So often, I write on the subject of Jamaican police’s lack of training that I sound like a broken record. Many of my former colleagues have said it is a lost cause; many argue that the force is beyond repair, even as politicians, prognosticators, and pontificators tell us about the new JCF and how courteous officers have become.
It is as if a well-trained, professional, competent, and courteous police department is mutually exclusive. Having consumed the cool-aid thrown into the well of the Jamaican ecosystem by Carolyn Gomez, Terrence Williams, and Horace Levy, and others, we now have a country that believes the Government’s first responsibility is to protect criminals, not law-abiding Jamaicans.
The Police department has been repurposed to fit that new belief, and now we have a police department that is completely clueless and inept, incapable of attacking criminality in our country in a way that makes criminals rethink committing crimes.
The JCF has become a dumping ground for posers and self-absorbed individuals who are singularly focused on what they can get from the JCF, not how they can contribute.
The images speak for themselves; officers are not exhibiting training in subduing offenders or esprit d corps the universal code of officers looking out for the safety of other officers. Either they are not trained in the aforementioned, or they are too afraid of the system criminalizing them for doing their jobs. This is exactly what Carolyn Gomez, Horace Levy, and Terrence Williams wanted to see in their campaign to neuter the police force completely. They have succeeded beyond their own imaginations.
This is not an individual act of carelessness, cowardice, or incompetence by an officer. It runs deeper; it smacks of carelessness, cowardice, and incompetence, but we see this kind of behavior from officers all the time. Officers are socialized to believe that when a colleague is committed to an arrest, it is up to them to effectuate that arrest.
This male officer is the worst iteration of what is wrong with the JCF. Separate and apart from the fact that it is an officer’s responsibility to assist in subduing and cuffing a suspect, it is outrageous that a male officer would stand around while a female colleague is wrestling to bring a suspect under control, male or female.
This male cop is garbage and a liability to the security of his colleagues; trust me, I know I worked with cops who ran away while I was shot and bleeding.
Even though this female officer was resolute and did not allow the suspect to overwhelm her, her lack of training was evident. She should have taken the suspect to the ground and subdued her. Officers have no responsibility to protect a suspect who has decided to fight with them. As a young constable doing the beats in downtown Kingston, a woman did exactly what the woman in these videos did to this female officer, to me.
I guarantee that woman never contemplated ever doing that to another police officer; even more commendable, the judge, having heard the evidence of what she did, made an example of her.
Of course, that was when we had anti-crime judges in our country. It is hard to distinguish judges today from criminals based on their rulings, but that is a different conversation for another day.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.