Harold Crooks, Contributor
(From left) Chief of Staff of the Jamaica Defence Force Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin; Commissioner of Police Lucius Thomas and Deputy Superintendent of Police Danny Graham, during a graduation cermony for 101 soldiers at the Moneague Training Camp last year.- CONTRIBUTED
THE GOVERNMENTS' National Security Strategy (NSS) was tabled in Parliament on January 7, 2006. It merely pulls together already existing
initiatives, providing mechanisms for
co-ordination and implementation along with some project planning jargon and timelines. This was then labelled strategy.
The National Security Strategy Working Group consists of 10 military men, two police officers and 30 distinguished public servants. Much substance in their report was sacrificed in favour of a grandiose definition of national security. Within this hazy mist, however, the working group has inadvertently crafted a fragmented strategy for integrating national crime prevention planning and risk mitigation into most aspects of public safety, along with the mechanisms to make it work.
To improve "effective democratic accountability" by the police, the group recommends a "civilian oversight" body that will set and monitor police operational standards, performance and conduct. In order to facilitate this, they will examine the Police Service Commission (PSC) to shield partisan politics from influencing the appointment, conduct and termination of police officers. Any law which trespasses upon this jurisdiction of the Governor-General and that portion, which he has delegated to the Commissioner of Police, will be void unless the Constitution is amended.
Such amendment procedures require that at least one Opposition senator votes in favour of the amendment, and this is unlikely, since the JLP would rather oversight of the police to be merged with the PSC. None of this is to deny that the appointment of all members of the PSC should be non-partisan, which is not now the case.
DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY
In most liberal democracies with a single national police force, the police is held accountable to the Constitution, the courts via the rule of law and to the people's elected representatives in Parliament. Not to follow this model, is to undermine political accountability for government's primary responsibility to ensure public safety.
In keeping with this constitutionally-conferred model of Cabinet responsibility, which has evolved over many decades, our police law, as outmoded as it is, requires that the Ministry of National Security set law enforcement policies and the Commissioner of Police is responsible, like most CEO's, to manage his force or be sanctioned.
Additionally, our police law was amended by this Government to provide for a ministerial inspectorate for the police. Its mandate was wider than the proposed oversight body but was never staffed and never given a chance to succeed or fail.
All over the world, civilian oversight refers to an independent civilian body to investigate complaints against the police. We missed the boat by giving the Police Public Complaints Authority insufficient authority and resources to do its job. The security strategy working group not only missed the boat; they are at the wrong pier, on an ill-fated voyage already charted by the authorities, with too many troops and too few mariners on board.
HOLD POLICE OFFICERS ACCOUNTABLE
What is wrong with our arrangements are poor management; a lack of political will to hold police managers accountable to benchmarked performance standards; insufficient resources to tackle police corruption and refusal to implement the more important aspects of the Hirst Audit, the Teten report, Report of the National Committee on Crime and Violence and the Wolfe report, which could be unpopular or politically risky. To amend the Constitution, deprive the Commissioner of Police of vital managerial authority and empower another layer of unelected representatives, is evidence that the working group has misdiagnosed the problems of our police and our police problem as sufficiently discrete categories.
Many recommended strategic reforms in the Wolfe Report such as, changes to the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) law, restructuring the Mobile Reserve and the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) as well as transforming police training and education, were later addressed by rhetoric and petty tinkering.
The 'strategic' socio-economic agenda of the working group regurgitates the homilies and hopes commonly heard on our many radio talk shows "The Government will foster an environment that provides access to economic opportunities; it will preserve human rights and alleviate poverty; it must 'address socio-economic problems', such as unemployment, poverty, illiteracy and human rights abuse; it must protect thousands of schools and hospitals, eradicate drugs and for the third time, kick-start failed programmes to promote 'positive values and attitudes'."
This must-do list is an endless chorus of the nation's hopes and aspirations pursued since Independence. They review a litany of our failures, which include erosion of moral values; poverty; exclusion; alienation; disorder; social discontent; murder; white-collar criminals; garrisons and ineffective educational and criminal justice sectors.
Shying away from how and why we engineered such endemic failures of governance, they naïvely suggest that with better policy coordination, another review of our police courts and prisons, a little more employment, less poverty and corruption, will, together, considerably improve our security, safety and our happiness.
RISE OF CRIMINAL ECONOMY
The rise of the criminal economy, workerless factories and investment without employment; the crisis in agriculture, and food security are matters left subsumed under calls for a 'stable economy'. The pity is that our private sector now appears willing to help build some equity, inclusion and national commitment to our central value system. But, we ask little of them because we doubt their readiness.
The working group claims that, "Jamaica is susceptible to military threats from other states," so we need a military to at least "delay or defeat" these imaginary apparitions even though they admit "this threat is in fact remote." Military resources are, therefore, "insufficient since they must cover all approaches to the country."
Since 1966, our military has been engaged 'routinely in law enforcement', prompting our Chief of Staff to call for some police powers of arrest. It would have been more useful if the working group had recommended comprehensive rules to deploy our army to act in aid of our civil ministries outside of declarations of states of emergency. In many democracies this is a device used to reduce arbitrary exercise of government's power to deploy the military to gain political advantage.
If armed criminals, organised crime or political adversaries pose a more urgent and credible threat than imaginary enemies, they should have developed a strategy advocated long ago to retool and legislate for a few platoons and military equipment to be merged with a reorganised police mobile reserve to suppress our heavily-armed 'dog hearts'. It would transfer big bucks, already being spent, and ready-made resources into permanent crime control.
After recommending demilitarising our police and moving them closer to communities while removing the army from routine law enforcement, they have failed to see that they have created a safer space for rampaging gunmen. All over the world, governments have learned the hard way, that if police is to be trained and organised to get widespread public support and trust, they have to be removed from the arena of suppression and armed violence.
IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTIONS
Notwithstanding this critique, the working group has made some important contributions to our security. One is to create a National Intelligence Agency advocated by some of us years ago and later by the JLP. More controversial is compulsory national registration of all, to include 'biometrics' collected at birth and to review the need for a national ID card predicted by George Orwell several decades ago. They could have considered a softer option by including photos and fingerprints on the TRN cards and require its use in more transactions. We would then be softened up for the biometrics part with a microchip that could later be implanted near the carotid artery, transmitting to locator GPS, geosychyncronous satellites, the Ministry of Health and the police so Big Brother can monitor our health and the evil in us.
Send contributions to the National Security Strategy green paper to nssiu@cabinet.gov.jm
