IN the 1990s my primary vocation was working at the Caymanas Park racetrack as the resident security consultant. The track back then was a tough place to secure on a race day. Well, it was a tough place to secure on any day, but the race days operated like a fuse waiting to be lit. It’s was a world to itself then and now. It’s the only place I have ever been where short men are like rock stars (those being the jockeys).

Well, one day after the running of a race the stewards ordered me to bring a jockey to them to be searched for a battery. For the uninformed and under-exposed, batteries are used to illegally shock horses into running faster.

So I went to the jockey, who was a really popular one, and told him as he walked down the tunnel that the stewards needed him for a search. He responded by opening the waist of his pants.

This had the dual effect of causing the battery, if he had one, to drop into his boots, as well as giving the impression that I was to stop searching him in public. The crowd went ballistic. Stones and bottles were thrown like missiles. I was in the tunnel and trapped, as they were attacking from both sides. I was armed, so they couldn’t come close. But they flung those missiles like the Sri Lankan pace bowler Lasith Malinga.

I couldn’t fire in the air as I was in a concrete tunnel, and I couldn’t fire at my attackers as I was armed with a 9 mm pistol, with hard ball rounds that would over-penetrate the attackers and hit the gawking morons behind them who were egging them on. So I was, in effect, being stoned to death like Naboth after being framed by Queen Jezebel with false charges of cursing God and King Ahab, forced to decide to allow these idiots to kill me and take me away from my infant children, or defend myself and commit a massacre.

This is for a crime I didn’t commit, and if I did, it certainly didn’t warrant death. God intervened and saved “them” when an off-duty police officer opened fire in the air, buying me a few seconds of confusion to run to safety. So that being said, let’s discuss mob violence.

Recently, a terrible crime was committed — a female child was raped and murdered in rural Jamaica. Her alleged attacker was beaten to death by a mob. His father was also beaten, but survived. I have heard nothing but celebration of the action taken by the crowd, including a few people in the public eye. Okay, I get it. If this guy committed this atrocity he deserved what he got, but that is not justice. It is not justice because there is no process to determine guilt or innocence.

Then suppose, just suppose, the man is innocent? It is this type of acceptance of mob justice that caused the beating of the tourist to death for hitting over a soup pot in Flankers, St James. A mob with ignited emotions involving a victim is not the appropriate tribunal to determine guilt or innocence.

In the 80s many communities in Portmore had violent mobs masquerading as neighbourhood watch groups whose standard for killing you was if they didn’t know you and you were in the community after dark.

I recall one incident many years ago when I was responding to an attempted break-in early one morning in Cumberland. I saw a young man whom I accosted and decided to detain momentarily until I could ascertain if he was the perpetrator. He was not from the community; he didn’t seem to have a good reason for being there at that time of the morning.

About a minute later I saw one of the residents from the neighbourhood watch group who was also responding to the attempted break-in. He realised I had a prisoner in the pickup and quickly blew his whistle.

Moments later, the group arrived and was now behaving like a gang. They attempted to remove him from the van so they could beat him to death. I prevented them, which resulted in me being injured instead. Needless to say, they were also injured in the incident. At the end of it all, the guy was innocent. He was guilty of taking a short cut home.

This is not the sum total of me being mobbed or mobs being wrong. I have been mobbed many times at the track, on squatter settlements, and on police operations. I abhor mob violence.

First, it’s cowardly. Not one of those morons who were stoning me could have attacked me one-on-one, nor would they have tried. It’s not subject to rational thought, and it’s uncivilised. When it occurs, it is a condemnation of our justice system.

There is no intelligence, no evidence; it is justice based on suspicion. Some will say that it’s okay because guilt is obvious. But obvious based on what scale, what assessment of evidence?

Have you ever heard of the town of Rosewood in Florida? Well, you can’t visit it anymore because it was burnt to the ground by a white mob in 1923 who believed — no one was certain — that a black man had robbed and beaten a white woman. They were wrong, and unofficial estimates are that 27 innocent people lost their lives.

It is the uncertainty of guilt that makes mob violence so wrong. It is uncertain because there is no process. Some say that imprisoning a man who would rape and kill a child is not justice. I couldn’t agree more. There is no penal solution to adequately punish a man like that. Not even execution is enough. Truth be told, nothing dulls the pain of having a child taken from a family.

I am a true believer in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I believe in hard punishment for “takers”. If guilt was as certain as providence I would advocate the death penalty for any crime that hurts another — from rape to armed robbery. But it’s not. So I advocate the death penalty for no crime, not because it’s not deserved but because it’s impossible to determine guilt without any possibility of doubt.

Mob violence is not a solution to crime. Some will say, what if the victim was my family member? I say, what if the wrongly accused who is beaten to death is yours?

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