The Tangled Web They Wove…

My friend brought to my attention this morning the comments of Dr Carl Williams Commissioner of Police as he addressed the 73^rd Annual Joint Central Conferences of the Jamaica Police Federation at the Hilton Rose Hall Resort and Spa in St James on Wednesday.

Said Dr Williams : “People who have sat their exams and who have passed should be con­sid­ered before we add more peo­ple to the pool”.
Isn’t he the Commissioner of Police?
Anyway !

The Commissioner of Police was respond­ing to the can­did asser­tions put forth by the Minister of National Security Robert Montague. Montague said “There must be a sys­tem where after you have passed your exams and you don’t get pro­mot­ed after a peri­od, the per­son must be called in and told what are their faults, or short­com­ings,”.
Hmm ‚oh well that’s a nov­el idea[sic].
It was then that the Commissioner revealed that of all per­sons who have request­ed to see him, about 95 per cent of the issues have to do with promotion.
No s**t , why is that such a “vexed issue”, in your opin­ion Commissioner ‚to bor­row your term?

Anyway the good­ly Commissioner of Police went on to say ‚“As the min­is­ter said, it is unfair for peo­ple who have done their exams to come back and do it again. And that is why no exams have tak­en place this year, because we have to ensure that no oth­er bright stars come and get 98 per cent and eclipse all the good hard-work­ing stal­warts who have been wait­ing for a long time,”.
Really Commissioner Williams, when did you receive this epiphany?
This has been an age old prob­lem, a “vexed issue”, long before you joined the depart­ment, your obser­va­tion would have been legit­i­mate had you made them from the time you joined up to the rank of deputy com­mis­sion­er but once you occu­py the big office you have lost that right to criticize.
What have you done about it , the buck stops with you?

There has nev­er been a bet­ter or pur­er sys­tem of pro­mot­ing peo­ple to lead­er­ship posi­tions than a mer­it-based-sys­tem.
Advancing peo­ple using any oth­er met­ric is bound to end up with dis­as­trous consequences.
Nepotism, who you know, polit­i­cal hench­men, brown-nos­ing, news car­ry­ing, sleep­ing with the boss and reduc­ing them­selves to yard-boys have been only a few of the qual­i­ties nec­es­sary for advance­ments in the JCF.
The hard work­ing stal­warts and those with abil­i­ties to crit­i­cal think were nev­er endear­ing qual­i­ties with­in the JCF.

The JCF has an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high attri­tion rate, there are sev­er­al fac­tors which are con­tribut­ing that race for the door. Top of the list are poor remu­ner­a­tions, lack of advance­ment which could poten­tial­ly com­pen­sate for poor remu­ner­a­tions, lack of sup­port leg­isla­tive­ly and polit­i­cal among others.
As a past mem­ber who actu­al­ly exit­ed the depart­ment after only ten years I under­stood quite well those chal­lenges and still today have a serv­ing mem­ber of my fam­i­ly who has been stuck at the rank of sergeant for over 15 years. Recently I asked him why do you stay in such an ungrate­ful agency , risk­ing your life for such an ingrate population ?
He shrugged and smiled.

Over the years I argued that the Jamaican peo­ple deserved a big­ger bang than that which they get for their buck. I believed then that the nation deserved to get more for the mon­ey it puts into train­ing offi­cers only to see them snapped up by oth­er nations and their police depart­ments where they shine with exem­plary brilliance.
Today I do not make the same argu­ments , I believe the nation deserves what it gets. There is no respect for the rule of law. There is too much active sup­port for crim­i­nals. There are too many peo­ple who are will­ing to side with crim­i­nals, includ­ing the judges whose jobs it is to put crim­i­nals in prison.
On that basis I active­ly sup­port mem­bers of the JCF leav­ing as I did, so they may secure a future and live out their dreams as so many for­mer offi­cers of the depart­ment has done.
I am yet to deter­mine whether there has been an audit done to deter­mine the cost of train­ing an offi­cer only to see so many of them head for the door.
If some of the struc­tur­al breach­es are plugged maybe ‚just maybe the attri­tion rate may be reduced.

MERGER

Some of the struc­tur­al issues plagu­ing the depart­ment are of the depart­men­t’s own cre­ation. I broach this sub­ject with the great­est of sen­si­tiv­i­ty and caution.
I know many of our com­rades from the for­mer Island spe­cial con­stab­u­lary are some of the finest pro­fes­sion­als, hard work­ing and dedicated.
With that said it would be naïve to assume that mere­ly bring­ing the ISCF into the JCF pure­ly for numer­i­cal rea­sons would not have neg­a­tive con­se­quences, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the JCF was unpre­pared to retrain them.

Let me has­ten to say that a large num­ber of can­di­dates who served and are still serv­ing in the JCF who were nev­er mem­bers of the ISCF were them­selves sub-stan­dard candidates.
I make this com­ment with the great­est of respect for the ser­vice of the mem­bers of the for­mer ISCF.
Bringing over to the JCF the mem­bers of the ISCF with­out retrain­ing, and fur­ther­more allow­ing them to main­tain the rank they had was anoth­er move which Stevie Wonder could have seen would have had dis­as­trous con­se­quences ‚the least of which is the pro­mo­tion log-jam which that ill-informed aspect of the merg­er exacerbated.

Regardless of one’s emo­tion­al lean­ing on this, the prac­ti­cal ques­tion remain­ing is whether it was a pru­dent move to bring offi­cers of the Auxiliary and make them super­vi­sors in the reg­u­lar force?
Simply put it amounts to the tail wag­ging the dog. Every mem­ber of the ISCF who wished to join the JCF should have been offered the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go to the train­ing acad­e­my and qual­i­fy to be a reg­u­lar police offi­cer, fail­ing which they should have been giv­en a sev­er­ance pay and allowed to go their way.
It would not have been the first time that a set of work­ers were told their ser­vices as it exist were no longer needed.
Good busi­ness deci­sions should nev­er hinge on loy­al­ty to or emo­tion­al attachments.
At the time of the merg­er I remained silent because I did not want to be accused of advo­cat­ing for peo­ple los­ing their jobs because of any num­ber of dredged up reasons.
Regardless, I opined to close friends that doing a merg­er pure­ly for the sake of numer­i­cal strength con­flict­ed with the forces stat­ed goal of modernization.
The chick­ens are sim­ply com­ing home to roost.