Martin Henry SGT. DAVID White is right, and he writes very well, calm, cool and clear. Policing in Jamaica must be one of the most dangerous in the world, counting Russia, Colombia and South Africa. The annual kill rate as a proportion of the Force certainly bears this out, and we tend not to give as much space to the numerous injuries that do not result in death but often in permanent impairment.
The 'illegal communities' that the head of the Police Federation wrote about in response to criticisms raised over concerns for 'zinc fence' policing heighten the risks and dangers of policing to unprecedented levels. The parallels of these communities are the barrios of Latin America, the townships of Africa and the housing projects of North America and Europe. In these places, to varying degrees, alternative 'legal' and 'social arrangements' 'dons' and 'kangaroo courts' exist, and members of these communities live in a 'culture of silence'.
POLICE ACTION LIMITED
The degree to which their criminal elements are armed and determined, determine the level of danger confronting the government's law and order and peacekeeping forces, as well as the effectiveness of policing.
It is not just in Jamaica that a policy of raids and containment operates. Wherever whole sections of society live under alternative arrangements, those arrangements must be broken up and the authority of the state restored for effective policing to take place.
The ink had hardly dried on Sgt. White's well-reasoned piece, which began with reference to the violence in Spanish Town, when Denham Town erupted. The details are lost in the usual charges and counter-charges, but the dangers of which the Police Federation chairman speaks came out into the open full force: School children fronted the assault upon the security forces, gunmen openly engaged them in a two-hour shoot-out, service vehicles were destroyed. Calm, until another day of armed confrontation, was only restored when the political representative issued orders.
Under what amounts to military attack, the police were restrained by the rules of engagement not to fire upon the attacking crowd. Amazingly, according to the report by this newspaper, "the lawmen strategically positioned themselves in the May Pen Cemetery and on Spanish Town Road to prevent any possible attack from Tivoli Gardens"!
SILENCE IS GOLDEN
The police, as peacekeepers, are forced to wage war in 'communities that are structured to fight war'. Heavily-armed criminals have the advantage of terrain, the 'culture of silence', and freedom from restrictive rules of engagement.
From hard medical experience, fellow columnist Garth Rattray did an excellent job of detailing the extreme hazards of 'zinc fence' policing in these communities physically and socially organized for war, not peace, and which are 'tailor-made by miscreants to kill intruders'.
Let us call a spade a spade, an M-16 an M-16 and an AK-47 an AK-47, as columnist Ian Boyne did on Sunday: "The links between Jamaican politics and criminality are well established, and the transaction costs of these links are incalculable." One of the casualties has been policing, transformed under those military pressures into para-military operations for containment and eradication.
One of the huge difficulties faced by the police under 'zinc fence' conditions is the meddling of criminals with the area population. To push the war analogy a bit further, the American military, the mightiest in the world, was defeated in Vietnam, and is facing severe difficulties in Iraq, partly because of the capacity of the 'enemy' to merge with the population against which the uniformed, formal military was obliged by the rules of engagement not to turn their weapons.
Needless to say, as they took more and more casualties from an invisible enemy lodged among non-combatants, who may be friend or foe, the niceties of international conventions were severely strained, and atrocities occurred. It would be a miracle if police officers, trained for peace, not war, who "must go down dark and narrow death-trap (alleys) or brave treacherous swamps and mangroves knowing full well that the next minute could be their last on Earth", as according to Rattray, did not resort to brute force techniques at least some of the times under such treacherous conditions.
Everybody wants community policing, but communities must exist for community policing to happen, and creating policeable communities is not, essentially, a police function. Sgt. White said it well: "We are not town planners, but we are aware that some communities are illegal. These communities are not organized to facilitate police work."
BUILT FOR WAR
These illegal communities are not just the 'capture land' and 'gully bank' communities which the Federation Chairman detailed, this 'town' and that 'town' has been progressively 'structured to fight war' and to challenge state authority.
It is farcical. The police tying children's shoelaces, painting basic schools, and feeding old people cannot be the answer to the impossibility of properly policing 'zinc fence' communities, neither is the culling of warrior 'bad-men' with collateral damage, ultimately the answer. The 'communities' which pose such extraordinary hazards to law enforcement activities must be converted into policeable communities, and that is a matter of political action.
In civilized places urban space is highly regulated to allow the delivery of services, including the maintenance of law and order. Our failure to do so can't simply be written down to poverty. We have witnessed the structured destruction of ordered urban communities, like the various 'towns' south of Cross Roads and central Spanish Town, by other forces beside just poverty, and the rot is spreading to new, originally ordered townships in the Portmore region.
I hope no one will accuse me of a disregard for human rights, which this column is dedicated to defend, nor of excusing police excesses. The police are human too and have been given a basket, crafted by others, to carry water. They face an impossible task and undue risks policing, according to Rattray, 'where angels fear to tread'. The captive innocents in these desperate places need liberation, but the solution is not primarily a police matter. A new set of orders and actions needs to go out.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
