Ja Blog Day 2013: Police & Security Force Abuse–“wi a pay unno fi murder wi!”

Poster by Michael Thompson, Freestylee

Poster by Michael Thompson, Freestylee

policeabuse

Mark Shields @marxshields
So NYPD, Boston PD and London Met Police, plus 1,000s more police depts ALL use Twitter. Come on #JCF – keep up. No cost, just results.

Mark Shields @marxshields
#JCF seethis “@NYPDnews: Male wanted for armed robbery, demanded cash, W 26 St & 9 Ave 5/19 1:20pm #10Pct #800577TIPS ”

Owly Images

Mark Shields @marxshields
#JCF and this: Officers investigating disorder during FA Cup Semi-Final at Wembley Stadium have released 16images flickr.com/photos/metropo…”

Michael Mitchell @MichaelAssured
@marxshields @MizDurie As long as they focus on crime-fighting instead of crime-solving, #JCF will NOT see [or] appreciate benefits of Twitter.

I open this post by quoting Mark Shields, the colourful English policeman who was loaned to the Jamaican police force some years ago, along with several of his colleagues, in a vain effort to combat the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s chronic problems with corruption, rogue cops and inefficacy to the point of stultification. Let’s get a sense of the depth of the problem by looking at this quote from the British policeman:

“When I first got here, there was a very inward-looking, nepotistic culture. They were hated by most of the public in Jamaica, because fatal shootings were running at a ridiculously high rate, corruption was out of control, from top to bottom. Anything from allowing drugs to be brought on to the island, and turning a blind eye for a cut, to police officers contracted to kill other criminals, anything you can think of, they did.”

Even the officers trying their best were struggling in a system that would have looked old-fashioned a century ago. “It was appalling. An exhibit such as a bullet fragment would be put into a paper brown envelope, and then they would get a red wax seal and stamp it on the back like something out of the Napoleonic war. I’m serious. So you would have this old envelope with a Napoleonic seal on the back, and that’s your exhibit.” Fingerprints were stored on cards, with no digital database; crimes were laboriously recorded by hand in big old dusty ledgers. “They would just say, that’s how we do it…”

As you can imagine there was a lot of resistance to the British imports into the JCF. Most of them have served their time and moved on but Shields, known as @marxshields on Twitter, is still here working privately as a security consultant. Ever one for upgrading to new technologies, in recent times he has been urging the JCF to start using DNA testing and Twitter, the detective’s tool par excellence, one i myself have been recommending to both my academic colleagues and the journalistic community in Jamaica for years. The reason? It’s the latest, most innovative means of news and information-gathering, like tapping into a vast reservoir, a virtual motherlode of data waiting to be mined; at the same time it offers conduits to reach multiple networks, to crowdsource whatever it is you need or just to transmit your message far and wide.

Has anyone seen this ‘Male wanted for armed robbery’? Here’s the picture we have of him. or Does anyone know where this place is? with a photo attached to it will bring in valuable responses that may very well help solve your research problem if you’re an academic or the crime if you happen to be a member of the Police Force. If you wanted to know for instance how many police forces around the world are already using Twitter you would post a tweet like this: Are the #police in YOUR country using Twitter yet? Please use #smartpolicing when replying. The hashtag ‘smartpolicing’ would collect answers from all around the world which could then be separately verified for accuracy.

But as @MichaelAssured pointed out the JCF will only realize the value of Twitter if they accept that their mandate is crime-’solving’ rather than crime-’fighting’.

With crime as rampant as it is in Jamaica and the Jamaican police specializing in crime-fighting you would think that they’d be experts at it now, neatly taking out criminals as they encounter them but no! Unfortunate citizens who happen to be in the vicinity of suspects will be taken out too; when questions are raised ‘collateral damage’ will be mentioned as in Tivoli Gardens three years ago to the day, when local security forces (army and police with benign technical assistance from the US) breached the barricaded community in search of the most wanted Don in the history of Jamaica–Christopher “Dudus” Coke.

In the days that followed 73 plus civilians were killed, no Don was found and despite claims by the armed forces that they were fighting heavily armed gangs loyal to Dudus only 6 guns were recovered. But let’s not rehash history. We are using the unfortunate events of May 23rd to catapult this first Ja Blog Day and to focus collectively on the problem of policing here and the wanton slaughter of Jamaican citizens.

The extra-judicial killings are too numerous to itemize here. I will pick just one to focus on because it illustrates the problem really well. It’s the case of Matthew John Lee, a generous young middle class boy, who gave two less fortunate friends a ride one day. The police descended on them as they drove through an affluent community many of us traverse daily and after the usual controversial ‘encounter’ all three were shot dead in broad daylight. I won’t repeat the details here because they were very well captured in this video footage of a show called Impact in which journalist Cliff Hughes explored the case with family members and the President of Jamaicans for Justice, Carolyn Gomes.

 

 

I deliberately cite the case of Matthew Lee because he was not a ghetto youth, the perennial victims of encounters with the police. He was a young middle class youth, a former junior hockey champion, a citizen in good standing, yet the police didn’t bat an eyelid in killing him. This suggests that a new frontier has been reached and those of us who think our elite status will give us immunity from the violence that stalks the land please take note. They came for Keith Clarke in the wee hours of the morning, they came for Matthew Lee in broad daylight and they will come for you and me whenever they please. Welcome to a reality the poor in Jamaica have always known–the Police/Armed forces are not in control–they are completely OUT of control. “Wi a pay uuno fi murder wi,” as one such hapless citizen remarked.

I close with an extended quote from a former policeman who has penned a tell-all book, soon to be published, which tells it like it is from the inside. I won’t disclose his name right now but do read the excerpt below. The incident described happened in the 90s. I warn you that it contains material that may not be suitable for children or the squeamish. It’s a measure of the problem we now face.

Most cops see the ghetto man as wicked, murderous, and criminal. And so he greets him with that mindset. He doesn’t see conditions; he sees an obstruction to peace and quiet. He sees the ghetto man as an animal that should be slaughtered as soon as possible. I was one of those cops. I was especially resentful of ghetto dwellers when I had had a few drinks. I abused them, kicked them, punched them and made them crawl in the gutters. I was indoctrinated not just by other police officers but by society at large. I did not like these youths who dressed outrageously and smoked weed and bleached and twisted their hair and wore earrings and nose rings. I was programmed to see them as nonentities, but the intelligence and wit of the ghetto man, his will to survive, his courage to face the bullets, baton and jailhouse was enough to open my eyes.
 
Sometimes it takes the death of another to open your eyes. I witnessed the killing of a ghetto man by one of my patrol member and it changed my perception of people from ghettos forever. That martyr’s death was the beginning of the end for me as a police officer. It wasn’t going to be the last of such incidents I would see but it remains the most senseless act of wanton cruelty I have ever experienced. The incident keeps replaying in my mind year after year and up to this day I feel motivated to speak out against it, to bring closure to this tragedy, to have that murderer in uniform face the Courts, to have the family of that young man compensated and consoled for what I consider a calculated, pre- meditated, cold blooded murder.
 
It was about midday when I received a call on my portable radio to assist another patrol in my vicinity. Along with my three army personnel, we covered ground quickly. On reaching we saw a young man with a broken machete in his waist trying to elude the grasp of some angry soldiers. It was in the Coronation Market area and the higglers were shouting to the cops and soldiers that the man was mentally challenged. The man seemed to be in his early twenties and was dressed in a pair of dirty short pants. The only weapon he had was the machete in his pants waist.
 
The soldiers from the other patrol tried surrounding him, but every time one grabbed at him he would step into the running sewage by the side of the road. Suddenly I saw a soldier take aim at him with his SLR rifle and open fire. The man fell into the sewage with half his face blown away. I saw one of the soldiers in my team holding his neck. The bullet had gone on to graze him. I watched the sewage turned red. As the bloody liquid passed me I saw the front teeth of the dead youth along with gum and top lip drifting along. I watched in shock as the young man’s body quivered and he clawed the ground trying desperately to hold onto a life that had long left him. Some people were shouting, “murder” and others were just screaming. Market stalls were overturned as people ran in all directions, some running towards the scene and others running away from it. I remembered just standing there staring, immobilized by this display of wanton cruelty. I looked at the soldier who had fired and I could see the fear in his eyes. He was swinging the rifle from left to right as if he expected the crowd to storm him. I crouched and walked away, but looked again at the body of the young man in his half pants, the machete still in his waist.
 
His killing did something to me; it tore me apart, for I was a part of this unwarranted and brutal abuse. I represented the group the soldier came from and I felt shame, anger and confusion all in one. The victim was mentally challenged, he was ill, he was helpless and he was murdered for it. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. The soldier with the grazed neck was beside me and he was still touching the spot where the bullet had grazed him. He too was muttering his disapproval of the killing.
 
When I returned to our base in downtown Kingston I saw the soldier who had pulled the trigger. I walked straight up to him, looked him in the eye and asked him why. He never answered. I don’t even know if he heard me. But the real shocker came when I discovered that I was perhaps the only one there who didn’t think he was a hero. Everyone else was congratulating and cheering him on. I was told later that this was not his first killing or murder, as one officer audaciously put it. By now rioting had started and we were summoned to the streets again, this time to quell the rioting.
 
I looked at the killer once more but he didn’t look at me. He pretended to be distracted by the noise outside. He was sweating, and there was fright in his eyes. This was the first time I was looking in the eyes of a murderer, and he didn’t have twisted hair or earrings, he wasn’t dressed outrageously, or have bleached skin. He was a soldier, not the usual demonic ghetto inhabitant.
 
It was painful to use physical force to disperse the mob that had gathered outside our command post but I had to do it. It was painful because I understood their hurt, their anger. They cursed me too, they called me ‘dutty murdering police bwoy’; some accused us of having strength only for ‘mad’ people and I will never forget the female voice that shouted above the rest “wi a pay unno fi murder wi,” That was the statement of the day, for it was true, it was shamefully true.
 
I left the scene that evening with my team, found a bar and drank for the rest of the afternoon. Later that night there was a news report that a man of ‘unsound mind’ was killed when he attacked members of the security forces with a machete. That was the moment it dawned on me that something was very wrong with the approach and conduct of the security forces. It was the beginning of the end for me.

What the police can do…Ja Blog Day!

Gleaaner: Soldiers stand guard at an entrance into Tivoli Gardens during the May 2010 incursion into the volatile community - file photo. Town - File.

Gleaaner: Soldiers stand guard at an entrance into Tivoli Gardens during the May 2010 incursion into the volatile community – file photo. Town – File.

Well, we’re counting down now to May 23rd, the third anniversary of the siege of Tivoli, a military operation in which more than 73 lives were lost, most of them civilian. The Jamaican security forces unleashed a blitzkrieg in Tivoli Gardens, a highly politicized residential community in Western Kingston, using shock and awe tactics, firing mortars, violently entering homes and massacring young male residents by all accounts. Their excuse? That most wanted Don, Christopher Lloyd Coke or the infamous ‘Dudus’, was holed up in the community with an army of gunmen protecting him. Well, they didn’t net the Don, who escaped and was captured almost a month later. Were the men slaughtered by the armed forces actually gunmen and criminals? Could they have been taken alive and arrested using more conventional methods? We’ll probably never know.

To mark the tragic anniversary of the Tivoli incursion and the lives that were lost there, Jamaican bloggers are uniting to draw attention to the scourge of extra-judicial killings in Jamaica and a police force seemingly out of control and beyond restraint, legal or otherwise. We invite all bloggers to join us by publishing thoughtful, well-researched, hard-hitting commentaries on police brutality in Jamaica on May 23rd, which also happens to be Labour Day here.

From Bob Marley’s famous line about waking up in a curfew, surrounded by police all “dressed in uniforms of brutality” to Lovindeer’s comical Babylon Boops (see video below), the police (often referred to as ‘Babylon’ in Jamaica) have been a popular subject for commentary and satire in Jamaica. Please add your voice to ours to make this first Ja Blog Day a meaningful and productive one! Please see further information on Ja Blog Day and how to participate immediately below the Lovindeer video.

Bloggers are not given any directives about how they should post or present on the issue of police and security force abuses. The topic was chosen around the time of marches in Jamaica to remember the 1963 Good Friday Coral Gardens Incident, also known as Bad Friday. Unfortunately incidents similar to Coral Gardens persist in Jamaica, the most recent occasion being the allegations about security force abuses in 2010 during the Tivoli Gardens Incursion to find and capture Christopher Coke. Abuses by both entities happen en masse during events at Coral Gardens, Tivoli, Braeton, and Crawle but also during what should be routine interactions between the Jamaican public and the entities meant to keep the peace, the army and police force. The names that many remember are as a litany – Vanessa Kirkland, Kentucky Kid, Nicketa Cameron, Kayann Lamont, Ian Lloyd. The public often charge that the innocent are killed and that the police or army acted improperly. The army and police often claim a “shoot out,” mistake, or nothing at all. But amidst the back and forth and wondering there is too often no resolution for a community or victim’s family. Too often there is no feeling of justice if indeed there was illegality. Too often there is no search for truth, however uncomfortable or unwelcome that may be.

“Many people may be resistant to speaking up and out about this issue because they’re afraid but the plain fact is that in Jamaica there are far too many and frequent questionable incidents involving the security forces and civilians,”. It is not intended that the posts produced on this first Ja Blog Day will immediately end instances of police and security force abuses. However, for Jamaica’s strong and growing community of Jamaican bloggers to speak up about this issue is important. Ja Blog Day is an opportunity for Jamaican bloggers to strengthen their presence on the Internet and within Jamaican society as important writers and contributors to the public sphere.

WHAT: First Annual Jamaica (Ja) Blog Day on Police and Security Force Abuses
WHEN: May 23, 2013, all day
BLOG REGISTRATION: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1EkbDJcjQPaUmXcjBFlqdUcLOtqhCEGhVh2HpwKlvXR8/viewform
WEBSITE: jablogday.tumblr.com
TWITTER:@JABLOGDAY
EMAIL: JaBlogDay@gmail.com

Jamaica (Ja) Blog Day will be an annual event for Jamaican bloggers. Each year’s topic will be different but the charge will be the same: a day of action in service to Jamaica, speaking on an important issue in Jamaica. Visit http://www.jablogday.tumblr.com and http://www.twitter.com/jablogday for more information and continuing updates.

Britain’s Black Debt: The Logic of Reparation

The launch of the book Britain’s Black Debt by historian Hilary Beckles, Principal of the Cave Hill Campus on May 2 was as solemn and grand an event as the weight of reparations from Britain for the crime of slavery demanded. The auditorium of the New Medical Sciences Building on the Mona Campus of the University was full, with ushers politely showing attendees to their seats. Here and there you could see clumps of Rastafarians equipped with small drums and instruments which they shook and beat whenever a speaker said something they approved of.

Kellie Magnus @kelliemagnus
Beckles: 300 years of salt pork has led to chronic illnesses. Rasta man shouts out: fire bun!

@chicab_1
@kelliemagnus I find huge flags waved at high speeds right by the ear more dramatic #strategiestosurvive3hourbooklaunch

Kellie Magnus @kelliemagnus
Gonsalves calls for intl conference on reparations. Offers St Vincent and the Grenadines as host #britainsblackdebt

anniepaul @anniepaul
Sigh RT @kelliemagnus: After 67 minutes Gonsalves says, “I turn now to part two of the book.” #britainsblackdebt

RT @keimiller: Gonzales has moved on to 2nd topic: slavery. Hope its not as long as Roots.

@touchofallright to @BigBlackBarry

dude–you shld be at this launch for “britain’s black debt: reparations for caribbean slavery and native genocide”

BigBlackBarry @BigBlackBarry
@touchofallright nobody doan invite me to these jiggy functions. How it can name black an Barry nat dere?

The flippancy of the tweets I’ve chosen to quote above are no reflection on the subject of the book itself but more the outcome of a captive audience equipped with social media and able to chafe publicly at the undue length of the ceremonies. Lord Anthony Gifford who has researched the subject of reparations extensively and campaigned for it, was short and incisive but by the time the guest speaker, the Honorable Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, finished his expansive official speech many of us had to leave without hearing the author of the book respond. This was a pity because I had come mainly to hear Beckles on a subject that I’ve thought and written about myself.

reparationlogic1

In fact the event reminded me that one of the earliest columns I wrote for the Sunday Herald (March 10, 1996) was titled The Logic of Reparation. I remember being stunned at the time when Rupert Lewis congratulated me on being the first columnist to tackle this troublesome issue in the mainstream media (Jamaica’s come a long way since the mid-nineties). My own interest in Reparations was sparked by my conversations with a family friend, Ras Makonnen, aka George Nelson, a feisty Rastafarian public figure who had he not succumbed to cancer would probably have been Mayor of Portmore today. Big George as he was known, founded the Committee on Reparations in Jamaica in 1991 and had attended the First Pan-African Conference on Reparations held in Abuja, Nigeria, April 27-29, 1993, out of which came the Abuja Proclamation, part of which i quote below.

…Fully persuaded that the damage sustained by the African peoples is not a “thing of the past’ but is Painfully manifest in the damaged lives of contemporary Africans from Harlem to Harare, in the damaged economies of the Black World from Guinea to Guyana, from Somalia to Surinam.
Respectfully aware of historic precedents in reparations, ranging from German Payment of restitution to the Jews for the enormous tragedy of the Nazi Holocaust to the question of compensating Japanese-Americans for injustice of internment by Roosevelt Administration in the United States during the World War II.
Cognizant of the fact that compensation for injustice need not necessarily be paid only in capital but could include service to the victims or other forms of restitution and readjustment of the relationship agreeable to both parties.
Emphatically convinced that what matters is not the guilt but the responsibility of those states and nations whose economic evolution once depended on slave labor and colonialism, and whose forebears participated either in selling and buying Africans, or in owning them, or in colonizing  them…
Well, I missed what Professor Beckles had to say on the occasion of the launch but at least i can buy the book and read it. It was only the other day that a conversation on Facebook about Reparations inevitably led to the argument by a ‘Jamaica white’ that s/he was a mixture of both black and white. So which part was going to pay which part? This kind of trivialization of reparative justice is quite common but the fact is that reparations need not be thought of as individual payouts such as the former slave-owning planters received, but as investments in public goods, like education, health and infrastructure. This would go a long way toward repairing the historical injustice Britain benefited from and inflicted on the Caribbean islands it once controlled.
English historians have recently uncovered the links between prominent British public figures and their slave-owning antecedents. From David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to highly regarded writers such as George Orwell and Graham Greene, the list is a long one. According to Nick Draper from University College London, who along with historian Catherine Hall and others studied the compensation papers “… as many as one-fifth of wealthy Victorian Britons derived all or part of their fortunes from the slave economy.”

To Dump or Not to Dump: Bureau of No Standards…? #TissueGate #Jamaica

This week Jamaicans are convulsed about substandard toilet paper on supermarket shelves that may have caused a rash of vaginal infections. The truth is we don’t know much. The Bureau of Standards claims to have found four brands that may be ‘contaminated’ but refuses to name them. Instead they are laboriously naming dozens of other loo paper that have alledgedly passed their tests. It leaves Jamaicans in a quandary. Should people like my friend Heather who invested in a case of toilet paper dump the lot because its not on the BOS list of safe tissues? Is it even safe to take a dump? The selection of tweets below, all dated today, will fill give some idea of the extent of the problem:

irietoilet-paper

Dionne JacksonMiller @djmillerJA
Coming up at 5.30 – the toilet tissue issue @RJR94fm Beyond the Headlines

Deika Morrison @deikamorrison
Toilet paper with expiry date? Huh? #TissueIssue

@BigBlackBarry How yu can have a female PM silent when women in this country are being subjected to bacterial assaults on their vaginas?

Dionne JacksonMiller @djmillerJA
Next – a local manufacturer on the toilet tissue issue @RJR94fm Beyond the Headlines

YoGyLe @jahmekyagyal
Does the BSJ have lawyers? have said lawyers told them that truth is a defense? or is it that BSJ don’t trust their own tests?

Emma Lewis @Petchary
Does the Bureau of Standards test baby diapers too? Just wondering…

BigBlackBarry @BigBlackBarry
This bredda is a kratches….him need fi wipe up with tainted tissue

KimberlyRacquel @KRSeymour
The Bureau of Standards are a spineless set of BUREAUCRATS who refuse to protect the public out of fear. Shame on Dr. Davidson! #tissueissue

@Sarahjah: Tissuegate. Smh.

Julian Cresser @JulianCresser
@anniepaul Why aren’t they being fair? They have told us what is safe. They don’t need to name the unsafe ones.

May i recommend a ‘lota‘ to Jamaicans distressed by the #TissueIssue. As the Mighty Sparrow said to his would-be Dulaheen:” I’ll gladly trade my toilet paper for some water!”

File:Black Badna-Bodna BD.jpg

Lota

And beyond that perhaps we should consider whether this whole folderol is just a tissue of lies concocted by local toilet paper manufacturers to protect themselves against ‘foreign’ (read Chinese) imports of the sanitary product.

It was news to me to find out that this tissue issue had reared its head as far back as February this year albeit in a slightly different context. As a Gleaner article dated Feb 3, 2013, Shoddy imported tissue raises stink, has it:

Scores of Jamaicans are purchasing substandard toilet tissues and putting themselves at risk of serious health problems.

Sources in the health and manufacturing sectors last week confirmed that a large quantity of substandard toilet tissues is being imported into the island, mainly from Asia.

The Jamaica Customs Department also confirmed that there are indications that the quality of some of the tissues being imported from China is less than acceptable.

A Sunday Gleaner probe revealed that the three major local manufacturers of toilet tissues have been lobbying the Government for changes to the import regulatory framework.

The manufacturers have also dispatched complaints to the Customs Department about the inequality inherent in the system.

They have claimed that the labels on some of tissues from Asia are not written in English.

In addition, local regulation states that the minimum sheet count allowed in Jamaica is 300, while the sheet count of tissues from Asia is between 200 and 240.

In the meantime the Jamaican Bureau of Standards (BOS) is digging in its heels and refusing to divulge the names of the contaminated toilet tissue brands. According to this Radio Jamaica (RJR) report:

While the names of the four brands of toilet paper  have not been released, RJR news has learnt that one brand is imported from within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

Last week the Bureau of Standards said it was waiting for conclusive scientific tests to be done overseas, before revealing the brand of contaminated toilet paper.

However,  Professor Winston Davidson – the Chairman of the Bureau of Standards now says the names may not be released due to legal concerns.

He argues that the Bureau never asked the manufacturers of toilet paper to meet microbiological standards  - similar  to what is required for food imports.

Concerning reports that some supermarkets still had contaminated toilet paper on their shelves – Davidson admitted that this was true.

However, the Ministry of Health has stepped in and revealed that it will be removing the affected toilet paper brands from the public domain.

More as the situation unrolls…er…unravels…

How Indian Journalists are using Twitter

The excerpt below is from a Neiman Journalism Lab article on Indian journalists and their use or non-use of social media. I was struck by the following paragraphs because of the connection to my previous post Why Twitter is Essential for Journalists in which i asked when the top brass of Jamaican journalism was going to start using Twitter, one of the most revolutionary new news-gathering tools available today.

The Delhi gang rape case prompted many journalists to use Twitter for updates on events and immediate responses from activists. To a greater extent than in previous protests, social media helped journalists keep a finger on the pulse of middle class India and get their immediate feedback on important issues. An Australian reporter said that “Twitter was really helpful to get a sense of the public sentiment and developments.” He followed the #delhigangrape hashtag, the official Twitter account of the Indian government, women’s groups, pressure groups, and Indian media on the subject.

Venkataramakrishnan, the journalist who found 140 characters limiting, nonetheless said that the protests have been incubators for social media sophistication in India. “Following the Anna Hazare case and the Delhi gang rape case, social media began to achieve a critical mass,” he told us.

Many journalists cited the importance of social media for background information. A journalist from The Hindu told us “I look at tweets by our own editor, editors from other newspapers, well known journalists such as Pritish Nandy [a columnist with The Times of India and the Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar], Abhijit Majumder [editor of the Delhi edition of the Hindustan Times], and Saikat Dutta [a Delhi-based editor of the newspaper DNA]. I also look up tweets by television journalists such as Shiv Aroor [deputy editor at Headlines Today]. You get a mix of opinions from their tweets. Knowing these people’s perspectives helps me during coverage — but only indirectly…I rely on what I see when I am on the ground.”

Interestingly the overall thrust of the article I’m quoting is that in countries like India social media only reaches a tiny percentage of people and therefore may legitimately be overlooked. In Jamaica the number of people who have access to the internet and use social media  via cellphones is much higher. Low internet penetration is all the more reason for media heads and top journalists to be au fait with the latest technologies so they can use it to inform themselves and their audiences who aren’t as well linked.

Why Twitter is essential for Journalists

investigativetweeting

2012 was the year a handful of name-brand Jamaican journalists decided it was time to start using Twitter. That was pretty late in the day already. The majority however are still holding back, perhaps signalling their impending mortality or the end of their shelf lives as journalists to take seriously? We still have no @ianboyne, @markwignall, @cliffhughes, @MartinHenry (perhaps the only local science writer!) and many others who straddle traditional media like local giants.

This post is dedicated to all the non-tweeting local giants of Jamaican journalism: The following quote from How to break into science writing using your blog and social media (#sci4hels), a Scientific American article should clue you in on why you’re shortchanging your audiences by continuing to spurn the latest newsgathering technologies such as Twitter. In addition this useful but long article provides a lot of great information for journalists in general on how to use social media to find new audiences and outlets.

“Let’s focus on Twitter now. It is essential for a journalist. Not having – and using – a Twitter account today is like not having an email address ten years ago (and yes, some cutting-edge people are completely abandoning email and doing all of their communications over social media).

Big companies have suffered losses because their old-timey PR teams were unaware of the backlash on social media, and then incapable of responding correctly on social media. Businesses can lose money if they are missing key information that appears only on social media. Academia is especially horribly insulated and way behind the times. But nowhere is use of social media as important as in journalism. Don’t be this guy who was completely oblivious that his newspaper was in the center of national maelstrom of harsh criticism, because “I only deal with what’s on paper”.

When an airplane skidded off the runway in Denver, I knew it, along with 100,000s of other people, 12 minutes before everyone else. A passenger tweeted about it, and it spread like wildfire, including his updates, blurry photos, etc. CNN had a brief piece 12 minutes later. The accidental “citizen journalist” scooped them. Sometimes, for some news, these 12 minutes may be crucial for you.

Twitter and Facebook were key methods of communication not just between participants, but also to the outside world, during the Mumbai attacks and the Arab Spring.

People got jobs and gigs on Twitter that started their careers.

Journalists on deadline quickly find expert sources for their stories.

Journalists who observed the massive, instant, intense and scathing reactions of experts to #arseniclife or #Encode did not make the mistake of filing their positive stories and then having to backpedal later.

If all you see on Twitter is garbage, you are following the wrong people. You have to carefully choose who to follow, and then learn how to filter. Unfollowing is easy, and polite. You are not dissing your Mom, as if you would if you unfriended her on Facebook.”

And guess what the best thing about this most cutting-edge tool for journalists is? It’s free!

Restorative Justice in Jamaica: Redeeming the back story to Songs of Redemption

Some weeks ago I went to see Songs of Redemption (Hereafter SOR) with a couple of friends, one of them an anthropologist who has written extensively about Jamaica and recently made her first film, the other an activist, both Jamaican. The film, set in Kingston’s legendary General Penitentiary (GP), is about an innovative rehabilitation programme that uses music as a tool, helping a set of inmates serving time for everything from petty theft to murder most foul, to discover and hone their musical talent. The film is a stunning production by Fernando Guereta, whose earlier film Why Do Jamaicans Runs so Fast, many of us have seen and appreciated. SOR takes us right into GP, an institution that has been a reference point in many a classic Jamaican song and into the lives of a group of prisoners who absolutely transfix  you with their dramatic stories and songs, their humanity, their selves. The scenes of imprisoned men milling around the compound of GP in rag tag bunches is, to me, unforgettable.

The quote below accompanies the Youtube video trailer of the film (embedded beneath the quote):

“Songs Of Redemption” is a documentary that captures the story of redemption and rehabilitation of Jamaican inmates of the General Penetentiary in Kingston. It features riveting interviews and powerful original Reggae music created, performed and produced by inmates wardens and Local Producers.

This documentary is dedicated to
the extraordinary work of human rights activist, Carla Gullotta.

 

 
After viewing SOR the three of us discussed the film over dinner. While I thought it documented an important initiative that definitely needs wider support and awareness i felt uncomfortable about the fact that all the principals behind actualizing the film and the project appeared to be Europeans and that in an unfortunate way the film therefore reproduced the stereotype or trope of the white saviour rescuing abject black subjects and promising salvation. The latter are revealed to Jamaican society and the world as helpless, incarcerated subjects worthy of being heard and ‘redeemed’.

The one black subject with some authority in the film is a Superintendent Fairweather, on the verge of retirement, who by his own account, had always been a champion of prisoner rehabilitation. The impression the film leaves you with is that Carla Gullotta, a Jamaicanized Italian activist, spearheaded this innovative programme under the approving eye of Supe Fairweather sometime in 2007.

Imagine my surprise therefore to find out that a rehabilitation programme had actually been in place in the prison system  since the late 90s when Desmond Green, founder of the Reverence for Life Foundation, started a branch at South Camp Road (formerly the Gun Court, now The Peace Centre). Louise Frazer-Bennett, who used to manage Ninjaman and Bounty Killer was part of that project and literally pioneered the introduction of music-related programming here. In 2000 Kevin Wallen, a former street kid who had later gone to school in Canada and become a motivational speaker, returned to Jamaica with his brothers hoping to contribute towards the nation in a meaningful way. They started and ran a computer boutique, One Stop Computers, at the New Kingston Mall.  While in Canada Kevin had become close to Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, a prominent boxer who had been controversially imprisoned in the United States for 20 years before being freed, an experience that had turned him into a campaigner for prisoners’ rights and rehabilitation. Bob Dylan famously wrote and sang the song ‘Hurricane’ in his honour.

Wallen describes how it all began:

In 1989, when Reuben Carter’s movie was coming out, I brought him to Jamaica to speak. We agreed to give free tickets to some inmates to hear Reuben speak. The inmates came on the bus from the prison, part of a program called Reverence For Life, run by Desmond Green. After Ruben spoke, one of them stood up and told his story. I remember Ruben said to him, “You know, the one thing you have where you are is time! So what ever it is that you need to figure out, that’s where you should to start. Start by using your time.”

Seeing the inmates’ passion and listening to them talk with Ruben, I volunteered to work with them at the South Camp Prison. I was looking for something more meaningful than computer sales, and I wanted to understand why my life had turned out good and they were suffering. Maybe by sharing my journey with them that would make a difference (source: Kevin Wallen’s forthcoming autobiography co-authored with Fern Nesson).

Influenced by Carter, Wallen started getting involved with prisoners in the correctional system here, first giving motivational talks, then building a library, introducing computers into the prison and gradually working with a group of inmates who had formed a self-help unit called SET (Students Expressing Truth). SET, which was highly organized and completely inmate-driven had started holding quiz competitions, spelling bees and other activities in prison.

Along with Charlie Nesson, a Harvard Law School professor who had also been working in the Jamaican prison system Wallen turned the computer lab into a transformational project. Nesson is the founder of the  Berkman Center for Internet and Society, one of the earliest outfits “to demonstrate the transformative potential of the cyber environment“.  The self-styled ‘Dean of Cyberspace’ set up a programme using Harvard personnel and resources to introduce Jamaican inmates to cyberspace.Provided with the latest technologies inmates learnt video editing, Photoshop, graphic design, built 3-d houses, wrote syllabuses and taught each other to use the programmes. Most of this work was done at the South Camp Road prison facility.

After his success at South Camp Wallen built a computer lab at Fort Augusta, the women’s prison, which was also hugely successful and by 2006 tried to introduce the programme to the GP by starting a small project there but to his surprise met with resistance, including from Superintendent Fairweather, presented in Songs of Redemption as a champion of prison rehab programmes. “It seemed like the powers that be liked things the way they were.” Wallen said. Doggedly sensitising the authorities to the benefits of rehabilitation and restorative justice Wallen built a computer lab that could hold 30 inmates at a time at GP. Nesson and Wallen then started thinking about the possibility of starting a radio station at the prison, researching it on the internet and finally with permission from the Commissioner of Corrections and funding from UNESCO which provided the equipment and training, CEDA providing funds for building the space, the radio station was established. The motivation for starting the station was a particular inmate named Serano (who plays a leading role in Songs of Redemption) whose voice and singing had made an impression as early as 1999 when he sang with the Reverence for Life project.

in 2008 David Sasaki, known to me from Global Voices Online took note of the innovative rehabilitation programme on a PBS blog site called Idea Lab:

When thinking of Kingston, Jamaica, blogging and podcasting are far from the first words to come to mind. “Murder capital of the world”, sure. Bob Marley and reggae music, of course. But a cutting edge prison rehabilitation program, which teaches prisoners at a maximum security correctional institute how to blog, podcast, and even participate in Second Life?

…

Kevin Wallen, the current director of S.E.T. first became involved in the organization after reading an inspirational book by Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a former American middleweight boxer who was released from prison and pronounced not guilty after spending nearly 20 years behind bars. Wallen, then living in Canada, returned to his native Jamaica and took over the leadership of S.E.T. in June of 2000. Since Wallen’s involvement in the program, over 100 prisoners have passed through the S.E.T. program and not a single one has returned to prison. That is a stark contrast to Jamaica’s traditionally high rates of recidivism (50% in 1993).

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Photo of Tower Street computer lab by Christina Xu

Wallen has also done an impressive job of attracting international involvement to spread awareness about S.E.T. and motivate inmates. During the January 17, 2006 inauguration of a computer laboratory at Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre, Dr. Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter urged inmates to take advantage of the opportunity and learn computer skills to improve themselves. Wallen has also attracted the support of Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, who established the Jamaica Project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society in 1998. Thanks to Wallen’s influence, the Jamaica Project has recently focused heavily on rehabilitation and restorative justice in Jamaica. You can view a video of Wallen and Professor Nesson speaking about restorative justice in Jamaica on the Berkman website. Nesson remains heavily involved in the project. Two weeks ago he was in Jamaica, where he introduced the male prisoners of Tower Street Correctional Facility to Second Life and met with the female prisoners at Fort Augusta.

Viewing Songs of Redemption you wouldn’t get even a hint of this rich history. The impression one gets is that an Italian activist, Carla Gulotta, arrived at the General Penitentiary in 2007 and set up the music studio and programme with help from various NGOs. In fact it was Kevin Wallen who introduced Carla to the SET project at GP in 2007. Shortly after that his involvement in the programme was terminated by Superintendent Fairweather and Carla took over the project. Wallen was by now bankrupt after 10 years of putting his own resources into the various computer labs he had built. Unable to repay money he had borrowed from Carla, he retreated to the hills, literally to lick his wounds and recover. As Wallen says in his forthcoming autobiography, co-authored with Fern Nesson:

Over the years, it became harder and harder to work in the prisons. The Administration gave me such a hard time. They preferred programs that made big splashes rather than SET. They didn’t care that a SET member had reconciled with the person that he had harmed or that he had called his mother just to say thank you. I saw a lot of changes in these men but the institution was so caught up in punishment that they were not ready to appreciate SET.

Charlie Nesson corroborates the sequence of events retailed by Wallen. He recalls how Superintendent Fairweather would refuse to send inmates to the computer lab when it was first constructed and had to be persuaded of the importance of rehabilitation for prisoners. Asked in a Gleaner interview to name five things that could reform Jamaica’s prison system Nesson replied, “Number One would be to change the real mission of the correctional services from warehousing to rehabilitating prisoners, which means helping them to rehabilitate themselves.” That was in 2010. Yet by January 2013 SOR was portraying the person in charge of GP as a veritable champion of restorative justice–as always having had the philosophy that prisoners needed active programming to help them rehabilitate themselves. What a farce.

I emailed Fernando Guereta to ask if I could talk to him about the film but received no reply. Am still willing to carry his side of the story if he makes contact.

Finally, just to remind myself I asked my anthropologist friend who teaches at an Ivy League university in the US and has written extensively on violence, reparative justice and such things, why she, like me, had been skeptical of SOR. This was her response:

Re. film, I think I felt uneasy about the lack of context, and the framing of redemption (rather than rehabilitation), and what that meant.  Also, wasn’t thrilled about the implicit thing of the white woman “savior” introducing the program and no follow up on what was going to happen now that the superintendent was leaving — will it continue?  Who will run it?  Who was she and why do we not see her except in the beginning, etc.?

Another friend, Garnette Cadogan, who is here writing a story on the Patois Bible for the Paris Review had similar questions. Where was the context? Why wasn’t the programme historicized properly? Why was the whole story so vague?

You didn’t have a sense of a point of view; you didn’t have a sense who was doing the programmes; there were all these invisible people–who was teaching the music programmes? how many prisoners were involved? how much time did they spend? Its ostensibly about the reform of prisoners through music programmes but we got no information really about the music programme, we got no information about who was teaching them,or recruiting them, we got no sense of the history, how did it fit in with the other programmes that were there? it was too acontextual. You find yourself wondering is this the programme Jah Cure, the famous Reggae singer who recorded his megahits while in prison emerged from? was it an offshoot of it?

I had wondered too why there was no mention of Jah Cure, it seemed an obvious reference. According to Wallen Cure’s trajectory is different because producer Bogdanovich and others were involved in his musical rebirth but that’s another story.

According to the film’s direcor, Nando Guereta (see comments), the EU did not fund this film as i had said earlier so I withdraw that statement. He also points out that he was commissioned to make a film about Ms. Gulotta’s work therefore he didn’t see the need to focus on Wallen. I think he misses the point that Wallen ought to have been at least mentioned when setting the context for Gulotta’s work here. But of course as more than one person has complained the film is acontextual which is such a pity and not characteristic of Nando’s earlier films. This post is merely an attempt to historicize SOR, to provide some of the fascinating background to a restorative justice initiative that needs to be known more widely, both here in Jamaica and the rest of the world.

Like Diamonds and Glass: The Barbados Tourism Authority vs The Jamaica Tourist Board

The above ad featuring the ‘Minnesotan Jamaican’ of VW ad fame was produced by the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB).

And this one featuring Rihanna was produced by Barbados’s tourism entity–the Barbados Tourism Authority.

Do you see a difference in strategy, production values, script and use of each island’s natural assets? Why does the Jamaican ad seem lame, insipid and bereft of imagination? why is the Barbadian ad on the contrary so perfect that it could be a global model on how to sell yourselves? And contrastingly how and why does the JTB ad sell the country short?

After 50 years of Independence is this the best our creative class can do? or is JTB hiring friends and relatives and not the pros that we need and have?

Discuss.

PS: This post came out of a discussion on Twitter and is indebted to @Gordonswaby, Erin MacLeod @touchofallright for drawing my attention to the Rihanna ad and @drewonline.

Doubletake: First Mattathias Schwartz, Now Dan Rather. What ails Jamaican media?


News outlets in Jamaica this week were inundated with coverage of  and responses to the US media’s unprecedented focus on the Lotto Scam, a locally generated con game, whose victims are elderly Americans. Former 60 Minutes stalwart Dan Rather visited Jamaica some weeks ago so his in-depth exposé of the scam, Just Hang Up, which aired on March 12, complete with heart-rending interviews with some of the victims didn’t come as a surprise. The documentary was timed to air in tandem with evidence presented to the US Senate’s Committee on Ageing yesterday. At least two  other major US channels also aired stories on the scam.

The US Embassy in Jamaica obligingly posted links on Facebook with the following note:

As you are aware, there has been a great deal of U.S. media attention focused on advanced-fee fraud (also known as “lotto scams”) recently. Below are the links to the Dan Rather, CBS and NBC stories.

I haven’t yet seen the entire documentary featuring Rather (its available free on iTunes though only in the US not in Jamaica) but the excerpts shown on TV here have been riveting. The American TV team even lured a scammer, tracked down by his IP address, to a meeting in Montego Bay, showing him live and direct for all to see. Naturally the impact has been sensational especially because this well-crafted documentary was shown on prime time TV in the United States. It suddenly came home to Jamaicans that ‘Brand Jamaica’, as local technocrats and the media in general have taken to calling it, was going to take a battering.

Relying on tourism and American visitors as much as Jamaica does this could be potentially devastating.

What does it mean that serious crimes like the Lotto Scam and the Tivoli genocide (the 2010 killing of 73 plus citizens by the State in its pursuit of fugitive don, Christopher Coke) are exposed by foreign not local media I asked on Twitter yesterday. For although the media here has carried any number of stories on the Lotto Scam, many of them bizarrely claiming that most of the scammers are gay, we’ve never been given a true idea of the scale of the problem, affecting enough Americans for their political representatives to start raising the alarm about it.

Several media folk I follow on Twitter reacted negatively to my question, interpreting it as a slight or a claim that there had been no local media attention to the scam. It s true that there have been many stories about the Lotto scam here. To my mind however there’s a qualitative difference in the way the story was investigated and reported on American TV and the way it’s been carried in the local media which mainly focused on the scam when police action brought it to the forefront. Piqued by public criticism Simon Crosskill played some of CVM’s previously aired coverage of the Lotto Scam last night. It did cover much of the same ground as Rather’s documentary but the audio was poor and too many of the people interviewed had their faces obscured and voices disguised, thus robbing it of the impact it could have had.

Are there some stories local media consider too dangerous to touch? or don’t have the resources to I wondered puzzling over this variance in the quality of media coverage. In the case of the 2010 Tivoli carnage also there had been nothing in local media to approach the in-depth investigative article by American journalist Mattathias Schwartz whose exposé provided evidence that the US had given Jamaica military assistance in the May 2010 incursion into Tivoli despite the Jamaican government’s claims to the contrary. In both cases it was the American media that brought these stories to international attention, and sustained interest in them, not local media.

Let it be noted that Jamaican media are perfectly capable of executing well-researched, hard-hitting, in-depth stories when they’re ready to. In 2004 Cliff Hughes’s TV programme Impact won an Emmy in the United States for its documentary on sniper Lee Boyd Malvo called ‘The Potter and the Clay’. It was so good it not only attracted the attention of the US media, it won one of the most coveted journalism awards there. Other journalists such as Earl Moxam, Simon Crosskill, Dionne Jackson-Miller and Emily Crooks are as good as or better than their American peers.

Is it that there’s a lack of political will from the big media houses to provide the best journalists with the required resources and time to follow up the really important stories? Or are there more sinister reasons why Jamaica doesn’t have aggressive, exposé-driven investigative news outlets such as 60 Minutes and ABC’s 20/20?

The closest thing Jamaica has had in recent times to similar hard-hitting TV newsmagazines, was Doubletake, produced by Anthony Miller and CARIMAC lecturer Yvette Rowe for TVJ in 2000-2001. Despite winning awards the programme was phased out after only 8 or 9 episodes because it was considered too hard hitting and perhaps too close to the truth for comfort. It was felt that the broadcasters’ relentless focus on corruption and calling out politicans and others without fear or fanfare was ‘mashing too many corns’. This was the perception of the hosts of the programme; the station apparently discontinued it for lack of sponsorship although it was extremely popular and well-received by the public. Why a popular, well-made documentary programme would have difficulty finding sponsors is anybody’s guess. But it reinforces the point I’m making about the lack of will on the part of those with the means to enable and sustain high quality, hard-hitting journalism.

Among other subjects Doubletake covered, were the death and funeral of Grants Pen area leader Andrew Phang in Death of a Don, colour and race issues in The Browning Syndrome, the politics of the 100 Lane Massacre and other such matters. Whatever was the issue of the day was grist for their mill and with a miller like Anthony, no holds were barred. We desperately need a show like Doubletake again.

The CCJ and Shanique Myrie: How to signify ‘good taste’ and ‘respectability’

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Shanique Myrie, circa the time of deportation from Barbados

There’s a landmark case being heard in Kingston, Jamaica, at the first sitting of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ ) here. In March 2011, Jamaican Shanique Myrie landed in Barbados to visit a friend there (by her own account). Instead of the usual sedate Barbadian welcome Myrie was treated to a cavity search, kept in a dark room and deported the next morning to Jamaica although nothing illegal was found on her person or in her possession.

After this unceremonious return to the country of her birth Myrie charged that in the process of the cavity search  she had been finger-raped by the immigration officials concerned. Her lawyers took the case to court claiming that her rights as a CARICOM citizen were abused, and that she was discriminated against because she is Jamaican.  The CCJ argued that Myrie does indeed have a case against Barbados and the trial began yesterday morning at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston.

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Photo of Myrie (r) from the Jamaica Observer

When one of my favourite Jamaican journalists who was present in court yesteday tweeted the link to her post on the proceedings of the first day I clicked on it rather eagerly but was repelled by her opening sentence:

A beautiful fair skinned pony tailed, black suit, white inside blouse wearing young woman in a medium heeled closed up black shoes, Shanique Myrie is called into conference room 2 at the Jamaica Conference Centre, in a fight for her rights as guaranteed under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas which establishes the Caribbean Court of Justice, CCJ.

In the first place, the Grammar Nazi in me was offended by the overladen, clumsy, grammatically dubious lead-in to the report. How on earth could “white inside blouse wearing young woman” be considered acceptable English by anyone but particularly a journalist? Was there a moratorium on fullstops, commas and hyphens? How could a black suit ever be described as beautiful, fair-skinned and pony-tailed?!

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Second, why was it important to know what the claimant was wearing? would a male petitioner’s clothing have been described in such tiresome detail? Later in the same post the journalist went on to note:

Wearing a diamond shaped gold looking clip on earring, Miss Myrie recites her full name as Shanique Samantha Myrie who though unemployed now works in food and beverage in better times.

I was dumbfounded and took to Twitter challenging this gendered depiction of events. Why not focus on the substance of what was unfolding in court and leave sartorial detail  to be captured by TV cameras ? The journalist responded saying “I believe it is important to paint a full pic for all.” She appeared puzzled by my objections.

I was even more puzzled by the reaction of another tweep, @diva_simmo, who argued that “in the court room image is everything. Even Vybz Kartel choose jacket and tie over – straight jeans and fitted.”  Her next tweet said “as a listener I found the information very useful especially the ‘medium heel shoe’. Image matters.”

Curiouser and curiouser. Pray how did it help to know that the claimant wore a medium heel shoe I tweeted back.

Because “if she wore 6″red wedge with mini green dress and blue wig it would indicate the direction her legal team is taking” responded @diva_simmo, “…her attire in court says legal team is portraying self respecting, mature professional.”

The penny dropped.

This landmark case is not only about nationality, it’s also about ‘class’, the ungainly elephant in the room no one wants to explicitly mention. It is important to portray Myrie as ‘decent’ ‘respectable’ and ‘sober’ because the image of Jamaicans in the region is overwhelmingly influenced by the higglers, DJs and hustlers who often represent the face of Jamaica,  visiting, even migrating to other countries, where they are not always welcome.

Why? because these enterprising but capitally-challenged individuals (ie owning  little capital, whether financial or social) often violate all the dearly held norms of ‘decency’ ‘respectability’ and ‘good taste’ with their choice of garments, raw speech and boisterous behaviour. They regularly transgress the zealously guarded borders of civility and decorum as much as the borders of nation states which under the new Chaguaramas Treaty they now have a right to breach.

Perhaps this was why Myrie was given the finger when she arrived in prim and proper Barbados, regionally glossed as ‘Little England’. Not just because she was Jamaican but because she was perceived to be a particular kind of Jamaican. So @Emilynationwide was right to emphasize the outfit and demeanour of Ms Myrie. It may be extremely germane in the instant case.

PS: The overall point I’m making in this post is not to dis the journalist concerned or claim that there was no substance to her post. Far from it. When i said let’s focus on substance rather than style or appearance it hadn’t yet occurred to me that in this case style IS the substance or a substantial part of what’s at stake.   I realized belatedly based on something @diva_simmo said that the reason for the focus on Myrie’s dress was because class prejudice is a real danger here and Myrie’s appearance is material evidence that may well influence the jurists involved,  so much so that her legal counsel went to great pains to counter this by dressing her ‘classily’. So Emily was right to focus on how this was achieved. Being somewhat resistant if not immune to the strictures of fashion this wasn’t obvious or self-evident to me. My point is simply that if class is an issue let’s explicitly state it and discuss it because that’s the substance of what we’re getting at by extensively describing Myrie’s carefully assembled clothing. Profound apologies for any distress I caused Emily Crooks.