When You Attack A Police Officer Weapon Or Not, You Must Prepare To Be Shot…

As crime con­tin­ue to rise in Jamaica because of the INDECOM Act chill­ing effect on offi­cers abil­i­ty to do their job, more and more peo­ple on the streets are being extra aggres­sive and vio­lent against police officers.
Time after time we see sim­ple traf­fic stops esca­late to dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions, usu­al­ly because some­one wants to show off to bystanders who usu­al­ly play the role of agitators.

Frequently we high­light instances of Police offi­cers unlaw­ful­ly killing cit­i­zens and oth­er­wise abus­ing the rights of cit­i­zens par­tic­u­lar­ly in the United States.
Conversely we see an oppo­site sit­u­a­tion devel­op­ing in Jamaica where the Police are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly being attacked by peo­ple who have no fear of consequence.

In instance after instance we see videos of police offi­cers on the streets try­ing to do their jobs being seri­ous­ly attacked by men who sim­ply want to show bystanders that they will not sub­mit to arrest.
Officers are fac­ing seri­ous risks to their per­sons and are clear­ly hes­i­tant because they do not want to be accused of using exces­sive force.
This sit­u­a­tion is unten­able, for­get about ris­ing crime, offi­cers have absolute­ly no oblig­a­tion to be assault­ed for doing their jobs.

It is impor­tant that offi­cers under­stand that despite what the vil­lage lawyers say “an assailant does not have to have a weapon to pose seri­ous harm to an officer’.
Let me reit­er­ate, the laws guar­an­tee offi­cers the pow­er to use what­ev­er force is nec­es­sary to pro­tect their lives or that of oth­ers. That force includes but is not con­fined to lethal force.
You may shoot to kill an assailant swing­ing at you with intent to harm you,. If an assailant suc­ceeds in knock­ing an offi­cer to the ground the next step is that he will take the offi­cer’s weapon and use it on him/​her.
You are jus­ti­fied in using dead­ly force on an assailant swing­ing at you.

The Commissioner of Police is a lack­ey whose chief func­tion it appears is to issue state­ments about police offi­cers being under threat, yet he does absolute­ly noth­ing to shore up sup­port for the men and women under his com­mand who are in mor­tal dan­ger every day they go out to pro­tect the lives and prop­er­ty of others.
The Police Federation is a neutered mon­grel which yelps inces­sant­ly but has teeth of rub­ber when it counts.

The first thing the Commissioner of Police should do to pro­tect offi­cers is to ensure that as soon as an offi­cer calls for back­up rein­force­ments are there imme­di­ate­ly or with­in two to three min­utes thereafter.
There is no greater deter­rent than an assailant know­ing more cops are on the way in sec­onds and his ass will be sub­dued one way or the other.
Physical assault is nev­er far away from police offi­cers. In Jamaica it is a blood­sport, peo­ple do it so they can brag about it.
It is time that offi­cers make it clear they will not tol­er­ate attack on their per­sons irre­spec­tive of who want to inves­ti­gate or the impo­tence and incom­pe­tence of the Commissioner of Police.

If the Government does not pro­vide tasers to sub­due poten­tial assailants offi­cers should not bear that bur­den through their shed blood.
Officers should nev­er abuse the rights of cit­i­zens how­ev­er if a sus­pect attacks an offi­cer he/​she must nev­er hes­i­tate to use their weapon. Whether or not the assailant is armed. Use the weapon you are giv­en, shoot to kill, period.
This lev­el of law­less­ness has sim­ply got to stop.