George Floyd murder vs policing in Jamaica
1494: 1570: 1646: 1808: 1821: 1824: 1891:
OTHER EVENTS
During his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus first sights Jamaica.
Turkey declares war on Venice for refusing to surrender Cyprus. Spain comes to Venice’s aid, but the Turks conquer Cyprus fully three years later.
British forces under King Charles I surrender to Scots at Newark, England.
Napoleon Bonaparte forces Spain’s King Charles IV to abdicate in favour of him in Madrid. He appoints his brother Joseph Bonaparte to rule.
France’s Napoleon Bonaparte dies in exile on the island of St Helena.
British troops take over Rangoon, Burma — now Myanmar.
New York’s Carnegie Hall (then named “Music Hall”) has law-abiding peoples from around the world about the sin committed against humanity in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020 — the day Floyd was murdered. The statistics on police killings tell a chilling story. In the year 2018 the number of civilians killed by police was 1,146 in America, 36 in Canada, three in the United Kingdom, and 137 in Jamaica. America is an 1893: 1936: 1941: 1954: 1961: 1964: 1965:
Today is the 125th day of 2021. There are 240 days left in the year. 1996:
its official opening night, featuring Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky as a guest conductor.
Panic hits the New York Stock Exchange; by year’s end, the country is in the throes of a severe depression.
Italian forces occupy Addis Ababa, ending Abyssinian — now Ethiopia — War.
Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie returned to Addis Ababa after the Italians were driven out with the help of Allied forces.
General Alfredo Stroessner heads coup against civilian President Federico Chavez, beginning 34-year dictatorship in Paraguay.
Astronaut Alan B Shepard Jr becomes America’s first space traveller as he made a 15-minute suborbital flight aboard Mercury capsule Freedom 7.
Israel announces that first water is flowing from its new pipeline from Sea of Galilee to Negev Desert, despite Arab objections to the project.
First large US military units arrive in Vietnam. outlier among rich countries for the number of police killings. Jamaica heads the list on a per capita basis, given its much smaller population.
Is the situation in America any worse than what is happening
wins the Kentucky Derby, the first of his Triple Crown victories.
Marxist terrorists of Red Brigades in Italy announce they are carrying out death sentence against former Premier Aldo Moro, whose body is found two days later.
Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands dies at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland on his 66th day without food.
Estonia’s Communist Party removes 22 party leaders in sweep that gives greater strength to reformers.
Singapore canes American teenager Michael Fay for vandalism, a day after the sentence was reduced from six lashes to four in response to an appeal by US President Bill Clinton. 1978: 1981: 1989: 1994:
Secretariat with police killings in Jamaica? We hide behind the fact that George Floyd was a black man and the people killed by police in America are disproportionately black, which makes it a matter of denying a particular group its
Thousands of civilians flee Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, as civil war rages.
Tommy Mccook, saxophonist and founding member of the Skatalites, dies
Indonesia and Portugal sign an agreement allowing the people of East Timor to vote on whether to remain part of Indonesia or seek independence.
Fidel Castro releases from prison one of Cuba’s most prominent dissidents, Vladimiro Roca, who was convicted of sedition for publishing a pamphlet that called for democratic and economic reforms.
genocide suspects remain in prison, with many yet to stand trial.
Greece’s attempts to calm security fears about the Summer Olympics are rocked by three bombs that explode before dawn — 100 days before the games begin. No one is injured in the blasts that officials attribute to selfstyled anarchists or other domestic extremists.
A Kenya Airways Boeing 1998: 1999: 2002: 2004: 2007: civil rights. But there is no solace to be found in the discriminatory practice by the policeman who killed Floyd and those who stood by and watched. No comfort we can take in the adversity of others in this case American jurisprudence — not when we consider that young men and youth from inner city and other poor marginalised communities account for most of the victims of extrajudicial killings by the police in this sun- and blooddrenched island.
To Jamaica’s credit, the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) was established to tame the beast, so to speak, by holding the police accountable for being judge, jury, and executioner. While there have been ups and downs in the year-to-year statistics, police killings have been trending downwards. From INDECOM’S own reports, and Amnesty International, the number reduced by half from 258 in 2013 when INDECOM began arresting and prosecuting police alleged to have committed a crime to 115 in 2014. In 2020 there were 86 reported fatal shootings by the police, the lowest in 20 years. Since 2014 INDECOM has successfully prosecuted 21 police offers for wrongs they committed. But there remains more to be done legislatively, as well as operationally.
It appears that the Government of Jamaica does not have the appetite to give to INDECOM the authority it needs in the tool kit of legislation to bring rogue cops to book. Let 737-800 carrying 114 and bound for the Kenyan capital Nairobi, crashes near the Cameroonian city of Douala, where it had taken off during a storm, killing all aboard.
Israel rushes to beef up its rocket defences on its northern border to shield against possible retaliation after carrying out two airstrikes in Syria over 48 hours — an unprecedented escalation of Israeli involvement in the Syrian civil war. 2013:
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Karl Marx, German socialist France’s Empress Nellie Bly, US (1818-1883);
(1826-1920);
(1867-1922); (19421998);
Eugenie journalist/adventurer
Tammy Wynette, US singer
Michael Palin, British actor/ comedian Adele, British soul singer Chris Brown, R&B singer Michelle Freeman, Jamaican track and field athlete who was an Olympic bronze medalist, O’neil Gordon “Collie” Smith, Jamaican and West Indian cricketer
(1943- ); (1988- ); (1989- );
(1969- ); (1933-1959)
us, therefore, turn our attention to what can be done from an operational standpoint as we learn from the Americans and the George Floyd case which led to the conviction of Chauvin on all three counts.
Police in America have always got away with their nefarious acts as if they never happened. Without a teenage girl having had the presence of mind and courage to video record the event as it unfolded, and without footage from body cameras worn by policemen, George Floyd’s unnecessary and unjustifiable death would have gone unpunished like all others before it.
What is the situation with Jamaican police wearing body cameras? Lloyd Distant, chairman of the local Crime Monitoring and Oversight Committee, in a front-page story in the April 23, 2021 edition of the was quoted saying the following. “The projection was to bring in 1,000 new body-worn cameras in this year. We are likely to bring in 120 additional. I think we have just about 200 in place right now. We are a far cry from where we need to be, and the conversations, they are largely around budgetary limitations that exist.”
Those who hold the purse strings, who say we cannot afford it, should be reminded of this adage attributed to Harvard University President Derek Bok: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” It is to them that I direct this question. What costs a Government, a society, and a country more than a life unjustifiably taken at the hands of representatives of the State?
The upholders of the law cannot be the breakers of the law.
Daily Gleaner,
hmorgan@cwjamaica.com