The police feature heavily in Jamaican music, mostly for the worse with lyrics about marijuana interceptions, dance shutdowns and general injustice.

Still, they continue to have a presence in music videos and provide security for music events.

Junior Murvin's 1976's Police and Thieves is straight out commentary on the street wars between gangsters and police ("police and thieves in the streets/frighten the nation with their guns and ammunition"), the song coming in the year of the infamous State of Emergency and a spike in gun crime. It was covered by punk rock group, The Clash, a year later.

John Holt's Police in Helicopter looks at the impact of the lawmen on the marijuana crop from above, as well as the likely repercussions ("if you continue to burn down the herbs/we're gonna burn down the canefields); Sugar Minott's Oh Mr DC takes the viewpoint of an interception on land ("coming from the country with a bag of collie/buck up on a DC, him waan fi hol' me").

courtroom appearance

Peter Tosh, never one to call a spade a garden implement, did not outright say 'police' in Cold Blood, but the song about a courtroom appearance for marijuana speaks about 'Babylon', a popular derisive name for policemen and the entire oppressive system. He sings:

"And every time I see Babylon

My blood run cold

Every time I see the wicked men

My belly move"

Culture speaks directly to violence by the police against citizens, specifically Rastafari, in Natty Never Get Weary, which he starts by saying "brutality me a tell yu bout y'nuh bredda". He then goes on to speak about a specific incident:

"Him tek whe everyting from I an' everyting I possess him ask I where I get it. Him sey bway, go inside a di jeep!"

In the early 1980s, Peter Metro did a comic take on Police Inna England; in the early 1990s, with the advent of the police's 'Operation Ardent', Buju Banton did a song of the same name, asking "what more, what them want the suffara fi do?/every dance whe wi keep dem mek it get curfew". It goes on to describe a search at a dance ("like a fire drill dem part di dance inna two/dem mek two long line/one fi Tom and one fi Sue/while two officer up a front one a search an one a screw").

dance lockdown

Mavado would look at the dance lockdown after the raid on his 2007 birthday party at Temple Hall Estate, St Andrew, in On the Rock, singing "helicopter inna de air, bright light a shine a grung/dem sey nobody move nobody run, from di river to di bank lock dung".

Baby Cham has long dismissed the Babylon Bway, warning that his garments are "dearer dan yu pay", while the fiery Anthony B has recorded his opinion about some elements of the force in Police:

"Who want the dancehall fi stop? Police

Who no want fe see herbs a shop? Police

Who kill de yutes pon di block? Police"

And as we head to the close of the first decade of the second millennium since soldiers gathered at the foot of a wooden cross and jeered an innocent, Queen Ifrica observes:

"Government an police

Civilian an' police

Taximan an' police

Everyone an' police a war".