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It’s In The Background Checks Stupid.…..

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In just a mat­ter of days the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) has had three major black eyes, this in addi­tion to a decades long dis­trust the pub­lic has for the Agency.
[Police Officer wear­ing Rastafarian wig shot as he attempts to rob bank customer.]
[Police offi­cer held and beat­en as he and cronies attempt to break into home.]
[Police offi­cer arrest­ed by MOCA as he tries to solic­it monies from businessman.]

Just a sin­gle inci­dent of this kind is egre­gious enough to cause mem­bers of the pub­lic to look at police offi­cers fun­ny even if the police depart­ment had a pris­tine rep­u­ta­tion to begin with.
The week­ly instances of egre­gious mis­con­duct adds fuel to the fire of mis­trust and increas­es ten­sions between the police and the pub­lic it serves.
I total­ly get that some­one whose home was bro­ken into might think twice about call­ing the police if they feel the police may come in and see an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther vic­tim­ize them.

As we try to come to grips with these embar­rass­ing inci­dents hap­pen­ing in the police depart­ment we hear dif­fer­ing opin­ions on why?
Why are peo­ple who are sup­posed to know bet­ter stoop­ing to such lows ?
How could any­one being a police offi­cer betray their oath to the extent they rob or attempt to steal from the very cit­i­zens they are tasked with protecting?
It’s impor­tant to note that the police come from a soci­ety which is inher­ent­ly cor­rupt , dis­hon­est and where high stan­dards are viewed as as a sign of weakness.
Despite all of that it is imper­a­tive that the Police do a bet­ter job of recruit­ing and back­ground checks than the sys­tem it present­ly has.
In a not so recent Article I raised this issue and there was sig­nif­i­cant push­back from some ex-mem­bers of the depart­ment who are sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­vinced that the police depart­ment has a good sys­tem in place.

I must admit I am not ful­ly con­ver­sant with the sys­tem the depart­ment has present­ly , I was nev­er an insid­er but I do know that what they have is demon­stra­bly in need of work. It real­ly does not mat­ters how sophis­ti­cat­ed the sys­tem in place is if it isn’t work­ing it isn’t working.
If the sys­tem of back­ground checks was revamped , updat­ed and improved that improve­ment is not reflec­tive in what’s hap­pen­ing in the depart­ment. the lat­est three offi­cers to be caught com­mit­ting crimes have been con­sta­bles with under a decade of service.
Clearly this does not argue well for a sys­tem of improved back­ground checks.

Commissioner of Police Carl Williams
Commissioner of Police Carl Williams

The Police Commissioner and his senior staff should be proac­tive­ly deal­ing with these crises with­in the depart­ment which from all indi­ca­tions are not con­fined to just poor back­ground checks. Over a peri­od of just weeks at least three mem­bers of the rank and file have alleged­ly tak­en their own lives.
This seem to sug­gest some­thing more sin­is­ter than actu­al­ly meets the eyes.
The Rank and file of the Police depart­ment have to inter­face with a hos­tile crim­i­nal sup­port­ing pub­lic. They are asked to car­ry out an almost impos­si­ble task with­out the tools to get the job done. When they fail we hear noth­ing from the high com­mand. When they suc­ceed there are no short­age of cred­it tak­ers from the bloat­ed high command.
Junior mem­bers of the force takes all the risks but share in none of the acco­lades. They do their jobs with­out sup­port from the Commissioner or the high com­mand much less from their employ­ees in the Government whose only func­tion seem to be to act as cheer­lead­ers to athletes.
Our Athletes are deserv­ing of the praise they receive for the pride they make us feel but with all due respect they do not risk life and limb to do their jobs.
An Administration which under­stands its core func­tions would know that the secu­ri­ty of the pop­u­la­tion is its num­ber one responsibility.

The Constabulary Force has nev­er been an agency which has crit­i­cal thinkers at it’s helm. despite being a PhD it seem Carl Williams is unwill­ing to break with that tradition.
A com­mon thread com­ing out of every instance where a young offi­cer kills him­self is that they were stressed out . A police offi­cer is required to be every­thing to every­one when they put on a uni­form and steps out to inter­face with the pub­lic. Jamaica trains 18 year-olds and puts tremen­dous respon­si­bil­i­ties on them to per­form at the high­est stan­dard at the per­il of death.
Some with their heads up their ass­es will try to tell you that it’s lack of for­mal edu­ca­tion which allows cer­tain behav­ior from some young offi­cers. The fact is that is a non­sense argu­ment. Just how much for­mal edu­ca­tion could one pos­si­bly cram into an 18-year-old, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the dif­fer­ences in the matu­ri­ty lev­els of peo­ple even of the same age?

Bishop-Gary-Welsh ACP
Bishop-Gary-Welsh ACP

It’s pret­ty easy to be crit­i­cal of an agency like the JCF in fact the agency seem to crave crit­i­cism. However we must be mind­ful that the youngest least expe­ri­enced peo­ple are the ones who do the hard­est most dif­fi­cult work. It is also impor­tant to under­stand that the mid­dle and upper man­agers of the force places sig­nif­i­cant and undue stress and pres­sure on their sub­or­di­nates, in many cas­es because they can.
It is impos­si­ble to arrive at a pos­i­tive out­come if the char­ac­ter­is­tics which cre­at­ed the begin­ning of the process was flawed.
Whatever process the force has in place for back­ground checks of appli­cants must sub­se­quent­ly be scrapped and a more strin­gent and com­pre­hen­sive one put in its place. That process should also now begin to take into account the psy­cho­log­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty of applicants.
In the same breath avenues must be opened up to make it eas­i­er for junior offi­cers to have out­let valves to air their griev­ances against abu­sive senior offi­cers with­out blow-back or neg­a­tive con­se­quences to their careers.
Having spo­ken to a few young men who walked away from the force recent­ly the depart­ment con­tin­ue to lose good peo­ple because the mid­dle and upper man­age­ment are ego­tis­ti­cal jerks who act out against their sub­or­di­nates to impress civil­ian affil­i­ates and love interests.
This must stop.….….…..

6 thoughts on “It’s In The Background Checks Stupid.…..”

  1. Mike, I had to com­ment although it is late in the night and I should be in bed! For the “boasie slaves” who are at the helm of the police force, they are noth­ing but lack­eys, whose inter­est are to stay at the top by any means nec­es­sary. I grad­u­at­ed from the Police Academy at the age of 18 years old and nine months (not gul­ly nine months). When I went to the Police Academy, I should be in high school but the love for the job made me left because in my head I thought I could make a dif­fer­ence to my lit­tle island, Jamaica that I was born and raised.
    As the years passed by when I was serv­ing, I keep wit­ness­ing the police force been oper­at­ed like a pat­ty shop, if you are con­nect­ed you could com­mit any crimes which is out­side the realms and scope of the job. In addi­tion, those who dare to go after the very same crim­i­nal police would pay the price with a trans­fer, sus­pen­sion or inter­dic­tion. The lead­er­ship of the force at the head sta­tions becomes a place for busi­ness with crim­i­nal ele­ments known by the com­mu­ni­ties as hard­ened criminals.
    The young men who are join­ing the force today, not mak­ing excus­es for them would see some of these police offi­cers being friends with the very crim­i­nals who would wreak hav­oc on the lives of the res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ties. When these young men joined the force, they think it is ok to do the same thing, because they are mem­ber of the same com­mu­ni­ties that wit­nessed crim­i­nal behav­ior by oth­er police offi­cers and decid­ed to emu­late them.
    In my opin­ion, and I do not have any sta­tis­tics or facts, because I am not on the ground in Jamaica. However, hav­ing spo­ken to a few mem­bers who are serv­ing, the main con­tri­bu­tion to the decline in the behav­ior of the police is the “diver­si­fied” poli­cies of the cur­rent police force.
    They are known homo­sex­u­als, battymen/​gays, sodomites, and trans­gen­ders serv­ing open­ly in the police force. The main rea­sons for this are the diver­si­fied polices. We know that the mind is the most pow­er­ful thing for any humans. once you’re able to trained the young minds to accept immoral lifestyles, such as these kind of behav­ior: ignor­ing their con­science by embrac­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty; hard­ened their hearts from the truth, by accept­ing some­thing that is nat­ur­al, thus mak­ing their con­sciences, ethics, decen­cy, hon­esty, moral­i­ty, and rev­er­ence is tak­en out of the equa­tion, this is what you’re going to get!
    With all these attrib­ut­es, char­ac­ter­is­tics and facets put togeth­er, the police force is on time bomb or should I say a tsuna­mi. In addi­tion, when it struck because it is on way and it is going to destroy many lives. The police think­ing of coun­try, patri­o­tism, loy­al­ty, decen­cy, ethics, and lov­ing God is a thing of past, absent, van­ish and it is rel­ic to be think­ing in this man­ner! The police mind­sets are the same as the com­mon crim­i­nals, and there is no oth­er way to put it. The mem­bers are dumb to what is hap­pen­ing around them! Their con­sciences does not work any­more, if their con­sciences was work­ing these thoughts much less action would not be a part of their think­ing, much less to car­ry out these depraved, bas­tardize, and viti­ate acts. The mind would wake them sub­con­scious­ly and they would not do it.
    Finally, as for some of us who served in the Jamaican Constabulary Force back then and not hav­ing any sub­jects or grad­u­at­ing from high school our moral stan­dards are very high, tremen­dous and immense­ly hard for the these young police offi­cers to gain, real­ized, and attained by them. It is not in their cra­ni­um to oper­ate in the spheres and orb that we could because they could not han­dle the moral stand­ing that we have then! The police force is as a mili­tias appoint­ed with rem­nant of some crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing within!

    • I just learned some­thing just now I was not aware that since I left the force the antecedent report was large­ly con­fined to get­ting a let­ter of rec­om­men­da­tion from the mem­ber of par­lia­ment where the sub­ject lives.
      This is wrong on so many lev­els , first it allows polit­i­cal hacks into the depart­ment and two it com­part­men­tal­izes offi­cers into two dis­tinct groups PNP and JLP.
      Most impor­tant­ly it shows just how messed up the sys­tem is , how many of the mem­bers of par­lia­ment would have any knowl­edge of the peo­ple they are recommending?
      Whose idea was that?
      How could any per­son think that that is a good idea?
      Unless of course whomev­er came up with the idea and had it imple­ment­ed had ideas which do not com­port with the best inter­est of the Nation.

      • Your infor­ma­tion is so wrong they only need rec­om­men­da­tion from pas­tors, or jus­tice of the peace, prin­ci­pals or senior offi­cers. And sec­ond­ly you need to remem­ber when the­ses police offi­cers are been recruit­ed it us the said mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty who tell the recruit­ing offi­cer when their ante­ci­dents is been done that they are angels. It is the said com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who write their rec­om­men­da­tions, the cit­i­zens of this coun­try need to start tak­ing the blame for some of these per­sons who they allow to serve and pro­tect them it is their rec­om­men­da­tion that put them in the job in the first place. They need to stop lying and start speak­ing the truth about their char­ac­ters and we will have less of these incidents

  2. I strong­ly believe that Jamaica should become a mil­i­tary state. All men should be trained to pro­tect and serve for a manda­to­ry 3 yrs after which they can pur­sue any ambi­tions they might have.

      • the police train­ing pro­gram in this coun­try need be longer 6 months wont do the job. Most crim­i­nals are using the police force has a escape goat to cov­er their wrongs, they are thief , mur­der , drug smug­glers etc. more crim­i­nals are in the fore than out in soci­ety . ” thief nev­er love fe see thief with long bag” the
        police eyes are too long.

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