Peter Bunting wants Jamaica to invest heavily in an effective closed-circuit television system, just like many of the developed nations have done.

The Opposition spokesman on national security, in a direct response to the imposition of a state of emergency in seven police divisions by Prime Minister Andrew Holness a week ago, said the cameras would go a far way in addressing many of the issues that has dogged Jamaica’s progress in crime- fighting and control.

Jamaica now has a system called Jamaica Eye, but this, too, Bunting, a former minister of national security, believes is not having the desired effect of capturing the behaviour of criminals.

“The use of cameras goes back many, many years,” said Bunting. “During my time [as minister] we had in Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, expanded it in Mandeville, Spanish Town, but we heard of a supposed surge, a new initiative in that area called Jamaica Eye, and the Government has spent millions bringing in cameras but, apparently, a lot of what they brought in were not properly spent on.

“Allegations are that entire containers of cameras have not been able to be used, which warrants an investigation to see who the suppliers were and who was specifying it. Even when you talk about the four police divisions that are generating a third of our murders, it’s a tiny area, less than 40 square miles. That area should be saturated with cameras, given current technology. When I ask police officers why they don’t use the cameras, they say the divisional officers don’t have direct access to the cameras so they have to go through an administrative bureaucracy.

“The second thing they tell me is that half the cameras are not working. A big announcement was made, a lot of money spent, and food eaten off the camera acquisition and installation, but they have not been effective in terms of when you compare how big cities across the world – London, New York … every big city has used cameras very effectively, both as a deterrent and also as an investigative tool to identify, after the fact, and allow them to arrest and charge the perpetrators. We have not seen any similar paradigm shift in the environment based on our deployment of cameras,” stated the Leader of Opposition Business in Jamaica’s Senate.

As to whether Jamaica should reach out to richer nations for support in the area of using technology to fight crime, Bunting told the Jamaica Observer that a few years ago a move was made to use technology familiar to Israel but, according to him, that move flopped.

“Many years ago, at least four from recollection, the prime minister, along with his then national security advisor, General [Antony] Anderson, and other security officials, made a very secretive trip to Israel and the speculation has been that they must have been pursuing the acquisition of various surveillance and monitoring systems. Since their return, notwithstanding billions of dollars being put in the budget of the Ministry of National Security for things like cybersecurity and cyber surveillance, we have got really no accounting or explanation of what the purpose of that trip was, what it yielded, or what was spent. In fact, the secretiveness has led to speculation about the spy software developed by the Israelis that has been used extensively by governments to spy on Opposition, to spy on media, etc. That trip has not yielded benefits in terms of reducing violent crimes,” Bunting suggested.

As for the competence and capability of the police to fight crime, Bunting brushed off a suggestion by the Sunday Observer that a laid back attitude within the ranks of the police force could be among the issues impeding the fight.

“The police are not laid back,” Bunting insisted. “What we do need is a police force that’s passionate, committed, motivated, enthusiastic, and who have the courage to go after criminals.

“Listening to media interviews over the last few days from the chairman of the Police Federation, one gets the distinct, clear message that the average rank-and-file police officer is demoralised and demotivated. You can’t expect them to be giving world-class performance if you have them in a state where they feel they are not being treated appropriately. There is no attention to their welfare etc. I remember one of the first speeches I gave to a Police Federation conference, and I said, if the Government is asking the security forces, the JCF [Jamaica Constabulaery Force] in particular, to treat the citizens like kings and queens, then they must treat them like princes and princesses. We can’t have this kind of class system where we don’t business. The fact that police suffer from hypertension, diabetes, all sorts of chronic illnesses at a much higher rate than the average population tells you that they need special attention. Their job is more stressful when you have something like a state of emergency, sometimes they are taken away from their families for weeks, if not months at a time and they have to be compensated for the extra efforts that they put out from time to time,” stated Bunting.

And, like he articulated during a news conference held at the Office of the Leader of the Opposition last Tuesday, Bunting insisted that the pay and manpower imbalance that exists between the police force and the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) must be steadied if the police are to get into the groove of becoming motivated.

He pointed to what he saw as the “militarisation” of the police as the reason for far more soldiers being taken under the wings of the State in the last five years as against the limited manpower growth in the constabulary.

“It is an inefficient use of the soldiers. It is an inefficient use of the budget. The way to support the police or any shortage in the numbers and strength of the police force is to recruit more police personnel and train them in investigations, in intelligence gathering, putting cases together that will result in convictions and take criminals off the street. But you cannot substitute soldiers for police officers because they don’t have the same training, they don’t have the same powers, and they shouldn’t.

“We have not increased the strength of the JCF at all over the last five or six years. In fact, it is where I left it as minister. In the meantime, the JDF has been increased by thousands. It’s a misallocation of resources,” added Bunting, whose tenure as security minister was from 2012 to 2016.

Bunting suggested, too, that the shortage in personnel that exists within the police force was also choking the crime fight.

“The last time I heard a figure, the strength of the JCF was about 11,800. The establishment is 14,000, so in the first instance, you just need to add 2,000-plus just to bring you up to the approved establishment. Ideally, you should be looking more at 16,000 to 18,000, but rather than first, getting the strength up to the establishment, and secondly, increasing the establishment of the JCF, we have increased the establishment of the JDF, when you combine the regulars and the reserves, by two to three times because they are so committed to the state of emergency as a tool and they are so committed to the big lie that the only way to get these forces deployed is through a state of emergency.

“Their expenditure has to flow and follow that because structure follows strategy and the inclination of the prime minister is to be authoritarian. He should have declared, when the COVID pandemic came in, a state of disaster, which is provided for in the constitution and which would have better suited this sort of extended pandemic which we have had, rather than the Disaster Risk Management Act [DRMA], which was largely aimed at dealing with hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, that sort of much shorter-term impact.

“But he has used that over an extended period, and essentially allowed himself to be able to create criminal offences and that was never what the DRMA was intended for. It was intended for the short term – you have a hurricane, you might have an impact for a few weeks, it disrupts normal life, it disrupts the sitting of the courts, maybe the sitting of Parliament, but that gave you a sort of short-term tool to allow the recovery efforts to proceed immediately…never intended for this protracted use that it has. But, essentially, concentrates the power in one person and that is what the prime minister wants and that is how he likes to operate,” said Bunting.