LAMBERT BROWN, GUEST COLUMNIST THE NEW Commissioner of Police, Lucius Thomas, sounded the right note when he said he was "moving swiftly to implement an approach to
reducing the homicide rate in our island".
Our country desperately needs the new commissioner to succeed. After all, crime, and in particular our high murder rate, impacts adversely on our economy as well as on the social and psychological life of our people. It is no consolation that there are reports that Jamaica now ranks as the most murderous country per capita in the world. I am sure all Jamaicans of goodwill wish our new commissioner well.
The commissioner's plan calls for increasing the level of resources and personnel in the areas of the high murder rate, holding the local commanders responsible for the implementation of initiatives aimed at reducing the numbers of murders and the recall of retired police officers.
Somehow his plan does not sound much, if any at all different, from the plan of his predecessor Francis Forbes. Will bringing back retired police officers to assist in murder investigations be the difference in making this plan work?
Unfortunately, it appears to me that we are in for more of the 'same old, same old' and therefore I cannot express any confidence at this point that we will see the necessary success in reducing our murder rate.
FLAWED AND OUTMODED
I believe that the current police investigatory techniques are woefully flawed and outmoded. If we are to reduce the murder rate, we must make radical changes in how our police services investigate crime.
Let us take the recent triple murder of the children in Kilancholly, St. Mary as a case in point. We must ask questions and demand answers as to what led our police officers to detain the wrong person not once but twice, while failing to capture the confessed culprit for almost 10 full days.
In progressive and modern work places, there would be an evaluation of the success and failures of that investigation. There would be questions asked as to why it took so long to get the culprit.
What clues if any were missed? Did they miss any fingerprints, blood evidence or shoe prints? Why did they hold the wrong person on two occasions?
The purpose of these questions would be to prevent a recurrence of this failure and to learn positive lessons for the future.
Regrettably, evaluation of failures and successes does not appear to be the norm in the police force. If this was the case, then it would be easy to generalise the lessons of success learnt, while avoiding the repetition of errors discovered.
If we are to win the battle against the criminals who are swiftly taking over more and more of our beautiful country while turning decent and law-abiding citizens into prisoners in our own homes, then we must catch and convict them.
Knowing that they will be caught and severely punished is the surest deterrent to the criminal.
Currently the criminal knows that no matter how dastardly his act, the odds are that he will not be caught and even worse, not convicted if arrested in the first place.
The death penalty will not work unless the criminals are caught. It, therefore, makes no sense calling for the death penalty unless we put new measures in place to apprehend the criminals. What is necessary is the
immediate introduction of all the technological aides that are available to help us combat and win the battle against the death mongers.
The Ion Scan technology has helped to reduce significantly the drug smugglers at the airports. Why aren't we using more closed circuits cameras in all the high-crime spots in the country? Why has the bullet identifying machine, so critical to helping the police to track and solve firearm crimes across the country, been allowed to be out of use for over four years?
The time has come for us as a nation to invest heavily in the medium and long-term in a new cadre of forensic scientists so that our police services can get the benefit of the most modern investigatory techniques and skills which are being used to solve complex crimes in other countries.
I propose that we select between 200-300 science-based students from our secondary and tertiary institutions, and provide them with scholarships to study overseas in a variety of forensic skills.
It is not beyond our private and public sectors possibly with international assistance to fund such a programme. Yes, we may lose some of these students along the way, but our country will be the great beneficiary of the new skills and we can truly begin to push the criminals onto the back foot.
NON-PARTISAN VOLUNTEER PROGRAMME
Just imagine the gains we could make by having numerous well-trained crime scene personnel available to attend the various crime scenes across the country. We would be able to reduce the workload on the overburdened police officers who are currently overwhelmed by multiple investigations and therefore unable to focus on solving
individual cases assigned to them.
We face a crisis in law enforcement strategies and only bold, new and innovative strategies by our policy-makers and
operational personnel will bring back the confidence of our people and fuel hope that we can indeed win the battle against the heinous criminals.
The time has come as well, to introduce a non-partisan volunteer programme to assist the police in crime fighting. I am sure that there are computer analysts who would be willing to train and assist the police on a voluntary basis to utilise the various
computer programmes that other countries and cities use to reduce and control their crime problems.
Modern times call for modern thinking and, hopefully, the new recruits from Scotland Yard will be able to energise our police force to think and act in a modern manner. This is the only route to a
sustainable reduction of the murder rate in our little piece of paradise.
Lambert Brown is first
vice-president of the University and Allied Workers Union and can be contacted at labpoyh@yahoo.com
