Jamaica Has No Interest In Law Enforcement:

Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner ran a sto­ry head­lined: NO REST FOR INDECOM: in the Sunday February 12^th pub­li­ca­tion. INDECOM of course is the most recent Agency that has been cre­at­ed to over­see alle­ga­tions of police abuse and so-called extra judi­cial killings. Lets be clear-most major police depart­ments have prob­lems with abuse, bad apples with­in the ranks, when­ev­er these abus­es rear their heads it is imper­a­tive that they are root­ed out. From my per­spec­tive I have no prob­lem with over­sight of the police depart­ment, after all, pub­lic employ­ees must have over­sight and account­abil­i­ty. The gen­er­al con­cen­sus is if one has noth­ing to hide, then there is no rea­son to fear oversight.

A promi­nent con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer in Jamaica chal­lenged me some­time ago in an email, to write about extra-judi­cal killings by police per­son­nel in Jamaica, his infer­ence being that as a for­mer police offi­cer I must have been a part of, or at a min­i­mum been wit­ness to instances of extra-judi­al killings by fel­low offi­cers. As insult­ing and arro­gant as that hubris is, it forms a cor­ner­stone of any con­ver­sa­tion involv­ing Jamaican law enforce­ment, wher­ev­er those con­ver­sa­tions happen.

NO REST FOR (INDECOM) .(Jamaicagleaner​.com)

This is the most laugh­able form of law enforce­ment imaginable .

Where is it ever writ­ten: NO REST FOR THE POLICE? The real police I might add!!!!

Reverend Gordon Evans, the com­mis­sion’s direc­tor of com­plaints for the west­ern region, told The Sunday Gleaner that the past month has offered no rest for INDECOM inves­ti­ga­tors cov­er­ing the west­ern parish­es. “We have been kept busy, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last four weeks,” he said. The cler­gy­man explained that his team has been called upon at least once and some­times more than once in each of the last four weeks to inves­ti­gate police killings and non-fatal shoot­ings. “For this week (last week), we were called upon to inves­ti­gate two cas­es. The triple killing and anoth­er shoot­ing that was­n’t fatal,” said Evans. He added: “There tends to be a peri­od where you get a spurt and then a lull.”

A Reverend in charge of an office that inves­ti­gates police shoot­ings. What’s next police offi­cers in charge of the Seminary? Does the polit­i­cal direc­torate real­ize the stu­pid­i­ty of these over­sight bod­ies ? It nev­er worked , and it will nev­er work, the strat­e­gy must be to train, equip and pay a pro­fes­sion­al police force and do away with all of the fake and wan­na be police depart­ments . This kills morale in the real police force and forces police offi­cers to close ranks in order to pro­tect them­selves. There is nev­er going to be real coöper­a­tion between the two bod­ies and right­ly so . Police offi­cers risk their lives to pro­tect they do not need Monday morn­ing quar­ter backs com­ing in lat­er to sec­ond guess them when they take action.

If (INDECOM) is a trust­ed enti­ty which the Jamaican peo­ple are pre­pared to work with, that they feel com­fort­able with , and they are pre­pared to open up to those inves­ti­ga­tors, then the prob­lem of cor­rup­tion and police excess is solved in Jamaica. Simply give (INDECOM) the guns and uni­forms, they are the police, prob­lem solved:

Gleaner pho­to

Of course if that is not a work­able solu­tion then the whole inves­tiga­tive cha­rade is a mon­u­men­tal fraud.

A pas­tor in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tors? How much more stu­pid can the pol­i­cy mak­ers be? There are some impor­tant facts Jamaicans will have to avail them­selves to, not least of which is the real­i­ty that whomev­er they chose to call when they need help, be it the tra­di­tion­al prac­tion­ers we call police offi­cers or the com­mu­ni­ty enforcer called the “Don”-the desired result is the same. The func­tion they pro­vide is polic­ing, the noun just hap­pens to be “Police”, so it mat­ters not who car­ries out the “verb”-the func­tion is the same. What this means is that cre­at­ing lay­ers of police agen­cies to police oth­er police agen­cies is an effort in futil­i­ty; a drain on the already impov­er­ished coun­try’s very lim­it­ed and in some cas­es non-exis­tent resources.

Having a seper­ate agency traips­ing around, sniff­ing at every scene of police shoot­ing, col­lect­ing state­ments and incrim­i­nat­ing cops with fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence is not a func­tion that will engen­der trust or coöper­a­tion, if this con­tin­ues there are going to be seri­ous con­se­quences to both agen­cies and the coun­try going for­ward. Police offi­cers are not going to, and should not allow peo­ple who are asleep in the dead of night to give state­ments incrim­i­nat­ing them end­ing their careers, send­ing them to prison, send­ing them into pover­ty, and destroy­ing their lives and that of their families.

Jamaica’s Governments of both polit­i­cal par­ties have been sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures which have betrayed the scared trust of the peo­ple, lead­ing them down wrong paths time and again, tak­ing advan­tage of their trust and in some cas­es naïveté’. And in the process set­ting up real ser­vants of the peo­ple who tru­ly sac­ri­fice, pit­ting them against their broth­er in a dan­ger­ous game of exploitation.

It is time that the Jamaican peo­ple rise up, throw off the encum­ber­ing man­tle of polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, and rec­og­nize that the polit­i­cal lead­ers are all manip­u­la­tive, lying, bas­tards who are enrich­ing them­selves at their expense with nary a thought for their inter­est. But then again how can they dis­card some­thing that has now become part of their DNA?

After all is said and done there is no men­tion of the grave dan­ger police offi­cers face in deal­ing with some of the world’s most heav­i­ly armed, deter­mined, blood-thirsty urban ter­ror­ists; the empha­sis is as always focused on those who risk it all and pay with their lives.

This is a strik­ing indict­ment on a repro­brate nation which embraces crim­i­nal punks over those sworn to pro­tect and serve.