Latest Bill Johnson Poll A Pathetic Distraction

Before I even begin to address some of the under­ly­ing issues which I find sil­ly and gross­ly spu­ri­ous about the recent Bill Johnson Poll con­duct­ed for the Jamaica Obsever, I will lay out a frame­work which dis­qual­i­fies those who com­mis­sioned the poll and the results of the poll.
Under the ban­ner”, Corruption haunts police force,” anoth­er incom­pe­tent excuse for a media house has gone out and slav­ish embar­rassed itself in pro­mot­ing a poll it com­mis­sioned to dis­cred­it the men and women of the Jamaica Constabulary Force who risk life and limb for pit­tances against some of the most blood-thirsty mur­der­ers in the world.
I will not dig­ni­fy the specifics of the so-called find­ings of the polls, suf­fic­ing to say that I will lay out a cou­ple of rea­sons why this poll must be viewed as spu­ri­ous at best and the find­ings dis­card­ed for the trash it is.

(1) Jamaica strug­gles might­i­ly with cor­rup­tion across the entire spec­trum of nation­al life. The entire pub­lic sec­tor is a cesspool of cor­rup­tion in which graft, favors, pay­offs, theft, nepo­tism and oth­er forms of cor­rup­tion have so infect­ed the infra­struc­ture it has become the rule rather than the excep­tion.
In fact, accord­ing to Transparency International, the Country recent­ly slipped in the cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion Index and is some­where around 84% cor­rupt, 100% being the most cor­rupt.
With a coun­try bur­dened with that kind of cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion, how does any­one jus­ti­fy sin­gling out a group of pow­er­less, dis­en­fran­chised peo­ple, who risk every­thing for every­one else, for con­tin­ued ridicule and crit­i­cism?
Who do you ask about cor­rup­tion in the police depart­ment when the aver­age per­son has a son or daugh­ter killing and rob­bing peo­ple?
Who do you ask when illic­it gains from lot­to-scam­ming spread across sev­er­al indus­tries and are putting food on the tables of so many?
Who do you poll when there are so many mur­der­ers and oth­er law­break­ers walk­ing around, know­ing that the police is the only thing which stands between them and what they want to accomplish?

(2) For years I have per­son­al­ly writ­ten about the con­nec­tion between the polit­i­cal par­ties and gun-tot­ing gangs in the nation’s inner cities.
I con­ced­ed this point to no one, as a young police offi­cer, I was on the receiv­ing end of one of those illic­it guns in 88.
Through these writ­ings, I have con­sis­tent­ly, through fac­tu­al point­ers, demon­strat­ed how both polit­i­cal par­ties have used the police depart­ment as a scape­goat to deflect from their crim­i­nal­i­ty cor­rup­tion, and incom­pe­tence.
That is why I am con­vinced that with the ongo­ing Petrojam Scandal, the admin­is­tra­tion is more than hap­py to have atten­tion shift­ed to some­thing else.
Why not the tra­di­tion­al point of hate?
And what pass­es for media, the dis­hon­est, intel­lec­tu­al­ly lazy bunch of elit­ist, (fake accents and all) are quite will­ing to con­tin­ue this straw­man narrative.

(3) There are rough­ly 126 rep­re­sen­ta­tives between both polit­i­cal par­ties at the Constituency lev­el.
Add those appoint­ed to the Senate and toss in Parish Councillors and at best you get a cou­ple hun­dred peo­ple.
If Jamaicans real­ly took stock of the lev­el of cor­rup­tion with­in this small group of a cou­ple hun­dred, they would be in the streets with pitch­forks, machetes, and torch­es which would make the Morant Bay rebel­lion seem like a walk in the park.
More impor­tant­ly, the cor­rup­tion cost to the coun­try car­ried out by this very small group, not just through bla­tant theft, but through the pro­cure­ment process, fake con­tracts and oth­er clever acts of thiev­ery, the cost per year runs into bil­lions of dol­lars.
The loss of con­fi­dence which keeps out investors and poten­tial returnees is incal­cuable.

(4) Juxtapose that with rough­ly 8’000 police offi­cers, an expo­nen­tial­ly larg­er group of peo­ple with­in the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty of 2.8 mil­lion. Whatever the cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion index involv­ing the police force, it pales dras­ti­cal­ly when com­pared to the cor­rup­tion of the polit­i­cal class. In terms of Dollars and cents, there is no com­par­i­son.
But say­ing that does not begin to uncov­er the lev­els of cor­rup­tion which runs in this lit­tle coun­try of 2.8 mil­lion.
From Jamaica House to Gordon House, from The high­est court to the board­rooms, Jamaica’s cor­rup­tion is leg­endary.
Whether it is the hood­lums who are set free on minor tech­ni­cal­i­ties by the court of appeals, or the deep cor­rup­tion which drains the Island of bil­lions which ought to go to build­ing infra­struc­ture and improv­ing the lives of cit­i­zens.
Or it is the mas­sive theft of pub­lic funds which does­n’t even get inves­ti­gat­ed.
Except, of course, if you are a mis­guid­ed cop who decid­ed to incrim­i­nate him­self and allow him­self to be used by an agency which hates the police.
Then there is account­abil­i­ty. That account­abil­i­ty is life in prison and the stip­u­la­tion that you have to spend an unprece­dent­ed 51 years in prison before being eli­gi­ble for parole.
Never mind that the heads of the well-armed gangs are sit­ting right there in the par­lia­ment pass­ing laws which fur­thers the pro­tec­tion of gangs and ties the hands of the police.

Sure there are far too many cor­rupt police offi­cers, that is not a Jamaica prob­lem, it is a world­wide prob­lem, because peo­ple make police offi­cers.
The high lev­els of cor­rup­tion with­in the legal com­mu­ni­ty is far greater than any­thing in the JCF based on their num­bers in the larg­er pop­u­la­tion.
So too are the cor­rupt judges worse than the police based on their num­bers as well.
Would I like to see zero police cor­rup­tion? You bet your ass. But I am a prag­ma­tist who under­stands that when you source water from a dirty pool, the water you get will be dirty too.

All in all, the con­tin­ued beat­ing of the drums and the inces­sant return to demo­niz­ing the poor defense­less police must be seen for what it is.
Bullshit!!!