True Crime – Page 425 – The Pen Hustle With Brandy Cavalli

Former Police Commissioner Testifies That Jamaica Was Fortunate Security Forces Responded To Dudus Coke’s Tivoli Gunmen

The former Chief of the Jamaican Defense Force stated in his testimony that Jamaica was fortunate that the security forces responded in May 2010 to the threat posed by gunmen associated with then Tivoli Gardens don Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. At the same time, he expressed deep disappointment with the level of social intervention in Tivoli Gardens following the security forces’ operation to arrest Coke.

Ellington, the former police commissioner, made the remarks while being questioned by Professor Anthony Harriott, a member of the panel of three commissioners looking into the operation by the security forces in May 2010 to apprehend Coke — who also goes by the name Omar Clarke — and restore law and order to the West Kingston area and sections of the Corporate Area and St Catherine.

“Jamaica is fortunate that the security forces responded to the threat as quickly as they did and with the impact it had,” Ellington said, adding at one point that “it would be anybody’s guess where Coke’s office would be today” if his Presidential Click criminal gang was successful in its bid to spread the resources of the security forces thin, and broke its will with its planned co-ordinated attacks.

Ellington likened the gang to “insurgents” and said that it presented itself as a “surrogate government”, which sought to expand its power and “perhaps political influence”. He also said that the gang threatened the operation of the Government with its targeted attacks leading up to the May 24, 2010 operation that led to the death of just over 70 civilians. A member of the Jamaica Defence Force was killed in the operation and several other members of the security forces injured.

“We were left with no choice,” Ellington said, noting that the police did everything they could to avoid a violent confrontation with the gang, and again expressed regret at the loss of civilian lives.

Coke is now serving time in the United States following his extradition.

Yesterday, Ellington said he was disappointed with the social intervention in the community. “I am very, very disappointed that not much has happened, save and except for the work of the security forces. If you go there you will see that the police and soldiers have become permanent fixtures and you will see the work they are doing on the ground,” he said.

“If we had followed with improved political leadership and better economic opportunity for the citizenship we would not be here contemplating the future of Tivoli Gardens and other marginalised communities across Jamaica,” he said in response to questions from Harriott.

Questioned by Peter Champagnie, one of the attorneys for the Jamaica Defence Force, Ellington said “all the elements were there” to make the circumstances surrounding the efforts by criminals to prevent the apprehension of Coke a war against the State. He said that, in his 30-plus years in the force, he had never seen anything like it.

The former top cop added that he described the situation to the Government as a “challenge to the sovereignty” of the State.

He testified also that the police got intelligence that an aeroplane with illegal weapons landed at the airstrip in Vernamfield, Clarendon, days before the operation to apprehend Christopher Coke commenced.

The former top cop said he had not immediately been made aware of the report of the illegal shipment.

He testified also that it had been reported by police, who were by the Kingston Harbour, that 15 row boats with heavily armed men were heading toward Portmore in St Catherine.

Jamaica Observer

‘The Legend of Shorty’ Film to Document the Life of Mexican Drug Lord El Chapo Guzman

Will Mexican drug lord Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán become more famous now that he is behind bars than when he was hiding in secret tunnels and sewers? It’s hard to tell, but two weeks after his headline-grabbing arrest in Mexico, a new documentary about the life of this nearly mythical figure made its world premiere at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas.

According to those who have watched The Legend Of Shorty, a 90 minute British documentary co-directed by British filmmaker Angus MacQueen and Peruvian journalist Guillermo Galdós, the film is a blend of mythology and hard facts. The Guardian’s film critic Henry Barnes wrote that The Legend of Shorty follows MacQueen and Galdós as they head out on their own investigation into the whereabouts of the world’s biggest drug dealer. “With extraordinary access to the cartel the pair travel to Mexico’s Golden Triangle, bear witness to the batch-loads of cocaine, meth and marijuana being prepared for transport and take part in long, often surreal meetings with Chapo’s inner circle, including a lunch date with his mum,” Barnes wrote.

McQueen told Spain’s Efe wire service that they didn’t think their lives were in danger when they were filming, because they are foreigners. There is a general belief that foreign nationals, whether tourists or otherwise, tend to be less physically vulnerable than Mexican nationals.

It is not clear if MacQueen and Galdós tried and failed to interview El Chapo before he was caught. In any event, the Mexican Navy and the DEA beat them to it when they found the drug lord still in bed at an oceanfront condominium in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, his home state, in the early hours of February 22. The arrest put an end to an international manhunt that has made a mockery of U.S. and Mexican law-enforcement over the past 13 years.

Barnes writes that the film’s directors recruited songwriter Jackson Scott to compose folk songs in English and Spanish telling tales about the past of one the world’s richest outlaws: “We hear how Chapo escaped from a maximum security prison by hiding in a laundry cart, we watch the film-makers compare the kingpin to Zorro, racing through the countryside, answering the call of the common man.”

In an effort to balance what appears to be a friendly portrait of the man responsible for introducing 25% of the illegal drugs into the U.S. market –including 50% of the heroine– the film discusses the bloody war on drugs and the 80,000 deaths that have resulted from it. Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández, author of Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers, offers “a vital counter-point to the intoxicating legend”, as Barnes puts it, by accusing the Mexican government of protecting El Chapo while he turned his business into a word-wide criminal empire that has no precedent in history.

Barnes calls The Legend of Shorty “an impressive film” and says that El Chapo’s unexpected arrest does not annul its purpose: “To suggest so is to assume that El Chapo’s empire is locked up with the man. That a corporation shuts down because the CEO is absent.”

On that, Barnes has a point. There seems to be a wide consensus, both inside and outside Mexico, that El Chapo’s arrest will change little. “He will have a laptop, [his prison] will turn into a hotel, and he will return to running the cartel from there,” a senior DEA official told The Guardian last month. “That is not something he has to build – it is something he already has.”

Since 2009, El Chapo has been included in Forbes’ World’s Most Powerful People list.

Originally posted on Forbes.com

Most Americans Support The Death Penalty

A majority of Americans support the death penalty, even though that level of support has been dropping fairly consistently for about two decades.

However, while there are sizable differences in how various groups view capital punishment — with big gaps divided by gender, race and political views — Americans seem to agree on one thing: There is still some risk that an innocent person will be put to death.

A new Pew Research Center poll found that seven in 10 Americans feel this way, with just a quarter of people saying there are enough safeguards in the system to prevent the execution of an innocent person.

This feeling is remarkably consistent among every group of people, even as there are solid divides found in the way people of different races and with different political beliefs view the system.

Yet regardless of other disputes over the death penalty, everyone seems to agree that the country’s capital punishment system carries with it an inherent risk of executing the innocent. Majorities of every group polled by Pew agreed that there is a danger that this will happen.

Death penalty opponents point to this danger as one of the main reasons they object to the practice. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said earlier this year he opposes the death penalty because “the ultimate nightmare” is that someone will be executed in error. And because death sentences are handed out as part of a system that ultimately relies on the judgments of human beings — people can, and do, make mistakes — such a failure is “inevitable,” he said.

“There’s always the possibility that mistakes will be made,” Holder said. “Mistakes and determinations made by juries, mistakes in terms of the kind of representation somebody facing a capital offense receives….There is no ability to correct a mistake where somebody has, in fact, been executed.”

This concept — an innocent person who is still found guilty and given the most severe sentence possible — is obviously not theoretical. Since the early 1970s, more than 150 people sentenced to death have been exonerated, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Meanwhile, a record 125 people were exonerated in the United States last year, and six of those people had been sentenced to death, the National Registry of Exonerations said in its report.

In Louisiana last month, a former prosecutor publicly apologized for helping put a man who turned out to be innocent on death row. The prosecutor argued that the situation with Glenn Ford, the exonerated man who was eventually released, showed how easily the system could be manipulated by an eager prosecutor and questionable evidence.

“This case shows why the death penalty is just an abomination,” Marty Stroud, the former prosecutor, told The Post last month. “The system failed Mr. Ford, and I was part of the system.” He added: “All it is is state-assisted revenge. We can’t do it. It’s arbitrary, it’s capricious. And I believe that it’s barbaric.”

The case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed by Texas in 2004, remains both in the news and in the court system. Willingham was put to death for setting a fire that killed his three daughters. Yet fresh doubts linger in this particular case more than a decade later, as the jailhouse informant who testified against Willingham later said he lied on the witness stand to reduce his own prison sentence. The prosecutor in the case was formally accused of misconduct in court last month.

It may seem odd that so many people would support the death penalty while also acknowledging that innocent people could very well be put to death. Part of that may be accepting the inherent risk that accompanies something as irreversible as death, but a part of it may also simply be that people are not paying that much attention to capital punishment. Executions in this country are generally carried out at night inside heavily guarded prisons with just a small handful of witnesses, so the public rarely takes note of them.

Nearly half of Americans told Pew they think the number of people put to death has remained steady or increased over the last decade. In reality, the number of executions has fallen in recent years, dipping last year to the lowest number in two decades. As we noted last year, support for the death penalty did not really budge after high-profile botched executions, and it was unclear how many people paid much attention to these incidents or the people who were exonerated.

So why do people still support it? Well, most people — a little more than six in 10 — say that the death penalty is morally justified when someone commits a crime like murder. About half as many people say it is morally wrong. The same number of people who think it is morally justified also do not believe that the death penalty can deter serious crimes.

Among people who do support the death penalty, nine out of 10 of them say it is morally justified in cases like murder. That is far and away the largest gap among the four categories viewed in the graphic above, highlighting what would appear to be the biggest gulf between supporters and opponents.

As for who actually supports the death penalty and who is opposed to it: More men support it than women (64 percent to 49 percent), a gap that has grown significantly over just the last four years, as more women have turned against it.

There is also a considerable divide among people over whether or not the death penalty is racially imbalanced.

A majority of white people support the death penalty (63 percent support, 33 percent opposition), basically a flipped image of the way black people feel about the issue (34 percent support, 57 percent opposition). Hispanic people are more evenly split, but opposition (47 percent) narrowly edges out support (45 percent) among them; they aren’t as opposed to it as black people, but they are not nearly as supportive as white people.

Still, about half of people overall think minorities are more likely to get a death sentence than a white person who committed a similar crime. Death-penalty opponents are very likely to view the system as being racially unfair: Seven in 10 opponents say the sentencing is racially unfair, while about four in 10 supporters say the same thing.

Among black people, these opinions are even more pronounced, as more than three-quarters of black respondents told Pew white people are less likely to receive the death penalty. Meanwhile, white people are split between that opinion and seeing no racial disparity.

This is also the area where the biggest split can be seen based on a person’s level of formal education. While support for or opposition to the death penalty is not that dramatically different for people who have graduated from college versus those did not, college graduates are much more likely to think the death penalty is racially imbalanced (60 percent) than people who did not attend college (44 percent).

Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republicans to think that white people are less likely to get a death sentence. This has accompanied a big overall shift in the way Democrats view the issue. In 2011, more Democrats said they supported the death penalty (49 percent) than opposed it (43 percent). Now, after a big swing in opinion, a majority of them oppose the death penalty (56 percent), while a smaller number support it (40 percent).

Opinions among Republicans are basically the same over the same period (a little more than three-quarters of them support it), while most independents still support it (a number that dipped to 57 percent now from 64 percent then).

Washington Post