Yesterday, I discussed Jamaican policing with a career police officer who served in the JCF and various law enforcement entities in the United States.
I had not seen or spoken to Mister —- in over three decades. I was shocked when he hit me up on social media with his number and requested that I call him. He was a good cop in Jamaica, so I was happy to return his call.
After exchanging pleasantries, he asked me if the people in Jamaica who make decisions on policing read my work.
I laughed because it would be mighty lofty to assume that my beloved Jamaica’s very well-educated bureaucrats and technocrats would listen to anybody except the fawning voices in their echo chamber.
We spoke definitively on a couple of topics. He has completed the full obstacle course on policing in the United States, and I have done much research and writing on policing for over a decade. We talked about the incompetence of the Police High Command in Jamaica and its failure to look at incidents involving junior officers on the streets. Their failure to dissect video and events frame by frame and take corrective steps to ensure that those things never happen again, and if they do, officers are equipped to deal effectively with them.
We discussed the lack of action on events where officers are placed in mortal danger dealing with a violent and lawless society that feels obligated to violently engage the police in the lawful execution of their duties.
We discussed the lack of policy designed to cut response time to the lowest possible second, a measure I feel would protect the citizenry and go a long way in dissuading those trying to fight with and obstruct officers executing their duties.
This latter point is particularly important to me because the Jamaican police do not get the legislative support they need to do their jobs effectively. Worse, even with the lax and criminal-friendly laws, the judges are the worst enemies of the police and the rule of law.
I constantly write that the police hierarchy must do a better job protecting its officers, given the hostile political and judicial landscape in which they operate.
Most importantly, we discussed that Jamaican police officers are the only professionals asked to do their jobs without the required tools. Teachers have books, pencils and pens, computers, etc. Doctors are equipped, police officers are given a gun they are not allowed to use (based on the pro-criminal laws) and when they do use them to protect their very lives, they are raked over the coals by every armchair general.
Officers do not have the all-important less lethal taser that would be a game changer in dealing with the belligerent and, worse, those who see it as their duty to inject themselves into lawful operations.
The average guy on the street knows the limitations the police officers face, and they openly engage the police and tell them what they cannot do. No other category of workers in our country is asked to perform their duties at the peril of death.
No other category of workers is asked to perform their jobs at the peril of death without the means to defend themselves.
There is a strange perception in our country that makes every discipline a stand-alone except policing.
It requires a farmer to be a farmer. A doctor must be a doctor; a nurse must be a nurse; carpenters, masons, plumbers, firefighters, electricians, etc., all require people steeped in their own discipline.
This is not so with policing; there is a perception that policing requires a Ph.D., Jurist Doctorates, and all kinds of degrees that must be earned from the intellectual ghetto.
The present head of the Constabulary, Kevin Blake, was chosen because he holds a Ph.D. in Sustainable Development from the University of the West Indies. His dissertation was in the fields of Information Systems and Policing.
On that basis, he was chosen to head the Force. It makes sense in Jamaica, a nation steeped in celebrity and the big-man culture. In the real world, it doesn’t.
It requires a competent cop to be a fucking cop. The commissioner of police does not need to be a doctor, lawyer, priest, or parson; they need to be a damn good cop who knows policing inside out.
At the end of our conversation, we both agreed that nothing would change because the political leadership could not have a police force that was competent and unafraid to investigate and throw them in jail for their criminal conduct.
For its incompetent part, the high command is content with being lapdogs to a political system that relegates it to a placeholder.
Truth be told, most of the people who make up the high command know nothing about actual policing; they have degrees from Mona, and that qualifies them to be policing leaders. Most policing leaders in Jamaica have never arrested anyone, investigated a case of simple larceny to a positive conclusion, and never experienced what real policing in Jamaica entails, yet they are leading our young people.
Poppyshows..
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.