Is A 7% Murder Conviction Satisfactory To The Jamaican Public…

NYPD Commissioner William Bratton was heck­led as he asked the New York City Council for mon­ey to hire 1,000 more cops.
Mayor de Blasio $78.3 bil­lion dol­lar bud­get did not include any mon­ey for new hires. The strength of the NYPD present­ly stands at about 35,0000 cops. de Blasio’s argu­ments for not imme­di­ate­ly adding more cops is that the dra­mat­ic drop in stop-and-frisk frees up cops to tack­le more seri­ous issues.
I would argue it would prob­a­bly be more effec­tive­ly in reduc­ing poten­tial­ly volatile sit­u­a­tions between com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and the mas­sive police army which is the New York City Police Department.

Some crit­ics argue that low lev­el crimes are down and rather than adding cops the depart­ment should be

reduc­ing the size of the depart­ment. The New Daily news reports that over­all, crime in the city is down 7%, includ­ing a 10% decrease in the city’s hous­ing projects, where crime had jumped 31% from 2009 through 2013. But vio­lent crime is up city­wide. There have been 115 mur­ders, a 12.7% increase over the 102 killings that hap­pened by this date in 2014. According to the Ministry of National Security’s web­site the The Establishment of the JCF is 9930 plus fifty five (55) super­nu­mer­ary posi­tions mak­ing a total of 9985, but the cur­rent strength is 8441.

New York City has a pop­u­la­tion of 8 mil­lion peo­ple of vary­ing back­grounds. The city is the world’s largest. Statistics show seri­ous crimes trend­ing upward with homi­cides been 115 a 12.7% increase over the 102 killings that hap­pened by the cor­re­spond­ing date in 2014.
Jamaica has a pop­u­la­tion of 2.8 mil­lion and a land mass of 4411 square miles. I recent­ly wrote that the Jamaica Constabulary Force can do a bet­ter job despite the woe­ful inad­e­qua­cies it has to deal with from those in the polit­i­cal direc­torate. According to the US State Department, Jamaica’s per capi­ta mur­der rate remains high, at 37 per 100,000; there are only six coun­tries where the most recent inter­na­tion­al­ly report­ed mur­der rate exceeds this fig­ure. The police are only able to resolve (make arrests) in 45 per­cent of homi­cides annu­al­ly, and they only con­vict per­pe­tra­tors in sev­en per­cent of the homi­cide cases.

All things con­sid­ered, we believe the Jamaica Constabulary can do a bet­ter job , despite the lim­i­ta­tions and lack of resources. The Department must man­age it’s most valu­able resource , (it’s offi­cers ) in ways which are more pro­duc­tive, giv­ing cit­i­zens bet­ter val­ue for mon­ey. This builds trust between the com­mu­ni­ties and the Police, some­thing which is a must, as both par­ties need each other.
Recently I read that Commissioner Carl Williams demand­ed that mem­bers refrain from wear­ing oth­er gar­ments which are not depart­ment issue. For those not in the “know” that means, offi­cers gen­er­al­ly wear the more com­fort­able and prac­ti­cal den­im work clothes and a peak cap , much like the ones worn by swat or spe­cial police teams the world over.

In defense of the rank-and-file, offi­cers who have to ride hors­es, motor-cycles- or give foot chase to crim­i­nals can­not effec­tive­ly do so wear­ing a sil­ly pair of pants with a cum­mer­bund. The fact that some­one stu­pid­ly came up with that as a prac­ti­cal work dress does not mean that the depart­ment must con­tin­ue on with that mind-bog­gling lunacy.
How about giv­ing offi­cers com­fort­able clothing?

This is up to the Government, peo­ple pro­duce when they are made to believe they mat­ter. Change the imprac­ti­cal colo­nial dress and bring the depart­ment into the 21^st cen­tu­ry. It should not be too dif­fi­cult in light of the salary they are paid. If offi­cers have decent dress which the high com­mand insist on, they will wear them. While you are at it put all gazetted offi­cers in the same prac­ti­cal work uni­form and trash the skirts women wear. Every woman who joins the depart­ment should wear pants, skirts are impractical.

As I stat­ed before, retrain­ing is crit­i­cal. The train­ing the Academy has is imprac­ti­cal, out­dat­ed and inef­fec­tive. I must con­fess I am a not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­ver­sant with every aspect of the present training

cur­ricu­lum. What I do know is that I have seen more than enough cas­es where sev­er­al offi­cers stand around as a col­league strug­gles with a sus­pect he is try­ing to place under arrest.
In oth­er cas­es I have seen female offi­cers who offer zero help to her male col­league who is being assault­ed in the process of effect­ing an arrest. Either you are a cop or you are not.
What kind of train­ing allows this? It mat­ters not that you may teach prop­er tech­niques and pro­to­cols at the Academy, if offi­cers are not uti­liz­ing them ‚there is some­thing wrong with the train­ing. It is a failure.
Could it be that offi­cers fear get­ting involved because they do not want to end up on sus­pen­sion for doing their jobs?
Maybe !!!

If so, that is some­thing Commissioner Williams needs to address with the nation’s Parliament. Police over­sight is crit­i­cal, it can­not be crippling.

Many of my read­ers did not exact­ly agree with the assess­ment of my pre­vi­ous Article that mem­bers of the JCF can do more. I have con­sis­tent­ly argued that it can be done because we did it before, with high­ly mea­sur­able success.
Jamaican cops are not the only cops fac­ing bud­getary or man­pow­er cuts. At the same time offi­cers must see them­selves as deliv­er­ers of a service.
Security deliv­ery is a ser­vice, offi­cers from Carl Williams on down must see them­selves as in the busi­ness of secu­ri­ty deliver.
Each offi­cer must ask him/​herself whether he/​she is giv­ing the pub­lic val­ue for money?