SSP McGregor’s Statement Not Helpful To JCF.…

Responding to the Nomination day event in Flankers St James in which a bus trans­port­ing JLP sup­port­ers was sprayed with gun­fire result­ing in the death of at least one person,
(SSP) Steve McGregor Commanding offi­cer for the parish had this to say.
“No per­mis­sion was grant­ed for the moror­cade to pro­ceed through Flankers, “In fact, there were explic­it warn­ings against it,”.
“We are appeal­ing to organ­is­ers and par­ty offi­cials to heed all instruc­tions and warn­ings giv­en in the future,”.

Okaaay !!!
Well there you have it JLP , I guess McGregor told you!!!
According to the report­ing on the ground one per­son was killed in the attack and sev­er­al vehi­cles were dam­aged as well.
Can you imag­ine the Police telling Political can­di­dates where they can and can­not go in any soci­ety oth­er than Jamaica?
Set aside for a moment that the vic­tims in this instance were mem­bers of the JLP . Make them PNP sup­port­ers or whomev­er , where does the police get off telling cam­paigns not to cam­paign , regard­less of neighborhood?

I get the part about cam­paigns not first receiv­ing per­mits before going ahead.
If it’s the law that cam­paigns first receive per­mits before pro­ceed­ing with cer­tain ele­ments of cam­paign­ing then cam­paigns must respect the laws .
I also under­stand that this could be the con­cern of the Commanding officer.
Nevertheless the larg­er issue I believe is that if you remove the green or orange shirts and par­ty para­pher­na­lia Jamaicans have a right to go wher­ev­er they chose in their coun­try with­out the expec­ta­tion of get­ting attacked and killed.

I under­stand that the police are deal­ing with sit­u­a­tions as they have been in our coun­try since inde­pen­dence. That sense of frus­tra­tion was evi­dent in Steve McGregor’s statement.
However as I have said on pre­vi­ous occa­sions the police seem unable to find its way out of a paper-bag.
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that the Police is in the busi­ness of telling cam­paigns in 2016 not to go to cer­tain neighborhoods.

Has the police giv­en up on it’s own mis­sion statement ?
(1) Prevention and detec­tion of crime.
(2) Protection of life and property.
(3) Preservation of peace and good order.

If it has­n’t , how then can the Agency tasked with the pro­tec­tion of inter­nal secu­ri­ty jus­ti­fi­ably tell any Jamaican not to go any place in Jamaica or even 12 miles out to see which falls with­in it’s sphere of responsibility?
Sure I under­stand ‘Risk Assessment?
Sure I under­stand the need to inform poten­tial tar­gets of vio­lent assaults of the threats against them .
Warning tar­gets of threats of vio­lence how­ev­er does not absolve the police of the respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect that tar­get of said intend­ed attack.

SSP McGregor seem to be of the opin­ion that his respon­si­bil­i­ty as Commanding offi­cer is to issue warn­ings to the tar­gets, in this case the JLP.
Many of my for­mer col­leagues crit­i­cize me for being crit­i­cal of the police even despite glar­ing instances of mas­sive incompetence.
Yet they hard­ly seem to pon­der the sub­stance of my points.
Senior Superintendent McGregor said that “police intel­li­gence assets are on the ground con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and that this infor­ma­tion informs deci­sions about the grant­i­ng of per­mis­sion for march­es and motorcades”.

Word of advice to the JCF and SSP McGregor . The sup­posed police intel­li­gence assets on the ground which informs deci­sions about the grant­i­ng of per­mis­sion for march­es and motor­cades should not be used to stop campaigning.
They should be used to weed out the crim­i­nals who would attack inno­cent people.
Regardless of the short­ages the police face, SSP McGregor’s state­ments are exact­ly indica­tive of law enforce­men­t’s fail­ures on the Island because of the depart­men­t’s ret­ro­grade thinking.