These days, I hardly spend time talking about what the JCF could be doing better; there are far more pressing issues in my adopted homeland.
I try to speak to the hypocrisy of how the United States uses its resources to help fight against transnational crime as a tool of sorts of dictate to developing nations on what they can and cannot do to their criminals. Nevertheless, I cannot pretend not to see that some of the issues that plagued the JCF over three decades ago are still evident despite the continued talk of transformation of the force.
I understand that there are resource shortages and probably will be for a very long time into the future. Those shortages include human resources, equipment, tools, legislation, adequate pay, better working conditions, training, leadership, motivation, and a simple common sense…The latter seeming to be the resource in the shortest supply.
One of the pressing issues facing the country is the issue of corruption. It is cancer that corrodes all Government agencies, stifles progress, and frustrates the population. This happens because the legislature is far too lazy, incompetent, and moronic to pass laws that set clear timelines in which government functions must be addressed.
For example, a person applying for a birth certificate should receive it in a set time. Same idea for passports, police records, and other documents that the people depend on to get on with their lives. There is no excuse for these things not to be clearly set in law and policy and enforced rigidly.
Failure to implement these common-sense legislative processes is a breeding ground for corruption. It allows low-level bureaucrats to frustrate the public who really need these documents and coerces them to pay bribes.
These shortcomings are within the remit of the elected officials who lack imagination, commonsense, and the knowledge to draft and pass meaningful legislation to advance the nation’s interest.
However, as I have asked over the years, “what stops the police from stamping out the fraud at the Registrar Generals’ office or the Motor Vehicle’s Department”? How difficult is it to set up stings and arrest the rogue motor vehicle examiners, rogue Custom Agents, and other leeches who enter public service to rip off the public?
I’ll hazard a guess; it isn’t that the police hierarchy lacks imagination (it does), but the force is itself far too corrupt to care about the culture of corruption that now characterizes Jamaican culture, which it has a sworn duty to try to correct.
No one wants a job from which they cannot steal.
I was nauseated several days ago when someone showed me a video on a social media platform of a Jamaican cop asking a couple in an automobile, “have you done any good deeds for those who protect and serve today” the occupants of the car realizing the pathetic attempt at a bribe solicitation handed the cop a few bucks, laughed at him and drove away.
Police officers demeaning their uniforms by begging, soliciting bribes, or as the old vernacular goes, “cutting,” is a reprehensible practice that demeans the entire force, even if was an isolated incident.
In Jamaica this reprehensible and shameful practice isn’t.
Rather than set an example for the nation to follow, the JCF continues to be an agency largely for show, form over substance. Members of the JCF now have more degrees than a thermometer, yet neither the force nor the country benefits from the advanced learning of these officers who sit atop the hierarchy of the JCF doing nothing but [flossing].
Instead of helping to seriously address the problems, the force has surrendered to being a part of the overall problem.
The extent to which graft, corruption, and crime have hobbled the nation’s growth and development may all be attributed to and laid squarely at the feet of the various government agencies, the JCF being no exception.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.