Nelson

At least 4,000 additional policemen and women are needed to effectively collar crime, says Minister of National Security Dwight Nelson.

"I say to everybody, I would love to hear complaints that the police is stopping me too often on the road, that I go through too many checkpoints and too many roadblocks," he said. "But we have a problem with numbers."

Nelson, noting that there are 8,000 police personnel in the island, added: "We are expected to have a minimum of 12,000 members in the police force to effectively carry out their responsibilities."

To add to this, the minister said only 300 police recruits are trained annually at Twickenham Park in St Catherine.

"We lose 250 policemen and women every year through attrition, whether by retirement, migration, death or other reasons," said Nelson, who was speaking at the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce's meeting of its board of directors, downtown Kingston, yesterday.

"We are netting out to about 50 additional policemen and women each year, so you can see how long this process is going to take," he said. However, the minister pointed out that a new training facility has been brought on stream in Tranquility Bay, St Elizabeth, and $15 million was spent in refurbishing it to bring it to acceptable standards.

He said the facility was expected to provide another 140 new policemen annually. Additionally, Nelson said, "To satisfy this need for numbers, there are a lot of policemen and women who sit around desks, stand at places, whether it's King's House or Jamaica House, and open and shut gates. These are people who were trained to fight crime yet we have them behind desks pushing paper and pushing pencils, opening and shutting gates."

Recruiting

He said the ministry was recruiting 300 district constables to do those jobs, with police personnel being put on the road.

The minister also mentioned another challenge.

"The police force has been a very deficient body, criminals are very technologically efficient," he said, explaining that measures such as CCTV and the recent agreement with the fingerprint system have assisted in dealing with those issues.

At the meeting, Nelson also revealed that 2,000 deportees have arrived in the island since the start of the year, with most coming from the United States and England. He said 70 per cent were deported because of criminal activities, and the ministry has implemented several programmes to rehabilitate them and integrate them into the society.

kimesha.walters@gleanerjm.com