Editorial | Revive Grants Pen-style police initiative

Police data on crime in the area is not readily available. But it is our sense that Grants Pen in St Andrew is not in the news for violent crime as used to be the case, especially during the 1990s and early in this century. Certainly, it has been one of the hotspots where the Holness administration felt it necessary to declare a state of public emergency (SOE) since SOEs emerged as the Government’s premier crime-fighting tool four years ago.

Should this anecdotal observation about Grants Pen be right, it is likely to be the residual effect of a community-based policing initiative implemented there a decade and a half ago, which this newspaper believes is again ripe for review and appropriate scaling up for implementation across Jamaica.

Indeed, a 2008 USAID-sponsored analysis of the project, and of the broader history of community policing in Jamaica, noted that among the objectives, the Grants Pen initiative is a catalyst for the development of a community-based policing model “as a part of a larger strategy for the transformation” of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) “by changing its style, organisational structure, relationship with the citizenry”.

“A second and related aspect involved community transformation,” said the reviewers, who included noted Jamaican criminologist Anthony Harriott, social researcher Elizabeth Ward, and John McLean, then an assistant commissioner of police (ACP). “This vision (and plan) was bold and ambitious, but necessary, if sustained reduction in the rate of serious crimes were to be achieved in the Grants Pen community.”

In this respect, the project transcended the construction of a high-quality, service-centred police station, similar to the one opened in Olympic Gardens in May. Instead, its core intent was a fundamentally transformative way of thinking about policing, which, unfortunately, is spoken about only cursorily by the current police chief, Antony Anderson, and the national security minister, Horace Chang.

OVERHAULING JCF

Of course, the discussion about crime and violence in Jamaica, and on ways to solve the problem, is not recent. And neither, it seems, are the conclusions of what is required to reverse the trajectory. All the serious ones include overhauling the constabulary, which is deemed to be corrupt, inefficient, and out of touch with the communities that it is supposed to serve. The JCF, however, has proved largely impervious to change. It quickly subsumes would-be reformers.

In the early 2000s, the American Chamber of Commerce of Jamaica – which, earlier, was instrumental in getting American support for a strategic analysis of the JCF by the American group Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) – proposed using the Grants Pen community as a model/pilot area for community-based policing after the failure of earlier efforts. The USAID financed PERF’s development of the project and the training of the police officers who would be assigned to the scheme. The island’s private sector helped to finance the construction of a model police station, with its adjacent community clinic (on the same compound) and facilities for commercial services – bill payments, Internet café, and teller machines.

A citizens’ group would interface with the police on security and community-development matters in an effort to build trust. But very critically, the primary initiative on the part of the constabulary was that the police were to be a visible and friendly, though authoritative, presence in the community. Officers would not only drive cars and ride motorbikes on patrol, but would also engage in foot and bicycle beat. Notably, 70 police officers were to be assigned to Grants Pen, which, at the time, was a ratio of one police officer to 113 citizens compared to the national average of more than 300 citizens per cop.

PERF established an extensive operating manual for the station, covering everything from the responsibilities of the senior officers to collection and analysis management of crime data, partnership with community leaders, and what was expected of beat constables. Among the responsibilities of these cops, the document said, was to “cultivate sources of information on criminal activity through regular contact with community residents”.

NOT SUSTAINED

Much of what was mapped was not sustained. With the reassignment of officers, police presence in the community fell, and the failure of the JCF to decentralise its management, allied with weak internal communication, meant that the trust built by the Grants Pen station was sometimes undermined by the actions of jack-booted outside squads. Further, as the 2008 reviewers observed, some in the JCF’s leadership bristled at the perception that ‘outsiders’, in this case private-sector interests, were dictating the internal operational management of the force, including which officers should, or should not, be assigned to the Grants Pen Police Station.

However, 15 years after the station’s formal opening, on a recent mid-week afternoon, people of the Grants Pen community used an ABM machine in an enclosed kiosk in a wide foyer to the station’s entrance. Looking west, on the side, towards the building’s back, is an adjacent facility. It was clinic day. People sat patiently awaiting attention.

The 2008 reviewers made clear that the Grants Pen model came with its weaknesses and problems. It was not a perfect template for uniform application across the island. It had successes and failures, from which the constabulary could learn, which, unfortunately, the JCF has been slow to apply. The establishment of the state-of-the-art station at Olympic Gardens, in Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ West Central St Andrew constituency, may be an opportunity for another look at the Grants Pen model, tweaked for the time.

Our suggestion in this regard is not for a slow roll-out of similar projects, as the 2008 reviewers appear to imply should be the case. Rather, the police should identify, say, the dozen or 20 communities with the worst crime problem and replicate the Grants Pen idea in them, including its high police density (which itself is a deterrent to crime). Additionally, instead of requiring cops only to cultivate sources, they should be given quantifiable, and verifiable, targets of the number of residents with whom they develop and maintain relationships. They would really be required to know the communities in which they serve – and to be tested on it.