You Think You Know Jamaica Because You Visit And Get Treated Royally: You Don’t.…

Fifty years after the US vot­ing Rights Act was passed and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, the United States Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 —That includ­ed the map that deter­mines which states must get fed­er­al per­mis­sion before they change their vot­ing laws. That part of the law was struck down after Court chal­lenges which cul­mi­nat­ed at the nation’s high­est court. Congress had renewed it four times, and the 2006 renew­al won a huge major­i­ty in the House and passed the Senate 98 – 0. That renew­al extend­ed the law through 2031.

I bring this bit of infor­ma­tion to the fore because I want to make a sim­ple point that laws should be done so that we can go back and fix them if they are deemed to be detri­men­tal or need updat­ing. The Americans have a his­to­ry of putting a time stamp on their laws which allow them to void the headache of doing a full repeal of a law which may not be work­ing so well. In many cas­es a law may not be work­ing well but oppo­nents and pro­po­nents alike are so well dug in that it is impos­si­ble to get any­thing done about that piece of legislation.
That is why it is vital­ly impor­tant to have an out clause which allows law mak­ers to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it laws and make them rel­e­vant to the times. Insofar as the US Supreme Court is con­cerned on the Voting Rights Act the Court decid­ed that the Law has worked well and the restric­tions ought to be removed from those states so con­strained, because sit­u­a­tions have changed as it relates to vot­ing in those states. Whether one agrees with that rul­ing is open for legit­i­mate debate.

This brings us to Former Scotland Yard Ex Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell who is now an assis­tant Commissioner of (inde­com) the Agency with over­sight respon­si­bil­i­ty of the JDF. JCF. and Corrections Department.
This Publication pays a lot of atten­tion to the oper­a­tions of (inde­com) and more-so it’s com­mis­sion­er his rhetoric and behav­ior as head of that Agency. We miss the boat how­ev­er if we miss the under­tones and argu­ments made by Hamish Campbell who is nei­ther the Commissioner nor a Jamaican citizen.
The British pub­li­ca­tion the Dailymail actu­al­ly cred­its Hamish Campbell and gives him con­trol of (inde­com) as if Terrence Williams does not exist.
See Story here: Caribbean island gun police kill one civil­ian EVERY day:
I have lis­tened to Campbell’s tone and con­tent since his arrival and I tried to be fair to him. Despite being a for­mer Police offi­cer of the JCF I have been a pro­po­nent of bring­ing in peo­ple to assist our police in the areas of train­ing and to help with exper­tise in areas where we are lack­ing. As such I am not opposed to for­eign­ers com­ing to Jamaica to help. What I do not want is a belief on their part that they under­stand Jamaican cul­ture and need to make us civilize.

Mark Shields and oth­ers have come to Jamaica sup­pos­ed­ly to help with our inves­tiga­tive capa­bil­i­ties, that did not work out so well for the Jamaican peo­ple . There is not much that may be attrib­uted to Shields and oth­ers. Conversely they have ben­e­fit­ed great­ly from their stay inJamaica.
When you are invit­ed into anoth­er Country you do the job you are asked to do and stay out of the pol­i­tics of the job. Listening to Hamish Campbell I am get­ting more than a lit­tle offend­ed at his Colonialist tone. Jamaica is an inde­pen­dent Nation, I under­stand Campbell may see the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be Lord Master being on the Island and deal­ing with the ador­ing natives includ­ing those who occu­py Jamaica House , but I would like to remind him not every Jamaican is an ador­ing native hap­py fi si mas­sa.[sic]

Said Hamish Campbell, “In the UK and else­where, an inde­pen­dent body is just that, it sets out to inves­ti­gate on behalf of the pub­lic mat­ters of death, bru­tal­i­ty, all sorts of things and does­n’t allow the police ser­vice to inter­fere with the laws which have been settled,”
Here’s the prob­lem with what Campbell said, he is nei­ther in the UK or any­where else and most impor­tant­ly the law is not set­tled unless we say it’s set­tled. As Jamaicans we reserve the right to agi­tate and fight until a par­tic­u­lar law is set­tled fair­ly. Might I add fair­ly is not what mas­sa sent Campbell down to the colony to tell us is fair, fair is what we say is fair.
The (inde­com) Act is a Jamaican alba­tross to Police and cit­i­zens alike since it’s incep­tion police shoot­ings have gone down yes but those reduc­tions are not attrib­ut­able to (inde­com). They are direct­ly as a result of police pulling back , because they do not want to be per­se­cut­ed. Additionally mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes have soared as a result of the ten­ta­tive nature of police and their reluc­tance to place them­selves in jeopardy.
In 2014 Campbell was incred­i­bly vocif­er­ous in detail­ing for all who would lis­ten just how sig­nif­i­cant­ly inci­dents of police shoot­ings had dropped since he arrived.
The (Dailymail) also detailed that ‘Around 1,100 peo­ple were mur­dered in Jamaica (pop­u­la­tion 3 mil­lion) in 2013. According to Hamish Campbell in London pop­u­la­tion 8 – 9 mil­lion only 100 mur­ders were committed.

Everyone who comes to Jamaica and are greet­ed by our ador­ing and kind peo­ple, after a brief time begin to feel like they know Jamaica or that they are indeed Jamaicans. Last night I watched a young British guy who went to Jamaica once, he had the Jamaica flag tat­tooed on his right bicep. He was play­ing Reggae music and toast­ing … well of course he though he sound­ed like us and you know what that’s great. That is the way our coun­try cause peo­ple to feel. Once you go you know.Right ?
Not exact­ly !!!
That lit­tle adage does­n’t apply to mag­a­zine writ­ers and oth­er jour­nal­ists who trav­el to Jamaica spend a few weeks or months with the peo­ple then head back to their coun­tries and write about sit­u­a­tions with tremen­dous con­vic­tion as if they know Jamaica. Neither have Hamish Campbell begun to scratch the sur­face of what real­ly hap­pen in Jamaica’s inner city com­mu­ni­ties and tight-knit communities.
Don’t assume that because you vis­it Jamaica and the peo­ple are kind and ador­ing that you under­stand the com­plex nature of our nation’s sub-culture.

Said Hamish Campbell:  “There is a wide­spread belief that the police are killing peo­ple who can’t oth­er­wise get to the courts.,’ he said. ‘The courts have huge back­logs. Trials are years and years behind. Some cas­es are dis­missed by the courts, because the police evi­dence is sim­ply not up to scratch. ‘It is dif­fi­cult find­ing peo­ple who are brave enough to sit on juries. Generally speak­ing, the police say they ‘all the peo­ple we shoot are crim­i­nals, they have guns, we have an encounter with them and they are killed’,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘But the obses­sive dead­ly force does not match up with the wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny in many of the cas­es.’ ‘A long-term cul­ture has devel­oped (in the police) that these judi­cial killings will cleanse the ranks of crim­i­nals. It is a com­plete­ly unac­cept­able and inap­pro­pri­ate approach to take.”
Insulting . Naïve. Misinformed . Outlandish. Propaganda. Hearsay .
Right off the bat this guy was off base, obses­sive dead­ly force? How did Hamish Campbell arrive at that con­clu­sion? was he at the scene of every shoot­ing? Was he at the scene of a sin­gle shoot­ing ? The answer is no ! So let’s see how he arrived at the con­clu­sion he arrived at real soon after he was sent down by the Monarch to edu­cate the savages[sic] “There is a wide­spread belief that the police are killing peo­ple who can’t oth­er­wise get to the courts.,”..
Oh sil­ly me, so in Campbell’s world of inves­ti­ga­tions a wide-spread belief(heresay) is evi­den­tary fact. No men­tion of the dan­gers the Police face. No men­tion of the vis­cous nature of Jamaican thugs which his Government is all too hap­py to deport back to the Island for the Jamaican Police to deal with.
“It is dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to sit on juries” I won­der why Campbell believe these Jamaicans are afraid to sit on juries?Wonder if he both­ered to ask why there is such a huge back­log in the courts sys­tem? No I’m sure he has­n’t because his focus is to prove that police are just killing peo­ple for no reason.
The fact that many of the peo­ple arrest­ed and charged for mur­der some­times already have sev­er­al oth­er mur­der charges on court dock­ets but were grant­ed bail; on these mur­der charges over and over and over by the lib­er­al left-wing courts upon which they sim­ply kill wit­ness­es who would have tes­ti­fied against them.

Campbell was not shy about div­ing into the pol­i­tics blam­ing the police while not assign­ing blame where it belongs.
Where have I seen that atti­tude before? Oh yeah that is the atti­tude of cops who spend their time in offices , are pro­mot­ed and then find it pru­dent to lec­ture real cops. In a real democ­ra­cy Legislatures would not have grant­ed bail to peo­ple fac­ing mur­der charges. Secondly the loop-hole which allows mur­der­ers to kill wit­ness­es or have them killed in order to make their cas­es go away would have been plugged.
In a Democracy that’s what real Legislatures do. Do not blame Police for the hor­ri­ble break-down of the Criminal Justice system.
Lay the blame where it belongs at the feet of the Politicians. Campbell seem to believe that as Jamaicans we are obliv­i­ous or unin­formed about the way British Police treat crim­i­nals in British cities. We are also not unin­formed on their rela­tion­ships with eth­nic minori­ties in England.
What Jamaican cer­tain­ly do not need is a lec­ture from our for­mer Colonial masters.
Well some of us don’t.