Mark Wignall | Minister Chang, big second move expected

Hypocrisy is quite often the strategic partner of the politician, and no place is it best employed that in the pandering to the faithful from a raucous party platform and in how all security ministers fawn over and flatter the police.

Back in the 1970s and somewhat beyond the 1980s, it was the standard sociopolitical belief that a political party needed the police vote if it wanted to retain or win power. Some police commissioners were little more than extensions of the prime minister and his party so, while on the stump, both the People's National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party gushed over themselves in trying to paint the police force as prim, proper and totally faultless.

And then came Minister Horace Chang, who recently threw a whole bucket of icy-cold water on that arrangement by labelling the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) as little unchanged in culture and practice from its initial and de facto mandate as being protector of the ruling class and hostile to the ordinary citizen.

Those were not the minister's exact words, but they pretty much carried the general sentiment. Speaking at the Caribbean Policy Research Institute, in association with the Institute of Criminal Justice and Security, Minister Chang said the JCF was designed to protect property owners "where we trained them for six months in military drill, gave them some discipline, gave them a big pine baton and a Lee Enfield rifle and then we complain that they shoot or beat up somebody".

Labelling the JCF as little more than a 'glorified security guard system' he added, "Now we have to reorient that, retrain and restructure the force to accommodate the young professionals who are interested in law enforcement."

And, of course, those with specific interests to protect, like head of the Police Federation Corporal Arleen McBean, have not greeted the minister with accolades for speaking the truth, choosing instead to borrow the standard operating hypocrisy and lambaste the minister for undervaluing members and drawing a bead of incompe-tence on their service.

I totally understand that Ms McBean is herself in a sticky situation. As head of the union that represents the bulk of the members of the JCF ,she is forced to give up on her personal views, whatever they may be, and stand up strongly in defence of the status quo.

Less important truth

According to Ms McBean, she would have preferred if the minister had whispered it in the ears of the federation instead of spilling it out in the public domain. In other words she, like all successive security ministers before, was forced to pretend that her representation of JCF members made Chang's truth less important.

Each time in this country that there is an interaction between a few members of the JCF, one or two social blue bloods and an ordinary Jamaican, the blue bloods triumph and the police and everyone else limps up at the rear.

Minister Chang, in citing the need for transformation, was highlighting the problems and the genesis of them. But, some of us would have preferred that Chang keep his mouth shut and utter the standard drivel.

Transforming the force cannot simply mean building out new police facilities and hoping for the best with the destructive cultural mores still in operational mode. For real change to take effect, a new police recruit will have to be turned out who knows his responsibility is to serve and protect and reassure every Jamaican, from gully bank to uptown heaven, none with more preference than the other.

Deep down, Ms McBean and Dr Chang are seeking similar outcomes - a JCF suited to 21st-century needs.

- Mark Wignall is a political- and public-affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.