What Are Your Obligations When Stopped By A Police Officer…

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If a police offi­cer who was issued a body-worn cam­era will­ful­ly turns it off when engag­ing with the pub­lic, any­thing he does illic­it­ly, should be con­sid­ered a pre­med­i­tat­ed crime.
As I said on a social media thread recent­ly, oper­a­tors of motor vehi­cles should secret­ly video and audio record all inter­ac­tions with pub­lic offi­cials, includ­ing the police. It is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that trust is devel­oped and cul­ti­vat­ed between the cit­i­zen­ry and the police for the bet­ter­ment and progress of the nation. Officers who would solic­it bribes or com­mit ille­gal acts because they are so pre­dis­posed or out of igno­rance of their jobs will be eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied and fired or retrained.


This is a quick way to reme­di­ate the prob­lem of the so-called licky, licky police offi­cer, a rep­re­hen­si­ble prac­tice in my opin­ion. Recording a police inter­ac­tion how­ev­er, can­not come at the cost of com­pli­ance. When you are stopped by the police and they request your driver’s license and doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the vehi­cle you are dri­ving com­pli­ance is not option­al. 


Operating a motor vehi­cle is a priv­i­lege not a right, that is the rea­son you must obtain a license to oper­ate a motor vehi­cle. In some places like Jamaica, if you do not have your license or paper­work for the vehi­cle you may be allowed to pro­duce them with­in a cer­tain time.
In order for that to be facil­i­tat­ed you are oblig­at­ed to give your name and address as request­ed by the officer.
If you are oper­at­ing a vehi­cle and you do not have a license or paper­work for that vehi­cle, the police is oblig­at­ed to seize and tow your vehi­cle and arrest you until you can pro­duce the request­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion. Citizens have a right to film the police in the per­for­mance of their duties as long as it does not inter­fere with the officer’s work. So if you are in the vehi­cle and it’s involved in a traf­fic stop, film away but if the offi­cer asks you to step out of the vehi­cle you must com­ply. The offi­cer can­not force you to stop film­ing but you must obey all law­ful com­mands , that includes putting your hands behind your back if he intends to arrest you.  


If you are being arrest­ed you can­not film with your hands behind your back, but you can request that the offi­cer allow your record­ing device remain record­ing. He his oblig­at­ed to allow you to do that.
Filming police for social media while you dis­obey law­ful com­mands is a bad idea that will get you nowhere but a jail cell depend­ing on the officer.
A knowl­edge­able offi­cer knows it is your right to record every­thing but it is his job to ensure you fol­low his com­mands. You do not get to decide that you will not com­ply with law­ful orders giv­en by the police because you dis­agree with them or you are butt-hurt.
If you feel that you were mis­treat­ed or that your rights were vio­lat­ed, there are reme­dies with the Police depart­ment, INDECOM, through your lawyer, and the courts. Fighting a police offi­cer in uni­form is a recipe for suicide.
I have seen peo­ple punch­ing, slap­ping, push­ing police offi­cers in Jamaica. When I served I believed peo­ple looked at me and decid­ed I won’t try it with that one. I had every right to do my job with­out being assault­ed and so does every police offi­cer today.


Police offi­cers wear masks and not shown iden­ti­fy­ing numer­als for sev­er­al rea­sons. Those rea­sons may vary­ing from depart­ment to depart­ment and from coun­try to coun­try. There is no log­i­cal rea­son that I know of that would neces­si­tate the need for face­marks out­side of envi­ron­men­tal or health rea­sons when offi­cers are engaged in reg­u­lar day to day duties. In those cas­es the officer’s iden­ti­fy­ing num­ber should be visible.
The most obvi­ous rea­son cops wear facial cov­er­ing and no iden­ti­fy­ing num­bers are the secu­ri­ty of them­selves and that of their fam­i­lies. Police all across the world uses masks and often have no iden­ti­fy­ing numer­als out­side the word police or fed­er­al agent on their vests. The small­er and more vio­lent the coun­try the greater the need for tac­ti­cal offi­cers to oper­ate with cer­tain degrees of anonymi­ty, as it becomes more crit­i­cal that their iden­ti­ties remain con­cealed because of the dan­ger to them and their families.
It is disin­gen­u­ous and dan­ger­ous for any per­son to bla­tant­ly lie like Bert Samuels did, when he claimed that police offi­cers in our tiny Jamaica cov­er their faces because they want to com­mit crimes while on duty.

Every year well over a thou­sand peo­ple are mur­dered, in some cas­es clos­er to two thou­sand liv­ing breath­ing Jamaicans have their lives snuffed out by mind­less ghet­to thugs. Those num­bers includes mem­bers of the police force and our mil­i­tary and inno­cent men, women, and chil­dren. Jamaica’s blood-thirsty thugs have zero respect for life and nei­ther does the women who depend on their macabre un-aliv­ing of peo­ple to eat and floss.
It is there­fore expect­ed that a par­ti­san crim­i­nal lawyers like Bert Samuels who depend on crim­i­nals to eat, and who wants to see the People’s National Party in pow­er so that crime can take over our coun­try act that way.
After all that’s how he makes his money.
His retard­ed lying com­ments when viewed in that prism makes a lot more sense.
Standing with Jamaicans For Injustice is anoth­er matter.
The European Union, George Soros for­eign spon­sored can­cer in Jamaica must be seen as a threat to our country’s nation­al secu­ri­ty. JFJ MUST GO.
It is not a human rights lob­by, it is sin­gu­lar­ly focused on what the police does and not what the crim­i­nals do and that dis­qual­i­fies it. It is irrel­e­vant and must be treat­ed as such.
The black faces at JFJ will con­tin­ue to sing for their sup­per, not doing what they are doing means there is no more for­eign money.

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