‘A Force For Good’, Is An Empty Slogan Without Results.…

It seems that what the Minister of National Security, Horace Chang meant when he said ‘we hafi gi tony a chance’, speak­ing of Commissioner of Police Antony Anderson, was about effec­tu­at­ing cos­met­ic changes.
What am I yap­ping about? Well, it seems that one of the things I have sup­port­ed for a long time, speak­ing of out­fit­ting police offi­cers in a prac­ti­cal uni­form, is com­ing to fruition. 
This nice blue uni­form adorned with the Jamaican flag and crest insignia above the heart is prac­ti­cal for both male and female offi­cers and some­thing they can be proud of don­ning each day.
But that seems to be all we are get­ting from Tony’s stewardship.

I’m told that offi­cers are asked to pay for these nice-look­ing uni­forms. I have not been able to ver­i­fy whether this is true inde­pen­dent­ly. However, there may be some truth, as many offi­cers wear imprac­ti­cal red-seam black pants and striped grey shirts. Some may argue that that ensem­ble is not so bad; truth­ful­ly, I have not seen any offi­cers wear­ing that ensem­ble with the god-awful cum­mer­bund of late.
But the fact that offi­cers still wear the red seams seems to indi­cate that offi­cers may have been asked to pay for the blue ensemble.
One last thing of note: how can we have nice high­ways and no police offi­cers patrolling them? Driving on the nation’s roads, you may see a sin­gle cop car parked with the offi­cers out of the car chat­ting or on their cell­phones. All of this while vehic­u­lar traf­fic races by at break­neck speed. The cops are in total oblivion.
If we are to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, the nation’s pre­mier law enforce­ment agency must act pro­fes­sion­al­ly and give the impres­sion that it is at least one step above Deputy Barney Fyffe of Mayberry.
I’m still per­plexed when­ev­er I lis­ten to the Prime Minister speak on secu­ri­ty inside our coun­try; he refers to the Jamaica Defense Force and then the Jamaica Constabulary Force as an afterthought.

The JCF, As I have writ­ten for years, must do a bet­ter job at polic­ing. It must demon­strate that it is a force to be reck­oned with.… not some emp­ty slo­gan vis a force for good.
By inves­ti­gat­ing and arrest­ing guilty offend­ers, catch­ing crim­i­nals in the act, and pre­emp­tive­ly dis­man­tling crim­i­nal net­works, the JCF will gain the respect of the Jamaican peo­ple. The JCF must retake con­trol of the streets before it expects any respect and sup­port from the peo­ple as to its abil­i­ty to seri­ous­ly impact crime and vio­lence in any mean­ing­ful way.
That is a force for good.….. not an emp­ty slogan.
The few offi­cers I observed in pub­lic on my last vis­it home did not give me con­fi­dence that the JCF is inter­est­ed in law enforce­ment but is more inter­est­ed in floss­ing and being on their mobile devices.
This is a fail­ure of lead­er­ship at all levels.
The JCF has expo­nen­tial­ly more offi­cers than two or three decades ago. It has more up-to-date resources than it did pre­vi­ous­ly. Yet, there are few­er cops vis­i­ble on the streets, high­er lev­els of vio­lent crimes, and the streets have all but been ced­ed to unruly drivers.
How the agency expects to func­tion this way is a mys­tery to me.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.