Placing The Federation Boss On Interdiction For Free-speech Is Tyrannical Behavior By The Brass On Behalf Of The Govt…

Some fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples guid­ed our con­duct when I proud­ly served as a Police offi­cer in my native Jamaica many years ago. Today hav­ing lived for over six decades, I look back at my time in ser­vice, and I am some­what proud despite the pres­sures the Jamaica Constabulary Force endured from the United States, Canada, and Britain, along with inside ene­mies of the Jamaican peo­ple. Though a com­par­a­tive­ly tiny nation, Jamaica got it right on some things.
Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I have zero tol­er­ance for crim­i­nal con­duct and will also attest to my firm belief in the rule of law. The rule of law can­not be based on one’s wealth, social stand­ing, or oth­er defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic that set one above the oth­er. For every­one to buy into obey­ing the laws, all [must] be treat­ed equally.
I have seen no nation oper­at­ing out­side the rule of law that has free and pros­per­ous citizens.
Thankfully, we had no racism in our police depart­ment, even though Jamaica is a melt­ing pot of peo­ple, and we were per­pet­u­al­ly accused of favor­ing peo­ple who lived in cer­tain areas.
While I served, I was par­tic­u­lar­ly pissed at the crimes some offi­cers were accused of, asso­ci­at­ing with non-police crim­i­nals, tak­ing bribes, steal­ing, etc. I arrest­ed and charged a cou­ple myself and was instru­men­tal in see­ing the back of anoth­er. I was proud to have stood up to a cou­ple of oth­ers who were senior to me but had tar­nished the force’s rep­u­ta­tion through actions unbe­com­ing of officers.
I was ashamed in 91; while in detec­tive train­ing, the lec­tur­er asked us to name an offense in the crim­i­nal code that was not already attrib­uted to mem­bers of our depart­ment. No one raised a hand.
I was also proud that our depart­ment was, nev­er­the­less, the only gov­ern­ment depart­ment that actu­al­ly policed itself and active­ly scrupu­lous­ly removed bad cops from the depart­ment. This was long before the advent of the antag­o­nis­tic and ill-formed INDECOM.
The depart­ment was by no means a great one, large­ly due to the incom­pe­tence of men and women pro­mot­ed above their capa­bil­i­ties through pol­i­tics, nepo­tism, and oth­er malpractices.
Despite all of the fore­gone, the JCF stood head and shoul­ders in terms of what we see occur­ring dai­ly in American polic­ing. It is shock­ing to see what pass­es for policing.
Acts of out­right mur­der legit­imized by pros­e­cu­tors and the courts, Gestapo-style polic­ing, lies, fal­si­fy­ing reports, lying under oath, brazen acts of unchecked bru­tal­i­ty, cops kid­nap­ping, bru­tal­iz­ing, and killing cit­i­zens, and the list goes on.
There is the argu­ment that there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for offi­cers to be cor­rupt. We can make that argu­ment, drop the micro­phone with an air of supe­ri­or­i­ty, and walk away as if the issue is solved. Or we can exam­ine why cor­rup­tion was so per­va­sive in the Jamaica Constabulary Force from way back when.
Officers were required to live exem­plary lives, which usu­al­ly meant not liv­ing in the hood that are incu­ba­tors of criminality.
The salaries paid to offi­cers may pay the rent for the apart­ment that the offi­cer has, but not much more.
Cops have fam­i­lies like oth­er Jamaicans, but though they risk life and limb, the remu­ner­a­tions are not near­ly enough to sus­tain at the most basic lev­els, lives of example.
We can pre­tend all we want, but giv­en those cir­cum­stances, it is impos­si­ble to keep offi­cers clean when they have the pow­er to solic­it bribes and find oth­er illic­it ways to make mon­ey. Even giv­en ide­al cir­cum­stances, peo­ple with pow­er abuse it.
This is no dif­fer­ent than lump­ing many poor peo­ple into com­mu­ni­ties and giv­ing them lit­tle or no resources. The result is a fight for sur­vival, which means vio­lence and oth­er crimes. Doing the same with less­er crea­tures elic­its the very same outcomes.
This is why I con­tin­ue to be astound­ed by the shock­ing atti­tude of the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion in address­ing the salary and remu­ner­a­tion demands of the rank-and-file of the police department.
From the very start of his lead­er­ship of our coun­try Andrew Michael Holness has demon­strat­ed a com­plete lack of under­stand­ing of and a sense of hatred toward police officers.
By both words and deeds, Holness him­self and mem­bers of his cab­i­net, Horace Chang, in par­tic­u­lar, has been open­ly hos­tile and down­right dis­re­spect­ful of the JCF.
Holness made his friend Antony Anderson, the for­mer head of the JDF, the nation’s first National Security Adviser. But that was only the begin­ning, He select­ed Anderson to be Commissioner of police, and Anderson was allowed to bring his JDF dri­ver, a non­com­mis­sioned offi­cer in the sad sack army, and made him an Assistant Superintendent of police.
If this isn’t nepo­tism I have no idea what nepo­tism is. Jamaica should be hap­py indeed that mem­bers of the JDF hier­ar­chy do not [yet] har­bor illu­sions of grandeur (tak­ing over the coun­try by way of a coup de’ etat) as Holness has placed and attempt­ed to place mem­bers of the JDF in key posi­tions with­in the pub­lic sector.
In fact, many Opposition par­ty mem­bers have already claimed those are his intentions.
I seri­ous­ly doubt those are his inten­tions, but his like­ness and affin­i­ty toward the JDF are strange, at the very min­i­mum. His affin­i­ty toward the JDF and the par­al­lel dis­re­spect he has shown the JCF are clear and unequiv­o­cal evi­dence of a man not ful­ly con­ver­sant with the crit­i­cal role law enforce­ment plays in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety. Horace Chang labeled the JCF a glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guard com­pa­ny, then back­tracked when mem­bers of the force react­ed force­ful­ly to the insult.
Holness and Chang have both run pro­tec­tion for Antony Anderson’s fail­ure to put a mean­ing­ful dent in vio­lent crime in our coun­try. Something no oth­er Commissioner or police has ever enjoyed under any admin­is­tra­tion PNP or JLP. Crime sta­tis­tics have always judged them. Not so for Anderson.
Holness claims he has retained Anderson to mod­ern­ize the force. … this is laugh­able, as the old Jamaican say­ing goes ‘while the grass a grow di horse a starve”.
That idea is both laugh­able and pre­pos­ter­ous. Dealing with vio­lent crime effec­tive­ly and mod­ern­iz­ing the force are not mutu­al­ly exclusive.
The JCF must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The force was able to do much more with much less in times past, so the idea that we must ‘gi Tony a chance’, accord­ing to Horace Chang, is unadul­ter­at­ed horse manure.
And now we have learned that the Antony Anderson JCF has sought to muz­zle the free speech of the chair­man of the Police Federation (Union), Corporal Rohan James, through inter­dic­tion, giv­ing rise to the idea that the Holness Administration believes it is above criticism.
The head of the Police Union can­not be guid­ed by the nor­mal pro­to­cols that guide reg­u­lar mem­bers, as one for­mer mem­ber points out. This is intim­i­da­tion tac­tics being employed by the Holness admin­is­tra­tion using the Antony Anderson high command.
Any mem­ber of the rank-and-file that con­dones this behav­ior, regard­less of their polit­i­cal belief, should have their head examined.
This is tyran­ny being employed by the gov­ern­ment. It should not stand.

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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.