“Glorified Security Guards,” What?

Several years ago for­mer Senior Superintendent of Police Renetto Adams called for the dis­band­ment of the Jamaica Constabulary Force( JCF).
At the time I found the argu­ments of Adams curi­ous giv­en that he nev­er called for its dis­band­ment through­out his rather lengthy service.

I doubt there is a sin­gle Jamaican who has passed through the JCF who does­n’t believe that there are seri­ous struc­tur­al flaws with­in the Agency, as is the case with all of Jamaica’s pub­lic bod­ies.
Nevertheless, the work put in by police offi­cers is sec­ond to none, the risks are expo­nen­tial­ly greater than that to which oth­er cat­e­gories of work­ers are exposed and the hours are far more than required of oth­er work­ers.

Over the years there have been far too many fuck-ups by some peo­ple wear­ing police uni­forms, oper­at­ing under the umbrel­la of police offi­cers but are worse than those who nev­er took an oath to pro­tect and serve.
As a con­se­quence, even the worst lowlives who should be locked away and the keys dis­card­ed have had neg­a­tive things to say about the force.
Despite this, how­ev­er, a larg­er major­i­ty have done tremen­dous work, some­times sep­a­rate and apart from the call of duty to ensure that we still have a place we can call a coun­try.
No one else, no oth­er cat­e­go­ry of work­ers have con­tributed more, bar none.

No real ded­i­cat­ed police offi­cer gets up and goes to work believ­ing they are secu­ri­ty guards.
Despite poor pay, abject work­ing con­di­tions and the dis­grace­ful lack of resources and sup­port, they sol­dier on and pro­duce the best results they can, giv­en the cir­cum­stances.
They do so while expos­ing them­selves and their fam­i­lies to ret­ri­bu­tion, some­thing the Island’s politi­cians could nev­er under­stand as they are in pub­lic ser­vice only to serve them­selves and the inter­est of their fam­i­lies.

That is the rea­son that the com­ments of Minister of National Security Horace Chang have stuck in my throat like a chick­en bone.
In seek­ing to make the case for the dis­band­ment of the Police force as it is con­sti­tut­ed, Chang stat­ed that they inher­it­ed a glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guard com­pa­ny, speak­ing of the JCF. 


For the record, I do not care to hear any respons­es about con­text.
Sure the PNP has held office for longer peri­ods of time than the gov­ern­ing JLP, but that does not excuse the JLP of any of the prob­lems plagu­ing the coun­try or the police force.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties are equal­ly as guilty in advanc­ing the break­down of the rule of law.
Contrary to their twist­ed per­cep­tions, dis­band­ing the force or cre­at­ing quote: Jamaica’s own police force” is a stu­pid idea bourne out of not know­ing their ass­es from their heads.

Changing the des­ig­na­tion of the police force to “police ser­vice” will cer­tain­ly stop the killings in the coun­try. (sar­casm drip­ping here).
As I have stat­ed for many years, this periph­er­al stuff is not going to fix any­thing.
Jamaican police offi­cers are going to have to come from Jamaica, a coun­try of imper­fect peo­ple like every­where else in the world.
Fix the Government, train equip and com­pen­sate the offi­cers, hold them account­able, edu­cate the pub­lic on the ben­e­fits of obey­ing the nation’s laws, cre­ate the nec­es­sary leg­isla­tive frame­work and get the fuck out of the way.
It is not rock­et sci­ence.


There is no redemp­tive con­text in which the Minister of National Security can refer to the JCF as a glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guard com­pa­ny in a non-pejo­ra­tive way.
The sac­ri­fices and the efforts made dai­ly, their shed blood and the ded­i­ca­tion of police offi­cers ulti­mate­ly dis­qual­i­fy politi­cians, least of all Horace Chang from speak­ing about them in the neg­a­tive.

Any incom­pe­tence in the JCF must be laid at the feet of incom­pe­tent, crim­i­nal sup­port­ing politi­cians and their crim­i­nal sup­port­ers.
If Horace Chang wants to change the train­ing reg­i­men of the police force, “I say go ahead this is long over­due,” source mod­ern polic­ing tech­niques from coun­tries which have good police depart­ments.
Ridiculing the men and women of the force is not smart, it is imbe­cil­ic.


My spilled blood in 1988 was not as a secu­ri­ty guard, glo­ri­fied or oth­er­wise.
I was a police offi­cer work­ing to uphold the laws and secur­ing the peace and secu­ri­ty of Jamaicans.
The men and women of the JCF deserve more respect from the pop­u­la­tion and they damn sure deserve more respect than they are receiv­ing from piss ‑ass low-life politi­cians like Horace Chang.