Preaching cop shocks Grants Pen child
IT is not unusual to see jeep loads of police officers patrolling the Grants Pen area neither is it uncommon for gunmen and officers to engage in open gun battles in that run-down community.
However, in an unusual twist Sunday, the police took on an added role in the area, that shocked young Tuana Bolton. The youngster, who had rushed from her adjacent Sunday school class to peer curiously through the open doorway of the Lifeline Church of God, stopped abruptly in her tracks and stared open-mouth at Corporal Lloyd Johnson delivering an animated sermon.
He was guest preacher at a service hosted at the Grants Pen church, organised by the St Andrew North Police Division, as part of its community outreach programme in the area.
Johnson, who has been preaching for the last eight years, urged residents to play their part in helping to make Grants Pen safe, while imploring them not to “transfer” the problems of crime and violence to yet another generation.
“The policeman preaching. Look the policeman preaching,” the young girl cried, while turning with an incredulous expression to her companion, Abegay Lewis.
Both children are from the Grants Pen area. Abegay lives on Grants Pen Avenue, and Tuana on Grants Pen Drive.
Abegay, however, was apparently used to seeing lawmen in different roles, or so she said. She indignantly turned to Tuana and scornfully declared: “Is the first you seeing a policeman preach…You never see that yet. I see them all the time,” the young girl declared almost cockily.
But to Tuana, Johnson, who has been performing the double role of pastor and policeman for the last six years, must have appeared a most curious sight.
He was decked out in his corporal uniform, minus his gun, and confidently quoted and expounded Psalms 133, from behind the pulpit.
His almost hour-long sermon had the congregation alternately muttering, ‘praise the Lord,’ ‘glory’ and ‘amen’, during the church service.
Johnson, who preaches at two Seventh Day Adventist churches in Clarendon, was undoubtedly on familiar ground, if the congregation’s muttered approvals were anything to go by. In fact, the adults in attendance at the service were apparently able to separate Johnson from both roles, as many edged him on to ‘preach more’, ‘go ahead’, and ‘talk yu talk’.
Johnson got particularly loud applause when he declared that it was time for the force to unite, clean up its act and stamp out corruption, while at the same time stating that citizens who gave the police a hard time also needed to get their acts together.
“You have some of us policemen… who feel we must abuse, that we must belittle… that we must treat civilians as anyway”.
“But you also have civilians in our society who try them utmost best fi meck life hard fi police,” he continued adding that “all when police a try do him best… all when policeman a do the good, it is turned around and twisted, to the point where they say that is corruption”.
Johnson, who has been preaching for the last eight years, and who joined the force six years ago, insists that both roles complement each other.
“I believe that I am a witness…and that both roles can happen… Policemen want to go to heaven like anybody else. And disregarding the stigmas and the negatives that are attached to the police force, not all of us are the same thing and I believe that to be a real policeman you should be a Christian,” he added.
But this was an eye opener for young Tuana, who told the Observer: “I never knew that policemen could preach.”