JCF /​Govt Act To Stop Attrition From Force: Another Sophomoric Decision…

There is a large group of men and women who served hon­or­ably and left the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) on their own volition.
I am count­ed among them. Many served a full term and retired vol­un­tar­i­ly oth­ers were forced out under a plan the gov­ern­ment hatched called ear­ly retirement.
That plan was hatched to clear out cer­tain effec­tive cops who were mak­ing a dif­fer­ence, paving the way for their cohorts and friends who were grad­u­at­ing from the University of the West Indies and oth­er col­leges to find work in the JCF.
The short­age of work in the gen­er­al econ­o­my made the JCF with it’s accel­er­at­ed pro­mo­tions pro­gram which favored peo­ple with degrees an attrac­tive option.
Applicants with degrees faced min­i­mal risks and were pro­mot­ed rapid­ly to senior man­age­ment ranks, how­ev­er, there was one lit­tle prob­lem with this mass influx of University graduates.They were nev­er cops and they nev­er became cops, they mere­ly wore the uni­forms of senior cops.
They were imposters and char­la­tans and they remain so. As a con­se­quence, the JCF became an inef­fec­tu­al top heavy paper tiger heavy on speech­es and light on accomplishments.

Many of the peo­ple who opt­ed for ear­ly retire­ment after serv­ing decades in the force had to wait sev­er­al years to receive their sev­er­ance payments.
Despite hav­ing mort­gages, fam­i­lies to feed and oth­er finan­cial oblig­a­tions those offi­cers were left on their own with­out any source of income while they wait­ed on the Government to pay them what they were owed.

Which brings up the lit­tle prob­lem of attrition.
The JCF has been bleed­ing cops for decades hav­ing served less than 10 years I made my exit voluntarily.
That deci­sion was an easy one despite my love for the job I found it impos­si­ble to con­tin­ue doing police work in a crim­i­nal’s par­adise which has pre­cious lit­tle respect for the rule of law.
I also did my own analy­sis which indi­cat­ed to me as far back as 1991 that con­di­tions in the JCF were not get­ting bet­ter and in fact would get expo­nen­tial­ly worse.
My imme­di­ate super­vi­sor at the time told me he was sor­ry to see me go but he would have made the same deci­sion if he was my age.

The JCF los­es over 600 offi­cers each year to attri­tion. Do the math it’s not that dif­fi­cult to see that an agency of close to 10’000 peo­ple los­ing 50 peo­ple to attri­tion alone each month, is doing some­thing rad­i­cal­ly wrong.

That does not include offi­cer deaths, retire­ments and oth­er means through which offi­cers leave the department.
In an anti-police coun­try like Jamaica, it makes it rather dif­fi­cult to con­tin­ue to find suit­able can­di­dates to become police officers.
Sure some peo­ple sign up each year but once they start plac­ing their lives on the line they begin rec­og­niz­ing that it’s a bad idea to keep mak­ing those sac­ri­fices in such a tox­ic anti-police envi­ron­ment with no real sup­port from admin­is­tra­tions of either polit­i­cal party.
So they leave!

Well, you must know that the Government would come up with meth­ods to cur­tail the mass exodus.
The above amend­ment to sec­tions of the JCF Act is what they came up with.
I am real­ly sor­ry to be this mad about the Government’s stu­pid­i­ty, I have to go against my friend’s advice that I some­times get too col­or­ful with my lan­guage. Are these peo­ple retard­ed or what?

Let’s set aside bet­ter pay, bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, bet­ter gov­ern­men­tal sup­port through leg­is­la­tion which puts crim­i­nals in jail and keeps them there.
Lets just for a minute cast aside remov­ing INDECOM and the state spon­sored office of the Public defend­er, both of which active­ly assist and enable cajole and com­fort crim­i­nals on the Island.
Let’s just set aside a cul­ture of con­for­mi­ty to the rule of law. Let’s also ignore work­ing to shore up sup­port for our insti­tu­tions which help in the equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of justice.

What we have left is a mafia style strong arm tac­tic which has been the modus operan­di of the JCF in con­junc­tion with the regres­sive Neandertals who make policy.
There is noth­ing like forc­ing peo­ple who want to leave to stay against their will. Never mind that the JCF is not a mil­i­tary force but a civil­ian entity.
If they think they have a prob­lem with peo­ple leav­ing through the back door wait until this pol­i­cy set­tles and there will be no one enter­ing through the front door.

Quite unsur­pris­ing­ly this is clas­sic Jamaica’s way of address­ing seri­ous issues in knee-jerk fash­ion. Do what seems most obvi­ous with­out think­ing it through.
This will be anoth­er colos­sal fail­ure, mark my words which will inex­orably lead to the fur­ther destruc­tion of the JCF.
This lat­est move leads me to con­clude that there are pow­er­ful forces on the Island which are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly work­ing to dis­man­tle the Jamaica Constabulary Force.