Shane Dalling Lays Bare Corruption Of FLA Board, Even As He Has Been Accused Of Lying…

The head of the Firearms Licencing Authority (FLA) should be called before a select com­mit­tee of the Parliament to tes­ti­fy open­ly as to the facts he out­lined in a speech he gave about over 200 crim­i­nals being giv­en gun licens­es over the objec­tions of the police.
In the list, Dalling out­lined that con­vict­ed crim­i­nals of all stripes, includ­ing mur­der­ers, have been giv­en licens­es to pos­sess firearms over the stri­dent objec­tions of the police who have sup­plied rea­sons for their objections.
At a press con­fer­ence, the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the FLA, Shane Dalling, assert­ed his right to speak, “my days of remain­ing silent are over Dalling assert­ed, I am going to speak on every mat­ter.”
Dalling said he want­ed to ven­er­ate the mat­ter of the grant­i­ng of firearm licens­es and what he called the con­stant attacks on his character.

He said he said he joined the FLA in June of 2017, and that was when he real­ized that peo­ple were get­ting gun licens­es under ques­tion­able circumstances.
He said he was first alert­ed when a Superintendent of police from Westmoreland sub­mit­ted a two-page let­ter to the FLA with what he char­ac­ter­ized as adverse find­ings on an indi­vid­ual involved in lot­to-scam­ming and gang activ­i­ties that had secured a firear­m’s license from the Board of the FLA…
In 2017 the entire board of the FLA resigned after it came to light that the same board was giv­ing crim­i­nals gun licens­es. To date, there have been no inves­ti­ga­tions by the police.
If peo­ple with crim­i­nal back­grounds are walk­ing around with licensed firearms, there is a prob­lem; why have the police not inter­viewed those board mem­bers to get an expla­na­tion of the rea­sons and on the basis by which those licensees were qual­i­fied to be issued licenses?

After MOCA and the FLA had done a review, it was dis­cov­ered that over two hun­dred (200) crim­i­nals from Saint James, Manchester, Clarendon, Trewlany, and Westmoreland were grant­ed gun licens­es. Dalling said the police warned that they should not be giv­en the right to have a legal firearm. None of those licens­es have been withdrawn.
Dalling said licens­es were issued to con­vict­ed mur­der­ers, Lotto-scam­mers, ille­gal pos­ses­sion of firearms, rob­bery with aggra­va­tion, rape, and drug trafficking.
Dalling assert­ed that he want­ed to be cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly clear that all of that infor­ma­tion was a part of the files, yet the FLA board still grant­ed licens­es to those criminals.
The fLA boss detailed the case of a man from Mandeville who was want­ed for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a firearm; the man was held and even­tu­al­ly sen­tenced for the crime. He alleges that the man applied for a firearm license, and the request was denied because he had a crim­i­nal record and had also lied on his application.
Mister Dalling said that although the appli­cant did not file a new appli­ca­tion nor did he file an appeal the FLA board went ahead and grant­ed a license to the same appli­cant three months later.

Mister Dalling said that the issues plagu­ing the FLA were brought to the atten­tion of the Ministry of National Security in 2015, but nobody did any­thing about it. Instead, he said the prob­lem mushroomed.
Dalling said peo­ple are try­ing to tar­nish his rep­u­ta­tion because every­one is mak­ing mon­ey from the cor­rup­tion at the agency and that many of them have open­ly lob­bied to have him removed from the agency.
Here again, we have a sit­u­a­tion made pos­si­ble by ad hoc craft­ed leg­is­la­tion inten­tion­al­ly done to allow loop­holes for crim­i­nal corruption.
If the laws gov­ern­ing the issuance of firearm licens­es were well writ­ten, clear, and con­cise, there would be no pos­si­bil­i­ty that a board could issue per­mits to any­one who did not tick all of the box­es in the law.
It is a murky mess designed to make it pos­si­ble for the kind of cor­rup­tion Dalling speaks to. Who has the finals say in who gets a license to pur­chase and car­ry a firearm? Is it clear­ly stip­u­lat­ed in the law, or is it as we imag­ine, a man does­n’t pay, so he does­n’t play.
In October 2020, the chair­man of the Police Federation, Sergeant Petra Rowe, accused Shane Dalling of fail­ing to grant licens­es to police offi­cers based on claims that they had com­mit­ted domes­tic violence.
At the time, Dalling denied the claim to the media, but Rowe coun­tered, “I think that he was try­ing to jus­ti­fy the com­plaint we had made to make it seem like they had prob­a­ble cause to deny police offi­cers firearm licens­es in large numbers.”
Rowe told the media there was no over­whelm­ing report with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) to sug­gest that police are involved in high num­bers of domes­tic abuse and assert­ed that if that were the case, there would have been sev­er­al reports and inter­nal inter­ven­tions as there are poli­cies in the JCF that gov­ern such occurrences.

In his push back against Dalling, Sergeant Rowe said, “It is quite curi­ous to think that per­sons would com­plain to FLA over seek­ing to pur­sue crim­i­nal actions against our col­leagues for domes­tic vio­lence unless the FLA CEO is con­fus­ing police offi­cers with some oth­er group. We do not deny there may be cas­es in the JCF where police offi­cers, like any oth­er man from any oth­er group in this coun­try, would have offend­ed their spouse in that way. But the claim from the FLA CEO gives the coun­try an impres­sion that this action among police offi­cers is so promi­nent that it leads to mass denials. So we are not say­ing it is not hap­pen­ing or has nev­er hap­pened, but the impres­sion giv­en by the FLA CEO that it is a promi­nent rea­son for denial is absolute­ly false.
At the time, Sergeant Rowe point­ed out that he was dis­ap­point­ed in Dalling mak­ing a pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion that a mem­ber of the JCF’s firearm license was revoked because of men­tal issues when there has been no psy­cho­log­i­cal report on the state of the mem­ber’s health. Rowe said the mat­ter was before the court, and it is for the court to declare the mem­ber’s psy­cho­log­i­cal fit­ness to hold a firearm; thus, Dalling’s dec­la­ra­tion is irresponsible.
Was Shane Dalling lying then, or is he lying now? If he lied, then as was borne out, can he be believed now even if he is telling the truth?

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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.