The Police Did What?

As news emerged that a bunch of police offi­cers may be arrest­ed soon for alleged breach­es of the law new infor­ma­tion sur­faced that police offi­cers from one of the branch­es of the force actu­al­ly accost­ed the men who assas­si­nat­ed busi­ness­man Richard Ramdial last Tuesday at around 4: 30 pm and released them.
According to Élan Powell Assistant Commissioner of Police with respon­si­bil­i­ty for crime “at the time, the cops were sat­is­fied that the men were clear, hav­ing searched them and checked their hands for gun pow­der residue”.
Shockingly, Powell says the vehi­cle was stopped after the police con­trol broad­cast a radio trans­mis­sion detail­ing the get­away car and its license plate number.
If you are in shock at read­ing this so am I from hear­ing it.

Having policed the streets of Kingston and oth­er towns and vil­lages with some of the very best anti-crime offi­cers any­where in the world I have tried to give the offi­cers in the case the ben­e­fit of the doubt.
I have tried plac­ing myself in their shoes and mulled the sce­nario as it may have occurred over and over in my head and I can­not find a sin­gle rea­son or sit­u­a­tion in which this would have hap­pened on my watch.

Whether it’s Bigga Ford or Parra Campbell, Dadrick Henry or Mckinnis, Allan Campbell or Little Wicked I can­not imag­ine any of these anti-crime cops stop­ping a car in which the plates on the vehi­cle match­es one from police dis­patch and the occu­pants are released.
Jamaican cops are par­tic­u­lar­ly hes­i­tant about get­ting involved, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it relates to the deten­tion of suspects.
With the traps and snares the gov­ern­ment placed in their way, I total­ly under­stand their appre­hen­sion about putting them­selves in legal jeopardy.

Because of the INDECOM Act, police offi­cers have to be dou­bly sure that they are 100% inhu­man­ly per­fect and cor­rect before and dur­ing their inter­ac­tion with even the most vio­lent and dan­ger­ous criminals.
In this case, how­ev­er, offi­cers on the streets respond­ing to infor­ma­tion put out by dis­patch is pro­tect­ed from lia­bil­i­ty because they are act­ing on infor­ma­tion from the con­trol room.

Set aside those con­cerns. The most con­se­quen­tial state­ment Powell made is that the offi­cers took it upon them­selves to car­ry out an arcane field test for gun­pow­der residue on the hands of the sus­pects before releas­ing them.
Powell the man tasked with han­dling the nation’s crime was nev­er a crime fight­er him­self but I want to be fair to him in this even though the ridicu­lous nature of the police sto­ry begs derision.

I was not aware that the police had the means to do field tests for gun­pow­der residue? I guess as far as the offi­cers are con­cerned the sus­pects passed the smell test[sic].
It is not every day that killers get appre­hend­ed min­utes after they kill. If the alle­ga­tions, in this case, are true, it makes it dou­bly dis­tress­ing that these men were released.

If the plates matched that giv­en by police dis­patch under no cir­cum­stances could the police ratio­nal­ly release the occu­pants of the car regard­less of who they are, what they had or did not have.
The most fun­da­men­tal piece of infor­ma­tion giv­en to the police was the plate num­ber. As a for­mer Investigator, I can tell you there are far too many changes which could have occurred between the time mis­ter Ramdial was gunned down and the car was stopped.
Regardless of weapons, gun­pow­der, or any oth­er excul­pa­to­ry fac­tor with the occu­pants of that par­tic­u­lar car they were not going any­where were I in the shoes of these officers.

So we are left with a sit­u­a­tion in which a few things comes to mind. In the first instance.
(1) Corruption in the mind of the anti-police trolls.
Hard to make that case as time and the sever­i­ty of the crime mil­i­tate against this. Possible yes prob­a­ble no.
(2)Incompetence. Possibly yes.
(3) Too col­le­giate? Possibly.
(4) Too timid and afraid? Highly Possibly.

No mat­ter how you slice this, if the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed is true this is sim­ply one of the most bone­head­ed occur­rences to ever hap­pen in the JCF. This is only one more log on the fire of dis­con­tent and dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
These are unforced errors which the JCF sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to use to beat itself.
For years the JCF has done a shit­ty job of recruit­ment, back­ground checks, spot­ting and root­ing out bad appli­cants to the agency.
Yes, the Jamaican soci­ety is as cor­rupt as most oth­er coun­tries, offi­cers have to come from that dirty pool. It can­not be ignored how­ev­er that the awe­some pow­er giv­en to the poor­est peo­ple would gar­ner immense scrutiny.

The incred­i­ble incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion dis­played by far too many in the JCF have caused even some who served to become crit­ics at large.
The truth is they knew they were no good yet they were able to get in.
Now they are the most vocal crit­ics of the force. Such is it when the agency allows itself time and again to be the Barney Fyffe of law enforcement.
The worse of the worse have much to say.

I’ll await the out­come of Élan Powell’s investigations.