Kevin Blake’s mandate

THE POLICE Services Commission (PSC) didn’t follow this newspaper’s suggestion for transparency in selecting the new head of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

But it seems that the PSC’s choice of Kevin Blake, one of the four deputies to the outgoing commissioner, Major General Antony Anderson, has met with, at worst, guarded approval and definitely widespread goodwill. Which Dr Blake will need, given the seriousness, and difficulty, of the job that is ahead of him.

That is why, notwithstanding the PSC’s failure to employ a more open and engaging strategy in his appointment, the new commissioner, on taking up the job, should do a personal reset by first outlining to Jamaicans the specific terms of reference he has been given; and second, pledge to deliver a three-year strategic and operational plan for the constabulary within 90 days of taking office.

Delivering the latter shouldn’t be difficult. Dr Blake has been in the JCF’s officer corps for the better part of two decades, including several years near the top of the organisation.

The performance targets and the operation/ strategy document would provide the benchmarks for judging Dr Blake’s effectiveness. Which raises the third element of there set the commissioner-designate must undertake: committing to a process by which he periodically, and publicly, reports on the outcomes of his operational programme, during which he can be robustly interrogated and assessed and for which he can be held accountable. While data delivery and good-news announcements will inevitably be part of these reports, the aim would be to delve into larger strategic and transformational issues.

Which leads to the core of what Dr Blake is expected to achieve and the skills he is likely to bring to the job.

PRIMARY MEASURE

The primary measure of the effectiveness of policing in Jamaica is the island’s murder count. In 2023 it was 1,393, or a homicide rate of approximately 51 per 100,000 residents.

These figures place Jamaica in the top tier of the world’s most murderous countries where there isn’t war or civil conflict. Yet the numbers represented an eight per cent fall in murders compared to 2022. The decline has continued into 2024. The 231 murders recorded up to March 9 were a drop of 17 per cent compared to the first 68 days of 2023.

On that score, Major General Anderson, a former army chief and national security adviser to Prime Minister Andrew Holness, is leaving the job on a relatively high note. He will probably attribute a good part of the current statistics on homicide to the generous use, over the past eight years, of states of public emergency as a crime-fighting strategy. Additionally, Major General Anderson has presided over unprecedented investment in technology for the constabulary, which has been hailed for improving the efficiency of the police.

Dr Blake, an intellectually minded man with a PhD in sustainable development and a master’s in information systems management, has been critical in the implementation of the JCF’s technology projects. In some respects, he is likely to be perceived as a continuity candidate who will pursue the strategies started by his predecessors.

Indeed, there are things to build on. However, there are many watchers, including this newspaper, who will advise Dr Blake of the need for a new, more balanced strategy to policing, pivoting the JCF from a paramilitary organisation to a genuinely service-centred institution.

While the current mix of policing strategies may have produced results, on the current trajectory, there will still be more than 1,000 murders in Jamaica this year. Moreover, there have been periods when murders decline for a few years – only to spiral again. The challenge for Dr Blake, who has operational autonomy, will be to balance any need for muscular short-term strategies with those that rely less on the JCF being a ‘force’.

AVOID TYRANNY

Dr Blake must, therefore, first avoid the tyranny of the squad and its penchant for circling the wagons in resistance to deeply transformative change in the JCF. The fact that he entered the organisation on a fast-track scheme rather than a typical recruit who usually becomes bound to his squad should make it easier for him to avoid these institutional strictures.

Further, Dr Blake’s background and mix of skills may predispose him to the concept and ideals of policing by consent and research-led approaches to problem solving.

In that respect, despite t he many recent declarations by officialdom of a metamorphosis of the police force, Dr Blake can’t underplay the low levels of trust Jamaicans generally have in the JCF and their perception of it as an organisation with high levels of corruption and poor accountability.

So even as he continues with the technological modernisation of the JCF, the new commissioner should be mindful of an observation by a 2008 multinational Strategic Review Panel, which remains relevant nearly a decade and a half later.

They said: “Previous reform efforts have not specifically focused on addressing cultural issues, preferring to focus instead on more tangible changes to systems and processes. We believe that this has been an omission. What is required is a concerted, long-term and coordinated effort to tackle the negative aspects of the current culture on a number of different levels. Behaviour, beliefs, attitudes, and ways of working must all be changed through a range of interventions targeted at improving leadership capacity, management effectiveness, professional skills, and integrity and accountability.”

Dealing with these cultural and integrity issues must be high on Dr Blake’s operational and strategy agenda on which (outside of his performance appraisals by the PSC and engagements with the national security minister) he should be willing to report to an appropriate parliamentary committee at least three times yearly. Indeed, he should offer to do so.