You Can’t Change Every Heart It May Not Be Necessary Either…

I watched some­thing pro­found yes­ter­day which remind­ed me the longer you live the more you learn if of course you want to learn
Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton was speak­ing to three mem­bers of the “Black lives mat­ter movement“who con­front­ed her on some poli­cies of her hus­band for­mer President Bill Clinton which end­ed up incar­cer­at­ing what they say are an unprece­dent­ed amount of blacks and oth­er peo­ple of color.

Secretary Clinton respond­ed appropriately …
“I don’t believe you change hearts. You change laws, you change allo­ca­tion of resources, you change the way sys­tems oper­ate. You’re not gonna change every heart. You’re not. But at the end of the day, we can do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some sys­tems and cre­ate more oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple who deserve to have them. …”
For peo­ple who deserve to have them..ha ha ..

There are times I seri­ous­ly wish that I could sep­a­rate out some Jamaicans who want things done a cer­tain way and allow the rest of us who want things done anoth­er way live togeth­er and see how things shake out right ?
Unfortunately we all have to live togeth­er even though we absolute­ly abhor and have the great­est dis­dain for closed mind­ed peo­ple who are unable to rea­son based on facts in front of them.

There are some peo­ple who adamant­ly believe cer­tain peo­ple should not have the right to vote because they are unin­formed and will­ful­ly so and as such they should not be able to vote and sub­ject every­one else to bad lead­er­ship based on that wil­ful or uncon­scious igno­rance. On that I will with­hold my opinion.

There is an old proverb which say ‘you nev­er throw out the baby with the bath water”. There’s anoth­er which says “you nev­er cut your nose off to spite your face”. In both of these prover­bial sit­u­a­tions you end up the los­er if you do. Of course one of the most dif­fi­cult things to get peo­ple to do is to rea­son based on facts and evi­dence, not be dog­mat­ic based on baked-in ide­o­log­i­cal lean­ings and biases.

No one has to give up their core beliefs in order to have an open mind. An open mind allows for hon­est debate on any range of sub­jects. In fact it is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of igno­rance to adopt a dog­mat­ic approach it means you have decid­ed­ly locked off your mind to the oth­er per­son­’s point of view . Which is fine but you also lose the abil­i­ty to absorb what the oth­er per­son says. And you cer­tain­ly fail to learn some­thing in the process. There’s anoth­er old say­ing which is appro­pri­ate here “even a bro­ken clock is right twice each day”.

TO THE BRAIN DEAD
The mat­ter of the (inde­com) Act is front and cen­ter in the debate in Jamaica every­one knows I am opposed to the Act , not because I do not want Jamaican Police offi­cers held account­able for engag­ing in unlaw­ful or crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. Of course not. In fact even as we debate this two more police offi­cers have placed the JCF Jamaica Constabulary Force in a neg­a­tive light once more.
One sup­posed offi­cer was shot by secu­ri­ty guards as he attempt­ed to rob a busi­ness­man and anoth­er was shot in a sting oper­a­tion involv­ing oth­er police offi­cers. These are in addi­tion to the oth­er police offi­cers who are some­how tied up in the legal sys­tem or oth­er­wise fac­ing inves­ti­ga­tions for alleged crim­i­nal conduct.
So mem­bers of the JCF def­i­nite­ly need over­sight. In fact Law Enforcement Agencies all across the United States are hav­ing to sub­mit to some lev­el of over­sight . Whether by Independent Agencies or risk being tak­en over by the Federal Government is some cases.
Effective over­sight is actu­al­ly good for good law enforce­ment Agents but that over­sight has to be done fair­ly and it must take into account the dif­fi­cul­ties police offi­cers face in the exe­cu­tion of their duties.
It is not enough to say we under­stand that police offi­cers face inher­ent dan­ger as a lead-in or pre­cur­sor before an all out ver­bal assault on their point of view.

It is par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal that we do not brush aside the con­cerns of police or those who sup­port law enforce­ment in the Island based on the exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances which are attached to police ser­vice in the country.
♦ Jamaica is seen as par­tic­u­lar­ly cor­rupt , in fact 84% corrupt.
♦ Jamaican crim­i­nals kill cops , thats it.
♦ Jamaican cops are poor­ly paid,poorly equipped, poor­ly super­vised , poor­ly sup­port­ed, poor­ly trained,and poor­ly appreciated.
♦ Jamaican crim­i­nals are determined.
♦ They face incred­i­ble risks, just on the basis of being police officers.

So when The Minister of National Security and The Junior Minister in the Tourism Ministry Damion Crawford speak out about (inde­com) there is no rea­son to demo­nize them. There is no rea­son to dem­a­gogue the peo­ple who refuse to say just kill all the police officers.
I learned I will not be able to change hearts or minds yes­ter­day and I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe the mem­bers of the joint select com­mit­tee with respon­si­bil­i­ty for (inde­com) Laborites and PNP, rec­og­nizes what we have been say­ing and what Raymond Wilson recent­ly said, the law is bad as constituted.
It is not always that PNP and Laborites have com­mon cause on any issue ‚so there must be some­thing to what those of us on this side of the issue are saying.
Driving the debate on the oth­er side is a poi­so­nous hatred of police so it mat­ters not what the police or their sup­port­ers say. There is real­ly no rea­son to spend time on a mean­ing­less debate of this issue with these peo­ple. Most of them has absolute­ly no idea what’s in the law so why talk to them.

One of the things that Terrence Williams has been able to do is to cap­i­tal­ize on the immense police hatred in the coun­try to push for more and more pow­er. Fortunately for the good peo­ple on the Island The joint select com­mit­tee of Parliament with respon­si­bil­i­ty to police (inde­com) has decid­ed to .….… police (inde­com).
The argu­ments of Young Jamaica the youth arm of the JLP that over­sight of (inde­com) is “tan­ta­mount to shack­ling the agency” goes to the heart of the group’s lack of expo­sure to how real democ­ra­cies work. Oversight of the over­sight agency is called “Transparency and accountability”.

The Minister of National Security and indeed young Minister Crawford are tak­ing a lot of ridicule for their coura­geous stance in rec­og­niz­ing that any Law designed to snare cor­rupt cops can­not have an adver­sar­i­al approach and atti­tude to police offi­cers. It is impor­tant to note that the labourites on the com­mit­tee also vot­ed because they have seen the light.
No one wants account­abil­i­ty in Jamaica more than me but that account­abil­i­ty can­not be about only one group of peo­ple who do a darn good job of arrest­ing crim­i­nals amongst their own ranks.
I sup­port­ed the Contractor General’s Act . I sup­port the INDECOM Act. The (inde­com) Act caus­es police offi­cers to be hes­i­tant and unsure about doing their jobs.
Why ?

Because the Commissioner of (inde­com) has made a mock­ery of the law and it’s man­date. He has stuck his nose into the office of the Director of Public Prosecution where he makes all kinds of unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims about favoritism and incom­pe­tence. He stuck his nose into the courts sys­tem demand­ing that his case should be giv­en pri­or­i­ty. In the end most of Williams sup­port­ers are unaware that he want­ed the job as a high court judge in Jamaica. He also want­ed to be DPP but was side­lined for Paula Llewellyn. After snag­ging the job at (inde­com) he fought to ensure that every­one knew that his job was at the lev­el of a high court judge, the post he real­ly want­ed to begin with.
That is what got us to this point, the DPP test­ed (inde­com’s) pow­er in the Parliament and guess what she won.
In his dog­mat­ic and rapa­cious cru­sade to con­sol­i­date pow­er Terrence Williams gave up power .

It was exact­ly because of his relent­less pur­suit of more and more pow­er which caused many peo­ple includ­ing the Police Federation and sane observers to have some pause, this Blogger being among them.

When a snap cost ben­e­fit analy­sis is done , though unsci­en­tif­ic one has to ask whether the snake oil Terrence Williams and oth­ers are sell­ing actu­al­ly stand up to scruti­ny? Terrence Williams , Hamish Williams and their legions of police hat­ing sup­port­ers would have you believe that it is because of (inde­com’s) sup­posed vig­i­lance why inci­dents of police shoot­ings have dropped. Notwithstanding by (inde­com’s) own report­ing and data the major­i­ty of police shoot­ings they inves­ti­gat­ed were found to be jus­ti­fi­able shoot­ings. Bear in mind that the agen­cy’s very exis­tence was pinned to alle­ga­tions of what spe­cial-inter­est in Jamaica called extra-judi­cial killings.
But let’s assume that that asser­tion was cor­rect. Are we say­ing we are sat­is­fied that the dra­mat­ic increase in the num­bers of mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous felonies is worth police lay­ing off tak­ing out seri­ous crim­i­nals? Remember (inde­com) said the vast major­i­ty of the cas­es it inves­ti­gat­ed where police shoot some­one they came away with a ver­dict of good-shooting”.

How then do they jus­ti­fy the marked increase in the seri­ous loss of life and oth­er seri­ous crimes being com­mit­ted since Williams’ witch-hunt began? Just a cou­ple of days ago Terrence Williams was in the news again talk­ing about the haz­ards of being an (inde­com) agent . I real­ly want­ed to puke when I heard him it’s every day now . Everyday he is in the news mak­ing one fan­tas­tic claim or another.
The bot­tom line is that nei­ther Williams nor his sup­port­ers can jus­ti­fy the loss of life because the real­i­ty is that the police are watch­ing the clock> Officers are doing the bare min­i­mum . The Island’s crim­i­nals know that the police do not want to be sub­ject­ed to an inves­ti­ga­tion or worse by an über anti-police group hell-bent on mak­ing a name for them­selves on their blood and sac­ri­fice. The crim­i­nals are sim­ply tak­ing advan­tage of this peri­od of mad­ness in Jamaica. Unfortunately the vast major­i­ty of the sup­port­ers of this mad­ness live uptown in for­ti­fied cas­tles where the like­li­hood of reper­cus­sions are dis­tant and unlike­ly because of the police. It would be good to see the Police pull back from Kingston 6 and Kingston 8 and pay some atten­tion to the peo­ple in Kingston 13 and Kingston 12.