Does The JCF Love Good Hard-working Cops?

I spoke to a friend recent­ly who is a mem­ber of the Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCF) he has been a cop since 1987, hard-work­ing dis­ci­plined, he has been a Sargent for over a decade, at the ripe old age of 44 he is now look­ing to leave the job he loves because he is stuck. The fact is that he does not kiss up, he’s not into pol­i­tics, and he is not con­nect­ed. Every day we read of cops doing things we would be alarmed at even if they were com­mit­ted by reg­u­lar crim­i­nals. I recall an instruc­tor ask­ing the class while I was on CIB course which offense was on the books that police offi­cers had not com­mit­ted? We remained silent, the more we thought about it the longer the silence grew, this was back in 1991. The point of all this is that even as the force is strug­gling with an image that is bad­ly in need of resus­ci­ta­tion and repair, it con­tin­ues to frus­trate good offi­cers, forc­ing them to leave for green­er pas­tures. As an Agency the JCF has an abnor­mal­ly high attri­tion rate, high­er that any oth­er agency in the coun­try. This begs the ques­tion why? If as some say that police offi­cers are ego-mani­a­cal light­weights who gets high on the pow­er, why does offi­cers give up that pow­er so freely?

I joined the JCF in 1982, passed grade 1 exams at 2 years ser­vice, no promotion.Passed grade 2 at 4 years ser­vice, no pro­mo­tion .I was not made act­ing cor­po­ral until about 7 years ser­vice, despite pass­ing the exam at 2 years ser­vice, and had already passed the grade 2 years ear­li­er. I went on CIB course , as well as qual­i­fied and passed the accel­er­at­ed exams and the inter­view, had a clean record with numer­ous com­men­da­tions, yet I was­n’t pro­mot­ed Corporal until I had decid­ed to leave at 9 years plus ser­vice. My sin I did not take no bull and I did not kiss ass. I was laud­ed by sev­er­al Judges as a fine exam­ple of what a good and com­pe­tent police Officer should be. Their Honors, Basil Reid, Donald Macintosh, His wife her Honor Mrs Marva Macintosh were some of the Senior Judges who had incred­i­bly high praise for not just my work , or case prepa­ra­tion, but the way I tes­ti­fied in court. Many Lawyers were ter­ri­fied to face me and this is no idle boast, it is his­tor­i­cal fact, not intend­ed as puffery , just to make the point.

In fair­ness to trail lawyers who I am par­tic­u­lar­ly hard on today, I have friends who told me in con­fi­dence if I ever need­ed a lawyer, they would rep­re­sent me pro-bono, they know them­selves, they are prac­tic­ing today.The only peo­ple who could not appre­ci­ate the val­ue of my work were the peo­ple whose job it was to do so, well at least some of them.

There are many oth­ers who left the JCF, or more appro­pri­ate­ly the JCF left them, because of poor lead­er­ship on the part of senior offi­cers who were them­selves pro­mot­ed to posi­tions they were not qual­i­fied or equipped for. I write this because it impor­tant to note that the police depart­ment as an enti­ty, has no oth­er com­mod­i­ty on which to trade except its human resource. Yet one of the great­est fail­ure of the JCF is it’s con­tin­ued inabil­i­ty to ade­quate­ly pro­mote and exploit that which is it’s great­est asset.

A sim­ple push-poll of for­mer mem­bers, would sup­port my asser­tion, many for­mer mem­bers irre­spec­tive of where they emi­grat­ed to, are doing expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter for them­selves and their fam­i­lies than they ever did serv­ing in the JCF. We always spoke to the nobil­i­ty of the Agency,I some­times won­der whether we are not refer­ring to the way we would have liked it to be rather than the way it actu­al­ly is?