Without Revolutionary Change George Quallo Will Be Just Another Former Commissioner…

I understand the need to have someone competent to sit in the big chair , keep the seat warm until someone suitable can be found to fill it on a longer term basis.
Where I’m stuck is , if I’m good enough to occupy the chair for 90 days or for whatever period , why can’t I be the person getting the job for the longer period?

Over the life of the JCF the Agency has had two qual­i­fied female (DCP’s) Deputy Commissioners of Police sit in the big chair, while the pow­ers vest­ed with the Authority to source a Commissioner sup­pos­ed­ly con­duct­ed their search .
To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion Jevene Bent was asked to act in the capac­i­ty of Commissioner twice while a search was con­duct­ed , on both accounts she was overlooked .

Recently Novelette Grant was asked to act in the capac­i­ty of Commissioner of Police for 90 days while a search was con­duct­ed for a replace­ment for Carl Williams whom was report­ed to have opt­ed for ear­ly retirement.
That search con­clud­ed and even though Novelette Grant is immi­nent­ly qual­i­fied she too was overlooked .
This is not new how­ev­er as men have been asked to act and have been over­looked as well.
The last being DCP Glenmore Hines. One start to get the feel­ing they know the com­pe­tence of the per­son asked to act, but those Temporary com­mis­sion­ers just don’t quite fit the pushover bill.
You know what I mean, they haven’t passed the lap­dog test.

Whether Williams was pushed ‚or the stag­ger­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics forced him to face facts we may nev­er know.
What we do know is that Williams is no fool , he was a career police­man who came up through the ranks and earned a PhD in the process.
Clearly from the van­tage point of Commissioner he must have had a come to Jesus rev­e­la­tion that no mat­ter how edu­cat­ed and savvy a Commissioner is he will only dam­age his record serv­ing in that capac­i­ty in Jamaica, a place built to fos­ter and pro­mote crime and dysfunction.

In most Military and para mil­i­tary insti­tu­tions peo­ple take ear­ly retire­ment when they have been passed over for a pro­mo­tion after being asked to act.
They also retire if they have lost a key com­mand. It hard­ly make sense to con­tin­ue when you have clear­ly reached the zenith of your career.
Both Jevene Bent and Novelette Grant have giv­en long and ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice to their coun­try and I wish them both well.

I must say that I often look at the JCF today and smile a lit­tle smile to myself . It is exact­ly what I thought it would be when I took the deci­sion to just walk away after a mere ten years service.
I had passed every test they had and was pro­mot­ed cor­po­ral. I had being on CIB course. I had been one of the few offi­cers who qual­i­fied for accel­er­at­ed pro­mo­tions but was passed over because I was nobody’s lap dog.
I knew that my sharp tongue and hard-nosed desire for excel­lence would not sit well in the JCF .
I took an ear­ly exit.
That deci­sion was one of the best deci­sions of my life.

Quallo

I don’t know the new­ly appoint­ed Commissioner of Police George Quallo beyond the fact that he joined the force in 1976 and he is now on his 41^st year of ser­vice to the JCF.
One of the lit­tle things which just seemed to be quite obvi­ous but no one is talk­ing about with this pick is that there is no PhD beside his name.
I men­tion this with­in the con­text of the pop­u­lar per­cep­tions which has fes­tered over the decades that there needs to be a cer­tain type of Police offi­cer lead­ing the force.
So they twice tin­kered with the top job by bring­ing in two Former Military peo­ple to head the Agency. Those for­ays were colos­sal failures.
Then they switched and brought in a PhD , noth­ing wrong with that either, at least he was a cop.

Now it seem they have decid­ed to go back to a cop.
A cop’s cop.
Someone who knows the grit and grind of the Island’s polic­ing needs.
Whether George Quallo is that per­son is yet to be seen.
I have long main­tained that being top cop or even a good cop does not require a PhD. It requires a cop not a lawyer, not a Business major , it requires a cop.

That a can­di­date for Commissioner of Police, or police offi­cer of any oth­er posi­tion has a PhD or oth­er Degree is icing on the cake ‚not the cake itself.
Being a good cop requires a whole lot more.
Don’t for one minute buy into the sil­ly notion that it doesn’t .
Former NYPD Commissioner Bratton is the mold of what a cops cop ought to be .
A Masters Degree in Business Management is great for busi­ness man­age­ment. A PhD in strate­gic plan­ning is great and all, but how does that trans­late into polic­ing Jamaica’s unique crime situation?
Former Commissioner of Police Carl Williams by all account was a good and decent man. Supremely edu­cat­ed yet he bowed out or was forced out early.
Clearly he must have rec­og­nized that the task he was giv­en was an impos­si­ble one. He must have seen that with one hand they claimed they want­ed him to curb crime but on the oth­er they were erect­ing bar­ri­cades to his abil­i­ty to do his job. He won’t even come out and say so but we know the score.

What is evi­dent is that the spi­ral­ing homi­cide rate has now pan­icked those who are tasked with select­ing a com­mis­sion­er of police to actu­al­ly take a seri­ous look at a cops cop ‚and tap him for the top job.
What is not clear is whether Quallo has the grav­i­tas and the abil­i­ty to moti­vate the good offi­cers under his command .
Root out dirty cops who con­tin­ue to besmirch the name of the Agency.
And defend the good offi­cers who go out day in day out and place their lives on the line for an ungrate­ful, crim­i­nal­ly-com­plic­it and cor­rupt people.

Crime in Jamaica is not unman­age­able or out­side the capa­bil­i­ties of the JCF.
The issue keep­ing crime at the lev­els they are is Government inter­fer­ence in law enforcement.
The idea of checks and bal­ances is cocka­mamie in Jamaica .“Sure there are checks against the police doing an effec­tive job that’s why they gave the coun­try INDECOM.

If Andrew Holness breaks the law will the Police go up to Jamaica House and bring him out in handcuffs?
If Peter Phillips breaks the laws will the police go to his house and arrest him?
The answer is a resound­ing no !!!
Is there any mys­tery to why the aver­age per­son on the streets break the nation’s laws with impunity?
If those with pow­er can­not be arrest­ed what is to keep them from abus­ing the laws?

Now do you see why we have this spi­ral­ing crime rate?
If you have every served in law enforce­ment in Jamaica you know that the nation’s crime rate can­not be altered with­out stiffer laws , less or zero polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, and Government get­ting out of the way.
Jamaica needs an atti­tu­di­nal change , a change in men­tal­i­ty which says you can­not sim­ply take some­thing which does not belong to you because you are poor.
Over the years that men­tal­i­ty has exac­er­bat­ed the crime prob­lem expo­nen­tial­ly .Poverty has become the excuse for all things criminal.
There is a gen­er­al belief that a per­son with mon­ey and prop­er­ty is an ene­my to be exploit­ed and killed .
Anyone can sim­ply build struc­tures on prop­er­ty they do not own and they are excused because they are poor. They then steal elec­tric­i­ty, water and what­ev­er else they chose. With that mind­set where is the desire to achieve through excellence?
This has hap­pened across Administrations of both polit­i­cal parties.

Governments have aid­ed and abet­ted in this mea­sure . It helps to absolve them, enables them to renege on their promis­es of ser­vice and their core respon­si­bil­i­ty to per­form up to standard.
As a con­se­quence we end­ed up with a gen­er­a­tion which believes hard work is too hard . A gen­er­a­tion who believes get­ting their hands dirty is beneath them.
A Generation which has no prob­lem how­ev­er get­ting bloody hands to eat. Just no earth under their fingernails.

How can they not be that way when we have a Government which apol­o­gizes to crim­i­nals for flout­ing the laws. Compensates them for burn­ing police sta­tions and killing sol­diers and police officers?
A gov­ern­ment which wants to pay off Rastafarians for killing police offi­cers in 1962 in St James.
Rastafarians who by the way were liv­ing on cap­tured lands.

This has been the foun­da­tion laid by the Island’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship of both polit­i­cal parties.
Two polit­i­cal par­ties which in my esti­ma­tion ought to be dis­band­ed and the lead­ers thrown in jail for incom­pe­tence , cor­rup­tion and gross dere­lic­tion of duty.
It is to this quag­mire that George Quallo comes to fail.
They do not want a crime free coun­try , every police offi­cer I have spo­ken to over the years knows it .
In order to have change in Jamaica there must be a rev­o­lu­tion­ary depar­ture from the sta­tus quo.
We are sim­ply not there.