Restructuring May Not Require As Much Money As Some Believe :it’s About The Will To Get It Done But Where Is The Leadership..

Yesterday I wrote about the risk to which younger members of the Jamaican Police force are being exposed because of the systematic failure of the gazetted ranks. I had some pretty awesome feed back on that blog.
One of the uplifting thing about the responses I received was that they came from former colleagues, people who actually understood in a real way what exactly we are talking about because they lived those very same experiences.
Actors in speaking after receiving their academy awards always pay homage to the people who go out and watch their movies but they are particularly moved that the recognition came from the Academy which is made of their peers, people who knows what it takes for them to bring the characters they play to life.
So too is articulating an argument in support for the rule of law and policing and being supported by others who have experienced what you have experienced , face the guns and even been shot.
You are mindful of the people who empathize with your point of view but the only people who truly can say I totally get what you are saying are your former comrades.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​a​k​e​-​d​a​m​n​-​a​r​r​e​s​t​-​a​u​t​h​o​r​i​ty/

In the same breadth I total­ly under­stand how some peo­ple can see noth­ing redemp­tive about police offi­cers or the job they do when all of their expe­ri­ences with offi­cers neg­a­tive , all of what they hear are neg­a­tive .The inces­sant neg­a­tive imagery of offi­cers mak­ing an ugly arrest , or forced to use lethal force is not some­thing which engen­ders mushy feel­ings towards officers.
The inci­dents where an offi­cer steps um and risks his life for a total stranger is nev­er doc­u­ment­ed those nev­er make the news.
On the fate­ful night I was shot on Blackwood Terrace in Kingston 8 I did not go there because I want­ed to hang out . I went there because a man I had nev­er seen report­ed a threat against his life and so we accom­pa­nied him home after tak­ing his report.
He failed to tell me the full sto­ry ‚had he been up front with me I assure you I would not have tak­en a bul­let that night and nei­ther would he.
Instead he divulged what he deemed expe­di­ent, it almost cost us both our lives.
Those sto­ries sel­dom ever gets told , yet they hap­pen every day.
It’s easy to miss the impor­tant work offi­cers do which allows peo­ple to do what they do and get on with their lives. In a coun­try like ours with all of the forces com­pet­ing for the stage of denounce­ment, it is dou­bly dif­fi­cult to find empa­thy for those who run toward the bul­lets when every­one runs for cover.

Following on what I wrote yes­ter­day I want to fol­low up with with a short syn­op­sis of what I believe is a pat­tern of sys­tem­at­ic fail­ure of the rank and file by mem­bers of the gazetted ranks. For the casu­al observ­er the mem­bers of the force who are above the rank of Inspector up to the Commissioner of police are mem­bers of the gazetted ranks .
(They are con­sid­ered civ­il ser­vants ) They are the offi­cers who wear the kha­ki-col­ored uni­forms and the black caps. Inspectors wear the kha­ki-col­ored uni­forms but wear the cap with the red band around it like the reg­u­lar cops. The Inspector Rank is by and large the bridge between the foot sol­diers and the Gazetted civ­il ser­vice officers.

As the police force has suf­fered scathing crit­i­cisms over the decades there is a cer­tain pre­dis­po­si­tion on the part of the Jamaican pop­u­lace to be for­giv­ing or even def­er­en­tial to the gazetted ranks of the force while lev­el­ing the most blis­ter­ing assault against the low­er ranks.
This par­tic­u­lar def­er­ence may very well be a part of the Jamaican cul­ture to be def­er­en­tial to peo­ple with pow­er (the big man culture).
Members of the gazetted ranks are not labeled (police bway) They are ref­er­eed to as (Supe or Boss”. They are nev­er labelled (jankru, duty police bway, licky- licky police ) you catch my drift !
Yet I have nev­er seen s**t flow upstream.

When a team fail it is always the fail­ure of lead­er­ship which must be held to account. Some say well what about not hav­ing the right players?
The quick answer to that ques­tion is who chose the play­ers? It is always a fail­ure of lead­er­ship when things go wrong . The Jamaica Constabulary Force is a case study in that sys­tem­at­ic fail­ure of leadership.

The com­mon excuse on the part of politi­cians of both polit­i­cal stripes is that what­ev­er ails the Jamaican soci­ety is the fault of the police.
The com­mon excuse on the part of the gazetted ranks of the JCF is that what­ev­er ails the soci­ety is the fault of the rank and file, not theirs.
It’s a clas­sic case of the tail wag­ging the dog syn­drome . Lets be clear there are sys­tem­at­ic and struc­tur­al prob­lems plagu­ing the police depart­ment which need finan­cial resources , how­ev­er some of those prob­lems may be addressed with a dis­ci­plined com­mon sense approach which include lead­er­ship , account­abil­i­ty and goal-ori­en­ta­tion, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly money.

(1)THE DEPARTMENT CAN START AT THE BEGINNING. 
The depart­ment sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dropped the ball for years on antecedent reports. Rather than cre­ate a cadre of offi­cers who have top clear­ance to go out and deal with antecedent (back-ground checks) reports , it relied on the sub-offi­cer in charge of the area in which the poten­tial force appli­cant resided.
The assump­tion made in using that method was that those sub-offi­cers would be in the best posi­tion to know the full and true char­ac­ter of the applicant.
The prob­lem with that assump­tion is that most of those antecedent reports by these low­er to mid­dle man­agers were done from miss Mary’s bar stool.
In the end I’m not say­ing that good qual­i­ty peo­ple weren’t recruit­ed into the force but as the Nation became more cor­rupt the pool of good qual­i­ty can­di­dates dried up.
The effects of those bar-stool antecedent reports have been very evi­dent over the last three decades.

(2)TRAINING.
The train­ing of the Island’s police offi­cers have not kept pace with the sophis­ti­ca­tion with which crime has evolved . Considering that Jamaica is one of the world’s most vio­lent and mur­der­ous nations.
The Police high com­mand does­n’t even seem to under­stand those com­plex­i­ties much less pre­pared should such a com­plex sit­u­a­tion present itself which cer­tain­ly will giv­en time.
The gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that offi­cers are unsure how to effect a sim­ple arrest. Set aside the INDECOM Act which is a dan­ger­ous crime-enhance­ment law, offi­cers are more and more less inclined to even help their col­league to secure a vio­lent sus­pect because they do not want to go through an inves­ti­ga­tion for doing exact­ly what they are sworn to do.
Simple take-down tech­niques , quick­ly secur­ing the sus­pect with swift and decid­ed author­i­ty and remov­ing the sus­pect from the hos­tile envi­ron­ment which is now wher­ev­er any group of Jamaican con­verge to watch a poten­tial arrest.
Officers who fail to assist their col­leagues in effect­ing a law­ful arrest must face severe dis­ci­pline which should include removal from the streets and retraining.

(3) SUPERVISION.
Younger offi­cers must be super­vised at all times a patrol or group of offi­cers oper­at­ing on a raid or spot check must be super­vised by a com­pe­tent sub-offi­cer or gazetted offi­cer who has street creds . The force is top heavy with kha­ki-clad offi­cers what are they occu­pied with in offices why are they not on the streets?
Police work is done on the streets , that is where they ought to be .
Whenever mem­bers of the senior corps of the force are on the streets from the rank of Inspector up I want to see them prop­er­ly armed with batons, guns and oth­er para­pher­na­lia of policing .
What is the pur­pose of the swag­ger cane or oth­er cane, and the stu­pid book in hand and no weapon? What are they there for if they are not there to do police work?

(4) TACTICS..
The police depart­ment must now devel­op a tac­ti­cal field man­u­al which specif­i­cal­ly spells out how each and every sit­u­a­tion is to be dealt with under exist­ing laws.
The JCF now has it’s own lawyers, the field com­man­ders (if the force have any com­pe­tent ones) should be called in to work with the depart­men­t’s lawyers to devel­op strate­gies with­ing exist­ing laws . Those strate­gies should then be incor­po­rat­ed into the train­ing Academy’s cur­ricu­lum and be part of each divi­sion­al and area com­mand train­ing continuüm.
If the depart­ment does not have com­pe­tent tac­ti­cal strate­gists it should seek help form peo­ple who know how. The Tivoli Gardens Inquiry should inform that deci­sion with clar­i­ty and dispatch.
Crime is an evolv­ing con­cept so too must Policing be. The police-high com­mand can­not be about fol­low­ing behind politi­cians and point­ing fin­gers at the rank and file for fail­ures which are the senior cor­p’s. On that basis the senior corp of offi­cers must meet reg­u­lar­ly to map out con­ceiv­able strate­gies on poten­tial even­tu­al­i­ties and devel­op work­able answers to those sce­nar­ios and put effec­tive plans in place to acti­vate and exe­cute said respons­es with max­i­mum alacrity and effectiveness.

(5) ACCOUNTABILITY.
If you can’t real­ly mea­sure it you can­not fix it.
The JCF Must now move to a (COMPSTAT) Computer Statistics type account­abil­i­ty and approach to crime.
Most mod­ern police depart­ments have moved to this type of polic­ing which iden­ti­fies spikes in crim­i­nal activities .
This process requires high rank­ing police depart­ment lead­ers to iden­ti­fy spikes in crimes using com­par­a­tive sta­tis­tics and address those spikes through the use of tar­get­ed enforcement.
Anything else is tan­ta­mount to a dog chas­ing it’s tail . The police depart­ment can­not be about putting out fires wher­ev­er they flare-up with­out a spe­cif­ic plan of action.
The JCF has always been a com­pla­cent low-think­ing force which falls back to it’s com­pla­cen­cy as soon as there is a lull.
There must now be an approach which includes the process of con­sol­i­da­tion on every gain.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​a​n​g​l​e​d​-​w​e​b​-​w​o​ve/

Recently the Commissioner of police addressed the issue of pro­mo­tion in response to state­ments made by Robert Montague’s Minister of National Security .
The com­mis­sion­er char­ac­ter­ized the issue as a vexed issue after the Minister cor­rect­ly said that if some­one was not pro­mot­ed then the thing to do was to call that per­son in and explain why he/​she passed the req­ui­site exams and was not promoted.
I had a good laugh at this one in par­tic­u­lar , in my day one had to be of good con­duct, pass the exam and be up to stan­dard in apply­ing first aid which was deter­mined by a writ­ten test as well as sit­ting in on actu­al first aid tech­nique sessions.
Despite those pre-req­ui­sites it was com­mon place to see younger peo­ple who just left the acad­e­my some­times who haven’t even sat an exam but sits in an office pro­mot­ed over the peo­ple work­ing their ass­es of day on night to secure the country.

This par­tic­u­lar prac­tice caused good intel­li­gent street savvy cops to exit the depart­ment while they pro­mote the polit­i­cal trolls, the incom­pe­tent news-car­ri­ers, brown-nosers, and those who slept with their boss­es to posi­tions way above their capabilities.
I con­stant­ly hear from younger offi­cers about being led by gazetted offi­cers who have zero clue about what they are doing.
Some of these lead­ers come from the sit­u­a­tions I laid out and oth­ers come from the merged ISCF.
One young man who recent­ly left the force told me of instances where the com­mand­ing offi­cer had no idea how to com­plete a charg­ing infor­ma­tion to place a sus­pect before the courts.
Those are most­ly the peo­ple exe­cut­ing polic­ing strate­gies on the Island .
Many have argued for the dis­band­ment of the JCF , I make no such argu­ment. Jamaican police offi­cer must always be Jamaicans we can do a bet­ter job with what is already there ‚it require lead­er­ship on the part of the senior corp .
Unfortunately that lead­er­ship is lack­ing because with the excep­tion of maybe a few cas­es most of the peo­ple who occu­py those posi­tions did not receive those advance­ments on mer­it and there­in lie the problem.
Stop blam­ing the young offi­cers the chick­ens have sim­ply come home to roost , it’s always the coach­es fault . Blaming the play­ers is pathet­ic and smacks of the basic inabil­i­ty to under­stand leadership.