Three Months Later And No Word On (duppy Film): Alleged Cop-killer Still On The Lose…

At about 8:pm on Tuesday December 22^nd 2015 Corporal Kenneth Davis of the Protective Services Division and Constable Craig Palmer both had their lives snuffed out by criminals as they engaged in a friendly game of dominoes in the community of Poor-Man’s-Corner..
Constable Palmer who hails from the community only days earlier had gathered with friends and well-wishers to honor the life of his sister who had passed a mere year before he was taken away in a hail of bullets.

At the time of the assas­si­na­tion of the two offi­cers res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty report­ed that mem­bers of the St Thomas Police were receiv­ing threats against their lives .
The sto­ry on the streets is that crim­i­nals in the com­mu­ni­ty want­ed revenge against the 35 year-old Palmer because he was involved in the death of one of two gun­men in the com­mu­ni­ty, whom he dis­armed dur­ing an attempt­ed rob­bery a few years ago. The oth­er man alleged­ly escaped on that occasion.

Member of Parliament for Western St Thomas James Robertson con­firmed that Palmer had been receiv­ing death threats. There is much to be mad about in this sto­ry. It is incon­ceiv­able that mem­bers of a police depart­ment could have been receiv­ing death threats and are unable to ter­mi­nate the source/​s of those threats. I say that with the great­est of humil­i­ty. I say that against the back­ground of the job the police is asked to do. If the Police can­not pro­tect it’s own how can the police be trust­ed with any­one else’s security.
I am not par­tic­u­lar­ly mind­ful of the paper-cops who are pre­dis­posed to push­ing back against my com­ments. I frankly don’t give a rat’s ass about them . When crim­i­nals threat­en the lives of law-enforce­ment offi­cers they are to be hunt­ed down and brought to jus­tice. If they chose to fight then jus­tice must be deliv­ered to them, it’s that simple.
MISTER COMMISH MY SOURCES CAN’T RECALL SEEING THE POLICE LOOKING UNDER ANY ROCK……….

At the time the two offi­cers were bru­tal­ly assas­si­nat­ed Commissioner of Police Dr. Carl Williams promised the fam­i­lies of the slain offi­cers that no stones would be left un-turned in bring­ing those respon­si­ble to jus­tice. The police depart­ment simul­ta­ne­ous­ly announced the name of Marlon Perry, oth­er­wise called ‘Duppy Film’, as a per­son of inter­est in the shoot­ing. They encour­aged Perry to turn him­self in to the Police.
Being the skep­tic I did not place any weight on the state­ment of the police then. I did not believe they had the clout to demand this alleged accused turn him­self in and if he did I did not believe they had evi­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate a charge of cap­i­tal murder.
I believed then as I do now that the state­ments were made to appear tough and to make them­selves look like they knew what they were doing. I believed the police hoped time would pass, things would get back to nor­mal as the offi­cers deaths fade into obliv­ion as that of count­less oth­er Jamaicans.

Let me state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that I sup­port the Police whole­heart­ed­ly . As a for­mer mem­ber myself I know all too well the chal­lenges the police face in doing their jobs.
Many of my for­mer col­leagues believe and con­tend I am too harsh in my crit­i­cism of police inep­ti­tude. I take their crit­i­cisms in stride even as I take into account the neg­a­tive impact the (inde­com) Act is hav­ing on the abil­i­ty of the police to do their jobs. I also under­stand the depart­men­tal chal­lenges they face in get­ting the job done. Many of the junior offi­cers want to work but they are sad­dled with com­mand­ing offi­cers who know lit­tle or absolute­ly noth­ing about crime fight­ing. To bor­row a term from these rank and file offi­cers their com­man­ders are (mod­dlers) . The term mod­dler is a col­lo­qui­al term for peo­ple who have form but no sub­stance. I refer to them as win­dow dressing.

I have pre­cious lit­tle sym­pa­thy for non-per­form­ers, the police depart­ment is not exempt from that in my view , it is rather easy to blame one’s lack of per­for­mance on what one does­n’t have. I much rather doing what I must exploit­ing what I have to the max .
I have repeat­ed­ly point­ed to the fact that if the Police depart­ment was a busi­ness it would have failed long ago. I say this against the back­gound of the data pro­vid­ed by the police depart­ment itself. You can­not clear up 30% of homi­cides and remain rel­e­vant. There is a dis­con­nect between the per­for­mance of the Police depart­ment , despite it’s best efforts and sol­ven­cy in a real sense.

To date there is no word on the where­abouts of Marlon Perry despite the fact that Jamaica is a small coun­try 4411 square miles and does not offer much in the way of where some­one can sus­tain him­self with­out being noticed.
Lets be clear , this is exact­ly how the Police Department has oper­at­ed for decades. On this prin­ci­ple crim­i­nals are allowed to remain on the lam and con­tin­ue com­mit­ting seri­ous crimes while the police is sup­pos­ed­ly look­ing for them>.
I addressed this non­sen­si­cal notion in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle in which I detailed a sce­nario in which I arrest­ed a sup­posed want­ed crim­i­nal and took a loaded weapon from him on my very first day at the CIB .

Nowadays police depart­ments use a cor­nu­copia of dif­fer­ent method­olo­gies to brink pres­sure to bear on want­ed sus­pects. These meth­ods includes but are not con­fined to sweeps, drag­nets, apply­ing pres­sure to fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends, main­tain­ing pres­sure on places where shady char­ac­ters con­vene along with the tra­di­tion­al mon­ey offer­ing for information.
These are some of the means by which the police can have an impact . Of course real cops worth their salt know there are lots of oth­er uncon­ven­tion­al tools police have at their dis­pos­al to bring pres­sure to bear,which invari­ably lead police to sus­pects or bring sus­pects out of hiding.

Despite the Commissioner’s promise and blus­ter it has been three months and still there is no word on the sus­pect Marlon Perry and no one has been charged in the death of these two officers.
Once again this medi­um call on the police depart­ment to bring the killers of these two heroes to jus­tice. For far too long the Police depart­ment has allowed crim­i­nals to live lives of lux­u­ry while pre­tend­ing the depart­ment is active­ly engaged in efforts to bring them in to answer for the heinous crimes they commit.
Donnovan(bul­bie) Bennett, remained on the lam for years liv­ing a life of lux­u­ry while he con­tin­ued to direct the oper­a­tions of his crim­i­nal empire from his man­sion in Clarendon.
It’s time the police depart­ment stop being an embar­rass­ment to itself and the nation. If it can­not bring crim­i­nals who assas­si­nate cops to jus­tice how can it be trust­ed to pro­tect the population?