Mario Deane was Brand Jamaica too

[Sir X]

At the No 14 Barnett Street, where he was taken and charged then denied immediate bail which was his constitutional right, he allegedly remarked: "That's why me no like police" or words to that effect. That utterance was to cost him his life. This writer is told that what he said was not pointed deliberately at the police present but was a sotto voce comment based on the fact that he did not like how his arrest and bail matter was being treated. You see, friends of Mario, I am told, had been encouraging him to become a policeman, but he had shunned the idea. Get the drift? Incidentally, it is no secret that on every construction site in this country ganja is smoked by workers so it was not unusual or "criminal" for Mario to have his "little weed" on his way to work.


http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...a-too_17599298

[Sir X]

House Fight
Sitting of Parliament ends prematurely as MPs trade insults over Mario Deane

BY BALFORD HENRY Senior staff reporter balfordh@jamaicaobserver.com

Wednesday, September 24, 2014 19 Comments




Everald Warmington

THE House of Representatives was adjourned prematurely yesterday by acting Speaker Lloyd B Smith after Government and Opposition MPs started trading insults over responsibility for Mario Deane's death.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/...Fight_17599419

[Sir X]

Chevannes decries senior's ganja arrest

Professor Chevannes, who chaired the National Commission on Ganja, describes the arrest of 92-year-old Egbert Williams on August 30 as a ridiculous attempt to suppress the folk culture of the Jamaican people.

"It therefore is useless and pointless, unless it is for share malice and victimisation to arrest and charge a 92-year-old man for such a simple offence. There is nothing morally wrong with this man smoking a spliff; the only thing wrong is that it is still on the law books," said Chevannes.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2...ead/lead4.html



Law Enforcement Officers

Also not to be ignored are the views of law enforcement officers. We first interviewed a retired Assistant Commissioner of Police, and a Sergeant of Police.

(i) The retired Assistant Commissioner of Police, with forty active years in the JCF at all levels, interacting with the general public, observing the changes in beliefs over the period, and being party to the enforcement efforts before, during and after the period of mandatory sentencing, comes to the position that the possession of cannabis below a certain weight should not be a crime. That it has remained for so long on our statutes as a crime, which, aside from the sentence one serves, remains on one's record "is one of the most destructive aspects", one that has "a most deleterious effect on our young people".

In support of decriminalisation for private purposes, he is of the opinion that the relations between police and citizen, in particular the poor, was flawed by our failure at Independence to inculcate within the Force "a deep respect for the individual and the individual's home, however humble". The power to enter and search a home is a power that normally should not be granted easily in legislation to the law enforcers.

"To be frank", according to a Sergeant of Police of a very large station, "for the small amount I think it costs the Government more to bring a person to court, than it costs the person. Because the paper that you write it on maybe costs more."


The officer expressed the view that ganja smoking does not of itself contribute to crime. What does is the prohibition that drives cultivation and trafficking underground. "Whatever contribution to crime is like a person plants [and] somebody comes in to steal it. That is where the crime comes in. But to say that because somebody use it they go out there and steal, I don't think that is a fact".


http://www.cannabis-med.org/science/Jamaica.htm

[Sir X]

Chevannes warn dem long time , but some academics say it has nothing to do with ganja .If the paper the police force wrote on to document the incident cost more, then M. Deane and thousands of others are worth less than a piece of paper or ink.

Think about that as you write , thats what Jamaican life is worth.


Madness....KMT....it had nothing to do with ganja, then what was it for all those years,decades ?