If Only The Police Would Simply Shut Up And Just Do Their Job…

Just last week I wrote about a trend in the JCF to engage in what I call media policing.
This phe­nom­e­non has become a norm for the Jamaican Police. It is Policing done from behind desks.
The Police has shift­ed from actu­al real polic­ing over the last two decades or less to a more Media ori­ent­ed grand­stand­ing which goes more to form than it does substance.

I am all for the police get­ting their side of the sto­ry out. But it’s impor­tant that they wait to have a side before mak­ing state­ments from behind desks.
The hier­ar­chy of the Police force seem to have com­plete­ly bought into the con­cept of office polic­ing , much to the demise and detri­ment of the country.

As I’ve asked in pre­vi­ous article,“why does the police feel oblig­at­ed to make state­ments on every ini­tia­tive they are about to embark on?
Is there a strat­e­gy by these new age cops who now pop­u­late the high­er ech­e­lons of the force to release strat­e­gy direc­tions as a means of con­vinc­ing the pub­lic that they are doing some­thing about crime, even as crime con­tin­ue unchecked?

CASE IN POINT…#1 

Last week the Police pre­ma­ture­ly released infor­ma­tion that they had com­menced Investigations in cas­es of attempt­ed extor­tion in three parishes.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Clifford Chambers bragged that busi­ness own­ers were now coop­er­at­ing with the police and they actu­al­ly knew who the offend­ers are.

Now I have turned that state­ment over and over in my mind, and I can­not find a sin­gle thing which gives cred­i­bil­i­ty to that way of doing things.
What could pos­si­bly be gained from this dis­clo­sure except to place the lives of busi­ness peo­ple in jeop­ardy, and send­ing the per­pe­tra­tors into hiding?

CASE IN POINT #2

The Clarendon Police announced an ini­tia­tive to stop and search young men wear­ing hood­ed sweat shirts and oth­ers hav­ing their faces cov­ered with handkerchiefs.
Head of the Clarendon Police Division Superintendent Vendolyn Cameron Powell said that the dri­ve to stop and search young men wear­ing hood­ies was part of efforts to com­bat crime in the parish. She also ques­tioned why any­one should need to wear hood­ies in Jamaica’s trop­i­cal climate.

Part of my argu­ments about the police refrain­ing from mak­ing too many state­ments relates to the fact that as a prag­ma­tist I am results driven.
Why not wait until you have some­thing pos­i­tive to report,-report it and move on, results speak a hell of a lot loud­er than ver­bal pronouncements.
Imagine just how lit­tle pro­nounce­ments mat­ter when there is noth­ing pos­i­tive to report.

Secondly there are active forces with­in the coun­try which are dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to the rule of law . Not nec­es­sar­i­ly because they are crim­i­nals , but more that with­out a chasm and a sense of con­flict between law enforce­ment and the cit­i­zen­ry they are absolute­ly irrelevant.
But we will come back to that.……

We still have a coun­try where peo­ple are free to wear what they want to wear.
What we don’t have is a coun­try in which peo­ple are free to break the laws.
There is a fine line between that sense of indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty and free­dom to do as we please and the right of the state to infringe on those rights to keep the major­i­ty in a sense of rel­a­tive safety .

This par­tic­u­lar police woman seem to have a seri­ous prob­lem with her mouth. It has not been the first sec­ond and it will not be the last time that she makes com­ments which she has no busi­ness making.
Profiling is an inte­gral part of polic­ing, any smart police offi­cer knows and under­stand this.
If you are hav­ing a slew of rob­beries in a cer­tain area, being com­mit­ted by say young Asian men you sim­ply do not go out look­ing for young Caucasian men.
You look for young Asian men. That’s pro­fil­ing .Profiling is some­thing police use, not some­thing police go around talk­ing about.

Immediately the head of the Clarendon Police made that state­ment there was push-back. Remember I said I would come back to this?
Enter Horace Levy the exec­u­tive Director of Jamaican For Justice(JFJ)

Quote :“There is no right (on the part of the police to imple­ment such a strat­e­gy) to me. Just because there are some crimes being com­mit­ted by guys with hood­ies, you are to start search­ing every hood­ed guy? It’s a style and a mat­ter of self-identification!” 
“I dis­agree with the police stop­ping and search­ing every­body wear­ing a hood­ie. The police are to have a good rea­son for search­ing some­body to begin with. They don’t have the right to just stop and search every­body. To add to that, if they are stop­ping and search­ing every­body wear­ing a hood­ie, that’s pro­fil­ing, and that’s being quite dis­crim­i­na­to­ry.”

There is noth­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry if police exer­cise vig­i­lance in look­ing out for crim­i­nals who wear hood­ed sweat shirts in 96 degrees weath­er so as to con­ceal their identities.
If there is a gen­er­al shift toward the wear­ing of hood­ies in Jamaica’s blaz­ing hot weath­er then the Police have a duty and indeed a respon­si­bil­i­ty to look at these guys.

The dif­fer­ence in all of this is that the police must stop telegraph­ing what they are about to do before they take action.
What is this new alien con­cept of polic­ing which tells exact­ly what it is about to do?
How does the Police depart­ment expect to shake it’s car­toon-char­ac­ter per­sona when it con­tin­ues to make unforced errors like this which ele­vates incon­se­quen­tial eat-a-food char­ac­ters like Horace Levy and others.
It was­n’t too long ago that Horace Levy and oth­er leech­es of his Ilk were active­ly push­ing back against the police wear­ing any type of pro­tec­tive gear which con­cealed their iden­ti­ties while on some operations.
Neither Horace Levy nor his men­tor Carolyn Gomes cared that police offi­cers are some­times forced to police volatile ares in which they them­selves live, which neces­si­tates the need for disguises.

Now these very same peo­ple are imme­di­ate­ly argu­ing for the rights of men to wear hood­ies when clear­ly their intent is to com­mit crimes and get away with doing so.
I have con­sis­tent­ly said that the police must be much smarter and more tac­ti­cal in the way it goes about it’s business.
The Media had no prob­lem find­ing Horace Levy to get him on record as soon as Cameron Powell made anoth­er stu­pid statement.
If only the Police could find a way to just shut the f**k up and just get the job done?