IMPROVE COMMUNITY relations, fight police corruption, have more patrols, work harder and more efficiently, be tougher on criminals, respond quicker to calls and train and manage your personnel better. These are some of the key instructions the Jamaican public is giving to incoming Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas.
These demands are among the findings in a recently conducted survey by pollster Bill Johnson of Johnson's Survey and Research.
Johnson polled 1,344 respondents in 84 communities, ranging from those which are known to be volatile to those which are crime-free and some in-between, across the island.
According to Johnson, some 36 per cent of the respondents believe that the police must improve their current relationship with the public if they are to reduce the spiralling crime rate. In that regard they are calling on the police to develop stronger community bonds, stop harassing and brutalising individuals and focus on improving their image among young people.
PUBLIC IMAGE PROBLEM
In an interview with The Sunday Gleaner, head of the Police Community Relations Department, Assistant Com-missioner (Acting) Leon Rose acknowledged that the police has a public image problem. He insisted, however, that this was caused mainly by the behaviour of some police personnel during operations, rather than a general problem of police-community relations.
"The context in which they speak of improving relations they are really speaking of attitude during operations attitudes especially towards young people, respecting their constitutional rights if they are incarcerated, whether they are given the sort of respect that every detained or arrested person is entitled to," ACP Rose said.
The poll found that 89 per cent of respondents believe that crime is becoming more of a problem for the country. This is slightly less than the 94 per cent of respondents who expressed a similar view one year ago.
WILLING TO HELP
In a related question, 57 per cent of respondents said that they would be willing to help the police identify the person or persons who committed a serious crime, while a substantial minority, 35 per cent, said that they would not offer any such assistance to the police.
Among those who said that they would not help the police 88 per cent said that they did not trust the police, fearing they would be putting themselves in danger if they provided information on criminals, with many of them labelling the police as corrupt.
On the crime reduction question, 16 per cent of the respondents said that the police needed to have more patrols, while 14 per cent identified corruption amongst the police as the major deterrent to greater success in crime fighting.
Respondents were almost evenly split on the question of whether the police were too tough and used too much force on suspects, with 44 per cent believing they are too tough, and 42 per cent asserting that they should be tougher. Fourteen per cent did not offer an opinion on the matter.
