Police fear crime too

Research data suggests local cops psychologically locked in a war-ready state

BY PETRE WILLIAMS-RAYNOR Career & Education editor williamsp@jamaicaobserver.com

Sunday, June 12, 2011

FEAR is one of the key factors driving cop killings of civilians in Jamaica. A new study suggests that these killings are unlikely to cease unless members of the constabulary can feel safer on the job, and society can get a handle on the homicide rate, which currently stands at more than 50 per 100,000 persons.

"Societies with homicide figures above the civil war benchmark — 30 per 100,000 or 1,000 combatants dying within a population of three million — such as Jamaica and South Africa, have so much violence that policing is characterised by (an) extreme fear factor," says anthropologist Dr Herbert Gayle in a recent paper which draws on data from, among other sources, his 2008 thesis entitled Poverty and Violence: A study of select inner-city communities in Jamaica and Britain.

It is a different reality for countries such as England and New Zealand where police officers feel secure enough to leave their firearms in their service vehicles, he says.

"In countries such as Jamaica and South Africa, policing is done as if the countries are in a permanent state of emergency. Officers are armed with handguns and sometimes assault rifles, and psychologically, they are locked in a state of war-readiness," Gayle added.

The statistics seem to bear this out, with the number of police killings remaining a feature of the society even as the law men, themselves, are targets for criminals. All while the homicide rate remains high.

Data out of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) reveals that in 2009, for example — with the country's homicide rate at 62 per 100,000 — the police shot and killed 263 people and lost 11 of their numbers. In 2008 — with the homicide rate over 50 — police shot and killed 224 civilians, even as 12 of their colleagues were themselves killed.

"In other words, wherever homicide rates are high, police fear factor will be high and consequently high levels of civilian deaths by the hands of the police. In such settings, an officer's preoccupation often shifts from that of protecting others to that of protecting himself," said Gayle.

Psychologist Dr Pearnel Bell said this is not surprising. In fact, she said it is normal that a police officer should experience fear and take steps to safeguard his own safety — certainly given the reality of homicides in the country.

"That is survival; we have that survival instinct. If you as a police officer, who is set to protect others, feels that you are coming under attack, it is going to prompt the survival instinct, so this is why they will have to protect themselves," she told the Sunday Observer.

"We are human beings first and we have an involuntary system called the nervous system that when people are under attack, there is going to be some level of fear. It is expected that police officers should be fearless, but in the face of threat, they are still going to want to ensure that they are protecting themselves," she added.

She, however, cautions against them becoming slaves to their fear and suggests that they strive to function intelligently -- in their own interest, as well as that of the civilians they are trained to protect. At the same time, the Montego Bay-based psychologist said it was past time that Jamaica focused on preventative crime fighting measures designed to minimises the number of civilian and police lives lost each year.

"On a whole, Jamaica should be moving towards more preventative measures (to solve crime)... We (need to be) putting programmes in place that we would end up with almost a zero rating for crime," she said.

"As for the police officers, I think they should use more intelligent policing, which means they are going to eliminate fear... and even in a crisis, they will be able to map out a strategy they are going to use to deal with the issues at hand, rather than dealing with situations impulsively."

Between 1991 and 2000, the JCF was reportedly responsible for the deaths of 1,433 Jamaicans, according to data from Amnesty International. Over the same period, they themselves were made victims, with 97 of their numbers killed by civilians, Amnesty International reported.

Between 2000 and 2009, with an average homicide rate of 51.6 per 100,000, the rate of police killings by criminals in Jamaica stood at 152 per 100,000, while the ratio of police to civilian homicide rates stood at one in three. This, in a country with an estimated population of 2.65 million people in 2009.

The reality is starkly different when compared to a country like New Zealand where, between 2000 and 2009, the average homicide rate stood at one per 100,000 and the rate of police death at the hands of criminals stood at 3.6 per 100,000, while the ratio of police to civilian homicide was one in four. This, in a country with a population estimated at 4.3 million in 2009.

The paper goes further to paint a dismal picture of the Jamaican society as a breeding ground for fear of crime, both among the police and civilians.

"The prevalence of guns and ammunition and the alarmingly high level of violent crime in Jamaica create an environment in which police and armed criminals have daily confrontations... The Jamaican police routinely experience criminal gun assaults from which they escape injuries or receive fatal or non-fatal injuries," Gayle said.

The situation, the anthropologist notes, is not helped by the brute force response of the state to the increase in homicides over the years.

"The JCF, supported by the military, routinely engage in operational activities within "hot-spot" communities that have a long history of protracted feud-like violence with the aim of apprehending armed criminals," he said.

"In addition to local police carrying out daily police operations and maintaining specialist police task force such as the now-defunct Crime Management Unit. These operations are paramilitary in design and serve to increase both police deaths and civilian deaths," he added.

This was a sentiment echoed by Professor Bernard Headley two years ago. At the time, the criminologist and lecturer at the University of the West Indies noted that how the JCF functions is rooted in its history.

"The JCF comes with a particular history. It was formed at a particular time in our colonial past and because it was formed at that historical moment, it had clearly prescribed objectives and functions. It was designed to violently contain — using the most arbitrary, even violent, means necessary — what was thought to be a very rebellious population, or certainly rebellious movements in a predominantly African population of recently freed slaves," Headley told the Sunday Observer in 2008.

"It grew right throughout Independence and the post-Independence period, with the Force taking a no-holds-barred approach to maintaining control," the criminologist said then, noting that it was modelled off the Irish law enforcement system of the 1800s.

"This substantially has not changed. Professor (Anthony) Harriott documents this and the historical data and the language that they (the police) use pretty much subscribe to this as their major function. Violence and the use of violence have gone along with the ethos of the JCF," he said.

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Police fear crime too