TWO sharply contrasting emotions emerge among Jamaicans when Senior Superintendent of Police Reneto Adams’ name is mentioned — intense hate and glowing admiration.

Even among his colleagues in the constabulary, who were willing to speak to the Sunday Observer without being identified, the differing opinions run deep.

Take, for instance, the views of a constable assigned to the Hunts Bay Police Station in the crime-ridden South St Andrew belt of the Corporate Area. “All I can say is Saddam (Adams’ street name) a di best. Him mek bad men tremble when them hear him name and we need 40 more like him in every police division.”

The possibility of that happening, though, would probably send shivers down the spine of a woman corporal who did not mince words in an interview with the Sunday Observer as she stated her dislike for Adams.

“Everywhere he goes he brings death,” she said. “It was an unfortunate thing that took place in Tivoli. I felt bad as an officer of the law.”

Although Adams earned a reputation as a no-nonsense cop long before he was assigned to head the Crime Management Unit (CMU) in September 2000, criticism of his tough, uncompromising and dramatic policing methods heightened last year after the CMU’s involvement in the July 2001 gunbattles in West Kingston, during which at least 27 people, including a policeman and a soldier, died.

In that incident, the police said they came under heavy gunfire in the area of Denham Town and Tivoli Gardens while conducting a cordon and search as part of an operation to search for guns and drugs at an old people’s home.

The shootings sparked three more days of unrest across the country in which two more policemen were killed.

Adams was severely criticised by the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) which claimed that the West Kingston violence was part of a plot by the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) to demonise the party’s leader, Edward Seaga, as a man of violence and reduce the party’s standing with the electorate.

Four months before that, the JLP and human rights groups blasted Adams and the CMU for the killing of seven young men at a house in Braeton, St Catherine.

The police said that the seven boys engaged them in a shoot-out and that among them were the killers of a policeman and a school principal. However, neighbours and the boys’ relatives have challenged those claims.

“I know that those boys in Braeton were not angels, but maybe a life or two could have been saved,” the woman corporal told the Sunday Observer. “I must say, however, that he (Adams) is not unique in this regard.”

Early last month, a 10-member jury that sat for nine months listening to evidence in a coroner’s inquest on the Braeton killings, delivered a 6-4 verdict that no one was criminally responsible for the deaths of the seven young men.

In October last year, Adams and the CMU were again under fire from human rights groups, the JLP and members of the public after the killing of Grants Pen community don, “Andrew Phang”, who the police insisted died in a gunfight.

But, amid all the criticisms, Adams has consistently defended his actions, as well as those of the men under his command, further irritating his detractors, some of whom regard him as not only cocky, but dangerous.

The JLP, for instance, has called for his removal on several occasions and just last week the Police Federation demanded that he be fired as head of the CMU after tension within the unit’s ranks deteriorated into a nasty public quarrel that included claims and counter-claims of corruption.

“The members have lost confidence in the leadership of SSP Adams and the breakdown has reached a state where it is now irretrievable,” the federation, which represents the constabulary’s rank and file, said in a letter to Police Commissioner Francis Forbes.

The federation also recommended that Forbes investigate the allegations traded by Adams and some of his men at a meeting with Forbes, and asked that “appropriate sanctions” be levied against anyone who the probe showed to be corrupt.

But in a television interview a few days later, Adams responded, saying that he was not employed by the federation and did not answer to them.

Forbes, in the meantime, has collapsed the CMU, as well as the force’s other tactical units, the Flying Squad and the Special Anti-Crime Task Force (SACTF), into the Mobile Reserve, under Assistant Commissioner Arthur Martin.

Adams, who up until November 8 reported directly to Forbes, immediately welcomed the reorganisation, but made it clear that he wanted to play a role at the decision-making level.

“I accept the change professionally,” Adams told the Daily Observer. “… I will work with Mr Martin … As long as he treats me with dignity and respect and gives me a chance to participate in the running of things, then I have no problem. The very day that is not forthcoming, then I will ask the commissioner to have me removed.”

But it is such statements that have kept the wind of controversy swirling for some time now around Adams, known for his penchant for chic sunglasses, SWAT gear and media publicity.

Opinion polls this year have also given him an approval rating of 60 per cent, totally baffling his detractors.

“He talks too much,” one detective inspector told the Sunday Observer.

Said another cop: “Mr Adams is, at heart, a good policeman. He loves his job, but at times he tends to get himself too occupied with the media spotlight. He has, however, in my view held the flag of the Jamaica Constabulary Force high, and I personally admire him.”

One sergeant was full of praise for Adams, claiming that his propensity to speak his mind has contributed to the dilemma he now faces.

There are others, too, who admire him, but say they are turned off by his swagger.

“That man is so full of himself,” seethed a female cop. “If a woman police approaches him and praises him for his work, he immediately feels that the woman wants him. I know, because it has happened to me.”

One policeman, who works at the Half-Way-Tree station, was of the opinion that too much attention was being paid to Adams and his squad.

He argued that most policemen are hard workers and are worthy of praise just as much as Adams.

“I would like to know if Mr Adams is the only policeman who a do work?,” he stated more than asked. “If you know how hard it is to do foot patrol in Downtown Kingston, and how the bicycle police work hard, then you would understand that police work, no matter the department, is hard work. How come the media and the public don’t pay so much attention to the narcotics people when they make big finds. That is hard work too,” the cop said.

Another woman constable, when asked for her view on Adams, sang the words of a popular song by reggae artiste, Anthony B: “You have good cop, bad cop. Cop whe kill people and cop whe bruk shop.”

The chant over, she stepped into the Central Kingston Police Station.