Commentary

Police Commissioner Owen Ellington spoke a truism in his remark last week that the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) could not continue with the kind of indiscipline so often displayed by its members and which has lost so much trust and confidence among the Jamaican people.

Indeed, were things not to change, the JCF would descend deeper into being the kind of unchecked paramilitary force, whose members would act with impunity, with no one being held accountable for incidents such as the recent one in Buckfield, St Ann. This kind of stuff tends to be the precursor to the failure of the liberal democratic state in favour of social anarchy or the rise of authoritarians.

So, the intention of Mr Ellington to overhaul the character of the JCF in five years' time is commendable, even though the time frame is somewhat longer than what was estimated by his anti-corruption chief, Justin Felice, using the same method.

Renewable five-year contract

When a policeman joins the JCF, he effectively enlists on a renewable five-year contract, whose extension is not automatic, although it used to be largely treated as such. Mr Ellington has now made it clear policy that each renewal be fully reviewed to determine whether the JCF wants that person to continue as a member of the team.

"I have said to all commanders, and it is by way of instruction, that people who have a record of indiscipline, dereliction of duty, disrespect to any individual, when they come up for re-enlistment, let us do a comprehensive review," Mr Ellington said in a speech to the annual conference of the Police Federation. "If we take this seriously, if it works, in five years' time we can cleanse this police force."

In the first seven months of this year, 105 police personnel were not re-enlisted when their contracts came up for renewal. This figure does not include the 44 others who were dismissed, having been caught in various infractions, mostly by Mr Felice's unit.

Needs configuration

Indeed, this newspaper previously applauded the initiative to seriously leverage the opportunity offered by the five-yearly re-enlistment requirement to clean the JCF, but expect that it should be a fully configured, rather than a hit-or-miss programme. More, this should be part of a broader suite of strategies.

For instance, we would expect that if the High Command is serious about the effort, an enhanced and empowered resources development and personnel department would have been robustly maintaining and upgrading the file of each JCF member, so as to identify the 'bad eggs' and to earmark those who should be watched for advancement.

But more fundamentally, the reform of the JCF cannot happen unless those at the top live without compromise, the culture that is expected, and tolerate nothing less - from themselves, their peers and their subordinates.

Additionally, the public must be fully engaged the programme for the reform of the police force, a task-force report about which was launched several months ago, but progress on which Jamaicans have heard relatively little.

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