National Security Minister Peter Phillips, his reputation as a doer on the line, has admitted he is unhappy with the rate of change in the security environment, saying “decent people” were still cowering behind bars because criminals rule the streets.

“We have started a lot of important things and we are making some gains, but I don’t think there has been any qualitative change in the nature of the security environment,” Phillips said candidly in an interview with the Sunday Observer.

“I, for one, don’t believe that we have to accommodate to having all the decent people cowering behind bars and afraid to go out on the road because criminals are overrunning the road,” he said with a hint of frustration.

“I think we need to change that and I look forward to the day when, even if we cannot beat the swords into plough shares, at least we can pull down all the bars that surround decent people’s houses and opening the windows and doors and making us feel free once again from the grips of criminality,” the minister said.

Last December 1, Phillips launched a major anti-crime initiative in the main crime centres of Kingston and adjoining St Catherine, telling the police to remain in violence-prone communities for as long as it took to clean up the criminals and restore law and order.

That initiative was launched in the face of a deepening concern about crime in Jamaica, although 1,045 murders here last year represented a near eight per cent reduction — but still one of the world’s highest murder rates at just over 40 per 100,000 population. So far this year, 317 Jamaicans have been murdered and the police reported a 17 per cent decline in all major crimes in the first quarter of 2003.

But while the latest effort was also about crime containment and for the security forces to take apart drug gangs which operate in the island’s inner-city communities, a substantial part of the mandate was for the law enforcement authorities to build trust in the communities where the police are often perceived as the enemy. Police homicides hover at about 140 a year and human rights groups often accuse the constabulary of extra-judicial killings.

The authorities, however, often counter with the claim that the Jamaican police operate in a violent environment and point to the number of police killed here — 15 in 2002 and two so far this year.

In the Sunday Observer interview, the minister said the security forces were increasingly more sensitive to the importance of demonstrating the message, both symbolically and substantively, that there was the rule of law and “that there is one law for all Jamaicans and that no one is above the law”.

“But I have said that ultimately it is only by effective investigation and policing that we will bring anyone who is in breach of the law to book. Only then will we have any real restoration of public confidence. This means that as far as the major centres of organised criminal activities are concerned, we need to be more effective, and I am very dissatisfied in that regard,” Phillips said.

He also acknowledged that there was an “intelligence deficit”, noting that it was now critical to modernise the country’s intelligence-gathering capabilities.

“…If there is one lesson that I have learnt, it is that effective policing in a modernised, urbanised environment where crime is being increasingly internationalised, intelligence becomes increasingly preponderant as the means of your counteraction,” said Phillips. “We certainly do not have an effective infrastructure to the extent that we need in this regard.”

“But beyond the intelligence deficit, I get the impression that we have allowed a sense of ‘untouchability’ that is paralysing even some of the people who are required to act,” Phillips said.

Phillips has, in the past, blamed a substantial portion of Jamaica’s violent crime on the international drug trade, given Jamaica’s importance as a transshipment point for cocaine from South America heading for North America and Europe. It is estimated that between 100 and 120 metric tonnes of cocaine, or 10 per cent of Colombia’s production, passes through the island annually. With the cocaine valuing up to $600 million, officials say, drug traffickers are willing to ruthlessly protect their commodity and protect turf and have the resources to corrupt many in the society, including the police.

Contending that change in the security environment would not come overnight, the security minister pointed to other areas of weakness: “We have to modernise the force… We have to address the morale of the police and the working conditions under which they operate. We’re going to have to address the question of public confidence in the force and the trust between citizenry and police.”

Phillips said the public must be assured of the quality of the integrity of the police force, adding: “I am myself very dissatisfied — there are too many reports, verifiable reports of corrupt activities.”

“The High Command has been acting on some of that… and some cases are before the courts. None of this does the reputation of the security forces any good, and it certainly weakens public confidence in the force; and that has to be an important line of attack on the problem overall in the country, and I’m working with the High Command to develop some initiatives to address this.”

Said Phillips: “I think an important start has been made, but I’m just saying that I would be the last one to beat my chest and proclaim victory. I wouldn’t do that. To the same extent that the Opposition spokesman says, ‘Well you’ve a blip downward and we need a new plan’; if it were not sad, it would be ludicrous and laughable, because it means that no one has grasped what I’ve been trying to say, that there is not a quick fix. We have to sustain the effort.”

See full text of the interview with Minister Phillips in tomorrow’s Observer.