Quallo’s Pick A Tacit Acknowledgement Morale Is Low And S**t Is Really Bad:Cop’s Cop Needed.….

The appointment of DCP George Quallo to the Office of Police Commissioner is a welcome move by the Police Service Commission in my view.

The appoint­ment seem to be a rever­sal of the tone-deaf­ness which char­ac­ter­ized past appoint­ments and oth­er actions both by suc­ces­sive Political Administrations and the Service Commission itself.

The actions of which I speak have left ordi­nary hard work­ing cops feel­ing deject­ed and with­out support .
Many devel­oped a feel­ing that their cho­sen Profession has chewed them up and spat them out.

Many no longer rec­og­nized the depart­ment they so loved. They no longer feel appre­ci­at­ed by the Department they lit­er­al­ly ded­i­cat­ed their lives to.

Arguably every offi­cer who took the oath of office did so with the star­ry eyed impres­sion that he/​she will be advanc­ing up the lad­der the final rung being their ulti­mate goal.
Whether prac­ti­cal or not is imma­te­r­i­al, hope is impor­tant for performance.

To bring oth­ers from out­side the Department and place them above the hard work­ing top tiered offi­cers whom have toiled and improved them­selves aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly over decades is to tell them we don’t think you are good enough.

Those actions have done untold dam­age to the depart­ment, not just to the peo­ple passed over for advance­ment, but they have poi­soned the well as far down as at the qual­i­ty of the recruits lin­ing up to join.

SO WHAT DO WE HAVE AS A RESULT?

Ostensibly, the guy doing the heavy lift­ing on the streets day in day out receives the mes­sage loud and clear , whether their per­cep­tions are cor­rect or not, it is their reality.
You are only good for what you are doing, that’s the mes­sage they receive .
When we need super­vi­sors we will find oth­ers despite your expe­ri­ence or dedication.

This leads invari­ably to a a mass influx of oth­ers from the Institutions of high­er learn­ing, and why not ?

Coming to the Department with a col­lege degree for all intents and pur­pos­es means rapid promotion.
Absolutely noth­ing wrong with edu­cat­ed peo­ple com­ing , but if they are com­ing they should be asked to do Policing and not desk-warm­ing and speech-making.
Many have no desire to make the force a career , it offers a pay­check and the abil­i­ty to lord over oth­ers ‚which is prob­a­bly just as impor­tant for their egos and Resumes’.
Literally ever young offi­cer I speak to tell me they do not care any­more , the force has become a place for modelling.

MORALE OUT THE DOOR 

The issue of low morale can­not be shrugged off or yawned at seri­ous­ly, unless one is unmind­ful of it’s neg­a­tive con­se­quences on the qual­i­ty of ser­vice giv­en as a result .

Over the years Governments of both polit­i­cal par­ties have tak­en extem­po­ra­ne­ous steps which have seri­ous­ly erod­ed the morale of the JCF.
Chief among them …
(1) Putting in place com­mis­sion­ers of Police from out­side the force who had no sup­port and did not care about the com­plex­i­ties of Jamaican Policing .
These were more con­cerned with mak­ing a name for them­selves at the expense of the hard work­ing men and women of the Department.
(2)The Tivoli Inquiry which sought to make crim­i­nals of mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty Forces for plac­ing their lives on the line , (some pay­ing the ulti­mate price) .
A trav­es­ty of epic proportion.
(3) The cre­ation of INDECOM a leg­isla­tive fias­co which ignored the per­spec­tive of law enforce­ment, or worse did not even con­sid­er it.
(4) Administrations of both Political par­ties bla­tant­ly sid­ing with law­less ele­ments and their inter­ests , instead of sup­port­ing the men and women of the secu­ri­ty forces.

This choice for Commissioner seem to have been a sober recog­ni­tion that the JCF can­not be a coun­try-club for University grad­u­ates who can­not find work else­where and the grunts who have no hope of advance­ments through hard and ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice and self improvement.
A large per­cent­age of the JCF at present are dead­wood who look good in uni­form yet bring noth­ing in the way of crime fight­ing to the table.
On the oth­er hand there are the few cops who joined to make a dif­fer­ence. They who took the oath to bring in the Cockroaches who would rob, rape and mur­der , but they have dropped their hands over the Government and Opposition par­ty’s oner­ous INDECOM law which empow­ers crim­i­nals and places them at risk for doing exact­ly what they are sworn to do.

This new com­mis­sion­er’s selec­tion is a tongue in cheek attempt to assuage those f**k ups.
Nevertheless Commissioner Quallo’s tenure will be no dif­fer­ent than the oth­er top cops before him, despite what seem to be broad sup­port for him by the rank and file.

Police offi­cers like to know their boss­es are one of them, not some upstart thrust upon them.
They like to believe in the con­cept of Esprit de corp.
No , Esprit de Corps is not some dredged up phrase which sup­ports some blue wall of silence, as the lying anti-police ele­ments in Jamaicans for Justice[sic] tells you.
It is a sense of uni­ty and com­mon inter­ests and respon­si­bil­i­ties, as devel­oped among a group of per­sons close­ly asso­ci­at­ed in a task, cause,enter­prise, etc.
This sense of com­mon inter­est , kin­dred spir­it is no more impor­tant than it is in Military and Para-Military Institutions in which the Comrade/​colleague at your back is lit­er­al­ly entrust­ed with your life.
As long as the Government and Opposition par­ty are dead set on erect­ing bar­ri­ers to crime fight­ing the crime rate will con­tin­ue to spike and it will be just a mat­ter of time before the very same Pharisees start call­ing for Commissioner Quallo’s resignation.

It has been their Modus Operandi for decades why would we expect any­thing dif­fer­ent now?