Assessing Renetto Adams’ Interview.…

My great friend, a for­mer effec­tive Jamaican police offi­cer inboxed me this morn­ing, in my inbox was a video of an inter­view giv­en by for­mer Senior Superintendent of police Renetto Adams to local tele­vi­sion sta­tion CVM.
My friend told me he want­ed me to watch the video and say some­thing about what mis­ter Adams had to say.
I told him I would watch the inter­view as soon as I had a chance and get back to him.

I must say that I do not know mis­ter Adams and must has­ten to say that mis­ter Adams came to promi­nence after I did my brief ten-year stint and exit­ed the JCF.
In the inter­est of clar­i­ty and full dis­clo­sure, I must reveal that I have on occa­sions crit­i­cized some of the things mis­ter Adams have said and in par­tic­u­lar, I have been par­tic­u­lar­ly harsh in my cri­tique of some of the method­olo­gies assigned to mis­ter Adams’ way of policing.
I con­tin­ue to stand behind those crit­i­cisms today.

Even as I have crit­i­cized for­mer SSP Adams on occa­sions, I was always mind­ful that much of mis­ter Adams’ ampli­fied tenure as a police offi­cer came in the 90’s after I had already left the depart­ment and the nation had become much more law­less and the pop­u­la­tion much more tol­er­ant of criminals.

Despite the fore­gone and to the extent that the video was avail­able, mis­ter Adams struck some impor­tant themes. Themes which I have been scream­ing about for years.

EX-PATRIATES

The JCF has a morale prob­lem, this is not new, every con­sta­ble join­ing the force is taught to strive to be the best and to shoot for the high­est office.
That office is the Chief Constable’s chair(commissioner of police).
The pay has always been lousy, so the specter of pro­mo­tion takes on greater sig­nif­i­cance to mem­bers look­ing to feed their families.
The promise to mem­bers that if they have good con­duct, pass their exams when sched­uled, are up to speed in their first aid and work hard they will be pro­mot­ed also makes it dou­bly dif­fi­cult when offi­cers check the box­es and are not promoted.
That affects morale, it makes it dou­bly worse when out­siders are brought in and pro­mot­ed over long-serv­ing mem­bers, not to men­tion expa­tri­ates who bring absolute­ly noth­ing to the table but are paid enor­mous sums of money.

Bringing in peo­ple from England as well as appoint­ing peo­ple from the mil­i­tary to head the force have done immea­sur­able harm to morale with­in the force as pol­i­tics has, which I will get to.
There is no way that a for­mer com­mis­sion­er of Police would be hired to head the Army which real­ly does not require much because of its size and scope.
Why then would a for­mer mil­i­tary head be qual­i­fied to head the JCF, not once but twice?

Worse yet what has Mark Shields, Les Green and oth­ers con­tributed to the JCF for the huge salaries they received, which I must has­ten to say was expo­nen­tial­ly more than Jamaicans who held the same rank?
When a com­par­a­tive analy­sis is done the harm their hir­ing did far out­weigh any con­ceiv­able ben­e­fits which may have accrued.
That includes the incred­i­ble urge black Jamaicans have to be val­i­dat­ed by white Europeans.

OUTSIDE INFLUENCES IN THE WAY WE ENFORCE OUR LAWS

I have long main­tained that part of the rea­son our coun­try is inun­dat­ed with crime is that as a nation Jamaica has teth­ered itself to for­eign treaties, char­ters, and con­ven­tions which have had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for our country.
Of course, Jamaica does not want to be a rogue nation but it is impor­tant that for our own sur­vival we adopt mea­sures only if they will not have debil­i­tat­ing con­se­quences for us.

We must ask our­selves why are inter­na­tion­al donors will­ing to give undis­closed sums of mon­ey to enti­ties like INDECOM, and the pha­lanx of groups now oper­at­ing on the Island fund­ed by for­eign dark mon­ey under the guise of human rights.
Could it be that they know that a coun­try over-run with crime will inex­orably be an impov­er­ished coun­try which will per­pet­u­al­ly be forced to come beg­ging and borrowing?

Why would they not give that mon­ey to law enforce­ment and the jus­tice depart­ment to improve our jus­tice sys­tem so that the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice would be more time­ly, effi­cient and just?
Could it be that a Jamaica of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple hav­ing those hall­marks of jus­tice would rapid­ly become a coun­try attain­ing sol­ven­cy and self-suf­fi­cien­cy there­by not reduced to beg­ging for aid and grov­el­ing for loans?

The United States, Britain, and Canada are all eco­nom­ic pow­er­hous­es, nei­ther of those coun­tries accepts out­side influ­ence in how they make or enforce their laws.
Most donors to groups on the Island which give tac­it sup­port to crim­i­nals are from the three named countries.
Jamaica should nei­ther accept nor allow either of those coun­tries to shape its policies.

POLITICS 

The age-old prob­lem of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence is one lit­er­al­ly every cop who ever stepped out on the beat can attest to.
Adams spoke to this can­cer, detail­ing how he was trans­ferred because he dared to ignore a gazetted offi­cer’s ille­gal request to drop a case he had which was already before the courts.

Those who have fol­lowed my rant­i­ngs over the years already under­stand my dis­dain for the senior corps of the JCF with the excep­tion of a few of its mem­bers past and present.
I always believed that cor­rup­tion starts at the top and fil­ters downstream.
The cor­rup­tion detect­ed in some junior mem­bers of the force are only vis­i­ble because they are more in con­tact with the gen­er­al public.

The real cor­rup­tion and col­lu­sion are at the top. Senior mem­bers of the Police force are always respon­si­ble for the oper­a­tional pros and cons of what hap­pens inside the force.
It is the cor­rup­tion which trick­les down from them which infect­ed the body of the force.
Nevertheless, they were nev­er shy to throw the rank and file of the depart­ment under the bus, cre­at­ing in the process ‚the impres­sion that the young men and women are the problem.
Corrupt, col­lud­ing, cow­ard­ly, and incom­pe­tent are the descrip­tive words I always believed best described the major­i­ty of the forces most senior officers.

The gen­er­al pub­lic does not see the envelopes deliv­ered to their offices for work done by their semi-starv­ing sub­or­di­nates who nev­er received a cent.
No one sees the envelopes they receive for the cas­es they pres­sure the young ener­getic offi­cers to drop at the per­il of their jobs and careers.

Yes, pret­ty much all of the offi­cers under­stand this all too well. This writer is no exception.
I was uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly and with­out warn­ing trans­ferred back to the Mobile Reserve from St Andrew North by a cer­tain mem­ber of par­lia­ment col­lud­ed with his lap­dog, a now-retired deputy Commissioner to have me trans­ferred out of the Division.
My sin, not allow­ing any Dons or area lead­ers to devel­op with­in my sphere of influence.
The Parliamentarian, now a dinosaur, is a min­is­ter of Government.

They thought they had pulled off a coup until the peo­ple real­ized what had occurred and all hell broke loose.
All traf­fic head­ing to Manor Park came to a standstill.
The peo­ple want­ed their police offi­cer that they could trust back, so com­ing from Herman Ricketts was back you go.
Police offi­cers can be tough as nails take no shit and still be revered, loved and admired.
When you are that type of offi­cer your ene­mies are politi­cians, cor­rupt senior offi­cers, street thugs and their supporters.

ON WANTING TO BE COMMISSIONER OF POLICE

Renetto Adams spoke elo­quent­ly on why he was not seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered to be Commissioner of police at the time he applied.
He allud­ed to the lev­el of con­trol out­side play­ers have on who gets appoint­ed the com­mis­sion­er of police on the Island.
There are pow­er­ful forces pulling the strings out­side the coun­try and this has noth­ing to do with real and jus­ti­fi­ably need­ed human rights guar­an­tees for every Jamaican.

All in all the points raised by for­mer SSP Adams were spot on.
In two arti­cles writ­ten for local news­pa­pers recent­ly, for­mer Assistant Commissioner of Police Keith Gardiner made sim­i­lar obser­va­tions and pre­sent­ed work­able solu­tions to restor­ing order to the Island.
That advice fell on deaf ears as much of what I have per­son­al­ly been say­ing have fall­en on deaf ears.
Nevertheless, I will per­son­al­ly con­tin­ue to doc­u­ment these events and make sug­ges­tions because it is impor­tant that we do so for the good of the chil­dren and even those unborn.

As I was writ­ing this a friend inboxed me from Jamaica, she loves Jamaica and has lit­er­al­ly made Jamaica her home, quote:

Tell me one rea­son why Jamaica has this killing culture…killing mentality.…???no Carribean island has this violence.…and all of them are the 3.World.….that means poor.…maybe the gov­ern­ment has to send all Jamaican’s back to they roots.…..to clean the island.…and devel­op with Refugees from Syria…Afghanistan…Africa…maybe it would be bet­ter if China takes it over one day.…..I love this island.…don’t get me wrong.…but I am look­ing for an alter­na­tive island.…Trinidad…St Martin…Barbados…Guadeloupe...

Me: Our coun­try has a cul­ture which encour­ages vio­lence, gives com­fort and suc­cor to mur­der­ers and a pop­u­la­tion which is high­ly tol­er­ant of crim­i­nals.

Her: I know.…this is very bad for the Tourism Industry...

Me: Jamaica has always been a coun­try which sup­ports crim­i­nals. The coun­try is sim­ply reap­ing the rewards of those actions.

Her : This is awful.…there is no Future for a bet­ter life.…I think peo­ple have crime gene…There is only a future for crime.….

Me: Things can be turned around but they require strong lead­er­ship, unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is no lead­er­ship of that kind in Jamaica. So yes the future is quite bleak.
Be safe, please…

Her: Yep I try my best.…but it is dif­fi­cult for a ****************..to have always bad mind of people.…there is no relax­ing part…no Joy…