Iron fists can't curb crime forever — Ellington

POLICE chief Owen Ellington has admitted that the current iron-hand strategy used to counter crime will not yield positive results indefinitely. His admission comes on the back of just such a prediction made by local academics, who have done research and written extensively on crime and violence in Jamaica — before and after the Tivoli incursion by members of the security forces last May.

"It cannot be an endless fight within the battle space between the police and the gangs, so there has to be another phase of strategy, which we have carefully articulated to the Government and it involves a number of things," the head of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) told the Observer's Monday Exchange last week.

The iron-hand police strategy has been reaping dividends recently. Between June 2010 and May this year, for example, there have been 700 fewer murders. The police also report that they have managed to make significant inroads in their efforts to eradicate gangs, dismantling 50 per cent of the 57 targeted since the New Year.

Notwithstanding, Ellington wants the country to plan ahead.

"The next phase of strategy has to be more refined, more fine-tuned, more focused on the community rather than the criminals. But it has to be supported by significant investment," Ellington added.

It is against this background, he said, that the police are now sifting through the strategies they currently utilise to settle on those that can be carried over into the future for long-term gains.

"We are looking at all the strategic elements that we are engaged in now which are useful — those that are sustainable based on how they are being applied now and those that are not sustainable," Ellington said.

One of the strategies being pursued, he noted, is the Safe Community Concept.

"(This) requires physical upgrading of the infrastructure, the roadworks, the lighting, managing the vegetation, proper sanitation -- even upgrading of the facilities for recreation and so on," the commissioner said.

Added to that, he said, are:

* the build-out of closed-circuit television systems that provide the police with "eyes and ears on the ground", thus supporting effective law enforcement; and

* the infusion of more technology into the operations of the JCF, including facial-recognition technology in the cameras which will enable law enforcers to "know where persons of interest are".

"We can (also) have licence plate recognition and capabilities so that when suspect vehicles are moving from point A to point B, we can access those. And even automatic vehicle locator systems so that our own vehicles, we can have better control and management of those on the road, because one of the things that undermines effective policing is police indiscipline and the misuse of resources," he said.

"There are many murders that could have been prevented if people (police officers) would remain where they are deployed and focus on the problems at hand. But they move all over the place, they drive the vehicles fast, they mash them up and they also use them for involvement in crime," Ellington added.

The police's move is one welcomed by researchers who earlier made the prediction that the police use of force anti-crime strategy could not be sustained in perpetuity, and would eventually produce diminishing returns.

"The commissioner is abundantly right and we ought to commend him for his consistently sound reflections. The 'dividend' that we want to reap in the society, as far as law enforcement is concerned, is not only a truly professional police force that is effective at both policing and investigating crimes, but one that gets along harmoniously and co-operatively with all the citizens of the nation," said criminologist Professor Bernard Headley, author of The Jamaican Crime Scene: A Perspective and A Spade is Still a Spade: Essays on Crime and the Politics of Jamaica.

"Heavy reliance on use of force is not new to the JCF, and it's disappointing to many of us who care about justice that force — albeit in new clothing — is being presented, at this particular time, as essential and necessary strategy for dealing with serious crime," he added.

"I'm afraid that at the end of the day — at the end of this short-term reliance on a heavy force strategy — that, if the underlying factors that contribute to so much crime and violence in the society have not been adequately dealt with, the police will have very little to show in terms of real gains in their post-Tivoli Gardens war against crime. I suspect Commissioner Ellington knows this," Headley commented further.

At the same time, he said that while more than the strategies noted by Ellington would be required to rein in the crime monster, they are as much as the police themselves can do.

"These may not go far enough, but they are all we can ask the police to do. In fact, there are already unrealistic expectations of the police. Increased use of technology, yes, but the police can't guarantee, or by themselves build 'safe communities', certainly not where these touch on matters of social infrastructure," the University of the West Indies lecturer told the Sunday Observer.

"What we will indeed expect of a modern, professional, technologically equipped police is their working collaboratively with structured communities on matters of problem-solving, including, but not limited to, crime," added Headley, who is involved with Hibiscus Jamaica in their work to help Jamaican deportees rejoin the society.

According to the criminologist, civil society will have to step in to help the lawmen.

"Effecting a greater good always requires the active engagement of civil society in all the affairs of state. It's civil society that sets the standards and is always deciding — for the police, the courts, the legislature and the entire legal order — what's the right thing to do," Headley said.

Horace Levy, a member of the Peace Management Initiative and himself a researcher, said communities will need to form the nucleus of all crime-fighting efforts if police gains made following the Tivoli invasion — which left more than 70 civilians as well members of the security forces dead or injured — are to be sustained. The invasion by the lawmen was necessitated by their search for former community strongman Christopher 'Dudus' Coke whose extradition was being demanded by the United States. Coke has since been captured and sent to the States to answer the charges against him.

Meanwhile, Levy said that long-term strategies to solve the crime problem would have to include improved education and jobs for those denied opportunities.

"The most important thing of all is literacy and employment. Unless there is employment, forget it. These guys want to change, but they have dependents, they have pickney. And unless they can see earnings from things, then they are going to go back to robbing," Levy said.

But, as with the initiatives put on the table by the police, those efforts, he said, cannot end there.

"It is not just a simple matter. These (literacy and employment) have to be in the context of life skills with moral values inculcated. It is not just a mechanical 'more work, more money' thing. It is more than just being able to read and write. Those are essential, but it has to be (done within) a broad human development context. There are value changes in the community that need to be brought out more," Levy said.

Community spirit will also have to be renewed.

"In the community, social capital has been badly hurt by the violence... (There will need to be) rebuilding (of) community spirit, giving youths a sense of responsibility for one another, respect for one another, respect for women and children. These are not automatic," said Levy, author of the books They Cry Respect: Urban Violence and Poverty in Jamaica and Killing Streets and Community Revival.

He noted that the challenge involved in dealing with crime has not been helped by the police's own use of violence over time.

"All of this has been hurt by police violence. The police give a bad example with the use of physical power. They simply are teaching that the way to solve something is to bludgeon it, to shoot at it, to eliminate it completely. This is the example that they give with the extra-judicial killings. These are some of the changes we need to see with the policy shift," he noted.

Anthropologist of social violence Dr Herbert Gayle has seen similar gains from the same approach elsewhere and he said they do not last. In fact, he said that near chaos has been the result of police utilising brute force, as has been evidenced in countries like El Salvador.

Citing data from his 2008 thesis entitled Poverty and Violence: A study of select inner-city communities in Jamaica and Britain, he noted that here in Jamaica, this has also been the case. The increase in murders from 152 in 1970 to 232 in 1973 — following the general elections of 1972 — for example, prompted the passage of the Suppression of Crime Act in 1974, giving police extra common law powers of detention. By 1978, murders were up to 381. The police again cracked the whip in 1981 following the 1980 election that saw 889 people murdered. But while murders went down to 484 in 1984, the number of civilians killed by police shot to a record 354, bringing the number of violent deaths in the island to a cumulative 838.

"Government policies of confrontation and suppression have never worked and have always worsened our lives," Gayle said.

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  1 comments

  0 comments