Outgoing Commish feels sense of accomplishment
OUTGOING COMMISSIONER of Police, Major General Antony Anderson, says he feels a sense of accomplishment as he leaves the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) today, describing his tour of duty as a leg of a relay that he has completed.
“We have a number of things lined up that my successor will do and will continue. When you embark upon these journeys, and initially it’s a big jump, you have to move things in a significant way and get things moving. There is still a lot of work to be done, but because you start something does not mean that you will finish it. What you need is a relay of persons to change the baton,” he said.
Anderson, who hands over the reins to Dr Kevin Blake during a change-of-command ceremony this afternoon, emphasised that no one person will start and finish everything within the JCF, but leaders must rely on the fact that they have created new leaders to continue the process.
He made the comments in an interview with The Gleaner while in Hopewell, Hanover, to officially open the new Hopewell Police Station.
When asked if he feels a sense of accomplishment as his tour of duty with the JCF draws to a close, his prompt response was, “I do, and one of the senses of accomplishment was that the Police Service Commission did not feel the need to look outside of the JCF to find leaders.”
Said Anderson: “We had credible people who were part of the process and could have been commissioner of police. In the end, they decided that it would be Dr Kevin Blake.”
He went on to describe Blake as a “heavy lifter in terms of the transformation process within the JCF”, which will be to the benefit of the public.
Turning his attention to the new police station, Anderson noted that the final product of the new facility easily met his expectations.
“This was originally going to be just a small post for we had a challenge here (in the Hopewell area), but clearly, the community was deserving of more than that, and the level of development that’s taking place around here, we had to do more than a post, and so we created a full station here,” he stated.
COLLABORATIVE AGREEMENT
The Hopewell Police Station has come about through a collaborative agreement between the Hanover Municipal Corporation (HMC) and the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), wherein the HMC has leased for a period of 50 years one of its property holdings in Pondpiece, Hopewell, at a rate of $1,000 per year.The building on the property was refurbished by officers of the JCF’s Property Management and Maintenance Division at a cost of approximately $25 million.
Anderson pointed out that a full suite of police services will be provided at the new facility, which he describes as a “smart station” because of it being equipped with the latest in JCF technologies.
“This is the first station that has started out as a digital-smart station,” he pointed out.
When questioned about his feelings about his tour of duty within the JCF over the last six years, Anderson argued that it was his belief that he managed to take the JCF some distance down the road on the process of transformation.