Wayne Cameron, Head And Shoulders Above Others..

Some mem­bers of the pub­lic have called for the dis­band­ment of the force, in fact, even Renetto Adams has called for the dis­band­ment of the depart­ment.
Me, I believe in no such non­sense. Those propos­ing the dis­band­ment of the depart­ment, includ­ing some sup­posed intel­lec­tu­als suf­fer­ing from over-inflat­ed egos, fail to under­stand that the chal­lenges the police face are soci­etal issues which can hard­ly be laid at the feet of the police.
I nev­er per­son­al­ly liked most of the senior offi­cers with whom I inter­act­ed dur­ing my brief 10-year stint.
I thought they were gen­er­al­ly poor man­agers who believed in chew­ing out their juniors in pub­lic and begrudg­ing their suc­cess­es.
They were gen­er­al­ly polit­i­cal hacks who kissed the ass­es of the politi­cians in the par­ty of their choice.
Additionally, the senior corps of the con­stab­u­lary has been more focused on being puni­tive to their sub­or­di­nates than teach­ing and guid­ing them in prepa­ra­tion for ser­vice, or work­ing on strate­gies aimed at elim­i­nat­ing crime in their areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty.
More than any­thing else in my esti­ma­tion, the senior offi­cers of the JCF have been a cow­ard­ly bunch of hacks who wilt and with­er away at the slight­est con­tro­ver­sy leav­ing their sub­or­di­nates to face the music unsup­port­ed.
At the time I decid­ed to leave the depart­ment my opin­ion of them was some­where in the sin­gle dig­its and dete­ri­o­rat­ing fast.

I guess by now you do get that I had/​have scant regard for the lead­er­ship of the force. That does not mean that the JCF has not had exem­plary offi­cers over the years. I was a big fan of for­mer SSP Bailey, who once led the Ranger Squad, a true moti­va­tion­al leader and despite his faults, Noël Asphall was a leader who made you want to go the extra mile.
Today not much has changed since I left the depart­ment, except that the lead­er­ship of the force may be a tad more edu­cat­ed. Unfortunately, the ben­e­fits of their edu­ca­tion have not shown up in the stat sheets, so sure­ly the edu­ca­tion they earned seems to be for self and brag­ging rights.
Fish rots from the head so if we dis­card the non­sense that the police is inept because the police are inher­ent­ly cor­rupt. Or that the police are even close­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what is wrong in our coun­try, we may be able to rec­og­nize that the police is only a small sam­pling of a soci­ety that is inher­ent­ly cor­rupt and dys­func­tion­al.
If we tune out the noise and face that fact that our coun­try has been a pre­ten­tious place for a long time, and that we do have a cor­rup­tion prob­lem, we may begin the hard work of turn­ing around our country.

One of the endur­ing qual­i­ties of lead­er­ship is the abil­i­ty of those in posi­tions of lead­er­ship to be able to moti­vate those whom they super­vise.
Leadership is not about boss­ing around and embar­rass­ing sub­or­di­nates.
It is about prais­ing pub­licly and chastis­ing pri­vate­ly. Those ele­ments are virtues which have elud­ed the lead­er­ship over the years. More and more they become stick­lers look­ing for trans­gres­sions of the archa­ic JCF Act with which to pun­ish and sub­se­quent­ly hold down their juniors.
As a con­se­quence, the rank and file have basi­cal­ly giv­en up. Faced with the twin pres­sures of deal­ing with the chal­lenges of the job on the streets and pro­tect­ing their safe­ty, while con­tend­ing with the nit­pick­ing over­lords in the depart­ment once they return from the streets.
This dual sided pres­sure has wrought undue harm and psy­cho­log­i­cal dam­age to the rank and file result­ing in mis­takes, hes­i­tan­cy, and a gen­er­al lack of con­fi­dence in the way they exe­cute their duties.
Other pres­sure points from oth­er Government agen­cies which have added addi­tion­al undue stress to a rather shit­ty job to begin with, has result­ed fur­ther in one of the high­est attri­tion rates of any police depart­ment any­where in the world. Except in parts of Mexico where some depart­ments have seen offi­cers drop­ping arms and walk­ing away in sur­ren­der to the drug cartels.

A GLIMMER OF HOPE

As I said before, my dis­dain for the lead­er­ship of the JCF though pal­pa­ble, does not mean that there are no good senior offi­cers in the depart­ment.
And I want to speak briefly to one such offi­cer who exem­pli­fies some of the qual­i­ties which ought to be the rule rather than the excep­tion in the (JCF).
The recent viral encounter in which a bus dri­ver in Spalding Manchester vicious­ly attacked a uni­formed police offi­cer was a sem­i­nal moment for the rule of law in our coun­try.
That one inci­dent revealed some struc­tur­al flaws which exist in the body politic. These are hav­ing dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for our very small and eas­i­ly man­aged country.

(1) Both Prime Minister Andrew Holness, and Peter Phillips the oppo­si­tion leader saw that vio­lent attack on a police offi­cer last week in Spalding Manchester.
Additionally, anoth­er offi­cer was attacked and shot in a sep­a­rate inci­dent as he sat in his car, he was hit sev­er­al times.
He valiant­ly fought off his attack­ers, though seri­ous­ly wound­ed.
He is still in very seri­ous con­di­tion in hos­pi­tal.
To date, nei­ther of the two pathet­ic lit­tle men seized on the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reaf­firm the need for, and their com­mit­ment to the rule of law.
Jamaica is NOT a par­adise as they would have you believe.
Crime is out of con­trol, it ben­e­fits both polit­i­cal par­ties. That is the rea­son bla­tant attacks on police offi­cers elic­its death­ly silence from both polit­i­cal lead­ers and their polit­i­cal parties.

(2) Those of you who saw the inci­dent also wit­nessed a lying bas­tard nar­rate a full sequence of the events. The only prob­lem was that it was all lies aimed at incrim­i­nat­ing the offi­cers and absolv­ing the attack­er of crim­i­nal cul­pa­bil­i­ty.
Conscientious observers who care about fair­ness and the rule of law, would be hard pressed not to think that this is a pat­tern which has unjust­ly incrim­i­nat­ed untold police offi­cers. Many of whom han­dled them­selves exact­ly as they were trained to do and was incrim­i­nat­ed on fraud­u­lent tes­ti­mo­ny, the likes of what we saw from that sup­posed wit­ness.
As a for­mer police offi­cer, I can tell you that most of those accounts are exact­ly false and concocted.

(3) The offi­cer dis­played cool tem­pera­ment despite the ver­bal onslaught and the ges­tic­u­la­tion from the bus dri­ver, even as the crowd egged the stu­pid dri­ver to attack him.
I can tell you with­out equiv­o­ca­tion that I would not have act­ed as calm and patient as he did. The minute he start­ed ges­tic­u­lat­ing and ver­bal­ly assault­ing me he would have been tak­en down and cuffed.

(4) After the inci­dent occurred, the com­mand­ing offi­cer for the Parish, Superintendent Wayne Cameron, did some­thing which has been miss­ing from Jamaican polic­ing.
That senior offi­cer did not run away and hide, hop­ing that if there were ques­tions he would be shield­ed from the media glare.
He stepped for­ward and made it abun­dant­ly clear that those who would attack his offi­cers should rethink their strat­e­gy as offi­cers would not be back­ing down.
Cameron’s stead­fast stance was refresh­ing not just for the offi­cers under his com­mand, but for the rule of law across the coun­try.
Superintendent Cameron’s unwa­ver­ing sup­port for the offi­cers under his com­mand is the kind of lead­er­ship which is lack­ing across the entire law enforce­ment spec­trum. It ought to be the rule, yet sad­ly, it is the excep­tion and sub­se­quent­ly, the law-abid­ing peo­ple of Jamaica pay the price for it.

None of the cow­ard­ly senior offi­cers in the Department, from the Commissioner on down, had a word of praise for the offi­cer.
None sought to use the inci­dent to speak to the coun­try on the virtues of adher­ing to the rule of law.
Sadly, there is zero day­light between the pathet­ic polit­i­cal lead­er­ship and the cow­ardice which heads the (JCF).
All in all the crim­i­nal sup­port­ing polit­i­cal par­ties and the spine­less bootlick­ing senior lead­er­ship of the JCF, has demon­strat­ed that they are incom­pe­tent and unde­serv­ing of the posi­tions they hold.
It is time for bet­ter and more capa­ble lead­er­ship in the (JCF).
If they were seri­ous about real lead­er­ship and the erad­i­ca­tion of crime they would look no fur­ther than the parish of Manchester and place Wayne Cameron in that lead­er­ship chair at 103 Old Hope Road.
We would begin to see some real lead­er­ship on crime in our country.

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