Decisively Making The Arrest A Huge Deterrent To Potential Offenders

One of the things I have con­sis­tent­ly spo­ken to regard­ing the law­less­ness on the streets of Jamaica is the inabil­i­ty or reluc­tance of the police to effect arrests.
In a video this week­end we saw a senior offi­cer tak­ing charge.….….. (sort of).……and bring­ing order to a sit­u­a­tion which should have been under con­trol long before it was done.

The per­va­sive law­less­ness on the Island’s road­ways put the lives of the trav­el­ing pub­lic and police offi­cers at extreme risk.
Every year hun­dreds of Jamaicans are killed in traf­fic crash­es which are total­ly pre­ventable. Traffic crash­es are quite dif­fer­ent from traf­fic acci­dents which are occur­rences in which dri­vers played no cul­pa­ble part in creating.

Speeding. dan­ger­ous dri­ving. ille­gal over­tak­ing. impaired dri­ving. tail­gat­ing. over­load­ing. are only a few of the rea­sons that traf­fic crash­es occur.
On the oth­er hand, vehi­cles over­turn­ing on break­away roads in sit­u­a­tions in which the dri­ver was not guilty of any of the afore­men­tioned vices are more in the vein of what is quan­ti­fied as traf­fic acci­dents, et al.

Minibus dri­vers and the pha­lanx of taxi oper­a­tors now tra­vers­ing the road­ways have made the job of the police expo­nen­tial­ly and ever increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult even as it endan­gers the trav­el­ing public.

It is for this rea­son that I have said that senior cops must be on the streets (super­in­ten­dents, SSP’s and ACP’s ) to ensure that the laws are obeyed and just as impor­tant­ly, that our young offi­cers do not get preyed upon by the vul­tures in wait­ing, when they are forced to take action.

It can­not be overem­pha­sized that at the very first sign that a per­son being spo­ken to for an infrac­tion becomes abu­sive and bel­liger­ent he/​she must be brought under con­trol by plac­ing them in handcuffs.

In the video, I viewed the senior offi­cer has the bel­liger­ent, threat­en­ing and abu­sive motorist by the back of the pants, good, but there was anoth­er offi­cer stand­ing around with the cuffs and of course the ever-present wall­flower female offi­cer stand­ing around as a spectator.

In the chaot­ic scene, civil­ians are stand­ing around in the sphere of oper­a­tion which places them at risks and places the offi­cers at risks them­selves, includ­ing legal jeopardy.
Most impor­tant­ly after the cop final­ly placed the cuffs on the sub­ject he allowed him to walk away mouthing off in a threat­en­ing way when he should have been deci­sive­ly and imme­di­ate­ly placed in the police vehicle.

Many peo­ple cheered the arrests, the vil­lage lawyers crit­i­cize, per­son­al­ly, I hope that this video will be used as a train­ing tool (what not to do)even though luck­i­ly it end­ed well for the police this time.

Nothing deters peo­ple from resist­ing arrests than the dis­tinct knowl­edge that they will be deci­sive­ly and imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed. Officers must use the req­ui­site force to gain com­pli­ance, it must be done at the first sign of bel­liger­ence and done swiftly.

The Police can­not get the lib­er­al left­ist’s courts to admin­is­ter the laws as it relates to resist­ing arrests and assault­ing police offi­cers but they damn sure can effect arrests in a way that makes would be resisters think twice and maybe three times before doing it.

This is not idle talk at the time of my ser­vice when I tell you-you are under arrests you know not to resist. As I have said repeat­ed­ly, what­ev­er is in the train­ing man­u­al is not working.
What is being done at the Academy is out­dat­ed, it has no rela­tion­ship to what offi­cers face on the streets. It must be scrapped and real polic­ing train­ing brought into the curriculum.