Holness’ Utopian Force For Good, Will Not Protect You From The Killers, It’s A Load Of Crock.…

There are sev­er­al dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tions going on at the same time about the Robbery In May Pen Clarendon last Sunday morn­ing, most of which makes sense.
Some are sym­pa­thet­ic to the offi­cers who were wound­ed, none more than this writer who has been shot in the line of duty as well.
Others are con­cerned about the response time which seemed from my van­tage point to have been pret­ty darn good.
Then there are those who believe that these events are a pre­cur­sor to big­ger things to come.
But one of the salient points I have heard raised is that offi­cers are not expos­ing them­selves to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as they did before, no mat­ter what the Prime Minister and or the Minister of National Security says it appears that the dam­age has already been done.

One for­mer col­league has been adamant that as things get clos­er to crit­i­cal mass we will be see­ing a singing of a dif­fer­ent tune by the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship. The Minister Of National Security seems to be adopt­ing a dif­fer­ent tack from his pre­vi­ous tone and tenor but the Prime Minister seems stuck in a one-track mind which has noth­ing to do with the nation’s secu­ri­ty.
Addressing the Police Federation In Ocho Rios Holness said that the JCF was chang­ing and that it was chang­ing to a [force for good]. That by default, means that the force has always been a force for bad.
Holness said that the force over the last decade has changed from a bru­tal force to one that mem­bers may not even see, even though those changes are hap­pen­ing right before their very eyes(not exact­ly a ring­ing endorse­ment of their intel­lect). The Prime Minister said that his Commissioner is imple­ment­ing changes and they are bear­ing fruits.
In oth­er words, the changes being imple­ment­ed are being made with­out the input of the mem­bers of the police depart­ment whom the changes will affect the most.
“I watch a video “Holness said,“an a man seh but dem ya police ya a joke”. the infer­ence being that the police did not take action as they are duty bound to do in the face of crim­i­nal con­duct being com­mit­ted in front of them.
The infer­ence being that tak­ing law­ful action as com­men­su­rate with the laws is tan­ta­mount to being bru­tal. That is the intel­li­gence lev­el of the Jamaican Prime Minister.
Remember that it was just a few days pri­or that that inci­dent in May Pen occurred in which heav­i­ly armed Militia-men sent the police scur­ry­ing for cov­er and two offi­cers near­ly paid with their lives.
And here was the nation’s chief exec­u­tive address­ing police offi­cers mere days later.

Jamaica murder rate 1972 – 2016

Posted on January 3, 2017 by jay

mur­der-rate-jamaica

Year	# of Murders
1970	152
1971	145
1972	170
1973	227
1974	195
1975	266
1976	367
1977	409
1978	381
1979	351
1980	899
1981	490
1982	405
1983	424
1984	484
1986	449
1987	442
1988	414
1989	439
1990	543
1991	561
1992	629
1994	690
1995	780
1998	953
1999	849
2000	887
2002	1045
2003	975
2004	1471
2005	1674
2006	1340
2007	1574
2008	1601
2009	1680
2010	1428
2011	1125
2012	1097
2013	1200
2014	1005
2015	1192
2016	1350

‘Ten years ago yu coul­nd’t turn on yu tele­vi­sion and not see neg­a­tive accounts of police per­tain­ing to police killings, a bru­tal force” Holness said. ” The per­cep­tion is now chang­ing, “the per­cep­tion of the bru­tal force is now chang­ing I think it is a good thing.“
Holness told mem­bers that for the 151 years the JCF has been used as an instru­ment of bru­tal­i­ty which has nev­er served us well and that Jamaica has nev­er record­ed a sus­tain­able reduc­tion in crime and vio­lence.
The real­i­ty is that Holness’ claim is not sup­port­ed by the facts. Up to and around until around the late 80’s to ear­ly 90’s crime increased in Jamaica as it did in even indus­tri­al­ized nations.
What Holness [did not men­tion], was the fact that despite the lack of resources, despite the lack of Governmental-sup­port, and in his view, the gen­er­al idea that the sac­ri­fices, of many mem­bers pay­ing the ulti­mate price, and the [force is a force for bad](sic) offi­cers have done a ter­rif­ic job.
The Prime Minister then went on to lay out a laun­dry list of polit­i­cal plat­i­tudes and promis­es, safe­ty vests, new police sta­tions, gyms and oth­er basic ameni­ties and accou­ter­ments which ought to be stan­dard fare for the police officers.

In the end, I tuned out Andrew Holness, and came to the con­clu­sion that when Andrew Holness tells us that he came from a two-bed­room board house in Cumberland Spanish Town, we should accept that he is a prod­uct of his envi­ron­ment.
Not the two Bedroom house part(most of us came from even more hum­ble begin­nings), but the geog­ra­phy of his ori­gin, and how it has shaped his [mis­un­der­stand­ing] of what actu­al polic­ing is all about.
Holness’ Utopian con­cept of the new Jamaica Constabulary Force did not include a sin­gle recog­ni­tion that, not only is crime increas­ing, the inci­dents of vio­lence have become more egre­gious, but the method­ol­o­gy and orga­ni­za­tion of the crim­i­nals have changed expo­nen­tial­ly.
The coun­try has had a whole lot of peo­ple deport­ed back, who have spent many many years in devel­oped coun­tries and have lived lives in crime and have learned how to evade police in those devel­oped coun­tries.
I wrote about this years ago that this would inevitably pose a seri­ous chal­lenge to Jamaica and to local law enforce­ment as the lev­el of sophis­ti­ca­tion these crim­i­nals would be employ­ing would require a dif­fer­ent kind of polic­ing.
Unfortunately, as I see it, the police are being watered down instead of being rein­forced.
Jamaica is in for a tor­rid time, I’m afraid. 

In the end, Holness’ lengthy speech was greet­ed at best with less than a luke-warm smat­ter­ing of applause. For the most part, mem­bers sat there in bored silence.
At one stage after talk­ing about the Mobile reserve Holness tried to force applause” well if you don’t clap for that I am hap­py for it,” offi­cers oblig­ed with about five peo­ple clap­ping dejectedly.

There are sev­er­al videos cir­cu­lat­ing on social media and what was clear is that the Robbers were pre­pared to fight regard­less of who inter­cept­ed them.
On one par­tic­u­lar video, sev­er­al police vehi­cles were seen back­ing away from the scene. Whether this was a tac­ti­cal maneu­ver to estab­lish a wider perime­ter is unclear.
What was obvi­ous is that not a sin­gle mem­ber of the group of an esti­mat­ed eight gun­men was killed or inter­cept­ed. So it becomes a lit­tle clear­er to deci­pher that maybe the marked police vehi­cles seen leav­ing the scene were not leav­ing to form a wider perime­ter.
If the the­o­ry is that the offi­cers retreat­ed and did not engage the rob­bers then this is a sem­i­nal moment whether Horace Chang, Andrew Holness or Antony Anderson acknowl­edges it or not. 

Every per­son is free to look at the mul­ti­ple videos on YouTube and form their own con­clu­sion as to whether this is some­thing that is get­ting bet­ter as the Prime Minister would have you believe.
Is this the [new Force for good] that the Prime Minister is mis­lead­ing the nation about?
Every Jamaican has a deci­sion to make because the choic­es are clear. The crit­i­cal ques­tion must be this.
Do you feel safer with this lev­el of secu­ri­ty the Prime Minister is offer­ing you in his new­ly trans­form­ing police force for good?
Here is my chal­lenge to you, lis­ten to the Prime Minister’s speech then deter­mine for your­self whether he made men­tion of the numer­ous mur­ders each and every day, not to men­tion the oth­er acts of vio­lence which do not read­i­ly result in death.
What he is con­cerned about is an image, unfor­tu­nate­ly, image can­not keep peo­ple safe.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police cor­po­ral, busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. He is also a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge.