Commissioner Williams Batting 0 – 2 Is A Strikeout Imminent

Commissioner of Police Dr. Carl Williams is lob­by­ing to again change the laws allow­ing police to arrest peo­ple they sus­pect of com­mit­ting crimes even with­out enough evidence.
Williams report­ed­ly said “We want to, hope­ful­ly, get an amend­ment to the Bail Act, so that even per­sons who are not charged for crim­i­nal offences can be arrest­ed and bailed pri­or to charge,”

What does that even mean?
So the Commissioner is seek­ing an amend­ment to the Bail Act. So that per­sons not charged with an offense may be arrest­ed and Bailed pri­or to being charged?
Simply put, the Commissioner seeks a return to the days of the Suppression of Crimes Act which allowed Police to just gath­er up huge groups of young men from cer­tain deprived areas and throw them in Jail some­times for weeks on end.
I must con­fess that the dura­tion of my 10 years of ser­vice was under those spe­cial pow­ers and yes crime was low­er across the board. However it can­not be said that lock­ing up dozens and dozens of young men from a par­tic­u­lar area is the way to go strate­gi­cal­ly if the goal is to have crime trend down on a continuüm.

The Gleaner reports that; In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down amend­ments made to the Bail Act which were made by Parliament the year before. Among oth­er things, the amend­ments pro­vid­ed for the deten­tion of a sus­pect on gun and mur­der offences for 60 days with­out bail. Additionally, accused were being required to sat­is­fy the court as to why they should be released on bail, a pro­vi­sion which runs counter to the Constitution. They could be held for up to 72 hours before being charged, instead of the 24-hour pro­vid­ed for by the Constitution.

I am tempt­ed to blast the Liberal Supreme Court for stand­ing in the way of any­thing which would alle­vi­ate the crime prob­lem and I would be on the mark . Nevertheless the Supreme Court has a duty to fol­low the Constitution.
This brings us to the ques­tion of con­sti­tu­tion­al reform. Jamaica needs a new Constitution. I believe the time is right for either a new Constitution or major over­haul to the present one geared at pro­tect­ing the cit­i­zens of our Country.
The Commissioner is seem­ing­ly at a loss as to the way for­ward ‚. Recently I saw some­thing in the papers about old retired Detectives will­ing to offer their exper­tise toward solv­ing the Nation’s crime prob­lem. The com­mis­sion­er should take them up on their offer.
The JCF must extri­cate itself from the ancient think­ing of bru­tal­i­ty and mass incar­cer­a­tion with­out charge, as a way of address­ing crime.There are no sub­sti­tutes for…
♦ Good Detective work.
♦ Scientific evi­dence. Improvements in Forensics.
♦ Bringing com­mu­ni­ties along on strategies.
♦ Community Policing.
♦ Developing and exe­cut­ing effec­tive crime strategies.

Commissioner Williams is a PhD.
We were told that what we need­ed to ade­quate­ly fix our crime prob­lem were no more big ‑foot-fool-fool-police bway.
The Force has under­gone much sup­posed improve­ments since my depar­ture over two decades ago,still the nation is yet to real­ize much in the way of returns on investments.
Sorry Commissioner this is not the way for­ward, whether you were jok­ing about your per­for­mance being 10 out of 10 or not , this lat­est strat­e­gy has you bat­ting 0 – 2 .
Will you strike out?
Time will tell.…..