’s lead­er­ship and even under Andrew Holness’s trun­cat­ed first tenure as Prime Minister. 

On 5 December 2011, Andrew Holness was defeat­ed at the polls by Portia Simpson Miller turn­ing back Holness’s bid to gain his own man­date after suc­ceed­ing Bruce Golding who resigned in dis­grace.
For Portia Simpson Miller it was a polit­i­cal vin­di­ca­tion of sorts, win­ning her own man­date after she was beat­en by Golding dur­ing her trun­cat­ed tenure, hav­ing tak­en over from Patterson.
On 25 February 2016, Andrew Holness would defeat Portia Simpson Miller in nation­al elec­tions called by Miller.
Holness too had been vin­di­cat­ed polit­i­cal­ly, he had won his own man­date.
The unfor­tu­nate fact of the mat­ter is that for­mer Prime Minister Simpson Miller does not deserve cred­it for the south­ward tra­jec­to­ry of vio­lent crime which occurred on her watch.
The sin­gle defin­ing event of the secu­ri­ty forces storm­ing Tivoli Gardens in 2010 caused a dras­tic reduc­tion in mur­ders and oth­er vio­lent crimes.
That event demon­strates how vio­lent crim­i­nals should be han­dled as long as the secu­ri­ty forces are res­olute and are in it for the long haul.
The answer to the nation’s mur­der prob­lem is right there in the 2010 secu­ri­ty forces response to Christopher Coke’s mili­tia.
Violent thugs ran away and scat­tered like the ver­min they are. However, once they real­ized that the Simpson Miller gov­ern­ment was more intent on play­ing pol­i­tics with the issue by set­ting up the Kangaroo Tivoli Inquiry, the dis­persed crim­i­nals who were lay­ing low in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties attached their ten­ta­cle into those com­mu­ni­ties.
Jamaica by then had a nation­wide Gang prob­lem, no one in the Simpson Miller admin­is­tra­tion would do any­thing about it.
It is now the sin­gle largest dri­ver of the nation’s mur­der problem.

Carolyn Gomez would lat­er be exposed for who she tru­ly was, but the dam­age was already done.
Others like Horace Levy,.….……oh, they are still there, like ter­mites eat­ing away at the wood­work of our coun­try’s rule of law.
Yup, the [big­ger heads], the mulat­tos and the uptown crew, they damn sure have made a mock­ery of our coun­try and the peo­ple who placed their trust in them.

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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.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.