The EDITOR, Sir:

The Sunday Gleaner's presentation of the New Year's message of the commissioner of police highlighted a marked reduction in the level of crime in Jamaica.

While any success in this area must be applauded, one cannot help but be cynical and wonder how much of this was accidental rather than the result of a deliberate and carefully crafted crime strategy.

I want the police to succeed, for when they do it redounds to the benefit of Jamaica. It provides the environment that will attract investments and will once again make Jamaica a desirable place to live and raise families. However, the police must do more if they intend to achieve real success. There needs to be smarter policing with increased use of technology.

Community policing must mean that there is real engagement with the public and not some public-relations strategy where officers attend a few events and have a press conference. There must be a true relationship with the public predicated on mutual respect. The police cannot continue to herd large groups of individuals into the back of buses and trucks and cart them off to a holding area for processing. This is not policing, but a violation of people's civil liberties.

The police need to be schooled in human rights, not in some perfunctory way but as an integral part of their training at the academy, as intensive as teaching them how to use the gun. This must also be ongoing after leaving the academy and should be part of the evaluation and promotion process. Police officers guilty of violations of civil liberties should not be promoted, at least, not until there is clear indication of reform.

use of force policy

Additionally, for the most serious of violations they should be dismissed from the force. There needs to be more than a reminder of the use of force policy, and the leadership of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) must rise to the challenge of effective management of the organisation. Human rights must be more than a catchphrase that is recited in an inaugural address by the commissioner but must be a crucial plank on the way forward.

Policemen must understand that under the Jamaican Constitution, there is a fundamental right to life, made even clearer by various international and regional human-rights instruments. The wholesale detention of individuals is unacceptable in this new year. The wanton killing of civilians is unacceptable in 2011. Perhaps the time has come, too, to install video and audio devices on every police vehicle and insist, as far as possible, that their interaction with the public is recorded. This should then be reviewed by only the most senior officers, who can remove the tapes (which cannot be erased) from the vehicles. Too many alleged 'shoot-outs' between the police and gunmen take place in houses and closed spaces where at the end of the day, the nightly news broadcast images of blood-soaked sheets, ransacked houses and bloodstains on the floors and walls. Too many encounters with the public result in death and cries for justice that go unanswered.

The prime minister, minister of justice and Parliament must hold the commissioner and his team accountable. It cannot be business as usual in 2011 for the members of the JCF.

I am, etc.,

HAROLD MALCOLM

Attorney-at-law

jamaicanlawyr@yahoo.com