Violence is not the answer
THE VIDEOS are disturbing. Soldiers kicking and hitting women; a wildly swinging assault rifle crashing through the defensive stance of a civilian. The gains made by the security forces in building relationships with those they were sent to serve and protect are hanging by a thread as their repeated clashes go viral. This is not the way the powers that be envision enhanced security measures/ ZOSOs/SOEs playing out. They should have known better. It was inevitable.
Soldiers are not police, their purpose is not to de-escalate situations. Soldiers are trained for combat with other soldiers and possibly insurgents, not pregnant females pointing in their faces and screaming at them. The restraint shown by most of the members of the Jamaica Defence Force in most situations is actually commendable given the provocation they face and lack of training in actual police work. Then there are times when they just lose it.
The police are supposed to be better able to manage boisterous crowds and unarmed aggressors. Yet every so often, we see the wails of those who claim an unarmed innocent was killed in cold blood. We see as well on videos, police officers losing control of a situation as they face resistance to arrest by individuals, or the mobs intent on setting them free. The security forces are facing barefaced challenges to their authority by a population emboldened by a culture of increased lawlessness and increasing hatred for them. The respect enjoyed by the security forces has plummeted in recent years, as these incidents have become far more commonplace. It is not simply a reporting bias due to the widespread availability of camera phones, but as a result of increased interactions between security forces and the general public, due to the widespread use of states of emergencies and their watereddown versions.
SWUNG TOO FAR
The pendulum had swung too far with extrajudicial killings, special task forces and hit squads forming the primary tools to maintain law and order. Then came INDECOM, which incentivised police officers to stay away from engaging criminals, lest they be banished to purgatory without full pay, legal representation, or any chances of promotion until the often flimsy cases against them were quashed. It is not common knowledge how often a police officer sent on leave during an investigation is actually charged with the alleged crimes committed in the line of duty. Anecdotal evidence says the conviction rate is poor. Whether this is a sign of an overzealous oversight body penalising officers who confront criminals, or a sign of their limited capacity to obtain a conviction, the results are clear. An officer who collects a meagre salary for dangerous work sees no advantage in confronting a criminal if they run the added risk of an INDECOM investigation. That, according to many members of the force, is why crime has continued to surge as gangs reigned unchecked over the last decade or so.
As that INDECOM butterfly effect led to the tidal crime wave we are now experiencing, we once again turned to the tactic we know best, violent crackdowns. This time there is no special squad. It is the army that is providing boots on the ground in the major crime-producing areas. Men who are trained to use force as their only tool are expected to help create a peaceful society. That has never worked in our history.
The Jamaica Constabulary Force was established following the violent upheaval in 1865 now known as the Morant Bay Rebellion. Back then, it was poorly trained voluntary militia and police force that maintained law and order. As they panicked and shot demonstrators during the peaceful march on the courthouse, the rebellion was born. Violence begat violence and it continued with hundreds indiscriminately slaughtered by troops, militias and Maroons. That was how law and order was maintained then, through murder and terror, and that is how we frame our approach now, to terrorise criminals. It is what we know best. It happened again during the riots of 1938, and during the crackdown on Rastafarians right through to the invasions of garrison communities. It continues because it is what we know best. We never truly tried another approach.
CANNOT CONTINUE
It cannot continue. For almost 200 years since the first standing police force was formed to replace marauding Blackshots, militias and Maroons, violence as a tool to guarantee public safety has only hardened us as a society. The approach of terrorising and killing criminals results in too great a collateral damage in the communities where these actions are concentrated. Two hundred years later, it is still the same poor, hopeless, less educated demographic who know nothing but violence and suffering, who bear the brunt of this collateral damage.
It is time we accept that this approach is not working. Soldiers and police officers cannot be forever deployed in the streets in a “shortterm” crime suppression strategy that goes on for years. We must tackle the root causes of crime and build relationships with the citizens in violence-producing communities instead of socially and economically isolating them. Crime must not pay, and gangs must not be families. Children need positive role models. Leaders need to do what they were elected to do and lead us to a better future by making tough decisions, instead of talking up a storm in the hope that the butterfly effect goes both ways.