The acting police commissioner in Jamaica, Novelette Grant, last week released an impressive list of statistics in a desperate attempt at burnishing the much-fractured image of the Jamaican Constabulary Force. This comes after the continued public outcry for more effective policing across the island and in the wake of the continued murder rampage, with 38 Jamaicans murdered on the island, year to date, and with 2017 only 17 days old.

It comes against a background also of the sensationalised sex scandal involving a Moravian pastor and a minor in the island’s west end, the coverage of which has enveloped even the mind-boggling murder toll as Jamaican media practitioners train their microphones and lens on the salacious story, attacking with a vengeance, not the perpetrator of the crime, but the person who supported his bail application. In the process, this deflected our collective attention from the ineffective crime management and the island’s runaway murder toll for a few days.

Against this background it was noticeable that the minister of finance, in the tabling of the Supplementary Estimates of Expenditure, announced a $5.5-billion increase in the provision for the island’s crime-fighting efforts. There has been no discussion as to how to address the runaway crime problem beyond throwing in more money, and in true Jamaican political tradition this comes as simply another grand announcement, especially as the Minister of National Security Robert “Bobby” Montague has already absolved himself of responsibility for a crime management policy, with his declaration that the incoming police commissioner must provide such a policy framework with their job application.

I do not know Acting Commissioner Grant, and I care not for who occupies the chair of the National Security Ministry. What I care about is the urgency needed in addressing the nation’s crime problem as the country’s ability to provide for the security of its people is paramount to its social, economic, and political success. While Acting Commissioner Grant’s reading of her table of statistics may seem impressive to the uninitiated, for anyone with a feel for the numbers and the reality on the ground, the statistics she provided are “a bunch of malarkey”.

For openers, we should ask Grant about her 57 per cent “cleared-up” rate for murders, and an even deeper question of how many of the individuals charged by the police for murder in 2016, and even back in 2014 and 2015, have been successfully convicted of those crimes and are now serving time for those activities?

Jamaica’s conviction rates for the crime of murder is well under 10 per cent, which means that nine out of 10 people charged by the police for these crimes, walk free. Nothing is said of the remaining 43 per cent and, in the circumstances, it becomes useless even bothering to ask about cold cases over three and five years old.

I would like to pose the same question to Acting Commissioner Grant with respect to crimes such as, robberies, rapes, possession of an illegal firearm, and ammunition. How many of the more than 17,000 individuals arrested by the police for various offences last year have been tried and convicted for those offences? Those, Acting Commissioner Grant are the real statistics, because those numbers speak to the effectiveness of the police’s investigative capabilities and to a real chance of addressing the crime problem in the country.

Hiding behind the numbers is a well known police high command tactic, and while officials like Acting Police Commissioner Grant preen their feathers as they reel off those meaningless numbers, the wanton extinguishing of people’s lives continues unabated, as too the continued offences against the person such as rape, child abuse, robbery, and the like. If the police cannot provide the investigative ability to present a properly investigated case for successful prosecution, then those numbers and those attention-getting announcements at press conferences by Grant may succeed in buttressing the police’s flagging image. But, in the end, it is simply a bunch of malarkey.

Richard Hugh Blackford is a self-taught artist, writer and social commentator. He shares his time between Coral Springs, Florida, and Kingston, Jamaica. www.yardabraawd.com. Send comments to the Observer orrichardhblackford@gmail.com.