Tag Archives: Police and Crime

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Those Opposed To Too Much Government Also Should Be Heard:

watchful eyes
watch­ful eyes

Yesterday I wrote about the need for the Jamaican Government to stop pussy-foot­ing around and rec­og­nize law-enforce­ment for it’s val­ue to the coun­try. Even as I believe pas­sion­ate­ly in the rule of law and it’s neces­si­ty in soci­ety. I am also vis­cer­al­ly pas­sion­ate about the right of indi­vid­u­als to being secure in their per­sons. The points raised by those opposed to cam­eras in pub­lic spaces are legit­i­mate con­cerns that war­rants seri­ous dis­cus­sion and debate.The chal­lenge for law-enforce­ment par­tic­u­lar­ly in large Metropolises is, how to bal­ance a healthy respect for indi­vid­ual free­doms and pri­va­cy while at the same time mak­ing sure they are able to keep res­i­dents safe. Criminal ter­ror­ist have to get it right only once, Law-enforce­ment has to get it right a hun­dred per­cent of the time to avert dis­as­ter. Even as I extol the virtues of CCTV as one more tool in the fight against crime and ter­ror, I also believe that we should watch those who we com­mis­sion to watch the crim­i­nals. The Police state is not some­thing any of us except those with sin­is­ter motives want. As such we must be vig­i­lant in ensur­ing that even as we acqui­esce to present day neces­si­ties, we should guard­ed­ly pro­tect the tra­di­tion­al free­doms we hold dear. Terrorists who exert their will through fear, does not stop try­ing to kill and maim sim­ply because we can­not fig­ure out how to bal­ance pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty. As evi­denced with the sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica, Special Interest groups squab­ble over small stuff crim­i­nals sim­ply show their dis­dain by shoot­ing out the cam­eras placed there in down-town Kingston.

it's important to have eyes in major cities today
it’s impor­tant to have eyes in major cities today

The dis­trust that cit­i­zens have of Government and it’s Agents that they will do the right thing with footage har­vest­ed from CCTV cam­eras, is a legit­i­mate con­cern. Government Agents, the world over have nev­er failed to abuse the trust placed in them. Even in the United States some politi­cians intro­duce Bills that if passed into law would seri­ous­ly lim­it the role of Government in peo­ple’s lives. Irrespective of oth­er sin­is­ter motives they may har­bor, they under­stand as well as any­one else the need to hold Government account­able. So for inter­est groups in Jamaica who are opposed to CCTV cam­eras, I sug­gest you call your elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive and let them know you want leg­is­la­tion which pro­tects the inno­cent from preda­tors , even as we ensure that Government does not tam­per with our free­doms and privacy.

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Gang Warfare Rages In Jamaica:

This is a con­tin­u­ing in a series of blogs I will write on the saga of the esca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica. Yesterday I point­ed to the utter incom­pe­tence of the coun­try’s nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Peter Bunting. Bunting came to the post total­ly unpre­pared. Speaking at the Police Elleston Road Facility, dur­ing a weapons destruc­tion event, around the sec­ond week of February the min­is­ter said he was informed at anoth­er event that if crime was low­ered it would help the economy !!!!

Really Peter ? You have to be told this ? how utter­ly dumb and igno­rant are you?

Today the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party blast­ed Bunting for recent state­ments he made accus­ing the JLP of not imple­ment­ing a crime pol­i­cy draft­ed in 2007. Delroy Chuck Opposition spokesper­son on nation­al secu­ri­ty blast­ed Bunting’s state­ments as arrant non­sense and point­ed out that the poli­cies were not only imple­ment­ed they were improved upon.

Bunting and Chuck

(Observer Photo)

Jamaican Cops in action

THE Opposition Jamaica Labour Party has dubbed Security Minister Peter Bunting’s accu­sa­tion that the par­ty failed to imple­ment a crime pol­i­cy draft­ed in 2007 as rub­bish. Bunting made the claim dur­ing a press brief­ing at Jamaica House yes­ter­day and drew the ire of the JLP.

“Minister of National Security Peter Bunting stat­ed that the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment failed to imple­ment a pol­i­cy draft­ed in 2007. The Opposition said that this is arrant non­sense and a poor excuse by Bunting for the present fail­ures,” the JLP said in a release​.Read more: http://​jamaicaob​serv​er​.com

Chuck went on to say:

“In respect of leg­is­la­tion the draft of the Anti-Gang Legislation was sent to Bunting and oth­er stake­hold­ers in 2011 for exam­i­na­tion and com­ment. No com­ment was ever received from Bunting or the PNP and they are only now claim­ing to be exam­in­ing this impor­tant piece of leg­is­la­tion,” Chuck said.

A total of 165 mur­ders have been tal­lied by the police since January 1 and yes­ter­day Bunting out­lined a raft of short and long-term mea­sures the state would be imple­ment­ing to col­lar crime but the JLP said Bunting’s response to the spike in mur­ders and shoot­ing is unacceptable.

“It is patent­ly clear that the port­fo­lio of National Security is beyond the capa­bil­i­ties of Bunting and that Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller must imme­di­ate­ly re-exam­ine the assign­ment of this port­fo­lio, as an increase of even one mur­der or shoot­ing over 2011 is unac­cept­able to the Jamaican peo­ple,” the JLP release said.

Anyone who fol­lows these blogs knows I am no fan of Delroy Chuck but “wow” I could­n’t have put it bet­ter myself. The only prob­lem with Chuck’s state­ment is that there is an implic­it sug­ges­tion in it that Portia Simpson Miller is intel­lec­tu­al­ly capa­ble of under­stand­ing that Bunting is a dud. And even if she could under­stand it, she would not have the will or under­stand­ing of the need for change.

WHAT BUNTING AND THE GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO DO IS TO SUGGEST THAT THE SPIRALLING CRIME RATE IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE JLP AND NOT THEIRS.

Bunting and the PNP could not address the doc­u­ment the for­mer gov­ern­ment sent them ‚they were too intent on pro­tect­ing the crim­i­nals in their gar­ri­son communities.Remember they vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly not to give police more time to root out ter­ror­ists after the fall of the Tivoli empire. The fact is they have six times more gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties than the oth­er par­ty and they had an elec­tion to win. In the mean­time Bunting and his par­ty has leaked infor­ma­tion to the press that they have no con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ties of Commissioner Ellington to do his job. Word on the streets is that they plant­ed this infor­ma­tion to once again blame the police and deflect blame and respon­si­bil­i­ty for their failures.

Commissioner Ellington Chief of defense staff Major General Anthony Anderson and Bunting(observer photo)

It will be a stretch for this lat­est strat­e­gy of the PNP to be effec­tive, Ellington has sim­ply been one of the most effec­tive com­mis­sion­ers in mod­ern his­to­ry not only in reduc­ing crime but in erad­i­cat­ing cor­rupt cops from the depart­ment. A 40% reduc­tion in crime is very sig­nif­i­cant , then again does the aver­age Jamaican under­stand this? In the mean time Bunting looks into the face of the com­mis­sion­er and tells him his job is safe .

Bunting, who was speak­ing dur­ing a Jamaica House press con­fer­ence, insist­ed Ellington enjoys the con­fi­dence of the PortiaSimpson Miller-led administration.“He has been suc­cess­ful and we expect him to con­tin­ue that suc­cess and he will have the sup­port of myself as min­is­ter and the administration.”

Since last week, word has been going around that the admin­is­tra­tion was not pleased with Ellington and the lead­er­ship that he pro­vides to the JCF. Persons close to the Government have claimed plans are afoot to replace Ellington, who was appoint­ed to lead the JCF under the pre­vi­ous Jamaica Labour Party gov­ern­ment. jamaica​glean​er​.com

In the image above Jamaican cops are seen in action under the cap­tion “Gang con­flicts rag­ing” in the (Jamaica Observer) Those con­flicts will con­tin­ue to rage in the absence of a seri­ous once and for all piece of leg­is­la­tion that puts crim­i­nals in prison and throw away the keys and a police force that is allowed to do its job law­ful­ly with­out favor or affec­tion , mal­ice or ill will.

Peace.

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Bunting’s Incompetence:

Peter Bunting spent most of his time thrash­ing Police Officers while his par­ty was in oppo­si­tion . He attend­ed many func­tions where he berat­ed the police force. As shad­ow min­is­ter for nation­al secu­ri­ty, he did­n’t both­er to spend time devel­op­ing a strat­e­gy that would fur­ther the process of crime sup­pres­sion and elim­i­na­tion in the coun­try of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple . In fact, Bunting was in the fore­front of his lead­er’s brigade that now forms the gov­ern­ment, they vot­ed not to give the secu­ri­ty forces the time and pow­ers they need­ed to con­sol­i­date the gains after they lib­er­at­ed Tivoli Gardens.

Photo cour­tesy of the Jamaica Observer.

Yesterday Peter Bunting told the coun­try that his par­ty, the People’s National par­ty will win a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the parish coun­cil seats in local gov­ern­ment elec­tions con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in March.

Why is this important ?

Peter Bunting just hap­pen to be the coun­try’s nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter. As we pre­dict­ed when his par­ty was returned to office after a short 4 year stint in oppo­si­tion, crime would head right back upwards . Word on the streets is, and always was, that his par­ty is high­ly tol­er­ant of crime. People feel they can run with what­ev­er they are into, “eat a food”. After Tivoli Gardens was annexed to Jamaica, crime trend­ed south­ward to the tune of 40% over the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od of pre­vi­ous year/​s. Jamaica record­ed an aver­age of 1600 mur­ders annu­al­ly up to the time of the Tivoli take-back. Crime trend­ed down and remained at 40 % low­er untill The PNP took office. Now it is far from com­fort­ing that we could crow about a 40% reduc­tion in crime when we have 1600 homi­cides report­ed each year . On the one hand it is great that 640 less Jamaicans have been killed whilst on the oth­er it is heart rend­ing that 960 peo­ple were slaugh­tered, in a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of only 2.7 mil­lion people.

Bunting yes­ter­day announced that 165 Jamaicans have been slaugh­tered since the start of this year. That 165 homi­cides, is over a peri­od of 51 days. That num­ber trans­lates into an aver­age of 3.24 Jamaicans killed dai­ly as far as police knows. Anyone who know Jamaica will prob­a­bly argue that those num­bers rep­re­sent the tip of the iceberg.

Today we are told that the gov­ern­ment of Portia Simpson Miller wants to bring crime down to first world lev­els by 2017.

WHAT ARE CRIME LEVELS OF FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES ?

Switzerland is a first world coun­try : In 2010 Switzerland record­ed 53 homi­cides, pop­u­la­tion at the time 7,554,661.

The United States is a first world coun­try: in 2010 The United States record­ed 14,748 homi­cides, pop­u­la­tion at the time 308,745,538.

During the late 1980 to ear­ly 1990’s the United States saw as much as 24,000 homi­cides at the zenith of the drug wars, since then crime has trend­ed down­wards to 14,748 in 2010.

I picked these two coun­tries because if we take out the dis­par­i­ty in pop­u­la­tion size they rep­re­sent two coun­tries most peo­ple would argue are sta­ble coun­tries where peo­ple want to live.

So which first world coun­try is the gov­ern­ment of Miller refer­ring to? The year 2017 is 5 years away , at the rate of an annu­al 1,600 homi­cides, are they sug­gest­ing that they are will­ing to see 8,000 peo­ple slaugh­tered before they take action?

This gov­ern­ment is the epit­o­me of incom­pe­tence. Not only do they give crim­i­nals the feel­ing that with them any­thing goes, they actu­al­ly cement that mind­set by hav­ing no plan to com­bat crime. Those who argue that this mind­set is not preva­lent on the streets are disin­gen­u­ous and the truth is not in them. Any per­son may car­ry out their own gener­ic poll to ver­i­fy these facts on the streets of any city , in any vil­lage in the country.

Like any­one else police offi­cers are enti­tled to their polit­i­cal views, how­ev­er many serv­ing mem­bers of the JCF joined the licky licky mass­es and vot­ed this incom­pe­tence into being , sub­se­quent­ly they share in the con­tin­ued destruc­tion of our coun­try , even as for­mer rigid dic­ta­tor­ships are shak­ing off the man­tle of polit­i­cal oppres­sion and embrac­ing free­dom and the promise of the twen­ty first century.

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Jamaica Has No Interest In Law Enforcement:

Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner ran a sto­ry head­lined: NO REST FOR INDECOM: in the Sunday February 12th pub­li­ca­tion. INDECOM of course is the most recent Agency that has been cre­at­ed to over­see alle­ga­tions of police abuse and so-called extra judi­cial killings. Lets be clear-most major police depart­ments have prob­lems with abuse, bad apples with­in the ranks, when­ev­er these abus­es rear their heads it is imper­a­tive that they are root­ed out. From my per­spec­tive I have no prob­lem with over­sight of the police depart­ment, after all, pub­lic employ­ees must have over­sight and account­abil­i­ty. The gen­er­al con­cen­sus is if one has noth­ing to hide, then there is no rea­son to fear oversight.

A promi­nent con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer in Jamaica chal­lenged me some­time ago in an email, to write about extra-judi­cal killings by police per­son­nel in Jamaica, his infer­ence being that as a for­mer police offi­cer I must have been a part of, or at a min­i­mum been wit­ness to instances of extra-judi­al killings by fel­low offi­cers. As insult­ing and arro­gant as that hubris is, it forms a cor­ner­stone of any con­ver­sa­tion involv­ing Jamaican law enforce­ment, wher­ev­er those con­ver­sa­tions happen.

NO REST FOR (INDECOM) .(Jamaicagleaner​.com)

This is the most laugh­able form of law enforce­ment imaginable .

Where is it ever writ­ten: NO REST FOR THE POLICE? The real police I might add!!!!

Reverend Gordon Evans, the com­mis­sion’s direc­tor of com­plaints for the west­ern region, told The Sunday Gleaner that the past month has offered no rest for INDECOM inves­ti­ga­tors cov­er­ing the west­ern parish­es. “We have been kept busy, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last four weeks,” he said. The cler­gy­man explained that his team has been called upon at least once and some­times more than once in each of the last four weeks to inves­ti­gate police killings and non-fatal shoot­ings. “For this week (last week), we were called upon to inves­ti­gate two cas­es. The triple killing and anoth­er shoot­ing that was­n’t fatal,” said Evans. He added: “There tends to be a peri­od where you get a spurt and then a lull.”

A Reverend in charge of an office that inves­ti­gates police shoot­ings. What’s next police offi­cers in charge of the Seminary? Does the polit­i­cal direc­torate real­ize the stu­pid­i­ty of these over­sight bod­ies ? It nev­er worked , and it will nev­er work, the strat­e­gy must be to train, equip and pay a pro­fes­sion­al police force and do away with all of the fake and wan­na be police depart­ments . This kills morale in the real police force and forces police offi­cers to close ranks in order to pro­tect them­selves. There is nev­er going to be real coöper­a­tion between the two bod­ies and right­ly so . Police offi­cers risk their lives to pro­tect they do not need Monday morn­ing quar­ter backs com­ing in lat­er to sec­ond guess them when they take action.

If (INDECOM) is a trust­ed enti­ty which the Jamaican peo­ple are pre­pared to work with, that they feel com­fort­able with , and they are pre­pared to open up to those inves­ti­ga­tors, then the prob­lem of cor­rup­tion and police excess is solved in Jamaica. Simply give (INDECOM) the guns and uni­forms, they are the police, prob­lem solved:

Gleaner pho­to

Of course if that is not a work­able solu­tion then the whole inves­tiga­tive cha­rade is a mon­u­men­tal fraud.

A pas­tor in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tors? How much more stu­pid can the pol­i­cy mak­ers be? There are some impor­tant facts Jamaicans will have to avail them­selves to, not least of which is the real­i­ty that whomev­er they chose to call when they need help, be it the tra­di­tion­al prac­tion­ers we call police offi­cers or the com­mu­ni­ty enforcer called the “Don”-the desired result is the same. The func­tion they pro­vide is polic­ing, the noun just hap­pens to be “Police”, so it mat­ters not who car­ries out the “verb”-the func­tion is the same. What this means is that cre­at­ing lay­ers of police agen­cies to police oth­er police agen­cies is an effort in futil­i­ty; a drain on the already impov­er­ished coun­try’s very lim­it­ed and in some cas­es non-exis­tent resources.

Having a seper­ate agency traips­ing around, sniff­ing at every scene of police shoot­ing, col­lect­ing state­ments and incrim­i­nat­ing cops with fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence is not a func­tion that will engen­der trust or coöper­a­tion, if this con­tin­ues there are going to be seri­ous con­se­quences to both agen­cies and the coun­try going for­ward. Police offi­cers are not going to, and should not allow peo­ple who are asleep in the dead of night to give state­ments incrim­i­nat­ing them end­ing their careers, send­ing them to prison, send­ing them into pover­ty, and destroy­ing their lives and that of their families.

Jamaica’s Governments of both polit­i­cal par­ties have been sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures which have betrayed the scared trust of the peo­ple, lead­ing them down wrong paths time and again, tak­ing advan­tage of their trust and in some cas­es naïveté’. And in the process set­ting up real ser­vants of the peo­ple who tru­ly sac­ri­fice, pit­ting them against their broth­er in a dan­ger­ous game of exploitation.

It is time that the Jamaican peo­ple rise up, throw off the encum­ber­ing man­tle of polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, and rec­og­nize that the polit­i­cal lead­ers are all manip­u­la­tive, lying, bas­tards who are enrich­ing them­selves at their expense with nary a thought for their inter­est. But then again how can they dis­card some­thing that has now become part of their DNA?

After all is said and done there is no men­tion of the grave dan­ger police offi­cers face in deal­ing with some of the world’s most heav­i­ly armed, deter­mined, blood-thirsty urban ter­ror­ists; the empha­sis is as always focused on those who risk it all and pay with their lives.

This is a strik­ing indict­ment on a repro­brate nation which embraces crim­i­nal punks over those sworn to pro­tect and serve. 

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Ellington Continues To Play With Cops Lives.

Jamaica’s Police Commissioner has once again put his foot into his mouth, Owen Ellington the Police com­mis­sion­er seem to believe that pan­der­ing to pub­lic per­cep­tions is a safer and bet­ter bet in secur­ing the coun­try than build­ing morale, train­ing and fight­ing for liv­able wages for offi­cers, while weed­ing out crooked and cor­rupt members.

Owen Ellington

(Gleaner photo)

Owen Ellington has tak­en unprece­dent­ed steps to make sure that the pub­lic like him, he has made the con­fi­den­tial police com­mu­ni­ca­tion doc­u­ment (force orders) pub­lic. This is the first instance to my knowl­edge where a com­pa­ny , orga­ni­za­tion , or insti­tu­tion has made their pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial com­mu­niqué avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic, much less a secu­ri­ty or law Enforcement Agency.

I must say that the secu­ri­ty firm Guardsman is a bet­ter run Agency that the JCF. Ellington’s gam­ble is sim­ple, pro­vide the media with a con­stant stream of non-news by the week­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tions he has with the Department, this does give Jamaica’s lazy unpro­fes­sion­al and incom­pe­tent media prac­ti­tion­ers a con­stant stream of infor­ma­tion that they pass as news to a gullible law enforce­ment hat­ing pub­lic. Ellington looks like he is doing some­thing spec­tac­u­lar, the media has a steady stream of news and Police offi­cers look like idiots and their safe­ty is com­pro­mised, what’s not to like? Ellington has posi­tioned him­self as a reformer when the oppo­site is real­ly true, let’s take a clos­er look.

Ellington’s expe­ri­ence

Ellington joined the JCF in 1980 , a past stu­dent of Glengoff High School, Ellington was edu­cat­ed at the University of the West Indies where he holds a bach­e­lors degree in human resource and a Masters degrees in National secu­ri­ty and strate­gic stud­ies. He also par­tic­i­pat­ed in Certificate cours­es in var­i­ous coun­tries to include China and the United States. The fact is Ellington is aca­d­e­m­i­caly qual­i­fied to be Prime Minister of Jamaica he how­ev­er lacks the req­ui­site skills need­ed to be an effec­tive com­mis­sion­er of police. There are those who believe aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions are enough to make a good cop, the truth is good cops the world over do not have a bach­e­lors degree , much less a mas­ters, I am in no way try­ing to dimin­ish the impor­tance of being ade­quate­ly edu­cat­ed. What I am say­ing is that it does not require a rock­et sci­en­tist to be a good cop.

Ellington lack the most fun­da­men­tal asset that makes a good cop, that char­ac­ter­is­tic is street smart, Ellington was reared in one office or anoth­er, he spent pre­cious lit­tle time if any doing police work and as such he has no real expe­ri­ence in how actu­al polic­ing is done. Police Departments that wants a tech­no­crat at their helm are smart enough to rec­og­nize they need a police chief that came up through the ranks. As is almost the case with every­thing else in Jamaica that process is dys­func­tion­al , this sys­tem of want­i­ng a Technocrat at the helm with­out a cred­i­ble feel for the streets is one bourne out of fol­ly, pen­cil push­ers can­not do police work and damn sure can­not suc­ceed in doing that job in Jamaica of all places.

THREATS AGAINST COPS LIVES COPS PLACED ON HIGH ALERT

On the 14th of this month we blogged about the seri­ous threats against police per­son­nel in the St. Catherine north , south and Clarendon Divisions made pub­lic by no oth­er than Ellington, who begged mem­bers to be on the high­est alert. Jamaican cops live in a vir­tu­al war zone , irre­spec­tive of where they are stationed,they are the guardians of the gate and as such they have much ene­mies, even some who should be friends are ene­mies This is not the first time Ellington has been forced to raise the threat assess­ment lev­el against mem­bers of the JCF by crim­i­nals who are deter­mined to kill cops at what­ev­er cost, if they can­not have their way in wreak­ing hav­oc in the country.

ELEVEN DAYS LATER

October 23rd Ellington was again in the news, this time berat­ing cops for tak­ing home weapons to pro­tect their lives and that of their families.

Said Ellington.

There are numer­ous instances where per­sons who are stopped by the police declare them­selves to be police offi­cers. Sometimes these per­sons pro­duce police iden­ti­fi­ca­tion; how­ev­er, there is noth­ing pro­vid­ed for them to ver­i­fy that they are autho­rised to car­ry the firearm.“Ellington remind­ed his charges that only a cer­tain cat­e­go­ry of offi­cers with­in the JCF are giv­en ser­vice firearms to keep and care. He argued that the absence of a prop­er sys­tem to quick­ly ver­i­fy whether a mem­ber is autho­rised to be in pos­ses­sion of a ser­vice firearm presents a risk, espe­cial­ly to offi­cers per­form­ing duties in civil­ian attire.A police­man’s uni­form forms part of his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. It tells the organ­i­sa­tion the per­son is employed with (Jamaica Constabulary Force or Island Special Constabulary Force); the lev­el with­in the organ­i­sa­tion the per­son is at; and some­times gives an idea of the per­son­’s length of ser­vice from the insignia worn. This, there­fore, plays a very impor­tant role in aug­ment­ing the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card,” explained Ellington. He added: “This addi­tion­al form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is not extend­ed to per­sons per­form­ing duties in civil­ian attire because of the need for them to be less overt and less vis­i­ble than uni­formed police per­son­nel. In light of this, with­out an estab­lished sys­tem to quick­ly ver­i­fy that a per­son is autho­rised to car­ry a firearm, armed crim­i­nals may get by police road­blocks and spot checks with ille­gal weapons by claim­ing to be police per­son­nel if they are able to pro­duce a police iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card.” According to Ellington, when an armed per­son in civil­ian cloth­ing is stopped by the police and declares him­self to be a mem­ber of the police force, con­tact is usu­al­ly made with the divi­sion the per­son claims he is from to ver­i­fy the accu­ra­cy of the claim, as well as to estab­lish if the per­son is autho­rised to car­ry the pis­tol in his pos­ses­sion. “This process may be a very lengthy and com­pli­cat­ed one as the per­son in the divi­sion with whom the infor­ma­tion lies might not be avail­able. There are instances where it is ver­i­fied that the per­son being checked is a police offi­cer, how­ev­er, the divi­sion can­not con­firm at the time that the per­son is autho­rised to car­ry the firearm,” said Ellington.(Daily Gleaner)

What a load of excrement !!!

Is this guy for real ? If there are cops who can­not be trust­ed with a gun , clear­ly that cop can­not be trust­ed with mak­ing life and death deci­sions with the lives of our cit­i­zens, can’t you see this is the prob­lem? Jamaica has one of the high­est homi­cide rate in the world, cou­pled with that the land mass is one of the small­est for a coun­try with that high lev­el of mur­der­ing scum bags run­ning around, this places the lives of offi­cers and their fam­i­lies sig­nif­i­cant­ly in har­m’s way. Officers do not earn enough to live in gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties so they share the same com­mu­ni­ties with the killers. What Ellington is doing is play­ing a pop­ulist game with the lives of cops to please the pup­peteers who pull his strings. Cops are not allowed to take home weapons after they just removed the bal­lis­tic vests , hel­met and oth­er para­pher­na­lia after a tour, they are then forced to go out and face the music going home , and com­ing back to work, then they suit up to go pro­tect the lives of the rich and pow­er­ful and those who tol­er­ate Ellington at the cock­tail recep­tions, Does any­one won­der why even mid­dle class peo­ple do not allow their chil­dren to be cops in Jamaica. Does Ellington have a gun and police protection ?

DISGRACE 

I have pre­vi­ous­ly point­ed to this guys actions in mak­ing the secu­ri­ty doc­u­ment pub­lic, reveal­ing where offi­cers are sta­tioned , their move­ments, and oth­er logis­ti­cal details. I have argued that any right the pub­lic may claim to have in this regard, is trumped by the fact this is a National secu­ri­ty Agency , notwith­stand­ing, Ellington has made the Force Orders pub­lic, I am yet to hear what over­rid­ing pub­lic need is met by doing so. Ellington has sought to dis­tance him­self from rank and file mem­bers of the force, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of some past com­mis­sion­ers who nev­er did a day polic­ing in their lives, we have all seen how well that exper­i­ment worked out for the coun­try. Rank and file mem­bers of the force con­tin­ue to oper­ate in a vac­u­um with mar­gin­al to zero sup­port from their boss­es with­in the high com­mand and the polit­i­cal direc­torate, the crime sit­u­a­tion will not improve untill all are on board the same train head­ing in the same anti-crime direc­tion. In the mean­time Ellington con­tin­ues to make an ass of him­self . It just goes to show that hav­ing a degree or two or three does not make one smart.

mike beck­les.

have your say.

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Threats Against Jamaican Cops:

The Police High Command in Jamaica has raised the threat lev­el against its mem­bers to extreme, in the Saint Catherine, north , south and the Clarendon Divisions, this means that as far as they are con­cerned, offi­cers who live and work in those Divisions and their fam­i­lies , as well as oth­er police per­son­nel pass­ing through , doing busi­ness ‚or vis­it­ing those divi­sions are also under the threat of death.

Criminals in any soci­ety who threat­en the lives of agents of the state do so because they are embold­ened because of one rea­son or anoth­er. There are only a few states in the world that would bow to threats from domes­tic ter­ror­ists, or are ill-equipped to han­dle low-lev­el punks with a few guns and big egos. The secu­ri­ty forces last May forced into a cor­ner and with no help from the polit­i­cal direc­torate, demon­strat­ed unequiv­o­cal­ly that they were capa­ble and had the will to erad­i­cate any domes­tic threat posed by local punks.

So then , why am I writ­ing a blog on this sub­ject? This seem like a reg­u­lar cut and dry issue for any democ­ra­cy , crim­i­nals hav­ing the temer­i­ty to threat­en the state are exter­mi­nat­ed right? Not so fast my dear friends, I do agree that would be the way things gets done in any oth­er coun­try in the world , cap­i­tal­ist or com­mu­nist, dic­ta­tor­ship, or democ­ra­cy. Just recent­ly the Government of Trinidad and Tobago insti­tut­ed a State of Emergency, not a (lim­it­ed state of emer­gency as was the case in Jamaica). The Trinidadian Government resolved to do what it took to give the nec­es­sary tools to its secu­ri­ty forces to flush out and erad­i­cate home-grown ter­ror­ists. They are well aware that left unchecked, crim­i­nals will do what we allow them to do, the Universe does not like a vacuum.

Women demand­ing that mur­der accused Adija Palmer, aka Vybz Kartel be freed from custody

http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​M​o​r​e​-​t​r​o​u​b​l​e​-​f​o​r​-​K​a​r​t​e​l​_​9​8​9​4​526

So why is this not the case in Jamaica? It seem like a nice place down there, lots of sun, fun, beach­es, it’s like, Jamaica no prob­lem right?.….….….….….….….….…..RIGHT.….?????

Well not exact­ly , you can’t buy a prod­uct based on the pack­ag­ing alone, beau­ti­ful wrap­per , shit­ty prod­uct, all of the above is true except the no prob­lem part. Our pol­i­tics is con­trolled by peo­ple who are less than hon­est, as is true in most nations with a major­i­ty black pop­u­la­tion it does seem that Jamaica is stuck with below mediocre polit­i­cal lead­ers who are hell-bent on fat­ten­ing them­selves and their cronies at the expense of the nation, this has gone on for decades. Both Political par­ties are aligned to crim­i­nal gangs and the lead­ers and oth­er oper­a­tives with­in each par­ty are deeply enmeshed with crim­i­nals. On both sides of the polit­i­cal divide Jamaica’s politi­cians are affil­i­at­ed with criminals .

It is of the gravest con­se­quence when the Prime Minister refus­es to hon­or an extra­di­tion treaty untill he was forced to , a treaty that would see a con­fessed gun-run­ner and drug deal­er get his just due.

It is of the gravest con­se­quence when the leader of the oppo­si­tion and his entire par­ty refused to vote to give the secu­ri­ty forces more spe­cial pow­ers even for a lim­it­ed time ‚which would see them con­sol­i­date the gains they made when they rout­ed the afore­men­tioned gun-run­ning , drug deal­er from his redoubt.

The Governing par­ty refused to let a crim­i­nal get extra­dit­ed . the oppo­si­tion pre­vent­ed the secu­ri­ty forces from going into their enclaves where they have twen­ty times the crim­i­nals in their camp. Both Political par­ties are crim­i­nal gangs, the police and Military are oper­at­ing in a vac­u­um unable to get the req­ui­site sup­port to effec­tive­ly erad­i­cate crim­i­nal terrorists.

So the answer to the ques­tion of why is this not an easy thing to do is sim­ple. Criminal polit­i­cal leaders. 

Pictures cour­tesy of Google

Pictured above are dif­fer­ent seg­ment of crowds of peo­ple from west­ern Kingston demon­strat­ing against the impend­ing extra­di­tion of con­fessed gun-run­ner and drug deal­er Christopher dudus Coke, now in US custody.

Jamaica’s cur­rent Prime Minister Orett Bruce Golding is now in the final stages of step­ping down from office,or so he says, even before com­plet­ing a full term. Golding is severe­ly dam­aged from his han­dling of an extra­di­tion request made by the United States Government for Christopher Dudus Coke the pre­em­i­nent enforcer of the for­mer so-called moth­er of all Garrison com­mu­ni­ties in Jamaica, Tivoli Gardens, the cen­ter of labor par­ty pol­i­tics and the nerve cen­ter of Golding’s con­stituen­cy of west­ern Kingston. Coke is the adopt­ed son of Lester Lloyd Coke aka (Jim Brown) now deceased co-founder of the noto­ri­ous show­er posse , so named for show­er­ing their ene­mies with bul­lets, Jim Brown was burned alive in a Kingston prison cell as he await­ed extra­di­tion to the United States on crim­i­nal charges. He nev­er got to tes­ti­fy, and no one was ever held respon­si­ble for his death, despite the fact that he was in a prison and it must be fair­ly rou­tine to deter­mine who had access to his cell and when, some­one want­ed him dead before he could tes­ti­fy in America and they made sure of it.

Christopher coke in the cus­tody of US author­i­ties and his late father Lester Lloyd Coke in Jamaican police custody.

Many years ago as I served in the JCF I felt that if I worked hard and was able to take as many crim­i­nals off the streets as I could, I would be able to pos­i­tive­ly change my coun­try, I real­ly felt that it was up to the police to effect change in the cul­ture of per­va­sive crim­i­nal­i­ty that is at the core of the Jamaican psy­che. As a result I worked incred­i­bly hard to bring san­i­ty to the streets of Grant’s Pen, Red Hills road, Barbican and all places in between, some­times we passed on our days off, not because we weren’t tired but because we knew there was work to be done and we were the only ones that were going to get it done.

Officers Like Altamont (par­ra) Campbell , Now dis­missed Inspector Dadrick Henry, Cornwall Bigga Ford and a host of oth­er no-non­sense cops, all of whom were old­er men than me, were cops I looked up to. They made sure peo­ple could walk the streets of Saint Andrew North we were not going to have any dons in our sphere of influ­ence, when I exit­ed the Department in 1991 I nev­er had the ben­e­fit of hav­ing been issued a bul­let proof vest, we made pen­nies for our effort, but we made damn sure that crim­i­nals got their just deserts. Most times I did not take admin­is­tra­tive leave, an enti­tle­ment, many times cer­tain dead-wood cops would ask us why we did not take sick leave which the depart­ment allowed with pay, my posi­tion then, as it is now own­ing my own busi­ness and work­ing for myself is ” I am not sick”.

As the years went by I start­ed real­iz­ing that despite the work we were putting in it seemed crime was get­ting worse nation­al­ly, I per­son­al­ly start­ed tak­ing a seri­ous eval­u­a­to­ry look at what we were sup­posed to be accom­plish­ing. Having almost a decade of expe­ri­ence of the grit­ty nas­ti­ness the polit­i­cal choke hold pol­i­tics has on law enforce­ment in our coun­try I had by that time seen most of the polit­i­cal play­ers at their worst and had tak­en the informed deci­sion they were not on the side of Jamaica. I real­ized it was not con­fined to just the politi­cians we love to hate, but encom­passed all sec­tors of nation­al life. From Judges to tri­al lawyers, from Court staff, to Media, from Academia to the gar­risons it became abun­dant­ly clear that the goal we had as crime fight­ers in see­ing our coun­try adhere to the rule of law was by and large con­fined to us , a spat­ter­ing of poor peo­ple in the inner cities, rur­al folks, and some busi­ness people.

It became clear­er as time went by we were set up as fall guys for the fail­ings of the polit­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al élite, this epiphany was not con­fined to me, the extreme­ly high attri­tion rate from the JCF is ade­quate tes­ti­mo­ny to that fact. Many argue that some who enter the JCF do so sole­ly for the pay­check this is undoubt­ed­ly true,but on the flip-side that pay check is not enough to keep most mem­bers inter­est­ed once they real­ize what they are up against.

It became more and more evi­dent when crim­i­nals who had com­mit­ted the most seri­ous crimes, and tak­en the most elab­o­rate mea­sures to avoid detec­tion and appre­hen­sion were rou­tine­ly returned to the streets by Judges who smiled and greet­ed their defense lawyer friends as they stood in court usu­al­ly with one foot, on the floor and one on the bench. As Investigating Officers we watched help­less­ly as dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers we had bust­ed our ass­es to remove from the streets laughed at us as they are rou­tine­ly grant­ed bail for the most pal­try sums of mon­ey. This cre­at­ed a don’t care atti­tude amongst cer­tain offi­cers, a crim­i­nal atti­tude in oth­ers and drove oth­ers from the depart­ment. When law enforce­ment feel that their work is being sab­o­taged by those who should be sup­port­ing the rule of law the end result is that the tail start wag­ging the dog, the crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica did not devel­op because of the police. Incompetent some may be ‚but they can do the job. The fact is there is no nation­al con­sen­sus by rel­e­vant stake hold­ers to coa­lesce around a pol­i­cy of intol­er­ance to crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. Inevitably what we end­ed up with is a coa­lesc­ing by some of the same stake­hold­ers, join­ing the ranks of the crim­i­nal world, those who do not active­ly engage and ben­e­fit finan­cial­ly, give aid and com­fort to them, say hel­lo to the, Media, Judiciary crim­i­nal rights, and legal fraternities.

Criminals in Jamaica are no dif­fer­ent than crim­i­nals any­where else in the world, They watch trends , they look for weak­ness of resolve, and they know who to look to for sup­port. In most coun­tries in the civ­i­lized world they stay below the radar as much as pos­si­ble, they under­stand that well think­ing cit­i­zens are watch­ing, will­ing to do what it takes to remove them and the can­cer­ous scourge they per­pet­u­ate on oth­ers who want a life free from crime. Not so in Jamaica , as is evi­dent in some of the images above the reverse is true, the worst mur­der­ers and scum of the earth are cel­e­brat­ed, revered ‚and idol­ized, make no mis­take about it ‚it may seem as if this is only true of the poor­er class on the streets, think again , this crim­i­nal cod­dling runs deep­er than meets the eyes.

That my friends is the rea­son crim­i­nals can brazen­ly threat­en the lives of law enforce­ment offi­cers with impuni­ty. At every lev­el the sup­port for crim­i­nals is stun­ning ‚one would imag­ine that poor peo­ple in depressed areas would be sus­cep­ti­ble to being manip­u­lat­ed by those who wield influ­ence, hand out token treats and of whom they are afraid.

What is stun­ning is the lev­el of sup­port that obtains for crim­i­nals from those who prac­tice law, those who sit in judge­ment, those who are sup­posed to report the news, and many oth­er sec­tors of nation­al life. This whole notion of “Jamaica no prob­lem” is a farce which needs to be exposed. There are some who feel it is not right to wash one’s dirty linen in pub­lic, to them I say sweep­ing the house and stor­ing the dirt under the rug still results in a dirty house. As the Coke Extradition have exposed, there is a deficit of trust as it relates to the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship with­in the coun­try. They can­not even be count­ed on to hon­or International agree­ments as it relates to crim­i­nals. Others can­not be trust­ed not to leak crit­i­cal nation­al secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion to com­mon crim­i­nals, this runs the length and breadth of the polit­i­cal food-chain. What is most embar­rass­ing is that one par­ty act­ing in uni­son , vot­ed down a mea­sure that would allow the coun­try’s secu­ri­ty forces a lit­tle time and space to effec­tive­ly remove crim­i­nals from the equation.

That my friends is the most shock­ing, most un-Jamaican,most trea­so­nous of actions any indi­vid­ual or par­ty could take against Jamaica. Interestingly Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller and her cronies are run­ning around Jamaica with the same band of crim­i­nal sup­port­ing punks , again ask­ing for anoth­er chance to raid the bar­ren nation­al cof­fers,. Have they no shame ? No! Have the peo­ple no sense of what’s right for them ? No !

Peter Phillips National Security Minister under the PNP Administration of Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller did not trust Miller the Prime Minister, nor any of the jok­ers that made up her cab­i­net, with keep­ing state secrets, when he signed the Memorandums of under­stand­ing with the American Government. This spoke vol­umes of the lack of con­fi­dence Phillips had in any­one in the Government, much less the then oppo­si­tion not to reveal to dan­ger­ous trans-nation­al crim­i­nals that the JCF and oth­ers were lis­ten­ing in on their phone con­ver­sa­tions. Former Police Commissioner Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin revealed that he briefed Prime Minister Golding and National Security Minister Dwight Nelson at Vale Royal, Official res­i­dence of the Prime Minister on the Extradition request the United States made for Christopher Coke, he con­tend­ed it took him less than 10 min­utes to get back to his Office at 103 Old Hope Road, and by the time he got to his office it was clear to him that Coke had been warned that the Americans want­ed him. Remember the only two peo­ple he briefed was the Prime Minister, and National Security Minister of the country.

It can be under­stood when a down trod­den por­tion of any pop­u­la­tion cheer for the bad guy, the one that got away, the one who beat what they per­ceive to be an oppres­sive sys­tem. This is noth­ing new , nei­ther is it con­fined to Geography or Generation. It is anoth­er thing when those who should know bet­ter, those tasked with being keep­ers of the gate , turn around and betray the trust we place in them.

I am no longer con­fi­dent the change we seek can come from with­in. it is becom­ing appar­ent that irre­spec­tive of who gets placed in lead­er­ship, it will be tan­ta­mount to noth­ing more than a re-arrang­ing of the deck-chairs, as the Titanic sinks.

mike beck­les:

have your say:

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Stupid Cops:

Police at theSpanish Town sta­tion were kept out of their post for more than an hour yes­ter­day after a hand­cuffed man armed with a piece of bro­ken glass threat­ened to hurt any­one who dared approach him. The inci­dent unfold­ed about 6 p.m., short­ly after he was hand­cuffed and tak­en to the sta­tion for breach­es of the Road Traffic Act. It is unclear what hap­pened next but police sources said the man got into a rage after been there for a while. He report­ed­ly smashed a glass in a sec­tion of the sta­tion in anger. Police per­son­nel stood by and looked on in amaze­ment as the man who armed him­self with a piece of bro­ken glass kept the offi­cers away with his threats. A weh yuh a go? Mi know sey yuh a bad police but right now my head no good,” he said, while wav­ing the bro­ken glass men­ac­ing­ly at a police­man while still hand­cuffed ‚coer­cion and plead­ing. One hour lat­er, after much coer­cion and plead­ing, the police final­ly gained entry to the sta­tion but not before arm­ing them­selves with riot shields. By that time, the police said the man had smashed sev­er­al glass doors and there was blood splat­tered all over the floor. The man, in the mean­time, had retreat­ed to a near­by room where he locked him­self inside. He was sub­se­quent­ly tak­en from the room, but even while in the police vehi­cle he remained defi­ant. “Mi nah move a wah unnu a deal wid, in yah,” he said, while lying in the vehi­cle. Many per­sons who con­verged start­ed to mock the police, “A so much a dem and dem can’t deal with the one man? Mi sure sey him no mad. It real­ly wicked pon dem still,” a woman said. The man was even­tu­al­ly tak­en to the Spanish Town Hospital where he was seen bleed­ing pro­fuse­ly. Investigations have been launched with a view of charg­ing him with the dam­age to the Government’s property.(Jamaicastar.com)

One won­ders just how stu­pid these cops are? I am speech­less at the total inep­ti­tude of these peo­ple who pass them­selves off as cops, no won­der they get no respect. This is absolute­ly egre­gious, I mean there are no words to describe how stu­pid these cops are. A pris­on­er cuffed with hands in front can grab a weapon and kill as many peo­ple as the rounds in the weapon allows, even with hands cuffed behind some­one hell-bent on doing harm can inflict seri­ous harm if they man­age to get their hands on a weapon.

It fol­lows there­fore that all pris­on­ers must be hand­cuffed and mon­i­tored close­ly untill he or she is placed into the safe­ty of a cell. The Jamaica Constabulary Force through its mem­bers con­tin­ue to arrest peo­ple with­out hand cuff­ing them , pris­on­er and cop walk­ing side by side hands swing­ing, on the rare occa­sion they do cuff an arrestee, they cuff their hands in front . All of this can be avoid­ed if cops act pro­fes­sion­al­ly by cuff­ing all arrest­ed per­sons with their hands behind them, all Police Departments fol­low these sim­ple safe­ty pro­ce­dures, only in Jamaica does unpro­fes­sion­al cops refuse to fol­low sim­ple safe­ty guide­lines .Will this police depart­ment ever learn anything?

Wow!!

mike:

by

Where Is Roshane Mckenzie?

It’s easy to ignore a killing in Jamaica, after all we are talk­ing about Jamaica, that’s what Jamaicans do , we kill each other.

Ever so often how­ev­er, we are gripped with dis­gust at a killing that seem dif­fer­ent than the oth­ers. One that tears at our being , with ever fibre of our soul aching, demand­ing , and crav­ing for a chance to get our hands on the per­pe­tra­tors . Whether it’s the shoot­ing of Khajeel Mais who was just rid­ing in a cab ‚or the lit­tle girl who was killed off Maxfield avenue a cou­ple of years ago burned to a crisp while those who set fire to the house stood guard out­side with machine guns, so no one could escape the flames.

Or whether it is the case of the two women who were behead­ed in Lauriston St Catherine, and their heads dumped into the Rio Cobre riv­er. There are more instances of these egre­gious killings than we care to remem­ber or detail, sor­did as they were we for­get them at our per­il. Once again we hear of the dis­ap­pear­ance of a 20-year-old young man who dis­ap­peared in broad day­light in the Clarendon cap­i­tal of May Pen.

shane roshane mckenzie

Shane ‘Roshane’ McKenzie often trav­elled to May Pen in Clarendon with­out any prob­lems, but since he left his home at Paisley Avenue in the parish to go to May Pen on Monday, August 29, he has not been seen or heard from. McKenzie, 20, arrived in May Pen approx­i­mate­ly 10 a.m. that day, accom­pa­nied by his younger sis­ter. The two went into a bank to pay school fees, but on see­ing the long queues inside, McKenzie left his sis­ter to pay the fees and went near­by to pur­chase a pair of shoes and a cable for his lap­top. McKenzie was then report­ed­ly accost­ed by five men, who forced him on to Stork Street, en route to Duke Street. He has­n’t been seen since. The dis­ap­pear­ance of McKenzie, a past stu­dent of the Bustamante High School, has left his fam­i­ly in shock, fear, and with a lot of un-answered ques­tions. Mary Jane, McKenzie’s moth­er, believes her son is dead. “Me know me son, him not stay­ing out for an entire day and me don’t hear from him, much less a whole week,” she said “A kid­nap them kid­nap me son and car­ry him go kill him. Him dead, me sure of that now. You kill him already, so give me his body, let me bury him,” she said. The woman said that when the younger child returned home with­out Roshane, she became con­cerned and began to call his cell­phone, which rang with­out answer “How can you take away a man right under the clock, where two cam­eras are and nobody can’t tell me where Roshane is?” she asked. The dis­traught moth­er said that the May Pen police were inves­ti­gat­ing McKenzie’s dis­ap­pear­ance, but had not made any sig­nif­i­cant break­through in the case. The fam­i­ly remains in con­stant fear. If them (killers) can take away Roshane right under the clock, can you imag­ine what them would come over here and do to us?” said Roshane’s moth­er. (cour­tesy jamaica glean​er​.com)

You may ask “what is the dif­fer­ence with this boy’s dis­ap­pear­ance? peo­ple dis­ap­pear and die every day. Those are legit­i­mate argu­ments to make , but read­ing the moth­er’s com­ments changes things for me. During my years a s a police offi­cer , it was sto­ries like these that kept me work­ing when some of my col­leagues gave up , or got tired. It was sto­ries like these that made me work unflinch­ing­ly and tire­less­ly to the point of exhaus­tion, as a twen­ty some­thing year old cop who got so exhaust­ed my cof­fee cup would shake in my hand from total exhaus­tion on occasions.

No greater charge could any­one be giv­en than to bring the killer of anoth­er human being to justice. 

Surely some­one saw, they were able to state that he was abduct­ed by five men, some­one saw those five men, have the police attempt­ed to speak to these peo­ple who stat­ed that they saw these five men, ? have they sought to get the tapes from the cam­eras the moth­er alleged to be in that vicin­i­ty. Why were there no police offi­cers on foot and in plain clothes in a bustling town like May Pen after 10 in the morn­ing? This is not the first time that a major crime has been com­mit­ted in that town in broad day­light , with dire consequences.

Not too long ago there was a large armed rob­bery with peo­ple shot , as is cus­tom­ary there were no police around. This leads me to ask ” where are the police offi­cers”? What are the offi­cers doing at the sta­tion house at 10 in the morn­ing, and not on the beat look­ing out for the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of the peo­ple who pay their salaries. I am absolute­ly dis­gust­ed by the police who seem to be worse than mall-cops at doing their jobs.Where is the proac­tive approach that is need­ed to ensure crimes like these are non-exis­tent or kept to a bare minimum..

Without know­ing the full facts as it regards the absence of cops, and any logis­ti­cal inad­e­qua­cies of the May Pen Police, we are still com­fort­able with stat­ing that irre­spec­tive of the short­age of per­son­nel there is sim­ply no excuse for the mains strip of a town like May Pen not to have uni­formed offi­cers patrolling , as well as plain clothes cops min­gling with the crowds.

I hope that this young man is alive, I feel the pain of this moth­er, I empathize with the sense of help­less­ness she is feel­ing in not know­ing for cer­tain if her child is dead or alive. And assum­ing as she has, that he is dead she does not even have a body. How ago­niz­ing it must be for this moth­er and the fam­i­ly of Roshane Mckenzie. Stating that she knows he is dead seem to be a cop­ing mech­a­nism for her. One can imag­ine that while she states he is dead, she still looks and lis­tens as the father of the prodi­gal son did, hop­ing Roshane will return home to her.

One won­ders where are those who say the care about the rights of the innocent,and the deprived and the dis­pos­sessed? No greater right has any­one , than the right to life.

I implore the May Pen Police to get their act togeth­er and find out where this young man is and if he was killed bring swift jus­tice to his killers.

mike beck­les;

have your say. 

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Police Federation Chariman Steps Down:

We note with inter­est, recent devel­op­ments regard­ing the sud­den res­ig­na­tion of sergeant Raymond Wilson as police fed­er­a­tion chairman.

Wilson has been a vocal advo­cate for the cause of rank and file of the JCF, he was recent­ly exposed to with­er­ing and sus­tained attack from mem­bers of the JLP, their affil­i­ates and elit­ists in Jamaican soci­ety and those liv­ing in the dias­po­ra. This arose from a speech he gave in which he blast­ed the JLP Administration of Bruce Golding as behold­en to crim­i­nals at the expense of mem­bers of the force.

Raymond Wilson

We chose to stand with Wilson dur­ing that assault , we stead­fast­ly made known our sup­port for him on the Gleaner’s web­site, as well as oth­er blog sites in which the sub­ject was broached. At the time we felt that Wilson spoke from his heart and spoke pas­sion­ate­ly as a Jamaican who loved his coun­try. We believed he loved his coun­try and would have made the same state­ments if the oth­er par­ty was in government.

There are oth­ers whom have inti­mat­ed oth­er­wise, infer­ring a raft of rea­sons from polit­i­cal to self-serv­ing. We have no rea­son up to this point in time to believe any­thing oth­er than what we believed initially.

In the inter­im we are left won­der­ing what the real rea­sons are behind Wilson’s sud­den and uncer­mi­nous depar­ture as chair­man of the police fed­er­a­tion. And in his stead a Constable installed at the helm of this very impor­tant arm of the JCF. We are in no way impugn­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of this constable .

What we do wor­ry about is the caste sys­tem in Jamaica, as well as the caste rank­ing sys­tem in the JCF.

One won­ders if they attacked and assailed Wilson a sergeant with that amount of feroc­i­ty what will they do to a con­sta­ble three ranks beneath his?

The JCF is going through a trans­for­ma­tion, cor­rect­ly so, the Federation needs to be vig­i­lant ‚vocal,and in tune with the needs of rank and file members.

We will with­hold judge­ment on the ascen­den­cy of this con­sta­ble and what it may mean for the mem­bers of the JCF.

mike beck­les:

have your say:

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Smart Move Dudus:

Christopher (dudus) Coke has fig­ured out what his legions of fans and patrons still haven’t, and may nev­er fig­ure out . That is, our lit­tle pond, Jamaica land we love, is just that , a lit­tle pond, we are all lit­tle fish in a great big Ocean, answer­able to one pow­er, wel­come to glob­al­iza­tion and a new world order.

He cor­rect­ly adopt­ed the most sane and plau­si­ble course of action opened to him under the cir­cum­stances, tak­ing a plea. After all, there are those who argued that he is a smart man, not sure about pre­vi­ous actions on his part , but this guilty plea tend to indi­cate that he is not stu­pid. There have been a lot of talk about Lawyers and what they are able to do , the argu­ments they are able to make and what must hap­pen as a result of what high­ly paid lawyers can get done. I get that , with­out mon­ey if one is caught up in the sys­tem you are as good as dead. Even with mon­ey in the United States, one is guar­an­teed grand­stand­ing lawyers mak­ing loud argu­ments in the court of pub­lic opin­ion for pub­lic con­sump­tion and not much more. Those pro­nounce­ments are loud­er depend­ing on the finan­cial worth of the client, those grand com­ments are geared toward fleec­ing their high-pro­file clients of all the cash they can . America’s Justice sys­tem is one of laws , no one cares about your stand­ing in soci­ety, if any­thing that may actu­al­ly work against one who has promi­nence. Grandstanding lawyers know bet­ter than enter court rooms with arro­gance , and self-impor­tance. I recall Mark Myrie’s (buju) case and one News paper crow­ing about Myrie’s lawyer cry­ing about the fact that Myries was con­vict­ed. As I com­ment­ed then, that was great the­atre and noth­ing more on the part of Buju’s lawyer.

This leads us to the real rea­son I am writ­ing this blog.download (13)

Christopher(dudus) Coke

It is a seri­ous indict­ment and a damn shame that the America many love to hate, is the coun­try that is always clean­ing up Jamaica’s mess. Christopher Coke came to promi­nence dur­ing the 1990’s after the arrest and sub­se­quent death of his father Lester Lloyd Coke. Matter will occu­py any space left unfilled, the Universe does not like a vac­u­um. Coke sim­ply filled a vac­u­um, left by incom­pe­tence, cor­rup­tion, pol­i­tics, and impo­tence. Christopher Coke , his father, and oth­ers before them, were allowed to oper­ate and flour­ish in the vac­u­um left in Jamaica by impo­tent Law Enforcement and cor­rupt dirty crim­i­nal Politicians. despite their mete­oric ascen­den­cy in the lit­tle pond, they were brought down by glob­al­iza­tion, mak­ing them vic­tims of the sys­tem as all oth­er Jamaicans have been.

I would imag­ine there are quite a few peo­ple who are a lit­tle wor­ried at these new devel­op­ments , the truth is, a brave yet fed-up police offi­cer is now a true Jamaican hero, we must acknowl­edge Dr. Peter Phillips for sign­ing the mem­o­ran­dums of under­stand­ing with the Americans a move that made all of this pos­si­ble. Phillips took it onto him­self to do this , a move that has earned him the ven­om of par­ti­sans and crim­i­nals in Jamaica, (not sure if there is a dif­fer­ence between the two) .

Phillips did not trust to inform the Prime Minister under whom he served of his inten­tion to sign the MOU’S , this my fel­low Jamaicans, is rather telling ‚and should be explored. What is the rea­son behind Peter Phillips’ deci­sion not to inform the cab­i­net of which he was a part , or then Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

Whatever the rea­son for Phillips’ decision,we must accept that Jamaica was well served by the actions of the Police Officer and Phillips whether or not we agree with the path they chose to take to get the result they accom­plished. I am sick­ened that after Lester Lloyd Coke was arrest­ed Tivoli gar­dens was allowed to con­tin­ue to devel­op into a state with­in a state.

The Police depart­ment have done no inves­ti­ga­tions into what was com­mon knowl­edge of gun-run­ning ‚drug deal­ing, extor­tion , mur­der for hire, weapons for hire, and a pletho­ra of oth­er seri­ous crim­i­nal and ter­ror­is­tic activ­i­ties in that enclave. These vices are not con­fined to Tivoli Gardens , but as one past Police Commissioner labelled that com­mu­ni­ty quote “the moth­er of all gar­risons” Tivoli took the cake in terms of exclu­sion. When we speak of zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sion the for­mer read­out of the Cokes, was the stan­dard by which oth­er gar­risons were judged. There were, and still are crimes and acts of ter­ror with­in oth­er gar­risons, but in terms of the order of how things gets done Tivoli gar­dens was the template.

Many Jamaicans are still strug­gling to com­pre­hend how so many peo­ple could have come out and demon­strat­ed their undy­ing loy­al­ty to Dudus Coke, they fail to grasp the order of how things was in Tivoli Gardens. Those com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers were nev­er answer­able to the Jamaican state, they lived accord­ing to the order of a long line of com­mu­ni­ty thugs,culminating in Dudus Coke. This com­mu­ni­ty, built by Labor was the brain-child of Edward Phillip George Seaga, who ran that con­stituen­cy as his pri­vate fief­dom, with the enforcers admin­is­ter­ing day-to-day run­ning of the con­stituen­cy . All of the activ­i­ties of Tivoli has been divorced from the activ­i­ties of the Jamaican state, until it’s annex­a­tion last May.

On these posts we dai­ly ask Jamaicans to think for them­selves and look at the qual­i­ty of the peo­ple they are elect­ing to lead them, as those deci­sions have seri­ous con­se­quences for them and their chil­dren for gen­er­a­tions to come. We sug­gest that the peo­ple demand con­sti­tu­tion­al reform, reform that will tar­get them for human and civ­il rights , safe­ty and secu­ri­ty and the abil­i­ty for them to be guar­an­teed their God-giv­en right to be all they can be in a soci­ety free from crime and terror.

I post for you com­ments from a few Jamaicans after learn­ing of Coke’s guilty plea.

Shortly after learn­ing that Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke was ready to plead guilty in a United States court, for­mer National Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips char­ac­terised it as a vic­to­ry for Jamaica against transat­lantic crim­i­nal­i­ty. This rep­re­sents a suc­cess­ful out­come in the spe­cif­ic plea arrange­ments and, in gen­er­al, will serve to assist Jamaica in chart­ing the way for­ward … . We now have to await the out­come of the plea arrangements.”

Thank you Peter Phillips , I do not agree with your pol­i­tics, how­ev­er on the course of actions you took regard­ing the MOU’s , I com­mend you for doing some­thing about this dis­grace­ful betray­al to our nation­al sur­vival, and our way of life.

For Jamaica Labour Party Senator Tom Tavares-Finson, who as an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ed Coke dur­ing the extra­di­tion hear­ing at Up Park Camp, St Andrew, in June last year, the deci­sion to cop a plea is like­ly to be the cor­rect one.I knew of the devel­op­ments and was aware that they were final­is­ing some arrange­ments … after some stren­u­ous con­sul­ta­tions. The lawyers on the team who have an under­stand­ing of the sys­tem as well as the clien­t’s (Coke) men­tal state would be in a posi­tion to make a sen­si­ble decision

Really Tom? this new posi­tion does not jive with your for­mer rhetoric , but you are a lawyer and politi­co I under­stand how you could have changed your narrative.

Peter Bunting, who now han­dles the secu­ri­ty port­fo­lio for the Opposition, said the lat­est devel­op­ments were hard­ly sur­pris­ing. “Once Mr Coke’s request to reject wire­tap­ping evi­dence into evi­dence was turned down by the court, there would have been lit­tle chance of him get­ting away as the evi­dence, cou­pled with that of the wit­ness coöper­a­tion, has been so strong.” this lat­est devel­op­ment should have impli­ca­tions for oth­ers in Coke’s crim­i­nal organisation.

Veteran politi­cian K.D. Knight, the attor­ney who rep­re­sent­ed the People’s National Party at the Manatt-Dudus com­mis­sion of enquiry, said it was clear that Coke had tak­en this course after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and deter­min­ing that this would get him the low­est pos­si­ble sentence. 

These two com­ments are the two that nau­se­at­ed me, what damn Cowards !

Both of these clowns have had oppor­tu­ni­ties over the last 181⁄2 years to do some­thing about crime and ter­ror in Jamaica . They have stood by and watched this crim­i­nal empire devel­op in Tivoli Gardens a labor gar­ri­son ‚and in many oth­er com­mu­ni­ties gen­tri­fied with pnp sup­port­ers. At every turn these two and their entire par­ty has vot­ed down the rule of law, unable to sup­port the police, or allow­ing the depart­ment to change to one that is com­pe­tent and pro­fes­sion­al in the per­for­mance of its duties. they have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sided with crim­i­nal rights groups against Jamaica’s secu­ri­ty forces, repeat­ing the same tor­tured repug­nant lie that giv­ing police more pow­er to do their jobs will lead to police abuse.

My posi­tion is this, even if the afore­men­tioned was true, I would still sup­port moves to empow­er police over crim­i­nals , then deal with any trans­gres­sions on their part as they arise.  Jamaica’s police depart­ment is prob­a­bly the most scru­ti­nized police depart­ment in the world. The par­ty of Bunting and show-boat­ing Knight, has nev­er seen a crim­i­nal they did not like.

The bot­tom line is that we Jamaicans will have a hard time inte­grat­ing into the promis­es of this new cen­tu­ry, we will also have a hard­er than nec­es­sary time nav­i­gat­ing the quick-sands of this new fron­tier . We con­tin­ue to hold onto failed strate­gies and social norms of the past, that have failed over and over again. We con­tin­ue to look to our colo­nial past for guid­ance , lead­er­ship, and sal­va­tion, not under­stand­ing that the future is in edu­ca­tion, infor­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies, and man­u­fac­tur­ing to help solve the prob­lems that will be part of the land­scape going for­ward. Our peo­ple are heav­i­ly invest­ed in the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of dance-hall disc-jock­eys , ath­letes, and peo­ple with Phd’s, ignor­ing at their own per­il the lit­tle farmer that toils to pro­duce life sus­tain­ing food, We dis­re­spect the guy that col­lects the garbage, but rev­er­ences politi­cians that are them­selves no more than garbage by their own actions.

Let this be a les­son to all who aspire to don-ship, let all who encour­age oth­ers to com­mit crimes in order that they may hold onto state pow­er, as I have stat­ed before , the rules are chang­ing , the world is get­ting small­er , crim­i­nal­i­ty will no longer stand.

mike beck­les:

have your say:

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Time To Get It Together:

POLICE have col­lared one man whom they believe can aid their inves­ti­ga­tions into yes­ter­day’s triple mur­der in Frankfield, Clarendon.His iden­ti­ty is being with­held pend­ing fur­ther investigations.

Investigators said that the man was held for sev­er­al hours after the body of 35-year-old Rolando Thomas, oth­er­wise called ‘Dadda’; Kenroy Carty, 17, also called ‘Notchy’; and Ricardo Fowler, 22, also called ‘Lance’, were found with mul­ti­ple chop wounds in a house in the quite community.

Investigators remain guard­ed about a pos­si­ble motive.

Residents have said that the killing was an act of reprisal for a recent wound­ing inci­dent in the area.

Police are also appeal­ing to any­one with infor­ma­tion about any oth­er person/​s who may have con­tributed to these mur­ders to con­tact the May Pen Police at 986‑2208, Frankfield Police at 904‑4507, Crime Stop at 311, Kingfish at 811, police 119 emer­gency num­ber or the near­est police stationRead more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​M​a​n​-​h​e​l​d​-​f​o​r​-​g​r​u​e​s​o​m​e​-​t​r​i​p​l​e​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​#​i​x​z​z​1​V​I​j​0​9​dpL

Dathan Henry you have always been a com­pe­tent Police Officer.This was evi­dent when we served togeth­er back in the ear­ly 1990’s . Now Superintendent in charge of the Parish of Clarendon if my mem­o­ry serves me cor­rect­ly .I do not pro­pose to tell you how to do your job my friend , but here’s a quick piece of advice , you real­ly have to move away from ask­ing cit­i­zens to come for­ward , this may not hap­pen , as a result a lot of mul­ti­ple mur­der­ers are walk­ing around in Jamaica with­out ever hav­ing to wor­ry about being held accountable.

I assume the rea­son this per­son was held in the first place was based on infor­ma­tion received, it is now up to you to take the clothes he is wear­ing, get a war­rant to vis­it his home look for clothes and shoes with pos­si­ble blood stains, take his machetes if he has any, tech­nol­o­gy today can detect mere traces of blood , even if an attempt has been made to wash away evidence.

You must use sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to nail down con­vic­tions, (remem­ber the rules of evi­dence, sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence is that which can­not rea­son­ably be challenged).Any eye­wit­ness evi­dence will then be icing on the cake.

Jamaica’s courts are prob­a­bly amongst /​if not the most lib­er­al in the world, as such you must present con­clu­sive evi­dence to gain a con­vic­tion, or they will be all to hap­py to throw out the evi­dence and set crim­i­nals free.

Don’t wor­ry ‚once you nail one with con­clu­sive proof, he will be all to hap­py to fin­ger the oth­er par­tic­i­pants. Then again even if you gain a con­vic­tion they prob­a­bly will be giv­en probation.

Ps: Note the con­tin­ued trend of mur­der­ers killing their vic­tims by oth­er means oth­er than shoot­ing . I point­ed to this in anoth­er blog, I hope the police is tak­ing a seri­ous look at my obser­va­tions, I the­o­rize that with the top­pling of a cer­tain empire , the flow of ammu­ni­tion have been seri­ous­ly dis­rupt­ed . I sug­gest the police keep plug­ging that dyke so that there will be no widen­ing of that breach, whilst at the same time devel­op­ing ways to deal with this new trend.

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IT’S SOMETIMES OK TO COPY:

Traffic fines mounting

Motorists fork out $561m, $2b still unpaid​.Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​a​u​t​o​/​T​r​a​f​f​i​c​-​f​i​n​e​s​-​m​o​u​n​t​i​n​g​#​i​x​z​z​1​V​C​r​t​K​GEa

This sto­ry makes one won­der how stu­pid Authorities in Jamaica real­ly are . I urge sub­scribers to these blogs to read this sto­ry which appeared in the Jamaica Observer , link is sup­plied above.

Errant motorists have paid more than half-bil­lion dol­lars in puni­tive traf­fic fines over the past three years, as author­i­ties fought a seem­ing­ly los­ing bat­tle against indis­ci­pline on Jamaican roads. St James pulled in the lion’s share of traf­fic fines out­side the Corporate Area, with approx­i­mate­ly $22 mil­lion in 2010 alone. Motorists paid approx­i­mate­ly $84 mil­lion in traf­fic fines to the Corporate Area Traffic Court over the same peri­od. But accord­ing to a well-placed Auto source, despite this hefty pay, an even larg­er amount, esti­mat­ed to be $2.2 bil­lion still remain uncol­lect­ed. Data from the Ministry of Justice, released for the first time through the Access to Information Act, show that in 2008, tax col­lec­torates across the island along with the Kingston Traffic Court raked in $156 mil­lion in fines for traf­fic offences. In 2009, col­lec­tions jumped to $181 mil­lion, and last year traf­fic fines con­tributed $224 mil­lion to gov­ern­ment coffers.

Meanwhile, the reluc­tance of way­ward motorists in pay­ing traf­fic fines is one fac­tor to be addressed in the new Road Traffic Act, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the National Road Safety Council Paula Fletcher told Auto this week.

It is hard for police to find peo­ple who did not attend Court, there is too much onus on the state to find peo­ple,” she suggested.

At the same time, Fletcher advo­cat­ed that inter­est be charged on out­stand­ing traf­fic fines as a fur­ther deterrent.

“These are the pro­ce­dures to be worked,” she told Auto, “I would also love to see peo­ple pay an inter­est for out­stand­ing fines,” said the NRSC exec­u­tive director.

One would rea­son­ably con­clude that since Jamaican author­i­ties are inca­pable of com­ing up with work­able solu­tions , they would at least be able to copy.

During my time in Elementary/​Primary school I had class-mates whom were just inca­pable of learn­ing , back then we just assumed they were dunce , plain and sim­ple. No one knew what to do with those stu­dents , so it was accept­ed they would exit school much the same way they entered, and to a large extent most did. Today schools do a lit­tle bet­ter job in iden­ti­fy­ing stu­dents whom are hav­ing prob­lems , and impli­ment strate­gies in an effort to bring those stu­dents up to per­form­ing at their grade lev­el. They are no longer ref­fered to as dunce, they are called learn­ing chal­lenged or learn­ing disabled.

One thing about those learn­ing dis­abled class­mates, they under­stood one con­cept, the abil­i­ty to copy. some­times they pla­garized their clas­mate’s name in the process, but copy they did .

The issue here is this, we know law­mak­ers in Jamaica are dunce, but even dunce stu­dents are able to pla­garize. How dif­fi­cult is it to copy from those who fig­ured it out ? oth­ers have fig­ured out how to prop­er­ly stream­line traf­fic fines, into dri­vers licenc­ing and every oth­er aspects of doing bussi­ness? Jamaica has an approx­i­mate 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple yet law­mak­ers are unable to copy the sys­tem being used in most devel­oped and devel­op­ing coun­tries . How can any­one respect these dopes ? when they are unable to come up with some­thing that is not re-invent­ing the wheel, some­thing that is being used every­where else , how dif­fi­cult is it to plagarize?

The Police are out there doing what they are sup­posed to do in tick­et­ing offend­ers. However as I have said before, the work of the police is being under­mined and sub­vert­ed by dunce politi­cians in Jamaica. The evi­dence is clear , they are able to col­lect only one quar­ter of the fines, in a coun­try small enough to fit into the State of Connecticut , with a total pop­u­la­tion, one quar­ter that of New York City.

This is a seri­ous indict­ment on the abil­i­ties of those tasked with tak­ing care of the peo­ple’s bussi­ness. Every year, hun­dreds of Jamaicans are killed on the roads in fatal crash­es. Crashes that could have been avoid­ed if the rules of the roads were being observed. No one is say­ing that laws will stop offend­ers from speed­ing, dri­ving drunk,or oper­at­ing con­trary to the rules of the road . What we are say­ing is , untill we can find a panacea, we have to copy leg­is­la­tion from oth­er coun­tries,. see­ing that we are too dunce to fig­ure out on our own what works. 

As I have main­tained in pre­vi­ous blog posts, Legislative lead­er­ship must pre­cede Police action. Police can­not enforce laws that do not exist. Police may work over­time to appre­hend crim­i­nals and offend­ers but if the penal­ties are not com­men­su­rate with the crimes, and the fines, and con­se­quen­cies com­men­su­rate with the offences then as is demon­strat­ed in this report 75% of the police’s effort is wasted.

Politicians have long scape-goat­ed our police depart­ment, set­ting them up to fail, pit­ting police against the com­mu­ni­ties they serve. The police depart­ment has been under­staffed , under sup­port­ed, under equipped, under paid, and under trained since it’s incep­tion. The afer­men­tioned set of cir­cum­stances cre­ates a per­fect storm , a potent mix for fail­ure and inabil­i­ty to deliv­er on their man­date. Such is the posi­tion in which the Jamaica Constabulary’ force finds itself . You will nev­er hear this ass­es­ment from the lack­eys at the top of the JCF . Most of whom , for the most part are too heav­i­ly invest­ed in ass kiss­ing and sub­servience , they are inca­pable of mak­ing prin­ci­pled decisions.

I have nev­er met the Federation’s chair­man, it does seem how­ev­er, that he has a grasp of what’s at stake, and says so in no uncer­tain terms.

Those who are pre­dis­posed to dis­agree­ing with this view, need look no fur­ther than the high attri­tion rate in The JCF , par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when jobs are hard to come by . I would implore that Agency to release the num­ber of offi­cers that have demit­ted that agency with­in the last twen­ty years , that num­ber would shock most.

I seek to high­light the truth to objec­tive observers, facts you will not hear from the police, most of whom are too scared of their unscrupu­lous ego-mani­a­cal civil­lian boss­es in Government/​oppo­si­tion, you won’t hear it from the crim­i­nal lawyers, or those who say they are in the busi­ness of human rights, I seek to show the truth . You decide.

mike beck­les:

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Just When I Thought I Had Heard It All:

Cops told to stop wast­ing light and water:
That is the head­line on a sto­ry in the Jamaica Observer of August 13.2011
That head­line is not news, but became so because Jamaica’s Police Commissioner Owen Ellington wants to be trans­par­ent to the pub­lic. Scrap that , he has no back­bone so he makes the week­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tions doc­u­ment between his Office and the Department pub­lic. I may be wrong, you read­ers can bring me up to date on these assump­tions, but I would ven­ture to say, no agency, par­tic­u­lar­ly one that is in the busi­ness of secu­ri­ty and law enforce­ment , makes their inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions public.
For those who do not know what the Force Orders is , let me explain, the Force Orders is a week­ly doc­u­ment that is issued from the offices of the com­mis­sion­er of Police to the var­i­ous Police Divisions Island-wide. In the force orders Police per­son­nel are made aware of exist­ing strate­gies , and brought up to speed on changes in pol­i­cy. It includes Divisional strength, and informs mem­bers of their trans­fer from one sta­tion divi­sion or parish to anoth­er .It informs them of pro­mo­tions, and con­veys to them all that they need to know from com­mand and control .
This was a sen­si­tive doc­u­ment that the pub­lic has no right to , and should not have access to .
Owen Ellington has made it a pub­lic document.
What this has effec­tive­ly done is give the media a con­stant stream of infor­ma­tion, that ought to have been between com­mand and con­trol and per­son­nel, he has effec­tive­ly turned this sen­si­tive doc­u­ment into a source of news.
This is a shame­ful and cow­ard­ly capit­u­la­tion to Jamaica’s crim­i­nal rights lobby.
Does the new­ly insti­tut­ed colo­nial mas­ters from England make avail­able to the pub­lic their inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions memo?
This poten­tial­ly puts the life of mem­bers of the force and that of their fam­i­lies at risk. Criminals want­i­ng to kill cops can fol­low that cop’s trans­fer know­ing when and where that offi­cer and his fam­i­ly will be.
Anyway back to the topic,Ellington is ask­ing cops to con­serve ener­gy! I am at a loss as to how that is to be done ? are the police to turn off the lights in the sta­tion house? how exact­ly does a police depart­ment save ener­gy? are offi­cers now required to turn out the lights in the sta­tion hous­es at 10 pm ?
Finally, why is the Police depart­ment hav­ing to wor­ry about pay­ing elec­tric­i­ty bills? isn’t that a civil­ian mat­ter for the Mayor’s office? what hap­pens if the police facil­i­ties exceeds their bud­get, does JPS turn off the light ? does the same prin­ci­ple apply to the water? This is the most retard­ed Neanderthal sys­tem I have ever heard of !!!
Police do not make pol­i­cy, they do not deter­mine the price of util­i­ties, those are the func­tions of the pri­vate sec­tor and Government. Why is Ellington ask­ing police to con­serve electricity/
Please Commissioner Ellington tell the Nation exact­ly how you pro­pose to do that? I know you have to sat­is­fy your polit­i­cal han­dlers, but in the mean­time, ask them to loosen the leash a little.
mike beck­les:
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Another Expert To Tell Us What We Already Know:

Jamaica’s National Security Minister has just announced that the coun­try has secured the ser­vices of a con­sul­tant to help stem the flow of weapons into the island. The con­sul­tant , a woman, will also be required to devel­op a nation­al pol­i­cy to stem the flow of small arms into the island — the preva­lence of which has been blamed for the coun­try’s year-to-year high mur­der rate. The con­sul­tant, a woman whose iden­ti­ty has not been dis­closed, began her six-month con­tract on June 9 and will also look at leg­is­la­tion on explo­sives and all firearms.

The Security Minister revealed that the indi­vid­ual has worked with a num­ber of inter­na­tion­al bod­ies. She is from an enti­ty, the Small Arms Survey, a grad­u­ate insti­tute based in Geneva, Switzerland… and has also worked with the UN dis­ar­ma­ment unit,” he said. “The objec­tive is to ensure a lev­el of con­trol with­in the soci­ety so that we can elim­i­nate, as far as pos­si­ble, crime and vio­lence relat­ed to gun use; and at the same time, those con­trol mea­sures will also include the ques­tion of [deal­ing with] impor­ta­tion, expor­ta­tion, trans­ship­ment,” he explained. Also list­ed as part of the consultant’s respon­si­bil­i­ties, the assess­ment of secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions at the island’s ports in keep­ing with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards, stock man­age­ment with­in law enforce­ment agen­cies, and a review of the Firearms and Gunpowder Acts​.Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​G​u​n​-​c​o​n​t​r​o​l​-​I​n​t​l​-​c​o​n​s​u​l​t​a​n​t​-​h​i​r​e​d​-​t​o​-​h​e​l​p​-​s​t​e​m​-​f​l​o​w​-​o​f​-​w​e​a​p​o​n​s​-​t​o​-​J​a​m​a​i​c​a​_​9​4​0​9​9​4​1​#​i​x​z​z​1​U​d​a​F​Y​fpg

I don’t want to be known as a cyn­ic, but I am just a lit­tle miffed at the rea­sons why the con­sul­tan­t’s name , and the amount of monies being paid out to her is a secret. Are the funds being doled out part of a grant , or loan, by a for­eign enti­ty that requires secre­cy ? If so the Jamaican peo­ple still have a right to know , at least that she is being paid by said entity.

Again , let me remind the Administration , in a Democracy you Govern by con­sent, in a Monarchy you gov­ern by decree, if as we claim ‚that we have a democ­ra­cy, then the boss­es of the Government, the peo­ple have a right to know what actions are being tak­en in their name.

If there are cir­cum­stances that makes those rights imprac­ti­cal, then the Government should clas­si­fy that infor­ma­tion . That we undertand.

I wel­come any help that the gov­ern­ment can source that will effec­tive­ly impact the flow of guns into the coun­try, and by exten­sion reduce the lev­el of rabid crim­i­nal­i­ty that is now the norm in Jamaica. 

However at the same time we com­mend this as a step in the right direc­tion , the Jamaican peo­ple must demand account­abil­i­ty for monies spent. Over the last sev­er­al years we have seen a pletho­ra of con­sul­tants and so called experts brought in ‚alleged­ly with a view to reshape and refo­cus our Justice sys­tem and police services.

The jury is still out on the rate of returns, if any,the peo­ple have got­ten on their investment.

Because the Country is awash in ille­gal weapons, it does seem like a good move to have some­thing done about it , what I am not sure about, is whether it required a six year con­tract to come up with a work­able strat­e­gy? What are the terms of her con­tract? what if there are no vis­i­ble improve­ments in the sys­tem after a peri­od of time? Will the Jamaican peo­ple be stuck with a poten­tial­ly high priced import ‚who is deliv­er­ing noth­ing for their scarce tax dol­lars. Will a future Government of the Opposition par­ty be bound by a con­tract they did not award?

This brings us to the com­pe­tence of our own Security proffesionals.Are we to believe that the nation’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence unit, and the much vaunt­ed more edu­cat­ed cadre of Police Officers, can­not fig­ure out a way to stem the flow of guns com­ing into Jamaica? We are well aware of the jagged nature of Jamaica’s coast­line, we are aware of the lev­el of resources avail­able to the coast guard and marine police , we get all of that. What we do not under­stand is how come those enti­ties can­not inter­cept any of the weapons com­ing in?

To my mind there is no need for any­one to deve­l­ope a pol­i­cy to stem the flow of guns into Jamaica . Minister Nelson allud­ed to the fact that most of the ille­gal guns stream­ing into the Island are com­ing from the United States. They have nailed down the state of Florida and has even fine-tuned this intel­li­gence to three coun­ties in that state.

Save the Jamaican peo­ple their tax dol­lars and lean on the General sit­ting there with you Minister Nelson, get the Americans with their in-finite resources to stop the guns flow­ing into Jamaica , case closed.

Why do you need a high priced , high­ly rec­om­mend­ed so-called expert to tell you what you already know?

Mike beck­les:

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Happy Birthday Jamaica:

coat of arms

Jamaica turned 49 years old as an inde­pen­dent Nation on August 6th 2011. True to form our peo­ple engaged in a series of activ­i­ties, and sport­ing events to mark the Country’s Independence.

Jamaicans have a euniqe abil­i­ty to make some­thing out of noth­ing , so it was not hard to imag­ine the var­i­ous activ­i­ties all around the coun­try to mark this event. On Sunday a group of church lead­ers , led by the rev­erend Al Miller of (dudus fame) led a march of chris­tians and well wish­ers through the com­mu­ni­ty of Lauriston just out­side the old Capital of Spanish Town. The pur­pose of the march was to give hope to res­i­dents of that com­mu­ni­ty crip­pled by fear, fear of a series of behead­ings that occured over a peri­od of just one week . During which three peo­ple were ruth­less­ly decap­i­tat­ed .The group of marchers , dressed in black report­ed­ly stopped at the gates of res­i­dents to pray and offer com­fort to them.

I com­mend rev­erend Miller as exten­sive­ly as I crit­i­cized him in the Christopher dudus Coke case. Any act of com­mu­ni­ty must be com­mend­ed, I will not begin to sec­ond guess or mon­day morn­ing quar­ter ‑back the actions of any­one who is so involved. As such I salute those res­i­dents who took the ini­ta­ti­ave to march for their com­mu­ni­ties and by exten­sion the country.

I salute the police for arrest­ing and bring­ing 4 sus­pects into cus­tody in rela­tion­ship to the afore­men­tioned killings.

As I have indi­cat­ed in pre­vi­ous blogs this new trend which strikes ter­ror into the hearts of res­i­dents , may have at it’s geni­sis a pos­i­tive devel­ope­ment. I have pre­vi­ous­ly the­riosed that the unend­ing sup­ply of bul­lets may have been dis­rupt­ed. This I the­o­rized is at the heart of this more nean­derthal method of killing , hav­ing spo­ken to sources on the ground ‚this the­o­ry have been some­what confirmed.

Are the Jamaican Police look­ing at this and for­mu­lat­ing a plan for­ward? As I com­mend them for the arrests I must state my absoloute lack of faith that those arrest­ed will even­tu­al­ly be held respon­si­ble for those killings. E ven if they are miracelous­ly found guilty in a Jamaican court, the sen­tence met­ed out to them will be a slap on the wrist and they will be back on the streets in no time.

Lets exam­ine what can be accom­plishe by this and oth­er march­es. They can poten­tial­ly assauge fears , com­fort the bereaved and trau­ma­tized, as well as show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty. none of these things, though admirable, will pre­vent the next killing, whether by decap­i­ta­tion or otherwise.

The les­son this and all com­mu­ni­ties must learn is that shield­ing crim­i­nals , fail­ing to report crim­i­nal activ­i­ties , and choos­ing the side of evil over that of the rule of law, does have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for your health.

There are var­i­ous Organizations oper­at­ing in Jamaica that pur­port to be ded­i­cat­ed to Human Rights. Here are three of them.

Amnesty International: British based with Offices around the world .

Jamaicans for Justice: head­ed by Carolyn Gomes. Given a National honor.

Families against State Terrorism; head­ed by Yvonne Sobers Mcalla: State terrorism?

The most basic and fun­da­men­tal right a per­son has , is the right to life. Neither group was present yes­ter­day , march­ing with those who sup­port the rule of law and those trau­ma­tized by these events. And do you know why they weren’t there?? There is non pub­lic­i­ty to be gained , if the agents of the state are not involved they do not care, what they care about is per­se­cut­ing inno­cent hard work­ing Police Officers and mem­bers of Our Military who risk life and limb to make sure those fraude­lent imposters are safe. As nau­se­at­ed as I am at that con­cept they do have the right to life. And as such we will all have to deal with their hypocrisy and lies.

Jamaicans have a choice to make, the answer does not lie in prayer alone, when we pary we must acti­vate the response by our par­tic­i­pa­tion. God does the big things , we have to do the small things, if women,/mothers wives/​girlfriends /​sisters/​neices/​aunts , con­tin­ue to shield and lie to pro­tect the crim­i­nal men in their fam­i­lies noth­ing will change . As long as a man’s val­ue is deter­mined by how much mon­ey he can give to a girl he likes, then each and every young man will be forced to show his worth and sat­is­fy his lust by rob­bing and mur­der­ing to get those dollars.

As a for­mer Prime Minister infa­mous­ly stat­ed quote “man fi hav nuff gal” it brings into sharp focus the putrid min­d­est that is at the heart of those killigs.