Wrong-headed Focus On Crime Incredibly Costly For Jamaicans

JAMAICA MUST TACKLE WAVE OF POLICE KILLINGS
This was the head­line Amnesty International post­ed on its web­site March 8^th 2012 , that head­line is still there almost three years later.
Additionally the London based Human Rights Group pro­ceed­ed to say .…

Quote; The killing of 21 peo­ple by Jamaican police in just six days must be sub­ject to a thor­ough inquiry, Amnesty International said as it called on the author­i­ties to mount an effec­tive inves­ti­ga­tion into recent and past police oper­a­tions. Six of the killings took place dur­ing a sin­gle police oper­a­tion in Denham Town, West Kingston, on 5 March. A 13-year-old girl died after report­ed­ly being caught up in the cross-fire between police and crim­i­nal sus­pects. Forty five peo­ple have been killed by police in Jamaica so far in 2012, accord­ing to press reports. “The recent wave of police killings in Jamaica is shock­ing but unfor­tu­nate­ly not unprece­dent­ed,” said Chiara Liguori, Caribbean researcher at Amnesty International. “The prob­lem is that police con­tin­ue to enter mar­gin­al­ized inner-city com­mu­ni­ties as if every­one there was a crim­i­nal sus­pect.” The last time such lev­els of police vio­lence were record­ed was dur­ing the state of emer­gency in May 2010 in West Kingston, where 76 peo­ple were killed over two days dur­ing an oper­a­tion by secu­ri­ty forces. Almost two years on, no one has yet been held respon­si­ble for those killings, and an inves­ti­ga­tion car­ried out by the Public Defender is still to be con­clud­ed. “If human rights abus­es such as police killings go unpun­ished, it will only open the door for more abus­es to take place,” said Chiara Liguori. Jamaica also has a bad record in terms of hold­ing those respon­si­ble to account and pro­vid­ing jus­tice and repa­ra­tions to vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Out of more than 2,220 fatal shoot­ings by police record­ed between 2000 and 2010, only two offi­cers have been convicted.

Amnesty International acknowl­edged that the cre­ation of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) in August 2010 has been a cru­cial step towards enhanc­ing inves­ti­ga­tions of abus­es by the secu­ri­ty forces. However, the orga­ni­za­tion believes author­i­ties in Jamaica must ensure INDECOM is pro­vid­ed with suf­fi­cient resources and col­lab­o­ra­tion from oth­er state agen­cies to con­duct effec­tive inves­ti­ga­tions that actu­al­ly lead to jus­tice for the vic­tims. Amnesty International’s research on police killings in Jamaica found that effec­tive inves­ti­ga­tions are ham­pered by a lack of inde­pen­dence in the bal­lis­tic and foren­sic ser­vices and by lim­it­ed resources which often con­tribute to the lack of jus­tice. “Faced with anoth­er wave of killings by the secu­ri­ty forces in West Kingston, the Jamaican author­i­ties must take deci­sive steps to fight impuni­ty,” said Chiara Liguori.“They should make all need­ed resources avail­able to ensure a prompt, inde­pen­dent and effec­tive inves­ti­ga­tion of the recent killings and appoint an inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion of inquiry to ensure that all human rights vio­la­tions com­mit­ted under the state of emer­gency do not go unpun­ished.“https://​www​.amnesty​.org/​e​n​/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​2​/​0​3​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​m​u​s​t​-​t​a​c​k​l​e​-​s​h​o​c​k​i​n​g​-​w​a​v​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​gs/

It’s dif­fi­cult to tell the exact num­ber of Jamaicans who have been mur­dered in Jamaica since this state­ment was first released by the watch­dog group who cer­tain­ly were not killed by the Island’s secu­ri­ty forces .
However using crime sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by the police it is safe to say approx­i­mate­ly 4,800 Jamaicans have been report­ed killed since then.

There is a dis­tinct slant in the way this report was writ­ten to cre­ate false perceptions.The lan­guage is inflam­ma­to­ry and sug­ges­tive. The text devoid of bal­ance or con­text in which police killings occur in Jamaica.
Even if the state­ment was to be giv­en the time of day based on what one could argue is rea­son­able cause for con­cern, the lack of objec­tiv­i­ty and the gen­er­al one-sided slant of the report makes the writer and the Publication sig­nif­i­cant­ly less wor­thy of one’s time.

The report which offered a sweep­ing indict­ment and not much more, was equal­ly devoid of cred­i­bil­i­ty as it relates to the facts. No men­tion was made of the envi­ron­ment in which these police killings occurred.
No men­tion was made of the num­ber of offi­cers shot and killed.
There was no men­tion of the num­ber of offi­cers shot and injured
There was no men­tion of the fact that on aver­age 1600 homi­cides occur annually.
The very same decade would have seen rough­ly 16,000 Jamaicans slaugh­tered by criminals.
What the one-sided piece of pro­pa­gan­da-nar­ra­tive was con­cerned about was the num­ber of crim­i­nals killed by police.
Police and law abid­ing Jamaicans be damned.

The Website the Guardian Reports the fol­low­ing since we actu­al­ly start­ed watch­ing inci­dents of police mur­der in the United States after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri.
Fact: In the first 24 days of 2015, police in the US fatal­ly shot more peo­ple than police did in England and Wales, com­bined, over the past 24 years.
According to data col­lect­ed by the UK advo­ca­cy group Inquest, there have been 55 fatal police shoot­ings – total – in England and Wales from 1990 to 2014.
Fact: There has been just one fatal shoot­ing by Icelandic police in the country’s 71-year his­to­ry. The city of Stockton, California – with 25,000 few­er res­i­dents than all of Iceland com­bined – had three fatal encoun­ters in the first five months of 2015.
Fact: Police in the US fatal­ly shot more peo­ple in one month this year than police in Australia offi­cial­ly report­ed dur­ing a span of 19 years.

Zambrano-Montes was killed in February by offi­cers respond­ing to reports that he was throw­ing rocks at cars. The inci­dent was caught on video, with 17 shots fired; accord­ing to police, “five or six” struck Zambrano-Montes.

In Finland, accord­ing to chief inspec­tor Jukka Salmine, police fired just six bul­lets in all of 2013.By the num­bers: US police kill more in days than oth­er coun­tries do in years.

Despite the fact that American crim­i­nals are some­times heav­i­ly armed, in many cas­es where police mer­ci­less­ly shoot cit­i­zens the sit­u­a­tion is as such that cops in oth­er coun­tries would have faced mur­der charges had they act­ed similarly.
In many cas­es sit­u­a­tions are esca­lat­ed by police them­selves in the United States in order to arrest or cre­ate false jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for assault­ing and killing cit­i­zens usu­al­ly Blacks or latino.
As a for­mer Jamaican Police Officer myself who dealt with dan­ger­ous and deter­mined crim­i­nals and was shot in the line of duty I have looked at video inci­dent after inci­dent and end­ed up with the same conclusion.
In many cas­es where American cops use lethal force, even when they pre­tend to be reluc­tant to use it,they even­tu­al­ly end up using it and in the end it still could have been avoid­ed, à la the killing of Khijame Powell etal.

In oth­er words even in sit­u­a­tions where life is not in dan­ger, the sus­pect has nowhere to go and dia­logue can be used, they even­tu­al­ly talk but end up killing sus­pects because he stepped for­ward with a knife, or as they clas­si­cal­ly say in police jar­gon “he lunged at them”.
The media gen­er­al­ly gob­ble up that lie and not only present it as fact, they defend and metas­ta­size it into believ­abil­i­ty and authenticity.
The only com­po­nent nec­es­sary to pre­vent some of these killings is time. Police offi­cials are reluc­tant to spend the nec­es­sary time to de-esca­late sit­u­a­tions because killing some­one who yells at them is so eas­i­ly and read­i­ly jus­ti­fied in America. So they rapid­ly esca­late minor sit­u­a­tions use lethal force and walk away.
No mat­ter how much one speak on police atroc­i­ty in America he would not even begin to scratch the sur­face of what real­ly goes on just below the surface.
Whether it’s cops rid­ing up and sum­mar­i­ly shoot­ing 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland Ohio then cal­lous­ly neglect­ing to ren­der first aid, or the count­less peo­ple, most­ly Black Americans who have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sent to prison on trumped up charges it’s all the same.
Or worse the sys­tem­at­ic crim­i­nal col­lu­sion and lack of will which exist in Prosecutor’s office and the bla­tant refusal to pros­e­cute mur­der­er cops à la Eric Garner etal.

IN ALL OF THIS AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL HAS BEEN MOSTLY SILENT

In all of this Amnesty International has been large­ly silent save and except where it is too embar­rass­ing to remain silent like when events erupt­ed in Ferguson Missouri.
Amnesty inter­na­tion­al’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion seem large­ly to rest with small impov­er­ished nations with cor­rupt Governments who are afraid to speak out of fear because they are oth­er­wise inher­ent­ly corrupt.
So the mas­sive ille­gal killings by police in the United States and the atroc­i­ties being met­ed out to Palestinians in their home­land by occu­py­ing Israelis is sim­ply par for the course for Amnesty International.

The empha­sis in Jamaica is not about catch­ing and bring­ing crim­i­nals who mass-mur­der cit­i­zens to jus­tice, the empha­sis has shift­ed to find­ing police at fault who go after the mur­der­ous demons.
Criminals in some cas­es are stupid.
Not always, Jamaican crim­i­nals are usu­al­ly very savvy they under­stand how to ful­ly exploit weak­ness­es in the crim­i­nal Justice sys­tem and they do.
They under­stand that the hands of the police are tied because a few pre­ten­tious “uncle tom n*****s” , or as my friend calls them “boasie slaves” think crime can be wished away.
Others like the “crim­i­nal lawyers” [dual-mean­ing] who stand against any changes to the present sys­tem are reap­ing a wind­fall. They have a win-win sys­tem in place, they win when police go after the thugs, they win when the (inde­com act) goes after officers.
What’s not to like ?