AS crime increasingly takes centre stage, district constables (DCs), a supplementary corps to the regular constabulary, appear to have lost the respect and importance they once enjoyed in the tamer Jamaica of the past.

The corps, historically, was meant to ensure that communities maintained respect for the law, and its recruits were keepers of the peace.

With the role came stature. But these days, there is much grumbling about working conditions among the more than 700 DCs who, despite considering themselves just as important as members of the other arms of the security forces in the fight against crime, believe they are being unfairly treated.

They complain bitterly that they have no living or death benefits to claim, unless they have a minimum of 20 years’ service under their belt.

“You can work for 19 years and drop dead, and get nothing. You have no vacation, no health insurance, nothing. For you to get something, you have to work 20 long years,” said Uriel Samuels.

Samuels, a 33-year member, says a DC who retires after serving 20 years is entitled to a gratuity of only four weeks for each year of service.

Moreover, the group finds insulting the $1,000 per day paid to constables who have served for more than two decades.

The duties of district constables include manning the front desks of police stations, recording witness statements in the guardroom diaries, or doing orderly duties in the courts.

A Manchester DC, who asked not to be identified, is upset that he and his colleagues are not salaried employees.

“If we don’t work, we do not get paid, and we have no pension,” he says.

Some DCs charge that in the face of their working conditions,their organisation, the United District Constables Association (UDCA), appears to be impotent.

Not one meeting of the association has been held in five years, they say.

“Nothing has happened. Everybody in the executive is sleeping, while $150 comes from my wages monthly to UDCA. I have nothing to show for it. What is my money doing?” demanded one DC.

But UDCA general secretary Beverley O’Sullivan blames the suspension of annual conferences, since 2000, on a request from the national security ministry.

“We have been having dialogue with minister Peter Phillips. He has asked us to hold strain because the issue of pension and all that is being discussed,” O’Sullivan said.

“It does not make sense having an annual meeting and the same old, same old is being told to the membership every year.”

But Phillips’ spokesman Donovan Nelson said the minister made no such request.

“I don’t know if a study about the role and responsibility of an entity such as the district constables should prevent them from having annual meetings. They must have misinterpreted what the minister said,” Nelson said in response.

“They can’t be holding strain based on the minister’s word that a study is being undertaken. They must be holding strain for other reasons,” he said, adding that irrespective of what UDCA was told, it should not prevent them from meeting to pool ideas for the strengthening of their organisation.

O’Sullivan suggested that the force was in limbo because of plans to integrate younger DCs into the regular Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) or the Island Special Constabulary Force (ISCF), the other auxiliary body.

“From time to time, there have been suggestions that the younger ones among the membership should become regular members of the JCF or the ISCF, and the older people would (otherwise) be dealt with,” she tells the Sunday Observer.

“There has also been the suggestion that no one (government) wants to deal with a third force, with different rules and regulations.”

But O’Sullivan argues that the JCF and ISCF would not be able to absorb everyone in the organisation, and hopes for a meeting to clarify the matter.

“We met with the minister two weeks ago, and he told us that a study is being done. It is to be completed by July, and we expect that the outcome could determine the future of the organisation.”

On the issue of salary, the general secretary says DCs are not expected to depend solely on the stipend for their living.

District constables are appointed by the commissioner of police and attached to a police station, usually one in their district.

The constables were once the cornerstone of discipline and law and order in rural communities. The baton – which they had little occasion to wield – was feared as much as a regular constable’s gun is feared today.

The police acknowledge that they give valuable assistance, with former Police Federation chairman Sergeant David White noting that they often help to teach rank and file members the ropes when they take up postings, and also that they complement the work of constabulary members.

“I have known of DCs – especially those DCs who have been in the system for years – guiding police officers, literally taking them and showing them how to do things,” said White.

virtuee@jamaicaobserver.com