My 'Please Do Not Kill' list

Daniel Thwaites, Contributor

I've just read the Director of Public Prosecution's (DPP) explanation why Det Sgt Lloyd Kelly hasn't been tried for killing Ian 'Chin Sing' Lloyd ('Why the Buckfield case fell flat', Gleaner, March 20 and 21), and the legal reasoning is, naturally, airtight. So airtight, in fact, that I'm gasping for oxygen.

What is abundantly clear is that, given all the legal logic, the fact that the DPP "is not an investigative entity", and that it must "rely on police investigators and INDECOM", and that it has "resource constraints", means the police can pretty much kill at will.

Chin Sing was 'not a angel', as the community tends to say about people who have a reputation as robbers, rapists and pillagers. Just before his own death, he had come to the police's attention for fatally stabbing an elderly woman about 13 times. Nevertheless, in his encounter with the police, there was videotape that, to my untutored eye, seemed to show the shooting of an unarmed man who was rolling around in the mud and flinging rocks at the cops.

But with all that, there is no prosecution? Look weh wi come to, eh? And even if there is a prosecution, the court of public opinion can mark for identification as Exhibit 2 the verdict in the case involving Calvin Lewis, the policeman accused of killing 17-year-old Hapete Henry at a football match inside the National Stadium in 1998.

So it's time to prepare for the worst. Here goes:

I want to personally thank every policeman and policewoman in the island for not shooting me, or my loved ones. I know they can do it, and they know, and they know that I know … even if the videotape is going, whenever they have a mind to.

SAVE THESE PEOPLE

Perhaps I'm abusing my position as tenant of a little space on The Gleaner's editorial page, but this is important. Because I also want to give the commissioner small photographs of my family and friends who I would like his force to not shoot, stab, or otherwise dismember. I reckon I'll just give him a list so we can both be on the same page.

Commish, I have a lot of country family that have to get on the list. Fraid fi dem now, after Buckfield! Especially one of my wife's cousins who gives 'chubble' every now and again! Then there is my church people. We may hope and pray for the afterlife, but we're not in any particular hurry to find out if the hope is justified, so I will have to include them on the list.

After some four decades of association with the island, the list could actually get extensive. There are people from my childhood who I haven't seen in years, who all the same I don't want you to wipe out. Then there are high-school friends, party friends, rumpanions, friends of brothers and sisters, comrades, associates, former co-workers. Spare dem.

There is the man who I buy pan chicken from, the grocer, my ex-neighbour, the Reggae Boyz, that girl down in Sav who looks like Malahoo but talks like a Jamaican and not as much. Then there's my favourite 'madman' who plies his trade, begging right at the corner of East Street and East Queen Street. Yeah! Mi ah beg yuh fi him as well. His name is Christopher and he's very mannersable. De head nuh good, but whose is? Nuh badda kill 'im. Please! Is just hard times tek him up.

There are a whole lot of people who I don't see that often, but I want to know are there. The coconut seller along the highway near Four Paths in Clarendon who told me she has sent all her children to college by selling right there. There are quite a few like that.

OK, please spare the staff down at Gleaner. Even the editorial writer! Commissioner, just like you, I saw the editorial that said "Omar Davies is, indeed, exceedingly arrogant", and we both know that it is a bad sign when a man is called arrogant for speaking the truth. But 'low it. 'Low dem!

MEK DI DANCEHALL STAY NICE

Oh! "Without de dancehall, weh wi woulda duh?" There is a pretty extensive number of entertainers I have to put in the mix. Dancehall cyaan nice if you take out Beenie, Bounty, Mavado, Kartel, Popcaan, Spragga, Capleton and Sizzla. I would add Buju, but … anyway. Konshens, Khago, Tarrus … I won't go on. Just fill in the picture. By and by, please set up Kartel with a studio since you already have him lock dung.

What to do about Audley? I know what you're thinking: "He created this condition with the 13 failed IMF tests, but now he's rolling around and flinging rockstone." Don't even think it, Commish! Audley is on my list. In fact, the whole Labour Party makes it. Tuffy can gwaan ketch rainwater, etc.

Actually, I also have a special request from a friend. I'm not sure what it means, but he said an ex-girlfriend of his from May Pen by the name of Tekeisha "shat 'im", so he "had was to tek a shat at de clinic". He would like her to get shot back. Please take care of that.

Here's a tough call. What about the miserable player-haters who say bad things about my columns? Even dem! Still no shooting. Actually, come to think of it, those you can shoot, but like in the knee or the foot somewhere. Oh, and then there's this one yute - an SOB - who beat me up once at St George's. Like the crowd said in the Chin Sing video: "Buss it!" No mercy fi him!

Come to think of it, my 'Please Do Not Kill' list is going to become quite extensive, and I'm wondering if it mightn't be better to set it up online so that I can add to it from time to time and as circumstances permit.

By the way, Commish, the DPP is racking up an impressive list on her own. Carlos Hill is grinning out from the front page daily. Bungles was bungled. And now we've bucked up into Buckfield and there's no justice for Hapete Henry. Maybe the DPP will make out like Benedict XVI? Talk to her nuh! Remember, I said, "Talk!"

Daniel Thwaites is a partner of the Thwaites Law Firm in Jamaica, and Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in New York. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.