Ellington Continues To Play With Cops Lives.

Jamaica’s Police Commissioner has once again put his foot into his mouth, Owen Ellington the Police com­mis­sion­er seem to believe that pan­der­ing to pub­lic per­cep­tions is a safer and bet­ter bet in secur­ing the coun­try than build­ing morale, train­ing and fight­ing for liv­able wages for offi­cers, while weed­ing out crooked and cor­rupt members.

(Gleaner photo)

Owen Ellington has tak­en unprece­dent­ed steps to make sure that the pub­lic like him, he has made the con­fi­den­tial police com­mu­ni­ca­tion doc­u­ment (force orders) pub­lic. This is the first instance to my knowl­edge where a com­pa­ny , orga­ni­za­tion , or insti­tu­tion has made their pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial com­mu­niqué avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic, much less a secu­ri­ty or law Enforcement Agency.

I must say that the secu­ri­ty firm Guardsman is a bet­ter run Agency that the JCF. Ellington’s gam­ble is sim­ple, pro­vide the media with a con­stant stream of non-news by the week­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tions he has with the Department, this does give Jamaica’s lazy unpro­fes­sion­al and incom­pe­tent media prac­ti­tion­ers a con­stant stream of infor­ma­tion that they pass as news to a gullible law enforce­ment hat­ing pub­lic. Ellington looks like he is doing some­thing spec­tac­u­lar, the media has a steady stream of news and Police offi­cers look like idiots and their safe­ty is com­pro­mised, what’s not to like? Ellington has posi­tioned him­self as a reformer when the oppo­site is real­ly true, let’s take a clos­er look.

Ellington’s expe­ri­ence

Ellington joined the JCF in 1980 , a past stu­dent of Glengoff High School, Ellington was edu­cat­ed at the University of the West Indies where he holds a bach­e­lors degree in human resource and a Masters degrees in National secu­ri­ty and strate­gic stud­ies. He also par­tic­i­pat­ed in Certificate cours­es in var­i­ous coun­tries to include China and the United States. The fact is Ellington is aca­d­e­m­i­caly qual­i­fied to be Prime Minister of Jamaica he how­ev­er lacks the req­ui­site skills need­ed to be an effec­tive com­mis­sion­er of police. There are those who believe aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions are enough to make a good cop, the truth is good cops the world over do not have a bach­e­lors degree , much less a mas­ters, I am in no way try­ing to dimin­ish the impor­tance of being ade­quate­ly edu­cat­ed. What I am say­ing is that it does not require a rock­et sci­en­tist to be a good cop.

Ellington lack the most fun­da­men­tal asset that makes a good cop, that char­ac­ter­is­tic is street smart, Ellington was reared in one office or anoth­er, he spent pre­cious lit­tle time if any doing police work and as such he has no real expe­ri­ence in how actu­al polic­ing is done. Police Departments that wants a tech­no­crat at their helm are smart enough to rec­og­nize they need a police chief that came up through the ranks. As is almost the case with every­thing else in Jamaica that process is dys­func­tion­al , this sys­tem of want­i­ng a Technocrat at the helm with­out a cred­i­ble feel for the streets is one bourne out of fol­ly, pen­cil push­ers can­not do police work and damn sure can­not suc­ceed in doing that job in Jamaica of all places.

THREATS AGAINST COPS LIVES COPS PLACED ON HIGH ALERT

On the 14^th of this month we blogged about the seri­ous threats against police per­son­nel in the St. Catherine north , south and Clarendon Divisions made pub­lic by no oth­er than Ellington, who begged mem­bers to be on the high­est alert. Jamaican cops live in a vir­tu­al war zone , irre­spec­tive of where they are stationed,they are the guardians of the gate and as such they have much ene­mies, even some who should be friends are ene­mies This is not the first time Ellington has been forced to raise the threat assess­ment lev­el against mem­bers of the JCF by crim­i­nals who are deter­mined to kill cops at what­ev­er cost, if they can­not have their way in wreak­ing hav­oc in the country.

ELEVEN DAYS LATER

October 23^rd Ellington was again in the news, this time berat­ing cops for tak­ing home weapons to pro­tect their lives and that of their families.

Said Ellington.

There are numer­ous instances where per­sons who are stopped by the police declare them­selves to be police offi­cers. Sometimes these per­sons pro­duce police iden­ti­fi­ca­tion; how­ev­er, there is noth­ing pro­vid­ed for them to ver­i­fy that they are autho­rised to car­ry the firearm.“Ellington remind­ed his charges that only a cer­tain cat­e­go­ry of offi­cers with­in the JCF are giv­en ser­vice firearms to keep and care. He argued that the absence of a prop­er sys­tem to quick­ly ver­i­fy whether a mem­ber is autho­rised to be in pos­ses­sion of a ser­vice firearm presents a risk, espe­cial­ly to offi­cers per­form­ing duties in civil­ian attire.A police­man’s uni­form forms part of his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. It tells the organ­i­sa­tion the per­son is employed with (Jamaica Constabulary Force or Island Special Constabulary Force); the lev­el with­in the organ­i­sa­tion the per­son is at; and some­times gives an idea of the per­son­’s length of ser­vice from the insignia worn. This, there­fore, plays a very impor­tant role in aug­ment­ing the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card,” explained Ellington. He added: “This addi­tion­al form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is not extend­ed to per­sons per­form­ing duties in civil­ian attire because of the need for them to be less overt and less vis­i­ble than uni­formed police per­son­nel. In light of this, with­out an estab­lished sys­tem to quick­ly ver­i­fy that a per­son is autho­rised to car­ry a firearm, armed crim­i­nals may get by police road­blocks and spot checks with ille­gal weapons by claim­ing to be police per­son­nel if they are able to pro­duce a police iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card.” According to Ellington, when an armed per­son in civil­ian cloth­ing is stopped by the police and declares him­self to be a mem­ber of the police force, con­tact is usu­al­ly made with the divi­sion the per­son claims he is from to ver­i­fy the accu­ra­cy of the claim, as well as to estab­lish if the per­son is autho­rised to car­ry the pis­tol in his pos­ses­sion. “This process may be a very lengthy and com­pli­cat­ed one as the per­son in the divi­sion with whom the infor­ma­tion lies might not be avail­able. There are instances where it is ver­i­fied that the per­son being checked is a police offi­cer, how­ev­er, the divi­sion can­not con­firm at the time that the per­son is autho­rised to car­ry the firearm,” said Ellington.(Daily Gleaner)

What a load of excrement !!!

Is this guy for real ? If there are cops who can­not be trust­ed with a gun , clear­ly that cop can­not be trust­ed with mak­ing life and death deci­sions with the lives of our cit­i­zens, can’t you see this is the prob­lem? Jamaica has one of the high­est homi­cide rate in the world, cou­pled with that the land mass is one of the small­est for a coun­try with that high lev­el of mur­der­ing scum bags run­ning around, this places the lives of offi­cers and their fam­i­lies sig­nif­i­cant­ly in har­m’s way. Officers do not earn enough to live in gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties so they share the same com­mu­ni­ties with the killers. What Ellington is doing is play­ing a pop­ulist game with the lives of cops to please the pup­peteers who pull his strings. Cops are not allowed to take home weapons after they just removed the bal­lis­tic vests , hel­met and oth­er para­pher­na­lia after a tour, they are then forced to go out and face the music going home , and com­ing back to work, then they suit up to go pro­tect the lives of the rich and pow­er­ful and those who tol­er­ate Ellington at the cock­tail recep­tions, Does any­one won­der why even mid­dle class peo­ple do not allow their chil­dren to be cops in Jamaica. Does Ellington have a gun and police protection ?

DISGRACE 

I have pre­vi­ous­ly point­ed to this guys actions in mak­ing the secu­ri­ty doc­u­ment pub­lic, reveal­ing where offi­cers are sta­tioned , their move­ments, and oth­er logis­ti­cal details. I have argued that any right the pub­lic may claim to have in this regard, is trumped by the fact this is a National secu­ri­ty Agency , notwith­stand­ing, Ellington has made the Force Orders pub­lic, I am yet to hear what over­rid­ing pub­lic need is met by doing so. Ellington has sought to dis­tance him­self from rank and file mem­bers of the force, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of some past com­mis­sion­ers who nev­er did a day polic­ing in their lives, we have all seen how well that exper­i­ment worked out for the coun­try. Rank and file mem­bers of the force con­tin­ue to oper­ate in a vac­u­um with mar­gin­al to zero sup­port from their boss­es with­in the high com­mand and the polit­i­cal direc­torate, the crime sit­u­a­tion will not improve untill all are on board the same train head­ing in the same anti-crime direc­tion. In the mean­time Ellington con­tin­ues to make an ass of him­self . It just goes to show that hav­ing a degree or two or three does not make one smart.

mike beck­les.

have your say.