Harold Crooks, Contributor
RECOGNISING THAT police efforts to control violent crime depends to a great degree upon community co-operation, Minister of National Security, Dr. Peter Phillips, needs to establish small 50-man police stations in select high crime communities configured to create a more lasting physical and social presence to compete with the influences generated by fear of gunmen.
It would restore confidence in the protective ability of the police; entrench a permanent influence over territory and offer one of the few realistic chances to create a lasting impact on crime control while Government long-term social crimes prevention measures takes hold.
Furthermore, since law and order issues have accompanied the deterioration of these communities, a more permanent stake-holding police presence is going to be vital to the success of efforts to rehabilitate and rebuild a greater commitment to the values of social harmony among inner-city dwellers.
Increasing the intensity and extent of transient and impersonal police/military patrols cannot achieve any of the foregoing advantages, and it is curious how the garrison mentality and military doctrines of pacification still dominate the thinking of our crime control planners causing costly and unproductive police/military patrols to scatter over the inner-city landscape and which are merely intensified during crises since they are as effective only as band-aid measures. Certainly, Minister Phillips should be able to discern what is not working by now.
In little more than a symbolic sense, the six major police garrisons/stations in the Corporate Area can be visualised as brick-walled enclaves from which patrols are dispatched into hostile territory to pacify warring tribes and protect citizens and their commercial interests.
Despite the new jargon and public relations hype, this has always represented the fundamental pillar of crime control strategy around which present tactics revolve under different guises.
Such a doctrine was developed in the Punic wars and reached its zenith in World War I. On its way to the grave, it reached the Caribbean police via the Royal Irish Constabulary and was resurrected to fill a void left by colonial police planners since Independence. In the "developed world" it is taught as history in war colleges but is still the lifeblood of strategy in police forces of the "Old Empire."
So today, the enduring vision of garrison-driven policing along with its tactical adjunct police/military patrol which failed in Northern Ireland remain at the heart of our efforts to suppress armed criminals. Such patrols are transient and impersonal in the sense that military/police personnel rotate fairly rapidly and the existence and/or frequency of these patrols are periodic due to shifting priorities. Consequently, they do not create a permanent nor a social off-duty presence of enforcement staff.
Employed as such, this method cannot win the confidence of members of the community sufficiently to win geographic ground, social space as they empty the police task of meaning and techniques so necessary to reduce, and later to displace the power, born of fear of gun/narco criminals whose influence still dominate people and territory.
What can be done?
A more permanent police presence would serve to integrate (at ground level) the many social crime prevention programmes giving the police a new face and adding another dimension to the implementation these programmes.
For example, who best to know that a recently convicted person was a recipient of training under such a programme.
It is therefore suggested that about 11 small 50-man dual purpose police stations be established in select areas in Kingston and Spanish Town. They should redirect general police service request to existing head station and focus on suppressing gun-narco criminals and provide a cluster of social service and confidence building police service to these communities which go deeper than that envisaged in the Jamaicanised version of community policing.
These stations would additionally
1) Serve as intelligence-gathering points
2) Possess the capability to suppress armed violence within their geographic area
3) Reduce response time to encircle a hotspot until other forces can then cordon and cauterise the situation and
4) Provide a cluster of select confidence-building social service policing as stated above
All of these new measures require a larger and more focused police staff dedicated to manage police operational initiatives in Kingston and Spanish Town. Rather than the present irrational dispersal of responsibilities between one deputy and two assistant commissioners of police.
This legislative agenda of the Ministry of National Security is narrow and lacks the daring and innovative necessary to craft a comprehensive law enforcement response to control violent crimes.
What is required is an integrated and all-embracing Omnibus Crime Control Act which blends past approaches with new initiatives to highlight a more focused and pro-active response. In selected circumstances the Act should shift the onus to prove onto the alleged offender reasonable allegations by the police or face convictions (similar to provisions in the Unlawful Possession of Property Tax).
The new Omnibus Crime Control Act should incorporate certain aspects of the Suppression of Crime Act; the Vagrancy Act, the repeal of which threw out the baby with the bathwater; an improved version of the laws relating to deportees with some aspects of extra-territorial legislation; a new sexual offender act copying useful elements from foreign jurisdictions such as publishing the address of released sexual predators and allowing child molesters to voluntary apply for medically induced impotence in lieu of part of a prison sentence. There is the commitment by the Government to legislate for domestic and international terrorism which should be part of the Omnibus Crime Control.
The Government also needs to create a Young Offenders Act to contain juveniles who pose a danger to society. Those released after committing certain offences should not be given bus fare and lunch money to disappear on their own as is now practised. They should also legislate for a comprehensive regime for the police to control and regulate behaviour in public spaces.
These just do not exist. The Towns and Community Act should be repealed and replaced with modern laws which can facilitate community peace and tranquillity and which should be linked with Community Councils and the Restorative Justice programme.
Harold Crooks is a former adviser to the Ministry of National Security.
