Norman Heywood’s Dereliction Of Duty A Disgrace And A Stain On The Constabulary…

We know the sta­tis­tics, and we know what has been tried.
We also know that what has been tried in crime con­trol has not been work­ing, and for good reason.
The car­nage on the streets.The mul­ti­ple killings. The sense of law­less­ness has police stand­ing by help­less as riot­ers do as they please — the use of Government Agencies as tools of self-aggran­dize­ment and per­son­al vendet­tas. And don’t for­get the inevitable trav­el advisories.
It all sounds like an ungovern­able Serengeti, and to a cer­tain extent, it is, but is it too far gone?
I don’t think so!
But if noth­ing changes in direc­tion, there will come a time in the not-too-dis­tant future when we will have passed the point of no return.
I con­tin­ue to ask the ques­tion: At what point will the nation’s lead­ers say they do not want any more spilled blood?
At what point will decen­cy and char­ac­ter trump polit­i­cal considerations?

There is a con­sen­sus among many Jamaicans, both at home and in the dias­po­ra, that the Government is not inter­est­ed in solv­ing the nation’s crime dilem­ma. Neither is the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion; it may rea­son­ably be argued that our crime prob­lem has been intran­si­gent and intractable because politi­cians have inject­ed them­selves into law enforcement.
The most recent exam­ple being the appalling exam­ple we were forced to wit­ness in Boscobel Saint Mary.
I agree that some of the Prime Minister’s utter­ances could rea­son­ably be con­strued as anti-police and, by exten­sion, against resolv­ing the coun­try’s crime problem.
The Political Opposition must also take respon­si­bil­i­ty for its con­sti­tu­tion­al role in gov­ern­ment, even from its side of the chamber.
It can­not be a zero-sum game for the PNP, which sees its role in Jamaica as either the gov­ern­ing par­ty or the par­ty that sab­o­tages what­ev­er the rul­ing par­ty does. Consequently, the two par­ties must change their views of gov­ern­ment and their roles, whether in gov­ern­ment or oppo­si­tion, as inte­gral parts of the gov­ern­ing structure.
If we can accom­plish that par­a­digm shift, if only in how they per­ceive their roles as ser­vants of our coun­try, we may reach a con­sen­sus on how the exis­ten­tial issue of crime must be approached.

I left law enforce­ment in Jamaica as a young adult after ten years of ser­vice in my country.
Today, almost 27 years lat­er, the images that grace reg­u­lar and social media of police oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures and process­es seem far more regres­sive and irra­tional than when I walked away in 1991. The con­stant sec­ond-guess­ing. Demonizing. Politicizing. Persecution. Morale killing. And oth­er neg­a­tives thrown at the police, in addi­tion to their anti­quat­ed train­ing and lack of leg­isla­tive and moral sup­port, have done much to cre­ate the Jamaica which exists today.
The experts and the talk­ing heads haven’t real­ized that the coun­try’s progress is in its own hands. Progress comes from a sta­ble, low-crime society.

Jamaica is nei­ther sta­ble nor low crime. As a result, any talk of pros­per­i­ty, even at its best, must be seen as hyped rhetoric.
We must receive answers to some seri­ous ques­tions. Those answers will give us a win­dow into why the crime prob­lem in Jamaica is like an intractable cough regress­ing into pneu­mo­nia. Why is it that an Assistant Commissioner of Police[the one pic­tured here, Norman Heywood] arrived on the scene on the Boscobel main road and saw a litany of crimes being com­mit­ted and did absolute­ly nothing?
Why was traf­fic allowed to pile up, total­ly incon­ve­nienc­ing the pub­lic while a senior police com­man­der stood by like one of the anarchists?
The pile-up of traf­fic that occurred last week in Boscobel incon­ve­nienced many peo­ple; it effec­tive­ly shut down com­merce and inex­orably cost count­less Jamaicans who had noth­ing to do with those law­less anar­chists in that town immense finan­cial and oth­er harm.

It is no dif­fer­ent from the pile-up on the road to the Norman Manley International Airport a week ear­li­er. It is no dif­fer­ent from the con­stant block­ing of roads, which, in addi­tion to the ram­pant crime, is destroy­ing the island’s eco­nom­ic and human life. What was the paper police offi­cer Norman Heywood afraid of? Why did he do noth­ing to stop the crime inci­dents while the junior offi­cers there with him were itch­ing to uphold their oath?
Why did it take a politi­cian [Robert Montague’s] arrival to quell the law­less anar­chy we saw play out before our eyes?

Why do politi­cians con­tin­ue to offer them­selves up as buffers between the police and the crim­i­nals, know­ing it has the effect of caus­ing those who break the laws to have no respect for the police?
What does the world not know in the sys­tem that caus­es a senior police com­man­der to abdi­cate his sworn duty?
Was it fear, and if so, fear of whom?
Was it a sense of not know­ing what to do [as I sus­pect is the case] with these paper cops who got into the police depart­ment because they earned a degree some­where and were giv­en command?

When he took com­mand of Police Area Two in September of last year, the hap­less Norman Heywood told a gath­er­ing at the Evansville Conference Centre in St Ann’s Bay, attend­ed by National Security Minister Robert Montague, that police in the area would oper­ate using the ‘Three‑R’ approach — rapid response, respect, and reassurance.

Neither of those char­ac­ter­is­tics was vis­i­ble in ACP Norman Heywood’s actions or lack thereof.
But Heywood’s lack of lead­er­ship [which I must admit makes me piss­ing mad] is direct­ly in line with the phi­los­o­phy of his col­league DCP Clifford Blake who deliv­ered an entire lec­ture to junior traf­fic cops on the virtues of rolling over and turn­ing a blind eye instead of enforc­ing the nation’s traf­fic laws.

Even as the nation’s crime increas­es and mur­ders con­tin­ue to ter­ri­fy the pop­u­la­tion, elic­it­ing trav­el advi­sories from for­eign nations, the Island’s top law enforce­ment offi­cers are teach­ing pas­siv­i­ty and rolling over to lawlessness.
The Police Commissioner must tell the nation whether or not this is the new direc­tion of the police force so that cit­i­zens can know not to expect pro­tec­tion from anar­chists and murderers.
This new breed of police lead­er­ship teach­es respect and human rights but does not enforce the nation’s laws.
Their stu­pid phi­los­o­phy is exact­ly from the play­book of for­mer Jamaican for Justice head Carolyn Gomez, that the role of the police is to observe human rights.
|There are more than enough safe­guards to pro­tect human rights, so much so that there is no enforce­ment of the laws right now. The rights of the most blood-drenched crim­i­nal now super­sede the fun­da­men­tal right to life an inno­cent Jamaican pre­vi­ous­ly had.

The same play­book that Owen Ellington allowed to be insti­tut­ed across the police force. It crim­i­nal­izes and demo­nizes Esprit-de-corp, the uni­ver­sal con­cept of broth­er­hood shared by mil­i­tary and police orga­ni­za­tions worldwide.
It is a con­cept that those who have nev­er signed up or vol­un­teered for any­thing can nev­er under­stand. A baby doc­tor out of her league has evis­cer­at­ed and dem­a­gogued it in Jamaica. We want to know who behind that demon­stra­tion ren­dered Norman Heywood impo­tent. Who ren­dered him unable to do his job as a com­man­der? Why did he not imme­di­ate­ly take com­mand of the scene and have the men and women under his com­mand issue direc­tives to per­sons gath­ered there to move to the side­walks imme­di­ate­ly or face being forcibly dis­persed? Citizens can gath­er peace­ably and air griev­ances against their gov­ern­ment or what­ev­er they are aggriev­ed by.
They have no right to block roads and pre­vent the free flow of traf­fic, incon­ve­nienc­ing and endan­ger­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic. After those com­mands are issued, if they refuse, the batons and tear gas imme­di­ate­ly come out to end the nonsense.
We must get back to enforc­ing the laws.
As much as I loathe these two par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives, I do not believe they were involved in Heywood’s abdi­ca­tion of his oath.
As such, the Commissioner of Police must deter­mine whether ACP Norman Heywood’s dere­lic­tion of duty rep­re­sents the police force he wants to lead for the dura­tion of his tenure at the helm of this department.