ACTING Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington’s swift promotion of three policemen who apprehended suspects in the major arms bust in Eastern Kingston was an inappropriate way of commending the officers for essentially doing their job professionally.

The promotions sent the message that integrity was such a scarce commodity in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) that it must be rewarded on the odd occasion it makes a public appearance. It also places the commissioner in a morally awkward position when integrity makes another appearance.

Equally, he mischaracterised the unlawful removal of guns and ammunition from the police armoury as a “breach of trust” rather than seeing it as a monumental absence of an effective management and security system.

Given the damage that the large quantity of guns and ammunition could inflict had they ended up in the intended (wrong) hands, we understand the commissioner’s “sense of gratitude” that the plot was foiled – a gratitude shared by well-thinking Jamaicans. The action may even have “saved a police force and the entire organisation”, as Mr Ellington said.

However, for the incident to actually serve the ultimate purpose of ‘saving’ the police force, as the acting commissioner has suggested, then it is important that the police high command, National Security Minister Dwight Nelson and the wider Jamaican community draw the right lessons not only from what transpired on Munster Road on the morning of Thursday, February 4, but in the larger context that framed the events.

Official police statements were that the three policemen and a district constable were on routine patrol in a volatile section of the Mountain View community when they accosted a group of persons acting suspiciously.

One of the suspects was a police sergeant who reportedly tried to get the patrol to look the other way. They refused, followed their instincts, did their investigation which ultimately netted 19 guns – some of them high-powered weapons – some 10,600 rounds of assorted ammunition, police vests and $787,000 in cash at two locations in East Kingston.

The action also led to the arrest of a highly favoured police sergeant, two civilian workers and a businessman. Subsequent investigation traced the guns, ammunition and police vests to the JCF armoury, the only authorised location for distributing weapons to the 19 police divisions across the country.

The first thing to be noted was that the find was not the result of police intelligence or hard-nosed investigation. It was luck; fortuitous, coincidence, but a buck-up nevertheless. Until a few good men turned up at Munster Road, the police did not know what was going on at the armoury.

And it’s probably worse than has been revealed so far. According to reporting by Karyl Walker (Observer – Thursday, February 11), an undetermined number of murders have been linked to police guns — rented or sold to criminals — suggesting that unscrupulous cops have for a while been illegally removing weapons from the constabulary’s armoury.

“We have identified a number of recycled weapons from the armoury and ballistics have shown that they were used to commit murders,” the high-level Observer source said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigations.

So the first lesson is that there is still a lot of work for the police force to do to beef up its intelligence capabilities to deal with organised crime inside its ranks and in the wider community.

The published evidence does not support the conclusion by Acting Commissioner Ellington that “the security procedures at the army and stores are adequate”. The police chief believes the system works fine if those operating it are “honest and responsible people” who pay attention to their duty.

So the second lesson is that the system is broke and must be fixed. The forensic audit now in progress should unearth clues about the movement of guns from the control of the state to the criminal underworld. The results of the audit should be made public as well as the actions to deal with anyone found to be criminally involved.

The audit should be used to guide the solution, which must establish new management, accountability and security systems that will provide a firm basis for believing that a recurrence is highly unlikely. That is critical to regaining some of the already little confidence people have in the JCF.

But in the wider context of violent crime in Jamaica, especially murder, the fix requires more than better management of the armoury and custody of weapons under the control of state officials.

The Munster Road incident is a frightening revelation of the extent of corruption and the links between the JCF and organised crime, because there can be no doubt that what is known so far suggests that the weapons were destined for organised criminal gangs that would have the financial resources to pay for the cache and the connections for their ultimate distribution and use in the society.

Professor Anthony Harriott in the 2009 GraceKennedy Lecture warned of the danger of organised crime, especially as it has the capacity to influence law enforcement.

Organised crime “is at the core of an expanding, self-perpetuating system that benefits and influences a wider range of powerful actors (police, lawyers, politicians, community activists and business people). Money and power buy immunity and facilitate more and more profitable crimes. Organised crime is the entrepreneurial money-making centre of violent crime.”

And only recently Acting Commissioner Ellington said, “I am deeply concerned about what appears to be an escalation in the activities or participation of members of the JCF in criminal gangs as well as consorting with known criminals.”

Mr Ellington, who I believe should be confirmed in the post of commissioner sooner rather than later, has listed “effective confrontation of corruption among JCF members” as one of the six strategic priorities the JCF will pursue this year.

The others are reduction of crime, especially murders; restoration of public safety and confidence; upholding of human rights; boosting morale and confidence of JCF members; and effective internal and external communication.

These are laudable positions that should be encouraged. Particularly, corruption prevention and control measures are a condition for any success in law enforcement.

But it will not come easily because the profits from corruption are huge. As Professor Harriott said in the GraceKennedy lecture, “The real challenge is getting agreement across the social and political divide and getting effective implementation of an appropriate strategy… These are the difficult political leadership and management challenges – of building trust and confidence and on this basis building coalitions for change, of developing institutional capacity and effectiveness.”

What happened at Munster Road should be more than a source of pride that a few good men stepped up when it mattered.

It must be the energy and resolve for Mr Ellington to press on with his announced initiatives like insisting on all policemen and women meeting integrity and anti-corruption standards before they are re-enlisted into the JCF after five years. He must push the JCF “to cleanse itself” of what he called “the corrupt, the bad and the lazy” who help to facilitate the deadly criminal gangs that are responsible for most of the murders in Jamaica.

kcr@cwjamaica.com