Editorial | Boost police presence with outside forces

Major General Antony Anderson came to the commissionership of the police force with a hefty rÈsumÈ and much public goodwill. Indeed, he also benefits from significant political support, having initially been appointed by Prime Minister Andrew Holness as czar of Jamaica's national security architecture after decades of service in the army.

It is particularly because of this serendipitous alignment why there has been a wellspring of hope that General Anderson would be best suited to transform the constabulary from a creaking, hobbling ogre that is highly inefficient, infested with corruption, and resistant to change.

The recent squabble about the ultimate efficacy of the three states of emergency -one of which expired on Wednesday and the other two set to lapse on January 7 and 31 - raised the importance of high visibility of the security forces on streets and in town squares. This newspaper believes that notwithstanding the prime minister's impassioned appeal about special powers under state of emergency legislation, the core of the success surrounding the 22 per cent decline in homicides in 2018 emerged from the unprecedented medium-term saturation of public spaces and places with teams of police and soldiers manning checkpoints and pressurising volatile communities, thus flushing neighbourhoods of criminals and displacing gang networks.

The upshot: Numbers matter!

And that's the rub - at least partly - behind the Jamaica Constabulary Force's incapacity in providing a buffer against the tidal wave of blood that has besieged our shores.

SHORT ON MANPOWER

With a complement of about 12,000, the constabulary is woefully short of manpower to sustainably rein in crime over long periods before burnout sets in. When compared to other Caribbean territories with much lower rates of homicides and other serious crimes, Jamaica has inferior numbers with which to challenge the scores of killers who trade in fear and bloodshed. And with an attrition rate of around 500 personnel a year, recruitment numbers cannot compensate for that deficit.

That is why we urge General Anderson to use his considerable influence, as one who has the ear of the prime minister, to pursue other means of complementing the police force. Among the principal measures is creatively tapping into Jamaica's private-security framework to forge a supplementary force to buttress the existing corps.

The private-security industry accounts for about 22,000 registered officers - but the real figure means that they outnumber the police by more than 2:1. As we noted almost a year ago in these columns, the State should divest police authority to segments of the private-security industry. This may involve incorporating security guards in manning traffic, or administering public order, or even operating within the precincts of police stations themselves.

Naturally, this is not a microwaveable solution to be implemented with undue haste and without thought. For it will undoubtedly require some legislative agility and retraining regimens to make those officers fully ready to fill those gaps.

Administrative responsibilities may also be transferred to security guards or recruits from the civil service whose jobs may be shed from the long-overdue rationalisation of the public sector.

Such creativity would facilitate the redeployment of police personnel to cover the street beat and saturate communities over the longer term. It would also free up more cops to conduct hard-core detective work and bolster the efficacy of squads targeting high-profile overlords in the underworld, well as criminal gangs.

Jamaica needs more police on its streets. More police equates to greater public confidence. More public confidence is good for social stability and a boon for business. Let's not twiddle our fingers while solutions stare us in the face.