THE EDITOR, Madam:
NOW THAT the furore over the recent stoning of the Denham Town Police Station by students of the Denham Town Primary School is over I would like to add my voice to the serious discussion and analysis which I hope will take place on this incident.
To start, I want to make it clear that I do not support the action of the students. I think it was wrong, very, very wrong and the students involved should be appropriately punished.
It must be that we teach our children that there are other ways of dealing with issues and the stoning of adults, police or sky juice vendor, is a no-no.
Despite this, I must say as an 11-year-old student of Rollington Town Primary School in the 1970s it is possible that I would have been involved in a similar incident during my time.
Like the children at the Denham Town Primary School, I grew up in an inner-city community and during my childhood it was always, "We vs. Dem".
For all my formative years I saw the police not as human beings but as "pigs" who were around only to terrorise the people of the inner city, law-abiding or criminals.
One of my earliest memories involving the police was while I was in grade five at primary school walking down First Avenue with my father who was then well past 50 years old.
At the time three policemen, not much out of their teens called out to us, "boy come yah". My father kept on walking because as far as he was concerned they could not be referring to him.
One of the policemen came over and proceeded to "box" my father for dissing them, as he did not stop when they called him. That day, I saw my father cry for the first and only time, more from the shame of my seeing a man "box" him rather than from the pain of the blow.
That memory stayed with me for years and was reinforced by the numerous occasions when we knew that "Tom or Mark or Danny" was unarmed when he was gunned down by the police, who claimed that he was in a shoot-out with them.
I have heard policemen tell a young man that "boy mi must kill you" and days later he was dead, "killed in a shoot-out" by the police.
As I think of those inner-city days I remember one afternoon when the police came into my house and asked my sister for her oldest brother. My sister pointed to me, then 16 and attending Kingston College. The "lawmen" then told me to join a large group of others who were being detained for processing.
A protest by my sister resulted in her being "boxed" by a soldier who told her "duty gal go back inna you yard". My sister had just completed her teacher training and was working in a prominent commercial bank.
These and other incidents made me hate the police to the point where my friends and I celebrated when we heard that one of the "pigs" had been killed.
As a young adult I moved out of the inner city and suddenly I found out that policemen and women were actually people. Then I would drive down the road in shirt and tie and meet a policeman who would say, "Goodnight, Sir, may I see your papers".
Last year a young policeman, whom I had come to know as part of my job, Corporal Roland Layne, was fatally shot on Mountain View Avenue by gunmen and I cried for and with his family.
I used the opportunity to reflect on how I've come full circle and wondered if this would have happened if I had remained in the inner city where the police see everyone as a criminal.
That is the story of Denham Town. These children live in communities where for years the police have acted as an invading force disrespecting their parents and friends, people these children admire and respect.
These children have helped their parents pick up the pieces after the police invaded their homes and smashed furniture, emptied underwear draws, turned over or cut beds all in the name of crime-fighting.
Until this happens to you, it is hard to understand the embarrassment a woman feels when her panties are lying on the ground, stepped on by police and soldiers.
The children see the police as enemies who would beat and/or kill anyone. This is at the heart of the attack on the police station. The children just do not trust the police.
Until this is addressed, we will have similar incidents repeated in Nannyville, Backbush, Water-house, McGregor Gully, Tivoli, Flankers, Payne Land and every other inner city community where its "We vs. Dem".
Police Commissioner Francis Forbes and National Security and Justice Minister K.D. Knight should know that their greatest challenge is to improve the relationship between the people of the inner city and the police.
Until it is addressed, "they that labour, labour in vain".
I am, etc.,
ARTHUR HALL
Kingston
Jamaica
