The JCF Continue To Demonstrate That It Is Not Up To The Task…

Thanks to the advent of the inter­net, voic­es that were pre­vi­ous­ly silenced are now the loud­est. People who hith­er­to had no way of get­ting their views heard, are now read all over the world. Credible research infor­ma­tion is just a click away.
The ben­e­fit that those pos­si­bil­i­ties present are incal­cu­la­ble, all in all, no one can claim with any degree of cred­i­bil­i­ty, that before they made cru­cial deci­sions, they were unable to access good and cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion or data on a giv­en subject.
Today’s JCF seems to be about pos­tur­ing, form over sub­stance, a nev­er-end­ing crab in a bar­rel fight to be promoted.
I under­stand the need to fight to be pro­mot­ed with­in the exist­ing JCF con­struct. After all, when a slight pay increase is tied to a high­er rank it is incon­ceiv­able that this race to the top would not result.
Unfortunately, in this mad rush to the top, the focus is not on polic­ing where it ought to be. For years I have sug­gest­ed a senior­i­ty sys­tem that guar­an­tees senior­i­ty pay that is not tied to promotions.
Additionally, pay­ing police offi­cers for over­time work is also anoth­er way in which offi­cers could begin to improve their earn­ings. That process would ease the stress on the pro­mo­tion process, more impor­tant­ly, it would reduce, if not elim­i­nate, some aspects of police corruption.

Over the years I have writ­ten hun­dreds of arti­cles in sup­port of the rule of law in Jamaica. Among those arti­cles are some that sim­ply sup­port the rule of law, and by exten­sion our police officers.
In oth­ers, I have been crit­i­cal of the tac­tics, poli­cies, and fail­ures of the force. During my ten-year stint in the force, those who knew me will recall that I had zero tol­er­ance for medi­oc­rity. As such I have felt oblig­at­ed to call out indi­vid­ual offi­cers for what I per­ceived to be incom­pe­tence and or cor­rup­tion. That too in my hum­ble opin­ion, is a con­tri­bu­tion to the JCF and by exten­sion the coun­try at large. An incom­pe­tent police force is no good for anyone.
A police force that can­not ful­fill its man­date can­not be a dump­ing ground for peo­ple who can­not find jobs or cut it in the pri­vate sec­tor or oth­er areas of the pub­lic sector.
By objec­tive­ly hold­ing every­one’s feet to the fire I sub­mit, we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to build a bet­ter country.
From the start, I under­stood the very dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that much of what I wrote would only be rel­e­vant as a his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence point, as opposed to being a tem­plate that the JCF would find use­ful in help­ing itself become a more pro­fes­sion­al and effec­tive agency.

I want to address today, the con­tin­ued inep­ti­tude of the JCF, and it’s per­sis­tent inabil­i­ty to present itself as a cred­i­ble intel­li­gence-dri­ven law-enforce­ment agency.
An intel­li­gence-led JCF would pos­sess the capa­bil­i­ty to ensure that those pre­dis­posed to using mur­der­ous scare tac­tics to usurp the crim­i­nal jus­tice process would fear, and have sec­ond thoughts about using vio­lence, or the threat of vio­lence, on those who would step for­ward to tes­ti­fy against them.
There is no greater threat to the safe­ty, sta­bil­i­ty, and secu­ri­ty of a nation, than the abil­i­ty of crim­i­nal net­works to use vio­lence, or the threat of vio­lence, to keep oth­ers from tes­ti­fy­ing in a court of law.
Allowing this to hap­pen is bow­ing to terrorism.
Make no mis­take about it, those who kill their fel­low coun­try­men, then use mur­der as a scare tac­tic to pre­vent wit­ness­es from tes­ti­fy­ing against them are indeed domes­tic terrorists.
They must be treat­ed as such. And so the nation needs a strong, com­pe­tent law enforce­ment agency that is up to the task.

I believe that even among my great­est detrac­tors, there is hard­ly a cred­i­ble argu­ment to be made that the JCF has pro­gressed to the point where it is equal to the task of effec­tive­ly deal­ing with the rag-tag- crim­i­nals oper­at­ing on the Island. Are they suf­fi­cient­ly being mon­i­tored, or remote­ly con­cerned about the con­se­quences the JCF could exact on their oper­a­tions? I think not.
I under­stand the real­i­ties fac­ing the agency. There are crim­i­nals among the elect­ed offi­cials, I get that. There is crim­i­nal sup­port in gov­ern­ment agen­cies, I get that. There is sup­port for crim­i­nals cul­tur­al­ly, I get that.
There is sup­port for crim­i­nals in the judi­cia­ry, I get that. And yes, there is sup­port for crim­i­nals across the broad­er soci­ety, I get that too.
But by God, none of that pre­vents the JCF from being a capa­ble agency that is com­pe­tent respect­ed, and feared, not for its bru­tal­i­ty but for its effectiveness.

No police agency can total­ly pro­tect all of its mem­bers form being attacked, injured, and even killed. But when a police agency is unable to find the shoot­er who just shot and killed an offi­cer sim­ply because he ran around a cor­ner, that agency has problems.
Recent, and pre­vi­ous attacks on mem­bers of the JCF with­out a sin­gle arrest has demon­strat­ed that the JCF is fly­ing blind.
An Agency that can­not pro­tect its own mem­bers can­not make the claim that it can pro­tect a nation.
Those are the hard truths.
There are ways that each and every vio­lent crim­i­nal that pass­es through the sys­tem can be mon­i­tored and kept in check. That is not to say that they will not be able to com­mit more crimes, what it means is that when they do, the agency will know what it is that they did, and will find them quick­ly and hold them accountable.

An Agency that is tasked with the secu­ri­ty of a nation, sim­ply can­not oper­ate as a stop-clock. Even with the best strate­gies in mind, mon­i­tor­ing, and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, data pro­cess­ing, and dis­sem­i­na­tion are crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing an edge in secur­ing the country.
Police agen­cies can no longer oper­ate in the dark, intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and data col­lec­tion, are fun­da­men­tal­ly crit­i­cal to mod­ern polic­ing, not large guns and show of force, even though those too have a place.
Simply react­ing to a piece of intel­li­gence is not intel­li­gence-dri­ven policing.
The intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing must be con­tin­u­ous, it must be dri­ven towards a pur­pose and the data derived must be col­lat­ed towards the strate­gic exe­cu­tion of well thought out strategies.
If the JCF is doing this we can­not see it. Members still con­tin­ue to be shot and at best the JCF can only guess as to who is behind the attacks, if they even both­er to think about those attacks.
The JCF still con­tin­ues to be an out­dat­ed reac­tive force, and that is the bot­tom line. The fail­ings of the force are not with the rank and file, they rest sole­ly on the inabil­i­ty of its lead­er­ship to step up and do the job they were appoint­ed to do.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
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