Paramilitary policing and J’can inner-city youth

What must change

IN THE 2007 Forced Ripe Report (Gayle and Levy), young men in three different inner-city and working-class communities stated that the police could not protect them, when “in reality, they need protection from us”. According to the young men, “The police can protect women and children, and middle-class people, but not us. Is a war thing between us.”

In Jamaica, police work climate, policing style, and the treatment of the police and inner-city youth by society contribute to a disastrous relationship between police and young men. The situation is a recipe for civil war in which both the State and inner-city males suffer high casualties.

Policing is one of the most hazardous professions in the world. More than a half of all police deaths are usually accidental,

There are many Jamaicans who support the police and youth killing each other. We ascribe a value to the lives of both inner-city youth and frontline police, both of whom are unfortunately from the underclass . ... We treat the death of anyone from the merchant class as a catastrophe, but the death of a peasant with indifference.

with road fatalities, drowning, and burning ranking among the most frequent. Nonetheless, in the most violent countries, the majority of slain police officers are usually murdered, suggesting a difference in policing policy and process, as well as an aggressive youth attitude towards the police.

In New Zealand, one of the most peaceful countries in the world, only four police officers were killed by criminal acts between 2000 and 2011. This produces a police death rate by criminal acts of three per 100,000, compared to 150 per 100,000 for the same period for the Jamaican police. Over the same period, Jamaica’s average homicide rate was 50 per 100,000; but 350 for inner-city young men (15-34 years) in the Greater Kingston area. This rate is almost twice the rate of deaths (205 per 100,000) in the Iraqi War and Occupation of 2003 to 2011. Not surprising, the police killed an average of 200 young men per year for this period – and on average, 13 officers were killed yearly.

EXTREME FEAR

Societies with homicide figures above the civil-war benchmark (30 per 100,000) such as Jamaica and South Africa have so much violence that policing is characterised by extreme fear. In such settings, an officer’s preoccupation often shifts from that of protecting others to that of protecting himself.

In New Zealand, England and most other stable societies, the average police officer does not carry a gun on his person. In these countries, lethal weapons are carried concealed in service cars, or are carried by various special strike forces called upon in events of emergency or extreme violence. In countries such as Jamaica and South Africa, policing is done as if the countries are in a permanent state of emergency. Officers are armed with hand guns and sometimes assault rifles and are psychologically locked in a state of warreadiness.