Tact And Common Sense Still Vital Tools Of Policing

Policing is as much using com­mon sense in the way offi­cers pro­tect the pub­lic as it is enforc­ing the nation’s laws . There is no one right way to fight crime so it’s a process of learn­ing and grow­ing, some­thing which is marked­ly miss­ing from polic­ing in Jamaica these days.
Having spent almost a decade of my life polic­ing the streets val­leys and by-ways of Jamaica I learned it can be the most dif­fi­cult place to police based on the propen­si­ty of some of the peo­ple to be bel­liger­ent and dis­re­spect­ful to the rule of law but I also found out just how lov­ing, kind and good Jamaicans could be dur­ing that decade.

One of my philoso­phies as a young offi­cer was that you stop some­thing before it gets too big after which you can­not con­trol it. Unfortunately this has­n’t always been the mantra of the high com­mand in my time and it cer­tain­ly was­n’t the core belief of some cops who saw no evil , heard no evil but cer­tain­ly spoke a lot of evil.
As time pro­gressed we saw way too many got involved in evil.
Over the last few years we heard some rather con­trar­i­an views on how crime is to be approached as if crim­i­nal­i­ty is a new phenomenon .

Of course crim­i­nals evolve as does the rest of us. Cyber crimes are now some­thing law enforce­ment agen­cies are forced to grap­ple with . This was not on the menu of things law enforce­ment had to deal with three decades ago. Nonetheless, even as Police depart­ments acquire and train com­pe­tent peo­ple so they may stay ahead of crim­i­nals, for the most part law enforce­ment still require com­mon sense and a lot of give and take.

When you stop the first guy sell­ing “bag weed” on the cor­ner you pre­vent anoth­er and anoth­er from com­ing there to do the same.
If you allow one guy to sell bag weed on the cor­ner because it’s just weed right?[sic] you will lat­er have to deal with the fall­out from com­pet­ing guys vying for turf.
Guys vying for turf use guns to defend turf , so now you have to deal with shoot­ings and homicides.
Additionally oth­er deal­ers of more potent drugs now see the free for all and they decide they too will ped­dle their wares and of course peo­ple are now addict­ed to the hard core drugs.
When peo­ple are addict­ed they rob , they steal. Cars are bro­ken into . Houses are bro­ken into. People are held up at gun­point, female addicts turn once pris­tine neigh­bor­hoods into dens of prostitution.
All of this would have been avert­ed if the Police did their job and stopped the first guy from sell­ing bag weed on the corner.
To hell with stop­ping peo­ple food . Just look at where not stop­ping peo­ple’s food got Jamaica. I wish I had a dol­lar for each time I heard Police offi­cers who were paid to enforce the laws open­ly deride offi­cers who actu­al­ly do what they are paid to do. It is not cru­el­ty to save peo­ple from them­selves. And yes Police some­times have to save peo­ple and their com­mu­ni­ties from themselves.

Nevertheless dur­ing my time I was able to extract a valu­able stream of action­able intel­li­gence from a few of those who sell weed on the corner.
Here’s how !!!
Many a guy on the cor­ner sell­ing Icy-Mint , Cigarettes, Red Stripe Beer and even coconut jel­ly was also sell­ing Ganga !!!
My method was to stop and order a jel­ly upon which the man would cut it and give it to me. I would sit down with him tell him that I know he is sell­ing weed. This would almost cer­tain­ly evoke howls of “no affi­ca no sah , mi nah sell nu weed sah” !!.
I then tell him okay I will search every­thing you have and every inch of grass in sight when I find it you can­not come back to sell any­thing here tomorrow.
For the cyn­ics yes you can do it the Town and Community Act gives Police wide latitude .……
This result­ed in res­ig­na­tion 100% of the time “okay affi­ca whe you wan mi fi du fi yu”. 
My response , I want to know every­thing that goes on here , if you don’t tell me you sell noth­ing here anymore.
“Okay affi­ca”.
The same is true of the squeegee man, they want to oper­ate make them informers.

I then pay for my Jelly and leave. Yes I pay for my jel­ly , it is impor­tant that you have char­ac­ter if you want to be respect­ed and if you want them to do what you ask.
Those who served with me know this is no idle talk we knew who com­mit­ted every crim­i­nal act in our police area because we had a net­work of will­ing informants.
Now deceased Supt Of Police Anthony Hewitt called me to his office as head of crime police area 5 and mar­velled at the qual­i­ty of intel­li­gence I was able to glean using sim­ple com­mon sense techniques.
Ever month DSP Hewitt gave me an enve­lope with a twen­ty dol­lar bill to enhance the process .
Back then twen­ty dol­lars could buy a few drink of whites for some of my informants.

I want to see police offi­cers in Jamaica get back in touch and endear them­selves to the pub­lic again we did it before it can be done again. During the 80’s and ear­ly 90’s there were oth­er fac­tors at play it was­n’t just polic­ing which kept crime at a min­i­mum , then we had 300 homi­cides per year we thought the skies were falling.
Today Jamaica records an aver­age of 1600 homi­cides each year and peo­ple shrug as if it is par for the course.
I wish they could actu­al­ly see the bod­ies of 1600 dead rel­a­tives friends and friends of friends laid out side by side , maybe that would have add shock val­ue, who knows ?