Commissioner And His Staff Utterly Delusional On Crime…

Three retired police offi­cers have lent their voic­es to the crime scourge in Jamaica, speak­ing to reporters three of the nation’s pre­em­i­nent for­mer law-enforce­ment offi­cers spoke on what they thought was miss­ing from the debate sur­round­ing the sub­ject of vio­lent crime and what the police can do in the process.

The retired offi­cers have point­ed to a lack of lead­er­ship, a fail­ure to con­nect with the peo­ple they serve and an absence of com­mit­ment by some mem­bers of the Force as the rea­sons the police are now strug­gling to tame the crime monster.
There are times when peo­ple offer up opin­ions on how cer­tain prob­lems are to be addressed and yet they have no train­ing ‚expe­ri­ence, or exper­tise in that sub­ject mat­ter. Jamaica has no short­age of those peo­ple who read­i­ly offer up grandiose sug­ges­tion with­out a resume on the giv­en subject.
Not so with these three, who have between them over a hun­dred years of polic­ing experience.
According to the Gleaner which spoke to all three men all of the for­mer offi­cers rec­og­nize the need for a con­nec­tion to the com­mu­ni­ty. One of the prob­lems in our coun­try is the propen­si­ty among a cer­tain sec­tor of the soci­ety to dimin­ish the role and impor­tance of the police in soci­ety. For the vast major­i­ty of ordi­nary Jamaicans how­ev­er the police con­tin­ue to be an invalu­able force for good and a bul­wark of pro­tec­tion between them­selves and those who would do them harm.
On that basis the major­i­ty of Jamaicans are still search­ing for a police force which treats them fair­ly but goes after crim­i­nals with a venom.
In my opin­ion it is those Jamaicans toward whom we must address our atten­tion, dis­re­gard­ing the use­less chat­ter of the vil­lage lawyers and detrac­tors who are gen­er­al­ly sat­is­fied to be cyn­ics and crit­ics from behind com­put­er key­boards with­out doing any­thing to help.

“The man them too detached from the streets. They need to get into the com­mu­ni­ty, get more involved with the peo­ple. I am not see­ing where they are doing that as much as before,” said Campbell, who spent his 40-year career at the Flying Squad and in volatile divi­sions includ­ing St Andrew South, Kingston Western and St Andrew North. “Police today need to see their job as a busi­ness and the peo­ple as their clients. You can’t oper­ate with­out your clients,” said Campbell. “Some divi­sion­al com­man­ders I know of will go into office and don’t come out ’cause them don’t know the streets. You must go out on the streets with the men you lead so you can build their con­fi­dence. They need to see you with them,” said Campbell.

“If you are talk­ing about the West Indies crick­et team of the ’70s and the ’80s, and the West Indies crick­et team now, it’s two dif­fer­ent eras. To com­pare which bats­man is bet­ter than which bats­man now, I can’t do that,” said Benjamin. “There is too much depen­dence on the tech­no­log­i­cal part of it (polic­ing) today. I don’t have a prob­lem with tech­nol­o­gy but for the tech­no­log­i­cal part of it to work you must depend on the human aspect of it as well. You must ensure that the human con­nec­tion is there too,” said Benjamin.

Retired Superintendent Hugh Bish, who served for more than 30 years, is not con­vinced. He believes that cops in past decades were more atten­tive to res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ties they served than the police are today.

“Back in my time, we respond­ed to every call. Sometimes we find some­thing and some­times we don’t. I don’t want to say that it is not hap­pen­ing now because that would be spec­u­la­tion, but these tac­tics usu­al­ly work for us,” said Bish, who oper­at­ed as a homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tor in some of the gang­lands of Clarendon, Kingston, St Andrew, Portland; and at the Mobile Reserve, among oth­er units. “You have to work with the peo­ple. If a man see some­body hid­ing some­thing and call you as the police and when you come all you find is a stick, it does­n’t mat­ter,” said Bish. “What has hap­pened is that man is a hun­dred times more will­ing to call you next time, and chances are you will go there and find more than a stick.”

No one strat­e­gy is a panacea to cur­ing Jamaica’s crime Problem, the opin­ions offered by these for­mer street cops are not sil­ver bul­lets. Crime did not end dur­ing the time they were offi­cers. I can per­son­al­ly attest to the effec­tive­ness of two of these for­mer offi­cers , Calvin Benjamin was a senior cop dur­ing my tenure and so was Parra Campbell.
I nev­er worked togeth­er with Benjamin from the same sta­tion or divi­sion but as a front-line cop in Jamaica game rec­og­nize game. Parra Campbell ? Totally dif­fer­ent mat­ter Campbell a much senior cop to me was the epit­o­me of a cop’s cop, the kind of per­son you want watch­ing your back in a fire­fight. These guys know what the hell they are talk­ing about.
The last active shoot­ing I was a part of before leav­ing the force involved the effec­tive­ness of Parra Campbell . We spot­ted a man want­ed for the mur­der of his own uncle, I quick­ly jumped from the car and grabbed him upon which he attempt­ed to pull a weapon from his waist, this left me no choice but to engage him at the lev­el he chose to be engaged , so I pushed him away from me as he came up with the weapon Parra neu­tral­ized that threat. That’s how we dealt with peo­ple who killed peo­ple and want­ed to kill us in the process.
Crime was not non-exis­tent dur­ing the tenure of these men but Jamaica was cer­tain­ly a much bet­ter place in which to live and do busi­ness. As front-line crime fight­ers we knew that we saw the very same peo­ple at the sites and scenes of shoot­ing and tur­moil when­ev­er those instances arose. It was a tough small bunch of actu­al crime fight­ers which kept a lid on things , and guess what the crim­i­nal under­world knew it and they knew bet­ter than to be bold and brave.

During our time I had peo­ple in the under­world giv­ing crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion to me each and every one of us who kept the streets had our own infor­mants who pro­vid­ed us crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion. I recall my time sta­tioned at Constant Spring there was a par­tic­u­lar crim­i­nal from Easter Kingston who want­ed to move from his base in east Kingston to set up shop in the Grant’s Pen Area. His idea as far as my infor­mant was con­cerned was that he had to kill me. The prob­lem with his plan accord­ing to the same source was that he was death­ly afraid to come any­where near me.
In an age when the issue of police has tak­en cen­ter stage with every­one offer­ing up their ver­sions of polic­ing it is impor­tant to note that we were suc­cess­ful , mea­sur­ably so because we cre­at­ed an aura of invin­ci­bil­i­ty around us.
It had noth­ing to do with the abil­i­ty to pull a weapon quick­ly . It had noth­ing to do with shoot­ing any­one. It cen­tered on what Bish spoke about. We fol­lowed ever lead, every report was inves­ti­gat­ed . Criminals knew we knew them , what they were up to and we darn sure knew where they lived. Most impor­tant­ly we knew where their women lived . As I have said before it is impor­tant to under­stand that Jamaican crim­i­nals love mon­ey, they love guns and they absolute­ly love women. Know where their women live and check-mate.

The strength and effec­tive­ness of the police depart­ment of yes­ter­year had noth­ing to do with num­bers and every­thing to do with ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment of a select minor­i­ty with­in the depart­ment who would not be dic­tat­ed to by crim­i­nal ele­ments . The vast major­i­ty of the oth­er offi­cers ben­e­fit­ed from the work of those select few. Most impor­tant­ly even those with the most caus­tic hatred of police ben­e­fit­ted from the sac­ri­fice of those offi­cers. The cumu­la­tive val­ue of that kind of polic­ing is lost on the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion and to some degree is immeasurable.
Effective Policing has noth­ing to do with hav­ing a few com­put­ers. It also has noth­ing to do with hav­ing a whole slew of for­ward-sound­ing names which cre­ates the impres­sion of com­plex­i­ty and or effec­tive­ness when the peo­ple who run these spe­cial­ized units can­not find their ass­es out of a paper bag.
Of course all of this seem to be an alien con­cept to the present Commissioner. I recent­ly read an Article some­place where one vil­lage lawyer said the days of (dirty-harry)style polic­ing has nev­er worked and will not work today either. Of course the (dirty har­ry) fig­ure is in ref­er­ence to the myth­i­cal gun-slinger depict­ed in old Hollywood films.
It’s easy to blovi­ate about what worked or did not work when one has no idea how bad it would have been had there not been the dirty har­ry style polic­ing for years. It was only the tough mind­ed nature of police why the shit had not hit the fan before. The head of (inde­com) and the sil­ly lit­tle rats who run behind him reminds me of the Hans Christian Andersen tale (the pied piper).
They believe police shoot­ings are down as a con­se­quence of (inde­com) .
The fact is that inci­dents of police shoot­ings have noth­ing to do with (inde­com) and every­thing to do with the lack of police engagement.
The high mur­der rate is tes­ta­ment to that fact. Criminals are embold­ened to act with­out fear of con­se­quence. What Cop wants to risk persecution ..?

COMMISSIONER CARL WILLIAMS TAKE.…

Police Commissioner Carl Williams is not con­vinced that a lack of com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment by the police is at the heart of the prob­lem accord­ing to the report.
“I don’t know; I have not got­ten that impres­sion any at all. We have a new sys­tem in place now that is help­ing us to engage the com­mu­ni­ties in a much more inti­mate way. In fact, polic­ing as it is prac­ticed now (com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment) is almost a philosophy,” ‘.
 Assistant Commissioner Gary Welsh head of the Security Branch, under­scored the com­mis­sion­er’s posi­tion as he point­ed to a dis­tinc­tion between com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions, which he said was being prac­tised decades ago, and com­mu­ni­ty policing.

“We have a great appre­ci­a­tion for the work and worth of those who served before us. They cre­at­ed a great foun­da­tion. In yes­ter­year, I’m talk­ing 10 – 15 years ago, we had what was called a com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions focus, which was the police cre­at­ing a rela­tion­ship with the cit­i­zens for the ben­e­fit of the police,” said Welsh. “Today, we have tran­si­tioned from com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions to com­mu­ni­ty-based polic­ing. The focus now is to have both sides ben­e­fit­ing. It’s a part­ner­ship. “You have to under­stand the sub­tle dif­fer­ence. Community rela­tion is ask­ing ‘what can the police get out of the com­mu­ni­ty’. Now we are say­ing let us cre­ate this part­ner­ship, where it is more than see­ing what we can get, but also about tack­ling some of the oth­er social issues,” said Welsh, who has served some 20 years in the Force.

If this mum­bo-jum­bo was­n’t so seri­ous it would actu­al­ly be laugh­able. What a load of excre­ment. Both Williams and Welsh are edu­cat­ed men who ought to under­stand when to shut their trap and when to actu­al­ly speak.
What the f**k kind of strat­e­gy does the JCF has in place which out­paces what was in place before? The JCF by it’s own num­bers claim they are lock­ing up 30% of mur­der­ers. By their own num­bers they are con­vict­ing only about 7% of that 30% and even when they do gain a con­vic­tion some are over­turned on appeal. Which means on the face of it 70% of all killers nev­er gets apprehended >.

If as for­mer cop Parra Campbell stat­ed, the JCF treat­ed the peo­ple like cus­tomers and the JCF a busi­ness , would the agency be sat­is­fied that right off the bat it’s fail­ure rate was 70% ? That’s just homi­cide . Be remind­ed that those homi­cides which are cleared up are domes­tic killings where a man kills his woman , vice ver­sa, or a fam­i­ly mem­ber kills anoth­er. Which means there are no real inves­tiga­tive work being done. Even in the case of domes­tic mur­ders the Agency can bare­ly man­age an embar­rass­ing 7% con­vic­tion rate.
Do me a favor Commissioners Campbell and Welsh get the f**k off your high hors­es and stop with the bull-shit. It may serve you to rec­og­nize that the emper­or has no damn clothes , instead of pre­tend­ing to see that which just isn’t there. Instead of delud­ing your­selves , I sug­gest you elic­it the help of these senior cops on how to deal with crime and stop with the bull-shit.