Police High Command Either Complicit Or More Stupid Than I Thought..

Among the per­sons being tar­get­ed, declared Selvin Haye, deputy com­mis­sion­er in charge of crime, are the financiers behind the ille­gal impor­ta­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of firearms, as well as those involved in drug trafficking.

“We will be build­ing more and bet­ter enter­prise cas­es to tack­le this type of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. We will be using spe­cial­ized teams now armed with bet­ter inves­tiga­tive skills and ana­lyt­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties to track these crim­i­nals,” Haye said.

Well, I guess we have got­ten over the cha­rade that ZOSO was going to be a sig­nif­i­cant dri­ver of crime in a souther­ly direction.
We are now onto the next smoke screen.
Inherent in those com­ments com­ing from the police high com­mand is a con­fes­sion that there have been zero empha­sis to link those ship­ping the weapons and ammu­ni­tion from over­seas to the con­tra­bands they ship.
The police high com­mand has been com­plic­it in sim­ply bask­ing in the glo­ry of an occa­sion­al find here and there and tak­ing the cred­it for the work the cops on the streets do.
That has been the modus operan­di of the bloat­ed top heavy bureau­cra­cy that is known as the police high command.
A com­mand struc­ture which has nev­er done much in the way of gar­ner­ing real com­mand and is any­thing but structured.
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So now they admit that despite the crime wave over the last sev­er­al decades, hell, since I left the force after my brief stint in 91 that the depart­ment was­n’t doing what they ought to have been doing even now?
The Deputy Commissioner’s state­ment was a real expose’ into what is real­ly hap­pen­ing or more like, what is not hap­pen­ing in the force that is con­tribut­ing to the wave of homi­cides and oth­er seri­ous crimes sweep­ing the country.

Though it is 2017 the force seems to be more focused on record­ing reports onto com­put­ers (mov­ing away from those God-awful big old books ) than solv­ing seri­ous crimes.
I was nev­er one who had much con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of the police high com­mand to get any­thing done or to sus­tain a good thing estab­lished by the rank and file. As such I nev­er gave any cre­dence to the grand pro­nounce­ments which come out of that body. Neither do I both­er pay­ing atten­tion to those who are con­vinced that there is new inno­va­tion hap­pen­ing in the force which will amount to any­thing pos­i­tive today.

In his first report­ing to the Parliament hav­ing been man­dat­ed by law after the launch of the first Zone of spe­cial oper­a­tions in Mount Salem St James prime Minister Andrew Holness told the nation quote:

The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the ZOSO des­ig­na­tion was based on the rel­e­vant legal cri­te­ria, intel­li­gence, as well as strate­gic and oper­a­tional con­sid­er­a­tions of the joint com­mand of the secu­ri­ty forces. He said that, fol­low­ing 32 spe­cial oper­a­tions con­duct­ed by the joint force in the first 10 days, five ille­gal firearms were recov­ered, two want­ed men were tak­en into cus­tody and a num­ber of “lead sheets” used in lot­to scam­ming activ­i­ties recov­ered. “The next 10 days will see the con­tin­u­a­tion of inter­nal secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions to rid the zone of ille­gal weapons, ammu­ni­tion, and con­tra­band,” the prime min­is­ter told the House.

The leader of the Opposition Peter Phillips coun­tered that despite the oper­a­tion haul of “five guns and two arrests in 10 days”, 54 mur­ders have occurred at the same time across the island. He insist­ed that since the dec­la­ra­tion of the ZOSO, the dai­ly nation­al rate has increased. “That is to say that we had been going nation­al­ly at about 4.2 mur­ders per day…and in the peri­od since the zone, the nation­al aver­age has been about 5.5 mur­ders per day.”

I nev­er thought that there would be a crime ini­tia­tive that would have any mea­sur­able effect on crime in the present envi­ron­ment that exists in the coun­try today.
There has to be a seis­mic atti­tu­di­nal shift in the way peo­ple see crime affect­ing their lives and what they are will­ing to do to change that paradigm.
Jamaica has nev­er been a place which was sup­port­ive of crime ini­tia­tives, it has always been high­ly opin­ion­at­ed with­out the facts as well.
Those char­ac­ter­is­tics are a per­fect storm which caus­es the Island of 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple to be one of the high­est pro­duc­ers of crime on the planet.

One of the prin­ci­ples I applied as an offi­cer was to allow sus­pects to talk, they will tell you pret­ty much what you need to know. Today as a per­son who oper­ates in the busi­ness space I still lis­ten intent­ly to all who I do busi­ness with-with a view to deter­min­ing their authenticity.
The state­ments of the police high com­mand have been extreme­ly revealing.

Which brings me to my final point.
The police high com­mand is even more stu­pid than I pre­vi­ous­ly thought they were.
If the Police high com­mand real­ly intend­ed to final­ly get up off their tired decrepit behinds and do some­thing about trac­ing the caches of weapons pour­ing into the Island why would they announce it?

One of the things those con­cerned about crime harp on is polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in law enforcement.
Politicians are cul­pa­ble as it relates to the crime wave sweep­ing the coun­try but as it relates to the police announc­ing its inten­tions to crim­i­nals politi­cians bear zero responsibility.
That col­lu­sion or utter stu­pid­i­ty is the police’s and theirs alone.

No one stands in the way of the police if they chose to go after prin­ci­pals in the weapons trade, not even the politicians.
If the police are inter­est­ed in bust­ing the peo­ple at the top who are import­ing guns and ammu­ni­tion into the coun­try the police can do it.
Announcing that they intend to go after prin­ci­pals now when it should have been doing that as a mat­ter, of course, tells a skep­tic like me that they are not going after the big fish they are sim­ply telling them to be more discreet.

I have always sup­port­ed the police but I can in no way turn a blind eye to bla­tant incom­pe­tence at the bare min­i­mum and gross com­plic­i­ty at worse on the part of the police.
Trust me it is not as hard as the police tell you it is to track down and bring these crim­i­nals to justice.
If the police real­ly want­ed to bring these prin­ci­pal offend­ers to jus­tice they would seek the war­rants they need and go about their inves­ti­ga­tions with­out mak­ing announcements.
After all the politi­cians are some of the worst crim­i­nals, why would the police tell them what they intend to do?
That ladies and gen­tle­man is the rea­son I decid­ed to walk away from this depart­ment as soon as the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself.