The Jamaica Gleaner reported that the PNP affiliated Clansman criminal gang is sucking the life-blood out of legitimate businesses in the nation’s old capital of Spanish Town.
The report conceded that the reign of terror is not confined to Spanish Town but has woven it’s way to Half-Way- Tree and Portmore.
Okay so this is not news, we are merely regurgitating old news because the situation is so dire.
In it’s Saturday Editorial the Gleaner bemoans the fact that the police know who the criminals are, know approximately how much money they are sucking out of business-people yet they take no action.
I wrote yesterday about police commissioner Carl Williams comments that police inefficiency is to be blamed for some of the nation’s crime problems. We were less than reverential to the goodly Dr, Williams’ comments, because we believe it is his job to fix the departments problems.
As we opined yesterday Commissioner Williams was hired to lead the department in it’s fight against lawlessness and criminality in the tiny Island nation of 2.7 million people, not tell us what we already know.
Grandstanding and finger-pointing will not solve crime. Williams must step up now and implement serious measures which will bring some level of assurance to the public or seek some other employment.
I believe I gave up on the Jamaica Constabulary Force 24 years ago when I walked away after only 10 years.
I walked away because more than half of the serving members were dead-wood, receiving a salary but having no impact on crime.
From the most senior khaki-clad pot-bellied gazetted officers to the last joined constable, the department was a cesspool of inefficiency, outdated bull-shit and friend looking out for friends.
Twenty four years later the department seem to be little more than just that.
The agency was always rich on form but a pauper on substance.
Throughout my brief carrear there were some over-achievers who toiled endlessly, those officers reaped tremendous results but were never rewarded and certainly were not supported or encouraged by the department.
Subsequently those officers walked away leaving the dead-wood and a cadre of pretenders from the UWI who are there only for the paycheck.
That is not to say there are no good cops in the JCF anymore, far from it, the problem is lack of senior leadership which understands how to produce good results.
One of the things we hear consistently is that the police do not have enough equipment , of course that is true it was always true.
Jamaica’s political system is one which favors the individual , it is not a country of laws.
No Administration is going to adequately fund the department, pay officers well and give them the respect they deserve.
Are you kidding me ? most of the country’s politicians would be behind bars.
Instead they create a “yard-bway” system in the police.(Yard bway)colloquial Jamaican term which means a type of servant.
Officers have to either align with one political party or another, or they can kiss advancement goodbye.
Juxtapose that with rampant nepotism and abusive and incompetent senior leadership the JCF is a colossal waste of taxpayers money.
A private company with the rate of returns of the JCF would have been insolvent decades ago.
The simple truth is that the ineptitude of the police though partly the fault of politicians, is largely a function of incompetence in its senior management structure.
Most are fat , lazy , half-baked idiots.
The rest which came in from the UWI to prop up senior management are there because there are no jobs in they country.
The are not true believers. It takes a certain type of dedicated person to be an effective cop period, to do so in a country like Jamaica requires even more gravitas. Those officers are not nurtured protected and encouraged.
Like every other arm of Government the police is simply a drain on tax-payers.
The police department can do a markedly better job with the resources it has it isn’t that difficult.
There simply is a crisis of leadership and will.