Mandeville, Manchester – It was like any prayer meeting, anywhere in Jamaica, any time of day. Except that it was being conducted by a policeman in the dark blue fatigues of the special constabulary, and uniformed colleagues of varying stripes and teams dotted the congregation.

The gathering, which included civilians – men, women and children – of all ages, had grown in just a few minutes from less than 12, to more than 50.

“How good and how pleasant it is to lift up the name of Jesus,” declared an emotional Special Corporal Derrick Folkes to a backdrop of “alleluah”, “amen” and “glory to God”.

For more than 90 minutes on Friday morning, Folkes, backed up by a lead singer, an organist and a drummer, led his congregation in song and prayer in the confines of the Mandeville Police Station, headquarters of the Manchester Police Division.

It’s a weekly devotional exercise replicated at police stations all over the country. In the case of last Friday in Mandeville, it was one more opportunity to come to terms with the death of traffic cop Constable Orville Champagnie, accidentally run over by a truck on the Winston Jones Highway recently.

More, far more, the weekly devotional exercise which departs the norm by involving ordinary people off the streets, “taxi drivers, market vendors, you name it” is part of the drive by police in Manchester to connect with, and gain the trust of its community.

“Most divisions have staff devotions but we open ours to the public. I started it (community participation) in 2002 shortly after I took command of this division,” explained Superintendent George Quallo, the man in charge of the Manchester Police Division.

“The idea was to strengthen community relations, but recognising also that there is more than just that. We need to look at the spiritual aspect of things and it has worked tremendously in our area,” said Quallo, who is a devout Baptist.

From rank and file to the very top, police in Manchester believe the weekly prayer meetings, usually supervised by visiting pastors, make a positive contribution to police/community relations and ultimately to the fight against crime.

Indeed, they believe such exercises – which are extended to include prisoners in the lock-ups on a Saturday morning – and a general attention to spirituality, have helped to keep Manchester’s crime rate at among the lowest in the country.

“I really think these initiatives are among the reasons crime in Manchester is as low as it is,” Folkes told the Sunday Observer, following the morning worship.

With crime, especially murder, on the up islandwide, Manchester is bucking the trend.

Only ‘breakings’ up 12 (13 per cent) and rape up two (six per cent) are showing an upward trend for the period January 1 to September 20, 2005.

Murders, on the rise at an alarming rate elsewhere, were down eight (32 per cent) to 17 in Manchester for the just-under nine months of the calendar year. Shootings were down six (40 per cent), robbery down 24 (38 per cent), carnal abuse down 20 (69 per cent), larceny down one (seven per cent).

And while the “cleared-up” or arrest rate of 105 of 228 major crimes is far from satisfying, it is described as “right up there with the best”.

As part of the effort to build its “spiritual link” with the community, the police, according to Quallo, have developed a trend “where virtually every month we visit a church in the parish and worship with them”.

It has evolved to the extent that “churches are now inviting us to come and worship with them, so you find that on a particular Sunday, we get requests from two/three/four different churches for us to come and participate.,” he added.

In addition to the divisional headquarters, Quallo says the “out stations” have also been sensitised and they have “embraced the whole philosophy and they too are going to the various churches .”.

The Manchester Police Chorale, said to be “very, very good”, performs at churches, concerts, and other community activities as part of the community relations drive.

Another initiative close to Quallo’s heart involves police personnel spending time with families mourning the loss of a loved one.

“. that is one of the better tools that we have to date. When people are grieving and they see members of the force coming to sympathise and to relate to them, it tells them that these people are really there and they really care. and that has really caught on and helped us in a number of ways,” he said.

“One member of staff went to (offer sympathy and condolences to a grieving family) a couple of months ago and coming out of that a gun was recovered. So it tells you that people are starting to. talk to you about just about anything.

And as you know that’s one of the problems we have in this country, most people just not ready to give up information to the police.,” said Quallo, who in the interview with the unday Observer was flanked by Deputy Superintendent Lascelles Taylor, Sergeant Paulette Knight and Corporal Richard Miller.

In addition to the spiritual aspects, Quallo and his team have drawn close to citizens, using other tools.

“We have our school visit programmes and we work hard on building and encouraging our neighbourhood watches. I think Manchester has one of the strongest neighbourhood watch programmes,” he said.

The police are also maintaining dialogue with what they call “key stakeholders”. These include the business community, the utility companies and all those agencies seen as having the potential because of the nature of their operations to find themselves in a tense relationship with the public, from time to time.

“Every third Monday we have a civic committee meeting here with a high level of participation. Recently we launched a Crime Prevention Community Safety group, which will allow us to look at a number of issues, including policing and non-policing issues.

We are saying that some of the social problems affect us as in the fight against crime, so we form an alliance with some key stakeholders. It involves a wide cross section of the society coming together to look at the various problems that beset us and how we can deal with them .,” he said.

A key area of activity is dispute resolution and mediation. The Manchester police have built a relationship with Northern Caribbean University (NCU) – whose campus is just outside Mandeville – allowing students to observe and participate alongside trained police mediators in dealing with situations. Local churches are also a big help.

“That (dispute resolution initiative) takes a lot of the workload from the court system,” said Quallo.

Additionally, the 24-hour Victim Support Service run by the Manchester police has gained accolades.

The result of all this, said Quallo, is that “community relationship is excellent.”.

He identified a wake for Champagnie at the Mandeville station on Thursday as a prime example. “If you were here you would have been pleasantly surprised. This man was a traffic cop, yet still, you saw this vast amount of taxi drivers . there is this perception that taximen and traffic policemen don’t live good.

“But to the contrary, there were many taxi operators here, sharing and grieving with us and I believe that among the things responsible is the strength of our outreach programmes,” he said.

An outgrowth of the trust between police and community, said Quallo, is that the parties can now easily sit together to develop strategies to fight crime – be it cattle stealing, praedial larceny, shop and house-breaking or anything else.

“When we have a problem, because of the linkages, people are prepared to meet and talk, and based on the discussions we come up with a solution, even if it’s only temporary. so you can make a plan. If this plan doesn’t work, you can go back on the drawing board again and we make another plan.

This is one of the real big pluses for us. our ability to interact with the community at varying levels. It works wonders for us,” said the divisional chief.

It has allowed the police to reap considerable success in intelligence gathering.

“A couple months ago,” said Quallo, “we went on a serious drive and we started to go to the community to say ‘look, when things get hot in Kingston and elsewhere the guys are going to come to places like Mandeville to chill out.’

“We said ‘look, if you see Miss Jane who is a decent person, probably plays the organ at church, really outstanding community person, but her son or grandson or family member who has lived in Kingston for ex-amount of years, just suddenly pops up. He has suddenly come home to stay with grandma .

It could be totally innocent, but share the information with us (police), tell us about it’.

“We have found that this has paid off very, very well. After getting that sort of information, nine out of 10 times when we investigated we found that they were actually wanted elsewhere.

We have been able to capture a lot of them and in all of those cases we have been able to do so without any casualty, which I think is excellent.,” said Quallo.

That form of assistance, said Quallo, is invaluable. “I say to citizens that on our own we (police) can’t solve crime. It doesn’t matter how minute you may feel this piece of the puzzle you are giving us is. But it may very well be that we already have the other pieces of the puzzle. so that when we get this other piece a picture starts to emerge,” he said.

“So we really ask people who have any information . anything that you are not too sure about or not very comfortable about, come and share it with us,” he added.

myersg@jamaicaobserver.com