PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
The self-appointed elites in Jamaica have always been highly offended by the powers of the police. They never reconciled the idea of people from the poorer caste having the power to restrict their movement and freedom.
If you understand that after the nation was handed over to black & mullato rule, the newly empowered former downtrodden, instantaneously became the new overlords, (a newly minted Bourjois‘).
Once we reconcile that, we begin to better understand the animosity between uptown and the police.
The consistent criticisms that the JCF was designed by the colonial masters to control blacks.
The consistent harping about how the JCF was designed to suppress the people after the Paul Bogle led Morant Bay Rebellion & therefore antithetical and inherently anti-Jamaican.
That screed has always been based on the fact that the JCF was put together by the British, & that the powers of the police were consistent with how policing powers were supposed to be authorized.
Those powers were antithetical to the rigid caste system that developed immediately after the former house slaves became the new [Massas].
The new Massas did not want a group of peasants from the underclass having such powers.
An immediate crack appeared between those who enforced the rule of law & the new rulers who wanted a clear understanding that the young nation’s laws would under no circumstances apply to them or anyone in their caste.
It is for those purposes that the unscrupulous politicians in the country and those others who believed the laws ought not to apply to them were never comfortable with the powers of the police.
The police were instrumental in the formation of (INDECOM), The supposed Independent Commission Of Investigations, that was formed under the leadership and with the work of the JLP’s Bruce Golding.
The agency was supposed to be an answer to rampant Police abuse and acts of criminality, much of which was true therefore arguably justifying the creation of the agency.
However, INDECOM presented to enemies of the police a golden opportunity to sock it to the police, that they had always held in pure and unadulterated contempt.
The Act would be so onerous that it would literally take away the fundamental right members of the force had against self-incrimination.
The framers of the Act knew that the law was bad for the police, they knew that it would ultimately be bad for crime in the country as well.
However they did not care, the law offered them the opportunity to kick the police in the ass and at the same time give themselves an extension to continue to live their lives as overlords in the crime-ridden society that Jamaica had become.
The poorer parts of the population are always the most vulnerable, and also the most gullible. With the unscrupulous & complicit media pummeling them day and night about the evils of the police, the stage was set for the Jamaica that exist today .
A crime-ridden pseudo lawless & almost ungovernable society.
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.
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