Dunce-headed Police Leadership Putting Cops At Risk/​making Mockery Of Them

One of the things I have argued over the years to much push-back from some of my friends is that police train­ing is inad­e­quate.
I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that the drills should be cur­tailed to 10% of what it is present­ly.
Drills are pure­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al, they lit­er­al­ly serve no use­ful pur­pose in real polic­ing prac­tices.
The 90% of the time tak­en from (drills) should be uti­lized in weight train­ing and swim­ming.
Hand-to-hand train­ing is crit­i­cal as this is per­haps going to be the most uti­lized ele­ment by offi­cers and may arguably be the dif­fer­ence between life and death of officers.

I make the fore­gone in light of an inci­dent involv­ing an offi­cer and a school­boy at the Kellits High School in Clarendon
In the inci­dent, the offi­cer was bad­ly man­han­dled and over­pow­ered by the school­boy in quick time.
Rather than crit­i­cize the offi­cer and what he may or may not have done wrong in the time in which he was assault­ed I would rather like to once again point to (a)the inef­fec­tive­ness of the train­ing in the Jamaica Constabulary Force and (b) the ease with which cit­i­zens feel free to assault offi­cers of the force as a con­se­quence of the lack of puni­tive com­po­nents in the law.

Assaulting a police offi­cer in most devel­oped coun­tries is a felony pun­ish­able by real jail time on con­vic­tion.
Jamaica is cer­tain­ly not a devel­oped coun­try but it has­n’t been shy in quick­ly adopt­ing prac­tices it lead­ers deem in their best inter­est from devel­oped coun­tries. 
What has­n’t hap­pened is a bill in the par­lia­ment which address­es appro­pri­ate­ly the dan­gers police face in this volatile envi­ron­ment.
Conversely, the INDECOM bill was intro­duced in 2010 under the Jamaica Labor Party’s (JLP) Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, with the full back­ing of the Opposition People’s National Party(PNP).
That bill became law with mar­gin­al results against crooked cops and dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for crime fight­ing on the Island.
Additionally, admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties have empow­ered oth­er agen­cies like the Peblic Defender’s Act which cre­at­ed anoth­er lay­er of state-fund­ed antag­o­nism against law-enforce­ment, unprece­dent­ed any­where in the world.
Arguably the only thing the two polit­i­cal par­ties in Jamaica can find com­mon cause around is their dis­gust for law-enforce­ment and the rule of law.

Changing police com­mis­sion­ers, putting friends into posi­tions of pow­er will not change the tra­jec­to­ry of crime.
Changing the struc­tur­al inad­e­qua­cies in the train­ing reg­i­men and giv­ing law enforce­ment the tools it needs to get the job done will.
Job one for all police offi­cers is self-preser­va­tion. 
The train­ing the police is receiv­ing is far from ade­quate hence these inci­dents. Thankfully this one did not result in the loss of life but offi­cers have lost their lives before in this way.
I call on the Government once again, shelve the archa­ic train­ing and intro­duce real train­ing, com­men­su­rate with the dic­tates of the times. 
The lit­tle thug will most like­ly get a brush on the wrist by a lib­er­al judge. The offi­cer is for­ev­er exposed to ridicule and the law­less­ness will con­tin­ue.
It will con­tin­ue because the Government which has the pow­er to put a stop to it refus­es to give law enforce­ment the nec­es­sary tools they need to do their jobs safe­ly and effectively.