JCF Slowly Begin To Wake Up After A Decade Of Terrence Williams Disinformation Campaign.

Yesterday I wrote about Horace Chang’s response to a dias­po­ra group’s state­ment that it would not hand over any mon­ey it rais­es to the gov­ern­ment, that it intends to go toward crime-fighting.
The min­is­ter’s response was heart­break­ing for me. When his state­ments are unpacked, the gist of it is that he is unap­pre­cia­tive of any help to stem the tide of killings and oth­er vio­lent crimes in our coun­try. His com­ments are rem­i­nis­cent of things we would expect to hear decades ago.
It seemed to be about brag­ging rights for funds allo­cat­ed to the JCF by his gov­ern­ment, rather than get­ting all the help he can to end the scourge of vio­lence once and for all.
Make no mis­take about it; the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion has been head and shoul­ders over any People’s National Party Administration ever.….. So when this admin­is­tra­tion’s efforts are com­pared to any PNP admin­is­tra­tion, they are light years above any­thing the PNP has done.
However, a low bar hard­ly gives the gov­ern­ment any­thing to brag about. If rea­son­able peo­ple were in charge of crime in our coun­try, Jamaica would be well on its way to becom­ing a devel­oped coun­try based on the rates of invest­ments and returns of peo­ple in the diaspora.
The col­lu­sion and incom­pe­tence of both polit­i­cal par­ties have stuck Jamaica in a time warp of crim­i­nal­i­ty, per­pet­u­al pover­ty, and decay.

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The sad real­i­ty is that the PNP’s record on crime-fight­ing has been so abysmal, the bar so low, that any­thing the Holness Administration does on crime is vast­ly supe­ri­or to the PNPs tenure on crime.
And so when Horace Chang brags about his gov­ern­ment spend­ing $54 bil­lion on the police over the past four years, at 13. 5 bil­lion annu­al­ly, he miss­es the impor­tant con­cept that what the JCF needs is not just mon­ey but oth­er crit­i­cal sup­port mechanisms.
That sup­port can come in the form of crit­i­cal train­ing that some may have, ideas on how to tap into gang activ­i­ties from for­mer mem­bers who have a wealth of infor­ma­tion to sim­ple human resources help, and a range of oth­er ways that peo­ple can be of help.
Only a fool makes it dif­fi­cult to receive the help that would solve some of his own prob­lems; Horace Chang’s state­ments, even though some may think they are rea­son­able, lacks the most basic under­stand­ing of how things get done in the 21^st century.
Most of all, the min­is­ter’s state­ment that he does­n’t know any­one who made any [sen­si­ble] offer that the admin­is­tra­tion reject­ed is curi­ous at best. Many peo­ple who served in the JCF have offered up their time and mon­ey to help; the Minister clear­ly has no idea how to coör­di­nate or exploit that help, and so he makes excuses.
Then again, when it is up to peo­ple like Chang to deter­mine what is sen­si­ble, are we sur­prised that he made those comments?

INDECOM

Those of you who have been loy­al read­ers and sup­port­ers of this medi­um must know that I have been a vocif­er­ous oppo­nent of INDECOM, the watch­dog agency formed in 2010 by the Bruce Golding admin­is­tra­tion with the sup­port of the PNP.
You also know that I have mil­i­tat­ed against the neo­phyte agency from the start, not because I am opposed to police over­sight; far from it, the police should not police them­selves. On the con­trary, good over­sight is good for both the cit­i­zens and the police.
However, police over­sight must be del­i­cate­ly looked at with a keen eye on what we ask them to do and at what per­il they car­ry out those tasks.
With that in mind, police over­sight demands a cer­tain degree of under­stand­ing of not just the dif­fi­cul­ties, but the nuanced nature of the risks offi­cers face as they car­ry out their duties.
Because of those real­i­ties, I have been against not the for­ma­tion of INDECOM but the frame­work of the act, which I read thoroughly.
From the begin­ning, I argued that as the Act was writ­ten, it was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, that it infringes on the rights of offi­cers, and that it would be a mas­sive dri­ver of vio­lent crime and law­less­ness in our country.
I have been proven right on all fronts.
Since then, they have had to tai­lor parts of the law, and cer­tain actions tak­en by the courts as it per­tains to con­vic­tions of offi­cers have been reversed. Additionally, when the ven­om of the agen­cy’s first com­mis­sion­er, Terrence Williams, was thrown into the mix, a per­fect storm of anti-law enforce­ment brew­ing was set in motion that could only result in crime being where it is today.
Police offi­cers left the force in droves, and those that remained shoul­dered arms even as I per­son­al­ly plead­ed with the Andrew Holness Government to jet­ti­son Terrence Williams and his poi­son so that the secu­ri­ty forces can once again begin the ardu­ous task of tak­ing back the streets from the mur­der­ous gangs roam­ing about unchecked.
So there we are, min­is­ter Chang; you are lying when you say that you have not ignored any sen­si­ble sug­ges­tions. Unless, of course, you believed that (a) Terrence Williams was doing a good job, or (b) keep­ing him there since 2010 to the time he was forced to step aside ten (10) years lat­er was indica­tive of your tak­ing advice.
The harm done under Williams for the decade he was allowed to pla­cate crim­i­nals while tear­ing down the police depart­ment must be laid square­ly at the feet of the gov­ern­ment that appoint­ed and enabled him.
It is impor­tant to note that the JCF is once again con­fronting the killers. In fact, they are con­fronting them imme­di­ate­ly after they car­ry out their das­tard­ly killings.
The force has a very long way to go in how it car­ries out those tac­ti­cal encoun­ters; the lack of train­ing and coör­di­na­tion is glar­ing­ly evi­dent. Even so, we salute the offi­cers when they act to put a dent in this crime scourge.
Hopefully, offi­cers will get bet­ter train­ing, so they will look less like untrained gang­sters just fir­ing wild­ly and more like trained offi­cers deal­ing con­fi­dent­ly and expe­di­tious­ly with a vio­lent situation.
I salute the JCF, even as I beg the gov­ern­ment to shed the arro­gance and accept help.….…. We need intel­li­gence to go with the tech­nol­o­gy so that the killers can be appre­hend­ed before they kill.
And yes, we need dif­fer­ent training.
I can only won­der how more effec­tive we would have been if we had the tech­no­log­i­cal help avail­able today in the ear­ly ’90s when I was a serv­ing member.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.