WALKER... an environment has to be created where people are assured that the information they give is not going to result in harm to them

DIRECTOR of Elections Danville Walker, yesterday supported calls for foreign assistance to help shore-up the credibility of Jamaica's police and backed proposals for the police chief to be given the authority to hire and fire senior officers at his own discretion.

Walker spoke at a luncheon meeting of the Caribbean Association of Military Professionals (CAMP), a group of retired army officers, against the backdrop of the heightened debate about the problem of violent crime in Jamaica and how it should be tackled.

Walker, himself a former officer in the National Reserves, said that the Jamaican constabulary was facing a serious credibility gap with the public and suggested that foreign help in some areas of the force could help bridge that gap.

"I support the idea of (getting) outside help," Walker told the meeting at Curphey Place, the headquarters of the associations of ex-servicemen. "Sometimes when you don't have the credibility you have to bring some persons in here who may have the credibility until you earn it."

Walker has won high praise for his office's management of the October 16 general elections and he drew on his experience in that process to back his support for greater power to the police chief to dismiss staff and generally build public confidence.

For the election, Walker explained, he was able to place workers in communities where they were strangers and were not compromised.

This was facilitated by an amendment to the election law to allow election day officials to vote, along with the security forces, prior to election day.

Additionally, Walker fired thousands 13,000 persons who used to work in the system and recruited and trained replacements.

In the past where election workers were placed was substantially the result of trade-offs between the political parties, which ended with either party getting its sympathisers to operate in areas where it suited them rather than doing what was best for the system. The upshot was it allowed for activists to be hired and for the electoral process to be compromised.

Walker argued that, similarly, the public's confidence in the police has gone so low that, in his view, foreigners were needed to rebuild trust between citizens and police in some communities. He suggested that foreigners could assist, specifically, in performing the information gathering work that the Crime Stop programme does.

"An environment has to be created where people are assured that the information they give is not going to result in harm to them," Walker said. "If you have to bring people here to set up such a structure because they are not tied to the local situation, then you need to do so."

Police Commissioner Francis Forbes has constantly lamented his inability to dismiss non-performing or corrupt senior cops and the cumbersome, legalistic mechanism that has to be followed through the Police Services Commission.

Walker suggested that the corrupt system should go and be replaced by modern management procedures where performance is measured against goals.

"...Those persons who can't achieve, pay them whatever you have to get rid of them," he said.

Added Walker: "We need the type of legislation... that allows us to build a professional police force...that the community respects... and has the credibility that when something goes wrong, you expect to get more action from (the police rather) than from the don."

The director of elections said the lesson to be learned from the successes achieved in reforming the electoral system was that the crime problems are not insurmountable.

"...Things that (appeared) unchangeable are changeable and the problems are solvable," Walker counselled. "But it is not going to happen overnight."

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