Officers Are Punished For Mistakes/​offenders Who Assault Them Walk Away No Penalty

We have a seri­ous prob­lem in Jamaica with law­less­ness and the gov­ern­ment, mean­ing those elect­ed to the par­lia­ment have not done any­thing about it for as long as the prob­lem has persisted.
Part of the law­less cul­ture that has per­sist­ed in our coun­try is the belief by many Jamaicans that they have the right to resist arrest, fight, and assault police offi­cers when offi­cers attempt to arrest them.

There are mis­de­meanor penal­ties under our penal code to deal with them. Still, the con­se­quences are so infin­i­tes­i­mal that peo­ple ignore them and in most cas­es, the crim­i­nal-cod­dling judges absolve and dis­charge those charges.
In addi­tion to INDECOM, which fur­ther chills the police’s abil­i­ty to deal with Jamaica’s crim­i­nals, this embold­ens Jamaicans to resist arrest, assault, and even cause seri­ous injury to police offi­cers while they car­ry out their sworn duties.
Neither Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Opposition leader Mark Golding, nor any oth­er politi­cian or self-serv­ing judge are forced to absorb ver­bal and phys­i­cal assault for exe­cut­ing their duties,[ what­ev­er it is that they do].
This begs the ques­tion; why are police offi­cers who try their best to keep every­one safe, even at the per­il of their own lives, being asked to absorb this kind of abuse with­out protection?

There is no ques­tion that Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Golding both see these video clips. I tru­ly believe that the Prime Minister has under­gone a meta­mor­pho­sis regard­ing his views on vio­lent crim­i­nals. Is he where some­one like myself is? Not a chance! However, I believe the weight of the office he holds has final­ly informed him of his most sacred duty as our coun­try’s leader, which is to pro­tect its citizens.
Where are the laws mak­ing it a felony to touch a police offi­cer? Before the advent of cam­era phones, the crim­i­nal cod­dling judges would admon­ish and dis­charge assaults and resist­ing charges, which they claimed were con­vic­tions, when they did­n’t dis­miss the charges out­right. The truth is that even if we agree that admon­ish and dis­charge is a con­vic­tion of sorts, there is no seri­ous penal­ty attached to ser­i­al offenders.
The same peo­ple sum­mar­i­ly do the same thing again and again with­out consequence.
This seems to delight the crim­i­nal cod­dling judges who see noth­ing wrong with vio­lence being vis­it­ed upon our police officers.
One thing that sep­a­rates my time from today is that the offend­ers who would raise their hands to a police offi­cer knew well who to try that with back when I was a serv­ing member.
You put your hand on me, and you will regret it for the remain­der of your nat­ur­al life.
Offenders who assault the police and are admon­ished and dis­charged are not pre­clud­ed from get­ting a US visa or get­ting a gov­ern­ment job, so the prac­tice is an entrenched part of our cul­ture, fight the police all you want, lit­i­gate your case in the streets with vio­lence against the police, even when you are not involved in what the police is doing…

Bruce Golding, the PNP, and the for­eign agi­ta­tors who oper­ate in Jamaica under the guise of human rights devised INDECOM, the so-called Independent Commission of Inquiry that inves­ti­gates mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces; they do not care about the assaults on our police offi­cers; they do not care now.
The leg­is­la­ture has a duty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to pass leg­is­la­tion that strength­ens the penal­ty for such assaults and resist­ing arrests. This can­cer of resist­ing arrest must be stopped now.
We can­not have a coun­try where offi­cers are pun­ished for mis­takes while offend­ers who assault them walk away with­out con­se­quence because judges refuse to sanc­tion them and the laws are too lenient in the first place.
The aver­age per­son has a right to ver­bal­ly assault offi­cers exe­cut­ing their duties (free­dom of speech) even when what is hap­pen­ing does not con­cern them, but when they inter­vene phys­i­cal­ly and get too close, to the point of touch­ing an offi­cer, all bets are off. What we are wit­ness­ing in these videos is not even peo­ple touch­ing offi­cers; they are active­ly fight­ing and try­ing to kill our police offi­cers. Where is the legislature?
On January 7^th of this year, one of the crim­i­nal­i­ty enhance­ment lob­bies oper­at­ing in our coun­try (JFJ) berat­ed the police and demand­ed puni­tive action against a police offi­cer who was video­taped respond­ing to an offend­er who inter­ject­ed him­self into law­ful police actions.
The sanc­ti­mo­nious crim­i­nal sup­port­ers issued a lengthy state­ment pub­lished in one of the dai­ly papers demand­ing actions while issu­ing forked tongue plat­i­tudes about the rule of law. We know what those char­la­tans are; they do not respect the rule of law. They are bot­tom-feed­ers whose very exis­tence is fed by the per­cep­tion that the police are cor­rupt. If the per­cep­tion of the bad police is removed, they have no rel­e­vance. No one should be sur­prised about their con­tin­ued dili­gence in high­light­ing any­thing resem­bling police mis­con­duct. They need to be able to demo­nize the police to con­tin­ue receiv­ing for­eign funding.
Nowhere in the state­ment did they speak to their crim­i­nal fol­low­ers about the need to obey our laws and refrain from inter­fer­ing with the police.

Their web­site has the fol­low­ing state­ment; The Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) pro­gram work is made pos­si­ble through a com­bi­na­tion of dona­tions and grant-fund­ed projects from var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment part­ners, foun­da­tions, and oth­er part­ners. JFJ does not accept con­tri­bu­tions from polit­i­cal par­ties.
In due course, we will for­mal­ly request Jamaicans For Justice pro­vide us with full dis­clo­sure of all their donors, where they are from, and why they are donat­ing mon­ey to JFJ?
We should have no prob­lem receiv­ing such infor­ma­tion under the free­dom of infor­ma­tion Act. If for­eign mon­ey is flood­ing into our coun­try to fund out­side caus­es, we need to know who is behind the money.

https://​www​.face​book​.com/​g​a​r​y​.​a​i​t​c​h​e​s​o​n​.​5​4​/​v​i​d​e​o​s​/​1​4​1​8​5​8​1​5​6​8​5​9​0​317

We need to see body-worn cam­eras for our police for account­abil­i­ty and to dis­pel lies about police abuse. Body-worn cam­eras are also help­ful to police in iden­ti­fy­ing at a lat­er time those who should be arrest­ed for inter­fer­ing in their work.
Police offi­cers need tasers, a non-lethal tool to appro­pri­ate­ly deal with arrestees who active­ly fight and resist arrest and those who would inter­fere in law­ful arrests.
Jamaica is one of the most vio­lent nations on earth; the homi­cide num­bers speak for them­selves. The coun­try can no longer say it can­not afford to give the most basic tools to police offi­cers on the front­lines fight­ing the scourge of vio­lent crimes. Allowing this scourge to con­tin­ue is, by default sur­ren­der­ing the nation to the rule of thugs. Mister Holness, we are watching.
We are already extreme­ly close.…..

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.