Govt, Groveling On It’s Knees To FBI For Help…

Over the years, I have been high­ly crit­i­cal of the Government of Jamaica and the Island’s pri­ma­ry law enforce­ment agency, the Jamaican Constabulary Force. Having served for almost a decade in the (JCF) gave me a bird­s­eye view of the agen­cy’s lack of sophis­ti­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism. As a con­se­quence, I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly argu­ing that despite the obvi­ous efforts of suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions com­pris­ing both polit­i­cal par­ties to sti­fle the agency, there is much more the JCF could have done and can do to make itself a bet­ter agency. A bit of imag­i­na­tion, research, and inge­nu­ity would have gone a long way in trans­form­ing the agency from a Barney-Fyffe laugh­ing stock to a pre­mier law enforce­ment agency in the region.
Unfortunately, the polit­i­cal direc­torate and the force’s lead­er­ship have con­vinced them­selves that crime-fight­ing out­comes will improve if they cre­ate a top-heavy agency laden with peo­ple with mul­ti­ple degrees.
This has not hap­pened as vio­lent crimes con­tin­ue to reach aston­ish­ing pro­por­tions. Why? Well, to begin with, degrees can­not fight crime; sea­soned, moti­vat­ed law enforce­ment offi­cers with intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing capa­bil­i­ties do.

Today, as it was decades ear­li­er, the JCF, even at its very best, is a third-rate law enforce­ment agency whose offi­cers seem clue­less and pathet­i­cal­ly uncer­tain in their approach in even the most seri­ous cas­es they are tasked with investigating.
Like a bro­ken record, I have begged the coun­try’s lead­er­ship to bet­ter train, com­pen­sate, sup­port, and moti­vate law enforce­ment agents so that they can secure the coun­try. Alas, this has­n’t hap­pened, which has led peo­ple in some quar­ters to argue that maybe the pol­i­cy­mak­ers do not want crime reduced because it would affect what they have going on. One of the most bla­tant bits of BS per­pet­u­at­ed is the idea that there can be pros­per­i­ty for the Jamaican peo­ple simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the nation expe­ri­enc­ing a pan­dem­ic of vio­lent crimes. It can­not hap­pen. In short, crime impov­er­ish­es nations; no nation can grow to any degree when it is inun­dat­ed with vio­lence and fear. For a coun­try to be its best, there must be an envi­ron­ment of trust and secu­ri­ty with­in so that the entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it can thrive.
There is no short­age of entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it in Jamaica; what we have too much of are vio­lence and fear.

Everyone should hang their head in shame, indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, that our gov­ern­ment is forced to ask for help from the American Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) to get to the bot­tom of the grow­ing finan­cial scan­dal involv­ing invest­ments of Usain Bolt and oth­ers. We can argue that it is okay to ask for help, but the sad real­i­ty is that our pre­mier law enforce­ment agency can­not fol­low a mon­ey trail to its con­clu­sion when the rub­ber meets the road. Law enforce­ment agen­cies across the globe col­lab­o­rate every day in the fight against transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works; this is not that. This is the Jamaican gov­ern­ment con­ced­ing that the JCF is out of its league in cas­es of this mag­ni­tude. That is what all Jamaicans should feel shame about. This results from suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions of the PNP & JLP, starv­ing the JCF of resources, train­ing, sup­port, ade­quate pay, and back­ing. In addi­tion, unwar­rant­ed polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in the force’s day-to-day oper­a­tions ren­ders it almost use­less as a crime-fight­ing enti­ty. Whether it is vio­lent or white-col­lar crime, the writ­ing is on the wall; the JCF is not up to the task.
Thanks to the two crim­i­nal gangs that oper­ate as polit­i­cal par­ties in our coun­try. There is no short­age of smart peo­ple in Jamaica; our coun­try lacks lead­er­ship. Deliberate sab­o­tage of law enforce­ment by both polit­i­cal par­ties has forced them to go grov­el­ing on their knees to for­eign pow­ers to solve prob­lems Jamaicans are quite capa­ble of solv­ing, giv­en the train­ing and tools.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.