Police Chase And Lessons To Be Learned (videos Inside)

Every inci­dent that occurs offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty for eval­u­a­tion, intro­spec­tion, and poten­tial reme­di­al action. How do we fine-tune the laws we have on the books, and where amend­ments and addi­tions are nec­es­sary, make changes with prop­er safe­guards for the population.
My atten­tion was drawn to a recent police chase in the cor­po­rate area. A sin­gle unit man­aged to safe­ly com­plete and bring to a safe end­ing an errant female motorist who seem­ing­ly believed the rules did not apply to her.
Police offi­cers who serve in Jamaica, past, and present, under­stand that this is the mind­set of the thugs on the streets and the igno­rant so-called educated.
I applaud the offi­cers in the chase for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism, with one slight caveat, despite the wom­an’s igno­rant insis­tence on not exit­ing the vehicle.

I must admit that hav­ing left Jamaican law enforce­ment for so long, I am present­ly unsure what the pro­to­cols are for a sit­u­a­tion in which the offi­cers boxed the car in, and the dri­ver refus­es to exit the vehicle.
My thought process was that as it per­tains to pur­suit of a per­son who runs into a premis­es, his or oth­er­wise, the police are empow­ered to go in with­out a war­rant and retrieve that offender.
A per­son who flees the police is sub­ject to the same rules, mean­ing the police can law­ful­ly smash the win­dow and retrieve the offend­er from the automobile.
Notwithstanding, I reached out to a cou­ple of sources who are still serv­ing, and they assured me that my think­ing is sound.
I asked why the offi­cers did not remove the errant and bel­liger­ent woman from the vehi­cle, forth­with all things considered.
One source explained that the police know that remov­ing her by break­ing the win­dow despite all that we saw would have trig­gered an INDECOM inves­ti­ga­tion fol­lowed by end­less blath­er of bull­shit on radio and tele­vi­sion about police dam­ag­ing the wom­an’s car.
Unconvinced, I asked what would have hap­pened if the woman had decid­ed she was not ever get­ting out of the car? As long as the woman decid­ed she would not exit the auto­mo­bile, the police would have to remain there beg­ging and plead­ing, I was told.
This is not law enforce­ment. I do not espouse a sit­u­a­tion in which police offi­cers arbi­trar­i­ly dam­age peo­ple’s prop­er­ty; nei­ther do I believe the police should be stand­ing around beg­ging a crim­i­nal who has bro­ken sev­er­al laws to fol­low orders.

People flee the police for var­i­ous rea­sons, but in the end, none of those rea­sons ever make sense. What could have jus­ti­fied her killing a child, an old­er adult, or any­one after she decid­ed she would not stop for the police? Could she lie her way out of a manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion, giv­en that the chase was video recorded?
Or was she con­fi­dent that the idiots who per­form the duties of judges would find a loop­hole to let her loose?

The igno­rance of the motorist was pal­pa­ble; it reeked of a brand of faux sophistry that has dom­i­nat­ed the psy­che of Jamaicans of all stra­ta but one that is most deplorable when we hear it from those with the speakie-spok­ie voices.
Her refusal to stop and exit the vehi­cle made her mind­set worse. Her argu­ment that because she was on her way from work and her resul­tant belief that the police had no pow­er to stop her for a traf­fic offense is laughable…
And, of course, the oblig­a­tory lies that fol­lowed, that the police hit her vehi­cle only for that lie to be rub­bished when she was informed that the whole inci­dent was video recorded.
This is what our offi­cers, includ­ing myself, were forced to deal with in this crim­i­nal par­adise where the words of liars are gospel in the courts even when they com­mit the worst crimes.
These inci­dents gar­ner days and weeks of illog­i­cal gib­ber­ish on tele­vi­sion. Moronic talk­ing-heads and their brain-dead callers make a liv­ing on talk radio by demo­niz­ing the police on inci­dents rid­dled with lies and innuendos.

The JCF is a top-heavy police agency with great offi­cers at the rank and file lev­el and many pre­tenders at the top.
The offi­cers on the streets have lit­tle sup­port from their gazetted supe­ri­ors, who, but for a few exam­ples, are mere­ly in the posi­tions they are in because it offers a paycheck.
The major­i­ty of the senior corps of the JCF are in uni­form to floss and give orders; the young offi­cers do not have the pol­i­cy under­stand­ings they need to have, which makes them timid and unsure of how to act.
All of this is because their polit­i­cal boss­es, despite the rhetoric to the con­trary, do not want the police ful­ly empow­ered to stop the may­hem in our country.
We need a coun­try of laws, not of men. We need the Government to untie the hands of the police so they can do their jobs but hold them account­able when they step out of line.
An effec­tive police force can­not oper­ate in an atmos­phere of uncer­tain­ty and fear in doing its jobs.
Policing is a job that will not change; it does not require fan­cy titles and rank. Unless you walked the beat and dealt with the worst of soci­ety, you have no busi­ness call­ing your­self a police officer.

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