Tivoli Inquiry A Witch Hunt.…..

Testifying before the Commission of Inquiry set up sup­pos­ed­ly to flush out what went on in Tivoli Grades in 2010 Deputy Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds stat­ed ‚“As a coun­try, most of us in this

room — I think the only per­son who can claim excep­tion is Sir David Simmons — are a part of the prob­lem, includ­ing the secu­ri­ty forces,”.
Hinds allud­ed to sys­tem­at­ic break­downs in the way Tivoli Gardens was allowed to oper­ate as a State with­in the Jamaican state. His com­ments were the most poignant and point­ed of any senior mem­ber of the JCF I have ever heard , past or present on the issue of the sys­tem­at­ic fail­ure of lead­er­ship which has plagued our country.
It is com­mend­able that Hinds has also tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty for some of those fail­ures of lead­er­ship, even though I dis­agree in prin­ci­ple that every Jamaican share in some way in allow­ing Tivoli to become a place where Jamaica’s laws did not apply.
Over the years since my depar­ture from the JCF I sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly kept up a drum­beat , point­ing to forces with­in the Jamaican state which were aid­ing and abet­ting in the break­down of the rule of law and social order.

Many Jamaicans read­i­ly yet cor­rect­ly point to Politicians , Police and the Church as the chief archi­tects of our coun­try’s decades-long pre­cip­i­tous down­ward spi­ral. Even though the Police must accept some blame, it is impor­tant to under­stand the Jamaican sys­tem of gov­ern­ment and the role polit­i­cal direc­tion plays in the ways laws are enforced, or not.
As such I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe the Police must be absolved of some of the blame for the chaos which was not only Tivoli but Jamaica’s many zones of polit­i­cal exclusions.
No oth­er enti­ty has played a big­ger part in cre­at­ing the Jamaica of today, while being total­ly let off the hook of respon­si­bil­i­ty, than that which pass­es for Media in our country.
Over the many years I have watched as the unac­count­able media unleashed a bar­rage of un-sub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions of abuse against police sole­ly on the say-so of local polit­i­cal players.
Radio talk shows blan­ket­ed the air­ways with anti-police pro­pa­gan­da dis­guised as talk-shows.
I heard Barbara Gloudon tell the coun­try to throw stones on police stations.
We wit­nessed to our hor­ror morn­ing tele­vi­sion hosts class police offi­cers as john-crows ( scav­enger vul­ture) on nation­al tele­vi­sion because the police had the gall to arrest one of their crack smok­ing col­leagues in Barbican square.

Anti police dog­ma gave rise to Garnet Roper, Wilmott Perkins, Ronald Thwaites, Barbara Gloudon, and many oth­ers who rose to fame and some degree of for­tune on the backs and on the blood of Jamaica’s police officers.
Even so, it was­n’t just the know-noth­ing bab­blers who shaped opin­ions and per­cep­tions, those who posed as legit­i­mate Journalists joined in the free-for-all in the way the news was pre­sent­ed to an incitable and gullible public.
Hinds touched on that some­what say­ing “We allowed the gang pro­pa­gan­da to hold sway over these cit­i­zens. …[No] police oper­a­tion was [ever] called an oper­a­tion; they were called an incur­sion or an attack or an inva­sion. What we would have done is cement­ed in the sub­con­scious of these cit­i­zens that they were not part of Jamaica, they must be left to their own vices because this soci­ety sees them as off-limit,”.

As far as the inquiry goes I am not sure I under­stand the selec­tion of Barbados David Simmons as chair­man of the com­mis­sion look­ing into the cir­cum­stances of the May 2010 operation.

Simmons a for­mer Barbados Chief Justice seems by words and actions lack­ing in fun­da­men­tal appre­ci­a­tion and respect for law enforce­ment. He also has thus far through his utter­ances, demon­strat­ed a lack of under­stand of the vio­lence law enforce­ment faces in Jamaica dai­ly. On that basis David Simmons is unfit to hear evi­dence and arrive at a fair con­clu­sion in this Inquiry. It becomes pret­ty easy to pre­empt his find­ings and state Simmons find­ings will be heavy on blame for police and our mil­i­tary and syrupy on praise and empa­thy for the poor inno­cent peo­ple of Tivoli Gardens.[sic]

Tivoli Gardens did not become a no-go-zone for police overnight it took decades in devel­op­ing into a state with­in a state. It was not the only (Garrison) zone of polit­i­cal exclu­sion which exist­ed, it was just the best orga­nized. As such it became a tem­plate to Jamaica’s crim­i­nal under­world, to them it rep­re­sent­ed a safe haven , a sanc­tu­ary against Jamaican law enforcement.
It was no sur­prise that Christopher Coke asked for mer­ce­nar­ies across the coun­try to come and defend the sanc­tu­ary of Tivoli Gardens against the Jamaican state.
It was lit­tle sur­prise then that mer­ce­nar­ies heed­ed his call, picked up their weapons and head­ed to Tivoli Gardens.

Bishop Herro Blair a known Labor Party sym­pa­thiz­er stat­ed when he went to Tivoli Gardens in the days lead­ing up to the joint Police Military assault to annex Tivoli, he saw more guns than he have ever wit­nessed in his entire lifetime.
Every damn Jamaican knew what was at stake that day in 2010. Jamaicans are not fools. What we do not need is an old colo­nial mind­ed for­eign­er with an anti­quat­ed title to tell us anything.
This inquiry was not designed to find answers as to why peo­ple died.
It was designed to for­ev­er pin the death of 73 peo­ple on the Jamaica Labor Party, with a view to fur­ther alien­at­ing the peo­ple from the party.
The Administration of Portia Simpson Miller does not care a rats ass about what hap­pened to laborites that day, this fish­ing expe­di­tion is pure­ly political.

We all know that the police implored peo­ple to leave the community.
Not just that , bus­es were pro­vid­ed for their depar­ture. Some argue peo­ple could not take up the offer because they would be seen as trai­tors. We under­stand that point , but the bus­es were pro­vid­ed nonethe­less, the police did what they had to do.
David Simmons seem to be woe­ful­ly unaware that all those pro­vi­sions were put in place to ensure cit­i­zen safe­ty. We saw the white ‑T-shirt clad crowds who marched demand­ing that they leave Coke alone while pro­claim­ing their undy­ing love

and desire to die for him.
We saw the attacks on Police stations.
We saw police offi­cers gunned down.
We say the police sta­tions go up in flames .

Rather than hold­ing a fraud­u­lent inquiry which will yield noth­ing sub­stan­tive beyond blame for the police and the Labor par­ty, let there be be a truth com­mis­sion set up to fer­ret-out how and why Jamaica was allowed to slide so deeply into gar­ri­son cul­ture. This should be done toward ensur­ing that nev­er again will it be allowed to happen.
As Hinds said, “Jamaica is still indebt­ed to the secu­ri­ty forces” for the con­duct of the oper­a­tion that result­ed in the sub­se­quent arrest of Coke, and “to bring back Tivoli Gardens as part of Jamaica”.

As a young offi­cer on the Rangers Squad my col­leagues and I took sus­tained gun­fire from Tivoli Gardens in the mid 80’s as we hun­kered down in the Denham Town Police station.
The Superintendent at the sta­tion gave us orders not to return fire even as gun­shots whizzed through win­dows shat­ter­ing glass.
We were sent there from the Mobile Reserve to prop-up and defend his sta­tion against exact­ly that attack.
The group of six mem­bers of the Rangers squad myself includ­ed were damn sure not afraid to tac­ti­cal­ly enter that enclave and put down the attack based on our train­ing and ded­i­ca­tion to duty. The Superintendent was just too polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed and piss scared to do his job, all he had to do was get out of our way.
He could­n’t even do that.
When the shoot­ing sub­sided most of the win­dows had no glass, all shat­tered from Tivoli’s mer­ce­nar­ies. Our truck was destroyed.
I don’t need any­one telling me whats wrong with my coun­try , I know darn well whats wrong and how we got there.…
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