Don Robotham, Contributor
Buju Banton
The replacement of Derrick Smith as minister of national security by Colonel Trevor MacMillan should not hide four basic facts. First, crime will not be reduced in Jamaica without national unity across political divisions. Second, crime will not be reduced if our police force is divided and demoralised. Third, crime will not be reduced without a major focus on improving the conditions of the youths. Finally, crime will not be reduced unless Jamaican society and culture are able to reassert its 'livity', as I wrote last week.
Perhaps the most important event of the week was not the appointment of Colonel MacMillan.
gaining support
The most important event was one reported in The STAR of Thursday, May 15. This story, written by Teino Evans, and entitled 'Artistes willing to change lyrics', recounted an initiative taken by Buju Banton, which is gaining the support of other major dancehall artistes such as Lady Saw, Vybz Kartel and Mavado. Buju Banton is quoted in his newsletter, The Gargamel Gleaner, as stating: "We are suffering a social decay yet not one, not a single one of our entertainers, has seen the need for a change in the lyrical content they are selling." This is a crucial intervention from the very centre of the Jamaican people. It is worth its weight in gold.
The appeal from Buju has received a positive response from artistes who have been associated with anti-social lyrics in some of their music. This shows that all is far from lost among the young people of Jamaica. The soul of the young is stirring and seeking to play its part in the healing of the society. Such a force from below is worth a thousand ministers of national security and commissioners of police. Because it is at the level of the street that crime will be defeated, not in the offices of ministers. However, the challenge thrown down by Buju will not be a simple one to meet in practice. Time will tell whether official Jamaican society takes up this challenge with sincerity or treats it only 'wordically'.
POLICE MORALE
The media and corporate sponsors have a key role to play in this regard. But equally important in the fight against crime is the state of police morale. There was a very unsettling story in The Gleaner on the same Thursday which reported serious demoralisation in the police force. A meeting was held with the prime minister and the new minister of national security in which members of the police officer corps expressed their dissatisfaction with the leadership style of Commissioner Lewin in no uncertain terms.
The allegation here seems to be the following: The new style of leadership is not consultative with senior officers, but is one of giving commands, military style. This feeling is not confined to persons widely suspected of connections to corruption and brutality. The difficulty is that honest officers whom we must retain in the leadership of the police force at all cost, also share in the sentiment that they are being treated with contempt. Sentiments such as "white man tek ova" and "dem a treat wi like bwoy" and "is brown man time now" are beginning to rumble. This is social and political dynamite.
What is feeding this sentiment is the belief that the view of some in the human rights community that the police force must be dissolved in its entirety is the policy being pursued. Honest officers bristle at this prospect and this gives those who are corrupt fertile terrain on which to agitate.
It needs to be said bluntly that any such broad-brush approach to reforming the police force is extremely foolish, dangerous and doomed to fail; it borders on the insane. It alienates the honest police officers and throws them into alliance with the crooks.
criminality
Further, were it to be pursued, it would send out into Jamaican society persons whose familiarity with the details of criminality would be such that we would rue the day. Impatience in the area of police reform, while understandable, will have fatal results. Iraq-type policies have Iraq-type consequences!
Worldwide experience teaches that reforming security forces is not a simple matter. A frontal approach is destructive and self-defeating. In our case, only an ignorant person could fail to appreciate that the Jamaican police force, with all its failures, remains a historical ladder of upward social mobility for the sons and daughters of working-class black Jamaicans. It's one of a triad - nursing and teaching are the other two. Kick that ladder away and it will have the most severe social and political consequences.
At the moment, this police ladder is being shaken by attacks from all sides. The result is an unannounced go-slow from the officer corps transmitted down the line to the rank and file. Many in this officer corps were already feeling humiliated by the recruitment of European police officers to the highest leadership levels. But they were willing to go along as long as they felt that their future opportunities for advancement were not being shut down. Now it seems that they are to have no future under the new dispensation. They are not going to take this lying down - not in their own country in the 21st century. It will never happen.
corruption
Minister MacMillan is no fool. Nor is Prime Minister Golding. Nor is Dr Phillips. They understand the seriousness of the issues raised above and the vital importance of dealing with them very carefully and promptly. Yes, the police force is plagued with corruption. Yes, it does have many who need to be cashiered. Yes, it needs to be re-built. But it also has many others who have a vital role to play in any reasonable scenario. If, because of impatience, human rights dogmatism or militarism, we drive these honest officers into the arms of the crooked ones, we can forget about reducing our homicide rate. Much tact is required to heal wounded feelings - from the prime minister himself, from the new minister, from the commissioner, from Dr Peter Phillips and, one must also emphasise, from European officers recruited into leadership positions. Nationalism is a powerful sentiment, which can sweep away the best policies. Jamaican black nationalism is not a force to trifle with.
POLITICAL UNITY
This issue of a crisis in police morale leads to the issue of political unity. Institutionalising unity between the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and People's National Party (PNP) - between Golding and Phillips in particular, is vital to resolve this explosive issue of the precipitous decline in police morale. It is of great importance that this unity not be only at the level of public statements of mutual support. The unity must be operational not just consultative, take an organised form and be prominently visible to all as an everyday reality.
This institutionalised unity will deprive corrupt officers of the weapon of political partisanship in their campaign to remain in the force. If the JLP and PNP agree on who is corrupt and who is not and the details of how this entire issue is to be dealt with, then the political mischief-makers will be defeated. If there is no such agreement, we shall fail in our attempts to reform the police. The same applies to attempts to dismantle the garrisons and to deal with the dons and hotspots. All these issues have to be depoliticised so as to prevent one garrison or don playing the political card. Therefore, political unity in the fight against crime is not a courtesy extended to the Opposition by the Government. It is a vital precondition for policy success. Without this broad national unity on the details of policy implementation and the organised monitoring of implementation - on what is done at each step of the way - the best thought-out policies are doomed to fail.
serious commitment
Since I have written at length in the past about the vital importance of youth policy and the need to reorganise this at the highest levels in a public/private youth foundation, I won't repeat all that today. We need only to remind ourselves that without a really serious public/private sector commitment all efforts at fighting crime will be in vain. But we must also understand that this is not just a matter of changing the youth - that is a superficial approach inspired by self-righteousness and a public-relations mentality. It is about changing ourselves. This is the entire point of the 'livity' argument. This will require those who have to provide substantial resources to assist the have-nots. But it goes farther. We, the adults, have to change our behaviour, not just the youths. None of this will be possible unless we end the idiotic political partisanship in Parliament and across the nation. National unity is a necessity.
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