It was January of 1982 I was giddy with excitement, I had just entered the Police Training school at Port Royal. Little did I know that I would spend a full year between Port Royal and Twickenham Park which would eventually become what we now know as the Jamaica Police Academy.
It is kinda strange how I ended up at Twickenham Park despite joining the JCF and found my way on the back of a truck destined for Port Royal.
In High School my Agriculture Science Teacher mister Bascoe thought that I was something special , I never quite figured out why, I always thought myself an average student but teachers I love them. Mister Bascoe gave me an all expense paid trip to the Twickenham Park facility which was the Jamaica School of Agriculture at the time.
I fell in love with the place, I redoubled my efforts back in mister Boscoe’s Agri sciences classes so I could make him proud.
It wasn’t long after that that the Jamaica school of agriculture was disbanded and the facility was given to the Ministry of National Security, it would later become the new home for police trainees.
My choices after leaving high school were Mico Teacher’s college or the Police department, I had no intention of going to Knockalva Agricultural School in Ramble Hanover.
Port Royal here I come..
The choice for me at the time was pretty easy. Coming from a family where money was something we read about. No one needed to convince me that at that time the Police department would be a better fit.
Police recruits are paid as soon as they start training not so for colleges.
The eventual hundred plus of us who started training in June of 1982 would be the very first batch of young constables to begin and complete training at the Jamaica police academy.
There is a lot to be said about anyone who decide to become a police officer. There is even more to be said about anyone daring to be a police officer in Jamaica easily one of the most lawless places . The people are largely uninformed yet highly opinionated, a sometimes potent mix.
It certainly did not take me long to realize that this was not the best place to be a police officer.
One of the things I hear now which I heard for the decade I served is that the police are only there for the money.
There is alway a certain element of truth to the argument that people work because they need money.
There is much more to the argument when that person actually place his/her life on the line for that paycheck. On that basis I never quite understood the logic of that argument.
Having seen the attrition rate from the police department over the years it certainly does not enhance the monetary arguments police detractors make.
After graduating from the Academy it did not take long for me to realize that despite my love for the rule of law the department would not be my last carrear stop. The job was difficult the pay was shitty but the people who led the department made the job more difficult and shittier than it needed to be.
Every young constable who enters the Police services is bookended by the perils on the streets and the egomaniacal kingpins who supervise the higher up the worse they are.
Subsequently cops are stressed, many officers seek escape in alcohol and other vices
Others simply decide to look out for themselves.
Most importantly however I realized that it was not in the cards that I would continue risking my life for a nation which simply did not believe in the rule of law.
People disagree somewhat with that sentiment but the facts are clear. Only the poorest of the poor country folks allow their children to enter law enforcement. Mothers actively counsel their children never to become police officers.
The brunt of that burden falls to poor rural folks to sacrifice and bury their children in service to country.
Many today who become Police officers are risk averse even with bullet proof vests , computers and other modern tools.
During the Seaga years when I served we were recording 300 murders annually, at the time I thought we were failing dismally in what we were supposed to be doing.
I thought then that we could have done better even with the shortages of resources which would have saved a lot more lives and reduced some of the loss to citizens.
As I have said repeatedly in other articles being a police officer brought out some of the greatest emotions in me. Usually love and admiration for our country’s poorest and dispossessed.
Conversely I developed a palpable disdain for those who considered themselves élite, they benefited most from the sacrifice we made while short circuiting law-enforcement efforts but giving nothing back to make our country better.
I walked away from law enforcement understanding that I would not make a significant difference in the fight to make Jamaica a country of laws. It was not going to be done from a law enforcement position. There were simply too many forces with their own interest which wanted a crime culture.
I cannot lie that I was not annoyed by the ghetto culture which demonizes police. However I was never particularly swayed one way or the other by it. I knew that with the right leadership the man on the street was movable.
With the right leadership people conform. The problem for Jamaica was never that the average guy was unswayable, the problem is that no one in leadership was doing the right kind of swaying.
The problem of lawlessness which exist today did not happen all by itself. There has been over half a century of cultural opposition to the rule of law. Unfortunately for the few sane Jamaicans still living there who believe things will change for the better I cannot offer any words of comfort.
If you plant corn for a million years for a million years you will reap corn.
Rather than look at models which work in other countries refine them to suit our particular circumstances Jamaican leaders either did nothing or actively stood in the way of better law enforcement.
This year like all the years before over a thousand and a half people will be slaughtered on the Island of 2.7 million.
Countless children will be raped and sodomized ( boys and girls) . Many more will be trafficked into prostitution and other vices. Hundreds more will be seriously hurt and disfigured from vicious assaults.
More houses will be firebombed and children mutilated and killed.
The Island’s leaders will do absolutely nothing about it.
In the end the people will continue to glorify criminal “dons”, even as they lament the crime spree, wash away the blood and bury their dead.
From as early as I can recall the police was “babylon bways”, my look at the Island’s history reveals nothing the police did to turn the people from respecting the rule of law. Conversely what I saw was a people opposed to discipline which invariably changed the police to start looking out for themselves.
The aforementioned is in no way a statement of support for corruption it is simply a statement of fact..
When a country create and cultivate a culture of disrespect for authority that country should not be surprised when it reaps a harvest of murder and mayhem.
The Island’s leaders are largely criminals in private, I say that without equivocation . It is not a stretch to theorize that the reason they allowed the Police department and the rule of law to deteriorate is that a competent police department is a great threat to their abilities to milk the country dry.
Today the department has a lot of members with degrees , these people worked hard to earn their degrees and must be compensated commensurate with their education, the downside to this is a top heavy force which is demoralized. Many of it’s members are not in it to reduce crime, it’s leadership worse.
Those who take the risks are not rewarded I have spoken to enough cops who tell me the same story.
The Nation missed a tremendous opportunity to do a top down audit of what ailed the force during the early 2000’ .
That audit would have revealed that the force needed new educated leadership capable of understanding the security challenges facing the country in the 21st century but that the force also needed tough honest dedicated officers do get the job done.
Had the Political directorate done that audit it would have recognized that many of the problems of corruption and allegations of abuse could be fixed with.…
Better pay . Better training. Better equipment. Better supervision. Better accountability.
Instead of fixing the problem they went ahead and created another Agency which further exacerbate crime contrary to what the boneheads tell you.
But the problems were the creation of the very people whose responsibility it was to preserve the safety of the population.
During the Patterson years there was no money made available to train a single detective for over seven years despite the skyrocketing murder statistics. Sure police officers were walking around with big guns but big guns do precious little to deter criminals who generally do not commit crimes in front of police.
Jamaica has always had problems containing crime but for those focused on this problem this was essentially when Jamaica lost the fight against lawlessness under the pathetic leadership of Percival James Patterson.
Patterson’s leadership or lack thereof ushered in a period of lawlessness which was not seen before on the Island. Ironically he did not lift a finger to do a damn thing to stop it. He was too busy pillaging the country’s economy.
It is little wonder then the present occupant of Jamaica house Patterson’s protégé, has no empathy for Jamaicans including police officers whose blood continue to run yet she is vociferous with support for the families of the dead in France.
Every day we witness police officers afraid to do their job of enforcing even the simplest traffic law because of course they will certainly be assaulted and they dare not respond without being subject to criminal proceedings.
I am sorry to remind those waiting for lower crime in Jamaica there will be a very long wait .……